*If you don’t read the whole post, at least do yourself a favor and watch the amazing video I posted at the bottom. Totally sums up what I’m about to say in a truly impassioned, beautiful way.
**Also, I realize this is a very hot-button issue for many people. If you disagree with me — that’s fine. Just please have the decency to read through the whole article, consider my points and be respectful in the comments section!
***Warning: A slight snark attack may or may not occur in this post.
Before I start, I just want to say that when I use the word “anti-choice,” I am referencing what is popularly known as the “pro-life” position, which is against a woman’s lawful choice to receive an abortion (many times, even in cases of rape or incest) and believes women should not be able to have them. I believe that the term pro-life should not be co-opted by the anti-abortion and anti-choice movement. I mean, what person alive isn’t pro-life? I sure am.
That said, I have a few things to get off my chest. I have a few questions for the anti-choice community:
Do you consider the fact that a fetus is physically attached to a woman’s body, and therefore, is a part of it? That it is not a separate and full human being until it is actually outside the mother’s womb?
Do you consider the fact that there are millions upon millions of abandoned/hungry/poor/impoverished/abused/raped/orphaned children out there in the world? Have you considered the fact that your time might be better spent advocating on their behalf than trying to convince people what they should do with their body, their pregnancy, and the fetus growing in their body?
Do you ever call your Senator or Representative, asking that the United States taxes be raised to help support all those unwanted/uncared for children? Would you ask that taxes be raised even higher to support all the unwanted children born if abortion was not legal?
Do you advocate for better, more comprehensive sexual education for teenagers, knowing that teaching children about condoms, birth control, and any other form of contraception will prevent pregnancy, and therefore, prevent abortion?
Do you think you could get every single person on earth — or even every single person you encounter — to eat cow tongue? So have you considered the fact that there is NO way you will EVER convince everyone to be monogamous, married and/or abstinent?
Why do you only blame women? Did you ever think to get to the source? Meaning — have you ever protested all male ejaculation? Do you realize that no ejaculation = no fetus = no abortion?
Do you realize that there are some people who hold the spiritual/religious belief that a fetus does not become a baby/human being until is has taken it’s first breath? Wouldn’t that mean you were infringing upon their religious beliefs if you were to say abortion should be illegal/less available? Would you like if people forced you to believe in what they believe in?
Did you know that most fertilized eggs don’t even make it to the uterus? And many women have miscarriages? So if abortion is murder, does that make these natural bodily phenomena negligent homicide?
Did you know women have been having abortions for a long, long time? That before modern medicine, women would take abortifacient herbs which grow naturally in the environment?
If abortion were illegal, do you think all women who got abortions should go to jail for it? No, really — think about it — if you make something illegal, don’t you realize that it’s punishable by jail-time? Wouldn’t our jails be over-flowing with women? How would you feel about that?
Do you realize that it’s usually poor women who suffer the most from your anti-choice work? That rich women can afford to go anywhere and pay any price to get an abortion (and would do so even if it were illegal), while poor women cannot travel as far, and don’t have as much money?
Did you know that — contrary to popular belief — pro-choice people do not think abortion is the new pink, and pro-choice people do not celebrate and cheer about abortion being just fabulous while encouraging everyone to have one? Do you know that pro-choice people and pro-choice women realize that abortion is an excrutiatingly difficult and personal decision to make, but that it is sometimes a better and more responsible choice than bringing a child into the world that you cannot/choose not to care for?
Chances are — your mother, your best friend, you, your co-worker, your aunt, your cousin, your daughter, your banker, the woman you always run into at anti-choice rallies — have had an abortion, will have an abortion, or will at least consider having an abortion at some time in their life.
So please think twice next time politicians — or you — want to make a decision on behalf of someone else’s body, life and choices.
Please contact your representative supporting their decision on the Stupak Amendment if they voted ‘nay,’ and urging them to not support the amendment when it goes to Conference Committee if they voted ‘yea’.
Phew! And now for the best and most empowering Pro-Choice Slam Poetry you will EVER hear!
Cross-posted at She Says All
Right on.
And that video gave me goosebumps.
Since I am a pro-life feminist, I’ll take a few minutes to answer your questions... I understand that odds are, I will not succeed in changing anyone’s mind about abortion issues in this space, but since you ask, I feel compelled to answer thoughtfully... and hopefully, this comment will not be deleted, although I recognize the following opinions will likely cause much anger here.
Do you consider the fact that a fetus is physically attached to a woman’s body, and therefore, is a part of it? That it is not a separate and full human being until it is actually outside the mother’s womb?
A fetus depends on the mother for basic life functions, like exchange of gases, metabolic waste products, and nutrients, it is true. Some people depend on ventilators and feeding tubes for the same functions... that does not mean they are lose their autonomous personhood and become part of the machines on which their lives depend.
Do you consider the fact that there are millions upon millions of abandoned/hungry/poor/impoverished/abused/raped/orphaned children out there in the world? Have you considered the fact that your time might be better spent advocating on their behalf than trying to convince people what they should do with their body, their pregnancy, and the fetus growing in their body?
There are many, many people in the world who are victims of grave injustice. All of them deserve our help. Where each individual allocates their time and other resources is a personal choice.
Do you ever call your Senator or Representative, asking that the United States taxes be raised to help support all those unwanted/uncared for children? Would you ask that taxes be raised even higher to support all the unwanted children born if abortion was not legal? Do you advocate for better, more comprehensive sexual education for teenagers, knowing that teaching children about condoms, birth control, and any other form of contraception will prevent pregnancy, and therefore, prevent abortion?
Yes. I call my Senator and Rep, and other elected officials at the state and local level, quite frequently, asking that they support initiatives which would make comprehensive sex ed available to everyone, and contraceptives affordable and easily accessible. I believe the answer to unwanted pregnancy is prevention, not abortion.
Do you think you could get every single person on earth — or even every single person you encounter — to eat cow tongue? So have you considered the fact that there is NO way you will EVER convince everyone to be monogamous, married and/or abstinent?
Yes, of course I do. But when you add “using contraceptives consistently and responsibly, when education and affordable access is provided” to the above three options, I think the odds move into the realm of possibility.
Why do you only blame women? Did you ever think to get to the source? Meaning — have you ever protested all male ejaculation? Do you realize that no ejaculation = no fetus = no abortion?
Both parents are equally responsible for pregnancies. I do protest male ejaculation that occurs without appropriate contraceptive measures when a pregnancy is not desired by both partners.
Do you realize that there are some people who hold the spiritual/religious belief that a fetus does not become a baby/human being until is has taken it’s first breath? Wouldn’t that mean you were infringing upon their religious beliefs if you were to say abortion should be illegal/less available? Would you like if people forced you to believe in what they believe in?
Unless their religion actually calls for abortion as a sacrament, then no, I am not infringing on their rights. Just because public policy does not follow logically from a particular religion’s creed, does not mean that practitioners of that religion are having their rights violated. And no, of course I don’t like it when soemone tries to force me to believe in something I disagree with. But sometimes it’s necessary. Some parents believe it’s appropriate to beat their children. In that case, society steps in to defend the defenseless. I believe abortion should be forbidden by similar logic.
Did you know that most fertilized eggs don’t even make it to the uterus? And many women have miscarriages? So if abortion is murder, does that make these natural bodily phenomena negligent homicide?
No, because there is nothing the woman could have done to stop the miscarriage- she probably didn’t even realize one occurred. Hence, no negligence occurred.
Did you know women have been having abortions for a long, long time? That before modern medicine, women would take abortifacient herbs which grow naturally in the environment?
Did you know that people have been oppressing women for a long, long time? That makes it okay, right? And there are poisons that grow naturally in the environment- that makes it okay to poison people, right? Actually, no, on both counts.
If abortion were illegal, do you think all women who got abortions should go to jail for it? No, really — think about it — if you make something illegal, don’t you realize that it’s punishable by jail-time? Wouldn’t our jails be over-flowing with women? How would you feel about that?
I’d be okay with it, although I would not support mandatory minimum sentencing that would prohibit the justice system from taking circumstances into account. Finding the balance between justice and mercy is a difficult undertaking when designing punishments for any crime, and abortion, if criminalized, would be no exception in this regard.
Do you realize that it’s usually poor women who suffer the most from your anti-choice work? That rich women can afford to go anywhere and pay any price to get an abortion (and would do so even if it were illegal), while poor women cannot travel as far, and don’t have as much money?
Yes, I do realize this (and this is by far the best question you’ve asked in your post, I think). It’s important that we keep the poor always in our minds. That’s why I think that contraception (and the education to go with it) ought to be available for free to poor women, with a minimum of red tape. I recognize that simply banning abortions without providing alternatives other than abstinence is not a good idea.
Did you know that — contrary to popular belief — pro-choice people do not think abortion is the new pink, and pro-choice people do not celebrate and cheer about abortion being just fabulous while encouraging everyone to have one? Do you know that pro-choice people and pro-choice women realize that abortion is an excrutiatingly difficult and personal decision to make, but that it is sometimes a better and more responsible choice than bringing a child into the world that you cannot/choose not to care for?
Yes, I am very clear on this point. Pro choice means pro choice, not pro abortion. I understand that. But I have to disagree that abortion is ever a better and more responsible choice than adoption or contraception. It is a moral wrong that I believe is never justified. We as a society have a responsibility to the unborn to protect their lives. We also have a responsibility to women to ensure that they have choice- between myriad other options, including open and closed adoptions and various types of contraception.
I want to finish by emphasizing that the abortion problem is not a single-solution problem. Banning abortion is only one necessary component of the change that needs to happen to ensure that the rights of ALL people, including parents, children, and women, are protected.
But I have to disagree that abortion is ever a better and more responsible choice than adoption or contraception.
The OP is not disagreeing with contraception.
Adoption, however, does not always lead down a path of rainbows and honeypots with loving, stable parents. Why do you think agencies advertise so much to find parents? I had many friends in school who were in the adoption/foster system. Almost all were physically or sexually abused while in the system. One of them a set of 3 brothers who were all sexually molested by their adoptive father. One of my old bosses is in jail for molesting his adopted daughter.
If abortion were illegal, I would rather go to jail for a few years than force a child of mine to be abused in the foster system for 18 years. Adoption and the foster system isn't an option.
Gexx your argument is nonsensical and ignorant.
If you place a child for adoption, it will not go into the foster system. You can choose the adoptive family the child will go with. Adopted children have no higher incidence of abuse than children that are raised by their genetic parents, in fact it's less common.
IF you believe it's not a child and you want an abortion, that's one thing. But if it is a child you would rather it die than go into foster care? Let's just kill all those poor foster kids and put them out of their misery.
My mother placed me for adoption and I went into the foster care system. No one wanted a little black girl they thought was mentally retarded.
Lea,
You write,
If abortion were illegal, do you think all women who got abortions should go to jail for it? No, really — think about it — if you make something illegal, don’t you realize that it’s punishable by jail-time? Wouldn’t our jails be over-flowing with women? How would you feel about that?
I’d be okay with it, although I would not support mandatory minimum sentencing that would prohibit the justice system from taking circumstances into account. Finding the balance between justice and mercy is a difficult undertaking when designing punishments for any crime, and abortion, if criminalized, would be no exception in this regard.
You would be okay with it. YOU WOULD BE OKAY WITH IT. The women and girls who you would send to jail would not be okay with it.
If you're really concerned about doing the right thing and holding a fair and balanced position, I highly recommend that you watch this documentary, full of personal anecdotes from women who lived and had abortions when abortion was illegal.
http://www.archive.org/details/when_abortion_was_illegal
Some people depend on ventilators and feeding tubes for the same functions... that does not mean they are lose their autonomous personhood and become part of the machines on which their lives depend. >>>
Please read this again and consider how horrifically offensive this comparison is. Women are not machines. We are not incubators.
The government does not require parents to donate blood, tissue, or organs to children they've birthed. It does not require people to donate blood, tissue, or organs to those they've injured, intentionally or unintentionally. It does not harvest organs without people's consent, even from executed prisoners. Abortion is the only issue where people feel the government has a legal basis to violate one person's bodily autonomy for the benefit of another.
Yes, I know we're not machines or incubators. Perhaps I can try to explain a little more clearly why I believe that a woman's right to bodily autonomy does not lead inevitably to a right to have an abortion.
Odd as it might sound, in a conversation where I am representing an anti-abortion viewpoint, my view of morality is constructed entirely around choice. An event is not good or evil simply because it causes suffering or joy. A mudslide is not evil when it kills dozens of people. It never made a choice to unleash destruction on its victims; in fact it lacks the capacity to make choices at all. It simply is what it is.
A fetus, although living, similarly lacks the capacity for choice. The fetus does not choose to take up residence in a woman's uterus, nor can it choose not to. It just happens.
The woman, however, did make choices. She may have been able to make a choice about whether or not to have sex, and what kind of contraception to use. She certainly has the choice now of whether or not to have an abortion. If she chooses abortion, she chooses to privilege her own rights to bodily autonomy above her fetus' right to have a chance for life. The only agent is this situation doing any choosing is the mother.
Right and wrong originate from choices. Wrong exists where an individual makes a choice that privileges their own rights and desires above the rights and desires of others. The fetus never made a choice to infringe the mother's rights. But the mother likely made several choices that led to the pregnancy in the first place- and then, if she chooses an abortion, she makes a choice to privilege her short-term bodily autonomy over the whole of her child's life. This is wrong. This is an unprovoked act of violence on another person who has done no one any wrong- who even lacks the capacity, at that point, to do wrong.
Good and evil come from the choices we make. In the situation of abortion, because the woman is the only one making any decisions, the fact that the fetus is "invading" her body is irrelevent. Her choices are the only thing that makes the outcome either right, or wrong.
Many women are not making informed choices as far as contraceptives (thank you, abstinence only education). They do not have the tools they need. Until 100% of girls and women and boys and men and all of those not identifying with any of those societal labels have that information, your point is moot. Until ALL contraceptives are available free of cost and accompanied by education on proper usage, your point is moot.
Furthermore, women in abusive relationships experience unplanned pregnancies at ridiculously higher rates than the general population. (40% of pregnancies in abusive relationships are unplanned, vs 8% in those in non-abusive relationships.)If all choices regarding contraception are controlled by a partner, how can you fault a woman for an unplanned pregnancy?
Segue: your entire post relied on women's choices, ignoring those of the men who were equally involved in conception. Until society starts applying equal accountability for unplanned pregnancies to men as society does to women, frankly, your views in this respect seem rooted in patriarchy to me.
>>Wrong exists where an individual makes a choice that privileges their own rights and desires above the rights and desires of others.>>
I appreciate your sense of community, but this is an extreme position. Every dollar of savable income that people stash instead of donating is a wrong? Every vacation, every meal out, every non-essential item purchased? Karmically, if you don't give, you won't get. But you've placed an unrealistic standard on people if you expect them to relinquish all of their available resources. Most people won't even donate blood when asked, and that takes a half hour, AND you get a cookie.
I totally agree with you on the accessible contraception and education issue. As I've stated a couple other times on this thread, I do NOT believe that abortion is a problem with a single solution. A ban, in and of itself, will on balance probably do more harm than good, or at least break even. Although my main goal related to the issue is to end abortion, I spend most of the time I devote to activisty things on promoting sex ed and contraception, which needs to be a major part of the solution. It makes me so ANGRY when large pro-life groups denounce sex ed and BC right along with abortions. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of human nature, and it's shooting themselves right in the foot. I guess it makes sense to them because of the way their pro-life beliefs are tied up with religion, which would also condemn non-marital sex, etc.
The reason I ignored men in my post above is not because I believe they lack culpability, but because from a legal standpoint fathers have no way of preventing a sex partner from aborting their unborn child, or of forcing her to do so- although they can certainly make choices to be supportive, absent, coercive, ect, and I should have addressed that. I should also have added that men need to make responsible choices related to sex, contraception, etc as well.
As to abusive relationships: this situation is tricky. After much thought, all I can say are two things you have doubtless heard before: blame the abuser, not the child; and "two wrongs don't make a right".
As to your last point: I draw a distinction between choices that actively HARM another person, and choices that fail to actively HELP another person. Obviously, no one is morally responsible for helping others at all times. But I do think we are all morally responsible for refraining from doing harm to others at all times, unless provoked to self defense by another person's choice to do us harm.
On "privileging her short term bodily autonomy":
Have you ever been pregnant? I haven't, to my knowledge. However, I have had the privilege of women communicating their experiences of pregnancy at various stages. The single most interesting conversation I had was with a friend who said that her WANTED pregnancy made her more pro-choice than ever. She was so uncomfortable, so disenfranchised from her own body, that she saw it as an unthinkable situation to force one into.
And an argument that I saw on this page was that forcing anyone else to go through that (nausea, vomiting, pain during sex, pushing an 8 pound object THROUGH A CERVIX AND VAGINIA, risking hemorrhage and death) would be torture.
Given a choice between condemning one person to discomfort, nausea, and pain for a finite period of time, and condeming another individual to death, which is permanent and (depending on the stage of pregnancy) may also be accompanied by hideous pain, I believe our society should pick the first option every time.
On "privileging her short term bodily autonomy":
Have you ever been pregnant? I haven't, to my knowledge. However, I have had the privilege of women communicating their experiences of pregnancy at various stages. The single most interesting conversation I had was with a friend who said that her WANTED pregnancy made her more pro-choice than ever. She was so uncomfortable, so disenfranchised from her own body, that she saw it as an unthinkable situation to force one into.
And an argument that I saw on this page was that forcing anyone else to go through that (nausea, vomiting, pain during sex, pushing an 8 pound object THROUGH A CERVIX AND VAGINIA, risking hemorrhage and death) would be torture.
What if a woman (and her partner) choose to use contraception every time they have sex, but still get pregnant?
Contraception is not perfect. It fails sometimes. The only way you can 100% avoid pregnancy is by not having sex. Every time a heterosexual couple has sex, contraception or not, there is a slim chance that a pregnancy will result.
If abortion were illegal, as you advocate, and that slim chance turned into a real pregnancy, the woman would be forced to carry that fetus to term despite the fact that she did everything in her power to prevent that pregnancy, bar abstinence.
It is *unreasonable in the extreme* to expect people to avoid sex until they are ready to have a baby. Human beings like to have sex for pleasure and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Many women don't feel ready to have a family until they are in their 30s. Do you really expect women to stay virgins until that age? Pull the other one.
Essentially what you and other anti-choicers are giving people is a 'choice' between abstinence, parenthood or sterility. It doesn't matter how pro-contraception you are, that is a red herring as far as I'm concerned because widespread contraception use would only reduce unwanted pregnancy, not eliminate it. Sometimes, condoms break and pills fail; and in those situations abortion is a necessary backup for those people who don't feel ready to be parents yet.
If you accept that people like to have sex for pleasure, and you accept that contraception is not perfect, then you have to conclude that abortion *must* stay legal - because anything other than that is a tyranny against women and their bodies.
It is a moral wrong that I believe is never justified
really? so women who are about to die because of their pregnancy shouldn't be able to have an abortion? Women who have been raped or are incest survivors should have to go through with pregnancies caused by a RAPIST and bring a RAPIST child into this world? I don't think so. You are NOT a feminist if you do not believe that a woman has bodily autonomy and should be able to choose what is best for her and her fetus even if that means not allowing that fetus to live.
I have another question for you.
Should babies be convicted of second degree murder if the mother dies during child birth? because that makes as much sense as it does to jail a woman for having an abortion to save her own life.
I really, really hope you meant to write a "rapist's child". Not a rapist child. Because there is no such thing. The child is not responsible for the sins of the parent, and is not doomed to automatically grow up to become a rapist him- or her-self.
Your last question makes no sense. You can't be guilty of murder unless you had the intent to kill. A child being born is not an intentional act. They didn't choose it, it just happens. A mother's decision to abort her unborn child IS an intentional act. Therein lies the difference.
I reject the position that being a child of rape makes that child inherently evil, undesirable, or unworthy of life. Reminiscent of days when a child was disowned or shunned because he was a "bastard." As if the child had any say in the matter.
If your argument is about bodily autonomy, make it about that.
Good post, and good questions. I'm honestly a bit hesitant to reply in the way I'm about to for a couple of reasons:
1) I don't have a uterus, and understand that I'm missing some critical experience as such;
2) I'm adamantly, adamantly pro-choice. I think that abortions should be completely legal, at any time during a pregnancy, for any reason, and "restricted" only in the sense of having their delivery appropriately regulated for safety purposes. I can't stress this enough given what I'm about to say next:
I completely respect the moral reasoning of (some) people who think that abortion should be illegal, and if I started from their logical premises I'd have to come to their conclusions. Allow me to explain. A while ago I was watching a debate about abortion - might have been on the Daily Show but I can't recall - and the anti-choice (pro-life?) person (Mike Huckabee I think) made the point that his position started from the premesis of a fundamental respect for human life. The retort (I think by Jon Stewart), was that pro-choice people respect human life too, thank you very much. Stewart is right, of course, but I'd argue that both of them missed a critical nuance. People who are thoughtfully pro-life (anti-choice?), as opposed to those who simply use a pro-life stance as part of a larger agenda of maintaining control over women's sexuality (and there is a difference, as I know many people who fall into the former category), generally derive their respect for human life from religious premises that don't marry well with a secular conception of life's value.
If you're a certain type of Christian, the REASON that human life has moral worth is because it is the physical expression of a unique and transcendant soul, created by God. That's WHY human beings are valuable. Secualr conceptions of morality, on the other hand, generally locate the value of human life in some combination of deontological and utilitarian ethics. This allows for that worth to have some kind of evolutionary nature, rather than being trapped in an existence/non-existence binary. Most of the time, this doesn't matter, because the actions called for are the same, and so allow for similar conceptions of rights and duties under the law.
Abortion, obviously, is one area in which this isn't true. Where/when human life, conceived of as human life with moral worth, begins isn't something about which people with these different worldviews can just agree to disagree. Furthermore, there's no clear principle for deciding which view has a greater claim on the State, because both views are essentially religious in nature. Obviously, one calls upon God and one doesn't (at least not necessarily), but both are based on metaphysical viewpoints that can't be empirically proven. In other words, saying that a human being DOESN'T have a soul in the Augustinian sense of the term is just as "religious" as saying that it does. Thus, no matter what stance the state takes toward abortion, it will, to paraphrase the OP, force some people to live under a regime governed by the religious beliefs of others with whom they don't agree.
Now, the OP is absolutely right that many of the concurrent conservative positions on issues like birth control or state funding/resources for adoption services, childcare, healthcare etc. run completely contrary to a truly pro-life viewpoint. Believing that abortion should be illegal on the one hand but that the state has no responsibility to create an environment in which children can be raised with love and prosperity is, if not hypocritical, certainly very cruel. Still, I have to say that if I were to start from the logical premise that human beings are valuable because they are the physical expression of a unique, non-physical soul, and that such a soul existed in a binary of existence/non-existence, I'd have to want abortion to be illegal. Arguing about medical realities simply wouldn't be relevant. Pro-choice people and I would basically be talking past one another.
Again, this isn't the viewpoint I take. I fall more on the secular side of things, and thus think that abortion is, if not always morally neutral, certainly within the realm of ethical decisions that people should make on their own. In a society that bends toward liberty, a pro-choice position is the way to go. Still, I see too many arguments where pro-choice and anti-choice people simply talk past each other, because they're talking about different things. We might as well acknowledge that, as long as people disagree about the fundamental premises of human value, they're not going to agree about abortion.
"Still, I have to say that if I were to start from the logical premise that human beings are valuable because they are the physical expression of a unique, non-physical soul, and that such a soul existed in a binary of existence/non-existence, I'd have to want abortion to be illegal. Arguing about medical realities simply wouldn't be relevant. Pro-choice people and I would basically be talking past one another."
The other loaded, unmentioned premise that still needs justification is that a human being has a positive right to life. That is to say (simply), that one human has the obligation to sustain the existence of another despite the consequences to their liberty, quality of life, or health.
One can be of the conviction that a fetus is a human being fully deserving of civil and/or moral patienthood and still believe abortion should be legal.
I don't consider myself "pro-life" (or "anti-choice", if you prefer), but I do believe we should prohibit abortions after roughly the first trimester, so I'll step up to answer a few of your questions here.
Do you consider the fact that a fetus is physically attached to a woman’s body, and...is not a separate and full human being until it is outside the mother’s womb?
Absolutely, though I disagree with the idea that it's not a "full human being" prior to birth. That, of course, is the crux of the issue. I think it's clear that at some point prior to birth, the fetus has all the relevant characteristics for acquiring rights as a "full human being", and therefore is entitled to legal protection. The attachment to the woman's body creates a conflict between her rights and those of the fetus, and thus the law has to strike a balance. Provided the woman consented to having sex and chose to carry the fetus past the first trimester, I think at that point, the balance tips in favor of the fetus.
Do you consider the fact that there are millions of [suffering] children in the world [and] your time might be better spent advocating on their behalf...?
I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. Besides, the same can be said about virtually any domestic policy issue. Why are we wasting our time advocating for health care reform, better schools, more social services, etc. here in the U.S. when there far greater problems to be dealt with elsewhere in the world? The answer, of course, is because we prioritize the issues that affect people in our own country. That may or may not be right, but it's not at all unique to the abortion debate.
...Would you ask that taxes be raised even higher to support all the unwanted children born if abortion was not legal?
Yes, actually.
Do you advocate for better, more comprehensive sexual education...?
I do.
[H]ave you considered the fact that there is NO way you will EVER convince everyone to be monogamous, married and/or abstinent?
Yes, which is why I advocate comprehensive sex ed and greater use of contraception.
Why do you only blame women?
I don't blame anyone. Neither sex nor pregnancy are blameworthy at all. I just think pregnancy introduces a third party to the equation (i.e. the fetus) whose interests have to be considered.
Do you realize that there are some people who hold the spiritual/religious belief that a fetus does not become a baby/human being until is has taken it’s first breath? Wouldn’t that mean you were infringing upon their religious beliefs if you were to say abortion should be illegal/less available?
I don't see this as a religious issue either way. I see it as a question of secular human rights, and the need to balance the rights of the woman against those of the fetus, just as we do in any situation where two people's rights come into conflict.
Did you know that most fertilized eggs don’t even make it to the uterus? And many women have miscarriages? So if abortion is murder, does that make these natural bodily phenomena negligent homicide?
Only if the miscarriage actually results from the kind of serious negligence (e.g. drug abuse while pregnant) that warrants a negligent homicide charge. "Natural bodily phenomena" such as you describe are, by definition, not a result of negligence.
Did you know women have been having abortions for a long, long time?
Yes, but that doesn't strike me as particularly relevant to a discussion of legal rights in the context of modern scientific knowledge and values regarding personhood and human rights.
If abortion were illegal, do you think all women who got abortions should go to jail for it?
Yes, as should anyone who acts as an accomplice, just like with any other serious crime.
Do you realize that it’s usually poor women who suffer the most from your anti-choice work? That rich women can afford to go anywhere and pay any price to get an abortion...?
Yes, but that strikes me as irrelevant to the question of whether or not abortion should be legal here. Rich people can fly to Amsterdam and have sex with prostitutes if they want, but I don't think that means we should legalize prostitution here in the name of economic justice.
http://www.archive.org/details/when_abortion_was_illegal
See above. Please watch this film and then restate your position.
I've seen it, actually, and it certainly is a horrific depiction of the situation women found themselves in back then. However, it doesn't change my point of view. None of that in any way impacts the moral and legal status (if any) of the fetus/child. There are plenty of impoverished and/or abused women with children who would be much better off without those children. Yet that obviously doesn't undermine the personhood or rights of the children involved. The economic circumstances of the mother are frankly irrelevant. The only question is whether/when the woman's right to control her body trumps the fetus' right to life. Everything else is just a distracting appeal to emotion.
Also, it's worth noting as an aside that much of the misery women with unwanted pregnancies endured pre-Roe was attributable to social stigma and economic hardships rather than a lack of safe and legal abortions. We now live in a much more tolerant culture, and there are more elaborate economic safety nets in place. The option of just carrying the kid to term and either raising it as a single mom or giving it up for adoption is much less horrific than it was in, say, the 1930s.
SO long as Blackwater tries to prevent its employee from prosecuting when she has been brutally gang-raped and put in a bin,
SO long as Roman Polanski can rape a thirteen-year-old girl and get away with it for about a million years, only to have a huge outcry on his behalf in Hollywood when he does try to face punishment,
SO long as there are women in the Congo or in Zimbabwe being raped as a tool for war,
SO long as a 14 year old girl can go to prison for being forced into prostitution at gunpoint while her pimps and johns get off scot-free,
SO long as 1 out of 4 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime,
SO long will I say that it is a matter of life and death and basic human rights for women.
To criminalize the abortions that the above-mentioned girls and women might seek upon being impregnated by their fathers, their rapists, or their employers is to deny them the right of ever being able to forget and move on from what happened to them. It is to ask them to risk their lives in childhood as in the case in Brazil where a child of 11 was asked to carry a child to term when to do so would shatter her own pelvis. It is to ask them to be near Saints with the kind of benevolence it would require not to be resentful of a child who was forced upon you, before you were ready, and who shares genetic code with someone who committed against you some of the most atrocious crimes anyone can ever commit against anyone else.
If the man who raped me had impregnated me, and I was going to be forced to carry a child to term, there is no doubt in my mind that I would at least contemplate suicide. Some things are simply too much to bear.
When you dedicate your life to ending the rape culture that puts women in these situations to begin with, promoting an end to the abstinence-only education, and advocating for the rights of disenfranchised women world wide, then, and only then, can we talk. Until then, as a man, you need to check your privilege.
Respectfully,
Alexandria Brown
PS. I just realized that I don't know for sure that you're a man, but I find it even more difficult to believe that a woman would engage in this rhetoric.
PPS. In the wake of Stupak, how can you possibly suggest that there are more elaborate safety nets? Oh wait, because you don't consider health coverage for abortion to be an acceptable safety net. Right.
And, lastly, if you think it's "a distracting appeal to emotion" to do the kind of journalism necessary to create that film, then I really have no idea on what grounds you can possibly argue that the rights of an unborn child are any more or less important than the rights of the woman.
As a student of political philosophy, I am also interested to hear your theory of values which apparently allows you to argue for human rights on the basis of rationality alone, and entirely devoid of any personal bias or emotion, because as the proud Nietzschean I am, I find listening to such "arguments" to be profoundly hilarious and entertaining.
Aletheia,
Note that in my post I specifically said, "provided the woman consented to having sex and chose to carry the fetus past the first trimester." Hence, your rape-related examples aren't applicable. Regarding the example of a woman's health/life being in danger, though,I should have been clearer. I do believe there should be an exception for that.
As for checking my privilege at the door? Meh. Not going to get into that with you. Feel free not to discuss the issue with me if you think my gender prevents me from being a worthwhile conversational partner.
Lastly, regarding my "theory of values," I never argued that it was based on pure rationality. I simply pointed out that a parade of horribles describing the consequences to women of an abortion ban is an appeal to emotion that does nothing to illuminate the issue of fetal rights. Further, I don't think name-dropping your favorite philosophers is particularly helpful either. It's all about balance. Law and policy are rarely made on the basis of Philosophy 101 first principles. And good law and policy is rarely made on the basis of pure emotion.
My view is that there is no difference between an infant 30 seconds before birth and one 30 seconds after birth. Thus, if the infant is a person with rights 30 seconds after birth, it is a person with rights 30 seconds before birth as well. I then work backwards until reaching a point where there is a clear difference. Somewhere between those two points a line is crossed, and that's where the balance of rights tips.
Right, but my concern is, that situation (consenting and choosing) is the exception, not the rule, and I have little idea how one could begin to prove or disprove whether they had chosen to carry that far (as opposed to waited because of economic inability or psychological issues or ignorance) to begin with.
Also, I'm sorry if my background in philosophy is confusing to you, but there is a difference between name-dropping and what I was doing, which was referring to a school of thought which is directly relevant to conversations like this. Nietzsche was one of the first philosophers to provide a critique of science and "metaphysics" on the basis that the ostensible "objective" and detached "viewpoint" they claimed to be able to have, outside of and above things was never going to give them access to truths in-themselves. In reality, Nietzsche argues, so long as science advocates the will to truth "at any price," even at the price of what is healthiest for our culture, it's claims that what is best is if the individual sacrifice his own passions to the "greater" good are no better than those of similar masochistic advocates for martyrdom in the Abrahamic religions. Nietzsche himself does not question the internal consistency of objective truth -- he simply questions its scope and universal domain. He questions whether there might not be other, more important types of truth (mythological truth, metaphorical truth, political truth) which need to be brought into dialogue with scientific truth so that the health of our culture may benefit. Laws, for example, don't ever exist objectively. I repeat, if the horrific experiences of these women seems to you to be a distraction from the argument, I don't know what to say, because it seems clear to me that these women deserve the right to choose what is happening to their own bodies, and what happens to a part of their bodies that is for all practical purposes, an organ of their bodies, until it is born and able to live on its own.
My concern is that we cannot presume to make these choices for other people.
From Nietzsche's Gay Science: "Our thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier, simpler."
This isn't name-dropping, it's a reference to the specific philosophical orientation from which I am making my argument.
I should also say that despite his personal misogynistic views, I find Nietzsche's critique of the hidden bias in ostensibly emotionless, objective viewpoints to be immensely helpful for feminist theory, where all too often women, POC, the queer community, or people in poverty have their viewpoints derided as "overly emotional" in opposition to the "rational" viewpoints of white supremacist capitalist patriarchs, whose "objectivity" is simply a cover for their own desire to maintain dominance. Here is an example of "objectivity" disguising a patriarchal and white supremacist bias: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrtqE4WyUdY
I of course am not clarifying this in order to suggest that you're a white supremacist patriarch, R. Dave. I'm just trying to outline why Nietzsche's thought is so important to me and to emphasize that there was no "name-dropping" involved.
If you're interested in further background, please read this short essay by Nietzsche, entitled ">http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Nietzsche/Truth_and_Lie_in_an_Extra-Moral_Sense.htm"> "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense."
Fair enough on the Nietzsche/philosophy point. I confess to having a strong anti-philosophy bias when it comes to political debates, because if we really get into it, it becomes like an endless game of "Yes, but on a deeper level..." until we finally throw our hands up in the air and concede that we can't opine on the wisdom of expanding the on-ramp to Highway 24 until we've ascertained the true nature of "being"! *chuckle*
So, my way of avoiding that kind of conversational spiral is to begin with generally agreed assumptions and work from there. In the case of abortion, I start with the (admittedly expansive) assumption that human beings have, from the moment of birth, the full array of legal and moral rights generally attributed to them in the Anglo-American political tradition. From there, I look for the distinctions, if any, that warrant treating pre-birth infants/fetuses differently.
Yeah, that is a common stereotype about philosophy, and one that is definitely perpetuated by a lot of undergraduates at large research universities.
I think it's just as clear where the domain of philosophy ends as it is where the domain of science ends. Slavoj Zizek (who I recently got into a big argument with because he is a rape apologist, but sometimes he says things that are kind of smart when those things do not have to do with gender) is fond of pointing out that if you have a large asteroid heading towards a major metropolitan area, you do not at that point consult the philosophers for advice on the nature of mortality, you consult some good scientists to construct some sort of device to save your ass.
And while this is (funny and) true, I think that the sub-species of philosopher whose interests lie in ethical and political applications of thinking have a pretty clear and concrete contribution to make to society, whether or not you're interested in talking to us about the Meaning of Being. :-)
I hesitate to post this, because I'm pro-choice, but I think you're misrepresenting R. Dave. They said:
"Provided the woman consented to having sex and chose to carry the fetus past the first trimester, I think at that point, the balance tips in favor of the fetus."
(my bold)
R. Dave is pro-choice, but believes in imposing a time limit on abortions. They put the limit at three months. So if you disagree with them then all you disagree about is when the time limit should be in cases of consensual sex.
Not, you know, whether abortion should be an option. Since R Dave thinks it should be.
Regards,
A
Thanks for pointing that out; the problem I have with that is that even in cases of consensual sex, I think that the only reason a woman would wait past the first trimester to have an abortion would be if she did not know she was pregnant, or if she couldn't afford to pay for one until then. Or, you know, if she was totally panic-stricken and crippled by anxiety.
I don't think we can or should legislate to decide why a woman did or did not wait that long; even if sincerely irresponsible cases exist I really don't like the idea of trying to prove that irresponsibility in court.
I actually don't know how I feel about those kind of practical issues, Aletheia. If a woman didn't know she was pregnant, couldn't afford an abortion, was pressured into waiting too long, etc., it's questionable whether she ever really took the kind of deliberate actions that I believe create the duty to rescue (i.e. duty to carry the child to term). I'm not sure if simply consenting to sex is sufficient to impose such an extreme duty. And it's true that court determinations would be problematic for a host of fairly obvious reasons. I'll have to think about the practical angle a bit.
Yeah, it is a complex problem. I think that these hypothetical women you are referring to, who chose to wait until the last minute to have an abortion all the while being fully informed, financially stable, and perfectly emotionally calm about the situation, are in the extreme minority, and in all honesty I have difficulty believing that more than a few of them exist at all. And in the case that they do, I'd be willing to bet money that their sordid viewpoint with regards to personal responsibility has a lot to do with having been deprived of a good education, which might also go along with socio-economic oppression. Poor women are 4 times more likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy. And in this case, the unwanted child likely will only have more trouble waiting for him or her when she is born -- either being put into a heinous foster system or kept in an abusive or exploitative environment where they are asked to work to support their family at an extremely early age.
If the foster system or adoption process underwent extreme reform, and if there was some way for us to be hugely judicious about the process (which I don't see as possible right now), I might see where you're coming from. For now, I think it's just incredibly heinous to subject a child to the kind of treatment they will deal with as a foster child or as an unwanted child, especially given that we still haven't decided how much doing do infringes on the rights of the mother.
We now live in a much more tolerant culture, and there are more elaborate economic safety nets in place. The option of just carrying the kid to term and either raising it as a single mom or giving it up for adoption is much less horrific than it was in, say, the 1930s.>>>
In my state, TANF benefits just sustained a 20% cut. A family of 2 receives $220 a month. Childcare assistance has been slashed in several states, making it difficult if not impossible for single mothers of infants and young children to work. The elaborate safety net you speak of no longer exists.
I get where you are coming from, but the first trimester seems like an arbitrary cutoff point, considering research has indicated that fetuses lack the neural pathways to feel pain until around the 30th week. But setting that argument aside for the moment:
You say,
"I don't blame anyone. Neither sex nor pregnancy are blameworthy at all. I just think pregnancy introduces a third party to the equation (i.e. the fetus) whose interests have to be considered."
and also,
"Provided the woman consented to having sex and chose to carry the fetus past the first trimester, I think at that point, the balance tips in favor of the fetus."
If it is simply a matter of a third person whose rights now need to be considered, what difference should it make whether or not she consented? If a woman is raped and is so traumatized that she does not realize she is pregnant until after her first trimester, is her fetus somehow less deserving of rights than that of a woman who had consensual sex?
I should point out that in your reasoning you are granting rights to fetuses that most would not grant to adult humans. No person is entitled to borrow another person's organ systems against her will, even to save his own life, even if she is the only person who can serve this purpose (think organ donation). Even accepting that a fetus should have the same rights as any human—a premise I do not accept—it does not follow that abortion should be prohibited.
I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. Besides, the same can be said about virtually any domestic policy issue. Why are we wasting our time advocating for health care reform, better schools, more social services, etc. here in the U.S. when there far greater problems to be dealt with elsewhere in the world? The answer, of course, is because we prioritize the issues that affect people in our own country. That may or may not be right, but it's not at all unique to the abortion debate.
umm.... this is happening in our own country, not oversees. Women in our own country are too poor to feed themselves let alone the children that they want to abort. Those women need to have abortions. Trying to derail this thread by making that argument is insulting at best. You need to check your privilege before you come on here and say something about what you know nothing about
After reading through the first few replies to OP's questions, I have to say that I still do not see a legitimate argument to ever make abortion illegal and unavailable to women. All I see is:
"Well, it's something that I think it wrong and so I have no problem telling these women they are wrong and supporting a restriction put on their choices."
As long as someone else is not doing something that you disapprove of (that would never even affect you all in any way, shape, or form) then all is well, eh? Sounds like self-righteous bull to me. No matter what you all may think about someone elses pregnancy, IT IS NOT YOUR BODY, NOT YOUR CHILD, NOT YOUR DECISION.
And I don't even know how many times it has to be stated that abortion is not about babies. It is about making decisions for people and taking away their rights and choices. And you may argue "well what about the choice of the baby???!" Well do you give your child a choice about how you are going to raise them? Do you sit a 1 year old down and ask them what religion they want to be? What sexual orientation they choose to be? No, you make a choice for them based on what you think will be best for them but also what would be best for them by what you find to be most comfortable for you. Because you believe that you know what is best - does it mean you are wrong? Whether it be a woman who does not want to bring her child into the world because she knows they would die of poverty or illness or a woman who is just not ready to have a child at a specific point in her life and she does not want to bring that child into her life unprepared, they are making decisions which are best for all. And they are entitled to make those decisions and not have their choices restricted by people who think differently than them.
I have known people who hate their lives so much that they had wished things like for their mother to have aborted them so they would not have to suffer through something. It's really sad...and of course I would hate to lose those people in my life but I still would want them to be happy no matter what. And if they can never be happy, what then? I do not have the right to tell them that they have to live or to bear a life against their will. I do not have the right to be selfish like that.
Pro-choice = choice for all (people who would like access to abortion and people who would never care to have one)
Anti-choice/Pro-life = (limited choice just so certain individuals can feel better about themselves and feel justified in their ideologies)
I'm very much in favour of keeping abortion legal, but I still don't get that whole choice argument that you're putting forward. Your argument seems to be basically suggesting that it's a mother's right to do whatever she wants with her child - but obviously, that's not true. It's not a mother's choice to murder the child after they're born, to neglect the child, to beat it (and personally, I think any parent who actively encourages their child to be a certain religion or sexual orientation is doing something very wrong, but I know many would disagree with that)... and that makes the question of whether or not abortion is okay entirely about when life begins, not about choices or anything else. I don't believe life begins at conception, so I don't see a problem with abortion. But I can definitely see how someone could, and we need to be talking about that.
And the whole 'I do not have the right to tell them that they have to live or to bear a life against their will' thing? That really, really bothers me. If one of my friends is about to commit suicide, I will do everything in my power to stop them - which is something the phrase 'I do not have the right to tell them that they have to live' would not seem to support. I firmly believe that the doctrine of choice must NEVER impede on our responsibility to care for the people in our lives.
Well the slope gets slippery there. While pregnant the choices a pregnant person takes (person because there HAS been a pregnant man) makes affects the fetus regardless of whether or not there is intention to abort.
While putting alcohol in a baby's bottle is grounds for arrest, getitng drunk everyday while pregnant is not-even though you're essentially giving the same entity alcohol and it poses the same risks.
Thats why the discussion should have nothing to do with the fetus or baby (after delivery) but whether or not the woman wants to remain pregnant, period. Damage to the fetus is irrelevant. Where the child would or would not grow up (poverty, class, adoption) is irrelevent, does the woman want to remain pregnant (her reasons are her business) determines whether or not she gets an abortion.
I am not very good at making clear arguments when I am upset and many of these posts deeply angered me. Sorry about that.
I am in no way suggesting that a mother can freely do anything to her child like starve her child, beat her child, etc...but I was trying to make a point that her choices should not be thrown to the wayside just because she has a potential human being living off of her if she does not want it to be there. She has a right to terminate her pregnancy because her body is directly involved in the situation and I believe that forcing her to give birth is equivilent to forcing her to use her body in a way against her will - which is wrong. So I guess I should have focused more on that.
And secondly, I am not saying that if someone I knew and loved was going to commit suicide or something that I would just let them do it. I would try all within my power to stop them because I love them. But what I was trying to say was that I understand why people can have a sense of hopelessness or not wanting to live depending on the circumstances of their lives. And the one person I mentioned who stated that they sometimes wish they had been aborted - it's not like I told them "yea I know me too". No, I told them I am happy they are here. But I understand why they said what they did because I know what has happened to them - it should never happen to a person but it happens everyday. And all these anti-choicers go around preaching that everyone should be born and live no matter what the circumstances are - they don't believe in being pro-life. They only want to further their own agenda just to prove they are right about something. They don't care what happens to the child after birth. All the y want is for the woman to have to do what they say because they believe they are in the right. THAT makes me upset, especially when they try to hide behind a mask of righteousness but really all they are are wolves in sheep's clothing.
On the flip side, I have seen the medical industry exploiting people, firsthand, even after those people have written a living will that states, for all intensive purposes, they wanted to have been allowed to die a long time ago. I am talking about people in nursing homes with terminal illnesses and an atrocious quality of life. These people are being kept alive for the sake of the pharmaceutical industry, for the medical facilities which are leeching all of their savings in their last years of life. This is happening to my grandmother, despite the fact that she wrote a living will precisely because she worked as an RN at a nursing home for 20 years, saw what happened to the patients, and was determined not to let that happen to her.
Nonetheless, when I go to visit her, I have to pass a sign that has a picture of a business man in a suit smiling with two old people in a wheelchair that says: "PROTECTING OUR NATION'S GREATEST ASSETS." What they mean is financial assets. I'm not even joking.
Similarly, do you think it is an accident that poor women are 4 times more likely to have unplanned pregnancies? Extreme right-wing conservatives view the poor as their livestock -- and it is in the best interest of every farmer to increase the number of livestock that he can feed into low-wage jobs in his mega-corporations. I know this sounds extreme, but I really think that most anti-choice (or pro-life) activists don't even realize that the heavy-hitters in business and politics who support them don't believe in a maximization of life for the sake of the intrinsic *ethical* value of life. They believe in a maximization of life for the sake of the *financial* value of life.
"And the whole 'I do not have the right to tell them that they have to live or to bear a life against their will' thing? That really, really bothers me. If one of my friends is about to commit suicide, I will do everything in my power to stop them - which is something the phrase 'I do not have the right to tell them that they have to live' would not seem to support. I firmly believe that the doctrine of choice must NEVER impede on our responsibility to care for the people in our lives."
Do you believe it is not a person's prerogative to end their life when they choose? If so, why?
A fetus depends on the mother for basic life functions, like exchange of gases, metabolic waste products, and nutrients, it is true. Some people depend on ventilators and feeding tubes for the same functions... that does not mean they are lose their autonomous personhood and become part of the machines on which their lives depend.
A woman is not a machine.
A woman is not an incubator. She is not a uterus on legs. She is an autonomous person. And no one, be they man or fetus, has the right to access her body without her express consent. And consent can be revoked at any time.
No one--be they relation or stranger--has the right to someone else's body, blood, or organs.
I'm not required to donate blood every month. Nor am I required to sign up on a marrow or any other donation list.
If I die, no one is allowed to harvest my body for organs unless I've given my express consent.
Even if it means people will die.
And, because some people feel that since you've created/helped create a fetus that makes you obligated, I must say that I'm also not required to donate blood, marrow, or any organ to any born child of mine.
Even if I'm a great match and there are few to no other donors available.
It's a matter of bodily autonomy.
I want to finish by emphasizing that the abortion problem is not a single-solution problem. Banning abortion is only one necessary component of the change that needs to happen to ensure that the rights of ALL people, including parents, children, and women, are protected
Certainly there are other solutions to reducing the number of abortions such as better education, access (for everyone) to health care and birth control and family planning information.
But a ban is simply unreasonable and not pragmatic.
Because there will always be accidents.
Because nothing is fool proof, not even sterilization.
Because there are abusive assholes who use pregnancy and subsequent children to keep a hold on women.
Because there will always be someone waiting to use their power and privilege to subjugate a woman.
Because there will always be women like me who want nothing to do with pregnancy or childbirth; which means adoption is not a viable solution.
(And, frankly, you'd have to kill me to get me to gestate against my will...and that seems rather counterproductive in the long run.)
And further, in a world where a government has the power to ban abortion, a government also has the power to force abortion. Among many other things.
I think it's clear that at some point prior to birth, the fetus has all the relevant characteristics for acquiring rights as a "full human being", and therefore is entitled to legal protection.
I would say rights only apply to born persons. Which the fetus is not.
And further, why should a fetus be given rights that trump that of the person whose body it inhabits?
And consent can be revoked at any time.
I disagree with that under certain circumstances. It's like the "duty of rescue" in common law. If I see someone in danger, I have absolutely no duty to help them, regardless of how easy or safe doing so would be, as long as I'm not the one who put them into danger in the first place. However, if I am responsible for creating the danger, then the law does impose a duty of rescue on me, even if helping would put me at risk too.
That's how I see pregnancy. If I consent to having sex, and I voluntarily wait until that fertilized egg grows into a person (i.e. sometime during the second trimester), then I have put that person at risk, and I have a duty to help alleviate that risk (i.e. to carry it to term).
Honestly, these kinds of things should be clear to anyone who has so much as graduated high school or read a single issue of the New York Times.
The fact that the fetus has survived into the second trimester does not by any means indicate that a woman has voluntarily waited. In all likelihood, it indicates that it took her that long to find the financial resources to seek out an abortion.
Indeed.
Any woman who doesn't want to be pregnant is most likely not going to be pregnant by the time the second trimester rolls around. Most abortions take place during the first trimester.
There are cases where women did not know they were pregnant (which could be due to a variety of things from irregular cycles to taking the pill) or who couldn't access or afford the abortion until the second trimester.
Women don't just sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting until later to get an abortion.
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/women_who.html
I mean, seriously! The very second after I was raped I panicked and took the morning after pill -- and only because I was lucky enough to have a friend offer to pay for it for me. And even so, I spent months buying pregnancy tests and worrying that I might somehow still be pregnant. This idea that I spent that time twiddling my thumbs is so profoundly insulting.
Ah, but what counts as 'putting someone into danger' for legal purposes?
Certainly, if I'm speeding and driving drunk and hit someone, that is on me. I was horrifically negligent.
Most pregnancies, however, would not fit that analogy. After a year of frequent sex with no contraceptive use, even perfectly healthy couples have just a 25% chance of pregnancy. Add in contraceptive use, especially multiple methods at once, and it drops to less than 1%. A pregnancy is simply *not* as inevitable a result of sex as the 'well, you knew you could get pregnant if you had sex' argument implies. When I'm driving, there is the potential something could go wrong no matter how careful and skilled I am. That doesn't, however, make me liable in situations where I *did* exercise appropriate care.
That's an excellent point, PDXHopeful. I mentioned upthread that I wasn't sure simply consenting to sex was enough, in and of itself, to impose a duty to carry the child to term. Your analogy is a pretty convincing argument that it isn't. Thanks for pointing it out to me.
uh...i did not write this.
Sorry. That was supposed to be a general reply to the overall post.
I believe you meant to respond to me. Thanks for being civil; I know this is an issue about which people feel strongly, and I really appreciate that although I am sure my comment angered you, you respond politely.
A woman has the right to bodily autonomy. I agree with you on this point, difficult though it may be for you to believe. I also believe that the unborn have the right to life, same as any other person. In the case of an unwanted pregnancy, these two rights come into conflict, which automatically makes things difficult for all parties involved. But unwanted pregnancy is not the only issue where the rights of diffenent individuals are in conflict. A farmer has the right to keep and work his land, but the other people of his state have a right to travel freely, and guess what? That new interstate is going to cut right through the farmer's payload. He loses his land to eminent domain. He is compensated monetarily, but however fair we try to be, he still gets a raw deal.
An example which will likely resonate more strongly with others in this space: I have the right to walk downt the street and not be harassed. There is a corner I pass every day where, more often than not, a certain man waiting for his bus will heckle me, on occasion try to grab me. He does it day after day, violating my rights. I've tried various things to get him to stop, but no dice. If I were to kill him, he wouldn't be able to do that anymore. But he'd also be dead. I don't have the right to take that action to protect my rights not be harassed; his right to life trumps that.
This last case seems awfully cut and dried, so unlike abortion. But it's actually very, very similar. The only difference is that the man has a face and a voice and a family, and unborn children do not. Silent and invisible, they are too easily forgotten. But it shouldn't be that way.
You have other rights you can exercise. You can call tell him to stop. You can call the police. He may be invading your comfort zone (which I agree is no small issue); he may be harassing you and breaking various laws. But he is not utilizing your bodily resources for nine months against your will. The situation you posed is NOTHING like mandated child birth.
We have all experienced street harassment. It sucks, we work against it as much as we can, and we understand that it has implications as far as bodily autonomy. However, state-mandated childbith has very different implications as far as bodily autonomy.
I've never had a catcaller demand the use of my blood and organs for nine months. Have you?
I would like to have coffee with you. Or perhaps several drinks.
Aww. :)
Right back at ya. You've mentioned a lot of things that I thought but hadn't been able to verbalize in this thread.
I "liked" your comment.
"No matter what you all may think about someone elses pregnancy, IT IS NOT YOUR BODY, NOT YOUR CHILD, NOT YOUR DECISION"
This I agree with.
Religious people won't though. If their God commands them to interfere with you then they will. Their God's will is more important than yours in their view of morality. This is basically why I hate religion.
I "liked" your comment back :) And I agree, but according to the separation between church and state, their God has no say in the matter. But sadly this country never really had a separation...we just pretend to have one when it's convenient. If only we could uphold that idea then perhaps so much conflict would have been avoided.
The Constitution calls for a separation of Church and State, not metaphysics and state. It doesn't establish atheism and its concurrent ethical implications as the default orientation of government (see my larger comment above).
I think the two most important questions in the debate were omitted from the OP.
1. Basically every study ever done on the subject shows that the legality of abortion has absolutely no effect on the number of abortions performed, only on how safe they are and on the crime statistics. Obviously if the illegality of murder didn't affect murder stats, that wouldn't be a reason to legalize it, but even so, it shows that when it comes to abortion, society cannot even dent the problem using the law. Hence, the best way to reduce abortions are non-legal routes, such as education and improving life opportunities and equality for women, which are shown to work. Why, therefore, do pro-lifers spend their resources on the legal routes when they'd save more 'lives' using ANY other method? Surely this shows they have totally screwy priorities? Is it that they'd rather just let millions of what they call lives be lost than see women achieving the liberation necessary to truly reduce abortion?
2. If there were some safe way to remove the fetus from the woman and gestate it to birth in a box under the bed, women who accidentally get pregnant would be in the same position as men who accidentally get someone pregnant - their bodily autonomy would be intact. This may be icky, but it's not the slavery that is being forced to give birth. So, there would be very little resistance to an abortion ban if a 9-month incubator existed. What are pro-lifers doing to create such a device? If they would not regard this outcome as satisfactory, clearly their goal is to control the woman's body and not to protect what they describe as life. Or, they're putting squeamishness ahead of saving lives.
If you can't answer those two, then you're putting your ideological stance before actually saving what you say are lives. And I don't think that's pro-anything, I think it's just stupid.
A response from an atheist, pro-life woman:
1)One of my greatest frustrations with the pro-life movement is their insistence on either rejecting contraception as immoral, or just pretending like it doesn't exist. I want abortion to be illegal, but I also want everyone to have access to comprehensive sex ed and affordable contraception. The two need to go hand in hand.
2) An incubator like what you describe would be awesome. If one were to be developed, I'd be all over promoting it left, right and center.
I am really, truly, absolutely telling the truth when I say that my goals as a pro-life activist are not to control or subjugate women, but only to save lives.
I am really, truly, absolutely telling the truth when I say that my goals as a pro-life activist are not to control or subjugate women, but only to save lives.>>
I think our difference lies in the practical implication of life-saving laws.
I would encourage you to look at the Guttmacher Intstitute's research on the comparison of countries that have accessible and safe abortion vs those who push women outside the realms of legality and safety. Criminalizing abortion does not reduce abortion rates. It only pushes women who need abortion into the shadows, increasing the likelihood of illegal and therefore unsafe abortion. If you are interested in saving lives, criminalizing abortion is not the way to do it.
If we look at the issue beyond morality, and instead look at safety, we find...
Women have been inducing abortions as long as they've been pregnant.
Women will continue to find ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, whether that methodology is legal and therefore safe, or illegal and therefore unsafe.
If we, as a society, care about the safety and health of women, we must fight to keep abortion safe and legal. If society decides that this is not a concern, women will be forced into pre-modern methods.
Bottom line:
The rates of abortion do not change with respect to legality. Either it is legal and safe, or it is illegal and unsafe.
I cannot stress this enough. The rates do not change. Either we have physicians administering RU486, or conducting D&E, or we have women aborting their pregnancies themselves. We have women running an inch of water in a bathtub and sticking their hands in an electrical socket.
(A Prof I had who studied illegal abortion talked to THREE different women in THREE different states who attempted that method. She told us of gin baths and falling down stairs. These are real alternatives.)
You said you advocate for comprehensive sex ed, affordable/free contraception, and other truly preventative measures. I completely agree. We cannot reduce the need for abortion without advocating for comprehensive sex ed accompanied by free/affordable contraceptives.
You have said that you think that criminalizing abortion is part of a network of protecting the unborn. I disagree. This is not about the unborn. If abortions are going to happen whether they are legal or not, the government has a responsibility to reduce harm to women as much is possible.
The laws can either be in favor of keeping abortion, and therefore women, safe, or they can make abortion, and therefore women, unsafe. To me, there is no middle ground.
I am really, truly, absolutely telling the truth when I say that my goals as a pro-life activist are not to control or subjugate women, but only to save lives.>>
I think our difference lies in the practical implication of life-saving laws.
I would encourage you to look at the Guttmacher Intstitute's research on the comparison of countries that have accessible and safe abortion vs those who push women outside the realms of legality and safety. Criminalizing abortion does not reduce abortion rates. It only pushes women who need abortion into the shadows, increasing the likelihood of illegal and therefore unsafe abortion. If you are interested in saving lives, criminalizing abortion is not the way to do it.
If we look at the issue beyond morality, and instead look at safety, we find...
Women have been inducing abortions as long as they've been pregnant.
Women will continue to find ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies, whether that methodology is legal and therefore safe, or illegal and therefore unsafe.
If we, as a society, care about the safety and health of women, we must fight to keep abortion safe and legal. If society decides that this is not a concern, women will be forced into pre-modern methods.
Bottom line:
The rates of abortion do not change with respect to legality. Either it is legal and safe, or it is illegal and unsafe.
I cannot stress this enough. The rates do not change. Either we have physicians administering RU486, or conducting D&E, or we have women aborting their pregnancies themselves. We have women running an inch of water in a bathtub and sticking their hands in an electrical socket.
(A Prof I had who studied illegal abortion talked to THREE different women in THREE different states who attempted that method. She told us of gin baths and falling down stairs. These are real alternatives.)
You said you advocate for comprehensive sex ed, affordable/free contraception, and other truly preventative measures. I completely agree. We cannot reduce the need for abortion without advocating for comprehensive sex ed accompanied by free/affordable contraceptives.
You have said that you think that criminalizing abortion is part of a network of protecting the unborn. I disagree. This is not about the unborn. If abortions are going to happen whether they are legal or not, the government has a responsibility to reduce harm to women as much is possible.
The laws can either be in favor of keeping abortion, and therefore women, safe, or they can make abortion, and therefore women, unsafe. To me, there is no middle ground.
ll try to contribute a few things that haven't been said.
Do you consider the fact that a fetus is physically attached to a woman’s body, and therefore, is a part of it? That it is not a separate and full human being until it is actually outside the mother’s womb?
Keep in mind there are clear scientific criteria for what makes something a distinct organism, as opposed to a subsidiary part of another organism. From this perspective, an embryo/fetus is not part of its mother's body, but a separate member of the human species. (This article may interest you - it also contain's a link to the Westchester Institute's longer paper on the subject.)
Why do you only blame women? Did you ever think to get to the source? Meaning — have you ever protested all male ejaculation? Do you realize that no ejaculation = no fetus = no abortion?
Actually, I think men are to blame in part for the high abortion rate. Consider the fact that over 60% of women who've had abortions report feeling pressured to do so-- there is probably a very high number of unsupportive or hostile fathers behind those numbers. And who knows how many women who felt they had no choice to abort, may not have felt so had they had the support (financial or otherwise) the child's father could have provided?
Do you realize that there are some people who hold the spiritual/religious belief that a fetus does not become a baby/human being until is has taken it’s first breath? Wouldn’t that mean you were infringing upon their religious beliefs if you were to say abortion should be illegal/less available? Would you like if people forced you to believe in what they believe in?
As I was trying to point out in my first paragraph, the question of when a new human life begins is an issue of scientific fact, not religious belief. A person has a right to believe that life begins at first breath if they choose so, but I don't think someone has a right to practice their beliefs when those beliefs directly infringe upon the life and well being of another human. (An analogous case would be parents who practice "faith healing" and refuse medical treatment for their children.)
If abortion were illegal, do you think all women who got abortions should go to jail for it? No, really — think about it — if you make something illegal, don’t you realize that it’s punishable by jail-time? Wouldn’t our jails be over-flowing with women? How would you feel about that?
I don't advocate criminal sentencing for abortion, for the reason that (as other commenters point out) the issue of a person's bodily integrity is always involved - and I think a woman who has an abortion is in a certain sense performing an act of violence upon herself, even though it involves ending a separate life that is dependent on her. (In a somewhat related way, we don't criminally punish people who harm their own bodies, or attempt suicide.)
Finally, I should note that many commenters on this thread seem to be talking right past each other. Those arguing against abortion seem to be talking mainly about intrinsic right and wrong (i.e., whether killing a fetus is ever inherently morally justifiable) while those in favor of legal abortion take a more consequentialist approach, talking about the negative ramifications for women and society if abortion were illegal. It's the end-justifies-the-means character of this second approach that I find disturbing - the attitude seems to be that we simply can't seriously ponder the question of whether abortion might be inherently wrong, because if there really were something wrong with abortion, the consequences would be simply intolerable. It seems to amount to saying that if something has negative consequences, it can't be true. It reminds me somewhat - if you'll forgive me for saying it - of the strategy certain torture apologists on the right who argue that, if you insist that torture is an absolute moral wrong and that terrorist suspects should not be subjected to it, you are an anti-American who does not care about the potential death of millions of citizens at the hands of terrorists. In the same way, it seems, if you believe that intentionally taking a human life is an absolute moral wrong - and that this extends to unborn humans - you are a misogynist who does not care about the lives and well-being of women.
I'm certainly not trying to talk past anyone; if you'll note, I bring up Nietzsche in order to emphasize that I do not believe that a system of morality based on rationality alone can emphasize intrinsic rights or wrongs (values), period -- it's simply not a truth that one can demonstrate empirically the way one can with science.
I don't pretend to be unbiased, but in the grand scheme of things, for those who do believe that intentionally taking a human life is an absolute moral wrong would probably be well-advised to get more into international politics re: Obama raising Afghan troops by 40K, and the like, than telling me what to do with my body.
As for myself, I find it offensive to my sensibilities to talk about anything being absolutely right or wrong. Coming from a vitalistic and new empiricist perspective, I think these are tough questions that we can't jump to conclusions about. Can you point to any biological ecosystem that can thrive sustainably without an apex predator -- i.e., without intentional killing? Would killing Hitler have been absolutely wrong? What about self-defense?
There are plenty of reasons to have a general injunction against the unnecessary destruction of human life, but even if I were a utilitarian, which I am not, there are plenty of ends-means reasons that could be used to persuade me that it's generally a good idea to minimize harm, right? To say that ends-means logic and an injunction against murder are incompatible -- that doesn't make any sense.
A right to self-defense is precisely what is at issue for some of these women and girls for whom having a child would directly or indirectly threaten their own life.
So yes, if you believe that the women who would fall through the cracks in the event of a widespread criminalization of abortion would be a necessary price that we would have to pay (and women would die as a result of this hypothetical law being passed), then you are indeed apathetic to the lives and well-being of at least those women.
I think the real bravery lies in daring to construct a personal system of ethics in the absence of some "higher authority" -- be it rationality or God, they're the same thing to me.
The real ethical courage lies in believing that self-governing human beings are capable of doing what is right without any artificial appeal to an "absolute" truth to back them up.
As you can tell from websites like this (www.noseparation.org), not everyone agrees with me, but I think a human ethics, and not a supernatural or a priori "rational" one -- with all of the honest partialities, multiplicities, and incompletenesses that go along with being human -- is going to get us much farther as a society than any thuggish injunctions to "universal truth" will.
PS. Uh... when I say "New Empiricist," I mean the new form of empiricism advocated for by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze... and not something weird to do with William James. Just because I know you all were really, really worried about this. Thanks.
The parties are talking past each other because both sides will throw out anything that might provide even the flimsiest support to their side.
Do you consider the fact that a fetus is physically attached to a woman’s body, and therefore, is a part of it? That it is not a separate and full human being until it is actually outside the mother’s womb?
Here's an interesting fact about birth: during the vast majority of our evolution, induced abortion did not exist to be selected against. Natural selection could not act on it. Infanticide and the killing of born people did exist for natural selection to act on. As a result, our ancestors evolved a distaste for the killing of born members of their species, which got passed down to us.
Because of this, we never evolved any sort of distaste for induced abortion; unlike infanticide and the murdering of born people, it did not exist to be selected against. Our ancestors never could have evolved any sort of psychological traits associated with it (e.g. guilt, shame, etc.) that would prevent them from doing it. Birth represents the stage in our children's development at which we begin to care about them, and would feel bad about killing them. Before that point in our children's development, we don't particularly care about them.
Do you consider the fact that there are millions upon millions of abandoned/hungry/poor/impoverished/abused/raped/orphaned children out there in the world? Have you considered the fact that your time might be better spent advocating on their behalf than trying to convince people what they should do with their body, their pregnancy, and the fetus growing in their body?
Those children are not being directly killed.
Do you ever call your Senator or Representative, asking that the United States taxes be raised to help support all those unwanted/uncared for children? Would you ask that taxes be raised even higher to support all the unwanted children born if abortion was not legal?
I've never done that. Instead of raising taxes, I would support establishing sexual standards and lowering the out of wedlock birth rate to below five percent, like it used to be and like it should be.
Do you advocate for better, more comprehensive sexual education for teenagers, knowing that teaching children about condoms, birth control, and any other form of contraception will prevent pregnancy, and therefore, prevent abortion?
I obviously don't support hormonal contraception, since it prevents implantation. As I said, I advocate for the implementation of sexual standards. Hormonal contraception and comprehensive sex ed are incompatible with those standards.
Do you think you could get every single person on earth — or even every single person you encounter — to eat cow tongue? So have you considered the fact that there is NO way you will EVER convince everyone to be monogamous, married and/or abstinent?
I think we can. The out of wedlock birth rates used to be under five percent, despite the fact that contraception and abortion were illegal.
Why do you only blame women? Did you ever think to get to the source? Meaning — have you ever protested all male ejaculation? Do you realize that no ejaculation = no fetus = no abortion?
Women are primarily responsible for abortion because they are the ones who choose to get them. But make no mistake: the sexual standards that I support do not only blame women.
Do you realize that there are some people who hold the spiritual/religious belief that a fetus does not become a baby/human being until is has taken it’s first breath? Wouldn’t that mean you were infringing upon their religious beliefs if you were to say abortion should be illegal/less available? Would you like if people forced you to believe in what they believe in?
There are some people who believe that if they abandon their infant, and no one takes it, that it is the will of the gods that their child die. Someone's religious beliefs can tell them that their children shouldn't have the same rights that they do; they are free to believe that, but they are not free to act on it.
Did you know that most fertilized eggs don’t even make it to the uterus? And many women have miscarriages? So if abortion is murder, does that make these natural bodily phenomena negligent homicide?
No. When fertilized eggs don't make it to the uterus, the death of the fertilized egg is usually natural and ideal, like dying of old age. There is nothing intrinsically bad about such deaths, and they are not something we need to try to avoid.
The only time that those deaths are not natural and ideal is if they are artifically brought about as a means to an end, through the use of abortifacient contraceptives, IVF, or stem cell research.
Did you know women have been having abortions for a long, long time? That before modern medicine, women would take abortifacient herbs which grow naturally in the environment?
I'd heard. I've never really heard of that happening much in modern times, though.
If abortion were illegal, do you think all women who got abortions should go to jail for it? No, really — think about it — if you make something illegal, don’t you realize that it’s punishable by jail-time? Wouldn’t our jails be over-flowing with women? How would you feel about that?
I don't think so, for reasons I've explained here.
Do you realize that it’s usually poor women who suffer the most from your anti-choice work? That rich women can afford to go anywhere and pay any price to get an abortion (and would do so even if it were illegal), while poor women cannot travel as far, and don’t have as much money?
That's how cheating on your taxes works, too. Did you know that abortion affects racial minorites a lot more than whites?
Did you know that — contrary to popular belief — pro-choice people do not think abortion is the new pink, and pro-choice people do not celebrate and cheer about abortion being just fabulous while encouraging everyone to have one? Do you know that pro-choice people and pro-choice women realize that abortion is an excrutiatingly difficult and personal decision to make, but that it is sometimes a better and more responsible choice than bringing a child into the world that you cannot/choose not to care for?
Women who are considering abortion have already brought a child into the world.
Wow. Hahahaha. Wow. This is a real person?
Mr. Conservatism sir, what is your point about racial minorities "being affected by" abortion, exactly? Please tell us in greater detail. We are clearly very uninformed.
Racial minorities are far more likely to have abortions than white women are. Would you like me to cite this for you?
Well frankly, there is no reason that you shouldn't cite it. I cited a Nietzsche text I referred to earlier. But no, darling, what I really wanted to know was this: what do you think is the significance of this fact? Surely if you brought it up to begin with, you think it has some importance.
Is your concern to know why racial minorities are being systematically denied the economic, social, educational, and psychological resources that would make unwanted pregnancies a problem? If so, then of course, I agree. I'm glad to see a conservative standing up for this injustice, because the problem is too serious to be tackled without solidarity.
Or... did you mean something else?
Presumably.
He's been quite active over at a thread on Pandagon.
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/misogyny_hijacks_health_care_reform_vote/
Ummm... I know it's inappropriate, but can I get a bwo chicabwobwo (porn style, obs) for "sexual standards?" I would really, really like to sit on that committee.
Does Mr. Conservatism qualify as a troll? Because I see no sign that s/he subscribes to any kind of feminism. Sexual standards? What kind, exactly? And WOMEN choose to have abortions? Men are completely uninvolved? Pressure (societal or personal) has nothing to do with it? Ugh.
Aletheia, I think your posts are really well argued and you obviously know your stuff. But I do think you underestimate the complexity of a worldview based on some type of religion. For me, my faith is not so much an a priori list of injunctions but an all-encompassing way of being which is pretty much synonymous with being human. I don't do things because God tells me to, but my experience of the world (of course my religion is a part of this) leads me to a) ethical beliefs and b) an understanding of God in said world/ethical system. I don't think I'm expressing this well, but I just wanted to say that I do get your problems with an a priori faith in rationality or in a set of religious rules *as such*, and I don't think accepting gaps and multiplicities necessarily excludes a faithful worldview.
In terms of the abortion debate, I am what I might call conflicted pro-choice. As in, I am completely pro-choice from a legal standpoint, but I am sometimes discomfited by the arguments of other pro-choicers who discount the rights of the fetus or do not see the fetus as a human life. I do believe that in some sense,life begins at conception. However, it is a special case of life and can't be compared to the life of a born person.
I believe the consequences (as someone mentioned in a pro-life argument) of banning abortion would perpetrate a far greater evil than any single abortion, and I do believe that consequences matter. Rationality is not God, so to speak, and rational analysis frequently leads to injustice. I am a big fan of empathy in making ethical choices (although emotion is certainly not a guarantor of ethical action). I find empathy distinctly lacking in many prolife arguments. I have never seen a prolife argument which adequately addresses the cases of rape, incest, mother's health, fetal health, etc. I also find the unwillingness to see the fetus as a special case of life absurd. Obviously the fetus and the mother are implicated in a relationship which is incomparable to other human relationships, and this complicates ethical questions. Given the numerous situations for which women may need abortions and the special character of the mother-fetus relationship, I believe that abortion must remain a legal choice.
Furthermore, I do not support restricting this choice to select preemptively for "more ethical" abortions. Do I find late-term abortions more mentally troubling than the morning-after pill? Sure. But any attempt to keep choice legal while eliminating "bad" choice winds up being hamfisted - as the argument over the hypothetical woman who waits until the 2nd trimester demonstrates. How on earth would we prove legally that she waited deliberately? I don't believe that the specter of the irresponsible abortion is sufficient to justify micro-legislating this choice. I do believe that given our inability to parse all of the ethical implications of such choices, it is by far best to keep abortion completely legal.
If we believe that abortion is an acceptable choice in some cases, then we must allow women the choice. The alternative essentially aims to eliminate "bad" choices, which negates the entire idea of choice, and, frankly, doesn't work.
I think your ideology about abortion is very well-thought out and rational :) And I don't think that you have to be conflicted about being pro-choice if you find the idea of abortion to be somewhat disturbing. The debate is not about whether you like abortion or not. It is as you said - about if you support the legality of a woman's choice being her choice alone. And I agree that denying the fact that a fetus is a human life (or a potential human life) is not the best argument to use which is why I don't like to make the argument about the fetus. Because in reality, it's not. Anti-choicers just like to make it about the fetus to distract from the real issue at hand, just like the prop 8 campaign did for gay marriage (i.e. your kids will learn how to be gay!! - that kind of garbage.)
tl;dr - I "liked" your comment :)
100% agreement - you put into words what I feel so much better than I could! That's why I find debating this topic so difficult - there are good and bad points to both arguments, lots of derailing on both sides, but I think in the end, in the world we live in right now, freedom of choice remains paramount at any point in the pregnancy for all the reasons you stated.
I think better sex ed and free contraceptives would help a lot too. If all the money that gets pumped into the prolife campaigning went on that instead, I reckon we wouldn't have so much of an issue over whether or not it's legal because it wouldn't be as prevalent anyway.
Yes, if only the "anti-choice" people would make their comments respectfully.
My major question for anti-choicers:
Have you considered the practical application of an "except in cases of rape or incest" law?
Such a law would require women to prove they'd been raped. What would be your threshold of evidence?
Would allegations be "legitimized" by an exam?
Many rapes result in no physical trauma, and the vast majority of victimized women and girls never go through an exam. If they do, evidence is often gone by the time a report is made.
For those who go through a Sexual Assualt Forensic Exam:
For most, the exam is considered a further trauma; by some, a second rape. Would you advocate forcing rape victims to undergo a forensic exam in order to receive abortion services?
Would this be "legitimized" by a criminal justice case?
If you're interested in why sexual violence victims don't advocate for pressing charges, visit RAINN.ORG.
For those who do, case disposition would be an unfeasible marker; it can take years for a case to get to trial.
What would happen in cases where no bruising or documentation of physical trauma occurred, as is common when women are raped while passed out or sleeping?
The fact of the matter is that most rape victims don't undergo an exam, most who undergo an exam don't move forward with prosecution, and most who move forward with prosecution don't get a conviction.
So what, exactly, would be your requirements? How would you decide that a pregnancy had resulted from rape or incest?
And what would be your timeline? How long would it take for a woman to obtain an "approved" abortion? The further along the pregnancy timeline, the risks associated with abortion increase. How do you balance gathering of evidence with a woman's life?
Hitching a rid on Opheelia's coat tails, I'd like to bring up another point.
A lot of the pro-life argument comes from the idea of fetal rights...
So what about pregnant women who refuse to undergo a physician recommended cesarean section?
Medical ethics demand informed consent from the patient before any treatment can begin.
But there have been cases in the news where doctors women to have c-sections. These women were unwilling. And those who refused have been criminally prosecuted, even tied to hospital beds to give birth.
So, does a woman's autonomy mean nothing once she is pregnant? Is the need for her informed consent nullified by the fact that she's carrying a fetus?
If someone else were forced to undergo surgery against their will, people (I hope) would be calling it a human rights violation.
And, again, you can't be legally compelled to undergo any other medical procedure for someone else who needs it.
http://www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/articles/forced_c-section.htm
When you start talking about fetal rights, you get into a lot more than just abortion.
That's an interesting point, sangetencre. As I said upthread, I see the abortion issue as a question of balancing the conflicting rights of the woman and the fetus. So, I would argue requiring a woman to carry the child to term if she waits past some fetal-development deadline (w/ appropriate exceptions for health, etc.) is acceptable, but requiring a c-section goes too far.
Again analogizing to the duty of rescue, it's like requiring someone to take reasonable actions to save the person in danger, but not to do absolutely everything possible, regardless of risk to themselves.
If I may, I'd like to throw out a hypothetical of my own for the pro-choice commenters who stress the bodily autonomy of the woman:
A woman gives birth and brings the infant home. She lives alone. After a few weeks, she decides she doesn't want to care for the child anymore - it's too stressful and demanding, she can't afford it, etc. Should she be legally required to bring the baby to an adoption service, hospital, etc., or to at least call someone to pick it up? Or should she be allowed to just stop caring for the child and let it starve in her house?
If you think she should be required to make arrangements, how do you reconcile that with her supposed right to absolute bodily autonomy? Isn't such a requirement forcing her to perform acts against her will for the benefit of a third party (i.e. the baby)?
Although it seems like a ridiculous hypo, I actually ask those questions in all seriousness. I think it highlights why the duty to rescue applies and why absolute bodily autonomy is untenable.
The child in your hypothetical situation, having been born, is not dependent on the woman's body, blood or organs for survival. It could be cared for, fed etc by anyone. It is not a breach of the woman's bodily autonomy to pick up a phone and call child services, because bodily autonomy refers to what happens to and inside your physical body (hence the term bodily autonomy), not acts you perform.
The difference lies in the fact that in the case of a pregnancy, the mother and only the mother can provide what a fetus needs. In the case of a born child, anyone could provide its needs. Therefore it is not unreasonable to require a woman to give a born child to a person who could meet those needs, if she is unable/unwilling to do so herself. It *is* unreasonable however to force the woman to use her body, blood and organs to meet those needs.
The difference is glaringly obvious.
So no dice. Better luck with your next hypothetical question.
It's not as glaringly obvious as you think. In the situation I described, no one else can care for the baby, because the baby is alone with the woman in her house. The only way another person could take over for her is if she makes arrangements for that. By requiring her to make those arrangements, you are forcing her to use her body to perform an act against her will. It is forced labor. It's a minimal inconvenience, to be sure, but the point is that she is still being forced to do something she doesn't want to do in order to help a third party. The difference between that and requiring someone to carry a fetus to term is one of degree, not kind.
Whoops, didn't mean to hit submit.
Anyway, leave the abortion issue aside for a moment. You agree that it's reasonable to require a person in that situation (alone with a baby they no longer want to care for) to make other arrangements for the baby's care. Why? What makes it ok for the state to impose a duty to act on someone under those circumstances?
Rather than play Socratic method, I'll just say what I'm getting at. It's the duty of rescue. If I see a baby lying alone on the ground in the woods, I have absolutely no legal duty to help. I don't even have to call 911. I can just keep on walking. However, if I'm the one who brings the baby into the woods in the first place, I am legally responsible for taking care of it. Ditto for the woman in my hypo. She willingly brought the baby into her home and thus acquired a duty to provide for that baby's care.
Extrapolating to abortion now: if a woman consents to having sex and chooses to stay pregnant past some point of fetal development, she has willingly brought that baby into her womb and thus has a duty to provide for it.
"she has willingly brought that baby into her womb and thus has a duty to provide for it."
I cannot find one definition from a medical or legal dictionary that defines "baby" as anything other than a human being that has already exited the mother's womb. You're loading your terminology to appeal to emotion.
If you want to be successful with that kind of thing you should go somewhere where readers are already inclined to want to agree with you.
Can I just point out that if abortion were illegal, that exact scenario you described will become more, not less common as women who are forced to give birth to children against their will neglect or outright abandon the children that were never wanted in the first place. So now I ask you: if you literally had the choice between "saving" a clump of dividing cells that is not easily distinguishable from a bad snot globule that you were able to dislodge into a kleenex during your last sinus infection, OR a living, breathing infant, which one would you save?
When it's *your* life that's about to go completly off the rails because a clump of dividing cells is threatening to turn into an infant that you're required to care for but cannot care for, then you learn really quickly what choice is.
When it's *your* family that will disown you if they see your bump, when it's *your* job or schooling that will be endangered because a bunch of moralizing busybodies make your fertility their business, when it's *your* health that's on the line as you develop any one of the common pregnancy complications, choice becomes something real and not some abstract Thomas Kincaid painting with cozy-looking cottages where every infant is a healthy white baby that just needs nine months of cloud 9 to produce, and every mom is just June Cleaver waiting for that first burbling coo to come out of her poor, emotionally damaged shell.
Oh, but goody for you, R. DAVE, you don't have to worry so much about that. If you're lucky, your girlfriends will take care of your little "accidents" quietly and never tell you because they know that you'd be an ass and try to take over their lives with *your* morality. And good for them when they do. They're letting you persist in this quaint little worldview that you've got going for you.
O.K. Let's say it is a matter of degree.
It's an important degree.
Hypothetical:
I'm in a car accident. It's my fault. I'm o.k. The other person is injured, lying on the ground, bleeding. I'm the only one around. I go to that person, stem the blood flow, and call 911 and report the accident and stay with the person until help arrives.
That's a reasonable duty.
Let's say I even go with them to the hospital. At the hospital, the patient needs blood. They're out of O-Neg and, in typical hypothetical fashion, they're also out of type A, which is the patient's blood type.
They type my blood.
I'm type A.
I'm under no legal obligation to give my blood (or anything else) to them to keep them alive.
In this situation, I've helped another person by providing a reasonable amount of care until other help arrives.
Yes, it was an infringement on my time and my physical person to a degree.
But not to the same degree that being forced to donate blood would be. Or to donate a kidney if, say, the person's kidney was damaged in the accident and I was a match.
That is a much more invasive and (in the case of organ donation, at least) life altering event than spending ten minutes pressing a towel to someone's wound.
The same argument holds for forced gestation versus legal requirements to make arrangements for the care of a born child/baby.
A baby can be taken, with reasonable effort, and, I would say barring extenuating circumstances, [such as physical or mental health issues, possible situations of abuse, etc] and dropped where there are other people who can provide assistance. (Safe Haven laws would be of great importance here.)
Continued gestation, however? Invasive and life altering, even when it's a freely made choice.
Pregnancy brings with it a whole host of issues involving physical and emotional health (everything from gestational diabetes, to high blood pressure, vomiting, Hyperemesis Gravidarum, headaches, pelvic floor disorder, loss of dental and bone calcium, depression, and even death.)
Those side affects, many of them common, could affect a woman's livelihood if she's not able to work/continue her activities as she was before she became pregnant.
And that's before you even think about the added emotional impact of being forced to continue a pregnancy you didn't want.
And no, obviously I'm not entertaining this idea of a woman willingly waiting until later in her pregnancy, be it the 5th month or the 7th to get an abortion.
A small percentage of elective abortions take place in the 2nd trimester. And late 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions are the domain of medically necessary abortions which happen if the woman's health takes a downturn or the fetus dies or suffers a severe abnormality.
[Sidebar: This is also why I work against abortion bans in the second or third trimesters. Because those bans, however "well meaning," can be used to deny women the best medical care. See the "partial birth abortion ban" which outlawed D&X--dilation and extraction--not only putting women, who have dead or terminally deformed fetuses, in harms way by forcing them to go with a riskier procedure but also causing potential emotional harm by keeping them from being able to hold their dead baby in tact if they wanted to.]
There is a difference between being legally required to offer some amount of your time, your actions, and your general attention to keep a person alive and/or relatively safe until help arrives and being legally required to donate your body/blood/organs to keep someone alive.
And you're not required to provide the latter to a born person, even if you're the catalyst of their injury, even if you have a "special relationship" to them.
Why should a fetus be a special case?
This comment has been deleted because it violates our comment policy.
oops...that should say..so glad abortion was not legal..or at least available. I think it was legal where I am..but very hard to access.
Folks, it boils down to this: people who want to outlaw abortion can present only thinly-veiled appeals to logical reasoning for their positions.
The fact is that there are no logical or scientific motives for any intelligent person to want to grant legal rights to a fetus.
Bottom line: anti-choicers always have, and always will, come from a political and religious place of sheer totalitarian intolerance and wish only to impose on everybody their very oppressive and narrow mindsets.
Hi everyone--
This thread has gone beyond the point of being able to moderate, so I'm closing it down.