Wanda Franz, Ph.D.
IMMORAL DECISION-MAKING
[The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act] brings me back, kicking and screaming, to the subject of abortion. I don't want to write about this. Like most Americans I want the abortion debate to end. I want abortion to be safe and rare. ...
Over the years, I have rejoiced at sonograms and picked names for what we call a baby when it's wanted and a fetus when it isn't.
Behind [the partial-birth abortion ban] is simply a mistrust of women as moral decision-makers.
This should be a wake-up call to all young women, because it's their health at risk, their role as moral decision-makers disparaged.
--Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe ("Out of the picture on the abortion ban," 11/13/2003)
The rights of children as individuals begin while they remain the foetus.
--Victoria Woodhull, the first female presidential candidate, in Woodhull's and Claffin's Weekly, 12/24/1870
Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never think of murdering a child before its birth.
--Victoria Woodhull in the Evening Standard, Wheeling, West Virginia, 11/17/1875
When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.
--feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton writing to Julia Ward Howe, 10/16/1873, as recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library
Regarding the legality of abortion, 30% of women hold that "abortion should generally be available to those who want it" and 17% say that "abortion should be available but under stricter limits than it is now." But 34% of women say that "abortion should be against the law except in case of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother"; and 17% hold that "abortion should not be permitted at all." That adds up to 68% of women opposing the current abortion-on-demand situation.
--based on "Progress and Perils: How Gender Issues Unite and Divide Women - Part Two," 6/4/2003, Center for the Advancement of Women, an organization headed by former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton
Columnist Ellen Goodman doesn't want to write about abortion. That shouldn't surprise us. To write seriously about abortion requires serious thought about it. And when women think seriously and without pressure about abortion they tend to reject it--130 years ago and now, as the quotes and polls above show.
What Ms. Goodman wants to end is the debate about abortion, not abortion itself. Any thoughtful debate about abortion leads to confrontation with the facts, as the arguments about partial-birth abortions have made clear. So,
Ms. Goodman would rather not continue the debate. The pro-abortionists don't have the facts on their side; so they often lie. And that, too, was made clear by the debate about partial-birth abortions. Ms. Goodman, too, resorts to sleight of hand. Her rhetorical weapons are a couple of slogans.
First, Ms. Goodman asserts that the child in the womb is "what we call a baby when it's wanted and a fetus when it isn't." Note the bald assertion. It is not "we pro-choicers" think so, it's "we" as in everybody. Well, if it were so there wouldn't be a debate and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act would have never passed. The poll referred to above demonstrates that it is not even "we, the women."
Second, Ms. Goodman asserts that challenging abortion rights amounts to disparaging "women as moral decision-makers." This is the trump card. In the land of political correctness, how would anyone dare to question women's right to make their own decisions? "Moral" decisions, mind you. It doesn't occur to Ms. Goodman that it is she who disparages women as moral decision-makers because she implies that the basis for their decision-making is a stupid and pernicious slogan: "it's a baby when it's wanted and a fetus when it's not." And how this is going to make abortions "rare," she doesn't say.
The point is not to beat up on Ms. Goodman. But she is well-connected to the major pro-abortion organizations; thus her attitudes and ways of thinking reflect the attitudes and thinking of these groups. We are now at a point in the struggle over abortion where many on the pro-abortion side do not even pretend anymore to be rational and guided by facts. An overwrought emotionalism is becoming the main tool of "argument." Beyond Ms. Goodman's columns, just look at the NARAL press releases and listen to the gibberish on "choice" emanating from the current Democratic aspirants for the presidency. And when emotionalism and sloganeering don't work, they recycle old lies--as we just saw with the latest round of congressional debates on partial-birth abortion. But do not underestimate them! They are not stupid. And they are well-funded.
What is the point, however, is that we cannot let our opponents get away with their deceitful sloganeering and that we must constantly force them to stand for the debate. We win when we confront them in public with the facts and when we force lawmakers to vote on well-designed legislation.
It is good for our cause when the pro-abortionists summarize the extent of their "moral reasoning" in slogans like "it's a baby when it's wanted and a fetus when it isn't"--provided we take the opportunity to explain to our fellow citizens how primitive that sort of "reasoning" is. A recent letter to the editor in my hometown newspaper said this: "One and the same child could be a 'baby' to one parent and a mere thing, a 'fetus' in the eyes of the other. Or the mother could, under the varying moods of a stressful pregnancy, pick a name for the 'baby' on one day and make arrangements to abort the 'fetus' on another, change her mind once more, and so on. In such a scheme, the notion of the inherent and permanent dignity of a human being evaporates. When being wanted by someone else becomes the criterion for our right to exist, then there is no end to the killing."