Abortion is Vile

Posted on April 27, 2004 in Abortion Crosstalk

It’s politics Tuesday!

I’m sure the title has provoked you. I wrote this piece as if I were going to die tomorrow. I might yet. There are no comments attached because I don’t want to see my site turned into a gladiator pit for the two factions. I believe there’s a third faction and that is why I am writing this. I’ve left trackback up and I will print thoughtful email commentary on Friday for those who want to answer me: I ask that those who do give me the courtesy of reading me through first.

Abortion is vile. I wrote that on a blog about a year and a half ago. And immediately the response came back: “Abortion is not vile.” It isn’t? It smells of violets in the spring, not blood, muscle, and shrieking nerves? It feels good for the woman driven to the procedure? It’s a sacrament? If so, it is a sacrament founded on an altar into whose table are scratched grooves for the draining of spilled platelets. Abortion is vile, like so much of what we have to come to depend on. And while I do not favor a change in the laws establishing the relationship between a woman and her body, I feel that abortion is vile and that we should do more to promote alternatives that allow single mothers to enjoy family life.

Not only is abortion vile, but it can be a cop-out. When I hear a proponent of abortion speak about the need to control overpopulation or ensure “quality of life”, I feel that they have sold out to the capitalist system. Sometimes there are hints of racism. Often there is call to reduce the number of poor people as if they were overflowing sewage. These words remind me of the war in Iraq, waged over there so the grass, the flowers, and the trees in the yard, the paint on the house, and the wallpaper in the bedroom won’t be scarred by the shrapnel’s shell.

Single mothers in this country and in most countries of the world face an unsupported life of poverty. Many women are trapped into it by circumstances: their husbands fly off because of the flutters of their glands, sometimes leaving no address. I do not side at all with men who do their part to bring life into the world and then leave it to find its own way. (See Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for a classic fictionalization of male irresponsibility and its consequences. See this New York Times story for male irresponsibility on a national scale.) I stand with the mothers: they deserve a better quality of life than what gets inflicted on them. Men may not carry the baby, but they remain connected to it by their genetic and cultural parentage. Fie on men who leave the mother and the child alone, fie on men who look for loopholes, fie on men who vote Republican because that party puts wealth over compassion and accountability.

I do not say “fie on women who have abortions”. You will not find me on the streets outside clinics, taunting and shaming women who come there because they have no other options. Nor will you find me on the inside of the clinic. Laura Dern’s film Citizen Ruth speaks elegantly to the mad piety of both the Pro-Choice and the Pro-“Life” camps. Both sides turn Ruth Stoops — described as “one bad mother” — into an icon for their cause, one side offering her money to keep the baby and the other to have the abortion. It’s a film that neither side cares to watch, much less cite because it points to the dehumanization of the person, the mother, the giver of life by this crusade of the Left versus the jihad of the Right.

Adoption is no solution. What good mother would want to give her child away to unknowns? The “Adoption not Abortion” argument strikes me as vile as the sucking out of the womb because it turns what might have come out into a commodity, a piece of human livestock. And what kind of fields will these cowfolk be turned out into? I can understand why a mother would think twice before giving her child to a Joe Bob who worships at the nearest homosexual-and-feminist-and-liberal-hating-Jesus-loves-you hall of simonry and demogoguery. My wife Lynn feels that adoption usually falls in line as a woman’s third option for her child, after keeping it herself and abortion.

I think we should do all we can to support the woman’s ability to exercise Option One. If you truly love Life, if you truly crave Woman’s command over her life, you must unite under Option One and reject the polarization of the issue that the media has so adeptly exploited. I believe that most Americans don’t care for the extremes. Middle grounds do exist and yet you wouldn’t know it from the talk on the television or in blogs. Jeanne d’Arc writes:

The issue isn’t really “morality” vs. “politics.” It’s about two visions of what constitutes promoting the value of life.

Screaming and hollering, shouting now “The Abortion Controversy is Vile!” I say that there is a third stream: Don’t just offer abortion or adoption as a bandaid for the burden of single-motherhood. Empower single mothers. By centering our energy on this issue, we allow for true choice and true respect for life. It’s what Ono Ekeh calls a “demand-side” answer:

This approach seeks to reduce the number of abortions by addressing the social issues that compel too many women to contemplate what would normally be unthinkable. If social conditions were changed so that women were empowered, and if we effectively addressed issues such as health care, child care, family leave, wage inequity, domestic violence and other women’s issues, we could reasonably expect a significant reduction in the number of abortions in the United States. For instance, 21 percent of abortions in the United States are a result of inadequate finances. This category of women, though not exhaustive, represents a very fixable opportunity. Consider the following simplified example. If a woman for whom inadequate finances were the primary reason to consider an abortion is confident that there would be assistance to compensate for her lack of finances, the lack of finances then weighs less in her deliberations.

This demand-side approach will take time and does not immediately make abortions rare, but our goal is to change a culture, not just a law.

I am for a change of culture because I think the culture in which this dispute occurs is vile. Both sides embrace a materialism which chokes the Third World. I stand for freedom: I do not think changing the laws will do more than force abortion into the waiting hands of backroom quacks. I stand for these things: stronger career opportunities for women which are not hindered or destroyed by the fact of motherhood; childcare for all; affordable housing for all; school lunch programs; food stamps; realistic sex education which, while preaching abstinence as the only 100% effective birth control means, also teaches kids about the Pill and condoms. I stand for all these things, I put my keynote on them because like smoking, drinking, and other forms of drug abuse, Abortion is Vile. I want to see the rate decrease. I want to see mothers able to choose keeping their babies for themselves without fear of social isolation or poverty. I want to affirm the dignity of Woman to be herself against the calls for conformity and materialism, against the cheapening of her womb as a hazard of sex or a holding pen for the adoption market.

Let’s factor out materialism so we can base our culture on compassion. Instead of giving only the options of saying no to abortion or farming kids out for adoption, let’s create conditions that allow a Yes for Parenthood.

Some other recent views.

• Deborama reviews recent developments in preparation for last Saturday’s march.
• Jeanne d’Arc considers Catholic responses to Kerry’s Pro-Choice position
• Kevin of Leanleft rightly asks why Cardinal Arinze isn’t also denying communion to supporters of the Death Penalty?
• Ono Ekeh calls for demand-side solutions to the abortion problem.
• Sursum Corda reflects on whether it might be better not to ask “Who is right, who is wrong” but “what kind of person would I rather be?”
• Lynn answers the question “What are you doing to support pregnant women in need”?