The Cost of Choice: Women Evaluate the Impact of Abortion

198 Pages·2004·0.62 MB·English

by  Erika Bachiochi

The Cost of Choice
Women Evaluate
the Impact of Abortion
Preface by
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Edited by
Erika Bachiochi
Encounter Books
SAN FRANCISCO
Copyright © 2004 by Erika Bachiochi
All rights reserved, Encounter Books, 665 Third Street, Suite 330, San
Francisco, California 94107-1951.
First edition published in 2004 by Encounter Books, an activity of
Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax exempt
corporation.
Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bachiochi, Erika.
The Cost of Choice: women evaluate the impact of abortion/ pref-
ace by Jean Bethke Elshtain ; edited by Erika Bachiochi.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-59403-077-4
1. Abortion—United States—Public opinion. 2. Public Opin-
ion—United States. I. Bachiochi, Erika.
HQ767.5.U5C66 2004
304.6'67—dc22
2004053210
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Dan,
Anna and Gabriella

Contents
Preface
Jean Bethke Elshtain, professor, University of Chicago vii
Introduction xi
PARTI Abortion, Women and Culture
1. From Culture Wars to Building a Culture of Life
Mary Ann Glendon, professor, Harvard Law School 3
2. Three Decades of Empty Promises
Candace C. Crandall, associate producer,
New River Media Inc. 14
3. Coming of Age in a Culture of Choice
Erika Bachiochi, JD 22
4. The Feminist Case AgainstAbortion
Serrin M. Foster, president, Feminists for Life 33
5. Living in the Shadow of Mönchberg:
Prenatal Testing and Genetic Abortion
Elizabeth Schiltz, professor, St. Thomas Law School 39
6. Abortion: A War on Women
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, professor, Emory University 50
PARTII Abortion and Women’s Health
7. Reviewing the Evidence, Breaking the Silence:
Long-Term Physical and Psychological Health
Consequences of Induced Abortion
Dr. Elizabeth M. Shadigian, Ob/Gyn,
University of Michigan Medical School 63
8. The Abortion–Breast Cancer Link:
The Studies and the Science
Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, assistant clinical professor of surgery,
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and co-founder of the
Breast Cancer Prevention Institute 72
9. The Psychological Aftermath of Three Decades
of Abortion
Dr. E. Joanne Angelo, psychiatrist, assistant clinical
professor, Tufts Medical School 87
PARTIII Abortion, Law, Regulation and Alternatives
10. The Supreme Court and the Creation of the
Two-Dimensional Woman
Paige Comstock Cunningham, senior fellow,
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity 103
11. Abortion Clinic Regulation:
Combating the True “Back Alley”
Denise M. Burke, staff counsel, Americans United for Life 122
12. Abortion-Alternative Legislation and the Law of the Gift
Dorinda C. Bordlee, staff counsel, Americans United for Life 133
About the Contributors 139
Acknowledgments 143
Notes 145
Index 173
Preface
JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN
A PREVALENT VIEW ABOUT CONTROVERSIAL Supreme Court
decisions is that they hit the public unawares; there is an imme-
diate hue and cry; then things settle down; eventually the hold-
ing is “normalized” and becomes part of the civic landscape. This
is the story of Brown v. Board of Education, for example, the deci-
sion that declared de jure segregation unconstitutional. It would
be unthinkable at this point—nearly a half-century after that deci-
sion—for any group to gain a hearing and garner support by call-
ing for a reversal of the Browndecision. Even for those who believe
that some of the remedies imposed by political bodies and courts
in the aftermath of Brownwere unwise, the holding that segrega-
tion violates the most enduring truths about America’s commit-
ment to moral and civic equality has indeed become part of the
dense latticework of American civic and juridical life.
We are now more than thirty years on from the Supreme
Court case of Roe v. Wade, but the controversy has not settled
down. If anything, the issue is more unsettled than ever as, increas-
ingly, slim majorities emerge to call for restraint and regulation
of abortion. In other words, opposition to the extreme and radi-
cal nature of America’s abortion order—embedded in Roe and,
even more pointedly, in Doe v. Bolton—has not been “normalized”
but, instead, has grown continuously since these decisions were
handed down.
ix
x The Cost of Choice
Why is this the case? One reason, surely, is that the abortion
debate taps into centuries of reflection and argument on the moral
status of persons. From the beginning of recorded moral philoso-
phy, human beings have pondered and puzzled over the question
of life itself and its moral status. We have measured progress in the
West by our sometimes agonizingly slow movement toward recog-
nition of the human status of those once denied such standing.
The history of slavery is a case in point. What was once rou-
tine in the ancient world—economies built on slavery—became,
over time, problematic and, finally, unthinkable. It took many
centuries, but eventually it came to pass. There was no moral jus-
tification—there could be no moral justification—for some human
beings to enslave others. Movement toward women’s moral and
civic equality followed a similar path. The long arc that bends
toward inclusion of human beings in the moral community rises
from a recognition that the arbitrary removal of whole classes and
categories of persons from moral concern—whether on the basis
of race or gender or ethnicity or religion—is a sign of moral degen-
eration, not progress.
The question of the moral status of the unborn child is part
of this long and arduous movement toward inclusion. Opponents
of abortion insist that the unborn child belongs within the bound-
ary of the moral community rather than outside it, excluded by
judicial fiat. As Mary Ann Glendon points out in her contribution
to this volume, most Americans do not realize just how “extreme
the legal treatment of abortion is in the United States,” and there-
fore do not appreciate that even Sweden, with its permissive atti-
tudes toward human sexuality, “strictly regulates abortion after
the eighteenth week of pregnancy.” If they were aware of this,
there would be even larger majorities calling for revision of Roe
andDoe,and insisting on sturdy restraints upon what is currently
a nearly unrestrained abortion right. We know this because all
credible studies of public opinion demonstrate that majorities say
they don’t want Roealtogether reversed, but they also oppose per-
missive abortion at any stage of pregnancy or for any reason, and
would allow it only for the most grave reasons having to do with
incest, rape, or a serious threat to the mother’s life. In other words,
they do not believe abortion is, simply, a woman’s “right.”