What is abortion?

IN THE SPRING OF 2005, GEORGE Lakoff, the insightful, practical and smart linguist challenged abortion proponents to reconsider its use of "choice" rhetoric. Responding to a wave of backpedaling by otherwise progressive individuals (former Vermont governor Howard Dean and New York's junior senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, to name but two), Lakoff was attempting to rescue this debate from right-wing zealots, who in his determination are actually "creating unwanted pregnancies." In his article, "The Foreign Language of Choice," which was published by the liberal-leaning online journal AlterNet, Lakoff was pushing for more proactive language, such as focusing on an individual's personal freedom and moving away from the linguistically inaccurate word "choice," which is less serious and derives from a consumer, rather than a moral, vocabulary.

Many in the prochoice community responded angrily, blaming Lakoff for contributing to conservative interpretations of this issue. The same accusations were unleashed against others who spoke out. Hillary Clinton, when she talked about this "sad, even tragic choice;" Howard Dean, who in his newish role as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, emphasized it as a decision of personal freedom; John Kerry, who in his presidential bid confessed that in his opinion, life begins at conception; and Frances Kissling, writing in these pages about placing some value on fetal life, also attracted criticism from some quarters. And even the paramount prochoice group NASAL Pro-Choice America came under fire after it penned "An Open Letter to the Right-to-Life Community," calling for a joint commitment to reduce the number of abortions. The proposal of reframing language in these instances--as well as numerous others--was only heard as negative; fodder for right wingers or a capitulation ceding the moral high ground. However, these perspectives come directly from individuals and organizations that have been leaders on this issue and who maintain that they unconditionally support a woman's access to abortion, though with varying degrees of restrictions, such as waiting periods and parental consent laws.

In my assessment, it seems more that these leaders were simply amplifying what they hear from the majority of their constituents--they support access to testing and procedures that thoughtfully help women determine whether or not to continue a pregnancy, but sympathetic allies and patients alike don't want to be associated with the politically divisive movements for abortion rights and choice. In other words, it's not the reality of abortion that's at stake, it's the rhetoric. Traversing the US speaking to thousands of college students and interacting with random individuals through my online advice column, "Ask Amy," I see reflections of this discourse and explanations for what some see as a declining number of prochoice allies. (According to the semi-famous annual study or UCLA's incoming freshman class, the support for abortion rights has been in steady decline since the early 1990s. Today it hovers at barely over 50 percent.)

Though fewer people are responding to labels like prochoice and abortion rights advocate, the real question is what does the general public consider these terms to be representative of? Support might be waning for this impersonal political terminology, but people--through their actions and expressions--support the actual procedures that underscore this issue. If we measured "support for abortion rights" by those who access this right in contrast to how accurately people answer public opinion polls, there would be no debate about what the majority opinion was.

We've all heard a story about an anti-choice protestor having to cross her own picket line to get an abortion or the Catholic woman who swore, out of religious loyalty, that she wouldn't have an abortion--until a severe fetal abnormality was detected during her pregnancy and an abortion was, all of a sudden, a "medical necessity." One woman was interviewed a few years ago in the New York Times for an article on prenatal testing about her decision to have a second trimester abortion after the fetus was diagnosed with an abnormality. When the reporter questioned her about her abortion, the woman clarified, "I don't look at it as though I had an abortion, even though that is technically what it is.... There's a difference. I wanted this baby." Another woman told me that her selective reduction (a procedure used to terminate one or more fetuses in cases of multiple pregnancies, increasingly common with the use of infertility drugs and other assisted reproductive technologies as well as the desire to reduce the stress on women who don't want to carry multiples) wasn't an abortion, it was ordered by the doctor. A friend, who had an ectopic pregnancy that was terminated just like the majority of these pregnancies are due to the risk to the mother and the fetus, claims that she did not have an abortion. As annoying as it is to hear such women qualify their experiences and distance themselves from the experiences of so many other women, in some ways they aren't so far off the mark. There isn't an actual procedure called abortion--abortion is the conclusion, but the process is more nuanced.

What people seem to be really reacting against is the word abortion, a word that has multiple meanings and interpretations, but is wholly synonymous with a political debate about whether or not women should have access to procedures that allow them to terminate a pregnancy, wanted or unwanted. Abortion is used politically as a litmus test and personally as a means to judge people. Many detect this and react against being characterized on such narrow grounds. They aren't rejecting the content, but the terminology. They don't want to be boxed in when in fact their feelings on the subject are likely to be much more complicated and detailed than can be summed up as either for or against. Everyone has their own threshold: What if she were raped? What if the fetus wouldn't survive anyway? What if it were her seventh child? What if it were me? And the same holds when it comes to restrictions. She could have afforded to have a child. She could have found a way to make it work. What about all the infertile couples? But the truth is, no one really knows what they would do and so it's pointless to speculate. While people are entitled to judge other people's decisions, they can simultaneously quietly not stand in the way of access--and this is what the majority seems to lean toward.

With the seemingly stark delineations being made, those of us who freely use these terms should pause and ask ourselves, is abortion an actual medical term or is it a political distinction? Or is it neither? The procedures encompassed under this vague term range widely from self-medicated, D&X, surgery and D&E to medical abortion, selective reduction and even delivery. The word abortion is inaccurate and doesn't begin to expose this specificity. The so-called "partial-birth" abortion ban really brought this to light. Congress essentially outlawed a procedure that didn't exist. It also overrode, for the first time, a counter-recommendation from the American Medical Association--thus confirming that the debate had been taken out of the hands of the medical establishment and firmly rooted in political bureaucracy. To the extent that these procedures result in the termination of a pregnancy, abortion is appropriate, but then the label should also apply to miscarriages (you don't hear people debating the politics of those usually sad circumstances), emergency contraception, which may or may not be interrupting a pregnancy, and even stillborns.

Since there is no official procedure that is abortion, what does it really mean to say that one is a supporter of abortion rights? The political right uses it as shorthand for murdering unborn babies and symbolically to condemn people who support women's access to these choices including, of course, anyone who has actually accessed this right. These women are assumed to be selfish, ignorant, baby killers. (Saying nothing, of course, about the men involved in these choices--they are freed from this ridicule, even though they are very often stakeholders in the decision and always participants in getting to the point of pregnancy.) The political left uses it as a symbol of equality and emancipation and as an issue to galvanize around. These professional advocates (not necessarily the masses) tend to push it as symbolic of other issues, such as access to sex education, access to quality health care, etc.

Historically, feminists called for abortion on demand without apology and today seem to have neutralized this demand to "it's a decision between a woman and her physician." In the 2004 presidential election, the Democrats used abortion as a means to placate women, but only certain women--those who need their lives saved or are 12 years old and desperate. To strengthen their argument, the poster child for abortion access is usually in a dire situation. This is a debatable tactic--we can't be in the business of determining whose choices, motivations and circumstances to sanction.

As much as the prochoice community has attempted to reframe the issue in terms of "choice" and "privacy" and "women's control of their bodies," the popular assumption is that supporting any interpretation comes down to being "proabortion." On the other side of the debate, "life" has been the favored term, used on one level in an attempt to claim the moral high ground, but more so to symbolize one's conviction that life begins at conception and thus any interruption in this natural progression is wrong (putting aside for a moment the hypocrisy of those who hold this view and simultaneously support the death penalty, not to mention the common inconsistency in leaving an exception for the life and health of the mother). Some conservatives take this so far that they would ban stem cell research on the grounds that those cells were potential life and even contraception because "the human embryonic person dies." (There have been exceptions to this rule, with antichoice zealots Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senator Orrin Hatch coming out in support of stem cell research.) This is all directly leading toward their larger goal of extending more rights to the fetus than to the woman. Regardless of the words used, the debate essentially comes around to whether or not one supports procedures that end a pregnancy and whether one trusts women to make decisions about when such procedures should be used.

In lieu of finding common political ground, we have to prioritize rescuing this basic human right from the contested language. We have to think beyond this divisive word and give more attention to what we are really debating. The biggest danger in perpetuating this narrow banter is that it's inaccurate. With apparently dwindling support for abortion rights, we have to find explanations beyond indirectly conceding that our country is moving in a more conservative direction. As barely 50 percent of eligible voters go to the polls that seems like a premature conclusion. When possible, we have to use more accurate language and not be so quick to judge others solely by how they answer one question. We have to take risks and be more honest about our own limitations while retaining our conviction that access to terminations should be legal and protected. It's possible for us to be personally conflicted without being politically compromised. And while we strive for eliminating any negativity associated with abortion and choice, we can't do so at the expense of alienating potential allies. Rigid language doesn't serve the larger goal of preserving access to terminations and neither does it serve women.

AMY RICHARDS is presently at work on Opting In: The Case for Motherhood and Feminism, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She is also the co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism.