I am and I am not

I am going to try to take the place of a pro-choice person for a minute. This won't be easy because what I mean by pro-choice is--no big surprise here--that any decision-maker should have all of the information available to make an informed choice. In that sense, I am already pro-choice.

But what I observe among those who like to label themselves as pro-choice is something decidedly different. Information is not nearly as important as ideology. Ideology dictates what information will be shared, and which will be suppressed. The consequence of this is that decision-makers can't make a fully informed choice (or give informed consent) because someone else has decided to keep information from them for their own good.

So in this sense, I am not pro-choice.

If pro-choice people understood the term the way that I do, what would they have to do differently than they do now? As I indicated above, they would have to re-examine the ideology that makes them want to muzzle voices that they don't happen to like. What are the elements of this ideology?

That's a bit hard to say as it comes out in sound bites and dismissive statements. But one does encounter certain common themes:

1. Women are not to be threatened with profound discrimination. No one disagrees with this statement on its face. We all concur that neither women nor men of any age, creed, race, origins, educational attainments, etc., etc. should ever be threatened with discrimination.

The issue of what constitutes discrimination always has to be balanced with another right, that of free speech. With respect to abortion, anything that suggests that it is wrong for a mother to abort is dismissed by definition as hate speech--profound discrimination to be sure-- by pro-choice groups such as the Capilano Students' Union (see my posts Secular fundies and the Cap College pro-life club, and Give me a good atheist any day!). Free speech loses to a certain definition of hate speech.

2. Women should have control over their own bodies. This is another way of stating an important human right with which we all agree, that of the liberty and security of the individual, regardless of gender. As the pro-choice people apply it to the abortion issue, of course, they mean that a woman should be able to choose for herself whether or not to abort, the assumption being that the fetus is, in some sense, part of her body rather than an independent life with its own rights to security of the person.

3. There is no religious argument against abortion. This may be expressed in a variety of ways; e.g., Religious considerations of public policy must simply be dismissed as inappropriate. Or, counseling centres should not make religious or moral judgments. Some pro-choice groups make a point of saying that they don't take any donations from religious/moral sources.

As a variation on the above theme, Planned Parenthood in the U.S. tells the clergy that they have a special responsibility to bear witness in support of reproductive rights so that the public and their elected representatives may understand the theological and moral basis for reproductive rights. Then, having established and helpfully advised the clergy that their opinion should be identical to Planned Parenthood's, they assert that ultimately the decision about abortion is between a woman, her conscience, and/or her God (link to quoted material).

One could go on, but these seem to me to be essential components of the pro-choice ideology as I hear it expressed routinely in the media and political circles.

Wearing my own version of the pro-choice hat, as I am trying to do in this post, I have to say up front that I have no argument with the first two principles. No one should be discriminated against, and no one should violate the body of another. The difficulty for me is that pro-choice groups want to place restrictions, or special meanings, on these human rights so as to eliminate anything contrary to their presupposition; i.e., that abortion (or more broadly, reproductive rights) are sacrosanct.

If I decide that access to abortion is so critical that any conceivable (no pun intended) medical or moral objection is odious, dangerous, and evil, then I am bound to label any such objection as hate speech. But this is putting the ideological cart ahead of the informational horse.

For instance, the deVeber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research reports that there are seventy-seven articles, nearly all from European scientific journals, supporting the conclusion that there is a strong link between abortion and mental health issues (National Post, September 19, 2007, p. A17). A research organization called the Elliot Institute claims that women who abort are six times more likely to suffer depression, substance abuse and suicidal tendencies than women who see the birth through.

Are they right? I'm not competent to judge, and I doubt if most pro-choice people are either. But one thing is certain--I wouldn't dismiss such findings out of hand because the researchers have come to different conclusions from mine, or because the scientists have faith-informed views (I have no idea what their religious views are, if any). I certainly wouldn't label these findings as hate speech. That would be a deliberate decision on my part to keep information from women that might be relevant because I have decided in advance that it is discriminatory.

Am I trying to set up a straw man here? Not at all. Listen to this very clear demonstration of a medical person deciding that keeping information from a woman who was considering an abortion was quite acceptable, a decision backed by the New Jersey Supreme Court.

A woman named Rosa Acuna found herself to be pregnant and consulted her doctor about the abortion option. Specifically she asked whether (at eight weeks pregnant) she was carrying a baby. The answer was either, "Don't be stupid; it's only blood." (the patient's version), or "What's inside you is just tissue at this time." (the doctor's version). An abortion ensued.

You can look up the further events ("N. J. Supremes Issue Flawed Abortion Ruling," Frank Diamond, The Bulletin: Philadelphia's Family Newspaper, September 19, 2007 at www.thebulletin.us), which included post-operative bleeding, and post-traumatic stress disorder for Ms Acuna. The upshot of it all was that Acuna took the gynecologist to court for misleading her about the fetus. He failed to indicate that there were differing views on whether a fetus represented independent life, and he did not warn her that some women suffer depression, even very serious depression such as she did, as a result of having an abortion.

To quote the reporter: What the New Jersey Supreme Court last week found important was that "she understood that without some intervening circumstance or medical procedure, a child would be born, but what she needed to hear on the day of her visit to [the doctor's] office was that she was carrying 'an existing living human being.'" Well, the court ruled, maybe Acuna needed to hear that, but Turkish was under no obligation to say that "an abortion results in the killing of a family member."

The court went on to say: "We are not unmindful of the raging debate that has roiled the nation and of the sincerely and passionately held beliefs by those on opposite sides of the debate." The court added that "Acuna must demonstrate that Dr. Turkish withheld medical information that a reasonably prudent pregnant woman in like circumstances would have considered material before consenting to the abortion."

This is Big Brother/Sisterism at its worst. The gynecologist, who is presumably aware of debates within the medical community concerning when life begins, and of the physical and emotional impact of abortion on some women, can pick and choose what to tell the young mother. The completely non-expert young woman is supposed to drag out of the good doctor whatever he has deemed not to be relevant to this ideal reasonably prudent pregnant woman.

I'm trying to think of any other field of human endeavour where we reasonably prudent citizens would countenance such censorship of information. But pro-choice people seem to accept this approach on an ideological basis. If I'm wrong, I will expect to see the pro-choice groups lining up to condemn the New Jersey Supreme Court decision.

Thus, if pro-choice people in the life vs. abortion debate want the word choice to mean the same thing as it does when we discuss democratic choice, or consumer choice, or career choice, they don't have to overhaul all of their principles. But they mustn't arbitrarily limit them by deciding in advance that some information is not apropos. This is censorship, pure and simple.