Aug 26, 2011
I believe that abortion as a direct, willful action is wrong in every case. That said: this column is not about that incontrovertible moral truth. It is about how society’s attitude toward abortion changes most often in strong, reactionary shifts to events rather than in slow methodical turns. Rarely does public opinion on abortion move slowly or philosophically on its own.
The legalization of abortion in 1973 was itself an abrupt departure from prevailing social norms. The court’s decision was a radical endorsement of personal privacy leading to an overtly individualistic interpretation of freedom. Faced with a perverse form of Solomon’s dilemma, the Supreme Court chose to ignore the child altogether.
Blind to half of the equation, society quickly embraced the concept of limitless freedom over natural law. In 1973, over 740,000 abortions were reported. Within a decade, the number of reported abortions performed annually doubled to over 1.5 million per year, peaking in 1990 at just over 1.6 million. Since 1973, over 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S.—there is no doubt that the mainstream culture has accepted abortion as a practice.
Coincidentally, the murder rate in New York City also peeked in 1990 with 2,245 homicides, earning the Big Apple the distinction of being the nation’s “Murder Capital.” In response to what was seen as an intolerable loss of life, immediate measures were taken. By the end of the decade, the murder rate had decreased by more than 50 percent to fewer than 1,000 homicides per annum. The annual abortion rate had also declined during the same period—to 1.3 million.
The strongest reversal in support for abortion since it was legalized occurred during the very public and ugly debate between President Clinton and Congress over partial-birth abortion. In the midst of the debate, a black-and-white, pen-and-ink drawing illustrating this particularly heinous form of abortion was widely circulated. This simple drawing was composed of five frames. The last frame depicted how scissors are inserted into the back of the half-delivered baby’s skull to kill it. The fifth frame provoked even ardent choice supporters to go against their own camp for the first time.
The stark clarity of the drawing caused otherwise pro-choice Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to whom I am not related, to denounce partial-birth abortion as infanticide in a memorable fit of outrage on the Senate floor. Clearly, Moynihan had not changed his mind on choice. He was just reacting to what had been made obvious by the illustration: Partial-birth abortion is undeniably murdering one’s own child.
I believe we have been presented with an opportunity for another monumental adjustment in the public attitude toward abortion. This one comes in the form of a chilling article by Ruth Padawer in the August 14 New York Times Magazine article titled “The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy.” Padawer reports an increase in requests by women carrying twins to have one fetus aborted, which is euphemistically referred to by fertility doctors as “pregnancy reduction.”
If the very concept of elective “pregnancy reduction” is not itself enough to cause all good men and women to rethink abortion in general, the honest and cold statements made by those requesting the procedure and those who provide it should do the trick. For example, Jenny, a 45-year-old expecting mother who has asked her doctor to abort one of the twins she is carrying is quoted by Padawer as saying, “This is bad, but nowhere as bad as neglecting your child or not giving everything you can to the children you have…”
Padawer’s “frame 5” is a description of how the abortionist stops the unwanted child’s heart: “The procedure, which is usually performed around Week 12 of a pregnancy, involves fatal injection of potassium chloride into the fetal chest…Some physicians found reduction unnerving, particularly because the procedure is viewed under ultrasound, making it quite visually explicit…” They may also be unnerved by the fact that executioners use potassium chloride to stop beating hearts as well.
I hope millions of people read this article and take it in directly—without intellectual equivocation. Not since the broad publication of the illuminating illustration of the partial-birth procedure have I encountered such a clear incrimination of abortion. Unfortunately, it takes a major jolt to raise awareness. At least this provides some possible redemptive value to the generally disturbing statements gathered by Padawer.