Getting the facts right on 'right to life' vs. 'right to choose'

Five myths about abortion

By Rickie Solinger, WashPost, Published: April 18

Rickie Solinger is the author of a number of books about the history of reproductive politics, including “Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

When debating whether a fetus’s “right to life” trumps a woman’s “right to choose” — or whether the news media has paid enough attention to the trial of a Philadelphia doctor who allegedly killed seven babies born alive during late-term abortions, as well as a pregnant woman — Americans are bitterly divided on abortion. Before abandoning facts for rhetoric, let’s tackle some misunderstandings about this procedure’s history and impact.

1. Laws against abortion have always been based on concern about unborn life.

Abortion was generally legal in the United States until the mid-19th century. At that time, physicians eager to professionalize obstetrics pressed state legislatures to outlaw midwifery and abortion while granting doctors sole authority over pregnancy and childbearing. State anti-abortion statutes were primarily justified on the grounds that women needed to be saved from uneducated folk practitioners, infections, future infertility and other physical risks.

In the courtroom, prosecutors rarely discussed the unborn, instead accusing abortion providers of preventing women from fulfilling their destiny: motherhood. When early feminists such as Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion, they argued that the disconnect between sexual intercourse and maternity endangered women’s chastity — at the time considered their main basis for moral standing and personal dignity.

Then, in the second half of the 20th century, technology such as sonogram imaging and genetic testing allowed us to see a fetus not simply as a potential life but as a patient requiring diagnosis and treatment, and sometimes entitled to more medical intervention than a pregnant woman.

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