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Obama Acknowledges Women as Moral Agents
What did you think of President Obama's commencement speech Sunday at Notre Dame? How will the Notre Dame controversy change the abortion debate in America?
One often unacknowledged but pivotal issue in the abortion debate in this country is that abortion is a uniquely serious moral issue where women are the primary ethical decision-makers.
One of the things I appreciated about President Obama's Notre Dame Commencement speech was that he acknowledged that women are the central decision makers and that women engage in moral reasoning to make the decision. "That's when we begin to say, 'Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually, it has both moral and spiritual dimensions.'"
The fact that women are the primary ethical decision-makers in the abortion decision, however, has most often kept religious authorities from making the connection between insights from the history of ethics and the abortion question. I speak here particularly of Just War theory. Francis Kissling made this argument in 1991 during the first Gulf War. She wrote, "If War is Just, So is Abortion."
One of the main reasons there is no exploration of when abortion might be "just" using the Just War theory is the criterion of "competent moral authority." Women are not considered "competent moral authorities" and so the connection between Just War theory and abortion is never made. Lloyd Steffen makes this point in his book Holy War, Just War: Exploring the Moral Meaning of Religious Violence.
In truth, women have not been considered 'morally competent' in Western thought since Aristotle. This is a deep problem in our culture and our religious attitudes and it will not go away overnight. But it will never go away unless we name it as a problem and deal with it directly as a problem.
Otherwise, some in the anti-abortion movement do not appear even to see women as human beings. It is crucial to see that women's lives are directly involved in the reproductive process and at times their lives are at risk, sometimes at high risk, in giving birth. Yet, efforts to redefine fetal life in terms of personhood with all the attendant legal rights personhood confers have sometimes seemed to ignore the simple fact that women are persons.
There are a number of important steps forward toward the kind of civil dialogue on abortion of which the President spoke. It would help abortion opponents to make the connection between war and abortion as it would encourage the "consistent ethic of life" of which Cardinal Bernardin spoke so eloquently. Taken to its logical conclusion, the "pro-life" position can only be a pacifist position or it is ethically self-contradictory.
Another important step can be taken by treating women and girls, and their sexual partners, as having the responsibility to become "competent moral authorities". Such a perspective would substantially change our approach to sex education, for example. The emphasis would be on increasing the capacity of young people (and adults) to engage in competent moral reasoning. This itself would be a huge step forward.
Finally, increasing ethical competence in reproductive decisions would inevitably focus the abortion debate where it belongs--on contraception.
Planned Parenthood has been right all along. Every child should be a wanted child. That is truly common ground.
By
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
|
May 19, 2009; 8:43 AM ET
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Posted by: marymack77 | May 25, 2009 9:34 PM
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I don't believe anyone really wants abortion. Having said that, I am vehemently opposed to the government, and in particular the male government legislating a women's body or her right to make decisions over her body and health. Additionally, the religious right has politicized every issue that is a religious and/or personal moral code. This has to stop. We each will stand before our Lord and answer for ourselves. We cannot make people live up to our standards.
Posted by: jraepaul | May 21, 2009 4:22 PM
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Yep, Professor. That's about where we are right now, isn't it?
Posted by: Paganplace | May 19, 2009 6:20 PM
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Since when has a baby become the sole possession of the woman whose womb it rests in? The crux of this issue is that legalising abortion has reduced one part of the human family to being a disposable possession. Leaving a mother the right to have this little person killed is not moral it robs the child of its right to live ;it robs the co creator of the his rights as a father or allows him to avoid facing up to the consequences of his own sequal behaviour since an aborted baby requires no child support and there is no DNA evidence to prove rape or incest in criminal matters.