But I am willing to say this: arguing that you “personally oppose” abortion but will not impose that moral judgment on those who disagree is preposterous. Mario Cuomo would mock anyone who took this position in reference to any other behavior. He would roll his eyes and reach for every polysyllabic term of derogation in his quiver to express disdain.
Cuomo knows there is only one reason to be “personally opposed” to abortion: your conviction that it is the taking of innocent human life. Why else oppose it? Seriously. What other reason could there be? If the fetus is not unborn human life, there should be no more reason to oppose removing it than a gallstone.
But once you say that — that you personally oppose abortion because it takes a human life — it is untenable to then hold that you do not mind if someone else takes that life, whether or not they believe it is permissible to do so. That’s preposterous logic. There is no other case where it would hold. Would anyone say he is personally opposed to slavery, but thinks those who disagree should be permitted to keep a few slaves? That he is personally opposed to wife-beating, but would not stand in the way of a man who thinks it a good idea to slap around the little woman once in a while to keep her in line? It would not matter how sincerely the slaveholder or wife-beater made his case, or how fine a fellow he was in other aspects of his life, whether he liked fine art and volunteered in his local soup kitchen, for example. We would not grant them discretion to act contrary to basic standards of decency. Why then let those who want to kill unborn children off the hook? Isn’t that bad enough to warrant condemnation?
The other lie is the one Bill Clinton came up with in one of his campaign speeches. Nowadays you hear it from many quarters. Indeed, it has become a mantra of sorts. It is the line that our societal goal should be to “keep abortion legal, but rare.” Those who advance this case are determined to convince us how “troubled” they are by what takes place in an abortion, but insist that there are extreme instances when it is necessary to protect the life and health of the mother and avoid great family hardships. They will concede that some women may use abortion as a form of birth control, but insist that through education and access to contraceptives such cases can be kept to a minimum – kept “rare.” They insist that the great majority of women will procure an abortion only when there is no other choice, and that they should not be denied access to the procedure because of the relatively few women woman who may act in an irresponsible manner.
Central to this thesis is the claim that enlightened “pro-choice” individuals understand the weighty moral implications of abortion and find it deplorable that anyone would consider an abortion for frivolous reasons. This is why they are determined to apply moral pressure on those who do not grasp the gravity of ending a pregnancy; why they are committed to keeping abortion “rare.” To which I say: Baloney.
I can remember hearing this case made by colleagues in the faculty room of the school where I used to teach in a suburb of New York City. “Of course, an abortion is a horrible thing, but…” “I agree, abortion is a sad and tragic event, but…” “You are right — abortion is unthinkable, except when…” One of those most outspoken was a fallen-away Catholic, a onetime altar boy who made much of his disdain for the “institutional Church.” You know the type. He protested that he loved Jesus and what Jesus taught, but that the Church had distorted His message and allowed itself to be shaped by backward thinking clerics obsessed with sex.
He was a likeable enough fellow, though, the son of a Pennsylvania coal miner, blessed with what Edmund Burke called the “unbought grace of life.” That is, without appreciating the source, he retained most of the traditional and family values taught to him in his youth by the Church. I enjoyed talking to him about sports and old movies and the music of the 1940s and ‘50s. So I was willing to accept that he was genuinely troubled by the nature of abortion.
Until one afternoon. It was near the end of the school year and I was with him doing some paperwork in the faculty room with a group of other teachers. Summer plans came up. There was talk about summer courses, teaching summer school, working summer jobs, and traveling – the usual options. One of the school’s guidance counselors was planning something out of the ordinary, however. He had bought a Winnebago and was ready to travel cross-country to California and back with his wife and three children. The children were in their pre-teen and early teenage years and he felt this was the ideal time for such an excursion, a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the family.
The reactions varied. Some envied him. Others offered that they would not drive from New York to California with their kids if they were paid to do it. There were some laughs about screaming kids and spilled bottles of fruit juice and broken air conditioners in Death Valley. Then the above-mentioned fallen-away Catholic chimed in with a story. It seems that his sister and her husband had planned a similar trip a few years before. They also bought a mobile home and were looking forward to hitting the open road.
Then his sister became pregnant. She was due to give birth in mid-summer, smack dab in the middle of the time when the family would be driving west. So the trip was cancelled. The mobile home was put up for sale, at a considerable loss.
“What a waste!” said my colleague. “I told her to get an abortion, but she wouldn’t do it.” He wasn’t kidding. He shook his head at the sad state of affairs.
Legal, but rare? Postponing a cross-country trip may be a disappointment, but it is not in the same category as the proverbial “rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Yet this man offered abortion as an answer to this family inconvenience as casually as he would suggest a new cap for a chipped tooth. He revealed more than he intended.
But I would argue that, if you posed as a “pro-choice” person and found a way to include yourself in a group that advocates keeping abortion legal, you would get the same reaction from everyone at the table. I am convinced that you would be hard-pressed to come up with an instance where the group would be willing to speak out against a woman contemplating an abortion. For example, in which of the following cases would the “pro-choice” crowd express sincere abhorrence at the notion of an abortion?
A woman who became pregnant after being offered a dream job that will not likely be offered to her again? A woman who just succeeded in regaining her shape after her last pregnancy, after many long months of dieting and working out in the gym? A pre-med student whose pregnancy would threaten her acceptance to medical school?
A woman who has just enrolled in her local college to get her bachelor’s degree, after leaving college to have her first child? A woman who has determined that the family budget will be sufficient to pay the college costs of the two children she already has, but not the third with which she is pregnant? A woman who becomes pregnant in the year that she and her husband had planned to travel to Greece and Rome?
A woman who becomes pregnant after her two older children entered high school, and she had been hoping to enjoy the pleasures – the theater, dining out, travel, the tennis club – she had denied herself while raising her family? A woman who has discovered that her unborn child has only one arm and does not want to deal with the anguish of raising a child with such a disability?
Come on, fess up “pro-choicers.” You would not actively discourage any of these women from “terminating her pregnancy.” Which means that you do not want to keep abortion “rare.” You are lying when you say you do, or are afflicted with a baffling case of self-delusion.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call (651) 224-5733.)
