A cartoon today reminded me of a thought experiment I have been musing lately — that homelessness has some parallels to abortion, that might make it easier to talk about abortion with people who have strong negative feelings about it.
Many people are deeply uncomfortable with the idea of abortion, without being able to consider exactly what they think should be done to minimize it. Similarly, many people are uncomfortable with the reality of the homeless. Very few people want to step around homeless people as they walk their dogs or drop their children off at school. Homelessness makes many non-homeless people feel deeply uncomfortable for reasons they may not completely understand. And many people are very judgemental about both the homeless, and women seeking abortions. But banning sleeping in public, like banning abortion, punishes without addressing the cause. The reasons for people sleeping on the streets are myriad and difficult. The same is true of abortion. Many abortion patients, like many homeless, have made choices that you or I might disapprove of. There is a lot of disdain. But banning either one is ineffective for the same reason — it takes the focus away from considering reasonable alternatives. The activists on the front lines of banning abortions are generally opposed to to anything like access to family planning or fact-based sex ed that would reduce unplanned pregnancy. They oppose social programs like Medicaid expansion that would meaningful help families who have children under difficult circumstances. In the same way, people who want to ban sleeping in public do not generally support government housing programs. I think in both situations, the desire to punish is stronger than any desire to understand the reasons, or to give people viable alternatives. But the analogy to homelessness might be useful to discuss that disconnect without having to discuss people’s faith-based beliefs about the moral value of zygotes. It isn’t about the perceived moral failings of our fellow citizens. It’s about our responsibility to our fellow citizens to not make their lives more difficult than they already are.