abortion practicalities

[chimerically]

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!

Comments

Re: Begs the question

[surpheon.livejournal.com]

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.

[chimerically.livejournal.com]

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!")