With reproductive rights guaranteed to American women being obstructed in many states and Roe v Wade likely to soon be eviscerated by the Supreme Court, the very meaning of that tidy phrase “pro-choice” is worthy of revisitation.
In Texas a six-week-old embryo, about the size of a grain of rice, has been accorded rights of personhood superseding the liberty of a woman in her own regard. In the religious imagination of some people this pulsing follicle is an expression of the original creative breath of an unseen God that must not be compromised by any actual conditions of a woman’s life, her own beliefs notwithstanding.
The Roman Catholic mandate that contraception is sinful and equivalent to abortion confirms this mystical imperative. It is the deistic notion of the sanctity of the chain of being emanating from the original urgency of the creator.
And yet, the Bible says nothing explicit about abortion. And the church and various popes have changed their views about it many times in history until only in the last century it was declared a procedure always to be banned. Of course, the church reserves the right to change this ruling at any time.
At what moment in gestation does an embryo differentiate itself from existence as an emerging uterine feature to become a human being? Are you of the opinion that an embryo about the size of the dot over the “i” in “Hampshire” in this newspaper’s masthead ought properly to be considered a “child” equivalent to your precocious kindergartener or recalcitrant teenager? You have the right to this opinion and you also have the right to live your personal life according to this sensibility. Millions of others, of course, are not inclined to agree.
Ronald Reagan was one of them back in pre-Roe 1967, when, as governor of California, he signed a liberal abortion bill. Roe was decided in 1973 so these protections were rare at the time. When Reagan attained the Republican nomination for president in 1980 he recalibrated this stance and supported a constitutional amendment outlawing nearly all abortions. His wife, Nancy, disagreed with him and after his presidency spoke out for a woman’s right to choose.
George H.W. Bush had to sign on to the anti-abortion platform when Reagan tapped him to join the ticket as vice-presidential nominee. Prior to this his position was ambiguous.
By 1988, when Bush was the presidential nominee himself, the GOP platform would go even further. It asserted that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”Bush explained that he had consulted with physicians and clergy and his understanding had changed. His wife, Barbara, disagreed with him as his attitude continued to shift, just as Reagan’s wife did.
Mitt Romney was publicly pro-choice when he ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate in Massachusetts as he also had to be to win his gubernatorial race against Shannon O’Brien in 2004. But in order to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012 he declared himself unequivocally opposed to the procedure. Was either of these views largely a political calculus? If yes, which one do you suppose?
In 1999 Donald Trump said on Meet the Press, “I’m very pro-choice.” When asked, if president, would he ban even so-called partial birth abortion, terminating a pregnancy in the third trimester, he replied “No.” Only as he prepared a run for president did his public stance shift from pro-choice to anti-abortion absolutism.
My point is not that these men changed their minds, even if their motivations may have been more about the opportunistic acquisition of political power than derived from authentic changes in conviction. They had the right to choose. The problem is that they advocated banning any woman from doing exactly what they had done, that is, consulting with clergy, doctors, embryologists, family, and their own conscience in order to reach their own conclusion. Their position was that they had the right to choose for all women and no women should have it in her own regard.
The decision to terminate a pregnancy merits deeply reflective consideration perhaps similar to that which George H. W. Bush says he devoted himself to before reaching a judgment that he then wanted to force every woman in the country to behave without any opportunity to do what he had done. He and these men believed that their most recent deliberation should be the last that anyone had the right to pursue.
Of course, we also have witnessed the hypocrisy of many who oppose a woman’s right to choose as a doctrinaire political stance yet avail themselves of the procedure when it suits them personally. This yields the cynical observation that many folks are opposed to abortion other than in cases involving rape, incest, or when they or someone close to them wants one. And for these rich men and their families and friends it is simple enough to go to wherever the procedure is available and pay for it no matter what oppressive controls they advocate for others.
So, who ought to have the freedom to choose? A pope? A doctor? A pastor? Ronald Reagan? Mitt Romney? The government by fiat? Your hostile next door neighbor as now empowered in Texas? Or, a pregnant person in their own regard?
Being pro-choice doesn’t mean you would choose to have an abortion, although you never really know until you are faced with that personal and sometimes dreadful decision. It simply means respecting and supporting women in making this choice in regard to themselves rather than being compelled by the choices of men who then command compliance with their own personal current opinion, a regard for women’s capacity to make this choice that is at least paternalistic and often contemptuous.
Jonathan Klate lives in Amherst and writes about spirituality, ideology, and the relationship between these two.