And miniature American flags for others: The Abortion Megathread
So, surprisingly, it turns out many of my Fellowphants have strong opinions on abortion, and really I don't care what your opinions are but you should all hear mine because it's awesome. Plus, since this is the biggest topic in the controversial opinions thread, I'd like to give it its own space to let down its hair, scratch its balls, and sprawl out on the sofa.
Quote:
Originally posted by an old joke
An abortion party is just like a baby shower, except the mother can drink.
So, full disclosure, I am a liberal, pro-choice Democrat who sometimes donates to both Planned Parenthood and NARAL. However, my feeling that abortion should be legal is mostly couched in pragmatism and as such I can pretty easily understand why a lot of people disagree. It's one of those issues that's fundamentally based upon drawing an arbitrary line over top of a continuous process -- the mysterious process by which something that is not a separate living thing turns into something that is.
And it is arbitrary. You or I might prefer one particular dividing line or another, but a quick survey of the history of this question shows how many different moments have been selected:- Fertilization: Pro-life advocates in the US typically argue that once sperm meets egg, it's now a child whose human rights should be respected
- Implantation: It's the normal medical definition for the beginning of pregnancy, since half or more of fertilized eggs never implant at all
- Forty days: Traditional Jewish law considered there not to be an actual recognizable fetus with limbs prior to that date, and thus that damage to it does not constitute injury of a living thing
- The end of the first trimester: The US Supreme Court, in decisions like Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, has established that the government has more legitimate business limiting abortion with each trimester
- Quickening: In English common law, procuring an abortion after the first fetal movements were detected (usually in the second trimester) was a crime, whereas no crime existed if a woman terminated a pregnancy before that
- Viability: This is a big one nowadays, since well before full-term, babies can potentially survive with medical treatment. Of course, this is not a clear division either, since viability depends on the amount of medical care received and is a matter of probability
- The end of the second trimester: Again, established by the Supreme Court, and abortions in the third trimester are typically very hard to get in the United States (even in the case of medical need)
- Birth: Clearly at least in US law once an infant draws breath it cannot be "aborted"; killing it constitutes murder. Few people in the West would advocate that infanticide is a legitimate means of family planning, but in many if not most pre-modern cultures it was practiced fairly routinely
- Well after birth: In some traditional societies, it's normal to wait to name a child until it is a few years old, due to high infant mortality rates. Arguably, in these societies, children aren't really considered fully "human" until they're walking and talking
People have struggled with the abortion issue for centuries or longer, and the lack of any consensus on when a few cells turns into an actual child illustrates something -- it's a continuous process. That being the case, whether or not it's morally right to abort obviously is not a binary question, and the rightness of it decreases as time passes. While some of the more militant pro-life activists out there argue that discarding fertilized eggs leftover from fertility treatments constitutes "murder", most of us wouldn't agree. (However, here in the US, the theoretical risk that birth control pills and emergency contraception could, in very rare cases, cause a fertilized egg to fail to implant has led to efforts to restrict access to those things -- probably with the effect of increasing the likelihood of later, even less moral abortions.)
Almost all advocates for abortion rights that I've ever talked to will agree that there's more reason to limit abortion in the third trimester, and a lot of pretty staunchly pro-choice people really have no problem with laws banning them except when necessary to protect the mother's health. Similarly, pro-life advocates have made the most concentrated efforts at banning late-term (so-called "partial birth") abortions. So whether you say "it's a child, not a choice" or "get your laws out of my uterus", both sides pretty much agree on this point.
It's inescapable. There's a clear difference between a single cell and a viable child a day from being born, but there's no dividing line to let us know how to treat it at all the points in between. Activists on either side may not want to admit it, but inevitably, the abortion issue boils down to muddy uncertainties and the weighing of conflicting rights. Even the staunchest advocates for one side or another implicitly agree that abortion becomes less acceptable as the pregnancy progresses.
Who's Going to Bell the Cat?
Exy, good post there.
My views on abortion come in two distinct flavors. First there is what I would like to see happening in an ideal world; then there is what I think is the only really workable way to handle things in the real world.
In an ideal world, I'd like to see pregnancy occurring only as a planned event for people who have considered all the implications of having a child. In which case abortions would only be required when medical complications arise, and there'd be no stigma associated with such an event.
Reality, alas, is a bit more complicated.
In the end it seems to me that there are two choices: Either abortion is a choice available to a woman for any reason she deems good, whatever my private opinion may be; or abortion is going to be restricted by people who won't have to deal with the consequences.
Let's talk about some of the popular exceptions that always come up when talking about abortion: pregnancies that are the result of rape. I think that when talking about restrictions on abortion whatever your position on the issue, it must be accepted that abortion foes are going to take any legal wording that allows restriction on abortion to be used to the full extent of the written law. So, in effect, I believe that any restriction on abortion based upon a rape clause is going to mean that prior to allowing it to be used, there will be some standard of proof required for that rape. The simplest standard of proof would be to require a rape conviction prior to allowing that fetus to be aborted. Which would probably result in a legal permission to abort that 12 month old baby sitting next to the victim. :sad:
But without that conviction, there will be a chorus of people claiming that any claim of rape to gain access to abortion services is simply being fabricated to allow the woman in question to evade the consequences of her actions.
When considering medical exemptions, I fear similar obstructionism to be coming to the fore. Who decides when the medical exemptions are to be used? The short answer is going to be "the doctors involved in the case." But for a legal restriction, "Thou shalt not perform third trimester abortions except in cases of medical emergency" to stand, it's going to require court orders prior to any exceptional procedures to be enacted. Which leaves me imagining a real set of death panels, where judges and lawyers on both sides are sitting in judgment as doctors testify and the woman involved is stuck, helpless, while people use her situation to fight out their own personal issues1.
In short, I cannot imagine a workable solution that offers any restriction on abortion that would not be at an unacceptable risk for obstructionism. Because of that, in the real world, I advocate complete, unrestricted access to abortion.
My private opinions about many of the reasons that people use for choosing to have abortions just don't matter compared to that. FTM, I've got private reservations about many of the reasons why people choose to become parents, too. It's a common thought of mine, when I am forced to reluctantly consider that I can't afford a dog at this time, that many people who become parents do so with less forethought than I use in choosing whether to get a pet.
To go one step further, my opinion is that in the US those people who oppose abortion are chasing a chimera with their focus on changing the legal environment surrounding abortion. If the goal of the abortion foes is, as they claim, to reduce the number of abortions being performed, it seems to me that the best way to deal with that is to advocate strongly for two things: complete, and honest, sex ed for all children, starting about age 10-12; Ready, and cheap (if not free), access to multiple forms of birth control.
There was a very disturbing story I saw about a week or two ago about a study claiming a success rate for so-called abstinence only sex ed. Per this WaPo story, the study is claiming that the rates at which children who have been exposed to abstinence only programs have sex after such programs is significantly over-estimated by many people. Only one-third of the kids were having sex within two years of being exposed to abstinence only sex ed. :roll:
Look you brain dead escapees from a Magdalen Laundry - the point of sex ed isn't to keep kids from having sex! The point of sex ed is threefold: demystify the poor kids about the changes going on in their bodies, and those of their classmates; give the kids the tools to minimize their own risks later in life (hopefully); and finally to reduce the teen pregnancy rate! If one third of the kids coming out of an abstinence only program are having sex within two years, they're not even using the Rythm Method of birth control! And we all know what they call people who use the Rythm Method.
*Runs off screaming into the sunset at the stupidity of people nominally on my side of the issue*
1Mind you, part of this is based on some of the horror stories coming out of Latin America where the laws restricting abortion are particularly draconian. I cannot understand how anyone with a gram of sense or compassion can justify forbidding abortions for ectopic pregnancies.
