The Eternal Flame

Posted by Freddie on October 27, 2005 under Uncategorized |

With the recent withdrawal of the Harriet Miers nomination, the next step becomes ever more important for President Bush. He’s already suffered withering attacks from his former allies. What will the next nomination hold?

The antsy, anxious crowds gathered in nervous anticipation of nominees to the Supreme Court exist on both sides of the liberal/conservative spectrum. The fact that Bush has had two opportunities for nominating new justices has highlit one area of public policy like no other. There are those who view the entire liberal-conservative celebrity death match through the lens of the Supreme Court and its interpretation of a single, already long-ago decided case: Roe v. Wade. The major piece of domestic public policy affected, of course, is abortion, or rather, the right to have one.

This slugfest will be eternal because the entire debate turns on definitions. Examined from one extreme to the other, the debate moves from those who view the death of individual sperm and eggs as loss of life, through those who eschew (and would force others to do so as well) the use of contraception, through those who believe that life begins at conception (and see abortion as murder), through those who look for a bizarre middle ground requiring a case-by-case analysis of each fetus to examine when it might be viable beyond the womb (regardless of the opinion or health of the mother), through those that recognize that human female biology is a domain unto itself until natural birth or surgery sever the ties between mother and child (and see abortion as a feminist and/or privacy issue), through those who perversely view abortion as a legitimate means of birth control. These are certainly not all the players and positions, but they are the major, easily identifiable ones.

And yet from among all these forces, the definitions of how and when human life begins and should thus be eligible for human rights are the points that matter and demonstrate that the issue of abortion rights will forever be divisive. And this is because the abortion debate is a corner case where science and the scientific method cannot actually have an effective impact on public policy. Science can effectively talk about that case-by-case scenario of fetus viability, but that is not the heart of the issue. This debate is about the gap between conception and delivery, and science will never tell us whether a fertilized egg is a human or whether a pregnant woman is one or two people. And, thus, contention.

In terms of the grand arena of public policy at large, whether foreign or domestic, ideas can be turned loose and let to frolic. Then public policy analysts can examine the resultant human behavior, economic impact, etc. to be published later by think-tanks. Alas, the scientific method will only resolve for us what societies that condone abortion versus those that don’t have in terms of an overall statistical view (in the same way, for instance, that the scientific method can comment that cities that are more tolerant toward their homosexual communities are more economically vibrant without commenting in any way on the morality of homosexuality).

Even the most ardent pro-choice liberals and tough-on-crime (pro-capital-punishment), hawkish (pro-war) conservatives will stake a claim on arguably the most important human right of all: the right to life.

The question in my mind is, should the ideologues who have sought for a generation to fill the courts from appellate through Supreme with pro-life conservative judges, succeed in their ultimate aim — appointment of enough conservative Supreme Court justices that Roe v. Wade is overturned — what will be next? Actually, this should be easy to predict: a massive state-by-state effort to outlaw abortion.

If we consider that it is already the case that a majority of Americans are pro-choice*, would it not behoove all Americans, whether pro-life or pro-choice, to mount a similarly massive effort to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place?

Clearly, this will not affect the voting habits of those conservatives who would never deign to vote for a pro-choice candidate because they view abortion as murder. But what a common ground coup it would be if these very same people, rather than (or even in addition to) vilifying the opposition for their immorality and creating large non-profit organizations and political action committees to elect a slate of pro-life candidates and appointments, could help to create a bipartisan, multicultural coalition that took a strong stand on domestic and sexual violence, produced rich and accurate sex education materials with an emphasis on outreach and planning (and even, liberals, *gasp*, an emphasis on (but, conservatives, not restricted to) abstinence as an extremely effective preventer of pregnancy and, bonus, STDs), and began a rigorous monitoring process of the number of abortions occurring annually in the United States each year with a shared goal of watching it drop. The best part? Such conservatives could join in such an effort without sacrificing any of their dearly held principles about the sanctity of life.

I will admit to being pro-choice when it comes to public policy because I believe that a woman is a woman until such time as woman and child coexist separately. And while I doubt that science will ever alter my definitions, I have yet to see a holy text that comments on this issue in explicit terms either. Regardless, I am shocked by the number of abortions that occur annually in the United States and would like to see the number drop.

After all, treating the causes rather than the symptoms is a methodology that is as effective in public policy as it is in medicine, especially for the doctors who make the difficult choice to practice in clinics that offer abortion.

* See item 14 in the referenced poll.