Recenter Abortion Debate on Equality of Sacrifice

I am sickened by the death of Dr. George Tiller, a physician who
displayed lifelong respect for the woman and her body. Operation Rescue
condemned his murder, though in language that tacitly encourages
violence. Randall Terry, calling Tiller a "mass murderer," even accused
him of performing late-term abortions for women who had simply decided
they did not wish to have a baby. Terry never lets facts stand in the
way of his vicious war against the rights of women. Grand juries in
culturally conservative Kansas rejected Terry's charges.

Some pro-life forces engage in or tolerate "acts of political
terrorism." Melissa Harris-Lacewell, writing in a blog for The Nation,
convincingly argues that Terry's goal is to isolate and humiliate poor
and pregnant women many of whom already face desperate health issues.
Demonstrators routinely intimidated Tiller's patients.

Political symbolism also counts for more than the lives of the
unborn. Writing on the Common Dreams Web site, Cristina Page reminds
us: "That Clinton presided over the most dramatic decline in abortion
rates in recorded history left them unmoved." Once the "pro life"
George W. Bush assumed office, health and family plan-ning options and
education diminished, abortions skyrocketed - and the demonstrations
stopped.

Most abortion opponents do not condone this murder.
Many are repelled by Terry's rhetoric. They believe that life begins at
conception. Their concern is the preservation of innocent life. I don't
believe a distinctively human life begins at conception, but neither I
nor my opponents have ironclad cases on this point. Nonetheless, if
protection of innocent life is one's motive, responsibility must be
shared equally between men and women.

In this society, denying women abortion imposes all the risks of sustaining innocent life on women.

The late Ellen Willis once advocated re-centering the abortion
debate on equality of sacrifice. (See "No More Nice Girls, From Forced
Pregnancy to Forced Surgery.") What a privilege it is to be a male!
Pregnant women must sacrifice their careers, comfort, health and
sometimes their lives to have a baby. If my child - or any child -
becomes gravely ill and needed my body, e.g., for bone marrow, I might
feel a moral obligation, but government can't compel me to accept these
risks.

If there is an absolute obligation to sustain innocent lives, men
need to accept dramatically increased risks and responsibilities. A
detailed portrayal of the medical demands that might reasonably be made
of men, especially as the frontiers of transplant and genetic medicine
expand, could shake up the abortion debate.

Some citizens might demand a draft for male kidneys, livers and bone
marrow. Others within conventionally gendered families might still
maintain the "natural" role of women as primarily responsible for the
health of all life. Such an argument might be hard to sustain in a
world where the possibility of motherhood and the proc-ess of having a
baby are now so heavily medicalized. My suspicion, however, is that
even some pro-life families would entertain the notion that if men will
not sacrifice their health for children, women should not be forced to
bear such sacrifices alone.

Nonetheless, children are our future. Society must move beyond
expanding "choice" for women to a more complete appreciation of the
sacrifice involved in parenting. Many women face unrelenting physical,
emotional and economic distress. It is hard for some to acknowledge let
alone address any inner doubts about the ideal of motherhood to which
one devotes so much of one's life. It becomes all too easy to regard
abortion rights defenders as selfish or even evil.

Society must expand the cultural and economic space for women in all
modes of life - better family planning resources and sex education,
paid paternity and maternity leave, more free time for families, more
opportunities for a voice in their children's education, jobs that pay
men and women equal and sustaining incomes.

The boundaries in the culture war are not fixed and impermeable.
Progressives can expand opportunities for many families to live out
their own values. Such a course may not convert all cultural
conservatives to progressive causes and probably won't sway Randall
Terry. Nonetheless, the foundation and the hope of democratic politics
is that subtle transformations in moral and political vision will allow
more of us to live together even as we continue to disagree on some
core principles.