The American pro-choice movement has been mired in contradictory values and beliefs since its inception. Although the American pro-life movement certainly has its own internal conflicts, they have formulated a compelling moral narrative that drives in its favor. The pro-life statement that “life begins at the moment of conception” has conveyed a strong, moral message that has kept their movement stable since the 1960s. The pro-choice movement, on the other hand, has yet to find a single statement of purpose, which some people cite as a detriment to the achievement of the goals advocated by leaders in the movement. Instead of identifying a distinct message, pro-choice advocates have sent a wave of contradictory ones that continue to this day. What their movement has done is form arguments that derive from “self-contradictory conclusions by valid deduction from acceptable premises,” also known as paradoxes.
Just some of the contradictory views the pro-choice movement has triggered:
1) ‘Therapeutic’ abortions. Abortion advocacy started in the early 1950s when a coalition of doctors, lawyers, activists, and public health officials, alarmed by the high death rate caused by illegal abortions, began advocating for ‘therapeutic’ abortions. That is abortions performed only in situations where the woman’s physical and mental health were at risk, including cases of rape, incest, and the likelihood of fetal deformity. The contradictory part of this is that abortion had not always been a “woman’s issue.” It was about the safety of both lives, the mother and her child.
2) NOW it’s a woman’s issue. Abortion as a matter of health and civil rights became an issue of women’s equality when the National Organization for Women (NOW) got involved in 1966. NOW began advocating “reproductive control as tantamount to abortion.” Not only did the notion of “reproductive rights” open up a can of worms, it also exposed a schism between feminists of the day.
3) Roe, row, rock the boat. By the time the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973, feminists were already split into separate camps. You had the aboriton reform advocates who agreed with NOW and campaigned for reform of abortion laws to make them less restrictive, and you had the so-called “radical feminists” for whom it was an all-or-nothing game because partial repeal meant partial equality. For these feminists Roe “represented one step forward and one back.” In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s decision to have an abortion was protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was different from Griswold where contraception became protected under the Ninth Amendment’s reservations of rights to the people. By also not being grounded under the Equal Protection Clause, the Roe decision opened the door to states imposing restrictions on abortion practices. (Which is exactly what has happened in the decades since.)
4) We want our privacy… kinda. The granting of abortion as a privacy right, not a public right, invites even more socio-political contradictions. Privacy is a policy that can both promote individual freedom and undermine it. This is especially true when the government gets involved in regulating it. Abortion supporters often fight to have free, or at least affordable, abortions. Many advocate for abortion to be categorized as a medical procedure so it can be covered under Medicaid for those who cannot afford it, which is a contradictory notion. Pro-choicers argue for less government intervention into women’s bodies, and yet they want the government (via tax dollars) to pay for abortions when women cannot afford them; this has brought the components of economics and race into the debate because minorities, specifically African American women, have the highest rate of unintended pregnancy. Perhaps our Founding Fathers knew that privacy is a double-edged sword and that is why they did not explicitly enumerate the right to privacy in the Constitution.
5) Right to choose? It wasn’t until after Roe v. Wade, that abortion reform activists renamed themselves as “pro-choice.” The change in semantics represented the move to protect privacy and personal freedom over the right to have an abortion. For the radical feminists thought this was exactly the problem: the debate was no longer just about abortion. The issues grappled with were now in the (even stickier) territory of gender equality and human rights. Despite becoming pro-choice, NOW continued to advocate for abortion law reform and rarely campaigned for access to maternal healthcare or childcare for woman who chose their procreative freedom. These groups continue to value women who have abortions over those who choose to carry their pregnancies to term. This begs the question: Does the “right to choose” really include the right to choose to not have an abortion?
6) Safe, legal, and rare. A common mantra among pro-choice advocates, stated by President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s and again by Senator Hillary Clinton last year during the 2008 election cycle, was to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare.” This slogan may reflect a key paradox in the pro-choice movement. Safe abortion practices, if only under extreme circumstances, are regarded as crucial by both pro-choice and pro-life advocates. Both parties believe in the sanctity of preserving life (if only the woman’s and not the fetus’s), because safety falls into moral ground. Legality and rarity, however, are a different story. Pro-choicers say they want fewer abortions, but they aim to remove all barriers (legal, financial, and geographical) in order to make abortions easier to obtain. Abortion advocates decry when an abortion clinic closes, but does that not mean that there will be fewer abortions? Fewer abortions is seen as a two-headed coin; it means couples are making better use of contraceptives, but it is also argued that some women, especially low-income minorities, have less access to abortions. If abortion services were freely available, would they not be utilized more? And if abortion is really just a simple medical procedure than why does it need to be rare?
Like same-sex marriage advocates, the pro-choice movement has made the choice to fight most their battles in the courts. Although some state restrictions on abortion have been struck down for being unconstitutional, many were upheld, including limiting public funding and use of public hospitals, informed consent, 24-hour waiting periods, and fetal rights. It is hard to see the progress supporters of abortion have made because the restrictions vary immensely from state to state. Over the years, the U.S. legal system may have ultimately undermined the pro-choice movement. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Article(s):
Nossiff, Rosemary. “Gendered Citizenship: Women, Equality, and Abortion Policy.” New Political Science 29.1 (Mar. 2007): 61-76.
Posted by Ian Mac 
