'Safe, legal, rare': make it real - abortion - Column

The letter from John Tomasin appearing in this issue [page 29] is a response to a letter of my own, [Commonweal, May 20] which was a response to a letter from my congressman, which was his response to an earlier letter of mine taking issue with his support for the inclusion of abortion funding in health-care reform. Of the making of many responses there is no end; not where abortion is concerned. If you've absolutely had it wiht the abortion debate, you are allowed to skip over this piece--though I think it may say something slightly new. If you're going to read it, however, please read Mr. Tomasin first.

First, old ground: the nature of abortion. To Tomasin, and those many Americans who think with him, it is "quite clear" that the product of conception is no more than a mostly featureless group of cells of no greater significance than we would give to a carbuncle. If this is true, it follows that abortion poses no serious ethical problem. But for many other Americans the conceptus is a human being, or at the least a "potential" human being: either a baby or a baby-on-the-way. If that is true, this particular clump of cells is not so easily expendable.

Which view is correct? Who can decide? Not the Supreme Court; finding no consensus on the question among "those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology," the Court decided the issue before it in Roe v. Wade on other grounds. It discovered (or created) a constitutional basis for leaving the abortion decision to individuals and for denying legislators any significant role in the matter. Today, dissensus still reigns; no method of philosophic argumentation or scientific demonstration has been found that can prove either definition of the embryo to the satisfaction of people on the other side of the debate. In fact, it strikes me that few peolpe are arguing this central issue; the debate is mostly about motives. Thus, Tomasin suggests that many who oppose abortion actually want poor woment to suffer. Some prolifers say their opposite numbers trivialize abortion in order to legitimize a technological quick fix for an inconvenient problem, whether personal or societal.

No doubt points can be scored on both sides of this slamming contest, but I don't want to join it (not here, anyhow). I do want to point out that whichever side is right about the ethical question, the political issue remains, and becomes more contentious in the wake of the proposal to provide federal subsidies for abortion. That proposal abandons any pretense of maintaining the stance of governmental neutrality toward abortion mandated in Roe v. Wade. It puts the federal government, and all taxpayers, on one side of an unresolvable issue that is a matter of conscience for very considerable numbers of Americans.

On societal aspects: Tomasin is certainly correct in saying that the question is more complex than my response to Congressman Nadler suggested; abortion policy necessarily raises not only issues of personal ethics but also problems of social justice. Roe v. Wade made abortion on demand the law

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