I believe that people on both sides of the abortion issue take great solace in their rhetoric as a way to avoid doing the real work it would take if one seriously wished to reduce the number of abortions. If you want to make abortions rare, here are some things that need to be done:
– Develop safer, more effective, affordable birth control methods for both men and women.
– Provide comprehensive sex education at an early age.
– Reduce the rate of rape and incest.
– Provide financial, spiritual, emotional and educational support for pregnant women who are in need of any of the above.
– Overhaul the adoption system so that more responsible adults are able to adopt children without facing litmus tests as to gender, marital status, orientation or ethnicity. Protect adoptive parents from losing a child they have adopted because a birth parent changes his or her mind months or years after the fact.
– Hold fathers accountable for the well-being of their children both financially and emotionally.
– Support medical research that will lead to better intrauterine care of fetuses and better techniques for saving mothers’ lives if a crisis should occur.
– Ensure that health-care coverage is available to families.
– Make responsible, affordable child care readily available–especially for poor mothers or those who must work non-traditional hours.
– Insist on family-friendly workplaces so mothers don’t have to choose between children and careers and so that fathers have both equal opportunity and responsibility for participating in their children’s lives.
These initiatives would take enormous work and investment. None is a quick fix and all would require long-term commitment. These steps would also necessitate relinquishing the underlying misogyny of some abortion opponents.
Since none of these things is likely to happen, there will continue to be prayers and placards, rhetoric and rosaries. There will be continued vitriol from both sides and there will be no progress in addressing this issue.
