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Of Rhetoric and Abortion

January 23, 2006 2:54 PM

o, it has been 33 years since the Supreme Court decided the (in)famous case of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), where it decided the U.S. Constitution protects a woman's right to have an abortion. There are a million different things that could be said about the controversial decision, and the few that i'm going to say here are, i'm sure, fairly unoriginal.

First of all, i remember the first time i heard about abortion. It was sometime in elementary school. I can't exactly remember what grade i was in. The teacher presented the case without much bias, actually. Or, at the very least, not any bias that my young mind could detect. She presented the rhetoric, too. Those who opposed abortion were "pro-life," and those who supported abortion rights were "pro-choice." What a happy little world, i thought, where we can all be pro something. Back in the day, my undevelopled little mind saw the issue fairly simply: "i used to be a baby. why would you kill a baby? i'm pro-life!" Clearly, this is a huge oversimplification.

As time passed, my opinion would swing to the other side: a woman's right to decide what's going on in and with her body surely supercedes the "rights" of a few cells somewhere in her belly. But this, too, is an oversimplification.

So, where do i stand on the whole thing?

First, i think it's important to recognize that the issue is not cut and dry. It is not a simple issue to decide and i, personally, think that anyone who thinks otherwise is falling victim to the oversimplifications i, too, have fallen victim to. I think it's also important that, while many people on both sides of the debate have used the issue as a wedge, a political pawn, there are a great number of people on both sides that believe the way they do in good faith, and for very good and admirable reasons.

On the pro-life side, it seems clear to me that if you believe that life and the soul adhere at creation, then abortion is something to be opposed. I am not religious (i believe in the soul, although i shy away from using that word. i prefer "mind," which, for me, means about the same thing. For me, the mind, the ability to think, feel, reason, etc., on the level that humans do, is what sets us apart), but this view point does not strike me as immediately unreasonable. After all, even scientists can't tell us definitively when life begins. But this view need not be based in religion. The argument that the Constitution protects all Americans, and fetuses are Americans, so the Constitution protects them is, also, not immediately unreasonable.

On the pro-choice side, as i said earlier, it would be pretty much unfair to say that the rights of a single cell, or of two, four, eight, or sixteen cells, should override the right of a woman to decide whether or not to have a child. That argument satisfies me for cases where the abortion would happen on the day of conception, or two days later, or two weeks later. But things get tricky when you get closer and closer to the due date. Moreover, as Katherine pointed out to me, the right to an abortion ensures that a woman is able to choose if and when to have children, giving her more control over her destiny, career, sex life, and life in general which, in turn, means that she is more likely to be able to partake of the sorts of things that men take for granted.

But, of course, none of these interests can override the interest of protecting a sentient being's life. So the question becomes, again, when this amorphous blob of tissue becomes something more.

That is a question i cannot purport to answer.

What i can address is the rhetoric on each side. Pro-choice activists are not necessarily death mongers. They don't want to mandate abortions for everyone. They don't want to end the family. They simply want to protect the interests of potential mothers from legislation propogated largly by men who are, by definition, immune from the problem. Pro-choice activists see the balance as one of social progress for women against the rights of something that can't really be seen (in their opinion) as a person. Unsurprisingly, the balance comes out in favor of abortion rights.

Pro-life activists, similarly, are not necessarily anti-woman. They don't want women to continue to earn sub-par wages or to be locked out of high power or high paying positions. They're not necessarily bad people. They just see the issue as being between the rights of one person and another. One person just happens to be a fetus. Unsurprisingly, they believe that abortion is murder.

The point of all of this is to say that neither side is clearly wrong or clearly correct. As always, the resolution (and the right answer) probably lies somewhere in the middle. The biggest problem in this country today is nothing more than a failure to see eye to eye. Both sides of the aisle are to blame. It's easy to say that the fundamentalists are the only ones who are unwilling to compromise, but liberals have their own irrational moments, as well.

In the end, we're in this together, and we've gotta try to get along. Have your opinion, fight for it, challenge it, defend it. But try to understand the other side, too.

For my own part, i believe abortion is something a woman should be able to choose.


8 Comments


kcs said:

I think it has been turned into a moral issue, which denies the reality of the situation. Women will have abortions. It is not a matter of making abortion illegal and ending abortion. Morality should not necessarily be the focus of the debate. It is a woman's health issue. It is about keeping it safe and regulated. Clinton said it best. Safe, legal and rare. That is the goal. You can be pro-choice without being pro-abortion. It is not an alternative to birth control. I believe that you misquoted me because I said that birth control allows women to choose when and how they want to have a family. Abortion is a last resort. However, the current administration opposes educating and promoting birth control. That seems counter-intuitive if they want to lessen abortion.

June 25, 2006 3:00 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

i agree with you, and i apologize for misquoting you.

However, i believe that, to a certian degree, it is a moral issue. To someone who believes that life begins at conception, then abortion as murder is a definite moral concern. These people would say that in some cases, though not all, it is a women's health issue. I think that, for the most part, the debate is one of what to do with abortions where they are NOT a health issue.

Safe legal and rare is great, and i agree that the current administration is approaching things in probably the most ham-fisted way possible.

However, the fact is that the argument that "it happens, therefore it should be legal" doesn't hold much water. the fact that people engage in certain behavior doesn't mean that such behavior should be legalized, merely so that it can be regulated. That works, i think, in instances of victimless crimes, such as drug use or, as i argue in my paper, polygamy. However, i think that the whole thing with abortion is whether there truly is no victim. that's the point of contention for many people.

we should have a face to face discussion.

June 25, 2006 3:01 PM



kcs said:

You miss my point. Legal abortion is always a women's health issue. If it is illegal, women still have abortions, only under much more dangerous conditions. A woman who doesn't want to bring a child into an abusive or impoverished household is also supposed put her life at risk? With legal abortions, there is also the availability of counseling, which might ultimately cut down on abortion and will certainly benefit the mother. My grandmother's sister died from a botched abortion. She was married, with a few kids, but they were very poor and without birth control she felt there was no other option. Poor people don't always have the luxery of grand philosophical debate. Sometimes it is a matter of survival. People on both sides of the issue tend to forget this is an issue in which the majority of people affected are poor and uneducated. The debate is framed wrong. Focus on birth control and education and cutting down on the need to have abortion. Get to the root of the problem, not the polarized, politicized talking points. The right to life movement has moved in on birth control by arguing that it too is an "abortion." The pro-life movement is much less about whether a fetus is a life than it is about restricting women's choices or birth control would not have become the next target. Bombings and shootings at abortion clinics do not demonstrate much philosophical thought over the nature of a life, a soul.

June 25, 2006 3:02 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

Well, clearly i'm not supporting bombing abortion clinics. While you can argue about the propriety and moral correctness of abortions, bombings are clearly wrong and stupid.

My point, and i believe the point that right to lifers would make, is that the debate, even in the case of impoverished people, is, to some degree, about the status of a fetus.

Certainly, what you're saying is important and deserves to be considered. However, i believe that it glosses over something that IS important - namely, the concern that abortion is, in a very real sense, murder. I'm not trying to be political here, i'm merely trying to play the devil's advocate.

As i alluded to in my post, i'm fairly certain that the majority of people in the right to life movement are not anti-woman or anti-poor people. What would your response be to the argument that, in cases where an unwanted pregnancy has happened, there is almost always the option of adoption?

June 25, 2006 3:03 PM



ChrysXtal said:

"Focus on birth control and education and cutting down on the need to have abortion. Get to the root of the problem, not the polarized, politicized talking points."

I totally agree with this.

June 25, 2006 3:04 PM



kcs said:

Ismael, adoption is not always an option. That statement denies so many different variables that are entrenched in the decision to have an abortion. Plus, I think you are looking at Roe v. Wade wrong. It is about the right to privacy, which is more interesting to me than the morality of the abortion issue. The life or death issue is the way the right wing has framed it. Don't buy into the morality debate. Look at the constitutional debate. Since the right to privacy is not written in the constitution, where does it come from? How strong is the legal argument? What other rights will be weakened/taken away if the right to privacy is weakened by outlawing abortioin? Also, as far as your assertion that abortion is murder, what if I agreed with you and said it was? That only increases the hypocrisy coming from the pro-life movement. Until the pro-life movement spearheads the effort for peace in Iraq because they are outraged at the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens or lobbies for intervention in Darfur, I have a hard time believing the debate over abortion has anything to do with the sanctity of human life.

June 25, 2006 3:04 PM



Ismael Tapia II said:

I think it's unfair to characterize the pro-life movement, as a whole, as being disingenuine. George W. might not give a flying fuck about the sanctity of life, but that doesn't mean that every right to life activist shares W.'s dispicable goals, means, or motivations.

Aside from that, i think that it IS a moral issue, and you can't separate it from that. The constitutional debate and the morality debate are inseparable. You can't say that the Constitution, through the right to privacy, condones murder. I'm a HUGE advocate of the right to privacy, but the whole point of the right to privacy is PRIVACY. It seems, to me, unquestionable that two men should be able to have anal sex in their bedroom. Move that into a public park, for example, and it's not so clear cut. Similarly, with abortion, the right to privacy protects a woman's right to choose not to have this non-person grow inside of her. However, if that thing IS a person, the woman's choice is no longer private. the right to privacy is inapplicable. Limited in this way, i don't see that the right to privacy would necessarily be voided or eroded by revoking constitutional protection for abortion.

I don't think that's a mischaracterization of the debate at all. A right to life supporter, one with good motivations, etc., would listen to all you're saying, probably be sympathetic, but maintain, nonetheless, that what is at stake here is a human being. One that is, itself, protected by the Constitution.

It seems to me that your arguments take it for granted that this is not true, and, personally, i can't buy into that assumption.

June 25, 2006 3:05 PM



Dee said:

ok, let's assume that pro-life lawmakers are really that, pro-life. they are motivated chiefly by a conviction that life begins at conception. isn't it their responsibility, then, to provide birth control and prevent abortions by avoiding unwanted conceptions altogether?
if they can foot the bill for free viagra, they certainly should be able to ensure that any woman, at any time, can get a monthly supply of the The Pill. but frequently, these same "pro life" legislators support iniatives to restrict access to birth control either by passing laws so that pharmacists don't have to fill perscriptions they disapprove of, or staight-up crazies like santorum trying to ban all forms of contraception.
don't these actions prove that they are less concerned with avoiding situations in which a woman might ultimtely choose to terminate a pregnancy than they are with protecting the moral majority ideals of no premarital sex and 2.5 kid households?

nifty blog, by the way.

July 14, 2006 7:42 PM



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