My Personal Conviction
June 24th, 2022… It was a Friday as I recall, and I heard the news from a distraught friend of mine who was both angry and crestfallen: Roe vs. Wade had been overturned. I was sickened and stupefied. I remember sitting motionless in my desk chair at home feeling as though I’d been delt a blow. A little over a year has past between this day and that. I’ve attempted to collect my thoughts and order them as succinctly as I can. Weeding out the bitterness that I feel isn’t useful, I’ve compiled the following as explanation for why I am pro-choice.
While I can definitely acknowledge the merit in wanting to reduce the number of abortions performed in America, any goodwill I might hold for this cause instantly evaporates when I discover the intended means to arrive at this end. The means matter. When our fingernails get too long do we trim them, or do we cut our hands off?
Demanding agency over another human life is morally wrong. I think that when we rob a person of their bodily autonomy, we rob them of their humanity and inflict upon them severe psychological harm. I fail to see the logic in denying one person’s humanity to acknowledge the humanity of another. Furthermore, I fail to see how we hope to teach a community the value of human life when we are comfortable forcing individuals to act in a manner that may be contrary to their own personal convictions.
Please understand that I do not advocate for abortion, but for the preservation of women to maintain agency over their own lives.
A Plea to the Pro-Life Christian
I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating: If you are a pro-life Christian, I’d encourage you to go back and re-read the story of the prodigal son found in Luke 15:11-32. Note that the father, at no point in the story, assumes agency over his son, even as the son follows a path incongruent to what the father might desire. The father doesn’t vilify, chastise, or admonish the son. In fact, the father provides him with the means to live his own life; and in so doing, acknowledges the humanity of his son. When I consider this story, my path forward with regard to the issue of abortion becomes clear: a woman’s bodily autonomy must be preserved.
If we are sincere in our desire to reduce the number of abortions in America, I am wholeheartedly on board; but when the proposed solution to the problem is to assume agency over every pregnant woman in the nation, my brain breaks. I simply cannot perform the mental gymnastics necessary to arrive at this conclusion. I see our society tread a path I cannot follow. I see it cutting its hands off to resolve the issue of long fingernails.
The means matter.
The Practical Argument
Strict Anti-Abortion Laws Do Not Work
From a purely practical view, demanding agency over another person simply does not work. Cutting our feet off to address the issue of long fingernails is perhaps a more appropriate metaphor than the one I first offered, because it more effectively demonstrates the absurdity of the American pro-life movement. A recently released report from the Society of Family Planning found that while states with abortion bans experienced reduced abortion numbers, the national number of legal abortions rose slightly in the year since the overturning of Roe. Additionally, a 2018 study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute concluded that countries with highly restrictive abortion laws have higher rates of abortions than countries with less abortion restrictions.
Furthermore, if history is any indication, demanding agency over large swaths of the population — forcing individuals to act in a manner contrary to their own conscience — results in failure. It didn’t work for slavery. It didn’t work for prohibition. It will not work for abortion.
The Loving, Nurturing Utopia Does Not Exist
One of the more prominent selling points used by pro-lifers for encouraging young women not to get an abortion is the idea that there exists a loving, nurturing community that stands ready to walk along side them with all the support they will need as they enter motherhood. Last November I happened to hear an episode of The Daily (a podcast produced by the New York Times) in which they told the story of how a pro-life activist, Reverend Rob Schenck, and his colleagues infiltrated and influenced members of the US Supreme Court. The report was interesting, but the most poignant moment in the piece, for me, was when Schenck related the moment he realized that he had been in the wrong with regards to the issue of abortion:
I realized, in our movement, we had demanded that women in an unwelcome pregnancy enter our fantasy of an idyllic life where the baby born to you will be loved, will be supported. There will be an army of pro-lifers who will come around her and support her and provide everything from diapers to medical care to child care, and on and on it goes. Well, there is no such reality.
Rob Schenck
There is a very specific circumstance that leads him to change his mind. He orates the realization pretty succinctly. If you get the opportunity, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to the episode.
Unintended Consequences of Overturning Roe
There are five things that I feel are certain to happen in the coming months/years as a result of the overturning of Roe that are unintended, but are important to point out.
One: women will die. Some will just outright commit suicide. They will look out at the landscape of a life devoid of agency and they will simply reason that it is a life not worth living. Some will die attempting to perform an abortion on themselves. Still others will die because they are denied an abortion that is medically necessary.
For those that avoid death, I would not be surprised if the trauma of being forced to surrender their own bodily agency to a government puts women at greater risk of developing significant psychological issues. Issues like passive suicidal ideation, anhedonia, and learned helplessness come to mind.
Two: pro-life individuals will become emboldened to treat women with hostility and disrespect. Violence toward not only women seeking abortion services, but also those who are in the arena of helping these women will no doubt face increased violence. I would not be surprised if some states will depend on citizens to hunt down potential targets in a gestapo-like fashion to insure that pregnant women are robbed of their bodily autonomy. I think it likely that these civilian operatives will also aid in the capture and incarceration of violators. The Texas Heartbeat Act (SB8) seems a decent representation, as it relied upon the efforts of civilians to enforce an abortion ban. Given the gargantuan task of ensuring every pregnant woman carries a fetus to term, I do not see how any such law could be successfully enforced without the employ of thousands of civilian operatives.
Three: Government officials will become emboldened to pry into the private lives of American citizens. A few months ago, 19 red state attorneys general signed a joint letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services seeking to obtain private out of state medical records for constituents living in their state, seemingly for the purpose of prosecuting individuals who obtain an abortion in states where the procedure is legal.
Four: I don’t think it hyperbole to imagine an increasingly complex underground develop, not unlike the underground railroad of the 19th century. Seeing forced births as an injustice, members of this underground will work to insure that women seeking an abortion will be connected with providers of the service.
Just recently I discovered that this is already taking place. There is a fascinating episode of The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper in which this underground is described in detail. One of the organizations mentioned in the episode is called Elevated Access. Elevated Access employs the use of single engine aircraft and private pilots to ensure that individuals are transported to locations where they can obtain the healthcare they need.
Five: If you are a pro-lifer, individuals within your sphere of influence will be forced to live inauthentic lives when they are around you. People who seek to maintain agency over their own lives, who you may deeply care about, will reason to themselves that you are not a safe person to confide in; and seek out help from other sources that may not have their best interests at heart. Having reasoned you to be an unsafe person, they may keep other details of their lives, details unrelated to abortion, hidden from you.
I never want to be an unapproachable person. I never want to be a person that instills fear in the heart of someone and causes them to put on a facade when they are around me. How can I possibly hope to help a person in need if I disqualify myself entirely by adopting an attitude of domineering oppression? I feel a deep conviction to allow others to be as true to themselves as they can possibly be. I simply cannot hold to that conviction if I force my will on others.
As our nation forges ahead upon this new path, I’ve compiled some articles that I think bring the error of the decision to overturn Roe into sharper focus:
- UN denounces decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
- A 10 year old rape victim is forced to leave Ohio to receive treatment.
- Texas woman forced to endure living with fetal remains in her body for weeks.
- Louisiana woman carrying skull-less fetus forced to travel to New York for an abortion.
- Amanda Zurawski Testifies before Congress after being denied a medically necessary abortion in Texas.
Closing Thoughts
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Epictetus
As I look back upon what I’ve written it all makes sense in my own mind, but maybe I’m wrong. Sometimes ego is an obstacle to learning. The issue of abortion is complicated. What do you think? Is my logic in error? Have I failed to consider a key element? I feel as though I know what you might say, but maybe not. I have tried to see both sides of the issue. Perhaps it is the weighing of the two sides that prevented me from speaking out for so long after the Supreme Court ruling.
If you do consider offering a rebuttal to what I have presented here, bear in mind that the task before you is not to convince me that life is sacred. Believing life is sacred is precisely what has led me to the stance I now possess. The task before you is to somehow convince me that forcing women to surrender their bodily autonomy to a government — even if doing so betrays their own conscience — is the best and only recourse with regard to the issue of abortion.
If reducing the number of abortions in the United States is truly the aim, we should look to devise strategies and solutions that both accomplish the end and inflict no harm in the process.