It would be nice to have a pro life point of view article for a change of pace. Of course, the person proposing this would have to be strong because the criticisms would be fierce. There are those who could very well debate the importance of pro life and the protection of the unborn. I think there are those folks who would appreciate hearing the reasons why pro life is relevant today in our society. They could speak of the changes of the pro life cause and the reasons behind this new resurgence in society. Why not give it a chance and see the results. It could be a very interesting discussion.
21
Pro-abortionists, especially those who came of age during the 60s, like to resort to tropes like this. "Christians don't care about the aborted." (they do). "Zygotes aren't human." (they are, and that's the central and most difficult component of the debate). And so forth.
They don't like to point out that the modern abortion movement has its roots in eugenics, in the Progressive era (not to be confused with modern Progressives). Black people were reproducing more than white people, so people like Margaret Sanger (per her autobiography) decided that the best way to proceed was to propagate the easy availability of abortion. Planned Parenthood has changed a lot since then, but there's always that little kernel of evil in the debate.
“As an advocate of birth control I wish… to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit,’ admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation.
“On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”
– Margaret Sanger. “The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda.” Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5
15
Irving has written beautifully in support of choice. And that is what scares me here when I make the mistake of reading what my fellow denizens have to say. Amazing that in a country like this one---with denizens who scream about their right to choose to drive any car they want, drink as much soda as they wish, eat as much dead animal muscle and fat as they desire, carry as many firearms as they believe necessary---a medical procedure to terminate a pregnancy is now where some feel, suddenly, it's okay to impede freedom of choice. If this is the case, then I want to my right to choose back! I want to be able to itemize where and to whom my tax dollars go, every last freaking cent that I pay. I want none of my taxes to pay for anything military-related. I want my taxes to go to relief for tired and poor and huddled masses. I want my taxes to buy blankets and toothbrushes for those children being held in concentration camps at our southern border. I want not one cent of my taxes to support any country that has, at its helm, anyone I know is a dictator. I want my taxes to pay for social welfare programs and free college to anyone who wants it, despite his or her legal status. I want my taxes to go toward single-payer healthcare. I do not want my taxes to go to corporate largess and I am willing to see how many of these companies flee the country: farewell, you scoundrels. I want my money to help the poor, not the rich. These are my choices. Let's get to work on them. Thank you.
100
I really wish the pro-life types would stop trying to do science stuff. It’s fun watching a kid play dress-up, but not much fun in an adult.
Really, folks, science just ain’t your jam. Look at the goofy stuff about when humen life begins: you can’t even define what “human life,” is, so you end up insisting that the genes are the same as a person. That’s absurd; it’s a fundamental warp of the last century of development biology. Genes don’t even turn on properly if the environment’s upwhacked, for crying out loud.
And then there’s the simple ignorances. Most fertilized ova “abort,” for one reason or another, contraception doesn’t work infallibly, there don’t appear to be any late-term abortions done just for the heck of it, abortion is less risky than delivering, and so on. I soecially like the guy who claimed that in citro labs somehow “prove,” that a fertilized egg is human, as though those labs didn’t heavily cull their products before implant. Yet the same old zombie lies get repeated again and again. Very loudly.
Of course I get why. If you just came out and said what the Pope said—it’s a matter of religious belief, which sees this unprovable “soul,” thingy as real—you’re crash headlong into the Constitution.
So kids, stop it already. It just makes you look like idiots.
49
Thank you, Mr. Irving, for pointing out the truth that much of the anti-abortion sentiment is primarily about punishing the woman. When I was in college just before Roe v. Wade, there was a common expression, "And then she got herself pregnant." -- Just like that! All by herself! Clearly, the slut must live with her shame--and be punished with the sole care of a child.
68
This article is spot on about what the pro lifers refuse to think about. There are millions of women in this country who had to face these life altering choices. Because without a choice many thousands and thousands of women will face a live of never ending poverty and struggle.
38
There should be a lot more open dialogue on this issue focused on those most affect, the young women and young men responsible and parents.
4
@Mike, fertility clinics dispose of fertilized eggs often, as more are produced than implanted in the mother’s uterus.
Is that violence against the unborn? Would you feel the same and fight to protect those fertilized eggs?
If not destroyed, they remain frozen - forever presumably. Is that humane? Should women be forced to provide a womb to these fertilized eggs so that they will no longer be denied birth?
35
I saw the fatal effects of criminal abortions first hand in New York City and Connecticut. Would that those men engaged in passing laws to criminalize a woman's right to a medical procedure have had a similar opportunity. They, of course, would not be able to subject themselves to those procedures so they would a better picture of what they desire to inflict on unfortunate women.
20
All pro lifers who have not yet sought to adopt a medically fragile, disabled, older, or emotionally disturbed child are hypocrites. I am currently raising a much wanted child who is severely autistic. We love him with all our hearts. But to force such a journey on a family with limited resources, or to tell them to just put the child up for adoption, knowing that those children may never find homes, is the utmost of cruelties. All pro lifers must first ensure that the children who are born in this world have adequate resources and care and loving families.
64
Why is it that the most “pro-life” groups are patriarchal institutions and people? The Catholic Church and the evangelical religions are blatantly patriarchal.
They also support “pro-life” politicians who vote against programs to feed, cloth, and shelter children. The hypocrisy is
is shameful and transparent.
63
Once again, men weigh in on an issue that belongs to women. I appreciate the support from Irving and I loved the book, Cider House Rules, I have a dog-eared copy on my shelf. What I resent is how this issue is driven by men, formed by men and largely managed by men, another way of men having power over women.
I have had friends and others tell me, men have a place in this conversation and I agree. I think that place is before intercourse, not after. If you are considering have sexual intercourse with a woman, take the time to explore where she stands on abortion. If it conflicts with your own value system, don't have sex, or take all precautions necessary to reduce pregnancy.
I believe men don't get a say after the fact. Once a woman discovers she is pregnant, the decision is between her and her doctor. Together they can review the options and choose the one that will best support her life and capability.
Abortion can be a discussion among other options, however once the decision is made, it's important for women to have safe legal affordable alternatives.
I do applaud Irving for reminding us that men in the medical profession have always been afraid of women's power and therefore sought to wrestle it from midwives/ women healers.
I never trust a man who stands between a women’s legs and tells her what she should and should not do with her body, that's not his place, rather stand beside her, support her decisions and trust her to know what's best - I do.
44
People of a certain age all remember a popular movie set before abortion in time call Dirty Dancing. It seems to me too many of these people have forgotten one of the side stories in that movie of a young woman that obtained an illegal abortion and almost died. Because that was the reality 50 years ago, just because you make something illegal doesn’t mean you eliminate it, you just drive it underground.
37
@John Over 600,000 babies are aborted each year, a much greater loss than that of a few woman who make foolish choices. The baby has no say.
6
John Irving is absolutely correct -- pro-life is just a marketing term. (A good one I might add.) Today we see pro-life people silent or insensitive to the plight of children in U.S. internment camps. They express little or no concern about the welfare of these young children and babies who were sacred when they were in the womb, but now are "illegal."
The Catholic Church proclaims the sacredness of the unborn child, but the Church-run homes in Ireland which housed unmarried pregnant women and their babies for most of the 20th century have committed sins far greater than an unwanted pregnancy. Just one of those homes was responsible for the deaths of 800 babies and toddlers due to neglect and malnourishment. A mass grave containing the remains of 796 of these babies and young children was found in an underground sewage structure on the grounds of the home. This is just one home! This is how the Catholic Church treated young women whose only crime was to be unmarried and pregnant. These young mothers were abused, and their beautiful children discarded like trash. The institution responsible for these sins and abuse of children has no moral right to speak on unwanted pregnancies.
It is mostly the woman who has to bear the loss, shame and pain along with the weight of judgment and humiliation of having strangers interfere in her most private personal decision. Perhaps those judging, and legislating should take a look in the mirror before casting stones and votes!
52
The "pro-life" in a few words:
Love the fetus, hate the child.
Love the fetus then kid, you're on your own.
"Blessed be the fruit." "May the Lord open."
18
One of the many problems with the anti-abortion movement and their - ahem - "questionable" relationship with the party of limited government is their zealotry concerning when life begins. Instead of leaving this to the sincere beliefs of women with unwanted pregancies, they deem themselves entitled to decide for everyone.
Zealots like Rick Santorum call them children, even when they are mere embryos. Curiously, they don't want to punish those who seek abortions for themselves, and yet they often characterize abortion as murder. This gives away the game they play. They won't punish the women who seek abortions because that would be political suicide for their movement.
John Irving suggests that he is happy to let anti-abortion proponents choose for themselves. I agree. Likewise, they should let pro-choice advocates choose.
15
I see from the many comments that one of the main points of the article was glossed over by most of you. It's a woman's right to choose. Not the church, not the state, not the country, not the AMA, not anyone else male or female. The woman who is pregnant.
44
I have never read newspaper commentary on abortion with which I agree more. Irving's history is accurate, but he should have mentioned that it wasn't just MDs who wanted to criminalize abortion. The Roman Catholic church had already decided abortion was murder, though much, much later than most would suspect. Protestant Americans were afraid we would be overrun with Catholic babies. I am sure that was a factor in Maine.
This piece is brilliant. Share it. If you have friends who are anti-choice, they need to read it.
23
Mr. Irving has done his homework on Evangelicals and his First Amendment points are salient. Evangelicals have been wolves in sheeps clothing from the start; dressing as hippies and out rounding up those disillusioned by the 1960s counter culture.
They have always been regressive. The desired goal is to destroy feminism, eliminate the personal and economic freedom of women, and subjugate women to maintain male dominance. Do not forget that women were not people, but chattel property right up to the early 1900's. This is the regressive state to which they seek to return.
27
Irving offers no evidence to support his outrageous claim that pro-life advocates do not care about women and children. Self-serving attempts to demonize his opponents does not accrue any legitimacy to his own views, regardless of how he portrays his fictional characters.
6
It's really not necessary for Irving to supply such evidence. It is obvious, and available to anyone who can read.
56
“The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception - fertilization.
At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individual zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo Sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop.
The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not nature.
As physicians dedicated to both scientific truth and to the Hippocratic tradition, the college values all human life equally from the moment of conception (fertilization) until natural death.
Consistent with its mission to ‘enable all children to reach their optimal physical and emotional health and well-being’, the college therefore opposes active measures that would prematurely end the life of any child at any stage of development from conception to natural death”.
- American College of Pediatricians, March, 2017
4
The American Academy of Pediatrics is the actual accredited organization for medical practitioners in the field. The so-called "American College of Pediatricians" is a fringe hate group that pushes fake anti-woman and anti-LGBT junk science.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/american-college-pediatricians
63
And what, one might wonder, is the American College of Pediatricians? Is in any way related to the widely known and respected 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics?
Or is it a 500-member group of socially conservative pediatricians and other healthcare professionals, whose primary agenda is to advocacy against the right of gay people to adopt children, and in favor of conversion therapy?
Not exactly a reputable source!
49
Absolutely amazing deception!!! This is a conservative organization created in 2002 by arch conservative pediatricians with maybe 60-200 members, created for the sole purpose to promote arch conservative (reactionary really) causes.
Completely unrelated to the American Academy of Pediatrics created in the 1930’s, and has 64k members.
Very ugly deception! Shame.
45
It's been some time but it's nice to read your words again, even in this format. "Cider House Rules" has always been a favorite novel of mine and you, one of my favorite authors. I doubt though, no matter how masterfully crafted or eloquently put, that your words will reach anyone who believes otherwise. Even the NYT employ writers who believe that legalized abortion is the cornerstone of the failing of this nation, that this "sin" is why God has forsaken us. This is just to note that this narrative is a common one and given credibility by all factions of our society.
I do not know if and how religious you are, but I do know the compassion that you feel for people through the books you have written. Life is messy and defies black and white characterizations, no matter how fervently we wish to portray it as such. The complexity of abortion seems to defy this truth as there are many who hinge their whole civic life on seeing God's will be done (since God is a Republican). They do not see the hypocrisy of war, the death penalty, nuclear weapons, caging children at the border, ...
Lately I've been seeking a new tact in an attempt to help "pro-lifers" understand a different perspective. I say "Parenting is an extremely difficult and demanding job and, if you know that you can't do that job, can the government force you to do it?" I know I didn't change anybody's mind with it but it did give them pause as it made it about government and work and less about morality.
15
As if to underscore the fact that the "pro-life" crowd does not care for life after birth there are two articles in today's Times worth reading. One about re-using WWII concentration (euphemistically referred to as internment) camps to house immigrant children and one about the unsanitary conditions in which we "house" these children.
Can we all spell dysentery?
19
Actually, it's not quite true that no-one is pro-abortion. I read a manifesto on Deep Ecology by the American poet Gary Snyder.
He wants to see a 75% reduction in the human population eventually, and he sees abortion as one way to achieve that (he also advocates sterilisation and voluntary euthanasia).
I don't know about 75%, but certainly a steady reduction in the human population would be of great benefit to future generations.
5
@Ambrose; or even stagnation!
2
The unfounded stereotypes certainly are flying, both in this article and the comments. I'm surprised the Times didn't accompany the piece with a cartoon caricature of a devil-horned "anti-choice" advocate just grinning with evil pleasure at depriving women of their rights. It seems to me that the rank and file pro-life are among the most unfairly misprepresented people in the world. If all you watch is cable news you might be tempted to think they're all male billionaires. In reality, close to half the country opposes abortion, and about half of pro-lifers are women. A lot of them are politically liberal, and support universal health care, birth control and government-funded child care. But they have a problem with killing the fetus. Some of them are simply agnostic, not knowing if killing a fetus is wrong or not, but err on the side of not taking a life when it's questionable. The pro-choice movement clearly has no counter-argument to these people and so purposely smears them as all rich men who want to dominate women, a caricature which is much easier to fight against. It's wrong to mischaracterize half the country and drum up hatred against them, as this piece is doing. Why not do the braver thing and admit that abortion is a morally fraught issue that people struggle with, and on which good reasonable people can disagree?
5
You are correct; it is entirely because rational people can disagree, that one group of haters should not impose their supposed religious views on EVERYONE, through big government, no less.
One perspective is not more corrext than the other. That’s the issue; not that many us struggle with the concept.
12
@Samuel Russell
Morals refer to an individual's own principles regarding right and wrong and so even if “fraught” the decision comes down to the individual woman and her conscience. Disagree but don’t dictate.
10
@Samuel Russell "In reality, close to half the country opposes abortion"; no one forces them to get an abortion. If you don't want one, don't get one. You have no right to impose your choice and beliefs on others.
20
I'm continually enraged by the sanctimony and dishonesty of the anti-abortion movement and these comments just set me off. When life begins is a question for philosophers and theologians; to demand that the federal government adopt a particular religious definition is to beat the First Amendment to dust.
Anti-abortion crusaders like to cloak themselves in civil rights language, but the broader context of their actions always give them away. People who are opposed to abortion are almost always the same people who believe women are inferior and should be married and subservient to their husbands. And they are almost always the same people who would rather have another tax cut for the super-rich than spend a farthing to help an impoverished child.
Anti-abortion crusaders try so hard to convince themselves that they're just like the abolitionists of 150 years ago, but they're just the opposite -- they want to enslave women by forcing them to carry unwanted pregnancies -- even the product of rape! -- for nine months and then force them to give birth.
21
Remember Todd Akin? You should.
Akin was the US Congressman and GOP Senatorial candidate who claimed that women who had been victims of "legitimate rape" didn't get pregnant because a woman's body has a way of shutting down these things. (I'm trying to roughly paraphrase how he put it.)
The fact is that about 5% of rapes result in pregnancy, which is identical to the rate for consensual sex. All that matters is that the sperm and the egg meet. A woman's body can't tell if a sex act is consensual or coerced.
And so Todd Akin became a national joke, and he lost.
But he's not alone, and the problem is a whole lot bigger than just him.
The belief that rape doesn't lead to pregnancy is widespread within the pro-life movement--yet another instance of the right creating alternative facts to justify their ideology.
And if Roe v. Wade is overturned and the pro-lifers are ascendant, that lie will become widespread, and it will be used to victimize rape victims yet again.
That is the Big Lie of the pro-life movement, and I issue them a challenge: if your side is so morally superior, why do you have to rely on lies to make your point?
23
The author, while talented, again creates what is called a "false choice" in this article, specifically here - "Pro-life proponents have no qualms about forcing women to go through childbirth — they give women no choice."
Let's start out with this simple assumption - unless you were violently sexually assaulted, you had lots of choices here as to what to do. You could have not had sex with the other person (choice 1). You could have opted for sex with birth control (choice 2). You could have opted to have a sexual encounter that does not result in a risk of pregnancy (choice 3).
There are lots of choices.
What ultimately is the question is this - are their consequences for your choices, or not?
Sadly, our society is becoming a nation where nothing anyone does is their responsibility, upto and including getting pregnant.
I would hate to be in the situation of thinking about something like this. This is a terrible situation for anyone to be in.
But, you did have choices. To say you had no choice is a fallacy and a lie, an deliberate attempt to obfuscate the issue and try to wrap it into a narrative of "choice" over pregnancy termination. But there is never a discussion of what choices you made to get you here.
The simple answer is this - everyone gets nordplant until they sign a document saying they are ready to have children and assume the responsibilities of getting pregnant. Then you can has all the sexual freedom you want, until you are ready for a child.
2
@Jason, The simple answer is THIS - every MALE gets a vasectomy until they sign a document saying they are ready to have children and assume the responsibilities of parenthood. Males cause pregnancy.
46
@Jason; as long as your "choices" have serious consequences for women but "ooops" for men, you are not distributing the responsibilities equally. Hence you don't get the same say in decision making.
22
Ah, the great typewriter rodeo man comes off his high horse to denigrate people he'd never stoop to acknowledge... the many pro-life workers who extend help of all sorts to those in need, and care deeply about the rights of the child and welfare of mothers.
But then, you're just an elderly gent with an ermine coat and buckets of sherry, so what do you know?
5
I love how the 'pro-lifers' seem to think that as long as a baby is born it's job done. Um, where are they for the next 18+ years of the cost of that child's life to its mother (and it's a giant assumption to assume that there is even a father making a contribution once he's done with the insemination).
It is obvious that those who are anti-choice (because that's the real issue here) are all about controlling and punishing women for doing something they don't approve of. When the penalties for men inseminating women (news flash, immaculate conception isn't a thing) come in, then you may start to make pronouncements about what choices women are allowed to make.
As the author states no one is forcing you to have an abortion if you don't want one. Likewise, no one can force you to give up a kidney for your dying relative. Why is the case for bodily autonomy so relative?
16
@Robin
There was a court case a few years back where a mother took her child’s father to court to compel him to donate a kidney to save their child since he was the only perfect match they could locate. The judge ruled against her stating that his right to bodily autonomy was fundamental. I don’t think the anti-choice men have given much thought to what happens if Roe is overturned. None of us will have a right to privacy or bodily autonomy
29
This divide, between common sense pragmatists like Irving and religious anti-abortionists will not be solved any time soon. The Republican Party uses this issue as a tool to win elections, even by autocratic populists such as our current President.
It is impossible to tell a religious person that government should be out of the business of opining about religious matters. For this reason, the abortion issue should be taken away from the Republican Party. Rather than waste tens of billions on elections hoping to result in pro or anti abortion judges appointed to the Supreme Court, there could be great savings if instead, the fight was lost and red states could hold onto their religious beliefs regarding abortion.
The savings could be applied be a private or government run run program that would allow pregnant females to travel with a loved one to states where abortion is legal. This would end the Republican Party's advantage with the religious right. The US could then avoid the pitfalls that come with autocratic nationalists. Maybe the US could even address climate change, because a percentage of Republican anti-abortionist voters actually believe climate change is real but still vote Republican because the lord wants them to fight against abortion.
4
I've read a few responses to this article that have included the phrase "coastal elites." I guess the conventional wisdom among some pro-life supporters is that only coastal elites are pro-choice. Tell that to the furious pro-choice supporters in Missouri who are fighting to keep their last remaining Planned Parenthood facility open. Pro-choice supporters are not confined to the coasts. They are everywhere. They could be your neighbors.
21
This piece hits the nail on the head. I’ve said these same things to people; that the pro-lifers aren’t really pro-life, they’re just pro-fetus. They don’t care about the babies once they’re born and they certainly don’t are about women. Young women are the ones who need to speak up and protect their reproductive rights.
14
I've always been kind of torn on this issue. Once the sperm and egg hit it off, do you have life exactly then ? If not then, when ? Some people say it's just a 'collection of cells'. OK, true enough. But I can tell you one thing for certain. If that 'collection of cells' goes undisturbed and its mother (host, if you prefer) remains healthy, in ~9 months you're gonna see a small human emerge. So, no two ways about it, you abort that 'collection' of cells for whatever reason, you are ending a human life. Either you can live with that, or you can't.
1
Red herring number 3 Abortion opponents are trying to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of us.
“I must remind the Roman Catholic Church of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ In other words, we are free to practice the religion of our choice, and we are protected from having someone else’s religion practiced on us. Freedom of religion in the United States also means freedom from religion.”
This argument is built on a false premise, that all opposition to abortion is based on religious belief. There are many pro-life atheists that would take issue with that assumption. Second, it conveniently invalidates any argument on a moral issue from anyone who professes a religious belief. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is opposed to abortion. The bishops are also opposed to the death penalty and support a “preferential option for the poor.” I don’t hear liberals complain that the bishops are imposing their religious beliefs on the rest of us with regard to capital punishment and the war on poverty. In the 1920’s the Catholic Church in the U.S. also opposed forced sterilization laws that eugenicists like Margert Sanger were advocating. Was the Church’s moral stance invalid? Abolitionists opposed slavery on religious grounds. Did that mean that slavery could not be debated as a moral issue? A neat way to sidestep the debate.
3
In contrast to Mr Irving's assertion, I am pro-abortion, and have been for many years, ever since I learned that, unlike my own case, women had no rights to make the decision about ending their pregnancies. This simply struck me as unfair, and, as far as I could imagine myself in such a quandary, I resented the officiousness of these decisions by politicians with, usually, nothing at stake. I think the movement to protect women's rights to their own decisions in this area should simply tell legislators and religious busybodies, "It's none of your blasted business."
10
I have always wondered why the Pro-Choice people always refer to the anti-abortion group as pro-life. Mr. Irving is correct. It's Pro-Choice and Anti-Choice. End of discussion!
21
For the GOP, "all life is precious", as long as it doesn't require any time, money, or effort.
20
It is a choice - that's all it is. No one can make that choice for her and no one should take it away. We don't have the right to force a woman to bear a child and we don't have the right to deny her a child if she wants one and can bear one. That's it.
14
Excluding pregnancy that happens due to rape I do not see how the view can be that the woman was getting "trapped" as if she had no choice in the matter. So many options to avoid becoming pregnant if choosing to engage in intercourse yet somehow because the woman and man involved made the choice to not use prevention it then should be ok to kill an unwanted child. "Oops, our mistake. We just wanted to have sex and even though we knew what the potential outcome is we decided to go without protection and now we want to have another choice and that is to take the life of the unborn".
Many against abortion struggle with this laissez faire attitude towards the unborn who apparently are the only ones without a say as to whether or not they will have the chance to be born.
1
Contrary to Mr. Irving's words, every person with integrity, intelligence, sincerity, and sanity speaks.
Abortion is not only a crime of ultimate cruelty against innocent children in the womb, it is obviously so.
2
My uterus, my rules.
27
The same old same old: you don’t like slavery, don’t own one. Doesn’t sound so great when you apply Irving’s logic to another serious moral issue.
These pro-violence arguments against the unborn are obscene.
2
Pro-forced-birth arguments invoking "slavery" are unfounded, since forced birth is gestational slavery. The UN recognizes gestational slavery as torture.
21
@mike
Forced gestation is slavery.
14
@goatini
Been reading a lot of your comments and rebuttals. Thanks for fighting the good fight or punningly- writing the good fight.
7
That from the author who abandoned the Ellen Jamesians. I still agree with him.
“Our founding fathers got this right; the choice to have an abortion or a child belonged to the woman.“
Notice how Scalian Originalists have deliberately dropped the ball on this one?
12
I am pro choice so don’t lecture me. This article, however presents faulty history and faulty argument. Their have been many Christian based groups established to help unwed mothers and their children throughout the years. An honest article would mention that. Nothing is perfect but don’t imagine for a minute that the effort was not made. People see what they want to see.
Furthermore, religions of all sorts recommend against, for example murder and stealing. We have laws against those also. Is that confounding religion and and freedom from religion in our government? The pope is against murder and stealing also. When we have laws against them, are we confounding religion and government?
4
Apparently somebody needs to lecture you: Irving’s point is that these laws and actions and beliefs are part of the systematic repression of women.
He’s right.
19
@JO Good job!
1
Love the photo. The pro life movement has come a long way since 1972. We now have the March for Life every January which started in 1974 which was a year after roe v Wade was enacted. It has grown larger each and every year which is so encouraging. More young people participate and many women also take part. It is not just a man's concern anymore.
There have been many pro life groups formed and their strength in numbers have resulted in lawmakers passing more strict abortion bills placing limits as to when women may obtain one. The Hyde Amendment was a major victory for pro lifers and hopefully will stay in place. Tax payers do not want to pay for a service that they strongly oppose. We can thank the Republicans for this and other pro life bills that are now in place. It is reassuring to know that someone is finally looking out for the lives of the unborn.
2
@KMW
As the author said, “they never did care about women”
Your comment proves it.
13
The woman’s life is not in jeopardy. The child’s is. When their is actually a medical choice to be made, the laws allow for the mothers life to take precedence.
Thank you so much, John Irving, for this wonderful opinion. You have stated so eloquently the case for children being born to mothers who eagerly await their arrivals. Your argument for "choice" was perfectly stated. Of course, no one is forcing any person who have an abortion who has a moral objection, so why must they desire to change the law to force other persons into giving birth.
14
There is nothing, nothing ISIS does or the Nazis ever did that is as cruel as aborting a baby moments before it is born.
2
@TravelingProfessor
Luckily, this doesn’t happen in the US.
30
@TravelingProfessor; then don't get one.
16
@TravelingProfessor
Please do some more reading up on this. What you’re saying isn’t true.
30
Contrary to Mr. Irving’s thoughts, the pro-life movement does care for both the unborn child and the mother.
One of the things his kind of thinking reflects is the titanic individualism found in western culture. As one of our fiercest pro-choice politicians has suggested - it takes a village to raise a child.
There are hundreds of pregnancy centers and churches in America that are walking with women through the challenges of both pregnancy and the birth of their unplanned child. And they provide decent, confidential and loving support - despite the outrageous lies that come out of Planned Parenthood.
I believe Americans do believe life is valuable - why else are we so outraged by the warehousing, neglect and abuse we are seeing of the child migrants being held in deplorable conditions in Clint Texas? Those children deserve safety, security and love. And I would argue so do the children who are waiting that entry journey through the birth canal.
I am sick and tired of coastal elites making distant proclamations that evangelicals care nothing for the child post-birth. Get out of your upper west side apartments and travel the world. Go to the most desperate and neglected parts of our globe and you will find the church already there caring for and loving the children that others have rejected.
Abortion is a hard choice - but it isn’t the only choice. America can love those children and their mothers, if she chooses to.
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@Santosh Ninan I've been all over the world, and while many religious groups attempt to help as you describe, the majority of them support political groups and policies that hurt children and women in many, many ways.
Also, enshrining religious beliefs in the law of the land is counter to the tenets this country was founded for.
Both of those are what is being called out in the article, specifically pointing to the American evangelical/republican axis, which consistently pushes policies detrimental to the living.
508
@Santosh Ninan "Contrary to Mr. Irving’s thoughts, the pro-life movement does care for both the unborn child and the mother."
Really? Is that why so many pro-lifers stand outside Planned Parenthood clinics yelling at women who go inside - even if they aren't actually there for an abortion?
And hey, why stop just with the unborn child? Where are all the pro-lifers marching against the abhorrent conditions in the camps where migrant children are being held? Where are all the pro-lifers demanding action to stop the people in Flint from drinking lead-tainted water? Where are all the pro-lifers insisting we take steps to tackle climate change, which is going to kill a LOT of children - and adults - who HAVE been born?
I could go on, but you get my point. There may well be individuals who back it up - which doesn't undo the fact that they're trying to dictate how other women, whom they've never even met, can live their lives - but as a whole, you're not doing a thing to translate any of the outrage you say you feel into action.
The Gospels say, "So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." If you actually are outraged, but you don't do anything about it, you're as complicit as someone who just doesn't care.
The fact is, "pro-life" is a master stroke of marketing, but as a descriptor of the actual movement, it's bogus. Pro-lifers care about the kid up until it's born - after that, you're on your own. If you want us to stop saying it, stop giving us a reason.
732
@Santosh Ninan Those pregnancy centers are great to support women...not sure how well they support them and their children after birth - and we know sadly how well the Catholic church has valued children...
The whole point here is that they are a choice. They are not forced on anyone by the government. If the government forces them to serve every pregnant woman because the government has outlawed abortion (also a choice) then the government will have to provide the funding for their support...and for the children resulting. It is estimated by the USDA to cost between $233,000 and $280,000 to raise a child through age 17 in the US today. So about $1200 a month subsidy would be appropriate for every forced birth, indexed to inflation, of course. You okay with that? It addresses the reality of the situation, which many choose to ignore while attempting to control the lives of people they don't even know.
369
It is always a bad idea to ascribe bad motivations to people whose public positions vary from one’s own.
Maggie Sanger also believed, as did many people at the time, that the “science” of eugenics was a good thing. And women who get abortions because of the fetus’ sex, or possibility of non-life threatening disability, or other reasons of convenience, continue in this vein.
Many people who oppose abortion do so as an ethical decision without reference to religious doctrine. Is something wrong because the Pope says it’s wrong? Or does the Pope say it’s wrong because it is the intentional taking of a human life, which is patently wrong?
To allege that pro-life people are simply misogynistic sheds heat, but no light, on the issue. It is no more than a barbaric yawp and is part and parcel of the inability of our society to think critically and include nuance in the discussion.
Get serious.
3
John Irving’s opinion piece was fascinating. I had not known that midwives had practiced both birth and abortion, nor that this began to change when male doctors wanted in. I had attended a Presbyterian Church in the 1960s, and remembered we’d repeated The Apostles’ Creed weekly. In it was a phrase about Jesus’s coming to sit at the right hand of God the father almighty from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” I’d long left organized religion before I’d realized I’d never known what “quick” meant. That was easy enough to find out and it seemed clear to me that The Apostles Creed was saying that for a soul to be judged it had to be both quick and dead. If not both, the Creed was saying, there was no soul to judge. For how many centuries had people stated once a week that the soul entered the the fetus upon quickening? I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed: for the past few decades, the word “quick” seems to have disappeared from the Apostles’ Creed replaced by a far less specific word. Irving’s editorial placed quickening at around 5 months. Why all the fuss and bother when not only had the Pilgrim’s respected a woman’s right to choose through almost two trimesters, but so had every other Christian religion, and had done so for centuries? It just shows the disrespect, cruelty, and ignorance of the modern “right to life” movement. It is about the diminution and control of women. It is meaningless and inaccurate even by their own standards.
5
Red herring 1 Abortion used to be legal.
“Prior to the 1840s, abortion was widespread and not illegal in our country. In the time of the Puritans, America’s deeply religious founding fathers, abortion was allowed until the fetus was “quick” — when the woman could feel the fetus move.”
The Puritans also hanged witches and bled patients to cure disease. Science has progressed. We know a lot more about fetal development since Puritan times.
Red Herring 2, Pro-lifers are antiwomen conservatives who don’t really care about babies or their mothers.
Spare me the you-don’t-really-care-about-mothers-and-their-babies sermon. This is another attempt to sidestep the issue by making a false assumption that pro-life means anti-poor. A fetus is a human being. It’s right to survive doesn’t depend on Ronald Reagan’s opinion of welfare. This pro-choice argument, however, does lay bare an underlying I’d-rather-abort-them-than-support-them motive. “Who’s going to care for (and pay for) all these unwanted kids, many of whom are born to single mothers and will grow up poor and prone to crime? Better to get rid of them before the problem becomes bigger.” This is an eerily similar argument used in the 1920’s in favor of forced sterilization for mental incompetents.
What happens to a woman after an abortion? Does Planned Parenthood offer support? I’ve known women who have had abortions. Some regret it bitterly. I have yet to meet a woman who chose not to have an abortion and who regretted it.
3
@Joe Borini Most women don't regret their abortions. I have met women who have regretted being coerced into giving birth, absolutely.
13
@Joe Borini
Joe, who will never be pregnant, has an awful lot of opinions about people who can get pregnant.
12
Thank you!
I would simply like to add, that the same people who oppose abortion - a restriction which has now rapidly evolved to included any circumstances including rape, incest, or the health of the mother - are the same people who do everything in their power to see that the 2,500,000 children currently living on the streets in this country, remain cold, starving, and homeless.
Their actions clearly demonstrate how "precious" life really is to them. I.e. It's only "precious" as long as it doesn't require any time, money, or effort. As soon as it does, it's suddenly no longer "precious" in any way, shape, or form.
No wonder these same people have no problem putting innocent children into concentration camps, after deporting their parents, so that they can be mentally and physically abused on the tax payers dime.
The depth of these people's hypocrisy is only matched by the depth of their cruelty. Their cruelty to innocent children.
10
The women who by law won’t be allowed to have abortions in America are poor neglected minorities that are not white and so they will bear the brunt of the law and the out come: garbage can-newborns or abused kids. Will the state support these hapless babes. No way.
White women, by contrast, will remain unaffected by this unholy anti-abortion craze. They will have their abortions at Will: here in secret or else abroad. The law won’t touch them. Their lives will go on smoothly .
Anti-abortion laws are thus foolish for they only ruin the lives of the very social groups anti-abortionist despise.. Why don’t these crazies realize what Europeans have long known?.
Abortion is here to stay either criminalized or dangerously home done on the kitchen table. Wisely
abortion is now legal in Europe as a practical Reality. And that reality should also be accepted in America
9
@Grandma "Europe" doesn't have the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights.
Killing innocent preborn humans is beyond cruel, and this pop writer's hackneyed knowledge of history and solipsistic reference to his own fiction cannot conceal the human rights issue of our time.
4
@Tourbillon
Spot on! Thank you for your comment.
1
@Tourbillon, there is no such thing as "preborn human". You are not a "predead human". And zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses are not "innocent" as they completely lack the capacity to be so. A product of conception, that is the cause of a compromised pregnancy that injures or kills an innocent pregnant woman, is not "guilty".
10
Re: '...The Long, Cruel History of the Anti-Abortion Crusade
Abortion opponents don’t care what happens to an unwanted child, and they’ve never cared about the mother..."
'Forced Birthers', I.S.I.S. and other violence prone Abrahamic Monotheist religious_beliefs are the surest way to make this voter, support the opposition!
If you wouldn't receive an abortion, fine!
If you intend to enforce that same, (personal), prohibition against MY life, you need 'pocket$, so deep', (civil court-wise), that R.M.S. Titanic would seem...resurfaced, in comparison!
3
A woman who is forced to have a baby she didn’t want is unlikely to be a good mother. You read about these babes drown beaten and even murdered. You also read about how no one else wants to take care of them and how they grow up to shoot guns and be angry criminals. Women who don’t want to make babies need abortion rights: better for her and better for the baby she dumped in the garbage.
7
@Grandma So, some humans aren't human enough to possess human rights?
@BNuckols, evidently the gestational slavery advocates think innocent women aren't human enough to possess and retain their sacred civil, human and Constitutional rights, once a random sperm penetrates an egg.
11
@goatini Gestation isn't slavery. Nonsense.
The mother created the egg and the environment that caused a new human being to come into existence.
Cause and effect. Biology isn't destiny, but there are consequences.
1
If men got pregnant you could get abortions in gas stations and sports bars. Or wait until the weekend when the local sports team has a "free abortions night" promotion
14
Abortion, as we know it today, is a construct of the modern Democrat Party that has become less interested in issues common to working and middle class Americans and more interested promoting the increasingly progressive, permissive, and promiscuous social issues of the political fringe. Thank you.
5
@Southern Boy Do you really not understand how abortion impacts the working and middle class Americans...the majority of whom are *women?*
13
I take it you think that working and middle-class women care zero about their health care and their fundamental rights.
12
@Southern Boy
Access to abortion disproportionally impacts working and middle class Americans since they require two paychecks to get by and the woman is increasingly the main bread winner. One in four women in this country has an abortion and most already have at least one child that they are caring for this is a solidly middle/working class issue.
9
If it takes a great literary artist to help us see the truth- play on... in our time where our ideals are discarded like yesterday's newspapers, may the DeNiros, Colberts and Irvings join the many scientists to bring honor to the ideals for which our soldiers and sailors fought.
3
Insecure men need laws or religion to control women. Ask the man who is required by law to pay child support payments how he feels about THAT law! No single man that I know of would willingly carry the ball-and-chain of a needy infant 24-7. Having a child can be a wonderful thing, but raising one costs a fortune and countless opportunities. The heroic "Pro-Life" forces romanticize their roles to an absurd degree and are much more "politically correct" than realists among us. So much magical thinking!
14
Excellent John Irving. No person has the right to force another to give birth. The "paying the piper" idea sentences those unwanted kids to a difficult place also.
11
All I can say is that I have nieces and nephews that were adopted at birth. I can't imagine a world without them in it. That is why I can't support abortion; the millions of people who are condemned to die because of a nine month inconvenience. Do we need to support these mother's and babies after birth? Absolutely. One final question? What about the choice of the babies being aborted? Of whom about 50% are women.
1
@Lisa L
So you’ll force a complete stranger to risk her health, life and livelihood and be treated no better than a farm animal, a broodmare, made to birth offspring for others because you have adopted relatives? Adoption is a gift what you are advocating is slavery and theft.
18
At the stage of abortion a fetus doesn't want . It can't even feel pain when the vast majority occur. (Though, by making a termination harder to get the delay will push it closer to that stage of development.) You're transferring your emotions for actual children in your life onto potential children. Emotional egotism like that is what leads people to condemn many unwanted children to be unloved, uncared for and/or destitute. That attitude often changes when a person may need an abortion themselves. I've known several anti-abortion and anti-choice people in that situation. (The two are not synonymous.) That includes my Evangelical daughter. Some chose to carry (like my daughter) while others aborted. The important word here is "chose". Abortion is rarely an easy or casual decision. I know of no one who takes it lightly. Let's not force our emotional drives and convictions into women or the children that may suffer because those women are forced to carry.
12
@Anon, so perfectly stated. The latter-day adoption mills are nothing more than a human trafficking syndicate exploiting innocent women as livestock. It is slavery and theft.
9
The title of this opinion should read:
"The Long, Cruel History of Killing Our Own Kind."
Over 60,000,000 cases of infanticide.
The greatest slaughter in the history of men and women-kind.
It beggars the minds and births of millions.
3
@Lake. woebegoner
Spot on.
The Holocaust of WWII is nothing in comparison.
2
Perhaps the title should be "Countless millions of women died from botched illegal abortions because safe, legal abortion wasn't available"
13
@Roberto
Hi Roberto, I ask you for the statistical proof of your numbers.
3
Making abortion illegal will not stop abortions, it will only make them more dangerous and deadly. Sadly, pro-life so often seems to exclude the life of a pregnant woman. Women will always bear the burden of pregnancy, though they NEVER get pregnant alone.
23
Leaving adoption and state support for parents and children out of it, some more fundamental questions are these: do women have the basic human right to control their own reproduction? If restrictions are imposed on access to abortion because of the religious beliefs of some Americans, is that constitutionally valid? To enforce abortion restrictions, is it acceptable to endanger a woman's physical health, her mental health? Is it constitutional, for a political agenda, to mandate doctors to stick an ultrasound up a woman's vagina more than is medically necessary and provide medically incorrect information--i.e. to lie to their patients? If a woman finds out that her fetus has a defect, should she be forced to carry the pregnancy to term against her will?
14
The most impactful result of the wide spread, affordable availability of the Pill in the late 60s and 70s was that women finished college and graduate school.
Women could finally control not only if they had children, but when. So that they could be prepared and welcome their children in a supportive and well-funded way.
Also, how is it possible to give birth to someone who has more rights than you? That’s not only embarrassing for us as a
culture, but just plain thankless.
21
Having been raised a Catholic, I have always been uncomfortable with abortion, but I have always believed it was a highly personal decision to be made by the woman, hopefully with the concurrence of the father. Irving's historical perspective and logical presentation in support of the right to choose, is both a compelling and a compassionate argument in defense of abortion and a woman's right to make decisions about her own body.
20
Part of the tragedy women face today is birth control. When contraceptives became widely available, young women and girls were sold (and sold HARD!) on the idea of equal rights: boys don't have to endure pregnancy when they have sex, so girls shouldn't, either. I dated both before and after contraception came on the market (and WAS marketed!), and I found the difference embarrassing. Nevertheless, the effort to deny women control over their own bodies is more than embarrassing; it is obscene.
7
"Paying the piper", was and is a terrible and inhumane attack on another person. We have experienced, in the last fifty years, a dramatic change in western society not least the almost total secularization of our society.
For those who have held on to a semblance of the Christian faith, they have succeeded in promoting a god made in their image.
For those Christians, primarily Catholic Christians, who are supported by biological fact of the humanity of the fetus and the teachings of his/her faith,, abortion is an abomination. To put it in its most simple terms, abortion is the killing of an innocent human being.
@Edward Lewis
The pro-choice position 100% supports you living according to your particular beliefs. You have no right to impose those beliefs on those who do not share them.
15
@Edward Lewis; that's what you believe in, so don't get one. You don't get to impose your belief on others.
10
And those Christians should not be forced to have an abortion. They also shouldn’t stop others from having one. We are not a Christian country. No religion is above any other here. Read the constitution.
13
Relying on the scientific knowledge of the 19th century is never a strong basis for an argument, but when the science is against you, it's better to appeal to the authority of ignorance.
4
Didn’t the US have separation of church and state at some point in its history? When did you guys lose it?
Let the religions try to sway the hearts and minds of the people on abortion. That’s basically what religion is for. If they succeed more power to them.
You shouldn’t have the state force people to follow religious law. That is exactly what the state is supposed to protect people from.
The US is in the brink of war with Iran which is, amongst other things, reviled for being an theocracy. And yet many people in the US think it’s ok to try and get the state to enforce their religious views on others. Go figure.
28
@Vizz: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", the first clause of the first amendment to the original US Constitution, is the target of these obsessive-compulsive wannabe operators of other people's bodies. Abortion politics is engineered to abort separation of church and state in the US.
10
@Vizz; yes, also considering almost all anti-choice people have no qualms about bombing other countries and killing the people there, including children. As you pointed out beautifully, the religious right wing in this country is extremely hypocritical.
9
I have a policy solution that will end all unwanted pregnancies and therefore all abortions. At age 12 every mail gets a reversible vasectomy. Then when he is married, has a job and written permission of his wife, then the vasectomy can be reversed and he will be able to have children.
No more abortions will be needed.
20
@Richie by; I rather like that idea of debating about the role males play in this whole discussion. We could also plant a uterus with an "unborn baby" in it inside male's bodies and have them carry to term and get a c-section.
2
Most women who want to end a pregnancy will find a way to do it, either it is safe or not. In the case of those seeking unsafe backally abortion the health care system and the social fabric ends up with someone needing extra care or a dead individual. What is wrong with giving a choice to women to end their pregnancy in a safe setting. I agree with the author that having abortion services near you does not mean that you would be forced to get one. Women can choose themselves!!
8
Let's forget about religion and look to science for some things to ponder.
Fact: No two humans are genetically identical.
Fact: a zygote (the combined sperm and egg) has DNA, a unique genetic code that determines all the characteristics of a living being.
Fact: the zygote, the embryo, and the fetus are separate organisms from the mother, who is an incubator.
Fact: there have been around 60 million abortions in the USA since Roe v Wade
Fact: If someone does not engage in sexual intercourse, there will be no need for abortion.
3
//the mother, who is an incubator//
If you're channeling Aunt Lydia and the Gilead playbook, you care not a whit for actual born, living, breathing WOMEN.
10
@Ann P: If all those abortions had not occurred, the population of the US might have have become 500 million by now. Ponder that.
6
No, real fact: the fact that the Human Genome Project deciphered the human genome doesn’t make the genome a human being. Map’s not the territory y’all.
Also real fact: a pregnant woman isn’t just an incubator scientifically, morally, or even in religious terms—unless you’re nuts, of course. This is because incubators do not think and talk and walk around and stuff.
5
I am a woman and would like to propose that all young men undergo a tubal sperm flushing before they are permitted to be alone with women. It might not be a perfect procedure, but the message is that these sperm are dangerous unless the woman involved clearly wants a pregnancy. Alternatively, a young man can have a vasectomy--around age 12 or 14--and have his sperm frozen.
And no, I am not being satirical.
8
I am a 51 year old woman living just outside of Toronto, Canada. When I was 37 years old and a mother of 3, my birth control - an IUD - failed and I became pregnant. For reasons that were obviously personal and specific to my situation, I chose to have an abortion. It was not an easy decision for either my husband or myself, but ultimately, it was my body and my decision to make. It is a very singular and personal choice. At the time, I took for granted that I had access to safe, legal and government-funded abortion services. Within a week of making the decision, my doctor had me booked for the procedure in a hospital. I know that not all women in Canada have equal access to doctors and medical facilities to perform this procedure. This is a critical issue that must be addressed in Canada. But I am horrified by what is happening now in parts of the US. Women are being made prisoners of their own bodies. No individual or institution should ever have the right to dictate what a woman can or cannot do with respect to her own body. That goes against the very principles of a free and democratic society. What a terrifying prospect for a woman to find herself pregnant and not have any choice or control over the decision to end a pregnancy. This is not a political or religious issue, rather it is a deeply personal and individual decision. Thank you John Irving for your article.
29
I have been an advocate for teens in dependency-- in group homes or foster care because of parental abuse or neglect. There are thousands of foster kids in my city, the older ones will "age out" at 18 and many will become homeless. I also advocate for homeless youth, and anyone who is hungry or needs shelter.
If evangelicals spent as much energy helping needy young parents and children as they do being pro-life-- such as supporting universal healthcare, affordable housing, guaranteed nutrition, and quality education-- I would admire them as true Christians. Some do their part, I'm sure. But from what I've seen, it's mostly county services, social workers, and non-church volunteers who help these unwanted but wonderful children. Pro-life? Prove it.
18
It's pretty simple. Let's all work together to give women birth control and reduce unwanted pregnancies.
It wouldn't eliminate abortions but would reduce it by a great amount.
But Republicans don't care about reducing abortion. They just want to give their evangelical base a reason to vote Republican while Republicans just want to cut taxes for the wealthy.
26
@Independent Birth control is not always reliable. I almost had a stroke when on the birth control pill. I was told to go off it instantly because my blood pressure was too high. Then I moved to an IUD. I had a painful miscarriage (although I would have kept the child had that been possible). Then on to the diaphragm, which resulted in pregnancy after a bit. Birth control is not always easy. How about making condoms mandatory for males to use unless the woman is trying to conceive?
5
@Independent wrote, "Republicans ... just want to give their evangelical base a reason to vote Republican"
Which is why the GOP will never permit the Supreme Court to strike down Roe. What, and lose the most effective fundraising, volunteer recruitment and Get Out The Vote tool they've ever had?
No, they will simply allow states to keep nibbling at access until it's a moot point in half the country. Missouri is almost there.
2
If you "watch what they do, not what they say" it becomes pretty obvious that what "pro-lifers"/evangelicals are really against is having sex for pleasure without any possibility of some form of punishment.
14
You mean the same religious right that turns a blind eye to Trump's abhorrent behavior? How do those few hypocritical clowns merit a nod from the GOP while alienating the female half of the electorate?
19
@DCBinNYC Beautifully stated. Thanks.
1
PUFF of methane on Mars is a sign of possible life. Fetal heart beat in the womb, not so much. It's an 'embryonic pulsation'.
2
Correct. There isn’t a “fetal heartbeat “ at 6 weeks of gestation. It isn’t a “fetus” for several more weeks. But embryonic pulsation doesn’t sound nearly so romantically endearing.
7
Sorry, but you are wrong on the science.
1
Life is a beautiful thing. Ask those babies whose mothers failed abortions resulted in their births. They will almost unanimously tell you they are glad to be alive. And often mothers are too. They were given a second and glorious chance.
2
I wonder what all those women who were raped (often repeatedly) who died giving birth would say? I wonder what their mothers would say?
I also wonder how someone must feel knowing that their birth killed their mother and that they were the result of their mother being brutally gang raped at 13. What an amazing living hell that must be.
21
@KMW: Wow. You have no idea what kinds of hell some of your fellow Americans inhabit, do you?
Following a story about sick children in our southern-border concentration camps, an ER doctor commented that their symptoms: unresponsiveness, shallow breathing, listlessness; were similar to those of neglected and abused children brought to his hospital by Social Services.
Abusive, negligent parents--who were likely abused and neglected themselves--do not provide "beautiful" lives for their children, and unwanted children are at high risk for bad parenting. In some cases, it really would've been better to not be born at all.
11
Here, here.
2
Southern Boy:
Have a baby yourself endure the pregnancy and give birth to a child unwanted and then explain to us why abortion should be prohibited.
18
A woman is the one who should be making the choices about what she can and cannot do with her pregnancy. Those who oppose abortion state they do care about children and mothers post - birth. If that is true, then where are the affordable day care centers? Where are the jobs and schooling that would allow a woman to support her children, with or without a partner? In matters of rape or incest many women might find the thought of giving birth just too painful and traumatic. Where are the mental health centers to support women in their choices? The anti abortion people are unwilling to imagine a day when men don't get the final say on everything. Not the Pope and not the politicians. They are entitled to their beliefs. But not until they have raised a child and given birth to a child do they get to decide.
12
Women are not a block (as politicians well know). The rise of professional doctors and in-hospital birth, to the detriment of midwives and their work and guidance for women, is correct (have read up on this history as well). That some women objected to abortion is a valid point, but a different issue. Women had few rights at that time, but one way to assert agency, was to be the “moral” conscience of the society (prohibition etc). The irony is that to have any rights, any voice, and to get support for that voice, woman often advocated a stance which actually limited their rights (ERA - Phyllis Schlafly).
Husbands did not decide, they weren’t even in the room, figuratively or literally. For thousands of years, whether or not women terminated a pregnancy was a “women’s issue.” It was only when the medical profession got involved in pregnancy, that the “male only” doctors began to get involved in the termination of a pregnancy.
4
In my several decades of following this debate it has always struck me that 'pro-life' zealots are far more animated by their hostility to the women who might be seeking an abortion than by any concern for the sanctity of life.
14
Thank you Mr. Irving for again stepping into the fray.
This argument is only about control and subjugation of women, and the belief that women cannot be allowed to make decisions about their own bodies. These same anti-abortion activists are not horrified by rape and incest, and do nothing publicly to stop it. Their attitudes toward women are a lot closer to the Taliban's than they care to admit or recognize.
16
In the discussion of abortion everyone always seems to think that it applies to children like they would have, by women of their social strata. What they don't want to think about is that the world is not just their world. I learned to think a bit outside my world upon becoming aware that the NICU at RBC in Cleveland in the 1980's was typically full of children born to women who were homeless and drug users who were either raped or sold sex for drugs. Far from the glib thoughts of 'at least they have a life', these children didn't deserve to be born to suffer severe withdrawal, then die of the complications from the horror that was their development and brief, torturous life. I fully agree with Mr. Irving's article, that 'Pro-life' proponents don't care about the child or the mother. Anti-abortionists are either delusional about the reality they are defining or they are determined to inflict suffering on others.
10
Mr. Irving, I care. I am anti-abortion. I care about the child and the mother.
2
If you don't care that many innocent women with an unwanted pregnancy want most of all to no longer be pregnant, then you don't care about pregnant women at all. And BTW, all children, ever, have already been born.
10
Terrific! Now the question is how we help and support women through pregnancy and motherhood. Making a medical procedure illegal is not the solution. As Mr. Irving mentioned, we need affordable childcare. we also need a livable wage and penalties for companies that hire people part time so they do not have to pay for health care. I too wish no one had to choose an abortion because they literally cannot afford a child, or because they are an ongoing victim of domestic viole6with very few options. I believe that if we do a significantly better job supporting women they will be less likely to choose abortion. Ultimately though, any medical procedure should be a discussion between a patient and their health care provider without mandated pelvic exams or transvaginal ultrasounds.
4
George Carlin said it best:
George Carlin said it best:
"Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fked."
21
Funny how the same people trashing Roman Catholics and other religious agencies for not caring about people after they're born, or for exhibiting "white paternalism" for helping out people in other parts of the world instead "of our own backyard," were the same people writing to the NYT asking where they could donate to the Catholic agency that was helping the starving children in Venezuela, as well as lauding the nuns who were helping out at the border, which I believe would qualify as "our own backyard."
3
Men cause 100% of the unplanned pregnancies.
They need to step up to the plate, get vasectomies and use condoms. They also need to go to state mandated “the miracle of conceiving, birthing and raising a child” videos before they try or not try to inseminate, then get a thorough invasive medical exam, then submit earnings records that show they can support a child, then testify that they have the time required to raise a child, all this before intercourse.
Additionally any sperm not used in insemination shall be disposed of in a state regulated funeral service.
Boys' turn.
21
@garlic11 Bullseye! Best comment here
4
Pro abortionists started the rhetorical game when they re-named themselves pro-choice. The only choice they demand is to abort, a capitulation to the view of some men that sex is without consequence.
The overwhelming majority of the women in the country think that if a woman does not want to have a child, she should use birth control and if it fails have the option of an early abortion. All of that presupposes that the woman is responsible and capable of managing her life. That is the law in most developed nations. Fifteen weeks is the limit for an elective abortion. Beyond fifteen weeks, exceptions are made if the mother's life or health is endangered. Many women would never choose an elective abortion for themselves, but are not opposed to the option being available for others. This is the mainstream position held in most civilized societies.
There is a small minority that believes that a child is a luxury good and only the wealthy are entitled to own a child and they should have discretion as to whether their unborn child should live up until the moment of birth. They believe overpopulation is a problem and seek to confine reproduction only to the worthy. They believe children cause poverty and argue they are doing women a favor by preventing reproduction. Some men support this position because it relieves them of the requirement to support children they don't want.
3
@ebmem
In Canada abortion is regarded as an issue between a woman and her doctor. The law doesn't enter into it. Somehow they have not descended into barbarism.
8
I find it very difficult to discuss anything with people who believe that “an argument,” is when you make up ridiculous nonsense and then yell at it real loud.
4
I believe in a woman's right to choose.
Yet I have several challenges to the formulation of this article that seem to indicate an undesirable bias, even if this is the opinion page.
The opening paragraph specifically highlights men of powers role in limiting reproductive rights, and yet the cover photo shows a group of predominantly women picketing "Against Abortion." So it would seem that this issue is more complex than the authors first statement.
In paragraph two ,John indicates that the founding fathers supported the idea that it was a woman's right to choose an abortion. I somehow doubt that this is how it worked out in practice. I have a suspicion that it was often the husband making this call, and I am loathe to heap more praise than is earned upon the progressive values of the founding fathers.
A large part of the demand for abortion stems from societies' attitudes toward women and reproduction in general. Women and reproduction are seen as negative forces that need to be controlled. By shame and shunning. By men. To the point of death, in many cases.
Why not adopt the polar opposite view? Pregnant young women could be celebrated, whether married or not. They could gain status with each pregnancy, and society could be ordered around their and their babies' needs. After all, where would any of us be without them?
Of course, I'm not holding my breath over this.
3
@Susan
I'm pro-choice which includes supporting women who have children but honestly we've got 7 billion plus people on the planet.
5
I thank Mr. Irving for an article that is as insightful and as brilliant as his other literary works. It's a shame that that "pro-life" adherents will likely fail to understand the logic behind his position.
8
"Beginning in the 1840s, doctors sought to gain control of the reproduction business."
It really is about big business and basic economics, isn't it?
Just take Missouri as an example, where women are the majority; in 2016, there were 3% fewer workers age 25-44 than there were in 1990, with total number of people seeking work dropping by 0.4% in 2017. 454,000 Missourian's lack a high school diploma. Childcare costs were cited the primary reason for declining birthrates, at around $8600 per year, per child, or about 15% of a families annual income. Factoring low wages and higher cost for child/healthcare, women are not having as many children in Missouri. A baby shortage to a worker shortage, big business and the big profitable business of health care require Missourian's to have more babies. Use more doctors and hospitals. The same analysis can be applied to each state where abortion rights are eroding. It's about economics.
Beyond Meat, a California company, chose to manufacture their in demand products in Missouri. One of the many stated risks of this exciting new public company is a lack of labor in Missouri-- that worker shortage. I can only guess they went to Missouri for production because it was better for margins. But if Missouri is exploiting women and closing healthcare clinics, why not take production to a state that values the health and welfare of its workers and customers? O'Reilly, Emerson, Enterprise-take a stand for your workers-while you still can.
2
Thank you for that information. Was going to try Beyond Meat - now I have no interest in doing so.
4
What an incredibly poor attempt at persuasive writing. Mr. Irving is evidently unaware that diagnosis of pregnancy followed by the science of human embryology - have progressed beyond the imperfect knowledge of the early 19th century.
180 years ago, quickening was the point at which an objective observer - a physician - could confirm pregnancy. The development of a better stethoscope, then reliable laboratory pregnancy tests, followed by ultrasounds and *in vitro* fertilization moved both the ability to determine pregnancy and increased the public's knowledge about the earliest days of life of each of us.
Mr. Irving evidently believes in his heart that some humans aren't human enough to possess human rights.
There's no question that human life begins at fertilization. Ask anyone in an in vitro fertilization lab.
3
@BNuckols When are *women* human enough to have human rights? Do you think they just disappear once the Holy Fetus exists?
15
@BNuckols wrote "There's no question that human life begins at fertilization. Ask anyone in an in vitro fertilization lab."
Same example proves that a zygote is NOT a person, nor does it have rights. Actual living people cannot be frozen indefinitely.
15
@BNuckols
If "life begins at fertilization", then why don't more forced-birthers protest the destruction of fertilized embryos at IVF clinics?
3
Whatever is said to the contrary, compelling the birth of unwanted children is both cruel and has real social consequences. The correlation between unwanted male children and felony convictions 72%. The fact is that many of the children born to young mothers who are simply not ready for the task, even with the later onset of teenage sexual activity. The fact remains that men are behind the current wave of the taking of a woman's right to choose and that as a nation we are slipping into overly theocratic governance. There is nothing moral about religious tyranny.
12
I think the saying by Florynce Kennedy "if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament". Lets start shaming and punishing men for having sex. Why do we never talk about how men contribute to unplanned pregnancies. Why don't anti-abortion protesters track them down and scream in their faces about their choices? Why don't we force them to be parents for every unplanned pregnancy to helped create? Why? Because they can run away from it all.....if they choose.
16
If it's Biblical law you're concerned about, let's go to the Bible, shall we?
"Genesis 2:7
7 Then the Lord God formed a man[a] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."
According to Judaic law (which far predates Christian law), a baby becomes a human being when it takes its first breath. Until then, the fetus is considered to be an organ of the mother's body, and, like any other organ, can be removed to save the mother's life.
So let's look elsewhere in the Bible, shall we?
"Exodus 21:22-25
22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine."
"Pay as the judges determine" - because a fetus is not recognized as a life; if a fetus were a life, then the aggressor would automatically be subject to death, not a penalty to be determined by a judge - penalties were assessed for property damage, not loss of life.
Medical technology has pushed back the point at which a a newly born child can survive - but if the child cannot survive outside the womb, it's missing the key Biblical component above: it cannot take breath. Therefore, it is not yet a person. I realize that other people have other definitions - the thing is, I don't push my definition on others the way they try to push theirs on me.
9
The so called pro-life movement should be called the pro-birth movement, because they stop caring about the life once it's born. Pro-choice allows woman to decide based on what is right for them, not what some religious zealot decides.
11
I am pro-life in every respect and have given my life to care for children, refugees, elderly, and anyone disadvantaged, both here and around the world. It’s not acceptable to make a sweeping condemnation of every pro-life person. My deeply help conviction is that every life is sacred to God, from the cradle to the grave.
4
@Krystyn Carey
Luckily, pro-choice 100% supports your right to live according to those beliefs while still allowing that other women who do not share your beliefs can choose differently.
16
@KrystynCarey, unfortunately you are in the minority of those who call themselves “Pro Life.” Your life’s work speaks to a sincere support for the life of a person, not just their birth. It would be so helpful if those,like you, who actually support efforts (pre natal care, education, housing, special needs, elder care) for human lives, would vocally and vehemently call into question those who tarnish their efforts. Those “Pro Life” imposters who force pregnancy and birth, at the same time they fight to defund all the post-birth programs that are needed to actually support a life.
It is the Pro Lifers who have no interest in your admirable work and actually make you work harder by starving of funds safety net programs to death.
6
As man, my understanding of this issue has evolved. Once indifferent, I now understand the basis of Roe v. Wade: If a person does not own his or her own body, then he or she is a slave. Slavery is expressly forbidden by the Constitution except in the case of punishment for crimes. Roe v. Wade freed women to make decisions about what to do with their own bodies. Now, "conservative" white men want to criminalize abortion, which would allow them to incarcerate -- legally enslave -- women again for the crime of refusing to reproduce or submit to their inferior status. It's not about "life," it's about "power." Weak men want the law to empower them over the ever-so-threatening females of this world. Here's the headline: Women are people, too!
21
I wonder what Mr. Irving thinks of the death penalty. That's been around for a long time as well.
2
The business about women being subject to male politicians is a bit much. Women make up the majority of voters in many red states, but they consistently support men over women in government. Look at Alabama--four women in the legislature (and a token, securely anti-choice, woman in the governorship).
If a majority of the women voters in red states voted for their own freedom from male domination, all this forced pregnancy nonsense would be stopped dead in its tracks.
2
@Al Luongo
I'd like to point out that Hilary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016.
In addition, red states traditionally have the lowest rates of educated voters. Education does make a difference!
13
Thank you for the comment that no one is pro abortion. If journalists, both those in print and visual formats, could finally stop talking about those who are “pro abortion,” and use accurate term “pro abortion rights.”
Better still, those who are pro abortion rights are really also pro religious freedom - as Mr. Irving notes - freedom from religion is Constitutionally protected. If a woman has faith that life does not begin at conception or even till quickening, why is her faith not being protected from other faiths? Why must she be forced to define life by someone’s else’s religion?
6
To all of the anti-abortion legislators and their supporters out there, where are your voices in support of free or subsidized prenatal medical care for the poor? You are silent when it comes to the issue of expanding Obamacare for those on Medicaid. Many of the states passing these severe restrictions or prohibitions on abortion are the same states that refuse to expand Obamacare. I haven't see you protesting for government-supported job training for new mothers to help them become an independent and self-supporting. Where are your voices in support of government-supported early childhood care programs?
If all life is sacred, as so many of you fervently believe, you seem absent from the scene as soon as there is a successful delivery. Where are you then?
9
The secondary title of this article reads as so:
"Abortion opponents don’t care what happens to an unwanted child, and they’ve never cared about the mother."
I believe that it demonstrates a lack of insight on the part of the author. I think it's clear on both sides: the ONLY thing that a pro-life advocate wants is to avoid, in pro-life terms, the murder of babies.
It's really that simple. Fights can be had all day long about what constitutes "murder", and "baby", but no one is going to be convinced by being told "you don't care about the mother!" and "you don't care about the baby, after its born!" I don't think pro-lifers necessarily feel a need to disagree. They just. don't. want. babies. murdered.
2
@Gershom
A zygote, embryo, or fetus is not a baby. Babies are born, and your calling zygotes, embryos, and fetuses "babies" does not make them so.
9
An eleven year old girl is raped and impregnated by her rapist and is then forced to bring the pregnancy to term (maternal mortality is 5x higher for children under 18 giving birth).
The eleven year old dies from childbirth. One could argue that that’s child murder. Her mother probably would argue that. So to “save a baby,” we kill a child.
Oh, and the fetus dies as well, because 11 year old little girls should 1) not be raped and 2) should be protected by us from those who would force her to go through the hell of that pregnancy after going through the hell of being raped.
Shame.
9
Concerning this highly charged issue, it should be women and women only who decide. Men should have no input in the legislative decision making. This is a women’s issue and by them it is to be resolved.
8
A great piece from one of my favorite writers. I read The Cider House Rules in middle school and the lessons in that story have stayed with me for more than twenty years. I was in a Catholic school at the time. Our religion class was doing a unit on social issues, and I chose this book for an assignment on secular representations of morality. Needless to say this assignment did not accomplish what my teacher had hoped.
You do not have to agree with or support the right to an abortion, but you have no right to take that choice away from someone else, particularly if you will not be bearing the burden of responsibility for the consequences. I have yet to be convinced in these 20+ years that the "pro-life" movement is anything but cruel and punitive.
15
There is an inconvenient question ignored: when does life begin? Logically it is the moment of conception; anything else is a motivated rationalization of ignorance. That said, the sad complexity of life can justify an abortion. The one pro choice position I respect was put forth by Watson of the DNA fame, I think, who advocated for a Mother's right to end a child's life up to three days after birth since many birth defects are not identifiable until after birth. There is at least a consistency in this position. Abortion should be legal however since we do such a poor job, as the author shows, of caring for Mother and Child after birth for example, pointing to how complex the issue is. Best to All.
5
Consider this. Over a 12 month period a woman could have sex with 100 men but only have one pregnancy. Over the same 12 month period, those 100 men could impregnate 100 different women resulting in 100 pregnancies. Why are we constantly putting the woman in the position of practicing birth control? Why are the women constantly charged with the delivery of and raising of those children? Why are the women always the ones who have been labeled loose, wanton, or marginalized because they've had sex? Why aren't men held to the same standards that women are? I know the answer to these questions. And no matter if you're talking about thousand of years ago or today, we live in a patriarchal society. Women are not equal. I'm not sure I'll see any change in my lifetime. The first 65 of those years have just proven to me that women have no value other than being vessels for birth. I know it's pessimistic, but changes are not being made to support women. We are the victims.
23
@Cecilia very true, which is why I've boycotted the institution of marriage my entire life. I'd rather dedicate my life and my money to myself - my wants, my needs. If the world won't give me equality, then I will give it to myself.
9
@Cecilia
You just identified the "conservative" man's major fear: That a woman could have sex with 100 men.
9
@Betti
Good on ya! That was me at the age of 6 when my aunt said to my brother, “oh chuckle! When you grow up you’re gonna be a doctor or a lawyer! Wendy, you’re gonna get married, have lots of children and get really fat!” Never had kids, married a really cool guy at age 36. I’m currently 52 and life is a blast!
4
One of the ironies of the whole 'pro life' and 'pro choice' worlds is in what it means to be pro life. The pro life people are generally the same people that when it comes to government programs, including those that help children born into poor families,support gutting the social safety programs for food, housing and the like in favor of giving huge tax breaks for the wealthy; despite popular myth promulgated by many pro life people, they don't think abortion is the lesser of two evils vs the politicians gutting government programs, they vote for politicians who are anti abortion and SUPPORT the gutting of the safety net, claiming private charity will do the job (it won't and can't) or that (worse), then 'poor mothers will just have to work hard'. Meanwhile most pro choice people support having a safety net when kids are born, especially programs to feed and house poor kids- so who is truly pro life?
And yes, I agree totally that a lot of the anti abortion sentiment is with the mindset that if mothers 'had to face the consequences of their actions' they would basically not have sex and go back to being virgins before marriage, and if they don't, well, then 'pay the price' (and of course,not caring what happens to the child).And want proof? When pro choice people talk about abortion being rare, but legal, using birth control and sex ed and the like to make abortion rare, the pro life people basically say "no" to that, because they are also anti sex, especially women's.
14
The level of ignorance among so many of these comments is staggering. Pro-lifers hate women, are evil men who want to control women's bodies, don't care about the mother, don't care about the babies, and on and on.
They see only what they want to see.
9
John Irving has long supported abortion. Science has confirmed that human life begins at conception. Destroying an innocent human life is never justified. Women who feel compelled by trauma or tragedy to have an abortion must be supported in every way possible to choose to bring their child to birth. This support must continue after the child is born. Pope Francis has called abortion an "absolute evil". On another occasion, he described it as a "horrendous crime" and a "very grave sin". On yet a third occasion, Francis echoed the words from the Vatican II document, "Gaudium et Spes" that called abortion an "unspeakable crime". He has also compared having an abortion to hiring a hit man. If John Irving can express his support for abortion in the Public Square, Pope Francis is entitled to state his opposition to it. Don't use the canard that Francis is "imposing" his religious beliefs on others. After all, Irving is only sharing his ideological bias, not stating ontological truth.
115
@Charles Ryder
"science has confirmed..." is also just your opinion. You can state it, that doesn't make it valid.
683
@Charles Ryder
Then by all means, you don't have to have an abortion. No one will force you. But I can't allow other people to dictate the operations in any capacity of another person's body. That is Wrong. That intrusion is and should be beyond your powers. One does not need your judgment or seeks your permission. The right to choose your body and it's functions is your choice. It is no one else's. That includes reproduction.
681
@Charles Ryder Ontology is a philosophy, not a science, so there's no "truth". In that context, Francis and Irving are doing the same thing, just as you and I are doing.
153
Next step: declare the Catholic religion and its opposition to abortion “unconstitutional.” So much for the first amendment and the separation between church and state. Rights will no longer originate with the Constitution which in any event is an outmoded relic written by white slaveowners but only with the “State” controlled by bureaucrats which alone decides what’s right and wrong and spies on us and controls our every thought. Welcome to our Brave New World—not the original version by Aldous Huxley but the updated one written by John Irving., who fancies himself the novelist for our time.
7
Perhaps the problem is that pro-choicers only focus on the once-in-a-lifetime abortion. I know women who have had multiple abortions because they couldn't manage the responsibility of birth control. They are a part of that small group of women who simply cannot use their birth control or use it right. Pro-choicer are probably happy that they can get abortions. I am sad and wish we could work on them instead of railing against everyone and anyone.
3
@AACNY The plural of anecdote is not data. Every post criticizing women for the "irresponsibility" created in one's own mind is not an accurate depiction of reality. Pro choicers respect women as capable of making their own private medical decisions. We also respect that men can step up and do their part to prevent pregnancy. I agree about the railing. So stop.
12
So? If you are so concerned about the availability and proper use of contraceptives, focus on that issue instead of abortion then. However, you'll find the great majority of people and organizations supporting accessible and effective contraception (for men AND women ) are pro- not anti-choice. The latter rather are known for fighting sex ed and promoting only abstinence, which does not work for most people.
7
@AACNY
'Work on them'? What does that even mean?
3
"I’m pro-choice — often called pro-abortion by the anti-abortion crusaders, although no one is pro-abortion."
The USA is "pro-abortion" : 879,000 abortions in 2017.
(source: https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/)
3
Pro-birth is not pro-life.
Access to healthcare, which Planned Parenthood provides, is pro-life.
Keeping families together is pro-life.
Ensuring families have food and housing is pro-life.
Preventing gun violence is pro-life.
Stopping police brutality is pro-life.
Education is pro-life.
Everything else is self-righteous hypocrisy.
15
If the claim to caring about women and the babies you want to force them to have involves Crisis Pregnancy Centers, uh, no sale. CPCs are deceptive and coercive organizations. I would never recommend them to a woman in need.
6
Oh, they do care about the children. A better supply of white babies for adoption to good ‘Christian’ couples. I am an adoptee who comes from that era and hope we never return there. It was an era with a lack of agency for women and a proliferation of secrets.
9
I am a pro life woman and proud. And the more I read these comments supporting abortion rights the more pro life I become. The excuses for abortion are so lame. It is the woman's right to control her destiny, she has the right to control her body, etc. The rights of the unborn do not compare to the woman's rights. Their rights are paramount and should come first and foremost.
2
Rights accrue at birth. Not before.
And innocent citizens' rights, specifically the rights to the protections of the 14th Amendment, are NOT erased at the instant of conception.
6
@KMW
I take it you're okay with being a second-class citizen, then? Because let me tell you, when they (the GOP, as if it weren't obvious) take away the most precious right of all, the right to bodily autonomy, then all the other rights fall like dominoes: the right to vote, to drive, to own property...
6
Mr. Irving makes a clear and cogent case about the language of abortion politics and the dubious motives of anti-abortion supporters. Their aim is to compel all citizens to obey their iron age religion. Does anyone believe their theocratic agenda would end with abortion? When will the power of the state be used to enforce again the Biblical commandment from Exodus: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live? Stoning is cool to some of these folks for many "sins."
The GOP weaponized abortion shortly after the Roe decision and used this cudgel effectively to win national elections starting with Reagan in 1980. The ineffective response of the Democrats is to passively wait and expect the Supremes to uphold a basic right in our secular first-amendment society.
An effective defense is a strong offense. Tax churches and religious lobbyists is a possiblity. Up the ante, if necessary, to get the other side to back off. A federal law could be enacted in which members of churches who intimidate citizens from exercising their right of choice could be arrested; a judge could sentence them to one week in an insane asylum for mental evaluation. If all is well, then they would be released. This action is similar to state requirements to have ultrasounds, mandatory "explanations" of abortion, and several days of delay before an abortion is made.
Time to use some imagination to end these patriarchial religious extermists from enjoying their religion too much for our own good.
2
There is such a twisted logic on the pro-abortion side. So YOU engage in an activity that has a result, and someone else should be responsible for the consequences? I just fail to see the logic here. Why should other people pay to clothe, feed and educate your child if you got pregnant?
The left, as per usual, wants absolutely none of the responsibility for their actions. They want all of the rights, but someone else should take the consequences off their shoulders.
2
@Mike Actually, what pro CHOICE people want is for women to be able to safely make the decision to end an unwanted pregnancy. By your logic, that eliminates the need to "feed and educate" any child, thus reducing the burden on both the woman and society. Win win.
"The left" simply wants women to be able to choose whether or not to proceed with a pregnancy. What, exactly, is your problem with that?
5
@Mike
If you're going to take away the right to control my own body, then yes, you take care of that unwanted consequence. Remember, it takes two to tango, and I didn't want this kid!
5
@KMH You have the right to control your body. It takes one to say "No." You also have the responsibility to deal with the consequences of your actions. The left wants the former without the latter.
The strategists behind the Republican party push the pro-life agenda not because they believe that any life is sacred, but to create single issue voters. Republican policies are incredibly harmful to the vast, overwhelming majority of voters. Running strictly on these policies no Republican could be elected. By pushing the pro-life agenda and fanning fanatical flames, the party has created a large contingent of single issue voters. These voters reliably vote Republican solely because of the abortion issue in spite of the great and lasting harm Republican polices cause to those very same voters.
6
Thanks for running this piece by Irving. I imagine it will cause a firestorm of criticism, but Irving nails it, and I thank him for writing it as well.
13
In this debate there is profound misunderstanding of what this country is; the Constitution contains what it does not because someone descended a shining hilltop with divine inscriptions, but because of the Enlightenment thinking that informed it.
Principally, that personal liberty is sacrosanct, and reason - or burden of proof - the only fair way to resolve law. So if we are to limit the freedom of women in a big way, we need a big reason that is sound for doing so.
Instead the anti-abortion movement offer emotional appeals of what God “would want”; conflating senseless clumps of cells with fully formed children. Without evidence they demand that the powerful desire to protect our young be the same in law for protecting tissue.
This is a nation fundamentally incompatible with telling people what they are to do or not do simple because some of us feel like it.
10
USDA: The cost of raising a child today is $233,610 – excluding the cost of college – for a middle-income family.
Even half that would be a substantial burden for someone struggling.
A few months of diapers and baby food isn't going to cut it.
11
At times, this argument makes me want to tear my hair out. Wait. Technology! Each hair follicle has the blueprint for a unique human being. When cloning arrives, will I be jailed for disposing of my hair?
9
I notice none of the religious zealots have made any effort to explain the earlier examples of contradictory viewpoints.
7
If you've got to go back to the 1830's to make your case, you're not doing a very good job of making your case.
As a parent with 2 adopted children, this is farcical.
Those of us who support a pro-life agenda also temper our beliefs with the reality that accidental pregnancies occur (as does rape and incest). Hence the allowance for 1st trimester abortions that are both safe and rare..as Democrats used to claim to want.
There are over 1 million families on adoption waiting lists and there is nobody I know who would reject any child of color or background in this adoption process.
If liberals and progressives would advocate for making adoption a viable option instead of doing the bidding of Planned Parenthood, you'd see a much more thriving America where some of these unborn kids are allowed to become scientists, doctors and maybe even...the President of the United States.
If so many progressives are willing and able to donate body parts...why not just consider that baby another body part and make another family that is infertile happy?
Seems like an easy decision to me, but then again...I have two mothers to thank for having given enough thought and consideration to others that they made this tremendous and joyous decision.
71
@Erica Smythe How do you reconcile the numbers you say are on adoption waiting lists with the numbers in foster care without families willing to adopt them?
166
@Erica Smythe If there's "nobody you know" on the adoption waiting lists, perhaps you should have a few conversations with the kids of color, with health issues, in questionable-at-best state and foster situations. I think the reality of what you're trying to say is that people want BABIES, not actual kids. Which is pretty much in line with the anti-abortion rhetoric.
160
Liberals and progressives never stopped talking about making abortion sage, legal and rare. When conservatives try to defund Planned Parenthood, it’s the liberal and progressive voters who push back. Liberals and progressives are trying to make more conception methods available over the counter. When we vote, our choices depend on the candidates’ positions on reproductive freedom. We will never vote for a candidate who would curtail that freedom.
So what are conservatives doing to make abortion rare?
106
I have recommended this book countless times to righteous "pro-life" advocates. John Irving tackles one of the most difficult issues of our time brilliantly.
4
The anti-abortion kooks have caused death and damage to women's health....They belong to a quasi-religious fanatical group of people who want to interfere in peoples' lives. They do not run orphanages nor adopt unwanted children...They do not give support to children already born....They need to mind their own business, forever!
8
When I was just becoming aware of the existence of adult issues such as family planning, my mother relayed a story from her early professional life. She had trained for a nursing career during the era in which abortion was illegal in the US. One of her most wrenching hospital memories was when she was assigned to tell a young father and his children that their spouse/mother had died of hemorrhage. The hemorrhage was caused by an amateur attempt to end her pregnancy. Even as a devout Christian, she decided that potentially exposing struggling families to this level of anguish might not be the most "honorable" or moral approach.
I recall that part of the social logic behind the campaign for legalizing abortion was to reduce the frequency of such tragedies for families or couples already lacking access to health care and much else. In our public debates on this topic, it might be wise to think again about those who are clinging to society's lower rungs.
12
The author directs his ire toward the Catholic Church, like anti- gun rights people all blame the NRA, but the real evil in this abortion controversy is the violent, radical Evangelical Christian movement of intolerance in the name of state protected religion. At least the Catholic Church does have a consistent doctrine of protecting life that is seen, if you look for it, in nursing homes, of all places. You see, Catholics don't believe in abortion because they value human life and they don't believe in assisted suicide or euthanasia for the same reasons. In my heavily Catholic state of Louisiana the nursing homes run and managed by the Catholic Church are among the best and most humane facilities of the lot. There are waiting lists to get into them. When you walk into a Catholic nursing home the halls don't stink of urine and the residents smile at you. They are not oppressed with the nagging fear that they may be killed, by negligence, or overt act, by an uncaring staff who always finds a rationalization for "mercy killing". Those nursing homes run by or affiliated with other protestant religions, like the Lutheran Church, are not so appealing or clean and well managed.
I once worked for an ambulance service in the New Orleans area and at the time had been inside virtually every nursing home in the metropolitan area. I've seen it myself.
2
You mean the Catholic healthcare facilities that regularly ignore patients' Living Wills in which they specify DNR orders for end of life scenarios? The Catholic healthcare facilities that insist that patients in extremis be denied their last wishes, in order to prolong suffering (and billing!) as long as possible? I'm planning on getting a Life Alert bracelet that instructs caregivers to NOT bring me to any Catholic healthcare facility.
4
@goatini
Have any of those scenarios actually happened to you, or are you just reciting horror stories you read on Facebook? Do you assume that all people of a certain age want to commit suicide or be put out of their misery?
@Aristotle Gluteus Maximus
The Catholic Church takes incredible care of all people, including immigrant children and mothers who want to have their baby but don't have the financial means to support themselves.
Much of this criticism stems from ignorance and religious bias.
1
As we speak there is a British-Nigerian woman in London who is being forced to have an abortion. I believe she is 22 weeks pregnant. Granted, she is developmentally disabled, but she wants to have the baby, and her mother has said she will help care for it. They are Catholic and strongly opposed to abortion. I have heard some pro-choice women weigh in and say she should not be forced to terminate the pregnancy. Her body, her choice. If we have no forced birth, we should have no forced abortion.
4
Don't you see anything vaguely wrong with the parent of a developmentally disabled adult, who somehow was unable to prevent her charge from being raped, saying "she will help care for" the issue of said rape? The parent's charge should be removed from her care post-haste to be placed in care where she will be protected from sexual assault. If she can't protect her daughter from rape, she shouldn't be accountable for any minor child or disabled adult.
3
I read about that and it is a messed up situation. The judge is concerned because the disabled woman’s mother said there would be times when her daughter would need to care for the baby alone. The judge determined that situation would put the baby in danger and eventually the baby would be taken from them. The judge said that a forced abortion would be less damaging to the woman than taking her baby away from her. It’s a complicated situation but I disagree with the judge. No one should ever have to go through a forced abortion.
4
@goatini
So you’re blaming the victim’s mother for her rape? You’ve never heard of developmentally disabled people being abused at the hands of someone in a school or group home or trusted caregiver? Does that mean any child who has been raped did not have adequate supervision and should be removed from the parents’ home?
2
Maybe this is another example of our need to get past the obvious. Of course they don't "care". Their pose of caring buys them time in the public square, but without fail, their actions always reveal their cruelty and will to control other people. That for them is an end in itself.
Sanctity of life, respect for institutions, morality, motherhood--none of that is what they really seek. All of those ostensible non-negotiables are negotiable for them, and all can be sacrificed if needs be for them; hence their spectacular hypocrisy today regarding Trump and their Bible. But always, always, they seek to control other people.
They have long since gone past deserving any benefit of any doubt. We help them when we give them that.
5
My mother had six children and complications during a seventh pregnancy that her doctor felt were certain to kill both her and the child (whom my mother wanted and named). Because—abortion was illegal, my parents were prominent, my father would not murder his wife to try save the baby—they gave my mother a complete hysterectomy to end the pregnancy while following the letter of abortion law. The impact physically of being thrown into menopause at age 34 was profound. Knowing that there had been a relatively minor surgical alternative that would have left her womb and hormones intact, but that men made illegal, made it worse.
The one woman I know who had a kitchen table abortion had a look of unforgettable pain and violation in her eye talking about it decades later. It made me think those who vote to restrict access to a legal, safe abortion should have to look in such eyes, and maybe they would value them above one interpretation of the Bible. She and her husband were already reusing dental floss and tea bags to keep shoes on their two children as he retrained to give his family a shot at a better life.
No matter how fervently—or hypocritically—you pray, people are going to have sex for reasons beyond procreation. That’s how God made us, right? Women must be allowed to decide whether to continue their own pregnancy or not. Old men and glib evangelicals and opportunistic Republican politicians should not be able to force a woman to go through pre-Wade horrors again.
14
I prefer the term "anti-choice" to those who want to control women's bodies.
9
I shall quote my great-grandmother, "If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." Another of her views on the subject was, "If women had the first baby and men all subsequent babies, no family would have more than two children." A very wise women, who by the way, had only one pregnancy/child: my grandmother.
There is though the issue of religion and freedom from it that is guaranteed by the constitution. My own religion is quite clear in teaching that life begins with the first inhalation and exhalation of air. Women have the G-d given right to control their own lives including the right to determine if they will carry a pregnancy to term. Why should your religion supersede my religion? THAT is totally contrary to the constitution.
10
Thank you, Mr Irving. At last, a man who understands and says so!
8
Anti-abortion, "pro-life" people have murdered doctors who performed abortions, they are for forced pregnancy and against choice.
10
The real irony is that just 50 years ago, evangelicals were pro-choice!
In 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception & abortion. In the lead article, professor Bruce Waltke, of the ultra-conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, noted the Bible teaches that life begins at birth, saying, “God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law states: 'If a man kills any human life he will be put to death' (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense… Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”
The magazine Christian Life said, “The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult.” The Southern Baptist Convention passed a 1971 resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.
So, what caused the Reversal of the Evangelicals? In the late 70's - well after '73's Roe v. Wade - Jerry Falwell engineered a 180 in evangelical "thinking” when he cynically weaponized Birth Choice as a way to politically attack Jimmy Carter because Carter was threatening the tax exempt status of religious madrassas like Falwell's Liberty "university". Why? Because the madrassas were practicing de facto segregation. Falwell's interests were in keeping his college lily-white while avoiding paying taxes. Birth Choice was just a tool.
7
How many anti-abortion activists have actually adopted any of the children they claim to cherish and protect?
10
Thank you John Irving - for your column, your books (loved Cider House Rules as well as the others), and your eloquence on this topic. We need to hear from more men. In all of the many cases of abortions that women of my (now senior) generation availed themselves of, husbands and/or partners shared in that decision and were grateful to have that option for the many reasons that arise in a family or partnership (or lack of one). The men who battle for control of women's bodies and the conduct of their lives simply do not know love,
5
While I'm sure there are anti-abortion advocates who care about the welfare of children, the alliance between the right wing and a significant majority of those advocates has meant consistently cutting support for children's health and education. It reveals that there are other factors at play.
Irving writes: "The prevailing impetus to oppose abortion is to punish the woman who doesn’t want the child. "
I would add, ....for having sex and possibly even enjoying it.
Given the hypocrisy of the right, the ferocity of anti-abortion advocacy appears to be a reaction to the sexual revolution, including the birth control pill. Women who had sex by choice, and who in the past would have to face the prospects of pregnancy as a deterrent, were partly liberated from the "punishment" of pregnancy. Despite the anti-abortion advocates' proclamations about the joyous wonders of birth and motherhood, the religious based motivation here is an anti-sex notion of pregnancy as punishment. For women.
Thank you for getting the discussion back to the real issues here.
7
I would like an op-ed to explore how the anti-abortion movement might have roots in slavery. It was fairly common for plantation owners to rape their slaves and have them bear their children. It was a win-win for the owner: Extramarital sex with someone who had no power to protest, and creation of new and valuable property for them. No doubt many children of women who were unable to obtain abortions are sitting in for-profit prisons right now, performing labor for mere pennies while lining the pockets of their corporate masters.
12
Through a back and forth online conversation recently a forced birther revealed something I long suspected - that due to Roe v. Wade there were no longer enough healthy white babies available for adoption. So, if abortion became illegal again the pool of local babies would fill up and childless couples would no longer have to travel outside of the United States to find adoptable infants. Naturally they are averse to older children or ones with handicaps.
How nice to become a brood mare. A Handmaid's Tale anyone?
7
Let’s see, “pro-life” is a “marketing term,” but “reproductive rights” is an accurate descriptor. Got that?
The “reproductive right” in question is for women to have unprotected sex with men they prefer not to parent with and to maim and destroy any resulting human life. The only thing that has been reproduced is 60 million deaths by woman.
And really, pro-life people don’t care what happens to the child after it is born? Seriously? There was a time, before the LGBT onslaught, when the Catholic Church provided adoption services throughout the nation. Pro-life Christians still provide most of the private shelters for unwed mothers and their children.
Irving should step out of his secular progressive hive for a while.
2
@Hombre Unless you were in the room, you have NO IDEA if the sex was unprotected or not. "LGBT onslaught," oh, brother. The Church had a tantrum over providing loving homes to kids in need if it involved same-sex couples so they picked up their toys and went home...leaving those children you claim they "care" so much about without families. I suggest it is you who needs to step out of your chosen hive.
8
@Hombre
Just goes to show not matter how erudite an ideologue is, he can be as ignorant as those who see nothing.
2
Lemme see if I have this right: the terrifying assault of them gay people drove the Church to stop all their adoption services.
Good grief, that’s silly.
8
The anti-abortion position isn't pro life it is pro birth. They don't care after birth.
6
I find the fact that the Pope who coined the phrase “right to life” is the very same Pope bystander who was complicit in the murder of 11 million lives during the Holocaust, very rich. Thank you for this article.
11
@Stephanie; plus I seriously doubt that molesting boys at the church at the hand of the priests is a new thing either.
3
Women choice stands for the separation of State & Church, it is what the future of our nation depends upon.Show me a people who are governed by the Church I will show you a reactionary,theocracy. A backward country restricted in creativity & the freedom of thought.
Marx was correct when he called religion the opiate of the masses.There will be peace in the world when the chains of religious fanaticism are broken& people throw out archaic thinking.Take the billions that the Churches control *& use it for the betterment of humanity.
5
@Independent1776; Exactly!
2
A thought about the wonderful alternative of the miracle of new life and birth from the great John Prine's "Unwed Fathers" - "In a cold grey town, a nurse says 'Lay Down! This ain't no playground and this ain't home.' Someones' children, out having children in a grey stone building, all alone. But unwed fathers, they can't be bothered, they run like water from a mountain stream."
6
Hey,,, if you are against abortion don't have one. Just don't tell the rest of us what to do.
You do have Free Speech. We heard your suggestion. Great, we'll take that into consideration, and that's the extent of your interference in other peoples' free will.
7
The Catholic Church dictates: no birth control, no abortions- and no homosexuality (no children there). The Catholic Church mentality teaches: have more children, have more Catholics, and we’ll have more money! Thanks to roe v wade; women’s /feminist movements; & books such as yours our awareness has grown.
5
A personal topic but beautifully written providing for many of us who don’t remember the past.
It’s very pathetic that some people have the free time to worry about what other people are doing with there bodies. Every tax paying woman has the right to make decisions for her body and this religious self righteous is just what it all about men’s desire for control and power.
If you Don’t like abortion vote for decent wages, health care for all, not allowing children in cages,poor schooling,lack of nutrition,etc. all based on racism,class status and the behavior of these so call people of God is sickening .
Capitalism is fed by suffering, private prisons, the medical schools delivering no cures for cancer unless your filthy rich. Health care provides money to make Wall Street run, poverty , abortion gives the politicians talking points politicians don’t care about anything but being re-elected.
3
For 90% of the pro lifers it is about controlling women. Everything these so called right to lifers do it to subjugate and humiliate women. The fetus is just the awn in their politics.
7
@GUANNA
For 90% of the pro lifers it is about controlling women.
*****
This is such an unexamined position it's hard to believe so many believe it.
3
@AACNY
Then what IS it about? From where I'm sitting, it sure isn't about life, the way the current administration keeps cutting all the programs for women and children; see also those concentration camps at our southern border.
2
So well put! The hypocrisy of "pro-life" zealots is staggering. An unborn child is "sacred," but if that child is unwanted, unloved, and should become a murderer, many "pro-lifers" demand that it be put to death as an adult. How can any reasonable person be pro-life and pro-death-penalty at the same time?
7
Women and girls-- especially women and girls of color and anyone who is not rich-- should be sure to help get out the vote for Democrats, and to vote for Democrats up and down the ticket this November 3, 2020.
When Democrats win, stay active to get the Equal Rights Amendment enacted. Women are STILL 2nd class citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment
4
and science has confirmed that the Bible is the word of the Only God . and I'm backed up by the christian president that we have to guide the world according to the gospel
1
The author is right. These so called Christians, who never emulate the documented behavior of Christ, are all about punishment of the woman for having sex. Period, end of sentence, or rather the beginning of one for mothers of unwanted children.
6
Hello! Pro-Lifers, you vote Republican over this issue and join with Gun advocates and Obama-care haters and while the Republican Administration ignores poor children, drops their health care insurance, locks up people at the border, reduces every manner of safety net services you and your family might need while lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans (the real Republican agenda). Do you really think DJT cares about abortions? I don't think so. We know he was pro-choice before along with HW Bush and Reagan. This is a marketing ploy to get your vote. Are Fords better than Chevy's? are Mac's better than Windows? Is Tide better than All, is anything you are marketed to death about actually real? You and I are all being conned. Wake up and do your civic duty, listen to Jesus when he said leave to Caesar the things that are Caesar's (you civic duty in this day and age) and leave to God the things that are God's (saving your, not their, Immortal soul).
3
“He was an obstetrician; he delivered babies into the world. .... And he was an abortionist; he delivered mothers, too."
One of the many passages that has stuck with me all these years.
8
The Pro-Birth movement is simply about forcing and shaming the woman to give birth. After she has given birth, she and the child are on their own. Trump is set to cut millions from safety net programs that would help women with children! Also, the Republican-Pro-Birth types do not offer women free prenatal care, nor do they offer to pay for hospitalization when the mother gives birth! They just want to shame the woman into giving birth.
How about Republican-Pro-Birth types FORCE the sperm donor to support the child for their first eighteen years?! How would that be?! Wonder how many men would support forcing women to give birth IF THEY HAD TO PROVIDE FOR THE CHILD?!
Hypocrites.
4
"Abortion opponents don’t care what happens to an unwanted child, and they’ve never cared about the mother."
This statement is demonstrably false. I personally know several individuals and organizations who provide aid to women with unwanted pregnancies and the babies born to those women. The NYT should be ashamed of itself for posting such falsehoods. It is also false to imply that men and men alone oppose abortion. Many women, mindful of the personhood of the life they carry, and the precious and sacred gift women have been blessed with, oppose abortion as well. Abortion is hard enough. Lies just make it harder.
3
@Danusha Goska
It is an outrageous lie. From the group who claims to believe in "facts", no less.
2
This is why they are pro-birth ONLY! No other language needed.
Nice to see this written as it really is w/o any sugar coating.
3
Thank you Mr Irving!
And also I find this article very illuminating
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133
1
We will not abort our child if the anti-abortion crowd will step to the plate to receive the unwanted children without hesitation.
2
On the money. This is the result of the sick, prurient interest of men, who are afraid of women and feel inferior to them, to stifle the futures of women, who only want to control their own destinies. The best way to do that is to saddle them with unwanted children, then maintain anti-mother policies in the civic and workplaces. It's just a giddy little side benefit to imagine the reproductive organs of women, and the irrational, testosterone-fueled power men want to have over them. Disgusting. Men who claim they are not doing this, are not doing anything to change the situation. THIS is a main reason for the breakdown of the family. Women are fed up, with men, and with motherhood. There are two old truisms: "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." "Men are dogs."
11
It is galling that our "pro life" president has once again been credibly accused of sexual assault, this time attempted rape in the 1990's.
Pro life indeed.
8
I am a RN. I have had child patients of incest.Their pain indescribable, as their mother’s pain too. To all the “pro lifers”, don’t have an abortion if you don’t want one.
12
I’m pro-choice but I understand the other side’s position. They view abortion the same as a mother taking her 3 year old child into an institution to be euthanized. I don’t think they could ever be convinced otherwise.
4
How do religion-ists square their claim of "innocent child" with their rant about "original sin"?
Don't they often equate the act of being born with "original sin"?
Therefore, being not born is better for the embryo?
1
Unlike some, if not most modern proponents of abortion, the Puritans recognized that a fetus in the second trimester is a viable being by virtue of being “quick.” Please do not interpret, as Irving would have you believe, Puritan permission for a woman to have an abortion up to the time that a fetus was “quick” as a step towards woman’s liberation; that would come later in American history when the Democrat Party became increasingly progressive, permissive, and promiscuous. Thank you.
1
I’ve always been of the opinion that everyone should be able to have as complete control over their bodies as possible, and that only a woman and her physician should be involved in decisions regarding abortion for her. It’s all about patient privacy and no one else’s business.
That said, I routinely fell for the “moderate” position that local law could put limits regarding viability and stage of pregnancy, and that individual states could make decisions about healthcare delivery. I heartily disagreed with most of the rationales given for in essence making abortion less available for poor women in those states, but my attitude was “well, they voted for those idiots, and that’s why they don’t even have support systems in place for the already born. I’ll contribute to costs for bringing those poor women to a state that actually respects their rights.”
I now realize that my “moderate”, “live and let live” attitude, so popular among Democrats, has helped support an ever-increasing threat to our rights to bodily autonomy.
Never again.
Time to return to the one and only reason Roe v. Wade came to be: privacy rights, and the right to personal autonomy.
Now I say: I don’t care what her circumstances, reasons, what stage or whether it’s publicly funded. It’s her business alone. If you don’t like abortion then don’t have one, and if you believe that God doesn’t allow it, then let Him/Her or Karma do the judging, or do you think you are equal in omniscience?
8
@Kamwick
"Everyone should be able to have as complete control over their bodies as possible" - except the unborn, of course. They get zero control over whether they even live or die. They're just expendable. So much for "live and let live."
@Samuel Russell
First of all, you're a man; you'll never face an unwanted pregnancy physically. Secondly, a fetus is not a child. A child is already born.
2
I agree Pro-life is simply a marketing term to oversimplify the issue and demonize families facing terrible situations. In Europe the market is a bit different. “Pro-Life” is not a movement to put women and doctors in jail. It’s a name for healthy dog food. That’s right— ProLife Dog Food. Check it out: https://www.mueller.de/marken/eigenmarken/pro-life-hund/ :)
2
Pro-Life.....the hypocrisy is mind boggling.
Anti-choice would be a much better moniker for “those people.”
4
These are the names of actual living children who have died in the custody of the United States Immigration authority .
Carlos Hernandez Vásquez, 16.
Juan de Leon Gutiérrez, 16.
Darlyn Cristabel Cordova-Valle, 10.
Felipe Gomez Alonzo, 8.
Jakelin Caal Maquín, 7.
Wilmer Josué Ramírez Vásquez, 2 1/2 years old.
All Americans Pro and Anti Choice might want to spare a thought and if you wish a prayer for these kids who were living human beings.
In my view the loss of their lives should have us all outraged, not the loss of a life that is as yet non existent .
9
As President Bill Clinton said, keep abortion legal, safe, and rare. Support and fund sex education in schools and access to affordable birth control.
8
@Karen
Better yet focus on the small percentage of women who are responsible for a large majority of abortions. They don't use birth control properly or at all, even when they have it.
When I hear a pro-choicer admit that women must use the birth control they already have, I'll believe that they are really interested in reducing unwanted pregnancies versus just interested in their own right to have the rare abortion.
I read this passage online and thought it sums up the pro-life movement:
"The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
13
Written by a Methodist minister, Dave Barnhart. Pastor Barnhart is a true man of God.
7
@Vsan23
That's rich. So you should only defend those who already have a voice? Actually, your example would be better used to explain why pro-choicers have no qualms about killing the unborn - the vicitms never make demands of you or hold you accountable or fight back, and you never have to hear them beg for their lives or scream in agony. They are, in short, the perfect people to kill for convenience, under the moral cover of standing up for women.
@Samuel Russell
I hope you're standing up just as fervently for the children in the concentration camps at our southern borders. These living, breathing children have no voice, and they are being treated as far less than human.
2
"Religious conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that they don't want to know about you." - George Carlin
9
The anti-choice crusade. Period.
3
I find it interesting that abortion became illegal as the industrial revolution crested and was fueled by child labor.
5
Thank you John Irving. Thank you.
5
Anti-abortion protesters could show their good faith by adopting one or more babies whose abortions they have prevented.
5
Thank you, again, John Irving.
3
It's true that those claiming to be "pro-life" couldn't care less about the lives of women and children.
They self-righteously say that they're protecting the unborn, but once the baby is out of the womb they're no longer interested in its welfare.
Mr. Irving, you are correct. The religious right is "no-choice", not "pro-life".
6
"Life begins at conception and ends at birth..."
6
@Dr. Dave
And pro-choicers will only support a baby financially if they want it.
1
You’d think that more “pro-lifers,” would notice, before they start yelling that Irving diesn’t know what he’s talking about, that they’re cheering on a President who exhibits his contempts for women and girls on a daily basis, who attacks health clinics and Head Start and AFDC and all the rest in half his speeches and legislation, who treats refugee families like garbage, who brags about beating people up and how great torture would be, who shouts whoopee for executions, who’s had zero to say to the worst human rights abusers on the planet, who gives speeches about going after the families of suspected terrorists, and who promises to “Bomb ‘em until the sand glows.”
Well, I would have thought that once. I don’t anymore.
2
It does not matter what happens to a child after he is born. The point is that he/she lives! Has a life, good, bad, long , short, happy and sad, just lives... It is always better to let them live than to presume they will have a "bad life". Do not choose for them.
38
It is matter how people live their lives. Why would we propagate misery? We are making choice for our children all the times, surely, we can decide when we want to have children. The birth affect not only children, but woman as well, and everybody who is around her. And because she is already born, her choice should be priority.
45
@Eduardo Duque Estrada
Your first sentence speaks volumes.
77
You say we shouldn't "choose" on behalf of a fetus. But the point Mr Irving is making is that many of rhese fetuses will go on to bwcome children who will have little choices about much of anything in life.
19
How many "pro-life" Christians have managed to quietly get abortions, or force women they have impregnated to get one? How many of them volunteer in community centers where accidental children grind out a "life" of transient and disadvantaged existance?
The pro-life world, when it extends beyond the churches and marches, is all about themselves and their rightousness. This is their ticket to salvation and feeling better about themselves because it is so often mentioned in the bible as the highest priority of society...oh, sorry it was not mentioned.
5
@Mike
How many of them allow that pregnancies from rape or incest can be legally terminated? Doesn't this speak volumes about their own doubts of their "absolute certainty"?
1
It's very simple for the "pro-life" crowd.
The right to life begins at conception and ends at birth.
It only reappears if you become brain dead and your family wants to disconnect the machines that are prolonging your dying.
7
@Lu
Thank you, Lu, for remembering Terry Shivo and the monstrous circus that W and the religious right made of her life.
5
I strongly believe that the "pro-lifers" should be mandated to adopt and raise all the kids they think they have "saved".
2
"If you think Roe V. Wade is safe, you're one of the reasons it isn't." Past is prologue.
3
One need only look at the absence of concern the anti-abortion folks are showing for migrant infants and children separated from their parents in inhumane conditions on the US border to see confirmation of Mr. Irving’s thesis.
7
“The Cider House Rules” is a stimulating, thought-provoking read for anyone interested in the ongoing abortion debate.
I would also recommend “A Prayer for Owen Meany.”
Thank you John Irving for your creativity, erudition, and compassion.
4
It is most interesting that anything that is not in line with liberal or progressive thought is “cruel.”
2
It has always been and always will be about men wanting to control when and with whom women can have sex. As Irving wisely observes, anti-abortionists could care less about the child when it’s born. These same people are the ones who are OK with ICE separating families and keeping children in cages. Very Christ-like.
4
I'm not really pro or against abortion - but even for someone as dispassionate as myself on this topic, it's clear to me this article is a lot of tosh. The pilgrims championing abortion rights? Come on. Evidence does not support the "widespread" pre 1840 abortion referred to in this article. "Our founding fathers got this right"? Abortion wasn't even a topic of debate with them. This piece is written with rearward looking historical reinterpretation. Should not appear in as a headliner in the NYT. Ridiculous.
What would happen to this debate if fetuses could be transplanted to artificial wombs? And women could legally push the child rearing burden onto the man?
2
Mr. Irving is an inspiration for all women, especially women of color. So many fetuses, so little time.
2
Such a vitriolic sub-title to this article ("abortion opponents don't care what happens..."). Without even reading the article, the author has already stereotyped and dismissed those of us who don't agree with him, we terrible "anti-abortionists" who care nothing for children. Why should I read more of this article when I've already been typecast and dismissed? Please please, the stereotypes around this issue are so divisive and ugly enough. Promoting them by your title of this piece can't and won't promote dialogue of any kind.
Well, since I don't have any dialogue whatsoever with anyone who advocates for my civil, human and Constitutional rights to be erased at the instant of conception, rendering me with less rights than a corpse, it's clear that the "typecast(ing)" is actually fact. Forced-birthers are divisive and ugly, a tiny minority of screechers attempting to interfere with and obstruct innocent citizens' access to the privacy rights established by the 14th Amendment.
5
I have been saying that last sentence forever. Pro-lifers are NOT pro life. They are anti-abortion or anti-women's rights. If they cared about the children they force to be born, they would not be against helping the mother's feed and clothe the children. Sometimes I despair. And to classify the great buffoon as pro-life is a disgrace. He is pro-DJT only!
5
They never cared about the woman. That is the truth.
Women and the men who love US have to care about our freedom to decide what happens inside our bodies. There is no right to be born. Birth is a gift.
To force a woman to bring a pregnancy to term is involuntary servitude prohibited by the 13th amendment. The current female slave states are many of the same states that fought to maintain slavery. We cannot allow this nation to go backward.
#BoycottFemaleSlaveStates
6
As I re-read Mr. Irving's statement--and after the Times refused to publish two of my earlier responses to it--I choked on one of the first substantive claims he makes, namely, that "abortion was widespread and not illegal in our country." I am not an expert on the legality of abortion in the centuries prior to Roe v. Wade, but I see utterly no real proof of the claim that abortion was 'widespread prior to the 1840s." Moreover, I repeat what I tried to say earlier, which is that it is slanderous to those of us who oppose abortion to say that we oppose this practice because we hate or are indifferent to women and children. Half the victims of abortion would if otherwise left alone enjoy a very good chance of becoming adult women. I am sorry that I believe this, but I do in fact believe that in this statement the New York Times has made itself a party to a very nasty slander.
@David A. Leev Of course you would want to see more womb servants being born. That proves nothing of whether you have any respect or empathy for those whose wombs you exploit. Women risk their lives bringing children into the world, they should do so WILLINGLY?Of course you would want to see more womb servants being born. That proves nothing of whether you have any respect or empathy for those whose wombs you exploit. Women risk their lives bringing children into the world, they should do so WILLINGLY.
2
It's time to stop the "NO-CHOICE" movement and add an WRC, "Woman's Right to Choose", amendment to the Constitution that can't be fiddled by SCOTUS!!
7
@gerry
Just pass the ERA.
It only needs one more state.
6
A fetus may be human and abortion may be murder. But that is a religious belief, and a fundamental principle of America is freedom of and from religion. If this belief is true, the punishment for this murder is best left to God, in the afterlife, if there happens to be one.
2
Thank you, John Irving.
I've never let the fact be forgotten that The Society Against Cruelty To Animals PRE-DATES ANY law on cruelty to children by two years.
So much for Christian love.
Here's one small point.
Christians are famously ignorant of any facet of their religion, and the most important factoid about Christianity is that it is an ASCETIC religion.
Asceticism is simple: It is the 'denial of the flesh' (fasting, no sex, no rich foods, no comfortable beds, no learning, etc.,), that 'poverty, celibacy and obedience' thing, that all cults demand.
But there is a further meaning to that word: Not only will you deny your OWN flesh, but you will, MUST, deny the 'flesh of your flesh'.
Your children.
Jesus says it best in Matthew 10: 35-37.
"Matthew 10: 35; For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
"Matthew 10: 36; and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
"Matthew 10:37; He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
I cringe every time I hear, "Jesus is love!" said with a bright, adoring Pence-smile.
Sure - but only if you never read the bible.
"Christian Love" is a contradiction.
In the first century everyone knew it was an ascetic cult.
They knew what 'ascetic' was.
It meant hate babies, hate women, hate your family.
Now they just call it, "Pro-life"....
4
In the 1960s, the strongest issue that galvanized conservatives was not abortion, but their objection to racial integration in the South. In the 1970s, they fought against a legal crackdown on their private, TAX-EXEMPT, Christian, “segregation academies”.
To continue segregation, the notion of Christian victimization was perpetuated, accusing government of infringements on religious freedom. Nixon's treasury department finally revoked the segregation academy's tax exempt status, and that became the central issue among conservatives.
If not for Paul Weyrich the mastermind of the conservative movement, abortion would not be a political issue with Christian Evangelicals.
Even Jerry Falwell did not preach against abortion until 1978, FIVE YEARS AFTER Roe v Wade, after Weyrich discovered in that he could get Evangelicals to the polls using the issue of abortion and homosexuality. He even got former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to produce a propaganda film, "Whatever Happened to the Human Race".
Ronald Reagan mentions the "unconstitutional" attacks on the Christian segregation academies in his speeches during his campaign in Dallas, referencing their former tax exempt status, but he does NOT mention abortion, because it was NOT a central issue to Republicans!
It's no surprise that, Trump continues to exploit the founding racist principles of the religious right.
Watch: The Man Who Mobilized the Evangelical Vote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcC53j32BW4
5
Is it about life, or really a stand-in for racism, America's "original sin"?
'Throughline' Traces Evangelicals' History On The Abortion Issue
ABDELFATAH: No. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention, they actually passed resolutions in 1971, 1974 and 1976 - after Roe v. Wade - affirming the idea that women should have access to abortion for a variety of reasons and that the government should play a limited role in that matter, which surprised us. The experts we talked to said white evangelicals at that time saw abortion as largely a Catholic issue.
KING: So if Roe v. Wade didn't cause the sea change, what did?
ABDELFATAH: In short, desegregation. Two years before Roe v. Wade, in 1971, there was a Supreme Court case that began to pull white evangelicals into politics. Me and my co-host, Ramtin Arablouei, dove into the story of that case, known as Green v. Connally.
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/20/734303135/throughline-traces-evangelicals-history-on-the-abortion-issue
I find it ironic, almost hypocritical how abortion is the only life issue of many ( not all), Catholics, Evangelicals or the politically far right American conservatives. While abortion is a horrible event in a woman’s life...as is rape and sexual abuse... what about other life issues such as not being able to afford life saving medicine or insurance? , gun violence, suicide prevention, programs for the mentally ill, pollution, environmental issues leading to horrible air quality and catastrophic illness... helping the wealthiest keep their wealth rather than helping the poor in this country, and opposing common sense birth control.. leading to world population out of control, unwanted children and their horrible suffering, ... and the list goes on. The politically far right do not support funds for any of these life issues. Yet abortion is their only life issue concern? I do not understand their rational or thinking. It is not logical at all.
6
"Whatever the anti-abortion crusaders call themselves, they don’t care what happens to an unwanted child — not after the child is born — and they’ve never cared about the mother."
Really? As a man I do not presume to speak for what women do with their bodies, how can you be so presumptuous as to know what the pro-life "crusader" community cares about?
A simple google search uncovered this article:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/pro-lifers-really-do-care-about-single-moms-and-it-shows
And my personal experience with church based programs that support a wide variety of the vulnerable including single mothers demonstrate otherwise. The Jewish/Christian biblical mandate has always been to care for the "orphan, widow, poor, and immigrant." Do not lump all conservatives and the politically right into the same batch. Stick to fiction.
1
A simple Google search uncovers the fact that the Washington Examiner is a right wing rag.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Washington_Examiner
2
I would have preferred to focus more on the hypocrisy of the pro-life movement in general while being spared the history lesson. The article makes it sound like abortion was super safe in 1840. We need to link the decrease in abortion availability to the increase in sex education, pre-natal care, post natal care, child-care, neo-natal care, maternity and paternity leave, an healthcare in general. Taking abortion out of this context is just ridiculous.
You said abortion was outlawed in all states for a century before 1973 (Roe v. Wade). Not so. Abortion became legal in New York in 1970.
2
I had never considered this before, but is it possible the medical profession was anti-abortion is because the fees for delivery are higher than fees for an abortion????????
4
I've read a lot of classical literature, and I don't buy the argument that abortion was accepted before the evil Victorian doctors took over.
In Machiavelli's MANDRAGOLA, a friar is blackmailed over his involvement in an abortion. In Defoe's MOLL FLANDERS Moll is a thief, but she is shocked at the idea of getting an abortion when she gets pregnant. (The abortionist is also her fence)
A favorite literary theme for centuries was the promising girl whose life is derailed by an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Gretchen in FAUST. Effie Dean in HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN. Lady Dedlock in BLEAK HOUSE. Hester Prynne in SCARLET LETTER. Tess in TESS OF THE D'UBERVILLES. For some reason none of them solved her problem by getting an abortion. The most likely reason was that abortion was considered wrong, even though it wasn't explicitly illegal.
When my married mother was giving birth to me in a Catholic hospital 70 years ago, the nun-nurse told my mother to stop screaming because she had brought this on herself. Childbirth and children were punishment for her "sin". Don't think that Vatican II and the "liberalization" (we're now allowed to have Jewish friends) of the Church has changed its attitude toward women. It is an institution run by men and for men. Its disdain of women children is evident in its reaction to priest's child abuse. An institution that has such a. history has no right to tell what a woman what to do with her body in a liberal democracy.
6
Anti-abortionists are not pro-life. They are pro-birth. Life after birth is irrelevant to them.
3
Is it still true that the Catholic church will not give last rites to a still born child? My sister-in-law was devastated when her much wanted daughter died when the cord wrapped around her neck during labor and the priest could not even give her the small comfort of that ritual. What hypocrisy.
2
Pro-life is a propaganda term and marketing is propaganda. It's like the absolute propaganda genius of renaming the United States War Department to the benign and righteous sounding Defense Department.
6
"...any they've never cared about the mother."
No truer statement ever written. The "pro-life" charities support mothers through maybe the first six months or so after the child is born. My oldest is 33 and I can tell you that I haven't stopped parenting for a single day since he was born. Even thinking that we stop parenting at 18, as if we all just shake hands, wish each other well, and go our separate ways.
It is forever. It is a life-long endeavor. And it can be a wonderful thing to build a family...or not.
4
Thank you, This needs to be said, and often.
5
And the opinion board lights up on fire again.
2
Those anti-abortion or anti-gay protesters are among the meanest, & cruelest people on this earth....They have no tolerance for anyone who does not share their 15th century views....
In the immortal words of Taylor Swift :
"You need to calm down"...
4
The goal of the so-called “pro-life” supporters is to punish women for having, and especially enjoying, sex. We know that because they always oppose sex education and birth control.
3
The Pope doesn't own my body. Neither does Jerry Falwell. Nor do all the Christian Right who justify their anti-abortion maneuvers by laying claim to a woman's choice to deliver her baby or not. Abortion is politically charged and motivated. the GOP uses the anti-stance to cultivate followers and votes. In my mind, just another attempt for male-indoctrinated groups to keep their patriarchal control alive, bringing their subservient women along with them. I'd like to see every foster child in America adopted by Christians. I'd like to see them acknowledge climate change, as millions of children's and mother's lives are at stake. I'd like to see them take up charters for health care, education, and daycare for the millions of women who struggle to make ends meet. Hello out there?? Where is your Pope and your Falwell and your POTUS to help lead this charge for true charity? Stop hiding behind your false beliefs.
9
Of course life starts at conception. Us progressives need to start there with bold courage. The truth is that life is messy. I think denying that life starts at conception does our movement a great disservice. Why are we buying into this narrative imposed on us by the Catholic Church of all things? This argument about when life starts is a religious one. It makes us look like fools.
@Christine Feinholz
Of course it doesn't. "Life" doesn't "start". Life is a cycle. Sperm and egg are alive. The particular arrangement of DNA doesn't result in anything other than another process in the developmental process. Despite the insistence of the anti-abortion crusade, science does not give absolute certainty to this debate.
3
Abortion is a woman’s personal decision. It has nothing to do with religion or patriarch. It is better not to be born than to be abused, crippled and murdered after birth. Many women do not want to mother and they should not be forced to.
4
The republican governor of Missouri has been on a crusade to close the last remaining abortion facility in the state, claiming he is doing so to "protect the health of women". Yet Missouri has a maternal mortality rate higher than the national average and the republican legislature refused to establish a commission to determine the reasons for this. One republican state legislator has even tried to make a case for "consensual rape". This is how much they "care" about women in Missouri.
2
"Pro-life" rather than a noble statement, is really another oxymoron, as is Citizens United, jumbo shrimp, etc.
3
I’ll always oppose the killing of children in the womb. None of the lies and hatred directed at me and others like me will change anything.
Contrary to the beliefs of most NY Times readers, we’ll all be judged someday on this very point. That’s going to be a sad day for the many who cared nothing about tens of millions of murdered children. So keep talking about a woman’s right to choose all you want. Just know that poor choosing will have material consequences.
1
@Bill Carson
I have an honest question: Do you believe that the use of hormonal birth control or an IUD that makes the lining of the womb inhospitable to implantation falls under the "killing of children"? Keep in mind that actual fertilization of the egg takes place in a tiny fallopian tube. Unless things have changed, OBGYN's define the start of pregnancy as the date of implantation in the womb.
Full disclosure - my husband and I relied on those forms of contraception for 17 or 18 years and produced only two wonderful children.
3
No children have ever been harmed in any way whatsoever in a safe and legal pregnancy termination. All children, ever, have already been born.
And fictional mythology does not result in, ahem, "material consequences".
4
When Republicans talk about abortion, they really mean abortion for the poor who can't afford abortion tourism.
I would like to see an anti-abortion bill that 1/ makes it criminal for any doctor not to report any pregnancy to the state and 2/ has a mandatory "where's the baby?" inquiry shortly after the due date of any reported pregnancy followed by a criminal investigation in case there isn't one.
Let's see how many Republican hypocrites would back such a bill...
2
so many women haters here--every woman has a human right to a safe abortion! period!
5
“She is paying the piper"
I learned from the Kavanaugh hearings, and much of the "me too" discussion, that for many Americans sexual relations without procreation intent are the fault of the female- even in cases of assault. Restricting birth control and abortion access sentences girls and women to a different, diminished life trajectory, whereas the males involved pay no price.
6
It's ok if (cough) pro-lifers want to impose their beliefs on us .... as long as we get to decide what they can believe. So, for example, if the stacked Supreme Court decides to overturn Roe then we can ban the teaching of creationism as science. Or better yet, what if we revoked the tax exempt status of organizations abetting child molestation? Two can play these games. It's time to stop this hypocrisy and go on the legal and political offensive against the pro-life movement. If the Dems win 13 of 22 open red Senate seats in 2020, Kavanaugh can be impeached. Just sayin'
4
Mr Irving you are wasting your words.
The human brain has evolved to want certainty and order. Your books play with that desire, promisng the reader a thrill but a happy ending (or the reassurance of fiction).
Humans who have grabbed onto the certainty promised by the (fiction but we won't go there) of religion won't let go of that bone. You are just making them bite it more tightly, I fear.
Before Roe vs Wade, women who were miscarrying were turned away from hospitals and doctor’s offices, as they feared they would be accused of providing an abortion. During this time, a pregnant family member’s fetus died at about 24 weeks. She carried that fetus for 4 more weeks, until she went into labor. There was no other alternative. She and her husband never attempted to get pregnant again.
3
That's very sad. Many people don't realise that in the case you described, the mother's life was at great risk. Being forced to retain a dead fetus can cause potentially fatal problems for the mother, something the right-to-life group ignores or discounts.
4
@Mebschn, the forced birthers don't care about the frequent and many complications of pregnancy that can result in the pregnant woman's permanent disability or death. They see women as livestock, and livestock that can't successfully breed is culled from the herd. If your cow dies, get another cow.
2
American Christianity: See the Pledge of Allegiance, dollars and cents, Christian holiday school breaks, government office and store closures, presidential speeches, judicial oaths, bigotry and antisemitism, the list goes on. Some of it is fairly benign, some not. Injection of religion into American culture may be illegal or wrong, but it isn't a stretch. After all, religion isn't based on rational thought, so anything goes. And it's been going for centuries.
What is untenable is male domination of issues pertaining to womens' rights, and womens' lack of support for other women's sexual, maternity and family rights, whether it be in the workplace, home, or abortion clinic. if women truly want the power to decide for themselves, stop letting men run your lives. Vote women into power.
4
@Me: Legislation works best when rationally thought out, which is why the first amendment prohibits legislation that gives credence to beliefs held solely on the basis of faith, and implicitly allows Congress to ban forced participation in religion.
2
Please let's use the proper language when addressing this issue. People who don't want others to have abortion are not pro-life. They are anti-choice. They are couching their ignorance in euphemism to make themselves look virtuous. They do not want any pregnant person to have control over their own bodies, usually because they believe some putative supernatural force has determined that a clump of cells adhered to a uterine wall is a person, in direct contradiction of every bit of scientific evidence to the contrary. Because they don't care about the truth. They care about what they believe. They are selfish and cruel. And they should be decried and shouted down at every opportunity.
10
By not addressing the pseudo-science propaganda with which the anti-abortion crusade convinces itself, and relatively disinterested voters, that abortion is the murder of babies you miss an opportunity to sway more votes than you would by scolding pro-life hypocrisy. They've spent decades honing a message that they have absolute certainty in "scientific truth" while they have nothing of the kind. In other fields of the culture wars this kind of propaganda has power to sway the disinterested just enough to believe "both sides need to be presented", and that's all they need.
3
I don't like tattoos or "body art". If we were created in God's image, we shouldn't try to "improve" what we're born with. That's why I have no tattoos. You want, feel you need tattoos, you are, and should be, entitled.
2
“Pro-freedom” would be a much better term than “pro-choice.” I’m amazed at the marketing incompetence of the pro-freedom crowd. “Pro-freedom” taps into a powerful, emotional, and sacred American value. Freedom is equal and even superior sometimes to life in the American value system. “Pro-choice” is about as convincing as “pro-maybe.” Please change the terminology to “pro-freedom.” Please. Words matter, words help persuade, words shape minds. Choose powerful words. Not "pro-maybe" words.
1
I prefer "patriotic". Patriots stand to defend and protect the sacred civil, human and Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens. Opponents of those sacred rights are anti-American.
2
@goatini
Pro-patriotic or pro-freedom. Either one would work for me. In addition, it's co-opting words so beloved of the right, which is a bonus!
1
The "pro-life" movement is organized hypocrisy -- the stone-throwing mob of our time.
3
For conservatives, pregnancy is the punishment for experiencing pleasure. Pregnancy has, until recently, been the ironic means by which men controlled the most intimate part of a woman's agency, her sexual desires, and pleasures. Medically safe abortion and the pill are the means by which women's agency can be freed from the burdens of pregnancy. This should be considered a universal good. But in the minds of those who wish to preserve the province of male dominance, any form of liberation for women is a threat. https://madsociologistblog.com/2016/04/04/trump-abortion-and-the-puritan-ethic/
2
I am so sick and tired, no, disgusted of religion in our government. It’s destroying logic and fairness. There is a reason the founders sought freedom of and FROM religion. They realized that, for example, almost all promulgate that theirs is the one truth - clear evidence that they are all wrong. Please take religion out of government, I don’t want my president getting scripture on his smartphone or using fantasy and o make decisions that affect 100’s of millions.
4
The 'pro-life' doctrine is so popular among republicans because conservatives by nature are cruel and authoritarian. Being 'pro-life' gives them the perfect opportunity to be cruel to poor women while feeling good about themselves for seemingly 'caring' for the fetus. Also their conviction is that being 'pro-life' guarantees them a spot in heaven after death.
1
So agree. I've always had the feeling that, apart from all the baloney spouted by Anti-Abortionists, the actual motivation was an incentive to punish, stigmatize, etc., with sexual frustration as a subliminal element.
3
Aside from natural disaster, I can't think of anything more dangerous or harmful to life than misguided religion.
5
From what I've seen in America, no one truly cares about child or the mother or the families. Instead of objecting to abortion or supporting it why not do the smart thing and support sex education for all children regardless of what their parents want. It's too important to have the right information before one has intercourse or necks to leave it to parents who are either too embarrassed, too religious, or worse to tell their children.
Children need to know that sex is for pleasure and reproduction. They need to understand how it works and how getting pregnant can be prevented. They do not need to be told to abstain at all costs, that one can become pregnant by being kissed, or that having sex before marriage is sinful.
Why doesn't our government do more to support families of all sorts? Why don't they see to it that every child can be enrolled in daycare so that the parents can work without worrying? What about providing better options for all Americans when it comes to medical care, illness, etc.? After watching the idiotic statements and dithering for over 40 years on the same issues my conclusions are these: our country, government and employers all, have no real interest in citizens or employees except as wallets from which to extract money. That goes for opponents and those in favor. We are one of the least family friendly countries in the developed world.
6/24/2019 12:11pm
2
Years ago I heard a tale about one of our male OB-GYN's in practice here. ( In the 70's all our OB's were male). A long-time patient of his, (he had delivered all her children), a married woman in her late forties, had had an extramarital affair and was pregnant. Her husband had had a vasectomy, and she was distraught and begged him for an abortion. An evangelical Christian, he looked at her and said "You made your bed, now lie in it."
In other words, pay the piper.
The author misstates the status of the law when Roe ws decided.Many statesby that point allowed abortion in some manner. Hence, the author's statement that abortion was illegal everywhere in the U.S. from 1900 until 1973 is just plain wrong.
You can be sure of one thing, this piece will not change anybody’s policy choices.
All this show is that Irving's non-fiction is as bad as his fiction.
2
keep speaking up. there are many who need to hear these points. and there remain too many who hide their anti life mindset behind their dictatorial wishes to impose their religious beliefs on every one... not at all a democratic or American view of government and the world.
1
This should be required reading for everyone, including --and especially-- the willfully blind.
But the problem is, willful ignorance trumps all efforts to enlighten.
1
And some more of talking past and ignoring the anti-abortion crusade propaganda. They really do believe that they're stopping the murder of babies. I'm sure that they'd love to adopt all unwanted babies and see to the welfare of all women, if they could. Maybe these settled on pro-choice talking points are just over my head. Maybe everyone just understands that the population that needs to be addressed is the great unwashed fence sitters and the anti-abortion pseudo-science propaganda can be safely ignored. But I can't escape the conclusion that we're in the current mess exactly because the pseudo-science propaganda has been ignored for decades. I believe that they've honed their propaganda and that it's enormously effective with the average, non-evangelical voter. I believe that it's had a much greater effect at convincing the average voter that abortion is murder than is generally appreciated. I believe that debunking the pseudo-science isn't that hard, that it needs to be the major talking points, and that it has to be done constantly. Some links:
https://oyc.yale.edu/molecular-cellular-and-developmental-biology/mcdb-150/lecture-23
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/When_does_life_begin%3F
https://blogs.plos.org/dnascience/2013/10/03/when-does-a-human-life-begins-17-timepoints/comment-page-1/
Carl Sagan article: http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
With all we have witnessed in my life
I can’t help but be cynical about the motives of the Catholic hierarchy. They own a large number of the hospitals and other facilities that make big money as birth centers.
Frankly, they need big money to pay off child abuse claims against their employees! So what is the word for the opposite of a “virtuous circle”?
2
@Mark Schlemmer, I think that word begins with "cluster...".
2
An otherwise wondrous story teller, Mrl. Irving brought us all "A Prayer for Owen Mean." A novel featuring a young man who prepped his entire life to save the life of others. All the others.
He recanted on life for the human fetus in his otherwisde caring story of a sad abortion in "The Ciderhouse Rules." He's been sinking ever since.
We have a LIfeCare Center that cares about the pregnant mother and her unborn child. Thousands support it.
Nearly half our population agrees that abortion is not the answer to an unwanted pregnancy. We care about ALL life: the mother's and the unborn child's, from conception to birth and beyond.
It's important to pass "open windows" Mr. Irving, just as it's critical to pass killing our own kind.
2
Caring about all life would mean that all women with unwanted pregnancies who want to continue the pregnancy and raise the issue would be provided with all of the resources needed to raise the child, and would provide support for the woman's educational and career goals. Caring about all life would also mean that all women with unwanted pregnancies who do not wish to be pregnant at that time can obtain, without interference or delay, a safe and legal pregnancy termination.
Advocating for gestational slavery if the woman does not wish to be pregnant, and/or advocating for the adoption mills to seize and sell the issue of an unwanted pregnancy through the billion-dollar human trafficking syndicates, is NOT "car(ing) about ALL life". These exploitative options most specifically care absolutely NOTHING for the actual life of the actual woman with the unwanted pregnancy.
5
@goatini - If a woman does not wish to be pregnant, use a contraceptive. Once it's a human life in the womb, it's a human that also deserves the "right to life," just like the mother.
3
Zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses have NO rights. Rights are conferred at birth. The only entity in the equation that is endowed with sacred civil, human and Constitutional rights is the born, living, breathing, innocent pregnant WOMAN. An innocent pregnant citizen's sacred rights are not erased at the instant that a random sperm meets an egg.
And ALL forms of contraception have failure rates. The momentous, life-changing, highly risky health condition of a pregnancy carried to term should ALWAYS be freely chosen and should NEVER be torturously forced upon an innocent woman who does not wish to remain pregnant. The UN rightly considers gestational slavery to be cruel and inhuman torture.
2
I'd like to know the historical connection between opposition to abortion and the Catholic proportion of the population. Mr. Irving notes that anti-abortion started in the 1840s and was nearly complete by 1900. I've found that Catholics in 1850 made up about five percent of the population, and that by 1906 were about 17 percent. I found this at
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nromcath.htm.
Were Catholics exerting legal and legislative pressure?
How can the anti-choice side refer to themselves as “pro-life” and proclaim that every life matters when they are also, so overwhelmingly, also “pro-war” and “pro-gun” and anti-healthcare and anti-immigration? Why don’t the lives of foreigners count as human lives?
2
Let's be clear. Anti-abortionists want to control women's bodies. They want to tell my niece what to do if she becomes pregnant, and they don't really care if she was raped or not. They want to put her and her doctor in prison if she decides to have an abortion. "Pro-life" doesn't really apply to anti-abortionists because viable life isn't what is at stake. The idea of a panel of Catholics and religious fundamentalists telling my niece what to do with her reproductive life is repellent.
4
Why don't we call it what it is, Forced Pregnancy, Forced Child Birth? A man can impregnate as many women as he wants, a woman forced to carry a child to term can still only have one birth. Perhaps we are looking at this wrong.
2
Not much to add but well done.
It strikes me as extremely hypocritical of the "pro-lifers" that they carry on about the sanctity of life, but are almost always the first ones to be ready to go to war. I wonder how many children have been killed by our own bullets and bombs in the last 30 years in the Middle East ?
Is it that these sanctimonious frauds think our children are any different/better than those in Iraq because they are "christian" and those in Iraq are muslim ?
By the way Mr. Irving, Great book/movie.
2
Count on it: it’s always a debacle when the pope or any religious group claims “higher power” knowledge and authority. It never ends well.
1
Make war on women who choose to have an abortion. Villify them and then by all means send young men to war to kill innocent people who are simply trying to survive. Banish asylum seeking refugees by separating parents and children, but if one of those children gets pregnant, make sure she gives birth, since life is sacred! Decisions made by men, for men to be powerful.
4
So what do the anti abortion advocates care about? Control, Old Testament thinking, meanness, punishment for having sex?
Republicans and evangelicals do not consider the consequences of their policies on real live living breathing people. And they have never cared about the children not now and not ever. Their policies are miserly and cruel.
It isn't just the child's life post-birth that the "pro-life" ignore, it's the future as a whole. I didn't have to dig very deeply when discussing a Christian friend's Trump vote, she made it very clear that she was a one-issue voter. And when pressed about all the other matters that faced humanity and might be negatively affected by giving power to an incompetent, ignorant con man, she shrugged and said, it's in "his" hands -- meaning her god.
2
What the most eloquent John Irving clearly alluded to but did not say explicitly, I will say: the right wants to punish women for having sex. Having the right to full autonomy includes the right to engage in sexual intercourse as one desires. The right wants to drag women back into the past where childbearing and rearing kept them down and from freely pursuing their own goals. If they truly cared for the fetuses who then become children, they would support social welfare programs. But it is those same people who consistently vote to deprive people of these safety nets, preferring them to instead go begging for charity from religious institutions. Whatever credibility the evangelicals once held, they have squandered in their support of Trump, an exemplar of a hedonistic lifestyle if ever I saw one. Oh, but there's the mulligan. How preposterous.
3
The term “Pro-Life” is one of the biggest hypocrisies foisted on the American population. These people are NOT pro-life, THEY ARE ONLY PRO-BIRTH.
After the child is born these “Pro-Life” activists are cruelly doing their best to strip away all forms of social safety net programs designed to help these mothers raise their children.
As the article points out, although we are supposed to have religious freedom, that right should end where your religious beliefs get imposed on other citizens.
I would propose that all of these “Pro-Life” activists and their followers be required to adopt and raise every one of these unwanted kids whose birth they have required. I wonder how long it would take to change their minds about interfering in other people’s lives.
2
Thanks for your essay. The Catholic church has only in this century come out as anti-choice. And it is patently clear that few in the pro-life really give a fig about children, women, or, really, the unborn. If they all worked together to support women, maybe they would make the world a better place for everyone. Thank goodness for Planned Parenthood and others who do care.
3
"Whatever the anti-abortion crusaders call themselves, they don’t care what happens to an unwanted child — not after the child is born — and they’ve never cared about the mother."
I would certainly agree that there are some pro-life folks who probably care more about winning the argument against abortion than they care about life. But what Irving is saying here is just not accurate.
Does Mr. Irving have any idea how many crisis pregnancy centers spend a great deal of their efforts providing parental guidance to mothers and fathers and loving the children after they are born? There are MANY. I cannot speak for every one, but the Christian nonprofit Carenet is a great example. Over an eight-year period, here is what they have achieved (per their website)
-677,000 babies born to mothers who chose to have them through contact with Carenet
-1 million men and women receiving parenting support
-1.6 million parents receiving free diapers, clothing, and car seats
This is just one example. Parents and children being born are being provided material support and COMMUNITY. This does not sound like pro-life as a "marketing" term to me.
Lastly, even if some pro-life people have been bad actors, does that make an unborn child less of a life? Just because some doctors commit malpractice, does that mean we should stop healing people? I'm sorry but I just can't see how any persons right to anything can trump another person's right to their own life. There is nothing higher.
2
@Nathan Howell the author of this piece does not care about counter-arguments like this. the author cares about making wide ranging statements to paint those that do not think precisely like the author in the worst possible light.
1
First off, Carenet is explicitly a Christian organization. They’re welcome to their beliefs and so on, but their whole purpose is to push from a religious perspective. Roe v. Wade rests on the idea that religion may not be imposed on all, or any.
Second off, Carenet appears to be one of the groups that claims to offer counseling and help—and then twists facts, and refuses to provide a full range of choices.
Third off...does Carenet procide any contraceptive info or services? I bet not.
Fourth: diapers, a car seat, maybe some formula, help. But they are a band-aid, not real help.
3
Irving shows his capacities as a fiction writer in this piece: repeating the trope of Cyril Means et al. that abortion was "legal" in America before states began enacting restrictive abortion laws in the 19th century. Coke and Blackstone both differentiated penalties for prenatal killing before and after "quickening" (the one reliable criterion in a pre-ultrasound age), but they did not regard pre-quickening killing as innocent. And to say abortion was legal is like saying radio was legal and unregulated in the 18th century: there are no laws on radio (nor does the First Amendment deal with the radio spectrum the same way it does print media) for the simple reason nobody makes laws for the rare-to-nonexistent. Irvine continues his stroll through fictionland by omitting the fact that doctors, when they came to understand the physiology of reproduction (in the 1840s, thanks to the advent of anesthesia that made access to the living but largely internal female reproductive system more possible) lead the crusade against abortion, along with leading feminists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. So, please don't say that "before 1808 abortion was legal" in the sense that it was largely accepted: if anybody, Irving should recognize a work of fiction.
2
You’re probably citing the Witherspoon Institute, and a siller farrago of half-truths, leaps of logic, and flat-out nonsenses I’ve seldom seen.
Just take your claims about the history of medicine. The general physiology of fetal development was understood well before the 1830s—it’s in Galen and Vesalius and da Vinci, for crying out loud!—and no, it was not anesthetics that allowed a better understanding.
It was dissection of corpses. Available anesthetics were far too iffy to allow regular surgical investigation, to say nothing of the sepsis that would have resulted given common surgical practices of the time. Nor did medical practice drive the promulgation of anti-abortion laws.
And the stuff about Blackstone et al looks like a deliberate attempt to hide the point: that until “quickening,” the question of human life simply did not come up. Which would be unhelpful to your RELIGIOUS belief that human life begins at conception, of course, which is why you’re twisting the facts.
There is no scientific basis for your claim. Arguably, there cannot be. Try making your arguments based on what your arguments are based on; otherwise, you sound like an Intelligent Design dingbat trying to be sciency.
4
@Robert Yep. Except you have somebody no less than Aristotle holding a theory of the "misbegotten male" in his embryology and the commonplace view that the Fallopian tubes were ventilation. Yes, people had some idea of fetal development, but the development of anesthesia really made INTERNAL medicine possible. So I stand by my "sciency" claim advances in medicine in the 19th century were responsible for real medical men (not bad philosophers) to recognize that abortion involved the ending of human life, knowable scientifically and not as a matter of dogma.
1
This is a very enlightening column on the history of abortion in the United States. I was surprised to learn that the Puritans condoned abortion and to learn that doctors in the mid-nineteenth century were opposed to abortion.
I'm curious what the statistics are for how many pro-lifers are also adoptive parents. If you want to vote to end Roe vs Wade, then you need to adopt children. Simple as that.
5
@Conscientious Eater
All you'd need is ubiquitous free birth control and the morning after pill sold in vending machines everywhere. There'd be no need to kill fetuses or adopt extra children.
1
Dear John,
I have always believed that Cider House Rules was your best novel. Now I know why. Thank you many times over.
2
Irving is a great author and his books usually feature characters who are quirky, but moral and fair. I'm a man and it is clear to me that pro-life is anything but. One comment accused Irving of being pro-abortion which is untrue. He is pro-choice, like I am. The pro-life movement's only objective is to hamstring women's freedom and nothing more.
6
As any woman who has miscarried can tell you, life does not begin at conception. I had already been there, twice, when a dear Catholic friend, already a mother of 3, experienced it for the first time. Her words, "Now I understand that life begins when the baby can survive on it's own." She remains pro-choice.
8
The most powerful case on this I have read. In Sophistical debates, people have one reason for holding a view and another given in defending it. Making the real argument clear is then a useful task for us writers.
The religious right cares for neither "rights" nor "life" and they know it. The rights they claim are proxies: A affirms his "moral" values, binding on B as her duty to C, a hypothetical person (whom A protects). "Life" functions here as idea, an abstraction. When not even sentient, it is a biological "person" whose similarity to us is developmental, prospective, and so hypothetical, a "scientific" dogma. Its "right" is her duty, which she owes to the state, society, and God of the righteous.
The right of persons to choose how to live their life
is not accidentally in conflict with the competing "right" of her fetus; rather, the latter cancel the former. It is meant to. The purpose is to force women to have children.
The right values "the family" as a duty (to have kids and raise them); it posits a morality of obedience and duty (do the right thing). It is a morality of enforceable mastery and servitude. This also explains why the evangelical religious right in America has no recognizably "Christian" values in the sense of their Gospels' message of universal love and compassion. And in terms of our nation's founding document, how hypothetical rights to "life" prevail over any interest in the free pursuit of happiness.
6
@William Heidbreder
Interesting that you mention sentience as a necessary condition for personhood. Do I have that right? Meaning we cannot say that something could lack sentience and be human at the same time.
You do realize what this line of reasoning commits you to, right? That any time an individual lacks sentience, then it isn't a human and therefore can be deprived of rights. This would include: people in comas, people under anesthesia, and most astonishingly: when people are in a deep sleep...
How could that possibly be the criteria you use?
The central argument of this piece is that some people in positions of power who are pro-life, are not consistent in their support for programs that would help the child once the child is born. Essentially, that those who hold these positions are to varying degrees hypocritical and therefore there must be some ulterior motive to their position: namely the effort to dominate/control women. This is an ad hominem argument at its core. This entire piece does nothing to a. prove that the unborn are not human and 2. justify elective abortion. This argument is weak and has been dealt with extensively in the scholarly literature on abortion. Furthermore, this argument rests on extremely tenuous ground, for the moment someone who is pro-life supports in their private life one of the myriad of ways one can help children: from volunteering to adoption, the argument becomes null and void... After all, they are no longer hypocritical. Weak argument.
Beyond that the author of this piece makes some astonishing claims that should strike anyone (regardless of position on this issue) as unhelpful rhetoric. Namely:
-the prevailing impetus to oppose abortion is to punish women…
-a woman’s life is never sacred: presumably because someone opposes elective abortion? So elective abortion is a necessary condition for considering some’s life “sacred”? Very very few people on the pro-life side of this discussion would disallow an abortion when the life of the mother was at risk.
4
Of course, antiabortionist do not care about the life of the woman. The infamous case in Ireland when a woman died, because she was denied abortion is an example. But more over, it is not only about physical harm, but also emotional harm that unwanted pregnancy could impose on woman. The wish of antiabortionist to control the women's body is clear. They are not care about women after they have the birth, or about children who were already born, otherwise, they would with same zeal to lobby for social programs that help mother's and children. Without that, the anti-abortionist's rhetoric sounds hollow, no matter how many scholar literature dedicated to antiabortion ideas.
4
John Irving argues that the anti-abortion movement is about power and cruelty, nothing else. That the zealots care only about telling women what to do with their bodies, and punishing them if they don't do it.
The comments in the thread from the zealots prove his point, over and over, and over, and over.
4
My great aunt was a midwife in Sicily, a highly respected profession. She came here and had no opportunities to deliver children, outside of her family. This article puts in perspective why my immigrant family never trusted the medical industrial complex.
The "pro-life" movement is really the "pro-birth" movement... the republicans platform is decidedly ant working woman and anti child.
9
A helpful debate would include mothers, women doctors and nurses, women judges, women politicians, and women from many other walks of life. The debate would welcome all perspectives, but the men in the audience would have to sit still and listen (no questions).
4
Thanks to John Irving for reminding people (and in any cases informing people) that abortion became illegal and vilified relatively recently in our history. It was a time of intense societal and economic change, with industrialization and increased immigration reshaping American society, a major evangelical religious revival movement, and reform movments. It was in these decades that anti-alcohol "blue" laws were passed (I think Maine's was the first - not coincidentally I would argue). There was little talk then of the humanity or sacredness of the fetus. It appears that the rise of the anti-abortion movement (which went along with anti-contraceptive laws as well as the "blue laws" regulating alcohol that I mentioned), had much more to do with the idea of regulating morality - specifically women's sexuality. By the time the Comstock laws were passed around 1870, banning the distribution of information on contraception due to its "obscene" content, the message was pretty clear - it was all about regulating women's reproduction, not about the fetus. By later in the century, social commentators were also preoccupied with relative lower birth rates of white people in relation to the immigrant groups flooding the country, calling contraception and abortion "race suicide".
4
"The prevailing impetus to oppose abortion is to punish the woman who doesn’t want the child."
Exactly!! Nail on head, and then some.
Thank you for "The Cider House Rules," an unforgettable thinking person's novel, passed around among women since the 80s. I passed it on to my daughters. They shared it with friends.
6
the argument pro abortion has been flawed from the beginning.
A woman's right to choose should not be the only slogan.
We have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the developed world. Millions of cases of child abuse, more than 600.000 children in foster care, hunger and homelessness. We never talk about the hypocrisy of the Republicans who refuse to take care of these unwanted and often unloved children, no affordable childcare, no paid maternity leave, unaffordable healthcare etc.
When abortion became legal the crime rate dropped by 31% in the following decades. The Democrates never bring up the the cruelty of the Republicans and their disregard for the future of the
children and their poor parent(s). Rich women can go anywhere to get abortions so only the poor will have unwanted babies. If they overturn Roe v. Wade they better start paying for all the social services to take care of these kids.
6
Terrific column. I take exception to the common myth (perpetuated by "pro-lifers?") that having an abortion is a heart-wrenching decision. The only emotion I felt after an abortion, was tremendous relief!
12
@Loretta Marjorie Chardin - Of course, you felt relief. An unwanted pregnancy is a serious, inescapable dilemma that must be dealt with immediately. But are you saying that you will feel no responsibility, now or later, for choosing to terminate that pregnancy?
@Randomonium, are you attempting to falsely accuse the OP of being irresponsible? Obtaining a safe and legal pregnancy termination IS an action of responsibility.
3
@Randomonium
By "responsibility" do you really mean guilt? The answer is a resounding NO!
2
The anti-abortion people have always been about their beliefs and comfort and never about affecting the lives of other people. SAD! Compassion and caring are just not in their vocabulary. They feel they can make the choice between a mother, her life, and her child.
5
@albert
"The anti-abortion people have always been about their beliefs and comfort and never about affecting the lives of other people." - WRONG! It's about affecting the lives of the unborn children!
2
Be careful about using the word “never.” I can see the effort to safeguard women’s health and pursuit of happiness in laws based on pro-choice even though I am philosophically pro-life. I don’t have short answers. I do have four children. Two came into our family by way of adoption from a birth mother with whom we as well as our two children still have a relationship. Birth father abandoned them back in the 80’s after suggesting abortion. I understand. But it’s not good to say “never.”
The Cider House Rules protagonist makes a simple error - because he is glad for his life, however hard, he thinks that he should promote it. If he came about because of a rape, would he have been as ready to say rape should not be prevented? If he could be pregnant, understand how being forced to carry an unwelcome pregnancy is much the same as rape, would he have come to his realization sooner that imprisoning others for future potential children was not OK?
1
You can be considered pro-life if you want to provide medical attention to children after they are born, even if they cannot afford it.
You can be considered pro-life if you want all children to be educated, clothed and fed, even if they cannot afford it.
You can be considered pro-life if you don't put children in cages just because they came into this country without papers.
You can be considered pro-life if you want to provide birth control, so unintended conception never happens.
You can be considered pro-life if value the woman enough to let her chose her own best course of action, along with her personal physician.
Finally, you can be considered pro-life if you when you care more about helping women, than judging them through your own prejudice lens.
10
Excellent and thoughtful article. It's always good to be reminded of historical context. And John Irving is correct. This movement is not "pro-life" by any stretch. The states passing the most punitive anti-choice laws have the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality and the worst healthcare for their residents. This is utter hypocrisy.
7
25 million women voted for Trump. That's a pretty large segment of the population willing to overturn Roe vs. Wade. That is also a pretty large segment of the population willing terminate to Obamacare and that's a pretty large segment of the population willing to tolerate destruction of the environment.
Don't blame me for women's problems.
2
utterly irrelevant no matter how unfortunate, if the issue is the sanctity of life/is it murder. that so many people refuse to accept this reality is mind boggling.
if we discussed euthanasia, would we be discussing how the anti-euthanasia people dont care about those who are financially and emotionally devastated by the illness of their loved ones??? what's the difference--that one is already alive, and one is not yet alive???
2
Excellent and well written article, no surprise from Mr. Irving. I used to accept the propaganda I have heard from fundamentalists and Catholics that life begins at birth. Now I see historically that even the Puritans didn't believe that which makes the anti-abortionists look anti-scientific, irrational and childish.
3
NEWSFLASH:
they don't care about the baby either, or they would care what happens to it AFTER they're born.
This is all about dictating orders. Period.
5
Brilliant as always Mr. Irving! Keep fighting for your rights!
Wonderful piece. When I read CIDER HOUSE RULES years ago, I could not imagine any empathic person opposing leagal abortion. Saturday, I attended a rally in oposition to the efforts in various states to delegitamize abortion. Female speaker after female speaker inveighed against a war by men against women. I got angrier and angrier. I am male and seventy-seven. I have supported legal abortion since before all these speakers were born. Why is so little said about the war against women by women? If women want to keep abortion legal, then they should be persuading the so-called right-to-life women and forget about men, many of whom are more open on this issue than a great many misguided women. Women do, after all, make up about 50 percent of the population.
4
Wonderful article. Thank you. It's a women's right to choose. But, a couple can make the same decision. We did. We were 19. I was away at war. She was home. I had a steady military paycheck. It, the situation, was a mess. I didn't know for certain who the child's father was. It finally came down to we were too young. At the time choice was the best solution. It turned out to be the best for both of us. We went our separate ways. Lived good lives. I became a parent, and a good one, when I was ready. No. Our society doesn't talk about the positive side of abortion. But, there is one.
10
"Beginning in the 1840s, and continuing over decades, abortion was outlawed state by state, becoming illegal everywhere in the United States by 1900 — until 1973, when the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision held that a woman had a constitutional right to an abortion."
Not so. For example, it was legal in New York State prior to Roe v. Wade (although only for two years or so). In a few other states as well, I believe.
1
"The Cider House Rules" is one of my favorites movies, ever; I've watched it several times, and still can't bring myself to delete it from my DVR.
Beyond the very obvious benefit of having a man - any man - put himself in a woman's place, especially when it comes to an experience that men cannot biologically experience, is Mr. Irving's creative approach to making a difference. This movie humanizes an issue in a way that politics can't match.
Sometimes our hearts can see what our politics can't.
We need more creative writers bringing issues like this to vibrant life - and publishers willing to risk political (and corporate) backlash by releasing the best of them.
4
Every election I face the abortion question. I know fellow Catholics who vote solely based on the candidate's abortion position and vote for the anti-abortion candidate. I think this is immoral. Catholic teaching is pro help for the poor. the hungry, the imprisoned, the immigrant and against the death penalty and abortion. There are no candidates that embody that spectrum. I believe that the welcome and support shown by Christ to the poor is best embodied by candidates that want to provide health care, food, shelter, education to all people. So first do that. Then we can talk about abortion.
13
What is the goal of the so-called pro-life movement?
100% of pregnancies result in a baby being born. And, to be charitable, that 100% of the babies are wanted. I mean, if they want to force unwanted children on people than they would be guilty of using child birth as a punitive measure. They say that punishment isn't who they are, right?
So, if 100% of pregnancies result in a wanted baby being born is the goal, why are they only focused on one solution and not the goal? They don't even want you to think of other solutions - except maybe she should be more careful.
Their solution: Force women to live through a 9 month gestation period, accepting all the physical aspects of that. Accept all the costs and economic consequences of pregnancy and birth. (Are they going to advocate the companies stop discriminating against pregnant women?).
Is there another solution that would be as equally, or maybe even less, medically and financially invasive?
How about all men are subject to a medical procedure that disallows the impregnating of women? The procedure is reversed when he has the consent of the woman to have a baby?
The result? No wanted pregnancies to abort, only possible medical reasons, and short of those medical complications 100% of pregnancies result in a wanted baby being born. Goal reached?
I suspect that this comment, like others suggesting men have responsibilities, will go unregarded while we continue to focus on women as the ones who will sacrifice.
10
@Marie - "The result? No wanted pregnancies to abort,"
Typed too fast. That was supposed to be: No UN-wanted pregnancies to abort,
I do, and will always, love John Irving.
6
This was a great piece, Mr. Irving, There is a long, conflicted and complicated history around women and our lack of agency with regard to any decision making for and about our lives. When do we get to be the piper?
5
The Catholic Church is right in one sense that procreation is the primary end of marriage, but not for reasons invented by their magical thinking. As far as science knows, the only reason for life is reproduction, to pass along our genes. And probably for us to eventually take control of our own evolutionary process, which we're doing. But I digress.
The problem is the sacralizing of anything; nothing is sacred. No wine and wafer, no beads and eagle feathers, no bones or relics, no places and monuments, no constitution written on yellowing parchment. When we declare anything or anyone sacred, we declare war against people to don't submit and share that belief. The punchline to sacralizing isn't a John Irving novel, but The Handmaid's Tale.
3
How many of the pro-life believers have adopted an unwanted child? Not many. These children often suffer, wind up in horrible foster homes and their mothers also suffer. It is no one's business whether a woman carries a child or not. Women do not get up one morning and say, "Gee, I don't feel like being pregnant anymore." The decision is wrenching. Few women feel good about having an abortion. They usually have good reasons.
16
The central issue is ignored, namely, the question of when life begins. If you don't know when life begins, then you don't know if abortion is killing a living human being. Does life begin at birth? If so, then abortion is OK at any time? Before birth? If so, then at what point exactly? Please be careful that your response is not arbitrary and/or convenient. Please also do not let legislators answer this question for you. To me it is absurd to believe that life begins at birth. Yes, the woman's body is sacred, and so is the body of the fetus. I am always disappointed that pro-life opinions ignore or dismiss the fetus. There is a human life in the balance. I do value the article for it's historic perspective, but none of it is central to the formation of my belief. I don't need the Pope/Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelicals or anybody else's opinion, nor do I need the self-serving motives of the medical profession or any other historical influences on society. All I need is my personal morality, at the top of which is the sacredness of life.
3
@Tom En
Factually, it is a convenient out to insist that "life begins". Life is a cycle. It doesn't begin at any time during that cycle. That is not a dodge. That is not "convenient". Far from it. It makes the philosophical, legal, and theological arguments much more difficult. Anyone that claims absolute objective certainty is confused by propaganda.
10
This just in, Tom: you don’t get to force your religious view—and it is a religious view, not one grounded in reason or in science—on everybody else.
Sorry.
2
@Tom En, and since you will never be pregnant, nor need to have an abortion for any number of reasons, your "personal morality" is completely irrelevant to the conversation.
2
Thank you. John. These are Important points we should keep in mind.
As a past Planned Parenthood volunteer, as well as now in abortion discussions, I'll suggest that laws do not stop abortion and if would be far better to support universal health care, comprehensive sex ed, and widely available and free contraceptives.
Not once has an anti-choice person accepted this alternative. Not once.
17
Yes! so many of the pregnancy "counselling" clinics give free pregnancy tests, formula, diapers, you name it. But where are they six months later when an unemployed mother is stuck with a child and little means to care for it? If they are so worried about these kids, why aren't they opening free daycare clinics, food services, babysitting, well baby care?
23
as Irving clearly points out, the abortion controversy is a sham and an excuse for demanding people (especially women) be controlled by the demands of a religion not necessarily their own, which goes against the establishment clause, if nothing else. these religious principals were originally formulated at a time much different from our own, when most children and many women died in childbirth, or soon thereafter... and most people were agrarian and needed as many surviving kids as possible to help the family subsist and take care of the few lucky enough to get old. women, in this context, were mainly breeders, like the livestock on the farm, offering the possibility of future survival. so, no contraception, no abortion, you'd be lucky to live through it and keep us going economically. and this is the basic story the righteous conservatives are so eager for us to return to: basically, reproductive slavery.
12
Contrary to all the protestations, there is no "caring about women" while maintaining they need to be forced to give birth. None. At all. If you recognize women as full people, you have to also recognize their individual liberty and autonomy.
19
The history of the world is that the female body is just a vessel for men's ambitions. That needs to stop. The pill and Roe vs Wade were a beginning not an end. Some people never got over the loss of power that those two events precipitated and are determined to wrestle that power back by turning the clock back. No.
19
Margaret Sanger and others, including Emma Goldman, worked with impoverished--and often abused--women in tenements. They came to see unwanted, but inevitable pregnancies as a crucial factor in the poverty and abuse, and distributed illegal birth control information as an antidote. For their actions, both faced imprisonment. Goldman actually served time in prison.
This is a terrific piece. It calls out the anti-abortion movement for what it is: anti-women. Of course, many anti-abortionists care about unborn babies, and the mothers, but the movement itself has a long and not so storied history of trying to control women's bodies and thus their lives.
17
Luckily the vast majority of women and their families in a pregnancy crisis are never going to consult me, a total stranger, about how they should deal with it.
It's absolutely none of my business. Too bad so many anti-abortion folks think it should be my business and theirs, as if the embryos were public property. Who are they to control a stranger's difficult and highly personal (and legal) decisions?
24
Mr. Iriving's critics take umbrage at his portrayal of 'pro life' as a marketing term, and his suggestion that anti-abortion Christians and Evangelicals are uncaring of life after conception.
But they miss a more central point that he makes: "Freedom of religion in the United States also means freedom from religion." In a democracy, if you have a moral and spiritual position, debate it and win over others. Don't force your religious beliefs on others. Among my own concerns about today's Evangelical movement is the religious tyranny and hypocrisy that they represent. And John Irving exposes that thoroughly in this piece.
19
@Down62
Your comment is extensively defective.
When you talk about having a debate, what you really mean is we in the pro-life camp will be permitted to have nice private parlor discussions with others, but when it comes to the law, only your views should ever be legally enshrined.
Freedom from religion? My religious beliefs entail that murder, rape, robbery are wrong. So because they are my religious beliefs, they cannot be enacted into law, because there may be some people who disagree?
As for religious 'tyranny', you do not appear to have a clear conception as to what tyranny truly is.
@Rob, when it comes to the law, the law is enshrined. The 14th Amendment protects the sacred civil, human and Constitutional rights to privacy in personal medical decisions.
2
@Rob
My, my, Rob. You compel me to take the bait. First off, you do not have a monopoly on the term 'pro life'. John Irving was right when he said that the term is a 'marketing tool' for a very specific agenda, only part of which involves abortion.
With respect to your comment about 'private parlor discussions', what I meant is this: you do not have the right to impose your religious beliefs on others. If you want to convince others of the merits of those beliefs, feel free to do so, not just in a private parlor, but in the public square. Don't impose. Persuade. It's called a democracy.
Next, where your religious beliefs dovetail with American law, we are all in agreement. That includes the criminalization of murder, rape, and robbery. Those are not just Jewish or Christian beliefs. Those laws protect us all.
Finally, as to your comments about tyranny: I am guessing that you would consider the imposition of Shariyah Law to be tyranny. I would invite you to ponder the possibility that millions of non-Evangelicals and other Christians view your beliefs, imposed, in the same light.
2
Thank you so much for this opinion piece. So many of the states that are putting draconian anti-abortion laws into place also have no, few, or seek to curtail, any safety net for those women on whom they are forcing unwanted children. A politically motivated bandwagon of "fetus-hood" is shortsighted in terms of quality of extended life for both the mother and the child. I am pro choice, but I am mainly pro human. If states want to force children on women, who for their own and obviously agonizing reasons, feel they cannot have a child, states need to pony up the considerable resources to care, educated, feed, provide life-long healthcare, provide job training, provide aging care, and nurture a sense of belonging to a community and a nation. Not so easy, huh?
16
This is just tremendous. Brave, Mr. Irving.
12
I've been pro-choice all of my life. But pro-choice isn't the same as being willing to blindly pay for other women's abortions. I'm not insensitive to the arguments made on both sides of the debate, but it's a hugely complicated issue.
1
I actually think the Hyde Amendment is a sort of reasonable compromise—the costs are often backfilled one way or another—but it’s not that complex.
Do you want to allow a religious minority to stuff their views up everybody’s throat, or not? Do you want to look at the actual science, or not? Do you want the numbers and facts on late-term abortion, or not?
And if you’re opposed to abortion, as the Church is—do you want to be consistent, and oppose the death penalty, wars or not? Do you want to help pay for better treatment of moms and kids, or not?
3
Try to find an alleged “pro-life” person who is not a hypocrite. They don’t exist. You can’t be “prolife” if you are pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-war, anti- health care and anti-immigrant.
24
@Bsheresq
I am pro-life in every sense of the term, and not a hypocrite. I'm against the death penalty, against the second amendment, against war and am a vegetarian and staunch supporter of animal rights and all life. Considering that I would never hurt any living animal, anything with a face and a heartbeat, I wonder how I could possibly support killing a human fetus. In every respect I support a woman's right to control her own body and to do anything she wants that doesn't involve taking the life of another.
For the record, I am pro-choice and I vote that way. Always. Always.
Just recently, in front of the State House on Boston Common, a guy stood holding a HUGE anti-abortion sign, painted in black, and played audio of a baby crying, over and over again. While one part of me laughed at the potential mistake of using a baby's cry to entice pro-life support (ok, darkly funny), the greater part was enraged. These pro-lifers are aggressive, invasive, violent, and always just weird, in an Inquisition-kind-of-way. Who has the instinct to attempt to publicly brutalize someone they don't know? And no pass for those who might whisper their rage, either, cloaking it in their religion. Irving is correct; they don't care about the child and mother. It's far darker an instinct than that.
Going to revisit the Cider House Rules. Thank you, John Iriving.
23
I wish Pro-Life included migrant children ripped from their parents at the border.
19
Humans are fallible. Any unwanted pregnancy is a desperate, life-changing event. Bringing another unwanted child into the world is tragic. So is choosing to end that pregnancy.
Either way, this is a decision that a desperate woman will have to live with for the rest of her life. Government and judgemental moralists should have no role in this difficult decision, but returning to illicit abortions is plainly unacceptable.
12
@Randomonium, I disagree with you and a few other commenters on one of your/their points. Full disclosure-- never had an abortion but I am vehemently pro-abortion/choice. However, the assertion that abortion is "tragic," or a "difficult decision" is not always true. Many women are careless with contraception and sexual activity. Many have had multiple abortions; this weekend Longreads published a piece called "the best abortion ever," by a woman who had four of them. I guess they thought the article was edgy? I found it horrid, though I read it through in the same way that I glance at a car wreck. My support of abortion is based on this: a woman owns her body and she gets to choose what to do or not do with it. The right or wrong as perceived by others is not relevant. Period. Thus we who favor abortion do not need to frame it as tragedy or any other such dramatic adjective. Abortion simply is.
3
@karen - I'm very much pro-choice, but I can't imagine how anyone could make that decision carelessly. I have nothing but disgust for anyone who does not feel regret for having to make that choice, and those soulless women to whom you refer are not worthy of consideration. This is a complex issue that people of conscience will approach cautiously and nonjudgmentally.
The Church established universities in medieval times and women (including midwives) were excluded. The Church made the sale of abortifacients illegal, but the apothecaries just relabeled the herbs and concoctions and sold them anyway, so that didn't deter people. It was the loss of knowledge that these midwives had that was catastrophic. Many of the reasons for declaring a woman a witch had to do with childbirth, and midwives were burned and persecuted at a high rate. The Church has been excluding women from women's health care for centuries, long before America was even born.
13
In the 1060's at a Catholic college we debated when an abortion should be considered killing a child. Our discussion was shut down by a theologian who stated that the Catholic Church doesn't exist if it allows abortions at any stage of a pregnancy. The Church's main pillar as the "one true Church" made infallible declarations of the Pope the word of God to mankind.
One infallibly declared doctrine (there are only two) was the Immaculate Conception, a declaration that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin FROM THE FIRST MOMENT OF CONCEPTION. By implication that means the fetus of Mary in the womb was her in full. A corollary to that is that all fetuses are who they will be after birth.
Any countenancing of a debate on abortion at any point in a pregnancy is, in Catholic doctrine, murder. Any admission that abortion may not be murder is a pathway to destroying the primacy of the Pope as God's spokesman. The infallibility of the Pope comes crashing down as does the Catholic Church.
There is no way out for a practicing Catholic. Not true for any other religion however. There is no science that can determine the existence of a soul -- or even of God.
6
@cjg This is very interesting theology, but it has no place in an abortion debate in a liberal democracy. The United States is founded on the principle of freedom of religion-- including the right to NOT practice religion. A catholic may believe that life begins at conception, other religions believe it begins with first breath (i.e. being born). This is a private matter between a woman and her doctor.
6
@cjg Look into the Catholic Church's history on abortion however, and you will see that this draconian attitude did not take shape until the nineteenth century - when anti-abortion laws were first being passed in many western countries (i would argue that societal changes were the real motivation - not least of which was the growing role of women in the public arena, and the anxieties that provoked). the supposed infallible teaching of the Church have in fact been very changeable over the centuries.
2
Thankfully, we are not all Catholics, nor do we all subscribe to the infallibility of anyone’s judgement on morals.
2
No man should have any say over what a woman does with anything inside her body.
Anti-abortionists want to control other people at the most basic level - their bodies. They have autocratic tendencies. Their views are anti-American, and deplorable.
17
What about “control” after viability?
Sovereignty. That is such a noble word and a noble practice. As a woman I can say the only thing worse than having an abortion would be losing sovereignty over my own body. Forced birth, forced sex, forced labor, all of these steal one's sovereignty.
525
@Amy Haible - “The only thing worse than having an abortion..” Really? There are so many things worse than having an abortion. We need to stop talking about abortion as a terrible thing. It is healthcare, that’s all. It’s not good or bad. It’s normal. End the shaming of women who use this service.
31
@Amy Haible
In the Middle Ages, jus primae noctis, "right of the first night", was the rationalization of a king or other nobleman having the right to sexually entertain a woman on her wedding night. It was extended to allow noblemen to take the virginity of any lower class woman in their territory.
Today, the Trumpian edict applies, so while the overall chances of meeting a "king" are statistically much smaller per person, it's of little consolation to the many that he has actually bestowed his presence upon.
For women in general, he's not just taking away their rights to an abortion, he is dramatically limiting their health care choices as well. For poor women, he is dramatically cutting supplemental aid for them and their children. It's the full package deal of maximum misogyny and cruelty at scale.
22
@Pat
It's a woman's decision. She ought not be judged whatever she choses. She should not be made to justify her reasons either. That being said, for many of us - women and men alike - it's a significant thing. It's the elimination of a potential life. And though I don't choose to use words like good or bad - I will suggest to you, that it's not as banal as you imply. I will suggest that it's one of those life events that can stay with people for the entirety of their years.
4
Well said, John Irving. Pro-life apparently also means restricting access to healthcare and putting children in cages.
11
Forty-three years ago, when I was 18, my girlfriend became pregnant. We married and had a daughter. The marriage did not survive, but our daughter did. My ex-wife and I don't have much in common, but I know that we are both happy that our daughter was born. That said, not everyone could or should do what we did. IMO, birth control should be available to anyone who might be sexually active; abortion should be safe, accessible, rare and at the discretion of any pregnant woman.
18
As a Catholic nun and clinical psychologist, I have followed the so called 'pro-life' movement for many years. I agree with Mr. Irving's message. It has long disturbed me that those who most staunchly claim the ‘pro-life’ label, have the highest voting records against funding the very programs that could enhance human life once it takes its first breath. This is one of the inherent contradictions that haunts the so called ‘pro-life’ movement and makes its message self-sabotaging. Yes, there are ‘pro-life’ proponents who also favor programs that support life after birth, but let’s be honest: These are exceptions. The ‘pro-life’ movement does not make headlines for its public crusade to end human caused climate change, or poverty, or hunger. And its entwinement with conservative religion (including my own Catholicism) serves up a very troubling challenge to the Constitution of the USA without actually saying so. Scientists know that life does not begin in "a moment". This may be a philosophical and spiritual question, more than a legal or scientific one. So, it would seem important to stop turning religious values into laws that govern everyone.
26
Throughout the article, Mr. Irving is unsure when life begins, as evidenced by his history of attitudes toward abortion. Just as opponents of the death penalty want to end all executions for fear of killing an innocent person (not unreasonable), shouldn't the same standard be applied for the unborn. At some point in pregnancy, the fetus (always innocent) must feel pain. Since we do not know when this is, should not abortion be banned to be on the safe side?
4
Opponents of the death penalty oppose the death penalty because we believe that killing people is Wrong; the question of their innocence is one of the reasons that it’s Wrong, not the reason we oppose the death penalty.
And death oenalty proponents have generally sluffed off any consideration of pain and misery, let alone the question of mental competence, which would seem to raise some questions concerning pious invocation of pain and human identity.
And the fact that nothing can settle the question of when human life begins is a reason to leave these decisions to individual conscience and choice, not to impose a religious standard on all. Not to mention that it’s illogical to argue uncertainty justifies such an imposition only in the case of abortion; if that’s your reason, you should oppose the dealth penalty on the same ground.
Anything else I can help with?
5
@John Farrell The science shows that based on gestational age, the fetus is not capable of feeling pain until the third trimester. The third trimester begins at about 27 weeks of pregnancy.
Most abortions by law are done well before then. Exceptions are when the mother's life is in danger (I would rather my daughter survived) or if the fetus is found to be incompatible with life. Is it fair to bring that fetus into a world of pain and certain death. I don't think so.
7
@John Farrell So pain would be the standard? Whose pain would be paramount -- the baby's, the mother's? And when does this innocent baby stop being innocent and therefore more valuable than the mother who is carrying it?
4
I find it sad and offensive that pro-abortion people always think they know what's in the hearts of those who oppose abortion, that we "don’t care what happens to an unwanted child — not after the child is born — and they’ve never cared about the mother."
I work for a pregnancy center (one of more than 2500 in the U.S.) All we do is focus on helping mom AND baby before AND after birth. We do this out of love for the mother and the child. All human life is sacred and valuable - that includes human beings at 9 weeks gestation and 90 years of age.
3
@Jamie Really -how long after the birth of that child? And the record of those pregnancy centers is not good - not the least of which they lie to and intimidate the vulnerable pregnant women they claim to help. You can protest to the contrary all you want - but anti-abortion advocates reveal their anti-life values when they vote in overwhelming numbers for politicians and policies that promote guns, caging children at the border, death penalty, cutting of funding to programs that help children and women in need, the list goes on and on.
3
@Jamie, does that help include covering the cost of daycare, education, and healthcare through college?
2
@Jamie
Thanks for your comments, keep up the great work that you do.
1
Where are the laws to force the fathers to pay for pregnancy and birth and pay for/raise the child that the pregnant woman dies not want to carry? If the fathers deny, Laws to force dna tests and the. Garnished their paychecks. If the fathers can’t give financial support, force them to take two low level jobs and pay. If they are not capable of raising a child with kindness, force states to provide great well screen foster care for unwanted babies
Come on Pro Lifers: make a full set of laws for fathers as well as mothers - and maybe for grandparents to help with costs and care.
If you are really pro-life, pass laws to ensure no one dies of curable diseases because they can’t afford health care and still pay for food and shelter. Pass laws to make sure any use of military force is totally necessary and find diplomacy to minimize soldiers deaths. And advocate to train police in human relations and punish police who kill unarmed peopleeven if they are black.
Pro Life ? Go for it fully without hypocrisy and with fair laws against the me. not just the women... it does take two to conceive, you know
15
I'm tired of this weaseling. This silly argument about what to name our two sides of the war. You, who are against abortion, should label your troops, "Anti-Abortion." We, who are not against abortion, should call our forces, "Pro-Abortion." Being pro-abortion doesn't mean we want to terminate all pregnancies in the bud. Just give us -- every single woman on earth -- the right to choose what she does or doesn't do with her own body. With every particle of her body. Pro-Abortion means that I will have an abortion if that's what I deem necessary. Enough, already.
4
Perfectly put.
2
Perhaps the darkest and least acknowledged element of human nature is its capacity for taking twisted pleasure in cruelty while justifying its obvious evils with a pretense of rectitude. That hypocrisy has become an epidemic that poisons many of the roots of U.S. politics, promoted by demagogues to disguise bullies as heros of a demented culture...
because there is so much satisfaction to be had in the power to torment the defenseless and allowing them to suffer.
I resist despair by reaching for hope. Jesus said, you must be born again. Taking that literally, I hope I've learned enough to do better next time and my loved ones and I will return in one of the Anabaptist communes where culture follows the kind and gentle rules of the Christian Gospels. (Those good folks don't do politics because Justice takes first priority.)
Those hypocrisies
1
Forcing women to have children they don't want to have is the ultimate cruelty to the women, their children, society, and the biosphere.
As soon as a new human is born, they become another suffering creature harnessed to the incessant biological, psychological, social and economic demands of life.
Life in the womb is easy. Outside the womb, it's a relentless struggle for survival. If anti-abortionists forced your mother to birth you against her will, and especially if you're the product of rape or incest, the struggle is herculean and tragic.
And every human born creates tons of pollution and massive environmental destruction, contributing to anthropogenic mass extinction.
Abortion opponents understand none of this, nor do they care.
They're anti-life, not pro-life!
9
Thank you, John Irving, for your historical review of the road we have traveled. I was in my twenties pre-Roe v.Wade and have watched with great alarm as women’s rights have been eroded. They never felt secured to me; I am heartened that younger women have now seems the danger and become active. We cannot go back.
9
I am reading Cider House Rules and finished the abortion section last night. I wondered if it was historically accurate. Thank you, Mr. Irving.
5
It is not unusual to hear anti-abortionists claim that science "proves" that life begins at conception. This is such a blatant category mistake that it is hard to know how to react to it - science has nothing to say about human rights, or when a developing embryo acquires them.
However, it is an indication of how much damage has been done by allowing the anti-abortionists to exert as much influence as they have on the science curriculum. A couple of generations now since Row have been found this doctrine in their biology textbooks, and so we find them parroting it even though it makes no sense.
How we fix this I don't know, but a technological society such as ours can not afford to be incapable of distinguishing scientific reasoning from religious dogma.
7
As ever, she pays the price. Never do people say that of the men who impregnate. Boys will be boys and sex is fun. This imbalance has to stop.
Men, these undesired pregnancies are the result of your carelessness. The sperm are yours, and they are the direct cause of pregnancy. Be a mensch by stepping up to say “I don’t want to be a parent. I asked her to get an abortion.”
Abortion is your issue, too. If you are going to whine about not wanting an abortion, then take 100% of the responsibilities and not just the financial ones. Find day care, get up every time the baby cries at night. Go to work exhausted and stay home when the child is sick or day care fails. Put your career last. Stifle your dreams and ambitions. Oh, yeah, and do it with a smile.
You had unprotected sex. You pay the price.
Problem solved because, if that were the case, abortion would be sacred.
25
Am I the only one who sees what’s REALLY going on? It’s not about “saving little babies”. Don’t you wonder why most of the “pro-life” protestors are middle aged white men? The anti-abortion movement is actually the “eliminate FEMINISM and put these women back where they belong- at home having babies and cooking supper for a man” movement. It’s just another example of “weaponized religion”.
21
It’s false to assert that abortion opponents do not care about what happens to mothers and children. In San Antonio for example, there is an organization, Seton Home, that provides residences and support for moms to complete or obtain degrees. There are similar organizations elsewhere. https://www.setonhomesa.org
5
@Mari
I wonder where the homes' financing comes from. And what happens to poor women or women not born with the talent to get such degrees. Or are only the talented welcome?
2
@Mari These programs don't make up for the supposed "pro life" support of politicians who are trying to take health care away from millions, cut funding to programs the benefit women and children, support gun fanatics, support caging of children at the border, support "abstinence" programs that spread lies and misinformation, support polices that will destroy the planetary eco-system.
1
Maybe so... but show me a Republican elected official who gives a darn about education, single moms or their kids, holding men accountable for the children they father, access to affordable health care or anything that doesn’t result in a massive give away to the already super wealthy and I’ll show you a unicorn. The only reason they “support” the forced birth movement is because the forced birthers will vote for them if they do. Not much different than the way they pander to the anti-immigrant or anti-gay crowd.
3
There is a simple solution allowing conservatives to maintain consistency in their actions regarding protecting "life" - Just send thoughts and prayers to the foetuses.
6
This article is honestly disgusting. Personally, I find anything pro-abortion disturbing. First off, the title is offensive to anyone who is pro-life. Saying that we do not care about the "unwanted children", or the mother is disgusting. Hundreds, maybe thousands of women die each year from legal abortions. I believe that if abortion is illegal, it then becomes the women's choice to what she wants with the child. If she wants to commit a crime by murdering her child, so be it. That is her choice. But I do not want my tax dollars to fund the murdering of innocent children. The pro-choice movement tries to divert the topic of the the 40-50 million babies murdered each year to the living children who are up for adoption or in the foster care systems. However, believing that it is better and more convenient to murder an innocent human and take away it's chance at an amazing life rather than allow it to possibly have a harder life in foster care is appalling. This article makes assumptions about the Catholic Church and quotes dead popes who wrote articles in the 1950s. John Irving also attacks the belief of the Catholic Church, which seems unfair, considering attacking any viewpoint of the Left is considered a microaggression, and there are other religions who have stricter beliefs on abortion and other issues. This article is hypocritical, nonfactual, and offensive to anyone pro-life. I am tired of being subjected to reading these anti-Catholic articles for my summer homework.
4
@Maggie Peitz This editorial is not unfactual. Your assertion that fetuses are full human being is not a fact. That is an assertion based solely on religious doctrine. Maybe you need to take a closer look at the history of the anit-abortion movement. You may be surprised to learn that the Catholic Church was not particularly anti-abortion until the nineteenth century.
2
@Maggie Peitz
Grow up. Nobody is forcing you to have an abortion or actively support them. You are the one who thinks others should be forced to act according to your beliefs. That's a fundamentally anti-American position.
3
@Maggie Peitz Are you serious? Where did you get your statistics? One could fact check almost every line in your comment and find an error. Irving's article was not offensive but if you choose to find offense, so be it. You are "paying the piper."
2
I am personally pro-choice, but saying that antiabortionists are hypocrites for not doing more for unwanted children is equivalent to claiming that those against the death penalty are hypocrites for not doing more for convicted murderers.
4
@Ernie Cohen Well that is just a dopey analogy - unexecuted convicted murders get free housing for life, just for starters.
1
Mr. Irving writes,
"Aren’t the same people who sacralize the fetus generally opposed to any meaningful welfare for unwanted children and unmarried mothers?" The key word here is generally, as in generalizing with nothing to back it up. The US Catholic Church has a pregnancy crisis center and home for unwed mothers in every diocese. The US government has a huge infrastructure for the welfare of unwed mothers. So, what are you talking about?
"...if a child’s life isn’t sacred after it’s born? Clearly, a woman’s life is never sacred;.." More unsubstantiated fiction from Mr. Irving. The Church is deeply involved in protecting and nurturing young lives. Please take a look at the breadth and scope of Catholic Charities and for overseas, Catholic Relief Services, and you will see that your statement holds no water.
"...they don’t care what happens to an unwanted child — not after the child is born — and they’ve never cared about the mother." You ending sentence, so profound. This is the most fictional of all of your fiction. You are making it up.
I just could not let this nonsense go unanswered.
2
@Jimbo,
The US government has a huge infrastructure for the welfare of unwed mothers? What, now? There’s no universal healthcare, no state-supported daycare, and poverty-level minimum wage laws.
3
@Jimbo
"The Church is deeply involved in protecting and nurturing young lives."
Except, of course, when it comes to promoting sexual abuse and protecting the perpetrators.
4
Who speaks for the fetus's rights?
6
@Amy A well funded, politically powerful lobby of ant-abortionists do - so my question to you - if fetuses have rights, should they be able to vote and be required to pay taxes?
2
Rights accrue to citizens at birth.
3
@Lizmill
Do children vote and pay taxes? Yet they have rights.
Abortion is wrong. God will deal with these evil people doing it. Our founding fathers said don’t mix religion with politics because it divides the country. They were right. The GOP are anti life they get us into more wars where women and kids are killed and by promoting laws for more coal use are destroying humanity as we know it. Very sad the supporters can’t understand this and demand life for every one.
1
The existential condition for a devout Catholic father of a bomber pilot who has run 50s carpet bombing runs on Coventry, Dresden,Hanoi, or Addis’s Ababba is to honor his son and to gain the blessings of the local bishop. His young daughter who aborted a pregnancy committed murder and sends her packing.Why have many Moralists allowed so many exceptions to
the command not to kill yet prohibit the killing of a fetus?
1
John Irving -- thank you, thank you.
5
Control control control ever since Lillith.
Thats all its about. There isnt a whit of concern for the child or the mother, and this level of pointless bullying authoritarianism by inadequates who know nothing about nature.
If they did theyd know all species abort when the circumstances arent right.
But yes lets bring more unwanted children onto this planet that we have cared for so well, to be a burden on the state and our dwindling resources.
Meanwhile to help stop Climate Change educate Girls and Give them Birth Control.
So in effect the future IS female in terms of where the emphasis should be if we want to survive.
Of course the people who are trying to control womens bodies are deeply threatened by that, because they dont understand cause n effect or how its commonsense, and in fact no threat to them at all, rather, a blessing.
6
IT IS THE HEIGHT OF CRUELTY, IGNORANCE AND HYPOCRISY To deprive women of the right to control their own bodies. For a stark comparison, consider the outcome of Prohibition. Did it stop the abuse of alocohol? Most emphatically NOT! What it did accomplish was putting organized crime on steroids, establishing it as a permanent fixture that drags on national progress like an anchor. It did accomplish the cynical goal of producing a job suited perfectly for the cruel, abusive J. Edgar Hoover. What illegal abortion did was NOT to decrease the number of pregnancies terminated, but rather to injure, sicken and kill women who had to resort to butchers. The choice is stark: relegate women to disease and death if legal abortions are unavailable. The GOPpers claim they want to get government out of their business. How cruelly hypocritical it is, then, for the GOPpers to force their policies into the bodies of pregnant women. Meaning that anti-abortion activities are, in fact, a form of emotional rape. Have they ever considered the hypocrisy in the intrusive policies they demand in order to end safe, medically sound, legal abortions? There is a pattern among the GOPpers. When they think they're losing, the start talking about genitals. Be they the genitals of pregnant women or the genitals of LGBTQ persons. Why the morbid preoccupation with staying below the waist in their policies. Democracy relies on brain power. On reasoned debate and compromise. ABOVE THE NECK GOP!!
5
@John Jones Thanks - that is the major point - illegality does not stop abortions. Where is abortion most rare? In countries that have legal abortion, universal healthcare, cheap effective, easily accessed contraception, and comprehensive sex education. All or most of these are opposed by the anti-abortion movement (I refuse to call them "pro-life").
3
No man has a right to second guess women on what is the ultimate decision of their lives. Far too much of the pro-life movement smacks of misogyny and a unjustified need to control woman.
10
The people who are anti-choice and pretend to be pro-life are the same ones who support the death penalty! They also don't want to support the child after it's born
5
nice column...... but let's be clear. NONE of the republican presidents you mention were anti-abortion. they went along with that hideous position to win elections. that makes them worse than the true believers in my book. Reagan was the first phony, moralistic member of the club. trump is the most egregious and hypocritical.
11
"Our founding fathers got this right; the choice to have an abortion or a child belonged to the woman."
Our "founding fathers" either permitted it out of indifference or neglect or they ordered it out of selfishness or couverture.
Back then very little, including children, "belonged to the woman."
3
By all means these anti-abortion people should get what they want. So they can go home with the medal on their chests and ignore the suffering and dying of women who can't get healthcare (or abortions) at the planned parenthood clinics they helped close (and offered them no alternative places to seek care). They can go home and never think about what kind of life the woman or the unwanted child will have after the birth. They can hold their heads high. They 'saved' lives today. And they can sit and just shake their heads and say "What a shame" as thousands of children starve in Africa , are maimed or killed by war by bombs supplied by their leaders, or are ripped from their parents arms at the southern border. All tied up so nice and neat. Consciences cleansed. Then all that suffering and dying, all the horrible terrible lives they wouldn't wish on their worst enemies becomes someone else's problem. Just as long as their tax dollars don't have to pay for it.
7
As an indication the "pro-life" people are all about punishing the woman one needs look no further than the ruling in Alabama (I think) that there be a totally unnecessary pelvic exam three days before an abortion.
10
Mr. Irving, not all pro-lifers are conservative Republicans. Some of us are genuinely pro-life in every respect: we advocate not only for the right to life of the fetus, but also for the protection of immigrants, the elevation of women (especially mothers) in the workplace, and other liberal causes. It is incorrect to lump all pro-lifers under the umbrella of Trump voters. I am staunchly pro-life and staunchly anti-Trump, because of the very fact that he is egregiously committee to devaluing the lives of women, minorities and immigrants.
6
@Jane M Fine - but there are VERY few of you.
1
irrelevant, because the right has learned to use abortion as a tactic to push their overall program, as they do with immigration, guns, and other hotbuttons that turn out the hoodwinked voters they're robbing blind.
2
Call them what they really are - Pro-Birthers. That's all they care about and all they support. After it's born, who cares. It will probably grow up in the system with either the state, or relative bringing it up and then it goes into the incarceration system. Oh but if it commits murder - send it to the death chamber.
6
@Doves Friend - Pro-Birthers.
They aren't simply in favor of birth. They want to force birth on others. Thus not pro-life or pro-birth, but Forced-birth.
Forced-birth. That is the goal. Truth in advertising.
2
Two wrongs, abortion and the failure to support children after birth, don't make abortion acceptable or right. To suggest otherwise, is to place a very low value on human life.
As a society, we can debate and argue over the effect various social policies have on people. With abortion, there is no such debate. It is a selfish choice that places the wishes of the mother over the life of another human being she helped create.
3
@Mark
Mark,
I grow tired of pro-lifers placing blame on women. Procreation involves both genders, a fact that most pro-lifers conveniently forget.
The decision to have an abortion also often involves the wishes of men who don't want the financial and legal responsibility of supporting a child and its mother. And this reluctance to be accountable often leads to a woman making the inescapable choice that she has to have an abortion. To place all the blame on her shoulders is monstrous.
1
@Mark If abortion is wrong, why do anti-abortionists oppose policy that has proven to be the best way to reduce abortion. Illegality does not stop abortions- countries that make abortion illegal do not have the lowest abortion rates. Where is abortion most rare? In countries that have legal abortion, universal healthcare, cheap effective, easily accessed contraception, and comprehensive sex education. All or most of these are opposed by the anti-abortion movement (I refuse to call them "pro-life").
1
Thank you Mr. Irving. A very well-written, thoughtful column. And I loved “Cider House” too.
6
Thank you for writing this. It's especially important that men share their thoughts on how important abortion rights are.
My own feeling is that old, white men who are elected officials should focus on generating new ideas about how to support their constituents and the country as a whole. But many of these politicians haven't any real leadership qualities, nor do they know how to generate innovative approaches to problems. So, they kick around abortion to distract folks.
If old, white men don't want to have abortions, they should refrain. You can be sure, however, that if their mistresses get pregnant, abortion, legal or otherwise, will be sought. While poor women who know they can't support another child, or a mother who is justifiably overwhelmed at the prospect of giving birth to a child with severe special needs, doesn't have that same access.
It's disgraceful.
7
My wife's cousin was denied an abortion in Maryland in the 1980s. The woman was in her 30s and was joyously pregnant with her first child. Then, in the 3rd trimester she learned that the baby's brains were developing outside the skull. The child would not survive childbirth and even if it did, would not live for more than a few minutes after birth. After learning of this heartbreaking development the woman decided that the best course of action was an abortion. She also learned that because of the condition of the fetus bring the baby to term could also endanger her own reproductive organs leaving her unable to have more children later.
Maryland denied permission for the abortion. Reeling from that order and the devastating nature of her pregnancy the woman sought relief in another state. I believe she had the abortion in New York. Following this tragic event the woman had two healthy children in the 4 years after the abortion.
The State of Maryland in its pious support of Right to Life failed miserably to consider the health of a young woman who's right to choose was denied without consideration for her health. As the John Irving wrote "Whatever the anti-abortion crusaders call themselves, they don’t care what happens to an unwanted child — not after the child is born — and they’ve never cared about the mother."
Clearly this case reveals the undue cruelty imposed by the state of Maryland other states as well. Right to life and women's health care must be equal.
23
More partisan vehemence. Our opponents don't care. All of them are no good. Etc. As I read the news I struggle to find articles that are more than just stirring the pot. That are about dialog. One positive aspect of this article is mentioning the ascendancy of the doctors. This had been going on since the late middle ages. Among the upper classes, the possibility of having a male heir was much more important than a woman's life. Unfortunately, this good information is used here to attack political opponents who are are just as worthy and caring as the author of this article.
3
Mr. Irving hits it on the head. That is why I have always referred to the other side as "anti-choice" rather than their adept, completely false, marketing term.
8
I'm an 80 year-old male who supports John Irving's opinion, as I continue to support a woman's autonomous choices over her body and her life. Any other argument is pregnant with hypocrisy.
12
Trying to figure out how the responsibility of "paying the piper" falls on a woman's shoulders when she's been raped or on a child's when she's a victim of incest. All these rules seem designed to prop up a patriarchy that only wants to control women's bodies and thereby their lives.
6
Dear Mr. Irving, I happen to be reading this in Iowa City, home of the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Thank you for your powerful words, and thank you for Cider House Rules. I still have my first edition copy. I am a pediatrician and I see firsthand how America cares for its most vulnerable citizens. The religious right should take a long look at the travesty that is the child welfare system today, and examine the consequences of bone-crushing poverty. The evangelicals in this country had a shameful history of siding with bigots and racists in the Jim Crow Era. Once that issue became untenable, they found new dubious, relevancy with the anti-abortion movement. Shame on any political party for shining light on their hateful beliefs.
13
Yes. I remember the rebranding of the anti abortion movement. I remember it was anti abortion not pro life. I am pro choice, pro abortion as a choice and pro life.....I am anti the death penalty. DJT called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five in a full page NYTimes ad. Yet, he is anti abortion and anti choice because all human life is sacred except for murderers. It is incongruous and the anti abortion stance is a matter of control only. There is no care behind any reason they give to be anti choice. It is only for control of women and to continue to keep women down. At least we don't make women sit in huts during that time of the month or cut off their erogenous zones or stone them to death as in other countries. What I do not understand is the fact the the extreme right does not understand that times are different. Women contribute as much as men to the rich life of this country. Think about what is gained with equality for women and not what men think they may be losing by asserting equal rights for women. What is the big deal. Women don;'t take anything away from men by being equal. Women just have something men do not which is the ability to bear children and keep the future going. I believe that threatens men. Why, I do not know.
4
"Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.”
I like this quote from "The Cider House Rules" and think of it often.
3
Your title itself is dishonest and mendacious.
My organizations provides money for the pregnant women who choose to have the baby and most cases a loving home for the baby, when placed up for adoption.
I myself was adopted and raised in a loving home by two wonderful parents.
Please, collect all data, not only those that support your pro-abortion stance.
5
I take it that you did not read this excellent editorial, which says zero about adoption agencies or adoption: its focus is on the way that abortion was first criminalized and then made a crusade, with little or no considering of women and girls.
That’s the point. One realizes you want it to be otherwise, but it’s not.
11
@Maria M, your "organization" sounds like nothing more than a human trafficking syndicate, warehousing innocent women with unwanted pregnancies to exploit them like livestock, selling the issue to the highest bidder via the billion-dollar adoption mills (in most cases "religiously" affiliated moochers off of the public tax base).
Truly loving people with actual concern for the plight of an innocent woman with an unwanted pregnancy would either help the woman obtain a safe and legal pregnancy termination - or would help the woman keep and raise the issue of the pregnancy, unselfishly contributing to the social safety net for her to do so without undue duress. "Loving" people aren't predatory barren vultures seeking to buy infant flesh.
2
@Maria M
Mr. Irving's article is an op-ed piece that he wrote and submitted on his own to express his own views; he is under absolutely no obligation to stump for organizations you support and confirm or validate you or your feelings. That's how op-ed columns work.
3
As medical science advances, Roe is clearly outdated. Now, not only viability is considered, but the “mental health” of the pregnant mother. That is a hole, that if not changed, will permit abortions until birth. The question SCOTUS has to address, is when a viable fetus gains rights a pregnant woman can’t deprive of it. The constitution protects life from government intrusions. Until a compromise occurs, the consequences will tear Americans farther apart.
2
I’ve worked in a NICU. You need to look up the stats on 26-28 weekers, and ask: of the maybe a third that survive, where do all the damnaged kids go?
And I’ve looked up the stats on late-term abortion. They’re quite rare, and I defy you to find a case in which one was done simply because some ditzy woman walked in and wanted one.
Please stop making stuff up. Please stop ignoring the facts.
12
@Jay
Roe vs Wade is the compromise and has been since 1973. The constant handwringing clarion calls for "compromise" on the part of anti-choice crusaders and fence-sitters is disingenuous and becoming tedious because the "compromise" already exists.
1
@Robert. My son was born under 2 lbs, and at about 27 weeks. He was discharged in 6 weeks, just below 5 pounds, in 1982. He has never had a setback, or any disabilities based on his early birth. As for ditzy, I believe the reason a woman decides to have an abortion is not documented based on a specific reason. Do you have documentation as to the reasons late term abortions are performed? How many are acceptable, 50, 500, or more?
Punish the woman indeed. This is patriarchy at its most egregious.
People, please: women don't get pregnant by themselves. You want the choice to do what you will with your own body? Start making men responsible for unwanted pregnancy. See how fast it becomes safe, legal, and rare.
7
"No one is pro-abortion...the difference between pro-life and pro-choice is the choice."
Exactly. And why Pro-Choice side in this debate should never ever use the term 'pro-abortion' that the anti-abortion side uses against them, which plays into the hands of those who wish to portray them as godless, selfish immoralists. Words matter. To let a pregnancy proceed or not should always be placed on the same footing, both being a woman's, or a couple's, choice.
1
@mark For the same reason we should never use the term "Pro-Life" to describe the anti-abortionists, because they are not.
3
As Irving points out, the Republican Party and the so-called Right to Life advocates are nothing but fetus friendly and child cruel. They too often use bellicose rancor to support armed conflict that results in untold numbers of civilian casualties and deaths, including those of children. Where is their outrage at the way the Untied States is treating migrant children in detention facilities on the southern border--kept in pens, required to sleep on concrete, filthy, and unclothed? Somehow, these positions are acceptable. But they are unwilling to give a woman the option to exercise sovereignty over her body and whether or not she chooses to complete a pregnancy. The rank hypocrisy is astonishing.
6
Very sad, but all too true.
1
Sad but true.
Anti abortion is lead by the "Christian" right.
They only care about controlling women and their body functions, the child is just the default to get once born is disposable.
3
So, why anti-abortionists are strong critics of those countries having religious laws imposing severe restrictions and disparities between a man and a woman?
The fact is that they THINK to be different from those cultures and mentalities but eventually they deliberately want to live in a society dominated by men who consider a woman not so different from a cow.
3
Any nation that inflicts cruelty upon the living while paying lip service to the unborn is morally unfit to remain a nation. Our Constitution explicitly puts a wall of separation between Church and State, yet a series of recent Supreme Court rulings would seem to put that in serious jeopardy. Whether Baptist, Jewish, Catholic or any other special-interest faith, religion holds too much sway in our Constitutionally secular system of government and is making life miserable for the rest of us. Keep religion in the home and out of the halls of government.
2
Irving has long had an ax to grind about a movement he knows nothing about. He loves to boast about his Oscar, as though that somehow gives him credentials to speak on this topic. For him, ignorance is bliss. Fetal rights is based on science and issues of justice, not religious beliefs - a common and convenient distraction technique of the pro-choice movement. The author's pseudo-historical conclusions are rubbish, as are many of the "arguments" he makes. He is bitter and biased and an unworthy source on this topic and should be disregarded as such.
4
Thank you. Irving is a 60s/70s guy who has always been beloved by many 60s/70s people because he caters to their self-images and self-illusions. He remains a fiction writer in this piece and not a very good one.
1
My favorite comment is not original: "If you don't like abortion, don't have one." And I will add that I hope those who believe that abortion is murder will consider the toll of war on human life.
6
@Rachel
"If you don't like war, don't fight in one." Something tells me that cop-out wouldn't have satisfied the anti-Vietnam protesters. Why should anti-abortionists accept it?
1
Pro-life is a misnomer. Pro-birth is much more accurate. As this piece so articulately illustrates, the anti-abortion crowd cares nothing for actual life. They abandon, and in many ways undermine, both fetus and mother once an actual living, breathing child is involved.
6
Those who oppose abortion, do so because they love life and want to preserve it. It could be easily argued that those who are pro-abortion are for the killing of innocent, defenseless life.
This article does a disservice to the discussion.
We need to stop demonizing those we disagree with and try to call out the extremism on all sides -- include those who write onions of this nature on the New York Times.
2
The same people who call themselves pro-life also oppose:
• sex education,
• government support for prenatal care,
• maternal and newborn insurance,
• parental leave,
• subsidized childcare,
• expanding Medicaid,
• food stamps,
• universal medical care,
• support for public education,
• free college, and
• loan forgiveness.
These policies merely trap people in poverty. How is this pro-life?
16
You bet I oppose free college and loan forgiveness. I borrowed to finance my education and paid it back. Do the same. To imply that forcing other taxpayers to pay for your education or eat your loans has anything to do with being pro-life is nonsense.
1
No one who refuses a woman the right to decide all issues relating to her fertility - the anti-Choicers - has any business ever being referred to as Pro Life. I refuse to ever call them such.
3
In Medieval times, the Church had arguments about the ensoulment of the fetus. There too, males had the advantage: they got their souls about a month earlier in utero, so it more of a loss and more wrong to terminate a male fetus. Trouble was, of course, there was no way to know the gender until birth.
The author doesn't say much about birth control but this is another front on which males have exercised considerable control to the detriment of women and seem hellbent on making sure women have less access even while they insist that every child has a right to life. They should ponder the fact that every unwanted child is put there by a man.
2
Human life begins at conception according to commenters such as
@Robert Currie of Stratford, CT
@Tricia of Sunshine State
@Jennifer W. of Cleveland, Ohio
@Charles Ryder of Massachusetts
They are among those who believe that a human being is a human being from conception. Something that they feel passionate about and are willing to fight for. I'd like to know why they are only fighting to force women based on this belief but not fighting for all that their belief requires? Where is there fight to:
1. Eliminate birth certificates. Require conception certificates. Birth is just a transition phase with no meaning.
2. Require tax deductions for dependents from at conception, not birth. With proof that your child was conceived on 12/31 and not after New Years in the wee hours of 1/1.
3. Have the Social Security eligibility clock starts at conception.
4. Celebrate Conception Day, not birthdays. (Could be a little awkward)
6
@Marie
How about requiring last rights and burial for the tampons and napkins of all sexually active women? Nearly a third of all zygotes fail to implant in the uterine wall and are passed with no sign of a zygote, sorry, a baby. They'll just move the goal post to implantation, but still...
1
There are too many people who call themselves "pro-life" but are pro-death penalty.
Life is life. Even the most wretched criminal has life. They don't see the hypocrisy. Need we bring up Freakonomics and its study of the impact of legalized abortion on crime?
And Henry Hyde was quite the hypocrite. While being married with children he had an affair with a woman who was also married with children. He called it a "youthful indiscretion" but he was in his forties when it happened.
If she had gotten pregnant, you know there was no way he wouldn't have made sure she had access to an abortion. And even if he objected, there was no way he was going to prevent her from having one.
2
Bravo! Brilliant!
3
They think people who have abortions have sex for fun and are having better sex than those who do it only for procreation.
They hate the sex-for-fun crowd.
2
Part and parcel of a nation founded 240 years ago on sexism and female slavery. The current rape culture didn't just ::poof:: suddenly appear over the last 5+ years.
4
"Abortion opponents don’t care what happens to an unwanted child"
Why lead with that? It's just useless hyperbole.
1
@Independent
Because it's the truest thing that can be said about the "pro-life" crowd.
3
Because it is TRUE!
2
Woman should be in charge of their Bodies. Period.
Better yet they should run this country (minus Susan Collins and Kay Ivey).
In some states a rapist has parental rights.
The Chattel system is going strong.
Keep women in their place, at home! The prevailing philosophy of the GOP and right wingers!!
1
Forced childbearing is immoral.
6
"The prevailing impetus to oppose abortion is to punish the woman who doesn’t want the child." Exactly. Anti-abortion people use pregnancy as a punishment. They determine who got pregnant "innocently" and those women/girls get to have abortions. "Guilty" pregnancies: your punishment is to stay pregnant. The only non-hypocritical anti-abortion state law is Alabama's. Alabama is no longer judging the guilt or innocence of the pregnancy. If abortion is murder, it's murder; there are no extenuating circumstances. The only non-hypocritical pro-choice option is abortion on demand.
2
I've been working on an idea to make things a bit more fair. I think that anyone that wants to dissuade a woman from getting an abortion would be required to take the woman into their home. Then they would be responsible for all her medical expenses through delivery. From then on they would be responsible for the raising of the child until they reach adulthood. After all, this child's birth and life was the protester's idea.
4
Reading John Irving (both this piece and many of his novels) makes me wonder what our country would look like if real writers and artists were in the government? What skills and what achievements has Trump made in his life? We know he didn’t write his books and most of his wealth is inherited through tax avoidance. My guess is John Irving really did write “The World According to Garp” and that he’s very well read and possess extraordinary critical thinking skills so here’s a question; in an election between John Irving and Trump,why would anyone not vote for Irving?
9
Throughout the 50’s, 60’s and mid-70’s I never heard a word spoken about abortion in my fundamentalist church - and they were against dancing and mixed-swimming.
191
@Carmen You are on to something here. I, too, grew up in small rural churches and that was my experience as well. It's not the abortion that's bad: it's people knowing. Sins are okay--hence the support for this President--but you have to say you are sorry and call them sins. It's the open defiance of the world view that's the issue. And NO, while it's sad that people who want children sometimes cannot have them, it is not the duty of women to carry pregnancies to term for them. I once considered donating a kidney. I would consider the sacrifice of a surrogate to be similar. I wanted my children, but my pregnancies were not easy.
15
@Carmen I wonder what happened to the women in that church who might have needed one. What you try to present as a non-issue was more likely a severe expectation, hence no need to talk about it.
1
@Carmen
They lost on those issues, so they found a new issue
10
The men that worked to outlaw abortion are the same men that seek to overturn Roe v Wade. They want to control women. They want them to know their place. They want to keep them down and maintain their patriarchal superiority. They don't want to be challenged and they don't feel responsible - for anything or anyone. It is about control and life has nothing to do with any of it.
I have read almost all of your books Mr. Irving - I am one of your biggest fans. - Thank you for so many enjoyable, thoughtful journeys.
10
I’m mixed on this issue. On the one hand, I know that the greatest gift in life is having a child whether naturally or just one to care for and raise. And I’ve known great kids who would have been aborted had the mom been able to reach the clinic. And I don’t think it affects the Republic or the fundamental nature of our democratic form of government to ban abortion. In fact, there might be a better constitutional argument to protect the helpless unborn. I think that abortion is mostly used (selfishly) as birth control, putting aside medically necessary abortions.
On the other hand, a fetus can’t do anything - even survive - without the mother, so why shouldn’t the mother decide what do with it? Ancient Romans allowed the pater familias to kill anyone in the family with impunity. Anyway, if the mother decides to abort, then I think she wouldn’t have been a good mother to begin with.
So I’m still undecided.
4
@Paco The majority of women who abort already have children. It's ridiculous to assume that they are bad mothers. Women have the right to protect their own health and life, particularly since every pregnancy is a risk to both. The pregnant woman is the only one who knows all the circumstances of the situation. The only one qualified to make the decision.
8
@Paco "And I’ve known great kids who would have been aborted had the mom been able to reach the clinic. " - such a specious argument, if you are going to argue against choice because of some good kids, should we argue for abortion because some kids (and adults) shoot up schools, rape and steal and vandalize and sell drugs? Any potential life may end up being wonderful, or may end up being horrible. We can't make our decisions based on unknown outcomes.
3
@Paco - Most women who have abortions already have all the children they want and can afford, or go on later to have a much-wanted child or children at a time they're able to support, care for and nurture them properly.
As for "bad mothers," have you ever spent a second thinking about the fate of that unwanted child born to a mother who'll resent it, neglect it, abuse it, and sometimes torture or kill it? Every child should be a wanted child.
3
In 1968 my girlfriend's room mate got pregnant on a one night stand with a guy she met in a bar. She was 19, unskilled and always short on money. We drove her half way of the 900 mile trip to get an illegal abortion. Other friends took her the rest of the way and brought her back home. The work was done with "some kind or a wire or rod" the place and the woman doing the job were dirty. She miscarried at a rest stop on the way home. She was lucky not to have been permanently injured or infected. It was a horrible and dangerous experience. This is the world as it was and how those on the religious right want it to be again in America. I hope we never go back.
690
@RwMoss - As a teenager in the early '60s, I babysat for a neighbor/classmate who'd fallen for the lies of a serviceman who assured her he loved her and would marry her if she got pregnant. When she actually had the baby, and tried to get child support, he brought in half a dozen friends who lied that they'd also had sex with her. Unusually for that time, her parents accepted the baby and allowed her and the baby to live with them.
Unfortunately, she fell for another pack of lies from another serviceman, and had a second baby. At that point the state stepped in and removed both children from the home because of the "moral turpitude" of the mother, even though she was a loving and caring mother and also had the support of her loving, caring parents. Such was the attitude toward unwed motherhood in the early '60s.
52
@RwMoss well, better gas up the car! We are on our way back to the pre-Roe days.
12
@RwMoss That's what we WANT? Hogwash. We want people to think about each other and their lives before getting married before having sex. Impossible? Some people do it; it's within the human range. We want repentance from sin, and we all sin; we all need to repent, we all need to be forgiven. Christ died for our sins--how can you top that for love? And rose up alive; power too. We want babies to have a chance; your parents gave you one.
2
No one is "pro-abortion.
The "right to life" movement cares nothing for the lives of the born or the women who bear them.
The anti-abortion movement at its root is an appeal to make laws that are an unconstitutional form of state sponsored religion.
As an atheist and a supporter of women's complete and absolute rights I say,
AMEN!
13
When I was in high school in suburban NJ, the administration brought in outside consultants to teach a two-day seminar on sex-ed and pregnancy. Unknown at the time they were invited, the consultants were funded by religious organizations.
Predictably, they claimed that abortion was "extremely harmful physically and mentally" and advocated for abstinence until marriage. However, they also only shared one form of birth control with the class: the condom, the least reliable form of substantive birth control. To me, the pro-life position lacks a crucial platform in that it is not pro-birth control as well. If you want to stop pregnancy in the modern era, shouldn't you prevent it from happening?
10
@IRW It is mind boggling that the anti-choicers generally also believe in restricting access to sex ed and birth control, but even more mind boggling that the group that came to your school promoted contraception for the boys and not the girls. Well, maybe not so mind boggling ... consistent with an anti-female agenda.
2
I write to take issue with John Irving's history of abortion legislation in this country. My limited understanding of the subject includes this: at least one elected official, including a Republican who helped to strip women of their right to conduct their pregnancies as they see fit, took his pregnant paramour to the University of Kansas Medical Center near Kansas City for abortion services prior to 1973, and abortion was legal in Kansas in the early 1970's. It may be true that there were some prohibitions to abortion somewhere in Kansas, but apparently, these where not absolute.
I also like to point out for those who were not around pre-Roe: I was raised in a Catholic parish in Illinois. My mother had two miscarriages after I was old enough to be aware of what was going. I realized that the expelled conceptus was not named, was not baptized and was not buried in consecrated ground (Catholic cemetary)--it was combined with medical waste and incinerated. So, later, when women were told that they must suffer because the fetus that they carried was sacred, I knew that this was a lie.
10
Why is the fetus sacred when the woman never is? Because the fetus may be a boy.
10
@Jane Ludlam
Excellent point!
This column is a great example of the kind of discourse that is incredibly unhelpful and I am sad the NYT published it. It begins right at the outset by painting with the broadest of all possible brushes to assert that 'if you don't agree with me, you are monstrous'. Really? Everyone? Every abortion opponent conforms to his horrific caricature?
Wait, and all pro-choicers are committed to a culture of death and excess - libertines drunk on their own bliss, right? Just making sure, here.
This is the kind of rhetoric that feeds polarization and dehumanization of the other. Worse, it's obviously false. Obviously. But, you published it anyway.
4
@BCZ
Regardless of rhetoric, all anti-choicers have the same agenda: they wish to force the woman to give birth to a child she does not want, thus reducing her status to less than that of a corpse. That is the point, at the end of the day.
1
@KMH
Sure thing. And all anti-lifers have the same agenda: to kill an innocent being whose only crime was to be born to a woman who didn't want it, reducing its status to that of a literal corpse. That's the point too.
Abortions were available in NY pre-Roe v Wade, 1970-1973.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/us/politics/new-york-abortion-roe-wade-nyt.html
Life is a gift and a blessing from Jesus Christ to mankind. As we are the creature and Jesus is the creator, one would be wise to consider their final fate in the hands of the one who gave you life. Judgement awaits all of us and you may find an eternal outcome you will forever regret. If you don't feel convicted then count yourself doomed because Jesus has hardened your heart and veiled your eyes for your recalcitrant ways.
2
How do you feel about the separations of families at our border? How about the inhumane treatment of children?! FYI Jesus is not Creator, He is Savior. The Trinity is a Christian belief.
AND Jesus never preached against abortion! BUT He DID preach against hate, bigotry and treatment of immigrants!
5
@JLC
Abortion is not mentioned in the Bible. Divorce is, and it is really bad. But for really, really bad deeds, look the punishment for working on Sunday.
And to me, the Bible says the soul enters the body with the first breath.
2
@JLC - There's only one passage in the bible that deals with abortion at all. It's a passage in Numbers where a priest provides a man with an abortifacient to force his wfie to take to rid her of what's thought to be her lover's child.
In a somewhat related passage, a judge rules that if someone attacks a pregnant woman, if the fetus dies, the attacker is fined, as for loss of property. Only if the woman dies does th attacker face the penalty for murder. That's why 40 denominations make up the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Therefore you don't get to hijack all of christianity and claim to speak for all christians.
3
Thank you John Irving: “If you think Roe v. Wade is safe, you’re one of the reasons it isn’t...
Cruelty is the abiding impetus behind the dishonestly named ("right-to-life”/faux life) movement... Whatever the anti-abortion crusaders call themselves, they don’t care what happens to an unwanted child — not after the child is born — and they’ve never cared about the mother.”
5
The hypocrisy of the "pro life" position is mind bending (pro capital punishment, anti-sex education, anti-safety net, etc)
But also consider the implications of state sponsored reproductive tyranny:
-- China favored forced abortions to police its one child policy, and our federally funded 20th century eugenics program for immigrants, people of color, poor people, and unmarried women) inspired the Nazis
(http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/)
-- Why are right to lifers not demanding funerals for miscarriage remains, missed periods, and discarded fertility clinic embryos?
-- Do fertilized eggs have voting and inheritance rights? Are the counted in the census? Have social security cards? Can they enter into contracts?
-- How about mandatory vasectomy for any man who fathers a child he doesn’t support?
No, it's only the control of and punishment of women these theocrats seek. Can't have women with full control of those powerful life generating, pleasure seeking bodies.
11
@Norburt
Control and punishment for poor women only. It is an exclusive punishment. Women of means can go elsewhere for their procedures and it is not a problem of any sort.
1
Abortion is a complex issue. Less complex is tearing toddlers from THEIR mothers and fathers on the border and keeping them without diapers, snot-nosed unwashed and sleeping on concrete under foils, protected from the cold only by material you would wrap your falafel sandwich in.
Nobody wants a proliferation in abortions; they should be rare and safe. Pro life in the real life scenarios turns out to be pro back yard abortions- because they will proliferate if abortion is blanket-banned; as with prohibition, people found other ways to distribute alcohol which set up underground webs and infrastructures where crime could fester under the auspices of the famous syphilitic, Al Capone. Hypocritical how the far right anti-planned parenthood are fine with kidnapped Latino kids being kept in evil conditions and yet so touchy about women having access to planned parenthood.
This situation of imprisoning kids in detention camps without soap or blankets is an excruciating embarrassment for the USA. Thats what you get with a sociopathic bloated gilded age president. As Mika Brzezinski asks- the kids that died in custody separated from their loved ones; were they alone when they died? Not that it should make a difference but these are Christian kids. I wonder what that legendary young middle-eastern man, Jesus, would think.
8
Your headline is correct. These "compassionate" people love love Love the Fetus - till it's born. A few seconds later it's "Get Outta here" !
4
Okay: "Abortion opponents don't care what happens to an unwanted child, and they've never cared about the mother."
So irresponsible mothers and "fathers" get a free pass to kill a fetus at will?
A bogus self-serving Cultural Marxist thesis by any measure that promotes more irresponsible behavior, i.e., solution just destroy the fetus. Nice. Clean and humane too.
4
@Alice's Restaurant - Birth control fails, often. Condoms have an 18% failure rate, which amounts to about one unwanted pregnancy a year. Hormonal contraception fails for an entire month if the woman takes certain antibiotics or other drugs, or has the flu. Doctors don't tell women that.
The birth control pill must be taken without fail every single day, at roughly the same time of day. Human beings sometimes forget. Or sometimes women can't afford contraception for that month. That's why 50% of pregnancies in the US are unplanned, and why 1/4 of American women have an abortion by age 45 (not long ago it was 1/3).
3
@Alice's Restaurant
Women of means get a pass as well. They can go elsewhere for their procedures with no problem.
2
@MegWright
This is all so much bourgeois expedience. Doubt that number, 50%, holds true with married couples, but, nonetheless, so since "50%" are unplanned, killing the fetus up until just before birth is okay? Excused irresponsible behavior is not reason enough.
In the Bible Belt shaming has replaced racism. After WW2 racism's evil face was fully revealed, hate had to find another disguise. White guys and their devoted wives turned to shaming women pregnant out of marriage. And if a woman made responsible choices they then called those women murders. Hate has many different forms.
3
The right to life people are so concerned with unborn embryos/fetuses, yet they don't seem to care about brown babies in detainment centers on the southern border. The hypocrisy!
6
Actually, it is the Catholic Church, from the pope on down to the US bishops and parishes near the border who have opposed as vigorously as anyone Trump's border policies.
Let's go back to calling the "pro-life" movement for what it really is: anti-abortion. We are asked to fight anti-abortionists on their terms. But, they switched the term to "pro-life" when "anti-abortion" didn't work. Why are we fighting them on their terms? They aren't pro-life. They aren't pro-choice. They aren't for the baby once it's born. They are simply anti-abortion. And, the author is right. It's about controlling the woman. Why?
8
We must remember that birth control was also outlawed, which is essentially what is happening in states that are now closing Planned Parenthood Centers. We are in a dangerous time warp. Take nothing for granted, young readers.
8
@Nancy Lory - In case anyone wonders what the forced birth movement is all about, remember that when birth control first became legal, it was legal ONLY for married women. It was a few years afterward that unmarried women were also granted that right. But they still think of that unwanted child as fitting punishment for the woman for having sex without the intent to reproduce.
2
this article has a photo at the top depicting 'new york doctors and nurses against abortion'.
here's the obituary for the woman who founded the group in the picture.
"A native of New York City, Ada attended the University of Alabama, and graduated with her medical degree from Flower-Fifth Avenue/New York Medical College in 1947. She opened a family practice in her homes in Levittown and Flushing, subsequently worked at Flushing Hospital Emergency Room, Local 3 Electrical Union and a local substance abuse clinic. She devoted most of her adult life to fighting for the rights of the unborn. She served as President of New York’s Right to Life movement, founded New York State Doctors and Nurses Against Abortion, and organized and supported countless protests, marches and sit-ins across the United States. In addition, she opened her home to over a dozen young pregnant women through the organization Birthright International. In 1975 at the end of the Vietnam conflict, she warmly welcomed in two Vietnamese refugees who became part of her family."
2
If true, highly unusual, good for her.
@Robert, maybe nobody told her anti-elective abortion views require not caring. or told irving that categorical statements are always, always wrong. at any rate, it's a terrible picture for this article, too much gray for black and white cognition, and best dismissed.
As a leftist, I think my side should reclaim the pro-life label. It's the left that is actually pro policies that improve people's lives. Policies such as universal healthcare, increased minimum wage, government funded higher education, opposition to senseless wars etc. The right, as the article accurately points out, is not pro-life, merely anti-choice.
9
@Nima
Agreed, and leftists should be consistent about standing up for the most vulnerable in society, which includes not only pregnant women, but unborn babies as well. Why is there so little concern about the fact that that fetus may suffer horrible pain when it's aborted? Why are we so quick to sacrifice its life in the name of "choice?" As a compassionate liberal, I find this very problematic, and I'm kind of disgusted with my fellow leftists for consistently avoiding the issue completely, and for insulting and demonizing those who have enough compassion to consider the fetus's life as well as the mother's.
Many anti-abortion Christians disdain any family living situation except nuclear. Single mothers are given no support or any hope for educational attainment, most condemned to poverty. The non-custodial mom is frowned on also, and shrouded with suspicion that there must be drugs or immorality involved in her choice. Gays or single people should not adopt.
From the array of stigmatized and prohibited families, we can see the true game of the anti-abortion is about punishing. The new laws which prescribe legal actions against women having abortion, and do not have the health exception, has made it transparent. The anti-abortion movement has never cared about the babies ... it was always about controlling women.
4
Doctors, midwives, and nurses should have the same right to choose not participate in an abortion that pregnant women have to terminate their early pregnancies. If you are pro-choice for some, you should be pro-choice for all.
Likewise, pro-choicers like Irving often over-reach by insisting that tax dollars be used to pay for abortions. Until this month, Joe Biden wisely endorsed the "Hyde Amendment," which gives third persons the choice not to fund other peoples' abortions. For all his faults, Mr. Trump took the moral high ground in his candidacy announcement by tacitly endorsing the Hyde Amendment principle.
4
@Hu McCulloch - I'm adamantly against war. I'm against corporate subsidies and tax giveaways. I'm against a number of things my tax dollars pay for. Why is it ONLY the forced birthers who deserve to declare where NO tax dollars are allowed to go?
10
@Hu McCulloch
The Hyde Amendment only affects the health of poor women. It is economically and sexually discriminatory.
1
In the first place, any doc or nurse can always quit if it’s that important to them. Why do right-wingers always demand all of the rights, and none of the responsibilities?
In the second, legislation already says that hospitals and staff cannot be required to participate. This started with the Church Amendment. In 1973. Right-wingers have pushed for more ever since.
Why don’t right-wingers ever look stuff up?
2
This op-ed is quite simply propaganda. In fact, as the New York Times and other media outlets have frequently reported, today evangelical Christians, most of whom would oppose abortion-on-demand, are also at the forefront of adoptions both from U.S. Foster Care and abroad. Christians are also deeply engaged in Foster Care, and in some states churches are the frontline of support for state agencies seeking foster parents, respite care for Foster youth, and adoptions from Foster Care. This is simply living out God's deep love, as indicated in Scripture, for the orphan and others in need.
The myth that Christians don't care about children after they're born is a jingoistic talking point that resonates because it makes abortion advocates feel better, but it's simply not true. To the contrary, it is active church-goers who are at the front edge of caring for the orphaned and foster child.
The pro-life movement also focuses on the well-being of expectant mothers, as well as living out Christ's love in caring well for those who have had an abortion and are today dealing with its impact.
6
@Wesley
In what way do fundamentalist Christians support pre-natal and post-natal care? I am interested in specific examples. Any specific examples, even just one.
4
@Wesley Jingoism means extreme patriotism generally to support warlike aggression, not whatever you want it to mean.
1
@Wesley
I'm curious to know how bombing clinics, killing women's healthcare doctors, and preventing women from seeking healthcare as well as cutting Aid to Dependent Children, schools, Head Start, etc., is "pro-life". In my experience, it's the right who carry out such things, as shown in the news.
2
It is time that media editors and style guides abandon the weighted term " Pro-Life". Proponents of denying a woman's choice of what happens to her body and future prove by their other beliefs that they are not pro-life. The discussion should be between those who are pro-choice and those who are anti-choice. Most rational humans are in favor of life. Some individuals who allow the dictates of mythology to shape their world view insist on trying to force their beliefs on others. These people should not be labeled "Pro-Life".
4
'Pro-life' may be a marketing term, but it's been used dishonestly to polarize a debate: the promise of a good life for mother and child is desired by both sides. Without anti-abortion laws, society was moving that direction. If anti-abortion laws are demanded, where are the laws requiring support to mother and child to ensure a good life? A good life needs at least medical care, education, food, housing, and childcare through a child's majority. When the supposedly 'pro-life' supporters are willing to require and pay for life support systems along with banning the medical procedure, I'll consider their position.
6
Well said! And when “pro-life” folks require that the sperm donor support the children of women they force to give birth, I will believe they are not shaming women!
1
Women's health is a very very large issue, as those of us who have the life experience of dealing with these questions know all too well. I hope that John Irving will insulate himself from the talking class, which will trim his voice down to a few talking points of 15 seconds for the yammerers to comment on! I know he is smarter than that, and I would like to hear him address and question ALL comers from the current premies who are candidates for the office of president and the sitting president and his coterie.Mr. Irving, I hope to see you on the protest field, teaching us some wrestling moves to force the uncaring into position to listen.
Yes, thank you! I have to pass by a planned parenting clinic on my way home from work everyday. The people out front protesting make me so bitter.
It’s really striking how the political expediency behind this goes unnoticed. Our president doesn’t care about babies. He cares about votes.
9
Great Article. "Pro-Life" is a fantastic piece of marketing that labels over the truth:
Anti-abortion folks care an awful lot about a baby being born but care almost nothing about the baby after it is born.
13
Here is a different perspective for the anti-abortionists who insist that the woman is obligated to host that potential human because it is murder to do otherwise.
What if you were a match for an organ transplant, and the recipient would die if you did not donate a kidney/lung/liver (something not *likely* lethal to you, but no promises).
Saying no would result in that person dying. You might well decide that you WANT to make that donation, but you also might decide that you can't afford it/can't be out of the workforce for the surgery/recovery, or don't want the potential health compromises. And reconcile in your own self the fact that the potential recipient will die.
Are you completely okay with the government dictating that you MUST donate your organs, on penalty of imprisonment (and ensuing enforced donation still) for saying no?
If that feels creepy and unacceptably overreaching, then maybe you can finally understand something about our side.
12
Heaven bless John Irving, for this sound, knowledgeable, history and examination of the politics and dynamics of the anti-choice movement in the USA.
This should be compulsory reading for anyone thinking about the issue--before they feel free to voice an opinion.
I have been a member of Canada's pro-choice movement since the early 70s. It was one of our federal justice ministers' public comment about "this silly slogan that a woman has the right to control her own body" that finally animated me to join every available arm of the women's movement at that time. And since.
Canada is blessed with a Constitution that defined personhood in such a manner that fetuses are not included. That took years of struggle, culminating in a national conference staged by and for women, and helped to cost another justice minister his job in the next election: he thought this was such a trivial issue that it did not call for inclusion. Women thought otherwise. We still do.
That addresses the legal situation of fetuses, and infants and others, in Canada.
To my knowledge, there is no scientific definition of "life" that conclusively argues against this. People who state that "life begins at conception" are arguing a loose, and unsustainable quasi-definition of "life". As such, it remains a matter of personal belief, and ideology or religious orientation. Which cannot be the foundation for any law that applies to all women. Ever. Anywhere.
We will not go back.
11
@Kathleen - Well said. But I always point out that the question of when life begins is the wrong question. The issue is that if we grant full human and civil rights to a fertilized egg, we automatically remove the civil and human rights from the living, breathing, sentient woman who happens to host that egg. In a contest of rights, the logical decision goes in favor of the already living, breathing, fully formed human being.
5
Irving hit it on the head. These people are hypocrites at their finest.
14
On a complicated topic with strong feelings and sensitivities, publishing an article where one side calls the other "crusaders", conflates women not being allowed to kill a life with not considering a woman's life sacred, and claims that all who seek to control abortion don't care for the child after birth or the mother ever, incites additional anger and misunderstanding. While increasing clicks, attention, and advertising, it hurts productive dialogue, understanding, and the likelihood of compromise.
5
@other - Roe is and was the compromise decision. It allowed abortion up to the stage of potential viability, and prohibits it afterward with certain crucial exceptions. Those who are trying to overturn Roe are eliminating the compromise and instead intend to force THEIR beliefs on everyone else.
3
@other, they hypocrisy really shines in this article. Those who claim that abortion-opponents don't care about the child are the same people who would just assume to kill it.
Those who oppose abortion, do so because they love life and want to preserve it.
"Prior to the 1840s, abortion was widespread and not illegal in our country." So was slavery.
"Beginning in the 1840s, and continuing over decades, abortion was outlawed state by state." So was slavery.
"In the 1840s, the fetus wasn’t yet sacred. Fetal life was still defined by “quickening”.... One job of a society with a social conscience is to rescue its citizens who are trapped."
It's called social progress. We realized that "quickening" was unscientific and killing babies was wrong. We realized we had citizens who were trapped, trapped in the womb but conscious, being killed as if they were nothing. And we grew morally. It was the same moral growth that led to the liberation of slaves, who were also trapped and voiceless. We began to see the cruelty in our own ways and try to be better. That's why we banned abortion in the 1840's. The original anti-abortionists were not people like Trump, they were liberals from the Catholic tradition, and many still are today. They absolutely support services for women and children, wanted or not. Many of them are women. They certainly are not all rich conservative men.
3
@Samuel Russell
And I believe that the simile that forcing a woman to gestate a potential human is itself slavery. Your saying that abortion is just the same as slavery doesn't make it so. It carries no weight for me.
4
@Samuel Russell
"So was slavery."
Yet you, and the rest of the Forced-Birth movement, happily pursue sexual and reproductive slavery of women without such a care. To make her voiceless.
The morality you are defending says that living, breathing women can be enslaved by society in the interests of an undeveloped fetus whose rights overshadow hers.
"trapped in the womb but conscious"
Speaking of unscientific? Where is the scientific evidence for this?
"killing babies was wrong"
No one advocates killing babies. That's simply a "clever" ploy to characterize something that isn't in a way to advocate for forcing women to give birth because you don't trust them to do what you want. A developing fetus is not a baby.
"We realized we had citizens who were trapped, trapped in the womb"
So you are fighting to eliminate birth certificates in favor of conception certificates? Deductions from your taxes for dependents to commence from conception not birth date? Eliminating birthday celebrations in favor of Conception Day parties?
4
Embryos are destroyed in fertility clinics all the time. None of the abortion laws make that illegal. Why? Perhaps because that’s business and those who write and pass these draconian abortion laws have a “morality” that ends when it comes to making money. And maybe none of this has anything to do with morality. The fetal heartbeat laws are intentionally dependent upon the ignorance of most; it’s not a heartbeat, but an electrical impulse because at that stage, neither the heart nor any brain matter has developed. It is morally vacant to preference non-sentient blastocysts over a living, breathing woman. If a woman knows that she can’t afford a child, doesn’t have health insurance to afford pregnancy and birth, is not healthy enough to bear a child, was a victim of incest or rape, or has any other barriers to becoming a good mother that society erects, its cruel to strip her of her rights to body autonomy and force her into a pregnancy she neither wants nor is equipped to deal with. We’d all be a lot better off if the ant-abortion crowd put 1/10th of their energy into making single motherhood affordable and acceptable. But who would the right malign if they didn’t have single mom’s and their disadvantaged kids to demean and kick around?
3
Bravo to Mr. Irving and the Times for publishing this piece. He is spot on in his analysis and the most important line (to me) is "Freedom of religion in the United States also means freedom from religion." This escapes many in the Christian Right who basically constitute an American Taliban. I, for one, do not wish to live under theocracy. Those who do are free to move to Iran or Saudi Arabia. (I have read many of Mr. Irving's books and he always provides entertainment and thoughtfulness.)
19
It will be interesting, given the history of abortion discussed in this op-ed, and in particular, the fact that at the time of our Constitution, abortion was legal throughout the US, so see how the "originalists" on the Supreme Court rule, if they ever directly rule again on Roe v Wade. Most (if not all) of them happen to be Catholic....
2
Excellent article. Way before Roe, I became a father as a teenager. A major failing on my part and hers. We had no education, no jobs, and a bleak future. My mother, unwed when I was born, back in the 1940s, said, "well, you made your bed now you're gonna lie in it." My girlfriend's father said to her, "you can come home, but he's not welcome." Life became very hard for both of us. Very hard. The marriage did not survive. Just a statistic now.
11
@Robert Shaffer
Very brave of your to share these private details of your life’s journey. One can only hope the zealots on the right will similarly appreciate you sensitivity and candor. Peace.
5
It has always seemed to me as weirdly ironical that so many of those opposed to choice for women also preach against sex education and birth control (sometimes finding ways to restrict it), which of course result in more unwanted pregnancies. These same people are also frequently opposedd to free medical care and nutritional programs for poor children (one of the results of abortion restrictions). Not to mention historically shaming unwed mothers.
15
This is by far the best article written on the subject of abortion. The knowledge about midwives performing both births and abortions until the doctors organized their practice to insure they'd be the ones to do so began the new direction this matter began, the issue of tissue as I call it. And Catholics as many other religious organizations sacralize the fetus, as Irving puts it, but not the mother or the infant born into questionable circumstances for a healthy life. And to call pro-life a marketing term point on. As in separation of church and state, this must remain a choice that a woman makes, alone. The fact that pro-life proponents want it only their way is proof. Closing down clinics for women where other health care available a cruel corollary that further harms women who cannot afford other options for their own health, in addition to the need for an abortion.
10
"Pro-life" would be believable if the same forces fought as vehemently against capital punishment and war, not to mention support for children's health, welfare and education. Without that consistency, the "pro-lifers" show themselves as nothing more than hiding behind the marketing term selling second-class status for women.
11
@B
So well put. Thank you for this astute comment. Succintly written and spot on!
I just want 15 minutes in front of Congress. That is my
"Big Idea" Give any citizen 15 minutes in front of a full Congress to be heard on any topic.
1
As a liberal, progressive, pro choice physician, I’m troubled that the author’s attempt to shed light includes “we don’t know why doctors wanted to make abortion illegal”. Was this strictly about financial interests? Did they simply push for regulation to protect women from high rates of complications? Was it all doctors or some? If it cannot be explained , why bother to mention it and cast a shadow on the entire profession? The comments about the marketing and double standards of the “pro life “ wording is well known and nothing new was mentioned. By the way, the cider house rules movie was a great piece of film making and we do know why.
7
I'm a liberal; a progressive liberal and I know that women need to have full power over their bodies. But we oversimplify it sometime. Abortion is not a minor procedure or event. It is safe if done early enough. My point; it should be avoided with greater human effort and behavior. It is by definition, a mistake. Better birth control methods are needed; better behaviors are needed. Most of this must come from human behavior and some must come from science. Maybe better adoption systems are needed. Let's all work on this.
10
@Frank
In this day and age of knowledge, there is no reason for anyone to get pregnant unless they choose to.
Condoms are widely available and often free. It is behavior, I agree.
2
@Frank
It may interest you to know that about 30 to 40% of all fertilized eggs spontaneously abort before the woman even knows she's pregnant. So, no, abortion isn't a "mistake" or a dangerous event. It's actually safer than carrying a pregnancy to term.
1
Epidemiological research has found that newborns die at higher rates when their mothers have less than 10 weeks of leave. Let me re-phrase that for clarity: if mothers have less than 10 weeks of leave, newborn babies will die.
When I see the "pro-life" movement dedicating as much passion to the cause of bringing the US on par with the rest of the world by providing paid maternity leave, I'll believe they care about infants.
21
What is life is a metaphysical question answered from one's personal belief systems; and being personal is why it is not a question to be decided in a public forum, and surely not decided by the courts, the congress, or the presidency. Being a mother is a decision made every moment in the care of her children. If that is true, how can the decision to carry to term, be made by anyone but the mother? Is it really a respect for life, that would deny mothers the choice to birth a child?
8
The author generalizes so much about the motivations of those he opposes that it results in lies. Not everyone that is pro-life (and yes they are "pro-life" because life is the core of their argument) is also an economic right-winger (or Republican). I am pro-life. I'm also an advocate of a social democratic future, extending FDR's vision for the future. We should protect human life in utero, and until natural death. This means we need Medicare-for-all, paid parental leave, and other life-sustaining programs. You don't know me/us, John Irving. The box you're trying to put pro-lifers in doesn't fit, and betrays the philosophical box you think represents the world as it is, but is just the limit of your vision. Many of us pro-lifers actually do care what happens to the mother, as well as her child.
10
@chris erickson You are correct to call out the generalizing. However, so many "pro-life" politicians in the past 30 years have fought against environmental protections, health care options, support for the poor, and limiting murder weapons that I believe it is more important to call out the inconsistency of the anti-abortion movement and question its motives. Voting for anti-abortion candidates has largely meant supporting the death penalty, supporting the war machine, and opposing even efforts to limit unwanted pregnancies. I know there are "pro-life" people like you, but the political movement against abortion has been quite consistently opposed to progress in preserving life in many ways.
8
@Ron I appreciate your thoughtful response. I think the reason most politicians that have advocated for saving unborn human lives have also been on the wrong side of so many other issues is because of our political system. We got two teams, red and blue. If you're pro-life on abortion, the blue team hates you. If you're pro-life on health care, not getting into wars, etc., the red team hates you. If you join the red team because they're pro-life on abortion, then you imbibe all the other views that team promotes. If we want more whole-life pro-lifers, then the Dems need to open up, and we need a more open political system that allows more parties with different combinations of beliefs. There is nothing inherently right wing about being pro-life. In fact it is quite inconsistent. The answer is we need a political home for whole-life pro-lifers.
2
@chris erickson - "and yes they are "pro-life" because life is the core of their argument"
No. The core, the result, what they want, is to force women to gestate and give birth.
So, no, they are Forced-Birth because that is the core of what they seek.
They can wrap it up in nice words and embellish it, but the core is what they want: Force, control.
And, "I believe, some, are good people". There may be a number of Forced-birth advocates that believe in life, aided by protecting life after birth, " Medicare-for-all, paid parental leave, and other life-sustaining programs" but they are few and far between - especially in the Republican party. When I see the GOP and the others fighting for Forced-birth apply the efforts equally to the causes you speak of then, then, I would be willing to listen to arguments that their core value is life.
3
Perhaps the man, who impregnates a women who then is forced to carry the pregnancy to term whether she wants to or not, should be forced to spend 9 months in jail. It would have to be a work-release program because he's going to need the money.
23
@Lolly Not only 9 months in jail, but a further 18 years paying half the support of the child.
2
@Lolly Love your idea about the man spending 9 months in jail if the woman is forced to carry the baby! If that happened, you can bet we'd see some serious backpedaling on the issue.
2
I think it is inaccurate to state abortion was illegal in every state from 1900 to 1973. Most states banned it without exceptions, but others had exceptions or did not have bans before 1973.
2
Of course the anti-abortion crowd never utters a word about the FATHER'S role in any of this. If they seek forcing every pregnant woman to have a child against her will, where are their proposals to hold the fathers financially and morally accountable too? It's all about control over women and always has been.
23
You’re absolutely right, Mr. Irving. I have made a point of giving up using the anti-abortion marketing term, “pro-life”. - a lie on multiple levels, since they don’t care for the lives of mothers, children, or families - in favor of “forced birth,” which to my mind reflects better what they’re about: forcing childbirth in women as punishment and subjugation.
11
I wish the movie Unplanned about Planned Parenthood had received the same amount of attention that The Cider House Rules is now receiving. Unplanned had far better sales than anyone had ever predicted yet there were no reviews or noteworthy press for this wonderful movie. It may not have had the star recognition of The Cider House Rules but it was still a very relevant movie for our time. The reason it was probably ignored by the liberal media is that they do not like or agree with a pro life message. In spite of this oversight, word of mouth from the many viewers got out the message that this was a must see movie. I do hope more movies of this kind are made as there is a sizable market who want to hear the truth. If you produce pro life movies, the people will come. They need to hear the other side of the pro life debate.
3
@KMW A propaganda film based on the word of a con artist about an "event" of which there is *no record* deserves no attention at all. Forced birth proponents believe lies very easily.
2
@KMW - That movie was based on lies and was filled with misrepresentations throughout. It was propaganda, not serious film-making. For one thing, the PP director featured in the film was NOT asked to assist in an abortion, and clinic records prove not only that she didn't assist, there was also no 13- week abortion performed on or near the date she claimed. And that's just scratching the surface of the lies.
4
The Cider House Rules is literature, and the book is what the author refers to here.
Unplanned is a load of deliberately false propaganda from an amoral grifter.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2010/01/the-earth-shaking-abortion-that-never-happened.html
5
The abortion issue is a political marketing and fundraising tool for the Republicans. Cearly constitutionally defective and doomed bils are introduced into state legislatures every year and become vehicles to rally "support", viz., base voters and political contributions to politicians introducing and supporting anti-abortion legislation. It imbues the religious right with a sense of empowerment, like the NRA, which allows it to "grade" politicians on their willingness to prostrate themselves before the religious right. I really doubt the power base in the Republican party want to see Roe overturned: it will mean the end of this vast network of voters and money, at which time you will see the religious right cast to the side of the road. When you consider the right's antipathy toward unwed mothers, "welfare queens" (thanks Ronnie), and social services in general, but for this political base and what it provides, it is difficult to understand "conservatives" opposing abortion on demand in every urban center in the country.
14
The intrusion of evangelical Christianity into secular society has been insidious and on-going. And there is no greater intrusion than legally forcing birth on an unwilling woman. In many evangelical churches there is a sometimes unconscious, but sometimes overt, belief (as in the pope’s words cited here, that the sole purpose of sex is procreation and sometimes a corresponding feeling that sexual pleasure is sinful and childbirth(labor) should be painful and a punishment for womankind.
Perhaps this idea is overly dramatic and influenced by the fictional (so far) dystopia depicted in Handmaid’s Tale, but I have envisioned a society so embedded with these ideas, that FGM becomes the next policy after forced childbirth. I believe Margaret Atwood has said that all of the policies and practices in HT have been found practiced somewhere.
Beware. Vote!
23
With regard to the most recent comment below Pope Francis should be more concerned with the "absolute evil" within the Catholic Church than applying that to the act of abortion!
As a physician I am very much "pro life!" I have put in 70-80 hour weeks for decades being pro life caring for sick patients. I am also very much pro choice, and as Mr. Irving points out not pro abortion. Therefore I am both pro life and pro choice! I very much object to the two terms being used in opposition. One can certainly be pro life and anti choice as well.
When I am walking out of my hospital Saturday evening after another 80 hour week no one better stop me and call me anti life. "Thems fightin words!"
12
The abortion "debate" (such as it is) is really about the role of government, not the morality of abortion. "Pro-Life" leaders are in fact suggesting a "government solution" to something they find objectionable.
As I tell every pro-life conservative, "First they take our choice, next they'll take our guns."
7
Striking how the idea of "choice" is lacking in so many comments. If these people are so committed to "life" why arent they marching over the treatment of refugees into this country? Why aren't the y concerned about child welfare, education, and safety. All their words, so represent a religious view point. There are religions that support abortion to save a mothers life - why dont they have equal standing?
16
It is great to hear more and more people call the so called "pro life" movement what it really is....the ProBirth movement. They immerse themselves in self righteous glory. But they don't care one bit about a child and mother once the child is born. Proof is that these pro-birthers also elect state governments that take away care for these children and mothers. Many of them claim to be driven by their Christian faith. The Jesus I learned about would be ashamed of them.
19
Let us be completely clear about this: the anti-abortion movement is NOT a pro-life movement. With rare exceptions, its adherents care absolutely nothing for life, especially born life.
Rather, their goal is two-fold. First, they want control. The crux of the anti-abortion movement is control -- control of women, control of women's bodies, control over people's reproductive and sexual lives, control over what people do. Control is their issue. This movement has never been about the sanctity of unborn life, but is rather about their compulsion to impose a theocratic construct on human behavior.
Consistent with this perspective, these people often also oppose contraception as well. There is a concerted undercurrent to the anti-abortion movement that aims to outlaw contraception.
There is another, related, goal, which is also ridiculous: they want to turn back the clock. These are people who don't live, breathe and think in the modern world. They want to impose the 19th (or maybe the 10th) century on all of us. They want to enforce a kind of rigid conformity on the country, consistent with their inability to accept the present state of the world.
Their pretending that they somehow want to protect life is a charade. What they want is control Make no mistake.
25
I am hoping for an organization that will do the following:
1. Encourage women who are seeking an abortion to consider, instead, carrying the fetus to term.
2. They will then pay her a stipend to cover her costs and the 'burdens' involved, whatever they are.
3. She agrees, in return, to give the child up for adoption.
The 'rights' of everyone involved are thereby respected, and a baby/son/daughter provided for a needy couple.
[Call this "Planned Parenthood" if you wish.... there's an organization that goes by that name, but they seem to have largely become "Planned Abortions"]
3
Planned parenthood offers many services, abortion is only one. They do offer prenatal care. To your point about adoption as a cure-all: There are hundreds of thousands of children that already need homes. Adoption is not without profound mental health issues also. Yes, make adoption a viable option ... but don’t pretend that children of color, children with health issues or disability, or children of addicts will be adopted to happy little families. That is fiction.
4
@vermontague - Women don't owe a childless couple a perfect white child (which is what most of them want). Adoption is an alternative to parenthood, not an alternative to risking one's life and health to gestate and birth a baby. And for those who think adoption is such a panacea, talk to some adopted children. Some will have had good outcomes, some not so much.
2
@vermontague What you are suggesting is coercing a woman into risking her health and life by paying her medical bills and then putting her through the trauma of giving up the actual child. This is horrible.
2
If stopping abortion was the true objective of the "pro-life" movement, they should embrace every opportunity to avoid the bloodshed. They should be promoting sex education. They should be making contraception available to everyone. They are not. They are imposing their religious beliefs and the social order that it necessitates on the rest of us. They have no right to do so.
22
Jewish religious law requires that a woman’s health and life be prioritized over that of the fetus. It also states that, until day 40, what exists inside the woman is water.
I would love to see a freedom of religion challenge to new laws that prohibit abortion for reasons that threaten the life and health of the woman, including rape and incest, because they reflect an illegal establishment of Christian religion.
16
@A
I am pro choice, so please accept this feedback in that sprit. Using one religious tenet as an argument over another is no way to solve this issue. Religion, whether in support or against of choice, should be left out of the argument. This enables the idea of sacredness, as this implies status from a deity, to be removed from the conversation. Now the we can discuss science and the right to autonomy on one’s person.
1
@Paul -- Roger that. But A's comment points out that the recent anti-abortion laws in many states are, in fact, a violation of the First Amendment because they enshrine in law a particular religious viewpoint. It requires demonstrating that the Christian doctrine embodied in those laws is not a universal societal view, but rather merely one religious perspective.
At least the sides are becoming more clearly defined: individual choice and autonomy vs. state-imposed religion and control.
1
@Paul - I kind of agree, in theory. But the fact is that the forced birthers have attempted to hijack all of christianity and speak for all christians. There are a lot of people who have been brainwashed to believe that the bible opposes abortion. It doesn't. In fact, the only passage about abortion supports it.
My very mainstream christian denomination is one of 40 denominations that make up the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. They support full reproductive rights for women, including the right to contraception and abortion. Maybe it's time to get the word out that all christianity does NOT oppose abortion.
1
As a member of a state legislature in the early 1970s, I filed legislation to legalize abortion in the state. The leading (and most vehement) opponents of my bills were often legislators who supported the Vietnam War and capital punishment, were indifferent to the environment, and were fine with cutting welfare benefits to children. These positions made their calling themselves "pro-life" a mockery. The Catholic Church did take liberal and compassionate positions on many of these issues, and I voted with their positions more often than some of my Catholic colleagues, but the Church showed through its lobbying efforts that abortion was the only legislative vote that it really cared about. The Church said then that it was most interested in protecting children, although that claim looks bizarre in light of more recent disclosures about pedophilia.
635
@PLM
The first modern concerted opposition to women's health was in 1965 by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to Griswold v. Connecticut, U.S. law wherein SCOTUS ruled that birth control was legal to all American females, protected under their right to privacy.
From the (tax-exempt) Vatican Inc. NCCB 1966 statement: "Government promotion of family planning programs as part of tax-supported relief projects may easily result in the temptation and finally the tragic decision to reduce efforts to foster the economic, social, and indeed moral reforms needed to build the free, enlightened society."
The year prior, in 1965 after Griswold, it announced opposition to the availability of even birth control information. Nearly 55 years later, the U.S. and American females remain yoked to these men and the elected policymakers who now are not just Catholic but the equal number of evangelicals.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has remained a 2nd world religious throwback perpetually dismissing females and female rights to 2nd class status, a 3rd world country on the physical safety of girls and women, a 3rd world country on female maternal and infant mortality rates. Not one single area the theocrats have pursued, both Democrat and Republican, has benefited women and girls or the entire Unites States for the past 243 years.
65
@PLM
As for your final sentence, they were just protecting their supply of victims.
13
@PLMWha t the church has done or not done. Whether or not your colleagues were being hypocritical has no bearing on the value of the life of that child... Does it?
3
Mr. Irving takes great offense at Roman Catholicism's opposition to a woman's right to choose, seeing it as the imposition of Catholic beliefs in the public sector. Is he equally offended by an atheist's opposition to the right to choose? (There are some pro-life atheists..) How about a Roman Catholic's opposition to the death penalty based upon the Ten Commandments? Or a Roman Catholic's abhorrence - based on the teachings of Jesus - at the alleged mistreatment of illegal immigrants? Are these positions OK, Mr. Irving?
5
Thank you John Irving for being willing to say what many of us are thinking.
I am pro choice and I have listened respectfully to both sides of the debate, including when Kristan Hawkins, president of Students of Life for America spoke at my school.
To hear her suggest that exceptions for rape or the health of the mother are never permissible were claims that she made absolute, claiming she had “friends who were raped”.
She compared the “stares” she claims to receive when she doesn’t wear her wedding ring to the grocery store with her children equivalent to the shame some feel due to rape or an unexpected pregnancy as justification for forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term.
To hear her rhetoric, that everyone else is dumber than her and therefore she gets to impose her logic as a religious, wealthy white woman of her “pro-life” views on everyone else feels antithetical to an America where church and state must remain separate.
As more and more states add medically unnecessary restrictions to abortion that hurt women including extra pelvic exams, and when several states are down to one clinic(including Missouri where the last one is being forced towards closing), it is time for everyone to wake up before we lose legal abortion in America.
15
Thank you, John Irving for continuing to speak out. It is imperative to protect the choice that only women have the right to make. I, too, remember people saying “she's got to pay the piper” when a 15 year old schoolmate was forced to marry and bear a child of her 15 year old boyfriend. They came from religious families (Baptist, as did I) who made examples of them as they marched us Sunday schoolers past the storefront window of the newlyweds “apartment” and forced us to see what the “mistake” caused. Both dropped out of high school, the boy worked at a gas station for a while and eventually left the mother and child. I will never forget this and I am a 77 year old woman, mother and grandmother.
Please, please stop the madness of taking away a woman's right to choose what is best for her.
20
I find it sadly humorous that the anti-choice crowd spends so much energy fighting against abortion where just one fetus is "killed" when every day labs that prepare fertilized eggs for implantation discard hundreds of those that are unwanted. Perhaps these good people will choose to "adopt" these eggs into their own uteri? If not, maybe we should just outlaw IVF procedures? The fact that they won't go there puts a lie to their stated life begins at fertilization.
13
For me, as a 71-year-old white male, if there were only one absurd and cruel action raised by some Republican state legislators, it would be this: women being legally forced to officially bury fetal tissue following an abortion (or miscarriage).
Allegedly Christian, white males controlling life decisions for women denies, and insults, the humanity and freedom of women. The world "crusade" is more than well chosen.
As Mr Irving notes, no one is pro-abortion. But the "pro-life" position is increasingly unethical, cruel, and anti-human. Everyone loses when half our society is degraded and demeaned.
18
Interesting op-ed and greatly appreciated. As someone who was raised in the Catholic Church, it was always my understanding (based on what I was taught) that the zygote, embryo, and fetus were always the more important consideration than the woman. I was taught that it was better to be dead than raped (google St. Maria Goretti) and better dead so that a pregnancy could come to term, regardless of the health of the mother. It takes a lot of years to undo THAT brainwashing!
8
Cider House Rules is in the pantheon of the most important American novels ever written. Mr Irving is a national literary, and moral, treasure.
I am anti-abortion. But the only sensible way of reducing the number of abortions is to keep the procedure legal.
As Mr. Irving points out, who could be for abortion? But as his novel so masterfully details, the alternative is nonsensical. The consequences for women most in need are devastating. And more will occur because the services that organizations like Planned Parenthood provide--which are largely aimed at birth control options that will prevent the need for abortion--will be diminished.
The movement to overturn Roe v. Wade has been cynically funded by Republicans who have used the issue to secure control of the Supreme Court. I say cynically, because the real motive was not morality but the accumulation of wealth by the very few through rulings that support unbridled caitalism at the expense of our environment and the health and well being of the vast majority of Americans.
The "American Taliban" that this largess has empowered is evidenced by state legislatures who now are emboldened to not only overturn Roe, but to exclude abortion even in the case of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk.
While the Republican party's strategy has been devestatingly effective to date, it has a Dr.Frankenstein aura about it. The extremes of America's Taliban and their prophet Donald Trump, will not end well.
16
Thank you John Irving. Our lives our now the stuff of novels.
4
“If women have no choice, how can doctors have a choice?”
BOOM! Lights flash!
Thanks for making this point so clearly!! A very timely and necessary reflection from a gifted writer.
6
I think that they are "Pro-Birth" as they don't want to help once the child is born. They don't want to allow birth control. I can guarantee you that if men had to to give birth, there would be FREE abortions, FREE birth control, etc. Next time your sperm is released without an egg present does that mean you can be prosecuted for ending the life of viable, living organisms?
When there is no food or shelter for that child, who helps?
Don't say abstain; The president can't why should a woman. When a man wants sex, he will sometimes just take it and not care if a woman becomes pregnant and then he absconds and leaves her to raise the child. AND the Govt says "you're on your own".
11
Mr. Irving, you are absolutely correct: abortion opponents don't care about the baby once it is born, and could care even less about the mother. They lack a social conscience.
13
For many years I have advocated for women to stop making men's lives comfortable until the issue of women's rights are made into the law of the land. The abortion issue is one small part of the entire issue of whether we women are full human beings equally entitled to the same rights and privileges of hetrosexual white men.
Our fight is the same fight as those whose skin color, sexual orientation or physical or mental abilities do not match up with an ideal of "white male". All those under the umbrella of "lesser than" are the majority but we keep dividing ourselves in the name of "being properly woke". Those white men in power count on us to continue this foolishness.
We women continue to defeat ourselves as if we don't really believe we are human beings whose biology is not a weakness.
Do we really want to be the generation to let our hardwon rights be reconfigured to fit some white male standard allegedly determined by some white males' idea of one religion's morality?
Do you really want your life or your sons' and daughters' lives dictated by one blip in history when abortion was deemed illegal?
4
So true. Historically, it’s always the woman who “pays the piper.” Every crisis or unplanned pregnancy is caused by a man, who strangely not only escapes societal scorn but is often viewed as virile as a result.
I would add that “protecting the unborn,” another marketing term, appeals to people who want to feel moral and “godly” without doing anything themselves, except judging others in a situation most will never face.
The unborn are certainly easier for many to love than real born children, with their many needs, requiring years of adult time, energy and money.
Sadly, all these Popes and other religious leaders always fail to see how they de-value the lives of women.
15
John Irving clearly articulates why the anti abortion zealots are wrong. In their turpitude they "defend" the right to life of the unborn, the health of the living does not enter their thoughts, as the article in the Washington Post yesterday on desperate search for accessible health care in one state -- Tennessee -- points out. (Tennessee being among the vitriolically anti abortion states that has refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act -- that continues to be under siege from Trump and his sycophants.)
6
it seems to me three related strains behind the so-called pro-life movement: 1 is political opportunism, illustrated by Trump and Mitt Romney, willing to flip-flop to use the issue to pander to the zealots; 2 is the desire of all religions, not just Catholics but also evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, to force their religion as much as possible on as many as possible when they can; 3 a revulsion, fear and/or hostility about female sexuality that underlies the religious leaders in charge (all men) to cruelly want to force women to bear children against their will
8
I am all for trying everything to help a woman to choose to keep the embryo. Counsel her, give her support, offer financial help. But leave the choice to her. The problem with the anti choice crusaders is that they are also against contraception and sex outside of marriage. Only have sex if you want a baby! That is their anachronistic message.
5
I remember seeing women dying of septic shock after botched abortions as a medical student in Brazil. And comparing this to the safe clean procedures performed at illegal private clinics in the rich neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro. The rich got sterile procedures under general anesthesia together with follow ups and prescriptions. The poor got no pain killers and dirty instruments inserted in their bodies by a lay person in the favelas. Meanwhile the Catholic Church and the evangelicals pressed for more restrictive laws and a child who became pregnant after rape was excommunicated after having an abortion. Pro-life indeed.
8
Many years ago, I worked for a Congressman who was a huge supporter of a woman's right to choose. Every time the Republicans introduced some anti-abortion legislation, my boss introduced a bill to create a national orphanage to care for all of the children the Republicans totally ignored after birth.
16
I have not read all 602 comments as of this writing but have not found one that even pays lip service to the fetus. You know the organism that will become a human being, if protected. It is all about the woman’s rights, the diabolical religious fanatics, and horrible men.
I am torn about abortion, recognizing that there are two vital beings, the woman and the fetus. If you ignore or eliminate one of those beings, either the woman or the fetus, your emotional and ethical concerns are resolved. Try resolving the issue with both beings, a process the neither the pro or anti abortion crowd bother to do.
2
@Thomas Gilhooley Or, let the woman make that choice. We are not children, we do not need the government (or someone else's church) to step in and make the choice for us. Your post assumes that woman choosing abortion are not making a thoughtful choice, while women choosing to continue their pregnancy are. Women understand the choice they are making; we are actually pretty intelligent, thoughtful people, you know.
17
You have set up a strawman hypothetical. There are only two people- the man and woman who didn’t use protection, or protection failed. There is no baby- no person- and saying that is belied by science and reason. But you ignore the guy who makes no effort to take care of the baby or pay for anything. We pay for insurance benefits for viagra- and get now religion gets to even decide birth control. Preposterous.
8
@Thomas Gilhooley I think you missed completely Irving's central thesis: "Isn’t it as clear now as it was in the Reagan years? Aren’t the same people who sacralize the fetus generally opposed to any meaningful welfare for unwanted children and unmarried mothers?" Do you need to have this spelled out for you, for the millionth time, that Republican's have only paid lip service to the sanctity of the child?
1
Thank you, Mr. Irving, for stating what I, as a long-time nurse, have been stating for years: I don't know any nurses who are pro-abortion, but I know plenty who are pro-choice. And while the pro-lifers campaign on life, they typically pay no attention once the child is born. That's not their job, they say. Then what is??
9
This entire discussion, including Mr. Irving's rather one-sided position, fails to address the real issue: the private interplay between a woman and her doctor. That's the core of the Roe v. Wade decision and it speaks to the most cherished American value: "minding one's own business" where no church, no government, nor anyone else has a right to interfere.
5
@David Keys
Certainly a woman's right to make a decision in concert with her physician is critical, but I would not say it's the real issue. If abortion is taken off the table as an option, then the woman's right to privacy and competent medical treatment is already hamstrung.
Furthermore, the United States' maternal mortality rate has been RISING, unlike most of the rest of the "western" world. In 2018 it put us in the company of countries such as Afghanistan, Swaziland and Lesoto. Having a baby can be a death sentence, something the so -called Pro-Life folks are uncharacteristically silent on.
2
During the Democrat debates I hope that each candidate who is in Congress is asked what legislation they have introduced over the years to make abortion on demand without restrictions, the law of the land. Why are Democrats timidly relying on constantly changing judicial interpretations of a decades old Court decision?
6
This is a smart and concise history of abortion in the U.S. However, Mr. Irving writes that we don't know why doctors wanted abortion to be outlawed because we don't know their thoughts. In actuality, we absolutely know what many of them thought because they wrote about it extensively in books, newspapers, and medical journals. As Horatio Storer, the doctor who led the campaign to criminalize abortion, wrote in 1866 in reference to the newly annexed “open” territories in the west and the recently emancipated south, “Shall they be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question that our own women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.” Storer explicitly wanted abortion outlawed because he wanted white women to be forced to reproduce more. He also wanted to wrest control of reproductive medicine from midwives so that doctors (who were almost always men at the time) would have the final say about women's reproductive lives. So we do know these anti-abortion doctors' reasons: they were motivated by misogyny, racism, and xenophobia.
15
“U.K. Court Says Mentally Disabled Woman Must Have Abortion”
This, despite the woman’s expressed desire to give birth to her child. Where are the raging pro-choicers now, advocating for this woman’s right to continue her pregnancy because, you know, her body, her choice?
4
Raging pro-choicers are angry about that too (at least this one is). Your assumption that we’re not suggests that you think of us as delighting in the need for abortions, which is flatly ridiculous. What we are passionate about is women’s reproductive autonomy, which was not served in the UK case.
20
@DB As Jen says, why do you assume that pro-choicers agree with this decision? But more to the point, why is the decision made in the U.K. relevant to the laws in the U.S.? There's a lot I disagree with in the laws regarding reproductive rights in other countries, but as a U.S. citizen, I only have a say - or at least try to have a say - in my home country.
6
Here's what The Independent has to report about your ragingly, over simplified question, "The woman is in her twenties and 22 weeks pregnant but has the mental age of a child aged between six and nine, the court heard."
1
The Founding Fathers also approved of slavery. And their knowledge of science was, from what we know today, from the dark ages.
As for the headline, "Abortion opponents don’t care what happens to an unwanted child, and they’ve never cared about the mother." Well, I suppose hard facts are not the fodder of opinion columns.
As for this abortion opponent, I did care and have been raising what might have been an aborted child since 3-months after birth. A child addicted to drugs at birth whose father suffered from schizophrenia. The once child is now 23, is doing great and almost self-supporting.
As for all the other people I knew who did foster care and adoption, they were all abortion opponent too.
So, the blanket statement that "abortion opponents don't care" is patently false.
13
@Prodigal Son The crucial fact is not what anti-abortion cursaders don't care about, it's what they do care about: everyone else's business. Against abortion? Don't have one. It's that simple, and all the squirming verbiage spewed by prohibitionists can't change that.
105
@tony zito Indeed, the essential legal question for anti-abortion campaigners is: By what standing can you determine that this, that or all women should be prohibited from access to safe and legal abortions?
40
@Prodigal Son
I’m pro choice but I respect your sacrifice and devotion to the child you helped raise.
13
This exercise in erudition will impress Irving's fans. It will not, however, change any minds.
Why do Irving and some other pro-choice advocates insist that "no one is pro-abortion"? I am pro-abortion. I'm in favor of safe, effective, available and affordable abortion services. I'm in favor of every woman in the world who wants an abortion being able to get one. I believe that such access would be an immense good in our (dangerously overpopulated) world. I am pro-abortion. For pro-choicers to state otherwise is to imply that there's something unseemly about abortion and that women should think long and hard before having one. It is to argue that, while access to abortion is necessary, it remains a necessary evil.
We can view abortion as beneficial (i.e., be pro-abortion) without advocating for the forced termination of pregnancies. And there is no abuse of abortion services that we need to defend ourselves against (no woman gets an abortion just for kicks). Why should we not be proud advocates for abortion?
9
My moderately conservative (long ago and faraway) father had an axiom "children should be brought into the world to be loved" not as a sense of duty. He was also involved in saving my battered aunts life (thank god she was a saint).
He was a hero in some ways until the intimate voice of talk radio corrupted him-
6
@Bob D
I used to have a colleague that was a conservative Democrat, primarily because she was pro-choice, and had had a niece who had been raped and impregnated. The niece had a safe and legal abortion.
Flash forward a couple years of my colleague listening to Glen Beck, Bill O Reilly, Dr. Laura et al, because it was the only talk radio; and she convinced herself that the niece's failed couple of relationships were because she had had that abortion. Not because she had been brutally raped, of course. Despite overwhelming evidence that many survivors of rape have difficulty with relationships, and intimacy afterwards, whether they had been made pregnant or not.
It boggles the mind how corrupting the conservative talk radio has been.
3
It is somewhat true that when the pro life movement began there was not a lot of support for the mother and baby. They were pretty much on their own and that was unfair and selfish. But that was many years ago and the movement has come along way since then. They realized that you could not expect a woman to have her baby if she is alone without any support. Now there are many groups and individuals who are more than willing to help these women whenever they need assistance.
One such group that offers aid is the organization, 40 Days for Life, in which I volunteer. They are located in every state and around the world. Thousands help out with this very compassionate and worthy cause. They are very concerned for both the wellbeing of mother and baby before, during snd after birth. They assist these women and their babies in every possible way with housing arrangements, job training and employment if needed. These women are never abandoned or left on their own and there is always a helping hand available if the need arises. The woman see the sincerity in these people and many have had their babies due to the kindness and support shown towards them. They have never regretted delivering their babies and some have gone on to join our movement. Some are the strongest advocates of the pro life cause. Who better to work with pregnant women in need than one who has been in the exact situation these women are facing. They are excellent role models for women in need.
10
@KMW
I have never heard of 40 Days for Life and perhaps a lot of people have not either. It sounds like its mission is the right one - to help these women at all stages of a pregnancy.
My question is what does this have to do with giving women the right to make choices about their family planning without constraints by any law?
60
@KMW - took a look at the site for your organization and see nothing about helping families. Nothing about pushing for healthcare. Only a focus on abortion. The blog had lots of celebratory bits about closing clinics that provided abortions - how many of those clinics provided many other prenatal health checkups and other care for women in many unserved areas of the country?
Excellent role models for people looking to end the use of abortion would be people who have prayer vigils in legislative offices where there are so many who fight against family leave programs, access to healthcare, access to family planning and birth control. A great number of them are against abortion, yet they don't try to provide support for the child or the mother.
Out of the developed nations, our maternal death rate is tragic - these are the women who didn't have an abortion - show concern for them. Show concern for a society where you think volunteers are sufficient to, as you claim, always provide a helping hand. The task is bigger, it's societal and not up to some faith.
59
@KMW I also took a look at the site. There is not one thing about any programs to support pregnant women. The goal seems to be to get people to “pray and fast” as a way of protesting abortion, and give the organization money for the privilege of doing it. The site celebrates the closing of Planned Parenthood clinics, but says nothing about providing alternate ways for people to get contraceptive information, cancer screenings and prenatal care, all of which Planned Parenthood provides.
63
An important opinion piece by Mr. Irving.
But I’d like to disagree with one minor point.
Mr. Irving says “The prevailing impetus to oppose abortion is to punish the woman who doesn’t want the child.”
In my view that’s not quite right. The anti-abortion movement seems a religious cult at war with its enemies - which is to say, the rest of us.
As, for example, rabid fans of sports teams, they want to win, to dominate.
They want to move the nation toward theocracy, to enshrine their beliefs in civil law.
6
Planned Parenthood Action Fund hosted a presidential debate that was covered on C-Span Saturday and every single Democratic presidential candidate supported abortion rights. I tuned in for a little bit but found it too depressing to watch for too long. The few candidates I did hear speak were enthusiastically for abortion which I found quite disturbing. They use the often expressed view that it is a woman's right and she should be able to control her own body. Some women in the audience spoke of their own abortions and some had had more than one. They asked the candidates what was their stance on abortion and hoped they would not get rid of roe v Wade.
If I had been in the audience and as a pro life woman. I would have asked them about the unborn's rights. What rights did they have, if any? Didn't they deserve a chance to live? Of course, the crowd was obviously pro choice and was geared towards their views.
I could never vote for a candidate who was for abortion which all of the Democratic candidates favor. I admire the Republicans for their support of pro life causes and their standing up for the unborn. President Trump is our most fervent pro life president to date. He is not afraid to say he stands with the pro life movement. It is so comforting and refreshing to have a supporter of the unborn and who is willing to speak out. Pro lifers finally have an advocate who is in their corner. This had never happened before and it is wonderful to see.
7
@KMW - care to share (in detail, please) exactly what the "pro-life causes" are that republicans support? I'm having a hard time coming up with any. Perhaps you can enlighten me. It's certainly not health care, environmental policy, immigration...
140
@KMW I think you fail to see the point of the article. Democratic candidates are NOT pro abortion. They are pro choice, which is an entirely different thing. In other words, I totally support your right not to have an abortion. That is your choice. I would like my right to make my own choice respected, as well. Also, there is supposed to be a separation of church and state in this country. I would like to see that respected, as well. Different religions have different points of view as to when life begins. Why should I be subjected to, for instance, your religion's view on the matter?
118
@KMW
The GOP only want your vote. The vast majority of them don't care about social issues such as abortion. All they want is to reduce taxes on the wealthy and to pick judges that are pre-approved by the Federalist Society to protect their ill-gotten gains through their corporate backed polices.
In the meantime they roll back regulations that protect the air and water, labor, food safety, public lands, social programs, etc, etc. etc.
The people who are single issue voters - be it guns or abortion- are the favorites of the GOP...a real lovefest because they are so easy to manipulate. The impact of these two groups over the decades is why we are so divided and at each others throats in politics.
46
Thank you Mr.Irving. Having participated with the Women’s Project in Rhode Island recently to successfully codify Roe V Wade I like many others feel strongly women are capable of making their own healthcare choices without any input from church or state. I admire the passion of the fetus crowd but have always had a problem with their single objective. I want to shout What about the children already born? If you are so prolife where’s your empathy and activism for them? I have had 2 abortions personally. While on birth control. I can think of nothing worse than being an unwanted child. To me that is the crime. Not women taking responsibility for when and how many children they choose to raise. Having children is a lifetime commitment. Of which I am committed to the 2 I choose to bring into the world. Thank you again for using your gift with words to add another support for My Body My Choice.
6
All free thinking, honest, and sane Americans concerned with the overwhelming intrusion of all religions into local, state and the federal government over the last 50 years ought know there are some terrific legal-based organizations that have been holding the sails together in this never-ending religious onslaught.
Freedom From religion Foundation, Inc. is one that has been astonishingly successful in exposing priest and preacher sex abuses, in keeping the pedal to the metal in the courts to hold firm on constitutionally protected public spaces, and on legislatively cleaning up and out the dark corners of theocracy from many state legislatures and federal policymaking. That's where the religious right began effectively putting at risk the lives of women in the 1980s. It's a mistake to only focus on the top: SCOTUS. The theocrats have strategically undermined the ethics, morals, and constitutional right of all Americans for decades.
A healthy dose of sunshine to clean sweep the theocrats includes local and state elections.
8
Stepping away from specifically abortion and the question of life versus death. The same people who are so adamant about abortion support the gun lobby and support war. Wars and guns kill more people than abortions.
So these groups are anti-abortion because they want to protect a life. Since they don't want to protect lives since they support guns and wars, then why are they anti-abortion?
This is a thoughtful piece like his books. But I think Dems get to caught up in the specifics of abortion and don't call out the GOP on their hypocrisy enough and loudly enough. If the issue is truly about life, why does the GOP support so many things that harm life? Guns, arms, denying climate change, polluting the environment, the water supply, the list goes on.
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I'm not sure the punishment of women is the main impetus behind the anti-abortion movement. This is not to say that Republicans care deeply about women. The GOP needed the votes of fundamentalist Christians. Taking the anti-abortion stance was a convenient and low-cost way to gain their support. There was no need to promise funds to their constituents, just make them believe that their opinions about abortion were the only ones that counted. Frame any resistance to their beliefs as religious persecution.
The approach worked. An amoral man who professes to be a champion of the religious right was elected president.
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