The abortion one

B from Tiny Cat Pants suggested I post this here as well. Here ya go.

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This topic has come up repeatedly here (as other places) so I imagine some people are impatient having to explain what they feel is a basic right. Imagine having to explain to people over and over again why you should be able to have whatever religious beliefs you wanted, when others constantly said “but if we let you believe that you’ll go to hell!”… what I mean is that the position you are advocating is something that is very well understood by many of those (here at least) who disagree with it. Some are patient about it, others just very frustrated, especially given the current trend in abortion politics.

Having said all that, if you are sincerely interested in understanding the line of thinking (which I believe you are based on what you said), I’ll do my best to paraphrase it.

I guess the logic runs like this:

1) The analysis will make more sense if you start with and hold firm the following concern: throughout history women have been viewed as property; of their fathers, their husbands. Women were traded for family alliances. Women couldn’t vote. Women could be raped with impunity by their husbands. Even today is some cultures, besides the whole genital mutilation thing, if a woman is sexually active, even in some cases where she is raped, she may be killed by her “tribe” for bringing disgrace. Not the man (even the rapist). The woman. Who belongs, especially her body/sexuality, to the community.

You may be saying “yes yes I know, but what in the world does this have to do with the life of the baby?” But if you neglect this past you’ll never grasp the context in which abortion rights are seen. Simply put, it’s this: When it comes to women, especially women’s sexual and reproductive rights, men have throughout history and across cultures presumed that they needed to control it, in part because they were wiser protectors better qualified than the women themselves to make decisions. And thus, a woman’s body never belongs to herself as fully as a man’s belongs to himself. And not feeling secure in your own body makes you respond to even well-intentioned concern with a “make all the suggestions you want but keep your hands off my body.”

Okay, now to your points, because they are valid, they just need context to address:

2) Life. Yes, a fetus/undelivered baby is alive. But lots of things are - butterflies, sunflowers. I expect you’d ask, “well sure but they aren’t alive AND human” … that’s more to the point. The question is a fetus/undelivered baby alive AND human. This is what some of the responses above were addressing. There are two answers, each of which are consistent with a pro-choice position, but get there different ways.

A) The fetus/unborn is alive, and human, but not fully so. Either it’s not fully alive (not viable, etc) or not fully human (a small clump of cells, not implanted, shrimplike, etc). The line of this thinking is that, to the extent that the fetus/unborn is less than a full born human baby, any conflict of rights between it and the woman carrying it will benefit the woman. I imagine you can fill in the blanks in this line of argument. I’d only point out the strength and the weakness of this position. The strength is that if at the moment of conception a fetus/unborn is fully alive and human (with all rights etc) then it raises tricky issues - for example, fertilized eggs for IVF that are not implanted can be viewed as murder (full human life stopped), etc. So the strength is that, for most people, there is some qualitative difference between an eggs 2 seconds after fertilization and a toddler. The weakness though is that a fetus/unborn baby 2 seconds before birth seems for all intents and purposes to be just as alive and human as it is 4 seconds later. So there seems very little qualitative difference between fetus/unborn and toddler as pregnancy approaches 9 months.

I think for most people, strengths of the “it’s a mass of cells” and the “it’s a baby” arguments lead to the compromise we have in law: that at first it’s almost all the woman, and by the end it’s almost 50/50 woman and baby, and so as the pregnancy progresses, the fetus/unborn gets more rights relative to the woman.

B) The second argument (which I find persuasive) avoids the whole cells/full human argument, and brings in the history of women as property. It goes like this: Even if for argument you assume a fetus is 100% alive full human with all rights from the moment of conception, the question remains whether that human has the *legal* right to take from a woman’s body. As in, if the child had already been born, and needed a bone marrow transplant to survive, could the government compel the mother (or father) to undergo a bone marrow donation to save the child’s life? I may not be able to express the point I want here, but it is something like this: we say “it’s a child’s life”, and even if in many circumstances that is debatable (as described above), there is a huge step from saying that a woman saves a child’s life by carrying a pregnancy to delivery, and saying that the government can compel a woman against her will to give her body to save someone else, at risk to her own health (which pregnancy always is).

Here’s where the history recap at the top comes in: a woman is perfectly capable of making a moral decision about life and death, and women tend to be just about as anti-abortion as men are. They are stereotyped as having a greater emotional connection to the baby; they carry it inside them. She would seem to be well positioned to understand what is at stake. But if a woman decides she wants her body to be free of the demands of another life (whether fully human, fully alive, or not), do men allow her to have that freedom that men always have, or do they say that the woman’s body belongs to the fetus/unborn, or to the husband, or society, etc? Or does the woman’s body belong to herself, and thus the moral question about whether to risk her health to keep the fetus/unborn alive rests with her?

I think there is a sense that as some feel that the government needs to step in to make the decision (as the last Supreme Court ruling effectively said ‘to save women from making mistakes they might later regret’), that again men are assuming that women are not capable of being responsible with their bodies, and thus someone else needs to step in and take ownership of their bodies and choices. This may also explain the “hey you’re a man, butt out” responses you will often get; it can be interpreted rather like a man who looks over the shoulder of a woman doing household repairs - implying she isn’t capable of taking care of these things without your help.

And this discussion about miscarriages is a case of that; women just trying to live their lives, but finding that men/society are saying that women owe them an accounting of how their bodies are working: the women do not own their bodies, but are allowed to have them by society, on the condition they report back on their use.

Some of that is of course hyperbole, but if you are really interested in understanding where people are coming from, I think that is where people are coming from. Of course most parents would give bone marrow to save their children, and most expectant mothers and fathers think of their unborn babies as babies, and would not want to lose that life. It’s more often the men who run off and leave single mothers. Given how disproportionately the burden of children falls on women, I understand why many feel that they don’t owe anyone else an explanation or obedience for how they use their bodies, and why if they feel they cannot or do not want to carry a pregnancy to delivery, other people should trust them with that difficult decision.

This is where bridgett’s point comes in, and I think it is a key one: that people (and men especially) who feel that they wish women would make different decisions, could best put that energy to use making the burdens of children less. For example, making it easier for women to have children and keep their jobs, better health care (especially prenatal care), etc etc. Point being, that if it is about valuing life and not bossing women around, then trust women, ask them what they need to carry life, and try to give it to them.

That’s what I believe, and I think many (not all) people here believe. Wanted to give you a real chance to understand. And thanks for asking and reading.