How Dare They?

Scott Lemieux wonders "how on earth" Christine Stansell's retelling of the history of abortion rights made it into the New Republic, since it breaks with the Jeff Rosen-Ben Wittes "Roe is bad law" line. I wondered how on earth it made it into the New Republic because it's completely tendentious and unconvincing. There is, for instance, the assertion that "before Roe v. Wade, abortion was as widely practiced as it is today," a canard that requires one to believe, among other implausibilities, that the abortion rate went down after legalization. There's the historical cherry-picking - a ballot initiative here, a Saturday Evening Post headline there - to suggest that public opinion and the Supreme Court were on exactly the same page in the late Sixties and early Seventies. (They weren't.)

And then there's this, which isn't so much wrong as delightfully obtuse:

So how, despite public opinion, did abortion opponents manage to waylay and subvert pro-choice measures in state after state before 1973? The answer lies in the intractable determination of religious conservatives to recast abortion as a debate over the primacy of child-bearing and the personhood of the fetus, rather than as an issue of women's well-being.

So you're saying that they used the power of argument to defeat you! Those ... those unspeakable bastards!

Comments

Weird.

There's a reference to cherry-picking in both your post and Yglesias' post.

This deserves a meta-analysis. ;)

Posted by David | May 14, 2007 12:51 PM

Do you care at all about women's well-being? I've certainly never read of you acknowledging the huge burden of unwanted pregnancy, or even of wanted pregnancy. You really don't do much to dispel the stereotype of right-wingers, and Catholics, as misogynist.

Posted by z | May 14, 2007 2:46 PM

z's comment has a lot of merit. Also, what about the issue of illegal abortions? Let's suppose Ross is correct and the abortion rate doubled when it was legalized. Is 650,000 illegal abortions a year really a better situation than 1.3 million legal ones, when you consider that the illegal abortions included some very unsafe procedures, plus widespread flouting of the law which is never a good situation? And what about those 650,000 women who were forced to bring their babies to term each year? What happened to them? How many of them had to drop out of school? How many felt they had to stay with an abusive boyfriend or husband to raise the child? How many of them suffered complications in their pregnancies? How many of them couldn't afford prenatal care or couldn't afford to take care of their child once he or she was born?

If one were really going to try to ban abortion in this country, there would need to be a whole infrastructure of social services created to deal with these problems, an infrastructure that pro-lifers never seem interested in discussing. (Indeed, tellingly, they tend to discuss the issues of women's sexual choices a lot more than they discuss this infrastructure.)

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 14, 2007 2:56 PM

Both Z and Dilan, of course, skip the eternal question about whether or not the fetus is a human who deserves a life. You assume that it is not and the only issue is whether or not the "mother" has a care-free and happy life b/c she was able to abort.

If the main question in the debate was so easy to answer, it would already be answered.

Moreover, whether or not one believes abortion to be a good thing, one can recognize that Roe was a travesty of constitutional law. While people can support the outcome of Roe, I have never read anyone who can support the legal reasoning.

Finally, the point of the main entry was not an argument for or against abortion, but to point out the lying that goes into the revisionist history of abortion in our country to find universal support for abortion pre-Roe. It reminds me of Ballisteres complete pack of lies he sold to the left in his "Historical" book that americans did not own guns until the last 50 years.

And this bit made me laugh:

If one were really going to try to ban abortion in this country, there would need to be a whole infrastructure of social services created to deal with these problems, an infrastructure that pro-lifers never seem interested in discussing. (Indeed, tellingly, they tend to discuss the issues of women's sexual choices a lot more than they discuss this infrastructure.)

Instead of say, people being responsible for themselves and their actions. Of course the answer is that gov't would have to provide . . . Indeed, not sure why you don't just state that the gov't should be providing all of that now, b/c not all babies are aborted now. And, I'm glad you admit that abortion is all about a woman's sexual choices (i.e., the choice to be irresponsible sexually and to use abortion merely as a fix to an inconvenient child).

Yes, we on the right are all prudes who hate sex and anyone who has sex and that is what the abortion debate is all about. Keep telling yourself that, it means you never have to think or rationally defend your "arguments".

Posted by Great Banana | May 14, 2007 3:09 PM

Banana,

You are obviously right that abortion, in part, helps insulate people from the consequences of their actions. However, it's rather glib to indicate that, if we just remove that insulation, everyone will start making better choices all the time, as evidenced by the fact that everyone (I think) agrees that there were lots of illegal abortions pre-Roe.

Human beings make mistakes, and pursue short-term goals at their potential (or even likely) long-term detriment all the time. As evidence, I cite the fact that very few people want to go to prison, most people know that committing a crime can result in you going to prison, and yet people commit crimes all the time.

Any system of laws you implement ought to take this fact into account. Anything else is simply going to be flaunted. And worse, this inculates a specific disrespect for the law which can only, in my opinion, have negative societal effects.

Finally, regarding the specifics of your post, you may hate the automatic appeal to government to help with the problem of unwanted and/or uncared-for children. You may think it shows weakness and lack of moral clarity. So your preference is to...just let those poor souls who would have been aborted otherwise suffer whatever happens to them, because their parents were irresponsible?

Posted by David S | May 14, 2007 3:35 PM

Ross,

I think you're being a bit purposefully obtuse here. I suspect she's arguing, although not very coherently (you won't get any defense of this article's publication from me!) that the anti-abortion arguments are more convincing, not because they are rhetorically or logically stronger, but rather because they have more emotional valence. For the same reason that people use 'think of the children' as the argument to defend their cause celebre, whatever it may be, anti-abortion arguments are simply more appealing on first glance than pro-choice opinions, which tend to be rely on more meta-analysis, statements about secondary and tertiary effects, etc.

You may think this is fine, and that if humans respond more instinctually to an argument, then the argument holds more power and represents the appropriate outcome. That's an eminently defendible position, although I obviously disagree. But to present it as the be-all end-all of the paper in question is a bit, as I said, disingenuous.

Posted by David S | May 14, 2007 3:42 PM

In the post below on Kinsley's review of Hitchens, Mr. Douthat writes that claims about the truth or falsity of religious claims deserves serious debate. Yet I have not heard him, or for that matter any pro-lifer, defend in any intellectually serious way the religious claims underlying their stance.

The question of when a fetus becomes a person is more or less unanswerable except to those who believe that the fetus has an incorporeal soul from the moment of conception. This belief is derived from what Christians take to be revealed truth.

If Mr. Douthat believes that his religious beliefs can be established as true to the satisfaction of other reasonable people by logical argument, he should be making such an argument. If not--if he acknowledges that the claims of religion depend in part on pure faith--then he must acknowledge that it is not for him, or any other believer, to decide for women the deeply mysterious metaphysical question of when a fetus becomes a person.

Instead we get neither a proper argument nor this kind of humility--only bluster. While Mr. Douthat may not himself be a misogynist, the assumptions informing the idea that women's choice to have an abortion might require the intervention of any outside authority certainly are.

Posted by BP | May 14, 2007 3:54 PM

While my position is informed by religious beliefs, they are not essential to it. Most people agree that a viable, healthy fetus is entitled to life outside a substantial risk to the health of the mother, and that there is little scientific difference between the taking of that life inside the womb and the taking of that life outside the womb. If one accepts that science is likely to push practical viability back considerably, considering that it has gone from perhaps 25 gestational weeks in 1973 to 20-21 now to give an otherwise healthy baby a realistic chance at life, fixing a date of viability (quickening, in dated parlance) becomes an arbitrary exercise. With non-lifesaving abortions beyond that date thus deemed reprehensible, we are confronted with a mounting body of scientific evidence (ultrasounds, among other things) that attests to the fact that even at early gestational dates the unborn possess distinctive characteristics and other aspects of personhood. So what it boils down to is that an attempt to peg a permissibility date for abortion has but one plausible choice, viability, and that an overextensive and malleable characterization in its own right. In confronting moral and scientific uncertainty it seems eminently more plausible to err on the side of life than on the side of convenience. Thus a nonreligious argument for the prohibition of abortion-at-will.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 14, 2007 4:52 PM

you don't need to be religious to be deeply troubled by abortion. i think the combination of better quality ultrasounds, more widespread education of women as to the ramifications of their actions, better adoption procedures, cheaper, better contraceptive options and wider availability of things like Plan B (plus the moderation of the tone of the pro-lifers) will continue to exert pressure on pro choicers' arguments. it's impossible to imagine abortion being banned in our lifetimes, however it's perhaps encouraging to speculate that the total amount of terminations could quite possibly be greatly decreased, and perhaps that the latest legal date moves towards, say, ten weeks.

Posted by lucretius | May 14, 2007 4:55 PM

Great Banana:

Your post demonstrates my point. You seem to have no concern at all for women who face unplanned pregnancies-- you seem to think that it will all work out fine for them in the end, and if it doesn't, it's their own fault. You certainly don't want to engage in any cogitation at all about what sort of social services would need to be available for these women if abortion were banned and they were all forced to either get illegal abortions or carry their babies to term.

But what you seem to have a lot of interest in is saying that they deserved what they got because they went and had immoral sex.

This is, in fact, precisely what most pro-lifers do. Banning abortion, as I said, would create huge externalities, and these externalities cannot be wished away by assuming that everyone will just change their behavior. Without the social programs I am discussing, your policy choice would end up ruining huge numbers of people's lives, including some of the very children you hope to save.

But you don't want to discuss that. You want to make a point about how these people shouldn't have had sex in the first place.

Finally, pointing out your contested claim that the fetus is a human life with all the rights of a born child doesn't really get at this. Even if we assume arguendo this is true, you still have to deal with all the women and children whose lives will be affected by this policy. Otherwise, it is as if ONLY the fetus is alive and has moral claims-- adults, apparently, do not have them.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 14, 2007 5:04 PM

Dilan,
I understand and agree with your lament. Pro-lifers would be well-advised to stop treating pregnant women seeking out abortion as whores rather than the particular percentage of the substantial majority of the nonmarried adult population that is sexually active who happened to pull the short straw of statistics. And I agree as well that social programs need to be in place to take care of these women; even if one accepts the idea of "incentivization" economic maxims do not work instantaneously, and services need to provide for the lag time. WIC and other efforts are actually pretty good at doing so, and their increased budgets would be a meager price to pay for such an outcome.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 14, 2007 5:10 PM

z's comment has a lot of merit.

No, no it actually doesn't. It's like the people who responded to some criticism of the Soviet Gulag with "ah, but what about the Negroes in the American South, you didn't mention them?" It is a comment made purely to (A) distract from the actual point at hand and (B) unfairly attack someone for not expressing an obvious point that is not needed -- as if every discussion of any issue must, in order to be just, invoke all issues everywhere that might, somehow, be related.

I am against spouse murder, quite adamantly so -- in particular (to concretize), women should not kill their husbands, except in self defense. Are there cases where spousal murder starts to look quite understandable, far short of self defense? Sure. We all want to kill some people, and once in a while we are even "justified." But not mentioning that in discussing why we don't have laws allowing women to generally murder their spouses is not, really, a failure.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 14, 2007 5:38 PM

pro-choice opinions, which tend to be rely on more meta-analysis, statements about secondary and tertiary effects, etc.

As far as I can tell, logically, pro-abortion forces rely not on these things (except in rarefied intellectual circles) but normal people's fuzzy, emotional, nature --

1) "Well, it's pretty icky, but what if my daughter was going to have to leave college to care for a stupid baby. That ought to be ok, right?"

2) "What other people do is none of my business."

The first is the typical human response to think that wrong things are only really wrong if you might never REALLY REALLY want them yourself, and the second is America's mild libertarianism at work. Abortion rights success (to the extent it has it) in polling and at the ballot box does not arise from meta-analysis. It arises from selfishness and leave-me-alone-ism.

That these are things some right-wing folks applaud with regards to economic choices does not make them much more than emotional responses.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 14, 2007 5:45 PM

your policy choice would end up ruining huge numbers of people's lives,

This basically amounts to: you people think that BEING DEAD is a more ruined life than NOT GOING TO COLLEGE WHEN YOU WANT TO. This is both true and obvious to anyone with any sense.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 14, 2007 5:48 PM

If not--if he acknowledges that the claims of religion depend in part on pure faith--then he must acknowledge that it is not for him, or any other believer, to decide for women the deeply mysterious metaphysical question of when a fetus becomes a person.

Perhaps he is not deciding what the answer is to this metaphysical question "for women." Perhaps, rather, he is deciding "for fetuses."

Posted by Jasper | May 14, 2007 7:58 PM

BP,

The question of when a fetus becomes a person is more or less unanswerable except to those who believe that the fetus has an incorporeal soul from the moment of conception. This belief is derived from what Christians take to be revealed truth.

The question is not when a fetus becomes a person, but how one defines personhood. Either all human beings are persons with inalienable rights (the most fundamental of which is the right to not be killed) by virtue of what they are (i.e. human beings), or there two classes of human beings: those who are persons and those who are not. If the latter is the case, then human rights are derived not from what human beings are, but what what particular characteristics they have. The usual argument along these lines refers to some sort of mental capacity (but of course all kinds of other criteria, such as gender (in Muslim societies) and race (too many examples to pick from), are used as well by various people). But since mental development is a continuous process from conception onward, and there is a continuum of ways in which adults can lose mental capacities (e.g. Alzheimer's), one is left with an essentially arbitrary criterion that distinguishes human beings with rights not to be killed from those without such rights.

Which of these premises are based in religious belief?

This is, in fact, precisely what most pro-lifers do. Banning abortion, as I said, would create huge externalities, and these externalities cannot be wished away by assuming that everyone will just change their behavior. Without the social programs I am discussing, your policy choice would end up ruining huge numbers of people's lives, including some of the very children you hope to save.

Dilan, your whole argument is an exercise in question-begging. If we were talking about killing 1-year-olds, instead of children still growing inside the womb, would your arguments have any force at all? Parenting is difficult, exasperating, costly, and removes various other choices as options for most parents. But nobody argues that parents with children ages 5 and 2 can simply abjure their parental duties because they impinge upon one's lifestyle. All you've done is arbitrarily set aside the first 9 months of a child's life as a sort of "do-over" zone, where one is stuck with the decision after the 9 months is up, but before that one can kill the child with impunity if it is inconvenient. What is the moral principle that says that it is morally wrong to kill a 2-year old for being inconvenient, but not morally wrong to kill a 7 month fetus for exactly the same reason?

Posted by Mike S. | May 14, 2007 10:24 PM

Pro-lifers would be well-advised to stop treating pregnant women seeking out abortion as whores rather than the particular percentage of the substantial majority of the nonmarried adult population that is sexually active who happened to pull the short straw of statistics.

Who does this? Most pro-lifers that I'm aware of a) want Roe overturned, so that abortion law can be hashed out in the state legislatures; b) want abortion providers punished, not women who seek out abortions; c) support, financially and otherwise, pregnancy crisis centers, adoption agencies, and post-abortion counseling centers. The notion that pro-lifers "don't care about the children after they are born" is mostly a false claim made by the left, and should not be acquiesced to by those on the right.

Posted by Mike S. | May 14, 2007 10:29 PM

I recall a semi-prominent right-wing blogger all but rejoicing in the fact that a woman had died from using RU 486. I'm an ardent pro-lifer, I just believe that sometimes we as Christians rightly emphasize the sanctity of life without emphasizing the virtue of compassion that should accompany it. This is not a universal and it is probably unfair of me to punish anecdotes with broad-brush generalizations, but it has been my experience that for too many "she should have kept her legs shut" suffices for being attentive to the woman's needs.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 14, 2007 10:37 PM

Having been raised in a Catholic family, I have been raised to believe in the terror of abortion, so I understand the beliefs of pro lifers. However, I'd have to agree that unwanted pregnancies are a huge burden. We're human, so we make mistakes, and contraceptives aren't perfect, and probably never will be.

Posted by GSB | May 15, 2007 12:48 AM

Wanted pregnancies are a huge burden, too. As I said, children are a huge burden after they have been born. So is taking care of a sick elderly parent. Life is full of "huge" burdens. We don't normally use that as an excuse for killing the "burden" (or paying someone else to do the killing for us).

Posted by Mike S. | May 15, 2007 9:18 AM

Not to mention the fact that Stansell is dishonest.

Posted by Joe M. | May 15, 2007 12:33 PM

b) want abortion providers punished, not women who seek out abortions;

What moral sense does that make, at all? Seriously, if you genuinely believe the act of abortion is tantamount to murder, how can you possibly let the mother of the murdered child off the hook? It would be like saying, "nobody wants to punish the man who hired the ex-con to kill his wife." How can you possibly square that?

Posted by Epsilon | May 15, 2007 1:23 PM

What moral sense does that make, at all? Seriously, if you genuinely believe the act of abortion is tantamount to murder, how can you possibly let the mother of the murdered child off the hook?

Because the law is not always equivalent to perfect justice? Punishment may be suited to the practical circumstances of society, rather than the abstract requirements of morality. That the law may not punish every evil, for practical reasons, is a standard trope at least of Catholic thought, dating at the latest to Aquinas (and common before that as well).

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 15, 2007 1:31 PM

Another reason is that most pro-lifers do grasp that women seeking abortions are often confused, scared, pressured, and ignorant, though certainly some are selfish and callous. There is a reasonable presumption of much better mitigating factors for the woman seeking an abortion than for the doctor performing it, all "Cider House Rules" nonsense aside. Some abortionists are clearly idealists, but we typically consider "personal" reasons (passion, fear) as more important in lowering responsibility for a crime than we do abstract convictions. The Unabomber and the 9/11 terrorists, and probably some Nazi experimenters (Mengele? who can say) were convinced, I feel, that they were doing "right" -- clearly most abortionists are not on this repugnant convinced-but-evil level, but they're closer than most women seeking abortions.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 15, 2007 1:36 PM

That the law may not punish every evil, for practical reasons, is a standard trope at least of Catholic thought, dating at the latest to Aquinas (and common before that as well).

Your problem there is that there is no practical reason to punish the hit man but not the man who hires him, nor is there a moral one. It's plainly evident that the folks who wish to see abortion criminalized have no qualms whatsoever about invoking the most overwrought possible rhetoric ("Abortion is murder") even though the very fact that they're willing to twist into intellectual knots by drawing distinctions in culpability between the conduct of the doctor who performs the abortion and the woman who pays him to do so.

I've exerted myself quite a bit to understand the moral reasoning behind people who call for throwing doctors in prison for performing abortions but not the women who commission them, but I just cannot do it. You've done an impressive job lessening the jarring contradiction in this position, but unless you can come up with a meaningful reason why my analogy is flawed, I remain totally unconvinced.

I'd like to be able to think that pro-lifers aren't simply opposed to women having reproductive freedom and sexual enjoyment, but it is immensely difficult to do so unless they're willing to advocate punishing the mothers as well as the doctors for abortion.

Posted by Epsilon | May 15, 2007 2:47 PM

I should have said "sexual license" in my last paragraph. Apologies...

Posted by Epsilon | May 15, 2007 2:48 PM

"I wondered how on earth it made it into the New Republic because it's completely tendentious and unconvincing."

Ross clearly doesn't read TNR very often.

Many, perhaps most, Americans are concerned about BOTH the health and freedom of young women AND concerned about the destruction of human life. Polls vary widely depending on the precise wording of questions, but most people seem to support some sort of compromise that falls somewhere between state-subsidized-abortion-on-demand and illegal-except-to-save-the-life-of-the-mother.

Personally, though, I think the rest of Lemieux's argument is more compelling than anything Ross or Stansell has to offer. If abortion were banned, privileged women will travel overseas, if necessary, to obtain safe abortions. Working class women will resort to dangerous procedures and start turning up once again in emergency rooms on a regular basis. And the overall abortion rate may decrease, but probably not by very much.

It's understandable for people who believe that abortion takes a life to WANT it to be illegal, just as it is understandable that people WANT to stop drugs from entering their communities, and WANT to put an end to gun violence. But policies need to be judged by their OUTCOMES, not by whether we think certain behaviors are good or bad. Laws that restrict abortion are generally ineffective, lead to injury and death, and the burdens are borne almost entirely by poor and lower middle class women. This why nearly every developed nation legalized abortion in the first place, and the argument is still compelling.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 15, 2007 2:51 PM

It is perhaps a bit sophistic, but the argument most tend to use, to an extent me included, is that in a culture of permissiveness that exonerates a woman for doing so we are all equally guilty, and until we place such conduct both outside the laws and outside our mores it is unreasonable to label someone a murderer for undertaking such a decision.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 15, 2007 2:52 PM

Mike S.:

It isn't enough to support centers to talk women out of having abortions while Roe is still the law. I am talking about what happens post-Roe, not now. The fact is, banning abortion will create a huge additional social service burden, because you will suddenly have a large pool of additional, mostly poor women and children (as rich women will still be able to get abortions by hook or by crook) who will need a lot of help and support if they are going to be able to go back to school, rejoin the workplace, get their lives back together, not be victimized by abusive husbands and boyfriends, etc. There will also be a pool of women who suffer consequences from unsafe illegal abortions. There will be some who attempt suicide or need psychological counseling.

This is just reality. And asserting that: (1) everyone will just change their behavior (which won't happen immediately, as Anonymous Conservative forthrightly admits, and which I suspect won't happen at all for many people); or (2) people who don't change their behavior are immoral and took the risk and got their just deserts isn't an answer to this. Yet I hear a lot more of arguments (1) and (2) from many pro-lifers than I do a forthright analysis of how we would bear the burdens created by making abortion illegal.

And to those who say it isn't even a relevant point because abortion is murder, I don't buy that. Even if you are right that abortion is unquestionably murder, you still have to deal with the externalities of prohibiting it. And if you don't want to discuss the issue, I don't think you can complain when pro-choicers infer that you aren't that interested in what happens to women.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 15, 2007 2:54 PM

Well put, Dilan Esper.

As I said before, many of my family members and some of my friends are ardent pro-lifers, so I don't WANT to believe the worst about their motives, but their refusal to acknowledge the consequences of outright criminalization coupled with their casual eagerness to toss around terms like murder makes it very difficult to believe otherwise.

It sadly seems apparent to me that so many pro-lifers work backward from their retrograde moral objections to premarital sex, as well as latent misogynism, to reach the conclusion that abortion should be illegal. The fact that they want to punish abortion doctors but not the women simultaneously shows a lack of moral seriousness and an abundance of political pragmatism (they know they'd have no chance of achieving their objectives if they followed their rhetoric to its logical conclusions.)

Posted by Epsilon | May 15, 2007 3:05 PM

Epsilon
I think you push causation in the wrong direction. Most pro-lifers I know don't think abortion should be illegal because they find the underlying conduct reprehensible, they think that the underlying conduct is reprehensible because they believe that abortion should be illegal, usually on the grounds that life is sacred. They find the act of abortion to be an abomination and so it colors their opinion of the people who undergo it.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 15, 2007 3:48 PM

Interesting point, AC, but I'm not sure that the actions that pro-lifers take are really commensurate with that line of thinking.

If you find abortion reprehensible, you should advocating everything in your power to reduce the frequency of abortion. Pretty much anyone with a functioning brain realizes that human beings are going to have sex (whether or not they are married), and as long as they do so, there will always be unwanted pregnancies. If you want to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and thus reduce the number of situations in which abortion would be an option, wouldn't you expect pro-lifers to be all in favor of promoting general contraception and things such as the morning-after pill?

Instead, they ignore human nature scream bloody murder about abstinence, which makes it hard to believe that they genuinely want to reduce the frequency of abortion, and further buttresses the impression that it is sex outside of procreational purposes that they truly find reprehensible.

Posted by Epsilon | May 15, 2007 5:11 PM

We toss around the term "murder" because this is the term for intentionally causing the death of an innocent human being. There's a certain sense to using the truth.

I, for one, would sentence a woman who hired a hit man to kill her spouse in certain circumstances with considerably more lenience than I would a seasoned professional hitman who carries out murder for hire. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't we all?

In a case where it is TRUE that the person being murdered is being murdered, but where some people don't understand this (and have lots of cognitive support for not understanding it), they may be let off the hook in a way we don't allow with more obvious cases of murder.

In a sense it is similar to how we historically treat people, otherwise of good will, who held slaves. Slaveholding was wrong, and slavery should be illegal. But not everyone who held slaves was a monster, or knew what they were really doing. We adjust abstract justice by society's state (though I think AC's "we are all guilty" bit is off -- I'm not guilty, I think, sorry).

Epsilon -- avoiding abortion isn't the only possible good -- a sane sexuality contained in marriage is not lunatic (I manage it, a lot of people do -- perhaps it's not managable for everyone if you consider some people inherently inferior and incapable of moral action). Contraceptive availability is pretty much total, to be honest -- anyone who denies this is a fool, as far as I can see, and abortion (and conception in situations where one might want an abortion) rates have risen with contraceptive availability. Hmm. Perhaps there's more to it than the shallow think?

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 15, 2007 5:24 PM

In other words, Epislon "why don't you conservatives act as if the things liberals pretend are true were true, even though your every bone proclaims their falsehood, or we'll judge your motives by whether you act by OUR precepts" is a standard that is unlikely to endear you to serious pro-lifers. I don't go about proclaiming how liberals don't really care about women's autonomy -- they just want to make sure that no consequences attach to their own sexual exploits.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 15, 2007 5:28 PM

Epsilon,
Just because "anyone with a functioning brain" acknowledges that people, married or not, desire to have sex, it does not follow that they should be encouraged to do so or that this should be facilitated. There are a great number of things we may be inclined to do that we ought do in moderation (eg eating) or not at all (eg taking what is not ours). There is virtue in restraint, and it is not merely anachronistic prudery that compels people to abstain before marriage or abstain from extramarital relationships during marriage. While personally I have no particular problem with birth control, both because I disdain abortion and because I would like to see diseases reined in, there are plenty of sound religious and moral arguments that recommend abstention as preferable.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 15, 2007 5:57 PM

Thanks for responding, marquis.

I, for one, would sentence a woman who hired a hit man to kill her spouse in certain circumstances with considerably more lenience than I would a seasoned professional hitman who carries out murder for hire. Wouldn't you? Wouldn't we all?

Certainly. But we wouldn't completely exonerate the woman in that circumstance, would we? If I heard a single pro-lifer advocate an abortion patient do even a year of hard time for the crime of murdering one's baby, I might be able to see the distinction here. But listening to pro-lifers, they'd toss the abortion doctor in jail and throw away the key, while essentially absolving the woman. This is a grotesque distortion of the respective culpability states, in my opinion. I can't think of any reason for it other than political expediency (because the public at large would react highly negatively to throwing women who had abortions in prison, because they intuitively believe the situation to be far less evil than murdering a live human.)

Along these lines, I also fail to understand how the mitigating cirumstances you cite in reference to the pregnant woman can be considered any less prominent among doctors who provide abortions. Do you honestly think any abortion doctors do it for the "rush" of extinguishing lives? Do you think they do it to get rich? Most of them probably do it because they realize it is vital that people have access to SAFE abortions, because a petrified, perhaps emotionally unstable pregnant woman may resort to life-threatening lengths to terminate the pregnancy without the services of such doctors. Why is the danger of back-alley or ad hoc abortions not a compelling "mitigating factor?"

Again, the only reason I can see for it is that every "evil" needs a boogeyman, a scapegoat, and it's more politically tenable to cast the doctors (of whom there are relatively few) as the
"villains", and the pregnant women (of whom there are comparatively many) as the "victims", when in reality, if abortion is evil, both are equally complicit in the act.

In other words, Epislon "why don't you conservatives act as if the things liberals pretend are true were true, even though your every bone proclaims their falsehood, or we'll judge your motives by whether you act by OUR precepts" is a standard that is unlikely to endear you to serious pro-lifers.

I don't really understand where in my words you could derive that sentiment, but while we're on the subject, it strikes me that you saying this: " a sane sexuality contained in marriage is not lunatic (I manage it, a lot of people do -- perhaps it's not managable for everyone if you consider some people inherently inferior and incapable of moral action)" is a little bit of the same thing, isn't it? Unless I'm reading this wrong, you're implying that having sex outside of marriage is not "sane" and those who partake in it (probably more than 90% of the population at some point) as "inherently inferior" and committing "immoral" acts. To me, that sounds like something you and other "conservatives" pretend is true, and it clearly informs your view on abortion, which was pretty much my entire point.

If you want to talk about framing something a certain way and judging others' motives by what you proclaim to be true, I think "premarital sex is insane and conducted by inherently inferior and immoral individuals" is quite a bit more specious than anything offered up on the pro-choice spectrum.

Posted by Epsilon | May 15, 2007 6:04 PM

Just because "anyone with a functioning brain" acknowledges that people, married or not, desire to have sex, it does not follow that they should be encouraged to do so or that this should be facilitated.

I think it's important to remember the context in which this arises, though: whether abortion should be criminalized or not.

I don't recall making any argument that says that people should be "encouraged" to have sex. I simply think it's foolish to think that people should be discouraged from it, and it disturbs me greatly that many people use the abortion issue as the vehicle by which to advance these concerns.

Posted by Epsilon | May 15, 2007 6:17 PM

The idea of outlawing abortion as a deterrent to premarital sex isn't particularly appealing to me (it dilutes or distracts from the compelling arguments against abortion), but the wider question of the appropriateness of discouraging premarital intercourse is not so easily dismissed. To steal a march from Aristotle, what does government exist to do but facilitate virtue and discourage vice? The problem is that you do not appear to think it a vice, or at least not a serious one.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 15, 2007 6:21 PM

Epsilon:

First, I'm unclear what is so horrid and pernicious about "political expediency" -- the perfect is the enemy of the good.

My point was your argument that we should pursue ALL possible ways to discourage abortions -- which seemed to mean "encourage contraception." But the recent studies seem to show sex ed with contraception does very little (nearly as little as abstinence ed!), and really, contraception is simply very very very widely available. It is not in short supply or a mysterious thing unknown to the public. I don't see why conservatives have any obligation to particularly pay attention to that, when we think cultural changes with respect to sexual morals are more likely to have a real impact on abortion rates.

As to the "sane" bit -- well, I was more vehemently saying what Anonymous Conservative said. Of COURSE people want to have sex. But that doesn't make those of us who advocate abstinence outside marriage (and being careful about who/when you get married) nuts; I managed to keep my pants zipped until marriage. I don't assume those who don't are _inferior_ but I do think they are as good as me and in theory capable of the same amazing trick, and would be better off if they did.

I am not, nor is anyone I know, in favor of banning abortion as a "means to an end" to end illicit sex. It isn't a very good tool for that, and there are perfectly good reasons to ban abortion with that. For one thing, I suspect a fairly large # of abortions in the US occur as a result of quite licit sex, within marriage -- by couples who don't think a Down's syndrome person is a human being worthy of life (you know, the German doctors and "life unworthy of life")? They're nice people, who want kids. They think they're doing something good, and the culture and the law tell them they are, so they do something monstrous. That concerns me as much if not more than a scared teenager who gets knocked up by her sleazy boyfriend. Though, I'll note -- that case, and the pressure he (or her parents -- see the case of the Italian teenager where a judge ordered her to abort because her parents wanted her to?) can put on her makes me wonder how seriously pro-abortion people who talk endlessly about female autonomy mean what _they_ say.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 15, 2007 6:36 PM

the marquis:

Instead of assuming you know why women have abortions, why don't you find out? Sure, there are married women who abort babies with severe birth defects, but given that the vast majority of abortions are in the first trimester before such tests are available, obviously there must be other reasons for abortion. There's quite a lot of literature on this issue-- you might want to head out to a feminist bookstore or do some searches on amazon.com.

Further, even if somehow you could change customary sexual practices, this would take a long time to accomplish. In the meantime, under your proposed abortion ban, a lot of lives will be ruined. Yet in all your posts here I haven't seen one intimation as to a willingness to deal with the consequences of that-- though you have managed to tell us what your view is with respect to sexual morality, though you swear it has nothing to do with your view on abortion.

In this, you are no different than most pro-lifers. But you are being callously indifferent to the women whose lives you would be impacting.

Really, what it comes down to is that even when we grant the premise that abortion should be illegal, it still remains that a lot of folks are more interested in discussing sexual morality than discussing the impact on women. If you want to change the stereotype that pro-choicers have that pro-lifers care more about imposing strict sexual codes on American women than they do about what will happen to women if abortion is banned, you need to shift the conversation.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 15, 2007 7:15 PM

Dilan,
At the risk of being accused of mere slogan-tossing, if abortion is perpetuated there's at least one person in that parent-child relationship whose life will undoubtedly be ruined.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 15, 2007 7:30 PM

In this, you are no different than most pro-lifers. But you are being callously indifferent to the women whose lives you would be impacting.

Dilan, my point is that of course there are consequences. But you haven't dealt with the CENTRAL POINT, to any pro-lifer: lives "ruined" vs. people _killed_ is a very poor balance for the people who think the "ruined" lives are more important. I know why people have abortions, to a general extent -- I wasn't claiming the Down's syndrome abortions are a majority (they clearly are not). I've dated a woman who had multiple abortions.

But of course I care about what happens if abortion is banned: there will almost certainly be significantly fewer abortions. That's a consequence I know you (who give the fetus no rights at all) don't care about. Some of those fetuses are women, last I checked -- over 50%!

Ducking around and around that point... Well, it doesn't change the stereotype among pro-lifers that pro-choicers are more concerned with sexual freedoms for themselves than human life. "No blood for oil" has been misused, but has some merit -- "no blood for sex" seems at least as reasonable.

I'm puzzled as to what I'm supposed to DO about the consequences of less abortions -- I give to charities that deal with this kind of thing, and so forth.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 16, 2007 12:12 PM

Why debate the issue of abortion at all?

Pro-life people tend to have more children than pro-choice people. Children of pro-lifers tend to be more pro-life.

In the long run, pro-lifers have the demographic upper hand.

Check and mate.

Posted by Charles Darwin | May 16, 2007 1:46 PM

marquis and Anonymous:

It comes down to this. I understand you think the fetus is the same as a born child. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that banning abortions don't cause massive negative externalities. If your response to to that is simply "I don't care, because I've saved all those fetuses' lives", that is, perhaps one answer-- but then you have NO STANDING WHATSOEVER to complain when feminists say that pro-lifers don't give a crap about women. Just because you think the woman's interest is outweighed doesn't mean that there is no interest at all, or that you should have no interest in addressing it.

In contrast, Anonymous' earlier post DID express some concern about what happens if you ban abortions.

I am not here trying to talk you out of your position that even a fertilized egg has exactly the same rights as a born child. I don't think much of that position, but I understand it is your position. But what many pro-choicers would like to hear from the other side is some understanding that there's a whole bunch of bad things that would happen to many women if you banned abortion, and some indication of a desire to mitigate or deal with the harmful externalities. The fact that pro-lifers almost never even mention this-- while many of them prattle on and on about female sexuality-- indicates to me that whether or not the initial MOTIVATION for the pro-life position is a desire to regulate female sexuality, there certainly doesn't seem to be any great CONCERN about what happens to women other than that some of them might be more chaste.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 16, 2007 2:50 PM

Dilan: Or perhaps it means that serious pro-lifers don't think that "expressing concern" magically does something about unfortunate consequences. Life is a vale of tears, and _no policy_ (or the mere symbolic expression of "concern") may have much chance of doing all that much about these particular externalities. Moreover, to the extent they can be addressed, the policies that might help are widely disputed; pro-lifers (like other people) probably differ on which ones are best, and when discussing abortion do not imagine that they must settle that debate as well -- it is a distraction from the critical point. Abolition of slavery introduced many terrible externalities, including (arguably) a terrible war.

Most of these are not externalities that would be suddenly introduced to the world after a hypothetical banning of the most clearly "contraceptive" abortions (which, in practical terms, is the most that is likely to happen in the US post-Roe). Rather, they are already-existing problems that, for some (those who consider abortion an option, which is not all women facing these problems -- there are pro-life poor knocked-up women too, you know) would become more likely. They are hard problems -- merely expressing concern won't fix them. Some of them are essentially unsolvable: it is not POSSIBLE to make life _safe_, or to protect people against even the most understandable foolish choices, or bad things that simply _happen to them_, in some cases.

"Discussion" isn't a magic wand. "CONCERN" in and of itself, without some ability to _do something_, doesn't make women's lives better. I'm sorry that's the way things are; perhaps the world would be better if the fantasy were true and Oprah-like "concern" had magical power. But it doesn't. Pretending it does, and castigating others for their lack of "concern" (not a lack of action in some particular direction you can argue for) about some woe is childish.

I care a lot, but I don't think preening about how much I care does anyone any good. This is one reason I'm not a liberal.

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 16, 2007 3:54 PM

Dilan Esper,

The bottom line is that pro-lifers will outbreed pro-choicers.

I don't see how any debate about abortion will change this.

Posted by Charles Darwin | May 16, 2007 3:54 PM

Dilan,

It comes down to this. I understand you think the fetus is the same as a born child.

Nobody has said that. What has been said is that a fetus has an inalienable right not to be killed.

Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that banning abortions don't cause massive negative externalities.

Nobody has denied that there would be negative externalities that go along with legal restrictions on abortion (though one might debate the modifier "massive"). I've yet to see you address the fact that there are negative externalities associated with legalization of abortion.

If your response to to that is simply "I don't care, because I've saved all those fetuses' lives", that is, perhaps one answer-- but then you have NO STANDING WHATSOEVER to complain when feminists say that pro-lifers don't give a crap about women.

This assumes that abortion is on balance a good thing for women. The pro-life community disputes this. Does the pro-abortion community give a crap about men? They typically give men zero say in what happens to their children in utero.

there certainly doesn't seem to be any great CONCERN about what happens to women other than that some of them might be more chaste.

And there is no great CONCERN in the pro-abortion community for the negative physical and emotional externalities for men and women due to abortion. When are you going to acknowledge those?

Posted by Mike S. | May 16, 2007 5:53 PM

Dilan,
It's a clash of absolutes. Thus aside from a halfhearted "she's a victim too" from the one side and a disingenuous "pro child, pro family, pro choice" from the other there is or should be a recognition that each position imposes a burden on the half of the parent-child relationship they choose not to emphasize, the mother because she has no (legal) recourse but to carry the child to term and the child because, well, it never comes to fruition. And certainly we would require more funding for the social programs that exist (perhaps new ones, but the ones that exist fulfill the needs of those who choose to carry children to term so it is reasonable to expect they would fulfill the needs of other expectant mothers as well), along with a greater effort from charities to help out. But if you believe as I do that the life of the child should be paramount, these are small prices to pay to give that baby a chance.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 16, 2007 6:24 PM

Anonymous:

I have seen your posts, and it does appear that you are willing to discuss the need for social programs to deal with the fallout.

But you are in a minority, I am afraid, among pro-lifers. You can see this in the other responses here, which are essentially arguing that the externalities do not matter at all.

Remember, pro-lifers are advocating a big policy change. Someone mentioned the abolition of slavery. I have a better example: imagine if someone advocated deposing Saddam Hussein's awful regime in Iraq, without having any plan to deal with all the problems that would be created upon his removal. One could, of course say that Saddam was so horrible that he needed to go anyway. But that doesn't excuse the necessity of dealing with the negative externalities. And if someone refused to deal with them, I think it would be perfectly proper to say that this person didn't have sufficient concern for the welfare of Iraqis, even if one granted that Saddam was evil.

If you think that the harmful effects on women are a lesser evil than abortion and are willing to deal with them, that's one thing. But people who don't think they are a problem at all, or think that they are magically absolved from dealing with them because of their moral beliefs about abortion are exactly like people who thought that Saddam's evil absolved them from the obligation to reasonably plan for post-Saddam Iraq.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 17, 2007 3:01 AM

The bottom line is that pro-lifers will outbreed pro-choicers.

I don't see how any debate about abortion will change this.

I understand the humorous utility of this sentiment, Mr. Darwin, but it still bears some comment.

There's certainly some logic to this point, but one of the vastly overlooked elements of the abortion debate is the fairly alarming frequency with which ardent pro-lifers actually avail themselves of abortion services. I read an article recently with dozens of anecdotes from abortion doctors about this phenomenon, and that kind of thing really underscores my contention that there's something else at play in the motivations of pro-lifers than the mere laudable concern for human life.

There's nothing stopping a woman from having an abortion or two when she's a teenager or college student, and then meeting the man of her dreams and having eight children in her thirties. While it's easy to assume that anyone who considers themselves pro-choice would necessarily have less children, there's an enormous difference between opposing the criminalization of an activity in light of the disastrous effects of such prohibitions and actually partaking in the activity itself. Most of my best friends are strongly pro-choice, and the ones who have either found themselves pregnant or have gotten someone pregnant have all elected to have the child (and we're all glad they did), even when it would be a significant burden and throw a wrench into their life plans. Conversely, many pro-life people have had abortions because they have this idea that THEIR reason is justified; they oppose abortion only for people who they feel are having irresponsible sex. By no means am I suggesting that all pro-lifers are like this, but there is enough evidence of this phenomenon to call into question the movement's "purity" as a whole.

If abortion were only available to married, upper-middle class and affluent women, I suspect much of the pro-life crowd wouldn't be nearly as violently opposed to its legality.

Posted by Epsilon | May 17, 2007 12:43 PM

If abortion were only available to married, upper-middle class and affluent women, I suspect much of the pro-life crowd wouldn't be nearly as violently opposed to its legality.

You know what? This stream of comments is essentially Dilan and Epsilon launching endless attacks on motives without much discussion of ideas, endlessly ignoring of the points about "well, mere discussion of exernalities, when we hardly all agree about the best policies to deal with them seems rather pointless", and so forth. I am unsure why, other than sheer bloody-mindedness, any of us are participating in an argument where two of the participants have no interest in discussion or debate, or in understanding -- only in insulting and ignoring most of what those they disagree with say.

For one thing, the essential battle, right now, isn't whether abortion will be universally banned in the US. It won't. It is unimaginable that it will be in the next thirty years, I would say.

The externalities aren't nearly as impressive (or on Iraq War or slavery scales) once you take into account that, say, MA and CA will have very little restriction of abortion at all. The Dakotas may ban it in all but a tiny number of cases, but most of the country will simply further restrict abortion, without a massive instant sea change. The democratic process will discuss and deal with externalities, and base it on real data, not abstracted guesses (and on nonsense and emotion and high dudgeon; this is democracy in action, folks). That's the basic debate, at this point in time -- the moral questions are critical, and the externalities matter, but the real point at this time is -- do the people get to discuss these externalities, think about them, decide on them? Or do we continue to operate under Dred Scott?

Posted by the marquis of carabas | May 17, 2007 1:29 PM

marquis:

You can't on the one hand say that abortion is murder and should be outlawed and on the other hand say "don't worry, if you really want one, you can go to Massachussets and get one", for several reasons:

1. You don't think pro-lifers won't go for a national ban, like they did on partial birth? Indeed, I believe the Republican Platform calls for a national ban, through an interpretation of the 14th Amendment as granting fetuses a right to life.

2. You don't think pro-lifers will, as a fallback, go for a law prohibiting people from crossing state lines to get an abortion? They are already trying to do that on parental consent laws.

3. My whole point is not that nobody will be able to get an abortion, it's that poor people won't be able to get them. And guess what, they are the most likely to get thrown out of school, the workforce, or their homes, or stuck in an abusive relationship, as a result of an unplanned pregnancy. Again, you have no interest in discussing this. (And when you say I am ducking the issues, you are projecting. You're the one who doesn't want to talk about what happens to women.)

4. Philosophically, it's not satisfying to say that you want a certain policy, but you don't have to deal with its negative impacts because it won't be enforceable anyway. The policy implemented in the form that you would desire it to be implemented WOULD cause the externalities-- after all, you don't WANT what you see as murder to continue to take place, correct?

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 17, 2007 4:44 PM

Dilan,

And guess what, they are the most likely to get thrown out of school, the workforce, or their homes, or stuck in an abusive relationship, as a result of an unplanned pregnancy.

I don't see how any of those things follow.

BTW, would you be more amenable to restrictions on abortion if Republicans/Conservatives were more supportive of social support services for pregnant women?

Posted by Mike S. | May 18, 2007 3:32 PM

Mike S.:

I wouldn't be, because I'm pretty strongly pro-choice. But there's two other political reasons I would nonetheless, quite honestly, commend the strategy to the pro-life movement:

1. Pro-lifers are hurt by their association with the religious right. A lot of people in this country who are troubled by abortion (especially later-term and partial birth abortions) nonetheless are scared of the perceived intolernance of the religious right, which includes people who really do want to use government power to restore earlier conceptions of sexual morality. Making a clear separation between the pro-life movement and those elements is probably a necessary strategy if pro-lifers want to persuade the center.

2. I think many people who are pro-choice are pretty squishy about it (unlike pro-lifers, who tend to be very dogmatic / principled (depending on how you look at it)). There is a lot of "gee, I really dislike abortion, but if I were in that situation, poor and alone and without the means to take care of a child, what would I do?". Making it clear that people in that situation will be given real and substantial support to both have the child and continue on with their life and pursue their aspirations (and not be condemned for their sexual choices or told that they have to marry or stay with an abusive father) is probably a necessity to persuading squishy pro-choicers to oppose abortion.

This, of course, is political advice, in addition to what I think is the moral imperative that people who advocate a policy, no matter how justified it is, have to plan for the foreseeable side effects of that policy.

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