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Today is the anniversary of the decision in Roe v. Wade, and one of BlogHer's resident pro-lifers, I was asked to weigh in on the abortion debate from my perspective. I suspect to rehash the traditional arguments about the legality and morality of abortion, at this stage of the game -- thirty-plus years after the original decision -- would just be repeating the obvious. If you want the pro-life side of the argument spelled out so that it can be ratified or ridiculed depending on your own position, there are a quarter-million-plus pro-lifers marching on Washington DC who will give you the God's honest Truth.
And on that, I'm actually not kidding. Well, sort of. But you get what I mean.
As a libertarian, I understand the concept of loss of rights. My thoughts on legislation that has to do with morality are pretty clear. The Federal government, and least of all the judicial branch of the federal government have no business poking around where they don't belong. For me, Roe v. Wade was more than a legal travesty, it was an impermissible interjection of the law into a place where democracy should have been king. Taking rights away -- explicit rights, not merely implicit rights like those elucidated int he decision itself -- from US citizens is never a "good" and by making abortion a federal question, the Supreme Court deprived American citizens of their ability to speak on a matter that was not only primarily important to them, it was tied to their most precious valuable: their future. So lets leave my thoughts (and yours) on legality and rights behind. We can't win by arguing those points, because neither will convince the other and both of us will leave angry.
And here's where it gets really tough. By miring abortion in the political world, abortion has somehow managed to become a sterile political issue. You're either in favor of a woman's right to choose to have an abortion, or you're opposed. For the most part, those on the front lines of both sides are there to represent hardened beliefs forged in the same kilns as their core ideology, and abortion is inextricably linked to the nature of their entire belief system. It has become a cause, a flag, a rallying cry for pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike. It has been reduced to an argument on paper, full of sterile words like "right," and "law," and "Constitution."
Women, the people at the core of this battle, are often mentioned only in passing. And that is the real tragedy of this war.
Certainly, both sides claim to have the interests of women at heart: their freedom, their rights, their very souls. Both sides believe that the law itself is central to preserving these precious gifts. But in the background, its not the lawmakers or the non-profit workers or the theologians making the choice that is abortion.
Coming from the hardcore right of the pro-life debate, it has been difficult for me to see the debate with any emotional clarity beyond the emotional clarity handed to me in talking points by the various self-interested organizations involved. Women are this, women are that. Women do this, women do that. I imagine, somehow, its the same on the other side. But when you stop and think about it, neither side really embraces the people they claim to be assisting.
It is my belief (and you are free not to share this belief, and yes, I intend to be simplistic), that no woman ever walks into an abortion clinic looking to kill a child. No woman who walks into an abortion clinic is a murderer with one thing on her mind: the destruction of human life within her womb. It is also my belief that no women ever walk into an abortion clinic with their held held high, a copy of the decision in their hands, looking merely to exercise their Constitutional right. They don't get abortions for political reasons. They don't get them callously.
Women get abortions because they are faced with an unplanned pregnancy.
The process itself is the focus of the political debate, but you would think, if women don't get abortions for all of these reasons so often thrown out by either side, then why do they get abortions? We seem to forget that before the action itself, there are so many considerations, so many sleepless nights, so many financial calculations and relationship analysis. There are worries, tears, concerns about medical bills and educational opportunities; concerns about
