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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
Much is made these days by the pro-choice movement about the supposed desire for “common ground” on abortion.
But the term “common ground” is amorphous, and at the end of the day, one is left to conclude that there is little regarding abortion and related issues that both sincere pro-life and self-styled pro-choice advocates can agree on.
Yet there are some points that both sides can agree on, one of which is revealed in a piece on the website Academic OB/GYN provocatively titled “Why Pro-Choice Is Losing”, written by stridently pro-choice physician Nicholas Fogelson.
He writes (emphases are in the original):
Right now, anti-choice is wiping the floor with pro-choice. Pro-choice is always on the defensive, and never on the offensive. Prochoice is tending goal and Prolife is always taking shots. This can only go on so long before one gets in the net, and we’ve been seeing that happen lately.
Here’s the problems as I see it:
Pro-life has been very successful in merging two question that should be separated, and by doing so have taunted the pro-choice side into addressing the wrong one. These questions are 1) is abortion unethical / immoral? and 2) should abortion be illegal? The vast majority of pro-life rhetoric is based on the belief that termination of pregnancy is immoral. Pro-life is marketing very successfully that abortion is unethical, and through that they garner adequate public support for their agenda, leading to successful legislative efforts to limit access.
Pro-choice must separate these two questions. There is absolutely nothing to be gained in trying to convince people that abortion is a moral act.
Notice the point he’s making to his fellow pro-choicers: arguing morality is a loser for them. Which means that on the other hand, it’s a winner for us.
On this, we agree.
It’s precisely because what abortion does to a human person at an early stage of development is so unspeakably awful that we must continually keep it before our fellow citizens, both through our words and our actions.
Fogelson then says:
Pro-choice needs to stop addressing the question of morality question all together. The only question that should be addressed is whether or not abortion should be legal, and the best way to do that is to clearly show the country what the effects of a ban on abortion would be. Pro-choice needs to make sure that everyone in this country can imagine the effects of an abortion ban on women, and is vividly reminded of what was going on in this country prior to Roe v Wade. Prior to Roe v Wade hospitals had entire wards full of women injured or dying from illegal untrained abortion. This is incredibly compelling, yet Pro-choice gives it a back seat to a pointless argument about morality.
“The bad old days of abortion” narrative might indeed be compelling—if it were true.
An interesting discussion ensues in the comments section in which Fogelson is called upon to produce documentation of his claims of widespread maternal abortion deaths pre-Roe v. Wade in which the best he can come up with is:
I don’t need a source – I have first hand knowledge. The very hospital where I trained once had an entire ward devoted to women with post abortal sepsis. Per several of my attendings who were there at that time, it was regularly full.
Note that what Fogelson claims is “first hand knowledge” is actually hearsay that doesn’t match up with what we actually know about the history of maternal abortion deaths prior to 1973.
After discussing the importance of stressing legality over morality, Fogelson candidly admits:
Pro-choice also needs to stop pretending that abortion is not destroying life. Pro-life argues that abortion is murder, and in response we hear from pro-choice is that it is not life, but a potential life. This is not a compelling argument. A fetus, from any scientific point of view, is alive. Claiming that a fetus is not alive is inaccurate, and this somewhat vampiric idea paints Pro-choice in a bad light in the eyes of the middle ground population that might be convinced to support their cause.
One wonders if Planned Parenthood would agree with Fogelson on this point?
It’s also worth pointing out that although openly acknowledging that abortion takes a life may seem, by today’s standards, uncommon among pro-choicers, it’s not a new development. Early advocates of legal abortion like Judith Arcana and, more recently, Princeton professor Peter “Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all” Singer are two such examples of those who make no attempt to tapdance around the question of whether abortion destroys a life.
For that matter, even Planned Parenthood at one time admitted that “abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun”.
Fogelson’s advice:
Pro-choice must recognize that abortion is destruction of life, but is still a justified thing. Parallels must be drawn between abortion and other justified destruction of life. It is ironic that the conservatives who are the greatest detractors of abortion are often also the greatest supporters of war, and in so are the greatest supporters of killing. To be a supporter of war and then to claim abortion cannot be justified because it is killing a life is a very bad argument, and the weakness in this position must be capitalized on.
This inartful comparison between abortion and war is rather beside the point, as the opinions of a particular group of abortion opponents has no bearing on what abortion actually is and what it does to the unborn. But since he brought up the issue of killing in war, one wonders if he would share the sentiments of those like Eileen McDonagh who argue with a straight face that abortion is justified precisely because a fetus—far from being innocent—is a “powerful intruder” guilty of “kidnapping” a woman.
Toward the end, though, Fogelson makes a noteworthy point:
While I am as Pro-Choice I have ever been, I have met far too many wonderful intelligent caring people who happen to be Pro-Life to continue to believe that their position is fundamentally wrong. Their beliefs are completely logical given the premises they learned as children.
Patronizing though his remarks are, Fogelson’s interactions with many “wonderful, caring” pro-lifers underscore the importance of always sharing the pro-life message with love and compassion, as these sorts of interactions may be the thing that, more than intellectual arguments, helps bring him around in the end.
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Thanks for the thorough response. it is a shame you took my last comment from a cynical point of view, as that has caused you to make an incorrect assumption. I meant those words quite literally. Many good and ethical people believe abortion is wrong, and many believe it is just. We just come from different points of view.
Abortion is justified because a woman gets to decide what goes on inside her own body. End of story.
Abortion does kill a life, but so does killing a deer for food, killing a person in war, or accidentally stepping on an insect. We cannot all agree on the ethics that govern abortion, so it clearly would fall to each woman to decide what ethics are most appropriate for her.
Posted April 13, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Mr. Fogelson,
It’s incredible to me that you compare killing an innocent child in the womb to killing a deer for food or stepping on an insect. Do you really feel that the life of a deer or insect has the same value as your own?
As for a woman deciding what happens in her own body, what about the father’s rights? It took two people to make that life, and they both “decided” to perform the act that created it.
Abortion doesn’t help anyone. Mother and Father are permanently wounded while the baby is fatally wounded.
Posted April 13, 2010 at 3:25 pm
It is refreshing, yet disturbing, for pro-abortionists to just say it like it is, that abortion is the killing of an innocent human being, an innocent person. I absolutely agree that we should just be honest in the debate. Pretending that the aborted baby isn’t just as human as the rest of us might make pro-aborts superficially feel better about their position but in the days of 4D ultrasound denying reality just makes them appear scientifically unsophisticated. Kind of like when some people denied the full humanity of black people.
I’ve already had conversations with plenty of pro-aborts in which they admit that abortion is certainly killing a person but they have decided that it is ok anyway. The problem pro-lifers (or abolitionists as I like to call us) have is conveying our message in the way that most resonates with people – with images.
If Mr Fogelson wants to be so bold and enter the debate in honesty, with full disclosure thinking that his side has a chance to win then he misreads the American people. If the day would ever come that abortion would be shown in images on TV just like the Holocaust and the enslavement and lynching of the blacks during that dark time in our history he will see that the compassion of the American people would outlaw abortion so fast it’ll make his head spin.
Posted April 14, 2010 at 7:38 am
“We cannot all agree on the ethics that govern abortion, so it clearly would fall to each woman to decide what ethics are most appropriate for her.”
——————————————————
Ah, Moral Relativism at it’s worst. The killing of an innocent, unborn human being is wrong no matter what spin you do to it.
Posted April 14, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Hey, Dr Nick,
Since it’s kind of critical to your argument (as presented in part by Jansen), just when was a teaching hospital’s ward full of post abortion sepsis patients?
Thank you.
Posted April 14, 2010 at 3:17 pm
[...] luck with that. As I pointed out last week, even staunch “pro-choice” advocates openly admit that any attempt their side makes to argue morality is [...]
Posted April 21, 2010 at 10:05 am
[...] luck with that. As I pointed out last week, even staunch “pro-choice” advocates openly admit that any attempt their side makes to argue morality is [...]
Posted April 21, 2010 at 10:12 am
“We cannot all agree on the ethics that govern abortion, so it clearly would fall to each woman to decide what ethics are most appropriate for her.”
But she isn’t deciding just what’s appropriate for her. She’s deciding what’s appropriate for another human being.
The bodily autonomy argument just doesn’t cut it. Compare:
Culpability. The fetus has no culpability in a pregnancy. There was no volitional act on the part of the fetus to place itself in the mother’s body. It was actions of other persons — almost always including the mother — that put the fetus there. The party whose actions caused a conflict has a greater responsibility to peacefully resolve the conflict. To say the mother has the right to kill the fetus because he’s in her body makes as much sense as a kidnapper arguing that he has the right to kill his hostage because she’s in the trunk of his car.
Degree of damage. The fetus needs only limited and temporary use of the mother’s body. Her loss is very limited if his rights are respected. But for the mother to assert her rights, she inflicts permanent, irreversible damage to the fetus. What the mother seeks to inflict on the fetus extends far beyond what the hapless fetus is “inflicting” on her. In order for a right to bodily autonomy to extend far enough to encompass causing another person’s death, then they extend far PAST, and therefore must include, a right to temporary and reversible trespass.
Sorry, but bodily integrity as an argument just doesn’t cut it.
Posted April 21, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I hate to say this, but Fogelson has a point. There are three cases in which an overwhelming majority approves of abortion:
• Rape
• Heath of the Mother
• Me
Most people are not very principled and they want laws that make their lives easier, regardless of how morally inconsistent these laws might be. While I think we might be able to pass laws against the most egregious forms of abortion (2nd and 3rd trimester), I doubt we will ever get the electorate to agree to remove the “escape hatch” of first trimester abortion, however desirable this might be from a moral standpoint.
Posted September 28, 2010 at 1:11 am