Pro-Choice is a Big-Tent Proposition
Note: I realize that parts of this may reflect ideas that readers don’t necessarily share, so I ask you to help me to develop a theme that reduces the emphasis on “abortion,” and places it on a woman’s right to manage her own life. Thanks.
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I may be terribly naive or out of touch, but it seems to me that one of the biggest problems with the debate between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice is that those of us who support choice have allowed pro-choice to be conflated with pro-abortion. Pro-choice should be a big-tent proposition. There are alternatives to abortion, which should be a personal decision of last resort due to its finality.
The term, "abortion," itself is a harsh and polarizing term. What if we focus on "choice" instead, and inform people about the choices they have or should have: education, family planning, contraception, medical care, adoption, child care, and finally, termination of a pregnancy? The primary goal of pro-choice proponents should be the reduction of abortions, by fully supporting the other options. Planned Parenthood is an organization whose mission includes most of them.
Those who are pro-life are often against the alternatives. They lobby and legislate to reduce education, demonize contraception, and refuse to make medical and child care more affordable. They were behind the Dobbs decision that overruled Roe, with no consideration of unintended consequences. They make Planned Parenthood seem like the enemy because it provides roughly 40% of all U.S. abortions as well as other services they oppose.
The sad examples of the unintended consequences of the anti-abortion laws are heart-wrenching, but limited in number and nature, and use of them by pro-choice folks as justification for restoring Roe is too easily dismissed by the pro-life folks. Stories about victims of rape, sufferers of miscarriages, and women whose pregnancies threaten their lives and the lives of their babies may get the attention, but not the desired results.
The philosophical, ethical, and religious questions are far too complicated and deeply engrained to resolve in any reasonable timeframe. What is clear is that a woman’s pregnancy is hers alone to bear, and it should be hers alone to decide what is best for herself and her family. To force an untenable choice on anyone is inhumane.
I suggest that we turn the argument back around. Pro-choice does not mean you're against life. It means that life choices are between a woman, her family, and her doctors. The choices are not limited to abortion, and we should be supporting the alternatives even more.
Thanks for posting this, Bob.
This is a thoughtful and sensible way to look at "unwanted" pregnancy. Nobody wants to kill fetuses. We are ALL "pro-life". But terminating pregnancies when there are no other reasonable choices has been a human tradition since we dropped out of the trees. Every culture has done it.
I have two thoughts beyond the inevitability of abortion being part of human life as long as we exist on the planet - legally or not. Privately or publicly. It will always exist. Prohibition doesn't work.
First, your points about education and contraception should be at the center of the discussion - not the imposition of someone's religious beliefs - which may be viewed by a majority of us as primitive, superstitious and just another chapter in the sexism and male domination scenario we can't seem to shed. Feel free to follow whatever faith you like. But leave it at home.
Second, abortion for many politicians is just like immigration. Why address solving the need when it is just a terrific political football? Want to get a cheer out of an audience? Demonize "baby killers". And demonize "others who are coming to take away our jobs". It's all emotional nonsense. But it stirs up a crowd very effectively.
The number of abortions in America could be reduced to almost nothing with an effective strategy of making contraception a grade school concept and by handing out the newly available over the counter contraceptives to every young girl capable of reproduction. Teach and help.
But what bible thumping demonizer of "libtards" would want to really solve the problem? They need the ammunition to feed their howitzers of hate.
You two have pretty much said it all. Clear and consistent terminology is essential to reasonable conversation and the perversion of the terms "Pro life" and "Pro choice", along with Bill's point about the political value of a continuing failure to resolve the issue is why we still have this problem.