August 14, 2006
NYC Letter: The Inconvenience Of Moral Argument
Had an abortion lately? Ms. Magazine would like you to tell everybody. To help you broadcast your abortion it is sponsoring a "We Had An Abortion" campaign and a petition.
Ms. Magazine says hundreds of thousands of women are dying each year because they cannot safely kill their babies. This is the same hundreds of thousands of women who were dying for lack of clinical infanticide before Roe v. Wade.
Liberals like to make the case that abortion is a health issue. It is not, except in the sense that pregnancy is a health issue. Pregnancy puts a woman's life at risk, which is one of many reasons why motherhood is a heroic calling. Yet, clinically safe abortions also put a woman's life at considerable risk. The later the abortion the greater the risk, and liberals have pushed lateness to the point of the child brought to term. So in principle liberals accept the same health risk for abortion as for pregnancy.
Perhaps it's all about choice. Pro-choice liberals also tend to favor no-choice for smoking, banning the health risk at its source. But they would never think to promote -- much less ban -- pregnancy at its source. So we are not persuaded that liberals are making an argument for the priniciple of choice.
Is the shrill liberal promotion of unfettered abortion nothing more than a contingency for rape?
Liberals make compelling arguments for the convenience of abortion. And there are many conveniences: eugenics, career, lifestyle, reputation. We have no clever answers to these arguments. But these are not moral arguments. And the dispositions of human life and human death are moral issues requiring compelling moral arguments.
Posted by Damian at August 14, 2006 11:00 PMI think, personally, and I mean this, the anti-choice crowd is scared to death of RU486 and especially the MAP (Plan B) because if these medications become mainstream and easily available, abortion, as an issue, will cease to exist.
1: The numbers of these “abortions” will become impossible to track (which, ironically, always worked in the anti-choice arguments, as there was no way to show what the numbers were prior to RvW because people kept quiet).
2: The alleged detrimental psychological effects will be negated (women won’t ever know if they were even ever pregnant or not).
3: The stigmatizing of abortion providers, pro-choice politicians, and patients will be gone (no target enemy/victim to unite the anti-choice constituency against).
I’m tellin’ ya’ - this will be the end of the issue of abortion.
Good riddance.
JMJ
Mr. McJones,
The abortion issue is not about means it is about the right and wrong of abortion.
Convenient abortion is not somehow a morally improved abortion.
Neither is abortion about numbers, though the numbers could be extrapolated easily enough. That you think the moral problems with abortion will evaporate with indeterminate numbers is a morally empty idea.
The "detrimental psychological effects" of abortion are not alleged. They are testified to by women who have had abortions.
Abortifacient chemicals will not be sold like candy. These chemicals will be prescribed under a physician's care. To think otherwise betrays a reckless disregard for the health of the user.
As for stigmatizing, it is abortion itself that does the stigmatizing not lobbies for or against.
Your enthusiastic embrace of better chemicals will not end the abortion issue. What will end the abortion issue is primacy of moral argument over arguments of convenience.
DGB
Posted by: Damian Bennett at August 15, 2006 06:35 AMTake the case where pregnancy clearly endangers the mother's life. This forces a decision about who lives of dies. In this case alone, I think abortion is an option, but only becuase it is a specialized case of the general situation where a similar choice must be made. Even still, I don't think the decision should be predisposed.
Excepting the above case, an argument against abortion is easily made on pragmatic grounds: If the pro-choice crowd is wrong about what they're doing, murder is committed. If the anti-abortion crowd is wrong, inconvenience is committed.
Which is the better mistake to make?
So far, I've never heard a cogent counter, and I don't think I will.
gp
Posted by: gp at August 15, 2006 02:01 PM
