Opinion Piece Examines If Abortion Access Should Ever Be Restricted

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 24 Jun 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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"Just because something is legal -- and should be legal -- does not mean it is always ethical," Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for Choice, writes in a Salon opinion piece, adding that "sometimes the right thing to say to a woman [seeking abortion] is 'I am so sorry, I cannot do what you ask.'" According to Kissling, there has "always been a fear in the choice movement that if we deal with 'morality,' we are going to lose." However, "tough issues come up more frequently than they did in the first years after" Roe v. Wade, and such issues "should make us pause and think hard," Kissling writes, adding, "The thought of putting every woman through the indignity of meeting with an ethics committee, or getting a doctor to sign off on her reasons for abortion, has forced most of us to stick with the principle that women must be allowed to make their own private ethical decisions, without the state getting involved." However, Kissling comments that "we express moral views about every other issue under the sun." She continues, "Expressing our views about controversial issues is how society develops norms and shared values."

Kissling adds that if abortion-rights supporters "follow the example of those opposed to abortion and present only one value -- a woman's right to make this decision -- as the only ethical consideration worth discussing in difficult cases, do we not become as extremist as we say they are?" She continues, "Is there not, in an ethical sense, an important weighing of women's rights and needs against a respect for life, even the life of nonpersons? Is there a point in pregnancy when our respect for life might outweigh a woman's right to make this choice?" Kissling asks, "[I]s the fact that we have avoided it part of the reason that polls show that more people are willing to call themselves pro-life than ever before?"

According to Kissling she has "come to believe that women's autonomy does not require that all efforts be made to protect women from pain or from hearing the word 'no.'" Kissling writes, "I still have a twinge of doubt when I write these words," adding, "For most of my years as an advocate of a woman's right to decide, I stepped back from this conclusion" and "could not bring myself to say that there are circumstances in which I would force a woman to continue a pregnancy." The piece continues, "What changed for me? ... Mostly, I feared that single value ethics about abortion, on either side of the debate, would result in a coarsening of our respect for both women and for life" (Kissling, Salon, 6/21).

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