I really like to assume the best of everyone, even people I disagree with.
And I try hard to take what opponents say, at their word.
But sometimes it’s hard..
A lot of people who favor forced childbirth for pregnant women say that they believe that an abortion, even early in pregnancy, is identical to child murder. Have an abortion, shoot a four-year-old in the head; morally, it’s the same. Or, anyhow, that’s what they claim to believe.
In contrast, pro-choicers tend to think that the abortion criminalization movement is motivated by a desire – perhaps an unconscious desire – to punish women for having sex.
I used to reject that latter view as a pointless ad hominem attack. Nowadays, I’m not so sure. Although I’ve met some rank-and-file “pro-lifers” whose policy preferences were consistent with a belief that a fetus is morally indistinguishable from a child, those folks usually have policy preferences which are totally out of step with the abortion criminalization movement as a whole.
In contrast, the leaders of the abortion criminalization movement have consistently put their political weight behind policies which make little or no sense if they genuinely think that abortion is identical to child murder. And those same leaders routinely endorse policies that make a lot of sense if their goal is to penalize women who have sex – to, as I’ve heard many of them put it, make sure women “face the consequences” of having sex. And they’ve done so with the apparent backing and blessing of the vast majority of the rank and file. Let’s review:
Almost none of their policies make sense if they really see no difference between the death of a fetus and the death of a four-year-old. However, nearly all their policies make sense if they’re seeking to make sure that women who have sex “face the consequences.” are punished. After years of seeing this pattern repeated again and again, it’s difficult to take them at their word.
Fetuses are not U.S. citizens, according to the Fourteenth Amendment:
Also, it would be interesting to see what the statistics are on teenaged sex in the “liberal” places. I’m not sure they would actually be having sex at young ages in any greater numbers – though I don’t have the numbers to back that feeling up.
Regardless – it makes no sense to discourage a behavior by increasing a penalty out of all proportion to the “crime”. You dared to have sex early and irresponsibly – therefore we doom you to nine months of body highjacking, followed by young (and in all likelihood impoverished) motherhood, or a lifetime of regret for an adoption, a likely case of STD, and an entirely preventable possibility of death by cervical cancer.
Seems a little excessive, doesn’t it?
“The liberal countries you alude to are truly effective at getting the contraception message out there. We don’t deny that success. But since we think that it is irresponsible and ill advised for teens to be engaging in sexual activity in the first place, we aren’t impressed with any results that don’t include a corresponding drop in teen sex to begin with. And certainly, we would not promote any strategy that was “contraception only” any more than you would promote one that was “abstinence only”. I think we both should be able to agree that the balanced approach is the best. ”
Doesn’t this comment really kind of cede that it’s all about sex, and not about the personhood of the fetus? In terms of the fetus, there’s no difference between contraception and abstinence: either way there’s no pregnancy. So why would anyone care about the method unless the topic of concern really was sex after all?
Which is the point of the chart in the first place. Us lib’rls are perfectly willing to agree that we have different views from the conservatives about whether sex is O.K. or not. It’s just if we’re debating that point, it’s obvious it’s the sexual behavior of women that’s the issue, not the fate of the fetus.
“Teen sexual activity is irresponsible because the mental, spiritual and emotional energies that are involved in sexuality are generally (not universally, but generally) beyond the ability of teenage hearts, minds, and souls to competently handle. The results of incompetently handled sexual energies can be shattered lives.”
Generally shattered by their disapproving parents, of course. See Romeo & Juliet and all ripoffs (West Side Story etc.) thereafter.
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Teen sexual activity is irresponsible because the mental, spiritual and emotional energies that are involved in sexuality are generally (not universally, but generally) beyond the ability of teenage hearts, minds, and souls to competently handle.
I don’t think that the anti-abortion movement as a whole thinks this way, but only some individuals in the movement. Many of the anti-abortion churches (Mormons especially, but also Catholics and many conservative Protestant churches) accept or even encourage early marriage. Marriage and childraising are far more demanding and stressful in every way than sexual activity alone.
I think that sex outside of marriage is the big issue for most anti-abortion people. The general belief that women should be obedient to men is almost as big an issue. Early marriage solves both of these problems, since young brides and mothers are usually completely dependent on their husbands and are much less likely to be able to go to college or earn a good living independently.
Many parents who want their daughters to be educated will, for that reason, encourage them to have safe sex if they so wish. As all Christians know, even very fine people often succumb to sexual temptations which can be overpowering, and asking your daughters (or sons) to postpone sex until the age of 22, 25, or even later is to risk seeing them cut short their educations and damage or destroy their chances of ever having rewarding jobs.
In short, I think that the blockquoted passage is inaccurate and basically dishonest. I admire the civility of the anti-abortionists here, but their arguments seem sly and evasive to me.
Lanoire – I believe abortion is a homocide (which is equivalent to the “abortion is murder” mantra without the legal terminology error). I do not hate women in any way.
I will take your word that you don’t hate women, but you clearly do not trust women to make their own decisions about if, when and with whom they reproduce. Your faith fills you with certainty about the way other people should live their lives.
As far as the intent discussion: if the anti-choice people have not thought through the “unintended consequences” of enacting laws that support their viewpoints, I think they need to go back to the drawing board. Regardless of your intent, the effect is to punish women, in various unpleasant and sometimes fatal ways, for having sex.
And as far as gengwall and Robert not knowing any anti-choicers who are opposed to contraception or HPV vaccines – boys, you might want to take a look at who the public face of your movement is – they are opposed to contraception, sex education, HPV vaccines (for everyone, not just their own children), and they are okay with women having to bear the child of their rapists.
I just came from the hospital.
A young woman is delivering a dead baby. I went to support her, and, with her other friends, to mourn the child who didn’t make it. The young mom began to cry in my presence, then bit her lip.
The baby had Down Syndrome. This was the sixth month of pregnancy.
Takeshi died spontaneously in utero, yesterday, as Down babies often do. There just wasn’t enough working right to make the grade, I guess.
The parents knew the diagnosis, of course, for some months. And Takeshi had a heart defect as well, which we knew about.
The pressures from the doctors, from the nurses, from nearly everyone, to abort this baby were tremendous. Partly, “well, he’s defective anyway”… partly “so much easier to raise a ‘normal’ child” … and partly, and most insidiously, “this child is going to be very expensive for medical insurers, and for society.” (Subtext: we don’t want the disabled here, and if you’re in a car accident and become a quadraplegic, watch out.)
Takeshi’s parents for personal reasons would never think of aborting this child. That is their right, I assume, under the rubric of “choice”?
So, why did they take so much shit from the medical establishment for it? What does the pro-choice movement make of this situation?
Was Down Syndrome the baby’s only problem, or were there known to be others? I don’t think that medical people urge aborting Down Syndrome babies, though I could be wrong.
gengwall, you said you would not be impressed by measures to curtail teen pregnancy and the abortion rate because they rely heavily on contraception and that doesn’t fit your evangelical framework. You then go on to claim that *why heavens no!* you’re not attempting to impose your views on others.
So would you not support those type of efforts in this country, even if most people don’t share your beliefs? Even if it were shown to have the potential of significantly reducing the abortion rate here?
You pose as a “squishy moderate” or whatever it was you called yourself but you’re looking more and more like a hardcore sexual-woman punishin’ wingnut with each post.
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Susan, that is absolutely their right to decide, and that is definitely part of the pro-choice movement. I suspect the doctors and nursing staff were suggesting otherwise because birth is dangerous business for women. More dangerous than abortion. For liability alone, I would imagine the medical profession would prefer to abort a stillborn baby, even late term, than to have the mother deliver vaginally.
Now, your friend made her choice, and she was able to have her way, and I hope it brings her some solace in what must be a horrible time for her. I’m sorry that she felt so much pressure. It does not follow that people should be allowed to limit the choices of a woman who would choose differently, though.
I agree. Some do mature earlier, but generally that is true.
That is why most civilized societies have this thing called “Age of consent”, and laws related to it (they do not, and can not, take into account the fact that people mature at different times). Because we recognize that very young people are incapable of making that choice. For me, the matter is of consistency: Do I believe teenagers (under a certain age) are too immature to consent to sex? Yes. Should teenagers then be told that it’s their choice? No, and how could I?
It seems to me odd that people are even arguing about it.
I can not see how people are actually arguing otherwise.
Garbled the post, I wouldn’t mind seeing the last line removed.
I don’t think that medical people urge aborting Down Syndrome babies, though I could be wrong.
John (per impossible) get pregnant with a Down baby and find out. You are very wrong. The “urging” was very persistent, bordering on coercion.
Takeshi’s only problem was Down, but that involves an awful lot of course.
“Birth is dangerous business for women” as a reason to pressure her to abort, maurinsky? Come on, come off it. Bullshit. Double bullshit. The medicos pressured her to abort because a disabled child is not acceptible to them. For reasons emotional and, alas, financial.
My friend was “able to have her way” you say. Does this phrasing imply that “her way” was somehow wrong-headed?
The right to “choose” not to have a disabled child…where does it slide over into the “obligation” not to have one? This is not a nothing question, you guys. I’ve seen the pressures, subtle and sometimes not too subtle, on my friends. How soon will it be when parents who choose not to abort a disabled child find that, because of that, the child is not eligible for medical insurance? Given the mind-set of the insurance companies, any minute now.
Watch out, watch out. Disabled kids are very expensive. If we have private insurance, they’re very expensive for the insured. If we have – as we should have – socialized medicine, they’re very expensive for all of us. Watch for more pressure like that my friends experienced. It’s coming.
“So, why did they take so much shit from the medical establishment for it? What does the pro-choice movement make of this situation? ”
It sucks and the medical practioners were acting unethically. Pro-CHOICE means exactly that, their options (including abortion) should have been laid out and they should have been free to choose based on information about all the likely consequences of their choices. If this was not done then they should be able to lay some sort of complaint.
Can we also take it from your question that the pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions (denying women not just choice but health) represent the “pro-life movement”?
Anyone here from Ohio and/or heard about HB 287? I just heard about it today in Twisty’s comments….
The right to “choose” not to have a disabled child…where does it slide over into the “obligation” not to have one?
is anyone here defending the behavior you described? being pro-choice means supporting a woman’s right to choose for herself based on her own personal values whether she wants to carry a pregnancy to term or not. a person who is pro-choice does not support coercing a woman to have an abortion. i personally believe that allowing the state to have the authority to compel women to remain pregnant is just an invitation for it to compel some women to abort ‘undesirable’ children and to prevent others from becoming parents at all because they are ‘unfit’ to breed. i am very uncomfortable with government regulation of reproductive choices for many reasons unrelated to abortion rights and your nightmare scenario is one of them.
emily1, thanks for your post at 7:34. Susan, you are reading way more into my post than I wrote. I didn’t mean anything by “had her way” except that ultimately, your friend got the outcome she desired. And I am sincerely sorry that she was pressured so heavily.
Having said that, it is not bullshit that delivering a baby vaginally is more dangerous than having an abortion. It’s true. That doesn’t mean that all women should abort, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the medical establishment should be exerting strong pressure on a woman to make one choice over another. I was perhaps giving too much credit to the medical establishment in your friends case – I thought it would be appalling to suggest to a woman who clearly wanted to give birth that she should abort, unless there was a legitimate medical reason to do so.
If people will put up with me for a moment, I’d like to propose a scenario: Imagine a dystopian world in which a plague or plagues killed 70-80% of people within the first days of their lives. Imagine further that this world was a pretty rough place even apart from this plague and up to 6% of people (ie 1/3 of those who survived the plague(s)) were killed within the first few months of their lives. Now, bizarrely, this society actually has plentiful resources and probably could, if it had the political will to do so, reduce both the homicide rate and the “natural” early deaths greatly (although there is no guarantee that it could do either). Should this society a) try to reduce the number of deaths from both causes as much as possible, b) ignore the plague deaths because they may be harder to deal with (the children dying from it are very sick whereas essentially healthy children are dying from homicide) and try to reduce the homicide rate using methods that have worked in other places even though these methods don’t involve punishing the killers, c) ignore the plague deaths and punish the homicides severely, even though previous experience has shown that this will not reduce the homicide death rate because justice must be served, d) ignore the plague deaths, punish the homicides, and put more children in harm’s way by instituting public policies that make life harder for families?
If you believe that every conceptus is a person then the society described is ours. Up to 80% of concepti die from failure to implant or other early problems. Many, but not all, have chromosomal abnormalities. The reasons for these early failures is not entirely known, but some hints of reasons have been found. There are known ways to reduce the abortion rate. These include sex education, making birth control easily available, and providing financial and social support for new mothers. Yet the pro-life movement generally prefers answer d: punish those who seek abortion, ignore the deaths from failed implantation, make unplanned pregnancy more likely by limiting access to contraceptives and reducing support for poor women and children. This does not sound consistent with their stated belief to me. Rather, it sounds consistent with a desire to punish people, particularly women, for having sex. But I could be wrong. As gengwall pointed out, people are not entirely consistent. Nor is the pro-life movement a monolith-some parts of the pro-life movement are, in fact, interested in helping poor families and preventing unwanted conceptions, though I fear that the majority of the movement is not. But I still wonder why no one in the pro-life movement is interested in preventing all those early miscarriages.
emily1, I could not agree more with what you have said!
I’m just reporting the conditions on the ground, the conditions resulting from the free availability of abortion. In my reproductive career, no one would have known that Takeshi had Down Syndrome, and abortion was illegal, so the problem didn’t arise.
Now that Tim and Debbie have the information, and have the “choice”, the Powers That Be attempted to force the choice in the direction which favored their financial interest. Did they ever!
Just reporting, here.
If I might, I’d like to play devil’s advocate on behalf of conservatives opinions on these matters & clarify some things.
Policy: “Opposing Contraception & comprehensive sex education.”
On the question of whether this policy is consistent with the belief that abortion is child murder the cutout says No, based on the fact Belgium has the lowest abortion rate in the world due to comprehensive sex education & promotion of conraceptives.
On the first front, with regards to contraceptives, this IS consistent with a belief that abortion is murder. Most people who believe that “life begins at conception” believe most contraceptives are abortofacients I.E. they prevent fertilized embryos from implanting in the uterus & therefroe, left to starve & expire. This doesen’t bother many people but for those who believe that life begins at “conception” these are no different from surgical abortions.
On the second front, attitudes towards Sex Ed. Firstly it’s important not to confuse correlation with causation. The type of person who believes that a human life begins and is imbued with a soul at the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg, is also one who is likely to hold very tradionalist views about sex, marriage & birth control.
Secondly, it makes the mistake of assuming bad faith on behalf of the pro-life faction because they don’t share the same views as the pro-choice movement on how to prevent unwanted pregnancy I.E. If you REALLY opposed abortion you would support X. You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that those in the right to life movement must obviously be hypocrites because they don’t believe as you do , that advocating contraception (of which much is considered abortofacient in nature) and sex education outside a focus on abstinence and sex only within the bonds of marriage is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies. They’ve got their own ideas of the best ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
I’ll continue in a second post.
Susan,
1) Feminists have a long history criticizing the medical establishment, particularly in relationship to labor and birthing issues.
2) As others have said – choice means choice. For example, I also advocate that economic measures should be provided by the state that give economically disadvantaged people aid in raising their children. I’d suggest that pro-life people could actually help by offering substantial economic scholarships to poor families that would like to have more children.
This kind of economic aid could actually lower the abortion rate. In Sweden the doctors are required to tell women that the state will help them raise their children before abortions. And in Sweden, this is actually a true statement.
This cutout, upon asking if favorability toward a ban on “partial-birth” abortion is consistent with a belief that abortion is no different from murder answers surprisingly NO, on the basis that if the procedure is banned, Doctors will simply adjust to different procedures that may have more consequences for the mother.
I find this the most difficult to defend intellectually in that it assumes a particular malevolence on the part of the supporter that I just don’t think exists. It may indeed be an unintended consequence of a ban on the procedure that it’s supporters were not aware of , but I feel pretty confident in asserting that the majority of this ban’s supporters, did so with neither the knowledge nor suspicion that it’s intended effect would be nil & that it would seriously endanger the mother. The number of people supporting this measure with the express knowledge that it would save no lives & supported out of a desire to endanger the mother to punish her for having sex is almost immeasurably small.
I’ll start another entry.
People “worried” about teenagers having sex. What parallel universe are these people inhabiting?
Teen agers have been having sex for tens of thousands of years. It was the norm before the birth of agriculture, citites and RELIGION.
What I cannot figure out is what these folks are missing in their lives that they have to resort to formalized religion.
geoducks2
1) Feminists have a long history criticizing the medical establishment, particularly in relationship to labor and birthing issues.
You betcha, and I was right in the front ranks 40 years ago. The creeps.
I’d suggest that pro-life people could actually help by offering substantial economic scholarships to poor families that would like to have more children.
Why just pro-life folks? Shouldn’t pro-choice people also be in the front rows on this, supporting that choice? It’s customary to criticize the pro-life movement on this, and that’s justified, but where the heck are the pro-choice people in supporting that choice?
Socialized medicine, a la Sweden? I’m all for it, believe me.
On the question of whether advocating less generous welfare benefits for single mothers is consistent with a belief that abortion is murder, the cutout answers NO, on the grounds that if conservatives believe that welfare encourages having children, conservatives would support it to lower the child murder rate.
This type of reasoning is near nonsensical, and in my opinion, does no honorable service to the pro-choice movement. On the first count, demonstrating the inconsistencies of the anti-choicers when they make exceptions for rape or incest is not the same thing as a belief that their should be less welfare & that is plainly obvious.
Secondly, conservatives don’t think welfare causes mothers to have children so much as they believe it incentivizes out of wedlock childbirth, which they believe, contributes to poverty. Even if they really believed that welfare encouraged motherhood, there’s difference between a belief that one shouldn’t have babies out of wedlock (or even babies at all) and a belief that if you do end up pregnant, it’s okay to terminate the pregnancy.
This also makes the two mistakes of “If you REALLY believed X, you would support Y” & a belief that those advocating a position are aware of it’s (often unintended consequences) wingers oppose welfare because they think it discourage single motherhood & increase children born in wedlock, not because they think it would lead to more abortions.
Let me issue this challenge.
“Pro-choice” shouldn’t mean just “the ability to have an abortion at will.” It should mean, if we’re really feminists, “support for whatever choice the woman makes.”
This is not the case now in this country. A woman who chooses to carry a disabled child, one known ahead of time to be disabled, to term, to bring him or her to birth, is subject to every sort of disadvantage, beginning with emotional pressure in the ob’s office and ending up with insurance discrimination at the other end.
Do we support choice? Really? Or is it just one choice that we support? And what does “support” mean exactly?
This is the kind of criticism which is customarily aimed at the other side, but one which we might take to heart over here. Screw them, what can we do about them, but we can control our own behavior.
IS there a choice? To carry the disabled child, the child the result of rape, the abandoned child, to term? Will we be there, we feminists, for the mother? The feminist community, generally? Will we, collectively, support that choice? Will we be there with the diapers, the baby food, the child care? The respite care the mom of a disabled child needs?
Or is she on her own, the mom, because we secretly believe that the Down kid, the retarded kid, the sick kid, the kid who doesn’t have a male (SHAME ON US! SHAME ON US!!) to support him, should be aborted? How honest is this “choice”? How honest is our support of that choice?
As for people who support abortion in cases of rape & incest, I would ask those pointing out this obvious hypocrisy to consider whether those advocating such a position aren’t considering politics when doing do, whether or not they really believe it, or whether they are even aware of the inherent contradictions of their poistion sometimes.
Most people opposed to or at least squeamish about abortion, don’t consider a blastulae the same thing as a 2 year old child. They obviously however, believe that a fetus is something other than just “not a human being”
The fact that the baby spontaneously aborted suggests to me that there were more problems than just Downs Syndrome, and that the doctors knew that.
Susan, the people who support socialized medicine and the like are almost all pro-choicers. That’s why people were suggesting that you get to work on your anti-abortion friends and allies. Anti-abortionists are mostly affiliated with right-wingers on most issues, and by voting comsistemtly right wing they stand in the way of lots of positive pro-family stuff, socialized medicine being only one example.
Age of Consent: even in recent times, the age of consent was as low as twelve here in the US. The maturity of children and their ability tobehave adults has never really been the issue. It’s the sexual freedom of unmarried women that is the issue.
Yes, I’d rather have my 13-year old daughter, if I had one, practicing safe sex, than have her married and raising a baby. Neither option is a good one, but I’d overwhelmingly prefer the former. It’s astonishing the way sexual conservative believe that girls who aren’t mature enough to have a sexual relationship are old enough to raise a child.
This is not a one-way street. This isn’t morality against amorality. Many anti-abortion people hold very offensive, cruel attitudes about many things, above all the freedom of women. They aren’t all fundamentally good people who hold beliefs I disagree with. Many of them are cruel, ugly, evil people.
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Jake, vaccinations are optional in this country.
Sure, as long as your children won’t be attending public school or any public school sponsored activities. So, there is, in fact, strong pressure brought to immunize your children. Most people don’t wish to or are unable to homeschool so these vaccinations wind up not being optional for the vast majority of the population. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
Who opposes making the vaccine available/required/strongly encouraged as other childhood vaccinations in this country (MMR, etc) are? The Family Research Council, for one. This flies in the face of the fact that many people contract HPV the first time they have sexual intercourse. Sure, if you believe that modern medicine is morally wrong I can understand your position. If that isn’t your position, what can possibly justify putting your child at risk for cervical cancer 40 years after the fact?
Or perhaps it is just that HPV only has life or death consequences for women. I’m willing to bet that if there was a syphillis vaccine (that, like the HPV vaccine, is much more effective when received before sexual activity commences) that there wouldn’t be nearly the same opposition to having it become one of the standard childhood immunizations.
Susan,
Those medical pros were acting unethically. This is not unusual. But, to me, the most important fact is that the mother was able, legally, to choose to continue the pregnancy. Were abortion made illegal, somebody who would have chosen otherwise (even if there were no coercion) would not have had the legal right to make their own decision.
Why just pro-life folks? Shouldn’t pro-choice people also be in the front rows on this, supporting that choice? It’s customary to criticize the pro-life movement on this, and that’s justified, but where the heck are the pro-choice people in supporting that choice?
Of course they should! And in terms of the people I know, we all support the type of economic choices provided by Sweden.
I singled out pro-life groups, because in America their energy is centered on criminalizing abortion.
Earlier in this thread, I asserted that criminalizing abortion does not actually lower the abortion rate. (See evidence from various countries around the world for empirical evidence of this fact.)
Thus, providing economic choices might actually fulfill the stated goal of these groups of lowing the abortion rate. However, why don’t they pursue policies and plans that would actually lower the abortion rate?
I suggest that one reason is the political interest in controlling women’s sexual and reproductive choices.
I would also suggest that certain political groups want to prevent poor women from having babies. They want certain women to have children, and prevent other classes of women from reproducing. (Or if poor women do reproduce, they want them to put their children up for adoption.)
Why just pro-life folks? Shouldn’t pro-choice people also be in the front rows on this, supporting that choice? It’s customary to criticize the pro-life movement on this, and that’s justified, but where the heck are the pro-choice people in supporting that choice?
liberals, who make up most of the vocal pro-choice advocates, support more generous social spending. this would allow women who feel compelled to have abortions because they are poor to choose not to have abortions.
liberals support socialized health care. other governments have succeeded in providing acceptable levels of univeral coverage, judging from the high rates of satisfaction reported by the citizens who use those systems. it would significantly lower the costs of carrying a pregnancy to term because pregnancy and childbirth require a lot of medical intervention to achieve the low infant and maternal mortality rate of a first world country. it would also remove an enormous obstacle for raising disabled children because they require a lot of medical attention.
so, pro-choicers do support ‘choice’ in a real sense instead of a symbolic one because they overwhelmingly support liberal goals.
John Emerson:
FTR, I am pro-choice. Alternative to 13-year olds having safe sex isn’t 13-year olds married and raising babies. False dilemma.
I can not see how one can simultaneously hold belief about age of consent, and argue that people under the said age can give consent to sex. Historical variance on age of consent is a good point, but it begs the question: Do you support reducing the age of consent to an age when teenagers are physically capable of having sex (12-14, roughly)? I don’t.
Seems contradictory to me. Can some of the folks who have argued that every teenager makes his/her own choice independently, and all are equally good, explain this oddity to me?
They aren’t all fundamentally good people who hold beliefs I disagree with. Many of them are cruel, ugly, evil people.
Sadly, cruelty, ugliness and evil are not restricted to some nifty category. And I don’t see what ugliness has to do with anything anyway.
FTR, I am pro-choice. Alternative to 13-year olds having safe sex isn’t 13-year olds married and raising babies. False dilemma.
when a 13-year-old girl gets pregnant, it’s not usually a 13-year-old boy that got her pregnant. young teenage girls who have sex often do so because they are coerced by a man who is five or more years older than she is. i don’t see this fact brought up in discussions about abortion and parental notification/consent very often.
A couple of things….
It annoys the hell out of me to see or hear pro-choicers say that pro-lifers do not trust women to make their own choices. It’s an emotional statement with no basis in fact as far as I am concerned. I am a woman, so to assume that I do not trust women is ludicrous. A person ( either a woman or a man) can have a PhD, an MD and a JD and still be DEAD WRONG. I do trust women, that does not mean that I believe that everything that every women does is a good thing or that it is the right thing to do.
I also do not believe that unfettered access to abortion for any and every reason is necessary in order for women to be equal participants in society.
I do not want to control womens bodies. I trust women to make their own choices regarding contraception if they are giving all pertinent information to do so and the financial resources necessary. Unfortunately, many women throughout the world are poor or uneducated and so they are not able to make informed decisions regarding their reproductive health. Believe it or not, most pro-lifers are of the “prevention via promotion of contraception” variety.
///dorktastic Writes: I’m going to add to the off topicness of this thread and ask for some more explanation of why postponing sex is inherently better for teenagers….. Is there some kind of evidence that people who have sex as teenagers are more fucked up than people who wait until they’re older?///
The vast majority of teenagers are not ready for the emotional or financial toll that sex can and often does create in the life of an adult. If you are living under your parents roof, eating the food your parents paid for, driving the car that your parents are putting gas into, or going to the doctor using the insurance provided by your parents health care then it should be obvious that not only are you not an adult and unable to provide for yourself it shouldn’t need to be said that placing yourself in the position to create another life that needs to be provided for is not an intelligent idea.
In every country that I can think of the responsibilities of adulthood are gradual foist upon children. They are able to drive at one age, and able to drink at another, and they might be permitted to vote at yet another age. This is because we all inherently know that the mind of a teenager is not the mind of an adult. Studies have proven to this to be true in a variety of ways and it is why we don’t allow 13 year olds to do things such as vote or make contracts.
I know 45 years old that make unwise decisions regarding regarding relationships and are emotionally shattered after breakups, why would it be a good idea for teenagers to be introduced to the intensity that an intense relationship calls for when their minds are not read for it?
Let them worry about what college they are going to go to instead of whether or not their boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating on them and what to do about it. If the average life expectancy was still 30 then it would make sense for teenagers to have sex but as society changes the age of first sexual experience should change also.
Very true (and sad). That is one reason why I believe the sex education should
1) Provide all the biological facts, a no-brainer.
2) Be wary of encouraging kids to have sex. Slightly more “conservative”, IMO. The “teenagers WILL have sex” basically pressures every teen to have sex just to fit in and not be outcasts (teenagers, for all their rebellion towards their parents, are hugely worried about appearing cool and fitting in.) The predators who have sex with 13 year olds are probably very happy to help making the teens cool in getting rid of that ‘childish virginity’.
The pro-choice crowd wasn’t there.
Today.
When Deborah was in labor with the dead baby, it was the pro-life folks, her church members, who were there. Who brought the coffee. Who sat there, with her. Who talked. Who supported the father. Who held the line against the medical weirdos.
When the pro-choice mom loses a six-month Down fetus (assuming she didn’t abort it as soon as she got the diagnosis) where will the feminists be? Will they be there with the coffee? I hope so, but somehow I doubt it.
No, there was nothing wrong with the baby but Down Syndrome, John. Something like 80% of Down conceptions don’t make it to live birth and survival. A lot goes wrong.
It annoys the hell out of me to see or hear pro-choicers say that pro-lifers do not trust women to make their own choices. It’s an emotional statement with no basis in fact as far as I am concerned. I am a woman, so to assume that I do not trust women is ludicrous.
Then you must be pro-choice, right? Because you cannot know the circumstances behind every single abortion, so you cannot say that they are all made capriciously or stupidly, or for reasons that are inappropriate, or silly, or not well considered. Whether you think they are right or wrong, you do not and should not have the right to make decisions about another woman’s reproduction. Otherwise, you do not trust women to make decisions, because why else would you feel the need to remove any of the reproductive choice options that are out there?
The more I think about the arguments for anti-choice & anti-contraception/anti-vaccination(in the sense that it should be up to the parents), the more it seems those arguments are about control vs trust and control vs protection.
No matter what we teach teens there will always be SOME teens who have sex. Rather than talk to our kids about sex (the pros & cons) and trust them to make the best choices they can, anti-contraceptioners & anti-vaccinators want to try to scare their kids into not having sex with no concern about the protection they are denying their kids should their kids either make a choice of which they disapprove or become a victim of sexual coercion or rape.
The same is true of the anti-abortion arguments (for the most part). If we outlaw abortion, that will keep some women from having abortions & may scare other women away from sex altogether – or so the argument goes. After all, the only 100% sure way to avoid pregnancy is abstinence & if you take the risk you will suffer the consequences.
Why is it so important to control women & children? Why do we want our daughters to suffer the consequences of what we may consider to be a bad choice decades after that choice (in the case of HPV)? How often are women who are forced to have children due to lack of access to abortion abstinent from that point forward? They have, after all, had to take responsibility for their choices, you’d think that they’d have learned their lesson.
Control, control, control. Live your life according to my dictates (never mind what I actually did when I was a teen) or suffer the consequences. How hypocritical and anti- most major religions is that? Judge not lest ye be judged? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone? Not quite. Control over caring is what it looks like from where I sit.
Let them worry about what college they are going to go to instead of whether or not their boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating on them and what to do about it. If the average life expectancy was still 30 then it would make sense for teenagers to have sex but as society changes the age of first sexual experience should change also.
Quite frankly, we shouldn’t encourage pre-teens or teenagers to date if we don’t want them to get obsessed with relationships. We encourage them to get dressed up and go to dances and to date, but then expect “virginity.” This is engaging ina kind of sexual brinksmanship that is, frankly, stupid.
What is sex and virginity, in this context? Is kissing sex? Second base? “Making out”? Mutual masterbation? Oral sex?
What is acceptable “sex” in this context of emotional saftey?
I’d suggest that any dating relationships can become emotionally problematic for teenagers and pre-teens.
Susan, I’m pro-choice, and I’ve been at a few hospital bedsides for happy events and tragic events. What, do you think pro-choice people don’t have friends and loved ones?
RE: The subject of teenagers having sex. I have a teenage daughter, and I’ve encouraged her to wait until she is in a position to handle the consequences of an unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. I was a teenage mother, because I was ignorant about birth control (more specifically, about how some antibiotics render the birth control pill ineffective.)
My daughter also knows that she can come to me about anything that is going on in her life, and she will get help/advice rather than punishment. She’s a great kid, and I’m glad I had her. I want to make sure that she will grow up in a country where she has autonomy over her own body. I don’t think she’ll have an unplanned pregnancy – she is much more knowledgeable about sex and the consequences than I was at her age. But if she does, I want her to be able to make her own decisions about what to do about it.
When Deborah was in labor with the dead baby, it was the pro-life folks, her church members, who were there. Who brought the coffee. Who sat there, with her. Who talked. Who supported the father. Who held the line against the medical weirdos.
What is your point here? That pro-choice friends and family don’t support one another when they end up in the hospital?
When someone is having a medical and emotional crisis – it’s family and friends and one’s social network (church/temple) who come and give support.
When the pro-choice mom loses a six-month Down fetus (assuming she didn’t abort it as soon as she got the diagnosis) where will the feminists be? Will they be there with the coffee? I hope so, but somehow I doubt it.
OK. That’s just insulting. I could talk about disability studies and Berube’s blog here, but what’s the point?
Susan, do you know what ‘projection’ means?
gengwall, from way back when, I’m sorry, but from personal experience I have to disagree. As a very young person, I was ‘pro-life,’ and I assure you that the brand of opposition to abortion I was taught was a) very much endorsed by women and b) tied into all kinds of anxiety and weirdness about women’s sexuality. The ‘caveman’ may be a minority, but the pro-lifer who blames ‘abortionists’–but not women, at least as long as they’re sorry afterward–isn’t.
gengwall, you can say you and other pro-lifers believe abortion is murder all you want. The trouble is that you don’t act like it.
Teen sexual activity is irresponsible because the mental, spiritual and emotional energies that are involved in sexuality are generally (not universally, but generally) beyond the ability of teenage hearts, minds, and souls to competently handle. The results of incompetently handled sexual energies can be shattered lives. Sex that you aren’t ready for – and it’s a fairly rare teen who actually is ready for it – can really fuck you up.
1) When you talk about “teens,” you’re talking about a group that ranges from 13-year-olds to 19-year-olds. What’s suitable or not for a teen at one end of that spectrum is very different from what’s suitable for a teen at the other end.
2) Is there any evidence that sexual activity damages older teens more than, say, twenty-somethings?
And here’s my biggest objection:
3) The pro-abstinence movement doesn’t say “wait to have sex till you’re older and ready.” It says “wait to have sex till you’re married.” According to this view, an unmarried thirty-something shouldn’t be having sex, so all your talk about those vulnerable teens is actually irrelevant to their (your?) argument.
maurinsky Writes: Because you cannot know the circumstances behind every single abortion, so you cannot say that they are all made capriciously or stupidly, or for reasons that are inappropriate, or silly, or not well considered.///
More talk of the emotional loose cannon variety, I see. Who said that all abortions are decided capriciously or stupidly or for silly reasons? I have never seen or heard a pro-lifer say that and chances are that neither have you.
I am not asking to make decisions about another womans reproduction. Pregnancy is 100% preventable when abstaining and up to 99.9% preventable depending on what combination of birth control is used.
Every choice is not a good choice and just because you can do something does not mean that you should do it. Abortion is not just about the woman. It is also about the fetus that she is aborting and the effect that the legalization of abortion has had on society.
I don’t see any inherent value in having a multitude of options if all options are not created equal.
Chief:
How very compelling. People have also been murdering, raping and oppressing each other for tens of thousands of years. Slavery was the norm for black people not so long ago. But if you want to hate RELIGION for one reason or another, be my guest.
It doesn’t make any of those behaviours good or desirable for a civilized society, nor does it invalidate the fact that in a modern society childhood and youth does not, by the force of necessity, have to end by 13 or so.
What if they do not resort to formalized religion?
Lanoire,
I provided a link for you that I think would answer most if not all of your questions about the negative outcomes that result from teens having sex. It also addresses the differences between a 13 year old having sex versus a 19 year old. All of this information is readily available to anyone that wanted to find it.
///3) The pro-abstinence movement doesn’t say “wait to have sex till you’re older and ready.” It says “wait to have sex till you’re married.” According to this view, an unmarried thirty-something shouldn’t be having sex, so all your talk about those vulnerable teens is actually irrelevant to their (your?) argument. ///
I am not a Christian but I will do my best to explain this from a Christian perspective. If you are a Christian then the pro-abstinence says that you should not be having sex outside of marriage whether you are 20, 30, or 60. If you are not a Christian then this ideal doesn’t apply to you.
As a non-Christian I say that if you are going to have sex you should use multiple methods of birth control; namely some form of hormonal birth control such as the pill and condoms.
Link to heritage paper (pdf file)
SBW, please learn how to make links.
Susan, you’ve been making a lot of hard but legitimate points. There’s a real bigotry against the disabled in this country, and that can interact with the right to abortion in disturbing ways. However, I think this:
…Is simply insulting, and goes too far. Pro-choicers love their friends and families too; pro-choicers sit at hospital bedsides too, just like pretty much all humans do, sooner or later. To imply otherwise is extremely rude and dehumanizing, not to mention inaccurate.
It is ironic that for many years HPV (the varieties causing warts genital and other places) was predominantly found in children. It is their gregarious and curious nature as well as poor hand washing that caused them to be readily passed. It makes sense to immunize against such things regardless of origin, the sooner the better.
The reference to Exodus 21:22 (post 15) that a miscarriage being of less value… the miscarriage is caused by a third party in that citation and is not intentional. The value assigned to the child is determined by the slave price of a similar woman who is pregnant as opposed to one who is not. (Rashi)
Amps chart illustrates the crazy reasoning we get into when we try and rationalize what should be treated with dignity, peoples free will for one. A similar chart could be made illustrating how pro abortion positions devalue human life. It would be equally distasteful for similar reasons. Blessings.
//Ampersand Writes:
March 21st, 2006 at 10:58 pm
SBW, please learn how to make links. //
Sorry, Ampersand.
namely some form of hormonal birth control
Not everyone can use hormonal birth control. For example, being 35 or older is associated with increased risk of serious side effects from the Pill.
I provided a link for you that I think would answer most if not all of your questions about the negative outcomes that result from teens having sex. It also addresses the differences between a 13 year old having sex versus a 19 year old.
We should really define sex if we’re going to talk about this. I assume that everyone can agree that negative physical and emotional outcomes can result from sex other then coitus.
And kids get emotionally attached through many forms of physical sex, including kissing. There’s a large range of sexual activity that could be defined as “sex”, including french kissing, “making out”, mutual masterbation, “second base”, oral sex, and anal sex.
What’s the definition of sex in this discussion? And are we talking only about hetero-sex here?
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namely some form of hormonal birth control
Also – women with high blood pressure and/or migraines.
Has no one pointed out that it can be emotionaly/spiritualy devastating to children to have sexual relations with out the necessary emotional maturity and relational commitment that should accompany such choices? Simply preventing babies and disease transmission is only a part of the issue with children having sexual relations (and many adults) devoid of the context of loving long-term relationship. Our children are the greatest wealth we have in our community; shouldn’t we teach and protect them from harm on all levels?
Abortion is abhorrent to many of us because it seems a callus treatment of a very rare and wonderful thing, life. No one has made any new life since it was first created. It can only be passed on. Nothing living has ever not been alive since the very first creat-ure; at no point is a human life not human, whether it is one cell or a billion. (We only act that way sometimes.)
If Religious conservatives are looking to punish folks for their choices than why limit it to sex? There are plenty of sins we all commit like not caring for the poor, judgementalism, materialism, failure to love our enemy’s etc. Having said this it is equally foolish to believe that our actions do not have consequences. Assuming one is mature enough to make choices regarding having sexual relationships, should imply one is willing to deal with the consequences of our actions. Pregnancy is a distinct possibility (one of many) of consensual sex and the value of that potential individual life demands (to some of us) a higher sense of responsibility for our actions than forcing that very creation to suffer consequences as a result of our choices. I have heard it said many times on this blog that men have no right to sex, neither do women. Even partaking with birth control entails some risks, “we tried” does not absolve one from responsibility, it is a risk that is assumed knowledgably at the outset, life is sticky and risky business. It is also precious and a miracle (IMO) and worthy of protecting at all levels. Blessings.
I apologize, I started writing after emily1’s post #120, got on a call and posted an hour later without thinking to see if more was posted before I did. Sorry for the redundancies.
I can not see how one can simultaneously hold belief about age of consent, and argue that people under the said age can give consent to sex. Historical variance on age of consent is a good point, but it begs the question: Do you support reducing the age of consent to an age when teenagers are physically capable of having sex (12-14, roughly)? I don’t.
But that isn’t how age of consent law works.
AOC law only kicks in reliably (I don’t know the situation in every U.S. state) when there is a significant age difference between the partners. It doesn’t criminalize horny 15-year-olds who have consensual sex with other horny 15-year-olds, and can’t, really, when the laws are gender-neutral — which 15-year-old gets to be the “perpetrator” and which the “victim”?
So AOC is not so much about younger teenagers’ ability to consent to sex as it is about their ability to consent to sex with adults.
I don’t think sex education or the availability of contraceptives constitute encouragement to have sex at a young age. They could just as easily be seen as advance preparation for the sex one is most likely going to have at some age, and while I haven’t personally experienced that many sex ed classes, I find it hard to believe that large numbers of sex educators are promoting the gung-ho “hey kids, sex is extra cool before you stop growing!” attitude some people seem to imagine.
Robert,
Regarding the HPV vaccine,
…that doesn’t sound like an argument for parental choice to me.
AOC law only kicks in reliably (I don’t know the situation in every U.S. state) when there is a significant age difference between the partners.
Elinor, this isn’t true. Age of consent laws vary widely by state. Some have the kind of “Romeo and Juliet” laws you describe, where the age gap between the partners is taken into account. Most, not all, have gradations in their age of consent; it’s still a crime to have sex with a 15-year-old, say, but it’s not as awful a crime as having sex with a 9-year-old.
The reason the laws get muddy is the attempt to combine two very different concepts:
1) People under a certain age are inherently incapable of consenting to sex.
2) Most of us believe it’s not so bad for older teenagers to have sex with slightly-older teenagers, or young adults–at any rate, it’s not as bad as if the older person is vastly older.
Auguste, that New Scientist article quotes the FRC spokesperson talking about the vaccine itself – probably by asking her “what would the reasons be for not getting the vaccine”? They didn’t ask her what the organization’s position was.
That position is here.
Money graf:
(My bolding.)
Dishonest reporting is the source for your beliefs concerning what pro-life organizations think of the HPV virus. You’re being lied to.
There’s a lot of other stuff in the statement itself.
Age of consent laws vary widely by state. Some have the kind of “Romeo and Juliet” laws you describe, where the age gap between the partners is taken into account. Most, not all, have gradations in their age of consent; it’s still a crime to have sex with a 15-year-old, say, but it’s not as awful a crime as having sex with a 9-year-old.
Yes, although these laws are written so it is not a crime if two 12 year olds (for example) have sex with each other.
It would be child rape, however, if someone older then a 12 year-old had sex with said child. (This age difference may range from a few months to a few years depending on the child’s age, the law and the state.) In general, the larger the age difference, the more severe the crime, in child rape/ sexual consent statutes.
//mythago Writes: Not everyone can use hormonal birth control. For example, being 35 or older is associated with increased risk of serious side effects from the Pill.//
I was making a blanket suggestion. I use the copper T IUD. The hormones are local ( can’t take the pill because I breastfeed and don’t want it getting into my milk) and its over 99% percent effective for the 10 years that I can use it. Once it’s removed I can get pregnant immediately.
Hormonal birth control isn’t the best for all women but there are a variety of birth control methods out there that every women should be able to choose one or a combination that is extremely effective.
The only quibble I have with this is that most pro-lifers don’t oppose the HPV vaccine, they oppose being forced to give it to their children. The effect is the same for their daughters, but they aren’t opposing it for other people’s daughters — yet!
Tuomas, you missed my point, which I made very clearly. I would not want my 13-year-old daughter to have sex at all, but if she were, I’d rather have her have safe sex than give birth to a child. Historically, traditional conservatives, as shown by age-of-consent laws which are usually lower for marriage than for non-marital relationships, have generally believed that 13-year olds are mature enough to raise children, but I don’t believe that. And the hard-core anti-abortion people believe that 13-year-old pregnant girls should be forced by law to give birth. I really think that the maturity of young people is a red herring here, and if someone raises the question I’ll say that childraising is more threatening to very young people than sex is.
I am a woman, so to assume that I do not trust women is ludicrous. : that’s just plain stupid. A lot of women don’t trust either themselves or other women to choose freely. The churches which teach that women should be obedient to men have women members who also believe that.
How very compelling. People have also been murdering, raping and oppressing each other for tens of thousands of years. Tuomas, few of us think of underage sex as comparable to murder, rape, and slavery. Your comparison makes it pretty clear that you are exactly the sort of anti-sex, anti-female person Ampersand is talking about. Your statement is sick.
Susan, the reason your friend had a pro-life support group was because she was a pro-lifer who belonged to a pro-life community. Duh. Your very pointed statement about that was dirty pool, and silly to boot.
On this thread a lot of reasonable anti-abortion people have made statements which are often reasonable. They talk about the reasonable anti-abortion people they know and want us to believe that they are typical of the anti-abortion movement. Based on what most of us have seen, this is just not true. A lot of anti-abortion people oppose sex education, all forms of contraception, and the HPV vaccine, and a lot of them let slip anti-female and anti-sexual feelings from time to time — sometimes accidentally, as perhaps with Tuomas above, and sometimes quite explicitly (“the woman is the weaker vessel and should submit to her husband”.)
Most pro-choicers are responding to the actual anti-abortion people we know about, and many of them seem harsh, cruel, bigoted, and right wing, and most of them have big political agendas beyond abortion. I have some small amount of sympathy for more reasonable anti-abortion spokespersons, but sometimes they just seem to be sly fronts trying to make an evil movement look good.
And I will repeat: this is not a struggle between morality and amorality, as the anti-abortionists always say it is. This is a disagreement about morality, and some of the anti-abortion leaders look evil to me, just as I do to them. Christians seem to think that they have a special deal with God so that everything that they is right, but if Christians do harm in the name of God or Jesus, they will be judged too.
John wrote:
John, speak ill of pro-life leaders and politicians all you want, but please don’t personalize things or make personal attacks on other posters here on “Alas.” Attack the argument, not the person. Thank you.
This thread has really degenerated. Seizing on the availability of contraceptive as a stick to beat over the heads of teenagers because you don’t want them to have sex “for their own good” is simply and purely punitive.
I actually have a 14 year old daughter and I don’t want her to have sex and I don’t permit her to be in situations where that could happen. Sure, she could evade my control measures and so forth, but the point is, I do everything within my power to prevent it, and so do nearly all other parents I know whether they are pro- and anti-choice.
Having said that, many teenagers have their first sexual encounter before they turn 18. I was such a teenager and I bet many people posting here were too and I am glad I had access to contraception. There are degrees of everything. There are girls who drop out of school to marry older men (knew a few of those when I was in high school) and there are those who have a couple of encounters with a steady boyfriend before they go their separate ways to college, and there’s everything in between.
I am no longer young, but I can still call up the memories of that period of my life. It was counterproductive and confusing to have a steady boyfriend, but the mess of my life, to the extent it was a mess, was far more affected by the fact that I had a mentally ill father than it was by the fact that I had a steady boyfriend. In fact, I gave the boy more slack than I should have because of the mentally ill parent. Something about needing emotional support from someone in my life.
Which is all to say that whether a particular teen has sex and how well they deal with its consequences, is probably not much affected by how hard it is to get contraception but by the quality and structure of their family life — whether it is filled with conflict and hardship or the opposites of those things.
I also see that no one has put forth a persuasive argument as to why anti-choices say one thing and do another. And this isn’t just a matter of policy, it’s a matter of actions: lots of self-proclaimed pro-life women have abortions. They don’t, however, murder their already born children.
Susan, saying that a baby “only” has DS isn’t very illuminating. One of my babies “only” had an unsurvivable trisomy — the reason why chromosomal anomalies are almost always fatal is because of the havoc they wreak in nearly every organ system. Many of these specific system deficits can be picked up on a u/s, some can’t.
Just for the record, nobody pressured me to have an abortion and death of the fetus was basically a foregone conclusion. And it is safer to have an abortion than to carry around a dead fetus (I assume they were closely monitoring her to avoid sepsis or other complications).
Amp – boy this is a way cool thread. I love the eb and flow of the discussion.
I’m way behind so it is probably best I just clarify a couple of things about my position.
I have never claimed that the pro-life position is consistent at all. Clearly from Amp’s chart, it isn’t. I can only assure you that for a majority of pro-lifers, hatred of women is nowhere on the radar as far as a motivation for their position.
Regarding contraception.
Someone way back made the comment that pro-life groups (as opposed to pro-life individuals) are against contraception and sex ed. They are against neither as a general concept or policy.
They are against some (maybe most) sex ed programs because of various flaws (in their view) in the materials. But nowhere in their policy positions do they say that sex education conceptually is bad. In fact, they are very much in of sex education. They just have a different view of what who should teach what.
And I still know of no non-catholic pro-life group that is universally against contraception. Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, Staver…none of these people have ever, that I know of, uttered a word against contraception as a general concept or practice. They are against RU-486 because it is abortive. They are against EC because in their view it can also be abortive. A very few are even starting to be against regular hormonal birth control because there is a slight possibility it could be abortive (again in their view). But nowhere do they have a blanket policy against contraception.
Regarding sex ed.
The conservative Christian hope is that people will stay abstinent until marriage. Actually, I really don’t think that is necessarily an exclusively conservative hope or an exclusively Christian hope. I know liberal athiests who hope for the same thing for their children. (Also, for the record, many, or even most, Christian parents failed in this regard themselves.)
The conservative Christian policy is to teach “abstinence until marriage” in the home. What we desire from public policy is to simply teach abstinence as a healthy and wise choice. We don’t expect public policy to relay religious dogma.
In reality, we release our children at some point and, again, hope that they have taken our teaching to heart. But, once they are adults, they make their own choices. My girls are 18 and 20 and I no longer exert any influence on them as far as sexual choices (although I still certainly offer counsel). I suspect, and hope, they will remain virgins until marriage. I also suspect, and hope, that if they choose not to that they will be as safe as possible in their activities. And finally, I suspect, and hope, that they know that whatever their choices are, we will never stop loving them. Do any of you really think this is a bad way to bring up kids?
This is predominant Christian parenting model. Some parents don’t follow it and their kids end up just fine (whatever “fine” is). Some parents are masters at it and their kids still end up screwed (literally and figuratively). Let’s face it, parenting is not an exact science. Of course, neither is sex ed. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our best in either endeavor and strive to find ways to improve the model.
The age of consent where I live is 14. 14 is very young, and I have a hard time imagining most 14 year olds being mature enough to handle some of the physical/emotional/mental aspects of sex. I don’t know if the same is true for 16 year olds or 18 year olds.
As for SBW’s comments:
I think you’ve taken me out of context – I was responding to Robert’s suggestion that the emotional/mental/spiritual consequences of sex were too much for most teenagers, aside from the issues of pregnancy and STIs. Of course, you are also assuming that the sex that teenagers will be having is heterosexual PIV sex, which is, as far as I know, the only sex that can lead to reproduction.
I think that Heather at Scarleteen has smart things to say on this issue, and the idea that sex between young people is somehow emotionally unsafe:
“It seems that a lot of what we hear in terms of safeguarding our emotions — if we hear anything at all — in regard to sex (and remember that here at Scarleteen, when we say “sex” we mean any number of sexual activities, not just sexual intercourse) is that either sex is okay, or it isn’t, and we just shouldn’t engage in it if we don’t want to be hurt or hurt others. Or, that only sex within marriage is safe emotionally, but that simply isn’t so: people are no less likely to become hurt by sex within marriage than they are outside it, especially if high divorce rates and spousal sexual abuse rates are any indication.”
She goes on to say:
” Sex is not something that need be hurtful, or that we have to avoid so as not to get hurt or hurt anyone else. When entered into with a solid basis of self-awareness, empathy, care, good judgment and an arsenal of accurate information, sex has no more the capacity to hurt than anything else in life, and has the capacity to be something wonderful, empowering and beneficial.”
(The rest of the article is here.
I’m sorry, but this just seems so far removed from the reality of most teenagers, who as far as I know, aren’t going to college.
More talk of the emotional loose cannon variety, I see. Who said that all abortions are decided capriciously or stupidly or for silly reasons? I have never seen or heard a pro-lifer say that and chances are that neither have you.
Wrong – most of the anti-choicers I know, including some very good friends of mine, believe that all contraception is abortion. The extremely religious ones think that any contraception is interfering with God’s will. The less religious ones simply think that life begins as soon as sperm meets egg – even a couple who have been through IVF or other assisted reproductive technologies, who know that more has to happen than just fertilization, believe that.
The more moderate anti-choice people I know favor mandated waiting periods, counseling that discourages abortion, and other policies that essentially provide an additional layer of shame and guilt to the whole process. Why would they want this? Because they think too many women do not not think about their decision, that they lightly enter into it.
I am not asking to make decisions about another womans reproduction. Pregnancy is 100% preventable when abstaining and up to 99.9% preventable depending on what combination of birth control is used.
So you aren’t wanting to make decisions about another woman’s reproduction up until the point they are actually pregnant, but after that, tough luck, you think it’s wrong and a bad decision, so they can’t end the pregnancy? That means that you do want to make decisions about another woman’s reproduction, SBW.
Every choice is not a good choice and just because you can do something does not mean that you should do it. Abortion is not just about the woman. It is also about the fetus that she is aborting and the effect that the legalization of abortion has had on society.
What affect is that? Contraception and abortion have freed women to get educated, build careers, contribute to our economy. For some women, it has saved their family from extreme poverty. For others, it has saved their lives.
I don’t see any inherent value in having a multitude of options if all options are not created equal.
que? I don’t understand what you are trying to say here.
gengwall, it’s just very hard to overlook that the “noise machine” of the pro-life movement does not by and large share your apparently reasonable outlook. Calling contraception abortifacient (wrongly, by the way) is a way to be against contraception without having to be forthright about it. Just like permitting pharmacists to refuse to serve rape victims in order to protect their conscience is a sly and devious way to prevent access to contraception. And “not hating” women is a far cry from treating them equally and respecting their autonomy.
And you can say conservatives really want this or that all you want, but it seems to me that they are rarely happy unless, in fact, children are being taught to value precisely and exactly what they value. No holds barred. It’s an issue of maintaining cultural and religious dominance that an authoritarian church culture values and has never had to fight for in the past but that is clearly under threat.
gengwall, you wrote:
I think it is very important to distinguish between an individual’s personal feelings about women and the feelings about women that are endemic in a culture. It is entirely possible, it seems to me, that someone can espouse an anti-choice position, arguing that abortion is murder and should be outlawed as such, and still be profoundly respectful, caring and loving towards the women in his or her life. Such a person could even be sincerely empathetic towards the bind his or her position about abortion puts women in. This does not change the fact that the anti-choice position…whatever its particular motivation in the psyches of individual people…gives expression to a cultural hatred of women and, more specifically, of the female body, that is endemic and ubiquitous.
By way of an example that is not about gender: Imagine a literature teacher whose circle of friends includes many people of color, who might even have a lover who is a person of color. Now imagine that this instructor has never once included in the syllabus for the survey of American literature course that he or she teaches a single work by a writer of color. (You could posit the same scenario using gay and lesbian literature.) It does not matter how deeply and seriously that instructor loves and cares about the peeople of color in his or her life, the fact that he or she does not teach any American writers of color in a survey course, no matter what her or his motivation, would be an expression of the hatred of people of color that is endemic in United States culture.
My point here is not that a literature course and a pregnant woman are somehow in parallel circumstances. My point is that we need to make sure that when we are talking about the hatred of women in this thread that we distinguish between personal feelings and cultural values, which do not always coincide. To argue that abortion is murder, to grant the fetus personhood and then allow fetal personhood to trump the rights of the woman in whose body that fetus is growing is woman-hating because on some level it cannot help but dehumanize the woman and it dehumanizes her specifically because of the nature of the female body.
This does not mean that someone who is anti-choice does not sincerely love the women in his or her life; it does not mean that someone who is anti-choice consciously desires to punish women for having sex; it does mean that someone who is anti-choice and wants to see that position enshrined in law hates the female body to the extent that it is inhabited by a woman who can, left to her own devices, choose to end a pregnancy.
But barbara – they don’t call “contraception” abortifacient. They call some contraceptive methods abortifactient. Name me one person anywhere who says wearing a condom is abortifactient. Or using a spermicide. I mean, the very thought is preposterous. Most don’t even consider “the pill” abortifacient even within their stricter view of what abortion is. And many are even willing to accept EC. So, I am just reacting to the notion that pro-life groups are against contraception. But maybe we are talking past each other again. Maybe you are using the global term but implying only some methods. Sorry if I missed that.
I have no qualms with the rest of your comment. Especially:
And ‘not hating’ women is a far cry from treating them equally and respecting their autonomy.
This certainly is true although in many cases the two are synonymous.
And you can say conservatives really want this or that all you want, but it seems to me that they are rarely happy unless, in fact, children are being taught to value precisely and exactly what they value. No holds barred.
True enough. I don’t know that is so bad or universally a conservative parenting desire. Doesn’t it make us all happy when our children are taught to value precisely and exactly what we value? Now, persons of all political stripes recognize that the teaching of these values which we value should take place in the home, not the school.
I will conceed that there are many Christians who cross that line and want their particular values to be ingrained in public policy and instruction. Believe me, they frustrate me more in the Christian forums I participate in than virtually anyone I have ever met over here at Alas has. I guess you will just have to take my word for it that they are the vast minority.
Okay, I got lost in my own post. The second paragraph in my previous post should have read:
“My point here is not that the people of color in that white professor’s life (and I realize I left out the “white” designation in the original post) and a pregnant woman are somehow in parallel circumstances. My point is that the difference between personal feelings and cultural values is one that needs to be taken into account when we talk about things like abortion. To take the position that gengwall takes, i.e., that because the people who want to criminalize abortion do not personally hate women, the hatred of women is not part of the position they advocate, is to reinforce male privilege in the same way that arguing that literature written by people of color somehow does not measure up to the standards of excellence set by the universally recognized masterpieces of white authors reinforces white privilege. So, we need to make sure that when we are talking about the hatred of women in this thread that we distinguish between personal feelings and cultural values, which do not always coincide. To argue that abortion is murder, to grant the fetus personhood and then allow fetal personhood to trump the rights of the woman in whose body that fetus is growing is woman-hating because on some level it cannot help but dehumanize the woman and it dehumanizes her specifically because of the nature of the female body.”
Richard – Yikes. You aren’t going to write about my capacity for metaphorical thought again, are you?
Seriously – I definately can see your point. And I think it really is applicable when talking about things like sex ed and sexuality in general. I certainly recognize the sexual double standards that exist in society and the repressive sexual heirarchy that exists in patriarchal societies where there always seems to be an emphsis on male “dominance” in the relationship (sexual and otherwise).
But abortion does have this nagging extra component with conservative Christians. They believe another human being is involved in the equation which makes it not an individual choice. To them, it is a balance of rights issue. So, as has been pointed out repeatedly, the effect of their stance might look, feel, and even actually result in woman hating from a pro-choice point of view, but it is in reality driven by child loving.
I do like that you separate the leaders from the rank and file. In my experience, most people don’t try very hard to think about the internal logical consistency and long-term operational consequences of their political attitudes, so I have no trouble believing that any given anti-abortion advocate really does think that it’s all about fetus-murder.
I’ve known some of them who seem so permanently distraught about what they perceive as the greatest mass baby-murder in history going on all around them that they’re barely able to function; any conversation they have about anything eventually rolls around to the horror of the dead fetuses. It’s hard for me to accuse these people of bad faith, though on the other hand their beliefs usually don’t seem to be much in line with the wider anti-abortion movement.
But there’s no excuse for the movement’s leaders not to have done the reasoning, and I think your analysis of motives is spot-on.
Richard – we keep crossing in cyberspace. My response to
To argue that abortion is murder, to grant the fetus personhood and then allow fetal personhood to trump the rights of the woman in whose body that fetus is growing is woman-hating because on some level it cannot help but dehumanize the woman and it dehumanizes her specifically because of the nature of the female body
is, no, it does not dehumanize her. It simply puts her on a human (and legal) par with the child.
Now, I agree that pregnancy is a unique human condition which requires out of the box thinking when it comes to policy. Conservative Christians are loathe to think out of the box here. Their dogma is often out of whack in dealing with the unique realites that pregnancy presents. I think that even if fetal personhood were recognized, there are still right to liberty arguments that could be made that would trump right to life arguments for the fetus and therefore still leave abortion a justifiable homocide. The point is that these pro-lifers are not dehumanizing women in any way. They are, instead, ultra-humanizing fetuses.
gengwall, war has an “added component”: it consigns any number of young men and uninvolved civilians, all separate human beings, to their death. Early Christians were “extreme” pacifists because they did not accept any political rationale as a sufficient basis for consigning other human beings to death. Eventually they made their peace with warmongers “for the good of the social compact.”
Willingness to accept death as a reasonable loss under the circumstances reflects a person’s willingness to value some things as greater than human life. Wars are rarely “life and death” decisions within a reasonable meaning of that terminology. They reflect society’s determination to impose its own values on others notwithstanding loss of life, in some cases even in most cases, totally innocent human life.
It’s not only a question of valuing life. Anti-choice people do not accept female autonomy as a greater or even an equal good relative to the fetus she is carrying. In many cases, they do not value her life to the same degree that they value the fetus.
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Barbara – true enough. That is what I was getting at by stating that pro-lifers “ultra-humanize” fetuses. They place greater value in them in contrast to others. Man, now that I say that I see how it dehumanizes the other people in the equation. Crap! I guess I owe some a big Emily Litella “Oh…never mind”
gengwall, I am off to teach and so can’t give you the full response that is beginning to take shape in my head, but consider this statement of yours:
I will, for the moment, accept your semantics–though I ultimately disagree with them–because whether you state the situation my way or yours, “a hierarchy of humanization” is being created with the woman on the lower end of that scale. It reminds me of Orwell: “All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.” (Apologies if my quote is not precise.)
Anyway, I will respond more fully when I have the time.
Gengwall,
You say that everything hinges on the claim that the fetus is a person. But it doesn’t follow from accepting that claim that abortion is morally impermissible. It *would* follow only if this principle is true: if something is a person, it is morally impermissible to kill it. But that principle is false: I may kill an enemy soldier in combat without doing anything morally impermissible.
Thus, showing that the fetus is a person isn’t enough to justify your anti-abortion position. To do that you’d need to show that the fetus’s rights as a person trump *every single one* of the woman’s rights to her body and integrity of person. That is a very difficult thing to show.
Personhood isn’t the issue.
Personhood is the issue when regarding the question “Do they really think abortion is murder”. Never-the-less, read my post 165. I recognize that there are possible arguments that could justify the fetal homocide of abortion and make it not murder. That doesn’t mean that some don’t have a reasonable belief that abortion is an unjustifeid homocide. It still al hinges on fetal personhood. No anti-choice person I have ever know has made the argument: “I know the fetus isn’t a person but I still believe it is wrong to kill it.”
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On the personhood issue, a test question for me would be “Could I have this ‘person’ in my eye and not notice it?”
When they get militant about the morning-after pill, anti-abortionists award personhood to pre-fetusses consisting of 8, 16, or 32 cells. That’s loony.
The best overall explanation of anti-abortionist behavior remains what Ampersand said it was: hostility to, and fear of, the sexual freedom of women.
Defenders will say that “Anti-abortionists are not consistent” as though that were a small, unavoidable glitch, but at some point you have to think that it’s bad faith.
Richard said,
I think it is very important to distinguish between an individual’s personal feelings about women and the feelings about women that are endemic in a culture. It is entirely possible, it seems to me, that someone can espouse an anti-choice position, arguing that abortion is murder and should be outlawed as such, and still be profoundly respectful, caring and loving towards the women in his or her life. Such a person could even be sincerely empathetic towards the bind his or her position about abortion puts women in. This does not change the fact that the anti-choice position…whatever its particular motivation in the psyches of individual people…gives expression to a cultural hatred of women and, more specifically, of the female body, that is endemic and ubiquitous.
Yes!!! Richard’s post summarized the situation.
I get chills when I hear anti-choicers who want to get rid of health exceptions. I literally cannot comprehend how people could force a woman to suffer liver failure or stroke for the sake of their philosophy. It’s like they negate the existence of the person who is actually carrying the embryo/fetus in order to promote their ideology.
maurinsky Writes: Wrong – most of the anti-choicers I know, including some very good friends of mine, believe that all contraception is abortion. The extremely religious ones think that any contraception is interfering with God’s will. The less religious ones simply think that life begins as soon as sperm meets egg – even a couple who have been through IVF or other assisted reproductive technologies, who know that more has to happen than just fertilization, believe that.
Thats not what I asked you. I said I have never seen or heard a pro-lifer say that all abortions are decidedly stupidly or capriciously, not that all contraception is murder and interfering with God’s will. The Catholic church does not support contraception; thats nothing new.
Second of all, you are alive from the moment of contraception. The scientific community has already decided upon the 7 to 6 characteristics that all living things and a fertilized ovum fits the bill. A woman is not pregnant until the ovum has implanted in her uterus but the ovum is alive before that point.
The more moderate anti-choice people I know favor mandated waiting periods, counseling that discourages abortion, and other policies that essentially provide an additional layer of shame and guilt to the whole process. Why would they want this? Because they think too many women do not not think about their decision, that they lightly enter into it.
The key word that I asked you about was “all”. You have yet to tell me that anyone has said “all” women have abortions capriciously. Are there some women on their 3rd, 4th, and 5th abortions because they are irresponsible? Sure! All you need to so is look at the statistics on who is getting abortions and why to see that this is true. Are there women that use abortion as a primary form of birth control? Yes, these women do in fact exist whether you acknowledge their existence or not.
The people that you are referring to seem to be anti-abortion because of they are religious. Their anti-abortion stance is just a small part of their general disdain for female sexuality; these people do not represent the entire pro-life movement.
So you aren’t wanting to make decisions about another woman’s reproduction up until the point they are actually pregnant, but after that, tough luck, you think it’s wrong and a bad decision, so they can’t end the pregnancy? That means that you do want to make decisions about another woman’s reproduction, SBW.
No, I don’t want to make decisions about another womans reproduction. Its not ALL about the woman. My concern is that the fetus shouldn’t be killed because she was irresponsible or the birth control failed. I don’t think someone should have to die over your responsibility.
Not ready to handle raising a child? Don’t have unprotected sex. If you do have sex and the protection fails your fetus shouldn’t be paying for your accident.
que? I don’t understand what you are trying to say here.
Killing a perfectly healthy fetus because you just had to have an orgasm is a bad choice. It’s selfish, irresponsible, and lazy; not to mention has a host of other negative effects on women and society.
Killing a perfectly healthy fetus because you just had to have an orgasm is a bad choice. It’s selfish, irresponsible, and lazy; not to mention has a host of other negative effects on women and society.
It’s all about control. You wanted an orgasm so bad (as if all women orgasm via intercourse) now you will have to give birth. It’s a scare tactic to keep women from having sex.
Gengwall,
1. Personhood is relevant to whether killing a fetus counts as murder only if it’s true that every killing of a person is a murder. But that’s false: my killing an enemy soldier in combat isn’t my murdering him. Note, too, that it’s also false that every killing of an *innocent* person is a murder. Suppose that you fall from a great height and that you will land on top of me, killing me in doing so. I am morally permitted to kill you–though you’re innocent–out of self-defense.
2. I think you may have missed my point. Pro-lifers usually argue for their position by claiming that the fetus is a person. But that claim doesn’t support the view that abortion is morally impermissible any more than the claim that the enemy soldier is a person–surely true–supports the claim that killing him is morally impermissible.
The point is this. To show that the pro-life position is the right one it isn’t enough to show that the fetus is a person. More argument is needed. (For the record, it strikes me as obviously false that fetuses–certainly early fetuses–are persons. But even if they were nothing anti-abortion follows.)
These ideas, by the way, are very old ones. They’re from the classic paper “A Defense of Abortion” by the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson.
An implanted ovum which has divided a few times may be alive and it may have individual human DNA, but it’s not a person and people who say that it is are loony. There are no 32-cell human persons. There aren’t even any 32-cell dogs or cats.
The energy behind anti-abortion politics comes from people who want to push the line a long way. There are reasonable people with reasonable concerns in the anti-aabortion movement, but they’re as irrelevant to it as the moderate Republicans are to the Republican Party,.
Yes, and because I made a possibly bad choice, I lose my right to bodily integrity? I made a bad choice so I have no right to control whether another person can use my body to survive?
What if I got raped? Have I made a bad choice to be around men, and therefore I don’t get to have an abortion? Or is my pregnancy no longer my fault therefore I can end it if I want to?
On the subject of rape, someone a while upthread said that abstinence is the only 100% effective way to avoid pregnancy. To that I would say: being completely segregated from any male capable of ejaculation is the only 100% effective way to avoid pregnancy. Well, I suppose that somebody could sneak in a turkey baster, but that would be getting even more ridiculous. In other words, in the real world, there is no 100% effective way to avoid pregnancy. In the real world, even the most religious, well-behaved virgin can find herself pregnant and may possibly desire or need an abortion.
A few points made above were never answered, as far as I can tell:
Robert pointed out that the Family Research Council (one of James Dobson’s groups) supports the HPV vaccine. And no one can identify any actual pro-life organization that opposes the vaccine. The original chart is inaccurate in implying that pro-lifers oppose that vaccine.
Jivin J pointed out (comment 20) that if pro-lifers are really worried about punishing women (as opposed to protecting fetal life), then it makes absolutely no sense that they would generally exempt women from serious punishment for procuring an abortion. True, exempting women from punishment isn’t necessarily consistent with the belief that abortion is murder, but neither is it consistent with the notion that pro-lifers are just trying to punish women who had sex.
One more point of my own:
Amp’s argument could be applied to pro-choicers as well.
Here’s how it would look:
How do you like having your own beliefs explained away in that fashion? How do you like having various positions attributed to you that you might not believe in, as if all pro-choicers believed the exact same thing? Is it fair to say that because a person’s positions are not all perfectly consistent, his or her real motivations can be portrayed in the worst possible light?
How will killing him prevent his body from falling on you anyway? :-P
Personhood is relevant, in my opinion. If the thing being killed isn’t a person, then killing it cannot be murder. However, even if the thing being killed is a person, that alone is not enough to establish murder. In other words, personhood is necessary, but not sufficient, to be able to call a killing a murder.
By the way, it might be best to transfer personhood discussions to this thread.
Also, the row about partial birth abortion is tendentious: It claims that “the other procedures that doctors switch to may have a higher risk of injuring the mother, thus making it more likely that she suffers consequences.” Thus, opposition to partial-birth abortion is because people want women to suffer consequences.
That’s a silly argument. 1) All pro-life literature that I’ve seen has emphasized that there is zero medical evidence that partial-birth abortion is ever safer. Whether that’s true or not, that’s what pro-lifers believe. 2) Pro-lifers are well aware that banning partial-birth abortion will simply cause doctors to use a different procedure. They nonetheless like this legislation for at least two reasons: (a) They believe that our society is on a slippery slope to infanticide, and that we simply must draw the line here; and (b) Just as pro-choicers always like to talk about blastocysts, pro-lifers like to focus public attention on a form of abortion that is particularly easy to depict as horrifying.