I don't think that this is an obviously crazy belief--I can see the argument for life beginning at conception. But ultimately I don't think it works, even for most people who profess it.
So. Now I can move onto the observation that if you actually think late-term abortion is murder, then the murder of Dr. Tiller makes total sense. Putting up touching anecdotes about people he's helped find adoptions, etc, doesn't change the fact that if you think late-term abortions are murder, the man was systematically butchering hundreds of human beings a year--indeed, not merely butchering them, but vivisecting them without anaesthetic. I'm sure many mass murderers have done any number of kind things over the course of their lives, to which the correct response, if you're trying to stop the murders, is "so?"
Imagine a future in which the moral consensus has changed, and our grandchildren regard abortion the way we regard slavery. Who will the hero of history be: Tiller, or his murderer? At the very least, they'll be conflicted, the way we are about John Brown.
I do not say such an outcome is particularly likely, although the more we know about fetal development, the more support for abortion seems to drop. But I don't think that it's particularly novel to note that our "instinctive" reaction to these things is partly, even largely, socially conditioned, not the product of deep rational thought.
We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders--had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer's actions. In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions. Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court. If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action? To shrug? Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes? Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn't seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right? We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it.
As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect. The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one. Tiller's killer is a murderer, and whether or not he deserves the lengthy jail sentence he will get, society needs him in jail for its own protection.
Still, I am shocked to see so many liberals today saying that the correct response is, essentially, doubling down. Make the law more friendly to abortion! Show the fundies who's boss! You know what fixes terrorism? Bitch slap those bastards until they understand that we'll never compromise!
Well, it sure worked in Iraq. I think Afghanistan's going pretty well, too, right?
Using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes does not seem to be very effective in getting them to eschew violence. In fact, it seems to be a very good way of getting more violence. Possibly because those fringes have often turned to violence precisely because they feel that the political process has been closed off to them.
We do not punish murderers by changing large sections of American law. We certainly don't punish them by, in essence, shouting "nya, nya, nya, we're killing more babies!!!!"* We punish murderers by sending them to jail, where they belong. If any of these changes to current law are justified, they're justified on their own merits, not because they'll piss off Tiller's nemesis.
* I understand that those advocating such changes do not perceive themselves to be saying this. But if you're trying to punish the gunman, and deter others, it's their perception that matters. And what bothers them is that they think you're killing more babies.
As the possibility of changing the law recedes away from them, the fanatics will turn increasingly to violent means to suppress the acts of abortion. And lets be honest- the threat of violence already deters to proferring of abortion services, and the increasing killing of providers will only restrict them further.
How accurate is the first clause of your first sentence with respect to late-term abortions? The legislation limiting partial birth abortions, which was passed by, if memory serves, a two-thirds majority in Congress before being signed into law by President Bush, was the most significant limitation on abortion passed since Roe v. Wade, wasn't it? Wouldn't that be an encouraging precedent for opponents of late-term abortions?
Megan's argument is rather illogical. Let's for a second assume that late term abortion is murder, so where does that put the mother? Why is the mother not a murderer same as the doctor? In any conceivable criminal murder trial the two would be in the same legal position. Therefore if it is justified to shoot the doctor to prevent murder why isn't it justified to shoot the pregnant woman to prevent an abortion? Except where would that leave the fetus?
This is by far the most remarkably even-handed and rational essay on the subject I've seen yet. Well done.
FWIW, I am one of those people who view abortion as murder. I oppose the killing of abortion providers only as bad tactics. As for Tiller, he killed people for a living, somebody killed him. I will lose no sleep over his death.
nor will anyone over yours
From reading these comments, it is obvious that the US equivalent of the Religious Taliban is in full swing. There is nothing Christian about this murder and it is wholey evil. Some of the comments appear to support this act of violence. There is nothing about this that is justifiable by any religion or set of civil laws.
This murderer should be sent Gitmo with the rest of the religious terrorists. Better yet, put him in the general population of one of our maximum security prisons and let the Neo-Nazis send him to his just reward. I sincerely hope that justice is quick and that this religious terrorist is quickly executed since he obviously has a very distorted view of the value of life.
Which comments are you talking about exactly? There are only 3 comments preceding yours, and only one of them can be regarded as supportive of a murder. I wouldn't call is supportive, but I can see the argument being made. Still, its a bit short of a full on march of lunatics, don't you think?
Also, we don't send murderers to gitmo because of their intentions, i thought. Rather, we send those that are captured on foreign battlefields.
Finally, don't you feel that it hurts your cause when you ask the neonazi's for help?
Hey Redrock -
Just curious: If you meet someone who has mass-murdered and professed an intention to continue doing so, and you have no legal recourse against that person, what exactly is your reaction?
I think that's one point Megan raised. When you achieve that mindset, then you either shrug and go the other way (Nazi Germany?), continue protesting the mass-murder as people have done for years, or act as a vigilante.
You are questioning his viewpoints, fine, but if you accept that he held those viewpoints then what exactly would you have done differently in his place?
re: redrockraven ... "From reading these comments...Religious Tablian..."
THE ABOVE COMMENT BY REDROCKRAVEN IS *SPAM*.
The reason it doesn't make sense (referring to non-existent comments) is because redrockraven is trolling google news, reading every story, and pasting in the same text.
I know this because yesterday, I read many articles on this topic, and all their comments, and recognize the uneducated drivel.
But for all my reading, Megan's article is one of the most well-reasoned ones out there, especially for abortion supporters, devoid of truth-clouding emotions. For a correction of its few shortcomings, see TreeJoe's comment, below; and no, abortion isn't equivelent to slavery, it's far worse.
redrockraven,
Your post is so full of irony one almost suspects you are intentionally trying to spur backlash away from the abortionist in favor of the killer.
And how, Allen, is your cavalier opinion of tim maguire's existence any different than his opinion of Tiller's?
Great post. I'm pro-choice, but I don't see how you can say that whether or not abortions before 8 mos are "even arguably murder." I definitely don't think they are murder, but I have a really hard time with people who don't even think it's an arguable point. Didn't you say yourself that you're just picking one bright line of two likely (though not necessarily probably right) candidates?
What's your ringer premise that the rest of us have yet to be bowled over by? Please do share, and end the argument once and for all.
And way to be a grown up, Allen.
eight months??? Srsly??? The fetus is 8 inches at that stage. I realize that the abortion debate comes down to a line-drawing exercise, but calling it "murder" at that stage certainly is arguable, and I think the majority of people would disagree with you.
So we can abort Megan's Mini Cooper, but Suburbans and Expeditions are allowed to live. Gotcha.
Like I said, it's a line drawing exercise unless you want to take an extreme position (e.g. morning after pill is murder, allow abortions up until the moment of conception, etc).
Do you disagree with the idea that the fetus becomes more "human" the longer it gestates (and concomitantly grows)?
In fact I find the notion of the fetus "becom[ing] more 'human'" to be completely ridiculous, especially when the sole basis of the argument is a scientifically definable characteristic like body length, for the same reason that the hands you had when you were born didn't become "more human" when you grew to adulthood. They grew larger and even changed major composition ratios (e.g. converted cartilage to bone mass), but it didn't change what they biologically were: human hands composed of human tissues correllating to a particular stage of human development.
From conception forward, the single cell to the zygote to the fetus has a unique set of human DNA and directs its own growth. That's all the scientific evidence anyone needs to discover a distinct human life, and the subsequent argument is when and how that discrete entity acquires rights, and how many at a time, not whether it is human. (Unless you're Scully.) If you want to argue about being or becoming "more human", then you need to confine your argument to philosophy, and prepare yourself for the possibility that all available religions in the room will rightfully demand a seat at the table.
Yes, "more human" was probably a bad choice of words on my part. I just have a hard time thinking of a zygote as a "person" whereas I have progressively less trouble as the fetus begins to look more like an infant. This is relevant because I have more sympathy for a "person" than a couple of cells with the potential to develop into a "person", and I'm fairly confident that I'm not the only who feels that way.
Perhaps neurological activity would be a better metric than size or term, but then we get into really hairy areas: if it's a crime to abort a fetus with a certain level of neurological activity, then should it also be a crime to kill an animal with the same level?
Uh, Godwin's Law?
Megan,
Really well written and carefully constructed. Thanks.
When I was in college, I cavalierly made the statement, "I'm ok with abortion, except late term".
Someone finally challenged me on this and asked me when I believed life began. It took me months, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that I couldn't define life as a specific week during pregnancy.
As science has progressed, we are able to rescue more and more pre-term infants and help them grow into healthier and healthier adults. It used to be 8 weeks early was VERY early. Now it's almost un-remarked when a 32-week baby is delivered, cared for, and turns out fine.
Eventually, the science will be there to allow any stage pregnancy to be removed from the woman's body and grown into a healthy adult (the science exists now, but it's not widely available).
When I thought about this, i realized that there was no time during pregnancy in which I could say "That's not a life."
For me, Dr. Tiller was someone who either hadn't thought through the subject like I had (unlikely) or hadn't reached the same conclusions. Throughout history, many upstanding people have committed atrocities without realizing the horror of their actions (the Bible is full of such fine folk).
To me, he murdered human life. He may have been a wonderful man, but his choices within his profession were terrible to say the least.
I understand alot of people don't feel that way. I've been down that road. But whenever I go back and re-analyze why i thought abortion was ok, it always came down to convenience....avoiding something difficult....and not to saying "Abortion is morally right."
If it's not morally right, then I don't see how it can be defended. I've alienated a family member (and his wife) who told me that a fetus is a parasite sucking off the mother and that there's nothing wrong with killing the parasite....provided it's still attached. I've felt the cold arguments.
In this and so many other things throughout history, it took a group of people and a charismatic (or well written) leader to take a stance and convince the other side.
Slavery was an issue that split the U.S. about as equally as Abortion has. I wonder when the day will come when 99% of the US believes about Abortion as they do now about Slavery; and I wonder what side they'll believe.
Joe
How about if life "begins" when the baby has a developed central nervous system and can feel the pain of being murdered. Would that be an effective compromise? There have been babies born at 6 months that came out breathing, crying, and survived.
Not to me honestly, and that's my point. Since you can't put a firm time on when that life begins (as you point out, 24 weeks into the pregnancy babies have lived....and it's possible to thrive even far earlier).
For me, and this is just my definition and subject to change, life begins when a baby will be born if no outside action to halt it's life is taken.
This, to me, represents a fertilized egg within the mother's womb....a fertilized egg in a freezer isn't going to be born unless outside action to begin it's life is taken.
FYI, a fertilized egg in a mother's womb is setup in such a way that as long as the mother continues living, the egg will grow and thrive....even at the expense of the mother sometimes. So it's fairly hard to abort the baby outside of a deliberate external action. Not impossible though.
Just my .02, and, again, subject to change in the years to come.
Would it change your opinion to learn that over a third of fertilized eggs die, one way or another, before birth? A quarter miscarry in very early pregnancy, another 8% in the first part of the pregnancy, and more die due to accident or genetic disaster before birth.
WOW! The philosophical conversation!! Nice....
Can science identify when an individual life begins?
Hmmm. First we must define what "alive" is and how much it means to be alive.
We are creatures of our senses. If we have no senses to perceive the world, are we alive? If we have never perceived a word with our ears, eyes or fingers, what language do we think in?
The questions can go on forever.........The philosophical conversation is not for the lazy or ideological.
Science can create, destroy, and differentiate. But ethics are not from science.
At times when science fails us, shouldn't we go with common sense? At one point people who had sicknesses were accused of being "cursed by God" and what have you, an aneurysm of common sense, if you will. Science hadn't yet proven that illnesses were caused by microscopic living organisms and various genetic deficiencies.
Science hasn't yet uncovered all the mysteries of the universe, but common sense tells me vacuuming a living child from a mother's womb is, if I may use an unpopular Bush era term, "evil."
ethics
Exactly. A conversation about what is or is not ethical, is a philosophical conversation.
"shouldn't we go with common sense?"
Yes, but because one might make sense of something does not mean it makes sense to another.
The laws of our nation decide what rights should be common.
In the case of abortion, it was determined that "common sense" in this touchy and controversial subject should be "mind your own business".
If that is what was determined, than maybe we should change it.
Change it?
Right! Through the power of your votes.
....I do wonder if the political exploitation of this subject is is falsely inflating its political value.
I don't see Roe v Wade going anywhere and I would also be fearful of a Supreme Court that was so ideological as to overturn the ruling.
The majority of people in America are pro life.
I would love to see a Supreme Court with enough common sense to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Although I believe a Constitutional Convention may be in order.
Abortion is not equal to slavery, and wishing will not make it so. People who oppose abortion on religious grounds, or any other, are entitled to their beliefs, and entitled to act on those beliefs -- for themselves and for no one else.
Abortion is a medical decision between a woman and her doctor -- period. It's no one else's business, nor is it the government's. We will not allow it to be criminalized.
We will prevail, make no mistake. And here's the deal for you, Joe. You can persuade any woman you want to not to have an abortion, but the moment you coerce her, we will put you behind bars.
It might come sooner, it might come later. But one day women will be free of you lot, and the United States will be a better place for it.
"Wishing will not make it so"
Slavery was a normal part of human life for ~4000 years. Accepted, even with guidelines put forth onto how to handle slaves appropriately.
Even when some people felt it was wrong, it took a long time and alot of bloodshed to end the practice in most places.
I guess I see a certain paralellism in that (and i'm not referring to the murder of abortion-practicing doctors).
As for not allowing it to be criminalized. Fine. Allow the guidelines that demand a woman wait 72 hours between setting up and appointment and receiving the procedure. Ask women to watch videos about the procedure beforehand (this is common in many areas of life before someone commits to a health decision).
Notice how far the rates of abortion drop? That's because people ponder their decision and realize some of the implications.
It's not criminalized, and yet a certain degree of innate morality is expressed. CS Lewis does a fantastic job expressing innate morality (sans divinity) in one of his books. I suggest thinking about why this feeling rears its ugly head for those individuals, and asking yourself why did they start feeling it when delayed?
Regarding your final statements: "Abortion is a medical decision between a woman and her doctor -- period. It's no one else's business, nor is it the government's. We will not allow it to be criminalized.
We will prevail, make no mistake. And here's the deal for you, Joe. You can persuade any woman you want to not to have an abortion, but the moment you coerce her, we will put you behind bars.
It might come sooner, it might come later. But one day women will be free of you lot, and the United States will be a better place for it."
Women will be free of "us lot" when, I guess, they can reproduce asexually.
As much as I appreciate your abrogation of men from the equation, the production of new human life requires two people of opposite sex to accomplish.
I don't really know why it's a common belief that once the sperm has fertilized the egg, the man no longer has a role. That belief only works during pregnancy apparently, because once the child is born the man surely takes on the role once more. Legally I mean.
Your statements seem very under-analyzed. Perhaps some introspection?
Joe
No, Joe. You don't get to interfere in a woman's medical decision without her consent. Galls you, doesn't it?
But forcing women to watch videos just means that the more sensitive of us will change their minds, and those of us who've delivered kittens and puppies will go on with our original plans. Or maybe those women who didn't mind the fetal pig dissection in high school biology class.
No one makes anyone watch a video before a gall bladder operation or hernia repair.
Private - No, but what does gall me is that the law (besides morality) is unbalanced in this area. A woman can choose to have or not have an abortion, and the man has no part. But the repercussions of having a baby do impact the father for, at the least, 18 years post birth.
Does that not gall you?
But I guess you prefer trying to bait people rather than engage in the actual discussion.
BennieJetz - Actually, as someone who has, at various points in the last 5 years, been involved in the creation of medical videos prior to a subject consenting to something.....yes, plenty of patients are required by the doctor's office to watch a video prior to going through with an elective.
Joe says:
"But the repercussions of having a baby do impact the father for, at the least, 18 years post birth.
Does that not gall you?"
--
No.
Private -
Ahhh, so based upon your response I'm guessing you follow a "I'm more equal than thou" philosophy?
"My rights are more important than yours"? "I come first"?
I could go on, but I apparently hit the nail on the head already: Your comments are focused on baiting, and not debating.
Your selfishness does not even help yourself, as your words don't help spread your beliefs....beliefs which need to be spread to be maintained, as you wish.
@Joe
"Slavery was a normal part of human life ..."
What do you mean when you say "was." Slavery is STILL a normal part of human life. Just not in America.
There are many places where slavery still exists, primarily in Africa, but also in India.
Slavery has been, for millennia, a normal part of the human condition, and remains so today.
Agreed, it's not slavery. NOT allowing abortion is slavery, because it forces women to bear children regardless of circumstances and the ability to handle it.
No, that's called not allowing adoption. Women have many ways of not bearing children due to circumstance or the inability to handle it (though that is far more of an emotional test, rather than a means test, as our social nets easily allow the means).
Slavery is the forcible control of another against their will. A lack of abortion as an option does not meet that test.
So can I kill my husband because it's really, really inconvenient? These arguments are specious. If you take seriously the claim that a fetus is a human person, than the right to make a decision about that life is no more interesting than the right to make decisions about my property, if that property is a slave.
When the hell were you put in charge of defining in absolute terms the limits of this debate & by whom?
If abortion is nothing more than a simple medical decision why must we only refer to it in euphanisms? [Right to choose, reproductive healthcare, etc] Why can't we just honestly refer to it as "A woman's right to kill her children if she finds them inconvenient at the time? That is kind of an awkward phrase isn't it?
Why does the child's father have no rights in this decision? If he doesn't want a child & the woman does he'll certainly have the right to pay support for up to the next 23 years.
BTW, you're not really "prevailing". The majority of Americans now consider themselves Pro Life. In large part that is probably because of increased knowledge about fetal development. Then again it may only be because people like you are so unpleasant.
I don't give a rip if you find me unpleasant. We're talking about what should be public policy here. Evidently you think it's just fine to outlaw a common medical procedure, and to put the full enforcement power of the state behind that, based on your religious belief that any fertilized egg has full human rights from the moment of fertilization.
Many people don't share your religious belief, and some cable TV poll that uses a meaningless term like "pro-life" can hardly be said to inform public policy. You're trying to force a religious belief on people who don't share it.
Don't even dream that you will prevail, or that any such law could ever be enforceable. We're going to mop the floor with you fetus fascists, and we are every bit as determined as you are. What you and your women do with your own medical decisions is your business entirely, and you can jolly well stay out of ours.
"Abortion is not equal to slavery..."
Of course not. Nor is abortion equal to Nazi-ism. No two things are equal, otherwise they are the same thing.
They do however have something significant in common: they can all be rationalized medically, politically, economically if one but except (or embrace) the premise that all people are NOT equal and their right to live or be free is contingent on their status (racial or other).
Take the time to read up on Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. You may discover that Nazis, slavery and abortion have more in common than YOU might wish.
(the science exists now, but it's not widely available).
Uh, the science doesn't exist now - you're essentially describing growing people in vats. We can't do that - we can't even do that for mice. If we could, no researcher would be worrying about breeding their mice, they'd just isolate sperm and egg and start from fertilization.
Saurabh - The science exists to grow someone in a vat. You don't need to grow them that long actually. And when I said it's not widely available, I mean because it's not widely available. It's extremely limited, because there has been almost no application for that type of technology. In other words, I'm not saying that there is a machine you can drop a fertilized embryo into and pop out a human...I'm saying the technology exists, but hasn't been applied.
And researchers breed mice because it's vastly easier and less expensive than trying to grow them at this time.
If, one day, it becomes far easier and less expensive to grow your own mice rather than breed them....well, then the technology will spread :)
No, it really doesn't, because there is too much we don't understand about the process of conception and fetal development. The building blocks of the necessary technology probably exist, but we're not even close to knowing how to apply them.
Case in point: IVF, which has at best about a 40% success rate. Any reproductive endocrinologist will tell you that we have no idea why some embryos implant and develop, and why some don't. Embryo quality is a factor, but not the only one -- some poor-quality embryos implant, many excellent ones don't.
There is a tremendously lucrative and immediate application for guaranteed embryo implantation (in fact, 100% IVF implantation rates would really change the ethical picture there). If we knew how to do it, or even had a vague idea how to help the implantation process along, every infertility clinic in the world would be offering it tomorrow. It would be revolutionary, and there would almost certainly be a Nobel Prize for it.
If you can't do implantation, you can't do any of the rest of the vat-growing process. It's the easiest step of the whole process, and yet we're such a long way away. The knowledge really isn't there at all, and won't be for decades.
Imagine a future in which the moral consensus has changed, and our grandchildren regard abortion the way we regard slavery. Who will the hero of history be: Tiller, or his murderer? At the very least, they'll be conflicted, the way we are about John Brown.
There certainly was a time in the past in many societies when infanticide was routine and, presumably, the moral consensus was that this was no worse than abortion is now. But now if we knew there was a kindly old doctor who was helping young mothers in trouble by performing infanticide, what would the moral response be?
And why is there a bright line that makes killing a late term fetus before birth legal but killing the same infant just a few weeks later after birth first degree murder punishable by death or life in prison? Sure, there may be practical legal reasons for making this distinction -- but moral ones?
Not to change the subject, but even today there are some philosophers (e.g. Peter Singer) who would argue that infanticide is no different than a late-term abortion, that neither is "[ever] equivalent to killing a person" because an infant is not "a being who wants to go on living." I'm with him before the comma.
I really think that in 50 or 100 years, when any fetus is viable outside the womb, support for the right to an abortion will be no more than half of what it is today. And I don't think that's just the pro-life optimist in me -- there's plenty of issues where I think my viewpoint will lose popularity over the next decades.
But now if we knew there was a kindly old doctor who was helping young mothers in trouble by performing infanticide, what would the moral response be?
It would go something like this:
Infanticide is a medical decision between a woman and her doctor -- period. It's no one else's business, nor is it the government's. We will not allow it to be criminalized.
We will prevail, make no mistake. And here's the deal for you, Joe. You can persuade any woman you want to not to participate in infanticide, but the moment you coerce her, we will put you behind bars.
It might come sooner, it might come later. But one day women will be free of you lot, and the United States will be a better place for it.
I think it is a crime that the murdering of unborn babies is legal in our country, and most of the civilized world. Late term abortions go beyond a crime to an atrocity.
However, murdering those who, unfortunately, support the vile practice is not only just as much of a crime, it is dangerous.
I truly hope, as someone already alluded to, that we don't turn into the middle east, with suicide bombers blowing up abortion clinics and ACLU branches. Peace, hope, and prosperity are three elements to American life I don't want to lose.
Great post.
I'm pro-life from conception, but consider any abortion after viability - about 5 months, these days, to be a crime against humanity. Moreover, I view people who are "OK with it" to be akin to those people who have witnessed genocide but have claimed "I didn't know THAT was going on."
Do I think it's an arguable point? Yes, in the same way that slavery is. If you concede that black people are so inferior to white people that they can't even be classified as people, then it's arguable. In the same vein: if you don't view a full-term but unborn human being as a human being, it's arguable.
But the streets are filled with what were once "premies," who are now very much alive - and most of them didn't require much in the way of "extraordinary care." Certainly not as much as most serious burn victims, for example - and nobody is saying that they should be left to die.
Since Obama is one of the few people to ever vote to allow an actually born baby to die, "ex utero," I view him as particularly heinous. Sort of the Mengele of the left, if you will.
With that said: since the vast majority of abortions are conducted BY liberals ON other liberals I can sleep at night. I realize that what they doing is horrific, but I can no more stop liberals from vivisecting their own babies than I can stop guppies from eating their fry.
What's this about Obama?
Rob is kindly repeating one of Hannity's favorite distortions, that by voting against a bill containing an amendment banning a partial-birth abortion procedure in the Illinois legislature that then State Sen. Obama voted to allow babies to be killed.
...
I start to see why Hannity gets so much hate.
Nah, he's talking about the bill in the Illinois legislature that Obama voted against that would have required hospitals to treat any fetus that survived an abortion attempt (ie, was born during the procedure) to be kept alive as any other baby would be. It was based on a case where such a birth was alleged to have been discarded and left to die.
Life does begin at conception (if it weren't alive, you wouldn't have to chop it up into little bits to keep it from growing and we wouldn't be having this debate). Whether or not the life is worth anything you can debate.
Good point. A pig's life begins at conception too, but we kill them well after birth, as the ham cooking in my oven right now will attest. It's whether that living creature has the right to life that is the issue. Is a fetus on the moral level of a plant(do whatever, nobody cares), a pig(do whatever, but don't be too cruel), or a person(actual rights)? I'd say a newly-conceived embryo is in the first category and a soon-to-be-born fetus is in the third, but the middle is all fuzzy. This is where the debate truly lies.
"A pig's life begins at conception too, but we kill them well after birth, as the ham cooking in my oven right now will attest."
Ah! Well then, to turn Megan's rationale around, since we don't believe a fetus is a person, what's to keep us from selling them in butcher shops? Why is a soon-to-be born fetus outside of the third category by a just born infant is not?
Assuming that there's no explicit law against cannibalism, what keeps aborted fetuses out of butcher shops is cultural norms. Same reason you don't find dog or monkey at your local butcher shop, just a more widely held version of it. There's nothing morally wrong about eating human flesh, just massively disgusting.
And you might have misread me - I said that a soon-to-be-born fetus is in the third category, i.e., has rights. Whether you're in a womb or a crib makes no difference, which is why I think birth as the dividing line is absurd.
It's good to see a self-conflicted argument about abortion. So well done. Though I'd consider myself a liberal, and traditionally pro-choice, as I've gotten older I'm become more comfortable with paradox in the abortion debate. I think it's 100% a woman's choice and 100% murder. The law, which demands certainty, is powerless. Thus the only resolution is to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
Agree 100%.
Derek
I don't think many other people believe it's murder, either, for all that they profess to. They mostly don't, for example, want fourteen year old girls who have abortions hauled off to lengthy juvie terms, which is what we'd do if they'd committed infanticide.
Actually, it is quite questionable whether friends or family would turn in a 14 year old for killing or allowing a baby to die at birth. Even when they are caught they typically receive lenient sentences or none since (obviously) they experienced temporary insanity (mental distress was one of the legal reasons for providing abortions in most states that allowed them prior to 1973). The willingness of abortion clinics to allow infants who survive attempted abortions to perish is rather infamous. The fact that people are inclined to favor a living person with defending family over a dead one who has none is hardly the foundation of a moral argument.
Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court.
The best way to end this sort of vigilantism is to allow Americans to vote on it. Allow the People to arrive at an ambiguous solution in line with the ambiguous feelings they have about abortion (ala "It's the taking of a human life. I'm not willing to treat a mother as a premeditated murderer"). The SCOTUS inventing law regarding so basic an issue as human life is a major cause of people arriving at this sort of distorted solution.
In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions.
In other words, the law wasn't "powerless," as it is when a true self-defense argument can be made, it was just different from what this guy wanted. But the law was, (unlike in Nazi Germany, for instance) subject to change by peaceful persuasion.
There are times when process is more important that substance; this is probably one of them. Better to live under an unjust law than to upend a functioning system that on average delivers more justice than any substitute likely to be achieved by murdering people.
*Is* it subject to change? It's not really within the sphere that's open to debate, unless you can secure 20 years of uninterrupted Republican rule and thereby pack the court.
Or unless we can get a Constitutional Convention going.
Yeah, but that's even less likely. Nobody in their right mind wants to open that can of worms, and that goes double for the nice folks in the state legislatures who would have to waive their own power to call one.
Sure it is. If, say, for whatever reason, in 20 years 75 percent of the populous wished to limit abortion, there'd be a constitutional amendment passed faster than you could say "Operation Rescue."
I'm pretty sure that 75% of the populace does wish to limit abortion. They just differ on how best to do that. If abortion law as laid down by the SCOTUS requires a super-supermajority to be changed, then it won't be changed. California requires a 2/3 majority for a tax increase, and look where that has gotten them.
If Roe v. Wade had been decided differently and if abortion were up to the states, the religious right as we know it in this country would not exist. But by disenfranchising voters on an issue they care passionately about, the SCOTUS created social conservatives as we know them. I say this as a Catholic who wishes he could vote for Democrats but can't because so many of them support legalized murder.
The most recent Gallup has the split at more or less 25-50-25 between "restrict all," "restrict some," and "restrict none." So I should have worded my comment better: You'd have to get 75 percent to agree to a very specific statement, such as "Abortions should be banned in all pregnancies 24 weeks or over except to protect the life of the mother." Today maybe you get, I don't know, maybe 50-60% agreeing with that, depending on how exactly you word the question (e.g. "ban" v. "not allow").
And as it happens, I'm an evangelical who wishes he could vote for Democrats but can't (at least not for the SCotUS-voting positions of Senator and President) because so many of them support legalized murder. I will always, always vote for a pro-life Democrat, however, even if they club baby seals as a hobby.
" ... I don't think abortions before, say, eight months are even arguably murder. ..."
Once the fetus has advanced to the stage where it has a reasonable chance of surviving outside the womb and going on to live a normal life, then killing it (without a heck of a good reason!) is most definitely murder. I'm not an expert on obstetrics, but I would have thought that, with modern neonatal technology, that cutoff is probably closer to 7 months than to 8 -- maybe even 6 and 1/2.
BTW: 'good reasons' might include significant risk of death or severe permanent physical injury to the mother, or significant risks of severe birth defects in the child.
The American 50/50 survival rate cutoff is about 5½ months. 6½ months is north of 90% for living a normal life, I believe.
" ... I don't think abortions before, say, eight months are even arguably murder. ..."
It's the 'even arguably' part that I have trouble with. I think reason only carries you so far with a subject like this. It is something you know instinctively is right, or is wrong.
Also, I think whether you believe it to be murder (or at least some kind of wrongful death) and the punishment you would inflict on the hypothetical 14 year old, are completely separate issues.
No, they go to the heart of this particular issue. For the argument from frustration (we tried to change the law but we couldn't) to merit even a moment's look, you have to posit a law that (a) juries would enforce and that (b) would deter most abortions. And I don't think, on the record, that the anti-abortion movement has done that, or has any real chance of doing it.
I agree with Stan, being as it's completely arguable. But I have to disagree with the last part, for use of the wrong term "majority". There is no majority on a topic like this.
I don't think that abortion is murder, but I don't think it's out of the definition of killing either. A group of people don't call the killing of animals 'murdering', and there's a group that do. The only thing that takes it too far is the fact that someone had so little sense of morals that they would do exactly what they wanted to stop. The man saw murder, so he murdered. If you feel absolutely fine with what he did, then that's your own moral code. By that logic, the death penalty would fit the crime. (Un)fortunately, I'm sure that he'll get his due in sweet time. Karma works like that, apparently.
The conservatives totally exploited the emotions of the religious so people would vote for them, then they kick ‘em to the curb.
No wonder these freaks turn to terrorism.
I do not think philosophical grounds are enough to remove the right of a mother to make her own choice.....and furthermore.....
Are we willing as voters, to support the social systems necessary to avoid abortions within society; i.e. education, healthcare, ending poverty?
Religious folks aren't freaks, over 1/2 of America still identifies as "Christian," and nearly everyone has some religious identity. You should see some atheists I've known in my lifetime if you're interested in freaks.
Also, no pie in the sky ideology will end poverty, give everyone health care, and give a perfect system of education. If you don't agree with me, google "Soviet Union, communism, and Karl Marx" to read about others who had a similar thought process. Once you wake up, we can at least solve the problem of systematically allowing a Holocaust to go on under our noses in our own back yard.
I never said religious folx are freaks? My theory is based on the exploitation of the religious.
When one is dissatisfied with the lack of movement on this issue by ones leaders, will one take matters into one own hands?
Pick up a pen or a sword; the "freaks" pick the latter.
If a plan to end poverty qualifies as a "pie in the sky ideology", then what makes you think you can simply issue an edict to end abortion?
John,
Is it really that hard to understand? No judgment or condemnation intended, but poverty in the USA is mainly the result of people who aren't willing to help themselves. My dad grew up in the ghetto and, through hard work alone, carved himself a piece of the middle class pie. Everyone else in the hood could do the exact same thing, but they let depression, laziness, and other social ills keep them down. No law is going to change that.
Abortion, on the other hand, would end as soon as it was made illegal. There are very few doctors who will risk their careers performing illegal abortions. Maybe one or two social crusaders, but you get the idea.
"... [I]t is obvious that the US equivalent of the Religious Taliban is in full swing..."
There is no US equivalent of the Taliban.
The fundamentalists hold views that were utterly uncontroversial 40 years ago. And if the Wichita jury trying this case looks anything like the community, upwards of two-thirds of the jurors who will send this killer to prison will belong to the fringe.
Yes, there is. If you look around you will see them. They hide as much as possible, because what they want is against our laws.
Not allowing women to make their own choices, as the extreme right wingers want, is Taliban like.
Also, Taliban eat bread, which makes all bread eaters like the Taliban.
And I agree with Hitler's position on smoking, so of course I am a Nazi.
I don't think abortions before, say, eight months are even arguably murder.
Are you serious??? Let me start by saying I am not a pro-life facist, but do fall on the pro-life side of the debate. Mainly because I am a Neo-Natologist (for those of you that do not know what that means, I am a Doctor who cares for sick babies). Most of my patients are pre-mature infants, the vast majority of which go on to grow up to be happy health children. Current law in Most states (definately the 3 I am licensed in) requires that medical intervention be used to save the life of fetuses that are only gestationally 25 weeks old. For those who can not do the math that is a little over 6 months old gestationally. 8 months old near full terms. The prognosis for a 25 week old fetus is not in the 90% out of the womb. For a 8 month old (or 32 weeker) is almost 100% barring any genetic issues. I would definately consider abortion of a 32 week old fetus to be murder. Especially if you consider that 38 weeks is considered full term. I have performed in-utero surgery on fetuses as young as 16 weeks. These 16 weeks old fetuses feel, react, and are most definately alive. As a doctor we take an oath to preserve life not end it. Doctors who perform abortions for reasons other than to save a mothers life, or end a life that will no be viable are not honoring their oath. Any anyone who can look at 3rd trimester fetus (over 24 weeks old) suck its brain out and pull off its limbs is not a Doctor, but a bucher.
Megan, your scum! You don't deserve to be alive. Animals are more loving to their children than you. Jump off the roof and do us a favor.
That sort of talk gives horrible reputations to decent Pro-Life supporters.
Kiss my a$$!!!!! You could go jump off a roof with her for all I care.
I did. It was the roof of my car.
This is his (hers/its?) intent. Don't feed the trolls.
You could jump also.
Operation rescue and the like are our domestoc terrorists - shouting fire is not allow in that crowded theater example - and urging murder is to be an accomplice - they should all be jailed.
The law already says a viable outside the womb fetus requires standard life giving care when that viable fetus is removed in an abortion - so the whole thought in this article is BS. There is no "John Brown" conflict nor will there ever be one - Operation Rescue equals domestic terrorism and they should be defended against with with the same process they urge for their followers - confrontation and talk and the occasional weapon when the law will not stop the urging to violence - or as in this article - the condoning of violence.
Bad clumps of cells happen all the time - there are over a million and a half spontaneous abortions by Mother Nature every year. When you find a way to stop mother nature and her abortions of fetuses, get back to me. Until then be honest and give up the "pro-life" misnomer - you folks are all about forced pregnancy - and nothing else beyond keeping a women in her place.
To begin with, he didn't perform that many late term abortions over his entire professional life.
Second, when a late term abortion as performed there is something very wrong. These are not viable fetuses, they are very deformed, have some fatal condition, or dead.
That's just not true. If the fetus is dead, it's not an abortion. Late-term abortions happen for all sorts of reasons, including maternal disorganization, maternal denial, and maternal impairment due to drug use, etc. Yes, many women do abort for deformities, genetic conditions, etc., but not in every case.
Tiller's own testimony in 2003 was 250-300 late term procedures, but the Kansas health dept. figured it was closer to 450, based on the drug that he used. He charged $6000 for a late term procedure, so let's not argue that his was a non-profit practice.
you don't think it's murder at 8 months?!!!!! I was born 2 months premature (at 7 months!) Are you serious?! Babies have birthed and survived at 5 months! How the hell do you not consider infanticide at 8 months?
" ...The best way to end this sort of vigilantism is to allow Americans to vote on it...."
Absolutely! And the decisions should be on a state-by-state basis, also. Not a 'one-size-fits-all' approach, dictated by nine senile old men in Central Planning.
I would bet that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, almost all States -- even in the Bible Belt -- would allow first trimester abortions, but that most States would put severe restrictions on 3rd trimester abortions; and there would be a big gray area in the middle.
Oh, and I want to add, those that are so hate filled and preach the violence are promoting terrorism. That's obvious. The definition of terrorism is to promote terror, which is what they are doing. This assassination was all about promoting terror, to try to intimidate doctors and other health care providers, along with the women who need them.
*Is* it subject to change? It's not really within the sphere that's open to debate, unless you can secure 20 years of uninterrupted Republican rule and thereby pack the court.
I do not think the current litmus test could survive a sustained shift in public opinion. You don't need Republican rule to pack the court any more than you need Republican rule to pass a law allowing concealed carry in national parks. Large numbers of D's voted to attach that amendment, and large numbers of them would vote for an anti-Roe justice if it would get them reelected.
Mind you, I think that SCOTUS screwed this up badly and continues to screw up any number of things badly, but "Congress can't do it" is not the same as "It can't be done."
The anti-abortion lobby just needs to be as effective as the NRA, and they'll get the job done.
You barely touched on the biggest problem, the Roe v. Wade decision.
Before Roe v. Wade, abortion was unlawful almost everywhere, available, of variable safety, and of unknown frequency.
Now, if a state wants to make it lawful but restrict it to perhaps the first trimester, we not only have to pass laws, we have to overturn a Supreme Court decision either by reversal (not very likely) or by an amendment to the Federal Constitution. The amendment would probably be worse than useless because it would come down on one side or the other instead of taking the matter away from Federal jurisdiction altogether.
It's a combination of Federalizing the issue and "Legislation from the Bench". They are both bad ideas whether you like the particular decision or not.
There are currently 28 responses to this article. Most of them well reasoned and all of them made by living human beings. With 28 people responding, odds are at least one of them was born earlier at less than 8-months gestation.
There is a 50% survival chance at 24 weeks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prenatal_development_table.svg
I consider myself to be pro-choice, but there is plenty of time prior to 14 weeks or so for a woman to make that choice. After that there's too good a chance that they're carrying around a viable human being to justify termination without extenuating circumstances. Ideally, you'd make the choice pre-conception...
Ms McArdle destroys any credibility she may have on this issue in the first paragraph of her article. Just what is abortion then Ms McArdle if it is not the termination of a human life? Termination of a pig, dog, or cow, by chance? Medical science has definitely proved that human life begins at conception. When that occurred, pro abortion rights advocates, such as yourself, lost all credibility on this issue.
For you to say most people doubt that abortion is murder is also factually untrue. It is true that a majority still do not believe abortion should be criminalized en toto. But ask those same people if abortion should be allowed for purposes of gender selection, birth control or parental convenience and a majority of Americans have always said no. That eliminates more than 95% of all abortions performed in the US.
Advocates such as yourself are left sputtering meaningless phrases such as "reproductive rights" and "choice". In more than 95% of all cases the "choice" was made to have sexual intercourse. The result of that "choice" is a developing human life. To destroy an innocent, defenseless, human life is the the most vile form of murder that can be contemplated. Shame on you for trying to justify infanticide with specious intellectual arguments.
There's a difference between "alive" and "possessed of rights", and that's the gray area that this debate lives in.
I don't agree with the murder of this man. He slaughterd an estimated 60,000 innocent babies for profit but the fathers and mothers of those children are mostly to blame for their murders.
For those commentors who seem to believe that Dr Tiller was performing lifestyle abortions of selfish, nihilistic liberals, I suggest taking a turn through the various stories that Andrew Sullivan has been posting, written by women who had late-term abortions at Dr Tiller's clinic. They generally seem to have been written by women and men who were truly conflicted about how to manage when a fetus showed signs of severe birth defects and had a very low chance of survival beyond a few days, and conflicted as committed members of one Christian tradition or another.
I would also suggest that, never mind the invocation of Godwin's Law, the use of Nazi genocide as a metaphor for abortion in this country is emotive rather than accurate. The Nazis had deliberate selection criteria for who was murdered, based on supposedly immutable tendencies - it wasn't like you could recant being a mischling. Abortion in the US isn't that organized, and the comparison has always seemed to me to be agitprop at best.
You've got a big selection bias problem there. The women who had late term abortions because, say, they found out the baby had Downs, or just didn't want to be pregnant, are much less likely to write in.
My understanding is that actual investigations of late term abortions found them to be rare--but also found that a shocking number of them were not done because the fetus was not viable.
i became pregnant with my first son during the mid 1980's, when there was a shortage of OB/GYNs due to malpractice insurance.
Because I had two sisters born with spina bifida, I could not find a doctor willing to take me on as a patient without agreeing to an amnio first. And the results were not available until I was 26 weeks along, putting me half-way through my second trimester, well beyond the stage of quickening -- that magical time when you can feel the baby moving.
Joyfully, everything was normal. But I know I would have struggled with this issue had things been abnormal.
I believe it is a murder; I have an unease with it that I don't have with earlier (5 weeks or less) abortions. Historically, before quickening, this was women's business, something managed by wise women with herbs. And that's where I'm most comfortable leaving the business. But as my own experience shows, that's not the way the medical world works.
In the end, I'm unwilling to agree to limiting a woman's choice, despite my discomfort. Women's lives are sometimes difficult and complicated. And since I can't imagine we'll ever live in a world where women are not victim to sexual predators (even the garden variety that hit on them in any imaginable social situation, not just the criminal sort,) I don't want to imagine a world where women aren't allowed control of their own reproduction.
Dr. Tiller's murder, as other murders have been in the past, is terrorism. I was at my chiropractor's office in Brookline, MA, next to the family planning clinic when worker's at the clinic were murdered. My children were with me. We walked through the protesters in front of the clinic several times a week. And it is religious terrorism. The intent is to frighten you for being godless.
Two tangents, however.
First is the Freakonomics piece connecting abortion and decreases in crime, and wanting your thoughts.
Second is population growth. I fail to see how human population growth can be sustainable. I'd prefer to see us control population voluntarily, instead of forcing unwanted births and eliminating extra people with war, disease, and starvation. Those evils seem part of this discussion. The baby murdered in Dr. Tiller's clinics, morally, is no more valuable than the baby murdered in Iraq, Sudan, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka.
Let's leave aside the common anti-abortion argument that women usually come to regret abortions; if so, you would expect some testimony hostile to Dr. Tiller. If you want to justify murder, surely you have to accord the victim (who obviously doesn't have the capacity to defend himself) the benefit of some doubt, and not allow invented theoretical testimony that might exist because of some "selection bias". Keep in mind that the anti-abortion movement has an enormous incentive to turn over heaven and Earth to find specific cases of callous behavior and misconduct on Dr. Tiller's part. If and when they produce such evidence, I will consider it. Otherwise, I will not accept the trashing of a man's life, and the whitewash of a cowardly premeditated murder, based on imaginary testimony that exists only in theory because of "selection bias".
In the same vein, let me take a moment to demolish your argument based on "actual investigations". Unless you propose to justify actual terrorism and murder, in the form of shooting a good and decent man to terrify doctors who may have fewer scruples, then you have to show that Dr. Tiller personally performed unjustifiable late-term abortions. Suggesting other doctors may or may not have done so has no relevance to the murder of this particular doctor.
But since Sullivan doesn't allow comments, and isn't posting signed stories, who knows what's true and what's not? He lost me as a reader during his who's the mom? Palin rants.
The Wikipedia entry on late-term abortion references a 1987 study on reasons for abortions after 16 weeks. Two percent were done because “fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy”.
I struggle with a lot of the implications of the "very low chance of survival beyond a few days" argument for late-term abortion. How low a chance makes the procedure acceptable? A 5% chance; 10%; 25%; 50%? Also I'm not clear what is being accomplished by aborting the fetus rather than allowing it to come to term and live out whatever life-span it has.
But (a) Wikipedia isn't a source, and (b) 1987 data is really old.
Yes, 1987 is really old. If you have more current data I'd very much like to take a look at it. I am certainly willing to believe that the percent of women citing a late-diagnosed fetal problem as the reason for an abortion after 16 weeks has increased given the better technology now available. The 1987 data is also not entirely relevant because it looks at abortions after 16 weeks and I think most people think of "late-term" abortions as third trimester abortions (although the issue of increasingly early viability makes this more complex).
I found some recent longitudinal data on abortion rates in this study by the Guttmacher Institute. If you load the pdf, you can check out Table 3 on page 12 which says that in 1989 4.7% of all abortions took place after week 15 while in 2004 4.6% did. Unfortunately the study does not examine the reasons for abortions so the fact that the percent has remained steady doesn't tell us any more than just that.
I'm not sure why you believe Wikipedia isn't a source. I wouldn't believe anything they simply asserted without further investigation but if the data is sourced I think it's at least as valid as anything else on the Internet. In the case of the 1987 study, Wikipedia provides a footnote for the numbers which links to a series of data tables taken from a publication of the Guttmacher Institute.
Mischling, agitprop... Wow, big words, you must be smart. I'm off to dictionary.com 'cause ya got me.
If you are referring to me using the term "Hollocaust", from www.thefreedictionary.com:
hol·o·caust (hl-kôst, hl-)
n.
1. Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.
ie, abortion.
It's a culturally loaded term. If you're going down the definitional route, then you would acknowledge that holocaust derives from the Greek for a burnt offering to the gods, and that the sense of mass destruction derives from the use of the word capitalized as Holocaust to refer to Nazi genocide of Jews and others. It implies, since World War II, concerted and narrowly planned action to kill off a large group of people.
The abortion rate in the US is the cumulative effect of thousands of individual decisions. Even taking the view that each of these is a murder, it's not a concerted planned effort of mass murder, any more than the collective result of individual murders among adults is mass murder. Using a term like holocaust is political, not descriptive.
Yes, but "A woman's right to choose" is an equally emotive phrase. Got to roll with the punches, ya know...
Did Hitler, oh wait, too cliche. Let me think.
Did Saddam really have the "right to choose" to kill thousands of Kurd's? He was the dictator, and dictators should have the right to choose what goes on in their countries, right?
Abortion is ending human life any way you look at it.
What I don't understand about Liberals is they hate Bush for going to war because it resulted in a loss of life, (A war which their messiah has yet to end*), but they defend killing their own children.
*Sorry for that little tangent.
kiddbilly, you're right, neither side has a monopoly on loaded language.
That said, coercive centrally planned / directed state violence is a horse of a different color from the cumulative effect of individual actions. That doesn't really matter much to the person or persons on the receiving end, but for purposes of discussion... Unless of course the idea is to continue with provocative rhetoric ;)
I am suffering from a little bit of cognitive dissonance though, as a result of your post above. I am politically liberal, and yet I don't automatically oppose war nor, to the best of my knowledge, have my wife and I killed our own children. Two pregnancies, two little mischlings. According to you, then, I might not be liberal.
FWIW, which is not much, my objection to former President Bush's decision to invade Iraq is that it was a wholly unnecessary way based on evidence either coerced or fabricated to meet a given end. My only concern about the invasion of Afghanistan was and remains the low odds of success, but a state that harbors those who attack the US shouldn't expect to get away scot-free. War inherently brings death, and shouldn't be undertaken for fraudulent reasons.
As for abortion rights, since I don't have a theological definition of the beginning of life, I am unwilling to characterize all abortions as murder. I am willing to say that past a point of viability, abortions should be an exceptional event with some basis in medical fact, because at that point one is in arguably talking about a someone rather than a something. I am unwilling to tell parents of a profoundly disabled child who has extremely low odds of survival that their duty of care to their child is for the mother to give birth for a short and painful life... much as I am unwilling to tell someone that they must persist in leaving a vegetative parent or spouse on life support. But just as war shouldn't be fraudulently undertaken, neither should the decision to end someone else's life.
These are morally and emotionally painful decisions, decisions that people have struggled with for as long as they have been human. We (by which I mean Americans) have the luxury of not exposing newborns whom we cannot feed. The condition of material and scientific plenty just changes where the painful decisions lie.
I believe the end doesn't justify the means in any situation.
I'm conflicted about Iraq, I supported it in the ashes of 9/11, and towards the end after the truth about WMDs was exposed, I objected. My fickle opinion makes me question my own opinion on that matter. I guess maybe people can change their minds?? *shrug*
I also oppose abortion. I guess I oppose all unnecessary loss of life.
Scott Roeder hates us for our freedoms. Seriously. He was so pissed off that women retained sovereignty over their own persons that, in lieu of killing them, he killed their doctor.
Roeder should be stuck in a room with a closed circuit live feed of the exterior of his local Planned Parenthood and a noose hanging from the ceiling, two feet out of reach.
And you should go jump off a roof.
eight months??? Srsly??? The fetus is 8 inches at that stage. I realize that the abortion debate comes down to a line-drawing exercise, but calling it "murder" at that stage certainly is arguable, and I think the majority of people would disagree with you.
8 inches? Not hardly. A 32-week baby is about 17 inches and weighs about 4 lbs. Babies born at this gestational age have *excellent* prospects, with well over 90% survival rates and very low rates of major disabilities. Most need only 2-3 weeks in NICU, mainly to gain weight -- often they don't need respiratory assistance, especially girls.
Talking about 24-weekers is a somewhat different story, because these babies are still so far away from independent survival. However, once you make it to about 30 weeks of pregnancy (which, because of the way pregnancy is dated, is only about 6 months after you miss your period) there's really not much difference between that and a 35-weeker, or a 37-week full-term baby. The 30-weekers will spend some time in NICU, sure, but they usually do very well and don't require the kind of medical heroics that micropreemies do.
Eight months is a pretty ridiculous place to draw a dividing line, biologically speaking. 24 or 28 weeks is more logical, and even 28 weeks is dubious -- a baby isn't all that different at 27 weeks 4 days than at 28 weeks. But there's almost no distinction between a baby at 31 weeks and 32 weeks, so it makes no sense to say that one is murder and the other isn't.
8 inches? Not hardly. A 32-week baby is about 17 inches and weighs about 4 lbs.
Well, that's what I get from trying to do "research" by throwing a query into Google and not even bothering to click into the results. My bad.
What they're really saying is protect what's legal. They're frustrated at what has been a tremendously effective campaign of intimidation and violence against providers. Most providers are over 50 and aren't being replaced outside of big cities. Medical students who support abortion rights are deciding the headaches aren't worth it. And even if George Tiller he hadn't been murdered on Sunday, he was 67. The actuarial tables dictate that at some point soon, medically necessary late-term abortion would be one-third less accessible in the U.S.
A woman denied control of her own reproductive system is, by definition, not free.
So there did not exist a free woman in the world before the 1950s?
Not completely free, no.
Second question: If freedom necessarily includes a right to control over one's biological processes, are diseases thus human rights violations? Say what you will about unwanted pregnancy, it's less bad for you than, say, terminal cancer.
"A woman denied control of her own reproductive system is, by definition, not free."
Of course, you're right - and anyone suggesting otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. But the issue is far more complicated than the simple formulation "Freedom for Women: For or Against?" Depending on one's view of a fetus's "personhood", there's an additional set of rights on the line - that of the baby's.
And that's where the intellectual dishonesty of the pro-choice movement enters. As a general rule, pro-choice advocates dodge the question of where *they* think (not how the Supreme Court has ruled) personhood begins. And then they follow up that evasion by never forcing themselves to weigh the value of the woman's individual liberty (or temporary suspension thereof) against the fetus's/baby's/hypothetical person's right to life (or permanent abrogation thereof).
An intellectually honest discussion of rights/liberty/freedom doesn't make the pro-choice case stronger. Just the opposite is true.
For the people who want to see pre-term fetuses which would possibly be save by medical intervention brought to term, here's a solution for you:
The woman seeking abortion comes to you, you provide her with the medical team to deliver said fetus by Caesarian section, put said fetus on life support and then adopt it.
You don't get to commandeer a woman's body. How's that for a concept?
You would probably be shocked at how likely it is for somebody to take you up on that.
I am pro-choice myself. However I would like to make one comment on abortions in the 8th month. I have twin girls who were born 27 1/7 weeks. They may has spend three months in the NICU but they are now 2 years old and doing great. Only minor problems. But I also know, from my own personal experience, that a baby (born under the correct circumstances and with lots of luck) can survive being born at 24 weeks. I know this because I have seen this with my own 2 eyes. So do I believe that life is alive and kick'n at 8 months. Yes I do very much so and I have two girls to prove this. Actually after 32 weeks a child can be born with minimal birth defects (as it is at this point that the lungs develop to the point of supporting breathing air outside the womb).
Now I am open to the idea of pre 20 week abortions (as prior to this life is not sustainable) and of course I would also be in favor of the mothers life over the unborn baby. This doesn't mean that I would favor my wife's to terminate her pregnancy without medical merit. But I'm not going to tell you that you can not.
One more item, in my three months in the NICU. The NICU was full(about 60 babies) almost 95% of the time. With a good number of them be pre 32 week babies. Mostly multiples or mothers who had preterm complications.
But of course with all things in this country. The crazies on both side speak the loudest and mess this country up. The far right will blame the far left and so on. While the overwhelming majority of us Americans are in the middle of the matter and can reason.
And as Forest Gump would say: And that's all I have to say about that!
Megan, I think your moral calculus regarding whether it is permissible to kill a person responsible for mass-murder may make sense from a modern perspective, but from a Christian standpoint it really doesn't. When we're talking about a faith which reveres the example of man who allowed himself to be tortured to death rather than use his godlike powers to save his own life, I find it hard to believe that anyone believes that such a God would tolerate the killing of any person, no matter how evil they were.
Alexi - Moving away from the abortion debate and onto the biblical side for a second...
The Bible talks extensively about killing people and justifications behind it. Moreso in the old testament, but in the new testament as well.
My only point is: the Bible teaches about killing, and it's not to exclude it from any possible action.
Alexi: you wrote "I find it hard to believe that anyone believes that such a God would tolerate the killing of any person, no matter how evil they were."
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I agree with your position, but you might want to reconsider your justification for your position...
See Exodus chapter 12 verse 28: where God writes about one of his early massacres....
"So the people of Israel did just as the Lord had commanded through Moses and Aaron. And at midnight the Lord killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn son of the captive in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed. Pharoh and his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died."
Don't take my word for it...check the Bible yourself. The Bible is filled with instances where God kills people...Noah's ark and the great flood, Sodom & Gomorrah, the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning that followed, etc...
Claiming to be a Christian is a weak argument against murder and abortion since the Bible is filled with murder. The "Golden Rule" would be a more solid argument...it is the simplest and easiest justification for moral behaviour and the most difficult to refute.
Full disclosure: I am anti-abortion, I do not support the murder of abortion doctors. I am not religious.
I think the whole resurrection of Jesus creating a new covenant kind of obsoletes the old Testamant brand of justice for anyone serious enough about being an actual *Christian*.
Obviously, large numbers of "Christians" don't believe in the primacy of the New Testament as a life guideline, so here we are.
(my aplogies for going slightly off topic as Plinko's response above is not referring directly to the abortion debate, but I would like to respond anyway)
Plinko wrote: "kind of obsoletes the old Testament brand of justice"
Sounds like you are saying parts of the Bible are valid and parts are not. It is my understanding that believers consider the entire Bible to be the words of God. If instead what you wrote is true, how does one know which parts are valid and which are not? The 10 Commandments are found in the old Testament. As is Psalm 19:7 which reads "The law of the Lord is perfect"...perfection means no changes required.
If, as you say, large numbers of Christians don't believe in the New Testament, it is not difficult to see why...
In Matthew 18 verses 7 through 9, Jesus speaks:
"If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell. - Matthew 18:7-9"
As I wrote in my original post above, the Bible is not a credible source for guiding moral behaviour because it advocates such senseless cruelty. What could be more cruel than being thrown into eternal fire? Eternal is forever, with no chance of parole for good behaviour.
The Golden Rule is a better guide than the Bible for our moral behaviour in all areas of life, including abortion.
Allowing oneself to be killed is rather different than allowing innocent third parties to be killed. I'm not an expert on Christian theology, and certainly not on what Tiller's murderer believed, but the example of Jesus is certainly quite different from what Tiller's murderer presumably thought was going on here.
You would be hard pressed to find any examples of divinely-endorsed murder in the New Testament. Conflating the testaments leads to a confused understanding of Christianity, as they often contradict each other. If you look to Christ as an example for behavior, it's clear that violent retaliation against sinners is impermissible, because such retaliation requires men to judge the sinfulness of other men, and that role is given only to God.
Even if we include the Old Testament in our consideration, killings are only permissible when ordered explicitly by God.
Violent retaliation isn't the same as violence to protect someone. While there's certainly room for interpretation, the claim that it's permissible to kill someone to prevent them from performing an atrocity seems well within the range of something a Christian could reasonably believe.
While I am pro-choice, I can understand the arguments both for and against. My person opinion would be to limit abortions to the first trimester, prior to true viability in any natural sense. And to compare it to slavery is absurd. The reason it's called the pro-choice movement and not pro-death is because in providing rights to the fetus, you take away rights from someone who is significantly more viable as a human, the mother. To deny abortions on medical grounds is, in my mind, to say that the mother's life is worth less. And from my understand, this is the service that Dr. Tiller was providing.
Abortion is compared to slavery all of the time, for several good reasons.
The core issue is "is this a human being, or not?"
The fact that you have made up your mind does not in any way mean that the issue is settled.
What's fascinating is that based on your own logic, this issue applies to Dr. Tiller. Is a full-term fetus a human being? Aside from location, it appears to be. Remove it from the womb and cut the cord and, voila, you have a baby.
There are many situations where people are buried under collapsed buildings, etc., that require far less work and/or medical treatment than birthing a baby does, yet nobody is saying that they relinquish their status as human beings because they cannot extricate themselves. Thus location, and needing help to move out of it, certainly is not the arbiter of whether a human being is a human being.
If you concede that a full-term fetus is a human, in the same way that a human trapped in a burning car is a human, then you are left with a fascinating conundrum.
You mention that the rights of the unborn aren't as great as the rights of the mother, so the mother has the "choice" of whether to chop that full-term baby up. How so? What makes her the "owner" of this person, such that she alone can decide whether it lives or dies? (see that "slavery" thing creeping in, again?)
Is it the fact that she is hosting it inside of her? Is it the fact that it shares 50% of her genome, thus making it "family?"
Would that not mean that the father of one of these chopped up babies - babies that contain 50% of their own genome, and are clearly "family" - have the same rights to chop up Dr. Tiller as revenge for killing their child?
Dr. Tiller only had a commercial interest in this; the father has a familial link.
Moral relativism is a slippery slope, indeed...
I am pro life, but I still don't support the murder of the so call doctor, or anybody else. So stop your generalization of every pro life individual.
Should we blame all your left wing nut job on murder of our military?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/01/arkansas.recruiter.shooting/
For me murder is a murder, one month, 2 months, specially 8 months or a doctor that perform abortions. I would like to see you people, who support abortion to encourage adoptions. If mother thinks it's so inconvenient to raise a child, put up for adoption. Why don't you rally about easing adoption rules? There is thousands of people waiting in line to adopt and even going overseas to do so, because it's much easier to that outside of US.
Don't think performing late term abortion on underage girl is moral thing.
Again I am against killing doctors, but I wouldn't call Tiller a hero, like some newspaper trying to portray him. There is a reason, that only 3 clinics including his that performs late term abortion in whole United States.
Each person, including all you pro abortion people have probably 1 in a billion chance to get born, just read A Short History of nearly everything, by Bill Bryson, don't have to read a lot, it's in first paragraph of the book. So why you think you have a right to cut that life short? You don't have to be "religious nut" to see that abortion, especially late term is wrong.
A woman denied control of her own reproductive system is, by definition, not free.
You don't get to commandeer a woman's body. How's that for a concept?
Well, a man wearing handcuffs is not free, either. But it is commonly accepted that the right to swing one's fists ends where another's nose begins.
Nobody I know if is advocating forced insemination or legalized rape; the most extreme pro-lifer advocates merely that the control prized by some be exercised at the very beginning of the reproductive process rather than at some later time. Once the nose is introduced, the fist swinging must cease.
That may or may not be the right answer, but it hardly seems like a pro-slavery position.
While I think this is a reasoned and rational post, I do wonder at 8 months as your cut-off point. An 8 month old fetus isn't just viable--it's a baby.
I was appalled at the comments at Jezebel equating a fetus with bathroom mold. If a fetus isn't human, what is it? If you run a DNA test on fetal matter, what species does that DNA belong to? You can say life begins at birth, but that's a hard sell to any woman who's had a child.
Tiller walked a very odd road, I think. He didn't report underage patients as victims of statutory rape, he had patients die after the procedure, and he seemed to have pretty lax criteria as to how the mother would be affected if she didn't have a late-term abortion. I wonder at some point if he did get hardened, like the Sonderkommando. And he did perform many late term abortions. Those procedures were a sizable portion of his for-profit business.
But of course, he didn't deserved to be murdered. That's barbaric, no matter how much you don't agree with the legality of late-term abortion.
What I find highly interesting is that nobody reacted to the comment posted by Andrew W at 03:08: prevent abortions from being wanted/needed.
I am 25, female and pro-choice. What I am seeing within my generation is morality sinking into a slime of self-gratification. We are the children of the Yuppie-Generation. Nobody wants responsibilities, everybody just has rights. No committments. Everybody just wants to have fun. And when the woman becomes pregnant from such fun, the men shrug and walk away, none of their business, its HER problem, HER responsibility. Women are pregnant because of men. Maybe menkind should start thinking before they crucify women.
It takes two to make a baby. Often women do NOT abort .. look at the growing number of single-parent "families". And of course, they are all so well off.
I would totally agree except our legal system has taken men out of the equation. Men do not have legal rights to a fetus, or even a baby for that matter unless the mother gives it to them or they fight it out in court. Once again as a Neo-natologist I see many mothers who have issues with the babies fathers. The mother is allowed to not recognize the father, and the hospital and medical providers are not allowed to provide the father with information, visitation etc, unless the father has a court order. So blame the courts, and our elected officials for fathers not being invovled in their childrens lives.
I think the mistake we make is in getting stuck on our sides of the issue. There are many of us living here in the middle ground. I support the right to choose, but I also believe we need to restrict access after the 1st trimester. We know that fetuses DO register pain once they are into the 2nd and 3rd trimester. Also, as Scott above mentioned, he was a preemie and was born 2 months early. If a fetus is viable and the mother waited beyond the 1st trimester to abort, then adoption may be the best option.
We also need to look at 3rd trimester abortions that are performed due to danger to the mother or severe birth defects. If there is another way, we need to consider it. Could we induce birth and then let the fetus die (very little or no medical intervention aside from making the death less painful)? Some of the severe birth defects will result in death without extreme intervention (this is another sticky wicket where I believe our medical advances that keep severely malformed or brain damaged bablies alive are potentially a very bad choice), so the child could be born with the decision not to use heroic methods to keep it alive.
If it is the mother's health that is at risk, maybe inducement or a c-section would be an option? There is still the chance that the fetus may make it & if not, well, then (once again) administer pain killers to make the death as peaceful as possible.
I fail to see how murdering a murderer “makes total sense.” Leave alone the question of whether a legal medical procedure counts as murder; this kind of twisted logic is seriously flawed by any standard. Generally I found the entire commentary to be rather flip, falling short of the kind of thoughtfulness and seriousness that the issue of abortion demands. I also question many of the premises thrown out here. For example, the author states “the more we know about fetal development, the more support for abortion seems to drop.” It seems to me that the pro-life movement is driven more by a religious perspective on the matter than scientific knowledge. Pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, rely on empirical evidence, e.g., prenatal brain development, in defining personhood.
I fail to see how murdering a murderer “makes total sense.”
Perhaps try re-reading the article with an open mind.
" It seems to me that the pro-life movement is driven more by a religious perspective on the matter than scientific knowledge. Pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, rely on empirical evidence, e.g., prenatal brain development, in defining personhood."\
I rather think it is the opposite. I wonder what percentage of Ob-Gyns consider abortion murder?
Since a pet peeve of mine is when people talk about abortion without basic knowledge of fetal biology or pregnancy timelines, here is my favorite resource for fetal development.
Also, here's a good explanation of pregnancy dating -- you are 4 weeks pregnant when you first miss your period, because gestational age is based on the first day of your previous period. This is relevant if you're going to talk about restricting abortion to the first trimester only, because it really is a very short period of time. Many women, especially those with irregular menstrual cycles, don't know they're pregnant until at least 8 weeks gestation, and very often they're more like 10-12 weeks. If the abortion cutoff is 13 weeks, that really isn't always "plenty of time" for a woman to make that choice, as Ivan256 suggests above.
Your scum and everyone knows it.
Megan, can we get a banhammer dropped on this troll?
Your bright line at 8 months is a puzzler, especially since premature babies are routinely saved much earlier than that. But I congratulate you on articulating well the moral dilemma we who believe abortion is murder live with. As to imprisoning teenagers, which I find a very silly argument, there is frankly a great deal of unacknowledged compassion and mercy on the pro-life side towards those who are persuaded to abort their babies.
The law recognizes all sorts of extenuating circumstances about the taking of human life, which is why the crime ranges from manslaughter to murder. A teenager living in a culture that insists she is doing no wrong by aborting her baby can be fairly said to be operating under a type of brainwashing. Thus, jailing women who abort their babies makes no more sense than hunting down all ordinary Germans who abetted the Holocaust, though in a true moral sense they are surely also guilty of killing Jews.
So long as prominent abortion supporters like our president pay only lip service to the deep moral problems that killing babies represent, and the courts prevent voters from crafting regional legal compromises, the only solutions lie outside of the law. That may mean prayer, or a bullet. I prefer the former, but I feel no moral outrage towards those who choose the latter. As another commenter has said, the doctor was a butcher.
What is almost completely absent from the abortion debate is the actual word from women and doctors who are effected, or have been effected by legal safe abortion. In a complicated pregnancy or delivery, we never question who should be saved, the mother or the baby. The mother's life is nearly always assumed to take precedent over the baby's life in a high risk delivery.
The women effected by late term abortion cannot just simply go get demand one on a whim. (physician's who provide this are rare) It is a lengthy process, up to three days preparation, and pre and post surgical time. Because it is such a rare procedure, always performed under at-risk, or high risk pregnancies, under anaesthesia, with pre-op dilation (painful) it is not something done for "convenience" purposes.
To remove a child (or an adult) from life support is painful and wrenching enough, but not many would condemn a family for doing that, under a doctors's care in a medical facility. Do we always know what if we made the right decision? What if the miracle of miracles would bring that family member out of a comatose state, or allow them to breath without a machine? But we do not when those miracles can or will happen.
The mother's life is at risk of sepsis if she carries a stillborn. The reason extraction is the prefered method of abortion of brain-dead children is because it preserves the uterus for a future pregnancy. The "partial birth abortion" is the less traumatic procedure, (now illegal) and preserves the body intact, in case a family desires internment. The alternative, the currently legal procedure is far more hazardous, far more gruesome as to the condition of the fetus, and is far more disturbing to the families who must undergo it.
I think the abortion debate has been completely sidetracked from the relevancy. When does life begin?/how is it different from infanticide?/how shocking! These side arguments serve no purpose because they are completely irrelevant to the actualities of abortion.
In every country where abortion is illegal, the number one cause of maternal and INFANT mortality is prior illegal abortion. In most of those countries, birth control is also illegal, or considered an "abortificiant". In Chile, the abortion rate for women is over 50%. Most of them are illegal. In countries such as Nicaragua, women suspected of inducing their own miscarriages are arrested and upon conviction, serve lengthy prison terms. So does anyone who helps them, such as hubands or boyfriends. In many states it is already Illegal to give yourself or a friend a miscarriage, and murder if you cause a miscarriage after 24 weeks pregnancy.
A war on abortion is a war against the sanctity of marriage and family. It is an assault on a woman's body. It threatens the personal sovereignty of a woman's body in favor of a percieved, potential, or undeveloped human. We must always choose life for life, that is the one fact of humanity that will always exist. We choose life for life when we save a child from a burning car and wait to go back for the parent. We choose life for life when we pull the plug on an ailing parent on life support. We choose life for life when we go to war, when we look the other way, when we don't get involved in a violent crime, when we allow ourselves to be blissfully unaware of the suffering in our darkest neighborhoods. We look away from child abuse, and gang violence. This is our self preservation. So too abortion.
Jump off a roof already.
But stillborns aren't the bulk of Tiller's (or any late-term abortion provider's) business. I don't think any state forces a woman to carry a stillborn infant around. If so, enlighten me.
An infant who'll die at birth or shortly thereafter--that's a different situation, and no, I certainly don't think anyone should be forced to carry that child to term, if she doesn't want to.
Actually, I think you mean affected-it's only English-learn it.
Geez, it's only manners-learn them.
Your statement on 8 months is very odd.
It's certainly arguable, even probable, that killing an 8-month fetus should be a crime, call it murder or something else, and I think a sizable number of Americans, perhaps even a majority, agree with me.
I'm pro-choice, but the notion of an abortion at 8 months makes me want to puke.
See my comment right below yours.
I've been a little too active in this comment log, but I can't resist. In response to this little gem from the original article:
>>I am pro-choice. I don't think abortions before, say, eight months are even arguably murder. Moreover, I don't think many other people believe it's murder, either, for all that they profess to.
Fox News Poll: 51% Percent of Americans Take Pro-Life Position on Abortion
link: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/15/poll-americans-pro-life-pro-choice-time/
CBS News Poll: 54% of Americans take Pro Life Position on Abortion
http://www.lifenews.com/nat3389.html
Guess you were wrong on that one.
I thought the article began well; but the ending was silly and did not live up to its promise. I also thought it was rather presumptuous along the way. You dont think abortion opponents really believe what they claim? Perhaps not, but that is a rather large assumption to make about the beliefs of others.
I really dont think anyone is out there saying, in response to the horrific murder of Dr. Tiller, "nah nah now we'll kill more fetuses...yea!!...we'll show you!" That is setting up a straw horse to knock down and does nothing to advance any argument.
My belief is that life begins when the fetus can live and breathe independently. When it is not either a being preserved in a dish or with the aid of machinery. I do not mean to say that a child is not a living being solely because it is dependent on another for care or needs medical services to survive; only that before i regard it as a being entitled to that care it must at least be able to breathe and exist on its own for a moment - however brief. It is that moment of miracle which defines the beginning of a human life.
It is indefensible to me that those who disagree choose to advocate their position by murder.
If they believe my view [or any other such position] is wrong then their obligation is to demonstrate why; not to murder those who act on a differing belief.
The article in the end is not serious because it goes from discussing these difficult moral questions to raising an argument over them in opposition to a silly comment created by the author that no one debating the issues seriously is actually making.
Define machinery. Is an oxygen tube under the nose "machinery"? How about a tube in the nose for supplemental feeding, for small babies who get too tired to suck? Plenty of full-term babies need this kind of help, and many premature ones don't. I know a 29-weeker who needed three days of CPAP and then was fine on room air, and another who needed a month on a full ventilator -- and there was no way to know what either would need until after birth.
As for living and breathing independently for "a moment, however brief", most babies do that even prior to 24 weeks. Babies born at 19 or 20 weeks, an age which is absolutely not considered viable, often breathe for at least a few minutes or hours after birth. Their lungs are lacking in surfactant and thus eventually collapse, but they do breathe and have heartbeats, and even cry. Often they have Apgar scores of 8 or 9, just like full-term babies. They're intubated to keep them alive over the longer term, but they're definitely born alive.
From the site that you linked:
While I agree it bugs me seeing this on a liberal site - they advocate that Congress get into all sorts of specifics all the time. What makes this case so different?
From my essay "Do the abortion math":
Read more for what I believe to be the only rational compromise on the matter.
Could we induce birth and then let the fetus die (very little or no medical intervention aside from making the death less painful)?..If it is the mother's health that is at risk, maybe inducement or a c-section would be an option?
The problem here is that birth, whether by induction of labor or by c-section, is riskier than abortion. (BTW, deliberately giving birth prior to viability, or with no intention of providing NICU care, is considered to be elective termination of pregnancy -- it's just a different method of abortion, and arguably not a kinder one to the fetus in some cases.)
If a mother is very, very ill (as can happen very quickly with preeclampsia/HELLP), there may not be time for induction of labor. You're still giving birth, so it still takes 12-24 hours from the beginning of induction, and induction doesn't always work. Plus, labor and delivery is a lot of physical stress, which is a very bad idea for a woman who may already be having seizures and threatening to stroke.
A CS is also major surgery, which is problematic for women with HELLP whose blood can't clot, and carries even higher risks of death or loss of fertility. Anecdotally, I had a major hemorrhage with my first CS, and a postpartum infection after my second CS which seriously damaged my ability to have more children. I'm OK with this because my family is complete, but I would have a very hard time if I'd lost my first child and my fertility together. A CS is a pretty safe operation as they go, but it's still more dangerous than a D&E.
I do actually tend to the pro-life side of the abortion continuum, and am not at all comfortable with abortion for non-medical reasons. However, I also have a lot of personal experience with various aspects of reproductive wars -- I've been through infertility treatment, multiple pregnancy, two different potentially life-threatening pregnancy disorders, a fatal genetic disorder scare, preterm labor at 24 weeks, and serious medical complications with both births. It's taught me that there is always an edge case where abortion really is the "better" choice. Most abortions aren't that complicated, but some are, and it makes it a hard problem.
The argument for killing Dr. Tiller is that he has a history of committing murder and is going to murder again. In Texas, at least, it is legal to use deadly force to protect the life of another. Now to be strictly legal, the killer should have broken into the operating room and shot Dr. Tiller as he was about to perform an abortion.
Now I don't advocate killing abortion doctors but I don't understand how anyone can think a third trimester fetus is not human. A third trimester fetus is essentially a baby. Eight months is a ridiculous cutoff...
Singer is clearly deranged. He advocates infanticide (or at least argues that it's ethical) while arguing that euthenasia for demented elderly people is unethical if they expressed a wish to be kept alive. So for a baby with a potential for a long and healthy life, killing them is a-okay, but for an elderly person with severe dementia who has lived a long life and is not going to recover, killing them would be unethical.
Comparisons of abortion to slavery are contrived and irrelevant. There was no justification for murdering slave owners just as there is no justification today for killing Health Professionals who provide medically approved health care.
If one wishes to talk to the future, then let's look to the day when abortions will no longer be required. When technology will allow the fetus to be safely extracted and brought to term outside the body, thus saving both the mother and the baby.
Until that day however, mothers, not doctors, politicians, or media talking heads, should be making the decisions that affect their health.
Comparisons of abortion to slavery are contrived and irrelevant.
They're perfectly relevant. Both are tied strongly to supreme court rulings, both treat the subject as property and in neither case does the being who is most affected have any choice in the matter.
Someday science will show us that slaves can live on their own as full members of society instead of as savages. Until that day however slave owners, not doctors, politicians, or media talking heads, should be making the decisions that affect their property rights.
Your attempt to equate the two still falls short. The Supreme Court has not ruled that a fetus is property. In fact, one would assume that just as you cannot purchase an organ for transplant, the same holds true for a fetus.
Still, the real point is that the murder of those who are engaged in a lawful business, despite your personal revulsion with what they do, is not acceptable in a civilized society.
To try and justify murder by invoking god or morality is a sick perversion of both.
I agree and don't think that most people who claim abortion is murder truely believe what they say. To say that that murdering someone who preforms abortions "makes total sense" is just wrong and irresponsible. This is how the anti-choice movement has rationalized it and in turn encouraged the actions of anti abortion terorists in the first place.
Furthermore there were plenty of states where abortion was legal before Roe V. Wade, and although the decission to legalize abortions didn't come about through normal political means doesn't mean that it can't be over turned through the political proccess
I gave birth at 30 weeks to my son, Peter. He's 14 now, loves drumming and skateboarding.
The above commentaries, some thoughtful, some merely accusatory, epitomize the moral and scientific contradictions inherent in the abortion debate. I am strongly, even fervently pro-choice, but not unsympathetic to the pro-life perspective. As a scientist, however, perhaps I can contribute some additional insight that extends beyond the moralizing.
To me, the question as to when life begins is irrelevant. As far as we know, life began about 3-plus billion years ago, and has not begun again since. A new individual starts when sperm meets egg, but the more relevant question (at least to us in the pro-choice camp) is when there emerges within the arc of fetal development an entity with attributes that make human life exceptionally precious - distinguishing it from the life of a mouse, a rabbit, a fish, or a mosquito. (I would add that I would regret the death of all the foregoing except for the mosquito, because in that sense, I'm emotionally pro-life, but I would not see those deaths as equivalent to the death of a human person).
What are the distinctive attributes I allude to? As persons, we are aware of our own existence. Even beyond self awareness, though, we are capable of hopes, dreams, plans, longings, aspirations and regrets. We live not only in the present but preserve detailed memories of our past, and even more importantly, anticipate the future with eagerness or worry. We are aware that life is temporary, and knowing that, we hope death will not come so soon as to deprive us of the future life we wish for ourselves. It is the loss of our future, in fact, that makes death so devastating for many of us. Few other animals share these attributes, and none shares them to the full extent we do as humans.
The extent to which these attributes are possessed during the first trimester of pregnancy, when most abortions are performed, is in fact zero. In fact, the development of the fetal brain does not establish the connections needed for even an awareness of pain until the second trimester. As development proceeds, however, the distinctively human attributes gradually appear, mostly late within the third trimester, but still rudimentary even at the time of birth. In that sense, a fetus is not a "baby", even if the adjective "unborn" is attached. Inconveniently, there is no sharp boundary from a scientific perspective indicating when an individual graduates from a level shared with most other animals to one that is distinctively and preciously human. The best we can do is to act conservatively to ensure we don't inadvertently destroy what is meaningfully human rather than merely biologically human. It is a compelling reason to be wary of third trimester abortions, but none, in my view, to preclude first trimester ones.
Parenthetically, I might address the claim that can be raised that the first and second trimester fetus is at least a potential person. Indeed so, but a potential person has no self-awareness, feels no pain, longs and hopes for nothing, has no plans and no regrets, and does not fear death. Does this mean that anyone troubled by the destruction of this potential is wrong? That would be unfair, because we each respond differently to the meaning of that consequence. I would suggest, however, that these individual differences are precisely what the concept of "choice" is about, and why it is regrettable that anyone would impose his or her choice on another. I'll add that modern research indicates that stem cells from adults appear to have the same potential as a fertilized egg. The results are not yet known to be applicable to humans, but that is almost certainly a technical matter rather than a fundamental biological distinction. In essence, a cell from one's skin could potentially be coaxed someday into becoming a person, and its destruction would thus be the destruction of a potential person. In my view, the fact that an artificial path to personhood differs from the natural route is not the distinction that would justify trivializing the former and deeming the latter to be murder. The vital distinction is between what is potential and what is real. To kill what is real is murder in the eyes of all of us with a moral sense. How we view what is not yet real remains, and should remain, a matter of choice.
Fred Moolten
Hey Fred,
Thanks for your contribution. To expand a upon one point you brought up but did not dive into....babies don't develop those unique attributes for months/years. Though we know they will develop those attributes.
So is not the life precious when we know the attributes will develop, rather than just once they have developed?
As persons, we are aware of our own existence. Even beyond self awareness, though, we are capable of hopes, dreams, plans, longings, aspirations and regrets. We live not only in the present but preserve detailed memories of our past, and even more importantly, anticipate the future with eagerness or worry...In that sense, a fetus is not a "baby", even if the adjective "unborn" is attached. Inconveniently, there is no sharp boundary from a scientific perspective indicating when an individual graduates from a level shared with most other animals to one that is distinctively and preciously human.
The problem is that a newborn baby isn't a "baby" either, if the criteria are as you suggest -- the capacity for hopes, dreams, plans, longings, detailed memories, etc. Many older, non-human animals greatly exceed human newborns in these capacities. What makes babies "preciously human" is their potential much more than their present characteristics. But that is true of fetuses as well, no?
Abortion Killer -
You are not contributing anything in these comments, other than wasted screen space. You appear to be telling people of every persuasion to discover terminal velocity. In other words, you appear to be wasting your time and wasting others.
By the way, have you noticed your screen name doesn't make sense? It's not a nickname or a self-descriptor. It's just two words that, in this context, don't connect in their current format.
They should do as I and jump off the rooves of their cars.
Sigh. Let's pull up this video again.
If someone really thinks that a fetus(or earlier stage of development) is really a human being, then they must also conclude that abortion really is homocide, women who abort should be thrown in jail for murder one for a long, long, time, and there aren't any exceptions for rape or incest.
Any waffling from that position would strike me as a person who really wasn't being serious about their precious concept of pershonhood and humanity.
Hey SoV-
I kind of expected what I saw in the first 45 seconds of that video before it even opened. (I did close it after about 45 seconds to 1 minute, so my apologies if I missed an important part)
Like many issues of controversy, the subjects advocating one position or another haven't thought through all of the ramifications of their advocacy. In this case, I imagine the people are so focused on one aspect that they haven't figured out their positions on some of the "down the line" stakes. And, most likely, they are afraid of responding to something they haven't thought through...
I think it's homicide, but it doesn't fill me with the tremendous anger of, say, a 14 year old girl getting raped and then strangled.
Rather, it fills me personally with sadness that someone had to face that choice and made the decision to abort. I want them to realize what is wrong. I don't think of them as murderers immediately.
I'm going to beat a dead horse here, but there were millions of Nazis. They weren't all put into prison once the regime was destroyed. Many of them acted as they did out of fear of what would happen otherwise....
For some reason, I think of this similarly. Though the action is morally reprehensible to me, I just want people in the future to NOT make that choice. I'm not really focused on penalizing.
Just my .02
Joe
It's conceivable that a fetus has a moral status somewhere greater than a tumor, but less than a full human being, wherein killing one is reprehensible, but not as severe as murder.
(Sadly, many pro-life advocates seem not to have thought this through far enough, and, as Megan and that video point out, stake out a nonsensical position that abortion is just as bad as murder, except when it isn't.)
It's also worth noting that a person can believe that a fetus is fully human, but still recognize that carrying a child to term is a significant imposition on that rights of the mother, but that that imposition is justified when the pregnancy is voluntary, but not when the imposition is forced. We do recognize a right to kill in self-defense, and for many, that includes defense against substantial infringement of bodily integrity; abortion in the case of rape can easily be seen as justified self-defense, even by people who believe that a person dies as a result.
MM--you change months to weeks with no explanation?
You don't believe that the original substitution of "months" for "weeks" was anything more than an oversight, do you?
I was just sent a very telling story about how Dr. Tiller came to be involved in providing abortions.
What a wonderful human being he was!
Here is the story of his career choice [sorry, i have no site for where this is from; it was sent by a friend of a friend who is involved with protecting the right to abortion]:
"His father had to turn someone away when abortion was illegal. That patient passed away. The elder Dr Tiller vowed to never let that happen again,legal or not. Upon the young Dr Tillers return from serving his country as a flight surgeon,he wanted to become a dermatologist. When his father was going to retire he saw a need to save lives so he took over his fathers practice. All they wanted to do was help people and save lives."
I'm trusting that the write-ups about Tiller aren't professionally done, because they do sound very simplistic and, in fact, make him seem shallow.
I am curious just what has to be thought through. If a fetus at 10 weeks is declared a human being, then aborting it is murder. In fact, premeditated murder. Open and shut. There's nothing to mull through, it doesn't take months of 'study'.
There's a few other videos out there like this, and it's pretty obvious that what is taking time to figure out is how to declare that abortion should be illegal on certain grounds without at the same time incarcerating the woman for life. Because, you know, that's looneytunes. Complete crazy. And they know the American public will never buy it.
It took me months of thinking things through to come to the conclusion that abortion was wrong (and not just late-term).
And I was far more focused on that then on the repercussions of making it illegal.
That was my point.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, securing their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Tiller's death was murder. His killer must and will be punished.
Abortion is also a violation of an inalienable right.
It represents legal tyranny.
Law gets many people exercised. It's so difficult to find an acceptable compromise.
I hope people will read the posts by Ezra Klein to which Megan is (surely) referring:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/how_should_congress_respond_to.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/setting_the_record_straight_on.html
The political process is NOT closed off--that's the thing here. Your argument presumes there has been some special condition imposed, but the right to an abortion is "settled law." The fact that you are in the minority does not mean that the political process does not work. It means you're in the minority. I remember, for example, opposing the Iraq War and arguing that the evidence for WMD was weak. I didn't get my way. If I went own to the pentagon and shot someone, would you be arguing that law law should go easy on me, otherwise I might be worse?
Seriously--the only possible tactic, in a society based on the rule of law, is to come down hard on the side of law. Conservatives generally love to denounce "appeasement:" they all have busts of Winston Churchill. Are you arguing the law should appease people like this?
If I bomb hospitals clinics, would you begin to support universal health care?
The fact that you are in the minority does not mean that the political process does not work.
Do you advocate that Roe v. Wade be overturned so that the decision can indeed be made by a majority of the people as opposed to 5 uber-lawyers?
No, I advocate that the same legal process that's been used to change other laws be used to change this one.
As far as I can tell a majority of the population support Roe v. Wade. If that changes, then Supreme Court won't be far behind, and Congress can further legislate against it.
Imaginging that it's just five people who keep Roe in force is naive. The Roe case still has the approval of most Americans. That's the larger will pro-life forces are trying to thwart
SoV - when one person kills another, even if it is deemed to be a crime and there is no defense, the punishments vary quite a bit depending on the circumstances. There is a precedent for treating the killer of a fetus different from the killer of an adult. Just like the killer of a child might got treated different than the killer of an adult or someone who killed under duress might get treated differently than someone who killed in cold blood after much planning.
I am pro-life and mostly anti-abortion. I would consider a late term abortion (one without medical reasons) to be similar to murder. But that does not mean I advocate treating the doctor or the mother the same way I would someone who killed someone for his wallet.
Carey - when the Supreme Court rules that it is Unconstitutional to ban abortion, then there has been a special condition imposed. In order to ban abortion, a Constitutional amendment must be passed which is a pretty high bar.
The majority leans pro-life but restricting abortion is hard because of the Supreme Court ruling even if the majority want to do so.
It SHOULD be a high bar--lots of people disagree with you about abortion. I tend to regard banning abortion as an egregious violation of women's rights. Lots of people agree with me--depending on which poll, a majority. So yes, it should be a very high bar.
It was a very high bar to end segregation, and a very high bar to end slavery.
Think about Dred Scott--the Supreme Court argued that the Northern states could not ban slavery, and that the negro had no rights a white man was bound to respect. It looks a lot like Roe from some angles. But slavery was on its way out--there was no need for the Civil War, slavery was gone everywhere in the world by 1888. Segregation looked immovable in 1934: 20 years later it was gone. If public sentiment trends against abortion, abortion will vanish
The problem, again, is that pro-life forces do not command a majority, they just think they do. Blaming it on the SOTUS is convenient and easy and empowers people like Roeder.
I thought that was a typo when I saw it.
I do not believe that any woman has an abortion lightly, and that having had an abortion, it will surely be in her thoughts forever.
Until a man can be pregnant NO man should decide what a woman can or cannot do to her body.
Saskia - I know of very, very few people who say that "a man should decide what a woman can or cannot do to her body".
And even if a man can get pregnant, why should that enable them to have any more decision over the woman's body?
I think one of the fundamental disagreements is whether or not the fetus is "a woman's body" or a new body being nourished by the woman.
If the latter, should a siamese twin be enabled to kill off the other side?
If the former, does a fetus only become a baby once the umbilical cord is cut?
Hokay. If someone murders an eight-year-old in what is clearly a act of premeditation, should they get the same sentence as someone who has premeditatively murdered a thirty-year-old?
Call me quaint and naive, but to first cut, I would suspect that a judge and jury would pile on in the murder of an eight-year-old, and the killer would be lucky to escape the death penalty. The thirty-year-old? Maybe not so much.
This idea that if a person views late-term abortion as murder then that person has to think Dr. Tiller's murderer is a "hero" is not logical.
Both are immoral. It's not an either/or scenario.
I've also found some interesting stuff on sentencing guidelines. My, my. Murder of any sort appears to be what is called a zone D offense. That doesn't look good. And here's a chart of sentencing guidelines as applied to murder.
Looks like about ten years, even if little Miss Daisy has been a model citizen and the leader of her scout troop.
So then, for the crime of abortion, we're talking, what? Eight years? Five years would seem to be an absolute minimum for the women involved.
When a life and/or health insurance policy can be purchased for the "conceived", or a tax deduction taken, or a social security number or some other identification issued (along with its benefits and responsibilities), then we can legislate the "personhood" of a fetus. I look forward to that day.
I doubt that anyone who makes sweeping generalizations about why women choose abortion has ever had to personally confront the issue.
When the mother's physical health is at risk, it is a Hobson's choice. If the risk is to the mother's mental health, then the impact would surely be felt by the child and the family, too.
When a fetus has such serious health issues that its life will be possible only with the infusion of enormous resources of medical technology, then there is a choice but one that involves us all: someone must pay for that care. Will we support a universal health care system that guarantees that care to all expectant mothers and infants who need it? Or will this option be available only to those who can afford it, with those who can't delivering the child and waiting for him or her to die "naturally"?
When it is a case of "convenience", there are so many variables that no generalization is possible:
Is the mother a child herself?
Was she raped, or coerced into this pregnancy?
Does she want this child?
Will keeping this child adversely impact her family?
Can she afford the pre-natal care, the delivery, and the cost to raise a child?
What will be the cost to her education, her job and her future?
Is the father want the child? Is he willing to assume both the financial and the familial responsibility for raising the child?
If she offers her infant for adoption, will there be a family waiting for it?
A better alternative might be to match those with unwanted pregnancies to those who are spending trillions of dollars in fertility treatments. Surely many women who chose to terminate pregnancies do so because they do not have the maturity, or the means, to raise a child. And surely those who would spend so many dollars on fertility treatments do so because they truly want to raise a child, not because they want simply to continue their DNA.
If every anti-abortion advocate actually offered an alternative to these women - a loving family for their infant that will cover the cost for pre-natal care and delivery, or "adoption" of the mother so that she can keep her child but still finish her education and gain the means to support her child - then the "pro-life" term you insist upon using would mean something. One cannot be pro-life for the sake of life without thinking about how keeping an unwanted child can affect the mother, the father, the child, the family, and society in general.
Is Dr. Tiller a murderer? That is a moral question, not a legal one (see paragraph one). Is the person who killed Dr. Tiller a murderer? That is a legal question, although the debate will continue based upon the answer you make regarding Dr. Tiller.
Moral absolutism is so messy.
Oh, dear lord, woman. You seem to have NO idea what an intact dilation and extraction is, who has one -- or why.
Educate yourself before you speak. You'll come across as far less a fool.
I know precisely and exactly what it is, and I know why those who have had one for medical reasons have done so.
It would be enlightening for you to share your alternative.
It is rude to infer that someone is a "fool" because they do not share your viewpoint.
First, you are misusing the word "infer." You mean "imply."
And I do not understand what you mean when you say you wish me to share my "alternative." When someone gets to 8 months' pregnancy and needs an intact dilation and extraction... she HAS no alternative. That IS the point. To call her and her doctor murderers makes you a fool. Period. And not a little callous and heinous.
And no, if you're still insisting on calling them murderers, you simply do NOT know what it is. You can say you do, but that is a bald faced lie. You have all the facts at your disposal, but you still call them murderers? And you draw an equivalence between the assassination of the doctor who performs an absolutely necessary MEDICAL procedure... and the medical procedure itself?
Utter, unequivocal... fool.
Actually, both "infer" and "imply" can be correct in that sentence.
Wow. Our side has its own set of extremists. Who knew!?
I happen to be pro-choice. I also happen to think that if there was a little more conversation and a little less name-calling we might make some progress on keeping abortion available, safe and less frequent.
I did not call either Dr. Tiller nor anyone else a murderer. In fact, I believe that this sentence - "When the mother's physical health is at risk, it is a Hobson's choice." is exactly the point that you made in the second sentence of your second paragraph.
Are you sure you actually read my post?
I think that we are violently agreeing with one another.
Dawn, thank you.
No, Jane. Not you. McArdle.
Sorry I wasn't clearer in the use of the second person there, and sorry about the flippancy with the whole "infer"/"imply" crap. I was just a MITE inflamed yesterday. I am, in fact, still quite inflamed. But No, it wasn't YOU I was calling the fool.
Pays to pause and take a breath or two before posting. I really, REALLY ought to have learned that lesson by now.
On the other hand... I don't deny the extremist charge. In the case of people's right to make their own medical choices without government interference (or being assassinated by whackjobs or terrorist groups, for the love of god) -- yeah, I'm an extremist.
Thanks for an article that thoughtfully looks at both sides of this issue. That is important and helpful because most Americans do exist somewhere in the middle of this debate.
I identify as pro-choice, but within strict limits. Like most people with a heart I am horrified by the idea of the healthy, viable, pain-feeling fetus who is "vacuumed/hacked-up/murdered/butchered/left-to-die," if I may borrow some of the rhetoric from the anti-abortion movement. Tiller's murderer is undeniably deranged, but was also inflamed by this exact type of rhetoric to think he was committing justifiable homicide.
I know that while the vast majority of pro-lifers would in no way advocate the vigilante style murder of anyone, the movement (despite Randall Terry's disclaimer) to some degree must take responsibility for inflaming this type of violence. Ultimately what happened to Tiller may seriously damage their cause, particularly at this time in history when pro-lifers seek to be acknowledged as representative rather than extreme.
Some argue that Tiller's murderer was driven to violence as a last resort because his (and most Americans') beliefs on the issue were being ignored by the government. Actually, abortion laws *do* exist in the gray area where most Americans are, though with vastly differing gradations they will never satisfy everyone (to seek some viable solution--other than prevention--that will satisfy everyone is a moot point, because it doesn't exist).
The clinic where Tiller worked is only 1 in 3 in the entire US where abortions are legally performed after the 21st wk, ostensibly for serious medical reasons, not for those of convenience. That's still a point of contention; hopefully more facts (but probably much misinformation) will come out in the days ahead. However, anyone who thinks an abortion, especially one in the 2nd half of a pregnancy, is remotely "easy" or "convenient" for any woman, is delusional.
Megan McArdle will try to walk it back, but it looks as if she said that at some time between 8 weeks and birth, killing the fetus becomes murder.
Exhibit A:
"I don't think abortions before, say, eight...weeks are even arguably murder."
Exhibit B:
"[T]he more we know about fetal development, the more support for abortion seems to drop..."
(Notice Megan said the more we know, and not: the more those crazy people think...)
I don't think there's a significant difference in the humanity of a 7, 8 and 9 month fetus and a born baby: Same brain-waves, same feeling of pain, and the same ability to perceive the world, but the fetus's external world is just smaller before birth. (And millions of us are born from 7 - 9 months. Do we make a fundamental moral distinction based upon the arbitrary date the Mother's body pushes out the child?)
Megan throws out a red herring along the way, when she refutes those who place an emphasis on conception, ans she's correct that few people really believe that all the way down.
But that's not what this matter is about, and Megan knows it.
When it comes to the shocking evil of late-term abortion as practiced by Dr. Tiller, Megan is a crazy judgmental religious fundamentalist, just like me.
(I personally am not religious, and I'd guess that neither is Megan McArdle, so I said "religious" just to rub it in, I suppose. But plenty of atheists are opposed to abortion, e.g., Nat Hentoff. And Meg McArdle.)
Figuratively Speaking,
Note the contradiction in your second paragraph. If you really regarded it as merely "rhetoric" then you wouldn't be horrified.
Abortion has morphed into yet another battlefield in the culture war that, at its heart, seeks to attack feminism, assert the dominance of men over women, and turn the United States into a Christian theocracy. Unfortunately, the court did a half-assed job with Roe, which has allowed this to fester.
The issue should be very simple, particularly to anyone who believes him or herself to be a libertarian: Just so long as the fetus is attached to the mother, the mother should maintain a unilateral right to decide its fate, period. The issue, if there is one, is between the mother, her conscience and, if she has one, her God or assorted deities. Legislation has no place here until the fetus becomes a child, a status that begins once outside the womb.
It is not the government's business nor my business. And it certainly isn't the business of people who post here, particularly for men who can only approach this academically as outsiders who need not live with the consequences. I have no more right to tell a woman what she can do with her fetus, any more than I have a right to dictate what she does with her appendix.
Two can play at this game:
Abortion has morphed into yet another battlefield in the culture war that, at its heart, seeks to attack the nuclear family, assert the dominance of the will of the rulers over the will of the ruled, and send the United States into a nihilistic, self-destructive downward spiral. Unfortunately, the court did the wrong job with Roe, which has allowed this to fester.
Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it? Well, that's how abortion opponents read your argument.
RW,
Yours is an emotional rant against those you don't like, rather than an attempt to persuade by the use of logic. I'm not a Christian, and I don't think you need to be a Christian to have a moral objection to killing people. You apparently have some difficulty thinking. By the same argument you use on your post, it's alright for one Siamese twin is his or her conjoined sibling.
The Siamese twin analogy is an interesting one. Say that Siamese twins are born in such an arrangement:
* separating them would cause one twin to die.
* one of the twins is severely retarded or otherwise disabled to the point of being catatonic.
* the other twin is a fully functioning individual.
Would it be morally justifiable to separate the functional twin from the "parasitic" one, even though it would result in the "parasitic" twin's death?
In my opinion, even as someone who despises abortion that is not medically necessary, it would be.
Yours is an emotional rant against those you don't like
No, I'm just calling it as I see it. The arguments against abortion rights are rooted in a specific interpretation of religious faith, not the Constitution. People who want to live in a theocracy should move to the Vatican.
I'm not a Christian, and I don't think you need to be a Christian to have a moral objection to killing people.
Yes, but as a fetus is not a person, that's not particularly relevant to the discussion.
The issue is fairly straightforward, and that is a woman's control over her own person. That prevails above your opinion or my opinion. It's just none of your business, and you should insert your nose elsewhere where it belongs, instead of places where it does not.
I am indifferent to what the fanatics think, frankly. I don't expect them to be convinced, and I frankly wouldn't waste my time trying to convince them, any more than I'd try to find religious tolerance in a jihadist. Some people are simply nuts, and they need to be ignored if they are peaceable, and imprisoned if they are not.
Yes, but as a fetus is not a person, that's not particularly relevant to the discussion.
Actually, that's the entire basis for the discussion.
Not to argue, but if a fetus isn't a person, what is it? The DNA says human, right? So--it's human, but not a person? How does that work?
Here's what I think:
a fetus is human. But it's not fully developed, and it's dependent upon the mother's body, before birth, and upon others, after birth. As an adult woman, I have more rights and responsibilities than does the fetus/unborn child. And one of those rights is the right to terminate the pregnancy, i.e. kill the unborn child, because only I can judge if I can carry the child to birth without serious damage to myself or to him or her, based on all the information available to me. To make a thoughtful choice, I need to be presented with that information.
With that right, comes the responsibility to make that decision mindfully. Not lightly, not on a whim, not without full knowledge aforethought. If I can't grasp those principles, other need to act in my place, but they should be acting in my best interest in all other matters as well.
Yes, it's killing. No,it's not pretty. But we make lots of hard choices in our lives, and live with the consequences.
Somewhat apropos of your comment, Camile Paglia has an interesting take on the subject:
Well, Camile does love to call a spade a mutha-lovin' shovel, but I think she's right. Rather than dance around the words, people might as well talk straight. (Fetus vs. baby sort of bothers me, as a classic example of dehumanizing.)
It's fairly easy to bash religious people, and thereby relieve yourself of the burden of having to come up with reasoned arguments for your own beliefs, because supposedly it's only those crazy religious people who believe otherwise.
I don't believe in God, but I do believe in biology, and I know that there's no significant developmental distinction between a 7 or 8 or 9 month old fetus and one who has emerged from the mother at around 9 months. So if you think it's wrong to go to maternity ward and stick a surgical instrument in a baby's head and scrape out her brains, it's wrong to do so to a late term fetus.
Reason.
Learn it.
Leave it.
Love it.
Kinda destroys the great dramatic effect, having to correct myself. I think I meant, Reason: Learn it, Live it, Love it.
But Whatevs.
I don't believe in God, but I do believe in biology, and I know that there's no significant developmental distinction between a 7 or 8 or 9 month old fetus and one who has emerged from the mother at around 9 months.
It's not enough to "believe" in biology, you need to familiarize yourself with it. A 9 mo old fetus in utero is nothing like a delivered, cord clamped neonate.
So if you think it's wrong to go to maternity ward and stick a surgical instrument in a baby's head and scrape out her brains, it's wrong to do so to a late term fetus.
Good thing the practice of medicine is based on reality rather than perception/personal belief/fantasy/"I think something, therefore it's true."
The indication for fetal skull collapse is to effect delivery. Totally appropriate for a fetus still in utero, not so much for one that's already been delivered.
Actually, that's the entire basis for the discussion.
For those of us who recognize it as the sovereignty issue that it is at its core, it certainly is not.
... and "sovereignty" is preconditioned on personhood.
"sovereignty" is preconditioned on personhood.
In my universe, that's true.
In yours, a fetus and its self-appointed guardians have primacy over an adult woman.
It would seem that if are to follow your lead that the rights of personhood decline following one's birth, at least in the case of a female zygote. A bit ironic, but I've lived in this country long enough that I've grown accustomed to this sort of logic.
It would seem that if are to follow your lead that the rights of personhood decline following one's birth, at least in the case of a female zygote. A bit ironic, but I've lived in this country long enough that I've grown accustomed to this sort of logic.
I don't know where you get that. My viewpoint (which I'm sure will be more vilified than Megan's "everyone will hate me for this" post) is that "personhood" should be defined by certain neurological activity; what the activity is, exactly, I don't know. Zygotes don't have brains, so they're immediately disqualified in my book. It gets a lot tougher with fetuses, though, especially since an ape has a more advanced brain than an infant.
Speaking of which, I'm curious about what decision you would make in the Siamese twin thought experiment I posited above...
I know that there's no significant developmental distinction between a 7 or 8 or 9 month old fetus and one who has emerged from the mother at around 9 months.
That's lovely, but as it has absolutely nothing to do with the points that I raise, it's not particularly relevant to my point.
I am familiar with your points, and they have no bearing on the issue of a woman's supremacy over what is her body part until the birth of the fetus. If I was using a viability argument, you'd have a point. But as I am not, you don't.
Reason.
Requires.
Comprehension.
I am familiar with your points, and they have no bearing on the issue of a woman's supremacy over what is her body part until the birth of the fetus. If I was using a viability argument, you'd have a point. But as I am not, you don't.
That's a cheap debater's trick. Your choice of argument is subject to reason, no?
The idea that this post is logically sound is a joke. Sure, it follows if you see the world as black and white, with absolutely no gradation, no subjectivity. Which is exactly how extremist Christians see the world and how they can justify murder in the name of God, a fetus, who the fuck knows what. But I think everyone will agree that the world is not black and white.
What this post misses, and what most of the commenters seem to miss, is that Dr. Tiller performed a service for women WHOSE LIVES WERE AT RISK. Women who would otherwise die. Women whose fetuses were already dead. An 11 year old who got raped. Do you think anyone gets an abortion at 8 months because they just changed their fucking mind? Where's the morality of forced pregnancy for those women? A forced pregnancy that quite possibly could end in their own death?
The pro-choice movement has just as strong of moral imperative for women who are, um, FULLY FORMED HUMAN BEINGS. How you missed that, being one yourself, is beyond me.
Oh and please explain how one compromises with a group of people who claim a medical process is murder. Because if you found a way to compromise with an absolute, then, you should share it-- you may have transcended the realm of logic. Otherwise, you're just positing that we should trade the life of the mother for the "life" of the unborn. The people who decry abortion and in a large part the same people who deny comprehensive sex education and teaching evolution in the classroom. Serious Brainiacs.
I seriously doubt any of you have had to choose in such a difficult position. Maybe you should try to relate, before you justify murder of a wonderful human and health care provider.
http://www.msmagazine.com/summer2004/womanandherdoctor.asp
http://www.aheartbreakingchoice.com/late.html
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown
Your choice of argument is subject to reason, no?
You can argue biology all night long if you like.
My point isn't about biology at all. So Zokar's repeated efforts to rebut my points with a biological argument is simply a straw man with respect to my argument.
I have asserted that it is none of my business, unless I happen to be the pregnant female making the decision. I have no jurisdiction to interfere with the choices of women in this position, and I accept the limitations of my authority.
Unlike myself, you want to butt your nose in. Given the primacy of individual rights in this society, you ought to provide a damn compelling reason why you believe yourself to be deputized as the Womb Police.
So far, you've just argued for when you believe your patrol shift should begin, but you haven't supported why should you go there in the first place.
Personally, I think that you need to stay the hell out of it, and find another hobby. The next time that you find yourself pregnant, then you'll have every right to worry about it, and then only about your own case. Otherwise, learn to mind your own business, and keep out the personal matters of others that don't concern you.
I have asserted that it is none of my business, unless I happen to be the pregnant female making the decision. I have no jurisdiction to interfere with the choices of women in this position, and I accept the limitations of my authority.
What about the women being aborted?
Personally, I think that you need to stay the hell out of it, and find another hobby. The next time that you find yourself pregnant, then you'll have every right to worry about it, and then only about your own case. Otherwise, learn to mind your own business, and keep out the personal matters of others that don't concern you.
Right. Just like how I should ignore that battered woman across the street, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and without enough self-esteem to call the cops on her abusive asshole husband.
RW, I usually love your comments, but you've got a classical case of egotistical bias. You're assuming that pro-lifers disagree with you about abortion for the same reason that you disagree with them. In other words, you support abortion because you feel it enhances women's autonomy, and therefore you're assuming that they want to limit abortion in order to limit women's autonomy. It's the exact inverse of pro-lifers who, themselves wanting to prevent abortion because they think it is morally equivalent to killing a baby, declare that pro-choicers hate babies.
There are two incommensurable values here; deciding that one is more important than the other is not the rejection of the other as a good value, much less an active desire to destroy that value.
Very thoughtful and well written. I commend you.
I take issue with this statement:
"The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one."
Science tells us when life begins, not morality. We all know when our lives began -- when we were conceived in our mother's wombs. That's when our existence began.
Morality, not science, tells us that it is wrong to kill others. Science doesn't tell us anything at all about what is right and wrong.
I agree with you that it is possible that someday we will look back on this as we now look back on slavery. You are very wise indeed to understand that the consensus of the nation can change dramatically as it did with slavery. You have a vision of history that I welcome. Would that all would live outside the moment as you do and see things in the larger context.
What I disagree with you on is the likelihood of it. I believe it is quite likely.
The very same thing that was done to African-Americans in the SCOTUS Dred Scott decision was done in the SCOTUS Roe v. Wade decision. "Roe" herself (Norma McCorvey) is now one of the staunchest defenders of life in the pro-life movement and was arrested alongside other protestors at Notre Dame's commencement.
I have personally ministed to women considering abortion and know that society's failure is in not loving them both -- mother and child. We can love them both, particularly now that open adoption is available. Rarely do I see this listed as a choice in the debate and I find it to be very sad that every single woman I ministered to told me "adoption would be cruel". That is proof to me that we aren't doing enough to promote adoption.
This is a very good article which includes some points on which I completely disagree with you, but this is the level of dialogue that I like to see. Please, keep up the good work.
I've been trying to understand the equivalence between Hilzoy's recommendations (legalize D&E; require training in, and availability of, late-term abortion techniques in certain circumstances) and American actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, I guess, we're talking about potential responses to a violent act of terrorism. But - without arguing right or wrong - military invasion of nations we believe to have been at fault is pretty different from working within the political system to enact laws the perpetrators would have disagreed with.
I think your point is that each action is a sort of swaggering alpha-male slapdown - or, rather, you believe that those who sympathize with the respective terrorists interpret them that way. Perhaps so. But that's a slim similarity, against the obvious differences between war and law. You can't use the one to justify conclusions about the other.
The goal is to make legal abortion safe and available for women who need it. (Hilzoy also talks about "one way to stop terrorism", but it seems like a means to an end.) Is increasing the availability of late-term abortion techniques a good way to achieve that goal? I'm sure you can argue it isn't. And deterrence is certainly relevant. But it's not the whole picture.In your footnote, you say that liberals need to understand how these actions will be perceived by the late gunman and future gunmen, if we want to punish/deter them. But I'm not sure punishment, or even deterrence, is Hilzoy's or Ezra Klein's goal. Here's Klein:
I've got a solution! Male birth control!http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3543478
I love everything about babies except that I can make one. I'm also sure I'm not the only man who feels this way, and as soon as that stuff hits the markets baby, I won't be making babies till I'm good and ready.
Holy crap, "late gunman"? What was I thinking when I wrote that? The presumed assassin is, of course, alive and in jail.
What about the women being aborted?
So this is what the anti-choice camp boils down to? So now fetuses have suddenly become "women," even though nobody in the (rational) real world uses this terminology in this way.
Orwell was right. The perversion of language is an instrument of tyranny when words lose their meaning and are used to confuse, rather than to communicate. Hence, all the inappropriate euphemisms from the coat hanger brigade.
This blog convinces me that modern libertarianism has morphed into a branch of the Republican party that just wants to reserve the right to bitch and to feel like iconoclasts, no matter who is in charge.
I am not a libertarian myself, but I embrace the libertarian position on abortion about 100% -- keep the regulatory wannabes out of it, and allow the individual (mother) make the decision. There should be few conflicts among this crowd, but it seems that almost none of them are actually libertarian at all. So much for all that talk about individual liberty...
Sorry Megan, but your post is a load of crap. It would be forgivable if you were a junior high school student, but you're not. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
You're assuming that pro-lifers disagree with you about abortion for the same reason that you disagree with them.
I've actually stated the opposite position. I'm not debating whether or not the fetus is a "baby." I am noting that in a battle over rights that only one side can win the contest over who gets to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy.
Both can't win. A side must be chosen. Either the state's judgment prevails or else it doesn't.
Interesting Discussion
A modest proposal.
I was talking about this issue with a firmly pro-choice friend recently who did admit that there was one situation under which she would be happy to accept strict abortion limitations. That would be if every male in the US made a sperm deposit and got a vasectomy right after puberty. That way there would never be any unwanted children and the only abortions would be in cases where there was an obvious and unavoidable serious threat to the mothers health (ectopic pregnancy, etc) or perhaps massive birth defects (is there really a point to carrying to term an anencephalic fetus with no brain that will die shortly after birth and was arguably never alive in brain activity terms).
This would largely eliminate the threat of pregnancy from rape or incest, so those excuses would not longer be necessary, unless foreign travel was involved. At the very least, it would cut the abortion rate by the success rate of vasectomy as birth control. Wouldn't 99% fewer abortions be a good thing?
I realize that this might cause VD rates to increase, since fear of pregnancy would not scare people out of having sex. It would also be very expensive, but how much do we currently spend on unwanted pregnancies, both those carried to term and aborted. Also, we could avoid much of the spending on other forms of birth control (except condoms), including the indirect health effects of birth control pills.
So gentlemen, which is more important, actually eliminating 99% of abortions, or retaining the right to impregnate anyone you have even casual sex with?
Trevayne
P.S. The sperm deposit is probably unnecessary. It should be possible to extract viable sperm regardless of the state of the seminal vesicles if something happened to your sample.
P.P.S. This proposal would also probably eliminate paternity suits, and if one was sued successfully, you could potentially sue your doctor for malpractice.
P.P.P.S. General point. I thought this topic was mainly about late term abortions. Does anyone really believe women would choose to voluntarily undergo 6+ months of pregnancy just so they could have an abortion for fun? These are very rare procedures (roughly 1 in 1000) and all of the ones I have encountered were for tragic medical necessities (anencephalic fetus, massive cancer in fetus, mother has cancer and needed chemo will kill fetus, etc).
Even if vasectomies were 100% effective(they aren't), such a solution would be a far worse abrogation of human rights than most of th problems it is intended to solve are. I know, thought experiment, but still.
"The law is powerless" is a singularly inaccurate statement in regard to abortion law. A quick glance at Wikipedia shows that states are allowed to restrict late-term abortions, and that four states allow late-term abortions *only* when the woman's LIFE is in danger. Even permanent mental or physical harm is not an acceptable reason.
I am not an expert on late-term abortions, but I seem to have s bit more understanding than you do on the subject. As Sullivan has noted, even in cases where the fetus is viable, most late-term abortions are done to prevent permanent injury or death to the mother, or to prevent more extensive suffering to a baby that will slowly die due to birth defects. If there are cases where a viable healthy fetus is killed as a form of late-term birth control, that is indeed horrific, but as I mentioned above states have the opportunity to outlaw such instances.
By your logic, if I am a radical vegetarian who believes slaughtering intelligent animals (e.g. pigs) for food is a horrific genocide, and I decide to shoot up a slaughterhouse to eliminate these "demonic" people, the Congress should not take action to prevent further such terrorism in the future lest they "incite" my fellow radicals.
A staunch vegetarian who kills slaughterhouse workers is a terrorist. Someone horrified by Bush v. Gore who assassinates a conservative Supreme Court Justice is a terrorist. If someone had gone after Rumsfeld, Feith, et al. to prevent the future horrors of the Iraq War, they would still have been a terrorist.
It's sad to see you state that taking a firm line against domestic terrorism is somehow a "nya nya nya" type of action. (Granted, the form of response needs to be measured and broadly supported.) In case you hadn't noticed, there are only a couple of late-term abortionists in the entire United States, for the very reason that domestic terrorism during the Clinton years proved to be quite effective in scaring off doctors.
Shorter Megan McArdle: We should let the terrorists win.
This is off-topic, and almost like writing in a private journal, because the thread is likely dead. However...
Megan McArdle's post was substantive and thought-provoking, but I wish she chose another example to make her point about alpha-male idiocy than Iraq. I've never been there, but I trust the testimony of journalists such as Christopher Hitchens and John Burns of the NY Times (the Australian; I think his 1st name is John) on the pervasive, crushing evil of pre-invasion Iraq. It's humiliating for what was once the cradle of civilization to have to be liberated by what might have looked like a bunch of cocky 19 year-old kids. But Saddam had the guns - he had the brute physical power to keep oppressing the people of Iraq - and force of that kind had to be checked by force.
And as for the Bob Wright-eque point (not made here) that we should reduce all possible blow-back because of the trend of weapons of ever greater lethality in the hands of ever smaller groups: That proves too much. Because of that trend, we're likely all dead in a couple decades anyway. And it's contemplation of this basic truth that argues in favor in filling the rest of our days with cocaine and whores. No I mean community and family. Yeah, that's it.
Don't you just love this completely idiotic argument? While we're at it, let's try this one too: there's a hypothetical US president who starts an illegal war against a country that did not attack us. This illegal and elective war kills over 4,000 US military and untold thousands of innocent citizens in this hypothetical nation we attack. Someone in the US decides that starting and prosecuting an illegal war is murder. This murdering goes on for years, say 6 or so. Who commanded this murder?? The president. That makes him a murderer. So, this hypothetical president is assassinated by someone who really really really believes God hates illegal wars. That president got what he deserved. And, his death will make all future presidents really think long and hard about starting bulls*!t wars, right? Megan, you have no business being paid to write such utter garbage.