This week I wrote a piece in The Guardian about Obama’s (excellent) commencement speech at Notre Dame (and you can also see me talking about it on CNN here)…This is my conclusion:
Perhaps by showing that he is prepared to listen to and engage with all points of view, Obama’s speech will mark a departure from the simplistic manner in which debates about abortion have been framed. Perhaps people will see that engaging in a more unified debate about abortion, just like debates about race or indeed any other sensitive topics, is what will lead to a truly unified America.
I would love to see, as the president suggested, more compromise that actually leads to fruitful dialogue rather than two camps – which are probably less in opposition to each other than they think – being mired in their own, very fixed idea of how things *should* be according to their own world view. The world just can’t operate well like that.
What I don’t understand is why you have to be considered either pro-life or pro-choice, as if the two are mutually exclusive? I am pro-life: I believe in the sanctity of life (which means I also oppose the death penalty, as many people who claim to be pro-life, interestingly enough, don’t and I am also strongly anti-war).
I also believe in a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body. I totally fail to see how, in a democratic society, people believe that someone else should tell someone else what they can and can’t do with their body, particularly when it is the woman who will be raising the child.
Of course then the argument is that the woman should think about that before getting pregnant. I agree – in the cases in which women do choose to get pregnant (what about rape cases?) – that many women have to be more responsible. Abortion shouldn’t be any woman’s mode of contraception. It really should be a last resort. That means that a lot more effort and money needs to go into sex education, into overcoming any taboos that stops people from talking about the topic, into empowering women so they can make sure that they are taking full responsibility for contraception and so on.
But the way things are framed at the moment is unhelpful… Taking a broader and more nuanced view of these things is what will help progress the conversation.
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