Don't Like Abortion? Don't Have One!

After 50 years of protection under Roe v. Wade, it is unfathomable that the Supreme Court took away, for the first time in history, a fundamental human right.  Unfathomable and infuriating.

During the early years of our marriage my wife worked as an administrator in a reproductive health center.   I learned through her experience that no person having or performing an abortion takes it lightly.  The conservative rhetoric accusing poor women of using abortion as birth control is cruel and wrong.  While it is true that some women have more than one abortion, it is the consequence of health injustice and inadequate education, not callous convenience.

As many have observed, the conservative hypocrisy is breathtaking.  The right wing religious zealots who played the persistent long game leading to the current SCOTUS majority, have worked with equal zeal to undermine efforts to provide universal health care and other elements of a decent society.  It is mind boggling that any sane person would outlaw abortion AND contraception.  These moralizing hypocrites will insist on the forced birth of many children who will live on the frayed edges of an increasingly unjust nation.  To them, the life of an undeveloped fetus is of far greater value than the lives of 13.1 million children who live with food insecurity and/or in deep poverty.

Nonetheless it is important to acknowledge the legitimacy of anti-abortion beliefs.  It is logically and morally consistent to be both pro-choice and anti-abortion.  Putting aside the more sensationalist images used by anti-abortion activists, an aborted fetus is not “nothing.”  The moral and philosophical complexity of the beginning of life defies easy answers.  Even an argument as extreme as “life begins at conception” is sincerely held by many women and men.   We should never be casual about the value of life.  This is why I have deep respect for animal rights activists, even as I make a different calculation about my own diet.  It is why I respect the rights of hunters, even though I will not hunt.   It is why I respect the individual convictions of those who oppose abortion.  But as the bumper sticker wisdom says, “If you’re against abortion, don’t have one.”

The complexity of the biological and moral questions surrounding abortion is why I so strongly believe that the pro-choice argument is about women’s autonomy, bodily and socially.   It is a profound violation of this autonomy for society to impose its choice on her body.   I cannot imagine an equivalent violation, if one exists, being tolerated by the men who sanctimoniously control women’s reproductive health choices.  I suppose mandatory vasectomy comes close.

Since Roe was overturned, many personal stories have emerged in the press and on social media sites.  The stories have provided painful details of the life or health circumstances that led to an abortion decision.   Others have envisioned the absurdly cruel consequences of prohibiting abortion in cases of rape or incest.  Even with my already low regard for legislators who would pass such a law, I cannot imagine how they could fail to understand the utter devastation caused by carrying such a fetus to term. 

But I fear that these stories, real or predicted, concede too much.  It is as though abortion rights advocates feel they must justify the decision to have the procedure.  But by anecdotal justification of abortion, well-meaning folks are inviting the inference that justification is required. It is as though a woman’s choice must somehow be negotiated with society; as if the majority male legislative bodies which pass these laws are entitled to decide when and if a choice meets their ethical or political standards.

No person has the right to violate a woman’s autonomy.  Only a woman, when confronted with pregnancy, can weigh the moral, health, economic, social and other ramifications of bringing a child into the world.  She may consult with a medical person, a partner, a family member or a member of the clergy, if that’s part of her personal calculus.   I can even imagine a woman looking at the world my generation has bequeathed and refusing to subject another human to the possible - likely - consequences of climate change, unmitigated gun violence, and social inequity.

While abortion is a woman’s choice, it is reasonable to have some limits that recognize the moral (and health) complexity.  Roe v. Wade did exactly that, however imperfectly argued.

Now women are once again second class citizens.  It seems to be just what conservatives want.