The Future Of The Abortion Debate

In honor of the 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the United States, the Center For Reproductive Rights released a video commemorating the occasion. Instead of a meaningful and honest video of, say, emotionally engaging clips cut together of women explaining what "the right to choose" meant to them, possibly with inspirational music, and a plea to the pro-life movement for understanding and compromise, what we got instead was this:

With no less than seven uses of the word "baby," this video goes above and beyond what I'm sure was supposed to be comedy and straight to horrific and creepy what-the-fuck-were-they-thinking.

And what were they thinking exactly? At least one faction of the pro-choice movement (and I beg you to know that it is very much the minority) will insist that this is just comedy, that its intended audience is the percentage of Americans that are pro-choice anyway, and that those anti-choicers can learn to take a joke. Meanwhile, the pro-life movement is up in genuinely heart-broken arms. "You see?" they say. "You see how evil and unconcerned they are, how the slaughter of unborn innocents is just comedy to them?"

Both of these groups are missing the point. This video is, in all reality, the culmination of a year of long and ugly political debate on the topic, of hate speech and legislation, of personhood and ways to shut that whole thing down. This video isn't celebrating dead babies or making light of abortion. It is, quite simply, a determined middle finger to conservatives everywhere.

Nobody knows better than someone who has had an abortion how very not funny the subject is. This video isn't saying that abortion is tons of fun, that it's a sexy thing to do, that feminists revel in the number of lives they've taken (whether or not we're in agreement that we're discussing a life). If you believe that, you're not looking at the whole picture. You're not looking at the coerced minors, the rape victims, the terrified women everywhere who don't see having a child as being an option. You're not seeing the desperation.

The fact of the matter is, this type of rhetoric is the inevitable result of the poisonous atmosphere of debate that has become American politics. These are people who believe whole-heartedly that they are defending women's futures, women's bodies, women's health. They believe they are doing good for the world and righting an injustice. The pro-life folks believe the exact same thing, except in the case of the baby. Can we stop pretending that we're all just a bunch of baby-killers and women-haters? Are we really that polarized?

If we stopped for a second to cut the name-calling and if we really asked one another "what is it that you want"... we might actually get somewhere. What if there was a way for everybody to get what they wanted? How could we reduce the rate of terminated pregnancies and at the same time reduce the number of women being forced to give birth?

The answer: free and available birth control. This is an issue that the pro-choice movement has fought long and hard for, and I cannot for the life of me understand why the pro-life movement is against it. If the reason is that there shouldn't be a thing as consequence-less sex, or if the reason is that "free and available" means tax dollars and resources, my one and only response is that these are lives we're talking about. Infants, boys and girls, infinitely unique creations that are being terminated by the millions every single year before getting the chance to live. Millions of women, sisters and daughters that have their lives derailed and futures ruined. What are they worth to you?

Compromise. It is time to acknowledge that demonizing each other doesn't solve anything. If our aim is problem solving, if we want to save lives... we're doing it wrong.