Are you 'responsible'?

NEW YORK, APRIL 9

At a public encounter the other day a student asked Senator George McGovern what was his position on abortion. He replied that American women could be counted on to behave responsibly on the question whether to have an abortion, "so let's leave it up to them." This brought uproarious applause from most of the crowd, and the air was thick with the incense that hovers over a Solomonic statement, hallowing the moment.

The trouble with Mr. McGovern's statement is that it is palpably wrong.

In debating the question of abortion, clearly we are talking about an unwanted child. But if the child is unwanted, why did it materialize? We all know the answer to this, do we not? The woman who became pregnant either a) was ignorant of the paraphernalia by means of which unwanted pregnancies are avoided; or else b) was not ignorant, but recklessly failed to take the proper precautions; or else c) was carried away by passion, perhaps in an inebriated state, and simply hoped she would not become pregnant; or else d) was raped.

Now with the exception of the last category, which accounts for one-half of 1 per cent of the pregnancies that are terminated by abortionists, is it correct to say that the woman in question was behaving "responsibly"? Presumably not: If you don't want a child and have the option not to have one, then it is not to behave responsibly to become pregnant. And if one behaves irresponsibly in the matter of conceiving, why should George McGovern assume that responsibility sets in between the moment of conception and the moment of abortion?

Most people don't think it entirely responsible to bear illegitimate children, right? This is so notwithstanding that many moralists would admire more the woman who bore the child she mistakenly conceived, than the woman who aborted it. But illegitimate birth is nevertheless viewed, on the whole, as an act of irresponsibility.

Well, in 1970, 10.7 per cent of all births in America were illegitimate. By 1986, that figure had more than doubled--to 23.4. Broken down by race, white illegitimacy in 1970 was at 5.7 per cent. By 1986 it had tripled--to 15.7 per cent. Comparable figures among blacks were 37.6 rising to 61.2 per cent. That would seem to be irresponsibility on a massive scale.

The point, then, is that women who go to an abortionist, or who procreate illegitimate babies, are not the best judges of right and wrong, even if society agreed that they should in their own situation be the executors of the critical decision, whether to give birth, or to abort.

Theology teaches that the conscience is supreme. This means only that you cannot commit a moral wrong unless you believe it to be wrong. It does not mean--anarchy would be the result--that all the decisions an individual arrives at are morally correct.

And this is the nature of the quarrel between those who believe in the woman's "right" to abort, and those who do not. If abortion is objectively wrong, a society may nevertheless wish to abide by the woman's right to pursue her own conscience and abort. But latitudinarianism by the society does not sanctify all the uses to which it might be put. If society licenses the sale of liquor, it does not derivatively license drunkenness. And of course the great divide, between the two camps, has to do with such questions as do not affect the drunkard, who for the most part damages only himself and his own reputation--if while drunk he attacks someone else, he gets hauled up on assault charges.

Leaving us, then, with the obvious question, the source of the intellectual and moral difficulty: Is a mortal assault on a fetus something on the order of assault and battery? Or is it no different from stuffing a tomato into a blender?

These perplexities may continue to confound us. But really, one shouldn't designate the class of people who have this problem as the class of especially responsible people.