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I’m a little dismayed at how my last post (immigration and food politics) was derailed by the topic of abortion. However, all the big issues are intertwined and I’m sure we could find a link between abortion, food politics and immigration if we tried. All the comments, as well as another thread elsewhere, and my ‘at home’ reading got me thinking again about when ‘life begins.’

Two years ago I spent two days discussing abortion with tenth grade boys in a Catholic high school in California. It was a great experience – for everyone I think. I was 5 months pregnant at the time. In my preparation for the presentation I came across many differing ideas about when life begins. I think the discourse around this needs to be changed from ‘life’ to ‘personhood’, because we are not debating life, we are debating what makes a clump of cells – indisputably alive! - a sentient human entity. If life is what the abortion debate is about then the life of dividing cells, the life of a person-shaped squidlet with spine, eyes, heart and brain clump, is given a lot of weight and other creatures with similar characteristics need to be given the same consideration. This means no animal testing of any kind – rats and monkeys are easily more advanced beings than a fetus at 12 or 20 weeks gestation. This means that eating meat is murder of advanced forms of life. There are many anti-abortion* advocates who are vegetarians, but as a whole the movement needs to address the fact that what we are debating is personhood.

Personhood is more than about whether or not something is alive. Cancer cells are ‘alive,’ mosquitos are alive, that spider you squashed is alive, that chicken is alive. We are talking about placing a priority on human sentience. Now sentience is more than intelligence because I am not suggesting in any way, shape or form that the less intelligent, the developmentally disabled, the infirm, the insane, etc are less than human. So what exactly does being human mean? I would like to see the anti-abortion advocates address this issue. Is it potential for human life? In that case, male masturbation, female menstruation, birth control methods, and any sex that is not intended to procreate are hindering the potential for human life. (Hey! That’s the Roman Catholic position! At least they are consistent.) What about miscarriages? Approximately 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage – often women just experience a heavier period, not knowing that the egg had in fact been fertilized. What do we say to those women?** ‘Potential’ is such a tricky word.

Personhood is about more than ability or potential. Whatever definition of personhood we choose says something about what we believe about humanity and its/our role in the greater picture. Many theologians who delve into this issue of personhood (theological anthropology – an area I love) talk about dignity, particularly the Catholic theologians. I think this is also a murky word. If Catholics and Evangelical and other forms of Protestants (though, again, not all) believe that life begins at conception (a belief that is enabled by modern science!) what do others believe?

Muslims (broadly, as with any large group there are bound to be many exceptions) tend to see personhood as beginning at the first sign of quickening (the first movement felt by the mother). According to David Abrams in The Spell of the Sensuous, Australian Aboriginal cultures believe that the spirit of the baby is inserted into the womb at the first quickening as well. What’s interesting is that this is usually between the 4th and 5th month of pregnancy – after the risk of miscarriage, once pregnancy has firmly taken root. This makes so much sense to me. Some Jewish traditions do not consider the baby a person until its head is outside the womb. Until that moment it has the potential (that word again!) for personhood but isn’t considered a full member of humanity until it is born.

This makes sense in a less scientific world, with less advanced medical care. So why shouldn’t we advance our standards with science? Because I don’t think our lived human experience aligns with that of science. So we can now see a baby-shaped squidlet at 8 weeks. I admit, seeing that is deeply mysterious and profound. But it is a disembodied experience: my mostly still flat belly is rubbed around with a cold instrument (or at this early stage a desexualized dildo is inserted) that produces a blurry black and white digital image. But I still can’t feel the baby. It is still experientially abstract. Our brains know, but our lived experience doesn’t. Women still miscarry – something that is considered shameful. The older I get the more I realize how many women have miscarried and how few of them speak about it. Obviously there is something shameful about this experience if we cannot speak openly about it and comfort one another.

*I have just decided to quit using the term pro-life because I think it is a misnomer. The issue isn’t life – it’s personhood. Most ‘pro-life’ advocates eat meat and are in favor of the death penalty, both of these would fall under ‘against life’ in my logic. ‘Anti-abortion’ states clearly what the group is about. Pro-choice however is more an accurate fit as it indicates that this group is in favor of… choice. I personally would never choose to abort and I feel that I share some of the reasons and emotions of the anti-abortionists, but I believe very strongly in defending this choice.

**I would be really really sad if I thought I was pregnant and miscarried. Those who are trying to have a baby are (usually) saddened no matter when the miscarriage occurs – 3 weeks or 13 weeks. But miscarriages happen for all sorts of reasons, usually ones that do in fact support life. I firmly believe that life wants to perpetuate itself so if a pregnancy miscarries there is most likely a very good natural reason for it.

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I was quite surprised to see that your immigration/food post turned so quickly to abortion. I stayed away, for a multitude of reasons.

I fully agree with much, if not all, of what you posted here. I've never heard it framed this way, but I think you are absolutely right, it is not about 'life', it's about personhood. Defining the moment where life turns into person is tricky - but for me, this whole debate boils down to the fact that no governing entity should have control over my body. Period.

Note that I'm pro-choice.

But I believe that a human is created at conception. What else would it be? A dog? A plant? No. It's a human.

Right now we have a sliding scale on the value of human life. Unborn babies and old people are low on the value scale. In between, there is more value placed on human life. Then enters things like attractiveness, income, accomplishments, etc. Those enter into value as well.

I 100% think it is killing a baby when you have an abortion. But..like capital punishment and self-defense...I think there are times when a person could make the case to society for there being a benefit to killing another human. Although rape and incest gets mentions as reasons - most of the reasons why women have abortions are monetary. Our society DOES seem to value money over humans so this is at least consistent. We want to keep our job, be employable, finish our education, can't afford the costs to raise a child, etc.

The whole "is abortion killing a baby" thing is like an old joke.

A guy asks a lady if she would have sex with him for $10 million dollars. She thinks about it and says "If you really had 10 million dollars, I would do it."
He then asks her if she would have sex with him for $10 dollars. She laughs at him and says, "No way...what kind of lady do you think I am?"

He responds, "We've already established what kind of a lady you are...now we are just arguing over price."

We've already established that babies in the womb are babies, now we are just arguing over at what point in gestation it is not ok to kill them anymore.

Edited 2010-04-30 14:32 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's entirely accurate to say that modern science supports the anti-abortion position. At 8 weeks the foetus might look like a baby, we might be able to determine organs and so forth, but we have no way to determine if it's sentient at that point. Babies once they are born might not even fulfil the conditions of sentience (namely consciousness - subjectivity, change, continuity, selectivity). It's well documented that babies don't have a sense of object permanence until after 6 months, and that around that time they have no notion that they are separate beings from their caregiver/s.

I think it's a lot less problematic to talk about the rights of the being at best developing sentience when it's not living inside someone else. Since we cannot know that a foetus is sentient giving them greater right at the expense of the mother, a being we know for certain is sentient, is vastly immoral to me.

For the record I am a mother, my son was unplanned (using contraception!) and is the light of my life. I can look at him with a full heart and be glad I made the choice I did, and yet be even more glad that I had the choice in the first place.

You're awesome.

I think "personhood" is ultimately a question for theological anthropology, even if you're an atheist and your "theology," as it were, is not centered on God. This is why I think choice is wrapped up with religious freedom and can never be disentangled from it, in a U.S. context.

I'm not arguing that abortion isn't killing off something human. It is indeed killing. But we don't talk about eating animals in terms of murder and killing. So what the debate about is more than 'life.'

"be glad I made the choice I did, and yet be even more glad that I had the choice in the first place"

Yes.

Thank you! I was hoping that your fine ethicist and Jewish self wouldn't call bullshit on me. I hated ethics when I took it!

The more that I think about it...it is all about value. Not an objective value, but a subjective one we place on another person.

If you were pregnant and you wanted the baby, if someone tried to do something to harm the baby, you would fight like a woman possessed to keep it safe. That's because you have placed value on it. It is worth something to you.

If you were pregnant and didn't want the child, than you have placed little or no value on the baby - so harming or killing the baby wouldn't raise your anger. Or, at the least, you have decided that you value something else more than the life of the baby. Job, education, freedom, etc.

Those that are pro-choice place more value on the happiness and earning potential of the mother than we place on the life of the baby.

Those that are anti-abortion place more value on the life of the child than the happiness or earning potential of the mother.

Hmmm.....happiness and income vs being alive. That's kind of a cold blooded rationale, isn't it?

I wonder how this will evolve. We, as a society, used to see little to no value in the lives of those who were impaired in some way. Then we decided that they do have value and, as a society, we go to great lengths to care for them. Time, energy, and money.

I also wonder, if we took money completely out of the equation, if that would change the differing values we place on humans. If abortion in cases of crime and impending death of the mother were allowed and money was not an issue - would abortions still happen and/or would they decline in number? Because then we are down to convenience. Those aborting would be choosing their own convenience over the life of another human. Would we, as a society, be accepting of that?

tl;dr - the debate over abortion isn't about life, or when humanity starts or sentience - its about what subjective value we place on another, especially in relation to something else. If the unborn baby has value to us, then it is a human and we protect it. If the unborn baby has no value to us, or we value something else more, then it is not-human enough for us to protect.

Edited 2010-04-30 17:00 (UTC)

It's about how we value different human lives differently, not what is life itself. The lower the vale, the more easily we can kill them, dismiss them, mistreat them, etc.

Which...if you weren't able to get that out of my post...I failed. Damn.

Aside - some people do talk about eating animals as killing and murder. Most vegetarians consider it such.

No, no I got that. Sorry. I was distracted. Bennett is using me as a jungle gym.

I suppose your point is where all the social justice issues intersect. What is it we value? Well, let's look at how we treat people. And we're not doing so well in any arena, are we?

It does sound harsh, but I think that's what it boils down to. And this is exactly where all the issues intersect. If we really truly want to support 'family values' and life we need to support birth control, access to health care, access to clean sustainable food, etc etc etc. Basically, we need to smash the patriarchy and start a revolution.

Sign me up.

i was disappointed that your immigration and food politics post got derailed into abortion. my initial inclination to comment vanished completely once i started reading the abortion comments.

"Defining the moment where life turns into person is tricky - but for me, this whole debate boils down to the fact that no governing entity should have control over my body. Period."

yes. yes. yes. this is exactly where i stand as well.

"And we're not doing so well in any arena, are we?"

Heh. No ... that's why I think we can at least say we are consistent!

Well, I would slightly modify what you said about "some Jewish traditions" but then it would get really complicated. But I think you did a good job of outlining how complex this issue is in a way that's respectful to different points of view but not pandering to any of them.

And to hijack this thread with the topic of immigration, I think that issue is just as hopelessly compromised by oppressive and exploitative systems as reproductive choice is. You're right to say that anyone who buys food to eat is implicated, but unless you really can grow all your own food or buy it from your neighbor, what are you gonna do?

For me what it all comes down to from a legal perspective, regardless of the choice any individual woman would make or why, is that there is absolutely no way to make abortion illegal that doesn't seriously compromise the rights of the pregnant woman. When anti-abortion people talk about the nine months of pregnancy as a mere "inconvenience" that women should just put up with, I know they can't possibly have carried a forced pregnancy to term (and no, an unplanned pregnancy that you choose to continue is NOT the same thing). When people start talking about how a fertilized egg is the moral equivalent of a baby, I wonder how many of them have had a miscarriage, with or without realizing it. I have, and it really gives a lot more weight to the older, less-scientific arguments about personhood.

The other thing that really sets me off is all ALL of the arguments about abortion, even late-term abortion, are framed around the woman being young, single, and not well-established in the world. The support systems most commonly mentioned to help reduce the number of abortions are things like educational programs and better access to contraception. What about the forty-year-old married woman with three kids and a mortgage, living paycheck to paycheck, whose 99.8% effective birth control fails? The whole just-be-abstinent argument doesn't really work in that case, does it? Adoption in this case would be traumatic not only to the mother, but to the child's siblings. The whole convenient/inconvenient argument isn't about how to support a young woman as she finishes her education, but about a family of five possibly facing bankruptcy.

And that, of course, bleeds into the cries from the right about personal responsibility. What would the responsible thing for a married couple in such a situation to do? Stop having sex? Forced sterilization? Are those REALLY the only two alternatives?

...I think you are the only pro-choice person I have ever agreed with. Ever.

Although at the end of the day, I am staunchly pro-life in 100% of circumstances. I see your argument, completely agree with it, and come down on the side of the child, who did not choose his or her own creation.

Those that are pro-choice place more value on the happiness and earning potential of the mother than we place on the life of the baby.

Those that are anti-abortion place more value on the life of the child than the happiness or earning potential of the mother.

Hmmm.....happiness and income vs being alive. That's kind of a cold blooded rationale, isn't it?

Agreed 100%.

And because it came up in Niki's previous post (I quit replying to comments because I wanted to lobotomize myself about halfway through - abortion is the #1 topic that "gets" me because of my personal experience) - women who miscarry aren't murderers. I have a terminally ill grandmother. If she dies of natural causes, and I'm with her - I'm not a murderer. However, if I smother her with a pillow, I am absolutely a murderer. It's all about intent. With a natural miscarriage, there is no intent to kill, or at least no intentional action to that effect - it just happens. Procuring an abortion is an intentional act meant to end a life. While the end result is the death of a living human (leaving the "personhood" bit aside for a moment), to compare miscarriage and abortion is like comparing natural death to intentional homicide, or Murder in the First Degree.

Interestingly enough, I have to write a paper for my legal ethics class on abortion this week... so this discussion is helping me steel myself for the last bits of research I'll have to do.

snowcalla, you might be interested in reading the majority opinion of Planned Parenthood v. Casey (I believe authored by O'Connor) and contrasting that with the dissents by Scalia in both Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well as Lawrence v. Texas. As a student of law, I, for one, found them very... interesting, especially with regard to your argument above.

If we really truly want to support 'family values' and life we need to support birth control, access to health care, access to clean sustainable food, etc etc etc. Basically, we need to smash the patriarchy and start a revolution.

I'm not sure if this is what you were saying, and I apologize if it isn't, but please see the zillions of studies that show that children with married parents, even if those parents do not have a great relationship with each other but retain a low-conflict marriage, are far better off than children from divorced, single, or even cohabitating homes. I think that some aspects of the patriarchy - like maintaining a home with two parents, preferably married parents, especially biological as statistically speaking, non-biological stepfathers and mother's boyfriends are most likely to commit child/sexual abuse - are good, and benefit the mother, the children, and the family as a whole. The earning potential and standard of living drastically increase with marriage and the family flourishes within the environment of commitment and idea of permanence. However, when these families divorce, the mother and children experience a drastic decrease in their economic situation while the economic situation of the father, in many cases, rises by approximately 10%. High-conflict divorces account for approximately 30% of divorces, while the rest of divorces are low-conflict; when a specific survey sampled unhappy couples considering divorce, they found that I think 86% of the couples that had stuck it out were actually "very happy" compared to their previous "unhappy" status, with a five-year difference between the past "unhappy" and the present "very happy."

I don't know if smashing the patriarchy, to you, means dismantling the influence and presence of fathers, especially in relation to the mother of his children, but I know that that is the meaning held by many, and I just wanted to state my position and offer what I've learned from my research - as a student, as a child of divorced parents, and as a single mother. ♥

*raising hand*

Pro-life vegetarian who is iffy on the death penalty (although I did eat meat for nutritional purposes when I was pregnant and breastfeeding). I don't believe my state (MA) maintains capital punishment (or if they do, they haven't offed anybody in awhile), but the cases of individuals exonerated due to DNA evidence and advances in technology make me leery about capital punishment.

HOWEVER, I will have to say that I'm a lot more "down" with capital punishment for people like Tim McVeigh, who irrefutably killed numerous numerous people and AFAIK never showed remorse. He was executed my freshman year of high school, and while I remember sitting in my (religion!) class and watching it, I don't recall what exactly happened. It was before I was into politics and law. I've been to Oklahoma City NUMEROUS times (it's pretty much my second home), I've been to the memorial, I've seen the spray-painted graffiti. My son's grandfather was actually on one of the rescue teams. That? I can get behind. Someone who has irrefutably done something horrific and unjustly stolen the lives of an individual or individuals, especially someone who lacks remorse for the harm they have imposed upon the victims and their families. These people have committed horrific crimes and should be punished. By committing a crime, any crime, you sacrifice some degree of your rights/privileges when you are found guilty. Your freedom to go from place to place? Welcome to prison. Your freedom to eat what you'd like to eat? Welcome to the prison cafeteria. As a student of the law, and as a member of a law-enforcement family, I have a tremendous respect for the law - for criminal law especially (because I have issues with no-fault divorce and of course the Roe, Doe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Griswold, etc torte rulings which became case law and stare decisis). People who commit crimes know this. They have been found guilty (in the case of criminal law) beyond a reasonable doubt (or by preponderance of the evidence in a civil matter). "You do the crime, you do the time." You commit a horrific crime in a state that exercises capital punishment - you HAVE GOT TO KNOW that execution could be a possibility. I'm pretty sure that's the reasoning behind those who are "pro-life" getting behind the death penalty while maintaining an opposition to abortion - because the unborn child hasn't committed any sort of crime for which s/he "deserves execution."

It's about how we value different human lives differently, not what is life itself. The lower the vale, the more easily we can kill them, dismiss them, mistreat them, etc.

This is the mentality for murderers and other violent criminals. The justice system aside, what sets us apart from them? What keeps one individual from being a killer and incites another individual to kill? A sense of human value, value of all, and taking into account the life and rights of others when making a "choice." (Generalizing a bit here, but I think my point is made. Sorry. Brevity is not my forte.)

ETA: To add the bit about law and the reasoning behind pro-life vs. death penalty, although I'll freely admit that capital punishment is one aspect of law which I have not entirely studied.

Edited 2010-05-01 02:17 (UTC)

Oh, and -

I also wonder, if we took money completely out of the equation, if that would change the differing values we place on humans. If abortion in cases of crime and impending death of the mother were allowed and money was not an issue - would abortions still happen and/or would they decline in number? Because then we are down to convenience. Those aborting would be choosing their own convenience over the life of another human. Would we, as a society, be accepting of that?

This was the point I stated in the previous post (the one re: immigration) citing Guttmacher Institute (research arm of Planned Parenthood) statistics giving self-reported reasons for procuring abortions, and I was told that I was pretty much discounting women and their various reasonings for abortion - which I don't think is the case AT ALL, speaking from, among other things, personal experience with making an appointment for an abortion because I didn't want to tell my family (or his) that I was pregnant, I didn't want to pause my education or my employment, and I didn't want to change my life. Me me me me me. Convenience, Party of 1!

*I'm not going to touch the caveat of finances right now, but I get your point and agree.

tl;dr I agree 100%.

Sorry for blowing up your inbox, Niki. I just have been rereading my comments and know that with this sort of issue, I have to tread carefully or my point - my unpopular point - will be misunderstood.

Edited 2010-05-01 02:25 (UTC)

"What would the responsible thing for a married couple in such a situation to do?"

Off the top of my head...they could use birth control. Or get fixed. Or get an IUD that would last for the next 10 years until the female sails into menopause.

I have about 2% pity for people who know they do not want a child and end up pregnant. 2%. Because that's the failure rate of a properly used condom.

I'll have my husband pull those.

Although I am pro-choice I hate this dance we seem to do around abortion. I've heard people say it's just a clump of cells or it's no different from having a cyst removed. People will do everything possible to NOT refer to the baby as a baby.

It's a baby.

If you can't deal with the idea that you are getting ready to kill your baby, then perhaps you shouldn't have the abortion. If you can't state that you support other peoples' right to kill their baby, then you haven't really faced up to what abortion is. I understand what it is and I'm still pro-choice.

I also think that men should be part of this discussion and should have a say in if the child can be aborted or not. It may be your body, but it's also his child. The mother would get financial support during the pregnancy and have her medical paid for by the father. If there are loss of wages and other hardships the mother faces, there could be compensation for that, as well. Then he gets custody and the mother can pay child support. I suspect that occurrence would be pretty rare and would be complicated by not being able to prove who the father is.

As it is now...we have possession being 9/10th of the law and so the female gets to make the whole decision on her own. ;)

Your husband works in the legal field? That is awesome. I hope to attain my J.D. but right now I'm content to get my Bachelor's, even with my three-year-old. I think it's a pretty big accomplishment, at least, but a few other things have to fall into place before I can study full-time or even nights. Right now, I'm working at home for a paralegal, and I love it. :) /OT

If you can't deal with the idea that you are getting ready to kill your baby, then perhaps you shouldn't have the abortion. If you can't state that you support other peoples' right to kill their baby, then you haven't really faced up to what abortion is. I understand what it is and I'm still pro-choice.

This is why I support the OK law requiring an ultrasound (well, my basic knowledge of the specific law - that's on my research list for research for my paper).

I agree with the point about men. The reason I didn't go through with my abortion is because my child's father spent three hours on the phone begging me to not do it, even to the point of saying that if I just carried him to term, he would take our child, and that would be that. I knew I'd lose him if I did that, though, and I didn't want to.

I do think, though, that involving men in the situation - because there is always a "flip side" or slippery slope regarding law - would result in a scenario much like the man who had a casual sexual encounter and ended up "accidentally impregnating" the woman. He was furious and wanted her to get an abortion. She refused. His argument was, "Well, you can get an abortion if you want to, whether or not I want you to keep the child or abort it. Why shouldn't I have the same right?"

If that was the case - men being able to give up paternal rights at will, with nothing stopping them, because women can do it through abortion and men don't have that physical option - I suspect we would see many more abortions, many more women and children living in poverty, and an even further breakdown of fatherhood and the "family structure." As a single mother (although admittedly not one who has gone through the court system, as my child's father and I are able to handle things peaceably on our own) that is NOT something I want to see. EVER.

But amyura mentioned the birth control failing.

"there is absolutely no way to make abortion illegal that doesn't seriously compromise the rights of the pregnant woman."

Exactly. Once we start farming fetus in glass jars then we can privilege them as complete entities unto themselves. But for now, they're grown in female bodies. ;)

.....

I started to get really silly, flippant and disgusting and just deleted it all. I think I'm over-tired (up at 5.30 am? Again? That's my boy) and starting to get weighed down by the intensity of these seeming dead end conversations.

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