Culture War, Inside and Out Part 1 - Pro-Choice and Pro-Life

Recently I have had some fiery discussions about the Culture War with friends as during these elections, Sarah Palin and all, it is highlighted even more. So I wanted to pick up the thread. In thinking about this article it soon became clear that it is impossible to cover the breadth of this topic in a single blog-length piece and how important it was to speak about this together. So this is a starting point for a discussion that will hopefully take us into new territory, beyond the current, frozen frontiers....

Riding through a peaceful New Hampshire afternoon I was turning the radio dial for a source of news. I came across a station where a man was taking questions about or contributions to his passionately voiced opinion that abortion, under any circumstances, was to be rejected. The afternoon didn't seem so peaceful anymore. My stomach in a knot, I still thought it could be good to find out how he was thinking about this - usually my response to ‘these kind of people' is just an inner snort of contempt. But being increasingly puzzled by the ongoing culture war I thought I needed to stretch. And so I stayed tuned, as a liberally minded caller and the Christian radio host exchanged arguments.

The listener was trying to make the point that the wellbeing of a mother, emotional, psychological and mental as well as physical should be considered. Of course I agreed with her point. But the listener was strikingly inarticulate, insecure.

Birth control and the right to abort are foundational achievements of the women's movement. This freedom has made it possible for women to redefine womanhood, to become socially and economically equal partners with men - at least to the degree they have so far. Ignoring the complexity of a woman's situation and taking away her right and ability to decide for her self whether or not she wants to bear a child is a step backwards into the slavery of our biology.

It bothered me that the woman on the phone was so meek - and I could relate to it. Why was that?

"Do you really think that a woman who has just been raped is able to make a clear, well thought out decision about her own life and that of her child?" the radio host asked.

 "I do", she replied, sounding very unsure. He didn't agree, and I didn't either.

Nor did it seem like quite the right question to ask.

The discussion went on....

"Would you kill a two year old baby then, because it was conceived in a rape?" the man pressed on.

" Of course not", the listener replied.

"How about a child that is two days old?"

 "No..."

 "And how about 5 months into the pregnancy?"

"Well, that is quite a long way in already", she replied, beginning to waver again.

 "At what point then does the child become worthy of protection - where would you draw the line? At what point does life start, do you think?"

Just as the listener I had no ready-made answer to this. Pursuing it further I found myself wondering about our fundamental relationship to life and particularly to consciousness, human, self-consciousness and the potential for it in each human embryo. I had never considered my own abortions in this light. I had them, because I did not want, or feel ready for having a child. I also did not let myself fully grapple with the shock and uncertainty that comes with the discovery of being pregnant, that suddenly, somebody else is there.... I really didn't want to deal with questions of life and death, such as this, and so an abortion was the obvious solution. In the German progressive environment I came of age in, there was no question about that being okay. None of my partners ever wanted a child either.

I can understand that such a simplistic license to end a life just looks immoral to the pro-life proponents. Rape, incest or danger to a mother's life are one thing, but for most of us the choice to have an abortion did not fall into that context. The freedom of self-determination that the women's movement fought so hard for, I took quite for granted without thinking deeply about the implications of this freedom and the responsibility that comes with it. I didn't know better then and so I made myself, and what I wanted, the ultimate standard.

 Then the radio host made another point. "How could the pain and wrongness of what happened in your own life, by being raped, say, be made right by killing another - that of your child conceived in the rape?"

Something in this argument struck me as deeply positive and hopeful. It was the conviction that no matter how bad things get, there was always the possibility of a positive outcome, a new beginning.

The notion I have held since being a teenager was that there are already too many people on the planet and that too many of them are living terrible lives. So it does not make sense to just add more bodies. And I understood my own occasional longing for being pregnant and having a child to be a hormonal trigger set in place by mother nature to make sure there were always plenty of humans to go around. But Life at this point seems to have a more significant agenda and need than simply creating more bodies. We are not just bodies. We need to become more conscious, understand ourselves better and create a world that not only protects and supports life in the womb, but once it is out!

We want to move on from simply being a more sophisticated kind of animal, concerned with survival, pro-creation and emotional and sensual fulfillment. But this is also where it gets tricky.

I think my rationality and somewhat enlightened view combined with a fundamentally selfish motivation in an unhealthy way. If logic is not supported by a real respect for the positivity and limitless possibilities of life we slide into dangerous territory. If there is a fundamental cynicism or casualness about Life, the sense of potential that comes with any new human being and ultimately the meaning of human life itself, is lost.

Maybe Pro-Lifers, even in their one-sided and very limited approach are responding so forcefully because of our postmodern lack of respect for much more than our desires of the moment, our unrestricted freedoms which value ourselves over everything.

 I had made it too easy for myself - meeting the arguments of that radio host in New Hampshire was important. The picture is a whole lot more complex than I had wanted to see. A new solution would have to be the result of discovering a new set of reference points, other than, as in my case, just wanting to do what I wanted, or, as in the Christian radio host's case the simplistic view that an embryo always comes first.

Somehow, pro-Life and pro-Choice cannot remain opposites. What I was left with is that having the right to chose must come with a real vision or purpose of what I am choosing for, and whether it is a new human being or not, it will have to be pro-Life and not just ‘pro-myself'. What that really means is something each of us has to find out.