So is there a middle ground in the abortion debate?

Regina Brett, columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote this today:

http://www.cleveland.com/brett/blog/index.ssf/2009/06/abortion_debate_needs_to_inclu.html

I figured that I'd try to answer her question.... Here's my reply to her:

Ms. Brett -

I read your Plain Dealer article on abortion today with interest. Your article basically answers the question you ask at the beginning as to why those "in the middle" are quiet - it's ambivalence. You know life is precious. You have your own joyful experience to attest to that. But you also know that life presents great challenges to us as well, and we want to have all options available to us to resolve those challenges. That is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

You speak of your wanted grandchild with love and affection. You speak of the unborn child of a 17 year old who doesn't want to be pregnant with more detachment (naturally - there's no relationship). But what's the difference between those two fetuses? One is wanted and one is not? Is that how we value human life? Sadly, it is. And that's what makes abortion such a corrosive issue. If life is precious, how can we close our hearts to precious life - any precious little life? The unborn child of that 17 year old is of no less value than your grandchild, is he/she? How can humans with warm hearts actually think in those terms? But we do when it comes to the political issue of abortion. Insisting that they are "equal under the law" would make us pro-life. Insisting they are not makes us pro-choice. But how do we describe those who want to believe those two lives are equally precious, but don't want to tell that 17 year old what to do with "her body?" It makes us confused and unable to reconcile those positions. That's why we stay quiet. We can't face our own moral confusion, so we shrug our shoulders and keep our mouths shut.

It's politically unpopular to proclaim all life to be precious, but in every other aspect of our lives, except abortion, we do that. We give thanks when a child overcomes cancer - because life is precious. We take part in relays for life to cure cancer - because life is precious. We mourn the loss of our oldest relative who has passed - because life is precious. We recoil in horror at the holocaust, at the memory of 9/11 and at senseless gun crimes - because life is precious. But we avert our eyes when we walk past a Planned Parenthood clinic - because life is precious, but those lives aren't protected because we don't want to impose our values and tell someone what to do with their own challenges.

So we remain silent. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. For years, I wanted to have it both ways too. I tried to reconcile my own precious children's lives with the "need" for legalized abortion on demand. I finally realized that I could not. I work to protect those little lives by supporting services like Maggie's Place - a new facility in Cleveland that takes in pregnant women who wish to keep or adopt out their babies. I try to make people aware that our abortion laws are toothless. Women do not have enough protection against predatory abortion providers - they are not given options and our culture doesn't insist that they receive them. Our culture doesn't support adoption and we should do more to do, as you say, focus on preventing abortion.

My hope and prayer is that every woman would be careful with her body and not put herself in a position to have to choose abortion, that she would value life so much that she would take responsibility and I pray that all of us would support her if she is pregnant and cannot support both herself and he child. We must do more, Regina. I thank you for bringing this up. I hope we can all find more answers - but the most important thing we must do is to face the question you raised today - and loudly proclaim that all life is precious and we will do all we can to change a culture that merely wishes to dispose of life when it's not wanted. That, Regina is no answer.

Thanks and best wishes.

Pam