'New And Improved Antiabortion Movement' Still Ignores Needs Of Women, Salon Opinion Piece States

A "new set of antiabortion actors" who are "anti-war, anti-capital punishment, pro-environment "pro-lifers"" have "emerged as the face of a new and improved antiabortion movement," Salon columnist Frances Kissling writes. Although these advocates supported President Obama in the 2008 election, they "suffer from the same lack of understanding of women"s nature and identity as do old-line anti-abortionists," Kissling writes. She notes that this group has "already decided that a political effort to make abortion illegal is hopeless, which helps the pro-choice cause." According to Kissling, "Taking legality off the table" increases the prospects for "rational public discourse about all the factors at play in women"s decisions not to continue pregnancy and not to become mothers," but "[w]e are ... far from common ground between the new anti-abortionists and the pro-choice advocates."Members of this new group believe that data suggesting that many women decide to have abortions for financial reasons prove that "better economic support" for pregnant women "will result in more continued pregnancies and more women embracing motherhood," Kissling writes. In addition, they "assert that if adoption policies were friendlier," more women would choose adoption over abortion, according to Kissling. "But facts have little place in their strategy," as the policies they support "are already in place in much of Europe," and "few women who face unintended pregnancies in those countries opt out of abortion," Kissling writes. She adds, "Something much deeper influences a woman"s decision about what to do when she is pregnant and does not want to become a mother -- and the new anti-choicers don"t seem to have a clue about what this might be." For this group, "the outcome [of pregnancy] -- the new person -- is obviously so much more valuable than whatever short-term loss or pain the women might experience," Kissling writes. Therefore, they believe it is "not asking much of a woman who faces an unwanted, difficult or unintended pregnancy to shift the plan she had for this time in her life and continue the pregnancy," according to Kissling.Kissling lists four "positions taken by the new antiabortionists [that] illuminate this flawed thinking." The first is "[d]enying the "need" for abortion," she writes. Secondly, their "same sense of pregnancy as no big deal influences the new antiabortionists" unwillingness to embrace contraception," Kissling says. She adds that "[i]f we really understood what it meant for women to consent to becoming mothers, we would want them to be able to meet their moral obligation to their own identity by avoiding becoming pregnant." The third position is an attempt to make "sex sacred," Kissling writes, adding that if "creating new life is sacred, then we want men and women to have the tools necessary to fulfill the obligation to create life responsibly and not create it when they cannot -- or choose not to -- bring it to fruition." The fourth position is "[r]edefining adoption," Kissling continues. She asks whether adoption is "now a process of finding children for needy parents," adding, "Might it not be more generous of us as a society to work harder to make it possible for women to keep their children if they so wish?"Kissling writes that the "challenge to the new antiabortionists" is whether "women"s perspectives on the meaning of pregnancy and motherhood will be considered in their project" or if "their ethical frame will remain focused on the fetus." She asks, "How many of these women"s decisions will the new antiabortionists be able to say "yes" to?" Kissling concludes, "So far it seems that it is far more than abortion that is a stumbling block to common ground" (Kissling, Salon, 7/20).