Is Abortion Political or Moral?

Abortion is one of those issues that divides people, because it has been posed as an either or question: either you favor permitting women to have them legally, or you do not.

Abortion could be posed in an entirely different way, as a moral question, but not as a legal one. You won't find many people, especially many women, who would be in favor of having one--until they are faced with having a child that they don't want, or cannot raise. For men the issue is much more hypothetical; after all, no man has ever had to have an abortion.

What makes abortion so morally and politically difficult is not just the actual question: when does human life begin, an argument that could go on for eons; it is that women are the only ones who would have to carry the baby, and are likely the ones who would have to raise the child, yet the man is also involved--he can be sued for child support if nothing else.

Making abortion legal has meant giving women the power to decide whether to have a child or not, regardless of what the man wants. So, it dis-empowers men in that instance; they don't have power over the woman, but it empowers women, not only with that decision, but with the decision of what to do with their lives.

So, abortion as an issue becomes entangled with the question: who controls women? The women themselves, or men and law courts. This question was just answered again, by the Supreme Court in its "partial birth abortion" decision: by men and law courts. It can be expected that women will resist that answer, as did the one woman on the court (with three other men, with whom she wrote the dissent). It's another chapter in the endless war of the sexes.

But the issue has also proven to be a useful political tool: the GOP has used it to win the support of whole sections of the population whose economic interests might lead them to oppose the Republicans' pro-big business politics. And if you look at the characteristics of most evangelical, "conservative" Christian voters, you will see that abortion is only one of a complex of social issues that have much more to do with controlling women, and controlling men, than it has to do with when life begins. Or what Jesus said about it.

Like race before it, like gay marriage after it, abortion is diversionary politics. Voters are persuaded that it doesn't matter if a candidate stands for many things with which they agree, while his opponent does not; what matters is whether he is a "baby-killer," or not. Poor blacks in the South were told that Kerry was a baby-killer, which is why a significant number voted against him; they didn't vote against him because he was critical of the war, although he wasn't critical enough for many. They didn't vote against him because he was more sympathetic to unions than Bush; they voted against him because he said that women should have the legal right to choose an abortion. In the late fourth century, Constantine and then Theodosius the Great decreed that in the case of "ravishment," a woman could no longer plead that she was willing. According to previous law, consent was a defense for both the man and the woman, but under Constantine's decree, "The girl, herself, will be held liable as a participant in the crime….If willing agreement is discovered in the girl, she shall be punished with the same severity as her ravisher." A woman's sexual decisions were no longer up to her; she was the property of her father, and then of her husband--because the Empire had become Christian?

In the fifth century, Christianization did accompany increased autocracy, and the increased incompetence--and greed--of the rulers. Greater control of women by men was accompanied by greater claims of power by government over everyone.

Autocracy does go with an authoritarian ideology, after all.