Analysis of With Liberty and Justice For All

I had my first taste of politics when I was about seven years old. My mother and father had me with them going from union hall to union hall handing out Michael Dukakis bumper stickers. I remember standing with my mother on the side of the road outside of the entrance to the plant urging her union brothers and sisters to support Dukakis. When we got home, I asked my mother why she was supporting Dukakis. Her answer still resonates with me today. She said that “he’ll support the working man and he’ll keep abortion legal.” At the time, I didn’t exactly understand what that meant, but as I got older, I realized that my mother had come of age in an era before Roe v. Wade, and if she would have needed or wanted an abortion, one would not have been readily accessible to her.

Most of my worldview on women was shaped by the fact that growing up, I had spent my youth almost entirely around women. My father, who was also a union steelworker, often worked shift work and double shifts to make life better for me and my sister. This meant spending time with my mother, who was also a steelworker but was a foreman and got to spend more time at home, and when she wasn’t around I was either with my sister who is 10 years my senior, my aunt and cousin who lived across the street from me, or my grandmother, who was a veteran of the Marine Corps during WWII, and often worked blue collar jobs. Spending my entire childhood around independent women, who eschewed the idea that their role was simply to be a homemaker had a tremendous impact on shaping my personal politics. Abortion was presented to me as one of the fundamental rights that women have. The right to decide whether or not they want to birth a child was extremely personal to each of these women, and it made sense to me.

As a man, I’ll never fully be able to grasp the concept of what it would mean if the government told me that I had no choice but to bear a child. For example, I don’t think I could truly comprehend what it would mean that if I was raped, and during the rape, was impregnated against my will. I do understand, however, if it were my sister, my wife, or my daughter who were the one raped, in no case would I, nor anyone else, have the right to tell her that she must carry the resulting fetus to term, and then because of parental obligation laws, be forced to care for the child for the first 18 years of life. My personal view on abortion is quite different from my public policy views on abortion. I do believe in the Bill Clinton view on abortion of “safe, legal, and rare.” I strongly discourage the idea of using abortion as a tool of birth control. However, I don’t feel that government has the right to force a woman to carry a fetus to term. The primary goal for me in this campaign is to ascertain why exactly must abortion remain to be both safe and legal.

The book I chose to read that supports my viewpoint is the book With Liberty and Justice For All by Kate Michelman. The book begins as Ms. Michelman describes an abortion procedure she went through in 1969, before legalization of abortion. She describes her climb through the ranks of working at family planning clinics, aligning with Planned Parenthood, joining the board of directors of Pennsylvania NARAL, and then becoming the executive director of NARAL in 1985.


Ms. Michelman describes in detail the legislative procedures that she and other reproduction rights activists faced in government and Congress. From the Bork nomination for the Supreme Court in 1987, to the Hyde amendment, to the 1998 Partial Birth Abortion Ban, to the Senate judicial confirmation hearings in the 2000s, she goes into detail about how NARAL and other groups lobbied Senators against approving extreme anti-abortion judges. Her testimony before Congress in 1994 crystalizes the viewpoint that abortion must remain legal.

“NARAL recognizes the compelling need for comprehensive welfare reform. But true reform lies not in callous policies that punish women for the choices they make, but in helping women make responsible, deliberate decisions about childbearing by providing access to necessary information and health services, rewarding and encouraging economic self-sufficiency, and helping reduce teenage pregnancy.” (Michelman, Pg. 151)

Given that I believe in a solid wall between church and state, and my belief that those who serve in public office should use their personal religious views to guide their private lives and not their public policy stances, I searched for a humanist or secular argument against abortion. To me, for a member of the Senate or House of Representatives to be against abortion on religious grounds, its analogous to me to be against the sale of cheeseburgers or shellfish since both are forbidden by the Torah, and the consumption of both are forbidden to Jews.

 Jennifer Roth, an atheist, states that those who consider themselves secular can oppose abortion on humanist ground. She makes the point that under law, infants do indeed have legal rights, such as the right to be protected, fed, and sheltered by parents. She argues that there is “precedent for the recognition of personhood in those who have yet to develop the ability to perform personal acts. Opponents of abortion propose nothing unheard of, then, in advocating that all human beings should be considered persons from the beginning of their biological lives. (Roth).


Roth then goes on to argue that it is the parental duty of a mother to support the child within them. Roth states that when a woman is pregnant, the “need” of the child was created by the mother and father, and that this obligates the mother to protect the needs of the unborn child. In cases of sexual assault and rape, Roth argues that an acceptable solution is to seek a “non-violent solution which allows the mother to heal from the trauma of the attack, and for the child to live. She makes the argument that children conceived in rape are not tainted, and are no less worthy of life than a child whose conception was a planned event. She makes the case that in a humanistic society, even one that disregards religious morality; we must place value equally on all life, including those in utero.


I choose to side with Ms. Michelman. I do believe that a woman has the right to choose whether or not she wants to bear a child, or not. This is a decision that is hers, and hers alone. The case that Ms. Michelman makes, that of child-bearing and preventing a financial or personal hardship on a woman, is a stronger case than forcing her to give birth to a child that she doesn’t want, and could potentially cause great mental anguish.


Before reading Ms. Michelman’s book, I was unaware exactly of what it took for pro-abortion groups to fight back against judicial and legislative assaults on the right to an abortion, a right granted to women with the Roe v. Wade decision. I plan to discuss via social media (Facebook, Twitter, and blogging) my findings, and my argument in favor of keeping abortion legal.


References


Michelman, K. (2005). With liberty and justice for all: a life spent protecting the right to choose. New York: Hudson Street Press.

Roth, J. (n.d.). Ms. Roth's Opening Statement: A Secular Case Against Abortion. Secular Web: Atheism, Agnosticism, Naturalism, Skepticism and Secularism. Retrieved February 4, 2013, from http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/secularist/abortion/roth1.html