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BOOK REVIEWS
Rights vs. Rights
by G.C. Dilsaver
Making Abortion Rare:
A Healing Strategy for a Divided Nation
by David C. Reardon
Acorn Books
(paper) 204 pp., $14.95.
(cloth) $24.95.
1-800-BOOKLOG
This book is a powerful indictment of the abortion industry-an industry that gets away with murder. Yet it does not focus on the rights of the unborn per se, but rather on the rights of the aborting mother, and the infringement of those rights by the abortion industry. The author arrays women's rights against abortion rights, advancing that this strategy will, indeed, make abortion rare.
Reardon's hallmark work Aborted Women, Silent No More, helped bring to light the suffering experienced by the other victims of abortion, the mothers. Making Abortion Rare uses the findings of this previous study as a springboard for the development of a two-pronged strategy. One objective is to bring about legislative and medical protection for women who are considering, or who have had an abortion. Reardon delineates how much of this first objective can be accomplished by the mere application of the medical profession's standard ethical and procedural practices to the abortion industry. For the abortion industry has, since its inception in the back alleys of quack medicine, created its own standards; standards that serve not to protect the patient, but to profit the abortionist.
But without a popular groundswell, medical and legislative strictures on the abortion industry will not be enacted or imposed. Therefore, Reardon's initial and key objective (again developing the data on the victimization of aborting women) is to unite the pro-life movement with a movement that seems to get more results, the women's movement. In order to so unite these two movements, Reardon bases his strategic plan to "make abortion rare" squarely on the concept of rights. But even if it is possible to re-align the women's movement with the pro-life movement (and this is a colossal "if" since abortion on demand is now nearly synonymous with the women's movement) Reardon's strategy based on rights still calls for critical examination. For in advancing women's rights as the key to the diminishment of the abortion plague, this strategy comes dangerously close to facilitating, at least philosophically, that which gives rise to abortion itself.
Reardon's reason for employing the women's rights approach is based on his experience in debating the abortion issue. He states that even when a pro-abortion woman would accept his argumentation in favor of the humanity of the unborn, she would, nonetheless, end the debate by asserting that "it may be human, but it is less important than a woman's life." According to Reardon the way to prevent such a close to the debate is by focusing the pro-life argument on abortion's devastating effect on the woman herself: "the only way to reach them is for us, also, to focus on the women." Yet this reviewer has experienced a slight, but crucial, variation of the above scenario's dialogue: While a pro-abortion woman will often agree with the humanity of the unborn, she will override this fact with a visceral assertion that "it's her body and no one (read no man) is going to tell her what to do with it." It is a reaction that is fueled by pride (and often not a little anger for once allowing men to amorously manipulate her body). And it is philosophically justified by the premise that "rights" are the highest of goods, higher than human life itself.
As such, the proposed union of pro-life forces with the women's movement would involve, at the least, a tacit acceptance and a utilization of its core dynamics-which is the prideful assertion of rights. The suggestion of such a union should give pause to pro-life forces, and Christians particularly, for it is this pride and assertion of rights that is at the very heart of the abortion plague, and innumerable other ills as well.
Feminism is a movement that seeks to give women the same rights and freedoms that men have in the political, social, domestic, and personal realm. Contraception is thus a perennial banner issue for the feminist movement. For contraception promises to go beyond mere political equality and impart to women the same biological, and hence social freedoms, that men enjoy. For feminists contraception is that which liberates women from that great and cruel injustice of nature where they are always the ones left holding the bag; the unwanted pregnancy; the babies. Nothing thwarts the feminist's idea of freedom, nor impairs the pursuit of profit or pleasure more, than being heavy with child, or having to care for a brood of children. Abortion, as the integral extension of contraception, is seen as the final solution to the unjust ways of God and nature. Hence, abortion on demand becomes the ultimate feminist cause; the ultimate feminist right; the very right to murder in the name of equality and freedom.
In seeking freedom from all dictates, be they imposed from without or ingrained within, the radical feminist must finally assault motherhood itself. Motherhood is viewed not as woman's eternal vocation, but rather her eternal bondage. At best, it is seen as a secondary option. And abortion, as the very antithesis of mothering, is the dark silver bullet in the feminist's war of rights.
Reardon's women's rights strategy is based on a woman's weighing of the pluses and minuses that will impact her in the abortion decision. But what happens when the woman finds the warnings of abortion post-trauma less threatening than the impending birth of a child? How many will be willing to forgo an immediate solution to their situation-accepting its imminent physical and possibly psychological and social trauma-by balancing it against promised future ramifications? The above process of discernment is simply the process of moral decision making, and, therefore, is more appropriately a question of virtue and sanctity than one of rights.
If the abortion issue is to be reduced down to one core arena of engagement, then that arena must be the spiritual one, not that of politics or rights. Post-abortion syndrome is essentially the syndrome of sin, and an especially grave and painful one since it stems from a transgression against a woman's very nature and vocation. The strategic principle of this book holds that if the personal temporal consequences of abortion are made known, then women will not choose it. But warning people of the temporal wages of sin will not stop them from sinning, only conversion will do that. And only an encounter with Christ Crucified will give women the strength, grace, and love to carry the cross so poignantly proffered in the many hard cases of pregnancy.
Making Abortion Rare: A Healing Strategy For a Divided Nation is packed with incriminating facts and figures on the atrocious abuses of the abortion industry. It also offers a sound and truly Christian pastoral approach to women that have aborted. And its argumentation and assertion that the pro-life position is the only authentic pro-woman position is irrefutable. But what it has to offer should be utilized tactically within the context of a greater overall pro-life strategy. And that overall strategic plan must be a spiritual one. For to heal the nation, we must convert the nation.
G.C. Dilsaver is a former John Paul II Pontifical Institute McGivney Scholar and is currently the Executive Director of
the De Montfort Academies in Simi Valley, CA, and Buffalo, NY.