This business about "Abortion"

[quintessentone]

An interesting tidbit on the news is that the majority of abortions are done using a pill, if this is the way of the future, namely abortion through drugs, then I foresee the act as becoming a very private personal matter if these pills are easy to obtain, such as over-the-counter. Unless Big Brother red states with strict anti-abortion laws begin to surveil drug stores and the like, but just like any other illegal drug, they too are easily had.

[Maxmars]

An interesting tidbit on the news is that the majority of abortions are done using a pill, if this is the way of the future, namely abortion through drugs, then I foresee the act as becoming a very private personal matter if these pills are easy to obtain, such as over-the-counter. Unless Big Brother red states with strict anti-abortion laws begin to surveil drug stores and the like, but just like any other illegal drug, they too are easily had.

I think any proposition about banning abortion outright is a fast-aging fantasy.  I imagine the authoritarian traditionalists like to clutch at the idea like a morality cudgel, a social 'lever.'

But as technology changes and younger generations face new social realities, the 'wisdom' of this kind of "control" of the human condition will simply render itself extinct.

And like I said before, being inclined to value the lessons of the past, I am conflicted in this regard. 

I suspect that choosing to protect one person (save an abused innocent) after the fact is not an entirely satisfactory and suitable justification to destroy the 'literally' innocent (before their birth.) 

I reject the license to 'arbitrate' a persons' right to live based upon transient, externally imposed, 'metrics,' and cannot divorce my compassion for the unborn circumstance - choosing one over another with any casual ease.  We were all 'unborn' once.

But I also refuse the idea that any personal feelings I might have should bear precedence over the life situation of a stranger, sight unseen.  I do not envy the circumstance, and know that were I in their shoes, I would reserve the moral authority to make my own decision, and likely refuse the judgements of someone outside the situation.  

Call it murder?  That's hyperbole of the activist order - relevant only as an external imposition. 

But such hyperbole manifests frequently on both sides of the argument. 

Calling a person "unviable" seems basely inhumane, considering there are many, dying, aging, or ill, who fit that description, and thus become equal candidates for "summary elimination."  I'm sure they would make all efforts to refuse calling that "murder."

Given how personal the condition, the state coming to be 'within' this argument is tragic.  I would call it 'activism,' 'politics,' and 'marketing.' Enter the "show."

Whatever we call it, it is undeniably profitable.  Where there is profit ... notions of 'humanity' will almost always be tossed aside as "irrelevant and inconsequential," or characterized as repugnant 'ideology.'

[Maxmars]

... And then there's this tragedy of the human condition... 

Here we have people desperate for a child, and their hopes dashed by the 'contention' between those who would tweak the 'definition' of human life towards their own predilection, in the name of others.

(FEB. 21, 2024) Alabama Ruled Frozen Embryos Are Children — Now What? (a sad, sad tale)

Which simply shows the defect of people "declaring reality" is not exclusive to those who wish to 'fine tune' when a human is a human... when it can be treated as a tumorous growth, and when a tissue cluster is to be considered a "child."

Is it possible that in no instance are either camp, correct?  Is it not clear that the path they have each selected to champion mandates no cooperation or capitulation is possible - no compromise?  And while they clash... they continue to proselytize as if they had already won... victimizing everyone around them... for the glory of being 'right' on TV and media... and in whatever societies they deem "polite."

It appears neither side will hear the other... and all the while, neither side will voluntarily approach understanding... deeming that some kind of 'loss.'

[Maxmars]

An interesting article regarding the Arizona abortion law that was instituted in the 1800's.

From the New York Times: The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban

It contains some elements which are very revealing about how the abortion issue first developed in the US.  As well as some indications that resistance to it came from the medical community itself...
 

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For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.

Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University. After quickening, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor.

“I don’t think it was particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was stigmatized was maybe this idea that you were having sex outside of marriage, but of course, married women also ended their pregnancies.”

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The truth is that for centuries, women in need of an abortion did not turn to "medical expertise" but rather tried and true folk-medicine.  Often these remedies were promulgated by midwives and other community assets who specialized in help women with their specific problems.  And as we progressed in our scientific and technological understanding, the claim to expertise was more or less monopolized by those who were trained in universities and members of associations that proclaimed their cloister to be those who were 'recognized' as doctors of medicine (mostly men.)

Back in those days, the term "quickening" was dubbed for describing the point during pregnancy where a gestating baby can be felt to move (usually in the second trimester.)  Before then, women honestly could not be absolutely certain they were pregnant.
 

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By the 1840s, there were some high-profile trials in cases where women who had or sought abortions became very ill or died. Some cases involved a British-born midwife, Ann Trow Summers Lohman, known as Madame Restell, who provided herbal pills and other abortion services in New York, which passed a law under which providers could be charged with manslaughter for abortions after quickening and providers and patients could be charged with misdemeanors for abortions before quickening.

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The picture this account paints is kind of regrettable... but those were different people, in different times...
 

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After the American Medical Association, which would eventually become the largest doctors’ organization in the country, formed in 1847, its members — all male and white at that time — sought to curtail medical activities by midwives and other nondoctors, most of whom were women. Pregnancy termination methods were often provided by people in those vocations, and historians say that was one reason for the association’s desire to ban abortion.

A campaign that became known as the Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion began in 1857 to urge states to pass anti-abortion laws. Its leader, Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, wrote a paper against abortion that was officially adopted by the A.M.A. and later published as a book titled “On Criminal Abortion in America.”

Later, the association published “Why Not? A Book for Every Woman,” also written by Dr. Storer, which said that abortion was immoral and criminal and argued that married women had a moral and societal obligation to have children.

Dr. Storer promoted an argument that life began at conception.

“He creates a kind of moral high ground bandwagon, and he does that for a bunch of reasons that make it appealing,” Dr. Fissell said. In one sense, the argument coincided with the emerging medical understanding of embryology that characterized pregnancy as a continuum of development and did not consider quickening to be its defining stage.

There were also social and cultural forces and prejudices at play. Women were beginning to press for more independence, and the male-dominated medical establishment believed “women need to be home having babies,” Dr. Fissell said.

Racism and anti-immigrant attitudes in the second half of the 19th century began fueling support of eugenics. Several historians have said that these undercurrents were partially behind the anti-abortion campaign that Dr. Storer led.

“People like Storer were very worried that the wrong Americans were reproducing, and that the nice white Anglo-Saxon ones were having abortions and not having enough children,” Dr. Fissell said.

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I found this to be a relevant bit of information to add to the discussion...  I hope you do too.

[Byrd]

First of all, once it's legal, it begins to take on the air of a "right" ... as if people have been 'oppressed' forever because they couldn't spontaneously abort their pregnancies. 

Being forced to carry the child of your rapist (or someone you absolutely hate) certainly is oppressive.

You're looking at it from a man's perspective.  Try looking at it from the viewpoint of someone who's basically chattel, who has no say in who she marries and who can't get out of an arranged relationship.

[Maxmars]

Being forced to carry the child of your rapist (or someone you absolutely hate) certainly is oppressive.

You're looking at it from a man's perspective.  Try looking at it from the viewpoint of someone who's basically chattel, who has no say in who she marries and who can't get out of an arranged relationship.

Agreed.  It is not fair for people to be chattel and not have a say in how their lives take form.  "Rape" is one of those things that makes it not just understandable, but from the perspective in the very least of the victim, justifiable. I can't divorce myself from empathy in this regard.  However, each person's choice is their own to make.  No one wants a right to get raped... so any victim's consequences of it are likely to be equally abhorrent.

But how many abortions are brought about by rape?  We know that is not the predominant reason for abortion.  Just as 'saving a mother's life (or abuse incest) is not 'usual in these decisions... many are more 'casual' and 'run of the mill' reasons... "Not me, not now."  Those abortions are an equal response to a nonexistent 'offense.'  I offer the same idea... exigent circumstances allow for extreme remedies... but how many abortions are due to exigent circumstances?

(Not trying to be contrary here... we are generally on the same page... but the discussion would not be complete if we didn't visit this aspect of it.)

[Byrd]

Agreed.  It is not fair for people to be chattel and not have a say in how their lives take form.  "Rape" is one of those things that makes it not just understandable, but from the perspective in the very least of the victim, justifiable. I can't divorce myself from empathy in this regard.  However, each person's choice is their own to make.  No one wants a right to get raped... so any victim's consequences of it are likely to be equally abhorrent.

But how many abortions are brought about by rape?  We know that is not the predominant reason for abortion.  Just as 'saving a mother's life (or abuse incest) is not 'usual in these decisions... many are more 'casual' and 'run of the mill' reasons... "Not me, not now."  Those abortions are an equal response to a nonexistent 'offense.'  I offer the same idea... exigent circumstances allow for extreme remedies... but how many abortions are due to exigent circumstances?

(Not trying to be contrary here... we are generally on the same page... but the discussion would not be complete if we didn't visit this aspect of it.)

Truth is, we don't know (nor how many are the result of a single night of consensual (or maybe reluctant) sex.)  Many women who have intercourse forced on them don't file a report (and some may feel that they "needed" to be forced (this was a trope in many, many romance novels before 1980))

Ursula K. LeGuin said it well when she wrote an essay about an abortion that she had... the child that she did not want would have kept her poor and unmarried (almost no one would hire a 'fallen woman' in that era) and would have prevented her from later having the three children that she gave birth to; children she wanted and chose.

Think back to when you were sixteen.  Now imagine that someone you just met walks into your life, hands you a baby and says "this is yours" and vanishes.  Society sneers at you for being immoral and your family kicks you out.  You've got to feed yourself, your baby (nobody else wants it) and that means childcare (if you can find and afford it) and a job that won't fire you if the baby gets sick and you need to take care of it.

And you're just sixteen.  You haven't even finished high school.

What kind of life will you have?  If you have kids right now... do you think you would have had them if you'd been given a baby when you were sixteen?  Do you think you would have met your spouse if you and your baby had been kicked out of the house when you were sixteen?

Now... what if you had the chance to stop the baby from being born -- at a time when many fetuses fail to implant (spontaneous miscarriage)?

Many abortions are because the woman wants a better life and WANTS children... when she's in a position to take care of them and herself.

[Maxmars]

I hope you can believe that I am not stating in my post that "Not me. Not now." is somehow an unworthy justification.  I only mean to point out that the continuing association of abortion as a 'remedy to abuse' is not entirely honest. I think it would be best to "own" the notion that it is the person's choice... and that they owe no one any justification (other than themselves.)

I accept that the decision has been granted to the bearer of the child... the person who has become pregnant. (Pity any partners exclusion.)  

But I reject 'activisms' narrative and characterization that every woman who chooses abortion is somehow a 'victim' heroically 'dealing' with inequity and social injustice.  It kind of makes me feel disappointed that people choose to lean on 'victim' status to make their decisions more palatable to others. 

Many abortions, as you said earlier are being done via pill form now ... no lines, no clinic visits needed (assuming they have access,) no need to "report" the unwanted 'condition' the patient finds herself in - nor how it occurred.  I imagined these were all good developments, since activism on the life-worshipping side had enjoined "shame and moral judgment" into their arguments... But then those on the opposite side seemed to enjoin the "celebration of abortion" as a remedy for "righteous victimhood" which is equally dishonest to my opinion.  Note that I refer to 'activism' here... the product of think-tanks and celebrities and there wanna-be ilk.

By the way, thank you for entertaining my thoughts on this, many people I have tried to discuss this with simply throw a brochure, yell a slogan, insult me or my "position," and then flip me the bird before walking away, talking trash.