Commentary

Pro-choice movement loses its innocence

John O'Neill

Unless you are a Michigan history geek, the town of Owosso might not mean much at first glance. Its claim to fame is being the hometown of legendary New York governor and two-time presidential candidate Tom Dewey, the Republican nominee in 1944 and 1948.

But on the morning of Sept. 11, 2009, Owosso attained its own slice of infamy. On that morning, Harlan Drake, a 33-year-old truck driver, is accused of having murdered James Pouillon and Mike Fuoss.

The motive behind the killing of Fuoss, who had owned a gravel company where the suspect's mother had once reportedly worked, remains unclear. On the other hand, police have no doubt as to the motive in the murder of Pouillon, an anti-abortion activist whose public use of pictures of the aborted offended the suspect.

Drake is presumed innocent. But the presumption of innocence in this case is great (meaning in legalese that the evidence against the suspect is overwhelming). What is certain is the loss of innocence once claimed by the pro-choice movement (which in its arrogance fancied itself immune to extremists and lunatics).

To be sure, until now, shooting sprees were the domain of the so-called anti-abortion movement. Yet the extremism in both respective political camps was apparent long before the killings in Owosso. Thus the title of the 1991 book "Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes" by Laurence H. Tribe.

Indeed, in Michigan as early as 1988, the two sides in the abortion debate displayed their mutual extremism. That was the year of the ballot initiative (which eventually passed) to end Medicaid funding for abortion. The point-counterpoints were ugly. While the anti-abortion campaign was nurturing resentment for having to fund a procedure for the poor and minorities (despite many studies indicating abortion is more often an option of the white middle class), a favorite abortion rights rebuttal was how it would be better to have an abortion option for the poor and minorities rather than have to support their children on welfare. In other words, it was a clash of racist arguments.

Of course, there is a valid abortion rights argument: The decision of enduring a pregnancy full term through birth must be entirely that of the woman. It's even legitimate for Catholics to have such a position (on the grounds that the highest Christian authority ever admonished us to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's).

But there are disturbing aspects to the abortion rights argument. The notion that abortion is the moral equivalent of a tonsillectomy or a procedure of no more significance than a manicure is warped.

Drake now personifies an abrupt extremist side to the abortion rights movement.

The vast majority of abortion rights advocates hardly condones the tactics of a deranged gunman. But this is also true of the vast majority in the anti-abortion movement when abortion surgeons are shot.

And just as the anti-abortion movement cannot simply wash its hands of this element, the abortion rights movement now too has blood on its own hands. That's what happens when two opposing sides to a difficult argument fancy themselves with a monopoly on the truth.

It's a debate format in which Owosso's favorite son, Tom Dewey, would never have taken a side.

John O'Neill is an Allen Park freelance writer.