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(Last uptated: 6 September 1996)
Smoke and Mirrors is not just a matter of debate technique. It is not just a sterile term which describes the way political rhetoric is formulate. The term describes an issue of dishonesty, of putting up barriers to communications, of using immoral means to force a political goal upon an entire nation. The most frustrating aspect of attempting to discuss whether abortion should be legal is the impossibility of breaching the wall of dishonesty which has been erected by pro-abortion leaders. In this page I will show how even the very facade of the "pro-choice" advocates is Smoke and Mirrors.
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When pregnancy is not desired, a woman has several options available to her. Pro-choicers favor the legality of a particular option in the situation where a woman finds herself pregnant.
First, a note about objectivity: For the sake of clarity, I will not inject the concepts of responsibility or morality within the context of my premise for this topic (which is not to say that they are irrelevant). I must implore the reader to self-impose this restriction, as well, because many will interpret their own rejection of an option, or the rarity of it, as the non-existence of that option. If we are going to deal truthfully with this topic, we must build a perspective that recognizes all possible options. Some of the options available are so repulsive to us that, although they have been options in other societies and in other times, they are seldom recognized as options in our society. Pro-choice readers who attempt this wider historical and sociological perspective, however, will soon find themselves better able to take part in an honest dialogue with their opponents -- assuming they have a willingness to put aside the demagogic rhetoric which dominates this topic.
For a woman with an undesired, prenatal baby, the non-interventionist option is to allow gestation to culminate in birth. After that, she faces the options of raising the child herself; allowing a close relative, a friend, or the father, to raise, or aid her in raising, the child; giving the child up for adoption; or as is practiced in many cultures (the People's Republic of China is one), killing the baby. Although it is not an option which belongs to the mother, if the child survives to maturity, he or she can later "choose" to perform a post-natal abortion.
The interventionist options include, first and obviously, abortion; but there are two more options which are seldom discussed: The second major interventionist option is for the woman to allow gestation to proceed until the pre-natal baby reaches viability, and then deliver it via either a Cesarean section or via induced birth. From there, the options become the same as those available after the non-interventionist option: She can raise the child herself (although if that were her original intent, she probably would have allowed gestation to continue until full term); she can allow a close relative, a friend, or the father, to raise the child; she can give the child up for adoption, or as is practiced in partial birth abortions or when live-birth was unintended, she or the doctor may kill the baby. Although such infanticide is covered over in this country, it does happen. The third major interventionist option -- we are told in the most emotional and accusatory terms by pro-choicers that it sometimes happens (and frequently did happen before Roe v. Wade) -- is for the woman to escape the situation by committing suicide.
There is one more basic option: that the woman have the option of not being impregnated in the first place. The optimal and most reliable method to a conservative pro-lifer is, of course, abstinence. The interventionist spin on this from the Planned Parenthood mentality, on the other hand, is birth control.
You may already be anticipating the connection to my contention that choice, as pro-choice leaders use the term, is "smoke", which is to say, it obscures the truth. The dominant pro-choice leaders oppose all restrictions, but most rank-and-file pro-choicers are not such anarchists as to promote the legality of all options. They do not advocate the legality of killing full-term babies after they have been born, unless those babies have severe birth defects. They are split over aborting the gestation of pre-natal babies who have reached viability, but tend toward prohibiting such. They do not advocate suicide -- indeed, they use tales of attempted suicides as an argument for the legality of the abortion option. Neither would they advocate self-inflicted, post-natal abortion. So if we ask the question, "Are pro-aborts for all options?" the answer is a resonding No.
Neither are pro-lifers against a multiplicity of options. To say that pro-lifers oppose choice is to say that they would impose one choice and one choice only; namely that a woman, once pregnant, should be forced to bear and raise her child when the pregnancy is unwanted. This is an unfair and false charge. It was the pro-lifers, for example, who pushed through Congress a tax credit for up to $5000 toward the expenses of adoption (for which, having previously vetoed it, President Clinton dishonestly appropriated the credit in his re-nomination acceptance speech) in 1996. It is exclusively the pro-life activists who operate networks of privately funded homes for unwed mothers -- one of the largest being operated by the much-reviled Jerry Falwell. On the other hand, it is primarily pro-lifers who fight against the liberalization of assisted-suicide laws. Wouldn't in make sense that both pro-lifers and pro-aborts favor legislation aimed at discouraging or prohibiting the suicide option? Dosn't it make sense that pro-lifers want to minimize the number of abortions by minimizing the number of illegitimate pregnancies? (Again, pro-lifers and pro-aborts share a common goal of minimizing unwanted pregnancies, although the debate over how to achieve such is so heated as to obscure that fact.)
I have listed four major options which branch out to at least a dozen distinct paths from which a pregnant woman could choose. Most are legal, a few are not. The difference between pro-aborts and pro-lifers is just one option -- one particular option out of at least a dozen. For pro-lifers to oppose the legality of one more option than pro-aborts oppose does not make them "anti-choice," and for pro-aborts to support the legality of one more option than pro-lifers support does not make them "pro-choice." To distinguish between the two sides of the debate on the basis of a difference over one option out of twelve is to distort the meaning of the term, "pro-choice." Obviously, pro-lifers are not against "choice" as such, and to label them as "anti-choice" is to unfairly, dishonestly, and malevolently demonize them. On the other hand, pro-aborts oppose just as many options, less one, as pro-lifers oppose. To label themselves "pro-choice" in contrast to pro-lifers is to falsely canonize themselves.
One relevant note before I conclude. I would assert that a choice made in panic or in ignorance is not a choice, but a reaction. Many young women, finding themselves with child, panic. They are in big trouble! "Mom will be furious! Dad's going to (figuratively) kill me! My life and my hopes of a career and a good husband are gone! What are my friends going to say? What am I going to do?" Such a mood clouds the thought process. Only the down side of being pregnant can be seen. Without a cooling-off period (which abortion supporters bitterly oppose as a deterioration of their rights), the aborting mother is not choosing. She is reacting. Similarly, if the mother does not grasp the facts regarding the risks of abortion procedure and regarding the development and possible humanity of the child within her, her so-called choice is made from a position of ignorance. It is, in fact, not a choice, but a reaction to her fears, obedient to the voices of those who care little for her rights beyond the right to get an abortion, and even less for the rights of those effected by her actions. Yet abortion supporters vigorously oppose informed-consent laws wherever they are proposed. Since abortion supporters do not support rational, informed decisions by pregnant women, choice is not truly to them the issue.
Freedom of choice is not the subject of the abortion debate. The legality of a single option out of many is the subject. The basis for such debate is not freedom of choice, but the conflicting interests of various parties: the mother, her family, the father, society, dare-I-say-it, God, and most of all, the pre-natal baby. By using the terms pro-choice and anti-choice, pro-aborts obfuscate the debate by changing the subject. For them, it is not a debate based on fact or on logic, but a propaganda war waged with deception and psychological warfare.
Therefore, the self-description of the "pro-choicer" as being for freedom of choice is at best self-delusion, and at worst, a lie. It presents an image of something that is not there; it is a mirror.
Dilemma Deepens Over British Twin AbortionLONDON (Reuter) - British anti-abortion activists offering thousands of dollars to a pregnant woman to dissuade her from terminating one of her healthy twins protested Tuesday at doctors' refusal to inform her of their offer.
One leading gynecologist[, Dr. Wendy Savage] accused activists of "auctioning" the unborn twin as offers of help poured in for the unnamed single 28-year-old who said she could not cope with raising two more babies."
'I find it horrifying that a woman is having her private medical history bandied around and people, as it were, auctioning her unborn child,' Savage told BBC radio. "
As the story explains, this is the first known case in Britain of the selective abortion of a healthy, naturally conceived twin. It has nothing to do with reducing risks to the physical or psychological health of the mother, or with fetal abnormalities or survivability. The woman is a single mother who already has other children and fears that it would be too expensive to raise two more -- though one would be satisfactory. Since the woman's concern is financial, pro-lifers have offered a pool of $69,000 to date in hopes that she would not kill her child.
Dr. Savage's statement requires that 'auction' be defined as trying to relieve the woman's budget problems so she won't kill her child. Doesn't auction mean sell? Isn't selling what the mother is doing, selling out her child for the sake of money and convenience? The appropriately named Dr. Savage not only switches the buyer with the seller, but also equates charitable giving with commercial profiteering.
Another re-definition regards patient 'confidentiality.'
"The London hospital where the 16-weeks pregnant woman is a patient said it would breach confidentiality to pass on offers of help.... 'What we are not undertaking is to direct those offers to the woman in this case because that would break her confidentiality,' said a hospital spokesman.... Offers from groups and individuals have ranged from cash donations to practical help such as child-minding and accommodation. "
Note the way the spokesman defines 'confidentiality', not as 'protecting someone's identity,' but as 'protecting someone from information.' Again, the source and the recipient of information are reversed in the propagandistic use of confidentiality.
In fact, the spokesman's use of confidentiality was propagandistic, not only in his use of the term when conveying information to the press, but also in the use of the concept. As Phyllis Bowman, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, stated, "You cannot talk about a woman's right to choose unless the woman is given all options." This ties back to my point that Pro-Choice is Mirrors.
The acquaintance, Dorr Clark, who shared the Reuter article with me, pointed out another contrast, an obfuscatory complaint which grows out of Dr. Savage's lack of perspective. According to Dorr,
"It is 'horrifying' to discuss a woman's medical history in public without revealing her name, and 'horrifying' to 'auction' off her child. But it isn't horrifying to kill her baby as a matter of convenience. The shallowness of the radical pro-abortionists is never revealed so clearly as by the excesses of their rhetoric."
First, as a point of fact, a hospital spokesman &said some details of the case had been disguised and it was possible the woman would not recognize herself as the person who has dominated news reports for three days.& For example, according to some reports, the case is considerably further along than indicated. The woman reportedly had her child killed in utero several months ago. (According to later reports, this turned out to be true.) At any rate, Dr. Savage's statement about the 'horror' of the mother's privacy being violated is not even based on fact.
Second, Dr. Savage brings up the privacy issue so that either she herself or we will not consider the real issue of the case. The issue is the conflict between the mother's rights, the aborted pre-natal child's rights, and the pre-natal sibling's rights. If placed in a just balance, the mother's economic concerns and convenience pale compared to the children's rights to life and to intact relationships with each other. As Bowman said, "one baby is being killed. It will be left in the womb, its brother or sister growing beside it ... The whole prospect for [the mother] and both of her babies is horrifying."
That last point concerning the sibling's right to have a relationship with his/her sibling is best illustrated dramatically. The loss of a sibling, even a loss which occurred before one gained long-term memory or was able to be conscious of relationships with other people, can have dramatic effects on a person's emotional state later in life. Picture, in the year 2056, a sixty-year-old grandmother, showing the family album to her grand-daughter.
"This is my big brother, Bob, and that's my sister, Bess, God rest her soul.... And there was one more, my twin sister -- but I... I never knew her. She was stillborn because mum had her killed while we was still in her tummy. It took me a long time to forgive mum when I found out. I had always felt that, somehow, there was this big part of me missing. But I know I'll get to see my sweet little sister in Heaven someday...."
Third, I think Dorr was too charitable. While those who fall for such rhetoric are indeed shallow, it must require great depth and intelligence to contrive such deceit. (I am, of course, playing with the word 'depth.' Pro-abortion rhetoric is obscure to the average person, is at the outer limits of debate, requires intense thought to contrive, and reveals thoroughness of arrogance. On the other hand, Dorr is right in that, morally, abortion advocates' use of such rhetoric reveals their shallowness of character.)
The Reuter quotes clearly demonstrate how abortion supporters twist words such as auction and confidentiality to show us something that is not there. It shows how they misrepresent facts to obfuscate the issues.
The funny thing about smoke and mirrors is that smoke is always twisting, and mirror images are always the reverse of reality.
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© 1996 Richard Wheeler
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