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The Gosnell Verdict and Abortion Politics
5/16/2013
I have received several inquiries today about an article located on this website by Cynthia Gorney called here "On the Politics of Partial-Birth Abortion". It is a reprint of a 2004 item from Harpers magazine. I don't usually reprint such items but this one provided an especially excellent history of the abortion debate including the troubling language used to explain what doctors do in performing abortions. It shows how opponents of abortion use such language to shock people into supporting the anti-abortion position.
The article was mentioned in a column at the Wall Street Journal by Daniel Henninger in response to the verdict against Dr. Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia this week. Henninger mentions this website as a source for the article. I would like here to make clear my own views on this.
First let me quote the Religion News Service on this trial:
Even before rogue abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted in Philadelphia on Monday (May 13) of delivering and then killing late-term infants, abortion opponents were convinced they had a case that could reshape an abortion debate that has remained static over the years. After the verdict, they were even more confident.
“Dr. Gosnell is only the front man; and the real trial has only just begun. The defendant is the abortion license in America,” Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor and leading conservative activist, wrote after a jury convicted Gosnell of three counts of first-degree murder for snipping the spines of babies after botched abortions.
What Daniel Henninger likes about the Gorney article is that she calls for a larger and better conversation about abortion. He quotes her: "There is a sober, profoundly difficult public conversation to be had about second- and third-trimester abortion in this country." I agree completely with that, but then he goes on to say:
No reasonable person could disagree. But let's make that any-trimester abortion. Whatever Roe and its successors allowed, it's not the answer. Something has to give. That means compromise is necessary if one wants fewer abortions. After Gosnell, 40 more years of the dreadful status quo is unthinkable.
Notice that Henninger wants all abortions to be questioned, not just the latter trimesters. So he is using the Gorney article to go beyond what she is recommending. He seems to be pushing for what Robert George also wants, an outlawing of all abortion.
The Gorney article is specifically about so-called partial-birth abortions carried out in the latter trimesters for various reasons. The grisly details of how these are performed make difficult reading. But the fact is that there may well be compelling reasons for such abortions if we are told all the facts about why a particular woman needs such a procedure. The Gorney article does not adequately provide those reasons.
And I still have not myself read about the exact details of the Gosnell case to know the conditions of the fetus and women involved in that case. A jury has found him guilty of murder since the life of the fetus was taken outside the womb. But I do know that what Robert George and other anti-abortionists do is to overly romanticize and idealize the biological processes involved in the development of human beings. They do not admit or realize that the biological process itself is not perfect, is often broken, and that a partial-birth abortion can be, in fact, the most moral action possible within a tragic set of circumstances.
These are the sorts of abortions which Dr. George Tiller was willing to perform on behalf of parents and women facing such tragic circumstances. He was a Lutheran layperson who was murdered in his own church by a man whose motivations were fueled by the kind of thinking of Robert P. George.
What most people do not realize is that abortion is not just a moral issue to be debated among those with varying ethical orientations. It is a political wedge issue used by one side of the political divide in this country as a handy emotional issue. Henninger's column even presents this context with his choice of a title, "America's Second Civil War". It is, indeed, a continuation of the original civil war.
Large numbers of followers of religious right preachers vote for Republican candidates, for example, who stand for positions against the economic interests of those very followers. The preachers dupe their followers by self-righteous rhetoric about abortion. Before the 1973 Roe decision, there was a wide variety of opinion among Southern Baptist leaders. But there was in the South widespread hatred of the Supreme Court for its decision on school integration which forced public schools in the South to integrate their classrooms. After 1973 the abortion issue became a rallying cry for the religious right, whose leaders mostly come out of the South, and which turned to the Republican Party after the civil rights victories of the 1960s. The so-called cultural wars are in many ways just a continuation of the civil war; the South is now trying to use abortion to claim the moral high ground against the North.
Abortion should not be discussed without acknowledgement of this larger political context. Furthermore, the religious right has taken a position against freedom and equality for women and a larger role for them within society. Abortion is absolutely a key emotional issue for the religious right against this greater role for women. When they use the highly emotional language about partial-birth abortion they are, in fact, engaged in lying about the facts involved in all abortions, most of which do not require such grisly methods.
In other words, the Gosnell verdict represents a particular case of a physician who did not practice acceptable methods of abortion. No matter what the law is, no matter how carefully institutional structures are designed, there are going to be cases of individuals doing the wrong thing. But we should not make law and create structure based on isolated examples. Robert George and others will claim that Gosnell represents what is universally true about abortion.
But that is not the truth at all. A better conversation is needed, I agree. But you can't have a good conversation with people like Robert George. What is needed to deal with people like him is a good political movement in support of women, women's health, and women's choice.
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