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

3. Of Women and Fetuses: Battling the False Dichotomy

68 I have, thus far, been primarily concerned with defending abortion rights and responding to the concerns others may have about my arguments. For the remainder of the book I discuss a variety of issues that contribute to the phenomenology and realities of abortion choice for both women and men. As with any attempt at achieving convergence among opposing factions, the first step is to acknowledge that both sides have engaged in flawed ethical behavior. The workers at one Milwaukee abortion clinic have been on the receiving end of multiple kinds of attacks, “including bombing, arson, shootings, and vandalism.” Picketers stand in front of the clinic’s doors and compare abortion to the Nazi Holocaust. They yell out to the women seeking abortions with words that are “dripping with hatred.”1 Selfish, irresponsible, sluts, whores, murderers , callous, heartless—these are all terms I have heard anti-­ choice advocates use to describe women who obtain abortions. On one final exam a student wrote, “Women who get abortions to get the things they want are selfish , evil, and murderers.” Similar derisive terms are used to describe abortion providers. In pre-­ Roe days, the term abortionist carried with it a highly negative stigma. It denoted a quack physician with bad intentions, one who was not good enough to practice real medicine and would 3 Of Women and Fetuses: Battling the False Dichotomy 69 Of Women and Fetuses butcher women. Even after abortion was legalized, the stigma against abortion providers largely persisted.2 Tissue, blobs, polyps, material, clumps of cells, products of conception —these are all terms I have heard pro-­ choice advocates use to describe embryos and fetuses. A colleague recently said to me that fetuses are akin to “inanimate objects or bacteria.” Another colleague consistently refers to fetuses as “parasites” that are morally equivalent to “hair follicles or cancerous tumors.” A fetus may indeed be functionally parasitic, in that it is metabolically dependent on the pregnant woman, but when people use such a term, they do not use it in a biologically descriptive sense. Rather, they use it to deny the fetus moral worth or value. Mutual Vilification and Dehumanization A 1989 case study by Marsha Vanderford illustrates that pro-­ choice and anti-­ choice advocates use similar tactics to slander and vilify each other. Pro-­ choice advocates largely dismiss anti-­ choice advocates with accusations of religious extremism and charge them with wanting to relegate women to lives of oppression. Anti-­ choice advocates accuse pro-­ choice advocates of being Communists (a term that incited much fear during the Cold War era) with an agenda that includes compulsory abortions. This derision is psychologically helpful in that it “allows the activist to define himself or herself as a moral agent fighting against evil.”3 Leslie Cannold’s The Abortion Myth is a study of ways in which both pro- and anti-choice women engage in more nuanced discussions concerning abortion and of how they share several underlying values. However, many differences remain. For example, anti-­ choice women are generally distrustful of women who choose abortion, and they believe they do so for largely frivolous reasons: For anti-­ choice women . . . the world is full of women who prefer their careers, their skiing trips, or their holidays in Europe to being pregnant and having babies. . . . Anti-­ choice Marybeth agreed: “Too often women have abortions for reasons of convenience: just Pro-­ Life, Pro-­ Choice 70 for convenience, for money, for having a good time.” . . . While pro-­ choice women generally trust that most aborting women are acting morally, anti-­ choice women are highly suspicious of most women’s motivations for seeking abortion.4 Cannold notes that the stereotype of aborting women as selfish and self-­ absorbed so permeates public consciousness that women who choose abortion often fear being labeled with these character traits. This ultimately affects their self-­ esteem and self-­ worth.5 It is worth asking why even the prospect of being wrongly labeled as selfish has such a profound effect on a woman’s psyche. The ideal woman and mother is often regarded as one who is purely selfless and giving; the idyllic woman is one who exists for others. Caitlin Moran effectively brings this point to light in her book How to Be a Woman: Our view of motherhood is so idealized and misty—Mother, gentle giver of life—that the thought of a mother subsequently setting limits on her capacity to nurture and...