Abortion has been in the news again lately, with the controversy surrounding the president's speech at Notre Dame, and the Gallup poll indicating a public opinion shift toward the pro-life position. It occurred to me that I've never written about why I hold a pro-choice position.
My views on abortion have nothing to do with Roe vs. Wade. In that decision the court found an imaginary right based on the non-existent right to privacy. In my opinion there is clearly no right to abortion in the Constitution, and the only reason it is a Constitutional right today is because of government fiat. So why do I support it anyway?
My position on abortion went from being pro-life with certain exceptions, to pro-choice under limited circumstances, to fully pro-choice -- a position that I've now held for a long time. My shift from pro-life to a limited pro-choice position was a gradual change over a number of years. Basically I came to believe that there is a certain point at which a baby becomes a baby. In my view it was obvious that a fertilized egg was not a baby -- it was a fertilized egg and could be aborted with no moral problem. On the other hand, a baby in the womb one hour from being born was clearly a baby. Killing a late term baby, let alone a partial-birth abortion, looked a lot like infanticide. So for years I felt that early term abortions should be permitted, late term abortions should be prohibited, and middle term situations were debatable either way. But then my thinking took a radical shift.
Rather than just focusing on the baby, I began thinking, what if I were pregnant woman? Once I started looking at it from that angle, I realized that the rights of two people were at stake: the woman's and the baby. But the baby, even a fully-formed viable baby, existed inside the woman. Why should the rights of an unborn baby take precedence over of the rights of the mother, a person that contained the baby within her own body? I could no longer accept the idea that the state should determine what a woman could do with something inside her own body -- even if that something was another human being. It's not that I hadn't heard this argument before. But I had just rejected it out of hand, since I wasn't looking at it that way. But once my viewpoint shifted, my opinion changed to what it is today -- that a woman should have the ultimate decision over what happens to her unborn baby.
Even though I am strongly pro-choice, to the point that I would support a woman's right to kill her late term unborn baby (and unlike some, I recognize that she's doing exactly that), I don't agree with it in many cases. I think it is clearly immoral to abort a late-term baby without a very good reason, and the decision is morally questionable in many situations other than an early abortion. But ultimately I think that should be the woman's decision to make and live with.
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The argument against allowing free access to late-term abortions is the same one that underlies implied legal duties to rescue or provide assistance. A mother who carries a fetus to the point of viability can reasonably be understood to have assumed a duty to cary the pregnancy to term, in the same way that a passing motorist who picks up an injured person on the side of an abandoned road is required to see that the person receives medical care.
ReplyDeleteBy assuming the responsibility for another person's well-being, while simultaneously assuring that no third-party will be capable of coming along and offering aid, the motorist--and the mother--must see that obligation through to it's end. Applying your permissive view of post-viability abortions to the injured motorist scenario, the driver would be morally, but not legally, culpable if he were to drive the injured person to an even more remote area and leave him in a ditch to die undiscovered.
While I completely agree with your analysis up to the point of viability (by which I envision some standard requiring a substantial probability of viability), I am not comfortable with that final step which allows a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy that she had freely chosen to continue for 8+ months.
Clay,
ReplyDeleteI understand your argument and at one time I would have agreed. But, for me it comes down to the fact that the baby is inside the woman's body. The only way to stop someone from having a late-term abortion is by the force of the state. By doing this, even for a good reason, we are taking away a woman's ability to control what goes on inside her own body.
As long as that baby is inside the mother it is part of her body -- despite being another human being. I don't think it's compatible with personal liberty to say that the state can take away her right to control her own body -- even if it means the death of a viable baby. In my opinion the baby does not have the right to be born against the will of the mother. I wouldn't say I'm comfortable with that either. But I don't see away around it.
"The only way to stop someone from having a late-term abortion is by the force of the state."
ReplyDeleteEven if that's true, it doesn't really speak to what is morally acceptable. If it's wrong, under all but unusual circumstances, to abort an 8 month-old baby, then it's wrong. The fact that the "only" method of stopping this wrong is the undesirable application of state power changes nothing.
It may very well be the case that X is morally repugnant and ethically unnacceptable, but (sadly) there is no acceptable remedy to the problem. Put another way, the cure may be worse than the disease. But why would that lead one to accept X? We have no real way to stop rape or child molestation; making these acts illegal deters, but does not eliminate. That's just the way it is. If we decide that making late-term abortions illegal is too high a price to pay in terms of expanding state power, then we are left with moral and community censure. And that's life without a god, messy though it may be.
"Even if that's true, it doesn't really speak to what is morally acceptable. "
ReplyDeleteI agree with that. But just because something may be morally wrong, that doesn't mean we necessarily need state involvement. Adultery is morally wrong also in many cases. Do we want the state punishing people for it, or do we just let it happen because state involvement is worse than the moral offense?
Rape and child molestation are different issues. They don't compare to the unique situation of pregnancy, where one life is inside the body of another living person.
"Why should the rights of an unborn baby take precedence over of the rights of the mother, a person that contained the baby within her own body?"
ReplyDeleteJust ask yourself, "Why is murder wrong?" If you follow this line of reasoning, all laws become inviable. Any law robs someone of some sort of right and gives it to another person, whether it be life, liberty, or property.
Following that same line of reasoning, parents could kill children for living within their own houses. Governments could murder citizens for living within their own countries.
You walk a very, very fuzzy line. To me, abortion is murder of a child. Obviously, it is not to you.
The only time I could possibly condone abortion would be in case of rape or the possibilities of serious medical complications to mother or child.
"Following that same line of reasoning, parents could kill children for living within their own houses. Governments could murder citizens for living within their own countries."
ReplyDeleteNone of those situations are in the slightest way equivalent to the situation of a baby inside a mother. Again, it's a unique situation that doesn't lend itself well to analogies.
"To me, abortion is murder of a child. Obviously, it is not to you."
It's definitely not in an early term abortion since there is no child yet. I don't consider a fertilized egg a child. If someone has an abortion in the eighth month, then yes, they are killing their child.
"You walk a very, very fuzzy line."
It's not fuzzy at all. It's very straightforward. I'm saying that the woman's rights should take precedence over the rights of the child, as long as that child is inside her body.