For a long time I looked for a way out of the polarization of opinion about abortion. Finding a way out was particularly important to me because I have had a foot in both camps: I agreed with one side that criminal legal sanctions against abortion should be repealed, but also with the other that unborn life was human and should be treated as such.
With the air full of brickbats flying from both directions, this has been a difficult stance to maintain. Yet I have stuck to it, not only because it was what I honestly felt, but also because the search it gave rise to has been a religious one.
My understanding of the Christian message, as I have encountered it in the Bible, is that its central declaration is one of reconciliation -- of God with people and of people with each other. This reconciliation is both a fact and a call. Christians are directed both to announce it and to exhibit it in “the world,” in the situations of their lives. The imperative of holding out reconciliation applies especially to situations of conflict.
For me, this call sounded insistently in the abortion controversy. I could feel at least partial accord with those on both sides, yet I was pulled apart by their mutual antipathy. Thus it was a matter of faith as well as opinion to feel that, despite all the acrimony, this conflict was not inherent in the situation.
About a year ago in St. Louis, at a meeting on abortion and related issues, an idea began to take shape. I call it the “St. Louis Proposal,” and cherish the hope that it might point the way toward breaking out of this impasse.
The confusion of values has only made the conflict more intense. The central issue for supporters of abortion is the matter of choice; only the woman involved, they insist, should make final decisions about how to deal with a problem pregnancy. Their campaign against restrictive laws was built on this premise. This can be distinguished from a secondary, though common, belief that an unborn fetus is not a human being. The commitment to choice, however, is prior and more basic -- and that is an important priority.
With those against abortion, the belief in the humanity of the fetus from the time of conception is primary. Because fetal life is considered human, it deserves all the protection given other human life -- even more, in fact, because of its voiceless, helpless condition. The subordinate but, again, widely held belief is that such protection can best be provided through criminal legal sanctions against abortionists and their clients.
Once they are disentangled, these primary objectives do not seem to be inherently contradictory. Abortion supporters could still uphold their main belief in choice for women even if they accepted the humanity of fetal life. Anti-abortionists could still maintain that a fetus is human even if they decided that criminal legal sanctions were not the best way to protect it.
A clearer view of these key values will lead to a better understanding of the strong commitments to them by activists of both persuasions. For pro-abortionists, these values are epitomized by the women’s movement against a social order which has denied them too many of the essential elements of personhood, including responsibility for their own reproductive lives. This struggle is real, with real grievances to address and genuine achievements to recount. Moreover, it is one which, in areas such as job and pay equality, many people on the other side of the abortion issue also support.
Anti-abortionists see belief in the sanctity of human life, including fetal life, not only as typically a religious conviction, but also as the proper interpretation of the biological data. They consider it a principle of critical social import as well; they can marshal plenty of evidence to show that erosion of this value has been associated with the most heinous crimes against the species.
I think there is much to admire and support in both movements, however ambiguous the efforts to achieve their goals may sometimes have become. Why, then, do they seem so irreconcilable?
One source of the polarization is cultural. By and large, the constituencies of the two movements are drawn from groups in our society which have distinctly different, often divergent, ways of looking at life. These differences feed into another source, the perception by people on each side of their opponents as representing, not their central concern, but instead their secondary, peripheral one.
For instance, the pro-abortionists fear the return of a suppressive criminal legal apparatus whose impact falls above all on women most often women who are alone. This retrenchment they are determined to prevent.
The anti-abortionists, on their side, see people who, by presuming fetal life to be nonhuman, are ready to measure human value by some hazy, socially determined notion of “viability” or “wantedness.” They see these as utilitarian standards which can be manipulated to exclude, and thus legitimatize the destruction of whole populations, of which the voiceless, unseen unborn are but the most easily attacked. This they cannot and will not accept.
There is, of course, much accuracy in each perception. But these are not the whole truth; nor, I think, are they even the essence of the truth.
In the last two years, significant exception to these general positions have appeared. One such exceptional figure is Mr. Burke Balch of Williams College, formerly vice president of the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition and a prominent young pro-life intellectual. Balch wrote a paper last fall for antiabortion legislative strategists, in which he seriously challenged the value of criminal sanctions as an approach to reducing the number of abortions.
Another is Dr. Bernard Nathanson of New York, who was medical director of the first legal abortion clinic in the United States. After supervising 60,000 abortions, he resigned his post and published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in which he stated that he now had no doubt that fetal life was human life.
It is critical to note, however, that neither of these people has abandoned their primary beliefs in the matter: Nathanson in the necessity for women to be able to make choices without legal constraints, and Balch in the humanity and rights of fetal life. It is their willingness to reconsider what are really, for each, secondary issues which shows that there may be a basis for reconciling their positions. This basis is what the St. Louis Proposal attempts to provide.
Simply put, my proposal argues for a legal recognition of fetal humanity, but one which specifically excludes criminal sanctions against abortion as a way of protecting that humanity. This is not a compromise in the conventional political sense, although each side would have to give up something in order for the proposal to work. It is meant as an opportunity for reconciliation, a chance to escape a dead-end conflict without abandoning anything essential to each cause.
Would such a resolution be fair to the respective positions? I believe it would be, because only the peripheral concerns of each side -- and also the weakest points of their arguments -- are left out.
There is plenty of reason to doubt that renewed criminal sanctions would stop abortions any more effectively than Prohibition stopped drinking. Moreover, there would be huge social costs involved in trying to enforce such laws, costs the public might well be unwilling to bear.
The fact is that pregnancy is a unique condition in which the unborn is utterly at the mercy of its mother. Its one protection lies ultimately in her conscience, fears, and hopes.
Similarly, however, denying human status to unborn life that is not “viable” or “wanted” has grave implications. The logic of such standards is shaky at best; it does not fit the biological facts. A newborn baby is utterly “inviable” by itself; a fetus “unwanted” by its mother may be very “wanted” by a childless family. Such standards are open to misuse by powerful groups. Where they have been openly accepted in modern societies, the results have been chilling.
The St. Louis Proposal could end up strengthening the arguments of both sides, by freeing them of their doubtful secondary notions. But could a declaration of fetal humanity, without criminal sanctions to back it up, actually do any better at decreasing abortions? I believe it could do a great deal.
For one thing, it would give government a clear mandate to protect the unborn, a mandate it does not now have. To limit the exercise of this responsibility to ameliorative programs would still leave open a wide field of action. A whole list of such programs, called “Positive Alternatives to Abortion,” has been developed by the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition for introduction in Congress in the near future. Burke Balch has played a key role in the research and writing of the bills. These proposals will embrace such items as reform of adoption procedures, support of independent pregnancy counseling, an end to discrimination against pregnant women, and increased maternal and infant health benefits.
The value of the St. Louis Proposal thus could go beyond simply redirecting legislative energy away from an extended, irresolute contention over criminalization. It might even enable both sides to see that such a declaration and the policies built on it could benefit both their major concerns. For instance, as a reform of our presently grossly inadequate adoption systems made adoption a more realistic alternative for women unable or unwilling to support a child, those women’s options, and thus their freedom, would increase, consistent with the underlying objectives of the pro-abortion constituency.
At the same time, anti-abortionists know that many women abort only because they see no other way out for them. The more genuine alternatives women have (and know they have), the more likely it is that the number opting to abort will decrease.
It may not be entirely utopian to imagine that both sides could at some point actually ally in support of such legislation. A (remarkable) coalition like this one would greatly increase their lobbying clout. As both sides gained, one of the more painfully divisive issues of our day could begin to be defused.
This is not to suggest that life in America would be perfected by acceptance of the St. Louis Proposal. There are likely to be too many abortions to please people opposed to the practice, and too many remaining obstacles to women’s full personhood to placate feminists. Yet the proposal could help end the destructive conflict between two major constituencies.
Once that happens, the number of abortions can be decreased; the options for women can multiply; and both processes can work to reinforce each other. Two groups of Americans with different but not ultimately discordant concerns can make this happen. Our society would unquestionably be richer for the collaboration.
When this article appeared, Charles Fager was a Sojourners correspondent in San Francisco and an author and freelance writer.
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