Dr. B gives what I think is the strongest argument for a pro-choice position. While I'm pro-life myself, I agree entirely with her view that more abstract arguments are not as important as the more concrete and personal issues. I do think they play a role, but they can't be allowed to dominate the discussion, as they certainly tend to do.
I don't normally talk about the issues surrounding abortion, precisely because of that (and, for related reasons, because I think this is a case which in a sense can only be successfully handled by women - not that men can have no view of the matter, but it really is a matter in which women can have more insight, and in which real progress can in general only come through women). My own view of the situation, which like a lot of my views is shared by no one else, is that the issue is caught up in a binary opposition or unresolved contradiction within progressive thought itself, inasmuch as the best arguments of both sides draw from different aspects of traditional progressivism; and this gets hardened by more reactionary members on both sides who are unwilling to recognize any insight in the other position. The progressive tradition cannot handle a lose-lose situation very well; and in this type of case there are, in my view, inevitable lose-lose situations.
As a matter of pure personal opinion I think, incidentally, it's unfortunate that in the United States the discussion so often centers around Roe v. Wade, for two reasons: 1) I think Roe v. Wade was a good decision in that I think the law that was struck down by Roe v. Wade deserved to be struck down, and while I don't think the justices wrote the decision very well at all, for constitutional reasons that could be stated the way they stated them; 2) I think Roe v. Wade was also a bad decision because it did not introduce real clarity into the situation as good Supreme Court decisions should, and I think this can be shown objectively by looking at the confusion it has spawned - had the justices deliberately written the decision to guarantee it would be controversial and challenged for the next ten decades, they could hardly have done a better job of it. Roe v. Wade is peripheral to the real issue; the real issue can be found only by understanding the women who genuinely do face the hard choices that Dr. B rightly notes can't be legislated away. They are many; and they are too often unseen by people on both sides who get caught up in the abstract arguments.
Because of my view of Roe v. Wade, I think it's probably the case that the only genuinely sustainable legal solution for the issue, if there is any at all, is pro-choice; that is, I think it very likely that no one will ever be able to find a pro-life legal state that will not violate women's rights, and that a pro-choice legal state is more easily sustainable. Being pro-life, I do think that a pro-choice legal state violates the rights of the unborn, which I think morally they have (however I turn the issue, I find I cannot in good conscience except them from my conviction that all human beings are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights). But moral rights are not the same as legal rights, and I see no way in which it would be possible to give them equal legal rights without detriment to the moral and legal rights of women. But I am not convinced that there is any legal solution to the problem at all; that is, I am not convinced that anyone has come up with a genuinely sustainable legal solution, nor that anyone ever will.
What I would like to see is for us to have a genuinely pro-life culture; but no one is doing any of the work that would have to be done to prepare for it. A genuinely pro-life culture would have to be a culture in which every effort is made to be supportive to women in hard situations, in which women are not shunned or despised because of pregnancy out of wedlock but instead lovingly supported, in which women are not isolated by economics or situation but always have available to them the wisdom and support of a living community of women, in which real people are more important than Pharisaic moralism. I think this is a society worth aiming at. Unfortunately, I don't think it is genuinely attainable. But any progress toward it would be worthwhile. But, again, I don't see much of the work being done that would be necessary for progress in this direction.
So while I am unabashedly and firmly pro-life, I am very pessimistic about our prospects on this issue. I think it would quite literally take a miracle or Kingdom Come to resolve the issue in an ideal way, and it is beyond human power to bring about either.
In any case, this will probably be my last post on this issue, at least for a long while. The discussion is better carried about by my betters on both sides, by people who have more insight and better character than I. If anyone is interested in the further state of the discussion, Dr. B notes several resources on the pro-choice side; several on the pro-life side can be found at Pro-Life Blogs, although I haven't checked on the quality of any of them - probably mixed, since these sorts of things usually are (and it should be noted that this is simply an aggregator, so a lot of the posts that show up to it aren't relevant to the issue).
