Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, or Pro-Reduction

Abortion is the defining, underlying issue of the Illinois GOP gubernatorial primary. Not taxes,  not the budget deficit, nor the pension burden, nor education nor infrastructure—matters the  governor and legislature can do something about. 

This column is not about pro-life or pro-choice arguments, but about whether the two sides could  ever come together to work on efforts both sides might agree on—how to reduce the number of  abortions. My friend Perry Klopfenstein of Gridley (north of Bloomington) thinks it is possible. 

First, the governor’s race. Earlier this year Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill that provides  taxpayer funding for abortions, after declaring on several occasions, even to the Catholic cardinal  of Chicago, that he would veto the bill. 

This action prompted outrage among pro-life conservative Christian groups in the state. And it  was the catalyst for the GOP gubernatorial run of conservative state Rep. Jeanne Ives of  Wheaton. 

Ives is now running TV commercials that appear to stigmatize gays and transgender persons as  well as those who have abortions. Ives declares that Rauner is their friend.  

Many, including the head of the state GOP, are calling for Ives to pull the commercials, but she  persists. Ives is obviously trying to arouse the base of social conservatives, which is hard to do in  primary elections. Only a small fraction, 15 percent or less, of persons 18 and over typically cast  Republican primary ballots in Illinois. 

Now to my friend Perry Klopfenstein. Perry is a smart guy, a successful small businessman,  Republican activist, staunchly pro-life. As with many people, I am opposed to abortion, yet come  down on the pro-choice side of the divide. 

Perry thinks people like the two of us should come together to work on generally non governmental policies that would reduce abortions. I still have in my files an op-ed column by  Perry that appeared in the April 5, 1998 edition of the Peoria Journal-Star.  

In his piece, Perry declares that rhetorical warfare has not produced positive results. “It’s time to  break the stalemate,” Perry says. 

He lays out seven “incentives for life,” which include adoption, informed and parental consent,  and medical and living assistance for those who would carry-to-term, this last a rather liberal  position. 

Perry encourages the pro-choice side to come up with their suggestions as well. I think of better  sex education and making adoption easier. I hear from couples wanting to adopt that the process is often more difficult that it needs to be.  

Then there is an idea I have offered before and which many find way too harsh, to wit: In return  for the state’s safety net for a single mother and her first child, a woman would agree to wear a  long-term birth control patch.  

 I offer this for the sake of the woman. A single, under-educated, single parent who has more than one child is basically consigning herself to a life of dependency on the state dole. 

The ideas above may have merit, or not. Perry’s point is that both sides could come together in  support of efforts to reduce abortions, and not wait for court decisions that may or may not ever come. Roe v. Wade (1973), which laid out a constitutional right to abortion, is not likely to be  overturned in the near future, though it might be down the line, as more conservative justices are  appointed. 

The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research group, reports that almost one-fifth (19 percent)  of all pregnancies in 2014 ended in abortion. The number of abortions that year is estimated to  have been 926,000, or 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44.  

This is a startling number to me, yet it is way down from earlier years. In 1980, the high point for  abortions, there were 29.3 abortions per 1,000 women, twice the 2014 rate. 

Joe Carter of the Gospel Coalition, a pro-life group, identifies the following as factors in the  lower rates of unintended pregnancies: increased contraception use; fewer teens having sex;  increased opposition to abortion among the young, and greater willingness to have a child from  an unintended pregnancy. 

So, possibly the intense public debate between pro-life and pro-choice positions has made young  men and women more conscious of their options to unintended pregnancy and abortion. 

Yet wouldn’t it be great if Bruce Rauner and Jeanne Ives took joint leadership in exhorting us to  create community groups of both pro-life and pro-choice folks to see how we might reduce  unintended pregnancy and abortion even further?