Best way to resolve abortion debate
“The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”
— Reinhold Niebuhr
The abortion debate is so highly polarized it seems to defy resolution. One pole contends that life and human personhood begins with conception. The argument observes that the fertilized egg, later embryo, has human DNA. Then the argument posits that having human DNA means an embryo is a human being.
So, destroying it is the same as destroying a human being. Killing a human being who poses no threat to anyone is murder. So, abortion is murder. And abortionists are murderers.
At the other pole are those who believe abortion is an important right. Our founding documents proclaim that we have “inalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” A woman caring for her body to preserve her condition of life is engaged in a private exercise of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The removal of an embryo from her body is an exercise of inalienable rights.
The Roman Catholic Church and some evangelical Protestant groups are among those who share the view that embryos are humans from conception. They are staunchly opposed to abortion, as are groups like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Other religious groups have views that range from no clear position, to allowing abortion in most instances, to allowing abortion with specified limits.
In seeking resolution to this conflict, it might be helpful to examine the prevailing level of concern for embryos in our society.
It seems self-evident that most Americans are substantially uninterested in early-stage embryos. A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute of 22,984 U.S. adults found that 65% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most instances — 61% in Pennsylvania. Only 7% say abortion should be illegal in all cases — 9% in Pennsylvania.
Among Americans without any religious affiliation, 85% approve of abortion in all or most cases. Even among Roman Catholics, contrary to church teaching, 62% of white Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Among white Evangelicals, about 14.5% of the population, support for abortion falls below a majority. But even for that group, 27% still support some form of abortion.
The same societal disinterest in early-stage embryos is found elsewhere. We have known for decades that a large fraction of naturally fertilized eggs do not result in live births. Natural processes resulting in early pregnancy loss are responsible, often before a woman even knows she has conceived.
We also know that women of all religious backgrounds use intrauterine devices as a method of contraception, even though it is widely understood that IUDs work, at least in part, by preventing the uterine implantation of fertilized eggs.
And yet — outside of in vitro fertilization procedures, where couples routinely create more embryos than can be implanted in a uterus — no concern has been expressed about the destruction of thousands of embryos that happens naturally every day.
There is and has been no demand for a publicly funded medical research program of embryonic rescue.
It seems that the difficulty of conceptualizing life’s moral beginnings has led to the selection of conception as an easily defined and communicated event for life’s beginning in spite of it not harmonizing with the public’s intuitions about what defines being human and the practices that reflect those intuitions.
Maybe, with a nod to Niebuhr, the resolution of the debate about abortion is more likely to be found in politics than in theology or moral philosophy.
A national referendum, or state-by-state referenda, that establish public policy on abortion might be a productive approach. In short, let the people choose the policy they want. If abortion were allowed by such referenda, those who provide and receive abortions would be subject to the regulations and conditions approved by voters. Independent of outcome, persons opposed to abortion are now and should continue to be free to express their concerns and their reasons for personally rejecting abortion.