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July 22, 2004
Ehrenreich owning up
Owning Up to Abortion, an op-ed in today's NYTimes
But what makes it morally more congenial to kill a particular "defective" fetus than to kill whatever fetus happens to come along, on an equal opportunity basis? Medically informed "terminations" are already catching heat from disability rights groups, and, indeed, some of the conditions for which people are currently choosing abortion, like deafness or dwarfism, seem a little sketchy to me. I'll still defend the right to choose abortion in these cases, even if it isn't the choice I'd make for myself.It would be unfair, though, to pick on the women who are in denial about aborting "defective" fetuses. At least 30 million American women have had abortions since the procedure was legalized, mostly for the kind of reasons that anti-abortion people dismiss as "convenience" - a number that amounts to about 40 percent of American women. Yet in a 2003 survey conducted by a pro-choice group, only 30 percent of women were unambivalently pro-choice, suggesting that there may be an appalling number of women who are willing to deny others the right that they once freely exercised themselves.
(My emphasis)
I'm telling you, this is where we are. For a long time, pro-lifers thought that getting the message out that what abortion is is killing a human being was the bulk of the job we had to do. (Besides giving material and emotional support to women in unexpected pregnancies). But I think a lot of people are beginning to see that for a hard core, this is irrelevant. They know what it is perfectly well, and they don't particularly care, and they aren't interested in any kind of moral analysis as to why it's okay to end the life of a baby in the womb but not outside. I started seeing this fifteen years ago, when I was reading a lot of pro-abortion rights feminist material. These women were not stupid. They knew what was going on in an abortion. They just felt that women's rights took precedence, period. I also started seeing it in college groups to whom I was speaking. Once I addresssed a group, along with the PR person from a local abortion facility. I took the opportunity to push her on how far they performed abortions - up to 24 weeks - and how they did it. She responded coolly, describing dilitation and extraction. A young man sitting nearby murmured "chop-chop" and there was a small swell of laughter from others. Perhaps uncomfortable, but still laughter. And not a bit of outrage in that group.
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Comments
That "hard core" is truly lost. Even me, with my horrible 10th grade biology grades, knew what was going on back then. Everyone knows; dismissing it as a "lump of cells" simply makes it easier for them to accept it. Our society is beyond redemption by mere evidence and reason at this point.
Posted by: c matt at Jul 22, 2004 8:39:25 AM
If it were not for laws that protected medical privacy, one wonders whether people like Eichenrich would expose the past abortions of pro-life or pro-life leaning women (such as legislators or opinion makers) who now support some restrictions on abortions.
Posted by: Patrick Rothwell at Jul 22, 2004 8:53:00 AM
It really brings us back to the irresolvable conflict between world views between pro-life and pro-choice women depicted in the great Kristin Luker study, "Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood."
Here's a review of the book that summarizes and critiques Luker's argument from Theology Today in 1985:
http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1985/v41-4-bookreview1.htm
Posted by: RP Burke at Jul 22, 2004 8:53:16 AM
I wonder whether Ms. Ehrenreich would stalwartly defend a woman's right to abort only her female fetuses? I take it she'd bite the bullet here and say yes.
Would she, then, criticize her feminist cohorts from being appalled at women who make that "choice"?
Allowing "choice" to trump all else seems to undermine other feminist goals, IMO.
Posted by: David at Jul 22, 2004 8:59:06 AM
I have to agree with CMatt. If they didnt know then, they surely know now with all the documented scientific information available- especially in embryology books. Not to mention the testimonies of Post Abortive women and during the PBA trials.
They read our documentation just as much as we read theirs. Our evidence against abortion is convincing more and more people that abortion has MANY victims, both physically and mentally. What new evidence do they have? None, because the real evidence, not mere propoganda, points to the truth which they have tried to supress from the get go.
The Pro-aborts are running scared and are becoming more violent aginst us Pro-Lifers. This was recently seen at the March for Death in DC and in Chicago with Joe Scheidlers Face the Truth tour on University campuses.
www.prolifeaction.org
Ironically, while they keep killing their future pro-abort children, we continue to
give birth to a new generation of pro-lifers..
sooner or later we will outpopulate the pro-aborts...Then what.
Posted by: von at Jul 22, 2004 9:07:43 AM
For what it's worth, like many divorce stats, where the effect of multiple divorces is ignored (most divorced folk have more than one, while a couple married 54 years to death counts as one, so the 50% figure is in error to an unknown degree), her analysis of women's response is patently dishonest. Ehrenreich herself -- and i had recommended her book "Nickled & Dimed" to roomfull of people the day before, to my chagrin -- admits to 2 abortions, so she knows herself that 40 million abortions doesn't reflect 40 million women. Some studies estimate the average number per woman who has any abortion (vs. those who have zero, lifetime) is 2.5 or even higher, and my personal and pastoral experience supports this figure.
In Grace & Peace, Jeff
Posted by: Jeff at Jul 22, 2004 9:09:08 AM
A reply to David.
"Allowing 'choice' to trump all else seems to undermine other feminist goals, IMO."
That is Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's argument too, in "Feminism Without Illusions."
Posted by: RP Burke at Jul 22, 2004 9:13:06 AM
Amy
Your impressions jibe with mine as well, for what that is worth.
David
I agree that Ehrenreich would stick with her logical consistency, and thus confirm Chesterton's definition of madness as someone who has lost everything except reason.
Posted by: Liam at Jul 22, 2004 9:16:26 AM
Amy--
I came to the same horrible realization over a period of years (that many know it's killing, and are, as the sinister jargon goes, "comfortable with that".)
I first heard it ca. 1980 from a male friend, and although it was appalling I didn't think it was widespread, certainly not among women. Some years later, maybe '88 or so, I heard it from a female co-worker. Her view was that it's self-defense: just as you have the right to kill an intruder who invades your house and threatens your life, you have the right to kill a fetus who invades your body and threatens your well-being. This rather put an end to what I had thought was a slightly promising dialogue on the subject.
Since then, it seems that in the face of overwhelming medical facts about the reality of fetal life, more and more of those committed to abortion rights have faced those facts and decided that they just really don't matter.
As I said in the NYT thread earlier this week, I don't see how any pro-life argument can reach people who believe this. Argue that in the long run the woman would be more fulfilled if she has the baby? That ain't gonna fly, in general.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at Jul 22, 2004 9:21:21 AM
Another important point to note in this callous column is that she's mad that many women are aborting their children with guilt and regret. It's screwing things up for her own self-justification.
She is correct that there is no moral difference between aborting a baby with a defect and aborting a baby who is simply unwanted. Unforutnately, however, she's trying to get those women who feel guilt for aborting babies whom they would have wanted had they been healthy, to feel no guilt b/c the morality is no different: "It's all good." She's saying.
On a similar note, yesterday I was googling for some resources on extended families in adoptions. I came across one page discussing the importance for the child to be loved and accepted by the extended family. The page was really into the relationships and love and acceptance that the child would feel by being really inclusive (between adoptive and birth extended families). So, it really seems to be about the humanity of and love among the people involved. The kicker is that when they needed a pronoun to make reference to "the child," the web site actually referred to the child as "it"! Not "him" not "her" but "it." There you go; kids are objects. It can only help the abortion cause. I was horrified and sent an email to the web site. [Don't remember the site, sorry.]
Posted by: Peggy at Jul 22, 2004 9:37:40 AM
Conversation is really difficult w/ people who think it is ok to kill a baby. No argument works. I don't know of many who have "converted" b/c of some argument. I am sure there are some out there. I have in mind a person who is open to truth and seeks it. But most people see the hideousness of it and trump that hideousness with the idea that killing is ok if it works better for me. It is very difficult to dialogue with a person in this regard, but I figure that prayer and Christian example is the best that is given to us. Remember that some rejected Christ, even when He was right in front of them. Some saw miracles, cures, etc. and wanted to attribute those actions to His "connection" with the devil. Someday, God willing, these people will open their eyes and see this philosophy for what it is and repent of their prior actions, and convert their lives to the God who is the Way, Truth, and Life.
BYW, it is also difficult to dialogue w/ others who hold that a woman should be able to choose, even though the person actually would not get an abortion. In my experience it comes from a mixture of not wanting to "judge" a person's prior actions as wrong and some kind of idea that taking abortion away is controlling people's lives from freely choosing to do what they want. Of course, if I use the argument that we should allow other forms of perversions like robbery, stealing, or discriminating the argument suddenly stops and I am accused of comparing apples and oranges.
Posted by: Jared at Jul 22, 2004 9:39:02 AM
Geesh, excuse misspelling: "unfortunately" and any others I missed.
Posted by: Peggy at Jul 22, 2004 9:40:34 AM
Maclin, I agree with you, and have never advocated "Oh, motherhood is your vocation and you'll be so fulfilled by this baby" as an argument, either in general or in particular. What's lost, however, is a sense that this life, which I had a role in bringing into the world, is independent of me. Even though it is hard to grasp and realize, especially in those early months, it is just the truth. I have no more moral right to end this life now than I will in ten months, after it is born. It is, in the end, about the hard truth, that requires all kinds of sacrifices on every level, that life is not all about me, even when in a sense it depends on me.
Posted by: amy at Jul 22, 2004 9:47:44 AM
This direction in which you say the debate is going--that the strongest supporters of choice recognize that what is growing in a woman's womb is indeed a human person but that they still feel that her rights trump this--is chilling and quite frightening.
If one person can have, by right, the power of life and death over the life of another person within the womb, what can ultimately stop this from being extended to people outside the womb?
Posted by: Sean Gallagher at Jul 22, 2004 10:16:43 AM
Sadly, my experience about 15 years ago in a Catholic college shows that many people don't care that abortion is murder. For a political science class, we polled another class on legal issues. Two of the questions were: do you believe abortion is murder? and "do you believe a woman has a right to an abortion?" About half the respondents said "yes" to both questions.
Posted by: Lisa C at Jul 22, 2004 11:01:01 AM
Sean,
You are exactly right. Fetuses will ultimately come under the ever expanding category of people whom the "experts" tell us don't have a sufficient quality of life to justify continuing "treatment."
Posted by: al at Jul 22, 2004 11:01:58 AM
Here's another NYT article from 2001 about the anguish of "ending a pregnancy" for medical reasons. I found it on the HBC website.
http://www.aheartbreakingchoice.com/janeb.html
Posted by: Julia at Jul 22, 2004 12:06:10 PM
When I studied philosophy not too long ago it seemed to me that the consensus was that the best argument for the "choice" position was the Violinist in a Coma thought experiment, that goes someting like this: Imagine you wake up one morning and you find yourself attached via medical machinery to a brilliant violinist. He is in a coma and will not emerge from it for at least 9 months. He is connected to you as a means of life support and while this poses risks to your health, he will definitely die if they remove him. Do you have an obligation to keep the violinist alive at the expense of your freedom and bodily integrity?
Obviously, there are problems with this kind of reasoning, but many of us don't even realize that this is the pro-abortion line and spend too much energy arguing a secondary point (that unborn children are human beings whose lives have as much value as other human beings) that our opponents are perfectly comfortable conceding.
Posted by: Robert Bruce at Jul 22, 2004 12:21:47 PM
c matt writes:
That "hard core" is truly lost. Even me, with my horrible 10th grade biology grades, knew what was going on back then. Everyone knows; dismissing it as a "lump of cells" simply makes it easier for them to accept it. Our society is beyond redemption by mere evidence and reason at this point.
Don't let frustration cloud your logic. If we believe the "'hard core' is truly lost" and that "our society is beyond redemption," then we don't believe in the gospel, and thus are headed for perdition ourselves.
Posted by: James Freeman at Jul 22, 2004 12:32:49 PM
As Paganism increases in our culture, I would expect abortion to have ever-greater backing. The Pagan worldview includes reincarnation. Which means that if you chop up this baby, the baby's soul is released to enter another body...a body in a pregnant woman who "wants" the baby for instance. When reincarnation comes into your thinking, the human body ceases to mean anything important. Instead it becomes the garment you can put on and take off at will, and in some thinking, an unwanted garment because spirit matters while "falling into reality" is the work of the evil Demiurge.
Think about how you treat a coat you no longer think looks good on you or that doesn't fit well anymore. That's what the human body becomes. Very dangerous doctrine, reincarnation. Madonna's Kabbalah School promotes it, btw.
If Paganism becomes the majority worldview in a Democratic society such as ours...?
Posted by: Carrie at Jul 22, 2004 12:40:27 PM
James, c matt is right. They're beyond redemption WITH LOGIC. It'll take grace, or something else. But logic won't work with them.
Posted by: Sydney Carton at Jul 22, 2004 12:50:52 PM
Robert,
the source for that argument is Judith Jarvis Thomson's 1971 piece "A Defense of Abortion". Notice the date. This argument was in the literature before Roe v. Wade (1973) was even decided.
John Finnis had a ready rebuttal, but I don't know that it's online.
J. Finnis, "The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion: A Reply to Judith Thomson," Philosophy& Public Affairs (1973).
Posted by: David at Jul 22, 2004 12:58:17 PM
James:
They are truly lost. Our culture is beyond redemption by evidence and reason. I specifically chose those terms to leave open the obvious option of grace, as Sydney points out. Unfotunately, our culture has turned the point where only a grace infusion can bring it back. I guess its another way of saying we have lost so much grace that there is not enough for reason and logic to work on.
Posted by: c matt at Jul 22, 2004 12:58:39 PM
All:
After considerable experience with articulate and activist proabs, I'd say the majority of educated "prochoice" people (and not just a small "hard core" of prochoicers in general) in fact believe that abortion involves killing a human being. But they also firmly believe that one ought to have the right to do so anyway in defense of their liberty. They just don't say so in public too often.
What does this mean? For them, abortion is like fighting a war in which innocent casualties must be accepted. Tactics like exposing them to pictures of aborted babies don't impress them any more than, say, people who favor the war in Iraq are impressed by pictures of the mangled Iraq civilians we have killed. Be strong! These tortured deaths are the price to be paid for our freedom. End of case.
It also means that many, many women know exactly what they are doing when they procure abortions. They are not poor, sad victims of Big Bad Men and Vast Social Forces. (The prolife movement itself often feeds this myth by universally characterizing women who procure abortions as victims who categorically and absolutely will never be punished by the anti-abortion laws we propose . . . and maybe we should, because our whole movemnt would be doomed if we demand jailing or executing 40% of the female population. So we blame it all on the doctors and Planned Parenthood.)
A qualificaton: Many will grant that the unborn are human beings, but they will not grant that the unborn are as valuable as or as fully human as born human beings. This attitude is reflected in poll after poll and law afer law on an international basis. It permits much more liberal rules for abortion early in pregancy than later.
On a fundamental level, many, if not most, people really do believe, like medieval theologians, that the fetus undergoes a kind of transition from a vegetative/animal nature or not-yet-human nature into a human nature, so they would permit abortions early in pregnancy that they find immoral and would forbid later. Except by denial and heaping scorn upon it, we have not really addressed this perception -- although it may be the key obstacle to any possible future substantive restrictions and, certainly, to any restrictions on matters like embryonic stem cell research.
Posted by: T. Marzen at Jul 22, 2004 1:39:45 PM
When Ehrenreich's piece is coupled with the "Dude I gots three kids here so let's kill a couple" piece from the NYT magazine this week, the hard-core fiends appear ready and willing, per Sean's suggestion, to take the plunge to extrauterine abortion.
According to Ehrenreich, killing your kid might make you a bad woman, but it will make you a good mother. So if you've got three kids, and pa gets laid off, do you really want to put your kids through the trauma of down-sizing from the new Volvo SUV to a used Taurus? The horror. A good mother would say enee-menee-minee-moe, and bury one of the brood in the garden. Or maybe just take out the ugliest because they'll probably never be happy. So says Ehrenreich.
But, I guess, at least Ehrenreich would do it for the other kids. Barrett would give all three the axe because she's not going to be seen by fellow Manhattan socialites behind the wheel of a Taurus. To which I can only respond: Sweet.
Posted by: Loudon Is A Fool at Jul 22, 2004 1:41:57 PM
