There are some cells in my uterus at the moment that aren’t usually there. I call these cells “my baby”, and spend much of my time planning the future that they may have, once they’ve finished developing into a human being. Other women, with similar cells, plan how to remove the cells as quickly and painlessly as possible.
A favourite pro-life argument is to seize gleefully on the similarities between the two groups of cells and demand how you can possibly justify the vastly different ways of treating them. If the fetus has no value, they ask, why do pregnant women often feel a close bond with their unborn babies? If it’s nothing more than a bunch of cells, why can a miscarriage be so devastating? Tempting as it is to dismiss this as so much irrelevance, it’s worth exploring the apparent contradiction for the insights it can offer into what pro-choice really means.
My baby is not yet a human being. Even with special care, it is very unlikely to be capable of surviving on its own if it were removed from my body. It needs my bloodstream and my uterus to have even a chance of becoming a human being. Although it’s genetically distinct from me, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to view it as a part of my body. A part that could, given the right conditions, become a separate person, but until that happens a part of me.
We all see our bodies differently, and we all give different values to different parts. Some people welcome body hair because of the cultural value it has; others remove it for much the same reasons. A transsexual man could be delighted at the removal of his breasts; a woman with breast cancer is more likely to feel mutilated. The same body parts, but very different reactions.
The cells inside the uterus are just another example. I give mine a very high value and watch their development with delight; other women give theirs a low value and can’t wait to be rid of them. The belief that we both have the right to assign value to our own bodies for ourselves is the essence of being pro-choice. If a woman places a high value on her fetus, removing it against her will is just as unacceptable as forcing a woman to retain, against her will, a fetus she gives a low value to.
This is partly why miscarriage can be so devastating. A woman who anticipates with joy the time when her fetus becomes a fully-fledged human being invests those cells with a great deal of value. If they are destroyed, she’s lost a part of herself that she loved and welcomed, and will naturally feel a degree of grief. The pain could well be made worse by the attitude that women are walking incubators, but that’s another question entirely.
The contradiction turns out to be no contradiction at all. I care passionately about my baby; every sign of movement brings me a little extra joy. But it wouldn’t bring joy to every woman, and those for whom it would mean nothing but discomfort should be able to make a different choice.
Sara: Maybe a better argument to make is not based on stage of development but on the uniqueness and unlikeliness and one-time-onliness of an individual once conceived. That was the argument I made in this blog essay, which is not abstract but based on my own experience.
Hey, a pubmed you requested! (PUB MED Source From NIH.GOV… (Brain Birth and Personal Identity, Jones. J Med Ethics. 1989)
Um…the “reference” you linked to is simply a link to the NIH’s main web site. I suppose you meant to link to the Jones article. In fact, the same article I linked to which concludes that “brain birth”, if a reasonable concept, takes place between 24 and 28 weeks of development.
Your comment displays a certain lack of sophistication with respect to the meaning of the sources you quote. For example:
“In the fifth week after conception, the first synapses begin forming in a fetus’s spinal cord.”
For the moment I’ll pass over the probability of a site which describes a five week old embryo as a “fetus” and assume that they have their facts right. It’s probably not a good assumption, though. In any case, the spinal cord is not the brain. Brain dead people have spinal reflexes. Spinal neurons are of little interest with respect to determining consiousness.
By the sixth week, these early neural connections permit the first fetal movements–spontaneous arches and curls of the whole body–that researchers can detect through ultrasound imaging.
Again, reflex movements. Of interest in terms of how the embryo develops, but of little significance to brain development. No brain activity, much less cortical activity is involved in reflexes.
Maybe a better argument to make is not based on stage of development but on the uniqueness and unlikeliness and one-time-onliness of an individual once conceived.
Two words: Identical twins.
Very sharp, but I beat you to it. Go read my 2-part piece. (While it is an argument against abortion, it is not an argument for outlawing first-trimester abortion. In other words, I don’t exactly belong to either the pro-life or the pro-choice camp as presently constituted.)
“an individual once conceived. ”
All of the discussion on Amba’s linked post about how identical twins aren’t really so identical appears to be based on post-conception development, especially post-birth development.
And if Amba’s response is to say, “Ah, but you didn’t read my whole essay,” I’d say it’s poor participation in a comment thread to use it to urge people to dig through one’s own website for what one’s argument is.
No, mostly post-conception development — the wiring of neurons has a random element to it.
And I can’t force anyone to go read my post; I do think free speech entitles me to invite them! Perhaps the more open-minded or the less busy will wish to do so.
P.S. I’m pretty busy myself just now, meeting a deadline — not trying to diss the comment thread by disdaining to reiterate my argument.
So quote a couple of relevant paragraphs from your post, Annie. But what you’re doing now isn’t participating in good faith in this discussion; it’s disdaining to participate.
If you don’t have time to participate now, that’s cool; come back later. We’re not going away. Best wishes to you, and I hope you make your deadline.
P.S. I’m a moderator, by the way, so please take this request seriously.
Thanks, I’ll come back later!
You know, Diane, it’s so interesting to me how with all the info and data and research in the publication you are stuck on… “a lack of sophistication… when I mistakenly named a 5 week human a fetus, rather than embryo…” Did you even read the data, or were you too busy “proofreading” my post? And um… I am completely aware the publication I referenced was the publication you referenced. I assumed you could navigate the NIH site on your own enough to find an article. Can these topics REALLY be all you have to nit-pick about? Talk about ‘Missing the forest for the trees’!
Did it not even phase you that several researchers stated deep concern for and respect for the developing human at the embryo phase? Did it not concern you that the author herself states that the entire ‘brain birth’ philosophy is lacking due to the fact that newborn babies would also be considered “non-persons” because the human brain is programmed to developing the ‘higher level’ reasoning skills in the first several years AFTER birth??
So, what DO you have to say to that? Do you think we should be able to kill newborn humans as well, since research shows the cortex is still so undeveloped at birth? This is a serious issue. Now you are going to need to justify why it’s okay to kill one group of humans and not the other….
Oh, I know, it’s up to the mother, she should be able to decide which humans should live and die, right? So, really, it has nothing to do with how developed, wise, thinking, reasoning, beautiful the unborn child is. The unborn human’s value lies in who values him or her, right? Yah,that makes a lot of sense.
sara,
Actually, the rationale behind the law’s effectively prohibiting abortion after viability is that at the point the pregnant woman no longer has to carry the fetus for it to survive, someone who wants to take care of the resulting baby can do so (that “someone” probably being a state-paid functionary), instead of taking an unwilling woman’s body captive to do it. So your rhetoric about killing newborns is a bit beside the point.
PG – Why is it beside the point? First of all, if women who are in their third trimester want to travel to KS or CO to kill their viable and unborn humans they can do so! Physical or emotional health of mother reason. The laws don’t force them to give birth, it’s in their power to end the life of that child, just like when they were in the first or second trimester. (You don’t know this?)
Secondly, my point is that… if Diane’s justification (of choice at this moment) is that the “brain is the seat of personhood” and if that brain functioning isn’t developed enough THAT is reason enough to be able to abort the unborn human… then the repercussions of that belief will transcend onto newborn humans as well. Not speaking about “wanted or unwanted” necessarily. This reasoning is flawed, not comprehensive and can have consequences for all of us and all of humanity.
Thirdly, “taking a woman’s body captive”? Is that the intent of the unborn human? Did that human have an intent and request to be placed in that woman’s uterus? (I’m not talking about the small % of abortions from rape or incest)
Why is it when it comes to creating life… we act like we should get “baby insurance” like we buy “car insurance”? How can we think we should be able to kill our developing humans once we create them? Did it ever occur to us that in this scenario… there is birth control to help PREVENT a pregnancy… but if we have a developing human being maybe shouldn’t be able to get “baby insurance” to “undo” the “mistake”(especially when the end of the 1st trimester comes around and that developing human is so developed)… like getting our cars into the shop to fix a fender bender?
Maybe, just maybe, a human baby isn’t a “car accident” that the shop can repair for a deductable. This is a serious matter. The matter of ANOTHER human beings life is at stake.
Physical or emotional health of mother reason.
no abortion may be performed after viability unless the attending physician and another financially and legally independent physician determine that an abortion is necessary to preserve the woman’s life or continuation of the pregnancy would cause a “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” of the woman. Kan. Stat. Ann. § 65-6703(a) (Enacted 1992; Last Amended 1998).
So you think that a woman should have a major bodily function impaired?
Thirdly, “taking a woman’s body captive”? Is that the intent of the unborn human?
Not at all. A fetus can’t have intent. It’s entirely the intent of you and people who think like you, and who, if they form a sufficient majority to change the law (or murder enough abortion providers) can prevent women from obtaining abortions and thereby hold them captive to your preferences regarding the fetus.
PG,
The reasons women choose to abort their fetuses? Unfortunately, it is NOT always a “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function”. Please don’t act like you don’t know this.
“In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along. The abortion-rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else.”
– Ron Fitzsimmons
Executive Director for the National
Coalition of Abortion Providers
The New York Times, February 26, 1997
sara,
The reasons women choose to abort their fetuses? Unfortunately, it is NOT always a “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function”. Please don’t act like you don’t know this.
The reasons to abort a non-viable fetus, sure. The reason many state legislature require in order to abort a fetus after it becomes viable? “Substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
I can’t tell if you sincerely believe that a 20 or 21 week old fetus is viable — i.e., could survive past infancy after being delivered at that stage — or if you’re just throwing that quote out there for the heck of it.
PG,
In the previous post you stated that late term abortions are done because… “a woman could have a major bodily function impaired” if she continues her pregnancy and gives birth…
To which I responded that, according to someone who would know… the Executive Director for the National Coalition of Abortion Providers…
“HEALTHY mothers and HEALTHY unborn babies”….
You can make of that what you want. The facts are presented.
In the previous post you stated that late term abortions are done because… “a woman could have a major bodily function impaired” if she continues her pregnancy and gives birth…
Try again. I stated the legal standard in Kansas for obtaining a post viability abortion. Your meaningless, non-medical and non-legal phrase “late term abortion” was not one I used.
To which I responded that, according to someone who would know… the Executive Director for the National Coalition of Abortion Providers…
Ah, yes, a lifelong lobbyist for 200 independent clinics without a medical degree who claims to have had a sudden impulse of conscience must know the conditions under which all post-viability abortions are performed.
Except, of course, that’s not even what he claimed. He was referring to the conditions under which a specific procedure is performed.
Not only that, PG, it was also his impression of how often and when that procedure is used. There was no gathering of data other than “talking to” doctors who perform that procedure.
First of all, if women who are in their third trimester want to travel to KS or CO to kill their viable and unborn humans they can do so!
Actually, abortion of ale fetus is illegal in Kansas except for cases of threat to the mother’s life or severe fetal anomolies inconsistent with life. Tiller’s home page, when it was up, specifically stated that he did NOT perform elective abortions after viability.
Hmmm… I sense some denial of FACTS of late term abortions… it doesn’t surprise me. The proabortion crowd is fully versed in how to deny any sort of truth about abortion: from the human life it kills, to the procedures they use and also to the very reasons they do abortions. Let’s not forget, it all comes down to how that mom feels about her unborn human. Thats it….
Just ONE of MANY TRUE accounts of the REAL REASONS late term abortions are done. This account is from ‘Elena’. Elena is ONE of MANY who chose to abort their fetuses for reasons OTHER than HEALTH of mom or baby (she wanted to finish school).
Deny all you want. It just cannot cover up what is really happening to these senate, feeling, fully developed unborn babies.
An excerpt from Elena’s story (http://imnotsorry.net/elena.htm)
“I scheduled a surgical abortion with Planned Parenthood in between my crazy school schedule and multiple exams. But during the ultrasound portion of my scheduled abortion I discovered that I was so much further along than I thought. I was in my 23rd week of pregnancy. I was completely devastated and I felt like an idiot. Here I was training to be a doctor myself, and I had no idea that I had been pregnant for so long! There was only one place that could help me at that stage and it was hundreds of miles away in Wichita, KS. It took almost 16 hours to drive to the clinic in Wichita. It was a long and relatively silent drive. I could feel the fetus moving inside me, kicking me. The entire process took three days. ”
Who knows how far along she was by the time she got to TIller’s clinic in KS. (Way past 23 weeks). So much for “cases of threat to the mother’s life or severe fetal anomolies inconsistent with life”.
Elena’s story is on a Pro-choice website, by the way. Another story, from a pro-life website, talks about Michelle Arnesto-Berg, who gave testimony before a joint interim legislative committee in September 2007 about her late term abortion at Tiller’s Clinic.
Here’s an excerpt from Michelle’s story
(http://clinicquotes.com/site/story.php?id=143):
“Michelle requested her medical records from Women’s Health Care Services and was shocked to learn that her healthy 26-week baby had been diagnosed as “not viable” (by the abortion doctor). This designation allowed the clinic to circumvent the Kansas ban on abortions of viable babies after 21 weeks, a gestational milestone that is considered the earliest a baby can survive outside the womb if born. Michelle did not receive a second opinion as required by law for post 21-week abortions, and she was never diagnosed with any condition that would have met the “substantial and irreversible impairment” standard in the law. Michelle agreed to make her medical records available to the committee. Rep. Jene Vickery commented that it seemed her abortion was done without any consideration of the laws of Kansas.”
These two accounts don’t jive with what you continue to claim?… contact Elena and Michelle. Not me. They are the ones telling their truths. And, they are two of many.
Sara, are you even aware of how rude your tone is? You’re giving the impression that you have total contempt for anyone who doesn’t agree with your position. If you don’t honestly view all the pro-choicers here with contempt, then the sneering, lecturing, condescending tone of your writing is giving a false impression, and maybe you should work on that.
Please try to keep the tone of sneering derision down to a minimum if you want to continue to be welcome to post comments on this blog.
This account is from ‘Elena’. Elena is ONE of MANY who chose to abort their fetuses for reasons OTHER than HEALTH of mom or baby (she wanted to finish school).
It’s pretty clear if you read Elena’s account that she was seriously depressed after finding out she was pregnant. Although she didn’t say that she was overtly suicidal, it sounds likely from her account that she was. “Pro-lifers” like to scoff at the idea that the mental health of a woman should be considered in determining whether a pregnancy continues or not, but depression has a 20% fatality rate. Should someone be forced to continue a pregnancy that has a 20% chance of killing her? Yes, say those who claim to be pro-life.
If the second account is true* then the doctor who performed the abortion broke the law. Why that should be used to argue that the law doesn’t exist is not clear to me.
Finally, even if these two women both had abortions in the third trimester for no apparent reason, all that says is that laws can be broken and sometimes are. It has no bearing on how often the laws are broken or whether the cases presented are typical or rare. Do you have any data on how frequently this sort of event occurs? (Preferably from a site that does not advocate on the issue of abortion from either position.)
*The source is a clearly biased one and so the veracity is open to question.
Diane,
Where did you get that she was suicidal? Did you read her account? The sentence that explains how she felt about her pregnancy was as follows:
“I reasoned that I had worked too hard to get where I was in my life, and I didn’t want to just throw that away. I decided that I would terminate the preganancy.”
Do you know what depression is and the signs and symptoms of depression? Not even covert messages given in this account even hint to depression. Let’s keep it real and acknowledge the times late term abortions occur – when they do no follow the law’s guidelines.
And let’s be clear about it. The doctors at this clinic have no reason to feel otherwise about the human fetus. The unborn fetus has no value on it’s own. It’s a clump of cells that are not a baby until the woman has her *magic* thoughts and it turns into a *baby*.
Ampersand,
I appreciate your comments. I will take that into consideration. It is not my intent to offend anyone, however it is my intent to tell the truth (as I see it to be) even it is unpopular to some. I would ask that others, who respond in a condescending manner, keep their tone to a minimum as well.
sara,
If you don’t want people to come across as condescending, perhaps you should discuss a matter of medicine and law with medical and legal terms. A good start would be explaining whether you’re referring to a post viability abortion, which in some states requires the pregnant woman’s life or health to be at risk, or if you just mean “late term abortion” to cover whatever category of abortions you find especially easy to get people het up about. I’ve already pointed out that in this discussion thus far, “late term abortion” has gone undefined and is thus a meaningless term. Either define your term or use one that has meaning in law and medicine.
PG,
Maybe this info will help clear things up for you.
Definition of “late-term” Abortion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-term_abortion)
A late-term abortion often refers to an induced abortion procedure that occurs after the 20th week of gestation. However, the exact point when a pregnancy becomes late-term is not clearly defined. Some sources define an abortion after 12 completed weeks’ gestation as “late”.[1][2]
Some sources define an abortion after 16 weeks as “late”.[3][4] Three articles published in 1998 in the same issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association could not agree on the definition. Two of the JAMA articles chose the 20th week of gestation to be the point where an abortion procedure would be considered late-term.[5] The third JAMA article chose the third trimester, or 27th week of gestation.[6]
The point at which an abortion becomes late-term is often related to the “viability” (ability to survive outside the uterus) of the fetus. Sometimes late-term abortions are referred to as post-viability abortions. However, viability varies greatly among pregnancies. Nearly all pregnancies are viable after the 27th week, and no pregnancies are viable before the 21st week. Everything in between is a “grey area”.[6]
By the way:
Because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual study on abortion statistics does not calculate the exact gestational age for abortions performed past the 20th week, there are no precise data for the number of abortions performed after viability.[13]
————–
For references go to link above.
Sara – “Healthy mothers have healthy babies” – I’m sorry, are you saying there is nothing that can happen to a fetus if the mother is not showing signs of disease? There are multiple fetal conditions that are incompatible with life (that’s right, that’s a commonly accepted official medical term that takes into account the medical fact that human life begins at birth). Many of these conditions show no apparent symptoms in the mother.
Yes, most procedures done after 20 weeks (which is not viability, by the way) are done because of FETAL malformations, and the mother is apparently healthy. In fact, most of these moms are devastated about their wanted pregnancy ending with a fetal malformation.
How heartless of you, sara, to demonize these women and their doctors as murderers.
Arguing about the rarest of abortions is really grasping at straws. States are already allowed to regulate second and third trimester abortions. All you are doing is kicking some of the saddest women when they’re down. 90% of abortions are done in the embryonic stage, before 8 weeks. The later ones are heart wrenching for all involved, and having ignorant melodramatic busybodies turn every conversation about legal, safe abortion into demonizing these women and their practitioners makes me sick.
sara,
There are some women who have late-term abortions while they are healthy and have had an unplanned pregnancy. Let us say, hypothetically, that in six months hypothetical-woman Maria and I both become pregnant and are carrying fetuses over 20 weeks old that are each diagnosed with a severe birth defect. As a result of these congenital conditions, if they are born the fetuses will be expensive to care for, and there is a slim-to-none chance for these potential infants to survive past the age of three.
Even though I’m a college student and don’t want children in the near future, I’m economically privileged and interested in parenting enough that I would probably be willing to keep my fetus if I had an unplanned pregnancy. Even so, I don’t know if I could handle the medical expenses of a severely disabled young child. Moreover, the psychological and emotional cost of watching my first baby die would be tremendous, and I don’t know if I could deal with that. I also want to finish college and have a stable partner and income before trying to raise kids – having this baby might prevent me from graduating on time. At this point in the hypothetical situation, I’m debating aborting my fetus.
Maria is married with one child already, and works as a schoolteacher. Dramatically transforming her life, her husband’s life, and her son’s life for the next few years to handle the demands placed on them by a severely disabled infant would be quite difficult. Leaving her job and trying to subside on only her husband’s salary would make things even harder, but specialized nurses for disabled infants are rare and difficult to afford. Even though she wants a second child and even though she values infant lives, Maria is also considering abortion.
Maria and I are different people, with different lives, with different potential children. Her choice, no matter what it is, will be heart-wrenchingly difficult for Maria and her husband. My choice will be similarly painful, and will have an enormous impact on whomever I conceived the child with, my close friends, my family, and me. These decisions aren’t easy – and they aren’t for bystanders or courts to make. Only Maria gets to decide whether she will carry her child to term or not. The same goes for me.
I’m not pro-choice because I would personally want to have an abortion – I’m pro-choice because I don’t want the decision to abort made by people other than the mother.
MomTFH,
First, I never said “Healthy mothers have healthy babies” – I was quoting Ron Fitzsimmons when HE said, “the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.”
Second, You may want to check your stats on the gestational age of abortions when they occur. The data from the CDC I have states otherwise:
“Of all abortions for which gestational age was reported, 61% were performed at less than 8 weeks’ gestation and 88% at less than 13 weeks. And 4.2% were perfomred at 16-20 weeks and 1.4% were performed at less than 21 weeks.”
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5511a1.htm
Third, You seem to be shooting the messenger here… don’t blame me (or other anti-abortion women) who simply state the reality of what is happening. I mean, abortion DOES kill a human. If you don’t think abortion kills a human (and I’ve encountered pro-choicers who insist it does not kill a human- not even the “person” or “being” adjective… just a human.) then you should probably review human life and human development resources/books.
Just because because I am not one of those pro-choicers who insist on ignoring the fetus altogether (like he or she is invisible) doesn’t mean I’m demonizing women: just that I am addressing the issue of that there IS actually another human in the “unwanted pregnancy” scenario. (Something pro-choicers refuse to do).
Please don’t confuse my acknowledgement of the life of the fetus with having a lack of empathy or concern for a woman with a challanging pregnancy or situation.
As Patricia Heaton (actress) once said,
“Every 36 seconds in America a women lays her body down, forced to choose abortion out of a lack of practical resources and emotional support. Abortion is a reflection that society has failed women.”
This is the essense of what I am discussing here. Quite often there are 2 victims in an abortion, and there is ALWAYS at least 1.
Quill,
I understand your story and the scenrios you are describing. Having had difficulties in my life and with my pregnancy I can empathize with the women and the situations you are describing.
The situations you describe, with a unborn fetus’s health issues are the rare cases that can often times be understood by pro-lifers, like myself. I believe it is what Roe V. Wade had in mind, those rare situations that are truly life and death. So serious that you are acting to “save a life”, not take a life.
However, the majority of abortions are not for those reasons you describe. And the pro-choice community doesn’t help to educate the general public about the seriousness of the decision to end a life and choose abortion. See the following post regarding the missing information in the book ‘Our Bodies, Our Selves’. http://fetalfactsdotnet.wordpress.com/category/our-bodies-our-sevles/
You didn’t mention these scenarios in your post, but in the cases of elective abortions, as I mentioned in my previous post- I am not one of the those who feel the unborn human deserves to take the brunt of the situation. The unborn human loses his or her life.
To tell the honest truth, Elena’s abortion makes me uncomfortable, even though I am pro-choice and am not even arguing she should have been prohibited from having it. Yes, her kind of abortion is very rare (the vast majority of abortions take place in the very early stages of pregnancy), but the pro-choice movement’s willingness to defend it or dismiss those who have discomfort with it is probably one of the reasons many people like myself who support a woman’s right to abortion tend to distance ourselves from the organized pro-choice movement.
‘makes me uncomfortable”
her access to abortion is more important than your discomfort. but way to center yourself in other people’s medical decisions.
If you read my comment, note that I said I didn’t think she should have been forbidden by law to have that abortion. However, I think the pro-choice movement is being foolish if they think people won’t be more uncomfortable with this woman’s abortion (at 23 weeks) than with a woman who has an abortion at six weeks.
Interestingly, even many of the liberal European countries often cited by the pro-choice movement have cutoff dates for abortions not performed for medical reasons (threat to woman’s health, fetal deformity, etcetera).
Sorry, but Elena doesn’t make a very good for the pro-life movement. And I know I’m not the only one who thinks so (check imnotsorry), even among pro-choicers.
Here’s a great quote by a pro-choice journalist by the name of Cathy Young: “Unfortunately, many abortion-rights supporters really are ideological zealots who oppose any restrictions on abortion any time in the pregnancy. Yet most Americans, including most who consider themselves pro choice, occupy a middle ground on the wrenching issue of abortion.”
No insult to Cathy — who I quite like, despite our many disagreements — but “ideological zealots” isn’t really useful language, if what you want to do is persuade people of your view.
It’s true that most Americans do not share the same view I do. Does that automatically make me wrong? Since when does “majority” equal “right”?
I realize that the idea of Elena’s abortion makes many Americans feel uncomfortable and unsure. But I think many Americans (including you, from what you say) would also feel uncomfortable about the law coming between Elena and her doctor and making that difficult decision for her.
You criticize the pro-choice movement’s decision to defend Elena’s right to make her own choices. But if we don’t defend the difficult, uncomfortable cases, then I’m not sure what good we are.
No, I don’t think the law should come between Elena and her doctor. And I don’t equate her abortion with infanticide. But I think using her case to defend women’s right to abortion does make the pro-choice movement look like ideological zealots, which some of them indeed are.
Another point: I think the pro-choice movement would do more to convince the public of the necessity of late-term abortion in instances, for example, where the mother’s life is in danger, where the fetus has a serious defect, etcetera, not in cases like Elena’s where there were no medical issues involved. An analogy: I’d defend the right to divorce (which until recently was illegal in some Western countries like Ireland or Chile), but to do so by defending an individual’s right to leave a spouse who had just been diagnosed with cancer wouldn’t make the pro-divorce movement look too good, would it?
I agree that it would be poor tactics for pro-choicers to deliberately choose a case like Elena’s as the primary example. (Morality aside, just looking at tactics).
But Emilia, it wasn’t a pro-choicer who brought Elena up in this thread. It was a pro-lifer. What would you suggest pro-choicers do, when pro-lifers bring up cases like Elena’s?
What would you suggest pro-choicers do, when pro-lifers bring up cases like Elena’s?
Throw them under the bus, and preserve the core freedom by being willing to negotiate about the outlier.
In the case of Elena, that would take the form of (for example) being willing to say that abortions past 24 weeks must have a medical rationale. The overwhelming majority of late-term abortions ARE for medical reasons; the very occasional Elena (“whoops, I’m a med student, but somehow three months of pregnancy went past without me realizing it”) is out of luck.
Actually, I first read Elena’s story on the site imnotsorry (pro-choice). When one other reader, a Planned Parenthood volunteer, expressed her concerns about Elena’s story, she was smacked down by the site’s moderator. That’s what I call ideological zealotry.
Yeah, it’s lucky when the ideological zealotry isn’t being willing to throw away someone’s autonomy and medical care just because it makes *you* uncomfortable. Luckily, that fault is the purview of other people.
A couple of points about Elena’s story:
1. She indicates that she was seriously depressed due to the pregnancy. Depression, for all that pro-lifers like to pretend it’s nothing, is a dangerous illness with a high mortality rate. And is very, very difficult to treat during pregnancy. The usual recommendation is electro-shock therapy.
2. She says that she is 39 and peri-menopausal. This strongly suggests that something non-optimal is going on in her body reproductively.
3. 23 weeks is still second trimester. It wasn’t even a third trimester abortion, though I agree she was pushing the limit.
4. She indicates that she is in medical school. Medical students often work up to 120 hours per week. There are 168 hours in a week. I challenge you to be in perfect touch with your body when you have an average of less than 7 hours per day to complete everything you need to do besides work. Including sleep. Just not happening. No surprise she lost track of her periods. And this is going to work with a baby…how?
I’m not saying I’m thrilled with Elena’s decision as expressed in her story. So what? I don’t have to be. I’m not her. I’m not her doctor. I’m also not thrilled with the decision of an acquaintance to continue her very high risk pregnancy. I think it’s a foolish move and one that’s putting her life at risk and putting her (several real, live, breathing, thinking) children at risk of growing up without a mother. But it’s not my decision and that’s the end of that.
Not everyone has periods that are normal in the first place. And sometimes women have bleeding even once they are pregnant. The expectation that women will know pregnancy is a possibility within a few days of a missed period is one that depends on an expectation of women’s biology that may or may not meet the reality.
Arguing with abortion rights zealots is a bit like arguing with the Jehovah Witnesses: they’ve got truth on their side, unlike the benighted majority who “know not what of they speak.”
By the way, I looked at Elena’s story again, and the word “depression” is not mentioned.
Again, I wouldn’t want to make Elena’s abortion illegal, but please don’t expect too many people to be sympathetic with her.
Emilia, if you can’t manage to disagree with people without being insulting, then you’ll be asked to leave this forum. You call us “zealots,” but we’re trying very hard to be polite to you even though we disagree; please treat us with the same courtesy.
I’m not sure what to say to you. Pro-choice is not the Vatican; even if it was desirable to keep women from talking about their own experiences (and I don’t think it is), it’s not like Planned Parenthood has the ability to manage what does or doesn’t get posted on imnotsorry.
I think it’s valuable for the full range of abortion cases — the typical ones, and the “uncomfortable” ones — to be talked about. It’s reality.
Pro-lifers will bring up the “uncomfortable” cases regardless of if pro-choicers do. Pro-choicers can’t prevent such cases from being discussed; the only thing we’d do by declining to ever discuss such cases is to make pro-lifers the only ones ever discussing such cases. I don’t think that would really be an advantage, from a pro-choice perspective.
With all due respect, Emilia, I just don’t understand what change it is you’re asking for. You’re talking as if pro-choice groups spend most of their time talking about atypical, relatively later abortions, and then scream “heretic” any time anyone disagrees. But I don’t think either one of those is true.
In this thread, people have disagreed with you — and you’ve disagreed with us. But no one is yelling “heretic!” at you. Honest.
Maybe the Jehovah Witness comparison wasn’t the best analogy (besides, I have nothing particularly against the Jehovah Witnesses; I don’t think they’re bad people in general), but I will state again that I think even most people who consider themselves pro-choice have a problem with abortions like Elena’s. And again, shouting down people who question the ethics of her choice (like the reader on imnotsorry) do make some – I’ll stress “some,” not “all” – pro-choice advocates look like zealots. And you knwo I’m not the only one to say this.
And I realize that the level of “discomfort” about abortion does vary from person to person. For instance, I don’t really have many moral qualms about a woman aborting a fetus found to have a genetic defect or even a woman having an abortion in the first few months of pregnancy for whatever reason she wants, even if it might be so-called “convenience.” But some people may. I will venture to say that MOST, again not ALL, individuals will find Elena’s abortion more morally questionable than the two other cases I’ve mentioned.
It’s uncomfortable to defend and rationalize Elena’s abortion because it’s a slippery slope- the whole concept of which humans we should be able to kill, when we can kill them and for what reasons. It’s our human instinct to feel something in our gut that isn’t quite comfortable about killing our own kind. Even many of those who perform abortions- with very small fetuses of 8 weeks, to the larger kicking, moving, thumb-sucking fetuses in the early 2nd trimester- routinely try to avoid looking too closely at that lifeless little human they have just terminated.
The more I consider abortion, for the woman with the unwanted pregnancy and the human in her womb, the more I agree with Patricia Heaton (actress) when she said, “Abortion is a reflection that society has failed women.” Women are forced to lay their bodies down and have their developing human ripped away from their bodies because they don’t have resources and practical support. THIS is the failure of our society. Why don’t we in our society do more to HELP the women (not just to kill their developing human offspring) but true help- so the woman doesn’t have to go through that experience of having to kill her own baby? Better birth control, better access to birth control, more required support from fathers, more support from local and national goverment by way of resouces and training.
As a former pro-choice woman I always felt that no woman “likes” abortion: but the choice needed to be there for her in case she needed it. Then, one day, I realized: why is THIS the choice I am focusing on? Why am I not insisting our wealthy country do more to help women in ways that don’t require her to kill her baby? Especially now with the invention of the ultrasound (has been around for only 40 years!) and the 3 and 4D ultrasounds http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/in-the-womb-2228#tab-Videos/01586_05 . It becomes more and more tricky to justify killing those little humans in there- when we see, before our very eyes, that they look and behave so much like us- the lucky born ones.
Why, what a perfect time to direct you to Ampersand’s post, “Actually Reducing Abortion,” in which he discusses exactly how to do that.
From the post:
—Myca
‘Why am I not insisting our wealthy country do more to help women in ways that don’t require her to kill her baby?’
Wait. Someone’s killing babies? Monstrous! Who, pray tell?
In keeping with the outlier examples…
I had a friend who used abortion as her primary form of birth control. It’s not the way I would choose for myself. I find it morally questionable, at best. Should I advocate for outlawing abortion because of her choices? Would the gains made by preventing the abortions she had outweigh the losses others would suffer in being unable to access safe, legal abortion?
My answer to both questions is, “No.” That is one of many reasons that I am pro-choice.
To Sara, I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you. In the majority cases I don’t see Elena’s case as a “slippery slope.” In the case of pro-lifers, my impression is that they consider life to begin at conception, so it would seem that they would not see Elena’s abortion as any more immoral than that of a six-week pregnancy. But you might correct me; I’m not part of the pro-life movement, so I don’t know whether every single pro-lifer feels this way.
About Elena’s case being a slippery slope for the pro-choice movement, again, I’m sceptical. I suspect that the reason why most (non-fanatical) pro-choicers find Elena’s abortion so repugnant is because her fetus was NOT a six-week or even twelve-week embryo. Perhaps in a few cases a pro-choice individual might think, “Well, if Elena’s abortion should be illegal, so should that involving a fertilized egg.” But I believe most of us would make a distinction between abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy and that later on (without a valid medical reason).
Especially now with the invention of the ultrasound (has been around for only 40 years!) and the 3 and 4D ultrasounds
Ultrasounds? Seriously, do you know what an ultrasound is? If you’re untrained in the use and reading of ultrasounds it’s just a fuzzy picture. Let’s show a few examples which are not cherry picked for the best possible looks: image 1 and image 2. What can you tell me about these “babies” based on these pictures. Remember, these are NOT particularly bad images. In fact, I went for some of the better ones. They’re typical of the sort of image one gets with an ultrasound.
If you want to see an actual, scaled image of early embryonic development try here. Most abortions are completed by the time the embryo gets to the largest stage shown.
But I believe most of us would make a distinction between abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy and that later on (without a valid medical reason).
If you’re not suggesting illegalizing abortion after the first trimester, so what? You find it morally repugnant. Good for you and may you never find yourself in a similar situation, but if you do I’m sure you’ll make the opposite decision.
And what consistutes a “valid medical reason”? Who decides?
As I said, most people other than extremists on both sides of the spectrum would find Elena’s abortion more ethically questionable than an abortion involving a six-week pregnancy. If it’s not, why don’t even the liberal pro-choice nations in Western Europe permit late-term abortions without a valid medical reason (and you should contact them to find out what a “valid medical reason) is)?
I guess it’s hard to be a moderate these days (which I believe most Americans are on the abortion question). You have to duck grenades launched by zealots on both sides – like the people who think a nine-year-old girl impregnated by her stepfather should have the child AND those who think Elena’s abortion is no different than a woman who terminates a pregnancy in the first trimester.
Yes Seriously, Diane! To the abortion industries dismay: It’s much easier to “terminate” something when you don’t know what it is, you don’t know how it looks, you don’t know how it behaves. Ooops! That is changing and will continue to: the discovery 3D and 4D ultrasounds of being able to see these little humans -will only continue to increase in it’s clarity and focus in the future. That aside, my hope is that with these inventions women are given more helpful resouces: so women don’t feel they are forced to choose abortion. They go together: the realization of who it is we are killing and the realization that we are called to do more to help women make choices that don’t include killing her child.
The older ultrasounds are hard to read, Dianne, but the new ones are not. Here is a picture of my daughter (now 7) at about week 24 – same period of time as when Elena had an abortion.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44772580@N00/4322487430/
The 4D ultrasounds have only gotten better in the intervening 7.25 years.
sara, you’re avoiding the issue! What do you think of the “babies” in the ultrasounds? Are you willing to go on record as saying that they’re people? What about the picture of embryos up to 8 weeks as seen with visible light? Are you interested in the less than thumb sized people? Do you see the speck on the end? Does it look like a baby to you?
Robert: They’re contemporary ultrasounds. But a 24 week vanity ultrasound is very different from an 8 week diagnostic.
Yes, the ultrasounds are different at 8 weeks and 24 weeks. And yes, the 4D ultrasounds look much better than the old technology; your “contemporary” ultrasounds are made by NEW machines using OLD technology, like taking a daguerreotype with a brand-new daguerreotype camera. 4D is the current SOTA.
You’re basically arguing that people aren’t going to look at ultrasounds and think “holy shit that’s a baby!” because the SOTA 20 years ago wouldn’t make that practical. The SOTA today does.
At 24+ weeks, it pretty much looks like a baby.
Robert, with all respect to your wonderful daughter, the photo you linked to looks like a blob to me; it might be that as a parent you’re a bit biased about how clear that photo actually is.
I did see a 4-D ultrasound a year and a half ago. It did look like a baby, for moments here and there. It did not, however, change my views on abortion, nor (as far as I know) the pro-choice views of any of the half-dozen people in the room. The main thing we all agreed on, other than that it was really cool tech, is that we wished the facility hadn’t insisted on piping cheesy pop music into the room. Oh, and that it was hilarious that the technician narrating the 4d kept calling the vagina “princess parts.”
I think that right-wingers imagine that there are zillions of women having abortions on an impulse, because they want to have their nails done or something. If that were the truth, then perhaps better imaging tech could make a big difference. But it isn’t the truth; women, by and large, aren’t idiots, and the reasons for abortion are usually better set than that.
Of course, we could reduce abortion drastically with a Netherlands-style program of lots and lots of sex ed and pushing birth control on young people early and often. There’s no doubt that countries with those policies have much, much lower abortion rates than the US. But since that would only reduce abortion, and doesn’t involve punishing women — or making them “take responsibility,” as pro-lifers often put it — there isn’t a pro-lifer in the world who’d favor that.
Emilia:
But the fetus that was aborted didn’t have a functioning cerebral cortex; it was incapable of experiencing anything at all. Not emotion, not desire, not thought, not selfhood. Nothing.
To me, something that is physically incapable of any sort of thought at all is not a person, and carries only limited rights. Our interest as a society in protecting the rights of something that is not a person is easily outweighed by a pregnant woman’s interest in not being forced to give birth against her will.
For that reason, I don’t see any moral difference between Elena’s abortion, and the abortion of a six-week embryo. In both cases, human tissue that isn’t yet capable of thought — isn’t yet a person — was aborted.
Obviously, you feel differently. But why?
(And yes, I acknowledge that my view is surely a minority view among Americans. But that doesn’t convince me that I’m mistaken.)
“Princess parts” is classic.
I don’t think there are zillions of women having abortions to fill the time before the next showing of “Avatar”. But I do think a fair amount of pro-choice belief – by no means all – is somewhat underpinned by a broad assumption of fetal invisibility; it’s just a blob of cells, nothing that you’d recognize as human if you could see it, so don’t worry about it.
Robert: Admittedly, I think the ultrasounds we’re using wouldn’t be out of place at a museum of obsolete technology (ah, the joys of underfunding), but I’m still going to refer you to pictures of actual embryos and fetuses. Ex-utero and photographed using visible spectrum light rather than having sound waves bounced off them through several layers of tissue: do the 8 week embryos look like babies to you? They don’t to me. And I’d like your commentary on the ultrasounds I posted. Saying they’re obsolete is all very well, but do you see a baby in them?
ETA: BTW, one image contains a finding that should be obvious to any 2nd year medical student. It’s one of the absolutely easiest things to see on an ultrasound. If you’re really seeing anything besides roschach test results in the u/s you should have…but that would be telling.
But the fetus that was aborted didn’t have a functioning cerebral cortex; it was incapable of experiencing anything at all. Not emotion, not desire, not thought, not selfhood. Nothing.
Um. Thought, I’ll grant you. But you can have feelings and experience without a cerebral cortex. You just won’t be ratiocinating about it like an adult human would.
Mammals, as I understand it, have cerebral cortexes while other branches do not. You seem to be asserting that fishes, lizards, birds, etc. experience and feel nothing. I don’t think it works quite like that.
I’m not any kind of medical student, Dianne. No, I don’t see babies in your 8-wk ultrasounds; that could be an ultrasound of the inside of a soda can for all I know. And?
As I understand it (and I’m no medical student), what we’re discussing is a fetal human, not a fetal fish, lizard, or bird.
Yes, but you’re asserting that the absence of a cerebral cortex makes an entity “incapable of experiencing anything at all. Not emotion, not desire, not thought, not selfhood. Nothing.”
If it’s true for mammals, why isn’t it true for lizards, birds, etc.? I grant you birds don’t have (advanced) thought as we know it – but I’m pretty sure they’ve got desire and emotion, and I’d be reluctant to give odds on (basic) selfhood (at the level of “I am this bird who is this bird”).
Let’s be serious: most people other than the most extreme aren’t going to see a 23-week fetus as the equivalent of a fertilized egg or even an six-week embryo (and yes, I’ve had an ultrasound when I was six weeks pregnant, and as moved as I was by the sight of what was to be my daughter on it, that didn’t convince me that an embryo at that stage is a “baby” or that abortion shouldn’t be allowed at that stage). I think the failure of pro-choice extremists to make this distinction is what’s making many people dismiss the pro-choice movement as a whole. And yes, people have a right to minority viewpoints – but then don’t complain if others find them objectionable.
No, I don’t see babies in your 8-wk ultrasounds; that could be an ultrasound of the inside of a soda can for all I know. And?
8 week embryos don’t look like babies. No matter how good the ultrasound. However, to the eye of someone wanting to find a baby in the ultrasound, a fuzzy picture-and even the best, newest u/s provide fuzzy pictures-an ultrasound-any ultrasound-is going to be “evidence” of the humanity of the little whatsit and the horror of killing it. Thus, sara’s contention that the advent of ultrasounds makes abortion “harder” is invalid*. It’s confirmation bias: she sees babies in the ultrasound because she wants to.
Also they’re not both 8 week pregnancy ultrasounds. You were right to be skeptical. But neither is the inside of a soda can either. One is of gallstones. To tell the truth, the gallstone picture looks more like a baby to me than the actual embryo. Again, unless you know how to read the thing, you’re going to see what you want to see, what you believe is there.
*Besides which, suppose ultrasounds had never been invented. We’d still have the internet full of pictures of spontaneously aborted fetuses of every size and description. And books full of pictures of normal and abnormal development. The fetus is not invisible. It never has been.
8 week embryos don’t look like babies.
Has anyone said they do?
I wasn’t “skeptical” of your ultrasounds; I couldn’t see much in my daughter’s conventional ultrasounds either. Thus my point about the BETTER ultrasounds where you CAN see (the glitch in Amp’s facial-recognition software aside).
What was the point of that exercise in deception, anyway? Hoping that someone would come along and say “I totally see a baby there! It’s obvious!!!” ?
Emilia, I think you and I may have different ideas of what constitutes a “serious” argument. I am serious in what I wrote; I gave a coherent argument, I think, as to why there isn’t an important moral distinction.
I’m not complaining that you find my viewpoint objectionable. I’m wondering why you think my argument is logically mistaken.
You seem to think that if any person is pro-choice, then it’s a horrible error for them to ever say anything that the majority of people don’t agree with. But this isn’t a press release from a major organization, or a statement by a pro-choice candidate for President. It’s the comments section of an obscure blog. If we can’t just say what we think here, without worrying about how it will poll with the masses, then where can we?
Robert: And helium balloons can fly without wings. So isn’t it illogical of me to say that humans, lacking wings, cannot fly under their own power? After all, wings aren’t necessary for flight.
In humans, a cerebral cortex is physically necessary for experiencing anything, including emotions. That this isn’t true for all other beings in the universe doesn’t alter the facts about how human anatomy works. If there’s any credible evidence that humans experience emotion without a cerebral cortex, however, please link to it and I may change my views about this matter.
Emilia: I have another difficult situation for you to consider*. A young woman, about 14 weeks pregnant with her third child, is diagnosed with acute promyeloctic leukemia. APL is highly curable but the treatment includes drugs which are violent teratogens. It also moves extremely rapidly: people go from healthy to dead in days to weeks if not treated. This particular woman was counseled to have an abortion and get treated. She refused and left. She was dead a few days later. So, her decision cost 2 children their mother and cost her her life. The fetus, of course, died with her. She knew that this was going to be the outcome when she made her decision*. Do you consider her decision a good one? Should she have been prevented from making it? If so, how?
*Fictionalized case based on a real event.
**Well, she was explicitly told that this was the likely outcome. Whether she believed it…that’s hard to say.
What was the point of that exercise in deception, anyway?
Sara was busying saying “oh, but ultrasounds show us how they’re babies”. I was pointing out that this is BS. You, a lay person with higher than average intelligence and medical sophsitication couldn’t even tell which organ was being examined.
And while I also see a face in the ultrasound of your daughter (cute nose too), I don’t think it’s amp’s facial recognition software that’s the problem: it’s just not that good a picture. Besides which, it’s clearly a vanity picture: a still made of the best, most baby like picture for the parents. The others probably looked far less like a baby. (But would be more diagnostically useful, i.e. ultrasound of the heart or kidneys or cranial diameter.) The bottom line is that ultrasounds are useless for the purpose of determining whether a fetus is a human or not and referencing them is just an attempt at pushing people’s emotional buttons when you’ve failed to convince them logically.
Amp: here you go.
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Merker-03062006/Referees/Merker-03062006_preprint.pdf
The whole thing is interesting but the discussion of children without cerebral cortex starts on page 28.
From the conclusion:
I just want everybody to get something in their pretty little heads: I don’t think Elena’s decision should have been forbidden by law. I don’t think it was the equivalent of killing a born child. I, along with many other people, simply consider it ethically more objectionable than the abortion of a six-week embryo or -and this is where I might be napalmed by the die-hard pro-life faction – than a late-term abortion done in a case of fetal deformity.
About the woman who decided against abortion rather than have treatment for leukemia, no, I wouldn’t have made the same choice, and one could argue legitimately that it wasn’t fair to deprive two children of their mother, especially if they were old enough to remember her (it might be different if they were young enough to given for adoption following their mother’s death). Again, as with Elena, I might not make the choice or even necessarily consider it right, but I would defend her right to make it under the law.
And here too everybody is free to form their own opinion. Some people might consider this woman a hero (after all, wasn’t an Italian woman made a saint by the Catholic Church for refusing an abortion to save her life). Some might call her irresponsible for leaving her two existing children orphaned. I suppose if you polled a group of people, you’d get a mixed response. I do suspect the outcome of the poll would be different for Elena’s story.
I’m more or less in agreement with you Emilia, but “pretty little heads” pretty much shuts down the discussion.
I’m not a pro-lifer in the sense that I believe first trimester abortion should remain legal. However, I’m frightened by the implications of how lightly some pro-choice people seem to take fetal and even embryonic life — when they don’t want it. What was there to protect them from the same fate, except a woman’s acceptance of them? There may or may not be a God, but it’s fairly terrifying when human beings, with their very wide range of motives and wisdom, play God.
It’s a strange disconnect when people who themselves passed through the embryonic and fetal stages on the way to being their fully fledged selves dismissively designate the embryonic stage as “nothing” or “a blob of cells.” Tat tvam asi, that art (or wert) thou.
Odds are, if I had been aborted, some other person would have been born instead; most women use abortion not to prevent themselves from reproducing ever, but to control the timing of reproduction.
There’s no reason to suppose that the person who likely would have been born instead of me would have been any less worthy or wonderful than I am. So I don’t find the “what if your mother had aborted you?” argument persuasive. If I had been aborted, then I never would have known or cared, and the world would have benefited from my hypothetical sibling who would have been born instead of me.
Put it another way: There are children in my life that I love very dearly, who are so wonderful, who would not have been born if their mother had not gotten an abortion, years earlier. Without abortion, they would not exist. That matters a lot more to me than the example you bring up; and yet pro-lifers seem to take that very lightly indeed. Why is the potential that they might not exist at all, any less important than the potential that I might not exist at all?
[Edited to de-snark a bit.]
So the argument about why we shouldn’t make an argument for late(r) term abortions is, “At 23 weeks they look more like people than they do at 8 weeks, therefore it is ethically problematic to allow abortions at 23 weeks or even to argue for allowing abortions at 23 weeks?”
I find that to be a pretty shallow and meaningless position. Is there even a point in arguing against such a weird and subjective contention?
The difference between potential people who might not exist in the future (whose number is infinite!) and an individual who’s already been conceived is profound. That argument is like the “every sperm and egg is a potential life!” one — disingenuous.
I myself would not exist if not for two abortions my grandmother had around 1920, if not for which she would not have had my mother. That’s not the point, either. (Remember I do not favor outlawing early abortion.) The point is, can we try evolve beyond this slash-and-burn mode of existence? Can we recognize what a stunningly unique event each one-time creation of a new individual is [yes, I know there are twins, that also does not negate what I’m saying], and stop pretending it isn’t that same remarkable event when it happens at a bad time for us? Can’t we view that event as remarkable enough to recommend some humility to our own will? I am all for taking great pains not to conceive when the timing is wrong for us. To me the crime we commit for our own convenience isn’t abortion, it’s, first of all, careless conception [yes, I know there are contraceptive failures and that does not negate what I’m saying; plenty of women are just careless because they know there’s always abortion] and second of all, the prior mental act of reducing a human individual to nothing at all whenever it suits us. That’s the part that seems dangerous to me. Treasure life enough not to create it when you can’t follow through.
This part of it isn’t even about “babies,” it’s about what we are, what we are becoming.
Plenty of men are careless because of the existence of abortion as well.
Annie Gottlieb, you wrote:
In my own experience, it is the antiabortion side of this debate that is responsible for the polarization you are talking about. If I want to assert that even though I am pro-choice I still believe that an embryo, especially a fetus, is still deserving of the respect we accord all living things; it’s just that I think the life of a born woman, her lived life, with all it contains, her consciousness, self-consciousness, etc. carries more weight than the life of the fetus (and I will refer people again to the example of Jewish law, which holds that an embryo/fetus is a life, but that it’s mother’s life carries more weight)–well, in my experience people who are antiabortion are unwilling to hear that nuance, are unwilling to admit that there might be a developed perspective out of which that nuance grows. Instead they call me a murderer, or an accessory to murder, and since the moral weight of calling me a murderer is something I have to get out from under if I want to be a part of the debate, then I am left little room other than to assert–in response to the notion that an embryo is, in fact, a fully ensouled human being–that the embryo is “nothing” or “a blob of cells.” I have known more than a few woman who have had abortions, at various stages of pregnancy, and not one of them thought the embryo or whatever was “nothing” or a “blob of cells,” but I have heard at least one of them use that argument because the weight of the antiabortion rhetoric left her little choice.
I am running, but I will also say that this does not mean I think the pro-choice side shouldn’t be doing more to try to change the terms of the debate–I just don’t know, given the all out war that has been declared by the other side, what we might do or how.
Can we recognize what a stunningly unique event each one-time creation of a new individual is [yes, I know there are twins, that also does not negate what I’m saying],
What, exactly, is the event that creates a new individual? Certainly, not every fertilized egg will become a baby. Apart from twins, as you already mentioned and inexplicably dismiss, there are also such things as chimeras (in which two embryos fuse, forming one baby), teratomas formed from fertilizations gone wrong, and many, many more miscarriages than abortions. Nor is the joining of sperm and egg the only time in which unique combinations of human DNA form. The mutation of a cell that produces cancer is an event that creates a unique individual (unless you are going to try to tell me that Henrietta Lacks is floating around in petri dishes throughout the world). Do you condemn “convenience chemotherapy”?
It’s a strange disconnect when people who themselves passed through the embryonic and fetal stages on the way to being their fully fledged selves dismissively designate the embryonic stage as “nothing” or “a blob of cells.” Tat tvam asi, that art (or wert) thou.
“You” also went through a stage where you were but an oocyte and spermatocyte. Why do you dismiss these stages as “nothing” and brazenly commit murder by menstrating every month? Shouldn’t you go out and at least TRY to get pregnant during that time?
Plenty of men are careless because of the existence of abortion as well.
Citation? I’d also refer you to the Alas post on abuse and sabatoge of birth control: men who are users who don’t care about their partners are likely to find strict laws against abortion more to their liking than liberal laws allowing abortion.
Dianne: sorry, I misspoke, or did not sufficiently specify. Of course not every fertilized egg survives. My belief is that human life begins at implantation. There is no human life without relationship. When an embryo successfully implants itself in a woman’s uterus and her body does not reject it, a relationship has begun. The individual that makes it that far is unique (it will be unique even if it’s a genetically identical multiple, for biological reasons I won’t go into now) and is already on its way. That individual has already come into existence and never will again.
The woman’s mind can still reject the embryo. My belief is that if she’s going to do so, it should be as early as possible, but that it’s worth your serious effort not to get into that situation and, if you do, a slide backward down the moral and evolutionary ladder to resolve it that way.
Your point about the ovum and sperm was so predictable that I, in fact, predicted it.
What? Even if we were to accept the claim of abortion as murder, how would that be a slide backward morally or, especially, evolutionary? Murder, especially murder in a situation that can be framed as self-defense, is moral in today’s US. Evolutionarily, what? Is your claim that we no longer kill our own species? I can’t believe you’d make that claim. So is that just hyperbole or are we dealing with something else here?
There is no human life without relationship.
Then a hermit living in the wilderness is not human? Or not alive?
@Dianne: The hermit came from a mother.
@Jake: Sometimes violence and killing are needful things, but nobody other than a psychopath would assert them as the ultimate advance in human problem-solving. If the solution to your problem is to kill something, you’re backtracking from our species’ best performance. It might be the best option you have – but I think Ambla is saying that it would serve us well to come up with better options so people don’t HAVE to make that choice.
There is much talk about “looking like a baby”. “Oh, it doesn’t really look like a baby!” etc. etc. It is strange that we are so fixated on if it looks like a baby. Human development starts prior to birth! Yes, a 5 week embryo doesn’t look like a 9 week fetus. And a 9 week fetus doesn’t look the same as a 24 week fetus. And a 34 week fetus doesn’t look the same as a 2 week newborn. And a 8 month old infant doesn’t look the same as a 2 year old toddler. And a 2 year old toddler doesn’t look the same as 4 year old preschooler……. all the way to…. a 40 year old man doesn’t look the same as an 80 year old elderly person. All these are stages in HUMAN DEVEOPMENT.
So, yes… Diane and the others infatuated with that the 8 week fetus doesn’t look or act “babylike” enough. You are actually right- BUT- that 8 week fetus is completely and absolutely HUMANLIKE and looks and behaves exactly the way humans are supposed to look and behave at that specific stage of development.
Now, just because you don’t value humans at that stage- doesn’t mean they don’t have intrinsic value. Plenty of humans over time have been dismissed and not valued at all whatsoever. Those humans still had value- society at the time just didn’t value them. A human’s value has nothing to do with who values or appreciates him or her. We have value because we are. Period.
On a personal level- the woman who is faced with this pregnancy right now. Yes, many women feel they have to make the choice to abort. They don’t want to. They value the little human child in their womb, but they don’t feel they have the resouces and support to care for that little human. Why do we not insist we and our society help women in more concrete and practical ways- so they don’t feel forced to make that choice?
You know, sara, your rhetoric seems to have as its underlying assumption that every woman who get pregnant really wants, by definition, (because she is a woman?) to be pregnant and really, in her heart of hearts, if only she is honest with herself, wants to give birth to the person the fetus she is carrying would become if only there were no impediments to her doing so. That is both a subtle and not so subtle version of biology is destiny and, were I a woman, I would find it, actually, quite insulting.
Which is not to say that we shouldn’t be providing services, etc. so that no woman feels she has to have an abortion because there is no support available to her. Still, there is quite a bit of distance between providing those services and assuming that the existence of those services will somehow render the need for women’s reproductive choice either fully or almost fully unnecessary.
Also, regarding this:
I am offended by this line of thinking–as I have been hinting in other comments. Just because my way of valuing a fetus or an embryo or a zygote is not yours does not mean I don’t value it, and for you to push the rhetoric in that direction is one of the things that shuts down debate.
Jake Squid: I couldn’t say it better than Robert.
We’ve generally been evolving in a direction of more awareness, more compassion. We no longer burn insane people with hot irons to drive the demons out. Outside of criminal enterprises, advanced countries don’t have slaves.
There are better ways to avoid or resolve this problem than by desensitizing yourself.
A woman who really doesn’t want to get pregnant, ever, can have a tubal ligation.
A woman who really doesn’t want to get pregnant now, or in the foreseeable future, but who wants to have sexual experience and expression (and there’s no question sexual love and adventure can not only “make another,” but can also “make self”), has a wide variety of birth control options to choose from. None of them are perfect (but what is?). But they work well when used as if life depended on it. When I read the many stories of failed birth control on websites like i’mnotsorry, I wonder what percentage of them are actually failed birth control and what percentage are failure to use birth control carefully and correctly.
Before abortion was legal, we were scared of having to be picked up in a mob car, blindfolded, and taken to some unknown place in New Jersey. A lot of us were very careful. I “lost my virginity” at 20. It was 1966. I went to a male GYN (most of them were), who made crude remarks to me in the process of examining me, and got fitted for a diaphragm, which I knew was the least invasive effective form of birth control, and was the kind my mother had used lifelong with only one failure (she had 6 wanted children and miscarried the 7th one, which she did not want). I used it together with the rhythm method — I’d “cover” the time of ovulation and at least 5 days in either direction with the diaphragm. I was fortunate in having “mittelschmerz” so I could feel when I ovulated, and I was regular. With great care and (I am well aware) also great luck, I didn’t get pregnant till I was 36, and that was a pregnancy that really, really wanted to happen: someone in the family had just died. My birth control routine was no different than ever, but this time it “failed.” I didn’t get it. It was a very complicated situation and I ended up having an abortion because my longtime man friend did not want a child then and I wasn’t so sure I wanted him. I will never stop regretting it.
And, the culture played a major part. It didn’t encourage me to recognize that embryo as part of a continuity that could extend 80 years or more into the future and change every life it encountered. On the contrary, it encouraged me actively not to go there, so that I could do this thing without feeling bad about it.
Ha ha.
Richard, do you value humans at that early stage? Really? Why don’t you define the ways in which you value those early humans (that validates the young human’s value- not dependent upon someone else wanting him or her)…
And, the countless number of women who suffer and mourn the death of the aborted offspring would surely take offense to you stating you don’t feel it’s necessary to account for their lifetime of regret. At least be unbiased: admit there will always be women who have zero connection to motherhood and would abort no matter abortions legality, fetal size or development, etc. Likewise there will always be those women who were misinformed by clinic workers, partners, reading material that blatantly leaves out fetal development facts http://fetalfactsdotnet.wordpress.com/category/our-bodies-our-sevles/, pro-choice propaganda, etc. They regret their choice.
I am considering those women in my thoughts and my statements. Please don’t belittle that, or them. Their struggles are real and the lives of their terminated offspring were real, too… not potential lives, but lives with potential.
Nevertheless, killing is in no way a slide backwards either morally or evolutionarily. I never said anybody asserts murder is the ultimate advance in human problem solving. How you think that is somehow relevant to my questioning the original comment is beyond me. I said that under current US moral codes and at the current evolutionary state of our species that it is not a slide backward. Can you see how that is not related in any way to asserting that violence and killing are “the ultimate advance in human problem-solving?”
The death penalty, our various bombing and/or military campaigns in such diverse locales as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Bosnia, etc. in the last decade or two, the legality of shooting an intruder in one’s home (even if said intruder is unarmed and/or fleeing) are all things that indicate that, even if we accept the anti-choice mantra vis-a-vis abortion and its equivalency to murder, there is simply no credible way to claim that abortion is “a slide backward down the moral and evolutionary ladder.” (Much less so if one doesn’t accept that anti-choice position. Most pro-choice folks do not so it’s a ridiculous tactic to use when confronting pro-choice folks.)
Sure, it would be better if we could come up with other options. Few people would argue that. But since we haven’t come up with other options at the present time one cannot consider abortion to be a step backwards morally or, especially, evolutionarily. It’s an absurd claim and its absurdity deserves to be pointed out.
And in other threads of conversation… this has degenerated into the black hole that is the hate and derision and same old arguments attendant in almost any debate about abortion.
sara, amba,
Do you think that none of us have seen the arguments that you put forth? I can tell you that we’ve seen them dozens or hundreds or thousands of times. Why should those arguments work now? We find them to be faulty at best, most often just flat out dishonest. That is not going to convince us, no matter your good intentions.
If you’ll stop, I’m sure the rest of us will stop responding to arguments that we find unconvincing and dishonest.
You evidently haven’t noticed that my argument is not an argument for criminalization.
As such, why do you need to counter it at all? Why should it bother you?
And why should someone who honestly differs from you be “dishonest” in their motivations, any more than you are? That strikes me as an attempt at silencing and at homogenization — everybody should be the same, and everybody should be like you. Or at least they should shut up.
Sara:
I’m not going to get drawn into this debate, especially since I have answered the question upthread, both in the link to what I wrote about the Jewish view on abortion and in the comment where I referenced the Jewish view on abortion. More to the point, answering my characterization of your rhetoric with the question you have asked is a deflecting strategy, not debating, though I do appreciate the fact that you have at least defined the category of women you are talking about, because of course those women’s lives need to be accounted for and of course those women deserve, are worthy of, compassion, and of course there should be mechanisms in place that help women in those positions avoid the regret you are talking about, but speaking as if those women are all women, or even most women, speaking as if biology were destiny–which is still I what assert that you were arguing, at least implicitly–is, I think, to use the term you use to accuse me, belittling of women. Period.
Amba:
I agree that this is something that needs to be talked about more, though I still think it is the antiabortion rhetoric and the way it frames the debate that prevents the discussion from happening between the two sides more than it is the pro-choice rhetoric. I once wrote an article called “Fertility and Virility: A Meditation on Sperm” which was about the ways in which our cultural emphasis on virility actively mitigates against men’s thinking very deeply at all about what it means that we are fertile beings. You can find it here, along with another piece I wrote, “His Sexuality, Her Reproductive Rights.” They are 20 years old and some of the language sounds quite corny to me now–the stuff about “living our manhood,” especially–and the arguments show that these were my first attempts at working through some of the ideas, but my point is that I agree with you that there is not enough serious debate, serious discussion, etc. in our culture about what it means that men and women are fertile and that this fertility is inextricably linked if not to sexuality per se, then certainly to sex.
Also, I think it’s worth remembering that there are cultures in which abortion is not considered murder that openly acknowledge the sadness, the mournfulness and even the regret, etc. that women–and often their male partners–feel about aborting a pregnancy. Here is an excerpt from an article called “Abortion and Earth” on Truthout:
Richard,
Thank you for the links (I really look forward to reading them while traveling tomorrow) and for your thoughtfulness. I think one problem is that we as a culture don’t do much of anything in a sacramental way. “Nothing is sacred.”
All I can say tonight — but again, thank you.
The hermit came from a mother.
Yes, but amba said that there is no living human without relationship. Presumably that means that if you have no relationships you lose either your life or your humanity. So the hermit may have been a living human by her definition but is s/he now?
We’ve generally been evolving in a direction of more awareness, more compassion. We no longer burn insane people with hot irons to drive the demons out. Outside of criminal enterprises, advanced countries don’t have slaves.
These changes are not due to evolution unless you’re going to demonstrate that there has been a genetic change in humanity that makes us less likely to burn insane people, etc.