Linda MacDonald Glenn, at the Women’s Bioethics Project, offers this comment on the conflict over abortion rights:

Despite sometimes harsh rhetoric from both sides, it’s important to remember that that is there is common ground and that the dialogue must continue for any progress to be made.

Perhaps. But what constitutes “progress” in this context? What is the end-point we are seeking, and in what way does “the dialogue” advance us toward it?

For many, I suspect, the hoped-for endpoint is a time when we can finally quit hassling over this issue and move on to other things – when abortion doesn’t hijack the entire political landscape such that it is the only issue under discussion in Supreme Court appointments, elections, and religious politics. For those strongly committed to their vision of the right on this issue, however, the only acceptable endpoint is the time when their preferred policy has been immovably emplaced as the law of the land. And for those firmly committed to a particular, ideologically-informed solution to the conflict, “dialogue”, compromise, and “the middle way” usually seem unlikely to produce an acceptable endpoint; they are rather merely guarantees of an inadequate solution that inherently incorporates some degree of moral wrong.

Thus it seems to me that all this hopeful talk about compromise and common ground (often given flesh as “making abortions safe, legal, and rare”) has to be understood as an appeal to people whose greatest concern is removing the abortion conflict, not eliminating (either) abortions or barriers to abortion access. It is unlikely to appeal to the true believers on either side of the spectrum – and it is those people who keep the conflict going.

I also wonder how much middle ground there really is. Repeated surveys show a large plurality of respondents favoring legal abortion with varying degrees of restrictions (allowing both abortion-rights supporters and opponents to claim that a majority favors their cause – by claiming the large middle group is on their side because it either accepts legal abortion or accepts restrictions on legal abortion). It is tempting to characterize this group as the soft center – the “moderates” who are willing to compromise – but I suspect that many of them are really just as ideologically committed as the “extremists”, just not committed to all-or-nothing positions.

A common “compromise” position on abortion rights is restrictions on teen access to abortion, often through parental-notification clauses. This is an issue that commands broad support, including among nominal supporters of abortion rights in other cases, and so it is possible to see it as a possible “middle ground”. But it is also an issue that engenders strongly-felt passions, touching as it does on child safety and parental concern for children’s welfare, as well as on the dangers of forced pregnancy and the possibility of driving teens to unsafe abortions. I suspect that those who take positions for or against parental notification are as strongly committed to those positions as they, or most others, are to their other positions regarding abortion rights for adults. The fact that some of them have differing positions on abortions for adults and teens does not make them any more “moderate” than those who insist on all or nothing for both groups. I suspect similar remarks could be made about other “compromise” policies such as waiting periods, intrusive “informed consent” procedures, and so forth.

It is easy to be sympathetic to “extremists” who have strongly-held positions on these issues – whether “all-or-nothing” or “moderate”. Almost everyone recognizes this conflict as one with a definitive and significant moral issue at its heart (as well as many other issues such as the role of religion in society, partriarchal oppression of women’s sexuality, social control of reproduction, etc.). Few people approach it with indifference. My claim – based on a hunch only – is that, in fact, almost everyone holds their preferences regarding abortion policy more or less equally strongly. The fact that some people have preferences that involve a mix of rights and restrictions does not make them more “moderate”, in the sense of willing to compromise some part of their positions, than the “extremists” who seek a policy of virtually no access or virtually no restrictions. In other words, I suspect there are relatively few people who really do fall into the moderate middle ground – who are likely to be responsive to the call for compromise. And that is because the hope of compromise really consists more in the desire to end the conflict in whatever way is possible than to find the one right solution to that conflict – the latter being the desire of almost everyone concerned about it, whether “extremist” or “moderate”.

I have no proof that my characterization of the debate participants is correct, or that there is no workable compromise to be found. (For myself, I am what would have to be called an “extremist” for abortion rights – in the sense of favoring very few restrictions on those rights – so I am inclined to look askance at people who are ambivalent about resolutions of the issue.) What Glenn’s remarks provoke for me is a curiosity whether the context in which this debate is conducted is one that lends itself to the outcome she – and so many others – endorse, and whether that outcome is one that really comprehends an ethically satisfying solution, or merely an end to overt conflict. I have offered my suspicions on the matter, above, but I wonder how others perceive it.