{"id":394,"date":"2014-07-03T23:38:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T05:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/does-common-ground-still-exist-sorry-not-about-obamacare.html"},"modified":"2016-01-22T08:13:06","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T14:13:06","slug":"does-common-ground-still-exist-sorry-not-about-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/07\/does-common-ground-still-exist-sorry-not-about-obamacare.html","title":{"rendered":"Does “common ground” still exist? (Sorry, not about ObamaCare. . . )"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

(Originally posted November 12, 2013)<\/p>\n

Many years ago, back in grad school I\u2019d say, I was reading about various \u201ccommon ground\u201d projects\u00a0 \u2013 people who considered themselves pro-life attempting to band together with people who called themselves pro-choice in a project to find \u201ccommon ground.\u201d\u00a0 It was the usual sort of moderate happy-talk:\u00a0 women who get abortions don\u2019t really want the abortion but feel compelled due to the tragic circumstances in their lives, so if only we focus on helping them, all will be well.\u00a0 In addition, everyone agreed that killing abortion doctors was a bad, bad thing, and pro-lifers and pro-choicers pledged to acknowledge that the Other Side consisted not of evil people, but of people of goodwill who simply differed in their beliefs.<\/p>\n

I think there was even a group that called itself \u201cCommon Ground\u201d \u2014 but I can\u2019t find anything online.<\/p>\n

Of course, it was a difficult project to begin with \u2014 the pro-choice version of \u201chelping women\u201d generally consists of free and widely available contraception, along with extensive drilling at school, and free maternity care and generous maternity leave if pregnancies happen.\u00a0 The pro-life version combines abstinence (generally not objecting to contraception but being quite uncomfortable with normalizing premarital, and especially teen and casual, sex), encouragement of adoption and private charitable action, along with government programs on a safety-net basis.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But I have the impression that abortion-rights activists have changed direction in a way that really precludes any \u201ccommon ground\u201d project \u2014 instead of Bill Clinton\u2019s \u201csafe, legal, and rare\u201d formulation, the National Abortion Federation now promotes \u201csafe, legal, and accessible\u201d and has this to say<\/a>:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Abortion Is a Valid and Positive Reproductive Choice <\/strong>\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over the years, abortion has been stigmatized by those who view it as the least desirable, or a completely unacceptable, reproductive option. It is critical not to give in to the pressure to stigmatize abortion as the one invalid reproductive choice among all the options facing a pregnant woman.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We all want to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, but there is no reason to single out abortion among all a woman\u2019s reproductive choices as the one choice which is somehow less valid or acceptable than childbirth, adoption, or other reproductive choices. Abortion is a valid personal decision within the continuum of health care. \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Opponents of abortion often portray abortion as a negative problem that society should try to eliminate. While we work to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, abortion is a valid and acceptable reproductive choice. For most women who have made this choice, abortion is not the problem, but is a life-affirming solution to the problem of unplanned pregnancy. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was thinking about this because of a feature that Slate\u2019s Double X blog linked to<\/a>,\u00a0profiles in New York Magazine <\/a>of 26 women who\u00a0had abortions.\u00a0I won\u2019t slog through them a second time for the details, because reading these stories a single time was creepy enough, but here\u2019s the reality:\u00a0 most of these abortions were of the \u201cabortion as back-up birth control\u201d category.\u00a0 Yes, a few of the stories were of the \u201chard case\u201d genre, but the theme was \u201cI don\u2019t have to justify my abortion.\u201d\u00a0 Women got abortions because they were seeing men who were jerks, who insisted they get the abortion or, even if not, were clearly not father material.\u00a0 Women got abortions because they\u2019d already had their \u201cperfect\u201d number of children, or just didn\u2019t want another this soon after the first.\u00a0 Women were in college, in grad school, finishing their Ph.D.s.\u00a0 Women got abortions because they just didn\u2019t want to have a baby, and abortion is the logical way to handle this difficulty.\u00a0 (In a few instances, the dad was disappointed, but for the most part, the father either didn\u2019t factor into the story at all, or was equally happy to be rid of the imposition.\u00a0 In one particularly creepy case, the woman was cheating on her boyfriend at the time, so he was all the more willing to \u201cget rid of it\u201d and she praised him for his support.)\u00a0 No amount of social services would make a difference in these stories.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And it feels like the gulf is growing.\u00a0 Once upon a time, I could reasonably view someone who\u2019s prochoice as honestly believing that the lines between what\u2019s illegal and what\u2019s just morally questionable should be drawn differently than what I see, and that their \u201cprochoiceness\u201d was as legitimate as someone \u201cpersonally opposing\u201d putting a pet down as opposed to caring for it through its sickness.\u00a0 But I find the demand that casual sex is a right, and that ready access to abortion is a necessary corollary to that casual sex right, to be an insurmountable barrier to finding solutions.<\/p>\n

Which, of course, feeds into other issues.\u00a0 Solving the issue of fatherless children by insisting that people only have sex with someone who\u2019s father-material (or \u201cmother-material), and only under circumstances in which one could reasonably parent (that is, with a somewhat open definition of what makes it possible to parent a child, not just under ideal circumstances)\u00a0violates this \u201ccasual-sex right\u201d so radically it\u2019s practically not even an option.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But wow \u2014 I hadn\u2019t really been intending to write much on social issues, but I\u2019m running out of things to say about ObamaCare, and my gut reaction to this New York piece was so strong I didn\u2019t want to leave it alone.<\/p>\n

Lunch break over!<\/p>\n

UPDATE on 7\/3\/14: \u00a0there\u2019s a piece over at the theothermccain.com blog<\/a> which takes a more \u201cbenefit-of-the-doubt\u201d approach: \u201cAfter four decades of rhetoric about \u201cchoice,\u201d and two decades of lectures about \u201csafe sex,\u201d younger Americans apparently assume that it is normal for sex to be sterile, and that for sex to produce its natural result (pregnancy) is something weird.\u201d \u00a0In other words, young people these days can\u2019t help it, because they\u2019ve been conditioned to think that sex is, in its very nature, a recreational activity only, with pregnancy as much of an unnatural \u201caccidental\u201d effect as a car accident is the result of driving. \u00a0Do I buy it? \u00a0I\u2019m not sure. \u00a0But it does explain the fact that so many people seem absolutely horrified at the Hobby Lobby ruling, and seem quite genuine rather than cynical (that is, I don\u2019t think this is just a bunch of Dems trying to milk this for the War against Women angle). <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Originally posted November 12, 2013) Many years ago, back in grad school I\u2019d say, I was reading about various \u201ccommon ground\u201d projects\u00a0 \u2013 people who considered themselves pro-life attempting to band together with people who called themselves pro-choice in a project to find \u201ccommon ground.\u201d\u00a0 It was the usual sort of moderate happy-talk:\u00a0 women who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[198,271],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-common-ground"],"yoast_head":"\nDoes "common ground" still exist? 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