Cross posted at MoralMeaning.com.
I have struggled for some time about how to be both a radical liberal activist and someone who is opposed to abortion on moral grounds. Part of my struggle has to do with conflicting values. There is a conflict between the high value that I place on women’s rights and how highly I value all life. Part of the struggle has to do with the costs associated with taking an anti-abortion stance and also being part of the radical liberal movement. And part of the struggle has to do with knowing how science and morality do and don’t intersect on the questions related to abortion.
Unless you take either the stance that personhood starts at the moment of conception, making abortion murder, or you hold the stance that the fetus is part of her mother until birth, making abortion an internal medical procedure, abortion is murky moral territory. Anything other than the above two positions calls into question a range of issues and conflicting values. Just what is “personhood”? When does “life begin”? What does it mean for a person to be inside of another person?
For some, these questions are answered through one’s belief in the human soul, which is what marks the difference between personhood and otherwise. Since I do not believe in the soul, for me there is no spark of life that occurs when the soul enters the unborn child. There is no moment when God makes a person into a person. I am left simply with an understanding of how the division and redivision of cells moves the organism’s cells towards specialization that will become a network of what will become a person independent of her mother.
I am not satisfied with any answer as to when those cells are or are not “a person.” But a failure to label does not negate that life is present, and that the embryo and fetus both are part of the wondrous process of a human’s development. For me it is the wonderful process of human development – the miracle of life – that trumps any questions about how to define when a person becomes a person. It simply does not matter that an embryo is very far from being a five-year-old child. What matters is that both are part of something totally amazing. And that amazing thing should be considered sacred, wondrous and something worth protecting.
I’d like an end to abortion because of what widespread abortion says about how we value life. Indeed, it bothers me that the concept of “unwanted children” is part of the pro-abortion rhetoric. There should be no unwanted children, and the way to make this so is not by aborting children whose parents don’t want them. Since the conception, development and birth of a child is a little miracle that should be cherished society should celebrate the birth of every child, and help every parent and every child have the support they require to fully embrace and experience that miracle. I am bothered by any movement that makes children into liabilities, that seeks to institutionalize the birth process by including termination as a solution to a specific kind of child (an unwanted one) from being born.
I believe that abortion is morally wrong. There should be no abortions. But this does not mean that I believe that abortions should be criminalized. That’s because I am willing to accept the tremendous amount of gray when it comes to an issue that affects only women. The issue of abortion isn’t resolved enough to make it a crime to have one or to perform one. And I don’t think that abortion should be made criminal because in the past that has resulted in much harm to women, harm that I do not think a just society can tolerate.
For now, ending abortion does not require making it a crime. In fact, having safe and legal abortion available as abortion is brought to an end may be the best way to make abortion into a socially unacceptable behavior. By having safe and legal options available, prevention of shameful harm to women by an underground abortion industry cannot be a justification used in support of continued support of the abortion act. Opponents of abortion can focus on the cultural attitudes that make abortion seem acceptable or unavoidable in the minds of many, leaving the pragmatic issues until abortion has become a rare and unacceptable act.
Thanks to condoms, birth control pills and other forms of contraceptives, abortion is no longer a reproductive or sexual behavior issue. It is in almost all instances a choice. The choice is between using birth control and not. A society that believes that abortion is morally wrong, that believes that abortion represents the killing of an unborn person, will do what it takes to prevent women from becoming pregnant without wanting the child to be born. And our society can easily do this by making birth control freely available to all sexually active persons, by removing any stigma with the use of birth control and by making sure that all persons understand that the choice is between taking the pill, using a condom, or killing a kid.
There are times when there is no choice for a woman who is pregnant, such as when a woman is violently forced to have sex. There can be no question that violent sex acts take choice from the victim. I understand why some believe that in such cases it’s okay to abort the baby from such a violent act. But I don’t accept this premise, not even in the slightest. That’s because I see the birth of child, even from such a violent act, as something to be celebrated. That child remains precious, even if her father is a violent criminal. We don’t kill born children whose fathers raped their mothers, and we shouldn’t kill the unborn for such a reason either.
I believe that all life is sacred. The life of the criminal on death row is sacred. The life of the solider on patrol in an innocent neighborhood is sacred. The life of the old and without memory is sacred. The life of the child whose school has been bombed is sacred. The life of the poor is sacred. The life of the rich is sacred. All life is sacred. That’s why I am vegan, why I am opposed to war, why I am opposed to abortion and why I am wary of euthanasia.