Choice concessions; technology and medical advances are hurting us

The LA Times ran an op-ed last week called Abortion's Battle of Messaging. Co-authored by the Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL, they concede they are fighting an uphill battle against this reality… technology is not on their side. Things like sonograms of unborn children are exposing the fact that what's in the womb is a baby. Could we say the truth is not on their side?!

Twenty years ago, being pro-life was déclassé. Now it is a respectable point of view. How did this happen? Did the pro-choice movement fail? Or did those opposed to abortion simply respond more effectively to the changing science as well as the social shift from the rights rage of the '60s to the responsibility culture of the '90s? In the 1970s, the arguments were simple and polarized: Abortion was either murder or a woman's right to control her body. The fetus, however, stayed largely invisible. The pro-choice movement stayed on the message offensive, tactically shifting in 1989 from women's bodies to the "who decides" question posed by NARAL…. But this was rapidly parried by the anti-choice demand that we look at what was being decided, not just who was deciding. Science facilitated the swing of the pendulum. Three-dimensional ultrasound images of babies in utero began to grace the family fridge. Fetuses underwent surgery. More premature babies survived and were healthier. They commanded our attention, and the question of what we owe them, if anything, could not be dismissed. These trends gave antiabortionists an advantage, and they made the best of it. Now, we rarely hear them talk about murdering babies. Instead, they present a sophisticated philosophical and political challenge. Caring societies, they say, seek to expand inclusion into "the human community." Those once excluded, such as women and minorities, are now equal. Why not welcome the fetus (who, after all, is us) into our community? Advocates of choice have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus.  The preferred strategy is still to ignore it and try to shift the conversation back to women. At times, this makes us appear insensitive, a bit too pragmatic in a world where the desire to live more communitarian and "life-affirming" lives is palpable. To some people, pro-choice values seem to have been unaffected by the desire to save the whales and the trees, to respect animal life and to end violence at all levels. Pope John Paul II got that, and coined the term "culture of life." President Bush adopted it, and the slogan, as much as it pains us to admit it, moved some hearts and minds. Supporting abortion is tough to fit into this package…. The specter of women forced into back alleys as a result of a one-time "mistake" has been replaced with hard questions about why women get pregnant when they don't want to have babies. In recent years, the antiabortion movement successfully put the nitty-gritty details of abortion procedures on public display, increasing the belief that abortion is serious business and that some societal involvement is appropriate. Those who are pro-choice have not convinced America that we support a public discussion of the moral dimensions of abortion. Likewise, we haven't convinced people that we are the ones actually doing things to make it possible for women to avoid needing abortions…

I read this and get the sense that they are lamenting technological advances in medicine. Are technological advances in medicine hurting women? Maybe they'd prefer we return to an earlier era where cutting-edge medical technology wasn't available to women. I love hearing them talk near the end of the article about wanting to "regain the high moral ground." Good luck.