{"id":506,"date":"2009-04-27T20:13:34","date_gmt":"2009-04-27T20:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/abortion-rights-safe-legal-and.html"},"modified":"2009-04-27T20:13:34","modified_gmt":"2009-04-27T20:13:34","slug":"abortion-rights-safe-legal-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/abortion-rights-safe-legal-and.html","title":{"rendered":"Abortion Rights: Safe, Legal, and Early"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I remember reading something by that famously spiritual sage Dan
\nSavage<\/a> about abortion. \u00a0He was reporting an argument he had with
\nanother guy about abortion, with Savage taking the position that if a woman hadn’t gotten around to having an abortion by the time she was in her third trimester then she should go ahead with the
\nbirth.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It struck me at the time that this famously
\nliberal, gay sex columnist was taking the stance that as the fetus progressed
\nit became more deserving in rights, and at the time I chocked it up to his
\nCatholic upbringing.\u00a0 <\/span>But now it
\nmakes more sense to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>As a fetus progresses from a potential life to a viable life, the rights
\nof the mother to terminate that life should, in my opinion, decrease.\u00a0\u00a0This idea was reinforced after reading\u00a0Steve Waldman’s\u00a0seminal piece called Safe,
\nLegal & Early – A New Way of the Thinking About Abortion<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

He writes:<\/p>\n

This belief that life within the womb is on a continuum is
\nnot explicitly reflected in the political debates about abortion. We debate
\nwhether we should have parental notification–not when we should have it. We
\nquestion politicians on whether they’d provide government funding for abortion,
\nnot ever asking whether subsidies should be provided for early abortions but
\nnot late.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Waldman suggests this way forward on the abortion
\ndebate:<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

My fantasy is that if the political system embraced the safe-legal-early
\ndoctrine, a few activists might even accept the legitimacy of part of their
\nopponents’ argument. Pro-choicers who accepted this framework would be
\nimplicitly conceding that, for at least part of the pregnancy, there’s a
\n“baby” in the womb–and the woman’s right to terminate that life is
\nneither absolute nor nine months in duration. With early abortions not only
\nlegal but easier, pro-choice activists could then have the confidence to accept
\nwhat many of them have publicly avoided but privately wanted: reasonable,
\ntightly written prohibitions on third trimester abortions while genuinely
\nprotecting the life of the mother.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Open minded pro-lifers would take note of these concessions
\nfrom their “enemies,” viewing them as a sign that these pro-choicers–far
\nfrom being hideous baby killers–fully embrace a moral dimension to the
\nabortion decision.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, any pro-lifers who accept this framework would be
\nmaking a concession, too. They’d be saying, in effect, that if the other side
\ncan concede that something precious is alive – and becoming more alive with
\neach day – then they could, in turn, acknowledge that reasonable people, of
\ndifferent faiths, can disagree about when exactly that baby becomes alive
\nenough to have legal rights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

Waldman may be on to something.\u00a0\u00a0My guess is that his proposal\u00a0<\/span>will be viewed
\nwith\u00a0suspicion\u00a0and hostility from both sides – which is probably as good of proof as any that it may provide a way forward for the issue of abortion in this country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember reading something by that famously spiritual sage Dan Savage about abortion. \u00a0He was reporting an argument he had with another guy about abortion, with Savage taking the position that if a woman hadn’t gotten around to having an abortion by the time she was in her third trimester then she should go ahead…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion"],"yoast_head":"\nAbortion Rights: Safe, Legal, and Early - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/04\/abortion-rights-safe-legal-and.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Abortion Rights: Safe, Legal, and Early - 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}