Last night, I saw Lake of Fire, a documentary about abortion. The film maker claims to be undecided on the issue. For anyone who is interested in this issue and whatever one's opinion, it is a must see. Keep in mind, it is not for the faint-hearted. The movie moves from the abstracted discussion of the issue to grim pictures of aborted fetuses, a woman who died from a botched abortion using a hangar and we are witness to a couple actual abortions. A couple of scenes will stay with you for the rest of your life if you watch this film. One reveiw here from the NYT and another one here. More reviews can be accessed from Metacritic.
I am convinced, after seeing this documentary, that we need to snatch the discussion from wackos on both sides (the movie is full of them) and political operatives (no Karl Rove tactics please). This is a much to serious to be left to the crazies (the movie involves some luminaries but their discussion seemed trivially abstract when confronted with the gritty abortions in the movie). There needs to be non-political forums convened of philosophers, ethicists, religious leaders, indigenous thinkers, doctors, women who've had abortions, women who decided against abortions, people whose parent(s) reconsidered aborting them and so on.
I am afraid there is no other way to put this and I refuse to tip toe around it: Abortions are a dreadful and tragic occurrence. Whatever, our disagreements and whether we are pro-choice or pro-life, to claim otherwise would be to trivialize and minimize what is happening to both the woman and the fetus. People of good will on both sides--pro-choice and pro-life--need to have this as a starting assumption and the prevention of abortions as a goal.
Some thoughts. Please be patient and read through the whole thing if a particular point offends you. This is a complex and messy issue that requires those who engage to get their hands dirty and not ride on the high horse of abstraction or ideology. I am also engaging this issue for the first time so there are many subtleties and facts of which I am sure I am unaware.
We all agree that if a woman gives birth to a full-term baby, she has no right to kill the baby, no matter how inconvenient the child is. The survivability of premature babies is also evidence that at some point in the womb, that fetus has become a baby. (Powerful blog here on couple with a 28-week preemie; for comparison, one abortion shown in Lake of Fire was at 20 weeks according to the NYT). So, we can all agree that whatever your beliefs about when life begins, at some point, INSIDE the womb a person, an individual exists. What we disagree about is when that point is. The reality is that no one can claim to know the point at which personhood begins and the location of that point is where much of our conflict is centered (which is not to say that you can't have a belief about when personhood begins; I, for instance, believe that point is closer to conception than further from it). Despite the absence of precision about when that point is, we are all very clear on one thing--a human life is being formed.
Having established that, it is clear that unwanted pregnancies will occur and have occurred as long as human beings have existed and if the choice is between women dying from unsafe abortions and having access to safe abortions, then women's safety should be ensured. We do however have to question what is meant by choice. Does choice mean having access to as many as five abortions as was the case for one woman in the movie? How do we deal with people who are not in enough control of their lives to make good decisions? On the other hand, how is criminalizing abortion a solution to actually reducing abortions? Has making drugs illegal stopped people from using drugs? How can you force a woman to use her body to carry a baby if she doesn't want to? Are we going to be hauling traumatized 16 year old girls off to prison? Is criminalization really about reducing abortions or making a moral point.
So I return to my initial statement--people on both sides of the argument have to agree that abortions are tragic and have to reduced. It means that people on both sides have to come off their high horses and get their hands dirty. It means that some pro-choice people are going to have to encourage women to consider adoption instead of abortion; some pro-life people are going to have to make contraception available to young women; some conservative Americans are going to have to accept that adoption by a gay couple is an alternative to abortion; some pro-choice people will have to accept that a woman on her fifth abortion, for instance, is not qualified to make that choice--abortion is not a form of contraception.
I know this are not particularly intelligent suggestions but all I'm trying to say is let's regain some sanity around this issue, stop trying to make moral or political points and start working to make abortions as rare as possible while safeguarding women's control of their bodies.
By the way, after watching Lake of Fire, I am more convinced than ever that what Obama said about how to engage people of different faith than you is true especially if they believe your real goal is to force your faith on them.
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.I don't that is too much to ask and would be much more effective. This is exactly what Nat Hentoff, an atheist who is against abortion does in the film and he is extremely convincing.
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