Lots of good stuff here! I will definately check back every day.
The problem is that the law didn't (pre-Roe) and wouldn't (if Roe were overturned) apply equally to everyone. In the 50s and 60s, if you had enough money, you could get an abortion (as the post below discusses). It's generally poorer people who can't afford to travel to another state/country, so it's poor people who lose the right to choose. In many people's minds, poor = irresponsible; therefore, overturning Roe would just stop those irresponsible dirty urchins from killing their babies.
urchins
SP, you misspelled "negroes".
Yeah! More abortion! Everyone's favorite!!!
More seriously though, excellent post. So good I have no comment.
4: Well, that's the rhetorical point. Making people realize that intermediate restrictions on abortion (waiting periods, counseling requirements, notification requirement) aren't structured in any reasonable way so as to produce better, more moral, abortion decisions -- that they are only likely to to make abortion inaccessible for some people on the basis of their individual circumstances, rather than the validity of their need for abortions. This is a rational goal if you think that a total ban on abortion would be a good thing, and so that preventing any number of random abortions (those for poor women, women with abusive partners, etc.) is a positive gain, but it's not a reasonable way of sorting abortions into 'permissible abortions for good reason', and 'impermissible abortions for bad reason.'
And SB is banned! (or, rather, SB is spam-filtered. [or rather, SB is REDACTED by bw.])
I also think that liberals need to get better at saying (particularly in regards to things that seem reasonable on the surface -- like parental notification laws).
The fact that 3209 may affect fewer than one percent of women seeking abortions does not save it from facial invalidity, since the proper focus of constitutional inquiry [505 U.S. 833, 838] is the group for whom the law is a restriction, not the group for whom it is irrelevant.
In other words, laws that are, superficially, structured to require people to take common sense steps will not affect those people who would normally apply common sense to a situation (e.g., the vast majority of people getting an abortion who would tell their husband or parents about it) but will have the greatest affect on those who, for some circumstace, would not actually be well served by following the "common sense" guideline.
We have reached a position satisfactory to the quarrelsome and hyper-rational. Political success is just around the corner.
Or, what LB said in 7, only with quotes.
Good post, LB. I think the problem is that many of the `moderate pro-lifers' you describe really haven't thought about this very carefully, and are trying to find a comfortable line to walk between two ideas they don't really like: abortion, and forcing women to bear unwanted children.
The problem is that there really isn't any unambigous line. Either you take the idea that all abortion is morally wrong, or you allow a whole host of difficult trade-offs.
The first position can be made consistent but it doesn't really allow for exceptions of any sort. Certainly not for `rape exception' type arguments, although perhaps extreme medical exceptions could be rationally included.
The second position will immediately bog down if you attempt to spell out allowable circumstances, and disallowed. I'll shamelessly assert that you cannot do this in a consistent way. So either you bite the bullet and accept that the only rational legislative choice is to allow women to decide. Hopefully, *as a seperate issue*, you also provide people with decent education and easy access to effective contraceptives, etc.
So much of the noise about this issue seems to boil down to people wanting to make themselves feel better about a difficult subject. But you can't wriggle out of it.
I will note in passing that it is quite depressing how little interest there seems to be on the part of extremely vocal pro-lifers in addressing the quality of life of these potential children if born. Laughable sloganeering about adoption, etc. aside, I've heard very little.
Unfogged for President '08!!!11!!
Good post! So good, I have two comments. One nitpicky, and one (I hope) more substantial.
First comment:
So, the "do you trust women?" argument just boils down to the tired old saw that we can't arbitrate it well enough to allow for exemptions, so *shrug* best to leave it open? We've heard that before. Now, that's a fair enough argument, but it seems a bait-and-switch is going on here. The emotional pull of the 'do you trust women?' argument was to... look at your daughter. Look at her. The women who have abortions are just like her. [Cite stats.] And you know your daughter wouldn't be runnin' off having any frivolous abortions for Prom Dress Reasons, so you can trust that women take abortions seriously. Prom Dress Reasons are straw men, and if you feel that you need to legislate against them, you're really deep down guilty of not trusting women, who are after all bona fide moral agents who take shit like abortion seriously.
That's a powerful argument. It's one I think is wrong, but I think the reconstrual of it here robs it of all of its emotional force. And if the old tired saw hasn't convinced any moderate pro-lifers, why should this one? What's new about this frame?
Unfogged for President '08!!!11!!
I hear ya, but Unfogged is going to have to come up with a coherent position on the Open Faced Sandwich or else they'll just get swiftboated.
Cala:
Not exactly. What you seem to be saying is that my argument is a claim that all abortion decisions are made for good, non-Prom Dress reasons. I explicitly tried to reject that -- if you think that reasons matter, then some abortions are going to occur for reasons you disapprove of. My argument is that there isn't anyone, other than the woman involved, qualified to judge or practically capable of judging the woman's reasons for wanting an abortion on a case-by-case basis for the purpose of deciding whether she should be allowed to have one.
If it's important to you that your good responsible daughter retain access to abortion if she really needs one for her own good responsible reasons, than you don't have any principled way of restricting abortion access for all those women out there with their bad reasons.
15 - I fear we will be gswiftboated.
Unfogged is going to have to come up with a coherent position on the Open Faced Sandwich
Prone.
For some reason 18 makes me think, immediately, "Venus on the Half-Shell".
Hmmm, I fear Cala is correct.
There are two separate arguments (1) Trust women to behave as moral agents and take abortion "seriously." (2) Even for women that make decision that you think are "wrong" it is impossible to write rules that will cause them to make "correct" decisions without doing more harm than good.
Trying to run them together may not increase the strength of either argument. FWIW, it really is argument (2) that I, personally, find most convincing -- that even in cases where one may, personally, make moral judgements about someone else's actions that rule-writing is impossible. I find this a powerful argument because it avoids the discussion of "in what circumstances is moral judgement warrented?" but avoiding that question makes it a much weaker argument for many people.
[Update -- I see LB has addressed the comment and says that they really are connected. The two arguments are connected in that they both are based on taking women's autonomy serious (as Dr.B has argued persuasively) but I think that Cala's point is that the circumstances in which they most closely overlap are the least contentious circumstances, and that in the most difficult cases they overlap less closely]
how little interest...in addressing the quality of life of these potential children if born
It makes sense when you realize that once the girl who wanted the abortion to fit into her prom dress is convinced to have her baby, she turns into the single-mother welfare queen who drives a Mercedes.
Some people say that my distinguished opponent wants to impose croques monsieur on dining tables across America. [Waves hands self-deprecatingly] Well, of course that would be extreme. I'm in favor of all kinds of open-faced sandwiches, those made of honey and shit and those whose shit has been scientifically extracted, those which can eat themselves and those which exist solely for the pleasure of being eaten; [Looking earnest now] these sandwichs are all good sandwichs, good Americans, and in America, we have always stood for the principles of freedom and equality. [Shit-eating grin] And that's just common sense!
LB, Cala's comment that I quote
"So, the "do you trust women?" argument just boils down to the tired old saw that we can't arbitrate it well enough to allow for exemptions, so *shrug* best to leave it open?"
seems to indicate that she *isn't* saying that your argument is that all abortion decisions are good ones, only that arbitration doesn't work.
If it's important to you that your good responsible daughter retain access to abortion if she really needs one for her own good responsible reasons, than you don't have any principled way of restricting abortion access for all those women out there with their bad reasons.
Thats it!
Agree. Wrap it up, i ll take it as it stands.
This is a typically better formulated version of my point in the previous thread: If one tries to legislate in such matters for cases of exception of which "we approve," one will end up violating the rights of any number of people because their situation has not been approved but might have been.
That is the tyranny I see.
It is the tyranny of the vociferous who feel the need to legislate against the private choices of those of whom they dissapprove without having the wisdom to see that there is no possible way of capturing all the permutations of that which they might have approved.
22 -- the very one. I think the way it came into my head was LizardBreath == Venus (obv.), Open-faced sandwich == Half-Shell. And then for our local Venus to describe herself as "prone", well, it gives a boy ideas...
Did you guys know Philip Jose Farmer wrote a book called "Venus on the Half-Shell" under the pen name Kilgore Trout, with KV's permission? I did not, until a recent bout of Googling. Apparently it reads quite like KV. Farmer wanted to publish more books as Trout, but KV asked him not to.
24: You're absolutely right. If I'm reading Cala correctly now, she isn't saying that I claim that all abortions are chosen for good reason, she's saying that unless I make that claim my argument lacks rhetorical force. Which leaves me saying that maybe it does lack force, but I think it's the honest argument we have available.
Annnndd the comment box ate my second comment. 29 is correct. Look, when this 'do you trust women?' argument first popped up, it seems to derive a lot of force from grrrlpower sorts of considerations. Let women decide! We're not going to abort frivolously! Don't you trust us? [pump fist] That's just not the argument presented here, even though it has the same name. Like I said, a nitpick, but one that bugged me.
Okay, so the second comment. Imagine a moderate pro-lifer's response (first trimester okay, medicalish ones afterwards). I think his response would be something like, "Look, you don't get why I'm a moderate. Abortion is ethically squicky. It's not like having a tumor cut out. And I find that the later in the pregnancy we consider it, the more my reasons look like a) mental & emotional health of the mother and b) horrible genetic diseases of the baby. I think we can legislate those."
"The woman who is six months pregnant who loses her job and husband on the same day her house burns down and needs an abortion is a tragedy, but let's be real. That's not what happens; making policy to protect against that possibility is like making torture policy with an eye to ticking-time bomb scenarios. I can cover all of the realistic cases by good medical exemptions."
"Now, I know you'll say that not all women have access to early abortion. But given that abortion is so squicky, especially as the pregnancy progresses, shouldn't we focus on increasing access in the first trimester and education and birth control, rather than rushing straight to unfettered access? Surely there's a middle ground between 'every sperm is sacred' and 'this is a fucking parasite'. "
"I can cover all of the realistic cases by good medical exemptions."
I agree with you that this is a key point in the mental process of a moderate, and that we need to be able to argue that it isn't true if we want to try to reach a moderate person.
So do you think this is true? My intuition is that it isn't true -- that we can't write rules that both cover all the realistic cases and don't, in practice, allow for abortions in almost all circumstances. I also suspect that we can't write rules in a way that won't disadvantage poor women far more than middle class women and I'm very uncomfortable with that.
But that's just an intuition. Is there a compelling argument one way or the other?
I'm not understanding why we can't say something like, "We trust women generally, but we don't trust this *specific* woman for reasons X, Y, and Z." That's the type of distinction we draw all of the time.
#30: I believe you are correct that a lot of `moderate pro-lifer' response boils down to this. I also don't believe it holds up to scrutiny.
By *all means* concentrate effort on increasing education and birth control access. It would be an unmitigated (however unlikely) success if efforts like this led to a situation where no-one ever needed to avail themselves of an abortion that made some of your `moderates' squirm. However, *don't* restrict access on this basis. Why? Because I don't believe you can draw any line that doesn't have an edge case that is problematic, and more likely than you envision. Furthermore, as many have pointed out, it is (I believe) more generally true that in the tricky cases the woman is in the best position to judge.
32: Because with respect to an individual woman making the decision whether or not to abort, who, in a literal sense, do you propose should make the decision not to trust a specific woman? You can make a general rule that no woman gets to decide whether she will have an abortion, but there's no rule you can make that imposes oversight on only the untrustworthy.
30: Here, I'm in a difficult rhetorical spot, if I'm trying to be appealing to the pro-life moderate. If I were going to say it without worrying how it would come across, I'd say: "What restrictions do you propose? Who gets the oversight? I can't talk to you about what is good policy unless you have a proposal."
I think that the rhetorically effective "do you trust women" argument does work, because I honestly think that virtually all abortions, when/if women tell their stories, are "defensible" even to people who find abortion icky. I mean, really: the girl who has the prom dress abortion is gonna be a responsible mother? Please. Given that abortion is stigmatized; given that even an early abortion is hardly a pleasant procedure (come on, even going for a pap smear is something a lot of women put off); given that person Y's ability to sit there in an arm chair and say "but a fetus is alive!" is hardly something that a pregnant woman isn't going to think of (and that a woman who doesn't is unlikely to be a "responsible" pregnant person or mother); given that the vast majority of abortions take place because (1) the women having them aren't economically set up to raise a kid (including the pregnant teenager or college student), (2) the woman isn't emotionally prepared to deal with motherhood (including the fetus with birth defects), or (3) the woman already has as many kids as she feels capable of raising, I don't see why the "look, you need to trust that women are not going to wander in and ask a doc to scrape out their uterus for kicks and giggles" argument isn't one that people think holds water.
34: Hmm. That appears to be a much broader notion of "trust" than we give to almost anyone. IANAR, but we do live under a pretty regulatory government regime that often restricts choices to those who have met certain conditions, or removes choices from those who meet other conditions.
bitchphd brings up a good point: I'm unable to come up with a plausible scenario where a woman is both unfit to make the decision of whether or not to have an abortion and fit to raise a child. `But there's always adoption' doesn't even come close to answering this.
33: As I understood this 'do you trust women?' argument, its point wasn't to reach out to the religious right, but to the sort of mushy middle of the road people who could really go either way. I don't see this argument getting any moderate-types into the unrestricted-access camp, and that was my only point.
31: No, I don't think it's possible, realistically. But it doesn't initially seem like it's all that implausible. We have hoops to jump through for lots of other medical care, ya know? We somehow manage to get people heart transplants with hundreds of legal restrictions.
36: I'm not following you. Sure, you can set up a system of rules that determine under what circumstances women may have abortions -- if you want to propose such a set, we can talk about them. But if you want to make distinctions on the basis of the woman's reason for wanting the abortion (desire to be able to support her existing children, good; desire to look good in a prom dress, bad) then you have to establish some arbiter to examine every woman's reasons. Who do you propose that arbiter should be?
p.s. have you noticed the NY Times article about the biology of pregnancy as a struggle for nutrients as well as symbiosis?
it's quite interesting.
(and explains some of the instinctive attraction-repulsion feelings that a lot of women have towards the state of being pregnant...)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14preg.html?_r=1&8hpib&oref=slogin
(sorry - but whenever i try to post the link more elegantly line breaks seem to foul it up)
One more talking point to add to the abortion discussion.
35: Indulge me, I'm being argumentative. See, I think the moderate pro-lifer isn't going to be terribly moved by economic arguments. Not that poverty isn't a reality in the U.S., it's just that having a baby as a teenager probably doesn't mean you end up starving to death on a church doorstep. And I think on balance, 'But I won't be able to go to college!' seems to weigh less than 'This kid won't get born.'
Quite a lot of abortions are done on middle-class girls from good homes with supporting families, who probably would be just fine, thinks the moderate. Abortion isn't fun, and no one does it frivolously, but I don't need frivolous, just the fear of telling one's parents.
Beyond that, I think one reason that no one expects women to make fit judgments about having a baby vs. abortion is that it's nearly always irrational to have a baby. It's very fulfilling afterwards, so I've heard, but if you were to measure it out beforehand, you'd conclude this human race is a bunch of wackos for thinking of parenting.
So it seems completely consistent to think, wrongly, "I can't handle a baby now! I can't afford it! My life will be ruined!" and contra 37, find, upon having the baby, that one is indeed quite more resilient than expected.
the instinctive attraction-repulsion feelings that a lot of women have towards the state of being pregnant
I must be unusual because I think the "being pregnant" part would be cool from a science-projecty/isn't-it-fascinating-yet-weird-that-my-body-can-do-this perspective. It's the "so, now I have to take care of this kid for the next 18 years?" part that I'm not that into yet. I guess my scientific instincts are still stronger than my maternal ones.
I'm in the opposite situation as you, Becks. I have pretty strong maternal instincts, but then I think, "And where is that thing going to sit for nine months? On my bladder? Oh hell no."
So I guess what LB is advocating is that there be 1) a presumption in favor of the woman's competency to make the decision, and 2) that this presumption be very hard to rebut, maybe conclusive. Imagining 1) done without 2), what kind of rebuttal is likely to be offered?
43: (First, Cala -- I'm not sure what your position on abortion is. For the sake of argument, I'm going to address you as if you were the moderate pro-lifer you're describing.)
At this point, I think I have to ask "What rules do you propose, and why?" You can nitpick at various reasons for abortion all day, but there's nothing to talk about concretely unless you're willing to tell us under what circumstances you think abortion should be legal. I don't believe that you can describe a workable set of restrictions that are at all likely to distinguish between abortions for reasons you approve of and abortions for reasons you disapprove of, unless the only reasons you approve of are survival of or great risk to the health of the mother.
39: I'm surprised that someone hasn't already pointed out the "arbiter" --- it was the supreme court in setting up the trimester analysis and the 'undue burden' test. If this is a speculative conversation then we can put that aside, but since I think the initial post, and one one before it, had more practical intention, you cannot ignore that the standard analysis as I understand it is that (1) it is okay to have an abortion in the first trimester, (2) but the longer you wait, the more your access will be restricted, provided that those restrictions have a health/life/rape/incest exception.
You can debate the rationality of the entire scheme --- what makes an abortion okay at x weeks but not x + 5 weeks? --- but if you are thinking practically, you have to take it into account because it has already drawn the moral lines framing the debate.
Those lines are not re-drawn by the "trust the woman" argument: the entire fight is over post-first-trimester abortions, and how they can be restricted, if at all. Even with Roberts and Alito, I don't seriously think 1st trimester abortion access is in jeapardy; the issue has always been later restrictions and --- usually unmentioned --- generally unavailability of abortions where legal. For example, there is only one abortion provider in all south dakota.
The point of my post, is that there's a tendency for people in the 'moderate pro-life' camp to talk as though the validity of a given woman's reason for abortion is an important part of figuring out what the law should be. I'm trying to put forth an argument that they can't, practically, make rules that are going to distinguish between women on the basis of how good their reasons are. (As Atrios recently pointed out, even a rape exception is completely unworkable if it is to depend on more than the unsupported word of the woman. What are we going to do, wait for a conviction? )
48 -- parental notification laws come to mind (and cala alluded to them in 43). They have quite a bit of support from moderates (including, at one time, Kevin Drum). Obviously they need to have exceptions that allow a minor to go before a judge in lieu of parental notification but, even with that clause they still seem like a bad idea.
Well, the biggest argument against parental notification, from the pov of the moderate pro-lifer, is that notification laws increase 2nd-tri abortions, apparently because young women who fear they are pregnant put off dealing with because they don't want to tell their parents. I recently read a news story of a girl who died from a self-induced abortion because she lived in a state with parental consent laws and preferred trying to self-abort than confessing to her parents she was pregnant. So even from the pov of the well-meaning moderate pro-life parent who conceives of judicial bypass as the alternative for girls whose fathers molest them, or whose parents beat them, the threat to a "good girl" from a "good family" is something you'd think parents would think twice about.
LB, no clue what my position on abortion is. But playing the part of the moderate pro-lifer: let's say something pretty close to Kevin Drum's. First two trimesters, no restrictions. Third trimester, medical/fetal viability/rape/incest. Probably parental notification, too. May not strike some as moderate, but my guess this is pretty close as to what we'd end up with if a lot of people had their druthers.
52 -- If moderate pro-lifers thought about things that way they would be calling for major commitments to increase knowledge and access to birth control, EC, visiting nurse programs, and a host of other things that would reduce the absolute rate of abortions.
Frankly I don't understand why they don't support these things (or, at least, don't support them actively and passionately) but it appears that, in practice, this argument isn't compelling.
But the girl fearing the wrath of her (very likely) nice, mild-mannered parents to the extent that she risks a home-made abortion isn't exactly going to convince any moderate she's a fully rational agent who is the only one capable of knowing her own circumstances better than anyone else. It's not going to help the 'do you trust women?' argument, though it speaks wonders to the practicalities.
First two trimesters, no restrictions. Third trimester, medical/fetal viability/rape/incest.
I don't know a pro-choice activist who wouldn't take this and be delighted with it. Anyone read Alas, A Blog? (which, I read, and get a lot of interesting stuff out of, but don't comment on much because I'm afraid I'm not feminist enough to keep up.) The commenters there are serious, hard core, no time for wishy-washy middleoftheroaders, pro choice, and those guys are kicking around a comments thread right now saying that after 28 weeks (all right, that's two weeks into the third trimester) the baby is a person, and elective abortion shouldn't be available.
Someone who holds this position has absolutlely nothing to argue with me about.
It's not going to help the 'do you trust women?' argument, though it speaks wonders to the practicalities.
But the practicalities are of the essence to the 'do you trust women' argument. Again, the argument isn't that every woman, every time, will make what you consider the right choice -- it's that substituting other decision-makers is going to produce worse outcomes, like teenagers trying to perform abortions on themselves.
re: 48
I think part of the problem with your hypothetical discussion with pro-lifers is that you fundamentally misconceive the bases upon which many people are pro-life (the other problem, of course, is that there are many reasons to be pro-life, and mine---which I will state--are I think very common ones, but they are by no means the only ones).
I think the basic pro-life stance has absolutely nothing to do with punishing "bad" women, hatred (or at least disregard) of the poor, hatred (or at least mistrust) of women, or hatred (or at least disregard for) the plight of African Americans--all reasons proposed in this and the prior thread (mostly by others, LB, not you--you have tired to keep it civil, which is appreciated). As long as you assume the bad faith of pro-lifers, you will not be able to have a satisfactory conversation with us.
Try starting your discussion with the pro-life premise, which is that the fetus has interests which the law should protect. I am not asking you to agree, but if you want to have a discussion with a pro-lifer, try to understand where he or she might be coming from.
If the fetus has interests in survival which the law should protect, then the challenge is mediating the interests of the mother with the interests of the fetus. When you look at it in this way, you can see that most pro-lifers are not particularly interested in whether the mother is "good" or "bad." The question is whether her rights trump those of the fetus. Now how that comes out is the hard part. Many people who are pro-life think the fetus' rights trump from conception. Some are like me and think that, given experience and the uncertain nature of fetal development, the mother's rights trump until much later in the pregnancy. But for many pro-lifers, the question comes down to a balancing of rights, and has nothing to do with punishment or moral judgments regarding good or bad reasons for an abortion (with a few exceptions, discussed below). I have never heard a pro-life person express the views you attribute to us (although you no doubt can Google and find that someone has at some time said it).
Many pro-lifers, even "the fetus' rights trump from conception" ones, see room for valid exceptions. Again, these exceptions have nothing to do with not trusting women or wanting to punish "bad" women.
You make an exception for cases of rape or incest because it is not unreasonable to say that a woman who had no choice in whether to have intercourse (and thus no choice regarding whether to engage in activity which can lead to pregnancy) has a greater right to end that pregnancy.
Some who are pro-life might grant an exception where there was a medical diagnosis showing the the fetus had little or no chance of a normal life. This is a very troubling area, but it is consistent with the basic view of balancing rights. A fetus which likely will be born into pain, may not live long, and will be a burden on its parents has less of a claim to survival than a normal fetus (goes the argument). Further, the mother, who must raise the child, has a greater claim to being able to avoid that pain. This is a terrible calculus, but it has nothing to do with not trusting women or punishing "bad" women.
Why can't the law just let the mother judge? For the same reason it does not let the mother judge in any other case where the rights of another are in question. The law reserves for itself the right to judge a mother who steals food for her child--as understandable as that act is--because the rights of other people are involved. The law reserves for itself the right to judge a mother who kills an abusive husband, even if we understand the act and can never know the pain of the mother. In the same way, if you believe that the fetus has rights which should be protected, the law should draw the lines and enforce them.
Sorry, that was long and incoherent. Bad day at work.
Then who are these moderates we're meant to be convincing? Modify it. First trimester free-for-all, second trimester we start hemming and hawing. Now what?
(I read Alas, a Blog, but I find it exhausting except when it talks about fat acceptance.)
continued from 58:
. . .and I should read the comments on preview before posting in case someone already has addressed by my point. Sorry.
Back to lurking.
56: I think this is probably already the consensus view, provided that the entire trimester scheme isn't derailed by the litigation around S.D.'s total ban. I would not, however, be so sure that this is the accepted pro-choice position --- or, if it is, I think pro-choice advocates have alot more work to do communicating it. Recall the stir Hillary Clinton caused when she called for "moderation" on the abortion issue --- the substance of her policy would probably look alot like what you've described as what you could live with. If capital-D Democrats signed onto that, would the attack on them be from the right, or left?
I think the basic pro-life stance has absolutely nothing to do with punishing "bad" women
I'll believe this when the leadership of the pro-life movement (and, indeed, the pro-life Party) comes out in favor of aggresively supporting birth control, sex education, contraceptives, and the HPV vaccine. I've even heard "pro-life" politicians equivocate on whether they would support an AIDS vaccine.
What do these stances mean, if not to ensure that dirty sluts get punished for sluttiness?
Try starting your discussion with the pro-life premise, which is that the fetus has interests which the law should protect.
This is missing the point of this post, which is that the analysis of some individual woman's reasons for having an abortion -- is she responsible or irresponsible about birth control; does she want to look good in a prom dress or be able to support the children she has already; did she agonize over the decision or treat it flippantly -- which occupies a fair amount of the discussion of abortion among moderate pro-lifers, doesn't have any sensible place in describing what legal restrictions should be placed on abortion.
If you want to say that after 26 weeks gestation, the fetus has developed to the point where it has rights that override the woman's right to get an elective abortion, that's coherent (and IIRC, that is your position), and it's a compromise which, as I said in my 56, that not a lot of pro-choice advocates are going to have much trouble with. But trying to make rules that will distinguish between someone who wants to have an abortion for reasons you respect and some flibbertigibbet who wants to look good in her prom dress (not saying that you, personally, do, but there are people who keep bringing up 'Prom Dress Girl') isn't practical, and conversations about Prom Dress Girl need to be redirected into conversations about what regulations are practically being proposed.
Idealist, I'm not going to assert that punishment is actually on the minds of a large number of pro-life people, but I thought it might be useful to mention an e-mail received by Digby from a pro-life blogger. I think that e-mail exemplifies the sort of position some have accused pro-lifers of in these two threads.
56: I think this is probably already the consensus view, provided that the entire trimester scheme isn't derailed by the litigation around S.D.'s total ban. I would not, however, be so sure that this is the accepted pro-choice position --- or, if it is, I think pro-choice advocates have alot more work to do communicating it.
Dude, that's Roe; that's the pro-choice position we have now. Bunches of states (I'd have to look them up, but I'm pretty sure) prohibit abortion in the third trimester, with the life or health of the mother exception. Elective abortion is not freely available in the third trimester anywhere -- I can't say it never happens, but you'd need to find a really unusual doctor to perfom it.
which occupies a fair amount of the discussion of abortion among moderate pro-lifers, doesn't have any sensible place in describing what legal restrictions should be placed on abortion..
See, while I imagine you can Google someone saying this, I have spent a lot of time around people who would describe themselves as pro-life (if forced to pick a label) and I have never heard someone say this. I am not saying that you have intentionally created a strawman, because there are no doubt people who say this (as there are people who will say pretty much any darn thing), but I do think you misaprehend the facts if you think that you are discussing a core pro-life position.
55: Doesn't it? It seems to me that a girl who tries to self-induce an abortion because she's so terrified of telling her decent parents that she's pregnant is quite correct in thinking that she's not ready to be a mother.
58: The problem with this "balancing of rights" thing is that it fails to recognize the *key* issue in pregnancy, which is that the survival and development of the fetus depend directly on a more or less parasitic relationship to the pregnant woman. Which is where the well-known argument that we don't require people to donate blood or kidneys comes in. And as the only response to that that I know of is that the pregnant woman had sex, and therefore has more responsibility than some stranger with a healthy kidney, we get right back to the blaming the sex-having woman issue.
55: That's the status quo. The reason I, for the sake of intellectual consistency, argue for the *right* of women to elective abortions in the third trimester is that my understanding is that women don't have third-tri abortions for any reasons *other* than medical necessity (third-tri abortions being complicated procedures) or b/c of things like rape, incest, and the difficulty (practically or psychologically) of getting an abortion before then.
Also, to be fair, because I take very seriously the idea that not even a viable fetus has a right to force a woman to risk her health for its survival, and the fact is that third-tri abortions are *less risky* than pregnancy and delivery.
66: Idealist, I think you're not attending to the distinction LB is making between *moderate* pro-lifers and people who are strongly committed to the idea that abortion is virtually always wrong.
63: I think Idealist was trying to say that the post is inadvertently setting up a strawman: there aren't a lot of pro-lifers who would say "Raped virgin at 20 weeks gestation, abortion good. Local slut at 20 weeks gestation, abortion bad. Local girl who got unlucky at 20 weeks gestation, abortion good." as a matter of going about forming a policy. And I've never heard a proposal that asked a woman to prove financial vulnerability, or some such.
But now I have to admit I'm confused. The 'do you trust women?' argument started off in this thread as, I think, just a way of saying 'This problem is too big to legislate easily'. BPhD's comments suggest that this is mixed with a bit of 'Women are smart enough not to abort for frivolous reasons' (which is not compelling if 'frivolous' just means 'any reason she doesn't agree with'). And whatever the form, I took it to be an argument from liberal pro-choicers to moderate fence-sitters, and I thought *that* meant an argument from "No Restrictions At All" to the sorts of restrictions I described as a Drum-like position.
But if the Drum-like position is the liberal one, then who is this argument aimed at? I'm not sure there's scads of people who think that they could come up with a workable system that let only so-called deserving people have abortions.
Well, but a lot of pro-life women do, in fact, get abortions. And a lot of the rhetoric around abortion does, in fact, distinguish between abortions "for convenience" and abortions for "good reasons"--and rape/incest are always trotted out as *the* good reasons par excellence.
The problem with this "balancing of rights" thing is that it fails to recognize the *key* issue in pregnancy, which is that the survival and development of the fetus depend directly on a more or less parasitic relationship to the pregnant woman.
How so? It is only because of the "parasitic" relationship that there is any debate. If the fetus did not depend on the mother, and if the mother were not compelled to sustain the fetus, then there would be no balancing and the fetus would have an unqualified right to life, in the pro-life view. It is only because of the mother's role that the mother's rights are considered at all. However, you assume the answer to the rights balancing question when you assume that the burden on the mother--a burden all recognize exists--necessarily means that the fetus' rights never trump the mothers. That is one way to do the balancing, but it is not obviously the only outcome. Indeed, it is not less absolutist than the "the fetus' rights always trump" version of the pro-life view.
55: Doesn't it? It seems to me that a girl who tries to self-induce an abortion because she's so terrified of telling her decent parents that she's pregnant is quite correct in thinking that she's not ready to be a mother.
Hardly. Lots of people are irrationally terrified of their parents and turn out to be just fine parents themselves. I don't know, of course, but I'd be willing to bet her desire to give herself an abortion had little to do with her worries that she wouldn't be a fit mother and everything to do with the fear of telling her parents. Probably thoughts of whether she'd be able to raise the child weren't on her mind (judging from friends who had abortions secretly, it was all about getting it done before Mom noticed you had been out of tampons for two months.)
I'm kind of wary of 'fit mother' arguments anyway. Don't see the relevance, much. Mostly because I'm not sure what 'ready to be a mother' means.
And a lot of the rhetoric around abortion does, in fact, distinguish between abortions "for convenience" and abortions for "good reasons"--and rape/incest are always trotted out as *the* good reasons par excellence.
But the 'convenience' sorts of rhetoric has never translated into an bonafide attempt to divide between say, poor girls who abort because they can't afford to raise a child and rich girls who abort because they might not get a second iPod, or between people who used the Pill and people who just played the odds.
I mean, if by 'convenience' all you mean is 'anything not rape or incest or life of the mother past the first trimester', then sure, people are against convenience abortions.
But I don't think that's what most moderate pro-lifers mean when they say that they think that abortion is a necessary evil and that there are bad reasons to abort.
68: Now we're talking about practical politics. It's perfectly possible, and indeed likely, that most serious pro-life people (say, Urple) are not picking and choosing who should be allowed to have an abortion based on her reasons -- they favor a flat ban (or a ban with exceptions for the survival of the mother or non-viability of the fetus) either from conception, or from some later date in gestation. Of those serious pro-life people, the argument I'm laying out isn't going to convince Urple, who's concerned about the rights of the fetus from conception onward, and doesn't need to convince you, given that your idea of when the fetal rights should be allowed to override the woman's rights doesn't kick in until the third trimester, not a hot-bed of abortion-rights controversy.
IIRC, polling comes up with a lot of people in the moderate pro-life group, who don't say they want an abortion ban, but disapprove of almost any specific reason given for an abortion. These people, to the extent that they exist, and polling suggests that they do, seem to be doing what I'm talking about; trying to distinguish between women having abortions on the basis of whether their reasons are subjectively good enough. If those people can be convinced that the sort of restrictions on abortion being proposed do not, in any useful way, distinguish between women having 'respectable' abortions and 'irresponsible' abortions, I think the political climate around abortion might swing in the pro-choice direction.
(I should note that Uprle, my example of a seriously pro-life person, did say in the other thread that he was torn about criminalizing abortion.)
43: You misread me in 37. I said I can't imagine a scenario where someone is unfit to *make the decision* (not a judgement on the decision itself) and yet fit to be a mother. In other words, I can imagine people who would by general agreement be considered unfit to make such a decision, just as in other spheres of life.
I may have misrepresented bitchphd in connecting it to her comment, but basically what I was saying is that for me at least competence as a parent implies competence to make such a decision.
I should probably append my comment(s) by saying that I don't think `fit parent' is a particularly useful designation in all this, or worth getting hung up on. Probably should have avoided bringing it up at all.
I was reacting to some hypothetical `oh but what if you regret it later' scenarios which were implying that perhaps the woman wasn't capable of making the right decision. In my view, you can be both capable of making a decision that is right for you at the time and of regreting it later and see no conflict.
So off I went on a tangent, a bit unclearly, about what it would look like if you really weren't capable of making such a decision. I couldn't (and still can't) imagine a scenario that doesn't involve you being enough of a mess that you are unfit to parent. I did have a couple of particular situations in mind when I commented.
a) this is a good discussion, thanks
b) I've tried to make some of Cala's points on recent threads at Digby and Pandagon and thereby offended people farther to the left on this than me, and also I have the sense from that that 56 is wrong.
c) re 65, Sebastian Holsclaw at ObWi claims that "health of the mother" in practice makes state legal prohibitions uninforceable.
d) Europe is much more in tune with the moderate position described above, which is interesting. Of course they have a stronger safety net which makes, e.g. France's 10-weeks general availaibility then only for health or gross defects law kind of within the moderate scope; ditto Holland's five-day waiting period.
e) I think in my ideal scheme abortion would be available through a few weeks past the amnio point (i.e., probably not past around 22 weeks, modulo later emergencies of a medical nature) with no barriers to make women miss that deadline, and a much stronger safety net to take economics out of the whole process.
Oh, and re "parasitic" - I posed the "sick violinist" scenario to my wife, who's probably rather to the left of me on abortion, and she didn't see the argument for cutting the violoinist loose. Does the argument work for people here?
I don't buy the "do you trust women?" argument as articulated by B. I'm definitely pro-choice. It's just that I don't trust in the moral agency (pretty much generally) of about 90% of the population, neither women nor men. I just think that the consequences of trying to legislate moraluity in this area are too awful, and I trust in the capacity of others to legislate morality even less. So, basically I prefer LB's formulation. So I think that, for practical purposes, we need to pretend taht we trust in the moral agency of people, but in actuality I don't. I fear that I'm an outlier.
Until I was about 15 or 16 I was basically pro-life. I think I got this from my father. I know that he felt queasy about the idea of abortion, and e told me a rather disturbing story about a strong pro-abortion person. (I think taht this guy was pro-abortion not pro-choice.) It was just after Roe was decided, and my Dad was sitting at a communal table at a men's club. He was talking to a man he didn't know, and current events seemed like a good topic for discussion. My father expressed his qualms about the decision, and the guy said, "Well, how else are we supposed to control the poor population?" My father was sickened.
10: I think that the first time I heard about abortion was when I was 8 or 9 during the 1984 election. We were a Republican household then. My father, having campaigned for Gene McCarthy, had thought that Carter's presidency was a disater, and from some time spent at the State House, he viewed the Democrats as a bunch of demagoguing, illiterate hacks. (He's always despised Rush and can't stand teh Republicans now.) I asked my father what abortion was, and then asked him why, if it was really the taking of a life, the politicians advocated an exception for rape or incest. He agreed that it wasn't really an intellectualy coherent position, but that people felt that those were difficult cases blah blah which made them feel blah blahIdon't rememberwhat. The point is that arguing that a position is intellectually inconsistent or doesn't seem to be particularly persuasive to most people--especially not in the context of a political campaign.
78 (b) and (c):
When I claim that there's really no need to argue about third-trimester abortions, I'm overstating the case -- you can certainly get a nasty argument going on the topic, I just think that there's a lot more rancor than policy disagreement going on, because people on both sides of the issue distrust each other so badly.
SH, if we're thinking about the same conversation at ObWi in which he complained about the unenforceability of third-trimester abortion bans if there's an exception for the health of the mother, is a case in point. If I recall correctly, he was arguing with Jesurgislac, who's British and is herself happy with a regime in which third trimester, and late second trimester, abortion is unavailable without medical reasons. (I haven't reread the argument -- anyone else who remembers it or was participating should straighten me out if I'm distorting it.) The argument wasn't, then, about when elective abortions should be available, it was about what kind of legal and procedural barriers should be in the way before a woman in the third trimester should be able to get a medically necessary abortion.
On this, I'm on the standard pro-choice side, thinking that the barriers should be low to nonexistent, despite the fact that I am also disturbed by elective third trimester abortion, for the following reasons, the first two of which are reasons why such barriers should be unnecessary, the third is a reason why they are an awful idea.
(1) I really, really, have a hard time picturing anyone wanting an elective third-trimester abortion. Someone who just doesn't want to be pregnant has been pregnant for six months already at that point, and could have gotten an abortion when it was incredibly easier. Saying that I trust women not to make a decision to have an abortion in the third trimester lightly, or unless it is truly imperative, is not making a claim about their moral judgment -- it's making a claim that women are no more likely to be insane than anyone else. Worrying about whimsically chosen third-trimester abortion seems to me like worrying about that artist who hammered nails through his penis -- while it's a big, weird world out there, and there's someone out there that will do almost anything, it's really not likely.
(2) No one's giving themselves an abortion in their third trimester -- they have to convince a doctor to carry it out. Now, the doctor, whatever you may say about her, is at least a disinterested third party. A simple prohibition on abortion in the third trimester without medical justification, without burdensome regulatory barriers, should be sufficient to keep her from cooperating with the hypothetical Prom Dress Girl who wants an abortion in the eighth month on a whim.
(3) Given (1) and (2) above, a woman who needs an abortion in the third trimester is almost certainly in a tragic emergency situation -- she either has a life-threatening condition requiring the termination of a wanted pregnancy, or she is carrying a fetus that can't survive, or is in some comparable situation (a fetus that might live for a year in intense pain, and then die; whatever). She needs help, quickly, and she is in a very difficult position, both physically and emotionally, from which to protect herself and fight with beauracracy. Barriers that will frighten the doctors she needs to help her away, because they're afraid of criminal liability if someone wants to attack them for not having all the i's dotted and the t's crossed, are going to be a significant and unconscionable burden on her health, at a time that is already a nightmare for her.
I truly don't understand the argument on the other side -- that strict controls enforced with the threat of criminal liability -- are necessary. I can't see what would make SH, or anyone who agrees with him on this issue, think that any woman would be seeking an elective abortion in the third trimester, and why he would think that some hypothetical lunatic who did decide to whimsically abort a third-trimester pregnancy would be able to find a cooperative doctor, such that there is need for a criminally enforceable ban with no exception for the health of the mother. There may be some argument there -- I just can't imagine what it is -- but the combination of my total failure to understand why this is necessary, with the rancor that surrounds abortion arguments generally, makes it hard to treat it with respect.
Damn. Nothing like posting a several-hundred word screed when everyone else has given up on the thread. Maybe I should email it to SH, and see if I can get a discussion going.
Saying that I trust women not to make a decision to have an abortion in the third trimester lightly, or unless it is truly imperative, is not making a claim about their moral judgment -- it's making a claim that women are no more likely to be insane than anyone else. Worrying about whimsically chosen third-trimester abortion seems to me like worrying about that artist who hammered nails through his penis -- while it's a big, weird world out there, and there's someone out there that will do almost anything, it's really not likely.
Exactly.
LB,here's one of SH's posts which links to others. Good luck drawing him into a discussion of this. More ObWi comment here and here.
Oh, thanks. Turns out I was conflating that post of SH's you linked with the conversation between Jesurgislac, Neils Jackson, and (less so) you that you also linked.
For the record, I don't support these regulatory burdens. I'm just inclined to think that everyone is pretty much insane, but I'll agree that a pregnant woman is no likely to be any more insane than the rest of the population.
I'm pretty sure that in the UK you need to get a doctor to sign off on all abortions. This means, de facto, that first trimester abortions are allowed, but the justification is not based on autonomy. The standard is something like:would it be safer for a woman to have an abortion or carry it to term? In the first trimester, it's almost always safer to have an abortion, so all GPs will sign off on the form. This is essentially a health-of-the-mother exception. Interestingly this is much more in line with bphd's thinking that a fetus is a parasite and that no woman should be made to nourish a potentially dangerous parasite.
VEry good point. It's also worth pointing out the obvious disjuncture between this moral ambivalence and the irrational regulations that so many people in the wishy-washy middle end up endorsing. These regulation s just make it harder for poor women to get abortions, but do nothing to ensure that abortions are obtained for the "right reasons" (leaving aside who anyone else should be deciding this in the first place.)
Actually, I've been thinking about posting something on that point -- addressing what the goals of the waiting period, notification, mandatory counseling sorts of regulations are. I'll give you a heads up if it gets written.