There's an interesting abortion debate going on in the blogosphere--Mark Thompson recaps it--and the question is basically about the Tiller killing and how we should respond to it. I tend to agree with Thompson--I think that Hilzoy is wrong to say that the proper response to this killing is to repeal restrictions on late-term abortion and make training on the subject mandatory for all baby doctors. I think that this is both politically and substantively misguided.
I'm a pro-choicer, but I will admit to being somewhat conflicted about the subject personally. I'm fine with abortion through the end of the second trimester--once viability occurs, and once the fetus is able to live on its own outside the womb, it is no longer a fetus but a fully living child. This isn't some sort of craven third-way stance on the issue--it is essentially the view of Roe itself. Before that, my view is similar to that of someone being kept alive by artificial means: it's a personal decision that the next of kin have the right to make. The analogy isn't perfect, as with a Terri Schiavo there's no hope of a change in the situation, while a fetus will, all things being equal, become a person. I acknowledge this shortcoming readily. But this is what I believe.
So, the implications of this put me in the mushy middle of the issue. I support a ban on partial birth abortion for personal reasons but also for political reasons. I know a lot of pro-choicers oppose such a ban (I know Ezra Klein's made this argument before) because it would be "chipping away" at abortion rights in America. I find this argument to be as silly as the wingnuts' argument that legalizing gay marriage means that soon guys will be marrying goats. It's the same slippery slope logic: that redrawing the line just a little bit is tantamount to erasing the line altogether. It's also a weak argument--it would be better for such folks to argue that life begins at birth, and that before that one can do whatever one wants to the fetus. Not my belief, but it would have the advantage of being coherent. And, politically, it would be a hard sell, though taking the stance that partial birth abortion ought to be legal has cost pro-choicers a lot of support among younger people who grew up watching pro-choicers defend the right to dismember and abort recognizably human babies. Conceding the partial birth position would have left the pro-choice movement in a stronger position to fight, say, spousal notification (which I oppose) or parental notification (which I support, so long as there's a judicial bypass). The pro-choice movement, like many interest groups, played to its ardent supporters on partial-birth instead of trying to convince skeptical moderates, and ultimately fought the wrong fight for the wrong reason. And they lost that fight.
So, I guess I'm sort of in the mushy middle on abortion as it is today, but the irony is that the supposedly "divisive" issue of abortion appears to have more or less morphed into a broad-based, durable consensus: the vast majority of people want abortion to be generally legal and want Roe to stick around, but they also want the partial-birth ban, parental notification and spousal notification. In short, they generally want abortion to be legal, but with a few restrictions in place to keep the whole family involved in the process and to avoid some of the more gruesome procedures. Polls on these specific issues all yield 60-70% in favor of each proposition. If such policies were enacted, it would put us roughly in line with the rest of the West, perhaps even a bit more on the liberal side of things than Europe. The American people have already made up their minds on this, and the results are fairly coherent. Somehow, though, I don't think this is going to make the exercised activists on either side of the debate quiet down, or even admit that they're each in a fairly small minority on at least some of these issues. I'm actually somewhat annoyed at this--clearly, the public has made up its mind on these issues, and I don't think people who disagree with this consensus should just shut up and go away, but I would like to hear officials and media types tell the truth on abortion instead of pretending that roughly half the country are in favor of abortion on demand while the other half want to bomb abortion clinics. I'd like to see an honest discussion about public sentiment on these issues, and an honest and durable official consensus made to echo the unofficial one, so that this issue could stop strangling every other one in our august republic. Given the money raised for both parties based on these issues, though, I suspect the kabuki will go on for quite some time to come. But the "debate" about abortion is over and has been over for a long time. Now it's just empty theater.
(P.S. Oh, and the less said about the argument that making abortion illegal would eliminate the right to privacy, the better. Seriously, why does this issue--and seemingly only this issue--turn smart liberals into total idiots?)
