Where has the “pro-choice” mentality taken us?

In the United States, by the late 1960s, change was everywhere. Many traditional values were questioned by young people—the “baby boomers”—resulting in a rejection of the prevailing culture.

Male-only bastions of higher education went co-ed. The birth control pill was “invented.” Women entered law schools, medical schools and the workforce in unprecedented numbers.   Hats and gloves disappeared. Eventually the loosening of so many cultural restrictions led to a change in sexual mores—bringing about the so-called sexual revolution. Easy and responsibility-free intercourse— seemed to be within reach of all.

Prior to this time, people did have sexual intercourse outside of marriage; however, the expected response to a pregnancy was a marriage proposal. Clandestine arrangements—in the absence of that proposal—often meant an out-of town visit to relatives. Rarely was the decision made to abort the pregnancy—because the procedure was illegal, dangerous and expensive. Statistics for the 1950s and 60s show that there were hundreds of women—not the 10,000 widely claimed—who died yearly from “back-alley” abortions. However, by 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade made abortion-on-demand a constitutional right, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that only 39 women died from illegal or self-induced abortions.

With the advent of the “pill,” easy sex became the “new normal.” But even “safe” sex—can result in pregnancy. Therefore, birth control needed a failsafe—abortion. Hence the loosening of abortion bans in the late 1960s starting in California and New York and leading to the seminal 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, which created the abortion landscape we have today.

Before the legalization of abortion, except in rare cases, pregnancy—planned or unplanned—meant a baby who either was given up for adoption or born into a home where his or her parents lived. But now, in many cases, an “unplanned pregnancy” is considered an unfortunate situation but a fixable problem. One unhappy consequence of this reality is the standard callous question asked by medical personnel of the newly pregnant woman—“Do you want to have the baby?”   Another consequence—unintended but foreseeable—is the enormous pressure on each “planned” child to fulfill the hope and dreams of his or her parents.

For the first few years after Roe, most politicians publicly opposed abortion—including such prominent men as Al Gore and Ted Kennedy. However, gradually, the two national parties took opposite stances. In an odd twist, Republicans, historically champions of property rights, opposed legalized abortion, using the social justice argument of protecting the small and defenseless. And Democrats, traditionally social justice advocates, used a property rights argument to support a woman’s choice to abort—my body, my choice.

By 1984, the year of the now-famous Mario Cuomo Notre Dame speech (“I’m personally opposed but I can’t impose my views on the public”), legalized abortion had gained respectability. In fact, abortion-supporters pivoted off his philosophy and came up with a guilt-free, thought-free term to describe their stance: “pro-choice”— a perfect foil for the “pro-life” terminology adopted by those who opposed abortion.   Not only did “pro-choice” sanitize the entire subject—but it tapped into the spirit of American independence. Choice meant control. “Pro-choice” became the acceptable if not laudable position of the enlightened. And following on, “a woman’s right to choose,” became a ubiquitous slogan.

However, another sort of change - a change in American hearts and minds—seems to be upon the land. In May 2009, for the first time since Gallup began polling on the subject, a majority (51 percent) of U.S. adults identified themselves as pro-life, whereas only 42 percent chose the label "pro-choice."  Claiming to be “pro-life” indicates a thoughtful pushback on the previously prevailing culture.

What happened?

• First of all—the change no doubt is the result of the ceaseless prayers and hard work on the part of pro-life activists.
• Second, the change probably follows the advent of new and improved ultrasound imaging, which gives pregnant women clear and incontrovertible evidence of new life in their womb—and the widespread use of that technology in pregnancy resource centers.
• Third, perhaps some of the “pro-choice” stories have caused Americans to recoil:
  • Sex selection abortions accepted as pro-forma in India and Asia and tolerable here—thus dramatically skewing the male-female ratios in the developed world,
  • The abortion of babies with birth defects (some as minor as cleft palates and club feet) in the futile search for the perfect child,
  • IVF-induced pregnancies with multiple fetuses “reduced” for the convenience of the parents.

• And fourth, perhaps Americans have become disgusted with the facile “pro-choice” mantra when they view the destruction left in the wake of the abortion-on-demand regime: (Statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute).
  • In 2008, approximately 1.21 million abortions took place in the United States.
  • Most women who choose abortion say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities.
  • Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended—40 percent of them are aborted.
  • Twenty-two percent of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion.
  • Forty-seven percent of women who have abortions had a least one previous abortion.
  • At the current rates, nearly one-third of American women will have an abortion.

Choice (or control) is a two edged sword. Choosing to abort a pregnancy when she is “not ready”—can come back to haunt a woman suffering infertility when she is “ready. “ IVF—the choice of most infertile women—is expensive and chancy as well as physically and emotionally draining. Statistics from the Center for Human Reproduction report a success rate (live birth) for women in their early 30s at 40 percent, with a steadily diminishing likelihood of success as she ages. Because of the effort expended to create the embryos and the uncertainty of their survival in the womb, most IVF physicians implant multiples. In some cases, all the embryos survive which places the woman at another crossroads of choice. Pregnancies with multiples can be a physical hardship for both the mother and the babies in utero—so often the woman is counseled to “reduce” the number of fetuses.

A woman profiled in an August 14, 2011 New York Times article, captured the absolute soullessness of the pro-choice mentality when she said:

“If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner—in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me—and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.”

This is where “choice” has taken us as a society. That the mother of twins could so dispassionately dispose of one of her children is the ultimate in control but the nadir in love or acceptance or peace. Maybe that is why Americans are slowly moving back to choosing life in all is messiness and beauty, in all its randomness and serendipity, in all its mystery and magnificence.

We continue to pray that America soon becomes an overwhelmingly “pro-life” nation.

Tags: • abortion • birth control • pro-life • Roe v. Wade