PBS303H: Focus on the Child or the Mother?

How can we be effective communicators to a pro-choice public? ¹⁾

Key topics:

• Marketing versus social reform
• Focus on mother versus child
• Answer:
  • The pastoral (and political) arm need different messaging than the educational arm
  • We need an educational arm effort that has the direct moral conversation
    • Heart apologetics are a bridge to integrate these insights into the essential conversation

1. Condense the summary and debate summary (Swope, Beckwith, Swope, Klusendorf - and get just essential/most interesting points)
   1. The problem, Caring Foundation research and solution, play some ads as examples
   2. Criticisms: playing to self-interest, missing the main moral point; counterpoint: My Fair Lady, suicide standing on ledge
   3. Answer: pastoral vs educational, both/and but difference if someone is standing on the ledge right now or you're talking about whether to assist/prevent suicide in general
2. Include some pastoral arm examples
   1. ATW and Sister of Life screenshots
   2. But counterpoint… Choice42… integrating some Paul Swope insights, but also “don't murder your baby” has to be said every single time or else they're failing

embed some of the “Think About It” ads, e.g.

Maybe a good summary of the “Pro-Woman” approach:

Abortion: A failure to communicate (1998)

For twenty-five years the pro-life movement has stood up to defend perhaps the most crucial principle in any civilized society, namely, the sanctity and value of every human life. However, neither the profundity and scale of the cause, nor the integrity of those who work to support it, necessarily translates into effective action. Recent research on the psychology of pro-choice women offers insight into why the pro-life movement has not been as effective as it might have been in persuading women to choose life; it also offers opportunities to improve dramatically the scope and influence of the pro-life message, particularly among women of childbearing age.

This research suggests that modern American women of childbearing age do not view the abortion issue within the same moral framework as those of us who are pro-life activists. Our message is not being well-received by this audience because we have made the error of assuming that women, especially those facing the trauma of an unplanned pregnancy, will respond to principles we see as self-evident within our own moral framework, and we have presented our arguments accordingly. This is a miscalculation that has fatally handicapped the pro-life cause. While we may not agree with how women currently evaluate this issue, the importance of our mission and the imperative to be effective demand that we listen, that we understand, and that we respond to the actual concerns of women who are most likely to choose abortion.

The importance of a new approach became clear from the results of sophisticated research pioneered by the Caring Foundation²⁾, a group that presents the pro-life message to the public via television. This group has been able to tap into some of the most advanced psychological research available today, so-called “right brain” research. (emotional intuitive creative / rational logical part of brain) […]
One objective of the research was to answer a question that has baffled pro-life activists for some time. How can women, and the public in general, be comfortable with being against abortion personally but in favor of keeping it legal? Because pro-lifers find it morally obvious that one cannot simultaneously hold that “abortion is killing” and “abortion should be legal,” they have tended to assume that people need only to be shown more clearly that the fetus is a baby. They assume that if the humanity of the unborn is understood, the consequent moral imperative, “killing a baby is wrong,” will naturally follow, and women will choose life for their unborn children. This orientation has framed much of the argument by pro-lifers for over two decades, with frustratingly little impact.

The new research shows why the traditional approach has had so little effect, and what can be done to change things.

The summary report of the study bears the intriguing title “Abortion: The Least Of Three Evils-Understanding the Psychological Dynamics of How Women Feel About Abortion.” The report suggests that women do not see any “good” resulting from an unplanned pregnancy. Instead they must weigh what they perceive as three “evils,” namely, motherhood, adoption, and abortion.

Unplanned motherhood, according to the study, represents a threat so great to modern women that it is perceived as equivalent to a “death of self.” While the woman may rationally understand this is not her own literal death, her emotional, subconscious reaction to carrying the child to term is that her life will be “over.” This is because many young women of today have developed a self-identity that simply does not include being a mother. It may include going through college, getting a degree, obtaining a good job, even getting married someday; but the sudden intrusion of motherhood is perceived as a complete loss of control over their present and future selves. It shatters their sense of who they are and will become, and thereby paralyzes their ability to think more rationally or realistically.

When these women evaluate the abortion decision, therefore, they do not, as a pro-lifer might, formulate the problem with the radically distinct options of either “I must endure an embarrassing pregnancy” or “I must destroy the life of an innocent child.” Instead, their perception of the choice is either “my life is over” or “the life of this new child is over.” Given this perspective, the choice of abortion becomes one of self-preservation, a much more defensible position, both to the woman deciding to abort and to those supporting her decision.

Even those women who are likely to choose life rather than abortion do so not because they better understand fetology or have a greater love for children, but because they have a broader and less fragile sense of self, and they can better incorporate motherhood into their self-identity.

Adoption, unfortunately, is seen as the most “evil” of the three options, as it is perceived as a kind of double death. First, the death of self, as the woman would have to accept motherhood by carrying the baby to term. Further, not only would the woman be a mother, but she would perceive herself as a bad mother, one who gave her own child away to strangers. The second death is the death of the child “through abandonment.” A woman worries about the chance of her child being abused. She is further haunted by the uncertainty of the child’s future, and about the possibility of the child returning to intrude on her own life many years later. Basically, a woman desperately wants a sense of resolution to her crisis, and in her mind, adoption leaves the situation the most unresolved, with uncertainty and guilt as far as she can see for both herself and her child. As much as we might like to see the slogan “Adoption, Not Abortion” embraced by women, this study suggests that in pitting adoption against abortion, adoption will be the hands-down loser.

This is very interesting, because the last 25 years have not proved this to be correct:

The attitude of these women toward abortion is quite surprising. First, all of the scores of women involved in the study (none of whom were pro-life activists and all of whom called themselves “pro-choice”) agreed that abortion is killing. While this is something that is no doubt “written on the human heart,” credit for driving home the reality of abortion is also due to the persevering educational work of the pro-life movement. Second, the women believe that abortion is wrong, an evil, and that God will punish a woman who makes that choice. Third, however, these women feel that God will ultimately forgive the woman, because he is a forgiving God, because the woman did not intend to get pregnant, and finally, because a woman in such crisis has no real choice, the perception is that the woman’s whole life is at stake.

In fact, while abortion itself is seen as something evil, the woman who has to make that choice is perceived as being courageous, because she has made a difficult, costly, but necessary decision in order to get on with her life. Basically, abortion is considered the least of three evils because it is perceived as offering the greatest hope for a woman to preserve her own sense of self, her own life. This is why women feel protective towards the abortive woman and her “right to choose,” and deeply resentful towards the pro-life movement, which they perceive as uncaring and judgmental.

Note that the primary concerns in any of the three options revolve around the woman, and not the unborn child. This helps to explain the appeal of the rhetoric of “choice.” It offers the sense that women in crisis still have some control over their future, and it allows women who may dislike abortion themselves to still seem compassionate towards other women in crisis.

These insights also shed light on another fundamental source of frustration and failure in the pro-life movement. A quarter century of polling has shown over and over that most Americans oppose most abortions, and that women are slightly more pro-life than men. Yet Americans are increasingly comfortable with the pro-choice rather than the pro-life label, and pro-life activists are still viewed as dangerous extremists. Is this due entirely to media bias? Why is it that the pro-life movement has not been able to build on the innate pro-life sentiment of the average person, and may even be losing ground in the arena of public opinion?

Results from this study suggest that the difficulty in gaining public support is not due entirely to unfair treatment by the media, although such treatment has no doubt played a significant role. The pro-life movement’s own self-chosen slogans and educational presentations have tended to exacerbate the problem, as they focus almost exclusively on the unborn child, not the mother. This tends to build resentment, not sympathy, particularly among women of child-bearing age.

When a woman faces an unplanned pregnancy, her main question is not “Is this a baby?”—with the assumed consequence that if she knows it to be so she will choose life. Women know, though often at the subconscious level, that the fetus is human, and that it will be killed by abortion. But that is the price a woman in that situation is willing to pay in her desperate struggle for what she believes to be her very survival. Emphasis on babies, whether dismembered fetuses or happy newborns, will tend to deepen the woman’s sense of denial, isolation, and despair, the very emotions that will lead her to choose abortion.

Her central, perhaps subconscious, question is rather, “How can I preserve my own life?” The pro-life movement must address her side of the equation, and do so in a compassionate manner that affirms her own inner convictions. Without stigmatizing or condemning, pro-lifers must help a woman to reevaluate what she perceives as the three “evils” before her.

• Another issue, semi-unrelated to Klusendorf's critiques: can these ads be deceptive, to a degree? Can they give a woman false reassurance about the control she will have following pregnancy?

[A woman is in front of a nice house, raking leaves. She says good-bye to her daughter, then turns to the viewer.] “I was sixteen when I found out that I was pregnant with Carrie. I wasn’t married and I was really scared. You know, some people today say that I should have had an abortion, but it never occurred to me that I had that choice, just because it wasn’t convenient for me. Hey, I’m no martyr, but I really can’t believe I had a choice after I was pregnant. Think about it.” While this ad is not always popular among pro-life activists, polls showed it is extremely effective with young women. This is because it presents a role model who is approachable and believable, and the subliminal message in the ad—the nice house, the good relationship with the daughter, the image of control as the woman stands holding the rake as she takes care of her own yard—all reinforce the message that this woman is, in fact, a kind of martyr, because she has made a difficult decision but “gotten on with her life.” The ad subtly offers the very kind of resolution a woman facing a crisis pregnancy desperately seeks and which she is too often deceived into thinking abortion will provide.

• Talia's comment about how this wouldn't be much comfort to the woman who is in poverty, and may still be after birth
• Counter-point: we do want to offer hope to women in crisis pregnancies, help them to see that their future life does not have to be a shambles. Ex. Choice42's videos from women who did choose life
  • Also, Talia's comments about how many women who have abortions already have other children. Does the same crisis of identity happen for these women?
    • Yes. (It may not be a crisis of identity with “motherhood” in general, but about the loss of freedom and one's life being overtaken by a newborn baby, again, I think.) — Blaise Alleyne 2019/03/08 13:32
• Pastoral approach and educational approach: currently, we need to combine education about humanity of the pre-born with responding to the unmet needs of the pregnant mother. The goal of the educational arm is crucial, though, because we want to get to a point as a society where women in need are not even abortion-minded. (And we need to respond to their needs, but just like we would for any person in difficult circumstances, not because we're trying to also prevent killing).
  • I.e. people in poverty or other difficult circumstances will always need support from those around them, but one day we want to get to the point as a society where killing a pre-born child is just as unthinkable a response as killing a born child. When parents of a 5-year-old lose their jobs, or the father walks out, etc. there's usually not even a question of whether the 5-year-old should be killed.

A New Understanding of the Trauma of Abortion (2013), with Charles Kenney

Women carry an unwanted pregnancy to term when guilt wins out over shame, when they feel that the pregnancy will not end their own current and future selves, and that the unborn will be better off alive than dead.

more recent article: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430152/abortion-roe-v-wade-unborn-children-women-feminism-march-life

should I add the book Real Choices?

http://frederica.com/writings/abortion-womens-rights-and-wrongs.html

For the question remains, do women want abortion? Not like she wants a Porsche or an ice cream cone. Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg, a woman who seeks abortion is trying to escape a desperate situation by an act of violence and self‑loss. Abortion is not a sign that women are free, but a sign that they are desperate.

How did such desperation become so prevalent? Two trends in modern feminism, both adopted from the values of the masculine power structure that preceded it, combine to necessitate abortion. Re‑emerging feminism was concerned chiefly with opening doors for women to professional and public life, and later embraced advocacy of sexual freedom as well. Yet participation in public life is significantly complicated by responsibility for children, while uncommitted sexual activity is the most effective way of producing unwanted pregnancies. This dilemma—simultaneous pursuit of behaviors that cause children and that are hampered by children—inevitably finds its resolution on an abortion table.

If we were to imagine a society that instead supports and respects women, we would have to begin with preventing these unplanned pregnancies. Contraceptives fail, and half of all aborting women admit they weren’t using them anyway. Thus, preventing unplanned pregnancies will involve a return to sexual responsibility. This means either avoiding sex in situations where a child cannot be welcomed, or being willing to be responsible for lives unintentionally conceived, perhaps by making an adoption plan, entering a marriage, or faithful child support payments. Using contraceptives is no substitute for this responsibility, any more than wearing a seatbelt entitles one to speed. The child is conceived through no fault of her own; it is the height of cruelty to demand the right to shred her in order to continue having sex without commitment.

Secondly, we need to make continuing a pregnancy and raising a child less of a burden. Most agree that women should play a part in the public life of our society; their talents and abilities are as valuable as men’s, and there is no reason to restrict them from the employment sphere. But during the years that her children are young, mother and child usually prefer to be together. If women are to be free to take off these years in the middle of a career, they must have, as above, faithful, responsible men who will support them. Both parents can also benefit from more flexibility in the workplace: allowing parents of school‑age children to set their hours to coincide with the school day, for example, or enabling more workers to escape the expenses of office, commute, and child care by working from home. We also must welcome women back into the work force when they want to return, accounting their years at home as valuable training in management, education and negotiation skills.

Women’s rights are not in conflict with their own children’s rights; the appearance of such a conflict is a sign that something is wrong in society. When women have the sexual respect and employment flexibility they need, they will no longer seek as a substitute the bloody injustice of abortion.