Editorials
O'Gara, James
ABORTION TEN YEARS LATER IT IS TEN YEARS since the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, rendered abortion as American as apple pie and nuclear weapons. That is not a nice way of putting it - as opponents...
...So did the abolitionists .So would any broad social movement fired by a sense of grave moral and social injustice...
...On the other hand, the Democrats seem locked in as the party of abortion...
...And abortion does "solve" immediate, visible problems...
...But those who think that all this complexity is sufficient jusification for leaving the status quo alone - well, they are wrong, too...
...All this is true of abortion as well...
...the destruction of human life, but it is quiet...
...So why not forget it, why not leave well enough alone...
...The avoidance practiced by pro-lifers shows itself in the assumption, surfacing again and again, that abortion always has its roots in selfishness...
...Both those arguments should have been laid to rest during the struggle over legal segregation...
...They will do almost anything to change the subject...
...while politics is notoriously limitless in its capacity to expropriate, coarsen, and misdirect moral concern...
...unfortunately, it was a non-starter, and the bishops are now being accused of abandoning the anti-abortion cause for the anti-nuclear one...
...More and more pro-lifers are recognizing that the president may be perfectly sincere in saying his administration will get around to abortion as soon as economic and national-security issues are dealt with - but that, practically speaking, this could mean never...
...Without it, for example, the number of teenage mothers would certainly be greater, with all that implies about blighted lives...
...For winning hearts: Mustn't the church and other pro-life forces mobilize far more resources to prove in deed what they proclaim in principle, namely, that every life is precious...
...Yet they constitute a kind of legal guerrilla warfare against abortion that cannot be dismissed out of hafid...
...But the effort to define what should be avoided in the abortion dispute may be the best way to approach a realistic position...
...For winning minds: Why shouldn't the church join with others in creating and supporting the kind of first-class research and publication program on abortion-related issues that Planned Parenthood provides for the other side...
...Our hearts are set on defending and protecting our sacred goal of life while other lives all around us beg for mercy...
...For better or worse, this journal has proceeded negatively on this issue over the past decade...
...two years later they are wondering whether it has turned out to be the Titanic...
...She wonders whether the movement is really prepared to face the consequences - and the responsibilities - of the victory it seeks...
...It is one thing to believe that abortion cannot be the solution...
...On the other hand, a human life amendment that bans all, or virtually all, abortions is probably unachievable...
...Striking a realistic balance is not easy, and the difficulty should remind us that...
...in some cases, they seem petty or downright cruel...
...and, if somehow politically engineered in the absence of a massive change in public opinion, would be swiftly reversed after doing fatal damage to the right-to-life cause...
...Unfortunately it has been said so often that it may become a slogan itself...
...And now that they do exist, there are grave difficulties to be faced in the effort to abolish them...
...She warns of the "win/loss mentality" and the crusading spirit: "The 'others' become the enemy...
...and at this point, only acts - adoption, support, caring - on an unprecedented scale will probably prove to Americans that a society without abortion is possible...
...so is the idea that the law can never lead but only follow social mores...
...The right-to-life movement has attracted fanatics...
...Not that every abortion involves a caring woman or couple trapped amidst multiple obligations...
...But it is to its credit that society has not been able to make a peace with abortion...
...So has the woman's movement...
...So has the peace movement...
...but far too many do for the fact to be brushed aside...
...as well as federal regulations on separating abortion and contraceptive services...
...The political standoff will continue...
...Nonetheless, there are limits to what the law can do...
...What these people do not want to face is the fact of real and terrible conflicts...
...in any case would be unenforceable...
...1. We should avoid reducing the dispute to slogans...
...So was the widespread resort to abortion that exploded in the wake of its legitimation by the Court...
...Roe v. Wade, we have argued, was a legal and moral disaster...
...Whether animals or slaves or trees or nations have rights depends, at least first of all, on something to do with them, not on whether recognizing such rights would impose a hardship on us...
...Refusing federal funds for abortion clearly indicated that abortion was in a different category from other medical procedures, that it remained fiercely controverted on moral grounds, and that, at the least, as the Courtsaid, "Abortion is inherently different . . . because no other procedure involves the purposeful termination of a potential life...
...Layers of euphemism rival anything produced by nuclear strategists: Abortion itself, having metamorphosed into "termination of a pregnancy," is now submerged in the larger swamp of "reproductive rights...
...has indulged in accusations, dramatics, emotional excesses...
...The same ambiguity marks the various laws now confronting the Court - prescribing waiting periods, detailed procedures for informed consent, etc...
...But occasionally, and sometimes too frequently, I must question these statements...
...The bishops' support of the Hatch amendment (as well as their coolness toward the human life statute) made sense to us...
...That is not a nice way of putting it - as opponents of abortion we are not searching for ways of minimizing the reality of millions of fetal deaths - but then we do not mean that comparison as nothing but harsh rhetoric...
...The Catholic church, in particular, could make a contribution here...
...At the same time, the Hyde amendment struck most directly at those most in need of government help...
...In an extraordinary article in the December 11, 1983 America, Joyce Evans, an experienced pro-life activist, reflects on the circumstances she has seen pushing some women to abortion...
...Being on the side of the unborn, like being on the side of the poor, requires acts as well as arguments...
...3. We should avoid putting all our hopes in the law or our energies into politics...
...It would be comforting to have a solution, complete and neatly packaged, to the abortion question...
...We know of no similar statement emanating from pro-choice ranks, no self-questioning of that depth, no parallel admission of the limits of one's own position and the humanity of one's adversaries...
...Those who think that the question of the rights of the unborn, or of the motivations of women seeking abortions, or of the philosophical and psychological foundations of pro-choice and pro-life positions, or of the law's role in a pluralist society, is simple - well, they are wrong...
...Yet the pro-choice movement and the liberal community resolutely avoid this question...
...We do not mean to throw up our hands in despair or to settle complacently into a wiser-than-thou neutrality...
...The Hydeamendment was a perfect illustration...
...Keeping America from assimilating abortion as "business as usual'' poses difficult choices...
...There are, in fact, plausible reasons why nuclear weapons exist - they are not simply the product of ill will...
...In 1980, pro-choice activists were shocked to discover that the fuss over abortion, which should have settled down years before, was more politically perilous than ever...
...Simply because many of us have thought about it, have racked our brains over it, indeed have often wished the whole problem could go away - and in the end we have been unable to reach any other conclusion than that the unborn individual has as much right to protection as the born individual, and that it would be as arbitrary and unjust to discriminate on the basis of passage through the birth canal as on the basis of race or sex...
...The avoidance practiced by the pro-choice movement and the liberal community generally is truly massive...
...4 We should avoid avoidance...
...it is another and self-deceiving thing to believe there really is no problem...
...But the liberals' central avoidance is that of the reality of the fetus...
...Can they succeed for another ten years?her ten years...
...The pro-life movement often emphasizes alternatives and claims that there is always another solution," she writes...
...Many of these measures strike us as legally and logically doubtful...
...The idea that morality must never be legally' 'imposed'' is silly...
...Abortion may be...
...Its opponents often think of it as painful for its victims, but in the greater number of cases that may well not be the case...
...we cease to listen to and evaluate their opinions...
...All the more reason then to think about winning hearts and minds outside of the political arena...
...The pro-life forces imagined that their ship was coming in at last...
...These excesses should not be condoned - certainly, much of the right-to-life leadership does not condone them - but they also should not be an excuse for other abortion critics to maintain a respectable silence...
...That is why avoiding stereotypes and slogans needs to be accompanied by the determination that . . . 2. We should avoid making our peace with abortion...
...The battle has begun, and victims are trampled...
...and in some cases they are meant to undermine the bishops' credibility on the arms issue...
...Perhaps they can never be abolished...
...Sorry...
...Neither group of activists has the support of most of the public, which would get a chance to express its own uneven, inconsistent views only if the Hatch amendment passed, at this moment a highly unlikely development...
...The right-to-life movement has many faults to answer for...
...The accusations are meant to embarrass the bishops back into a crusading stance of no-compromise on abortion...
...Both pro-choice and pro-life causes have met frustration in the political arena...
...But there is no reason why the bishops should not reply with a ringing affirmation of their pro-life position, this time, however, in a much more non-political direction...
...As we have said, the question of the moral status of the unborn individual is not simple, but ultimately that question must be decided on its own terms and not on the grounds of the burdens that one or another conclusion would have on others...
...perhaps we can only manage to reduce the harm they can do to a minimum...
...It is traumatic for many women and some men, but we have ways of coping with that...
...This is obvious...
Vol. 110 • January 1983 • No. 2
