Cynthia Nixon, star of the “Sex and the City” series on HBO, recently launched a campaign to raise public awareness of what she calls the “frightening” anti-abortion language included in the Stupak-Pitts version of the House healthcare bill. According to Nixon, abortion is a “very basic female right that we need to protect”; and clearly, the Stupak-Pitts amendment is geared precisely at undermining that claim.
In an interview, Nixon told CNN that she has been vocal about her pro-choice affiliation for almost 30 years—since she was 15-years-old. Certainly, her fervor has not waned in recent years. In fact, Miranda—Nixon’s character on “Sex and the City”—at one point even chose to have an abortion because of an unwanted pregnancy, but backed-out at the last moment. The significance? “Choice,” says Nixon. “This should be all about choice.”
Of course, to embed a campaign for liberal access to abortion within talk of a woman’s right to pursue self-determined, free choices is a gross misrepresentation of authentic human freedom; the significance of free choice must be embedded deeply within a thorough understanding of the meaning of the human person. But, unfortunately, such a tactic is quite commonplace in today's public dialogue. What is indeed more shocking, and what demands a much closer look, is Nixon’s very personal connection to the issue of abortion which, in the end, betrays a level of carelessness in her argument that shows how bizarre a defense of abortion really can be.
“My mother had an illegal abortion pre-1973,” reports Nixon, “and it's something that I would never want to face or want my daughter to be facing or any of her friends. Abortion is a right I feel must not go away, and I feel like people aren’t mobilizing so much because it’s so complicated and it’s difficult to understand.” (CNN)
Indeed, abortion is difficult to understand. But even more perplexing is Nixon’s horrifying misinterpretation of the significance of her own mother’s illegal abortion. How can she defend abortion tactics when the fetus aborted could quite well have been her?
A few things are critical, here: first, in order to assess a social reality, like legalized abortion, one must first take account of him or herself as an integral member of that social group. In other words, to form a value-judgment concerning the moral integrity of some action (even a social-action), one must first possess and realize the capacity to form such a judgment—a capacity that is firmly rooted in personhood, and the faculty of self-reflective, rational thought (all thoroughly “human” characteristics).
Nixon’s sensitivity to her mother’s plight (while at first, perhaps, driven by empathy and the desire to show compassion) is, in the end, completely illogical. If Nixon hopes to show the value of legalized, “safe” abortion, then she also asserts, simultaneously, her own capacity to form reasoned, meaningful judgments; and these are proper only to human persons. In other words, Nixon’s claim that abortion is a justifiable action—specifically on account of her own mother’s unfortunate circumstances—betrays the very fact that she, as the subject of a pregnancy carried full-term, possesses the ability to think rationally, speak articulately, and argue forcibly (all considered hallmarks of human nature). And all of this simply by virtue of the fact that she was born alive, and educated—not as something other than the “pre-1973” fetus, but as precisely the same sort of being—that is, as a human being.
The question then arises, what separates Nixon from that fetus? After all, they both were formed in the same womb—and both were conceived by the same mother. Moreover, it is implied by Nixon’s argument that, had the aborted fetus been born alive, it would have actualized the same capacities for rational thought, articulate speech and forcible argumentation. In short, the fetus would have developed into a mature human being. Once more we ask: what is the fundamental difference between Cynthia Nixon and the “pre-1973,” illegally aborted fetus?
The answer, of course, is nothing other than the intention of the mother. In the case of the aborted fetus, Nixon’s mother never intended to carry the baby full-term, and subsequently, she had it killed. In Cynthia’s case, however, her mother intended to complete the pregnancy, and to bear her child. In either case, the life inside of her womb was fully human, but only in the latter was it made the subject of unalienable rights. In any case, the very child whose death Cynthia Nixon cites as her own justification of legalized abortion is in fact—even biologically—her own sibling.
In a grim turn of events, Nixon’s advocacy for a woman’s right to choose is made suddenly grotesque by her implicit support of fratricide, all under the guise of women’s liberation and the defense of basic human rights. Instead of mourning the loss of her older, unborn brother or sister, Nixon ignores that suffering altogether, and chooses to empathize rather with her mother—whose decision to carry her later pregnancy to term no doubt holds significant value for Nixon. Ultimately, a situation that might have afforded perhaps the most convincing platform for combating pro-abortion legislation—the loss of a sibling to the tragedy of abortion—was turned into a depraved endorsement of murder, fratricide and relativistic reasoning.
