To endorse ”choice” in the abortion debate is not necessarily to embrace abortion as the only choice.
This may seem self-evident to most people, but apparently it is not so to some abortion-rights advocates who take bitter exception to an essentially benign television advertisement regarding infant adoption. The ad, appearing on some local stations and national cable channels, encourages women with unwanted pregnancies to carry their babies to term and offer them to adopting couples.
Many-probably most-of those Americans who do not want to see the total elimination of legal abortion also hold deep, often ambivalent reservations about its use. Many see abortion as the choice of last resort. Only an extreme minority would hold up abortion as a singular option, just as another minority insists that abortion should never, ever be available under any circumstance whatsoever.
The ad is funded by the Arthur S. De Moss Foundation of St. Davids, Pa., a charity that keeps its philanthropic credo to itself but which supports a number of evangelical causes. It is also sponsoring a second TV spot that is more explicitly anti-abortion.
With a warm and fuzzy portrait of a couple taking in a baby, the adoption ad employs Hallmark-style emotionalism to press its point. Objectors say it is simplistic, manipulative and a strategic setup for the ”battle zone” to come in the U.S. Supreme Court and this year`s elections, according to a Newsweek report.
But emotion-emotion that stems from soul-wrenching beliefs and sometimes painful personal experience-has long dominated the abortion debate. Abortion- rights advocates who march with brandished coathangers have no business crying ”dirty trick!” over this.
The complainers are more on target when they point out that many children-especially those who are older or who suffer effects of drug addiction, AIDS or other disabilities-go unwanted and unadopted. But they ignore the equally compelling fact that many infertile couples go to desperate lengths, including difficult foreign adoptions and great expense, to adopt young children. Government policies that effectively bar trans-racial adoptions and fail to provide sufficient support for would-be parents of handicapped children also discourage some adoptions.
Adopting the term ”pro-choice” should include true choice. There is more than one.
