Pro-life AND Pro-choice

Pro-life AND Pro-choice
According to the Huffington Post Sarah Palin, speaking in Dallas on November 10, described President Barack Obama as "the most pro-abortion president to occupy the White House." She then continued to attack the President for his support of abortion rights, which she saw as inherent in the terms of the federal health care reform. [Huffington Post, November 11, 2010],

As someone who is both pro-life and pro-choice, I think it is time for both sides to look beyond the name-calling at the implications of having the American Government adopt an official pro-life policy, particularly one in the form of a constitutional amendment.

The issue is not the populist dichotomy, which pits those who are anti-abortion against those who are pro-choice.  Rather the more significant issue is that of who gets to call the shots – the woman in whose body the unborn is being formed, or the government who will gain full control over her body.

That is to say that any form of government authority over abortion is not as simple as its advocates present.  Such authority would transfer complete control over a woman’s reproductive system to the government – in either direction.  While this appears to be self-evident, and desirable from the point of view of the pro-life advocates, what is overlooked is the fact that government control over the woman’s body is a two-edged sword.  Government protection of the unborn is offset by the fact that government is also in control of the unborn.

Consider the Chinese government’s limit of one child per family in order to control its rampant overpopulation.  A Chinese woman who conceives a second child is fair game for the official abortion mill since she is no longer in control of her own reproduction system.

In other words, once a society cedes the right to reproduction to its government – that government – can, and in many cases, has – used that right to limit reproduction and impose abortion, along with sterilization, on those it determines unworthy to reproduce. 

In Germany, during the Nazi hegemony, for example, the government rewarded married women who produced children for the Fatherland with stipends intended to support them at home as caregiving Mothers.  Although this might appear to be a progressive move, the same authority that rewarded the care-giving mothers was invoked by the Nazis to justify forced abortions for those it deemed of little or no value - which included not only Jews, but also Gypsies, Africans, the mentally or physically handicapped, or anyone the government regarded as ‘degenerate’ or of negative value to the Fatherland.

As recently as the 1930s, forced abortions and sterilizations were imposed on African-Americans in the fervor of the Eugenics movement in the United States.  Throughout the twentieth century, other victims of sterilization included epileptics, the deaf, mental patients, and criminals. The last such sterilization in the United States is reported to have taken place in Oregon in 1981.

Crusaders like Margaret Sanger were at least as interested in purifying the American race as they were in providing freedom for pregnant mothers. Sanger made her goals clear in speaking about the ‘rights’ of the handicapped, the mentally ill, and some racial minorities, which she saw as counter-productive to the goals of a pure society:

"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control" [and, one can infer, from abortion].  Cited in Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

In this attitude she was not alone.  Marie Stopes a London paleobotanist was a prominent campaigner for eugenic policies.   Inspired by the movement, she opened the first family-planning clinic in London.   Ostensibly a movement to promote family planning and the reproductive rights of women, much of what she advocated was geared towards what Hitler would later invoke as “racial purity.”  Her definition of “unfit” ranged from near-sightedness to mental illness to racial and ethnic origin.  In 1920, she wrote in favor of the "sterilisation (sic) of those totally unfit for parenthood” which she insisted should “be made an immediate possibility, indeed made compulsory." Radiant Motherhood (1920). 

The advocates of the Eugenics movement were also firmly in the camp of compulsory abortions for those they considered less than ‘fit.’  Among these advocates were such prominent persons as H. G. Wells, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg, Linus Pauling and Sidney Webb, who saw the hand of government in reproduction as a progressive next step in the quest for the ideal society.

Advocates of both sides of the abortion issue would be wise to examine the slippery slope situation attached to the giving of the power of the womb to government.   

Advocate against abortion if you will; fight for reproductive rights if that is your belief; but keep the government out of the discussion.  Even more important, advocate for adequate care, both medical and nutritional, and for affordable housing, education, and safety for both the mothers and the babies who result from your beliefs.