guns and babies

Friend Donna convinced me I should keep writing, so here goes again. Recent thoughts have been circling around the similarities between the issues of gun control on the right and abortion rights on the left. The basic conceptual underpinnings are the same, i.e.,: maintenance of personal choice; autonomy from government in private decisions; defensiveness against using isolated, outlier tragedies as justification for a ban; and entrenchment to avoid the slippery slope. Up to this point I have been in favor of gun control and also reproductive autonomy, but I can see the ideological hypocrisy in this.

Thought experiment: What would it actually take to allow for movement on either side? Specifically, what would I need in order to be able to soften around reproductive rights? Suppose that if I desired an abortion, I would have to have an ultrasound, look at the embryonic heartbeat, be counseled about alternative options, and wait 48 hours prior to moving forward.

If I believed that those interventions were being forced upon me by outsiders who disrespected my decision-making capacity, it is very difficult to imagine that I could ever accept them in an open-hearted way. But if I imagine that my healthcare provider were to say to me something like, "I sincerely trust your ability to make this decision. At the same time, there are many people who do believe that sometimes there are aspects of this decision that you may not have fully considered, and in order to keep this procedure legal, we will ask you to participate in these steps. If, after going through these steps, you continue to wish for an abortion, we will proceed without any further questioning."

I guess I would be willing to go through those extra steps in order to appease the concerns of those who believe that an embryo is an actual human life. It would not make me happy or feel good, but as long as I knew the choice would remain my own, I could likely stay open to something like a pre-procedure consultation. In fact, it is not dissimilar to the pre-procedure consultations that intended parents receive prior to donor-conceived IVF.

So. What if a gun-rights advocate went to purchase a gun, and were told that they needed to go through a waiting period, a mandatory training, and a background check - not because we disrespect their capacity to be responsible with the weapon, but in order to appease the fears of some in the community about gun ownership.

In order to get movement on these issues, both sides need to be willing to engage in behavior that is personally distasteful out of a sense of the shared community, and a recognition that there are fellow citizens who fear the action they are about to take. Emotionally, I want to be an absolutist on these issues - women should never have to answer questions about their reproductive choices, and no reason justifies the ownership of a high powered rifle. However, I have to recognize these behaviors occur within a societal context. If we all insist on doing whatever the f*** we want without attending to the legitimately-felt concerns of our opponents, we are no longer in a fellowship society.

On the other hand. Taking this train of thought in another direction, this kind of policy could result in all kinds of ridiculousness. Like that gay people should have to do some sort of coursework on heterosexual sex before engaging in gay sex, just to appease the fears and concerns of the homophobic amongst us, and vice versa... The examples of ridiculousness never really end.

So I am back to the drawing board. If we are committed to respecting personal choice, how are restrictions on behavior ever determined? It has to have something to do with societal harm. Pro-lifers believe they are saving the lives of actual human beings. Gun control activists also believe they are saving lives of actual human beings. Pro-choice activists dispute the humanity of the embryo while emphasizing that of the woman, and gun rights activists dispute the danger of the gun, but rather of the irresponsible gun owner. The problem with these issues is that the two sides hold a fundamentally different understanding of where danger or violence resides. Without a shared definition of the problem, there can never be consensus about how to move forward toward common ground.

So that must be how to move forward. Somehow to find a place in which the issues are defined in the same terms by opposing sides.