Put on your helmets, we’re talking about abortion.
This is gonna be long, because I have a lot of shit to say. With an issue like this, if you just throw your opinion out there and keep at the surface level, such as, “I’m against abortion” or “I support a woman’s right to choose”, you’re likely wasting your time and the time of everyone listening to you because most people will assume several things about you based on either of those statements and will dismiss or embrace you based on those assumptions, which in my case at least, would be so very wrong.
So I’m going to detail this right into the ground, because this is my blog and somewhere in my archives there needs to be my definitive opinion about this issue for me to link to whenever abortion comes up in the future. My other motivation for this exceedingly long opus about a dreary subject is that I’m incredibly sick of this issue always coming down to a war between faith-based morality and hyper-liberal feminism. There’s so much gray area in between those two that no one ever seems to want to inhabit publicly, and I think that’s why no progress is ever made in any debate about it.
So the first thing to do is state from the get-go a few key facts:
1. I’m not a Christian or a believer in any other religion that has ever existed. See here. Nothing that I have to say about abortion is in any way rooted in religious faith, religious dogma or teachings, or religious ideals.
2. I’m a social liberal. I don’t care what gays do, I don’t care if people want to smoke dope, blah blah blah you know the drill, and I don’t want abortion made illegal.
3. I’ve never been pregnant and never intend to be. I don’t want kids.
All right then.
I’ve said in the past that I have no opinion on abortion one way or another, which was because I just didn’t give it much thought. It’s never been an issue for me personally, after all.
But recently I realized I do have an opinion, obviously I do, because I’ve gone to great lengths for many years to avoid precisely that situation: it ever being an issue for me.
I’ve never wanted to experience pregnancy, have children, be a mother, any of it. I love being a woman, I’m rampantly heterosexual, and I think babies are adorable, but I just don’t want to be a parent for a multitude of reasons that require a whole other post.
Anyway, when I started thinking lately about why I’ve avoided pregnancy so vigorously, it didn’t take long for me to understand that it’s because I’m more opposed to having an abortion than having a baby.
I knew since I was a child that an accidental pregnancy at any point in my life would result in one of the following outcomes unless I had a miscarriage: I’d have a baby OR I’d have an abortion. One or the other, end of story.
There’ve been a handful of times I thought I might be pregnant - never because I didn’t use contraception correctly; always because I’m paranoid and assume the worst too often for my own good. Period one day late? Pregnancy test stat!
Each of those times, even if the idea I might be pregnant only lasted for five minutes, I contemplated the possibility that there was a real live tiny human being inside my body, and I knew beyond any doubt that if it really were there, I could not kill it.
(I also knew that along with being unwilling to abort it, I’d be unwilling to give it away for adoption. It’s just not in my psychological makeup. If I gestated and gave birth to a person, I would love that person and would want to raise it. Even though I’ll never pursue becoming a mother, if it happened despite all my best efforts, I know myself well enough to know that I would feel immediately attached to the baby, long before it was born.)
The point is, clearly I’m deeply opposed to having an abortion; otherwise I wouldn’t have spent so much effort and been so careful for the last almost-20 years. Even now, I’m about to turn 36 and am statistically far less able to get pregnant even if I wanted to, and I’m still a complete psycho about preventing it. Because if it happened, I would have a kid, because having a kid is less repugnant to me than having an abortion. Otherwise, I wouldn’t worry about an “accident” so much, because I’d know I could fix the problem in an hour at the clinic.
So, realizing all of that about myself, I went deeper with it in my mind. Why do I see abortion as such a bad thing? I don’t give a shit what the Bible or the Pope say. I don’t believe in hell so I don’t fear Godly punishment. I don’t believe babies are a gift from God or a sacred miracle. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business what I do reproductively. Almost all of my friends are pro-choice and they wouldn’t shun me if I had an abortion. No man I’ve ever been involved with had a solid opinion either way so that wouldn’t have been a problem.
And, frankly, I don’t even think it’s wrong for a woman to have an extremely early abortion, before the fetus’s heart starts beating (which, however, is a lot earlier than many people realize). Even most pro-choicers agree that late-term abortions are seriously fucked up and shouldn’t happen unless the mother will die otherwise.
Well, I’ve figured out that it comes down to two things for me. One is simply that for me personally, destroying a pregnancy, no matter how early, just isn’t something I could do. Every other woman has to decide for herself, but in my brain, with my psychology and emotional makeup, abortion would never be possible because I know that the minute I realized I was pregnant, I would see that embryo or fetus as my own child. And what kind of psychopath can kill their child, even if someone else might not see that clump of cells as a “child”?
But the second reason I see abortion as anathema to how I want to live my life shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s read this site for long: personal responsibility. To me, the vast majority of abortions (in the U.S., that’s all I’m talking about here) are a direct result of an utter failure to behave in a rational, responsible, thoughtful fashion.
If you don’t want to be pregnant, then don’t get pregnant.
Easy to say, right? Yep. It’s also pretty easy to DO, at least for me, because I fancy myself a sentient human being with a functioning brain, and as such, I enjoy making decisions that result in pleasant outcomes for me and everyone I care about. Failing to prevent pregnancy while knowing full well that I don’t want pregnancy would be an irrational behavior, not to mention fantastically immature and shortsighted.
Before I go any further with this, please note:
Women with family incomes less than $15,000 obtain 28.7% of all abortions; Women with family incomes between $15,000 and $29,999 obtain 19.5%; Women with family incomes between $30,000 and $59,999 obtain 38.0%; Women with family incomes over $60,000 obtain 13.8%.
1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).
47% of all abortions are performed on women who have had at least one previous abortion.
You see that only 7% of abortions in the U.S. are done for reasons most all of us can get behind: rape, incest, and medical situation of the mother. It’s the other 93% I’m talking about here, and the fact that so many are repeats and so many are not simply poor women who don’t know any better or who can’t get contraception. The same link also shows that only 20% of abortions are on teenagers.
In other words, a whole LOT of abortions are done on grown women who are not in poverty, who weren’t raped, and who have no medical contraindications to pregnancy. They just don’t want to be pregnant.
I have no “moral judgment” of those women. What I have is a profound lack of respect for their decision-making abilities.
Having an embryo or fetus removed from your body is a definitive statement: you do not want to be pregnant. And if you are THAT opposed to being pregnant, you have no rational excuse for becoming pregnant in the first place. If you can get access to a doctor to perform an abortion, then you can get access to contraceptives.
If you’re smart enough to figure out that abortion will prevent you from giving birth to a baby, and you know how and where to get an abortion, then you’re smart enough to know that contraception will also prevent you from giving birth to a baby, and you will know how and where to get the pill, condoms, diaphragms, spermicides, Depo-Provera injections, and all the other handy prophylactics out there.
Can’t take the pill? Get your tubes tied. Might want kids some day? Condoms, spermicide, diaphragm, and withdrawal. I’m not kidding. Do it all, every single time you have sex. Sure, it’s a pain in the ass; so is having the contents of your uterus vacuumed out.
You do all that, every time, and still get pregnant? Your pill “failed”? That would suck, but the odds of getting preggers while taking the pill perfectly, or while using more than one prophylactic device at once, are so small that it’s a waste of time to discuss. But if you want to go all the way with this reality, the fact is that if you truly are so against having a baby, so much so that you’d kill it rather than birth it, then you should seriously consider sterilization or not having sex at all if you can’t find a contraceptive you trust.
There is nothing complicated or difficult about any of this, when viewed as an alternative to abortion.
And the only reason any intelligent human being could possibly have a problem with anything I just said is if she simply doesn’t agree that abortion is a less desirable thing than all the hassles of contraception.
[This is now so long that it's getting too cumbersome to have the whole thing on the main page; click below to read the rest.]
I had a college friend who told me that the reason she was having her SECOND abortion was because the pill was too much of a pain in the ass to take every day at the same time. So, abortions aren’t a pain in the ass? Is that a fact? Going to a doctor, getting sedated and anesthetized, getting up on a table, having that doctor put a vacuum into your uterus to suck out everything inside, and enduring physical pain for hours or days afterward, is easier than shoving a pill in your mouth every day at the same time? Easier than making your man wear a condom covered in spermicide while you use a diaphragm?
A monkey could do it. I told her that. She said, “Actually, yes, I’d rather get an abortion once a year than take the pill every day.” There are people who simply don’t think abortion is any different from birth control. I’m working on the assumption here, however, that those people are few and far between.
Some of you are waiting for me to mention abstinence. Frankly, that would be taking “stating the obvious” too far, and even I’m not willing to embarrass myself like that. Clearly, it’s the best way to avoid getting knocked up. But it’s also not very reasonable to expect it. Post-pubescent humans are going to have sex, and at least for the adults among them, there’s nothing wrong with that.
What’s wrong is that so many of them can’t navigate a problem that even primitive people mastered thousands of years ago. The ancients used animal bladders as condoms, you know.
And it’s a very big damn deal, that’s the thing. We’re talking about human life, not cars or diets or even religion or politics. This is bigger than all those things combined.
I know women who spend years of their lives figuring out how many calories are in a burrito but haven’t given one day’s introspection to what it means to live on this planet as a fertile female. It’s a huge responsibility and a huge burden, since you’re a walking, talking potential incubator whether you like it or not. It needs to be taken seriously.
It should be obvious that I’m not talking about third-world abortion here, by the way; my opinion only applies to females who live in the same society and culture I do, and no woman in America of childbearing age right now (under 55 to be safe) can reasonably claim ignorance or that she has no access to contraception, unless at the same time she is ignorant of abortion and has no access to it, either.
I didn’t pay for pills the first 4 years I was on them because I went to Planned Parenthood and told them I was poor. They give them to you for free. Condoms, diaphragms and IUDs and spermicides if you want them, too, along with your yearly checkups (required for any dispensation of contraceptives). FREE.
Oh, I know. Not every woman can get to a free clinic; maybe there’s not one in your town and you have no transportation. Do we really have to go that far out on the bell curve of this thing, though? It really is a stupid point to make anyway, because if you can get access to an abortion, I’m gonna go out on a limb and repeat that you can get access to contraception. They’re supplied by the same people, after all.
For me, none of this has anything to do with religion or morals or whatever; it has everything to do with common sense and using your brain. We’re a species smart enough to put machines on Mars, for crap’s sake, but a huge portion of women in the most advanced and successful society to ever exist aren’t rational or thoughtful enough to comprehend the gravity of what it means to have a functioning uterus. Some animals have a better grasp of cause-and-effect than this.
Like I said before, if any point I’ve made strikes any given person as untrue, then clearly, that person simply doesn’t think abortion is a big deal and genuinely does not believe that it is any different than having your appendix or a tumor removed. I’m working on the assumption here, though, that the vast majority of decent adult human beings would prefer that there are fewer abortions, if for no other reason than the fewer medical procedures you have, the better.
Even if you believe babies aren’t viable human beings until they take their first breath of air, if you’re a reasonable person, you will be compelled to accept the fact that there are medical risks involved with any medical procedure, including abortion. Anesthetics, painkillers, surgical tools, post-procedure pain and possible infection, and so on. Therefore no matter where you stand on when human life begins, the default position for reasonable people is that abortion is “bad” if for no other reason than it’s a medical procedure that can easily be avoided.
Some radical pro-choicers, and even some who aren’t radical at all, will still say I’m wrong. They’ll say none of this matters and all that does matter is what women have the freedom to do what they want with their bodies. Which is fascinating, because I’m positive their claims about autonomy and choice and all that would very likely not be the same if it came to a similar scenario but one that had nothing to do specifically with women, sex, or the feminist agenda.
Let’s say that there was a food that everyone really, really likes a lot, the most delicious food in the world, which almost everyone agrees is absolutely freakin’ delicious - call it orgasm cake. It’s that good. And let’s say that every time you eat orgasm cake, you have about a 20% chance of developing a benign tumor. For genetic reasons, that tumor is extremely painful only for people with blue eyes, so painful that they will have no choice but to have it surgically removed. Any other color eyes, and it is not painful but rather actually feels good and makes you happy. So everyone knows before they eat the cake whether or not they’re going to want that tumor.
The surgery for removing the painful tumor entails all the risks that all surgeries do. It costs money, it’s emotionally difficult, and it’s physically painful.
And let’s say there are dozens of ways for blue-eyed people to eat orgasm cake every single day of their lives but never develop that tumor. All they have to do is take a pill, or stick a patch on their arm, or wrap their fork in plastic and sprinkle some tasteless chemical on the orgasm cake before eating it, or most effectively, do all of those things and others. Blue-eyed people who take those precautions almost never grow the tumor and thus never require the surgical procedure. Everyone knows about these precautions and can get them from either the drug store or the same doctor who they’d otherwise have to go to for the surgery.
What would the same people who insist that abortion is simply a reproductive choice that should be respected say about me, a blue-eyed person, if I ate orgasm cake without using any of the tumor-prevention-devices? They may still say, “hey, that’s your call, it’s your body, your can do what they want.” But how could they possibly, reasonably, deny that I’m completely goddamned nuts?
They can’t. Because it IS nuts to fail to do something that will prevent you from experiencing pain and surgery. It IS nuts to be able and smart enough to neutralize the tumor-causing chemicals in orgasm cake and to fail to do so. It IS nuts to know full fuckin’ well that you have blue eyes and therefore there is a 20% chance that orgasm cake will damn near ruin your life if you’re not careful, and yet you take the chance anyway. That is a completely idiotic way to live.
That’s where I’m coming from on all this. I’m not trying to take anyone’s cake away, I really don’t care if blue-eyed people want to gorge themselves on that cake and have the resulting tumors removed time and again, and I certainly don’t want the surgery to be made illegal.
But I definitely think I’m on solid ground when I say those people are not taking responsible care of their health, they are not using their basic human intelligence to make sound decisions, and they are using their right to personal bodily autonomy to justify doing something that makes no sense. How can it possibly make sense to fail to prevent a tumor that you know will be painful, when it’s so much easier, safer, less expensive, and less painful in every way to do that than to have it removed later?
Like I said at the start, the opinion that abortion is “bad” need not have anything to do with religion or politics. And I really believe that the only way to ever achieve any common ground on this subject is to take those things out of the debate and boil it all the way down to basic common sense. But it seems to me that all you hear from the pro-life side is that abortion is murder and all you hear from the pro-choice side is that abortion is simply a reproductive choice. And everybody just ends up hating each other because they see that simple opposing argument as a total rejection of their own fondly-held ideals.
Meanwhile, I sit here thinking all of those people are completely missing the point, which is that no sensible person wants there to be any abortions at all, and that because of the majority’s refusal to get in the gray area and talk about common sense, the problem not only doesn’t get solved, it gets worse.
If pro-lifers truly want to reduce abortions, they will work with the only thing they can work with, which is reality. Many of you hate Planned Parenthood and want it shut down, but you won’t accept the fact that Planned Parenthood prevents a lot more abortions every day than you ever will by throwing around “abortion is murder.” This is true, and I mean absolutely no offense to you by saying it.
My sister-in-law and I were talking about this yesterday, about what we had to go through at Planned Parenthood to get the pill when we were in our late teens. If you’ve never been there, you have no idea how very determined they are to keep people from getting pregnant who don’t want to be. We were asked if anyone was pressuring us to have sex, we were counseled on the emotional responsibility of sex, and we were given extremely detailed information on how the only way to really prevent pregnancy and STDs was abstinence. I remember the doctor telling me straight up that I had a huge responsibility to use the pills correctly and that she would be very disappointed if she saw me back there, pregnant. They don’t like doing abortions. There are bad seeds among them, of course, and they make the papers. But you have to know that only the outrageous examples (like the PP official who took donations specifically to abort black babies) are going to make it all the way to your awareness.
What I’m saying is, there are very practical ways for pro-lifers to eliminate a lot of abortions. Not necessarily Planned Parenthood, per se, but thorough education for young people and vigorously encouraging them to use contraception IF they insist on having sex. Which most of them will.
At the same time, if pro-choicers truly want to reduce abortions, which most of them say they do, they’ll operate in reality, too. And that involves understanding and accepting that a whole hell of a lot of the people who oppose abortion do so because they sincerely believe fetuses are human beings and that abortion is killing. You have to accept that. It feels like a holocaust to some people, and not because they think you’re a Nazi. It genuinely disturbs them that it’s acceptable to destroy pregnancies, because they see that as destroying human life, in exactly the same way it disturbs them to hear about innocent adults being killed.
You have to give up the idea that anyone who’s opposed to abortion is just being an oppressive misogynist dickhead because that is patently untrue in most cases. Like I said about Planned Parenthood, only the most obnoxious assholes make the news. Most pro-lifers, when it comes down it, are simply horrified at the idea of destroying a baby, even if it is inside a woman who doesn’t want it. And yeah, you can say, “Well then they should be lining up to adopt those babies!” My answer to that is, bullshit. It’s not their fault the unwanted baby exists in the first place. Just because someone doesn’t want a baby to die, which is a perfectly acceptable way to feel, doesn’t mean they should feel obligated to raise that baby as their own.
The only practical answer to any of this is for everyone to mellow out on the rhetoric, stop attributing malicious intent to the people on the other side of the argument, and work with what you have, which is apparently a shitload of women and girls who need to be taught about contraception and need to be able to get it far more easily than they can get an abortion. As long as one side agitates against comprehensive sex education and easy availability of contraception, there will be a huge number of abortions. And as long as the other side refuses to put a lot more emphasis on the most important “choice” as happening on the day a woman has sex instead of the day she gets an abortion, there will be a huge number of abortions.
Everyone on both sides can keep doing what they’re doing, but would be fools to think anything will change if they do. Meanwhile, abortions continue unabated.
Now I’m done. And fair warning: I absolutely refuse to let the comment section become a war zone. My blog will not be host to any kind of insults, name-calling, or denigration of people’s character based on which side of this argument they sit on. If anyone says something obnoxious, and you know what I mean by obnoxious, DO NOT RESPOND to them because I’ll be deleting their comment anyway and you’ll look like a tool for addressing someone who isn’t there. I’m serious. The whole point of this horrifically long post is that the debate as it usually goes is a big fat waste of time, and that’s not how we’re going to play here. You can give your point of view all you want, just be civil about it. (The regulars already do this without me having to ask because they are awesome; I’m just trying to preempt any newbies from embarrassing themselves.)
Well written, whether I agree with you or not.
(And I happen to, though it doesn’t matter much. I can’t ever get pregnant and I doubt I’ll ever get all up-in-arms on the subject one way or the other.)
/Bill
April 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pmEST- - - Me thinks she doesth protesth too much - - - - - -
Anyone else bet that our dear Ms Lu-kiss is preggers???
April 7th, 2008 at 1:37 pmESTI agree with the vast majority of your points and I think they’re very well-reasoned. Oddly enough, I come down very differently on the legality issue.
By the way, I don’t know if I would agree that you’re a “social liberal” rather than a libertarian. Being a social liberal has some government-as-solver-of-social-ills connotations that I’m pretty sure you would oppose. I could obviously be wrong.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pmESTHmm.
I doubt it. After all, she’s expressed her opinion on gun control and yet she’s not gone out and robbed a convenience store (that we know of, anyway), and she’s expressed her opinion about religion and yet she’s not gone out and set foot in a church (you know, to worship, that we know of, anyway). And I’m guessing that there are a multitude of other opinions in the Ether that she’s written just because she wants to get it out in the open or, cynically, to get more pageviews this week to drive up the ad revenue.
I think it’s just Rachel’s being Rachel.
But I could be wrong. It’s happened before.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pmESTI’m fundamentally anti-abortion, as I’m fundamentally pro-accountability. If there’s one thing I can come to count on here, Rachel, it’s your thoughtful, honest and blunt take on things.
Two things stuck out for me on your commentary:
and
It’s unfortunate that there are so many people who don’t share your perspective. The illicit taking of innocent human life, to me, is one of the most abhorrent actions humans can perpetrate on one another. Through a consistent PR campaign by those who are pro-abortion, the wording has changed. What used to be “pro-abortion” is now “pro-choice.”
Call a spade a spade. “Killing babies” and “accountability removal” (for at least 93% of abortions by your statistical citation) accurately characterize the action. Anything else is whitewash designed to deceive and mainstream a despicable practice. It is the physiological equivalent of a sub-prime mortgage crisis bailout, and it typifies liberal thought today: Do what you want, when you want–and legislate away the consequences.
Man, I ramble. Hopefully I’ve added at least one-fifth of a salient point here. I’m a little emotional on this, as I have three beautiful children and a fourth set to join us here in June. For as much crap and grief they cause, when they come in and say the things they say–and do the things they do–I just can’t imagine why anyone would ever say “no thanks” to that. (I see where you’re coming from on the thought that you’d be automatically attached to a baby at conception, Rachel…even though I’m not a woman. Men get the same way–just 9.5 months later.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pmESTI’m sure you’ll generate some pageviews with this topic, as you have with others, but you won’t really get a heated debate until you write a full-blown epistle on “Why I use a (Mac or PC)” which expresses your hatred for the other camp. Then you’ll see some real traffic.
(And, no, I don’t believe you’re putting these controversial topics up for pageviews. Even I’m not that cynical.)
April 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pmESTThis topic was my introduction to junior-year Bioethics when I was in college. And it was a whole different take on the way I’d normally heard the subject addressed, because– let’s face it– whichever side you happen to be on, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve at least heard the other side’s argument. So this topic was given to us as practice, as it were, for what was to follow. It is hard, very hard, to construct an argument without resorting to emotional appeals or religion, and to make that argument equally compelling for people of diverse backgrounds. But I think Rachel did it. Brava. And on a more prosaic note, hot-diggity-dayam!!
April 7th, 2008 at 1:54 pmESTHmm. I absolutely agree, Rachel, that until both sides lose the rhetoric there’s no chance for progress. I’m a little more pessimistic though — even WITHOUT the rhetoric, I think there are some points of absolute non-compromise between the camps. I left a comment in the other post about abortion questioning the timeline involved, which comes directly from a conversation with friends — i.e., not one person in the discussion thought the others were godless heathens, nor yet reichwing nutjobs. But there was a fundamental difference that could not be bridged.
The moderates thought that over time, the mother’s rights related inversely with the baby’s — 1st trimester abortion was acceptable, 2nd semester less acceptable, 3rd trimester only for the health of the mother. The leftists thought that it was a violation of human rights to at ANY point make a woman bear a child she did not want to, including at 8 1/2 months. The conservatives thought abortion was murder, period. Not one person thought the others in the group were hysterical, evil, etc. etc., but there was no compromise that we could reach.
Finally, I’m also way more pessimistic than you about more education and access to birth control resulting in fewer abortions. I know, I know, the plural of anecdote is not data — but two of my friends have had abortions, and both of them knew ALL about the Pill, condoms, diaphragms, etc. etc.
Now, if you could come up with the equivalent of Planned Resposible Adulthood — an organization that indoctrinates teenagers on the fact that ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES AND YOU SHOULD DO YOUR DAMNDEST TO PLAN ACCORDINGLY — I’d give ‘em a donation today.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:55 pmESTI am glad a woman took the time to say what you have said here.
Ditto. Personal responsibility.
I don’t care about abortion so much from the babies’ points of view. I believe they go to Heaven with never having to grow apart from the protection and love of what is supposed to be the safest place on Earth: a pregnant woman’s body. They never have to get a hard knock, other than suffering whatever they suffer when they are killed or murdered. Of course, they never get a chocolate chip ice cream cone or their first beer, either.
The other addition I have, which isn’t as hopeful and is a bit negative, is that men don’t get a choice. I get tired of the rhetoric that persuasively argues that it isn’t the man’s business. Gut check, really? Why? Will SOMEONE please address that issue?
I was taught (perhaps incorrectly) that one facet of Roe v Wade was that the man in the case wanted to raise that kid. And that he had ample finances and the wherewithal to do so. Was that ever part of the case?
So, there is a cussing meter available for blog sites. How about a respect meter? ‘Cuz you have my admiration and respect.
Another fantastic essay, Rachel.
*Delete the part about Heaven if ya want. Especially if you forsee that pushing this in the wrong direction. I didn’t say it as a means of proselytising. It just explains why I kinda don’t give a shit and am pro choice because I believe something wonderful comes out of something horrible.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:01 pmESTGreat argument!
As you (R Lucas) have framed it, persons who opt for abortion over prevention are irresponsible, and this stems from laziness, and this, I think, stems from the ease of abortion.
If it hurt realllllllly badly, or carried more and worse risks, I bet more persons would focus on prevention.
duuuuuhhhhrrr
But in a broader sense, isn’t this….
ease—> lazy—> irresponsibe—> abortion over prevention….
pretty much the same with much of the developed world?
ease of getting grades in college—> lazy —> irresponsible regarding self-development —> party over study
ease of getting divorced/no fault/women have careers, anyway —> lazy —> irresponsible (infidelity) —> get another spouse over do the hard work on being married.
ease of rearing kids (TV, pre-school, after-school care, let Granny rear your kids) —> lazy —-> not responsible —> have kids out of wedlock, be a minimal mother.
ease of feeling secure (cops will catch the bad guys, soldiers or government will prevent more bombings) —> lazy —> not responsible for own defense or for contributing to national defense —> no training in weapons, for gun control, spit on troops
We need the stark fist of reality.
http://www.subgenius.com/
April 7th, 2008 at 2:06 pmESTRachel, great topic, been waiting for it for a while now. While I largely agree with what you say, I would take it a step further. Life is the value which all others are based off of. Simply enough, when you take something that was alive and make it not alive, its now dead (duh). That act is called killing, which is necessary to sustain life (food from animals) or in self defense, but when done for other reasons, the term is murder. Unless the baby is a direct threat to the life of the mother, its murder. There just isn’t any other way around it, no other justification. I waffled on the whole topic for years, i could totally see both sides of the argument, until I decided to sit down and really think it through, what was right and what was wrong. When I express my views, I always get “you must be one of those religious nuts” (I don’t believe in religion of any kind) or “you have no say-so, you’re a man, your opinion doesn’t count” (which REALLY pisses me off.. I was a “fetus” at one point in my life, so YEAH, MY OPINION MATTERS). So even knowing full well that about half of all aborted babies would have grown up to register as a democrat, I still have to say that the practice is wrong, has been horribly abused anyway, is nothing more than a political tool, has no redeeming qualities and should be banned immediately. OK, somebody else’s turn on the soapbox…
April 7th, 2008 at 2:10 pmESTAlthough I do not agree you on the morality part of it, nor the legality, this is a very well written post. You have done a very good job of eliminating the radicals (of either side) and boiling it down the the biggest peice of the puzzle: RESPONSIBILITY.
Well done, Rachl Lookis.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:14 pmESTSplendidly put, Blogsis.
Now, you know me well enough that I’m not going to change my pro-life opinion about abortion, but that’s irrelevant to your post anyway. You didn’t try to change it.
What is splendid about it is that you’re right. I don’t have to change my opinion that abortion is murder to be able to work with “the other side” on this one, at least the part of the other side that isn’t the tiny loony minority who actually believe that children are an unimportant growth to be removed at will and with no second thought like you’d clip a nail.
As a matter of fact, I’ve always felt that way. I’m perfectly willing to get to work here, keeping my fundamental opposition out of the discussion and instead focusing on how we can make abortions more scarce, at the very least. If I can’t abolish them entirely, I’ll settle for taking care of the 97% that are caused by selfishness, stupidity and ignorance or any combination of the above.
It’d be a huge step in the right direction.
Now, if only I can get “the other side” to see it the same way…
April 7th, 2008 at 2:15 pmESTI was adopted pre-Roe and thus have every reason to believe if I was conceived a dozen years later I would not exist…and my daughter would not exist.
That said, Rachel has written the best and most reasoned piece on abortion I have ever read. This dovetails exactly with the situation as I see it and should somehow be disseminated to a much broader audience. Go girl! (Love using “seminate” in a post about abortion.)
April 7th, 2008 at 2:16 pmESTI always hear, “My body, my choice” and every time I hear that I ask myself, “But didn’t they already make that choice when they chose to have unprotected sex that resulted in this unwanted pregnancy?”
I think, in a way, it goes along your thought process, Rachel, of personal responsibility.
One other thing I pointed out on someone else’s blog a long time ago:
Why is it that, as a general rule, when the pregnancy is wanted, it’s a child and when the pregnancy is unwanted, it’s a fetus?
I’ve never understood that.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:19 pmESTI have nothing to offer here, other than a kajillion kudos for an awesome essay.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pmESTRachel,
I’d like to preface this response by stating I think you did a great job with this post and I will be bookmarking so I can refer back to it later. I think you make an excellent argument against abortion that both sides can support.
However, I feel I must pick a few nits (it’s my nature).
I confess, I can’t seem to reconcile these two statements.
On one hand, you state in no uncertain terms that you don’t want abortion made illegal. On the other hand, you state also state in no uncertain terms that if you were to become pregnant, you would not be able to terminate the pregnancy. You say that you don’t want to take away anyone’s “right to choose”, but you also refer to the organism growing in the womb of a pregnant woman as a “human being”.
To me, these positions seem mutually contradictory.
You say you would be utterly unable to abort a hypothetical unborn child growing inside you. Why?
Au contraire, Rachel. According to a recent Heritage Foundation study, the more non-marital sexual partners a woman has, and the earlier she has sex, the more likely she is to become pregnant out of wed-lock, have an abortion, be infected with an STD, suffer from depression, and so on.
(Just thought I’d throw that out there.)
April 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pmESTI’ve got a few loosely connected thoughts and memories to type here. Bear with me, or skip down to the next comment which, I’m sure, will prove far more interesting.
1) Rachel, you are, as always, honest and fair in your appraisal of the situation. Kudos for tackling a thorny issue. When my ethics professor brought it for a roundtable discussion, I thought that the class would devolve into combat any second. The topic was never broached again.
2) I saw Jill Ireland-or someone of her ilk- on O’Reilley one night. Bill mentioned how abortion was very emotionally traumatic for some women. Ms. Ireland exclaimed how it couldn’t possibly be true because she felt such a great sense of relief when the cells were scraped out of her. My opinion of the human race which was never very high, dropped a bit after listening to her. Two friends of mine had abortions in their early twenties, or maybe at age 19. Both of them were wrecks for a long time. One of them assumed that she would never be worthy of being a mother. Fortunately, she now has two healthy children to ease that pain.
3) I’m opposed to abortion, but I have some sympathy for the position that abortion isn’t murder until the baby can survive outside the womb. I believe that Thomas Aquinas once postulated that a person doesn’t become ensouled until the fetus becomes a little person; perhaps he used the word homunculus. In any event, while I’m opposed to it, I can understand how not everyone shares my view vis a vis 1st trimester abortions.
4) However, people who get 3rd trimester abortions, barring imminent danger to the mother’s life, I think should be horsewhipped. Since I was born around 30 weeks or so, I take those procedures a little personally. Also, a friend of mine and his wife had twins weighing in a 1.8 and 2.1 pounds. They had to spend almost a year in an incubator before being able to leave the hospital. So the whole “not viable outside the womb” argument is getting a bit more tenous as medical science keeps improving.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:28 pmESTRachel,
April 7th, 2008 at 2:34 pmESTVery nicely put. But I will mention the part that riles me up about the whole “its my body” argument. It takes two to “tango” and the dance partner has absolutely no say in the outcome. To me that is offensive in the extreme. Your description of the orgasm cake and the tumor means eating the cake ALWAYS has a bad result. Think of it in another way; the making of the orgasm cake is what is really great, and afterwards while it is in the oven both people at least get to discuss and decide whether the they should eat the cake or throw it in the trash. What happens if one wants to eat the cake and the other wants to toss it? ..I know get your paws off my ovaries…93% did you say for social reason? I wonder how many of those the other baker knew a cake was in the oven?
I dunno, Rachel.
It seems to me you’ve largely defined away the heart of the debate with
But the debate has always been about what to do with people who refuse to use their brain.
No one’s going to disagree with your concluding imperative, “Be Smart!”
However, your second key fact, that you don’t want abortion made illegal, without further refinement, leaves readers with the impression that while you probably hate hate hate partial birth abortion, you wouldn’t make it illegal.
Is that your stance?
Also, it seems pretty clear you favor lots of sex ed. So do I, but it mostly needs to come from the parents. It is nigh impossible to teach sex ed without discussing morals–and I don’t want the government doing that.
Perhaps the compromise should be the school system providing parents with materials for required home study, and then the school system testing the kids on the facts.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:41 pmESTExcellent post, Rachel. While my initial pro-life views were derived from my religious beliefs, further study on that horrific practice solidified my views. With advances in medical technology, it is difficult to argue that it isn’t life - and using abortion as one’s primary method of birth control is (in my view) at BEST very, very irresponsible.
Now where can I get some orgasm cake?
(and the pills, and saran wrap, and tasteless powder, I guess - I have blue eyes…)
April 7th, 2008 at 2:43 pmESTI have 2 strong opinions on abortion. First the government should stay out, not the government’s business. It’s a personal freedom choice that should never have been accepted mainstream. Second, I do not agree that it is an acceptable choice for birth control. It is not birth control. It is a govermnent sanctionioned method for destroying potential life so people will do it without prejudice.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pmESTmightysamurai:
Forgive me if this isnt posted the correct way, but I have a question and observation.
First off let me say great post, very well thought out.
Now to mightysamurai’s point. Why would those statements have to be contradictory? Isnt it possible to oppose something and yet understand that each person has to make up their own mind?
April 7th, 2008 at 2:49 pmESTFrom my research, I don’t believe Thomas Aquinas himself ever said that (he seemed to have been of the opinion that abortion and contraceptives were sinful). You may be thinking of Pope Innocent III who wrote that abortion only becomes murder after the “quickening” (”quicken” is defined as “to reach the stage of pregnancy at which the child shows signs of life”). However, exactly when the “quickening” begins is unclear, even today.
Originally the quickening was whenever the mother first felt her baby moving inside her. But modern medical science shows that the first movement of the baby is not always noticed by the mother, particularly if it’s her first pregnancy. Modern ultrasound shows that an unborn child often starts moving long before the mother feels it.
Also, the moment when the baby “shows signs of life” is rather vague. Is it when the baby actually starts kicking, or when the baby’s heart starts beating? Both of those could be considered “signs of life”, yet the latter occurs quite a bit earlier than the former.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:52 pmESTFrom Lissa:
I am convinced that this is what Americans want, but no leaders have yet codified it and seriously proposed it. Oddly enough, this is pretty much the way most industrialized societies deal with abortion, and they don’t have anywhere near the rancor we do.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:00 pmESTI’ve known for a long time that the women most likely to get abortions are well-educated, upper-middle class and white (my demographic exactly). Your statistics clearly bear this out.
In spite of all our advantages, our seemingly educated, rational minds, we are being completely and utterly irresponsible with ourselves and the living things that result from our actions. It’s pathetic. Margaret Sanger may have devoted her entire life to abortion rights, but the true feminists of our nation’s history wanted us to have access to contraception, not abortion. We have all these tools, and yet we demand the right to retain the crudest of all prophylaxis. Again, pathetic of us to squander the rights women before us treasured.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:06 pmESTOf course, but the question is why do you oppose that thing?
What I mean to say is: If you believe that an unborn child is a person, how can you also believe that abortion should remain legal?
If an unborn child is a person, then they have a Constitutional right to life. If they have a Constitutional right to life, then aborting a pregnancy is, by definition, murdering a person. And if aborting a pregnancy is murdering a person, then abortion itself should be illegal.
That is why Rachel’s statements seem contradictory to me. On one hand she refers to an unborn child in a way that suggests she considers it a person, but on the other hand she is opposed to making it illegal to kill that person.
The only other possibility is that I am misinterpreting Rachel’s statement. That she did NOT intend to give the impression that she views the unborn child as a person and her opposition to abortion is based solely on the fact that it is risky and runs counter to her belief in personal responsibility.
But if so, then I have to wonder why Rachel stated that if “a real live tiny human” were inside her she would be unable to kill it.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:10 pmESTErm, not quite. From Rachel’s link:
In real numbers white women in America are (probably) having more abortions, but that’s just because there are more of them (white women in America, that is).
April 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pmESTDearRachel,
I have been dreading the oncoming Abortion post for a long time, because I just knew that you were going to say something that I profoundly disagreed with you about.
You did not.
Well written. Regardless of whether one is pro-choice or pro-life (and from that nomenclature you can pretty well infer which one I am), I think everyone in the country should read this post.
And no snarky comments either. You really do have a higher standard commenter than anywhere else.
Very respectfully,
April 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pmESTmike
Samurai,
I think she considers HER unborn child a person, but she doesn’t necessarily deem OTHERS’ unborn children as persons.
I’m really stretching the inference here because she didn’t exactly say that. But if it is accurate, I disagree with it–we must find rules we can all live with, and variable definitions of personhood just simply will not do.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pmESTAbortion.
I am against it. Especially when it is used as common, callous birth control. I am doubly against it when a government agency uses my tax dollars to finance something I find anathema.
I wish Personal Responsibility could be enforced on a Federal level.
What do you call a “nanny-state” that could enforce personal responsibility?
April 7th, 2008 at 3:22 pmESTagainst abortion for myself, but i don’t much care about what other people do because it’s their lives. but you do make a good point, although i did get lost on your analogy of orgasm cake. my mind, which seems to always be in the gutter, took on a rather crude image of said orgasm cake. hehe.
ok, back to cramming.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:32 pmESTThe feminist of the 60’s and 70’s have really done a number on us. Making us think we aren’t responsible for our actions, even actions that create life. By the time that baby is in your belly you’ve already made your choice. Now you have to deal with it. Married, not married, young, old, everyone knows how babies are made if its that important to you to not have one then don’t have sex. I’m not all about waiting for marriage but as women, we are the safe guards of our bodies and its ability to sustain and bring new life into this world. If that power were taken seriously there would be no need for roe v. wade, and 16 year old girls wouldn’t be in these situations. A baby is ALWAYS a miracle (just watch the discovery channel shows about in the womb) whether it is seen as one or not by the people whos selfishness brought it into this world.
Of course a woman has the right to decide whether or not she wants children. Only she can determine if she is in the right place in her life, the right relationship, and if its the right time. I just feel like the time to decide these things is well before a baby is growing inside of you. I mean “safeguard”, not in a prudish, holding tightly onto one’s virginity way, but rather in a self respecting way. Having a deep understanding of your body and the power it holds. To take all matters of birth control into your own hands, knowing full well that if a pregnancy occurs you will be bearing the brunt, especially if its with a man you doesn’t care about you or the impending child.
Women need to take more responsibility well before they are faced with the decision of “do I want to keep it”.
I recently had a baby, and the whole thing still blows me away. To think that this perfect whole human being with a heart and a brain and a soul, did not exist before two people had sex. That’s it, that’s all it took to create LIFE. A life that wouldn’t exist if not for our actions.
In other words I agree completely with your post. I agree with everything you say. Its weird and I feel like a stalker, but it’s true.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:33 pmESTCarbo said:
Old quote: ‘follow the money.’ the politicians on both sides don’t want a resolution. They get too much political and monetary resources out of exploiting the issue and not resolving it. Permitting abortions only in the first two trimesters or when the woman’s life is seriously endangered would make much of America happy and return the debate to the fringe. Unfortunately the politicians would lose a handy speaking point that can be used to hold their base.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:38 pmESTGreat Post, Rachel.
Heck, based on some of her statements, at times I think she doesn’t deem others’ born children, those with a couple dozen trimester, as persons.
Snark only, not meant to violate policy on insult.
Seriously now. Rachel, I’m glad you understand that a large contingent of the pro-life crowd sees abortion as nothing less than murder. Given that you recognize that as their (I’ll be honest, I’m one of them, so I’ll say our) position, could you expect them to do anything less than attempt to outlaw it?
In our legal system, the state, with due process of law is the only one allowed to execute another human. There are legal exceptions for self defense, still referred to as homicide, but justifiable homicide. Given that we see abortion as homicide, out side the cases where it may be justifiable (such as the baby putting the mother’s life in risk), how could you ask us not to damn it in the loudest possible terms and try to make it illegal?
A good post, I’m glad you wrote it, and I admire your ability to empathize and write on an issue, as opposed to write from a bias about an issue, but in this case, I think you may have missed part of the point. Normally, working the grey is a good solution. Maybe it is because I am more at the extremes than most, but I just don’t see room for compromise here.
I will agree with you on this though, that as the battle wages for the best solution (from our view, outlaw aside from the rare, call it 7% case), if the other side wants to work on preventing them, that we should team with them. This is one reason why, as discussed in an earlier topic, come down in favor of strong sex education.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:40 pmESTMS, you may well be correct, as I haven’t read that particular excerpt in 20+ years. And I wholeheartedly agree with you on not knowing when the “quickening” occurs.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:40 pmESTRachel, Have to say I’m pleasantly surprised by your entry. I really thought you were for abortion.
I want to agree with Serenity, you beat me to it, but it bears repeating. You already made your choice.
To me, a baby is alive, whether it is 2 weeks old or 8 months old. To kill it, is just flat out murder.
In courtrooms, you can now be tried for murder if you kill an unborn baby. So already the courts have agreed that a baby/fetus is a living person with rights.
So the next question is, at what point should that be considered. When its heart starts beating? When it forms a head? What about 2 cells? Don’t we consider 1 and 2 cell organism’s alive?
Who can unequivocally say they are alive at X number of days, but not before that? No one can?
And finally, Their bodies, their rights? What about the babies rights? Isn’t it their bodies we are really talking about here?
April 7th, 2008 at 3:47 pmESTHaverwilde, I understand where you come from. I think of similar logic when it comes to the race hustlers. But here, I’d urge caution against assuming fiscal motivations. At least on the pro-life side (I can’t speak to the should be legal side, I’m not part of them) there are deep held moral convictions at play. Convictions that see time, money, effort, and passion paid out, not received, in an attempt to end the horror of the 93% case. Yes, some one receives this money, and they may well be less pure than those giving out the donations. However, that so many give the donations would indicate to me that it is a belief (extreme, if you want to call it that still) honestly held.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:48 pmESTThe one thing missing from this is the one thing that is ALWAYS missing from this debate.
Apparently, men have no control over their reproduction. Only women seem to get a say. 1/2 of that child and the responsibility for it lies with the man. You’d best believe the woman (and rightly so) will go looking for that support. Yet the man involved might as well be dirt under foot when it comes to that baby.
I speak on this from personal experience. Some years back, the woman I was dating got pregnant and had an abortion, without so much as a whisper to me. This was MY kid. And probably the only one I’ll ever get to have.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:49 pmESTWell reasoned and communicated.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:49 pmESTEr, actually, the abortion rate has declined steadily for the last couple of decades, right along with the teen pregnancy rate. Something is working at lowering pregnancy rates.
In avoiding pregnancy that’s a valuable truth. For avoiding abortion once someone is pregnant, not so true. It is more physically dangerous for a woman to carry a pregnancy to term than it is to have an abortion. An ounce of prevention (not getting pregnant) sure looks preferable to me.
I’ll leave the side-taking chest-thumping moralism to everyone else.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pmESTRachel, for years I have harbored the exact same thoughts, for the exact same reasons, as you have expressed here so well. Though, having lived about a decade longer than you, I think my patience for all the excuse-making, etc., has worn thinner than yours. But wait a few years, you may get to that point eventually, too.
I’ve watched too many of my friends abort too many babies along the way — one friend aborting MULTIPLE times to hang onto multiple men (at least one of them already married!) — to buy into all the feminist rhetoric about abortion being the route to biological “freedom” for women.
For too many women (like the college friend you mention), abortion is simply a matter of convenience, nothing more. A convenience, as you pointed out, that might better have been considered with a dollar’s worth of latex when climbing into bed as opposed to the pain, misery, and expense of climbing up on the operating table later. And that’s leaving the moral issues out of it completely. Though, the older I get, the less inclined I am to divorce the reality of what abortion actually is from the discussion. Not when we’re able to actually SEE, through new photographic and ultrasound techniques, exactly who and what we’re vacuuming away.
I agree totally about the need for the pro-life and pro-choice people to work together, toward making contraception cheap (cheaper), easy (easier), and universal (I’m thinking most grocery stores carry condoms these days). But I think you missed one big impediment to that ever happening, and that’s this:
You forget that, for the power players on both sides of this debate - whether pro or con - abortion is one great big money making venture. There is no way in hell that either side is going to give up the political clout and all the money that comes along with it to “fix” this problem. Neither the founders of The Lambs of God nor the high humpty-dumps of NOW are going to beat their swords into plowshares on this issue anytime soon. If unwanted pregnancies become a thing of the past, and abortions decline to a level that makes any kind of sense, then these characters will be out of a job! They’ll have to take their bullhorns and their picket signs, their coat hangers and their effigies, and go home. Some of these people might actually have to go out and get work that doesn’t involve getting their faces on the evening news, and we can’t have that!
The bottom line? There’s no money to be made for these people in solving this problem. They get a whole lot more out of keeping the debate going and going and going.
So, that’s the first hurdle we face, I think. And after that, it’s all downhill as we try to convince our society to re-embrace the quaint notions of “responsibility” and “common sense” that were once more or less expected. After a couple of decades of Political Correctness and various grievance mongers teaching everyone which “victim group” they belong to, that ought to be easy!
But thanks for the well thought out post. It was a very interesting read, to say the least.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:58 pmESTOh, and historically “quickening” meant specifically when a woman herself could feel the baby move within her. That’s roughly around the 20th week. All reframing is changing definitions to suit oneself–that’s exactly what it meant throughout human history.
It is also exactly what Thomas Aquinas, Pope Innocent III, and Pope Gregory XIV meant when they spoke of quickening.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:59 pmESTJames Taranto of the Wall Street Journal calls this the Roe Effect. His theory is that liberals are more likely to abort their children, which leads to fewer liberals, which leads to fewer abortions.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:01 pmESTVery well put Rachel. I’ve actually spent some time on a feminist site discussing this issue. I think I’m the only pro-lifer they allow to comment. I don’t believe legislation is the answer to the problem. More personal responsibility is. The same people that have enough time to picket Planned Parenthood remarkably don’t have the time to talk to these women in a compassionate way and offer them a more appealing choice. Women who don’t want to get pregnant but then make bad decisions and get that way anyway are at a crisis point in their own lives. Which camp would you rather turn to? The one shouting names like ‘whore’ at you or the one that will put their arms around you and tell you they can make it all better? It’s another free market solution. If no one wants abortions, no one will provide them. Supply is not the problem here, its the demand.
I find it fascinating that the far left has no problem destroying innocent life and yet finds it morally reprehensible to use the death penalty.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:02 pmESTDearRachel-
Brava! Well said.
Once again, you have raised the bar.
Thank you.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:06 pmESTThere is an inherent contradiction that divides this country and I’m pretty sure at this point that we will never agree about abortion. To a woman who desperately wants a baby, pregnancy is a baby inside her from day 1. Many pregnancies miscarry very early - early enough that without modern science and cheap pee tests the woman would not have even known she was pregnant but that does not make it any less real for the woman who briefly thought she was pregnant. For people who believe that the fetus is a baby from day 1 (leaving aside why they believe that) abortion is murder, plain and simple, end of story.
To a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant I just imagine that they must dissociate from the idea of a baby. A simple medical procedure and it’s all gone. You might call it denial, but if that works for you & your mental health then fine.
I support the choice mainly because I can’t imagine anyone telling me that I HAVE to carry a baby inside my body for 9 months. I know that the Dad should have a say, but the Dad doesn’t have it inside him. Equality sounds great but you can’t argue with the reality of biology. The best solution for a family to me is the one that works for them. The amount of care and commitment required to raise a child, both during the pregnancy and for the 18+ years afterward is a commitment so profound that no one should be able to force anyone into it. Not the Dad, the Mom, and certainly not the government.
Like Rachel, I never wanted to have to face that choice, and so I took precautions (contraception) so that I would not have to make a decision that would change my life irrevocably either way. When younger, I truly didn’t know what I would have done if faced with the choice but I knew without a doubt I didn’t want to have to make it.
The problem for us moderates is that we’re really in neither camp. Just because I personally could probably not bring myself to have an abortion does not mean that I want to restrict the right of another woman to make her own choice. I know that it doesn’t make sense: To the pro-life movement once I acknowledge that I believe that the fetus is a baby then how could I NOT be against abortion? And yet I’m not. I guess I just don’t like the idea of people being forced into anything, no matter how noble the goal. Especially something so profoundly personal.
I also don’t think that we will ever agree when a fetus becomes a person. “viable” varies and with advances in science is earlier & earlier. Once a fetus is a person, do you charge a woman with abuse and neglect if she smokes crack while pregnant? What about a glass of wine? The reality is that if the mother thinks of it as a baby then to her it’s a person . . . but that’s not very legally helpful.
I don’t know what the answer is, but as long as we are willing to talk about it with respect and consideration for the views of others at least there’s hope.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:07 pmESTMy mother is a nurse and fairly liberal. She came of age and had me post-Roe so abortion has been a reality all of my life. When I was in 6th grade I was so brain washed that I wrote a pro-abortion paper. My teacher was SO proud and impressed.
One year later I remember being in the library and reading some books about conception and seeing the stages that a ‘fetus’ goes through and I changed my mind. In 7th grade! Not because my religion told me it was wrong but because science just seemed really logical to me that at the moment new DNA is created it is a life.
I’m less strongly opposed to very early abortions and morning after pills. But the moment a baby is viable outside the womb (earlier and earlier with our medical technological advances) it becomes a murderous and horrendous thing to KILL a child. I’ve read and heard too many horror stories of babies being aborted improperly and being alive - whereupon the ‘doctor’ throws them still alive into a bucket. Just the idea of a bucket of baby parts makes me ill.
People who use abortion as a form of birth control need to be sterilized or forced to take depo shots. They are beyond lazy - they are borderline sociopaths in my mind.
Your essay is wonderful.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:07 pmESTchikea…as a moderate do you think it should be legal to suck a nearly full term “fetus” brain out in order to KILL it and abort it? Because those still do happen and I am sorry but that is murder. If a child is able to live outside the womb then sucking it out of a womb is wrong - socially if not morally. It should be a shameful thing. Or how about at the point when the “fetus” has arms and legs and those appendages are CUT OFF and pulled out?
I just don’t understand how anyone can be “moderate” about this issue. Either life (yes, viable life) matters or it does not. I am not up for making abortion as a procedure illegal but it should be HARD to get and it should be only available in extreme cases - Rape, Incest (not as high a percentage as pro-choicers want us to believe) or the physical well being of the mother. Not the MENTAL well being. The physical well being.
Otherwise, personal accountability and responsibility needs to be taught and pounded into young kids. Sheesh.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pmESTI used to believe, like some of the men commenting above, that it was unfair for men not to have any “choice” in the abortion decision. Maybe that’s true, but here’s where I stand these days: men and women are different. Sometimes unequal treatment is inevitable. If you equate unequal with inherently unfair, get over it and be a man. As a man, sometimes you have to take responsibility for not only your own actions but also the actions of others. And like other commenters have said, you have a chance to make your choice before conception occurs. If you don’t want kids, be responsible. If you are anti-abortion, maybe know something about the opinions of your partner before having sex with her. I refined this opinion during my first 2 years as an attorney, working in child support enforcement at the DA’s office.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:25 pmESTTo answer a few questions from comments so far:
–I would feel/believe that a pregnancy in my own body would be a real human being with a soul. But I don’t know that and thus I don’t think it’s my place to decide for anyone else. I know women whom I deeply respect and who are sensible in all ways who feel just as strongly that it is not a “real” human being until it can live outside the mother’s body. All I can say is what I would feel if it happened to me.
–I am 100% opposed to late-term or partial-birth abortions in any circumstance except when the mother will die otherwise.
–When I say I don’t want abortion made illegal, I mean absolutely illegal. If it were up to me, which it’s not, I’d make it legal only up until the point when the fetus’s heart starts beating, because I believe that is when life begins. Not at conception but also not after it has a functioning cardiac system. But we’re talking 5 weeks into the pregnancy here, and you will never convince most pro-choice people that that’s enough time (even though it is).
–No, I do not expect people who believe abortion is murder to stop trying to make it illegal. I just think you’d have a lot more success actually eliminating abortions if you spent more time and energy preventing unwanted pregnancies. Even if you make it illegal, there are still going to be tons of abortions. It’s a fine goal but I think it’s a waste of time because I truly don’t believe it’ll ever happen.
–I left out the father’s rights because that’s a whole other tangent for this issue that I didn’t have time for, and the crux of what I’m trying to say is where women are going wrong, because the only way to cut down on abortions is to get women set straight before anything else. You have to start there.
But I do think it’s a very interesting aspect to this debate, and I’ll probably post about it soon to find out what everyone else thinks. But like I said, this post was simply about the choices women make because as it is today, men don’t have a say so you have to work on the women if you want fewer abortions.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:26 pmESTMen don’t have formal, official, or legal say. That doesn’t mean we’ve been robbed of our voices, or our first amendment rights. We can and should talk with our partners, and make our position clearly known. Men can pressure (note, I’m not saying force) the women they’ve impregnated into abortion. It is despicable, but I’m sure it has happened. We can also make certain that the women we sleep with know that if a pregnancy should occur, we’ll be there. Depending on the women in our lives, we can make this known, even if we aren’t the ones impregnating. Sisters, cousins, friends, any woman you know, that you know is sexually active, and open to abortion, you can offer, in advance, what support you are comfortable giving to them.
Men still have their own voice, plus the right, and responsibility, to use it, if they are passionate about this.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:37 pmESTVery well written. And I agree that I would not be able to have an abortion myself either. But I also don’t want that right to be taken away for those women who make that choice.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:38 pmESTThink about it, if they could abort a child and they felt it was a child as soon as they were pregnant, what could they do to a child that had been born?
I have no problem whatsoever with a woman taking the morning after pill though, because I don’t believe a baby is a baby until it has a heartbeat, somewhere around 8 (or is it 18?)days. If in 8 days you haven’t gotten it together enough to get the morning after pill, then you shouldn’t be having sex anyway. And the bottom line is, just like you said Rachel, take responsibility for yourself, take or use what you need to to keep from having to make the decision whether or not to have an abortion.
In short, don’t believe in abortion? Don’t have one, but don’t tell me what to do with my body.
(I took the pill, with great personal pain, ((migraines from hell)), then had two kids, and had my tubes tied during the second c section, best decision I ever made).
As a 45-year-old woman who has had 3 miscarriages in the last 2 1/2 years (last one two weeks ago), this is an emotional issue for me, and I find it hard to feel “relief” that those “cells” were “scraped out” of my body (I had to have D&Cs in all 3 cases). To the points about “quickening” and when life begins, etc., I had sonograms at 6 weeks in the last 2 pregnancies, and you can definitely see a heartbeat that early. In my case, those hearts just stopped beating within a week or two of that 6-week sonogram.
Slightly different slant on the discussion: I wonder if, under HillaryCare TM, I would be forced to be sterilized on the premise that my odds of having a “good” egg fertilized are low because of my age, and it would be costing the government too much money to have those D&Cs… I would not put it past some bureaucrat to set up the system that way.
For the record, I didn’t find my Prince Charming until I was 40, and we didn’t get married until I was 41, hence the pregnancies late in life. We are not necessarily “trying” to have a baby, i.e., we’re not into the whole fertility thing, but we’re not NOT trying, either.
The whole ordeal has brought the abortion issue into sharper focus for me, and I just can’t imagine choosing abortion as a method of birth control.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:49 pmESTWell, Raving Lunatic finally brought it up, I was wondering if I’d have to break the ice. He said “Apparently, men have no control over their reproduction.” I’m sure we all know of course that that is not the case. To wit:
(1)I am a man. You are a woman. I do not want children. You claim to not want children. You claim to be on birth control. I trust you. You get pregnant. At minimum, I am financially responsible for our child until he/she is 18 or you get married. This is the legal, and proper, outcome.
(2)I am a man. You are a woman. I want children. You claim to want children. I trust you. You get cold feet (or whatever) and decide to get abortion without my knowledge. This is the legal, and imho immoral, outcome.
As far as I can tell, no feat of logic will allow these two viewpoints to coexist. In the real world that is. As opposed to the reality-based world.
[EDIT to add:]Tully appears to have (maturely) answered the question regarding mightsamurai’s “quickening” comment. I still have to add though that I’ve always believed that the quickening occured after the penultimate highlander was decapitated. I believe lightning bolts and broken windows are an indication of the quickening.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:58 pmESTThere seems to be some controversy about when “life” begins, whatever term is applied. To say that abortion is ok up until the point when the baby can survive outside of the womb is preposterous. A newborn baby requires much more intensive care once its been birthed than at any time in the womb. Pretty self-sufficient there. Hardly a good basis for human/non-human discrimination. There is no point at which it can be determined that a fetus has gone from a collection of self-replicating cells to a human being. When can one possibly declare “Now its a baby, whereas 1 second ago it was not.” Sperm is sperm and eggs are eggs, but once the two get together, something entirely else takes place. The 2 parts become something greater than the sum of their parts. Only then can a determination of individual life be true and honest. You make your choices for your own life right up until then, but as soon as you get a girl pregnant, or a girl becomes pregnant, a brand new life with his/her own choices occurs, and until that person is old enough to be responsible for his/her own actions, YOU are the guardian of that life and it shouldn’t just be the woman’s job either.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:59 pmESTAt the end of the day, “My Body, My Choice” really translates to:
“I shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of any of my choices if I don’t feel like it.’
.
Unless it’s coming from a man like Obama - in which case, it’s about children-as-punishments.
.
At the end of the day, they’re not ‘Choices’ and they’re not ‘Punishments’ - they’re babies.
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They’re Babies.
.
Why do we have a discussion beyond that point?
- MuscleDaddy
April 7th, 2008 at 5:06 pmESTI thought so too, but that strikes me as a fundamentally illogical position from someone who is, generally, very logical.
Think about it for a moment. Why is HER hypothetical unborn child a person, while another woman’s hypothetical unborn child a clump of cells? If an unborn child is a person, then it is always a person no matter whose belly it resides in. If you believe that an unborn child in YOUR womb is a person who deserves to live, then logically ALL unborn children are persons who deserve to live.
But maybe I am misunderstanding Rachel’s argument. Maybe she’s saying that it’s up to the individual woman to decide whether that thing inside her is a person or a lump of inanimate cells. But are we really prepared to live in a world where individuals have the right to decide whether a living organism (and it is a *living* organism) is a person endowed with Constitutional rights or a lump of cells with no rights? How far are we willing to extend this “right to decide”? Can a mother decide after her baby is born that her baby is not really a baby and it’s okay to perform a “fourth trimester abortion”? Obviously not, only a lunatic would suggest that such a thing be allowed.
Then when should the cutoff point be? Rachel suggested that it should be at the moment when the unborn child’s heart starts beating (which would place the cutoff point much, much earlier than most pro-choice groups would be comfortable with). But that brings to mind another problem: no one knows for sure when life (in terms of “personhood”, not simple biological life) begins. We can use an ultrasound to find out whether the baby’s heart has started beating, but does that prove that life begins when the heart beats? Of course not. After all, hospitals restart patient’s hearts all the time. If the difference between “life” and “non-life” was as simple as whether the heart is beating or not, then CPR is essentially useless and anyone whose heart stops should be immediately given up for dead, because if their heart has stopped then that’s exactly what they are and there’s no point in wasting hospital resources treating a dead body. Of course, we know that a person’s heart CAN be restarted after it stops and we don’t consider people who have had their heart restarted to have actually been “dead” in the eyes of the law (otherwise they’d have to deal with all sorts of insurance-related difficulties), so obviously “beating heart” cannot logically be considered the sole factor in determining whether or not someone is “alive”. You could write a law that said so, but that law would not have any logical basis, which brings us back to the original question: when does “life” begin?
Personally, I think Rachel hasn’t fully examined the abortion issue from every angle she’s just not sure about whether an unborn child has a right to life. That’s probably why she limited her argument to one of personal responsibility and medical safety and why she pointedly avoided discussing whether abortion was right or moral. And that’s probably best because she gave us a very reasonable, well-expressed argument that any rational person, whether pro-life or pro-choice, can get behind. But me being the person that I am, I can’t resist picking a few nits now and again. I just saw those two statements as being contradictory and I was wondering how Rachel reconciled them.
Anyway, I’ve made my point. End of rant. If anyone wants to debate me about the morality of abortion I’d be happy to fight it out with you, but I think Rachel would prefer we save that for another thread.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:10 pmESTI think you get it. I applaud your choice.
Speaking of choice, the anti-life people keep railing on about “a woman’s choice”. Fine. But that choice happens a little while before conception.
After that, it’s not a choice, it’s a responsibility.
Now as to the extreme examples (incest, rape &c), we should not make sweeping laws based on extreme examples. We handle the extreme examples. Adoption, for one.
Taking off from Doug’s last comment: Consider the baby just after birth. Definitely alive. Now go back to just before birth. Has anything really changed, other than cutting the umbilical cord? [If so, then that must be the magical and mysterious process that gives life to an organism.] Now go back a few more minutes. And a few more hours. And so on. Where is the magical and mysterious process during the 270-odd days of gestation that “gives life”? (Your argument about a beating heart is persuasive.)
One conclusion is that life starts at the beginning.
On another tack, I think that most of the problem centers on the question of whether the Gummint should fund it. (And relatedly, whether the Gumming should force Catholic hospitals to do it.) I think the Gummint should stay out of it, and not fund it. Let Catholic hospitals refuse to do it, and let those hospitals who see no fault, keep doing it.
While abortion can be made illegal, adolescent urges cannot be stopped. And “back-door abortions” are a cure worse than the disease.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pmESTI am so thankful to see someone else with the same approach to this subject as I’ve had. Six months ago I expressed this same view to a ‘friend’ who effectively cut me off because she didn’t come to the same outcome . Still reeling from that one but it’s nice to see there are reasonable people in the world.
As for criticisms — you can nitpick anybody’s beliefs to death and find fault. The fact of the matter is Rachel has put more thought into it than probably 98% of the population. Maybe this will kick start some of them.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:25 pmESTSome radical pro-choicers, and even some who aren’t radical at all, will still say I’m wrong. They’ll say none of this matters and all that does matter is what women have the freedom to do what they want with their bodies. Which is fascinating, because I’m positive their claims about autonomy and choice and all that would very likely not be the same if it came to a similar scenario but one that had nothing to do specifically with women, sex, or the feminist agenda.
At the risk of stirring up another debate about choice I have to relay this story as a case in point to prove your theory. I ride motorcycles and I am against mandatory helmet laws for +18 y/o for lots of reasons. Anyway, a biker friend of mine was approached by a Pro-Choicer back in the 90’s when California was pushing for their helmet law. After her shpeal about supporting “Her Choice” he asked her if she supported his choice not to have to wear a helmet. She told him no he should wear one for his protection. He then said I can’t support your freedom to choose if you don’t support mine. She of course huffed away pissed off.
Excellent post, that whole personal responsibility thing could solve a bunch of problems only if people were actually forced to use it.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:37 pmESTstylinjulie-
I am sorry to hear about your miscarriages. I’m not sure I can really understand what that is like (I’m a boy-person), but it happened to someone close to me and it was obviously very difficult. You have my deepest sympathies.
You raise an interesting point in your email. I don’t think HillaryCare would force you to be sterilized. However, as a member of a high-risk category, your fetus would be screened for genetic defects. If any were found, you would be ‘encouraged’ to have the baby aborted. This is what happens in places with Nationalized health care. They are always looking to save money, so pregnant women carrying fetuses with known genetic defects are pressured into having abortions. For their own good, of course, and so the poor child won’t be born into a life of suffering. After all, why waste money on some kid with Down’s Syndrome when you can spend it on a ‘normal’ kid, right? I’m not saying all medical professionals in socialized medical systems are like this; but it seems like quite a few are.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:38 pmESTI disagree. My research suggests that “quickening” meant when the unborn child became truly “alive”. The word “quick” originally meant “alive” and the unborn child was considered “alive” when it first stirred in the womb. William Blackstone wrote:
“Life … begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemeanor.”
Of course this wasn’t the only historical standard used to determine when life begins so other people obviously had different views on the subject, but from my reading it seems to have been the majority view at the time.
I find that unlikely. Aquinas may have said it (I can’t find any proof that he said it but he may have just the same) but I doubt that’s what he or Innocent III meant.
Innocent III specifically said that abortion after the quickening was murder but before that was a less serious sin. I doubt he would have made that distinction unless he believed that the quickening was the moment when life begins.
Gregory XIV may have said that and meant it, but he apparently placed the cutoff point at ~17 weeks, so for him it doesn’t really matter.
Thank you Rachel, that’s what I was looking for. You feel, but you don’t know, and you don’t think it’s right to impose your subjective beliefs on other people.
I disagree with that interpretation, I believe the fact that we don’t know when life begins means the only prudent course of action is to outlaw abortion unless and until we can figure it out for sure, but I can respect your opinion.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:41 pmESTTwo arguments that drives me a little batty. “DO NOT impose your morals on my/others body/self.” and “I think abbortion is wrong but I do not want to impose my beliefs on others.” EVERY law on the books is an imposition of morals and beliefs on society. From traffic laws to bank regulations to stealing and murder. All are laws that have been enacted to protect or punish.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:49 pmESTRachel- There is no medically justifiable reason for third trimester abortions. Nearly all of these babies can be delivered if the mother’s life is in danger- not aborted. With new techniques to help prevent neonatal morbidity most of them cannot only survive, but lead normal lives.
As for Thomas Aquinus and the homunculus, it was thought that each woman carried a tiny person, who carried a tiny person etc. etc. So the homuncullus existed at conception. They didn’t have a concept of embryological development, just a series of people imbedded in each other, like those little nesting Russian dolls.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:58 pmESTI didn’t read any of the comments, those people bore me, so I hope I am not traveling over well worn areas. Abstinence only for me after reading that primitive folks used animal bladders as condoms. From this point on because I simply cannot get that out of my damn head. Thanks. No. Really.
My nymphomaniac fiancee thanks you, too.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:07 pmESTAs an infertile woman, I have pondered this question from another side. What if there were a third alternative besides abortion vs. baby? With medicine now able to save preemies at younger and younger stages, and with the numerous variations of IVF and surrogacy that we now have, why hasn’t there been any research on how to move a baby from the womb of a woman who DOESN’T want it to the womb of a woman who DOES?
April 7th, 2008 at 6:11 pmESTI have always known that most abortions are for convenience not necessity.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:16 pmESTI believe in the right to choose. But the time to choose is before you have sex, not after you become pregnant.
My wife has a medical condition that could kill her if she became pregnant, if only because she would not abort. We do natural family planning and since I travel, I may miss a month. After two months I am ready to jump the fence and have become short tempered, but Love wins.
Rachel - very nice. Extremely lengthy, but it gets the job done.
Mightysamurai -
The problem with your position is that when “life” begins depends entirely on your definition of “life”. Is it when cells begin to replicate (i.e. conception)? Is it when blood begins to form? Is it when the heart begins to beat (the Rachel Lucas definition)? Is it when gender is formed? Is it when the fetus is capable of surviving outside of the womb? The list goes on, and we know when most of those things happen already. Ultimately, it’s not a matter of technique or method - it’s all about semantics.
More broadly speaking, when faced with incomplete knowledge, the prudent action is not necessarily to do nothing or ban an activity entirely. To choose a particularly ridiculous example, there was a time when nobody knew what was west of Tennessee. Was the prudent course of action to simply ban people from heading west, even if it meant that people could be killed? Of course not.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:28 pmESTI know you meant this innocently but the possibility of THAT happening scares the Holy Hell out of me. One of my female friends had a terrifying experience when her infant son was stolen right out of her shopping cart (she got him back later, don’t worry) by some psycho woman who apparently really wanted a baby. Now I keep getting flashes of a pregnant woman falling asleep in a hospital bed and waking up no longer pregnant.
Maybe I’m just being irrational.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:33 pmESTSnowdog–
Thanks. I had forgotten about the genetic screening angle. My former OB/GYN (she has retired from the “OB” biz) brought that up in discussions I had with her before my first pregnancy. I knew my age made me high-risk, so I wanted to talk through those risks with her (talk about depressing statistics). She talked about the various options available for genetic screening of embryos/fetuses (is there a diff? based on age of the being in question?). I suspect you are correct, and that HillaryCare would probably require that screening for pregnant women over a certain age.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:34 pmESTMaybe the only thing worse than abotion is the many women, (and men) having children and then not loving and taking care of them.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:46 pmESTI know that Rachel said that men’s rights would have to be a separate topic, but I completely disagree with the comment above. In my opinion under those circumstances that is not the proper outcome.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:47 pmESTThe feminists with their sexual revolution and notch the bed post sexual ideal, as well as their ‘victimhood’ mentality have caused a great catatrophe and that is that women no longer need to take responsibility for their behaviour.
There is no expectation of responsibility for making a ‘mistake’ or for that matter outright lying because everyone knows that the state will track a man down and force him into a life of monetary servility.
I am not saying that men should not have any responsibility for their behaviour. In my opinion if I were a guy I would not believe one thing a young woman says about birth control, take care of it yourself no matter what she says!
But the way this is being handled at this moment is no better than the women having a kid for the extra welfare money.
Anyway, sorry about being slightly OT.
Great post Rachel.
I’m very much against abortion due to both religious and common sense reasons. I completely agree with you regarding the personal responsibility issue and I can’t tell you how much it sickens me when I listen to somebody callously explaining that the reason they got an abortion was because they didn’t see any reason to ruin “the mood” because neither they nor their partners had protection.
I do have to say that it is entirely possible to teach teens to leave sex alone. The catch: the parents have to be very involved with their children, know who they are dating, how long they’ve been dating, and if they are seeing other people as well. I’ve seen this work many times. I can honestly say that I can remember one girl in my entire graduating class being pregnant. When parents are involved with their children, check up on them, set reasonably strict rules and then actually enforce those rules, and do so in a way that will actually stick with the teen, you’d be utterly surprised at how many kids will wait until later in life to have sex.
For instance, I have a sister who is a junior in high school right now, 17 years old, and my dad will not let her date just one guy exclusively (and any guy she does go on a date with had better have some grounding in good moral values). She is not allowed to go out on a date without a group. She also has a curfew that she must abide by or face actual consequences. My dad is not an overly-strict guy. As a matter of fact, he has always been pretty laid-back. But he has also always been very proactive in my sisters’ and my lives and while we aren’t all doing all the things he wishes we would do, not one of us has ever been pregnant (aside from my married sister) or been diagnosed with an STD. I’m not saying it will always work, but that extra involvement really does help and really shows kids that their parents do care.
All that aside, I tend to lean more toward allowing abortion simply because I don’t feel like I should have to help foot the bill for unwanted children. I believe the women who get abortions because they are too lazy to take responsibility before they get knocked up will have some explaining to do someday. But I’m not the one they’ll be explaining to and I won’t be held responsible for their stupid decisions.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:51 pmESTSuppose I would play the Devil’s advocate, so to speak, and respectfully submit that…
I do not choose to bow to the god of “personal responsibility” and so, I would like to know why my choice to abort a dozen beating hearts is any less worthy of respect than that of someone who chooses to have multiple, dangerous plastic surgeries? Personally, it’s my life and money and health and if I choose to put it in jeopardy with multiple surgeries, who is Rachel Lucas to put it forth for judgment amongst my peers?
I mean, if the only real argument here is about personal safety and good sense,then by all means, multiple abortions and plastic surgeries and dental implants (just brush your teeth every day, dammit!) all stand on equal ground and why are we wasting all these bits and bytes, trying so hard to not judge or moralize or bring some sort of voodoo belief system into it? Let’s go out for drinks instead and consider everyone to be idiots because we say so.
Why should I behave according to anyone’s dictates of their conscience, when it clearly doesn’t bother me, my actions haven’t hurt them, and if I choose a dangerous lifestyle, well, it is to laugh that anyone would give a fine got-damn one way or the other.
This post and its pre-courser, is a fine effort. You have an Ideal of personal responsibility that you have couched as “practical” but have failed to give me a practical reason to embrace it. Not if I, along with so many other women, am well able to afford your idea of “impractical,” and have chosen it as my favored resource for birth control.
I would submit that there are as many people who see no problem in rejecting personal responsibility as there are people who see no problem in aborting a life. There is no stigma, moral or religious, attached to either any more, so why waste our time bothering with it?
April 7th, 2008 at 6:57 pmESTYou’ll find no argument from me, though when my mother got pregnant with me she was on the pill.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:03 pmESTNot at all. In fact, my position is intended specifically to avoid that very problem. I believe that, unless and until science proves otherwise, that it is more prudent to assume that “life” (i.e., personhood) begins at conception, because it is only after that point that you are dealing with a distinct and separate life form.
I would rather we ban abortion under that assumption and find out later we were wrong, than to allow abortion and find out later we were condoning infanticide.
If it helps, try to think of my position in terms of the death penalty. Would you sentence a man to death without first proving him guilty? Of course not. So why would you sentence an unborn child to die without first proving it isn’t a person?
[EDIT: I should add that I have no problem with abortion if, and only if, the mother's life is seriously endangered by the pregnancy.]
Not in every case, sure. But in this case I believe it is the most prudent course. Look at it this way.
Scenario 1: We assume that life begins at conception and outlaw abortion.
1st possibility, we turn out to be wrong. What happens? Lots of irresponsible women have to take responsibility for their actions. Not much of a downside there.
2nd possibility, we turn out to be RIGHT. *whew* Dodged a bullet there. We almost legalized infanticide!
Scenario 2: We assume that life begins at some point after conception and legalize abortion.
1st possibility, we turn out to be right. What happens? Nothing really, although we probably won’t do much to solve the problem of women who use abortion as a form of birth control.
2nd possibility, we turn out to be WRONG. Oh crap. The pro-lifers were right all along. We really were condoning baby killing. Every woman who ever had an abortion now has a massive weight on her conscience. She KNOWS now that when she had that abortion she was actually murdering her child. Sure, in the eyes of the law she’s not actually guilty of murder, but in her heart she KNOWS that she killed her own child.
Do you see what I’m getting at here? At least under Scenario 1 there is no chance that any babies will be killed.
I’m not sure how your analogy compares to abortion.
A better analogy might be if we banned people from settling west of Tennessee until the area was better explored and turned out to be safe.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:11 pmESTThis is one of those incredibly personal issues that the government shouldn’t stick its nose into. I know I couldn’t have an abortion myself, but I also don’t believe it’s the job of politicians to tell me whether I can.
I remember I was pregnant in 2002, and the OB told me that my baby most likely had Turner’s Syndrome. I spoke to a few doctors, including an old family friend, who confirmed it can be absolutely insanely horrid for the child, or it could be not so horrid - some developmental abnormalities, that’s about it. Apparently no child with Turner’s exhibits the same symptoms, and we wouldn’t know until she was born how horrible her life would be. We were given the choice to abort the pregnancy at that point. I was at about 28 weeks or so by then. I couldn’t do it. At all. But I could also see how some parents could make that choice. My thoughts kept wandering to my child’s future. How painfully horrible was her life going to be? What would happen to her? Could I bring her into the world knowing that I would be bringing her into nothing but pain? All that kept going through my mind, so I can see how some would choose not to let the baby suffer.
Unfortunately, at 32 weeks, my daughter died anyway. She was stillborn. I made the choice to carry her to term, but she died. And to this day I keep wondering what would have happened if she had been born, and would I have been responsible for bringing her into a world of pain and misery? And how would I have felt if some shitslurping politician told me what to do instead of allowing me to make that very personal decision on my own?
April 7th, 2008 at 7:19 pmESTWow, this is such a thorny issue for some people, and a slam-dunk for others. I’m opposed to aborting sentient babies, but I have to admit I have a difficult time getting real upset about the abortion of an 8-celled blastocyst.
But if I DID get upset on behalf of the blastocyst, then I would also have to be upset about contraception, because I think the real issue is whether or not we should prevent the birth of a human being. A sperm and an egg are not a human being, you say. Technically, you are of course correct, but each of you knows as sure as orgasm cake that contraception prevents the birth of babies who would otherwise be born. You are preventing the existence of a human being in either case. In fact the denial of an opportunity for life is what contraception is about. The issue is the human life that never got to exist, is it not? Or is “murder,” as it has been described here over and over, a mere technicality?
You could say, well, yes, I know that one of these times that I’m having sex eventually a human being would be born if I didn’t prevent it, but I did prevent it, so it never was a human being, and therefore, I didn’t prevent a human from being born. ?? Do you really believe that?? Does the whole thing turn on a technicality? So, is it the technical difference between the biological act of a sperm entering an egg the issue? You could make the argument that contraception is murder by pre-emptive strike…
Frankly, I see no difference between a viable blastocyst and a viable sperm and egg as for as the morality of preventing the human being who, in the absence of contraception, would have been born in either case.
Well, you say, Mr. Smartass QSS, exactly WHEN do you decide the little clique of cells becomes human, if it is not at the moment the sperm enters the egg? Mr. Smartass says, maybe it’s that moment when the sperm is slicing through the semen, screaming “YES, YES, I’m home free, just one more centimeter and BAM! OW! what the hell was that? The sperm in second place, laughing out loud, says, “That’s a condom wall, you idiot. You would have made it too, if it hadn’t been for that serial murderer with the rainbow colored, strawberry-flavored rubbers.” “Damn,no fair, I’m going to file a lawsuit on behalf of the kid me and that egg would have (gurgle gurgle), “What the hell is that noise? OH MY GOD WE’RE BEING FLUSHED!! Aaaagghhhhhhhhh
I mean, the sperm is actually DOING something, and the stupid blastocyst is just sitting there swelling up like a balloon. I don’t get it.
I got thinking about the orgasm cake, and the next thing that entered my mind was “have your cake and eat it to” and then I got all queasy.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:26 pmESTThank you for a thoughtful and reasoned essay Rachel. I have always been of the “abortion is murder, period” school of thought, but have been uncomfortable with the thought of imposing my own moral views on others, as I believe equally strongly in all people being free to make their own decisions in most areas possible.
All laws are an imposition of morals, as was noted by Nathanetr above, but we need to try to limit the number of laws to the lowest number possible, and as Rachel noted, we are dealing with the REAL world, not the ideal world as we would wish it to be.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:27 pmESTI think that Rachel provided a starting point that both sides of the issue can start from to try to work together on to obtain the goal both sides SAY they wish, ie fewer abortions.
When the government crosses the line and decides to legislate morals, we are at the beginning of a very steep and slippery slope. This debate is the type of thing that sets precedence for future moral arguments. Abortion is also a topic that has a high probability of getting restrictive laws put in place for its distasteful nature that makes it abhorrent in the first place.
I hate the practice and idea of abortion, but as someone said before, its not my/our place to decide if its legal or not. It should be left between the mother and God. The conscious and soul are very persuasive.
Thats if the mother has one.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:40 pmESTFirst, let me just say I deeply sympathize with your situation and I can’t imagine what it must be like to face such a terrifying decision.
That said, I am uncomfortable with the idea of terminating a pregnancy rather than force a child to grow up with a congenital deformity, disease, or condition. Who are we to decide that certain people aren’t “fit” to live and must be destroyed in the womb? Who are we to decide that someone else’s life would be too “painfully horrible” for them to stand?
Worse yet, where might this policy lead us? What other conditions shall we decide are so “unfortunate” that the sufferers should be snuffed out before they are born? Mental retardation? Autism? Blindness? Epilepsy? Allergies to sunlight? Shall we also judge the lives of these individuals as “too painful” for them to tolerate? Who are we to make that decision? Many of these people later go on to lead highly productive lives even despite their condition. What right do we have to say they should be killed in utero in order to spare them the pain of their own existence?
April 7th, 2008 at 8:09 pmESTQSS, your idea may work if we operated in the 4th dimension the same we do in the standard 3 spatial ones. However we do not. The beauty of free will we have been discussing means the future doesn’t exist until we make it. I am celibate, 26. Call that 12 to 14 years of fertility, no sex, no possibility of babies.
Using your logic, as well, if the man abstained, those sperm cells would have also died, so their fate remained unchanged, the contraception therefore changed nothing. If your logic were true, then every 3 or 4 days a man (any man) went with out ejaculating into a fertile woman, he’d be guilty of killing the potential babies. This is why we can’t play with the future and what-ifs like that. A blastocyst, zygote, fetus, baby, whatever you want to call it, is real, not potential, and therefore the responsibility of the parents.
By the way. From what I understand, the 8-cell blastocyst is almost never aborted (excepting the morning after pill). For an honest to God abortion, the woman needs to know she’s pregnant. Debate the relevance of the zygote all you want, but you damage your point when you dismiss it as something different.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:09 pmESTYou are oversimplifying the issue. The question concerns ending a life, not preventing a birth. Technically you would be “preventing birth” simply by not having sex in the first place.
That would be an utterly unreasonable position to hold. Only one sperm can fertilize an egg. Unless the rest of them can each find an egg of their own, they will all die anyway.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:16 pmESTAnyone else bet that our dear Ms Lu-kiss is preggers???
D’oh!
::::hides under the bed, fearin’ lukkis wrath:::::
April 7th, 2008 at 8:17 pmESTmightysamurai
You might want to read this article: The Abortion Debate No One Wants To Have. I practiced OB for many years but it took an abnormal prenatal test on my own baby for me to realize that the final common pathway of prenatal genetic testing was abortion. Few doctors sit down with patients and tell them what all of these tests are really all about. Women want them to “make sure the baby is all right.” But what if the results aren’t all right? What then? Once I took the time to explain to women what tests could actually help the baby and which ones were simply meant to screen out and abort affected fetuses, the number of women who wanted the entire panel of prenatal testing fell significantly.
And it took parents like Nicki Fellenzer to educate me regarding the value of continuing a pregnancy despite a “poor prognosis.” In fact, I will never forget the father who had a baby everyone knew would never survive. He said that, if nothing else, the fact that he and his wife chose to have a child they knew would die let their other children know how much they were loved. Absolutely and completely.
In the “OB biz” it’s assumed that couples with “abnormal” fetuses will choose abortion. I gradually came to realize that is not always the case. And a whole lot of people just don’t want to know. Like stylinjulie’s doc, I’m not in the “OB Biz” anymore, either. And I’m glad.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:47 pmESTI read about a woman in the UK somewhere who had an abortion because her baby would be born with a cleft lip. I don’t know if it was an urban legend or not but it sadly would not surprise me if it were true.
I am so sorry for you ladies who have lost your children.
As someone who is actively trying to get pregnant I can only imagine the loss.
I’m not against abortion in the extreme cases. A coworker of mine found out that their baby had NO brain. Literally! And there were other issues as well and basically if it was not “terminated” it would be a hazard to her own health. The decision was not made lightly and they wanted their baby. So I do understand that not all abortions are done for birth control or due to irresponsibility.
But in the other 90% of the time I do not think they should be so easily available. Other alternatives should be explored (adoption for one). I don’t want women who don’t WANT a child to be forced to keep one but I don’t want abortion to be the ‘easy out’.
I like that the conversation has been so pleasant here.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:51 pmESTThomas Paine- Quickening occurs when an Immortal-to-be suffers what would normally be a life-ending wound/injury; and his/her immortality is awakened. (Should that not occur, they can - and do - die a normal death.) The bit with lightening is the souls of the decapitated losers killed by the loser of that particular fight leaving the loser and entering the victor.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:02 pmESTWell, one useful standard for that comes from the other end of life; namely, we already have a standard of “brain death”. While still a little controversial (although much less so than abortion, at least), we do at least there have evidence for the notion that if the cortex is working, even if the heart has stopped and organs failed, etc., etc., there’s still a person in there, and that contrariwise, if the cortex has failed, then whatever the rest of the body’s doing, there’s no person in there any more; personhood’s gone, and all you’re left with is “animate meat”, in effect.
So in my view, I’d suggest flipping that around. Once the pregnancy’s progressed far enough for the cortex to develop and start functioning, he’s or she’s a person with all applicable rights; before then, it’s not. Obviously, neuroscience isn’t yet to the point of being able to determine precisely which parts of it are involved in creating conscious personhood, and there’s obviously some variation in development speed, but that’s easy enough to solve; it seems obvious that the violation of rights involved in killing a person is more serious than that involved in requiring a mother to preserve the life of a not-yet-person, so we should draw a bright line at the point at before which we know it doesn’t occur. If I recall correctly, that would be around the 11th week.
Well, as someone who generally takes the position that preventing hereditary disease is a good thing, I would say that we don’t have standing to decide that for other people - once they’re people. So, if someone with one of these conditions is older than that 11-week bright line, then they’re a person with all associated rights, life included.
Before that, however, I’d say that it’s not a matter of destroying a person, whether to spare them suffering or for whatever other reason, it’s just a matter of selecting among different possible people who don’t yet exist, to make sure that the child you do have will have the best possible life.
Or so I reason, anyway.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:06 pmESTI decided years ago that I did not want to have kids either, and I did my level best to prevent pregnancy through responsible birth control use. However, the thought that was always in the back of my mind was. . .what if I became pregnant? No birth control method (save abstinence) is 100 percent foolproof. What would I do?
The answer was: I would have a baby. Said baby would have been conceived in love and stability. I would have been a good mother, and my husband would have been a wonderful father. I would have been surrounded by a loving and supportive family. Such a pregnancy could only be viewed as a happy accident. However, I would never force my views on another nor would I want abortion to be become illegal.
The legality of abortion is irrelevant, anyway. It will always be available, either above or under ground.
And, no, I don’t think that Rachel is pregnant.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:07 pmESTOf course, having said that, I would like to make it clear that I’d always advocate pre-natal care, and genetic screening of the parents beforehand, and other such measures to ensure that the problem never arises as preferable to screening and temination after conception. But that’s not always possible or practical.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:08 pmESTApril 7th, 2008 at 9:09 pmEST
I’ll repeat, because I’m not sure why you use the quote. The future doesn’t exist until we create it. But the present does exist. This includes the living human growing in the mother’s womb.
I’m reiterating my point, not necessarily arguing.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:18 pmESTGreat post on a sensitive issue.
I am mostly pro-choice on this issue, as I do believe that an adult women should (in an ideal world) be the best person to take into account all the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy and make an individual decision based on those circumstances. No law can fully encompass and cater for all the possible scenarios that a pregnant women may face.
However, saying that, I do wish that there was less nonchalance about abortion from those that support legal abortion. I understand the anger and frustration that people who have a strong opposition to abortion must feel when they hear the blase, almost callous, descriptions of pregnancy and fetuses, particlarly in relation to late term abortion.
Thomas Paine: I’m with you on the Highlander reference even if no-one else is. Made me laugh in the midst of some seriously serious posts. Thanks.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:26 pmESTOops. Hit the button too soon. When you prevent a life via contraception, you have created the future. You just created a future without a specific individual who would have lived had you not artificially interfered with nature. Both the sperm and the egg possess the genetic code that except for your willful interference will allow a specific individual to be born. You will win the argument about taking a life vs. preventing a life, but your victory will be a matter of semantics as far as the end result is concerned.
Look, I realize this is not a convenient position to take. But if you were only concerned with allowing people to live, and not at all with convenience, it wouldn’t be absurd at all. In fact it would be essential.
The sperm and egg that would have united have, except for your interference, every bit the potential to come to full term as the blastocyst that you did permit to exist.
You can rationalize this away and say well that is one thing and this is another, but you cannot change the fact that the simple statement before this one is true.
Do I think there is something morally wrong with contraception? No. But some people do.
People tend to speak in absolutes about abortion. All I’m saying is that it is not as simple as drawing a line in the sand. You can draw the line, but if you practice contraception, the sand is shifting beneath you.
But if you are honest with yourself about what you are doing, then you might be a little more tolerant of those with whom you disagree.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:48 pmESTAlistair Young, you said:
There are already hundreds of genetic tests that can be done. The question is- should they be done? We’re not so far from realizing Hitler’s dream of eugenics- especially in other countries where American couples can undergo genetic testing for sex selection and abort the “wrong” sex if they so choose. Can height and hair color be far behind?
And even when it comes to diseases, would some people be labeled unfit to breed? Or could they breed but be required to conceive via in-vitro fertilization so the blastocysts can be tested for genetic disease before they’re implanted? After all, most genetic diseases are recessive, so only one-fourth of their offspring would be afflicted. Or do they just have chorionic villus sampling in the first trimester so the abortion can be done as early as possible? What if the illness is something like Huntington’s Chorea (a fatal disease with no treatment that doesn’t afflict people until they’re adults)- and the prospective father doesn’t even know he has it? Should he be told?
How about cystic fibrosis- a disease people can survive until their third or fourth decade of life and for which there might be a cure someday soon? Where do we draw the line and say which fetuses are fit to live and which are not? Ask someone with cystic fibrosis and you’ll get a whole different answer than you might get from the medical authorities that recommend prenatal testing for cystic fibrosis with the offer of abortion should the test be positive.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:50 pmESTI can not grant your premise, I’m sorry.
That egg and sperm meet only in the instance that the sex is had. I choose (active interference, by your premise) not to have sex, therefore I have had thousands of lost babies, because all that spermatoza generated died in me. Your premises rests on the assumption that were it not for the contraception, that sperm and egg would meet, and create a child. I say, if not for the contraception, the sex would not have been had, so the sperm and egg cell would die, lost forever. This is the fate they share due to the condom. Here the contraception changes no future.
I see what you are saying, but conception is not an artificial line. Any line drawn after that point is artificial, shifting sand if you will, but right there it is a discreet event. I’m making this point, not convince you, since you don’t seem to care, but to point out where your argument is quite week, for the future.
In other words this isn’t rationalization, it is fisking. You are attempting to build an argument of the extreme to make a point, but it doesn’t hold up here.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:57 pmESTI see where you’re going, but I don’t think that analogy works.
Brain death is not simply the lack of detectable brain activity. Brain death is the total necrosis of the brain tissue. The brain is, literally, dead. It can’t be brought back. Ever.
By contrast, while an unborn child may not have any detectable brain activity until late in the pregnancy, to say this is equivalent to being brain dead is just not true. The unborn child’s brain is not dead, it is simply undeveloped. Given time and barring any abnormality, it WILL develop into a normal, healthy brain. The same cannot be said of someone in brain death.
Also, as you yourself point out, science can’t even determine which part of the brain contains the human consciousness or when it develops. So again we’re faced with the problem that we do not know for sure when “life” truly begins. We can speculate, but we can’t know.
*sigh*
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t intend that to sound like a newsletter from Eugenics Weekly.
But you still haven’t answered my question. What gives us the right to say these people are “life unworthy of life”? Who are we to judge how much potential suffering is “too much” potential suffering?
And again, where will this ultimately lead us? What other genetically inheritable maladies shall we classify as so horrible or painful that the sufferers shouldn’t even be allowed the chance to live? Schizophrenia? Bipolar disorder? Huntington’s disease? Cerebral palsy?
Maybe we could set up special courts to determine which diseases are acceptable to society and which ones warrant an abortion. We’ll call them “Genetic Health Courts”.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:11 pmESTPretty much.
Oh wait…he’s saying what I just said, isn’t he? That life in law at the time of his writing began at quickening. Which was when the fetus was felt by the mother. (One can safely assume some mothers lied about that…)
The historical view in the Western tradition is as I stated it. Other cultures had widely divergent views–the Western view is most explictly based on RC Church doctrine, and varied by what authorities you accepted. It was not until the immediate post-Gospel post-Pauline era that abortion became a contemporary topic, mostly in moralistic Pauline reactions to the widespread Roman-era use of herbal abortifaceants as “morning-after” birth control. (Pay attention to that point–we’re rapidly reaching the point where modern pharmacology is outrunning surgery in this area as concerns 1st-trimester abortion, and it’s changing the nature of the debate.)
One can always pick and choose historical authorities, of course, and many do, as there is zip in the Bible specifically regarding abortion. St. Augustine himself embraced the Aristotelian concept of “delayed ensoulment,” in which the fetus was not “ensouled” until quickening. That was also the mainstream of Greek and Roman thought at the time of Christ, and pretty much carried forward though the Middle Ages.
In any case, the big debate was then (as it pretty much is now) when a fetus gains a soul–an explicitly religious concept. Aquinas and Innocent III both also proclaimed the “delayed ensoulment” concept, that the fetus does not become ensouled before quickening. That doctrine was overthrown by Pope Sixtus V, who was in turn reversed by Gregory XIV who re-applied the “quickening” standard. That applied for the next few centuries until 1869 when Pope Pius IX reversed it by dropping the concept of “quickening” entirely from Church doctrine. In 1886 Leo XIII declared that all abortion was murder, even if absolutely necessary to save the life of the mother. Which, despite what some believe, it sometimes is.
Note that’s all Catholic Church doctrine, not that of any other religion or church, and not that of the law as applied throughout the ages in various nations and empires. And other churches have very different views.
In the pragmatic-policy view, it’s simply not possible to stop abortion, and history so reflects. Legislating against it has predictable results that are felt by society as a whole. Legislating unlimited abortion, likewise. Morality has nothing to do with that–the results occur regardless of what your moral position is. Being morally superior and self-righteous does not allow you to avoid those inevatable results, it just allows you to attempt to disclaim them. But they inevitably result nonetheless, regardless of how morally superior the law either way makes you feel. And please note–IMHO that applies to the results of ANY policy, WHICHEVER side you care to advocate.
If you advocate unlimited abortion up until birth, you OWN those healthy babies killed in the womb at 35 weeks for some shallow woman’s lifestyle convenience. If you advocate no abortion ever, for any reason, you OWN that poverty cycle that results and the women dead from bad pregnancies and back-alley procedures and maimed and sterilized by failed attempts. And the same for all shades in between. That’s where I leave the True Believers of both sides behind. In my not so-humble-opinion, when you take a position on an issue, any issue, YOU OWN THE WHOLE DAMN THING. The good and the bad. Grown-ups take responsibility for their actions and positions. They accept the whole package, and make the hard choices without trying to make themselves feel better by shuffling off all the bad side on someone else. They may grieve at the down-side results of their decisions and regret them, but they don’t try to dodge their responsibility for them.
In slightly simpler terms, I do not buy for an instant the “it’s their own fault” doctrine in the dictation of rules for others. When you make rules for yourself, great. When you make rules for others, you own the results. 100%. All of them. Always.
My two cents and the last I’ll say about it.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:22 pmESTAh. Sorry, I misunderstood your original statement. I thought you were arguing that the quickening only ever meant the moment when the unborn child started moving and never had anything to do with the right to life.
Yeah, well, no offense to St. Augustine, but he was flat-out wrong.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”
It’s not possible to stop burglary either, but that doesn’t mean we should repeal laws against theft. The fact that people will choose to break the law does not, in and of itself, prove that the law should be repealed.
So morality is irrelevant and results are all that matter? Isn’t that just another way of saying “the ends justify the means”?
You realize that I could use this same argument to argue against just about any law, policy, or ideology in existence, right? If you advocate capitalism, you OWN the resulting economic inequalities and unequal distribution of wealth. If you advocate freedom of speech, you OWN the decrease in general decency that results. If you advocate democracy, you OWN every instance where the majority makes a stupid decision that ends up costing us all in the long run.
I’m afraid I simply don’t understand this position. It seems that not only do you reject the very idea of personal responsibility, but you reject the very concept of law and government (that would be “making rules for others” after all).
April 7th, 2008 at 10:53 pmESTSo you’re saying, Chris, if there were no contraception, there would be no sex? There would definitely be less, but I’m pretty sure there would still be sex. In fact I’d see to it.
I’m talking about instances where sex is being had, where people are engaging in activities known to make babies, where a sperm is about to dock with an egg, pregnancy is imminent and artificial means are being used to prevent it. In the situation I’m talking about, contraception does in fact change the future.
I’m sorry, you are obviously much smarter than I am and I’m sure you know what you are talking about, but I don’t. My bad. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just continue to talk about what I am talking about.
By keeping your pants zipped and avoiding sex, you are not doing anything unnatural…well, some might consider that unnatural, but you are not practicing contraception. Without sex, there is nothing to contracept. There is no possibility that children will result from your inactivity.
I agree with you that conception is a discrete event (it may or may not be discreet). So is contraception, which is my point.
And you don’t have to apologize for your inability to “grant my premise.” I didn’t ask for your grant.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:53 pmESTBS, mightysamurai. It’s an explicit acknowledgement of accepting responsibility for anything you do that affects others. Even if you are doing the right thing, you still own it. You own those in prison for burglary–you just accept the cost, by your lights. As an adult who knows that responsibility does indeed ALWAYS come back to those who exercise control over others.
It’s not an argument for or against anything, except the ever-popular attempt to dodge the responibility for the results of one’s own actions and advocacies when imposed on others. Your decisions impose those results on society. Society may well consider them acceptable–like locking up murderers. But you still own the results. Hopefully the good outweighs the bad. BUT YOU OWN IT ANYWAY.
Sez you. But that’s an opinion. And we could argue opinions for eternity. Your mama. My mama. Yada yada. Proves nothing. You can trumpet your morality all you like–society will still live with the results. And you are responsible for the results of what you advocate. All of them. Always. Matthew 7:1, if you like.
If you feel otherwise, you’re pretty much just confirming what else I said–that ideologues use “morality” and other external claims as an excuse to dodge their own personal responsibility for the results of the rules they wish to place ON OTHERS. Uh uh. You advocate the rules, you impose them on others, you own the results. When you presume to act as your brother’s keeper, you accept your brother’s welfare as your own, and YOU are responsible.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:09 pmESTYou are absolutely wrong, and simultaneously absolutely right.
The only thing I note is that when government is involved one way or another I am suspicious of the efficacy of the proposed government “solution.”
April 7th, 2008 at 11:34 pmESTYes, I understand what you’re saying, I just don’t understand your position.
Honestly, I just don’t see what point you’re trying to make here. I agree, the policies we advocate can have negative consequences that affect others and those consequences should be seriously considered when implementing those policies. But blaming illicit abortions on anti-abortion laws makes about as much sense as blaming murders on laws against homicide. Again, the mere fact that some people choose to disobey a law does not, in and of itself, prove that the law is bad.
Ironically, in attempting to argue against “the ever-popular attempt to dodge the responibility for the results of one’s own actions and advocacies” you have ended up doing the exact same thing. All you’ve done here is try to place yourself up on a moral pedestal so you can claim none of this is your fault.
Nobody can pin sexual promiscuity due to legalized abortion on you, that’s the result of someone else’s actions and advocacies.
Nobody can pin the dead bodies of women who killed themselves trying to perform an abortion with a coat-hanger on you, that’s the result of someone else’s actions and advocacies.
None of it’s your fault, it’s all our fault. You have the answers and everyone else is wrong.
In attempting to accuse the rest of us of dodging moral responsibility, you have ironically revealed that you are just as guilty. I suggest you take a look at Matthew 7:1 yourself, along with the rest of the Discourse on Judgement while you’re at it.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:35 amESTHow DARE you throw logic into this heated issue?
In your arguments, you have not abandoned the human condition in your logic and for that, I think you’re wonderful.
I find it very interesting that those that are so rabidly for or against ANYTHING are less open to the other side if you’re talking about general statistics - that is, the group as a whole - but more apt to be understanding, even “forgiving,” if the individuals are singled out and circumstances are explained.
Maybe if everyone took the time to really look at each person as a human being, foibles and all, instead of lumping them into a category: i.e., “cake eaters” or “purple people,” and tried getting to know “Sam” or “Rachl,” things would be easier.
Eee. I’m sorry. Did I just squirt patchouli in here or what?
April 8th, 2008 at 1:20 amESTMy own take is that it isn’t a “baby” until it is born—or at least, until it is capable of surviving outside the womb. I’d be willing to compromise as follows: abortions legal until the last three months or so of pregnancy, then illegal save in cases of real medical emergency or non-viability. Unfortunately, the extremist whackos on both sides won’t let there be a compromise.
April 8th, 2008 at 1:22 amESTI know I’m the 108th’ish person to say so, but that was extremely well put! I’m SO tired of people not only being careless about their responsibilities in having kids, but practically EVERY area of life. Living in LA for 2 years, we saw every form of un-responsibility (yeah, i carelessly made up a word, so what?). If people would actually take responsibility (uh-oh…the R word!) for their actions, just THINK of how much better things could be.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:24 amESTWhat about making sex education real simple for people?
Right now we teach people how babies are made from conception to birth. Which is great and all, no one should be ignorant of their basic body functions. People need to know how their bodies work. Which kinda dovetails into how horrible health education is in this country, but back to the main topic…
People may know the process of reproduction but no one seems to be passionate about explaining the reason why sex feels so good. It feels good for the same reason that there are 6.5 billion people on the planet right now. If sex felt like going to the dentist, like some distasteful chore, then there sure as hell wouldn’t be 6.5 billion people or so.
People need to get that fucking leads to babies.
In case you want to hear it as an “if-then” proposition “IF you don’t want kids THEN don’t fuck carelessly.”
Not get it in a ha-ha-ohigetitfunny kind of way. Not in a yeah, 2+2=4 kind of way. They need to get it way down deep in their guts the same way you learn at a real young age that touching a hot stove gets you a burned hand.
For me, the greatest contraceptive in the world is knowing that the person I am screwing might end up carrying my child. A sobering thought. One that I got from day one of sex ed because my parents made sure I understood.
Does that mean that I didn’t sow any wild oats when I was younger? Of course not. But I made damn sure to wrap my tool and be a little more choosy of potential partners than most of my peers. Because the last thing I wanted, besides drippy dick, was to potentially bring a child into the world that didn’t get the same chances I got.
I definitely did not want any child of mine to be a “whoopsie”. I have always believed that the principal ingredient of making a child is love. Otherwise, what is the point?
I think the that people need to be a little more accountable for their own actions.
To the women out there: you are not the Virgin Mary. You were not immaculately conceived. You fucked, you weren’t protected. Now you need a painful surgical procedure to correct your mistake. Which means that you basically didn’t use your head and were being driven by your gonads. Hey, as a man I can understand. But you are still retarded. Or atavistic at the very least.
If you are still too young to raise a child or are a child yourself(16? 17?)PUT THE DICK DOWN. Do you really want to make your parents take care of another kid? Do you really want to make your life hell and, oh by the way, ruin your kid’s life? Do you really want to be emotionally scarred for life getting an abortion so young?
Let’s face it ladies, you have the baby factories. Contraception, with the exception of condoms which should be worn unless you know the person REAL well anyway, comes down to the woman. What man is going to make sure you take a pill in the morning or help you insert your diaphragm? If you want the choice, then you have to accept the responsibility too. Sorry.
To the men out there: wow, keep a rubber, know how to use one and wear the damn thing. Dipping your wick bareback in some ditzy chick is about as smart as swishing it in Drain-O. Then hitting it with a hammer. Ever hear of the HIV?
And if you happen to make a girl pregnant, support her NO MATTER WHAT. If she decides to get an abortion, hold her hand while it happens. If she decides to keep it, then send her money to feed your offspring.
Because otherwise you fail at being a man and have lowered yourself to the status of an animal. A dog. The one thing that separates us from all the other furry beasts is our brains, asswipe. If you can’t accept that, then be prepared to accept the high-voltage contempt I will be sending your way. Congratulations, you know how to fuck. So does my dog. So does a goldfish. So does a pig.
Me, I want to be a man.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:55 amESTYou know, people should really try and get over this one, and that goes for:
too.
Why? Because Hitler was an idiot and a butcher. His notion of so-called eugenics involved the mass murder of actual, existing people, forced sterilizations, and any number of other gross barbarities and crimes against people, and for all he tried to use scientific terminology to cover it, usually for specious, ungrounded reasons that Nazi racial doctrine invented out of whole cloth.
Yes, advocating voluntary-and-recommended genetic screening programs against actual hereditary disease fits within the technical meaning of “eugenics”, but comparing it to Nazi extermination programs is just ridiculous.
Because we’re their parents, and we have a responsibility to our children.
Let’s take this from the top, shall we? There have been a couple of cases in which deaf couples have deliberately chosen, using screening techniques, to ensure that the child they have is also deaf. “To perpetuate ‘Deaf culture’, etc.” Anyone want to stand up and tell me that’s a moral choice? (If so, it’s fairly clear we’ll agree on nothing, so I’ll bow out now.)
OK, for those who remain, let’s think about why that’s not a moral choice. I would argue that as parents, we have a responsibility to give our children the best start in life that we can. For the same reasons we have a responsibility to see them well fed, and clothed, and raised, and educated after they’re born, we shouldn’t start out in life by deliberately afflicting them with a handicap that starts them out behind everyone else.
And so, by the same argument, I’d say that as a responsible parent, if I can ensure that the child I choose to create does not suffer from any condition that worsens their position in life, I have a moral responsibility to them to ensure that I do so. If I choose, deliberately and willfully, to avoid doing that, then I’m deliberately worsening or risking worsening their life, and that’s both immoral and irresponsible. I would argue.
And note: this is not “life unworthy of life”, because there is no living person yet. Once someone is alive, they have a right to their life. They deserve the chance to make of it whatever they will. It’s theirs. They can’t be morally deprived of it. But that’s not the same moral question as “is it right to start that life off in the first place?”
Or, if you like, to take the “eugenics” out of it, an analogy would be, “Should we euthanize the children of parents who can’t afford them?” (no, of course not, and I sincerely hope no-one disagrees with me on this) versus “Is it responsible for parents who can’t afford them to have children?”
April 8th, 2008 at 6:14 amESTWell, really, it’s silly and shallow and distasteful and morally contemptible, but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong enough to outlaw, per se.
I’m going to be honest with you here, and say that I don’t know. I dislike the thought of even the mildest of coercive eugenics. This is, after all, a free society (and one I, as a libertarian minarchist, would like to be considerably more free), and I’m not at all, as a general principle, in favor of forcing people to do things when it’s not absolutely necessary.
However, here we run into the very thing that makes this debate difficult in the first place; namely, that there’s more than one person, or more than the parents, involved, and that the child (unborn or not) also has a set of rights.
There’s a general consensus, for example, even among minarchists that sometimes the rights of children have to be protected from their parents - both in cases of direct harm at the hands of their parents, and also in the case of parental irresponsibility. We don’t permit parents to leave their children uneducated, for example, or to decline to feed, clothe, and house them.
And, per my previous argument, I think the case can be made that deliberately permitting your child to come into the world with some genetic disease (or, for that matter, some pre-natal condition like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) is also a case of gross parental irresponsibility, and one in which the child should be protected from the parent.
It’s a hard question, and while I would always prefer to trust parents with always acting in the best interests of their children, we know that this is not always the case, and I can’t begin to tell you that I have a perfect solution yet.
On this specific case, well, yes, obviously. How can he be expected to make an informed decision unless he has the information to make it with?
Ask someone with cystic fibrosis if they’d prefer not to be, and you’ll get one answer. Ask the same someone if they’d like to be the person who lived the exact same life they did only without the cystic fibrosis, and I submit that you won’t get the same one.
But in any case, that’s dealing with already existing people. Try a more direct analogy to the screening case, and ask someone with cystic fibrosis if they’d prefer that people in the future continue to be born with cystic fibrosis when it would be possible for them not to be, and it would take a pretty selfish person to answer “yes”, I should think.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:46 amESTI agree with abortion and also strongly agree that it should NOT be made illegal. I think for every teenager or woman that is not married or has no job or is on drugs or is an alcoholic or is homeless or is an illegal immigrant it should be mandatory.
Our taxes would go down as we, the hard working citizens who pay taxes and plan for our children’s future’s have to pay for all of those who don’t. Our economy would certainly improve.
Yea it’s easy to get your hands on birth control but a teenager (most likely) is not going to go to their parent’s and ask for birth control. I was one of them.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:49 amESTGreat Essay!!!
Just an observation: The US has federal and lots of state laws that describe the murder of a pregnant woman as a double homicide; but, we also have legal abortion through the second trimester. An oxymoron?
April 8th, 2008 at 6:53 amESTI think I may have phrased that badly, sorry.
It’s not the brain activity standard that I would use, as the brain capacity standard. Someone who is in a coma, say, or various other states may not presently have what we recognise as conscious brain activity, but their brain still has the capacity to support it. That’s effectively what you point out in your second paragraph above, with regard to brain death - it’s not only that the activity’s gone, it’s that the brain’s ability to support the activity is also gone, that we use.
Where we differ is in the second. The equivalence with brain death, in a sense, is that in early enough stages of pregnancy - I think week 11 doesn’t count as “late in the pregnancy”, I’m afraid - also doesn’t have the capacity to support conscious brain activity, simply because at those early stages, the necessary part of the brain doesn’t exist.
Now, I would agree with you that given time, it would develop the capacity, but I don’t think that is, in itself, sufficient. For example: given time, a zygote, a single fertilized egg cell, will also develop all those capacities, and we don’t extend full protection to those - indeed, we reasonably can’t, considering that far more fail to implant or spontaneously miscarry than ever make it to noticeable term. Also, it would be rather inconsistent of us - in every other situation I can think of, we treat people, objects, and situations as what they are now, not what they may or will become later.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I would point out that we can’t determine that exactly, with the current state of science. However, we can, with what science knows at this stage, go so far as to draw a line around the cortex and say “it’s somewhere in here”.
And while we cannot, therefrom, say exactly “this is a person, and is endowed with the inalienable rights of such”, we certainly can draw some legal and ethical lines around it, and say carefully “anyone inside these lines may be a person, and therefore must be endowed with the inalienable rights of such; whereas anything outside these lines is not, and need not be”.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:41 amESTEven though I’m for keeping it legal, this may help some women think twice about having one.
http://www.pregnantpause.org/safe/bcancer2.htm
Not to mention I just looked at a bunch of pictures and I think I’m gonna be sick the rest of the day.
I won’t list the site as I’m not sure Rachel would want links to that on her website.
I could never do it.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:24 amESTAnd Hitler is the only eugenicist there ever was, right?
Alistair, what do you think Margaret Sanger’s original intent was when she founded Planned Parenthood?
Why? Why is it ridiculous?
Do you think the Nazi eugenics program started with involuntary sterilization and euthanasia? Of course not. When it first started it was all totally voluntary. People were just “encouraged” to abort fetuses with a high chance of inheriting a genetic disorder.
A responsibility to kill our children because we don’t think they are fit to live? Awfully strange philosophy on parental responsibility you’ve got there.
A moral choice to make their child deaf? Of course not. But you don’t honestly believe that’s the same as killing an unborn child because you think they might be born deaf, do you?
But again, you’re not talking about stopping people from “deliberately afflicting” a handicap on them. You’re saying we should abort fetuses that maybe, could be, possibly, might be born with a handicap.
And once again, where does this stop? What other handicaps shall we decide are too painful to inflict on anyone? Nearsightedness?
By killing them before they have the chance to live?
Can you prove it?
Didn’t think so.
Of course it’s irresponsible. But how does that make it okay to kill the child in the womb?
Do you realize the contradiction here?
Earlier you stated that the unborn child is “no living person”. But if the unborn child isn’t a person, why should its rights matter?
I’d like to be able to go without glasses. Does that mean I should’ve been aborted in the womb?
This argument is highly specious. Obviously nobody wants to see people born with cystic fibrosis or any other disorder. Not you, not me, not anybody. Nobody wants that to happen. But nobody wants soldiers to die in Iraq, either. Does that mean we should pull out of Iraq? Wouldn’t it be awfully selfish for someone to allow soldiers to suffer and die overseas when you could easily bring them home where they’d be much more safe?
No one wants to see any more children born with hereditary diseases. But that alone does not justify snuffing them out in the womb.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:47 amESTI haven’t had a chance to read all the comments because I didn’t get much farther after reading Raving Lunatic’s.
This is, by far, one of the saddest things I’ve read here. It really broke my heart. The heart of a father, grieving what could have been and never was.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:50 amESTRachel,
You actually are making a moral argument against abortion; it’s just that you’re taking a Virtue Theory approach to the issue (what would a virtuous person do in regards to X?) rather than a Deontological approach (what principle does X violate?).
To argue that abortion is seldom the best decision for a rational human being to make is to make a moral judgment about the act of deciding to get an abortion. If X doesn’t behave rationally when X can and should act rationally, then X is open to moral censure in proportion to the gravity of the issue. Since killing a fetus is a rather grave thing, it follows that in most cases the decision to abort is open to strong moral censure.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:59 amESTI don’t want to attempt to hijack the thread, but this has been bugging me since I read it yesterday…
So people opposed to gun control (or in support of the second amendment) are of a criminal bent?
Also, (back to the topic at hand)
Something FAR more vile and shall I say, downright evil, pulled me squarely off the fence on this issue… this story of so-called “Selective Reduction.” It has stayed with me ever since I read it.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:52 amESTI’ve been pondering this for awhile, I didn’t want to jump in too quick before I had time to think things through.
Let’s leave aside the abortion question itself and instead think about how we treat different behaviors. In the old days a person faced moral opprobrium for some behaviors that, while legal, were socially unacceptable.
That sort of societal oversight has almost gone the way of the dodo and I am convinced it is a bad thing. While it has been overly oppressive in some cases it has done more good than otherwise.
Look at how accepting everyone is of the mindset of the young people who don’t refer to a boyfriend or girlfriend but to ‘my baby’s daddy or my baby’s momma.’
As a society that sort of behavior not only negatively impacts the individuals involved but society as a whole. We have a right and a duty to try and reduce that kind of irresponsible thought and behavior. We can’t outlaw it but we can make it plain we abhor it.
I’m not suggesting that we try to turn back the clock to the fifties however it wouldn’t hurt to seriously consider not only whether something should be outlawed but whether, if it isn’t, we should use some sort of societal pressure to make clear that it is a less-than-desirable behavior and those who engage in it face society’s displeasure.
As it is only fat people and smokers face that kind of pressure.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:57 amESTSigh. I’m not going to get into arguing the details of specific cases which I may or may not agree or disagree with some specific parts of, some of the time. Argument by generalization is a fallacy. If you’re going to lump everyone in a very large field together, you might as well argue that because the North Koreans arrest dissidents and the Saudis stone women for flirting, all law and order is bad; because China invaded Tibet and Germany invaded Poland all war is bad; and because Fred Phelps and Jeremiah Wright are foamy-at-the-brain hatemongers, all Christianity is bad.
But you’d be wrong, wrong, and wrong, and by doing it in this case, it’s still wrong. Let’s argue the merits of the specific case, please, not on how similar it might or might not be to what someone else might have proposed at some point.
I’d just like to point out at this time that the term “fetus” applies after the major structures have formed, which is after 11 weeks, gestational age. So if you go by my proposal, fetuses are all rights-endowed and untouchable.
I’m talking about zygotes, blastocysts, and embryos.
(Oops, sorry, hit post button too early. More follows.)
April 8th, 2008 at 10:13 amESTGood on ya, dearest!
I couldn’t agree with you more; I have always been against abortion for the very reason you expounded above: It’s not about morality so much as it’s about responsibility! Of course, if you take away abortion, then the very irresponsible dolts who end up getting pregnant prove themselves to be the LAST people who should be given the responsibility of actually raising children.
Society has eliminated the stigma of unwanted pregnancy and promiscuity under the guise of “personal freedom,” when nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a slap in the face of everyone in the US who has the fortitude to accept any semblance of personal responsibility. Bring back the stigma! Let promiscuous people be ridiculed in public; maybe then they’d learn to keep it in their pants. Maybe if people were ridiculed for behaving like hormone-driven teens, we could get back to the idea of holding people responsible for their actions instead of excusing their behavior according to their social status, or gender, or race, or… , or…
You know, I bet unwanted pregnancies would go down if we had a three day waiting period on abortions. We have a three day waiting period to purchase handguns because someone MIGHT kill someone, let’s have a three day waiting period when we KNOW somebody’s going to kill someone…
And please give my thanks and best wishes to Rupert.
Semper Fi,
April 8th, 2008 at 10:29 amESTMattski
You’re right, I should’ve said later in the pregnancy. My bad. But my overall point still remains valid.
The benchmark of “the capacity to support conscious brain activity” is extremely vague. What is the “capacity” for conscious brain activity? Where is the dividing line between someone who is totally brain dead and someone in a deep, deep coma with no detectable brain activity but could, in the future, regain consciousness?
One of the primary reasons why there was such a huge controversy around Terri Schiavo was because of the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Although the doctors pronounced her as PVS, they were only able to confirm that diagnosis post-mortem. And according to a UK study, 43% of a study group of patients declared PVS were later found to have been misdiagnosed. Even allowing for the possibility that the sample may have been skewed somehow, that’s still and alarmingly high number. And even among people who accepted the PVS diagnosis there was still endless debate. “Just how ‘persistent’ is a persistent vegetative state?” they asked. “Is it at all possible that Terri might come out of it someday?” they asked. These were highly relevant questions at the time since more than a few people who were diagnosed as PVS have woken up later.
Now, please note, I did not cite that example with the intent of rehashing the Terri Schiavo debate. She’s already dead and arguing about it won’t change anything. I’m merely trying to illustrate my point that the legal and medical definition of “consciousness” is not fully understood.
You can designate “capacity to support conscious brain activity” as the cutoff point after which abortion becomes illegal, but that decision would be essentially an arbitrary one based on your personal opinion of when life begins. And if it’s wrong for ME to impose MY personal opinion of when life begins on other people, isn’t it just as wrong for you to do the same?
We’re not talking about pregnancies that fail due to random chance. A pregnancy could just as easily fail because the mother took a nasty tumble down a flight of stairs. What we’re talking about is deliberately terminating a pregnancy.
On the contrary, we do it all the time. I remember when my paternal grandmother had a stroke and slipped into a coma, the doctors asked my dad to make a decision about whether to remove life support. The first question my dad asked them was “Is there a chance she’ll come out of it?” (She did eventually but later passed away due to some diabetes-related complication, but I digress.) In fact, I’d wager that just about every person ever faced with the unenviable decision of whether or not to take a family member off life support asked themselves and their doctor that very same question. Likewise, when a conscious patient is diagnosed with a serious medical condition and their choices come down to death or a highly invasive or uncomfortable medical procedure (dialysis, chemo, being put on a respirator, etc.) they often base their decision on their chances of recovery. Is it possible that they might recover later or will they just be buying time?
So obviously we do treat people based on what they may or will become later, in certain circumstances.
But that brings us back to the fundamental question:
What if you’re wrong?
You can say “it’s somewhere in here” but how do you know you’ve hit the right mark?
For the sake of argument, lets say you put the cutoff point at 10 weeks.
What if you’re wrong? How do you know you haven’t placed it a few weeks too late? Of course you’ll say, “Well I’ll just move it back 5 weeks, just to be safe,” [again, the exact number is not important, this is all for the sake of argument] but you’ve still got a problem. What if you’re wrong again? What if this time you placed it too early? Wouldn’t you be infringing on the mother’s “right to choose” if you placed the cutoff point too early?
You might say, “That’s okay because we’re just erring on the side of caution,” but a pro-lifer would very reasonably point out that erring on the side of caution is exactly why we feel that abortion should be outlawed.
If it’s okay to drop the cutoff point back a few weeks in the interest of erring on the side of caution, why is it not okay to say that life begins at conception and we should outlaw ALL abortion just to be on the safe side? Why is it okay to infringe on a woman’s “right to choose” by moving the cutoff point back from 10 weeks to 5 weeks, but not okay to infringe on a woman’s “right to choose” by moving the cutoff point all the way back to the moment of conception? Why is it wrong for me to impose my personal beliefs on women by saying life begins at conception, but not wrong for you to impose your personal beliefs on women by saying life begins at X weeks after conception?
But don’t you see? You’re doing the exact same thing that pro-lifers do. You’re arguing that a fetus that has advanced X weeks may be a human life, therefore we must protect its inalienable right to life. In other words, you’re saying we should err on the side of caution in order to avoid destroying what might be a human life.
So why is it okay to err on the side of caution by putting the cutoff at X weeks after conception, but not okay to err on the side of caution by putting the cutoff at the moment of conception itself?
April 8th, 2008 at 10:30 amESTLet me be clear, I’m not trying to make an argument by generalization.
If it sounded like I was calling you a Nazi or comparing you to Hitler or saying that what you are advocating is just as bad as what Hitler did, please understand that was not my intent and I’m sorry if my lack of clarity made it sound like that.
What I’m arguing is not an argument by generalization, but a slippery slope argument. None but the most extreme of the extreme pro-choicers actually believe that abortion should be used as a form of eugenics. But then, none but the most extreme of the extreme in Nazi Germany actually believed Hitler would go as far as he did.
Today we’re talking about aborting unborn children that are diagnosed with debilitating genetic disorders. But tomorrow, who knows?
What other disorders will we one day decide are so horrible that destroying the sufferers in the womb is preferable to letting them experience the pain of their own existence? Or more to the point, who else will we decide is not fit to be born?
First it’s the handicapped.
Then it’s the poor.
Then the inconvenient.
Then the “different”.
Today we abort children with Down Syndrome or cystic fibrosis. Who’s next?
April 8th, 2008 at 10:53 amESTNow do you see why we call them “unborn children”? : )
Anyway, I’ll keep that in mind, but be advised that I may slip up and use “fetus” from time to time, if only from force of habit.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:57 amESTI had to run before finishing my comment. Here’s what I attempted to add before time ran out.
If we think killing a baby is wrong then we should try to make it easier to have a baby and let it be adopted than it is to abort it. People take the path of least resistance. Societal pressure can help ease an action or make it more difficult.
It doesn’t have to be all one way or all the other. It won’t make everyone happy but there is a middle way.
Personally I would like to see all abortions banned except to save the life of the mother. No exceptions for rape or incest. I realize that that is an extreme position to some but I think a human life should never be taken except in extreme circumstances.
A middle way for the abortion question is to make contraception easily available (which it is) but to make abortion difficult to obtain and inconvenient to go through, though still legal. We should put incentives in place so pregnant women will have a reason outside of their own desires to consider keeping their child and make the process to give a baby up for adoption easier on the mother. I think there should be a three-day waiting list for abortions, why make it any easier than we have to.
There are other avenues to get abortions reduced than outright banning them.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:59 amESTAbsolutely agree. The massive amount of red tape surrounding the adopting process in America is one of the primary reasons why women choose to abort instead. It’s also one of the main reasons why so many people adopt children from overseas.
As Carlos Mencia once said, “Be patriotic. Adopt American.”
April 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pmESTI completely disagree with this statement. I do not own the choices other people make, whether it’s the ones who choose to engage in risky behavior and get tagged, or the ones who choose to provide such services. This sentence, and the one above it which I didn’t quote, completely miss Rachel’s point of the importance of personal responsibility.
Being against theft doesn’t make me own the crimes of those who flaunt the law and do it anyway. Being against legalizing drugs doesn’t give me ownership of the underground drug culture. How in the world could being against abortion make me own the injuries of those who do it anyway?
April 8th, 2008 at 12:15 pmESTOK, I’m going to mix and match your comments a little here, since I think it reads better that way.
I’d make a distinction here. I don’t think it’s vague. I think what it is, a lot of the time, is extremely hard to determine accurately.
It’s for that reason that I think we need to be careful at the other end of life, as well. If we see someone the cortex of whose brain is actually necrotic, there’s been cell death, and it is actually physically impossible for that brain ever to function again, then you can rule brain death. A brain where you can’t detect activity but where the neurons appear to be functioning and could, in theory, work? I don’t think we can currently rule out the possibility of it “restarting” itself, and so I don’t think we can claim, beyond a reasonable doubt, brain death.
(Not to rehash said debate, I do think/acknowledge that the medical profession isn’t nearly as careful about making this distinction as it ought to be.)
Well, that being said, there are, at each end of life, cases in which matters are unambiguous. We can be certain when massive cell death has taken place in the brain, for example, or even in some accidents that can reduce most of the brain to mush, and yet the body can be sustained alive almost indefinetly.
Likewise, I think we -
(Okay, I’m going to make another distinction, here. I’m not thinking in terms of when life begins, here, but rather, when personhood does. Obviously, the unborn are alive from the fertilized-egg stage onwards, but the trouble with life as a criterion, as I see it, is that it’s a very low standard to meet. Even leaving aside the people with actual, confirmable brain death, we shed millions of cells all over the place every day, all of them living. And animals and plants and tissue cultures and so forth are all living, and they don’t get many rights on account of that. So I’m not all that fond of the “Life Standard”.
So I look to the essential characteristic that distinguishes “people” from “animals” and “things” - we’re self-aware/conscious, we think, we emote, etc., and treat that as the determiner of personhood.)
- can make some determinations at the start of life. Starting with the fertilized egg, we know that it can’t be conscious - it has no brain to think with, no organs to sense with, nothing. Moving on, we have the blastula, again with no brain to think or senses to perceive, and so on and so forth.
Once you get to the fetal stage, there’s brain development, and then I say, enough. Now, I admit that is, as you say, arbitary, but I don’t think that it’s just a matter of my personal opinion, because even though it’s not based on objective knowledge of where consciousness is - it may well happen along considerably later in development, for all we know - it is based on objective knowledge of where it can’t be. “No brain, no consciousness” is as firmly established as anything else we can call a fact.
(I acknowledge, at this point, that my choice of self-awareness/consciousness to determine personhood is arbitrary, just as the choice of life would be, but at that point we’ve wandered out of biology and into metaphysics.)
And you’re absolutely right here, there is that risk, in both directions.
If you’ll indulge me for a minute, here’s what I see as the problem with making all these determinations. I believe, axiomatically if you will, in the three fundamental rights: life, liberty, and property, which which all persons (conscious entities) are endowed. The problem we have here is that two of them clash: the parental right to liberty and the child’s right to life.
So we have to find some way of adjudicating those to find some suitable trade-off to minimize the harm done. My rule of thumb here is that the right to life of the child is more important; we’re looking at losing all life, permanently, rather than partial liberty for a nine-month period (presuming adoption), in essence. So, given that, to do the least harm, I believe in setting the date back sufficiently far as to prevent infringement of the right to life of the child as a conscious entity.
But I also believe that we have to minimize the total violation, which is to say, we can only justify violating the mother’s right to liberty to prevent violation of the child’s right to life when the child is such an entity. Otherwise, we don’t have any moral standing to justify violating her right.
And finally, to complete my argument, we have to make that call with the evidence we have available. As far as I can tell, the best evidence we have suggests that it is impossible for consciousness to be present before a certain point, with nothing that I am aware of to suggest otherwise.
And so, it’s that minima that’s where I argue the line should be set.
My argument here would be that that level of caution isn’t justified by the evidence. We have evidence that suggests that consciousness resides in the brain; we have no evidence to suggest that a zygote, blastula, etc. are capable of it, any more than a randomly chosen cell or cell-cluster from anywhere else in the human body. Given that…
That’s pretty much what the pro-choice people usually say to me when I raise this argument - it seems to be equally unpopular with both sides of the debate, which is always fun, especially given that most debates on the topic are much less civilised than this one - but I think here it comes down again to the difference in measuring-stick. I’m thinking in terms of “conscious persons” rather than “human lives”.
You’ve raised some other points, but in the interest of keeping this down to manageable length, I think I might let that stand as the main stream of this argument, unless you want specific answers to any of them?
On the other stream of it, concerning genetic screening, etc., I think it once again reduces to this difference in measuring-stick. From the basis that the pre-conscious unborn, to coin a term, do not possess the inalienable rights of personhood (since they are not conscious persons), the terms of the argument appear different:
and
Technically, it is “killing” because, as stated, they are indeed alive; however, it isn’t murder in a moral sense, since one can only murder a person. Naturally, by the same argument, if one were to advocate aborting the post-conscious unborn, or for that matter killing people with genetic conditions after their birth, that is moral murder because they are conscious persons. That’s the line I’d claim we must not cross.
There is a special case here, just to point it up, because someone could construct an argument that lets someone inflict harm upon the pre-conscious unborn which would then carry through to the post-conscious unborn, and claim that they had done nothing wrong thereby since they harmed no person by so doing. (This does have real-world applicability; Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, for example). My claim would be that this becomes a moral wrong when the pre-conscious becomes the post-conscious, because at that point the harm transfers. (Which, I freely admit, is not the most elegant ethics ever constructed, but it is a case that needs to be handled.)
Now, the next issue is the difference between doing harm, and failing to prevent it. That’s a whole other ethical question, but for the sake of argument, what I believe in this field is that while failing to prevent harm is less morally culpable than causing it, it is still morally culpable (what the law would call negligence).
What I would argue in the case of genetic screening is that the actions of the parents, in effect, are selecting which pre-conscious non-person entity (zygote, blastula, embryo) will transform, over time, into the post-conscious person, the child.
As responsible parents, then, where this capacity exists available to them, by selecting a pre-conscious entity which does not possess any genetic disorder, they avoid doing harm by negligence to the future person into whom that pre-conscious entity will develop. And I would argue that this is a moral good.
But that, as you can see, depends entirely on the distinction between pre-conscious and post-conscious (non-person and person), and so unless we first agree on the first, we’re never going to agree on the second…
April 8th, 2008 at 12:18 pmESTStylinjulie:
Good luck! A frind of mine called your method “taking the goalie out of the net”.
We also started late, and have two wonderful kids after much trying (not that trying is a bad thing…). Don’t give up.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:23 pmESTThanks for the clarification; I appreciate it!
And I do acknowledge your slippery slope argument. While I do believe in eliminating, one day, genetic disorders in the same way we’ve managed to see off smallpox and (almost!) polio - and even in doing what we can to improve the baseline human condition - I certainly understand the dangers of misuse. Frankly, I’d much rather see genetic technologies used, as they become available, to correct these conditions than simply to write off those embryos, pre-conscious or not.
But, essentially, I think we need to be capable of resisting the slippery slope, rather than simply writing off the possibilities. As a society, I think - and I hope - that we can both good and smart enough to look at what we can do to minimize human suffering and maximize human potential without ever crossing that line I mentioned.
But just accepting that we can’t, and that we’ll always be leaving people sick and lame and blind and broken because we can’t be responsible with the means to stop it seems to me like giving up, and I don’t much hold with that.
And for what it’s worth, I’m entirely with you here!
April 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pmESTWow… very nice and well written. A really great explanation of the personal responsibility aspects of abortion. For what it’s worth, I linked your post from my blog. Hopefully both of my readers will check it out.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pmESTRachel, another good post. I like the argument made from the ‘personal responsibility’ viewpoint rather than a moral or religious viewpoint. It brings a different level of thinking into it.
And I must say that I’m very impressed with the rational discourse going on in the comments. Many different opinions and positions are being forcefully yet respectfully debated. Someone DID bring up Hitler, which normally is a violation of Godwins’s Law and results in immediate loss of argument and a 15 yard penalty. But in this case, they were actually talking about Hitler and his views on race building and eugenics, not calling someone Hitler. So that’s okay.
Carry on, opinioneers!
April 8th, 2008 at 1:59 pmESTExactly. It’s uncertain, indefinite, or unclear in character or meaning. Textbook definition of “vague”.
Granted, but, like the word “fetus”, understand that I may continue to use “life” and “personhood” interchangeably for the sake of simplicity.
But this brings up another problem.
Is “consciousness” necessary for “personhood”? What about hospital patients that are comatose or catatonic? They essentially have no “consciousness” yet we would never claim it’s okay to simply execute them.
Yeah, I recognize this argument. But the right to liberty NEVER trumps the right to life. The Founding Fathers listed life, liberty, and property in that specific order for a very specific reason.
Life is the first and the most important right. Without a right to life you can have neither liberty nor property.
Liberty is second and the next most important. You can’t have property without a right to liberty but you CAN have life without liberty. But again, without life, the right to liberty is useless.
Property is the last and third most important. You MUST have both life and liberty in order to have property. If either one of those are missing, the right to property is meaningless.
But in the end, life is the most important right we possess. Because without it, all other rights are meaningless. Therefore, the right to liberty NEVER takes precedence over the right to life.
This still doesn’t answer the question of why “consciousness” is required for a being to retain an inalienable right to life.
The problem isn’t the evidence. The problem is the way you are defining the debate.
You are trying to reframe this as a question of “consciousness” when the REAL question is about “personhood”. You are essentially claiming that “personhood” and “consciousness” are the same thing without bothering to PROVE they are the same thing. I submit that they are linked, but not necessarily the same.
Well I’m afraid the right to life is not reserved only for conscious persons.
But who gets to define what a “person” is? You? What gives you that right?
You use the phrase “after their birth” here. Are you saying that you would suspend your earlier “no abortion of fetuses, only embryos and zygotes” rule when it comes to fetuses with genetic conditions?
Negligence only applies when a person’s failure to take reasonable care resulted in harm to another (failure to feed your child, failure to keep your eyes on the road, etc.), or when a person had a duty to act to protect someone from harm but did not.
Surely you’re not suggesting that parent’s have a duty to abort their own child if that child is diagnosed in utero with a hereditary disease, are you?
Maybe you would, but always keep in mind the Law of Unintended Consequences.
“Genetic screening” may seem like a good idea right now, but how long will it take before you have people trying to create “designer babies”? How long before employers start “genetically screening” their applicants to determine which one is the genetically superior employee? How long before the government starts “genetically screening” public school students in order to track them into the careers their genes are best suited for?
Ever see the movie Gattaca? It’s a pretty good picture of where “genetic screening” might take us some day.
I thought so too…….before I interviewed a Holocaust survivor when I was in college.
It’s hardly the same thing as “giving up”. I never said we shouldn’t try to search for better treatments or even cures for these disorders. But the world has seen what happens when well-intentioned human beings try to futz with the natural order of things.
Natural selection is supposed to be just that. Natural.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:27 pmESTAll I can say in response is, that there is a market for adoptions from China and Africa for a reason. And it isn’t oversupply of adoptable American babies. People ARE lining up to adopt those babies. My cousin and her husband have adopted 4 children from China.
April 8th, 2008 at 2:47 pmESTI find I agree with Eric S. Raymond when he says, “The liberals’ looney-tune feminist notion that a fetus one second before birth is just a mass of tissue who has no rights has done half the job of making a well-reasoned debate about abortion impossible,” and “The conservatives’ looney-tune religious notion that a fertilized egg is morally equivalent to a human being has done the other half of the job of making a well-reasoned debate about abortion impossible.” But Ms. Lucas has done a pretty decent job of cutting through the fog here.
Like her, I’ve avoided the issue, mainly by marrying a woman who had previously had a hysterectomy (if SHE had gotten pregnant after that, it would have been time to call the tabloids!), and, after we divorced, by not being in any hurry to find someone to replace her. Now, I’ve been saying that I don’t really HAVE an opinion and I don’t feel really ENTITLED to an opinion on the abortion issue, being male and all, but I wonder if I haven’t subconsciously come to the same conclusion she has, and just never put myself in a position where I’d have to face the responsibility of having put a child into a woman who then would have to make that fateful decision. And obviously, whichever way the decision went, it would affect ME, too.
Now, I’m not saying this to be morally smug or anything, because I’m not the kind of person that feels that NOT being a parent is anything to feel morally smug about, and I’m still ambivalent about the whole thing, for a variety of reasons. But this article has done a lot to help educate me, and I thank her for that.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:03 pmESTActually people like Eric S. Raymond who spend their time making ridiculous caricatures of other people’s arguments that are mostly responsible.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:17 pmESTAh, not so. Something can be both clearly defined - say “on” or “off” - and hard to determine - “the switch is in the cellar, in a locked cupboard, behind a wall, covered in stacked filing cabinets” - at the same time.
I’m not sure that will work, at least for these purposes. After all, a major thrust of my argument is that “life” and “personhood” are not the same quality, and thus aren’t interchangeable for this use.
This is where we plunge into metaphysics, I’m afraid. People have been arguing over what exactly personhood is defined as ever since there was such a thing.
Myself, I subscribe to John Locke’s definition of a person as “a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it”; consciousness, intellect, self-awareness, and volition.
Unfortunately, “conscious”, as an English word, is overloaded with meanings. Such patients aren’t conscious in a medical sense, as in currently awake and active, but that does not affect their status as “conscious beings”/persons. (Although sufficiently severe injury so as to remove the possiblity of “consciousness, intellect, self-awareness, and volition” entirely would, however. In that case, though… well, is there a better word for someone lacking consciousness, intellect, self-awareness, and volition than “dead”, even if their body remains animate?)
[snip]
That’s a good question. But here’s my question in reply - why does the inalienable right to life inhere in humans, and not in dogs? Cattle? Trees? All of those are alive.
Regarding the former, I agree with you, but the question underlying our major difference here is simply, in what does the right to life - all these rights - properly belong?
It’s not “all living creatures”, given that we eat animals and plants. It could be “all living humans”, but then we have to ask, what is man that we should be specially mindful of him? The thing that distinguishes man from every other form of life on the Earth is his consciousness/personhood.
Occam’s Razor, then, suggests to me that the proper scope is “all persons”, rather than “all living humans”. And if persons other than human should turn up one day, that way we won’t offend them by accident!
Approaching it from another angle, I might point out that man, having the properties enumerated above, is uniquely injured by deprivation of his right to life in a way that living beings of a lesser order are not.
Well, that’s really the essence of the debate, isn’t it? What constitutes a person, or failing that, what is the criterion that defines the entities in which the right to life (et. al.) is vested?
…well, someone’s got to, or this whole language-as-a-means-of-communication thing’s not going to work out very well. Wikipedia lists many of the other contenders, too.
No, sorry if that was unclear. That was adding to the list of prohibited things, specifically, that not only is abortion of post-conscious fetuses not permissible, but neither are infanticide or involuntary euthanasia. All of these things are well on the other side of the line.
Logically, the same duty that requires parents to avoid taking actions that might harm their children, such as drinking, drug-taking, etc., during pregnancy should also oblige them to refrain from passing on hereditary diseases to their children.
I’m afraid I just cannot see deliberately passing on such a condition to a child where (presumptively) an ethical capability to avoid doing such as anything but negligent irresponsibility.
Well, that’s a different debate, but here’s my opinions on that one:
Trivial modifications (”I’m a redhead, and I would like my children to inherit my hair color”) which don’t leave the child either better or worse off may be shallow, but I don’t think have any particular moral weighting.
Modifications which leave the child better off than they would have been (better disease resistance, greater strength, enhanced intelligence, etc.) are a reflection of the laudable parental desire to leave their child better off than they themselves were, and as such are a moral good.
Modifications which leave the child worse off of course fall under the do-no-harm rules, and as such should rightly be forbidden.
Any employer or government dumb enough to do that deserves exactly what it will get as a result, and that result will not be pretty. Genetic determinism is a crock - variation from nurture is wide enough to entirely mask it in areas as high-level as career success, and there are plenty of studies around to say so, too.
Natural selection isn’t supposed to be anything. It just is.
But to that - well, what the world’s inhabitants point out are the few disasters. What they don’t point out is that interfering with the natural order of things is why we’re sitting in our comfortable, heated, well-lit homes having this debate over the Internet instead of shivering in caves, eating raw mammoth, and hiding from the thunder gods. Assuming we weren’t dead already - at 33, the natural order of things would probably be killing me off any day now.
In a very real way, the entire history of civilization is One Big Futz with the natural order of things.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:28 pmESTPeter Bland, you are awesome. Marry Me. Rachel Lucas, you are right as usual. I think the “when does life begin” argument is beside the point; I can be against abortion of my own baby and not wanting to impose that view on others simply because I don’t care enough about their unborn baby. I spend too much time working with and dealing with the consequences of kids who are growing up neglected, abused, malnourished and ignored; I’ve seen too many women who never should have had babies, to believe that the birth of unwanted babies, by mothers who would have otherwise aborted them, is the pure and unadulterated good everyone seems to assume it is. It never fails to amaze me that the people who are so passionately anti-abortion don’t spend much time or energy worrying about and helping the unwanted kids who are ALREADY here…where are their advocates? Oh yes, home patting themselves on the back about their moral purity because they’re out fighting the good fight, keeping women from aborting the babies who will grow up as felons and having unwanted babies of their own.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:50 pmESTThree day waiting period? That reminds me…. my oldest was born on an Army base. Before he could be circumcised my wife and I had to watch a film that showed an actual circumcision. Yeah that was almost a deal killer!
April 8th, 2008 at 8:56 pmESTSeveral thoughts.
1) I believe that the position of Aquinas was that a baby did not become human until 24-28 days AFTER BIRTH. Make of that what you will. In my personal experience he was being conservative. I’ve known people in their thirties in whom the process was far from complete.
2) I have absolutely NO sympathy with doctors who perform abortions who object to anti-abortion groups publicizing that they do.
3) I have absolutely no sympathy with the various efforts of “Pro-choice” (they aren’t pro-choice, they are pro “the choice WE think is OK”) groups who try to silence the opposition. The attempt to use the RICO statutes to bankrupt anti-abortion protest groups stuck me as particularly fascist, even for the Lockstep Left.
4) I am deeply uneasy at the idea of making abortion illegal, because I have no desire to have the kind of slatternly fool who gets accidently pregnant in non-rape circumstances reproduce. We don’t need more morons.
5) I think the “Pro-Choice” political groups which oppose parental notification and defend partial birth abortions are goddamned fools who are endangering everything they supposedly fought for. Both positions are political poison.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:33 amESTSo I basically just linked to this post, because you said exactly what I would have said, had I the ability to write that well.
My mantra on abortion has been, “I personally wouldn’t have an abortion, because it’s my choice to get busy in the first place, but I can’t tell anyone else what to do with their bodies, even if I disagree with it” since high school.
Also - regarding Planned Parenthood being “free” - it’s not. This has never made any sense to me, but I was unemployed and living off of my savings for a while, and I desperately needed a refill of my birth control (took it for hormonal purposes). I called, they asked if I was employed, I said no, and they said, “Okay, the cost for an exam and the pills is going to be $120″. Excuse me? Didn’t I just tell you I’m unemployed? “Yes, ma’am, but unless we have proof of an income, at which point we’ll only charge 10% of your weekly income, we have to charge the base amount.” Makes absolutely no sense. None. Unless they figured that because I was over 21 and actually calling, I was completely lying about my employment status, which falls under “discrimination”, I believe.
Anyway, great post.
April 10th, 2008 at 8:04 amESTI’m not sure this applies to the abortion debate, but at one point you branch out into the “unnecessary risks” question of how we live our lives.
Rachel, you said we can all agree that unnecessary risks are a bad thing. Are they? You believe, we can all agree to avoid the “orgasm cake” because of the unnecessary risks it brings with us. You start with
And finish with…
Let me state unequivocally - I believe that the government should stay the hell out of my life, wherever and whenever my actions impact only myself. Find any scenario you please - and I don’t really like arguing hypothetical situations, because there are plenty of real-world examples we can get our teeth into - and I will argue for the small-government, individual freedom point of view. I also don’t believe that we will always agree on what is acceptable risk. “A difference of opinion makes a horse race.”
Your “orgasm cake” example is almost exactly smoking, drinking or drugs. Some believe alcohol and smoking should be illegal. It is a perfectly acceptable way to feel, but should it dictate how I live my life? Given the increased health risks, are all smokers nuts?
How do you feel about things like downhill skiing? Sky diving? Scuba diving? Anything that involves adrenaline? I get into a small boat and sail out of sight of land. Out of radio contact as well. Shall we agree that these things are bad? People do things every day that put themselves at risk of injury or illness that are “optional.” Do you want to create a world - most people call it the nanny state - that eliminates every risk? Stop driving your car for starters. Stop owning dogs. (Do you know how many children are sent to the emergency room every year because of dog bites?) Look at the injury rates for riding bicycles, motorcycles, jogging, playing tennis, etc. and then we can talk about how every reasonable person would avoid doing things that would carry with it a risk of injury, illness or surgery. Is everyone who participates in an activity that carries some risk, you don’t agree with, “NUTS?” That seems to be what you are saying.
You need to be careful, because even if you don’t think they are nuts, some people will, and if you once unleash a bureaucracy, it is really hard to stop it from running amok.
I have a distinct impression that under the nanny state, (Hillary Care for example) things like skiing will be outlawed (or heavily penalized) because of the “cost to society.”
In free country, I am supposed to be able to manage my own risks, as long as they don’t impinge upon you. It is called being an adult. (I have to live with the consequences.) You don’t have to agree with my decisions - in fact I don’t even invite you to comment on them. But then we don’t live in a free country anymore, do we.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:26 amESTBeautifully written and constructed essay, rl…but you offer as as a primary factor in your positions:
“personal responsibility…the vast majority of abortions (in the U.S., that’s all I’m talking about here) are a direct result of an utter failure to behave in a rational, responsible, thoughtful fashion.
easy to say? Yep. It’s also pretty easy to DO, at least for me, because I fancy myself a sentient human being with a functioning brain”…
why do you separate personal responsibility and rational thought in the USA from sentient functioning human brains elsewhere?
jtc
April 12th, 2008 at 6:22 pmESTI think I should expand on my last post a little. I said that contraception is the responsibility of the women out there. There is absolutely no reason, in our day and age, that we should have unwanted children at all. This is not the middle ages. There is the pill, the patch, IUD, the shot, foam, diaphragms, morning after pill, RU 486, etc, etc. There is absolutely no excuse for getting “knocked up” nowadays. I think that the solution to the crisis, yes crisis, we have of women having these abortions because it is convenient is not less but more education. Let’s just make sure that we give people the right kind of education so there is less of this sick behavior.
There is nothing wrong with meeting somewhere in the middle here. Here is how I would go about educating someone if it were up to me:
“Having sex feels good because it was meant to. But it also should be more meaningful than any other form of pleasure in your life because it is designed to make babies. If you don’t want babies, then here are the alternatives, their pros and cons. The only one out of all these options that is guaranteed to work all the time every time is abstinence. If that is not an option for you, then please be sure to do something before you engage in these activities. If not, you might as well play Russian roulette with a semiautomatic. Finally, remember that condoms are an emergency stopgap and are not nearly as reliable as a combination of other choices. Now that I have told you about your choices it is up to you to live with the consequences of those choices.”
With all this said, I would like to stipulate that abortion is abhorrent to me and I would absolutely love it if there were less of them performed. I am NOT talking about those that need it (rape, incest, medical reasons, etc.) but subjecting yourself to these procedures is pretty horrible. I believe that no one who understands how they are done would wish for there to be more of these operations performed. Again, this comes back to a really good education on the pragmatics of reproduction.
Is anybody out there really pro-abortion as far as they want more of them performed?
I do not think that it is up to me to support other peoples bad decisions in the way of unwanted babies because I believe the way I do. A big part of my belief system (or “ideology” if you want to put a name to it) is the understanding that we are all adults and need to take responsibility for every choice that we make in our lives, big and small. When I speak on this topic I do not think the government should be involved at all. Yes, that means I believe that the government should give no money to clinics for this procedure UNLESS there is a medical need for it or she was raped or something.
Bottom line: why should I pay for someone’s baby I don’t even know because I think that aborting it for convenience is horrid?
April 12th, 2008 at 9:18 pmESTThank you for saying what I have always thought, but was never able to articulate so well…
June 25th, 2008 at 9:19 pmEST