Breaking through the stereotypes

...but those outlooks are often not immediately apparent on the surface of their conventional arguments and moral stances...

...Too often it is assumed that a commitment to feminism entails a pro-choice position...

...The acceptance of reality as it is implicitly legitimates the status quo, undercuts efforts to bring about social change, and sanctions violence as an acceptable method of coping with problems...

...The pro-life movement cannot, in its essence, be reduced to a simple conservative nostalgia or backlash, however much that may characterize some of its activist leaders and many of its mainline features...

...Each side is uncomfortable with the more stark options and tight combinations of values pursued at the extremes of the debate...

...This article is also appearing in Family Planning Perspectives...

...Differences of that kind run deeply, pitting fundamentally discrepant attitudes and predispositions against each other...

...The public, they think, will eventually respond to the principled witness of those who reject it...

...At one time, while Daniel was writing a book on the subject, we talked about it every day for four years...

...Its recognition of the injustice inherent in the known pattern of illegal abortion -- that of de facto discrimination in favor of the affluent and the powerful -- makes an important contribution to a more just society...

...As a social psychologist, Sidney had earlier investigated the differing views and personal characteristics people have SIDNEY CALLAHAN is associate professor of psychology at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, New York...

...Well over half of our thirty years of marriage have been marked (though rarely marred) by an ongoing argument...

...But that is not the only pro-choice formulation...

...Most critically, neither side finds the understanding and interpretation of the other outlandish or implausible...

...We hoped that, if we could not entirely escape the common forms of sociological or psychological reductionism, we might at least bring to them some greater complexity and penetration...

...In the formulations of some, it can just as well go in a recognizably liberal direction...

...By its emphasis on the unique burden of women in pregnancy and childrearing it has fostered the enfranchisement of women in controlling their own destinies...

...They are willing to pursue together an understanding of ways to limit a forced choice of abortion because of poverty or the oppression of women, or lack of social support for childbearing...

...Too often it is assumed that a commitment to the family as an enduring value entails a prohibition of abortion...

...t h e s t e r e o t y p e s SIDNEY CALLAHAN & DANIEL CALLAHAN A PART FROM some of the nastier reasons people impute to each other, just why is it that there are such profound differences about abortion...

...That argument is more fully laid out in the book we edited as an outcome of the project Abortion: Understanding Differences (Plenurh Press, 1984...

...In its polity, the pro-choice movement is at one with that recently emergent tradition that would free procreational choices from the control of the state and, more generally, give the benefit of uncertainty in matters of conscience to the individual rather than the government...

...Finally, although we wanted a group that was evenly divided on the moral and political issues, we also wanted one that could effectively talk and work together...

...In its libertarian formulation, it is heavily weighted toward the maximization of individual choice and the privatization of moral judgment...

...Pro-life is misleading because it begs the quesCommonweal: 522 tion of what actually serv~ human life and welfare...

...As a mirror image of that movement, there is a pro-choice ideology dedicated to female emancipation from the body and a repressive nuclear family, a subordination of childbearing to other personal goals, a celebration of rational control of self in place of the acceptance of fate, and a secular rather than a religious view of life...

...At that level, the debate admits of no accommodation...

...Over the years, every argument, every statistic, every historical example cited in the literature has been discussed between us...

...Here we will try to present a composite picture of the positions presented at our meetings...

...and many in the pro-choice group are repelled by the banal moral arguments used to justify many abortions...

...What probably most distinguishes it in that rendering from the more garden varieties of liberalism is its willingness to live with -- and accept -- externally imposed tragedy as a part of life...

...A few other decisions gave the project its final shape...

...And even then, there will still be some justifiable reasons for abortion...

...As Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady says about "words": "There's not a one I haven't heard...

...Abortion poses a supreme test in trying to achieve that coherence...

...prochoice is not less misleading because it begs the question of whether freedom of choice ought to be made an ultimate moral value, regardless of the nature of the choice to be exercised...

...Through its concern for choice and control in procreation, it has focused attention on parental responsibility, helping to remove childbearing from the realm of biological chance and sexual inevitability...

...That has not been a traditional part of secular liberalism, which has always been far more inclined toward instrumental rationality than the version that has surfaced in the pro-life movement...

...The basic concern is not so much with the social and economic conditions under which choices are made, or with the ethical criteria by which they ought to be made, but solely with preserving the right to make a choice...

...Hence, not only can the pro-life movement make a strong claim to upholding many traditional liberal values, it can also (in some important formulations) lay claim to reflecting some recent developments intrinsic to liberalism's self-definition...

...Though they came up from time to time, we did not directly deal with the most common issues in the abortion debate -- when does life begin...

...it will never disappear...

...They thus felt free -- and indeed, in many ways, compelled -to appropriate and adapt from both poles, to fashion a different kind of synthesis...

...But in the end it came down, we think, to what is perhaps one of the most profound and subtle value differences of all...

...We sought only understanding, not a compromise solution, a consensus position, or a political recommendation...

...The fi~'st, already alluded to, is that participants from each side combined both liberal an d conservative, modernizing and traditionalist, ingredients in their respective positions...

...the value, not of fatalism but of accepting accidents and mischance as a part of life, and a denial of violent solutions as a way out of such vicissitudes...

...Just as the pro-life movement can be said to have its conservative and liberal wings, the same is true of the prochoice movement...

...Those topics, we believe, provide for many in our society the baclCground framework of values that often shape abortion attitudes...

...Yet, though they may differ about the meaning of the various civil-rights struggles, those battles serve as a common reference point for both...

...They want to be able to use the past selectively, preserving what remains valuable, rejecting what has been either harmful or wholly overtaken by time, and in general seeing the past as a resource requiring constant adjustment and adaptation for life in the present...

...Neither group, in short, is happy when prolife or pro-choice seem to require a reductio ad absurdum, or inflexible, insensitive moral rules, to be pursued regardless of consequence...

...The general debate has seen an effort, on all sides, to make abortion fit into some overall coherent scheme of values, one that combines personal convictions and consistency with more broadly held social values...

...The values that were identified as integral to the pro-life position are a mixture of those ordinarily labeler"liberal" and "conservative...

...Put another way, pro-life begs the question of moral means...

...It also recognizes a closely related principle: that those who must personally bear the burden of their moral choices ought to have the right to make those choices...

...The liberal community itself, however, has engaged in some sharp criticism of the part of its tradition that has stressed "rationalization" (a rational socially engineered solution to personal and political problems) and "emancipation" (freedom from the restraint of society and rejection of moral traditions...

...The pro-life groups point out that a fundamental aim of the civil rights efforts was to protect and give voice to those without power -- to give them an equal moral standing in the community...

...The dichotomies are expressed in our ordinary language when "idealists" are contrasted with "realists," or when the "hard-nosed" are pitted against the "starry-eyed...

...Fourth, both sides are concerned about the conditions that lead or drive women to abortions, and about the social, economic, and cultural contexts of abortion decisions...

...and, on the oXher, that version of the pro-choice position that is interested only in the easy availability of abortion, regardless of cause or motivation...

...the legitimacy of writing moral convictions and principles into law, particularly when that seems necessary to protect the rights of others (as in the civil rights movement...

...ever so faintly tilting one way or another can be decisive when the political and legal choices are so narrow...

...She found that the moral stance one takes on that common moral problem reflects deep and pervasive premises about the self and the world...

...They would be equally drawn from the pro-choice and the pro-life side...

...They are unwilling to ask women to give up a viable solution to their present problems in the name of a yet-to-be future, one that might never come...

...Four features of that discussion are worth noting...

...Thus there was no pretense that the group would be representative of all the ethnic, religious, political, and cultural groups active in the abortion debate...

...that a lack of communal, economic, and social support often coerces an abortion that would not be necessary in a more just society...

...The labels are also disliked because of a suggestion that one must be wholly one or the other...

...By sundering a once necessary relationship between sexual activity and procreation, it helps provide an adaptation to a world that no longer needs, nor can afford, unlimited childbearing...

...By stressing freedom of choice, it gives centrality to the sovereignty of the individual conscience, especially in cases of moral doubt...

...a former associate editor of Commonweal, is the director of The Hastings Center (Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences) in Hastings-onHudson, New York...

...p ERHAPS the most striking outcome of our project was the way it broke many stereotypes...

...5 October 1984:523...

...Whether observers made the connection between the two Callahans was not always clear, but we experienced the conflict first-haod...

...Our own project discussions manifested some traits significantly different from those sketched above...

...that private moral choices are subject to moral judgments and standards...

...They cannot be asked to bear personally the burden of helping to create a better future, which, even if possible, is not within their individual power to bring about...

...They are willing to make a moral bet that the violence inherent in abortion will, in the long run, be repudiated...

...Both, strikingly, borrow from the various civil-rights struggles of the recent past...

...In the larger political arena, it is victory that counts...

...Our desire to better understand our own differences and those of others led us not long ago to organize a small research project at The Hastings Center, supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation...

...That is the matter of one's general hopes and beliefs about the world, human nature, and reality...

...In part, they can differ because of the relative weight they give to various considerations...

...Those terms, they are well aware, were devised for polemical and political purposes, not for carefully nuanced distinctions...

...For all of that period, one of us (Daniel) has taken a pro-choice position and the other (Sidney) a pro-life position (to use, somewhat reluctantly, the common labels...

...In this, they not only share some of the conservative and neoconservative critiques of liberalism, but share as well a similar questioning that has become part of the liberal tradition itself, whether from Marxist or other sources...

...fetal rights are not inherently hostile to women's rights...

...In Daniel's work on biomedical ethics, he has similarly observed that people bring to specific moral issues their broad outlooks toward themselves and the world...

...It is a living out, in bold relief, of the struggle between modernity and traditionalism that has been waged since at least the age of the Enlightenment...

...They are, however, hardly less distrustful of that form of traditionalism that believes the past must be preserved in all of its purity...

...and they are no less willing to pursue together those social reforms that would be more supportive of troubled pregnancies...

...In a 5 October 1984:521 different rendering -- what might be called liberal communitarianism -- the pro-choice movement recognizes that a socially forced choice in favor of abortion is not a fully free choice...

...They rejected, on the one hand, that rendering of the pro-life position that construes all choices in favor of abortion as merely personal convenience or crass expediency...

...but that is only one version of feminism, not necessarily its essence...

...Kristin Luker's research on those groups (presented in our project before its appearance in book form in Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, has vividly laid out the background values and assumptions that animate their convictions...

...Third, they are uncomfortable with the labels pro-life and pro-choice...

...T HE VALUES that sustain and give theoretical legitimacy to both the pro-life and pro-choice movements are commonplace and command widespread respect...

...Neither of us has remained unchanged by the other...

...The pro-choice group, for its part, is hesitant to indulge hopes of that kind...

...But by choosing to cast the issues in those fundamental terms, and by making abortion carry the weight of a ManicheanSlike struggle between the good (evil) past and the good (evil) present, each side has doomed itself to an utter inability to talk with the other side, the likelihood that neither side can wholly triumph in the future, and the disheartening prospect of never-ending, never-decided civil strife for everyone else...

...By contrast, the pro-life group believes that a better future cannot be achieved unless we begin now to live the ideals that we want to achieve, unless we are prepared to make present sacrifices toward future goals, and unless aggression toward the fetus is denied, however high the individual cost of denying it...

...It stands at the juncture of a number of value systems, all of which continually joust with each other for dominance, but none of which by itself can do full justice to all the values that, with varying degrees of insistence and historical rootedness, clamor for attention and respect...

...the need to protect the weak and powerless, at the least in order to preserve them from the harm that can be done by the more powerful, and at the most to provide them with an opportunity to develop their full potential...

...For at least twenty years now we have asked that question of each other, just as we have asked how our own differences and those of others might be reconciled...

...but that does not follow either...

...The crucial difference, however, is that those on the pro-choice side believe that the world as it is must be acknowledged, and not just as it might or ought to be...

...Both sides, then, are prepared to agree that abortion is undesirable, a crude solution to problems that would better be solved by other means...

...Our project, therefore, sought to see if we could provide some better insight into how individuals weigh and order their values when dealing with abortion...

...To recall Karl Marx's expression, they want to change the world not understand it...

...The pro-choice groups, sensitive to the deprivations of women who are given no options in their reproductive lives, want to provide women with a choice about something central to their lives...

...Here and now, in our present social reality, there are women who need or desire abortions...

...How do they bring that wider and deeper understanding to bear on this difficult, divisive issue...

...The results of our discussion were sufficient to persuade us that a more complex, nuanced, and fruitful argument is possible...

...Ever since the topic of abortion became of interest to us, in the 1960s, we have disagreed...

...The pro-choice movement can lay an equally strong claim to an important piece of the American and Western tradition...

...There are, we think, two different abortion debates now taking place, one of them tense, open and familiar, the other more relaxed, less public, and surprising in some of its features...

...But it was to be representative of one important, if sometimes overlooked, group -- those women who, though they differ, are willing to talk with those on the other side, willing to make the effort to empathize with those who hold opposing views, and willing to see if they can find some shared ground to keep their dialogue alive...

...How can that be...

...but in some renderings a denial of abortion can be a way of affirming rights...

...Second, both sides tended to share a distrust of that form of libertarianism that would wholly sunder the individual from the community, setting up the private self as an isolated agent bound by no moral standards other than those perceived or devised by the agent...

...If our own domestic wrangles have not led to a general shift in position for either of us, it has nonetheless been valuable...

...Put simply, for many who are pro-choice, abortion is a necessary evil, one that must be tolerated and supported until such time as better sex education, more effective contraception, and a more just social order make possible fewer troubled pregnancies...

...They have to live with the reality they encounter...

...For both the pro-choice modernizers and the pro-life traditionalists, abortion serves as a perfect symbol for such pervasive issues as the roles and rights of the sexes, the family, the relationship between law and morality, the nature and malleability of social reality, and the place of reason and choice in human life...

...At one level, there is the fairly primitive, monochromatic struggle that takes place between the most public and vociferous activists on both sides...

...about the making and keeping of promises...

...And they would focus their discussion on four broad themes: feminism, the family, childbearing and childrearing, and the political and cultural Commonweal: 520 nature of our society...

...See box, p. 524...

...What should the law be...

...Consider first the pro-life position...

...Many people, we reluctantly suspect, are not greatly interested in understanding in some sympathetic way why abortion is so divisive an issue...

...The liberal pro-life group, it sometimes seems, favors the equivalent of unilateral disarmament on abortion, and is willing to bear the hazards of a stance that will put many women at risk of disaster...

...Why not, we thought, look at the problem by considering the different ways in which abortion opponents understand themselves and the world...

...Neither has invented unusual moral principles nor idiosyncratic values...

...It is only to suggest that the relationship of abortion to such deeper values as feminism, the family, childrearing, and the political culture are open to more flexible, interesting possibilities than has been apparent in much of the public debate...

...But the more complex reality is that many in the pro-life group will not condemn out of hand all women who have abortions...

...F OR ALL of those reasons, it is the debate at the other level that bears attention, cultivation, and development...

...and that what ought to be an inherently difficult tragic choice can easily be trivialized and routinized -- tacitly sanctioned and advanced by a society that promotes narcissism, prefers technological fixes to structural change, and is all too happy to see abortion put to the service of reducing welfare burdens...

...Yet we continue to disagree...

...For the pro-life group, it is a ban on abortion that must be the necessary evil, one that must be advanced as a long-term step in devising a social order that is more supportive of women and childbearing, more dedicated to an eradication of violence as a solution to personal or social threats...

...Future solutions to the general problem of abortion, at some unspecified date, will do them no good...

...For them, the task is to extend to the fetus the rights won by women and racial minority groups...

...Why, then, sharing so much in their beliefs about how the abortion problem should be understood, and sharing some mutual criticisms of the assumptions and premises of those who fight at what we have called the first level, do they still differ...

...Too often it is assumed that a prochoice stand entails treating children as disposable goods, of value only if wanted...

...Thereafter, Sidney wrote a number of articles on abortion, some of which would be xeroxed and distributed by pro-life protestors at Daniel's lectures...

...Not all of the participants may have perceived the discussion the way we did, but we think the following account would gain general support...

...But that is too often a parody of the genuine affirmation of the value of children that can be a central part of a pro-choice position...

...and, finally, the conviction that moral values and ideals toward nascent life should be upheld even at the cost of individual difficulties and travail...

...It is committed to respect for an individual's right to life, even if that right is uncertain or in doubt in borderline cases (or even if there is doubt about whether it is "life...

...But given the depth and apparent intractability of abortion differences, we think that in the long run most persons in the society will have to find a way to live with differences...

...and so on -- but instead with the way in which abortion as a problem is situated within the terrain of a person's general, more encompassing values...

...an obligation on the part of the community, whether through mediating institutions or the state, to provide support for those whose troubles (for example, an unwanted pregnancy) might lead them to forced, destructive choices...

...With _9 e exception of Daniel, all of the other participants would be women...

...There is a pro-life movement dedicated to the preservation of the nuclear family, the centrality of childbearing in the life of women, and a religious rather than a secular view of life...

...There is no suggestion here that the differences are any less sharp than ever, or to deny that even slight differences can have a significant social impact...

...Too often it is assumed that a society which values the rights of individuals must deny the value of community and thus any social restrictions on abortion choices...