Re: Abortion, Killing etc

[Beth Goldstein <bg28@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kathat,

Thank you for articulating so well the complex realities of abortion, the
abortion decision and the abortion dilemma.  Each time I write about or
discuss abortion I begin by stating that abortion is NEVER an easy option,
one never enters into an abortion without some ambiguity or regret.  I
agree with you that presenting it as if women do turns living, breathing,
complex morally thoughtful people into monolithic, morally blind,
insensitive, selfish adolescents -- and that does a great disservice both
to feminism and to the women who struggle with the decision.



Beth


> For hundreds of years, American women have seen pregnancy as a
> continuum,in which the fetus gradually becomes more of a baby. I don't
> think most people think a five-day-fertilized egg, or  has the same
> status as a six-month or eight-month old fetus--that's one reason why
> the anti-choicers do not have more support. Before much was known about
> fetal development, it was legal, and an accepted social custom, to abort
> before "quickening" -- the felt movements of the fetus in the womb,
> which happens at four-five months. So two hundreds years ago, americans
> felt suprisingly similar about abortion as they do now: early ones are
> okay, part of regulating your health and fertility, later ones are
> morally problematic.  this is true in some other countries too today,
> where (as in Bangladesh) early pregnancies are still seen as "blocked
> menses" and drugs and herbs to bring on periods are freely sold, while
> "abortion" is restricted and stigmatized.
>   I don't think you will ever persuade many people that until it pops
> out of the womb, the fetus as no status or interests at all, is the
> moral equivalent of a benign tumor. the culture of pregnancy  is too
> involved with the fetus for that -- ultrasound lets you 'see it," sex
> it, name it; fetal surgery lets you treat it before birth, plus we know
> too much about what  behavior of pregnant woman makes for the best
> chance at a healthy baby. Also, like it or not, the age of survival for
> preemies is being pushed back, so "preemie" and "fetus" are not always
> such clearly distinguished categories any more.
>   I think the trimester system worked out in Roe actually reflects
> rather well how most people understand the fetus: as a being which
> gradually acquires more "rights." But as medicine and fetal knowledge
> advance, and viability moves earlier, late abortions seem, to many,
> worse than they did when less was known and less could be done to keep
> the tiniest preemies alive.
>   Instead of trying to persuade people that late abortions are trivial
> events -- which few women unfortunately enough to have undergone them
> will accept -- I think we should argue that they represent terrible
> social failures -- ignorance, shame, poverty, fear, lack of access to
> earlier abortion, and tragic personal circumstances, like serious fetal
> deformity and sudden drastic problems in a woman's life that she has no
> other way out of. There will always a need for late abortions -- second
> trimesters are now about ten percent of all abortions, and third
> trimester abortions are (I think) around one percent, almost impossible
> to get. So of course pro-choicers can't agree to banning them in the
> interests of a "compromise" on abortion. But  we don't have to say
> they're trivial.
>   I really hate that appendectomy analogy. I don't think women who have
> late abortions think they are merely being rid of a useless organ they
> barely knew they possessed. To compare it to appendectomy sounds callous
> and trivializing of women's experience.  Even at the medical level, a
> late abortion is a much bigger procedure.  And socially, culturally, the
> two couldn't be farther apart.
>   Let's say you are carrying a wanted child, and discover through amnio
> that it will be born with devastating problems. So you decide to have an
> abortion at five months. How is that experience like having your
> appendix out? By the same logic, delivering a full-term dead baby
> should  also be like having your appendix out. No baby was born alive,
> so nothing happened except an operation.
>   I think as feminists we sometimes try to get round complexities of
> women's experience that don't fit the streamlined ideal by denying they
> exist. Remember when premenstrual symptoms and menstrual cramps were all
> supposed to be psychosomatic?  Partly we do this because antifeminists
> make TOO much of these things --menstruation makes you nuts, abortion
> scars you for life, etc. But just because they oversimplify and deny
> reality doesn't mean we should.
>
> katha
>