On Abortion, Which Extreme Creeps You Out More?

Tell me and then I'll tell you.

Here's the left -- a post from more than three years ago that's still "alive"  Read around in the comments, especially, where applause, gratitude, and approbation are the prevailing responses to this reasoning in the main post:

There are some cells in my uterus at the moment that aren’t usually there. I call these cells “my baby”, and spend much of my time planning the future that they may have, once they’ve finished developing into a human being. Other women, with similar cells, plan how to remove the cells as quickly and painlessly as possible. [...]

My baby is not yet a human being. Even with special care, it is very unlikely to be capable of surviving on its own if it were removed from my body. It needs my bloodstream and my uterus to have even a chance of becoming a human being. Although it’s genetically distinct from me, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to view it as a part of my body. A part that could, given the right conditions, become a separate person, but until that happens a part of me. [...]

We all see our bodies differently, and we all give different values to different parts. Some people welcome body hair because of the cultural value it has; others remove it for much the same reasons. A transsexual man could be delighted at the removal of his breasts; a woman with breast cancer is more likely to feel mutilated. The same body parts, but very different reactions.

The cells inside the uterus are just another example. I give mine a very high value and watch their development with delight; other women give theirs a low value and can’t wait to be rid of them. The belief that we both have the right to assign value to our own bodies for ourselves is the essence of being pro-choice. If a woman places a high value on her fetus, removing it against her will is just as unacceptable as forcing a woman to retain, against her will, a fetus she gives a low value to.

Here's part of what I thought was the best pro-choice argument from the comments:

There are billions of chance events which could have made me no longer exist, as Nick says. That’s life - each and every one of us is vastly against the odds. It’s an interesting philosophical point (and one that’s essential to the end of Watchmen), but it’s not a logical reason for me to think any differently about abortion - or birth control, or train schedules, or masturbation, or my older sister’s sleep schedule when she was an infant, or any of the other billions of things that might have led to me not being born. Whether or not I in particular was born is a matter of very minor consequence to society [here's an ad vividly contesting that very point - a.] - much less consequence than the question of if the government will be used to force pregnant women into childbirth against their will. If I had been aborted, I wouldn’t have known or cared or minded, so who cares? [...]

Very often, abortion not only ends a life, it creates an opportunity for a different life. [...] [Graphically true:  my mother would not be here, nor would I, if her mother had not had two then-illegal abortions in between her two daughters - a.]

Here's the right -- and here again.  From the first link (where, it may give you a frisson of schadenfreude to see, the next genocide is predicted to be -- the doddering, costly Baby Boomers!):

In the end, atheists fall back on the woman's womb as sacrosanct property of the mother, not to be interfered with by the state.  It's a hard argument to refute.  Abolitionists faced the same resistance from slave owners, who regarded their plantations as private property, absolutely sacrosanct in the eyes of American jurisprudence.  This argument, too, proved difficult to refute and required a Civil War to finally decide. [...]

I insist that [abortion] be named precisely what it is -- murder of a helpless person for convenience. [...]

Is abortion the new, unacknowledged genocide?

[Among the] 8 stages of genocide are:

1.   CLASSIFICATION:  All cultures have categories to distinguish people into "us and them"  In abortion, the "us" are all citizens we can see, those of us already born; the "them" are those still residing within a woman's womb, technically the "unborn."  Specifically, abortion requires a further separation of those intended for extermination, the "wanted unborn" as opposed to the "unwanted unborn."

2.   SYMBOLIZATION:  We give names or other symbols to the classifications.  We call the unwanted, unborn child, the fetus, the blastocyst, the glob of tissue, or anything whatsoever except the unwanted, unborn child.  Nearly all of us, quite naturally, call the wanted child the baby.  Maternity clothing shops abound with t-shirts bearing the phrase, Baby on Board, and not Blastocyst Herein.

3.   DEHUMANIZATION:  One group denies the humanity of the other group.  Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases.  Planned Parenthood of Minnesota/South Dakota, for instance, has run newspaper advertisements which read in part "BABIES ARE LOUD, SMELLY, AND EXPENSIVE. UNLESS YOU WANT ONE. 1-800-230-PLAN."  The slogan for Planned Parenthood, the Nation's #1 provider of abortions to the tune of more than $100 million each year, is "Every child a wanted child," thus dehumanizing the group of children deemed "unwanted."  Unwanted children are dehumanized for the express purpose of extermination.

And from the second link:

Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us. [...]

Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman’s dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time, this convention renews our resolve that we shall not weary, we shall not rest, until the culture of life is reflected in the rule of law and lived in the law of love.

H/T for the latter two:  New Wineskins.

UPDATE:  Vanderleun at American Digest has a must-read, not oversimplified and not an abstraction, but based in his own experience: 

My own experience has been that when you are confronted with the abortion issue after having nurtured a child, abortion is no longer an abstraction. [...] 

It seems to me that (absent the usual banal disclaimers involving crime, rape, incest, danger to the mother, etc.) the abortion issue splits between those who base their position on the abstract notion of choice, and those with more concrete experience -- parents. This is not to say that those with children who remain pro-choice are caught in an abstraction, quite the opposite. I place them in the latter camp. It is to say that, no matter where they stand on the issue, the opinion of people with children has more standing, to me at least, than those without children. Parents have, to use an expression not without irony, "Real skin in the game."

That's you, Danny!

One of the commenters on Vanderleun's post says, "I actually dread the day when either side is able to enforce its will with an iron boot."

Another says:  "My own view is that abortions -- all abortions -- are immoral. But I am pro-choice because I don't believe that morality can be legislated. My mission as someone who believes that abortion is immoral is to persuade the pregnant mother to be to keep her baby, not compel her to do so by criminalizing abortion."

I'm among my people here.

Comments

[Danny]

Oy, God love you for continually wading into these difficult waters. Since you ask, the second post "creeps me out" way more than the first. The comparisons to genocide are intellectually interesting but first you have to accept the author's stark definition of abortion as "the murder of a helpless person for convenience" which I do not. To be literal about it, the most you could say is a "potential person," a fetus is simply not a person.

In my younger years, I was pretty blindly pro-choice without thinking twice about it. Today, I would call myself pro-choice and anti-abortion. I wish no abortions were necessary and I do judge people who get pregnant out of sheer carelessness and have multiple abortions for that reason. But I do not believe that is the majority--the women I know who've had abortions have certainly not taken them lightly and I sure as hell am not going to condemn them for it...or wish to see them arrested or forced into pregnancies. I don't see thousands of unwanted babies being born into this already crowded world (already full of lots of unwanted children born to unprepared mothers) as a good thing. The answer to everyone (except the Pope) is SO simple. BIRTH CONTROL, BIRTH CONTROL, BIRTH CONTROL.

As a man who cannot get pregnant, I sometimes think I don't have a right to weigh in on this issue. What was that line, I think it was from Lily Tomlin: "if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." She might be right. The image of a bunch of men having decision-making rights over women's own bodies is never going to be an easy sell.

[amba]

OK, I'll bite (probably predictably):

While I disagree with the latter (the "uterus as plantation" analogy is absurd -- if you're going to get into "slave" analogies, which you'd better not, a much stronger case can be made that the mother is enslaved by the fetus), I find the former FAR creepier. Where do I start?

- It is so utterly unscientific, and this from people who otherwise tend to be pro-science. The embryo is an organism from the get-go. It is organized and (once implanted) self-organizing, anything but just a bunch of cells. This is just flat-out denial, real Ministry of Truth stuff. Like the guy at the first right-wing link, I much prefer Camille Paglia's frank, "Yes, it is alive, it's human, and abortion kills it, and I'm OK with that."

- The dependency argument fails. Jacques is completely dependent on me, or someone, to take care of him. He could not survive more than days without care. That certainly doesn't make him a part of my body, nor does it give me the legal right to dispose of him because his care is a hardship for me -- even if he were to become as unconscious as an embryo. I am NOT saying the status of a dependent elderly person is the same as that of an embryo, but I AM saying that is both a terrible argument for legal abortion and a true slippery slope -- far more so than "gay marriage will lead to polygamy." Because if you follow the logic of the dependency argument, I would have the right to do with Jacques whatever I pleased, including do away with him.

- The dependency argument is hypocritical on another score. These same people would almost certainly argue that the fact that we now have power over "nature" does not give us the right to destroy trees or wolves or whales for our own purposes.

- I would agree with pro-choicers that the early embryo is not yet a "person," but there is no denying that it is a unique individual. Given the difference that unique individuals make in each of our lives, it's always a tragic waste to destroy one of these unique creations.

It chills me to think of having to choose between an abortion-on-demand regime and one in which abortion was criminalized. In the latter, at least I'd have a good shot at avoiding getting pregnant (as I in fact succeeded in doing while sexually active for 7 years pre-Roe v. Wade and 9 years after; no doubt part of it was luck). But the icy coldness of the former, as represented by some of those commenters, freezes my bones.

I want first-trimester abortion to remain legal but increasingly scarce mainly because poor and powerless women, who have the least access to birth control, the most trouble even avoiding sex with male predators, and who are the least able to support the resultant children, are the ones who would suffer most. As I've written, I don't think "nipping a human life in the bud" before it unfolds very far is murder; I think it's a moral gray area, a tragedy rather than a choice or a crime. I'm all for abstinence education as well as birth-control education, and I'm all for support for those who choose to keep their babies or give them up for adoption.

[Danny]

You're right--that IS me. While still strongly pro-choice, my views on abortion itself changed a lot when I became a parent. And especially, as I already explained in these comments once, when my then-wife was treated for meningitis before we even knew she was pregnant. Because of the medications she had taken, her neurologist INSISTED that she get an abortion even though our obstetrician said it wasn't necessary. "You can have other children," the neurologist kept saying, angry at our hesitation. "But not THIS child," we replied back in tears. I just dropped that child, now 14, off at her acting class and tears are rolling down my face right now, as they do every time I think of that story and imagine what would have happened if we had listened to that doctor's urgent pleas to end that pregnancy.

[Rod]

I’ll throw in my lot with those who choose life. If you worked for someone for a week and were not paid, you would be outraged. Your employer would have stolen 40 hours of your time. What can we say of a choice which deprives someone of every moment of an entire life? No laughing pillow fights, no Disney movies, no birthday parties, no Little League games, no first kiss, no prom, no love, no family.

I understand why people choose abortion. It may be too hard to tell Mom you are pregnant. A child may get in the way of your social life or hamper your climb up the corporate ladder. The timing is all wrong because we’re not in love. He’s married to somebody else. Sometimes the price of saving a life is high. But all of these answers sound to me like varying degrees of inconvenience when measured against depriving someone of an entire life.

So the pro-choice perspective has to be to dehumanize the budding person who is to be. Instead of the future schoolgirl, mother, and caring daughter who would be named Simone, we have “a fetus” - a lump of cells which you can choose to love or not care about.

[Donna B.]

My position on abortion hasn't changed much since 1973, which is when I first gave it any serious thought.

I don't think I could have ever had an abortion, but I was never faced with any questions about the baby's health or mine. I was married, financially and socially ready to have a baby. I'm one of the lucky ones.

Danny, I can't imagine how you must feel every time you think of your daughter.

Another thing I can't do is make my moral judgment on this issue apply to everyone else. No two situations are quite alike. In fact, I think it's immoral to be that judgmental.

But do it early if you're going to do it. After 26 weeks or so, I think it's undoubtably a human baby. It can survive outside the mother, though it requires a lot of care. If a woman has gone that far with the pregnancy, I think she owes it to the child not to kill it. And I realize that's a sort of harsh judgment in some ways... this is where health of the mother is likely to come into play.

There are no easy answers, there never are to the big important questions.

I'd like to see much more education of different types of birth control, including ru486. I'd like to see pharmacists NOT have the right to refuse to dispense because of the personal beliefs. They need a new profession if that's the case.

I'd like to see adoption procedures streamlined. Frankly, a child does not need a perfect home or a perfect family and would probably be miserable in one if it could be found.

And, I'd like to see the medical profession stop trying to scare the crap out of pregnant women. I'm sure Danny can relate to this, but I'm talking about on a much less obvious level:

One drink will harm an infant, one cigarette will stunt their growth, no ibuprofen, no deli meat, no tuna, no caffeine (including chocolate), must gain a "perfect" amount of weight, must breastfeed the baby (which includes all the above "healthy" rules) and must never ever allow your child to be around anyone who does any of those things!

It's an external exhortation to submit your body and your life to only what's good for the baby for 9 months of pregnancy and the 1st year of breastfeeding.

A true wonder it is that any of my children survived! I drank, smoked, and worked around probably toxic chemicals throughout three pregnancies, even while in the hospital.

I'm not suggesting we go back to the "old" way, but the "new" way is too harsh and perhaps a consideration for some in deciding whether to get an abortion.

Cranky seems to be my mood today, so take the above with a grain of good humor and indulgence.

[amba]

Rod, the pro-choicers (my own mother included) then say, "But that someone will never know or care what they missed." They (my mother included) even say, like the one I quoted, "If I had been aborted, I'd never have known or cared, so who cares?" I then said to my mother, "That's cheap and easy to say, here you are." The commenter said I was wrong to suggest that living people who say it wouldn't have mattered if they'd never existed are being insincere. But it's a sort of M.C. Escher conundrum, isn't it?

[amba]

Donna: if my mother had followed all those rules (which were unknown in the 1950s), let's see: I might have been born larger than a perfectly healthy 6 pounds 12 ounces. But I would have missed the blissful feeling of reunion when I first tasted coffee around age 12 -- that jolt of caffeine took me right back to the womb! (Fortunately, nicotine did not. Who knows why.)

[Peter Hoh]

I admire Paglia's forthrightness on the issue.

I prefer the muddled middle. The extremes on both sides depend on abstractions, and both insist on creating caricatures of people who do not agree with them.

Re. the Lily Tomlin line: perhaps that's where Rush Limbaugh got the idea for his line that liberals view abortion as a sacrament.

Some years ago, a friend -- very much pro-choice -- had a late-term miscarriage. When talking about it later, she acknowledged that her grief challenged her earlier idea that a fetus didn't quite count as a baby. But she added that this did not change her mind about the legality of abortion.

[Rod]

Amba, you point out:

the pro-choicers (my own mother included) then say, "But that someone will never know or care what they missed." They (my mother included) even say, like the one I quoted, "If I had been aborted, I'd never have known or cared, so who cares?"

If you murder a one year old in his sleep, he may never know or have the capacity to care, because you have extinguished him before he can formulate such thoughts. You have still robbed him of a lifetime.

If you kill somebody, the moral component remains the same whether or not he saw it coming.

If a woman passes out drunk, is it morally acceptable to take liberties with her so long as she never knows it happened?

[amba]

What's frightening is that we have the power to decide what is valuable -- and we're not up to it.

And this whole business of making unwanted embryos unimportant (I deliberately don't use the word "fetus" because I'm talking about early abortion) is kind of a reverse bootstrap operation, isn't it? We're cutting our own bootstraps, cutting the ground out from under ourselves. Thinking we're making ourselves important and sovereign, while actually undermining our own value, because the self with all its ties cut is empty and meaningless. It seems as if that's what we're trying to do -- cut all the moorings and make the self absolute.

I can't even put my finger on this, but it seems extremely treacherous.

[Ron]

I can't remember where the specific location of this Uncle Fred quote is, but here goes my paraphrase:

Let us not forget that the value of life cannot be estimated. Not by the living, because they are an interested party; and not by the dead for -- other reasons.

[Peter Hoh]

Annie, the line break in your 11:57 comment, as it appears on my screen, made me think you were writing about "And this whole business of making unwanted embryos."

Which is a business. Seems to me that equating embryo with viable infant puts a burden on those seeking help from certain reproductive technologies.

[Donna B.]

Peter -- those embryos are extra ones, not unwanted ones. Not that it makes a difference in the long run, I suppose.

[amba]

The fact that the development of human embryos can be suspended at the blastocyst stage, when they are ready to implant, and then restarted without harm, led me to think of them (in a sort of thought experiment) as "people seeds". The biological analogy is pretty close.

The mind-bender is that we don't think of human individuals being created en masse, like a clutch of fish roe. In order to get to that point the ovaries have to be artificially forced to "spawn," a violation that some think may raise risk for ovarian cancer.

Then, instead of one unique genetic throw of the dice at a time, you get a bunch of individuals created in potentia, most of whom will never get beyond that and will be discarded. It's the mass production of individuality. Why do Cabbage Patch dolls come to mind?

It doesn't surprise me that the Vatican is against it. But in an age of high technology, why should anyone accept infertility as their sad fate? Or unwanted pregnancy as their sad fate? "I want" is the absolute. Meanwhile, the technological fulfillment of so many other needs and desires is leading to hormonal alterations (via estrogen-mimicking chemicals in the water) that are increasing infertility, and maybe autism too.

Can o' worms.

[karen]

"The comparisons to genocide are intellectually interesting but first you have to accept the author's stark definition of abortion as "the murder of a helpless person for convenience" which I do not. To be literal about it, the most you could say is a "potential person," a fetus is simply not a person."

""But not THIS child," we replied back in tears. I just dropped that child, now 14, off at her acting class and tears are rolling down my face right now, as they do every time I think of that story and imagine what would have happened if we had listened to that doctor's urgent pleas to end that pregnancy."

Am i the only one that cannot connect these two statements as coming from the same man? They seem to say opposite things, Danny. One is from what the mind believes it knows- and one from which the heart of experience knows as true. It cannot be both.

Today, at Mass, postcards were offered for our signitures to be sent to our representatives in Washington, urging them to please vote against FOCA. That's Freedom of Choice Act- which would force, by law- those of us that disagree w/abortion in all it's available forms to aid in its advance. Doctors, hosipitals, pharmacies, nurses... regardless of our conscience or belief otherwise.

For those of us who believe that a child is a gift, including the time in the womb- we accept as a truism that all would not be possible w/out God. This makes a child an act of creation inclusive w/God and to diminish humanity as not found in the womb, i find that willfully harsh. I guess those who beleive that God is not a part of, or even a Being- take the power unto themselves, so destroying the unborn can't really be such a leap- as they take credit for the creation of it. Power of self... unless FOCA gets its way.

We have frozen embryos in our semen tank in the barn. Expensive enough as to be included as inventory and asset to our bottom line:0). In this day and age- when such animal embryos are more valuable than human ~extras~- it makes me wonder where our loyalties lie.

If (your)Mom had been destroyed in the womb, amba- there would be no amba, no David w/his mystic mr. gobley words or any of the family. It isn't one person that's destroyed through abortion- it is whole families and their contributions to the world that are taken. "You can't miss what you've never had"- all of these sayings come from the wrong side of life's experiences. Sometimes it's way better to let go and let God.

I think all of our days hold potential for our growth. We are a potentionally smarter or better or healthier person every minite of our existence. My lifeline begins w/in the womb. Where does everyone else begin?

[amba]

Karen, in our family's case, if two of my mother's older siblings had not been destroyed in the womb, my mother would never have been conceived, and our family would not exist. That's the much more uncomfortable fact: some of us owe our existence to the sacrifice of others, among many other factors. If it was our "destiny" to be here, what about those others??

Much better not to conceive in the first place, whatever that takes, than to conceive and abort.

[karen]

Yes- i agree. I'm not for ~out-lawing~ contraceptives, even if i disagree w/some and, as a Catholic- don't use any me own self.

[Kate Marie]

I'm a pro-life mother of two, and thus I have the "concrete" understanding of the issues that has been suggested above. But I wanted to wade into the "abstractions" for just a moment. I would suggest that those who accept without question that a fetus (especially in its early stages) is not a person are making an abstraction of the concept of personhood that doesn't necessarily hold up.

A fetus is a human being (or a human organism, if you prefer) in one of its earliest stages of development. The suggestion that a fetus is *not* a person is premised on the body/person dualism that someone like Robert George has written about. That is, for body/person dualists, a human's "personhood" is not integral with/inseparable from its human body, but instead inheres in some other quality/qualities -- sentience,consciousness, capacity to desire survival, what-have-you. One might describe these qualities as abstractions. In any event, I find this kind of dualism untenable and sometimes disturbing.

What *is* the difference between a fetus (a not-yet-a-person) and a human being, say, in the last stages of Alzheimer's, or in a persistent vegetative state? Aren't those latter human beings no *longer* persons, under a definition of personhood that separates one's "personhood" from one's body? Is an adult chimpanzee a person? If not, why not? Doesn't the chimpanzee have the qualities that are defined by the dualists as constituting personhood? If one is comfortable assigning non-person status to a human in its earliest stage of development, should one be comfortable assigning non-person status to a human being in the last stages of Alzheimer's? Why not?

[karen]

And maybe to go on from another abstraction/dimension: the value of a person due to their contribution to society. Mostly due to his/her contribution to the making of this world to go around, they cease to matter so much in the overall realm of what constitutes life as that ability weakens... according to some.

These same persons define life to that very ability. Also, to a supposed and only imagined quality aspect. So much so that the world can count down the amount of days it takes to starve and thirst to death a woman because it was deemed cruel to allow her to ~live~ in a state of assumed vegetation.

Our humanity is inherent- our value is connected to our humanity. Not to any contibution or drain on our society. If not treated equally from the very beginning- then why at all?

[michael Reynolds]

Amba:

I only really disagree with you in the portion where you disagree with your mother. She's right: the baby not born doesn't know what it missed. Neither do you.

For all you or I or anyone know any given baby could be the next Jeffrey Dahmer. Or a teen suicide. Or a child with a painful disease. Or the next George Washington. It's a little silly to talk about it as though we've all missed out on something wonderful. Maybe we did, but maybe we dodged a bullet, there's absolutely no way to know.

It's not an Escher print. Time only goes in the one direction. Baby born followed by effect of baby on its world. The effect of baby does not predate its existence. So the effect of baby is nothing . . . until the baby has some effect. You could as well argue that every sperm might have combined with an egg and that the effect of this possible union
has been lost.

[Danny Miller]

Well, Karen, my two statements that you feel are the opposite of each other don't seem that strange to me but I've said that my feelings on this issue are far from the propaganda about the die-hard pro-choicer who views getting an abortion with the same emotion as getting a manicure. Bottom line in my case: I found it traumatic and repugnant to be pressured into choosing an abortion for a much wanted child but what I alluded to and didn't explain is that we consulted several high-risk obstetricians who monitored my wife and said that when she was unknowingly taking the medications that are known to affect pregnancy she was so newly pregnant that the embryo hadn't yet attached itself to the uterine wall (or something like that) so they weren't that concerned. I must follow this up by saying that if the neurologist's fears had been accurate, and the drugs in her system had caused severe birth defects and other problems for this baby, we may well have tearfully chosen to end the pregnancy. I'm obviously grateful as hell that we never had to participate in that horrific decision. I guess where I do fit the stereotype of the rabid pro-choicer is that I would never presume to tell women what they must do with their own bodies. I just wish they wouldn't get pregnant if they don't want a baby but I know it's not always that simple.

I guess I"m repeating myself. I'm just always shocked when Annie writes about abortion on here to find that the vast majority of readers who respond seem so vehemently against giving women the right to choose what to do with their pregnancies. But I learn from the discussion each time and respect the views of each participant. And I feel grateful that I've never been and never will be in the position where I have to be part of the decision to have an abortion but I feel very defensive on behalf of the women I know who have made that decision to hear them characterized as selfish, uncaring people who are murdering a baby for convenience sake. I will not judge the women I know in that way and I know it's not at all accurate.

[Kate Marie]

The kinds of arguments about abortion that are concerned either with whether the fetus "knows" what he/she missed or with whether the absence of that particular person has a beneficial/deleterious effect on the world seem beside the point to me. The latter issue is premised on a utilitarian notion of the value of human life that I don't buy. As for the former issue . . . a euthanized Alzheimer's patient, or a patient in a persistent vegetative state, doesn't know what they missed either, do they?

All the talk about "forced enslavement" to pregnancy -- as though the human fetus is some sort of strange alien maliciously preventing a woman's exercise of her Right to Personal Autonomy -- sounds so odd to me, too. That alien, that invader preventing a woman's exercise of her rights, is the woman's son or daughter, her "child," to whom she presumably has a duty -- but the question of where our duties lie doesn't have much currency these days.

[amba]

I don't assume we've all missed out on something wonderful -- for example, my kid would've been the right age to go to Iraq; might have insisted on volunteering, and gotten killed. Who knows? What's incontrovertible is that we missed out on someone.

And the "every sperm is a potential life" comparison doesn't work, and is very tired. There's every difference between millions of potential combinations and an actual, unrepeatable one. When you roll the dice in Vegas, all your possible throws do not have equsl status with your actual one.

[amba]

What bothers me is the drive to dehumanize the embryo and fetus in order not to feel conflicted about the decision, and the angry defense not only of the act itself, which (I know!) can sometimes seem close to the only choice, but of the right to make that scientifically bogus assertion ("some cells in my uterus"??) and not be challenged on it. This by the same people who would argue vehemently against our right to destroy redwoods or whales simply because we have the power and think we have the need.

[Rod]

If abortion was a no-brainer issue we could just chant slogans at each other and get on with life. I understand the pro-choice perspective. Pregnancy is a major disruption in life. To do it right, a woman has to avoid many things she may want to do for a number of months. She will probably feel lousy for several weeks early on and very uncomfortable for the last six weeks of the pregnancy, as well. Some of the effects, such as weight gain and stretch marks, can be mildly disfiguring or difficult to reverse. It can even be life threatening in some cases. And, the social context is not necessarily a warm and supportive "Ozzie and Harriet" marriage.

And, I will concede that it is a bit too easy to simply say, "You don't have to raise the child." That choice may simply be too hard for some women to make after a pregnancy, even if another kid in the house would play havoc with her life. And, there may be pressure not to give the child up for adoption in some circumstances, even though Mom may not be emotionally up to the task of raising a kid.

If pregnancy and child rearing were a walk in the park, we wouldn't be having this dialog.

I guess my comments earlier in this thread might have put me in what Danny Miller called the "vast majority of readers who . . . seem so vehemently against giving women the right to choose. . ." The truth is, I have no desire to deny women the right to choose anything, but there are somebody else's rights at issue here.

Very few of us treat women who get abortions as murderers. In fact, before abortion became a Constitutional Right, there was no death penalty for abortion, or life without possibility of parole. Having conceded all that, it would be nice to hear from the pro-choice side that a fetus is more than a lump of cells that a woman can decide to love or toss away like last year's shoes.

As I write this, I can hear the singing voice of my granddaughter, who was almost aborted. I am raising her, and her irrepressible vitality is a joy of the lives of nearly everyone she meets. Destroying her before she ever took a breath would have been unspeakably cruel. She is experiencing all that life has to offer. She is just as real and just as human as each of us posting here.

A future grandchild of mine was aborted. My future daughter-in-law couldn't tell her mother that she got pregnant before she got engaged. My son, who intended to marry her (and subsequently did) left the decision to her. Whoever that child would have been had as much a right to exist as the girl I'm raising. I wept for the kid who didn't get a chance. I would gladly have given up the remainder of my life for that child, just as mot of you would throw yourselves in front of a bus to save a toddler you never met.

The mother of the child who never had a chance married our son within a few weeks, and we love her unreservedly as our daughter. She immediately got pregnant again and gave us a beautiful grandson, the child who never would have been, but for an abortion. And of course, we love him too.

Sometimes life's tapestry is too complicated to fit into one moral perspective, but we still have to make choices. I choose life, not because I am arrogantly trying to force my religious views on anyone or deny women their right to choose, but rather because I humbly do not have all the answers, and life is a bright light in the fog of living.

[karen]

Hey, speaking of creepy- i just went somewhere i've never been before and found it practically unbearable. I suppose, being conservative- i would, but it's Wonkette begging free manicures for all!!! Oh- and crispy cremes, etc. I have no link- have been hopping around, trying to get my e-mail to download- and found it. I could seriously have done w/out.

SORRY WE DIDN'T GET A PRESENT Happy, Uh, ‘Birthday,’ Roe v. Wade! is a post there. The comments have not one charitable word for choosing life. ~Only for me- not for thee~ would be an excellent motto. If this is our future and these are the ruminations of thought w/in-- it really sucks.

Danny- i don't mean to judge- i just couldn't find the common ground between the two comments. I'd like to think- had you made the same choice w/any difference in outcome- you would still adore your daughter just as much. One never knows how one will react to anything dealt in life until that moment arrives.

[karen]

It's too bad my above comment had to follow yours, Ron. It's takes me a very long time to post- and had i seen yours prior, i would have refrained. They don't fit well together.

Your comment is beautiful.

[Danny Miller]

I agree that Rod's comment was moving and heartfelt even if I personally don't agree with some of the interpretations. Karen, I purposely clarified that point about my ex-wife's pregnancy knowing that you would judge me for the possibility that we would have changed our minds if the ultrasounds had shown serious damage as a result of those drugs. But that was what was happening for us at that time. To be honest, who knows what we would've done since it all worked out and we never had to face such a decision, thank God. I understand that you would have had the baby no matter what and this becomes the slippery slope where many pro-choice people can't find common ground with those who say all pregnancies MUST continue no matter what's going on.

But I do agree with amba and you guys who say that there are those who want to completely dehumanize the embryo to avoid the conflicted feelings. I'm sure that's very true. But I've never personally met a woman who viewed their abortion with such insensitivity--like they were getting a boil removed. I'll shut up after saying this AGAIN, but I'm just not going to make that decision for other women. And I'll throw in, as a parting shot, countries and governments that suppress the use of birth control are the real killers.

[amba]

Rod's granddaughter! Danny's daughter! They are here! And they both came close to not being. That shines above the rest of this argument like -- two stars!

[michael Reynolds]

Let me throw in another complication. We had Jake 11 years ago. We had an abortion 30 years ago. Had we not had the abortion we'd probably never have had Jake. We adopted Julia 6 years ago. Had we not had Jake when we did we might not have adopted Julia.

Having written a number of time travel books I can tell you that rewriting history is an incredibly complicated business. Life isn't dominos, it's houses of cards.

[amba]

Yeah . . . shades of The Terminator. Ironic name, eh?

[Rod]

Michael: If I understand your comment right, every fork in the road creates a different set of "what ifs." The tragedy of the potential grandchild who was aborted must be viewed in light of the grandchild born later, who never would have been, but for an abortion.

Had it not been for a man named Hitler starting a war, my parents would have never met, and I never would have been born. I suspect that is true for a lot of Baby Boomers. WWII shuffled the deck.

I would say good could come from evil, like the Old Testament story of Joseph and his brothers. The world builds on what is, not on what might have been. But, that does not make Hitler any less evil, or Joseph's brothers less wrong.

By the way, Michael, I was unaware you had written about the paradoxes of time travel. I am a fan of alternate histories.

[Donna B.]

I do not feel I have the moral obligation or right to judge another's action in regards to abortion, UNTIL the baby is capable of living outside the mother's uterus.

After that time (and it is a difficult time to measure) I do not consider the mother's rights as overriding the child's.

Perhaps many of you look at a child's potential and may think that if it not "good" that perhaps that child should be aborted.

My view is informed by a child's potential being truncated by an accident at age 7. A child truly and incomprehensibly different from the one I knew at age six.

Yet, the man I know at age 33 now is one I can't describe. He is both the result of a brain injury and his innate, hereditary - if you will - good nature.

He has made a difference in a few people's lives. Perhaps he is a 'burden' on society, but if I had aborted him (as I did consider because I became pregnant less than two month after having a baby) where would I be now? What would I not have learned?

I will NOT judge a woman who chooses an abortion if it within the first 20 weeks. After that, I reserve the right to, considering the circumstances.

Why I can separate what I know I myself would do, compared to what another would, I really can't explain, other than I realize I have been extremely lucky in that I have always had someone loving me unconditionally, as I do my son.

Doing the loving is much harder than being loved, IMHO. Today. I reserve the right to change my mind.

[michael Reynolds]

Rod:

My wife and I used to write a kid's sci fi book series called ANIMORPHS. We did some time travel within that series, but more in a second, companion series called MEGAMORPHS. We did Hitler, we did the Dinosaurs -- in which our heroes decided to let the comet hit earth and destroy not only the dinosaurs but two sentient races then living on earth.

Every time we did time travel we'd swear never to touch it again. And then we would anyway. It'll make your head explode trying to plot it out.

[amba]

This is a very moving conversation, to me.

Rod: Jacques once said something to me along the lines of, "If it weren't for Joe Stalin, I would never have met you." That's sort of a . . . horrifying compliment, or something! Like being given a bouquet of spent munitions?

[Rod]

Michael: A single changed event can have enormous consequences over time. If the Spanish Armada hadn’t run into some rough weather, we might all be posting our comments in a different language. Sometimes a single person could have a huge impact. What if Washington’s boat had capsized and he drowned crossing the Delaware? The “what ifs” are fascinating, but they are no doubt a challenge to the careful writer.

[amba]

One of my favorites in that genre is "Time and Again" by Jack Finney. Know it?

[Donna B.]

Rod, one of the most fascinating things I've learned doing my genealogy is that IF the King had not pardoned 6 North Carolina Regulators before the Revolutionary war, I would not be here today.

And, if my uncle had not been one of 11 survivors of the Palawan massacre, I'd be missing 5 cousins today.

And if my father had not survived sepsis (a 9 month hospital stay in the 40s), I certainly would not have been here.

A single changed event... but should we think it pre-ordained, or random?

[amba]

Is there such a thing as post-ordained?

[Peter Hoh]

Post-ordained: That's when we look at a series of random events that have led up to this moment and conclude that they must have been ordained to achieve this outcome.

half-snark off.

In his childhood, my FIL and his brothers disassembled a few mines that washed ashore the island on which they spent most of WWII. A misstep and my kids would not be here.

[michael Reynolds]

Amba:

You actually loaned me that book which I read, loved, and promptly lost in the drifting snowbank of books we have.

I owe you. And a Stephen KIng book, too.

People should not loan me stuff, I'm not mature enough to be trusted.

[amba]

The Stephen King book I didn't loan you, I dumped it on you. That makes us even.

I'm happy you loved Time and Again. The low-tech time travel sent me.

[Danny Miller]

That is one of my favorite books ever. The plot twist involving the hand of the statue of liberty is so brilliant. Did you like the movie "Portrait of Jennie" with Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten? That always reminded me of "Time and Again" in some ways.

(Wow, these comments have come far afield from grappling with abortion...)

[Donna B.]

Going far afield is one reason I read the comments here!

One of the most interesting things in my life recently is finding I have a cousin I've never met before. And his life is now more interesting finding out at age 60+ that he was adopted.

One thing I've realized lately is that it was easier in the 1940s to "go to the big city to work" and have an illegitimate child to give up for adoption than it is now.

Mistakes will always be made, it is how we as a society allow them to be corrected and atoned for that is the huge question in the abortion debate.

It's also amazing to find out the human capability of keeping secrets. The birth mother and the adoptive parents kept one for 60+ years.

I have to wonder if the ease (comparatively) of having the baby and giving it up for adoption was a good thing. If it were not relatively easy, would my aunt have decided on a back-alley abortion? Would she have died or possibly been sterile (thus reducing the cousin count considerably)?

This aunt most likely could have persuaded my uncle (my mother's brother) to marry her. I have to wonder how he would have felt if he knew about the baby.

Yet... he was already interested in his brother's girlfriend by the time she found out she was pregnant. She was also not so fond of him any longer.

When she got home from the big city, she married another of my mother's brothers, who was so incredibly strait-laced he would never have considered marrying a "tainted" woman.

How did my dear aunt feel when she didn't become pregnant again until she'd been married for 11 years? In her situation, I think I would have found it difficult to not think of that as a punishment.

Or to wonder if the brother she'd chosen was sterile... after all, she knew she wasn't. How many awful thoughts might run through one's head?

There is a point to all this -- and that is society's willingness to forgive and absorb "mistakes" or unintended consequences.

Today, with unlimited connectedness, it's quite difficult for a young woman to disappear and have a baby, give it up for adoption and return to her normal life. Could that possibly be a reason for an increase in the acceptability of abortions?

[Rod]

Time and Again sounds like fun. My favorite time travel book is "Guns for the South," in which some Afrikaners travel back in time to reverse Apartied. They conclude the way to make the world more friendly for racism is to go back to Virginia in 1864 and make M16s available to the Confederate Army. Much of the story is told from the perspective of a soldier who marvels at the ingenuity of the rifle and, in the process, describes a soldier's life during the Civil War. Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee, who accepts the help of strangers to turn around a dire situation, begins to distrust their cruelty to slaves. It has an historian's eye for details of the time.

[Callimachus]

No American slavery = no black culture in America. No blues, no rock 'n' roll, no "I Have a Dream."

[Callimachus]

In West Chester, Pa., where I grew up there was such a hospital in the, I think 1920s and 1930s, where young women from the cities nearby came and discreetly laid up until they gave birth to babies who were the quietly adopted. Every now and then one of these babies, now likely grandparents themselves, would contact me to help find their parentage. No luck.

It was called Veil Maternity Hospital, though whether that name was deliberately suggestive, or honored some founder, or both, I do not now remember.

[Callimachus]

I usually keep a couple spare copies of "Time and Again" on hand, because I'm forever giving them to people.

[amba]

Cal, with your Civil War chops, do you know Guns for the South? I never heard of it before. It sounds good.

[Callimachus]

Nope. There's a whole bookshelf of alternate history Civil War books, and I haven't read any of them. It's more than enough for me to keep up with the actual scholarly output on the topic, and I fear if I started reading fiction with the ring of truth I'd never keep the categories straight in my head. Like the veterans who swore they served alongside Stephen Crane (born 1871) after reading "Red Badge of Courage."