Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 29, 1992 TAG: 9203300190
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Which is enough to suggest, if you knew nothing else about the issue, that a lot of people are ambivalent about abortion.
I certainly am. I believe access to abortion should be a legal right. But the idea of abortions makes me uneasy, and I am appalled at how many of them are performed in this country.
Partly as a result, I've had problems making up my mind about the bill, passed by the legislature, that would require parental notification for minors seeking abortions in Virginia.
As it happens, I am father to three girls. (OK, so the oldest is only 7.) The real difficulty, though, has been trying to separate the issue from the motives and agendas of those debating it.
Take Gov. Wilder. He rode to office three years ago on abortion rights, while saying he "could" sign a parental notification bill.
At the time, there seemed little prospect such legislation would ever cross his desk. Wilder may not have foreseen that, with the help of a larger GOP contingent and some fancy procedural maneuvering, this past session of the General Assembly would produce a notification bill.
But produce one it did. And Wilder, of course, finds fault with it.
It's poorly drafted, he says. I'd say he's right, especially regarding the bill's provision for judicial bypass, under which girls could seek court permission for abortions without notifying their parents.
The legislation fails to define key terms a judge would use to grant an exemption. It also doesn't explain how delays can be avoided in rural-area courts, which do not convene for long periods. Nor does it provide for the cost of judicial bypass.
These and other defects (the measure would apply to girls under age 18; a younger age would be better) justify a veto.
But still unanswered is whether Wilder might ever meet a notification bill he'd like. And still plausible, to me anyway, is Wilder's ostensible position: considering the legislation on its merits, while insisting that notification requirements in principle aren't necessarily onerous or evil.
The legalistic Wilder seems to be winking at Virginians, letting us know he's playing a political game.
Playing a different sort of game are some of those lobbying him to veto the bill, on the grounds that any impingement on access to abortion threatens the right itself.
Says Grace Sparks, executive director of the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood: If Wilder signs the bill, it would be "the first step" toward "destroying a woman's right to abortion" in Virginia.
This view seems akin to that of the gun lobby, which argues that even modest regulation of arms sales will set America on a path to ruination amid the litter of a trashed Constitution. This is too extreme.
As a matter of law, the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade ruling - on which abortion rights are based - recognizes a legitimate sphere for regulation and takes into account potential conflicts of rights. Minors in any case don't enjoy the same rights as adults.
And, as a matter of politics, you have to wonder how it accrues to the advantage of pro-choicers to be arguing that parents enjoy no legal rights regarding a medical procedure on their children.
This proposition, like some people's refusal to recognize any distinction between the abortion of a fetus and the removal of tumescent tissue, prompts pause and concern in reasonable minds.
A fact relished, of course, by abortion's zealous opponents, who also have an agenda beyond parental notification.
Their rhetoric notwithstanding, pro-lifers seem less interested in the merits of notification than in gaining a popular foothold in their struggle against abortion.
Like the problem (on the pro-life side) of abortion in cases of rape and incest, notification is a wedge with which to divide the opponents, force them into contradictions and highlight their extremism.
So why hand them the wedge? Pro-choicers' moral high ground derives in part from: (1) their compassion for the real-life situation of pregnant teen-agers, and (2) their attention to the real-life challenge of reducing pregnancy in the first place.
They risk ceding some of that ground if they seem to argue (1) that minors should be able to undergo this operation with less than major, ongoing intervention by a parent or other adult, and (2) that abortion, even for girls, should remain as convenient and consequence-free as possible.
On the basis of such considerations, I was nearly ready to conclude that notification was an effective wedge for good reason: Opposing it is unreasonable.
All I needed was a way to dismiss the risk, the downside of notification. Alas, the downside happens in the real world.
When a pregnancy crisis arises, most families communicate. No law is needed for them. But many families are, in the current jargon, dysfunctional.
And here's the fear: With notification required, some pregnant girls may be so terrified by the thought of their parents' reaction and so untrusting of judicial authorities that they would avoid contacting any adult in a position to help.
They might delay abortions, increasing the health risk. They might leave the state to get abortions, sacrificing follow-up care. Some might even put their lives at risk by resorting to back-alley practitioners or desperate, self-induced abortions.
(Message to my kids: I care less about knowing than about your health.)
I was prepared to put all this aside, on the following basis: Things tough in individual cases can be good for society. Some 180,000 teens a year are having abortions in America - a horror. Many teens are having multiple abortions.
I was prepared to argue that, if more seriousness could be attached to abortion by requiring notification, maybe fewer teens would get pregnant in the first place.
I'm still prepared to argue this. But I won't. Right now, I don't want to find myself having to applaud either the fact that a shrinking number of doctors are willing to perform abortions or the unconscionable lack of public funding for poor women's abortions. These things make abortion more difficult, too, don't they?
Parental notification is appealing because it seems to fit the muddled middle's ambivalence about abortion, an ambivalence that feels right. I want to maintain the right, but reduce the number of abortions. I want to preserve access without belittling the gravity. At issue, though, is whether notification is a good means to this result.
Consider divorce. Everyone wants to reduce the number of divorces in this country. But is the answer to pass laws making divorces harder to get? Isn't the better way, albeit the far harder task, to increase supports for love and commitment?
The essayist Roger Rosenblatt, in his book "Life Itself," says: "To take a stand against abortion while also allowing for its existence . . . both speaks for moral seriousness and moves in the direction of ameliorating conditions such as ignorance, poverty, the social self-destruction of fragmented families, and the loss of spiritual values."
Such conditions give rise to abortion. Maybe, in resisting them, hope and ambivalence can be friends.
by CNB