Over at Vox Nova, Morning’s Minion has asked whether a truce on the abortion issue is possible. It’s a good post — head over and read it. I was going to leave a comment over there, but MM makes a lot of points that are worth addressing and I tend to be exceptionally wordy, so I’m going to comment here and leave a trackback over at Vox Nova. And, surprisingly, I agree with just about everything MM had to say — just from the opposite side of the debate. I do think this conversation has the possibility to be fruitful.
First, I would like to thank MM for opening up this discussion. MM is obviously writing in good faith, and he/she takes a respectful and welcoming tone that is often absent in discussions about reproductive rights. I’ll ask that in the comments to this post, commenters please follow MM’s lead. I have a tendency to get snippy and frustrated when assailed by the same anti-choice comments over and over again, and I certainly get angry when I feel like someone is questioning my very right to exist as a human being fully endowed with the rights of self determination and bodily autonomy. I’d like to avoid that here, and you can all help me out on that end by keeping the discussion respectful.
So, MM’s post (which is really fantastic). My short answer: I’m not sure that we can call a truce on abortion and still satisfy both sides. I do, however, think that we can find lots of common ground.
I don’t think we can call a final truce for the reasons MM details: Pro-choicers see abortion as a right and those who are anti-abortion don’t. The legal aspects of the abortion issue will never be resolved in a way that all parties find acceptable. And a key part of the pro-life Catholic view is, as MM says, “that you can never do something that is wrong so that good might come of it.” Such a view conflicts with the way a lot of us balance right and wrong, and how we structure our own moral systems. The definition of what’s “wrong” is also not universal. Pro-choicers will always want abortion and contraception to be legal, accessible and acceptable — that is, we don’t want shame and guilt hung on reproductive choice. Pro-lifers are definitely not on board with that goal.
Our differences of opinion on morality and legal rights, though, are not the be-all end-all of the debate. MM writes:
Having said that, it is quite clear to me that abortion is related to poverty and prevailing social conditions. Declines in abortion in the US occurred most rapidly during times when poverty rates were falling– most notably under the Clinton administration (see here for detailed argument). Look at some of the statistics: 57% of women opting for abortion are economically disadvantage, and the abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). And when asked to give reasons for abortion, three-quarters of women say that cannot afford a child.
And yet, the political pro-life movement often ignores this aspect. Not only that, it often uses the abortion issue to cover some less savoury aspects of policy. Note that when supposed pro-life candidates are elected, we see little impact on abortion, but a major advance in economic policies that foster upward redistribution. And too often, the pro-life lobby contents itself with minor victories that have little direct impact on abortion, but do rally political support. Case in point: I am pretty certain that S-CHIP will do more to lower the abortion rate in the US than the partial-birth abortion ban, which everybody pretty much agrees will do almost nothing.
I was nodding along with everything he/she wrote in that section. I’ll add that 100 percent of the country’s worst legislators for children are “pro-life.” The lack of concern for life after birth is something we’ve written about quite a bit on Feministe. It makes me really happy — and heartened — to see a self-identified pro-lifer expressing concern for the lives of born people. Pro-life people like this exist in significant numbers, but they lack the mouthpieces that the Republican-tied “pro-life” groups have. MM continues:
It is also the case that banning abortion often does not really impact on its incidence. Ireland has a robust abortion rate, even though there are no abortion providers in Ireland, because travel within the EU is so easy. I often wonder if a repeal of Roe v. Wade, when the issue gets pushed to the states, will have much impact on abortion? Personally, I doubt it, except for the very poor who cannot travel to states that allow it, and pay for it– and these are the women who are more likely to have abortions in the first place. And while I believe the repeal of Roe would be good, simply because I cannot accept abortion as a “right”, I believe a political strategy focused solely on this goal is fundamentally misplaced. We need to create the conditions that would encourage women not to have abortions in the first place.
Could this be a point of common ground among Catholics and pro-choice feminists, since we are not really going to change each others minds on this matter? If we would focus less on the coercive side, would you be willing to work to minimize the abortion rate?
Absolutely. This is what pro-choicers have been saying all along. The problem, though, is that the mainstream, monied and well-connected anti-choice groups don’t take this tack. It’s pro-choice groups and pro-choice individuals who support comprehensive sexual health education, universal health care, aid to low-income women with dependent children, affordable daycare, equal pay, children’s health care, Head Start and after-school programs, increased educational funding, and on and on. So that’s where MM loses me — when he/she asks, “Would you be willing to work to minimize the abortion rate,” I think to myself, “What does s/he think we’re doing?”
I would love — love — to see pro-choice feminists and pro-life religious folks work together on projects to expand health care access, to create safety nets for families, and to provide pregnant women with the resources they need. In my ideal world, there would be whole networks of crisis pregnancy center-esque organizations where women could go for holistic and affordable pregnancy help and care, without judgmentalism or coercion or an anti-choice agenda.
The really sticky issue — even stickier than abortion — is contraception. Contraception is the most effective way to prevent pregnancy (other than simply never having sex, which is pretty unlikely and pretty undesirable for most people). The Catholic pro-life view (and, increasingly, the Evangelical view) is that contraception wrong and/or tantamount to abortion. That argument stems from the view that life begins at fertilization, and there is a teeny tiny and highly debatable chance that hormonal birth control might prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. Anti-contraception pro-lifers aren’t going to change their minds on that, and contraception access is not part of their plan to decrease the abortion rate. It is central to the pro-choice plan. I’m not sure that gap can be bridged.
MM concludes:
We need to tackle poverty and economic conditions. We need universal health care urgently. I also think we need to work on the breakdown in family life in some of our communities. We may need to think outside the box. I have proposed on this blog that the government provide subsidies to women to carry their children to term, and provide sizeable financial incentives for adoption. I was attacked for doing so, and maybe there are good reasons for not pursuing this in the realm of policy. But we need to start putting our money where our mouth is. Otherwise, the pointless “culture war” that benefits nobody will keep raging.
I disagree about the government subsidy policy, but that aside, MM is right that the Culture Wars thing is silly and unproductive. But my issue is that I see pro-choicer people, groups and politicians putting aside abortion politics and supporting things like economic justice and universal health care. I don’t see pro-life politicians and organizations doing that. I can list a litany of things the pro-life leadership can do to lower the abortion rate; clearly, MM can, too.
So I’m left with the question, “What else can pro-choicers do to lower the abortion rate while staying true to our rights-based principles that we aren’t doing right now?”