On Abortion
Go back a week and I can safely say that I hadn’t given the subject much thought beyond a perfunctory “her body, her choice”. As someone who won’t be having children, planned or otherwise, it was, for me, a issue of little importance. A week on and I still consider it unimportant but I have, as a result of circumstance, had to think about it.
What set the ball rolling was finding myself drawn into a conversation about what the libertarian position on the matter should be last Tuesday evening after the conclusion of February’s TFA’s Free Spirits talk.
In hindsight I shouldn’t have gotten involved as I didn’t realise how passionately the two individuals believed in their position and consequently I had my head handed to me. Not much of a shock frankly given my aforementioned disinterest in the subject and my general lack of debating skills.
Their contention was that life begins at the moment of conception and thus abortion violates the ‘do no harm’ principle. How much the fact that one of them is, as I found out afterwards, a Catholic contributes to his position or vice-versa I don’t know but life beginning at conception is, as I understand matters, a general tenet of that faith? No doubt if I am wrong on this someone (Demi?) will correct me.
I’m not going to attempt to argue against that view in this post simply because even I realise that it is a ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’ discussion and so far no one has come up with an answer that a majority are happy with.
All I will do is note that the abortions in the UK are not legal after 24 weeks and point out that those children born before that point are usually not viable whilst those few who do survive spend a lot of time in hospital and are likely to have heath problems for the rest of their (possibly short) lives.
I didn’t however think too much more of the matter until Wednesday morning when the Telegraph led with the story that some doctors would agree to terminate a foetus on the basis of gender – a reason which is not allowable under UK law.
Once what passes for my brain cell had taken the time to digest this news, my general thought process was something along the lines of “we allow abortions on the basis of inconvenience, disability, health or because it wasn’t planned so what makes gender selection different?”
Yes, to us in the developed world it seems distasteful to relieve oneself of a pregnancy simply because of the gender of the unborn child but it seems more humane than the apparent murder of millions of young female children simply of the basis of gender – a practise which still happens in parts of countries such as India and China.
Gender selection aside however, abortion is not a new practice, with recorded instances dating back over 2,500 years. Even during the period in the US and UK when the practise was illegal, getting a termination was still possible assuming you knew where to look.
According to WHO figures almost half of all abortions taking place in the world, some 20 million, are in countries where it is illegal or unsafe to do so, resulting in no shortage of deaths and infertility. That is not to say that such outcomes are not possible in places where it is legal and/or safe but the numbers are tiny by comparison.
Thus I come down on the side of rationality. Regardless of the reasons involved, termination of unwanted pregnancies will happen whether it is legal or not. Therefore it makes sense for the practice to be as safe as possible for those who choose to undergo it – for whatever reason – and this is not something which can be achieved by making it illegal.
Happy to oblige
The position of The Church is that the soul enters the body at the time of conception. I’ve never had a satisfactory answer as to what happens in the case of identical twins…do two souls enter the single fertilised ovum, or does a second soul enter at the point where the ova split, and is the twin which had the original soul therefore the older one, whichever is born first? There are also questions about when the soul leaves the body, which then knock over into “withdrawal of treatment” choices…but that would be off topic.
The more helpful viewpoint for me is to start from an axiom that human life is inherently special, which I do genuinely believe. This, then, informs my stance on what are usually referred to as the “life” issues, which has a number of logical (given this axiom) consequences: that euthanasia is wrong (though life shortening paliative care is right and proper so long as the life shortening is a side effect and not the purpose); that artificial abortion is wrong (but aggressive treatment to prevent spontaneous abortion can also be an intervention too far). And that the creation of humans, even in embryonic form, who will never develop but instead be used for experimentation is inherently wrong—the end doesn’t justify the means (though therapies using adult or umbilical stem cells are very proper).
Alas, life issues (and abortion in particular) are usually discussed using megaphones. The regular stories in my Catholic Herald are not about the theological considerations, but about the latest developments in the “campaign”, and the churches (not just Catholic) are adapting well to the rôle of victim against a Godless society (Matthew 5:10, so often used as a crutch for the unjustifiable).
Not sure if this helps much…
If you think twins of various kinds are difficult to deal with try chimeras.
http://chaospet.com/2009/11/09/156-table-for-one-or-two/
Apparently, such chimeras are not that rare again, so it is not just some perhaps nonexistent situation. There was a recent paper that estimated the frequency. It is mentioned and cited on Wiki (not behind paywall). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29#Human_chimeras
This is the second article in a week which has pondered the “libertarian” stance. AFAIK, no other major UK political parties have a stance on it – it’s always left to the conscience of the individual MP when it comes to a vote. This seems reasonable as it’s not the role of poltical parties, or the state, to get involved in theological questions of the nature of life.
Libertarianism must be light touch and pragmatic. Pragmatic in this situation says that if the UK state bans abortions and other countries don’t, the ready availability of cheap flights means that most pregnant could circumvent any restrictions by going elsewhere. Many countries, by accident or design, have ended up with a 20-24 week limit. This is based on the viability argument. This seems intuitively right.
To try to invoke gods, souls, and other unproven entities, is unhelpful at best. No one who beleives in these things is forced to have an abortion.
I know that the matter has been raised both at Anna’s and at Libertarian Home but I refrained from reading either piece until I had had a chance to try and put my own thoughts down.
we allow abortions on the basis of inconvenience, disability, health or because it wasn’t planned so what makes gender selection different?
Disability and health are non-variables. Inconvenience or gender are whims. Personally, I’ve no hard and fast view.
“Regardless of the reasons involved, termination of unwanted pregnancies will happen whether it is legal or not. Therefore it makes sense for the practice to be as safe as possible for those who choose to undergo it”
Er, does the foetus choose to undergo it? No. It just gets murdered, often after its nervous system has evolved and it can feel pain.
PS I speak as an Aetheist.
I’m also an atheist, having turned my back on religion even before I reached my teens. I’m not a militant one a la Dawkins vein however.
I did not say that I believe abortion is right (and nor did I say it was wrong) I chose instead to take the pragmatic approach – or cop-out if you will. Yes, it would be preferable if the parties involved used proper protection or if, failing that, women kept their legs together and men kept it in their pants but even if you leave the hard cases (e.g. rape victims) out of the equation abortion will still happen and I’m afraid that I don’t see, given the numbers, that prosecuting the mothers or the doctors involved is a viable option. And, as James points out, going elsewhere is hardly difficult.
Perhaps if, at some point in the future, medical science has evolved to the stage that fertility is something which can be switched on/off then we will be in a position to do so if someone changes their mind but until then I don’t see a better option.
Don’t quite see this as only a 3rd world issue. Oprah Winfrey once raised the issue of how many women in the US felt they had to keep on having kids until they had the boy they wanted or the girl they wanted.
I see this quite frequently where they’ve had three or four of the same sex and do sometimes admit that they’d have stopped at 2 if they’d had a boy and a girl.
Many’s a time I’ve wondered how many there are out there who know dashed well what their parents were thinking of or who harbour a degree of resentment when the “right” child got all the attention.
You are completely right in the end. It is exactly analogous to the drug situation. Whatever the arguments for legalization and criminalization (harm principle and whatever), it is going to happen. We should get the best out of the result. Basically, the pattern is this: 1) Is there a strong demand for X?, 2) Will there be a black market for X which is worse than a white market? If both are “Yes”, then it should be legal. The answers for both drug legalization and abortions are “Yes, yes”.
Even if the above argument fails, and I disthink that it does, then I would still support such freedom of procreation on other grounds.
As for the matter of viability that you refer to earlier. There is another thing not related to survival per se but societal costs. As it turns out, not surprisingly to me, fetuses born way too early have developmental problems with their brain. Those born very early average at an IQ 20 below the average (this is a huge difference). This implies that a lot of such children born will need special education and generally just be a burden to society. Is it really better to allow such fetuses to survive/convert to babies just because it is technologically possible (in some cases)?
Here is a summery of much of the pre-term birth research. I read some of the papers. The situation really is quite grave for such children. http://www.prematurity.org/research/not-catchingup2.html
I will quote the abstract from one study: Academic attainment and special educational needs in
extremely preterm children at 11 years of age: the EPICure Study
Abstract
Aim. To assess academic attainment and special educational needs (SEN) in
extremely preterm (EP) children in middle childhood.
Methods. Of 307 EP (?25 weeks) survivors born in the UK and Ireland in 1995,
219 (71%) were re-assessed at 11 years, with a comparison group of 153 classmates
born at term, using standardised tests of cognitive ability and academic attainment
and teacher reports of school performance and special educational needs (SEN).
Multiple imputation was used to correct for selective dropout.
Results. EP children had significantly lower scores than classmates for cognitive
ability (-20 points; 95%CI: -23,-17), reading (-18 points; -22,-15) and mathematics
(-27 points; -31,-23). Twenty-nine (13%) EP children attended special school. In
mainstream schools, 105 (57%) EP children had SEN (OR: 10; 6, 18) and 103 (55%)
required SEN resource provision (OR: 10; 5, 18). Teachers rated 50% of EP children
with attainment below the average range compared with 5% of classmates (OR: 18;
CI: 8, 41). EP children who are entered for mainstream education an academic year
early due to preterm birth had similar academic attainment but required more SEN
support (OR: 2; 1.1,3.8).
Conclusions. EP survivors remain at high risk for learning impairments and poor
academic attainment in middle childhood. A significant proportion require full-time
specialist education and over half of those attending mainstream schools require
additional health or educational resources in order to access the national curriculum.
The prevalence and impact of SEN is likely to increase as these children approach the
transition to secondary school.
I think the most consistent libertarian position is that put forward by Walter Block, under the name ‘evictionism’ (find it on YouTube if you care), which posits a woman has a right to ‘evict’ the foetus, but not to kill. As such, at present it is a pro-choice position, but in future, as science advances it becomes pro-life.
Such a position would be a very bad idea for the reasons I mentioned in the post above yours. It is not a good idea to keep these very pre-term fetuses alive/convert them into babies.
I think you’re dismissing the argument without considering it fully. The fact is; science continues to advance.
Pre WW2, i.e., before “modern” medicine, there was a moment in early pregnancy when the foetus “quickened” – this was assumed to be when the collection of cells received, generated, developed or initiated (according to whatever you happen to believe in) its consciousness. I vaguely recall this happens at approx 12 weeks. So it’s not truly alive before this moment.
I was quite shocked by the catholic attitude when my (once catholic) wife died and the priest wanted details of all her pregnancies. She had two miscarriages (and two lovely daughters). The funeral service mentioned the miscarriages, to the distress of my daughters, other family & me – we had had no warning of the priest’s intent. If possible, my contempt for the catholic church was increased by this insensitive behaviour – apparently their beliefs about natural miscarriages are more important than the feelings of the bereaved.
Why think the worst of the priest? I’m sure he didn’t say what he said to offend the bereaved family.
Most pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. And by most I mean ~75%. Most people don’t know this and it certainly does not make much sense in religious views. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage#Epidemiology Note that the numbers there are extremely under-reporting the actual number.
I have no reason to doubt the figure you quote, but on what basis do you claim that most people don’t know this or that it doesn’t ‘make much sense in religious views’ (sic)?
Contrary to what you say, I think people are only too aware of the high incidence of miscarriage, having either direct or indirect experience of it.
I don’t think it is a matter of most people don’t know, I think it is a matter of not giving a thought about conception until it is obvious with a missed or late period.
However, I am a little concerned abut the train of thought that says that abortions will happen, so let the state license clinics to perform them so that they are safer. I do not believe that this line of thought takes into consideration the fact that some members of society will say that if the state licenses the procedure then it must be OK to use that procedure, which is exactly the same argument I would have against legalisation of heroin. I think that state licensing of the procedure (or the drug) will lead to increased usage because it is seen as legitimate.
Hum, so, your argument basically runs along the lines of “because some people will abuse it, no-one should legally be allowed to do it”? No, can’t see the flaw with that…
Sorry, but that one doesn’t fly I’m afraid. As for drugs, well we’ve had a real life experiment running in Portugal for the last 10+ years and that seems to be going ok…