Abortion

Abortion is a politically charged and highly polarizing issue in America. It didn’t surprise me to learn—having already marveled at the the political flip-flops chronicled in These Truths by Jill Lepore—that abortion (and some other features of contemporary conservatism) was invented as a political issue by a social liberal non-politician whose son randomly felt strongly about “the rights of the unborn” and convinced enough people that they should care. The Republican party realized the issue would score points with evangelicals and wove it into their platform to win them back from the Democrats in the 1970s.

I’ve been thinking about the issue a bit in the wake of learning about new laws / proposed laws in Alabama (all abortion illegal except in a couple of edge cases not including incest or rape), Georgia (abortion illegal after detectable heartbeat, which can be at 6 weeks), and Missouri (abortion illegal after 8 weeks). The opinions and debates I’ve seen on this matter are more steeped in identity-related narratives (political and religious, mainly) narratives than they are in good-faith arguments and reason. Identity-based narratives can only widen discord. The stronger the identity associated with a belief, the more useless a discussion between opposite sides of an issue.

The pro-choice rhetoric on pro-lifers’ motivations as being about control/repression may have some truth to it when it comes to some of the old men pushing for it but almost certainly isn’t true for a majority of those that oppose abortion. The morality and/or religious beliefs of most of those that oppose abortion, i.e., “abortion is literal murder” and/or “all God-created things need to live”, make it perfectly rational to do so. This is akin to flying a plane into the World Trade Center being a rational action if you literally believe everything spouted by radical Islamists and have convinced yourself you’re really booking a first-class ticket to heaven.

As with all ideological battles involving morality, the abortion debate won’t be (at least temporarily) settled unless a significant majority of humans in any region under one legal system believe one thing vs. the other and the debate therefore ends up not being politically useful. In Brazil, where abortion is legal murder and 87% of people in a 2017 poll didn’t think abortion should be legal; and Sweden, where abortion until 18 weeks (for whatever reason) is legal and 87% of people in a 2017 poll thought abortion should be permitted. Contrast this with the fact that 53% of Americans, according to a 2018 poll, think abortion should be “illegal in all” (18%) or “legal only in a few” (35%) circumstances.

Politicians only care about winning elections and will move on to the next issue if this one is no longer polarizing enough. The goals of those on either side of the debate, therefore, should be to empathize with and actively change the views of folks on the other side through good-faith conversations—one person at a time—rather than calling them names or otherwise demonizing them.