Exultate Justi

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Abortion - a response to a response

Andre, I apologize for not clearing this with you first, because I don't want it to look like I'm calling you out. I'm not. I just think that you make some valid points in your comments, and I'd say that you speak for a pretty enormous chunk of the pro-choice world in what you say. There's no malevolence in your opinions, and I'd not ascribe any evil intent. There's still the matter of ends and means, however, and I feel that I've got to chip in my two cents (or, for what they're worth, maybe it's 1.5 cents...). No sense filling up a comment section, when your position deserves a hearing in a more suitable format.

First, a little background for folks out there:

If nothing else, I've always liked to believe that it's possible to have genuine friendships with folks with whom I differ politically - even in the venom-fueled environs of these interwebs. That's why I hate the tendency on both sides to not only disagree with positions held, but also disparage the value or character of the person espousing the position in question. While this is still the web, and I'm just as passionate in my beliefs and prone to screw up as any three people, I've been gratified by productive, cordial, and (at least to me) enlightening discussions with a number of folks more left-leaning than myself through the years. While I'd feel pretty comfortable saying that I haven't done anything to change their minds, and similarly, I haven't shifted on my essential beliefs, at least we probably understand one another a bit better than before, and that's worth something. I've enjoyed my back-and-forth with any number of folks of sharp wit, good will, and big hearts (from what I can glean from digital interactions), with a couple popping to mind almost immediately: Bijan Bayne, and Andre Louis. I disagree with these guys on many (though not all) fronts - sometimes vigorously - just as I'm sure my own beliefs oftentimes tick them off. I don't, however, have any qualms about them as good folks (and in their cases, as my very brothers in Christ), or as cogent, eloquent, worthwhile thinkers and writers. They are not my enemies, nor I theirs.

In responding to my post about Planned Parenthood's defense and justification of infanticide (sorry. I know that's a hyperbole-tinged word, but it fits. Not gonna change it), wherein I asked "anyone care to defend this?", Andre wrote the following:

Jared,

I won't/can't mount a defense to this. At least not a defense that will satisfy anti-abortionists.

But I will say one of the problems with people on the whole anti-abortion tip is that they try to portray people who support abortion as evil monsters with no regard for human life. Instead of objectively seeing abortion as a person's decision not to bring a child into this world (for whom they can't adequately provide), abortion is seen as cold, heartless murder.

I hate the idea of abortion as much as the next person. But given the brokenness of the foster care system and rampant poverty (crippling a child's chance at "making it" in the world; even if they "make it" from the womb), I at least recognize - and ACCEPT - that abortion will always be with us.

While I know that there will be no small number of folks out there on my side who immediately jump to the defensive, I'd say we'd have to admit that - in many ways - Andre's hit the nail on the head, at least in terms of the way that many of us approach our intellectual and political opposites. He's right, and this fact should pain us, folks. It should convict us. One of my favorite bloggers out there - Avery Tooley - wrote something that I think absolutely needed to be written a couple of weeks back:

Put it like this: the advantage that the Democrats have is not that they actually do anything for Black folks. You can look at the state of a lot of major cities that have Black mayors and majority-Black city councils and see that ain’t the case. It’s not about actually doing, it’s about the perception of caring. Somethin’ like, “Maybe they ain’t gon’ do nothin’ about it, but at least they’re concerned enough about my problems to know what they are.” Most Black conservatives - even the ones who are well-intentioned - tend to eschew that sort of sentiment. Thing is, 1) the people are used to it, and 2) there’s no trust factor. If the people trust you, in part because they believe you care, they’ll ride wherever you’re going. If they don’t, even if they agree with everything you’re saying, they’re only gonna go so far, and up to this point, the threshold has generally been short of the voting booth.

So basically, as I’m seeing it, Black conservatives writ large can complain about the fact that Black folks vote as a Democratic bloc all they want to, but until they change the style of their message, it’s not gonna get through, even if the people agree with the substance. Maybe somebody might argue that it shouldn't’t be that way, that the only thing that should matter is stands on policy, but the reality is, if you’re suspicious of somebody, it doesn’t really matter what they have to say. Black conservatives and Repubs, if they’re ever gonna make any inroads, gotta geek down on that “BUT THEY AIN’T DOIN’ NOTHIN’ FOR YOU” and come in on some fairly quiet, “we’re here, we care, and we’re actually doing something.” Build a track record the people can trust, and then see what happens. One-two.

Okay, so, swap out "Black conservative" for pretty much any bloc of folks on the conservative side of things - including those of us on the pro-life side of the equation - and his position retains its integrity. Until such a time as there is - among pregnant women struggling with the question of abortion - a knowledge that the folks out there in opposition to the act give a rip about their plight...their struggles, and not just the life of the baby in their womb - the effectiveness of the pro-life movement will (and should) hit a pretty low ceiling.

If, like me, you're drawn toward the pro-life side because of faith in Christ, allow me to be very clear on something: Jesus loves that woman every bit as much as He loves that baby, and to ignore either at the expense of the other is an affront to the Gospel. Plain, and simple.

So, I've copped - and will continue to cop - for my side's errors and failures, and there are plenty to catalog. I could start with only my own errors in judgment, moral idiocy, and flat-out incompetence, and we wouldn't get through them for a month.

Like any other essential moral question, though, the issue of abortion isn't as simple as all that. The pro-life movement's extremes and failures aren't the end of the story.

As I started to write to Andre, before I realized that the comments were getting out-of-hand, length-wise:

Andre, I get where you're coming from. Totally. The problem, though, is that the same distortion is true of the pro-choice side. I'm an adoptive parent. My wife and I have pretty much crawled over broken glass to get our kids, spending tens of thousands of dollars (that we had to borrow and pay back), losing countless hours of sleep, and enduring hellish paperwork/nightmares/roadblocks like you wouldn't believe. The waiting lists to adopt out there say that we're not the only ones who do so. Yet, on any number of occasions, I've had folks tell me (to my face, no less), that I only "care about kids before they're born". The stereotypes run both ways, my friend, and I know you're intellectually honest enough to admit this.

At the end of the day, though, with neither side being perfect in its opinions of, or behavior toward the other, what's the bottom line? There's only two ways to break it down, and I know (and hate) that I'm going to come across as brutal in saying this, and it's not my intention - I'm just not eloquent enough to figure out any other way to say it...

Where is the intellectual or moral honesty on the pro-choice side that says "yes. I will look these procedures full in the face"? How many folks on the pro-choice side of the equation would immediately take offense to the video I posted below - not because of the words being spoken by the PP worker (let it sink in please, folks. She's talking about a baby born alive, and left to die on a table.) - but because these words were being made public?

What about partial birth abortion? People get more hacked by the fact that it's not automatically referred to as a "dilation and extraction" procedure (because of the inflammatory nature of the term "partial-birth abortion") than they do by the procedure itself, largely due to the fact that most folks who support it aren't even willing to go to the trouble of finding out what it entails, or how.why it's used (not used int he case of danger to the life of the mother, etc.).

And, when I do find somebody on the pro-choice side who does, in fact view abortion as the destruction of a human life, or who admits that the only difference between the full-term baby aborted via D&X (usually performed on a healthy baby in the womb of a healthy mother, more than 21 weeks along) and the newborn in the nursery is the parent's desire - or lack thereof - to grant it its life, should I find comfort in this fact?

I confess to being utterly stupefied as to how "abortion as birth control" has become so widely accepted by so many in this society. I am. Words fail me when I try to describe my grief over this madness. They fail me because I've seen - first-hand - the struggles from both sides. My daughter's birth mother is developmentally disabled. She was in her early 30s when she became pregnant with our little girl, and - according to most - would have been a textbook case for abortion. She had no business becoming a mother. And yet, because of this heroic woman, my wife and I awake every day to a five year-old vision of joy bopping around the house, bugging her little brother, and pretty much running the joint.

I'm unable to restrain my passions when it comes to abortion, because I'm simultaneously enraged by the practice itself (and by the flippant way in which it's defended), and brokenhearted at the way in which we - on the pro-life side - have so frequently botched the issue - both in the public square, and in the very real, very intimate worlds of so many of the mothers trying desperately to figure out what to do.

The church is doing reasonably well with the meager resources most have to work with. Centers have been, and continue to be set up in order to provide emotional, material, and spiritual help to young single mothers. This is a good start. We need many more such facilities. As a movement, however, we've got to expand our compassion (though it's never been nearly so lacking as they stereotype would lead one to believe). The pro-life movement needs to be about life, not only unborn life. I'll admit - with great sorrow - that my cause has failed in this regard on too many occasions.

There is still, however, the monstrosity of abortion to be accounted for, and just as the evil of slavery has clouded our moral authority for generations following its cessation, the deaths of more than 4,000 children a day (most on an altar of convenience) will most certainly follow us for eternity. Andre, while your point made here:

Instead of objectively seeing abortion as a person's decision not to bring a child into this world (for whom they can't adequately provide), abortion is seen as cold, heartless murder.

is well taken, and must act as a starting point for the way in which the pro-life movement addresses those hurting women struggling with the decision of whether or not to abort, I think it's something of a cop-out. Whether or not the child will "make it" is surely a subjective matter. There is nothing "objective" about this decision from the point of the baby, is there? While the pro-life side too often ignores the needs of the mother (something to which I'll admit over and over again), wouldn't you have to admit that the pro-choice side largely refuses to even consider the child? For all its talk of "consciousness", "awareness", and "personhood", the pro-choice movement fights tooth and nail to prevent access to modern ultrasound equipment in clinics, and seems unwilling to examine the mounting evidence that development in the womb happens at a much more rapid pace than ever thought possible. Any realization of that child's independence or "personhood" becomes a political stumbling block to "the cause". A generation ago, there was next to no awareness of fetal development. Why in God's name are we content to base moral decisions of enormous import on medical science as it stood in the 50s?

The crux of the matter comes down to the fight over D&X, doesn't it? Once one has stripped away the niceties, the technicalities, and the couching of terms, the only difference between the full-term child resting in its mother's arms in the delivery room and the full-term child having its skull punctured and crushed with its body outside of the birth canal is - aside from a few inches of flesh - intent. Either the child was wanted, or it wasn't. If the right to existence can be stripped away because another simply wishes it to be so, where does that leave us as a species?

"Well," many argue, "you're picking D&X - a totally rare procedure - just to make your case with the extreme." You know what? You're right. I am. I do so because it's completely right and proper to do so. D&X embodies the issues at-hand more perfectly than any other example, and if the case can't be made at its essential, most distilled level, why does the more "moderate" path get an automatic "out"? Where is the cutoff for when abortion no longer results in homicide? Is it - as it now seems - a more-or-less arbitrary point in fetal development? If there is a cutoff, can't we at least agree that elective abortion beyond that point in development should be illegal?

The pro-choice side paints a picture wherein abortion is usually the path of last resort - predominantly used by desperately poor, single women. This is misleading. Half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned, and of those, half end in abortion. It's not only the desperately poor who are having abortions. It is - in many cases - simply viewed as a form of birth control. There's a pretty fascinating look at the demographics of abortion produced by The Third Way, and available here. Third Way is definitely not conservative in its leanings. The figures there are - if anything - slanted toward the pro-choice side of the equation. They're well-presented, however, and relatively free of overt bias. It's a good starting point.

At the end of the day - like you said, Andre - abortion will still be with us. Even if Roe v. Wade is one day overturned (and yes - I pray that it will be), this act alone in no way eliminates (or even makes illegal) abortion. The central focus of our efforts needs to be reducing the number of abortions performed in the US (and no - there isn't total agreement with this idea. There are plenty out there who see absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with the concept, and they terrify me). Preventing pregnancy in the first place needs to be a major focus (and yeah - I'm aware that this is another big issue in and of itself). Another key - to my mind - is fostering some semblance of moral reflection and intellectual honesty on this topic. I can't take seriously those proponents of abortion-on-demand who refuse to be grown ups about the issue, educate themselves about what's involved, and own up to the act of abortion - the procedures involved, and the effects on the child - itself. I fear that this description fits the vast majority of folks on that side. It's always easier, after all, to get yourself a little credibility and favor in the eyes of the press, the culture, and the secular society at-large (all of which tend to favor abortion-on-demand overwhelmingly) by endorsing the position than it is to challenge that endorsement by confronting its ugly reality head-on.

Anyway, Andre, that's what's on my mind. I thank you for - as usual - adding value to what I toss up here through your presence, and by your comments. Additionally, please accept my apologies - again - for not touching base with you before I used your comment as a starting point for another post.

Have a good one.

(permalink) Posted by Jared @ 10:26 AM |

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