Abortion is becoming the great moral issue of this century, much as slavery was in the last. The July 3 Supreme Court decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services marks a new stage in the debate because, for the first time in 16 years, the American people have been given back at least limited power to protect unborn life, and pending court cases may give back even more.
Media attention has begun to focus on strategies and politics in the abortion debate--how the proabortion and prolife activists work, how the issue will play in elections, and how lawmakers will work to pass or block protective legislation.
The proabortion side, especially, is attracting media attention by talk of strategy, activism, and increased momentum on the issue. They talk about choices, politics, personalities, and framing the debate properly. They talk about anything except the central issue before our country--abortion.
The highly motivated prolife movement, meanwhile, continues its activities of education about abortion, lobbying, and public affairs to bring about meaningful protection for all human life. The talk, as it has been for 16 years, is about abortion.
The current strategy of abortion advocates is to frame the debate in terms of "choice." They ask, who should decide whether a woman may have an abortion--the woman or society at large? Freedom of personal, private choice, they assert, should be absolute in a free country, regardless of reason, timing, or the opinions of others. Society at large should not impose its views on individuals.
The argument is seductive, both because it appeals to the American sense of individuality and because it allows us to not have to wrestle with the moral and philosophical complexity of abortion. The argument for choice allows people to abdicate responsibility; that is, to express discomfort and moral misgivings about abortion while at the same time dismissing the entire argument.
But unqualified free choice, especially in life-and-death issues, does not exist. Despite our many freedoms in the United States, restrictions are in place to protect the vulnerable end to assure a reasonably orderly society. For instance, society does not give a man the choice whether he may rape or beat his wife, though these acts may occur in privacy. Society does not sanction the choice, because rape and beating are wrong.
The plain fact is, our choices are limited by our interdependency and our mutual rights. Simply put: My freedoms stop where your rights begin. A woman's freedom over her own body stops where another body, another life, begins--the life of her child.
Choice also implicitly requires an informed decision-making process, with knowledge of all the facts and the options. Yet those who advocate abortion protest vehemently against informed consent legislation, which would require a woman to know exactly what is involved in abortion. They argue that to give a woman information about the developing life within her and the procedure involved clouds the decision-making process.
Certainly, facts such as that babies have
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