Asymmetrical Information

Your argument assumes the fetus is normal. Am I correct to assume you find abortion more acceptable if the fetus is deformed?

As for your aunt she could have had the baby, put it up for adoption and gone on with her life (moving away if necessary). I believe there are still plenty of religious communities today in the United States in which bearing an illegitimate child would be scandalous.

"My great-aunt had an abortion in the thirties, to prevent a pregnancy that would have ruined her life."

Well, not to prevent a pregnancy. If there's no pregnancy, there can be no abortion. She prevented a live birth that would otherwise have likely taken place, had she not gotten the fetus killed.

Abortion is not about preventing "another human being from being born." It is about stopping the development of fetal tissue that has the possibility of becoming a human being. A collection of cells, tissues, and fluids that has never had independent thought, consciousness, or memory is not a human being.

My wife and I wept after each of her two miscarriages. The fetuses were perfect; an undiagnosed autoimmune disease caused placental rejection and fetal death. But, had either fetus been found to have serious chromosomal problems or deformities, we would have (sorrowfully) aborted it.

So, is abortion sad or bad? It is almost always sad, and it is sometimes bad. But it isn't murder.

Dr. T., abortion does end the life of a human individual. If conception results only in tissue, you're dealing with a hydatidiform mole or a blighted ovum. The fetus is not human because it will become a baby if you don't snuff it. It's human because every human being that survives until birth goes through that phase of development.

You may claim that the human entity in the uterus is too small, young, undeveloped, or helpless to confer upon you any obligation to care for it, but you can't claim it's not an individual example of homo sapiens.

BTW, pointing out to pro-life folks how small, young, undeveloped, and helpless the embryo or fetus is merely awakens our instinct to protect the vulnerable among us. You might just as well try to convince a jury that it's okay for a young man in the prime of his life to batter to death a disabled toddler on the grounds of the toddler's size, youth, unsophistication, and helplessness. Some of us believe that the strong have obligations toward the weak, rather than, as the prochoice seem to assert, the other way 'round.

"Some of us believe that the strong have obligations toward the weak, rather than, as the prochoice seem to assert, the other way 'round."

Until they're born, of course. Then if their parents don't have the bucks to take care of them for any reason then it's unfortunate that they were born to wastrels who are a burden to society but we shouldn't expect to have to pay for it. At least according to a significant subset of those oh so wonderful people that you claim moral kinship to, Christina.

Keep in mind that all accumulation of wealth essentially cuts of some individuals from happines in order to assure the happiness of others. Many, many people in this country have the resources to save thousands of lives from death by disease and starvation.

If the wealthy in this country simply let the starving and hungry come and take their wealth, like parasites, those starving and hungry would certainly do so. Just as the fetus will certainly consume the mother's placenta and grow into a healthy, viable baby if it is not resisted by the mother through abortion.

The mother protects her wealth and hapiness by cutting the baby off, just as the wealthy protect their wealth and happiness by cutting off the sick and starving from overrunning them and taking all that the wealthy own.

In fact, if a person who was non-fetal suddenly attached him/herself to your body and began feeding off your blood and tissue, even if that was the only possible way for that person to survive, I think you'd be justified under our cultural norms to shoot him.

Let's say a homeless man needed $50,000 for an operation or he'd die. You'd be justified in shooting him if he came onto your property to take $50,000 -- even if that was the only way he could survive. Even if he said "I either take your money or I die" you'd be justified in killing him to keep him from taking your money.

Rugby players...Uruguayan rugby players.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2324621.stm

Were they soccer players, they would have been found dead, grimacing and clutching their shins in mock pain.

"...combat is also different from murder in degree rather than kind..."

Warsaw Uprising: The young Jewish lad who desperately wielded a smuggled hunting rifle to protect his wife and baby against the advancing SS was basically the same species of killer as John Gacy? The acts committed by the two men are basically the same thing morally speaking, but Gacy is (arguably?) somewhat worse?

Is "combat" a term which can meaningfully be compared to "murder" in the first place? Cannot murder and its opposite--self-sacrifice to save another--both be committed within the context of combat?

Very shaky analogy. Sheds no light; increases confusion.

"Yet there is a countervailing force that is swinging the pendulum back towards the pro-life side:"

I understand that the younger generation (i.e. my generation) are trending more anti-abortion than their parents. And I think there may be another component to that force -- that every one of us born after Roe v. Wade is made again and again aware that, on our mothers' whim we might have been destroyed. On the margin, I expect there is an unease about this, accounting for at least some of the shift away from abortion.

Of course, I may be incorrect on the numbers here. But certainly, for myself, this is something that leaves me feeling a bit cold.

I mean, like Dr. T. above, one can wriggle out of the feeling by arguing that that fetus your mother might have killed wasn't really you -- it was just some bundle of tissue that had the potential to and became you -- but the fact of the matter is, you already know it did become you. I think it is difficult, for the individual himself (i.e. me) to avoid feeling a certain identity with that bundle of tissues. After all, whether a fetus or a newborn, it's something we can't remember -- they are both extremely remote from our present selves. But intellectually, we realise those were the stages we passed through, and so, really, they were us.

"The rape exception does seem to carry cultural freight about responsibility, but as I discussed here, it seems to me that this has much more to do with intuitive distinctions between active and passive responsibility than with a desire to "punish" women for having sex."

As long as I'm commenting I may as well go whole hog. Isn't the rape exception best seen as just another manifestation of the "choice" idea? I.e. when you have consensual sex, you've already freely made the choice that leads to pregnancy and a child, though our technologies may let you take it back. When you're raped, obviously, this isn't so. A rape exception makes perfect sense under the logic of choice. Just not under the logic of "a fetus is a human being!"

*****

"I don't mean this perjoratively; the incest taboo undoubtedly has all sorts of culturally indispensible functions. But the "ick factor" that attaches to incest, cannibalism, and so forth operates far below the level of rational, or even moral, judgements"

I have to say, seeing as incest is pretty much the last sexual taboo (race and gender have largely fallen), I suspect it's only a matter of years before it too falls. For my own part, years of watching Japanese dramas and cartoons have so rotted my brains that I feel, at most, a sort of dried-up sense of mild disapproval when male characters lust after their sisters and vice-versa. Or when lovers turn out "unexpectedly" to be close blood relatives.

I expect the vast majority of us will continue to think incest a loathsome and disgusting practice when we imagine it in our personal lives -- the thought of doing anything like that with my sisters is sick-making. But then, it's pretty much the same for gay sex -- the thought of me doing it with another man is pretty sick-making too. So I expect (as with homosexuality and interracial intercourse today) there will still be a sizeable minority of people who think it is wrong, but that the powerful and active sting of revulsion will, in fairly short order, fall off. We'll be left with mere social disapproval.

The fact that the incest taboo may serve culturally indispensable functions is, I think, pretty much irrelevant to this process. Unless people can pull those functions out and wave them before the public with great effect (and certainty), they're not going to do much to arrest the shift. The trend nowadays is to consider sex as just something two individuals do, not as an act tightly bound up with the future of a society, and therefore an act in which that outside society has a nontrivial interest. Under such a view, we are doomed, I think, to much broader acceptance of incest and abomination.

Just wait and see!

The Uruguayans were rugby players, not soccer (except in the movie). That makes it more plausible what they did...even expected.

"Keep in mind that all accumulation of wealth essentially cuts of [sic] some individuals from happines [sic] in order to assure the happiness of others. Many, many people in this country have the resources to save thousands of lives from death by disease and starvation. "

The assertion at first view seems interesting, then quickly fades to idiotic under any logical examination. The "wealth accumulation" that you claim "cuts of some individuals from happines" is the major result of the social rules that allow for such wealth of food and medicine and knowledge to be created. Allowing masses of decrepit poor (who don't plan very well) to take whatever they want would result in the death of the entire society.

That this is different both qualitatively and quantitatively from pregnancy. First, no woman (or man) is going to be mobbed by thousands of roving fetuses (although this could make for an amusing scifi story - hmmm).

Second, under all your later arguments, Jane has already acknowledged that where a woman's actual health (rather than comfort) is at stake, there is a strong(er) moral right to abort - letting beggars take what they want (monetarily or physically) would clearly be more analogous to that scenario.

In fact, we can turn around and say that, like normal conditions of pregnancy, your economic analogy is *exactly* what happens. About a third of my income is siphoned away from me by taxes and tithes to feed the poor and so on. (You can argue as low as 10-20 percent.)

A typical baby *cannot* take more than the mother can give, because any genetic codes that cause that demand will not reproduce as successfully as those that are more polite in their demands. Therefore most women should be able to successfully bear most babies without much risk. Indeed, rates of death from childbearing are extremely low - it's in the neighborhood of ten deaths per hundred thousand, give or take fifty percent.

A woman who uses birth control pills, she will spend thousands of dollars over the course of her reproductive life to prevent other human beings from being born.

When a man or woman has a sterilization operation, he or she expends time and money, and endures pain, to prevent other human beings from being born.

Before there was widespread access to birth control, women who didn't want to risk pregnancy had to abstain from sex. Just to prevent other human beings from being born.

The employees and sponsors of Planned Parenthood, even if we ignore their abortion-related activities, collectively exert a great deal of effort and spend a great deal money in order to prevent millions of other human beings from being born.

We can argue about whether an ovum is a human being, but we can all agree that it will be a human being by the time it's fertilized and born. Is any of this wrong, or bad, or even sad? Would it be fair to call any of these "time-lapse infanticide?"

Did your great aunt eventually go on to get married to a man other than the one who first got her pregnant, and then to have children? Think about what not having an abortion would have meant for the children she went on to have later. They never would have had a chance to live. There are millions of people in this country who owe their lives to abortion.

We get all sorts of silly dilemmas like this when we try to count "potential lives." But we shouldn't. Potential lives don't count. Only actual human beings count. If you want to make a solid case for abortion being "wrong," or "bad," or "sad," or anything like that, you have to show that a fetus is a real human being.

Jane - Very interesting and thoughtful post.

On the subject of the "rape exception" to the (moral) proscription of abortion, I never understood it to be another form of the "choice argument" (it was your choice to have sex...). Instead, I've always understood it as another aspect of the health of the woman exception. That is, rape must be one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a woman. If a pregnancy results from such a tragedy, some women might be able to use the "good" of the pregnancy to help them overcome the bad of the rape. However, I suspect for many women, being constantly reminded of the rape -- which would happen every time the baby moved within them -- would be unbearable. Their sanity would be at great risk.

Two points.

On incest, Taeyoung, the real abomination is not sibling-sibling, but parent-child, and that generally falls under adult-child sexual taboos that seem to me to make a lot of sense (despite how many hot 16 year-old girls I see whenever I dare venture into the mall).

On potential lives, Brandon Berg, the argument you seem to be refusing to grapple with is that Jane wants to make a distinction between the 'potential' embodied in an unfertilized egg, or a roving sperm, and the 'potential' in, say, a zygote.

You may say there is no distinction, but an interesting debate could surely be had, and it would include a more direct confrontation with the argument.

"the real abomination is not sibling-sibling, but parent-child, and that generally falls under adult-child sexual taboos"

Really? I dunno. It still seems rather squicky to me even if everyone involved is an adult. I think society's revulsion at incest survives pretty well quite entirely independent of whether there are children involved.

The trick, for incest activists, will be essentially the same trick homosexual activists had to pull off. The archetypal homosexual used to be a pederast (and for many people, the archetypal homosexual is still a pederast), but homosexual activists successfully distinguished the public image of the homosexal from the public image of the pederast. I don't expect incest activists, once they come out in the open, will find it any more difficult to do the same.

I must admit, I had forgotten the taboo on sex with children. But rest assured, there are activists and philosophers hard at work at battering down that taboo as well. I think it may last somewhat longer than incest, though.

Aren't we a little off base when it comes to the rape and incest exceptions? After all, we don't require abortion in those circumstances, as we might if the issue were simply our disgust at the results of rape or incest. Instead, we are simply willing to allow abortion in those circumstances, even if we didn't allow it in other circumstances.

Isn't it that we think that, as a rule, forcing a woman to carry a baby resulting from rape and incest to term is too much? And isn't this intuition problematic for the pro-life side of the debate, as other woman, in other situations, will suffer just as much from having to carry their baby to term? I am generally pro-life and I find it bothersome.

"We are having abortions, instead of giving up our babies for adoption, so that we will not face the inevitable stigma from our bosses, our friends, and our families, who will wonder what kind of a heartless woman gives up the baby she bore rather than raising it."

I have never understood this attitude. Bearing a child and giving the child to loving parents to raise when it is not possible for you to do so is a huge sacrifice and act of love. Although the conception was unwanted, and pregnancy and birth are HARD, giving a child up once you've done so much for it is REALLY, REALLY HARD. But adoption provides benefits to all involved, and no one should ever be made to feel guilty for doing so. Society should be celebrating birth mothers... not denegrating them.

It is not heartless... THAT would be abortion.

All these discussions prove one thing, and that is that the government should stay the hell away from this issue.

I've carried two children to term, and had one abortion. I nearly died on the table giving birth to the first one. Any pregnancy can cause lifelong injury and death, it's very difficult to predict--a friend's sister had a heart attack on the table and died (as did the baby), and she had no previous history of heart disease.

Taking this risk into consideration, I think it's reasonable for any woman, even one who seems healthy, to choose not to undergo the very real physical risks of pregnancy.

um abortion(point of view from someone who is only 14)

why abortion is bad:
* taking away a life
* its stupid(parents are stupid for having sex)

why abortion is good:
* maybe someone 16 and younger was raped.
maybe then they could consider abortion( depends on the person)

its whatever the parents choices are. mother should tell father (if she didn't) but they don't both agree to one. the mother is a retard and doesn't know how to make the best of it.

OK, I thought I would give my story of my near abortion. This should really muddy the water.

I was in college and despite correct usage of birth control and using it every single time (all of 3 times at that point) my period stopped. Not only that, I started having trouble keeping food down. I was convinced I had gotten pregnant. However, 2 preganacy tests later, it was apparent something different had happened. That first test was in the abortion clinic with funds in hand for an abortion though.

Now... was I wrong to go and get a near abortion, yes and no. Undoubtedly, this was a selfish decision. I could see very little way to be able to continue college with a child. The father would never have consented to an adoption, though I tried to run that past him. He was already attempting to pressure me into quitting school and getting married, not to say that I could not have withstood the pressure, but the toll of college work and kid would have been more than formidable. Without a baby, I had a scholarship (Minimum class load to keep this would have been nearly impossible with the work necessary to pay for childcare and time I would need to devote to care.) a light duty job to pay for sundries and a distant boyfriend. In hindsight, I am quite grateful that no child of mine was subjected to him as a father. He has a nasty habit of blaming those close to him for every problem in his life including those he caused himself and those that are plain bad luck. Of course it would be 4 years before I figured this out.

So... heartless or not? I am tremendously glad that there was no child, I would have definitely had the abortion if there had been. And I would have had more than one period of thinking about how could I have killed another human being for what was essentially my own comfort.

"A collection of cells, tissues, and fluids that has never had independent thought, consciousness, or memory is not a human being."

Well, since we don't really know when those things begin, I could probably make a really persuasive argument that you just described a two-month old baby...

Jane -

a side issue: disgust with incest, and many of the other emotional reactions which permeate the abortion discussion, are better described as "non-rational" than as "irrational". "Irrational" tends to imply that the reaction is the opposite of what a rational reaction would be, while "non-rational" does not.

For example, if you unexpectedly hear a large angry dog barking at you, the fear you feel is non-rational - the part of your brain which processed the bark and made you fearful is not the part in which cognition takes place. On the other hand, if you feel fear at the sight of a small, friendly, happy dog behind a fence (or otherwise restrained), most people would consider that fear to be irrational, as there is no good reason to fear such a dog.

To Silvermine: Anyone who interacts with a healthy newborn baby can recognize its consciousness and responsiveness (which are more than just reflexes). This is not true for severely premature infants (those born at less than 28 weeks of gestation) who do not give visible signs of cortical brain activity. At less than 20 weeks gestation, the brain cortex is not truly functional. To me, a fetus at that stage or younger is not a human being, even though it has the proper genes to be classified as species Homo sapiens (this is in response to Christina). Thus, I do not believe that aborting a 1st or 2nd trimester fetus is infanticide.

Dr. T:

The fact that, to you, a newborn baby is obviously conscious doesn't mean that every parent of every newborn is going to perceive that consciousness. And when you couple this statement about your (admittedly specially educated) perception with

"This is not true for severely premature infants (those born at less than 28 weeks of gestation) who do not give visible signs of cortical brain activity"

...that certainly opens the door for allowing a 27-week preemie to die with no effort to save it and no guilt, for lack of a better term, about the human life that's just expired before your eyes. Doesn't it? I myself might make that same choice - to let a profoundly premature baby die rather than to undertake a medical miracle against the odds to save it, just as I wouldn't try to prevent a miscarriage, on both religious and practical grounds. (In fact, my husband and I discussed these possibilities during each of my pregnancies and decided these same things.) But I could not delude myself that I would be doing anything other than allowing a baby to die. Based on what you've said so far, I can't imagine that you'd equate an abortion at 27 weeks to allowing a preemie to expire without intervention, though you might well make the latter choice also.

So: is birth the bright line, still, on one side of which you can end this life without feeling bad about it, and on the other side of which it's wrong? Or, is a functioning cortex the line? And what happens when/if the age of marginal viability is pushed back to 20 weeks (isn't it about 21 weeks now?)? Or, does it come down to intent: if the parents intended a baby, abortion is wrong at all stages, but if they're ambivalent, reluctant, or desperately unhappy about the prospect, one of these other lines apply? If the fetus shows signs of Downs syndrome, what then? Does the financial or emotional readiness of the parent or parents rule? (If so, who besides me, while considering when to start a family, got the advice from friends and parents that "you're never really ready, financially or otherwise"?)

In other words, you've presented your criteria, but they're not quite as clarifying as you might hope.

Wait a minute: Our only choices are bad or sad? I thought having an abortion was noble and heroic.

Don't you people watch movies?

Gee, thanks, denise, I just sprayed my Sprite Zero all over my keyboard.

DUDE GET OVA IT ABORTION IS ABORTION FARRRRR

DUDE GET OVA IT ABORTION IS ABORTION FARRRRR

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