“Each of you is to write an argumentative paper on a contentious issue. However, NO papers on abortion!!! If you turn in a paper on that topic you will not receive a grade. I never want to read a paper on that topic again and NO! I am not going to discuss this and your ‘free speech rights’. You can write all you want about free speech, but not in any way related to how I won’t let you write this paper about abortion.”
It was 1989 and I sat in a high school classroom in American Falls, Idaho. The old, high windows let light pour into the room. Students moved uneasily in their chairs, one girl even stormed out of the room. It was abundantly obvious that trying to argue with the instructor was a bad move. Clearly the teacher’s caveat just sunk a dozen papers half-written before pen ever reached paper.
I sighed and went through my mental list of topics I cared about and selected something more mundane. As I usually did, I sketched out the argument so I could do my research at the library later. Maybe my mother would take me to the Idaho State University library so I could find a few better resources than the minimal school and city libraries provided. At the large library I could take notes and start to fill-in the outline. If something was particularly complicated, I would have to pay five cents a page to make copies of it to read through later. Then I could hand write the paper. We had a Commodore at home with a printer, but I still had not learned how to type. So, I would have to neatly rewrite it in pen before turning my paper in.
Adolescents have it different today. They argue day and night with their friends about major topics. Research is as easy as doing a Google search to find “the best argument for…”, heaven forbid that anyone have to go to a major regional library! Notes are made on laptops, phones or tablets (although my teen son seems to need notebook paper for some mystical reason). Copies are made by taking a screenshot, printing as a pdf, sharing a meme, or photographing a page with a phone camera.
The joys of editing and re-editing the text, auto-correct, and other features make the task of presenting an idea far easier. Is it any wonder that our national discourse has become so off-the-cuff and built upon “owning” the opponent in endless online flame wars and echo chambers? There is no teacher to say, “enough of that topic” or to set parameters for research, citation, and reasoned argument. If we feel it, it must be true. If we feel it deeply, we must be on the side of the angels.
Still, I often think about that teacher and her strong rejection of any papers on abortion and why she steadfastly refused to tell us why. Of course I have thought through the possibilities.
Perhaps she was tired of hearing the same talking points over and over again. Maybe she detested the subject and how cavalier a bunch of fresh-faced high school students treated it with bald assertions and moral outrage.
Maybe she, a family member or a close friend lost a baby during pregnancy or was raped or simply became pregnant at a young age and had an abortion and hated being endlessly reminded of the events.
Perhaps she was a liberal and hated reading endless papers from conservative kids in small town Idaho. Perhaps she was a conservative and hated the claims from the newly minted liberals in her class.
Certainly she believed enough ink had been poured out in newsrooms, schools, Congress, state legislatures, letter campaigns, and the Supreme Court to adequately cover the topic. A high school paper would add nothing useful or insightful, no matter how many words, pages, and citations were required.
Maybe, probably, it was most of that and more. No matter what her reason, I can understand her desire and her limits on the assignment. Sixteen years after Roe v. Wade should have been long enough for everything to be said. It wasn’t. The “culture war” was far from over. Nobody was going to concede anything.
Now, forty-nine years after it was decided by the court, a new Supreme Court ruling overturned Roe and my news feed is endlessly filled with the same arguments, the same talking points, the same simplistic political cartoons, and the same red-faced shouting.
I certainly never wanted to hear the slogans ever again. Yet here they are in headlines, social media posts, and endless podcasts, articles, and news shows: back-alley, coat hangar, baby killer, rapists, privacy, murder, incest, choice, life, forced birth, adoption, pro-life, men controlling women’s bodies, mothers killing their babies, fetus, baby, clump of cells, human, activist court, the people, the rule of law, Constitutional rights, states rights, women’s rights, human rights, fascist, communist, compromise, no compromise, slippery slope, hypocrites, what about….
Emotionally loaded words are fired as endless broadsides against the two sides - two evenly-matched and equally obstinate battleships caught in an endless battle. Neither is willing to give an inch, both convinced of the ultimate rightness of their cause, only obliteration of the other is acceptable. Salvo after salvo fills the air with thunder and smoke, but each shell bounces harmlessly off the armor of the opponent. Sailors grow old and die, but are quickly replaced with new recruits - more fanatical, more angry, more determined, more full of righteous indignation, more full of hate.
Everyone somehow knows everyone else’s motives. Forget about facts. Go for the jugular and call them out for being sluts or misogynistic rapists. Scream in their faces. Do what it takes. Confront them on the streets, in restaurants, and march on their homes to terrorize their spouses and children. The stakes are too high. The ends justify any means. The enemy’s every thought is evil, ours are all pure and righteous. We know what we need to know, they are all morons. Trying to reason with them is pointless. We are the enlightened, they are the stupid.
Things are a little different today, though. It is certainly not high school in 1989. We are back in junior high. Cliques gather around the people who shout the most cutting barbs. Dissent is met with ostracism, cruelty, and unveiled hate. Rude comments and vulgarities are thrown in the face of anyone who does not agree with us. Everyone is suddenly a constitutional scholar and will punch you in the face if you disagree with their pronouncements.
Oddly, both sides claim to be on the side of love and kindness.
Yes, I do believe what one side is advocating is morally wrong, but that does not mean the other side is morally righteous. Ends do not justify means. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Shouting gets you nowhere. Perhaps we need to go back to grade school and relearn those lessons before we try to take on more weighty issues.