Stanek weekend question: Does calling abortion a “difficult decision” play into pro-life hands?
An August 15 op ed in the Washington Post makes the case that a common depiction of abortion by proponents plays right into pro-life hands.
Janet Harris, former communications director for the pro-abortion group EMILY’s List, cites several reasons why calling abortion a “difficult decision” cedes ground. She also posits the first clear reason I’ve read why “pro-choice” is problematic:
However, when the pro-choice community frames abortion as a difficult decision, it implies that women need help deciding, which opens the door to paternalistic and demeaning “informed consent” laws. It also stigmatizes abortion and the women who need it….
Today, when advocates on both sides of the debate talk about the decision to have an abortion, they preface their statements with adjectives such as “difficult,” “hard” or “reluctant.” For anti-abortion conservatives, the reason for using such language is clear: Abortion is murder, they contend, but characterizing a woman who has one as a murderer is a bit, well, harsh. A more charitable view is to assume that she must have struggled with making this immoral choice. Pro-choice advocates use the “difficult decision” formulation for a similar reason, so as not to demonize women. It also permits pro-choice candidates to look less dogmatic.
But there’s a more pernicious result when pro-choice advocates use such language: It is a tacit acknowledgment that terminating a pregnancy is a moral issue requiring an ethical debate. To say that deciding to have an abortion is a “hard choice” implies a debate about whether the fetus should live, thereby endowing it with a status of being. It puts the focus on the fetus rather than the woman. As a result, the question “What kind of future would the woman have as a result of an unwanted pregnancy?” gets sacrificed. By implying that terminating a pregnancy is a moral issue, pro-choice advocates forfeit control of the discussion to anti-choice conservatives….
Abortion rights groups are struggling to expand their message from “pro-choice” – which they say no longer resonates with voters as it once did – to more broadly encompass women’s health and economic concerns. The movement needs such recalibration precisely because it was drawn into a moral debate about the fetus’s hypothetical future rather than the woman’s immediate and tangible future. Once these groups locked themselves into a discussion of “choice,” terminating a pregnancy became an option rather than a necessity. Pro-choice groups would be a lot stronger, more effective and more in sync with the women they represent if they backed away from the defensive “difficult decision” posture.
These are all quite compelling theories. The problem is, to now portray abortion as a nondifficult decision makes it appear cavalier, which people will find repugnant.
Have abortion proponents backed themselves into a corner here?
[Photo, via Entertainment Weekly, is of 16 and Pregnant’s Markai Durham “as she came to the agonizing conclusion to have an abortion.”]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I could care less regarding whose side of the argument it helps or hurts – the battle isn’t won or lost with the public perception of the minority of people who yell and scream on the two fringe sides of the argument.
It is true, and obvious, that millions of women get pregnant every year and are in a situation that they see as “difficult”, and thus the next steps to them is “difficult”. Realizing that women face these obstacles is a nice first step. The fight to legislate out abortion could go on for centuries more – or could never end. Helping women in society so that the choice isn’t quite so “difficult”, and the choice of life is easier to make – that would be a nice change to help decrease the number of abortions.
They want an impossibility: to completely ignore the life of the fetus, but also be taken seriously. The pro-life movement is able to honestly discuss, and directly help, both the mother and the child. That’s a significant advantage.
Pro-bort activists are in a difficult position.
The world knows that women suffer with the decision to abortion, before and after the child is gone.
But the pro-bort dogma insists that abortion is an easy, pleasant, life-affirming decision with liberating consequences.
So…. Do they speak their beliefs boldly, and look like extremists?
Or do they bite their cheeks and put on masks and try to persuade the world that they are not extremists, but reasonable people like us?
But they can’t agree on their strategy, so they are doing both.
Maybe it’s difficult, maybe it’s not. Of course some women struggle with the decision if they’re conflicted and having a hard time deciding. For others it’s a choice they make more easily, perhaps very easily. Same as women who decide to continue the pregnancy, some will be conflicted about it, some will make the choice easily.
Isn’t it “paternalistic and condescending” to say that women should not or cannot make difficult decisions? Morality aside, many decisions in life are difficult, and there is nothing wrong with acknowledging it. The opening statement of the quote is far more misogynist than any recognition that woman, like all people face hard decisions.
And I disagree that the decision being difficult has anything to do with moral conflict. If a woman is facing financial hardship, the decision to spend money on abortion requires financial sacrifice. What about a woman who wants the baby, but feels she cannot afford it? What about a woman who must choose between her unborn child and her partner (which may have financial, housing, or parenting implications)? And what about the woman who wants children, but not now? All such cases pose difficulties, but do not inherently involve the morality of abortion or the persobhoid of the unborn.
The question, “Should I kill my child because of ‘x’?” will always be a morally difficult question. Women know this. Our culture knows this.
But the abortion industry insists that abortion is morally neutral. A child is either “wanted” or “unwanted,” and an unwanted child can be discarded like used tissue paper. Some people accept this (most notably, deadbeat boyfriends). The abortion industry hopes that everyone will adopt this attitude, and the moral question will just go away. They even blame the pro-life movement for preventing this change.
What the abortion activists fail to realize is that matters of life and death will always be moral questions. Legalized killing will always bring difficult decisions to most people. And so the pro-life movement is a natural consequence of our human nature.
Murder and rape and slavery will always be morally wrong. Cultures that permit these things will always be self-conflicted.
I wouldn’t say it plays into pro-life hands. It simply acknowledges reality. Moving away from the “pro-choice” model, as the author supports, moves toward the “women have NO choice” argument. Such a posture will resonate with anyone who thinks that women are victims by nature, incapable of moral reasoning, trapped at all times by men and circumstance. I for one would welcome the challenge of refuting that lie.
Ellen: Moving away from the “pro-choice” model, as the author supports, moves toward the “women have NO choice” argument.
Women just do have the choice, though. It may come to a time when a woman would have to travel, i.e. let’s say Roe gets reversed – then we’d have some states that would pretty much outlaw abortion, while others would have it legal. It’s only women who are too poor to travel to a “legal” state who are then denied the choice.
As far as the conscious decision to stop using “pro-choice” so much – it’s surprising to me, but hey, whatever….
The law does recognize that murder does seem different when it is the mother versus other categories of relation. This article has an interesting discussion of how the law looks at murder-by-mother. Pubmed has it as a free article. I do not see it listed as a free article in Google scholar. So, if you are interested, you can search for this at “Pubmed.”
Arch Womens Ment Health. 2013 Aug;16(4):259-70.
Perinatal depression: a review of US legislation and law.
Rhodes AM, Segre LS.
Abstract
Accumulating research documenting the prevalence and negative effects of perinatal depression, together with highly publicized tragic critical incidents of suicide and filicide by mothers with postpartum psychosis, have fueled a continuum of legislation. Specialists in perinatal mental health should recognize how their work influences legislative initiatives and penal codes, and take this into consideration when developing perinatal services and research. Yet, without legal expertise, the status of legislative initiatives can be confusing. To address this shortfall, we assembled an interdisciplinary team of academics specializing in law, as well as perinatal mental health, to summarize these issues. This review presents the relevant federal and state legislation and summarizes the criminal codes that governed the court decisions on cases in which a mother committed filicide because of postpartum psychosis. Moreover, the review aims to help researchers and providers who specialize in perinatal depression understand their role in this legal landscape.
Hilary is one of the politicians who is on record describing abortion as a “sad, even tragic decision.”
What is so tragic about removing that lump of cells that is norally equivalent to a mole or appendix?
http://www.ontheissues.org/Cabinet/Hillary_Clinton_Abortion.htm
She is also on the record as an opponent of sex-selective abortion – well, if the blob of future-female cells is not alive, what is the big dill?
She has also been a fan of the “safe, legal, and rare” mantra.
She has been on the international stage, including United Nations, with these views.
These views will be yet another liability if she cannot avoid the nomination.
I don’t know about Faux-cahontas’ specific views on abortion. If she runs instead – a scenario I hope for – I will have to look into that.