Pro-Choice Is Not Pro-Abortion by Nancy McShane ©2005
 presented January 9, 2005, at the 1st Unitarian Universalist Church of Springfield

          January 22 is the 32^nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision which gave women the right to have access to a safe medical abortion. At 7 p.m. that night, the citizens of the Ozarks will celebrate that right, as well as other rights guaranteed them under the U.S. Constitution, at an event entitled “Raise a Glass to Roe” to be held here at the 1^st UU Church. We will have a wine and cheese reception followed by a reader’s theatre performance of monologues sharing stories of how choice, or the lack of it, has made an impact of the lives of women and men across the nation, and across the generations. 

They say confession is good for the soul, so I’m going to start out this sermon with a little round of True Confession. I’m going to share my own story of choice.  

Choice. That’s a loaded word these days, isn’t it? When you talk about choice, and being pro-choice, people seem to automatically assume you are talking about abortion. And being pro-abortion. But it’s not the same thing.  

See, what we’re really talking about here is our reproductive rights, and the choices we are allowed to make about those rights. We. Women and men. So my story about rights concerning reproduction starts out where it did for most of us. In fifth-grade health class. 

When I was 10, I was shown a filmstrip along with all the other girls my age at Delaware Elementary School. I assume the boys were also shown a filmstrip; but for all I know they were out on the playground playing kickball. The main visual I remember was of a big duck egg, a medium-sized chicken egg and a teensy-weensy human egg. I’m not sure what the point was…it could have been about making omelets. But since it was called Health class and not Home Ec, I guess we were supposed to be learning about “s-e-x.” I’m guessing it was easier on those of you who are now in your 20s and 30s. Back in the 80s they went ahead and called it “sex ed,” at least in the bigger cities. What do they call it nowadays? Oh yeah, “abstinence education.” 

When I was 12, I started my period. I was at school, in the sixth grade. I even remember the outfit I was wearing, blue plaid culottes and navy blue knee socks. Very Marsha Brady. I remember that I came home from school and told no one. I just went to the bathroom closet and got out one of those hideous belt/pad/trapeze/combo things they had back before they invented panty adhesive. I never talked to my mom and she never shared any information with me. I guess because I was the third daughter and the fourth child she figured the “talk” was already out there, floating amorphously through the house and that I’d pick it up through osmosis. Which I guess I did. 

But I also picked up information at school. Not on the playground, where information is often suspect, but in the girls’ locker room at Parkview High School, and in the lunch room, and in the bleachers during games. That’s why when I was 17 I made my way to Planned Parenthood to put myself on the pill. It never occurred to me to talk to my mom or to my pediatrician, or to ask to start going to a “grown-up” doctor. Eeeuuw, I didn’t even like being in the same room as my brother and dad when tampon commercials came on. Planned Parenthood is just where high school girls knew to go back in the late 70s. Back then it was located at the corner of Glenstone and Bennett and you could park in the back. I parked across the street in front of La Casita Mexican Restaurant because my dad owned the building they rented. He drove past there 4 or 5 times a day and would have wondered what I was doing there. He was used to seeing my car at La Casita.  

Even though I was scared and nervous about it, they were friendly at Planned Parenthood. They didn’t treat me like trash and they talked to me in plain English. I remember the little things they did to make the experience more comfortable, like keeping the room warm and putting potholders over the stirrups on the examining table. I wish my fancy Catholic health system doctor had the same courtesy. The visit didn’t cost too much and the pills were affordable. I went to Planned Parenthood not because I was sleeping around, but because I knew you could never be too careful, and the only person I could really rely on to be prepared about birth control was myself. This was back before we knew so much about STDs. Now I would proactively arm myself with the pill and a purse full of condoms. And a book on self respect. But that’s another sermon. 

Now I’m going to share something with you that will probably shock you. I was, no thanks to the public school system, finally fully versed in the facts of life. I was on birth control. I had pretty trusting parents. And you know what? I didn’t become promiscuous. In fact, the only time the pill came in handy during high school (except for the fact that when on the pill you know exactly when to expect your period) was the time I had too much to drink and too little resistance, and that, by God, is what birth control was intended for! 

          The story fast forwards here. I went to college, worked a while and then got married. When I was 25 I had a miscarriage in my 12^th week of pregnancy; what the doctors call a “spontaneous abortion.” It’s not what you want to hear in the examining room, but that’s the medical term for it. Afterwards, I don’t know how many well-meaning Christian people came up to me and said, “God must have taken it for a reason,” or “There must have been something wrong with it,” or “God must have decided this wasn’t the right time.” Which led me to believe that God could perform abortions and his followers would never question him for it (it’s not for us to know the reasons why…) I, however, began to question God; a series of questions that began with why? and ended with God being relegated, for me, to a natural power that exists somewhere on the order of string theory. You know it’s…rather like…aw, I’ve heard some smart people talk about it once and it sounds probable but don’t expect me to explain it to you. 

          When I was 32, I was pregnant with Ellie. I remember that summer, when I was about 8 months pregnant, they were holding a pro-choice rally at Phelps Grove Park. I fantasized about going to the rally and getting up in front of everyone and pointing to my huge belly and reminding them “This, too, is choice. Choice doesn’t equal abortion. Women, even pro-choice women, believe in having babies. We are good mothers.” But I didn’t. It was hot, I was miserable and, believe it or not, ten years ago I wasn’t too keen about speaking in public. Of course I don’t have that problem now, which is why I’m going to stand up in front of hundreds of people on January 22, including many of you I hope, maybe in front of television cameras, and give a toast celebrating our right to privately determine our reproductive future, the right to privacy being one of those traditional American values that some say we are sorely lacking in these days.         

So there’s my personal story. You might say, “OK, so she doesn’t equate choice with abortion, but what about the organized groups of ‘rabid femi-Nazis.’ Surely they are for the whole-scale destruction of fetuses!” 

          I quote from the NARAL Pro-Choice web site: “Unintended pregnancy is the primary factor behind the high number of abortions that take place every year in the United States. Although abortion is safer than childbearing, many women could avoid the procedure altogether if contraceptive options were improved and if safe, effective and easy-to-use methods, together with comprehensive sex education, were more widely available.” 

I’m also going to quote the NARAL site when it comes to crunching the numbers: “Both state and federal governments are restricting reproductive rights – including access to contraception, legal abortion and sex education – on a widespread scale. Eighty-seven percent of counties in the United States have no abortion provider. Since 1995, states have enacted more than 400 anti-choice measures and Congress has voted 166 times with anti-choice politicians winning all but 32 of those votes. Abortion is becoming less available even though it remains legal.” 

“With every political trend working against us, the fact is; the need for abortion will never go away until we, as a country, can achieve two of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s goals: better access to more effective contraceptive options and better access to other kinds of reproductive health care and information.” 

We’ve all seen the recent poignant pleas from such diverse celebrities as Nancy Reagan and Christopher Reeves on behalf of stem cell research. This, too, has become wrapped up in the all-encompassing umbrella called choice: Again I quote NARAL: “Opposition to the right to choose has had an adverse and chilling impact on scientific research and medical advances in the United States. In recent decades, anti-choice political activity has interfered with promising research into a host of diseases and conditions, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, AIDS, endometriosis, infertility and multiple sclerosis. Research on fetal tissue played an instrumental role in the development of the polio vaccine, virtually eliminating the disease from our society. Yet those who oppose abortion still seek to halt this research at every turn.”

“In addition to blocking scientific advancement, anti-choice groups often turn science on its head in their effort to portray legal abortion as unsafe for American women. In reality, legal abortion is one of the safest and most common medical procedures available today. Legal abortion entails half the risk of death involved in a tonsillectomy and one-hundredth the risk of death involved in an appendectomy. The risk of death from legal abortion is even lower than that from a shot of penicillin. And although anti-choice groups often try to link abortion with the risk of developing breast cancer, the largest and most comprehensive study on the subject concluded that ‘induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer.’”

But even though these front page issues seem to frame the public debate on choice, NARAL doesn’t shy from the buried-on-page-twelve stories about public reproductive health care: “NARAL Pro-Choice America works to reduce the need for abortions. Americans need better access to contraception, health care and sex education. But, anti-choice forces are chipping away at a woman’s right to choose which results in more unintended pregnancies and more abortions.”

“Recent surveys have shown several positive trends concerning teenage sexual activity and contraceptive use. Statistics demonstrate a stabilization in teen sexual activity, a decline in teen pregnancy, and an increase in contraceptive use at first intercourse. Yet the U.S. continues to face an adolescent reproductive health crisis. The rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease (STD) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections remain unacceptably high.”

“In searching for solutions to this crisis, some individuals and groups have focused on abstinence-only education. But while abstinence education is an essential part of sex education, it should not be the only lesson taught. Sex education should also teach teens how to protect themselves if they do become sexually active.”

“Rather than focusing on abstinence-only education, the U.S. must demonstrate a national commitment to remedying this adolescent crisis through a multi-pronged approach. Such an approach would invest in the development of young women by valuing their lives, inspiring them to seek better futures, enhancing self-sufficiency, preparing them for higher education, providing job training and ensuring access to health care.”

“We need to embark on a campaign to increase family planning funding, improve and expand access to contraceptives, and increase awareness of and access to emergency contraceptives. Finally, we must launch a national effort to require comprehensive sex education throughout our primary and secondary schools. This approach would protect teens by promoting abstinence while simultaneously providing teens with the contraceptive and STD/HIV prevention information they need to make responsible decisions if and when they become sexually active.”  

“Put simply, the government cannot mandate healthy family communication where it does not already exist. But unfortunately, young women in crisis are becoming an increasingly inviting target for restrictive legislation. In the states, laws mandating parental involvement in a minor’s decision about abortion are becoming all too common, even when the pregnancy is the result of incest or news of the minor’s pregnancy may result in emotional or physical abuse.”

We here at 1^st UU are way ahead of the curve. For several years we have been involved in the OWLs program. Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual health and behavior. It equips participants with accurate, age-appropriate information in six subject areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. Grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, Our Whole Lives provides not only facts about anatomy and human development, but helps participants to clarify their values, build interpersonal skills, and understand the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality. We have trained some of our youth and have plans to continue and expand that training. If you have any question about the program, you can talk to R.E. Director Michelle Bradley after the service.

So. Many of us here might be in agreement that pro-choice does not mean the same thing as pro-abortion. And we might be in agreement that, as Anna Quindlen put in the reading April read earlier, “we are on the side of choice, but.” And that, as Quindlen states, these difficult questions that follow the “but” should not be met with silence or slogans, but with speech.  

So. What can we do? We can start by talking the talk. By showing up at the “Raise a Glass to Roe” event at 7 p.m. on Saturday, January 22, and listening to the voices of choice, and adding our own two cents worth. We can write to our state and federal legislators. We can keep informed in the issues. We can walk the walk by working hard in our community to ensure that the need for abortion is avoided altogether by making the OWLs classes more widely available and by working to implement two of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s goals right here in the Ozarks: better access to more effective contraceptive options and better access to other kinds of reproductive health care and information. 

        So be it.

READING

Life Begins at Conversation by Anna Quindlen
© Newsweek, 29 November 2004
 

I’ve been an opinion columnist for 15 years, and the public debate that has advanced least during that time is the one about abortion. (For the record, the discussion of gay rights has come the farthest.) From the time Roe v. Wade was first handed down by the high court, leaders of the opposing sides have been frozen into polar positions. Autonomy versus maternity. Coat hanger versus cradle. Constitution versus church. 

            Those are oversimplifications, but too often oversimplification has seemed to be the ruling principle on this extraordinarily complex issue. And so many of the discussions of abortion from both sides have felt remote from everyday concerns. Maybe you know someone who watches the little stick turn blue and sits down on the toilet to think about a culture of life or the right to privacy. I don’t. Lots of women have decided to end a pregnancy wondering why the so-called debate seems to have no connection to what they’re thinking, feeling and doing. 

            We talk about how the country became so bitterly divided. Abortion is the issue that first set the template for this schism. The public dialogue hardened into ice long ago. In the most recent issue of Conscience, the journal of Catholics for a Free Choice, the leader of the group tries to break the impasse with a wise and provocative manifesto. Frances Kissling asks those who believe in legal abortion to publicly acknowledge competing interests, writing, “Are we not capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time; of valuing life and respecting women’s rights?” 

            She goes on to raise some compelling questions. Is it helpful to concentrate solely on legal arguments when moral imperatives are so much a part of the equation for many people? Is it useful to refuse to consider the emotional pull of the fetus even as we conclude that the rights of the mother ultimately take precedent? Is there a dangerous disconnect between our public positions and our private sentiments, a disconnect the public suspects is dishonest? 

            Kissling makes some excellent arguments in support of legal abortion, in which she believes deeply. To the charge that a culture in which abortion is permitted will devalue respect for all life, she counters with the example of Romania under Ceausescu, where abortion was forbidden yet children were abandoned in record numbers. But she also takes note of how troubling some potential allies have found the seemingly automatic support for later procedures, writing, “Is there nothing, they ask, that concerns pro-choice people about abortion?” 

            Those of us who support reproductive rights like to say that polls show many Americans are on our side. The truth is that they are on our side, but. But they are troubled by what they’ve heard about certain methods. But they’re concerned about what they can see on the sonogram. How come, they ask, an unaccompanied 14-year-old can’t get a tattoo but can get an abortion? How come when you want it it’s called a baby and when you don’t it’s called a fetus? And how come they’re made to feel unreasonable and ignorant when they ask such questions? How come we don’t call it as they feel it? 

            Difficult questions should not be met with silence or slogans; they should be met with speech, speech and more speech. The abortion-rights agenda should be set, not by the opponents, but by the interested on-lookers. Kissling wrote her essay before the election results were in. Today those who work to ensure that abortion remains safe and legal may be tempted to harden their positions even further under renewed fire from the right. That would be wrong. 

            Sure, it’s alarming that the new senator from Oklahoma is an obstetrician who believes abortion should be outlawed and the death penalty applied to abortionists. Tom Coburn objects to legal abortion in the case of rape, noting that his own great-grandmother was raped by a sheriff, and he opposes abortion for what he calls “convenience.” Yet he performed two abortions himself on women with heart disease. 

            There’s hours worth of useful discussion in that one paragraph. What if those women had had, not heart conditions, but mental illness that made them suicidal in the face of pregnancy? Should public policy for all rape victims be based on one family’s history four generations removed? And what constitutes convenience? If you are destitute, is it convenient to have an abortion, or realistic? As the National Catholic Reporter concluded in a recent editorial, opposing abortion is “cheap grace” for those politicians who don’t support policies that make it easier for women to bear and raise children. 

People will keep on reducing this discussion as best the can: God and freedom, rights and wrongs. But this will never be an easy issue to parse. It can’t be; instead of fitting neatly into black-and-white boxes, it takes place in that messy gray zone of hard choices informed by individual circumstances and conscience. People of good faith need to talk about it just that way, to advance the dialogue even in the face of rigid opposition. We insult women by suggesting that this issue is easily encapsulated in aphorisms. We insult ourselves by leaving its complexities unexamined.