Asymmetrical Information

This is why I try to reframe the issue in terms of personhood rather than life, and want a bumpersticker which reads "Abortion after the seventh week stops a beating heart".

Jane, this was another well written post. While you are correct that most people who have thought about the abortion fall into one of the two camps you describe, that's not always the case. For example, Mormons do not believe abortion is always the same thing as murder. This is because they do not believe life starts at conception. Instead, life starts when the baby is "quickened" in the womb. (The belief life does not start at conception, does not mean Mormon's hold abortion is alright. It's still a very serious matter, just not the same as murder.) This religious doctrine is why Senator Hatch, a Mormon, can support stem cell research without supporting a policy that is contrary to his church's teachings.

Other religious groups, I'm sure, also teach life does not begin at conception. This in no way is meant as a criticism of what you wrote. It's just another example of how complex this is.

Abortion is the new Living Together Out Of Wedlock*.

*Insert reference to snowclones here.

Most people, I think, really don't pay much attention to the abortion debate. So it is unsurprising that their views are somewhat incoherent.

For example, polls typically show 60-65% of Americans oppose overturning Roe vs Wade and around 25% support overturning it. They also show that 50-55% of Americans think abortion should either be forbidden, or allowed only be legal in cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother's life. Which means that around 20% of the electorate has opinions on the legality of abortion that are in direct conflict with one another -- e.g., believing abortion should be unrestricted in the first three months (Roe) versus believing it should be banned in most cases.

Jane, I would suggest that trying to cast the issue as a moral gray area that requires compromise is what really shuts down the debate. Refusing to argue one of the poles, and instead taking the view that there must be someplace we can meet in the middle where everybody will be happy, is the essence of avoiding debate. Let's compromise! Let's not talk about whether a fetus is a human life, and let's not talk about whether abortion is murder or not!

It would be great if we lived in a morally simple universe where we could find a compromise that would make everyone right and everyone happy. But we don't live in such a universe. This debate should be had, even though that means someone will be deeply unhappy when it's over.

As one who has also tried to "grapple with the grey areas" in an "AmbivAbortion Rant" (parts one and two, part three yet to come), I really appreciate these posts and have linked to them.

RE' an earlier post, in 22 years of associating with Mormons, I have not met one who abhors the abortion of a fetus and would not consider a fetus as a child heading toward being born. I have also not heard a definition of "quickening".

Abortion is an abominable act, even though it may be necessaty, at times, to protect the life of the woman.

RE' an earlier post, in 22 years of associating with Mormons, I have not met one who [does not] abhor[s] the abortion of a fetus and would not consider a fetus as a child heading toward being born. I have also not heard a definition of "quickening".

Good point.

However, in Church courts abortion is treated much different from the murder of innocents. Dramatically different.

That has given me pause, without solutions.

BTW, for current LDS discussions on abortion:

http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=388

http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=376

Human cloning is going to happen sooner or later, more likely sooner than later. Does that make every living cell in our body a potential new baby?

Personally, I agree with Jane's preference of abortion being safe, legal and rare and would support a sliding scale of ease of obtaining abortion from week 1 through week 40.

DRB,
I think you mischaracterize Jane.
The point was a simple one.

Of course it's possible for a society to take either of the extreme positions that she describes. It just so happens that in our society, most people do not hold such absolute positions, but believe there to be a gray area (for all the reasons laid out). If we are lucky, then we as a society will struggle towards some middle position that represents the best compromise of what we as a society believe. Of course, there will be people deeply unhappy about this result - that's true of almost any issue in politics.

I think that by only allowing the possibility of a sincere resolution at the extremes, you are presenting us with a false choice.

And I hate to get personal and appear snarky, but I think it is YOU that lives in the morally simple universe. It's one extreme or the other, and messy compromise be damned. By mischaracterizing those looking for the appropriate middle as dreamers you yourself are taking the morally simple approach of only looking at the false choice of two extremes.

My gosh - the ironies here are so rich that I have to stop myself now, else I'll go on forever.

"and what happens to it is of no more interest to anyone (except her and her doctor) than what happens to her appendix."

This is going to be a touch inflammatory, I expect, but really -- this attitude has always seemed kind of incoherent to me. I mean, take the parental consent laws. Loads of pro-choicers who do make the analogy to the appendix (or some other innocuous bundle of flesh) nevertheless think that a minor ought to be able to get an abortion without ever consulting with her parents. But that minor certainly can't get an appendicitis without consulting her parents, and getting their approval to boot. Aren't there all those cases with faith-healing too, where parents are supposed to have abused their consent powers to put their children though (sometimes fatal) lack of treatment?

Even (or perhaps *especially*) for the pro-choice side, there has to be something really special about the fetus and the act of abotion, to justify making a Constitutional right out of it. And if it's not because it's a developing child, what is it? I honestly don't understand.

I have also not heard a definition of "quickening".

Quickening is when the fetus starts to move. Historically, it was when life was considered to begin. That attitude changed once modern medicine discovered that the pre-quickening fetus was more humanlike than previously realized (which is why doctors led to push to ban abortions in the United States).

Both sides act as though in one moment its just cells and in the next instant there is a person who has full rights. The 2 sides just pick that moment in far different places though they are making the same fundamental mistake. It doesn't matter whether the point is conception or the cutting of the umbilical cord- the more that baby is allowed to develop the more we should take its rights into account. After the first 12 weeks we are no longer talking about the woman's right to choose- we are talking about the woman's right to change her mind. And since abortions are not reversible I see no problem at all in saying that once a woman decides to let that baby develop that she starts to lose some options on what she can do moving forward.

I for one am soundly in the middle, but I don't think the position is necesarily muddled: from conception to birth the "fetus" is in the *process* of becoming a person, a sort of proto-person (with the proto part diminishing over time) who, if not exactly having "rights" certainly deserves some sort of consideration, certainly more than that appendix.
It is apparent that the vast majority of rigid pro-choicers believe this in their gut, otherwise a) they would have reason to give lip service to "safe,legal, and rare" -- if a totally amoral act, why rare at all?, and b) they would not be so *terrified* of "baby" terminology.

A while back I did a pretty thorough of the Planned Parenthood website's large section on prgnancy, birth control, and abortion. I could not find ONE single line drawing, much less a photo of anything showing a baby/fetus inside the uterus, not one. They seem to act like not only do they think thy have a constitution-granted right to abortion, they also think they have a very real right to not have to anything which might engender doubt. Seriously.
Furthermore, their site's discussion of adoption very clearly is spun to make adoption sound like a *worse* option than abortion, discouraging women form pursuing it. Pretty despicable IMO.

Another Planned Parenthood bit of deceitful spin I discovered upon a careful reading is this: "emergency contraception" is IN FACT *not* "contraception" at all but rather causing the embryo to be "aborted" (in laymen's terms) by blocking it's implantation in the uterine wall. They distinguish it from medical abortion by word games (however technically correct) --the former is not an "abortion" because one has to be "pregnant" (ie zygote implanted) in the first place to have an abortion. But this is totally, and disgustingly, intentionally misleading for women who do use birth control but would draw the line for themselves at uinterfering after fertilization/conception.

Getting back more on track, I think the coherent middle view is that there are two opposing sliding scales-- on one the fetus/baby has increasing "personhood" (for want of a better term) whereas on the other there is the disruption to the life of the mother caused by allowing the pregnancy to continue to birth. Assuming adoption is a possibility (which I grant it realistically is *not*, for a married woman), for a 4-6 months pregnant woman (that everyone already knows about) to finish out the pregnancy is less of a future burden on her than it would be for another woman who just discovered she was pregnant. Both this utilitatian scale of the impact on the woman and the biological scale of fetal development coincide in saying that an early abortion is better (or less bad) than a later one -- which matches most people's common sense view. I don't think it is an incoherent view at all.
There is a rational basis for people to believe that abortion, at least early on, should be legal even though it is not an amoral act, that while the life of the fetus is not equal to that of the woman, it is nonetheless not worth *nothing*, that it may potentially be the least of several evils. But in no way does saying it should be allowed contradict policies to reduce its use.

Just be cause Prohibition was repealed doesn't mean that DUI shouldn;t be a crime, or that government funded PSAs shouldn't campaign to reduce/combat alcoholism.

For that matter (and this argument really pisses hardcore pro-choicers off) I have a right to arm myself (which unlike abortion is *explicitly* in the Constitution) yet few of the same pro-choicers adopt the ultra-libertarian position wrt guns that concealed carry licenses, background checks, providing mandatory information on gunlocks with each sale, etc, etc are horrific undue burdens on that right.

I'll also add that at both of the extremes some(much) of the motivation is really in fact about sex as sex and NOT about the woman's "right" to control her body or the life of the unborn child: the prochoice ideologues simply want to preserve consequence-free sex come hell or high water, and the worst of the pro-life RR types don't want mere mortals interfering with unwanted pregnancy as God's punishment for "fornicatin'".
Phrased that way *neither* extreme looks particularly noble.

Thinking about Dan's comment early in the thread re: abortion polls, I wonder how many of the subjects, when asked, really understand what would happen if Roe is overturned. I got into this in an email discussion with an old friend recently. She's extremely intelligent and well-educated (a psychology Ph.D.), but her politics are not overly sophisticated. She's a liberal Democrat, raised by liberal Democrats, who lives in a very blue state, and so I think her political opinions have just not been challenged very often.

So she asked me, in all seriousness, if abortion would be immediately illegal everywhere if Roe was overturned. I said it would go back to the states to decide, but it would likely remain legal in many, probably a majority, of states.

Anyway. My question is, if this highly-educated woman is unaware that overturning Roe would not immediately make abortion illegal everywhere in the country, how many other Americans (answering poll questions) are similarly uninformed or misinformed? I think there's a big chunk of people out there who are very uncomfortable with abortion, but believe that it should be legal in certain very limited circumstances. These people may be unclear on what would happen if Roe is overturned. If they believe toppling Roe is an extreme measure that would mean all abortions would be illegal no matter what, I can easily see why they'd come out in favor of upholding Roe. But they might not do so in such large numbers if they were better informed. (The possible influence of activist scare tactics on either side, as a way of muddying the issue, is another conversation.)

Maybe I'm underestimating the public's awareness of the issue. But I'd be curious to see a survey that tried to find out exactly how sophisticated people's understanding of the political situation was BEFORE asking them their opinions on Roe. I bet some interesting connections could be made.

None of these are the issues.

The issue is what role should the Federal Bureau of Prisons play.

The person to person debate over the morality of abortion is nice and we should have one or two.

But the issue we face is general is whether we should go to jail over it.

One can, amazingly enough, be against abortion, and against the government actively taking a side in the debate. Perhaps we might notice that we don't have to do or not do something merely and solely because some concede the debate to a legislative body. Perhaps we can actually lead our lives without looking in the USC every five minutes.

*snip*
>>And your typical strongly pro-life man does not, in fact, want to see women sent to jail for having abortions, even though he would almost certainly endorse a stiff stretch in the pokey for any woman who hired a doctor to hack her infant to pieces and throw the pieces of the body in a medical waste bin.
*snip*

I'm one of the far-pro-life folks, but the reason I wouldn't throw every woman who's had an abortion into jail rests on the fact that they don't realize they've killed their child. Imagine your boss took you into a room and showed you a button, and told you that if you pushed the button, you'd kill somebody in Russia, but if you didn't push the button, that person would be your legal ward for the next 18 to 24 years. Pushing the button has no legal ramifications, and (for some reason) you don't believe that people in Russia are fully human. They're genetically human, and fit the definition of being alive, but they aren't "really" people yet, and you'll never see them if you push the button.

Basically, most women that have abortions don't truly realize they are killing their child. Kinda like driving drunk, but the deaths are almost assured you never have to see the bodies.

Correct. It's more like "Abortion is Negligent Homicide", or "Abortion is Manslaughter", but they just don't have the same rhetorical zing.

>> And your typical strongly pro-life man does not, in fact, want to see women sent to jail for having abortions, even though he would almost certainly endorse a stiff stretch in the pokey for any woman who hired a doctor to hack her infant to pieces and throw the pieces of the body in a medical waste bin.

Missy,

I think it's not entirely clear what would happen to abortion law if Roe were overturned, because sometimes laws not enforced for decades have been declared void due to desuetude. But the very worst that could happen (from a pro-choice perspective) is that the laws in place in 1973 would come back into force. Some states already had liberal abortion statutes at that time, and many others would obviously liberalize their laws quickly. I don't know what CA's abortion law was like in 1973, but the State Constitution here has an explicit "privacy" clause that has been taken to cover abortion rights.

I really can't imagine any state (not even in the Deep South) outlawing abortion altogether. OTOH, I can imagine a couple dozen restricting it to the first trimester, absent extraordinary circumstances. Frankly, I haven't got a problem with that, and I rather suspect that the majority of the electorate does not. People who aren't hard-core pro-lifers don't think of an early-stage pregnancy as quite involving a second human being; and people who aren't hard-core pro-choicers understandably get queasy at the idea of ripping into little pieces something of the same gestational age as the preemies in the neonatal ward next door. Putting the cutoff at two or three months is going to seem a workable compromise to a lot of people.

I have to agree with Missy...most people's understanding of the legal ramifications of overturning Roeis woefully inadequate. Being more to the right on the issue, I actually ask people their opinion of the issue and I would say that less than 20% actually understand that overturning Roe probably wouldn't change much of anything. NARAL would probably just stop wasting money fighting legal battles and start up a fund to help transport women from non-abortion states to abortion states.

I real reason Roe needs to go, even though Griswold really set the standard for invented privacy, is its rallying point for the extension of invented "rights." There is nothing more threatening to our freedoms than "rights"-creep, where people think they have the "right" to just about anything. The "right" to free health care, to free school, to paid time off...where does it end? If you were to attempt to write a legal definition of privacy, it would take a whole page.

Whenever you attempt to sever the link between an action and its consequences, you ultimately get the situation where people believe they are entitled to something. And once people think they are entitled to something, it gets exponentially more difficult to take that thing away from them. Abortion is just a microcasm of this. Other than in China, where infanticide still occurs, the U.S. has the most liberal abortion laws in the world. Even most pro-choicers would agree that as long as it stays legal there should be some limits (i.e. no partial birth abortion). But we cannot get to this point because abortion is held up as some kind of gold-plated symbol of freedom by an extremely vocal minority. If we would stop thinking of abortion as a right, and look at it for what it really is - a medical procedure that prevents birth - then maybe we could bring some sanity to the situation.

The right to abortion is part of a zone of personal freedom, no more and no less.  It's the right to tell busybodies to go stuff themselves, if you bother to tell them anything at all.  It doesn't invent anything, like a "right" to welfare payments; it's just the right to be left alone.

And Michelle, you might not want to think too deeply about those 2nd-trimester premies.  The treatments which permit them to survive are certainly painful, and the pain goes on for months rather than minutes.  The ones which live all too often have serious physical handicaps, blindness, deafness and brain damage.  Even the more mature ones have health impacts later in life.

The 24-week premies on ventilators are the unlucky ones.  There are worse things than death.

So, you think that my lovely cousin, who is quite a nice, happy person, was "unlucky" to live?

Up yours. And that's more polite than it should be.

If she was born at 24 weeks and made it through physically, mentally and psychologically whole, she is far more lucky than anyone has any right to expect.  Too many are not.

I know a lovely lady with spina bifida.  She's happy with her life now, but she said straight out that if it had been her choice to avoid the surgeries, the physical therapy and the daily pain she would just as soon not have been born.

I take her at her word.  What else can I do?

Engineer-Poet,

Yes, of course extremely premature babies are very likely to be permanently damaged and to suffer greatly. That wasn't my point. My point was that once they are born, no one disputes that they are, well, babies. There are definitely people who think they'd be better off dead; there are even people who think that the mother should have a legal right to kill them. (OK, Peter Singer isn't "people," but you know what I mean.) But I don't think there's anyone alive who would countenance ripping them limb from limb. And yet there's not a lot of practical difference between that and a second-trimester abortion, is there?

Engineer-Poet

What else you can do is not make a sweeping judgement on a large group of people who *are* very diverse insofar as to their state of health, even if it is below the average, based on an (apparently) one-off statement by a member of a different group who was in pain.

It's like saying "Hey, this one MS friend of mine says that it's such a pain, he wishes he'd never been born, because it depresses him. Teenagers are depressed a lot. Teenagers would be better off not to live at all!"

If you think I'm over-reacting, imagine how you'd react if someone said your mother should be dead.

[i]"How can we build a society in which women are equal if they spend much of their adult lives [b]at risk that an untimely pregnancy will disrupt their careers?[/b][/i]

i find this formulation extremely amusing considering the large numbers of college educated women who are [b]choosing pregnancy[/b] and even semi-retirement post birth.

how can you build a society "in which women are equal (by which i can only presume that you mean equality of outcome) if they" desire different outcomes from men in the first place?

Well, I guess I'm a zealot.

For example:

A team of astronauts is on a manned mission to Mars.

In a soil sample they collect, they find a clump of dividing cells.

Would anyone care to provide the headline appearing on the front page of every single newspaper in the WORLD the following day?

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