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

Begs the question

[oddthink.livejournal.com]

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.

[surpheon.livejournal.com]

The problem I see with this line of argument is it is too often used to argue an abortion should be no more of an issue than a root canal, so birth control is a lot like flossing - well advised to avoid an unpleasant procedure, but who doesn't have a few fillings? In the Soviet Union abortion was the typical, if not only, convenient birth control option (oh yeah, and the "100% effective" abstinence). I like being in a society that couches abortion more as a choice between evils with some weight to it, rather than simply an almost annual birth control procedure.

IMHO, should women be able to get a safe, medical abortion without having to deal with a horde of zealots with horror-show 10' fetus pictures? Absolutely. At the same time, should society put more effort into reducing the need for abortion than it puts into fighting tooth decay? Yes. That means good sex ed, universal access to birth control technologies, combating poverty, raising women's standard of living and supporting adoption programs. Doing that fights abortion. As your argument clearly states, trying to make it illegal is actually a pretty poor approach to fighting abortion...

Anyhow, there are counterpoints of varying level of mediocrity to your arguments:
First- Being a parent certainly profoundly affects fathers - at the most callous this is being enforced more and more by DNA testing.
Second- Stephen Hawkings should have been aborted.
Third- Female circumcision has been around for centuries; cultural relativism was killed by Nazism...

Doh! I almost Godwin'd it didn't I? Close enough, you win :) But I don't think we were too far apart to start with.

[olego.livejournal.com]

I like your argument.

An animal-rights-type vegetarian (and Catholic) weighs in

[sbtorpey.livejournal.com]

This may seem cruel, but here's my take on the idea that aborting a fetus is taking a human life. Legally, I should have the right to stop someone from living in my body and using its resources for his or her own purposes without my permission. If the only way to stop this person is to kill him or her, so be it. Our law is pretty forgiving if I shoot someone who's entered in my apartment against my permission; it ought to be at least as forgiving about my actions toward someone living off my body without my permission. Maybe I'd come out of the situation unharmed, but I think I'm the one who should decide whether I feel generous enough to take that risk.

Ethically, my responsibilities toward this person may depend heavily on what role I played in getting him or her into this situation, but the idea of having the government make the call about that role makes me queasy.

Of course, I hope a lot of people who find themselves unintentionally supporting another human being will have the courage and generosity to help out the tiny stranger who's utterly dependent on them by sharing their bodies and their lives for the better part of a year. But I don't think it'll do much good to try to force anyone to do that. As a society, we'd be much better served by organizing our universities, workplaces, and social welfare network so that people don't have to choose between this generous act and all their longstanding academic and professional dreams.

Unwanted pregnancy is simultaneously a statistical reality (given our cultural norms about the time between onset of adolescence and the appropriate age for starting a family) and an abidingly shameful thing in our society; that's probably why it tends to be an invisible thing on many of our more elite campuses. Yet we all know that no birth control method is perfect. I'd like to see us find a way to celebrate people who do something as shockingly counter cultural as actually carry one of these babies to term, but maybe that would just traumatize all the more ordinary people who look at their chances at scholarships and fellowships and grad school or job offers down the line and decide they just can't take the risk of sacrificing their own life to save someone else's.

Men and abortion

[pr0lix.livejournal.com]

"men have no place to say anything against abortion, since they'll never have to actually deal with being pregnant"

I do agree with this quote, but usually I don't hear men having arguments about whether abortion should be legal or illegal. Usually, I hear them having an argument about whether or not they should have a say in a specific person's abortion (i.e. the woman pregnant with their child).

Obviously, a baby isn't the same thing as a saved game on an X-box; and the last time I checked, it was rather difficult for a man to have a baby without a consenting female. So while I don't agree with it, I find it slightly amusing that a man might, say, sue a woman for property damage after a successful abortion. Of course, since these sorts of things can get incredibly complicated (see bottom), I don't think there is any good option other than placing the decision solely in the hands of the female.

[dirtyindiewear.livejournal.com]

this is how i've always felt about abortion.

i wish it wasn't necessary. i think it should be a last resort. but i think that making it illegal would be extremely dangerous.

we already have an overstuffed-underfunded foster care system in the US. imagine how much worse the system will get...