Morality play

In January 2004, Alexander Sanger, chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council and grandson of organization founder Margaret Sanger, published "Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century." In the book, he presented what he called "a very simple but heretical question. How many more pieces of anti-choice legislation will it take to get the pro-choice movement to rethink its approach to the issue?" He wrote, "I believe that to win the judicial battles and political battles we first must win the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people ... If the American people have moral confusion about abortion, then the fault lies with [us] who argue on behalf of reproductive rights." The answer, Sanger went on to argue, is to reframe the debate in a way that makes clear that abortion is a moral choice, integral to the formation of happy, healthy families.

Some have been trying to preach a new gospel of abortion pride: Planned Parenthood sold T-shirts that proclaimed "I had an abortion"; one activist started a Web site called I'm Not Sorry.

In December, Frances Kissling, a beloved figure in the women's movement whose 30 years as a pro-choice advocate and Catholic leader lends her both moral and ideological credibility, swung back with an essay titled "Is There Life After Roe? How to Think About the Fetus." In it, she made the radical argument that the pro-choice movement must acknowledge the moral value of a fetus -- and the potentially painful reality of its loss -- in order to strengthen its claim that a woman's right to choose is ultimately worth more.

Kissling's 7,500-word piece, published in the Catholics for a Free Choice journal Conscience, raised alarm on both sides of the abortion debate. Feminist Majority Foundation president Eleanor Smeal was quoted in the Village Voice saying, "I don't buy it," suggesting that arguments like Kissling's distract advocates from the work of preventing women's suffering. And, she pointed out, "I don't hear [Kissling] saying that there's joy sometimes." Catholic League president William Donohue released a statement headlined "Pro-Abortion Camp Seeks to Hijack Religion."

Even the politicians are in on the act; Howard Dean has called on Democrats to "change our vocabulary" about the abortion issue, while John Kerry acknowledged he believed that life begins at conception but still supports a woman's right to get an abortion. And then there was Hillary.

"There is definitely this swirling," said Kissling by phone, about what appears to be a push to rethink the movement. "I take no credit or blame for what Hillary Clinton said," she continued. "Everybody's talking about this." Kissling said her opus stemmed mostly from the discussion within the pro-choice community about upcoming legislation (the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act) that would require physicians to discuss the possibility of fetal pain with women considering abortions after their 20th week of pregnancy. "I felt the fear that many of my colleagues had about confronting in public the status of the fetus," she said.

Confronting the status of the fetus is a scary proposition for pro-choice advocates. To acknowledge it as anything other than a mass of developing cells is to risk careering down a slippery slope to the word "murder." To write or speak a sentence on the subject of abortion rights is to face a field of semantic land mines; every reference to a fetus or its potential future must be preceded by the appropriate conditional. Kissling understands this as well as anyone. Later in the conversation, after talking about the ambivalence of patients who would ask her, when she worked in clinics in the 1970s, Will my fetus feel pain? Kissling paused and said, "and they didn't say 'fetus.'"

Even Kissling -- willing to break many taboos -- is unwilling to say that the word they used was "baby." Pro-choicers shy from "baby" in reference to unborn humans like horses from flames. That's precisely why the seemingly quiet notion of "changing vocabulary" within the debate has the potential to be explosive. That's also part of why work, like Kissling's, that asserts a language of feeling and loss regarding the termination of pregnancy has such an impact. "Is There Life After Roe?" struck a chord because it acknowledged an uncomfortable human truth: that for some happily, healthily expectant women -- and even for some who abort their fetuses -- the bump in their midsection is a baby.

"I think it makes all of us uncomfortable," said Kissling of her line of inquiry. "It is sometimes uncomfortable for me. How do we say this in ways that don't undercut our argument or aren't misinterpreted? This is a tough task, a difficult transition period." She added, "We have resisted the moral conversation for good reason. Historically, as well as in the present, the minute you raise morality, opponents of women's rights use it against us."

But, Kissling said, "I think it's pretty sad if the reality of pro-choice thought is that a discussion of morality leads to an antiabortion position." Kissling has always trod the delicate line between her pro-choice compatriots and her Catholic belief. The Roman Catholic hierarchy remains the mortal enemy of reproductive freedom -- be it abortion or birth control. "I've thought about the morality of this ad nauseam for 35 years and come to the conclusion that making the choice [to have an abortion] can be a profoundly morally correct decision," said Kissling. "It can be morally incorrect too, but so can having a baby."

Kissling continued, "To me a pro-choice movement that couldn't withstand moral scrutiny would be a very poor movement. And I don't think we have a poor movement." In fact, said Kissling, "Is There Life After Roe?" stemmed in part from internal debate among pro-choice leaders -- and not just Catholic ones -- about how to reconcile changing medical and cultural views of the fetus with an abortion-rights agenda. "You can't live in this society and not be affected by the enormous change that has happened in terms of the visibility of the fetus," she argued. Kissling talked about technologies that allow women to look at three-dimensional images of their fetuses early into gestation, and advances in medicine that help younger and younger premature babies to survive ex utero.

But Kissling insisted her interest in the fetus does not change her views on women's reproductive rights. "Abortion should be legal," she said unequivocally. "It should not be restricted. But that doesn't mean it's not complicated and doesn't mean that talking about morality leads to restriction!"

But it's so easy to see how it could. "Is There Life After Roe?" is not an easily digestible piece. Kissling presents a philosophically challenging argument that requires intense consideration from its reader. It's not the kind of thing that translates smoothly to the political stage, especially in a glib, "Need some wood?" political era. If ethicists and theologians find it challenging to absorb a philosophy in which we accept a fetus's value as well as the value of a woman's choice to abort it, how can we reasonably expect an electorate intolerant of dependent clauses to take the time to hash it out? And what happens when politicians eager to jump on what looks like a new centrist bandwagon simplify the message until they transform it into something straight from the mouths of the religious right?

Next page: Some say abortion is always a moral tragedy. But what about the women who have abortions and are relieved or even joyful?