Since today is Blogging for Choice day, it seems as good a time as any to review my own thoughts on the subject of abortion.
The argument is often made that abortion is wrong, that it is effectively "killing" another human being. I disagree with that stance for a couple of reasons.
First off, pregnancy is a biological process that carries with it significant risks for the woman. If you take the position that terminating a pregnancy is "killing the child", then the corollary stance to that is that you must hold the child responsible for the mother should something catastrophic happen during childbirth.
Obviously, such a stance is fraught with ethical and moral issues throughout, as it presupposes a degree of intent on the child's part; and it further dehumanizes the woman by treating her as a mere vessel once she becomes pregnant - ignoring her status as a thinking, intelligent human being.
The second point I wish to raise extends from the basic recognition that a woman does not give up her faculties and abilities as a human being the moment she becomes pregnant. In no respect is her judgment impaired, or her capacity to reason diminished. To me, this is quite clear, and it means that the woman is ultimately capable of making her own moral and ethical decisions regarding a pregnancy. While we may wish to provide a certain moral framework in which society would want her to frame that decision, it is unquestionably her decision first and foremost.
The last part that I wish to address is the prickly issue of medical abortion itself. Fundamentally, it is a medical procedure, and a relatively recent one at that. While it is a medical procedure, and correctly governed from within the medical profession, we must not lose sight of its origins. For as long as humanity has been around, women have sought to control their fertility - whether it be through abstinence or the use of a variety of techniques to ensure that they avoid becoming pregnant (or ending that pregnancy)
In the years prior to the Roe v Wade decision, safe abortion was available only to those with money. If you weren't sufficiently wealthy and needed an abortion for whatever reason, you fell prey to the questionable ethics of underground operators whose practices ranged from acceptable to downright criminal. While a handful of such operations no doubt still exist, they are relatively rare, and most women have access to relatively safe procedures. (I do not claim that any surgical procedure is inherently "safe" - they all carry some kind of risk, but so does being alive)
In speaking up for a woman's right to choose in these matters, I speak in favour of ensuring that abortion remains accessible and safe. I also speak from the perspective that a woman being pregnant does not alter her intellectual capacity. If we claim that safe abortion (or any other surgical procedure) should be denied to her simply because she is pregnant (and not because of some inherent risk that pregnancy would introduce), we are essentially saying, as a society, that in fact her reasoning capacity is diminished - a claim for which there is no reasonable evidence.
7 comments:
Abortion is a sensitive subject; myself, I'm against it in principle BUT that's where it ends. I cannot and will not force any woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term if she does not want to, whatever her reasons.
Anyone who says that the woman should carry a child to birth then give it up for adoption is treating that woman as some sort of breeding vessel, and in the process turning that individual into a convenient vessel for someone else's benefit. No one should be subjected to that. There's a reason that any child to be given up for adoption at birth is never allowed to be seen by the mother, regardless of how much she may not want the child there is a psychological bond, a bond that is reinforced by the physical contact between a child and mother. Yet the ultimate irony is that there are a lot of young children in need of families but no one is lining up to adopt them, care for them and give them the homes that are so desperately needed. That only proves to me that we as a species are still closer to our primitive hominid ancestors than we'd like to admit.
If we want abortion to stop, we'd better wake up and start educating everyone about the real facts on sex, sexuality, and birth control; religion should not be a barrier to knowledge, nor should religion/culture be an excuse to be excluded from knowing. I find that people who say it's against their 'beliefs' use these reasons as an excuse to limit or deny knowledge to members within a community and/or family and thus trying to retain control over them. Keeping women 'barefoot & pregnant' and using 'ignorance is bliss' ideals is not the way for human society to progress.
We progress by learning and understanding the reasons for the way things are, by asking questions and looking for answers. No one is asking anyone to go out and try something 'just because you can'; but there are those who, in a desperate & vain attempt to assert their will on others or just because they feel that their beliefs are being challenged, will go out and spread their messages of fear and hate. To blunt their attacks we have to come back at them with the facts and a level headed approach, not easy where these subjects are concerned.
E.
I'm personally glad to see that high profile characters like Huckabee are getting out the plain old talk on contraception being the same as abortion...and wanting to outlaw contraception again.
There are a lot of people out there blissfully cruising in neutral because they haven't been pushed into the "I need an abortion" reality.
The "I need contraception" reality is much, much larger.
There are days I sit back and look at the bus ads for the pill and listen to condom ads on the radio and think...it is SO good to live in Canada after reading about the hysteria in the US.
And then I see a bus ad for one of those faux 'pregnancy crisis centers' the anti-abortion backed ones that lie to pregnant women, and I remember vigilant education is all that separates us from the rest of the forced-birth slippery slope.
The other side:
http://www.ccbrinfo.ca/
Anonymous @ 2:36:
I'm plenty familiar with CCBR - sadly, they are your basic forced birth organization which misses the point every time.
I hate to point this out, but human biology is generally pretty messy - so it should come as little or no surprise that abortion is too. (As a matter of fact, giving birth is pretty messy too ... your point?)
Showing me a bunch of gory pictures isn't going to change my opinion on the subject. If you wish to speak meaningfully to the moral and ethical issues my post raised, or that one of my commenters has raised, go for it. Otherwise, go crawl back under a rock.
Wow, what a great argument. When you are remotely challenged, the response is "go crawl under a rock".
Clearly this blog is devoid of any rational discourse.
Dear Anonymous Troll:
A link to a propaganda site is not "challenging" me, nor is it "engaging" in anything resembling discussion or debate.
You have neither addressed my argument nor that of any of the other commenters in any meaningful sense.
anonymous @ 1:25
Grog clearly asked you to either "....speak meaningfully...." OR "....go crawl back under a rock..."
You did NOT 'challenge' Grog nor did you bother even trying to engage in meaningful debate. Instead when faced with the decision to use your brains you immediately used the tool that all other trolls use, twisting words.
This blog is usually inhabited by people with the ability to understand polysyllabic words and have the capability to engage in measured discourse. You quite clearly do not have either.....
SB
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