Why is it so hard to argue that women’s lives are valuable in just this way? 

You mean apart from the fact that economic and political systems are set up to regard us all as little consumer robots, mindlessly working, shopping, and shitting until we’re in the grave? Hell, we know that the “the birthright of many men” has to be propped up by degenerating women, simply because society has set them up as losers.

As a guy, feminism isn’t the enemy. Feminism is a reminder that we all should be worth something more than our paychecks.

And so it goes.

And that’s why the whole “but it has brainwaves in the 3rd trimester” kinds of arguments don’t work at all. The most bizarre argument along this line that I’ve heard is that if a woman is still pregnant in the 3rd trimester her consent to carry to term is implied because she didn’t get an abortion earlier, and therefore she must be forced to give birth.

I don’t care if you’re a vampire or a fetus or a person who needs a kidney transplant. You don’t have a right to my body to sustain your life.

Entomologista, so, got ANY cut-off in mind?  Fifth trimester perhaps?

The only even somewhat satisfactory reason to be against third trimester abortions that I’ve ever heard is that at that point, there’s a strong likelihood that the fetus would be viable outside the mother, which some doctors feel is problematic in a hippocratic oath sense. 

Or basically, “look, you waited 8 months, can’t you just give it another few weeks and put it up for adoption?”

I don’t happen to agree, but it’s the only argument that holds any weight at all.

Eric…

Um, what?

So, cut-off or no cut off?  Abortion right up to labor, or during labor too?

Gotta draw that line somewhere, right?  Prithee, when?

If it’s viable, then induce birth. It achieves the end of pregnancy either way. Since an actual human doesn’t have the right to take another human’s blood, organs, tissue, etc. even if they need it to live, I see no reason why a potential human should have that right.

Amanda, this is actually my favorite argument. 

1) The personhood of a fetus, or the existence of a fetus’ soul (assuming the existence of souls in the first place), or the existence of a fetus’ natural rights as a person are all subjects on which reasonable persons can disagree.  Good faith reasonable arguments exist both for and against each of these propositions.  The personhood of a fetus is entirely debatable- even most fundies will concede that point: reasonable arguments exist, even if they disagree with them.

2) The personhood of an adult woman, the existence of her soul (assuming the soul, etc.), the existence of her natural rights are most emphatically NOT subjects on which a reasonable person can disagree.  There are no reasonable arguments against any of these propositions.  This is not debatable.

3) Therefore, any conflict between an entity whose personhood is unclear, undefined and subject to reasonable debate and one whose personhood is actual and obvious to everyone has to be resolved in favor of the actual person.

The only way you can argue against this is to assume the proposition that women aren’t really and truly people.  Or if you argue that both women and fetuses are actually the property of men.  Even the most fundy aren’t willing to publicly admit that they believe that.  Well, maybe the FDLS, but they’re not really part of the discourse, are they?

Eric, the cut-off is birth as far as I’m concerned.  That’s the date on every legal document that defines me as a person.  That’s the date on which I came into being, as far as the world is concerned.  I may have had some rudimentary form of consciousness before then, but so what?  I was still dependent entirely on my mother, and ONLY my mother, for life and was therefore subject to her decision whether to continue that arrangement or not. 

If she’d chosen not, then you’d be reading someone else’s comment right now.  After birth, I was still dependent, but not necessarily nor exclusively on her.  I was then a person, in the eyes of my family, society, and the law.  And most religious traditions, if you wanna go there.  Killing me after birth would have been murder.  But not before.

(omg! waddifshedabordedme!  Who cares?  What if I’d choked on a chicken bone at age 9?  What if I’d died in that car accident at age 17?  What if that drive-by on my block last spring had hit me in my living room?  What if my mother’d killed me at age -2 months?  This is a stupid and pointless line of argument.  Don’t even bother with it.  Maybe others wonder if their mothers really love them and wanted them.  I don’t.)

Amanda:

*standing ovation*

Wonderfully said and thank you.

Eric:

Entomologista, so, got ANY cut-off in mind?  Fifth trimester perhaps?

At the fifth trimester, it would be born already, therefore the pregnancy has already been terminated and thus killing it could not possibly be termed an abortion.

Learn to biology.

At the fifth trimester, it would be born already, therefore the pregnancy has already been terminated and thus killing it could not possibly be termed an abortion.
Learn to biology.

I dunno.  Those six month olds can be cute enough to eat for breakfast.  Which is abortion, in a sense, no?

Abortion right up to labor, or during labor too?

Labor technically IS an abortion.

And since the whole point of abortion is GET IT OUT OF ME, well, causing its death along the way is a side effect, and not the general goal, and one that can in most cases fairly easily be left out of the procedure with no real interference with its success, if there’s anything to be gained in doing so (read: yes when it’s viable, no when it’s not).

The question about “when is the cutoff?” is nothing but a distraction and we shouldn’t fall for it by engaging in the discussion.  The overwhelmingly vast majority of all abortions are done when a fetus is nowhere near viable. 

A tiny fraction of abortions are done in the third trimester and of those a tiny fraction are truly elective (as in, not just the best of a few horrific options such as laboring to birth a stillborn or serious fetal abnormalities incompatible with a meaningful life outside the womb), so why do we seem to think it is ok for these rare instances to take up over 50% of the discussion?

My right to terninate at 1 week past implantation is under attack and I don’t have the time to discuss what restrictions should be put on the maybe 100 women per year who terminate for reasons of which you or I might disaprove.  Let’s refuse to be distracted.

so why do we seem to think it is ok for these rare instances to take up over 50% of the discussion?

Well to be perfectly fair, I’ve had this conversation exactly twice, ever (and the other time was with my father, who while generally being not as liberal as I’d like, is hardly writing policy).  And most of my participation thus far this time has been to advocate the nomming of infants, anyhow.

I found amusing that the last anti-choicer who showed up at my blog to argue against my Why Pro-Choice Is The Only Moral Option post, left grumbling that I wouldn’t let him and other pro-lifers argue for the sanctity of the life of the fetus: I wanted them to defend their principle that a woman should be forced through pregnancy and childbirth against her will.

None of them wanted to do that. It does appear that anti-choicers focus so intensely on “the fetus!” that if you tell them “No, this argument is about the pregnant woman” they mostly, simply, can’t do it - they don’t have the mental capacity.

Eric, if the fetus isn’t out of the woman by the 5th trimester, what you’re talking about is an autopsy. Because fetuses won’t live that long in the womb, and I don’t think a woman’s body can handle a dead fetus that long.

Fifth trimester baby:

1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup scallions chopped fine
2 tsp tarragon
1/4 tsp oregano
1 bay leaf

Brown baby in olive oil, turning frequently, remove to simmering kettle and add bay leaf.
When baby is tender, reheat oil, brown scallions briefly, add seasonings, and spoon the mixture over the child presented prone.

Abortion through labor. Yes.

If you honestly think that there are women out there who decide, at 8.75 months of pregnancy that they’ve changed their mind and don’t want to be a mom anymore (and there aren’t extenuating circumstances), then you have such a low, fucked-up opinion of women that I wouldn’t trust you to pick up a box of pantyliners, much less something to do with my body.

So yes, abortion through labor. Because in the unlikely situation that it’s warranted, a woman should be allowed the choice. And anything less is just trying to get a toehold in so you can take all choice away from her completely.

I don’t care if you’re a vampire or a fetus or a person who needs a kidney transplant. You don’t have a right to my body to sustain your life.

Why?

Since an actual human doesn’t have the right to take another human’s blood, organs, tissue, etc. even if they need it to live, I see no reason why a potential human should have that right.

Well there are a few glaring differences between abortions and organ-snatching.

1. Virtually every woman who is pregnant is in that state because of a choice she made - the consequences of which she was very likely aware. On the other hand, if you need precious life-saving blood from me I am in no way responsible for you being in that situation of need. If for some reason I am responsible I should be forced to provide you with that blood.

2. Prohibitions on abortions don’t involve forcefully tearing anything from the bodies of anyone. Quite the contrary - they stop individuals from tearing things from their bodies. In other words, both bans - on forced organ giving and abortion - simply prohibit operations - not impel them.

3. Additionally, in the case with organ and blood donating a needful recipient has multiple avenues in which to get his/her much needed transfusions/organs. With a fetus - on the other hand - no one else is capable of sustaining it’s life except its mother. On the other hand, except in some extremely unusual cases - people needing organs and blood won’t die simply because some obstinate person refuses them access - they can just find a more altruistic individual as an alternative.

I think the fact that the mother put herself in this situation, the fetus is completely dependent on her for life and the fact that a ban on abortion simply prevents anyone from stopping a natural process separates forced organ snatching from abortion.

3) Therefore, any conflict between an entity whose personhood is unclear, undefined and subject to reasonable debate and one whose personhood is actual and obvious to everyone has to be resolved in favor of the actual person.

If both rights in conflict are equal. If the supreme right to life, on the other hand, conflicts with a lessor right: to bodily integrity and the right not to be inconvenienced - then the individual with the superior right should come out on top.

Progessive Prince: Virtually every woman who is pregnant is in that state because of a choice she made - the consequences of which she was very likely aware.

I’m impressed with how PP both elides over the issue of women who are pregnant because they were raped with his “virtually every”, and conflates the choice of having sex with the decision to have a baby.

Also, I’m relieved he comes out with both lines of crap in his very first point, meaning we know the rest of his comment is from an asshole.

Translated!

“Well there are a few glaring differences between abortions and organ-snatching.”

1. You spread your legs, slut, now you WILL suffer through the consequences.

2. Stop whining about pregnancy like it’s something dangerous! It’s what bitches were made for in the first place, after all.

3. Once a fetus is inside your body, you’re nothing more than its life support system.  Yes, everything you are and have and desire is completely secondary to your engaged reproductive function.  You are a womb with legs.  Get over it and do your moral duty.

Progressive Prince: please change your handle, you are neither of the things it describes.
Furthermore: fetuses are not people, problem solved.

If for some reason I am responsible I should be forced to provide you with that blood.

So you think that a person at fault in a car accident should be legally responsible for providing any and all injured parties with blood, organ transplants, etc, with their own body?  Because they made the choice to get behind the wheel, right?  And they should have known the consequences of that, right?  Or what if you’re a bartender, and you serve a drink to a customer with a bad liver?  Do you have to give him yours?  I mean, you know what alcohol does to people. 

Good luck with that radical shift in the entire concept of torts.  Whee!

I loved this post, and recently feel I’ve been on the so-called “front lines” of the abortion debate lately. I’m on a mailing list for a bunch of hippy moms in my area, and for some reason one of the Catholics decided to openly instigate the abortion debate. Why, I have no idea.

One thing that blows my mind about the anti-choice argument is the idea that a one celled organism is a fully fledged human being, which is completely counter to everything we do as a society. With ZEFs and children, there’s a progressive becoming of a fully fledged human being, not a specific cutoff point. A 12 week fetus is more of a human than a 3 week embryo, a 10 year old more than a newborn, etc.

They seem to fetishize the biological processes of life, which in my opinion are relatively meaningless. So what if it has DNA and automatically contracting muscle? Doesn’t mean it’s a person. A 34 year old that fits that description would be considered brain dead and fundamentally no longer a person but a body.

In other words, antichoicers make no sense.

Virtually every woman who is pregnant is in that state because of a choice she made - the consequences of which she was very likely aware.

Good to know that if I get pregnant with a wanted child and then discover it has birth defects that mean it will live a few minutes past birth at best (assuming it even survives the birth process at all), I should have to carry that doomed fetus to term because, hey, I knew what would happen if I was so stupid as to have a deformed fetus.  I should have thought it through before I allowed my fetus to have a fatal birth defect, right?

Shorter Duke Douchebag: all ur bodiez are belong to ME, DAMMIT!

I call dibs on Duke Douchebag’s kidneys. Mine suck.

It’s depressing how many people can’t wrap their brains around the idea of a woman having complete autonomy over her own body.

I could use some liver too.  I drink too much wine.

The fundamental problem with every pro-lifer’s discussion of abortion is that they assume that fetuses would just, you know, live, on their own, if women’s bodies weren’t actively *making* them live. They equate the woman to the pot of dirt you plant a flower in. The pot of dirt doesn’t *do* anything, the flower does all the work.

Shit ain’t like that.

When you are a pregnant woman, your body is working *hard* to keep that little thing alive. Your blood volume increases drastically, which may cause you high blood pressure, called pre-eclampsia. You’re eating extra food and digesting it and circulating it through your body so it can get to the baby. Your immune system is suppressing itself so it doesn’t reject the baby, which results in you having a much harder time expelling dangerous micro-organisms—much more work not to be sick. Your muscles work harder as you get heavier. Your body works to retain water. Your lungs are compressed and must work harder to draw in, not just your oxygen, but the extra oxygen the fetus needs.

A pregnant woman is not a pot of dirt. She is *working* her ass off to make that baby live and give it what it needs to grow.

Now, Progressive Prince, if I take on the job of feeding a bunch of orphans, for no pay—I’m volunteering—and then I decide, this is hard work, I don’t wanna feed these orphans anymore… are you saying I no longer have the legal right to refuse to do the work of feeding orphans? What if they’re vampire orphans and I’m feeding them MY OWN BLOOD? The fact that I consented to start the process of feeding them means I must feed them until they can get food on their own? There’s a word for that, and it’s slavery.

What if you were a farmer, and you planted a brand new tomato that was genetically engineered to be sentient? And the sentient tomato, which will grow up to be able to talk and think and do complex math problems, requires so much goddamn watering and fertilizing that you don’t have time to grow anything else? Are you compelled to continue to feed the tomato, even though doing so is destroying the rest of your life?

A woman is not a pot of dirt. Consenting to have sex isn’t consenting to have a baby any more than consenting to drive a car is consenting to getting in a car accident, and for that matter, consenting to conceive and carry a baby isn’t *perpetual* consent any more than my consenting to start a new job prevents me from quitting in a month. Being pregnant is physically very hard work, and the only way to stop doing that work, once you’re pregnant, is to expel the fetus from your body—whether it lives or dies after you do that is not the issue, the issue is that *you* should be able to choose whether to do that work or not.

I believe the reason anti-choicers don’t want to deal with this is that they want to think that babies are magical gifts of God that just grow. The idea that every human being alive is alive because of the hard work done by a woman is antithetical to misogyny; you cannot hate women *and* recognize that women are the reason for all human life. (Men do contribute sperm, but women do all the work; the contribution of a man is more like the contribution of a CEO who says “Okay, build on that site” and then leaves his minions to do all the architecting and construction.) If you truly understand how much work a woman’s body does in the course of pregnancy, you understand that it’s not a case of a woman being a passive incubator for something that’s just gonna grow on its own; the thing that is living inside her cannot live without her, not because it needs a warm safe place to grow but because *she* is working to keep it alive. There is no other job that anyone tries to argue that if you consent to start it you must continue it for nine months.

Fetuses have no right to life because they cannot live without the hard unpaid physical labor of another human being. In fact, *no* human has the right to life when they cannot live without the labor of another human being; this is why hospitals in Texas are legally allowed to take dying patients who cannot pay their bills off life support AGAINST THEIR WILL. But in most circumstances where a human could live if *someone* stepped up and helped out, the state does provide means of preserving their lives—so born infants, who can be cared for by anyone, will be taken care of by the state if the parents cannot or will not care for them. In pregnancy, however, only one person can do the work, and no one can fill in for her. If she chooses not to do it, it is a violation of her rights to force her to. When the state can take a fetus and implant it in a willing foster surrogate mother without any harm to the biological mother, then we can talk about making abortion illegal, because we’ll have an alternative that causes less harm. Until then women must have the right to have abortions or we will be slaves.

“Progressive Prince” should be IP-banned for false representation. We put up with idiots around here (I’m still around), but lying trolls have no rights in Pandagonia.

So you think that a person at fault in a car accident should be legally responsible for providing any and all injured parties with blood, organ transplants, etc, with their own body? 

Good luck with that radical shift in the entire concept of torts.  Whee!

Well actually now that I think of it the basic concept behind torts is making people whole again when they are unjustly harmed by another. As my tort’s professor repeatedly pointed out the law of torts does seem to persist in this legal fiction that all wrongs can be addressed by money.

Why not expand the concept? If through my negligence I cause someone to loose use of their kidneys maybe I should be forced to make them whole again - something that only my organ could do and not simply a large settlement check.

Anyway, I notice the dearth of argument in your post - your only quasi-argument was a blind appeal to legal traditionalism. I guess in your mind if that’s the way it is now that’s the way it should always be. Convincing.

The concept that you own your organs = blind appeal to legal traditionalism.

Can I smoke your peyote? ‘Cause I’ve been high, in my time, but I’ve never thought anything 1/100th that stupid. I wanna see what it’s like to be one step above protozoa.

As my tort’s professor repeatedly pointed out

Why does every. single. troll at Pandagon who can go beyond petty fist-shaking at “Marcotte” inevitably claim to be an attorney? 

Did the Federalist Society add The Wholesale Destruction Of Pandagon to its mission statement?  Or are they all just making it up?

Maybe they’re all really just one sadsack law school dropout sitting around the house of a Thursday afternoon trying to fill the hours between Passions and Judge Judy.

Though I will say that my use of the word “torts” in that post was pretty off—I’m no lawyer but even I know that the concept of torts in general does not necessarily apply to exactly how remuneration should be made but the ultimate responsibility or lack thereof for consequences faced by another. 

It’s just that in the 21st century USA, said remuneration is generally assumed to involve currency and not gore.

OMG, I totes figured it out.  Progressive Prince is the reanimated corpse of an ancient Anglo Saxon judge.  Wergilt, anyone?  I’m pretty sure the first word of his screen name implies that he was reanimated by someone over at Progressive car insurance, trying to come up with better ways to facilitate automotive legal issues.  Nice try, guys, but I think you’re going to have to stick to charging your customers actual money, which you in turn pay out on their behalf.  This Eye For An Eye pitch is a little slasher flick for my taste.

Now, Progressive Prince, if I take on the job of feeding a bunch of orphans, for no pay—I’m volunteering—and then I decide, this is hard work, I don’t wanna feed these orphans anymore… are you saying I no longer have the legal right to refuse to do the work of feeding orphans?

I think you know the big difference abortion and this analogy is that someone else can step in to feed the orphans… I know this because you point this out later in your argument:

But in most circumstances where a human could live if *someone* stepped up and helped out, the state does provide means of preserving their lives—so born infants, who can be cared for by anyone, will be taken care of by the state if the parents cannot or will not care for them.

I assume this means you don’t think that infanticide is acceptable even though infants can’t exist without labor (pun intended) even though you stated earlier that “Fetuses have no right to life because they cannot live without the hard unpaid physical labor of another human being.”

I suppose that would apply to your silly sentient tomato hypothetical as well…

In pregnancy, however, only one person can do the work, and no one can fill in for her. If she chooses not to do it, it is a violation of her rights to force her to.

Actually, typically Anglo-American law holds a person more beholden to someone else if that person can rely on no-one else. For example if a crowd of people are watching a child drown none of them can be legally held responsible. If one of the people jumps in to save the child the idea is if that person then abandons the rescue he can be held responsible The idea is that his attempt to help prevented others from trying (because they saw someone else already taking care of it) so now, being the only one in a position to help the child, he is responsible for it.

Consenting to have sex isn’t consenting to have a baby any more than consenting to drive a car is consenting to getting in a car accident, and for that matter, consenting to conceive and carry a baby isn’t *perpetual* consent any more than my consenting to start a new job prevents me from quitting in a month.

I disagree. If you partake in a type of activity that isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary you are consenting to deal with the logical consequences and should be held accountable.

Additionally - there a major flaw in your analogy - never does driving a car lead to someone else being dependent on you for life - at least not that I can see.

Being pregnant is physically very hard work, and the only way to stop doing that work, once you’re pregnant, is to expel the fetus from your body—whether it lives or dies after you do that is not the issue, the issue is that *you* should be able to choose whether to do that work or not.

Once again my problem with this argument it that it’s basically vaulting the right to bodily integrity and to avoid work above the right to live. Unacceptable.

I’m as pro-choice as they come.  I value women’s lives and don’t believe anyone should ever bear a pregnancy against her will for any reason.

That said, I also regret an abortion I had and have been suffering from almost suicidal despair over it for almost a year.  I have a supportive partner and a great, feminist therapist--so no need to point me in those directions. 

My point is just that we really need not to be so dismissive of the possibility that for some people, sometimes, abortion might not be the right decision and might leave someone with a great deal of sadness. 

If you continue to be pro-choice in spite of this feeling, as I do, there’s really nowhere to go.  The pro-choice people don’t want to hear that anyone ever regrets an abortion (that’s just something the bad guys say), and I don’t want anything to do with the pro-life people who would just get their jollies saying “I told you so.”

It’s a pretty lonely feeling.

I wish this argument was made front and central at the Democratic National Convention. None of that “safe, legal, and rare” fluff. I want the world to see what “pro-choice” really means.

Though I will say that my use of the word “torts” in that post was pretty off—I’m no lawyer but even I know that the concept of torts in general does not necessarily apply to exactly how remuneration should be made but the ultimate responsibility or lack thereof for consequences faced by another.

No the ulitimate idea is to address civil wrongs by making plaintiff’s whole again. Naturally this entails figuring out who is responsible first.

OMG, I totes figured it out.  Progressive Prince is the reanimated corpse of an ancient Anglo Saxon judge.  Wergilt, anyone?

Color me impressed. Not that I thought you were stupid or anything but not many people know what wergild is.

Not saying,
There may be pro-lifers who “get their jollies” saying “I told you so,” but my guess is that far more would be sympathetic and want to help you with your grief. Regardless of what you’ll see posted here--and you’ll see this a lot--it’s not just a clump of cells or a 20-minute procedure. It’s a very difficult and life-changing event you’ve been through and I’m so sorry for you. You’re in my prayers.

*cue sneers*

No one else seems to have specifically addressed this little gem:

“2. Prohibitions on abortions don’t involve forcefully tearing anything from the bodies of anyone. Quite the contrary - they stop individuals from tearing things from their bodies.”

Surely you must be joking. You ask any woman who has ever given birth whether anything was forcefully torn from her body. Actually, it takes a hell of a lot *more* force to tear out a full-term fetus/baby than it does to remove a six-week embryo.

“In other words, both bans - on forced organ giving and abortion - simply prohibit operations - not impel them.”

Because as we all know, protecting people from being forced to undergo harmful surgical operations against their wills is exactly the same as preventing them from being able to procure helpful surgical operations at their own request and consent.

Well actually now that I think of it the basic concept behind torts is making people whole again when they are unjustly harmed by another.

Yes, indeedy.

But the pregnant woman hasn’t harmed the fetus.  She is simply refusing to accomodate it - and, even ignoring the problem that it isn’t a human being, she has no obligation to house it.

Consider a hypothetical - they come up with a transplant operation that allows the whole fetus+placenta to be grafted on someone else. Attached to your belly, for example.

A pregnant woman has as much obligation to keep an unwanted pregnancy as you have an obligation to give over your body to house some random fetus.

To help you out here, the typical anti-choice counter is to waffle on about “accepting” responsibility due to having sex. If you intend to try that, please explain why having an abortion is not “accepting responsibility”, and why precisely women having sex should be punished.

Not saying, I think you’re wrong about the pro-choice support you’d get. As someone who works at Planned Parenthood from time to time, I can tell you that any volunteer or staffer there would be happy (and trained, to boot!) to speak with you about your feelings. We would never, ever shame you for your regret. Any life decision can inspire regret, honey. We don’t think that abortion, or childbirth, is any different. (Speaking as the child of a woman who does, in fact, regret my birth.)

You’re in my thoughts. I hope you find the peace you are looking for, and can move forward.

To Not Sayin:

Just also wanted to add, I am incredibly inspired by your ability to avoid projecting your regret onto others. That shows an immense strength and well of self-knowledge. If nothing else, you should be proud that you’re clearly a wise and compassionate person. I know your partner and your therapist must admire you, as well.

PP:

Once again my problem with this argument it that it’s basically vaulting the right to bodily integrity and to avoid work above the right to live.

By that logic, cold-blooded murder and killing in self-defense are morally and legally indistinguishable.

Not if you’re psychic, Dan, and can tell without a doubt that the person is going to KILL, rather than simply MAIM, you.
What, you have some kind of problem with being permanently maimed? Perhaps paralyzed? What if the attacker just gives you diabetes for life (yes, fetii can do that!)

Well, buck the fuck up, chuck....

If you partake in a type of activity that isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary you are consenting to deal with the logical consequences and should be held accountable.

And one of the logical consequences of getting pregnant through consensual sex is to weigh one’s options. And one of those options is to call the abortion clinic and schedule an appointment. Glad we agree.

Surely you must be joking. You ask any woman who has ever given birth whether anything was forcefully torn from her body. Actually, it takes a hell of a lot *more* force to tear out a full-term fetus/baby than it does to remove a six-week embryo.

No I wasn’t joking.

I suppose you are right in a sense. Technically, a ban on abortion does likely force a pregnant woman to eventually give birth and one could consider labor to be a process in which something is torn from the body - meaning that, yes, in a sense an abortion ban would impel some women to have something torn from their body.

However, I think my point is still valid.

After all, Pregnancies are a natural process begun by consensual (a vast majority of the time) sexual activity.

Organ snatching is the decidedly unnatural taking of an individual’s organs without any pretense of consent on his/her part.

I think that’s a substantial difference.

Oh, I don’t know, PP...your general pro-cruelty position makes organ snatching sound like a pretty “natural” consequence to me.

Let’s call a truce: When you actually carry a fetus to term, and give “natural” birth to it, THEN you get an opinion, mmkay?

It’s fine to say that people should “deal with the logical consequences and should be held accountable”, but all you’ve established is that there isn’t a fundamental right to have abortions funded by the state. So the people can discuss whether there are net advantages to society to be gained from such funding.

Not saying, if any fellow pro-choicer you encounter seems upset at hearing about your regret and grief, it’s probably because she or he is a highly empathetic person who hates to see anyone suffer for any reason, not because it weakens the pro-choice position (it doesn’t--but you obviously know that).

That said, thanks and congratulations for being wise enough to recognize that the regret you feel does not mean that you or anyone else should not be allowed to make the choice that you made. I hope you are able to find the peace that you need and deserve.

To help you out here, the typical anti-choice counter is to waffle on about “accepting” responsibility due to having sex. If you intend to try that, please explain why having an abortion is not “accepting responsibility”,

It’s not accepting responsibility to kill offspring in lieu of caring for them.

and why precisely women having sex should be punished.

Being anti-abortion just means you don’t want to let women terminate their pregnancies legally.

Your question only makes sense if you assume two things:

1. Pregnancy is the result of all sexual intercourse.

2. Pregnancy is a punishment.

Neither of these assumptions is warranted in my opinion.

Oh, I don’t know, PP...your general pro-cruelty position makes organ snatching sound like a pretty “natural” consequence to me.

Let’s call a truce: When you actually carry a fetus to term, and give “natural” birth to it, THEN you get an opinion, mmkay?

Instead let’s call your comment what it is: an ad hominem logical fallacy.

That said, I also regret an abortion I had and have been suffering from almost suicidal despair over it for almost a year.

And my mother-in-law went through months of almost suicidal depression after she had a quadruple bypass. 

I’m not trying to belittle your suffering, NS, but traumatic experiences can do bad things to you; it’s not limited to abortion.  For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time, and I hope you get better soon.

My point is just that we really need not to be so dismissive of the possibility that for some people, sometimes, abortion might not be the right decision and might leave someone with a great deal of sadness.

I don’t see anyone on this thread who’s being dismissive, unless you count my remark above.  Everyone reacts differently; some feel only relief, while others have second thoughts and mourn what might have been.  I’ve even read a post (was it here or at feministe?) where a woman wrote about the “funeral” ritual she devised after having an abortion.  No one here passes judgment on any reaction, except perhaps those who decide to try and deny others the very rights that they used. 

That being said, there’s a reason that we emphasize those whose abortion was a positive experience: we need to get out the word that they exist, that abortion can be a positive good, and not just a “necessary evil”.  Like the anti-choicers, we need to be bold and unashamed in presenting our beliefs.  “What about rape victims?” and “What about the health of the mother?” are good “gotchas” when illustrating just how little anti-choicers care about the walking incubators that we consider to be full human beings, but in the end, those arguments only establish that there are some circumstances where abortion is okay (which means that there are some circumstances where it is not).  We have to present those who say: “Without abortion, my kids wouldn’t exist”, “Without abortion, I would still be stuck with my abusive boyfriend”, “Without abortion, I never would have made it out of the ghetto”. 

The pro-choice people don’t want to hear that anyone ever regrets an abortion (that’s just something the bad guys say),

Really?  The post I mentioned above, where the woman wrote about her “funeral” ritual, was very well received.  Maybe the pro-choice people you know are just jerks.  The world’s not divided into good people and Death-Eaters, after all.

“After all, Pregnancies are a natural process begun by consensual (a vast majority of the time) sexual activity.”

Ah, no, not really. Pregnancy is begun by a blastocyst implanting in the uterine wall, an event which no conscious entity has any control over.

Also, Google “naturalistic fallacy.”

OK, PP, so what happens when a woman gives birth, and this results in a chronic condition like diabetes or a permanent injury like pelvic floor tearing.  Does her child bear the responsibility for providing blood, organs, or any other bodily support for resulting medical procedures she may require to fix or treat such health problems?  Why not?  I mean, it was the baby’s fault that injuries occurred.

At the fifth trimester, it would be born already, therefore the pregnancy has already been terminated and thus killing it could not possibly be termed an abortion.

Learn to biology.

Um, I’m pretty sure that was a joke.

Learn to humor.

Not Saying, as a pro-choicer I insist on believing that you did nothing wrong or immoral in having an abortion.  But that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to regret it or that your regret is in any way invalid.  The right to abort a fetus, like the right to divorce a spouse, is essential to human freedom and gender equality.  Like a divorce, an abortion is a personal decision that is the right choice for some people at some times, and also like a divorce, one may regret getting one, or one may regret not getting one.  Good luck and G-d bless. 

PP, every argument you make assumes your conclusion that a fetus is a human being with individual rights equal (or superior) to those enjoyed by the already-born.  Nothing you say will ever make any sense to anyone who does not share that underlying assumption.

Why not expand the concept? If through my negligence I cause someone to loose use of their kidneys maybe I should be forced to make them whole again - something that only my organ could do and not simply a large settlement check.

This is fascinating:  PP has come out in favor of the government forcing people to donate their organs involuntarily if the government decides it’s a good idea.

I guess the next step is for the government to have us all register so we can be randomly called for organ donations when someone else needs it.  After all, we’re all contributing to this society, and it’s not like there’s any such thing as bodily integrity, so why would donating a kidney involuntarily be any different than paying taxes involuntarily?  After all, they’re only asking for part of your liver, and that’s no big deal.  It’s not like you’re using that second kidney or anything.

I think the fact that the mother put herself in this situation,

At the end of the day, remember folks, it’s all about punishing women for sex.  Actually, not always.  It’s also, and “Progressive’s” post reminds me of this, about treating women like flowerpots.  If a man bothers to impregnate you, how dare you---a mere woman---stop the mighty actions of his mighty sperm on your weak, insufficient body?

Abortion Is Emasculating.  Take it to the grave.

K, PP, so what happens when a woman gives birth, and this results in a chronic condition like diabetes or a permanent injury like pelvic floor tearing.  Does her child bear the responsibility for providing blood, organs, or any other bodily support for resulting medical procedures she may require to fix or treat such health problems?  Why not?  I mean, it was the baby’s fault that injuries occurred.

My answer to this has to (sorry again) use a few legal concepts.

In fact causation is when someone does something that leads to something else happening but itsn’t something they are legally responsible for. So if I go driving and I am hit by a drunk driver through no fault of my own - my driving was an in fact cause of the accident. Had I not left home that night the accident would not have happened - the logic goes. However, I am clearly not to blame.

The drunk driver’s reckless drunk driving was, on the other hand, the proximate or legal causation of the accident. The differnce is the drunk driver is the one that did the illegal thing.

In the hypo you just came up with the offspring is, in some sense, the in fact cause of his parent’s suffering. However, not being culpable or negligent in anyway I don’t think you could legally impel him to do anything to help his mother.

That said, I also regret an abortion I had and have been suffering from almost suicidal despair over it for almost a year.  I have a supportive partner and a great, feminist therapist--so no need to point me in those directions.

I say this only because I resisted it for almost a decade:  has your therapist recommended medication?  I lost way too many years to depression because I was convinced I could tough it out because, after all, it was just being depressed and crying all the time, right?  For every person whose doctor puts them on antidepressants at the drop of a hat, there are 5 who need medication and never get it.

I do think that people like PP aren’t helping, because they’re basically telling you that you should feel terrible and you should feel like you’re a horrible person for making the decision that you felt was best at the time and now regret.  To be human is to regret the decisions that you’ve made and to wonder what might have happened if you’d made a different decision.  And grief can do funny things to people, especially if you feel like you’re not being allowed to grieve.

I wish this argument was made front and central at the Democratic National Convention. None of that “safe, legal, and rare” fluff. I want the world to see what “pro-choice” really means.

Oh, please, don’t throw us in the briar patch, Sharon.

Not Saying: My point is just that we really need not to be so dismissive of the possibility that for some people, sometimes, abortion might not be the right decision and might leave someone with a great deal of sadness.

Yeah. I think that’s a good point.

I go back and forth on what I feel about abortion, quite honestly - always from an academic perspective, in the sense of distant/intellectual. I’ve never been pregnant, nor am I ever likely to be. But while sometimes abortion is a very easy decision, sometimes it’s going to be a much harder one, and no one but the pregnant woman herself is really going to know exactly how easy or hard the decision is.

I’m sorry you regret the decision you made, and second someone’s upthread recommendation to see if you can find a counselor or therapist via Planned Parenthood.

I never change my mind about whose decision it rightly is, though: which is what assholes like PP never seem to get.

Oh, please, don’t throw us in the briar patch, Sharon.

What I love is that Sharon made her itchy little comment just a few minutes after Not Saying. Typical pro-lifer, Sharon’s first thought wasn’t to respond to Not Saying - it was to start a party-political attack.

(*waves* Hi, Sharon! Still got that ginormous crush on me?)

not saying on,

If you haven’t felt your feelings are supported, I think you haven’t been looking in the right place.  There’s an organization called Exhale that was set up precisely for women like yourselves, who want an apolitical place to discuss their feelings about abortion. 

http://www.4exhale.org/

They won’t pressure you, like anti-choicers, to direct your feelings towards an ideological agenda.  They’re there just to talk to you and support you, whatever you feel about your abortion.

However, not being culpable or negligent in anyway I don’t think you could legally impel him to do anything to help his mother.

I dunno, man.  I think it’s pretty fucking negligent to have the nerve to try to go backwards down the birth canal, resulting in significant harm to the owner of said birth canal’s excretory systems. 

Also, if you really have any legal education at all, or shit, if you have any experience with the legal system or even just more than your average idiot’s understanding of how civil matters work, you will be aware of the fact that a person does not have to be consciously or maliciously culpable to still be at fault. 

I once took a slightly dodgy turn into a parking lot, which caused a woman who was probably driving a little faster than she should have been (and was definitely driving a much larger vehicle than is particularly responsible) to side-swipe my car.  Even though I didn’t consciously intend to cause an accident and in fact was not aware, as I was making the turn, that what I was doing was particularly risky at all—I was still the one ruled to be at fault for the accident. 

Under current tort law, an infant who causes long term bodily injury to its mother in the act of gestation or the birthing process should bear legal culpability.  And, according to you, compensate her with her/his own body, if necessary.

Of course PP’s hypothetical baby is a boy.  They always are.

Progressive, you’ve made it quite clear that your view of your own manhood is dependent on the belief that you can, at any point in time, conquer a woman’s body by forcing her to bear children. 

It takes an amazing amount of self-confidence for some men to treat sex as a fun thing to do with an equal, not a literal re-enactment of male dominance. 

Or maybe it’s just the fear that if you don’t trap her with a pregnancy, she’ll escape.

I want to see PP’s rationale for distinguishing “consequences” from “punishment” in the context that he believes that women who become pregnant when they don’t wish to be should be forced to carry to term and take care of the resultant child. 

Here’s your chance, cupcake.  Dazzle me with your brilliance.

I swear to god, I am sick to the teeth of the involuntary virginal college Repubs on the internet.  It’s a real fucking shame they feel their sexuality is this horrible, punishing burden because it makes them desire women---who they feel are beneath them, and then, to add insult to injury, this inferior creatures reject them and their seed as if they have the right.  Sit on that bitterness long enough, and banning abortion to punish them, so they feel sexuality as a burden, too, starts to seem “fair”.  Misery loves company and all that. 

Also, when you feel that women have all this unjustified power to say no to you, then it’s probably very compelling to fantasize about how intercourse is the final conquest.  Someone finally says yes, and it’s time to party, to completely own her by forcing her to have a baby against her will and prove, once and for all that yes, you are the master.

Hey PP.  Do you think people with STDs should be forced to suffer through it without medical care because they made the choice to have sex?

Thanks for the many thoughtful and supportive comments above. 

Mnemosyne, it’s okay to make the suggestion.  I’ve tried anti-depressants, and they did help with the crying all the time.  They didn’t make it all okay, though.

Gator90, as I said, I’m still pro-choice, so I also agree that what I did wasn’t “wrong or immoral” in a general sense.  It was just the wrong choice for me as an individual at the time that I made it, and the memory of the whole experience leading up to and including the procedure is incredibly traumatic and painful. 

To those who suggested talking to someone at Planned Parenthood… Thanks, but I’ve already had someone in an equivalent position (a very “well-trained” clinic provider) try to talk me out of how I’m feeling, and I can’t face the possibility of having another one of those conversations. 

Anyhow, much as I appreciate the support from you-all, we’re not going to make me all better here in comments. 

My point in raising my situation was only to serve as a reminder that even though the pro-life side makes horrible use of some women’s regret and grief after abortion to try to take away our right to choose doesn’t mean that those feelings aren’t real for some of us… And I’m sorry to say, I’ve read all too many blog posts and comments on “our side” (including here at Pandagon) that are dismissive of the possibility of any negative emotional consequences of abortion for the woman. 

I’m really not trying to pick a fight about any of this, or get anyone’s defenses up, just trying to raise awareness and encourage even more sensitivity in how we talk about things.

Mnemosyne, it’s okay to make the suggestion.  I’ve tried anti-depressants, and they did help with the crying all the time.  They didn’t make it all okay, though.

They didn’t make it all okay for me, either, but they made talk therapy a lot more productive.  And it still took 7 years to really get to a good place.  Don’t underestimate how much time these things take or beat yourself up over it taking “too long”—it takes as long as it takes and you can’t do it on anyone’s timetable, even your own.  Just keep plugging along and working with your therapist and it will get better eventually.  I promise. 

I dunno, man.  I think it’s pretty fucking negligent to have the nerve to try to go backwards down the birth canal, resulting in significant harm to the owner of said birth canal’s excretory systems.

In civil law, in certain cases, the standard of care for negligence can be the law - in other words if your turn broke the law that could be used as evidence of your negligence. The idea is you have a duty to follow the law and you’re not doing of it breached your duty and resulted in damage for which you can be found liable.

Under current tort law, an infant who causes long term bodily injury to its mother in the act of gestation or the birthing process should bear legal culpability.  And, according to you, compensate her with her/his own body, if necessary.

Nope. Generally, children under the age of 7 can’t be held liable for torts. Sometimes they can be but the idea is they have to be at a certain level of self-awareness.

Actually, typically Anglo-American law...

... has no problem with legalized abortion, traditionally.

Most people do not regard a fetus as a person. Those who disagree have the burden of explaining why a fetus should be considered differently.

Of course PP’s hypothetical baby is a boy.  They always are.

I can’t believe it. As I was writing he I actually paused and considered changing it to female in order to preempt any bogus sexism claims. No, I thought, they couldn’t be that bad.

Hey PP.  Do you think people with STDs should be forced to suffer through it without medical care because they made the choice to have sex?

No. Not unless their treatment plan implicates human right’s issues.

Keep in mind that I am an anti-abortion Democrat. I don’t want to be anti-abortion because it’s really inconvenient to be against abortion and consistently vote Democratic.

I’m against abortion because I genuinely think its incredibly, inexcusably immoral.

I’m super-for any form of contraception precisely because I hate abortion. I think the best case scenario is a society were unplanned pregnancies essentially don’t happen - thus negating the need for abortions.

I’m also for providing women who have children with as many resources as possible in the form of health care and government programs to assist mothers so they won’t have abortions because of fears that the child won’t be well cared for.

The idea is you have a duty to follow the law and you’re not doing of it breached your duty and resulted in damage for which you can be found liable.

OK, so you’re saying it would be perfectly fine for me to cause bodily harm to someone such that her pelvic floor was destroyed?  That this is in no way a violation of any law?

Generally, children under the age of 7 can’t be held liable for torts. Sometimes they can be but the idea is they have to be at a certain level of self-awareness.

Which is a beast of a totally different color to the rest of your line of argument.  If a child who negligently caused injury to a woman is not bodily responsible for her medical care, due strictly to age, then why do you have such a problem understanding that fetus != person?

Not saying, I just realized I’m partly pep-talking to get my own self back into therapy.  Turns out that if you’ve been struggling with your mother’s death since you were a child, and you get to the age that she died at, it kinda puts your brain back in a bad place and you need a tune-up.  So hopefully I didn’t come across as too hectoring since the person I’m really hectoring is myself.

try to talk me out of how I’m feeling,

Then you had an irresponsible, BADLY trained counselor. A good one does not try to talk you into or out of one damned thing. Please, please do not abandon all hope of compassion and help because you encountered one douche.

Not Saying: Thanks, but I’ve already had someone in an equivalent position (a very “well-trained” clinic provider) try to talk me out of how I’m feeling, and I can’t face the possibility of having another one of those conversations.

Then they were a bad therapist - what you feel is what you feel. Because one therapist was bad at their job doesn’t mean they all are. (Try St Johns Wort: fewer side-effects than any other anti-depressant, and it can give you emotional room to get into a space to deal with your situation.)

Argh. If I had any kind of managerial power, I’d ask who it was. You can actually report that to the management at the PP, Not Saying...They do want to know when people in their own ranks are operating some agenda. Your counselor there would have been disciplined.

Dickhead Duke wants to ban abortion. Not because he’s a misogynist fuck who wants to make sure women don’t get away with having sex and not facing their rightful punishment/consequences (same thing). Nope, he’s just in it for the baaaaybeez.

Let’s test that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html

Turns out anti-abortion laws do not have the effect of lowering abortion rates, but they do have the effect of raising women’s death rates.

Now, the only rational response from someone who really doesn’t want to hurt women, and just wants to save babies, is to say “I guess I was wrong. Abortion should remain legal. What can I do instead to lower abortion rates?”

Any other response, and we know what the Dickhead Duke is really all about: crime and punishment.

Kyra, “fifth trimester”, learn to recognize sarcasm, genius.

Oh, please, don’t throw us in the briar patch, Sharon.

Why not? I think it’s incredibly important for people to know the exact position many pro-choicers have on abortion. Not the feel-good “I know you had no choice” face that Planned Parenthood or NARAL usually put on this issue. I really like the fact that so many commenting here are bold enough to extoll the virtues of abortion up until complete birth. That’s wonderfully consistent, unlike the way most human beings, particularly those who have been through pregnancy and birth, view gestation and abortion.

Not Saying has put the other face on abortion, the one most of the commenters here ignore. That regardless of the woman’s belief about the acceptability of abortion, her abortion was painful at the time and since then. You can find posts here denying the idea of Post Abortion Syndrome, yet that’s basically what Not Saying says she’s going through.

The ridiculous lengths that people here have gone through to discredit Progressive Prince’s arguments shows why so many Americans disagree with the pro-choice side. It’s not really a winning argument to declare that health problems resulting from childbirth are the responsibility of the child (as opposed to simply a risk of childbirth). Nor does Amanda’s babbling about “dominating males” increase the support for that grisly procedure. But both are viewpoints, I think, that need full and unfettered expression on national television at the DNC convention. People should know what they’re getting.

BTW, a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute isn’t going to be without bias towards legalized abortion. It is an arm of Planned Parenthood.

You can find posts here denying the idea of Post Abortion Syndrome, yet that’s basically what Not Saying says she’s going through.

I think you need to check yourself before you label someone else’s feelings. She says she has feelings of regret and sadness. She does NOT say she has any kind of “syndrome.” Moreover, several commenters have now responded to her, without dismissing or questioning her feelings. We’ve responded that yes, like any major decision, one can come to regret an abortion. And everyone has hoped she finds peace with her past. So...basically your entire last post is a lie that stinks of your own asshole.

Try. Again.

No wait, don’t. Because every try, you fail.

What I love is that Sharon made her itchy little comment just a few minutes after Not Saying. Typical pro-lifer, Sharon’s first thought wasn’t to respond to Not Saying - it was to start a party-political attack.

My comment was written after reading through the comments on the thread. Not Saying’s was not there yet. I suppose, in Jesurgislac’s World, everybody refreshes their computer screens before commenting. *rolls eyes*

BTW, a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute isn’t going to be without bias towards legalized abortion. It is an arm of Planned Parenthood.

Yawn. No it isn’t, but it wouldn’t matter if it were.

The World Health Organization controlled the study. You have to be a real far-right paranoid to imagine that the WHO is cooking the books for some international pro-choice conspiracy. (In other words, we already know what you think, Sharon. The only question is whether Dickhead is as crazy as you.)

Well, what? Accurate name.

People here only responded with any sympathy to the idea that a woman would regret her abortion after Not Saying stated her position (and also saying she was still pro-choice). There’s never been any indication on this site that there is large scale support for the grief and struggle many women have after abortion (please reference Amanda’s posts on Feminists for Life, for starters). Basically, what you’ve done is support my conclusion that it is very important for everyone to know how pro-choicers feel. Also, I didn’t say Not Saying had a “syndrome.” I said that what she expresses is part of what is known as Post Abortion Syndrome, an idea scoffed at here and at other sites. So, no, I didn’t lie and my asshole doesn’t stink. But you might try wiping so you don’t smell yourself.

There’s never been any indication on this site that there is large scale support for the grief and struggle many women have after abortion (please reference Amanda’s posts on Feminists for Life, for starters).

Wrong.  We’ve had entire threads on Pandagon about how resentful some women feel when we’re attacked for not “suffering enough” after having had an abortion procedure.  The grief and shame of an abortion doesn’t come solely from inside the woman who has the procedure.  Plenty of negative attitudes are heaped upon post-abortive women in an attempt to make them suffer, and yes, sharon, I’m looking directly at you and your wingnut ilk. 

As it states in the DVM IV, there are behavioral disorders, personality disorders, and psychosocial disorders, and so-called “post-abortion syndrome” falls into the last category.  Women feel bad about abortion because everyone in society is blaming them, either for having been careless with their birth control or for having been walking alone at night when they got raped.  It’s the same difference as far as the victim-blaming is concerned. 

Also, I didn’t say Not Saying had a “syndrome.” I said that what she expresses is part of what is known as Post Abortion Syndrome.

That makes absolutely no sense.  You said what you said.  We all read it, and we can all recognize when you’re trying to armchair psychoanalyze someone who has not (at least that I can see) asked for a diagnosis from you.  In what way are you qualified to make that observation?  Why do you say that we scoff at “post-abortion syndrome” here and at other sites when the American Psychological Association has already issued a definitive statement explaining that “post-abortion syndrome” is a made-up psychological disorder without any scientific evidence to indicate that the abortion procedure itself (and not negative social stigma) causes grief and depression? 

Also, PP, you never answered my question.  Explain to us the difference between consequence and punishment, and how being forced to carry a child to term that you don’t want is a “consequence” and not a punishment.

I go back and forth on what I feel about abortion, quite honestly - always from an academic perspective, in the sense of distant/intellectual. I’ve never been pregnant, nor am I ever likely to be.

I know someone who used to be similar to you, Jesurgislac. She was and is adamantly pro-choice, but she felt that abortion had a moral dimension that pro-choice arguments did not fully address. But she is now pregnant (desired and planned), and she tells me that the effects of the pregnancy, although well within the typical range, are quite enough to prevent her from accomplishing everything she wants to accomplish right now. Her position is now, “Women’s bodies, women’s choices, period.” (That’s my position too, but as I lack a uterus I’ll never know it in my gut the way she does.)

GrammerRWA

I have heard of the Guttmacher Institute’s study.

First of all, I would like to point out that if a practice is evil, as I hold abortion to be, the mere fact that it will always be present in a society does not justify making it legal: even if it could be demonstrated that making it illegal has no effect on its prevalence.

For example, take human trafficking. It exists. Everywhere. In this country, in the most developed nations and in the least developed.

If someone were able to demonstrate irrefutably that human trafficking is unaffected by illegalization (or even decreased by legalization; because of regulation) would you be in support of making legal this essentially modern day slavery?

If you wouldn’t that’s pretty much where I am on abortion. If it is an evil I am against it even if making it illegal wouldn’t decrease it.

Secondly, I don’t buy the Guttamacher Institute study. The problem with it is that it compares all nations, developed and undeveloped, traditional and modern, democratic and not - which frequently have different local customs, mores and medical standards together with no regard to these differences.

I think if we want an idea how our country would deal with abortion we should look at Ireland. Ireland is the only decent sized, prosperous, modern, liberal democracy which has completely banned abortion (except in about 100 cases a year). It has an abortion rate which is a fraction of ours and the best maternal health rate in the world.

Additionally, Ireland refutes the pro-choice belief that abortion is somehow linked to the political rights and status of women. That country has already had a female president, has more political representation of women in it’s legislature than ours.

Wrong.  We’ve had entire threads on Pandagon about how resentful some women feel when we’re attacked for not “suffering enough” after having had an abortion procedure.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume I didn’t make my point clear. The argument you speak of isn’t directed at pro-choice supporters who scoff at the notion that abortion is a big deal. Insead, your comment discusses what would generally be described as pro-life supporters and/or people more pro-life than you. That’s not quite what I was talking about. Even on this thread, before Not Saying appeared, the arguments were quite strongly in support of the idea that having an abortion at 38 weeks should be permissible and, implicitly, that there would be no grief or guilt on the part of the woman involved and how dare anybody who thought it was bad!

I’ve read numerous threads here discussing abortion and perhaps I managed to miss the handful that showed any sympathy for women regretting abortion. It would be easy to get lost among the hundred or so chest-thumping “I should have an abortion if I want it and F.U. if you disagree!” posts.

As for my comment on Post Abortion Syndrome, you do understand the difference between something being a syndrome and something being a symptom of a syndrome, right? If I have sore joints, that’s a symptom of arthritis, but I’m not saying I have arthritis because it could be related to something else.

And Cyan, there are many women who take the “my body, my choice” attitude with their first child. Then they have other children and their opinions change.

But seriously, anybody else want to see this pro-choice face played out at the DNC? Nobody wants to do that?

Most people do not regard a fetus as a person. Those who disagree have the burden of explaining why a fetus should be considered differently.

I disagree. You’re basically arguing what plantation owners and patriarchs did. Prove to us we’re wrong, they said.

I think if you are trying to justify not treating a class of persons as human beings its up to YOU to prove that you don’t have to give them human rights. If you want to argue in support of slavery - YOU have to prove those enslaved are not really human. If you want to justify sexism its up to YOU to prove that women aren’t fully human, etc.

That way is safer. After all it is worse to assume a human being isn’t a human being than to assume a not human-being is a human being.

The best you can do is Ireland?

Seriously, Ireland?  Where people have been regularly maimed and murdered in the streets because of domestic terrorism for the last thirty years?

Why not compare abortion rates with somewhere a little more politically stable, like Sweden, for example?

Oh yeah, best maternal labor policy and lowest infant mortality rate in the EU.  Couldn’t have anything at all do with the fact that their NHS provides free reproductive healthcare to all of its citizens (and lawful residents, too).

I disagree. You’re basically arguing what plantation owners and patriarchs did. Prove to us we’re wrong, they said.

I think if you are trying to justify not treating a class of persons as human beings its up to YOU to prove that you don’t have to give them human rights. If you want to argue in support of slavery - YOU have to prove those enslaved are not really human

Uh. Hm.

Glaring lack of understanding both of the body of law re: physical integrity AND a shocking ignorance of (at least American) history. Shock.

For the record: No. It was more or less up to those who felt African-Americans and women WERE human to prove THAT to the patriarchs. See: Abolitionists, hundreds of ‘em. See: Suffragists. And it’s worth noting that they have not yet been terribly successful, despite being utterly correct.

It’s not really a winning argument to declare that health problems resulting from childbirth are the responsibility of the child (as opposed to simply a risk of childbirth).

Just FYI, but I certainly was not (and don’t think anyone else is) arguing that as a genuine pro-choice position, but as a rhetorical test of Progressive Prince’s position on the matter (which is that women should be forced to see all pregnancies through to term because a fetus apparently has more rights than a human does—namely the right to feed off of a person’s body regardless of that person’s desire to allow such a thing.) When PP decided that torts law could somehow be twisted to justify this (implying that, in fact, the law ought to obligate people to do things like give blood, donate organs, etc), we got to have lots of fun stretching those arguments out to their breaking point: if torts can be applied to force a woman to carry a child to term, they should also be applied to force all 18 year olds whose mothers experienced traumatic and/or health-problem causing pregnancies/deliveries to properly remunerate the women they assaulted.

Ireland is the only decent sized, prosperous, modern, liberal democracy which has completely banned abortion (except in about 100 cases a year). It has an abortion rate which is a fraction of ours and the best maternal health rate in the world.

Isn’t the whole point that when abortion is illegal, the STATS will show there’s no abortion, while the dead women with sepsis say something else? Maternal health rate doesn’t take into account women who secretly get illegal abortions, and it most certainly doesn’t track the health of those who die from secret illegal abortions.

It has an abortion rate which is a fraction of ours and the best maternal health rate in the world.

Ireland is also part of the EU, which means that Irish women can travel easily to other European countries with more liberal abortion laws.  Any Irish woman who wants an abortion can hop on a cheap RyanAir flight to the UK or maybe a Scandinavian country or France and have an abortion.  I’m not even sure it would cost her more than the price of the trip. 

Hence the deceptively low abortion rate.  Ireland is only able to ban abortion by piggybacking on nearby countries which fully allow it and providing cheap and convenient travel links to such countries (which of course is partially by virtue of being a small European country).  If this were untrue, there would be massive political agitation for abortion law liberalization, and the position of Ireland’s government would be untenable.

Prove to us we’re wrong, they said.

And, they were proven wrong. Mostly because there was a long tradition of regarding slaves as human to begin with, so ultimately the institution died out.

However, fetuses have never been considered the same as people, and when you point to the long tradition of Anglo-American jurisprudence, you are obligated to accept the fact that such jurisprudence has for a long time accepted legal abortion as not even a remotely controversial issue.

You’re also making the mistake that I actually disagree with you. I don’t. I’m simply aware of the fact that regarding a fetus as a person is a completely out-of-the-mainstream view which humans have accepted since as long as we’ve had the written word to go on. The case for opposing abortion before the first trimester is a tough one to make: it is essentially a religious view that the value of the life of the fetus is on equal standing with the life of a person. Your case has to be extremely strong to justify it, and the onus is on you to come up with a convincing explanation of why all historical legal views of the place of a fetus are wrong and that yours is correct.

Must be tough to be a pro-life Democrat.

Oh, please, don’t throw us in the briar patch, Sharon.

Why not? I think it’s incredibly important for people to know the exact position many pro-choicers have on abortion.

Sigh

Please tell me you get the reference, at least.

Not the feel-good “I know you had no choice” face that Planned Parenthood or NARAL usually put on this issue.

Actually, Planned Parenthood and NARAL are more about “It’s your choice.” - Planned Parenthood in particular provides contraception, abortion, and prenatal care, so they’re prepared for whatever choice you make.

“I had no choice” is more for anti-choicers who get abortions and want to justify it to themselves.

I really like the fact that so many commenting here are bold enough to extoll the virtues of abortion up until complete birth. That’s wonderfully consistent, unlike the way most human beings, particularly those who have been through pregnancy and birth, view gestation and abortion.

Because no one here is a mother.  Snort.

What we’re extolling is the right of women to make their own medical choices at any time.

I don’t know what image you have in your twisted imagination - a woman in labor demanding that the ob/gyn stick a suction tube into the baby’s head while she’s crowning? - but we’ve pointed out enough times that that’s nothing like reality.  What it comes down to is this: anti-choicers keep asking at what point in pregnancy a woman’s self-determination away from her.  The answer is never. 

Not Saying has put the other face on abortion, the one most of the commenters here ignore. That regardless of the woman’s belief about the acceptability of abortion, her abortion was painful at the time and since then.

As I said (more nicely) to Not Saying, the reason we focus on women who have positive experiences with abortion is because there are plenty of people talking about the other side.  All the time.  And we need to make people aware that there’s a counter-argument.  We certainly don’t pretend that women who have a negative experience don’t exist, and we have nothing but sympathy for those who do.

What do you think of women who have the experience of abortion that you prefer to ignore?

You can find posts here denying the idea of Post Abortion Syndrome, yet that’s basically what Not Saying says she’s going through.

Not Saying says she’s going through sadness and regret, which often accompanies major decisions and traumatic experiences (like, say, an unwanted pregnancy).  Post Abortion Syndrome, on the other hand, is nothing but anti-choice wishful thinking, a bit of hope that, even though the dirty slut escaped her rightful punishment, she’s at least suffering a little.

People experience sadness, regret, and depression.  But women who have abortions experience them in no greater proportion than anyone else.

People here only responded with any sympathy to the idea that a woman would regret her abortion after Not Saying stated her position (and also saying she was still pro-choice).

Yes, because Not Saying specifically said that she did not want her personal experience to be the basis of laws that would affect women who might have a different experience.

My knee surgery was pretty traumatic—should I start lobbying to have knee surgery banned because, in my personal experience, it was horrible?  We’d pretty much have to stop all practice of medicine if we let the people who were traumatized by a particular procedure dictate that it should be banned for everyone in the country.

It would be nice if forced birthers like you wouldn’t leap on each and every instance of a woman regretting a difficult decision to demand that abortion be outlawed.  Maybe then we could figure out an honest percentage of how many women have bad experiences instead of the scare stories that you want to use to have the procedure banned for every woman, even ones who wouldn’t be traumatized by it.

at what point in pregnancy you can take a woman’s self-determination away from her.

Dammit.

Since my experience is now the subject of debate - ugh to that, by the way, but I knew I was taking that risk when I first commented - I would like to clarify that pretty much none of what I’m feeling has anything to do with “feeling bad about abortion because everyone in society is blaming [me].” I agree that it’s awful that society does this.  I just don’t agree that it’s why I have my feelings.

I don’t accept the views of those who try to shame us and I don’t feel _guilty_ about my abortion.  That’s not what my grief and regret are about.  It turns out that I can regret what happened quite thoroughly without it having much of anything to do with “society’s view”. 

Also, at least one person has characterized me as someone who “came to regret” my abortion later, as if I were engaging in revisionist history about something I wanted at the time, but then later changed my mind about.  That actually doesn’t describe what happened in my case.  I didn’t fully want it at the time, but I felt boxed in to the choice and for a variety of reasons that I’m not going to detail here felt I couldn’t stop it once I’d started down that road.  I think at the time, I thought it was my job to tough it out and that I’d be okay once it was over if only I could get through it.  I was wrong.  I’m not okay.  I didn’t break down under the grief and regret until a few days after the procedure, but I don’t think that’s quite the same as “coming to regret” it in the revisionist sense. 

I don’t know what makes something a syndrome.  I certainly don’t agree with the way PAS or whatever it’s called gets used by pro-lifers.  ...But I also have flashbacks to the experience, I have panic attacks, I can’t concentrate, I have been depressed… Going down one of the checklists on one of the websites, I’d say I’ve experienced all but a few of the symptoms on the list over the course of the past year, and they’ve been very real and very awful, whether they’re part of a syndrome or not. 

Thanks Amanda for the link above, by the way.  And not to worry, folks who were concerned about the counselor who was inappropriate, because as I mentioned in the first comment, I have found a good therapist.

I didn’t fully want it at the time, but I felt boxed in to the choice and for a variety of reasons that I’m not going to detail here felt I couldn’t stop it once I’d started down that road.  I think at the time, I thought it was my job to tough it out and that I’d be okay once it was over if only I could get through it.

Think that could be more the source of the problem than the abortion itself?

After all, our whole point here is that the most wonderful things in the world can become horrors if you’re forced into them.

Sharon, no one disputes that some women who have abortions regret it or feel bad about it.  (You keep claiming that pro-choicers deny the existence of this phenomomenon, but I frankly suspect you’re making that up.  I just haven’t seen it, ever.  It appears to be a straw man.) My question is, how is this obvious fact relevant to the question of abortion’s legality?  I’ve known many people of both genders who have deeply, profoundly regretted their decision to marry; should marriage therefore be prohibited?  That is where your logic leads, unless your only point is to accuse people of insensitivity they have not in fact displayed.

Must be tough to be a pro-life Democrat.

Not so much: politics is the art of the possible. Supporting Democrats is the best way to get the troops out of Iraq, improve access to health care, and pursue a rational approach to the environment.

On the other hand, supporting Republicans because you want to stop abortion is just an exercise is self-gratifying wankery that helps no one, but makes you feel all righteous. And that’s a waste of time, because politics isn’t about personal expression, it’s about getting things done.

The best you can do is Ireland?

Seriously, Ireland?  Where people have been regularly maimed and murdered in the streets because of domestic terrorism for the last thirty years?

First of all, that’s Northern Ireland a.k.a, part of the UK, which incidentally does have UK abortion rates - higher than ours I believe - although I didn’t just check that.

Also the violence stopped over ten years ago.

The peaceful part of Ireland is what I am talking about, and yes, it is the best I can do. Good for me it does pretty darn well.

The peaceful part of Ireland is what I am talking about, and yes, it is the best I can do. Good for me it does pretty darn well.

Except for this:

Ireland is also part of the EU, which means that Irish women can travel easily to other European countries with more liberal abortion laws.  Any Irish woman who wants an abortion can hop on a cheap RyanAir flight to the UK or maybe a Scandinavian country or France and have an abortion.  I’m not even sure it would cost her more than the price of the trip. 

Hence the deceptively low abortion rate.  Ireland is only able to ban abortion by piggybacking on nearby countries which fully allow it and providing cheap and convenient travel links to such countries (which of course is partially by virtue of being a small European country).  If this were untrue, there would be massive political agitation for abortion law liberalization, and the position of Ireland’s government would be untenable.

Did you catch it that time?

I was the one who said “came to regret.”

My turn of phrase was not meant to imply anything “revisionist.” You simply can’t regret something until you do it. So one does something, and one can come to regret it—instantly, soon after, years after...but it’s all AFTER the choice is made. My apologies if you thought I was accusing you or misrepresenting your case. 

(I suppose it’s technically possible to regret something you are in the midst of doing? Which seems to be the same thing as “doing something you’re not happy about”...not sure.)

Oh, and big props to Seraph: you have hit it on the head. Nothing coerced is a “blessing.” Nothing coerced is “beautiful.” And I’d argue that however biologically simple it might be, nothing coerced is “natural” either.

A coerced birth and a coerced abortion are equally heinous things.

PP, Ireland also bans divorce.  I assume you’re on board with that as well, right?

(I suppose it’s technically possible to regret something you are in the midst of doing? Which seems to be the same thing as “doing something you’re not happy about”...not sure.)

There was a fascinating article in the New Yorker one time about people who commit suicide by jumping off of bridges, and the few people who survived the fall recalled thinking the instant after they jumped, “Wow, this was a bad idea.” So I think it’s very possible to regret doing something in the middle of doing it.

Ha! Mnem, that is exactly the article I was thinking about when I posted. It’s the English major in me, not the psychologist, that quibbles over whether you could still call that “coming to regret” the action.

Progressive Prince: Ireland is the only decent sized, prosperous, modern, liberal democracy which has completely banned abortion (except in about 100 cases a year).  It has an abortion rate which is a fraction of ours and the best maternal health rate in the world.

BWAH! Okay. I’m British, Proprince, and both Ireland and Belgium have “resolved the abortion problem” by formally shoving it off on to neighboring countries. Belgian women who want to have an abortion go to the Netherlands (or the UK): Irish women go to the UK or the Netherlands.

This isn’t a perfect solution for the women concerned, but it means the Catholic-dominated government of those countries can continue to pretend they are pro-life. You can get an idea of the figures of the actual Irish abortion rate here - in 2007, 4686 women gave addresses within the Republic of Ireland at UK clinics that perform abortions. That was a decrease from previous years, but in the Netherlands that year, 445 women gave addresses within the Republic of Ireland. Furthermore, ProPri, Irish women who can give a British address (and many Irish people have relatives in the UK and could give a family address) won’t be included in that data - it’s an undercount.

You really are an idiot, yes?

After reading too much about these issues too late at night, my unconscious served up a nightmare in which I was having a miscarriage / abortion. I say “miscarriage” because doctors and instruments did not feature; instead the contents of my womb fell out onto the floor, plop, but in the dream I knew it was an abortion. I had only been one month pregnant but the fetus already had a partial face (at the stage when it looks like Cthulhu). I scooped it up in a towel and cast about for a place to dispose of it. I thought of throwing it away in a nearby lake or woods but was afraid someone would stumble over it, so I put the towel in a trash can.

This dream was wired into the American collective unconscious. It doesn’t get past the ick factor. Many American women seem stuck at this stage.

Can we have rational discussion in the waking world, please.

Did you catch it that time?

Yes.

It’s true that 5,000 Irish women got abortions in England according to the addresses they leave the English clinics, but that still comes to less than half of the U.S abortion rate.

Even when you compare Ireland’s abortion rate to Spain, the most catholic country in Europe which has legalized abortion, it still comes to about 40% less (Spain in 2004 had 85,000 abortions amongst a population of 40 million - Ireland 5000 for 4.1 million).

This I think is pretty good evidence that abortions decline significantly when the sanction of the state and society is against it.

Even the relatively minor inconvenience of air travel and associated costs - is enough to deter a substantial number of Irish women from seeking abortions.

If you want more evidence just look at the U.S abortion rate after Roe. According to the Guttmacher Institute the overall number of abortions significantly decreased. Even after almost two decades of decreasing post-Roe the overall abortion rate is still higher than before Roe was handed down.

In other words, abortion rates in this country are definitely impacted by it’s being legal or not.

Oh wait - scratch that the overall number of abortions increased - not decreased - significantly after Roe was handed down.

But there is no sanction against abortions in Ireland, ProPri. None at all: you’re talking out your arse.

Women who need an abortion in Ireland go to the UK or to the Netherlands. There’s no sanction against doing this. Your earlier claim that Ireland had only a hundred abortions a year was stupidly, ignorantly wrong. Ireland has thousands of abortions each year that are outsourced to other countries.

In other words, abortion rates in this country are definitely impacted by it’s being legal or not.

BWAH! The Netherlands, to which women in Belgium (and Ireland) who need an abortion go, has abortion on demand any time in the first trimester, and safe legal abortion thereafter if the woman can get medical sanction, has the lowest abortion rate in the world - one seventh the rate of the US.

Countries that want to decrease the abortion rate need to emulate the Netherlands…

If you want more evidence just look at the U.S abortion rate after Roe. According to the Guttmacher Institute the overall number of abortions significantly decreased. Even after almost two decades of decreasing post-Roe the overall abortion rate is still higher than before Roe was handed down.

You really are an idiot, aren’t you? To quote the Guttmacher Institute source you linked to: By the end of 1970, four states had repealed their antiabortion laws, and 11 states had reformed them. The pre-1973 numbers listed are LEGAL abortions.

So the “marked increase” you’re pointing at there is a marked increase in the number of legal abortions, when, after 1973, abortion became legal in ALL states, not just 4-15.

More information from the Guttmacher Institute:

Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One analysis, extrapolating from data from North Carolina, concluded that an estimated 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions occurred in 1967.

One stark indication of the prevalence of illegal abortion was the death toll. In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year. The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200, but illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And these are just the number that were officially reported; the actual number was likely much higher.

Abortion rates have been steadily falling in the US since women got better access to contraception, despite the pro-life attempts to prevent this. Women have also been more likely to decide to keep and care for their baby, if they decide not to abort.

Same goes for Ireland: steadily increasing access to contraception and better welfare services.

I mean, to recapitulate, ProPri:

1. You pointed to Ireland’s abortion rate as an example of how a complete ban can work, without realizing that you got the number of abortions wrong by a factor of 10 because you had never bothered to find out where women who need abortions in Ireland go.

2. You continued to maintain that a complete ban “works” despite having been shown that it really doesn’t.

3. You point to a chart that shows a rise in the number of legal abortions in the US after abortion became legal throughout the US, that specifies it does not show how many illegal abortions were carried out in states where all abortion was illegal… and claim it shows how legalization caused a rise in the abortion rate.

God, can’t you send us smarter pro-lifers? ProPri is so stupid arguing with him feels like kicking stranded fish!

But there is no sanction against abortions in Ireland, ProPri. None at all: you’re talking out your arse.

Nah. I was pointing out that even as mild of a sanction as making someone go through the hassal of a Ryanair flight between the UK and Ireland (done that by the way) is enough to cut abortion rates down. It would be a hard case to make that filling Ireland up with abortion on demand clinics would do anything but increase the abortion rate - like it did in the U.S.

I do agree with emulating the Netherlands. I suspect that the low abortion rate in the Netherlands has nothing to do with the legal status of abortion and everything to do with making more birth control, sex education and better health services available for women - and some of it probably just has to do with the culture there.

But the idea that somehow their rate of abortions is low because it is legal seems completely non sequitur to me.

It’s not accepting responsibility to kill offspring in lieu of caring for them.

I agree.  When the fetus is born, is outside the woman’s body, is, in fact, a baby, and can be handed over to an adoption agency, it would be criminally irresponsible to just kill it.

Since we’re not talking about something that can be handed over to an adoption agency, this is a baby, that is outside a woman’s body or is, in fact, offspring, your point is irrelevant.

Abortion does not kill offspring.  It kills a fetus which, by definition, is not born.

PP - you’re ignoring a few things:

1.  In a country where abortion is illegal, many women (especially poor women who can’t afford to travel abroad) will simply have illegal abortions.  These women would be idiots to then report said abortions to the authorities. 

2.  Ireland does not criminalize abortions resulting from medical procedures which induced abortion as a “side effect” of the treatment.  Which makes me wonder how often this happens, and what the rates for “miscarriage” are.  I’d also wonder how many pro-choice doctors perform legitimate abortions under the radar, and what other sorts of loopholes exist. 

3.  It’s entirely possible that a great many Irish women who go abroad for abortions don’t give an Irish address.

4.  Considering that the US has a population of 300 million, and Ireland has a population of 4 million, even without delving deeper the numbers don’t seem that far off.  If really only 5100 Irish women per year have abortions, and there are no significant numbers of illegal abortions or nebulously documented abortions, US has about twice the number of abortions per capita.  And that’s if the Irish are the most honest people in the world, and there really are only 5100 Irish abortions per year.

I mean, to recapitulate, ProPri:

1. You pointed to Ireland’s abortion rate as an example of how a complete ban can work, without realizing that you got the number of abortions wrong by a factor of 10 because you had never bothered to find out where women who need abortions in Ireland go.

2. You continued to maintain that a complete ban “works” despite having been shown that it really doesn’t.

I guess you and I have different ideas as to what constitutes a working ban. I think a ban works when it decreases the rate of something undesirable.

I’ve never argued that an abortion ban works in the sense that it completly stops abortion - as that would be foolish. It would be like arguing that a ban on murder should not be imposed in the U.S. because we still have murders.

3. You point to a chart that shows a rise in the number of legal abortions in the US after abortion became legal throughout the US, that specifies it does not show how many illegal abortions were carried out in states where all abortion was illegal… and claim it shows how legalization caused a rise in the abortion rate.

Two things:

1. I was referring to what the graph showed after 1973. Specifically, the near-doubling of the legal abortion rate from 800.000 to 1.6 million 7 years after Roe was handed down. That is not only much higher than the maximum alleged illegal abortion rate of 1.2 million - it shows that after Roe abortions increased substantially every year.

My interpretation of this data led me to conclude that more women then ever started having abortions after it became legal. Now, I realize you are arguing that they just started obtaining legal as opposed to illegal abortions. That doesn’t make any sense, however, because the rate continued to climb for seven years. Are you seriously suggesting that women were obtaining illegal abortions in significant numbers seven years after it was legal everywhere? If so, evidence please.

2. I was also referring to the graph further down the PDF file (I apologize for not being clearer) which purports to show the rate of all abortions. This graph suggests that the rate of all abortions went up after 1973 and despite a decade of falling has yet to achieve the low levels of ‘73. That chart, incidentally is labeled “the Abortion rate increased following legalization” - Indeed.

I think if we want an idea how our country would deal with abortion we should look at Ireland. Ireland is the only decent sized, prosperous, modern, liberal democracy which has completely banned abortion (except in about 100 cases a year). It has an abortion rate which is a fraction of ours and the best maternal health rate in the world.

Okay, I’ve lived in Ireland, so let me clear this up.  Although abortion is technically illegal (in Northern Ireland as well as the Republic of Ireland, incidentally), it’s widely understood that anyone who wants one can do so by taking a ferry or cheap flight over the Irish Sea.  It used to be against the law to leave the country for the purpose of getting an abortion, but in the ‘90s they had one of those worst-case scenarios where an underage rape victim got pregnant and the authorities wouldn’t let her go to the U.K. for an abortion, and everyone realized how cruel the law was and changed it.  Nowadays, I’m pretty sure Irish people get abortions about as much as people elsewhere in Europe; they just don’t get them in Ireland.  The actual stats are unclear because women getting abortions in Britain aren’t required to state their nationality.

And I agree that Irish culture is an interesting mix of hidebound misogyny and honest respect for powerful women.  That’s Catholicism for you, I guess.  The good maternal health care, though, has more to do with the country’s generally solid socialist safety net than any particular respect for women’s reproductive health.

I guess you and I have different ideas as to what constitutes a working ban. I think a ban works when it decreases the rate of something undesirable.

Ireland has never had legal abortion. Therefore, whatever’s been decreasing the rate of women with Irish addresses seeking abortions at UK clinics over the past few years, it’s not the ban on legal abortion.

I know you’re very stupid, but you can presumably figure that far!

Now, if Ireland had legal abortion incountry rather than outsourced to various neighboring countries, they would be able to find out if the abortion rate was decreasing - which no one actually knows: it may be that Irish women are just less able to afford the fare to the UK recently (though I hope not) and so stay home and have an illegal abortion. Or it may be that Irish women now do better at preventing abortions - access to contraception and sex education have both improved over the past few years. Or it could be that Irish women have figured out effective ways of getting abortions on the NHS in recent years (which would entail, at least, a UK-mainland address). But as it is, all the Irish government has to go by is a decreasing number of women giving Irish addresses at health clinics. Which tells them very little.

What they do know - because, unlike you, they’re not stupid - is that having a ban on abortion is not what’s changed the numbers in the past few years, because the ban hasn’t changed…

I was referring to what the graph showed after 1973. Specifically, the near-doubling of the legal abortion rate from 800.000 to 1.6 million 7 years after Roe was handed down. That is not only much higher than the maximum alleged illegal abortion rate of 1.2 million - it shows that after Roe abortions increased substantially every year.

Oh, goodness. Basic ARITHMETIC.

Your chart showed that the legal abortion rate before Roe was about 800,000.

A median estimate of the number of illegal abortions before Roe was about 829,000.
...
Now do the basic arithmetic: add the two figures together: (you can ADD, can’t you? If not, use a calculator...) three years before Roe, the number of abortions in the US was about 1.6 million. Seven years AFTER Roe, the number of abortions in the US ...was about 1.6 million.

Given the population increase over 10 year period, I think anyone who can do basic arithmetic can see that that seven years after Roe, the abortion RATE had actually decreased.... unless they’re so stupid they think Ireland has only a hundred abortions a year.

First of all, I would like to point out that if a practice is evil, as I hold abortion to be, the mere fact that it will always be present in a society does not justify making it legal: even if it could be demonstrated that making it illegal has no effect on its prevalence.

Dickhead! Is it not evil to condemn some women to rape at the hands of shady doctors and others to death in unlicensed clinics?

If you wouldn’t that’s pretty much where I am on abortion. If it is an evil I am against it even if making it illegal wouldn’t decrease it.

Even if making it illegal kills women who otherwise would live. And you say you aren’t a misogynist.

Refer yourself to http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/im_voting_republican.php#comment-931413 and following. You are predictable.

Secondly, I don’t buy the [World Health Organization and] Guttamacher Institute study[, because I am a sociologist who specializes in mortality and I refer you to my recently published paper].

That is fascinating. Which journal?

Additionally, Ireland

We freedom loving Americans value our right of privacy. If you want to be an authoritarian dick, do it somewhere where you’re less likely to hurt my family. (Sorry, Irish readers!)

I hadn’t met a Democrat who hates America’s freedom before today.

GrammarRWA, I honestly think ProPri is just too thick to be considered really evil.

Of course, he could just be cunningly feigning stupidity in order not to be condemned for being evil.

But if so, he’s doing it damn well - it’s not often I meet a pro-lifer who is so stupid I actually want them to give me more of a challenge by presenting smarter arguments.

If you want to be an authoritarian dick, do it somewhere where you’re less likely to hurt my family. (Sorry, Irish readers!)

Uh, as noted further down thread: ProPri is stupid enough to think that the 100 legal abortions carried out in Ireland each year under their draconian ban represented all the abortions that Irish women have. He’s also stupid enough to think that a ban that has persisted over decades has somehow changed the abortion rate.  While I wouldn’t say he’s too stupid to be an authoritarian dick (look at George W. Bush) he is certainly too stupid to be successful as an authoritarian dick without very, very rich friends of family propping him up - look at George W. Bush.

“Think that could be more the source of the problem than the abortion itself?”

Um.  Aren’t you kind of splitting hairs here?  So if I felt conflicted about it going in, then how I have felt since has nothing to do with the fact of having it?  Huh? Don’t you think a lot of people feel conflicted about it?  Do you think it’s always a clear-cut, black and white decision? 

Look, I really don’t need you all to try to decide which exact moment in the course of events is the “true” cause of my feelings--the unplanned pregnancy itself, the events leading up to the procedure, the procedure itself, the aftermath.  Believe me, I’m quite aware that it all sucked.  But among the things that sucked is, in fact, the abortion itself and the fact that I did not continue the pregnancy.  Those things suck.  I’m not okay with them. 

The person who mentioned the experience of those who jump off bridges has it exactly right, actually.  Before this all happened, I had always told myself that the reason I could never kill myself is that I just knew that in the moment between taking the step that makes it too late (pulling the trigger, jumping off the bridge) and death, I could imagine the howling anguish of thinking “oh, no, what have I done?”

That is what my abortion experience feels like to me.  I feel as if I am stuck forever between the jump off and the dying, with nothing but the howling pain of “what have I done?”

There are days when I struggle really hard against the impulse to find an actual bridge and finish the job.

Uh, as noted further down thread: ProPri is stupid enough to think that the 100 legal abortions carried out in Ireland each year under their draconian ban represented all the abortions that Irish women have.

I’m surprised this guy is willing to walk around in public like that.

There was a fascinating article in the New Yorker one time about people who commit suicide by jumping off of bridges, and the few people who survived the fall recalled thinking the instant after they jumped, “Wow, this was a bad idea.” So I think it’s very possible to regret doing something in the middle of doing it.

Mentioned in a voiceover in Medium. Something along the lines of “Halfway down, they all come to the stunning realisation that their problems are not too bad after all, and that they could be solved if they wanted them to be solved.  Except for the problem that they just jumped off a bridge a second or two ago.”

Not saying, I’m not sure why anyone thinks this thread is a good place to psychoanalyze you. It’s weird.

Your chart showed that the legal abortion rate before Roe was about 800,000.

No. The chart shows that when Roe was handed down there were 800,000 abortions, prior to that there were less legal abortions - specifically in 1970 it shows that there were 200,000.

A median estimate of the number of illegal abortions before Roe was about 829,000.

No. If the ranges estimated from 200,000 to 1,2 million; the median of that is 700k. 829k was the number of a study that extrapolated N. Carlina’s abortion rate across the nation.

Now do the basic arithmetic: add the two figures together: (you can ADD, can’t you? If not, use a calculator...) three years before Roe, the number of abortions in the US was about 1.6 million. Seven years AFTER Roe, the number of abortions in the US ...was about 1.6 million.

According to the graph in the PDF three years prior to 1973 - which would be 1970 - there were 200,000 legal abortions - which even if we add to the maximum 1.2 million still means there was a substantial increase in abortions - from 1.4 million in 1973 to 1.6 million in 1980.

However - less face it - the actual number of abortions was probably a lot closer to the 800,000 and could have been much lower as in 200k which could mean the abortion rate increased by 4 times. However it doesn’t matter in the end - no matter how you run the numbers the legalization of abortion in the US increased the numbers of abortion there.

Lastly, I notice you don’t have an explanation for why women would still be obtaining illegal abortions up to 7 years after it was legal. That simply doesn’t make any sense.

unless they’re so stupid they think Ireland has only a hundred abortions a year.

It does.

Go there, if you really believe that. Start asking nonjudgmentally and see what you find.

At this point it’s obvious you’re delusional.

How narcissistic do you have to be to think your mother should have been imprisoned if she’d sought a medical procedure?

No. The chart shows that when Roe was handed down there were 800,000 abortions, prior to that there were less legal abortions - specifically in 1970 it shows that there were 200,000.

Yes, because there were fewer states in the US where a woman could GET legal abortion. Says nothing about ACTUAL abortion rates.

No. If the ranges estimated from 200,000 to 1,2 million; the median of that is 700k. 829k was the number of a study that extrapolated N. Carlina’s abortion rate across the nation.

And possibly then as now North Carolina had a higher abortion rate than the rest of the nation. cite - but then, maybe not. The disadvantages of not allowing legal abortion is that stats get lost or distorted. Given that the figures for illegal abortion will always be undercounts (since illegal abortions would always be concealed if possible) 1.2 Million may be a lowball.

no matter how you run the numbers the legalization of abortion in the US increased the numbers of abortion there.

You still haven’t managed to show that - though by this time I accept that you are too stupid to understand that. Someone who can’t understand that to get the total number of abortions carried out before Roe you add the number of illegal abortions carried out before Roe to the number of legal abortions carried out before Roe is really, just… too stupid to continue a discussion with.

6226 abortions performed on women who traveled from the Republic of Ireland in 1999. 30.4% of those abortions were before 9 weeks, as opposed to 45.8% of English and Welsh abortions during the same developmental period.

And that 6226 number is just those who travel to the big island.

<blockquote>You still haven’t managed to show that - though by this time I accept that you are too stupid to understand that. Someone who can’t understand that to get the total number of abortions carried out before Roe you add the number of illegal abortions carried out before Roe to the number of legal abortions carried out before Roe is really, just… too stupid to continue a discussion with. </blockquote

I have shown that.

Let me break it down again for you. I will make it easier for you to refute me by numbering my claims so you can tell me where my reasoning is breaking down.

1. Legal abortions preformed in 1970 were about 200k. You can see this by looking at the graph on page 2 of the <a href “http://www.guttmacher.org/presentations/trends.pdf">guttmacher</a> site.

2. The number of illegal abortions is in dispute but ranges from 200k to 1.2 million (this according to you)

3. The highest number of legal abortions preformed in the U.S was 1.6 million in 1980-81 - according to the graph.

4. The number of legal abortions in 1973 was 200k. If you add 200k to 1.2 million - the maximum number of illegal abortions alleged anywhere - it comes to 1.4 million.

5. 1.4 million is lower than 1.6 million

Conclusion: even if you use the outlier statistics for illegal abortions used by a pro-choice organization the amount of abortions in the U.S increased from the years 1970-1980.

Also, again you fail to point out why thinking abortion rates would be unaffected by its legalization makes any sense. Surely if you make something easier to do and take away any possible penalties - that thing - if all other factors hold true - will go up.

Hope that helped.

PP, why did you not cite the pro-life paradise of Nicaragua where no abortions are allowed, with no exceptions?  I mean, they only have a hundred or so women die every year because of the ban, and their lives don’t matter much if you can save fetuses, right?

Hey, if Olga Reyes didn’t want to die because doctors were afraid they would be accused of performing an abortion if they operated on her ectopic pregnancy, she shouldn’t have decided to have an abnormal pregnancy.

6226 abortions performed on women who traveled from the Republic of Ireland in 1999. 30.4% of those abortions were before 9 weeks, as opposed to 45.8% of English and Welsh abortions during the same developmental period.

Actually the more recent number of 5000 is cited up thread. That’s from 2004.

Anyway, what’s your point?

Ack had to clean this up:

You still haven’t managed to show that - though by this time I accept that you are too stupid to understand that. Someone who can’t understand that to get the total number of abortions carried out before Roe you add the number of illegal abortions carried out before Roe to the number of legal abortions carried out before Roe is really, just… too stupid to continue a discussion with.

I have shown that.

Let me break it down again for you. I will make it easier for you to refute me by numbering my claims so you can tell me where my reasoning is breaking down.

1. Legal abortions preformed in 1970 were about 200k. You can see this by looking at the graph on page 2 of the guttmacher site.

2. The number of illegal abortions is in dispute but ranges from 200k to 1.2 million (this according to you)

3. The highest number of legal abortions preformed in the U.S was 1.6 million in 1980-81 - according to the graph.

4. The number of legal abortions in 1973 was 200k. If you add 200k to 1.2 million - the maximum number of illegal abortions alleged anywhere - it comes to 1.4 million.

5. 1.4 million is lower than 1.6 million

Conclusion: even if you use the outlier statistics for illegal abortions used by a pro-choice organization the amount of abortions in the U.S increased from the years 1970-1980.

Also, again you fail to point out why thinking abortion rates would be unaffected by its legalization makes any sense. Surely if you make something easier to do and take away any possible penalties - that thing - if all other factors hold true - will go up.

Hope that helped.

Anyway, what’s your point?

This: “Since Northern Ireland was excluded from the 1967 Act there have been at least five known deaths to unsafe abortion practices.”

It is your position that it’s a good thing that these women are dead.

I just think that should be emphasized.

And since 60% of women getting abortions are already mothers, probably three of those women were mothers to children who are now motherless.

It is your position that it’s a good thing these children are motherless.

Again, how narcissistic do you have to be to think your mother should have been imprisoned if she’d sought a medical procedure?

I’m late, but I thought I’d offer a few reasons that women may have gotten illegal (or rather, unreported) abortions after Roe. 

1.  Doctors capable of performing abortions don’t get trained overnight because of a court decision, so safe legal abortions would not have been available everywhere at once.  And I believe that an abortion performed by someone not certified to do so would be illegal (for the performer) so these wouldn’t have been reported.  That’s a guess though.  However, someone who isn’t certified to perform abortions is quite obviously not going to be asked how many they perform in a year (nobody conducting a census would know to ask them) so abortions performed by non-certified people would go unreported.  As more doctors were trained in the procedures, the reported legal abortions would increase. 

1.5.  Equipment also wouldn’t be available overnight.

2.  Safe abortion clinics certainly didn’t pop up overnight either, especially in places resistant to the idea (small towns, rural areas, etc) so not everyone who wanted an abortion would have been able to obtain it through locations where it would be counted statistically.  Women who couldn’t get access easily could have still self-aborted.

3.  Social stigma, especially in the early years.  Given the option between an unsafe abortion at home, or walking through a gamut of protesters (who could be your neighbors, friends, etc) to a safe clinic, it’s not improbable that some women chose to stay at home, or use a non-certified but more secretive person to perform the abortion.

Jesurgislac, abortion is legal in Belgium, up to 12 weeks.

Progressive Prince: I>Let me break it down again for you. </I>

Thanks for that - you demonstrate by that you were not witlessly unable to do arithmetic when you argued that the number of abortions in the US had gone from 200K in 1970 to 1.6M in 1980, you were making a thoroughly unprincipled argument based on facts that you yourself knew to be inerrant.

I appreciate your at least showing that you are not as stupid as you were acting: you were just used to arguing with people whom you assumed would be taken in by providing them with distorted figures.

What you are now carefully omitting is population growth: the total number of people in the US in 1971 was 207 660 677. In 1981 it was 22 946 5714 - a rise of 10.5%. Yet the total number of abortions stayed about the same - your fudging around with numbers to try and make the pre-Roe number look smaller notwithstanding.

So, the abortion rate went down. As one would expect: it became more acceptable for women to decide to have a baby, and before Ronald Reagan tanked the US economy and ripped up welfare nets, it was more possible for a woman on a low income to support a child.

Also, again you fail to point out why thinking abortion rates would be unaffected by its legalization makes any sense. Surely if you make something easier to do and take away any possible penalties - that thing - if all other factors hold true - will go up.

That’s true for non-essentials/luxuries. It’s not true for essential services. If a woman is pregnant and wants to terminate, she needs an abortion - it’s not a luxury or something she can delay or do without. As the Guttmacher Institute figures show, worldwide, abortion rates don’t change because a country makes them legal or illegal - as you’ve been shown, Irish women don’t not have abortions, they just go to the UK or another EU country to have them as their own country won’t provide them legally.

What legal or illegal abortion really changes is the maternal mortality/morbidity rates for a country. Countries which don’t allow women access to safe legal abortion (whether directly, as in the UK, or indirectly, as in ireland) have higher numbers of women dying or suffering irreparable damage to their health.

Pro-lifers are either ignorant of this or don’t care. Given your pretended ignorance of basic arithmetic upthread, I do wonder how many pro-lifers pretend ignorance because they’re aware that if they say they think it’s acceptable for women to die because abortion is illegal, it will be obvious that they are monsters.

Cockney: Jesurgislac, abortion is legal in Belgium, up to 12 weeks.

Really? I never thought to check - my bad. I assumed a Belgian woman would know what she was talking about. Maybe it’s legal but really inaccessible, so it’s easier to go to the Netherlands (which is very easy from Belgium: short inexpensive train ride).

I’ve no doubt that’s what women used to have to do, but I don’t think accessibility is a problem nowadays in Belgium, thankfully. I grew up there and although I don’t have experience of seeking out abortion services I often saw adverts for family planning centres on public transport and stuff. Belgium seems similar to the Netherlands in that nowadays it provides very good sex education and therefore has a low abortion rate.

your fudging around with numbers to try and make the pre-Roe number look smaller notwithstanding.

If I fudged around with the numbers explain why. I clearly labeled every step of logic I took in show that abortions went up. Again, if you can refute me, tell me where my argument went wrong.

To refresh,

Let me break it down again for you. I will make it easier for you to refute me by numbering my claims so you can tell me where my reasoning is breaking down.

1. Legal abortions preformed in 1970 were about 200k. You can see this by looking at the graph on page 2 of the guttmacher site.

2. The number of illegal abortions is in dispute but ranges from 200k to 1.2 million (this according to you)

3. The highest number of legal abortions preformed in the U.S was 1.6 million in 1980-81 - according to the graph.

4. The number of legal abortions in 1970 was 200k. If you add 200k to 1.2 million - the maximum number of illegal abortions alleged anywhere - it comes to 1.4 million.

5. 1.4 million is lower than 1.6 million

Conclusion: even if you use the outlier statistics for illegal abortions used by a pro-choice organization the amount of abortions in the U.S increased from the years 1970-1980.

I know you won’t because you can’t.

when you argued that the number of abortions in the US had gone from 200K in 1970 to 1.6M in 1980,

That’s not what I argued.

What you are now carefully omitting is population growth: the total number of people in the US in 1971 was 207 660 677. In 1981 it was 22 946 5714 - a rise of 10.5%.

That would be an argument if the abortion rate only went up 10%. However, even if you take the maximum number of illegal abortions alleged anywhere the abortion rate still increased from 1.4 million to 1.6 million over that time period - a growth rate of 16% - in excess of the 10% population growth.

Once again, I win, even taking the best possible alleged statistics from a pro-choice organization. The number of abortions went up when the service became legal.

Keep in mind that everyone agrees (even you based on your earlier post) that prior to 1967 (when the first states started to liberalize abortion laws) that there were more like 800k illegal abortions. Mind you this is prior to any abortions being legalized. After they became legal in all the states that number eventually rose to 1.6 million abortions. That’s a doubling - what I originally claimed. 100% is greater than 10% population growth.

If you fudged the numbers? You tried to claim that a chart which shows the rise in the LEGAL abortion rate before and after abortion BECAME LEGAL showed that:

Specifically, the near-doubling of the legal abortion rate from 800.000 to 1.6 million 7 years after Roe was handed down. That is not only much higher than the maximum alleged illegal abortion rate of 1.2 million - it shows that after Roe abortions increased substantially every year.

Legal abortion rate at the time of Roe was 800 000 per year. Illegal abortion rate at the time of Roe was probably about 800 000 per year, though it could have been as high as 1.2 million a year or higher.

7 years after Roe, the legal abortion rate was 1.6 million a year.

800 000+800 000=1.6 million.

So the total number of abortions in the US did not go up, and given a 10% rise in population, the abortion rate actually went down.

Now you have fudged around the numbers, outright lied, and pretended to be too stupid to add two numbers together… but the facts are there.

Legal abortion rate at the time of Roe was 800 000 per year. Illegal abortion rate at the time of Roe was probably about 800 000 per year, though it could have been as high as 1.2 million a year or higher.

Okay the problem with your argument is that you are confusing your statistics.

This is what you said earlier:

Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One analysis, extrapolating from data from North Carolina, concluded that an estimated 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions occurred in 1967.

You seem to think the estimates of 200k - 1.2 million illegal abortions is for 1973 - the same year there were 800k legal abortions.

They aren’t - they’re from the 1950’s on up to 1967. That’s when the first state liberalized its abortion laws. During that time period there were no legal abortions.

That’s why I am saying the legalization of abortion increased the overall number of abortions. If prior to 1967 there were 800k abortions total and by 1980 there were 1.6 million - that’s a doubling of the abortion rate coinciding with the liberalization of state laws and eventually Roe.

You seem to think the estimates of 200k - 1.2 million illegal abortions is for 1973 - the same year there were 800k legal abortions.

Yes, ProPri. Did you put BE STUPID on your list of things to do today? As has already been pointed out to you upthread, there is no reason to suppose that where legal abortion was not available on 21st January 1973, it magically became available in every state of the US on 23rd January 1973.

That’s why I am saying the legalization of abortion increased the overall number of abortions.

And you’ve been shown wrong. So why do you continue to argue this point? Do you like making pro-lifers look stupid?

As has already been pointed out to you upthread, there is no reason to suppose that where legal abortion was not available on 21st January 1973, it magically became available in every state of the US on 23rd January 1973.

There are major problems with this argument.

1. I never made the claim that abortion became magically available the moment the clock struck midnight Jan 23rd 1973.

This is important because if you except to be able to refute arguments the first step is to correctly determine what your opponent is saying.

Here’s a tip: if you’re opponent never said it he’s probably not arguing it.

2. You don’t have a point.

The abortion rate in the U.S by 1980 was already well beyond the 800k estimated illegal abortions prior to 1967. It was twice that amount, in fact.

Okay… so now say that after Roe there was a period where women were still obtaining illegal abortions to some degree.

Think about it: that means the abortion rates reported in the 70’s and 80’s would be, if anything, higher if there were still illegal abortions going on. We know from the legal rate of abortions alone that there were twice as many abortions in 1980 as the esitmated illegal abortions only 13 years prior… now you are saying that there is another, hidden layer of illegal abortions going on in 1980?

Great. Fine by me - now you are saying that even more than 1.6 million abortions took place by 1980 that strengthens my argument - - that the abortion rate in the U.S increased dramatically as abortion became legal and accessible - specifically 1967-1980.

I notice you still haven’t even attempted to refute my argument that the statistics demonstrate that even if you take the maximum, pro-choice numbers on illegal abortion prior to 1967 and account for population increase - the legalization of abortion increased the U.S abortion rate.

Dickhead, would you care to explain why it would be a good thing for women to be imprisoned for seeking a medical procedure?

Would you care to explain why it’s a good thing that women in Ireland have died while seeking illegal abortions?

And why it will be a good thing when women are again being raped by shady illegal abortion providers? I’m sure you meant to address this, and it’s just an oversight on your part.

Dickhead, would you care to explain why it would be a good thing for women to be imprisoned for seeking a medical procedure?

No.

Would you care to explain why it’s a good thing that women in Ireland have died while seeking illegal abortions?

No.

And why it will be a good thing when women are again being raped by shady illegal abortion providers? I’m sure you meant to address this, and it’s just an oversight on your part.

Nope.

You see I don’t defend positions I never took and arguments that I never made.

Especially, when they are made on my behalf by an antagonizing commenter.

Au contraire, motherfucker.

Those are all the results of the policies you support.

You wouldn’t support them if they weren’t “good”.

Okay, let’s try a different tactic here. A thought experiment!

You are a rescue worker with clairvoyant super powers, so you can see things no other mortal can see. A hurricane has flooded a major city and a fertility clinic is succumbing to the floodwaters. There are two wings to the clinic and you can only get in and out of one wing before the first floor is completely flooded.

On the north side, there is a nurse trapped under a fallen filing cabinet. She was told to evacuate, but she stayed to try to save patient files so that the clinic, which she loves and supports, would not lose all its patient files and go bankrupt after the hurricane is done. She *might* be able to pull herself free, if she breaks her leg, and possibly could swim to safety, but odds are not good. She needs you to get the filing cabinet off her leg or she will most likely drown.

On the south side, there are three children trapped behind a locked door, who were forgotten in the confusion. If you don’t unlock the door, the children will drown.

Now, almost anyone would choose to save the children. There are more of them, they are innocent whereas the nurse got herself into this situation (albeit with the best of motives), and *maybe* the nurse could escape on her own, but the children will certainly die without help. Even the nurse herself would probably say “save the kids.”

Okay. Second scenario. Instead of three children, there is one newborn infant. Now there aren’t numbers on the side of the baby - it’s strictly about the life of the adult vs. the life of the newborn. Again, most people, including the nurse, would probably say “save the newborn” because it is innocent and helpless and we like baybeez.

Third scenario. There is a freezer with 25 frozen embryos, and a cooler next to it. You could put the embryos in the cooler and get back out of the south wing, but if you do, you cannot get into the north wing to rescue the nurse. If you rescue the nurse, the freezer will tip over in the floodwaters and the 25 frozen embryos will wash away and be destroyed.

If pro-life logic is to be followed, you *must* save the 25 embryos, because they are babies and there are more of them. For the same reason you saved the newborn, for the same reason you saved the three kids, you have to save the 25 frozen embryos. Yet, the vast majority of humans would consider that a highly unethical choice and would greatly prefer to save the nurse… even though, just *one* newborn baby outweighs the nurse, but 25 frozen embryos do not.

Conclusion: In the minds of most people, frozen embryos are not babies. In fact when you take it out of the context of abortion and phrase it like this—an adult human woman who *might* not die if you don’t save her, vs. 25 frozen embryos—*most* people would consider it so immoral to save the embryos instead of the woman that a first responder who saves the embryos and lets the woman die or get badly hurt might get his ass fired. Most people think it is immoral to prioritize an embryo over a living woman… unless the living woman got into the situation by having sex. Then they might be convinced to slut-shame her and think she should give up her life for the embryos. (try it. See what people think when you change the nurse who was saving patient files to a prostitute who fell asleep after giving the clinic manager a blow job, and is now trapped because everyone who knew she was there forgot about her in the evacuation.)

if the value of the human woman’s life in comparison to the embryos is considered vastly greater, so much greater that it is a firing offense to save the embryos instead, *unless* the woman got in the situation by having sex… then people aren’t objecting to abortion out of a desire to save unborn babies, but a desire to punish sluts.

When the majority of pro-lifers answer this question with “Save the 25 embryos”, and continue to say “Save the 25 embryos” when the female nurse is replaced with a male doctor, then I’ll believe that pro-lifers are about believing that humans have full rights starting at conception. But then, i’d also need to see them campaign to outlaw fertility treatments that produce extra frozen embryos in the first place, as most embryos produced in fertility treatments are destroyed. (Supporting the ‘adoption’ of embryos is morally equivalent to supporting adoption as an alternative to abortion; it is not the same thing as trying to get abortion made *illegal*. The pro-life movement currently is doing nothing to try to make the production of extra embryos illegal, the way it is trying to outlaw abortion.) Right now, I’m pretty sure even most pro-lifers will prioritize the woman over the embryos. And in my opinion, that makes them human. I certainly would not give a job as a first responder to *anyone* who would prioritize embryos over adult people.

Alara ftw.

-Abortion should be made to be illegal.

-Production of extra embryos should be made to be illegal. 

-The above two points have nothing to do with punishing anyone - it is about legal consistency.  If we were to make murder legal, I would have no problem with abortion at all.  But one shouldn’t be legal while the other is illegal.

-It doesn’t matter who you save in the flood scenario, as long as you try to save someone.

-If you can save both, you should.

-The nurse’s gender and promiscuity should have no bearing on whether you save her or not. 

-Putting this scenario before us in the first place does no one any good.  Attacking the motives of pro-lifers may be fun and all, but the argument that they put forth - that life begins at conception - remains whether they save the nurse or the embryos.  The argument will survive the weak resolve of those who *make* the argument.

-If you want to make an impression on pro-lifers, you should probably cease argumentative tactics that are traditionally considered low-class:

-Presuming to know why someone is making an argument, and them berating them for it
-Attempting to dehumanize your opponent because they disagree with you
-Emasculating your opponent because they disagree with you.  And because you think it’s fun.

-Can’t we all just get along?

Progressive Prince,

If the supreme right to life, on the other hand, conflicts with a lessor right: to bodily integrity and the right not to be inconvenienced - then the individual with the superior right should come out on top.

Spot-on. The one [and only actual] individual with the superior right, the pregnant woman, and her supreme right to life should come out on top. Besides, it’s not like the uterine wall is that particular about its integrity, while the placenta’s tolerance for being inconvenienced is legendary.

Once again my problem with this argument it that it’s basically vaulting the right to bodily integrity and to avoid work above the right to live. Unacceptable.

Your problem is that you’re unfamiliar with the basics of the topics under discussion, like pregnancy. Implantation is indistinguishable form a neoplastic process; the very establishment of a pregnancy jeopardizes a woman’s right to live. [There’s a very good reason why the majority of fertilized eggs fail to implant.]

Just because it’s common for women to choose to risk their life by carrying a pregnancy to term you assume, incorrectly, that an imposition on bodily integrity and some work/inconvenience are it when it comes to the choice of a term pregnancy.

I’m against abortion because I genuinely think its incredibly, inexcusably immoral.

Two things. First, I’m actually curious how you go about deeming a safe and effective medical procedure “immoral.” Second, the position you’re advocating--allowing the State to force medical decisions on women [which, might I remind you, can be anything from a ban on abortions or, say, C/Ss, to forced abortions or sterilizations, depending on the type of government in power]; in what way is your position more credible, excusably moral than allowing women to make their own medical decisions?

I’m super-for any form of contraception precisely because I hate abortion. I think the best case scenario is a society were unplanned pregnancies essentially don’t happen - thus negating the need for abortions.

Your support for contraception is commendable but your best case scenario is a fantasy. About half of all unintended pregnancies occur in contraceptive users. [And no, it’s not possible to come up with an ideal contraceptive; there’s just too much variation in human anatomy/physiology, not to mention lifestyles.] Add to that those who, for a variety of reasons, don’t think that they can get pregnant or are unable to use the available methods or have been raped and you’ll see why the best we’ll ever have is a reduction in, not an, for all practical purposes, elimination of unintended pregnancies.

And, just so we’re clear, no unintended pregnancies does not negate the need for abortions. There will always be intended pregnancies that need, or are elected, to be terminated.

I think if you are trying to justify not treating a class of persons as human beings its up to YOU to prove that you don’t have to give them human rights.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, a pregnancy is not a person.

Secondly, I don’t buy the Guttamacher Institute study. The problem with it is that it compares all nations, developed and undeveloped, traditional and modern, democratic and not - which frequently have different local customs, mores and medical standards together with no regard to these differences.

Your position is that ~70 million citizens should become wards of the State. The least you can do, when advocating a slide into totalitarianism, is become familiar with the literature. Taking the time to just read the study would save you the embarrassment of declaring the WHO/AGI study problematic because of a “comparison with no regard to differences.” [See the study’s repeated, and detailed country/regional analysis, especially in the Discussion section.]

This I think is pretty good evidence that abortions decline significantly when the sanction of the state and society is against it.

I guess you and I have different ideas as to what constitutes a working ban. I think a ban works when it decreases the rate of something undesirable.

Your thinking and ideas on this topic are incorrect. According to the data, unrestrictive abortion laws do not predict a high incidence of abortion, and by the same token, highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with low abortion incidence.

Last, but not least,

[T]hat’s pretty much where I am on abortion. If it is an evil I am against it even if making it illegal wouldn’t decrease it.

So, when all is said and done, your position is that patients should be deprived of proper medical care and the ability to make their own medical decisions because you hold a particular personal belief. Got it.

Sharon,

I think it’s incredibly important for people to know the exact position many pro-choicers have on abortion. ... I really like the fact that so many commenting here are bold enough to extoll the virtues of abortion up until complete birth.

I agree. I, too, think it’s incredibly important for people to know that many pro-choice people hold the position that a woman during her 3rd trimester is still fully capable of making her own medical decisions.

In fact, if I may be so bold as to suggest a field test, I urge you to go to any L&D;floor and inform the patients that, since they’re in their 3rd trim, they’re no longer competent to make medical decisions, and the State gets to decree who, you know, will be permitted to deliver vaginally, who may get an epidural, etc. No doubt the people--staff and patients alike--will great your announcement with bon-bons and rainbows.

BTW, a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute isn’t going to be without bias towards legalized abortion. It is an arm of Planned Parenthood.

Magical thinking isn’t an argument. Just saying something doesn’t make it true. The WHO/AGI study stands on the merits of its methodology/peer-review, not AGI’s real/imagined affiliations.

I said that what she expresses is part of what is known as Post Abortion Syndrome, an idea scoffed at here and at other sites.

Scoffing at propaganda ["Post Abortion Syndrome"] is, after all, an Internets tradition.

He Who Remembers: -Can’t we all just get along?

Progressive Prince wants to force women through pregnancy and childbirth against their will, and is indifferent to how many of them die as a direct result.

There is absolutely no way for any woman to “just get along” with a man who regards her as an incubator or a slave.

Spot-on. The one [and only actual] individual with the superior right, the pregnant woman, and her supreme right to life should come out on top…

Just because it’s common for women to choose to risk their life by carrying a pregnancy to term you assume, incorrectly, that an imposition on bodily integrity and some work/inconvenience are it when it comes to the choice of a term pregnancy.

I find this interesting. I’ve heard the right to terminate pregnancies couched in terms like “bodily integrity” or “personal autonomy” or other such nonsense but I’ve never heard anyone actually seeming to equate pregnancy with death.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I realize that women can die from pregnancy. I’ve just never really thought the two were really associated. Is it really a thought on the mind of women when they first find out they are pregnant? I can see: “oh crap - how will I raise this thing”, or “how did this happen” - or “I am going to be a Mom!”, etc.

I don’t see “I will DIE unless I get this thing out of me as soon as possible!” as being the first thought in their mind.

That probably has something to do with the fact that the chance of dying by bringing a child to term in the U.S is about the same chance that particular women will die from an auto accident during her pregnancy. It’s a chance - but it’s a pretty remote possibility - only 1 in 7,000 or so.

Anyway - call it a hunch - avoidance of death is probably not a reason for which too many women get an abortion.

I’m actually curious how you go about deeming a safe and effective medical procedure “immoral.”

Since an abortion almost certainly results in the death of the would-be-kid I find referring to it as a “safe and effective medical procedure” somewhat amusing. Sure abortion is safe for women generally - only a few dozen or so die in the U.S from abortion each year.

But that’s sort of like saying cruise missiles and smart bombs are a “safe and effective” way for the US to wage war - a belief which is true only if you conveniently and totally ignore the intended victims of the practice.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, a pregnancy is not a person.

Yes, in the sense that a childhood or adulthood is not a person. They, like pregnancy, are stages of life we go through. Being in an earlier one of those stages i.e. childhood does not make you less alive or entitled to your right to life than someone in a later stage i.e an adult.

Your support for contraception is commendable but your best case scenario is a fantasy.

Thanks.

However, I disagree that widespread contraception is a pie-in-the-sky fantasy.

For one thing I think our current methods are pretty effective. According to the planned parenthood site if one uses the Pill as directed there is less than a 1% chance of pregnancy occurring over a year of sexual activity and a 2% failure rate for condoms.

Secondly, I have no doubt that other methods of birth control will be made available that will be even more effective than what we have now - call me a believer in progress.

As for the Guttmacher study from what I can tell, correct me if I am wrong, did not account for developmental and cultural differences between the nations compared. Also problematic were the lack of reliable statistics - especially regarding illegal abortions. In some cases, the institute apparently increased (in Bangladesh) the estimated rate of illegal abortions by 300% for no apparent reason other than it thought the number was higher. Generally, Guttmacher increased the rate of illegal abortions by 140% over existing estimates.

To give you an idea - that would be like the institute examining the number of abortions pre-1967 in the US - finding that the average estimated number of illegal abortions was 800k and then multiplying it by 1.4 - to “adjust” the “under-reported” not reported illegal abortions - and determining that - presto - there were 1.92 million illegal abortions in the U.S per year prior to its legalization. This, despite the fact that there weren’t 1.92 million illegal abortions.

What’s great about the Guttmacher Institute study is that they flat out just admit they make numbers up.

In any case, as was pointed out above, if you take the estimated pre-1967 rate of illegal abortions can compare it to the 1980 number of legal abortions, it’s pretty apparent that as abortion became legal and available in the U.S the overall number of abortions soared.