A pro-life challenge

We are in an election year, albeit a very different one, with COVID-19 creating a "new normal" everywhere. Over the past four decades, political figures at both ends of the spectrum — radical right-wing anti-abortion fundamentalists and radical left-wing pro-choice supporters — have used the abortion issue as political capital in election campaigns.

The resulting rigid and divisive polarization between feuding camps does not lend itself to serious, reflective conversation among people who seek solutions that respect both the moral challenge and the complexity of the abortion issue in modern life. In fact, angry rhetoric further solidifies polarization and all but guarantees that no workable consensus will develop.

In January, National Catholic Reporter carried a significant article headlined "It's time to change the abortion debate in America." It argues that framing the debate simply as an either/or belies reality. Authors Patrick Carolan (Catholic) and Brian McLaren (evangelical Protestant), both representing the organization Vote Common Good, contend that there are now at least five identifiable groupings around the abortion issue within the faith community in the U.S.:

• Anti-abortion absolutists who want to make it illegal;
• Those who oppose abortion but don't want to criminalize it;
• Those who support abortion rights but would like to significantly reduce numbers;
• Those who regard abortion as a personal decision, a women's issue;
• Those who find points of convergence in all camps, suggesting that society could benefit from dialogue.

Carolan and McLaren invite politicians, religious leaders and citizens in general to turn away from "a rhetoric of mutually-assured destruction" and reframe the debate in a "Next Generation Abortion Conversation." Such conversation could identify compromises around which consensus might possibly grow. It removes the need to demonize the other side.

For example, after extensive conversations with theologians, women and other informed members of the faith community, I have concluded that there is already a growing consensus that criminalizing abortion helps no one — not women, not medical providers, not society. In such conversations, people often note that safe, legal abortion provides protection against "a return to the back alleys," or situations that limit access to all but wealthy women.

I sense, too, more agreement that consideration of the moral component is a significant part of the conversation, however complex. People generally affirm that abortion ought not be regarded as simply another form of birth control. Data from the Clinton era indicated that abortions decline when programs of assistance with raising children — such as paid maternity leave, affordable day care, CHIP medical assistance, and food stamps — are readily available.

Carolan and McLaren propose that we "shift the debate from making abortion illegal to making abortion less and less necessary," opening the door to a conversation that allows a new generation to address issues in a new and wiser way.

Elements of such a conversation might include the following:

• Recognition that pro-life is much more than anti-abortion, that it includes the broad spectrum of life-affirming actions that create what Pope John Paul II called "a culture of life" — i.e., affordable prenatal and postnatal maternity care, available and affordable quality child care, affordable housing with a family focus;
• Redirection of our social and political emphasis to awareness of the common good rather than an individualistic "me first" approach;
• Grounding our social values in respect for the dignity of every person to reduce racism, poverty, violence and bigotry — hallmarks of the "culture of death."