I’m 23 weeks pregnant: almost two-thirds of the way through. So far, I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a normal, complication-free pregnancy.
Which means that I suffered two weeks of feeling vaguely sick during every waking moment, unable to face any food apart from crackers and chopped apples. I vomited at the sight of blood for the first time in my life. I had days when exhaustion overwhelmed me and I couldn’t do anything but sleep. For the whole of the first trimester, hormones sent my emotions so far out of whack that a DIY show could reduce me to floods of tears.
I’ve given up or cut down on favourite foods and drinks that, although harmless to me could do untold damage to my baby. I had to take a vile-tasting liquid medicine for a recurring condition rather than the usual straightforward tablet, which contains an ingredient that could harm the baby.
My nipples became so tender that I had to wear a bra even in bed. By the time that had stopped, my breasts had grown large enough to make me uncomfortably self-conscious. A visit to the bank manager is now torture because my waistline has thickened so much that none of my smart clothes fit. I have to take exaggerated care whenever I lift anything that it doesn’t press against my stomach.
These are all minor niggles compared to the joy of knowing that I’m having the baby I always longed for. And when November comes and the oxytocin works its magic, none of them will bother me again. But it has had one effect on me: what patience I ever had with the argument that “if you don’t want the baby you can just put it up for adoption” has vanished forever.
Women who want an abortion don’t object to the fetus, they object to the pregnancy. If the technology existed to remove a fetus unharmed from its mother and transfer it into an artificial womb, with no more complications than an abortion presents, abortion would disappear. Putting the baby up for adoption doesn’t solve the problem: the woman is still forced to act as a life-support system for nine months.
I want this baby passionately, and I still wish it was possible for me to take a break from being pregnant every now and again. Just pop the baby into an artificial womb for a couple of hours and do my own thing without having to worry about how it might affect the baby. And if I feel like this with a wanted pregnancy, how much worse would a woman feel who became pregnant as a result of contraceptive failure and remains pregnant because she’s been denied access to abortion?
Pro-lifers often brush this question under the carpet. There’s no admission that pregnancy is a process, and one that uses up a woman’s physical and emotional resources, sometimes alarmingly. They treat pregnancy as a passive state, purely a question of not having an abortion.
That’s not how it is. I may not be consciously controlling the progress of this pregnancy, but I’m not waiting passively for my due date either. I’m not the same person, physically or emotionally, as I would have been had I not become pregnant. For me, those changes are worthwhile: a small price to pay for my baby. But to insist a woman accepts them against her will, despite being by her own admission not ready for motherhood, is neither fair nor reasonable.
Edit: When I said that artificial wombs would eliminate all need for abortion, I thought I was stating the majority pro-choice position. Turns out there’s a lot more to the question than I believed. For “disappear”, please read “be enormously reduced”.
And it’s not just uncomfortable: pregnancy is dangerous. You risk your life every time you endure a pregnancy, and not only because of previously-existing conditions. Women still die in labor; you can have a heart attack on the delivery table even with no previous heart history to indicate the risk.
And then there’s the lifelong changes to your body. They’re not all just superficial appearance things. My hips have never closed back to their pre-pregnancy dimensions, even when I’d lost all the weight and toned the muscles: the joints separated and there’s no returning them. Same with my feet, they’re wide now and always will be. My uterus is scarred from each pregnancy, where the placenta attached. My breasts swelled so much and so fast during pregnancy that the skin stretched permanently.
Thanks for this post. You have my sympathy for the discomforts of pregnancy. I hope you have a good doctor/midwife and lots of caring people around to help.
In typical argumentative fashion, I do take issue with this point in your post: “Women who want an abortion don’t object to the fetus, they object to the pregnancy. If the technology existed to remove a fetus unharmed from its mother and transfer it into an artificial womb, with no more complications than an abortion presents, abortion would disappear. ”
Be careful talking about all women – that may be true for some but it is by no means true for all. It’s not true for me.
There was a philosophy book written on this subject, called “The Abortion Myth” by Leslie Cannold, a bioethicist. She grapples with the hypothetical “artifical womb” you offer, and concludes that it would not be a cure-all for unwanted pregnancies, and that most women would reject the option.
I think you’re right that women aren’t primarily rejecting the fetus, but I think it’s not pregnancy they reject either – it’s much bigger than that. It’s the physical, emotional, financial responsibility of motherhood. Not generally, because many women are already mothers when they have abortions, but they do not want to mother that potential child, at that particular time.
Sure, some women don’t chose adoption because of the physical stress of pregnancy and childbirth, but I would guess that for most it is because they don’t want a child existing out in the world that they have given up. I respect women who do it, but I can’t imagine the psychic pain of that choice. The emotional burden of motherhood is not something that adoption takes away, and the artificial womb couldn’t either.
I usually avoid hypotheticals but this one brings out a lot of the nuances of what being “pro-choice” is really about. I’m curious to hear others’ thoughts.
“If the technology existed to remove a fetus unharmed from its mother and transfer it into an artificial womb, with no more complications than an abortion presents, abortion would disappear.”
I wouldn’t go that far, but I do agree that it would be a lot rarer. (Thanks for another great post btw.)
For those of us that don’t see a fetus as a person, but care very much for children, I think that there would be a reluctance to simply pass along a potential child and assume that the social services and adoption system was going to do a decent job of raising him or her. If I was ever in a situation where I was pregnant, but did not want to be, I would be reluctant to go through pregnancy and give the child up for adoption not only because this would require that I go through pregnancy, but becuase I would feel responsibility to a child that I don’t feel towards a three month old fetus.
I would also worry, if this became a trend, that the number of families looking to adopt would be outstripped by the number of children needing to be adopted.
Bean, do you think that people should be allowed to sell their surplus organs?
I had an interesting epiphany last night about this very subject. I was reading Robert’s statements about women who had birthcontrol fail for them being sent to adoptive agencies, versus allowing them abortion – his three pronged response to the different motivations for abortion. I thought to myself that adoption would not have been an option for me, and having gone through one full-term pregnancy and being in the third trimester of another, I know for a fact I would have a DAMN hard time of adoption being a viable solution for me. Once I considered my options in the first pregnancy I had, where I terminated it, I never had any doubts about it being the right choice for me.
That said, I thought about the whole ‘what if they could remove the fetus’. What I decided would be acceptible for me is one of freezing, much like with embryo, where the fetus is suspended indefinitely and the only person or people with the right to that fetus would be the parents of said fetus, unless they signed such rights away.
Nick, From reading this and previous posts, I believe it can be stated that you are a mature and intelligent woman. You knew what you were getting into and you were educated about what would happen to your body, and mind.
Nonetheless, pregnancy is frightening and life altering process that should not be belittled.
Imagine being 13 or 14 and pregnant, against your will, and unable to get an abortion? Having to go through the pregnancy without any understanding of what is going to happen to your body or the pain you are about to go through.
My mother was a labor and delivery nurse for 20 years and delt with 14 year olds going into labor. She watched them in pain, being unable to consent to drugs, and frightened. She watched as her parents refused to consent to painkillers.
Forcing a CHILD to go through with a pregnancy is inhumane.
The pains of going through a pregnancy are rarely truly recognized in mainstream media if only to show (in humor of course) how “difficult” it is on the significant other to deal with the alter-ego which comes out during pregnancy.
Great post.
bean: I’m not sure about that. Once the fetus is out of the woman’s body, whether by natural birth or transferral to an artificial womb, the whole equation changes. Killing it because you won’t use your body as a life-support system can be justified, but I’m not sure killing it because you’re uncomfortable about its existence can.
Nick, well that all depends on whether you consider abortion equal to killing, doesn’t it?
Robert, what exactly, does that have to do with anything?
“If the technology existed to remove a fetus unharmed from its mother and transfer it into an artificial womb, with no more complications than an abortion presents, abortion would disappear.”
I also used to believe that, but after reading the post about Frances Kissling’s article, and the comments that followed it, I’m not so sure.
Of course, such a situation would make Roe obsolete.
I think we settled in the last thread that abortion kills fetuses and the question up for debate is whether this can be justified.
“I think we settled in the last thread that abortion kills fetuses”
Sorry, I missed that part – I bowed out after a while.
“the question up for debate is whether this can be justified.”
Which is closer to what was going through my head anyway, so ok.
There are a lot of serious ethical questions involved with taking a fetus out of a woman and having it develop that way. It might be very unethical to do for all concerned. It shouldn’t be regarded as a possible way to justify ending abortion.
Robert, what exactly, does that have to do with anything?
If you believe that your control over your cells should be so absolute that even the existence of something with your DNA “out there” violates your rights, then you surely believe that you have the right to sell your own organs. If you own it, you own it, right?
I think we settled in the last thread that abortion kills fetuses and the question up for debate is whether this can be justified.
Anything can be justified. I think the question that needs to be answered to move this decision out of the realm of personal choice is:
Can it be objectively determined that a fetus is a person or equal to a person? Or at least, does the overwhelming majority of people believe that a zygote, embryo or fetus is equal to a person?
Can it be objectively determined that a fetus is a person or equal to a person?
But a fetus can be less than a person and still have a right not to be killed without good reason. And once it doesn’t need a woman’s body to survive, the best reason vanishes.
I think it would reduce it, for sure. Probably the end result is if you abortion from 9 weeks on, you’d put it in an artificial womb and before that, no one would really think much of just terminating altogether, because it’s not human enough to bother. As soon as it became impossible to use pregnancy as punishment, most of the concern for zygotes and very young fetuses would vanish, so I think that’ s a moot point. Later abortions, howerver, are troubling, but they are less than 10% of all abortions–later abortions being post 12 weeks.
If you believe that your control over your cells should be so absolute that even the existence of something with your DNA “out there” violates your rights, then you surely believe that you have the right to sell your own organs. If you own it, you own it, right?
Various things I clearly own, yet cannot sell:
1. My 401(k) account
2. My law degree, permitting me to practice law in the state of Pennsylvania
3. My vote
4. My Jello-pudding cup (from a pack of six — resale prohibited)
Ownership is rarely compatible with unfettered rights over the object.
FYI, Nick, most women who abort are plenty ready to be mothers in the sense that they’ve already had children. They don’t want another child is all. Anti-choicers have got us all imagining the typical abortion patient as a young, slutty woman who is avoiding “consequences” and weaseling out of her holy obligation to be a mother. In reality, it’s usually a woman with as many, if not more, children already than she can handle and she aborts rather than degrade the lives of the ones she already has.
Somebody ought to set up a test case for minors going through labor whose parents won’t consent to painkillers. The person GOING THROUGH LABOR wants painkillers? I don’t care if they’re twelve. Give them painkillers. End of fucking story. For a parent to deny their daughter painkillers not only reinforces the pregnancy-as-punishment, control-of-women system that is the anti-choice crowd’s true agenda, it is the work of a heartless, unfeeling, abusive pissworm, and a sadistic, sickeningly unfit parent, who is treating thier daughter as a slave, as chattel, as something less than human and fit only to be abused, and they’re doing so with the full support of the government whose constitution clearly outlaws cruel and unusual punishments.
What would happen if some parent decided to punish their child for something by deliberately causing that amount of pain, in a manner unrelated to pregnancy, such as electrical shocks, burning, or a severe beating of some sort? My guess is, that would be considered abuse. So why’s this acceptable?
At the same time, dentists FORCE people to take Novicaine when they have cavities drilled . . . or at least mine does. So how come delivery-room staff doesn’t override the parents’ wishes with those of SOMEONE WHO MATTERS?!?!?!
On the other hand, thanks for chasing away my sad-Harry-Potter-book-ending-induced depression with pure rage.
Pregnancy is a process, that’s for sure, and every step of the way something different can intervene to end it. I don’t know whether the “incubator option” would reduce the rate of abortion. I suspect that it might make adoption more palatable to some women because they would have gone through considerably less emotional investment to get there, but there are a lot of issues that come into play when you are considering adoption. Just for instance: when I was pg at 19 it was made clear to me in various ways that my boyfriend was going to try to rope me in permanently if I gave birth. He flat out told me that he would not consent to adoption. So you would have had to count me out.
As far as I am concerned, the only issue here is at what point the respect given to the fetus as a living being outweighs the mother’s right to direct her life and be free of its actual and potential impact on her emotional and physical well being. There is NO clear answer here, everyone has their own view based on how they weigh the rights and interests involved, and although I think viability is a reasonable line, in fact, the overwhelming majority of abortions are terminated far in advance of that line, and most of the rest do not involve potentially “adoptable” babies. I could see, for instance, a woman whose health is threatend by a planned pregnancy definitely using that option — but not because she plans on giving up the baby.
And, of course, there isn’t going to be any incubator option anytime soon. It’s not even clear to me that such an option would be ethical, but then, I spent considerable time wandering through a NICU after the premature birth of my first daughter and have a lot of questions even now on the dramatic and invasive intereventions that are used to salvage incredibly sick infants.
But a fetus can be less than a person and still have a right not to be killed without good reason.
I had a better response yesterday that was lost at “technical difficulty time,” but…
There are lots of things that are less than a person that we kill without good reason. Big game hunting is an example. Also, just because the best reason has been eliminated doesn’t mean that there aren’t good reasons remaining. I can think of several.
I agree with the other commenters that it would greatly lessen the number of abortions, though.
The fact that you unnecessarily suffered from morning sickness drives home the point that US society values fetuses infinetly more than the mother. You probably entirely avoided alcohol, and carried a variety of other unnecessary burdens. They are both baseless moral panics that specifically burden women at no cost to men. Any risk to a fetus is too much, no matter how slight the risk, nor how heavy the burden to women, is considered worthwhile trade-off by society.
Morning sickness is almost entirely unnecessary in pregnancy, and the reason so many women suffer from it is the same reason we’re so panicky about alcohol during pregnancy.
Vitamin B6 (10 to 25 mg every eight hours) should significantly reduce nausea and vomiting. If that doesn’t work, Diclectin (available everywhere [Europe, Canada, etc.] outside the U.S., but known as Bendectin when it was available in the U.S.) is the next step. One tablet of Bendectin had 10 mg each of vitamin B6 and doxylamine. 10 mg of Doxylamine is half a Unisom tablet, sold over the counter with no pregnancy restrictions or warnings in the U.S.. Verify this with your physician for peace of mind as to it’s safety if you are in the U.S.. That this isn’t better advertised in U.S. pregnancy guides is shameful.
Bendectin was voluntarily removed from the market after numerous, unsuccessful lawsuits alleged it had caused birth defects. After it’s withdrawal, no decrease in the rates of malformations occurred, despite Bendectin being used by 40% of pregnant women at one point. Study after study continued to prove it’s safety. More details are available here and here.
Similarly when it comes to Alcohol, there is conclusive evidence that a single drink a day has no increase in Fetal Alcohol syndrome. Binge drinking, such as taking more than the recommended for pregnant women weekly 120 grams of alcohol all in one sitting, is very different, and has been proven to be harmful. (Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, 1996). Although these recommendations have been challenged by some (Guerri et al., 1999), they are typical of the European stance on prenatal drinking (EUROMAC, 1992).
For more, read Elizabeth Armstrong and
Ernest Abel.
“For instance, a woman who has one drink a day every day and a woman who binges once a week, consuming six or more drinks at once, both average seven drinks a week. Yet each of these drinking patterns represents potentially very different levels of alcohol exposure for the woman and her fetus. Since peak blood alcohol levels (BALs) reached per drinking episode are a crucial factor in FAS (Abel, 1999), the ‘average drinks’ measure distorts the relationship between alcohol and teratogenesis and muddies our perceptions of risky drinking. ”
Making pregnancy into more of an ordeal just reduces a woman’s energy and ability to engage in healthy behaviors, for her and her baby. Women who cannot work due to unnecessary morning sickness hurts the baby’s financial start in life. Women who cannot care for other children because they are debilitated with the morning sickness of another child hurts those children’s well-being.
Baseless panic about alcohol during pregnancy just makes women less likely to trust guidelines that have merit.
As I’ve started a family, reading the pregnancy books and actually figuring out what is or isn’t alarmist fiction, and what dangers are underreported (read “Having Faith” on environmental toxins and pregnancy) is a huge undertaking. This should not be so hard.
Throw guaranteed nationalized healthcare in with that artificial womb and it’s a deal, even if I share bean’s feelings about possible nervousness regarding my DNA walking around somewhere out there, getting into who knows what kind of mischief… [cue ominous music]
Seriously, one of the reasons thoughts of my own future are rarely pleasant is because of the perpetual crap-fest in this pathetic country that passes for healthcare. If my spawn has a 1 out of 2 chance of inheriting the same potentially deblitating disease that I’ve got, and thus the same uncertain future, it seems stupid to me to perpetuate my DNA. It would be nice if all the people who obsess about helpless pre-borns would obsess half so much about already-borns who rankle at the thought of dying pointlessly of a largely curable disease– thanks to this fucked-up system.
Even the “artificial womb” idea requires me to assume that if I spawn, some loving person(s) out there will want the result despite my family’s long history of myopia, hideous flat feet, bad skin, early baldness (if it’s a male child) heart trouble, and mind-blowing Seinfeldian neurosis. Can I get a signed statement from the future parent promising they’ll love the little tyke despite all this ? I want the statement before I sign up for the interwomb teleport !!
Good column, Nick.
Where would all these children go?
I lived in Ecuador, where unplanned pregnancies are terminated all the time, illegally. I even helped arrange one. Yet, there is still a “glut” of unwanted babies in orphanages. In the oild days, unwanted girl babies could become foster maids- one word for maid in Spanish is “criada”, which has another meaning as fostered child, or maybe foundling. I personally know two adult foster maids very well. Both were taken in as babies, and raised to be servants. One is still, at 50. The other is married and has her own houselhold. I think the practice is on the wane, Many unwanted babies get adopted to US families- thanks to legal abortion. Others grow up in orphanages. Others get adopted domestically, but there is still that lingering attitude towards “foundlings” and I know one family that refused to give the’r adoptee the family surname.
My point is: adoption is presented as this obvious, loving, easy solution, but have any of them looked at how it was before Roe v Wade? Has there ever been a st
Woops. I would just like some crack research team to study the success of adoption in cultures with legal abortion v. cultures where it is illegal.
Once the fetus is out of the woman’s body, whether by natural birth or transferral to an artificial womb, the whole equation changes.
Which is why it’s murder to dispose of an unwanted frozen embryo.
Oh, wait…
Just a quick response to Kyra, in the case of what my mother witnessed, the parents did believe it was “gods punishment” and the doctors sat them down and basically told them if they didn’t sign the form, their daughter and the baby could be at great risk (esp. if she passed out from the pain).
The doctors were not about to stand by and watch this young girl suffer.
EdgeWise and alsis 39 are both right. To understand how “fetalcentric” we have become you only need to understand many obstetricians’ stance in favor of c-section: it lessens the risks to baby by a very little bit, but indisputably raises the death rate in mothers. Many obstetricians and their professional societies consider this to be an acceptable trade off to the point that they don’t even convey this as a risk.
Barbara what about practices performed on the mother during labor in the past that never had anything to do with the mother or the baby? Like routine enima’s or routine episiotomy. The fact that women are put in a position completely against gravity to make it more convenient for the doctor?
The rise of c-sections has to do with a lot of other issues as well. The rise of obesity has made it harder for women to give birth vaginally because they aren’t strong enough.
c-sections are also being opted for by women who do not want their vagina to go through the wear and tear a vaginal delivery can do and they want to be able to schedule their delievery.
Another frightening reason women are opting for c-sections? They are having them early in the 8th month of pregnancy to avoid any excess weight gain.
Elena, those are interesting points. I also think that pro-choicers should be unhesitant in talking about the huge amount of money that will be made by go-betweens in the U.S. if there’s any sudden boom in the number of healthy White babies available for adoption. After all, pro-lifers can prattle on about bullshit like inidividual aborting women not wanting babies because they won’t be able to buy so many Prada shoes, etc. Why shouldn’t pro-choicers turn the tables and start asking pro-life groups if they stand to reap a cut from the potential millions coming from the legions of “better” babies that would suddenly be available post-Roe ? Wouldn’t that further taint their insistence that all they really care about is the precious baby and making the world more godly blah blah blah ?
Barbara: “Fetalcentric.” It’s funny because it’s true. Also sad. :/
This is exactly how I felt when I was pregnant in ’01-02. I so desperately wanted my daughter, and I was beyond cloud 9 in happiness. Yet, pregnancy was disabling for me. I had hyperemesis gravidum until 21 weeks, then extreme pubic symphysys pain and loss of some function of my left leg. Exhuasted beyond belief and some of the most extreme stretch marks I have seen. Yet I was never, ever so happy, despite the suffering! My dad, who is really a dyed in the wool ditto-head gloated “I bet you’re pro-life[sic] now, aren’t you!” and I looked at him for a moment and said, “I have never more wholeheartedly supported abortion rights then I do now. If anything I am more pro-choice than ever. NO ONE should go through this unless they really, really want to.” Pregnancy changes you forever, and simply giving the baby away is not feasible for most women (though it is for some). Being pregnant strengthened my resolve that pregnancy must be a choice. It takes over your life for those 9 – 10 months.
Actually, on advice from my doctor and midwife, I cut my alcohol intake to something like one unit twice a week from week 13 onward. Which was not enough to satisfy some busybodies, but I had no problem with telling them I had medical sanction and they could go to hell.
As for the various dietary changes, which bug me a lot more than alcohol, I’ve thought about saying “to hell with them”, but then I considered how bad I would feel if I miscarried and decided it’s better not to tempt fate.
Exactly what I said when the nausea was at its worst.
bean wrote:
Man At His Best [tm], a la’ Esquire magazine. Of course, pro-lifers rarely talk about specimens like this. Man ? What man ? [snort]
Just a plea from one commenter – can we please not feed Robert on this thread? Especially when he’s clearly trying to rile people up? After all, it’s not as if we don’t already know what he thinks about this subject.
Can I second BritGirlSF?
Also, thanks to all of you who are sharing your pregnancy stories, and those of you who are sharing your abortion stories. It’s so good to see them, when we’re all currently being attacked by the divide-and-conquer techniques of the anti-choicers.
The fact that it would feel weird to have some random kid of mine running around just because the condom broke isn’t the only reason I would feel uncomfortable giving a fetus up to an artifical womb. Although, yes, it would, and this is an important point. As Amanda points out – what about mothers with already loving families that just don’t want more children, do you think they would all be comfortable with this option? Especially if it’s simply that they don’t want anymore children right now? Especially if their reasons are economical?
As Barbara also points out: “the overwhelming majority of abortions are terminated far in advance of [viability], and most of the rest do not involve potentially “adoptable” babies.
Whether it’s bean worrying about the kid’s father hurting him/her (great point btw), alsis39 worrying that the variety of traits the kid will inhierit will make it less likely the kid’s adoptive family won’t love him/her, or alsis39 and me worrying that our offspring will inheirit our more serious medical conditions – without any assurrance that the child will be given adequate care or, in worse cases than mine, needed cures will be found in time, our point is that it’s a much more complicated suggestion that just: oh! I don’t have to go through the whole pregancy and raising the kid part? well count me in!
There are many different reasons why women choose abortion, often many different reasons why a woman chooses abortion. Nick, you’ve hit on a big one by pointing out that, currently, even if a woman chooses adoption she still need to go through pregnancy, but it’s still not the only one. Until all of the reasons are addressed (and I’m not sure they can be) abortion still needs to remain safe and legal, even if we choose to work on making it more rare.
Sorry to double post, but I wonder, if an affordable artificial womb is available (and it will need to be affordable for it to be put to the use being discussed here) how many women who do want children will opt to have children, but not go through pregnancy themselves?
I also can’t see extreme pro-lifers actually going for this in reality (although, despite it’s faults I think it’s an idea worth exploring). The whole artificial womb idea seems too “Brave New World” for the far right to get behind in IMHO.
Plus- who would pay for the articifial wombs?
Edgewise thanks for your thoughts on fetal centrism. It’s so scary being pregnant, and crazy pregnancy nazis make you even more afraid. I had my inlaws criticizing me for being in a car on a bumpy road, and people sagely telling me “better safe than sorry” when they told me not to bend at the waist. I had the world’s worst headache once for a whole day until I caved and called the doctor, who said of course I could take some advil. I did drink occasionally and I dyed my hair, pumped gas and ate everything I wanted. My aunt always says that people have taken all the fun out of being pregnant.
The whole point of being “pro-life” isn’t to “save the baby Jeebus” in the womb – it’s to use pregnancy as punishment for women having sex. That’s it.
The ideal scenario for the pro-lifers is that of middle-class white women in the 1940s through the early 1970’s, where middle-class white women were punished for having sex by being shipped off to prison-like “shelters” where they got prenatal care, pregnancy counseling and delivery – just so long as they gave up their children for adoption. Here is a link to many accounts of what happened to birthmothers in these “shelters.”
Forced adoption is win-win for the “pro-lifers” – the birthmother gets twin punishments of being forced to carry a fetus to term, but having the baby taken away from her soon after birth. Don’t tell me this isn’t traumatic to the birthmother – all the birthmothers I talked to during the Measure 58 (open records for adult adoptees in Oregon, 1998) had the same guilt “pro-lifers” try to pin on women who have abortions.
If the “pro-lifers” wanted to reduce abortion, they’d be for increased knowledge of and distribution of birth control. However, they’re the ones refusing to dispense birth control prescriptions in pharmacies, keeping Plan B from being dispensed over-the-counter, and mandating ignorance-based “abstinence” education in schools.
Okay, I know this is tongue in cheek, but I felt I needed to add to the stipulation that any invitro fertilized eggs that are frozen need to be given out as well, regardless of whether those potential parents want their genetic offspring being handed out ‘like candy’ to quote that Wisconsin politician. Free babies for everyone!
I would personally be against using an artificial womb as an alternative to abortion for myself not just because of an abstract concern for having some unknown-to-me child running around out there, but for ethical reasons, both as far as the potential offspring itself and in general. The consequences of transferring an embryo from a real womb to a fake one mid-gestation would be mostly unknown for a good 25-50 years after the launching of such technology. I wouldn’t want to be part of a possibly disasterous and unethical experiment, especially since my part in it would be subjecting someone else to the treatment before they were even a “someone else.” The method of removing the embryo would likely be more dangerous and invasive than a simple first trimester abortion, also. It seems another violent and unnecessary intrusion upon women’s bodies to me. Further, women’s role in pregnancy is not just providing a womb. I suspect we won’t fully understand just how complicated the art and science of a gestating woman’s body is until we strip embryos from them and attempt to raise them in creepy artificial environments.
Kim wrote:
I don’t know. If everyone in blog land is bombarding the internet with cute pics of their offspring, it’s not gonna’ be so special anymore, is it ?
Aaron V. wrote:
Oh, but Measure 58 (which passed, for those playing in another state) allowed the rule-your-lifers to wallow in the proverbial cheap grace as never before ! For the most part, the same people who would have been calling single mothers longing to keep their babies “psychotic” and so forth were the same ones shedding crocodile tears for the birth mothers who didn’t want the measure. The rationale of the pro-lifers being that the passage of the law would lead to more abortions.
They did such a superb job, as usual, of ducking their own role in that probability– since their own emphasis on “shaming” as a benevolent social tool is what makes it so “extremely difficult” (per Aaron’s link) for some single, unmarried women to keep and raise their babies in the first place. Only the mothers are shamed, of course. Never the fathers, even though any fool (well, one who didn’t have sex-ed classes in the Bush Era :p ) knows that eggs can’t turn into babies without help from sperm.
And, yes, I know that some women would find the possibility of a more open adoption procedure a factor in choosing abortion over adoption. I’m not sure how often it would be a deciding factor, however. I’m also not sure that adoption is a rosy-hued wonderful thing under all circumstances. Again, it’s the pregnant woman’s choice. She should always get as clear a picture as possible of all potential rewards and pitfalls, including stuff like the link Aaron mentioned and the ramifications of law like M58.
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I think “faux-lifers” is a better term for those people.
Anyone catch that “Doug” guy on Jakbische’s blog, grumbling about how men are ignored in this debate, poor things ? Maybe someone should start a thread asking whether once this “artificial womb” thing takes off, we can compell pro-life men to wear the womb themselves, and carry the precious baby until it’s born. I think an artificial lactation hormone is in order, too, so they can enjoy breastfeeding their adoptive spawn at least until a few of its teeth come in.
Hey, guys, if you didn’t want to engage in the tough work of pregnancy and birth and parenting, you should’ve kept your mouths shut. What’s the saying ? Ah, yes: “Mind your own business, and you’ll stay busy ALL the time.”
Feh. >:
I’ve seen doug on other blogs and I tend to take him at his word. He wasn’t grumbling about the lack of men, just noticing it.
That said, I think it’s very telling that he assumed the “other person in the equation” was a man, and not the pregnant woman. Show’s just how fucking invisible women are to enforced-childbirthers (I love that reframing and I’m totally sticking with it).
I had similar thoughts to you, about how men who want to outlaw abortion should be willing to have fetuses implanted into their own bodies. I’d be happy to write a post on it over the weekend, but I don’t get nearly the kind of traffic y’all get here, so I don’t know if the thread would be as satisfying for you as you’d like. Hrm. I think I’ll write the post anyway.
Oh, btw, I’m Jake from Ms. (wildcatfighting from the ezboards). I’m so excited to see that you read my blog!
Jenny K :
I’d do it if it had been proven safe and reliable (so, not if it were invented today, but if it had been invented 20-30 years ago I’d probably go for it). Not that this is possible with modern technology (gestation is unbelievably complicated), but it’s nice to think about.
I like kids; I think I’d be a good parent; I think my husband would be a good parent. But pregnancy is terrifying. I’d be totally down with the offspring thing if my husband were the one who’d be pregnant — I could fetch him drinks and rub his feet and find the quickest route to the hospital and all that good stuff. But me, that’s a whole ‘nother story. I’ll probably do it eventually, but I will complain a whole lot. Having the option to avoid pregnancy would be great.
It seems an underlying topic in this thread is adoption. Indeed, it’s an unexamined topic in the whole abortion debate. Who will adopt the millions of unwanted babies? Who will adopt the foreign orphans when abortion is no longer leagl here? Is adoption always better than singlemotherhood (no, but let me ask it rhetorically, because it’s not being examined in the debate by the Enforced Chilbirthers). I mean, if choice is truly threatened, it’s time to start talking about what on earth is going to happen to all he unwanted children. Enforced childbirthers seem to think the model of adoption in the legal abortion era will apply- but I doubt that pregnant teenagers will get to handpick the adoptive family anymore once there is an oversupply of babies. Adoption, as noted before in this thread, wasn’t always considered a loving sacrifice, and it wasn’t always and isn’t always a happily ever after story for kids, either. Not to mention the poor women.
Tiger Spot, why wait for an artificial womb? You could adopt instead, and even skip the infant stage too if you’d rather. It seems criminal to me how much money is spent developing more and more technologies to aid fertility when there are still children who need parents.
Jake Squid: “I agree with the other commenters that it would greatly lessen the number of abortions, though. ”
Considering this thread is the origin of the “long weird road of tangential speculation on reproductive technologies of the future,” as you put it in the other thread. Odd there is no whinning from you about hypotheticals or no bizarre rants about “womanbabykeet”s here.
Yeah, well that’s because nobody hijacked this thread from what it was about. It’s also because nobody here claimed that the speculative artificial womb eliminated preganancy. It’s because all of the commenters on this thread seemed to understand the term “pregnancy.” It’s because nobody here went to absurd lengths about the SAW to try to assert that men have equal rights to a decision about whether or not a woman should/could have an abortion. It’s because this was a discussion about pregnancy as a process & the effect that a SAW might have on the incidence of abortion and, as far as I remember, we didn’t get into a man’s right to impose his will on the matter of choice for women. Do you see the difference between the two threads?
PS: You may remember that the “womanbabykeet” was Raznor’s attempt to match your bizarre hypotheticals in a thread about abortion a year ago or more.
Okay I’ll bite:
What the hell is a “womanbabykeet”?
First you have to imagine that we’ve been subjected to progressively wilder hypothetical situations wrt abortion. Eventually Larry brings up the hypothetical of a woman in labor, head has crowned, etc. demanding an abortion now. So Raznor brings in his hypothetical… Something along the lines of: Suppose there is a mad scientist and after the woman gives birth, he grafts the baby on to her back. Can she demand an abortion then? And, further, what if the mad scientist then grafts a parakeet onto the baby? Would the parakeet have the right to abort the woman? What would we call such a creature? A womanbabykeet?
Ah, Kim(bv), I’ve found it.
Link to post
babykeets
light the corners of my miiiind
misty woman-colored baaaaaaaaabykeeeeetsss
of the way we weeeere….
Ha! (and a whole bunch more of them).
Kim: “Okay I’ll bite: What the hell is a “womanbabykeet”?”
Basically it was some pathetic attempt to justify dodging a series of hypothetical questions.
I dunno, Larry, it sounds pretty funny to me.
And the fact is, it’s really tiresome and offensive when people constantly bring up a hypothetical that not only doesn’t exist, but also wouldn’t be honored. When people bring up unreasonable hypothetical’s, don’t you agree that a reasonable answer is to quid pro quo?
What Kim said. Some hypotheticals–besides being rather disingenuous tacks to take in an argument–involve so much alteration to the real-life scenario that the only possible answer is tautological: “Yes, if everything were completely different, everything would be completely different.”
I don’t see how the budgie scenario is any more ridiculous than, “Well, what if it were magically, painlessly, instantly transported from the woman’s body into an artificial womb hundreds of miles away, where it could develop into a baby that would immediately be adopted by a wealthy, progressive, culturally conscious family that would neither judge the birth mother nor alienate her? And she’s a convicted serial rapist and a paranoid schizophrenic? THEN would you allow her to get an abortion?!”
Which, yes, absolutely, if only because a woman has the right to opt out of an ultra-preachy Star Trek episode if she has the right to opt out of pregnancy, but so fucking what? Pregnancy is not a hypothetical. There are real-life, recorded situations to explore and debate. The women responding with (literally) chimerical pregnancy complications have the right to feel angry and scared when a commonplace situation with actual effects on their lives is treated as a Philosophy 101 essay question.
What if you were literally the last man on Earth, Larry? Would it be okay for women to steal your sperm, store it in Tupperware, and impregnate themselves the same day you were laid off? Would the survival of the human race give them a claim to child support, or would it be unfairly burdensome to garnish your wages hundreds of thousands of times over? Or, wait, what if this woman was an ex, and you’d been with her for ten years before breaking up, and you’d confessed to her many times your secret desire to have an out of wedlock baby result from a drunken one night stand? What then? What if a mad scientist grafted a snow leopard onto your groin? Would it be rape if scientists wanted to breed the snow leopard in captivity?
piny, if I wasn’t convinced marriage is not for me, I’d propose to you.
Kim:
“And the fact is, it’s really tiresome and offensive when people constantly bring up a hypothetical that not only doesn’t exist, but also wouldn’t be honored. When people bring up unreasonable hypothetical’s, don’t you agree that a reasonable answer is to quid pro quo?”
For some reason many people on this site have a politician’s like fear of hypothetical. They either don’t want to be pinned down, or don’t want to think too hard about tough subjects. Simplicity can be very secure. But whether one is reasonable or not depends on the context and in the spirit that the questions were asked. If, for example, we were debating acceptable interrogation methods of suspected terrorists would it be unreasonable to explore the subject with hypotheticals? Why couldn’t I reasonably expect an answer to questions such as:
**Suppose a group of terrorists had captured a family and held them hostage and threatened to kill them in one day unless their leader was released from gitmo. Then suppose we got lucky and captured one of the group 12 hours before the deadline. Then suppose ordinary interrogation methods were not working and there were only 2 hours left. Should it be wrong or illegal to:
Slap him? Hit him with a baton? Falsely threaten to kill him with an unloaded weapon to scare him? Use a waterboard to make him think we would be drowned? Threaten him with a growling dog? etc.
**
In an honest debate should I expect answers such as: “show me where that’s happened and I will answer”, or “First answer me this: Suppose the suspected terrorist was really a terminator cyborg how would you capture him then? Huh? Huh? Then I will answer your questions.” (womanbabykeet)
I guess you’d know, Troll. I find it a clear mark of an overly simple mind when a person obsesses constantly over hypotheticals at the expense of reality. While you toy with your pretend horror-show scenarios, your comrades in arms are stripping women of our reproductive rights. While you play with your gaming dice, your comrades play games with our lives to get their own moralistic ya-yas off. They work mightily, too, at selling your treasured hypotheticals to an ignorant public as things that are in imminent danger of occurring. Small wonder we find you such a contemptable piece of work.
Alsis39:
“I guess you’d know, Troll. … Small wonder we find you such a contemptable [SIC] piece of work.”
Ahh yes, one of the invective sisters. I expected one of you might show up spitting your vile, hate-fillied bilge. Your always lurking, ready jump into phone booth and dawn your cape, filled with bumper sticker slogans, and your giant foam finger so you can wag it at suspected trolls that might threaten to awake you from your self-loathing stupor.
Small wonder we find you such a contemptable [SIC] piece of work.
You contempt is my badge of honor. I think many others on this site are a lot more reasonable.
OK, this has gone far enough. alsis39, please stop feeding the troll. FormerlyLarry, please keep your posts within the bounds of something resembling civility. Everyone else, could we please abandon this tangent about the value or otherwise of hypotheticals and either stick to the original topic or abandon the thread.
Many thanks to all.
Nick Kiddle, It’s your thread so I will respect your wishes and bow out of it. With regards to civility, don’t dismiss me as a troll or call me contemptible and expect me to turn the other cheek.
Lilith (from comment 54):
I would be cool with adopting, but the other person in this potential kid-raising endeavor is firmly attached to the idea of a child with his genetics. And mine .
Also, adopting is complicated and expensive.
You mentioned assisted reproduction technology. I, too, think it’s strange that people go to so much trouble to have genetic children, or even non-genetic children that they carry. I don’t understand why they want that. It’s not something I’d ever do.
Note: I don’t think anyone should be barred from using whatever reproductive technologies they’d like; I just don’t understand it. I’ve read enough by people who are going through hell to try to get biological children that if I was going to understand why they do it I would by now, but it just doesn’t make sense to me on a very fundamental level. Kind of like smoking.
Oh, Nick, you can take down the whole damn exchange if you want. Believe me, I never wanted anyone to find out about the cape. :/