*dons asbestos suit*
October 13, 2006
I’m probably going to offend everyone with this post, but hey. Several things have come up recently that have put the idea into my head to post about the dreaded topic of abortion.
The main trigger was Lavendersparkle’s excellent polemic. I really like her argument, and it’s one I don’t really see being made in all the mountains of pointless aggro that makes up most of the abortion debate. She argues that The majority of abortions in the US and UK are caused by patriarchy
, and gives a very closely reasoned and compelling explanation for this position, because: Abortion doesn’t solve [...] problems; it simply makes them less visible. It pushes the burden of ‘dealing’ with them onto women who are then expected to be thankful that had the ‘choice’ to have an abortion
. And her conclusion is the triumphant: I get so annoyed when I see pro choice feminist schmucks kidding themselves that they’ve achieved some kind of feminist utopia by being allowed to use their money, their bodies and their offspring to cover up the huge injustices of our society.
Then I found myself discussing abortion with Ploni bat Ploni, and ended up being quite vehement about certain aspects of the issue. I think I’d probably like to set my thoughts down here.
The last thing which really convinced me I should overcome my trepidation and post about this is the aftermath to this incident at Den of the Biting Beaver. (In case you haven’t seen this, I’ll summarize the background: Biting Beaver is a fairly strident American feminist blogger. She experienced a contraceptive failure and posted about having to go through hell to get the morning after pill. Her post was very widely linked, primarily by lefties outraged at the way the ill named “moral right” have all but closed off access to emergency contraception in the US. But this prominence brought the post to the attention of the pro-life crowd, some of whom proceeded to troll her (see the first link). Eventually, Biting Beaver was able to obtain her morning after pill. However it didn’t work, and Biting Beaver was brave enough to post publically that she is pregnant and intends to have an abortion.)
This conjunction of people talking about abortion served to remind me why I potentially alienate everybody by being neither pro choice nor pro life. Essentially, I think the pro choice movement is generally well-meaning, but in their fervour to keep abortion legal, lose sight of the fact that abortion is not a good thing. However, I think much of the pro life movement is actively evil, even though I am broadly in agreement with the basic tenet that abortion is wrong.
What I think about abortion actually isn’t terribly relevant here; I want to talk about the debate and politics around abortion, not rehash the debate. But FWIW, I believe abortion is wrong, but not murder. I don’t believe that making sure all pregnancies are carried to term is the greatest moral imperative that could ever exist. There are some circumstances where abortion is the least worst of several bad options.
Anyway, my beef here is with the kinds of arguments and behaviours that exist on both sides of the debate. When it comes to the pro life movement, it’s not even a case of the ends justifying the means; most of the methods and arguments are not only cruel and unjust, but actively counterproductive. The people who called Biting Beaver the vilest of names and sent her death, rape and torture threats when she was in the middle of a personal crisis are surpassed in evil only by the people who sent her apparently helpful, sympathetic emails with recipes for lethal poisons they claimed were herbal abortefacents. And that kind of thing is all too common in the pro life movement. A prolifer would argue that it’s not fair to judge the whole movement by a few fringe extremists, but the fact of the matter is that even the supposedly moderate sectors of the pro life campaign do a lot of harm, and don’t save any babies in the process.
Good sex education would prevent a large number of abortions, yet pro life politics seems to support leaving sex education as late as possible and as incomplete as possible. Teaching teenagers (and vulnerable adults) that having sex is evil, but using protection is really, really unforgivably evil can only lead to unwanted pregnancies. Lying about the effectiveness of protection and the biological reality of pregnancy might change a few minds on the abortion issue, but only for as long as the victim remains ignorant; once they find out they’ve been deceived they’re almost certainly going to reject the central part of the message too. That is to say, if your argument against abortion is based on an Aristotelian view that a zygote contains a little tiny human being, fully formed from the moment of conception and therefore having full human rights, it’s a pretty weak argument given that an early embryo is not in fact a miniature human being. And arguing from cuteness is very dubious indeed; there are plenty of non cute creatures and people who need protection and if a foetus’ rights depend on the fact that it’s (supposedly, though actually not) cute, they are not real rights.
Attacking women who are sexually active (and if someone’s pregnant there’s no way for her to be in the closet about it) is only going to encourage abortion. In general, promoting rigid gender roles is likely to leave more women vulnerable to being pressured into sex or unsafe sex or, in fact, abortion. Arguing as if having a baby were a punishment for being “irresponsible” or worse, slutty is certainly not an encouragement for keeping the baby if an unwanted pregnancy occurs. Restricting adoption to white, middle class, monogamous, straight, married couples (and then slandering even those who do adopt because it’s so important for children to be brought up by their biological parents) means that it’s harder to find adoptive parents and more women will choose abortion than otherwise. In Biting Beaver’s case, the actions of the pro life movement led directly to her being in the situation of needing an abortion; the lie that pro life propaganda has promulgated that the morning after pill is an abortefacent means that more and more medical institutions are reluctant to prescribe it, and the length of time it took Beaver to obtain her pill would undoubtedly have reduced its effectiveness.
As for withdrawing funding from charities that provide medical care and education to the world’s most vulnerable, on the grounds that such charities have “links” (defined extremely vaguely) with abortion providers, that is absolutely morally despicable and is certainly going to lead to more, not fewer, babies dying. And there’s a whole bunch of stuff on these lines, where abortion is so broadly defined that various gynecological medical procedures are subject to the same opprobium, and again, worse healthcare for women and mothers is going to lead to more pre-natal deaths. So this is wrong even if you somehow believe that the mother’s welfare is entirely irrelevant and only the unborn child matters.
I can only conclude that the real motive of the pro life movement is not, in fact, preventing abortions. I think part of it is in fact simple misogyny. As a side note, I don’t believe that “the patriarchy” is trying to make lots of women have unwanted babies, any more than I believe that there is a worldwide conspiracy of men to make lots of women have abortions. This is primarily because I don’t find it plausible that there is a worldwide conspiracy of men full stop. But “the patriarchy” can be a useful shorthand for all the ways that society is systematically unfair to women. I do think that some of the pro life attitude is based on assumptions which boil down to women being inferior and sex being evil and so on, and that some of that has the largely incidental consequence of putting lots of women in situations where they need abortions while also attacking them for being in that situation and for having abortions.
A major part of it is this weird political thing where you somehow convince the electorate to vote against their interests by using abortion as an emotional lever. If voting for a right wing party, no matter how racist, authoritarian and even incompetent it may be, is seen as supporting the baby savers over the baby killers, that’s a very strong card for the right wing party. I have also seen the extremely cynical argument, I think probably from , that people who don’t have good access to birth control are likely to be more politically compliant. Some of the best people, the ones who would otherwise be at the barricades, are neutralized because they are precisely the ones who will step up to their responsibilities and take care of more children than they can really afford.
Now to the pro choice movement. I think because they are fighting such a dreadful beast, many pro choicers are inclined to get quite fanatical about their cause. Anyone who expresses the slightest doubt that abortion is great, the pinnacle of human achievement, and people should have as many abortions as possible because yay abortion, is suspected of helping the pro life enemy.
I think there is an important difference between the US and Europe. Certainly, it is American politics which dominates online debates, and the issues are not always applicable over here. I know that some people react to stories like Biting Beaver’s relatively smugly, sure that that kind of religious fundamentalism claiming to be pro life in order to push a particular religious agenda, could never happen here. I’m not so complacent about that; I think a lot of American political ideas do contaminate the meme pool over here. Still, while the evil pro life movement has less traction in Europe than the States, there are important differences in the respective pro choice movements.
American pro choice arguments are often based on rights and feminism. Women have the “right” to choose, the “right” to self-determination, the “right” to decide what happens with their bodies, the “right” not to be pregnant and not to give birth and not to be mothers. AIUI, the original laws permitting abortion were based on considerations of privacy, so it makes sense that this is the argument that pro choice campaigners rely on. The problem is it makes little sense to talk about the right to do something which is not a desirable thing to do in the first place. Pro lifers would counter that the unborn child has a right to life which trumps the right of the woman to these issues of autonomy and privacy. And my problem here, as very well expressed by Lavendersparkle, is that by loudly proclaiming the right of women to minimize the effects of injustice by having abortions, it is easy to forget about fighting the injustices which led to women being a situation to want to have an abortion in the first place.
European pro choice arguments tend to be much more medical. In the UK, which is the situation I know best, the law and many of the arguments are framed in terms of permitting abortion where carrying the pregnancy to term would harm the health of the mother. At the moment, a situation where having a child would totally ruin the mother’s life is, and I think justly, regarded as a real harm. But there’s this other aspect, which is about the health of the potential child. Foetuses with congenital defects can be aborted right up to full term; there is no time limit as is the case for healthy foetuses. This political reality is, I think, extremely harmful to the cause of disability rights. If one frames the argument in the American terms, one can say that a woman has the right to refuse the responsibility of caring for a disabled child. That’s perhaps distasteful, but my opinion is that it should be distasteful. That’s what the whole idea of the right to choose is based on, that women are entitled to kill a foetus if they don’t want to be responsible for the baby it will become. But in Europe, you often hear people arguing that abortion is morally best for the baby, because it would be “cruel” to bring into the world a child that would have such terrible quality of life. That is an argument I have a huge problem with, because it very quickly shades into the meme that it is better to be dead than disabled.
I happen to believe that the issue, like many moral questions, is extremely complicated and good people can come to different conclusions from me, and still be good people. But if you want to take exception to this, go ahead.
October 13, 2006 at 9:50 pm
I’m always happy to see you posting because you unfailingly raise valid points and frame them simply and effectively, without incendiary language or intent; these thoughts especially resonated with me. If I may, I’ll link to this?
October 13, 2006 at 10:03 pm
You make many many valid points. It is all a most depressing business.
I went and had a read of Biting Beaver, and she cited this as an example of the kind of crap she has to deal with:
…when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK? You would not exist…
One sees this relatively often, and I don’t get it. So what if she’d decided to terminate? So I wouldn’t exist. Lots of people don’t exist.
October 13, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Excellent arguments.
I would point out, though, that there is a powerful non-spoken reasons for the abortion of a fetus with a congenital defect. It’s not so much that it would be cruel to the child to bring it into the world. It’s the effect on the parents. Caring for a handicapped child can be life-consuming. The amount of time and money that parents must spend on a severely disabled child can be crippling. If the congenital defect is one that will lead to the child never leading an independent life — a disorder that leads to early death,for example — then insisting that the parents go through all that “for nothing”, as it were, is also cruel.
October 13, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Gosh, thanks! You’re very welcome to link; this is the kind of thing where I want exposure.
October 13, 2006 at 10:23 pm
good post.
Arguing as if having a baby were a punishment for being “irresponsible” or worse, slutty is certainly not an encouragement for keeping the baby if an unwanted pregnancy occurs.
that one always makes me shake my head. for one, “slutty” isn’t worse than “irresponsible”; many self-proclaimed sluts i know have never gotten accidentally pregnant, and we all know unwanted children who were conceived while their bio parents were “in love”.
more importantly, why in the world would society want irresponsible people rearing children? bad enough they’re having sex without sufficient protection, i agree, but that’s nothing compared to the damage an irresponsible parent can do to a child. having one does not miraculously bestow sudden wisdom and responsibility upon a person.
generally i am with you. i disdain the misnamed pro-life movement (i prefer to call them anti-abortion, and resent that they picked a name that actually fits the other side rather a lot better) — except that i agree with their stance that abortion is not a good thing, and that society should discourage it. i think it is the lesser of several evils, which is the only fundamental reason why i am pro-choice. because the whole idea that somebody’s temporary physical autonomy should trump somebody else’s right to life? the labelling of a fetus as “parasite”? *gah*, stay away from me. and yes, i’d like society to develop to the point where women (and men) truly feel free as to whether to procreate, and where almost all babies who are born are wanted and will be well cared for, whether by their birth family or by somebody else.
where i probably differ is on disability rights — i don’t see a particular problem (other than a possible slippery slope argument) with aborting because the fetus has a disability. i am all for the rights of disabled people who’re already born and alive and have to play the hand they’re dealt. but i don’t think it’s a particularly good idea to reproduce more disabilities — i’m not hardcore evolutionary about it, but a little. i’d like us to be able to cure genetic defects, and have for the most part only healthy babies born. life is hard enough as it is. for me that doesn’t translate to “better dead than disabled” per se (though i admit that certain disabilities, if i found myself with them, would result in my suicide, and i damn well want the right to do that). i wouldn’t force abortions on people who feel they’re prepared to give a disabled child all the extra care zie’ll need (well, i wouldn’t force abortions on anyone). but i also wouldn’t blame people who don’t want to deal with that.
October 13, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Yeah. That whole thing about, what if you had been aborted, is a complete nonsense. I didn’t even bother addressing it because it’s so obviously stupid and fallacious. I think the reason it comes up a lot is because the pro life movement has a very efficient propaganda machine, and the same few memes keep reappearing all over the place.
But mere illogic is nothing compared to the people who think they’re saving babies by calling Biting Beaver a dirty whore and hoping she gets raped and dies horribly… Poor woman; admittedly it was her choice to post the whole business on her blog, but what a horrible thing to go through on top of the misery of the unwanted and unsustainable pregnancy.
October 13, 2006 at 10:41 pm
I agree with you, largely. My problem is not with the principle of aborting disabled foetuses; it is just as moral to abort a disabled foetus as a healthy one. I happen to think that neither is particularly morally desirable, but it would be a really odd argument to say that it’s morally acceptable to abort a healthy pregnancy just because you don’t feel like caring for a child, but it’s morally wrong to abort a foetus you expect to be disabled. (Mind you, I have seen feminists arguing that sex selective abortion is evil and shameful and terrible, but selecting for non-disabled children is great and a positive feminist act.)
No, my problem is with couching the choice in terms of saying it’s kinder to the child not to let it live. People should be honest, and admit that they want the abortion because they can’t deal with caring for a disabled child. I am not about to condemn someone for feeling like that, because as you say it is incredibly hard, harder probably than most of us can imagine. (Personally, I would avoid using the word crippling in this context.) People shouldn’t pretend that it’s for the sake of the child though. This is the argument that I pointed out as being more prevalent in the UK and Europe than in America, and it’s a morally abhorrent argument because of its assumptions about the value of a disabled life.
October 13, 2006 at 10:44 pm
There are a lot of chewy points here, and as someone who firmly does not intend to reproduce on the grounds of not thinking myself up to being so good a parent as that warrants [ for those who don't know me, I have a stepson, whom I first met at age five, and started sharing living space with at age nine, who is now just gone sixteen, for whom I am endeavouring to do the best I can with the extent to which I am in loco parentis; six weeks of fostering a sixteen-month-old confirmed for me that this is a responsibility on an entirely different scale, and uses physical and psychological energy on an entirely different scale, from a child of that age ] I feel less than fully qualified to have a voice on. I agree with you entirely on large swathes of the anti-abortion movement being a flag of convenience for antipathy to sexual independence, and choice on that level; and I suppose “the patriarchy”’s as good a label as any for the opposing forces.
However, when I see:
Abortion doesn’t solve [...] problems; it simply makes them less visible.
I find myself wondering whether the scale of problems considered includes such things as the correlation Steven Levitt has described [ link is to a collection of related articles on his blog ] between access to legalised abortion in the US post-Roe vs. Wade and the drastic drops in crime rates across the US visible between 1990 and 2003 [ which was when the last detailed report I read on this was compiled ] of in some cases almost 75% [ homicides in New York City ] and nation-wide rarely less than 50%, when the generation of young adults would no longer include many of the unwanted children it would previously have had.
[ I raise this here as a descriptive point about complexity of human interactions rather than a prescriptive one; an economic observation rather than a moral position. ]
October 13, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Very good post, and I agree with all of it. I think I’ll memorify this and use it for when I need to discuss my own view on the pro-life/choice debate, because this matches my own views very well, only in a much more coherent and eloquent way than I would write.
October 13, 2006 at 11:06 pm
I’m offended by your implication that I, as a pro-life person, wish to further mysogyny rather than protect life. You probably foresaw my taking offense, but a commitment to the truth requires that I type it out loud anyway.
The goal of the pro-life movement is exactly what it says on the tin: we are in the cause of life rather than death. Just as you cannot say that, for example, that Islam is a brutal religion solely on the behaviour of some of its adherents (quite apart from a thorough study of the appropriate texts), nor can you say that the pro-life movement furthers mysogyny solely on the behaviour of some who hold its values and yet whose behaviour apparantly contradict the tenents.
One of the common themes I come across reading the pro-life blogs I do is our emphasis on how all we do much be emphasised by love: love for the children, love for their parents, and a commitment to supporting life in any way possible. I am not lessened by not reading the rhetoric of pro-lifers whose emotions are not properly managed and then spill over into name-calling, but those who do not make the effort to read those pro-lifers who do manage to control the passions involved and thus judging the position based on the actions of those who hold it.
Ultimately, in order to avoid the problem of individuals’ behaviour obscuring the merits of a position, it is often necessary to simply examine what the position itself declares, in black and white. This is the sensible thing to do with regards to Islam, Communism, List Pym Fortuyn, and the reclassification of drugs in England’s legal system. It is also the sensible thing to do with the pro-life position, and it seems clear from what you have written that you have not done this.
Tackling the evil of abortion (please note that I speak of the evil of the act, not necessarily that of the actors) is a many-pronged process. True, people need to be better “educated”, but not simply in How Babies Are Made And How To Get Rid Of Them. The real education that has been lost over the last fifty years or so is the knowledge that man (homo, not vir) occupies a particular place in the world, and that it is only by absolutely protecting human life, especially innocent human life (as is the case with the unborn) that we can fully understand and cherish all life that exists.
In more practical terms, people need to learn the centrality and essentiality of the mum-dad-children family core. We need to once again recognise that it is this family unit that forms the basis of society, and that it is this context where children should be conceived, born and brought up.
When it comes to practical help for those considering or recovering from abortion, I and those I know would absolutely advocate as much material, emotional and spiritual help as possible. Regardless of how the child may have been conceived, the truth remains that he is a child, needing protection, and that he and his mother/parents deserve help and support. There are many avenues where this support can be found, both in the US and the UK, and it seems to me that you have not adequately informed yourself of these in forming your opinion of the pro-life movement.
On a personal note I will say that in typing this I feel somewhat as though you have set a trap, waiting grinning for me to walk in, and that when you read this a thought of triumphalism will come up, because I fell for your bait. Overriding this, however, is my duty to present the truth of what you have misrepresented in your post, and if to you and your friends this makes me look like a fool, then I suppose that humiliation is just something to be endured.
October 13, 2006 at 11:19 pm
In more practical terms, people need to learn the centrality and essentiality of the mum-dad-children family core. We need to once again recognise that it is this family unit that forms the basis of society, and that it is this context where children should be conceived, born and brought up.
I think the assertion that two parents plus children is the fundamental unit of family is true for a really remarkably small number of cultures through history, nor is it visibly beneficial for those who have it with comparison to those who have not; and I also doubt strongly that two adults are really sufficient to optimal raising of a child compared to the benefits offered by a closely knit broader support network [ for an example with which I am personally familiar, resident grandparents and siblings of parents ] in terms of providing additional assistance and taking some of the weight off the parents’ hands. To be a parent is more than a matter of biology, it’s a matter of responsibility; and I do not see how one can condemn biological parents who fail to live up to that responsibility without thereby lauding others who undertake to take it on themselves, which as a live-in step-parent I do feel rather strongly about.
I also think there’s something rhetorically spurious in identifying any fertilised egg as a child, considering how many such fail to implant in the womb in the natural course of things and are never even noticed, and considering how long after fertilisation it is that one can distinguish whether what one has here is going to wind up a single child, twins or more.
You have other points here with which I disagree adamantly, but given the manner in which you assert them - for example, that man occupies a paticular place in the world and therefore deserves inherently certain forms of being valued, which is a statement of faith rather than one of logically arguable knowledge [ and one with which I agree, but for very different forms of being valued than you are asserting here ] - I do not see anything to be gained by disputing them at any greater length.
October 13, 2006 at 11:23 pm
I mainly agree with you. My stance is that killing anything is negative, better avoided when possible. But you have to kill things. When I have an infection, I’ll take antibiotics. The small negative of killing bacteria is outweighed by the positive of me living and being healthier. I’m biased toward sentients, and the more sentience, the more I care. I think it’s wrong to kill or torture a cat. But if there were a fire and I could only save one, I’d grab the human baby before the cat. I’d feel horrible, but well, I’d feel horrible either way.
So, I believe that sometimes abortions are the right decision. And I strongly and fiercely want to defend the right for women to have them. But I would love more to be done to reduce the need for them. I think even in a great social system, there would still be a need for abortions now and then, but far, far fewer.
On a side note, it really bothers me that the system made it such that the smartest thing I could do, if I were an asshole, would be to have as late-stage an abortion as possible. You see, I was severely disabled, and I couldn’t afford medical treatment. There was a possibility that delaying medical care would kill me. It actually did lead to significant permanent vision loss that probably would have been treatable at the time. But you don’t get health care with recognized disability until 2.5 years after the official recognized start date of your disability.
But you can get free medical care if you’re a pregnant woman.
I obviously wouldn’t have a baby under such conditions. Especially one I didn’t want at all. Buy getting pregnant might have saved my life. And then I could get medical care for a while, up until the point where I went for an abortion to get rid of the unwanted, but useful pregnancy. Afterall, I was broke and disabled, there was no way I was going to be raising a child. And having a child with my body so damaged… I would worry too much about what would come out.
Thanks US healthcare system. Good work there.
October 13, 2006 at 11:44 pm
Thank you. A compliment from you is really something I treasure. I’ve been writing this post in my head for a while now, and then thinking better of writing it, and there ended up being such a conjunction of incidents making me think about the issue that I decided it was probably meant to happen. And thanks for your comments too; lots of novel angles as opposed to just rehashing the obvious debates.
I think you’re right in theory, and thanks for pointing this out. But in general society, slutty is a serious insult. It’s great that you move in circles where that’s not the case, and that is my ideal for the whole of society. I don’t think that holding that ideal is going to protect women from the social ostracism and even worse that can result from being regarded as slutty in our actual, non-Utopian society, though.
That’s a good part of the reason why regarding parenthood as punishment is an extremely bad idea, yes. I would not prefer irresponsible people to have abortions, I would prefer irresponsible people to give the child up for adoption into the hands of responsible people. But that too is something that would only be a good option in a society much better ordered than the one we live in.
I think that’s probably true for me too, but I feel really uncomfortable calling myself pro choice because really, I am not campaigning for a bad outcome.
Hear hear! I think in the end almost everyone wants this. (Apart from the vicious nasty elements who are pretending to be pro life.) The disagreement is on how to get from here to there. I don’t think that trying to make abortion into a positive thing is the way, but I also don’t think that a ridiculous, futile attempt to stop people from having sex is the way either.
October 13, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Your comments seem (please correct me if I’m barking up completely the wrong tree) to be based upon the premise that a fetus is only ‘alive’ once it is born or to get more to the core of the issue, that something significant happens to the fetus at the point of birth that makes it OK to kill it before the birth but not OK to kill it after the birth. From a religious point of view I would agree with you because it’s a pretty mainstream Jewish idea that killing a human only counts as murder when the human has been born so a fetus at any level of development can be killed in circunstances when murder would be prohibited. However, my secular side just can’t see how one can justify aborting a fetus that would have survived if it had happened to have been born premature the day before it was due to be killed as materially that different from killing a born baby that did happen to be born early. I know that only a very small proportion of abortions occur when a fetus would be viable but I really don’t understand the logic.
October 13, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Wow… you talk about love, and yet I read it and feel hated and hurt. You probably don’t actually hate me or people like me, but it’s hard not to feel that way.
I love kids; I really do. I hope to have some. I may not, because I have very high standards for what I want before I’m willing to have kids. I want to provide a peaceful, loving safe family for them that can provide for their needs.
I used to work as a substitute teacher. I adored it. It was great. I got hugs from 7 year olds now and then (which made me uncomfortable, because they drill into your head don’t touch the kids for any reason, but leaping back in horror seems like it’d be more harmful than accepting and hoping it’s brief), drawings made for me by second through fifth graders. I watched a first grader have an insight into reading. I helped a high schooler understand the epilogue to As You Like It. It was great.
I’m patient, and I try to be a good teacher. I’m loving and supportive. Tons of people tell me they think I’d make a good teacher or a good parent. I’ve been told this by teachers, by children, and by people who know me online and in person. I really care about people and want to make people’s lives better.
But I don’t intend to raise my kids in a mum-dad family. That’s not my goal. So, I suck and am the enemy and am destroying families and kids. You want to educate people not to be like me. That what is important and core isn’t what I am.
Maybe you didn’t mean it that way. And if so, okay. But still, it hurts. Watching myself be dismissed by someone who doesn’t even know me or anything about my life. Watching people want to get rid of my way of life. And claiming it’s essential for the sake of children. When I love kids and am good with them.
Anyhow, my point is, you may want to rethink how you present this. But if it’s what you truly believe, then it is what you truly believe. In which case, you may want to separate your views about which families are good from your pro-life views, because I don’t think they are essentially linked, and it may tarnish the views of pro-choice people from pro-life positions to see them entangled with other positions that are unrelated. Although if you truly think they should be tangled together, then never mind.
October 14, 2006 at 12:19 am
*deep breath* This is complicated. There are lots of different things going on here, and I think I wasn’t clear which of them I was talking about. Also, it’s an extremely emotive topic for me, so I may not handle it as dispassionately as I would like to.
I agree that there is a distinction between a foetus expected to be born disabled, and an actual disabled person. It’s the same as the distinction between a healthy foetus and an able-bodied person, in fact. I also agree that it would be unreasonably judgemental to blame someone who felt they couldn’t handle the task of parenting a disabled child. I strongly doubt I could do it, myself. I further agree that if someone genuinely wants to commit suicide for any reason, including disability, then it is not moral to try to compel them to live.
In my opinion, there is not a moral difference between aborting because of a disability, and aborting for any other reason. The specific thing I am arguing against is the type of pro choice argument which says it is cruel to bring a disabled child into the world, that it is for the child’s sake to make it not exist at all rather than being disabled. I think it’s important to be honest and say clearly that a choice to abort in that situation is for the sake of the parents, because they couldn’t cope with that child. There’s a difference between: this particular person doesn’t want to go on living, having this particular disability; and making the generalization that life with such a disability isn’t ever worth living for anyone. Of course the first case can’t apply with an unborn child, and the second case is morally wrong and harmful to actual disabled people as well as to the potential one that would be killed.
As for curing disabilities, well. There are some disabled activists who feel that pre-birth cures are tantamount to genocide, because they would result in no disabled people ever being born. I personally wouldn’t go that far but I do respect that argument. I think there’s a philosophical difference between selective killing versus preventing people with a particular condition from being born by curing the condition.
I think I can best explain this in terms an idea I got from Ballastexistenz, a really strong writer on disability: People are not interchangeable. If the foetus is cured of whatever its defect is, that person still gets a shot at life. If that foetus is killed, the only outcome is that an altogether different person will be born instead. The flaw in this reasoning is just how much you regard an unborn child as a person at all. Since I regard a foetus as less than human in the sense that I do admit some circumstances where killing it is the least worst option, whereas that is definitely not the case for a person (other than if they want to die). So one could argue that foetuses are in fact interchangeable even though people aren’t.
As for , I think that’s the point where I actually disagree. It’s eugenics (I don’t think that you can describe a philosophical position as “evoloutionary”). Disability is a social construct. It’s a value judgement that some types of bodies are disabled and others are able bodied, it’s a value judgement that the second category are better. This is a tricky line to maintain without getting into ridiculous PC bullshit, but I would prefer to err in this direction than in the direction of assuming disabled people are of lesser worth than others.
October 14, 2006 at 12:49 am
Others have picked up on other issues with your comment but I have noticed one of my personal pet peeves in the phrase:
I don’t like the idea that a fetuses life might be in some way worth more than a born person’s life because they haven’t done anything yet. They’re innocent in that they haven’t done anything bad but they also haven’t done anything good. It gives the impression of life that we’re all born with a perfect copy book that we just go on to blot for the rest of our life rather than seeing life as an opportunity to make the world a better place than if we hadn’t been a part of it.
While we’re on the topic I don’t like the idea that killing a guilty person is better than killing an innocent person. Human life is sacred. That isn’t changed by a person’s actions.
October 14, 2006 at 12:50 am
The specific thing I am arguing against is the type of pro choice argument which says it is cruel to bring a disabled child into the world, that it is for the child’s sake to make it not exist at all rather than being disabled. I think it’s important to be honest and say clearly that a choice to abort in that situation is for the sake of the parents, because they couldn’t cope with that child.
The issue here is how one scales disabled. To a first approximation, any genetic disruption sufficiently small that a living baby can be born is on the mild end.
The case that strikes me as as the dividing line is anencephaly, where the neuroderm does not close over in fetal development and most of the brain is not formed; sometimes enough of a brainstem is there for there to be reflexes and breathing, sometimes not. No cerebrum; no possibility of consciousness, ever. And it’s detectable quite early on, an open skull shows up on ultrasound.
My own position on this is that there would be something of great cruelty in requiring a woman to bring a fetus known to be anencephalic to term, when the best medicine in the world and the best will in the world cannot do anything for it but have it die in hours or days, and when it’s quite likely to die during the later portion of the pregnancy anyway.
October 14, 2006 at 12:53 am
Here via monanotlisa, and very impressed indeed. *adds to memories and friendslist*
There are some circumstances where abortion is the least worst of several bad options.
It’s weird. My friends and I - all avowed feminists - were trying to express this very thing. The closest thing we could come up with is: “abortion is a right you should never have to exercise”. It’s not quite there, but it’s on its way.
I’m probably adding a whole other hornets’ nest to the issue here, but my thoughts on abortion are roughly aligned alongside my thoughts on euthanasia: the loss of life is always tragic and it should never, ever be sterilised to the point where it is not acknowledged. However, it is imperative that no one is compelled into a state where they are denied certain choices about their bodies. I’m coming at this from a war-crimes perspective - my understanding of the issue comes not from the more common US Roe v Wade but from the Rwandan and Yugoslavian tribunals; from the rape-camps and the forced pregnancies and the ‘breeding out’ of ‘undesirable blood’ - so it probably colours my opinion a great deal.
I do believe that the act of abortion is a battle across the woman’s body, where opposing discourses - the discourse of ‘pro choice’ and the counter discourse of ‘pro life’ (in the UK - vice versa in the US) - clash. Both of these, however, are exercising the same force across the woman’s body and are thus both patriarchal discourses. (I realise that a lot of people have an almost pathological aversion to Foucault, but bear with me.) This can be seen most vividly on the body of a raped woman: she is caught between the discourses of normality and morality, both demanding that the rape had never happened and that she deal with the consequences ‘ethically’. What neither of these discourses do is acknowledge the change of pregnancy without prescribing a course for the woman to follow.
October 14, 2006 at 12:54 am
In other words:
A woman who wants to have the baby will not have an abortion. Therefore, only women who do not want to have the baby for some reason will have one. I’m arguing that this reason is generated by the clash between the discourse of normality - make things the way they were, because you are not paid enough to afford a child (the male-female wage gap is ever-widening in the UK, and how will you raise a child in the US if you’re paid minimum wage there?), or because you would have to give up your career, or because you would have to spend your life caring for the child, or because your parents would reject you, or any other reason that means a woman has strayed from what is socially acceptable. No ‘accidental’ pregnancy where the mother is not rich and independent and capable of taking care of the child with or without the father can be viewed as ‘acceptable’ by any of the societies I have come into contact with.
On the other hand, we have the ‘moral’ argument, which argues that you pay for your screw-ups and if you got pregnant, it’s your fault. This, too, lays the onus upon the mother. There is no group of pro-lifers out there chasing down fathers who walked out on their pregnant girlfriends, or volunteering at the child support agencies. It is the woman’s body, not the man’s, who pays for the transgression of surrendering her ‘virtue’.
Thus, the products of these transgressions must be killed, or accepted: but it is up to the woman to bear the burden of responsibility. Even when she is having the abortion because she cannot afford the child, it is still somehow ‘her fault’. However, the fact that she is having the abortion simply means that one discourse has won over the other - not that the patriarchal discourse has been broken down. Abortion is not resistence to patriarchy, it is patriarchy manifesting in another form.
Resistence to patriarchy would not be seen in something so medicalised or regulated. Just like the regulation of insanity and homosexuality, the rules are simply the dominant discourse absorbing the aberrations into itself, catalogueing them, and then locking them up in little boxes. In the Victorian era, the only places for insanity were the hospitals and the insane asylums. Now, the places for these pro choicers are the abortion clinics, where a government doctor will assess whether you are allowed the procedure according to the rules that someone else, removed from the siuation, has set up. You will be catalogued and recorded whatever you choose - another specimen to study.
I would argue that the only true resistence to patriarchy is universally available, universally infallible birth control that is not dependent on a specific partner taking it. Maybe a situation where both partners take the pill? *ponders* Although the test-marketing for the male birth control pill is interesting all by itself and has some worrying implications, so lets leave that to one side for the moment.
Erm. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that I agree with you. Only with more words.
October 14, 2006 at 1:05 am
I’m not sue. I think it’s often true, and people who don’t think they can cope with a disabled child may use it as an excuse to avoid facing the truth about their own desires/needs. But my mom chose to do things that were morally abhorrent to her in order to prevent herself having more than one child with a genetic disability. I think watching her brother suffer may have influenced her decision as well as the firsthand knowledge that care would be hard on the parents.
My uncle is haemophiliac. When my parents got married in the mid-seventies, genetic testing was in its infancy and the testing she had before trying to conceive suggested she was at high risk to be a carrier of haemophilia. Amnio was new back then, more likely to lead to miscarriage than it is now, and couldn’t tell her if a male fetus was haemophiliac (actually, I suspect that may still be the case, regarding this particular disorder), only if it was male or female. Before she got pregnant with me, she decided that she would not have amnio in her first pregnancy, owing to the possible risk of miscarriage. However, if her first child was a boy and was a haemophiliac, she would have amnio in any subsequent pregnancies and would abort any subsequent male fetus.
When my mom told me this last year, I was quite shocked, because she’s always been very anti-abortion. She’s gradually come to a politically pro-choice view and now won’t vote for anti-abortion political policies on the grounds that they’re packaged with policies she finds morally reprehensible. But when I was a kid, she was very anti-abortion. Also, it is her eldest brother who is haemophiliac. Her parents subsequently had another son who was healthy. Thus, she would’ve been in the position of knowing for certain that she might be aborting a perfectly healthy male fetus.
The reasons she gave were:
a) all those years of watching her brother in terrible pain
b) the idea that raising more than one haemophiliac child would be too much
c) having known some very religious Catholic families who continued to have child after child in spite of having multiple sons with the disorder. She felt it was irresponsible to subject a child to that kind of pain when birth control could prevent it.
Now, I’m sure that b) was a big factor. Particularly since she’d seen firsthand the stresses her parents experienced raising a haemophiliac. But I believe that a) and c) were also significant to her. Especially since she was clearly willing to take the risk of having one haemophiliac son herself. My uncle was very, very sick for large chunks of his life. He didn’t finish university until he was 27 because of all the breaks he’d taken for illness. And my grandparents did not want him to get married. They also tried to convince him and his wife not to have children, because they were worried that he would die and they would be supporting his widow and small children. As it happens, he’s still alive, and has three young grandchildren. But that’s more luck than design. He very nearly died on multiple occasions during his childhood and in early adulthood. He narrowly avoided getting HIV from the blood supply, and has had to have very painful treatments for Hepatitis C (complicated, of course, by the haemophilia).
October 14, 2006 at 1:26 am
Since males can only have haemophilia, not carry it, my uncle’s children and grandkids are perfectly healthy. But I know my mom’s been very worried about him on many occasions, and that he’s had to endure a great deal of pain. She has also been insistent that my sister and I get genetic testing before we have children, because there are new methods now in which a carrier of a sex-linked disorder can be virtually guaranteed to have a child of the opposite sex, so if either of us were to turn out to be carriers, we wouldn’t necessarily have to either have a haemophiliac son or abort potentially healthy male feti. And Canada’s health service will cover the cost of the centrifuge treatment and artificial insemination, on the grounds that it’s far more expensive for society to pay for the ongoing care of a child with a sex-linked disorder than to prevent it being conceived in the first place. It’s irrelevant to me, since I don’t want kids, but my mom has been very insistent that my younger sister find out her carrier status before she thinks about starting a family.
So I do think it’s possible for parents to be very concerned about the morality of having a child with a terrible disorder, even if their lack of desire to be parents to a handicapped child is a far more significant factor than they might want to believe. Especially if they already have a relative or an older child who suffers from the same disorder. In many cases it’s a moral cop-out, because people would prefer to believe that they’re aborting for the child’s sake than their own. The person I know who’s been most honest about her self-interest being the primary factor in her having an abortion is my cousin who aborted a planned pregnancy when she was diagnosed with cancer. Which is a very different situation than an otherwise healthy pregnant woman finding out she has a severely disabled fetus, and in some ways much more clear-cut on a moral level. Because when your life and health are at risk, it’s more socially acceptable to act selfishly. And please note that I’m not trying to attach judgments when I use the word ’selfish’. Were I to get pregnant, I might well have an abortion on selfish grounds. I have to take anti-depressants, which can have neurological effects on a fetus. Clinically depressed women who become pregnant by accident are strongly encouraged to go off their meds for the duration of their pregnancy. If I were to get pregnant, I don’t know if I would be able to face the idea of not having the meds for, say, eight months. I might not be able to work with the depression untreated. Were I to get pregnant right now, with my emotional health in its current state, I would most likely choose to go off the meds, carry to term, and do an open adoption. However, there have been periods in the past when the depression was significantly worse than it is now, and those may recur in the future. So while I don’t care for the idea of having an abortion, I can’t say 100% for certain that I wouldn’t. I know clinically depressed women who’ve become pregnant and carried to term, and some of them have had a very hard time coping with the depression without meds, and had great difficulty getting back on an even keel after they give birth. But I also know women who’ve bounced back pretty easily. It’s never simple, alas.
It’s pretty much academic, since I’m queer and thus not a strong candidate for accidental pregnancy. But if I were to get pregnant, I would have to balance my desire to stay emotionally healthy with my desire not to give birth to a child with preventable birth defects. If we’re going to put moral weight on the best interest of the potential child, then obviously the best outcome would be for me to go off the meds and carry to term. But morally I think an abortion might be a less bad choice than staying on the meds during the pregnancy despite knowing the risks. But ultimately it comes back to self-interest, because my primary objective would be keeping myself from ending up in a potentially life-threatening depressive tailspin as a result of not getting treatment for many months. And I would put my own well-being above the existence of a potential child if I believed those two objectives were on a collision course.
October 14, 2006 at 1:43 am
Again, you make an awful lot of good points. FWIW, that abortion is a necessary evil, but that we should definitely have access to it, (which I think is what you said) is what I would have said. And assume that that is how many pro-choice people would describe their position.
Of course, you’re right that this is often obscured in what people say and in what people think by the simpler message “abortion=good”. But I don’t think you’ll necessarily get flamed, is what I’m trying to say
Conversely, I tihnk I’ve heard pro-life people say abortion is a necessary evil, it shouldn’t be done without a good reason — which is the same thing from a different perspective: many people on both sides might be in your camp if you had a name for it. But I don’t feel at liberty to speak for that side of the debate, so I couldn’t say if many people would go that far.
That much pro-life sentiment stems from what to me seems a rather confused hodge-podge of ideas about how people should behave chastely I can’t disagree. Nor that some prochoice people take things too far, nearly implying abortions are good or harmless. Nor that people of any stripe who resort to verbal and physical attacks to make their point are doing something wrong!
And certainly, letting people make informed choices and providing simple birth control, and maybe changing attitudes amongst people to all sorts of things, are some of the most important things imho. Though I couldn’t compare how important they are compared to the right to have an abortion — all are good to fight for, and need a lot of work, and some ways are more effective to fund, but I wouldn’t like to criticise anyone who concentrated on any cause.
However, (and apologies for rambling, I’m working this response out as I go along), lavenersparkle’s essay makes me uncomfortable in some ways. As I guess it should, I suppose. She’s correct in the problems she points out —
“Even if you thought that abortion were completely morally neutral surely millions of women paying hundreds of dollars each to have a not particularly pleasant medical procedure should tell you that there’s something seriously wrong with the position of women in the US.” seems to say it all, succinctly and evocatively, and a point that needs remembering.
But describing anything using the term patriarchy seems problematic; it’s often unclear what it means, and has varying extremely loaded connotations for many people. Yes, there are ways people think it would be good to change. Yes, there are many women in problematic or bad situations. But are these deliberately perpetuated by men generally? Are they fairly universal conceptions? Are some people specifically at fault? Saying patriachry seems to risk pinning the blame on a concept which can’t readily be dealt with.
Also, if you accept that abortion is a necessary evil, isn’t it a battle won to legalise it? There have been great strides in society, even if there are still lots of problems.
Do you think I should say that in her journal though? It seems dishonest to think about it and not say so, however, I basically agree, and know what I say may well sound accusatory, and know I won’t understand the problems as well as someone else because I am a man.
PS. I think I may have wandered a lot, and thought about the abortion debate which is what you were specifically not — oops
I might try to follow up with some relevent comments.
October 14, 2006 at 1:57 am
Also here via monanotlisa with heartfelt thanks for the bravery and clarity.
October 14, 2006 at 2:05 am
* Sam, if you’re reading, hi! Sorry for the last comment…
* That many things are the trade-off between two rights that can’t both be satisfied (eg. the right of the mother, the right of the baby) is a point I made a lot and think you are too. It’s *why* many issues are extremely complicated and well-meaning people can come to different conclusions with equally great force
* Your explanation where you mention ballastexistenz’s description is good. That’s something else I’ve struggled to articulate. “If you were going to be born [very severly disabled somehow], would you want to be born or not?” is — potentially impossible to answer. An already-person has rights, and is special, and should live our their life if they want to. So I wouldn’t want to go back and erase my existence. But we’re considering the wants of someone who doesn’t exist. Can they be said to have any? Is the question meaningless? If not, aren’t we obliged to procreate as much children as possible all the time — but I don’t think we can possibly want that.
* Um. I guess those points are related to the aristotelean thing. A zygote is of the human species, it has individual DNA (but so does a single unique hair). And it’s going to be a person, but I think it becomes so slowly. So it has *some* rights once it grows very big, but not as many as a person.
* Where are right-wing/religious/prolife/anticontraception/pro-nuclear-family/anti-casual-sex people coming from? I certainly do know people with similar views, though only rarely have we talked in depth about it. I guess partly the same as everyone else, they have a collection of political beliefs they were brought up with that seem natural to them.
Also, maybe, that sex is part of a committed marriage, designed to produce children amongst other things. Hence casual sex, and contraceptives, are bad. I guess that explains why abortions have a bad reputation — it might sound like you deliberately took the risk of pregnancy on yourselves and inflict the consequences. Of course, you’d think a child being born to a single mother would be a lot worse from that point of view, but apparently it doesn’t balance out. But I don’t know if there’s any good reason pro-life should be linked to this, other than both arising out of similar history.
October 14, 2006 at 2:20 pm
This conjunction of people talking about abortion served to remind me why I potentially alienate everybody by being neither pro choice nor pro life. Essentially, I think the pro choice movement is generally well-meaning, but in their fervour to keep abortion legal, lose sight of the fact that abortion is not a good thing. However, I think much of the pro life movement is actively evil, even though I am broadly in agreement with the basic tenet that abortion is wrong.
That certainly won’t alienate everyone. I don’t think it’s even an amazingly rare belief (it’s certainly one I share) - it’s just a nuanced one that gets lost in the maelstrom.
October 14, 2006 at 2:31 pm
The goal of the pro-life movement is exactly what it says on the tin: we are in the cause of life rather than death.
You mean that you want to force people who have sex to give birth and that is why a significant fraction of the vocal part of the pro-life movement opposes contraception?
I’m afraid that that’s what I get from both a literal reading of what you wrote and from looking at the pro-life movement.
The real education that has been lost over the last fifty years or so is the knowledge that man (homo, not vir) occupies a particular place in the world, and that it is only by absolutely protecting human life, especially innocent human life (as is the case with the unborn) that we can fully understand and cherish all life that exists.
And the single biggest thing that has improved the sanctity of human life is contraception to ensure that there aren’t hordes of foundlings and otherwise unwanted people. The next biggest is to ensure that all babies who are born are wanted. And readily accessable contraception goes a long way towards that goal and accessable abortion goes slightly further.
If there are a lot of unwanted people, of course human life is not going to be cherished. Therefore if you want human life to be cherished, your best approach is to make sure it is only created where it is wanted - i.e. to provide contraception to all (which will also have the beneficial side-effect of lowering the abortion rate).
In more practical terms, people need to learn the centrality and essentiality of the mum-dad-children family core. We need to once again recognise that it is this family unit that forms the basis of society, and that it is this context where children should be conceived, born and brought up.
And you have forgotten the deeper wisdom of which that is only a special effect. It takes a villiage/community to raise a child. The family is only the smallest subdivision of that - and insufficient on its own and unnecessary (although desirable) if a good community exists. And there is no reason why it has got to be mum-dad. (And grandparents and other relatives thrown in for good measure help).
I won’t even get into the issue of the definition of “child”
October 14, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Having never lived in the US, I have no personal experience of the debate as it manifests over there, although I understand it anecdotally to be quite polarised. I think it’s easy to equate “pro choice” with “pro abortion”, and I’m sure that some people assume that “choice” means “choice to have an abortion”. “Choice” should (to get ideal for a minute here) also indicate the right to choose whether to take on the reponsibility of bringing a child into the world and raising him or her- as a positive and proactive choice and not just because of legal bars to the alternative - as well as the choice not to do so.
I think it need not be impossible to agree (as you do) that abortion is not a good thing, but feel that it is for any number of reasons not always the best thing. I think being “pro-choice” can mean “in favour of weighing up all the available alternatives before making a difficult decision”, and not just “happy to yank as many foetuses from their wombs as are available”.
For my own part, I support absolutely a woman’s right to choose (although perhaps the number of weeks up to which the choice may be made could be reduced in line with medical advances since the law was passed); I wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable having one myself, but I don’tsee that choice as giving me the right to impose anti-abortion views on anyone else through law or any other means.
October 14, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Kudos to you for providing a well thought out discussion on your views. Sadly I do not believe that the debate over pro-life or pro-choice will ever truly end and whenever religion is brought into a discussion it becomes even more complicated.
The right to personal choice is what I believe in.
Will some people abuse this choice? Yes I believe that some will because there are always people out there that will push society to it’s limits on what is acceptable. And yet I will still believe in the right to personal choice.
Rich or poor, married or single, old or young - these points complicate the matter even further. It can be turned into a broad topic that runs from the privacy of your own bedroom to the very basic codes that your society believes in. What constitutes a family comes into question even, why? Your culture/religion/society determines your family structure, not mine.
We argue with people we don’t know, more often than not over points that we do not take the time to understand both sides of and over matters that we take very personally so we cannot leave our emotions out of the argument and speak logically. I’m not saying that is happening here because this is one of the calmest threads on this topic I have ever seen but it is often the case with this topic.
It is worth noting that whether planned abortion is legal or not does not stop planned abortion, it merely provides a safer option.
I do wonder though, if one is pro-life what their thoughts in invitro fertilzation and unused fertilized eggs?
October 14, 2006 at 9:19 pm
many pro choicers are inclined to get quite fanatical about their cause. Anyone who expresses the slightest doubt that abortion is great, the pinnacle of human achievement, and people should have as many abortions as possible because yay abortion, is suspected of helping the pro life enemy.
Citation, please. This is a strawfeminist. I have *never* heard a pro-choicer say anything like any of this: that abortion is good in itself, that women should have as many as possible, *none* of it.
The closest thing to what you are describing is a feminist refusal to feel guilty about having an unpleasant medical procedure. Refusing to feel guilt is not the same as rejoicing.
I can only conclude that the real motive of the pro life movement is not, in fact, preventing abortions. I think part of it is in fact simple misogyny
In the US at least, it’s a combination of misogyny, patriarchy, and the Anti-Sex League. I do not actually understand how Europe managed to get to the point where abortion can be a medical issue instead of one of sexual politics, and I’d love to know your take on it.
October 15, 2006 at 12:45 am
Proper reply to follow, but right now: in no way did I intend to trap you or humiliate you. We’re on the same side here; both of us are against abortion. I am trying to argue my way to the best methods for preventing abortion and protecting life.
I think that the political pro life movement as it exists right now is using some really bad methods, and I think that there are some nasty misogynists pretending to pro life for their misogynist aims. That doesn’t mean I think that everyone who is against abortion is a misogynist or violent or evil, because if I thought that I’d be accusing myself of being a violent, evil misogynist!
Telling the truth matters, and it’s particularly important when your position is unpopular amongst your circle. Thank you for speaking up, I appreciate it.
October 15, 2006 at 11:12 am
Thanks for joining in. I’m not sure about the arguments about who is “qualified” to have an opinion about the abortion question. The view that says that only the actual pregnant woman herself is entitled to any opinion is at least philosophically consistent, though I don’t think it’s a good way to do morality. But the idea that men shouldn’t have an opinion, or people who haven’t yet had kids, or people who don’t intend to have kids, or people who aren’t currently pregnant, and like categories doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t intend to reproduce either, and unlike you I have zero experience of any kind of parenting. *shrug*
is a nice phrasing for the thing I’m arguing against, so thanks for that.
The problems that was talking about was the specific subset of problems related to injustice towards women, not all social problems in general. This makes sense in a context where she’s addressing feminists who think that promoting abortion is good for women, whereas she and I think it’s actually harmful to women.
Levitt’s correlation is really interesting. Thanks for the link. As you say, it’s most useful if treated as descriptive. I personally would rather see fewer abortions even if some of the people who would otherwise have been aborted go on to commit crimes. But criminology is too complicated for me and way beyond the scope of this discussion.
October 15, 2006 at 11:13 am
*blush* Thank you, that’s really encouraging. It really makes my day when I get comments like this!
October 15, 2006 at 2:13 pm
I just want to note quickly that I’m very impressed with the well-thought out reasoning in your post and the range of views expressed here so far. I’d like to have time to read this all properly - and maybe I will (finally year of PhD not withstanding etc etc) - but in the meantime, thanks for writing.
October 15, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Pro-choice, to me–and I think I’m entitled to my definitions, being one of the few commenters here who seems happy with that label for herself–means that it’s a woman’s choice whether to have children. That means, yes, that she can choose not to become pregnant, and to abort an unwanted pregnancy, or a wanted one that has become dangerous or disastrous. It also means that she has the right not to be sterilized even if someone else thinks she shouldn’t have children, and the right to carry a pregnancy to term even if, say, her parents or husband think she’d be a bad parent.
In terms of the discourse you’re invoking, that means that yes, if a woman has been raped and is now pregnant, the harm is real, and she has a real choice to make. I’m not saying, and pro-choice people generally are not saying, that she must carry the pregnancy to term. Nor am I telling her whether, if she does choose to bear a child, whether she should raise it herself.
If that’s a patriarchal discourse, then everything is a patriarchal discourse, including discussions of Copernican astronomy and whether I should have another cup of tea. At which point the label is not useful in most specific discussions.
October 15, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Ultimately, in order to avoid the problem of individuals’ behaviour obscuring the merits of a position, it is often necessary to simply examine what the position itself declares, in black and white. … It is also the sensible thing to do with the pro-life position, and it seems clear from what you have written that you have not done this.
I don’t think it’s quite that easy. is talking about the soi-disant “pro-life” movement, which is a group of people, not a position (she’s already said she’s in favour of the anti-abortion position, if I can simplify her views that much).
In a movement like that, ideas are not expressed in purity and isolation, but rather, they tend to accumulate other ideas which find a home in the movement. In the case of the “pro-life” movement in the USA, those ideas are viciously misogynistic. It’s obvious that a person of conscience should not associate themselves with this movement.
In the West, both inside and outside the USA, anti-abortion ideas are usually associated with theistic forms of religion, mainly Christianity (as I suspect your own remarks about man’s place in the universe and the family unit illustrate). Not all of these forms are misogynistic, certainly (although the more doctrinally orthodox they are, the more likely that is). But even more liberal Christian opposition to abortion isn’t the pure idea that you’re asking us to consider, but carries with it the baggage of religion. I don’t know about the rest of Europe, but the UK has weighed Christianity in the balance and found it wanting, as the church attendance figures indicate. In a UK, there should be no place in public life for arguments which assume Christianity in their axioms.
It might be possible to develop a pro-life position which proceeds from a consensus of ideas that aren’t uniquely religious, but I’ve not seen anyone do this yet. In the USA, pro-life is evil, whereas in Europe, it’s merely religious. Neither of these make me want to see the movement gain any power over people’s lives.
October 15, 2006 at 5:23 pm
A lot of people seem to have jumped on you; I wasn’t honestly expecting that to happen, but I think it’s part of the thing I was complaining about, where pro choice people view pro life people as the enemy. You are the most openly pro life person in this discussion, and you are taking stick for behaviours that are not really your fault.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable if you saw my post as encouraging that pile-on. I’m sorry that I put you in a situation where you might get attacked; I’m not sorry that I offended you, though, because I am saying that many of the people you regard as your allies are actually evil, and that’s unquestionably an offensive thing to say.
Let me try to clarify, though. I am not accusing you of misogyny. I didn’t say that anyone with pro life views is misogynist, and I most certainly didn’t say that all Catholics are misogynists. There are many people, and I include you in that group, who genuinely want to save babies. But those people are making a mistake in thinking that the pro life movement, as it currently exists, is going to help with that aim.
You don’t want to be judged negatively because of the extremists, and that’s perfectly fair. But at the same time, you are more or less defending said extremists by using phrases like . It’s ok, they only say mean things because they feel really strongly about this oh so important issue. It’s not just name-calling, it’s death threats and attempting to poison someone who isn’t pro life enough for them.
That’s kind of quibbling in a way. We both know that extremists like that are not admirable people. I think my comments about the non violent and non extremist parts of the pro life movement are more relevant here. Let’s try an analogy: murder is bad. But if there were an “anti-murder” movement that claimed that murder is caused by people getting angry with eachother, so the most important priority in the whole world is to stop people getting angry, you would tend to question their motives. You, and a lot of other pro life people, seem to be arguing that abortion is bad, and the only suitable thing to do about it is to go to any lengths at all to try to stop people from having non-procreative sex.
[more to follow]
October 15, 2006 at 5:26 pm
You talk about , certainly an admirable goal. I can just about imagine how, say, voting for a party whose foreign policy has led to 600,000 deaths in Iraq and whose domestic policy means that poor people find it harder and harder to cover their basic needs, simply because that party has a stricter line on abortion, might be justified, but it’s a stretch. It relies on believing that protecting even a small handful of unborn children is more important than protecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of living people. I can see how forcing a woman to carry her pregnancy to term even when that will kill her or destroy her health might be justified, if you believe that the unborn child, being “innocent”, is more important than the non-innocent mother and her partner and living children whose lives will be ruined if she dies.
But if something so extreme is justified for the sake of preventing abortion, how come something as harmless as using condoms is not justified? There’s the further issue that war and economic destruction are in fact likely to lead to more abortions (even if they don’t directly kill pregnant women and their foetuses, which is arguable). So maybe some abortions would be prevented by the stricter laws against abortions, but abortions would be caused by putting more people in extremely vulnerable situations where they would be unable to raise children.
Insisting on is another thing which is likely to lead to more abortions. It makes it all the more likely that someone who ends up pregnant when she is not married to a responsible husband is going to have an abortion. It makes it harder to find adoptive parents for unwanted children, if you exclude potential adopters because they aren’t married or aren’t heterosexual. It puts a huge burden of childcare onto only two people, instead of trying to create structures where many people are involved in the children’s welfare.
Definitely, education is good, and I wholly agree that sex education is more than just informing people how to get rid of babies. But telling lies or withholding information about basic facts of biology is not education. And there’s no point arguing that it’s worth it if it prevents some abortions, because that kind of miseducation will only have the opposite effect. I also agree with you that providing support for pregnant women, and for parents, is hugely important. Some of that support is coming from pro life people, and that is definitely admirable.
October 15, 2006 at 6:21 pm
I always like your comments, you think your positions through carefully and you often have interesting and unusual perspectives.
I agree with you that killing is sometimes unavoidable to prevent worse harm. And that not all living creatures have equal consideration. I think a foetus is less important than a fully-formed human, just as I think an animal is, but in neither case should they be made to suffer or killed unless it is very necessary.
I think you’re right that there might still be some abortions even in a much better society. I think it ought to be possible to campaign to reduce abortions without diminishing women’s rights in our current, imperfect society, but it’s frustrating. I certainly don’t think that negativity towards those who oppose abortion is helping, and I suspect the rhetoric of a woman’s right to choose may be unhelpful too.
Your hypothetical of a cynical person having a late-term abortion in order to get medical care while pregnant is chilling. I hope people on both sides can agree on the need to fix things so that nobody finds herself in the position of considering such an abhorrent option.
October 15, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Hi, welcome and thanks for your kind words as well as for your thoughtful extension of the discussion. I warn you that most of my journal is not serious, carefully composed political essays like this one, just random personal stuff and a lot of reviews.
Very cogent point about war crimes. It’s not an issue that usually comes up in the standard abortion debate, and I think it is important to consider.
And I think your Foucaultian bit agrees with me, that both the pro choice and the pro life movements are harmful to the women who suffer from discrimination and injustice. If it isn’t callous to include rape in that category, it is perhaps the most extreme example of such.
October 15, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Absolutely you should be the one defining pro choice if you’re the one taking on that label. Kudos to you for speaking out about your beliefs.
One of the interesting and unexpected things that have come out of this post is that people seem to be arguing with people who look to me as if they ought to be on their side. Like lavendersparkle is arguing with pleonastic for not being sufficiently pro life, even though there are people far more extremely towards the pro choice end of the spectrum than P. is. And you’re arguing with kangeiko for not being sufficiently pro choice, even though to me, it looks like kangeiko’s position is much closer to yours than mine is. But then, I’m reading and taking note of your argument too.
I strongly doubt that you’re being patriarchal. Your position is one I respect and even find appealing; pretty much anything that involves giving people more autonomy goes over well with me. I don’t know, I think I want to proclaim the right of women not to be forced into situations where they would need to have an abortion. But there probably ought to be room for both.
October 15, 2006 at 8:34 pm
I should confess that my ‘excellent polemic’ was original an insensed rant at yet another person on LJ who seemed unable to believe that one could be both ‘pro-life’ and a feminist. It ended up on my LJ because having written it I discovered that I didn’t have commenting rights in the community I was trying to comment in, , and I didn’t want to delete it. It was indeed intended for a female/feminist audience.
I’ve read the original paper that inspired the Freakonomics abortion chapter. I think was intended to be and definitely should be taken as purely descriptive rather than as a policy proposal.
October 15, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Levitt’s correlation is really interesting. Thanks for the link. As you say, it’s most useful if treated as descriptive. I personally would rather see fewer abortions even if some of the people who would otherwise have been aborted go on to commit crimes.
I can quite sympathise, and I’m not - nor is Levitt - arguing for abortion as a crime-prevention measure.
It does however raise the question that given, for example, there were about 1700 fewer murders in New York in 2003 than in 1990, and if one accepts the correlation between this and abortion rates as causative, where does the ethical balance go; and if your position is that a fetus does not have the same rights as a human after birth, but does have some ethical standing or rights , however you want to phrase it, that is greater than zero, that suggests there would be some idea of that balance between the extremes of weighting each abortion as homicide, or assigning them no moral weight at all.
October 15, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Here are a bunch of people who don’t base their pro-life views on religion.
http://www.godlessprolifers.org/library.html
October 15, 2006 at 9:10 pm
I’ve only come across online a few people who were pro-abortion, in that they were in favour of more pregnancies being aborted, but their stance was based upon them feeling very strongly that human population should decline rather than feminist principles.
I have met a lot of feminists who will quite happily call you a misogynist as soon as you voice any ethical quarms about abortion whatsoever. I’ve also found that for some feminists abortion rights is seen as the main aim/achievment of feminism, for instance in Female Chauvanist Pigs Ariel Levy sees the two main achievements of second wave feminism as Roe v Wade and nearly passing the Equal Rights Amendment. I thought “If those are its two main achievements it hasn’t achieved very much.”
October 15, 2006 at 9:15 pm
I’m not really sure why you’re apologising.
October 15, 2006 at 11:23 pm
So many people put their arguments in here. I actually want to refer to personal experience without mentioning who I am talking about. When the woman does not want the child and gives birth to it the child might suffer by always feeling unwanted. Well, it depends on the woman how much she lets it feel like it. I personally think the woman who is concerned should decide. It prevents pain for the child and the mother. Men should also be more careful and considerate. It is not just the woman responsible for unwanted pregnancy. The man needs to know what he is doing even during the foreplay which can cause unwanted pregnancy as well. I am also for more education how to prevent pregnancy. It would certainly decrease the problem.
October 16, 2006 at 2:08 am
Oh, then nevermind, please disregard and return to your regularly scheduled criticism
Sorry[1], just that my other post disagreed with yours a bit, and wasn’t sure if it came across as attacking, so wanted to err on the side of politeness.
[1] Oops, there I go again
October 16, 2006 at 6:41 am
did you mean to reply to me, or to livredor? i am asking because what you’re saying seems to have nothing to do with what i said, but your comment is threaded after mine.
and before i engage with what you wrote (which will be difficult because i see such little connection), i wanted to make certain.
October 16, 2006 at 7:26 am
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I feel like I should ask you to slow down a tad; I’m a natural scientist and all this theory is a bit much for me.
But yes, I do want to get at most of the reasons for abortion, because most of them are symptoms of injustices against women. Empowered women would in most cases not want to have abortions, and feminism ought to be about giving women the power to make good decisions rather than least worst decisions in response to their oppression.
I don’t think that making women go through pregnancy, give birth and become parents as a punishment is in the least moral. Primarily because even worse than abortion itself, it mainly punishes the child. I don’t think that punishing the irresponsible father equally or as near equally as possible given biological reality would make that any more moral. A more minor argument why this isn’t moral is that being forced to raise an unwanted child is completely out of proportion to the original “crime” of being less than perfectly careful about contraception, or even just unlucky.
I’m not sure that because something is medical, it is automatically patriarchal. I’m of the opinion that medicine is generally a good thing. But I do see where you’re going with that argument.
Universally infallible birth control is not a sensible aim, just because thermodynamics prohibits that kind of perfection. Male birth control pill would help, as would better access to and attitudes towards both male and female sterilization. One thing I’d like to see would be moving away from elevating PIV sex above all else. Ironically, the right wing abstinence only pro lifers are at least equally responsible for that prejudice. Most people are happy with the idea that sex is for pleasure as well as reproduction, yet still see PIV intercourse as “real” sex. Straightforward statistics would mean many fewer unwanted pregnancies if all the sexual options were equally desirable and people would choose according to personal preference and mood.
Anyway, thank you for agreeing with me and also giving me ideas to think about and extend my thoughts on the issue; I really like it when that happens with LJ posts.
October 16, 2006 at 10:47 am
I was writing in response to your last paragraph. You said that you were all for the rights of disabled people who were ‘already born and alive’ and I thought you were implying the any fetus that hasn’t been born isn’t alive. However, fetuses are alive; if they weren’t they wouldn’t be able to die. Lots of people on this thread have been using language that implies that fetuses aren’t alive or don’t exist before their born, yours was just the first comment I saw that seemed to be doing this. I’m sorry if I’ve just misread your comment.
October 16, 2006 at 1:24 pm
The specific thing I am arguing against is the type of pro choice argument which says it is cruel to bring a disabled child into the world, that it is for the child’s sake to make it not exist at all rather than being disabled. I think it’s important to be honest and say clearly that a choice to abort in that situation is for the sake of the parents, because they couldn’t cope with that child.
I agree with you about the assumptions about the value of a disabled life compared to that of a temporarily-abled life. However, in the case of people who do hold those assumptions, I kind of think it would be cruel for them to bring a disabled child into the world, simply because of the abuse (certainly psychological, and perhaps even physical) such a child would almost certainly recieve from parents who hold those views.
October 17, 2006 at 7:34 pm
Thanks for this comment. Lots of interesting and thoughtful stuff.
I’m not sure I would completely go along with . I would really like to see a reduction in the number of abortions, and I think the best way to achieve that is through good sex education, empowering women, improving the adoption system, supporting non-traditional families, doing more research into contraception and reproductive medicine generally, preventing rape, and improving attitudes towards the disabled. What I see the pro life movement doing is almost the exact polar opposite of all these. I am pretty agnostic about what the law should be regarding abortion; it is pretty clear that simply making abortion illegal does very little if anything to prevent abortion.
It is true that most pro choice people do not in fact think that abortion is a good thing. But it is fairly common for people in that philosophical camp to harp on women’s right to choose, absolutely forbidding any criticism because such would seem to be pro life. And I’m not happy with putting a lot of effort into giving people the right to make what seems to me to be a bad choice.
I mentioned in my original post that I don’t want to get into a debate about the term patriarchy. I dislike the term myself, but I think stylistically it worked well in lavendersparkle’s piece, which she labelled as a polemic. It’s a pithy opening line, and arguing about it is distracting from the main point.
Whether you should comment in her journal is not something I can decide. Ask her! My impression of her is that she is extremely sane and not liable to go looking for insults or accusations where none are intended. But I can’t speak for her, obviously.
October 17, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Thank you! That’s a really kind comment.
I’m not sure it’s brave to post like this; the worst thing that will happen is people will yell at me or defriend me. It’s not a highly emotive topic for me, for the most part. It’s extremely unlikely that my views would put me in physical danger.
But anyway, I’m glad that my post was beneficial, and thank you for letting me know you appreciated it.
October 17, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Hm. At least a section of the abortion debate boils down to: is the foetus a person? If it’s a person it has rights which have to be balanced against those of the mother, and it has interests, for example in continuing to exist including if it may become disabled. Much of the pro choice argument seems to be predicated on the idea that a foetus is not a person. I kind of agree, in that defining a microscopic blob of a few dozen undifferentiated cells as a person is pretty counter-intuitive. However, the standard pro life arguments and behaviours, though they claim that an “unborn child” is just as much a person as an adult, are not remotely consistent with this view. I tend to define the foetus as a creature with some moral standing, which increases as it develops.
I do not understand philosophically why there is a connection between the pro life position and what rather elegantly termed antipathy to sexual independence. This is why I suspsect the pro life movement is actually coming from hidden motives, rather different from what advocates claim are their aims. It may be that Muder’s ideas about inherited obligation versus negotiated commitment are part of what’s going on with the anti sex crowd. They want independence from state interference, but they also want absolute certainty that nobody will ever abandon anyone to whom they have an obligation. Hence, no sex unless you are in a position and are prepared to raise any offspring that may result.
October 17, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Oh dear, I was concerned I would get flamed and in fact people are complaining I’m too reasonable! Thanks for the supportive comment, anyway.
October 17, 2006 at 8:11 pm
In general, I don’t think it’s a good idea to impose one’s views on other people (beyond the absolute minimum necessary for civilized society). But I also have the impression that in the fervour of the pro choice movement to insist that only the particular pregnant woman can decide whether to keep the pregnancy is getting in the way of creating a framework in which the need for abortion can be reduced. This is because avoiding abortion is seen as the province of the evil pro life movement, not because most choicers actually think abortion is a good thing.
If abortion should be illegal, which I’m really not sure about, there certainly needs to be a better reason than “because I think it’s wrong”. A major reason I’m not a fervent supporter of legal compulsion is that it patently doesn’t work to prevent abortions, mind you.
October 17, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Empowered women would in most cases not want to have abortions
Why not?
October 20, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Ooh, that link is fascinating.
October 23, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Hi, thanks for dropping by and for this comment. Sorry it’s taken a while to get back to you; I tend to be slow about following up discussions, by LJ standards.
I completely agree with your point that the debate can degenerate into just yelling at strangers, not understanding their religious and cultural background. That’s definitely one of the things that bothers me about the issue.
I’m not actually bothered by the fact that some people might “abuse” the choice to have an abortion. It’s more the case that many women end up in bad situations for all the reasons outlined in her original post, economic, social, sexism, whatever, and this pushes them into having abortions. Instead of fighting the problems that made it necessary for vulnerable women to have abortions in the first place, pro choice advocates seem to be celebrating the fact that the supposed “solution” of abortion is available.
Also, a good point that criminalization isn’t an effective method of preventing abortions. That’s a big reason why I don’t consider myself pro life, though it’s secondary to the fact that I think the pro life movement as actually constituted is evil.
October 23, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Hello, and thanks for your comment. I’m really pleased about how widely this post was linked; it’s a shame I’ve taken so long to get back to everyone.
It’s fair enough to call me on what was basically hyperbole. I could have just said , and that would have made my point without extending it too far and making pro choice advocates look ridiculous. I agree that the direct claim that abortion is good is fairly rare, though not unheard of. What I do see is that as soon as anyone expresses a slightly negative opinion about abortion, there is a whole chorus clamouring that it’s the individual woman’s choice, and any criticism at all is an unconscionable attack on women’s freedom.
There’s a bit of it even in this comments thread, and the people commenting her are all highly reasonable and thoughtful people compared to the standards of the abortion debate in general. I’m not sure this is the best example, because it’s a long and complicated thread with a lot of different issues going on, but look at some of the comments on this thread at Alas, a blog. Similarly, there was that meme that was popular on LJ a while back where people were supposed to post saying or something like that. I can definitely see that as part of the refusing guilt thing that you allude to. But I have to admit it bothered me.
Thank you very much for linking to your own essay on the subject. I really like the way you’re framing things there. I think I’m probably in category A to a great extent, but I definitely see those as useful categories and a way of circumventing the unhelpfully polarized debate.
I’m not at all sure how Europe ended up with such a different slant on the abortion debate, and one that frankly is more politically harmful in many ways, particularly to disability rights. And to be absolutely fair I’m only in touch with the details in the UK rather than the whole of Europe. Definitely sexual and gender politics is an element in the debate over here; it would be foolish to pretend otherwise! It’s also important to acknowledge that just because something is “medical”, it doesn’t magically become objective and unbiased and gender egalitarian and otherwise wonderful; the medical profession can become infected with harmful memes just like any other element of society.
October 24, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Thank you for your kind words! I’m really impressed at how many interesting and even novel ideas this post has generated; it helps that I’m starting with a civilized and intelligent group of friends, of course, but still. And yeah, I’m supposed to be working too…
October 24, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Thank you for contributing. I am always 100% in favour of better education, and you make a good point about men needing to be fully aware, and of course careful.
Interesting thought about a child who feels unwanted. I have difficulty with the argument that goes: I don’t want this child, so I would be horrible to them if they were born, so it’s better for them not to be born in the first place. Surely a parent has a choice in whether to be horrible to the child or not! Also, in this case it really seems like either not getting pregnant in the first place, or carrying the pregnancy and putting the baby up for adoption, would be a better solution than abortion. The problem is that both these options can be difficult in a society where women don’t have as much freedom as they should.
October 24, 2006 at 1:04 pm