Choice and Repercussion

by Donald DeMarco

Jean Bethke Elstain, an author I greatly admire, made an astute observation when she remarked that “much that comes parading through town under the banner of ‘choice’ is actually a new set of constraints and compulsions.”  “Parading” is an appropriately descriptive word since this new attitude toward choice does not come to us through a wise and thoughtful tradition. Rather, it comes whistling into town with much clang and clatter, but with little substance. “More and more women,” she goes on to say, “testify that the ‘choice’ to abort post-amniocentesis if they are carrying a ‘defective’ child is nearly irresistible:  they become ‘bad mothers’ by carrying a child to term rather than aborting it!  ‘Choice’ and ‘constraint’ always go hand-in-hand.”  She penned these words nearly 25 years ago (Chronicles, October, 1989). In retrospect, she appears prophetic.  Her words are truer today than they were a quarter of a century ago when she first wrote them.

Choices are not without consequences. Bad choices can have unhappy repercussions. Nature cannot be mocked with impunity; it has a way of striking back.  Overeating brings on indigestion.  Immoral choices are followed by guilt and regret.  In the web of life, choice is not free from a multitude of things that are not directly chosen but nonetheless do reverberate.  A thief in the night may think that all he is doing is obtaining his loot.  But his action puts the whole town on alert.

Joyce Arthur, coordinator of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada complained when actress Nicole Kidman announced to the press that she was “thrilled” at being pregnant.  Ms. Arthur wants pregnant women to be less positive about their pregnancies:  “It certainly shows any young woman watching these movies or following these celebrities that the best option is to have the baby and it glorifies that choice.”  The choice to abort brings with it a prohibition of any public display of maternal joy.  One choice annuls another.  We must not glorify choices.  We want to make all choices perfectly free of any outside influence.  This would mean, incidentally, the logical end of commercial advertising. Nonetheless, this is a strange request coming from an organization that has done everything it could to influence the choice of abortion.  The choice for abortion, indeed, as Elshtain has remarked, does bring with it a considerable array of constraints and compulsions.

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 Donald DeMarco, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International and a contributing editor of the Truth and Charity Forum. He is Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario and adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, CT.