What Are We Going to Do About Abortion?

I t has been three years since the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade. Can we talk about it, already?

What is she talking about? you may be thinking. Where has she been? There are about 72 news stories a day about our new Dobbs age, named after the Mississippi case that overturned Roe. Rest assured, I know what you’ve lived through. I’ve been on planet Earth, too. In the weeks after Dobbs, I canceled my New York Times subscription for a time because I couldn’t handle the seemingly daily, devastating propaganda on the front page.

The longer I live, though, the more I appreciate how painfully long it can take humans to process anything significant. We talk about trauma more than we once did, and yet the more traumatic an event is, the less likely many — most — of us are to give it any time, unless the issue is forced by our disastrous coping attempts. So it is with abortion. Under-covered and underappreciated is women’s need for postabortion healing. Ministries like After Canaan and Project Rachel often are not even mentioned in Catholic churches, where you’d think they’d be most welcome, because the priest doesn’t know or because women don’t want to talk about their experiences for fear of judgment by “good Catholics.” If you’re in the pew, however, you are a sinner. A Christian is a sinner in need of a Savior — it’s why we’re there. And postabortion healing ministries are open to all, offering retreats not only for women who have had abortions but also for siblings of aborted babies and for men who have fathered children who have been aborted because of their pressure or against their attempts at stepping up to the plate. Abortion affects more people in more ways than we typically know or care to acknowledge. It’s a most intimate form of violence, of course, on the woman who lives on, without her child.

This is all to say that we live in something of a delusion when it comes to abortion. Because it is so frequently in political news, we act as though we are dealing with it. And while the political — and legal — are important, they can be a distraction. The law is a teacher, as we say, so whether we are even allowed to make laws regulating abortion at all is fundamental. In that sense, the end of Roe v. Wade was a bit of a win for everyone, because it meant we can actually have debates in the states about who we are and what we should be. That comes with tremendous challenges, including the need to be truthful and sift through lies and misinformation.

My colleague Haley Strack contacted the Washington Post recently when the paper asserted in a news story that undercover videos recorded by the Center for Medical Progress — showing Planned Parenthood employees talking about how they deal with aborted baby remains — had been doctored by the pro-life group. Planned Parenthood officials in the videos talked about costs. The impression they gave was that they were making money off the sale of aborted baby parts. The latter is unclear, but the former isn’t. Once the Post was contacted, it corrected the story. Courts found that the videos had not been edited in any substantive or misleading way. That’s good news in the news.

ProPublica, on the other hand, recently won a Pulitzer Prize for its “Life of the Mother” series. The stories were about preventable deaths that ProPublica blamed on pro-life state laws. The deaths were tragic and, indeed, most likely avoidable. In two of the cases, women had taken abortion pills, which are more dangerous than the Food and Drug Administration has let on. In other cases, women had infections that doctors didn’t treat. It is not true that pro-life laws prohibit doctors from treating sepsis in pregnant women. It is not true that the pro-life movement wants pregnant women with cancer to die. In the awful case of Adriana Smith, in Georgia, the 30-year-old nurse who is being kept alive to deliver her son, it doesn’t seem to be the pro-life laws in the state but advance directive rules that are keeping her on life support. Throughout the life of the pro-life movement, we have been focusing on the fact that there are two lives, two patients, involved in a pregnancy — and so in an abortion, too. If a mother has cancer or sepsis, the second patient entails no moral reason to ignore the mother’s medical needs. If she is conscious, she can choose to opt out of chemotherapy, for example, for the sake of a child, but if the baby dies as a tragic side effect of the treatment, that is not the intent. These things have to be said because there is so much confusion. Just as it must be said that a miscarriage is not an abortion, these are different things and must be treated differently. And a woman who suffers a miscarriage must absolutely have the opportunity to grieve her child.

When the Washington Post corrected its Planned Parenthood story, it made clear that it had relied on previous reports. I certainly believe that was the case and that the reporters weren’t lying. And that once again raises my initial question: Can we start to really talk about where we are as a country after Roe? Where can we meet to help women and families who want to bring life into the world? How can we help women heal from miscarriages and abortions — two very different kinds of losses, but unconsolable ones, both. How can we better facilitate permanent transitions out of foster care in the best interests of the children involved? And how can we, at the very least, get back to the Clinton-era guardrails on abortion pills and our agreement that abortion should be rare?

Let’s start an honest conversation, this third June after the Dobbs decision. Three times may not be a charm but a restart for life.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.