Why Politicians Should Be Both Pro-woman and Pro-life

Politically Correct Vs. Politically Smart

by David C. Reardon

The abortion debate is about women’s rights versus the rights of the unborn. Right?

Wrong. That is the way the pro-abortionists and media have framed the debate. They have consciously defined this issue in terms which polarize the public and paralyze the middle majority — the “fence sitting” fifty percent or more who feel torn between both the woman and the child — into remaining neutral.

For pro-abortionists, this women versus “fetus” strategy has been highly successful. By framing the debate in this way, they are attempting to push pro-life candidates into a box labeled “Uncompassionate Anti-Woman Ideologues.” Pro-life candidates are quite aware of this trap. Many try to avoid this trap by down-playing the issue or dancing around it.

Our boldest pro-life politicians, on the other hand, usually try to counter the opposition’s focus on women’s rights by reframing the debate in terms of the sacredness of innocent human life, to which they may add the importance of better options, such as adoption.

While this counter strategy is often a successful way to display a pro-life candidate’s integrity and commitment to ideals, in fact it only reinforces the original framing which says abortion is an issue about balancing women’s rights versus fetal rights. This pro-life strategy shifts the spotlight, but it does not truly reframe the arena which defines the debate’s dynamics.

Reframing the Debate

To truly reframe the debate to our advantage, it is not enough to simply highlight the part of the frame touching on the rights of the unborn. Instead, we must expand the frame to include more parties, so that we can convincingly show that it is we who are defending the authentic rights of both women and children.

In short, we must insist that the proper frame for the abortion issue is not women’s rights versus the unborn’s rights, but rather women’s and children’s rights versus the schemes of exploiters and the profits of the abortion industry.

The best way to avoid our opponents trap, is to put them into it! Anyone who oppose our pro-woman/pro-life initiatives can rightly be described as anti-woman. Those who defend coercion are the enemies of freedom. If they oppose our pro-woman/pro-life initiatives, it is they who belong in the box labeled “Uncompassionate Anti-Woman Ideologues.”

Reframing the abortion debate in this way is not difficult. But it does require pro-life candidates to become familiar with new facts, arguments, and media “sound bites.”

To begin, the pro-woman/pro-life candidate needs an agenda. This agenda would include support for legislation covering one or more of the following needs: 1) protecting women from being coerced into unwanted abortions; 2) guaranteeing the right of women to make free and fully informed decisions about abortion; 3) protecting the women most likely to be injured by requiring physicians to properly screen patients for characteristics which would place them at higher risk of physical or psychological complications; and 4) expanding the rights of injured patients to recover damages for physical or psychological harm resulting from abortion, even after very long periods of time, when an abortionist has failed to ensure that a woman’s choice was truly free and informed, or fails to properly screen her for risk factors.

Second, the pro-life candidate must be prepared to shift every abortion related question to the issue of the need to protect women from the unscrupulous abortion industry and those who are forcing them into unwanted abortions. By shifting all questions to this need, the pro-woman/pro-life agenda can be presented.

Third, every time the issue is raised, the opponent should be challenged to support specific legislation which would protect women from being coerced into unwanted abortions. This challenge must be repeatedly and insistently made. The goal is to force the opponent to agree to pro-woman regulations of abortion (and thus alienate their radical pro-abortion supporters) or oppose such pro-woman protections (and thus appear to be more interested in protecting the profits of the abortion industry than the freedom of women.) This is a win-win position for us, and a lose-lose situation for them.

Coerced Abortions — A Political Issue

The task of gaining public support for a pro-woman/pro-life platform is not difficult. The issue of coerced abortions, for example, is ripe for the picking.

In my experience, once this issue is raised, everyone, even pro-abortionists, admit that coercion is occurring. It is common knowledge that abortion often suits lovers and parents more than pregnant women themselves. It takes no leap of imagination to understand how these other persons often pressure, badger, and blackmail a woman into accepting an unwanted “safe and legal” abortion because it will be “best for everyone.”

Even pro-abortion ethicist, Daniel Callahan, director of the Hastings Center, writes: “That men have long coerced women into unwanted abortion when it suits their purposes is well-known but rarely mentioned. Data reported by the Alan Guttmacher Institute indicate that some 30 percent of women have an abortion because someone else, not the woman, wants it.”

This is a powerful political issue. No one can rationally deny that coerced abortions occur, and no politician would dare to defend this practice. Only population control zealots defend forced abortions, but even they are generally reluctant to publicly express this position.

Thus, a pro-life politician who emphasizes this issue will be establishing common ground which will be shared by all people of good will. Pro-lifers will support such defense of women’s rights, and the vast majority of citizens, even those who describe themselves as pro-choice, would also agree that an effort to stop coerced abortions is reasonable and necessary.

While a campaign speech may not be the place to define the solution to this problem, the solution is straightforward. Abortionists must be held legally responsible for ensuring that a woman’s choice to have an abortion is totally her own and that she is not being pressured into this decision by others. If abortion clinics fail to properly screen their patients, they should be held accountable as “accessories” to the crime of pressuring a woman into an unwanted abortion. If a woman can later show that an abortion counselor added to the pressures which made her feel she “had no choice,” or did nothing to protect her from being pressured into an unwanted abortion, she should be entitled to sue the clinic for the wrongful death of her wanted child – which can entail millions of dollars in compensation. This is fair because the emotional pain and suffering of a mother who loses a wanted child to abortion is no less than the suffering of a mother who loses a child to a careless driver.

This leads us into the second goal which a pro-woman/pro-life candidate should emphasize. We must focus attention on protecting a woman’s right to informed consent and her corresponding right to redress.

Polls show that the vast majority of the public supports informed consent requirements. Most people understand that a woman’s “right to choose” means nothing without a corresponding “right to know.” How can pro-abortion candidates say they are protecting the right to choose and at the same time insist that women should be “protected” from the right to know about abortion’s risks, about alternatives, or about fetal development?

Similarly, there is a wealth of information available as to how women have been abused and exploited by dysfunctional abortionists, inadequately screened for risks, subjected to abortions which were contraindicated for their condition, and denied the right to recover damages due to inappropriate statutes of limitation.

Correcting the Statute of Limitations

Regarding the latter of these issues, a precedent exists which allows victims of child molestation to sue for damages decades after the molestation occurred. This is because the law recognizes that psychological injuries may create a disability which makes it impossible for a victim to seek damages until after that victim has achieved at least some level of psychological recovery.

This same reasoning should apply to victims of abortion trauma. According to an Elliot Institute study (reported in this issue), women report that it takes, on average, 7.5 years before they can even “begin to reconcile” themselves to the abortion experience. This same study found that 62% of women with post-abortion problems experience a period during which they denied the existence of negative feelings resulting from the abortion. This period of denial lasted, on average, slightly over five years, with many reporting symptoms of denial lasting over a decade.

Clearly, the statute of limitations for women suffering psychological injuries from an abortion should not begin to run until after they have sufficiently recovered from the disabilities of repression and avoidance behavior. Not only is this a fair consideration to a patient’s rights, it is also good consumer protection policy.

Still another public health goal should be to hold abortionists properly liable to refuse to perform an abortion which is contraindicated because of pre-identifying risk factors (see The Post-Abortion Review, 2(2) Summer 1994 and 1(3) Fall 1993). If this duty were properly exercised, many, if not most, women would be referred to receive medical, legal, or social services assistance which more properly addresses their true health needs.

All of these pro-woman proposals are impossible for pro-abortion candidates to oppose on pro-woman grounds. The only publically acceptable way they can oppose these reforms is to deny that these problems exist. But when faced with such denials, the pro-woman/pro-life candidate simply has to point out that 1) the opponent is risking the welfare of women for the sake of preserving the abortion industry’s profit margins, and 2) these pro-woman initiatives do not outlaw abortion but simply make abortion providers properly responsible for these problems which are occurring, or at the very least, may occur.

This strategy also makes good sense in attempting to build up a constituency. By reframing the abortion debate in this way, the middle majority (who are uncomfortable with abortion, but sympathetic to women in crisis) will see the pro-woman/pro-life candidate is an appealing moderate, trying to prevent unwanted abortions by protecting and expanding women’s rights.

To Love a Child, First Love the Mother

While committed pro-lifers may be more comfortable with traditional “defend the baby” arguments, we must recognize that many in our society are too morally immature to understand this argument. They must be led to it. And the best way to lead them to it is by first helping them to see that abortion does not help women, but only makes their lives worse.

Pro-life leaders who are nervous about focusing more attention on the woman for fear that it will distract attention away from the unborn, should meditate on the following truism: One cannot help a child without helping the mother; one cannot hurt a child without hurting the mother.

This intimate connection between a mother and her children is part of our created order. Therefore, protecting the unborn is a natural byproduct of protecting mothers. This is necessarily true. After all, in God’s ordering of creation, it is only the mother who can nurture her unborn child. All the rest of us can do is to nurture the mother.

This, then, must be the centerpiece of our pro-woman/pro-life agenda. The best interests of the child and the mother are always joined — even if the mother does not initially realize it, and even if she needs a tremendous amount of love and help to see it.

We can best help each by helping both. If we hurt either, we hurt both.

The goal of our pro-woman/pro-life agenda is to lead our nation to an understanding of this reality. It is a process which requires following the reverse of the pro-abortion movement. The pro-abortion movement was born in a social vision which separated the mother’s interests from her unborn baby’s. If their interests are separate, than there is the potential conflict between the woman’s rights versus her unborn child’s rights, one of which must prevail.

We cannot accept any part of this reasoning. We must fight against any ideology which frames the abortion issue as one of a mother versus her child.

We are both pro-woman and pro-life. We believe that we can and should help both the mother and her child. We believe that legalized abortion was not an advance for women’s rights, but an advance for social engineers, abortionists, and other individuals who exploit women in crisis.

In short, pro-lifers should never fear that a pro-woman/pro-life candidate who focuses on the pro-woman side of this issue is not paying “sufficient” attention to the unborn. This strategy simply recognizes the political necessity of re-emphasizing the pro-woman aspect of our goals to a society which wrongly equates pro-life with anti-woman. The agenda proposed above will protect women and save lives, but also attacks the myth that abortion is “safe” and educates the legislators and the public about the real dangers abortion holds for women. It is only when the dangers of abortion for women are properly understood that the “fence sitters” who make up the middle majority will open their minds and hearts to accepting our equal responsibility to protect the child.