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The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear arguments from a Missouri case which could reverse all or part of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
The impending courtroom conflict has inspired demonstrations on both sides. It has also resulted in allegations that the media terminology favors those who support the current law of the land.
The right-to-life lobby says that people who call
themselves pro-choice
shouldn't slide by with such
an innocuous sobriquet; they're really
pro-abortion.
No. Search my pro-choice soul as I might, I can't say I'm pro-abortion. I am appalled that so many women take abortion as casually as a visit to the hair dresser. I find abortion as reprehensible as many other perfectly legal activities that I'd rather not be a part of -- building warheads, shooting down airliners, dumping toxic wastes, etc.
But what I think about abortion doesn't matter. It isn't
my decision to make. It is properly a woman's decision,
which makes me pro-choice,
not
pro-abortion.
The other side says it's really pro-life,
not
anti-abortion.
But if the pro-life
people
indeed care about all fetal life, then why are most of them
willing to make exceptions for rape or incest? Life is
life, even when it results from crime.
And why are the pro-life
forces so content to
march in the streets and stand around abortion clinics,
harassing all who dare enter? There are dozens of places to
stand up and work for life where it might make a
difference: Nicaragua, Peru, Mexico, Washington, the
nearest AIDS hospice, perhaps doing something to reduce the
toll of child abuse, which killed 26 Colorado children last
year.
That would involve risk and hard work, though. And why
bother when it's so much easier to stand in the street and
wave signs with your like-minded friends, yell at people
who already have enough trouble, and then go home, feeling
sanctimonious about how you're fighting for the right to
life.
The right to life
forces obviously believe that
life ends at birth, because they cease to care about a
child at the instant the placental cord is cut. They aren't
pro-life
; they're anti-abortion.
The real problem with the abortion issue, though, isn't who calls who what. It's that the legality of abortion is one of those all-or-nothing moral propositions which our political system doesn't handle very well.
If abortion isn't the woman's decision, then whose is it? Any answer will involve gross violations of privacy and the individual rights that our country supposedly stands for.
But then again, if a woman has the right to control what happens inside her own body, then it follows that public funds will help pay for abortions, and many people will say they're being forced to pay for something they find morally abhorrent.
There are analogies from our past, where private moral considerations became political issues. Unfortunately, none of them offers much comfort.
At the turn of the century, it wasn't enough to abstain personally if you were dismayed by drunkards. The temperance lobby insisted that unless saloons were banished, then you would suffer certain effects of drinking, even if you never touched the stuff. Thus came Prohibition, a monumental failure.
Fifty years before that, slavery was the issue. You couldn't just oppose slavery on personal moral grounds and leave it at that. The Fugitive Slave Act required you to take an active part in perpetuating slavery; it was your legal duty to return an escaping slave to his owner. Outrage over this is one reason we had a civil war.
The abortion controversy has the same fevered moral passion on both sides. If we're any smarter than our ancestors, we might come up with a solution somewhere this side of warfare. But we're probably not, which is another reason why I try to avoid thinking about abortion.
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