Put on your helmets, we’re talking about abortion.
This is gonna be long, because I have a lot of shit to say. With an issue like this, if you just throw your opinion out there and keep at the surface level, such as, “I’m against abortion” or “I support a woman’s right to choose”, you’re likely wasting your time and the time of everyone listening to you because most people will assume several things about you based on either of those statements and will dismiss or embrace you based on those assumptions, which in my case at least, would be so very wrong.
So I’m going to detail this right into the ground, because this is my blog and somewhere in my archives there needs to be my definitive opinion about this issue for me to link to whenever abortion comes up in the future. My other motivation for this exceedingly long opus about a dreary subject is that I’m incredibly sick of this issue always coming down to a war between faith-based morality and hyper-liberal feminism. There’s so much gray area in between those two that no one ever seems to want to inhabit publicly, and I think that’s why no progress is ever made in any debate about it.
So the first thing to do is state from the get-go a few key facts:
1. I’m not a Christian or a believer in any other religion that has ever existed. See here. Nothing that I have to say about abortion is in any way rooted in religious faith, religious dogma or teachings, or religious ideals.
2. I’m a social liberal. I don’t care what gays do, I don’t care if people want to smoke dope, blah blah blah you know the drill, and I don’t want abortion made illegal.
3. I’ve never been pregnant and never intend to be. I don’t want kids.
All right then.
I’ve said in the past that I have no opinion on abortion one way or another, which was because I just didn’t give it much thought. It’s never been an issue for me personally, after all.
But recently I realized I do have an opinion, obviously I do, because I’ve gone to great lengths for many years to avoid precisely that situation: it ever being an issue for me.
I’ve never wanted to experience pregnancy, have children, be a mother, any of it. I love being a woman, I’m rampantly heterosexual, and I think babies are adorable, but I just don’t want to be a parent for a multitude of reasons that require a whole other post.
Anyway, when I started thinking lately about why I’ve avoided pregnancy so vigorously, it didn’t take long for me to understand that it’s because I’m more opposed to having an abortion than having a baby.
I knew since I was a child that an accidental pregnancy at any point in my life would result in one of the following outcomes unless I had a miscarriage: I’d have a baby OR I’d have an abortion. One or the other, end of story.
There’ve been a handful of times I thought I might be pregnant - never because I didn’t use contraception correctly; always because I’m paranoid and assume the worst too often for my own good. Period one day late? Pregnancy test stat!
Each of those times, even if the idea I might be pregnant only lasted for five minutes, I contemplated the possibility that there was a real live tiny human being inside my body, and I knew beyond any doubt that if it really were there, I could not kill it.
(I also knew that along with being unwilling to abort it, I’d be unwilling to give it away for adoption. It’s just not in my psychological makeup. If I gestated and gave birth to a person, I would love that person and would want to raise it. Even though I’ll never pursue becoming a mother, if it happened despite all my best efforts, I know myself well enough to know that I would feel immediately attached to the baby, long before it was born.)
The point is, clearly I’m deeply opposed to having an abortion; otherwise I wouldn’t have spent so much effort and been so careful for the last almost-20 years. Even now, I’m about to turn 36 and am statistically far less able to get pregnant even if I wanted to, and I’m still a complete psycho about preventing it. Because if it happened, I would have a kid, because having a kid is less repugnant to me than having an abortion. Otherwise, I wouldn’t worry about an “accident” so much, because I’d know I could fix the problem in an hour at the clinic.
So, realizing all of that about myself, I went deeper with it in my mind. Why do I see abortion as such a bad thing? I don’t give a shit what the Bible or the Pope say. I don’t believe in hell so I don’t fear Godly punishment. I don’t believe babies are a gift from God or a sacred miracle. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business what I do reproductively. Almost all of my friends are pro-choice and they wouldn’t shun me if I had an abortion. No man I’ve ever been involved with had a solid opinion either way so that wouldn’t have been a problem.
And, frankly, I don’t even think it’s wrong for a woman to have an extremely early abortion, before the fetus’s heart starts beating (which, however, is a lot earlier than many people realize). Even most pro-choicers agree that late-term abortions are seriously fucked up and shouldn’t happen unless the mother will die otherwise.
Well, I’ve figured out that it comes down to two things for me. One is simply that for me personally, destroying a pregnancy, no matter how early, just isn’t something I could do. Every other woman has to decide for herself, but in my brain, with my psychology and emotional makeup, abortion would never be possible because I know that the minute I realized I was pregnant, I would see that embryo or fetus as my own child. And what kind of psychopath can kill their child, even if someone else might not see that clump of cells as a “child”?
But the second reason I see abortion as anathema to how I want to live my life shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s read this site for long: personal responsibility. To me, the vast majority of abortions (in the U.S., that’s all I’m talking about here) are a direct result of an utter failure to behave in a rational, responsible, thoughtful fashion.
If you don’t want to be pregnant, then don’t get pregnant.
Easy to say, right? Yep. It’s also pretty easy to DO, at least for me, because I fancy myself a sentient human being with a functioning brain, and as such, I enjoy making decisions that result in pleasant outcomes for me and everyone I care about. Failing to prevent pregnancy while knowing full well that I don’t want pregnancy would be an irrational behavior, not to mention fantastically immature and shortsighted.
Before I go any further with this, please note:
Women with family incomes less than $15,000 obtain 28.7% of all abortions; Women with family incomes between $15,000 and $29,999 obtain 19.5%; Women with family incomes between $30,000 and $59,999 obtain 38.0%; Women with family incomes over $60,000 obtain 13.8%.
1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).
47% of all abortions are performed on women who have had at least one previous abortion.
You see that only 7% of abortions in the U.S. are done for reasons most all of us can get behind: rape, incest, and medical situation of the mother. It’s the other 93% I’m talking about here, and the fact that so many are repeats and so many are not simply poor women who don’t know any better or who can’t get contraception. The same link also shows that only 20% of abortions are on teenagers.
In other words, a whole LOT of abortions are done on grown women who are not in poverty, who weren’t raped, and who have no medical contraindications to pregnancy. They just don’t want to be pregnant.
I have no “moral judgment” of those women. What I have is a profound lack of respect for their decision-making abilities.
Having an embryo or fetus removed from your body is a definitive statement: you do not want to be pregnant. And if you are THAT opposed to being pregnant, you have no rational excuse for becoming pregnant in the first place. If you can get access to a doctor to perform an abortion, then you can get access to contraceptives.
If you’re smart enough to figure out that abortion will prevent you from giving birth to a baby, and you know how and where to get an abortion, then you’re smart enough to know that contraception will also prevent you from giving birth to a baby, and you will know how and where to get the pill, condoms, diaphragms, spermicides, Depo-Provera injections, and all the other handy prophylactics out there.
Can’t take the pill? Get your tubes tied. Might want kids some day? Condoms, spermicide, diaphragm, and withdrawal. I’m not kidding. Do it all, every single time you have sex. Sure, it’s a pain in the ass; so is having the contents of your uterus vacuumed out.
You do all that, every time, and still get pregnant? Your pill “failed”? That would suck, but the odds of getting preggers while taking the pill perfectly, or while using more than one prophylactic device at once, are so small that it’s a waste of time to discuss. But if you want to go all the way with this reality, the fact is that if you truly are so against having a baby, so much so that you’d kill it rather than birth it, then you should seriously consider sterilization or not having sex at all if you can’t find a contraceptive you trust.
There is nothing complicated or difficult about any of this, when viewed as an alternative to abortion.
And the only reason any intelligent human being could possibly have a problem with anything I just said is if she simply doesn’t agree that abortion is a less desirable thing than all the hassles of contraception.
[This is now so long that it's getting too cumbersome to have the whole thing on the main page; click below to read the rest.]
I had a college friend who told me that the reason she was having her SECOND abortion was because the pill was too much of a pain in the ass to take every day at the same time. So, abortions aren’t a pain in the ass? Is that a fact? Going to a doctor, getting sedated and anesthetized, getting up on a table, having that doctor put a vacuum into your uterus to suck out everything inside, and enduring physical pain for hours or days afterward, is easier than shoving a pill in your mouth every day at the same time? Easier than making your man wear a condom covered in spermicide while you use a diaphragm?
A monkey could do it. I told her that. She said, “Actually, yes, I’d rather get an abortion once a year than take the pill every day.” There are people who simply don’t think abortion is any different from birth control. I’m working on the assumption here, however, that those people are few and far between.
Some of you are waiting for me to mention abstinence. Frankly, that would be taking “stating the obvious” too far, and even I’m not willing to embarrass myself like that. Clearly, it’s the best way to avoid getting knocked up. But it’s also not very reasonable to expect it. Post-pubescent humans are going to have sex, and at least for the adults among them, there’s nothing wrong with that.
What’s wrong is that so many of them can’t navigate a problem that even primitive people mastered thousands of years ago. The ancients used animal bladders as condoms, you know.
And it’s a very big damn deal, that’s the thing. We’re talking about human life, not cars or diets or even religion or politics. This is bigger than all those things combined.
I know women who spend years of their lives figuring out how many calories are in a burrito but haven’t given one day’s introspection to what it means to live on this planet as a fertile female. It’s a huge responsibility and a huge burden, since you’re a walking, talking potential incubator whether you like it or not. It needs to be taken seriously.
It should be obvious that I’m not talking about third-world abortion here, by the way; my opinion only applies to females who live in the same society and culture I do, and no woman in America of childbearing age right now (under 55 to be safe) can reasonably claim ignorance or that she has no access to contraception, unless at the same time she is ignorant of abortion and has no access to it, either.
I didn’t pay for pills the first 4 years I was on them because I went to Planned Parenthood and told them I was poor. They give them to you for free. Condoms, diaphragms and IUDs and spermicides if you want them, too, along with your yearly checkups (required for any dispensation of contraceptives). FREE.
Oh, I know. Not every woman can get to a free clinic; maybe there’s not one in your town and you have no transportation. Do we really have to go that far out on the bell curve of this thing, though? It really is a stupid point to make anyway, because if you can get access to an abortion, I’m gonna go out on a limb and repeat that you can get access to contraception. They’re supplied by the same people, after all.
For me, none of this has anything to do with religion or morals or whatever; it has everything to do with common sense and using your brain. We’re a species smart enough to put machines on Mars, for crap’s sake, but a huge portion of women in the most advanced and successful society to ever exist aren’t rational or thoughtful enough to comprehend the gravity of what it means to have a functioning uterus. Some animals have a better grasp of cause-and-effect than this.
Like I said before, if any point I’ve made strikes any given person as untrue, then clearly, that person simply doesn’t think abortion is a big deal and genuinely does not believe that it is any different than having your appendix or a tumor removed. I’m working on the assumption here, though, that the vast majority of decent adult human beings would prefer that there are fewer abortions, if for no other reason than the fewer medical procedures you have, the better.
Even if you believe babies aren’t viable human beings until they take their first breath of air, if you’re a reasonable person, you will be compelled to accept the fact that there are medical risks involved with any medical procedure, including abortion. Anesthetics, painkillers, surgical tools, post-procedure pain and possible infection, and so on. Therefore no matter where you stand on when human life begins, the default position for reasonable people is that abortion is “bad” if for no other reason than it’s a medical procedure that can easily be avoided.
Some radical pro-choicers, and even some who aren’t radical at all, will still say I’m wrong. They’ll say none of this matters and all that does matter is what women have the freedom to do what they want with their bodies. Which is fascinating, because I’m positive their claims about autonomy and choice and all that would very likely not be the same if it came to a similar scenario but one that had nothing to do specifically with women, sex, or the feminist agenda.
Let’s say that there was a food that everyone really, really likes a lot, the most delicious food in the world, which almost everyone agrees is absolutely freakin’ delicious - call it orgasm cake. It’s that good. And let’s say that every time you eat orgasm cake, you have about a 20% chance of developing a benign tumor. For genetic reasons, that tumor is extremely painful only for people with blue eyes, so painful that they will have no choice but to have it surgically removed. Any other color eyes, and it is not painful but rather actually feels good and makes you happy. So everyone knows before they eat the cake whether or not they’re going to want that tumor.
The surgery for removing the painful tumor entails all the risks that all surgeries do. It costs money, it’s emotionally difficult, and it’s physically painful.
And let’s say there are dozens of ways for blue-eyed people to eat orgasm cake every single day of their lives but never develop that tumor. All they have to do is take a pill, or stick a patch on their arm, or wrap their fork in plastic and sprinkle some tasteless chemical on the orgasm cake before eating it, or most effectively, do all of those things and others. Blue-eyed people who take those precautions almost never grow the tumor and thus never require the surgical procedure. Everyone knows about these precautions and can get them from either the drug store or the same doctor who they’d otherwise have to go to for the surgery.
What would the same people who insist that abortion is simply a reproductive choice that should be respected say about me, a blue-eyed person, if I ate orgasm cake without using any of the tumor-prevention-devices? They may still say, “hey, that’s your call, it’s your body, your can do what they want.” But how could they possibly, reasonably, deny that I’m completely goddamned nuts?
They can’t. Because it IS nuts to fail to do something that will prevent you from experiencing pain and surgery. It IS nuts to be able and smart enough to neutralize the tumor-causing chemicals in orgasm cake and to fail to do so. It IS nuts to know full fuckin’ well that you have blue eyes and therefore there is a 20% chance that orgasm cake will damn near ruin your life if you’re not careful, and yet you take the chance anyway. That is a completely idiotic way to live.
That’s where I’m coming from on all this. I’m not trying to take anyone’s cake away, I really don’t care if blue-eyed people want to gorge themselves on that cake and have the resulting tumors removed time and again, and I certainly don’t want the surgery to be made illegal.
But I definitely think I’m on solid ground when I say those people are not taking responsible care of their health, they are not using their basic human intelligence to make sound decisions, and they are using their right to personal bodily autonomy to justify doing something that makes no sense. How can it possibly make sense to fail to prevent a tumor that you know will be painful, when it’s so much easier, safer, less expensive, and less painful in every way to do that than to have it removed later?
Like I said at the start, the opinion that abortion is “bad” need not have anything to do with religion or politics. And I really believe that the only way to ever achieve any common ground on this subject is to take those things out of the debate and boil it all the way down to basic common sense. But it seems to me that all you hear from the pro-life side is that abortion is murder and all you hear from the pro-choice side is that abortion is simply a reproductive choice. And everybody just ends up hating each other because they see that simple opposing argument as a total rejection of their own fondly-held ideals.
Meanwhile, I sit here thinking all of those people are completely missing the point, which is that no sensible person wants there to be any abortions at all, and that because of the majority’s refusal to get in the gray area and talk about common sense, the problem not only doesn’t get solved, it gets worse.
If pro-lifers truly want to reduce abortions, they will work with the only thing they can work with, which is reality. Many of you hate Planned Parenthood and want it shut down, but you won’t accept the fact that Planned Parenthood prevents a lot more abortions every day than you ever will by throwing around “abortion is murder.” This is true, and I mean absolutely no offense to you by saying it.
My sister-in-law and I were talking about this yesterday, about what we had to go through at Planned Parenthood to get the pill when we were in our late teens. If you’ve never been there, you have no idea how very determined they are to keep people from getting pregnant who don’t want to be. We were asked if anyone was pressuring us to have sex, we were counseled on the emotional responsibility of sex, and we were given extremely detailed information on how the only way to really prevent pregnancy and STDs was abstinence. I remember the doctor telling me straight up that I had a huge responsibility to use the pills correctly and that she would be very disappointed if she saw me back there, pregnant. They don’t like doing abortions. There are bad seeds among them, of course, and they make the papers. But you have to know that only the outrageous examples (like the PP official who took donations specifically to abort black babies) are going to make it all the way to your awareness.
What I’m saying is, there are very practical ways for pro-lifers to eliminate a lot of abortions. Not necessarily Planned Parenthood, per se, but thorough education for young people and vigorously encouraging them to use contraception IF they insist on having sex. Which most of them will.
At the same time, if pro-choicers truly want to reduce abortions, which most of them say they do, they’ll operate in reality, too. And that involves understanding and accepting that a whole hell of a lot of the people who oppose abortion do so because they sincerely believe fetuses are human beings and that abortion is killing. You have to accept that. It feels like a holocaust to some people, and not because they think you’re a Nazi. It genuinely disturbs them that it’s acceptable to destroy pregnancies, because they see that as destroying human life, in exactly the same way it disturbs them to hear about innocent adults being killed.
You have to give up the idea that anyone who’s opposed to abortion is just being an oppressive misogynist dickhead because that is patently untrue in most cases. Like I said about Planned Parenthood, only the most obnoxious assholes make the news. Most pro-lifers, when it comes down it, are simply horrified at the idea of destroying a baby, even if it is inside a woman who doesn’t want it. And yeah, you can say, “Well then they should be lining up to adopt those babies!” My answer to that is, bullshit. It’s not their fault the unwanted baby exists in the first place. Just because someone doesn’t want a baby to die, which is a perfectly acceptable way to feel, doesn’t mean they should feel obligated to raise that baby as their own.
The only practical answer to any of this is for everyone to mellow out on the rhetoric, stop attributing malicious intent to the people on the other side of the argument, and work with what you have, which is apparently a shitload of women and girls who need to be taught about contraception and need to be able to get it far more easily than they can get an abortion. As long as one side agitates against comprehensive sex education and easy availability of contraception, there will be a huge number of abortions. And as long as the other side refuses to put a lot more emphasis on the most important “choice” as happening on the day a woman has sex instead of the day she gets an abortion, there will be a huge number of abortions.
Everyone on both sides can keep doing what they’re doing, but would be fools to think anything will change if they do. Meanwhile, abortions continue unabated.
Now I’m done. And fair warning: I absolutely refuse to let the comment section become a war zone. My blog will not be host to any kind of insults, name-calling, or denigration of people’s character based on which side of this argument they sit on. If anyone says something obnoxious, and you know what I mean by obnoxious, DO NOT RESPOND to them because I’ll be deleting their comment anyway and you’ll look like a tool for addressing someone who isn’t there. I’m serious. The whole point of this horrifically long post is that the debate as it usually goes is a big fat waste of time, and that’s not how we’re going to play here. You can give your point of view all you want, just be civil about it. (The regulars already do this without me having to ask because they are awesome; I’m just trying to preempt any newbies from embarrassing themselves.)
Well written, whether I agree with you or not.
(And I happen to, though it doesn’t matter much. I can’t ever get pregnant and I doubt I’ll ever get all up-in-arms on the subject one way or the other.)
/Bill
April 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm- - - Me thinks she doesth protesth too much - - - - - -
Anyone else bet that our dear Ms Lu-kiss is preggers???
April 7th, 2008 at 1:37 pmI agree with the vast majority of your points and I think they’re very well-reasoned. Oddly enough, I come down very differently on the legality issue.
By the way, I don’t know if I would agree that you’re a “social liberal” rather than a libertarian. Being a social liberal has some government-as-solver-of-social-ills connotations that I’m pretty sure you would oppose. I could obviously be wrong.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pmHmm.
I doubt it. After all, she’s expressed her opinion on gun control and yet she’s not gone out and robbed a convenience store (that we know of, anyway), and she’s expressed her opinion about religion and yet she’s not gone out and set foot in a church (you know, to worship, that we know of, anyway). And I’m guessing that there are a multitude of other opinions in the Ether that she’s written just because she wants to get it out in the open or, cynically, to get more pageviews this week to drive up the ad revenue.
I think it’s just Rachel’s being Rachel.
But I could be wrong. It’s happened before.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pmI’m fundamentally anti-abortion, as I’m fundamentally pro-accountability. If there’s one thing I can come to count on here, Rachel, it’s your thoughtful, honest and blunt take on things.
Two things stuck out for me on your commentary:
and
It’s unfortunate that there are so many people who don’t share your perspective. The illicit taking of innocent human life, to me, is one of the most abhorrent actions humans can perpetrate on one another. Through a consistent PR campaign by those who are pro-abortion, the wording has changed. What used to be “pro-abortion” is now “pro-choice.”
Call a spade a spade. “Killing babies” and “accountability removal” (for at least 93% of abortions by your statistical citation) accurately characterize the action. Anything else is whitewash designed to deceive and mainstream a despicable practice. It is the physiological equivalent of a sub-prime mortgage crisis bailout, and it typifies liberal thought today: Do what you want, when you want–and legislate away the consequences.
Man, I ramble. Hopefully I’ve added at least one-fifth of a salient point here. I’m a little emotional on this, as I have three beautiful children and a fourth set to join us here in June. For as much crap and grief they cause, when they come in and say the things they say–and do the things they do–I just can’t imagine why anyone would ever say “no thanks” to that. (I see where you’re coming from on the thought that you’d be automatically attached to a baby at conception, Rachel…even though I’m not a woman. Men get the same way–just 9.5 months later.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pmI’m sure you’ll generate some pageviews with this topic, as you have with others, but you won’t really get a heated debate until you write a full-blown epistle on “Why I use a (Mac or PC)” which expresses your hatred for the other camp. Then you’ll see some real traffic.
(And, no, I don’t believe you’re putting these controversial topics up for pageviews. Even I’m not that cynical.)
April 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pmThis topic was my introduction to junior-year Bioethics when I was in college. And it was a whole different take on the way I’d normally heard the subject addressed, because– let’s face it– whichever side you happen to be on, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve at least heard the other side’s argument. So this topic was given to us as practice, as it were, for what was to follow. It is hard, very hard, to construct an argument without resorting to emotional appeals or religion, and to make that argument equally compelling for people of diverse backgrounds. But I think Rachel did it. Brava. And on a more prosaic note, hot-diggity-dayam!!
April 7th, 2008 at 1:54 pmHmm. I absolutely agree, Rachel, that until both sides lose the rhetoric there’s no chance for progress. I’m a little more pessimistic though — even WITHOUT the rhetoric, I think there are some points of absolute non-compromise between the camps. I left a comment in the other post about abortion questioning the timeline involved, which comes directly from a conversation with friends — i.e., not one person in the discussion thought the others were godless heathens, nor yet reichwing nutjobs. But there was a fundamental difference that could not be bridged.
The moderates thought that over time, the mother’s rights related inversely with the baby’s — 1st trimester abortion was acceptable, 2nd semester less acceptable, 3rd trimester only for the health of the mother. The leftists thought that it was a violation of human rights to at ANY point make a woman bear a child she did not want to, including at 8 1/2 months. The conservatives thought abortion was murder, period. Not one person thought the others in the group were hysterical, evil, etc. etc., but there was no compromise that we could reach.
Finally, I’m also way more pessimistic than you about more education and access to birth control resulting in fewer abortions. I know, I know, the plural of anecdote is not data — but two of my friends have had abortions, and both of them knew ALL about the Pill, condoms, diaphragms, etc. etc.
Now, if you could come up with the equivalent of Planned Resposible Adulthood — an organization that indoctrinates teenagers on the fact that ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES AND YOU SHOULD DO YOUR DAMNDEST TO PLAN ACCORDINGLY — I’d give ‘em a donation today.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:55 pmI am glad a woman took the time to say what you have said here.
Ditto. Personal responsibility.
I don’t care about abortion so much from the babies’ points of view. I believe they go to Heaven with never having to grow apart from the protection and love of what is supposed to be the safest place on Earth: a pregnant woman’s body. They never have to get a hard knock, other than suffering whatever they suffer when they are killed or murdered. Of course, they never get a chocolate chip ice cream cone or their first beer, either.
The other addition I have, which isn’t as hopeful and is a bit negative, is that men don’t get a choice. I get tired of the rhetoric that persuasively argues that it isn’t the man’s business. Gut check, really? Why? Will SOMEONE please address that issue?
I was taught (perhaps incorrectly) that one facet of Roe v Wade was that the man in the case wanted to raise that kid. And that he had ample finances and the wherewithal to do so. Was that ever part of the case?
So, there is a cussing meter available for blog sites. How about a respect meter? ‘Cuz you have my admiration and respect.
Another fantastic essay, Rachel.
*Delete the part about Heaven if ya want. Especially if you forsee that pushing this in the wrong direction. I didn’t say it as a means of proselytising. It just explains why I kinda don’t give a shit and am pro choice because I believe something wonderful comes out of something horrible.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:01 pmGreat argument!
As you (R Lucas) have framed it, persons who opt for abortion over prevention are irresponsible, and this stems from laziness, and this, I think, stems from the ease of abortion.
If it hurt realllllllly badly, or carried more and worse risks, I bet more persons would focus on prevention.
duuuuuhhhhrrr
But in a broader sense, isn’t this….
ease—> lazy—> irresponsibe—> abortion over prevention….
pretty much the same with much of the developed world?
ease of getting grades in college—> lazy —> irresponsible regarding self-development —> party over study
ease of getting divorced/no fault/women have careers, anyway —> lazy —> irresponsible (infidelity) —> get another spouse over do the hard work on being married.
ease of rearing kids (TV, pre-school, after-school care, let Granny rear your kids) —> lazy —-> not responsible —> have kids out of wedlock, be a minimal mother.
ease of feeling secure (cops will catch the bad guys, soldiers or government will prevent more bombings) —> lazy —> not responsible for own defense or for contributing to national defense —> no training in weapons, for gun control, spit on troops
We need the stark fist of reality.
http://www.subgenius.com/
April 7th, 2008 at 2:06 pmRachel, great topic, been waiting for it for a while now. While I largely agree with what you say, I would take it a step further. Life is the value which all others are based off of. Simply enough, when you take something that was alive and make it not alive, its now dead (duh). That act is called killing, which is necessary to sustain life (food from animals) or in self defense, but when done for other reasons, the term is murder. Unless the baby is a direct threat to the life of the mother, its murder. There just isn’t any other way around it, no other justification. I waffled on the whole topic for years, i could totally see both sides of the argument, until I decided to sit down and really think it through, what was right and what was wrong. When I express my views, I always get “you must be one of those religious nuts” (I don’t believe in religion of any kind) or “you have no say-so, you’re a man, your opinion doesn’t count” (which REALLY pisses me off.. I was a “fetus” at one point in my life, so YEAH, MY OPINION MATTERS). So even knowing full well that about half of all aborted babies would have grown up to register as a democrat, I still have to say that the practice is wrong, has been horribly abused anyway, is nothing more than a political tool, has no redeeming qualities and should be banned immediately. OK, somebody else’s turn on the soapbox…
April 7th, 2008 at 2:10 pmAlthough I do not agree you on the morality part of it, nor the legality, this is a very well written post. You have done a very good job of eliminating the radicals (of either side) and boiling it down the the biggest peice of the puzzle: RESPONSIBILITY.
Well done, Rachl Lookis.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:14 pmSplendidly put, Blogsis.
Now, you know me well enough that I’m not going to change my pro-life opinion about abortion, but that’s irrelevant to your post anyway. You didn’t try to change it.
What is splendid about it is that you’re right. I don’t have to change my opinion that abortion is murder to be able to work with “the other side” on this one, at least the part of the other side that isn’t the tiny loony minority who actually believe that children are an unimportant growth to be removed at will and with no second thought like you’d clip a nail.
As a matter of fact, I’ve always felt that way. I’m perfectly willing to get to work here, keeping my fundamental opposition out of the discussion and instead focusing on how we can make abortions more scarce, at the very least. If I can’t abolish them entirely, I’ll settle for taking care of the 97% that are caused by selfishness, stupidity and ignorance or any combination of the above.
It’d be a huge step in the right direction.
Now, if only I can get “the other side” to see it the same way…
April 7th, 2008 at 2:15 pmI was adopted pre-Roe and thus have every reason to believe if I was conceived a dozen years later I would not exist…and my daughter would not exist.
That said, Rachel has written the best and most reasoned piece on abortion I have ever read. This dovetails exactly with the situation as I see it and should somehow be disseminated to a much broader audience. Go girl! (Love using “seminate” in a post about abortion.)
April 7th, 2008 at 2:16 pmI always hear, “My body, my choice” and every time I hear that I ask myself, “But didn’t they already make that choice when they chose to have unprotected sex that resulted in this unwanted pregnancy?”
I think, in a way, it goes along your thought process, Rachel, of personal responsibility.
One other thing I pointed out on someone else’s blog a long time ago:
Why is it that, as a general rule, when the pregnancy is wanted, it’s a child and when the pregnancy is unwanted, it’s a fetus?
I’ve never understood that.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:19 pmI have nothing to offer here, other than a kajillion kudos for an awesome essay.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pmRachel,
I’d like to preface this response by stating I think you did a great job with this post and I will be bookmarking so I can refer back to it later. I think you make an excellent argument against abortion that both sides can support.
However, I feel I must pick a few nits (it’s my nature).
I confess, I can’t seem to reconcile these two statements.
On one hand, you state in no uncertain terms that you don’t want abortion made illegal. On the other hand, you state also state in no uncertain terms that if you were to become pregnant, you would not be able to terminate the pregnancy. You say that you don’t want to take away anyone’s “right to choose”, but you also refer to the organism growing in the womb of a pregnant woman as a “human being”.
To me, these positions seem mutually contradictory.
You say you would be utterly unable to abort a hypothetical unborn child growing inside you. Why?
Au contraire, Rachel. According to a recent Heritage Foundation study, the more non-marital sexual partners a woman has, and the earlier she has sex, the more likely she is to become pregnant out of wed-lock, have an abortion, be infected with an STD, suffer from depression, and so on.
(Just thought I’d throw that out there.)
April 7th, 2008 at 2:24 pmI’ve got a few loosely connected thoughts and memories to type here. Bear with me, or skip down to the next comment which, I’m sure, will prove far more interesting.
1) Rachel, you are, as always, honest and fair in your appraisal of the situation. Kudos for tackling a thorny issue. When my ethics professor brought it for a roundtable discussion, I thought that the class would devolve into combat any second. The topic was never broached again.
2) I saw Jill Ireland-or someone of her ilk- on O’Reilley one night. Bill mentioned how abortion was very emotionally traumatic for some women. Ms. Ireland exclaimed how it couldn’t possibly be true because she felt such a great sense of relief when the cells were scraped out of her. My opinion of the human race which was never very high, dropped a bit after listening to her. Two friends of mine had abortions in their early twenties, or maybe at age 19. Both of them were wrecks for a long time. One of them assumed that she would never be worthy of being a mother. Fortunately, she now has two healthy children to ease that pain.
3) I’m opposed to abortion, but I have some sympathy for the position that abortion isn’t murder until the baby can survive outside the womb. I believe that Thomas Aquinas once postulated that a person doesn’t become ensouled until the fetus becomes a little person; perhaps he used the word homunculus. In any event, while I’m opposed to it, I can understand how not everyone shares my view vis a vis 1st trimester abortions.
4) However, people who get 3rd trimester abortions, barring imminent danger to the mother’s life, I think should be horsewhipped. Since I was born around 30 weeks or so, I take those procedures a little personally. Also, a friend of mine and his wife had twins weighing in a 1.8 and 2.1 pounds. They had to spend almost a year in an incubator before being able to leave the hospital. So the whole “not viable outside the womb” argument is getting a bit more tenous as medical science keeps improving.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:28 pmRachel,
April 7th, 2008 at 2:34 pmVery nicely put. But I will mention the part that riles me up about the whole “its my body” argument. It takes two to “tango” and the dance partner has absolutely no say in the outcome. To me that is offensive in the extreme. Your description of the orgasm cake and the tumor means eating the cake ALWAYS has a bad result. Think of it in another way; the making of the orgasm cake is what is really great, and afterwards while it is in the oven both people at least get to discuss and decide whether the they should eat the cake or throw it in the trash. What happens if one wants to eat the cake and the other wants to toss it? ..I know get your paws off my ovaries…93% did you say for social reason? I wonder how many of those the other baker knew a cake was in the oven?
I dunno, Rachel.
It seems to me you’ve largely defined away the heart of the debate with
But the debate has always been about what to do with people who refuse to use their brain.
No one’s going to disagree with your concluding imperative, “Be Smart!”
However, your second key fact, that you don’t want abortion made illegal, without further refinement, leaves readers with the impression that while you probably hate hate hate partial birth abortion, you wouldn’t make it illegal.
Is that your stance?
Also, it seems pretty clear you favor lots of sex ed. So do I, but it mostly needs to come from the parents. It is nigh impossible to teach sex ed without discussing morals–and I don’t want the government doing that.
Perhaps the compromise should be the school system providing parents with materials for required home study, and then the school system testing the kids on the facts.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:41 pmExcellent post, Rachel. While my initial pro-life views were derived from my religious beliefs, further study on that horrific practice solidified my views. With advances in medical technology, it is difficult to argue that it isn’t life - and using abortion as one’s primary method of birth control is (in my view) at BEST very, very irresponsible.
Now where can I get some orgasm cake?
(and the pills, and saran wrap, and tasteless powder, I guess - I have blue eyes…)
April 7th, 2008 at 2:43 pmI have 2 strong opinions on abortion. First the government should stay out, not the government’s business. It’s a personal freedom choice that should never have been accepted mainstream. Second, I do not agree that it is an acceptable choice for birth control. It is not birth control. It is a govermnent sanctionioned method for destroying potential life so people will do it without prejudice.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pmmightysamurai:
Forgive me if this isnt posted the correct way, but I have a question and observation.
First off let me say great post, very well thought out.
Now to mightysamurai’s point. Why would those statements have to be contradictory? Isnt it possible to oppose something and yet understand that each person has to make up their own mind?
April 7th, 2008 at 2:49 pmFrom my research, I don’t believe Thomas Aquinas himself ever said that (he seemed to have been of the opinion that abortion and contraceptives were sinful). You may be thinking of Pope Innocent III who wrote that abortion only becomes murder after the “quickening” (”quicken” is defined as “to reach the stage of pregnancy at which the child shows signs of life”). However, exactly when the “quickening” begins is unclear, even today.
Originally the quickening was whenever the mother first felt her baby moving inside her. But modern medical science shows that the first movement of the baby is not always noticed by the mother, particularly if it’s her first pregnancy. Modern ultrasound shows that an unborn child often starts moving long before the mother feels it.
Also, the moment when the baby “shows signs of life” is rather vague. Is it when the baby actually starts kicking, or when the baby’s heart starts beating? Both of those could be considered “signs of life”, yet the latter occurs quite a bit earlier than the former.
April 7th, 2008 at 2:52 pmFrom Lissa:
I am convinced that this is what Americans want, but no leaders have yet codified it and seriously proposed it. Oddly enough, this is pretty much the way most industrialized societies deal with abortion, and they don’t have anywhere near the rancor we do.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:00 pmI’ve known for a long time that the women most likely to get abortions are well-educated, upper-middle class and white (my demographic exactly). Your statistics clearly bear this out.
In spite of all our advantages, our seemingly educated, rational minds, we are being completely and utterly irresponsible with ourselves and the living things that result from our actions. It’s pathetic. Margaret Sanger may have devoted her entire life to abortion rights, but the true feminists of our nation’s history wanted us to have access to contraception, not abortion. We have all these tools, and yet we demand the right to retain the crudest of all prophylaxis. Again, pathetic of us to squander the rights women before us treasured.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:06 pmOf course, but the question is why do you oppose that thing?
What I mean to say is: If you believe that an unborn child is a person, how can you also believe that abortion should remain legal?
If an unborn child is a person, then they have a Constitutional right to life. If they have a Constitutional right to life, then aborting a pregnancy is, by definition, murdering a person. And if aborting a pregnancy is murdering a person, then abortion itself should be illegal.
That is why Rachel’s statements seem contradictory to me. On one hand she refers to an unborn child in a way that suggests she considers it a person, but on the other hand she is opposed to making it illegal to kill that person.
The only other possibility is that I am misinterpreting Rachel’s statement. That she did NOT intend to give the impression that she views the unborn child as a person and her opposition to abortion is based solely on the fact that it is risky and runs counter to her belief in personal responsibility.
But if so, then I have to wonder why Rachel stated that if “a real live tiny human” were inside her she would be unable to kill it.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:10 pmErm, not quite. From Rachel’s link:
In real numbers white women in America are (probably) having more abortions, but that’s just because there are more of them (white women in America, that is).
April 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pmDearRachel,
I have been dreading the oncoming Abortion post for a long time, because I just knew that you were going to say something that I profoundly disagreed with you about.
You did not.
Well written. Regardless of whether one is pro-choice or pro-life (and from that nomenclature you can pretty well infer which one I am), I think everyone in the country should read this post.
And no snarky comments either. You really do have a higher standard commenter than anywhere else.
Very respectfully,
April 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pmmike
Samurai,
I think she considers HER unborn child a person, but she doesn’t necessarily deem OTHERS’ unborn children as persons.
I’m really stretching the inference here because she didn’t exactly say that. But if it is accurate, I disagree with it–we must find rules we can all live with, and variable definitions of personhood just simply will not do.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pmAbortion.
I am against it. Especially when it is used as common, callous birth control. I am doubly against it when a government agency uses my tax dollars to finance something I find anathema.
I wish Personal Responsibility could be enforced on a Federal level.
What do you call a “nanny-state” that could enforce personal responsibility?
April 7th, 2008 at 3:22 pmagainst abortion for myself, but i don’t much care about what other people do because it’s their lives. but you do make a good point, although i did get lost on your analogy of orgasm cake. my mind, which seems to always be in the gutter, took on a rather crude image of said orgasm cake. hehe.
ok, back to cramming.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:32 pmThe feminist of the 60’s and 70’s have really done a number on us. Making us think we aren’t responsible for our actions, even actions that create life. By the time that baby is in your belly you’ve already made your choice. Now you have to deal with it. Married, not married, young, old, everyone knows how babies are made if its that important to you to not have one then don’t have sex. I’m not all about waiting for marriage but as women, we are the safe guards of our bodies and its ability to sustain and bring new life into this world. If that power were taken seriously there would be no need for roe v. wade, and 16 year old girls wouldn’t be in these situations. A baby is ALWAYS a miracle (just watch the discovery channel shows about in the womb) whether it is seen as one or not by the people whos selfishness brought it into this world.
Of course a woman has the right to decide whether or not she wants children. Only she can determine if she is in the right place in her life, the right relationship, and if its the right time. I just feel like the time to decide these things is well before a baby is growing inside of you. I mean “safeguard”, not in a prudish, holding tightly onto one’s virginity way, but rather in a self respecting way. Having a deep understanding of your body and the power it holds. To take all matters of birth control into your own hands, knowing full well that if a pregnancy occurs you will be bearing the brunt, especially if its with a man you doesn’t care about you or the impending child.
Women need to take more responsibility well before they are faced with the decision of “do I want to keep it”.
I recently had a baby, and the whole thing still blows me away. To think that this perfect whole human being with a heart and a brain and a soul, did not exist before two people had sex. That’s it, that’s all it took to create LIFE. A life that wouldn’t exist if not for our actions.
In other words I agree completely with your post. I agree with everything you say. Its weird and I feel like a stalker, but it’s true.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:33 pmCarbo said:
Old quote: ‘follow the money.’ the politicians on both sides don’t want a resolution. They get too much political and monetary resources out of exploiting the issue and not resolving it. Permitting abortions only in the first two trimesters or when the woman’s life is seriously endangered would make much of America happy and return the debate to the fringe. Unfortunately the politicians would lose a handy speaking point that can be used to hold their base.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:38 pmGreat Post, Rachel.
Heck, based on some of her statements, at times I think she doesn’t deem others’ born children, those with a couple dozen trimester, as persons.
Snark only, not meant to violate policy on insult.
Seriously now. Rachel, I’m glad you understand that a large contingent of the pro-life crowd sees abortion as nothing less than murder. Given that you recognize that as their (I’ll be honest, I’m one of them, so I’ll say our) position, could you expect them to do anything less than attempt to outlaw it?
In our legal system, the state, with due process of law is the only one allowed to execute another human. There are legal exceptions for self defense, still referred to as homicide, but justifiable homicide. Given that we see abortion as homicide, out side the cases where it may be justifiable (such as the baby putting the mother’s life in risk), how could you ask us not to damn it in the loudest possible terms and try to make it illegal?
A good post, I’m glad you wrote it, and I admire your ability to empathize and write on an issue, as opposed to write from a bias about an issue, but in this case, I think you may have missed part of the point. Normally, working the grey is a good solution. Maybe it is because I am more at the extremes than most, but I just don’t see room for compromise here.
I will agree with you on this though, that as the battle wages for the best solution (from our view, outlaw aside from the rare, call it 7% case), if the other side wants to work on preventing them, that we should team with them. This is one reason why, as discussed in an earlier topic, come down in favor of strong sex education.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:40 pmMS, you may well be correct, as I haven’t read that particular excerpt in 20+ years. And I wholeheartedly agree with you on not knowing when the “quickening” occurs.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:40 pmRachel, Have to say I’m pleasantly surprised by your entry. I really thought you were for abortion.
I want to agree with Serenity, you beat me to it, but it bears repeating. You already made your choice.
To me, a baby is alive, whether it is 2 weeks old or 8 months old. To kill it, is just flat out murder.
In courtrooms, you can now be tried for murder if you kill an unborn baby. So already the courts have agreed that a baby/fetus is a living person with rights.
So the next question is, at what point should that be considered. When its heart starts beating? When it forms a head? What about 2 cells? Don’t we consider 1 and 2 cell organism’s alive?
Who can unequivocally say they are alive at X number of days, but not before that? No one can?
And finally, Their bodies, their rights? What about the babies rights? Isn’t it their bodies we are really talking about here?
April 7th, 2008 at 3:47 pmHaverwilde, I understand where you come from. I think of similar logic when it comes to the race hustlers. But here, I’d urge caution against assuming fiscal motivations. At least on the pro-life side (I can’t speak to the should be legal side, I’m not part of them) there are deep held moral convictions at play. Convictions that see time, money, effort, and passion paid out, not received, in an attempt to end the horror of the 93% case. Yes, some one receives this money, and they may well be less pure than those giving out the donations. However, that so many give the donations would indicate to me that it is a belief (extreme, if you want to call it that still) honestly held.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:48 pmThe one thing missing from this is the one thing that is ALWAYS missing from this debate.
Apparently, men have no control over their reproduction. Only women seem to get a say. 1/2 of that child and the responsibility for it lies with the man. You’d best believe the woman (and rightly so) will go looking for that support. Yet the man involved might as well be dirt under foot when it comes to that baby.
I speak on this from personal experience. Some years back, the woman I was dating got pregnant and had an abortion, without so much as a whisper to me. This was MY kid. And probably the only one I’ll ever get to have.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:49 pmWell reasoned and communicated.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:49 pmEr, actually, the abortion rate has declined steadily for the last couple of decades, right along with the teen pregnancy rate. Something is working at lowering pregnancy rates.
In avoiding pregnancy that’s a valuable truth. For avoiding abortion once someone is pregnant, not so true. It is more physically dangerous for a woman to carry a pregnancy to term than it is to have an abortion. An ounce of prevention (not getting pregnant) sure looks preferable to me.
I’ll leave the side-taking chest-thumping moralism to everyone else.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pmRachel, for years I have harbored the exact same thoughts, for the exact same reasons, as you have expressed here so well. Though, having lived about a decade longer than you, I think my patience for all the excuse-making, etc., has worn thinner than yours. But wait a few years, you may get to that point eventually, too.
I’ve watched too many of my friends abort too many babies along the way — one friend aborting MULTIPLE times to hang onto multiple men (at least one of them already married!) — to buy into all the feminist rhetoric about abortion being the route to biological “freedom” for women.
For too many women (like the college friend you mention), abortion is simply a matter of convenience, nothing more. A convenience, as you pointed out, that might better have been considered with a dollar’s worth of latex when climbing into bed as opposed to the pain, misery, and expense of climbing up on the operating table later. And that’s leaving the moral issues out of it completely. Though, the older I get, the less inclined I am to divorce the reality of what abortion actually is from the discussion. Not when we’re able to actually SEE, through new photographic and ultrasound techniques, exactly who and what we’re vacuuming away.
I agree totally about the need for the pro-life and pro-choice people to work together, toward making contraception cheap (cheaper), easy (easier), and universal (I’m thinking most grocery stores carry condoms these days). But I think you missed one big impediment to that ever happening, and that’s this:
You forget that, for the power players on both sides of this debate - whether pro or con - abortion is one great big money making venture. There is no way in hell that either side is going to give up the political clout and all the money that comes along with it to “fix” this problem. Neither the founders of The Lambs of God nor the high humpty-dumps of NOW are going to beat their swords into plowshares on this issue anytime soon. If unwanted pregnancies become a thing of the past, and abortions decline to a level that makes any kind of sense, then these characters will be out of a job! They’ll have to take their bullhorns and their picket signs, their coat hangers and their effigies, and go home. Some of these people might actually have to go out and get work that doesn’t involve getting their faces on the evening news, and we can’t have that!
The bottom line? There’s no money to be made for these people in solving this problem. They get a whole lot more out of keeping the debate going and going and going.
So, that’s the first hurdle we face, I think. And after that, it’s all downhill as we try to convince our society to re-embrace the quaint notions of “responsibility” and “common sense” that were once more or less expected. After a couple of decades of Political Correctness and various grievance mongers teaching everyone which “victim group” they belong to, that ought to be easy!
But thanks for the well thought out post. It was a very interesting read, to say the least.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:58 pmOh, and historically “quickening” meant specifically when a woman herself could feel the baby move within her. That’s roughly around the 20th week. All reframing is changing definitions to suit oneself–that’s exactly what it meant throughout human history.
It is also exactly what Thomas Aquinas, Pope Innocent III, and Pope Gregory XIV meant when they spoke of quickening.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:59 pmJames Taranto of the Wall Street Journal calls this the Roe Effect. His theory is that liberals are more likely to abort their children, which leads to fewer liberals, which leads to fewer abortions.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:01 pmVery well put Rachel. I’ve actually spent some time on a feminist site discussing this issue. I think I’m the only pro-lifer they allow to comment. I don’t believe legislation is the answer to the problem. More personal responsibility is. The same people that have enough time to picket Planned Parenthood remarkably don’t have the time to talk to these women in a compassionate way and offer them a more appealing choice. Women who don’t want to get pregnant but then make bad decisions and get that way anyway are at a crisis point in their own lives. Which camp would you rather turn to? The one shouting names like ‘whore’ at you or the one that will put their arms around you and tell you they can make it all better? It’s another free market solution. If no one wants abortions, no one will provide them. Supply is not the problem here, its the demand.
I find it fascinating that the far left has no problem destroying innocent life and yet finds it morally reprehensible to use the death penalty.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:02 pmDearRachel-
Brava! Well said.
Once again, you have raised the bar.
Thank you.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:06 pmThere is an inherent contradiction that divides this country and I’m pretty sure at this point that we will never agree about abortion. To a woman who desperately wants a baby, pregnancy is a baby inside her from day 1. Many pregnancies miscarry very early - early enough that without modern science and cheap pee tests the woman would not have even known she was pregnant but that does not make it any less real for the woman who briefly thought she was pregnant. For people who believe that the fetus is a baby from day 1 (leaving aside why they believe that) abortion is murder, plain and simple, end of story.
To a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant I just imagine that they must dissociate from the idea of a baby. A simple medical procedure and it’s all gone. You might call it denial, but if that works for you & your mental health then fine.
I support the choice mainly because I can’t imagine anyone telling me that I HAVE to carry a baby inside my body for 9 months. I know that the Dad should have a say, but the Dad doesn’t have it inside him. Equality sounds great but you can’t argue with the reality of biology. The best solution for a family to me is the one that works for them. The amount of care and commitment required to raise a child, both during the pregnancy and for the 18+ years afterward is a commitment so profound that no one should be able to force anyone into it. Not the Dad, the Mom, and certainly not the government.
Like Rachel, I never wanted to have to face that choice, and so I took precautions (contraception) so that I would not have to make a decision that would change my life irrevocably either way. When younger, I truly didn’t know what I would have done if faced with the choice but I knew without a doubt I didn’t want to have to make it.
The problem for us moderates is that we’re really in neither camp. Just because I personally could probably not bring myself to have an abortion does not mean that I want to restrict the right of another woman to make her own choice. I know that it doesn’t make sense: To the pro-life movement once I acknowledge that I believe that the fetus is a baby then how could I NOT be against abortion? And yet I’m not. I guess I just don’t like the idea of people being forced into anything, no matter how noble the goal. Especially something so profoundly personal.
I also don’t think that we will ever agree when a fetus becomes a person. “viable” varies and with advances in science is earlier & earlier. Once a fetus is a person, do you charge a woman with abuse and neglect if she smokes crack while pregnant? What about a glass of wine? The reality is that if the mother thinks of it as a baby then to her it’s a person . . . but that’s not very legally helpful.
I don’t know what the answer is, but as long as we are willing to talk about it with respect and consideration for the views of others at least there’s hope.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:07 pmMy mother is a nurse and fairly liberal. She came of age and had me post-Roe so abortion has been a reality all of my life. When I was in 6th grade I was so brain washed that I wrote a pro-abortion paper. My teacher was SO proud and impressed.
One year later I remember being in the library and reading some books about conception and seeing the stages that a ‘fetus’ goes through and I changed my mind. In 7th grade! Not because my religion told me it was wrong but because science just seemed really logical to me that at the moment new DNA is created it is a life.
I’m less strongly opposed to very early abortions and morning after pills. But the moment a baby is viable outside the womb (earlier and earlier with our medical technological advances) it becomes a murderous and horrendous thing to KILL a child. I’ve read and heard too many horror stories of babies being aborted improperly and being alive - whereupon the ‘doctor’ throws them still alive into a bucket. Just the idea of a bucket of baby parts makes me ill.
People who use abortion as a form of birth control need to be sterilized or forced to take depo shots. They are beyond lazy - they are borderline sociopaths in my mind.
Your essay is wonderful.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:07 pmchikea…as a moderate do you think it should be legal to suck a nearly full term “fetus” brain out in order to KILL it and abort it? Because those still do happen and I am sorry but that is murder. If a child is able to live outside the womb then sucking it out of a womb is wrong - socially if not morally. It should be a shameful thing. Or how about at the point when the “fetus” has arms and legs and those appendages are CUT OFF and pulled out?
I just don’t understand how anyone can be “moderate” about this issue. Either life (yes, viable life) matters or it does not. I am not up for making abortion as a procedure illegal but it should be HARD to get and it should be only available in extreme cases - Rape, Incest (not as high a percentage as pro-choicers want us to believe) or the physical well being of the mother. Not the MENTAL well being. The physical well being.
Otherwise, personal accountability and responsibility needs to be taught and pounded into young kids. Sheesh.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pmI used to believe, like some of the men commenting above, that it was unfair for men not to have any “choice” in the abortion decision. Maybe that’s true, but here’s where I stand these days: men and women are different. Sometimes unequal treatment is inevitable. If you equate unequal with inherently unfair, get over it and be a man. As a man, sometimes you have to take responsibility for not only your own actions but also the actions of others. And like other commenters have said, you have a chance to make your choice before conception occurs. If you don’t want kids, be responsible. If you are anti-abortion, maybe know something about the opinions of your partner before having sex with her. I refined this opinion during my first 2 years as an attorney, working in child support enforcement at the DA’s office.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:25 pmTo answer a few questions from comments so far:
–I would feel/believe that a pregnancy in my own body would be a real human being with a soul. But I don’t know that and thus I don’t think it’s my place to decide for anyone else. I know women whom I deeply respect and who are sensible in all ways who feel just as strongly that it is not a “real” human being until it can live outside the mother’s body. All I can say is what I would feel if it happened to me.
–I am 100% opposed to late-term or partial-birth abortions in any circumstance except when the mother will die otherwise.
–When I say I don’t want abortion made illegal, I mean absolutely illegal. If it were up to me, which it’s not, I’d make it legal only up until the point when the fetus’s heart starts beating, because I believe that is when life begins. Not at conception but also not after it has a functioning cardiac system. But we’re talking 5 weeks into the pregnancy here, and you will never convince most pro-choice people that that’s enough time (even though it is).
–No, I do not expect people who believe abortion is murder to stop trying to make it illegal. I just think you’d have a lot more success actually eliminating abortions if you spent more time and energy preventing unwanted pregnancies. Even if you make it illegal, there are still going to be tons of abortions. It’s a fine goal but I think it’s a waste of time because I truly don’t believe it’ll ever happen.
–I left out the father’s rights because that’s a whole other tangent for this issue that I didn’t have time for, and the crux of what I’m trying to say is where women are going wrong, because the only way to cut down on abortions is to get women set straight before anything else. You have to start there.
But I do think it’s a very interesting aspect to this debate, and I’ll probably post about it soon to find out what everyone else thinks. But like I said, this post was simply about the choices women make because as it is today, men don’t have a say so you have to work on the women if you want fewer abortions.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:26 pmMen don’t have formal, official, or legal say. That doesn’t mean we’ve been robbed of our voices, or our first amendment rights. We can and should talk with our partners, and make our position clearly known. Men can pressure (note, I’m not saying force) the women they’ve impregnated into abortion. It is despicable, but I’m sure it has happened. We can also make certain that the women we sleep with know that if a pregnancy should occur, we’ll be there. Depending on the women in our lives, we can make this known, even if we aren’t the ones impregnating. Sisters, cousins, friends, any woman you know, that you know is sexually active, and open to abortion, you can offer, in advance, what support you are comfortable giving to them.
Men still have their own voice, plus the right, and responsibility, to use it, if they are passionate about this.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:37 pmVery well written. And I agree that I would not be able to have an abortion myself either. But I also don’t want that right to be taken away for those women who make that choice.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:38 pmThink about it, if they could abort a child and they felt it was a child as soon as they were pregnant, what could they do to a child that had been born?
I have no problem whatsoever with a woman taking the morning after pill though, because I don’t believe a baby is a baby until it has a heartbeat, somewhere around 8 (or is it 18?)days. If in 8 days you haven’t gotten it together enough to get the morning after pill, then you shouldn’t be having sex anyway. And the bottom line is, just like you said Rachel, take responsibility for yourself, take or use what you need to to keep from having to make the decision whether or not to have an abortion.
In short, don’t believe in abortion? Don’t have one, but don’t tell me what to do with my body.
(I took the pill, with great personal pain, ((migraines from hell)), then had two kids, and had my tubes tied during the second c section, best decision I ever made).
As a 45-year-old woman who has had 3 miscarriages in the last 2 1/2 years (last one two weeks ago), this is an emotional issue for me, and I find it hard to feel “relief” that those “cells” were “scraped out” of my body (I had to have D&Cs in all 3 cases). To the points about “quickening” and when life begins, etc., I had sonograms at 6 weeks in the last 2 pregnancies, and you can definitely see a heartbeat that early. In my case, those hearts just stopped beating within a week or two of that 6-week sonogram.
Slightly different slant on the discussion: I wonder if, under HillaryCare TM, I would be forced to be sterilized on the premise that my odds of having a “good” egg fertilized are low because of my age, and it would be costing the government too much money to have those D&Cs… I would not put it past some bureaucrat to set up the system that way.
For the record, I didn’t find my Prince Charming until I was 40, and we didn’t get married until I was 41, hence the pregnancies late in life. We are not necessarily “trying” to have a baby, i.e., we’re not into the whole fertility thing, but we’re not NOT trying, either.
The whole ordeal has brought the abortion issue into sharper focus for me, and I just can’t imagine choosing abortion as a method of birth control.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:49 pmWell, Raving Lunatic finally brought it up, I was wondering if I’d have to break the ice. He said “Apparently, men have no control over their reproduction.” I’m sure we all know of course that that is not the case. To wit:
(1)I am a man. You are a woman. I do not want children. You claim to not want children. You claim to be on birth control. I trust you. You get pregnant. At minimum, I am financially responsible for our child until he/she is 18 or you get married. This is the legal, and proper, outcome.
(2)I am a man. You are a woman. I want children. You claim to want children. I trust you. You get cold feet (or whatever) and decide to get abortion without my knowledge. This is the legal, and imho immoral, outcome.
As far as I can tell, no feat of logic will allow these two viewpoints to coexist. In the real world that is. As opposed to the reality-based world.
[EDIT to add:]Tully appears to have (maturely) answered the question regarding mightsamurai’s “quickening” comment. I still have to add though that I’ve always believed that the quickening occured after the penultimate highlander was decapitated. I believe lightning bolts and broken windows are an indication of the quickening.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:58 pmThere seems to be some controversy about when “life” begins, whatever term is applied. To say that abortion is ok up until the point when the baby can survive outside of the womb is preposterous. A newborn baby requires much more intensive care once its been birthed than at any time in the womb. Pretty self-sufficient there. Hardly a good basis for human/non-human discrimination. There is no point at which it can be determined that a fetus has gone from a collection of self-replicating cells to a human being. When can one possibly declare “Now its a baby, whereas 1 second ago it was not.” Sperm is sperm and eggs are eggs, but once the two get together, something entirely else takes place. The 2 parts become something greater than the sum of their parts. Only then can a determination of individual life be true and honest. You make your choices for your own life right up until then, but as soon as you get a girl pregnant, or a girl becomes pregnant, a brand new life with his/her own choices occurs, and until that person is old enough to be responsible for his/her own actions, YOU are the guardian of that life and it shouldn’t just be the woman’s job either.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:59 pmAt the end of the day, “My Body, My Choice” really translates to:
“I shouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of any of my choices if I don’t feel like it.’
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Unless it’s coming from a man like Obama - in which case, it’s about children-as-punishments.
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At the end of the day, they’re not ‘Choices’ and they’re not ‘Punishments’ - they’re babies.
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They’re Babies.
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Why do we have a discussion beyond that point?
- MuscleDaddy
April 7th, 2008 at 5:06 pmI thought so too, but that strikes me as a fundamentally illogical position from someone who is, generally, very logical.
Think about it for a moment. Why is HER hypothetical unborn child a person, while another woman’s hypothetical unborn child a clump of cells? If an unborn child is a person, then it is always a person no matter whose belly it resides in. If you believe that an unborn child in YOUR womb is a person who deserves to live, then logically ALL unborn children are persons who deserve to live.
But maybe I am misunderstanding Rachel’s argument. Maybe she’s saying that it’s up to the individual woman to decide whether that thing inside her is a person or a lump of inanimate cells. But are we really prepared to live in a world where individuals have the right to decide whether a living organism (and it is a *living* organism) is a person endowed with Constitutional rights or a lump of cells with no rights? How far are we willing to extend this “right to decide”? Can a mother decide after her baby is born that her baby is not really a baby and it’s okay to perform a “fourth trimester abortion”? Obviously not, only a lunatic would suggest that such a thing be allowed.
Then when should the cutoff point be? Rachel suggested that it should be at the moment when the unborn child’s heart starts beating (which would place the cutoff point much, much earlier than most pro-choice groups would be comfortable with). But that brings to mind another problem: no one knows for sure when life (in terms of “personhood”, not simple biological life) begins. We can use an ultrasound to find out whether the baby’s heart has started beating, but does that prove that life begins when the heart beats? Of course not. After all, hospitals restart patient’s hearts all the time. If the difference between “life” and “non-life” was as simple as whether the heart is beating or not, then CPR is essentially useless and anyone whose heart stops should be immediately given up for dead, because if their heart has stopped then that’s exactly what they are and there’s no point in wasting hospital resources treating a dead body. Of course, we know that a person’s heart CAN be restarted after it stops and we don’t consider people who have had their heart restarted to have actually been “dead” in the eyes of the law (otherwise they’d have to deal with all sorts of insurance-related difficulties), so obviously “beating heart” cannot logically be considered the sole factor in determining whether or not someone is “alive”. You could write a law that said so, but that law would not have any logical basis, which brings us back to the original question: when does “life” begin?
Personally, I think Rachel hasn’t fully examined the abortion issue from every angle she’s just not sure about whether an unborn child has a right to life. That’s probably why she limited her argument to one of personal responsibility and medical safety and why she pointedly avoided discussing whether abortion was right or moral. And that’s probably best because she gave us a very reasonable, well-expressed argument that any rational person, whether pro-life or pro-choice, can get behind. But me being the person that I am, I can’t resist picking a few nits now and again. I just saw those two statements as being contradictory and I was wondering how Rachel reconciled them.
Anyway, I’ve made my point. End of rant. If anyone wants to debate me about the morality of abortion I’d be happy to fight it out with you, but I think Rachel would prefer we save that for another thread.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:10 pmI think you get it. I applaud your choice.
Speaking of choice, the anti-life people keep railing on about “a woman’s choice”. Fine. But that choice happens a little while before conception.
After that, it’s not a choice, it’s a responsibility.
Now as to the extreme examples (incest, rape &c), we should not make sweeping laws based on extreme examples. We handle the extreme examples. Adoption, for one.
Taking off from Doug’s last comment: Consider the baby just after birth. Definitely alive. Now go back to just before birth. Has anything really changed, other than cutting the umbilical cord? [If so, then that must be the magical and mysterious process that gives life to an organism.] Now go back a few more minutes. And a few more hours. And so on. Where is the magical and mysterious process during the 270-odd days of gestation that “gives life”? (Your argument about a beating heart is persuasive.)
One conclusion is that life starts at the beginning.
On another tack, I think that most of the problem centers on the question of whether the Gummint should fund it. (And relatedly, whether the Gumming should force Catholic hospitals to do it.) I think the Gummint should stay out of it, and not fund it. Let Catholic hospitals refuse to do it, and let those hospitals who see no fault, keep doing it.
While abortion can be made illegal, adolescent urges cannot be stopped. And “back-door abortions” are a cure worse than the disease.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pmI am so thankful to see someone else with the same approach to this subject as I’ve had. Six months ago I expressed this same view to a ‘friend’ who effectively cut me off because she didn’t come to the same outcome . Still reeling from that one but it&#