Is the morning-after pill abortion? That’s the question two columnists from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tackle in an article highlighted by Julie Ann Fidler. While Fidler presents an interesting personal perspective, the two columnists, Diane Glass and Shaunti Feldhahn, merely succeed in talking past one another. Too bad. This is an important question that shouldn’t simply be filed under the typical pro-life/pro-choice categories.
The controversy surrounding the issue is whether the morning-after pill should be classified as an abortofacient or a form of contraception. Abortofacients are drugs or devices which cause an abortion within the weeks of pregnancy. 'Emergency contraception", however, work by either inhibiting or delaying ovulation; inhibiting tubal transport of the egg or sperm; interfering with fertilization; or by altering the endometrium (the lining of the uterus). The first three processes are no different than ordinary contraception. It is only in preventing implementation of the fertilized egg that the line between contraception and abortofacient becomes blurred.
Ordinarily I would automatically assume that preventing implementation would be no different than performing a first trimester abortion. Once conception occurred and life began, I would have assumed that any attempt to end the process would be the equivalent of an abortion. But then an argument by Christian bioethicist Gilbert Meilaender caused me to rethink my position:
[There] are some good reasons to hesitate, reasons why we might fix the beginning of individual human life slightly later than conception. For one thing, the fertilized ovum must successfully implant in the uterus before pregnancy is established and research seems to indicate that as many as half of fertilized ova may fail to implant successfully. If any figure even approaching that is accurate, and if an individual life begins at fertilization, we would be forced to conclude that half of the human race dies after a life of four to five days. Although that is logically possible, it is also rather counterintuitive. Moreover, for the first fourteen days after fertilization, the individuality of the developing entity is not firmly established. Up to that point, the developing blastocyst can 'segment" -- that is, 'twinning" can occur if the one blasotcyst divides into two (or more) of the same genotype. Therefore, it is difficult to argue that individual human beings exist prior to that point. (George Meilaender, Bioethics (pg. 31))
From this, Meilander concludes that emergency contraception is more like contraception than abortifacient procedures.
I must admit that I find the argument compelling and believe this position would resolve many of the difficulties associated with unwanted pregnancies. By fixing, as Meilaender says, 'the beginning of individual human life slightly later than conception" we narrow the window of abortion even further and provide an alternative 'choice" that removes many of the excuses for having a first trimester abortion. This also has the effect of limiting the scope of Roe’s 'first trimester" to a ten week window.
Meilander’s position is not without its difficulties and I haven’t made up my mind whether to accept his conclusion. But it does show that the issue is more nuanced than we might have considered. Whatever position we eventually decide upon, though, we should base it on solid moral reasoning rather than predigested arguments.
Update: Thanks to Josiah Neely I've found a solid rebuttal to this position that strengthens the case for why life begins at conception.
Meilander’s logic escapes me. Not that my mind traps all logic that passes through it, but look at it this way:
A computer program is a computer program whether it is a bunch of coded information on a disk or has been installed on a computer and is up and running. A human is a human whether he/she is a developing blastocyst with a full set of very human DNA or has been born, potty-trained and educated. If it is not confusing with computer programs, why is it so confusing with humans?
Just because the blastocyst can segment does not mean he/she isn’t a person, it just means he/she can be a “they.” It does not negate the individuality of the human(s) who are developing.
Pregnancy does not begin life, it nurtures life. It is the result of the creation of new life – however many. The pregnancy may not yet have begun, but the life certainly has.
Hey Elle,
I think Meilander's point is that by taking that position we are saying that God allows half the human race to die with five days of being given "life." While its logically possible, it certainly gives me pause.
Elle,
Bad example. The point be Meilander would only be analogous to software if you said that a program is a program whether it's version 0.0.1 or 10.0.
Well Joe it looks like maybe we have the kind of compromise we need in order to get rid of abortion, if the public is ready for it of course.
If you were to put the blatocyst (which is, I admit, a word I'm hearing for the first time) under a microscope, would a scientist be able to determine that it is (1) alive; and (2) human?
That's the question.
If you move away from fertilization as the beginning of human life, you enter into the argument of the beard.
There are numerous logical as well as moral problems with Meilander's argument, just as there was with the Dred Scott argument, or the Roe v. Wade argument.
The idea that "half of the human race dies after a life of four to five days" seems to me to cohere with the doctrine of the Fall. This is certainly not the way God intended things to be; rather it is a result of living in a fallen world. Take a look at Paul's writings on groaning, C. S. Lewis on pain as God's megaphone, and Philip Yancey's "Disappointment with God."
Meilaender's logic does seem problematic in this statement: "if an individual life begins at fertilization, we would be forced to conclude that half of the human race dies after a life of four to five days. Although that is logically possible, it is also rather counterintuitive."
Perhaps the reason we find this so startling or "conterintuitive" is that we are numb to the fact that we have an infant mortality rate that unmatched throughout history (for the infants that make it through birth, that is). I think this should show us the fragility of life and the miracle that it is that any of us makes it to birth.
The fact that God "allows" this to happen is the same age-old theodicy that theologians have been dealing with for years. Man is marked to die at some point during life, and it appears that the extremely young and extremely old are most susceptible. I'd wager that the percentage of mortality is similar among octogenarians, and we dare not say that they've stopped living after age 80.
I kept waiting for the punch line. Something along the lines of "after all, if we can limit the number of abortions by changing the definition of abortion, why not say that abortions can only occur after the 12th week? That would get rid of first trimester abortions altogether." Unfortunantly it never came.
Joe, surely you read Robert George's response to these arguments: http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/cloningreport/appendix.html#george
Is there something in George's response you find lacking?
Joe-
This'll be one of those rare times when I disagree with you. The only difference between you and a child is time and nutrition. The only difference between a child and a fetus is time and nutrition. The only difference between a fetus and a newly-conceived life is time and nutrition. He's complete from the moment of conception.
The difference between this position and most 1st-trimester pro-choicers seems somewhat academic to me. They would claim that most abortions occur while the infant is still insensitive to pain and a "simple fish-like creature." Their arguments are no less logical than your own, IMO, once we cross the line that life is sacred and begins at conception (not that I think for a moment that you hold life to be anything less than sacred.)
The idea that God doesn't allow a large number of children to die very young might seem logical, but it's intensively speculative. The fact is, none of us knows when the soul enters the body. But I do know this -- life should ALWAYS be given the benefit of the doubt among Christians. You don't bury someone unless you KNOW they're dead. It's bizarre to me to have to even type this here on an Evangelical site -- it's the very argument we've been giving the pro-abortion and pro-euthenasia people for decades.
We have no right to play God, which is precisely what we'd be doing by arbitrarily declaring when life begins based on speculative, extra-Scriptural reasoning and then giving the church's imprimatur to exterminating those who don't make the cut.
As an aside, most people are unaware that the Pill in many forumalations has an abortifacient back-up -- it prevents implantation of any "accidents" in much the same way the morning-after pill does. Christians should be aware of which type of "Pill" they're using, to be sure they aren't unqittingly complicit in abortion. . .
http://www.cin.org/life/pillabor.html
Discoshaman:
As a nit, why is "he" complete from conception, and not "she?"
But where I really take issue is here:
And the question becomes: which life? Two big problems I have with the "pro-Life" position: it tends to value embryonic life even more than it values current, adult life (hence the common refusal to acknowledge that there are indeed circumstances in which one life might need to be sacrificed to save the other, and that most people would choose the adult life over the embryonic life in that circumstance); and that it has little to no regard for quality of life -- just quantity.
That last point requires some justification. Suppose people who protested abortion spent just a fraction of that time, money and effort instead caring for poor, underprivileged children who are already here. Suppose further that they spent much of this time trying to prevent the unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
I know that to many, the idea of an "unwanted pregnancy" sounds absurd, but there are lots of them, every day.
And for people who say "you could always give the child up for adoption," they're generally thinking in a caucasian-centric world view. Sad though it may be, there just isn't a big market for the adoption of minority children.
I guess in summation, people who oppose EC, contraception, and ultimately abortion take an absolutist view of the issue: either you're destroying a life, or you're not, and if you are, it's wrong. I tend to look at things in more shades of gray -- if you're destroying a life that has never achieved consciousness, and if that life has a high probability of being unwanted, unloved, or living in destitution, then bumping off a three-day-old glop of cells seems to be, by far, the lesser evil to me.
I've been arguing a similar point for a while now, regarding the possibility of twinning--if the zygote can split into two, then has a soul (yes, I'm using the word "soul" here, "conciousness" or "individualness" works too) come into the body beforehand? If yes, then does the soul split, or does it stay in one half when the other half gets another soul? This seems overly complicated. Thus, I propose that the soul, or whatever it is that makes a clump of cells into a person, must come in once it is determined that the clump of cells will only make one person.
tgirsch-
Because I'm not a PC chucklehead, and have
other things to do than obsess over pronouns. Thanks for asking.
As for the question of "which life", I'm not going to turn this thread into a general purpose abortion debate. There are plenty of threads for that. This is an Evangelical site, and I come here to discuss nuances within that milieu, not rehash the same pro vs. con points I've been reading since I was 12. I don't mean this rudely, just a friendly, 'maybe next time.' This is a thread about the morning-after pill, not Roe vs. Wade.
My sister is Korean and I may have a Mexican little brother soon. :) As for the points about helping the needy, Evangelicals donate and volunteer all out of proportion to their population size.
Further, most pro-Life energy isn't devoted to protesting, but to helping unwed mothers. Before you point fingers, take a look at your own side. The "pro-choicers" are truly only pro-abortion. If a young girl chooses to have her child, she gets exactly zero support from the pro-aborts. However, practially any decent sized town in America has a Christian outreach to unwed moms.
It's all a matter of presuppositions. If I had different ones -- for example, atheism -- I would absolutely agree with you. I'm coming from a Christian viewpoint -- specifically that God is the giver of life, and that it's sacred. And it's primarily because we come from different presuppositions that it's pointless to debate it. Our foundational premises are too divergent for us to sway the other.
Discoshaman:
Our foundational premises are too divergent for us to sway the other.
Probably so, as your use of the term "PC Chucklehead" would seem to imply. When I was growing up, we used different terms for "political correctness": we called them "politeness" and "manners." But I digress.
As for your claim that pro-choice organizations offer "zero assistance" for women who choose to go ahead and have the baby, I'm highly skeptical of that claim. But it's irrelevant, really. The pro-choice mindset is actually a very conservative one: what you do is not the government's business, and if you are unable or unwilling to raise a child properly, don't. The pro-choice perspective simply enables women to take personal responsibility.
Discoshaman:
I would be remiss if I didn't applaud your parents for adopting minority children. That's admirable. My best friend's wife is an adopted Korean.
Also, if you have links to pro-life organizations that provide assistance with expenses and such post-partem, I'd like to have them on hand, in case anyone I know might need them.
tgirsch-
Unless you "grew-up" circa 1996, then the standard pronoun for someone of an unspecified gender was "he." It's only been since the mid-90's that PC-speak has devolved to such a ridiculous level that you would feel the need to nitpick me for using standard English instead of a clumsy and politicized he/she or s/he. If I don't fulfill such arbitrary standards of politeness, you can judge me as you will.
In nearly all normal cases, I refer to people by the designations they've chosen for themselves, be it African-American, Ms., Latino, etc. That is, indeed, politeness. But when you feel the need to speak up for the feminist rights of theoretical female zygotes, then it borders on the farcical and I'm not about to play along.
That said, I'm enjoying talking with you. Let's drop this fruitless sparring over pronouns and just talk, okay? Political or theological agreement is NEVER a prerequisite with me when it comes to friendship. Some of my best friends are Pagans, as the saying goes. ;)
Actually, that's a libertarian mindset. Further, even if libertarianism were part and parcel of modern conservatism, that wouldn't place homicide within the bounds of "freedom." The issue is whether it is or isn't the taking of a human life. If it is, then talk of "limited government" becomes academic. No humane law system in the world recognizes an individual's right to kill another arbitrarily.
Again, this is rather a pointless discussion, as the foundational disagreement is over what constitutes human life, and barring agreement on this, we can't reach any sort of agreement. This isn't an issue like marginal tax rates where one can split the difference. Abortion is either the victimless removal of a non-human creature, or the arbitrary killing of an unborn human being. And given that, there can be no middle ground on the issue itself.
My point with this was two-fold -- to point out the inaccuracy of those who say there's no "market" for minority children. Americans adopt huge numbers of foreign minority children every year. So there is a "market", though I hate that term. There are also a shortage of domestic children for adoption. My parents would happily have adopted domestically, but there was a minimum 5-year waiting list. Further, there were ridiculous laws and traditions in the legal system which said it was better for a minority child to remain in a group home than be raised by someone of another (white) race. Newborns put up for adoption don't normally spend their lives in homes. Most people are looking for exactly that age group to adopt -- newborns.
Happy to! There are between 3-4,000 such centers in the States these days. The two largest networks, Heartbeat Int'l and Carenet, maintain around 500 and 700 centers, respectively. Here's a short history of the movement. Also check out Options Magazine, which is published specifically for unwed moms. Here's a link to one of the ones in my home town, where I did some volunteer work. There were at least three in Sarasota, including a converted motel that was made into apartments for the moms. My wife spent an entire year volunteering at one in San Antonio before we were married. This is the side of the Pro-Life movement the media ignores, preferring the sensationalism of dead baby pictures.
Lastly, here's a link to Optionline.org, which maintains a nationwide directory of pregnancy centers. . .
Anyway, it's good talking with you. Take care.
Discoshaman:
In nearly all normal cases, I refer to people by the designations they've chosen for themselves, be it African-American, Ms., Latino, etc. That is, indeed, politeness.
Then I expect you'd know better than to fall into the trap applying of the overused "PC" label. Just to get the pronoun thing out of the way, I was taught (well before 1996) that in a generic case, since there is no gender-neutral singular pronoun, to instead use the plural pronoun, e.g. "Each according to their ability." But admittedly, there is debate over this, and many argue that "his" should be used in place of "their." Anyway, I was picking on you, and you took it way more seriously than I intended. I forgot to drop a smiley there. :)
That said, I'm enjoying talking with you. Let's drop this fruitless sparring over pronouns and just talk, okay?
Agreed.
Actually, that's a libertarian mindset.
True enough.
Again, this is rather a pointless discussion, as the foundational disagreement is over what constitutes human life, and barring agreement on this, we can't reach any sort of agreement.
Rather than making this discussion pointless, the foundational disagreement is central to the discussion. It's precisely the point of the discussion. If we (collectively, not just you and I) cannot agree on what exactly "life" is, and when precisely it begins, then we cannot define whether contraception (emergency or non) constitutes "killing" a human life. Minus such consensus, and minus definitive proof one way or the other, the obvious answer (to me) is to leave it up to the individual to make that judgment. However you want to label it, that's pro-choice.
Further, there were ridiculous laws and traditions in the legal system which said it was better for a minority child to remain in a group home than be raised by someone of another (white) race.
This is likely true. I expect the pro-life movement has it as a top priority to fix this problem.
Most people are looking for exactly that age group to adopt -- newborns.
That is indeed a larger problem. The older a child becomes, the more difficult it becomes (exponentially so) to find an adoptive family. But that brings me around to my decidedly un-Christian viewpoint that one easy solution to this problem is to prevent unwanted children from ever being born in the first place.
You may not like that term "unwanted," and I admit its unpleasant, but I believe that in many cases, the shoe fits. Does this mean that all "unintended" or "unplanned" children are "unwanted?" Of course not. It's just that many are.
TG - All you have to do is look in the Yellow Pages under Abortion Alternatives, where you will find a number of pro-life groups, including Catholic Charities, that provide more than just financial assistance. I'm surprised that someone who purports to characterize the adequacy of pro-life groups' care for others wouldn't know this.
intense:
I suppose I should clarify my allegation against pro-life groups, by clarifying my definition of "pro-life." To me, a "pro-life" person is not just someone who opposes abortion -- it's someone who thinks abortion should be illegal, i.e. that we should legislate against it.
By and large, the same people who support legislation banning abortion also oppose legislation that would provide funding to help raise these children (essentially welfare). They are also the same people who are most likely to oppose sex education (proven to reduce teenage pregnancy) and to vilify birth control (proven to dramatically reduce unintended pregnancy). That's the kind of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too attitude with which I take great exception.
And while I admire the efforts of pro-life groups to help those women who have unwanted children financially and otherwise, I question whether or not they'd be prepared (financially or otherwise) to help raise the 4,000 additional children that would be born every day in the US if abortion were not allowed.
I never said abortion was a pleasant thing; but it is, in my estimation, a lesser of evils in many cases.
Mike-
You said:
Bad example. The point be Meilander would only be analogous to software if you said that a program is a program whether it's version 0.0.1 or 10.0.
I thought about it and disagree. The point is that at either stage, blastocyst or full grown, we have the same amount of information in our genes. If I used the 0.0.1 - 10.0 comparison, I would be saying that as we grow, our amount of DNA information increases, becoming more complex. That is the theory of evolution. We don't evolve in the womb, we grow using the same information we started out with at conception.
Elle:
You're mischaracterizing what the theory of evolution is. Perhaps you should read this.
This isn't to say that Mike's analogy is entirely accurate, either. Frankly, I haven't given it much thought, to be honest, so I can't comment on that.
Discoshaman:
To your previous point suggesting that pro-choice groups offer "zero" assistance for women who choose to have their babies, I submit this. And this. And this.
What's interesting to me is, as I've said before, the people who want to legislate against abortion don't want to legislate for postnatal care (and vice versa).
But the position of NOW on this seems plenty consistent to me. They want to ensure that if you don't want to carry an unintended pregnancy to term, you don't have to. But at the same time, they want to ensure that if you do choose to carry it to term, the baby will be provided for, and you won't be forced to give up that baby to ensure such provision.
tgirsch-
"If we (collectively, not just you and I) cannot agree on what exactly "life" is, and when precisely it begins, then we cannot define whether contraception (emergency or non) constitutes "killing" a human life."
Certainly. I should have been more specific and said that I'm not interested in discussing it with you specifically. I was interested in engaging Joe on it because we have a common authority -- the Word of God. Again, I was interested in discussing the nuances of the Christian worldview on this, rather than having another abortion debate. I burned out on them a few years ago. :)
As for the pronoun thing, "their" is a plural, each is a singular. What we're being asked to do is mangle our grammar in order to satisfy someone's political agenda. "He" worked fine as a generic singular for centuries, and I see no reason to change it, and came to this position for both grammatical and curmudgeonly motives. *L*
"By and large, the same people who support legislation banning abortion also oppose legislation that would provide funding to help raise these children (essentially welfare)."
That's because they understand cause and effect in a way that liberals apparently don't. In 1968 we had 20% illegitimacy in the black community. After decades of social programs, that now stands at 67%. What you subsidize you get more of, that's a pretty basic law of economics. Children of single mothers are 6X more likely to live in poverty. Weirdly, after the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, illegitimacy rates dropped. It takes a childlike faith in coincidence not to see some sort of causality. . . I oppose welfare because it ravaged the inner city and created a permanent underclass, the least egalitarian thing imaginable, and something contrary to the very spirit of this country. Liberals are wonderfully compassionate in the short-term. I give them full marks for honestly caring. I do question their wisdom. The long-term devestation of these programs upon those they purport to help more than negates any short-term aid.
tgirsch-
I think the NOW articles you linked to are so illustrative of the two sides. On the pro-Life side, you have hundreds of thousands of workaday people devoting their time, money and lives to helping hurting individuals through networks of pregnancy centers.
On the other you have NOW, a powerful lobbying group, being compassionate through OTHER people's money. Specifically, by using the coercive power of the state to force them to fund NOW's agenda.
True compassion versus vicarious compassion. . .
That's an interesting approach. Again, goes back to worldview. If life is sacred, then I will certainly err on the side of preserving human life. Just like I wouldn't bury an adult if there was some doubt about his status, I support the same consideration for unborn humans. Even if I granted, just for the sake of argument, agnosticism about the time when a fetus becomes human, your moral calculus would be incomprehensible to me (along with all other forms of calculus and higher math, truth be told. . .) I could never imagine giving someone else the arbitrary power to execute someone who MIGHT be alive.
I'll have to question your claim here. People are rational beings, not animals, and make new decisions based on new situations. It's facile to point up the current (dropping) number of abortions, and then extrapolate from there. The data shows, if anything, that people DO change their personal and sexual choices in response to outside factors -- whether that be AIDS, new laws, abstinence programs, birth control programs, social programs, welfare reform, or what have you. As I pointed out, we see a direct drop post-1996 welfare reform. Why would you think unwanted pregnancy rates would somehow remain in stasis after a major change in abortion law?
One last thing for tonight, then I have to get offline. It's after 2 a.m. over here. :)
"Then I expect you'd know better than to fall into the trap applying of the overused "PC" label."
I'm aware of what PC means, after several years of campus activism. After you've been on the student senate of a Massachusetts college, you know from PC. And I stand by the use of the term. The verbicide that we're being forced into by well-meaning but parochial and self-righteous liberals is intensely annoying to me. The term doesn't just refer to th draconian speech codes on some campuses, but also has milder manifestations, such as the Pronoun Police. Thankfully, you were speaking tongue in cheek. A lot of them aren't. And they have way too much free time.
Discoshaman:
"He" worked fine as a generic singular for centuries, and I see no reason to change it, and came to this position for both grammatical and curmudgeonly motives.
My understanding is that "he" only became prevalent in the 19th century in this usage. I'll have to find the reference, however. The root problem, not easily solved, is that we don't have a gender-neutral possessive pronoun suitable for such contexts.
That's because they understand cause and effect in a way that liberals apparently don't. In 1968 we had 20% illegitimacy in the black community. After decades of social programs, that now stands at 67%.
I wonder: Why single out blacks? Has the number not also increased for whites and other non-blacks? Is the correllation truly to race, or is economic standing more important? And could it be that illegitimacy is more likely to be reported now than then? A good friend of mine (white, by the way) is big into genealogy, and he inadvertently dug up all kinds of skeletons in his proverbial family closet, relatives who were illegitimate but magically showed up as legitimate in the record books.
I call BS on that relatively meaningless statistic.
Children of single mothers are 6X more likely to live in poverty.
Wouldn't that be all the more reason to recommend abortion to pregnant unmarried women?
Weirdly, after the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill, illegitimacy rates dropped.
Which, if true, only means that more people were getting married. You have done nothing to show that these are in any way related, however, and haven't addressed whether or not the people in poverty who got married fared any better than the people in poverty who didn't (and whether they STAYED married). It's a very complicated system, which you're attempting to grossly oversimplify.
On the other you have NOW, a powerful lobbying group, being compassionate through OTHER people's money.
I'm sorry, I didn't realize that the people of NOW were suggesting that they themselves be exempted from whatever taxes support such services. So it seems they're plenty willing to put their own money (and, indeed, time) on the line. They merely expect others to do likewise. We already do this for education and innumerable other things. Why should health and well-being be any different?
If life is sacred, then I will certainly err on the side of preserving human life.
Which again, to my mind, values quantity over quality. Better to ruin two lives than to end one before it ever gets established, eh?
I could never imagine giving someone else the arbitrary power to execute someone who MIGHT be alive.
McVeigh was alive. >:) OK, OK, but he was guilty of a crime, and I know that's different. But such decisions get made every day. Innocent lives were taken in Iraq, for example, and this was somehow deemed "worth it" in the grand scheme of things.
It really comes down to the autonomy of the woman in question. Never mind what mistakes she may or may not have made to get to this point: she is now pregnant and emotionally, financially, personally unprepared to deal with this fact. My "moral calculus" tells me that it is her right to decide whether or not she wants to act as host for several months, and make the necessary lifestyle adjustments to accomodate this. It is her right to wash her hands of the whole thing, should she choose to do so.
The unrealistic alternative, as I've said many times over, is simply to never, ever, ever have sex, unless you're actively trying to have a child. Ultimately, when boiled down to its logical conclusion, this is the position the pro-life crowd is asking you to take; especially those who vilify contraception (remember that? That's how this whole thing started). You have sex and get pregnant (single, married, young, old, whatever), hey, you play, you pay, right?
It's facile to point up the current (dropping) number of abortions, and then extrapolate from there.
Guilty. But on the other hand, statistics prove that the legality abortion has no discernable effect on the incidence of abortion. In other words, banning abortion won't stop it, it will merely make it less safe. So no, there won't be 4,000 additional births every day. (And by the way, the 4,000 a day number was taken from a pro-life site). We'd just go from having 4,000 safe, legal abortions a day to roughly that many unsafe, illegal abortions every day.
And let's not forget the dumpster babies, which happen even now, with abortion safe and legal. Do you honestly believe that this wouldn't increase if abortion were made illegal? After all, as you say, people alter their behaviors based on external factors.
Back to the pronoun issue briefly, while I admit it's a bit extreme to get worked up over pronoun usage, it seems that your sole defense of the sexist usage of pronouns in the English language is that "we've always done it that way, why change now?" Forgive me if I find that less than compelling. And I will disclaim here that I generally use "his" in the same context as you did; it's just that I feel that it's less than ideal to do so, whereas you see no trouble with it.
Discoshaman:
As long as we're throwing out statistics, in Europe, policies are far more liberal than in the US, particularly with respect to things like sex education, England has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates on the continent... and it's less than half the US rate.
"It takes a childlike faith in coincidence not to see some sort of causality. . ."
tgirsch-
You said:
You're mischaracterizing what the theory of evolution is. Perhaps you should read this.
Included in the theory of evolution is the theory of descent, which requires an increase in DNA information. As far as I know, the only observed evolution (read change) consists of a loss or reshuffling of information that already exists in the genetic code. In the context of my statement, I think it works. If I were writing a doctoral thesis on why evolution is fundamentally impossible, it would serve my interest to be more specific.
To your previous point suggesting that pro-choice groups offer "zero" assistance for women who choose to have their babies, I submit this. And this. And this.
Oh, come on. You must have made a mistake as you typed those URLs.
One is for a pamphlet put out by Planned Parenthood. Ya know, you'd be surprised how little a flimsy piece of paper does to help a mother through pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, child-rearing. . .
Another is a two-year-old article opposing welfare reform legislation. I think you've missed the point. Most pro-life activists are helping real-life women, real-life children, in their own communities. Giving of themselves, their time, and their money--not legislating for the government to help these women so they don't have to get personally involved.
And the other link is an article about a feminist protest that happened 7 years ago! Again--while pro-lifers are politically active, they are also personally active with women, children, and families in need.
These don't seem like the best representatives of "pro-choicers care about born children" that are out there. Couldn't you find anything better? Or were these are sentimentally significant to you? You wrote the pamphlet or were at the protest, maybe?
Planned Parenthood offers limited pre-natal care--very limited--to show, "see, we don't care just about selling birth control and abortion." And I know feminists who are involved on a personal level with charities.
But you don't see among pro-choicers the same mass commitment that you do among pro-lifers to put their money and time where their mouth is.
T-
"The unrealistic alternative, as I've said many times over, is simply to never, ever, ever have sex, unless you're actively trying to have a child."
Not quite. But it is not unreasonable to say that if you are sexually active you should be prepared to deal with the possible outcomes, both positive and negative. This includes pregnancy, as it is a logical, natural result of sexual intercourse. No birth control is 100% effective. Indeed, abortions sometimes "fail" as well - I once knew a girl whose abortion didn't "work" and she didn't realize it for months - and wound up giving birth to the baby.
Sex isn't bad, far from it, sex was invented by God, one of his cooler ideas, I think :). But it's part of a system designed to further the human race, and while you can use it for recreational purposes, don't be surprised if it winds up producing exactly the result it was intended to.
As far as the "Every Child A Wanted Child" thinking, child neglect/abuse is more closely correlated with drug use and the victimizer having been victimized him/herself as a child than with the intention of origin of the current child. Having some experience with the foster care system, most of the kids I've served as a foster group home parent and seen served in my friend's home (she is a foster parent) were not accidents, unwanted, etc. The abusers abused for the reasons cited above and below. Some were whacked out on drugs and thought it was cool to light their kid on fire to see what would happen, or men in the family thought females of any age were "up for grabs" (literally), or mother decided to get a new boyfriend who didn't like her kids (who she had liked well enough before)so she decided to let him whomp on them, etc. And in the course of my life, the people I've known with surprise pregnancies have all risen to the challenge.
Disco-
Don't be too harsh with those Christians who consider thoughtfully a new perspective on the question of when life begins. It's a question of supreme importance if you value life, which I know you do. It's important to truly *know* what we believe and I think that almost requires us to listen to others' perspectives and think on them for a bit to decide, "Does this idea have merit?" "Is it in accordance with Scripture?" "Is it scientifically accurate?" etc. If you can't question, then your positions aren't really legitimate, they are rote learning, and rigid opinions, which really turn people off. I think that I would be more likely to be persuaded by someone who shows that he has thought an issue through, investigated all options and scenarios, because then I can trust that his conculsion has been reached after considering, and finding cause to reject, all other positions. I'd feel more confident in such a man's (or woman's) judgements.
AutMom:
But it is not unreasonable to say that if you are sexually active you should be prepared to deal with the possible outcomes, both positive and negative.
We don't disagree on that statement, at least not on its face. I merely suggest that abortion ought to be one of the available options for "dealing with the possible outcomes." If it's not, then you can't have sex unless you're willing to have children. Period.
And by the way, that point is completely independent of any religious belief. Even if your qualms about abortion are not religiously based, if you're not willing to have children, and you're not willing to have an abortion, then you shouldn't have sex.
Oh, and I should point out that I don't think abortion eliminates the unwanted child problem, which you seem to think I think. I just think that the more tools we have (abortion included) to improve the lives of the people who are already here, and of the wanted children, the better.
TG - I suspected that your inquiry regarding pro-life groups' efforts to assist those facing unwanted pregnancies was a cheap rhetorical trick. It is a waste of time reading and responding to your posts.
intense:
I suspected that your inquiry regarding pro-life groups' efforts to assist those facing unwanted pregnancies was a cheap rhetorical trick.
No, not really. Pro life groups want to legislate that (some) embryos have a fundamental right to life. They do not want to legislate, however, that they have a fundamental right to health and well-being. The primary concern is that they are born. Once they go from being babies to being children, hey, it's not my problem that some irresponsible single mother isn't taking proper care of her kids. Don't tell me how to spend my money to solve this problem. Sure, I mandated that you have the child in the first place, but that doesn't in any way make me responsible for what happens to the child once it's born.
That is the sort of hypocrisy I was calling out when I said that pro-life groups "don't seem to care" what happens after birth. If life is so sacred that we should be legislating that all pregnancies must be carried to term (even if the prenatal care must be done at government expense), why is it not also so sacred that we should legislate proper care (even if that means at government expense).
Ack! That last post was me. I forgot to clear my wife's data from the box. . .
Anyway, take care!
Much grace,
John
tgirsch-
I don't even believe it. I'd written a long post, and cleared it before it posted. What a chucklehead. . .
Anyway. I'll rewrite an abbreviated version.
tgirsch-
I can see this discussion ranging farther afield, and the time I'll need to devote to it is correspondingly growing. And, just as I'd suspected, you're serving up the same arguments I've been hearing from pro-aborts for 15 years. I don't mean it in a snotty way, it's just the case. Which is why I wasn't enthused about getting into things to begin with. I'm going to cut to the chase, and we can start bringing our convo to a close.
You said at the outset that you understood that we have radically different presupps, but your arguments since belie this. If you did, then you wouldn't be raising most of the points that you are. I'll explain.
I would quote the Bible, when talking with an atheist about an ethical issue, in order to explain my position. But I would never quote it to try to CONVINCE him of my position. Why? Because it isn't a relevant source of truth or authority to the mind of this atheist. It would be an irrational and pointless line of argument. This is essentially what you've been doing for most of our discussion. Ultimately, pro-aborts don't REALLY understand pro-life people.
When we compare Roe v. Wade to Dred Scot or the Holocaust, you hear it as an attempt to score rhetorical points or as emotional hyperbole. It's not. We honestly and truly believe that all three situations involve a government declaring a class of human beings to be non-persons, and therefore able to be killed arbitrarily.
Is there any amount of anecdotal evidence, "logical" points, abstract "autonomy" and "privacy" arguments, or debatable statistics that would convince you of the justice or morality of slavery or the Holocaust?
If not, then why are you employing these to get us to "see the light" about your position? If someone truly believes that abortion is the killing of a human being, how monstrous would they have to be to find your arguments compelling?
Abortion kills children and victimizes the desperate women it purports to help. My wife and I will continue to fights against this evil, while at the same time working to make it irrelevant by helping to provide alternatives for these women. Our dream isn't merely a world where abortion is illegal, but a world where it's unneeded and unthinkable.
Discoshaman:
And, just as I'd suspected, you're serving up the same arguments I've been hearing from pro-aborts for 15 years.
If it makes you feel any better, you're serving up the same arguments I've been hearing from the anti-reproductive-rights folks for at least that long. :)
If someone truly believes that abortion is the killing of a human being, how monstrous would they have to be to find your arguments compelling?
I guess I can see that point of view. My big problem is that the wants, needs, and dreams of the person responsible for carrying that "human being" for the next nine months are at best a secondary concern. You got yourself pregnant (even if you "got yourself" raped), and now you're compelled to carry it out. You may not see it this way, but to me it reduces women to mere vehicle status.
It's clear that we will never see eye to eye on this. However I will say that the difference between the holocaust and abortion is that it didn't impose on anyone to leave the Jews alone.
In a perfect world, abortion would be unnecessary, because there would be no rape, no incest, and no unintended pregnancy. Birth control would be foolproof, and the only women who ever got pregnant would be the ones who truly wanted to and were capable of properly raising children.
But we don't live in a perfect world. This requires that we make some compromises, and abortion is unfortunately one of them.
Abortion kills children and victimizes the desperate women it purports to help.
Now you're just parrotting rhetoric. I know several women who have had abortions, and I can honestly say that not one of them views themselves as a "victim" because of it. If anything, a couple of them viewed themselves as victims of the unwanted pregancy.
Our dream isn't merely a world where abortion is illegal, but a world where it's unneeded and unthinkable.
On that last, at least, we can agree.
As an aside, I still wonder why you argue that embryos have a fundamental right to life, so much so that we should legislate this, but simultaneously argue that they don't have a fundamental right to health and well-being, such that we should avoid legislating to provide this.
Irresponsible mom? Not my problem, just so long as the baby gets born. I know that's not really how you feel about it, but that's how it comes across sometimes.
tgirsch-
I'll have to beg off for tonight. Like I said, this is the mad part of my week. Tonight I should be able to write up a closing post. Til then, take care. :-)
tgirsch -
Let me (a pro-choicer) try to provide an analogy to Discoshaman's position. If you were introduced to a society that allowed the execution of paraplegics, you would no doubt be appalled. Would you be considered hypocritical if you weren't willing to pay for all the needs of a paraplegic? No, the right to life is not dependent on your willingness to support them.
What you are probably having a tough time accepting is that there is a whole class of people who *genuinely believe* that the life of the unborn from conception is actually as valuable as yours and mine and thus abortion is literally murder.
Of course, I've met one or two who told me that children are God's punishment for promiscuity, but as I've gotten older, I've learned to realize that most anti-abortion folk really do believe that the definition of human (and thus worthy of protection) is not dependent on cognition or shape.