I started writing my thoughts after the leak, before the decision. I finished a couple of days after the decision was published.
It is striking to me, dumbfounding, how hard it is to discuss this very important topic without hyperbole and obfuscation. Shallow and simplistic extremism dominates. We can do better.
We need to be plain and frank. We need to embrace the pain, for there is pain all around, in all aspects, and for everyone touched by it. We are all limited and finite.
Ultimately, everyone will have to compromise. Ultimately, we need clear lines and limits, and there will have to be means of adjusting and clarifying. No one will be happy with all of it. Comfort is not an aspect of this topic. Acknowledge the discomfort and deal with it honestly and with as much love, the conscientious kind, as musterable.
We can’t compromise if we don’t have an agreed-upon set of facts and a starting point.
The first fact I’d like to establish is that once two human gametes combine into a zygote with typical DNA structure, the new thing is a new living individual human. Of course, we can argue in good faith (potentially) from historic and factual and philosophic grounds about when this new individual human becomes a person (particularly a person protected under our civil law), but humanness and living cannot be denied. The new zygote is most certainly alive, and the new human is absolutely unique in all of time in all of the universe. We really need to assent to this fact because it helps us avoid hyperbole and obfuscation. We cannot reason together if we will not affirm such rudimentary observational facts.
Further, to describe a human organism in objective terms, we are fundamentally dependent on DNA. We scarcely understand the full human genome, and there are nuances to DNA that force us to consider just exactly how to define an organism as human. Biologically, we generally allow for a great deal of variation and “defect” in the DNA while still defining the individual organism as human. Genetic variations range from the barely perceptible to the extreme. Down syndrome seems an unavoidable example. Down syndrome is defined as the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21, and there are variants, and there are other similar alterations that can occur in DNA to greater or lesser obvious effect. Medically we tend to refer to these alterations and other noticeable atypical characteristics as birth defects, but we don’t assert that such differences in DNA result in nonhumans. I recall a speech not long ago given by a fellow human with Down syndrome, and he declared he didn’t want to change laws, he wanted to change hearts. His heart was broken knowing that many children were aborted because of the extra chromosome, and these children were otherwise wanted and loved until the genetic difference was known.
Roe v Wade was bad jurisprudence. It was unconstitutional in multiple ways. As a corrupt decision, it had to be struck down because anything built upon it was also damned to corruption.
Roe v Wade established a “royal” privilege that belonged solely to a pregnant woman.
It didn’t establish a right. There is no absolute right to end a human life. We, our culture overall, acknowledge that circumstances can justify the taking of a human life, but it is not an absolute right. The right to life is an absolute, and it can only be taken by the state, and only after due process. We agree, mostly, that circumstances can arise, and often do, to justify the taking of a human life. The clearest example I can think of is the hostage-taker holding a knife or a gun to a young child. No one can fault the sniper who ends the hostage-taker’s life and saves the child. There are still moral gray areas, but the kill was “righteous” in our vernacular.
Roe v Wade established a privilege belonging to every pregnant woman; it allowed her to abort the pregnancy at any time for any reason. Further, no one, no one at all, had any say whatsoever in the decision. The father responsible for the pregnancy had no say. The parents and other relatives of the woman had no say, no matter how capable, willing, and eager they might be to raise the child as their own, even with honest intent to hold the woman under no obligation at all and to help as possible. No one had any standing before the law. The woman could abort for any reason at any time. If the woman was madly in love with a kind, providing, loving husband, and for whatever reason decided to leave him and abort the pregnancy, she could, and no one could stop her. No one could call a judge for an injunction. No one could hire a lawyer to bring suit. No one had any say whatsoever.
That is no longer the case. Women have lost no rights. They lost only a special privilege; a privilege that can only be described as royal. Sorry, ladies, but you are no longer queens in that regard.
Now, we must talk about it.
Hopeful, we can all approach the subject with honesty and open hearts.
Women are not second-class citizens. Women have the vote. Women have full standing before the law in all regards of our society and our politics. Women are in the majority, and women register to vote in a higher proportion compared to men. If it is merely a women’s issue, women have the upper hand. I trust the large majority of all of us will accept it as an issue for all of us, not just women. We are, and have always been, in this together.
It seems to me that the point to start with is an unplanned pregnancy.
I think we should set aside the reasons for getting to an unintended pregnancy and start by addressing it as the start point. We likely will get to this point less often if we make oral contraception (the pill) available over the counter without a prescription. I support that.
I know some consider the life-of-the-mother to be an inadequate reason, but I hold it as sufficient. I’m sure the majority in our society do, also, especially when there is no hope for the child to live, such as an ectopic pregnancy. I expect many a mother given the either-or would choose the child, but it isn’t a rational choice, and any mother should be supported who would choose to abort when the double-checked medical opinion asserts the mother is likely to die otherwise. Again, some few will take the contra position, and there are valid arguments to be made, but we, as an entire society, must find the compromise that we can all live with, and live at peace with. Likewise, rape. Coercion is evil. It seems to me, that we, cooperatively and supportively, should give the benefit of any doubt to the mother in the case of rape. Some few will want the baby, others will opt to allow adoption, but some will have the emotional requirement to end it. I don’t suppose I can see it one way or another. However, I am convinced two wrongs never make a right, so I hold that we must allow rape as an exception. Leave that to the woman on her own time. These things run deep. Liberality is in order.
When a woman finds she is pregnant it can be a joy or a terror. We idealize it as one of the greatest joys and greatest honors of all, but the reality of our finite exitance makes it less, sometimes much less, sometimes even the opposite.
What do we do for the individual woman who finds herself pregnant and in turmoil and fear? It is easy to hold up lofty goals, but can we, as a society, deliver for every individual woman?
Can we justify setting criteria for a status of “unplanned”? I think that would cause more problems than it could solve. It would certainly be divisive, and it would probably result in legal challenges for years. I don’t see a way to justify establishing procedures for a woman to go through to terminate the pregnancy.
Frankly, we need a limit. Most countries have limits.
What shall it be for our country?
Some will say a beating heart, but I find that inappropriate. The growing human is essentially independent from conception. The heart beginning to beat isn’t any more clear demarcation than any other point of development. The only point before human and before living is before conception. There isn’t any place to draw a line based on physiology, biology, or any other quantifiable objective point of “science.” We must pick a point arbitrarily. We need the limit set where the majority can say with a clear conscience, “I can live with that.”
Many people assume, even still, that Roe v Wade made the matter merely a matter of a woman’s private decision in the first trimester, the first 13 weeks. Sadly, the ruling was applied throughout the pregnancy. Essentially, unless the baby breathed, and an official autopsy established that the baby breathed before being terminated, it was treated as nobody’s business. Given that many people assumed 13 weeks was the notional limit, perhaps we should start there. I suggest 100 days. Why 100? No particular reason, but it is slightly longer than that first trimester that seems to have been nominally assented to. Fifteen weeks was the time limit in the case challenged, and that is 105 days.
Note, I’m saying as a matter of legislation voted on by our representatives or by plebiscite, we as a people should allow a woman to abort her pregnancy as a personal and private matter through the first 100 days.
As a matter of historical record, abortion has been with us always. Most societies have had various methods of contraception and abortion, and many have practiced exposure. As reprehensible as it seems to most of us moderns, exposure was simply a matter of the midwife taking the newborn, and rather than giving the bade to the mother, taking it out to the woods and leaving it on the ground for the wild animals. We’ve all heard of unsafe, illegal abortions. They happened and suffering often resulted. Suffering is our lot, but we need not make it worse. It is immoral to inflict suffering intentionally. Some women who want an abortion will choose to do so even if it is unsafe and illegal.
I want to minimize that potential.
We moderns, in this country and most every other, hold life as dear. We generally consider killing to be immoral.
“It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” [The character, Will Money.]
That is the reality. Terminating a human life is never to be taken lightly, but we find sometimes it is necessary. Don’t we owe it to ourselves and our posterity to discuss it openly and in good faith and arrive at a consensus? I believe we must.
We must compromise to some point near this limit, something like it.
And one more thing: We must have guidelines and requirements for exceptions. Our legal system has means of due process in all things handled in criminal and civil courts. I think we can compromise there, too. Our legal system fails from time to time, but it usually works out. Our “speedy” requirements fail too often, but end results tend to work out, even if they proved expensive. I think we can set the rules and leave it to the courts. Due process works. We should let it.
There is a good bit more, such as the moral question of personhood and equal protection under the law, and it is all complicated, but we will be a better nation, a better society for facing these issues and actually working them out.
An afterthought, viability is a meaningless concept regarding setting a limit. A rational, logical argument can be made for any time during a human’s life to be called the point of viability.
Oxford English Dictionary:
“the fact that something can be done and can be successful”
“(biology) the fact that something is capable of developing and surviving independently”
Or “ability to survive or live successfully”
Dictionary.com has:
“ability to live, especially under certain conditions”
Success is subjective, and conditions are arbitrary. One cannot define viability quantitatively and objectively with regard to an isolated human life.
Humans cannot be expected to be successful independently and in isolation under most circumstances that might actually try them alone. Any human at any point in the life of that human could be declared to be nonviable with appropriately defined conditions for success, especially with an appropriate definition of success.
Viability is not a useful word in discussing abortion.
“the fact that something can be done and can be successful”
“(biology) the fact that something is capable of developing and surviving independently”
Or “ability to survive or live successfully”
Dictionary.com has:
“ability to live, especially under certain conditions”
Success is subjective, and conditions are arbitrary. One cannot define viability quantitatively and objectively with regard to an isolated human life.
Humans cannot be expected to be successful independently and in isolation under most circumstances that might actually try them alone. Any human at any point in the life of that human could be declared to be nonviable with appropriately defined conditions for success, especially with an appropriate definition of success.
Viability is not a useful word in discussing abortion.
gottadobetterthanthis 