January 30, 2006

Case In Point: Roe v. Wade

Pro-choice, pro-life: reframing the debate

So much has been written about the conundrum of abortion — Roe v. Wade, right to life, right to choose, partial-birth abortion ban, unborn victims of violence act, life begins at ... fertilization? birth? or when? — that just raising the subject can cause the reader to grow weary, long before completing the first sentence. The issue is a web of interconnecting issues, often so complex, so challenging, that it can seem all but impossible to fully grasp all the threads. How to sort it all out? Philosophy, religion, theology, medicine.

It is one of those defining issues that engages us as a society for so many disparate yet seminal reasons, one that the Supreme Court will certainly revisit sooner than later. And do so with Sandra Day O’Connor gone and Samuel Alito newly seated.

Consider the point of view of William Saletan, Slate’s national correspondent, who recently wrote an interesting piece for the op-ed page of the New York Times wherein he suggested reframing the argument regarding a woman’s right to choose.

While he doesn’t advocate outlawing abortion as an option for women (there are more than three million unintended pregnancies in the U.S. each year), he does suggest that groups such as Planned Parenthood, Naral Pro-Choice America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the National Organization of Women confront the underlying dilemma of abortion directly: the killing of a fetus.

Clearly, the American people are conflicted over abortion: while supporting Roe they understand the implications of abortion as a procedure, and recognize that it is a profoundly serious decision for any woman. To abort a fetus is invasive and traumatic, both physically and psychologically. And yet the public still wishes it to be an option for women; however, they view the choice not in the affirmative, but as the least of many evils.

But there is a larger issue which is often obscured by the heated rhetoric of “right-to-life” and “right-to-choose”: that would be the frontline intervention known as “prevention.” As Saletan points out, any woman, when confronted with an unintended pregnancy and the choice of getting an abortion or carrying the fetus to full term would surely have chosen not to get pregnant in the first place.

What the pro-choice movement should do is reframe the argument. These groups should take the position that they are pro-life as well as pro-choice, which is to say that they should place the full weight of their efforts behind “prevention first” while never relinquishing the right to choose. But the first choice should always be to use the most efficacious birth control methods available, to include emergency contraception. At the same time, these organizations should acknowledge that an abortion, the longer a woman waits, has serious implications.

If the pro-choice advocates took the argument of “prevention” to the right-to-life groups and to the politicians, it would give their position the moral gravitas that it is now often lacking. It is not enough to simply say that a woman has the right to choose. In today’s social and political climate, the debate must go much further.

Pro-choice could righteously ask those who are right-to-life: If they are anti-abortion, if they support a culture of life, then why has the pro-life movement and the Republican administration allowed the Prevention First Act of 2005 to languish? The Prevention First Act is an omnibus family planning initiative that expands access to preventive health care services and education programs to help reduce unintended pregnancies, prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and reduce the need for abortion. It requires health plans to cover FDA-approved prescription contraceptives and related medical services (don’t health plans cover Viagra?) and funds to expand teen pregnancy prevention programs.

What possible reason would those on the right have for not generously funding and expanding this act? The need for abortion could be reduced to a trickle if we had the will to educate our children about their sexuality and make available myriad options when it comes to preventing unintended pregnancies. If we had the will.

Isn’t prevention the first line of defense if you are anti-abortion? Shouldn’t the Prevention First Act be embraced by pro-lifers as a responsible and humane way to eliminate abortions?

Or is it the case that those in the right-to-life movement view birth control as a form of stealth abortion and therefore must take the position that abstinence is the only viable and moral option? Is sexual behavior out of wedlock, contrary to the overriding messages of our popular culture (Brad and Angelina; Tom and Katie), deemed to be immoral, hence birth control is linked to promiscuous and immoral behavior? Clearly, by any measure, when evaluating our culture’s sexual practices, most especially among teenagers, abstinence has proven decidedly ineffective. Of all teen pregnancies in 2000, some 840,000, 75-95 percent were unintended; only half went to full term.

If all the pro-life movement has to offer is abstinence on the one hand and the elimination of abortion on the other hand, won’t such positions send women “underground” once again, to the days in America when abortion was criminalized and more than one million women each year sought back alley abortions resulting in thousands being maimed or killed? Is that a pro-life posture?

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