Another year, another protest
This past Wednesday, thousands of anti-abortion protestors marched from the Washington Mall to the Senate steps for the 40th time in as many years — always in January, because that’s when Roe v. Wade was decided 41 years ago.
Coverage of the march was slim this year. A few news outlets reported on it, most with a headline focused around the frigid weather the protestors faced (Temps dipped below zero with wind chill.)
Some protestors see this lack of attention as the media’s effort to tamp down the anti-abortion viewpoint. It’s more likely there’s not much new to report about an event that’s been happening annually for 40 years.
And that’s the problem with abortion debate, generally. Forty years after Roe vs. Wade, abortion is still legal. It will probably always be legal, even as anti-abortion groups and politicians have seen success in the last couple years with chipping away at access to abortion (with parental consent laws, partner consent laws, mandatory waiting periods, restrictions for abortion clinics that effectively shut them down, and others).
These sneaky laws will make a dent — and likely force many women in the strictest states, like North Dakota, to have children they didn’t plan for — but it won’t end abortion in America.
Yet the debate drags on — elections are determined based on abortion issues; both sides continue to fixate on the most extreme examples and take them as standard; and polls continue to befuddle (though it seems clear that America is split down the middle when asked about the morality and legality of abortion before 20 weeks).
Many anti-abortion protestors are people of compassion. Some are stodgy men from another time, sure, who still take offense at a woman having control over her body and, more importantly, her sexuality. How dare those women folk have sexual intercourse for pleasure and not procreation!
But for every person like that — who wishes to take away female agency with anti-choice laws — there’s someone who genuinely cares for the potential life lost.
If I sound slightly anti-abortion there, it’s because like most pro-choice people, I don’t like abortion.
I don’t like that it has to happen. I don’t like that women are raped and become pregnant by their assailant. I don’t like that teenagers have sex before they’re ready and before they understand what they’re getting themselves into.
I don’t like that low-income families and women know that another family member would just be another empty stomach they can’t fill. I don’t like that incurable birth defects leave women and families with a difficult choice. Who does?
So, when do we start coming together to lessen the abortion rate? Again, outlawing it entirely just isn’t going to happen. And those compassionate for potential life (anti-abortion), and those compassionate for existing life (pro-choice), have some very important stuff in common — as long as they keep their compassion.
Armed with compassion, we can tackle the dismally low conviction rate for rapists, who have no incentive to stop. We can advocate for contraceptive education for young people. We can strengthen the economy for everyone and make it less likely that money will be a deciding factor in whether to keep or terminate a pregnancy.
But, sadly, these are all steps that — in general — anti-abortion proponents wouldn’t support, because they support ideals that, for better or worse, don’t fit the model of our current world — chastity before marriage, monogamy, no sex while poor (apparently). A world where pro-choice and anti-choice defenders come together, of course, is not the world we live in. To top it off, politicians have dug deeper trenches with their rhetoric about abortion because they know that keeping people divisive translates to votes in their favor.
There’s also the dictum of “personal responsibility” which imagines the most egregious scenarios — twenty-something brats who can afford the baby but see it as an inconvenience; drug addicts who have a half-dozen abortions a year; low-income single mothers who have a bunch of kids to different fathers.
All of those scenarios happen.
But when we let those stories overwhelm the stories of women who aren’t ready or able — for whatever reason — to have children, compassion slips away in favor of a kind of contempt.
And so does rationality.
Safe, legal and rare — it’s where we started from forty years ago, and the path on which we should stay.
Jessica Vozel is originally from Perryopolis and, after attending graduate school and teaching in Ohio, now works as a freelance journalist and copywriter in the Pittsburgh area.