Activists reveal rigidity by fighting coerced
abortion ban
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Abortion-rights activists frequently accuse their pro-life adversaries of
simplistic thinking and ideological rigidity. That charge made more sense 30
years ago, when proponents of legalized abortion brazenly claimed the mantle
of
defending women while opponents of abortion focused their rhetoric on the
rights of the unborn. But that allegation has not aged well. And it is
taking a
particular beating right now in Missouri, as the state Legislature debates
the
merits of a proposed ban on coerced abortions.
In one corner of this legislative fight are the supposed anti-choice
simpletons: legislators like Rep. Cynthia Davis and Rep. Bryan Pratt, the
sponsors of House Bills 46 and 434, and Sen. Rob Mayer, sponsor of the
corresponding Senate Bill 264. Their legislation would make it a crime for
anyone to knowingly coerce a woman into aborting her child by performing
criminal acts against her or her family, assaulting or stalking her,
attempting
or threatening to harm her baby against her will or without her knowledge,
firing or threatening to fire her for failing to abort her baby or revoking
or
threatening to revoke her scholarship for that reason. The legislation also
strengthens informed consent for a pregnant woman by mandating that she be
offered an opportunity view an ultrasound of her baby before an abortion and
requiring that she receive more complete information about alternatives to
abortion.
For an abortion-rights movement predicated on giving women choices, this
legislation would seem to be too innocuous to fight. After all, who wants to
see a woman make a life-or-death decision for her unborn child without
adequate
information, only to lament later — as do the growing ranks of women in the
Silent No More Awareness Campaign — that she did not truly understand what
she
was choosing? Who wants to deprive a pregnant woman of access to as much
information as possible so she can make her decision from a position of
strength, knowledge and freedom rather than desperation and ignorance? And
does
anyone want to defend the right of abusive or manipulative boyfriends,
husbands, parents, employers and coaches to bully a woman into aborting her
child because her pregnancy inconveniences them?
Odious as this last prospect sounds, it is apparently not repellant enough
to
deter Missouri's abortion lobby from battling even this modest pro-life
legislation. Blasting it as alternately redundant and radical, unnecessary
and
insulting, the state's so-called defenders of choice are laboring to kill
this
choice-expanding bill.
As these abortion apologists see it, a woman need not be asked to clarify
her
consent before undergoing an abortion because she already has become the
very
model of self-determination simply by walking through the clinic door. The
possibility that she might have a boyfriend waiting in the car outside who
has
promised to punish her if she fails to "fix" her problem, or parents who
hounded her all the way to the clinic and prevented her from reaching out to
a
crisis pregnancy center for help in keeping her baby, does not worry them
nearly as much as the possibility that a woman who wants an abortion will be
irritated by an offer that she see her baby on a sonogram or get an unwanted
update on his development before she aborts him.
Such priorities may seem out of whack, but they hardly are surprising for a
movement that has been known to extol the medical virtues of partial-birth
abortion and denounce legislation outlawing infanticide. The opposition of
abortion-rights zealots to a ban on coerced abortions is yet another sad
consequence of their ideological rigidity — the very simplistic thinking and
refusal to acknowledge reality that they ascribe to their opponents but
exemplify in themselves.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.