How to Depoliticize Abortion.
Posted by DLW in Uncategorized at 5:14 pm | 
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So here is a succinct statement of How to Depoliticize Abortion:
My idea affirms the essence of Roe-V-Wade as giving a woman the right to elect an abortion under defined circumstances. It guarantees long-term protection to a woman’s right to choose by ensuring that a woman will determine when those defined circumstances will be. It mandates the use of a national referendum of US citizens as the only way we may alter the federal ceiling(currently set at birth) for states’ laws as to when the fetus becomes legally protected against arbitrary loss of life. The national referendum would propose a given specific change to the ceiling that voters could accept or reject. However, for it to pass more than 75% of voting US citizens would need to accept it. The 75% super-majority requirement would guarantee women due process in the determination of laws that exclusively affect their rights.
This removes from the Supreme Court the thorny issue of when the gov’t’s interests in the life of the previable fetus are sufficient to prohibit their elective abortion. It would guarantee some legal change and prevent a return to the pre-Roe-V-Wade days. It would preserve the separation of Church and State, since any religious group would need to persuade many of their fellow citizens of the rightness of their belief as to when personhood should begin before they can change the laws of their country. It would not challenge the part of Roe-V-Wade that leaves whether a woman may elect an abortion during the first trimester to their doctor. It would call for a clarification of the broad guidelines given to doctors for what is a non-elective abortion, but would rely heavily on doctors’ professionalism for compliance with the guidelines. It would challenge the association of human personhood with viability. For what makes us human beings, or persons, is an inherently contested concept that should not be codified into our law in our constitution. We are future-oriented beings and so our viability/autonomy, or our ability to live outside the womb or exist apart from another, need not determine whether we will be legally protected against the undue termination of our lives.
So that’s the idea. In my previous post, I went on to detail additional ways one could prevent elective abortions indirectly. Andrew Donlan writes well on numerous forms of early childhood interventions that can prevent later risky behaviors that lead to unwanted pregnancies and abortions. My general belief is that, to be effective in preventing abortions, what is needed is a serious change in the strategy of prolife political activists. Our existing strategies still alienate our opponents too much into obstructing reforms. As it currently stands and will continue to stand, Abortion mainly serves as a wedge issue that produces much acrimony and crowds out other issues from becoming significant in our elections.
dlw
ps, suggestions for improvement in the above’s wording would be appreciated.
dlw
The 24th of March, 2005 at 8:24 am
Interesting thought experiment, but the nature of politics is such that its not really possible to get 75% of the electorate to agree on anything . Once interest groups start spinning the debate, people tend to get split somewhere close to the middle. Incidentally, there is virtually no difference in opinion between men and women on abortion.
The problem isn’t that the issue is politicized, the problem is that the courts became over-politicized as a result. Even some basically pro-choice thinkers have inferred that it would have been better decided outside of the court (Justice Ginsburg, Alan Dershowitz, Francis Fukuyama).
There are plenty of models of abortion law that falls between the extremes of Roe-v-Wade and pre-Roe USA — look at Europe. There are more restrictions in place — or at least “hoops” to jump through that might discourage it — than in the US. I believe all of those laws were decided by legislatures.
The 24th of March, 2005 at 10:48 am
Ah, but they don’t have to agree that a proposed legal change is ideal, they just need 75% of the population agreeing that it is preferable to the existing law.
The frame of the referendum would be very simple. As I wrote for PTheologian, “Do you support the establishment of legal personhood for a human fetus after x-weeks of gestation, at which point a woman would no longer have the right to elect an abortion?” Then, one could then refer people to sites like this one that provide a wealth of facts about the human fetal development process and other sites that summarize the statistics of when abortions happen and the relative risks of abortions at different stages.
The problem isn’t that the issue is politicized, the problem is that the courts became over-politicized as a result. Even some basically pro-choice thinkers have inferred that it would have been better decided outside of the court (Justice Ginsburg, Alan Dershowitz, Francis Fukuyama).
It still is a problem that it is politicized, because the abortion issue tends to crowd out other issues in elections, despite the attempts of others to expand the issues that Christians consider in making their vote. Too many people have put a lot of time and energy into the abortion issue. They don’t give up on it easily. This will guarantee change and make it no longer matter what the personal views of politicians or judges are.
The primary restriction on abortion ought to be based on whether we view the unborn fetus as at a certain point meriting protections analogous to those given a newborn infant. Other countries don’t have the same historical cultural wars conflicts that the US does. It is because of the acrimony that this issue has caused and the distrust from both sides that we need to go into binding arbitration on the matter.
dlw
The 25th of March, 2005 at 9:45 am
Your statement–
“The primary restriction on abortion ought to be based on whether we view the unborn fetus as at a certain point meriting protections analogous to those given a newborn infant.”
The problem is that there is no constituency that is for the legalization of abortion that frames the issue in that manner. They are concerned about the woman, not the fetus. Here you are letting your intrests shine through.
Furthermore, restricting abortions is always a non-starter because this side feels that this is a medical matter that has no business being decided by the general public. The proposal thus politicies what it claims to be depoliticizing, because right now, this is simply a decision between a woman and her doctor. If your proposal were enacted, things would be very different.
The 25th of March, 2005 at 12:27 pm
1. You can’t be for the legalization of abortion since it is already legal.
2. Yes, they may not frame it that way, but that is literally what is at stake. What is not at stake here is the largess of rights for women.
3. One can be concerned with both the woman and the fetus. At issue is the judgement of whether or not the state has a significant enough interest in the previable fetus at a certain stage to prohibit elective abortions.
4. Medical matters still operate within legal frameworks and legal frameworks are subject to public democratic revision. The process of fetal development is not abstruse science, unlike with the discernment of when a non-elective abortion is needed.
5. All choice is done within a legal context. At issue is the legal context. Many states already make restrictions on elective abortions at later periods of development. In Oregon, you cannot elect an abortion after 16 weeks of gestation.
I’m just proposing a way for us to negotiate a federal ceiling to coincide with the floor that was already determined with Roe-V-Wade.
So don’t be a liberal fundy and insist the world is going to go to hell in a hand-basket if you’re side doesn’t get its way and help me get more people talking about my idea.
dlw
The 25th of March, 2005 at 1:53 pm
All I am doing is trying to explain to you why the proposal is DOA. Where I don’t think that you are facing reality is regarding your numbers 2 and 3. You seem to think that because you see this as the issue that therefore a) everyone must see this as the issue (which they don’t–in huge numbers) and that b) even people that don’t see this as the issue are going to enter into binding arbitration which may very well give away half the farm (which they won’t–period), when they don’t have to.
The pro-choice groups are never going to vote to put something in the constitution about fetal viability. Even putting the matter in those terms is Republican fantasy. I can already see the commercials: the right could show endless pictures of fetuses floating in amniotic fluid as campaign ads for the proposal
Would you support a similar proposal that was worded “Resolved: At week X women shall be forced to seek back-alley abortions during a pregnancy”? For the ad campaign the Democrats can run pictures of blood-soaked coathangers in the hands of Dr. Mengele-lookalikes. Of course, I know you wouldn’t support this, but is it because you are “right wing fundy” who doesn’t recognize a depoliticized way out of the current mess when he sees one? Or is your reason for not supporting my proposal the same as mine, which is namely that both proposals are biased in one direction? Now as much I would love to have my proposal voted on by the electorate, what’s the likelihood that members of the pro-life community are going to get behind this?
The 26th of March, 2005 at 4:20 pm
We will see whether it will remain DOA. I received some counsel from Andy Donovan and rewrote my succinct summary of the idea quite a bit.
I guess it depends on what you see as “reality”. I believe the vast majority of US citizens would agree that birth is an arbitrary point at which to treat the human fetus as a legally-protected person. I totally disagree that the idea would by any meas give away half the farm. What it would do is guarantee that the vast majority of the actual farm is protected and does not need to be guarded as much.
It escapes me why liberals like yourself cannot see the value in that.
The pro-choice groups are never going to vote to put something in the constitution about fetal viability. Even putting the matter in those terms is Republican fantasy. I can already see the commercials: the right could show endless pictures of fetuses floating in amniotic fluid as campaign ads for the proposal
I’m not putting anything about fetal viability in the constitution. You’re still not grasping the point. I am taking away the Republican Party’s ability to use later-term pictures to pursue making much earlier abortions illegal. We can prohibit partisan advertisements and set up official sources of statistics/non-dramatized pictures of the relevant fetal stages that would provide the grist for people’s decisions.
Would you support a similar proposal that was worded “Resolved: At week X women shall be forced to seek back-alley abortions during a pregnancy”? For the ad campaign the Democrats can run pictures of blood-soaked coathangers in the hands of Dr. Mengele-lookalikes.
No one forces anyone to risk their life/health by breaking a law. There are better ways to prevent such extreme situations than to keep abortion on demand legal at all stages of pregnancy.
both proposals are biased in one direction? Now as much I would love to have my proposal voted on by the electorate, what’s the likelihood that members of the pro-life community are going to get behind this?
I can’t say the two are really the same or just biased differently so long as it is guaranteed that there are defined circumstances when women may elect an abortion.
I think the real issue here is whether or not we can trust the general US population to decide when the human fetus should be legally protected.
I think we can and that if we do that it will end up improving the overall rights of women. Why do you think that a majority or more of women voters would be so easily manipulated into naively giving up more than half of the farm?
dlw
The 26th of March, 2005 at 9:20 pm
I didn’t say anything about anybody being manipulated, much less women. Those are your words.
What I am saying is that thirty plus years of polling data on abortion has demonstrated that you can get a huge variation of responses from exactly the same people simply by changing the wording of the question. Your question obviously favors your side and does not favor mine. Obviously, taking into account what is widely known about the polling data, the pro-choice side is not about to allow you to frame the question in a way that is disadvantageous to keeping the staus quo, any more than you would allow it to be framed in a way that was disadvantageous to yours.
That you don’t even understand how it is disadvantageous to the pro-choice side is even further reason why it will be DOA. You can’t very well rectify what we would percieve to be weaknesses if you don’t grasp why we object, which you clearly don’t.
You are projecting what you see as the issue–a legal standard for fetal viability– and making it a universal, when it really is just your issue. The pro-choice side has no interest in making that the law. That you have to argue with me to try to convince me that it really is my issue ought to give you a clue that you are barking up the wrong tree and that you would probably do better to go back to square one, which in my judgment would be to build something that grew out of our concerns, not just yours. And again, if you have to argue with me to get me to see reason that it really is my concern, it most assuredly is not.
The 26th of March, 2005 at 11:13 pm
It is not about your side versus my side and it is not about protecting the status quo on this particular issue. It is about whether there is a way to reframe the issue to resolve the matter and let other issues, particularly those that affect the rights of women, come to play much greater importance in our elections/ democracy.
Not all frames of the issue are equal in this regard. I don’t want to see any woman die or be seriously injured from an illegal abortion. I also believe that neither birth nor viability are the end-all-be-alls for when we should be treated as legally-protected persons. I think we can change both.
There is no weakness in changing one’s long-standing position on a matter. God knows I’ve changed mine. My hope is that the prolife supporter’s energies would be redirected to changing hearts not laws on this particular matter and doing more to help save unborn and already-born lives via other means. But I think that to redirect those energies, we need to depoliticize Abortion and that is why I’ve been working on this issue for quite some time.
Look I’m sorry, I don’t mean for this to get personal. I’ve appreciated your feedback on the matter and your perspective. I hope you have a blessed Easter and thankyou again for a rousing debate.
dlw
The 28th of March, 2005 at 1:12 am
From Bob Jenkins -
We have spoken before about your proposal and while there has been effort in a revision, it still does not recognize the law and how the law is changed. No majority of the people can change a constitutional provision and, even if it were proposed as an amendment, it would be right back in the hands of politions who would speak for state ratification without a requirement to even poll the state electorate - given the ratification process selected by most states.
Your comments equate the referendum to a “preference” and that is as non-binding as a “sense of the Senate”
The 28th of March, 2005 at 11:16 am
Hi Bob,
I’m afraid this sentence, [an amendment] would be right back in the hands of politions who would speak for state ratification without a requirement to even poll the state electorate - given the ratification process selected by most states. is unclear as is the next sentence.
dlw
The 29th of March, 2005 at 9:15 am
Thanks for the invitation to join the fray, but I’m afraid there is not much I can add about your proposal. I certainly agree with you in principle that there needs to be compromise. But in reality, I’m not confident it will happen.
America has the most liberal abortion laws in the world and they were imposed by judicial fiat. That is an inherently unstable situation. Every other western democracy has settled the issue legislatively. They are less polarized and have fewer abortions.
One of the reasons there won’t be compromise is because the pro-choice side has no reason to compromise. This is pretty well illustrated in your debate with PT. The pro-choice lobby has strong influence on the Democratic Party, which has pretty much raised its middle finger to working-class Catholics and Evangelicals who used to constitute the party base. The 2004 Dem platform actually advocated for a woman’s “right” to an abortion “regardless of her ability to pay”. In other words, taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, through all nine months of pregnancy. When you have that kind of influence on a political party, why compromise?
But the Dem’s are committing political suicide. It’s no accident that their biggest loss was in the senate, where they’ve been fighting Bush’s judicial nominees. Roe-v-Wade may well be overturned in the next decade. The question, for pro-life moderates like myself, is how much collateral damage will come with it?
The 29th of March, 2005 at 10:18 am
Potentially, a lot of collateral damage will come with the struggle to overturn Roe-V-Wade and that is why the debate needs to be reframed. Think about having more Anthony Scalias as Supreme Court Justices. Think about how much time will be wasted on the nomination process when we have so many other issues to deal with.
That is why us moderates need to work to reframe the politics of abortion. Wallis is not being specific enough. It is because of the legislative clout and concern of liberals that we need to use unusual measures.
I’d only pray that you pray and think about helping me publicize my idea. I’m hoping that Tim Penny will run as the MN Independence Party candidate for gov’r of MN again and take on my idea as his official position.
All it needs to work is to get enough people from both sides behind it. The dynamics of US politics will significantly change if we depoliticize this issue. Even if it doesn’t come into being, it can reframe the debate in ways that will be more fruitful.
dlw
The 23rd of May, 2005 at 2:17 pm
I have read the first several posts, and skimmed the rest, but it seems to me that most of the discussion has assumed that the fetus is healthy.
Let me tell you my experience: but first, let me remind you that the limit mentioned above was 16 weeks pregnant.
My partner was working as a ultrasound technition in a level two OB/Gyn practice. This means doing ultrasound scans on the more difficult or questionable cases. When she was fairly new at it, she had a patient who was having her first scan at 29 weeks. We don’t know why she waited that long — she wasn’t older, and there were no other indications of problems, so maybe that’s why. When the tech scanned the fetus, she found malformed arms, legs, heart, and kidney, with no skull and the brains floating, disorganized, in the amniotic fluid. This fetus had no chance of surviving more than a few seconds after birth. Childbirth is always a danger for the mother. This problem wasn’t discovered until 29 weeks.
What would you do if the law said no abortions after 16 weeks?
At the very least, in order to enact a law like that, the government would need to pay for ultrasound scanning for ALL pregnancies before 16 weeks. But some stuff you can only tell at about then, so there’s no time to organize an abortion before the deadline. By the way, her mentor, a more experienced ultrasound tech and gynocologist said they find about one case like this per month. It’s not as rare as you think.
The 24th of May, 2005 at 3:55 am
Hi Kim, thanks for the questions. The law says no elective abortions after the point determined by more 75% of your fellow citizens. The case you mentioned would be an easy diagnosis of a non-elective abortion.
As I have written elsewhere, I believe that broad guidelines should be given to doctors as to what is an elective vs nonelective abortion. And the enforcement of these laws would depend rather heavily on the professionalism of the physician.
I hope that helps, thanks for reading and posting.
dlw
The 28th of May, 2005 at 7:35 pm
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
The 16th of October, 2005 at 3:03 pm
I applaud your attempt to put some reasoned and ethical thought into the matter. Forgive me for taking the wind out of your sales immediately, but there is simply nothing there that would depoliticize anything. Instead, it would create a whole new range of politicized issues.
First of all, you have to understand that fully 10% of the population is never, ever going to accept any form of legalized abortion. It is considered by this group to be inherently evil - it’s muder. The only way to satisfy this group is to make all abortion illegal.
Then there is another 10% who will not accept any limits on abortion rights under any circumstances. Abortion is a symbol for this group of a woman having possession of her body. There is no room for compromise with them.
What you can do is attempt to come up with realistic limits that a majority of the remaining 80% of the population will back.
Now, to deal with aspects of your proposal:
First, there is no mechanism that allows any sort of national referendum. To accomplish this would require an amendment to the Constitution. That is designed to be a very difficult plan of action.
Second, the only way to remove the Supreme Court from the mix is to pass yet another amendment backing your position. A plan that depends on two amendments is not going to be politically viable (at least not in the short term).
Third, 75% of registered voters have never even agreed to vote in the same election, much less agree on which side to vote.
Fourth, both sides find an advantage to the current situation where they can use abortion as a reliable issue to turn out voters. In short, they don’t want to change it because it works for them.
XT
The 16th of October, 2005 at 3:39 pm
I applaud your attempt to put some reasoned and ethical thought into the matter. Forgive me for taking the wind out of your sales immediately, but there is simply nothing there that would depoliticize anything. Instead, it would create a whole new range of politicized issues.
I disagree, let me be more specific about what I mean by depoliticize, I mean make an issue of far less significance in elections as a wedge issue.
First of all, you have to understand that fully 10% of the population is never, ever going to accept any form of legalized abortion. It is considered by this group to be inherently evil - it’s muder. The only way to satisfy this group is to make all abortion illegal.
I know this and wrote my idea in part in reaction to them. Hopefully most of the people in their ranks would support making some elective abortions illegal and once there is no chance in hell that all abortions will be made illegal, they will move on to other issues.
Then there is another 10% who will not accept any limits on abortion rights under any circumstances. Abortion is a symbol for this group of a woman having possession of her body. There is no room for compromise with them.
Once again, I understand this and think that they too can be undercut, so long as a decent guarantee is given that the first groups’ preferred position is made unfeasible.
First, there is no mechanism that allows any sort of national referendum. To accomplish this would require an amendment to the Constitution. That is designed to be a very difficult plan of action.
I agree it would require an amendment to make the legal redefinition of when we are first treated as legally protected persons determined only by referendums. I think if one can garner a sizeable fraction of 80% of the population’s support on an issue that has wearied so many people with its intransigence, it will get momentum and the meanwhile transform the political debate so that there is more two basic positions with mine claiming much more of the center.
Second, the only way to remove the Supreme Court from the mix is to pass yet another amendment backing your position. A plan that depends on two amendments is not going to be politically viable (at least not in the short term).
We can fuse the two changes and even if it isn’t likely to pass short term doesn’t mean that it isn’t good political strategy to change the dynamics of the debate.
Third, 75% of registered voters have never even agreed to vote in the same election, much less agree on which side to vote.
Advertisements for the Censuses are successful in improving turn out. We don’t need 100% turnout for a referendum to hold…and not voting will not necessarily imply opposition to the referendum. I’m sure we can work out details like that. Hopefully, we probably won’t need too many referendums and can rely on the Senate to use surveys to avoid having referendums that are unlikely to pass. But given that Abortion has been the most divisive issue in our country’s history since Slavery, I don’t see anything wrong with using unusual measures to deal with it.
Fourth, both sides find an advantage to the current situation where they can use abortion as a reliable issue to turn out voters. In short, they don’t want to change it because it works for them.
Ah, but there are other issues they can do this with and we don’t need to get the official party leadership’s approval to make the alternative a contender. We just need maverick politicians to champion the issue and garner the media’s attention to it so that the debate will spread and new wineskins will be necessitated.
thanks for the critical feedback…
dlw
The 8th of November, 2005 at 6:42 pm
_fairleft_ wrote First of all, your effort should be to (greatly) lessen the politicization of abortion. Depoliticize ain’t gonna happen.
It’s a matter of relative importance. One can make the issue far less likely to e decisive in elections.
Here’s my take: the goal would be achieved by the SCt dealing explicitly with the issue of when human life begins (rather than continuing the avoid-the-subject and constantly changing ‘viability’ standard). I think this judgment is best a judicial one because putting it in the political arena would inappropriately bring religious judgments to bear on the matter.
“religious” judgments come to bear on the matter regardless of whether it is decided in the courts, in the legislature or by a nat’l referendum. That’s why I prefer a nat’l referendum.
The Supremes should make a common sense _scientific_ judgment, tied to some sensible but inevitably arbitrary scientific standard, that most people (assuming judgments were not clouded by religious doctrine) in their best natures would accept. As a start, the b.b. size zygote at 25 days sure doesn’t seem ‘human’ to me or to any other reasonable person, and at 7 or 8 months the fetus sure sure does. The judges need to stay close to those kinds of seat of the pants judgments, but find a hard scientific border.
I don’t think such a moral judgment is strictly “scientific”, though it requires a deliberation on the facts that scientific study generates. I don’t think the relevant facts are that erudite regarding when we should treat the unborn as a legally-protected-person. I think the relevant facts dividing elective vs non-elective abortions are far more erudite and so the gov’t should just set broad principles that trust the Hypocratic oath taken by Doctors for much of their enforcement. I think Doe-V-Bolton is somewhat excessively vague in its criterion in this regard, though.
I don’t think that the capability to reason is critical for what makes us humans. This is part of our autonomy and a slippery-slope, IMO. Even people with brain trauma or mental retardation deserve to live out their lives naturally.
Tough work, and I would expect and accept the judges to secretly bias things just a little toward religious opinion, that’s par for the course. And secretly bias their judgment so that a woman has plenty of time to choose before, very properly, the rights of the human being inside her outweigh her privacy rights.
I think faith inevitably plays a role in such judgments, regardless of whether it is a “religious” faith or not. I also think there is selectivity in how much time a woman truly needs to elect an abortion. If she is raped, she can do it the next day. If she is sexually active and risks contraceptive failure, then she can periodically take a pregnancy test.
As I stated, I would prefer for my community to treat the unborn as a human being 48 days afater conception, but I do not see any chance for first trimester elective abortions to be made illegal in the near future, but I think some day, the def’n of legal personhood would extend into the first trimester.
dlw
The 9th of November, 2005 at 3:27 pm
Please post my original post (not this one) as an independent post.
The 9th of November, 2005 at 3:45 pm
Okay…
dlw
The 14th of November, 2005 at 11:16 pm
[…] I think the wording of the nurturing family life policy section may have been changed some so that homosexual civil unions may be possible so long as they are not treated as the (heterosexual) family’s social and legal equivalent. The document remains unequivocal in its implicit view that the newly-formed zygote is a human being in its condemnation of abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. It would be interesting to see how the NAE people would react to my proposal for permitting the legal redefinition of when human personhood begins. Their unequivocal skipping over the fact of some ambiguity as to when we become human beings makes me hope even more that we can depoliticize this issue, so that some within the NAE will not perpetually insist that key to a biblically-balanced agenda for evangelical civic responsibility is more often supporting candidates that purport to be in favor of making all elective abortions illegal. […]
The 23rd of November, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Your proposal faces the challenge of a totally unprecedented means - a national referendum, for which there is no Constitutional provision. It also frames the issue solely in terms of age, which will be difficult for many who don’t personally frame it that way.
For the near term, probably the most effective way to deal with the issue of abortions is not in the legality/illegality arena. It is more in the nature of making the choice for life seem more viable for pregnant women who now do not see it as viable. I think the reduction of the abortion rate in recent years has a great deal to do with this - the network of thousands of pregnancy centers and other resources for pregnant women has provided women with the support they needed to make a choice for life. There is also properly a governmental role in this, exemplified by the 95/10 Initiative of Democrats for Life - see http://www.democratsforlife.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=45
There is a stereotype of those who are pro-life on abortion, which includes being right wing and opposed to almost anything which supports life in other contexts than abortion or euthanasia. Progressive people often buy “pro-choice” as part of a package without ever seriously thinking about it. Those of us who don’t fit the stereotype need to be very open about it to help burst it. This has already started to occur, but much more needs to be done. Groups like Feminists for Life, Democrats for Life and Consistent Life can play a very important role. And one thing we need to do is challenge the rightwing anti-abortion groups when they try to reinforce the stereotype.
The 24th of November, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Hi Bill, you wrote, “Your proposal faces the challenge of a totally unprecedented means - a national referendum, for which there is no Constitutional provision. It also frames the issue solely in terms of age, which will be difficult for many who don’t personally frame it that way.”
I agree that it would require a constitutional amendment. I also agree that it reframes the issue radically from the way it’s currently framed by many people. [Keanu Reeve voice:]That’s why it’s going to work!
The fundamental legal issues are when do we first treat the human unborn as legally-protected persons and what general principles should to guide the physician’s discernment between elective and non-elective abortions. All other frames unnecessarily complicate the heart of the political conflict or unhelpfully read their preferred solutions in to how the problem is framed.
And so even if my idea is not likely to be put into action in the near future, it can change the nabure of the debate and that is part of it’s intention.
For the near term, probably the most effective way to deal with the issue of abortions is not in the legality/illegality arena. It is more in the nature of making the choice for life seem more viable for pregnant women who now do not see it as viable. I think the reduction of the abortion rate in recent years has a great deal to do with this - the network of thousands of pregnancy centers and other resources for pregnant women has provided women with the support they needed to make a choice for life. There is also properly a governmental role in this, exemplified by the 95/10 Initiative of Democrats for Life.
I don’t see why the two are not mutually compatible. The issue of the potential legal redefinition of when we treat the unborn as legally-protected persons is always going to loom over the issue until we start to dialogue more on it. A lot of the implicit language used by both sides in this debate skirts over this issue by implicitly assuming that the unborn is always a human being. They just then frame the issue as being whether we allow for murder to be legal or we “criminalize” abortion. This is a recipe for further political paralysis and general mean-spiritedness by both sides that may have an undue influence on the selection of our supreme court justices, a selection that is very important for lots of additional reasons besides the laws governing abortion.
thankyou for commenting, but I think it’s not enough to burst the stereotypes of prolifers. I think we need to be peace-makers, reframing the issues in ways that prevent it from remainingin the most ideologically divisive issue in the US since Slavery. Given the gravity of the issue, we need new wineskins/frames for dealing with it.
dlw
The 24th of November, 2005 at 7:02 pm
You are clarifying that your purpose is to ensure the legality of abortion by denying the humanity of human beings before some arbitrary age. You attack both sides for assuming the humanity of the fetus, which is actually a biological fact.
You say “I think we need to be peace-makers” but essential to peacemaking, IMHO, is assuming the humanity of the other. As someone who is pro-abortion, you are willing to assume the humanity of pro-lifers but you are not willing to assume the humanity of the unborn.
You have brought up the parallel to slavery. Note that we freed, at least legally, all human beings. We didn’t provide a category that could remain dehumanized. We must do the same with respect to abortion.
Could we have ended slavery without a war? I believe so. England and other countries did.
The 25th of November, 2005 at 1:19 am
thankyou for your honest interaction, Bill.
You are clarifying that your purpose is to ensure the legality of abortion by denying the humanity of human beings before some arbitrary age. You attack both sides for assuming the humanity of the fetus, which is actually a biological fact.
No, I think a more accurate statement of the root presuppositions in my proposed idea is that there is some ambiguity, or room for legit disagreement, about when we become human beings and that it is futile to try to make and keep all elective abortions illegal. The fact that the fetus is “human” does not imply that it is a human being. To have human dna and be biologically alive does not make one a human being, inasmuch as the same can be said for each one of our cells. Thus, the “facts”, in and of themselves, are not conclusive and that is why we need to come up with a means by which we can agree to resolve our disagreements in determining the sorts of laws that will govern us all.
As such, while it is true that the referendum-procedure I propose would only change the arbitrary point when we treat the human unborn as legally-protected persons, the new definitions would reflect the deliberations of at least 75% of the US population on the facts of the human fetal development and what it means to be a human being. That would be an improvement on the current situation and permit further changes as we successfully change people’s hearts on this issue. I do not see any hope for making all elective abortions illegal, on this side of heaven, and, based on my own extensive deliberations, I do not believe anymore that the newly conceived zygote is a human being. I am able to live with preventing by law elective abortions after a certain albeit arbitrary cut-off point and then supporting a wide array of policies to prevent risky behaviors/unplanned pregnancies/earlier abortions. I believe this goal is a reasonable one that will free my and other’s activist energies up to press more forcefully on other issues.
You say “I think we need to be peace-makers” but essential to peacemaking, IMHO, is assuming the humanity of the other. As someone who is pro-abortion, you are willing to assume the humanity of pro-lifers but you are not willing to assume the humanity of the unborn.
I think being “peace-makers” has a lot to do with getting to the root of a given conflict and communicating the essence of this conflict to the opposing parties in a way that facilitates peaceful compromise. I think key to long-term depoliticization of abortion is an acknowledgement by both sides that there is some ambiguity as to when we become human beings and should legally protect the unborn against arbitrary loss of its life by others.
I am not pro-abortion. I do not see wisdom in trying to deny the extant woman’s right to elect an abortion in defined circumstances. I see past attempts to deny this right as responsible for the poisoning of my country’s democracy over the past thirty-some years and am concerned about preventing this sit.
You have brought up the parallel to slavery. Note that we freed, at least legally, all human beings. We didn’t provide a category that could remain dehumanized. We must do the same with respect to abortion.
The parallel is limited, inasmuch as it is not self-evident or even given in the Bible, when the unborn is a human being. The sooner we acknowledge that, the easier it will be to make progress on abortion.
Could we have ended slavery without a war? I believe so. England and other countries did.
I agree completely that if the abolitionists had been more savvy at dealing with structural sin and picked their battles better, we could have organically grown the African-Americans out of slavery without such a deadly war as the Civil War that killed off our country’s reformist spirit, led to deep-seated regional inequalities in development, and made us in the North far more materialistically oriented.
We cannot change the past, but we can pick our battles better in the present, employing the greater structural savvy we have been blessed with today.
dlw
The 25th of November, 2005 at 9:06 pm
[…] I’ve been writing more letters to the Evangelicals for Social Action’s Prism E-pistle, practically pleading for attention for my idea to depoliticize abortion. Well, my pleadings were pleasantly answered when Bill Samuels, webservant of Seamless-Garment.org commented on my idea. […]
The 28th of November, 2005 at 10:01 pm
I agree completely that if the abolitionists had been more savvy at dealing with structural sin and picked their battles better, we could have organically grown the African-Americans out of slavery without such a deadly war as the Civil War that killed off our country’s reformist spirit, led to deep-seated regional inequalities in development, and made us in the North far more materialistically oriented.
um, what does this mean?
The 29th of November, 2005 at 12:02 am
Abolitionists tried to deal with structural sin the same way they dealt with personal sin, thorugh personal conversions.
But dealing with structural sin requires different tactics. It generally requires sustained activism focusing on a series of reforms. If abolitionists had focused more on pressing for gradual political reforms, pricking the consciences of their fellow Christians, without advocating for truly radical changes, they could have been more successful earlier. And, eventually, we might have “freed” the African-Americans out of slavery without having to have such a dealdy civil war.
The civil war killed off our country’s reformist spirit(and made the North far more materialistically oriented, disregarding the importance of history) and the way the southern states were overall treated by the radical republicans in the north helped to foster serious regional differences in regional development.
dlw
The 14th of February, 2006 at 6:55 pm
[…] RoeVWade enshrined that viability outside of the womb was the only valid basis for treating the unborn human as a legally-protected person. This is a very contested notion and was a serious mistake. We can allow for legal change in what are the defined circumstances when women may elect an abortion, while at the same time guaranteeing women the right to due process on this matter that affects them most of all. The answer that allows for ongoing compromises between the opposing sides that do not trust one another and makes it so the personal views of legislators and judges are not so important is my idea to depoliticize abortion. […]
The 20th of May, 2006 at 11:56 pm
[…] I just don’t see serious progress on this critically divisive issue and the political renewal needed for third parties to become effective becoming possible until we reframe this issue and I strongly believe with all my heart that no better way in the US currently exists than the idea that I developed. […]
The 20th of June, 2006 at 5:47 pm
[…] My goal is to get him to focus more on changes in animal rights and less on making others believe that every soul is sacred. We also talk some about the freedom of religion and the role of ontotheological beliefs in all political activism. Along that line of debate, I’m probably trying to get him to have a more generous orthodoxy in animal rights activism. I’ve also tried to get him to help me propagate my idea on how to depoliticize abortion. […]
The 22nd of June, 2006 at 3:24 pm
[…] Well, it was bound to happen eventually, but I finally got the big thumbs down from Alan Avans of the CDU for my idea to depoliticize abortion as a watered down version of RoeVWade that could never be part of their platform. I kind of thought already this would happen, but it still stings some. […]
The 25th of June, 2006 at 10:57 pm
[…] I did through a misunderstanding, believe that some reconciliation was possible or that I could win them over to changing their basic plank. I guess my ego inflates my estimation of the extent my writing may change others. But, here is a revised version of what I wrote for Alan Avans/CDU, recently. I believe it is a superior strategy for dealing with abortion and could enable a third party to gain a serious foot hold on power by capturing the center on this most persistently contentious issue. For the CDU to succeed in getting significant National attention and a toe hold on power, it needs to gamble. That includes gambling by taking a controversial and more centrist position on the politics of abortion. The goal of this gamble is to reduce effectively the number of abortions and to get free nat’l media attention by distinguishing ourselves from both main parties and capturing the center on this issue. Idea: We call ourselves Pragmatic ProLifers. We commit ourselves to working long-term to making all elective abortions approx. 48 days after conception illegal. We justify this goal by stressing that it is not an arbitrary compromise cutoff point but rather is a clear cut dividing line for when we should first treat the human unborn as legally-protected-persons. It is clear cut on account of the critical importance of relationality for whether someone is a human being. What makes us human beings is not our dna or our level of brain activity or how much autonomy we have as individuals. What makes us human beings is not any specific set of attributes that we possess, but rather how other human beings are able to recognize themselves in us. This is the critical importance of relationality for whether someone is a human being and the first means by which we recognize someone as such is through their human form that emerges at 48 days after conception, as illustrated here. Now, we don’t have to all agree at CDU on this notion of when we should first treat the human unborn as human beings, but we can say that “Not all of us in the CDU believe this and many of us hold to more conservative or liberal positions personally, but we agreed that politically it would be wise to make this our end-goal for the extension of legal-personhood to the unborn. We could then use pictures from before, at and after this point in embryonic development to illustrate our goal. The next step is to emphasize the need to be pragmatic or strategic in acheiving this goal. The point here is that we need to stress that it is much more important to change hearts than laws about the personhood of the human unborn and that we must also seek legal and social changes that will value all mothers. The first part would involve us committing ourselves constitutionally to changing the beliefs of the vast majority of USAmerican citizens on when the human unborn should be treated as legally-protected person. This can be done with a constitutional amendment making such change only possible through a national referendum, as outlined in my idea. The second part follows Jesus in the way he did not condemn the sinner in John 8:1-11 but rather stood up for her right to life and dignity(despite her shortcomings) and asked her to leave her sinful lifestlye. So we’d have a three part strategy. In the first part, we would encourage local reforms meant to prevent abortions and care for mothers, like those advocated by feminist prolifer Serrin Foster, in the second part we would lead the charge for a multipartisan-supported Constitutional Amendment that would omit the economically liberal aspects of your current amendment to seek support of prolife economic conservatives and repeal parts of RoeVWade(We could try to repeal RoeVWade piece-wise, leaving its protection of all first trimester elective abortions until the end.), the third part would be to press for a series of referendums until we reached our goal. I believe this would work long run and in the short-run it would be just what the CDU needs to distinguish itself from the main parties, whose institutional rigidities would let us capitalize on capturing the center. As someone who used to believe that we were humans at conception and then switched to viability and then went through a process of gradually working out what I believed through much debate and study, I can promise you that I believe 100% that we will be able to convince 75% of the US population to make the beginning of legal personhood at 48 days after conception. I don’t believe that about conception. In fact, I see the belief that we are ensoulled human beings at conception as basically a religious tradition, justified neither by Science nor Scripture, that is held by some Christians and not others. As such, I am very much opposed, on the basis of the separation of Church and State, for it to be made law over and against the views of the majority of US citizens. Strategic Problems with the existing CDU approach. The approach of coupling a strong orthodox position on abortion with economic advocacy for the working class and poor is too easily decoupled. I think it also is hard to commit to politically. It skips over the uncomfortable question of how the party would work out its priorities when the two agendas inevitably come into conflict. A party has only so much political capital and when they come into power, they will be under pressure behind the scenes by moneyed interests. In these situations, it would be easy to deprioritize economic issues by over prioritizing social issues and then spinning the outcome to the party as “biblically balanced” or “compromise”. The key to circumventing this problem is to pick one’s battles wisely at the outset on social issues so as to ensure a better balance between them and economic issues and to provide more room for making key structural reforms to the political system. Structural reforms like First Pass the Post Plus or making state legislative bodies a unicameral hybrid between representational and majoritarian systems where elections are annual and there is near 100% voter participation. But in all of this, we need to distinguish between God’s ideals and human laws that inevitably accomodate human sinfulness. And, inasmuch as we are fallible in discerning what sorts of legal changes we may make in the here and now, it is not helpful to claim that our goals reflect a transcendent ”natural law”. We can believe in moral realism and oppose moral relativism but also admit that our systems of cultural values/beliefs fall short of “The Ideal” and can and should be open to change. So, that didn’t work with the CDU, but I still believe that it could work and help a third party grow in political influence. I was at the Independence Party convention yesterday to support my friend Pam Ellison who is running for gov’r of MN. She was seeking the endorsement of the party and the funds it got because of the quasi-successful campaign of Tim Penny four years ago, after Jesse Ventura decided not to run for reelection. Tim, unfortunately, took his loss four years ago hard and decided not to run again. This is tragic. Now, the party has endorsed Peter Hutchinson as its main candidate along with his Team Minnesota. The problem is that Hutchinson is not as a good of a speaker or debater as Pam and one could describe him as a Tim Penny Lite. Which raises the question, if Tim couldn’t win four years ago with his political experience, prestige and great press coverage, how does Hutchinson think he’s going to win? One could argue that Pam is definitely a different candidate than Penny and, as a female with a female lieutenant gov’r candidate, would have several strategic advantages. But no, slogans like, “Neither Right nor Center, But Forward!” and party stalwarts ensured that Hutchinson et al will get the money to spend. But Pam is still going to contest him in the Primary in September, and maybe now she’ll consider taking the gamble of taking on aspects of some of my own ideas. We’ll see… dlw […]
The 2nd of August, 2006 at 9:50 pm
[…] However, as I believe in the separation of Church and State, I want to commit myself to changing first the hearts of the vast majority of US Citizens on this matter. I think the way to do this is to tie ourselves to the mast and initially target a strategically chosen Constitutional Amendment that would only allow us to make federal legal changes as to when we first treat the human unborn as a legally-protected person through national referendums that would require a 75% super majority to pass. If we passed the constitutional amendment, we would then be able to use a series of referendums to make the human unborn legally-protected persons at earlier stages of development, ideally up until 48 days after conception. […]
The 20th of April, 2007 at 1:52 pm
[…] I oppose it, as the proper issue is not whether a particular abortafacient technique should be legal, but rather whether the human unborn should be treated as a legally-protected person. […]