Moral Complexity and Choice

As Pseudo-Adrienne, Amanda, and Jessica all point out, this NYT article about the experience of women getting abortions is very good. However, there is one argument it contains that drives me crazy whenever I hear it:

While public conversation about abortion is dominated by advocates with all-or-nothing positions – treating the fetus as a complete person, with full rights, or as a nonentity, with none – most patients at the clinic, like most Americans, found themselves on rockier ground, weighing religious, ethical, practical, sentimental and financial imperatives that were often in conflict.

Now, it is true that the “pro-life” position pretty much empties decisions about abortion of moral complexity; criminalizing abortion does indeed deny the ability of women to make moral choices. But the reverse is most certainly not true. To advocate the legality of abortion is most certainly not to deny that the experience of getting an abortion is morally complex; moral reasoning is not limited to the universe of legal statutes. (It is true that pro-choicers do believe that the fetus has no legal rights, but this is quite different than saying that abortion therefore lacks any complex moral dimension.) The fact that I think the adultery should not be illegal doesn’t mean that I think that committing adultery doesn’t often raise grave moral questions, and similarly even when abortion is legal many women will struggle with various moral imperatives when deciding whether to get an abortion–and nobody denies this. The pro-choice position is not that abortion presents no difficult moral issues; it is that women should be taken seriously as moral agents. (This is a particularly strong contrast with pro-lifers who believe that abortion involves the murder of a human being but should not involve legal sanctions for a woman who procures one, a position which requires the belief that women have no moral agency at all.) Obviously, the fact that women are not compelled by the force of the state to carry pregnancies to term does not mean that the decision of an individual woman to get (or not get) an abortion is devoid of moral deliberation. It is those who wish to use the blunt instrument of state coercion to prevent all abortions who drain abortion of all of its moral and ethical complexities.

…Prof. B reminds us of her earlier work on the topic.