Opinion> Connie Schultz> Debate On Abortion Is Women S Work

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Debate on Abortion Is Women's Work

Every spring, a local boys' high school makes me their class project.

A stream of anti-abortion e-mail suddenly fills my inbox, courtesy of male adolescents whose time would be better spent focusing on their own roles in preventing pregnancies they never will have to bear.

How do these boys figure that a woman's womb is any of their business? How do men, for that matter?

Not long after I started writing this column in the fall of 2002, I lost a friend over abortion.

We had discussed countless issues, professional and personal, over the years. We often did not agree, but that just fed a spirited banter.

Then I wrote a few columns that made clear my support for women's reproductive freedom, including the right to abortion.

First, he sent me an e-mail expressing his "disappointment." Then he sent another insisting that whenever I wrote about abortion, I sounded "angry," a trait he never had associated with me. I assured him that he was mistaking conviction for rage, and maybe we should agree to disagree.

That's when he started forwarding circulated e-mails that included "testimonials" from women who said they deeply regretted their abortions and had emotional scars that never would heal.

When I assured him that studies consistently show that most women who choose abortion do not suffer long-term psychological distress, he accused me of supporting murder. Before long, he was barely speaking to me.

I was sad to lose a friend, sadder still that he felt so compelled — and entitled — to lobby against women's reproductive rights.

Recently, two photos ran with an Associated Press story about Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion 35 years ago today. In the first photo, pro-choice women rallied on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the second, men picketed an abortion clinic.

The gender divide suggested by the photos is overstated. Many women oppose abortion rights, and plenty of men support them, but the photos did reflect a historical fact: Women's reproductive rights always have been legislated and adjudicated primarily by men, not one of whom will ever have to face the physical consequences of any pregnancy.

The older I get, the more wrong that feels.

Abortion remains a complex issue in this country.

Studies still show that the majority of Americans believe that the decision to have an abortion should be left up to a woman, her family and her doctor. Most, though, also struggle with the morality of that choice, and there is no end in sight for that internal conflict.

Advancements in prenatal, for example, offer earlier alerts to a myriad of fetal abnormalities. These test results present excruciating choices for prospective parents, including those who insist they are pro-life. Four years ago, The New York Times reported that these same couples often decide to terminate pregnancies when the fetuses are not normal. They just don't like to call it abortion.

As the issues grow more complex, so do my own feelings — not about women's rights but about those women who don't agree with me.

In a recent column, for example, I criticized those who claim to be pro-life but did not care one bit for the plight of immigrants' children. I still loathe that kind of hypocrisy, but some readers who oppose abortion rights, most of them women, asked me not to lump them with the extremists.

They, too, deplored the treatment of an immigrant mother who was separated for 11 days from her nursing infant. Many also agreed that men have too many opinions about an issue that affects only those with a womb.

After such thoughtful conversations, I regret not making that distinction. I also wonder how the abortion issue would evolve if women owned the debate.

Surely, there is common ground to be found in reducing the need for abortion while protecting that right.

And it's not the kind of work we can leave to the boys.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.