Interpretation and the Abortion Debate

Despite Dworkin's attempt to resolve the conflict over abortion by ignoring different possible interpretations of the principle of the free exercise of religion, an account he gives of the relation between legal and literary interpretation seems to lead in a different direction. Indeed, it seems to lead in a direction close to the model of legitimate differences that this book has tried to promote. According to what Dworkin calls the aesthetic hypothesis, any "interpretation of a piece of literature attempts to show which way of reading . . . the text reveals it as the best

work of art." Here Dworkin picks up on Gadamer's "anticipation of completeness" to argue that part of any genuine attempt to understand a text involves an effort to construe its meaning in such as way that it has as much point or value as possible. To read a detective novel, Dworkin insists, as if it were a philosophical treatise on death is to obscure a point of view from which it can be a piece of literature with value. Still, Dworkin also argues that we can approach texts with different aesthetic hypotheses about what makes a piece of literature a good one. "Different theories or schools or traditions of interpretation," he writes, will "assume significantly different normative theories about what literature is and what it is for and about what makes one work of literature better than another."^[34] If our aesthetic hypothesis demands that we interrogate eighteenth-century novels in terms of issues of class, race, and gender, then we will understand and rank their value differently than if our aesthetic hypothesis directs us to look at aesthetic form instead. Hence, our interpretations of texts under different aesthetic hypotheses will differ.

At the same time, Dworkin argues that all interpretations must comply with what he calls constraints of "fit"^[35] and what the German hermeneutic tradition of Schleiermacher and Gadamer understands as the coherence of part and whole. In reading the work as the best work of art it can be, interpreters cannot change the work, ignoring large parts of its plot, descriptions, or characterizations. Nor can they fail to show how the various parts of the content of the text fit together as a coherent unity or how its style and tropes are to be integrated with what the interpreter takes to be the text's content. To this extent, considerations of fit constrain questions of how the text is the best it can be: "Perhaps," Dworkin writes, "Shakespeare could have written a better play based on the sources he used for Hamlet than he did and in that better play the hero would have been a more forceful man of action. It does not follow that Hamlet , the play he wrote, really is like that after all."^[36]

Yet if our interpretations of literary texts can differ in their aesthetic hypotheses and still remain constrained by considerations of fit, this analysis suggests that our interpretations of life and liberty in the debate over abortion might similarly differ in constrained and therefore legitimate ways. Luker claims that the "surprise, outrage, and vindictiveness" that characterize the abortion debate are the predictable result of finding that one's world view is not universally shared:

Individuals are surprised because for most of them this is the first time their deepest values have been brought to explicit consciousness, much less

challenged. They are outraged because these values are so taken for granted that people have no vocabulary with which to discuss the fact that what is at odds is a fundamental view of reality. And they are vindictive because denying that one's opponents are decent, honorable people is one way of distancing oneself from the unsettling thought that there could be legitimate differences of opinion on one's most cherished beliefs.^[37]

Still, these are not the typical reactions to finding that others do not share one's understanding of a text or work of art. Nor are they part of Luker's or Ginsburg's response to their own investigations of pro-life and pro-choice views. Instead, these responses seem to reflect a willingness to take seriously, as interpretations constrained by considerations of fit, understandings of life, liberty, sex, and abortion that differ from their own. Indeed, they reflect a willingness to see these interpretations in their "best light" and to use them to illuminate the issues at stake.

Suppose we develop these attitudes. Suppose we no longer conceive of the debate over abortion as a clash between different absolute principles, between principles of life and procreative responsibility, on the one hand, and liberty and "amative" sex, on the other. And suppose we no longer conceive of it as a conflict that must end in a consensus on the liberty of all to their own sense of religious or sacred values, as Dworkin claims, where, as Americans, we also agree on what is to count as a religious value. Suppose, instead, we take up his analysis of the possible validity of different interpretations of law and literature that all nonetheless comply with constraints of "fit" and "best light." Suppose, in other words, we construe our differences over abortion in the same way that Dworkin construes our differences over literary texts, as the consequence of different contexts of assumptions and values duly and legitimately constrained by considerations of fit. Moreover, suppose we not only take the alternative views of abortion seriously but actively look for the ways in which they might complement and expand our own.

On this view, it is important to the pro-choice position in the abortion debate not to ask only how it might argue against the "truth" of the pro-life view. Rather, and more important, it might ask how it could expand its own understanding by taking the pro-life view seriously, as both an internally coherent position and as a possibly plausible and appropriately constrained interpretation of the meaning of the values, norms, and principles at stake. It need not adopt a pro-life position. Still, in considering it hermeneutically, a pro-choice position might conclude that it has focused too entirely on a woman's life and liberty and might therefore be led to revise its own understanding of these principles

to include a greater appreciation of the value and even potential of different sorts of human lives. As many feminists themselves point out, some women experience feelings of grief after enduring an abortion, even when they have no feelings of regret.^[38] That abortion is not the equivalent of a tonsillectomy, that more is at issue than the right to decide what is done with one's own body are parts of what pro-choice advocates can learn (and many already have learned) from the pro-life view. Pro-choice advocates might learn, in addition, to concede that abortion can cause grief without assuming such grief casts suspicion on those decisions or on pro-choice advocates' commitment to principles of autonomy.^[39]

Moreover, pro-choice advocates might learn from the pro-life attack on the materialism and consumerism of American life, as well as from the particular existential orientation that many pro-life advocates manifest by accepting life's vicissitudes. From their point of view, pregnancies happen, and one's life adjusts to living and caring for the children that result. One need not accept all the fatalism this life orientation implies. Still, there is a dimension of it that seems important and that we already met in considering surrogate mothering: namely, that not all of life can be controlled or planned. New technologies, both with regard to giving birth and to preventing it, bring with them a focus on control that can blind us to other possibilities. This blindness seems obvious with regard to new birth technologies, which can lead couples to be so intent on technologically conquering their infertility that they overlook the parenting opportunities that exist through adoption.^[40] Some of the same might be said for attempts to control our fertility. We do not have to give up all attempts to control fertility or infertility to see the point that not all aspects of love or life are ones for which we can completely plan, whether through technology or law. Instead, we might hold onto two ideas: first, nurturance is a value that may require us to change our lives while it enriches them and, second, reliance on technological control can imprison our lives as much as it may seem to liberate them.

On the other side, the pro-life position has a similar opportunity to learn once it understands that its claims about liberty and the sanctity of life reflect interpretations of ideas of which other interpretations are possible as well. By taking seriously the pro-choice understanding of liberty, the pro-life view might learn to find dimensions in the meaning of this principle that center on the particularity of different family circumstances. Moreover, in the meaning of the sanctity of human life it might learn to find dimensions that distinguish between different kinds of human life, just as the pro-choice position learns to see connections between

them. It might also learn to consider the level of social services required if women and children are to have a decent life, as the pro-life position might come to understand it. One cannot be consistently pro-life only up to the point of birth. Rather, a pro-life position might learn to concern itself with prenatal care, child care, and the poverty in which many families, with their children, live.^[41]

On the more existential level, a pro-life advocate might learn from the pro-choice position to be less quiescent in the conduct of his or her life and, more important, in the conduct of his or her children's lives. If those who are pro-choice can learn to modify their technological hubris from the attitude pro-life advocates take toward life, pro-life advocates might learn to modify the imbalance they have struck between control and acceptance as well. They might learn to understand the raising of children as a grave responsibility, not a natural occurrence that one simply accepts, but a journey the implications of which inspire awe and intimidate enough to legitimate some level of emotional, psychological, social, and financial preparation. Indeed, since family relationships seem inevitably to overwhelm the intentions we have with regard to them, it makes all the more sense for individuals to be able to decide for themselves when they are simply not ready for them.

In any case, we might overcome the clash of absolutes in the debate over abortion not by denying our differences or exaggerating them. Instead, we might recognize them as "just" constrained interpretations of the meaning of certain norms and principles that both sides in the debate take seriously. Further, we might ask how each interpretation of these norms might be educated and expanded by the other so that each is helped to a more complex understanding of the meanings our principles, norms, and values might have.