Given how salient this issue has been for the past half century or more, and how both Republicans and Democrats have wielded it as a cudgel and a wedge to divide us for their own partisan purposes, it’s a perfect one to use as a bellwether of how ready we as a people are to move past the intractable Red Team/Blue Team frame and into a much more practical and stable long-term equilibrium founded on principles, logic, and empathy. It can work, but it won’t be fast or easy. Strap in and grab a beverage or three—this could take a while.
Principles
To begin with, let’s try to forget the talking points and entrenched positions for a moment. Everyone (and especially people who have had or seen abortions) can agree that undergoing an abortion is neither pleasant nor desirable, and that it should not be celebrated or encouraged. We can also agree that every individual would be better off if they were never in a situation where they might need or want to consider this invasive and unpleasant procedure. It follows from this that we should strive to minimize abortions, and–crucially–it follows from THIS that we should strive to minimize all the factors that contribute to situations that can lead to abortions.
Given that we can agree on all of this, why can’t we then agree on a series of policies and tactics that help us make concrete progress toward this laudable goal? (Newsflash: It’s because we are basing our arguments on partisan talking points meant to send signals, rather than on the principles that reflect our true thoughts and feelings as well as our deeply held beliefs.)
That’s not to say that we all hold or prioritize the same principles when it comes to this issue. But it does mean we can find common ground if we try.
The principles held by those on the pro-choice side of the debate tend to gravitate toward a person’s right to make their own decisions about what they do with their body, which really gets back to the bedrock American principle of individual freedom. They also touch on a woman’s right to control her reproductive capacity, and especially to avoid being forced to bear a child that was forced upon her, e.g. through rape or incest. If the government can tell women that they can’t terminate a pregnancy in certain arbitrary situations (e.g. the condom broke or the woman was a victim of rape or incest), what’s to stop it from telling them that they must terminate one in other situations (e.g. the baby has a congenital defect or other serious health problem, or the family already has a large number of children or is financially insecure)?
Additionally, if the government can police the choices women make regarding their reproductive organs, why couldn’t it lay claim to dominion over male organs next? Would men be willing to let the state perform a mandatory vasectomy on them when they reach sexual maturity, with the possibility of reversal contingent upon means-testing, IQ assessment, and work requirements after they have reached the age of majority? Or perhaps we would instead prefer to implement the mandatory sterilization of any man who fathers more than a certain number of offspring, unless he can show financial resources sufficient to support additional dependents.
Certainly each of these tactics would reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and therefore the number of potential abortions, and they are arguably less of an imposition on the individual than forcing them to carry, deliver, and raise a child. But I doubt that many opponents of abortion would favor such measures, because they understandably want to maintain control of their bodies and bodily functions.
This is not to say that those on the anti-abortion side don’t have valid principles to stand on. Respect for the sanctity of human life, and specifically the fervent defense of it in all its forms at all costs, is certainly an admirable principle in its own right. When the pro-choice crowd vilifies their fellow citizens who sincerely hold these beliefs, they discount the miraculous nature of life and fail to capitalize on our common humanity. What if abortion were legal not only during gestation but also after birth, say up until age 5? Would abortion rights supporters be equally in favor of overly stressed or financially strapped parents summarily executing toddlers because raising them proved to be too much work or the children refused to behave themselves? I think not.
To the extent that we can eschew talking points and instead base our arguments on principles, we give ourselves a much better chance of finding common ground based on shared values and beliefs.
However, common values and/or beliefs are not enough to resolve our differences, because we still have the matter of what to do about the issue to deal with.
This is where logic, reason, and data come into play. It is transparently obvious to any non-partisan observer that the extreme positions currently advocated by the contestants in this debate are both illogical and untenable. Being in favor of letting women maintain control of their bodies does not logically imply that we should also be in favor of abortion on demand at any point in the pregnancy with no regard for the life of the unborn child. Similarly, believing that abortion is murder should lead anti-abortion activists to seek out and support any and all possible means of preventing unintended pregnancy. Unfortunately, these same people are in most cases so blinded by their ideology that they instead stridently oppose all manner of commonsense measures that would have this hugely beneficial effect.
Logic dictates that we abandon our current, highly ineffective approach
Logic would dictate that in the consideration of any problem, we assess the tools we have at our disposal, consider the likelihood of success conferred by each one, and then deploy them as broadly and effectively as possible given any budgetary or other constraints.
Comprehensive sex education, easy access to affordable (or better yet free) birth control, and policies designed to enforce long-term personal responsibility in reproductive decision-making for both sexes, would all go a long way toward helping people avoid accidental or unwanted pregnancy. But if we want people to make better decisions and to then be fully accountable for those decisions, we must first provide them with a true and complete accounting of the relevant biological and legal facts.
This means doing 3 things:
1 – Eliminate abstinence-only sex ed and all other forms of sexual health curricula that let people down by only providing a tiny sliver of relevant information
It has been proven repeatedly that these types of programs don’t work, either to prevent teens from having sex or to prevent them from getting pregnant. The reality is that hormone-charged teens are interested in sex and curious about trying new things. And as any parent of teenagers will know, telling them NOT to do something only increases their drive to do that thing. Just like with alcohol and recreational drugs, prohibition simply doesn’t work. Humans are too smart and too clever, and will find ways around any barriers you erect if they want to (and they do).
So what do we do instead? Well, it’s actually pretty fucking simple. What we do is provide comprehensive, medically accurate information about how our bodies work and what can happen when we engage in sexual behaviors. Emphasize that abstinence is the best, and in fact the only guaranteed, way to avoid pregnancy, but follow that up with an overview of non-intercourse sexual activities that are “safer than sex” from a probability-of-pregnancy perspective. The repression of sexuality, especially among girls and young women, causes untold problems for us later in life and is as wrong-headed as it is ineffective. It needs to stop. Everyone needs to understand which behaviors can transmit infections (e.g. oral sex) and which can’t (e.g. masturbation) in order to make the best decisions for themselves and their sexual partners. And of course, we need to dedicate a huge proportion of the curriculum to covering the best tools we have at our disposal, both to avoid pregnancy and to prevent or at least limit the transmission of STIs. Which leads us to…
2 – Emphasize the importance, minimize the cost, and maximize the availability of all forms of birth control
This is an obvious one, and a head-shakingly stupid point of contention in the current framing of the debate. If you want to minimize abortion then you need to minimize unintended pregnancy. If you want to minimize unintended pregnancy you either need to force people to avoid sex (which as we pointed out above has been widely and repeatedly proven not to work) or you need to give them ways to have sex without getting pregnant. Therefore, if you want to minimize abortion volume, you need to maximize birth control. It’s that simple. So let’s not hide the ball by refusing to educate people about condoms, pills, patches, and other forms of physical and hormonal birth control. Let’s not make it hard for them to obtain, either by requiring parental consent or by deliberately excluding it from otherwise comprehensive health care coverage.
Let’s do the opposite: encourage everyone to learn about what the products are and how they work, explain whether they are also effective at preventing the transmission of infections (condoms yes, pills and patches no), and provide them via easy, over the counter access for little or no direct cost.
Some people are uncomfortable talking about sex, and some of these people would obviously prefer that their children never have sex (except of course when it suits THEIR purposes, like maybe once or twice to produce grandchildren). But pretending that people aren’t having sex won’t magically make it stop happening, and attempting to compel others to agree with you by moral fiat, especially when what you are asking them to do runs directly contrary to their own desires and instincts, doesn’t have any history of success either. Much better to face the issue head-on and find as many ways as possible to encourage healthy behaviors and good decisions while mitigating risky behaviors and negative outcomes. And again, if your goal is to minimize abortions, you’d best do absolutely everything in your power to continuously bring down the number of unintended pregnancies. No matter what else you do, if that number (currently just under 3 million per year) stays flat or goes up, you lose. Period end of sentence mic drop.
3 – Finally, we must decide what to do when an unintended pregnancy does occur
This is where those deeply held but unfortunately countervailing principles come into direct conflict with each other. On the one hand, the government cannot be in the business of regulating people’s bodies, but on the other, we can all acknowledge that killing or even harming another human being is an abhorrent act that should not be tolerated. So how do we resolve the impasse? Again it’s logic to the rescue, and neither side will like the outcome but that’s pretty much the definition of compromise for you.
The most reasonable answer, based on where science and medicine currently stand, is this:
- No restrictions on abortion in the first trimester (because during this period, the potential baby is still an embryo, and has no chance whatsoever of surviving outside the womb)
- Escalating restrictions throughout the second trimester (as the embryo becomes a fetus, it develops recognizable physical and mental human characteristics, spends much of its time in the REM stage of sleep, and begins to be able to process sensory input. At week 25, baby to be can respond to its mother’s voice)
- Total restriction (i.e. no abortions whatsoever) in the third trimester, except in cases where the mother’s life or long-term health is directly threatened by the continuation of the pregnancy (after week 27, the odds of survival outside the womb increase dramatically, and continue to climb consistently all the way thru birth)
The Mayo clinic and other professional medical websites have rich information about the science behind these guidelines, but the overarching logic behind the progression is prioritized around the fetus’ likelihood of survival, taking into account the intentions and desires of the mother (and father, if applicable).
If this doesn’t seem exactly right to you, think about it like this: if we could remove the pregnant woman from the equation entirely, i.e. wave a magic wand and poof the baby is now outside her uterus, floating in a Matrix-style robo-womb in a lab or hospital, would we be able to keep that baby alive? With our current knowledge and technology, and assuming that the baby was immediately placed into a neonatal intensive care unit at a modern hospital in a developed country, the answer is “absolutely not” during the first 12 weeks of the pregnancy, “extremely unlikely” from 13 until 24 weeks of gestation, and generally “maybe or yes” thereafter. I’m sure that roughly 50% of the people reading this disagree with me strongly (25% in each direction, of course), but I’ll also wager that the “broad center” out there sees the reason behind my argument as I’ve laid it out.
As you smash out your angry email to me and/or wipe the flecks of spittle from your screen following the profanity-laced tirade you just unleashed in my general direction, I would invite you to now consider the third and final missing element in our public discourse: empathy. Simply put, it is, according to Google, “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Easy enough in theory, but difficult and emotionally draining in practice. And while it’s difficult to have true empathy for people you’ve never met and may not quite understand, it’s often enough to just make an attempt to see things from their perspective, to walk a mile in their shoes, as the saying goes.
And, to be fair, if you already consider yourself an empathy expert, you can skip this part and go right to the bottom. But then again, you’ve made it this far, so maybe humor me and read it anyway (approx. 3 minutes of your time).
Empathy
The importance of this vaunted capacity to understand points of view that differ from our own is highlighted by the dysfunction that pervades in its absence. Without at least trying to consider why the people we disagree with feel the way they do, no amount of facts or stats will ever get them to change their mind. As long as we are shouting angrily past each other rather than engaging honestly with each other, we will never be able to identify the areas where we agree or the common goals that exist across the ideological spectrum. Instead, we must learn about other perspectives and try to approach the issue from positions that differ from our own.
By doing so, we give ourselves the best possible chance of finding common values and shared goals, which can then lead to a productive discussion around how to achieve those goals. This level of engagement requires letting go of one’s strongly held ideology for long enough to take a glimpse into someone else’s. Easier said than done, but also the only approach that will work on issues where entrenched partisan battle lines appear to prevent any possible compromise from ever being reached.
Since this is new territory for most people (and for me as well, I’ll freely admit) and you may not know where to start, here’s a simple 3-step quickstart guide for practicing empathy towards those you may not understand, agree with, or like. It’s not perfect, but I have found it helpful.
1 – Remember that someone else can be right without requiring you to be wrong
Imagine someone tells you the sky is green. You know it to be blue and you take it as a given that everyone else does too, so you think this person is either crazy, intentionally trolling you, or both. However, it turns out there’s a special kind of color blindness called Tritanopia which causes people to see blues as greens. This person literally sees colors differently than you do, and is giving you their honest and legitimate opinion when they tell you that, to them, the sky appears green. Political views can be similar to this, since we each have opinions that have been shaped and honed over a lifetime of experience, and no two people have exactly the same background. When someone disagrees with you about something you believe to be transparently obvious, remember that their green just might be your blue, and that it’s possible for you both to be right at the same time.
2 – Try to come up with arguments from your opponent’s perspective that might convince you to change yours
This is a classic trick used by debaters, trial lawyers, and everyone else whose job depends on persuasion. They do it in order to foresee the strongest points that could be made against their own arguments and prepare to rebut them. But we’ll do it because we are actually trying to understand why the other person is thinking what they are thinking. You don’t have to do a ton of research and be able to marshal an encyclopedia’s worth of facts for this approach to be effective, but it does depend on being able to think carefully about why someone might feel the way they do, and also about what the reasons behind their beliefs might be. Let’s say, for instance, that you’re meeting an old friend for dinner tonight and you’re trying to figure out where to eat. You really want pizza but your friend really wants Thai food. The two are so different that there is no real possibility of a compromise option, but you enjoy each other’s company and haven’t seen each other in a while so you both really want to find a solution to your dinner destination dilemma.
Now you may want pizza because it’s your favorite food, but you can understand that your friend wants Thai because the two of you took a backpacking trip to Southeast Asia together several years ago, and your friend has expressed their desire to indulge in a little nostalgia with you and reminisce about the trip over dinner. You might allow their argument in favor of Thai to persuade you because even though you love pizza, you also like Pad Thai and Chicken Satay and Mango Sticky Rice, and you want your friend to be happy.
You’re not “wrong” that pizza is delicious, and they’re not “right” that Thai is better, but in this particular situation, with this particular friend, they have a very valid point that going out for Thai together will create the best experience for the two of you tonight. More likely than not, they’ll agree to pizza next time anyway, so you’ll both get what you want and you’ll be grateful for the other person’s understanding and support.
3 — Imagine the person you’re arguing with is a close friend or relative, and that you care more about having a good relationship with them than you do about winning the debate
This one only works if you have at least 1 close friend or relative that you truly care about, but let’s assume you do. Now, whoever you’re arguing with, close your eyes and pretend that your chosen friend or relative is now standing in their place. Your long history of trust and faith in this person endows the discussion with an entirely different feeling than it just had, and you are now much less likely to glibly hurl profanity-laced insults in their direction. Even if you disagree with them, you will try to prioritize maintaining this person’s respect over your desire to prove them wrong.
This may just allow you to make a more grounded and more empathetic case in favor of your chosen position, which in turn is likely to be more persuasive to them. Furthermore, your desire to maintain a strong bond with this person is likely to result in you more deeply and earnestly considering the points they are making, because they probably have something useful to say, or some knowledge to impart, that you had not previously considered.
Sometimes people are so invested in their own ideology that they will still be unwilling to consider your good-faith arguments against their views or to make good-faith arguments against yours, but even if you are unable to convince them to change their views and they don’t have anything new to teach you, we’ll all still be better off doing less shouting and more listening.
Wrap it up already
In summary, the Abortion debate in America is one of those situations where we need to stop generating so much heat and start generating more light. Solutions to this problem exist. They are backed up by data and science, and informed by principles, logic, and empathy. If we are each willing to listen to the other side and give a little of what we have to gain a lot of what we want, we can make serious progress towards solving this issue once and for all. Also, if you’re going to have sex, and you don’t want to make a baby, wear a goddamn condom. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
