I don't think I'll ever have an abortion. I was going to start out saying "I would never have an abortion" but of course, that wouldn't be true.
I've read the debate back and forth about abortion here the last week or so. I'm a little late to the fray, but I figured I might as well say my $.02.
One of the biggest problems when discussing (and legislating) abortion is The Great Divide. Simple put, a man can never, ever contemplate, no matter how much he tries to put himself in a woman's heels, what a woman feels like when she is pregnant, and when she is considering abortion.
Which is why it's troublesome that a mostly male Congress believes it has the foundational knowledge and experience necessary to properly address the issue of abortion. They don't. As long as the Senate is composed of rich, white men, no piece of legislation coming from that body will properly reflect the reality of being pregnant and considering abortion.
That point being made, the issue of abortion has always intrigued me. I've never had one, and like I said above, I don't believe I ever will. The pinch of ambiguity is added there because of two possibilities. (1) if I get pregnant, and it is discovered very early that the child will essentially be so malformed, with half a brain or something like that, so that it has no chance of survival, so that I would be giving birth by the end of my pregnancy to a dead baby, I would have an abortion. (2) if I were ever raped, I don't know if I would have an abortion. I don't know if I could deal with the emotional trauma of carrying my rapist's child. I might, I have no idea. But I would be thankful as hell that the possibility of abortion was there.
In all other instances, I wouldn't have an abortion. This is no surprise, considering I grew up in a very conservative, very traditional family, with my Orthodox religion informing many of my values. Personally, I wouldn't have an abortion just because I couldn't afford to raise a child, or because I didn't think I was ready to be a mom (I've always been eerily mature in that regard, so that never posed a problem for me).
But that's me.
You Just Killed Beethoven
If we lived in a perfect world, condoms would never break, there would be enough money to feed every child, all babies would be born perfect, and rapists would be shooting blanks. But the reality is, we live in an imperfect world, and abortion is an imperfect solution.
I say imperfect because abortion is always a lose-lose sitation. For some women, the emotional trauma (and sometimes physical trauma, in extreme cases) of abortion is too much to bear, and affects them for the rest of their lives. For others, it's just another medical procedure, and it doesn't affect them at all.
The reason why I say it is a lose-lose situation is because a future life is always lost. Notice my use of the word future. The reality is, every cluster of cells aborted would have probably become a full-blown fetus, a baby, a child, an adult who would be contributing to society. This is the aspect of abortion that I have struggled with. You've all read I'm sure that forward:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?
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If so, you just killed Beethoven.
The reason why the issue is such a delivate one is because of that What If?. This is what the conservative right focuses on. What if the woman didn't have an abortion? Well then, there'd be another happy baby in the world, right? Well, "happy" is up to interpretation.
I think abortion has been such a core issue for the right because of how they perceive it. The right has cast the abortion issue as a promiscuity issue, plain and simple. Now, I went to an all-girl's private school, and I cannot tell you the number of abortions that occurred in my class. For those girls, abortion was an easy way out, a way of avoiding the consequences of their irresponsible lifestyle.
But what the right does is it takes this one scenario - abortions used by slutty, irresponsible girls--and casts all abortions in that light. Thus, the word "abortion" has come to connote, on the right, a "responsibility-be-damned" lifestyle. Of course, this is obviously not true. Abortions affect women of all types: professional women, married, unmarried, sexually responsible, even those women who don't want an abortion. Abortion is not about an easy way out; it's about a mature decision and a woman's privacy interest in her bodily integrity.
Speaking of privacy interest, Roe v. Wade is one of the most unsound decisions I have ever read by the Court (and yes, I've read many). Why? Because it is essentially arbitrary. The Court weighed the privacy interests of the mother, vs. the state's interest in protecting potential life, and drew an arbitrary line at a "compelling" point of viability. Of course, the whole premise of hinging a state's ability to proscribe abortion based on "viability" was dangerous to begin with, especially in light of how rapid technology has been advancing. "Viability" in 1973 is not "viability" in 2003 and will certainly not be "viability" in 2023. As science progresses, the inevitable conclusion is that that "compelling" point of viability where a state's interests override a mother's privacy interest will be sooner and sooner.
Pro-Life=Pro-Slavery?
Here's the problem I have with the whole "state interest" argument. Yes, a state should protect life. And yes, a person's privacy interest is not absolute. But theoretically, outlawing abortion is equivalent to the state forcing a woman to carry a fetus to term. She does not want to carry a baby. She will likely give it up to the State at birth. Yet the State compels her to use her body to produce another citizen. Is this not, in essence, a form of slavery, which was abolished by the 13th Amendment?
Why should the State's interest override the woman's interest here at all? Hell, the State could say it has a compelling interest to fit everyone with embedded tracking chips, (we live in a post-9/11 world after all, don't you forget that!) but shouldn't a citizen's interest in his physical body be absolute?
Outlawing abortion means that for nine months, the State has hijacked a woman's body. She is not free from that which grows inside her womb, from the morning sickness, from the responsibility necessary to keep the fetus healthy. She is obligated to take nine months out of her life and produce something that the State wants.
This "something" is a human life, and that is why this issue has divided citizens and families for thousands of years. That is why I myself have had such conflicting emotions about abortion.
Kerry's View, And I Concur
But the fact has always remained for me that, no matter what my feelings towards abortion are, I have absolutely no right to impose my beliefs upon others. So I never argued with the slutty girls at my school for having abortion after abortion. I never would advocate outlawing abortion in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother's life is in jeopardy. I never would say that the government has an unqualified right to tell a woman what she can do with her body and when to do it.
This is why I agreed with Kerry's position on the issue (which was another reason he was labeled a flip-flopper). He said he could not legislate his morality, and he was 100% right. How can I say I support the Constitution, all the freedoms it entails, and say that the State can force a woman, even a slutty one, to keep a baby for full term? How can I say that woman are equal citizens to men and then force them, not the father, to bear the financial and emotional burden of an unwanted pregnancy?
Most importantly, how can the right say it stands for smaller, more limited government, yet it supports that government forcing itself into the uterus of every woman in this nation, deciding for them the single most important decision of their lifetime?
How can the right call itself "pro-life" when it wants to outlaw all abortion, even when necessary to save the life of the mother? How can anyone choose which life is of greater value? And greater value to whom? To society? Which one will live longer and pay more taxes? To the father/husband? To the woman, sweating and bleeding on the hospital bed? When they choose which life is of more value, who's perspective do they choose and what makes them think they are in a position to make that choice?
And it is precisely because of all this ambiguity, because abortion is and will forever be an intensely personal, private decision that I side with the left on this issue.
Am I pro-life? Yes. I am pro-life in all respects, from the mother about to die on the operating table to the man strapped to a gurney about to be injected.
Am I pro-choice? Yes. Because no citizen should be enslaved, body and mind, to the government.
OK, so, maybe I said more than $.02's worth.