The Daily Show -- Stewart and Huckabee on Abortion

This is a joint post with June Carbone         

 

   In mid-June, Jon Stewart conducted another of The Daily Show’s multiple part interviews with former Governor Mike Huckabee.  While the previous show had focused on gay marriage, Stewart asked Huckabee to choose a topic he’d like to discuss.  Huckabee’s choice:  “the pro-life issues,” paraphrased by Stewart as “abortion.”  The two reprised the continuing debate over abortion – and as has become increasingly the case, conducted the discussion almost entirely on Huckabee’s terms.  The articulate former preacher set forth the importance of a “culture of life” and how abortion denigrates it by permitting abortions triggered by comparatively trivial concerns about the “inconvenience” of the pregnancy.  Huckabee emphasized that every human life has value.

            Stewart responded with a classic defense of a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy.  His embrace of the pro-choice position focused almost exclusively on a woman’s right to control what happens to her body. 

            Missing entirely from this conversation was any articulation of why a woman might choose an abortion and why many women (and supportive fathers, husbands and boyfriends) might view it as a profoundly moral act.  Huckabee’s  references to “tak[ing] a human life” because the baby represents an “interference” or an “interruption”  to the mother’s life, socially or economically, fails to acknowledge that the woman’s decision is likely to be heavily influenced by concerns about the fate of the child rather than selfish concerns.   Stewart’s defense of a woman’s right to bodily integrity, though more sympathetic, reinforced Huckabee’s notion that pregnancy is the issue..

            We know of no women (other than those facing serious health issues) who would choose an abortion because of the effect of the pregnancy.  Instead, women choose abortion because they care profoundly about the future of their children.  Women who elect abortions know that true commitment to a child is an enormous – and lifelong – undertaking.  The pregnancy is the easy part.  They know also that to raise a child properly requires resources, support, and maturity.  They understand as well that the number of children for whom they can provide a decent chance in life is limited.  Having a child at seventeen, if it derails the mother’s life chances, shortchanges that child and the children she might have later.  Having a third child when a mother is struggling to provide for the two she already has diminishes the prospects for all of them.  Women who choose to terminate a pregnancy because of the supposed “economic inconvenience of the pregnancy” are making a decision that they cannot provide adequately for that child at that point in their lives.  It is because of a profound appreciation of the value of children’s lives, not a casual disregard for them, that women choose abortions. 

 

While adoption provides an acceptable alternative for some women, many women do not want their children to be raised by someone else.  Women in a small exploratory study of why they obtained abortions explained that they rejected adoption because “the thought of one’s child being out in the world without knowing if it was being taken care of or who was taking care of it was more guilt inducing than having an abortion.”    

            As governor of

Arkansas

, Huckabee riled conservatives by supporting some governmental assistance for poor children.  His allies who supposedly support the “culture of life” he advocates, however, rarely support systematic support for children’s wellbeing – for collective provision of the food, medical care, child care services, and educational assistance that would make childrearing less daunting.  Indeed, in the interview, Huckabee dodges Stewart’s efforts to define the true middle ground as support for accurate sex education and comprehensive access to contraception that would reduce the number of inopportune pregnancies. 

            It is time to redefine the abortion debate. Those who passionately defend a woman’s right to choose also care passionately about a culture of life that is committed to bringing children into a world in which every child has a decent opportunity to flourish.  As we discuss in our forthcoming book, Red Families v. Blue Families (OUP 2010), pro-choice advocates need to highlight the fact that the women most likely to seek abortions are those who are most likely to lack access to effective contraception, viz., the poor, the naïve, and the isolated.  They are the same women who choose abortion because they are the mothers least able to provide for the children who might result – and those most vilified by the supposed pro-life group who routinely oppose support for children.

            Pregnancy is not the issue; care and commitment to your children is.  Which is the true “pro-life” position?