Notebook
Hoyt, Robert G.
4 NOTEBOOK 'SAFE, LEGAL, RARE' MAKE IT REAL T he letter from John Tomasin appearing in this issue [page 29] is a response to a letter of my own, [Commonweal, May 20] which was a response...
...Neither is the decision purely private...
...The gross disparities of wealth, income, and security that persist in our society result from human choices for which, to one degree or another, we all bear responsibility...
...just as obviously, it would be fairer to poor women (and costlier) than granting subsidies only for abortions...
...Neither Kinsley nor Tomasin adverts to the situation of poor and pregnant women for whom abortion is a sad choice— even an evil one—but who nevertheless submit to the procedure as the only way they can find out of a situation they experience as intolerable...
...Of the making of many responses there is no end...
...4 NOTEBOOK 'SAFE, LEGAL, RARE' MAKE IT REAL T he letter from John Tomasin appearing in this issue [page 29] is a response to a letter of my own, [Commonweal, May 20] which was a response to a letter from my congressman, which was his response to an earlier letter of mine taking issue with his support for the inclusion of abortion funding in health-care reform...
...Realistically, then, the prospect for compromise and progress on the issue is dim...
...The administration's minimal-to-moderate proposals for changing the economic rules that guarantee the persistence of poverty have been mostly stymied in Congress...
...May their numbers increase...
...It discovered (or created) a constitutional basis for leaving the abortion decision to individuals and for denying legislators any significant role in the matter...
...It puts the federal government, and all taxpayers, on one side of an unresolvable issue that is a matter of conscience for very considerable numbers of Americans...
...Tomasin first...
...Thus, a pregnant woman who faces this "most intimate of decisions" but lacks a decent place to live, can't get regular medical care, gets no help from family or spouse, can't qualify for a job—in short, has no reason to hope—is not a free person...
...Speaking only for myself, I might be able to buy into President Bill Clinton's sloganized intention of making abortions "safe, legal, and rare"—provided there were adequate signs of a serious program to make the slogan real...
...Instead it offers a position "that recognizes the need for an extensive and ongoing process of public persuasion, and one that provides care, assistance, and alternatives to women caught in the dilemma of unwanted pregnancy...
...In fact, it strikes me that few people are arguing this central issue...
...Do people like Tomasin and me have anything more to say than to question one another's motives...
...Which view is correct...
...If you've absolutely had it with the abortion debate, you are allowed to skip over this piece— though I think it may say something slightly new...
...the choice is not "purely voluntary...
...Some prolifers say their opposite numbers trivialize abortion in order to legitimize a technological quick fix for an inconvenient problem, whether personal or societal...
...But the question is still more complex...
...No doubt points can be scored on both sides of this slamming contest, but I don't want to join it (not here, anyhow...
...I do want to point out that whichever side is right about the ethical question, the political issue remains, and becomes more contentious in the wake of the proposal to provide federal subsidies for abortion...
...In both kinds of cases poverty exerts a near-coercive force...
...First, old ground: the nature of abortion...
...not where abortion is concerned...
...no method of philosophic argumentation or scientific demonstration has been found that can prove either definition of the embryo to the satisfaction of people on the other side of the debate...
...Who can decide...
...If you're going to read it, however, please read Mr...
...Roe v. Wade made abortion on demand the law 5 of the land—except, as Tomasin says, for women who can't afford an abortion, with the result that some women are forced to bear children they don't want and can't adequately care for...
...Most women who are poor don't just "happen" to be poor...
...That proposal abandons any pretense of maintaining the stance of governmental neutrality toward abortion mandated in Roe v. Wade...
...But it's much too early to say whether any such proposal will make headway...
...ROBERT G. hoyt 6...
...If that is true, this particular clump of cells is not so easily expendable...
...In the June 13 New Republic, the ardently prochoice columnist Michael Kinsley gives reasons to doubt that the numbers of such women are large...
...In the second group of cases, it would not become any more voluntary if the government subsidized abortion for those unable to pay...
...On societal aspects: Tomasin is certainly correct in saying that the question is more complex than my response to Congressman Nadler suggested...
...But for many other Americans the conceptus is a human being, or at the least a "potential" human being: either a baby or a baby-on-the-way...
...the debate is mostly about motives...
...If Tomasin will consider whether, even granting his premises, coerced motherhood is any greater a moral horror than coerced abortion, perhaps he will address the full complexity of the issue and concern himself both with making choice more truly free and with making life more worth choosing...
...There is, however, something to talk about: In the same June 13 issue of the New Republic, Fred Barnes reports that William Kristol, formerly Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center are hoping to persuade the GOP to adopt a new strategy on abortion, one that backs away from the hard-line, unenactable 1992 platform demand for a human life amendment banning all abortions...
...Apart from continuing the polemical battle, is there anything else to consider...
...the best prolife forces can hope for at the moment is defeat of government funding for abortions, a holdthe-line position...
...Apart from social reforms, making abortion rare (what's "rare"?—there are more than 4,000 a day now) would surely require regulatory measures (e.g., making sure that the abortion decision is truly an informed one) that neither political party has yet embraced...
...finding no consensus on the question among "those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology," the Court decided the issue before it in Roe v. Wade on other grounds...
...Obviously, it would confer no status on the embryo or fetus...
...To Tomasin, and those many Americans who think with him, it is "quite clear" that the product of conception is no more than a mostly featureless group of cells of no greater significance than we would give to a carbuncle...
...Thus, Tomasin suggests that many who oppose abortion actually want poor women to suffer...
...Far from being a radical call for overall reform of our unjust class structure, the Weigel-Kristol strategy is a modest one...
...Today, dissensus still reigns...
...In both prolife and prochoice circles, however, there are those who worry about the plight of poor women—whether or not they are pregnant—and about the poor in general...
...No signals to that effect are coming from the White House...
...Not the Supreme Court...
...abortion policy necessarily raises not only issues of personal ethics but also problems of social justice...
...If this is true, it follows that abortion poses no serious ethical problem...
Vol. 121 • July 1994 • No. 13
