When Pro-Choice Arguments Are Painful
By Alisa Craddock
March 5 2006
A friend of mine once asked me to address some powerfully moving arguments presented to him by a pro-choice woman, which he had found difficult to answer. The situations this woman described are not typical, but are genuine possibilities and therefore very hard to deal with. It is perhaps the most powerful weapon in the liberals’ arsenal to use worst case scenarios to define the debate on contested social issues. So I present here her arguments, and my response. Neither is all-inclusive of the arguments of either side, but may be helpful to pro-lifers who encounter them, and may help pro-abortion people to understand why we pro-lifers are so determined. I have edited the pro-abortion arguments to remove the personal elements and leave only the arguments she presented.
WHY ABORTION? SOME ARGUMENTS IN DEFENSE OF “CHOICE”
Late stage abortions should not be, and are not, performed simply because the mother decides that she does not want a health baby. Late stage abortions are performed to save the mother's life, or when there is something severely wrong with the fetus. In both cases, the mother probably proceeded so far with the pregnancy because the child was wanted. If a severely mentally retarded, or severely handicapped child is born, the mother is condemned to a life of changing diapers, or the child is put into an institution. Quality of life for all comes into play here. Is there beauty in a 40 year old adult with the mentality of a 1 year old, who needs his diapers changed? The anti-abortionists would not ruin their lives looking after someone else's severely retarded or physically handicapped child. Very few people would be willing to take on such as child. The anti-abortionists would rather the mother died, than have an abortion. This lack of compassion and empathy is frightening.
You perhaps cannot imagine the horror of something growing inside you that you don't want, or the fear of pregnancy and labor. You maybe can't imagine what it would be like to be ostrasized by your family, jeered at by society, and abandoned by the father of your baby. Women have committed suicide because they can't cope. Others went to back street abortionists and died or were horribly maimed. I feel more compassion for women who find themselves in an untenable position than for an embryo that has no thoughts or emotions, and never even knew it lived.
I still do not think abortion should be used as birth control, but accidents happen. Men are as much to blame as women but do not have to bear the burden.
A PRO-LIFE RESPONSE
I was at one time pro-choice. Though I don't like the word "choice" as used by the side that supports abortion, I think I can say in fairness that I was in favor of having the choice, rather than being pro-abortion. I always used the "rape and incest" argument. A column by William Buckley, whom I admire enormously, drove home the reality of my own position to me. I tried obsessively for weeks to write a rebuttal to his devastating argument, but when I went looking for the facts, I discovered that rape and incest survivors rarely chose abortion. Most believed that there was a reason for their pregnancy, and had found it a healing experience to go ahead and bear the child, even if they gave it up for adoption. In addition to that, I came face to face with the unpleasant truth about myself: that what I was saying was that I would rather kill my (hypothetical) unborn child than deal with the emotional upheaval of bearing a child (that I would feel ill equipped to raise) and giving it away to someone else. I thought, “King Solomon is turning over in his grave.”
Your arguments are much harder to counter. I wrestle with them myself even now, and I am pro-life. Or more precisely, I believe that our life is created by God and that we have a right to exist, and that all other natural rights of man are subordinate to this greatest one. Nevertheless, I have pondered with anguish the horror of women who gave birth to thalidomide babies or babies with severe handicaps or retardation, and the impact on their lives and the lives of the children. It is a severe test of faith even for the staunchest Christian.
I am going to assume that you are not a woman of deep faith. The reason for my assumption is because your arguments, though rational in the absence of the existence of a Creator, are untenable if we acknowledge that we are created by God, simply because the only conclusion one could come to is that God created that person for a reason, and therefore it is not up to us to judge the value or quality of his/her life, or to presume to have more compassion than the author of life, who sees, knows, and understands what we cannot, in the case of both mother and child. In other words, if there is a God, there is a larger spiritual purpose at work in the act of creation, and it is not for us to interfere.
In the absence of God (and the attendant belief in a higher purpose) then we are faced with rational choices, based on a secular humanism. Though I adhere to the former line of thinking, it is necessary to ponder things from this angle to see if there might be a practical side as well.
Late term abortions, you argue, are performed to save the life of the mother, or when there is something severely wrong with the 'fetus'. There are times when it is medically necessary to remove the gestating infant from the mother to save her life. It is NEVER medically necessary to kill the child to save the mother's life, as the former Surgeon General, C. Everett Koopstates below:
"Protection of the life of the mother as an excuse for an abortion is a smoke screen. In my 36 years of pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother's life. If toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother's health, the doctor will either induce labor or perform a Caesarian section. His intention is to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby's life is never willfully destroyed because the mother's life is in danger."(C. Everett Koop, M.D. Former U.S. Surgeon-General.)
No one expects the mother to die rather than the child, including the Catholic Church--only that every effort be made to save the child. See, if the mother dies, the child dies with her, so it makes no sense to say that pro-lifers would rather the mother die than have an abortion. If it is medically necessary, though, to remove the child, and it cannot survive, of course that is tragic, but unavoidable. But it would have died with the mother anyway.
With regard to the profoundly retarded or handicapped child, this is more difficult. In our culture, we do tend to concentrate on the individual rather than on the "big picture", and big pictures usually involve statistics and overall effects, and cold, impersonal facts. Conversely, one can look at an individual whose circumstances move us to tears, and that person's plight becomes the overwhelming image that drives the agenda. Roe v. Wade is an example. The "worst case scenario" brought to bear on the legalization of abortion was "gang rape"--who could not be moved by such a story, and fail to be compassionate. (It has since been revealed that the story was a fabrication designed to elicit precisely the kind of emotional response it did, but for purposes of demonstration, I let it stand).
But in our case, we are talking about quality of life issues, both for the mother and the child. The problem with "quality of life" arguments is that someone has to play God. Without the respect for life as God-given, each of us becomes the arbitrary judge of the value of another human being. Without God, each of us is a tyrant over the lives of others, even if only by our acquiescence in the actions of those making the "who should live/who should die" decisions. The case of Terry Schiavo in Florida is right on point. When human beings take it upon themselves to make these decisions, or to cooperate by acquiescence in the decisions, the list of those whose lives are deemed “unworthy” or “too burdensome” widens more and more. I am reminded of the German people forced to go through the concentration camps after Germany fell to the allies, theirs handkerchiefs covering their mouths and noses as they wept, saying “We didn’t know. We didn’t know.” But where were they when the Jews were being portrayed as subhumans, as rats, as anything but fellow human beings made, like them, in God’s image. And now it is the unborn who are portrayed as less than human: They are “products of conception”, a parasite, a venereal disease, a fetus, a mass of tissue, the “something growing inside you that you don’t want.” Anything but fellow human beings made, like all of us, in God’s image.
The real point is, there have been 4o+ million abortions in the US alone since Roe v. Wade. The overwhelming majority of them were "convenience" abortions, and over half were performed on women and girls who were using a birth control method that failed. Of those, only a very tiny percentage fall into the categories we are concerned with--rape, incest, retardation, severe handicap. But the plight of those mothers becomes the “moral” impetus behind blanket legalization of abortion, which is wholesale slaughter of babies by their mothers. The effect on society has been the devaluation of life and a kind of fascism toward life issues that makes the unthinkable sound reasonable. Cloning, for example, assisted suicide, euthanasia, genetic engineering, "designer babies", sex selection. In addition, men have abdicated responsibility for their involvement in the begetting of children, and the laws have encouraged this by giving the father no say in the decision of the mother to abort or not. The burden now falls entirely on the mother to protect herself against pregnancy, where, prior to the sexual revolution, responsibility was shared more equally.
There are myriad other consequences to society that go way beyond the woman’s private choice. The fact is, the psychological and emotional damage experienced by women who have had abortions has repercussions for her relationships with the children she may later have, as also the fathers, who must often share in the guilt without having shared in the decision. Children who learn of their parents abortions often wonder if they were wanted, or if their mother may have wanted to end their lives too. It profoundly affects a child’s bond with a parent to know that a brother or sister was aborted. Children need to believe their parents are all-loving, and all-accepting of them. The discovery of a parent’s abortion distorts the child’s sense of security. And these troubled families beget more troubled families. Society is not unaffected. Multiply these consequences by 40 million, then by all of the lives that were affected by those 40- million, and it is not difficult to see the consequences for the stability of society. Anything that endangers the wholesomeness and security of family life, that degrades even the recognition of the necessity of the family as the basic unit of civilization, endangers the society, and ultimately the whole civilization. That’s the big picture. That some families aren’t very good is irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. There is no substitute for a healthy, traditional nuclear family in the healthy rearing and ultimate social stability of children, who make up the society. Even sociologists, who are notoriously liberal, concede this fact. Abortion undermines healthy families and free societies.
The bottom line is, when we fail to recognize the sanctity of human life, when we allow the value of even a single human being to be decided by any person, even ourselves, we open the door for an ever increasing callousness toward the value of human life in general. When we take it upon ourselves to “[defend] the unborn against their own disabilities”, as Margaret Sanger put it, we open the door to an ever widening list of “undeserving”, “unworthy”, “burdensome” individuals to be condemned on reasons of inconvenience or expediency. When we try to eliminate suffering by eliminating those who suffer, we may find the greatest casualty is our own ability to feel compassion.
That would be those most dehumanizing thing of all.
Alisa Craddock is a social and political activist in the culture war, a convert to Catholicism, and describes herself as a Christian Libertarian.
Polite comments or questions may be addressed to acrock43_j@yahoo.com.
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