IMovedOn.org

Americans do relish their marketing buzz words…we search for those short, pithy phrases that embody our ethos – define “who we are”. In no other debate do we seem to find two camps neatly defined by their simple buzzword monikers: Pro-choice and Pro-life.

Both “life” and “choice” are good things… things that we all should be promoting. The problem of course is that if you view that “life begins at conception” then abortion is no longer a choice any more than we have a choice whether or not to shoot our neighbour.

In order to bridge this divide, we have to examine each of the “positions” at their extreme limits to see if they still make sense. On the pro-choice position, does a pregnant woman really have an inalienable “right” to terminate a pregnancy 1 hour before delivery?… I think the vast majority would claim – “no”…there is some point prior to the “last hour” where the unborn child attained a civil right to not be killed.

Before we get too deep into this discussion, we have to state that nothing I say here has anything to do with the situation where the mother’s life is at risk. It is well established in all codes of ethics that the mother’s life is to take precedence at all times – even if it means terminating the pregnancy.

The extreme limit of the “pro-life” position is at the other end of the pregnancy – at conception. On the day after conception, does society have the right to remove the mother’s “choice” as to how to proceed with her pregnancy? If this is so, society’s “right” has to be grounded not in a religious viewpoint but in a universalist viewpoint.

The concept that “life begins at conception”, while a tenet of Christianity that “abortion” is “murder”…this concept is not shared by Judaism. The traditional Judaic viewpoint is that the purposeful loss of a fetus is not “murder” but is a case of “damages”. When a pregnant woman who is attacked and looses her fetus – it is not a case of murder – she is awarded “damages”.

If the concept that “abortion is murder” is not a universalist viewpoint…then it is a religious tenet and therefore on the day after conception – we would have to impose a religious viewpoint on any pregnant woman – clearly a repugnant concept for a secular society.

So we are now faced with a fact that we have always known – that pregnancy is a “process”…it begins at conception and ends roughly 9 months later at birth. The “pro-choice” viewpoint cannot stand the “morality” test at point right before birth and the “pro-life” viewpoint cannot stand the “morality” test on the day after conception because we, as a secular society, do not impose religious viewpoints on our citizens.

We are left with the conclusion that the pro-life viewpoint cannot be established in secular society at the beginning of a pregnancy and the pure pro-choice viewpoint cannot be established at the end of a pregnancy.

So we are left with a “truth” that we can no longer ignore – that the resolution of the conundrum is that the point in the “process of pregnancy” where society’s “right” to protect a fetus overrides the mother’s “right” to “choice”…that this point lies somewhere between conception and birth.

Since neither the pro-life or pro-choice viewpoints can be acceptable, it is up to some body; either the judiciary or the legislators to decide at what point during a pregnancy should a mother’s rights be subjugated to the obligations of society to protect the life of one of it’s members.

Most likely such a deliberation would choose as this “dividing line” a logical point during the process where the fetus could reliably live outside the womb of the mother. The impact on the expectant mother is that she would have to make a decision sometime during the first 4-6 months of her pregnancy – not a too terribly onerous restriction.

To do otherwise leaves us in a society which is untenable from many points of view.  In a pure pro-choice world, infanticide is allowed and we as a society stoop to the lowest levels of barbarism.  In a pure pro-life world, we decend into a society of forced religious perspectives.

While I view the sacredness of life as an imperative and I agree with the pro-life agenda – I cannot in good conscience adopt their methods.  The pro-life forces in America cannot be allowed to resort to inquisition-like techniques of forcing their religious perspective on to the general population which may not share their viewpoint.  The pro-life forces have to go through the difficult, generations-long process of teaching our the young people of our nation the value and sacredness of life and the responsibility of parenthood.