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

Voters are not likely to endorse the abstract language of reproductive choice, except insofar as they retain the traditional moral sentiment that, since pregnancy involves a developing human life with its own non-alienable dignity, the choice of birth is morally superior to the choice to abort and

thus is to be socially preferred in state policy. Prochoice language unsuspectingly lives off prolife moral capital. A pertinent research finding is that welfare recipients gave not "prochoice" but largely "prolife" responses to survey questions. Only 28 percent agreed that "an acceptable reason for termination" is when "it is an accidental or unplanned pregnancy" (1996: Table 5.20).(20) Only 38.5 percent agreed that an "acceptable reason" for abortion is if they "don't want another baby." Congruent with American abortion opinions (but even less approving), the great majority of welfare women say the only acceptable reasons (71 percent for both) for abortion are "The birth would threaten your life" and for "rape and incest." While poor women are more likely than other women to report abortions, they are also more likely to hold "right-to-life" sentiments. In fact, when asked about factors influencing their decisions about pregnancy, more than three-quarters said "finding adequate care" and even more, 85 percent, said "not having adequate finances to raise the child" (1996: Table 5.26, pg. 213).

Their answers challenge New Jersey right-to-life groups as well. Poor women already affirm the pro-life attitudes right to life groups unflaggingly promote. The data show that poor women abort so often not because they lack prolife sentiment but because they lack the resources to be prolife. It's not that the right to life movement has not always recognized that prolife words must be connected with prolife help, as the more than 70 volunteer crisis pregnancy centers in the state show.(21) But these centers by themselves can't help poor women of limited resources achieve the self sufficiency required for promising parenting. Besides, these emergency pregnancy centers are disproportionately listed in non minority areas - in the right to life Internet listing only two were listed in Newark and one in Jersey City. New Jersey abortion opponents can effectively counter high abortion rates among the poor by contributing to a statewide effort that effectively challenged, not merely the family cap, but the moralistic and individualistic premises about poverty embedded in New Jersey welfare changes.

The challenges presented by the Camasso data far exceed the present thinking, tactics, and lobbying of New Jersey right to life social movement organizations, with the possible exception of the New Jersey Catholic Conference which has the resource of a consistent ethic public theology. But the NJ State Catholic Conference seems not to have effectively taught and transmitted the consistent ethic public theology to abortion opponents who, in their press interviews, sound unpersuasive and sometimes even damaging to their prolife cause. Ironically, the NJ Right to Life responses about the cap given to journalists unintentionally strengthen the already powerful public mood of "safety net" tax cutting and government shrinkage: "Whenever abortion rates go up, it's something states should be concerned about - especially when we as taxpayers (emphasis added) . . . are forced to pay for Medicaid abortions" (Wiggins and Padawer 1998). Local abortion opponents are mostly political novices and, effectively to help women and children, they must join coalitions with groups with more sophisticated social policy skills. Coalitions with groups actively promoting child care and work training for the poor, which welfare women themselves emphasize as important factors in pregnancy decisions, are likely to bring abortion opponents into an uncomfortable political culture where their anti-abortion sentiments are misunderstood and even opposed. But prolife/prochoice coalitions that do not obscure moral objections to abortion can be achieved, usually with the aid of common ground terminology. It has happened on the national level, and specifically on the question of a family cap. The 12 June 1995 ACLU media advisory announced "Apart On Abortion, Together On Children. Pro-choice and Pro-life Groups Schedule Joint Press Briefing on Child Exclusion Policies." Among the "100 religious, civil rights, and women's rights organizations" the press release listed Catholic Charities USA and Feminists for Life who joined the ACLU and NOW-LDEF at a joint press briefing. Only this national coalition of prochoice and prolife groups was able to make the "child exclusion" provision of the national welfare bill voluntary rather than mandatory.(22)