Regarding Amy Richards & Abortion
| July 22nd, 2004Amy Richards has been condemned a lot this week for this NYT article, mostly (but not exclusively) on the right half of the blogoverse.
Richards - who many Alas readers are familiar with as the co-author of Manifesta - was pregnant with triplets, and chose to abort two of the eight-week-old embryos so that she could give birth to only one child. From the article (which is not written by her, but “as told to Amy Barrett”):
The specialist called me back at 10 p.m. I had just finished watching a Boston Pops concert at Symphony Hall. As everybody burst into applause, I watched my cellphone vibrating, grabbed it and ran into the lobby. He told me that he does a detailed sonogram before doing a selective reduction to see if one fetus appears to be struggling. The procedure involves a shot of potassium chloride to the heart of the fetus. There are a lot more complications when a woman carries multiples. And so, from the doctor’s perspective, it’s a matter of trying to save the woman this trauma.
Many folks - even pro-choice folks - have been very disturbed by this article. I don’t see what the problem is.
Not being of an original frame of mind today, I’m just going to quote some of the better comments I’ve seen. From Majikthise:
However, for those who argue that one needs some “better” reason to have an abortion, let’s look a the facts of Richards’ case. As a single mother, Richards felt that she could provide a good home for one kid but not for triplets. If you think it frivolous to balk at the costs of two extra babies, imagine the difficulty of securing childcare for three infants, or the expense of keeping them fed, clothed and diapered. Three college savings plans… So, Richards bravely chose to bear exactly the number of babies she wanted. If those aren’t good reasons, I don’t know what are.
Besides, Richards and her partner plan to have more children when they are ready. When spacing births by selective abortion means a better life for the mother and her entire family, we should celebrate the practice.
She goes on to make good comments about the medical issues - having triplets really isn’t as safe as having just one baby, for either the mother or the infant. Read the whole thing.
In the comments at Unfogged, FL wrote:
Having the selective reduction doesn’t seem crazy to me– is it crazy to have an abortion for similar reasons after condom failure? This is one of the classic test cases, and most “pro-choice” people think that abortion is permissible in such a circumstance. Are the odds of triplets that much greater than condom failure? I’m not seeing the case for hell yet…
Also in the comments of Unfogged, PZ Myers - who also wrote a good post on his own blog - wrote:
If you want to go bankrupt, try having a premature baby. Try having three. This isn’t a matter of just having to absorb the costs of an ordinary-sized family all at once, we’re talking about a vast increase in expense.
Mortality rates skyrocket with multiples. For single births in the US, death rates at birth are 2.7 per 1,000. For twins, 37; for triplets, 52; for more, 231.
Pre-term multiples tend to be low birth-weight. This is strongly correlated with the incidence of disabilities like mental retardation and cerebral palsy. The mothers also face greater risks of complications like gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. These problems can be minimized by more intensive care during the pregnancy, which the article mentioned.
Seriously, we human beings are MUCH better off having our kids one at a time. We just aren’t very good at handling more.
This was followed up by a comment by Cardinal Fang, who wrote:
That’s more than “a little inconvenience.” Each baby has a five percent chance of dying, and even if a baby survives it’s likely to have lifelong problems.
Abortion is a means of controlling the number and frequency of bearing children. Richards’ reasons for wanting to control her reproduction were stated a bit flippantly by the writer, but they are not, as so many have argued, trivial. Wanting to have a career is not a trivial concern. The difference between raising a first baby and raising newborn triplets is not trivial. The health concerns that come with bearing triplets are not trivial.
That so many people - even some pro-choice people - were prepared to make a snap judgment that these are trivial or unimportant concerns convinces me, more than ever, that it would be a disaster to place the abortion decision in anyone’s hands but the mother’s.
* * *
In addition to the posts I linked to above, here are some other posts discussing Amy Richards’ abortion:
- Trish Wilson has a good, not-easy-to-quote-a-small-bit-of post on the matter.
- Professor Bainbridge gets the prize for most over-the-top pro-life comment: “It is hard to see how any one with normal human values could find common ground with the author of this essay, whose morality differs but little from Hitler’s executioners or the Rwandan genocidal killers.”
- The pro-choice UNF at Unfogged - whose readers had many super-intelligent comments, some of which I quoted above - is barely any better than Bainbridge. “… when you have the motives expressed in this article, you ought to be sent to jail. Because you’re certainly going to be sent to hell.” Yes, this woman wanted to have a career and control her own childrearing - how evil of her!
- Hugo Schwyzer is also pro-life, but he at least let a little humanity sneak into his judgment of Amy Richards, which makes him better than Bainbridge.
- Mousewords has a harsh - but I think often on target - critique of Hugo Schwyzer’s post.
- I disagree with just about everything on Sed Contra, but this post nonetheless struck me as the most thoughtful and interesting pro-life post I’ve read on the Amy Richards matter (although it’s also over-the-top in its comparisons to slavery, but if you read pro-life sites you get used to that sort of thing). Unlike the author, David Morrison, I have no problem understanding why the value hospitals give fetuses should depend on if the mother wants to go through with the pregnancy or not. Restaurants often cook food with great care for their customers, but throw out apparently identical food that is unwanted; I wonder if this practice also strikes David as contradictory?
- Feministing’s Hannah is more disturbed than I am, but comes (I think) to the right conclusion.
- Over at A Small Victory, I’m having a debate with a pro-lifer in the comments of this post. (If you go over there, please be ultra-polite.) I thought that this post, also on A Small Victory, was much more thoughtful and interesting.
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:27 am
Wanting to have a career is not a trivial concern
Ah, but to the people flipping about about her abortion, it is. Careers for women are a second prize if you can’t be a full-time housewife mommy, or grudgingly tolerable if through no fault of your own you have no other means of support (i.e. your husband died or ran off on you).
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:32 am
Whether you consider it “over the top” or not, I will stand by the anology, and point out that your response makes it appear that the point was missed.
An unborn child isn’t food, that’s why the restaurant analogy fails. The unborn child is an unborn child, and we have (and are gaining more every day) data that details of the humanity of that child. My question in my post was how much longer can we continue to ignore the flood of information (data, images, sounds, etc) that indicate that this is so?
In 1849, a Lousiana plantation owner could beat a slave to death and not be charged with murder. Why? Because the plantation owner’s society failed to recognize what other Americans living at the same time had recognized, the slave’s humanity.
As the data steadily increases, as wanted unborn children are steadily recognized more as a patients and people worth protecting, it will become harder and harder to justify the killing of the unwanted ones.
Might I ask if you condemn abortion for any reason? If Amy’s fear of Costo, Staten Island and large jars of mayo are enough, how about the practice in South Asian immigrant communities of killing unborn girls because they are girls?
This comment was written by David Morrison.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:51 am
What is this, “…flood of information (data, images, sounds, etc)..” that is proving the case for the “humanity” of 8 week embryos? Can you provide any links that can show this data proving the personhood of 8 wk “unborn children”?
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:55 am
If Amy’s fear of Costo, Staten Island and large jars of mayo are enough…?
David, you’re far too intelligent to maintain this pretense that you’re unable to read and understand symbolic illustrations of a life path taken (or avoided). Those items you list represent the difference between Richard’s ability to live a life she wants, raising her children in the way she wants, and pursuing a career that means a lot to her. That you consider such concerns too trivial to take seriously or talk about with even a modicum of respect adds nothing to your credibility, when you’re talking to a feminist.
Also, Richards also expressed medical concerns, which you’ve chosen to ignore; do those concerns seem trivial to you, too?
An unborn child isn’t food, that’s why the restaurant analogy fails. The unborn child is an unborn child, and we have (and are gaining more every day) data that details of the humanity of that child. My question in my post was how much longer can we continue to ignore the flood of information (data, images, sounds, etc) that indicate that this is so?
After the 20th-24th week (when abortions are extremely rare), you’d have an argument. But no images or sounds before the 20th week make up for the lack of a functional cerebral cortext. And science is clear on this: no human without a functional cerebral cortext, connected to their brain, is capable of experiencing thought or emotion.
No scientific developments have changed this basic fact, David. We can now make out facial features earlier and earlier, but so what? The right to life isn’t dependant on having human-like facial features (if it were, a severe burn victim might not have a right to life). The right to life isn’t based on being able to mindlessly squirm away from a stimuli (if it were, fishing with worms would be outlawed, and Stephen Hawking would have no right to life).
Why is it that we can watch Star Trek and accept an intelligent, glowing ball of light as a person? It has no face; it does not sqirm or kick; it meets none of the definitions of “life” that pro-lifers have suggested to me. At the same time, we accept that Mudd’s robots - who have human-looking faces, and who move around, but who do not think or feel emotion - are not people.
What’s the distinction? Mudd’s robots don’t think and feel, so aren’t people. But the glowy ball is a person, because it is sentient, it thinks, and it feels emotions. That - not possessing a nose-like lump in an ultrasound scan - is what personhood is about.
Might I ask if you condemn abortion for any reason? If Amy’s fear of Costo, Staten Island and large jars of mayo are enough, how about the practice in South Asian immigrant communities of killing unborn girls because they are girls?
I think such a practice is wrong, so in that sense I condemn it. But I don’t beleive it should be outlawed; it’s better to try and change society so that sex-selective abortion won’t be wanted anymore.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:55 am
how about the practice in South Asian immigrant communities of killing unborn girls because they are girls?
The issue there is not abortion, but the enormous sexism that leads to couples not even wanting girls to exist. It is no different than if those couples took a magic pill that only allowed Y-carrying sperm to fertilize the ovum.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:03 am
Oh, and finally, you seem to have missed the point of the food comparison. My point was that there’s no contradiction in treating two 16-week-fetuses differently if you can accept that the hospital is serving the wishes and needs of the mother, not of the fetus.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:12 am
It is true that multiple gestations are risky for mother and offspring. Twins are not so much of a problem, but even they are subject to some prematurity and increased associated complications. The overwhelming number of twin pregnancies are delivered by caesarian section in the US. I daresay all triplets and higher are delivered by C-S. Some of the immediate complications of prematurity include neonatal brain hemorrhages (strokes), lung immaturity or damage, and death of the intestinal tract. In many ways, having triplets or higher is like having a bunch of special-needs children who may or may not grow out of their problems. The expense is considerable, and if you don’t have health insurance (apparently this woman is a free-lance writer, so I assume she is paying for her pregnancy out of pocket and is uninsured), is a cause for bankruptcy or for spend-down of all assets in order to qualify (if possible) for medicaid. Moving to Staten Island is not the point - moving to the underpass is, unless boyfriend is very well insured and married her tout suite.
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:12 am
Jake, just one part of the new data that I was able to find in about two minutes on Google. From the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3846525.stm
The new images also show foetuses apparently yawning and rubbing its eyes. The scans, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell at London’s Create Health Clinic, are much more detailed than conventional ultrasound. Professor Campbell has previously released images of unborn babies appearing to smile.
12 weeks, btw, not 20 or 24. And this is only the latest. There will steadily be more and more, more medical treatments to treat maladies in the unborn, more ways of understanding our development in those earliest ages.
This comment was written by David Morrison.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:20 am
David, how many special needs children have you adopted, and how much time have you devoted to their care? How many US minority healthy non-infants, how many children of any age with serious medical problems or moderate retardation or autism or schizophrenia? Sorry, I don’t count healthy white babies from the US, or healthy Chinese or Korean “white enough” babies as showing a commitment to adopting all that need it.
How many children are you the stay-at-home dad for? How many jobs have you given up for your children? Are you on the Daddy Track at work, and if so, do you contribute at least 50% of teh time and unpaid work involved in childraising?
All hat and no cattle, I bet.
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:33 am
David, adults waking up rub their eyes to clear their eyes of dry matter, to moisten their eyes, and to help their eyes focus. None of these are things that a fetus would have any need to do - it’s not possible to be dry in the womb, nor is there any way to focus their eyes. In fact, a 12 week old fetus isn’t even able to open her eyelids.
Your evidence is crude anthromorphism. Fetuses are constantly moving - of course some random gestures are going to resemble deliberate movement. Just as animals will often (with the right editing, as in those old Disney animal specials) seem to display human emotions and responses. But that’s not meaningful, and it’s not science.
Do you have any scientific explanation as to how it is possible for a fetus to experience thought before it has a functioning, connected cerebral cortext?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:36 am
Barry, what I am suggesting is that hospitals (and the rest of us) are recognizing that mothers are not their only patient in a pregnancy. This is happening now, as steadily more medical procedures treat the unborn child as an unborn child and not like merely an extension of her mother.
And my only point is that all of this will continue to undermine abortion as a method of regulating parenthood.
Reasonable people are going to find it more difficult to accept killing kids for lifestyle, career, gender selection or economic reasons after they have had their own kids, cousins, nephews, nieces, worked on in hospitals at the same age; after they have been invited to see their neighbor’s ultrasounds of kids the same ages.
This comment was written by David Morrison.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:46 am
mothers are not their only patient in a pregnancy
What happens when the two patients have conflicting interests? Do we go back to the old ‘let the baptized die and save the unbaptized’ standard?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 10:53 am
David, I adore my neice and nephew, and even moreso the baby I live with. I’ve stuck the ultrasound photos to my fridge with magnets. But my position on abortion hasn’t changed a whit.
I think as science tells us more and more about how the mind works, there will be fewer and fewer people who think that a pre-thought, pre-feeling embryo or fetus is the same as a child.
However, in the end, how many people agree with you or with me doesn’t matter. What’s right or wrong isn’t decided by popular decree; even if 99% of Americans agreed with you, David, I’d still say that using force to make pregnant women give birth against their will is wrong. And I assume that your opinion, too, isn’t subject to being altered by what polls say.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 11:30 am
It seems I was too hours and one post too early to discuss sex selection abortions. I wrote below:
On the other hand, last week China announced that it was banning “sex selection” abortions, as there are now 119 boys for every 100 girls in China. The result will be about 30-40 million more Chinese men than Chinese women. I would never support a similar law here, but I can’t say that I oppose that law in China, even though it’s affecting lots of choices of lots of individuals in lots of trimesters.
Ampersand writes: “I think such a practice is wrong, so in that sense I condemn it. But I don’t beleive it should be outlawed; it’s better to try and change society so that sex-selective abortion won’t be wanted anymore.”
In China (and India) however, this is exactly what they are doing, and the problem is only getting worse. In China, there are now 12.7 million more boys than girls under the age of 9, and that figure is from two years ago when the ratio was “only” 117 to 100. Meanwhile, the national numbers mask local problems (non-Han sections of China have a more “normal” distribution), like in Yongxing Township where there are 141 boys for every 100 girls!”
I approve of freedom of the individual to make decisions about her body, but there are limits, and it would seem that a society could fairly elect to not commit suicide. “Try and change the society” seems like a good way to fight generalized racism and sexism that are harmful, but no one denies the value of a law telling a man he has to employ qualified women and minorities in his private company, even if he would prefer to work in an all-white-male environment. There must come a point, however, where “trying to change the society” is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. China seems to be at that point.
– RB (father of two girls and not complaining one bit!)
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 11:42 am
Problem is, in societies where girls are so undervalued, women are undervalued as well. They simply don’t have the power or autonomy to choose otherwise, or excersize autonomy over their bodies. I would imagine that in many of these societies, the husband/extended family has a lot of say in the decision.
Also, sex-selection often takes place after giving birth. Female newborns are killed and declared stillborn. Female children often fewer resources (including food, medicine, etc.)–these go to the boys. Not exactly the conditions for a long and healthy life. In that sense, changing attitudes will do more to preserve life.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 11:44 am
Richard, you should read Amartya Sen’s work on the “missing women,” an absence that is not just attributable to abortion, but to unequal access to education, and to health care at every stage of life. However, what Sen concludes, as I recall is exactly what Ampersand stated: the “cure” is to elevate the status of women at all levels of society — and he gives examples of parts of India, in particular, where there is no distortion in the ratio of boys to girls. Punitive measures will not by themselves accomplish much.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 11:45 am
It’s also not an either-or choice–permit abortions for sex selection or try to talk people out of them. China’s one-child policy encouraged these abortions, but more importantly, so does the utter lack of any kind of social structure that takes the place of sons’ obligations. In rural China, a son is a kind of old-age insurance, whereas a daughter is seen as a burden. (That may change as girls become a commodity, of course.)
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 11:54 am
But isn’t a big part of changing attitudes changing the laws under which the attitudes operate?
When a woman is arguing with her husband’s mother, who wants her to abort the female fetus so that the male line can continue, a big part of changing the culture is allowing the woman to say, “No, it’s illegal. Do you want me to break the law?”
Why did we oppose anti-Sodomy laws like in Lawrence v. Texas? Because once every 20 years or so someone actually gets arrested under it? No, because it is easier to gain cultural acceptance when your lifestyle is not criminalized. Brown v. Bd. of Education didn’t end racism anywhere, but it gave the civil rights movement a banner to gather around — a recognition that what they knew was morally right was protected under the law.
When there are large inequalities in power, it helps when the law is on the side of those with less power. Part of changing the culture is changing the law. Once the culture has changed (like in America) the law becomes unnecessary.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 11:58 am
But isn’t a big part of changing attitudes changing the laws under which the attitudes operate?
Yes. I’m not sure changing the particular law banning sex-selection abortions is the right legal change to make, however. Partly because the law will be circumvented–as it is in India–and partly because it will shift from abortion to infanticide.
I don’t believe that banning abortion for sex selection in China will necessarily empower women.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 12:00 pm
Richard, who enforces those laws? Yes, it’s a bit of chicken and egg problem, but if China and India are concerned, for instance, their resources would be better spent ensuring that girls get better access to health care, education and nutrition, and focus on elevating girls who have already been born. I’ll find the cite to the Sen work, obviously, he’s a lot more articulate (and knowledgeable) than I am.
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 12:25 pm
As the mother of girls, I too have more than an academic interest here — but I am just trying to stress that abortion is the symptom, it is not the evil unto itself — undervaluing women is the evil. It would be wrong to take our obsession with abortion and try to superimpose a “fix” without cultural context. If you are interested, go to the following link (no html skills at all):
http://www.thp.org/sac/unit4/missing.htm
(some of it didn’t seem to be working well, but you will get the idea if you read even the first few pages).
This comment was written by Barbara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 12:32 pm
I would never support a similar law here, but I can’t say that I oppose that law in China, even though it’s affecting lots of choices of lots of individuals in lots of trimesters.
May I ask why, Richard? Assuming that you’re focused on the reasoning–the desire to filter out the girls–what would the difference be between such a law in the US and one in China?
If it’s just because there are more of this particular kind of abortions in China, please explain why it makes sense to ban something based on the extent of the problem rather than the problem in and of itself.
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 1:24 pm
please explain why it makes sense to ban something based on the extent of the problem rather than the problem in and of itself.
If society was perfectly balanced, I would have no problem with people making whatever individual choices they wanted.
In America, there are lots of all-boy and all-girl schools. People can choose whether they want a co-ed experience (the large majority) or would rather have a single sex education. I have no problem with that. People can do whatever they want, and however they feel they learn best. I could join a group informing parents of the dangers of single-sex education to try to “change society” and root out the last single-sex holdouts, but in the end it would be their choice.
If I lived 50 years ago, and all of the top colleges were Men Only, I would have supported a law that required all schools to become co-ed. There would have been a lot of statistics out by Conservatives showing how both men and women learned better when they didn’t have all the social pressures of co-ed classes, plus there were perfectly fine Women’s Colleges. There would be social pressure to keep things the way things always had been, even though women were barred from the top schools.
Changing the law permitting single-sex schools would be the best way to change the society. “If you can’t do it fairly, then you can’t do it at all.” Today, separate can ACTUALLY mean equal in single-sex education, so the law banning single-sex education is unnecessary and choice-restraining. In 1950, it couldn’t be equal, so was necessary to change society for the better.
Similarly, in a society where some people want boys and some people want girls, then they can all do whatever they want without destroying the fibers of society. Not because “abortion is wrong,” but because “having a 75% male country is wrong,” no matter how it came about. If everyone in town wants to be a teacher, we have to tell some of them, “No, we only need so many teachers, some of you will have to go to law school.” If everyone wants a son, we have to tell some of them, “No, we need girls too.”
On the other hand, if the few remaining girls could actually leverage their bargaining power when there are twice as many guys competing for them . . .
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 1:32 pm
If everyone in town wants to be a teacher, we have to tell some of them, “No, we only need so many teachers, some of you will have to go to law school.”
In America, we allow the market to do that (at least in theory); when we have too many lawyers, lawyers get paid less, and people do other things if they want to make a living. We don’t pass laws saying that only people with last names Q-Z are allowed to go to law school.
If everyone wants a son, we have to tell some of them, “No, we need girls too.”
The question is HOW we tell them that. And we don’t do it by throwing out women’s control over their bodies.
You do realize that telling people “No, we need girls” might lead to requiring abortion for sex-selection. Too many boys born? Let’s make people abort them until our balance of girls evens out.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 1:47 pm
I personally think this is reflective of the decline in personal responsibility in America today. We never believe that we are at fault for anything. I was not so much sickened as saddened and dismayed. It kind of reminds me of the lawsuit against McDonalds. You do something, you are not happy with the results, you refuse to take that responsibility for your action. Sadly, this is all too common now. If Ms. Richards were anything other than a shallow narcissist she would have taken responsibility for her action and given up her babies for adoption. Whatever your views on abortion, Ms. Richards needs serious help.
This comment was written by Josh.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 1:59 pm
It kind of reminds me of the lawsuit against McDonalds
The one where McDonald’s refused to take responsibility for serving undrinkably hot coffee in the drive-through and ignoring customer complains that it was dangerous? Or is that not quite what you meant by “responsibility”?
Whatever your views on abortion, Ms. Richards needs serious help.
Security guards to protect her from wackaloons would be a good kind of help.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:12 pm
The question is HOW we tell them that. And we don’t do it by throwing out women’s control over their bodies.
But you assume that “women’s control over their bodies” means abortion rights. It does not.
What if, in a fair poll of Chinese women, you found out that over half of them were aborting girls under family pressure, and that they didn’t feel that they had sufficient control over their body to choose to not abort, despite their wishes to have the baby irrespective of its gender?
In that situation — where it is impossible for the government to know in any given case whether the woman seeking an abortion is doing so under her own free will or under pressure from a pervasive man-dominated society — is it more freeing to women to permit all of the abortions or to forbid all of them?
If the hypothetical “law requiring sex-selection abortion” is not the law of the land but the law of the family, is it not more freeing for women — giving them more control over their bodies — to have the state coerce them to do what they wanted to do anyway, rather than have their family coerce them to do what they don’t? At least until we can “change society,” however that gets done, and the pressure is off the women.
In America, where women have control over their bodies, they do not freely choose to abort 15% of all girls. Assuming that Chinese women are the same, doesn’t the different result imply that it is more likely that it is the permissive abortion laws that are the major obstacles to women controlling their bodies in China?
Alternate Hypothetical: In some parts of Africa, adult women are “free” to get circumcised if they weren’t circumcised as infants. I support laws prohibiting those female circumcisions, even though some women might really really want to get one (for example, in order to get a husband who would never marry a women who was uncircumcised.)
Sometimes, you have to look at an un-screwed-up part of the world (in that particular area of screwed-upness), and ask what women would REALLY want to do if they were not so tightly constrained by their culture. It seems to me that most women I know (from various non-Chinese, non Sierra Leonean cultures throughout the world) choose not to abort girls because they are girls and choose not to get circumcised. It is fair, I think, to conclude that women in small pockets of the world, in insulated cultures, who choose differently are not really expressing their own free will.
So, yes, sometimes the way to give women control over their own bodies is to ban abortion.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:16 pm
Re: Amy Richards. There are plenty of reasons to dislike her as a person. She’s elitist and privileged and refuses to acknowledge that in her writing. She’s condescending, and frankly, I think she ends up turning off more people by her writing than anything else. Even when I essentially agree with her (like here) she makes me dislike her so much that I find it difficult to agree with her. She has an article in the most recent issue of Bitch in we she talks about the “cliche” of “every mother is a working mother” and how she’s “waiting for the ‘work’” because right now it’s just been an easy walk in the park and half way through I just want to throw the magazine out the window and scream, “fuck you, you little fucking moronic overprivileged idiot.” The same thing happened when reading Manifesta.
But, you know what — even moronic overprivileged elistist idiots deserve the same rights as everyone else. So, while I may find Amy Richards to be more than aggravating, I still support her decision 100%.
Re: sex-selective abortion. I’m opposed to it — not as “abortion” but as a sexist misogynistic practice. But do I think a law against it is the right way to go? I don’t know. Hasn’t worked in India, and it’s been illegal in India for almost a decade or more.
The way I see it, it’s often like the case of someone in Western society aborting a disabled fetus. Some people do it because they really do think that disabled people shouldn’t be born, really do hate the thought of having a disabled child (not for the extra work and cost, but because they hate disabled people).
But most people do it because they don’t think (or know) they can handle the extra financial burden and energy that it will take to raise such a child.
Raising a girl in a society that so undervalues girls (and women) is a similar situation. Girls will not stick around to help out the family. They will leave and go to their in-laws. The parents will have to come up with a dowry. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Personally, I’m morally and ethically opposed to aborting a disabled fetus. I figure, if you absolutely cannot handle having a disabled child, you shouldn’t have a child (what if it’s something like CP that can’t be detected in utero? what if your child is in an accident at the age of 2?).
Regardless, I do understand that raising a disabled child does take extra effort and more finances than a non-disabled child. And while I may oppose abortion for this reason on moral and ethical grounds, I can’t oppose it on legal grounds — and I would support the legal right for any parent to make that decision.
The thing is, in this society it is more than an “imposition” on a family to raise a disabled child. It doesn’t have to be — but in order to change that, we need to make some changes as a society (which we do not seem willing to make at this time).
The same can be said for a family who ends up with a baby girl in India or China.
This comment was written by bean.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:28 pm
is it more freeing to women to permit all of the abortions or to forbid all of them?
False dilemma. You are plastering over the real issue (forced abortions) by denying women control over their bodies: “You don’t get to control whether you can be pregnant, but nobody else gets to, either.” It’s like preventing marital rape by banning intercourse.
Your example makes a lot of assumptions: that ‘over half’ of women wouldn’t get these abortions if they could (is that the case?), that it is impossible to prevent forced abortions, and that husbands and families who would force a woman to abort a girl will shrug and give up their nefarious anti-girl scheme when abortions are banned.
I doubt it is the permissive abortion laws so much as a pervasive climate where boys are not only preferred, but needed, in rural China to ensure parents’ support in their old age. Americans do not need to worry that if they have no sons, only daughters, they will be destitute. There is no law that limits the number of children they may have.
Your Africa example is interesting, because–as in China–there’s the distinct possibility that adult women are not being forced, but are going along with what they think is proper. At what point do we say that we know better? (You may remember a recent bill in, I think it was Louisiana, which barred genital piercing along with real female genital mutilation.)
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:36 pm
Richard, if you’re trying to make the point that, “Not because ‘abortion is wrong,’ but because ‘having a 75% male country is wrong,’” then I agree with everyone else here that the best–indeed, I’d argue the only–way to achieve such an end is to change the structure of society.
We should attempt to solve the problem itself–women are undervalued–and not, as Barbara said, its symptom. Especially since the right to an abortion is all about women being able to control their own bodies.
And I have a problem saying, “Abortion should be legal everywhere except in China and India.” I don’t think the fact that something is used for one purpose here and another there is a good reason to support a ban of it either here or there. In this particular case, I don’t think social context matters.
Your co-ed schools example is relevant. Banning co-ed classes would be just as unfair now as it would be at any other time and in any other place. Are you suggesting that you wouldn’t mind if today’s Congress passed a law that required all classrooms to be same-sex? Without co-ed schools, we wouldn’t ever have gotten to the point where we don’t need them anymore.
But you assume that “women’s control over their bodies” means abortion rights. It does not.
I disagree. It’s not all about abortion rights, but women cannot have full control over their bodies without abortion rights.
is it not more freeing for women–giving them more control over their bodies–to have the state coerce them to do what they wanted to do anyway
Um, no. “Coercion” is never “freedom.” You’re assuming that no woman in China or India would ever choose to have an abortion for any reason, and that’s just incorrect.
Besides, if you ban abortion, what have you achieved? The pressure to produce male children will still be very much there. So what will happen to the girls? Do you honestly believe that all the men will just throw up their hands and say, “Oh, well, guess there’s nothing we can do about it”?
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:37 pm
I meant to say that your co-ed schools example isn’t relevant.
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 2:42 pm
And the FGM issue is a very tricky one; I haven’t quite figured it out yet. On the one hand, yes, it’s horrible and should never, never happen. But on the other hand, breast implants are harmful to both individual women and women in general, and I’m pretty sure no woman would ever choose to have that kind of surgery if it weren’t for the social pressure…
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 3:21 pm
Amp: My point was that there’s no contradiction in treating two 16-week-fetuses differently if you can accept that the hospital is serving the wishes and needs of the mother, not of the fetus.
There’s no contradiction in treating food as to be eaten or to be thrown away, depending on the owners. In the end, no matter how you look at it, it’s just food.
But that doesn’t even remotely mirror the situation with abortion. How does it make sense to say, “This thing here is either (1) A baby who deserves the best medical treatment; or (2) a mindless clump of cells that needs to be killed, and the only thing that makes the different is someone else’s intention”? Sooner or later, people are going to see the contradiction in that attitude.
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 3:39 pm
The analogy I was trying to draw with co-ed schools is:
1. Law banning single sex classes is NEEDED when women don’t have equal access to top schools and all top schools are male only.
2. Law banning single sex classes WRONG today when single-sex education is one of many equal option.
Similarly:
1. Law banning abortion is NEEDED when women do not have free control over whether they can get an abortion or not.
2. Law banning abortion is WRONG when women are free to make the choice over whether to use the option.
To me, the abortion issue, FGM, and your breast implants examples are all part of the same sliding scale. You have to, as a society, weigh the risk of permitting with the loss of freedom from forbidding.
You’re assuming that no woman in China or India would ever choose to have an abortion for any reason, and that’s just incorrect.
No, I’m assuming that over half of the abortions in China are coerced and not voluntary on the part of the woman. I base that assumption that in countries where women are freer, they make different choices.
Another example is the “right to die,” where opponents of physician assisted suicide think that family members would pressure the elderly and sick to kill themselves so as not to be a burden. The answer — to me at least — is not obvious.
You have to weigh the harms and the benefits. How many people — on the margins — will have a new option made available to them? (Abortion, FGM, breast implants, suicide). How many people — on the margins — will be forced against their “true” will to have an abortion, etc.?
These are empirical questions, and if the answer is that 90% of the women who have abortions in China do so because of cultural pressure and would have preferred to have a daughter, while 10% of the women have abortions either because THEY want sons (apart from family pressure) or because they otherwise don’t want to have children at the time, then the “pro-woman” balance swings the other way.
–RB. Socailist in Switzerland and Capitalist in Korea.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 4:11 pm
Choice
This comment was written by Body and Soul.Building on Barbara Ehrenreich’s column on abortion in today’s New York Times, Susan Madrak tells the story of a friend’s difficult decision not to have an abortion, which makes clear not only how hard the decision is, but also that,
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July 22nd, 2004 at 5:25 pm
In regards to the silly argument that we ought to protect the fetus because it is seen “yawning and rubbing its eyes”:
Baloney.
Embryos wiggle and twitch all the time: they’re full of cells that are building muscle and wiring up nervous connections, after all. It is no more a sign of conscious, human mental activity than the fact that anencephalic newborns also move and make reflex responses.
This is just the usual anti-choice appeal to emotion: it has a nose! It must be human! It has a heartbeat! You can’t kill it now! It moved its arm — it was waving hello to its mommy and dreaming about ponies and circuses and Jell-O pudding pops!
It’s a phony argument. I study embryonic fish in the lab. They move and have a heartbeat, and I suspect they have a more functional CNS than a 12 week human fetus…but no one is pounding on my door telling me that I have to preserve every last single one.
This comment was written by PZ Myers.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 5:33 pm
to me, abortion is not about the humanity of a blastocyst, embryo or fetus. i’m pregnant right at this moment–25 weeks tomorrow, second pregnancy, have never aborted, do not deny the fetus i’m carrying (and i do call it a baby) is human.
and yet, i got scared early on and seriously considered terminating. why?
(1) biggest reason: the father was emotionally distant from me. up to that point he’d been talking about having children even more than i had. however, he has also been through a former partner getting an abortion and his first wife having several miscarriages, and couldn’t be excited about something that he couldn’t really believe would work out. on top of all this, in the next couple of months he met someone new online and put more of his emotional energy into her than he did into me. (we had an open-ish relationship, but this was still reprehensible in my eyes.) i originally was ambivalent about terminating and when he said he wanted me to continue, i did… but now i wonder.
(2) i have been struggling with mental health issues for many years now. they’ve gotten pretty bad in the last two years and i was seriously worried, and sometimes still am, that this would adversely affect my parenting skills.
(3) i’ve wound up with a very sketchy job history primarily because of my mental health issues, and do not have the education or training to make a sufficient income for myself and a child. this wouldn’t have been so much an issue had my partner not emotionally bailed on me, but it is certainly an issue now.
other issues i’ve faced:
(1) unlike in my previous pregnancy, this time i actually faced a health complication. shortly after finding out i was pregnant i began suffering joint pain and swelling. it got so bad i had trouble moving and could not sleep, so i went to an urgent care center. they tested me and it turned out i was having an autoimmune reaction.
(2) diabetes runs in my family and my previous baby was nine pounds at birth. i’m being tested in this pregnancy more often than is standard because of that. in fact my first glucose tolerance test came back with a BG of 147 when they don’t want us going over 135. probably this was due to stress from my relationship.
(3) and speaking of stress, i find myself moving out of my boyfriend’s house for a number of reasons, not least among them being that if the stress continues i may find myself at risk for PIH/pre-eclampsia.
these anti-choicers (i won’t grace ‘em with the moniker “pro-life;” i mean, who ISN’T pro-life? a suicidal person?) want to convince everyone around them that pregnancy is a walk in the park, that nothing bad ever happens to the mom, the baby, or the mom’s relationship with the dad/sperm donor. um. i’m here telling you that shit *does* happen. remember me saying this was my second pregnancy? i kept my first child for almost three years. his dad wound up becoming a convicted felon, we split up and i couldn’t afford to keep my child anymore. his grandparents have adopted him.
there are times i think i’ll probably send this child to join hir sibling, too. and believe you me, speaking from experience, giving up a child is NOTHING like having an abortion might be. in the latter case, you’ve never seen “the baby” and the worst you suffer is physical pain and *maybe* being haunted afterwards by wondering if you did the right thing. in the former case, you have to watch someone take your born, living, breathing child, whom you have at least briefly seen and with whom you’ve at least briefly interacted, away from you. and it’s forever. it’s not some “flippant” decision you can just reverse three years down the road.
“but at least the child lives.” sure, that’s a valid point, i guess. one more on a planet teeming with six billion people, and nobody really cares how the mom feels anyway. we’re just brainless walking uteri, right?
This comment was written by dana.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 6:27 pm
Joe M:
But that doesn’t even remotely mirror the situation with abortion. How does it make sense to say, “This thing here is either (1) A baby who deserves the best medical treatment; or (2) a mindless clump of cells that needs to be killed, and the only thing that makes the different is someone else’s intention”? Sooner or later, people are going to see the contradiction in that attitude.
Who has expressed that “attitude?” Quote them. I think you are grossly misrepresenting the nature of the differences attributed to fetuses on the basis of the intentions their parents.
This comment was written by Don P.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 7:44 pm
No, I’m assuming that over half of the abortions in China are coerced and not voluntary on the part of the woman. I base that assumption that in countries where women are freer, they make different choices.
But that is not the only difference in those countries. China is not “the US but half of abortions are coerced”–which you have to admit is a rather big assumption. In rural China, at least, there is a culture where boys are strongly preferred, not just by everyone-but-pregnant-women but by everyone. It’s not a good idea to assume that if a woman aborts a female fetus, it’s because she values daughters but nobody else does. It’s also a culture where the one-child policy has been enormously strict until recently, and where sons are an investment in one’s financial future.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 8:06 pm
It was asked: “please explain why it makes sense to ban something based on the extent of the problem rather than the problem in and of itself.”
We do that all the time. Anti-nuisance laws - noise regulations, traffic and parking restrictions, littering fines, stuff like that - are passed not because the thing itself is so bad to need a law against it, but because the extent of the thing becomes intolerable. One car driving down your secluded suburban street at night is tolerable. A whole stream of them who’ve discovered it’s a shortcut around a traffic jam on the arteries is what’s intolerable. Then and only then are legal sanctions applied.
This is not to argue that the same policy ought to be adopted to deal with undesired reasons for abortion. Even in the case of nuisances like the above list, legal proceedings are not always the best policy. But it does show that the principle exists in law.
David Morrison wrote, “An unborn child isn’t food, that’s why the restaurant analogy fails.” He has missed the point. Throwing out unwanted food may not be as morally momentous as throwing out an unwanted child [assuming it is a child, a point on which Morrison’s “evidence” is entirely specious], but it is not an act without moral moment. The gratuitous discarding of edible food is considered disturbing in our society. Matching grocers and restaurants with charitable groups that can give their unwanted food to the hungry is a major activity.
This comment was written by Simon.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 8:10 pm
Reading the pro-life male comments on this and (where these comments were much more extreme) at Kevin Drum’s blog, I am reminded of a short story by T. Coraghessan Boyle that was published in The New Yorker some years ago. I can’t recall the title, but the story was a fictionalization of one of the teenage mother-throws-baby-in-trash incidents, but he had upscaled it, made his teenage mother China Berkowitz the stereotypical Jewish Princess. Boyle is a conservative satirist, of course. He knows how to push all the buttons.
The pro-life guys, for all their supposedly intelligent ethical reasoning, seem to have a script in mind:
Fate allows me to date Sarah Jessica Parker, but when she becomes pregnant by me, she aborts my fetus!
meaning, in subconscious psychological short-circuit, that she kills me.
Fans of Amp’s cartoons will also presumably know of the by all reports insane Dave Sim (of Cerebus fame). He imagines women as monsters who cannibalize men, as Devouring Female Voids out to extinguish the tiny, helpless male Light (subconscious image of embryo in big, dark womb). He’s also overtly anti-abortion.
The exaggeration of the degree of privilege of Amy Richards (a free-lance writer and a college lecturer is not rich on the scale of Sex and the City fantasies) is part of this psychological script: the woman must be more powerful than the man.
This comment was written by sara.Report this comment to the moderators
July 22nd, 2004 at 9:01 pm
The fact that a woman has internalized her culture’s misogyny does not mean her “voluntary” decisions were not coerced. I agree with everyone who promoted “changing the culture,” but that’s a long-term solution. Sometimes short-term fixes are useful and necessary as well, and legal changes have the advantage of both providing a short-term fix and helping to change cultural norms.
In the meantime, relying on “cultural change” won’t do any good when you’ve got 40 million Chinese men in a state of perpetual adolescence due to their inability to find a wife who wasn’t aborted 25 years ago. What will happen to a society when 10-15% of its young men want to get married but can’t? Who knows. But it can’t be good.
This article says the bad news has already started, and if I’m a woman in a Conservative rural society where pre-marital sex is a no-no and job options are non-existent, I’m not sure I wouldn’t be willing to give up my right to “choose” an abortion to decrease my chances of being kidnapped and raped by a sex-starved bachelor.
“Chinese commentators fear the effect on public order, painting a picture of bands of testosterone-crazed youths roaming the countryside, raising hell. . .
“So far, the main effect of the shortage of women seems to be nasty behaviour towards them. Official figures suggest that 64,000 women have been rescued from forced marriages since 1990. Xie Lihua, editor of Rural Women Knowing All, an immensely successful magazine (fancy a readership of 50m-60m?), describes how she helped to rescue two readers from Sichuan province who had been kidnapped and married off to men in Guangdong. But such errands of mercy are sometimes unwelcome. “Often when the police arrive, the villagers surround them and threaten to beat them up,” she says. “They don’t object if somebody has paid for a wife. They don’t want to see the village die out.”
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 1:32 am
Sex-selective abortion was being overly used and abused in India for years. Because of that, they made changes to the laws. Now, it is no longer possible to find out the sex of your baby before birth. Sex-selective abortions are illegal, although abortions for other reasons are still legal.
Has this changed things in India? Not really. Sure, the number of abortions based on sex have gone down. But the number of female infanticides and the number of abandoned baby girls have increased. Is this really better?
I don’t think anyone should be coerced into an abortion for any reason. But, neither do I believe that it is ever right to coerce — no, force — a woman to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. And outlawing abortion — regardless of the intentions — is doing exactly that. Even if we were to believe Richard’s numbers that “half” of Chinese women who abort are coerced to do so (which is extremely unlikely — they may be doing so because of societal pressure to have a boy and not a girl, but that doesn’t mean that the abortion is being coerced), there are still the remaining half who would then be forced to carry the pregnancy to term against their will.
This comment was written by bean.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 4:38 am
That’s great, sara. I was fixing to make a similiar point, but your way was funnier. Before I got into blogging and reading blogs, I used to think that the stereotypes of pro-lifers, the men as women-fearing and the women as sister-punishing, were probably unfair. But while it’s unfair to say that all pro-lifers are like that, or even most, a disturbing number are.
This comment was written by Amanda.And I am continually amazed at how the pro-life movement constantly has way more men than women and yet this never seems to give them pause and ask themselves–if we really know so much about what’s going on inside a woman, how is it women themselves usually disagree and so strongly?
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July 23rd, 2004 at 6:59 am
pro-life movement constantly has way more men than women and yet this never seems to give them pause and ask themselves
What’s your evidence for this? Remember that a majority of women are pro-life, and that most polls show that the percentage of pro-life women is about equal (or greater) to the percentage of pro-life men.
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 7:08 am
Who has expressed that “attitude?” Quote them. I think you are grossly misrepresenting the nature of the differences attributed to fetuses on the basis of the intentions their parents.
Who? I’m not talking about one person’s literal words, as most readers of the English language could see. I’m talking about general attitudes. On one floor of a hospital, everyone calls it a baby, and they treat her as a patient deserving the best in pre-natal care, surgery (yes, they can do pre-natal surgery for some things), and so forth. On another floor, an identical fetus is euphemized as a clump of cells, or the product of conception, or the like, and its destination is a bloody death.
What’s the difference in those two fetuses? Absolutely nothing. The only difference is in someone else’s attitude.
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 8:02 am
Um, if it’s a *bloody* death, does that somehow make it worse than just ordinary, run-of-the-mill death? Just wondering.
See, and I agree with you, Joe: some pregnant people treat their fetus as a person; some don’t, and, yes, that’s a difference in attitude. But Amp’s functional-cerebral-cortex argument is, I think, a relevant one here.
We’re talking about two human lives whose interests are in direct conflict with each other, period. The best interests of one will have to be sacrificed, period.
I think, ultimately, the pro-abortion argument is that, while we are, yes, talking about two human lives, we’re not necessarily talking about two human *beings,* and that’s why pro-abortionists believe the decision to favor the pregnant person’s life over the fetus’ life is the correct one.
Abortion kills a living organism, and that organism is, genetically speaking, human. No one’s arguing that, and if they are they’re ignorant of biology. But that organism, as far as early-term abortions are concerned (and the vast, vast majority of elective abortions are early-term), does not think or feel–while it’s human, there’s nothing that makes it a human *being.* The same can’t be said for the person in whose body that human organism resides.
This comment was written by Morphienne.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 8:51 am
I’m with bean: We should never ban abortion because there will always be some women who would choose it outside of any pressure they may be under, and it’s unacceptable to deny them rights in order to achieve an end which probably wouldn’t happen anyway.
Simon, I think you’re correct about your “extent of the problem” post. I should have said “reasons” instead of “extent.” You get fined for parking in places where you may not park. You don’t get fined for parking in illegal place X because you wanted to go to a bar, but not in illegal place Y because you were visiting your mother. The reasons you were there don’t matter; your being where you weren’t supposed to be (or annoying someone by the level of your noise, or littering in general) is the only important point.
But with Richard’s recommendation, that’s what would happen. He’s in favor of banning abortion in one place and not another not because he thinks abortion in and of itself is wrong, but because he thinks the reasons a particular group of people is choosing abortion are wrong.
Wouldn’t it make more sense, then, to ban abortion based on those reasons rather than all abortion? bean mentioned not revealing the sex of a fetus and banning sex-selective abortion (which would be just as abhorrent in America as anywhere else). These are much better ideas than banning abortion outright, and would be at least as effective, if not more so.
Richard, your post about the “nasty behavior” of some Chinese men only supports my point. How will an abortion ban fix this problem? If they threaten to beat police up, why would they pay any attention to a mandate that forbids abortion–especially since it has had a tremendous role in their lives?
1. Law banning single sex classes is NEEDED when women don’t have equal access to top schools and all top schools are male only.
2. Law banning single sex classes WRONG today when single-sex education is one of many equal option.
OK, I understand. (But we need to be clear that the ban applies to male-only classes; there would be no reason to ban female-only classes in either example.) Perhaps, then, it’s more a matter of degree and the extent to which it deals with the problem at hand.
The problem in the school example is that women aren’t getting access to an education; the laws give them that access. It doesn’t limit anyone’s right to an education. But a total abortion ban does limit the right to an abortion. The problem is not that fetuses are being aborted, but that female fetuses are being aborted. In this case, a ban on sex-selective abortion would be more comparable to a ban on male-only classes.
Also, I believe that the right to retain control of one’s own body is far more important than the right to a male-only education, which makes banning abortion less acceptable in my eyes than banning same-sex classes.
This comment was written by Hestia.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 10:09 am
What’s the difference in those two fetuses?
About seven to eight months of gestation followed by birth. Plus the fact that on the maternity ward, the mother chose not to abort.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 11:09 am
About seven to eight months of gestation followed by birth.
Wrong. That doesn’t explain how the fetuses are different now.
Plus the fact that on the maternity ward, the mother chose not to abort.
Well, that’s the point. Based on the mother’s whims, the doctors have to treat the fetus either as a medical patient or as something to be exterminated.
This comment was written by Joe M..Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 11:23 am
Based on the mother’s whims, the doctors have to treat the fetus either as a medical patient or as something to be exterminated.
Yep. I don’t see why you have a problem with this. ‘Treating the fetus as a patient’ is for the benefit of the born baby the fetus will, eventually, become, not because the fetus mobilized Mommy to walk in and ask the doctor for help.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 11:34 am
OK, I understand. (But we need to be clear that the ban applies to male-only classes; there would be no reason to ban female-only classes in either example.)
The issue is the power of those who exclude, not the gender of those affected by the exercise of that power.
When Joe Hogan wanted to attend the Mississippi University for Women Nursing school, the Court forced them to let him in, primarily because there was no other convenient nursing school in Northern Mississippi that accepted men. That has to be the right answer. If Mississippi had a Men’s Nursing School and a co-ed nursing school nearby, and they were all of comparable quality, there would be no problem.
The problem in the school example is that women aren’t getting access to an education; the laws give them that access. It doesn’t limit anyone’s right to an education. But a total abortion ban does limit the right to an abortion.
Similarly, the problem in the China example is tha women aren’t getting the opportunity to give birth to daughters; the laws give them that opportunity. And it doesn’t limit anyone’s right to have a baby. But a ban on same sex education limits the rights of women in Northern Mississippi to atttend a women-only nursing school.
The issue is not whether the right to abort or the right to have babies is the more “important” right, it is that the government cannot police every family interaction, so needs to act on a governmental level based on which right is being more greatly infringed upon. It’s just a simple utilitarian calculus. When some rights will necessarily be infringed, you set policy to minimize the overall infringement.
This comment was written by Richard Bellamy.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 12:13 pm
women aren’t getting the opportunity to give birth to daughters
Your argument rests on the assumption that those women want to give birth to daughters but nobody will let them. Are you sure that’s the case?
Your comparison to FGM is an instructive one–it’s not men who insist on infibulating their daughters. It’s women.
If Mississippi had a Men’s Nursing School and a co-ed nursing school nearby, and they were all of comparable quality, there would be no problem.
Yes, there would be. You aren’t allowed to refuse to serve blacks in your restaurant by pointing out that there are five other restaurants that do serve blacks in a one-mile radius.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 12:23 pm
A college isn’t a public place in the same way a restaurant is.
Legally, Richard is correct - if their had been an equally-good-in-all-ways nursing college open to men in the same neighborhood, then the Court would have allowed the female-only nursing school to keep on operating.
That’s oversimplifying a little, but basically, that’s what the Court’s decision said.
Regarding banning abortion in China, I do find Richard’s case persuasive. But I find Bean’s rebuttal - that, based on the Indian experience, you would just wind up with a higher rate of infanticide - even more persuasive. I’m not convinced that Richard’s solution would be effective in the short or in the long term.
The only real solution is to support programs to improve the status of women - through public education, through grants targeted to let women attend college and start businesses, etc. That won’t work in the short term, but it will have an effect in the long term. An effective Social Security program would help, too.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 1:52 pm
That’s oversimplifying a little, but basically, that’s what the Court’s decision said.
I’d honestly have to go back and read the decision, but I suspect whether the college is private or publicly-funded (a la VMI) affects the issue.
I believe Richard has a point if the problem is that Chinese women really want to have these girl babies and making such abortions illegal would guarantee them an out–”Sorry, honey, I’d love to abort, but we’d get in trouble.” I’m not sure you could confidently make those assumptions.
If it’s women who are also expressing the preference for boys (and according to Chinese friends, that’s very much true) rather than just their husbands, then you’re not freeing them from oppression or giving them an out. They don’t want that out, and they’ll find ways around it.
It’s worth noting that given the current shortage of girls, increasing the birth ratio now could simply create a market for girl babies. Have your girl, sell her to a family with a boy that wants to guarantee him a wife.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
July 23rd, 2004 at 4:33 pm
Choice
This comment was written by Body and Soul.Building on Barbara Ehrenreich’s column on abortion in today’s New York Times, Susan Madrak tells the story of a friend’s difficult decision not to have an abortion, which makes clear not only how hard the decision is, but also that,
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July 23rd, 2004 at 4:45 pm
Choice
This comment was written by Body and Soul.Building on Barbara Ehrenreich’s column on abortion in today’s New York Times, Susan Madrak tells the story of a friend’s difficult decision not to have an abortion, which makes clear not only how hard the decision is, but also that,
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July 26th, 2004 at 3:40 pm
Selective Reduction
This comment was written by Cheeseorgy.(Article, or letter rather, can’t be found online, but this sums it up.) I want to say that I’m disgusted, that this should never have been allowed to happen. But I don’t see the difference between knowing that you can’t…
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July 28th, 2004 at 6:52 pm
Somebody wrote:
“Mortality rates skyrocket with multiples. For single births in the US, death rates at birth are 2.7 per 1,000. For twins, 37; for triplets, 52; for more, 231.”
—
I’m not sure where this person got their numbers, but I decided to look them up because the numbers seemed ridiculous - 3% mortality rate for twins, 5% mortality rate for triplets?
The CDC (2001) reports 9.9 per 100,000 live births, with a total of 400. That’s a heck of a difference from the numbers quoted above. Each of those is a tragedy, but statistically, that’s about 0.01 percent.
Whatever side of this discussion you stand on, at least try to get the statistics within an order of magnitude or two.
This comment was written by Iblis.Report this comment to the moderators
July 30th, 2004 at 8:47 am
More on the Amy Richards Story
This comment was written by feministe.Several feminists have expressed that they felt uncomfortable with the NYTimes article that chronicled Amy Richards’ decision to have two of three triplets she was carrying (conceived naturally) aborted. Several takes: Alas a Blog, Noli Irritare Leones…
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July 30th, 2004 at 8:51 am
More on the Amy Richards Story
This comment was written by feministe.Several feminists have expressed that they felt uncomfortable with the NYTimes article that chronicled Amy Richards’ decision to have two of three triplets she was carrying (conceived naturally) aborted. Several takes: Alas a Blog, Noli Irritare Leones…
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July 30th, 2004 at 9:01 am
More on the Amy Richards Story
This comment was written by feministe.Several feminists have expressed that they felt uncomfortable with the NYTimes article that chronicled Amy Richards’ decision to have two of three triplets she was carrying (conceived naturally) aborted. Several takes: Alas a Blog, Noli Irritare Leones…
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October 17th, 2004 at 8:11 pm
Not exactly offended
This comment was written by Raising WEG.I stumbled into blogs via infertility, specifically a very funny set of infertility tickers at a little pregnant that showed up on the Triplet Connection back in August. That was right around the same time the Amy Richards selective reduction fracas …
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November 15th, 2004 at 6:36 pm
Choice
This commeBuilding on Barbara Ehrenreich’s column on abortion in today’s New York Times, Susan Madrak tells the story of a friend’s difficult decision not to have an abortion, which makes clear not only how hard the decision is, but also that,