Abortion
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I find the debate over abortion in this country complex, circuitous, dishonest, tedious, and interminable. Personally I am pro-choice because I believe the government should interfere in our lives as little as possible and I have no religious conviction to convince me an exception should be made in this case. That said, I find both sides of the abortion debate strident, intolerant, and myopic, and wish they would both just shut up.
This was written specifically for submission to the Atlantic Monthly, and was submitted but never published. It was also recently, after Hilary Clinton reignited the debate over abortion (and outraged the left) by repositioning herself toward the “reasonable middle” on the subject, submitted to Salon.com but not accepted for publication.
- 30 October 2000
The issue of abortion is once again forming the backdrop for the political show of our election cycle. And, as for the last thirty years, it is the bogeyman in the shadows, obsession of the few, ignored by the many until it is needed by politicians to frighten voters when they seem to be happy with the opposition. Abortion is universally recognized as divisive and intractable, a subject to be used for advantage among partisans but avoided in polite company, a fuse you can light but cannot control. What makes it so? Why, when we seem able to find common ground on many other contentious issues, does this one belie our belief in the primacy of consensus? And why can we not let it go? What makes this our own Middle East dilemma?
The heart of the answer is that Abortion, the national debate, is not a surgical procedure but a tangible metaphor for philosophical chasms that divide us. It is not one issue, but three, and not one subject, but a proxy for an entire policy debate that reaches into the fundaments of our politics and our society. That the participants in the debate are blind to that complexity only makes the problem more intractable.
The questions at the center of the abortion debate are primal: what defines ‘human life’, endowed with rights that demand protection by the state? What is the legitimate function of government in regulating personal and social conduct? What is the proper role of judicial interpretation in construing the meaning of law? Each faction in the abortion debate focuses almost exclusively on one of these questions, and on one answer, which it assumes to be the only moral choice. And in the realm of moral choices, compromise is impossible, passion is extreme, and civility disappears.
The result is that the factions, for all their argument, never actually engage; they merely talk past each other.
It would be comforting to think that, recognizing this problem, we could redirect the debate to overcome it. But on this topic polarization is not an artifact of miscommunication or misunderstanding. The poles exist because they must, because they reflect fundamental differences in interests and values and beliefs. No amount of pushing or coaxing will make them come together. The problem cannot be resolved; our best hope is to make it go away.
And go away it must, for it is corrupting both our civil discourse and our political process. The issues at the core of the abortion debate are important on their own merits — far more important than abortion itself. But as long as abortion is on the table, debate devolves into argument, and argument proceeds only within that narrow context. By focusing the debate so finely on a single manifestation of our philosophical differences, we run the risk of ignoring the broader implications of the choices we must make, to our ultimate detriment. If we are to choose wisely, we must agree to disagree on abortion so we may move beyond it.