Making Women the Subjects of the Abortion Debate: A Class Exercise that Moves Beyond "Pro-Choice" and "Pro-Life"

Abstract

Making Women the Subjects of the Abortion Debate:A Class Exercise that Moves Beyond "Pro-Choice" and "Pro-Life" Sara L. Crawley (bio), Rebecca K. Willman (bio), Leisa Clark (bio), and Clare Walsh (bio) It is 11 a.m. on no particular Wednesday in spring semester and the "Bull Market" (our campus outdoor venue for student groups to advertise and promote their activities and/or sell their fundraising wares) is just beginning to buzz for the day.1 One student group has set up a mock graveyard with small white crosses marking the "graves" of "unborn babies" "murdered" by abortions. They also have a table handing out professionally pre-printed leaflets. There is purportedly some correlation between the number of crosses and the number of local abortions performed, although the validity of such statistics seems quite suspect given what we know to be the factual inaccuracy of the rhetoric on the fliers. As this event was unexpected until students arrived on campus that day, Feminist Student Alliance (FSA), the undergraduate student group on our campus that is housed and supported by the women's studies department, is unprepared to counter this rhetoric, but nonetheless, they go into action. Within thirty minutes they have corralled four to five members, created a large sign reading "They do not speak for me," and set up a table handing out fliers which were created on an impromptu basis but provide more accurate data about abortion taken from reputable, quotable, scientific sources. Following a calm and polite discussion between FSA and the pro-life student group that has formally reserved space for their display, FSA has set up across the sidewalk from the pro-life group, creating a space where students entering campus walk, albeit unhindered, through the gauntlet between the two warring rhetorics. Students seem to shrink as they walk past. Some begin to avoid the sidewalk altogether, crossing on the grass. And thus we have replicated the national debate about abortion in our own campus, perhaps in a more civil and polite manner. But the roles are the same: a few staunch advocates of the "pro-life" side, a few staunch advocates of the "pro-choice" side, and a large public who, while they may or may not hold personal opinions, avoid these settings with great distaste. How Do We Teach About Abortion? This is the social context in which we are to address the abortion issue in our classes. As faculty and graduate students [End Page 227] in women's studies, each of us has strong feminist convictions and an interest in intellectually engaging with students on issues of gender inequality and public policy. Each of us laments the general lack of understanding about the second wave feminist movement by most undergraduates we have worked with. Yet we can imagine a no more polarized and passionate issue in recent times, and the inability of students to move outside the public rhetoric often seems insurmountable, leaving us dispirited and wishing we could avoid the discussion altogether. The conundrum is that if we avoid what seems sure to be a classroom brawl, ending in no intellectual engagement, only the (often inaccurate) political rhetoric wins.2 Clearly, this is a more repugnant option than spending a class session trying to affect positive change, but how? How can we address issues surrounding abortion in the classroom, in an intellectually informed, civil manner that moves beyond the polarizing debate and has some potential for engaging thought and discussion, not just political reaction, among our students? This is how we came to the exercise we offer in this article. In this article, we describe a classroom exercise designed to put women (and children and men) back at the center of the abortion debate, avoiding the standard rhetoric and engaging reflection on how we might find common political goals among the so-called pro-life and pro-choice sides. We want women to be the subjects, not the objects, of the abortion debate. It is a tall order, we know, but it is our goal and we believe the exercise we describe below pushes students to think and participate in the debate rather than to blindly follow a rhetoric...