By Lisa Macdonald
Applauded and promoted by the establishment media as a new, refreshing and sophisticated re-examination of the issue of abortion, Leslie Cannold's book The Abortion Myth: feminism, morality and the hard choices women make is worth reading, if only to understand the latest form of the ideological assault on women's right to control their reproductive lives.
Cannold would immediately object to this statement. She does, as she states repeatedly, support women's right to choose abortion.
Whether she intends it or not, however, Cannold's stated position is undermined at almost every turn by the reasoning she presents to argue that abortion "can be supported or opposed without resorting to rights-talk".
In the place of women's right to choose abortion, Cannold substitutes morality. "Women must have the right to choose", she says, "but with rights come responsibilities".
The "evidence" for her conclusions is drawn from the responses of 45 women — half of them pro-choice, the others anti-choice — to detailed questions about the morality of the abortion decision.
"Honest talk has been in short supply", she says. "The hypocrisy of the anti-choice side has been matched by pro-choice attempts to squash the moral ambiguity around abortion with deceptive language or by ignoring the foetus. Because the anti-choice movement has used feminist acknowledgment of the moral uncertainty of abortion as 'proof ' that abortion is wrong, feminists have grown reluctant to make such admissions."
Having asserted that "'facts' may be used to support either side of an argument", Cannold advocates a new feminist perspective on abortion which includes "thorough discussion" of the moral aspects so that "an alternative defence of abortion can be structured" based on women's personal experiences.
Rights
Cannold asserts that the feminist case for abortion rights has failed to recognise that women don't separate abortion from their complex feelings about motherhood.
Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, she says, women don't think about "rights". Rather, they think about what it means to be a mother and are aware of the overwhelming responsibilities of motherhood. She then tries to reduce the abortion decision to one about motherhood.
Of course women don't separate the questions of abortion and motherhood; the decision to abort is first and foremost the decision not to become a mother. But the right to decide to have an abortion also encompasses the right of women to control their bodies at all times.
Cannold disagrees. Abortion, she says, has "complex ethical, medical and social implications" which cannot be reduced to ideas such as women "owning" their bodies, or abortion as a routine health requirement.
She says that discussion about the emotional content of decisions about abortion has been repressed by the women's movement's focus on rights.
Abortion, she argues, is a moral question, and if we acknowledge and deal with this, life will be easier for those women who now find the decision to abort difficult, and the pro-choice movement will win the "middle ground".
On top of Cannold's misrepresentation of the feminist movement's approach to women's feelings (it was the movement which fought for resources for pre- and post-abortion counsellors and supportive, "pro-woman" clinics), there are two fundamental flaws in this argument.
The first is that "rights" are the codification of social conduct by the state. The state, backed by a police force, prohibits or allows certain actions. This impacts directly on women in so far as they cannot make the choice to have an abortion if the state prohibits it.
The women Cannold interviewed did not, she says, focus on the question of rights. But, for the moment at least, they can take this right for granted. If women did not have the right to abortion, the threat of prosecution, the danger to their health and the prohibitive financial cost of an illegal abortion would place rights back in the forefront of their concerns.
Cannold's refusal to argue in terms of rights is a refusal to engage in the work of influencing the state's position on abortion.
It was the similarly defensive, ambivalent and heavily qualified support for choice among large sections of the feminist movement in the US over the last decade that has made possible huge gains for the anti-choice forces.
Morality
The second basic flaw in Cannold's analysis is that it is thoroughly individualised, yet morality cannot be reduced to the individual.
Every person's moral code is shaped by the social structures in which they live. Their historical context, country of residence, religion, ethnicity, class position and so on ultimately determine their sense of right and wrong.
Individual women's decision to abort will be much more difficult and imbued with emotion in a society which accepts the notion that the foetus is a human being. While this notion is about as scientifically sound as the Virgin Mary's immaculate conception, it still influences modern law, politics and public opinion.
When the women's liberation movement was a stronger force, its public campaigning and consciousness-raising activities countered the influence of religious superstitions and conservatism. During the '70s and '80s, public opinion, political parties' policies and the law shifted in favour of women's right to choose.
While abortion remained (and will always be) emotionally difficult for women who aren't sure that they don't want to have a(nother) child, being able to have a safe, inexpensive, non-judgmental abortion was also an enormous relief for millions of women who were sure.
However, the conservative backlash against women's rights and the decline of the organised feminist movement have, according to abortion clinic workers, produced a marked shift in women's reactions, towards varying levels of guilt and anxiety.
In Australia today, 10% of the women eligible to claim a Medicare rebate for an abortion do not do so — presumably because they don't want others to know about their decision.
Cannold herself points out that in 1991, 81% of Australians favoured freedom of choice, but by 1996 this had dropped to 77%. A 1995 Morgan Gallup poll found that only 51% of 14 to 24-year-olds supported choice.
With more people expressing ambivalence or outright opposition to women's right to choose, and with the right to abortion under concerted attack in parliaments and the courts, Cannold's argument that the concept of rights is no longer useful in the struggle to maintain and extend women's control over their reproductive lives is reactionary and absurd.
The foetus
Having defined abortion as a question of morals rather than rights, Cannold raises questions she says have "never been answered, and so rarely been asked ... Are there 'irresponsible' pregnancies? Which reasons for having an abortion are bad ones? Does the foetus matter, how much and why? Even if women have a right to choose abortion, is it always right for them to do so?"
The fact that these questions (which were answered by the women's liberation movement) are being re-raised is a measure of the considerable ideological ground the anti-choice right wing has made.
Cannold says she is trying to "move beyond" the narrow ground of rights, which is defined as much by anti-choicers (foetal rights) as pro-choicers (women's rights). In fact, she is capitulating to the most fundamental of anti-choice assumptions: that there is no difference between a baby and a foetus.
She argues: "... reclaiming the moral ground in the debate will require making space for the foetus [albeit recognising that] that space is always inside a woman".
"Making space for the foetus" is code for conceding to religious "morality" that removing a foetus from a woman's body might be murder. Using this logic, the right to choose abortion is forfeited, irrespective of what individual women believe.
Indeed, Cannold uses the language of murder to make her case. Her 45 interviews, she argues, establish that women "see their foetuses as highly valued could-be children". For Cannold, abortion morality is the hope and expectation that "each woman's abortion decision will be made thoughtfully, sorrowfully and with respect for the sacredness of pregnancy and with love for their could-be child. That women's decisions will be, in other words, responsible ones to kill from care" (italics added).
Cannold denies any logical connection between a moral assessment of individual abortion decisions and believing that the law should punish those who don't measure up morally. However, the law is (at least popularly) perceived as embodying and enforcing the moral values of a society, so she is on very dangerous ground. The anti-choice project is precisely to have women's right to choose outlawed on the "moral" basis that a foetus is a "baby" and abortion therefore "murder".
Cannold couldn't be more wrong when she says, "Taking a position on the status of the foetus is not necessary to defend women's right to choose". She is also wrong that "whether a foetus is or is not a person is a question of value, not of fact".
What characterises a human being is consciousness. Consciousness is not injected by god at the time of conception, or any other stage of foetal development. Consciousness is a product of society, of human beings' existence in relation to each other. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that the foetus is conscious.
A foetus becomes a human being when it is born and begins interacting with other human beings. That is when destroying it becomes murder. Until then, it is simply a potential human being, a collection of cells like any other organ in the body. As such, a foetus has no rights separate from those of the woman carrying it, and the decision to have it removed is no different from any other operation a woman might have.
All women must be able to exercise the right to abortion without qualification, guilt, apology, risk or hassle. Without that right, their freedom in all other spheres of life is severely limited.
For so long as that right is questioned, defending it is of utmost importance for women's health and well-being. If we fail, how any individual woman feels about the rightness or wrongness of an abortion will be irrelevant because she will not have the choice.