Asymmetrical Information

Motherhood might not prevent women from participating as citizens, but it limits their activity in the political process; moms are less likely to be elected to office or be key aids. To the extent than women look after kids more than men do, women will be underrepresented in positions of power.

Feminsts look at that as a bug rather than a feature of our society.

Eve's linked description of the discussion doesn't contain anything along the suggested lines, and she herself is kind of vague about it. More details.....?

Another thing to consider is -- even if the fetus has a "right to life", does it have a right to live in the mother's body?

Many -- I'd guess the overwhelming majority -- of conservatives and libertarians would consider that "I need X in order to live" in no way equates to "you, therefore, should be morally and legally obligated to give me X". Usually we only consider that you are obligated to provide X if you caused the person to be in need of X. Well, mothers didn't cause their fetuses to need their bodies in order to survive. It is a natural weakness of fetuses that they need a woman's body to live.

I wonder how many female "pro-life" activists have offered up their bodies as hosts for the fertilized eggs of women who don't want them? It seems as if "the life of the fetus", while apparently more important than "the property rights of the biological mother", is less important than "the property rights of other men and women". What's the rationale for that, I wonder. Beyond "punishing the mother for her sinful ways", which I suspect is a major motivating factor here. ;)

Dan has an interesting point, but a woman who becomes pregnant had a number of choices available to her to prevent the pregnancy. If she did not choose a means of prevention, she has implied that her body is available for the support that the fetus requires. To back out after the zygote/embryo/fetus has begun its life is a dastardly double-cross. If you want to argue about the relatively small number of pregnancies as a result of incest or rape, what's wrong with involving the courts? Such decisions, even if they were almost always in favor of the woman, would at least give the fetus the opportunity for due process, and a reasonable balance of the woman's rights and the fetus's rights would evolve.

I'd agree that the tide is shifting to the pro-life side and, as Jane says, not because of the PBA issue. The social stigma/physical risks idea is interesting, but I think that the advance of science and medicine has more to do with it. We can get much better images of "fetuses" nowadays and--what do you know--they look a lot more like babies than "blobs of tissue." Does anyone else remember that photo (I think it was in TIME magazine) of an unborn baby grasping a surgeon's finger during some sort of mid-pregnancy medical procedure?

And a pro-life correspondent of mine once stated that the shift of the tide is an example of natural selection!

I'm pro-choice, but the privacy rationale was always a questionable reed to rest a right to abortion on demand on, and it would have been even if the opinion was more tightly reasoned than it was. The obvious place to look would have been the 13th Amendment, but comparing unwanted pregnancy to slavery might be a tad inflammatory. Having sex is not consent to get pregnant--this is particularly true in an era when birth control is widely available, but not perfect in effectiveness. The original Roe approach, which allowed for abortions in the first two trimesters to go basically unchallenged (but which would permit regulating or banning third trimester abortions), would give a woman who didn't want to give birth sufficient time to decide to end the pregnancy before the fetus reached viability. Unfortunately, later refinements to Roe led to loopholes that permitted increasing numbers of third trimester abortions, sometimes on very flimsy grounds ("health" being defined broadly and basically being a matter of sole discretion for the physician). The NARAL retort is that such abortions are rare, and justified. "Rare" still means thousands a year, and even if 99% of these were for legitimate purposes, that leaves a few dozen fully viable fetuses a year that are being killed for reasons that amount to simple convenience for the mother. I find that appalling, and I believe it makes the NARAL position as extremist as the gun rights advocates (not many, thank goodness) who think that the Constitution demands that they be allowed to own .50 machine guns and armor piercing bullets. Believing in choice for women shouldn't mean giving a license to kill a being that, under the original rationale of Roe, should be able to receive the full protection of law to preserve its existence.

There was a recent article in Tech Central Station that made basically the same point that Eric Seymour makes above:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-013003C

One other item to ponder: the increase in abortion in the US has led folks who can't reproduce (for whatever reason) to go find children and babies in other countries. This has become a huge multi-million dollar industry. A swing back to the pro-life position might mean an increase in the amount of US babies put up for adoption and would certainly decrease the waiting time for childless people.

You might call this a supply-side argument...

Ironically, motherhood hasn't stopped either Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton.

Thank you for an interesting and thoughtful post on a difficult issue. But you do not open the most vexing issue --when does "life" begin? At some level, the question is circular -- life begins at the point when it's murder to terminate it. But at another level, it's not. Many people, as I discovered in a series of posts over at Tony Woodlief's blog, believe that life begins at fertilization. Once the egg & sperm fuse, creating a unique DNA strand, this cell is, in their view, "alive" and therefore due all the protections of our civil and criminal codes.

the reason that the discussion is relevant is that it questions whether the abortion wars will ever be over. many people, myself included, believe that a woman's right to autonomy, privacy and self-determination outweigh the rights of a fertilized egg to be carried for 9 months by an unwilling partner. but those who believe that a fertilized egg is "alive" hold the contrary belief. Unfortunately, I do not see the two sides ever finding common ground on how the abortion wars can be resolved.

FDL: Answering that question "When does life begin?" will probably resolve the unanswered political issues attendant on Roe v Wade. Establishing a political consensus defining when life legally starts (which won't make anyone happy except those who don't care) will allow for unlimited privacy before then and strong restrictions, imposed by individual states, afterwards. The Partial Birth Abortion debate is merely a prelude to this resolution.

It's pretty hard to get around the fact that the world is overpopulating. That's the most compelling pro-choice outcome-based argument.

FDL is basically right, in that we have two opposing belief systems which will probably never be reconciled. I seriously doubt science will be able to define the genesis of a human life, and even if it does it is unlikely to be a factor in others' religious/philiophical/spiritual arguments.

Almost every other argument I've heard is absurb from a logic standpoint.

Pregnancy is a unique phenomenon in this world and I think it's basically impossible to draw parallels to other situations.

From a practical standpoint, I think that any advocate of banning and/or limiting abortions should have equal fervor for supporting pregnant women and children. This, of course, is why I view the current administration hypocritical when it makes drastic cuts on spending for the support structures for the women and children that need the most help, while simultaneously pushing hard for limiting (and/or banning) abortions.

Another practical concern is that women will still get abortions, regardless of whether they are legal or not. It provably increases the danger to a woman to have an abortion through illegal means. This doesn't justify abortions from any sort of ethical or moral standpoint, but I imagine it'll go down much like either the Prohibition or the current War on Drugs.

As long as we've waded into this mess, one thought that Jane kind-of-sort-of-almost touches on, is the bizarre "choice for men" argument. I don't say bizarre pejoratively, either. But it highlights a lot of what Jane was getting at. There's an idea among some that men ought to have access to "paper abortions"--that is, they have the right to early knowledge of the pregnancy, and can decide to sign a form that "aborts" their parental rights/responsibilities. It's a powerful consideration, even if it will never happen, because the arguments against it are basically pro-life arguments.

Often, the response (usually from women's rights groups) has been to the effect that "he should have kept his hands to himself"--which has been derided as cruel and chauvanistic when applied to women by pro-life groups. There are a lot of angles to this, not least of which is the question of whether men ought to have fewer choices than women--being held utterly hostage to her whims. What about his responsibilities? Well, since when do we assign responsibilities to people who have no relevant rights in the matter at all? What about his right to "convenience" or control over his future? I'm not an avowed proponent of the paper aborion idea (it's unimplementable), but it's an interesting one, since it reveals a lot of the problems with the both sides of the abortion debate.

Jason--The description I linked is actually a description of two different panels, of which I only saw the second. Prof. Balkin doesn't describe every speaker, nor does he describe every argument made by each speaker--his post is more, "Here's some of the interesting stuff that happened at my conference." And I think he and I were interested in different things.

As for me, I tried to be fairly tentative in part b/c what the "motherhood vs. citizenship" speakers (one was Prof. Robin West of Georgetown, the other, I think, was Prof. Reva Siegel [sp?] of Yale) were saying seemed SO out there that I didn't want to make really hard-and-fast claims in case I had somehow missed a step. However, I was listening closely and taking notes.

I do think I've given the mis-impression that Profs. West and Siegel thought women shouldn't be mothers, or something--West says (this is from my notes), "I fully agree that motherhood as we currently socially construct it is incompatible with citizenship..." (and the "motherhood vs. citizenship" language was used fairly casually at other points in the conference), but I think she also believes it may be possible to overcome that incompatibility by having more "community parenting" (eh) and more government-funded child support (plus legal abortion, presumably). Several of the speakers became kind of fuzzy about whether abortion would still be Constitutionally required in a socialist/communal-parenting state; I assume that's because we're, uh, not gonna see that state any time soon.

Hope that clarified things--
Eve

Oh, one other thing--I'm not so sure I buy the notion that having sex is not "consent to get pregnant." In what other area of life do we apply that rationale? Eating junk food is consent to getting fat, implicitly. Even if you exercise and take other precautions, a reasonably responsible person understood to be the bearer of their own consequences knows they may get fat doing it. Sex is even more cut-and-dried. Anybody who gets pregnant after having sex and looks around, shocked and bewildered, saying "I never agreed to this!" is living in an infantile fantasy world, a world without outcomes, a world without cause and effect. It's a fantasy of our own construction, because we've essentially bought the idea that nobody should ever have to face the likelihood of pregnancy if it doesn't fit in with their grand plans--which amounts to saying pregnancy is some political injustice inflicted by nature that needs correcting. As women have bought into this, men have jumped on that bandwagon in droves (see: children, fatherless). We don't hesitate to tell a man, "Sorry compadre, you whipped it out, you knew what could happen--you consented, now be a man and face your responsiblity." Only if we understand pregnancy to be a disease or some objectionable infirmity, something like a biological car crash, can we say that a person engaging in sex is not consenting to the precise outcome that sex is desgined to produce. I'm not making a pro-life argument, since I'm a true moderate on the topic, but I think this failure in our understanding badly clouds the issue and turns consenting adults into "victims of circumstance."

I do think I've given the mis-impression that Profs. West and Siegel thought women shouldn't be mothers, or something--West says (this is from my notes), "I fully agree that motherhood as we currently socially construct it is incompatible with citizenship..." (and the "motherhood vs. citizenship" language was used fairly casually at other points in the conference), but I think she also believes it may be possible to overcome that incompatibility by having more "community parenting" (eh) and more government-funded child support (plus legal abortion, presumably). Several of the speakers became kind of fuzzy about whether abortion would still be Constitutionally required in a socialist/communal-parenting state; I assume that's because we're, uh, not gonna see that state any time soon.

Ah, ok; their statements sound vaguely reasonable now. :D

One other item to ponder: the increase in abortion in the US has led folks who can't reproduce (for whatever reason) to go find children and babies in other countries. This has become a huge multi-million dollar industry. A swing back to the pro-life position might mean an increase in the amount of US babies put up for adoption and would certainly decrease the waiting time for childless people.
You might call this a supply-side argument.

There's a contradiction in adoption:

1) There's an incredible shortage of adoptive parents, in general.
2) There's an incredible oversupply of adoptive parents who want young, physicall and mentally healthy white babies.

I think foreign adoption is becoming more popular, to be completely crass about it, because people don't want the children currently available, and are cherry-picking from overseas. A decrease in abortion would increase the supply of "desirable" adoptive children, but it'd also increase the supply of the kids no one wants.

Well, yes and no, Jason.

Adoptive parents are definitely biased in favor of young children; they don't want to deal with the problems that parents with difficulties have inflicted on their kids. But it seems to be a myth that parents care much about the race, at least as far as I can tell from a friend who adopted and was quite loquacious on the subject for several years. However, many states won't allow a white couple to adopt a black baby because it will lose it's heritage; the rationale, strange as it may be, is that it's better for the kid to be with black foster parents than a permanent white home.

Most of the kids who are unadoptable under the age of six or seven, possibly older, are kids who are legally unadoptable because of family entanglements and legal issues. Those kids would be taken in a heartbeat by families if the legal system would let them go.

You also have a fairly large number of kids in foster care who are being "fostered" to family members; those family members don't adopt them only because foster care benefits are more generous than welfare. Those children aren't candidates for adoption, but they inflate the number of unadopted kids.

So I think it unlikely that the majority of aborted fetuses would have trouble finding homes as babies, since one presumes they would be immediately ready for placement.

I can't help but note how much more difficult it is for parents to adopt than to abort.

As an adopted kid (I'm biased), I can't help but think of all the trouble my parents went through to justify their "worthiness" to the state when their counterparts merely had to put that thingy into this thingy.

Perhaps this is why, Jason, that parents are going overseas -- it's just too hard and too arbitrary to work through the states. I know of no parent who would turn down an opportunity to raise a child, no matter how undesirable you might deem them.

It has long been apparent to me, as a pro-CHOICE person, that Roe v. Wade needs to go. It created the so-called "Religious Right" movement, and took away something that rightly belongs to the democratic process.

Most women simply are not radically pro-choice. Most instinctively recognize that, beyond a certain point, you've had your chance to abort early and have committed to seeing it through--which is why almost no one supports late term abortions except in life-threatening circumstances.

A fact that radical pro-choicers generally cannot face is that most women aren't on their side. Once you realize this, it becomes ever more obvious that, sooner or later, there are going to be changes. Roe v. Wade was a mistake. Even Jane Roe thinks so now.

The Sage said "I'm not so sure I buy the notion that having sex is not 'consent to get pregnant.'"

Okay, how about the case where the man says "I had a vasectomy" and is lying? If it involved (say) an automobile sale instead of a pregnancy, the woman would have legal recourse to avoid being forced to accept and maintain the defective vehicle. There would appear to be no equivalent relief in the "unintended pregnancy" case, from your position... even if the woman successfully sues to cover medical expenses and damages, she is still forced to bear the child.

Except in rare circumstances, Troy, I find it hard to imagine a responsible woman who would have sex with a man she didn't know well enough to evaluate his truthfullness (or well enough for him not to want to risk getting her pregnant), without using some backup. I mean, I guess I could imagine some woman's husband conning her, but it seems a little extreme to be making laws around. And if you're having sex with strangers, you have an obligation to yourself to stay healthy, and to take your own steps to prevent pregnancy if you don't want to get pregnant.

Jane: What this extreme line on "actions do have consequences"?

Troy, read more closely. I explicitly said I wasn't making a pro-life argument, only that the picture of pregnant women as hapless victims of circumstance is a distorted one. The particular example you use (the phony viscectomy guy) is so wildly unlikely, though of course not impossible, that it hardly bears addressing. In any event, if I thought abortion ought to be legal for those cases where the woman has been decieved by some dastardly scheme and tricked into getting pregnant, then I'd only be condoning a pitifully small percentage of abortions. It's not much of a basis for allowing such an ethically problematic procedure. In fact, the number of men who are thusly decieved has to be higher by many orders of magnitude, but we don't even consider allowing that into our calculations concerning a man's say in whether a pregnancy can be terminated. So, I remain convinced the picture of two consenting adults as helpless "victims of chance" is an unhealthy and misleading one. As Jane was getting at, we've been relying on some terribly weak grounds and distorted ideas to support abortion rights for some time now, and I believe that the pro-choice movement has everything to lose by trying to justify it on the basis of far-flung and extremely rare eventualities, that bear no resemblance to the actual circumstances under which abortions normally occur.

I do think it is interesting that both extremes of the debate seem to me to be arguing about issues that are not directly addressed by R v W -- the right say its about when life begins. The left says that a mother's choice is absolute.

However, R v W doesn't side directly with either position. What the court did address was the issue of viability. For the right, viability starts a few seconds after the lights are turned down and the music starts. For the left, viability doesn't start until the age of 18. :)

Nonetheless, viability, or the ability of the fetus to survive outside the womb is the legal issue. If it can survive, then abortion can't be performed no matter how early in the pregnancy.

This is the slippery slope that has caused pro-choice advocates to fervently reject viability altogether and to embrace the issue of women's rights. They know that because of technology advancements, the timing of viability will get pushed earlier and earlier into the pregnancy.

This is what the partial birth movement is about -- pushing the limits of the legal determination of viability. I believe in planned parenthood v. casey, for instance, the notion of trimesters determining viability was discarded.

Therefore, R v W is a ruling that is subject to the influence of advancements in technology. Left alone, the ruling could have drastically different implications for society 50 years from now than it does today. I would even go so far as to say over time it will be less helpful to pro-choice advocates and more helpful to anti-abortion advocates.

Jason--See, I still don't get this. How is it "reasonable" to suggest that my mother, say, who runs a human-rights law office, is barred from full citizenship because while she was working her way to that position she was also raising two daughters in a non-socialist state? How did we detract from her citizenship? That position is, to me, utterly bizarre, and based on a really fallacious understanding of citizenship (and motherhood!).

Sorry if you were being sarcastic and this is just ax-grinding on my part.
Eve

I will only add two notes, one of which has been at least partially covered above:

1) Regardless of one's position on abortion, Roe v. Wade is bad constitutional law.

2) Anyone (and I have seen several who have done this - not here, of course) who uses the term "fetus/parasite" has forfeited the right to be taken seriously or even be allowed into the debate.

That last one is just a pet peeve.

I made no claims that my example was common; I merely proposed it as a counter-example to a claim which seemed to me to be extreme in the opposite direction.

But then, this whole topic isn't one where middle-of-the-road arguments are viable, is it...

"2) Anyone (and I have seen several who have done this - not here, of course) who uses the term "fetus/parasite" has forfeited the right to be taken seriously or even be allowed into the debate."

I really wonder if the more extreme pro-choice advocates know just how idiotic they sound when they oppose legislation that provides pre-natal care and which allows third parties who assault pregnant women to be prosecuted for murder when the fetus dies, because the legislation is seen as the first step on a slippery slope to ban abortion. These are cases where the women have exercised their choice, and they want to have the baby, which means that the societal interests in protecting life and the woman's interests in exercising reproductive freedom are in synch. Opposing this sort of legislation gives credibility to the truculent assertions of Rush Limbaugh and other pro-life speakers that NARAL, et al, are more interested in maximizing the number of abortions that occur than in protecting the rights of women to exercise *all* of their reproductive rights, which include actually giving birth.

It's pretty hard to get around the fact that the world is overpopulating. That's the most compelling pro-choice outcome-based argument.

Well, the "developing" world is increasing in population quickly, but the industrialized world is seeing a population decline. The US and Europe would be declining in population, if not for immigration. Most demographers agree that as a country industrializes, birth rates drop. And many predict that global population will top out at a sustainable population.

So, population control is a pretty weak argument for abortion, especially here in the U.S.

Responding to Josh:

Another practical concern is that women will still get abortions, regardless of whether they are legal or not.

Correct, but the magnitude of the noun "women" decreases in the case of illegality. It also greatly reduces the non-majority but still-troubling cases where, say, a woman who is inclined to deliver is instead pressured toward abortion by a panic-driven boyfriend.

It provably increases the danger to a woman to have an abortion through illegal means.

Perhaps, but what does this statement actually mean in real terms? It's not entirely safe to get an abortion now, depending on where you go to get it (it varies depending on the clinic but is not a problem restricted by income or class demographics). Former clinic partner-owner and abortionist Carol Everett, now a pro-life activist, had some disturbing first-hand insights on this. The industry performs a potentially-dangerous medical procedure, at an attractive profit-level, while not being held to the same stringincy of accountability as comparably dangerous medical procedures (except when performed in a hospital). Add to this mix the reduced overall legal liability (women are less likely to raise malpractice issues unless they are very serious, for several reasons), and you have a workable recipe for corruption.

Second, well before Roe vs. Wade, an overwhelming majority of all illegally-occurring abortions (bear in mind that rape and incest provisions were in place before RvW, so a very small percentage of abortions were performed legally) were being performed by physicians in their offices, according to Planned Parenthood's statistical reckoning.

This doesn't justify abortions from any sort of ethical or moral standpoint, but I imagine it'll go down much like either the Prohibition or the current War on Drugs.

Not necessarily. I believe Ms. Jain McGalt referred to statistics, some time previous, showing that a great majority of Americans do not support the current broad legalities applied to abortion. This is not the same as, say, banning booze when a very broad sector of society prefers reasonable access to it.

Responding to Jane Galt:

So I think it unlikely that the majority of aborted fetuses would have trouble finding homes as babies, since one presumes they would be immediately ready for placement.

Fewer than the numbers would suggest, even. Many women undergo an in-utero bonding procedure with the fetus later in the pregnancy. Abortion prior to this stage obviously prevents this bonding stage from occurring, since abortion procedure typically dictates that any time after ten weeks is fair game. (Ten weeks being the stage at which the fetus has acquired all of the recognizable human body parts, thus making for easy inventory afterward -- leaving part of the fetus in the womb will likely result in a disastrous infection.)

Most of the kids who are unadoptable under the age of six or seven, possibly older, are kids who are legally unadoptable because of family entanglements and legal issues. Those kids would be taken in a heartbeat by families if the legal system would let them go.

If you say so; I can't find statistic supporting this either way.

So I think it unlikely that the majority of aborted fetuses would have trouble finding homes as babies, since one presumes they would be immediately ready for placement.

This logic would seem to imply that their should be little or no unadopted children right now, though. Is there a significant difference between the population currently aborted, and those currently put up for adoption?

I really wonder if the more extreme pro-choice advocates know just how idiotic they sound when they oppose legislation that provides pre-natal care and which allows third parties who assault pregnant women to be prosecuted for murder when the fetus dies, because the legislation is seen as the first step on a slippery slope to ban abortion.

Probably about as idiotic as gun-rights advocates when the fight legislation banning .50 caliber rifles.

Jason--See, I still don't get this. How is it "reasonable" to suggest that my mother, say, who runs a human-rights law office, is barred from full citizenship because while she was working her way to that position she was also raising two daughters in a non-socialist state?

I don't think they're making that strong of a statement. It's more of a "it's difficult to participate in society when you have to devote years to child-rearing, especially when there's no economy of scale involved." Like, having to pay child-care out of pocket and stuff.

Oh, and can I point out the reason lots of perfectly reasonable people don't trust pro-lifers to suggest any changes whatsoever? There's a real counter-productive subtext of outraged vengeance against "the bad women" and "the bad doctors."

"'I really wonder if the more extreme pro-choice advocates know just how idiotic they sound when they oppose legislation that provides pre-natal care and which allows third parties who assault pregnant women to be prosecuted for murder when the fetus dies, because the legislation is seen as the first step on a slippery slope to ban abortion.'

Probably about as idiotic as gun-rights advocates when the fight legislation banning .50 caliber rifles."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of their rationality then, is it? Not to mention that the Democrats have been far more vocal publicly about the fetus related legislation than any Republicans have been about .50 cal rifles--it isn't making them look good.

>1) Regardless of one's position on abortion,
>Roe v. Wade is bad constitutional law.

Can anyone point me to a good essay on this subject, written by someone who is pro-choice?

Thanks.

Correct, but the magnitude of the noun "women" decreases in the case of illegality. It also greatly reduces the non-majority but still-troubling cases where, say, a woman who is inclined to deliver is instead pressured toward abortion by a panic-driven boyfriend.

My feeling is that the number of women having abortions would not decrease by an order of magnitude. I don't have anything to back up that feeling other than my belief that abortion is a serious decision for people, most often driven by need rather than a whim. And how much do you want to bet the "panix-driven boyfriend" won't pressure the woman to have an abortion regardless of legality?

It's not entirely safe to get an abortion now

It's also not entirely safe to cross the street(or to sit in your living room, or to drink a glass of water, etc.) Pregnancy isn't exactly low-risk either. I'm willing to bet that making abortion illegal isn't going to improve women's health overall.

This is not the same as, say, banning booze when a very broad sector of society prefers reasonable access to it.

Ah, but we're not talking about the public as a whole. We're talking about people that would have chosen to have an abortion if it were legal. And my claim is that a large percentage of those women would still have an abortion. So the ban doesn't solve the "problem" of abortion.

Abortion as it involves government breaks down on the question of enforcement.

Outlawing abortion is as enforceable as the drug laws. For the same reasons.

Wondering if Ms. Galt has gotten a copy of or has yet read Hadley Arkes's _Natural Rights and the Right to Choose_ (just recently published by Cambridge U. Press)? A brilliant, devastating criticism of the pro-abortionist movement.

Here's a link to a very thoughtful review of Hadley Arkes's book:

http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/spring2003/stoner.html

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