Usually I can't read any article about abortion because no matter what side it supports or stance it takes, I get angry about something. But today, on the thirty-third anniversary of Roe v. Wade, there's an op-ed in the New York Times, Three Decades After Roe, a War We Can All Support that frames the debate in a way I can get behind. The premise: everyone acknowledges abortions are bad and that we'd like to reduce the number of abortions, the real issue is how to do that.
The problem with using restrictions to reduce the number of abortions isn't that the restrictions are judgmental. It's that they're crude. They leap too easily from judgment to legislation and criminalization. They drag police officers, prosecutors and politicians into personal tragedies. Most people don't want such intrusion. But you lose them up front by refusing to concede that there's anything wrong with abortion. You have to offer them anti-abortion results (fewer abortions) without anti-abortion laws.
The pro-choice path to those results is simple. Help every woman when she doesn't want an abortion: before she's pregnant. That means abstinence for those who can practice it, and contraception for everybody else. Nearly half of the unintended pregnancies in this country result in abortions, and at least half of our unintended pregnancies are attributable to women who didn't use contraception.
It seems like a fitting time to reexamine this issue and discuss better ways to address it. For too long both sides have been polarized and unable to even discuss the topic of abortion in any reasonable manner.