Part one of a two-part series.
In my lifetime I have not seen a more divisive topic of debate than the one over abortion.
Like many of us in East Tennessee, I was raised to view abortion as an immoral act of selfishness perpetrated against an innocent life. Once I matured enough to get past the rhetoric, I was able to investigate this subject from a more realistic perspective.
I found that this is not a simple cut and dried issue like many would want you to believe. It is a very complex and intensely personal decision that only a woman can make.
Myths exist where women are portrayed as uncaring people with no morals who use abortion as a method of birth control. Like most myths, a real-life example is there to use as proof, but these people are the rare exception and not the rule.
Another myth being used right now is the thought that late-term abortions are common practice. Once again, this is incorrect and totally misleading, since the use of this procedure as portrayed by the pro-life side is very disingenuous.
The public debate is a very emotionally charged battle. The points of contention boil down into these major categories – the question of when human life begins, the “personhood” of the fetus and its putative moral and legal status, and acceptable versus deplorable motives for terminating a pregnancy and the philosophical groundings of each one.
This doesn’t even mention the interests of the state, the medical profession, assorted religions, the taxpayer, the infertile, the fetal father and even the fetal grandparent.
The one thing I believe everybody can agree on is that we want to see the need for abortion reduced and one day eliminated. The conflict comes on how to achieve such a result.
The side that we know as “Pro-Choice” seeks to reduce the need for abortion by working towards preventing unwanted pregnancies, promoting contraception, educating women and youth and ensuring families have the necessary resources to raise healthy, happy children.
The slogan “every child is a wanted child” is not just idle talk for those who support this philosophy. I have spent seven years in the social services field working with families in crisis. I know from experience that when a child is unwanted, the child and all of society pay the price for this deplorable situation.
The side known as “Pro-Life” states that they view the fetus, from the moment of conception, as a human being, which makes abortion murder. They promote abortion alternatives like adoption, or try to assist the woman in caring for the child, if she will commit to having it.
You cannot mention this side without including the religious aspect. The pro-life side is dominated by those who view their activities as a holy cause supported by their religious dogma.
As I looked at the Internet resources on this subject, pro-life sites proclaiming abortion as a modern holocaust and the work of the devil quickly overwhelmed me. This is not to say that the pro-choice side does not have numerous individuals who are religious, it just means they do not view this as a holy crusade against the forces of evil like those on the pro-life side.

Since this is a highly emotional issue for everyone, especially when you do not view this as within the realm of human experience, but in the arena of a battle between good and evil. This religious injection ends rational debate. Everyone is biased in this area and I find myself on the pro-choice
side simply because this is an issue of privacy for the woman and her doctor. I just won’t degrade women into being treated like cattle forced to
give birth because of someone else’s beliefs. So let me just ask you to consider how you arrived at your stance on this issue. Also do you find it
interesting that men in power decide a woman’s health issue, either in Congress or the Supreme Court, or that many of the leaders of the pro-life
movement are men and the leaders of most of the pro-choice organizations are women.

Throughout history, men have exerted their power to control women and so it seems this continues in the present as well. It has been my experience that
those women who oppose the right to choose change their minds when they find themselves in this situation. When this ceases being about promoting
your beliefs and becomes a personal decision you face, then many become very pro-choice. This doesn’t mean they will have an abortion, but they do not
want to be denied that option. I knew a very religious, very pro-life young woman who came from a very conservative, prominent Protestant family. She did
not plan on getting pregnant, but in a very human fashion, in the heat of that moment, it happened. The sad irony is that because of the very religious,
judging nature of her family, she could never let them know she was pregnant. She made the decision to have an abortion because of the situation she
found herself in because of her family’s fundamentalist dogma.

Maybe if we had less rhetoric, less judging, less damning of those who want to let the woman decide as being demonic, then maybe we can get to the
causes that women find themselves in to seek an abortion. If we can address those causes, like ignorance, poverty, fear, religion, mental illness and so
on, we can work to eliminate the need for abortion. The great irony is that those who claim to be militantly against abortion support the conservative
element in politics. Yet, under Clinton, whom the right-wing absolutely hates, the abortion rate has declined as well as the teen pregnancy rate. Things
that conservatives oppose, like sex education, the distribution of contraceptives, the rational discussion of this issue without the religious threats, have all
contributed to the decline in these rates.

We know that the prohibition against abortion does not eliminate it at all. It drives poor women to seek out “back alley” methods to terminate their
unwanted pregnancies. For rich, usually white, women they simply find an understanding doctor who performs the procedure and just calls it something
else. Her life is never in danger and the matter is just hushed up. The poor woman faces a much more dangerous outcome. The opportunity for
counseling, intervention and any other assistance the woman may need is eliminated, since all of the regulated, Doctor staffed clinics would have been
closed. Is this really the situation we want to return to in our country? I sincerely hope not.

The concern that the pro-life side claims for the woman who has had an abortion is interesting. They claim most women are traumatized by this action
and suffer for years. I looked into this claim and found that the American Psychological Association did a long-term study on post-abortion distress. They
found no correlation between the abortion procedure and post-abortion distress. The main factor found was the woman’s sense of well being before the
abortion. This was true for women regardless of income, religious faith, level of education and marital status. I would surmise that those found to
have had post-abortion issues were those women traumatized by pro-lifers who push the idea that the woman had sinned and therefore had done something
wrong.

Adoption as the preferred option. I have heard this uttered many times by those who say abortion is not needed. If you have a healthy, newborn,
Caucasian child, then yes, I guarantee not only can you have it adopted, by you can make good money doing so. I know from experience working for
the state, that if a child has any medical complications (think crack babies here), defects or illness then the odds of adoption drop precipitously. If a
child happens to be African-American, Hispanic, mixed, etc, then it falls into the special needs area because of the sheer difficulty of finding adoptive
families. The odds drop even further as the infant ages and is passed from placement to placement waiting for someone to adopt him or her.
Maybe if all that energy and money now being used to attack choice was used for these difficult adoptions, then I could garner some respect for
those who are so militant on that side. A love affair with the fetus does nothing to help those children already here and in need.

To say simply that if we eliminate access to contraception and sex education that people will not have sex is beyond naive and denies any
understanding of what it means to be human. In the absence of birth control and education, people fall back on their biological drive to reproduce.
Being a teenager means being driven by your hormones. Do you want to leave them alone in ignorance to find their own way? Do you think that by
telling them nothing other than it is a sin will truly stop the vast majority? We don’t leave loaded guns lying around for our children to play with, I
hope. We educate them about the dangers of the gun and how to properly use it. To me, it should be the same for sex, how do you use that loaded
gun? This may sound jaded but we have to face facts, some people should not be parents. Abortion will continue to be needed as long as we have
these issues in our society. They can be solved, if we decide to put aside our bickering tinged with some misplaced sense of moral superiority
based on one’s belief system. If you want to eliminate abortion, eliminate the need by working together on those things proven effective in bringing
down the abortion rate.

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