Earlier this year, in one of my psych classes, my professor had the class answer a series of questions. One of the tasks was to estimate the number of abortions for every 100,000 births. To do this, we had to choose a high and a low number, within which we were 90 percent sure the real number lay. Remarkably, as it turned out, not a single person in the class of about 40 was able to provide a correct range.
The correct answer, in 2005, the latest year for which numbers are available, is that for every four births, there was slightly more than one abortion, totaling 1.21 million abortions for the year.
No doubt that almost all those hands that lay resting when the professor asked who estimated correctly would have shot up had he then asked who was pro-choice. That’s because most supporters of legal abortion are unwilling or unable to grapple with the hard reality of abortion in America.
Except maybe Jeffrey Toobin. In a remarkable piece for The New Yorker, Toobin, one of the nation’s top legal analysts, turns these statistics on their head, using them not as an argument against legal abortion, but for it. “Abortion is almost as old as childbirth. There has always been a need for some women to end their pregnancies,” opens Toobin. He continues blithely: “[T]hirty-five percent of all women of reproductive age in America today will have had an abortion by the time they are forty-five. It might be assumed that such a common procedure would be included in a nation’s plan to protect the health of its citizens. In fact, the story of abortion during the past decade has been its separation from other medical services available to women.”
Why is abortion so controversial if it’s also so common, Toobin asks. Going to the doctor for strep throat? Awesome—have an abortion while you’re there, and maybe get your flu shot.
This kind of talk is distasteful for most of us, pro-choicers included, because we know, as much as Toobin wishes otherwise, that abortion is different from other “common procedures.” President Obama realizes as much, as Toobin disapprovingly notes: “[L]ike many modern pro-choice Democrats, [Obama] has worked so hard to be respectful of his opponents on this issue that he sometimes seems to cede them the moral high ground. In his book ‘The Audacity of Hope,’ he describes the ‘undeniably difficult issue of abortion’ and ponders ‘the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion.’”
The new battle on abortion, then, is not between pro-lifers and pro-choicers; it’s between two camps in the pro-choice movement.
In some sense, Toobin is right: To support legal abortion but to work to reduce the number of abortions comes across as incoherent. Why should the number of abortions be reduced, Toobin might ask. Because it’s immoral? And why is it immoral?
From this point, it’s pretty hard for the pro-choice side to win the argument—because the answer to why it’s immoral is that maybe a fetus is a human life. And if maybe a fetus is a human life, then maybe we shouldn’t allow the destruction of a human life. As Toobin says, cede too much ground, and suddenly you’ve lost.
But in a more meaningful sense, he’s wrong. A recent Pew poll found that 65 percent of Americans support reducing the number of abortions, meaning that most people agree that terminating a pregnancy is not just another day at the doctor. After all, what other medical procedure would people support decreasing just for the sake of decreasing it?
That’s why ultimately Toobin’s side in the feud between pro-choicers is sure to lose: He can’t pretend that the banality of abortion implies its morality.
— Matt Barnum is a fourth-year in the College majoring in psychology. He is a member of the Maroon Editorial Board.
For anyone who values women, not just as mothers but as full human beings, there is really one overarching moral question. Women must be free to determine their lives, including whether and when, if at all, they will have children.
A fetus is not a baby and abortion is not murder.
Why should the number of abortions be reduced?
Because it’s expensive, especially when compared with the most basic of birth control methods, the condom.
Because, like any medical procedure, it’s dangerous for the mother to undergo.
Because, regardless of whether the mother feels she has the moral “right” to have an abortion, abortions are traumatic for the mother. Even if she knows she is not capable of having the baby, many mothers still wish they could and regret not being able to care for their child.
NOT because its immoral. Therefore, seeking to reduce the number of abortions while still upholding abortion’s morality is not a contradiction at all.
I find it unusual that much of this debate comes from men…This article was written by a man…
While I personally would never get an abortion I find and believe that there is no place for the government in or around my body and my personal space, and I believe that’s my inherent right as an American citizen.
Where I believe intervention is possible is in the schools, teaching people how to have safer sex and preventing the horrible trauma of an abortion. Here we can reduce numbers in a non-contradicting way. People aren’t looking at the cause of abortion, they are just looking at the numbers.
Man, why does no one realize that the abortion debate is an epiphenomenon, and that the /real/ question is determining what it is that makes a human being a human being? We need fundamental ontology, not more silly prattling that disguises the real debate between two incommensurable metaphysics.
“I find it unusual that much of this debate comes from men…This article was written by a man…”
Jessica, does the truth differ depending on whether you are a man or a woman? Surely if abortion is immoral, it is so from the standpoint of both men and women; and if it is not, it is so for both genders as well. Would you object if I were to say to some well-meaning American: “You shouldn’t object to Genocide X, because you are not an Xian!”? If a fetus is a person, then the situation is exactly that of genocide and should be condemned by man and woman alike; if a fetus is simply a part of the woman’s body and has no claim to personhood, then man or woman alike ought affirm with equal fervor that the government ought not intervene.
I must say I object to the sexism implicit in your suggestion that men and woman are so vastly unequal, and indeed, incommensurable, that something as basic as the standards for truth differ between them.
Barnum is ignoring the obvious logical importance of understanding how common abortions really are. It is not, in fact, to compare getting an abortion to “get[ting] a flu shot” (which is not only an over-simplification of Toobin’s argument, but so glib that it’s insensitive)but rather, to clarify the need for legal, safe abortion. The reality is that many women *do* feel the need to terminate pregnancies in their lifetime and if they do not have a safe, affordable way to do so, their health and well being as HUMANS is clearly at risk. This is as much an issue of public policy as it is a moral issue. Abortion is a medical procedure more than a million American women seek out every year. It is fundamentally important to remember the desolation and danger of denying women access to this medical procedure. The American government should act in the best interest of these million+ live, human citizens of our country instead of wasting their time and our taxpayer dollars passing moral judgements on a procedure that has always been, and always will be, a necessity for many women at some point.