Classical Values :: Some children are born unwanted. Others aren't.

September 19, 2008

Some children are born unwanted. Others aren't.

An anti-abortion group has sponsored this anti-Obama ad, in which Gianna Jesson (a woman who survived an abortion) points out that "If Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here."

It's hard hitting, and intended to highlight the fact that Barack Obama's position on abortion is to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barbara Boxer.

While I think abortion is immoral, I oppose criminalizing early term abortion primarily for two reasons:

1. I am philosophically uncomfortable with the idea of imprisoning women who are so miserable with the idea of having a child that they decide to terminate their pregnancies. (However, this means that there is no excuse for waiting, and I therefore believe that the earlier the abortion is performed, the better. The longer a woman waits, the more immoral it becomes.) I have a problem with compulsory anything, including compulsory pregnancy, and it strikes me as especially unconscionable to require a rape victim to carry a child to term. (Again, though, there's no excuse for delay.)

2. I believe that in order for a human being to have rights, there must be a functioning human brain. What we would call consciousness. Where the line is to be drawn exactly, I do not know, but common sense suggests (to me, at least) that embryos are not human beings of the sort possessed of rights. Thus I do not consider the use of the morning-after pill to rise to the level of immorality. At some point in the fetal development (and there is no agreement on what this point is) there is a conscious human brain. Again, the earlier the abortion is performed, the less I'd be inclined to call it a crime (or put a woman in prison for it).

I am horrified by third trimester abortions (the stage at which Ms. Jesson apparently was when she was aborted), and I am shocked that any doctor would perform one except to save a mother's life.

So I'm hardly in the anti-abortion ("pro life" I guess is what they call it) camp. Nor can I be considered solidly pro-choice. (I know I'll never have an abortion, though, so it's easy for me to shoot my mouth off.)

I don't agree with McCain on abortion, nor do I agree with Barack Obama.

But Obama's position strikes me as more outside the political mainstream than McCain's, and I think the above ad raises a legitimate point.

One of the red herring memes that has long annoyed me is the idea of an "unwanted child." This is said to be the worst fate in the world. Why? Clearly, this Gianna Jesson woman was unwanted, or else why would her mom have had her aborted? But she obviously would rather have not been aborted. So she's more content with having been an unwanted child than not to have been a child at all.

I think most unwanted children (aborted or born) would say the same thing. So it strikes me that "unwanted" is a rhetorically sneaky term having more to do with what the mother wants than what the child wants. Clearly, if a mother does not want a child, she can put it up for adoption. Is that really a tragedy? They make it sound like "unwanted child" is some kind of horror. I don't get it. Are there not also unwanted adults? So what? I can understand why a woman might not want to see her pregnancy through (and I have philosophical problems with forcing her), but because she is not required to keep the child after birth I don't see what the status of the child ultimately being wanted or unwanted should have to do with it. How do we know what person will be "unwanted"? It strikes me as implying a moral judgment based on the child's anticipated eventual status as a justification for the abortion. Little different than, say, a judgment that the child would be born into poverty. Or born with alcoholic (or homosexual) genes. It just strikes me as arrogant to decide based on some statistic that a child will be "unwanted," and that this is a terrible fate.

Do any of us know to a moral certainty whether we were really and truly "wanted"? If any of us learned that we weren't wanted, I don't see how that would have been an argument for abortion. Whether we agree with the right to an abortion or not, it is supposed to be based on a woman's right, not a judgment on the status of her child. I know the distinction sounds like nit-picking (and activists on both sides would not care), but I think there is a huge logical difference between "I cannot face going through with this pregnancy" and "The baby would be an unwanted child after its birth." The former strikes me as an understandable reason grounded in an individual decision, while the latter strikes me as grounded in communitarian social-planning eugenics.

Even if I'd thought my mother wanted to abort me, I'd rather have it be because she couldn't go through with the pregnancy. Not because she thought I'd be an "unwanted child."

I think there is a difference. It may sound silly, but I'd rather be murdered by someone who hated me than by someone who thought I was part of the overpopulation problem.

posted by Eric on 09.19.08 at 04:15 PM

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Comments

Thank you, a thoughtful post with which I almost entirely agree. (Could it be that's why I think it's so good? nah...)

I was capable of pregnancy (way too old now), but even at age 20, I could not imagine having an abortion.

I even thought that if the pregnancy was far enough along that the baby could survive, my survival came in second. I had the security of knowing someone in my family would love and care for the child.

Now that it is my daughters who are having the babies, I've rethought that 2nd position; I still cannot bear the thought of losing one of MY babies.

When I was 20, I also thought that I did not have a right to make a moral judgment about another woman's decision to have an abortion. I've rethunk that one also.

So, I don't entirely agree philosophically with you that 'because I just can't go through with this pregnancy' is a good enough reason, by itself, to have abortion.

A lot depends on the reasons why a woman feels she just can't go through with it. Physical, medical reasons are good enough, but women with such conditions usually take great care with 'conception' control.

In fact, that's a more accurate description of most methods, though some are 'implantation' control. I'm okay with either variety. True 'birth control' is an abortion.

The older I get the more difficult I find it to consider abortion as moral, except when the mother's life is in danger.

The one area I'm stuck on is that of rape. On one hand, I'm wondering why the child must be condemned for the sin of its father. One the other, I can certainly recognize how that pregnancy would be a constant mental and emotional horror for the mother.

I think that I could, would have the baby. However, I'm not 100% sure, so I won't judge any woman who chooses not to under those circumstances.

After having said all that, I don't think abortion should be illegal, as the reasons for it are too many, too varied -- too individual. Who would decide, if not the woman?

Donna B. · September 19, 2008 06:07 PM

You know who performs the most abortions in America? It is not doctors. It is God.

BTW different faiths have different ideas. In the Jewish faith abortion is OK in the first 40 days. Also an infant killed in the womb is of less worth (Jewish tort law) than one that has been born.

I have thought for a long time that the best way to reduce abortion was persuasion and not the bludgeon of law. Besides I'm against black markets.

M. Simon · September 19, 2008 07:44 PM

They're having a horrifying chat about the other end of the Bell Curve of Life. Oddly enough it too comes down to being wanted or unwanted.

"Tuesday is Soylent Green Day"

Call it "Some old people grow to be unwanted. Others don't.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2983652/Baroness-Warnock-Dementia-sufferers-may-have-a-duty-to-die.html?source=EMC-new_19092008

Robert Sendler · September 19, 2008 08:38 PM

M. Simon, yes spontaneous abortions, many of which the mother is never even aware are quite numerous. I don't think the abortion debate gets into that area. Nature is still mostly not within our control.

I don't know of anyone (though I'm sure there are plenty) who now thinks that an infant born alive does not have human rights, is not fully human, whether it ends up surviving or not.

I'd add support and easing restrictions on adoptions to the persuasion (best practice). Law is a bludgeon and should therefore be carefully wielded.

Someone should inform Congress, btw.

Donna B. · September 19, 2008 10:04 PM

Donna B.,

I thought Obama's position on the CBA act was just horrible and heartless. And as you can tell from above I'm pretty permissive about abortion.

The man is not fit to be a human let alone President.

M. Simon · September 19, 2008 10:41 PM

Ya know, I'd just simply put it out of my mind Obama's vote there. Possibly because I could not comprehend it.

Yes, I am quite comfortable with my head in the sand sometimes.

Donna B. · September 19, 2008 11:40 PM

I was told once by an angry feminist that I had no business even forming an opinion on abortion because I was a man. That was my first direct experience with the intellectual thuggishness and totalitarianism so dear to the left.

Apparently my prior experience, having once been a fetus, did not give me any stake in the matter.

Steve Skubinna · September 20, 2008 09:25 AM

Some of us pro-lifers would love to make most abortions illegal, but we realize that won't happen. IMO the best weapon in our arsenal of persuasion is 3D ultrasound. My daughter knows two women who would have aborted if not for seeing photos of their unborn children. I know one of those children and I'm glad she was born.

notaclue · September 20, 2008 11:26 AM

"Embryos are not human beings of the sort possessed of rights." Well, what sort of human beings are those "possessed of rights" - old people WITHOUT alzheimer's, handicapped people WITH all their limbs, working age people WITH positive personal net benefit/cost bottom line ...?

These kinds of delicate parsings of the abortion issue really frost me. A zygote, to say nothing of an embryo, scientifically and morally, is a distinct, unified, self-integrated human being. What does "consciousness" have to do with it? A human being develops from here, to birth, through childhood to puberty, to adulthood and into, hopefully, old age. The path this development takes is dictated by its nature - DNA - and its environment.

Thus for an outside agent, even its mother, to voluntarily end that life, is murder. Who are you, or anyone else, to decide under what conditions humanity is defined? The only conclusion to reach here is that the "Classical Values" of this blog are those of ancient Sparta where the unfit infant is thrown off a cliff.

Now that the venting is over, I agree that criminalizing abortion is beyond the capacity of a civilized society to enforce. To effectively perform this function society would have to construct a sustainable mechanism to invade individual and family privacy in a manner and to a degree which is culturally and politically unthinkable in any current Western society.

The only option open is for that society, or those who believe that voluntary abortion is never the answer, to speak out forcefully and often. At the same time, the public sector must not, in any way, provide sustenance or condone this activity, up to and including the decertification of licensed medical practitioners who are proved in court to have assisted in a voluntary abortion. Again, individuals can perform this kind of activity but not under any licensing regime of implicit government sanction.

boqueronman · September 21, 2008 06:42 PM