Revising the Pro-Choice Perspective
Sure enough, Kissling's usual allies greeted her essay with suspicion: What was she doing, questioning pro-choicers' values rather than those on the other side? Wasn't she giving them ammunition? Taft, the former Dallas clinic director, encountered even more grief when she told a reporter that abortion was "a kind of killing." Her airing of such issues in public, and inside the clinic, made other providers -- including the clinic's owner -- uncomfortable. Referrals diminished. Taft was pushed out of her job, and she believes her approach was a contributing factor. Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, was once quoted as saying, "We think abortion is a bad thing. No woman wants to have an abortion," and then backpedaled furiously, insisting that she would "never, never, never, never, never mean to say such a thing."
And then there was Hillary Clinton's famous speech to 1,000 fellow abortion-rights supporters. In the middle of a long argument for birth control and legal abortion, Clinton noted that abortion can represent a "sad, even tragic" choice for many women. "I, for one, respect those who believe with all their hearts and conscience that there are no circumstances under which any abortion should ever be available," she said. There were "gasps and head-shaking," according to the New York Times, and pundits rushed to gauge whether Clinton was pulling back on abortion rights. The mere suggestion of complexity, it seemed, constituted a retreat. She hasn't used that kind of language since. (She did not return calls asking her to comment for this story.)
And yet, the ferment continues. At one invitation-only meeting of pro-choice activists this spring at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., the talk was about framing the issue. One participant, liberal columnist William Saletan, has argued that pro-choicers need to get comfortable saying that abortion is "bad" and should be prevented, whenever possible, with birth control.
Pro-choice groups certainly aren't using words like "bad" to describe abortion. But they are employing other language to shift the debate. In March, NARAL ran a "Pro-Prevention" ad in USA Today that advocated reducing the "need" for abortion. NARAL literature stresses "values" like personal responsibility and freedom. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards often tells interviewers, "We provide abortion, and thank goodness we do, but 90 percent of what we do is prevention."
Pro-choice advocates caution that birth control, too, is under attack. In reporting for her recent book, How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, NARAL researcher Cristina Page says she found that every major anti-abortion group is opposed to most or all forms of contraception.
It should go without saying -- but, in the minefield that is the abortion debate, nothing ever does -- that the ferment on the pro-choice side is not about questioning women's right to decide whether and when to bring life into the world. On the contrary: It's about getting out of the defensive crouch many people backed into years ago. "It became really [hard] to have that honest conversation," says Taft, who now lives in New Mexico. "We felt we had to emphasize that there was nothing difficult about abortion. So long as we held on to that kind of language, we thought, we would be able to protect [our] rights. But I came to the conclusion that the only way to protect that right was to speak about the whole thing -- the moral piece, the emotional piece, the way the experience is different for different people. Everything."
