"Abortion should be safe, legal and rare."

"Teens in Gloucester made a responsible decision when they decided to keep their babies."

"Nobody likes abortion." 

The Right has done it again. True, they've not yet achieved everything they want legislatively; abortion is still legal and available - in some places under some circumstances (although they have been appallingly successful at whittling away at both availability and legality). But, they have successfully changed the discourse -- and the moral climate -- even within much of the pro-choice community. 

Thirty years ago, abortion was seen as a positive advancement -- medically, socially, and religiously. Medically, abortion was seen as a solution to a public health problem, because safe abortion reduced maternal mortality and morbidity. Socially, access to abortion gave women the ability to order their reproductive, family, and professional lives. From a religious perspective, abortion enabled women to be responsible stewards of their God-given gifts and talents -- to make decisions about how to order their lives so that they could best use those gifts to serve God and the common good. 

But now, after decades of badgering and finger wagging from the purportedly morally superior Right, not only are individual women succumbing to obligatory guilt where once there was relief and gratitude, but even the pro-choice movement has jumped on the bandwagon. Emphasizing the "rare" in "safe, legal, and rare," focusing more on reducing need than on increasing availability, expecting these decisions to be fraught with moral ambiguity and guilt...all of these (not bad in and of themselves) are disastrous when put to the service of disparaging, rather than rejoicing in, abortion. 

How about a reality check? 

The reproductive justice movement has clearly outlined what women need to control their reproductive lives.  We need support for the children we want and the abortions we need.  To be able to choose when and if to have children, we must value healthy sexuality, live free of overt and covert violence and coercion, have better contraceptive options, promote sex education in schools starting from an early age, and be a society that respects women and our moral agency.  We're not even close to that. If we were, there would still be women who needed abortions, but we'd need to rely on that solution less often. 

Yes, we need to be sensitive to women who struggle when choosing an abortion.  But that sensitivity has shifted our frame to "abortion is painful, abortion should be avoided."