Abortion: Essay Most Pointless

No argument, no matter how reasoned, will change any opinion whatsoever on this topic.

That never stopped me before.

Male Opinions

Does a man's opinion count in any discussion of abortion? After all, only women can bear the burden of pregnancy. I think male opinions can count. Now, I think it's evident that in any individual case, the woman must have the final decision. We might hope that she'd have a decent respect for the opinions of humanity, to borrow the words of Thomas Jefferson, and that her decision would be informed by the opinions of the father and her friends, family, and loved ones, but ultimately, she has the privilege of decision because only she bears the weight.

But, as Harlan Ellison has pontificated, everyone has a right to an informed opinion. That's as true in the case of abortion as ever. I think men have as much right to an opinion about abortion in the general as women. Even were one to consider it reasonable for one class not to be entitled to an opinion about another class's issue, you would have to construe it too narrowly to call abortion a female issue; it is a human one. But I find the premise of that conditional flawed. If you know enough about any topic to frame a reasoned argument, you have enough of the currency of ideas to participate in its discussion.

Abortion Is Not Murder

When does human life begin? Error: Undefined term.

A blob of cells is not recognizable as human in anything but its DNA, while many mothers in their third trimester have already begun to recognize the incipient personality of their impending offspring. The only change in pregnancy which is recognizable as a phase shift and not a simple change in grade is birth itself. Does that mean that birth is where we recognize the beginning of a human life? No. The difference between a newborn and a 34th week fetus is a question of degree, not of kind. You can't define the beginning of a human life, because you can't define what a human life is.

Most eggs are never fertilized. Many fertilized eggs fail to implant. Many embryos are absorbed by the lining of the uterus without forming a fetus. Many fetuses are rejected for known and unknown reasons during gestation. Medical abortion is induced from without rather than from within, but it is otherwise conceptually identical to processes that occur naturally.

Building a baby human is hard. The biochemical reactions necessary are complex and fragile. Things can and do go wrong all the time. The body catches a variety of errors and decides it's better to try again later. Or the pregnancy is naturally terminated when the body determines that environmental stresses (such as famine, injury, and even psychological trauma) make it a good idea not to have a baby right now.

We think nothing of supplementing the body's immune system with antibiotics. In many respects, a medical abortion is a similar kind of supplement. The woman consciously decides "Now is not the best time to have this baby", using criteria often substantially similar to the ones her body uses to make the same decision. Until it is not her body anymore, she has to be able to make that call.

That is not to say that I don't think there's a moral cost associated with abortion. Squelching a human life, however in potentio, is not blithely done. If you are trying to kill me, then I am justified in killing you, but killing you is still less than a good thing. We should have reverence for life; one of the damning truths of existence is that to live is to kill.

Does Society Have an Interest

In many cases, such as the drug war, individuals want to do something which will affect only themselves and society objects, usually because the something has negative consequences. You can frame the issue thus: Does society have an interest in protecting the individual from himself?

No one disputes that society has an interest in protecting individuals from each other; that's society's major responsibility. You get drunk, I want you too scared of the possible consequences to even think of getting in your car. But that doesn't particularly apply when it's only protecting you from yourself. How about the motorcycle helmet law? Well, it turns out, taking care of quadriplegics is a major drain on society's resources. Society has a definite interest in keeping your head attached to your neck.

Is abortion a case of protecting an individual from another? As indicated in the previous section, I think it is clearly not.

Does society have an interest in prohibiting abortions? I've seen it phrased in a variety of ways. One of the traditional exercises of the state's police powers is to promote a healthy society. Healthy babies and an expanding population are often considered means to that ends. I find this argument unavailing. As a ZPGer (Zero Population Growth) and misanthrope, I think there are too many people already. We don't need more, particularly ones that the mother would rather not have.

The state also has an interest in promoting morals. This is the standard justification for immunizing churches against taxation. Abortions, it is said, promote disrespect for human life, indiscriminate and careless sexual activity, and a host of other ills, and so are a reasonable subject for society to discourage. I also find this argument unavailing. Oh, certainly, society has an interest in stopping careless sexual activity, if only to prevent STDs, but birth control is cheap, reliable, and available. Promoting its use is a better means to the end of sexual responsibility than prohibiting abortion.

Similar arguments for society's interest in prohibiting abortions are left as an exercise for the reader. In the end, I find that society has a legitimate interest in limiting unwanted pregnancies, not in prohibiting abortion.

Fetal Viability Is a Reasonable Criterion

The majority of abortions (both medical and natural) occur in the first trimester. The majority of the rest occur in the second trimester. The tiny fraction of abortions that occur after that are usually due to gross medical problems, direct threats to the mother's health or monstrously-deformed fetuses.

Most American jurisprudence on limiting abortions, as opposed to regulating them, focuses on fetal viability as a line of demarcation. As I'll discuss, I think this is a reasonable demarcation, although it may become less so.

The basic theory is that society has a valid interest in seeing a baby born after the point at which it could be born. At that point, instead of undergoing a surgical abortion, a woman could induce labor and be similarly rid of the burden of pregnancy, with society having a new baby in its plus column.

Prior to fetal viability, prohibiting the woman from having an abortion would render her hostage to her own womb, a lesser-class citizen held to bondage and service. This is clearly unjust (though many argue that a similar injustice is performed to the inviable fetus if the woman has an abortion).

For the reason that, after viability, a woman can get rid of her pregnancy one way or another, I find that fetal viability is a sensible place to allow some prohibition of abortion.

However, it may not remain so.

Medical science grows ever more sophisticated. Fetal viability, once mid-third trimester, rapidly grew to encompass most of third trimester without particularly heroic efforts. Now, with heroic efforts, babies born late in second trimester have a decent chance of survival.

But.

There's a huge cost associated with a second trimester neonate. The medical costs are astronomical. As we've already mentioned, society has enacted some regulations precisely to keep medical costs down. Furthermore, there's some evidence that extremely premature babies have significantly greater incidence of developmental problems. They're physically and mentally reduced compared to their full-term kin.

As medical science gets better and better, the cost of maintaining strict fetal viability as a criterion may be too great (at least until we get full-blown artificial wombs). We may want to set a hard limit at a point in development where a preemie does not have much risk for medical complications. An unhealthy baby is not a check mark in society's plus column.

Conclusion

I'll sum up my thoughts on the subject with two sound bites.

Abortion is not a good choice, but it is sometimes the best choice available.

So long as there are unwanted pregnancies, abortion must be an option.

That tells us what we should be working for: Ensuring that people always have good choices, and that there should not be unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is just a symptom.

Posted by Greg at September 16, 2002 11:57 AM