A certain 15-year-old

After President Obama's visit to Notre Dame in May, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Sunday editorial section ran a debate of the two sides of the abortion issue under the title "Does abortion allow for common ground?" I read both positions to a certain 15-year-old I know, who is no lover of God. I asked that she take mental note of the respective apologists' arguments, as I meant this to be an exercise in analysis and rhetoric, and not particularly a proselytizing session. First up was Dayle Sternberg, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania.

Ms. Sternberg used her 1,000 words to make the following points:

When I finished Sternberg and glanced up at my 15-year-old, she had a puzzled look on her face. She expressed surprise that the abortion rights proponent had not even mentioned the question of the status of the baby (or fetus, or products of conception, or whatever they're calling it these days). She found all the statistics on unwanted pregnancies and failure-rates of birth control to be oddly beside the point.

I then proceeded to read the anti-abortion side, contributed by Edell Finnegan, director of the Pro-Life Union in Pennsylvania. It mainly highlighted two facts: that human life begins at conception and that abstinence is 100 percent effective. My 15-year-old deemed the pro-lifer to have the better argument.

But she told me she is still pro-choice. Her reason? She said she doesn't like a bunch of white guys in Washington telling her what to do with her body.

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