Clouding the Abortion Issue

I was walking through Harvard Square two nights ago when a man with a sign informed me that fascism had come to America. Fearing the worst--that, as his sign proclaimed, Nazism had taken root in our country--I went over to him and took the reading material he was handing to passersby.

Worried that the man might know something I didn't, I hurried home to read what he had given me. When I finally got through the page-and-a-half proclamation, my anxiety turned to disbelief. This man's Nazis were not the anti-everybody Aryan supremacists from mid-century Germany. His Nazis turned out to be anti-abortion activists.

The anonymous author did raise important questions about the tactics of some anti-abortionists. He wrote that an anti-abortion group calling themselves "Operation Rescue" had used "blacklists and smear campaigns" against women who spoke out in favor of abortion. And he noted that antiabortionists have repeatedly firebombed clinics in an attempt to prevent women from obtaining abortions.

Obviously, we can not tolerate such behavior in a democratic society, especially one in which abortion has been legal for 15 years and one in which the Constitution guarantees all citizens equal protection of the law. Firebombing clearly goes well beyond legitimate civil disobedience.

BUT beyond these claims, the anonymous author distorted or ignored relevant facts. In doing so, he made an argument in favor of legal abortion on demand which is clearly untenable and which demonstrates how some prochoice arguments suffer from severe gaps in logic.

In the second paragraph, the author announced that the anti-abortion movement aims to make abortion illegal and send "thousands of women back to the horror and death of self-induced and back alley abortions or the enslavement of forced pregnancy." Later he argued that "forced reproduction is a shackle on all women preventing their full participation in society."

We can all sympathize with the author's practical concerns about women who would seek illegal abortions and thus put their health at risk if the Supreme Court ever overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. (Attorney General Richard Thornburgh recently predicted that the Court would overturn Roe and let states enact their own abortion laws.) The government must address this problem and the problem of punishments for violators before it can ever safely and successfully illegalize abortion.

But while the author's concerns on this front are justifiable, it's hard to understand why he repeatedly implied that women inevitably must have sex and get pregnant. The author completely ignored the simple fact that a woman gets pregnant when two adults have sex, an act from which both women and men are usually free to restrain.

That does not mean that all women who get pregnant should be forced to have the baby. There are competing constitutional claims for both the mother and the fetus, a potential rational being, which must be balanced. Sometimes this balance would mean that some women should be allowed to have abortions, even if their lives are not in danger.

It's true that not all women who get pregnant choose to have sex. Rape victims, though often responsible adults, have no choice in the matter and never choose to take the risk of having sex. If they get pregnant, they should be allowed to have an abortion.

It's also true that not all women who choose to have sex are fully aware they can get pregnant. Often teenagers suffer from inadequate sex education and consequently are more likely to get pregnant without intending it. Such women should also be allowed to have abortions.

This country's laws have recognized that minors are not completely rational and cannot be held responsible for all their actions. No one is born knowing that sex leads to babies, so no one can be expected to make a rational decision about sex until educated. The state must insure that all citizens receive this education even if the state itself doesn't provide it. If teenage women do not receive this education, they should not be held responsible.

WHILE the above arguments are valid justifications for a pro-choice stand, the arguments that all women either don't know they can get pregnant even when using birth control or that all women are forced to have sex and get pregnant do not succeed.

The author of the pamphlet blames anti-abortionists for wanting to keep women in the "enslavement of pregnancy" when it is often the woman who, knowing the risks, consents to sex in the first place.

Such women should be held responsible for their own actions and should not be allowed to have an abortion. They willingly take the risk of getting pregnant and should not be allowed to use abortion as birth control. The fetus' claims as a potential being should take precedence over the mother's, who shouldn't be allowed to make the fetus suffer when she willfully took the chance to become pregnant.

Unfortunately, no clear criteria exist for determining exactly who can or cannot rightfully claim ignorance. Until the government can insure that all citizens are sufficiently educated about sex, women should be allowed to choose an abortion, and the government should encourage sexual restraint. If the government ever attains its goal of ensuring adequate sex education, the courts ought to outlaw abortion, except in cases of rape and health of the mother.

Pro-choicers like the man with the sign should admit that just because some people want to outlaw abortion, that does not automatically mean they have something against women or that they are fascist. If they want to make a strong case for choice, they ought to point to rape and the sex education problem. Accusations such as this author's only cloud the debate on abortion and make finding workable solutions to this divisive issue that much more difficult.