abortion – Thinking Pacifism

Ted Grimsrud—9/29/18

I am acquainted with several people (and know of many, many more) who were troubled by Donald Trump’s lousy character and shady business dealings yet still voted for him. The basic rationale seems to have been: “Sure, Trump is awful. Clinton’s awful too. The difference is that Trump will appoint Supreme Court justices who appose abortion.” The vote in the 2016 election was close enough to imagine that these people may have tipped the balance.

And now Trump is rewarding such choices. First, he got the rigid right-winger Neil Gorsuch on the Court to replace rigid right-winger Antonin Scalia (some analysts have suggested that Gorsuch is even more extreme than Scalia in his embrace of a corporatist agenda, hard as that may be to imagine). Now, we are likely just days away from Brett Kavanaugh (a long time Republican Party operative) joining four other rigid right-wingers to form what will likely be a long-term Supreme Court majority.

It’s hard to say precisely howthis new unequivocally “anti-abortion” majority will act to undermine abortion rights. They may simply overturn Row vs. Wade and allow whatever states choose to to make abortion in all situations illegal. However, I have read commentators who suggest that, realizing such a direct move would energize the pro-choice forces, the Court may move in a more piecemeal direction. They may make decisions that continue to chip away at abortion rights until, while technically legal, abortions become virtually impossible to obtain in most of the country.

A counter-productive strategy

Ironically, though, I believe that this strategy will backfire on those who, out of genuinely humanitarian motivations, desire a sharp reduction (if not complete elimination) of abortion in this country. Basically, in helping to elect Trump and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, “pro-lifers” have actually put into power forces that are profoundly anti-life (militarist, anti-environment, ruthlessly pro-corporate, pro-mass incarceration, etc.). The “success” of getting an iron-clad “pro-life” majority in the Supreme Court will not only lead to heightened misery for non-wealthy Americans, but ironically likely will do little, if anything, to eliminate abortion.

Continue reading “Why Abortion Opponents Should Oppose Brett Kavanaugh…and all Other Republicans” →

Ted Grimsrud—October 30, 2011

I have to admit that I have never been especially exercised by the abortion issue.

On the one hand, I have never found the strict anti-abortion position attractive. While self-labeled as “pro-life,” it has often struck me as rigid, legalistic, ideological, and too easily co-opted by political forces that in other respects are pretty anti-life. Yet I also have a hard time thinking of abortions as positive or even morally neutral acts. I also am uncomfortable with arguments that present abortion is strictly a matter of the pregnant woman’s personal choice.

And it is not an issue I have ever had close personal experience with. So it has been easy to focus on other issues—as I still do.

However, in the introductory ethics course I teach to mostly first-year college students, I use abortion as one of several case studies we briefly consider. So I do find myself getting more interested.

The success of “pro-life” rhetoric

I am struck more and more with how successful the anti-abortion advocates seem have been in setting the terms of the discussion. Most students seem to take it as a given that human life (in the sense of deserving of full human rights, let’s call this “personhood”) begins when the egg is fertilized. So, abortion at a very early stage is understood to be the taking of a human life, morally equivalent to murder. When pushed to consider it, many of these students would see that even “birth control” methods that prevent fertilized eggs from being implanted on the uterine wall (e.g., the “morning after pill”) are abortion.

This seems to paint people into a corner. We have heard several true-life stories from guest speakers about cases where the strict pro-life belief led to actions that many in the class recognize as seemingly problematic. Continue reading “What about abortion?” →