In the comments to Pro-choice and pregnant, Robert said
Oh, and congratulations on the baby. I’m glad you’ve decided not to kill it.
Ignoring for the moment the question of whether that was intended as deliberate provocation, I wanted to address the question of whether it’s even accurate. I’m not sure it is.
“Decided not to…” implies that the possibility has been given some consideration, however fleeting; I might say, for example, “I thought about buying the Kaiser Chiefs album but decided not to.” If the option hasn’t been consciously considered and rejected, it doesn’t really make sense to imply a decision has been made. I wouldn’t say that I’ve decided not to move to Milton Keynes, become a chartered accountant or take up underwater basketweaving, and nor would I say that I’ve decided not to terminate this pregnancy.
Before I became pregnant, I spent a long time considering the possibility of having a baby. I passionately wanted a family, and although I don’t believe there’s anything special about biological, as opposed to adoptive, parenthood, I decided the simplest way to have a baby of my own was to give birth to one. So to say that I “decided not to adopt” is completely reasonable: I considered the possibility and rejected it.
The decision to become pregnant was less positive: the timing never seemed to be quite right and I wasn’t sure I had the right to inflict myself on a child. I hesitated, and circumstances came together to help me decide. I had the opportunity to have unprotected sex at the appropriate time of the month. I took it, and three nervous weeks later a blood test confirmed my pregnancy.
Abortion never entered my mind as a possibility. Pregnancy was something I’ve longed for, hoped for and occasionally put myself at risk in search of for most of my adult life. Now that I finally have what I always wanted, why should I consider throwing it away? If the pregnancy had been especially difficult or scans had revealed a problem with the fetus, I might have had to examine the option, but so far everything has gone smoothly and I’ve had no reason to consider abortion.
So why does Robert think I “decided not to kill” my baby? Does he believe that every woman, pro-life or pro-choice, who sees a pregnancy through to the end has decided not to have an abortion? If it’s unreasonable to say that a woman at the farthest extreme of “fetuses are people too” pro-life philosophy has decided not to kill her baby, what makes it more reasonable to say it about someone who made a deliberate choice to become pregnant but respects the choice of other women to avoid pregnancy?
There’s another distinction to be made here, as important as the one between a wanted and an unwanted fetus: the distinction between wanting to do something yourself and supporting the right of others to do it. I am pro-SSM, but I wouldn’t even consider marrying a woman. I believe in free speech, even speech that I personally consider repugnant. And I am pro-choice, despite the fact that my choice was made long ago.
Why do I support a right I have zero desire to exercise for myself? All sorts of reasons. People I care about may well make a different choice, and I want it to be open to them if they need it. I don’t want to live in the kind of world where women can be forced to sustain a pregnancy against their will to satisfy someone else’s idea of morality. I want the world to know that I’m having this baby because I deeply and passionately want it, not because I couldn’t get rid of it.
Being pro-choice doesn’t mean you think abortion is wonderful. It doesn’t mean that when the doctor’s receptionist confirms a very much wanted pregnancy you immediately think “of course, I could always have an abortion”. It simply means you believe the decision whether to become pregnant or the decision whether to continue with a pregnancy is the woman’s to make as she sees fit.
That’s a pretty creepy comment, but I think it reflects the attitude of a lot of pro-lifers fairly accurately. I suspect that they really do believe that pro-choice women are so callous that, every time we may find ourselves pregnant, we will naturally ask ourselves “I wonder if I should kill this one? Too difficult to decide really, maybe I should flip a coin.”.
Like I said, the underlying assumptions are deeply disturbing. I’m anti death-penalty, but that doesn’t mean that I assume that everyone who is pro death-penalty has some deep-seated desire to kill people just for the fun of it.
Personally, I always wonder how much the anti-choicers are projecting. I’d bet a nickel or two that Robert has encouraged his partner to get an abortion at some point in the past…
Thank you — this post helped me to understand something that really threw me overboard a few years back. I’m pro-choice, like Nick, because I believe that women should have this choice. My mother, however, is a pro-life activist.
In the city where she lives, there was a big campaign to build a billboard or giant poster or something with pictures of “babies who were ‘saved.'” She thought it was a fine idea to take the baby pictures I had sent her of my two children, and add them to the poster.
It makes me almost crazy to even think about this, but to me, she was implying that my children needed “saving” — and from who? Apparently, me.
Nick wrote:
Well, no, it’s not. In the other thread of Nick’s, a couple of people drew a parallel between forced organ/marrow donation and forced pregnancy. These procedures, too, can have major benefits but also create moral conflicts within individuals. I’d say that while there’s nothing particularly wonderful about the act of abortion, it’s also not “horrible,” to use Kos’ words from a month ago. I may not be willing to strut around like the Goddess of Everything if I get an abortion, but I’m not going to spend the next thirty years hanging my head in self-loathing over the “horrible” thing I’ve done, either.
When guys say this kind of shit, you wonder if it ever occurs to them that the woman across the breakfast table from him (his wife, mom, sister, daughter) may well have had an abortion in secret, that she can only have the life with him that she has because she had one, and that some part of her is withering inside because the person closest in the world to her would think she was a “killer” or “horrible” if he knew. :(
It’s a damn good thing to be a woman and live in a culture where you can choose when you want to breed and when you don’t. Even if the answer to “When do you want to breed” is “Never, Thanks.”
Britgirl wrote:
Yep. I feel the same way about folks who go into the military, which makes me a total sop by the standards of some other anti-war Lefties, but so be it. The power of life and death over another is a difficult issue, but I sure as fuck wouldn’t waste my time going to Military Families Against the War or a similar site to call vets “killers.” Blecch.
“Why do I support a right I have zero desire to exercise for myself?”
But is your pro-choice stance really just out of solidarity with other women? You mention in the same post that you might consider abortion if there was a problem with the pregnancy or the fetus. I’m not sure there are any women who desire to someday have an abortion, but when faced with an unwanted pregnancy it feels *necessary* for some reason. I hear the old “I’m pro-choice but could never have an abortion” line a lot. It always sounds to me like a way of distinguishing oneself from those other women. Unfortunately, you never know what tough situations will be sent your way.
For the life of me I can’t imagine a man having to write a second blog entry surrounding a personal choice that he has made with his body. If a woman has never felt like public property before, there is nothing like her pregnancy to bring it to light.
I am happy that you are pregnant; I am pissed that some man thought that his opinion was more important than your pregnancy.
It’s a fair question. I would consider abortion if circumstances seemed to warrent it, but unless the pregnancy presented a serious threat to my life, I think I would conclude that I couldn’t end it and live with myself afterwards.
I suppose I am distinguishing myself from women who feel more able to choose abortion, but not out of any wish to criticise their choice. I just want to emphasise that women are a diverse lot and there’s room for all sorts of personal choices under the “pro-choice” umbrella.
very well said!
thanks for writing.
How rude. And of course the underlying implication is that women are naturally murderous. Actually, I would characterize it more as resentment that it’s our choice whether to allow what a man’s done to us or not–pregnancy is still very much seen as a man’s work through a woman’s body. In the rush to characterize any woman who dare reject this role, our very nature has to be constructed as murderous, because we don’t get pregnant every time we have sex. And often even fertilization occurs but not pregnancy, meaning that women are unconsciously destroying men’s work, aka “murdering babies”.
Sara said
“I hear the old “I’m pro-choice but could never have an abortion” line a lot. It always sounds to me like a way of distinguishing oneself from those other women. Unfortunately, you never know what tough situations will be sent your way. ”
This argument has been vexing me too recently, so I’m going to go a step further.
If I discovered I was pregnant right now, I would have an abortion. I would not need to sit and give it a lot of thought, I would not agonise over it, I very much doubt that I would feel guilty for doing it. This is not because I have some kind of deep-seated murderous tendencies, it is because I do not want children. I have always known that I do not want children. I’m married., and my husband doesn’t want children either.
Because I know I don’t want kids I am very careful about contraception, and I have never been pregnant as far as I know (I am aware that women frequently miscarry and don’t even realise it). I intend to continue being careful. But, if all my precautions should fail and I should find myself pregnant, I am going to have an abortion. People who do not want kids should not have kids. I like kids, and I’m a great aunty, but I just don’t want any of my own. I think there are lots of women out there who feel like me, and who have been intimidated into silence, sometimes even by people on the pro-choice side. The insistence that all women agonise over abortion and suffer terrible guilt afterwards is bullshit. Some do, some don’t, everyone is different. I’m not going to apologise for how I feel, and if anyone doesn’t like it they can kiss my ass. It’s my body and it’s my choice, not their. End of story.
By the way, Nick, this rant is in no way aimed at you. It’s aimed at the growing pressure from idiots like Kos who want us all to adopt the anti-choice framing on this issue and are too stupid to see the implications of doing so.
I feel much better now. If there are any lifers on here who feel like giving me a lecture – bite me. It’s my body and it’s none of your goddamned business.
Well written Nick. I also applaud BritGirl’s direct and to the point speech above.
I think every woman has to come up with her own decisions about both having and not having children. If a woman supports a decision that she wouldn’t make for herself, I don’t think we should be castigating her. Unless she starts making moral judgments about women who have abortions, then I’m willing to take that statement to mean “I don’t think it is right to apply my decisions to other woman” and be glad for the support.
I made the decision many years ago not to have children. So you could say that I made the decision not to have an abortion and thus my support of choice for others is suspect. On the basis of my decision, you could also doubt my support for pre-natal care, children care, and IVF. I, of course, would disagree; I wouldn’t have kids, I wouldn’t’ have an abortion, and I do strongly support all aspects of women’s reproductive rights.
The irony of Robert’s sarcasm and indeed of the pro-life movement itself is that abortion has made joyous pregnancy more possible, and adoption an option for women with unplanned pregnancies. I remember reading a book by a Brazilian writer (Jorge Amado? Can’r remember) years ago about how the poor women of the favela would never go to the “angelmaker” for their first, happy pregnancy, but would go for subsequent ones in an effort to make their lives and their children’s lives less wretched. And that’s what no abortion and especially no birth control does- it makes women and children’s lives wretched. It devalues pregnancy and children because they become unwelcome burdens in too many households.
I have often wondered what would happen to the “loving option” – adoption, if abortion were made illegal, or if indeed BC were restricted as many seem to want as well. Would American women drop off their babies at orphanages to be neglected as happened in Romania? Even if the US could cope with the glut of unwanted kids, what would happen to all of the foreign children who find loving familes in the US now? I think we can imagine what would happen- orphanages and a sad existence.
In the book “Freakonomics” the authors posit that abortion has lowered the crime rate. I would like pro-lifers, so-called pro-lifers, to think about that and to remember that life can be cheapened in more way than one.
Like Sara and BritGirl, I’ve heard this a lot – heck I’ve said it, not to distinguish myself from women who had abortions, but because I honestly couldn’t imagine myself being in that position. I found myself in that position at 19, beat myself up to make sure I wasn’t terminating for “selfish” reasons (though a pregnancy was not in my best interests at that time) and came to the realization that my legitimate concerns about my own health and embryonic/fetal anomaly due to exposure to known teratogens were considered selfish reasons by those who oppose abortion (even those who support exceptions for rape & incest). I honestly think that the majority of women who said they support the right to make a decision they wouldn’t make themselves aren’t trying to stand a moral high ground, they’re (in general) adding the caveat to illustrate that just because a certain decision may not be right for them, that doesn’t mean it’s not the right decision for someone in different circumstances.
I think the snide comments from those who oppose privacy in life andmedical decisions just lend credence to dadahead’s excellent suggestion for re-framing the debate at Liberal Avenger.
“I want the world to know that I’m having this baby because I deeply and passionately want it, not because I couldn’t get rid of it.”
I love this line. It’s pretty much my general reaction when flag-burning amendments, and other laws designed to restrict choice rather than protect people, are suggested.
Regarding the “I’m pro-choice but could never have an abortion” discussion, I realize that many women who say this are trying to simply make a point that supporting freedom means supporting freedom for everyone, not just people like you, but I think the way that’s it’s usually phrased/used makes it come across as seperating onesself from those women who would have abortions. (I’m saying this as someone who has been guilty of doing the latter at times when I was younger).
My mother was actually the first person I heard utter this, and she did so in a conversation in which she was trying to explain to me that not everyone who finds themselves knocked up was simply being irresponsible. She had pointed out that only one of her four children was from a planned pregnancy and my parents were using some form of birth control all of the other times she got pregnant. (Her purpose was not to seperate the responsible unwanted preganancies from the irresponsible pregancies, but to poke holes in my assumptions).
At the time I translated what she said (I can’t remember exactly how she phrased it that day) as meaning that she would never have an abortion. Looking back I’m fairly certain that isn’t what she meant, even if that’s what she said.
I was born with a congenital heart defect that required constant medicine and frequent visits to the hospital from about 6 weeks until I had open heart surgery at 2. My mother was preganant with my younger brother when I went in for surgery (one of the unplanned pregnancies). I have no idea what she actually would have decided had circumstances been different and, say, my dad lost his job and health insurance about that time and my parents didn’t have family to turn to for help, but I can’t imagine her choice would have nearly as easy or clearcut.
I can’t speak with absolute certainty for my mother, but I think what she was really trying to say was that she is pro-choice even though, given her own feelings and situation, she could never choose to have an abortion herself.
Why does the abortion argument boil down to “pro-choice” vs “pro-life”? Is there not a middle ground? Choice is a wonderful option, and a woman should have that right, but as with all rights it carries resposibility. Choice begins before conception. Should I engage in sex? Should I use contraception? It seems simple that if one does not wish to become pregnant, or impregnate, one should use effective contraception. Granted it’s not a 100% guarentee, but it’s far more effective than using nothing. I would suspect that the overwhelming majority of “unplanned” pregnancies are from failure to use effective birth control. There’s also surgical options, for both sexes, to eliminate one’s child bearing ability.
Not all pro lifers are extremists. Many recognize that abortion is not always an easy decision for a woman. I sense that its not abortion itself per say that disturbs lifers, but rather the number, over a million a year if I’m not mistaken. Instead of arguing life vs choice, why not recognize the legality of abortion but work to reduce the number, and acknowledge that with rights come responsibility. Abortion should not be presented in political debates as something to celebrate, nor should women who choice such be condemed as murders.
Ahh, but Jenny K, that’s the point–situations change, usually in unexpected ways. So to say “she could never choose” an action in the future given her situation in the present doesn’t make sense, because none of us ever really know what our situation will be in the future. (For the record, I was very very guilty of saying this many times when I was younger, so I’m not trying to castigate anyone. I just think it’s an interesting point to bring up and examine, given how often you hear the “I’m pro-choice but…” thing.)
Whoops, just re-read your post and realized you might have meant exactly what I just said. (Duh. Must read better now.) If that’s the case, sorry for the redundancy.
“If a woman supports a decision that she wouldn’t make for herself, I don’t think we should be castigating her. ”
I’m sorry if I came across as castigating. I don’t presume to know her reason (or anyone else’s) for using the “I would never have an abortion” line. I think other commenters are right – people say it for lots of reasons, and not all of them are meant to be holier-than-thou.
But what puzzles me about it is that it makes it sound like there are two types of women – those who have abortions, and those who do not. And that I can somehow know what type of woman I am. While our decisions about our reproductive lives are political, politics don’t usually drive those decisions, and they don’t define who we are.
When I was a pre-abortion counselor I met many a “pro-life” woman who wanted an abortion because “the circumstances warrant.” Each one had always believed she would never ever make that choice, but then she did. And the pain from that cognitive dissonance was nearly palpable, because her very identity was at stake.
All I’m trying to say is that playing the “I would never” game is a dangerous way to define yourself. You never know until you’re there.
AB, I’m a bit confused, because that was kinda my point: that if she got pregnant right at that time (or had gotten pregnant other times in the known past) then she could reasonably say that, but she couldn’t say (and wasn’t really trying to say) the same for a future that was very different from her current situation or that she would have made the same choices in the past had her past been different.
I guess to me saying “I’m pro-choice but could never have an abortion” is too absolute, but saying “I would never have an abortion in my situation, but I’m pro-choice” suggests both support of people who would choose differently and acknowledgement that circumstances play a part in the decision.
If you disagree that’s fine, I’ve never been spectacular at conveying ideas concisely – as anyone whose read my plethora of long posts knows :) – but I’m curious if you disagree because I didn’t word it well, or because you think that there isn’t a way of conveying this particular idea using so few words.
hah! AB, that’s ok – see note regarding my not always steller ability to convery ideas :)
There are many women who assume with blithe assurance that they would *never* have an abortion, until they become pregnant. Such was the case of my best friend in high school. I was so sure she would be psychologically damaged by throwing away her principles that I did try to persuade her to rethink. She was sure, and you know what, she survived and prospered, is happily married and so on.
It is certainly possible to regret having had an abortion, or needing one, it is after all an unanticipated and unwanted event that requires planning and money, and can also be quite painful. Not that childbirth doesn’t involve all of the above to one degree or another, at least if the child is unplanned. There is this assumption among pro-life types that once the child is born there will be some sort of epiphany that erases the “unwanted” gloss from forcing a new addition into the family. Sometimes this is true (most likely, if you are already set up with a family), but it is usually an arrogant assumption that is contradicted by a lot of evidence.
In short, you can have bad or mixed feelings about abortion and still not think that what you did was a wrong for which you must atone. But there are lots of women out there who are just suffused with the “cheap grace” that comes with exercising your rights but not assuming fundamental responsibility for the fact that it was, after all, a choice.
I assume she = me, and I can assure you I didn’t feel at all castigated. I didn’t say that I would never have an abortion, just that (right now implied but not stated) I haven’t even considered having one. And that, unless the circumstances were extreme, abortion would probably cause me more pain and regret than whatever I hoped to avoid by it.
I don’t see a sharp divide between women-who-have-abortions and women-who-don’t, more of a spectrum from someone who can have an abortion and feel nothing but relief to someone who cannot contemplate, at least in the abstract, going through it. I place myself at one end of that spectrum based on what I know of my personality and my reactions to other situations.
These people amaze me with their coldness at times. As if such a decision is ever taken lightly. Okay, yes perhaps to some, but to the majority? No!
“Castigating” was probably too strong a word and I apologize for using it. Perhaps I reacted somewhat strongly because the “you never know” was what I heard over and over again when I decided not to have children. Yes, I’m sure that there are women who blithely say “I would never” about abortions without really having thought about it but I feel that I have to be willing to trust their judgments in the same way that I wanted people to trust my decision.
There are plenty of people, like pretty much everyone in this thread, that say they wouldn’t have an abortion but are pro-choice. Because they know that if they were pregnant, they’d very much want a baby.
But there are people who say that, like the Kos example, who want to strike a balance between passing judgement on women who get abortions and people who don’t want it to be made illegal. Because of that attitude, though, women like me who would abort immediately and without regret are silenced and the anti-choice movement gets to define women who choose to abort, or would if they got pregnant, as selfish sluts.
Well, I’m not. I’d be a wretched mother, so it’s kind of me not to inflict myself on a child.
Amanda wrote (emphasis mine) :
Maybe we could start a support group ? :/
Well, I’d say a Discoteque, but that would definitely get condemned, probably far more than the “I had an abortion” T-shirts.
I’m in, if we can have a Feminist Jazz Snobs Night once a month.
Hmmm, while I know I’m not at all far from the norm, I think it’s worth pointing out that I’m pro-choice, mother of one, and pregnant for another and HAVE had an abortion. It’s not like people are either baby-havers or baby-killers. Choice means just that, and is based on the situation. In my current situation, abortion hasn’t even been a consideration – like Nick, I’m extremely happy about the baby I’m nurturing into being, and it wasn’t a situation that warranted me needing to consider ‘exercising’ my right to choose.
The fact is, though, that most women who have had abortions or will have abortions also will bear children. Of the – lessee – eight women I am either related to or know well whom have had abortions, only two of them have not also had children. Each woman has a different story as to what provoked her choice, and a different level of comfort with the choice itself.
Contrary to the portrayal offered by many anti-choice folks, being pro-choice is about women having the right to exercise choice over their own body, not about ‘killing’ babies.
being pro-choice is about women having the right to exercise choice over their own body, not about ‘killing’ babies.
OK. What are they choosing?
“If a woman supports a decision that she wouldn’t make for herself, I don’t think we should be castigating her. “
I had no intention of castigating anyone either. My point was that I see many pro-choice people using this language as a sop to the lifers, an attempt to “meet them half way” and I think it’s politically unwise. There’s really no way we can meet lifers halfway without accepting their framing of the issue, and accepting in principle that other people have the right to tell women what they can do with their bodies. We can’t compromise by advocating for better contraception, because they want to restrict access to that too. Attempting to engage with the lifer position is a losing strategy, and it’s going to end up hurting women. Look at the Dems suggesting that we should “compromise” on 3rd trimester abortions. Most 3rd trimester abortions are performed because of severe fetal abormalities and/or danger to the mother’s health. How the hell can we compromise on that?
Robert, they’re choosing to put off childbearing until later. That’s the case with, I would guess, the overwhelming majority of women who have abortions. They end up having the one, two or three kids they always would have, under different circumstances. And some, like my friend from high school, end up choosing the child-free life that she always wanted.
By requiring “regret” and making snarky statements like “I’m glad you decided not to kill it” pro-lifers are trying to shift the conversation in an effort to elicit the tacit agreement of even those who support abortion rights that abortion equals infanticide. I am not going to play your game.
Some of us don’t want children. And we don’t need any sanctimonious meddlers trying to bully us into liking the idea of having our own children. That’s our choice, and I for one don’t intend to let meddlers or their apologists (ie- Kos) shame me into pretending otherwise. I’ve known since my own age was in the single digits that motherhood was not for me. I knew this as surely as I knew I was left-handed and had some artistic skill. These things are central elements of my personality. They will not be altered to please the dictatorial instincts of others. That’s final.
IOW, what BritGirl said. Those who are determined to label me some kind of potential “killer” would do well to support expanded access to healthcare and to stop spinning elaborate justifciations for shithead pharmacists who think their own “consciences” should get to intrude into my fucking womb when I ask for birth control or EC. I’ve been fortunate to reach the ripe old age of 39 without more than one or two false pregnancy scares. But I shouldn’t have to rely on luck alone to arrange my life the way I want it. I’m a full-fledged citizen, and I won’t be treated as chattel by patriarchal assholes.
Robert, they’re choosing to put off childbearing until later.
Ignoring the fact that you’re directly contradicting the women who have explicitly stated that they do not intend to ever bear a child:
What means are they using to exercise that choice?
Lay off the trolling, Robert. Barbara is speaking for the women she is most familiar with, as is Kim. The fact that women like myself, Amanda, and BritGirl probably make up a tiny fraction of pro-choice women doesn’t make us any less deserving of choice. You have heard me, and others, explain what we have done to avoid the necessity of abortion. You have also heard any number of times why even with the best will in the world, all our efforts could still fail and we could still find ourselves pregnant. (Rape culture thread, anyone ? Do you think most rapists stop to put on condoms, or check to see if their target is on the pill ?)
You’re not that dumb, Robert. You’ve gotten your answers a dozen fucking times. If you don’t like the answers, that’s not our fault. We don’t exist to please you. So if you’ve got nothing original to contribute, why don’t you just drop it ?
Actually, Alsis, I haven’t gotten answers. I’ve gotten some abuse and a whole lot of tap dancing, all of which seems designed to avoid for as long as possible a simple acknowledgement of the simple fact that an abortion kills a life. No, no, it’s about “choice” and “privacy”. Choice to do what, and privacy behind which to do what – where apparently an acknowledgement – a bare acknowledgement – of what “what” covers would break the sisterhood, or something.
Although it’s none of my business, you’ve discussed your reproductive life and intentions enough to lower the privacy barrier. If you are bound and determined to not have any children, why don’t you get your tubes tied?
Robert, plenty of pro-choicers have concurred with you, despite your bleating about “tap-dancing,” that an embryo or fetus is “alive.” What we don’t appreciate is your constant assertion that its status is equal to that of the life of the woman carrying it.
I don’t know why you think you get to decide how lowered the “privacy barrier” is any more than you think you’ll get sympathy for kvetching about how you’re being “abused” –when you could have avoided this latest round by simply not being such an asshole to Nick in the first place. If I liked and trusted you, I’d be happy to discuss my medical status in your presence. But, frankly, I neither like nor trust you, so I consider it none of your fucking business. Maybe you’d like to amuse yourself by waltzing over to some MRA sites and asking the men there why they all don’t get vasectomies. Maybe you could give Planned Parenthood a buzz and offer to anonymously fund a few sterilizations out of your own pocket.
Growing up, I always had the view that I couldn’t think of a scenario outside of rape/incest/health when I’d agree with abortion BUT that this was entirely not my decision to make and my opinion didn’t matter.
Until, of course, a very close friend had a pregnancy scare with an abusive boyfriend. Then, I openly urgerd her to consider abortion and learned to never assume an absolute on this issue.
Still, I and most progressives would take the approach of “Safe, legal, and rare” on abortion. Part of that is promoting birth control use to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Indeed, this should be a major part, but it is stymied by right-wingers who find the notion of birth control to be immoral who are still fussing of the judicial activism of the Griswold decision (which I think had something to do with being able to by birth control while on a family vacation). Safe is also undermined by efforts to intimidate providers in many parts of this country where a safe and legal abortion is extremely difficult to procure. I want as many people as possible to never have to make the choice to have an abortion, but I still want them to have that choice. Its theirs to make, ultimately. Not mine. The myth of the pro-abortion is left is one of the most disgusting creations of the radical right and its highly disappointing to see Robert engage in such petty misrepresentation and insult of those he disagrees with.
What we don’t appreciate is your constant assertion that its status is equal to that of the life of the woman carrying it.
Since I’ve never asserted that, and don’t believe it, you can increase your level of appreciation however you see fit.
When you regularly refer to your pregnancy scares and your sexual life and your intention not to bear kids, that’s to me a lowering of the privacy barrier; kind of like when a vet brings up how he lost his arm in the war, you can generally feel comfortable asking him if its hard to cut his meat with just one hand. Apparently I was wrong. Never mind.
What is most disturbing about the extremist position that you, and a few other pro-choicers, stake out is the absolute insistence on freedom from any interference, outside judgment, or social control. Very few groups or individuals ask for that level of autonomy from the larger whole (not even the hardcore libertarians do) and those that do are usually pretty worrisome; Randian nutjobs and the like. In general, people need some social control over their actions; very few of us are capable of handling absolute autonomy in a way that is compatible with a healthy social environment. People who believe they need or deserve absolute autonomy are pretty scary, and usually for pretty good reasons.
Your allies in the pro-choice movement might want to consider how much support from moderate people who have objections to some, but not all, abortions is lost by having abortion-rights absolutists in the ranks. The moderate pro-choice position is reasonably defensible; most Americans either hold it or understand and sympathize with it; you can count me in the latter group. The absolute position, on the other hand, is just nuts. You demonstrate yourself that you know its nuts by the strenuous lengths you will go to in order to avoid a simple, technical description of what abortion is. If an absolute right to that practice is so great, why can’t you bring yourself to just say what it is?
That said, it’s obvious that there’s nothing to be gained in terms of information or understanding from my continued participation in this discussion, and I imagine it might be hurting the feelings of some people whose feelings don’t deserve to be hurt; I’ll bow out other than to answer direct questions.
I’ve actually thought long and hard about the “safe, legal and rare” strategy for ensuring women’s reproductive choice, and initially I thought it might be useful. But then, the niggle in the back of my mind that always suggested a problem with it came fully into focus; namely, how it comes down to shaming women about having an abortion, and more than that, having sex.
Some may argue it’s about minimising the amount of potentially dangerous medical procedures. But I think that’s honestly bullshit, as a wellperformed abortion is actually far more safe for a woman than a pregnancy itself.
If the anti-choice people honestly were simply interested in reducing the numbers of abortions, then they would have responded to the reaching out from pro-choice organisations with efforts to increase sex education and subsidise and provide access to birth-control, as both these things have been shown to decrease abortions, whereas making abortion illegal hasn’t. But no one has seen anything other than a trickle of movement in that direction from the anti-choicers. This seriously suggests to me there is something else going on here, and it has very little to do with descreasing abortions rates.
Moreover, there are a lot of women out there, as have been evidenced here, that weren’t conflicted or traumatised about accessing abortion services. Strategies such as the above would alienate them. Abortion doesn’t have to be a traumatising event AND for some it is. It’s not a ‘but’ argument, it’s an ‘and’ argument; just as there are a diversity of women, there are a diversity of approaches to accessing abortion, so allowing for this is the best strategy, not taking merely one perspective. We shouldn’t be telling women how they should orientate themselves to abortion; that’s for them to decide; that’s the point. It’s not our role. It’s our role to provide services and support should that be what a woman articulates she needs.
Of course, I say this as a woman that can’t get pregnant (something I have known since I first started college) and as a lesbian. Pregnancy has never ever been something I have had to consider, worry about, or whatever. Sometimes I get wistful, but then I’ve also always been whigged out by the idea of passing something the size of a football … ouch.
Oh, and as to Robert’s comment, I said this on the previous thread, and I’ll say it again here; it was, and still is, a dickhead comment.
Robert:
What abortion is:
Abortion is an ending of a pregnancy by removal of a E/F. That’s what abortion is. Anything else is trying to reframe the debate to make women look like killers.
And I highly doubt that a women who gets an abortion makes that decision entirely in a vaccuum…at the very least she has to consult with a doctor. But she probably consults her close family, friends, maybe a religious leader, and of course, she has to consult with her own morals.
I don’t think it’s overzealous of any women to demand that she choose what, when, and where her body gets used for. That’s the definition of autonomy. That doesn’t mean she gets to dictate what anybody else wants to use thier body for, or that she doesn’t get a network of friends…but the final decision must rest with the women making the decision.
Since you directly addressed me:
Abortion is an ending of a pregnancy by removal of a E/F. That’s what abortion is.
An “E/F”. You can’t even type it.
“Removal”. You have to euphemise it.
You’re making my point for me, Antigone.
Anything else is trying to reframe the debate to make women look like killers.
Or using simple and direct language instead of euphemisms and acronyms.
It was alive. Now its dead. In the middle, you did something that you knew would move it from alive, to dead. That by me is killing.
By you, it’s “removal”. Of an acronym.
I wasn’t aware that I mentioned pregnancy scares prior to this particular thread. I wasn’t aware that I’d been discussing my sex life in graphic detail, either. Projection is a bear, Robert. Watch out for it.
Your comparison to a hypothetical war vet is funny (strange, not ha-ha) on a number of levels. For one thing, I don’t regard my lack of desire for children as a disabling situation. It just is, and always has been, a part of my life. Very strange analogy on your part there.
It’s also rather funny (strange, not ha-ha) that you yourself have repeatedly failed to respond, for instance, to the folks who have wondered aloud whether you would support forced surrender of your organs or bone marrow to save somebody else’s life. I’d say if anyone in these never-ending exchanges could be said to be “tap-dancing,” Robert, it would be you.
What kind of “social control” do you want, exactly ? For someone who repeatedly reserves the right to define each and every term/subject in a debate, Robert, you are quite vague about this. Furthermore, I don’t understand why you assume that women who are sexually active and yet work to avoid unwanted pregnancy are not excercising sufficient “control.” What exactly beyond do they need “society” to do ? We are adults, and you seemingly trust our male partners to conduct themselves responsibly without your quasi-benevolent assistance. So why can’t we adult women have the same consideration ?
If you have been reading this thread and the related threads, I think you will find that my allies understand the dangers of purges pushed upon them by people like you. I think that my allies understand that the danger of letting someone like you define “absolutism” means that they, too, run the risk of being vilified as “absolutists” at some point– even if they themselves don’t feel like they are.
And again, I reiterate that being an abortion-rights “absolutist” is not in any way a true counterpoint of being a fetus-rights “absolutist.” I don’t believe that I have the right to tell another woman to abort or use birth control. Funny that while you feign concern for “non-absolutists” like Kim, you fail to notice that they don’t have any problems with seeing my POV. Sounds to me like you are unhappy that you can’t pit mothers and non-mothers against one another. Sad for you. Not so much for us.
So you get to decide which woman is worthy of getting an abortion and which one is not ? You really can’t grasp why that’s so noxious and nasty, do you ? You would never want me to intervene in your own family life and tell you how many children you could have, and when, and how– yet you cannot extend me the same courtesy. Shame on you, Robert. If that’s “moderation,” I’ll pass.
My desire to not intervene in the lives of other women or to project my own desires upon them–and to expect the same consideration from them– is “nuts” ? Really. That would be funny if it wasn’t so sadly indicative of the upside-down view that so many men have of women’s rights. Well, you know the old saying about how madness is a reasonable reaction to a society that is insane, don’t you, Robert ?
Your description, such as it is, is hardly “technical.” You have gotten as much acknowledgement from me as you are ever going to get as to the nature of how much of a full-fledged “life” an embryo or fetus is, Robert. It’s not my problem if you want to poo-pooh my opinion because I won’t sign onto your interpretation that a woman who aborts –for reasons you don’t like, of course, as you are oh-so “moderate”– no matter how many times you stamp your foot and demand that I look at the world the same way you do.
If you had cared about people’s feelings, you would never have made that snide, hateful remark to Nick in the first place, Robert.
Oh, Antigone, you bad, wicked woman. Using an abbreviation. Don’t you know that every time you abbreviate, God kills a kitten ? Or something. Into the lake of fire with you !! :p
Sarah, great to see you again !
Robert: On the off chance that you are actually interested in some of the whys and why nots of tubal ligation-
(Firstly, it’s a sterilization procedure, so only applicable to those that don’t want to ever be pregnant again. But you knew that.)
Firstly is that it’s an elective procedure, which affects insurance coverage and also whether or not a doctor will be willing to perform it. Many simply deny it to women under 30, or women who haven’t had kids, etc.
Secondly, it is surgery, with all the risks and complications associated with surgery. When weighing costs and risks of a ligation vs. condoms and the pill/patch, ‘regular’ birth control obviously is going to win out a lot.
Of course, you aren’t interested in the actual whys and wherefores of the matter, you simply want to get into a flamewar about how women who don’t want children and don’t get their tubes tied are shooting bullets into a crowd, metaphorically speaking.
Robert,
You had said that you were going to bow out of this debate. That was a good idea, and you would have been well advised to stick to it.
But I’ll bite, just to remove your ability to indulge in this particular bit of rhetoric (“you can’t even type it” – how patronising).
Abortion involves the killing of a fetus. Note that I used the word fetus, not the word baby. Most of us have differing opinions as to when a fetus becomes a baby, and the most common opinion seems to be “when the fetus would be viable outside the body”. This immediately excludes all of the first trimester, and about half of the second trimester. Most abortions happen in the first trimester. The efforts of the pro-life movement to restrict abortion have, in a case of great irony, succeeded in making it so hard for many women to get access to early abortion that there are more and more abortions happening in the second trimester. This is not what the pro-choice movement wants, and it’s not what either women or their doctors want. Second trimester abortions are more risky, more painful. The main reason that more of them are happening is because people like you have made it very difficult for women to get abortions in the first trimester. This is a bad thing for everyone, and most of the blame for it rests on the shoulders of the pro-life movement. Congratulations lifers on making the “problem” that you claim to be fighting worse.
Also, you keep coming back to the idea that pro-choice women just aren’t doing enough to avoid pregnancy. This is disingenous bullshit. Plenty of women right here have gone out of their way to point out how careful they are to use birth control. Birth control is fallible. As to your suggection that pro-choice women should have tubal ligations, I invite you to take your suggestion and shove it up your ass. You have no right whatsoever to tell someone else that they must submit to surgery in order to meet your personal moral code. And even if they did, it’s still not completely fullproof. There have been cases of women who have become pregnant after tubal ligation. It also would not be covered by most people’s health insurance, so if you really think this is such a great idea you might try suggesting that some pro-life groups offer to help pay for it. I’m guessing you won’t get very far with that strategy. It is interesting that you didn’t suggest vascectomy for the partners of these women though. Interesting, and very telling.
I’ll even give you another analogy, a bonus if you will. I have two first degree relatives who had breast cancer. This puts me in a high risk group. I am of course doing all the smart things that one does to decrease one’s risk of cancer. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink to excess, I eat healthy foods, I exercise, I maintain a healthy weight. In spite of all this there is still a chance I may get breast cancer. Would you suggest that I get a double mastectomy now, just in case? Am I acting irresponsibly if I do not do so?
Also, what about the possibility that a woman who does not think she wants kids now might change her mind later? Do you assume that you have the right to tell her that she must deny herself the ability to keep her options open by having a tubal ligation now?
Which again brings us back to the central issue. None of this is any of your business. These are not your decisions to make. Given that you are fairly intelligent, none of this should be difficult for you to understand.
And one more note RE late-term abortions. Most of these are done because of major developmental problems in the baby and/or health risks to the mother. Do you really think that you have the right to dictate to a woman that she should risk her own life to bring a child to term? Do you actually think that the life of the baby is always more valuable than the life of the mother? Or that a woman should be forced to committ the rest of her life to caring for a severely disabled child? That’s a pretty big committment, and I remind you that if these children are put up for adoption their chances of actually being adopted are very low. They would probably spend the rest of their lives in an institution, and that’s a pretty horrible fate. Bearing all that in mind, do you really think that you have more right to make these decisions than the woman actually carrying the child?
BritGirl, check your email. There’s a pro-choice rally in SF tomorrow. (Sorry for the late notice).
Brian, thanks but I can’t go! Ironically enough given the topic here and our friend Robert’s assumptions, it’s my niece’s first birthday party tomorrow and her mother would never forgive me if I missed it. So, evil baby-killing feminist me will be spending all day shopping for baby clothes and cooing over an infant.
Thanks for keeping me in mind though. Next time…
Robert:
Abortion is ending a pregnancy by killing and removing the embryo or fetus. See? I have no problem stating it, and I’m about as extreme a pro-choicer as you’ll ever encounter.
Meanwhile, try to find a pro-lifer who doesn’t become enormously uncomfortable when pro-life policies are accurately described as state-enforced childbirth for pregnant women. For that matter, try to find a pro-lifer who is willing to say what penalties a woman who has an abortion should recieve – five years in prison? Twenty years? Lifetime? Death penalty?
It may be, as you say, that some pro-choicers aren’t entirely comfortable talking directly about what abortion is. But the vast, vast majority of pro-lifers are just as uncomfortable when asked to talk about the reality of criminalizing abortion.
(If they are comfortable, it’s generally because they favor virtually no punishment for the woman at all – a position that’s completely incoherant when combined with the view that abortion is murder.)
No one is saying that people shouldn’t be free to make unkind judgments about women who get abortions. Rather, people are saying that they’ll make unkind judgements upon the unkind judgers in turn.
Frankly, I don’t see much unique about the position that “I should be able to do _____ without being interfered with, as long as what I’m doing doesn’t harm another person.” I should be able to draw whatever cartoons I want, for instance, without social controls telling me what I can draw or can’t.
Robert said:
Your allies in the pro-choice movement might want to consider how much support from moderate people who have objections to some, but not all, abortions is lost by having abortion-rights absolutists in the ranks.
To be honest, it is the “moderate people” out there who scare me the most. It’s that “some, but not all” thing that makes me nervous. On the one hand they pat us on the head: they tell us not to worry, they support abortion, they support a woman’s right to choose. But then they turn around and start making exceptions, putting conditions on when, where, and how a woman can choose to abort. They assure us it is still our right to choose, but they want to decide, set limits on what, when, and if we get to choose. Because they know better than we do. Because they are more informed than we are. Because they are more moral than we are.
Robert describes himself as a moderate. He thinks that the pro-choice folks should be grateful for the moderate “some, but not all” view on abortion. He thinks that we are not reasonable because we don’t want to make concessions, because we don’t want to accept limits and restrictions on what we can do with our own bodies. But the problem with making concessions, with letting other folks set limits is that they don’t ever seem to want to stop. If we agree to one limit or restriction, they think we should agree to the next. If we give up one thing, it is easier to give up the next thing.
So we are placed in a position where we can’t make concessions, where we can’t agree to limits. Either we are in control of our own bodies or we are not. And if we can’t even control what happens to our bodies, to the one thing that is ours, then we are less than a person. We are chattel, we are breeders, we are body parts, not people.
Robert, what do you think constitutes an absolutist position on abortion?
As to the desire to be free of “any interference, outside judgment, or social control,” what kind of social control, exactly, are you proposing? A morality squad that will judge the suitability of a particular decision (“she used five types of birth control, she gets to have an abortion; she didn’t use any, so she doesn’t deserve a break”)? That kind of social control? And my life would be bliss itself if I could command the right to be free of outside judgment, but I don’t think I’m going to waste a lot of time pursuing that as a goal.
You accuse us of trading in euphemisms, but the average pro-lifer can’t or won’t put together a coherent explanation of why, for instance, he or she would be in favor of abortion in the case of rape or incest but not failure of birth control, or as Amp says, what kind of penalty would apply to a woman who arranges an illegal abortion, or for that matter, her partner, because these things are rarely done alone. Scratch 1 mm below the surface of an average pro-lifer and you find that a fetus is a baby with an asterisk. So here’s a thought: “Life begins at conception” is a euphemism greater than anything the average pro-choice person has ever concocted. It avoids all kinds of pesky questions about logic, compassion, autonomy and a host of other values that I, for one, find important to living in a free society.
I favor unrestricted abortion up to about 16 weeks, with a more complicated and nuanced view on availabiltiy after that point. Somehow that makes me an absolutist, while those who take the view that a zygote is equivalent to a “human being*” are “moderate” in their views? And apparently this is because I’m not willing to require regret and mourning for those who avail themselves of the right to abortion?
Robert: What is most disturbing about the extremist position that you, and a few other pro-choicers, stake out is the absolute insistence on freedom from any interference, outside judgment, or social control.
So Robert finds it disturbing that women think they ought to be able to trust their own moral judgments when making decisions about their own pregnancies but he has no problems with other people trusting their own moral judgments about denying women emergency contraception or even birth control. And Robert thinks it is better to preserve the “innocence” of kids that to provide them information that might help them prevent unwanted pregnancies later in life.
And while Robert insists he supports abortion when it meets the requirements, as yet unrevealed, of his “moral calculus”, he insists that we all use his morally-loaded phrasing (“killing a baby”) to describe abortions — I guess this is his way of letting us know that even if he will concede in some instances that abortions might be acceptable, any woman who gets an abortion is automatically morally corrupt.
And Robert wonders why we are so resistant to having “moderates” like him as allies.
I hate the way pro-lifers believe that feminists are baby killing monsters who have abortions for fun, although I know that is all part of their rhetorical strategy. It’s beyond insulting when abortion is a very difficult decision for most women. Mind you, I do think as feminists we need to have another look at the abortion/pro-choice issue. I’m involved in a feminist group in Wales and recently someone joined wanting to run an abortion campaign. I was surprised to find that very few people really wanted to be involved. Although they identified themselves as “pro-choice” feminists a lot were uncomfortable with the idea of having an abortion or actively campaigning on the issue. I don’t know whether this is because pro-life rhetoric has made deeper inroad than I’d previously imagined, or if there is a general shift occurring in young women’s attitudes to abortion.
It does not take emotional or verbal gymnastics to be pro-life. If there was no growing life (dead things don’t grow) then there would be nothing to kill. You know you are killing something and you must do semantical sommersalts in order to not think that something is a human being. What is it then? A duck? A dog? You know you are killing something. You know that something is your child. You just so desperately want to maintain your lifestyles that you’ll make human sacrifices to see that happen. It’s the baby’s body and not yours to dismember. If you want to burn yourself in saline or have your limbs torn off then be my guest. Doing that to your child- be she born or not-yet-born is child abuse. I don’t care if she lives in your house or in your womb.
As a woman, I’m disgusted that you would paint yourselves as so much more important than your children that you have a so-called right to end her whole life at your whim. I have an advanced degree and a wonderful career. Having a baby at this point would hinder my doctoral plans and my career advancement, but I don’t think that my situations justify stealing my child’s whole life from her. My job is to CARE for and nurture the life I helped create. Abortion is truly a selfish act. Abortion paints women as completely self- interested and oppressive towards those that depend on her for care and protection. Women are not killers by nature. It takes significant delusion to think that abortion is not killing a child. It takes propaganda pieces written to CONVINCE self and others that you believe as you do. I don’t need a peptalk, and my children are safe with me.
Oh gee, those selfish, selfish women. How dare they want autonomy! How dare they not be repentant of having teh sex!
It’s a fetus, or more likely, an embroyo, that I’m killing. I end up killing more living things when I scrape my knee. Hell, I kill more complex creatures for lunch. A ZEF is there at my disgression, and thus I can do whatever I want to my body. If I want to make my uterus a hostile envirnment, guess what? It’s my uterus. Unless I want it, it’s a kin to someone holding me hostage.
MY LIFE is important. I don’t give a damn if you think that’s me being selfish or not, it’s the truth and I refuse to let people wrap this up in “It’s child abuse” nonesense. For it to be child abuse, it has to ACTUALLY BE A CHILD. Until the moment it can survive outside of me, it is not more or even equally worthy life as mine. If you say I MUST give childbirth, you are putting a potential life above my not disputed life. You know what I say to that? Fuck you.
Go to the orginal post, and read the tread there. I said it when Nick first said about her pregnancy, and I’ll say it again right here:
Sex is to rape and a wanted pregnancy is to an unwanted pregnancy.
Sorry, didn’t mean to put it up yet:
In fact, it’s selfish of the state and others to DEMAND that I give birth, selfish in the sense the word was supposed to be taking. They are taking something that doesn’t belong to me (my body) and dictating what I’m supposed to do with it. Whereas I’m taking something that DOES belong to me, and something that I do have jurisdiction over (my body again) and deciding how to use it. That’s not selfish, that’s doing with my own property what I want.
They’re choosing to remove another organism from their body that is essentially parasitic. Sadly for the fetus-worshippers, there’s not really a way to remove this organism without also killing it, but I would say there’s no desire on the part of the woman to specifically kill the fetus: it’s just a side effect of the removal process.
As a human being, I’m shocked that you can come out with such inflammatory nonsense. It’s not disgusting to suggest that a fully-grown woman is more important than a bunch of cells that could turn into a person with the co-operation of the woman. If the pregnant woman was killed, the fetus would die too, whereas the converse is not true: doesn’t this suggest that we might be onto something at least?
Well, that’s just wonderful for you. I have a degree too, and planned before I discovered I was pregnant to train as a teacher. It seems like I’m going to have to put that on hold for the time being, but I don’t use this as justification for dictating to other women what their choices should be.
You remind me of nothing so much as the hearty people who tell depressives that they too have suffered much in their lives and you don’t see them moping, so the depressives should just get on with it and quit whining. Not all people are the same, and ability to cope with either pregnancy or abortion is amazingly variable between women.
You see where I’m coming from? You can’t look at some other woman and magically know whether she’s capable of supporting pregnancy, so you don’t have the right to make her choice for her. Only she can do that.
That’s a job you gave yourself, not one that is yours by divine fiat. If you enjoy that job, as I do, that’s wonderful. But other women don’t, and I don’t see how you have the right to say they ought to.
Jacqueline:
Then do it. If you are pregnant, have the baby. Who here has said that you can’t, or shouldn’t.
No. It’s you who aparently had to drop your so-important-I-had-to-brag-about-it-to-the-unwashed doctoral work and come here to paint us as baaaaaaaaad baaaaaaaad people. Get this through your arrogant head, Jacqueline. I don’t give a damn whether you think I’m selfish. I don’t give a damn if you can’t tell the difference between an embryo and a child. My body is not yours. Nothing grown in it or coming out of it is yours. Frankly, I find you an arrogant, self-righteous shitheel for prattling on as if my life and my body were any of your fucking business. Leave it, and me, alone. I’ll be sure to do the same for you.
Do you plan to call for us selfsih, eeeeeeeevil aborters to be jailed for “child abuse” ? Good luck with that. It may very well be that your fellow pro-lifers are a lot queasier about that than you.
You know, reading this sort of stuff from Robert and Jacqueline makes me think that perhaps the terms “moderate” and “extremist” have outlived their usefulness, and should be tossed out. :/
You had said that you were going to bow out of this debate. That was a good idea, and you would have been well advised to stick to it.
So difficult since women’s uteruses are, after all, public property. You are denying him the right to tell you what to do with something he, as a member of the public, as partial ownership over.
MY LIFE is important.
Better double check to make sure you don’t have a vagina before you go spouting off like that.
Wow, you have an advanced degree … I’m so impressed … let me see, I have … oh, I don’t know … 4 of them, and … what do you know … I’m working on my 5th … I must be insanely qualified then to tell every other woman on th planet what they can or can’t do with their bodies and what kind of people they are depending on their choices.
In case you missed it, that was sarcasm, to demonstrate the patently arrogant nature of your post, Jacqueline.
This kinda of troll behaviour from anti-choice people just shows how incredibly right a position that allows women to control their own reproduction is. We don’t tell women what they can or can’t do with their bodies, and moreover, we don’t tell them what kind of person (and particularly, what kind of a moral person) they are for making a particular choice.
It’s about supporting women and respecting and defaulting their choices as valid, regardless of their education level or career privileges.
Simply having a different conception of what abortion is or isn’t is not ‘verbal gymnastics’ and again, it’s the height of arrogance to suggest that there is only one way of looking at things and that was it yours. I’m not going to tell you how to look at abortion, if you want to think of it as child abuse, then go ahead, but at least have the basic humanity and civility to not have the mid-boggling audacity to demand others come around to your way of looking at things.
And people ask what problems we have with the anti-choice mob …
The moderate pro-choicers are getting angry. The “extremist pro-choice group” not only is denying everyone the right to control the contents of a woman’s womb who is having an abortion because of a situation that wasn’t her “fault”, they are also denying the moderates the right to control the wombs of dumb and evil women (sluts). The audacity of those extremists! How dare they suggest that we should just trust and respect pregnant women to make the best choice for themselves? I mean…. (to paraphrase a certain senator, or was it a congressman) If you can’t control a slut’s pregnancy, whose pregnancy can you control?
Duh. Your own.
Jacqueline’s post reminds me why I usually stay out of abortion discussions, I think it’s impossible for the two groups (pro-choice and pro-life) to achieve any sort of mutual understanding. It’s always “but killing babies is wrong!” against “It isn’t killing babies”. And the fact that many pro-lifers need to bring the irresponsibility/selfishness arguments (it’s your fault you are pregnant, now deal with it = don’t have an abortion) means that plenty of pro-lifers don’t really believe abortion is murder, but can co-exist with the radicals who do and embrace the same rhetoric.
There are actualities. There are absolutes. There is a RIGHT and there is a WRONG. Whether you beleive that or not is totally irrelevant. If you didn’t beleive that the world really is round would not change the fact that it is. Taking care of your children (read that as: not paying to have the child killed) IS a responsibility. The child actual exists. If it didn’t there would be nothing to endearingly call ‘your baby’ and nothing to have killed with forceps.
So everyone here is reinforcing that they think they are more important than their children- because of stage of development or whatever excuse makes you feel better about it. I maintain that I had just as much worth before I had boobies than I do now. It would have been just as much murder to kill me before I grew my breasts or even my hair (I was bald at birth). Because I am more developed does not make me more of a person or suddenly give my life meaning. I was all that I am now at conception- I just grew.
So basically- grown women have value, pre-born women do not. That’s essentially what is being said. Reminds me of when whites had value and blacks did not or when men had value and women did not. I am a person- no more valuable than another person of any level of ability. Is ability is the question for personhood, I have worked with many disabled people. Why not kill them? My child may not yet be able to breathe anything other than amniotic fluid whilst I breathe air but we have the same value. Anything less is oppression. If you use development or ability to impue rights, then you better be careful. I’d hate to be you after a car accident or disabling injury.
Abortion is selfish and evil. I’m not touting responsibility but life vs. death. You can be irresponsible as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. You can drink too much, miss your deadlines, whatever. You can harm your body all you want. Slaughtering your unborn babies is a different matter.
And trolls are a pain in the ass.
Jacqueline, let me ask you a hypothetical question.
There’s a burning building. In one room is a petri dish containing a dozen human zygotes, every one of which can be implanted and eventually born if they’re rescued from this burning building,
In another part of the building is a two-year-old girl.
For the purposes of this hypothetical, there’s only time to save one – either the petri dish (and the dozen zygotes), or the little girl. Which do you save?
Well, yes. A grown woman is more important than a fetus or zygote, no question. If a pregnancy is likely to put a woman’s life in danger, virtually everyone agrees that the woman should be able to abort in that circumstance; the reason for that belief is the consensus that the woman is more imporant than the zygote or fetus.
Some “stages of development,” like growing boobies, are (as you point out) morally unimportant. However, speaking for myself, I don’t think that having the ability to think and experience and have preferences – the presence or absence of a mind – is morally unimportant.
Furthermore, the difference between being inside someone else’s body and being separate also seems morally important.
You seem to be arguing that because some stages of development are morally unimportant, all stages of development must be morally unimportant. I don’t think that’s a justifiable view. Just because a law might make it illegal for me to cut down a 200-year-old oak, it doesn’t follow that the law should forbid me from destroying an acorn.
Ah, of course, the “I’m right and you’re wrong” defense.
I guess we should just give up in the face of logic like that, as she is obviously so incredibly advanced beyond us that it’s just futile to argue otherwise and oh so apparent that all our previous thoughts are so obviously wrong now. I do so wish someone had used this defense before because then I wouldn’t have wasted so long thinking the “wrong” things I have been.
Oiy. Trolls.
Did you just miss the large number of posts above under yours that show we just don’t see it the way you do? You simply repeating the same things over and over and over again without a logical base does not a coherent arguement make. Consistent, undoubtably, but coherent, not even at a stretch.
Yes, you see a fetus/zygote as a child. How wonderful for you. We don’t.
Jacqueline:
I agreed that there are absolutes, but unlike you I acknowledge that they are unknowable to human beings and that our moral imperative is to try and figure them out. You haven’t figured them out, and you should remember that when you are feeling especially righteous. I haven’t figured them out either and anyone who says they have is wrong.
Here’s an example of how abortion isn’t absolutely wrong that even anti-choicers have to accept: it has made life better for women and the children they do have. It has made it possible for pregnant teens to handpick stable familes for the babies they decide to give up for adoption. It has made it possible for more women to be educated. It has made it possible for children in foreign orhanages to find loving parents in the US. It has saved women’s lives.
If you are studying to get a degree, you are probably in contact every day with women who used their corporal veto and ended a pregnancy because they weren’t ready. Women who would never lift a finger against someone, much less their children, found it acceptable to end a pregnancy, to snuff out the embryo. Adult, moral women make this choice all the time- women who will almost all be mothers one day. Stable, better off mothers.
Frankly, defining being pro-choice as “extreme” is just another way the otherside of this debate is trying to design a playing field to benefit them. An extreme position would be enforced abortions. Its not like this isn’t a position that some have actually made. There have long been extremists who believe that abortion should be actively promoted for a variety of patronizing or blatantly racists opinions. This is, however, an exceptionally marginal opinion. As opposed to the extreme on the otherside, which calls for a complete ban on abotion, even in cases where the mother would otherwise die. That side, however, actually has political clout. So they’ve been allowed to move the goal posts in their direction. If they are extreme, so then must be the majority on the otherside of the issue. So they’ve slapped us with the extreme label and derided as pro-abortion. We’re stand-ins for the real extremists who justifiable have little to no influence. Middle-grounders, instead of acknoweldging that one side is corrupting the debate to call us extremists have merely tried to use the new rules to their advantage. As the middle-ground always does.
What you’re touting is the potential torture of neonates because you, personally, find abortion reprehensible and you feel perfectly justified in making blanket moral judgements (ostensibly because you think you are much more intelligent and moral than anyone with a dissenting view). You are not omniscient, you’d best take care to remember that.
Amanda, lol. Lemme check…damn it looks like I have one. Guess that means that I’m NOT important. How silly of me, it must be hormones making me selfish.
So Jacqueline has an advanced degree but would give up her career and apparently everything else she has worked for IF she became pregnant. You know what Jacqueline, what planet do you live on? I have an advanced degree, along with, I am guessing, many of the posters on this board. And I HAVE already given up chunks of my highly paid career in order to care for my children, as many, many if not the outright majority of women do. What does any of that have to do with some other woman living some other life than mine or yours?
And you know what, I along with many others here have heard this plaint before, the “I would never, ever have an abortion,” only for the speaker to hit the rewind and record again button when faced with her own unplanned pregnancy — or perhaps when faced with a pregnancy that threatens her health, and so on.
I’ve been pregnant a whole bunch of times, and I still think that it takes an act of intellectual will, not to say denial (I won’t be so crude as to say an act of delusion), to equate a fetus with a child. They aren’t the same. Most declared pro-lifers act and talk in such a way that makes it clear that even they don’t believe that a fetus has the same moral worth as the woman in whose body it is growing. Why don’t you take your fight up with them? After all, they are at least supposed to agree with you.
Jacqueline,
By being a doctoral program at all, you are on an extreme in the spectrum of women’s educational and economic opportunities. Would you be where you are today without birth control measures? If not (and I think it’s likely), thank the pro-choice movement which made it legal for women to obtain birth control at all.
You say you would never have an abortion, but that is based on your experiences which led to your current moral values and your current circumstances, which arguably are pretty nice (though I know grad school is hard work). What if, hypothetically, you got pregnant in high school, rather than in a doctoral program? Currently if you dropped school to have a child, you could get a cushy office job with opportunity for advancement. What if stopping school meant the only jobs you could obtain after you had that child were working in food service or cleaning with no opportunity for advancement until you obtained your GED, if you had the energy after a long day of work and if you had someone to mind your child while you took the necessary classes?
Many women have had children either at a young age or under otherwise difficult circumstances and soldiered on to make successful lives for themselves, but each woman knows her own circumstances and abilities best. Who are you to tell a woman that she must follow the plan you prescribe? I trust women to determine for themselves whether allowing the embryo to grow into a child or having an abortion is the right decision.
I have never used birth control in my life. I thank the modern feminist movement for NOTHING but making women look like irresponsible weaklings that need to oppress their own children to the point of death- oh, yeah, and telling people that women need government quotas in order to get a job. I have not needed birth control pills or surgery to succeed in life.
I thank my feminist fore-mothers that promoted EQUALITY and not oppression. They were staunchly pro-life and knew abortion to be the ultimate exploitation of women.
Options exist other than abortion. I have a non-profit organization that provides such options, and I personally donate to many others with my time and expertise to provide more resources for women in unplanned pregnancies. What does the prochoice movement do for women in trouble besides take hundreds of their dollars to kill their baby. Every service my organization provides is absolutely free.
By the way, I did drop out of high school.
I have been called a troll and a pain in the ass. I thought discourse was invited. If I’m so wrong then surely you could demonstrate that, instead you just want to reinforce eachother’s views because it makes you feel better about supporting the indefensible. I recognize that I use inflammatory language, but it’s true. Show me how abortion is not selfish and not oppressive. Show me a survivor of abortion that says, “Damn, I wish the doctor wasn’t the bottom of his med school class. Maybe he could have finished me off!”
Abortion is killing a unique life. You all know that- you just have a vested interest in deluding yourself otherwise. Since I know that you know exactly what you support, nothing I say will matter.
I’ll excuse myself from this discussion.
This is not original with me but I have used it many times when discussing abortion:
“If you mean to suggest that mainstream adherents of choice are pro-abortion nothing could be further from the truth. We acknowledge that for some people all abortions are morally wrong and for all people some abortions are morally worng. What we vehemently oppose is legislating the prohibitionists’ morality, which is that for all people all abortions are always wrong.” ( Richard E. Poole)
I am 60 years old. At the age of 17, I became pregnant while still a senior in high school. My boyfriend was a freshman in college. At that time, abortion was not legal, but, frantically, my bf went to his fraternity brothers to find someone who would “fix” the problem. We were both frightened to death to tell our parents. We ended up with a rushed marriage and a 7 month baby girl. (Along with 8 other girls in my senior class.) My daughter is now 42 with an 8 year old daughter of her own. I sincerely can’t imagine my life without my daughter….she is my friend, my hero, my life. What if I had aborted her? What if she had aborted my granddaughter, who is the brightest, kindest, most loving little girl in the whole world?
Do I support abortion rights? Absolutely. Whether or not my daughter or granddaughter decides to have an abortion for whatever reason, they must not be denied the CHOICE. As I grow even older, I realize it is the ability to CHOOSE many things…such as marriage, jobs, friends, children…. that makes us equal to males. I never want my daughter and granddaughter to not be able to choose anything they really want, I love them too much for that.
…but…but…you never answered Ampersand’s question about the burning building and the two year old human being and the petri dish!
I confess, I am shocked. You must have missed it.
Jacqueline,
I believe in abortion on demand in the most extreme sense for one simple reason: I believe that women themselves know better than anyone else the circumstances of their own lives, and I believe that they should have the right and ability to make decisions based on those circumstances. Because I take the absolutist position, I believe that women have the right to do things with their bodies that may make me personally uncomfortable. They may decide to have multiple abortions; they may decide not to notify their parents if they are under 18, they may decide to bear and keep children that they cannot adequately support: whether or not I agree with those decisions, I believe that they should be trusted to make them.
I believe this because I believe that the decision to have an abortion is not something that women do lightly, and that even if it is taken lightly in some cases, it is still none of my business. Like most of the commenters here, I also believe that the value of a potential life has less importance in the calculus of these decisions than the value of extant lives: the woman, her partner, any children she may already have, the woman, the woman, the woman.
Women have abortions for reasons that may not make sense to me, or that may make me sad, or angry, or confused. That doesn’t make them wrong reasons, and it doesn’t make my feelings an important part of the discussion. Because I wish to retain the right to make all kinds of medical decisions about my body, I believe that other people should have those rights as well. It’s hard for me to see the position that abortions should be criminalized in any way that doesn’t involve a belief that women can’t be trusted to steward their own bodies, and I find that belief abhorrent.
What makes you distrust women so much? When women have abortions, do you believe that they should simply feel ashamed, or do you believe that there should be a legal or criminal punishment involved? What would be a just punishment, in your eyes?
Its good that options exist other than abortion. Those options absolutely need to be made available to all people so as to preserve the fundamental nature of choice. Again, Jacqueline has transformed being pro-choice into pro-abortion. Not in the least. This is not to say that abortion as a choice should be scorned and condemned, of course. This would undermine the freedom of choice. But that doesn’t mean all other options shouldn’t be made available. While I’m happy you provide such options, I feel quite certain that you do as a means to condemn different options. Perhaps this is why you have such a hostile and ill-informed perspective of those who support the freedom of choice. You don’t seek to provide options. You seek to provide one option, with the understand that the opposite option is completely unacceptible. You seem to have projected the reverse belief on those who disagree with you. This simply isn’t so. I want to see a world where all choices are made available to women who have a concern about the future of a pregnancy. Without prejudice. I hope pre-emptive action such as birth control and sex education can pre-empt the need for such issues to be addressed, but when they do come up, all choices must be presented neutrally. Intimidation of providers who do precisely this does no good. It defies the freedom of choice just as much as criminalizing certain choices. Contrary to your nearly slanderous suggestion that clinics that offer one choice among many are somehow only concerned with money, there are many clinics dedicated to presenting all options and all alternatives and doing so to all who need it, not only those who can afford the medical care being offered. Your apparent hostility towards birth control is especially disquieting, but I presume it comes out of a belief that no one ought to be having sex out of wedlock, and therefore any responsible steps taken during such a venture are meaningless because you see the act itself as unredeemably irresponsible. It seems the issue then might actually be that you wish to impose your sexual politics on everyone.
Which all leads up to the issue you raise in your weak defense of accusations of trolling. Discourse is indeed invited. What discourse, however, can be expected to result when you view us all as oppressors and murderers for our opinion? That is not discourse. It is not debate. It is an attack of an exceptionally offensive and vicious nature. If this is your stated view of us, you hardly have much to complain about if you merely termed a “pain in the ass” in response. Considering you accuse us all of condoning mass murder, you have little ground to defend in suggesting yourself the victim of intemperate behavior. You say yourself that our opinion is indefensible. Should we be the least bit surprised then that you find our attempts at engaging you in discourse, in spite of your destructive remarks, to be unworthy of response? Calling us murderers and terming our opinions to be indefensible is not the act of someone interested in discourse, so please save us this little charade. You are interested in condemnation and vitriol, nothing more. At least be honest about your motives instead of play-acting the part of the victim of personal attacks.
That is not the message of the feminist movement. Feminists simply have pointed out that the culture we live in oppresses women socially, economically, educationally, etc. and has fought to improve our conditions. The fact that you take for granted all the improvements and then cut femisists down wholesale because you don’t agree with one of the issues illustrates your ignorance of not just femisnism, but of history as well.
Pre-feminist movement, I guarantee that you would not be a doctoral student. I suggest you rethink that thank you card.
Study your history. Talk to women in their 40s and beyond. It wasn’t that long ago that women were not hired for jobs other than teachers or secretaries. I have a good friend who was looking for her first job out of college. She was told to her face by the interviewer that she was wasting his time because he would never hire a woman accountant. That was in the seventies. She couldn’t do a thing because there was no such thing as EEO. Did he hire a man instead of her because the man was more qualified? Even HE doesn’t know because he didn’t even interview her!! Your pretty lambskin isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on if no one will hire you because of what’s not between your legs. Thank the feminists that it’s now illegal to pass over a qualified candidate on the basis of sex. Mind you, discrimmination still exists [I just quit a job at a company that employs ~40 managers, all men], but we’ve come a long way.
You say you’re in a doctoral program. How many women are in your program? How many women were in your program 30 years ago?
Do you play sports? If not, were there more than one or two girl’s sports teams at your HS and college? Thank the feminists.
I won’t do more than mention the self-evident improvements wrought by the feminists’ contribution to redefining rape and battered women.
Yes, those feminists, they’re just a bunch of baby-killers.
Thank the diety[ies] of your choice that you exist in a time and place that you have the opportunities that you do. It’s fair to assume that if you’re in a doctoral program that you’re of at least average intelligence and that you don’t live in poverty. You can’t say what you would or would not do , or how your moral compass would read in situations that you are unfamiliar with or do not understand.
But were you pregnant at the time? Your choices as a HS dropout are vastly different depending on your motherhood and financial status. Financial status aside, a HS dropout/mother combo is a huge barrier to higher education and economic opportunity. Truly, I’m proud of you for turning your life around and for bettering yourself through education. But the original comment about the HS dropout was in reference to a pregnant/parent HS dropout. So unless you’re a mother, and have been since the time that you dropped out, I don’t see how you being a drop out is relevant to this discussion.
“So difficult since women’s uteruses are, after all, public property. You are denying him the right to tell you what to do with something he, as a member of the public, as partial ownership over. ”
See, this is the problem with having picked a partner who doesn’t see me as chattel. He fails to remind me of the fact that my body is under public ownership, and thus I tend to forget sometimes. Clearly I should have married someone like Robert or, god forbid, a male version of Jacqueline, who would remind me of my nothing-but-a-walking-incubator status on a regular basis.
And I agree with BStu. The Right is once again attempting to use semantic tricks to move the goalposts in such a way as to give themselves maximum advantage. And we’re not going to let them do that. That’s why they’re throwing a tantrum.
Jacqueline:
At some point in the future you may want to start a family. By that time abortion may be illegal in your state. If by some misfortune you should happen to have a miscarriage, I hope you’re comfortable with explaining it to the police. Because that’s the world you’re arguing for.
A friend of mine carried an acephilaic child to term. It had enough of a brainstem to breathe and keep its heart beating. But it wasn’t a human and never would be, even though it sure as hell looked like a baby. Lived for three days. Should someone who knows their child is doomed really trudge through all the steps of the dance? (That’s a rhetorical question; your statements so far make me pretty comfortable with guessing how you’d answer.)
I’m sorry there isn’t a nice clear answer like, “Human life begins at conception,” and then you can just stop thinking. The real world has a lot of real situations in it, and they are rarely as clear as you seem to want them to be.
Answers to non-rhetorical questions posed to me (if I missed you and you really wanted an answer to a question, or if I mistook your non-rhetorical for a rhetorical, lemme know):
Alsis:
What kind of “social control” do you want, exactly ?…you seemingly trust our male partners to conduct themselves responsibly without your quasi-benevolent assistance. So why can’t we adult women have the same consideration ?
The social control I would like to see on abortion would be exercised primarily through extralegal means. The law should handle things like waiting periods and notification for parents, but should not bar abortion outright, especially as such laws would be unenforceable. Society – the culture, the church, and our interactions with other people – should establish incentives and disincentives for the reproductive behavior of both men and women. You keep fixating on how I’m not going after men; perhaps that’s because there aren’t very many men here going on about how they should have the right to kill or abandon their offspring.
Basically, a woman who aborts to save her life or for major health reasons should be empathized with and supported. A woman who plans to abort because she isn’t ready for motherhood should be referred to social welfare groups for adoption placement. A woman who aborts because she doesn’t want to have to start shopping at CostCo should be ostracized.
A man who declines to meet his parental obligations should be (essentially) legally enslaved and his resources put at the disposal of the child, via the mother or other caregiver.
BritGirlSF:
do you really think that you have more right to make these decisions than the woman actually carrying the child?
That depends on the woman actually carrying the child. Our society steps in and makes decisions for people all the time. Generally, I accept the libertarian position that the default locus for such decisionmaking ought to be the person most intimately involved.
I also accept the proposition that there are people who are not responsible agents. Those people require assistance and external structure, sometimes through the state, sometimes through civil society, sometimes through family.
One group that would certainly seem to require some external control would be people who insist that an abortion only has one life involved. If someone insists that other human lives are so unimportant that no external agency has a voice in their fate, that person is a prime candidate for some curtailment of their autonomy, in my view. Not a legal curtailment; as noted above, that just doesn’t work. But certainly their social position and their community standing ought to suffer.
The bottom line is that the rights of the next generation trump the rights of the current generation. Our children are more important than we are.
Amp:
I don’t see much unique about the position that “I should be able to do _____ without being interfered with, as long as what I’m doing doesn’t harm another person.”
I agree with that statement 100 percent, Amp. It’s the concluding clause where we run into difficulty. I’m not sure how being dependent on a woman’s uterus for life support makes a fetus not a person.
Barbara:
Robert, what do you think constitutes an absolutist position on abortion?
The belief that any woman can have any abortion at any time for any reason. Your position (unrestricted up to 16 weeks, then the barriers start piling up) is far from being absolutist.
Amp again:
there’s only time to save one – either the petri dish (and the dozen zygotes), or the little girl. Which do you save?
The little girl. Her right to life outweighs the potential right to life.
A woman has become pregnant due to a birth control failure. If she bears the child, it will cause a drop in her socioeconomic status from upper-upper middle class to just upper middle class. She will have to start shopping at CostCo. She has delayed the decision of whether to abort or not until the 23rd week.
Which right do you believe is paramount? The 23-week old fetus’s right to exist, or the woman’s right not to move from the 99th to the 97th economic percentile?
Thanks, btw, to those pro-choice commenters willing to acknowledge what they are advocating for the unrestricted right to do. I appreciate your intellectual honesty.
I don’t believe a fetus is a person. A thing that doesn’t have an independent existence, is unable to consciously interact with the world, and doesn’t even realize that it is alive, cannot be a person.
But even if a fetus was a person, I’d still support completely unrestricted abortion rights. Because without the right to control her own body, a women is a slave — as women have been for thousands of years.
Me:
The little girl. Her right to life outweighs the potential right to life.
Let me expand on this answer Amp’s query a little bit. Maybe it will make clearer the reasons for my position.
The zygotes are living human creatures. However, they are endowed with a great deal more potential than viability. They have no home; they will not, left unmolested, develop any further. They are a dead end until by some conscious act of will, a woman gives them a home. In fact, their life expectancy is very short, barring very unnatural conditions.
A fetus in a uterus, on the other hand, is a living human creature. Although it still has much potential – since there are many more developmental stages to go through, including the acquisition of a cerebral cortex – it is actual in a way that the petri-dish dwellers are not. It has a home. Left unmolested, it will turn into an independent human.
It is possible that the fetus occupying a uterus is an uninvited guest. Rape, incest, these are terrible violations of a woman’s right to control her sexuality, and one of the consequences is sometimes the formation of a life that was not willed. Those cases are fortunately the exception rather than the rule. Their disposition ought to be subject to a different analysis than the ordinary run of life.
In the majority of cases in our society, the woman either explicitly wills the creation of the new life within her, or is aware that the creation of such a life is a predictable and regular outcome of a specific sexual act. The use of birth control for that act is certainly an indicator that the participant in the act doesn’t desire that potential outcome and is seeking to reduce its chance. However, everyone understands (or ought to) that birth control is not a perfect barrier to conception.
And that being the case, willing, fertile participants in heterosexual vaginal intercourse are placing themselves in moral hock to the potential new lives that could be created through their act. Our acts have consequences. Those consequences which are known and predictable, we are responsible for. I can drive to Denver tomorrow with safety in mind and using all due diligence, or I can drive to Denver recklessly and negligently, or I can stay home. In the first two choices, if I end up killing somebody on the road, that person is dead and I bear responsibility. The legal and moral consequences may change depending on my actual behavior – but the death is still on my conscience, and I have to live with it. That may be hard or easy, depending on the circumstances, but it will be done regardless.
If I am just completely unable to accept the potential responsibility, the potential liability, for those consequences, then I would be well-advised to take the third option and stay home. Translated back into the realm of sex and reproduction, that option becomes “refrain from heterosexual vaginal intercourse”. There are other ways to find sexual gratification.
And the answer to “but why should I have to?” is the same answer that we give to people who don’t like having to take driver education, or pay their child support : “Because other people’s lives depend on it, and we’re responsible for our actions.”
It is absolutely true that human liberty autonomy – as an abstract value – is more important than a particular life – as an abstract value. But in each woman’s decision, her choice of how to live with the consqeuences of her life choices, there are no abstracts. It isn’t a question of “autonomy” versus some abstract life; she’s got the autonomy, or she wouldn’t be making the decision. It’s a concrete question of the actual squirming little life inside of her, versus the actual risk of of job loss, health, lifestyle, consumer spending, life-threatening condition, or what have you. It’s a real choice.
Perhaps its dreadfully judgmentally fundie of me. I don’t know; it seems reasonable. I know that if I chose my own convenience over the life of something that I myself created, I would have to look very hard in the mirror. Choosing my own life over another life would probably be more understandable. How often is that the choice, though?
I’m sorry that this is hard for some women to hear. Why would it be hard to hear, why would it stir grief, if there wasn’t something in a woman’s heart that told her it was true?
Brian:
I don’t believe a fetus is a person. A thing that doesn’t have an independent existence, is unable to consciously interact with the world, and doesn’t even realize that it is alive, cannot be a person.
Fetuses have an independent existence. They exist. They have distinct DNA, separate morphology. They are tied to their mother by a tube; that does not serve as a barrier to their own identity.
Fetuses react to the uterine environment, which is the world that they perceive. (Just as the space around you is what you perceive; the existence of cool stuff on Jupiter’s moons of which you are unaware does not mean that you do not interact with the world.)
Consciousness…consciousness is a tricky one for your side of this argument to use. Define consciousness for me in a way that doesn’t end up with you tripping all over the place trying to cover up the inconsistencies and counterfactuals. Philosophers have been trying for 6000 years and haven’t done much of a job.
Doesn’t realize its alive seems similarly tricky, but it would seem reasonable that you bear the burden of proof on that one. I mean, it’s alive, it has a brain, even if it isn’t much of one. The same is true of mice, and I’m pretty sure mice know they’re alive.
So I guess I’m not real impressed with your demolition of fetal personhood. I’d go at it from another direction:
A fetus is unquestionably alive. It unquestionably has its own human genetic material. It unquestionably has its own unique DNA code (or maybe mostly shared with an identical twin.) It is unquestionably one point on the temporal spectrum from twinkle in mothers’ eye to adult human to corpse. Alive, human, unique, conceptually and temporally tied to the human lifespan – it looks an awful lot like a person from here, chief.
About the only counterargument I can see is that it’s dependent on another for its life support; so are a lot of people in the hospital. They’re people. Also, it’s significantly less capable than the average human being. Again, so are lot of other folks who are unquestionably people. Those characteristics don’t seem to do much to dehumanize the little critters. Heck, my almost-three year old girl (apple of my eye) is dependent upon me and her mother for life support, and she can’t do much other than charm the hell out of everyone. She’s certainly a person.
At what point tracking back along her lifespan does she shift from personhood to un-personhood?
A fetus does not exist independently. Sever the umbilical cord before the fetus is viable, and the fetus dies.
It can’t interact with its environment. It may react, but it can’t actually do anything to alter the world around it. The ability to alter the world through one’s actions is the beginning of consciousness — and it can’t happen until after birth. My understanding is that it takes some time for a child to realize it’s a separate being from it’s mother. That process can only start with birth.
If she doesn’t have the ability to make the decision, she no longer has autonomy.
A fetus does not exist independently. Sever the umbilical cord before the fetus is viable, and the fetus dies.
Independence from life support is not the sine qua non of independent existence. Is my (hypothetical) grandfather not an independent creature because he gets fed from a tube?
It can’t interact with its environment.
Based on what? Its inability to make fire?
It perceives its environment. It moves around. It touches itself, and its mother.
My hypothetical grandfather on life support can’t do much more than that.
Do you really want to make your defense of fetal unpersonhood dependent upon the fetus’ inability to do some things, when there are a lot of other people who can’t do those things either?
OMG Robert you make so many false assumptions that I hardly know where to begin.
Firstly a pregnancy doesn’t only put a physiological strain on the carrier but also a psychological one. Post-natal depression is extremely common among women who wanted their child nad was happy with their pregnancies. Still, the hormone changes in their bodies make them incapacitated and sometimes suicidal. How much worse won’t this be for women forced to endure an unwanted pregnancy and following birth? Leaving people psychologically scarred for life no doubt.
Secondly, how can you tell when a woman has been raped? I don’t know a single woman who has gone to the police but I do know a lot of women who have been raped – and not by strangers in the park or people at fratparties either. Should they have to carry this parasitical being he has forced upon theem in their bodies for nine months and then possibly have to care for an unwanted child for the rest of their lives?
Thirdly, it seems very optimistic to assume that a ill-timed pregnancy only drops the family’s economic status to middle-class. The woman is far more likely to end up on welfare or in lower working class – hardly making it and forced to leave the kid with (at best!) charitable relatives for most of the day.
Who are you to place these demands on other people? You never answered my question about enforced donation either Robert. If it seems fair that we put forth these demands on behalf of a potential life why not demand organ and bonemarrow donations of people on behalf of actually existing life?
“I’m sorry that this is hard for some women to hear. Why would it be hard to hear, why would it stir grief, if there wasn’t something in a woman’s heart that told her it was true? ”
Robert, what you are saying is not hard to hear in the way you think it is. It’s clear that you are convinced that on some level we all agree with you. It’s also completely incorrect. Other than Jacqueline, I can’t think of a single woman here who agrees with you and is reacting to your statements in the way you assume that we are all reacting. Nothing you are saying is stirring any grief in me. All it’s stirring is the wish that you would go away and keep your opinions to youself.
And honestly, I respect your right to have an opinion. What I neither respect nor accept is your insistence that you know what a group of women you are in no way personally acquainted with feel in their heart of hearts. You’re projecting. Most (although not all) of the women here have refrained from making projections about what you feel in your heart of hearts. If you wish anyone here to be willing to listen to your arguments you would be well served to do the same. Your powers of omniscience are not as strong as you think. It would be wise to remember that only God can see into the hearts of men, and women. You seem to have forgotten that.
Brian said “If she doesn’t have the ability to make the decision, she no longer has autonomy. ‘
Precisely. And, although Robert keeps saying that he believes that women have autonomy, I would find that claim more credible if he didn’t keep claiming to be able to read our minds and be able to guess at what’s in our hearts. It is almost impossible to know what is in someone else’s heart unless you know them very well, and sometimes not even then. To claim or assume otherwise is implicitely to doubt their autonomy. It is a refusal to acknowledge that not everyone is just like you.
Robert writes:
I’d say that not having the necessary conditions for cognition (see below) is the main thing that makes a zygote or fetus not a person.
I’m a bit bewildered by your argument here. You seem to be saying that because something is difficult to define, we can conclude it is morally irrelevant. I can’t imagine why you think that (if that is what you think), nor how such a position would be justified.
The fact that cognition is difficult to define precisely, does not prove that it’s irrelevant to personhood. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine anything more central to personhood. Look at science fiction – Star Trek and other shows have given us the cliche of the glowing blog of intelligent energy. And it’s a cliche that people understand intuitively, without difficulty. These aliens lack heartbeats, breathing, faces, etc – but because they can cognate, we have no problem accepting that they are people.
In contrast, when a person entirely lacks a brain, or lacks the ability to cognate due to brain death or a severely damaged cortex, they are not generally considered living people. (Even in the case of Terri Schiavo, few pro-lifers argued that she had a right to life even if her higher brain functions were entirely dead; instead, they argued that Terri had been misdiagnosed and actually had the ability to think).
Why do you suppose there is no Star Trek cliche of a type of alien that has no ability to think or cognate, but is nonetheless a person? I’d say the cliche doesn’t exist because, outside of the context of abortion debates in which pro-lifers have a motivation to pretend otherwise, we all instinctively recognize that cognitive ability is essential to what is and isn’t a person.
In any case, abortions before the 25th week – which is to say, well over 99.9% of abortions – are not a “hard case” when discussing cognition. In humans, a necessary but not sufficient condition of cognition is a functioning cerebral cortex integrated with the brain. If something lacks that necessary condition, it’s safe to conclude that it cannot cognate and is not a person.
It’s a gradual process, so there is no single specific point.
The woman’s. A 23 week old fetus has either a barely functioning cortex or a nonfunctioning cortex, and so in my view lacks one of the necessary conditions of personhood. I don’t think a non-person’s rights can be paramount over a person’s rights.
But I realize the intent of your question was not to discuss the exact timing of cortex development. Let’s say that you had asked me, instead, about a 30 week fetus. I still doubt it’s a person, but the issue in this case doesn’t seem nearly as clear to me as it does pre-cortex.
In that case, I’d say that my preference is that the woman go through with the pregnancy. However, I also prefer that she be legally free to make that choice for herself, even if the particular choice she makes is one I don’t agree with.
Amp : “the glowing blog of intelligent energy”
Did you mean “blob” or was that a description of Alas? Sorry, that one was too good to let slip by…
Erin, you summed up exactly how I feel, especially this bit:
Even if, as I suspect, the pro-lifers are beyond convincing by any argument, this point needs to be made over and over, so people who haven’t thought about abortion much beyond being vaguely squicked by it aren’t so vulnerable to pro-life rhetoric.
As for the rest, I wonder what a “survivor of abortion” is. I have this image of a woman who was left horribly scarred by a backstreet abortion in the days when it was criminalised but has managed to put her life together somehow. But I doubt that’s what was meant.
Robert’s explanations are really helpful in understanding his actual positions. First, we get those selfish, thoughtless women who didn’t want the additional financial burdens that would drop their income from the 99th to the 97th rather than an example of the woman who has no health insurance, would lose her job and her savings because of time off, causing her and her other children to become homeless. Because, of course, the second example wouldn’t allow for the high moral indignation.
You keep fixating on how I’m not going after men; perhaps that’s because there aren’t very many men here going on about how they should have the right to kill or abandon their offspring.
What a pitiful bit of obfuscation to avoid saying that only women can get pregnant, only women have to worry about state-enforced breeding, and only women would have to follow Robert’s ultimate cure for unwanted pregnancies — get thee to a nunnery (see below).
Those consequences which are known and predictable, we are responsible for. I can drive to Denver tomorrow with safety in mind and using all due diligence, or I can drive to Denver recklessly and negligently, or I can stay home.
… If I am just completely unable to accept the potential responsibility, the potential liability, for those consequences, then I would be well-advised to take the third option and stay home. Translated back into the realm of sex and reproduction, that option becomes “refrain from heterosexual vaginal intercourse”.
If a person drives to Denver safely and with all due diligence and still has a fatal accident, her insurance company will pay the costs, the police will investigate, and she will decide how this will affect her life.
I think I must be using a different translator because my translation doesn’t drum up a lot of new business for either flea or the Catholics. Mine is that if a woman has an unwanted pregnant and decides to abort, she will have to have the means to pay, will need to consult with a doctor, and decide how the abortion will affect her life.
And though Robert doesn’t bother to continue his analogy, it’s easy to reach his unstated conclusion that those who do have sex without “due diligence”, get pregnant, and have an abortion are criminals who should be punished by the state, just as the negligent driver would be.
Thanks, btw, to those pro-choice commenters willing to acknowledge what they are advocating for the unrestricted right to do. I appreciate your intellectual honesty.
I wish we could say the same.