The Abortion of Humanity
I have long considered abortion to be one of the thorniest policy issues in American politics. It strikes me as one of those issues that galvanizes people to the extreme and yet one that can be debated on grounds of morality ad infinitum. Ignoring the politics of the moment, the dimensions of the issue involve gender equality, primordial imperative of procreation, libertarianism, privacy, cultural norms about sex, the balancing of individual and inter-generational liberties, and the very essence of life and how we choose to define it. I almost cannot think of an issue that sits so squarely on the intersection of medical science, spirituality and societal norms. We are in a moment of extreme controversy on the issue and almost every imaginable facet of it is being engaged by one politician, legislator or jurist or another. The issue has been front and center on the political landscape for many years and this year it has the unusual position of wanting to be a central issue by Democrats while Republicans are doing everything they can to avoid the issue. It has shown itself to be a “King of the Hill” phenomenon, with whomever ascends to dominance being the target for the next round of conflagration. After fifty years of the liberal pro-choice ideology being dominant by virtue of Roe v. Wade, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case has thrown abortion into the cocked hat of sate-by-state legislative consideration.
The polling on the abortion or reproductive rights issue are exceedingly clear. Public opinion all across the country, including in otherwise very conservative states, strongly favors more liberal access to abortion and prefers to leave the abortion decision to a woman and her physician. That is very understandable in a world increasingly governed by science and technology versus one dominated in days gone by from the strictures of religious rigor. The decline of organized religion across America and the world at large is well documented. In 1937, 73% of Americans said they were formally a member of a church, synagogue or mosque. That number is now down to 47%. That is a full ⅓ reduction and brings American’s direct connection to a religious organization into the minority, with signs that it will continue to fall from here. It does not necessarily suggest that Americans are any less spiritual than they have ever been, but it does imply that they have a far more liberal and perhaps pragmatic interpretation of the norms of humanity.
In the history of the world, the high incidence of child mortality has caused people to be driven to procreate. Religion supported that imperative by setting norms and rules like the traditional Catholic ban on contraception as well as abortion. From the first time that coitus interruptus was deployed as a DIY contraception, people have been practicing some form of family planning. By 1960, the widespread concerns about overpopulation caused contraception to move front and center with the Pill and other forms coming into popular usage and being advocated globally to control rampant population growth. By 1980, the world’s largest country, China, was so concerned about the issue that it implemented the mightiest public policy stricture in world history with its one-child policy. All of this was further backed by rampant STD spread (especially once AIDS hit the scene) that could best be addressed by various contraceptive methods. Quite frankly, the world started to care far less about the ethics of terminated procreation and far more about the ethics of demographic over-population.
This shift in collective concerns was even further advanced by the growing rights and societal push for greater equality for women. The biology of procreation has always been well-understood to fall mostly onto the backs of women. As in many parts of the natural world, the male part in procreation is somewhat transitory and while culturally pushed for greater connectivity and accountability, it is impossible to deny that the woman bears the vast majority of the obligations associated with child-bearing. It is only natural that along with that would come the view that women have a right of self-determination when it comes to reproduction. As logical as that seems to most women and many men, there are clearly those more traditionally inclined that disagree with a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry out the natural sequence of events. That seems mostly to be driven by the issue of male cultural dominance, something which is gradually eroding as women increasingly join the out-of-home workforce and increase their educational equality. This trend is so deeply entrenched in our society today that women represent the majority of veterinary, medical, and legal post-graduate students and are generally taking over an increasing role of dominance in high-level professional fields.
We can generally all agree that being a parent does not give one the right to end the life of a child arbitrarily. But the issue of when a child is a being, or when life exists in a formal sense is highly debatable. It is unclear that either science or religion has a definitive answer to that question because there are so many predicate considerations like viability and the very spark of existence when fertilization occurs that are subject to interpretation and, indeed, further influenced by the very science that traditionalists eschew. And yet, the traditionalists that dominate the extreme end of almost every religious sect are clinging to their ability to define the moment of life’s initiation without specific regard to scientific definition. Those fundamentalist beliefs are so strongly rooted in creationism that belief almost always trumps science in this pivotal notion.
That all undermines or reinforces the defining logic behind the abortion issue, depending on your interpretation of what should govern issues of human existence. That is what leads us into the political realm, which is generally driven by desire for control. That would be control over societal norms, control over lesser people (including women by the definition of many traditionalist men) and thereby control over life and death. The nurturing of life is something that should span every moment of human existence. If one is pro-life, which is a chosen designation by one end of the political spectrum, it stands to reason that support of the totality of life should be forthcoming. That should include supporting pre-K education, food services for young school-age children, childcare services, all the way to and including other welfare programs that people need throughout their lives to sustain themselves. It should even go so far as to being against any forms of capital punishment and death sentence. But that never seems to be the case, which is what makes pro-life such a misnomer. What this political contingent really wants is simply the ability to govern the birthing decisions of every woman in their realm. Strangely enough, it is the women in minority groups that are most impacted since they have limited means to “buy a bus ticket” to another pro-abortion locale. And yet it is those same minorities that are the most denigrated by the same people. Governing the reproductive rights of women is simply not a pro-life notion and never has been.
The interesting dynamic on the political front is that with popular support so strongly favoring abortion rights, the old Republican saw of endorsing states’ self-determination rights on issues like abortion has left the national candidates at the mercy of a patchwork of antiquated state laws and much more radicalized state legislatures. We are now seeing Republicans running away from anti-inflation rhetoric and laws as much as the had seemed to promote them not so long ago. All that tells us is that there was less humanity or even spiritual belief to their stance rather than just more good old political posturing. I guess we can call that the abandonment or abortion of humanity in the final analysis.