AN ARTICLE ON ABORTION…AND WHAT WAS LEFT OUT OF IT

May 6, 2015
by Ken Berwitz
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Today\’s New York Times has an article on abortion, written by Lynn Vavreck, a political science professor who teaches at UCLA.

Ms. Vavreck, I suspect, thinks she has written an evenhanded analysis of the differences, and similarities, between people who generally support or oppose a woman\’s right to abort.  But, astonishingly, it leaves out the one factor which – I certainly would hope – should be most important to this decision, both from a moralistic and judicial standpoint.

Here are a few excerpts: 

If you listen to party leaders, you might think that the nation is hopelessly divided on abortion.

But unlike the opinions of party activists and pundits, public opinion about women\’s choices during their pregnancies yields surprising points of agreement across party lines. If you ask them specifics, Americans agree on quite a bit about when and why abortions should be legal.

The American National Election Studies (A.N.E.S.) charts public opinion using a random sample of adult Americans every election year. In 2012, the A.N.E.S. asked a typical abortion question: “There has been some discussion about abortion during recent years. Which one of the opinions on this page best agrees with your view?”

The choices were: (1) By law, abortion should never be permitted; (2) The law should permit abortion only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman\’s life is in danger; (3) The law should permit abortion for reasons other than rape, incest or danger to the woman\’s life but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established; and (4) by law, a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of personal choice.

Based on work done by the Stanford political scientists Morris Fiorina and Jon Krosnick, the A.N.E.S. fielded a more specific battery of questions in 2012, using seven different circumstances to ask whether respondents believed abortion should be legal or illegal or whether they weren\’t sure. The idea was to uncouple the conditions of rape, incest and risk to the life of the mother from one another to learn about support for each of these categories separately and for some others.

It appears as if the giant party difference in support for abortion under any and all conditions is an artifact of the way the typical abortion survey question is constructed.

Note to Professor Vavreck:  it is not just the way the typical abortion survey question is constructed.  it is also what is and what is not asked…which brings me to the point of this blog. 

My personal belief regarding abortion is that there is one issue that towers over all others:  is there a live child?

-When there is no live child, I don\’t object to anything a woman does regarding her pregnancy, it\’s her body and her life. 

-But when there is a live child, the issue is not exclusively hers.  It is their bodies and their lives.  The issue then changes from whether a woman has a right to make decisions about her reproductive status to whether a woman has a right to kill her live child in the womb. 

Now, look back at the excerpts I\’ve posted and, if you would, please read use the link I\’ve provided to Professor Vavreck\’s entire article.  Then please tell me if you can find any part of it that addresses whether there is a live child…because I looked and I can\’t.  Not one word.

Could it be possible that A.N.E.S. asked no questions which take whether there is a live child into account?  I don\’t know; I logged onto its web site and could not find this specific study.  If there were none, then shame on A.N.E.S. for researching only part of the story.

But even if the organization left it out, Professor Vavreck didn\’t have to.  An honest commentary on abortion would have noted the data about the child\’s status if it were there, or noted that it was not there and pointed out that this is a key issue which should have been researched.

One of the ways unconditionally pro-abortion people make their case, is to completely dehumanize what is growing in a woman\’s body – as if whether there is a human being is based on geography/which side of the uterine wall the entity happens to be on.

But if what is inside that wall has a formed human body, a heartbeat and brain activity?  Other than the most devout, unconditional abortion proponents, you would be hard pressed to find anyone telling you that is just some lump of tissue connected to the woman carrying it, no more or less a child than an embryo. 

To most people – even people like me, who support abortion under many circumstances – that is a baby.  Not a completely developed one (any more than a baby months outside the womb is), and possibly not life-sustaining without the mother (like people on on life-support equipment in hospitals), but a live baby nonetheless.

Maybe, just maybe, that should have been incorporated into this article…and into our thinking about this controversial subject.

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