It’s the ideological battle of the century: Pro-Choice vs.
Pro-Life. Let’s skip pondering how much
each of those factions paid their high-priced marketing firms to come up with
those positive-sounding monikers and go straight to the heart of the matter: As
long as women remain locked in a claws-out, sparks-flying perpetual
stranglehold over the legality of abortion, women will continue to be held back
from political advancement, perceived as a one-issue constituent group.
And in the real world, in hospitals on the poor side of the
city, in small towns across America, and in villages across the world, women
and children will continue to die of eminently preventable causes in childbirth
and from childbirth complications like obstetric fistula that are not addressed
or funded because the women with the most resources and political clout in the
world – white middle and upper class American women – are busy funding and
fighting the Abortion War. Every time a
woman sends her hard-earned, eighty-six-cents-on-the-dollar check to the
National Right to Life Committee or NARAL, she has chosen to let another woman
or baby die in childbirth while bolstering the one-horse-wonder political
philosophy that abortion is the most important women’s issue.
Money is the sinew of war.
The most recent solid data I found reports that NARAL had a budget of
over $11 million annually in 2008, and the National Right to Life Committee a
budget of over $9.5 million in 2009. I
assume they’ve both gone up since then. And I assume (confirmed in part by
research into some randomly selected state groups across the country) that all
the myriad local components – every state chapter, local chapter, church group,
etc. – has a combined budget in excess of that of the two major national
organizations. A very conservative estimate would be that $50 million is spent
annually on the pro and anti abortion debate in the United States.
Every battle has its ‘collateral damage.’ In a war of public
rhetoric, high-paid lobbyists and paid advertisements, one way to describe that
collateral damage is in terms of opportunities lost. The opportunities lost due
to the abortion war are threefold.
First, the money sent to this battle could have, in a very
real and immediate sense, been used to save the lives of women and children by
paying for the set of medications commonly necessary in childbirth (about ten
medical commodities, according to the UN, including injectable antibiotics,
oral rehydration salts, and zinc, at a cost of about $6.40 per
woman-giving-birth), and for procedures to repair childbirth injuries such as
obstetric fistula surgery (which costs about $300 per woman). Whether your partisanship
in the abortion war falls along the side of saving infant’s lives, or enhancing
women’s autonomy and dignity, that $100 check will do a lot more of either if
it’s sent to UNFPA’s Maternal Health Thematic Fund or to entities like Doctors
Without Borders earmarked for maternal and infant health programs than if it’s
sent to NARAL or the National Right to Life Committee to pay for lobbyists and
magazine ads.
Second, the intense media and public focus on abortion costs
us the opportunity to discuss the vast array of other critical issues
surrounding maternal and infant health, even at home in America. For example,
the U.S. is the only western nation where the maternal mortality rate is on the
rise. The maternal mortality rate in America was 6.6 per 100,000 live births in
1987, 12.7 in 2007, and according to the most recent figures available from the
World Bank and WHO, 28 per 100,000 in 2013.
The maternal mortality rate for black women in the US is nearly three
times as high as that for white women – meaning the odds of a black woman dying
in childbirth in this US are higher than in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Iran. If
we are to assume that the objective of the women who are carrying pro and anti
abortion banners is actually to save the lives of women and children out of
respect for all life and all families, rather than merely engaging in
ideological debate for the sake of ideological debate, then they all should be
collectively screaming in the streets over the U.S. maternal mortality
rate. Email Congress and the White House
– I send Michelle Obama a weekly note on this issue but have yet to get a
single reply – and send that $100 check to your local hospital earmarked to
cover prenatal care for persons of limited resources.
Thirdly, by keeping all these intelligent, passionate,
activist women who care deeply about reproductive health and the lives of
women, children and families fighting with one another tooth and nail, the
hyperbolic abortion debate costs us the opportunity to engage in dialogue
designed to work productively towards our common interests. Enhanced
reproductive health education. Development of easier-to-use, more effective,
and less medically dangerous family planning methods. Community support for
pregnant women and new mothers, especially those who are young and single.
Removing toxins from our environment that harm fetal and maternal health.
Support for increased participation of men in childrearing – financial,
economic and physical – especially young unmarried fathers.
There will always remain a fundamental disagreement as to
whether abortion should be legal or not, as well as whether it is a morally
appropriate option, an unacceptable evil, or a necessary evil. But when nearly
300,000 women die globally each year in childbirth, and another million women
suffer debilitating childbirth related injuries and infections – and ten
million children die each year in infancy or early childhood – most of which
could be prevented for very little money, you have to seriously question
whether the pro and anti abortion activists are really much interested in
‘saving children’ or ‘enhancing women’s lives’ or if they are simply committed
to fighting with one another.
I have tried for years to get any entity in Vermont to
facilitate a dialogue between Vermont’s pro-life and pro-abortion contingents.
I think that these factions have much to talk about – like why, despite Vermont
having a stellar reputation in all aspects of health care and particularly
children’s health, we have a merely average abortion rate – about 1 per every 6
lives births, or 1300 a year. Most Vermont abortions involve pregnant women in
their early 20s – probably related to the high number of college students. Wouldn’t it make sense for the women of
Vermont—pro choice and pro life -- to work together on diminishing the
unintended pregnancy rate in our state, and to reach out to see what the
disconnect is at our colleges? To work together to clean up our waterways that
present hazards to our unborn and growing children? To create stronger
community networks to support young mothers financially, emotionally and
physically?
But apparently they’d all prefer to fight. With very rare
exception, the response to my proposal that women of divergent views engage in
meaningful dialogue has been met with facial expressions similar to those seen
in response to the latest IS beheading video. I’ve been told, pointedly, by
individuals from both sides, that they would NEVER talk to THOSE PEOPLE who
disagree with them.
Like most wars, the partisans get wrapped up in their self
identity as a warrior and lose sight of the underlying purpose of their cause.
They’ll keep writing those checks to the side of their choice, even though that
decision means they are knowingly standing by watching women and babies die
completely preventable deaths in the U.S. and around the world. They’ll keep waving those signs, marching on
state capitals and Washington, pressing candidates to take a side, and telling
women that you are either for us or against us. All while the solution to
saving and improving the lives of women, children and families is right there
in their hands: Stop fighting, start working.
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