Professor Althouse has a suggestion.
While I don’t have a strong position personally on whether or not abortion should be legal (other than it’s none of the federal government’s business, either way, and that Roe was a constitutional atrocity), I’m always struck by the callousness of the “pro-choice” movement, which seems to be more of a pro-abortion movement. For instance, they don’t even want to get “bogged down” with the apparently inconsequential issue of whether or not a developing child can feel pain in the womb. And as Yuval Levin notes, as with other issues on the Left, they won’t even grant sincere good will to their political opponents:
The headline in the print edition [of the NYT] is “Unfazed by 2012, G.O.P. Is Seeking Abortion Limits.” As if the people struggling to save the lives of innocent children whose only crime is that they are unwanted by their mothers or would disrupt somebody’s plans should be “fazed” into inaction by the 2012 election.
The article itself offers no sense at all that the pro-life cause has any moral component, no notion that perhaps this isn’t just about this or that election. Just a perfect confusion about why anyone would want to spend time worrying about this issue.
“The re-emergence of abortion as a driving issue among the conservative base has left some moderate Republicans baffled,” the article notes. Has it really? Baffled?
The Times sometimes changes the headlines of its stories when they go online, and I wondered if maybe the online editors saw that this particular headline was ridiculous. So does the story have a different one online? Yup: The online headline is “G.O.P. Pushes New Abortion Limits to Appease Vocal Base.”
Even better.
In a similar vein, KLo writes about the pain of Penelope Trunk:
…it’s almost as if we prefer abortion. It’s an expectation. We’ve adapted our lives to it. And so a whole ideology needs to exist to insist it’s okay, that women and men aren’t feeling what they’re feeling. That this is good, when not very long ago we absolutely knew better. And it was not just priests or self-identified pro-lifers who knew better.
It’s all of a piece with the death merchants of the Left who think that humanity is the world’s biggest problem.
The part I always get stuck on is that the stated positions of the two sides aren’t actually in conflict.
The “Pro-choice” position is nominally that the female has the choice (at -every- point, from before-I-met-the-guy through 8.999 months) to have a complete physical, moral, and legal separation from the consequences.
The “Pro-life” position is that a fertilized egg is a very weak human, and thus as deserving of life as the mother is.
Grant both sides their wish.
1) Rule that a fetus is a human.
2) Turn “Abortions” into medical-separation combined with extreme neo-natal care/research and then adoption.
Performed -today-, we would end up with a lot of ‘premature C-sections’ that live fine. And a lot of first trimester ‘deliveries’ that died – even with the medical establishment’s best efforts.
But. If gone into honestly, this would push neo-natal and uterine research at a phenomenal rate. Because the people involved are interested in doing their best to keep the child alive.
The “Uterine Replicator” from Lois McMaster-Bujold’s science fiction universe lies down this path. Not immediately, but eventually.
That wouldn’t go down well with the neo-Malthusians, and there’s a lot of overlaps between them and the “pro-choice” movement. As I said, many who call themselves “pro-choice” are really pro-abortion, and actually get upset when one of those ignorant breeders chooses to give birth instead.
Well aware of that. Living in Seattle, I’m able to point this out to people poignantly at an astounding pace. They’re quite baffled and enraged if you take this approach:
“I have a policy that -fixes- this. It allows immediate, funded removal of the fetus by qualified medical personnel as well as complete medical, moral and legal protections for the young female.” (lot of nodding along). Then getting commitments: “So who here would be -for- something like that? ….”
Then the mention about the slight change in the doctor’s goals. (I propose two doctors actually.) Then the outrage and the “So… you -are- pro-death, I thought so.”
breeders ? Surely you meant “mouth breathers”?
I typically use the term “breeder” to refer to someone who assumes that everyone wants to breed, or should. Others are more lax with their usage.
Oh great, let’s have this conversation again.
I’m not “pro-choice” because I can’t agree with their stupid arguments. I am pro-abortion, both because of moral arguments that many are too squeamish to appreciate, and because, ultimately, it’s not my decision to make (I’m male).
Just to add some icing to your outrage cake: I think there’s no parental responsibility to unwanted children. You either want to be a parent or you don’t.
I think there’s no parental responsibility to unwanted children.
So, let’s look at a similar situation. A prisoner is unwanted. Does society have any responsibility to a prisoner, once they have condemned them as a prisoner?