chimerically | abortion practicalities

This is in response to a friend's blog post on abortion - I just wanted to post it on my blog. :~)

When I argue for abortion, I tend to sidestep the "embryo is a human too" argument, just like I sidestep the "animals have rights too" argument of vegetarians. That's stepping into ideology, and I think it's much more effective to argue the practicalities of the matter than to convince someone to change their belief system.

First, being a parent, and even being pregnant, is profoundly life-altering - and it's almost always the mother who is saddled with the changes.

Second, abortion may be gruesome (especially when pro-life groups put up ten-foot-high pictures of aborted fetuses all over Sproul Plaza), but so are fetal alcohol syndrome and other mental and physical disabilities that are induced by drug use, recessive traits, or generally not caring enough to be healthy during pregnancy. When I saw those posters on Sproul, I wanted to counter with pictures of major birth defects that are due to the mother not caring about her unwanted pregnancy ... maybe pictures of child abuse also. There are too many unwanted children in the world.

Finally and most importantly, women have been getting or inducing abortions for centuries. They recognize how life-altering having a baby is and will avoid having one at any cost. If abortions aren't legal, women who do not want to carry a baby to term will seek illegal and often unsafe alternatives, just as they have throughout history. (It is not reasonable to simply tell people to abstain from sex - it's too much against human nature. Utah's sex ed. program sums up to "abstinence is good" - the teachers can't even give more information unless specifically asked by students - and when I was in high school, Utah had one of the highest out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy rates in the nation!)

Arguing whether abortions are "right" or "wrong" will not change the fact that women will get them - but making abortions illegal will just increase the number of women who die horrible deaths from unsafe abortions. Coat hangers or bleach in the uterus, anyone?

*deep breath*
*steps off soapbox*

I like Micheal Moore's comment about abortion: men have no place to say anything against abortion, since they'll never have to actually deal with being pregnant!

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Alas, that seems to beg the question, i.e. assume what you're trying to prove.

I doubt many abortion foes are against it because of pragmatics; I imagine that they're against it because of their beliefs about souls or general sanctity of human life. In that case, arguing pragmatics is irrelevant, because it's a question of principle. Arguing the pragmatics in fact assumes that the principle is not a problem, hence it's begging the question.

I don't know - I don't think I'm trying to prove abortion is right or wrong; I'm saying regardless of that, women will seek them.

Fair enough, but I doubt anyone doubts that.

On second thought, the pragmatics argument is really the only argument that can be made. Sure, only some people will care about the pragmatics, but it has a wider appeal than pretty much anything else.

But I think it's not inconsistent to believe that a human life, even in fetal form, is sacred, but to fall on the side of keeping abortion legal. It depends on whether you believe that laws exist to represent our morals and principles, or whether they should be used to influence people's behaviour in order to create a better society. I can imagine a pro-life moderate who takes the latter position, and perhaps spends time discouraging people from having abortions, but realizes that outlawing it does more harm than good.

This is interesting - I like the stance that laws should represent our ideals rather than force us to conform to others.

And your "... human life, even in fetal form, is sacred ..." reminds me of a few other problems I have with anti-abortion arguments ...

In my last political and economic development lecture (*sniff*), we were discussing how, through our actions (or inactions), we show that we clearly value the lives of people in the U.S. - and even more so rich people - over people in, say, Africa. Two kids in Colorado died from flu a few days ago, and it makes headlines across the country - yet thousands of kids die every day from malnutrition and preventable diseases (when, in many cases, vaccines would only cost a few cents) and even when we know about the statistics, we ignore them. We may be aware that the GAP (and sister stores Old Navy and Banana Republic) has overseas sweatshop labor plants, but the lives and well-being of women and children overseas is not as important as getting that trendy pair of jeans at a low price. I'm guilty too in this cultural favoritism.

Another thing that puzzles me about the "sanctity of the fetus" argument is that about 30% or more of known pregnancies end in miscarriage - and in female sexuality, I learned that an estimated 50-70% of pregnancies end (with a slightly off-schedule, slightly heavier than usual menstruation) in the first few weeks, before the mother even knows about it.

The fact that a fetus is so dependent on its mother is one argument that pro-choice people have made for fetuses not to be considered human. (Thank you,

sbtorpey, for your beautifully-put description of this dependence!) However, because it's now possible to sustain a fetus at least for a limited amount of time without a mother, anti-abortion groups argue that that makes it "more of a person," and some say that if Roe v. Wade was brought before the Supreme Court again (especially with the current political climate) it would be struck down.

And then easy as that, I could be forced to bring an unwanted pregnancy to term, or risk my life with an illegal abortion.

Anyway, I can't help but find it ... paradoxical that people fight for the lives of fetuses when so few of them make it to term anyway, and when others around the world are dying for no good reason.

Grabbing onto the thread heading away from the main subject, I really don't like the argument that the mass media can be used to judge our society's valuing of life. In an average season, 36,000 people die of complications related to the flu, and that rarely makes the news. Six deaths were reported this year just because they were unusual and fit into a "you could be next!" news bite.

I also seriously question the "just a few cents" for a vaccine premise. If it was just a few cents of vaccine, I wonder why someone hasn't managed to skim off some of the $44,000,000,000 given by Americans (only about $12 bil of that was government payoffs, the rest was private contributions that probably did something useful) last year to foreign aid to buy some vaccines. Who can I send money to do these vaccinations (obviously UNICEF, the Grameen foundation, Heifer Project, etc. are simply are not getting the job done)??? Maybe I should slip a few bucks to our Togo contact ;).

Where I have seen real poverty (OK, just the outskirts of Tijuana), they needed much more than just a lunch and a shot. They needed health care, just laws, education, infrastructure, non-corrupt leaders, etc.

Hmm, I'm not really sure what the costs are - I'm echoing a sentiment I've heard elsewhere, without having anything to really back it up. Let's see what I can find ... UNICEF says that the six most common vaccines (measles, tetanus, whooping cough, tuberculosis, polio and diphtheria) cost about $1 each, plus up to $9 for transportation costs. Not quite pennies, but still very cheap ... and groups like UNICEF are reaching millions. The main treatment for the bugs that kill the most children - gastrointestinal ones - is simply (clean) water, sugar, and salt, because many of them just die from dehydration.

But you're right - just vaccines or treatments aren't enough. From what I've heard, overcrowded health facilities and a lack of knowledge of sickness is a pretty big problem: by the time you're able to be seen by a doctor, you're already close to death, if you can see a doctor at all. Couple that with increased susceptibility from malnutrition and things start to look more complicated. But a little education can go a long way ... and so can a little money toward health care. Paradoxically, the IMF often insists that countries taking out loans cut spending on government programs, which cuts those two very things.

Maybe we're measuring the wrong things. In class I learned that Sri Lanka has had a women's education program in place for a while now, which has resulted in decreased birth rate, decreased infant mortality rate, decreased deaths during childbirth, and increased health of mothers and children. But some deemed the program a "failure" because it didn't affect any of the economic indicators of Sri Lanka - probably because women's work in the third world often consists of subsistence farming, bartering, and childcare, and none of those generate revenue that is measured. (The U.N. and others often report these women as "unoccupied!")

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