Back at it.

After several months off and on hiatus, I’ve decided to pick up Snark and Bluster again. Life intervened as life tends to do, but I’ve missed writing, and find that the regular discipline of a blog helps focus my thoughts and refine my ideas. So, back to the drawing board (rather, computer keyboard) we go.  I’m aiming for a weekly post every Saturday, so check back regularly or better yet, subscribe to the blog feed.

So many things call out to me from the week’s news, and most of them tend to fall along very predictable political fault lines. The usual suspects are trotted out on both sides. The usual accusations are flung (one imagines baboons flinging poop at this point). And then everyone retreats to their respective corners, hunkering down. I’ve done it too, but by now, my small circle knows what I think, and either ignores me or gives me virtual high-fives.  I know who will do what going in, but social media is like catnip. Irresistible.

I find myself of two minds, with the pendulum predictably swinging between wanting to simply disengage from it all entirely, and wanting to jump in with both feet and fists flying. Which mind wins out on any given day may depend on what else is going on in my life and how many cups of coffee I’ve had. Maybe there’s a third way. Maybe I can disengage from the drama, but still dig into the issues of the day. I’m not quite sure it can be done, and I know there are moments when I’m not capable of it, but I’ll give it a go.

One topic of the week was the congressional hearing with the head of Planned Parenthood. As expected, both sides talk past each other, and remain as deeply entrenched as ever.  I now consider myself to be pro-choice, but I used to be pro-life, mostly for religious reasons. As my religious beliefs shifted over the years, my thoughts on abortion paralleled that shift.

The intractability of this issue comes from both sides arguing from the extremes. Pro-life believers conjure images of fully formed, full-term, healthy babies just moments from birth in their arguments. Pro-choice advocates by contrast tend to use fertilized eggs, zygotes, or early-stage embryos for their arguments.

The reality is that a pregnancy, wanted or not, encompasses the whole spectrum, and therein lies the problem. Would I morally support the idea of a woman 8 months pregnant with a healthy fetus just “changing her mind” and waltzing into a clinic on a whim?  Of course not. Absolutely not.  At the other extreme, do I think that a fertilized egg, or an embryo in the earliest stages of development, cells just starting to differentiate, is the moral equivalent of a 6 month old baby or a 3 year old child? Of course not.

Should the act of taking the “abortion pill” immediately upon learning one is pregnant be the moral equivalent of infanticide? I think most people would say no. The further along in the pregnancy, the more morally problematic pregnancy termination becomes, and the more it should be restricted.

If I really want fewer abortions overall, and fewer abortions occurring later in pregnancy, what has to happen is clear. Contraceptives must be freely available, with as few barriers (financial or otherwise) to their use as possible, and terminating a pregnancy very early on should not be made difficult. The more barriers we put to block early termination, the more we push the procedure into the moral quagmire of the second trimester.

Of course, my entire thought process takes religion out of the picture. I no longer look at this issue through a religious lens. And therein lies another social conundrum. Those who advocate from a position of religious morality cannot allow any policy that deviates from it. They invoke “God says thus” and are relieved of having to wrestle with the issue in a complex way that acknowledges biological reality.

Biological reality is that development occurs on a continuum, from single cell to full term birth. Historical reality is that abortions have occurred in every culture across time, regardless of legal status. Sensible policy requires us to acknowledge both those realities.