Abortion and the Culture War

Part I -- Competing Rights

For those American readers not old enough to remember a time before the nationwide legalization of abortion through the court case known as Roe v. Wade (1973), let me remind you of some of the attributes of that era. The prevailing law made it very difficult to get an abortion in the United States, but not impossible. The real question was how much danger a pregnant woman was willing to face in the illegal "back alley" operations that were available. You see, as with most things illegal, a "black market" existed which would not only eliminate the unborn fetus, but often kill the distraught mother as well. If you were well off and determined, you could go abroad and have the operation performed with relative safety -- often making the whole issue one of class privilege. Behind the scenes, one found two dramas played out: (a) the frantic, sometimes near-suicidal despair of the pregnant woman, often only a teenager, and (b) the sanctimonious prattle of those anti-abortionists mostly men -- who said they represented the will of an imagined deity.

Having said this, I do not want the reader to believe that there is no moral question when it comes to abortion. From an evolutionary standpoint, the fetus is a potential human being upon conception and may well have a "moral right" to that life trajectory. Yet that right exists within a broader context which requires that it should be balanced against a woman's "moral right" to control her own body and the child's "moral right" not to be born into an environment where he or she is basically unwanted. If we were to deal with this issue logically, the real answer to the dilemma of competing rights is surely free and universally available contraception -- along with sensible sex education.

Part II -- Anti-Abortion and Gun Mania -- An Eerie Connection

There is yet another relevant fact to consider. Remember that the whole anti-abortion movement assumes that human life is uniquely valuable. However, our societies often do not act as if human life is something special -- morally or otherwise. Take a look at the essay I wrote in June 2019 entitled "The Alleged Preciousness of Human Life." I think it lays this failing out clearly and convincingly. Here in the United States, this fact is most obviously brought home by the society's glorification of guns and the resultant deadly mayhem.

Actually, there is an eerie connection between the abortion issue and gun mania. It runs, of course, through the Republican Party. At the end of July 2021, "228 Republican members of Congress told the Supreme Court that it should overturn Roe v. Wade and release the court's 'vise grip on abortion politics." These are the same politicians who have sworn loyalty to the official Republican party platform that states "We uphold the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, a natural inalienable right...secured by the Second Amendment. Lawful gun ownership enables Americans to exercise their God-given right of self-defense." In other words, the Republicans who demand that the courts subscribe to their view of the "right to life" of unborn children are the same ones who insist that each citizen has a right to possess society's chief instrument of death. In this effort they invoke, once again, the approval of that imagined deity. They also misinterpret the Second Amendment, and play fast and loose with such words as "natural" and "inalienable." Well, as it is often said of American politics, hypocrisy is the name of the game.

Part III -- Culture War

Both abortion "rights" and gun "rights" are parts of a continuing American culture war -- which also includes other hot topics such as real equality for Blacks, Native Americans, women in general, homosexuals, and transgender people, as well as other questions such as multiculturalism.

None of these issues existed as publicly divisive ones before the 1960s. Before that time, the misleading though strongly promoted image of American society was white, male, heterosexual, and benevolent. For those old enough to recognize it, the benign version of this model was given in a classic TV show called The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which aired from 1952 to 1966. The resulting false picture of the near-perfect American family dwelling in a community where there were no serious social problems became so iconic that, subsequently, many Americans came to idealize the 1950s. One strongly suspects that the anti-abortion and pro-gun lobbies still do.

The Ozzie and Harriet model had broken down by the second half of the 1960s. What shattered the iconic image were (a) the demand for equal rights, both in social and political terms, for, initially, the country's Black minority and female majority -- that is, the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Liberation Movement and (b) opposition to the Vietnam War, which shredded any claims of "God-given" moral exceptionalism for the nation.

The "excrement hit the fan" the moment these campaigns for equal rights and peace began to gain political backing. People knew this was happening because new laws came into existence: anti-discrimination laws and others like the "war-powers act" which sought to limit presidential power to wage undeclared war. These were seen as progressive moves attuned to a different, if yet unfulfilled, humane canon of American ideals.

From that general moment until today, the progressive equality camp has been engaged in a culture war -- really a struggle for political power -- with the camp that favors the traditional white-male-heterosexual-anti-abortionist setup.

Part IV -- Fascist Potential

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).