All Posts Tagged With: "abortion"

As somebody who wants Democrats to win elections and understands the importance of persuasive political rhetoric, I see obvious value in the way many Democrats have come to frame the abortion issue as promoting a policy of making abortions “safe, legal, and rare.” As a human being with genuine beliefs and opinions, I consider such rhetoric to be an extremely unpleasant surrender to the viewpoint that women who get abortions are making morally inferior choices. So I reacted with mixed feelings to the Democratic platform’s [PDF] draft section on abortion:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empowers people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.

Note that there is no “safe, legal, and rare” language (the way there was in 2004), and that the only hint of moralizing on the issue is in reference to “reduc[ing] the need for abortions.” On the whole, pretty strongly pro-choice language that is unlikely to make pro-life progressives happy.

On balance, I think that’s pretty great. I understand the value in making appeals toward more socially conservative Americans who are open to voting for Democrats but who get hung up on abortion. But ultimately I think those appeals can be made without issuing moral condemnations of abortion. Doing so involves emphasizing the consequences of policies over the moral nature of the issue, as in: “You and I disagree on the moral question at stake. But Democrats favor better sex education, increased access to contraception, and increased support of affordable family planning, health care, and adoption. I favor those things because I think they help people, but another thing they do is reduce the number of abortions in this country. I don’t care much about that, but somebody with your moral views obviously does, so you should probably vote for the party whose policies will reduce the number of abortions rather than the party that will try to capitalize politically on the issue by employing a lot of moral lecturing but which has done essentially nothing in practice to stop abortions from happening.” I’m comfortable with that argument, while I’m not so comfortable saying, “Yes, I concede abortion is wrong, but it’s still not a good idea to ban it.” For one thing, I don’t agree with that argument; for another, I think there’s more political efficacy to the first argument seeing as how it doesn’t piss off pro-choicers.

A while ago, Lally posted a video of abortion protesters who were uncomfortable with the idea of enforcing an abortion ban with prison time. She subsequently got jumped on by most of the people here for being mean to old people (or something).

Now we’re presented with some hard data about the pervasiveness of this view among pro-lifers. Third Way did extensive polling on abortion views (PDF). In one section, the questioner asks, “I am going to list goals for some legislation before Congress regarding abortion. On a scale of 0 to 10, please tell me how strongly you support that goal, with a zero meaning you do not support it at all, a five meaning you are neutral toward it, and a higher number meaning you support it.” A couple results:

So while Americans are pretty evenly split on whether to ban most abortions, they overwhelmingly do not want to imprison violators. This is not necessarily a contradiction, of course, since Americans could want to merely impose a fine on violators. But since the interest for which pro-lifers are advocating is the protection of innocent human life, a mere fine would seem a strange punishment.

I don’t want to re-hash an old debate, but I really don’t think the last time this got brought up that the issue was really hashed at all since everybody was too concerned about the injustice of putting street protesters on the spot by (gasp!) asking them questions about the issue they’re protesting.

This time around, a simple question that everybody can take their time to think about: for the readers here who are pro-life, what should the punishment be for a woman who gets an abortion and why?

This post by Scott Lemieux at The American Prospect about how pro-lifers are often reluctant to sanction women who get abortions the same way they sanction murderers directly relates to the video Lally posted earlier in the week. It also, in my opinion, pretty adequately lays out why this point is entirely valid and therefore not “mean” to lay at the feet of those who advocate banning abortion (though I’m not really sure why any point, valid or invalid, directed at people who are standing on the street protesting can be considered “mean,” even if they are kind-looking old women). A brief snippet:

One can, it’s true, have pro-life moral premises that stop short of claiming that a fetus is like a baby and conclude that criminalizing abortion makes no sense because it’s a highly ineffective way of protecting fetal life that also entails gross inequities and negative effects on the health of poor women who seek abortions. (Although this is obviously not true of arguments that consider fetuses legal persons, for example.)…At any rate, while “pro-life” moral premises do not require criminalization, it remains completely irrational to exclude women who obtain abortions from criminal punishment altogether while punishing doctors.

It’s very straightforward:”pro-lifers” who believe that women should not face any legal sanctions for obtaining abortions that are otherwise criminalized 1) don’t take their own underlying moral premises seriously or 2) don’t consider women moral decision-makers responsible for their actions. There is no third option.

And I’d point out to Billy that the arguments being refuted here aren’t being made by “average people on the street,” or whatever group it is he thinks should get a free pass from society to become activists for a cause without having thought seriously (or at all, really) about the consequences of their proposals. Lemieux is countering serious writers and thinkers whose jobs entail making arguments about policy.