All right, this post is a reply to Thought’s thoughtful (heh) critique of my position on abortion. Interested parties may review that exchange beginning on
Page 70 of the Fuck Sexism Thread, continuing until Thought’s reply on Page 72. This post is addressed to Thought but is intended primarily for the benefit of the gallery, since Thought’s reply came mainly as an effort to add a perspective which he thought would be helpful.
At this point in your response, it became clear that you are not so much pro-choice as you are pro-abortion. The rest of your post confirmed this. I debated if I should respond, as indicated earlier.
That is incorrect, and I will be correcting some of your mistakes which follow from this original one. For now, suffice it to observe that the insinuation of being “pro-abortion” rather than “pro-choice” carries a negative connotation with it—it is very nearly a straw man, not an emotional one but an academic one—and although if forced to do so I would defend against that veiled denigration I find it unnecessary to do so here because I am simply not pro-abortion when we contrast that construction with the option of pro-choice. I am in favor of abortion at will as a means for people to control their circumstances and not be subjected against their will or by coercion to an age-old prejudice which disempowers and punishes both females and unwanted children, directly, and those around them indirectly.
In contrast, what does it mean to be pro-abortion? Why, it means that you’ll support abortion. Nothing is said of the context in which the procedure is performed. Nothing is said of the rights of the woman, or the rights of humans. Tush mentioned it, but since you’ve been ignoring him, perhaps you missed this: forced abortions occur. Someone who is pro-choice thus cannot be abstractly pro-abortion: if we support a woman’s right to control her reproduction, then we must support a woman’s access to an abortion if she so chooses to have one, and we must oppose abortions being forced on those who do not desire them.
Your understanding of the issue would benefit from realizing that American debate on abortion rights exists only on one half of the possible spectrum, ranging from abortion on demand to no abortion at all. Abortion on demand actually occupies the central ground—which is why I view my support of unrestricted abortions at will as moderate and the views of most Americans as extreme. Moving in the other direction from abortion on demand, we eventually get to the opposite extreme of no births at all—every baby is aborted, regardless of whether the mother wants to give birth or not. Various positions on this half of the spectrum account for the incidence of forced abortion in the real world.
Thus, the spectrum is one of choice which proceeds from no choice but to accept one outcome, to free individual choice for either outcome, to no choice but to accept the other outcome.
To be quite clear, I have not explored that half of the spectrum as thoroughly as I have explored the spectrum which opposes the right to abortion, as that half of the spectrum comprises much of the issue’s urgency and lingering injustice in our social climate. Contrary to the claims of conservatives, forced abortions in this country—although they do exist—are rare and do not represent a broader social ill.
To be even more clear, I do not generally support forced abortions, and I can think of no specific circumstance where I would support an abortion if it were directly against the will of the mother. Perhaps that is because I have not explored that half of the spectrum sufficiently to identify all possible categories of justification. Nevertheless, I can think of no instance where I would support it. The most I can say is that I would support involuntary abortions in cases where the mother is mentally incapacitated and unable to render an informed decision, and some kind of risk exists as to either the mother’s wellbeing (if she retains the capacity for such) or the child’s.
Consider, then, your own words in opposition to the author’s statement that he is not pro-abortion. The effective meaning of your opposition is that the pro-choice movement’s primary goal is to promote abortion, even when it is in opposition to a woman’s right to choose. That is what a pro-abortion stance necessitates, and that is why the author rejects it, and that is why you should reject a blind pro-abortion stance. Even if all you say is that forced abortions are not tolerable, you are then admitting that abortion is only tolerable within the context of the situation.
My opposition to the author of that article was that he supported abortion by vilifying it, nothing more. Your logic here follows from the incorrect assumption that I am pro-abortion, and thus is equally inapplicable.
To make a free choice, one must have access to honest information. Additionally, while it is admitted that one cannot know all potentially relevant factors to a conundrum before him or her, free choice also relies on having as full and complete of information as possible. The reason for this is that malicious characters can use partial information and false information to get an individual to make the “choice” that the malicious character wants them to make. Such behavior injures and suppresses the right of the individual to make a free choice.
The necessity of full and honest information is particularly important in medical procedures, where it takes the name of “Informed Consent.” While patients should indeed listen to the recommendations of their doctors, a doctor must still explain the situation to a patient and be complete honest with all unpleasant details. If there is only a 10% chance that you’ll survive an operation, the doctor is morally obligated to tell you this. If there is a chance that there is a 0.2% chance that you’ll feel queasy for an hour after a medical procedure, the doctor is still morally obligated to tell you that. Patients must be fully informed of their options, the risks associated with each, and the potential outcomes.
This is broadly correct. My only contention is that what you speak of as a “moral” obligation—I will overlook my disregard for moral systems here and treat your usage of the word as compatible with the concept of ethics—which exists at all levels of statistical risk is eventually bounded on the lower end by other ethical obligations as well as practical realities. To apprise individuals of
all risks—the ethical position you are taking—is prohibitive, because the full spectrum of risks for essentially any action entails a long tail of vanishingly unlikely but still directly possible outcomes which, were they to occur, would significantly affect the individual in question. Not only is such information prohibitive, but the provider does not possess it in its entirety to begin with. Thus your position with regard to these statistical extremes is untenable (because it is not practicable) and cannot stand without a provisional directive.
The significance of this bit of abstractness in the present discussion is that, in order to be actually pro-choice, one must not only work to maintain a woman’s access to an abortion, if she so chooses to obtain one, but one must also work to ensure that those who are faced with such a choice have access to as honest and as full of information as is possible.
Your error, then, is in not supporting that goal. Indeed, you are opposed to that goal!
Frankly, I find it difficult to accept that an individual of your intelligence could make a statement like this with full honesty. It makes me doubt your sincerity, and wonder what you are playing at.
In any case, you are flatly wrong. I fully support the right of a pregnant female to have good information prior to making a decision about whether to have an abortion. I always contend that people should base their decisions and judgments on good information. I have hit that conviction repeatedly over the years, here and in our discussions elsewhere, and everywhere else I write my personal thoughts. That is a theme of mine. You know, “Illumination” and all that. I don’t know if I ever specifically stated at the Compendium that I want people who are considering whether to complete or terminate a pregnancy to have good information, but if I did not then how supremely disappointing of you to infer that my silence on that very narrow and explicit assertion could possibly mean that I support the opposite view. I trust you will stand corrected without delay.
The right to personhood by the unborn child sets in after conception but before the child is born. This strategy pragmatically attempts to serve everyone by asserting the right to an abortion for part of the pregnancy, but asserting personhood rights for the fetus for the remainder of the pregnancy. The logic behind it uses irrelevant and often arbitrary physical factors such as heartbeat, the ability to feel pain, “viability,” the ability to smile, the presence of certain detectable brain activity, and various “human” behaviors like kicking. This argument is simply not defensible.
Your stated justification for rejecting the position that personhood sets in after conception but before birth is that such a position is not defensible. That is a worthwhile consideration, to be sure, but that is not sufficient to reject such a position. Indefensible or not, if it is true, then it must be held to! To do otherwise is to present a false face to the people making the choices to have abortions, and thus it is to manipulate their choices and undermine their rights.
By “not defensible” I meant “not correct on the grounds of being not logically defensible.” Yes, if a position is correct it should be upheld, but that scenario is irrelevant because the argument that personhood develops prior to birth is not correct—i.e., the assertion is not logically defensible. Indeed, such arguments as exist in support of that particular assertion—e.g., the primacy of a supernatural “soul,” the prevalence of irrelevant physical characteristics such as a heartbeat—all of them are bogus. To one of your learning they should be self-evidently bogus (and we could take them one at a time if it were truly a point of contention), but I recognize that your past history of Christian conservatism may create intellectual blind spots.
You go beyond that to affirm a falsehood as well:
Our physical nature provides that an unborn child does not possess personhood at any stage. Personhood, not “life” or “humanity,” is the relevant criterion at issue when it comes to asserting any special rights of the unborn. The absence of personhood is the absence of legal standing. One cannot murder a non-person, nor is the killing of a non-person inherently wrong like murder is.
To be very clear, I am not saying that your falsehoods are contained in the claim that personhood does not begin at conception, nor is your falsehood contained in the claim that personhood begins at birth. Rather, the falsehood comes is asserting as truth that which you do not know to be true.
This is of utmost importance, so I will repeat it: Your error is in making a definitive judgment on a topic that you lack any concrete evidence for. The lie is making a moral quandary appear resolved and simple.
I understand what you are saying here. I do not possess metaphysical certainty as to what personhood entails, and my scientific understanding of the concept is, though well-informed, necessarily incomplete (as our current science does not yet encompass such completeness).
Although in all but the highest levels of precise dialectic conversation, some casualness is not only inevitable but also to be encouraged lest we reduce our intellectual engagements to a robotic quality, since you pointed it out I will indeed have to clarify my position. Ahem: “Our physical nature provides,
to the best of our understanding, that an unborn child does not possess personhood at any stage.”
There you are. Usually—as those who know me well will point out with a roll of the eyes—I am quite exhaustive about these clarifications, but I sometimes omit them when I am speaking imperatively. Call it a writer’s prerogative. Regardless, I am all too happy to admit my mistake and take this opportunity to address what is one of only a few criticisms in your whole post that is both correct and applicable to me.
Incidentally, your comment that my alleged falsehood is not contained in “the claim that personhood begins at birth” makes another incorrect assumption. I do not claim that personhood begins at birth—a position which you wrongly imply to me—but that it develops gradually beginning a number of months after birth.
Since there is no objective observable point where personhood begins, we must refrain from making arguments based on personhood.
Incorrect. There may yet be no absolute point, but there is a clearly defined interval of uncertainty, the lower end of which does not come anywhere near a child’s pre-birth existence. Furthermore, even if there were such an overlap, we would still—and should still—be able to make such arguments on a tentative basis.
What I can and will do -- and what I here urge you to do -- is to pursue truth first, a human’s right to choose second, and abortion only as a third.
It is easy to be encouraged to affirm that which one already holds. Except for your tacking on of abortion to the end of that statement—which is unnecessary—I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Defense of abortion is only our primary concern if abortion itself is our primary concern. If our primary concern is freedom of choice, then we must discard even easily defended positions if they are false.
You present a false dichotomy here. Abortion is relevant because it concerns a female’s right to self-determination. Choice is the means by which self-determination is executed. Abortion is, in this particular case, is the object.
That you judge the matter in terms of defensibility rather than accuracy is part of why you made your error, Josh.
Again you mistake me. This time your mistake is understandable, as I tend to be quite particular with my word usage, and my usages are not necessarily standard. A correct position is defensible, by definition, even if that defense is tentatively inaccessible or otherwise conceptually very difficult to communicate, let alone unpopular. An indefensible position, therefore, by corollary, is never correct. Hence it is trivial for me to use the terms interchangeably in most circumstances, because imprecision will never lead to inaccuracy.
I had two criticisms of your post. The first, that your stance is oppressive, has been explained.
And dismissed as an error of interpretation on your part! On the whole your criticisms are valid—with a few glaring exceptions—but they simply do not apply to me personally. We have substantially more agreement on these issues than you realized, and perhaps I have been able to bring this to your awareness. I know that I can be abstruse, arcane, obscure, and capable of many shortcuts whose intermediate steps are not apparent. That is a weakness of mine as a writer who writes to general audiences. I would advise you, in general, to ask me for clarity prior to spending your valuable time on criticisms which, though generally meritorious, are irrelevant.
The second, that you use Christian Fundamentalist tactics, is next.
Simply put, you are engaging in the same unthinking aversion to compromise that fundamentalists take in relation to science.
I hereby disabuse you of the notion that I have put anything less than extensive consideration and study over many years into my views on abortion. My
thinking is extensive. My position is rigid only because the alternatives presented to me are ethically unconscionable. You just spilled much ink insisting that positions be upheld to the extent they have truth to them; it is an inescapable consequence of that (correct) insistence that positions based in untruth be rejected. I am really a very reasonable person. It is American ignorance to blame, dear sir, and not humble Josh, that I cannot accept any of the popular positions on abortion in this country. I am not intransigent. I am more than willing to negotiate to the extent my ethics will allow me, and to be tolerant of all that exists within that sphere. I am even, in cases of deplorable injustice, willing to accept interim compromises leading to solutions which exist outside my ethical sphere, on the understanding that they will progress forward with time and social clamor. For instance, I support abortion rights in this country as they exist right now at the federal level—even though abortion is flatly illegal in many instances. It’s not that I accept the present status of rights as an end, but that I support the fact that the present regime alleviates considerable injustice and is preferable to no abortion rights at all until the day we can achieve abortion on demand for everyone.
Insisting that a complex world view is all or nothing results in a terrible choice.
Once again we are in general agreement and you do not realize it. I only issue absolutes where it is factually correct or ethically compulsory that I do so. My general philosophical stance is highly agnostic, curious, skeptical, and probing. I am impressed that I can offer what few absolutes I do, but I am proud of them, Thought, because they are important and because they are right, and I simply do not accept your underestimation of my thinking or considerateness. I could count on one hand all the times in my life where I have issued an absolute which turned out to be fundamentally incorrect. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any.
You objection to the author of the article, Josh, is clearly the result of him not adhering to what you perceive as the only legitimate world view. Since you perceiving him erring in anything, even though it is minor, you perceive him as no longer being part of the “faithful.” The problem is, he isn’t the only one. People have and will continue to recognize the lie in your position, but this isn’t a crisis unless you make it one.
Good rhetoric, but it has no legs to stand on.
However, as an objective curiosity, I think your last remark there—about people having broad power to prevent crises in their lives—is one of the wiser and more insightful truths I have heard from you, ever, let alone lately, and I encourage all others reading this to reflect upon it. I should include myself, as the recent kerfuffle with tush indicates. My usual methods did not account for his, well, his style, to put it charitably, and I create a lot more trouble for myself and him and all the rest of us than it was worth to point out the absurdity and wretchedness of many of his positions and arguments.
Should you construct such a world view in which if people don’t agree with you they then feel like they have to become pro-life?
Indeed not. You make a good point. Generally, I tolerate allies when we align on issues but not necessarily the underlying rationale. For instance, you and I are in broad agreement on many issues indeed, yet I suspect without much doubt that, on a personal level, we are quite different in some important ways when it comes to why and how we hold those positions. To reiterate, I usually tolerate people with whom I share common cause. Most of my allies on this very Compendium are just that, allies, and not people with whom I share a deep and abiding philosophical worldview. I do this out of shrewd pragmatism on one hand, because their support aids my own ambitions, but also because it makes relationships with these peope easier, friendlier, and more satisfying.
But, with regard to that contact on my Google+ list who I “un-circled” for posting in support of the view taken by the author of that abortion article, I departed from my usual practice of tolerance. I was aware of my choice at the time, and I felt that the overreaction on my part was a demonstration of my fury at the view which supports abortion rights but hates abortion. It was not inherently consistent, but it was contextually so.
And I do that on occasion. I’ll depart from my usual practice to do something unlike me, to make a point—even if the only person who cares is me, myself.
Within the pro-choice movement, there needs to be room for people who say that personhood begins at conception but that abortion can still be acceptable.
I see what you are saying, and, though I don’t like it, in an effort to enrich myself from your very thoughtful post, I will contemplate on how I can be better about this. Of course, your suggestions are always welcome. =)
At this point you are probably thinking that these have been interesting but ultimately unconvincing arguments (particularly, I suspect, on the less important topic of your scare tactics). Allow me to make another stab at displaying how your perspective is pro-abortion instead of pro-choice and how that perspective is flawed. These are essentially supplemental considerations that weren’t warranted by my above arguments but which I am here making in an effort to get past your normal hesitations.
Hah! This is one of the reasons why I so enjoy your company. You
care more than most people do, and you have the words and wits to act on it. If not for your claim that I don’t support access to good information prior to making decisions, I would have found your post one of the most enjoyable things I have read from you on the Compendium in many months, even though it mostly wasn’t applicable to me. I am attracted to passion, to intelligence, to good language...and you do that better than anyone else here, I think, possibly but not necessarily excepting me. I deeply enjoy it and, what’s more, I deeply appreciate it. Thank you, Thought, for reminding me in the midst of a Compendium stagnant era that this forum is really something special.
The effective meaning of your effective meaning is quite clear: you hold that there are no instances where abortion would be unacceptable. This is easily disproven since forced abortions are not acceptable.
You know what? You’re right. I’m wrong. I don’t concede the point, but my substantiation thereof is not correct. I will have to add a qualifier to it. That much is trivial; I’ll get to it the next time I need to get to it. Some instances of abortion are unacceptable. I suppose my implication in my earlier remark was the condition of “as pertains to the mother’s will.” In other words, I meant that I hold there are no instances where abortion would be unacceptable if the mother’s will is to terminate her pregnancy. But I didn’t say that, and, moreover, the point you raise is a good one.
I return to the article to make sure of this, but the author at no point advocates that woman should pursue this option before resorting to an abortion. That is entirely you.
You are incorrect. From the article:
I’d also love to pour some money into research to find ways to make embryos and first-trimester fetuses harvestable so they can be implanted in the wombs of people who can’t have their own babies...
It is implicit on the author’s part that this is being presented as an alternative to abortion.
Likewise, the sentiment behind your statement is clearly pro-abortion. It alienates those women who believe that their fetus is a person, and thus do not want to get an abortion, yet do not wish to carry the creature to term. If an option can be developed for them that does not hamper the freedom of other women who disagree, why reject it?
I don’t reject having that choice be available to those who want it. I support that. What I reject is the
motive by which the author indicated support for funding that research. The author’s motive is his or her own personal opposition to abortion, and we have already covered that ground.
Pro-lifers already support adoption over abortion, and this procedure would be quite similar in concept to adoption.
Slightly off-topic, but pertinent: Adoption carries a burden which abortion does not, and which many people do not realize: The adopted baby will indeed eventually become a person, and that eventual person will not initially be a part of its biological parent’s (or parents’) life.
As has already been discussed, anyone who promotes equality should hope that the events which cause unwanted pregnancies would go away. This would, indeed, necessitate the hope that one day abortions would go away as well, due to lack of demand. That is only an undesirable hope if one supports abortions in opposition to choice. Abortion is a tool: pick it up when it is needed, set it down when it is not.
Returning to your forced contrast of “pro-abortion” versus “pro-choice” and your mistaken interpretation that I subscribe to what you have grouped into the former, you again paint me into an image which is not representative of my actual views. I too hope that demand for abortions
which result from unintended pregnancy eventually drop to zero. But I did not say anything to contradict that earlier. I said I hope that there are as many abortions as people desire to have. So long as birth control methods are imperfect, and as humans are imperfect themselves, unintended pregnancies will continue to exist. We can pare them down, though, and I support that if only as a bulwark against the societal restrictions on access to abortion and the modest medical discomforts and minor risks of an abortion.
(However, if we are going to fancifully postulate the ideal existence of “invisible” birth control, then let’s postulate the ideal existence of invisible abortion too. In such a scenario, there aren’t many instances where birth control is any more preferable than abortion. Indeed, abortion may end up being more economically affordable—although that’s just speculation on my part.)
Meanwhile, owing to physical or social complications as well as personal changes of heart that arise once a pregnancy has begun, there will always be the demand for abortions.
But, well, only the most perfect discipline is acceptable for someone of your caliber.
The above certainly satisfies my requirements, but we shall see if you have anything to add! My hope is that you will easily and without pain recognize that your interpretation was mistaken and that we have very few actual disagreements.
