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Pro-Life-Choice
By Barry Graham
published: February 12, 1998

Last month was the 25th anniversary of Roe v. Wade,

and the war over women's right to abortion is no nearer
to being over than it was in 1973. The discourse has been
pretty static, barely moving on over 25 years. It's an
ideological war in which I walk through No Man's Land.
I'm pro-life.
I'm also pro-choice.
This is only a contradiction in the eyes of dogmatists on
either side.

On the one hand, there are the dogmatists who describe themselves as being pro-life. It might be more
appropriate for them to call themselves "pro-existence." They picket such places as Planned
Parenthood, harassing women as they go inside. Often, they picket on days when abortions aren't
being carried out. One client of Planned Parenthood recalls a time when she was hassled by
anti-abortion protesters as she went in to get birth-control pills.

"They showed me photographs of dead fetuses. I thought, 'The reason I'm going to Planned
Parenthood is to avoid that.'"

However, these people don't show pictures of abused children, or children abandoned--literally or
emotionally--by parents who don't want them. Their interest in "life" tends to stop at birth. These
same zealots almost invariably favor capital punishment.

On the other hand, there are the dogmatists who favor abortion. The common myth is that hard-core
advocates of abortion are feminists. Look at the body of contemporary feminist theory on the subject,
and it's clear that the opposite is true. Feminist discourse on abortion tends to be complex and
thoughtful. But abortion is a sacred cow of middle-class white liberals, especially men, who often
sound so enthusiastic about it that they make it sound like a recreational activity.

Both sides are wrong.

Abortion is an obscenity. It may not be killing, but it is certainly the taking away of what is necessary
to sustain life.

Of course, the most extreme pro-choicers deny that a fetus is really a living being. They have to, or it
would be impossible to justify their position. Throughout history, people who commit atrocities have
justified their behavior by denying that their victims have validity as human beings. The slave trade
depended on black people being seen as less than human. The Nazis justified the Holocaust by denying
the validity of the Jews as human beings.

And so, those who are pro-abortion (which is not the same as being pro-choice) view the fetus as a

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cluster of growing cells, a tumor, something to be gotten rid of without remorse. The fetus, it seems, is
not a baby until near the time of birth, or after it leaves its mother's body.

This is an incredibly arrogant premise: As the fetus matures and looks more like a baby, it has more
validity as a baby. The less it looks like you and me, the more okay it is to kill it.

This denial of the fetus's validity as a child doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny, whether religious
or scientific. If you believe humans have souls, how can you say when the fetus has a soul? Does the
soul hover like a vulture outside the mother's body, waiting to jump into the baby as soon as it comes
out? If your perspective is that of an atheist, then the argument is even simpler--if there is no soul,
then life is life. A fetus is alive inside the womb, feeding and growing. And abortion is the taking of life.

A fetus is a baby. And yet I'm pro-choice. I believe all women should be entitled to abortion on
demand.

Why?
Two reasons. One is that abortion is often a necessary evil. Pro-lifers believe they can speak for the
fetus. They talk about the baby's right to be born. What gives them the right to decide that the baby
would choose to be born? Can anyone be sure that a baby would choose to be born to a mother who
doesn't want it? Pro-lifers tend to be solipsistic in the extreme. I've heard them say over and over that,
even if the woman doesn't want to have the child, she'll love it after it's born.

You only have to look at a newspaper to see the fallacy of this. People who love their children may find
it impossible to believe that all parents are not like them. But in a world in which child abuse and
neglect is routine news, in a country with the highest rate of child poverty in the industrialized world,
it's clear that too many children are being born into misery.

But even this argument is a red herring, a distraction from the real issue, which is one of freedom. You
don't have the right to kill, but you have the right to refuse assistance if that assistance would invade
your body, which is the last boundary of privacy.

Suppose you're driving on the highway and you see an accident; the law requires you to stop and
render assistance. But if one of the victims needs a blood transfusion, you can't be compelled to hand
over your blood. To refuse might be considered despicable, but you have the right to refuse. It's your
blood. Nobody owns your body except for you, and nobody has the right to use your body or take from
it without your permission.

Suppose you have a 10-year-old child, and that child needs a life-saving organ transplant, and you are
a suitable donor. You don't have to do it. You can refuse to give your child one of your kidneys, even
though the child will die without it. There are many names that can be applied to you if you refuse to
help your child live, but you have the right to refuse. There is no question that such selfishness is
revolting, but it's still your right. When it comes to your own body, you have the moral right to do what
is morally wrong.

This right applies before birth, too. Even if we recognize the fetus as a child, you can't be compelled to
carry a child inside your body, and to go through the painful and sometimes dangerous process of
giving birth. If the fetus could survive outside a woman's body, there would be no case whatsoever for
the right to abortion. This is why there is no moral defense for partial-birth abortions, unless the
health of the mother is in danger.

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But if you get pregnant by accident, you find yourself with an unwanted stranger living inside your
body, feeding off you as it grows. And you have the right to refuse to give yourself to that stranger. You
have the right to abort, to let the child inside you die. And, whatever anyone might think of you for the
abomination you commit with your body, it's your body and your conscience alone.

Update: I recently reported the trial of Wendsler Nosie, a San Carlos Apache who was charged with
criminal trespass after climbing Mount Graham to pray. As well as being a sacred site to the Apache,
the mountain is also the site of the University of Arizona's observatory.

Because Nosie didn't deny that he was walking down a road that he wasn't allowed to walk on, it
seemed certain that he'd be found guilty. Even his lawyers believed there was no chance of winning the
case. So instead of trying to convice Judge Linda Norton that their client hadn't broken the law, they
decided to use the trial as a political platform at which to discuss the issue of the Indians' right of
access to sacred ground. After the trial, Bill Foreman, one of the lawyers who worked pro bono for the
Indians because of his belief in the importance of the issue, explained to me that this was the strategy
Nosie had wanted him to take, and that the chance to state their case could be cathartic for the
Indians.

It turned out better than anyone had hoped. Judge Norton didn't hand down a verdict at the trial's
conclusion, saying instead that she'd think it over and deliver her verdict by minute.

And she's found Nosie not guilty. According to the law, the prosecution had to prove that Nosie
knowingly committed trespass. And, since he was walking down the road, and the "No Trespassing"
signs face downhill, he said he couldn't see them. In the eyes of the judge, the state failed to prove that
he could.

Contact Barry Graham at his online address: bgraham@newtimes.com

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