Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice. – H.L. Mencken
Despite my steady progress toward cronehood, I find that I still do change my mind on some things from time to time. Really, this isn’t surprising; while most people become steadily more conservative as they age, I have become steadily more radical. The reason should be obvious: as many of you have observed, I am unusually pragmatic and unafraid to follow ideas and observations to their logical conclusions. When I was younger and far less battle-scarred I allowed far more sentiment to contaminate my moral views, and was much less likely to recognize the extent to which people will abuse even the slightest power over others. But as I’ve lived in the real world, paid attention to its mechanisms and watched even the best-laid plans of mice and men gang agley, I’ve come to understand that the more control anyone (individually or collectively) is given over the lives of anyone else, the more often things go horribly wrong. And while it’s true that some small amount of authoritarian violence is, unfortunately, a necessary evil, the optimum amount is vastly lower than that which exists anywhere in the world today.
I’ve expressed many ethical opinions over the past three years, and many of you have disagreed with me; I’ve also read the words of many other writers expressing different, tangential or totally contradictory opinions. And while most of the time my own positions, developed as they have been over three decades of careful observation and consideration, remain unmoved, once in a while little things add up enough so that I recognize that my previous opinion on a subject was unformed, naïve, incomplete, erroneous or even dead wrong. Sometimes it’s just because I never really thought deeply enough about the issue; for example, because I don’t drink I never thought enough about the way “drunk driving” laws are written to recognize them as fallacious and enabling of tyranny, but then I read an essay which asked why it’s legally considered worse to drive well with a blood-alcohol level above an arbitrary limit than it is to drive poorly (or even cause an accident) cold sober. Had the authoritarians not taken these laws to their logical conclusion with police-state checkpoints (now with blood extraction and forced catheterization), I might never have been forced to consider the subject enough to recognize their wrongness. Similarly, I never devoted any serious thought to the laws governing gender-reassignment surgery until a commenter on my column “He or She?” very politely pointed out that my supporting the psychiatric community’s “gatekeeping” over the process violated the principle of self-ownership:
…governments and moralists who presume to know more about our minds and ourselves than we do? Telling us what we are and are not allowed to do with our bodies, “for our own good”? People who have no experience (or even understanding) of transsexuality unilaterally deciding that the desire to be the opposite sex HAS to be the byproduct of disturbed thinking, simply because it’s not something they can conceive of wanting to do? I’m not equating transsexuality with prostitution…but I hope the rhetoric sounds familiar…Those safeguards…are not, and never have been, for the benefit of transsexuals. They’re a buffer for medical professionals against malpractice suits, and the next best thing for the moralistic assholes in power if they can’t criminalize transsexuality outright…it does much more harm than good to set up an endless row of hurdles that transsexuals must clear, usually with a hostile or uncomprehending system, before we’re “allowed” to be what the rest of the population takes for granted. Prohibitively difficult “safeguards” don’t make the process any safer, they just make it longer, more humiliating, and far more expensive…
In other cases, however, my thinking was clouded by my own emotions. As I’ve mentioned before, I have fairly pronounced maternal instincts and suffered a very late-term miscarriage (22 weeks gestation) which still tends to upset me emotionally if I dwell on it. Rationally, I understand that it’s probably best I did not have children, and that my own feelings on the matter no more constitute an argument against the legality of abortion than my aversion to depictions of male homosexual behavior constitutes one against its legality. And yet, up until last year it always seemed to me that 12 weeks was enough of a window for legal abortion; despite compelling arguments that the limit of viability (roughly 24 weeks) is a far more logical dividing line, I simply did not want to think about ending pregnancies more advanced than my own was at the time of its spontaneous abortion.
But 18 years is a long time on a human scale, and I’m nothing if not reasonable; though dogmatic “feminist” arguments which ignore or even deny the fact that Roe vs. Wade also invalidates prostitution laws are even less convincing to me than Christian superstition about ensouled zygotes, arguments based in the philosophies of liberty and harm reduction are another matter entirely. An email I received last July from Joyce Arthur of FIRST (the Canadian pro-sex worker feminist group) contained the following passage:
Delays in seeking abortion…are often the direct result of legal restrictions…making gestational limits even more unjust. Canada has no laws against abortion whatsoever, not even gestational limits, yet only about 0.4% of abortions happen after 20 weeks, and over 90% are before 12 weeks. This is what happens when you treat abortion like any other medical procedure, it does not turn into an irresponsible free-for-all when it’s not criminalized. In fact, our abortion rates are much lower than the U.S. and have been in decline since 1997. Abortion can be…handled the same way as any other medical procedure – through medical policies, codes of ethics, doctor discretion, etc. The problem with imposing legal limitations…is that women will find a way – if you make it too difficult or too expensive, many will just try to do it themselves or have an illegal unsafe abortion…
Nor are unsafe abortions the only problem; government powers inevitably expand until they are forcibly stopped, and laws defining fetuses as citizens to be protected by law inevitably result in prosecution of women whose actions inadvertently result in miscarriage or stillbirth. And it gets worse:
…Our study identified 413 criminal and civil cases involving the arrests, detentions, and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s physical liberty…between 1973…and 2005…[and] 250…since 2005…A [Utah] woman…was…charged with…homicide based on the claim that her decision to delay cesarean surgery was the cause of the stillbirth…a [Washington D.C.] court…[forced] a critically-ill pregnant woman…to undergo cesarean surgery over her objections. Neither she nor her baby survived. A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion. A woman in Oregon…was subjected to involuntary civil commitment [for disobeying a doctor’s orders]…A Louisiana woman was charged with murder and spent…a year in jail…[for] miscarriage that resulted from [prescription] medication…In Texas, a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana…was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor. A…Wisconsin…court…[arrested a] woman…and [subjected] her to involuntary…medical treatment [because she planned to use a midwife instead of an obstetrician]…if passed, so called “personhood” measures would: 1) provide the basis for arresting pregnant women who have abortions; and 2) provide state actors with the authority to subject all pregnant women to surveillance, arrest, incarceration, and other deprivations of liberty whether women seek to end a pregnancy or not…
For those still stuck in fantasyland about the innate trustworthiness of government, consider that Brazil has already tried to force all pregnant women to submit to compulsory registration and monitoring. Even people who believe abortion should be illegal don’t generally think women should be arrested for it, but that is exactly what would happen because authoritarian governments totally lack both self-control and the ability to differentiate between an illegal act and a criminal one. Having given the matter all the consideration it is due, I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer back any legal limits on abortion whatsoever; though I still feel it is unethical for a doctor to abort a viable and healthy fetus without some compelling reason, I also believe it is no concern of the state or any other uninvolved party, and that laws governing pregnancy inevitably lead to far greater evils than the rare ones they prevent.
So it’s cool to abort a child right before it naturally delivers? I mean – like literally in the throughs of labor?
I’m sorry – can’t follow you there. Life is the FIRST liberty. I don’t agree that government has no right in this matter. Protecting people is the first thing that government should do.
If you can abort a child at the moment of birth – it’s only a short skip to the next stone … aborting one after.
I think 12 weeks is a good window – though I’m not even comfortable with that but I’ll take it for the sake of stamping out prohibitionist laws.
Also – most Americans won’t follow you here. The more the Pro-Choice movement moves toward unfettered third trimester abortions – the less support you’ll see in the public at large. In fact, I know “Pro-Life” people who would LOVE to see the Pro-Choice movement adopt such a radical position. In short – you’re going to make it easier for the “life” crowd to enact more laws against abortion because the voices on the other side will have become so radicalized they will be unrecognized by the majority of Americans.
Good Luck with that! 🙂
People who imagine that women and doctors need the threat of jail to not “abort a baby about to come out” have a very low opinion of women and doctors (and medical ethics boards), and I have to wonder about what THEY get up to when the cops aren’t around. Morality enforced by threat isn’t morality, it’s fear. You need to reread my essay “The Suppression of Virtue“.
Do you really think I have a “low opinion” of women?
Is this really about my insignificant opinion though? Or the fact that you just moved the goal line to the actual moment of birth?
No, because I don’t think you really believe that women and doctors need that threat to do the right thing.
“that women and doctors need that threat to do the right thing.” I’d modify that to “most”. Certainly, as much as I believe in the mid-20th Century liberalism that people are basically good but flawed, I would never maintain, let alone imply, “all” as you did.
I agree with Krulac that “Life is the FIRST liberty”, without that we as human beings have nothing. I do however disagree with 12 weeks; my line is still drawn at viability. Aborting a “fetus”, “baby”, or “tissue” as you will, at 30 plus weeks when in the vagina (euphemistically called “birth canal”, magic words), is just deplorable if not disgusting, unless that (insert comfort word) represents a clear and immediate danger to the life of the mother.
That’s right son – never argue the point, always go meta. The way to have a drawn-out, pointless argument is to complain about the tone of your opponent’s reply.
(BTW: “you just moved the goal line to the actual moment of birth” is a misrepresentation of her position. Her line was dawn at “viability”.)
Humanity can certainly sink quite low, and there are plenty of monsters within the population of doctors and women.
Totally true, but not REMOTELY as many as within the population of cops, prosecutors and politicians.
Damn, as much as I would like to nitpick you gave me nothing.
Oh wait, aren’t cops the people that self-sacrifice all day long, without whom we wouldn’t be safe, and never lie? And prosecutors just seek justice for the victims and truth because only that gives justice to the victims? How can you say there are monsters there?
My government tells me so with immunity to all that it employs; qualified, sovereign, or absolute; without it couldn’t do its job of serving us. They all be good.
Hyperbole has its uses.
Krulac, I think your ignoring some very important considerations, the most important being that a baby is not an independent person. Regardless whether or not that baby has a soul, the baby is a fragile, half formed person, who is physically dependent on the mother, even during labor.
I don’t think you really understand what the criminalization of an abortion means. It certainly doesn’t protect babies, even in the slightest. All it does is endanger mothers, by putting them at risk for persecution.
Barring the vast numbers of legitimate medical reasons for a woman to abort, and even some very legitimate socioeconomic reasons, there are also a number of ways to abort without having to go to a doctor. And accidental abortions are NOT the same as manslaughter, no matter how twisted your argument might be
When a woman carries a baby, she is putting her life at risk and she is permanently damaging her body. Criminalization of anything done during any phase of pregnancy also means that a woman must now put her freedom at risk as well. It is ludicrous, and wrong.
Let my give you an analogy. Two hikers are hiking around near the top of a cliff. Hiker A slips, and hiker B just manages to catch hiker A. Hiker B is unable to pull hiker A to safety, and hiker B is also beginning to slip over the cliff, and hiker B is now scared for his own life. Hiker B lets go of hiker A, who falls to their death. I ask you, who in their right mind would bring criminal charges up against hiker B?
That is what it is to bring criminal charges up again a woman who has had an aborted child.
No one is arguing that it is okay to abort a child who’s half out of a mother’s body because the mother “changed her mind”. First of all, viability means that the baby is capable of surviving out side of the mother’s body, and if that child is capable, every doctor ever would make an effort to save the child. If the child is not capable of surviving outside of the mother’s body, the age of the fetus is irrelevant, the baby is not an individual person, it is a parasitic symbiote attached to the mother. Whether or not you believe that baby has a soul is irrelevant, because it is still physically a part of the mother, and thus part of her own body.
If a child is still born, or if a baby is lost in the efforts to save the mother’s life, there is NO JUSTIFICATION EVER for that woman to need to be tried for murder.
No.
I’ll say it again: Criminalization of any aspect of pregnancy does nothing to save babies, but does a world of hurt to every pregnant woman.
I haven’t “ignored” anything … I think the fact that I progressed from staunchly PRO-LIFE to solidly Pro-Choice (up to the end of the first trimester) would indicate that I’ve pondered this issue quite a bit and turned it over in my head. That’s the problem with you guys – you ASSUME that you’re the only ones who’ve applied reason and thought to your arguments. News flash – this is a difficult issue and plenty of Pro-Life people have applied a lot of thought to this.
A baby not being “independent” – is irrelevent. A baby is not technically “independent” until it’s potty trained and can open the refrigerator door.
But uhm … yeah – ya’ll go ahead and yell at me … heh, I’m on your side. This is why I say that adopting such an EXTREME position on abortion is going to lose us support.
When it comes to the political things – I’m never wrong.
I mean … Peter Singer was a NOBODY until the Pro-Life movements dug up these comments …
Pro-Life has a field day trying to paint the entire Pro-Choice movement as a bunch of extremist based on just those comments. They will have much more success if you all adopt this notion that abortion AT ANY POINT prior to birth is acceptable. You will be isolated and thrown from the table of discussion.
Fortunately, this is NOT a mainstream view of the Pro-Choice movement and, I don’t think it will become one.
The pro-lifers see the issue simply: Some ancient book, supposedly dictated by their Friend In The Sky, says that a fertilized egg has a soul. Ergo, abortion at any point is murdering a baby. They don’t give a rat’s ass about Canadian statistics, any more than neofeminist whore-haters care about New Zealand statistics.
But let me point out the absurdity of the pro-life argument: If the government can arrest a pregnant woman whose pregnancy ends, then the government can require that every man be tested for genetic defects; and any man so labeled could be required by law to be celibate.
Furthermore, if the government knows more than you what’s good for your body, then there’s no reason for the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, which interfere with those all-wise government employees just doing their jobs.
The pro-Life movement originated in the Roman Catholic church, and then spread to some other Christian movements.
The Catholic Church is against, in addition to abortion:
1. Birth Control
2. Non-Vaginal Intercourse
3. Sex outside of marriage for any reason
4. Sex within marriage for any reason other than procreation.*
5. Sex itself (the celibate asexual life is considered the highest Christian ideal within the Catholic Church, and sex is something that they give a grudging OK to only for the purposes of producing more Catholics).
I don’t really believe that the Catholic Church wants to protect fertilized human eggs because they believe that they are fully realized humans. I believe, looking at the list above, they have a phobia about sex, which they consider wicked and evil.
*There is a loophole here. Even a sterile married couple is permitted to have sex, because a miraculous birth is still considered possible. However, that can’t be induced sterility it has to have occurred for other reasons than to avoid children.
pws,
Pro-life as a phrase may have originated with the Catholics, but anti-abortion goes back well before Catholics were a force in this nation. This country was a Protestant and post-Protestant nation well into the 20th Century. Look at the social history of the Irish potato famine to the influx of Italians in the 1910s (my grandfather). The Catholics had no influence beyond the local ghetto however extensive that ghetto.
Anti-abortion was a Protestant and post-Protestant issue. It’s only in my lifetime that Catholics have been a force on this issue. Anti-abortion is still as much, or more, a post-Protestant issue now.
Not all Christians oppose abortion. Genesis says Adam became a living soul when he started breathing, not before.
Genesis also gave Adam as existing without a woman. Really cuts into the meaning of penis-vagina. Did Adam have a penis before Eve? If so, why? It’s obviously not necessary to evacuate a bladder, or women would have penises too.
Breathing is nice, but so is warmth and food (I include hydration). Try living without one of the three. Asphyxia, hypothermia, or starvation. The only difference is time.
Actually, it doesn’t. The Old Testament says that if a man strikes a woman and causes a miscarriage, he will pay a fine. This is significant, because the OT, being a revolutionary book for its time, does NOT allow blood money to be paid for murder; it mandates execution. So it’s very clear that the OT does not forbid abortion.
Jewish authorities consider abortion immoral as an injury to the woman; but they do not consider it murder.
I think you have misinterpreted my use of independent, which I clarified later as a physical body capable of surviving out side of the womb. That is hardly the same as an infant who needs to be fed and washed, because anyone can feed a baby, but only the mother can carry it in her body.
Honestly, I don’t think you appreciate that the “abortion debate” is not about what the government has a right to regulate about a pregnancy, but about whether or not it has the right to regulate it at all. It has literally nothing to do with saving lives and everything to do with oppressing a pregnant woman’s rights to her own body. The only way you can justify regulating a pregnancy is to say that, while pregnant, a woman loses the rights to her own body in some way.
That will. Not. Be. Tolerated.
I know it’s off the main topic, but Peter Singer was definitely not a nobody before those comments were dug up. He was already one of the people most responisible for the modern Animal Wrongs movement, particularly the more fanatical groups.
” They will have much more success if you all adopt this notion that abortion AT ANY POINT prior to birth is acceptable.”
That isn’t what they said. They said GOVERNMENT FORCE is an immoral way to express your opinion about its unacceptability.
“being that a baby is not an independent person. Regardless whether or not that baby has a soul, the baby is a fragile, half formed person, who is physically dependent on the mother, even during labor.” Please, put this argument to rest, leave it at a curb somewhere and grab a taxi.. A baby three months before or three months after birth isn’t independent. You’re confusing a gynocentric view of independence with the reality of independence. Again, test it, take your newborn, or your six-month old, and leave it in your back yard, come back a week later and we’ll go over independence. Breathing is only one part of independence: in your womb it breathed by your breath, but got all else from you; outside of your womb it breathes but all else has to come from you or its father, or some other person The “it isn’t independent” is just a BS argument, all gynocentric and as poor as any androcentric argument, and not the reality. Lay the argument to rest in the dung heap it deserves without expecting to find a rose.
As for labor, that is the one moment of where the life of both is interdependent.
I agree with you on criminalizing abortion. It serves no purpose other than to harm. But I would still draw the line at viability, where the harm switches to the child after. (Usual disclaimer: unless the mother’s life is threatened by continuing the pregnancy. This is an old and accepted 20th Century view that really shouldn’t need repeating as it’s a given. But…it’s like not acknowledging that all cop’s aren’t bad, if you don’t give it someone will accuse you of saying “all”.)
” some very legitimate socioeconomic reasons”. OK, I can give some worth to Margaret Sanger and the Catholic ghettos of the early 20th Century (I’ll only neglect her Eugenics because it was a Progressive idea in the period), but what socioeconomic reasons today? Birth control, in all forms, is ubiquitous and cheap today. The excuse is just an excuse. Yeah, I’m being callous, but one chooses to have sex, and any woman can get birth control if she wishes. She can also say “no condom, no sex”. He can also, and many men do. All of this applies in marriage too. How long will we embrace early 20th Century excuses?
“First of all, viability means that the baby is capable of surviving out side of the mother’s body, and if that child is capable, every doctor ever would make an effort to save the child.” The problem with “all” is it’s simply untrue. You need to keep up.
“it is a parasitic symbiote attached to the mother.” With that perspective a species deserves to die out; you compared your offspring to an organism that you might pick up in the Amazon river or rain forest. I am so glad that most of mammalia hasn’t reached your level of sentience, it would make the endangered species list longer than the IRS codes.
‘When a woman carries a baby, she is putting her life at risk and she is permanently damaging her body.” So a natural process becomes a “risk’. Go back to the paragraph above this one. You don’t permanently damage your body unless: you mean stretch marks (I grew 6 inches in one summer, my ass is covered in stretch marks, growth spurts are therefore permanent damage and should be avoided); your breasts sag from feeding (breasts are for sex?); your vagina is stretched (expected, given humans have big heads unlike other species); or the looser ligaments by hormone so you can give birth (which tighten up afterwards but slowly)? Do you mean the sucking of nutrients from your body? Did you eat properly? Did you miss that it is possible to feed a 120 to 140 lb body and a 5 to 10 pound body without one or the other being permanently damaged? Unless you were popping out kids for ten years straight, year after year, you’re body isn’t anymore damaged than the damage caused by 5 or more years of not enough sleep. I have a wife and three children, and like any novelist I can draw from that experience.
Women live longer than men now; when the process of childbirth actually took a toll on women they didn’t. Check out mortality in the 19th Century.
Finally this “it is still physically a part of the mother, and thus part of her own body”; no, it’s a different body because its DNA isn’t yours alone, it isn’t “you”. Understand that it isn’t “you”, it isn’t some tissue of yours alone. It’s not, no matter how much you want to claim it’s “you”, a problem women too often have even post-partum. That’s why there’s a barrier between you and that fetus, that sac that separates the two of you, not the two of “you”.
StormDaughter,
“parasitic symbiote” is an oxymoron. A parasite destroys the host, a symbiote or symbiont is either neutral to the host or enhances the host’s survival. Do you like children?
If offspring are parasitic a species dies. If offspring are symbiotic you might have more fun at the movies, even if PG sucks.
Viewing offspring as either is a mental aberration that only homo sapiens sapiens can claim. The other primates would feel shame (OK. so I anthropomorphized, but if the anthropo’s can’t grasp the stupidity of viewing offspring as something you catch in the Amazon I can only hope other primates do recognize that stupidity.)
Pre viability there should be no question. Post viability it should be between the mother and her doctor.
Why should we propose state forcing birth while simultaneously objecting to state provided welfare to care for the child?
I find it interesting that the catholic church is arguing against malpractice for no doing c-section on very viable twins where the mother and father had expressed desire to take pregnancy to term.
Both the above seem to be shoving your morals down someone’s throat then objecting to paying for it. Nice.
Side note. States with anti abortion laws abort average later term abortions and higher abortion rates.
Reasons are simple, it takes time and effort to clear the hurdles set up by the “sex is sin, and pain of childbirth is the way you attone” crowd.
And yet, the quote from Joyce Arthur says that despite the absence of limit, Canadians don’t terminate pregnancies that late, just because they legally can. I’d guess most women wouldn’t even consider doing it so late and most of the 0.4 % are likely due to health problems rather than “I don’t have wan’t to have a baby”.
Only a small percentage of human beings murder other human beings. Let’s get rid of all laws outlawing murder shall we? I mean – since it doesn’t happen very often statistically speaking? Why worry ourselves?
Let’s not talk too much in “percentages” shall we? .01 percent of the population of China is a SIGNIFICANT number – it’s thousands of people. People use percentages too often to make otherwise unacceptable numbers appear to be “palatable”.
Look – by saying that life begins when the child emerges – is an untenable political position. Hell – it’s even untenable scientifically if you compare that delivered to child to the state it was in 24 hours prior to natural delivery.
The Pro-Choice movement has been gaining ground nationally for the last few years. This is because the LIFE movement went radical with a bunch of circus clown tricks passed by conservative governors. Clown tricks like forced vaginal ultrasounds prior to abortions. They lost ground on those things because they looked radical to the rest of us.
If you want to be the radicals now – then I you should expect to see the kind of erosion of support that they did.
Krulac, please don’t demean two years of soul-searching and consequence weighing on my part by lumping me into a group. I’m not a “they”, I’m Maggie McNeill, and if you think I arrived at this lightly or as part of some moronic “movement” you need to reread this essay. Twice.
What group have I lumped you into? It was unintentional, I assure you. I’m not saying that you haven’t deliberated on this long and hard – hell, I know you have and, I respect that.
And your opinion here does have merit. I agree with you that government abuses almost every institution it touches. I just don’t come to the extreme conclusion that we can replace government with a bunch of “tiny deities” (read: Doctors) who decide what is life and what ain’t. You are distrustful of government – so am I, maybe a bit less so but we’re basically on the same page. You however, seem to trust doctors a lot – and I don’t trust them at all. Not because of the abortion issue mind you – or anything even on the periphery of it. Long story.
Its not about trusting doctors to decide what is and is not life, it about allowing the owner of the body being used in the creation of life to retain control of said body.
A viable baby is a baby that no longer needs to live off of the physical body of its mother. It is a baby that is no longer part of the mother’s body. A baby is not a separate person from the mother until it is viable. For all practical purposes, they are the same person until the baby can survive outside the womb. And so, the baby is literally part of the mother’s body until that time.
“A viable baby is a baby that no longer needs to live off of the physical body of its mother.”
By which you mean a baby that that has been weened? Or a baby past a wet-nurse? Or one you feed formula to keep your breasts pert? Your gynocentric arguments tied solely to womb are lacking the real reality of having and raising a child.
“For all practical purposes, they are the same person until the baby can survive outside the womb.” For all practical purposes if you ignore DNA, the purpose of the placenta (because the fetus is not “you”, its DNA is not “you”), and you ignore that the baby can’t survive outside of the womb without one whole lot of help from all involved for months and years. It isn’t “you”, it is dependent on you in the womb like it will be for years after that magical trip down six or seven inches of vagina. But after that magical trip, the “you” may be a lot of other people not “you”.
What the hell do you think breasts are for, to make that low-cut dress pleasing to males? They are there to continue the survival of that fetus, now baby, for months or years. This “it’s not in my uterus thus it’s independent” is just pure crap.
“And so, the baby is literally part of the mother’s body until that time” (Edit: that time being post vagina) If it were a kidney, liver, or lung, I’d give you that. It’s only part of your body because it’s in your body, it’s DNA isn’t yours (it’s why after that magical trip your daughter may not be a match for a kidney). You really have to distinguish what happens in your uterus from “you” when it comes to nascent life or life fulfilled by oxygen. The placenta is the barrier between you and that other “you” which isn’t “you”, because without it your body would kill that other you see as “you”.
Now if you’ve reproduced by parthenogenesis, hey, it’s all you…
“Look – by saying that life begins when the child emerges – is an untenable political position. Hell – it’s even untenable scientifically if you compare that delivered to child to the state it was in 24 hours prior to natural delivery.”
Preposterous!! Not only is it NOT untenable, but it has been the exact position of common law for over a thousand years.
Gordon,
“Preposterous!! Not only is it NOT untenable, but it has been the exact position of common law for over a thousand years.”
Should we look at what common law has considered tenable over the last thousand years? Let’s start with the age of consent…
I would also point out that it was only about 200 years ago or less that it was actually understood what “sperm” meant.
This stands ““Look – by saying that life begins when the child emerges – is an untenable political position. Hell – it’s even untenable scientifically if you compare that delivered to child to the state it was in 24 hours prior to natural delivery.”, because using common law in this circumstance is like maintaining Ptolemy’s circles are correct because they go back 2000 years. Our understanding has changed.
Life does not begin at conception. A sperm is alive, an egg is alive. Life has existed in a continuos unbroken chain, in some form, for eons.
When people say “life begins at conception,” I suspect that they means, “the cells are en-souled at conception.” Where “life begins” is a red herring. For me, where sentience begins is the pertinent question.
“For me, where sentience begins is the pertinent question.”
Cynically, I could say that question leaves a lot of 20 or 30 year olds hanging.
I’ve had a conversation with a sea cucumber, but it didn’t know Sartre. I forgave it for its lack, because it didn’t know whether it lived or existed.
Sentience is a genetic endowment. It doesn’t begin at some point you acknowledge or give your stamp, both being arbitrary.
Life is only continuous in that it has continued to exist. With all the extinctions, it isn’t an unbroken chain.
What leads from the first life on Earth to us is indeed a broken chain, or we wouldn’t be here. But it’s not a chain like you wrap around a gate to keep it closed, but rather like some sort of chain mail jewelry. The chain leading from the first life on Earth to Tyrannosaurus Rex broke when T-Rex went extinct, but the part of the jewelry leading to us was not broken.
“…is indeed an UNbroken chain, or…”
At I thought I got enough sleep this time.
SB,
“What leads from the first life on Earth to us is indeed a broken chain, or we wouldn’t be here. But it’s not a chain like you wrap around a gate to keep it closed, but rather like some sort of chain mail jewelry.” Exactly, and that’s what I wanted to read. It’s the breaks that allowed this “unbroken chain”. If Dinosauria hadn’t gone extinct, marsupials and mammals would be but a footnote in some Saurian book. (Saurian reference by way of the Series with “souffle girl”.)
You gave a nice analogy at to why the “Tree of Life” is a shrub not a tree.
There is a book i will have to look up the title that says dmt is found in our bodies at the 7th week of gestation. They say it is the soul entering the body. The sex of the baby is also determined at that time. I believe in choice but I also believe to make that choice as soon as you can.
I had an abortion because a condom broke and i stupidly assumed my sore boobs meant I was going to start my period. So I didn’t get the day after pill. Well a few days later no period and I knew I blew it. I went to the doctor before I would have noticed a missed period. When the lab results came back it said embryonic something or other but the fact was , it wasn’t even a fetus at that time.
The point of what I was going to say has departed my tired brain but I think people need to think about the consequences of having sex and have a basic idea on what they would want to do if said sex ends up in sperm and egg meeting. I knew. I knew as soon as the condom broke. And after that I made sure I was on the depo also. Back up…at least for pregnancy. I have 1 child and that abortion and I am 50. And I have had a lot of sex. Being responsible about sex isn’t that hard.
This is why I do not understand pro-lifers being anti birth control. That , to me, is the answer to the abortion problem. Prevent egg and sperm meeting. Just my 2 cents.
Where opposition to abortion really is about “the sanctity of life,” birth control will be promoted for the very simple reason that women who are not pregnant do not get abortions.
But for much of the “pro-life” crowd, an unwanted pregnancy isn’t a problem to be solved or even a life to be saved. No, they see an unwanted pregnancy as a fitting punishment for being a slut. And since both abortion and birth control allow a woman to be a slut without being punished, they are against both.
For the same reason they are against safe sex, HPV vaccines, and if anybody comes up with a cure for AIDS, they’ll be against that too.
Late term abortions are very rare, and in the vast majority of cases when they do occur, it’s because something has gone very, very wrong with the pregnancy, and mother or child or both are unlikely to survive.
As for the claim that late term abortions will lead to murder being legal, that’s similar to the claim that gay marriage would lead to the legalization of pedophilia. There are marked shades of difference between one and the other, and it’s apparent to most people.
Besides, most of us know quite early if we want to carry a pregnancy to term or not.
My standard on any of these questions, from abortion to prostitution is, if it’s my body, I make the rules.
Now this: “I’ve come to understand that the more control anyone (individually or collectively) is given over the lives of anyone else, the more often things go horribly wrong.”
Exactly. However, the nature of the world is that some things require coordinated effort. Much of life’s accomplishments are made possible by working with others. But how do we do that? The capitalist model has one, or a small number of bosses, and many being bossed. Socialism has many people working together in a structure fr a common goal. It’s easy for me to see which is preferable.
Ah but, define “rarely” in actual numbers? Not percentages but numbers.
Also – compare that statement to the following …
“The U.S. tortures … but very rarely”.
“Innocent people on death row are put to death – but very rarely.”
“Cops sometimes victimize sex workers – but very rarely.”
Except that all three of those statements are totally false, and the other is true.
The last one might be a bit false – the one concerning Cops – but the other two are perfectly correct.
We don’t have clear numbers differentiating after 20 weeks, but according to the CDC statistics I can find on wikipedia, out of ~840 000 abortions per year, ~11000 abortions happen after week 20. A late term abortion is defined, depending on who you’re asking, as either a post-24 weeks one or a post-28 weeks one, and on the rest of the chart abortion rates drop drastically after 12 weeks and keep dropping, so I estimate late term abortions to be quite a bit less than 11k per year. How much less, and how many of those are caused by unviable fetuses or intolerable health risks to the mother, I don’t know, because the CDC doesn’t release detailed data post-20 weeks, nor (to my knowledge) do they have a study on reasons for abortion at different fetal ages, and I don’t want to bother digging for statistics anyone in here might consider partisan. If I had to guess, and feel free to put very little to no value on my guesses, I’d guess that the vast majority of late term abortions have a medical reason, because I can’t imagine that after pregnancy hormones have had the time to do their number on the mother’s brain, the number of women who will abort without being constrained by rather nasty circumstances (health issues, inability to abort earlier, sudden change in life circumstances that make raising a child much more difficult than expected) is little more than statistical noise. This is part of why I wish the CDC had more data – unless we know why women are having abortions later in the pregnancy, we won’t know what, if anything, we can do to decrease the number of late-term abortions. One thing I can assure you, though, is that even the rabidest pro-choice activists agrees that it’s better to prevent a pregnancy than abort it, and better to abort it earlier than later, because even if you don’t think fetuses have any human rights until birth, there’s still a “simpler,cheaper, safer medical intervention better than a more complicated, expensive and risky one” factor at play.
Sorry for the wall-o-text. I keep forgetting how narrow text is in comment threads, and how hard to read a reasonably-sized paragraph becomes in such conditions.
comixchik,
The problem with this “My standard on any of these questions, from abortion to prostitution is, if it’s my body, I make the rules” is that at some point it isn’t just your body. What we are arguing about with viability is when is it also someone else’s body. I’m sorry only one sex gestates, but that’s what two sexes means.
In fact even from onset it isn’t just the body of the sex that gestates, it isn’t “you”, “it” has a separate and unique DNA. “It’s” actually two bodies: made of one that carries, the other goes to Taco Bell at 0200. And pays if the first body is unhappy with the other.
At some point we have to recognize that we quibble over the point where one says “post my body” is the only salient issue while the other says “post my body” has the same issues of dependence.
“The capitalist model has one, or a small number of bosses, and many being bossed. Socialism has many people working together in a structure fr (sic) a common goal. It’s easy for me to see which is preferable.” The problem here is that your first sentence is reality, your second is idealism. In reality, both systems end in the same structure. One just acts like it doesn’t and thinks itself better for the act.
No, socialism doesn’t end the hierarchy, it’s evident in all “social democracies” as well the execrable Communist countries. In the latter it’s really bad in both hierarchy and “rule of gun”; in the former it’s as much by “rule of gun” as in capitalist countries.
Comixchik:”Socialism has many people working together in a structure fr a common goal. It’s easy for me to see which is preferable.”
Socialism is a death cult that has so far murdered 150 million+ people–assuming you don’t count Hitler/fascism as the bastard child of socialism (which I do–Musolini who coined the word fascism was formerly Italian marxisms golden boy). You might take that as “working together in a structure fr a common goal” I’ll take my chances with my boss–if he gets too difficult I can tell him where to stick his job and leave. Try that in the Lubianka/Auschwitz. Bring in socialism and you will no need to worry about abortion.
And as for (so far–excluding Afghan and Iraqi civillians) non murdering socialist types in –say– the UK’s labour party–I can tell you from experience that 99% of them could not find their backsides with their hands and the 1% who can are venal, lying, self-serving scumbags.
Political leaders murder people all the time, with abandon. They do it for more power. or to concentrate power, not in the interest of fairness or socialism.
“the UK’s labour party–I can tell you from experience that 99% of them could not find their backsides with their hands and the 1% who can are venal, lying, self-serving scumbags.”
99% of all politicians are such, and it’s probably higher among the tories.
Exactly, it’s why socialism is no better than capitalism. One can pragmatically co-opt the ideas of the other. I’ll leave you to guess which one does.
A few observations…
If abortion were made illegal (again), the police would HAVE to interrogate every woman who had a miscarriage as well. This isn’t totalitarian; if a dead body is found the police are required to treat it as a homicide, no matter what the circumstances, until it’s proven that no foul play was involved.
The Puritans’ view on abortion were that it was acceptable until the child had ‘quickened’ (begun moving in the womb). Oddly enough, that’s also about the time when it’s (barely) medically possible to keep a fetus alive outside the womb. That limit would seem to be the most reasonable for abortion in most cases (there are, as always, extenuating circumstances).
And the Catholic Church (or rather, a Catholic hospital) has successfully argued in court that a fetus is NOT a human being. Hey, dogma is fine; but the hospital was being sued for wrongful deaths. When money comes in, the dogma is chased outside…
Except that it never used to happen prior to 1973, when the miscarriage rate was much higher than it is today. This whole abomination of treating women like criminals is the natural consequence of neofeminism, and was only just getting started in a few benighted places when I had my miscarriage. Look at the numbers; only 413 cases in 32 years, but 250 cases in 7. That’s a 176% increase. So though the police would claim they “had to”, it’s no more true than their claims that they “have to” smash down people’s doors at 4:00 AM or murder dogs, children and old women for “officer safety”. If people really wanted to end the loss of “innocent lives” they would be lobbying for the police to be banned, not abortion.
Back in the dark ages (err… the 1970s and before) abortion was a different issue, socially. But it’s not (strictly speaking) a question of treating women as criminals. If the police find an elderly person, dead in their home, without any immediate sign of foul play…they still have to investigate. Now, there isn’t as much pressure; 99.99% of the time it’s natural causes, and everyone knows it. But, every now and then…it isn’t. By the same token, back in those dark ages if a doctor was seeing to the case, the police would simply wait and see if the doctor reported anything wrong. If not, then no crime, personal tragedy, move along.
Things are different now. There would be forms to be filed, doctor’s statements and records to include, and a (usually) perfunctory investigation. Without those forms on file, the police would be open to charges of ‘covering up’ possible crimes. This would make officials look bad, which must be avoided at all costs.
And I really don’t wish to return to a 17th Century standard of self-policing.
It’s not clear whether the miscarriage rate is higher or lower. Miscarriage are far more common to diagnose now (my sister says those “three days earlier” pregnancy tests are a mixed blessing). The only thing science has shown us that it is more common than we thought. And one of the things I discovered when my wife had one (twins at 6; I can’t imagine what you went through at 22 wks; my sympathies) was that no one talks about this. If you work out the stats, just about every woman who’s reached 40 has had one. But you wouldn’t know it to listen to pro-life pols.
Thank you. As I said in the text, it still bothers me. A lot.
I want to add my sympathies to HAL’s. I will probably not want to make any comment on abortion, abortion law, or the place of government in the abortion issue. But it was a harsh thing you went through, and I’m sorry you had to go through it.
1973 is over and we are not in Mayberry anymore. If abortion after some gest age is made illegal again, investigating miscarriages would become the main thing police do.
To be fair, we never were in Mayberry. It’s a fictional town, like Smallville.
Maggie, I did the hyperbole by “abort babies because it’s safer” and you do “If people really wanted to end the loss of “innocent lives” they would be lobbying for the police to be banned, not abortion”. Both are absurd, please.
The pivot on yours is “innocent life” as mine with “safe”. If viability is accepted as the beginning of human life, or at least the point we should acknowledge it, then all life aborted after that is “innocent life” even if that life threatens the life of the mother.
The “miscarriage must be investigated” is absurd, even sick, as you pointed out. It wasn’t done before Roe and wouldn’t be done post-Roe. My wife and I lost one child between the 2nd and 3rd (died in the womb). It’s a painful and private tragedy, which both man and woman face however differently but mourn equally, that the government should stay well away. It’s none of it’s business. Whatsoever.
I’m so very sorry for your loss.
Thanks so much Maggie for this piece, and your reconsiderations on the abortion issue! I appreciated reading it and I’m honoured to have had some role in your change of mind.
To help respond to some of the comments, late abortions are a distraction from the issue, since most happen early, 62% before 9 weeks in fact (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html). After 20 weeks, they are all for serious health/life reasons or uniquely compelling social circumstances. Compassion, not judgment is needed, and certainly not criminal laws. The small numbers of late abortions are mostly not preventable, because they are the result of changed or dire circumstances, primarily serious fetal abnormalities. Those that are preventable are better addressed through easier access, less stigma, and more education. Eg, sometimes women delay because they’re afraid to talk to anyone, don’t know their rights or where to turn, or are in denial about the pregnancy.
The notion that women could be changing their minds and having abortions right up to the moment of birth is really a misognyist assumption, and shows a lot of distrust and disrespect for women. Women don’t request abortions that late without good reasons, and even if the occasional hypothetical “empty-headed and irresponsible” woman did so, she would not be able to find an abortion provider to help her – unless she was living in a country where abortion is illegal because then some unscrupulous and unqualified person would be there to make a buck off her, and probably injure or kill her in the process.
It’s highly ironic in fact, that anti-abortion people complain about the dangers of unregulated abortion, or the “harms” of abortion to women, when that is exactly the situation they want to return women to by banning or restricting abortion. It only goes underground and creates a black market, or leads women to try and self-abort with no medical supervision. The best analogy is to Prohibition, and the multiple harms that caused to society and those who drank. You can’t use criminal laws to stop a social behaviour that a significant percentage of the population insists on doing, without turning millions of average people into criminals and creating a public health disaster. (Also, it can’t be compared to murder, because murder is relatively rare and everyone is against it – unlike abortion, alcohol, drugs, and prostitution.)
“Misogynist”? How many stories of live infants thrown into the trash or smothered do you need before you can recognize that women can be as cold-hearted as any mere man. Most abortions will always be performed early to avoid a swollen belly and other symptoms, but since “choice” is all that matters, how can there be a moral objection to an abortion at any stage?
Yes, you are right. But it is still immoral to use the might of government to force your will on some woman’s body. Do not forget that EVERY law passed in the United States has that unspoken clause at the end, “Or else we’ll kill you.”
joycearthur,
First, drop anti-abortion from your lexicon, it’s no different than using pro-abortion, and just as biased. Both are outliers where “at any cost” applies.
Second, really understand that pro-life isn’t necessarily anti-choice: it is about looking at the choices with all their ramifications and the best fit for all involved, and a weighted fit. Abortions have their place, and we argue here about the what and the when.
Third, “For serious health/life reasons or uniquely compelling social circumstances.” Those are weasel words. They say nothing other than abortion is always justified. And makes your “after 20 weeks” meaningless drivel (after 20 weeks was justified because I won’t get my PhD, or my MA, or my BSE, or my HS Diploma or my mother will speak badly of me, or it will just be plain hard to make my car payments, or my boyfriend will find someone else).
Fourth, “The notion that women could be changing their minds and having abortions right up to the moment of birth is really a misognyist assumption, and shows a lot of distrust and disrespect for women. Women don’t request abortions that late without good reasons”. Oh, please, women aren’t some superior sex any more than the male. “Good reasons”, yeah every human being does everything for good reasons because we can come up with all sorts of good reasons to justify what we do, and regret it later if we have a conscience. Women are just as bad as men, pointing it out on one particular subject isn’t misogynist, even if you deem it a women’s only subject. The misogynist label is like racism, so easily done and so self-satisfying. You did the “all” rather than the “some”, which just makes you the other side of misogynist (would that be ubergynist? Progynist is taken).
Fifth, “It’s highly ironic in fact, that anti-abortion people complain about the dangers of unregulated abortion, or the “harms” of abortion to women, when that is exactly the situation they want to return women to by banning or restricting abortion.” No, banning would be, restricting wouldn’t be unless restricting equaled “ban”. Restricting abortion to not aborting by sex wouldn’t “harm” women, unless it ignores some “uniquely compelling social circumstances” (which is why females are aborted much more often than males globally, it’s that “uniquely compelling social circumstances” issue). “Harm” is problematic without strict definition.
Sixth, Prohibition of anything the good public wants is problematic. But from there you go so muddled. “Murder” is an act of taking life that isn’t sanctioned by society (this encompasses self-defense and abortion, both are killing but neither murder). This “Also, it can’t be compared to murder, because murder is relatively rare and everyone is against it” falls into Asimov’s dictum of creationist 2nd Law Thermodynamics: something best left in kindergarten because it only rises to the level of kindergarten reasoning. No, neither drinking, drugs , nor prostitution, can be compared to murder. There’s a simple reason, because the acts themselves aren’t based on taking a life, no more than farting, however annoying that may be to others.
Seventh, “The best analogy is to Prohibition, and the multiple harms that caused to society and those who drank.” The problem with the analogy is that Prohibition actually did lead to less individual alcohol-violence, by far so less harm there, but a whole hell of a lot of organized crime and government violence (including the government killing of thousands by secretly varying the composition of denatured alcohol to thwart boot-leg chemists; the thousands that died weren’t “innocents” of course because they drank that alcohol, innocent in 1915 but criminal post 1919). Mixed bag, but I would agree that overall Prohibition was a net negative, like all prohibitions it simply traded one problem for another. Did make the Temperance League happy, just like MADD is being made happy today.
Maggie,
I was, like you, at one time an advocate of “viability” limits on abortion. It seemed reasonable and it looked like a non-controversial idea – aside from a few fanatics (as I looked on them at the time).
There were two instances that brought me to question my original position, both of them involving anencephaly and one of which is still available here. The other, which I have not archived and which I can’t conjure up enough data to isolate by a google search, was a woman who first told of her desparate attempt to find some means of mitigating the defect – which, of course, does not exist – and then her desparate quest to find someone who could spare her the horrors of carrying a child to term only to face the travails of laboring to give birth to a dead baby. IIRC, Dr. Tiller was her abortion provider as her state and all adjoining ones had shut down any closer alternatives.
It was not just the emotional impact of their stories that moved me, but a realization, on my part, that however reasonable I thought the standard was, I was still substituting my judgement and advocating the imposition of government force (by proxy) to enforce my judgement on those closest to the problem, on whom it would have the most impact, and against their judgement of what would be best for them in those circumstances. They would have to live with the consequences of those decisions, not me, and so for me to employ a gun to force acquiesence to MY judgement, rather than leaving them to abide by their own judgement was a moral over-reach on my part and an advocacy of using gov’t force to violate their rights. And so my position had to change.
As I further considered the issue, it became obvious to me that by advocating an external control on a biological process within her body, I was denigrating her right as an individual to control her body, however reasonable I may have thought those constraints to be. And as such, I was substituting my judgement for hers – which is an intolerable state of affairs if one holds to the principle of individual autonomy. At that point I realized that a woman’s choice in this regard must be absolute and that the right of the individual baby becomes active only when they are separate from the mother.
To do otherwise is to attempt to “balance” fetal “rights” with maternal rights which is to take the basic question of life or death out of the hands of the woman and hand it to a coercive 3rd party. Which leads to instances like the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland or the death of the 16 yr old girl in the Dominican Republic.
Contrast that with the outcome of the pregnancy of Jenni Lake who forwent chemotherapy in order to give birth to her son and died 12 days afterwards. No coercive 3rd parties were involved even though she was a minor. And whether she chose to bring the baby to term or to abort it and fight for her own life the choice would have been moral either way. Because it was her choice to make. In the most meaningful sense of the concept.
And, concretely, that is the choice in the real world. We can have coercive third parties depriving young women of their lives as in the first two cases, or we can have young women making the most fundamental choices of their own free will and abiding the consequences. Personally, I’ll take the second option. And that is why I’m an absolutist on a woman’s right to choose.
c andrew,
G*d (for my Jewish friends), how could you be more all over the board on this. I begin..
One: anencephaly has an incidence of roughly 3 per 10000. Anencephaly has special emotional import to me because it was the only time I saw my bio-mother cry, no sob, as a nurse. She was “interning” and her first charge was “A beautiful, perfect baby with nothing in his eyes” (I still remember these words from 1969, I shouldn’t have asked as it was a long night because I did). Abortion is reasonable for anencephaly, at whatever time that congenital deformity can be determined, It’s truly horrific; there is no person there, no chance of a person being there. But anencephaly is still outlier, and no reason to embrace abortion across the board for “any reason”.
Two: I come from a weird family of Baptists, Southern Baptists, Catholic, and Mormon. Most all were pragmatic about sex, the Catholic and Mormon side most pragmatic, even my Baptist great-grandparents were (it left me with no hang-ups about masturbation, fellatio, or cunnaligus; prostitution not so much, but I’m talking about people born in the 1890s, 1910s, and 1930s, with the impact on me by that order yet think about their liberalism/pragmatism on sex and the times they grew up in, amazingly weird family). I came from a strong pro-abortion (pro-choice came later when euphemism was necessary) or “live-and-let-live” abortion family, and I was strongly pro-abortion, then pro-choice, well into the early 1990’s. I parroted it’s “only a woman’s body, it’s only her choice”. But, like you, I started to examine those beliefs, but came to a different conclusion. I’m still not anti-abortion but I see more than “it’s only a woman’s body” so I call my view pro-life and I counsel accordingly. I’ve told my oldest daughter that I would support her on any decision she makes, but that any decision she makes should be well thought out taking into account how she may feel years after, and she is more than capable of weighing that nagging doubt. I did give her four choices versus the three I’ve written earlier (the forth raises hackles with the “it’s only the woman” crowd): abort, adopt, keep, or give. All have ramifications, the latter two include life-of-child responsibilities (women really being the worst in child-support, don’t make excuses, please, infantilizing is not acceptable when talking adults).
Three: “At that point I realized that a woman’s choice in this regard must be absolute and that the right of the individual baby becomes active only when they are separate from the mother.” So, when is a baby separate from the mother other than severing the umbilicus? Because of technology, because of oxygen? I wasn’t breast fed, my mother didn’t make milk, and if it weren’t for early 1950’s formula I would have died, let me repeat that I would have died, without a wet-nurse and that wasn’t a choice for a poor girl, married or not, in the 1950s. I would have died. This whole argument that a baby (or any magical word you need pre-partum) is independent because the umbilicus is severed is so ignorant, willfully ignorant, that I want to scream. I have three children, I have so many more reasons to scream that I don’t need your willful ignorance to add to it. To maintain that baby is “independent” post-partum is a narcissistic gynocentric view of reproduction. That you’re male has no relevance.
I’ll quit here, if only out of disgust. Sorry to be harsh but it’s all I’m left to be.
I won’t get too into it, but this will be a rare point of disagreement between us.
One issue I will note: I don’t think the example of Canada is that informative. They have better health than us, but it’s not because of socialized medicine. They have better crime, but it’s not because of gun control and speech codes. Their overall abortion rate is half of ours. I don’t think that’s because of the law. It’s because of a different culture, one not engaging in a hysterical pretense that sex should not exist until you’re married.
You’re not doing too bad, young chrone. 🙂
I’m glad to know we disagree about some things; disagreement is the fuel of rational consideration. When everyone agrees on a subjective question, it tends to lead to groupthink, stagnation, tyranny or all three.
If you want people to disagree with you, stop being so brilliant, cogent and eloquent.
But if everybody agreed with me to start with, there would be no need for my brilliance, cogency and eloquence. 😉
Wall to wall interludes. It’d be great.
Hal 10000,
Yeah, Canada has better health than us. To buttress your point: I had a possible torn rotator cuff, it was confirmed one week later by MRI (only because I didn’t accept the appointment for 3 days later), surgery about 2 weeks after that. In Canada, that would have been about 2 months or more, upwards to 3-6 months because they don’t have as many diagnostics tools per 100,000 that we do.
These comparisons miss so many other salient factors. BTW, before Canada loosened the restrictions of choice, Canadians that could afford it came down to the US to get those MRIs.
“It’s because of a different culture, one not engaging in a hysterical pretense that sex should not exist until you’re married.” Maybe Canada has changed, but my short visit to Western Canada in the 1970s gave me a “wow, the 1950s still exist”. An off-shoot of that is the Robin Sparkles/Daggers theme on “How I Met Your Mother”. They really were more polite.
They did have bars on their ships, so that’s a plus.
{nitpick}
Canada doesn’t have socialized medicine. They have single-payer health insurance (like Medicare). Socialized medicine (like the VA) is what England has.
I think this is the single best post I’ve read here, at least among those not about whoring. One of the most important qualities in the rational mind is the ability to detect and acknowledge your own errors, without external or internal dissembling. That is staggeringly difficult, but you’ve done excellently. You’re stepping in a fire pit, of course; I’m quite sure you know it; and that makes it all the more impressive that you’re willing to publicly change your mind. Linking to your own public statement of the opinion you’re updating was a great touch, too.
I would like to think I would applaud this even if I didn’t agree with your new position. I almost wish I didn’t, so that the applause would carry more weight. I will say I hold it for entirely different reasons, but I do think yours are more logical. Am I interpreting you correctly, to think that you still morally disapprove of mid-to-late term abortions; but that you consider the cost in liberty and suffering of trying to prevent it to be too great, and that this is the primary cause of your change of mind?
If so, it reminds me of this, which while not about abortion, does apply to the sort of argument you seem to be making:
‘Saying “People who buy dangerous products deserve to get hurt!” is not tough-minded. It is a way of refusing to live in an unfair universe. Real tough-mindedness is saying, “Yes, sulfuric acid is a horrible painful death, and no, that mother of 5 children didn’t deserve it, but we’re going to keep the shops open anyway because we did this cost-benefit calculation.”‘
It’s from Eliezer Yudkowsky’s essay “Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided.” It deserves reading in full. Google will find it, though I’ve noticed links get comments eaten so I won’t link it. I consider the position correct, but applied vanishingly rarely; I’m impressed to see it here.
In closing: go forth, argue, and *update*.
Oh yes, I know. But I take that word “honest” in my blog title very, very seriously, and I believe that full disclosure of things like this will help scoffers to recognize that I really am committed to full honesty, even when it hurts.
Exactly. My moral viewpoint hasn’t changed, but I don’t have the right to inflict my moral views on other people, and neither does anyone else…especially not at gunpoint.
No, the position of real tough-mindedness is taken quite often. The group that Eliezer refers to as saying “people who buy dangerous products deserve to get hurt” are libertarians.
I may disagree with libertarians a lot but even I think that’s a ridiculous straw man argument.
People do in fact, frame polices in terms of cost-benefit calculations, though they are usually less blunt about it.
For the record, Eliezer runs lesswrong.com, the website the essay. There are some very parallels between that community and objectivism.
“The group that Eliezer refers to as saying “people who buy dangerous products deserve to get hurt” are libertarians.”
He may be saying that, but that isn’t what libertarians mean. There’s an ethic involved. The seller that offers a dangerous product will be found out and will lose in the marketplace. Some buyers will suffer, but others will become educated.
So you are right, it’s a blatant straw man.
Just to add, if anything is good about “objectivism” it’s giving value for value. If you think or know you’re cheating the other for advantage, you aren’t giving value for value. You’re a schmuck.
Some few parallels, and many major divergences. For one, LW is mostly about methods, not so much about conclusions. LW is far more evidence-based – the founder doesn’t, say, think that relativity and quantum mechanics are wrong. Multiple entries critical of the founder, LW’s other officers, and the foundation itself, are high reputation on the site itself, and have not caused schism.
Three Worlds Collide, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Luminosity, and even Friendship is Optimal are all way better than Atlas Shrugged (I haven’t read the Fountainhead).
… and sheesh, Ariel. You’d think Yudkowsky wasn’t most sympathetic to libertarian out of all the available options.
Very eloquently put. When you combine it with the knowledge that the “Christian” justification for outlawing abortion has NO BIBLICAL BASIS and is completely based on the “Christian” bigots’ need to control women and NO OTHER MOTIVE, it makes a dramatic and momentous argument.
You know with a few words changed, you’d be in a Kingdom Hall. You might read Hoffer’s “True Believer” for insight.
“No Biblical Basis”, good luck on that one. The biblical basis is far beyond the phrase “abortion isn’t allowed”. But I will give you that if someone beats a woman until she aborts, he only pays a fine. In that circumstance, it agrees with you that it isn’t murder. You should enlighten our legislators given you give so much worth to the literal word of the Bible.
As for ““Christian” bigots’ need to control women and NO OTHER MOTIVE”, that’s so 19th Century atheism, 20th Century gender feminism, and just so unthinking in any century that my mind boggles. Let’s make a simple phrase and claim it’s truth, with Caps to make it undeniable. Let’s ignore all the interplay.
Now, if you had written 21st Century Islam…
Really, it’s just not that simple unless you are that simple. Even Patriarchy had its matriarchy (I really love and identify with my great-grandmother, she had more impact and direction on me than any male). I love pithy phrases, now called sound bites, but only if they make real sense and really describe. I’ll leave that to H.L. Mencken, Mark Twain, Will Rodgers, Groucho, Lenny Bruce, and Frank Zappa. But not you. Sorry, but not you.
One thing about taking lessons from Canada, though. While it appears to be very similar in many ways to the US, it has a wildly different demographic makeup, and they seem to not have a large, permanent, almost ungovernable underclass, for whatever reason. As a result, policies that work well there – minimal government oversight, public medical care, even transit systems that work on the honor system for paying – would likely not work down here. In a real sense, the American situation is somewhat poisoned by our more difficult demographic issues.
Also, while I saw lots of cultural diversity when I was there a few years ago, this diversity seemed a lot less dysfunctional; and their immigration program deliberately selects for those with skills or talent, and those who are more easily integrated, and excludes others.
These issues may seem irrelevant, but they’re not. In effect, Canada has a more easily governable population, one in which self-restraint is a more respected virtue. This is also true to greater and lesser degrees of the American middle classes; but not of the almost permanent underclass we have.
It’s this segment that’s usually the (failed) target of law-and-order types, and it’s this segment that Canada doesn’t have to deal with.
Isn’t there a feedback effect in the existence of the underclass? When you try to exclude a group from society (ethnic minority, people who perform necessary functions no one wants to think about – people dealing with the dead come to mind, as well as sex workers), they learn they cannot trust the government, because it is a major factor of their exclusion. So they resist it at every turn. This makes them “ungovernable” (at least for that government). More exclusion only makes things worse, but even positive steps are viewed with suspicion, because past experience matters very much in perception.
Wouldn’t you agree that a child with absurdly strict parents is more likely to be described as rebellious as one with parents who understand they cannot totally control their child? On the other hand, once the child rejects authority because of their parents, they’re likely to see any authority as illegitimate, while the child of reasonable parents is more likely to make the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate authority.
I’ve been struggling with that distinction my whole life. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the only authority I can accept as “legitimate” is that to which I choose to submit of my own free will; all others are illegitimate, including untrustworthy deputies of a trusted authority.
“I came to the conclusion that the only authority I can accept as “legitimate” is that to which I choose to submit of my own free will; all others are illegitimate, including untrustworthy deputies of a trusted authority.”
Maybe that has a touch of what some would call narcissism, but that’s my take too. I would write that no authority is actually a “trusted authority” without verification daily. A phrase and a word: Lord Acton and immunity.
Governments so like immunity, and so follow Lord Acton. That our government wrapped itself so quickly in sovereign immunity is so telling. A King can do no wrong after all so why did we rebel against George the Third?
Take a look at this. Pay particular attention to about four minutes in, but please do watch the whole ten minutes and some seconds. “Michael Moore” is a cuss word for many conservatives, but he knocks down one common liberal trope.
The only problem with your argument is that whole other groups have learned that they can’t trust the government either. If you’re a civil libertarian, which has no ethnic, race, or even socioeconomic classification, you don’t trust government. I get your point, but exclusion isn’t just the groups you’ve given.
I don’t like nor except the “child” analogy. Absurdly strict parents can create an authoritarian child, a rebellious child (rebelling against their ridiculous strictness when viewing the world), or a middle-of-the-road child. Permissive parents can create an authoritarian child (rebelling against their permissiveness which lacks structure), a rebellious child (no structure so no rules), and a middle-of-road child.
I have three children, guess where each fall. (Hint: I’ve given three categories to describe where children go.)
Gorbachev,
I just looked up the demographics of Canada. The country is frigging, frigging white European, just like Australia and New Zealand. It’s 90% white European in 2006. The USA hasn’t been that for decades. Like Australia (roughly 23 million) and New Zealand (4.5 million), Canada’s population (33.5 million) is a nothing which is why it’s mostly European white. The USA is the third most in population after China and India, and it’s not because all those Wasps or White Catholics played bunny time. There is no comparison in diversity with Canada, because Canada has no diversity in comparison to the USA.
I went through this with an Australian that went on and on about their diversity versus America, when Australia was +90% white European, like the US in roughly 1960-1970. White liberal fantasy, not that liberal is bad, but white liberal fantasy is really bad. So is black, yellow, red, purple, or taupe.
This diversity fantasy of the other colonies is just that: a fantasy. Yeah, they aren’t dysfunctional because they are essentially homogenous. Wait until they reach our diversity. I neglect the cultural differences, eh, which may be a larger predictor of dysfunction. But until they aren’t 90% European white, eh, we can’t be sure that culture is the problem.
This comparison of diversity is a real joke. Canadians are, however, more polite. And they like doughnuts. Eh?
As an aside, if you moved all Canadians out of Canada, and moved all American Blacks to Canada, the population of Canada would increase by roughly 22%. If you moved all non-whites from America to Canada, under the same condition, the population of Canada would more than triple. Not much point other than Canada isn’t diverse by American standards. (You can certainly do the reverse math, eh.)
I love the white liberalism of the British Commonwealth because it so has no perspective.
[…] pregnancy and birth control choices are matters of Grave Concern to the State, and that her miscarriages and motivations for engaging in sex are subject to criminal investigation and violent […]
I’m chiming in late here, but reading the comments I have two points to make. First, the definition of ‘viability’. I don’t presume to know how everybody was using it, but I understand the word to mean (in the context of pregnancy) the point at which the mother could theoretically birth the child and hand it over to somebody else. That’s a good deal earlier than 40 weeks, but it’s much later than 8, 12, even 20 weeks. To be viable a foetus needs to have functioning organs, nerves, and bones.
Second, the idea that some women would choose to have late term abortions, even while in labor, is misleading. Sure, they exist. They are the same women who, in the current legal climate, kill their babies. They are horrible people, and thankfully not that common, but I contend that a woman who is willing to have her child aborted at 39 weeks (with all the added risk that entails compared to an earlier abortion) is probably determined enough to simply kill the child once she gets home from the hospital. I highly doubt the life of any child is saved by the current legal position, but the lives of those women who legitimately need a late term abortion are harmed.
(Disclaimer – I had an chemical abortion at 8 weeks, due to failed contraception. I don’t like the idea of late term abortion, because I don’t think it takes that long to notice when one is pregnant, nor to decide whether or not to abort…but that doesn’t mean I support legally curtailing people’s rights.)
P.S. Also on the DNA thing? Most of the cells in our body don’t contain our DNA, they are microbes. The reason I consider them ‘me’ is because they can’t exist outside my body.