The Child Not Taken
Russell D. Moore on Aborting the Conscience Through Choice
Recently a woman wrote a back-page article in the New York Times Magazine about her decision to abort two of her triplets, a choice she tells readers was not all that difficult and one she is glad she made, and would make again. When she found herself carrying triplets—she had gone off the pill because it made her moody—Amy Richards was 34 and not married (though living with the father of her children), lived in a walk-up apartment in the East Village, and would lose most of her freelance income for the year.
“There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?” she wrote.
I’d have to give up my life. Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn’t be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It’s not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.
She went to her doctor and asked, “Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?” It was, and she did. But this ghoulish commentary was far less revealing than some of the letters to the editor the Times received in response.
Some readers praised the Times for the “courage” and “bravery” of the piece, but several other pro-choice writers expressed shock, discomfort, and even moral revulsion at the calculating indifference of the writer’s point of view. Particularly noteworthy was a letter from a pro-choice reader in Montreal, who noted that the column caused her to “wrestle” with why it so disturbed her. She asked, “If the freedom to choose removes a sense of awe from the realm of human possibilities, is it freedom or a cruel burden?”
No one thinks that most women get abortions for the vain, self-indulgent reasons offered in this article. But why did it strike such a nerve? After all, the leaders of the abortion rights movement ridicule the pro-life “love affair with the fetus,” arguing that the fetus is no more personal than sperm or a discarded fingernail clipping.
Why would people like the writer from Montreal feel “comfortable” with legal abortion—until they read a story like this? If the fetus is not a person, one might find the story of this woman’s “selective reduction” for reasons of personal convenience self-absorbed and tacky, but why would one find it so morally repugnant?
This column was provocative not only because of the unblinking sassiness with which the writer asserted her right to discard two of her three “pregnancies.” It provoked even pro-choice readers because of its unusual directness, a directness so unexpected that even seared consciences flinch in response.
In our national discourse, we use language about abortion that cloaks abortion itself. Our politicians will say that they stand for “a woman’s right to choose,” without ever telling us precisely what action a woman should have a right to choose, much less whether anyone else, like a father or a child, should have a say in this choice.
Pro-choice speech discusses the decision to “end a pregnancy” or, in moments of unusual directness, speaks of “the decision to abort.” But even then they do not say what it is (never mind who it is) that may be aborted—a computer program, a space mission? Marches for legal abortion rarely mention the abortions themselves. Instead, the activists march for “women’s lives,” thereby testifying that even they know that life should be something worth protecting.
Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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