Common, Compassionate Ground on Abortion?
October 17, 2007
Nathan Ketsdever is one of my favorite bloggers because his perspective embodies the compassionate conservatism that some politicians only mimic. He’s always trying to find common ground, even on incredibly contentious issues like abortion.
What I love about this perspective is that it acknowledges the complexity of the issue. I can appreciate a nuanced conservative perspective on this issue — even if I disagree with it. What I object to is the black-and-white perspective of political convenience that has driven a wedge so deeply between those on the left and right of this issue.
Nathan has seven points around which he thinks we can coalesce some reconciliation on this issue:
- Promoting both male and female sexual responsibility
- Fostering equality and respect for women
- Strengthening parent-child communication
- Reducing the number of teen pregnancies
- Improving prenatal and maternal care
- Supporting and funding the choice of adoption
- Working together to remove the conditions that lead to abortion
It’s that last point that — as I wrote to Nathan in a recent message — I have some questions about. It seems to me that people who take the traditionally liberal perspective on the issue and people who take the traditionally conservative perspective have a hard time seeing eye to eye on the “conditions that lead to abortion.”
I see those conditions as:
- Deplorable lack of accurate information about and access to birth control for poor and underage women.
- General cultural attitudes that keep us from fully discussing sex and pregnancy with our partners.
I think that a lot of people on the other side of the issue see the conditions as:
- A lack of moral fiber and family values which leads to…
- Promiscuity
- An inability to take responsibility for the consequences (pregnancy) of one’s actions (sex)
What do you guys think? Is there any common ground here? I’d definitely like to get Nathan’s thoughts in on this as well. He asked me if he could publish the stuff from my message and I said that it was cool for him to do that. I wanted to repost them here too to get your thoughts.
i agree with your thoughts on the last point. i couldn’t have said it any better myself.
Great post! Thanks for the link.
Only thing…”compassionate conservatism?” Certainly, I think my ideology is a tad centrist, for instance on mass media issues. Alternatively, no more conservative on the media issue than Hillary (she doesn’t like the hyper-violent video games for the youths). Teresa, did you mean I was a call for conservatism to live up to its compassion?
At the end of the day, I just believe politicians should be more compassionate and empathetic, which is what the progressives in the democratic party generally tend to stand for.
As an aside, if you’re refering to the “I heart huckabee” posts, its that I like him of the GOP choices. I ultimately heart Obama, but have tried to not be particularly overt about it until recently.
But seriously…pole dancing for children? Yeah…I’m nay on that.
What really gets me about the “responsibility” anti-choicers is that they want to take away the ability of the woman to take that responsibility for her actions–having the abortion IS “taking responsibility”!