Asymmetrical Information

Well coat hangers will become a more commonly used tool in ending unwanted pregencies once Bush 43 puts this Alito gut on the bench of SCOTUS. Oh well all you folks who like Big Brother just got your wish. Not only to these guys give millioms to billionaires they they invade the most personal decision a woman can make...... which is choosing to become a parent or not. Ihope santa gives every member of the Senate who votes for this clown coal for Christmas. They'll deserve it.

Thank you, Tommy. That is an excellent example of the kind of useless invective that ensures that abortion moderates will be thoroughly repulsed by your position.

Better pharmaceutical birth control is an unlikely aspiration, given our predatory legal class.

As a man, I think its not a good thing to put a woman in the position of possibly needing an abortion.

As a human being, I don't think it matters that abortion is legal, because there is no shortage of people in the world. My guess is that as population grows we will find reasons to categorize still other types of people as "nonviable".

I can't speak for God or for Women, because I am neither.

amen, Jane Galt
thanks for intelligently discussing that which is taboo

Jane,

Count me in. I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. I suspect that probably a majority of the American people do, too, which is why the public is not up in arms at the prospect of Roe being overruled.

"Pro-choice folks: you're losing the Court. Pro-life folks: you've already lost the public. But you might have a chance of getting something done if you stopped shouting at us and talked to us instead."

That is the most intelligent thing I have ever read about the abortion debate.

As a serious pro-lifer, I wish that I could get the extremists on my side to understand the import of that statement.

Tyler Cowen's paper on political self-deception came to mind with this post

Thanks Jane. You summed up my feelings on this issue better than I ever could.

Unfortunately, neither side will quit shouting at each other until this issue ceases to be an effective fundraising tool for politicians on both sides.

Jane-

If you're going to write about abortion, a large percentage of the responses will be brainless, self-glorifying righteousness. You know that, right? And you continue to do it (and thanks, 'cause it's interesting) and then follow up a couple days later. Reminds one of the "Doc, it hurts when I do this" joke.

Jane, you're wonderful. And I imagine the same intellectual rigor and passion that fuels your writing is also responsible for your inability to let these comments go. But get this. You will never, ever, ever post on abortion without subsequently becoming infuriated by the intellectual vacuity of many of the responses.

So please continue with the occasional abortion posts, but as an exercise, you might try forcing yourself not to respond with follow-ups next time. Just for your own well-being. Or try following up with some meditation, or alcohol, or Percocets. I particularly recommend the latter two together.

Well I certainly didn't mean to offend you Jane. All I'm saying is that I personally can't understand how anyone 18years or older can't be in control whether or not they wish to be parents. I certainly don't think it's the government's buisness

Pro-life folks: you've already lost the public.

I highly doubt that is true, for multiple reasons:
1. Democrats have had to abandon their pro-choice litmus test
2. People who vote Republican are perfectly aware of the party's pro-life position. That is the only poll that matters. If they are voting Republican then it simply means that abortion does not matter to non-feminist pro-choicers.
3. Our society is gradually getting more conservative on sexual matters (AKA myself) as the connection between disappearing daddies and poverty becomes more and more clear. Abortion is caught in the halo effect of our views on sexual morality as a whole.

Jane, I consider your posts on abortion to be far and away the most intelligent I've seen on that subject. A few days ago I referred the folks at Pandagon (a hard-left feminist blog) to your "Alito Fatigue" post, to see if they'd find a way to attack it. Nothing so far.

You might want to do a little research on the Puritans.

Pro-life folks: you've already lost the public.

But this is not uniformly true. There are states where the public (at least a sufficient majority of voters) supports a total ban on abortion. There are almost certainly state legislatures where a majority support a ban even though the public may not (states where, for example, conservative rural voters are over-represented). Absent Roe, it seems likely to me that there will be substantial areas of the country where abortion will be banned. And the argument that availability in some states is sufficient to provide everyone with a choice just doesn't work out -- there are women whose situation will preclude making the 500-mile trip to a jurisdiction where abortion is legal.

Generally, I'm on your side. But contraception isn't perfect and accidents happen. And kids don't have a voice in choosing their parents or the state where they live. I'm old enough that I went to high-school in a state where abortion was banned, and where it would be banned again if Roe were overturned. I knew young women who did not have any realistic opportunity to exercise choice. I do not want to go back to those days.

JG:

I am not a "theist"
I am not a "statist"
I am not a misogynist who just wants to control women
I am not a puritan who wants to punish women for having sex
...

I am also in favour of more and better birth control, which I devoutly hope the pharmaceutical companies will provide as fast as they can. I would love to see the Pill be otc.

tommy:

I personally can't understand how anyone 18years or older can't be in control whether or not they wish to be parents.

Well I certainly didn't mean to offend you Jane. All I'm saying is that I personally can't understand how anyone 18years or older can't be in control whether or not they wish to be parents. I certainly don't think it's the government's buisness

Then next time, say it without the hysterical sloganeering. Your initial post was so disconnected from reality that I wondered if you were attempting parody just to see who would snap the line.

For example, coat hangers have never been a significant factor in the abortion debate, even before Roe. They are a tool of propaganda and nothing more; so, the instant that kind of thing pops up, you pretty much discredit yourself in the eyes of reasonable people. If you really are serious, don't do that.

Tommy: do you think that I should be able to "control whether or not I can be a parent" by throwing my one year old child out the window? What if I get a doctor to stab it in the head right as it is being born?

The debate is precisely about what sort of rights a fetus should have, and when. If you think that a fetus is closer to a baby then not (and many people do), then your formulation is simply silly. It's exactly the kind of thoughtless sloganeering that passes for wisdom among those who spend too much time with their fellow activists reassuring each other that the other side is a bunch of moral lackwits with a logical vacuum between their ears. Since the moderate side has already figured out that they neither think that abortion is murder, nor that it is the moral equivalent of birth control, this just turns the mushy middle off, since we honestly do understand what is happening in the minds of both sets of activists. Worse, when you say "I honestly don't understand [how you can support women who kill their babies/how you can interfere with a private decision like becoming a parent]" just signals that you probably don't have a whole lot to add to the debate, because you've never engaged with any of the tough questions.

Wonderful discourse. My belief is that all these comments are for naught. If we get the breakthroughs we all hope for then the entire world will be in the falling demographics category.

Countries will do things good and bad to try to insure their populations increase. Including banning abortion and forced inseminations.

Well Jane simply put a child isn't a child until it leaves the womb IMHO. There is no mushy middle for me personally. When I was 17years old a girl in my neighborhood who was 15 at the time told me she was pregnant. Now this is N.Y. so we're pretty liberal over here. But she was still a minor technically. She asked me to claim to be the man who got pregnant. I also paid for it because the guy who did get her pregnant told her it was her problem. Since I was 17 I went to clinic and paid for it since legally it was OK for our respective ages to have sex(even though we never did) Also her Dad was a very strict Catholic and would've went crazy if he found out she was even HAVING sex. Several years ago I ran into her in the old neighborhood. Married now with a 4-year old old. She couldn't thank me enough for helping her out. That's why I'm staunchly pro-choice. People lives can get ruined by unwanted pregnencies and I think it's even worse when it's done in the name of God. I believe that God's merciful not venegful. Isn't that what Jesus would say?

Tommy: do you think that I should be able to "control whether or not I can be a parent" by throwing my one year old child out the window? What if I get a doctor to stab it in the head right as it is being born?

I'd like to address this question on its own. I do not think someone should be able to control whether they are a parent by killing their child after it is born. The reason is that there are many legal, safe, and essentially easy methods to stop being a parent in that situation. The obvious is adoption. In many states you don't even have to arrange anything but can simply drop the child off at any hospital, fire station, church, etc.

When it comes to wanting to control whether you are a parent and you are still in your first trimester the question becomes complicated as the only way to control being a parent at that point is by committing an act that many people believe is murder. If there was a way to safely remove a fetus from a woman and then keep it alive until it could be adopted then there would be no need for abortion.

Here is the conflicting rights problem. Commonly people phrase this in the form of "does a woman's right to control her body mean that she can kill someone?" I'd like to look at this from a slightly different perspective, one of economics.

How much does it cost the mother to bring a baby to term? There are obvious hard costs like costs of doctor visits, cost of delivery, cost of increased food consumption, etc. There are also costs related to possible time off from work, possible loss of mobility, possible sickness, and general discomfort. Finally there are intangibles such as the pregnancies affect on ones standing with their friends, their family, and their work. What would the value be of all these things that are part of bringing a baby to term so that then it may be given up for adoption?

Now, if we had a dollar amount for that value, and you were carrying that amount of money in your pocket and someone jumped you on the street, should we treat you as a murderer if in defending yourself you killed them?

There is an obvious difference between pregnancy and this analogy in that the fetus has not "done" anything to you and is technically innocent, whereas the person on the street has committed a crime by attacking you. However, I think the thought process is constructive. Do you think a person killing to defend their money (or property) is a better person than someone who kills to defend their money, way of life, and comfort?

Jane:

I never could get the trackback to work, but I posted a piece of meta-commentary over at Catallarchy on the abortion issue in response to one of the posts in your one-woman Carnival of Abortion last November.

My basic complaint is that nobody seems to be even trying to address what I see as the only really significant question: Why an adult human has the right to life, and why this should or should not apply to fetuses.

You talk about conflicting rights, but does a fetus really have a right to life? If so, why? Things like viability and brain waves and beating hearts can't be the answer, because dumb animals have all these things, too.

There’s a very obvious difference between a baby and a fetus which fetal rights advocates including you, Jane, seem to overlook, deliberately or not: a fetus is using the woman’s body for its survival, whereas a born baby does not. And no, an already born baby for all its needs doesn’t use another person’s body, it uses another person’s labor and that person can be pretty much anybody. A fetus, in strictly biological terms, is a parasite which uses each and every organ and system in the host’s body and can’t do without. So those who are willing to endorse fetal rights and a fetus’s right to be born pretty much assume that a fetus has a right to use another person’s internals with or without this person’s consent just because it’s the only way for it to survive.

So why should a fetus not only have equal rights but more rights than those already born? After all, you don’t have a right to another person’s kidney, or liver, or bone marrow as an expression of your right to live even though having these organs or tissues donated to you might be your only means to survive. Why isn’t a woman’s consent required for continuation of pregnancy while you can’t even take organs from a brain-dead body without permission? All this rhetoric about infanticide really obfuscates the fact that terminating a pregnancy is more akin to taking the fetus off of life support that a woman’s body provides because the rightful owner of that body doesn’t want to donate the use of said body to the fetus, a far cry from tossing a baby out the window. And given the enormous stress put on a woman’s body even by a healthy pregnancy you’d think it should be treated at least as voluntary a matter, as, say donating blood.

typical woosey liberal blog:

http://inhershadow.blogspot.com/

Jane

Thanks for continuing to stake out the Sensible Center on the abortion position, a position that doesn't get much public airing, even though it probably represents a plurality of opinion.

One reason why it doesn't get much airing is visible from the comments, and that is that it opens one up to moronic comments and ad hominum attacks from right and left.

Thanks for taking the flak that this position brings upon your head.

Your articulate, sensible commentary keeps me an avid reader. Thanks.

Ah, one of the most contentious issues extant today.... As one who was raised as a Catholic, I morally believe that human life begins at conception. (Why not, after all - those "trimester" distinctions are just arbitrary).

However, the pragmatist in me also feels that someone who has made a mistake (especially one that could have substantial & ruinous consequences) should have the abortion option available. This does not make it "right", and reflects a bit of dichotomy between what I feel is morally right & what is expedient.

It would be nice to have consistency, but I can't find it even within myself! :)

Best solution would indeed be if abortion was a RARE thing! -- Not the fallback plan for sloppy birth-control or careless sex. However, our society has de-stigmatized unwed sex & pregnancy to the point that restraint (or shame) have virtually ceased to be forces that used to temper careless behaviors.

And, as some have pointed out, Roe being thrown out (& many say it's a fundamentally flawed ruling anyhow) would not de-legalize abortion, but just toss it back into the realm of the individual State legislatures to decide.

Big question is whether the issue deserves Federal standards, rather than a hodgepodge of individual state decisions; much as we have Federal laws that apply uniform standards for the entire nation. There would have been MUCH less dissent if the issue were decided by legislatures & voters rather than by judges.

Now, if we had a dollar amount for that value, and you were carrying that amount of money in your pocket and someone jumped you on the street, should we treat you as a murderer if in defending yourself you killed them?

Yes. Killing to defend anything other than life is and should be considered a crime. Nothing hard in that question.

anfried: The problem with your theory is that after the first trimester (give or take), a fetus CAN survive without the mother's body. So, following your logic, after the first trimester, there's no reason to kill it.

And pregnancy is a voluntary matter. Women every day choose not to get pregnant by not having sex or using birth control.

I'd endorse what anfried said. Note, too, that the typical counter to the ideas she's expressing is that the fetus should be protected despite the impact on the woman because the woman is basically at fault for the situation, i.e., she had sex without ensuring that adequate precautions were taken. That fault concept is why people get suspicious that part of what's going on with abortion restrictions is a desire to restore/enforce traditional sexual morality and that the moral principles in play include not only "life begins at conception" but also "sluts should bear the consequences of their bad acts."

For most of us in the mushy middle, the issue isn't whether the abortion option should be available, but rather for how long should it be available. At what point in pregnancy does the state's interest in protecting the life of the fetus trump the woman's interest in having the option to end her pregnancy for non-medical reasons?

If Roe is overturned, absolutists on both sides will have to deal with this question in states where there is not a majority for one of the absolutist positions.

Benighted, I think you meant.

And I'm confused as to how you got into a pissing match with Peter on this at all. He asserted that you were ignoring the extent to which access to reliable birth control is driven by economic status. You don't seem to have responded directly to that proposition. Without insurance, generic birth control in the form of pills costs about $45 a month. How much of your life have you spent being uninsured?

restore/enforce traditional sexual morality and that the moral principles in play include not only "life begins at conception" but also "sluts should bear the consequences of their bad acts."

Actually, I think traditional morality is more along the lines of delaying/avoiding actions that you cannot bear the responsibility for, and take responsibility for your actions. You may be a slut or a gigolo, but you are still responsible for your actions.

and I think that abortion should remain legal, at least in the first trimester, with limited restrictions

Isn't that exactly what Roe says? My memory may be faulty, but isn't the entire ruling based on trimesters (allowed in the first; some restrictions in the second; not allowed in the third)?

If you want abortion to remain legal, why do you want Roe overturned? Won't some states ban it completely?

Abortion should be legal, safe and rare. Fifty million abortions in the first 30 years after Roe is staggering proof that it's being used as a substitute for birth control. We don't know when a fetus becomes a person. Shouldn't we err on the side of caution until we do?

Part of a larger problem in society is a strong trend not to make people responsible for their own bad choices. As Bill Woods said, above, "...the time to exercise that control is before you get pregnant." If you have unprotected sex, what do you expect to result? I won't call you a slut, just selfish, immature and maybe not fit to parent a child. That doesn't mean you should abort it. There are millions of prospective parents out there who are ready, willing and able to adopt.

If your birth control fails, that's another question. A friend of mine had a child as result of anti-biotics overriding the type of pill she was on. She agonized over whether or not to abort. Kid turned out wonderful and you never saw a prouder mother.

I don't know the answers, but the total number of abortions taking place is a horror show that must be slowed by magnitudes.

Theoretically that's so; effectively, Roe has been so construed as to forbid late-term abortion bans (although late-term abortions are not a particularly popular procedure).

PG, if you read the post below this one, you'd see that your figs are wrong. At my New York City drugstore, Trinessa is about $25 a month without insurance. Moreover, if you had read the original response, you would have found me pointing out that Planned Parenthood will provide brand name pills for even less. On a per-act basis, condoms are cheaper still, and while they wouldn't eliminate unwanted pregnancy, as I point out, they would seriously dent it, given that over 50% of unwanted pregnancies seem to result from using no birth control at all. I find your oversight especially odd given that you commented on the post in question.

How many times have I said this. Surgical abortions will be history soon. Legal or illegal, abortion by pill will be the norm and no one will talk about it anymore.

I'm really not seeing that there is a center position in this debate.

For those who see the fetus as a person, there is no center position which can allow that person to be killed.

For those who see the rights of the mother as absolute, there is no center position that can allow those rights to be violated.

There are compromise positions. But no center. And the compromise positions are about maintaining order, not reaching a decision.

Actually, I think traditional morality is more along the lines of delaying/avoiding actions that you cannot bear the responsibility for, and take responsibility for your actions. You may be a slut or a gigolo, but you are still responsible for your actions.

Right, but when abortion is available, having a child ISN'T a necessary consequence of having sex and getting pregnant. That's my point. When you talk about bearing the consequences of your acts, aren't you really saying that the risk of having to raise a child when you're not ready is a useful threat with which to enforce traditional sexual morality, and that abortion is objectionable because it breaks that link?

We don't know when a fetus becomes a person. Shouldn't we err on the side of caution until we do?

How are we going to "know" when a fetus becomes a person? That's a philosophical/moral issue, not an empirical issue.

Jane - you say you believe in stigmatizing people who have abortions as a way of deterring them/forming a middle ground opinion. Are you forming a middle ground between fetus is a person/fetus not a person? Is a fetus now sort of like a puppy? You might look down on someone for killing a puppy, but you don't think they should go to jail?
I will note that our society doesn't seem to consider infanticide to always be as bad as murder. This is only by recollection, but I don't think that that spate of teenagers in the mid-90s who were giving birth at proms or whatever and throwing their babies in trashcans got the electric chair or life w/o parole.
At what point does a baby become sentient? At first they can't understand their senses or their motor functions. Are they forming memory? Are they conscious?

"You talk about conflicting rights, but does a fetus really have a right to life? If so, why? Things like viability and brain waves and beating hearts can't be the answer, because dumb animals have all these things, too."

Well, there's no constitutional right to kill dumb animals. And I think most people believe there should be a balancing of interests. Killing a dog by torture just for fun: most people think that should be criminalized, I would guess. Putting a bolt quickly through a steer's skull so we can eat hamburgers: most people can live with that.

How many PETA members do you suppose are pro-life?

If you walk in to a hospital and pull someone off of life support, you'll be charged with murder.

On the question of "responsibility": it's not really about sexual morality. You don't have to offer someone help if they're in danger, but if you caused them to be in danger (whether by negligence or intent), you are responsible for the outcome.

You don't have to jump into a pool to save someone who's drowning, but you DO have to if you're the one who pushed him in, or face punishment for his death. That's so even if your push was an accident.

It's not about sex.

Well said, Jane. We need to get you a bigger platform, like a TV show.

Common sense is in short supply these days.

Plus, I hear you are a babe.

BTW, if it's your own child drowning in a pool, the law will expect you to jump in to save him, or go to jail, regardless of how he came to be there.

"There’s a very obvious difference between a baby and a fetus which fetal rights advocates including you, Jane, seem to overlook, deliberately or not: a fetus is using the woman’s body for its survival, whereas a born baby does not. ... A fetus, in strictly biological terms, is a parasite which uses each and every organ and system in the host’s body and can’t do without. So those who are willing to endorse fetal rights and a fetus’s right to be born pretty much assume that a fetus has a right to use another person’s internals with or without this person’s consent just because it’s the only way for it to survive." -- anfried

The distinction which you identify does not carry the moral weight you intend to give it. Suppose a world renown violinist were to fall from the sky into my home -- crashing right through my roof. Miracle of miracles, she survived the crash, but the doctors tell me she cannot be moved for weeks, if not (9) months, without dying. Morally, would it be alright for me to kick her out of my home? She had no RIGHT to enter my home and has no RIGHT to a claim on my resources or to demand I care for her until she can safely leave my abode. She cannot claim that I chose to allow her to live in my house when I built it. I am an innocent victim. Shouldn't my right to choose trump her right to life? Don't I have a right to privacy within my own home that should prevent an outsider from co-opting a portion of my home and resources?

You may be able to make some colorable argument that the law should not PROHIBIT my evicting her from my home and that it should not REQUIRE that I care for her at my own expense. However, I don't think you can make a cogent argument that my declining to care for her would be right and proper in any moral sense. (Don't assume in constructing your argument that caring for the invalid violinist would cost anything more than a significant inconvenience on my part. I might be able to take that cruise I'd been planning, but it won't risk my life nor cause any real hardship. It might entail a financial sacrifice, but nothing I could not recover from over time with effort.) My decision to evict would be motivated by selfishness, callousness, or envy. Many might laud my act of selfless service if I choose to care for my uninvited guest. Few would have anything but scorn for my refusal to help should I evict her from my domain.

I take the example of the falling violinist from an essay I studied in one of my philosophy classes (unfortunately, I cannot remember the author's name). After examining her hypothetical six ways from Sunday, she concluded that she could not imagine how evicting the violinist was the moral, proper, thing to do. Despite her desire when she started to write her essay to argue that abortion was at worst morally neutral, she had come to the conclusion that abortion on demand (not to save the life of the women or to preserve her health) was immoral.

That does not mean that abortion should be illegal. Something legal is not always moral.

Jane if one needs an argument as to why first and second trimester fetuses do not have the same rights as third trimester fetuses and actual babies why not simply adopt a notion of "brain life" that is symmetrical with brain death. After all, all that makes us human is bound up in our cortical functions, prior to 6 months (roughly) a fetus has no cortical functions whatsoever. Moreover, with modern technology it is possible to determine when cortical functions start in the fetuses. Think of it as the enlightenment notion of "ensoulment".


For me until there are cortical functions I am unwilling to assign a fetus any significant rights whatsoever, after that the fetus has very significant rights.


Seems a very simple and non-religious solution to a problem that is otherwise only soluble by religious indoctrination.

David Walser,

The only abortion argument involving a famous violinist that I am aware of is the one proposed by Judith Jarvis Thompson in "A defense of Abortion". It's possible what you read was a response by someone else to her piece but if not, you presented a rather different version of her argument. She does believe that abortion should not be illegal, but should be considered morally reprehensible.

To DrewB: no, a fetus isn't likely to survive outside of mother’s body until much later. And the statistics shows that the number of abortions performed that late in pregnancy is rather small and the most common reasons for them is severe fetal abnormalities or mother’s health. What exactly is achieved by regulating abortion in these cases except making a tragic situation even worse?

As for pregnancy being a voluntary matter and taking responsibility for one’s actions: look, I think getting pregnant as a result of unprotected sex (if you don’t want to be, that is) belongs to the same category of stupid as, say, getting infected with HIV as a result of unprotected sex, or getting lung cancer as a result of smoking, or getting diabetes after becoming obese due to your fast food diet. It’s very regrettable when folks understand the cause and effect and do it anyway. However not too many people argue for withholding treatment for these results of one’s admittedly irresponsible actions. Is criminalizing chemo a good way to make people more responsible for their own bad choice to take up smoking?

And again, it doesn’t matter if a fetus is a person or not; even if it is considered a person it doesn’t have an automatic right to use another person’s blood, lungs and kidneys against the donor’s will any more than any of us persons do.

O'Scully - Yes, that's the essay we studied more than two decades ago. It was part of an anthology of arguments, pro and con, on the topic of abortion. When I said I'd borrowed the example of a violinist, I was not intending to imply I had faithfully represented the original. I merely wanted to acknowledge a source and allow others to find the original if they were interested.

"And again, it doesn’t matter if a fetus is a person or not; even if it is considered a person it doesn’t have an automatic right to use another person’s blood, lungs and kidneys against the donor’s will any more than any of us persons do."

There's a lot that's wrong with this, but for one thing, once you've donated a kidney, I don't think the laws of any state permit you to take it back from the donee if you change your mind.

I guess I do have to commend you for saying it doesn't matter whether the fetus is a person. There's honesty in that part of your argument.

I love the fact that 'tommy in nyc' went straight for the coat-hangers, right after Megan painstakingly laid out her disclaimers.

Too good to be true.

LOL.

So those who are willing to endorse fetal rights and a fetus’s right to be born pretty much assume that a fetus has a right to use another person’s internals with or without this person’s consent just because it’s the only way for it to survive.

And again, it doesn’t matter if a fetus is a person or not; even if it is considered a person it doesn’t have an automatic right to use another person’s blood, lungs and kidneys against the donor’s will any more than any of us persons do.

This absurdly lopsided reasoning would be incredible improv comedy, were it not for the tragedy that you seem to take yourself seriously on these points. Does a woman sleeping alone suddenly wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a stork's wings making a hasty departure, upon which she misses her next period and acquires morning sickness?

Because if so, I need to look up my various school biology and health teachers, and demand to know who made up that load of crap they fed me from 5th grade onward. As well as how they convinced my own folks to reinforce the same story at home.

Otherwise, methinks you are blithely blowing right over a whole lot of mitigatin' context.

I think that your position is entirely reasonable (= I agree with it) but to become "beknighted" you'll have to change nationality. "Arise, Dame Megan": sounds good to me.

As PG said, I think there's a lot of arguing past each other going on. I've tried to clarify my arguments (at perhaps tedious length) here:

http://www.crescatsententia.org/archives/2006_01_25.html#006317

We aren't disagreeing about education; I think we're disagreeing, to the extent we are, about whether there's much hope in lowering the subjective costs (monetary and otherwise) of contraception (without coercive means). I'm sorry that my sarcasm made this unclear, to the extent that it did.

Anfried,

I'd appreciate a real response to my drowning-in-the pool hypothetical instead of repeating the same mantra.

A person drowning doesn't have any right to my efforts to pull him out.

But if I shove him in even by accident, he certainly does; I could be up on criminal charges if I make no attempt to rescue him (someone blameless in the accidental shove--say, someone who was shoved by a third person and couldn't help bumping into the drowner--has no legal duty with regard to the person in the pool).

And, as I said in the second post, my own child has a legal right to my attempts at rescue regardless of how he wound up in the pool.

So it seems that someone who 1) becomes pregnant because she didn't use any birth control, or 2) becomes pregnant by accident while trying to use birth control has some duty to let the resulting child (if it is a child) use the "life support." And even rape victims, who in the pool situation have no duty because they had nothing to do with it, owe something to their own offspring by virtue of sharing their DNA, or at least so the law would say for "extra-uterine children."

Well, there's no constitutional right to kill dumb animals.

There's no constitutional right to play baseball, either, but the lack of any specific constitutional protection is not a valid reason to ban something. The vast majority of people agree that it's okay to kill an animal when it serves some human good other than morbid pleasure.

And even rape victims, who in the pool situation have no duty because they had nothing to do with it, owe something to their own offspring by virtue of sharing their DNA, or at least so the law would say for "extra-uterine children."

There's nothing in law or in common sense that suggests that anyone should be obligated to do anything for anyone else by virtue of sharing DNA. Any woman who gives birth to a child, conceived through rape or otherwise, is free to give it up for adoption. Any obligations she incurs with respect to that child are purely a product of voluntarily taking on that responsibility by not giving it up for adoption.

In the United States, at least, the only situation in which anyone is ever forced to care for a child is when only one parent wants to keep it and the other is forced to pay child support.

There's nothing in law or in common sense that suggests that anyone should be obligated to do anything for anyone else by virtue of sharing DNA.

That may be true for common sense, but it is certianly not true of the law. Parents have a duty to care for their children, protect them from harm, and come to their aid when they are in danger. In many states, statutes provide that children are responsible in a very similar fashion for their elderly or invalid parents.

For most people, parenthood is defined by the sharing of DNA, and indeed that is the legal default rule. In the absence of a lot of cumbersome adoption paperwork (or, say, a court finding of unfitness), DNA controls both duties and rights.

This is not an issue in any developed Western country.

The only reason for a strong prohibitionist force against abortion rights in America is theism, predominantly of the fundamentalist/literalist type.

You may not identify yourself as one of them, but it is pretty obvious your thinking is, directly or indirectly, influenced by contemporary theocon apologetics.

So if a woman is raped, she is allowed to have an abortion, because it wasn't her "fault" ?

Are we going to set up Abortion Tribunals to determine how "responsible" a woman was in her sexual conduct ?

Did she have too much to drink. Did she not insist forcefully enough about the condom. Did she not check if the pill was out of effective date.

"This is not an issue in any developed Western country.

The only reason for a strong prohibitionist force against abortion rights in America is theism, predominantly of the fundamentalist/literalist type.

You may not identify yourself as one of them, but it is pretty obvious your thinking is, directly or indirectly, influenced by contemporary theocon apologetics." - David

Really? Seems that I recall that abortions are far more difficult to legally obtain in MOST of Europe, or don't those countries count as developed Western countries? Are these countries also under the control of the theocons?

A wonderful and intelligent piece, Jane. It points to an acceptable compromise, which does not require one to relinquish a belief, but merly acknowledge that one set of ideas will not prevail.

The fact that the majority of abortions now occur solely as a form of birth control argues strongly for restricting its availability. Pro-choicers want abortion "fast, widely available, and free". Pro-lifers want zero abortions.

A compromise seems wise for two sides that cannot find a middle ground, and you've staked out such a space. The proof it is likely an acceptable one is that both sides find something objetionable about it.

A free abortion is remarkably easy to get in Europe.
It is not a political issue.

Even in Ireland it came out recently that the government paid for a woman to travel to the UK to get an abortion.

When you talk about bearing the consequences of your acts, aren't you really saying that the risk of having to raise a child when you're not ready is a useful threat with which to enforce traditional sexual morality, and that abortion is objectionable because it breaks that link?

No. Abortion is objectionable because it is killing an innocent. However, a traditional moralist would agree with you if you substituted "birth control" in place of "abortion".

What? No more coat-hangers?

C'mon...

This is not an issue in any developed Western country.

The reason abortion is less controversial in most other Western nations is that in most other Western nations the issue is allowed to be decided democratically. Here it isn't; it was decided by court fiat.

In any case, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Finland all have more-restrictive abortion laws than the United States does; all of those nations have laws which would be struck down as unconstitutional if they were passed in the USA. If those nations' courts did such a thing -- forbidding the majority from passing laws it wanted -- then abortion would be a controversial subject in those nations too.

Those countries never had controversial court decisions about desegragation and interracial
marriage either.

It is the shameful history of our state governments in denying rights to various minorities - that prompted court intervention in a wide variety of subjects.

In any case, the goal of "pro-life" forces is absolute(religious zeal will do that you), and it is the complete removal of autonomy from a pregnant woman.

Any talk about 'restrictions' a red herring.

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