Beyond Pro-life and Pro-choice. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, March, 1997 by John Marks

Abortion has become a no-holds-barred battle between unyielding foes. As in all wars, propaganda merges with reality, and demonization of the enemy substitutes for communication.

As someone who works in the field of conflict resolution, I see no possibility of negotiating a settlement on the basic issue of abortion as long as the pro-life side sees abortion as murder and the pro-choice side believes that women have a fundamental right to choose. There does, however, seem to be a way to drain poison from the issue and, in the process, improve the quality of our national discourse. Instead of--or in addition to--pro-choice and pro-life supporters confronting each other on the legality of abortion, let them come together around frameworks that both can support.

Why not, for example, work together to prevent unintended pregnancies? Consider the case of Reproductive Health Services, a St. Louis abortion provider that became a national symbol after the 1989 Supreme Court case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. From the opposing perspectives of abortion supporters and foes, Reproductive Health Services was viewed as either a place of refuge or a killing field.

Yet until 1993, Reproductive Health Services was not only an abortion provider. It also included an adoption agency, called Adoption Associates, that worked closely with area pro-life supporters. If a pregnant woman came to Reproductive Health Services and expressed a desire during counseling to give birth and put her baby up for adoption, Adoption Associates was likely to refer her to Our Lady's Inn, a Catholic home for unwed mothers. Our Lady's Inn, whose staff and directors were fervently pro-life, provided advice, pre-natal support, and residential care. Adoption Associates arranged placement with a family.

One would have thought that, irrespective of their differences, both sides could agree this was a good thing. After all, from the pro-choice point of view, women faced with unwanted pregnancies were given another option to choose; from the pro-life point of view, each baby born and adopted was a life saved.

In fact, neither much liked this cooperative arrangement. People associated with both Adoption Associates and Our Lady's Inn were accused of the same transgression: consorting with the enemy. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers mirrored each other when they said, in effect, that working together on adoption makes the other side look reasonable. Demonization is not possible if the adversary is credible and reasonable.

When Reproductive Health Services sought outside funding for Adoption Associates, every donor approached refused. No funder was willing to support the agency which had arranged for about 150 successful adoptions. Potential givers interested in the abortion issue usually support one side or the other. A collaborative adoption program clouded the issue. As a result, in 1993, Reproductive Health Services felt compelled to close Adoption Associates for lack of money.

It may be understandable why those directly involved in the abortion struggle would not want to divert resources to promote adoption, but what about the rest of us? Reframing the issue does not solve the core dispute, but it might help reduce the approximately 1.5 million abortions performed each year in the United States--an outcome that everyone should be able to support.

Unfortunately, as Kathy Rudy writes in her thoughtful new book, "In the logic of today's debate, there is no room for third or fourth alternatives; each side claims a zero-sum game, an either/or structure."

An assistant professor of ethics and women's studies at Duke University, Rudy was raised Catholic and left the Church over "political quarrels" She is torn between the extremes of the issue: She feels that abortion is wrong but believes that the state should not interfere with a woman's right to control her body. She writes:

We believe one thing, and at the

same time we believe something

completely contradictory. Our

convictions are splintered, our loyalties

divided. Our ambivalence signifies

the fact that we live in contradictory

worlds.

My own view is that many, if not most, Americans share her ambivalence. For most people, abortion is not an absolute, black-or-white issue. It abounds with grays. Rudy presents her own framework for transcending the bifurcated debate. She calls for repeal of all abortion laws and states, "Competing ideologies should be fighting to make their world views intelligible and attractive to others, not fighting in the courtrooms over the legal status of abortion.... A tradition only wins in the abortion debate when a woman with an unwanted pregnancy sees the hope and possibilities offered to her by that tradition and changes her interpretation of her pregnancy as a result."

Rudy believes that for pro-life Christians, the most appropriate way to deal with abortion is to provide more effective assistance to women with unwanted pregnancies--which would logically reduce the demand for abortion. She says that pro-choice partisans "need to be working toward ways that break down the racial, class, and heterosexist barriers that exist between women in order to move into a world where women have a greater number of options than pregnancy or abortion."