Do you think abortion is tragic and terrible and wrong, that Roe v. Wade
went too far and that the prochoice movement is elitist, unfeeling,
overbearing, overreaching and quite possibly dead? In the current debate
over abortion, that makes you a prochoicer. As the nation passes the
thirty-third anniversary of Roe, it is hard to find anyone who will say
a good word in public for abortion rights, let alone for abortion
itself. Abortion has become a bit like flag-burning--something that
offends all right-thinking people but needs to be legal for reasons of
abstract principle ("choice"). Unwanted pregnancy has become like, I
don't know, smoking crack: the mark of a weak, undisciplined person of
the lower orders.
On the New York Times op-ed page, William Saletan argues that
prochoicers should concede that "abortion is bad, and the ideal number
of abortions is zero," and calls for "an explicit pro-choice war on the
abortion rate." Sounding a "clear anti-abortion message," prochoicers
should promote a basket of "solutions" to unintended pregnancy: the
Prevention First Act, which calls for federal funding for family
planning programs; expanded access to health insurance and emergency
contraception; comprehensive sex education. "Some pro-choice activists"
are even "pushing for more contraceptive diligence in the abortion
counseling process, especially on the part of those women who come back
for a second abortion." Give those sluts the lecture they deserve.
Saletan is a very shrewd analyst of political framing. Indeed, plenty of
Democrats have already picked up the "I hate abortion" mantra. I seem
always to be reading calls from prochoicers to antichoicers to work
together on contraception. Calling their bluff sounds so clever. Why
isn't it working?
The problem is, although of course many abortion opponents support birth
control, the organized antichoice movement hates it. To the movement,
the most effective birth control methods--the Pill, emergency
contraception, the IUD--are "abortifacients" and "mini-abortions," and
even barrier methods like the condom promote a "contraceptive
mentality": a selfish, licentious attitude that leads straight to
abortion hell. Wherever antichoicers have political power, they've
slashed funds for family-planning clinics, passed laws enabling
pharmacists to deny women EC and the Pill and promoted abstinence-only
sex ed that tells kids condoms don't work. In 2003 the
Republican-controlled Missouri state legislature handed over the entire
state family-planning budget for poor women to "abortion alternatives"
centers. Among antichoicers, the political will to mount a significant
public-health campaign for contraception, safe sex and accurate
information simply does not exist. Democrats for Life of America is
pushing "95-10," a plan they claim would reduce abortions by 95 percent
in ten years. It doesn't even mention birth control. And that's the
liberals!
And there's another problem, too. Inevitably, attacking abortion as a
great evil means attacking providers and patients. If abortion is so
bad, why not stigmatize the doctors who perform them? Deny the clinic a
permit in your town? Make women feel guilty and ashamed for choosing it
and make them sweat so they won't screw up again? Ironically,
improvements in contraception have made unwanted pregnancy look more
like a personal failing. "Why was I so careful? Because I never wanted
to have an abortion," wrote 32-year-old Laurie Gigliotti in response to
Saletan's op-ed, describing her super-vigilant approach to safe sex. You
can just see how unwanted pregnancy will join obesity and smoking as
unacceptable behavior in polite society. But how is all this
censoriousness supposed to help women control their fertility? If half
of all pregnancies are unplanned, it doesn't make sense to treat them as
individual sins.
Fact is, there will never be zero abortions. Half the women who abort
are using birth control already--there are no perfect methods or perfect
people, except maybe Laurie Gigliotti. Even in small, tidy, prosperous
Sweden and the Netherlands, there are abortions. So how can there be
zero abortions in America, with our ramshackle healthcare system, our
millions of poor people, our high school graduates who can't even read a
prescription information sheet?
The trouble with thinking in terms of zero abortions is that you make
abortion so hateful you do the antichoicers' work for them. You accept
that the zygote/embryo/fetus has some kind of claim to be born. You
start making madonna-whore distinctions. In the New York Times Magazine
Eyal Press, a contributing writer to this magazine, writes of his
father, a heroically brave and dedicated abortion doctor: "Had the
women...been free-love advocates for whom the procedure seemed a mere
matter of convenience, he would not have been so angry" at the
antichoice protesters who hounded him and his patients. Why not? Because
a sexy single woman should suffer for not suffering? Nobody's proposing
the walk of shame for men who don't or won't use condoms, or stern
lectures for them in the clinic waiting room either.
In 1989 a number of polls asked respondents whether abortion should be
legal or not depending on the reason for seeking it. After life/health,
rape/incest and fetal deformity, majorities of Americans disapproved of
every reason on the list: can't afford a child (40 percent approval),
too many children (40 percent), emotional strain (35 percent), to finish
school (28 percent), not married (25 percent). Assuming opinion hasn't
drastically changed, most Americans think women should be denied
abortions for the reasons the vast majority of procedures are performed.
They think women should carry unwanted children to term, even if they
can't support them, have no partner, have to drop out of school,
shortchange their other children or can't cope emotionally. Now, maybe
those respondents don't really want abortion to be illegal so much as
they want to express their disapproval.
Either way, these answers don't suggest to me that injecting more
antiabortion moralism into the debate will help keep abortion legal and
accessible. I'd say it is too moralistic already.
"Subject to Debate" columnist Katha Pollitt has written for The Nation since 1980. Pollitt's writing has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Ms. and the New York Times. In 2001, her Nation essays were published as a collection, Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture.
Copyright © 2006, The Nation
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