Category Archives: abortion

by | May 27, 2012 · 6:00 PM

A Different Ethical Framework

I recently read this article by a Christian doctor who continues to perform abortions.  I was struck by this line:

I wrestled with the morality of it. I grew up in the South and in fundamentalist Protestantism, I was taught that abortion is wrong.

Yet as I pursued my career as an OB/GYN, I saw the dilemmas that women found themselves in. And I could no longer weigh the life of a pre-viable or lethally flawed fetus equally with the life of the woman sitting before me.

In listening to a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, I came to a deeper understanding of my spirituality, which places a higher value on compassion. King said what made the good Samaritan “good” is that instead of focusing on would happen to him by stopping to help the traveler, he was more concerned about what would happen to the traveler if he didn’t stop to help.

I became more concerned about what would happen to these women if I, as an obstetrician, did not help them.

I just blogged about how the Pro-Choice movement needs to rethink its strategy about how it presents itself to a new generation.  This is one example of moving the debate into a moral playing field instead of a policy one, albeit a consequentialist perspective.  This type of debate occurs on economic policy for instance.  President Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan offer different perspectives on how to balance the budget and when to raise taxes.  On gay marriage, people quote lines in Bible about the sinfulness of homosexuality who oppose gay marriage and people quote the inclusiveness of Jesus and his followers to support gay marriage.  Moralizing is not hard to do and quoting Jesus is not hard to do either, it just requires various frameworks to discuss specific topics.

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by | May 23, 2012 · 9:56 PM

Pro-Choice Needs to Rethink its Strategy

U.S. Adults' Position on Abortion

By John Stang

This chart from Gallup shows a growing number of people are crossing over into the pro-life camp.  Andrew Sullivan comments:

I think it’s interesting and salient that public attitudes toward abortion have shifted slightly toward a more pro-life position in the last decade or so, and that this includes the younger generation. There isn’t anything like majority support for banning it altogether as the GOP wants – but Americans seem more attuned the to gravity of the moral question here. Compare that with the issue of marriage equality. The only inference is that there are a lot of pro-marriage equality folks who are also anti-abortion. I don’t want to criminalize abortion in the first trimester, but if I had to describe myself, I’d probably say “pro-life.”

True, but I also think it also means the “Pro-Choice” side needs to recalibrate its strategy in terms of selling its message.   Pro-choice is not equivalent to being pro-abortion.  It just means someone thinks women should have the choice whether or not to have an abortion.  There is a certainly a grey area between being against abortion personally (as I am) and wanting to ban it altogether (the more extreme position).  Instead, the movement should emphasize that one can be morally against abortion and want women to consider that as their last option or in extreme circumstances, but not get rid of the practice altogether because they think it would be a bad idea policy wise.  Saying everyone should have a “choice” in the matter mediates the position and makes it more libertarian sounding, and, I think, brings more people on board.

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by | February 26, 2012 · 2:55 PM

Rick Santorum and Other GOP Abortion Flip-Floppers

By Luke Brinker

Rick Santorum, the arch-conservative former Pennsylvania senator and GOP presidential hopeful, has earned a reputation as a hard-line culture warrior. Not only does Santorum oppose abortion even in cases of rape and incest, he also inveighs against “the dangers of contraception.” But Santorum hasn’t always been such a down-the-line social conservative.

This week, the Huffington Post dug up a statement from 1995 in which Santorum confessed to having previously been a pro-choice Republican. The revelation puts Santorum in an awkward position, given that he’s portraying rival Mitt Romney, a former pro-choicer himself, as an inconsistent and insincere social conservative. That the two leading contenders for the GOP presidential nomination used to support abortion rights is instructive: even some of the most stridently anti-abortion Republican politicians have histories of endorsing a woman’s right to choose.

Ronald Reagan, a secular saint among conservatives and renowned in pro-life circles for his authorship of Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation, signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act as California governor in 1967, six years prior to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. With the ascendance of the Religious Right in the 1970s, Reagan switched to a staunchly anti-abortion posture. Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush, entered politics in the 1960s as a vocal supporter of Planned Parenthood. Prior to joining Reagan’s ticket in the summer of 1980, Bush maintained a pro-choice stance on abortion.

Contemporary examples of pro-choice-turned-pro-life Republicans include former Minnesota Gov. and presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (whose failed 2008 presidential campaign centered on the abortion issue). Perhaps these men underwent sincere conversions to the anti-abortion cause, but it’s not insignificant that their flip-flops dovetailed with the position of the preponderance of the Republican base. (To be fair, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Richard Gephardt, Jesse Jackson, and Ted Kennedy are but a few Democratic politicians who switched from anti-abortion to pro-choice positions at some point in their political careers.) The last pro-choicer to win the Republican presidential nomination was Gerald Ford, in 1976 (and even Ford equivocated on the issue during that campaign; he only became more forthright in his pro-choice views well after his political career ended). Rudy Giuliani valiantly tried and spectacularly failed to secure the GOP nomination as a pro-choice moderate in 2008. Republicans with national ambitions have, no doubt, taken heed of Giuliani’s example (and that of Arlen Specter in 1996 and George H. W. Bush in 1980 before him). Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, one of the GOP’s rising stars, is currently pro-choice. If he aims for higher office someday, don’t be surprised if he abandons his current position.

Republicans’ storied history of abortion flip-flops makes Romney look fairly typical in his position switch on the issue. Of course, what makes Romney stand out isn’t just that he’s changed his position on abortion; he’s also been on various sides in debates over climate change, gay rights, gun control, the Reagan presidency, Afghanistan, taxes, and more. But considering that social issues lie at the heart of his main challenger’s campaign, it’s unclear whether former pro-choicer Rick Santorum is social conservatives’ optimal messenger to take Romney on.

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by | February 2, 2012 · 7:24 PM

Komen’s Decision Makes Little Sense

Pink Ribbon

By John Stang

The pressure is continuing to increase on the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which primarily fights breast cancer, to desperately reconsider its decision to pull its funding from Planned Parenthood.  The decision is supposedly “not political.”  Rather, Komen says it is making the change because Planned Parenthood is under investigation.  Actually, the investigation is a bogus one being led by a Republican congresssman who has an axe to grind against abortion in the first place.

Putting aside the political hotbeds of abortion, the decision by Komen is not a very smart one.  Only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortions and only 10% of its clientele get abortions.  Most of Planned Parenthood’s activities include cancer screenings and HIV/AIDS testing for lower income citizens.  This would make sense if Komen wanted to attach a string to the funding given to Planned Parenthood, similar to the Hyde Amendment in Congress, that bars money from going to abortion, again not the reason Komen is admitting for deciding to stop funding Planned Parenthood.  Instead, Komen is removing all its funding from the organization for a vague reason that might or might not have to do with abortion implicitly.

This stance is equivalent to killing an ant with a machine gun when a fly swatter will do.  Instead of removing all funding from the organization, taking away certain parts would make more sense.  Komen is a private foundation and can do what it wants, but the strategy appears ineffective and loses crucial supporters in the process to save lives against breast cancer and not just theoretical forms of life.

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by | February 1, 2012 · 6:31 AM

Susan G. Komen and the Stigmatization of Planned Parenthood

By Luke Brinker

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the prominent breast cancer charity, discontinued its grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screenings on Tuesday. As Slate’s Amanda Marcotte writes, Komen claimed that the withdrawal of funds stemmed from Rep. Cliff Stearns’s (R-Florida) investigation of Planned Parenthood, but given the politically charged nature of Stearns’s investigation, it’s more likely that Komen simply “caved under relentless pressure.”

Planned Parenthood has been under conservative assault in recent years, even facing prosecution in Kansas. The group struggled in 2011 amid federal and state budget cuts, which resulted from a largely fact-free conservative campaign against the group. Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl erroneously claimed that abortion is “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” When confronted with the actual figure – three percent – Kyl’s spokesman defended his boss’s comment, saying it “was not intended to be a factual statement.” Anything to advance the social conservative agenda, I suppose.

What is most remarkable about the right’s concerted campaign to stigmatize Planned Parenthood is that for much of its history, the family planning organization, founded by Margaret Sanger in 1916, was far from the political hot potato it is now. To be sure, social conservatives have always opposed its mission, but before party polarization set in, there was substantial bipartisan backing for Planned Parenthood. Prescott Bush and his son George Herbert Walker Bush were major fundraisers. John D. Rockefeller III was the recipient of a Margaret Sanger Award. Ann Romney, wife of Willard Mitt, was a donor in the 1990s. And until 2012, the nation’s foremost breast cancer charity supported Planned Parenthood’s efforts to screen women for the disease.

In an era of sham investigations, prosecution, and savage budget cuts, one might assume that Planned Parenthood has always been a lightning rod of controversy. But it has not always been true that one’s political party predicted one’s attitude toward the organization. Nor has it always been deemed necessary for a mainstream organization to cut all ties to a group focused on women’s health. Anyone who doubts that ideological polarization has very real consequences need look no further than Komen’s action yesterday.

 

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