Roe-d Rage
The controversy now tearing forcefully at the delicate fabric of our American character is neither new nor easily understood. I witnessed both sides of it many years ago, but not on the streets among dueling protesters. It was in a hospital obstetrics ward. As a ministerial student engaged in a Clinical Pastoral Experience (CPE) course I was introduced to many of the realities of health care through first-hand experience in a large metropolitan American hospital in Washington, DC. My semester of CPE provided me with a valuable foretaste of what would become a quite familiar venue for my ministry while serving as a parish pastor and nursing home chaplain. On this particular day in 1976, within the span of less than two hours, I was invited to witness the birth of a child and an abortion, both performed by the same physician. First I observed the nervous excitement of a mother and father welcoming a new life into their home and hearts. The delivery room was animated with shouts, groans, and encouraging words, followed by smiles, cheers and tears. Still several years away from sharing in this miracle with my wife, I think it helped me gain a degree of assurance in anticipating our future. In the surgical suite where I followed the doctor, things were much quieter. An attending nurse was on hand and the procedure was done quickly and easily. The patient remained in that dead-to-life slumber that anesthesia so effectively provides. For the physician it seemed just another day at the office, facilitating the beginning of one life and the ending of another.
Recent events involving leaked Supreme Court arguments, reflexive protests over the airways and on the ground, and predictable outrages from nearly every quarter have brought these memories back from the cerebral vault in which they’ve been kept these many years. Abortion has hovered over the American cultural conscience since its legalization in 1973. Roe v. Wade has traced a line across our nation, a continental divide if you will, that has, from year to year, state to state, and election to election surfaced as an issue for which there seems no consensus or common ground, even if both sides claim to speak for the majority of Americans.
It is perhaps this non-negotiable posture that shapes so much of the Right to Life vs. Pro Choice rhetoric that most concerns me. For the issue at hand is of such complexity that simple, dichotomized answers seem unable to provide any satisfactory insight or lasting solutions to what is such a polarizing dilemma. Among the many issues buried within our too-easily reduced distillations of the “abortion” question are the following, any of which require our best reasoning and compassion to adequately tackle.
When should human life be treated as human? By putting the question this way, some will likely think I’ve already revealed my bias. Is a fetus growing within a woman’s body a human life? My scientific inclination (forged to a modest degree as a biology major in college) prevents me from calling it anything else. From the moment of conception, the organism in formation, even at a cellular level, possesses the DNA coding specific to the human life that it will soon begin to resemble in its gestational development. In just five to ten weeks this life, now called a fetus, is unmistakably human in appearance, with head, nose, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, intestines and external genitalia. While still not viable outside the womb, its legitimacy as a human being seems to be a moral and religious question rather than a biological one. When does a human embryo have a soul or mental constitution that would make its destruction, by any externally induced abortive agent, a killing? Is it a matter of weeks, months, or after its birth? By extension, when is the termination of any human life, whether due to mental or physical abnormality, criminal conduct, or the debilitations of age, justified? Such reflection quickly links abortion to other life-ending efforts, from eugenics to euthanasia to capital punishment to warfare. And for each the rule of law and the convictions of faith are often inconsistent guides when establishing absolute values or setting civilized precedents.
How should we balance the rights of the several humans involved in any pregnancy? Sometime between childhood and adolescence we awaken to the fact that, when it comes to pregnancy, it takes two to tango. Male and female cells are always involved, no matter if the delivery system comes in the flesh or via test tubes. While the journey from zygote to embryo to baby takes place within the body of a unique, human host, the care and responsibility for it is shared, even if not always accepted. Mothers—a term I still find more personal and endearing than gestational or birthing parent—are joined in the pregnancy by others. Ideally that includes the father, but this is not always the case. It also may involve grandparents, siblings, and close friends who bring their delight and their concern for the potential expansion of this family. It doesn’t take long until doctors or midwives, who will see the pregnancy through to its inevitable completion, enter the picture.
While the woman is by far the one most engaged and affected in any pregnancy, most often she makes this journey in the company of others whose support and understanding are critical to her and her baby’s well-being. When abortion is only seen as a woman’s choice alone, as an inconvenient problem that a post-contraceptive surgical procedure can correct, it ignores or overlooks the rights of the others who are part of the pregnancy equation. At the same time, when abortion can help overcome the violence on a woman’s rights through rape or incest, or ensure her ability to survive this birth—then it warrants protection that is both morally and legally justifiable. And should the baby she is carrying be shown to have mental and/or physical defects that will place devastating hardships on both the child and those responsible for its care, then abortion would seem a right that they and they alone should be entitled to exercise. None of these so-called “hard cases,” representing 3.5% of abortions each year, leave parents with easy, black-and-white choices. But why would we think that well-meaning politicians, clerics or righteously motivated interest groups have more right to decide such a life and death question than the people whose lives will be most affected by their rulings.
Where should the lines that protect the private and public spheres of our individual and collectives be drawn? An oft-publicized pro-abortion argument is that this is a matter of privacy that the Supreme Court is now intending to violate. In some respects it is. Roe v. Wade was largely based on upholding the privacy intentions of the 14th Amendment. Yet even those majority justices tempered their judgment about privacy when they wrote: “this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests—safeguarding health, maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life—in regulation.” * As venerable Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes clarified in drawing the boundary of our personal freedom at the place where “my fist touches your nose,” privacy is never fixed or absolute. It lives in a continual state of respect for, and negotiation with the privacy of others.
At what point in our daily existence is our privacy not invaded by others? At what moment do our words, our actions, our very existence not encroach into someone else’s space, sight or hearing? Privacy is a domain whose boundaries are never set in concrete, but are always in transition. It takes but one word, one text, one gesture or appearance that gives offense to or intimidates another for my privacy to be challenged. The puff of cigarette smoke or the sight of a mask—worn or unworn—can be enough to impinge on someone’s rights and violate our fragile reckoning of the common good. The fact that abortion often depends on public funding, or is factored into the premiums our insurers require of everyone they cover, makes it far less of a private matter than sign-bearing protesters may be willing to admit.
Is this a question best addressed by a one-size fits all mandate, whether enforced on a national or state level? Roe v. Wade created a window of time within which abortions could be legally performed, and in the 49 years since its implementation an estimated 60 million of these procedures have been performed under the protection of federal law. At the same time a number of states have initiated a variety of exemptions, extensions, and restrictions detailing the how, who, when, if and what of abortions in their respective regions of sovereignty. As the Supreme Court prepares to weigh in on the fate of Roe, somewhere between 13 and 26 states are expected to enact anti-abortion laws. While this prognostication may have more to do with the elevated hysteria that has protesters encircling the homes of more conservative justices, it does reveal how widely torn we are on this particular issue. Recent elections have laid bare the red state-blue state divisions that more than coincidentally mirror the abortion gulf. All of which makes me realize that, in our not-yet-perfect union, neither the U. S. Constitution nor a shared history can make of us an Unum—at least not on this question--where none has existed, except possibly on December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001. If Roe is overturned as a national mandate, we will move forward with 50 statewide codes, many more strict and prohibitive than have been in place for the past five decades, and many less restrictive and more permissive than we’ve ever known. Whether this will be better or worse for our nation, remains to be seen.
I will not pretend to be able to offer exhaustive comments on any of the questions I’ve raised in a BLOG that most hope they can finish before emptying a cup of coffee. Nor do I think for one moment that my modest stab at unpacking this complex issue has been covered in a mere four questions. My intent in making this the topic of this week’s Twilight Reflections is to suggest how naïve and simplistic we can be when supposing that abortion is an issue that can be reduced to a simplistic, either-or resolution. For it touches upon so many aspects of our being, drawing out our most deeply held understandings of law, morality, individuality, freedom, health, happiness, and the value of life itself. And to the degree that it provokes in us unbridled levels of demagoguery, uncensored degrees of dishonesty, and unrestrained outbursts of uncivil behavior, it is proving to be a litmus test for our future as a people somehow united in a commitment to freedom and justice for all.
* Justice Blackman Opinion in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), VII (155)
