“Common Ground” Is Reducing the Need for Abortion
On Sunday, May 31, Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in his church. In the escalation of words and the threats of violence that followed, the President’s counsel seems both inadequate and naïve.
I join reproductive health advocates and faith leaders across the country in mourning the loss of George Tiller and calling for protections for women and medical providers. His murder and the subsequent closing of his clinic are stark reminders of how few medical options there are for women who need abortions even in the earliest stages of pregnancy.
It’s also an opportunity to reach across the divide on abortion to forge ahead toward a goal that surely is common ground—to reduce the need for abortion by reducing the incidence of unwanted pregnancy. And it’s an opportunity to uphold the moral agency of women in making the decisions that are right for their individual circumstances. That’s how we can honor George Tiller, whose motto was “trust women.”
It’s important to note that there is a vital distinction between those who argue for abortion reduction, like Jim Wallis at Sojourners and Third Way, and those, like my organization, the Religious Institute, who believe the focus must be on reducing the need for abortion. The numbers of abortions will be reduced by making abortions harder to get through restrictions, threats to providers, and a lack of training.
The President appears to understand the difference between decreasing the numbers and diminishing the need. As he said at Notre Dame, “Let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”
What we must focus on now are the means to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place—specifically, comprehensive sexuality education (not abstinence-only) and universal access to contraceptive services, including emergency contraception.
The advocates for abortion reduction correctly note the correlation between poverty and abortion rates. But they often fail to mention how poverty first contributes to unintended pregnancies. Adoption alternatives and economic support for poor pregnant women are important—but these strategies do not address the fact that poor women are at least five times more likely than other women to become pregnant unintentionally, often because of a lack of information and contraceptive services as well as the motivation to avoid pregnancy.
Here's what the Guttmacher Institute's Susan Cohen wrote the last time an abortion reduction strategy was floated by Democrats for Life in 2006: “While it is theoretically possible that increased social supports for pregnant women and even more 'adoption-positive' problem-pregnancy counseling could have some impact, neither can hope to approach the real reductions in the abortion rate that could be achieved by preventing unintended pregnancy in the first place." (Emphasis added).
This is the real moral challenge we face. I've worked with thousands of women facing unintended pregnancies. They aren't looking for "abortion on demand"; with only a handful of exceptions, these women sat with me (often with their partners or parents beside them), and they wept as they tried to decide what was best to do. Often they did have financial concerns—not so much about how they would pay for prenatal care or infant care, but about how they could afford to raise a child (or in many cases, another child) to adulthood. Too often, they did not have partners whom they wanted to spend their lives with or who could support them. As one of my colleagues has said, such women have “too much responsibility already and too few resources, both personal and economic.”
So here is my suggestion: Let's stop talking about reducing the number of abortions as a goal in itself. Such talk obscures what should be our principal objective—reducing unintended pregnancies—and leads to anti-women and anti-teen measures that would place restrictions on abortion access. Let's keep talking about reducing unintended pregnancies. This is not only the better public health position; it is a faithful and moral one as well.
When I wrote about George Tiller on my blog, and about the painful responses I received from those who would celebrate his death, one of my regular readers—who describes herself as pro-life—assured me that “the individuals who take pleasure in Dr. Tiller's murder, or believe it was justified or in any way a good thing, betray the very principles upon which the belief in the sanctity and dignity of ALL human life is based.” Her words called to mind an eloquent and irrefutable passage from the Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Abortion as a Moral Decision, which the Religious Institute published five years ago. It read: “The sanctity of human life is best upheld when we assure that it is not created carelessly.”
Surely this is common ground where all of us can stand.
