New Republic-Itis
By Elton Beard says a lot of what I was going to say about Garance Franke-Ruta’s recent article about women who get multiple abortions. But there’s a particular type of argument here that crops up a lot, and I think it’s worth pointing out why it’s wrong. Both The New Republic and the abortion debate produce to a lot of contrarian arguments that don’t hold up, and I’m afraid that the combination has also been deadly in this case to Franke-Ruta, whose work is generally terrific. What’s frustrating is that many of the points she brings up–the class effects of Roe, the lack of access to and education about contraception among many poor women–desperately need to be made. The key problem is the “pox on both their houses” frame into which Franke-Ruta–in classic TNR fashion–tries to wedge her potentially valuable argument:
Studies suggest that women having repeat abortions as compared with those having first-time abortions are more likely to be minorities, poor, and victims of sexual abuse–in short, among society’s most vulnerable. Liberals have always sought to aid the neediest, but their fear of undermining abortion rights has paralyzed them when it comes to helping women at risk of repeat abortion. The sad fact is that, three decades after legalization, abortion is no longer mainly a tool women use to shape their own destinies, but rather a symptom of larger social problems that ought to be addressed by policymakers. Realizing this may just mean accepting that there’s some credibility to conservative views on abortion. Conservatives and liberals alike, she suggests, don’t care about the underlying problems that lead to some women getting multiple abortions. One will search the article in vain, however, for a single advocate of reproductive freedom who doesn’t support providing education, contraception, and post-operative care to women who get abortions. Indeed, she identifies some who do:
There are some post-abortion services available already in the United States, though the efforts are mostly piecemeal. Atlanta’s Feminist Women’s Health Center, one of the oldest abortion providers in the country, offers a shot of the long-acting hormonal contraceptive Depo-Provera and post-abortion counseling to all women who obtain procedures there. Planned Parenthood also has begun to offer post-abortion counseling services at some of its clinics, and it has long made sure that all women who leave their standard post-abortion follow-up visit are provided with a form of birth control. Ah, so in fact some reproductive clinics do provide these services. In an article not trying to make a specious contrarian point, one might perhaps contrast this with the abjectly useless “pregnancy crisis centers” favored by pro-lifers, which provide pro-life propaganda but no contraception, useful education, or pre- or post-natal care. And perhaps we might ask: is it supporters of abortion rights who want to fund the latter rather than the former? Is it liberals who opposed scientifically accurate information about contraception and subsidized education for the poor? Is it a liberal administration that puts scientifically inaccurate information about contraception on government websites, and far from funding Planned Parenthood clinics won’t give a dime of government money to clinics that even discuss abortion? Of course not.
And that brings us to the bigger problem–without this unjustifiable (and unsubtantiated) attempt to blame advocates of reproductive freedom for the effects of the policies supported by their opponents, the implausiblity of her central causal argument is immediately manifest. The crucial question is this: would discussing women who get multiple abortion make the worthy policy goals she favors more likely to happen? And the answer, I think, is obviously not; indeed, quite the opposite. I agree it would be really nice if in the contemporary United States such a discussion would lead to a desire to make sure that women who have abortions get good post-surgical care and not to the stigmitization of women who get abortions as sluts whose choices need to be limited by “reasonable” regulations of their rights, but alas this simply isn’t the case. Franke-Ruta’s arguments–whatever one thinks of them normatively–might be strategically effective in, say, Germany, but in this country they would be highly counterproductive. And this–and not some opposition to better funding for Planned Parenthood clinics–is why advocates for reproductive rights aren’t anxious to discuss the issue. They understand the nature of abortion politics in this country.
The argument, in other words, seems to be a classic pundit’s fallacy–Franke-Ruta seems uncomfortable with women who get multiple abortions. That’s her privilege, although I personally am not going to moralize about the difficult choices made by women in situations I can’t imagine being in. But her attempt to claim that her normative position is good politics is, I think, pretty clearly erroneous.