Since this blog is still new, I'm going to put down thoughts on the basic issues as a statement of values. It's good to revisit the basics - it hopefully prevents dogmatic thinking creeping in. It's also a useful record in case my opinions change.
It won't surprise anyone to find out I'm pro-choice, but it is surprising to me how long it took me to figure out why. I was a liberal, and liberals are pro-choice, therefore I'm pro-choice. We don't have to discuss it too much in England, so there it sat. I have a suspicion a lot of male liberals don't like to go near abortion for a number of reasons - they think it's not their domain, they think only women can speak about it with any authority, and simply they at some level find it distasteful or shameful, however much they support it as a right. More male conversation about abortion would definitely be a good thing. That however, is not quite my point.
My point is really directed to pro-choice people male and female. What has irked me for a long time about the debate is that the sides never engage with each other's argument. Much of the pro-life movement is based around the idea that an embryo or foetus is a human life and therefore to abort it is murder. This is a simple proposition from which, understandably if that is your position, incalculable amounts of righteous energy is derived. Now whenever I debate the issue with a pro-life person, my instinct is to directly debate on that point, since that seems to me the heart of it. Most pro-choice rhetoric, however, is based around women's control of their bodies. This is a good argument. But it is utterly useless in debate because you are being accused of murder, which supercedes pretty much anything you can say. Surely the important bit is: "I don't think abortion is murder". Everything else misses their point.
I would suggest out-christianing the Christians and loving your enemies. Take them seriously as people, not as men (and women) trying to wrest control of reproductive organs from free people. Rather, meet them on that first point. Is abortion murder?
The pro-choice movement, it seems to me, spends far too little time on the "when does life begin" question. This may be because it's an uncomfortable subject, because it divides adherents, or simply because they refuse to play on the pro-lifer's turf. But I think it is the single best place to fight the battle. Because I don't know when life begins. It's something I struggle with. Not something you want to admit in such an ideological and impassioned debate with people accusing you of sanctioning the slaughter of the innocent. I can't claim the abortion rate in China, for instance, doesn't give me the willies. I can't claim I'm comfortable with my current position that the development of the spinal cord constitutes the beginning of what I understand as human life. It seems so arbitrary. But so much of life requires arbitrary distinctions about gradual changes. A child does not gain the sudden ability to help govern a democracy on their 18th birthday. We don't know where the line is, so we make a guess and draw one.
I may not know where life begins. But nor does anyone. Oh, the religious might say they know life begins at conception because God plans each soul, but they have no evidence of this or that their God exists, and so can't expect to have any say on the law because of it. The decision about whether the termination of a ball of cells is different in kind to the continual destruction of billions of sperm and thousands of eggs is sufficiently complex that the law cannot intervene. That leaves the decision with the mother by default. I have many other opinions on the issue, but this is the rock bottom of my belief, and though I welcome challenge, I cannot see how it is ever to be overcome by opposing arguments.
I fear that when the pro-life movement runs away from the accusation of their opponents, it looks like weakness. They should charge at it head on, and we should all be discussing where we think life begins. It's an uneasy topic for anyone, but it is where the strongest argument and eventual victory lies.
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