Moral boundaries can be hard to navigate in the public sphere, especially in western secular democracies. How do we live with people who use a different compass and have other priorities? How do we bring to bear our sense of right or wrong on policy and discourse? What is considered persuasive amid a multiplicity of values?
Certain groups, identifiably Christian, have responded to these questions by picketing certain clinics attended by women seeking an abortion. Their targets receive such actions as hostile and intimidating. It is an odd way to prosecute an argument, and to draw any satisfaction from that effect seems to give away a kind of malice.
Last Friday, the Victorian parliament passed an amendment to the Public Health and Wellbeing Act to establish a 150-metre protest-free zone around abortion clinics. It is now illegal for pro-life activists to accost women going in and out of these medical facilities.
On the same weekend, a man shot three people to death and injured nine others at a Planned Parenthood building in the United States. Witnesses believe the Colorado attack was motivated by opposition to abortion, with the gunman saying 'no more baby parts'.
The incident adds to a considerable list of threats, murders, bombings, trespass and vandalism that have taken place at abortion providers since the US Supreme Court decision on Roe vs Wade.
Australia has seen a bit of this violence. In 2001, a man brought 16 litres of kerosene to a Melbourne clinic, intending to burn all 15 staff and 26 patients to death. He killed a security guard. In 2009, a Mosman Park (WA) clinic was firebombed by individuals who believed that it facilitates abortion.
There is an obvious inconsistency in being pro-life while being destructive and murderous.
I need to assert at this point that I believe that life begins at conception. I find it impossible to reconcile with the idea that personhood in utero depends on whether a baby is wanted or unwanted. Human dignity cannot be so arbitrary; it loses meaning otherwise.
But I also believe that bodily autonomy is integral to the dignity of women. There is too long a history to outline within this space how women have been deprived of agency across several dimensions: political, economic, social, sexual and cultural. Against such a backdrop, being able to make a choice carries its own compelling morality.
It is possible to carry both these beliefs simultaneously. More than one feminist has