Has anyone noticed a "national conversation" about abortion?
Long ago I lost count of the number of things about which it has been said we should have a national conversation. Budgets and fiscal restraint. Universal health care coverage, whether we should have it, how to pay for it, whether that will lead to "socialized medicine," and whether socialized medicine (like England's National Health Service) would be good or bad for the United States. Energy policy, and all of its accompanying issues, especially energy independence, renewable resources, and climate change.
I like the idea of a national conversation. I think of a conversation as two or more people settling into comfortable chairs to have an exchange of ideas about a topic of some importance or significance. The purpose is to give everyone some insight into the subject, including how others think. Ideally, if it's a national conversation about something of national importance, it should enable the development of consensus. That isn't always possible, but it's worth a try.
We don't seem to do this very well. The art of conversation requires active listening and a mind that is willing to entertain others' ideas and be open to the possibility that divergent viewpoints are meritorious. Our "national conversations," however, tend to be more like single-minded monologues. You express your views, while I am focused on what I'm going to say when you're finished. If I'm listening to you at all, it is only so that when it's my turn to talk, I can make sure I include a pointed refutation of anything you've said.
Is it any wonder that consensus has so persistently and repeatedly eluded us on issue after issue?
This happens because we form opinions quickly and adhere to them tenaciously. Once we've made up our minds, we are very selective about the opinions of others we are willing to hear. If you are to the left on the political spectrum, you would no more watch the Fox News Channel than go to a Klan meeting. If you are a political conservative, watching MSNBC is reserved for a day that might otherwise be spent reading Das Kapital, say, the second Thursday of next week.
Climate change? Evil humans are destroying the earth. No, idiots believe we are changing the climate, as if we have the power to alter God's plan, when there have been much larger changes in climate than this one over the course of our planet's history.
Health care? Corporate greed precludes any possibility of rational allocation of resources, steadily widening the gap between rich and poor. No, socialists want to destroy the world's best health care by turning it over to mindless bureaucrats who will assure that all of us get health care of equal mediocrity.
Fiscal policy? We are irresponsibly burying our children and grandchildren under mountains of debt. No, the deficit doesn't matter, and cutting the federal budget by 2% will inflict unimaginable suffering upon orphans, widows, and others unequivocally deserving of our generous help.
Perhaps no issue highlights our inability to engage in civil discourse better than abortion. Extreme views dominate the debate. On one side is the position that life begins at conception and abortion is murder. The opposing view is that personhood begins at birth, and before that the only consideration is a woman's right to control her own body.
When do we hear a national conversation - one that meets my definition - about this issue? That's right. Never. The most recent event to gain national attention in connection with abortion was that exact opposite of a conversation: the one-person filibuster.
To remind those whose memories of high school or college political science have dimmed, when a deliberative body is debating something, there are rules about how long debate can go on. In some contexts, such as the United States Senate, debate can go on ad infinitum unless there is a successful motion to close debate, called cloture. In that body, cloture requires 60 votes, rather than the standard 51-vote majority. So if there is someone who wants to debate something endlessly, and there aren't 60 votes to invoke cloture, whatever it is will never come up for a vote. Rules vary about whether debate must actually be going on continuously around the clock, and in the US Senate that typically isn't actually necessary to filibuster a bill, preventing it from coming to a vote without a 60-vote "super-majority" to close debate.
The Texas Senate was considering a bill to impose various restrictions on access to abortion. I will not describe them here, because it is not my intent to focus on the details, but I can assure you that the pro-life folks think they are all eminently reasonable, and the pro-choice camp finds them all quite unacceptable and intended to keep any woman from ever getting a safe, legal abortion: in short, another battle in the Republican Party's "war on women."
Texas State Senator Wendy Davis took to that chamber's floor this week to filibuster the abortion bill. The idea was that she would speak on the issue without interruption (as required by Senate rules for debate to go on without the matter coming to a vote) until the scheduled end of the session, thereby keeping the Senate from voting on the bill before adjournment was mandated by the clock.
I believe Senator Davis's filibuster was available for watching and listening in various ways, probably including C-SPAN and live Internet streaming. I must admit I didn't have a chance to watch or listen to any of it. But I think I can be confident that she did not spend her time examining the arguments for and against each feature of the bill in a carefully balanced way. That isn't what filibustering politicians do. A filibuster isn't a national (or state) conversation.
Can we have a national conversation on this issue? I believe the answer is yes. And I believe the key to doing so is a willingness to accept the notion that this is an ethical dilemma.
About three decades ago I began to develop a keen interest in biomedical ethics. One of the constant features of this realm of thought is the ethical dilemma. Someone is having trouble figuring out the right and wrong in a situation because it isn't obvious. Arguments can be made on either side that seem to make some sense. Clearly issues of health, and life and death, fall into the realm of biomedical ethics, and when right and wrong are not straightforward, ethicists will frame a dilemma. This requires defining, and then comparing, competing interests.
In my view, the competing interests here are clear. On one hand is a woman's interest in controlling her body and what happens to it. On the other is the interest of the unborn child in surviving to viability outside the uterus (which usually means birth).
In 1973 the United States Supreme Court espoused the principle that, in general, state abortion laws may not restrict access to abortion before fetal viability but may do so afterward. (This creates its own difficulties, in that advancements in medical technology can make the age of viability something of a moving target, but that's a big subject all by itself.) So the Court cast the competing interests in black-and-white terms. Before viability, a woman's interest in controlling her body is paramount; afterward, the state may consider the interests of the fetus and impose restrictions. Black-and-white terms. Suitable for application of law. Note that the Court is not a group of nine ethicists.
The great difficulty in having a national conversation is that the debate is dominated by those who refuse to accept the notion that there is an ethical dilemma, that there are competing interests to be defined and weighed against each other. No, there is only one interest, and what that is depends on which side you're on. Either the only interest is the woman's right to control her body, or the only interest is the baby's right to life. Anyone on the other side of the debate is either a baby killer or is waging a war on women, condemning them to being maimed or killed through back-alley abortions with wire clothes hangers. Plain and simple.
But it's not plain and simple, and until we stop pretending it is, the national conversation will never take place, consensus will never emerge, and this issue will continue to be among the most divisive that our society has ever seen.
There is, I believe, no doubt about the path we should follow. But we will never take the first step along that path until we admit that others' views may have some merit.
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