A Liberal's Agrument for LIFE

(This is taking from another blog posting)

Thursday, December 16, 2004

The liberal pro-life argument
This came in the mail. Clearly I don't agree with this viewpoint, but I thought he made his case well. And in the interest of debate, I'll present it. Now read closely: Jen and I are pro-choice. Jen did clinic defense while in law school. But you don't often hear liberal pro-lifers, so....
I figured I'd give you a quick comment on your abortion article just to throw some contrary thoughts your way.

I am a Consistent Life Ethic kinda guy - oppose abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, pretty much anything that involves the termination of human life. I'm also pretty much overeducated NY style Irish Catholic white trash - relatives are cops, meatpackers, union men, &c. So I hope that I know that of which I speak. I'm also a member of Democrats for Life - we're pretty much a pro-life Democrat organization, in the Consistent Life Ethic vein.Anyway a couple of thoughts. I think one of the major messes involving the abortion debate in the United States is that its interpretation is pretty much unique. The rights-based interpretation of abortion is pretty much ahistorical - I know, for example, that Susan B. Anthony expected one of the signs of women's liberation would be the elimination of abortion. That women would no longer be so far backed into a corner that abortion would be considered an option.Similarly, it's unique to the U.S. and Canada. In Europe it's viewed as more of a health and biology issue - France has considerably tighter abortion laws than the united States. Actually, on paper, pretty much every western european country has tighter abortion laws than the united states; also considerably lower abortion rates. I'd argue that one of the holes we're in in the U.S., and the reason that abortion is not a 'settled issue' the way it is in Europe is only partly due to pro-life militancy, it's also because of a marked unwillingness on the pro-choice side to discuss the issue. Since Roe, U.S. abortion policy has been pretty much static with one side desperately trying to pack the courts and the other side desperately trying to prevent it.I haven't found anyone on the pro-choice side who views abortion as a celebratory act, but rather as a necessary choice - to eliminate the specter of back alleys and coat hangers. However, what the GOP does is focus on the corner cases of the issue - and the Democrats end up reacting in fear and ending up defending more and more indefensible cases. Partial Birth was really more vote-whoring than anything else, and also exhibit A in why the GOP doesn't care about abortion past getting votes - they had the ability to do something substantive, and this was their choice. Same thing with this anaesthesia measure they're pushing next. It's real goal is to put democrats on the defensive.There's an organization called PLAGAL - pro-life alliance of gays and lesbians - and their argument against abortion is because they're worried about what happens if homosexuality is genetic and we develop a pre-natal test. This is actually a problem in places like India right now - where abortion is used heavily as a way of guaranteeing male births. I'm sure that somewhere right now there's a move in the GOP to produce a bill making the democrats defend sex-selective or eugenic abortion - something that is going to make the choice rhetoric ring truly hollow.I think the biggest problem with the U.S. abortion debate is that it treats the entire thing as taking place only at the moment of the choice - as if we reproduced via parthenogenesis. My mindset these days is that abortion is a symptom of a deeper problem - when we do find somebody who is having an abortion, we should ask how we as a government and a people have screwed up so badly that this is considered a good idea. what can we do to fix this next time? Better birth control education? Better prenatal care for women? National health care?The reason I am a pro-life _democrat_ is because I believe these kind of solutions make a helluva lot more sense in the Democratic context. My general feeling is that the GOP will end up increasing abortion rates simply because they're going to increase the number of corners a person gets backed into. My concern for the Democrats is that they've implicitly accepted a 'GOP' interpretation - one of helplessness and impotence, rather than figuring out how to apply the capacities of government to solve the problem.I actually think that the Democrats could come up with something more acceptable to pro-lifers within the context of Roe - most of the Roe messes actually come from Doe V. Bolton, which established an inordinately broad definition of threats to the mother's health in the third trimester. If the Democrats approached abortion as a necessary and constitutionally protected evil, but worked to reduce the abortion rate through measures that we know work, then we'd open the door to bringing back a lot of Democrats who've gritted their teeth and voted Republican for the past 20 years.The thing is, this would be a golden opportunity to make the GOP put up or shut up. Ask them if what they want to do is stop abortion or stop _legal_ abortion. When I drive to D.C. from PA, I hit fireworks stores at the Maryland border; I'll bet that if Roe is overtuned and PA outlaws abortion, abortion clinics will pop up at the PA border. Hell, Ireland has a 10/1000 abortion rate. The GOP can't actually do much realistica about abortion unless they try to pass a Human Life Amendment, and if they do, they'll lose a good chunk of their constituents anyway - one of the successes of the GOP's abortion strategy is that they've made the 75% of the population who aren't militantly pro-choice view the democrats as more fanatical about abortion.