Why Am I Pro-Choice?

If I had no right to self-determination, I'd be a slave.

Comments

[eRobin]

Well said.

I thought mine was short!

It's interesting how both sides of this issue evoke slavery in our arguments.

[Roxanne]

I initially wrote something much longer, but it seemed like a repeat of much of what else is out there already. Also, I didn't see the point of making the issue more complicated than it is.

[eRobin]

I agree, which is why I went short as well.

[Amit Joshi]

Exactly! In response to the insidious "It's a child, not a choice", my answer always was "If it's not a choice, it's slavery!"

[Ray Radlein]

That's been essentially my line of argument on this for years, too. Except not in the first person, for obvious reasons.

[ae]

Right the hell on, Rox. I spend damn 300 words trying to say this.

[Roxanne]

I dunno. Next to Jill's post, I feel small and pitiful.

[Chris]

Nonsense. Taking your argument to its conclusion, every woman in states that banned abortion until 1973 (nearly all of them) were slaves, and every woman in Ireland and Chile is a slave today. Given that those two countries currently have a female president, it seems slaves can advance quite far there. And, for that matter, some women - again, slaves - had served in the US Congress and in the Cabinet by 1973.

The point is, every right has common-sense limits. I'm a strong supporter of the right to keep and bear arms, but I don't claim the right to own nuclear weapons. Likewise, I'm a champion of free speech, but I do believe direct and unambiguous incitement to violence should be restricted.

In the case of abortion, you miss two glaring facts. First, except in the case of rape, a woman does have self-determination when she allows a man to impregnate her. Sometimes we make choices in life that we can't undo. For instance, if I jump off a 100-story building, I can't decide to reverse course as I whizz past the 73rd story on my way down. My second point deals with *why* pregnancy is a matter of irreversible proportions (ethically - legally, of course, it is reversible). The reason is because your "self-determination" comes directly in conflict with the baby's (or whatever other word you want to use) right to live. It too has a body, and the fact that its body resides entirely within your body for nine months does not take away from its right to life. Since the right to life is the most fundamental one (without it, we would be able to exercise no other rights), it trumps the alleged right to self-determination. No one's saying you can't do to your body as you please, but when there's another body in question, the equation changes entirely.

[Roxanne]

Since the right to life is the most fundamental one (without it, we would be able to exercise no other rights), it trumps the alleged right to self-determination.

Except many legal jurisdictions say it doesn't.

[Roxanne]

But nice shot at the concern troll thing. I don't think I've ever had one of those.

[Vince]

Chris, by that logic we should force people to donate organs regardless of their personal opinions or beliefs. People can refuse to donate organs or give blood for any reason, or no reason at all. A pregnancy requires a woman to give over her body's resources to someone else, albeit temporarily. Deny a woman the right to regulate her fertility or terminate a pregnancy, and she loses that control over her body. She does not have the rights afforded to a corpse.

[Chris]

1. >Except many legal jurisdictions say it doesn't.

Well, they could be wrong - I and many others happen to think they are. Sorry to repeat an old cliché, but just because the Supreme Court endorsed slavery in Dred Scott doesn't make slavery right; its endorsement of abortion in Roe similarly has no effect on the underlying principle of the matter.

2. I disagree, because a fetus is more than an organ, which is part of a woman's body and over which I agree she should have control. A fetus, while existing within a woman and dependent on her, is a separate entity. I'm not saying that during a pregnancy a woman ought to lose complete control over her body; for instance, she should be allowed to consume alcohol heavily, even though that could well kill her baby. However, she should not be able to take decisions that will guarantee the death of the unborn (ie, have an abortion), because that is not part of her body, only within her body. I know pregnancy is unpleasant, inconvenient, and something I'll never experience, but that is unfortunately how things work - the bottom line being that, for those nine months, women's autonomy should be circumscribed only insofar as it relates to their pregnancies, in order to achieve the greater good of safeguarding their offspring's lives.

[Roxanne]

Your point of trolling here is what? You aren't going to change any minds here.

[Vince]

That separate entity is using her uterus and her blood for its survival. A mother should have control over usage and access to those resources, same as any organ or blood donor.

As far as the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade goes, the case ultimately deals with privacy. Abortion is sometimes medically necessary, and the government does not have the right to interfere in the decision process. Bringing up Dred Scott is specious.

Your logic regarding circumscription of a woman's autonomy escapes me. A woman should not be allowed to endanger her fetus, but should be able to drink, smoke, and eat poorly? This makes no sense.

[Chris]

1. So your mind is closed? How sad. (Good argument, by the way.) I happen to like to debate. Anyway, I don't see any directives discouraging commenters with opposing views. I imagine you're free to delete comments, though.

2. True, but if she gives birth, her infant will also be using her breast milk, or at least her time and money, for survival. I agree that, under normal circumstances, women should have control over their uterus and blood, but when a living being depends on them for survival, and her life is not threatened by giving it use of those parts of her body, simple decency demands that she let the baby use them. Think of the Good Samaritan (no matter what your religion) - you may not have a legal obligation to help someone in a life-threatening situation (without putting your own life at risk), but it's wrong not to do so. A mother has a similar obligation to help her unborn child into the world.

It's not specious; I was just making the point that sometimes the Supreme Court gets it wrong; it's not the final arbiter of what's right. Governments don't have rights, they have powers. That said, I see no mention of abortion or privacy in the Constitution, so the states retain the power to ban abortion because of the 10th Amendment.

Yes, abortion is sometimes medically necessary, and I'm willing to be flexible with that, but a large number of abortions (most?) are ones of convenience.

Let me expand on that. I believe strongly in personal freedoms, including the freedom to dispose of one's own body as one sees fit. That means that pregnancy should encumber those rights as little as possible. What I meant was that if a woman drinks during pregnancy, that should be no business of the state. Of course it's immoral, but that's something between a woman and her own conscience, not an area for governments to meddle in. Where the line is crossed, though, is when direct action is taken (either by an abortionist in a medical procedure or by a woman herself using a device such as a coat hanger) with the clear intent of ending the pregnancy by killing the fetus. That is a clearly malicious act that I believe should be criminalized.

[Vince]

You seem to be confusing moral and legal obligations. I may have a moral obligation to donate a kidney to a family member, but no law (and no court) can force me to donate if I choose not to. That family member will die if I don't, but donation is my choice, not the government's. A woman without the legal right to control her fertility (and to terminate a pregnancy if necessary) loses the right to make that choice. The morality of abortion is not under discussion here; the authority of the government to force women to carry pregnancies to term regardless of circumstance is.

The Supreme Court is not an arbiter of morality. It interprets laws against the rubric of the Constitution. Slavery was an immoral institution, but there was nothing in the Constitution prohibiting it until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. So the argument is specious.

The right to privacy is provided by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Commerce Clause allows the federal government to enforce laws down to the local level. In order for any limitation of abortion to be considered constitutional, it must have provisions for the health of the mother. The decision to abort is a private matter between doctor and patient, and therefore exempt from government interference.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is primarily a critique of obsessive adherence to religious law, similar to Jesus eating the offerings at the temple. (It's also a dig at religious-separatist attitudes, but that's beside the point.) A more explicit example of a call to charity and mercy would be Lazarus and the Rich Man.

You argue that most abortions are ones of convenience. Can you cite any evidence of this?

[Chris]

First, I wouldn't be so sure some future law couldn't force you to donate an organ - we have a very powerful government that is growing more powerful by the year. I'm not confused about moral and legal obligations; it's just that they sometimes overlap. We have a moral obligation not to steal; the law also prohibits theft. Women have a moral obligation not to deliberately end their pregnancies; the law ought to (and in most states did until 1973) ban abortion. I admit that the basis for this is grounded in morality, but so are many of our other laws.

The Supreme Court perhaps should be an interpreter of laws only, but in practice many of its rulings are permeated with a moral language, so more than purely judicial concerns are on the Justices' minds. While I agree that legally, the Court probably got it right in Dred Scott, there were two dissents in the case. Of course these have no force of law, but they show that there was at least some disagreement within the legal community on the matter and that just three more votes would have produced a different outcome. Furthermore, those very dissents make moral as well as Constitutional arguments - for instance when Justice McLean writes, "All slavery has its origin in power, and is against right...A slave is not a mere chattel. He bears the impress of his Maker, and is amenable to the laws of God and man, and he is destined to an endless existence." In sum, there were leading legal scholars who thought the Constitution as of 1857 rendered the Fugitive Slave Act invalid, just as there have been numerous scholars since Roe (another 7-2 ruling) who find banning abortion wholly consistent with a Constitution that includes the 14th Amendment.

First, due process does not include the right to privacy; the framers of the 14th Amendment didn't see it that way. (Or at the very least, an alleged right to abortion is not contained within the notion of privacy.) Second, if it did, the Due Process clause would be enough to compel the states to allow abortion, since it explicitly applies to the states; by contrast, the Commerce Clause merely allows Congress "to regulate commerce... among the several states", and abortion taking place in one state is not interstate commerce, so Congress has no say, and neither should the Supreme Court if it cared about states' rights.

>In order for any limitation of abortion to be considered constitutional, it must have provisions for the health of the mother.

That's just your interpretation, and that of Harry Blackmun. It could easily be wrong, and I think it's wrong, because again, the 10th Amendment reserves for the states the power to regulate abortion, and it's highly revealing that such a "right" was not even discovered for 105 years after the ratification of Amendment XIV.

>The decision to abort is a private matter between doctor and patient, and therefore exempt from government interference.

>>The decision to kill his wife was a private matter between him and the hit man, and therefore exempt from government interference.

In other words, there is a third party involved; let's not forget that.

I re-read both those parables and while it's true that the Good Samaritan story mainly deals with what you said it does, it does also show that we should help those in need, and that is also how it's popularly used - "Good Samaritan laws", for instance, are named after this aspect of the parable.

I didn't actually say that most abortions are ones of convenience - I put the word in parentheses and a question mark afterwards. However, we do have a nice set of surveys right here: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html . If, for argument's sake, we exclude rape, incest, or health-related abortions, and count all others as ones of choice, then it would seem (taking the data at face value) that nearly all abortions are in fact therapeutic in nature.

[Vince]

>We have a moral obligation not to steal; the law also prohibits theft.

Eminent domain and exorbitant interest rates can be considered theft, and yet they're perfectly legal. Better to say that the law prohibits certain kinds of theft, just as it prohibits certain kinds of killing.

>>The decision to kill his wife was a private matter between him and the hit man, and therefore exempt from government interference.

Another specious argument. Assassination is not a medical procedure, so the analogy doesn't work.

>In other words, there is a third party involved; let's not forget that.

Most abortions take place early in the first trimester. At that point, the third party in question is an aggregate of differentiated cells that may or may not develop to the point of independent viability. Medical intervention (abortion or good prenatal care)can tip the balance one way or the other.

The parents of a child born at 29 weeks are offered a choice. The doctors can act to save the baby's life, or they can let the baby die. The parents are allowed to decide without any intervention, and are not required to justify their decision. Again, medical intervention tips the balance one way or the other. Chris, would you argue against the parent's right to decide whether or not to intervene without interference?

>If, for argument's sake, we exclude rape, incest, or health-related abortions, and count all others as ones of choice, then it would seem (taking the data at face value) that nearly all abortions are in fact therapeutic in nature.

Precisely my point. Check CDC data, and you'll find that most abortions are conducted well before viability on girls under the age of 15. Girls of that age cannot legally consent to sex. That's why statutory rape is a crime. A child of that age may physically able to conceive, but may not be able to carry the preganacy to term without complications or be emotionally capable of handling the responsibility. That's where the doctor/patient relationship comes in. I would not trust a politician or judge's opinion on medical necessity, any more than I'd trust a plumber's opinion on tort law. Leave the decision to the experts.

It is a common rhetorical device in the anti-abortion community to treat pregnancy as a consequence or a punishment for irresponsible behavior. (Chris, you used this when you mentioned jumping off a building.) A child should not be viewed as a punishment. That's just cruel.

(BTW, I hope everyone's enjoying this little sparring session. Feel free to jump in; I'm sure I'm not the only Billy Goat Gruff around here.)

[Vince]

To tie two points together: sex with someone under the age of consent is a crime, regardless of whether or not both partners agree to the act. If I have sex with a fifteen-year-old girl, I have commited a crime. She has not. By your logic, if she becomes pregnant because of my criminal action (a natural result of sexual activity), she should have to carry that pregnancy to term regardless of her physical or mental fitness, because after all she shouldn't have been having sex. The baby becomes a punishment for a crime she did not commit. And that's just cruel.

[Chris]

Right, and those crimes are typically state-perpetrated (I don't consider exorbitant interest rates to be criminal as one is never forced to sign up with a particular lender), but abortion and murder of people already born are both done by private individuals, so logically they should be punished equally. Let's let Albert Jay Nock put this more eloquently:

"Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime that I spoke of a moment ago, and that it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien. There is, for example, no human right, natural or Constitutional, that we have not seen nullified by the United States Government. Of all the crimes that are committed for gain or revenge, there is not one that we have not seen it commit – murder, mayhem, arson, robbery, fraud, criminal collusion and connivance."

Ah, but how do we define "medical procedure"? Yes, abortion happens to be performed by a doctor, but as I think I've established, most of them are not out of necessity (and also can be performed by non-doctors, as some were prior to 1973). Abortion is like plastic surgery in that regard: something one wants to do, and sees a doctor because that's who does it, but not by any means urgent or necessary.

First, absent abortion, most first-trimester fetuses do end up being born. Of course some die, but it's not very common, and a pregnant woman can safely assume that she'll have a child. Second, I wasn't aware that that was the case, but assuming you're right, then I would say that since the child has been born, the parents ought to have a legal responsibility to pay for its medical upkeep, just as they would pay for a child born at term (when they can't choose to just let it die). Of course I oppose state financing of medicine, so if they can't pay then they should either give it up for adoption or allow it to die.

The CDC data I looked at (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5212a1.htm) show that in 2000, 18.8% of abortions were obtained by women 19 or younger - meaning that many of those were above the age of consent. Let's guess that 10% were below the age of consent, then. Well, if those girls were forcibly raped, that's one thing, but if they agreed to sex (and I know that legally they can't), then they too should bear the consequences. I would agree that below some age (maybe 12) I'd agree that all sex is rape, and possibly entertain the thought of allowing abortion there (though conception might also be difficult at such young ages, but not unheard-of), but someone who is 15 generally knows what she's doing, even if she isn't legally able to consent. It may be cruel, but that's how life sometimes is - indeed, you jump off a building, you can't stop it; you have sex, you shouldn't be able to stop the consequences.

However, I would support capital punishment as a deterrent for child rape. The Supreme Court has in its wisdom ruled adult rape unconstitutional (I disagree with that ruling), but has yet to pronounce itself on child rape, and indeed a man named Patrick Kennedy is awaiting execution in Louisiana for the aggravated rape of his eight year old step-daughter.

In closing let me just point out that since no more than 18.8% of abortions are had by girls 15 and under (the actual number probably being closer to 10%), this again is an example of partisans zeroing in on the exceptions, just like my side enjoys pointing out the horrors of partial-birth abortion (which, while horrible, is quite rare). The fact remains that most abortions are neither medically necessary nor the product of statutory (or forcible) rape.

[Vince]

>If, for argument's sake, we exclude rape, incest, or health-related abortions, and count all others as ones of choice, then it would seem (taking the data at face value) that nearly all abortions are in fact therapeutic in nature.

>The fact remains that most abortions are neither medically necessary nor the product of statutory (or forcible) rape.

These are two contradictory statements. Actually, you've shown a number of contradictory attitudes in your posts. You believe that individuals have the right to dispose of their bodies as they see fit, but see no right to privacy in the Constitution. You believe that a woman should be allowed to damage a fetus through poor diet and heavy drinking, but not not to the point that she miscarries. You quote a libertarian, but advocate state interference in medical procedures. Your stances are inconsistent. If the government should stay out of peoples' lives, it should stay out - period.

>since the child has been born, >the parents ought to have a legal >responsibility to pay for its >medical upkeep, just as they >would pay for a child born at >term (when they can't choose to >just let it die). Of course I >oppose state financing of >medicine, so if they can't pay >then they should either give it >up for adoption or allow it to >die.

The situation I described falls under the same legal and ethical parameters as the choice left to family members of severe trauma victims. Some friends of mine were faced with this very decision a few years ago. They were allowed to decide without having to consult an attorney and without any interference from any outside party. Incidentally, without help from the state, a lot of barely-viable preemies would die, which for you is unacceptable, as life should be defended at all costs.

The US had a period with minimal government interference in private life, business, medicine, etc, in the 1800s. It was great if you were rich and white, lousy if you weren't. Read Jakob Riis, John dos Passos and Upton Sinclair for a taste of life under "Laissez faire".