Pro-X: a Historical Approach to the Philosophical Problems of the Life/Choice Binary in American Abortion Discourse
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PRO-X: A HISTORICAL APPROACH TO THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF THE LIFE/CHOICE BINARY IN AMERICAN ABORTION DISCOURSE by CLAIRE PICKARD Presented to the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2019 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Claire Pickard Title: Pro-X: A Historical Approach to the Philosophical Problems of the Life/Choice Binary in American Abortion Discourse This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Philosophy by: Naomi Zack Chairperson Colin Koopman Core Member Nicolae Morar Core Member James Mohr Core Member Allison Madar Institutional Representative and Janet Woodruff-Borden Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2019 ii © 2019 Claire Pickard iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Claire Pickard Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy June 2019 Title: Pro-X: A Historical Approach to the Philosophical Problems of the Life/Choice Binary in American Abortion Discourse I employ history to ground, to reveal, and to understand the logical, metaethical, and otherwise explicitly philosophical problems of the pro-life/pro-choice binary system in American abortion discourse, a binary I refer to as “pro-x.” Three chapters of my dissertation are a history of abortion in the United States, moving from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day. What historical analysis reveals is not just the contingency of the ways of understanding abortion that we often uncritically adopt today. It also shows how those contingencies shape the present discourse, including the pro-x logic that is so often taken for granted as a necessity for “the abortion debate.” I first argue that “pro-choice” and “pro-life” are both terms with co-constitutive meanings, which is not readily apparent in common use of the terms and which lends itself to rampant fallacies of composition and equivocation. I argue that these complicated, multiplicitous, and very often ambiguous meanings of “pro-life” and “pro- choice” make them unsuitable for use in political or moral conversation, even if they were divorced from a binary structure, which I do not take for granted as a possibility. My second main argument is that the structure itself, which assumes two opposing pro-x stances as representing the “sides” of the abortion debate leads to an iv inability to weigh metaethical nuance outside of the binary pro-x labels. My third main argument is that much of abortion discourse, especially inside the pro-x system relies on what I call “equivocal standards,” terms that are a critical part of a metric to determine the morality of an action, but which are broadly used in a fallaciously equivocated manner, whether intentional or unintentional. The use of equivocal standards form a condition for the possibility of a pro-x binary and are one of the central causes of the binary’s failure as a useful tool for public discourse. Equivocal standards also open the possibility for future action to deconstruct the pro-x binary through public recognition of the fallacious arguments that form the foundation for a pro-x logic. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Claire Pickard GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Philosophy, 2019, University of Oregon Masters of Arts, Philosophy, 2016, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy, 2014, University of Mary Washington AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Social and Political Philosophy Abortion History PUBLICATIONS: Pickard, Claire. “Borrowed Knowledge: Pedagogy and Student Debt in the Neoliberal University”. In David Boonin (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Critical Genealogies Collaboratory, (co-authored paper by C. Koopman, Sarah Hamid, Patrick Jones, Claire Pickard, Bonnie Sheehey, and Laura Smithers). "Standard Forms of Power: Biopower and Sovereign Power in the Technology of the U.S. Birth Certificate, 1903-1935," Constellations (25)4: 2018. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Professor Naomi Zack for her spectacular guidance and detailed feedback at every stage of this project. Special thanks are due to my partner, Mason Moorman, for his unending patience and support during the dissertation process. I also thank my fellow graduate students in the Philosophy Department, whose commitment to a spirit of community and solidarity have no doubt made many dissertations possible. Finally, I thank my mother, who introduced me to the ideas which prompted my philosophical interest in the topic of abortion. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………… 1 Notes………………………………………………………………………… 20 II: MEDICALIZATION AND REGULATION IN THE MID-19 TH CENTURY.. 24 Notes………………………………………………………………………… 47 III: THE ABORTION FACTIONS OF THE EARLY 20 th CENTURY…………. 51 Notes………………………………………………………………………… 77 IV: THE RHETORIC OF RIGHTS………………………………………………. 82 Notes ………………………………………………………………………… 113 V: THE MORALITY PROBLEMS OF PRO-X…………………………………. 118 Notes………………………………………………………………………… 162 VI: EQUIVOCAL STANDARDS AND IDENTITIES………………………….. 168 Notes………………………………………………………………………… 191 VII: CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………… 194 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………. 203 REFERENCES CITED…………………………………………………………… 212 viii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION Anna Yocca was 24 weeks pregnant when she unraveled a coat hanger, sat in the tub of her upstairs bathroom, and attempted to give herself an abortion. Alarmed at the amount of blood she was losing, the 31 year-old from Murfreesboro, Tenn. became concerned for her safety and called her boyfriend to take her to the hospital, where she delivered a living child via caesarean section. She was charged with attempted first-degree murder and later pleaded guilty to one felony count of attempted procurement of a miscarriage. Although Yocca was arrested in 2015, the story of her detainment would not be out of place in a newspaper one hundred years ago, although actual prosecution of women seeking abortions was nearly unheard of then.1,2 Women’s experiences of self-abortion, hospitalization, and criminalization are not new. But the polarization of two distinct narratives surrounding this story represents a relatively new phenomenon. Pro-choice activists flocked to Yocca’s defense, with renowned abortion-rights advocate Jessica Valenti writing for The Guardian (U.S. edition) that “Yocca’s desperation and inability to obtain a safe abortion prove that we are shamefully failing women.” 3 Pro-life groups such as the National Right to Life were quick to condemn the “grievous injuries” to the “viable unborn baby.” 4 The meaning and significance of this story, which became national news, is framed by whether Yocca is an attempted baby murderer or a martyr—a woman persecuted for trying to assert her right to bodily autonomy even at the risk of her own life and freedom. But in our current cultural polarity between “pro-choice” and “pro-life,” it seems that she can only be one. This Introduction opens up the problem of the life/choice binary, beginning with the dissonance of data on who adopts the labels of “pro-choice” and “pro-life” and the 1 significance of those identity labels to individuals and organizations. I then examine the difficulties of finding precise language around the topic of abortion and label the terms I will be using. I further establish the polarized situation of the abortion debate by looking at the large organizations on either side and examining their goals. Then, using three prominent texts in the field, I analyze some of the common themes in the existing literature on pro-choice/pro-life polarization, and I distinguish the aims of my own project from similar approaches, especially in the role it plays as a philosophical history. Lastly, I describe the scope of the chapters. The Polarization of Identity In her introduction to Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Moral Diversity in the Abortion Debate, Kathy Rudy describes a billboard along the highway with a picture of a third- trimester fetus and the caption, “Abortion is Murder.” 5 The viewer’s reaction to the billboard—agreement that the killing of a subject like that constitutes murder, immediate dismissal as manipulative conservative propaganda, or hesitance to accept the message of the billboard but willingness to think further about the moral implications of abortion— are already conditioned by the different realities of the diverse viewers, and those realities include divergent understandings of what “abortion” itself means. Most Americans arrive at that billboard with a pre-existing idea of what sort of thing abortion is, ideas which are cultivated through an individual’s religious, cultural, and political history (although that is certainly not an exhaustive list). The limitations of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” language make it difficult to capture nuances and assume a playing field in which everyone who speaks about “abortion” means the same thing, even if they disagree on approach. 6 I would add that there must be an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance for 2 someone who self-identifies as pro-life or pro-choice, but has the third reaction to the billboard—one of uncertainty and moral questioning. The limitations of the life/choice binary are not simply restrictive