Perhaps more than any other political issue, abortion naturally produces extreme moralistic reactions. This is to be expected. To someone who is pro-life, abortion is an assault on human life. To someone who is pro-choice, attempting to restrict abortion is an assault on human autonomy. It is an issue with massive moral implications and virtually zero room for compromise.
With this in mind, it’s not surprising that pro-choice groups had a very vocal response to efforts made this past summer to restrict abortion rights. Unfortunately, the pro-choice community did not respond in a productive way. Instead, they responded with politically motivated and unfair attacks, the type of which only contribute to the polarization and gridlock which define today’s political climate.
Take, for instance, the emails sent out by Organizing for Action, the non-profit advocacy group formerly known as “Obama for America.” The day after the House passed H.R.1797, a bill authored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) which would criminalize abortions after 20 weeks (except in cases of rape, incest, or risk to the life of the mother), OFA Director of Issue Campaigns and former Director of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood Lindsay Siler wrote an email with the subject “I can’t believe this just happened” to OFA’s supporters:
This just actually happened: The House of Representatives passed one of the most unbelievable, unconstitutional attacks on women’s health in a long time … Women made their voices very clear last year when it came to the extreme positions that some elected officials took on women’s health. But that hasn’t stopped conservative politicians … Making progress on smart health policy isn’t easy, but when Congress is spending its time actively trying to chip away at a woman’s rights, it feels impossible.
Fewer than ten days later, Siler sent out a similar email in response to Wendy Davis’s filibuster of the Texas bill implementing a 20 week abortion ban. Siler’s second email included phrases like, “these extremist Texas legislators,” “ugly efforts to strip women’s rights away,” and, perhaps most tellingly, “disturbing attacks on women.”
The primary problem with this type of rhetoric is that it misconstrues the motivations of the “extremist Texas legislators” and other pro-life activists. To someone who is pro-life, the question of how the government should make laws regarding abortion has literally nothing to do with women’s rights. Rather, it is a question of whether or not a fetus is a human being.
This can easily be demonstrated by examining the thought process that an elected representative (or anyone for that matter) would go through when deciding whether or not to support H.R.1797. Conveniently enough for this mental exercise, the bill eliminates extraneous factors that often complicate the question of criminalizing abortion: cases of rape, incest, and risk to the life of the mother. Even more significantly, this bill would still allow women 19 weeks to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, which effectively eliminates any argument that an unwanted pregnancy would restrict a woman’s freedom. That only leaves one question: Is a 20-week old fetus a human being?
With all other factors accounted for, the way someone answers this question should single-handedly determine his or her views are on this bill. If someone believes that a 20-week old fetus is a human being, then she will in all likelihood support the bill, because the U.S. government exists for the primary purpose of protecting rights (the most fundamental of which is the right to life) even if it means making certain choices illegal. If someone believes that a 20-week old fetus is not a human being, then she will almost certainly oppose the bill. If a fetus is not a human, it has no rights. In that case, the government has no business telling a woman what to do with the non-human fetus in her body. Finally, if someone feels ambivalent about whether or not a fetus is a human being, she could either support or oppose the bill. She might support the bill, but if truly conflicted, she might instead defer judgment to each individual mother as to whether or not the fetus inside of her is a human being.
Obviously, legislating abortion becomes more complicated when more factors such as rape and the life of the mother are considered, or when the age of the fetus is pushed back far enough that women might not have had sufficient time to decide whether or not to carry pregnancies to term. But everything will always begin (and usually end) with the fundamental question of humanity; it’s simply the hierarchy of human rights. It’s not acceptable to take another human being’s life as an expression of one’s own autonomy, but it’s also not acceptable to violate someone’s autonomy for any other purpose besides the protection of other rights.
It’s crucial to remember that the only question considered here is when a fetus becomes human. How we answer that question has nothing to do with our character or our partisan leanings, and it certainly has nothing to do with what we think about the role of women.
We (almost) all acknowledge this fact, whether consciously or not. If someone’s opinions on abortion actually reflected on his character or, as pro-choice rhetoric seems to suggest, his views on women’s rights, then we would refuse to so much as associate with anyone who disagreed with us on the issue. The moral implications would be too severe.
Yet in spite of this truth, many politicians and advocacy groups behave as though the motivations for views on abortion are entirely different. They ignore the obvious good intentions of those who disagree in favor of an attempt to fire up supporters in the name of anger toward all who disagree. This is a dishonest political tactic, which at the moment is particularly prevalent on the pro-choice side. Current pro-choice rhetoric, as demonstrated in Siler’s emails, does not shy away from levying accusations against specific individuals for being pro-life, while a quick glance at the rhetoric of actively pro-life representatives like Franks shows that pro-life rhetoric usually focuses on the humanity of a fetus as opposed to the motivations behind abortion.
It seems unlikely that this discrepancy means that the pro-choice movement is more malicious. Rather, it is almost certainly a result of what is and is not considered taboo. Society rejects the obviously inaccurate claim that pro-choice people hate children. But for whatever reason, there is no such rejection of the obviously inaccurate claim that pro-life people hate women. If anything, this accusation appears to be in vogue. But if we ever want to have a legitimate dialogue about abortion, we must first fix this problem with pro-choice rhetoric and talk about the questions that actually matter.
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