The Abortion Article (part one)

The Miller Lite Theory of Reproductive Rights: or, is it truer to say that the blood of the innocent tastes great, or that is is less filling?

In my seventh grade English class, we all had to get up in front of the class and explain our position on the subject of abortion. I think we were given a day to prepare our arguments. I told the teacher that I didn't have an opinion and she dismissed this as impossible. I went home and asked my mother what she thought and repeated her answer back to the class verbatim. I had not given a single thought to the subject prior to that point; I've spent the nineteen years since working out what my position actually is. My teacher told me, "Everyone has an opinion about abortion." When I was standing in front of that class, I felt like the only person who hadn't come to grips with what was clearly an important issue. Now I begin to suspect that I am the only person to have expended any thought on the topic whatsoever.

Thought is largely surplus to requirements when what you're actually expected to do is select one of two bizarrely unrelated soundbites which you are then supposed to defend to the last breath: do you believe that (1) life begins at conception; or, (2) in a woman's right to choose? The masses that gather together to wave banners emblazoned with these sentiments at one another bear an uncanny resemblance to the absurd denizens of Miller Lite commercials, endlessly and uselessly shouting "Tastes Great!" and "Less Filling!" back and forth across the town square. The pro-life movement argues from an ethics perspective while the pro-choice movement argues from a political one; its two separate conversations going on in the same room. A beer enthusiast will, of course, clear things up immediately: Miller Lite is crap. It's the same with the abortion debate: neither side can possibly win the argument, not only because they're not having the same argument, but because they're both wrong in various ways.

The reason that the abortion debate looks like a beer commercial is that both the pro-choice and pro-life movements have been hobbled by their perceived need to advertise. Through advertisement, they hope to sell their positions and triumph over the competition. To this end, both have adopted the time-tested technique of selling a product by showing the potential buyer how much better the people who already have it are than everyone else. Doing this shifts the focus from the issues onto the people and replaces discussion with "We're better than you." Each side refers to itself in only positive terms and its opposite in only negative terms. This is why the pro-choice side of things carefully avoid the anti-abortion label.

Neither of these groups is pro anything, but they adopted the names that they did to position themselves as the good guys. Good guys vs. bad guys: pro-life vs. anti-life; pro-choice vs. anti-choice. Anti is, rightly, perceived as negative, motivated by fear, disgust, and distrust, but that's what both sides clearly are. Neither group is against what the other claims it is, though: they are anti-abortion, on the one hand, and anti-subjugation, on the other. No one I know is pro-abortion or pro-subjugation; they're not particularly supportable propositions and, as such, these two supposedly opposed groups might not have differences as irreconcilable as they believe themselves to. Real communication could lead the realization that both sides have been right all along. The shared fear of letting anyone see that they're afraid, however, ensures that it is impossible for either side's fears to be addressed and each group remains ensconced behind a facade of strength made up of all the things that they've got wrong.