Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
New Abortion Laws are Splitting the Right, Too
Compared to many of you, I’m new to the abortion discussion and am self-conscious about taking positions on it. I have never been pregnant nor have I had an abortion. Until about 15 years ago, I was pro-choice. Gradually I have found myself soundly in the pro-life position. Yet the arguments that are occurring, even among those on the Right, have caused me to take a closer look at my
beliefs. I thought our having that discussion here about the abortion laws might help many of us learn from each other and clarify our views.
First, there are many states that have decided, with exceptions and no exceptions, to ban abortion. There are a whole range of criteria for whether abortions should be banned and when and how abortions might be legal:
Multiple states such as Kentucky and Georgia have passed bills that ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy, while Alabama recently passed the strictest abortion law in the country, banning the procedure with few exceptions.
Several other states are considering “trigger” laws that go into effect to ban abortion should Roe v. Wade be overturned, while other states like New York have passed bills that enshrine abortion rights.
In most of the states that have passed legislation regarding abortion, those laws will go into effect in the next month or two; in many cases, legal actions, particularly by the ACLU, have already been issued. And several other states are in the process of reviewing the status of abortion in their states to determine whether to take action.
The most intense controversy seems to be whether or not exceptions have been included in these laws for rape, incest, or the health of the mother. The Alabama Senate wrestled with this issue:
The Republican-majority chamber adjourned in dramatic fashion when leaders tried to strip a committee amendment that would have added an exception for cases of rape or incest. Sponsors insist they wanted to limit exceptions because the bill is designed to push the idea that a fetus is a person with rights, in a direct challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to abortion.
Whether this approach would have the intended impact at the Supreme Court is difficult to discern.
The controversy rising among those on the Right is how to address exceptions to these bills:
Reporters on Capitol Hill have peppered Republican lawmakers with demands to know whether they agree with Alabama’s law, which forgoes the rape and incest exceptions.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that for him personally, the Alabama law goes too far and that his position is in line with the views held by both President Trump and former President Ronald Reagan, who favored the exceptions. But Minority Whip Steve Scalise said that when he was in the Louisiana legislature, he supported anti-abortion legislation that only had exceptions for when the life of the mother was in danger.
‘I am strongly pro-life and I do believe we ought to try to protect life at every stage and that is why protecting the life of the mother was an exception I’ve always supported,’ he said.
There are some people who feel that after the horrendous experience of a rape or incest, a woman should not have to carry a baby to term; if her life is at risk, how does one decide which life to save? In some cases, the woman’s health at risk has included her mental health.
On the other hand, no matter how the baby was conceived, the baby is a human being, too. It didn’t choose to be conceived by rape or incest. It doesn’t bear responsibility for causing the mother’s health to be at risk.
And finally, if both lives are to be considered, should the mother be expected to carry the baby to term and take the option to relinquish him or her through adoption? Wouldn’t this choice be the most moral and fair for both?
A number of questions can be gleaned from this discussion—
*What criteria should be included in an abortion ban law, in your opinion?
* Should the potential impact on the Supreme Court be a consideration?
*What are your thoughts about exceptions to be made?
Published in Culture
Roberts is CJ. The effort to overturn is doomed.
First, @kozak stated that rapes resulting in pregnancy are rare, especially if they admit themselves into a hospital. If they don’t, I’d point out that the decision to not get treatment is not the baby’s fault. (Let’s not forget that if the rape is not reported, a rapist is loose to act again.) Even so, regarding the infrequency of untreated rapes, there is a baby involved. (Let’s not do the “cluster of cells” discussion.) Is a woman who becomes pregnant by rape ever asked to consider that carrying the baby is nine months of her life and a chance for it to have a life, and if she doesn’t want to raise the baby, she can give it up to a loving family that is willing to give it a chance at life. Yes, in one sense it is a life-changing decision for her; but it is for the baby as well.
Yes. “Personhood” has no logical basis by which to claim a born baby but not an unborn one. That is to say a baby is unlike an adult. He or she cannot speak or express oneself in any way to distinguish oneself as an individual. A zygote is a stage in human development, not fundamentally different from a baby with a heart and brain and limbs.
In fact, the only time “personhood” comes up is when someone thinks someone else should be killed (abortion and euthanasia). How one describes a particular person expands and recedes throughout his or her life depending on how much we can perceive. There is no definite and objective measure.
Obviously, there is no need to punish a death which was not intended; and no opportunity to mourn a death which goes unnoticed. Known miscarriages are mourned, though seldom named because that complicates the emotional trauma. If the mother sees only blood and a “clump of cells”, it is yet emotionally traumatic.
A baby is loved for who he or she is, not just who one will become. Born babies doomed to die within weeks or months are not regretted by their parents, nor chucked aside.
That is not a whole human being in development. If we could freeze babies showing a heartbeat and revive them, would we?
I respect that. When people say that we must make an arbitrary judgment about when “personhood” begins, they typically avoid the problem that a miscalculation means killing somebody.
I would accept that language.
I would accept that language as well. I do think that that is where the conversation begins. Is it legal to kill a child? Of course, if a child were threatening a mother with deadly force we would say it was self defense. We would consider it tragic and wonder how things got to that point. But legally we would excuse the homicide.
The question then is whether there are analogs in the pre-birth child? “Threatening the health of the mother” has been a recognized basis for terminating a pregnancy. An involuntary pregnancy, e.g. rape and incest, raises questions about involuntary servitude. A mother may elect to give a child up for adoption, but should a woman be required to carry the pre-born to term for the purpose of adopting it out? Is that not involuntary surrogacy? This argues for a “safe harbor” period when a woman can terminate a pregnancy without justifying it to anyone. The question about “heartbeat” bills (IMO) has to do with a statistical question — what is the probability that a woman would not reasonably suspect they were involuntarily pregnant before the “heartbeat” deadline passed. I would push it to a later date if the deadline was so tight that too many women were being placed into involuntary surrogacy.
Just to be clear, by “involuntary” I limit it to coerced sexual relations, not simple failure to avoid pregnancy by contraception. But if the period of time is set so that nearly all women would reasonably know they were pregnant and had an opportunity to consider the decision to terminate pregnancy, then I think there would be no undue burden on women who wish to terminate a “voluntary” pregnancy.
We have two completely incompatible positions here: Body autonomy vs the baby’s life. A woman either has control of her body or she doesn’t. A baby either has an inalienable right to live or it doesn’t. The extreme bills passed by New York and Virginia are abhorrent to me and the extreme measure passed by Alabama is abhorrent to the pro-abortion forces. Compromise of any kind is deeply troubling to both sides as it violates their core beliefs. As someone said here, less slavery is no better than more slavery. No slavery is the only acceptable answer. It took a Civil War to come to unanimity on that issue but we eventually did. I don’t think we’ll come to unanimity here.
So one side will either have to ram it down the other’s throat, as Roe vs Wade did, or we will have to go through this contentious process of achieving a compromise that the majority can live with. We’ve had 50 years of that decision and we are more at odds than ever. That tells me that this conflict will never be resolved by some national fiat and that it will be necessary to give the states a chance to fight it out until some broad consensus is reached on how much autonomy a woman must give up and, sadly, under what circumstances she can kill her baby. If there is no consensus, then we will end up with a patchwork like we had before Roe vs Wade, only more extreme. In some states it will be completely legal under all circumstances and in others, it will be illegal in all circumstances (with the likely exception when it’s a choice between the mother’s life or the baby’s).
I agree with @bryangstephens that technology will shift the debate in unforeseen ways. But for now, I have to admit if you were to present me with one of those classic lifeboat scenarios: You have a zygote and a 6 month old unborn child in the lifeboat and one of them has to go or everyone will die, whom would you sacrifice?, I know which I would choose. And I have to admit that I didn’t have any problems choosing it, unlike some scenarios that are presented (a healthy grandmother or a young man with cancer). That tells me that I instinctively find it less abhorrent to kill an unborn baby at some points more than others. I suspect others do too. The heartbeat laws are trying to find that limit up to which we can make that value judgement without difficulty. Doesn’t make it right, but if that is what the majority can live with, it might be the best we can do. And it would be better than nothing
I disagree that involuntary pregnancy makes killing the baby acceptable, difficult as the situation is. I disagree that a baby at one month in the womb is less precious than a baby at one month out… any more than a baby at 6 months out would be more precious than a newborn. But I appreciate the reasoned arguments.
And I agree that this issue will never be completely resolved to everyone’s satisfaction politically.
It didn’t need to. Slavery was doomed by the industrial revolution and economics. Abortion may be doomed by a similar set of circumstances. I hope that eventually the prevalence of better and better early ultrasound will make the younger generation, who all have pictures in their baby books of them in utero, have seen their brother or sister on the ultrasound screen will be less likely to murder their children. Until then I think we should get what we can where we can in terms of laws without making it an all or nothing proposition.
-There was a time when I would have agreed to a compromise but no more. The pro abortion people are the best example of slippery slope. Not content to get what they wanted, they kept moving the bar until they tried to make it evil to disagree with them. It is a binary issue now, either all or nothing. Even allowing states to chose doesn’t work, as the gay marriage issue has proven. After all, we are here because they wanted to force all states to embrace their morality. I vote to ban abortion.
-The left/right doesn’t work. We are rather a mishmash of Venn Diagrams, sometimes overlapping, sometimes not, depending on the issues. My Venn circle totally overlaps VDH’s and Michael Walsh’s, mostly overlaps Charles CW Cooke’s, halfway overlaps Jonah Goldberg’s, David Crench’s, and Jay Nordlinger’s (the other half being Trump commentary), and never overlaps “the left.” You can’t win elections and have purchase if you exclude or attack all who aren’t totally inside your circle.
-I prefer the pyramid where totalitarian isms are at the bottom and freedom is at the top, with scaled ascendancy, re relationship between man and government. Abortion is a tool of the totalitarian isms and clouding it with niceties like “choice,” “reproductive health,” etc doesn’t change that. It is a profitable eugenics tool forced upon us that alleviates people of the burdens of their actions at the expense of new life forming in the womb.
I agree that slavery was doomed, for both economic and moral reasons. Given time, the South could have found moral redemption on its own. Hotheads on both sides prevented that and led to the South’s unwise secession. Both sides then settled things through a war with horrible loss of life and destruction of capital that also robbed the South of the honor and satisfaction of achieving a moral solution on its own. The resentments birthed Jim Crow and exist today thanks to condescending lefties who still mock the South which no longer deserves such condescension. Abortion should not have been forced on states outside of their own ability to to reach a moral solution, which many are doing now by rebelling against the state (federal) solution.
I agree with this.
Yet still, it means far more if the mother chooses life rather than it be forced on her. She can own it as her decision rather than one forced on her and the child can rejoice in his mother’s choice to give him life.
I’d rather see the default lean to choosing life, but I still think she should be given the choice like all the other women who chose to have sex when fertile.
In the future, please do not claim people are lying or arguing in bad faith. It is guaranteed to increase the hostility of the discussion.
That said, I don’t oppose more restrictive abortion controls. I just do not advocate them, and I think they might not be successful.
Looks like it’s not just the state legislature serious about abortion in Alabama. When you’re willing to take a hit in the pocketbook, it’s a good indication something other than politics is involved. First institutional opposition to pressure from the Left I recall in a long time.
Then there is:
Tay-Sachs disease – Genetics Home Reference – NIH
Yes, there are some terrible diseases that, for me, it is unclear whether a pregnancy should be brought to term. I don’t think there is any clear scientific/moral rule that can be fashioned. At best, whatever date were selected for an elective abortion to be permissible, there would need to be an exception thereafter for abortions on the basis that medical evidence exists that the life experience of the child would be so limited or painful and the burden of care so significant that the mother should have the ability to terminated the pregnancy if she chooses. I don’t think legislation can be crafted to define every disease that would qualify. We would need to leave it to the professionals to research and advise. Yes, that could be a slippery slope, but I don’t see burdening parents involuntarily when it is known in advance what a terrible condition the child is in, and children with such diseases would be unadoptable.
Broken record here: at conception, a complete, unique, unrepeatable human genome is present. The blastocyst is a nascent human being in a phase of development every person debating this issue passed through. When did you gain your (natural) right to life?
There’s no hypothetical choosing between this person or that one. In the rare cases where it is necessary to terminate a pregnancy to save a mother’s life, the killing of her child is co-incidental to the treatment necessary to save her. It is not the whole point of it, as is the case in abortion (therefore, it is wrong to call saving a mother’s life an “abortion”). If the child could be saved together with the mother (such as late-term), that would be the moral course of action.
We do not allow people to kill people to solve their problems. That’s really where this argument begins and ends. We will be a better people if we ever stop this hideous practice. People might actually take sex seriously and quit the hook-up culture. Marriage might become important again to secure the protection of and provision for women and the children they produce. How refreshing!
And this idea that “women should be able to control their bodies” is the devil’s false promise. I didn’t get a choice about breast cancer. Did the abortive woman have control when she chose to engage in the procreative act? “Control” is a fiction in life. It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you respond to it that matters.
I get the instinct to fight oppression, but the control idea feels like a social construct. I suspect it is a holdover from the days of death in childbirth and stay-at-home moms raising a dozen kids. Those things don’t happen anymore. Instead, pregnancy could just as easily be an excuse to eat bon-bons for 9 months and then give your kid to a family desperate to adopt. A win-win! Really, what is the worst-case for being pregnant these days?
I’d like to ask the following provocative questions:
1.
What if we are stuck with abortion and it turns out that it is a relatively permanent feature of modern life? What if, despite the passage of the laws that restrict access to abortion in some states (where, it bears mentioning, few abortions are taking place anyway), the practice continues, in one form or another, in the rest of the country?
2.
What if, on the other hand, the pro-life movement succeeds in restricting or even criminalizing abortion by passing state laws that protect the rights of the unborn. How much power are we prepared to give to the state to enforce the new laws? Practically speaking, can the state police the lives of women to such a degree that it can detect whether a woman has taken an abortion pill? What are we prepared to do if a women does take an abortion pill at month 2 or 3?
3.
What are we prepared to do if a women endangers the life of her unborn child by not taking care of herself during her pregnancy? If the unborn have full rights, parental negligence ought to be punished. If the mother neglects to take vitamins or has a bad diet, the child may have developmental delays or disorders. Let’s also think about the liability of fathers, too. Who gets to sue the parents: the state on behalf of the children or the children themselves? Are the parents only liable if their behavior results in harm?
4.
If the unborn have first-class rights, does the state have the power, in order to protect their rights, to prevent some people from having children if it thinks they are unfit?
Why on Earth would they ban it?
I would expect the opposite, that as soon as such technology exists they will push for it to be federally funded, free, and available to all public school boys the moment they hit puberty.
No. I don’t for instance believe that zygotes should have the right to vote, nor drive, nor bear arms — but then, I don’t think toddlers should have said rights, either. Full rights belong to fully mature adult citizens.
I do however believe that zygotes and toddlers are human beings and as such have a fundamental right to life.
While I don’t mean to be ghoulish, nor do I wish her ill, if Trump wins reelection will the Notorious R.B.G. be able to hold her seat until 2025? Justice Breyer is no spring chicken, either.
Perhaps Justice Barrett will cast the 5th and deciding vote to overturn Roe irrespective of how the Chief Justice votes.
Those are definitely the antecedents. But, remember, to the left we are always one step away from the Handmaid’s Tale. Also in the past there was a tremendous stigma on out of wedlock births and babies resulting from infidelity The first is pretty much gone; the second, I don’t know? Would a politician’s career be ruined in this day and age if he fathered a child out of wedlock? Would he force his mistress to have an abortion? Happens all the time on TV.
If a mother is a pot head and alcoholic, for example, there’s a good chance she’ll harm her unborn child. At the very least, the state needs to carefully supervise the entire pregnancy.
This happens all the time and the state only gets involved after the fact. Fetal alcohol syndrome has been a thing since I was a kid and probably a lot longer ago than that. We have nurses in the family working pregnancy and delivery in the “inner city” who see drug addicted babies every stinkin’ day! No one is advocating state-supervised pregnancies. We accept the tragedy of fallen human nature (and government dependency — women married to Uncle Sam instead of the father(s) of their child/children).
But, you still don’t get to intentionally kill innocent people to solve your problems.
I admire Alabama for pushing the envelope in an age when infanticide is on the table in regressive states. At least when the Greeks were killing their offspring, they’d just abandon them on a hillside somewhere rather than having the “doctor” (first, do no harm) murder them. There’s more outrage over kittens in a bag in a river.
If not now, when? If not us, who? Force the Supreme Court tell us women have a “constitutional” right to kill innocents to solve their problems. Force them to justify it.
The abolition of man.
There are realities that have to be considered in a Republic. Citizen views matter and where laws are made matter. The issue arose and became radically political because of R v W et al. A law was imposed on 50 different States and evolved because of decisions by 9 justices. First that law has to be overturned by the court itself. Then different states will have to fight it out internally. Different abortion laws in 50 states will impact views around the country but there will not be a national law that resolves the problem to the satisfaction of pro or anti abortion people. That in fact is the way most laws in this Republic should be. R v Wade et al is the problem and to eliminate it requires legal argument not fundamental moral discussion. That comes later but it cannot resolve the issue in 50 radically different constantly changing populations.
It’s hard for the Supreme Court to justify it.
Roe says that the state has an interest in protecting the lives of the unborn. The interest of the state is balanced against a new right, the mother’s right to choose.
We are at the point where greater understanding of fetal development helps the pro life movement to argue that the states interest should begin earlier than it does in Roe.
The pro-choice activists defend Roe because activists know that the pro-choice public agrees with the balancing approach. The activists, however, believe the state has no interest whatsoever is protecting the lives of the unborn and even the born in some circumstances.
In place of Roe, activists envision a right to abortion on demand that is paid for and protected by a coercive program of socialized medicine. Then all beginning/end of life decisions can be decided administratively, by HHS.
On the other hand, if the court or state legislature rules that the unborn are “persons” under the Constitution then there is a logic that justifies the state getting involved before the fact. Eventually you’ll start hearing “three generations of imbeciles is enough.” But this is surely the smaller price to pay to avoid the nihilistic dystopia I’ve alluded to above.
I don’t argue the when is it a “person” issue. It’s a distraction and it’s simply a logical premise that a person exists at conception. The science shows there is a complete, unique, unrepeatable human genome — a nascent human being at a stage of development every single person arguing this issue passed through.
I’m not interested in the state controlling the prospective mother’s behavior during or after pregnancy. I’m interested in the state not asserting a positive right to kill someone to solve your problems. In a practical sense, this would outlaw the
executionerabortionist, a practice no decent “doctor” should be involved in anyway.The Supremes will likely duck a direct attack on Roe. Roberts and Kavanaugh are sensitive to political realities. There is an existing political consensus that there should be an out for unwanted pregnancy early on but not when there is a viable baby. The trimester fudge in the Roe decision parallels the political consensus.
It is not a biologically, theologically or even logically coherent policy but moving either way towards a broad new restriction on abortion or post-delivery infanticide would be politically difficult.
The left is at least being consistent in denying the humanity of babies unless and until the mother feels like accepting it. If they admit a human life in existence at month 5 or 6 months it raises the obvious question about why then? What is the supposed dividing line? Why not an individual life from jump? The murder of a fully formed, viable baby must be redefined as a morally defensible medical procedure to preserve ideological consistency.
The pro-life side is often less consistent. Why is it not a life before a heartbeat is detectable? How is it less imbued with rights if conceived out of rape or incest?
The Democrats are staking out a losing position in that late-term abortion is not remotely popular. The “extreme” positions of the Ohio, Georgia and Alabama legislatures are much closer to the political consensus than is Hollywood’s.
Alas, I don’t think the GOP as a whole has the savvy or guts to withstand the media assault to run with a position that is actually immensely popular.