> "... In no other situation do we require a person to sacrifice their body or health ..."
What about men being drafted into the army, being obliged to risk life and limb? For the greater glory of man and Gawd and the "Amurican way of life"? 😉🙂
Not to say that I fully reject a woman's right to abortion. Just that one might reasonably say that, in many if not most cases, she's in that position because of her irresponsible behavior, and that it's not up to the rest of society to pay all of the freight to rectify the consequences, that she should be obliged to pick up a major portion of the damages -- financially or healthwise.
En passant, I kind of object to the Pew Research survey using the word "gender" to tabulate their results. At best, all that "gender" means is a range, a spectrum of sexually dimorphic personality and behavioural traits -- are they tabulating results by who are introverts and extroverts, by who's more feminine or masculine?
Yes, men being drafted is a good counter example. I think the draft is very, very problematic, but nevertheless I get that it's required as a backstop. I hope that we'll continue paying enough and having a technically advanced enough military that we can avoid using it. It's true, my statement was a bit to absolute, there are some situations where we force someone to sacrifice their body, but this should only be when necessary for some sort of existential risk, not to save a single person's (or fetus's) life.
Thanks, though "existential risk" is something of a can of worms. What about the survival of the species, of "the American way of life"? Cultures or civilizations that don't engage in sexual reproduction tend not to survive or propagate themselves -- one of your themes if I'm not mistaken.
Though somewhat moot as to any overarching principles or values -- apart from bare survival. What price on that?
>In no other situation do we require a person to sacrifice their body or health for the life of another, even when they’re responsible for that other person existing and/or being in danger.<
Of course we do. Do you think being a parent stops having any costs associated with it the moment that the birth canal is passed? We expect parents to continue sacrificing in every aspect of their life for the sake of their children for 18 years, yet for some reason we do not allow people to kill their offspring in order to back out of this arrangement after the magical passage through the birth canal has occurred. Only before.
The killing is really the key bit. I think we could compromise based on the "bodily autonomy" argument, but the compromise would be ensuring the baby has the best care possible to ensure his or her survival.
The very motivated anti-abortion minority exists because the USA never had the public debate over it, because the Supreme Court took that out of the public's hands. So instead of people making arguments for or against abortion, the fight became about defending or changing the status of the Supreme Court.
And yes, to hold that overwhelming consensus in the UK certain rules exist. We mostly debate around the edge of the law, for example, should it be 24 weeks or 20. Should we allow for a foetus with Down's Syndrome to be aborted after 24 weeks? But none of this is a large, manifesto issue. That passed in the 1960s and 1970s in the UK.
It's going to become a non-issue in the USA because politicians are going to find a compromise solution. I would go out on a limb and say that within 20 years, there will be no states where it's illegal.
I agree that the democrat's position is to the left of the average voter but that doesn't seem to be hurting them too much. I think allowed the Roe standard of 24 weeks for so many years more or less enshrined abortion as a right that has been taken away and that really bothers voters
Individual bodily autonomy seems like a bad standard. This would include self mutilation, drugs of all types, and of course suicide. The problem is that a person is functionally not time consistent. 1) we are emergent processes that can/should evolve to shifting environments and self perception. My buddy got dumped hard by a woman he really loved. He was a total wreck for weeks but slowly adopted to the new reality. He's a different person before, during and after in the sense that he would make different choices in similar situations. Meth may seem like a reasonable life choice when one's concept of the future is in shambles, but then returns to a bad choice after coming to grips with the new situation. We are constantly slaves to the choices we make in our weakest moments. Removing access to meth is good for the person (emergent narrative) while limiting the freedom of the momentary agent. Importantly, the person as agent is not required to be irrational or mentally ill, they could simply be rationally in a moment of nihilism.
2) People are impacted by body chemistry in making choices this includes drugs, hormones, depression etc. Teen dealing with distress and cutting... you don't hand her the knife and say "bodily autonomy", you remove the knife and deal with the issues.
3) I think we should reconsider individual autonomy for major decisions more generally. Consciousness is not self: we access more of ourselves when we engage with others in processing a major decision. Problem solving and processing are more effective in partnership or community. Doing drugs or self mutilation has communal impact, therefore it should be evaluated communally. As a father and husband, I have social and ethical responsibilities to my family which limit my autonomy. My personhood is deeply embedded in my relational network-- autonomy is largely fictional, therefore legal restrictions that reasonably formalize social interdependence improve individual and communal outcomes.
Thanks Flavel: this is really only a third of my rather unique take on abortion. Part 1 is to address suicide and the appropriate legal restrictions there. I think the parallels on the issue are quite strong. Part 2 is defense of the social and personal value of motherhood. Basically being mother is a source of purpose, well-being, social cohesion and personal growth which greatly exceeds (and does not exclude) paid labor or a year of formal schooling. Motherhood deserves preferential treatment under the law: abortion undermines flourishing akin to meth or suicide. Part 3 is that a norm of choice shifts responsibility (even culpability) of having a child to the women. Instead of pregnancy and a child being an outcome that is often accidental in the course of life's happening, it is always personal choice. This creates internal, interpersonal and cultural pressures to only have kids in "ideal" situations: right man, right time, financially ready... Instead of man, family, culture supporting her in a less then ideal situation, they treat it as solely the women's problem. This is a bad equilibrium as a women who could choose motherhood with support of the man and her family, may choose against it if everyone's response is "why are you having this baby". Inevitably parents and children are never ideal and the pressure of ideal motherhood and ideal children which distracts from the intrinsic good in being mother and child.
This dovetails with a shift in my thinking regarding politics/policy/law, which is that social outcome is more important than abstract principle. For example, pornography is legal based on the abstract principle of free speech or a market based “if someone wants to pay for it or produce it, it’s fine” freedom of consumption. But the effects are so negative that it’s hard to argue it shouldn’t be banned.
I think it's important to note that the two extremes are not symmetrical.
If you're a pregnant woman in a "moderate" state, it may be rational to worry about being rushed to the hospital at 24 weeks, finding out your baby has no chance of survival, but having to risk your life (or ability to have future children) because the doctor isn't sure if it's legal to perform an abortion.
If you're a woman in Texas, it's rational to worry that you'll have an unwanted pregnancy but won't be able to get abortion pills or a quickie abortion when you find out at 7 weeks.
If you live in New York, are you so worried that a few dozen women are getting elective abortions at 28 weeks because they're too dumb to make up their mind before? I guess some hardcore Christians lose sleep about it, but I don't think most people care all that much, even though we agree that it's morally wrong.
Yes I think you’re right, this is similar to something Tiger lava lamp commented. I think that people are really disturbed when they reflect on late in pregnancy voluntary abortions, but they aren’t forced to confront them often enough for it to be a live and meaningful fear.
Also, in 2018 women were more anti-abortion than men, which had been the case for decades. Today, women have become a few points more pro-abortion than men. After decades of repeating the baseless lie that abortion is a "women's issue" which women want to promote, the media has actually made the lie true. They have memed it into reality.
Thanks, I didn’t know how this shifted post Dobbs. Women seem to care more on average about abortion, whether they’re pro life or pro choice, but the line that the pro life position is “about men who want to control women’s bodies” is insane.
There's a big asymmetry between the extreme positions. Banning all abortion could affect you personally (if you're a woman) or someone you know and love. Allowing abortion all the way up to birth is harming someone who you don't have an established relationship with. (The mother does have some relationship with her fetus, but in that case, she's the one making the decision.) That makes the former much scarier than the latter and is likely to motivate people to vote to avoid an abortion ban if they have issues with both extremes.
Yes, think this is a fair point. While people are horrified by the idea of voluntary late in pregnancy abortion, they aren’t personally affected by them because they’ll probably never know a woman who gets one, while the full ban would be more likely to personally affect them.
"harming someone who you don't have an established relationship with" was a reference to the fetus, not the woman getting a late abortion. The biggest harm is to the fetus, who dies, and while some people have worldview-level objections to that, a 0 year old person isn't someone who you are going to have an established relationship with
yes I know - what I meant is even if you have worldview-level objections to harming fetuses you won't know about the fetuses that get harmed, so it won't actually burden you in the same way. If you lived in some sort of dysfunctional community where people were getting really late abortions all the time and you knew about it this might be different though - I just don't think such communities are common
One problem I have with the kidney analogy is that you don’t donate your kidney by default if there’s no medical intervention, whereas that’s what happens when you give birth. You do it by default if there’s no medical intervention.
I’m pro choice and banning T1 and T2 abortion is ridiculous. Still for T3 I think I agree that we don’t want any laws against it, I mostly trust women and doctors. It’s true that someone could in principle actually unethically kill a T3 baby for no reason but it’s true that if you pass laws some birthing woman could not be able to get an abortion and have health problems or even die.
Perhaps a better analogy is to imagine a world where for the first few weeks after birth the baby was still connected by an umbilical chord and if you cut it then it would die. But after a month the baby is fine without the chord and just goes on its own. Cutting the chord is very difficult and you need a medical professional. Not doing it can have health consequences for the mother. Most mothers really protect the baby with their lives. Should it be illegal to go see a doctor to cut the chord? Probably not. If your mother wants to cut the chord your life is gonna suck anyway and probably there is a good reason. It’s very unethical but trying to ban it would cause more problems than it solves. But I think ethically it’s a bit worse than the kidney thing, though not as bad as infanticide. Somewhere in between.
I think I also buy the libertarian slippery slope argument. Just as a general principle the government shouldn’t regulate peoples’ bodies too much. I definitely am pro vaccine but I don’t want the government to mandate vaccination for private citizens. If an employer does it that’s fine. If the government does it for its own employees I guess that’s OK too.
Another thing - how many people do you actually think will get T3 abortions for no reason? I think a very small number. I'm willing to accept that for the sake of liberty. Unless you believe in draconian drug restrictions and surveillance everywhere to stop crime, you should too.
All good points, thanks for the comments. My position was long against late in pregnancy abortions but I’ve come to doubt the benefits of that given the liberty concerns, edge cases etc. That said, I do think a larger number of voluntary late abortions do happen vs what pro choicers tend to think. The data is bad but there’s ~4000 abortions after the 21st week per year in the US and it’s unclear how many are “voluntary” but I think it’s potentially the majority of those… will link to 2 things I looked at in a previous piece
Quoting myself: “ But there are still over 4,000 abortions per year that happen later than 21 weeks into pregnancy. And for people that agree that late in pregnancy abortions are on a spectrum with infanticide, noting that there are “only” 4,000 per year isn’t a convincing reason to ignore the issue. After all there are less than 100 unarmed civilians killed by law enforcement per year and people seem to be pretty concerned about that. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be good information on how many of these late in pregnancy abortions are done for medical reasons (either in response to fetal abnormalities that hadn’t been previously detected or in cases where the mother’s life is at risk), but it seems like it’s not the majority based on this FAQ”
“ I did find some poll results on non-medical reasons for delaying abortion. The most common reason was lack of funds. I know that a lot of Americans don’t just have $500 lying around, but if there’s any situation where it makes sense to do whatever you must to get it, it’s this. For one thing, abortions get a lot more expensive, a lot harder to get and require more recovery time when you get them late in pregnancy. And a baby will obviously cost a lot more than $500. Depending on your pre-existing biases you’ll either take this statistic as a sign that people need to take more personal responsibility for their lives (and fetuses) or as a point in favor of universal healthcare and easier abortion access. Regardless, I think most people can agree that reducing the frequency of late in pregnancy abortions would be a good thing.”
"In no other situation do we require a person to sacrifice their body or health for the life of another, even when they’re responsible for that other person existing and/or being in danger."
I think that's not accurate. Let's say you're involved in a car crash with another driver, and by breaking some traffic law, you're solely culpable. The other car starts burning, but you are still conscious and unhurt. You could try to rescue the other driver, risking your life. You are not legally required to do so, but you'd face a negligent manslaughter sentence rather than a "Reckless Endangerment"-charge, if the other driver dies. If you 'heroically' save the other driver, you might not even get prison time. So we do essentially require people in contrived, but comparable legal hypotheticals to accept responsibility for the danger to another person, that they have caused.
EDIT: On second thought, a more straightforward example would have been Captain Schettino who sank the Costa Concordia thru negligence (and literal showboating), and then not leaving the ship last (which was counted against him as "Abandonment of Duty"), surviving whereas 32 passengers drowned. He's 16 years in prison for manslaughter. Should have hung him, but we're too soft these days :(
These are good counter examples, thanks! These maybe suggest we should legally require organ donations in the car crash situation (or similar) which I mentioned? But I think we don’t because these things can get messy and we prefer to keep bodily autonomy as sacred as a value as possible - so I still think it stands that we value that enough that in the context between fetus’s life and mother’s bodily autonomy we’d pick the mothers bodily autonomy. But the norms you bring up here make a case against allowing late in pregnancy abortion imo… the negligence implied in getting pregnant accidentally isn’t enough to take away bodily autonomy but the negligence involved in waiting that long to decide maybe is
Note: I don't really care about the topic. Just trying to poke holes in your stated ethical justification for fun. I very much sympathize with wanting your personal rights maxed out, and hitting the tree of morality, till it gives me the answer I want to hear :)
«we’d pick the mothers bodily autonomy»
Well sure, one can phrase it like that. But the framing of it being the mother's body, rather than it being a shared body (which we could argue it would be, if a fetus were to have full personhood) is doing a lot of work here.
Your position implicitly accepts, that she kind of just gets to ignore competing claims, if she really wants to. Might makes right and possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the fetus does not possess control here whatsoever. Is that ethically justifiable from first principles? Eh... very arguable.
But law is the art of the possible and giving civil rights to fetuses seems just all around impractical.
Essentially we just rely on and trust pregnant women not to be (self-)destructive psychopaths, instead of trying to make a law against every kind of ethically impermissible action.
We don't even try to make it illegal for a pregnant woman to drink vodka, smoke or do hard drugs with the intention of giving birth, AFAIK. But I think everyone's moral intuition probably skews around "Yeah, she's definitely go to hell for that one!". Mostly it works out for the best, since women aren't usually psychos, nor do they chose abortion lightly.
«we prefer to keep bodily autonomy as sacred as a value as possible»
So, I don't think pro-choice activists value bodily autonomy in general as a sacred good. That's just rhetorical posturing and if it's honestly believed, then it's self-delusion. They're too specific in "whose" bodily autonomy they're talking about, completely neglecting a potential fetus' claim. And if they cared about bodily autonomy as a general sacred principle, they would demand full self-ownership. Not just the uterus, but all organs. And that would include transfer rights, specifically the right to bequeath ones organs to your next of kin as an inheritance for them to charge market price for. Nobody is protesting on the street, that the government is oppressing them, denying them their natural rights, though. Wish they would. But oh well, it's not a polarizing wedge-issue nor a big moral quandary, where you have natural competing interests and clashing moral intuitions. So it won't ever get attention.
I agree with you on abortion: no limits, and for the reason you state. This is 100% a woman's decision, because it's her body.
Now, can we not work towards making them "rare", in improving our culture and the way we view sex, such that people are way more responsible about it? Don't need to consider abortion if you're not pregnant.
First thing to point out is that whether something is a winning issue and whether a majority is on your side are not the same question. It matters a lot who will make this the deciding issue in their vote, or even decide to vote because of this issue. Gun control seems to be a losing issue for Democrats even when they stick to reforms with widespread support. Abortion has proven to be a losing issue for Republicans post-Dobbs. Pro-choice voters have more reason to cast their ballot on the basis of this particular issue than they did before and pro-life voters have somewhat less. It is possible this issue will cost Republicans the election, or it's possible that Dobbs is fading in relevance and people will cast their ballot based on other issues, but it doesn't really come down to what 60% or 40% support.
Other thing I wanted to mention is I live in Europe now and have started following the politics a bit and the most bizarre thing from my American perspective is the elections are never about abortion. The same division of opinion exists, all the other issues seem to be the same things Americans fight about (minus guns) and policies vary but somehow this isn't what elections are about. I'm not sure why, but it gives me hope that compromises can work and people move on to other things. The sweet spot seems to be having a law that seems restrictive on paper but in practice isn't.
Agreed, I don’t know enough about the fine grained polling etc to say this is not a losing issue for republicans. But I did want to point out that both parties seem to take a more extreme position than their voters do.
Along with most, I think abortion's a tough issue, lacking any simple obvious answer. My personal moral sense (for example) is that abortion is a Bad Thing if performed for sex selection. Most agree that late abortion is more troublesome than early, reflecting the problem (mentioned in Roe v Wade) that the fetus is viable at the end of a normal pregnancy; accordingly, how is one to distinguish abortion from infanticide?
> ".. how is one to distinguish abortion from infanticide? ..."
Indeed. And from "useless eaters"? Something of a slippery slope.
There may well be questions of triage involved -- society has limited resources that it must "husband" carefully -- so to speak. And "people", in various stages of development, may have to take their lumps.
But ignoring the elephant in the room or trying to sweep it under the carpet is not terribly wise or productive of those scarce resources.
Why is abortion for sex selection bad? If one believes that children of a certain sex (such as female) will live a better life, for instance, then what's wrong with aborting male fetuses?
Also, there actually is a strain in pro-choice logic that argues in favor of at least some legalized infanticide. Peter Singer's and Michael Tooley's, for instance.
IMHO Dr. Singer has excess logical rigor at the cost of common sense, but hey. My problems with abortion for sex selection are two:
1: Ick
2: Several societies (e.g. parts of India) practice it fairly extensively to favor boys. A consequence is the disruption of basic elements of society arising from a shortage of potential wives.
1. Rimming is also disgusting. Should it also be criminalized?
2. This might be an argument against legalizing it in countries like China and India, but it applies to a significantly lesser extent in sex-egalitarian Western countries. Should sex-selective abortion thus be legal in the West?
BTW, from a Jewish perspective, sex-selective abortion makes perfect sense if one fears that one's future children will intermarry. Selecting for girls would ensure the preservation of the Jewish bloodline for the next generation regardless of anything from a halakhic Jewish perspective. With boys, though, there are no guarantees.
Rimming, to the extent it causes harm*, causes harm to the adults who chose to rim their partner. Late-term elective abortions harm a human infant that has feelings and its own subjective perspective (if not any rational 'thought' or self-awareness going on yet). Sex-selective** abortions harm society as a whole by screwing up gender ratios and thus social dynamics.
*i.e. if people don't follow really basic safety precautions, (admittedly, maybe if they're rimming at all then they're crazy enough not to follow those precautions)
**I'm skeptical that sex-selective abortions would have a negligible effect on gender ratios in the US, because it seems likely to me that a plurality or majority of customers asking for sex-selective abortion would be first or second generation immigrants whose subculture's assignment of status to daughters vs sons hasn't fully gotten over a history of patrilocal customs.
Interesting. Hard to say. It would probably avoid direct dysfunctional effects on societal gender balance, but I don't know how to weigh the benefit of increased individual liberty in some cases (e.g. there are perfectly innocent reasons to want your 2nd child to be some particular gender, maybe to balance out the first one's gender) against the general undesirability of writing laws that treat genders differently when they could avoid it.
"I support legal abortion without exceptions because I believe the right to individual bodily autonomy should always take precedence over any legal duty to protect potential or actual persons."
Lmao that literally legalizes everything. I guess I have the "bodily autonomy" to pick up a gun [with my body], load it [with my body], point it [with my body] and pull the trigger [with my body]. All with no legal duty to protect "potential or actual persons".
> "... In no other situation do we require a person to sacrifice their body or health ..."
What about men being drafted into the army, being obliged to risk life and limb? For the greater glory of man and Gawd and the "Amurican way of life"? 😉🙂
Not to say that I fully reject a woman's right to abortion. Just that one might reasonably say that, in many if not most cases, she's in that position because of her irresponsible behavior, and that it's not up to the rest of society to pay all of the freight to rectify the consequences, that she should be obliged to pick up a major portion of the damages -- financially or healthwise.
En passant, I kind of object to the Pew Research survey using the word "gender" to tabulate their results. At best, all that "gender" means is a range, a spectrum of sexually dimorphic personality and behavioural traits -- are they tabulating results by who are introverts and extroverts, by who's more feminine or masculine?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#usage-1
As Francis Bacon put it, "therefore shoddy and inept uses of words lay siege to the intellect in wondrous ways".
Yes, men being drafted is a good counter example. I think the draft is very, very problematic, but nevertheless I get that it's required as a backstop. I hope that we'll continue paying enough and having a technically advanced enough military that we can avoid using it. It's true, my statement was a bit to absolute, there are some situations where we force someone to sacrifice their body, but this should only be when necessary for some sort of existential risk, not to save a single person's (or fetus's) life.
Thanks, though "existential risk" is something of a can of worms. What about the survival of the species, of "the American way of life"? Cultures or civilizations that don't engage in sexual reproduction tend not to survive or propagate themselves -- one of your themes if I'm not mistaken.
Though somewhat moot as to any overarching principles or values -- apart from bare survival. What price on that?
Don't think she appreciated my analogy ... 😉🙂
(ETA) But been a a long time since I read his Culture of Narcissism; probably time to re-read it. 🙂
>In no other situation do we require a person to sacrifice their body or health for the life of another, even when they’re responsible for that other person existing and/or being in danger.<
Of course we do. Do you think being a parent stops having any costs associated with it the moment that the birth canal is passed? We expect parents to continue sacrificing in every aspect of their life for the sake of their children for 18 years, yet for some reason we do not allow people to kill their offspring in order to back out of this arrangement after the magical passage through the birth canal has occurred. Only before.
The point is parents are NOT required to put their own life on the line to save their offspring, not legally.
Sure, and in 99.99% of abortions, the parent's life isn't on the line. So what's your point?
The killing is really the key bit. I think we could compromise based on the "bodily autonomy" argument, but the compromise would be ensuring the baby has the best care possible to ensure his or her survival.
The very motivated anti-abortion minority exists because the USA never had the public debate over it, because the Supreme Court took that out of the public's hands. So instead of people making arguments for or against abortion, the fight became about defending or changing the status of the Supreme Court.
And yes, to hold that overwhelming consensus in the UK certain rules exist. We mostly debate around the edge of the law, for example, should it be 24 weeks or 20. Should we allow for a foetus with Down's Syndrome to be aborted after 24 weeks? But none of this is a large, manifesto issue. That passed in the 1960s and 1970s in the UK.
It's going to become a non-issue in the USA because politicians are going to find a compromise solution. I would go out on a limb and say that within 20 years, there will be no states where it's illegal.
I agree that the democrat's position is to the left of the average voter but that doesn't seem to be hurting them too much. I think allowed the Roe standard of 24 weeks for so many years more or less enshrined abortion as a right that has been taken away and that really bothers voters
I think that’s a good point - new restrictions being added is generally unpopular
Individual bodily autonomy seems like a bad standard. This would include self mutilation, drugs of all types, and of course suicide. The problem is that a person is functionally not time consistent. 1) we are emergent processes that can/should evolve to shifting environments and self perception. My buddy got dumped hard by a woman he really loved. He was a total wreck for weeks but slowly adopted to the new reality. He's a different person before, during and after in the sense that he would make different choices in similar situations. Meth may seem like a reasonable life choice when one's concept of the future is in shambles, but then returns to a bad choice after coming to grips with the new situation. We are constantly slaves to the choices we make in our weakest moments. Removing access to meth is good for the person (emergent narrative) while limiting the freedom of the momentary agent. Importantly, the person as agent is not required to be irrational or mentally ill, they could simply be rationally in a moment of nihilism.
2) People are impacted by body chemistry in making choices this includes drugs, hormones, depression etc. Teen dealing with distress and cutting... you don't hand her the knife and say "bodily autonomy", you remove the knife and deal with the issues.
3) I think we should reconsider individual autonomy for major decisions more generally. Consciousness is not self: we access more of ourselves when we engage with others in processing a major decision. Problem solving and processing are more effective in partnership or community. Doing drugs or self mutilation has communal impact, therefore it should be evaluated communally. As a father and husband, I have social and ethical responsibilities to my family which limit my autonomy. My personhood is deeply embedded in my relational network-- autonomy is largely fictional, therefore legal restrictions that reasonably formalize social interdependence improve individual and communal outcomes.
This is the first new take I’ve heard on abortion, thanks for giving me something to chew on
Thanks Flavel: this is really only a third of my rather unique take on abortion. Part 1 is to address suicide and the appropriate legal restrictions there. I think the parallels on the issue are quite strong. Part 2 is defense of the social and personal value of motherhood. Basically being mother is a source of purpose, well-being, social cohesion and personal growth which greatly exceeds (and does not exclude) paid labor or a year of formal schooling. Motherhood deserves preferential treatment under the law: abortion undermines flourishing akin to meth or suicide. Part 3 is that a norm of choice shifts responsibility (even culpability) of having a child to the women. Instead of pregnancy and a child being an outcome that is often accidental in the course of life's happening, it is always personal choice. This creates internal, interpersonal and cultural pressures to only have kids in "ideal" situations: right man, right time, financially ready... Instead of man, family, culture supporting her in a less then ideal situation, they treat it as solely the women's problem. This is a bad equilibrium as a women who could choose motherhood with support of the man and her family, may choose against it if everyone's response is "why are you having this baby". Inevitably parents and children are never ideal and the pressure of ideal motherhood and ideal children which distracts from the intrinsic good in being mother and child.
This dovetails with a shift in my thinking regarding politics/policy/law, which is that social outcome is more important than abstract principle. For example, pornography is legal based on the abstract principle of free speech or a market based “if someone wants to pay for it or produce it, it’s fine” freedom of consumption. But the effects are so negative that it’s hard to argue it shouldn’t be banned.
I think it's important to note that the two extremes are not symmetrical.
If you're a pregnant woman in a "moderate" state, it may be rational to worry about being rushed to the hospital at 24 weeks, finding out your baby has no chance of survival, but having to risk your life (or ability to have future children) because the doctor isn't sure if it's legal to perform an abortion.
If you're a woman in Texas, it's rational to worry that you'll have an unwanted pregnancy but won't be able to get abortion pills or a quickie abortion when you find out at 7 weeks.
If you live in New York, are you so worried that a few dozen women are getting elective abortions at 28 weeks because they're too dumb to make up their mind before? I guess some hardcore Christians lose sleep about it, but I don't think most people care all that much, even though we agree that it's morally wrong.
Yes I think you’re right, this is similar to something Tiger lava lamp commented. I think that people are really disturbed when they reflect on late in pregnancy voluntary abortions, but they aren’t forced to confront them often enough for it to be a live and meaningful fear.
The 19% figure is a recent increase after the Dobbs decision. In 2018 only 13% supported unrestricted abortion. https://news.gallup.com/poll/235469/trimesters-key-abortion-views.aspx
Also, in 2018 women were more anti-abortion than men, which had been the case for decades. Today, women have become a few points more pro-abortion than men. After decades of repeating the baseless lie that abortion is a "women's issue" which women want to promote, the media has actually made the lie true. They have memed it into reality.
Thanks, I didn’t know how this shifted post Dobbs. Women seem to care more on average about abortion, whether they’re pro life or pro choice, but the line that the pro life position is “about men who want to control women’s bodies” is insane.
I think most men just don’t care about abortion. The abortion issue is Feminists vs. Church Ladies.
There's a big asymmetry between the extreme positions. Banning all abortion could affect you personally (if you're a woman) or someone you know and love. Allowing abortion all the way up to birth is harming someone who you don't have an established relationship with. (The mother does have some relationship with her fetus, but in that case, she's the one making the decision.) That makes the former much scarier than the latter and is likely to motivate people to vote to avoid an abortion ban if they have issues with both extremes.
Yes, think this is a fair point. While people are horrified by the idea of voluntary late in pregnancy abortion, they aren’t personally affected by them because they’ll probably never know a woman who gets one, while the full ban would be more likely to personally affect them.
"harming someone who you don't have an established relationship with" was a reference to the fetus, not the woman getting a late abortion. The biggest harm is to the fetus, who dies, and while some people have worldview-level objections to that, a 0 year old person isn't someone who you are going to have an established relationship with
yes I know - what I meant is even if you have worldview-level objections to harming fetuses you won't know about the fetuses that get harmed, so it won't actually burden you in the same way. If you lived in some sort of dysfunctional community where people were getting really late abortions all the time and you knew about it this might be different though - I just don't think such communities are common
One problem I have with the kidney analogy is that you don’t donate your kidney by default if there’s no medical intervention, whereas that’s what happens when you give birth. You do it by default if there’s no medical intervention.
I’m pro choice and banning T1 and T2 abortion is ridiculous. Still for T3 I think I agree that we don’t want any laws against it, I mostly trust women and doctors. It’s true that someone could in principle actually unethically kill a T3 baby for no reason but it’s true that if you pass laws some birthing woman could not be able to get an abortion and have health problems or even die.
Perhaps a better analogy is to imagine a world where for the first few weeks after birth the baby was still connected by an umbilical chord and if you cut it then it would die. But after a month the baby is fine without the chord and just goes on its own. Cutting the chord is very difficult and you need a medical professional. Not doing it can have health consequences for the mother. Most mothers really protect the baby with their lives. Should it be illegal to go see a doctor to cut the chord? Probably not. If your mother wants to cut the chord your life is gonna suck anyway and probably there is a good reason. It’s very unethical but trying to ban it would cause more problems than it solves. But I think ethically it’s a bit worse than the kidney thing, though not as bad as infanticide. Somewhere in between.
I think I also buy the libertarian slippery slope argument. Just as a general principle the government shouldn’t regulate peoples’ bodies too much. I definitely am pro vaccine but I don’t want the government to mandate vaccination for private citizens. If an employer does it that’s fine. If the government does it for its own employees I guess that’s OK too.
Another thing - how many people do you actually think will get T3 abortions for no reason? I think a very small number. I'm willing to accept that for the sake of liberty. Unless you believe in draconian drug restrictions and surveillance everywhere to stop crime, you should too.
All good points, thanks for the comments. My position was long against late in pregnancy abortions but I’ve come to doubt the benefits of that given the liberty concerns, edge cases etc. That said, I do think a larger number of voluntary late abortions do happen vs what pro choicers tend to think. The data is bad but there’s ~4000 abortions after the 21st week per year in the US and it’s unclear how many are “voluntary” but I think it’s potentially the majority of those… will link to 2 things I looked at in a previous piece
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45161.pdf
https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-sheet/abortions-later-in-pregnancy/
Linked in my other abortion post: https://open.substack.com/pub/reganarntzgray/p/pro-choice-anti-abortion?r=ipqw&utm_medium=ios
Quoting myself: “ But there are still over 4,000 abortions per year that happen later than 21 weeks into pregnancy. And for people that agree that late in pregnancy abortions are on a spectrum with infanticide, noting that there are “only” 4,000 per year isn’t a convincing reason to ignore the issue. After all there are less than 100 unarmed civilians killed by law enforcement per year and people seem to be pretty concerned about that. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be good information on how many of these late in pregnancy abortions are done for medical reasons (either in response to fetal abnormalities that hadn’t been previously detected or in cases where the mother’s life is at risk), but it seems like it’s not the majority based on this FAQ”
“ I did find some poll results on non-medical reasons for delaying abortion. The most common reason was lack of funds. I know that a lot of Americans don’t just have $500 lying around, but if there’s any situation where it makes sense to do whatever you must to get it, it’s this. For one thing, abortions get a lot more expensive, a lot harder to get and require more recovery time when you get them late in pregnancy. And a baby will obviously cost a lot more than $500. Depending on your pre-existing biases you’ll either take this statistic as a sign that people need to take more personal responsibility for their lives (and fetuses) or as a point in favor of universal healthcare and easier abortion access. Regardless, I think most people can agree that reducing the frequency of late in pregnancy abortions would be a good thing.”
I strongly agree with trying to do something to lower the number. Screening earlier for genetic diseases, perhaps adoption in those cases, etcetera.
Sending the people to jail or banning it sounds like a bad intervention that’s a slippery slope to policies that are even worse.
Also 22 weeks is not the same as say 36 weeks.
"In no other situation do we require a person to sacrifice their body or health for the life of another, even when they’re responsible for that other person existing and/or being in danger."
I think that's not accurate. Let's say you're involved in a car crash with another driver, and by breaking some traffic law, you're solely culpable. The other car starts burning, but you are still conscious and unhurt. You could try to rescue the other driver, risking your life. You are not legally required to do so, but you'd face a negligent manslaughter sentence rather than a "Reckless Endangerment"-charge, if the other driver dies. If you 'heroically' save the other driver, you might not even get prison time. So we do essentially require people in contrived, but comparable legal hypotheticals to accept responsibility for the danger to another person, that they have caused.
EDIT: On second thought, a more straightforward example would have been Captain Schettino who sank the Costa Concordia thru negligence (and literal showboating), and then not leaving the ship last (which was counted against him as "Abandonment of Duty"), surviving whereas 32 passengers drowned. He's 16 years in prison for manslaughter. Should have hung him, but we're too soft these days :(
These are good counter examples, thanks! These maybe suggest we should legally require organ donations in the car crash situation (or similar) which I mentioned? But I think we don’t because these things can get messy and we prefer to keep bodily autonomy as sacred as a value as possible - so I still think it stands that we value that enough that in the context between fetus’s life and mother’s bodily autonomy we’d pick the mothers bodily autonomy. But the norms you bring up here make a case against allowing late in pregnancy abortion imo… the negligence implied in getting pregnant accidentally isn’t enough to take away bodily autonomy but the negligence involved in waiting that long to decide maybe is
Note: I don't really care about the topic. Just trying to poke holes in your stated ethical justification for fun. I very much sympathize with wanting your personal rights maxed out, and hitting the tree of morality, till it gives me the answer I want to hear :)
«we’d pick the mothers bodily autonomy»
Well sure, one can phrase it like that. But the framing of it being the mother's body, rather than it being a shared body (which we could argue it would be, if a fetus were to have full personhood) is doing a lot of work here.
Your position implicitly accepts, that she kind of just gets to ignore competing claims, if she really wants to. Might makes right and possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the fetus does not possess control here whatsoever. Is that ethically justifiable from first principles? Eh... very arguable.
But law is the art of the possible and giving civil rights to fetuses seems just all around impractical.
Essentially we just rely on and trust pregnant women not to be (self-)destructive psychopaths, instead of trying to make a law against every kind of ethically impermissible action.
We don't even try to make it illegal for a pregnant woman to drink vodka, smoke or do hard drugs with the intention of giving birth, AFAIK. But I think everyone's moral intuition probably skews around "Yeah, she's definitely go to hell for that one!". Mostly it works out for the best, since women aren't usually psychos, nor do they chose abortion lightly.
«we prefer to keep bodily autonomy as sacred as a value as possible»
So, I don't think pro-choice activists value bodily autonomy in general as a sacred good. That's just rhetorical posturing and if it's honestly believed, then it's self-delusion. They're too specific in "whose" bodily autonomy they're talking about, completely neglecting a potential fetus' claim. And if they cared about bodily autonomy as a general sacred principle, they would demand full self-ownership. Not just the uterus, but all organs. And that would include transfer rights, specifically the right to bequeath ones organs to your next of kin as an inheritance for them to charge market price for. Nobody is protesting on the street, that the government is oppressing them, denying them their natural rights, though. Wish they would. But oh well, it's not a polarizing wedge-issue nor a big moral quandary, where you have natural competing interests and clashing moral intuitions. So it won't ever get attention.
I agree with you on abortion: no limits, and for the reason you state. This is 100% a woman's decision, because it's her body.
Now, can we not work towards making them "rare", in improving our culture and the way we view sex, such that people are way more responsible about it? Don't need to consider abortion if you're not pregnant.
Yes, I agree, I would like more focus on avoiding unwanted pregnancy which would lower abortion and less focus on what should be legal
Thank you for this article, chock full of facts , reasoning and questions. Good writing.
Thank you so much, Stephanie!!
There is a “conscientious objector “ exception to the draft, and wars are fought in defense of the whole nation, not to save one person/zygote/fetus.
First thing to point out is that whether something is a winning issue and whether a majority is on your side are not the same question. It matters a lot who will make this the deciding issue in their vote, or even decide to vote because of this issue. Gun control seems to be a losing issue for Democrats even when they stick to reforms with widespread support. Abortion has proven to be a losing issue for Republicans post-Dobbs. Pro-choice voters have more reason to cast their ballot on the basis of this particular issue than they did before and pro-life voters have somewhat less. It is possible this issue will cost Republicans the election, or it's possible that Dobbs is fading in relevance and people will cast their ballot based on other issues, but it doesn't really come down to what 60% or 40% support.
Other thing I wanted to mention is I live in Europe now and have started following the politics a bit and the most bizarre thing from my American perspective is the elections are never about abortion. The same division of opinion exists, all the other issues seem to be the same things Americans fight about (minus guns) and policies vary but somehow this isn't what elections are about. I'm not sure why, but it gives me hope that compromises can work and people move on to other things. The sweet spot seems to be having a law that seems restrictive on paper but in practice isn't.
Agreed, I don’t know enough about the fine grained polling etc to say this is not a losing issue for republicans. But I did want to point out that both parties seem to take a more extreme position than their voters do.
Along with most, I think abortion's a tough issue, lacking any simple obvious answer. My personal moral sense (for example) is that abortion is a Bad Thing if performed for sex selection. Most agree that late abortion is more troublesome than early, reflecting the problem (mentioned in Roe v Wade) that the fetus is viable at the end of a normal pregnancy; accordingly, how is one to distinguish abortion from infanticide?
> ".. how is one to distinguish abortion from infanticide? ..."
Indeed. And from "useless eaters"? Something of a slippery slope.
There may well be questions of triage involved -- society has limited resources that it must "husband" carefully -- so to speak. And "people", in various stages of development, may have to take their lumps.
But ignoring the elephant in the room or trying to sweep it under the carpet is not terribly wise or productive of those scarce resources.
Why is abortion for sex selection bad? If one believes that children of a certain sex (such as female) will live a better life, for instance, then what's wrong with aborting male fetuses?
Also, there actually is a strain in pro-choice logic that argues in favor of at least some legalized infanticide. Peter Singer's and Michael Tooley's, for instance.
IMHO Dr. Singer has excess logical rigor at the cost of common sense, but hey. My problems with abortion for sex selection are two:
1: Ick
2: Several societies (e.g. parts of India) practice it fairly extensively to favor boys. A consequence is the disruption of basic elements of society arising from a shortage of potential wives.
1. Rimming is also disgusting. Should it also be criminalized?
2. This might be an argument against legalizing it in countries like China and India, but it applies to a significantly lesser extent in sex-egalitarian Western countries. Should sex-selective abortion thus be legal in the West?
BTW, from a Jewish perspective, sex-selective abortion makes perfect sense if one fears that one's future children will intermarry. Selecting for girls would ensure the preservation of the Jewish bloodline for the next generation regardless of anything from a halakhic Jewish perspective. With boys, though, there are no guarantees.
Rimming, to the extent it causes harm*, causes harm to the adults who chose to rim their partner. Late-term elective abortions harm a human infant that has feelings and its own subjective perspective (if not any rational 'thought' or self-awareness going on yet). Sex-selective** abortions harm society as a whole by screwing up gender ratios and thus social dynamics.
*i.e. if people don't follow really basic safety precautions, (admittedly, maybe if they're rimming at all then they're crazy enough not to follow those precautions)
**I'm skeptical that sex-selective abortions would have a negligible effect on gender ratios in the US, because it seems likely to me that a plurality or majority of customers asking for sex-selective abortion would be first or second generation immigrants whose subculture's assignment of status to daughters vs sons hasn't fully gotten over a history of patrilocal customs.
You could allow sex-selection for females but not for males. Would that work?
Interesting. Hard to say. It would probably avoid direct dysfunctional effects on societal gender balance, but I don't know how to weigh the benefit of increased individual liberty in some cases (e.g. there are perfectly innocent reasons to want your 2nd child to be some particular gender, maybe to balance out the first one's gender) against the general undesirability of writing laws that treat genders differently when they could avoid it.
"I support legal abortion without exceptions because I believe the right to individual bodily autonomy should always take precedence over any legal duty to protect potential or actual persons."
Lmao that literally legalizes everything. I guess I have the "bodily autonomy" to pick up a gun [with my body], load it [with my body], point it [with my body] and pull the trigger [with my body]. All with no legal duty to protect "potential or actual persons".