Unquiet

I have struggled with the practice of abortion since high school, moving from the side of total opposition to qualified support to full support, and back to the middle. At no time, however, did I believe that my feelings surrounding abortion should be codified into law, as seems to prevalent in American culture today. I simply felt that, confronted with a personal situation - a friend, or more personal still, a lover - suggesting an abortion, I would offer my feelings and allow the other to make her own choice.

That never made me popular with any of the crowds, though I perhaps had more acceptance from the pro-choice movement.

Current pro-life activists define the foetus as a human being from the moment of conception. Current law sets the line of humanness a little later in pregnancy. Some pro-choice activists suggest life does not begin until birth. I, too, have held all three of these views. Regardless of our specific views of the foetus, it seems that most people consider that the developing human possesses some rights, if not all, common to those of a born human.

Prior to birth, the foetus depends entirely on its mother for its life. Thus we have guidelines for pregnant women - what exercises they can and cannot do, what foods and drinks they should avoid, what medications might be harmful. We imply that a woman who chooses to partake of substances contraindicated for pregnancy is being careless and negligent; would we condemn her with the same vehemency if she smoked during her pregnancy and miscarried as we would if she did everything right for the first trimester and then aborted the foetus? We choose to apply some value to the unborn child; but even in our own minds we weigh the foetus’ rights against our own rights and privileges.

Children remain dependent on their parents for years after birth, and recognizing the ability of parents to be negligent or abusive we have developed protections for dependent children. Who can argue that child abuse, pedophilia, neglect, etc., are not violations of the rights of children?

Still, I believe that we are confronted sometimes with questions of whose rights should be respected, rather than how to respect everyone’s rights. This is obviously not the ideal situation. The opponents of abortion sympathize with a being that has no voice to defend itself, and capitalize on the gruesome imagery to martyr the unborn dead; the proponents denounce the oligarchy of old white men who violate women’s bodies with the phallus of law, telling women what they should and should not do.

The debate is one of rights, and we should extend it to the rest of our lives. Why place more inherent value on the unborn than on the living? We grow up to drive fast, eat and drink poisons, smoke, do drugs, share sexual diseases, make war and to think up newer and quicker ways to make ourselves miserable. Yet there are very few people in this country - and others - who would not defend at least some of those toxic behaviors because they are choices freely made. (Ironically, many of the same people who oppose abortion support tobacco and big military spending.)

I don’t support abortion in general. I wish there were some other solution that would respect both the rights of mother and foetus. However, I believe the only humane solution given our current abilities is to compassionately weigh the interests of the mother with the interests of the baby. Such decisions are not to be taken lightly, and from what I know of the process, it is traumatic even for those who use abortion as a convenience.

Once the choice is made, however, it is not our duty or right to celebrate or condemn the action. The choice is a private one, to be made within a circle of friends and loved ones, and - ultimately - by the mother. Nobody else knows better the balance of rights between mother and unborn, and those who tell us otherwise like to imagine that a simple line can be drawn. It can’t; wherever any simple line would be drawn, the blood of mothers and children would still freshly stain the ground on both sides.