Sociology and public theology: a case study of pro-choice/ profile common ground - 1998 Presidential Address

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 1999 by James R. Kelly

Public Theology and Framing of the Family Cap Objections

The Camasso et al. study narrowly investigated but one dimension of the New Jersey welfare changes, namely the impact of the family cap on reproductive decisions. They asked no deeper questions about the causes and extent of poverty, why poor women who are not married have children, why the fathers don't become husbands. With a few exceptions, abortion activists on both sides also kept to this narrow focus. The New Jersey legislature nonchalantly received the findings showing the cap-abortion link. Regina Purcell (interview, 19 May 1998) said she "was no longer surprised when observers from within and from outside the state responded to the findings with indifference." Abortion is a constitutionally protected civil right and, though many continue to think of it as immoral, as a matter of law and public policy, abortion can be included in the category of "responsible" choices. Indeed, many would judge it irresponsible to bring a pregnancy to term when the mother will need resources taxed from other citizens. Principled pro-choice activists have yet to confront the libertarian limits of their rights language.

Such activists talk about autonomy and individual choice. The object of choice is not explicitly specified. Unlike "citizen discourse," in prochoice discourse there are neither "responsible" nor "irresponsible" reproductive choices, but only autonomous or coerced abortions. The legal director of the NJ chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Lenora Lapidus, said "I think it's important to understand that those of us who claim to be pro-choice are really pro-choice. We are opposed to the government interfering in a woman's decision about what to do with her pregnancy, whether that coerces that woman to have an abortion or not have an abortion" (Fitzgerald 1998). Expressed this way, pro-choice seems a specification to abortion of "libertarian" thought which typically seeks to free individual choice from government constraint. But, unlike pro-choice discourse, libertarian reasoning also reduces the interference with private choices affected by government taxes. Pro-choice, as libertarian thought more generally, can make a strong case for government neutrality in reproductive decisions but cannot, in consistency, make an equally strong case for taxpayer support when the decision is to bring to term a child whose parents cannot independently support it. As yet, pro-choice has no persuasive rejoinder to politically astute cap defenders who retort that when working class families have another child they do not automatically receive any more family income.

Additionally, from a pro-choice premise, it is hard to know why case workers shouldn't actively persuade poor women towards the "responsible" choice of abortion. Moreover, it would not be easy to juridically determine when persuasion passes over to coercion. Of great relevance to principled pro-choice thought is the research finding that welfare women themselves endorse the family cap language of responsible choices. Eighty six percent agree with its framers that "The family cap encourages people to take responsibility for their actions" (1996: 211: figure 5.24). But a slight majority also suspect the unexpressed political motives behind the moral language, especially Hispanic (59 percent) and African-American women (55 percent) who agree that "The family cap is an attempt to limit family size of minority women" (1996:213: Table 5.26).