Pro-Life, Pro-Choice: Shared Values in the Abortion Debate

5. A Pro-Choice Moral Framework

104 5 A Pro-­ Choice Moral Framework It has been four decades since Roe v. Wade granted women abortion rights, and the moral debate has far from abated. The dispute is not simply between pro- and anti-­ choice advocates; even among pro-­ choice advocates conversations brew concerning what constitutes morally acceptable or unacceptable reasons for choosing an abortion . Leslie Cannold notes: “Almost all the women I interviewed saw the abortion issue as revolving around the pregnant woman’s decision-­ making process. An abortion decision that did not reflect a woman’s ‘feelings’ and ‘love’ for her could-­ be child and other significant people in her life, and that was not motivated by care and protective concern forall those she loves, was just plain wrong.”1 Unlike anti-­ choice advocates, pro-­ choice women typically do not question the legitimacy of abortion rights— yet they do maintain that discussing the morality of individual abortion decisions means going beyond the language of rights. Cannold reports: The younger women I interviewed tended to see safe and legal abortion as their birthright and were more concerned with the morality of the abortion decisions made by individual women. . . . No matter what their position on the morality of abortion, the women had almost identical views on the ethical issues that should be central in the mind of a woman 105 A Pro-­ Choice Moral Framework dealing with the dilemma of an unexpected pregnancy and the concepts pregnant women needed to use to navigate this dilemma: responsibility, motherhood, relationship, and caring.2 Cannold asked many of the women she interviewed to express their thoughts on what is known as “abortion doping”—the rumored practice among Olympian female runners of deliberately getting pregnant then aborting right before a competition; the added hormones produced by the recently terminated pregnancy are said to enhance performance . According to Cannold, the “vast majority of women found the idea of using pregnancy as a means to another end completely repugnant .” One pro-­ choice woman, Carey, chastised anyone who participated in abortion doping for failing to “honor” pregnancy as “the phenomenal creation of life.”3 Another pro-­ choice woman, Frances, maintained that what’s wrong with abortion doping is not the act itself, but rather that “what gets left out is the ‘emotional’ and ‘spiritual’ aspects of the pregnancy.”4 Because abortion doping reflects a lack of respect, compassion, and care for the creation and destruction of life, many pro-­ choice women regard the practice as selfish and callous. Cannold continues: For pro-­ choice women, the feminist contention that the only requirement for an ethical abortion is that a woman freely chooses it was simply not enough. . . . Pro-­ choice women felt it necessary that, in her decision-­ making, the woman consider the fetus not as an autonomous cosmonaut but as a vulnerable and dependent creature who had the capacity to become her child. While anti-­ choice women largely disapproved of abortion, they agreed with pro-­ choice women that the way a woman becomes pregnant, and the way she thinks about pregnancy, are necessary things to know in making a moral assessment of an aborting woman’s decision.5 Lori Freedman noticed a similar mentality even among abortion providers: At the very core of abortion work is the value that abortion is a personal choice that should not be judged or evaluated by anyone Pro-­ Life, Pro-­ Choice 106 but the pregnant woman herself, but the justification for the abortion nevertheless seems to remain important in the hearts and minds of providers. In order to justify it, many seek to understand why patients choose it.6 The belief that there are better and worse reasons for getting an abortion seems to be pervasive. Fleshing out these evaluations is tricky. Some pro-­ choice women focus on the importance of having the right kind of emotions as motivating factors for seeking an abortion. Many philosophers, most notably David Hume, advocate the idea that sentiments play an indispensable role when we make moral decisions.7 Even Immanuel Kant, who argues that actions performed merely as a response to emotions, rather than to fulfill moral obligations, have no real moral worth, acknowledges that cultivating the right kind of sentiments is important because it renders decision makers more likely to respond to their moral obligations.8 So one way we can determine whether a particular instance of abortion was morally permissible is to explore the kinds of emotions that...