Abortions of convenience

Lizardbreath has a dynamite post about abortions and convenience, here's an excerpt:

I've mentioned here before that I've had an abortion; I don't know how clear it was that it wasn't a particularly sympathetic abortion. In spring 1995, I'd just started having sex with a new boyfriend. We were using condoms until I could get on the pill, and either one of us screwed something up, or there was a leak, or something happened, and I got pregnant. I had an abortion as early as I was able to schedule it, didn't find it a particularly upsetting experience (being pregnant was upsetting, both for the obvious practical reasons, and because the hormonal effects of early pregnancy make me very emotionally volatile. One of the odder things about the abortion, and about a later miscarriage, was suddenly recovering control of my emotional state over a period of less than a day.) and haven't regretted it since then. Morally, I think that a ten week embryo -- in fact, any fetus in at least the first two trimesters -- is not sentient and is not a person or anything else with rights, and that ending a pregnancy does not have moral significance with respect to the rights or interests of the fetus.

If it did, I'd be in a very questionable moral position with respect to the abortion I had. [Read the whole thing.]

The post is entitled "Some Politically Counterproductive Personal History." Maybe it's politically counterproductive to admit that some women get abortions just because they don't want to be pregnant. But not wanting to be pregnant is reason enough.

If you think that fetuses have rights, then you'll want a very good justification for killing them. Whereas, if you agree with Lizardbreath, me, and most pro-choicers fetuses don't deserve serious moral consideration.

In the long run, it's politically counterproductive to pretend that all abortions are disastrous or tragic. Sometimes, they're just a pragmatic solution to a problem. Nobody gets abortions for the sheer thrill of the procedure. Abortion only becomes an option when something goes wrong. It's almost axiomatic that if this is an unwanted pregnancy, the woman would have preferred not to have gotten pregnant.

By hand wringing about the tragedy of abortion, we are implicitly reinforcing the anti-choice claim that fetuses really do have rights. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so tragic to abort them.

Furthermore, if we seem to be implicitly acknowledging fetal rights and aborting fetuses anyway, we play into the stereotype of pro-choicers as selfish, immoral people who kill babies in cold blood.

The only way to get out of this spiral is to be blunt: Abortion is not a big moral deal. Fetuses don't have rights. A woman has the absolute right to decide whether she allows a fetus to gestate in her body. She doesn't owe an explanation to anyone.

Comments

[Kevin T. Keith]

Well said.

[doyle saylor]

There is a conundrum though with absolute rights. In many places like India, like China, as soon as the family finds out it is a girl they abort the baby. The absolute right ought to be tied to... (for example not knowing the baby by amniocentesis, or other means like sonagrams), or one runs into prejudice that deforms the principle of abortion and threatens the right with a clash with other rights.
Doyle

[Roy]

Re: Fetuses don't have rights. A woman has the absolute right to decide whether she allows a fetus to gestate in her body. She doesn't owe an explanation to anyone.

I'm not sure that the two are mutually exclusive. I have no problem what-so-ever with admitting the possibility that a fetus may have some rights (I tend to think it doesn't, but I can accept the possibility). Even if I accept that a fetus has rights, it doesn't follow that the fetus has rights that over-ride a woman's right to self determination. The question of a fetus's right to life is secondary to the woman's right to self determination. Her body is hers, and hers alone, and it doesn't matter how many rights any group wants to ascribe to the fetus, none of those rights comes close to surpassing her right to control her body.

Ultimately, I think the last line sums it up- it's her body, and she doesn't owe an explanation to anyone.

[LongHairedWeirdo]

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon put it very well: abortion isn't the problem. It's the solution to the problem.

It's spot-on like divorce: don't talk about the tragedy of divorce; the tragedy is the irreparably broken marriage. The divorce is the solution. Sad or not, tragic or not, the problem is not the abortion, but the pregnancy that the woman wishes to abort.

[C.S.Strowbridge]

"Even if I accept that a fetus has rights, it doesn't follow that the fetus has rights that over-ride a woman's right to self determination. The question of a fetus's right to life is secondary to the woman's right to self determination. Her body is hers, and hers alone, and it doesn't matter how many rights any group wants to ascribe to the fetus, none of those rights comes close to surpassing her right to control her body."

Absolutely. The right-to-lifers would never say a fully gown human has the right to steal food from someone else in order to live, possibly killing the victim in the process. So why woulf a lump of cells have more rights than a fully former human?

[Biff Davis]

Your wrote:
>
> Abortion is not a big moral deal.
>

This statement (as well as much of your post) is absolutely laughable... if only because you immediately preface it by warning us not to play into the "stereotype of pro-choicers as selfish, immoral people who kill babies".

Your stance is "in the long run" just not politically viable and never will be. That is why leading Democratic leaders such as Hilary Clinton are couching discussion about abortion using "safe, legal, and _rare_" terminology.

I highly recommend a talk given my Mrs. Clinton two years ago on the subject:

http://clinton.senate.gov/~clinton/speeches/2005125A05.html

"There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances."

You won't read her flippantly stating aborition is "not a big moral deal". Not once. Not ever.

The carefully crafted goal in Mrs. Clinton's abortion policy is to underscore the gravity of the moral decision of abortion and to use that as a means to build up pulblic support to implement policy that will completely eliminate, or more practically, nearly eliminate unwanted pregnancies. The policy is brilliant because the stated goal is just what the pro-lifers want to hear, that being 0 (yes, zero) abortions - all while preserving women's reproductive rights.

I hope Mrs. Clinton still feels this way (I admit I haven't kept up on her as best as I should), because she really (really!) should be ignoring political advice from the likes of you (and from what I've read, many of your readers too)... especially about an issue as important as this one.

cheers.

--biff.

[mijnheer]

"Her body is hers, and hers alone, and it doesn't matter how many rights any group wants to ascribe to the fetus, none of those rights comes close to surpassing her right to control her body."

Aren't you begging the question here? Typically, "pro-lifers" don't explicitly deny that a woman has the right to control her own body; what they deny is that a woman has the right to control someone else's body. So whether there is someone else involved is an unavoidable question in the debate, and one that cannot be waived away with claims about the right to control one's own body (just as pro-lifers cannot legitimately rely on claims about the impermissibility of killing an unborn baby).

But you're right to say, "Even if I accept that a fetus has rights, it doesn't follow that the fetus has rights that over-ride a woman's right to self determination." Indeed, as Judith Jarvis Thomson has famously argued, it doesn't follow. I'm not entirely persuaded by Thomson's logic, once she concedes, for the sake of argument, that the fetus is a person with a right to life. (I think she concedes too much to bear the weight of what follows.) But one can hold that the fetus, though not a person, at least by some point in the pregnancy has non-negligible moral status, without thereby denying a woman's right to choose. And, politically speaking, allowing the possibility that abortion can sometimes be at least a moderate moral deal may serve the pro-choice cause better than denying it, since so many people on both sides of the issue believe that it is some sort of moral deal.

[XPM]

I believe the argument is more along the lines that a woman's body is outside of the State's sovereignty, and that the question of the fetus's personhood is moot.

I'm not sure how I feel about this position--I find it a bit reminiscent of the Roman legal doctrine of the right of the pater familias, and difficult to reconcile with modern doctrines of universal rights.

[ausblog]

World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is somewhere between 20 and 88 million.(likely 55 to 60)

Over 3,500 per day / Over 1.3 million per year in America alone.

50% of that 1.3 million claimed failed birth control was to blame.

A further 48% had failed to use any birth control at all.

And 2% had medical reasons.

That means a staggering 98% of unwanted pregnancies may have been avoided had an effective birth control been used.

I am a 98% pro-lifer, 2% Pro-choicer, who has no religious convictions at all . I didn't need the fear of god or anything else to come to my decision, just a good sense of what is right and wrong.
You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?
You would not exist, if you have children they would not exist, and your (husband or wife) would be married to someone else. You would have been deprived of all your experiences and memories. In this day and age with terminations being so readily available and so many being carried out, if you make it to full term you can consider yourself lucky.
Lucky you had a mother that made the choice of life for you.

Don't you think they all deserve the same basic human right, LIFE?

At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existence. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.

Though it pains me to say it , there may always be a need for the 2% medical reasons and such, but that's all.

So how do we get the other 98% to be responsible...................

How do we get them to be honest with themselves, about when life begins.

egg+sperm = human being

Sadly many prefer an occasional abortion, over using birth control, they have all kinds of reasons, each of them selfish.

Then there's the christian impossition,and their men in high places.(all a bit talibanish, church and state should never entwine) their stance against birth control has only added to the numbers.

People should be able to choose to use birth control, to avoid having to make another choice.

I'd like to see effective birth control made available to all who can't afford it.

Sanity must provale, abortions should remain available and safe to the 2% and such, and the rest need to have a good look at themselves and get their act together.

I'd also like to see a 4D ultrasound in every clinic to provide a more informed choice,
before going through with something they may regret.

If you think the point of conception is NOT when life begins, and all you have is a clump of cells and not a living human being.
Then at least concider this -

Soon after you were conceived you were no more than a clump of cells.
This clump of cells was you at your earliest stage, you had plenty of growing to do but this clump of cells was you none the less.
Think about it.
Aren't you glad you were left unhindered.... to develope further.
Safe inside your mother's womb until you were born.

Want to know how to find humanity-?

True humanity can only be achieved, by concidering others/ caring about others, as much as, if not more than yourself.

Until we do we are no more than an uncivilisation,

with all the uncivilised things that we do...

[Sajia Kabir]

As a matter of fact, ausblog, there's a chance that my mother might never have given birth to me, and if she had, well, obviously I wouldn't be there to regret it, now, would I?
There was a time when she wanted to have only one child, my older brother. She wanted to get a Phd in history, which would have improved her job prospects, but my father was opposed to her having a higher level of education than him. I think she was on birth control, and only when (at the time being) she couldn't go to school, she had me instead.
I'm here because my grandparents decided to arrange my parents' marriage to each other, because her options were limited, because she chose not to adopt in order to give my brother a sibling, because my parents weren't at a movie that night, because that act of intercourse resulted in a pregnancy, because that pregnancy didn't end in a miscarriage, because I didn't die in labour, because things are the way they are.

[Numad]

ausblog,

"What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?"

Yes.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"it's her body, and she doesn't owe an explanation to anyone."

This line appeals to the concept of property rights (the body belongs to the woman, it is her property). Property rights have been fundamental to the liberal tradition, going as far back as John Locke's writing in the 1600s. I do think that framing the abortion issue as an argument over property rights is a very powerful way to argue with right-wingers who claim to respect property rights - if our bodies are not our own property, then what are they? However, some people on the left are not absolute in their defense of property rights, so for these people it must be a bit of a curious exception to base their argument on property-rights? I wonder what the strongest argument for abortion is that doesn't rely on a property-rights line of thought?

[Tyler DiPietro]

You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?
You would not exist, if you have children they would not exist, and your (husband or wife) would be married to someone else.

The inanity of the argument is unbelievable. We always deal with contingencies in our lives that we have no power over. You may not like it, but things just happen. And if they happened any other way prior to your birth, in all likelihood you would not exist.

[Jesse M.]

ausblog:
You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?

These sort of what-ifs are pretty silly. If your parents had decided not to have sex the day you were conceived, you wouldn't exist either, but that doesn't make it immoral to sometimes say "I'm tired, honey". The squashing of yet-unrealized potentials is quite different from the killing of existing persons. A fetus in the early stages has no personality or consciousness, only the potential for these things (as I noted in the comments to the last post on abortion, the synapses connecting neurons in the brain don't even form until near the end of the second trimester, until then there can be no organized brain activity whatsoever, so the fetus presumably has about the same level of consciousness as my liver).

My mother actually had an abortion shortly before having me--it's a safe bet that if she had had that kid, I would never have existed. Would this be a good reason for me to support abortion rights? Of course, not, and it's equally absurd to oppose abortion based on the argument that you wouldn't have existed if the fetus that grew into the person you are today had been aborted.

[Chris O.]

ausblog -- just think of all the people who haven't come into existence because of a woman's decision not to have sex on a particular night! How dare they! If YOUR mother had decided not to have sex the day you were conceived, would that have been ok?

[ausblog]

As usual I get the same lame answers to my comments, with the exception of one, Sajia Kabir who would prefer to have never existed.

All the what if's you all mention are irrelevant,
Facts are I / you were concieved, carried to term,
and we were born.
I am glad of that. Aren't you ?

[Jesse M.]

All the what if's you all mention are irrelevant,
Facts are I / you were concieved, carried to term,
and we were born.
I am glad of that. Aren't you ?

I am glad about it too, but it has zero to do with the question of whether abortion is wrong, just like the fact that I'm glad my parents conceived me has zero to do with whether it's wrong to avoid sex when given the opportunity.

[latts]

Sigh... y'know, attempts to appeal to pro-choicers with the "aren't YOU glad YOUR mom chose Life™?" is pretty pointless, because most of us are actually not convinced that we're the center of the universe. If we'd never been born, the world would be slightly different... so what?

My stock response is that I exist because of a stillbirth... I was conceived days after the original due date of my parents' first pregnancy, induced (btw, with a nice, torturous, week-plus waiting period for all the approvals, as required back in pre-Roe days) at 7.5 months, so my mom was able to conceive me weeks later. And I also know-- seeing as I'm not the center of the universe, after all-- that given a choice ahead of time, my parents would have preferred to have had that son safely, and I never would have existed. Perhaps I should feel more self-righteous about my existence and consider any suggestion that it may not have happened under different circumstances an insult, but I'm just not that vain or self-absorbed.

[Roy]

Aren't you begging the question here? Typically, "pro-lifers" don't explicitly deny that a woman has the right to control her own body; what they deny is that a woman has the right to control someone else's body. So whether there is someone else involved is an unavoidable question in the debate, and one that cannot be waived away with claims about the right to control one's own body (just as pro-lifers cannot legitimately rely on claims about the impermissibility of killing an unborn baby).

I don't think I'm question begging at all. Pro-lifers don't explicitly say that women don't have a right to control their bodies, in most cases, but that's the implication.

They're doing one of two things: they're saying that a woman doesn't have a right to control her body
-or-
They're saying that the fetus has rights which supercede the woman's right to control her body.

Neither of those positions is defensible. In reality, it shouldn't matter whether the fetus is a person or not, because no person has the right to make demands for the use of another's body. I can't demand organ transplants or blood donation, and I sure as hell can't demand that someone allow me to live off of his/her body for nine months.

Abortion isn't about killing fetuses or babies- it's about ending a pregnancy. If the pro-life movement have a way of effectively ending a pregnancy on demand that doesn't involve the death of the fetus, let's hear it. In the meantime, they've yet to show either that the fetus is a person, or that the fetus-person has rights to control a woman's body in ways that no other person does.

[cfrost]

You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?

I once had someone tell me that I was being selfish for remaining single & sans progeny. “What if your father had the same attitude you have? You wouldn’t be here.” I was polite enough then not to say that in that case I wouldn’t be having a conversation with an idiot.

World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is somewhere between 20 and 88 million.(likely 55 to 60)

So? If the human population numbered less than a hundred frightened souls in a howling wilderness I would have a problem with abortion. Seeing as how we number 6 billion and growing by the second, I’m not too concerned.

…2% had medical reasons.

The point here is that a woman’s reasons however “selfish” are hers and hers alone. Perhaps she’s thinking about a career, perhaps dad’s a jerk and she doesn’t need another connection with him, perhaps she just doesn’t like stretch marks or would prefer a life of heavy drinking to motherhood, whatever, it’s none of your damned business.

[ausblog]

I have found some evidence that proves that a fetus is a living human being.......

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a United States law which defines violent assault committed against pregnant women as being a crime against two persons: the woman and the fetus she carries.

This law was passed in 2004 after the murder of the then pregnant Laci Peterson and her fetus, Connor Peterson.

[Tyler DiPietro]

I see I have several options here:

1. Use obvious troll as punching bag:

Benefit: I'm in a really fucking shitty mood after some events yesterday and could really stand to take out my aggression on an easy target.

Detriment: Troll will be fed.

2. Ignore troll:

Benefit: I'd be less likely to get angry enough to gouge my own eyes out and pour aftershave in the sockets.

Detriment: If I keep reading this threat I may get angry enough to do the above AND saw one of my arms off.

Decisions, decisions!

[Alon Levy]

The problem with 2 is that other people will feed the troll even if you don't.

I'm glad my mom had an abortion before she got pregnant with me. So is she, both within and outside the parameter of her having me. I'm glad my parents decided to have sex the moment they did 9 months before I was born. I'm glad I survived nine months of pregnancy, which if I'm not mistaken only one conceptus in five ever does.

[Julian Elson]

I'm personally glad of my existence, but the world as a whole would be a better place if I didn't exist. (although my actually killing myself at this point would impose greater trauma than my continuing to exist, even if my initial coming into existence was a mistake. Sunk costs and all that.)

[ausblog]

Oh I get it, everyone with a different point of view is obviously a troll.

Debate is a healthy process...

Don't you think ?