(no subject)
Nov. 6th, 2003 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sereneIf abortion is a sticky/emotional/traumatic subject for you, skip this, please.
A friend posted this link in zir journal, with the following quote:
Now, I have often been criticized by fellow left-leaning people because my position on abortion is unpopular. I (along with a friend) was booed at a national Green Party platform plenary for expressing it. So I'm not saying I'm unbiased on this matter. (While I support safe, legal, affordable abortion, I do so because while I think that abortion is in general a bad idea (at best -- a tool of anti-woman oppression at worst), I think punishing women for making a difficult choice and choosing differently from the way I would choose is a worse idea.)
That said, I think the argument above stinks from a logical standpoint. The fetus in the example is not making a moral decision equivalent with stabbing someone; it's making no moral decision at all. Leaving aside the fact that only a small number of abortions are done for the reason that the mother's life and/or physical health are endangered, I think it's weaselly to use language that implies that if the mother decides (or is forced) not to have an abortion, that's the equivalent of some assault by the fetus upon her. It may be an assault by the State, but not by the fetus, who has no culpability whatsoever, as far as I'm concerned.
Comments are enabled, as always; comment away. I don't have that much emotion around this, but the argument just struck me as icky, so I'm blogging it because, well, I can.
A friend posted this link in zir journal, with the following quote:
Even if we were to accept the premise that a fetus is a person, it may have a right to life, but it doesn't have the right to subject another person against her will to painful and dangerous medical consequences. If I needed a kidney transplant, I might be able to get the organ I needed to survive by stabbing someone and forcibly removing one of theirs. But even if they recovered with no ill health effects after the attack, I'd be guilty of a moral (and legal) wrong for subjecting them to it in the first place. Those people who want to consider fetuses person must remember that even another person with a right to life doesn't have the right to that life at the expense of another person, not even if that person is the child's parent. Being pro-life can't mean being in favor of saving one life by allowing it to hold another hostage for 9 months.
Now, I have often been criticized by fellow left-leaning people because my position on abortion is unpopular. I (along with a friend) was booed at a national Green Party platform plenary for expressing it. So I'm not saying I'm unbiased on this matter. (While I support safe, legal, affordable abortion, I do so because while I think that abortion is in general a bad idea (at best -- a tool of anti-woman oppression at worst), I think punishing women for making a difficult choice and choosing differently from the way I would choose is a worse idea.)
That said, I think the argument above stinks from a logical standpoint. The fetus in the example is not making a moral decision equivalent with stabbing someone; it's making no moral decision at all. Leaving aside the fact that only a small number of abortions are done for the reason that the mother's life and/or physical health are endangered, I think it's weaselly to use language that implies that if the mother decides (or is forced) not to have an abortion, that's the equivalent of some assault by the fetus upon her. It may be an assault by the State, but not by the fetus, who has no culpability whatsoever, as far as I'm concerned.
Comments are enabled, as always; comment away. I don't have that much emotion around this, but the argument just struck me as icky, so I'm blogging it because, well, I can.
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no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:47 am (UTC)(Speaking for me and for me alont, I would hope that if I chose an abortion, I would say "Okay, I'm choosing my life over the life of this child," and accept that I made a difficult decision that may have been the wrong one. I don't see why there is the need to make it a case of "This fetus is actively harming me by existing, so I am in the right by terminating it." Why can't we just own that sometimes we choose to do things that are morally iffy or unclear, and possibly wrong? This is a rhetorical question, and one I am still struggling with.)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 02:04 pm (UTC)Because some folks are trying to ban abortion, and arguments about harm carry a certain amount of weight via legal and moral precedent, so they're more likely to listen to those arguments than to "because I felt like it."
If no one were trying to ban abortion, I think there wouldn't be (such) a need for such arguments.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 04:17 am (UTC)Your rhetorical question - it is very difficult to choose to do something which we know is "not necessarily right", especially if we work at thinking of ourselves as basically good people. Accepting one's own faults is harder than accepting those of one's lover.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:44 am (UTC)I'm not saying abortion should be illegal or unavailable. But I have an issue with making pregnancy the logical equlivant of the mother being randomly attacked by a fetus.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:53 am (UTC)My mind has strange randomizers
Date: 2003-11-06 12:36 pm (UTC)You are attacked by
a Wandering Fetus.
Do you choose to [R]un or [F]ight?
[/Bard's Tale]
Re: My mind has strange randomizers
Date: 2003-11-06 12:50 pm (UTC)[S]creaming.
;)
Re: My mind has strange randomizers
Date: 2003-11-06 03:16 pm (UTC)The mystic forces of this place assault you! You are attacked by 8 Elder Bible Thumpers. Do you choose to [R]un, [F]ight, or [S]lap with a steenky feesh?
[/Bard's Tale]
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:45 am (UTC)good point. i agree about the fetus having no culpability.
i do think that the 50 minute hour writer makes an important point, even if not as gracefully as i'd like.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:57 am (UTC)Being pro-life can't mean being in favor of saving one life by allowing it to hold another hostage for 9 months.
i'd reword it to "being pro-life can't mean being in favor of saving one life by holding another hostage for nine months", but then we get into passive voice hell, and i'm not sure that's actually a clearer way to say it even though it does remove the hint of fetal culpability.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:45 am (UTC)I am adamantly against becoming a mother (and I have to note that it's really a non-issue for me because I do not have p-in-v sex and have never had same and things are not looking good for the future, either). If I were told I could not have an abortion, by the State, by the male half of the pregnancy equation, by whomever had the power to make that order stick, I would feel like a hostage. A hostage at risk for gestational diabetes, dangerously increased blood pressure, and a whole host of other fun genetically transmitted diseases* in addition to the normal stresses that a pregnancy puts on the body.
Which means I would not only be held hostage by the decreeing party, but I would also, effectively, be being tortured in the process.
An emotional response? Absolutely. Should it have an effect on lawmaking? Well, that depends. I see it as an extension of the "Cruel and Unusual" clause. Others see it differently (feeling that my behaviour toward my theoretical foetus violates that same clause).
I'm sure there is a middle ground. After all, I don't particularly consider myself "pro-abortion." I'm "pro-every-child-a-wanted-child." I'd much rather abortion were a non-issue because every woman (and man) had the information needed to prevent unwanted pregnancies (and the strength to insist that they were used every time).
I think I may be babbling.
*Another reason I intend to avoid pregnancy at all costs is that my blood type is negative.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:52 am (UTC)Personally, I'd like to be able to transfer the damn thing to the male half of the equation and let HIM deal with it.
But that's just me. Feeling snarky.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:04 pm (UTC)That said, on a gut level, I'll side with the woman over the fetus - or the law - every time. I don't care if she's ignorant, if she's underage, if she's careless, or even if her partner doesn't want her to abort. It's her body. She gets to decide what to do with it. I am hard-core on this, unshakable, and I don't care if it's illogical.
I think this is a consequence of coming of sexual age in the years before Roe v. Wade, and at a time when many doctors in many communities - including the one where I went to college, flat-out would not prescribe birth control to unmarried women. Add to that the still-new "sexual revolution," and a *lot* of young women faced the bad choice of unwanted pregnancy (and usually a hasty marriage, since there was still a *huge* stigma against unmarried mothers) versus illegal abortion.
Something like six or seven women on the dorm floor where I lived got pregnant my freshman year alone. One (my roommate) left school to have the baby. We never heard from her again. Some - myself included - scraped together enough money to go to New York or Puerto Rico for a clandestine but "safe" abortion (safety being very much in the eye of the beholder). At least one, too broke to afford the trip and too scared to tell anyone, tried to abort herself in her bedroom one weekend and wound up being rushed to the emergency room, trailing blood all over the hall. We never heard from her again, either.
This scenario repeated itself every year until 1973, when Roe changed everything.
While I know that times have changed, reproductive freedom-wise, the memory of those years will never leave me. Abortion is a lousy choice, but being forced to bear a baby you truly do not want is, IMO, a worse one.
If, as appears possible, abortion becomes illegal again in this country, I've vowed to do whatever I can to help women get illegal abortions if they want them. There was a feminist "underground railroad" that helped me when I was in this position, and I have no doubt a new one will emerge if it's needed. And I will be so there.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:47 pm (UTC)So will I, and I don't think it's illogical. What I think is illogical is using the argument put forth in the original quote.
I'll be right there with you on the underground railroad, but not because I think abortion is a good in itself -- I'll be there because I think that punishing women for making the decision to have an abortion is a wrong thing.
My ideal world is one in which abortion is safe, legal, affordable, and very rare. I think abortion is a violence, and I don't mind admitting that, but I think that jailing women for having abortions is also a violence, as is forcing them to carry a baby to term or have an unsafe abortion. I just feel that it's my moral obligation to admit that when I support a woman's right to abortion -- and I do, truly -- I am supporting that right even though I believe she is ending another person's life. I accept that my position is morally problematic, and I think it would be disingenuous to try to rationalize it and say that I am doing a moral good by supporting a woman's right to choose -- I don't think I am necessarily doing a moral good. What I am doing is weighing two morally fraught options and choosing the one that makes the most sense to me.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:57 pm (UTC)*nod* Understood, and mostly concurred (with the "mostly" based on my own belief that what's being ended is a *potential* other person's life. My value system doesn't confer personhood on anyone who hasn't been born yet.)
Which is why Planned Parenthood has always been one of my personal hero organizations. Their commitment to making the kind of world where abortions aren't necessary, but also to making sure that until that day comes they remain available, is inspiring.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 01:09 pm (UTC)My questions go like this, at least at the moment. Please believe me when I say that I have not made up my mind about this issue, so these questions are not being posed as rhetorical devices to support an anti-abortion stance. I honestly struggle with these questions every time this topic comes up.
1) If life is potential until birth, is a baby who is born prematurely at 7 months a life, and a baby that is still in the womb at 7 months still a potential life?
2) Is a baby at birth that much more a person, or alive, or human, or whatever, than it was a day before? A week? A month? How do we know this?
3) I am now who I am. Ten years ago, I was only potentially who I am now. Does that mean that the potential me of ten years ago should have different rights from the rights I have now?
I really am not picking a fight. This issue is so complicated for me that I'm almost embarrassed to talk about it in public, because I often feel pressured to have a clearer, more certain position on it.
tangenting
Date: 2003-11-06 01:33 pm (UTC)Other than that, I agree that in a better world, abortion would be safe, legal, and rare. (Rant about "abstinence-based sex education" and other abominations deleted on the grounds that you could write it as well as I, perhaps better.)
Re: tangenting
Date: 2003-11-06 02:01 pm (UTC)What follows is, I hope it goes without saying, my own opinion, colored by my experiences, biases, belief system, etc., achieved at over a long time and a great deal of thought and personal struggle. I don't ask anyone else to swallow any or all of it.
"Life" is certainly present at conception, and even beforehand, if one considers life to include all living organisms and parts thereof. While I feel generally reverent toward life-in-the-abstract, I don't think it confers personhood or any of the legal rights attached thereto.
Once a baby is born - however that occurs, with or without extraordinary medical intervention - then a second *actual* person has certainly entered the picture, and the rights and protections of law must and should apply. Once you are born, you deserve full human and civil rights until you die, IMO (with the minor caveat that with certain rights come responsibilities, and those may be curtailed until the person is old enough to deal with the responsibility part). I *do* believe birth is the dividing line between thing-ness and personhood.
I grant that there's a shadowy place between - call it "viability" or whatever - when ethics and law become murky and morally difficult. I recognize that medical technology is making that area even murkier. I don't know any way around that. I think it will *always* be the subject of medical religious and moral debate, and I doubt it's even possible to answer the question "when does living tissue become a human being?" The answer is too dependent on individual beliefs about such things as whether souls exist, where they come from, etc. At best, I hope (probably in vain) for peaceful coexistence and respect among mutually contradictory belief systems.
I wish there were some sensible system for helping women and their health-care providers settle these questions on a case by case basis, for *themselves*. I'm all about autonomy and self-determination.
But my bottom line is that I don't think it's the business of the police, the courts or (goddess help us all) a bunch of politicians to play any part whatsoever in that decision. I am, I confess, ambivalent and conflicted about just what role should be played by the person who contributes the other half of the genetic material. In many instances, I'd have to say "none."
I'm also aware there are holes and inconsistencies in my position, but I'm comfortable with that, just as I'm comfortable with the fact that it appears on the face of it to contradict my equally strong position against the death penalty. I am large; I contain multitudes.
(And not to worry, dear serene, I know you're nothing like doctrinaire; if we can't discuss these very important issues among friends, how do we ever hope to defend our positions against enemies?)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 02:14 pm (UTC)1) A baby who is born prematurely at 7 months is a life. A baby in the womb at 7 months is potentially a life although it is Life - we do not know until the baby is born if it can be kept alive with ordinary mothering or if the baby needs special measures.
(Some background: a cousin of mine, may he rest in peace, was born prematurely at 5 1/2 months and required heroic measures to live, which he did until 5 years back)
2) A baby at birth *is* that much more of a person because the baby is breathing for itself and performing its own digestion and directly experiencing what happens around it. I know this from direct observation.
3) Depends on how old you were and the rules in your state. Some rights are based on age. (I admit I'd love it if some of those rights had a maturity component for early allowance, but I'm not da boss)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 02:14 pm (UTC)Life is potential until the individual can physically survive without being a part of another individual's body.
Ramifications of my view:
If scientists develop incubators that can sustain life in fetuses or embryos that currently can't live outside the womb, then I wouldn't have a problem in theory with a requirement that such entities be sustained instead of aborted.
However, I would only not have a problem with it if there were organization(s) willing to take on the financial and social costs of bringing those people into the world. Forcing someone to economically support another person without the resources to do so is also harmful.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 04:43 pm (UTC)I believe that life begins at conception. However, I also believe in reincarnation. Therefore, I believe that, while a fetus does have a spirit like yours or mine or everybody else, if it is killed before birth it will incarnate again, elsewhere. In some ways, I think that abortion can be kinder to a spirit than allowing it to live a full life incarnated as a human... life as a human can be painful and complicated.
In the hypothetical "hostage" situation - if I was pregnant and legally/societally/medically prevented from having an abortion, I would resent the fuck out of the baby. I know it isn't the baby's fault; but I would be unable to separate my helpless rage and feeling of violation from it. Even if it were taken away and given to a nice family as soon as it was born, I can't imagine that nine months of gestation in a person who hates it wouldn't do some level of damage to any person. :|
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 04:07 pm (UTC)As to my own take on the whole thing, I also completely and unequivocably believe that every person should have absolute sovereignty over his/her own body, period. Even at the expense of an unborn child.
As I posted in Dani's journal earlier today, that same fundie pal I mentioned above sent me an article about the possibility of artificial wombs in the future. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, if you could take the fetus and grow it outside the woman's body, that should eliminate the need for abortion. But on the other hand...shouldn't we have the right to choose how our DNA gets disseminated? But on yet another hand (I have lots!), many men don't have that choice now, with women in control of whether a baby gets carried to term or not, and this would level the playing field. But then again, everyone should know that pregnancy is a possible consequence of engaging in intercourse, and be prepared to deal with it if it happens.
No easy answers here. Lots to think about, though.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 11:38 pm (UTC)I agree with this. The problem with the first argument -- the one you quoted -- is that it applies equally well to post-natal babies, children, the very elderly, the infirm, the seriously mentally disabled -- in short, everybody who absolutely requires care of others (and therefore incurs some cost / harm to others)
Abortion does make me uncomfortable, morally. I'm concerned at a general trend in society which emphasises individual freedom at all costs. At the same time, I'm male. I'm not going to beome pregnant -- so I don't see it as being up to me to decide whether someone can or can't terminate a pregnancy.
That said, I might have a more serious problem were the child mine. But that's another issue :)
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:28 pm (UTC)I honestly don't know why those who have stronger moral objections against abortion don't emphasize avoiding unwanted pregnancies to begin with. This is the 21st century, and there are many forms of effective birth control. What percentage of abortions are done because birth control, used properly, failed? I don't think those who are careless deserve to be forced to give birth to an unwanted child, but it drives me nuts (and drove me nuts in high school, when it was my friends doing this) how many people would have unprotected sex, panic at a pregnancy scare, and then go back and do it again. Why?? I know there are socioeconomic factors, education factors, other factors... but even among my privileged suburban friends who had access to birth control, nobody was taking it seriously.
That's why arguments like the one you cite, and the "violinist" analogy, drive me up the wall. These arguments suppose that a woman might wake up one morning pregnant, having done nothing to cause it.
But I don't think it's the government's place to be paternalistic and, say, only allow abortion if the pregnancy wasn't, by some set of rules or somebody's judgment, the woman's 'fault.' I don't think we can legislate morality that way. I don't think we should, and I hope we never will. I don't think women who are pregnant, however they got that way, should be having babies they don't want. But I still cannot find it in myself to celebrate abortion.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 01:02 pm (UTC)I don't know a single person who does, even among some fairly radical pro-choice thinkers.
Some of us do celebrate the court decision that restored* the right to make that choice, however.
* Abortion was legal in the US until the 1820s, when the American Medical Association and others began lobbying to make it illegal - ironically, for the protection of women who were dying from aseptic abortions.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 02:26 pm (UTC)20 years ago it certainly wasn't. Let's just say it's been a long time since I've been blithe about "oh, this is 97% effective."
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 12:58 pm (UTC)Nor does a virus. Nor does flesh-eating bacteria. Nor does a rabid animal. Nor does a well-trained tiger who takes a playful swipe at its trainer.
I do not view having or not having a moral center as being central toward Life happening. I only view it as essential in regards to how I react toward others who have some capacity to think.
I view the fetus as being responsible insofar that without the fetus there would not be the question in the first place. This does not mean that the State or the Community does not have a hand in this; it means that at the very least the fetus is a catalyst and the woman would not atract this attention without this catalyst.
I view abortion as a viable choice for a woman. It must be her choice, regardless of the father, and I have my own reasons for saying such. People may make their choices for the right reasons or the wrong reasons but it should be and should remain their choice, with consequences to be dealt with as they come up.
That's my thought-through opinion on the matter. I respect other thought-through opinions no matter if they are the same or different.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 01:32 pm (UTC)yeah, that's what always gets me about so-called "pro-life" people who take antibiotics, or use pesticides, or support capital punishment, or hunt, etc. etc. etc. it always strikes me that they're solely pro-fetus.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 02:31 pm (UTC)*shrug* If some aspect of Life does not have a moral center do we have an obligation to treat that aspect as if it does? This is a question for the ages. In my religion, Judaism (and note I am not particularly religious by certain standards), the story used to make a case for abortion not being murder was, IIRC, that somebody injured a woman and this caused a miscarry. He was forced to pay a fine as restitution, which was not the penalty for murder.
Just some food for thought.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-06 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 09:21 am (UTC)I view abortion as a choice that is necessary because it enables a woman to have control over herself. A woman shouldn't be considered a walking incubator with no more rights over her body than a machine. I may redefine that point when robots get the vote.
The death penalty... thing is, one of the reasons I am in favor of it is that there is no chance that the person who committed the crime is going to commit one again, barring reincarnation (which takes time) or necromantic unlife (highly unlikely). I *do* feel that it is being applied unfairly in many parts of the USA and I am opposed to that. I am not pleased with Texas for that reason.
Just some mental meanderings.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 04:14 am (UTC)I don't believe an abortion can ever be right; I only believe it can be the lesser of two wrongs.
Someone dear to me was once told by his partner (paraphrase, because I wasn't there and the issue is not discussed - has never been, apart from one tearful evening of soul-baring): "I am pregnant and I'm going to have an abortion; I thought you had a right to know. I'm not sure that you're the father, either." This in spite of the fact that she was urging him to emigrate to live with her so that they could start a family. This makes me a lot angrier than it makes him; he believes that he has no right to be angry over her use of her body even though he believed that starting a family together was the plan and the reason they had unprotected sex.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 09:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-07 09:59 am (UTC)