Beyond 'it's a baby': if pro-lifers give more thought to women's needs, they will serve children better

National Review, Dec 31, 1997 by Frederica Mathewes-Green

While the financial and practical needs of these women are great, the surprising thing I learned while researching Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion was that women said what they needed most was a friend. As I traveled the country holding "listening groups" with women who had had abortions, I always asked, "What situation caused you to make this decision?" I expected to hear tales of financial woe, yet nearly 90 per cent of the women told me they had had their abortion because of a relationship -- because someone they loved, a boyfriend or a parent, told them to. When asked what anyone could have done to help them complete the pregnancy, over and over the answer was: Just stand by me. "I would have had that baby," I heard repeatedly, "if only I'd had one person to stand by me." Pregnancy-care centers may run short of diapers, maternity dresses, and doctor fees, and but as long as they can keep the doors open and the lights on they can do that one necessary thing: be that friend.

When I've spoken at colleges and elsewhere, I've found that talking about the women's needs and problems has a disarming and opening effect. Even many who are hostile will say, "I agree with you about all that, but I just don't think abortion should be illegal." If we can agree about all the foregoing, we've come a long way indeed. I do think abortion should be illegal -- in any civilization, laws protecting the weak from the strong belong to the irreducible core of justice. But I don't know if I'll see such laws in my lifetime. I'm convinced we can do much to prevent abortions even while the regime of legal availability remains. Tomorrow morning, 4,100 women will wake up and think, "My abortion is today." An amendment to the Constitution is not going to suddenly appear and halt them; in fact, if we miraculously padlocked all the abortion clinics tomorrow, without making any changes in our support system, all we'd have is women banging on the locked doors and crying. We wouldn't have done anything to alleviate the problems that drove them to the clinic in the first place. What can we do to help them?

ONE thing I don't do any more is debates. Too often these amount to verbal mud-wrestling, a spectacle put on for entertainment, not elucidation. They entrench positions around cheering sections, rather than lead to consensus and change. Besides, an access of cleverness doesn't lead to success; you can't beat someone up until she agrees with you.

Instead, I've become involved with dialogues. Through the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice, based in Washington, D.C., I can meet, for respectful dialogue, with a group of pro-lifers and pro-choicers. We don't expect to change minds immediately or to agree, but we do seek to comprehend each other's beliefs; we try to clear away the misunderstandings so that we can arrive at genuine, honest disagreement. I've learned a lot there. When I look across the table at a pro-choicer, I don't see a fiend who deserves a "kick in the head"; I see someone troubled by the grim reality of abortion, and seeking a solution she can live with.