Pro-Choice Consistency

“Safe, legal, and rare” has been the rallying cry of the modern pro-choice movement since the days of President Bill Clinton. This phrase is etched in the Democratic Party platform, broadcasted on televised debates, and witnessed in signs demanding that Roe v. Wade remain the law of the land. However, keeping abortion safe and legal seems much more consistent with the pro-choice position than ensuring that the procedure is rare. Why exactly is this curious third word included in the abortion catchphrase?

This stipulation for rare abortions indicates a moral judgment. This phrase was inserted to appeal to voters who support abortion rights, while still harboring some moral doubts regarding the procedure. According to a 2007 Gallup Poll, only 26 percent of Americans favor legalized abortion in all circumstances, while 55 percent favor legalized abortion in limited circumstances. Most Americans seem to take a middle ground approach to abortion rights, favoring its legality in limited circumstances. This is consistent with the moral ambiguity that typically surrounds the issue for the majority of people.

Many proponents argue that abortion must remain legal; it is wrong to impose one’s personal morality on the masses through the law, even if one believes that abortion is morally wrong or questionable.

Many actions of questionable morality are legalized to allow for personal choice. Some religious groups are morally opposed to the consumption of alcohol, yet the legality of this activity is virtually uncontested. Why should abortion be any different than other morally contentious issues, such as the right to drink alcohol, which are left to individuals to decide for themselves?

The answer, of course is simple: to legalize abortion is to put a seal of moral acceptability on the procedure. It is inconsistent to view the procedure as morally wrong, yet advocate for its legality in the name of personal choice. This tenuous position advocates the legality of a procedure that—if it is morally wrong—is wrong because it destroys human life. To some, other contentious issues, such as drinking alcohol, might be considered wrong, but not because of their effect on an innocent third party. Thus, even those who view drinking as wrong can advocate for its legality on the basis of personal choice. However, the stakes are much higher for abortion.

Certainly, one may consistently view the procedure as one without any morally questionable aspects, and argue that it should be legal. However, the intellectual incompatibility arises when one allows for the possibility that abortion is wrong, yet argues that women should have access to it because it is their right to choose. If a woman feels that abortion is wrong for her, that is because she feels that it takes a life, or at least the potential for a life. She must then hold that abortion is wrong for others, for the fact that the procedure is being done on another woman would not change that fact that it is still harming an innocent third party in her view: the child who will never make it past a few months of life. Those who feel that abortion is morally wrong or questionable for them, yet advocate for its legality, must argue that a woman’s right to choose supersedes a child’s right to live.

Instead of maintaining the clause that abortion should remain rare, and thus placing a cloud of moral doubt over the procedure, pro-choice Americans should view abortion as morally acceptable. This is the only way to maintain consistency between the morality and legality of abortion. Abraham Lincoln made this same argument when he responded to Stephen Douglas in their famous debates. Douglas supported federal neutrality on the slavery issue, while claiming to be personally ambivalent on whether slavery was right or wrong, which Lincoln called an untenable moral position. Lincoln argued that it was only reasonable for the federal government to remain neutral on the morality of slavery if it viewed slavery as morally acceptable. As Lincoln said, it would be easy for someone who did not view slavery as wrong to advocate that the federal government not take a stand on the morality of slavery, while this would be an impossible position for someone who viewed slavery as morally wrong to hold. Similarly, those who advocate for the right to choose, while purporting to stay neutral on the topic of whether abortion is good or evil, predicate their argument on the fact that abortion is not the stain on America’s moral conscience that many believe it is.

Furthermore, if the pro-choice movement fully embraces the moral acceptability of abortion as it must, then it follows that there should be nothing wrong with women choosing to use the procedure as birth control. With this logic, there should be no objections against the Yale senior, Aliza Shvarts, for her art exhibition reported nation-wide last week, which may have included footage of multiple artificially induced abortions. If one argues that abortion should be safe and legal, then he cannot, in the same breath, insist that he hopes abortion is also rare.

Whenever you are told that personal moral convictions should be left out of the abortion debate, remember that the person making that assertion has already brought her convictions into that debate. The shaky middle ground of being personally pro-life but advocating for abortion’s legality because you do not want to impose your moral convictions on others rests on an intellectually untenable foundation.


Caleb L. Weatherl ’10, a Crimson editorial comper, is a sophomore economics concentrator in Currier House. He is the president of the Harvard Republican Club.