I claim an absolute right to be interested in the condition of the human fetus because … well, I used to be one myself. I was in my early teens when my mother told me that a predecessor fetus and [#image: /photos/54cbfa292cba652122d8f69f]a successor fetus had been surgically removed, thus making me an older brother rather than a forgotten whoosh. I hope the thought of this hasn’t made me unusually self-centered, or more than usually so. And I’ve since become the father of several fetuses, three of which, or perhaps I had better say three of whom, became reasonably delightful children. There was a time, it seemed, when I couldn’t sneeze on a woman without becoming a potential father. Then there were warped coils, tattered sheaths, missed pills, even moments of grim abandon. I could have been like P. G. Wodehouse’s male codfish, which, suddenly discovering itself to be the parent of several million baby codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all.

But nature and nurture were both lenient. Some of those start-up operations never made it to full term for mysterious reasons, and at least once I found myself in a clinic while “products of conception” were efficiently vacuumed away. I can distinctly remember thinking, on the last such occasion, that under no persuasion of any kind would I ever allow myself to be present at such a moment again. (Having once written a mildly “pro-life” essay, I now find that “christopherhitchens.com” links you instantly to a Web site called abortionismurder.org, emblazoned with a ghastly photograph of a dead 21-week-old baby. I resent this crude, uninvited annexation.)

The decision I took was mine and taken for myself alone. If it doesn’t have a moral basis, it does at least have a very strong instinctual one. But can I or should I be able to make it for anyone else? Three decades ago this month, in the matter of Roe v. Wade, the United States Supreme Court ruled that this question was circumscribed by a privacy right which resolved the whole agony into a matter of personal choice. Ever since then, the abortion “issue” has been the most fervently debated social problem in America. And, as a mobilizing matter, it has gained rather than lost potency. (Most of the Democrats I know still cling to the wreck of their party for this reason above all, or in some cases for this reason alone.) And in no other country or culture has the struggle of “choice” versus “life” been fought so hard, or for so long. This isn’t surprising when you reflect that:

• The United States is the birthplace of the modern feminist movement.

• The United States is the nation par excellence that decides its most grave matters in its courts rather than its legislature.

• The United States is the most religious as well as the most secular of societies.

• The United States is the country most wedded to the idea of individualism.

• The United States is the special site of medical and scientific innovation.

• The United States is the chief bastion of puritanism as regards the family.

• The United States is the great bridgehead and laboratory of hedonism as regards everything else.

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is therefore the perfect hinge for a full-dress cultural war. It was, in strict political time, a late triumph of the 60s ethos of “liberation” from social and sexual constraint. It was achieved by the courts rather than by the voters, George McGovern having been obliterated in the preceding year’s presidential election amid jeers about his endorsement of “acid, amnesty, and abortion.” But the trick was turned back on the conservatives by a shrewd tactical maneuver, which redefined the uterus as a location of private property and individual liberty. Ever since, and in a drama which becomes at times quite surreal, the “left” in this dispute has defended the right of the autonomous person to be let alone by the state, while the “right” has called for the deployment of “big government” intrusion into the most intimate of all conceivable spheres.