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Is It Possible to Be in the Middle on Abortion?
Yes it is. And there are probably a lot of us here.
Nobody sane wants to murder innocent babies. Can we just start there?
I realize that might be a rather provocative opening for an essay about abortion, but maybe it’s appropriate for something we’ve somehow managed to turn into one of the most vicious, divisive, and intellectually dishonest arguments in American politics.
On one side, we’re told that life begins at conception, that every pregnancy represents a sacred human life, and that ending that pregnancy is murder.
On the other, we’re told that a woman’s bodily autonomy is absolute, that abortion is healthcare, and that the government has no business interfering with her reproductive decisions.
And somewhere between these two positions are millions of people who recognize that the developing life of a fetus and the existing life of the woman carrying BOTH it matter. What a radical concept.
This isn’t about one right answer. It’s a topic worthy of the nuance we somehow seem to have lost the capacity for in public debates. Maybe the reason we can’t agree about abortion is that we’re pretending there’s only one kind of pregnancy. There isn’t.
