Tufts Health Service is now providing medicated abortions to students as late as 11 weeks into pregnancy. “Essentially, medication abortion is the process of using…two different medications to end the pregnancy,” said Dr. Marie Caggiano, the medical director of Tufts Health Service, in an interview with the Tufts Daily. The procedure uses a mixture of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol to block the growth of the fetus and prompt the uterus to expel the pregnancy.
I am not arguing about the legality of abortion, but instead, whether universities should encourage it. A woman’s agency is not the end-all-be-all in the discussion of abortion, despite the portrayals of pro-choice activists. There is a difference between discussing whether a woman has agency over her healthcare and whether increased abortions should be considered “very exciting,” as the Tufts’ Sex Health Representatives social media coordinator, Ashton Gerber, put it. Alexandra Donovan, director of the Center for Awareness, Resources, and Education, said she was “thrilled we have these medical options.” In fighting to preserve a woman’s right to choose, many people lose sight of the fact that abortion itself is a tragedy that should be mitigated, not promulgated.
The unrelenting truth is that whether or not abortion programs should be considered “very exciting” is not a question of female agency, which may be a hard pill to swallow for those who brush aside objective ideals in favor of a vague sense of relativism. Bill Clinton’s words “Safe, Legal, and Rare” are wise, as they reconcile an ever-increasing social libertarian impulse with the tragedy of the act. And if anyone tells you abortion isn’t tragic, don’t let them fool you. Over the past 30 years, a great deal of work has been done to portray abortion as something benign and normal, promoting instead the words “Safe, Legal, and Accessible.” This characterization was expedient for the pro-choice debate, as it overlooks any moral connotations while retaining the emphasis on free movement.
Those who shed light on these moral implications often hear in response, “You think women want to have abortions?” The answer is a resounding No! Despite the fact that most people are naturally averse to abortion, women face socially constructed pressures to have abortions. In a USA Today poll, 74% of women who had an abortion claimed that it was because “having a baby would dramatically change my life.” Moreover, according to the Lozier Institute, there is no evidence that abortion improves women’s mental health, and abortion itself is tied to exponentially greater chances of mental health conditions and substance abuse. By the same token, pro-choice advocates promote abortion as something desirable. The assurance that abortion is not only the necessary action but the just action for the mother’s sake, despite any other consideration, is endogenous to relativistic social constructs weaponized in the pro-choice debate. These norms obfuscate our perceptions, dose us with a moral anesthetic, and make us think that marketing abortion is “very exciting.”
Planned Parenthood predicts that one in four women in the U.S. will have had an abortion before 45. This statistic should be considered a tragedy, not an ideal. There is a sense of compassion within us that knows that abortion as a ubiquity is worse than abortion as a scarcity, which is why our debates about abortion focus on fringe cases of rape, incest, and death — even though a majority of abortions of what would otherwise have been healthy children are by healthy mothers above the poverty line. Pro-choicers discourage abortion by promoting contraception, while pro-lifers emphasize the importance of protecting human life at its beginning. While neither party agrees on how to achieve the ideal, every individual must know that it exists.
What is the best way of keeping abortion rare? How do we cultivate incentives that discourage irresponsible sex and encourage the preservation of life? It is not by marketing a free, 11-week medicated abortion program as “very exciting.” To achieve the ideal, we have to work toward it and cultivate norms that reinforce behavior that protects life and does not squander it.
By Miles Gendebien