Submitted to a Candid World

Hi-
I just stumbled upon your blog, and since I’m not a law student, you’ll have to bear with me for a sec. But I have to take issue with this statement:
“I believe that every life is sacred, but I draw the line for what constitutes “life” at the end of the second trimester (possibly first – I haven’t worked that out yet), and would categorically ban all abortions after that point except those necessary for the mother’s health.”
If “every life is sacred” can I assume that you are a vegan who doesn’t ever kill bugs or even wash yourself regularly (given that skin cells are alive and all)? And if I don’t believe that “every life is sacred”, why can’t I get an abortion whenever I want? Just curious how this whole sanctity of life world would work, given the subjectivity of one’s belief system.

Other than that, I really like your post!

first, that is my most favoritist segment ever and ever from the simpsons.

second, your statement:

Because, for many pro-lifers, the abortion issue isn’t about defending life, it’s about punishing fault.

is spot-on. well done!

third, i think the feminist movement and many subsequent pro-choice efforts erroneously simplified what abortion really means to the woman … how agonizing and personal and heavily weighed the decision is by — i am going to argue without data — the vast majority of women who make such a choice. i think the feminist movement made a mistake by packaging it relatively flippantly … a woman could pop in for a quick d&c and be back in the office for her 2:00 power lunch …

i exaggerate for effect … but, obviously, so does the pro-life movement. i think these flippant images galvanized pro-lifers, and left the majority of americans not knowing quite what to do about abortion.

it is a tough, excruciating emotional and intellectual issue for a woman to navigate. i can’t blame the majority of americans for their ambivalence.

on top of all of this … attitudinal data are problematic. this is an ongoing issue in the social sciences. for instance, if a survey asks respondents if they ever have racist thoughts, guess what the answers are … but if you ask respondents if they have ever done this or that, using this or that as a proxy measure of racism, you get a better idea of what’s really going on.

i suspect, based on what i know about survey research, a person might respond “sure, abortion is o.k. in instances of rape,” forgetting that aunt doris (not a rape victim) had to have a little problem taken care of in the late 70s, but that’s different, and we don’t really talk about that.

I try to avoid posting when I don’t have anything to add, but I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve found both the original thread and the following comments very thought provoking. I’ve had a very muddled head on the entire abortion issue and your conversation is, believe it or not, actually providing some clarity.

Who says these ‘net ramblings don’t accomplish anything?

~ John

john, that’s pretty darn cool.

more thoughts … i have never been convinced by the rape-victim exception … i suspect the percentage of reported rapes that result in pregnancy can’t be very high … though, i admit i am too lazy to google stats …

anyway, how does a woman “prove” she was raped? rape has an abysmal conviction rate, especially in instances of acquaintance rape … to get an abortion, would a rape victim have to wait for a conviction? would she simply have to say she was raped? if it’s the former, then why have the exception at all … the baby would be born by the time of conviction (if there is one) … and if it’s the latter, then why wouldn’t a woman, who had gone through the whole matrix and decided to abort, add that she had been raped, regardless of truth?

“Because, for many pro-lifers, the abortion issue isn’t about defending life, it’s about punishing fault. The difference between rape and consensual sex is a difference in culpability”

I don’t think it is so much the issue of culpability as the lack of desire to debate a touchy topic. Most pro-lifers would rather put aside the minority of abortion performed on those who were impregnated as a result of rape and focus on the much larger number of abortions performed in cases where rape isn’t an issue. It is much harder to argue against abortion for rape victims because rape is such an emotional issue. The easy answer, create an exception for rape and get on with the argument.

Ames,

Thanks for the post and forcing me to think.

I would agree rape is an extremely emotional issue. Yet from a purely logical standpoint, if life is sacred in the womb (and I believe it is), then that sacredness should be protected even in the presence of evil (rape). Practicing one evil will not remove the other. Yet we are emotional creatures, and it is difficult to see things as black and white as that. Sitting here on the couch, I would find myself in that 13%. I would hope if my daughter were in that situation, I would still be.

Steve,

Why exactly do you love the idea of abortion on demand, any time for any reason? I can understand why some people think it should be a right (well not any time for any reason), but love it? Please enlighten me.

I wanted to let this post simmer around in my head a bit before replying – so forgive me if it’s a bit long.

First, I think it’s important to establish that to even have a ‘debate’ about abortion, it must be acknowledged that most pro-choicers believe life starts well after the first trimester. So, for them, anything is fair game during the period when the child is not viable outside the womb. For those of us in the pro-life camp, we tend to believe life begins at conception. We can think of few scenarios which trump the life of the child. Realizing that dynamic means that most of this conversation is probably futile, but hey, let’s walk that plank anyway.

To throw some numbers out there 90% of abortions take place in the first trimester. Of those, here’s the breakdown: 1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).

Given those statistics, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the vast majority of abortions (a little over 1 million in 2005) were ‘inconvient’ pregnancies in the first trimester. But then we go back to our original premise and we see that the reason doesn’t matter because it’s not life yet, correct?

Let’s pretend for a minute that pro-choicers wake up one morning and decide that life DOES begin at conception, but they still see cases where it is necessary. Now we have arrived at Ames’ original premise. He argues that any nuanced postion taken by pro-lifers is violating the ’sanctity of life’ rationale. I would tend to agree with that. But just what kind of exceptions are we talking about?

Most pro-lifers grant exceptions to the ‘big three’ (rape, incest and health of the mother). We understand Ames’ arguement and the implied hypocrisy but let’s face the facts: those three items account for 7% of the total abortions performed in a year. Restricting abortion to those cases would mean 1.1 million children would be saved each year. Being a society that rarely deals in absolutes, I’d say those numbers are pretty good. I think I am echoing Totaltransformation’s point there.

To address just a couple of other points:

DM talks about the emotionally difficult decision to abort a baby. Yes, it must be tough. But so is the choice to give the child up for adoption and in that case the child gets to grow up.

Gotchaye discusses the child support obligations of men who have no say in whether or not their child is aborted. I would prefer a system where the father DOES have a say and is also responsible for child support. It’s not about punishment, it’s about responsibility.

I would also echo the comments of Shadowcatdancing that consent begins at intercourse. Ames and others may see an abortion ban as ‘punishment’ but I’ve never considered acceptance of one’s responsibilities as a punishment, forced or otherwise. Let’s also keep in mind that these women whose rights to abort you are talking about are the gatekeepers to pregnancy. Other than the tiny fraction of rape-induced pregnancies, women control the ‘means of production’ as it were. It’s not unkind to put the burden of a 9 month pregnancy on them in light of this fact. Should the child be kept, the financial responsibilities of the father begin at birth.

In cases of rape though, I would like to advance one notion which I have been considering as of late (and have not made up my mind about). If the parent of a 8 year old child commits a murder, or should molest that child, should we kill that child to spare him the inevitable pain he will deal with later in life, knowing what one of his parents perpetrated? If given the choice, wouldn’t the child probably choose life? I understand that rape is a heinous act and tremendously difficult for the mother, but does it justify the murder of the child? Or do we advance that notion as a way of easing the pain of the mother? If so, what does that say about the value we place on life?

I find myself greatly outmastered in debating credentials, but here’s just a quick interjection.

“The fetus’ rights don’t change, but the mother’s rights change dramatically based on how exactly she became pregnant….It’s much easier to say that someone has an obligation to sustain another life for nine months if they’re responsible to some extent for that life being dependent on them.”

When this argument is applied as an anti-abortion attack on rape victims – it trivializes the woman’s emotions and will. Some schools of thought say that women are responsible for themselves and rape is a woman’s fault. Back to the original post’s premise – this brings abortion into the role of punishment again against women.

“DM talks about the emotionally difficult decision to abort a baby. Yes, it must be tough. But so is the choice to give the child up for adoption and in that case the child gets to grow up.”

The emotional scarring in these two situations have hugely different values. In a) the woman must deal with the abortion emotional package. in b) the woman must deal with (the unwanted) pregnancy’s physical and emotional issues AND the emotional road that comes with giving the child up.

Perhaps this is a deadbeat argument but I object to the assertion that ‘aborted to be’ fetus should be had and adopted out or to become wards of the state. This places the /unnecessary/ burden on society to take care of these unwanted children.

“Other than the tiny fraction of rape-induced pregnancies, women control the ‘means of production’ as it were. It’s not unkind to put the burden of a 9 month pregnancy on them in light of this fact.”

Again, this undermines a woman’s humanity, dubbing her solely as an incubator. Pregnancy and in fact the resulting child are not minor inconveniences.

And women are not asexual – yet. As long as men are needed to supply their sperm, women are not humanity’s sole ‘gatekeepers’ and cannot be charged with carrying the species’s continuation alone. Abortion is not stunting the population by obstructing women from continuing with later planned pregnancies when they are in a more emotionally and economically stable state (better for society and the child in question all around).

leftoverkumquats,

The emotional scarring in these two situations have hugely different values. In a) the woman must deal with the abortion emotional package. in b) the woman must deal with (the unwanted) pregnancy’s physical and emotional issues AND the emotional road that comes with giving the child up.

Nothing you have just said outweighs the life of the child in my opinion. Again, in the mind of a pro-lifer that sees life beginning at conception we don’t see ‘emotional turmoil’ as more concerning than murder.

This places the /unnecessary/ burden on society to take care of these unwanted children.

What did Charles Dickens say about the ’surplus population’? There are other unwanted children who were carried to term. Should we start ‘thinning the herd’?

Again, this undermines a woman’s humanity, dubbing her solely as an incubator. Pregnancy and in fact the resulting child are not minor inconveniences.

No – they aren’t. And that’s why people should think before they engage in activities that may produce a child.

And women are not asexual – yet. As long as men are needed to supply their sperm, women are not humanity’s sole ‘gatekeepers’ and cannot be charged with carrying the species’s continuation alone.

I agree – and as someone who has paid child support for 14 years and been a very involved father, despite the ‘inconvience’ I fully support legal requirements for men to at least be financially responsible for the children they father.

let’s go back to ames’ opening statement …

While I disagree vehemently with the position that abortion should be illegal in all instances, it is intellectually consistent, and draws its strength from a deep (and indisputable) belief that human life begins at the very second of conception, and is sacrosanct. I can’t debate that. I can’t debate away someone’s religion. I have to respect it.

(my bold)

this comment thread is veering towards the argument ames points out cannot be resolved.

i want to go back to pc’s quoted stats … they reflect, somewhat, my personal knowledge …

i know several women who have had abortions. two were high school students. three others were single, uninsured waitresses or bartenders … meaning not only were they uninsured, their livelihood (tips from flirting with men and working their asses off on their feet for eight hours straight) was not conducive to working while pregnant. (the other responsible parties, by the way, were either unemployed or waiters and less than forthcoming with assistance.) these five women had abortions very early into the first trimester. each one of them was deeply affected by the entire experience.

then there are the three women who chose to terminate in the second trimester. i want to be careful with details because the blogging world might be quite small, and i don’t want to betray anyone’s identity … these women are all married and very much looked forward to giving birth. two of these women found out the fetuses had terminal heart defects. if the babies survived delivery, they would have to be rushed into neonatal surgery and face grim prognoses for survival. the couples (and ultimately, the women) opted to terminate. the third case is equally heartbreaking. a married, first-time mother had an incompetent cervix and started rapidly losing amniotic fluid right at the start of the second trimester. she was rushed to the hospital and stabilized, but the fetus could not grow to term in the present situation and would ultimately cause infection and death to the mother, neither could it be delivered and supported in the nicu. the couple opted to abort.

there is one more woman i know who had an abortion pre-roe-v.-wade. this was the late ’60s. she was single, uninsured, working a low-paying service job. abortion was illegal, remember. even going to a doctor to discuss the situation was dangerous.

she and her roommate drove to mexico late at night. she had an abortion in a dingy “clinic” in the wee hours of the morning, and drove back home. it was only a matter of days before she was rushed to the hospital, literally on the verge of death. the abortion was shoddy. rotting tissue had caused a lethal infection.

did all of the women in these pregnancies, even the “inconvenient” ones consider the baby. WITHOUT QUESTION.

and for every pro-life supporter who is implacable in their stance, i hope he or she is NEVER caught in any of the situations i described, having to make an incredibly difficult choice when there, truly, is no clearcut “right answer”.

as ames states, believing that life begins at conception is a religious view. we live in a country, though, where law is based on reasoning higher than personal religion. ambivalence in a person’s view of abortion is understandable, but, again as ames says, unprincipled. ensuring abortion is safe and legal for all women, however, is a principled tact.

And I would also dispute that a belief in life beginning at conception is a religious view. There are plenty of doctors out there that will agree that life begins with an embryo, not sometime in the second or third trimester.

You have no more evidence to support a claim to the contratry than I do to support a claim in support of my position.

We have, indeed reached the point where things become impossible to resolve. And the only thing I can say about them is that I respect your belief, and encourage you to act in accordance with your belief, for yourself, but I will not allow you to impose your beliefs on me.
I am not willing to kill 130 living breathing women to get a million fetuses.
Nor am I willing to support a double standard that tells poor men ‘have all the sex you want and let them try to get the money to support the kid out of you if they can,’ while telling poor women ‘have sex only if you are willing to die for it.’ (Yes, I know, both are accepting the risk of sexually transmitted disease, but what we are discussing here is differential risk and I’m not going to be distracted by that red herring.)
It also comes down to a profoundly different attitude about sex. If you consider sex inherently sinful, unless it is for the purpose of having a child, then it is easy to say ‘if you don’t want a baby don’t have sex.’ If you consider sex to be a wonderful source of intimacy, connection and pleasure for people who care about each other, then it is unreasonable to demand a life of celibacy form those who can’t support or don’t want to risk children.
The bottom line for me is that I am not willing to grant a fetus, whether it does or does not have a soul, rights that ans 8 year old wouldn’t have. When the day comes, as it eventually will, that we can gestate in vitro, I will completely support the notion that abortion be replaced by transferring the fetus to such an artificial womb.
But a woman must be able to decide for herself what risks she is willing to take.

From Gotchaye:

…PC’s right that there are people out there who place value on humanity for reasons having nothing to do with religion; I’ve known someone who held that view while not believing in God. One can call it religions insofar as it is transcendental, but that’s a pretty big net.

I was one of those people. I became pro-life about 30 seconds after my daughter was born and have never looked back. But I was an avowed agnostic/atheist then and for nearly a decade afterwards. My pro-life stance had nothing do with faith and everything to do with what I experienced as a parent.

PC, on your decision to go pro-life:

That’s a very moving story, first. And one of the better reasons to go pro-life. But what you’re describing is a personal reason for being personally pro-life. Must the experience you gained from your life-changing experience be put upon others who lack the same personal knowledge, by force of law?

To offer, perhaps, a less inflammatory example, what if someone expressed the belief that, not only were fetuses not persons, but infants aren’t persons until they’re two years old. Presumably, you’re anti-infanticide not because you’ve managed to construct a rock-solid argument for it but because it just feels really wrong to you, because you’ve had personal experience with babies and find it inconceivable that killing them is moral. Would you favor not putting your beliefs onto others by force of law?

It seems to me that the position of most of the ‘pro-life’ people I’ve talked to could better be described as ‘fetus worship’. The idea that every human fetus is sacrad to god, or even just sacred to ‘nature’ if you don’t believe in a god, is contradicted by nature itself. More than half of all human fetuses are spontaneously aborted before the woman even knows she’s pregnant. It would seem therefore that ‘god’ does not place a high value on human fetuses.

Steve,

You’re still getting disease mixed up with natural functions of the body.

Michael

Steve,

A disorder in medical terms is when there is a disruption in the normal functioning of the body. Pregnancy is a natural consequence of sexual intercourse, not a disruption. That is the way a woman’s body is designed. By your definition, if for some reason I “decided” that I didn’t like the way my knee bent, I could call it a disorder and justify cutting it off. That, however, might get someone a visit with a psychiatrist. Sorry, no matter how you twist words, pregnancy is not a disease, regardless of how the woman feels. You cannot medically define terms based on feelings and wishes.

Sentient = able to perceive and feel things. Please don’t tell me you think fetuses can’t perceive or feel things?

i don’t know if this is going to help or hurt; though, that’s relative anyway in this forum …

this is a very interesting and educational site.

http://www.visembryo.com/baby/index.html

it’s an nichd project … science with no politics (at least as far as i could tell, and i referred to it during my pregnancy. i felt it was an objective reference.)

Because, for many pro-lifers, the abortion issue isn’t about defending life, it’s about punishing fault. The difference between rape and consensual sex is a difference in culpability. If recreational sex is a sin, both members of the couple who engage in it are sinners. But in the case of rape, only the man is a sinner; the woman is innocent. In a philosophy where sex is immoral, rape removes the cloud of fault from the woman.

I’m a pro-life feminist, so let me tackle this one.

Wrong rationale & logical fallacies abound.

You assume that because ONE explanation COULD explain how one can be pro-life and support abortion in the case of rape, then that explanation MUST BE TRUE. So let’s start with the knowledge that your post is based on a logical fallacy.

Now, on to what pro-lifers actually believe:
First of all, if there are any pro-lifers who view children as a punishment for sexual sin, they are also the 19% who don’t believe that abortion should be legal in the case of rape. You’ve yet to prove (and I suspect you cannot) that the groups that believe that children are a punishment for sexual sin overlap with those who are generally pro-life but support a rape exception. (Yes, this is required for your viewpoint to be remotely logical. Yes, you failed miserably.)

Second, pro-lifers (in general) don’t view children as punishments for sexual activity, rather as blessings (if religious) or as human beings of value (if non-theist). You way of thinking about the rape exception is terrible, because it fails to acknowledge this. (It’s pro-choicers who view children as punishments, actually… unjust punishments that can be rightly eliminated through abortion.) You’re imputing pro-choice belief systems in your analysis.

Third, you – like Judith Jarvis Thomson – make the massive logical mistake of translating from abortion in the case of rape, health, or life, to all abortions.

Fourth, you fail to acknowledge the difference between that which is moral and that which makes for a good legal system. Many pro-lifers know that we can get abortion bans through if we have rape exceptions. Women who seek abortions after rape account for roughly 1% of the abortions performed in the U.S. (health and life for another 6%, leaving 93% as lifestyle abortions). It is utterly insane to not support a rape exception, to continue to have 1.3 million babies slaughtered every year, when we could support a rape exception and effectuate a massive reduction in that number.

Now, most pro-choicers don’t support partial-birth abortion, ninth-month abortion for convenience, and the like. Many of them, perhaps, believe that a woman has already made her choice to be a mother – that sometime during the six or seven or eight months prior, she grew a baby and has lost her opportunity to complain about being pregnant.

Pro-lifers are also pro-choice. For us, the act of voluntary sexual intercourse (protected or not) is the point at which a woman – who is hardly a child in need of extra-special attention and accommodations, because she’s too silly to be held responsible for her actions – has made the choice to embrace parenthood of pregnant.

We do not feel the need to tell women that they need a special exception to the rule about not killing people, because they can’t really be responsible for the logical results of their own actions. That’s incredibly paternalistic and patronising, but that’s what the pro-choice crowd demands we give women. When pro-lifers treat them like the adults they purport to be, suddenly, we’re “anti-feminist.” Such crap!

Arguably, the pro-choice framework is anti-woman in the extreme. The largest supporters of abortion rights are young, unmarried men – those who know that abortion allows them to sleep around and sexually exploit young women, without the consequences of fatherhood, child support, or angry families demanding a shotgun wedding.

The pro-choice culture demands that we not be women – capable of gestating a baby after sexual intercourse – but men – who may have as much sex as they want without the burden of a baby in their lives. Women who are pregnant need all sorts of social support – from their universities, which can provide assistance with class scheduling, housing, daycare; offices, which can make their routines better for parents and make it easier for pregnant & parenting women to move up the corporate ladder; and from their families and friends, who are needed to help with child-rearing. By making abortion a “choice,” we’ve created the situation in which everyone takes the easy route – telling women to have an abortion. (64% of abortions involve coercion.) It’s easier to have your girlfriend “take care of the problem” than it is to be a father; it’s easier to tell your daughter to “get rid of it,” rather than support her through unplanned pregnancy and parenthood; and it’s certainly easier for everyone in society to force women to be like men – barren – rather than adapt to women’s needs.

I agree, but my answer in most cases is “it’s her choice” :)

No, it is normal in this day and age that she had the choice. What makes it wonderful is the choice she made.

By the way, Michael, I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your points earlier. I wrote this post the night before it went up, and the day it went live was a busy one at work :). Glad you’ve come back, and I appreciate the thought you’ve put into this issue.

Uhhh iPhone typo: “live” = “love”

Lunch Admin.

Actually the story is about choice and motherhood. That does not mean it is not about rape. Do news articles have to be about one issue only?

Do you happen to know this girl? Why can’t this baby help to heal her wounds? Is there some aspect of humanity that makes this impossible?

You said,

“Will this baby mean that Elizabeth can still be a ‘good girl’ despite the great wrong done to her?”

I don’t understand this statement. Are you saying she was a “bad girl” before the baby? Are you saying that she can’t be a “good girl”?

The motives of the publisher have little to do with the reality of the situation. A girl is raped, becomes pregnant, and chooses to keep the baby. You seem to be reacting negatively to her choice. Are you saying she was wrong to keep the baby? Why are you assuming she is mentally ill for choosing to keep her baby and tell her story? Can’t this be something to celebrate?

And just because you wouldn’t, does that make it wrong?

It is a celebration of life because Elizabeth chose to have the baby despite the evil that produced her. She decided, that for her, two wrongs do not make a right.

The wisdom, or lack thereof, of doing a news story about it does not diminish that point. Could the story have been handled better? Sure. Could you argue that the picture was pointless? Certainly.

Can you agree that Elizabeth made the right choice in having the baby?

Again, why such hostility?

Elizabeth made the right choice if she’s happy with it… that’s all that matters.

I don’t see it as “two wrongs” though – that’s circular reasoning.