Polite Talk Rules Out Abortion

Imagine yourself the hostess of an elegant dinner party. Your guests, chosen for their sociability, their diversity, are assumed to know the rules. These have changed over time.

Certainly in this political season, politics is now fine for conversational fodder. Disgust will usually dampen any true passion before it leads to a disruptive brawl. The process, the candidates, the same ol’ blah blah. The dinner party consensus: Tsk, tsk.

And today religion, too, can be thrown into the mix of polite talk. Religion, imparter of moral values, is on the upswing. The mass media tout it as a wholesome trend.

But, of course, religion in the style of the Middle Eastern fundamentalists, those extremists , is not something that we want here. The dinner guests are now ready to move on; they are wondering about dessert.

This is how it goes, usually. Another chatty evening, another pleasant time. Opinions are exchanged, even if the passion stays inside. Unless, of course, your guests break one of the most vexing of the new social mores.

If they talk about abortion, all bets for a successful evening are off. This is part of what is so wrong.

People aren’t talking about abortion, not really, not in the sense of honest give and take, or by exploring subtle hues of grays. They aren’t even allowed to talk about it at a clinic that receives government funds.

So instead people are shouting about abortion, or holding signs, or else they are clamming up. Polite conversation and abortion do not jibe.

Ask people how they feel about abortion--is it right or wrong? a woman’s right or a government’s crime? your business or that of the Supreme Court?--and you have entered a realm of conversational intimacy that makes them squirm.

Nowadays, only the choir hears the preaching, and they’ve heard it all before. There is only one answer! All together now. Amen !

Last week was the latest march on Washington about abortion, hundreds of thousands of people who wanted to tell the government that it has no business dictating social policy from the womb. I happen to believe this myself.

Right about now is when I could quote statistics, polling data and the like. I could say that most people think as I do about abortion rights. The implication, therefore, is that I am right.

And if you think differently, that you are wrong.

This is the basis for extremism of any kind. A world of black and white is much easier to navigate, choices are much less taxing on the mind. And if neither black nor white is quite appropriate, well, just close your eyes and pretend.

When you are talking about abortion, this reasoning never made less sense. Yet I understand it well.

It doesn’t matter if you call yourself pro-choice, or pro-life, or if you adhere to some other label that you think imparts just the right spin. The point is this is political hardball, over an issue that millions of Americans hold dear. Extremism, holding fast , is the norm. If you give ‘em an inch, they will take a mile.

Inconsistencies, of course, are overlooked in such schemes. If abortion is murder, shouldn’t the woman who has one, the doctor who performs it, and any who conspired with them, be charged with a capital crime?

And if abortion is a simple outpatient procedure, say, similar to removing a mole, shouldn’t we promote it, along with other methods of birth control, as a responsible choice?

The truth is, there is nothing comparable to pregnancy. Somewhere in the process, a new life takes hold. Where, I do not know. Neither does the Supreme Court.

Is it any wonder that in the high-tech world of 1992, we still refer to the “miracle” of birth? We can accurately describe the process, but we are still left to interpret, for ourselves, the why. And how it feels.

I gave birth to two daughters and, wanted from the start, they are loved beyond words. Pregnancy was easy; mostly I delighted in being the vessel for a child. Yet with the youngest, now 1 1/2, abortion did cross my mind. What would I do, I wondered, if the amniocentesis showed that there was something wrong? I never had to make that choice.

But a friend of mine did. By the time her test results came back, the fetus inside her was formed. She had a name. She also had a condition that was expected to kill her shortly after birth.

And when my friend went in for her abortion, the first thing she encountered, from someone who hadn’t even bothered to read her chart, was a nasty scolding about better planning the next time around.

How did we get into this situation, where when people talk about abortion, their tone conveys their message more strongly than their words? Increasingly, this tone is angry, bellicose, with no room for anything beyond black or white.

Each side has its examples--desperate women who died of illegal abortions or the mother who thanks God that she refused to let them abort the baby she carried in her womb.

The examples, the demonstrations, the clinic blockades, the doctors forced to choose between performing abortions or having a practice at all, will continue. Regardless of how the Supreme Court weighs in on abortion this next time around, this war will get worse.

And I, for one, would love to sit it out. Unfortunately, I cannot. I still want to make my own decisions about abortion, regardless of what they might be. And as for my daughters, and perhaps, their children as well: Let them, too, make up their own minds.