As we read that Amnesty International and the Catholic Church are feuding over the issue of supporting abortions for women subject to rape and incest, a friend of mine in Oregon sent out this quote and citations from the US pro-life movement in email:
"I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer forÂ
that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them."
- Answers given in a mini-documentary about abortion. The man behindÂ
the camera is asking anti-abortion demonstrators if abortion shouldÂ
be illegal, and if so, what the penalty should be for women who getÂ
an abortion. Amazingly enough, the demonstrators seem to claimÂ
simultaneously that abortion is no different from any other murder,Â
but there shouldn't be any punishment for it.
The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T95avZoqlhE
Interesting article by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek: http:// www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20010696/site/newsweek/Â
I found this facile, including Anna Quindlen's opinion that the law treats women as hapless victims. In some cases, it is the place of law (and human rights policy) to protect hapless victims.
As a woman who was pressured into having an abortion years ago, I can tell you it is not always the informed and rational choice of the woman involved.
Does this make me pro-life? No. It means I believe that abortion should be available and safe -- and birth control even more so. But it also means that we need to do a better job of teaching women of childbearing age about their real options.
I do not personally believe that abortion should be illegal, nor that physicians or women should be punished. In fact, I think this question ducks the question of coercion.
Years ago, I volunteered for a women's health clinic. What I saw made me very sad.
Many of the women who go to physicians for an abortion do not choose abortion. Their parents, their lovers, their husbands, the stories they've been told (often false) about welfare, single motherhood, adoption services or parenthood -- those dictate their lack of choice, not their choice.
If abortion clinics required a psychological evaluation and the woman got to read about parenthood and abortion and then tested for comprehension, we'd have far fewer abortions. Â
And if we required such eval and testing, the pro-choice people would freak out totally, because the cost of potential intimidation by the process is a higher cost to them than the cost of women being coerced to have abortions.
Neither of the pat stances (pro-choice or pro-life) is what it says it is, neither is perfect, and as long as procreation is so highly charged hormonally, socially, and economically, there will be no good answers.
So good for these folks in the video who think women should be prayed for, rather than jailed. They are only whispering about what people on the pro-choice side of the argument are in serious denial of. Abortion is often not a choice, but a family or social mandate -- or seems to be a mandate to the woman, out of her control.
The woman is not in control of her body then, either, is she?  How much better is an abortion imposed upon a woman by her boyfriend or husband than date rape or rape, which we punish openly? Â
But indeed, we should all support the right of a woman to an abortion imposed by violence, all the more.
Treat the woman as a person capable of making a rational informed choice based on her own judgement and good balanced information? Neither side is in favor.
--Â
Â
Shava Nerad, News and Opinion Correspondent:
Shava’s column, Iconoclasm, published several times a week to Gather Essentials: Newsis an examination of the provocative ideas emerging in media and world culture behind the news.
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Shava Nerad has been working on the Internet for twenty-five years, at the boundaries of Internet and social issues. She is executive director of The Tor Project as her day job. She lives in Somerville, MA with her teenage son, her fiance (a professional magician and fundraising coach), and a corgi/dachshund mutt named George.
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Opinions here have nothing to do with Tor.Â
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Keep up with Shava’s other postings and Gather activity by joining her Gather network -- just click here and select the orange “Connect†button on the left-hand side of the page (colleage connections only please, unless you know me on the street!)
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Comments: 20
My point was that there's such a tangle of forces and motivations involved, we can hardly tell who wants the abortion performed.
I think we have gotten so muddied in the whole issue, that we have forgotten what questions to ask.
They are compassionate toward the mother. I wish they were compassionate enough to see that in many cases, having the baby is worse. And I wish they were compassionate to the doctor.
But shouldn't you be happy that they want to offer the woman love and prayer rather than jail? I actually felt much better about these people after seeing the video and reading the story.
Not all of them are hateful against the doctors either. Some of them see it as a complicated issue, and I wish everyone did.
A true scientist wouldn't be so glib with theoretical numbers. They've changed a couple times already in my lifetime.
It would be so much simpler if more women and men refused to have unprotected sex. I simply don't believe all or even most unwanted pregnancies are the results of failed birth control. I realize this happens and no form of birth control is perfect, but if both the man and the woman are using some form of prevention and the woman then takes the morning after pill, nobody is going to convince me that as many unplanned pregnancies would occur.
I'm decidedly pro choice as long as the woman is the one who must carry, give birth to, and raise the results of a pregnancy wanted or not. I still believe strongly in personal responsibility. My daughter has a friend who uses abortion as birth control. She's had five of them so far. To me this woman is criminally negligent in her behavior. Even if she could not take birth control pills, a condom and some form of barrier for her would certainly lower her risks considerably. She is simply to lazy to bother.
Abortion is a very complicated issue. It's not made less so by people who want to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term but once the baby is born they feel their job is done. Unwanted children are often abused, neglected, or exploited. Some women realize they have no business being mothers and total abstinence, for whatever reason is not a choice for them. In the end, however, the best decision is to make birth control readily available, educate people about all of their choices, and let them make their own decisions. Nobody knows more about what is best for a person than the person themselves.
If a birth control rate has a 3% chance of failure, it will fail about three times in 8 years. Women have a time of fertility now of 3-4 times that. But people are human, they rarely use any form perfectly.
The morning after pill is, of course, a recent innovation, but will not be available to a woman who is being coerced.
Carolyn, if you believe that women can't be coerced by the people in their lives, you've lived among strong women and good people your whole life, and you're blessed.
But very few social circles or cultures in the world -- or even the in US -- really embrace your ethic that nobody knows more about what is best for a person than the person themselves. It hasn't even been socially acceptable as a posit for a woman for more than perhaps 50 years, in any kind of non-radical circles.
I think a lot of young women today have been sheltered in their upbringing to believe that women are and have always been the equals of men. While this is good for their self esteem, it is dangerous to a sense of history and culture, and makes it hard for them not to blame the victim in cases where women are oppressed by their culture of origin.
You're old enough, Carolyn, to remember a time that was different. The times are still different for a lot of American women, and a majority of the women in other cultures. Saying they should stand up for their rights will perhaps save a few.
We can't count on just making birth control available being enough, so long as women are under the thumb of their families and such in many subcultures, in most of the world.
Many times wrestled with by young women who have no clear vision of their futures or their current situations. I've known several women who had abortions and then later deeply regretted it. Some of them stated that they felt caught up in doing what was toted as "the smart decision" of that day/age/generation.
More information and help in processing the individual situations from conscientous counselors would definetly be helpful.
That is interesting that so many protestors want no punishment. I was emotionally steeling myself for hearing the pronouncment of a death sentence or at least life in prison. Who'd a thunk they'd say otherwise.
Good article.
And in email, he compared me wanting to counsel women on their choices to demanding literacy tests to be able to vote.
You are not defending a woman's right to control her body -- the right to privacy that Roe v Wade depends on -- unless her options include bringing the baby to term also, if that's what she really wants.
The standard today is that the abortion is the "smart thing" -- by implication, having a baby is dumb. And in some cases (a mother who is a substance abuser, etc.) that may be true, but it isn't always so.
We have built up such walls. We need to talk about this as a hard problem, but politics really has turned it into a litmus test with very few real questions asked.
I haven't said that women cannot be pressured, only that in the end they make the decision and must live with the consequences of their choices.
I strongly believe that protesters are often not compassionate to women seeking abortions. All many want is to prevent the abortion because the procedure offends them. Many don't know the woman's history. They have no interest in the child once it's born. They don't care if it is being born into grinding poverty or even abuse, or if having a child at this time would irrevocably destroy the mother's life. They simply want to stop the procedure itself. Post born babies can take care of themselves apparently.
I don't agree with you that having an abortion is "the smart thing" socially. In fact, more women today, especially single women, choose to continue the pregnancy and raise the child than ever before. This was almost never an option when I grew up. If the girl was pregnant she was sent away to have the baby, give it up for adoption, then pretend it never existed. Keeping and raising it was almost never a choice. We were fortunate in my family that my parents chose to take my sister's child and raise it as their own.
You see, I know about this from all sides. Yes. In some cases abortion is the best choice. In others it's simply a convenience for someone too lazy to use birth control.
The person who sent you the email is a jerk. If the counseling is consensual on the part of the woman and not mandatory in order to have the procedure, it is not the equivalent of literacy tests. And now that I think of it, what's so very wrong about people being able to read the ballot they are casting a vote on? Why shouldn't people have to be able to read to vote?
I do understand that this was often rigged to deny voting rights to minorities even if those minorities could read. It was the same as the poll taxes used for the same reason. But simply because something has been misused doesn't mean the underlying idea is always defective.
Offering a woman counseling on her choices is perfectly acceptable. Demanding it is not.
I suppose I should clarify that I wish that women would be presented with what options are available to be counseled about, not that they go through some indoctrination thing for hours.
It seems to me that Americans have made a national passtime out of making irrational choices based on poor judgement and a total lack of information.
As proof, I offer the US Congress.
Good article BTW.
I have been warned by by my friends, including some men that being a man I should have no opinion on abortion and could never understand it.
I am not sure I understood the following:
> And if we required such eval and testing, the pro-choice people
> would freak out totally, because the cost of potential intimidation
> by the process is a higher cost to them than the cost of women
> being coerced to have abortions.
I find myself on the pro-choice, or anti-criminalization side of
this debate mostly, but I have to say that I am really
uncomfortable with the fervor some of the women I have
talked to have for abortion. It it was not so terrifyingly
serious it might be funny.
On the other side there is no even potential humor in anyone
forcing someone or killing someone for their beliefs or
for performing an abortion.
> passtime out of making irrational choices based on
> poor judgement and a total lack of information.
-WM H.
I wish I'd said that! ;-)
Religion has nothing to do with this, or if it does, I think it has to fall under things that we train ourselves to believe so that we can maintain our humanity and culture.
Though the argument is misused all the time, there is something to the idea of the "slippery slope" that leads to disaster. If we allow abortion, it desensitizes us to treating human life as animal life which we do routinely destroy or eat.
The fact that the fewer abortions there are the more power and emotion each one will illicit is almost economic in its simplicity. The ideal to me would be abortion would be legal, but everyone would be responsible enough to never have it come up as a necessity. Unfortunately there are some women who use abortion as birth control, or as Shava expanded, people who push women to use abortion as birth control.
This procedure is tied up with how we view ourselves I think and very touchy. Its very important in a society to handle carefully the self image of its members. Since we do not really know for sure the ultimate truth it is or primal importance to create the best most positive illusion that leads to the the uplifting of people not their degradation. Dave thinking of people as animals only doesn't fly. I'd have more sympathy with someone who was claiming we should treat animals as human.
==
I am not sure I understood the following:
> And if we required such eval and testing, the pro-choice people
> would freak out totally, because the cost of potential intimidation
> by the process is a higher cost to them than the cost of women
> being coerced to have abortions.
==
Well, there have been movements by pro-life forces to try to do things like make women in abortion clinics have to read information that shows what fetuses look like and involve pro-life rants. If you require information to be available, who gets to decide what's involved? Do we include pro-life, pro-choice, AMA stats, WHO info, where does it stop?
So far, the efforts to make information available beyond simple health impact info have generally been by pro-life folks to make women watch videos of botched abortions or some such, so there's some tender nerves there.
@WM: it's a paradox isn't it? You can't grow up until you're given chances to take unprotected chances, and until you've grown up, you shouldn't be trusted with chances. So where do we start the cycle? :)
I believe abortion should be legal. I also think it is a crummy thing every time this happens, if only for our own self-image as human beings, particularly for the class of people in the world who do not know how to treat themselves or others as human beings, which I do not want to see grow larger.
If the price to make the abortion happen is to watch some BS propaganda from religious groups, POLITICALLY, I think that may be a a realistic toll to at least create a little peace. I don't think it is fair, and I do think that whatever is shown needs to be monitored and agreed on if possible. I have heard something like they are lying to women and saying abortion makes it more likely they will have cancer ... based on a slight decrease in the number of mothers who get cervical cancer ... is that correct. If so it is an argument to for all women to think about having kids, not necessarily a fair argument to throw at women when they are thinking of having abortions.
Anna, to be a human being a certain amount of resouces. material, and even spiritual need to come to bear at the right time and place If we have enough people who are willing to not take responsiblity for their procreation to make that process harder or even impossible to create, we can lose even more human beings in ever more uglier ways.
I know many women who say they support abortion, and had abortions or did not have abortions. I am not surprised you hear what you did though, maybe the strength of your beliefs comes through to people who are unwilling to say what they really think to avoid unpleasantness.
I think abortions should voluntarily be eliminated, but the need going away, but it is an abomination to force a women to bear the child of her father, or a rapist, and all I need is one case for abortion to prove my point logically that it is not always wrong.
I have gone back and forth on this issue myself. Aside from the 'bigger picture', it just doesn't make sense that two lifes have to be at risk. One is definatly going to die. That's a given. But why does another have to be put at risk? One can still have compassion for the woman and still allow her to have a choice.