Pub­lished in the State Press on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 23, 2007

With yes­ter­day mark­ing the 34th anniver­sary of Roe v. Wade, the ground­break­ing judi­cial opin­ion that changed the land­scape of women’s repro­duc­tive rights in Amer­ica, many pop­u­lar areas of protest prob­a­bly found their own land­scape slightly changed: col­ored with pro-choicers loudly cel­e­brat­ing a land­mark deci­sion, and lit­tered with equally ide­al­is­tic pro-lifers hiss­ing provoca­tive words like “baby killer” in their con­fet­tied wake.

But amid all of this self-righteous clamor, one word in par­tic­u­lar will repeat­edly arise as the cen­ter of all our abor­tion debates this week: “per­son­hood,” that favorite fall­back of all pro-lifers, which will surely be squawked ad nau­seam by either side — a cacoph­ony as obnox­ious, inces­sant and point­less as the fake bird sounds on Mill Avenue.

While reli­gious ide­ol­ogy com­pels the pro-life crowd to argue that fetuses, as cit­i­zens, have a right to life, the pro-life crowd com­pels pro-choicers to argue that fetuses aren’t people.

This is fol­lowed by a vol­ley of pseudo-scientific facts cou­pled with inane metaphors about life and free­dom that is, at the very least, enter­tain­ing to the passers-by but, ulti­mately, a very poor use of Hay­den Lawn.

It’s hard to believe that after 34 years, peo­ple are still hung up on an argu­ment that the Supreme Court itself decided was irrel­e­vant at the time of their land­mark deci­sion way back in 1973.

But as often as debaters talk about the case, whether tout­ing or crit­i­ciz­ing it, few seem to know very much about the par­tic­u­lars of the judi­cial decision.

The Supreme Court Jus­tices didn’t over­look the issue of per­son­hood when they made their deci­sion. Among other things, they were con­cerned about when a life begins, and whether fetuses have, or should have rights.

But ulti­mately they decided that they “need not resolve the dif­fi­cult ques­tion of when life begins” because they felt it wasn’t their place to spec­u­late on some­thing that doc­tors, philoso­phers and the­olo­gians couldn’t agree upon.

That’s right – the flus­tered folks fac­ing off on Hay­den Lawn aren’t the only ones who can’t agree on this issue — far more edu­cated and intel­li­gent peo­ple can’t either.

The jus­tices even­tu­ally came to the con­clu­sion that “the unborn have never been rec­og­nized in the law as per­sons in the legal sense” and there­fore, would not be con­sid­ered as such just because leg­is­la­tors favor­ing a par­tic­u­lar the­ory of life try to over­ride a woman’s repro­duc­tive rights.

So why is there still so much focus on “per­son­hood,” and not on the other count­less (and more valid) points of dis­agree­ment regard­ing the abor­tion debate?

Because, despite the fact that every­one seems to have an opin­ion on abor­tion (formed care­fully and thought­fully, no doubt, through many years of study and delib­er­a­tion), few know very much about it: its prac­tice, its his­tory, its con­se­quences or its ben­e­fits, and espe­cially its legislation.

Per­son­hood is an easy argu­ment for the igno­rant to adopt because there is no answer to it. And, cir­cu­lar debates are a great way to avoid talk­ing about more tan­gi­ble issues, like the dis­as­trous fail­ure of abstinence-only pro­grams in schools, the pro-life movement’s hos­tile war on sex (both safe and non), and the younger pro-choice generation’s fail­ure to artic­u­late its own stance.

Then again, it’s rarely ever been a match of wits as these two groups duke it out for pos­ses­sion of the Amer­i­can woman’s body — the pro-lifers resort­ing to ugly pic­tures of allegedly aborted fetuses and the pro-choicers stick­ing to the tried and true tra­di­tion of catchy picket-line chants, such as the ever clever “Keep your rosaries / off my ovaries!”

It would be refresh­ing if, after 34 years, both sides dropped the gim­micks and instead focused their cre­ativ­ity and pas­sion into edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the issue at hand — and, in doing so, actu­ally learn a lit­tle some­thing them­selves about the issue that they spend so much time argu­ing about.

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