A blogfriend sent me the link to a Chicago Sun-Times column by Neil Steinberg, titled "What's Behind the Anti-Abortion Frenzy?", which revives the old canard that pro-lifers are really anti-sex. More interestingly, it links to Beliefnet editor Steven Waldman's essay "Safe, Legal, and Early," which maintains that the legal question about abortion shouldn't be "Yes or no?" but "When?" This was my response.
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Obviously, Waldman's position (I read through the link) is the one the great majority of people hold, myself included. I'd like people to be a lot more conscious of the real stakes when they consider having an abortion at any stage (or, a significant step back, having unprotected sex risking an unintended pregnancy), but most traditions (the Jewish tradition certainly) have long recognized a continuum on which the woman's (or family's) decision prevails early in pregnancy and that shifts as the fetus develops.
I don't know that it matters whether the abortion debate is a proxy for a desire to make sex safe, legal, and rare (LOL). I used to think that, but second-guessing and psychoanalyzing pro-lifers' moral convictions has come to seem condescending and insulting to me. What matters is whether they can impose their own choices, noble as they may be, on everyone else, and whether, if they can't, they view it as an utter defeat by a satanic society. (The rhetoric around Notre Dame's invitation to Obama -- from some of my own blogfriends, I might add -- was so overblown, it was really depressing to me.)
Maybe no change happens without absolutist fervor (as a commenter says here, "Seriously, it’s nice to be civil, but Obama has to realize that it took a wild-eyed extremist (John Brown) and the death of 600,000 Americans to end slavery and make it possible for him to be President"), and without the feminist push for "abortion on demand" all abortion would have remained illegal and dangerous, and without the pro-life movement people would have blown off the moral momentousness of the decision and settled down in a very degraded place. To the extent that I'm getting my wish of people being more conscious of the stakes, the push-back by pro-lifers is largely -- no, almost solely -- responsible. Thanks to free speech they've done a beautiful job of dragging our attention back to the gravity of wishing away a unique human being. Thanks to that, we are within reach of finally getting the legal balance right. If the absolutists on both sides will let it happen. Which requires the vast middle to finally speak up.
Thanks, maybe I'll even post this, although the whole topic hits me on my broken heart. I will repeat that I'm grateful for the change in the culture the pro-life movement has wrought, and that it is culture, not law, that could have tipped my own decision the other way. Just living in today's culture, instead of on the condom-littered beach where the tide of the '70s had just begun to creep out, would have been enough. I want us to continue moving, voluntarily, in that direction.
P.S. Steinberg coins a rather chilling term for abortion: "murder lite." Here is what I think is the most literal and accurate description of what early abortion is and what it does: nipping a human life in the bud.
Isn't it odd that pro-life people are called "absolutists" and the ones who kill the baby/fetus/parasite are not? The pro-lifer could change her mind and kill later, but the pro-abortion mom can't bring that life back. Death is pretty absolute whether at 3 weeks in utero, or 95 in the nursing home.
Posted by: Norma | May 21, 2009 at 04:10 PM
"Abortion on demand," any time for any reason, that's absolutist. No abortion ever for any reason except the mother will die otherwise, that's also absolutist. Reality is some women are going to have abortions even if it's illegal. The rich ones who could afford to have the baby will be OK, the poorest and most desperate ones among them may die. Think that's only fair?
What's real is to reduce the number of abortions by every possible means -- education, propaganda, abstinence, birth control, Plan B, research -- and restrict the remainder to the first trimester, with the abovementioned exception. That will save lives. It's fine to try to persuade women that they should never have an abortion, but legally regulating early pregnancy, yes, that is a privacy and family issue.
Posted by: amba | May 21, 2009 at 04:50 PM
I mean, what is parental notification? A teen-age girl's parents are not necessarily going to be against her having an abortion. They may even be more for it than she is. They may push her in the direction of having one. Is it their parental right to counsel her against abortion, but not their parental right to counsel her in favor of it?
As a blastocyst becomes an embryo and continues to develop into a fetus, the interest of the law should shift in its favor. The destruction of an individual life in the very early stages is a tragedy. It is not a crime from a legal perspective.
This is common sense. Like life itself, it's complicated and not hard-and-fast. Anyone who wants to observe a stricter standard for themselves, God bless them.
Posted by: amba | May 21, 2009 at 04:55 PM
And Norma, I don't know if you have read my essay about abortion, but gee, tell me about how you can't bring it back. That's not exactly news to me. If I knew someone who was contemplating having an abortion, I would urge them not to.
Posted by: amba | May 21, 2009 at 04:58 PM
If you nip life in the bud- the result is that this person(no matter the blastocyst reference)will never grow to bear fruit-- and i'm not meaning of the loin.
I agree w/you, amba-- as a beginning of an end to abortion. It still amazes me that life is so easily denied to those growing children of the womb. That the realization of life w/in the womb is not allowed to see the light of day(i'm assuming in most cases, here- which is arrogant of me- i apologize)because to allow this realization is to admit a horror of a death willfully committed. A mistake.
Harsh- is partial-birth abortion. Harsh: is hearing a heartbeat, seeing a sonogram- and choosing abortion because it's just too much to deal w/an ~imperfect~ child. Harsh: is allowing a newborn- of abortion- to die w/out ever being held or allowed medical treatment to live.
Who is it that supports all of these, the harshest- of abortion stances as a mantra and ideology? Rewarded for his ~human rights~ interests w/a doctorate of Law form the ever-so-Catholic Notre Dame?
When this man speaks and leads otherwise, amba-- then i think i'll believe there is a hope in reducing the deaths of unwanted children through their murder in what should be the most sacred and safe places in this world: the womb.
Until then, it's all just words.
Posted by: karen | May 24, 2009 at 05:56 PM
I have come up with a rule of thumb which, I find, is quite useful in judging anti-abortion arguments. Two, actually.
1) anyone who opposes abortion, but also opposes all birth-control methods, teaching, etc. is not actually opposed to abortion. They are opposed to what they see as immoral sex. Period.
2) anyone who claims that all abortions are murder needs to have a good response when asked if they and their church hold funeral services for every mis-carriage suffered by anyone in the congregation. It isn't murder, but it clearly is a death in the congregation according to their position. No funeral services pretty well knocks the "life begins at conception" position on its back.
There are certainly those who oppose all abortion on its merits. But they appear, in my experience, to be a tiny minority compared to those who have other agendas for which opposing abortion is at least in substantial part a means to an end.
Posted by: wh | May 26, 2009 at 06:39 PM
Great thoughts wh
Posted by: The Meaning Of Life | June 02, 2009 at 04:30 AM
"What matters is whether they can impose their own choices, noble as they may be, on everyone else, and whether, if they can't, they view it as an utter defeat by a satanic society."
At least a pro-lifer can later change that opinion, and no life has been lost. So just who is the absolutist? Who is bring down society to the lowest, most degrading, inhumane level? Animals have more protections than the pre-born.
Posted by: Norma | July 12, 2009 at 08:11 PM
Will there be PAYBACK for Dr. Tiller?
Will there be COUNTERTERROR against right-to-lifers?
If a right-to-lifer gets counterterrorized TO DEATH, will that be murder or JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE?
WHO would be the most effective and deserving TARGETS for anti-right-to-lifist counterterror?
WHERE do they LIVE?
operationcounterstrike.blogspot.com
Posted by: OperationCounterstrike | August 11, 2009 at 10:57 PM
Right-to-lifers have one good answer: fetuses are persons, members of the Human Family, and entitled to all the rights and privileges other persons enjoy.
But right-to-lifers have the wrong QUESTION. What matters is not WHAT fetuses are, but WHERE they are.
I say if something is inside my body, then I'm entitled to have it killed NO MATTER WHAT IT IS. Even if it's a person. Even if it's an INNOCENT person. If you were inside my body, I'd be entitled to kill you. If I were inside your body, you'd be entitled to kill me. In fact, if ALL the people in the WHOLE HUMPING WORLD, including the innocent ones, the pregnant ones, and the unborn ones, were assembled inside my body, then I'd be entitled to kill any or all of them. That's part of the meaning of the word "my" in the phrase "my body". MY body is the body about which I, and no one else, get to decide who gets to live inside it, and when, AND HOW LONG.
Abortion kills a person. Doing an abortion on a woman who doesn't want it is baby-murder. But abortion on demand is JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE.
Posted by: OperationCounterstrike | August 11, 2009 at 11:03 PM
And I DO support parental-consent requirements. If my thirteen-year-old daughter comes home pregnant and says she wants to grow the pregnancy and be a mom, she should damm well need my permission for that. Which she would not get. If necessary, I'd strap her down and do her abortion my own self.
Posted by: OperationCounterstrike | August 11, 2009 at 11:44 PM