Arguing Abortion, Responsibly

This week the Institute of Politics (IOP) began a study group on abortion entitled, “Abortion: The Legal and Political Landscape.” In an e-mail sent out to students urging them to attend, the study group’s chair, Bolek Z. Kabala ’03, who is also a Crimson editor, wrote, “Tentative plans right now are to invite two speakers, a convicted abortion clinic bomber and someone as far to the Left on the issue as possible.” Abortion is at a critical juncture in America today. As Kabala rightly noted in an interview, there is a White House administration committed to overturning Roe v. Wade for the first time since most of us could vote. With international affairs occupying the nation it is only too easy to turn our back on the erosion of the freedoms and guarantees of reproductive rights at home. And yet, such erosion is occurring as you read this column.

President Bush nominated Judge Charles Pickering to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Pickering, Bush’s first abortion idealogue to come before the Judiciary Comittee, has a history of opposition to women’s rights: As a state senator, he voted for a resolution calling for a constitutional convention to propose an amendment to ban abortion and voted against state funding for family planning programs. Pickering’s nomination was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, but his nomination is an indication of the type of judge Bush may later attempt to appoint to the Supreme Court. Secondly, Bush’s proposed budget is unequivocally hostile to reproductive rights. Bush included $33 million in abstinence-only sex education in his budget, plans to eliminate funds for the United Nations Population Fund and cut the USAID portion of the international family planning budget by $21.5 million in 2003.

I alert the reader to these facts not to “scare” readers who support reproductive rights. Indeed, one of the problems with the abortion debate as it is currently framed is that both sides use rhetoric designed not to reach a middle ground, but to draw their own adherents to further extremes. Thus anti-abortionists use phrases like “baby-killers” while pro-choice activists dub anyone opposed to abortion a “right-wing religious nut.” Even without this irresponsible rhetoric, it is most likely impossible to have a dispassionate or “academic” debate about abortion. Abortion is a highly emotional and personal issue in general because it touches upon people’s most sacred and natural rights: Their sovereignty over their bodies and their lives. This fact, however, should only challenge Harvard students to discuss the issue in as reasonable and open a manner as possible. This is an educational institution, and participants from both sides of the debate come to learn and participate in a safe environment as free from violent rhetoric as possible.

That being said, Kabala’s proposal to invite a convicted clinic bomber would be disrespectful both to the students who come to the study group wanting to learn and discuss in a safe environment and the reproductive rights establishment. Debate about abortion can only occur in situations where participants feel safe. One would not, for instance, want to debate U.S. foreign policy with a convicted terrorist. Putting a domestic terrorist on the dais with an advocate for women’s reproductive rights, however far “left” he or she may be, is both an insult and a threat to those who have dedicated their lives to ensuring that the constitutionally protected right to abortion is available to American women.

If Kabala and the IOP want to sponsor a debate on abortion that is beneficial to participants on both sides of the issue, they should not consider the widespread implications of banning abortion. They should bring in medical professionals who can speak to the issue of the intrusion of government in medicine. There is a whole medical ethics debate about abortion which is often ignored when people start calling fetuses “babies.” This debate has many corollaries in and implications for the debate about cloning and stem cell research, and as such demonstrates that abortion is not the isolated moral issue that many abortion-rights opponents believe it to be.

Secondly, they should host members of religious organizations such as the Catholic Church in order to teach study group participants about the theological arguments for and against abortion. The church has made some of the most powerful (and popular) arguments against reproductive freedoms. And yet, one of the most Catholic countries in the world, the Republic of Ireland just voted last week not to restrict abortions further in that country.

Most importantly, students should attend the study group in order to talk amongst themselves about this difficult issue. The one piece of rhetoric that Kabala was right to invoke was that which reminded us that abortion rights could be overturned in the very near future. That fact alone should convince Harvard students of the necessity of discussing abortion and picking apart the strands of the debate in an honest and open manner.

Meredith B. Osborn ’02 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.