Not a word here about criminalization of abortive services? Where, exactly, do questions of morality and policy intersect with the police power to prosecute and punish? Or do they at all?
2
It is completely reckless of the New York Times to publish this picture of “an abortion clinic.” The picture is sterile, disposable, cheap, crowded, cramped. It’s a dark room featuring an anachronistic digital clock devoid of humans. Sadly it perpetuates the notion that abortion is a sketchy procedure done behind closed doors and undertaken with little thought or reflection. If I was an individual and/or family struggling with the decision to terminate a pregnancy I would be scared by this picture. If I was an individual struggling with the “abortion question” I would be equally scared. Pregancy and the decision and/or need to terminate a preganacy is a human condition. Featuring a picture without humans is not ‘how to talk’ or think about abortion.
2
pro-life: wrong
pro-choice: wrong
pro-abortion/anti-pregnancy/anti-procreation: right
procreation is the mother of all evils. abortion is mercy. ALL pregnancies should be aborted as early as possible. end the cycle of death and suffering.
"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun:
I saw the tears of the oppressed—
and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
and they have no comforter.
And I declared that the dead,
who had already died,
are happier than the living,
who are still alive.
But better than both
is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil
that is done under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 NIV
3
Nothing in this piece will sway anyone on any argument.
3
Imagine you were unborn. Would you want to be born? It isn't a moral or medical question. It is a personal one only you can answer.
1
Small wonder anti-abortion activists think feminists are cold blooded. No individual ethics? How convenient.
2
The pro-abortion group needs friends like this like a hole in the head. Justifying abortion on medical grounds? It is all about choice. If someone does not believe in abortion, they should not do it. But insisting that everyone else follows that belief is imposing religious beliefs on others.
7
The author lives in an apple pie world if she thinks the anti abortion crowd can debate the issue of choice to end a pregnancy without appealing to their view of immorality and their hard-held view a fertilized egg is a human being.
1
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Abortion is a complicated issue. It is so frustrating (and naive) when the anti-choice folks make it out to be entirely black-and-white, right-or-wrong. In some states now, a corpse, who can have refused organ donation, has more rights to bodily autonomy than a woman of child-bearing age. How's that for crazy?! TRUST WOMEN (and their doctors).
4
Hmmm - can you write a similar article on global warming? Or gun ownership? Since you seem to believe that one can reason with anti-choice people, then surely we can also reason with climate deniers and the NRA.
Or is your article just a large wishlist that has nothing to do with reality?
2
How does the Pro Life group feel about Trump's Pro Death stance for drug dealers?
4
A zygote is a human life. Anyone who denies that is not even being scientifically accurate. So please don't lecture on "appropriate treatments" as if termination human life were the same as treating toenail fungus. You must recognize the moral dimensions of this issue. This tone-deaf article that debases human life is emblematic of the left right now and their devotion to abortion. Other options exist. Pay the mother $50K to deliver the baby and put it up for adoption. No one is killed. Adopting parents will not have to go overseas to adopt.
1
DIY early abortions are on the rise and requests for info about how to perform early self abortion are skyrocketing. The procedure involves simple inexpensive sterile equipment, basically a tube to insert into the uterus and a syringe with which to aspirate the uterine contents. Should early self abortion become common and prove itself to be effective and low risk, the government will no longer have to concern itself with pregnancy.
1
I wish this article on abortion included the medical definition of when life begins, but seldom do pro-choice authors mention this fact. What about the public policy of prenatal life, and all of the unborn women who are aborted?
1
Morality is the core of the debate about abortions. I don't think that the differences can be resolved without addressing the moral issues. Religions like to deal with absolute truths that they can address in a Platonic universe that is completely isolated from real life. Real life presents contradictory considerations where what is right depends upon priorities that are very inconsistent and impossible to predict with certainty. That creates situations where the moral thing to do within the limited considerations of a religious doctrine fail to address the considerations of the real world situation and the moral thing to do may not be the same thing. Allowing a woman to die and the fetus as well when ending the pregnancy would save her life may satisfy a prohibition against abortion but it amounts to homicide. Blaming God is really a stupid excuse. Following rules without consideration of the reality of things is a phony kind of morality.
2
"Yet questions about individual moral behavior or personal ethics, which still generate wide disagreement based on religious diversity, are not really all that relevant to the issue of lawmaking"
What an incredibly politically obtuse comment!
Being a caricature of the elitist, liberal intellectual parsing abstruse theories with no conception that what the plebeian masses think might actually matter. But in the broader society, particularly a democratic one, that does matter, it IS relevant. It is exactly this type of gentrified class attitude and its condescending tone that has contributed so much to discrediting liberals and fuel right wing populism. How tone deaf can one be?
2
Why must we search for a consensus on Abortions. Those who want one, get one, while those who don't by all means don't. What I do is none of your business. And what you do is none of mine. Seeking a consensus is sticking your nose in other people's business, which Americans are unfortunately, real good at.
4
You don't talk about it, period. I's none of your business; no more a moral issue than discussing an appendectomy or knee replacement.
Besides the US and Canada, there are only 4 other countries worldwide that allow abortion on demand after 12 weeks.
Which appears to answer the question on public policy, and morality.
How to talk about abortion:
Be a female. Able to actually become pregnant, or pregnant in earlier life. Otherwise, shut up. You have NO skin in this game, you cannot DIE from pregnancy or related complications. That's ALL. Period.
5
At some point we are going to have to separate basic medical care from the requirements of fundamentalist religions.
Maybe offer an orthodox form of healthcare for those who have specific beliefs. Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam all have differing ideas about "when life begins" including a recent rerun of the fertilized egg citizen concept. For a while it was the cultural belief that a living, fully formed homunculus lived in each sperm- that would be an interesting twist to shove this argument off on males for a while to make them the responsible party for each "living being" - as we know, these arguments have been rotating in and out of history, and suspiciously coincide with control issues in the church. Oddly, the pedophile priests who wept over the abstraction of a fertilized egg assigned no such sanctity to the lives of children whose lives they ruined, so there is a question of moral convenience as well.
There needs to be basic healthcare based on reasonable needs of families and their doctors, not laws reflecting the astounding ignorance of mostly male legislators stirring the pot for votes while suggesting abortions for their own mistresses, or religious fanatics with some sort of "get to heaven" requirement for themselves.
8
I see a major degree of cognitive dissonance in a country which will stand on its collective head to protect foetuses but which happily goes out and bombs whole nations full of living, thinking, breathing human beings (not to mention fostering a culture of gun-fuelled violence at home).
6
The Stone is devoted to enlightening readers on contemporary philosophical issues. This article is not really philosophical in nature and rather belongs in the Op-Ed section.
2
I suppose one day, sooner than we might think, we will read a similar
essay on euthanasia for those who are deemed no long necessary to
society.
After all if you give someone a drug and then kill them what pain
do they experience ?
A long essay and so little about the simple and horrible fact that
we are killing babies in the womb of their mothers.
2
I was 18 years old when I married a man 29 years old. I didn't like being beaten-up when I became pregnant. As soon as the pregnancy began to show the beatings stopped because he was often not home. I was still afraid of him when he did come home. I went to see an attorney who told me I could not file for divorce unless I could prove he was committing adultery but it would be easier if I could get him to file for divorce. He could divorce me for a list of reasons, or adultery. Then the law changed right after I had our daughter. I filed for divorce in 1970 under no fault. Thank you California! I still couldn't open a bank account without my father's signature, or apply for credit without my father's signature, nor buy car or life insurance without my father's signature. The lists of what I couldn't do without a male gaurdian's signature seemed to be a mile long. But I could divorce a man who was cruel and turned out to be a drug addict. So it wasn't that he was committing adultery (as I thought). Nope. It was because he was too high on speed or crashing so hard he just couldn't make it home. I never knew until his best friend told me that my husband had been spending nights in his truck at different truck stops because he was afraid the dealer was going to kill him if he came home.
A woman doesn't belong to anyone but herself. No man has any authority over any woman. It's about time all this grandstanding ends. We will decide our own lives, thank you very much.
13
This woman has been living under a rock. That is, if she thinks she will be having a reasoned discussion about these issues with people who are raving about "murder". You cannot take individual morality out of this debate on one side, because individual morality is the entire debate among prohibitionists - that is, the morality that they, individually, want everyone else to hold to. Among abortion rights advocates, individual morality is actually individual, and so stopping government interventions and regulation is the point. Even worse, introducing fine distinctions about this, that or the other aspect of abortion only encourages anti-abortion extremists to seek prohibitions. Everything is ammunition when you are hellbent on shooting down other people's rights. How about this? Keep pushing back on radicals who believe in the two-patient theory, or whatever nonsense they are peddling, until they are politically crushed. Because the Supreme Court has already decided that *abortion is a right.*
6
I'm no psychologist, but it has always seemed to me that people who discuss groups like anti-abortionists miss an important point. It seems groups like this, who militantly espouse fringe positions - anti-abortion, anti-vaccine, Columbine denial, holocaust denial, etc. - have one obvious thing in common: That intoxicating feeling of belonging to a small, elite group of people who believe they are more religious, more conscientious, more moral - in short, just plain better - than everybody else out there. I also believe this type of desparate embrace of the illusion of being part of some kind of elite group is responsible for the rise of Trumpism and the election of the worst president and most chaotically inneffective congress the US has ever had.
14
Restricting abortion shouldn’t even be up for discussion until all the children in this country are properly cared for and loved. Let the super ‘religious’ people help with that if they want a cause. Right now there are millions of children that aren’t properly cared for, which is an obvious consequence when > 50% of pregnancies already aren’t planned. (I won’t even go into women’s rights to a certain quality of life.)
7
Abortion is a necessary evil sometimes. But it is always sad, never something to cheer on or celebrate.
People like me who would (almost) never have an abortion, are really turned off by women bragging about multiple abortions.
No wonder so many Republicans consider this their key issue.
There is no "right to choose."There is only the right to consider the necessities of ones life in deciding whether to continue a pregnancy.
1
Abortion, as another means for a woman to control her destiny, is at odds with both conservative Evangelical and Catholic notions of a "woman's place". More importantly it also dovetails nicely with their other notion that sex outside of marriage without real risk of a pregnancy literally allows the woman to avoid the natural consequence of sin (why many are also adamantly opposed to birth control in addition to abortion). This isn't about life, its about punishing women who sin. That also nicely explains why the conservative Christians' interest in that child effectively ends the minute it takes its first breath outside the womb. The next 18 years are the woman's penance for her sin.
What I'm also saying here is that they've now positioned themselves philosophically where there is not middle ground. Medical professionals who perform abortions commit murder, women to seek them commit grievous and unforgivable sins. When you listen to their rhetoric they've created a Boolean world for themselves; good/evil and right/wrong. Among those groups there is no nuance, especially in regards to abortion and birth control. This is a fight that will not end until the medieval notions fueling it are put to rest.
11
M says it best. It's a power issue.
1
Laurie: perhaps you could simplify your presentation a bit. Try reading your piece as if you are an average reader - not an intellectual dissector of delicate detail.
Here is a simpler approach:
It is a mother's choice until the child is born.
A fetus is a human with "rights" when it breathes fresh air and is viable.
A moral person who believes that a fetus has rights should also believe in universal healthcare and universal nutrition and universal education and universal right to proper housing... not in that order but you get the drift.
i get that you want to tone down the emotion. But rights is rights. Not the right to impose them on others. Choice is the operative word.
5
This is typical of recent Left-wing approaches to public debates, delegitimize the other side. It is sophistry, just a way to limit the terms of the debate to arguments only the Left wants to discuss. Make it immoral to argue the morality of Abortion and you can easily demonize or denounce anyone who tries.
But it won’t work. The choice to have an abortion is a moral choice. When a woman ends a pregnancy, she is making one of the most important decisions of her life and she must consider the morality of her choice. She must weigh the moral dimension of having an abortion against her reasons for having one. I believe abortion must remain illegal but to have one for frivolous reasons is immoral. Abortion is not a form a birth control. We are witnessing a genocide of people with Down's syndrome as women choose to test for the condition and then abort the fetus. We should be discussing the morality of this but the author of this article would not allow it.
Can you imagine a slave owner telling abolitionists that they could only discuss slavery as merely an economic decision? The Left diminishes itself and humanity by denying the moral dimensions of public policy.
I have to disagree with your definition of abortion. It is not always a medical procedure. It can happen spontaneously and formerly these were called “spontaneous abortions.” Now they are more euphemistically called “miscarriages”. This area of medicine is so politicized that much harm is being done to actual people (and by people I mean those in being not potential life in utero, which until the last fifty years was a well settled legal distinction).
1
Abortion rights, pro-choice v. anti-choice:
The King James translation of Genesis 4:7 translates "timshel" as "Thou must". There are no other choices.
In Hebrew Scripture the word "timshel" means "Thou mayest" with the understanding that there is choice and consequences.
There is a difference...
Pro-life is simply an oxymoron. After 270 days its "Good luck" & God bless"
1
The premise of this article is wrong.
Aborting a healthy baby in a healthy mother (the vast majority of abortions in the USA) is not medical care.
Abortion may be a right, but that does not make it medical care.
The author seems to ignore the extreme risk to the life of the baby. As for the commentator who sees anti-abortion as a way to "deny agency" to the mother, is there no concern that abortion is a way to "deny agency" to an innocent baby?
I think this would sound about right to many Americans.
The most thoughtful discussion of abortion I ever read was written by Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan: http://2think.org/abortion.shtml
Though decades old it is so much more sensible that most of today's rhetoric.
The entire article just reinforced the knowledge that Roe v Wade was adjudicated correctly. It has worked and works well even today.
3
I'm pro-choice, which to me means that the woman (there is no such thing as "pregnant persons, despite the Supreme Court, because men can't get pregnant) gets to make this decision for herself because SHE is the one who has to carry it for 9 months, deal with the physical issues caused by pregnancy, and she is the one who will be caring for it. I don't presume to know why women choose to have an abortion or why they choose to carry the pregnancy to term, nor does it matter. It is the woman's decision.
To me, this is simple. If you are against abortion, don't have one (if you are female) and if you're male, then you make sure that you don't get your partner pregnant until she is ready to have a baby. And if you're against abortion, then you should be voting to fully fund Planned Parenthood, to make female contraceptives readily available and free, voting to provide full health insurance coverage for women and girls, and voting for and fully funding complete sex education in the schools.
Pregnancy is not risk-free, and there are too many instances when a woman may choose to have an abortion even though she wanted to have a baby. Ectopic pregnancy, spina bifida, Tay Sachs, etc. may influence a woman's decision. A woman who has been raped or is the victim of incest should be forced to remain pregnant if she chooses not to.
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament, provided free of charge upon demand, without shaming, hate, or moralizing.
10
I'm sorry, but this column and the reactions to it are the best demonstration I
have seen so far about why amour country is in so much trouble. First, in the guise of "objectivity" the author clearly stakes out a pro-choice position, which isn't objective at all. Then the comments overwhelmingly support that pro-choice opinion. Thus this entire exercise is an absurd waste of time.
Our mission today must be to find ways to overcome our differences and criticizing the other side's position is definitely not the way to begin that effort! The word is "understand". Talking about how the other side wants to control women's bodies is not understanding! Talking about why the other side thinks their opinions are the right ones is the place to begin.
Our democracy is failing not because of our politics but because of our intolerance! We are the problem, not the Rs or the ads or even Donald Trump!
And by the way, I'm pro-choice.
1
Personally I think it's pretty easy. Don't believe in abortion? Then don't have one.
Don't think you've the right to decide against what a woman (and her partner) and doctors decide is best for her (and them).
Don't represent women as using abortion as a form of contraception. Don't represent women who have abortions as heartless murderers of their own children.
Don't imagine if abortion was illegal that there would be no abortions.
Personally I think a human being becomes a human person when he/she has sufficient grasp of a language and the self-regard that it allows. When they can give a coherent response to: "Tell me about yourself." About age five?
I think a fetus becomes a human being when it is viable outside its mother or an incubator. Late term abortions are rare. I won't second guess in abstraction a doctor's advice and a woman's decision to have one.
I am for women utilising very reliable contraception and aborting as early as possible if it fails and they do not wish to continue with the pregnancy. It's not ideal but neither is life. If we cannot control our fertility we cannot control our destiny.
15
This is incorrect. Look up the data. There is no correlation between blue states or red states. Mark NY 12 hours ago
Abortion should be legal, rare and safe. In blue states that fund proper sex education and access to contraceptives is unhindered, it is. In red states where abstinence-only education is the rule of the land and contraception harder to get, it's more common and less safe.
17
"a medical procedure in which the fetus’s death is an unavoidable outcome": With friends like this, who needs enemies?
I'm pro-choice. I think it does that cause no good to pretend that the death of the fetus isn't the /point/ of an abortion,
Let's let the "pro-life" people, who tend also to be pro-death-penalty, have a monopoly on hypocrisy.
11
The basic problem with this reasonable argument is that a large swath of the American public (and officials) do not believe in personal autonomy as a primary right and have no problem dictating to others what they can and cannot do, based on the disingenuous argument that by living in a society and supporting a government that allows behaviors they deem immoral, that THEIR religious freedom is being infringed upon and/or their arrogance that their religion is the only source of truth gives them the right to dictate others' personal choices.
17
This should get you nowhere--a cold, technocratic treatise on an explosive topic. It's impossible to keep morality out of discussions of this topic--as well it should be. There is something definitely wrong with anyone who can approach abortion without personal torment. That doesn't mean the procedure should be outlawed. It has to be a moral question, but it should be a personal moral question. Bill Clinton said it best; abortion should be safe, legal and rare. (And I do have standing to talk about it.)
8
Separation of church & state must be woven into these complex social policies. While we all agree that murder, robbery, drunk driving and tax evasion deserves legal constraint on a civil basis- there’s is no clear civil/community danger if a woman makes a private personal medical d3cision.
Moreover, those pro-life zealots are completely silent when many of us claim a Right to Live by restricting assault weapons and other gun reform. There cannot be only two rights...2nd amendment & a specific religious doctrine claimed as the right to restrict nonbelievers.
We live in a civil democracy, not a theocracy. Diversity requires individual belief is protected...for individual choice. The liberty cited by the NRA is hypocritically narrow & arbitrary.
It is time for the majority to assert our rights as clearly.
22
I want no limits to abortion, and not becasue I have ever needed or wanted one. It's becasue as the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS case and unfortunate decision proved: there are no limits to the restrictions the religious right wants to enforce upon the rest of us, in this case women. They want no contraception. Thus the red line for supporters of a womans right to choose has to be no restrictions at all.
23
No, I think we need to still discuss abortion in terms of ethics. Obviously, the concept of protecting women's health is an ethic. Some people hold that ethic, and apparently a lot more don't, if America's shameful maternal mortality rate is any indication. Another ethic is the concept of women's bodily integrity: do you own your own body, and can you make decisions for your own body that include keeping it safe (or making it safe) from incursion by another body? Eileen McDonagh wrote a book about this back in the '90s called Breaking The Abortion Deadlock: From Choice To Consent. It's worth a read.
6
Abortion is and always will be a socio-economic issue.
Overturn R. v. Wade.. then here's what happens:
The rich white girl in Beverly Hills flies out of the country to Sweden to "visit relatives" .. The poor black girl will be forced to meet an "auntie" in a garage ...
21
The author proposes that framing the abortion debate as an issue of public policy, rather than individual morality, would allow for more productive public discourse. Most pro-choice supporters already view the abortion debate as a public policy issue. However, for people who believe that life begins at conception, abortion is pre-meditated murder, plain and simple. For people with this belief system the abortion issue really is simple: abortion is murder of an innocent person and cannot be allowed under any circumstances. It is unrealistic to expect people with this belief system to be willing to discuss abortion as a public policy issue.
I suspect, however, that for many anti-abortion supporters the main issue really isn’t the life of an innocent fetus. Their opposition to abortion may be a surrogate for their fears that the world is changing in a way that reduces their quality of life and position in society. For people with this belief system, allowing abortion is the top of the slippery slope of pre-marital sex, gay marriage, and all forms of immorality that they associate with the groups in society that are ascending at their expense. Perhaps the answer is economic – if the inequality and poverty in our society was less maybe all groups would be less frightened of the future, and more tolerant of each other’s views
3
I appreciate the author's take on what is certainly one of the more vexing moral issues of our age. I followed the logic well until this: "It is only reasonable to order a medical team to do this when such a procedure is medically necessary." On what basis does it become "reasonable"? The fetus' death? The fetus dies no matter at what stage an abortion is performed. Viability is not a black or white moment that kicks in at six months. This test, as M from Cambridge notes in their comment, is merely a slippery slope for those who would deny women dominion over their body and its functions. Abortion is so central to our culture's discussion around morality because it is so intrinsic to the struggle for women's empowerment. A fetus is a fetus. A child breathes and exists in the world on its own (albeit with the close care of others). Until we have the courage to maintain this distinction in all discourse around abortion, those that appose abortion will be able to move the line of legality subtly, yet measurably.
8
There really is no soul before birth, because the soul derives from the experience of striving to live autonomously after birth.
Either the Constitution is rooted in a right to be left alone in the most intimate and private decisions about one's own body, or there is nothing left the State cannot control. If privacy and self-determination do not exist in the Constitution such that the State can prohibit women from terminating a pregnancy, it's a very short distance to the State ordering women to bear children. Women control their own bodies and lives, or the State does. We are free men and women or we are Handmaids.
21
Motherhood is the most momentous decision a woman will make in her life--why is it even Government's ("the State's") business what she decides, especially since over 40% of pregnancies are unintended?
I find the author's entire approach troubling, discussing what role the State would play in all this and at a loss to think of an example affecting male privacy in the same way. How about "the State" taking DNA samples of every American male and assigning Fatherhood (financial support, inheritance rights, time spent holding a crying baby at 2am) to the responsible father? Would we be eagerly leaping over inherently personal decisions to impose Government intervention?
13
I escort at a clinic which provides pregnancy terminations. If only we could sit down face to face with those who protest there and have a reasonable discussion devoid of shouting. As others have pointed out, the abortion issue is less about moral values, and more about the right of a woman to make decisions about her own body. Most of the time the majority of protesters at the clinic are invariably male. Those who oppose abortion have no idea what the woman who has chosen that path is feeling or trying to cope with in her life. Sometimes there is spousal abuse, sometimes there are financial problems, sometimes there is a severe medical problem, sometimes it is someone who is the victim of incest, and yes, sometimes it is someone who is just not ready for motherhood who is seeking an abortion. The point is, women should be able to make a medically informed decision about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, and if she does choose termination, just like with any other medical procedure, she should not have to run a gauntlet of people shouting at her, video taping her, and holding up signs designed to instill guilt.
For many years in this country before the turn of the 19th, when a woman became pregnant, the decision about whether or not to have a pregnancy termination was hers and hers alone to make, not the State's. It should be that way now.
20
Ethics, and not just health risks and outcomes, need to be part of a discussion of when a government should prohibit properly trained medical professionals from performing an abortion. Some state governments have established laws requiring women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds before getting an abortion. That a patient is forced to consent to this medically unnecessary procedure as a condition of exercising her legal right to an abortion amounts to legalized battery. Furthermore, she is financially responsible for the procedure. Such laws are certainly unethical.
10
Ultimately it always comes down to the question of whether a fetus (or an embryo or a fertilized egg cell) is a person. Except perhaps in the latest stages of a human pregnancy it is not; any other opinion is a religious opinion and has no place in the laws of this country or any state. In the earlier stages, a decision made by a pregnant woman and her doctors is their business alone. Any law restricting the right of such a woman is denying her the right to control her body. People who are not allowed to control their own bodies are called slaves. The thirteenth amendment prohibits slavery.
10
The real issue is whether women have the bodily autonomy granted to every other person in this country. Once a child is born, no one can force either parent, or a stranger, or a sibling, to donate so much as a single drop of blood even should the life of the child depend upon it. Only a pregnant woman is subject to discussions about the limits of her bodily autonomy; only her decisions about it are ever up for questions and constrictions.
Why should the state ever have the right to override a woman's decisions in these circumstances but not any other person's, even when the issue is the same preservation of life?
23
When I was 8, and my brother was 11, my mother had a miscarriage. I can remember, the night before, feeling her tummy to see if I could feel the baby kick.
The miscarriage was a big disappointment, but it in no way had the feeling of having lost a life, in great contrast to the death of our family dog, probably within a month of the miscarriage.
Soon after the miscarriage, my brother and I accompanied our mother to the obgyn. She was 38, and was concerned about whether she could have another baby. When she came out, one of us--neither of us is certain which--said to her, "Well! Are we going to try again, or are we going to adopt?" (We tried again, and we got a baby sister.)
12
Abortion is not just a right, it's a necessity. Access to legal, safe and free abortion services, along with a panoply of contraceptive medications and interventions, is essential in reducing poverty, overpopulation and social ills. Reducing population through demoralizing and normalizing abortion services is essential on a dying planet. The issue of the potential child's quality of life is a serious ethical consideration as the biosphere reaches a terminal condition. Abortion, vasectomy, and contraception all need to be fully funded and made widely available. Moreover we need a national and international debate on the ethics of having children. Adoption is essential as many children linger without families at all. Genetic narcissism must end.
15
Well said! If only we could frame the debate in more pragmatic and sensible terms. The bodily autonomy argument falls well short and is morally suspect.
3
Dr. Schrage's erudite comments are extremely interesting and worthy of discussion. However, I think that she overlooks the important point that today's argument about abortion is almost entirely about emotions and religion and really has nothing to do with rational thought.
Women have spent centuries trying to free themselves from being the chattel of men. We've made much progress but are still not there. (One dictionary's synonym for "chattel" is "slave". )
As an 80-year-old retired professional woman, I still find it a truism that "if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament".
But thank you, Dr. Schrage, for providing a more sensible means of discussion.
19
I would argue that the government should basically never have to limit medical procedures. It's not very well equipped to make the kind of fine distinctions that are necessary to make good medical decisions.
But that makes the assumption that the medical industry will self regulate. As long as physicians are offering interventions that:
1) Have a clear and objective indication
2) Meet a generalizable standard of medical necessity
3) Are supported by strong evidence of clinical benefit
4) Are better than or equal to the other available options,
then there shouldn't be a problem.
3
I am sorry but reducing the abortion conversation to a clinical/medical one in no way serves us well. We currently have in Washington an administration that is fundamentally amoral. Policy issues are framed essentially with an algorithm based on the president's personal interests and power. This is a reflection of President Trump and the GOP which has lost its moral compass. But it also reflects the fact that as a culture, we are increasingly unable to engage with the moral issues relating to much of our common life such as health care, immigration, safety in schools, tax policy, nuclear arms etc. There are moral components of all these issues as well as abortion. Americans need to learn greater skill in having respectful moral conversations, not the avoidance of them. It won't always lead to a simple solutions captured in a sound bite, but we will be better off as a nation and a planet if we do so.
6
The author rightly distinguishes between personal ethics and whether or not society should impose laws to enforce particular ethics.
Let me take a stab at reframing the issue of personal ethics in a different situation. A man has a wife who has become severely disabled and is dependent on him for everything; no other resources are available. He can not cope with this life any more and decides to leave. His wife dies as a result (by suicide or inability to look after herself). His friends might say that he felt dreadful for leaving, but had to leave for his own self preservation, and was ultimately able to do more good for others by this choice. Many others would condemn his action as selfish and immoral, perhaps even saying that his decision was one of convenience. But there is no law that requires him to stay, and I very much doubt that there would be any pressure to enact a law to require a person to stay in a marriage, no matter what the circumstances.
To “pro-lifers”, you are entitled to your beliefs, but not to impose them on those who do not share your beliefs.
13
I don't think this analogy works - the husband would be abandoning and thereby abusing/mistreating a vulnerable adult and there are protections against that. And the people you are trying to argue against (those that you derisively use the "" for) generally base their arguments on morality - and they would very likely make the case that the husband should be prosecuted.
All good science, all good thoughts - but when are we going to shine light on the fact that: an embryo is created by two people providing egg and sperm cells. We always seem to leave the male contribution out of the conversation. Net net - why don’t we change the conversation to include the prospective fathers? If they sign legal docs to provide for mother/child, I am guessing that many more women would be open to options. If they don’t, the choice should belong to the woman alone.
2
Absurd argument. Men bear none of the biological burden of pregnancy.
2
An important point that is often missed is that an abortion involves not the pregnant person alone, but the pregnant person and a practitioner. If a pregnant person could self-abort, then their decision would be absolute and final, and we would have no business regulating it. However the fact remains that a pregnant person needs help from another member of society in order to carry the abortion. Hence the choice of the pregnant person cannot be absolute, because their decision to abort means that someone else will have to perform an action. Ms. Shrage's line of argumentation is therefore sensible, and is worth being debated. That said, I still believe that the rationale of the pregnant individual should take precedence, given their particular physical burden.
2
I agree that the dichotomization of the abortion debate has led to an unproductive standoff. I agree that this can and should be done in part by better educating Americans about medical realities of pregnancy, in order to expand the discussion from black and white to include shades of grey. The article seems to deny the reality that many Americans do support the "absolute" pro-life and pro-choice positions.
To expand discussion of the grey shades between these poles, the discussion should focus first on the least controversial medical context. This defines the darkest shade of gray, a rhetorically important boundary between the absolute pro-life position and all others. Cases in which the life of the mother is in clear jeopardy receive strangely little discussion, despite garnering the broadest public agreement. If you want to expand public discussion, this seems like the obvious starting point. The article does not mention it specifically.
Consider a case of placenta previa, with uncontrolled bleeding, at week 18. The fetus is too young to survive outside the womb. The mother will likely bleed to death without an emergency abortion. Should she have the right to choose this procedure? At many US hospitals, she does not. Polarized rhetoric may cost these women their lives, without saving a single fetus. To advance public policy discussion, why not begin by seeking a consensus to let them choose life?
9
Can't quite see how one can have an absolutist stance on ProChoice. Pro choice means you can choose one way or the other, ProLife means you have no choice.
I'm pro-abortion. However, the notion that you can talk about abortion without a moral dimension is ludicrous. Every law has a moral dimension. We have laws against murder due to morality, and morality is another term for enlightened self-interest - allow murder to go on, and society will descend into a series of retributive killings. Abortion is allowable if you decide that a fetus is not a fully franchised baby. I support abortion due to excess population and due to my beliefs that women have the right to make that decision. Those are moral choices. I choose to believe that killing a fetus is allowable.
6
I'm pro-abortion too. I agree with all you have written.
Has the author ever spent time with religious opponents of abortion? Based upon what Sharge writes, it appears she has no understanding of them. I've always been pro-choice, however I understand that opponents of abortion will never accept what Shrage proposes. Shrage states: "Abortion is first and foremost a medical service or procedure, not an individual action, and thus a more important and relevant question for public policy is, under what circumstances, or for what reasons, should a government prohibit properly trained medical professionals from performing an abortion? This is a question that fellow citizens can productively debate, and that may lead to a consensus." Shrage makes a fundamental mistake in thinking she can separate morality and medicine in regards to abortion if she employs good reasoning. People who oppose abortion on religious grounds won't accept how Shrage uses reason, nor will they ever accept any criteria she proposes for a productive debate. For them there is no debate, they are right, and in disagreeing with them, Shrage is wrong. Shrage entirely ignores their belief system. There will be no debate on the grounds Shrage tries to set as opponents of abortion reject her entire thesis that they need to accept that "abortion is first and foremost a medical service." To opponents of abortion, abortion is first and foremost a crime. Since they don't accept that this a debate about a medical services, it's impossible to arrive at any consensus about it.
11
When a woman (or man) has a tumor removed, no one is concerned about the tumor.
But we have to ask an uncomfortable question regarding abortion: Is there any distinction between a fetus, however well developed, and a tumor?
In the end, of course, we can't chain the woman to the hospital bed. She must be given control over her body, and the fetus is part of her body.
But the question is still there: Is the fetus the same as a tumor? And if not, what then?
I didn't say it was an easy question.
4
Webster’s defines religion as “ a principle, cause, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith”. One side of this argument believes that life begins at the moment of conception, while another believes that it begins at some point between conception and the beginning of the third trimester. Both sides of the debate hold to their personal answers to this question with ardor and faith, so it could be said that both arguments are religious in nature. As in most cases, scientific research tends to confirm ancient wisdom rather than overturn it.
The question isn't when life begins. It's when is a woman no longer a person?
1
In Texas, the state voted to close all Planned Parenthood clinics in the state because 'some (2)' offered abortions. They claimed at the time, that other for profit clinics would rise to fill in the void, especially for poor clients.
Few did, and the effect is no easily accessible birth control. The other side effect is the rapid rise in unplanned pregnancies.
Essentially, the state of Texas now controls the bodies of all women who live there.
17
The arguments that pro-life people are motivated by religious reasons betray either superficial understanding of the issue, or a willful attempt to dismiss any intelligent conversation of abortion. In fact, atheists can be pro-life. And pro-choice people can be just as adamant about their own secular “beliefs” as the religious right.
6
The vast majority of anti-abortion activists are indeed motivated by religion. Just go to any protest at a clinic, or a march, and observe: you will hear hymns being sung, prayers being sung, and God being invoked. Yes, atheists can and do choose to be against abortion, but there is no denying that the militant, no compromises anti-abortion movement is fueled, driven, and sustained by religious fervor.
9
A few years ago, after 2 healthy children, my wife became pregnant with a baby boy. (many would call it a fetus, but he was our little boy) Tragically, he had a severe occurrence of spina bifida, and at 18 weeks was already experiencing many developmental problems. We unfortunately had to choose between doing nothing and endangering my wife and family, having pre-natal surgery and endangering my wife and family, or ending the pregnancy. We are pro-life, but we were so thankful for the right to choose what was best for our family. While our decision was heart-breaking, and still hurts, I know we made the right decision. I learned that it is totally possible to be both pro-life and pro-choice. Many people will seek an abortion for "the wrong reasons," but we still need to protect our right to choose.
18
Pro-choice does not equal anti-life. In fact most pro-choice proponents I know actually work, lobby, add volunteer to make abortion as rare as possible through sex education and free birth control, and to ensure that every born child is wanted, has access to health care (along with the mother), clean air and water, sufficient food, affordable day care, equitable schooling.
12
There are no good abortions or bad abortions or good reasons or bad reasons just reasons. They are all personal and none of anyone else’s business. You made the decision that was right for your family - I respect that
You should also be tolerant to accept that someone very alone, very poor and unskilled should also get to make their own decisions.
9
Anyone who has ever worked at an abortion clinic knows that anti-abortion activists commonly choose abortion when it is their own family member with the problem. Somehow, they imagine that their own reason for doing it is justifiable, whereas all the other women are doing it for immoral reasons.
10
Quoting in Conclusion: "In short, what a good society does is based on a different set of considerations and principles than what a good person does." By this measure, any form of government or policy would prove just fine. This opinion suggests we must take moral considerations out of the debate about abortion, while arguing for the autonomy of a woman deciding to abort her own gestating child, quite possibly out of an ignorance as to that human life. All proposed or otherwise passed legislation intended to remedy that ignorance (for example, requiring Ultrasound) has been struck down by clever pro-Abort lawyers for people and organizations who have general ideas about the morality of over-population or minority fecundity or environmental issues all of which have no bearing on the particulars or the morality of ending a gestating human life. Would it help everyone to understand that abortion is by no means medical care, in part because Abortionists and Abortion Clinics themselves assert as much when it suits their legal interests? Yes, of course. Some of us need to familiarize ourselves with the Hippocratic Oath of Medicine: "First, do no harm." Whether we argue the morality or the science, it should be evident that pre-1973 standards of conduct must be recovered for the good of our children, our parents, our families, our medical establishment, and yes our society. Both personal and public health would benefit.
2
Of course it is medical care. Pregnancy is a medical condition that can cause immense harm to a woman's health and even end her life. Even when everything goes perfectly, your body is still changed for life.
The day when you can be forced to donate one of your two kidneys, against your will, to save the life of another; I'll consider your argument that I have to donate my entire body for 9 months against my will.
22
Women aren't ignorant. We understand what an abortion is. That's why we're having them.
Abortion is medical care. The same procedure used to perform a surgical abortion in the second trimester would also be used to complete a miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy. The fact that you don't like a woman's reasons for having a d&c doesn't mean it's not medical care.
1
This is a perfectly sensible approach to public policy, but it unrealistic (ironically) because it requires people to agree that all U.S. laws must be secular in nature and that mandating religious principles (be it traditional marriage, the Sabbath or abortion) is inappropriate. The same secular principles that forbid a Muslim grade school teacher from leading prayers in their classroom forbids a devout Christian grade school teacher from leading their own. The belief-based objections and/or disgust with gay marriage (no matter how sincerely and genuinely felt) are as legally irrelevant as the belief-based objections to interracial marriage, integration, women's suffrage and abolition that came before. And, despite what the Roy Moore's of the nation assert, no earthly court is competent to interpret divine law and pass judgment upon sinners. Furthermore, even if such an earthly court existed, I very much doubt the loudest religious voices on this issue would themselves survive scrutiny, much less be fit to judge others for any sin.
If we could collectively agree upon that there would still be objections to abortion, but we could establish the parameters of abortion rights (whatever they might be) without the need for Papal bulls or footnotes from "Rev." Falwell, Jr. If we want to set some agreed upon point at which life begins, we can do it the same we collectively decide when life ends (i.e., arbitrarily and inconsistently across multiple jurisdictions).
4
Instead of arguing about 'when life begins' the better question is - under what circumstances, if any, does the State have the right to force a woman to continue gestation. Are women in their reproductive years to be treated as second class citizens, stripped of the most basic bodily autonomy?
14
Morality is the basis of politics. It cannot be separated Morality is central to human life, politics less so.
Reading your post carefully suggests that you are in favor of the rights of a woman over the rights of the fetus, except when the latter is near birth. But often problems happen in late term--the mother's blood pressure shoots up to 200 systolic, the fetus is diagnosed with a brain disorder, such as Down's syndrome, or some other serious disorder.
One cannot separate moral views from political, as is evident in Ms. Schrage's post. Abortion, like gun rights, is an insoluble problem, both morally and politically.
1
I am pro-choice, but most of my family are pro-life. Your argument, however valid, will not convince those who believe that abortion is murder. Murder is a civil issue as well as a personal moral one, and while it rests on the weaker personhood argument it still covers your civil society notion.
As a side note, I am convinced that the opioid crisis is not simply about addiction but about untreated pain, a consequence of deductibles discouraging routine medical visits to address the causes of the pain while they are still treatable.
9
Thoughts:
1. Do we have a public consensus on the question that a human person could NOT exist before any complex psychological properties have developed?
2. This argument calls some assertions made about fetuses in pregnancy "metaphysical or religiously based." Yet we need to expand the parameters of the label to include anyone interested in philosophical issues: persons at any level of any society. All points of view must be on the table when a society has not yet come to a consensus on such a serious issue.
3. This part makes me most nervous because it brings up the issue of the individual vs. the state:
" Yet questions about individual moral behavior or personal ethics which still generate wide disagreement based on religious diversity are not really all that relevant to the issue of lawmaking." Moreover, try applying this argument to the Oval Office today.
2
"When moral philosophers and others take up an issue that is at the center of public debate, we tend to frame it as a matter of individual ethics."
"Moral philosophers and others" is a generous way of identifying a group that includes state and federal lawmakers. They ultimately decide the extent to which women can legally access abortion services, all too often without the benefit of a pubic debate.
3
Expecting rationality from those who do not accept the existence of it when it comes to certain issues — be it abortion, the second amendment, [fill in the blank] — is to not comprehend how irrational those outside the center-moderate middle actually are. In a world lived primarily in the grey of reality, these individuals pretend it's all black and white, either-or. Exceptions do not exist.
Nuance and subtlety are non-existent for the true believer. Thus the distinctions made in this piece are lost on those who refuse to consider the possibility they even exist. This is why the obsession with fetuses but neither children nor adults. Thus the pretense that embryos are human beings and life begins at conception. Or that contraception is a form of abortion. All just making it up.
This is why we give individuals the right to make their own choices, and not everyone has to either agree or approve. There's no wisdom to be found in extremism, but extremists are the last to know this. Reasonable people can disagree, unreasonable people simply reject that premise. What a surprise.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
8
Until there is a safe way to remove a fetus from it's mother and implant it into a volunteer and ALL anti-abortionists become those volunteers (and men can actually also be able to carry a child as many who are against abortion are men), then I think abortion - at any stage - needs to be a decision between a woman and her doctor. Husbands and/or the father can voice opinions, but not interfere with whatever the woman decides to do.
We don't force people to run into burning buildings because there's someone inside. Even firemen gauge their own safety before they act. Pregnancy is dangerous and can still die from trying to bring another life into the world. Forcing someone to take that risk is no different than demanding they engage in risky behavior.
31
How to Talk About Abortion? Tell Them To Not Do It! This from a non-aborted fetus.
2
Those who oppose abortion believe a fetus is a human being. A medical procedure that ends the life of a human being, whether it is assisted suicide, execution, or last-ditch experimental treatment for terminal disease, is usually highly regulated. It’s pointless to tell people not to believe what they believe. Instead, we have to admit that the rights of the human carrying the fetus outweigh those of the fetus. If a woman chooses not to remain pregnant, her rights supersede her fetus. But let’s not pretend that we don’t understand the complexity of this bargain. When a woman who was thrilled to be pregnant miscarries, do we say to her, “I’m so sorry you lost a fetus?” I reluctantly believe that safe abortion should be legal and readily available, but I’m under no illusions about what a fetus is.
7
What a fetus could become, you mean.
BTW, many woman who seek abortion also mourn the loss. They are making the best choice for their circumstances, but that does not necessarily make it easy, or less of a trauma than a miscarriage.
6
Because abortion politics and ethics often focus on later-term abortions, I wonder why author did not address the reason that later-term abortions typically are sought: fetal abnormality. The author looks only at the risks to the women and the unavoidable death of a viable fetus. If fetal abnormality was a consideration, then these trade-offs, particularly fetal death, would necessarily be examined through a different lens. Put more bluntly: would it be as big of an imposition on the medical staff to terminate a viable fetus if its post-birth life would be insufferable? If they were saving a woman from being forced to carry, and then give birth, to a baby that would ultimately die? To discount the reason why most women seek later-term abortions is to have an incomplete conversation when we talk about abortions.
12
What do Prohibition and the War on Drugs have in common? Simply, we can’t legislate morality. A decade or so ago a missionary Catholic Priest from Africa visited our parish and at the end of Mass, commented that American Catholics give great importance to protecting the unborn but are unwilling to pay for programs that would reduce the need for persons seeking it. A small percentage of persons use the procedure as a form of birth control but that’s the exception.
As a former social worker assisting persons apply for welfare, I ask those who have never experienced extreme poverty, neglect or abuse to walk a mile in the shoes of those who have. It’s so easy to be critical of others and lack compassion that requires more than lip service. When a husband walks out on a pregnant wife with three kids, is there someone really there to pick up the pieces? There are limited faith based organizations to help but the problem is bigger than one church or even an alliance can handle.
Supportive services were briefly expanded with the enactment of Welfare Reform in the mid-90s but it didn’t take long for Congress to cut services. Even today huge tax cuts are directed to the wealthiest among us and well-connected corporations at the expense of social service assisting the poor, elderly and disabled.
Will we ever learn that to love life means accepting the responsibility for providing adequate support to those who are helpless and turn to the extreme of seeking an abortion?
22
"Under what circumstances, or for what reasons, should a government prohibit properly trained medical professionals from performing an abortion?" Regulation of abortion should not be different than any other medical procedure. There is no moral issue that justifies greater state involvement.
11
Why should abortion clinics be any more regulated than medical offices where colonoscopies are performed? The state laws that require these clinics to be outfitted like a hospital are merely enacted to force clinic closure.
7
How many regular medical procedures are regulated by government?
1
This was incredibly logical. Thank you for laying this divisive issue out so clearly. This could be applied to nearly all legislation.
It also demonstrates the futality of attempting to legislate religious exemptions into public policy. Beliefs can't be proven or quantified. Policy must be based on facts and the common good. It can't create piecemeal exemptions for favored belief sets.
My youngest still believes dogmatically in Santa Clause, but I don't redesign the chimney around him.
9
I’ve seen at least one comment stating how easy it would be to get an abortion if men could get pregnant. In the past I’ve seen comments on these pages stating abortion would be a sacrament if men could get pregnant.
This must be confronted. It is so easy to see with a moment’s reflection that these claims are clearly false, and so clear on further reflection that these claims discount or denigrate the contributions men make to society, that to make these claims is to knowingly or unthinkingly promote a misandry that makes a difference.
In an earlier comment I said questions about giving some measure of legal protection to a developing fetus are unique, so that analogies to whether we have a legal duty to aid another, to refrain from harming another, or to accept conscription and armed combat will quit working at some point. But for this limited purpose, the facts that men have long been expected to perform dangerous work and often been subjected against their will to conscription and combat easily disprove the claim that men are not expected to sacrifice much for the good of the nation, tribe, or family.
Attempts to avoid becoming cannon fodder were not sanctified by mainstream culture.
Men rarely feel free to talk about women the way Donald Trump does when they’re around me. People shouldn’t feel free to talk this way about men and their place in society when they’re around you, dear reader.
3
The point of the comments you object to--the point you refuse to acknowledge--is that it is men making the laws and regulations and policy decisions that apply only to women of reproductive age. The fact that men sacrifice for the welfare of others does not entitle any man to impose on any woman any form of government authority from which he himself is exempt.
11
Society as a whole creates a culture in which many men have been expected to take on dangerous occupations. Society as a whole decides whether to conscript men and send them to war.
Society as a whole decides whether, and if so when, to grant a developing fetus some measure of legal protection and, if that protection is granted, whether that protection must yield to the pregnant woman’s choices regarding her own health.
Some people will carefully and fairly consider those decisions and others will not. Know that often men have been put in harms way on the job or in the armed forces for careless, thoughtless, or unfair reasons. Certainly society should not carelessly, thoughtlessly, or unfairly burden women regarding reproductive choices.
Please provide the percentage of men who have been conscripted v. the percentage of women who become pregnant and give birth.
I bet you'll find those numbers are wildly different, especially in the past 3 decades.
The claim you take issue with has nothing to do with denigrating men's contributions to society and everything to do with the acknowledging that men *hold the power* and make laws that are unpleasant and demand sacrifice and inflict harm on those who do not hold the power. Men would NEVER choose what they inflict on women for themselves. The point is to demonstrate that bans on abortions have more to do with power over women and less to do with the Sanctity of Life (tm).
6
In the article and comments there is no mention of father’s rights. Shouldn’t the right to opt out of parenthood be extended to the man as well as the woman? What right does the woman who has decided on her own and against the father’s wishes to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term, to force the father to pay child support?
7
Because the father is the father ... he impregnated her.
3
You are confused. No one can opt out of "parenthood" (by parenthood, you clearly mean paying child support...). Women can be compelled to pay child support just like men can.
Abortion allows a woman to opt out of *pregnancy and childbearing.* That is different than "parenthood."
The right to "force" the father to pay child support does not belong to the woman. It is a state action based on the right of the child to be cared for by someone other than tax payer. It applies equally to men and women.
1
Um, assuming the father was not forced into sexual servitude, he surrendered his right to appeal paternity when he had unprotected sex with the mother.
He might wish it weren't so, but nothing is forced upon a reluctant father--other than personal responsibility, mild adulthood, and the right society has to insist that able-bodied fathers bear the moral obligation to support their own offspring instead of taking advantage of our society's ethical commitment to all children in general.
1
Until we look at child birth as a biological event and not a divine event, the morality question will never be left out of the debate. Religion always gets in the way of this question, and so it will ever, even thought he argument put forth here is logical and an enduring one.
4
It’s interesting to see how the anti-abortion position is always pegged as exclusively religious, when the truth is that this is still a moral issue without religious context. The question of when human life begins is not just a religious one, but a scientific question as well. And indeed it seems science is much better equipped to answer that question than any religion.
As a thought experiment, if we assume science revealed that human life indeed starts at conception, that would have huge moral ramifications, and the same would be true if it revealed life to begin at birth. Neither of these scenarios require any religious belief.
1
Science cannot 'reveal' that human life starts at conception or birth or at any other point. The question is not 'when human life begins', but rather 'what is human life' - and this is a philosophical question, not a scientific question.
5
The State does not require you or I to donate organs, blood etc to save a dying person. Even a corpse's organs cannot be 'harvested' without a legal directive or the family's consent. The principle is one of bodily autonomy (at least to me), not one of competing rights. And since most dogmatic anti choice groups appear to be opposed to the most reliable contraceptives (LARC, birth control pills, etc) the true motivation is likely one of controlling women.
5
The question isn’t when/whether government should regulate abortion, it’s when/whether government should regulate ANY medical procedures. If so, we’d need guidelines, which would lead a reasonable person to ask why the only medical procedures and FDA-approved drugs/devices we regulate so aggressively, are those used exclusively by women.
The author asserts that the woman does not have sole decision-making authority over abortion because someone else must agree to, and actually, perform the procedure. This is true for every medical procedure, not a reason to focus on abortion.
The government has interests in both fetal and (if only) women’s health, yet rarely intercedes in parental decisions about their children’s health care after birth. So long as the pregnancy continues, society loses interest in maternal and child health, before and after birth. Look no further than proposed cuts to social services and congressional determination that maternity care is non-essential.
The author implies lack of individual agency in comments about government’s balancing of. Perhaps we should ban or regulate pregnancy because of its inherent risks. (Wait, we’d need increased access to contraception, so let’s just ban sex!) Every medical condition, procedure and service carries risk; doctors explain and we make decisions we hope are best for ourselves and our families. Even women can do this some of the time.
6
Until we start having government interference in all aspects of medical care; ie regulations on brain surgery, which is far riskier than abortion, I frankly don't see what business the government has in stepping into the exam room at all. These are practices best developed by professional organizations in terms of safety, not morality.
22
I agree - although there are quite a few situations already where law conflicts with medical care. Euthanasia in terminal disease is a prime example. Psychoactive addictive chemicals are another.
1
I don’t think it’s quite so easy to separate individual morality from public policy. Our laws are codifications of individual morality upon which we agree. As the author states, the question of the legality of abortion is political, not individual. It was adjudicated by the Supreme Court based on their interpretation of the Constitution. A different interpretation may or may not be applied in a review. Given that the issue has had such a major effect on political practice for nearly 50 years, such a review by SCOTUS may be the most practical and efficient way to resolve the issue. In the meantime, rhetorical tropes on religion, metaphysics, and assigning motivations to how and why people come to their decisions on this topic are less than helpful.
1
Do you mean that we should keep presenting it to SCOTUS for review every year? Or just until they overturn Roe vs. Wade, and then we can halt the process? Forever. Really? I can't imagine that satisfying anyone.
Perhaps if the issue of preserving the right to abortion throughout the full nine months was framed in terms of being in place to protect doctors who sometimes need to take swift, decisive action in the third trimester to preserve the health of a woman whose pregnancy takes an unexpected turn, it would stop being such a political football.
The extremist insistence that women be allowed to terminate a third semester pregnancy without medical cause is extremely divisive. Since it's used as a political football, it ultimately hurts the cause of preserving safe, accessible abortion.
The abortion debate is similar to our struggle, as a nation, to enact sane, sensible gun laws. The extremists in that situation fight vehemently, and irrationally, against any background checks at all, or restrictions on which guns are available to the public and under what circumstances they will be available. Their rationale is that allowing any restriction at all opens the door to further restrictions. I'm afraid that abortion rights supporters who insist that a fetus is just a clump of cells and that abortion must remain legal even in to the ninth month are just as much extremists as the NRA, and in their zeal to protect our fundamental right to bodily autonomy, they actually hurt us by fueling the seemingly never ending abortion wars.
3
Where are you seeing this insistence? The parameters of Roe v Wade work as well as they ever have. I haven't seen anyone looking to change this. Over 90% of abortions are by week 12.
Why not leave Roe vs Wade in place ? It seems to be a reasonable compromise.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once opined "Wovan mann nicht sprechen kann daruber muss mann schweigen". Very roughly translated as If you have nothing intelligent to say, keep quiet. What can we say about abortions when more Americans have been killed by firearms during the last 100 years than have been killed in all the foreign wars we fought? What can we say about abortions when we have murdered and maimed millions in undeclared foreign wars since 1945? What can we say about abortions when we are the only advanced western country where the death penalty is sanctioned for murder. What can we say about abortions when we have sanctioned torture across the globe. What can we say about abortion that is more important then the declarations of a mother and/or her loved ones? Or as the Roman poet Juvenal wrote in one of his satires : "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes". Who will guard the guards themselves.
9
I cannot believe that America is still having this conversation. Wake up!
11
What happens to that developing organism if it is not aborted? What is its future? We see from advances in fetal medicine ever more clearly fetal tissues forming into a separate human face. That's science that can't be ignored or denied to satisfy the demand for "choice."
Appeals to the history of women's rights is full of irony: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the great suffragette leaders, were universally opposed to abortion, which they called "child murder." Alice Paul called abortion "the ultimate exploitation of women."
7
'Exploitation of women' would rather be, forcing continued gestation and childbirth on an unwilling pregnant woman. Why not let women themselves decide, as they do now? Why is a woman infantilized and construed to be so ignorant of pregnancy that she must read a pamphlet, view an ultrasound, listen to a description of the fetus and insulting state mandated scripts? The bigger picture here is one of State control over a woman's body, relegating her to the status of an incubator.
Wlliam Cutrer, a Professor of Christian Ministry at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in an article on the school's website, uses the statistic that almost one-third (and possible as high as one-half) of all pregnancies result is a spontaneous abortion. How many fertile sexually active women who believe life begins at conception save their menstrual flow every month and have it tested for fetal tissue? And then give it a funeral if fetal tissue is found? It is easy to moralize if you don't have to act in concert with the beliefs you want to impose on others.
16
I think a more reasonable question might be how many women who have a miscarriage - even a very early miscarriage in the first few weeks - mourn the loss. I'd say most of us.
1
If a woman on her period, she is not pregnant. There is no need to check for fetal tissue because the presence of a period means there isn't a zygote or an embryo, let alone a fetus.
Wrong on facts, but you're preaching from "The Stone" which means your grasp of metaphysical reality does not coincide with actual reality.
Every human acts only individually. We can glom together to work as a team, but each individual on the team only acts individually. There is physically no other way to act. There is no group action. So an "abortion" is an individual decision. While other individuals are involved in order to perform the procedure safely, only one person has a decision to make. Taking that decision away from that person is a violation of that person's rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. These are the only considerations that are important.
The only relevant public policy question is: Is it right to violate the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness - or is it wrong to do so?
8
Separating moral and medical issues in the abortion debate is not possible. The author argues that confining governmental actions solely to medical issues would permit productive debate that could lead to consensus. The problem is that the medical risk of early versus late abortions cannot be made in the absence of moral judgement. Only if it is assumed that the life of a viable fetus is more worth protecting than of an earlier stage fetus will this approach work. Anti-abortionists have long understood this and argue that any human life form as early as a fertilized ovum is as entitled to life as is its mother. With this definition most abortions cannot be justified even when the life of the mother may be at risk. Since many laws are based on moral precepts, e.g., murder, rape, theft, etc., it is unlikely there is a way out of this conundrum.
3
These discussions rarely change anyone's mind on this volatile subject. I do think the fanatics, the ones who are vehemently against abortion in any imagined contexts, hypocritical. I'm thinking of the radical right politicians who pay for their mistress's abortions (I keep waiting for one 45's mistresses to come forward) and the ones who get all discombomulated over the idea of "killing a child's life." Would these same people be willing to adopt a crack-addict baby or a baby of color?
7
You know, I hate to be flip about this, but the reality is exactly this: if men got pregnant, you could get an abortion at an ATM. Any discussion around "morality" and "ethics" would fly right out the window.
Think about what that means for a second.
16
This is reasonable. Unfortunately, the forced birthers will not give up their power over every woman and man in this country without a bitter fight.
7
A good try. To take the heat out of the subject. Yet in doing so, the layout seems naive and the perspective almost too clinical. Or perhaps too lawyer like in a way that most of the strong voices will not heed. I appreciate an attempt to lay out some rationality in a subject that is over the top emotional. Value of human life itself is at issue. And yes, we do place a value in dollars on people all the time. Or devalue as we often do in war zones. Worth thinking on indeed.
1
The author correctly points out that the earlier an abortion is performed the safer it is; therefore laws that unnecessarily delay the procedure may contribute to more risks. She goes on to say that this hinders the government's interest in protecting women's health. Let's be clear; those who wish to abolish abortions have absolutely no interest in women's health. They are only interested in their "moral superiority" and in playing to their constituencies, who believe they can speak for everyone else.
15
The author *almost* got me. But then she declared that "there is more than one "patient" involved in an abortion".
No. There isn't. There is a living, adult, human woman.
No abortions done past the age of "viability" (and what a loaded word THAT is) are done for spurious reasons. They are done to save lives. They are performed to prevent infants being born for short lives of unimaginable pain. They are done because surprise, mother nature isn't that neat and sometimes bad things happen, and a woman shouldn't have to bear a dead child for several months just because some random white republican male wants to see her punished. At the stage where a woman is considering a late term abortion, "viability" isn't the issue, it has already been determined unlikely if not impossible.
There is NO SECOND PATIENT. The minute the author went there, she stepped over an uncrossable line.
My Body, My Life, My Choice.
26
For what its worth - you nicely highlight why the author tries a different approach to the pro abortion discussion.
And no, your body doesn't give you free rein to do what you wish to it. If you try to kill yourself, society will impose on you and attempt to stop you. Arguably there is no single act more integral to personal autonomy - and society will deny it to you - you probably won't get to chose the moment of your death. And you can't mutilate your body - attempt to disfigure or cut off limbs and society will again intercede.
We have a long track record of trying to prevent people from harming themselves.
So your body does not equal your choice.
I often wonder why those personally opposed to abortion are not typically strong supporters of universal healthcare, improved social services, income equality and educational opportunities - those things that might actually significantly reduce the number of abortions.
21
Don't like abortion? Then don't have one and provide all people with the education and resources to prevent an unplanned pregnancy that could potentially cause one.
17
Jame K-- that is the crux of the matter. I used the same argument on gay marriage-- opposed to it? Don't marry someone of the same gender. Period. Done.
But it's never enough for the faux moralists on either issue.
This argument amounts to "Don't like murder? Then don't don't murder someone...", "Don't like slavery? Then don't own a slave..." see how ridiculous your argument is? There is far more to preventing human rights abuses than choosing not to do it yourself.
Not that long ago a friends married daughter was pregnant with a wanted child that died in utero. She needed a doctor to remove the dead fetus but because the procedure is similar to a late term abortion she had to travel a great distance to find a physician with the necessary skills. A nightmare.
Much longer ago in the 1950’s a woman awoke at her summer home to find herself having a miscarriage. She was far from home and her doctor and she had her two young children with her. Again she had wanted another child. The local doctor she found refused to do anything because what if she had induced an abortion?(she hadn’t). So although bleeding she put her kids in the car and drove two hours to her doctor.
Although separated by decades these women were white, educated married and at least middle or upper middle class. They got the care they needed and survived physically. And neither one was seeking an abortion and both were in medical distress that could have killed them. I doubt that poor unmarried uneducated nonwhite women would fare as well.
16
"activities necessary to securing their basis human needs" presumes an answer to the questions of what is a basic human need. The NYT has already decided the acceptable answers.
Does opoid or cocaine addiction satisfy a basic human need? Alcohol or nicotine addiction? The addicts think so.
Viewing child pornography? There are probably some people who think that satisfies, at least for them, a basic human need. The rest of us reject that, and retain the right to make moral judgements, and to enact them into laws.
1
How well has the War on Drugs gone? How about Prohibition, how well was that received? Even though cigarette smoking is proved to be unhealthy it is not prohibited. Women should be left alone to decide their healthcare choices.
3
Abortion is not a healthcare choice. No healthy pregnant woman “needs” to have an abortion in order to remain healthy.
There are lots of ways to talk about abortion, but the typical way the Left chooses to discuss the issue is to scream "shut up!"
More than 80% of Americans favor banning partial-birth abortion, yet we cannot discuss such common sense regulation without hearing about "turning back the clock," "back allies" and "coat hangars."
In addition, most Americans agree that abortion clinics should have the same health, safety, and sanitary regulations as any comparable outpatient surgery center, along with doctors who have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. Yet that is seen by Planned Parenthood and NARAL as unconstitutional infringements on a woman's "right to choose."
Every time I hear somebody howl about the power that special interests, like the NRA have over Congress I can't help but think that the NRA must be envious of Planned Parenthoods political clout.
3
As a means to deny women their right to choose, hospitals deny doctors at these clinics admitting privileges, so they cannot perform safe abortions. Don't act as if the doctors aren't seeking the privileges. They're being denied because of where they work and what they do.
16
"Partial birth abortion" does not exist. It's just not a thing. That's a term the anti's made up to describe a procedure called intact dilation and extraction, because it lets you mislead gullible simpletons into thinking that a woman in her 40th week of her pregnancy with a healthy baby, who is in the process of delivering the baby via a normal vaginal birth, all the sudden just up and cuts her kid's head off.
Wow, that does sound insane, now doesn't it. It's almost like that's an anti-choice fever dream, instead of reality.
"In addition, most Americans agree that abortion clinics should have the same health, safety, and sanitary regulations as any comparable outpatient surgery center, along with doctors who have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. "
The Supreme Court has already shown the country why this argument is specious and completely rejected it. Rather than retype it in a 1500 character window, I refer you to Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt. Enjoy educating yourself on this subject.
Do you understand under what circumstances late term abortions are usually performed?
a more realistic framing could be:
abortion is a medical procedure for ending a pregnancy.
some people believe it is also murder and others that it is a personal choice.
those who believe abortion is morally wrong often also think it is up to them to dictate what everyone else ought to think and how they should behave because they have the moral high ground.
so, besides being a medical procedure, abortion is also a litmus test for who gets to be in charge and foist their primarily religious beliefs on others, no. attt what ge others believe.
in this way, it is a test of our American, secular democracy: who has the ultimate authority - a religious minority or the people, specifically women and their doctors, themselves?
12
Well, that's how social rules and laws come into being, a majority imposes its will. Some people think rape and murder are OK, the majority of others said no and "imposed their will" on society to ban them.
Absolutely essential to any public discussion of abortion are the voices of women, and men, who have experienced it. We're so late to the discussion because the religious moral police have long shamed us into silence. No more!
I had an abortion in my senior year at a fundamentalist evangelical baptist school that had only the most minimal sex education required by the state of California. I had little clue of birth control. Had I continued the pregnancy, my life would have been destroyed and my potential offspring a victim of a greatly diminished mother. It was the single-most best decision of my life and I don't regret it for a moment, ever.
For too long we've allowed the religious police to dictate the discussion with wild fear-mongering of the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of abortion with no input whatsoever of women's actual experiences. They say women suffer, become sterile, depressed, or suicidal, get breast cancer, and more. We hear this without any other input and think "bad therefore I should vote against". Every one of these assertions is wrong and I'm living proof. If we all, en masse, stand up to publicly and consistently push back on these lies with our bodily proof, our truth, then people and public policy won't be so easily swayed by false religious male-dominance propaganda.
How to talk about abortion? Personally, truthfully, and, most importantly, publicly as the only true authorities, those with actual experience.
16
I agree. I've never had one. I took great care to never need one, but if my birth control had failed when I was a young, poor college student or later, in my forties, when I was done having children, I certainly would have. Having control over our reproduction gives us freedom from dependency on men.
9
Abortion is not a moral issue in China, Japan, and India, but it seems to be in the United States. It's really a political issue in the U.S. , a way of energizing and motivating American evangelicals to support the Republican party and get out the vote. Such "moral" issues have so blinded evangelicals that they voted and now support a President who is corrupt, incompetent, and favours the interests of himself and his family businesses over the common good. The consequences of electing Trump are far more serious than abortion, but a significant minority of Americans are oblivious to this distinction.
18
Regrettably, the arguments that the author tries to address with reason are just tactics. Talking about "abortion" misses the point, which is government-forced childbearing as a penalty for the sin of human sexuality.
Still, so long as the author was at it, it would have been interesting to complement the point about abortion being safer than childbirth with a comparison of the amount of pain suffered by the woman and the fetus in the two events.
6
I’m happy to see efforts to unpack and depolarize debates about abortion and the law. Surely it is political spin, tested over decades by polls and focus groups, that has entangled the questions of contraception, elective abortion as a method of birth control, and abortion to safeguard the life or health of the pregnant woman.
I agree that religious doctrine, without more, does not justify a law in America. Speaking as a voter, it’s hard for me to imagine an argument that would lead me to approve a law that could generally force a woman to carry to term a pregnancy that posed a specific risk to her health.
But I’m also pretty sure that questions regarding the relationship between the law and a developing human fetus are unique, without a counterpart. Analogies to whether we have a legal duty to aid another, to refrain from harming another, or to accept conscription and armed combat will quit working at some point.
And I don’t see why it is necessary, as you suggest, to solve the metaphysical question about when human personhood begins to determine that, at some point, perhaps at or a little before or after quickening, the law will grant a developing fetus a measure of protection that is enough to outweigh a pregnant woman’s choices rooted in convenience but not enough to outweigh her choices regarding her health.
2
Health of the fetus should also be a consideration. Many very serious defects cannot be identified until the third trimester.
Is the author presuming that in the area of abortion, "the government [is] pursuing its interest in protecting women’s health"? Nothing could be further from the truth. Many state governments and now the GOP federal government are dominated by those who pass law after law aimed at taking us back in time to the Biblical era, when women were male property. Conservative religion and the faux-Christian politicians who claim it are all about maintaining patriarchy. Male dominance is insured when women are denied agency over their own bodies.
12
I am pro-choice and pro-science.
What I find disingenuous is that so many pro-choice advicates deny the science when they insist that a fetus is not a human life in its earliest stages. Describing a developing fetus as just a clump of cells, as so many pro-choice supporters do, clouds the issue, and contributes massively to the polarization.
I think most people who have a centrist view of abortion - meaning that it is absolutely necessary in a free society to protect womens autonomy and that the decision to carry a pregnancy to term must be left up to the woman and her doctor - also acknowledge that a human life is being ended by the procedure. Even though that life is in its very earliest stages, and even though it may never have progressed to the stage of viability, a fetus is not simply a clump of tissue.
I find that people who have a centrist view of abortion are deeply sympathetic to the situation of women who get pregnant by accident - through contraceptive failure, sexual assault, or emotional abuse. They are much less understanding of people who fail to use contraception even though they don't want to be pregnant. If morality is a part of the issue, it's in the failure to use contraception by men and women who do not wish to conceive a child.
8
Want to change the debate about abortion?
Let's have universal access - meaning, free, no charge, available everywhere - to effective birth control. And let's have universal access - again, free and everywhere available - to good prenatal care and to child care once a child is born.
And it would be good for men to take more responsibility for preventing pregnancy, since unwanted pregnancies are generally not initiated by women. Just saying, guys.
11
Please! Men like you must vote, vote, vote your statements every single election. And it also requires putting aside the zeal for ideological purity that leads to the crazy idea that voting for Jill Stein when there is absolutely no way she can win is somehow going to give us "universal access".
Vote and vote STRATEGICALLY. This last election has now accelerated the destruction of everything we've accomplished, especially women's reproductuve freedoms. Who cares if Hillary Clinton wasn't perfect or was corrupt but on a level far less than Trump. Had she won, we wouldn't be worrying about this and talking instead of the continuing Republican obstruction started under Obama. And frankly, I would have far preferred that fight with all my rights intact than what Jill Stein's ridiculously futile and now known Putin-backed candidacy gave us instead.
7
Howard, who then is initiating these unwanted pregnancies? Doesn't it take both a man and a women?
I agree that the argument for choice needs to adopt a different angle. However, I am concerned that backing up the argument with scientific data would be meaningful to many anti-choice proponents. While the argument for equal marriage has gained wider approval, what about the scientifically-based argument for environmental protection? Or what about the fact that so many of the uninformed buy into the false argument that the use of birth control pills can lead to mental instability in women?
I would prefer to see the argument for abortion take into consideration other points that affect the public, such as crime rates, children's poverty, and education access.
4
How about liberty, freedom from State intrusion, agency and bodily autonomy? Anti choice folks should read up on the Romanian disaster, which involved forced childbearing. Thousands of children were abandoned to State run orphanages.
It is privacy rights. It is prayer for the person making a private decision. It is prayer of their guidance. It is prayer for their forgiveness. Beyond prayer it is fighting to preserve privacy rights. Then It is seeking ways to lessen a the likelihood of a private decision that is permanent and irreversible. Social supports? Income supports? Income inequality corrections? Access to healthcare? Government intervention must not interfere with private decisions.
A very well-reasoned, balanced and thoughtful framing of how to handle the issue of abortion in terms of public policy. But...
The author presumes that public policy should be set based on "consensus" - - that is the foundation of her argument. But, she also brings up the issue rightly so and with fairness, that there are or might be "two patients" not one involved. A niggling point.
Looking at American history, when the Taney Supreme Court of 1857 rendered its "Dred Scott" decision, they consigned millions of African-Americans to slavery as rightly chattel, property to be owned and traded.
If the public consensus or even the acts of the Government are immoral, what obligation do we have to those impacted or harmed? Since Abolitionists roared for slave to be free, and half the U.S. said, "No." In a liberal democracy, do we not have an obligation to agitate and fight for the oppressed or forgotten? Liberals would say, a resound, loud and proud, Yes in terms of the obscenity of slavery. So, then what?
3
Slavery occurs to me as an apt description of forcing women to continue gestation and give birth against their will.
7
Not the same argument AT ALL. Slaves were born beings, freely independent of another being's uterus. Fetuses, at least until viability, are not.
6
It is. Moreover, this was literally a part of the institution of slavery in America.
This is a great way to talk about abortion- in a philosophy class, in the academic lounge at a university, or perhaps a cocktail party on the upper west side. This is how to talk about abortion with people who already believe that some form of abortion should be legal.
In discussing "a liberal democracy," I can only assume that Dr. Sharge was referring to a country other than the United States. With Conservatives in control of all three branches of the federal government, and the majority of the state capitals, the United States can hardly be considered a liberal democracy.
For the average person, especially the average person in Trump country, the way to speak about abortion is through religious terms. The reality is that the Scripture is relatively silent on the subject of abortion, a point that is little known but waiting to be revealed. On the other hand, the Holy Texts speak quite a bit about the sanctity of the female body and contain many laws that favor a women's wishes over the male, or the state.
A conversation can only take place when everyone is speaking the same language.
7
What a horrible and and disturbing piece this is! Reducing questions of individual morality to a quest for public consensus can lead only to the rationalization of horrors that make abortion look like child’s play. Substitute euthanasia for abortion and soon we will be debating whether or not to do away with the physically or mentally challenged, or people of low intelligence or even of entire ethnic groups. Now, where have we heard this before?
9
Give the government the power to tell a woman she can't have an abortion you also have given them the power to tell a woman she must have an abortion.
I prefer to leave the decision with the woman.
12
I find it ironic, that an organization that calls itself Planned Parenthood, is as far removed from parenthood as could be possible.
2
The main services provided by Planned Parenthood are precisely what the name says: planning for parenthood. Planning when to become a parent, how to be a good parent, etc. Planned Parenthood would be delighted to be disconnected from abortion if other reasonable options were available to women who need one.
5
Is there any other circumstance where a person is required to give up part of their body, even temporarily, to save the life of another?
8
Even a corpse cannot be forced to give up its organs to save a dying person...
The abortion issue is all about power. If the pro-birth movement was really concerned about the unborn, there would be a focus on medical research on miscarriage, stillbirth and ectopic pregnancies. In each of those situations, conception occurred, but the pregnancy did not result in a live birth.
16
That's so true. The doctors can help you getting pregnand, but in the Pregnancy you are left alone with the choice if you or your fetus /child is ill. Ich think it is better Testing in an early Stage, than in the Last Term of the Pregnancy. (also to end a Pregnancy) My twins are born in the 30th Week. Well and healthy.
Thankfully I've had a choice, but the Chance to choose. If it happend to me a decade earlier, I don't know If I had done the same.
1
In Montana and Florida - stand your ground states - you'd think women would have the right to protect themselves from life threatening invaders. No so much so.
If abortion could be accomplished with a gun, it would be legal.
17
I have always said that any politician (or anyone else) who is against abortion
should be willing and able to adopt at least one otherwise unwanted baby
that is the result of a woman's inability to have an abortion, and to raise and educate and totally provide for the child.
13
Any way you look at it, in the eyes of God abortion is murder. Period.
2
I don't really think God is all that worked up, to be quite honest. There are more than 7 billion people alive right now and approximately another 103-105 billion who have already died. No shortage of humans any time soon.
8
Separation of church and state. Period.
By all means let us promote more "scientific" abortion and continue to locate and promote these services to poor black women so that we limit the increase in "undesirables"!
That is the dirty little secret about abortion promotion. It was started by eugenicists who hated blacks and continues to be supported uncritically by the left because it still serves the same purpose. History, however unpleasant to one's preconceptions, is a great illuminator.
2
Your point is only valid if women are being forced to have abortions against their will. I am not aware of forced abortions being at issue here. In fact, I worry that such a distortion of history even deserves a response.
7
I know this: if the GOP gets its wish that the Supreme Court overturn Roe V. Wade, it will rue the day.
Abortion will became a state issue, with local yokels minding YOUR business, depending on geography. Do you really want your local hack deciding issues of privacy and medical matters?
Moreover, fifty state firestorms will engulf the nation. Only the heat from Hell will be comparable.
4
The GOP doesn't really want Roe v. Wade to be overturned. If it ever was overturned, all their (single issue) voters wouldn't need them anymore.
6
I’m going to cancel my NYT subscription because all of my pro-life comments are being censored. Shame on you! The polls don’t lie. America is leaning pro-life.
5
they're not being censored, they simply take time to pass through moderation before they are posted.
2
Sorry, but all government decision making is about good and bad--morality. What to do, what not to do. If a large group of the population has moral beliefs--pro or con--about abortion--or a thousand other issues--then they are going to use those beliefs in their public policy debates. You cant just tell some segment of the population not to use a certain type of argument. They are pretty much free to use whatever arguments they want. And no one can censor them.
2
If pro-lifers are genuinely concerned about unborn babies, they need to open their homes to the many children languishing in foster care or CPS. Exerting such power over life comes with longer term consequences. The US has a serious childhood poverty problem. "Saving" a life by preventing an abortion to a woman who knows how dire her circumstances are and then watching that child struggle, is cruel. The pro-life position would make more sense if they picketed for a strong social safety net. The US is going in the other direction: decimating public education, high rates of food insecurity, loss of working class jobs. Fighting for children to be born then dooming them is mean.
8
The abortion issue should be a simple one: 1) females must legally be allowed to end a pregnancy if we wish to do so, because otherwise we can be forced to become reproductive slaves of males who rape us, which is unconscionable in America, and 2) abortion is the killing of human life in the womb, a sad event not to be undertaken lightly.
3
The way to talk about abortion,
My Body, My Choice.
15
If it were just your body, you’d be right. Women should be able to control their own bodies but not the body of the person living inside of them
Great article. Let me state up front I am pro-choice for many of the reasons listed in the article. The biggest problems we face in dealing with this issue, is that a substantial number of abortion opponents, probably the large majority of them, don't argue from a rational perspective. Most opposition to abortion is fundamentally about "values" and in-group "virtue signalling". To be opposed to abortion is one way that religious reactionaries (I use the term deliberately) signify that they are "moral" despite the fact their support for "life" usually ignores the mother and seems to end upon birth.
To arrive at a reasonable accommodation to this issue will be difficult.
The other significant problem is that republican reactionaries also don't want arrive at a reasonable compromise, because they use single issues such as abortion in demagogic appeals to their base. Abortion is an easy issue to utilize, as single issue voters are the easiest marks in politics. All one has to do is look at Trump, as long as he is "pro-life" with all its attendant ironies, he can maintain he support of the single issue "pro-lifer". The inability of large chunks of the American voter to examine issues rationally, is why we can't have nice things, like sensible health care policies.
9
The article does not address the primary goal of the pro-life movement, a constitutional amendment banning abortion. How does one address such a point of view? Let’s begin by limiting the discussion to half the population. Anyone without a uterus must be quiet and listen.
8
Indeed, I think women collectively should decide this issue.
Removing individual morality is the only way you can convince a woman to murder her baby. Once you remove
individual morality what remains of a person?
5
I don't think I have ever read a more succinct piece on this issue. We are currently witnessing a phenomena of seeing some Christian leaders insisting on a strict adherence to a political/National morality while privately flushing their own principles and morality down the drain.
I would not be so opposed to Roy Moore's Ten Commandment monument if I thought that he had ever read them.
Franklin Graham's opposition to abortion would not be hypocritical if he were not such a supporter of the abortion he helped put into the White House.
The idea that those who oppose any and all abortions need to convince the rest of US (the majority) of the truth to their beliefs is just brilliant.
Too bad the politicians who prey on these issues won't read this piece or if they did, reflect on its truth. The old saying is still true: if men got pregnant abortion would be celebrated as a God given.
5
I think that much of the religious right's reaction to abortion has much to do with the concept of sin. The innocent, sin-free fetus is placed on a pedestal, loses its exalted status soon after birth, and it goes downhill from there. The flip side of the love of fetuses is thus the devaluing of the promiscuous, the slothful unemployed, the felon...and to a certain extent, is also a philosophy which sees no value in caring for members of society at large.
12
How Americans talk to each other about abortion. "I vote pro-choice", and, " I vote pro-life"...on bumper stickers.
1
For abortion before the fetus is viable, it all boils down to one or both of two positions untenable in a pluralistic society: (1) My deity tells me that life begins at conception and therefore you should obey the dictates of MY deity, even though you don't subscribe to my belief, and (2) We the State have power over your body, so you only get a choice when we grant you one.
12
Hey, it's only poor women that are denied access.
9
The anti-abortion fanatics are perversely against contraception and sex education. Even if they "win" by criminalizing choice, they have other fish to fry.
10
The author lays out a clear path to consensus on the question of ‘when to have an abortion’ when the motive is medical. Another fruitful point of discussion and potential consensus is when the motive is financial. The most frequent (about 2/3) reason women give for seeking abortion is that they “cannot afford a baby now”. Since everyone, including choice proponents, wishes to reduce circumstances that force women to go there, surely the conversation should include how financial support can help women avoid this often unhappy but always necessary choice.
3
If it’s OK for a woman to have an abortion because she “can’t afford a baby right now”, wouldn’t it also be OK to kill an elderly relative because you can’t afford to keep grandma alive at the moment?
Elective abortion is all about one person choosing to end the life of another. To suggest that abortion can be addressed without addressing whether it is immoral or not is absurd and insulting. To suggest otherwise is strong evidence of your utter cluelessness. Your hollow rhetoric is strictly for internal consumption by those who already support this shameful social tragedy.
2
For the "pro-life" faction, abortion is willful murder. "Is the state not to make a law against murder just so some people can exercise their right to murder at will?" Is their question. If the premise that a fertilized egg is a life be accepted, the only justification for killing it must be to save another life. That is the "social policy" question.
For the "pro-choice" faction, there is no life until the fetus is viable. Otherwise, a contingent possibility (that the fetus will in fact be born) is allowed to override the right of a living woman to decide what life she wants.
One of the clear answers is education about, and free access to, effective contraception. Many in the "pro-life" faction show their true object in opposing education about and free availability of contraceptives. They want to limit and control the sex lives of women. Until Griswold v. Connecticut it was thought that the state had a right so to limit women's private lives. Most of us now think that it does not.
The ultimate hypocrisy of the pro-life faction is that once the state forces a woman to have a child, she is left on her own to try to care for it, although she can, of course, give it away and hope it will not thereafter be abused.
9
Sorry, this approach will not work with abortion. Those against abortion believe that from conception onward the fetus should be treated as a human being. Viewed from this perspective, abortion is murder. They will not compromise. Those who do not agree that a fetus is human (at least until viable outside the womb) disagree and would permit abortion. Adding to this debate are those who would declare that either way, the woman who is carrying the fetus should have the final say.
3
I see little disagreement that our current top leadership has turned lying into an acceptable norm, used whenever it benefits the leaders. For this administration to make any argument based upon a sense of morality is spurious at best. When Trump talks about something like pro-life, pro-choice, abortion, or any issue that brings into question a moral stance of some kind, it immediately seems quite ridiculous. This context, the low state of morality of our current leadership, cannot be ignored. It makes it very difficult to even read this article that tries to advance a discussion of such a complex issue for our society. Good for you for trying. But it assumes that we have some semblance of a "Good Society", as a context for discussion. Uh, not so fast.
2
I used my access to the NYTs archives a couple of years ago to read the articles I could find related to abortion and related issues between 1968 and 1978 (Roe was 1973). After the dust settled, it appears that the only change that could be documented by 1978 was a decrease in the number of women dying in pregnancy related events--i.e. botched abortions. The statistics on abortion rates are questionable since pre-Roe abortions were mostly not legal and not well documented, but it is not at all clear that the number of abortions went up after Roe. Abortion did, of course, become a political issue and has been possibly the most reliable Republican scam since 1973 til today. God only knows--literally--what the politicians trying to restrict access to abortion believe, but the political motivations of their efforts are fairly clear.
11
I love this article. Most Americans believe a woman in the early stages of pregnancy should have the legal right to choose an abortion. Most Americans also believe that from a moral standpoint that choice is far more complicated and fraught than any other medical procedure. In other words, most Americans would be happy if the legal arguments were largely settled and the moral debate could continue for those who care to engage in it. The only reason this battle continues at such a ferocious pitch is there are a relative handful who, like arms merchants, can only sustain their lifestyles if the two sides continue to demonize each other. On both sides of the equation there are leaders who would need to file for unemployment if people ever started behaving rationally and decently toward each other. Lucky for them that day will never come any time soon. Just read the comments posted here.
4
Ms. Shrage's reasoning is solid and important. Yet it is a good thing that the legal right to abortion was not initially decided on the federal level on the basis she provides.
If it had been decided on this basis, then many states, such as Louisiana, would repeatedly have attempted to criminalize women who had abortions.
I think it is terribly ironic that while the right wingers howl about the late term abortion procedures, their own legislation and legal initiatives, such as the Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funding to any abortion, actually makes a late term procedure more likely. Roe v wade ensures a woman the right to an abortion before the fetus is viable. we can protect that standard by repealing the Hyde Amendment and ensuring that every woman has the wherewithal to obtain an early, safe abortion, without concern for costs, and without having to save up for weeks for a procedure.
8
Medical and moral discussions aside, to me this is a civil rights issue. Does government have the right to invade and remove civil rights from a segment of the population? The answer to that question must be no, or our bill of rights is rendered meaningless.
5
I’m a strong supporter of women’s reproductive rights generally and Roe v. Wade specifically. However, this op-ed reeks of the author’s ideological premises. As such, it’s not a useful offering if the purpose is to find common ground between the warring sides.
Abortion is NOT merely “first and foremost a medical service or procedure”. Even to those to whom it’s not murder, it remains the intentional ending of life that if that act or “process” were not performed would result in a human being. It’s also a conscious act whose outcome deeply outrages millions of decent people with strongly held convictions of their own. The question at issue is whether an individual has the right to end life.
Presenting abortion as some antiseptic act that merely has medical implications does nothing to reduce the heat and introduce some light on the controversy – quite the contrary.
In other examples, the author appears willfully blind as to how governments work and the people who constitute them think and act in regulating behavior. You can’t get to the issue of whether same-sex marriages should be recognized by government unless you build a consensus first that they’re “ethical”.
The message appears to be that on highly contentious issues, no perfect solution can be struck, therefore narrow government’s involvement in the issue to the margins. Yet, if government and the Constitution hadn’t interposed itself (and still does), there might BE no abortion, and the point becomes moot.
2
Moreover, NO solution is perfect in a democratic framework governing a society as diverse as ours: ALL solutions that have strategic legs are works of compromise.
Point to a serious problem about the mechanical PERFORMANCE of abortion, and most rational people would agree that government must regulate that mechanical performance. I’m not aware of any disagreement on that, except from extremist Libertarians who don’t want government regulating anything. The disagreement on abortion for which we must find workable compromises (such as Roe) is far more basic than whether a physician has adequately sterilized instruments before performing one.
This op-ed does not represent an argument for how to arrive at those workable compromises, but merely sets forth a set of ideological premises that unsurprisingly underpin ideological conclusions; and assumes that everyone embraces those premises. They don’t.
Abortion has been practiced since Ancient Greece at least. It was acceptable until "quickening," which is equivalent to around sixteen weeks, even in the 19th century. It will happen, whether legal or illegal.
2
'You can’t get to the issue of whether same-sex marriages should be recognized by government unless you build a consensus first that they’re “ethical”.'
Yes, we can get to this issue, and very simply: The government should not be in the business of regulating "ethics".
2
I would dearly love to live in a society that values Life--the fullest possible actualization of everyone born into it; the Life and health of the environment; the financial well-being of the citizenry versus hyper-wealth for the few at the top. I would love to see a population that engages only in emotionally healthy, well protected sex, so that those of child-bearing age have all the resources they need to prevent pregnancy if they are not ready for children AND support their children financially if and when they are ready to become parents.
But unfortunately this is NOT the world we live in.
To me, what makes the anti-abortion stance both morally reprehensible and anti-woman is that they focus on a very thin slice of the total pro-Life picture (protecting the life of the fetus, then suddenly losing their fervor for Life after the child is born).
AND they seek to foist onto the pregnant woman the ENTIRE BURDEN of the dysfunctions and non-Utopian aspects of our society that gave rise to the unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
We NEVER hear any of these so-called religious conservatives acknowledging that it takes both a man and a woman to conceive a child. WHY are they not demanding that the man who fathered the fetus step up and devote his finances to the well-being of the child for the next 20 years?
Men are free to go on their merry way, while women--in the name of "morality"--are supposed to absorb all the costs and consequences into their bodies and lives!
4
I had an abortion in 1971 when it was very "hip" and "liberated" to defy the "male-dominated" culture and finally gain freedom for ourselves and our bodies. Don't believe that this blatant "cockiness" was ever part of "the scene"? Well, getta load of this: the black nurse who held my hand had had four. (That's right. I said f-o-u-r.) She had a beautiful baby boy in between the second and third "procedure" and felt quite proud of her "birth control" method. Something sad about all this. Really, really sad.
3
Billie - Why was it necessary to mention the nurse's race?
7
I've known exactly one woman in my life who seemed to use abortion as birth control. She had a drug problem (thus the lack of birth control) and recognized she'd make a terrible mother.
I have a few strong reactions to this piece:
1. There's no mention at all about the GOP (abetted by Russia) using divisive social issues like abortion to rally highly religious, undereducated viewers to vote Republican. That's a big omission. Just as we saw with the supposedly pro-life congressman who forced his girlfriend to have an abortion - what they say and what they do, and the reasons why, really needs examination.
2. Red states have the highest teen abortion rates. That's also a serious omission from this article.
3. Don't lump homosexuality and abortion together in a justification. It encourages hatreds and fears to cross-multiply (i.e. an intolerant person who hates one, but has no strong feelings about the other, begins to equate the two and learns to hate both).
4. Among democrats I know, there's a moral difference in the stages of abortion - and even those who are supportive of abortion in later stages after the first trimester would far rather see more comprehensive prenatal education and prepregnancy education for women to prevent the need for those later stage abortions. If Republicans were really serious about life, they would work with democrats to begin that education early to continue to drive to abortion rate down-and that's a win for everyone.
3
I don't believe that discussions, films, protests, letters to the editor, comments to the NYT, sermons, pamphlets etc. ever change anyone's mind about abortion.
What changes people's mind about abortion is finding themselves personally in a situation of a complicated pregnancy and having to actually decide.
All the rest is sound and fury.
14
Why does an IUD, a very small bit of plastic cost $1000 ? Effective birth control should be free and available everywhere.
16
I'm sorry, if consensus is not needed about discussions of a man's decision not to reproduce by having a vasectomy, there is no consensus needed in a woman's very private decision about her reproductive status. Anything beyond that is simply attempts to control women and then justifications of that control.
Period.
12
Abortion is not about "good medicine," it is about the moral worth of life and if all life is worthy of protection by the state. Period.
3
By logical extension then we are failing vast swaths of our population by not providing universal health care, livable wages and free education. So until religious people stop being hypocrites, they simply don’t own the moral high ground.
12
So when do we ban AR-15s?
11
I'm confident that if it were men who had the wombs and carried an unborn child to childbirth, society would not have this never ending, (profitable) and counter productive debate. The laws on the books would simply state that the fetus was a man's private property, like his body, to do with as he pleases. No one would even conceive of starting an entire movement to allow the State to dictate what he does with his body.
Yet that is exactly how the issue is framed with women in our society. Our laws come from a judeo-crhistian tradition -- in which 'morality' unavoidably comes into play, and informs even how 'good medicine' is supposed to act. The most visible anti abortionists are all men, often making good money on this 'cause,' and spout some dogmatic distorted morality about being protectors of "life," as though women -- who have constitutional rights to both privacy and safety, are nothing more than carriers, vessels really, who have no right to life. The debate has been hijacked for over forty years after a badly written Roe v. Wade and the dial is stuck on this patriarchal approach towards women's bodies. Stripping the moral dimensions from it may be laudable, but ultimately disingenuous. The moral question remains: what on earth are a bunch of men doing thinking they have the right to control a woman's body? and what on earth is a society doing when they invest men with this power? Pro-life? Then go adopt a dozen unwanted children already on this earth.
7
This article may be useful in spurring discussion, but I find it bizarrely dissembling in its rationalizations, peripatetic in its wanderings and mechanistically reductionist.
The procedure argument could be laid out much more simply: Medical procedures should be allowed to proceed unimpeded based on the current law of the land. Okay. Got it.
As to the moral argument that can be distilled, the author seems utterly dismissive of any consideration of sentient human life prior to the third trimester. That seems clinically cold to me. I am pro-choice but abhor abortion after more than a few weeks, and would oppose anything beyond about ten weeks except in compelling emergency circumstances.
Society must establish some policy thresholds for our nation to find some semblance of settled peace in this agonizingly intractable conflict. I doubt that it will. But I must ask the ardent pro-life folks: Are you anti-death penalty? Do you support prenatal nutrition and medical care? Early childhood nutrition and education? Affordable child-care and education in general? A decent social safety net? Unfettered contraception (aside from true abortifacients)? Reasonable weapons of violence regulation? Hospice care for the elderly and terminally ill? Do you believe in our society doing something about climate change and armed conflict? If no to any of those, how can you call yourself "pro-life" with a straight face?
5
If the issue were this logical, it would not be an issue. Certain groups believe that “abortion is murder” and so no argument of regulating a medical procedure will prevail. We must acknowledge that we will never agree on the exact moment when a clump of cells becomes a human life. Both sides rest their arguments on their opinions of when this happens. In other words, in the end it’s a matter of belief, of faith, if you will.
If certain groups oppose abortion, then they simply should not have abortions. Extending that faith-based opposition to others through legislation violates separation of church and state. It is tantamount to evangelical sharia.
4
Roe vs. Wade is never going to be accepted as legitimate in large areas of the country.
Furthermore this one size fits all regions policy is the "gift that keeps on giving" for Republicans. It therefore makes achieving further social progress in this nation very difficult.
We need a constitutional amendment that would return the abortion issue to the states, while simultaneously forbidding state level residency requirements.
But your suggestion would be a violation of the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law. Why should a woman in California have more reproductive rights than a woman in Ohio or Tennessee? I don't think women should have to navigate around a hodgepodge of different state laws that make different allowances for her right to control her own fertility. Heck, that's why the Supreme Court took up the issue in the first place!
8
I agree this is not an ideal solution. It would be vitally important that no residency or other burdens be placed on out of state women seeking abortions.
However, only large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate plus control of the Presidency will prevent this nation from becoming even more of a Latin American style populist oligarchy. Trump is our potential Juan Peron.
Lamb's victory in Pennsylvania shows what it will take to get large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress.
He is a former Marine, Catholic, and gun owner who has distanced himself to a certain extent from Roe vs. Wade.
Feminists can either take absolutist positions on abortion or they can decide to beat Republicans.
At the Battle of New Orleans Gen. Andrew Jackson reportedly ordered "boys elevate them guns a little lower." He won a resounding victory.
Lamb did not distance himself from Roe vs. Wade. He said it is the law and should not be changed. He also said he is personally opposed to abortion. I respect his position.
Allow sex education in schools and disallow abstinence teaching...you will see abortions drop in number. States that push abstinence have some of the highest teen pregnancies in the country.
10
The legal issues are something like: (1) Does the government have a legal interest in protecting a fetus?; (2) if so, what is it?; and (3) If so, when does that right arise? Roe v. Wade got the answers to these questions right, it seems to me. The government's interest arises at viability, at "quickening." It's the perfect middle ground. It also seems to me that if the government is going to force a woman to have a child she doesn't want, it should pick up the tab - all of it until, let's say, the child is 18. Food, clothing, housing, medical care, education, daycare, etc. If the government has an overriding interest, then it's obligations don't end at birth. The government can't then just abandon the child and say "Oh, we trust parents." Clearly, it didn't. If the government has an overriding interest, why are there laws that allow religious communities to pray over a sick child rather than taking the child to the doctor? The state's interest ends when you invoke a religion? If a religious belief of a parent is superior to a child's then the Satanic Temple ought to win it's case in Missouri. According to its religious beliefs, a woman can have an abortion anytime. Roe got it right. We shouldn't mess with it.
7
What an excellent and dispassionate essay! Thank you.
Fascinating...the author writes about abortion with no substantive discussion of religion. She seems unaware that the anti-abortion movement is essentially the manifestation of religious fanaticism.
The anti-abortionists just want to win; to dominate; to force others to live according to the dictates of their religion.
12
Apparently guns enjoy one of those "inalienable " rights that my right to control my body does not.
9
I have 2 questions:
1) "Abortion is first and foremost a medical service or procedure, not an individual action..." Says who? The entirety of the remainder of this column's proposals rest on the unquestioning acceptance of this statement which, at best, is debatable, at worst a pedantic simplification.
2) What happens to this approach to public policy determination if the word "slavery" is substituted for the word "abortion", with related changes to "medical services" as "business interests"?
This has always been the problem with taking what are fundamentally personal, human rights decisions and deciding preemptively that they are, instead, public policy decisions. The only reason the policy is "public" is because anti-abortion crusaders are adamant that they know better how a woman should behave, and are determined to have their say in the matter.
2
Women will have abortions regardless of how those who oppose them feel about the issue. The government's job is to ensure that the process is safe and that women have the same level of access regardless of what state they live in. In a country that prides itself on individual liberty I find it hypocritical that a minority is allowed to impose their will on opposing a medical procedure just because it violates their religious beliefs. If you don't want an abortion don't have one but don't tell me what I can or can't do with my body.
9
But the forced birthers are also against free and accessible birth control. And they complain about even a meager safety net for women and children saying “Don’t have kids you can’t afford”.
9
There is no debate to be had. It's my body, and what i do with it is no one else's business whatsoever. End of.
8
With your own body, yes. What about the baby's body?
1
...what about it? The *fetus* doesn't have the right to live inside my body and use my body to sustain its life. It does not get to hijack my body for its use. End of story. The "baby" is welcome to do whatever it wants, outside of my body.
5
My body is not public or community property. If you can find a way to save your fetus and take responsibility for it without touching my body, have at it. Wanna tell me what i can eat too?
3
Seems to me that the question of when human life begins is central to one's position on abortion. The "safety" of a medical procedure includes whether anyone is killed as a result of it.
1
"The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than with abortion."
By forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy she wishes to terminate, the government is forcing her into slavery. It takes away her rights.
Approximately 15,000 children under 5 die daily from dehydration, starvation and disease.
Billions of people will face a lack of water within the next few years. The infants and children will be the first to die.
There are thousands of poor children in the U.S. who start school without the necessary preparation (or diet).
So many small children in need of care. But I guess it is easier to stand on the sidewalk and spew false piousness.
Check out the Beatitudes.
7
All societies must grapple with moral issues to the extent that they seek to govern human behavior through law. These issues become considerably more intense when the issues become more about government power than individual choice. Individually, I strongly doubt that our Constitution creates a federal right to abortion, but would strongly support state laws authorizing early abortion on demand for adults and minors with parental permission. That said, I personally oppose efforts to make abortion, birth control or even sex education a public expense, and would be far more passionate about those issues if I were more morally opposed.
We could substantially de-escalate the divisiveness of the abortion issue if government would stop at simply authorizing it, without working so hard to promote abortion and nationalize its costs.
It bears repeating that Roe already regulates late-term abortion--na matter what anti-choice activists (or presidential candidates) want you to believe. When abortion is legal and accessible, no woman carries a fetus past viability and then casually decides to abort. Roe, state laws, and medical ethics already regulate this. Abortion is LEGAL in all three trimesters so that no doctor must wait for a court order or risk their license--or prison--on a judgement call to preserve a woman's life or health.
9
I find it comical that a thread whose topic is "how to talk about abortion," with the hidden subtitle being "without being an extremist" has brought out the extremist elements via comments.
You can say all you want about individual rights - specifically, the rights of the woman - until you're blue in the face if you don't simultaneously recognize that Homo Sapiens is a eusocial creature. That means that we collectively care about each others' collective wellbeing - and this includes the wellbeing of the unborn.
Call them what you want - fetuses, embryos, etc. - it doesn't change the fact that we're talking about the process of human reproduction and the continuation of society. And as with all things that affect society as well as the individual, society has a role to play.
If you see this as solely an individual right, then you're on the wrong side of this argument. You're one of the extremists they're talking about.
1
But i have a problem with those who deny any aspect of an individual right in the process.
Most abortion foes (pro-birthers) dont even mention the woman when they talk about abortion.
There may be a societal interest to decrease dialysis but I dont get to make decisions about whether you have to give up a kidney. It would save a life if you would donate, it would be better for society in general, it would be pro-life! But you get to decide about your own organs. Women get to decide about theirs.
6
So many focus on the "personhood" of the fetus. When is the woman no longer a person?
12
Those who want to ban abortion must answer the question, "Who goes to jail?" Until they have a solid answer about this they aren't being serious about shaping a law. If the US gave free contraceptives to all who want it, the rate of abortions would plummet. But then more people would have sex, the real bug-a-boo that the won't be address. Some people just don't want people to have sex and therefor don't want contraceptives provided to them. This causes more abortions. Forget a new law and work on the things that will decrease pregnancies.
4
Perhaps at some point it would be possible to frame the abortion discussion along the lines of “The Cruel Sea” dilemma, wherebye a commanding officer must choose between stopping his ship to pick up men in the water who will surely perish if he doesn’t, and risking his ship and all of his men to torpedo attack if he does. Many on the ship and all in the water see him as just a hard hearted, cold blooded murderer, while he has to make, and live with, a decision based on his best judgement and the weight of his position in having responsibility in a terrible situation with no solution that can possibly satisfy anyone.
50
Almost there. In an abortion decision, there is only one person's opinion to consider, and that is the woman carrying it. She is under no obligation to "satisfy anyone" except herself. One simply cannot grant more rights to a fetus than the woman carrying it. It is that black and white.
3
That is the way I see it: a decision between evil alternatives. But who is to be the commanding officer? And how might one best avoid finding oneself (or others) in such tragic circumstances?
1
35 years ago Carol Gilligan wrote about her research suggesting that women tend to view the decision (whether to have an abortion) in just this nuanced way. See her book, In a Different Voice.
4
I generally favor abortion rights. Still, I think this article doesn't really add to the debate. Leaving morality out of the debate simply isn't possible for those who think abortion is murder. Indeed, I think leaving morality out of any debate is dangerous. And indeed, the article doesn't leave morality out of the debate. It instead finds morality in democracy, liberty and equality. These three amorphous concepts are often at odds with each other, so there is still room for debate. For someone who believes a fetus is a human being, abortion renders the liberty and equality of that "person" impossible.
3
Until you take the Pope out of the discussion, it's meaningless to discuss the role of our own secular government,
4
Amen. And the Catholic hierarchy in the USA is more loyal to their pope than to the Constitution of the USA. They would override the Constitution and keep trying to to this and not just with the issues of abortion. If you study the Catholic Church internationally, it has long worked to subvert whole governments to ensure that Catholic doctrine is the law of the land. The Philippines, Spain, Italy are good examples of a willingness to encroach on and dominate democracies. In fact, the religious right is inimical to democracy.
In the US, we're long past due for a push to restore the strong 'wall' of separation between state an church which kept church authorities from dominating our government. VP Mike Pence is a dominionist who insists abortion must be criminalized. If you don't know what that is, look it up.
2
I think the challenge of the abortion debate (as well as the debate over such things as same sex marriage) is for policy makers to remove religious-based morality as a component of the discussion. I was reading what the late Steven Hawkings said about ignorance--that stupidity is not the opposite of knowledge, rather, that belief was. When faith informs the arguments, there is no room for debate, because faith, for the believer, always trumps rational thought.
Therefore, the only grounds on which the debate can progress is on ethical grounds. And I think that is sort of what this essayist is arguing.
2
A perfectly logical point. Too bad the author seems to have forgotten that one side's argument isn't based on anything logical. Until we have a truly secular government this argument will continue, and continue to be ugly.
4
Ms. Shrange, like a polished politician, starts with a motherhood statement (“abortion” is really an umbrella term for a number of different medical procedures) forming the basis for her entire OpEd thus drawing the reader into her thinking (It's OK, it's safe, ...etc.). Abortion is a procedure which results in the death of a child. Anyone with a conscience knows this.
3
If you take morality out of the consideration, you can justify just about anything. (segregation is just a social process or the death penalty is just a procedure).
2
There are several medically wrong statements.
1 Most of the deaths from pregnancy happen near the end of pregnancy- postpartum bleeding, illegal abortions, toxemia, postpartum infections and obstructed labor.
2 Third trimester abortions are rare and mainly done to protect the mother's health and when the fetus cannot live.
3 Many states have ridiculous regulations to "protect the mother" which mainly increase the cost, effort, and availability of the medically safe procedure.
4 Abortion is usually the least of evils, just as war and self defense can cause death. Morally abortion causes guilt is every mother.
6
Abortion is a private issue in the early stages. Exactly when early become mid and late-term, I'll leave to the medical profession. The state should be involved in late-term abortions. As stated in one of the comments, I don't believe there's a way an abortion can be considered simple and safe at the 8-month stage. This is a medical issue and should be regulated by the State. However, the doctor must have the final say. Also, several other issues need to be considered regarding abortion. Rape and the psychological state of the woman. The rape itself is a legal issue but may profoundly affect the woman's psychological state. This is an area in which I fear to tread. No one can truly know whether the outcome of the rape will come back and haunt the woman long-term or she will heal and move on with her life. My impression is to allow for individual choice through a woman's doctor, rather than imposing a societal decision. As far as imposing a religious overview on the abortion procedure, we are a country that allows people to practice the religion of their choice. We must set aside any societal decision biased by religious overtones. If one's religion preaches an anti-abortion stance and they wish to follow its precepts that may be fine for them. It's an individual choice and should be respected if a patient's life isn't at risk. On the other hand, no one has the right to force their viewpoint on another citizen who may practice a different religion, or none at all.
1
It is good to see a rational discussion of this issue, rather than the same tired arguments. A factor that I have not seen discussed is whether quality of life should be considered. We see this in regarding euthanasia: does a mature person with a painful disease without hope of recovery have the right to choose to end her life? --The difference being that the sufferer himself, being mature, makes the choice. In fact society makes a choice all the time on this basis: why else have prosthetics to replace lost limbs, or eyeglasses to correct sight, or painkillers? We cannot predict with total accuracy the future of a newborn, but we can make a good guess from the circumstances of its birth, and nobody is more qualified to make that prediction than the mother.
4
Should the “quality” of a life determine its value? If so, no need of a social safety net, just let the poor in this country and throughout the world just die off. Or better yet, to remain in the context of whether it’s ok to kill babies because we can assume their quality of life will be substandard, why not just go and kill all the people whose lives don’t measure up to a standard of quality which we impose?
This issue often focuses on esoteric academic and philosophical debate, which will never reach consensus. I believe real stories put things into perspective and can bring clarity to this dilemma. My wife and I were expecting our first child and we were very excited. A routine 20 week ultrasound revealed abnormal cardiac anatomy. We were quickly referred for more detailed imaging which revealed severe cardiac anomalies, as well as possible gut and renal anomalies. We went from excitement to complete devastation in less than one hour. We met with a pediatric cardiologist for about 5-10 minutes. She explained that these defects were incompatible with life after delivery. If the pregnancy was continued, we could try multiple surgeries, with no guarantee of success, with a prolonged hospital stay of likely several months, and numerous potentially severe complications. If the child had meaningful survival, he would likely require repeat operations throughout his life. Because of abortion laws dictating the limit of when the procedure could be done, we had 2-3 days to decide. We decided to end that pregnancy bc it would be cruel to force a child to start life with such impossible odds and poor quality of life, a horrible decision I wouldn't wish on anyone. We now have 2 kids and we are wonderful, committed parents. I'd ask anyone who considers themselves to be anti-abortion to picture telling my wife, in her devastated state, that she must be forced to continue that pregnancy.
18
I'm so sorry you had to go through this, and happy that you had the strength and emotional support that enabled you to go on and conceive two healthy children.
Your letter is a poignant reminder that pregnancy does not always go as we plan and that options must remain open, even for very late term abortions.
Perhaps if the issue of preserving the right to abortion throughout the full nine months was framed in terms of being in place to protect doctors who sometimes need to take swift, decisive action in the third trimester to preserve the health of a woman whose pregnancy takes an unexpected turn, it would stop being such a political football.
The common ground that can be achieved between the pro- and anti-abortion groups lies in the realm of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. If we can do this -- and we have -- then abortion becomes moot. Advances in birth control technology are helping to get us to this place, and sex education should be expanded and encouraged. Puritanical fear of pre-marital sex comprises the resistance to positive trends in unwanted-pregnancy avoidance, and this is a problem the country needs to work on. But thanks to the internet more and more girls hopefully will gain access to information as well as products that will keep them from getting pregnant.
6
Hasn't the abortion policy question already been answered by our courts and legislatures? Abortion is legal in all cases until the fetus is viable (currently around 24 weeks). After that, it depends on the health of the mother. Late-term abortions also occur when the fetus has a condition which will lead to early death.
No, the problem is religious conservatives who want to impose their beliefs on everyone else. Since a founding principal of the country is separation of Church and State, their personal, religious beliefs should not affect abortion policy. Unfortunately, we are far from that ideal. Evangelical religious conservatives infect just about everything they touch. They should not have so much influence.
12
Shrage's focus on finding ways to de-politicize abortion is laudable, but while her focus is toward medical ethics, I think a simpler, rights-based approach yields a greater benefit. If a right can be thought of a sphere of future action that surrounds a person, then in the case of a pregnant woman, there's a unique situation: one sphere (the fetus) is physically inside another sphere. So how can one draw a law separating the two spheres? Accordingly, siding with either a pro-life or pro-choice position is problematic. So realistic political solutions to the problem might be (1) let each state government decide, not the federal government (2) find win-win approaches such as letting childless couples adopt the fetus in-utero, if they'll pay for delivery expenses, and if no such couples can be found, permitting the woman to have the abortion. A brief video explains it better. https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=D5rqm-AOhi8
Forcing a woman to give birth in order to provide a child to a childless couple is NOT a "win-win" solution. Would you like me to force you to donate a kidney?
2
Abortion is legal in the US for a simple two reasons: women seek abortions no matter the legal status and it’s a procedure that can save a woman’s life.
People who oppose abortion should not seek restrictions but public policy measures that reduce the likelihood (excluded medical necessity) women seek abortion: contraception and empowering women in family planning.
And let’s finally talk about more important problems.
8
Nice try, but your reasoning will mean nothing to those morally opposed to abortion. And those morally opposed to abortion are the activists, not the Conor Lamb’s and Tim Kaine’s of the world.
The only thing I can say to people who are anti-abortion is, they are less concerned about the well-being of the woman carrying the fetus than they are about the well-being of the fetus, and I am more concerned about the well-being of the woman. There’s a kind of hypothetical scenario about having the chance to save either one rack of frozen, unused in vitro embryos or to save one adult person. When you’re talking to private citizens rather than lawmakers, you’re going to wind up in a moral discussion.
4
Professor Shrage's essay is an intelligent effort to re-frame the debate in a way that would enable us to have an intelligent discussion about abortion free of the emotional baggage that currently prevents any consensus. She acknowledges that religious conservatives might reject any compromise on the grounds that life begins when the egg is fertilized. A consensus, however, does not require that everyone agree, only that sufficient numbers do so to represent the sense of the community.
But I am troubled by her assertion that lawmakers should not consult their religious values when deciding how to vote on a bill. Certainly, no government official has the right to condition their enforcement of a law on its conformity with their sectarian beliefs, as some county clerks did when they refused to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.
Legislators, however, consider their own views, as well as those of their constituents, when they determine their vote on a proposed law. Should non-religious lawmakers also jettison their principles when they decide how to vote? I realize that the beliefs of a deeply religious representative might not reflect the values of many voters, but the same could be said of one who is indifferent to religion.
I doubt if we can escape our dilemma over abortion by demanding that legislators ditch their personal values.
This is a normative utilitarian position that I am happy to share, but it does not reflect the reality that a sizable minority that believes religion is a higher good than democracy has effectively seized control of political power. The conclusion is that we do not live in a good society or an effective democracy.
More importantly, we must begin to understand that discussions of abortion are secondary. Before addressing this issue, we must reach consensus on contraception, where an even smaller minority seems to have seized control in the regulatory political domain. I am sure we all agree that there should be fewer abortions, but we should reduce unwanted pregnancy as much as possible before we can know the dimensions of the actual issues we have.
7
Oh those precious precious unborn children!!
If only the people who wish to protect them were more in favor of life for the born, it wouldn't reek to high heaven of hypocrisy. The forced birth, or sperm's rights, advocates, are often also eager to stop contraception.
For that, we have the example of Bristol Palin: abstinence only.
When women are given control over their lives, societies thrive. Denying aid if it is associated access to contraception abroad is also scandalous. There is one tried and true method of advancing a working cultural model, and forcing women to do without contraception or deal with the health problems of rape and unprotected sex is not it.
15
Some of the best expressed moral arguments for abortion can be found in Dr. Willie Parker's memoir "Life's Work: A Moral Argument for Choice." A physician and a Christian, Dr. Parker went from being an anti-choice evangelical Christian who demonized and infantilized women, to being a pro-choice evangelical Christian who risks his life to provide abortions for poor women across the South. If you care about women and children, his inspiring story should be required reading.
8
Women's bodies are where embryos develop into fetuses and those fetuses become viable infants if all proceeds as it should. Until that fetus can survive outside the uterus without extraordinary intervention or the woman's doctor (if she has one) deems it more unsafe to have an abortion than proceeding through labor, the decision about having an abortion ought to be between the woman, her doctor and, if she so desires, her significant other. There are legitimate reasons for late term abortions, none of them frivolous. There are equally legitimate reasons for earlier stage abortions: rape, incest, failure of contraception, unable to afford a child or another child, not wanting a child, detection of a birth defect, etc.
Women are not baby making machines. No woman should be forced to complete a pregnancy just so she can give up the child for adoption to make another couple happy. That's not our job in life. If she wants to that's wonderful. What we need to do in America is to educate all our children about reproduction, sexual feelings and how to satisfy them without having intercourse, contraception, safe sex, and what's involved in having an infant around.
The best outcome would be for abortion to be safe, legal, and rare. If a woman doesn't want to have an abortion that's her choice. It should not be made for her unless she's incompetent for some reason. Being pregnant does not render a person incompetent.
14
I don’t get how if abortion is morally ok why it should be rare. In the same way, I don’t get how if a woman chooses abortion on the basis of the belief that the fetus isn’t human, she should have to agonize about the decision or regret it at a later date. If the fetus isn’t human, shouldn’t the abortion have the same moral status of removing a wart?
I really believe the issue should be decided on what is moral vs. what is practical.
Let’s for a moment accept the premise that life begins at conception and that every unborn human being ergo has a right to be born into the world.
Will a ban on abortion end or even reduce the practice?
No. That fact has been proven in just about every country that currently bans abortion. A ban will likely be no more successful in ending the evils of abortion than Prohibition was in ending the evils of whiskey.
Can a ban, even a limited one, on abortion be achieved without causing severe, irreparable harm to women and girls, as well as the multitudes of children who will be born into broken households as a result?
The answer is an emphatic no.
In the future, can the pro-life movement succeed in changing the culture to a point where the majority of people recognize that all human life has value and can not only enact such policies but actually enforce them in way that actually makes a meaningful difference?
Not under this leadership, who have become so morally compromised themselves that they have lost all credibility with the younger generations, and while likely see their numbers further reduced in the near future as a result.
Can we reduce the number of abortions through greater access to contraceptive care and sexual education? Can we improve our social safety net to a point where women facing this decision will be more likely to choose life?
Yes. We very much can.
12
This is very much like the libertarian argument that the state has no right to impose itself between the individual and his/her body. Would you also argue that the state has no right to regulate opioids? Worse than that, it is an expedient argument. Should the state recognize that since it can not eradicate the evil of murder, should it then accept murder as a practical necessity?
I was glad to see the concept of "viability" covered in this piece. All too often, that never even makes it to the discussion table. There are, believe it or not, millions of women who are religious who absolutely and totally "get" this concept and do agree with it. And they also believe that an abortion is a medical service and it is the right of the woman to decide if she will have such a procedure.
3
This column is excellent at two levels. First, it is as succinct of presentation regarding the complexities of the issue of abortion as it relates to public ethics as any I have read. Second, it removes the unabashed emotion which clouds rational thinking; for both sides in this debate.
The true challenge Ms Sharge has laid at our feet is how to now engage in this type of rational, clear-headed discussion; leaving behind the emotional demagoguery which has been waged over the past forty plus years. Unless we find a way to do that, this serves as only a framework for peace-talks between the two sides.
One side -- the anti-abortion side -- do not want peace talks. They are absolutists and they pursue a line of reasoning that is full of false concepts, false language and general disregard for facts and distinctions. Motivated, as they are, by an "ends justifies the means" they make statements like, "every fertilized egg is a baby," "all abortions are baby murders," "baby killers are evil folks, not like you and me," and so many false claims about Planned Parenthood that one cannot fathom their thinking.
One of the problems in today's effort to have public discussions has been the rise of absolutists and bomb throwers whose leaders encourage the most extreme positions and framing of all issues. Facts don't matter. For example, in the anti-abortion and anti-birth control group both abortion and birth control are completely unsafe and women die every day from these unsafe medical practices. The facts and the truth are neither accepted nor acknowledged because they just aren't into the truth or facts.
4
I am 100% pro-choice. That said, I find this article to be an example of tortured logic and largely beside the point. Abortion is a medical issue but it is also more than that. All discussions of the nuances are useful for women to consider when making their personal choice but the fact is, women are free and autonomous people and control of their bodies is theirs alone. Period.
8
As a physician, my view is that an individual patient, in general has the right to make decisions involving their body and their life.
Society has a role in arbitrating or regulating collisions between the rights of different members.
In the case of induced abortion, the person who is pregnant has the right to decide to terminate that pregnancy, in my view. As long as she was grossly mentally competent.
If the fetus is viable, termination may sometimes be performed as a “delivery”.
When pregnant women are not allowed to have a professionally assisted abortion, they often have the ability to attempt to induce one by themselves. Crude methods (“coat hangers”) have sometimes been used which resulted in infection, uterine perforation and sometimes death.
The process of obtaining an abortion should include a consultation with a clinician to ensure that the patient is adequately informed about the risks of the procedure. This also allows the woman to clarify, IF SHE WISHES, her reasons/concerns that led to her decision.
7
"There is a lot packed into that statistic, but we often forget that pregnancy and childbirth pose health risks, which vary for women depending on their age, health status, projected need for a cesarean section, number of previous pregnancies and the spacing between them, and so on. Given these risks, access to legal abortion is, in general, life- and health-preserving for women."
I don't think anyone forgets that. In fact I think it's precisely the point; many people who oppose abortion rights believe that women should be punished for being sexually active. It's the western liberal democracy version of the menstrual hut: an attempt to control women's sexuality and, barring that, to punish them for it. This is the only way to reconcile a "pro-life" movement that is also anti-contraception, anti-universal health care, anti-public education, pro-guns, etc. By attempting to be reasonable and academic, the article legitimizes the extremist position that permeates both houses of Congress and the White house — and glosses over the utter disingenuousness that characterizes the abortion debate in America.
4
No one who is pro-choice would force someone to have an abortion. Those who oppose abortions under any circumstances would force someone to bear a child. These are not morally equivalent positions that can be balanced by an appeal to statistics about the safety and efficacy of abortion as a medical procedure. Yes, individual morals should guide individual behavior, but there are too many in this country who want to impose their individual moral values on others.
8
It makes no sense to inject morality into this debate. The question should not be when life starts or when a fetus feels pain. Quite simply it's whose rights take precedence. That of a partially developed child that cannot survive without its host mother, or that of the pregnant women, a completely independent human being. This might sound cold, but the law is not a warm, fuzzy thing. Would it be reasonable to charge a woman with child endangerment for driving recklessly while pregnant? Of course not. The law doesn't recognize the fetus as having rights that supersede its host mother in any other circumstances.
8
Abortion used to be a regulated medical procedure, which was becoming more widely accepted throughout the country and the world. The supreme court chose to make it an individual right, through the dubious extension of a previous precedent. If abortion is an individual right, then the act of having an abortion is therefore an act of individual morality. Regulating abortions as a medical procedure is a ship that sailed in 1972. Perhaps you could return to that state by reversing Roe v. Wade, but I doubt it. Too much angry water under the bridge since then. Individual right vs. individual morality is where the issue will remain.
3
Laurie Shrage correctly links discussion of abortion to a variety of issues with a perceived moral dimension. In all of these issues, one overarching question might be: “is religious belief personal, societal, or governmental?”
I did not understand the importance of the separation of church and state until my first visit to Westminster Abbey in London, England. Then it hit me. For more than 750 years, Westminster Abbey, with 450 tombs and monuments of royalty, landed aristocracy, cultural, and political elites was a dramatic visual expression of the synthesis of power – all aligned together - all against the free choice of the individual. In Britain, faith and morality was personal, societal and governmental!
America’s Founding Fathers effectively said, “No, not for us!”
Until religious and political leaders accept the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers that faith is personal and until religious leaders focus on conversion rather than dominating imposition, I fear the debate will continue indefinitely. At some point, personal freedom must trump the imposition of belief and government must honor the constitution.
Let’s treat the discussion of abortion as a professional and personal medical issue as Laurie Shrage suggests. And let's apply the Founding Fathers' wisdom to other "moral" issues.
5
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What's the relative safety of abortion versus childbirth? Two equally incisive questions in the abortion debate.
Is abortion morally permissible? That's the only question that matters, and the author actually states it in a constructive way: "Under what circumstances, or for what reasons, should a government prohibit properly trained medical professionals from performing an abortion?" Unfortunately, the ensuing list of statistics amount to preaching to the choir. For faith-based voters, the answer to the question is--by definition--informed by faith, not reason. If the goal is to maximize positive health outcomes for women, the evidence is apparent. Faith-based voters are clear, however, that the health of the mother is not their primary concern. After all, an unwanted pregnancy can only be the result of sin--who wouldn't want to have a(nother) baby with their lawfully wedded husband? No, only loose women would even need an abortion; their "choice" was made when they couldn't keep their legs closed.
There's an ivory tower naivete on display in the piece that is almost laughable. No, Doc, citizens are not going to productively debate abortion any more than they are going to productively debate gun-control or bigotry. They are going to fight over abortion, the same way they fight over gun-control or taxes or sex or war.
3
I have no control over the amount of people who are morally offended by a controversial behavior. Nor do I wish to. The issue is that the state should not be getting involved in matters of private physical autonomy, which would be unthinkable under any other circumstances.
14
Sure, if you 'remove arguments of individual morality' from a debate that millions consider related to the morality of when is it OK (or not) to kill a living fetus, the debate becomes much simpler. Almost trivially simple, in fact, since it amounts to adopting the position of one side.
But the moral arguments are real. They should not be dismissed as 'irrational' or 'insulting' to even consider the moral implications, as this very biased author suggests. There are straightforward, logical arguments to be made that a fetus is alive. These don't depend on any religious basis, and it is not 'insulting' at all to consider when/if it's OK to kill anything that's alive.
To actually make progress toward consensus law about abortion we can all live with, we should agree that pro-choice and pro-life are both unproductive positions in that they mostly consider only the fetus or mother in isolation. The reality of pregnancy differs, it's a unique situation of two lives sharing one body. Real solutions to questions of when is it OK to abort or not will come when we acknowledge the "two lives" reality and consider implications in good faith. We'll know we're getting somewhere good when "two lives" becomes a concept at least as mainstream as pro-life or pro-choice.
The author hints at this herself in the 'when personhood begins' paragraph and 'more than one patient involved' comment. Too bad that isn't the central thesis of this otherwise terrible article.
2
Framing the debate this way may work as a political tactic for protecting choice, but if a fetus has a soul, then there is no papering over this dispute. Society will remain "hopelessly divided" as long as abortion opponents stay mobilized. A philosophically complete position would be that we define life as starting when a fetus becomes viable, and that's when the state's interest in protecting it begins.
1
From sperm/egg to human is a continuum. We will never agree as a nation about the moment that the fetus becomes a human as this is essentially a matter of faith. It’s a matter of personal belief and opinion. Agreeing to that would solve many problems. If a group of people think it’s morally wrong, then they don’t need to access that medical procedure. Nuf said. But trying to impose their faith on others is unacceptable and a slippery slope to evangelical sharia law.
2
Determining the legal personhood of a fetus/unborn child occurs along a continuum. Most Americans agree that an 8 month term fetus should not be aborted. And most rational people would agree that a 2 hour old fertilized ovum does not resemble a human being. I think the problem is that most religious people have a problem with making moral/ethical judgments that occur along a continuum, that is, aren’t black and white. So they are compelled to reach back to conception in an effort to avoid any moral ambiguity. While it is messy and difficult to try to pinpoint the moment of personhood during a pregnancy, refusing to try is an immature moral cop out.
10
The GOP has used abortion as an issue to get votes. Clearly their real interests regard economic issues, nevertheless being anti abortion was sure to bring in votes. So they have used it and used it. I have personal beliefs against abortion BUT it is a private issue. An issue of private morality. I want to live in a country where abortion is legal and safe because making it illegal doesn't make it go away- it makes it unsafe.
Could we please quit giving the GOP votes with this simple rallying cry? Let us allow our government to work on issues of public morality- fair distribution of resources- fair law enforcement- and let each of us privately manage our private morality.
26
If you are against abortion then do not have one.
Your reasons for not having an abortion are your own choice and you do not have to justify personal choices to anyone.
With that in mind your personal beliefs that support your choices should not be used to control the actions of other women or families or the US.
Keep in mind if you or your children have sx - unprotected or with protection there are NO guarantees that a pregnancy will not happen.
9
That makes as much sense as saying "If you are against murder then don't commit one but otherwise, all is OK!"
1
In the US, we really do not take good care of many of our born children -- those in foster care, those with abusive parents, etc. Day care is expensive. In West Virginia, recently, teachers needed to strike to get decent (and hardly generous) pay and in lots of other states (Kansas and Louisiana come to mind) education budgets have been slashed in the name of tax cuts. Then there are the student loans that keep young people in debt almost forever. I really do not want to hear about the rights of the unborn as long as the born are so terribly being ignored.
25
Yes. So long as any suffer we must allow the killing of the innocent. That means all murder is allowed because some suffer. Makes a lot of sense.... if one has no concept of evil.
What is there to say about abortion that has not already been said before? Abortion is the taking of innocent human life in the womb. Whether you refer to it as a fetus/baby it still is the killing of a human being. It it an evil act that is demoralizing to both mother and child.
I am a pro life woman and have been involved in the pro life movement for sometime now. We have seen our efforts realized in reducing the number of abortions taking place. We have seen mothers entering the abortion clinics only to come out and tell us they are keeping their babies. We assist these mothers before, during and after birth. They are never left to feel helpless and alone. We supply a place for them to live, job assistance and even job training if they desire. The pro lifers are compassionate and caring people. Many of the women are so grateful that we have showed concern and really did not want to kill their babies. We never coerce these women as it is their choice. They make the final decisions and we are grateful when they choose life.
The pro choice/pro abortion side say we are harassing women when we stand quietly outside abortion clinics and pray. This could not be farther from the truth. The pro abortion people are the ones harassing us. They scream and shout profanities. We have been outnumbering them considerably and this upsets them immensely. We have made great strides in our efforts but we are not finished. Every life has meaning and is precious.
5
When you use the term “ pro abortion “ you betray your animus, because you know perfectly well no one is “pro-abortion”. People are “pro-choice”, which means keeping abortion safe and legal, and the decision to terminate a pregnancy a private matter between a woman and her doctor. By the way that woman’s life has meaning and is precious, so you should stay out of it and mind your own.
If you wish to set up clinics or places of council and let women choose to come to them by free choice fine. But to use guilt and your morality standards to intimidate and accuse women outside clinics which provide safe legal abortion services is just wrong.
7
You have completely missed the entire point of this piece. I suggest you read it again and pay particular attention to the last paragraph. As an aside, the conclusion that you are or are not harrassing women at clinics is not yours to make. If they believe you are harassing them, then you are.
8
If you're not coercing them, why does your non-coercion require so much effort? If it's their choice, then let them make it.
"when we stand quietly outside abortion clinics and pray." Even when you're not talking at the women entering the clinic, you're carrying large, graphic signs that scream "murderer". You want to be quiet and pray? Find a church.
11
Abortion is a medical procedure. As such, it need not be regulated any more or less than any other medical procedure. Neither must it be regulated by the religious proclivities and misogynistic leanings of a handful of lawmakers, most of whom are men, few of whom are doctors and none of whom are the woman facing an unwanted pregnancy.
21
Refreshing to read a more "scientific" approach to the dilemma of abortion in our nation. It is the law of the land and the attempts to thwart it in many states should be illegal. It really comes down to the hypocrisy of the righteous who are against sex education, birth control, etc. No one is going to eliminate the sexual desire making it unconscionable to block methods that would actually prevent the need for abortion. It also speaks to the second class status of women who are most affected by abortion or not. Perhaps we could practice our beliefs without denying others theirs.
15
Abortion should be legal, rare and safe. In blue states that fund proper sex education and access to contraceptives is unhindered, it is. In red states where abstinence-only education is the rule of the land and contraception harder to get, it's more common and less safe. I find it so confusing that the most ardent anti-choice activists are also vocal opponents of easily accessible contraception. This line said it all:
"or what kind of sexual acts are permissible."
A state where the answer is anything other than "whatever is explicitly consensual between the participants" has no business dictating its morality to anyone.
160
Amen to the 'legal, safe and rare' comment. IMHO, the Dems lose out on the argument when they remove the inevitable emotional toll of abortion. It would be refreshing for a candidate (I don't care which party) to say that they are both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. Being pro-life should include sex education and easy/free access to birth control methods which is PROVEN to reduce the need for abortions. Being pro-choice should include room to include pro-life folks to reduce the need for abortion via education and access.
2
Yet multiple studies have confirmed that women do not suffer lifelong "emotional toll" from having abortions.
11
What about the baby? Any long term detrimental effects for that individual?
The article was helpful as far as it went. But the author stopped short of addressing what the public policy should be when a woman discovers relatively late that her fetus has a serious genetic defect or other physical anomaly, or she develops a serious health condition.
However, as medicine advances, one can only hope that these tragic conditions can become diagnosed earlier (as with the new early test for Down Syndrome), which would allow the pregnancy to be terminated earlier, if that is what the family decides. Nobody would be happier for that earlier option to happen than the women involved and their families.
3
The first thing that has to change in the discussion regarding abortion is the term "pro-life". Choosing this term, as opposed to what it should really be (anit-abortion) was a stroke of genius.
Any time anyone proclaims they are pro-life, the first question to them should be "How do you feel about the death penalty?". Other than the Catholic church, most organizations are only pro-life when it comes to those not yet born.
18
Your argument is a canard. Abortion kills a completely innocent human while the death penalty is applied to the guilty.
By your logic no one should suffer prison as it is applied deferentially as well.
Intentionally killing the innocent is evil and if that is not something one can agree with then one has no real concept of evil.
It is patently absurd to try to strip morality out of law. All law is based on basic ideas on morality. Why be against murder if not for moral reasons? Should we judge every human life solely on the basis of economic value instead? In that case I guess it's open season on many of the mentally ill homeless and the severely disabled. What non morality based case can be made for allowing them to live? They are, when viewed merely as humans stripped of all morality, costly objects to maintain from an economic standpoint and thus, expendable.
How about theft or burglary? Without morality to stigmatize why would we not view such actions as salutary as they, by definition, redistribute goods from the "have's" to the "have nots"? How is such redistribution wrong if not morally?
In looking at the authors justification for abortion as a safety measure for the, potential, mother one must point out that there are 2 people involved in all such procedures. The death rate for one of the participants is 100%!
4
Hmm, those are interesting arguments and ones not made based on religion. Something to think about; history should judge societies based on how they treat their most vulnerable not their most capable.
Abortion is an animal rights issue. An early stage embryo has no more right to life than a slug; a late state fetus has a moral status comparable to a newborn baby--whatever that is. And in this I agree with Peter Singer that it's morally ok to euthanize some newborns and, by the same reasoning, to abort some late state fetuses.
Human status, being genetically homo sapiens, is irrelevant. The issue is, what kind of organism is this? How developed is it?
As for women's interests, certainly, early stage abortion is absolutely trivial--like killing slugs--and should be readily available. If early stage abortions were readily available there would be no issue of later stage abortions which pose animal rights issues.
As for women's concerns in this, if a woman has a baby she doesn't want she can just put it up for adoption or leave it at the hospital emergency room no questions asked. What's the big deal? I have no sympathy for women who sentimental motherhood and 'maternal instinct'. Men desert their children all the time. If women aren't prepared to behave like men I have no sympathy for them.
1
Your comment is a "breath of fresh air" as it is different than all the rest. I read at least two of Peter Singer's books years ago and I agree with him. All animals (human and non-human) are sentient beings. They are all equal. Humans are not superior. They are the most invasive species on Earth. Human fetuses are not sentient beings. This is not a government issue since there is supposed to be a separation of church and state. Get religion out our government!
1
Abortions should be legal, safe and, in most people's opinion, rare. On the other hand, conservatives unthinkingly promote more and more abortions by cutting family planning assistance (i.e create more unwanted pregnancies) and also by relaxing regulation on air pollution (that can cause spontaneous abortions).
Progressives need to keep reminding voters of these facts.
8
What is odd, by your lights, is that the states that have the most complete family planning and sex "education" curriculum, primarily blue states, also have the highest rate of abortion. I doubt very much that your ideologyl will allow you to see the obvious connection!
Actually, I believe Evangelicals have the highest rate of abortion. It used to be Catholics.
People of means will have access to abortions regardless of their stated positions; if the time ever comes that she needs one, a woman of means will get that abortion safely. The real question is whether women without access to the necessary funds will be able to get a safe abortion. Pro-choice people want that answer to be yes, anti-choice people want that answer to be no.
12
My moral objection is that laws restricting abortion only affect poor women. Any woman with means can simply take a trip to somewhere to get the procedure done. A poor woman is forced to a less than legal solution, many of which are dangerous. What would be the punishment for the rich woman? Nothing. More transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
BTW, I believe the soul enters the body with the first breath.
4
You've expressed a political objection, not a moral objection.
It may or may not be a religious issue, but what it is is that some people are forcing their beliefs on others by getting laws passed that violate the privacy of the doctor patient relationship.
Abortion should only be between the woman and her doctor, not some self seeking sanctimonious politician, lookin for a drum to beat on. This is more of an issue of control than the safety of the woman.
13
I think this article misses the mark. The very thing you are proposing is the very reason we are losing the argument.
For the so-called pro-lifers, this is a morality play and ONLY a morality play. It's a binary choice for them. If you are a good person, you would not kill a baby. If you are a bad person, you callously would kill said baby. See what I am doing there? By discussing this issue so clinically you de-facto fall into the second camp, and then they stop listening.
In my opinion, there are other ways to make this argument:
You start out acknowledging the truths that the other side articulates and which are hard to argue with:
- A fetus is not a static being. At the beginning of a pregnancy, an embryo is a tiny humanoid; by the end, a viable baby.
- Somewhere along that continuum, that viable baby does develop certain rights. As their humanity forms, so does their place in the world and society's responsibility to protect them.
Then you introduce ours:
- Even so, that has to be balanced with another unmovable truth: the right to autonomy over your own body. That fetus/baby is, for all intensive purposes, a parasite to it's mother's body and there is nothing more basic than one's dominion over one's physical being.
So what to do? Find a pragmatic middle of the road choice. No one wants to hear this--but it's what we have right now.
There are restrictions on abortion; there are also avenues for abortion. The law does not need to be changed.
6
The author wins the debate by setting the rules to favor her position by making everything else irrelevant. Not the best way to win over opponents who might, just might, think that morality has some relevance to law.
5
This is great, except for the fact that abortion is primarily a moral issue for anyone against abortion. So if you try to reason with an opponent to abortion by saying "lets take morality out of the equation", its a non-starter. They would look at you cross-eyed.
3
I agree wholeheartedly with much of what this piece says. It lays forward a clear and concise argument for a pragmatic and balanced approach.
That said, it glazes over something that has become quite obvious: those that claim to be "pro-life" do not care as strongly for preventing abortion as they say. If they did truly care about reducing abortions, they would wholeheartedly and enthusiastically support easy access to safe, effective birth control. But they don't, because at the end of the day, they're really just anti-sex, not "pro-life".
6
Sure looks to me like another element of the effort to keep women subordinate. Sexual aggression, standards of appearance, keeping women in a constant state of uncertainty about their autonomy over their own bodies - all of those work effectively to prevent women from gaining an equal share of the economic pie.
9
We have lost the distinction between a moral and an ethical choice. Ethical choices are those that apply to everyone in a society. Moral choices are the product of some specific religious teaching.
Ethics can require that we all drive 20 in school zones, pay our taxes and not steal. Morality is religiously determined and often extends into various life choices (i.e. what foods you can or cannot eat, what sexual acts you can or cannot enjoy, what clothes you can wear, how much you give to a church, temple or synagogue, etc.).
The anti-abortion crowd have worked assiduously and relentlessly to blur the distinction between morality and ethics. Despite the fact that Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, United Church of Christ and Jewish religions all agree that abortion can be moral, the anti-abortionists demand that the federal and state governments enforce the religious teachings of Catholics, Mormons and Baptists on everyone.
In other words, the government would tell Methodists et al that they picked the wrong church and cannot believe or act as their own church (pastor, priest, bishop or rabbi) would allow. Once government starts telling folks that they picked the wrong pastor, priest, bishop or religious, that is REAL governmental overreach!
169
Bob,
I don't think your favored distinction between morality and ethics would be a dominant one: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/ . From that detailed discussion:
"...the term “morality” can be used either
1. descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons."
That same source (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) has multiple entries on different sorts of ethics. I am not convinced that these sorts of arguments will help alter rigid public positions that surround the abortion issue.
1
Human nature is the source of morality - not religion.
You may get your morality from a culture, a religion, a philosophy, your personal experience, peer pressure, or any number of places. But where morality comes from is human nature.
1
As a Mormon, I can tell you that the official stance of the Mormon church is that abortion is moral in certain situations. That said, most of my Mormon friends are adamant pro-lifers. I'm not sure where the disconnect is coming from but it is definitely there. And drives me crazy.
5
Before talking about abortion, one has also to consider accessibility and affordability of birth control means in the USA , where many women ( particularly in red states ) are denied , sometimes by misogynistic laws , access to proper healthcare to protect their reproductive rights .
3
Let’s start with the Constitution’s protections. The First Amendment forbids government from establishing any religion as the state religion. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Emphasis has been primarily on “freedom of religion” but the Amendment guarantees freedom from religion more importantly. The State Religion of England, France, Spain was clearly denied and prohibited.
Personhood is what religious people use to hide their religious imposition on Americans. Personhood in Law means very specific things among them property and inheritance rights. No Republican in their right mind would ever confer legal personhood on fetuses given the rate of mortality of fetuses and the probate nightmare that fetal personhood would create. No. Personhood means the presence of a human soul at conception which inspires Catholics and some Evangelists to demand the prohibition of abortion. Religious beliefs cannot become Law in America. It would be Shariah Law.
Rational discussion? Souls are not rational. Souls are a matter of faith. There is no evidence of the existence of souls, no scientific evidence. The First Amendment guarantees the right to believe in souls or not. Rational discussion in this matter must be a discussion of and by the “aggrieved party”: women. Then other elements must be recognized as irrational: sex, intercourse, human intimacy are biological imperatives, but are feelings based, not reason.
3
There's quite a bit of confusion in this essay. For example, seeking "public consensus" on an issue of the validity of an individual right (for example, the right to control one's own body) suggests that slavery became wrong when a public consensus against it developed. But more important is the author's claim that, "The state also has an interest in protecting fetal human life ..." Why is that? Because it has human DNA? A spent hair follicle has that. Because is can, under some circumstance, develop into a functioning human being? Male sperm have that characteristic. Because it is inhabited by a human soul? That's a purely religious conception, not something on which to base law and punishment. A mature chimp has 98% of the DNA of humans and is immeasurably closer in its capacities to a functioning human than a two week old fetus. I believe that the defenders of a woman's right to an abortion have made a tactical mistake by ceding the frame of the debate as a conflict of rights between woman and fetus rather than taking on the issue of when the gradually developing fetus gradually acquires the rights that human beings enjoy.
4
Would be nice if you acknowledged that the real reason you want to drop the ethical argument is that there is no ethical stance that allows for killing an innocent person, so for the people who define life as beginning at conception, you will always lose the ethical/moral argument. That's the reason! There is no moral/ethical stance for killing innocents. It's a so-called/defacto non-crime which always has a victim which never had legislation legalizing it, just judicial edict. No elected leader made it legal. There are way more things that are illegal that have no victims, this procedure always has a victim, even if it is performed for some "good reason." For some reason a vast swath of our culture and populous have consented the killing of innocents as a form of compassion. It's a difficult argument to make that it's ever compassionate for the deceased, because they were never even given a chance to rise above their circumstances (being unwanted, and usually worse) but that never justifies killing. When you take ethics and morality off the table in terms of end of life scenarios, you have completely lost me. What is an end of life scenario without a moral element, dying of natural causes? This is not natural. Sounds like someone prefers a harsh, antiseptic bureaucracy to what we used to have which was self-governance.
3
Question — would any in the pro-choice advocates (who are likely highly aligned with advocates of gun control) be willing to support legislation that would reduce (not eliminate) the 800,000 tp 1 million abortions each year in a compromise with the gun lobby to restrict gun sales/ownership that contribute to the annual 12,000 non-suicide deaths by gunfire? Not suggesting a ban on either but is there a point of agreement that might result in a compromise where both sides give something to get something that is so important to them?
How easily you trade women's rights away, since they don't concern you.
3
I am not trading away anything. I am suggesting that since abortion rights and gun rights are the political bete noire of progressives and conservatives, respectively, and anathema to the other, there must be some position that each side would be willing to yield in exchange for some level of restriction of the other. As an example, "A" is a pro-choice supporter (including late term abortions) believes that gun ownership and transactions should be banned. "B" believes in total 2nd Amendment rights with no restrictions but who is also pro life. Maintaining these positions are like a game of chicken where neither side is willing to yield. Why can't "A" agree to some restrictions (say late term abortions) if "B" will agree to a banning of assault rifles? I am not suggesting that this is the tradeoff required, it is just an example. but there must be some level of restriction that each side is willing to accept in exchange for some restriction on the other. This is what compromise is about.
Man: "I am not trading anything away." *Delivers long explanation about how one should yield positions to another in exchange for other positions yielded; does not appear to understand that he is merely using more words and synonyms to describe trading rights away."*
Compromise. Yield. Exchange. Tradeoff. Accept restrictions.
We can read. The fact that you described trading rights away in a bigger word salad the second time around doesn't mean that's not what you're advocating for.
Classic mansplain.
1
This all makes a lot of sense to me, but I suspect the writer will simply be raising the blood pressure of the pro-life crowd when she discusses the health and safety of the woman in connection with an early term abortion. They view the woman and her medical team as murderers, nothing more or less.
And suggesting that the superstitious, religious analysis be removed from the abortion debate is a lot more difficult than removing an early term fetus from a womb. In fact, it’s darn near impossible.
2
An interesting article that i am sure will go nowhere in the national debate. A simple fact, the elephant in the room, is that the embryo and for much of the final months, the fetus, cannot live outside the woman's body. It is, in a word, a parasite, feeding off the blood and nutrients of the mother. The placenta separates the two beings. But they are bound irrevocably (until birth) by the umbilicus. The woman dies, the child dies. When the government agrees to support the live infant, when the churches agree to take in the children born to an impoverished mother, they might have a dog in the fight. But it is still my body. My blood. The very calcium in my bones. None of anybody's business except mine.
9
When men have uteruses and are made fully accountable for the responsibility of carrying a child to term and raising a child then we should have the ability to weigh in.
Anyone who is in the hypothetical realm about raising a special needs child as a single parent need not speak.
Where is god and his divine messengers when you are hourly and miss work for the endless medical appointments a special needs child requires.?
Out closing down Planned Parenthood clinics I suppose.
Or out contracting STD's and spreading them due to lack of access and information?
10
Although I support a woman's right to choose an abortion without hindrance, I think this issue is not so easily unknotted. I am fairly sure that the phrase "Abortion is first and foremost a medical service" would be challenged immediately by those who oppose it under any circumstances. I can hear the response, "But it is NOT a medical serviced; it's simply murder of the innocents." No royal road past that gulf of perception.
2
I imagine many people would agree that it’s good to avoid an abortion if possible. In Germany, a woman can anonymously deposit her newborn baby in a kind of drawer at hospitals (with a nurse or team of them on the other side who take care of the baby immediately, but without seeing the woman), thereby either
a) relinquishing the child permanently, or
b) relinquishing the child for a few days with the possibility of changing her mind before those days are over, so as to reclaim the baby. So there are different types of drawers in the system.
This allows for a completely different approach to the very conversation surrounding abortion, as it gives viable alternatives that are non-shaming to the woman in question. We would do well to imitate the Germans.
Lastly, I disagree with the author that the issue of when personhood is acquired is a religious issue. I don’t think that we need to rely on religious arguments to conclude that there is nothing magical about the birth canal the bestows personhood. A fetus will always grow into what we all recognize is a person. There is no logical reason to deny a human being personhood simply because of its immaturity. If someone must cogently argue their point, I think it’s those who deny personhood to the fetus. With a nurse or team of them on the other side who take care of the baby immediately, but without seeing the woman)
6
Gestation and delivery have very real health risks for women and the U.S. is experiencing a rise in maternal morbidity. Adoption is great but it is not the answer and no woman is obligated to risk her health and life so that others may have a family.
12
"A fetus will always grow into what we all recognize is a person."
Beware statements that include the words "always" and "all," because they are rarely accurate.
6
Well I’ve never heard of a baby, child,or adult who wasn't seen to be a person. Fetuses never come out as a head of broccoli. So I have to day this "always" stands.
The problem here, as several commenters have pointed out, is that ultimately the question of the personhood of the fetus may take abortion out of the realm of personal morality (i.e. "victimless" actions) and into the realm of universal ethics. That is, IF the answer to the ontological question, "Is the fetus human?" is No, then one whole set of ethical considerations essentially disappears, whereas if the answer is Yes, that same set of ethical questions becomes primary and would normally override all others. If the fetus is human, the argument "If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one," becomes specious, on the level with "if you don't believe in capital punishment, don't take a job as the prison staff member who administers the lethal injection."
The real problem is that society does not, and seemingly cannot, reach a consensus on the humanity of the fetus or even on the grounds by which that questions could or should be determined or decided. Some are convinced that the answer is provided by their religion; others believe that ample evidence is found in science -- that the findings of genetics and embryology have failed to reveal a single moment at which the developing individual crosses some kind of line that demarcates Human from Non-Human.
Parents who want the pregnancy usually call it "the baby" from the outset, seek fiercely to protect it, and deeply mourn even a very early miscarriage. Is that a clue to our "real" convictions?
85
For some people, their religious or philosophical leanings may have even a wider net. According to some dictionaries, a "fetus" doesn't exist until after the second or third month of pregnancy, before which it exists as a mere embryo. Hence, the argument that life begins at conception attaches personhood to the very first dividing cell.
1
The personhood argument is a legal rationalization substituting for a religious precept, that life and the soul arise at the moment of conception.
3
The question has never been is the fetus human. No one thinks it is not human. The question is whether the fetus has the right to be an unwanted parasite.
You have the right to not donate blood or organs while living. Your right to make your own decisions about your body extends even into death. Immediately after you die, I may not use your organs to save another human life - even a fetal life - unless you have so designated. Your body is yours in all circumstances unless you are a woman who is pregnant.
It is not about saving human life. If it was, you would have no right to have your organs intact at burial.
10
Sex is a human drive apparently uncontrollable by culture, morality or law. Sex is as innate as thirst or hunger. Pregnancy is often an uninvited consequence of sex and automatically renders a women unequal competitively in a dog eat dog capitalist society. The US Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law but offers no protection or substance guarantees for pregnancy. Thus, abortion is the only reasonable option for a poor, resources-limited woman/girl.
6
You lost me at abortion is the only reasonable option for a poor, resources-limited woman/girl.
Are you saying the Ivy league Harvard student who finds herself in a unplanned pregnancy will automatically have that child - nope but she will probably have more options in being able to access a safe abortion.
Perhaps if the "poor-resource-limited woman had better birth control resources she wouldn't find herself with a unplanned pregnancy.
Surprise women/girls no matter what their financial world deserve to have a safe place to make their own choice.
2
In other words, "We should avoid talking about the fact that we are taking a human life because that hurts our position. If we ignore that detail, then we have a better chance of getting pro-abortion policy passed."
6
Define "human life." Defend your definition without resort to religion.
1
If I were a Democrat running for office (good thing that's not the case!), I'd argue to put the abortion issue on the ballot, "let the people decide". By doing so, it would "settle" the issue, one way or the other.
2
The people have already decided. The majority believe abortion should be legal and safe.
4
At the end of life, when no brain activity can be detected, the family recognizes there is no human person remaining and humanely pulls the plug.
So clearly, at the beginning of life, when no brain activity can be detected because it hasn't developed yet, there is no separate human person there. All decisions are up to the only active brain in the reproducing body. There can be no laws preventing women from making decisions about their own future at least up until organized brain activity develops in the fetus. Only after that point do any the other arguments come, weakly, to bear
7
The right to make decisions about your own body could not be more central to the Constitution. Any law restricting your ability to make those decisions or to access safe unencumbered medical aid is basically unConstitutional and interfering with your civil rights. Neither a family member nor a legislator nor a religious body is enabled by the Constitution to make decisions for an individual unless that person is mentally unable to do so for themselves.
Why some Christians and other Orthodox people believe they have the right to decide for others how to deal with this intensely problem goes to the heart of their religious hubris: they’ve essentially decided that their religion has the only possible answer, the “correct,” and the only “moral” one possible. To which I say, “Women have been deciding for themselves for centuries. Your attitude simply makes life difficult for them, possibly for a lifetime.”
In addition, their attitude of self righteousness flies in the face of religious freedom. Why should someone who is a Buddhist or a Jew or a Moslem be forced to live according the conclusions of a Christian theology? If these people were truly concerned they would provide all kinds of support services to the women and children they say they are trying to help. That they do this hardly at all shows what colossal hypocrites they are. Their have no problem at all just telling others how to live and that’s how they want it, even when it causes irreparable pain.
243
So we should overturn all laws regulating all drugs on the basis that no doctor can infringe my right to treat my own body, as well as laws respecting private property because I have a right to place my body anywhere I choose, etc. the list could go on forever. As a society we determined long ago that the rights I have over my own body are not absolute.
1
B. Rothman,
Where is "abortion" mentioned in the Constitution ?
Where is the "Right to Privacy" mentioned in the Constitution.
Many Pro-Life Groups will help the mother and her babe during and
after pregancy.
A babe murdered in its mothers womb is far worse than irreparable pain.
1
You lost me at it's not an individual event. Huh? A movement does not get an abortion. An individual does. I appreciate the effort but this won't do it.
Childbirth 14x more deadly than abortion....except for the fetus, living matter or do call him or her an unborn child? Which is pretty much 100%. When you have a full frontal assault on Down Syndrome beings, such as the case with Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, in which she was fine with second trimester abortion (viable and with senses) because her comfort is more important than life, any science and life-respecting people can't help but be totally appalled. So all of you who are pro-choice with scientific and ethical opposition past viability better give the memo to the absolutists. Likewise, the tyranny of Democratic power brokers to purge themselves of anyone pro-life is just another sad statement about politics that adds o the misery of having an amoral, petulant child in te White House.
2
A fetus is not realistically viable until week 24 and is not capable of feeling pain until around week 27. Ms. Marcus' editorial is not as you have characterized.
2
When I was pregnant with my son I wanted a child very, very much. My husband used to joke that he was afraid he'd come home one day and find me with a baby I'd stolen, so great was my desire for a child. But because I'm a rational person who believes in living in the actual world, I held myself back from committing to an actual baby until the 16 week period had passed. Sometimes I think women are (necessarily) more practical than men. We think out the real-life consequences of having a child because we have to.
1
"State officials who appeal to their own beliefs on questions of individual morality, in order to justify their policy decisions, are violating values more fundamental to our society."
The crux of the issue, and one long gone unnoticed in the debate. The difficulty, no, say the impossibility, of reflecting absolute morality in public policy is because they are two separate things. Public policy in a democracy has to reflect the most lenient of moral stances, to let everyone in. Personal morality takes up where public policy leaves off. Requiring that the long and coercive arm of government to compel where you cannot persuade is merely laziness on your part.
1
Thank you for pointing out that in a discussion about abortion we should avoid debates on morality, but rather keep the focus on public policy. What is the role of government in the restriction or access to a medical procedure? When should it restrict? When should it facilitate access? Still hard questions, but ones for which we may have greater consensus.
7
The abortion debate does not strike me as one that can be simplified. There are religious people pushed by the sincerely held belief that an emission of sperm not intended for procreation represents an abominable loss of life. There are many of them, and they will not be persuaded by a rational argument.
There are other people, including the author of this opinion, who seem to believe that a late-term abortion is used as a form of birth control, rather than the personal tragedy it represents for someone who had already thought they were going to have a child, only to find that the fetus was not viable or was stricken by a serious disease. Of course, there are also people who fear that late-term abortion would be used as a genocide against the disabled or female.
I am strongly pro-choice. I agree that abortion is a health issue. I believe that access to abortion is practical, good, and a societal good. But this article convinces no one.
7
Abortion is morally wrong. It involves the taking of a human life. Doctors have no business engaging in this unless the life of the mother is at stake. This is not an issue where compromise is possible. Just like in the case of slavery. I hope for the day the states are given the right to end this procedure and stop the killing of innocent babies!!
3
This is a religious position which is not shared by every religion, let alone by those without religion.
4
That is your religious belief. Many people of good will believe differently. Our country was founded by people escaping a state religion. Our constitution bans the establishment of a state religion. The seaparation of church and state is a mandate, not an option. No one believes abortion is “good”, but it is at times necessary. Your religious beliefs can not be allowed to supersede another’s access to medical care.
4
How many "innocent babies" have you adopted?
The government has no right controlling what a woman can do with her body. Period.
16
Nor the right to kill an innocent child. Period.
The government cannot force her to gestate. Whether the child (sic) is innocent is irrelevant.
1
I don't know any anti-abortion position that claims the government can force a woman to gestate...nice straw man though.
Somehow in all of this 'logic' regarding medical practice and social (ie, male) norms, you forgot to mention that women are wholly human, fully autonomous, equal in mental and moral capacity humans with a natural right to determine what we choose to do with our bodies.
If men are not to be burdened with the state determining the course and outcomes of their reproductive labor, then women cannot be either, or we will never be equal under the law.
It is the choice of women as consumers of market-driven medicine to determine the risk/benefit of abortion as a medicalized procedure to purchase, yet somehow you've managed to take women as full moral agents over their own lives and bodies out of the policy question.
The issue of abortion isn't about the state regulation the behavior and choices of medical professionals, it's about the state regulating the behavior and life outcomes of women. That you choose to participate in the obfuscation of the fundamental issue, women as fully equal and autonomous humans, makes you complicit.
15
On Nov. 22, 2017 a deer hunter shot and killed a woman, mistaking her for a deer. He took a chance thinking the movement he observed in the distance was a deer. He is blameworthy for her death even though he had no intention of killing a human being. But he should have not taken the chance; He should have followed the principle of "the safer path", i.e. one has the obligation to be certain he/she is not doing wrong.(Hippocratic oath!) If there is uncertainty about the human life status of the zygote/embryo, then decision has to come down on the avoidence of the killing. The deer hunter should not have shot without the certainty he didn't put human life in jeopardy; life within the womb should not be taken unless there is certainty, not probability, it's not human life.
1
There is certainty that an early term fetus is not a human life. This is based on knowledge and evidence that an agglomeration of cells does not in fact resemble a human being. The only way uncertainty is introduced into the equation is by religious notions involving “souls” and “God” and the like.
2
Crusader, does one have to "resemble" a human being to be a human being? In "Johnny Got His Gun" Dalto Trumbo presents a WWI victim without eyes, limbs, face, etc. but he was human. Our unique genetic code begins at the instant of fertilization. The process thus begun continues marvelously unless interrupted. A sincere question, Crusader: when did you begin? I strongly recommend the book "Embryo" by Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen.
Why do men persist in mistaking women for either a deer or an incubator? It's not your body and not your decision.
3
It is not generally known that almost all late term abortions are done because of severe problems with the fetus that also threaten the mother's health if carried to term.
A not uncommon situation is severe toxemia in which delivering the fetus if it is viable or previable is the only cerain way to help the mother. Late term abortions for "convenience" are extremely rare.
Women have been trying to limit their fertility and child bearing for centuries.
Most of the pro life vitriol is not to protect the fetus but fear and distrust of female sexuality and the need they feel to constrain women's independence equal to that of men.
73
Several studies indicate that crime rates dropped 15-24 years after abortion became legal. Infants born to poor, unwed, or abused teenagers have little chance for a normal life. It's important to consider society in general when we discuss this subject. Most people are anti-abortion from an emotional standpoint, but there are times when we need to be rational. Refusing to sell the morning after pill, Plan B, should be punishable by fines and incarceration.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/barro/files/99_0927_crimerate_bw.pdf
25
The issue of poverty you reference could also be used to argue in favor of adopting babies away. There are so many who want to adopt in this country.
Agree. Thanks for pointing that out. I have not heard about any abortion foes adopting, but I hope it happens.
Which country, since you're not posting from the US.
The more “society” intrudes into the relationship between doctors and patients the less free patients will be to act in their own best interests. The authors emphasis on communal decisions will lead to a governmental bureaucracy that will make the best and the wisest decisions for all patients. This is already happening in some of our states where previously confidential patient information must be reported to the government. Policing of these decisions will follow next. The right to privacy will be seen as a passing legal fad.
6
Let's face it: most of the folks who are opposed to reproductive choice could care less about the health of the mother- or even about the life of the mother. They're fixated on the fetus, primarily because they've been moved to do so by culture and religion. So here's the way to talk to them about abortion: prior to Roe v Wade, women ended their unwanted pregnancies via back-alley abortions or repurposed coat hangers. Taking away safe and sterilized procedures will send women straight back to the alleys and the closets. The fetuses will therefore continue to die, and so will many of the women (at least some of whom would probably want to sustain pregnancies right through to parturition at some future date). Ergo, your protests are largely for naught. Understood?
28
The writer's argument falls apart for me just past the midway point in reference to the question of when personhood begins (vis a vis the minority opinion that it begins at conception, or at least earlier than the 3rd trimester):
"To get there, the minority who believe this would have to convince the rest of us of this metaphysical, or religiously based, assertion."
The burden of proof is no on the minority opinion. The answer is a fundamentally unanswered one (hence the the need for the author to carefully lead us through the issues surrounding early vs. late term abortion) and so the burden of proof is on both sides, even for the opposing opinion. There is, in short, no slam-dunk argument for when personhood begins biologically. To quote the author, "We are not there yet" on the majority opinion either.
The author's stance thus betrays a mind already made up, which is neither a rigorous enough nor neutral enough enough position from which to pontificate about *how* to debate this issue and *what* should be excluded from it.
5
You might have entitled this column "Back to the Future."
There was a time when people were debating abortion as a medical procedure and there were people who considered that banning it was an unwarranted government interference. Among these people were conservative Republicans like Ronald Reagan, who, as governor of California, signed one of the most liberal abortion laws in the country and George H.W. Bush whose mother had headed Planned Parenthood in Connecticut..
However, when the conservative wing of the Republican Party was looking for issues in the 1970s to get attention away from the disastrous Nixon administration, it lit upon abortion. With it now needing something to turn attention away from another disastrous presidency, lots of luck getting it to have anything close to a rational and reasonable debate on abortion.
57
Your point is well taken. Yes we should talk about abortion from a basically medical point of view, but muddy ethical waters will never be extinguished from our conversation about abortion. I wish it were that simple.
Those who oppose abortion for any situation also scoff at scientific truth. Morality trumps science in almost every situation. It's as if the nineteenth century religious dogma still rules.
Science deals with evidence while religion teaches faith, a faith that for many excludes science or even logic. So the difficulty is often in our languaging and in our thought processes and the gulf between science and religion is such an emotional one that we seem to speak at cross purposes.
Science is a human centered way of looking at the world, but who can argue with those who claim to receive their knowledge directly from an all powerful, but unseen God?
12
Would it were even as simple as "religion" vs. "science." There are those who in perfectly good faith appeal to science as their grounds for asserting the humanity of the fetus. The genetic makeup of a unique individual is determined at the moment of conception; thereafter, the development from zygote to embryo to fetus proceeds seamlessly, with no exact moment of demarcation in which (as one religion traditionally taught) the individual was "ensouled" and became human. The dividing line of "drawing breath" or emerging from the womb is legally defensible but is clearly, from the scientific standpoint, arbitrary and artificial. The line of "viability" also contains a wide gray area, as anybody knows who has read the many human-interest stories of "miracle" babies born at twenty-some weeks weighing only a pound, and survived to become a healthy child ... or a profoundly disabled child ...
If only "science" were simple. It isn't.
1
As a person who is facing end-of-life issues in the near future, I have given a great deal of thought to the happenstance that I was born and have lived, seen the sky, loved a woman and raised children. Whether that fortuity is the work of God or random natural chance is often on my mind. But if it was the latter, this life is all that I ever will have, and the way that I recognize that reality for myself must be at the center of any morality, secular or religious, which guides my relationship with my species fellows. Abortion is a choice to deprive another of the same species of everything that is and ever could be. Leaving aside arguments about souls and personhood, which are unknowable in this life, that fetus is a human entity at every stage of its development. In their failure to put this reality at the center of this article, the authors miss the central issue in any moral analysis. Morality is not about how we exalt our own wishes; it is about how we treat others.
4
"Leaving aside arguments about souls and personhood, which are unknowable in this life, that fetus is a human entity at every stage of its development."
Seems to me that you have burdened a viable argument about souls and personhood being unknowable with the absolutely unsupported assertion that a fetus is a human entity at every stage of its development. You are implicitly bestowing the status of "human entity" on everything post-conception. That's not viable unless you buy into all that stuff about souls and personhood that you supposedly set aside as unknowable at first.
1
I was born in late 73 and given up for adoption. I feel like my life was protected by the fact that abortion had not yet become legal and in full swing. Everyone deserves to be protected by law. I believe life starts at conception.
4
50% of fertilized human ova fail to implant in the uterus and are expelled with the menses. Thus, the view that life begins when the sperm meets the egg makes Mother Nature the primary abortionist. One obvious policy conclusion is that the "morning after pill" does nothing that nature does not do.
8
How much is life worth to someone who was never aware of living? If we really cared about minimizing suffering and struggle, abortions should be rare (thanks to good contraception), and legally and practically ACCESSIBLE (abortion, say 2-4 weeks after conception minimizes both the physical and the emotional pain of the mother and the child alike).
2
I'm glad that your mother made the choice that worked best for her. Every other woman gets to do the same and the rights of the woman come first.
3
A reasonable sounding but fundamentally specious (having deceptive attraction or allure; having a false look of truth or genuineness) message from the ivory tower of academic philosophy. Ms Shrage proposes that the primacy of the principle of personal individual morality and autonomy should take a back seat to a debate "as a matter of social ethics and political values" on "the relevant public policy question raises issues of medical privacy, limits on governmental power, and the protection of public health." Such a debate might be modestly interesting in high school or college debate clubs but the outcome of such debates is determined by a judge and usually a single judge. Roe v Wade and it's companion decision in Doe v Bolton were both decided by a 7-2 vote, with 8 of the 9 justices having been appointed by Republican Presidents. While the 2 decisions remain "settled law" in a country of laws and not of men, it is not and never will be settled in the court of public opinion. The anti-choice crowd has actually lost the debate as witnessed by the fact that women have voted with their feet and about half choose to end unwanted pregnancies at some point during their reproductive years.
9
The central moral issue here is whether the freedom to disrupt pregnancy belongs to the individual or the community. 'prolife' people insist that the community must decide. There is a political irony here, as the seeming conservatives here are opting for the collectivist, big government model just as the liberals prefer a free market approach. .
Most people seem to accept that there is no room for something as mundane as the facts. I accept this, but will cite one anyway: By the end of the second month, something like 70% of all fertilized and implanted eggs have been spontaneously aborted. In most cases, the mother has no knowledge, since at most the evidence is only a missed period. My query is:how is it that the Almighty can make so free with abortion while we mortals can't have the procedure at all? I'm quite content with God's pronouncement in Exodus: "Let the husbands decide. Let the judges decide". There is no divine amicus brief filed here.
6
No
Abortion is not first and foremost a medical procedure.
It is when it comes to a abortion to protect the health of the women.
If not then it is first and foremost the right of the state to determine the legality of providing abortions to those who want it.
5
So incest, rape, viability of the fetus: those decisions (among others) should be left to the state?
No.
24
Sorry. It is first and foremost a medical procedure. Rhinoplasty is also first and foremost a medical procedure, even when the patient can breathe and smell normally without the procedure.
If one adds the welfare of the patient (a universal medical consideration) to the intentionally narrowed criterion of "health", the state clearly loses most of its right to dictate, unless one believes that the state knows better than the individual what will promote her welfare.
8
Given the risks of pregnancy and delivery, abortion is absolutely a medical procedure.
2
I enjoyed reading this article very much. It provides a solid starting point for all thinking people to begin a rational conversation.
Unfortunately, the citizens of the United States abandoned reason and informed discourse decades ago. But, nice try.
23
Another key point which this article doesn't go into is that women's health-care access in general, and abortion access in particular, is an ECONOMIC issue! It goes hand-in-hand with far-right ideology that seeks to concentrate wealth and opportunity at the top of the socioeconomic scale at the expense of those at the bottom, who (surprise!) tend to be predominantly minority and less-educated women. Tax policy, educational system, housing and urban development, Medicaid, SNAP, women's health care--it's all the same to them: "Small Government" = "No services to all those 'takers'."
Rich women will always have access to abortion services no matter what happens legislatively in this country. It's the poor and underprivileged that will suffer--as usual.
64
Good article with reasoned thinking. We are on the pro choice side given that the vast majority of abortions (88%) occur within 12 weeks and most are much sooner when the fetus is the size of a raspberry. It is a difficult choice that should be left to the woman. Recently, we learned a very close friend's daughter has to make that choice. She is married and found out her problem is an ectopic pregnancy 8 weeks along that is already endangering her health. Even with that, some of their pro life friends are arguing against an abortion. That attitude by the pro lifers is the problem and I wonder how many of the pro life commenters here agree she should not have an abortion.
217
When I was in Catholic school 60 years ago, we learned in ethics class that with an ectopic pregnancy, there is no choice. The pregnancy has to be terminated...it's not in the uterus, therefore there's no chance the baby will go to term. And the mother could die. So, there's no sin. At least this is what i remember. I can't even believe there's a question. What is that young mother doing talking about to so called pro life people anyway?
3
That's some of the pro life crowd, insistent on no abortion under any circumstances. As to the young mother, she wasn't the one talking, it was the busy bodies from the pro life side interfering.
2
I hope your daughter is safe and well cared for. An ectopic pregnancy will never produce a live child. It inevitably will rupture, killing the mother and child. Your daughter's acquaintances who are urging her to continue the pregnancy are, in my opinion, the ones acting outside the scope of morality or ethics.
8
My thoughts are this:
At what point does the government strip a woman of her civil rights in favor of potential life.
That is the essence of the debate.
The anti-women-civil-rights crowd advocate telling falsehoods to women. Governments have passed laws that forbid doctors from providing information and mandate misinformation be told to women. They have pressured schools to include propaganda along with scientific facts or in place of scientific facts.
329
It is sad how right this is though it is incomplete.
It the vast majority of organized religions, there is no equality for women. There are religious leaders who are male, who expect households to be headed by men. With government and business, really anywhere outside the home, to be controlled by men.
There have been many recent Republican candidates who don't think women should be able to vote.
It isn't that these people worry about when to strip a woman of her civil rights, they don't believe that as an individual she has any. They don't believe that women should be part of any debate even ones that involve her own body.
That is the moral battle that people who believe in equality are up against. It doesn't start or stop with abortion. They are already going after contraceptives, they often blame rape on the victim, they elect self professed sexual harassers.
I wish abortion were just about abortion.
12
Er, does the fetus have any civil rights? Does a potential human deserve the chance to live a wonderful life? I could never abort one of my children; but I see the right of other people to have a completely different opinion, and I am not their master. Perhaps minding one's own business is the right approach here. No? Did god tell you differently? Judge not. For we all see through a glass, darkly.
3
I agree that the core issue is whether or when government may limit women's right to reproductive choices and that we should think of such restrictions as limiting civil rights. But I think, more importantly, it limits women's moral autonomy, the freedom to decide issues of personal responsibility. Without moral agency, are we human?
Laurie Shrague is attempting to separate political decisions from moral principles that figure in personal choices, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. That approach may seem like tolerance in a society as culturally diverse as ours, but it does not work. There is a reason why Aristotle's "Ethics" and "Politics," for example, go hand in hand: we cannot achieve a virtuous society without virtuous citizens, and vice versa. "Personal ethics," as this author uses the phrase, may vary widely from one citizen to another, but for that very reason we need to agree on laws that leave us free to live according to our differing moral principles, and that means protecting free will--personal liberty--and recognizing the breadth of principles we may call moral (it's not unlimited, but it is diverse).
If I could hear just one diehard pro-lifer admit that a working-class single mother struggling to raise children acts on principles of moral responsibility when she chooses to abort a pregnancy, I might be able to respect the pro-life position, but pro-lifers' desire to neuter women as moral agents tells me what is really at stake for them.
6
Instead of viewing abortion as a medical issue, it makes more sense to frame it as an education issue.
Abortion rates dramatically decrease when sex education and modern contraception availability contraception increases.
Abortion rates (and social welfare rates) decrease when affordable, low-cost and no-cost contraception is widely available.
Publicly funded 'free' IUD implants for poor women saves many times the costs of publicly funded birthing costs, neonatal costs and welfare aid to poor women and their newborns.
But extremely religious citizens want no part of modern education and modern contraception and prefer that all of society be subject to their perverted interpretations of a medieval textbook that they were intellectually abused with as small children.
Christian crusaders do not want modernity or reasonable sex education, preferring instead a society replete with forced pregnancies due to poverty, poor healthcare access, poor public education and poor choices for females.
Abortion rates have fallen the MOST under Democratic Presidents and remained flat or decreased slightly under Republican administrations BECAUSE access to contraception is more effective in reducing the number of abortions than regulation that controls access.
https://qz.com/857273/the-sharpest-drops-in-abortion-rates-in-america-ha...
But, America's radical right prefers abstinence, ignorance, AND ultimately, higher abortion rates.
Nice GOPeople.
233
Well stated. And it would be a different story if "pro-lifers" had programs available to women who choose to keep their babies. But to them, once the child is born, you're on your own.
28
I am opposed to abortion and have worked in a crisis pregnancy center where care, resources, and services were provided to women throughout their pregnancies and afterward. These women and their babies are card for. You have no idea.
I do, however, agree that progressive government policies put in place by Democrats are much more helpful in reducing the number of abortions. The availability of safety net programs and birth control and women’s healthcare are essential. Those programs are usually cut when Conservatives are in the majority. This is so counterproductive to what they claim to value.
3
Actually there are any number of pro-life organizations, whatever you think of them, that operate "crisis pregnancy centers" to support women through their pregnancy, arrange for adoptions, or help the mother and baby get started. Clearly they cannot just "undo" the pregnancy and essentially restore the status quo ante, the way an early abortion does, and at some point, the woman is left with the responsibility either to care for herself and her child for decades to come, or to deal for the rest of her life with the emotional effects of relinquishing the baby for adoption.
2
I wonder if Laurie Shrage has spoken with pro-birth people.
I am strongly pro-choice, but Shrage's arguments will not cut it with those who believe that fetus's have the right to be born. (Many who call themselves "pro-life" actually seem not to care much about the life of the resulting infant, voting against child care, parental leave benefits, adequate health care, adequate schooling etc.) Imagine a bumper sticker on a buggy in 1860. "Against slavery? Don't own slaves." After all, we've pretty well figured out how to deal with slave revolts, so owning slaves is quite safe for the health. That's what Shrage's argument feels like to the pro-birthers.
I believe the issue must be addressed through right to privacy, which includes our rights to our own bodies. And that means the right to have something removed from our body - even if that something would, if left inside for a few more months, been a viable human being.
Yes, many who oppose abortion argue about its safety, but that is not the reason they oppose it. We need to address the rights of the woman vs. the rights of the would-be-viable-if-left-inside fetus.
27
terrific perspective and distinctions between personal and societal issues. we in the US downplay social needs to a large extent in our public policy debates.
6
This debate can never be resolved because it involves conflicting beliefs that cannot be proven one way or the other. So if you don't want one don't get one, but you don't get to make that call for anyone else.
22
Yes. This is an important and cogent argument. Unfortunately, we live in a soundbite world. As long as thinking people tacitly consent to using the "pro-life/pro-choice" monikers, the polarization will continue. I challenge thinking politicians and policy makers to stop using this frame--both sides of it.
3
You are absolutely correct. "Pro-choice" is a euphemism that avoids stating what's being chosen: a medical procedure that ends life. Whether and when that life is human, abortion ends a living entity, period, and reproductive rights advocates, of which I am one, need the courage of their convictions to call it what it is. Likewise, "pro-life" as shorthand for those opposed to allowing women to terminate a pregnancy--yes, a living entity--for any reason and at any stage, are also denying the right to life--for women. No one is "pro-abortion." No one is "anti-life." Yet when we use the terms pro-choice and pro-life, that's what's implied. For those who support women's reproductive rights and those who want to protect life, there is much more common ground than those two terms allow.
Law is by nature a deeply moral undertaking. When a law is made it is taking a moral position. Therefore the idea that the public good can be sought without reference to moral codes is impossible. Every time a new law comes into force someone’s moral position has either been affirmed or denegraded. We cannot avoid this.
Abortion rests on the mortality of personhood. If a fetus is not a person then lets support it for the sake of the legal person, the mother. But if the fetus is a person, the issue becomes one of balancing the rights of 2 legal persons against each other.
10
“Abortion is first and foremost a medical service or procedure, not an individual action, and thus a more important and relevant question for public policy is, Under what circumstances, or for what reasons, should a government prohibit properly trained medical professionals from performing an abortion”
Balderdash!
Substitute heart transplant, lumpectomy, broken bone repair, sex reassignment surgery, or any one of 1000s of other medical procedures for ‘abortion’ in the sentence above, and see the spaciousness of this argument. Women can- and do - give themselves abortions. That will never change.
Removing the agency of an individual to make decisions about what happens to their body is state-sponsored invasion of privacy and it’s all about control, nothing more.
31
Fine article. Reading through all the comments tells me it's unlikely a large group of people will even agree on identifying the main point of something they're reading, let alone agree on answers to the point itself.
For me, that point was we'd benefit from having our laws/policies shaped by discussion (debate, argument) between policymakers which is *different* from that which we typically engage in ourselves or see in the media. I.e., discussion by policymakers which prioritizes the ethics of statesmanship *ahead of* the individual statesman's moral beliefs. I think that's an excellent point, well-stated by Professor Shrage and under-appreciated by society in general. I also think it's a problem likely to grow worse before it gets better, as primaries generate more candidates who make emotional appeals and commitments to voters' personal beliefs rather than to the good of the county, state, or country.
7
The question of when life begins is not a scientifically verifiable issue. If you believe that life begins when an ovum is fertilized, it follows that not only abortion, but even use of an oral contraceptive (that prevents attachment of the fertilized ovum to the uterine wall) is murder. How can one who believes as I do that abortion is a moral choice (preferable to forcing a woman to endure an unwanted pregnancy and to bring an unwanted child into the world) ever achieve consensus with those who believe that life begins when the ovum is fertilized? It seems to me that we must agree to disagree.
25
Are med students taking courses in medical ethics that include the abortion issues? If so, I'd like to hear about such courses. Obviously, a trained doctor can perform abortions? Should they and why must be part of training.
2
According to my child while in medical school, they were offered the "opportunity" to attend and possibly "assist" in an abortive procedure. Many, while recognizing the patient's right to choose a medical procedure regarding her own body, chose not to attend or get involved. Obviously, this is something medical students discuss, possibly outside of their formal training. Given the intelligence of these students, I'm sure their discussions would be enlightening.
1
Yes but that also goes for Priest sand Rabbles .
They are smart and more important are more relevant when issues that are not medical and if not a health issue abortion is not about medicine like physician assisted suicide is not a medical issue even when a medical professional is the one who is giving the assistance.
A fetus is not part of the woman's body.
That's why it is illegal to perform a abortion in the last trimester when the life of the child is acknowledged and should not be ended unless the health of the mother is a issue.
This essay includes excellent comments but does not address the central issue. Without addressing it, the entire argument in this essay is moot. The central issue for both pro-choice and anti-abortion arguments is when does life start. The former set it later in pregnancy while the latter set it earlier in pregnancy, and sometimes even before pregnancy. The problem with the question of when does life start is that it depends on the scientific and medical knowledge available at the time. I am sure that at some point in the future, we will be able to maintain earlier and earlier fetuses outside the womb until they can continue surviving on their own. This has already been done in sheep. The debate about abortion cannot be advanced until we move away from relying on the argument regarding when does life begin. This argument relies on the notion that there are only 2 options: live and inanimate or not-live. What if there is a third option? This is the case in microbiology. Are viruses or certain intercellular microorganisms alive or not? They can replicate but they depend on a host cell to survive.
Unless we find a way around the argument of when does life starts, we will be just arguing when in gestation is abortion acceptable, to one group it will be late in pregnancy and to another it will be never. As technology improves, the "late" in pregnancy will progressively become closer and closer to the "never". What do we do then?
2
No, the central issue is do we consider women to have equal agency and autonomy over the reproductive labor as men.
2
No. The issue is who is responsible for a person’s own body: the individual, a particular religion or a secular government? The question of what is a fetus and when does its existence have importance to any entity but the woman inside whose body it exists is a religious one, perhaps. But then the question is: whose religion? If it is a question of law then: when does the State wish to provide for it? Ironically, those who say they care the most about life act as if the woman herself doesn’t exist. She’s just the container. They discard caring for her as soon as the contents are delivered. To say these people are hypocrites is being generous. They need to get a life of their own and stop trying to impose their values and their will onto the lives of others under the banner of God.
4
The issue isn't, or shouldn't be, when "life" starts. It is when "personhood" starts.
3
Wow.
First of all, good luck with excluding the moral element from this debate. That horse is so far out of the barn it's on another planet.
Second, I'm flummoxed by the suggestion that a late-stage abortion has anything to do with a "viable fetus." Nobody has a third-trimester abortion just because she changed her mind! Third-trimester abortions are about NON-viable fetuses.
Not a constructive article.
64
How can you say that.
There are women who believe they have a right to a abortion in the third trimester where the fetus is viable and their health is not at risk.
Even if it doesn't happen often it has to be mentioned.
Since you seem to think it isn't a issue because you say it doesn't happen then I assume you would hold that it would be wrong to have a abortion when the mothers heaslth and the viability of the fetus are not a issue during the third trimester.
Molly Ivens said she didn't think there are many women eight months pregnant waddling past an abortion clinic saying "Oh I knew there was something I meant to do!"
4
There is no fetal human life before birth. This is a religious belief not a scientific or legal concept. Only a woman can decide whether to have an abortion based on her own religious beliefs and physical health. She and only she can determine both.
The history of the state's interest in preserving survival of fetuses goes back to Roman Emperors interested in population growth when the military campaigns depleted their populations. The same Roman Emperors also concocted prohibitions against homosexuality based on the same consideration of replenishing their armies. Modern war is efficiently run with machines and huge armies are no longer necessary and therefore it is not necessary to use prohibitions based on sophistic interpretation of religious dogma.
24
I believe that abortion is not a good thing. I don't think anyone thinks abortion is a "good" thing. It is the outcome of a huge array of human struggles, failures and, yes, even circumstances of coercion and abuse. It exists because life is imperfect. People are imperfect.
BUT, I believe in the right of women to control their privacy, their bodies and their reproductive lives.
"Pro-life" folks like to skip the ugly details of our lives and reduce everything to a moral absolutism that always boils down to them being "right." Perhaps, if they spent more time and resources in the pursuit of making life easier for people, there would be far fewer reasons for women have an abortion.
23
No matter what the law is some women in some circumstances will seek abortions.
A question to people who want to outlaw abortion: why would you punish the doctor and not the woman? If I contract with someone to kill another human being, both I and the killer are punished for breaking the law.
Morality cannot be separated from the abortion question. But the discussion of morality can be more respectful and nuanced.The idea of engaging the topic in segments is helpful.
Even while keeping morality front and center we can have productive discussions on three points:
1. How far into a pregnancy is birth control via abortion reasonable? Some will say never, but most will land somewhere between one day and 10 weeks.
2. How far into a pregnancy is abortion for birth defects reasonable? What sort of birth defects should be considered? Honest answers to this question will likely be both muddled and uncomfortable.
3. How far into a pregnancy is abortion to preserve the health of the mother reasonable? This question isn't likely to have much debate by most people.
The all or nothing character of our current abortion debate poisons our politics. If we break down the discussion into pieces and address each other honestly, abortion may cease to be a wedge issue and the tenor of our public debates will vastly improve.
7
Asserting that "governments have a compelling interest in restricting abortions in late stages of a healthy pregnancy" is by no means a path to consensus. An alternative suggestion: get used to the fact that there will always be a lack of consensus on any given public policy issue. Welcome to pluralism; welcome to democracy, where political and moral differences are a way of life. In a democracy, disagreement is tolerated and morality is on the table for debate. The alternative is monism and absolutism - non-democratic spaces where everyone is in agreement. The only way you ever get a consensus on public policy issues is to force those who disagree to leave the room.
2
There cannot be a "democratic" decision that would force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.
By its very nature it would be dictatorship against the woman.
2
Thank you Jerry Engelbach. I happen to agree with you!
1
Abortion is only a "medical procedure" is the same way physician assisted suicide is a medical procedure. Doctors do it, so it's medical. But if performed properly, one of the two patients (the child) dies. Discussion about the "health" of the procedures is chilling since death is the desired result.
8
Not a child....most times nothing more than a zygote. This is the inflammatory rhetoric that created this situation in the first place.
4
Here's a statement that is clearly wrong: "Because an abortion is a medical service, and not something a woman decides or does by herself, her right to decisional privacy in this matter is not absolute."
Her right to decisional privacy in this matter IS ABSOLUTE. It MUST BE absolute.
In nearly every instance of abortion in the third trimester, women facing that decision are grappling with questions of life and death for themselves, and for their unborn child. Others - doctors, spouses, family members, even clergy - may give counsel, but IT IS NOT THEIR BODY, and ULTIMATELY NOT THEIR DECISION TO MAKE.
To infer that there is a point in time at which the RIGHTS of a woman - by simply being a pregnant female facing a life-and-death medical crisis - become less than absolute regarding her own life and bodily autonomy, is a cruel, misogynistic, specious argument.
80
Her body? Remember, the woman is not talking about suicide - that is HER body. An abortion is about killing the offspring, which - by definition - is not her body. Thus, your argument carries no weight in this debate.
David, are you being obtuse on purpose? The fetus is being gestated by her body. The question is not whether the fetus *is* her body, it's whether she gets to decide whether *her body* is pregnant.
You have no business assigning weight to anyone's opinion if you don't even understand what the arguments are.
Also, come on, how can a fetus be an "offspring." Has it sprung? Listen to yourself. Abortion is not simply about "killing the offspring (sic)." It's about making a pregnant woman *not pregnant.* I hope that clears it up for you.
7
I want to limit the number of unwanted pregnancies. I think this is done with education and access to contraception. Education helps women and men understand that having a baby is a great responsibility. Women's education also seems to help them decide to have fewer children, have them later in life; wanting to first have a 'career' or at least a few good jobs before having children.
Nobody wants more abortions. Everybody would like to see fewer; as few as possible. Stopping unwanted pregnancies is the goal we must set and talk about and take actions to attain. Democrats must talk about this issue openly.
The few, loud-mouthed people that use this issue as a way to get more Republican votes must be shown to be hypocrites: they want more babies born, but have few or no programs to help this babies thrive. They seem to want to blame the mothers.
Make no mistake: abortion and guns are two issues the wealthy Republicans use to keep poor whites voting for their candidates. The Republican Congress was very good at cutting the taxes for the richest Americans. That's what the Republican super-PACs bank on. That's their main issue. As their leader said, 'If we can't pass a tax cut, what good are we?' Very true to their 'values'.
Talk about preventing unwanted pregnancies and having accessible contraception to help with this. Do this, not for political reasons, but because it's the good and honorable thing to do. Talk openly.
22
the author of this essay makes a good case for trying to shape the conversation on abortion in terms of public health policy. Beliefs based on moral or religious grounds change over time, based on the cultural context. Prohibition, for example, was based on moral grounds that drinking, in and of itself, was morally bad. Times changed, Prohibition was repealed, but the moralist attitude about alcohol dependency persisted. It wasn't until our policy makers started to tackle addiction as a public health problem that more resources have been devoted to medical treatment. I think policy makes should shift the conversation about abortion from the realm of moral and religious belief systems to a conversation about public health and in particular, women's health.
2
A woman's autonomy is not a public health issue. It's moral and political.
If a woman is punished by being forced to carry a fetus to term she is being dictatorially deprived of any notion of due process.
It makes a mockery of equal rights under the law for both men and women.
6
Abortion, or induced miscarriage, is a woman's choice--surely not mine, but at the risk of unintended offense I want to talk about its politics. There are many women who are strongly convinced it is wrong and it is a deal-breaker for them when voting. But if abortion was not on the political table, we would not have Trump. We would have had $15/hr, universal healthcare, free college, a much smaller military and regulations to prevent greed--things that are important to women, especially single moms. But the right to have a legal abortion is important as well---for many it is also a deal-breaker. So, compromise? Or polarization will tear the country apart.
14
A woman cannot "compromise" about a decison that woud force her to risk her life carrying an unwanted fetus to term.
Individual freedom, absent conviction for a crime, is absolute in matters pertaining to one's own body.
6
Of course, to remove the simple fact that a potential human being's destruction is being destroyed, would make the conversation about abortion more amenable to consensus, but is it a real consensus? This is akin to making the reductive statement, e.g., "if everyone believed the Bible, then the world would be a better place" or suggesting that we all sit around, hold hands and sing Kumbayah. Yes, society, in the form of the state, has a vested interest in ensuring that a person (the constituent members of society) is protected, whether from euthanasia or abortion: this is simple protection of human beings (or their potentialities, which grow over time in the womb), and any sociological or philosophical discussion of the role of the state necessarily involves moral considerations and discussion. It does not help the discussion to pander to the notion that abortion is simply a matter of "women's health" and the analogies to e.g., opiod prescription are inapt. We could at least all agree that abortion destroys a potential human life (if not a human life) and that, combined with the current narrative that abortion comes without guilt, make it impossible to discuss this simply as a "public service". To try and sell this as a public service/"women's health" ultimately does women a great disservice, because it denies the topic the gravitas that it deserves.
6
Well, PWD, your logic compels the conclusion that contraception destroys "potential human life", as do sexual positions and practices which defeat the opportunity for conception. Good luck selling that anywhere except in your church. Maybe.
4
Actually, no it doesn't: a beating heart cannot be equated with the opportunity for conception (sexual intercourse). I used the term, "potential human life" to try to bridge the apparently unbridgeable divide between those who believe that life begins at conception, with those who believe that whatever the fetus is, it's simply a women's health issue.
Yes, induced abortion destroys a potential human life.
So what?
So does a miscarriage. So do countless spontaneous abortions that women neer even feel. So does ejaculation.
The operative word is "potential." Meanwhile, the woman's life is not potential, but existing.
Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted fetus to term is sentencing her to punishment for no crime. It is dictatorship, nothing less.
The right of an innocent person to control her own body is absolute. Anything less is tyranny.
3
Thank you. Yes, this should be a rational discussion about rules....and a rational discussion between parents and doctors medically. In the US we cannot divorce the issue of money either. As long as the US keeps narrowing the safety net for parents attempting to raise a handicapped child, we require parents to be financially responsible for their families—or the entire family suffers.
This is what is omitted from much discussion. A handicapped child may require full time care or supervision for his entire life. How can an able bodied parent work as is increasingly required by public aid, while providing care for their child? How can a parent pay for their child’s expensive medical and educational needs as the middle class is increasingly priced out of the market?
These are societal constraints placed upon every parent of a handicapped child for the life of that child....and society remains silent.
12
"Viability: the ability to survive or live successfully" Oxford Dictionary
In Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the Supreme Court "nominally" allowed the states to prohibit post-viability abortions except in apparently limited cases, but it actually defined the limitation in a way that bars the state from prohibiting such abortions if physicians are willing to perform them.
I argue that the fetus is a separate being, for it could not be formed were it not for the contribution of two people.
I generally reject the "viability" argument of those in favor of abortion because it is a fact that no fetus or baby could be viable were it not for the nutrition and care offered by the mother, in the case of the fetus, and an adult, in the case of a newborn.
2
There is no supportable logic in your argument that a fetus is a separate thing simply because it was formed by two people.
Two people contribute to it, but it is not separate from the woman. It is completely a part of her, and no one else.
Regardless of the process by which something is formed — be it a cancer, a cyst, a polyp, a hematoma, or a fetus — it belongs solely to the body that contains it.
A woman's right to control her own body is absolute.
5
You don't understand the what the word viability means. It means that the organism can sustain its life processes on its own. There is a difference between requiring any random care giver to survive and requiring a specific physical body to sustain your life. Following your argument to its conclusion, a bed bound adult in a nursing home is not viable. That's stupid. You've taken away the meaning of the word.
2
The suggestion that ethics can be taken out of the equation when it comes to lawmaking just seems strange to me. Some of civilization's earliest written laws were grounded in morality, such as the 10 Commandments. Even today, we have a whole subset of laws that are based on notions of what is "good" and "bad": the criminal code. What actions are made criminal are often viewed by society, and ultimately by lawmakers, as being morally reprehensible. It is for that very reason that we decide to outlaw them. You write that abortion "is an issue about good medicine," but what's good or bad is inherently an ethical question.
4
The author plays down the central issue at stake in abortion, vainly hoping to reach a “consensus” on a powderkeg issue. Try telling someone opposed to abortion that their opinion is merely a matter of “personal morality,” not public policy. Moral philosophers hold personal actions to account on the basis of universal rules by which everyone is bound, and to which public policy must conform. Gosh, the lady picketing the abortion clinic with a sign in her hand wasn’t aware that “that ‘abortion’ is really an umbrella term for a number of different medical procedures.” Just repeat that gem of insight to her in a calm and level voice, Ms. Schrage. Abortion opponents have every right to regard the arguments articulated in this article as so much folderol. I say that as someone who has always stuck up for abortion rights.
6
Laws require a fact based common sense logic connection to a compelling or reasonably related government interest. Our Constitution requires separation of church and state. That means no religious or moral test for justifying or cancelling any law. That is the premise of Roe v. Wade.
15
A clearer, more concise presentation of the problem we face vis a vis abortion, can't be made. Thank you. Now, if only those who would impose their own particular moral values on the rest of us can desist, we will all be the better for it.
1
This is an excellent framing of the issue since it clarifies something usually ignored: that an early legal abortion performed in a proper medical facility is overwhelmingly safer than childbirth itself. However, the anti-abortion forces don’t really care about this since they claim “pro-life” as a defense, which ironically is very hypocritical since it refers exclusively to the fetus, not the woman. I posit that “pro-life” is actually “pro-birth” since no thought is given to the care and well being of the fetus once it is a baby. If the anti-abortion forces truly cared about “life” they would organize the financial structures to provide the care, education, parenting, and other services necessary for the nurturing and raising of a productive well adjusted member of society. Children born unwanted have a poor start in life and the long-term consequences for all of society are often dire. The “morality” of the anti-abortion forces stops at birth. I believe the definition of “moral” in this debate also includes the right of the baby to a good start in life by being born wanted into a loving home. “Moral” must also recognize the right of a female human to determine her own future and when, and if, to bear a child.
299
Yes, an unwanted child bears a heavy burden, especially during a period of his life where love and nurturing, and the absence thereof, on the arc of his life.
But you gloss over an important social issue that has real bearing on the subject: Birth control.
In today's medical world, pregnancy prevention devices are inexpensive and readily attainable.
Why then, the reluctance of the sexual partnerships to avail themselves of these proven tools to avoid having to make a wrenching moral choice?
Abortion is legal. It should remain so.
But, there are important public health reasons for the involvement of government, ones, that if not taken, would quickly qualify as a shiny object for the ire of the public if problems arise.
There is little reason why the state shouldn't require that abortions be performed by qualified medical people. Level of qualification is another subject.
There is little reason why the state shouldn't specify that abortions be performed in suitable, purpose-built surgical suites that are maintained a s surgical standard consistent with the procedure being performed. Out-patient surgeries all over the nation establish the "moral authority" of state involvement in the risk management.
And, finally, there is little reason why the state shouldn't specify that someone within an abortion facility has admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Things go wrong in medical procedures, and abortion is not one of those that is exempt from mistake or error.
agora,
There are many Pro-Life groups that support the mother during her pregnancy and afterwards.
I am fully in favor of healhcare for all, for the right of the mother to stay home with her children until they are three years of age.
What I am not in favor of is killing a babe in the womb for no other
reason than because the baby would be a a burden.
1
What a good society does is make the lives of individuals better, and that means better for all. Forcing women who don't want babies to carry to term or seek out backstreet abortions is bad for all. The former results in, at best, adoption, and it's rare that adoption involves no trauma. The latter--need anyone rehearse that heartache? Abortion, the whole set of procedures, is a basic human right.
http://www.thecriticalmom.blogspot.com
9
I agree that abortion needs to be discussed as a matter of social ethics. The first and foremost duty of any society is to protect its members, especially from death. That position is shared by philosophers ancient (Aristotle), medieval (Aquinas), and modern (Hobbes, Locke). To discharge its primordial responsibility, a society must be clear about and articulate who its members are and when they become its members. Roe et al. v. Wade continues to roil American public life because it pretends to avoid that question by feigning ignorance about when life begins. No society can pretend to be ignorant of that question--or reduce it to a matter of individual "choice"--without forfeiting its raison d'etre as a society. So, yes, those of us who fight and will continue to fight Roe et al. v. Wade until it is rightly assigned, alongside Dred Scott v. Sandford to the dustbin of Constitutional fiction and trash, will do so because Roe represented a fundamental deviation and regression from the American tradition of robust civil rights protection. Overturning Roe is the civil rights issue of our day.
1
John makes the classic mistake of assuming what is being argued--namely, that fetuses are "members of society," which by implication means they have "rights." Yes, members of society have obligations to fetuses that need to be considered, but this does not mean fetuses are "members of society" with the rights and obligations that come with that.
More spuriously, John implies that because philosophers such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes and Locke were concerned with social ethics, they were opposed to abortion. This is decidedly not the case with either Aristotle or Aquinas, and in the case of Locke and Hobbes, they can be used to support either side of the abortion debate.
Enough of this arguing by authority--especially the authority of dead white men who, in any event, almost always considered male fetuses superior to female fetuses. What about what the experiences of real women? What about their rights--rights only recognized in modern times? Why the obsession with the putative rights of fetuses, with nary a nod to the rights of women?
As an important side aside, John needs to remember that around 1 in 5 pregnancies end with a spontaneous abortion. No society follows up miscarriages with police investigations because no society considers fetuses to be "members of society."
John demonstrates that the contentious issue of abortion is an emotional and religious issue that will never be resolved by turning to philosophy.
6
The question of when life begins is of importance to certain Christian sects but not to others, and not to other religions. So, who ya’ gonna call when our secular government decides to poke its legislative nose into such religiously based decisions? Either the Constitution grants exrant women the right to make their own decisions about their own bodies or women are made into baby carriers and delivery bodies with no support afterwards. You cannot have it both ways. As a woman I am entitled to my own decisions about myself or I do not have civil rights. We know where the Christian Right stands and it isn’t with our civil rights and ironically it isn’t even with the fetus. They stand “with God” to impose their self-proclaimed laws on women. Man, this is so, so old and so, so obvious all the moralizing lingo notwithstanding.
8
Your supposed commitment to life would force women into a subservient position in society.
They would be either be forced to endure a potentially life-threatening pregnancy, or to suffer imprisonment for obtaining illegal abortions.
Your misogynist dictatorship is something most women — and most men — want no part of.
4
Let's not forget you have to be alive to participate in individual moral behaviour or personal ethics, lawmaking decisions! I believe what a good society does is ensure life is offered to persons on both sides of debate!
1
This piece attempts to split the knot by cleanly organizing abortion into moral and medical dimensions. If only that were true. The abortion issue is as much about power as it is about the supposed morality of those who oppose it. The most egregious examples come from members of Congress who speak and vote anti-abortion while encouraging their mistresses to do what's expedient. And, you hear the abortion issue as power play from people who not only want to deny access to the medical procedure but also want to block access to birth control and want to keep teenagers from learning or talking about sex and sexual relationships in candid, factual, and positive ways.
The author even seems to be willing to concede to restrictions on late pregnancy abortions while highlighting earlier in the piece that anti-abortion groups will use late term viability as part of their delaying tactics to ensure the woman cannot have an abortion.
Being anti-abortion, then, isn't so much about the death of a fetus as it is about controlling a person. It's about denying that person the agency, the liberty, to make decisions about relationships, sexual activity, and family planning when those decisions appear outside the restrictive world-view of a minority of people who have anointed themselves as our moral betters.
478
"Being anti-abortion...isn't so much about the death of a fetus as it is about controlling a person. It's about denying that person agency...."
Some pro-choice people never seem to get it. As someone who is pro-life, we face a dilemma, because be believe that BOTH the mother and the unborn child are persons. The mother, as the stronger person, has the right to take the weaker person's life. The unborn child is not only denied agency, but any kind of future at all.
That said, I am not black and white on this. I can see times of great tragedy when an abortion is understandable. But many pro-choice proponents seem to believe that no reason is too small. They cannot imagine any situation where an abortion would be morally grotesque.
2
This comment does exactly what it appears to preach against: the writer has predetermined that anyone who might disagree is immoral. Maybe it would be better to do as the author of the article suggests, confine our arguments to those areas on which we can agree (e.g. that a woman's health matters) and take the moralizing offline. Most Americans agree that a woman should have safe, legal access to abortion procedures. Painting horns on the heads of anyone who might believe that ending a human life, however embryonic that human life may be, is a morally fraught decision only adds fuel to the extremists' fire and makes things worse for everyone.
1
This is the hokum of someone who hasn't had a candid conversation with someone who is pro-life (and who is not a politician). Yes, there are terribly hypocritical "pro life" politicians who may use the issue as a tool of power - but that is not the foundation of the pro-life movement and its numerous "regular people" supporters.
2
This is nothing more nor less than argument by definition, by fiat, by begging the question. And then anyone who disagrees with her is "insulting" her and others! If this is the best contribution of an "expert" to the debate, then either we really are in trouble, or we need less "experts."
6
Abortion is certainly the subject of a challenging debate. To me, the primary question is: "When does the fetus become a person ?" or to re-phrase it: "When does the government get involved ?". Looking at our history, it would seem that the government has no right to impose medical procedures on a person, unless there were a compelling issue to society, such as vaccinations for small pox, polio, etc. Accordingly, I think we need to trust the mother to be in charge of her body, which includes the fetus, until the fetus is viable on its own. Such point is not reached for a human until the baby is a few years old. A fawn is viable at birth, but for humans, because of our large heads, viability occurs only years after birth. So, this fact introduces yet another complexity regarding when the government should start "protecting" the fetus/baby. The religionists have the answer, unfortunately there is no basis for their answer. Yes, not all questions have answers.
2
So, basically, even toddlers don't have any rights. Only after a few years the personality develops and so it is fine if the mother decides to kill the toddler right after birth....How about the father? Would it be OK if he killed the baby as well? Since there is no personality anyway why not?
The important thing to note is that indeed: No consensus has been reached on this practice. Court rulins attempting to shut down debate have only polarized both camps.
I think the only we to de-polarize America would be for the courts to back down and let governments discuss the issue. If people are complaining about radicalizing view points remember: The courts were radicalized first.
1
While superficially reasonable (and for the record, I am pro choice) this article avoids the crux of the conflict. Being anti-choice requires not one, but two things:
1) A belief that a fetus or embryo is equal in value to that of a born human being;
2) A desire to impose one's personal morality on public policy.
For some people who hold belief #1, #2 is an automatic follow up: If it's murder, how can I tolerate other people doing it? There is no satisfying answer to the question of how to get someone to believe that other people have the right to do something they consider morally heinous. In their minds, allowing the option to have an abortion is itself a moral wrong, even though it means that one group of people is allowed to impose their personal morality on the public at large. In their view, there must be a common moral standard.
24
LIFE, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (or Property, depending on which document you adhere to).
Without LIFE, the other two are moot.
4
The arguments here are persuasive IF you are approaching the issue from the point of view of examining and balancing competing social and individual needs, and IF you are willing to put moral judgments aside. But the people who vehemently oppose abortion seem uninterested in any of these considerations, and start with a fixed and unshakeable premise: since "life begins at conception" then abortion is murder, period. It's not clear to me that it is possible to engage someone who thinks like that in any kind of rational discussion. At which point, we have to say, fine, you are entitled to believe what you believe, but you are not entitled to impose those beliefs on the whole country.
27
Many of us would be in favor of any way to stop demonizing the opposing views of abortion, particularly the most extreme. It is accurate to say that the rates of abortion in the USA are relatively high: http://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/ .
We are deeply divided: http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/views-about-ab... . And that divide is tied to the moral issues discussed by Ms. Shrage. The public split has remained relatively constant over two decades: http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/ (57% in favor of legality; 40% against) None of this has influenced lawmakers, who value wedge issues such as this.
Much as I appreciate the arguments put forward in this NYTs essay, they are not going to convince those who view this as moral/theological issues. The argument about their lack of relevance to lawmaking will not convince many, particularly given the declining status of expertise in the public's eye.
Converting abortion to be viewed more as a public health issue might prove even more difficult than it is with guns, and that has proven intractable (maybe some progress in recent months, but too soon to tell). Whatever one says about "majority rule," that does not and will not always hold.
4
Restricting abortion and also restricting access to and education for contraception, while relying on abstinence as birth control will take us back to the days of back alley abortions.
31
This may be how to talk about abortion among people who support the right to have one, but I can't find a single argument here that I would expect an anti-abortion person to consider in the least.
That said, one moral question to add is whether a woman's decision to have a child after previously having had an abortion makes things morally neutral from a pro-life perspective? Does bringing another child into the world, who would not have happened had earlier circumstances been different, cancel out any possible "sin" from that abortion?
4
Should the state tax or forbid the consumption of meat in the interests of the environment and reducing animal suffering? We can see immediately that may questions of 'personal ethics' have political ethics counterparts. Should the state further limit access to abortion in the interest of protecting fetal life? My own view is no, as I believe women deserve a large degree of bodily autonomy irrespective of the moral status of the fetus, and that fetal life is not comparable to infant life. But, these are philosophical positions about which reasonable people disagree, and I respect my political opponents enough to take seriously their views/arguments. Trying to ignore the actual disagreement in the politics of abortion by characterizing it as merely a medical procedure is nearly disingenuous, as those who argue that abortion should be more highly regulated dispute precisely that. Schrage is assuming, as much as her opponents, a certain understanding of the moral status of the fetus - as becomes evident in the later part of her piece. My point is not that Schrage is arguing in bad faith (I appreciate her thoughtful contribution), but that we will continue to have to have the contentious political discussion of the morally troubling question of the state's legitimate interests in regulating abortion.
3
The author’s framing of the abortion issue as a logical debate with which we all can engage, is appreciated. Unfortunately the issue is so tangled with highly emotional topics, such as deeply held cultural religious beliefs and varying opinions about how much autonomy women should be allowed to have, that logical discussion seems off the table. Now what?
7
This should not even be up for discussion.
"How much autonomy women should be allowed to have" is defined in the Bill of Rights and subsequent Amendments to the Constitution.
It is as much autonomy as men. No less. Anything less is dictatorship.
Abortion is as much a woman's right as eating and blowing her nose.
5
Thank you for discussing this. When I decided to terminate my pregnancy 5 years ago, I was fortunate. I knew immediately that I could not not bring another child into this world and I had easy access to a well-run clinic that could evaluate me and give me the "abortion pill" when I was 6-7 weeks along. I had the money to pay out of pocket (about $500) since insurance wouldn't pay and I had a husband who was with me and supported me through the whole process. The procedure was simple and it felt like a heavy period with cramps, but I had good pain medication, fortunately. Oh, and by the way, there was no "baby" that came out. Just a lot of blood and tissue. Like I said, I was fortunate. All women should be.
171
Most women who have had abortions are as fortunate as you.
Despite lying attempts by the Right to claim otherwise, there is hardly any woman who feels guilt after an abortion.
According to most studies, the overwhelming feeling is relief.
10
The abortion rights movement is a continuation of the historic movement for women's' rights throughout the past century that produced a woman's right to own property, to vote, to divorce and in recent years the fight for equality in the workforce. At every stage opponents invented religious, moral and pseudoscientific rationales for perpetuating the denial of women's' rights.
A woman's right to choose whether to keep a pregnancy is a fundamental civil right, period.
209
So, does the baby have any rights? You seem to think womens' rights obviate all others' rights. The right to vote or work don't involve killing anyone, so moral arguments against them are spurious at best. No one dies when women vote. But killing a human being is an act of concern for all societies, and most frown on it.
1
Don't forget the freedom provided by birth control, a tool the same anti-abortion folks want to take away for the same misogynistic reasons they want to deny a women's access to abortion.
5
No, it is a continuation of the early 20th century eugenicists push to rid the US of "undesirable" poor, black and disabled individuals. It had little to do with women's rights but much to do with ensuring racial purity.
It still does.
Seems a very reasonable article to me. But there are great obstacles to being reasonable. One of my pet unsubstantiated theories is that we have a great great many people wondering around who in the very soul of their being do not feel very good about themselves, and I think this powerfully attracts them toward very simple absolute moral positions to which they can powerfully demonstrate their utterly inflexible loyalty thereby gaining a powerful sense of self-worth otherwise lacking within them. I think this fuels extremism in many forms, and it arises in large part from a lot of suffering in this world that gets visited on people often without any real need or proper justification. Long term, the best antidote would be a better more compassionate world that helps make us all more open to the sort of reasoning this article offers.
24
I believe that the fact that pregnancy has impacts on a woman's body is the key to the right to make decisions about that pregnancy. I'm not really comfortable with the throwaway assertion that most of those impacts are over by the third trimester. Anyone who has borne a child ought to know that's just not true.
I'm also not comfortable with saying that a third trimester abortion is the same as a first trimester abortion. The statistics about how many of these abortions happen isn't mentioned here. Anyone who has been pregnant knows that the awareness of the fetus as a separate entity increases as the pregnancy progresses. There are also changes in the woman's body that make it more difficult to end the pregnancy and they aren't just related to the safety of the procedure.
I welcome suggestions that we find a way to change the conversation about abortion. I respect those who fervently believe that life begins at conception, but not those who play on that belief for political gain.
As the arguments have become more passionate, and more vicious, I've often thought that a goal ought to be developing procedures that would be just as safe as abortion, but would remove the embryo, and, later, the fetus, and allow those who think it's a person to care for it. I recognize that there are limitations to this idea: the medical technology that would be involved as well as protections for a woman's right to control what happens to her body.
6
It's a nice try, but misplaced; one simply cannot have a debate about abortion without a discussion of whether the products of conception (the most neutral term I could think of here) have the legal status of "person"--that is, the status of an independent entity with certain rights.
Certainly, there is difference of opinion as to whether those products have such rights, and at what stage. What we need is a better definition, based on scientific knowledge, of when those products are capable of the behavior of a "person". For many these means viability outside the womb; for others it means when there is evidence of consciousness.
But this debate hinges upon that determination--the point at which the products have legal "rights" equal to that of any other "person". To not deal with that is to lead the debate in an endless circle.
9
I agree. Though I am pro-choice, framing the issue this way ignores the heartfelt values of those who are pro-life. This framing automatically places the burden of proof on the pro-life side without giving it a full hearing. This kind of verbal legerdemain is exactly why liberals and conservatives have such a difficult time communicating. The only way to deal with this issue is head-on with a frank acknowledgment of the values that have to be balanced—if they can be—on both sides.
4
Two points: 1)Of course, "life" begins at conception, but not HUMAN life. We simply do not know when this begins. Some claim it starts a few months or years AFTER birth. 2)Religious opposition to abortion is based on an ethics that judges the morality of an action by its consequences. But there IS an ethics that judges the morality of an action by what the decision maker intends. In other words, one ethics sees consequences, the other sees personal intentions. The first one was framed when individuals were not very important; the second one, is modern (last one thousand years). The first one underplayed choice and favored consequence; the second one places choice at the core. The first one emphasized the system; the second one puts individuals first. Most people moralize according to the first system, which is generally the Christian one (Natural Law ethics, as it is called); most people know nothing about this second ethical system (Kantian, as it is called).
1
"Because this is an issue about good medicine,..."
States that pass laws restricting abortion cloak them in the disguise of protecting health. But conflict about abortion is most definitely not an issue of good medicine, or safety, or risk vs benefit. It is a debate about conflicting rights of two entities, the mother and, through proxies, the fetus. Whether we like it or not, there are those who feel abortion is wrong and they will not change their minds if they are assured that it is safe. Through personal experiences, I am on both sides of this, so I have a foot in both camps and feel that basically both sides are right. This makes it intractable.
5
"When does personhood begin?", is a bad question. The idea of our having a separate identity is an illusion of consciousness.
The concept of "Personhood", is an extension of our own self-awareness. We see ourselves and other people as having a 'personhood', so we want to infer this condition to babies, and even to embryos.
But the objective truth is, there is no distinction between ourselves, and our genetic line of ancestors and descendants; we are an unbroken chain of life extending down through the eons. Or, we are the end of our line.
Even the notion of "when did the Universe begin?", again embodies the same faulty logic. Because we can always ask, "what came before that?".
The notion of a beginning and an end, is a reflection of our mortal lives, the ever present reality of death that we seem inevitably to be approaching in lockstep. So we look into the world, and grasp it by defining, 'beginnings, middles and ends'.
The mental construct that is essential for us to navigate and make sense of the world, often leads us astray in the pursuit of knowledge.
Which is why cults, religious authorities, and autocrats should never be allowed a voice in the public square. It is a tragic outcome to allow base ignorance to be broadly imposed on the public through the mechanism of the law and policy.
31
Oh, your thinking is way too deep for most of the people I am acquainted with but I must say that I appreciate it very much.
1
There seems to be an assumption that the anti-abortion crowd all arrive at their position due to their religious convictions, and thus may be ignored by non-believers.
There are, and have been, a number of "pro-lifers" who have been outright atheists. (Nat Hentoff, for example.)
The religious debate is a dead end with each side tuning out the other.
3
Last week, the NY Times ran a good article on another controversial issue--guns, and today, another good article on another controversial issue--abortion.
The thrust of piece on guns was to explain the different views of firearms held by different parts of the country.
The author of the piece told me in an email that he had already heard plenty from the anti-gun people, but he also heard support from progun people, even as the author said in the piece that he supports a ban on AR-15 style firearms.
My reading of the abortion piece is that some of those who do not support abortion will caricature the piece as advocating abortion right, just as some of the anti-gun people caricatured the gun piece as advocating gun rights.
1
For me the best argument is economic. As long as women are imprisoned by their biology, they can never fully participate in our economy. As long as men have to pay for the upkeep of children they did not want they will also be deprived of economic freedom. Having said that, I do believe that late term abortions should only be sought for health reasons or in cases where the fetus will not live long after birth. Since all evidence is that this is true, I see no reason to hinder a woman seeking late term abortion who has been advised by her doctor to do so.
41
I suggest we reframe adoption as well. While it has many benefits, adoption inflicts trauma on both mother and child and we tend to overlook this. We make broad assumptions about what is in the best interest of the baby based on societal memes that are not nuanced, and often not even true.
31
No no no. Focus on improving health care for pregnancy and child birth. Focus on teaching young men and women their responsibility to each other, use of contraception and safe sex. No woman ever wants an abortion but that, safe, option must be available in a society that values women and men equally. Or maybe that is the real problem?
75
If you believe that "no woman ever wants an abortion," Norah, than you haven't gotten around much.
I, for one, very much wanted mine. And so had the other women I knew -- in the U.S. and in other countries -- who had had them.
Call us unfeeling. Point us out as evil. Discount us as beneath contempt. But let us go our own way, please, OK?
8
While the article suggests some similarity between abortion and gay marriage, i.e., that both are areas where personal moral conviction must/can be separated from societal policy, there is one major difference. For a segment of society, abortion is murder of an innocent life - period. With that view, they believe they cannot allow their society to sanction or legalize this "procedure."
I consider myself pro-choice, but am personally uncomfortable with abortion. The 'abortion is murder' crowd make it hard for me to talk with them for they tend to write off anyone who is pro-choice with anger, disgust, and harsh language. I am pro-choice because I am a realist recognizing that women will have abortions safely and medically or in back alleys. But I am also pro-choice because I believe that that decision should be made by a woman and her doctor.
That said, the 'abortion is murder' group has a point of sorts - abortion always kills a separate living being with a unique genetic make-up. That fact, and it is fact, should be taken seriously. Much can be done to ensure proper use of contraceptives, to discourage excessive drinking (drunkenness is one way otherwise careful women end up pregnant), and to warn young women about unprotected sex.
109
I am with you. I believe that it should be legal and am pro choice- but it would not be a choice I would take lightly. I also support medically accurate sex education, access to contraception and financial support to families in need. Those are the means we have to effectively reduce the number of abortions. Making them illegal did not work but just made them more dangerous.
37
"That said, the 'abortion is murder' group has a point of sorts - abortion always kills a separate living being with a unique genetic make-up. That fact, and it is fact, should be taken seriously."
That is a brilliant point. You are absolutely right. You describe my own ambivalence with the topic.
Clearly we need to reframe the argument.
You have competing rubrics:
- the right of a woman to have complete dominion over her body. Not a small choice when you consider the expense of being pregnant--from ending up with a baby, all the way to the things pregnancy does to women.
- the rights of that fetus to life: the baby is de-facto dependent on his or her mother and without that mother's consent, he/she has no means to assert those rights.
- the transition of embryo to fetus: The "when is a baby a baby" question.
Those three moving categories must somehow be integrated into law......and I believe that's what our current system has done. Flawed as it may be, it works.
2
I am pro-choice and agree with much of what you say above.
What I don't understand is your point of view on how to safeguard against unwanted pregnancies. It takes two to tango. What about men and their role in creating unwanted pregnancies? Why do you put the onus on women?
Giving female AND male teens and older children access to realistic information about sex, contraceptives and other ways to prevent pregnancies, has proven in study after study to decrease the need for abortions.
5
An excellent reframing of the debate.
I would include the morality of humanity learning to control human population in ways that are not an infringement of individual human rights. Part of that is recognizing that we were at risk of over-population, and legal birth control and abortion were the ways we changed that trajectory. Giving women access to reproductive health care and access to education also promote economic well-being, not just of families, but for nations. It is morally imperative to continue that trend for the well being not just of women's families, but for the whole planet.
Finally, just as women should have a right to consent to parenthood, perhaps we need to give men that right too; and let them opt out of fatherhood responsibilities before a birth if they so wish. No child support, but also, no visitation or contact.
10
One side of a many-sided complex issue presented calmly, logically, succinctly, even-handedly. I’m not sure I agree with all of it. But thank you.
12
"Abortion is first and foremost a medical service or procedure, not an individual action...."
This phrase tells you everything you need to know. The author is using sophistry to strip away the moral consequences of the decision to have or perform an abortion. Abortion is by definition ending the life of a human fetus. Notice, I have not used the term "baby," intentionally avoiding the emotions associated with the term, but we cannot honestly avoid the fact that every abortion kills a human fetus. Yes, you are terminating a pregnancy, but in the process you are also killing a living organism. The fetus is not an organ of the mother, since the fetus has its own DNA signature and after a few weeks its own organs. You may want to argue that the life of a fetus should not be valued the same as a that of a human being who has been born, but you must make that argument and not avoid it by pretending that you are not killing the fetus. You may want to make the argument that any moral right to life that may be attributed to a fetus is trumped by the mother's right to control her own body, but you must make that argument, and not pretend that the mother's freedom to choose is the only moral question. The attempt to suggest that no individual moral responsibility exists with regard to the life of the fetus is an implicit admission by those making the suggestion that they are not confident in defending the moral implications of such a decision.
102
War also involves killing, yet most, and I would say especially a certain type of anti-abortion activist, would agree that there are times when war is justified. World War 2 is an example. War, in the "best case", protects our beliefs, freedoms and rights, yet far less noble ideas such as access to resources like oil are often cited as justification for the killing, not only of enemy combatants, but "innocent" women and children as well.
Anti-abortionists hide behind the fetus, so to speak, claiming its life is what they're defending. What they don't want to discuss or debate is their attitudes about the role of women in society. It's not just about the "mother's right to control her body" (strategic use of the term "mother", by the way!); it's about a woman's ability to fully function in modern society, with full equality. THAT is the debate: does women's full equality take precedence over the life of the fetus. Were anti-abortionists interested in discussing this issue, we'd be hearing more about paid child leave for both men and women, etc., alternatives to abortion that acknowledge the restrictions that "traditional" notions of childbirth and child rearing place on a woman's ability to pursue a career.
98
But see, you say the abortion ends "the life of a human fetus", which is where many people disagree! The fact the fetus's DNA is unique from the mother's is not enough to convince many people that it is a separate living entity. An easy counter point is that the fetus cannot survive without the mother, so it is clearly not a separate living being. Another counterpoint is that it is absurd to call a frozen embryo at a fertility clinic "alive", though it has its own DNA and could grow into a separate being if implanted. Moreover, a 6 week old fetus is different than an 8 month old fetus, which is different than a newborn baby. But, to your point, a fetus is clearly not completely indistinct from the mother, like a gallbladder or appendix. There's obviously something there that is different and unique.
I think the whole point of the sort of argument laid out in this column is to avoid debating "what is life." We will never agree as a society on one common definition of where life begins because it is far too complex and subjective an issue.
22
I am so tired of men telling women what to do with their bodies. You disrespect us, you withhold our birth control, you assault us, you value some cells growing more than you value us. As someone who suffered through infertility, I am here to tell you that just because the egg fertilized, it doesn't mean you actually have a baby. Even more importantly, it doesn't mean you have a healthy baby. In my ideal world, kids would understand their own sexuality well enough to explore it with a person they truly care about. When that time comes, they would have access to birth control, and understand how to use it, so that their pregnancies would be planned. When they discover through their 18th week ultrasound that the baby they longed for is growing with its lungs outside of its closed chest (my friend) or with no brain (my friend) or in some other desperate circumstance, they would have the ability to choose to terminate the pregnancy, because how horrific to know that your baby will never take a breath, and yet have to carry it for FIVE MORE MONTHS after the worst day of your life. It might take them until the pregnancy is 20 or 21 weeks along to have the procedure because WOULDN'T YOU WANT TO BE SURE? So yes, I appreciate this author's argument and think that perhaps by looking at it from a different point of view we, as a society might be able to find a way to live with one another, even though we hold as vastly different views as yours and mine.
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I applaud your willingness to try to impose some sort of reasonable framework for debate on an issue that is perhaps the most divisive in the nation. But I think you are assuming (wishing? hoping?) that anti-abortion advocates have some incentive to be reasonable, and to view the issue through an unemotional, logical lens. Not likely.
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The pro life movement has been trying to inject science into the argument for a long time. Isn't that logical?
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There may be many anti-abortion advocates that are unwilling to have a reasonable debate about this issue. I'm sure that's the case for many topics that people are passionate about. Your dismissal of a huge portion of the country with one sweeping statement, however, does not support the reasonable framework you endorse.
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"I think you are assuming (wishing? hoping?) that anti-abortion advocates have some incentive to be reasonable, and to view the issue through an unemotional, logical lens."
EXACTLY. For far too many people, the question about whether a government should be allowed to permit/regulate abortions, gay marriages, etc., quickly invokes the "word of 'God' ". Rather than get involved in a discussion about the existence of "God" (especially a "male", and in other ways biological one -- or about any credible evidence in support of that eons-old hypothesis) let's just recognize that genetic coding for intelligent/rational behavior is apparently not present in all members of our species.
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i personally am entirely pro-choice because I do not value the fetus as a human being. However, I do not understand how the issue can be discussed without putting the question of the value of the fetus front and center. Imagine a pro-slavery person suggesting that we discuss the pros and cons of certain laws regarding the treatment of slaves, while putting to the side the contentious question of whether the slaves have value as human beings. We would all recognize this as a morally blind attempt to evade the fundamental issue. For a person who values the fetus as a human being, this article would similarly seem to be an evasion of the real issue. It claims to present a way out of a controversy, but it actually just begs the question.
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Stephen says, " Imagine a pro-slavery person suggesting that we discuss the pros and cons of certain laws regarding the treatment of slaves, while putting to the side the contentious question of whether the slaves have value as human beings."
Which gets to the real moral conundrum of fetus-first arguments; it places priority on the fetus and ignores the value of the woman as a human being, making her no better off than the slaves stripped of the right to make their own decisions about their lives.
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These arguments don't have to ignore the value of the woman as a human being. If it is a question of a human life vs a few months of inconvenience for someone who was typically instrumental in creating the dilemma in the first place, it's easy to see how one could argure that this isn't an impossible question.
2
A few months of inconvenience?
Says someone who cannot get pregnant. I'll quote from the article: "There is a lot packed into that statistic, but we often forget that pregnancy and childbirth pose health risks, which vary for women depending on their age, health status, projected need for a cesarean section, number of previous pregnancies and the spacing between them, and so on."
It can take up to two years to fully recover from pregnancy; and it is still, for some women, deadly.
Raising a child, too, is not a 'few months of inconvenience.' Doing so while working full time and shouldering the majority of the burden of household chores and management, including working out complex child-care arrangements is also inconvenient.
Maybe you should put your efforts into inconveniencing men to do more household chores and child care and less sexual harassing instead of forcing women to go through pregnancies they don't want.
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