Abortion

Justin Bieber Gets Something Right?

Abbreviated, as still recovering from travel, but the argument went well!

Because you surely care, Justin Bieber, apparently, is pro-life (but for weird reasons) and pro-single payer (but for no discernible reason). It’s not really clear why we should care here, specifically, or about celebrity views on politics, generally. But note this: how often do you see someone with a hard left position (on healthcare), alongside a hard right position (on abortion)? Republican messaging is such that these normally go hand-in-hand as, for example, the healthcare war was largely fought on ideological lines (“socialism!”) rather than anything close to the merits.

Why’s Justin Bieber slipped the line? Here, finally, we might draw something interesting from celebrity punditry.

The Logical Conclusion of the Anti-Choice Position

A South Dakota committee has reported out a bill that would make the murder of anyone attempting to harm an unborn fetus “justifiable homicide.” The bill (changes in bold, with thanks to TPM):

Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt to murder such person, or to harm the unborn child of such person in a manner and to a degree likely to result in the death of the unborn child, or to commit any felony upon him or her, or upon or in any dwelling house in which such person is.

Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person in the lawful defense of such person, or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant, or the unborn child of any such enumerated person, if there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony, or to do some great personal injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished.

The bill’s sponsor states that, because “this code only deals with illegal acts, which doesn’t include abortion,” it would not permit justifiable homicide of an abortion doctor. But this limitation occurs nowhere on the face of the statute. In fact, the legislature avoided an easy redraft that would eliminate the possibility:

Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person in the lawful defense of such person, or of his or her husband, wife, parent, child, master, mistress, or servant, or the unborn child of any such enumerated person, if there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design to commit a felony, or to do some great personal injury, and imminent danger of such design being accomplished.

Although this change would neuter the justifiable homicide defense, it would also prevent anyone from reading the law to permit, say, a father to kill a doctor performing an abortion on his daughter. As written currently, this is a possibility.

Shocking, yes. But this bill is entirely consistent with the anti-choice lobby’s position. If abortion is murder, then why shouldn’t the full penal code incorporate it as such?

If Some Abortions Are Unsafe… Is That Reason to Ban It Altogether?

I’ve never understood why a list of health complications, or scare stories about abortions gone wrong, or unscrupulous doctors (all of the above mentioned here) state an argument about making the process illegal, rather than making it safe. Especially  the anti-choice lobby has made because abortion less safe, by banning unpopular but (at times) necessary procedures, it seems increasingly clear that the movement’s respect for life extends only as far as the fetus, with the life and health of the woman being (at best) an afterthought, and (at worst) a chit to be exploited in the operating theater of public opinion.

Libertarian regulatory wisdom — from which (I thought) the tea party draws its essence — is not to the contrary. Under that rubric, a process that can be made safe should be legal, but regulated. Plainly, if that logic does not control, we prefer potential over actual life.

Two Vignettes on Abortion: Minimizing Dredd Scott, Moral Doubt, and Moderation

With apologies for delayed posting…

It should come as no surprise that I’m not a particular fan of Rick Santorum (R-Nothing), one of the first and worst offenders of the nastiest era of the latest culture wars. Here’s Santorum’s latest spin on abortion:

The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — “is that [a fetus] human life a person under the Constitution?”

And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that human life is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say “now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.”

The reference is to Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), the Supreme Court decision that, in no small part, ignited the Civil War by not just returning a runaway slave to his master, but speaking of the slave, Mr. Scott, as a chattel, rather than an independent human being. The operative conclusion — that Mr. Scott was “a being[] of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that [he] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” [no citation] — compelled the dismissal of Mr. Scott’s suit, because, simply put, property cannot sue.

Reading it today, the decision should still feel like a punch in the gut. The Court not only ended a man’s independent life, but did so in the most offensive, painful, and consequential way possible. This is the great wrong that Santorum compares to abortion.

We can note the superficial similarity. Scott denied agency, autonomy, and humanity to a person; similarly, Roe denies humanity to a specific organism. But here the similarities end. To posit that a fetus sits in the same seat as Dred Scott is to imbue the fetus with the individual will, and hope of better life, that made Scott’s case so painful. It’s also to assume one’s conclusion. If a fetus could cry out and say, “free me!”, or possess the consciousness to hold that desire, none would deny it its life and its freedom. But you can’t assume free will and cognition of what is, in some cases, a bundle of cells. Santorum’s comparison is inflammatory, sure, but that’s nothing new. It’s also legally wrong, and elides the more complex and necessary question: when can the state express an interest in future life?

Speaking of complexity, an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal attempts a criticism of Palin’s feminist critics, by ignoring the same. James Taranto:

To the extent that “feminism” remains controversial, it is because of the position it takes on abortion: not just that a woman should have the “right to choose,” but that this is a matter over which reasonable people cannot disagree–that to favor any limitations on the right to abortion, or even to acknowledge that abortion is morally problematic, is to deny the basic dignity of women.

To a woman who has internalized this point of view, Sarah Palin’s opposition to abortion rights is a personal affront, and a deep one. It doesn’t help that Palin lives by her beliefs. To the contrary, it intensifies the offense.

Emphasis mine. It’s very easy to criticize feminists as absolutists, but that doesn’t change the fact that the majority, the voices that matter as opposed to Catherine MacKinnon, are not. No-one imagines abortion is devoid of moral dimensions, and no-one (of importance) insists on unfettered abortion rights, especially because, to secure unfettered abortion rights, one would have to overturn Roe, but in the opposite direction. On the other hand, Sarah Palin is precisely that absolutist, but in the opposite direction. Her stated views on abortion are that it is net-immoral, and ought to be illegal. In all cases. All of them.

This is a minimization of the complex moral questions that real people ask of themselves before even considering an abortion, and the very reason that the abortion issue is deadlocked in this country. In fact, avowed feminists — like President Obama, with his exhortation that the two sides find common ground on minimizing the need for abortions — are the only parties attempting a compromise. Why?

Dispelling the Myth that Pro-Choice Activists Minimize Adoption

From my friend’s popular anti-”crisis pregnancy center” website:

Adoption can be a positive choice for women and couples facing unplanned pregnancies.  Depending on the kind of adoption, you may have ways to remain in contact with your child as she/he grows up.  “Open adoptions” can be very empowering for women; in an ideal situation you may be able to choose the adoptive family, and you can usually remain in contact with the adoptive family as your child grows up. [. . .]

It’s important to note that there are many, many women who have given children up for adoption, and a woman who was well-informed about her decision will ultimately have a hugely more positive experience with the process than a woman who was coerced into the decision or left in the dark about the details.

Pro-choice activists encourage women to choose adoption, if it’s right for them. But we don’t pretend it’s their only choice. We’re in the business of helping people, not validating dying social norms.

A Scientific Explanation for Creationists

And global warming deniers, and other adherent to those pernicious scientific minority views, that curiously become political plurality views. From a commentator on the study:

The authors [of a new study] favor a model, called the cultural cognition of risk, which “refers to the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values.” This wouldn’t apply directly to evolution, but would to climate change: if your cultural values make you less likely to accept the policy implications of our current scientific understanding, then you’ll be less likely to accept the science.

More sophisticated players then cherry-pick science that, out of context, supports their cultural instincts. The assertion that this wouldn’t apply to creationists feels wrong. Fundamentalists of all religions are as likely, if not more likely, to build “cultural values” resistant to objective truths uncovered by modernity. It also explains the scientific sleight of hand noted in my article on Gonzales v. Carhart, where a parade of minority-view scientists built enough of a sham record to convince Justice Kennedy into signing off on an unconstitutional law.

“Statism” and Abortion Politics

Italian authorities in Lombardy, the stretch of Italy bordering Switzerland, have devised a plan to cut down on what they see as the prime reason for abortions among their populace — economics — by offering women money to not have an abortion. Clever. Here’s the surprise — I see no problem with this.

The plan contains within it a tacit acknowledgment that women ought to have control over these decisions, and that abortions can be cut by some means other than an outright ban. It also completely removes morality from the equation, so that women in need and state authorities can work towards their shared goal — decreasing the number of abortions. These are all advances, and Italy should be thanked for addressing the abortion issue practically — something anti-choice lobbies in the States can’t ever seem to do and, truly, have never even bothered to attempt.

Curiously, American anti-choice groups seem pretty happy with the scheme, too. But while it may decrease abortions, the plan seems to violate another key belief shared by most American anti-choice groups: that government shouldn’t be in the business of using money to affect the life decisions of its citizens, especially because government programs like these are uniquely subject to waste and exploitation. If implemented at the federal level, such an incentive-based plan to minimize abortions would stretch the Commerce Clause to the breaking point, because limiting abortions is social policy, not economics. It would actually present a case of federal overreach, which activist conservative lawyers gleefully over-identify elsewhere, and vainly prosecute.

Admittedly, this just validates what we already knew: that the right’s support for command social policies is the exception that swallows their limited government “rule” whole, at least when the state asserts power over someone undesirable — someone gay, someone Muslim, someone pregnant by her own “fault,” someone else. Next time you see a tea partier with a Gadsden flag, don’t miss the implied emphasis: “Don’t Tread On Me.” For everyone else, well, it depends.

Sex and Responsibility

Last week, we noted that WorldNetDaily has a problem with women enjoying sex, especially because the Pill, and the availability of safe, legal abortion, together permit them to do just that while suffering nearly as few negative consequences as their male partners.

Maybe men and women should both be more responsible with that ability. But that’s not the question posed when we ask whether the Pill is “good” or “bad.” Today, at least one member of The National Review seems to recognize as much:

The fiftieth anniversary of the contraceptive pill seems to have provoked some grumbling around this fine Corner. I appreciate that some folk have religious objections to contraception. Those objections are what they are. As a practical matter, however, it seems to me that the development of the pill has been an enormous boon. Like many of the greatest scientific advances, it facilitated an enormous extension of freedom. Did some people abuse that freedom? Sure — and no surprise there — but the fault for that lies with people, not pill.

Good for them. I’d expand that reasoning to abortion, too, but perhaps that’s asking too much. I’ll note, too, that in the year 2010, we should really be past the question of whether contraception is good, and it’s a sign of the right’s continued radicalism that such issues are still controversial.

Fetal Death, State Power, and the Anti-Choice Movement

To the argument, increasingly common, that the mourned death of a fetus indicates a value in fetal life that the pro-choice movement somehow elides, a simple point. When mothers mourn the loss of a child they sought and desired to bring to term, and when they sue on the basis of the loss of that expectancy, or ask the state to prosecute it, the law vindicates the mother’s interest in potential life.

When deciding whether to criminalize abortion, that interest is off the table. The fact pattern assumes it away, because the prospective mother desires to forfeit her expectancy. Rather, the only question is whether the state’s interest in potential life defeats the prospective mother’s continued interest in the integrity and control of her body. The law is powerless to make a woman want to bear a child, even if it eventually forces her to do just that.

This conflict between the state and the individual is at the heart of the abortion debate: no matter how you choose to frame the morality of the abortion debate, it is about control. Either the state tries to substitute its judgment for the woman’s, by bombarding her with abusive imagery and medical information until she changes her mind, or it simply ignores her lack of consent, by foreclosing all medical alternatives to childbirth.

We might take this as further proof that there’s nothing individualistic about modern conservatism — at least not when it comes to the lives of others.

Abortion for Convenience?

Vigilant subway riders will have spotted the “Abortion Changes You” campaign — in all its tacky instances. One example, for discussion:

One can imagine that abortion does, in fact, change you — that’s why it’s a serious choice: one not to be taken lightly, and one not to be coaxed into, or out of. Like the decision to have a child.

I stress the decisional aspect of raising a child because, in the modern era, regardless of how you feel about abortion, it is a choice. By disputing that it is a choice — and not just arguing that the exercise of the choice would be wrong — this RedState article on the subject probably gives us more information than the author ever intended. If, after all, abortion isn’t just a bad decision, but no decision at all, the minute a pregnancy occurs, the woman must carry it to term, not because there’s no moral alternative, but because that’s the way of things.

We — men — don’t often look at it this way, but, combined with the far right’s hostility to responsible sex education, this is a very deterministic way to look at a woman’s life. Under this reasoning, the world can alter a woman in a way that she cannot alter the world, and bind her, and her alone, to a future that she was, in every instance, not alone in choosing, and in which she sometimes had no choice.

Conservatives can take the position that an abortion for “convenience” (read: any reason other than grave danger to health) is an immoral act, but instead of acknowledging the difficulties it creates, they demonize women expressing valid concerns as selfish, mock those who share them, and in no way attempt to avoid the difficulty by providing meaningful pre- or post-pregnancy support structures. When was the last time you heard conservatives speak honestly about contraception, or push for incentives, whether public or private, for affordable neonatal care, or day care for working mothers? Until that happens, the anti-choice lobby — and yes, even the women who populate it — shouldn’t, and won’t, be able to avoid being characterized as anti-feminist. Maybe a fetus isn’t a “choice,” but nor is a woman a passive vessel for the state to control, and then ignore.