The debate about U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s subpoena of hundreds of women’s private medical records is divided into two basic camps. Predictably, these are drawn down the line of pro-life (anti-abortion) and pro-choice (anti-government intervention). On the one side, those who are opposed to abortion systematically chip away at the laws stemming from Roe vs Wade, try to redefine the start of human being, and feel they stand for morality (at least until their sister is raped, perhaps). On the other side, a heavy rhetoric of medical privacy is used to keep the controversial decision of whether or not to be responsible for a terminated pregnancy a personal rather than an institutional one – but while it focuses on that issue, it also refuses to confront difficult (albeit personal) spiritual and religious issues. Both sides have flaws – this is why the controversy never dies down.

I suppose what bothers me the most about this debate is that, like so much else, it is being conducted at such a superficial level. Where are the investigative reporters? Why don’t we ever read or hear about the interconnections between each argument and other realities such as the death penalty, or welfare, or class structures, or the religious misunderstandings by both sides? Even the basic issue is much more complicated than our public discourse would suggest. Haven’t we matured enough into this debate to finally start asking some more difficult questions? Or are Americans really so dumb that all we can do is march around with a Yes or a No? I don’t understand how Ashcroft or anybody else can justify going to private hospital records – but why aren’t we surprised? Where are the OLD republicans that would have compared the transparency of all our private information to the current administration to those bad ole Russians over which we held such clear superiority in terms of freedom and values. I don’t actually see much in the way of values or integrity across the board. The next time you hear someone mention that word, how about a definition – a real definition.

Let’s lose the buzzwords – we need to get down to the real arguments and evidence in these matters. And we need to somehow do it outside of the charged emotional mind-numbers that our abortion debates have engendered among us.