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Abortion – Listening to Both Sides
In a Gallup poll released last month, I learned that 47% of Americans consider themselves pro-life, 45% pro-choice. As William McGurn wrote in the Wall Street Journal (“Gallup’s Pro-Life America: When Will the Media Reflect America on Abortion?“) this week, “Our strong moral qualms about abortion have not gone away.”
However, most Americans still want abortion to remain legal.
In writing about women and spirituality I’ve not squared off with the important issue of abortion. I’m friends with women who are pro-choice and pro-life. As in the gun rights issue, it is the caricatures in media coverage that distort the women behind t
he platforms. I’ve noticed how easily both of us fail to understand the robust arguments for the other side.
For instance it’s neither accurate or fair to believe that all pro-choice advocates are pro-woman and anti-baby, nor is it accurate to assume all pro-life advocates are pro-baby and anti-woman. In this post I want to see what we can learn from each other without the mud-slinging.
Our recent book, Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk, begins with the Rules of Loving Discourse. I’d like to practice these with you as we discuss abortion. Let’s see if we can get into the other side’s shoes, listen to valid arguments and concerns all the while discovering what we actually believe about life, womanhood, family, sex and death.
The Grey Area
It seems only fair to begin by admitting there are areas where the decision to terminate a fetus’ life is not black and white, where the mother and the baby’s life are in danger.
Our local paper syndicated Nicholas Kristof’s coverage in the New York Times of Sister Margaret McBride’s recent excommunication, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. The charge: McBride’s assent to the termination of an 11-week old fetus carried by a 27-year-old mother. This mother of four suffered from pulmonary hypertension that created a high enough probability that the strain of a continuing pregnancy would likely kill her and her baby. The balance of mother and child’s life hung suspended at this Catholic hospital, needing permission from someone like Sister Margaret. To refuse to act would have likely destroyed both mother and child.
The Bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, ruled that “the mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” and excommunicated McBride. Read the full story at NPR.
Then What?
Often my pro-life friends are quick to assume that if abortion were made illegal, the world would be a better place.
But, consider for a moment what would follow. What laws would pro-life advocates want enforced? What specific policy would we implement against doctors who perform abortions when they are illegal? Would we charge them with first degree murder? What crime should a woman be charged with for seeking an abortion?
If women are victims of abortion, how can we penalize them? Doesn’t this assault a woman’s volition, her autonomy, her maturity? Should penalties for women be increased if they seek more than one abortion? For mothers who seek abortions, do we incarcerate them and remove them from their families to prevent further abortions? Do we penalize then with a fine? with community service?
Are we truly ready to call all women who seek abortions murderers? And what about the systems, the ethics committees, the counselors and family members, the boyfriends and husbands who play a part in these abortions? Should they also be charged with murder? If abortion becomes illegal do we call McBride an accomplice to a murder?
For more questions and a rigorous development of the “then what?” see Dan’s Hole in the Wall: Getting Political for a Moment“)
Listening to Pro-Choice
I recently came across a blog where Hugo Schwyzer, professor, Episcopal youth minister, husband and father explains that his experience of watching his second daughter born only confirmed him more resolutely into the pro-choice camp (read at “Pregnant Woman, Personhood and Some Paternal Reflections“).
Confused and interested I read on. He notices that once a woman becomes pregnant people’s perception of her value splits into two categories.
One, her value as a woman.
Two, her value as a life-giving agent to sustain, carry, feed, shelter this growing life inside. A perfect way to illustrate this duality is how commonly people feel free to touch a pregnant woman’s belly. I experienced this as well. People I knew only casually slid their hands all around my abdomen, without seeming to realize this was my skin, my nerves they touched. They weren’t really touching Finn, they were touching me.
Schwyzer notes that a growing life inside a woman, for all its excitement and beauty, does not trump a woman’s subject-hood. In other words, the life of the baby should not erase the woman’s life. He writes,
” To see my daughter born was one of the great experiences of my life. But I never lost sight of the reality that my wife was more than a vessel to carry this new and splendid creature. My wife’s rights didn’t diminish with conception and with each passing week of gestation. I knew a longed-for and desperately wanted new life grew inside of her, but the emphasis was always as much on “inside of her” as on the “new life.” And I assure you that my wonder at the miracle of life is matched, and even surpassed, by the wonder at what a woman’s body can do if that woman chooses to make it happen.”
In thinking about this I both agree and disagree. I agree that a woman’s personhood is intact, even while pregnant. However, I think Schwyzer has overblown the choice woman have.
You cannot be pregnant without becoming a vessel. The fact that a woman’s life (food, energy, etc) serves her fetus is not a choice. You cannot bear a child and also refuse to become a vessel. Pregnancy means our body will serve this child’s growing needs, you cannot be pregnant without performing this service. And, in my case, gain lots of extra weight, feel sore, require frequent bathroom visits and feel achy while you try to do normal activities. Pregnancy can feel like an invasion. To call this a choice is in my mind mistaken.
A better verb is not choosing, but entering or enduring or accepting. I would not call the pregnancy a choice as much as something that happens to women after sex… and there’s no way for a woman to exit the pregnancy without having something else happen to her, be it a miscarriage or an abortion.
As much as I dislike the picture of woman as passive, accepting pregnancy does not have the texture of other intentional decisions I’ve made in my life. Waiting and watching my body change wasn’t the same as choosing what major I wanted, who to marry, what flowers to plant, when or how to have sex.
Pregnancy feels more like something is happening to me, like a ride I stepped on, a plane I boarded. Pregnancy felt like something was being acted within me. And to accept this vessel-becoming experience, to become a tabernacle of new life involved my investment and daily sacrifice (read more about my pregnancy experience “New Body“).
Perhaps what Schwyzer means is that woman’s choice to accept pregnancy should not obliterate their personhood in the process. I agree, however, I found pregnancy could enhance the personal dignity of my womanhood.
Outlawing Pain
Schwyzer’s main point is that since pregnancy and delivery (whether vaginally or caesarean) hurts, forcing a woman to go through this painful (and he admits, worthy) process is horrific. He writes, “We [he and his wife] both shudder, more than ever now, at the thought of compelling a woman to go through this process against her will.“
He believes the woman must choose this pain and that the child must be wanted.
He writes about abortion doctor’s work as ministry. He talks about abortions as a time for doctors to trust that women know what is best for their own bodies and the lives of their children.
I read that and think, wait, I believe in women, too. And I trust women. Are some feminists hearing pro-lifers as people who do not trust women?
Challenge to Pro-Choice Advocates
Speaking as a woman who has endured labor without any pain medication I will agree with Schwyzer. Yes, it does hurt.
The litany of sacrifices on the part of the mother (birthing hurts, pregnancy is inconvenient, sleep-deprivation is unpleasant and disorienting and push-me-to-tears frustrating, the stitches after my second degree tear throb for days, the physical deprivation of no sex for weeks and weeks pushing me to wonder more than once, “Why, oh WHY didn’t God split up biological baby-care duties a bit more evenly? I mean he could at least have given men breasts so my poor ol’ body could heal with decent night’s rests instead of healing on 3 hours here and there snatched in between feedings?!!!”) is not to be minimized.
No way, Jose.
The fact that children are painful remains a point most pro-life advocates fail to really park on. The movie Juno, does a good job of showing part of the pain. I felt my insides quiver with participatory suffering when I watched Juno weep after she had given birth, her boyfriend crawling into bed next to her, his muddy running cleats on the hospital bed (an apt metaphor for the messiness of relationships, sex and children).
However, pro-choice advocates forget that as God created sex, one aspect (others being recreation and unity) is the potential for children. I don’t think you can divorce sex from children, not without damaging both parties.
Perhaps pro-choice advocates feel the intensity of the pain and the amount of time pregnancy requires warrants the state remaining mum on the subject and letting a woman choose.
I disagree.
The law enforces painful things everyday, like the draft for military service, a requirement that isn’t anything as natural as the sex-baby connection. The state enforces taxes (a painful process to say the least) for your entire life without an opt-out. I’m not saying having a baby is the same as being drafted or paying taxes, but it does serve to prove that the state frequently requires it’s citizens to undergo pain (and in the case of the draft, to face death) without asking permission.
Maybe we don’t like that the state has this power, we might even petition against it or think it unfair. But we certainly allow it this right, as our government.
So I don’t think the charge that pregnancy and birth (and child-rearing) is painful holds.
I have an inkling that woman would more easily undergo nine months of painful “invasion” of a fetus if pregnancy’s responsibilities ended there. It’s the life of a person for years and years after the birth that has our adrenalin pumping with fearful anticipation. Will I be able to handle a child?
When I compare the glorious portability and minimal responsibility of carrying Finn as a fetus compared with caring for him as a baby, the pregnancy part was a breeze.
During pregnancy I slept long and well. I easily coordinated elaborate outfits with accessories and make-up. I worked out or spend hours reading and writing without leaking milk. Then I had a baby.
It’s not merely the pregnancy that women must count as a cost, it’s the life after the birth.
I believe more women would refuse an abortion if they could serve nine months and be done with it. It’s not the pain of the nine months; it is the idea of a life to be responsible for, to be guilty about, to wonder as to the painful, happy, fruitful or fruitless future of your offspring.
Cleaning the Slate?
Perhaps the single most provocative offering of abortion is a promise that abortion can help you wipe the slate clean. This is an offer too tempting to refuse when you are faced with life as you know it ending (how will you raise a teenager in this world?) or facing the idea that through the “out” of adoption someone else will raise your teenager in this world (To better understand a woman’s feelings before terminating her pregnancy read an example at “Choosing Not to Keep the Baby” note the comments – most striking to me is how no friends rallied behind this young women to help her raise her unplanned child – this a problem I’ve heard of time and again with the friends I know who have walked into abortion clinics by themselves… it is at root a problem with all of us – How many of you have helped an unwed mother raise an unwanted child? – understanding how we all play a part in abortion deserves another post).
But back to the idea that pain should not be demanded out of women unless they choose it, I don’t see the precedent in any other area. Avoiding our own pain has never been an adequate reason to extinguish another life. As the Dread Pirate Roberts of The Princess Bride says, “Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”
We know the laws of nature require pain if we choose to disregard them. If we choose to run a race, we will face the pain of conditioning. If we choose to love we face the pain of vulnerability, rejection, fragility and death. If we choose to make love when we’re not ready in some (even small) capacity to become a vessel for a child, then we face the pain of dashed plans, the inconvenience and pain of either a baby or an abortion.
Abortion and Sin
Living east of Eden, sin is it’s own punishment.
So we must ask yourselves, is abortion sin? Let’s simply define sin as missing the mark or twisting the good.
If abortion is sin, I’m less concerned with making abortion illegal.
If abortion is missing the mark I believe the costs of a woman enduring an abortion provides a strong enough punishme
nt without heaping on a murder charge, silence out of shame and isolation to boot.
It seems most likely, from my limited experience with two pregnancies, that women know they are taking away life or a form of life when they terminate their pregnancies. I’m not saying they admit it, though some do (see Naomi Wolf’s “Our Bodies, Our Souls“)
My concern is that pro-choice advocates remain intent upon driving a wedge between procreation and sex. I don’t think this is appropriately human, nor that God created our bodies and souls to permanently cleave sex away from procreation.
Conundrum
It seems to me that the difference between terminating an eleven week old fetus and terminating a thirty week old fetus is significant and worth thinking about. I’ve heard pro-life advocates say there is no difference in value.
I do not intend to minimize the grief of losing a child at any age (read my own grief over the loss of our six week old fetus here). However, I have an intuitive sense after losing a six week old fetus and facing the possibility of losing a week old baby (read here) that you feel like you’re losing more with a week old baby.
Now here is where pro-choice advocates need to tread carefully. Does the intuition that a baby at one week is more v
aluable than a fetus at 6 weeks find valid justification? I mean do my intuitions match reality, do they find justification in Scripture, in natural law, in God’s law? Are there reasons to think of one as more valuable than another? Is if fair to fault a smaller, less developed form of human life as less valuable than a bigger, more developed form? Is it merely because a baby looks more like a baby as it gets older that I feel the loss greater?
Now, here’s the strange conundrum, the dependency of a one week old baby feels greater, more invasive, more sobering and commanding than the dependency of a five week old fetus. But we protect the life of a baby once it’s outside the womb, no matter how inconvenient, painful, difficult that life might be to mother, to father, to society.
Thoughts? Concerns? Ideas?
June 24th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Hi Randomizer,
I’ve been following the discussion on this post for a bit now and decided to jump in since you and Jonalyn have moved into an area I have a lot of interest in (I teach a Philosophy of Mind course at a Canadian university).
It may be helpful to point out that just as you weren’t satisfied with (what you you took to be) Jonalyn’s appeal to Thomas Aquinas, most philosophers are going to be unsatisfied with your appeal to cognitive science. It is, in principle, impossible for the cognitive sciences to ‘prove’ that there is no mind/soul. The very most they can do is point to a correlation between the mind and body. This is something that is almost universally accepted among philosophers of mind (with Paul & Patricia Churchland being notable exceptions – those dang Canadians!). For example, in his book on the philosophy of mind John Heil (who is not a dualist of any sort) notes that “questions that arise in the philosophy of mind are rarely susceptible to straightforward empirical answers… Science provides a loose framework for representing empirical findings, but no strictly scientific principles tell us what we are to make of this evidence” (Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction, page 16).
Because the findings of cognitive science are compatible with either a Cartesian or Thomistic dualism they pose no problem for those that hold those views. (This truth is particularly ignored by popular magazines and news writers.) So if we’re to believe that there is no mind/soul and that the body is ontologically one thing, then it would need to be on philosophical grounds.
Another interesting thing that came to mind in reading your most recent post is that most philosophers actually consider emergentism to be a type of dualism. Because the mind/soul emerges from the body it must be distinct from it (that which emerges from some thing cannot be identical to that thing). In philosophical communities emergentism isn’t looked at in much better light than standard dualism because it requires one to accept the belief in something non-physical.
Jonalyn regularly refers to that non-physical part of the human as a ‘soul’ which for many people does have religious connotations, but it need not. (Plato, for example, obviously wasn’t a Christian but talks a lot about the soul.) I think you could easily take any instance in which she uses ‘soul’ and just replace it with ‘mind’. After doing so the charge of “attaching unnecessary supernatural bells and whistles” goes away pretty quickly. The use of ‘soul’ or ‘mind’ typically demonstrates where one focuses the philosophical discussion. Descartes focuses on the cognitive aspects of the non-physical part of the human and thus regularly uses ‘mind’. Aquinas, however, starts with and focuses on the integrated whole between the body and the non-physical part of us and so uses ‘soul’. Even for him it’s not the same thing that many Christians today use to talk about “that thing that gets saved from Hell.”
Finally (this got much longer than intended!), I’m fairly certain that Jonalyn commits no logical fallacy. Her method of reasoning seems to be as follows:
1) If humans have souls from conception, then the fetus is ontologically equivalent to “born humans”.
2) If the fetus is ontologically equivalent to born humans, then abortion is equivalent to killing a born human.
3) Therefore, if humans have souls from conception, then abortion is equivalent to killing a born human (and thus morally wrong).
There is no logical fallacy there at all, it’s just a standard hypothetical syllogism. Jonalyn, of course, needs to give us reasons for accepting the antecedent of the first premise (i.e., humans do not have souls from conception) – something she does do. You, however, deny the antecedent of the first premise. What’s funny is that if based upon that denial you conclude that abortion is not equivalent to killing a born human then you would be the one committing a logical fallacy (a series of denying the antecedent). But, if you start with the denial of the consequent of the third premise then you could validly deny the antecedent of the first. (One man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens.
) The debate then would need to come down to which we have more reasons to accept: a) humans have souls from conception or b) abortion is not equivalent to killing a born human.
Best,
Paul
July 1st, 2011 at 6:00 am
Thanks for the thought-provoking challenge. In my world, philosophy of mind is part of the interdisciplinary domain referred to as cognitive science though you are correct that the field can entertain dualists and their philosophical opponents. You raise a number of points and I will try to address them cogently but will divide my response into two posts.
First, the question of emergence versus embodiment is interesting. If I propose that sand dunes are an emergent property of sand under the influence of physical forces including gravity and wind, does that imply that sand and dune can be separated? If not then how does the concept of emergence imply dualism in this context. Is the use of the idea of emergence in this context dirrerent than how the word is operationalized in formal discussions of POM? In any case, I do not personally subscribe to mind/body dualism.
July 1st, 2011 at 7:01 am
Secondly, you are correct that formally jocelyne’s logic is sound and that challenging only the first antecedant does not result in a logically sound and complete counter-argument.
I do not accept the proposition that yaweh breathes an essence into each of us at our unicellular origin. I find the claim both unlikely and untestable. However, refuting this proposition alone is not sufficient.
I support a woman’s right to choose for two reasons. First and foremost is the value I, amongst others, ascribe to bodily autonomy. Admittedly, there are limits where individuals interact. My freedom of movement does not allow me to punch you.
Secondly, I do not accept that a foetus is equivalent to a born human with a claim to personhood. I do not deny that it has human DNA, but so too do my fingernails. It lacks many of the attributes we associate with personhood and yet some would claim that it can assert claims that trump the bodily autonomy of the woman in whom it resides.
As stated upthread, no person may claim by right such an extreme and perilous endeavor as a foetus would claim of a woman from conception to delivery.
Jonalyn (apologies for earlier mis-spelling) asserts that the pre-nascent guest was invited and therefore may demand hospitality up to and including efforts risking death. I disagree.
My argument is:
1. If a woman is a person with bodily autonomy, then she cannot be forced to give birth.
2. If a foetus is not a person it cannot make claims limiting a person’s autonomy.
3. A foetus is not a person.
4. If there are circumstances in which the bringing a conception to fruition would cause more harm than good, a decision to abort may increase the net good.
5. Finally, a woman who has conceived has the greatest stake in all outcomes of the decision and is therefore best placed to make this and her decision should be respected.
Procedurally, the rest is a matter of how to implement the decision and back alley medicine serves no good.
June 24th, 2011 at 10:21 am
Paul,
Appreciate your showing the limits of cognitive science in deciding which philosophy to choose in terms of mind/body connection.
I think, for clarity, that you mean to write the antecedent of the first premise would be “humans do have souls from conception)? Randomizer denies that humans have souls from conception.
Does this sound accurate?
Appreciate your final clarification of the debate Paul.
Randomizer, would appreciate any feedback.
June 24th, 2011 at 10:34 am
Ah, yes you are right. The parenthetical in the second sentence underneath the numbered propositions should read “(i.e., humans do have souls from conception).”
Sorry about that and thanks for the clarification!
(And for what it’s worth, I apparently have a habit of inadvertently adding an unwanted ‘not’ every once in awhile. I did that in the first line of the first paper I wrote in graduate school and then again in my doctoral general exams. I’m very thankful my professors were as charitable as you.)
July 2nd, 2011 at 10:16 am
I question, ultimately whether Jonalyn and I can usefully debate further given that our epistemilogical commitments are irreconcilable.
July 5th, 2011 at 8:52 am
Hello Randomizer,
I have to agree with you that we will probably not shift our positions here, our epistemological basics are very different.
I will probably continue to believe a foetus very substance holds more uniqueness and potential than, say a human fingernail. Would you be willing to list the attributes a foetus lacks that you find central to personhood? I think that will be helpful to myself and other readers.
I also find the burden of death that we heap upon women with unwanted pregnancies an unlikely salve to their predicament. It seems backward to treat pregnancy as more of a societal ill than the death a termination induces. Though I’m very cognizant of the toll of those nine months and the years afterward (I still have not slept for more than 5 hours at a time for over a year with my 16 month old).
I do believe that your fourth point above is so difficult to ascertain as we cannot know the future. Betting on probability where human will and determination supernaturally topsy-turn the future is something I cannot easily forget. It feels arrogant to super-impose our projections of an intolerable life upon a woman who may turn her life and that of her child to brighter places.
I remain grateful for your response and your willingness to let others read, critic, question and engage with you.
Your ideas are welcome here,
Jonalyn
July 25th, 2011 at 6:49 am
Jonalyn,
I notice a key point in this discussion is when a fetus becomes a person that we should therefore treat as such.
Pro-choicers argue for one reason or another that fetuses are not really people.
This argument has been used before.
What about black slaves? In the past it has been permissible to horrifically mistreat and even kill them because they weren’t “really people”.
Racism never was the issue but a tool. It gave people an excuse to treat their slaves as they saw fit.
The labels are different but the thinking behind them is same. Dehumanizing fetuses gives women the “right” to dispose of fetuses as they see fit.
When life begins is irrelevant. We are all God’s children, no matter what stage of development.
For this reason alone abortion is murder.
As Christians we should have no question whether abortion is wrong if we have accepted that God is love.
July 25th, 2011 at 7:12 am
Erin,
While I agree with you that all abortion destroys humans made in God’s image (regardless of age the fetus is still human), I’m not certain I know how to back up the belief that we are all God’s children. What Biblical text are you relying upon to make this case?
All ears,
Jonalyn