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Abortion and thinking Americans
The U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions, along with a variety of health care services for women. The Virginia General Assembly last week approved legislation that requires abortion clinics to be regulated as hospitals, and providers say the stricter regulations will force many of them out of business. Both measures were pushed by anti-abortion activists. Should personal and religious views be allowed to prevent women from having access to a legal medical procedure?
Many people who consider themselves to be "thinking Americans" dismiss pro-life arguments as being based on someone else's view of morality. The people to whom I refer are well-informed citizens. They are concerned about the poor; they give to charity; and they take care of their families.
Pro-life representatives are often religious figures, and they tend to speak in those terms. When, however, they reduce the abortion issue to one of morality, the "thinking Americans" find it easy to ignore them. They have resolved the abortion issue to their own moral and religious satisfaction. So, we are often left with two groups talking past each other.
I would suggest that there are many solid pro-life arguments that are unrelated to religious beliefs. As bioethicist Hadley Arkes of Princeton University explained, the pro-life case "is grounded finally in principled reasoning, the kind of reasoning that could be understood on its own terms without any appeal to religious faith or personal beliefs."
George Orwell recognized the pro-life position need not be rooted merely in religious and theological views. In his book "Aspidistra," Orwell's main character, Gordon Comstock, went into a public library and found a book on human embryology. In it he saw pictures of a six-week and a nine-week-old fetus. He recognized the humanity of the unborn child, identified with working class values, and "oppose[d] abortion out of a commitment to reason and moral conscience alone."
Today, that conclusion should be even easier to reach. That "blob of cells" in the womb has DNA that is distinct from the mother's DNA. The same cannot be said of any other group of cells in the mother's body.
Roe v. Wade purportedly was based on science and the age at which a fetus was thought to be viable. That science, however, is outdated. Modern science has made it possible for younger and younger babies to survive outside of the womb. In fact it is not inconceivable that biomedical technology someday will produce an artificial womb, enabling a fetus to live "outside the mother's womb" from conception until birth, making the viability point conception itself. The Supreme Court did not consider such scientific advances.
In situations other than abortion, American law recognizes the personhood of unborn children. Consider the not too uncommon situation of medical operations on, say, a 21-week-old fetus still in his mother's womb. Obviously the mother, the surgeon, the manufacturer of the special instruments, the insurance provider, and numerous other people associated with this type of work view the fetus as being an unborn child, not something less.
The legal system, with the sole exception of matters related to abortion, treats unborn children as persons. For instance, because of the unwritten right to privacy, a woman and her doctor have an absolute right to kill the fetus, with very limited interference from the state. At the same time, if someone else kills the fetus, it will likely constitute some form of homicide-- probably manslaughter but perhaps murder. Similarly, in most states, an unborn child at some point in his or her development is considered a person for purposes of a civil wrongful death lawsuit.
It is true that an unplanned pregnancy can be an embarrassment, create a severe financial strain, and cause parents (especially the mother) to drop out of school early. That does not justify, under any normal legal analysis, the taking of a life. We do not take it as a justification for homicide, for instance, if an elderly parent strains the finances or psychological balance of a household. In no situation other than abortion does an individual or group of individuals have a right to kill based upon status alone.
At the end of the day, science, history and law all point in the same direction. Religion aside, abortion is a bad thing. Thinking Americans need to contemplate that. I believe that at some point in the future, people will look back in horror at this era of abortion. At that time, as people now do with the civil rights era, they will ask where various individuals stood on the great moral issue of the day. Thinking Americans may want to think about what they will be able to say when that day comes.
By
Ronald Rychlak
|
March 3, 2011; 3:45 PM ET
| Category:
Catholicism
,
Pro-choice
,
abortion
,
politics
,
sexuality
,
women’s maternal health and reproductive rights
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Posted by: cricket44 | March 4, 2011 9:31 AM
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RR: "I believe that at some point in the future, people will look back in horror at this era of abortion."
When contraception is perfected, we'll look back at the abortion era and say "isn't it great we don't have to go back there."
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Most of Rychlak's arguments above come to saying "The question of fetal personhood must have one answer. Since the answer is 'yes' in the case of a wanted pregnancy, it must be the same in the case of an unwanted one." This argument is usually based on one or both of the following threads:
1) God must have an opinion, and since God's opinion is yes in the case of the wanted pregnancy, it can't change based on the mother's preferences
2) Pregnancy is not an active process. "Wait nine months and see what you get" or "We could artificially support a fetus outside a womb, so a pregnant woman is morally compelled to perform the same function."
All this comes down to saying that some agent (God, medical science, society) has the jurisdiction over a woman who does not want to go through completing a pregnancy and giving birth.
If you don't want to have those discussions, perfect contraception.
Posted by: WmarkW | March 3, 2011 5:54 PM
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As a pro-choice "thinking American" I appluad you sir. We may not agree, ever, but we have opened up to the greater possibility that we might find common ground.
On to the argument!
Firstly, I admit to never having read "Aspidistra" but the point stands that any person reading a book of scientific fact and coming to, as you said, a point of "moral conscience" is necessarily adding to that scientific fact their own interpretation of how to use that scientific fact for their own end. A hammer can help build a house or bash in a skull, the fact is it is still just a hammer. Thus the logical weight of scientific fact does not translate to the moral position taken through interpretation of that fact.
Secondly: Unique DNA showing an organism as distinct from the organism it resides in does not make the case for that DNA having a right to exist within the other organism. Viruses. Need I say more? I take it you are using that scientific evidence of unique DNA to make a case for personhood and/or individuality of fetus from mother? This also runs into problems in determining personhood along an arguably arbitrary point along a continuum and from the standpoint of individuality in both physical points (not only viability but also the fallacy that the DNA is truly unique when 1/2 is the mother's) and the metaphysical (what is an individual and how is that defined?). This follows on to your next paragraph in that viability outside of the womb is not the sole point at issue here.
Next, your argument that a legal double-standard somehow weakens the position of a woman to choose an abortion can be argued with through analogy of other legal double standards that serve a similar purpose. Perhaps something akin to the various laws that allow a parent or guardian to make legal, medical, what-have-you, important life-altering decisions on behalf of their children when it would be not only inappropriate but illegal for someone else, regardless of competency, to make that same determination. I can already foresee the counter of "false analogy: Parents still can't kill their kids (legally)." That point on it's own is granted but then brings up the issue of the moral justification of killing. That is also before we have even come to a clear determination, based on previous argument as to exactly WHAT IS being killed. Legal analogy could be just as easily made to the destruction of property or laws regarding animal treatment.
Finally, we come to the highly arguable statement in the second-to-last paragraph: "In no situation other than abortion does an individual or group of individuals have a right to kill based upon status alone." Just in that statement alone, it begs for the clarification of the terms "individual or group of individuals" "right" and "status." Is a state not a "group of individuals" that has a "right" to kill based on the status of "legal standing?"
At the end of the day, these do NOT point to the same thing. Contemplate that.
Posted by: ashtar377 | March 3, 2011 5:38 PM
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"It is true that an unplanned pregnancy can be an embarrassment, create a severe financial strain, and cause parents (especially the mother) to drop out of school early. That does not justify, under any normal legal analysis, the taking of a life."
All of the above are true, however pregnancy and childbirth is much more than an embarrassment or a financial hardship to a pregnant woman.
Pregnancy causes real physical changes in the mother and can be life threatening. One third of all pregnant women will pegnancy realted medical complications and 2-3 women in the US die every day as the result of pregnancy or childbirth.
We do not compel any other person to risk his or her life for the life of another. We may think it moral or ethical, but we do not compel it.
A parent is not required by law to donate an organ to a child, even if the child will die without the donation.
Downplaying pregnancy and childbirth as merely an embarrassment or a financial hardship dismisses the woman who carrys the pregnancy.
No one has the right to compel a person to risk her life for another.
Posted by: MsAlley1 | March 3, 2011 4:38 PM
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I have studied developmental biology in Iniversity and I don't find your appeal of using a scientific basis for deciding whether a fetus is equal to a human being very compelling. The qualities that make us human only emerge after fetus has developed significantly.
As you say, abortion is bad, and it is a terrible choice to make. But if you want to make early term abortions illegal that means that you wish the State to force a women to bear a child that she does not want. That is no way to begin a life.
I personally feel that a women should have that choice early and that it should be restricted sometime after the first trimester.
Posted by: robguest | March 3, 2011 4:29 PM
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"It is true that an unplanned pregnancy can be an embarrassment, create a severe financial strain, and cause parents (especially the mother) to drop out of school early." Dismissive, much? I can't accept your claim to be speaking for "thinking Americans" until I see proof that you have been trying to be one. Here's what we know: The *woman* is a person. The fetus uses her physical resources to survive and grow. The woman has the right of physical autonomy to deny the process. When the artificial womb has been created, your arguments will have merit.