Breda O’Brien: Why is it so hard to believe anti-abortion people are just as motivated by human rights?

In September, it will be 25 years chronologically – and several light years culturally – since the 5,000 Too Many conference. Prof Patricia Casey and I brought pro-choice and pro-life people together on the basis of something almost everyone agreed on then: reducing the number of abortions.

Pro-choice politicians, psychiatrists, academics and counselling organisations happily took part and the media coverage was positive.

Imagine the innocence of everyone being worried about 5,000 abortions. We had 8,500 last year. If the birth rate is similar in 2022 to 2021 – 58,443 births – there will have been one abortion for every seven births.

There was only one dissenting voice at the conference, Ivana Bacik. She stated from the audience that she disagreed completely with reducing abortions. The correct number of abortions was the number that women wanted. End of story.

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That view, then a minority voice, is now the consensus among those who dominate our policy formation. You could not bring pro-life and pro-choice people together for a conference like 5,000 Too Many today. The gulf between the sides is getting wider daily.

For example, US lawyer Julie Kay stated recently that banning or limiting access to abortion is about “judging and controlling women”.

A human rights lawyer like Kay apparently struggles to believe that anti-abortion people are motivated by human rights, just as she is. Is the presumption now always bad faith on the part of those who oppose abortion?

The most stunning recent example of this failure to understand pro-life motivation that I have seen is a (subscriber-only) blog by Alice D Dreger, former academic and founder of East Lansing Info, a citizen news service.

It begins promisingly. Dreger grew up with a mother who was a leader in Feminists for Life. Dreger is now pro-choice but advocates recognising that “the people on the other side are coming to very different conclusions from similar values”.

Her mother was motivated by feminist values, seeing abortion as anti-woman. She raised Dreger to be financially independent of any man and encouraged her to pursue so-called male interests, such as studying physics. Nor were her parents anti-science. Their abortion views were formed by “reasonably educated ideas about what science has learned about fertilisation and development”.

Having engaged in the kind of respectful, understanding analysis every anti-abortion person dreams of from pro-choice people, there is a completely unexpected swerve.

Dreger says that the real difference between pro-choice people and pro-life people is their view of sex. Pro-life ideas about abortion arise “from a worldview that is fundamentally about sex functioning in the service of kinship order and patriarchal homage”.

Dreger grew up with a feminist mother who steeped her in feminist values, yet she still believes pro-life views about abortion stem from homage to patriarchal views of sex? Why is it so hard to believe that Dreger’s mother just thought that unborn humans are people and abortion is a symptom of patriarchy? Whatever happened to Occam’s razor?

There is much around which to unite: meaningful support for pregnant women, better data, improved palliative care, even eliminating microplastics in placentas

It is almost comic, but such misconstruals mean it is far easier to dismiss or even erase pro-life views, including freedom of conscience. To give just two examples: the Minister for Health does not feel he has to meet pro-life people. The independent review of the abortion legislation suggests holding values clarification workshops for healthcare professionals that aim to change people’s firmly held anti-abortion convictions.

One of the “gotcha” questions frequently asked of pro-life people is, “Why don’t you trust women to make their own decisions?” The answer is that of course, I trust women and want the best for them but I also trust science, which tells me that there is another human life in the equation. That individual, early human life has rights. Just like the rest of us, those rights include the right not to be killed.

This humanity is sometimes uncontroversial, for example in a Guardian headline declaring “Microplastics revealed in placentas of unborn babies”. The article states that it is a “matter of great concern” that “babies are being born pre-polluted”. Yet, in another context, aborting that same unborn baby would be framed as nothing except a healthcare procedure like a tonsillectomy.

Many in the pro-choice movement deal with the existence of a second human life by essentially declaring it irrelevant, a distraction, a cover for sinister anti-woman motives.

The gulf exists on the pro-life side too. There can be a failure to recognise that pro-choice people’s views stem from compassion and a sincere belief in equality for women. The people on the other side can indeed come to very different conclusions from similar values.

A conference called 8,500 Too Many could not happen today, but there is still so much around which to unite: provision of meaningful support for pregnant women; better collection of epidemiological data; improved palliative care services; even eliminating microplastics in placentas. (The Minimise Project, of which my son, Ben Conroy, is a founder member, has an excellent blog on this topic.) Presumption of bad faith simply leaves us all sniping at each other from behind our barricades.