Yahoo! News – Women’s Rights Marchers Gather in D.C.
WASHINGTON – Abortion-rights supporters marched in huge numbers Sunday, roused in this election year by what they see as an erosion of reproductive freedoms under President Bush and foreign policies they say hurt women worldwide. Political agitation suffused the gathering of hundreds of thousands. Their target: Bush, like-minded officials in federal and state government and religious conservatives. Speaking beyond the masses to policy-makers, Francis Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice declared, "You will hear our pro-choice voices ringing in your ears until such time that you permit all women to make our own reproductive choices." Women joined the protest from across the nation and from nearly 60 countries, asserting that damage from Bush’s policies is spreading far beyond U.S. shores through measures such as the ban on federal money for family-planning groups that promote or perform abortions abroad.
I am, frankly, worried to see that in 2004 there is a necessity for reproductive rights rallies. I am pro-choice, which does not automatically mean ‘pro-abortion’, by the way. But I see abortion as a necessary (though unpleasant) medical option to be decided by those involved (pregnant woman, partner, doctor). The gradual wearing-away of reproductive freedoms for women in this country is frightening to watch. It impacts what kind of health care all women receive.
I sincerely respect pro-lifers for standing up for their interpretation of ‘protecting lives’, but I think it’s misguided to place the lives of the unborn ahead of the lives of women. I do not place either life ‘above’ the other – but my spiritual leanings allow me the luxury of believing those babies will be born to someone else. Is that a cop-out? Someone who dismisses reincarnation and the like might think so. I think it must be very difficult for someone who believes we only have one shot at life to come to terms with the ending of one before it had a chance to really begin. So I empathize with the pro-life stance, at least in the sense that they’re trying to stop what they see as acts of murder, irreversible and offensive to God.
That said, the waving of ‘abortion porn’ signs (bloody fetuses, et. al.) does nothing to draw thoughtful fencesitters to their side. Nor does the harrassment of crying young women as they enter a medical clinic. NOR do bombings and the killing of doctors. Is murder an acceptable way to stop murder? If abortion is murder … and that’s wrong … how can terrorism and murder be moral means to end it? Isn’t that committing a sin to stop that sin? Isn’t that completely hypocritical? Ah, but those are the exceptions. As with any wedge issue, we are often only treated to the extremist end of the side we disagree with.
I know many kind, generous, moral, gracious, thoughtful people who happen to oppose abortion and would like to see it made, once again, illegal. Most of them are too young to have been alive before Roe v. Wade, however, and they are as appalled and disgusted by terrorism in the name of "Pro-Life" as anyone else. But they see abortions too easily available, and too often used, when a baby might seem (in their view) only an ill-timed inconvenience. That is the real issue, I think. They are good people taking the best stand they know how to take. Since they do not see induced abortion as simply a medical procedure, but as the taking of one life to benefit another life, I suspect the seeming readiness of so many women to abort at the drop of a hat appears crass.
Of the women I know personally who have had abortions, every single one agonized over the decision. It was neither narcissism nor selfishness that made the choice for them – but a hard, cold look at whether they were equipped to carry the child, then choose between keeping it or giving it up. In some cases, poor health was the deciding factor, but most often it was the realization that not only was prenatal health care not available to them, neither was a stable home life for the nine months of pregnancy and enough of a support system to be able to make a healthy choice about what to do when the baby was born. They are also good people, and they made the best decision they knew how to make.
Is it crass to recognize that your abusive boyfriend will probably continue to beat you while you’re pregnant? Is it narcissistic to realize you’re so addicted to meth you won’t be able to stop during pregnancy – that as much as you understand, intellectually, that you should stop, you’re too cranked up and dependent on your man to drop it all and live on the street – and that you’ll likely bring a sick baby into the world that you simply can’t care for? There is a certain amount of self-awareness here – at least a hint of ‘wanting the baby to have something better than this’. Not a pure selfishness alluded to by some in the opposition camp. Ideally, every abused girlfriend or wife would be able to leave her man and find a safe place to live, have a healthy baby they can care for, and live happily every after. Ideally, every addict would stop using the second they got pregnant – to quote from Trainspotting, they’d "choose life!" – and they, too, would live happily ever after, suffering no nasty repercussions from their drug use. In the absence of an ideal world, some women choose to induce abortion at a medical clinic, and, eventually, down the road, extricate themselves from the boyfriends, the users, the hells they’ve created and live with regrets over what might have been.
Or not. Some folks really are selfish and shallow. For them, abortion’s just what you do when you get pregnant and don’t want to deal with it, and there’s not so much as a second thought about it. I’ve met a few of those. But not many.
But, again, that’s the extremist end of things. And the extremist, simplistic, shallow end is simply not the whole picture. For a few people, it’s such an easy decision to abort that it isn’t a decision at all. Just as with some people, it’s an easy decision to shake a crying baby. Or an easy decision to bomb a clinic. Or an easy decision to scream "Murderer!" at a crying teenager. ‘Decision’ implies some thoughtful weighing of options, a consideration of consequences and impact on others – something you won’t see these people do.
These people are not the majority in any debate. These people are at the far, shallow end of the pool, and though they need to be taken into account (if only to anticipate their reactions, and work to minimize their impact on thoughtful people), they should not frame the dialogue for the rest of us.
