We’ve All Been There, Right?

I just attended a demonstration in London to mark the 40th anniversary of the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act, which made abortion legal in the UK. While there, the following genuine question occurred to me, as I’ve never seen the issue addressed in these terms. As most of the people I know are against abortion, I don’t have anyone to help me answer it, so I’m hoping that people reading this can.

Everyone involved in the debate, on either side, was a foetus once. So, if you are someone who believes that abortion should be solely a woman’s free choice, would you have supported your mother’s right to terminate you?

If yes, isn’t that a scary thought?

If no, isn’t your position inconsistent?

Thanks to anyone who can help me here. Let’s keep it civil, people.

42 thoughts on “We’ve All Been There, Right?

  1. Clearly an aborted foetus isn’t going to browse to your blog and be able to answer the question, making it a weird one to ask. I don’t know what you’re hoping to learn from this exercise.

    Anyway, I suppose I’ll go with yes. My parents could have simply have never had sex in the first place, let alone an abortion, and the result would be the same; I wouldn’t be here, giving a crap one way or the other about abortion.

    I don’t see why this should be scary. We can fill our lives with “What if x happened before I was born”, but it’s a complete exercise in futility. What if my mother was hit while a bus by pregnant? It could have happened. Obviously it didn’t. I’m not going to go and argue about the merits of buses based on the sole fact that one could have killed me before I was born.

    To me this just highlights the two distinct viewpoints about abortion: You’re looking at it from the foetus perspective, while most pro-choice folks look at it from the mother’s point of view.

  2. would you have supported your mother’s right to terminate you?

    The trickiness of this question lies in the fact that you refer to yourself at two different moments: once as an adult person and once as a foetus.

    As an adult you obviously wouldn’t want to be terminated (AKA killed). But when you imagine yourself being the foetus you were, without memories, without rational thought or self-awareness, barely with any consciousness at all, you might conclude that there wasn’t much who could have minded. Of course that being (you as a foetus) couldn’t have supported its own mother, either.

    The answer should thus be neither a “yes” nor a “no” but rather the qualification that the question is inconsistent in itself.

  3. Gerv, I agree with Ben’s and Simon’s answers and since he beat me to it, I can’t really add much more to it. But I’ll turn around and ask a similar question for those that advocate for the criminalization of abortion.

    Assume that abortion is made illegal. If abortion is equal to murder, then it needs both a victim (the fetus) and a culprit. Choice 1 for the culprit is the mother, in which case the law would nominally require a murder conviction which usually carries a penalty on the order of 20+ years to life in jail. Most abortion is premeditated (ie planned at least several days in advance), so manslaughter is not a viable charge. I have yet to meet a person who advocates putting the mother in jail for 20+ years for having an abortion.

    Choice 2 is to charge the doctor who performed the abortion with murder since s/he is the one that did the actual killing (this would be similar to charging the hitman in a murder for hire). But then what about the mother? Is a pregnant woman mentally incapacitated such that she does not know right from wrong and is to be held blameless if she has an abortion? Do you then commit her to a mental hospital? Or if you don’t think they are mentally incapacitated, why don’t you charge them with directly facilitating murder (which in the jurisdictions of which I’m aware of, is generally the same as committing the actual murder)?

    Choice 3 is to make it a criminal act, but charge no one, which of course is ridiculous.

    So what’s the proper legal response by the government to a mother who has an abortion if abortion is made illegal?

    My posed question is similar to your question, but approached from the other side. There is a disconnect (and maybe even contradictions) within and between the social and legal spheres when it comes to the rights/responsibilities of a pregnancy, which is why we are still having these discussions.

  4. Abortions will occur whether they are legal or not. Making abortion illegal does not protect fetuses by preventing abortions. Making abortion illegal simply puts mothers’ lives at risk from dangerous black-market abortion procedures. There’s a blurb in the October 29, 2007 issue of Time magazine “Abortion: Prohibition Is Not Prevention” that states “Abortion is no less prevalent where the procedure is prohibited… It’s just more dangerous”. To me, asking whether women should have the right to abortion is the wrong question. The right question is which policy will be most beneficial overall. Yes, paradoxically, I am pragmatic to the point of idealism.

  5. I would wholeheartedly support my mother’s right to choose. And I don’t find that scary at all.

    What I do find scary is the idea of being born to a parent or parents who don’t want me, or worse feel trapped into having me.

  6. @Ben:

    “Clearly an aborted foetus isn’t going to browse to your blog and be able to answer the question…”

    I come close.

    My mother was pregnant and unmarried in the late ’60s in northern England, when there was a considerable amount of shame and scandal about such things. The father was abusive too and a drunk.

    I discovered relatively recently that my mother seriously considered the following options:

    * get her parents to bring me up as if I was theirs, and let me think I had a big sister

    * have me adopted

    * have me aborted (this was 2 years after the Abortion Act)

    * bring me up as her own

    Thankfully, she took the last option.

    I’m glad I exist, and I hope others who know me are too. The tragedy is that many many other foetuses are denied that chance.

  7. Why stop at the foetus level?
    There are too many sperms and ovums that are denied their chances, too. Isn’t it scary to think that your mom and dad might have argued the evening they conceived you, ending up not having sex that time, or even (gasp!) used condoms?

    Thereby we absolutely need to outlaw every form of contraception, and introduce minimal child birth per decade requirements for people of able age. Surely if someone denies his breeding cells the chance to act (think of all the kids who might have been born!), he or she is accumulating the guilt of many murders.
    Right?

    The question about foetuses is about just as ridiculous, really. Even when ovum is fertilized, it is still just a cell. Or a couple.

  8. Counterfactuals can prove nothing except “If things were different things would be different”. If P then Q, P false, so both Q and not Q are true.

    Compelling a woman to bring to term a foetus she doesn’t want is simply monstrous abuse of power. Killing a foetus isn’t so hot either, so let the woman and no one else decide. Meanwhile focus on widespread availability of contraception, contraception research (they’re only 95-98% effective, which means a lot of people who don’t want a baby start one), and women’s rights so fewer have to make the decision.

  9. This is not a new question: just ask google.

    I’m another person who’s father was out of the picture as soon as my mother found out she was pregnant, and I fully support her right to choose. I think everyone, pro-life or pro-choice would like to minimize the number of abortions performed. However, as others have pointed out, making something illegal does not keep it from happening. If pro-life proponents really wish to reduce the number of abortions, they’d be much better served to offer financial and educational assistance to poor young women. Oh yeah, and stop pretending that abstinence is a realistic birth-control method.

  10. Of course I’d support my mother’s own right to terminate me.

    For me, it’s about having faith that others will make intelligent decisions about a situation.

    I was lucky enough to be born to a mother and father who were married, employed, and owned a home. They were financially able to support a child, even one who (as it turned out) needed a bit more than the usual amount of medical care upon birth. They were mature enough to understand how to raise a child and had friends and family who would help support the child. Given these parameters, I think my mother made a fair decision not to terminate her pregnancy.

    If situations had been different and my mother would have been unable to raise me properly, for whatever reason, I certainly would support her terminating her pregnancy. I have faith that my mother would make the proper decision given the circumstance. (If she was comfortable having a baby and giving me over for adoption, that is a wholly different matter–another decision I take on faith.)

    Two women are unhappy when they first learn of their pregnancies. Good people sometimes make bad decisions. Each knows it would be difficult or impossible to raise a child on her own. Both have no further continuing with the father. Both have unsupportive or no family. Neither has the financial ability to provide for a child. Neither has the time to spend raising a child.

    The first woman has her child. The child is hungry, in ill health, and neglected. She won’t put the child up for adoption because it is “her baby.” Her love for her child blinds her to the harm she is causing it.

    The second woman has an abortion. She works to further her education and develop work skills. She chooses to have children later in life once she believes it is a responsible decision. She regrets having to end her first child’s life, but realizes that she would have never have been able to properly raise a child given the circumstance.

  11. Yes, I’d absolute support her right to do that. As was mentioned earlier in the comments thread, the concept of being brought up by parents who resented my very existence is much scarier to me than the concept of not existing.

  12. Yes, I’d absolutely support her right to do that. As was mentioned earlier in the comments thread, the concept of being brought up by parents who resented my very existence is much scarier to me than the concept of not existing.

    (apologies for the double post if this goes through twice; my internet was acting up)

  13. To me, this is sort of similar to the notion of dying immediately. Assuming I’ve had a reasonable life so far, the only thing that it does is stop your ability to do something else *here* . I find life very much worth living (and would hence not choose to die), but if it were to end soon, at least I have enjoyed it. As for the foetus, the case there is even more simple as the foetus cannot ever have desired to live, as its brains are not capable of desires (especially not that complex) at the point where abortion is still legal. So there it has no incentive or wish to continue living. It will not be more or less happy as a result of not being given that option. So yes, I think that it is OK for the mother to have this right, and I would have been happy with my mother having that right (in fact, I think she did, though I’m not sure about Dutch law).

    How about asking the reverse question: should we try, as humans with advanced technological means to do so, to make every seed and egg the human population produces come to a child, because if we don’t we have passively stolen the chance for that possible child to enjoy life (from that would-be-child)? In other words, should we really set up laboratories and harvest eggs and semen in order to produce as many children as possible?

  14. Answer to the 1st question : yes, 100% my mother’s right.
    Answer to the 2nd question : no, not scary at all. If you’re a believer, then you surely believe such an interrupted life deserves heavens. If you’re not, you know that life always ends badly, sooner or later. So no problem.

  15. Would you have supported the right of your parents not to have sex with each other?

    If yes, isn’t your position inconsistent?

  16. To clarify, I don’t consider questions like this to be a useful way of approaching the issue at all, because the answer hinges entirely on what you already consider the beginning of human life to be. Of course I would prefer that I not be aborted, but if you follow the causal chain back far enough you’ll eventually hit a branch that could have gone the other way without any immoral act being committed, no matter whose definition you use. Each of the infinite number of human beings that were never conceived would, if we were somehow able to ask them, presumably answer that they would prefer that events had caused them to be brought into existence. Obviously those uncountable number of people have not all been murdered simply because their parents never met, or someone had a headache that night, or there was no egg to fertilize because of a birth control pill. You have to draw a line somewhere – where do the decisions start to be immoral? At what point does it stop being a potential life and start being an actual one? You’re right back where you started; the hypothetical hasn’t actually gained you anything. It might convince someone by appealing to their emotions, but hopefully that’s not what you’re looking for here.

  17. As an adult you obviously wouldn’t want to be terminated (AKA killed).

    There are no absolute truths so that’s not that obvious for everyone. There are adults that would rather be dead or even to have never born. I’m one of those people so I would have supported my mother’s decision to abort me. I’d wish she would have taken that option as it would have saved lots of problems for both of us. Including the agony of going through post-birth abortion.

    What I do find scary is the idea of being born to a parent or parents who don’t want me, or worse feel trapped into having me.

    I agree with this sentiment as I do believe these kind of situations can lead to the creation of the most monstrous criminals and sociopaths. Although, sometimes it might be better to give unwanted children for adoption than to abort them.

  18. Like most of the commenters here, I would have agreed with the right to an abortion, just like I’d have supported their right not to have sex.

    I think the reason I find that easier to accept than people like Gerv is that to me, at an early enough stage, a fetus is just a small ball of cells with no consciousness so the question is where to draw the line.

    Other people are going to believe that small ball of cells already has an immortal soul which makes the moral choices much harder.

  19. I think the whole problem with the abortion debate in is the semantics. When Gerv says “most of the people I know are against abortion” it makes it sound like there are those of us who are “for” abortion. I think everyone agrees abortion is a horrible thing to do. Someone in my family had an abortion once, and she told me she had nightmares about it. So even women who have had abortions are not really “for” it.

    The question is, do we want to attempt to force women who want abortions to carry through with a having baby they do not want? Simply making abortion illegal is clearly not effective. Even if we could convince all women who want abortions to put their babies up for adoption, we would likely end up with millions of unwanted children who would lead miserable lives. As mentioned previously, abstinence-only sex education is also ineffective.

    We need to acknowledge some simple truths. People will have sex before they are ready to have children. No birth control method is 100% effective, so some unwanted pregnancies will occur. The best we can to is to help unmarried couples use effective birth control, provide safe ways of aborting pregnancies as early as possible, and help women who decide not to abort with raising the child on their own or putting the child up for adoption.

    If you are truly “against” abortion, the worst possible policy is to tell people not to have premarital sex, shame them if they have an unwanted pregnancy, and make abortion illegal. That only causes women to have risky illegal abortions. Bafflingly, however, that seems to be the policy that the most “religious” people in the US recommend. Isn’t that position the truly inconsistent one?

  20. Organizations such as “Right to Life” completely soured my opinion of people who call themselves “Pro-Life”. As mentioned above, using the term “pro-life” implies that the people not on the same team as you are “anti-life”, and I really don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think everyone using that term deserves that judgement, but it’s an easy first impression to get after seeing all the propaganda from Right to Life and similar groups.

    I happen to think that abortions are bad, and that people who have unwanted pregnancies should take them to term and then put the child up for adoption, unless there is some medical reason (such as endangerment of the mother’s life) to make an abortion necessary. I also think that most of the people in the “pro-life” movement have taken things way overboard.

    Organizations like “Planned Parenthood” and similar, to me, seem to be going in a much better direction. Don’t advocate for making abortions illegal. Educate people about the other alternatives instead. Provide good birth control. Actively support women who have unwanted pregnancies to help them through it so that they can make their own choice to preserve the life of that child.

    A woman with an unwanted pregnancy who is forced by law to go to term with the pregnancy will resent both the government, and the baby, if it is ever born. She also stands a much greater chance of looking to the black market for an abortion.

    A woman with an unwanted pregnancy who has the choice of whether to abort or not should be educated about all of the alternatives and make an informed decision that’s in line with her faith. Hopefully it will be the right decision, and hopefully the experience, and the education she received in the process, will help her to explore her faith and come to appreciate the life that’s inside her. But even if she doesn’t, and goes through with the abortion anyway, the result is likely to be much safer (both for her and for society) if it isn’t enforced by the government. A woman given a choice can feel like people care about *her*, and by caring about her, people also care about her baby, and she might decide to keep it. A woman who is coerced to go to term feels like she’s worthless and people only care about the baby and not her.

    I guess I’m rambling at this point, but you can probably see where I’m going anyway.

  21. It’s a difficult question, as posed, but luckily most of the things I thought of in response have been said already in other comments, so I won’t bother. Instead, I’d just like to point out my favourite trick for trolling in arguments about abortion — instead of proclaiming to be pro-choice, I label myself anti-life, and label the pro-life opposition as anti-choice…

  22. Thanks, everyone, for some interesting and civilly-put answers.

    First off, several people pointed out that there’s a logical flaw in the question. Which, on analysis, is a fair point. I think anon‘s testimony is powerful, though – as is those of people whose mother tried to abort them and failed.

    There’s even one case (did I blog it before?) of twins where one was aborted and the other “accidentally” survived. Would you expect the grown twin to support the mother’s right to attempt to kill him, and actually kill his brother?

    hakubo asked: Why stop at the foetus level?
    There are too many sperms and ovums that are denied their chances, too. Isn’t it scary to think that your mom and dad might have argued the evening they conceived you, ending up not having sex that time, or even (gasp!) used condoms?

    I don’t think the reduction works, because a load of sperm and an egg aren’t you – you were only you, or potentially you, once the egg was fertilised and a particular sperm was successful.

    dustin said: I think everyone, pro-life or pro-choice would like to minimize the number of abortions performed.

    If only that were true; it’s not what we are hearing here in the UK. At the Marie Stopes conference held here a week or so ago, there was discussion of the best way to “export” abortion to Africa. Which is understandable from their point of view – any business wants to expand.

    Clinton (and maybe others, I don’t know the origin of the phrase) said that abortion should be “legal, safe and rare”. I wonder what politicians, either in the US or UK, have done recently to make that third part more true.

    skierpage said: Compelling a woman to bring to term a foetus she doesn’t want is simply monstrous abuse of power.

    Surely it’s an abuse of power to create a foetus you don’t want? As I understand it, “pro-life” advocates are absolutely pro-choice, in that they believe in a woman’s right to choose. They just put the point of decision somewhere else.

    Steve Chapel said: Making abortion illegal does not protect fetuses by preventing abortions.

    Since abortion was made legal in the UK, the number of abortions has gone up by between 600% and much more, depending on whose figures you believe for the number of illegal abortions before 1967. Surely it’s undeniable that if it were made illegal again, the number would go down, at least somewhat? And, if so, abortions are being prevented and foetuses are being protected.

    This argument, of course, says nothing about the rightness or wrongness of making them illegal again. But I’m pretty convinced your statement above is wrong.

    Simon said: But when you imagine yourself being the foetus you were, without memories, without rational thought or self-awareness, barely with any consciousness at all, you might conclude that there wasn’t much who could have minded.

    But if the question comes down to whether the foetus minds, then surely that opens a few other pretty unsavoury doors? If I blow your head off with a shotgun from behind, you die instantly and unknowingly. So you can’t really mind, can you? If you argue “But I’d rather go on and live the rest of my life, thank you”, why can the same argument not apply to the foetus? Or are you really saying that the fact that you can have hopes and aspirations, and the foetus does not, is the difference?

    dustin said: Oh yeah, and stop pretending that abstinence is a realistic birth-control method.

    I don’t understand the argument against it. To argue that “it doesn’t work” is surely to argue that people don’t have a choice about whether to have sex or not, or perhaps that sex is such an important part of being a proper human being that to deny it to people is cruel, and making them accept the consequences of their choices is unnecessary.

    Again, thanks to all contributors.

  23. [Just to note: the comment above was written a while back, but didn’t submit properly because I foolishly had “sperm” on a blacklist. Everyone else should check that their comments have appeared. Apologies for this. My comments on some later comments are just coming.]

  24. Second round:

    Dave Miller said: As mentioned above, using the term “pro-life” implies that the people not on the same team as you are “anti-life”, and I really don’t think that’s the case.

    A fair point, but one which applies equally well the other way. Using the term “pro-choice” implies that people not on the same team as you are “anti-choice”, and I really don’t think that’s the case either. As I said above, I’m absolutely for a woman’s right to choose – but I think that once the foetus has been created, she’s way past the point where she made her choice.

    (Before anyone mentions rape, remember that hard cases make bad law, and try arguing against the general point.)

    Steve said: I think everyone agrees abortion is a horrible thing to do.

    Steve, I wish that were true. But it really isn’t. What pro-choice (I carry on using the term for convenience, even given the argument above) websites or arguments start with “We agree that abortion is a horrible thing to do, but…”? And it doesn’t match the terminology used either. What’s horrible about scraping out a “ball of cells”?

    People will have sex before they are ready to have children. No birth control method is 100% effective, so some unwanted pregnancies will occur.

    Those things are undeniably true. However, it does not follow from them that people should be legally permitted to escape the consequences of their actions at the cost of a life.

    Of course, some would argue that it’s not “at the cost of a life”; as I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post, the key question on abortion, to which the discussion always comes back, is “is the foetus a person or not?”. I guess Justin made that point when he said “the answer hinges entirely on what you already consider the beginning of human life to be.”

    Even if we could convince all women who want abortions to put their babies up for adoption, we would likely end up with millions of unwanted children who would lead miserable lives.

    Possibly. But the question is: is it your place, my place or their mother’s place to decide whether they want to live that “miserable life” or not?

    Having too many babies and not enough couples wanting to adopt is a good problem to have IMO, and when we have it, we can figure out how to fix it.

  25. I think the reduction does work. In theory, in technologically advanced civilization it would be possible to harvest every egg and sperm and bring to life a much greater number of human beings. Doing anything less would seem criminal towards those that could be born. This seems like the logical conclusion to the pro-life movement.

    I think dustin’s comment about everyone wanting to minimize the number of abortions is correct (well, there are always fringe groups but let’s forget those for now). Both sides would be happier if there was never a need for abortion. Exporting the option to people living in Africa doesn’t really have anything to do with this.

    It sounds like you make it only a woman’s choice to have or not have unprotected sex. There is always a man involved as well. (Assuming sex that can lead to children here of course.)

    I also read the report a few days ago that claimed the number of abortions is no different regardless of the law, it was just that more women died when it was illegal. I can’t remember the exact details of the article, though. It could have been some specific countries, or globally. Things might of course be different in some other countries (the UK?), although you have to remember that when something is illegal it is much harder to determine the numbers…

    Studies have shown that abstinence does not work. Sex drive in most humans seems to be stronger than the virtue of abstinence. It has also been shown that what is forbidden makes it even more attractive. It also seems that where abstinence is practiced there is also lack of information about sex in general which may contribute to the bad success rate. It also seems logical that abstinence works better when the period of abstinence is relatively short; in most developed countries the age of finishing studies and settling down with family has gone up quite a bit since the baby boom generation.

    I also think most people on both sides agrees abortion is a horrible thing to do. Sure, it may be just a few scraped cells. But there are a lot of emotions, what-ifs involved, regardless of your beliefs in the matter.

  26. If I blow your head off with a shotgun from behind, you die instantly and unknowingly. So you can’t really mind, can you?

    Being dead, I won’t mind any longer, sure (or more precisely: there’s no “I” to mind any longer), but you weren’t talking about an aborted fetus – rather one to be aborted.

    Or are you really saying that the fact that you can have hopes and aspirations, and the foetus does not, is the difference?

    Indeed. I don’t consider a fetus to be a person (as in “self-conscious, rational, communicative being” which are all necessary to actually mind anything) which makes all the difference there is.

    Now you could argue that while the fetus can’t mind, it has the potential to grow into something or rather someone who could mind. So the question becomes whether that potential alone should be enough to be protected at all costs or whether you want to make legal exceptions. I’d argue here that the basis for protecting that potential simply isn’t strong enough as to force people (especially directly involved parents-to-be) to actually help it being realized.

    You should still be able to observe though that when people get emotionally involved, they will often decide themselves not to abort. OTOH provocatively asked: Why punish those who rationally decide to get rid of an unwanted parasite inside their bodies? It’s not like you would ever help those parents and their unwanted child…

    And BTW: Of course you will (most of the time) get the desired answer from parents, who wanted to abort but didn’t or couldn’t, when retroactively asked whether they regret their decision to go through with it after all: had they not accepted their initially unwanted fate and made the best out of it, they’d probably have emotionally broken down in the meantime.

  27. Dear Gerv.

    I am sure you have the best of intentions in mind while posting this question but for you (and most anyone else who took part of this discussion) it is nothing more than just an abstract intellectual exercise in trying to solve (or prove your point in) the moral dilemma of the pro-life vs. pro-choice discussion.

    As I’ve read through this discussion, many good arguments have been posted here and depending on your position on this they have been either convincing or not. However nobody here has really admitted to have to face the decision themselves. Being a male specimen, neither have I.

    For me personally, this whole discussion is moot, because in the end, abortion is an extreme intervention in both mother’s physical body and their potential child’s life. In every single case of abortion it is clear that the child is not wanted or premature. While I agree that the parents should be responsible for their actions, how can you with a straight face condemn a child to be a punishment for the mom’s mistakes?

    The responsibility should not come from outside (e.g. the law) but rather from inside of the parent and such a freedom of choice is the only thing that makes the choice possible.

    There are edge cases of course – women who use abortion as a form of contraception (and men who require such an action, to be fair). These are just as much edge cases as is the rape in your argument – let’s not touch on these extreme cases.

    In general though – the abortion itself is an extreme case – no responsible woman will and should consider it without a pause. And if she does choose against carrying the baby through the term, she most likely has some pretty strong reasons for that. Take away that choice and condemn her to be “responsible” for her child and she will be more likely to resent the child for lost opportunities or be forced to bring her up in a hostile or inadequate environment…

    PS – if a shotgun barrel is aimed at my head, I really do not have the choice – whether I want it or not, the choice is with the guy squeezing the trigger and no amount of wishful thinking on my part will change that. However – in the context of this argument – I think this is a red herring you are waving in front of our noses…

  28. The argument is easier when you accept the bible and Harry Potter are both fiction.

    What happens to all the sperm that could potentially become babies? All the periods that go without becoming babies?

    Pointless argument: -1 Troll.

    monk.e.boy

  29. PS I’m glad this stuff comes up on Mozillazine. Hopefully someone from Mozilla also reads it and will think about terminating Gervs contract.

    Who the hell forces Christianity on people in the name of Mozilla and Firefox?

    Gah! I’m feed the trolls.

  30. Gerv said: What pro-choice websites or arguments start with “We agree that abortion is a horrible thing to do, but…”? And it doesn’t match the terminology used either. What’s horrible about scraping out a “ball of cells”?

    What exterminator websites or arguments start with “We agree killing insects is a bad thing to do, but…”? I personally would be horrified if I came home and found my son or daughter stomping on an anthill killing ants. On the other hand, sometimes ants invade people’s homes. In that case, I don’t see any reasonable alternative to killing the ants to get rid of them. After all, they are just insects, and I need to live in my home.

    Likewise, some women find themselves pregnant and choose to not carry a baby to term. If they can abort the pregnancy while there is only a small ball of cells to get rid of, that isn’t nearly as bad as murdering a full-grown human being. That’s what those pro-safe-choice sites are saying. Not that it’s not a horrible thing to do, but not as bad as anti-safe-choice critics try to make it seem.

  31. Abu said: I also read the report a few days ago that claimed the number of abortions is no different regardless of the law, it was just that more women died when it was illegal.

    I’d like a reference for that, because it’s quite clearly not true. There were 30,000 abortions in the first year of it being legal in the UK, and 200,000 now. Unless they are trying to argue that there were 200,000 secret abortions in 1966 and the figure plummetted on legalization (!), then I think it’s fairly clear that legalising abortion makes it happen more often.

    This is not a surprising result. Can anyone name some activity which has been made legal and subsequently got less common than when it was illegal?

    RsT said: There are edge cases of course – women who use abortion as a form of contraception (and men who require such an action, to be fair). These are just as much edge cases as is the rape in your argument – let’s not touch on these extreme cases.

    The first year abortion was legalised in the UK, there were 30,000 abortions. Last year, there were 200,000. Now I agree the population of the UK has risen since 1967 (by about 10%, from 55 to 60 million) but, even taking that into account, abortion is now far more common than it used to be. Why is that so?

    I don’t think it’s due to an increase in desperate, poor women with 3 children already who can’t possibly cope with a fourth. There are far fewer people in poverty than in 1967. Surely it must be due to a large increase in those who have sex with contraception, realise that it failed and so therefore have an abortion? What else could cause such a large increase?

    So when you say “And if she does choose against carrying the baby through the term, she most likely has some pretty strong reasons for that”, does that mean that the physical and social environment has got 500% more hostile to babies since 1967? Or must you admit that the reasons have got weaker?

    Steve Chapel: None of them. That’s because they are happy to admit that killing insects is fine with them. You are arguing that everyone thinks abortion is bad; I am saying that if so, pro-choice websites would say very different things. In fact, they are happy to say (and say in debate) that abortion is fine with them, and has no moral consequences. Just like the insect-killers. Your observation does not support your point.

  32. Equal Rights?

    Encouraged by the very civil conversation in my previous post, here’s another thing that’s been puzzling me. When a couple has a baby, they refer to it as “our child”. This seems like almost too obvious a point to make. The law recognises that it’s the…

  33. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html?ex=1349841600&en=37c9e94ac1d9d097&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&


    Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare

    A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not…

    …collaboration between scientists from the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a reproductive rights group, are being published Friday in the journal Lancet…

  34. Abu said: I think the reduction does work. In theory, in technologically advanced civilization it would be possible to harvest every egg and sperm and bring to life a much greater number of human beings. Doing anything less would seem criminal towards those that could be born. This seems like the logical conclusion to the pro-life movement.

    I don’t think so. The difference is that in your scenario, people are taking active measures to create life. In the abortion scenario, they are taking active measures to end it.

    In fact, a pro-life stance often goes hand-in-hand with an anti-IVF stance – primarily because of the embroyos such procedures create which are not brought to term. And because people having IVF should be adopting instead, which would solve both problems. Of course, the adoption and fostering system is messed up as well <sigh>

    Anon: the article itself gives some good arguments as to why the conclusions are suspect. How do you know the abortion rates in countries where it’s illegal anyway? As shown in the UK case, pro-abortion campaigners have a tendency to inflate the figures. Also, it tends to be that abortion is illegal in countries with poor medical facilities anyway, so those countries would have a higher death rate even if abortion was legal there.

    dustin: What are the rape statistics supposed to prove? Africa has positions 1 (South Africa), 2 (the Seychelles, which is such a small place that I bet their position changes massively from year to year) and 7 (Zimbabwe, which is a mess). After that, the next African country is at 49.

    Regardless, you’re making the “there are some hard cases for which a case for abortion may be made, therefore abortion should be completely legal in all circumstances” fallacy.

  35. I dunno Gerv. Your logic has the flaws that the first few posters pointed out.

    Let me twist it further with two indisputable “facts”

    Axiom I Not one fetus that been aborted has issued a complaint.
    Axiom II A small percentage of living human beings (depressed, suicidal, etc) would say indeed they would have been happier if aborted.

    From A1, we conclude that since not one complaint has been registered by any abortee, the practice causes no harm.

    From A2, we conclude that in fact abortion may be in fact abortion, and it should possibly be a good idea to consider offering financial incentives to parents to have abortions, hopefully reducing the pool of these unhappy born folk.

    Clearly of course both are patently ridiculous.

    My point is merely expose the illogic of people arguing for or against abortion based upon their own personal experience in the matter of having been born :)

    Abortion sucks. Plain and simple. It aint a GOOD thing for anyone involved. It MAY be a NECESSARY thing, and I’m not willing to make that judgment, hence I’m pro-choice.

    I might even go so far (unlike a lot of pro-choicers) to shrug and say “yes it’s murder”. What of it.

    Murder is not absolutely wrong (take war, capital punishment, self defense) – it’s obviously a terrible thing 99.99% of the time. But that .01% is in fact the source of half of human ethical discussion – and such is the case with abortion.

    Frankly, being the boring person I am, I think the ONLY way one can be 100% consistently against abortion on the basis of it being murder is to

    – oppose capital punishment (ok, that’s pretty easy, for me frankly)
    – oppose all war
    – not accept self-defense as a valid defense for violence.
    and quite possibly, if one wants to be absolutely “pure”
    – not accept even accidents as valid defense. Who cares if it is premeditated or not? Or the doctor just made a mistake during the operation ?

    Murder is murder, right?

  36. mjb: I’m not sure how you put forward two arguments, describe them as “patently ridiculous”, and then draw conclusions…

    A1 is clearly false; that sort of logic means that murder is fine, because murdered people don’t register complaints.

    A2 is clearly false, because these people are only able to make the choice to say that they wish they hadn’t been born, by having been born.

    I don’t think the falsity of either of these axioms can be used to prove that it’s illogical to argue against abortion based on the fact that one has been born.

    You claim you are pro-choice, yet if you are consistent with what you say, then surely you must be extremely uneasy at the current extremely high abortion rates, which are not the .01% of the time you say it might be OK. So, if you want abortion reduced to a small fraction of the level it’s at now (because it’s not a good thing, because it sucks, because it’s murder) then your goals are far more in line with the pro-lifer who wants it eliminated entirely than the pro-choicer who is happy with the status quo.

    Your point about consistently opposing abortion doesn’t follow. It would only follow if you said “killing”, not “murder”. Murder is a subset of killing, defined normally _not_ to involve self-defence or capital punishment.

  37. The abortion debate has played a key role in helping me uncover a deeper understanding of myself and the values I hold most dear. I had struggled long and hard to articulate to others why I believe access to abortions is right while capital punishment is fundamentally wrong. For the latter I would vehemently argue for the “Right to Life,” yet for the former I would argue as strongly against it. It pained me that my value system seemed so inconsistent. That ceased with a very long and heated conversation with my sister-in-law. In the end I stood up and stated quite forcefully:

    “I rather allow myself and others to kill or be killed than allow myself and others to enslave or be enslaved.”

    During that argument I placed a great deal of emphasis on “self-determination” which I defined as “the expression of personal sovereignty over one’s body, state of being, or purpose through the exercise of choice.” I saw self-determination as an essential component of something greater than just a quantity of life. I realized I wasn’t arguing against the “Right to Life” but for a “Quality of Life.” The exchange demonstrated that though I treasure the “Right to Life” as a near absolute, I treasure “Quality of Life” even more. I clearly stated that I believe that when the “Right to Life” — my own or another’s — is in absolute and unavoidable conflict with “Quality of Life,” the former can be sacrificed in the defense of the latter. I now had a sort of ranking of values where one trumps the other.

    With that framework in mind, my position on access to abortion became resolute. It became clear to me that any erosion of access to abortion is an attack on self-determination through the restriction of choice over one’s body, state of being, and purpose. It made no difference whether I believe a fetus is alive or not. Indeed, I do. Regardless, for me the thing that matters more is that it is the insistence on the “Right to Life” for an unborn child that has the potential to enslave and would only guarantee the unborn will be born into a world willing to enslave. That is a thought that terrifies me, terrifies me to the point that I know this is one issue over which I am willing to take up arms — a thought which troubled me before but now I see is a clear responsibility. But it need not come to that. There is plenty of common ground.

    As a proponent of the access to abortion, I most stress that I’m not a promoter of abortion. I think everyone should work hard to make abortion the very last option to ever come to a person’s mind. Mere concern over personal finances, present/future opportunity, or fitness for parenthood may not be valid personal sovereignty issues. Those concerns often fail the “unavoidable, absolute conflict” test when adoptions, foster care, or other options are considered. Plus, choosing to give life is one of the greatest gifts one can make. It is a choice that should be encouraged vigorously. I believe something given by choice is always more valuable than anything taken by force. I don’t believe in removing someone’s right of choice because I don’t agree with the way they exercise that right just as I don’t think others should be able to do the same to me.

  38. I believe that when the “Right to Life” — my own or another’s — is in absolute and unavoidable conflict with “Quality of Life,” the former can be sacrificed in the defense of the latter.

    Doesn’t that conclusion scare you just a little bit? That you’d put your quality of life above another’s right to life?

    Also, Right to Life is absolute – people are either alive or dead. But Quality of Life is variable – it can be fantastic, terrible or somewhere in between. How great does your Quality of Life increase have to be in order for you to sacrifice someone else’s Right to Life?

    The Quality of Life decrease caused by “having to” have a baby here in the West is not, by many measures, large. It’s nine months of increasing inconvenience, bouts of nausea, a painful few hours at the end. And a tiny, although perhaps a little bigger than the alternative, risk of injury or death. Compare that with what some people suffer every day – the pain-wracked arthritic, or someone with persistent shingles.

    OK, given the Western world’s idolatrous over-glorification of the physical body, the idea of wider hips and stretch marks is to many a fate worse than death. But it shouldn’t be.

    It became clear to me that any erosion of access to abortion is an attack on self-determination through the restriction of choice over one’s body, state of being, and purpose.

    Yes, absolutely it is (just as laws against murder are an attack on self-determination through the restriction of choice over one’s purpose). Where we differ is that I disagree that self-determination is the absolute right you say it should be. Absolute self-determination would lead to anarchy.

    it is the insistence on the “Right to Life” for an unborn child that has the potential to enslave and would only guarantee the unborn will be born into a world willing to enslave.

    And you would rather they die than are born into a world willing to enslave?