For many years I believed that there was some ground, albeit narrow and shaky, on which to respect those anti-abortion activists who sincerely believed that abortion was tantamount to murder. We've all heard or read about anti-abortion types who are clearly no more than sentimental hysterics ranting incoherently about "saving babies," and it's also clear that ithe anti-abortion movement takes more of its energy from a concern with controlling female sexuality than with "innocent life." Nevertheless, I have met good people who oppose abortion from a carefully considered sense of moral duty.
I'm sympathic because I'm a vegetarian for what I consider ethical reasons. My beliefs are not that widely shared so I have to deal with the contradictions that arise from living in a world where slaughtering and eating animals are routine. I have never attacked anyone with the slogan "meat is murder," but I admit that it has a certain resonance for me. I have always assumed that this tension forms part of the experience of people in the anti-abortion movement who believe that they have a moral duty to oppose what they have been persuaded is an act of violence against innocent life.
At the same time I have also been appalled by the flimsy arguments for abortion as murder. Take "life" begins at conception. Of course it does - in the sense that at the moment of conception there is potential for another human being. But that fact is totally irrelevant. The real question is whether or not that potential life is more privileged than that of the mother on whose body it depends, or if there are special conditions when it may become more privileged or achieve parity, usually considerations of viability or sentience. We, of course, deal with questions of such privilege regularly when we consider killing in self-defense, in war, or capital punishment. In a complex moral world establishing priorities is essential.
The most common way to support assertions that abortion is murder is by reference to a religious belief, such as "ensoulment" at the moment of conception. Ensoulment is, however, no more demonstrable than the existence of a soul itself. It's a matter of reigious faith and even among religious individuals it is not a universally held belief. While those who believe a zygote, embryo or fetus is the equivalent of an actual baby are free to refrain from having abortions, they shouldn't be able to impose the consequences of that belief on the rest of us. (And even if a zygote possesses a soul, one assumes that the mother must do so as well. I often wonder where this consideration figures for some of the most dogmatic, religious anti-abortion crusaders when the life of the mother is at risk. Why is the ensouled, fully developed human female less important than an ensouled, incipient human being?)
Nevertheless, I have understood that when a person who truly believes he or she is preventing the violent death of an innocent child is confronted with platutudes about "choice" exercised by an apparently healthy woman, he or she might be a little underwhelmed. Until last week, that is, when I was set straight by a Catalan nun, Sister Teresa Forcades, and finally understood just how deep the issue of choice goes. Forcades who was featured in a National Public Radio (NPR) interview, is brave, progressive and very eloquent. Through a simple analogy she made me understand what choice really means and why it should always trump a concern about the right of a potential human to continue to develop at the expense of another without that other's consent:
Forcades is a frequent commentator on Spanish TV. That's where a few years ago, she voiced her support for abortion rights — on live TV. A letter of reprimand swiftly arrived from the Vatican. And Forcades wrote back, posing a philosophical question to the Vatican in response.
"So let's imagine you have a father and the father has a compatible kidney, and you have a child, an innocent child, who needs the kidney. Is the church ready to force the father to give the kidney, to save the child's life?" she says, recounting her reply to the Vatican. "That the right to life of the child takes precedence over the right to self-determination to his own body, of the father? And that was my question I sent to Rome in 2009."
She received no reply back. So for now, Sister Teresa remains very much part of the church — and proud to sometimes disagree with it.
If this doesn't hit you in the gut as it did me, if it seems obvious, I apologize. I also realize that putting the shoe on the other, masculine foot, may indicate a certain element of sexism on my part - although it would work as well for me if Forcades were talking about a mother. I think the power of this example goes further than simply reversing sex roles. Forcades is talking about an actual, living, fully-developed child and donating a kidney would not deprive the father of his life, yet I can't imagine living in a world where many people - of any ideological stripe - would argue that the father should be forced to forfeit his internal organs without his consent. What's different when the object of consideration is a pregnant woman? When the child is inside rather than outside the womb? Undeveloped as opposed to a living, breathing, independent human life?
What this example does is to bring home to me the inherent bigotry and willful mental sloppiness that allows anyone to label abortion "murder." I have always known this fact intellectually, but, thanks to Forcade's simple analogy, I now really know it. No matter how deeply felt and rationally expressed, abortion is murder sloganeers are ultimately just that: sloganeers. They are, in reality, hardly distinguishable from brutal dimwits like the National Review writer who recently declared that women who have abortions, along with anyone who assists in abortion, doctors, nurses, etc., should be hanged. Isn't this the logical extension of "abortion is murder"? And isn't it as bigoted and anti-life as it can get? One thing for sure, I no longer believe that those who believe that abortion is murder deserve real consideration, nor do those who act in regard to others on the basis of such a belief deserve even a modicum of respect. Nor will I be embarrassed to speak of choice since I now know that implicit in the word are the concepts of self-determination and consent.