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| Individual choice has become ultimate authority. |
If the discussion of abortion comes up, you are likely to be asked if you are 'pro-choice' or 'pro-life'. These terms have come to define the conversation and you will be encamped in one viewpoint or the other. As ever, labels are often unhelpful, and whatever the discussion which follows, people will rarely think beyond you being either 'pro-choice', or 'pro-life', along with the associated connotations of each.
If you are 'pro-life', it is assumed you are anti woman, right wing, against progression of a fair and equal society, and more often than not male. If you are 'pro-choice', you will be considered liberal, left, likely to be female and a firm believer in the feminist movement. In reality of course these are not always true and not always helpful, yet nonetheless they are still the thoughts that come to mind when the labels are used.
My concern is in the use of 'pro-choice'. I'm not really sure choice is the core of the issue, and in fact believe it can often be a red herring and used unhelpfully. Choice implies two or more options, that are by right available to an individual, i.e. I have a choice between two t-shirts to wear.
I'm not sure we can use the same language when the choice involved involves another human being. If 'my body, my choice' we used as a defense for vegetarianism, or the sports we take part in, or piercings we have, then it is a valid and relevant argument as they are independent choices with no implications to others. However when used to defend an action which is fatal for another human being, the choice really isn't there to be made. If I were to steal food from a hungry child for my own benefit, using the language that it was my choice, wouldn't be a great defense against those who would rightly accuse me.
Yet we live in a society and culture which have made an individuals choice almost sacred ground, and for it to be questioned by another is somehow now morally abhorrent. If someone wants to make a decision, why should anybody else have a say in that decision? If you are to question someone else's decision, you will be accused of meddling, policing and poking into others business. This obviously fights against the place God wants in each and every heart, and the ordered society of submission to authority laid out in scripture, where rule & law is followed for the common good.
Modern day life suggests I am free to make whatever decisions I choose, and no individual, organisation or even state, should have any say on my personal right. Self, choice and rights rules supreme. The 'pro-choice' movement has used this to their full advantage, and moved the abortion debate away from the ethics of how we treat unborn children, to instead how we dare suggest an opinion on an individuals 'choice'.
The conversation must not be sidetracked by being scared of 'choice', and instead focus on defending the powerless, those without any choice, but to be dependent upon the choice of their mother, who is told be society they are free to decide as they please.
I leave you with two quotes, firstly from Jim Wallis, an Evangelical political adviser in the states, and secondly, from Naomi Wolf, a feminist writer writing in "The New Republic", 1995.
To suggest that the only issue at stake in the abortion debate is protecting the 'choice' that women have in their reproductive rights is simply not enough. That is to neglect or even deny the existence of another life, at stake in the decision. Jim Wallis
Clinging to a rhetoric about abortion in which there is no life and no death, we entangle our beliefs in a series of self delusions, fibs, and evasions. Naomi Wolf
