Abortion/safe sex op-ed

[Seany-D]

someone at the last meeting was interested in the abortion issue. I offer an op-ed from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to chew on. --SED



Promote birth control to make abortion rare
By Cynthia Tucker
Originally published September 20, 2004

ATLANTA -- The nation's leading abortion-rights activists have an eye on the U.S. Supreme Court. They believe that if President Bush is re-elected, he will swamp the court with enough right-wing justices to overturn Roe vs. Wade and do more damage to the country than Ivan, Frances and Charley combined.

They're probably right. A second Bush term could easily lead to the most reactionary court since the one that ruled that Dred Scott had no rights.

Still, the tenor of the abortion-rights crusade seems passé, outdated, even crude. The activists spend so much time arguing for abortion that they seem to ignore its complexities and its pain.

The latest gimmick of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is to encourage women who have terminated pregnancies to wear T-shirts advertising the fact. Is that really the best way to promote a right rooted in privacy?

The pro-choice crusade needs a new focus.

Instead of using bumper-sticker tactics that seem to mock the painful decisions that accompany termination of a pregnancy, abortion-rights activists should start a campaign to make abortion -- as Bill Clinton once said -- safe, legal and rare.

I've never met anyone who is pro-abortion. I've never met a woman who had made the decision to terminate a pregnancy who was blithe or careless or unfeeling about it.

As far as I can tell, it's always a gut-wrenching decision, and it always carries long-term emotional pain. It is, of course, a decision any woman should be free to make for herself.

I once explained to an abortion opponent that I am also uncomfortable with abortion. But I'm even more uncomfortable with the idea of telling another woman what decision she should make about something so personal, so challenging, so complex. A court has no business interfering in that.

Nevertheless, the long-term interests of reproductive rights would be better served by a crusade that focuses equally on encouraging the use of contraceptives.

How can we insist that women and their lovers are mature enough to decide whether to end a pregnancy if those couples show no maturity about protecting against unwanted pregnancies?

There is simply no excuse for the failure of so many sexually active women -- and men -- to use contraceptives properly when they are so readily available and easy to use.

It's been a long, hard struggle to get here, but contraceptives are now finally advertised on TV.

In Western Europe, sexually active adults (and adolescents) are much more likely to use contraceptives than Americans are. As a result, the rate of unwanted pregnancies is much lower. That means the rate of abortion is much lower, as well.

While the United States has 53 births per 1,000 teenagers, a rate worse than India's and Rwanda's, Britain has 20 babies per 1,000 teens. Germany and Norway have only 11, Finland has eight, Sweden and Denmark have seven, and the Netherlands has five. The much lower rate of teen pregnancy results from a "pragmatic European approach to teenage sexual activity" that does not pretend adolescents are not sexual beings, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

Of course, Western Europe has little of the hyper-moralistic, fundamentalist Christianity that subverts rational discourse about sex. While the "abstinence-only" movement has hit Britain, it has not settled in deeply in other countries. They don't have to deal with a small but loud constituency of moralists who seem to believe that children are the appropriate punishment for having sex.

Still, any country that airs provocative ads for Viagra and Cialis, which have only one purpose -- aiding sexual activity -- surely is ready for a broad public campaign encouraging the use of contraceptives. Americans are not nearly as prudish as we claim. We can do much more than we have done to make sure that abortions are rarely necessary. Maybe abortion-rights activists will take up that cause.


Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

[ebonywnd]

This makes sense. If we can encourage people to use birth control, rather than pretending teenage sex doesn't exist, then the rate of unwanted pregnancies should decrease, thus making the rate of abortion decrease. The majority of people who object to abortion don't have many, if any, qualms about using birthcontrol. That would put a damper on some of the hostility that rises from both camps. Pro-choice people can be seen as less callous, because promoting BC as a way to stop the demand for abortion is much different than supposedly saying "if you get pregnant and don't want it, it's ok to just kill it. It's not a person anyway."

There are so many directions in which to take this topic, and I'll go crazy if I try to cover them all in one sitting. So I'll stop now.

[Seany-D]

Question: are you sure that the majority of people whom are opposed to abortion would acquiesce to birth control use? I am generally under the impression that most people whom vocally oppose abortion are of the mindset that sexual relations are meant solely for procreative purposes. I am sure one of us is misinformed, but the abortion issue is not one that I am as well-versed in as I shoud be. Anyone else want to chime in?

Sean "if a zygote is a human being, then is spontaneous abortion suicide?" Davis

[ebonywnd]

Hmm...well I was thinking about all people who are opposed to abortion, not just the most vocal ones. I did consider the fact that the most vocal were likely to be against all forms of BC, but I made a supposition that the majority of pro-life people weren't as radical. I could've been wrong. But I wonder....given the choice between the pill and the forceps, how many would find that a lesser of two evils? Likely not the extreme radicals, murder is murder after all.

Interesting. Jacking off is supposedly a sin in their eyes, yes? Well what about letting all those precious eggs go to waste via menstruation? If the whole point of this is not letting these potential babies go to waste, without God getting to dictate first if they will be babies, then a man is sinning even when he doesn't jack off, and a woman sins monthly. God gave us these cells so that they would be made into babies, right? Why would he make excess ones if he already knew which he would turn into babies?

Anyway, I guess the whole difference between a guy (for simplicity's sake) having a wet dream and losing a bunch of little guys that way and a guy having sex with a condom on is in how good it feels. Because the better it feels, the greater role Satan had in making it. Funny how our the kind and loving god has made in some way a sin almost all the things we find most pleasurable.

My reasoning is probably faulty, I'm hungry.

-Laura "if god controls everything, is a spontaneous abortion assisted suicide?" McIntosh

[the anti-myrmidon]

BC and abortions are both seen as bad by a number of religious groups (the Catholic Church being most prominent, but also several veins of Protestantism as well). The reasoning against BC by many non-fringe people generally involves a distaste for premarital sex. Some view contraceptive use within a marriage as being acceptable...for those that don't, then we are getting into the sex-for-procreation-only faction. Contraceptives are often opposed because to many people it implies sexual promiscuity (not quite sure why).

When you get into issues of sex education, the opposition gets stronger. Even those in favor of adult contraceptive use agree with abstinence-only programs for teens and adolescents. Here, the reasoning is that teaching full-out sex education will only encourage earlier sexual experiences among kids. Furthermore, teaching safe sex will make kids believe that if they wear a condom or take the pill, then they are 100% safe against unwanted pregnancy or STDs. I personally find this to simply be a case of major denial, since abstinence-only programs aren't going to make kids into perfect, chaste angels any more than a decent sex ed program will turn our young'uns into pimps and whores.

Anyway...I could go on forever (as I am wont to do on occasion), but all I can say is that it really pisses me off that our government has advocated abstinence-only programs both domestically and as a response to the AIDS crisis in Africa. I may add more on this later. In the meantime, I leave you with the following:

People are always going to fuck, even outside of marriage. Insisting on abstinence will not change that.

Discuss

[Rama]

I'm quite skeptical, almost to the point of immediate dismissal of the idea that "all abortions are traumatic and cause long lasting damage blah blah blah..."
I haven't done a terribly large amount of research on the issue, but from the small amount of feminist media I've run across, I'd say the author of the editorial hasn't run into too terribly many liberal minded women.
It makes little sense that abortions will always cause severe mental trauma, when one of the most common panicked screams from the pro-life camp is that people in inner cities are having abortions on a regular basis instead of using contraceptives.
Furthermore, I've actually met a girl who had an abortion after a condom broke, and claimed (quite convincingly) that she felt no trauma from it whatsoever.
A clump of cells is just a clump of cells. I'm an atheist, and I do not believe in a soul. I believe that person's personality is created and stored in their brain, and developed and changed by the experiences of their lives.
I also deny the assertion that human beings have any "innate value" to them. I see value in human life as being built, being achieved, not as some sort of default characteristic.
Yup, you heard me right. I don't think Hitler had any inherent value simply because he was a human being. Oh what a madman I am!
The extension of this logic of course leads to the conclusion that a fetus is nothing more than a fetus. It has no personality, it has no soul, it is not good or bad, and does not "deserve" life or death or anything else any more than your toe or your little finger does.
I've never gotten anyone pregnant to the best of my knowledge, but I can assure you that if I ever do, and I am not ready for a child, I will kill the little fucker as quickly as possible without a second look back. I like to think I only involve myself with women who are comfortable and agreeable with this disposition.
I don't think that anything has the power to always mentally traumatize someone. As bizarre as it is, I actually know a girl who lost her virginity when she was raped while camping in highschool. I don't know if she's always felt this way, but she will swear up and down that she wasn't scarred by the event, and hasn't suffered any long-term psychological trauma. Given that she's very open about the subject, and very convincing in her arguments, I've always been inclined to believe her.
It should not need to be stated that certain people will put different amounts of value on different things. While it's entirely obvious that some people are very attached to their mewling unborn spawn or their virginity, my personal experience leads me to believe that this is of course not true for everyone. Pro-lifers will contend that the damage is life-long and inescapable, but this claim becomes absurd when you actually meet women who have easily overcome these experiences. If someone can relatively easily cope with being violently raped, then is it not obviously to be expected that they can overcome the loss of a part of themselves that they do not value, do not want, and do not consider to be any more important than a steaming bowel movement?

[Seany-D]

Yes, Nathan, I think you're correct in noting that, just because something is traumatic to some, it isn't necessarily traumatic to all (take ice skating, for instance. Very traumatic to me, at least). Pro-lifers will argue that those who are untraumatized just haven't dealt with the issue yet. They are trying to force an outcome that they desire, in my opinion. Will it upset a certain group of people? Yes, but ladders also traumatize people. Emotional reaction isn't a sound basis for morality. I believe that the abortion issue gets sketchy around the time that the fetus is viable, circa 3rd trimester. Then the little slobberer should have a fighting chance at life ... unless that life would be extremely difficult (e.g., congenital defect) or it would result in the death of the mother. I personally think that the death of the mother is more disasterous than the death ofthe child. The mother has managed to survive to adulthood and reproductive age. This likely indicates some evolutionary advantage, i.e., she's not a blithering idiot. Sadly, some mothers knocking out babies *are* blithering idiots, but I can't speak for them. Why sacrifice the life of a person who stands an excellent change of propagating the species, a life who likely helps sustain those either in her family unit or performs a valuable job in the workforce for a life not yet developed? Note that this argument is predicated on the idea that the mother's life would be at risk by bearing the child; by the third trimester, you should have already made gone with the fetus if such was the desire.

Sean "was born after a mere seven months of gestation" Davis

[chapdawg]

I believe there are people out there that use abortion as a contraceptive, but I really think that they are in the minority. Most people that I have spoken too are very squeamish about the issue. I myself am for abortion, yet it terrifies me to think about actualy resorting to such drastic measures.
You can't get around the fact that a fertilized egg is a potential human being, no matter how little stock you put into the notion, it is still out there. People devote there lives to reminding others that are willing to have abortions that they are "sinners" or "murderers," And the voices of religous zealots are difficult to ignore.
You might not feel guilty originally, but the pro life people can really eat away you defences.

[Seany-D]

CD --

Most of their arguments are emotional appeals, though. Are you aware of the number of fertilized eggs that are not implanted in the uterine wall? My memory is sketchy on this one, but the number is somewhere around 35% of fertilized eggs do not implant and are thus 'aborted'. Some of them are genetically unfit (not to sound like a Nazi, this is on the line of improper meiosis ... or is it mitosis ... long time no biology), but many are, theoretically, able to mature into squirming, shitting little babies. I really need to find that article in Discover, or even better, the journal articles cited in the Discover article. In either event, many fertilized eggs are not taken to term ... some of them are aborted spontaneously (or by god?), others are Hoovered out. A serious decision with possible emotional consequences? Absolutely. But not one that should be legislated on the basis of religious ideology.

Many people do spend their lives in support of such causes, and I respect the fact that they feel so strongly about the issue. But stength of feeling for an issue isn't necessarily an indicator of "right" or "wrong". In fact, I'd proffer that, in general, the more emotional one is about an issue, the less rational discourse is likely to take place, and thus the more likely a less-than-desirable outcome will result.

Sean "which is not to say I'm dispassionate about things, but rational evaluations beget optimal outcomes" Davis

[Rama]

chapdawg said:

You can't get around the fact that a fertilized egg is a potential human being, no matter how little stock you put into the notion, it is still out there.

Sean kinda already touched on this, but to extend your logic, even an unfertilized egg is a potential human being, as are sperm. This ties back to the fact that I don't see value in a clump of unthinking cells until those unthinking cells become something more impressive. If we're counting the potential for sentience instead of the presence of sentience, then judging by the trillions of sperm I've gotten rid of over the years, I'm a far worse man than Hitler could have ever hoped to have been.
I haven't really met an argument that can chip away at my rationale, but I'd love to hear one if anyone can think of a few.
I enjoyed Sean's comments about the veracity of a claim being unrelated to the conviction with which it is held. I kinda wanted to touch on this at the last meeting but didn't really get a chance.
This issue is of particular interest to me because I am very confident in the non-existance of God. Note: I'm still agnostic, and would love NOTHING more than to be proven wrong. Also, the firmness of my beliefs does not originate from the same place as a fundie's. In my 22 years I've spent an inordinate amount of time researching and investigating various religions, everything from Christianity (which I followed for 18 years) to Buddhism, Shintoism, Daoism, Islam (admittedly, I've not paid as much attention to this one), Wicca, and even ridiculous shit like hermetic and shamanic magic (wait...or do they spell it 'majick'?).
The confidence I hold in my beliefs is a direct result of the simple fact that I've heard almost any argument for any religion you can think of at least three or four times, and subsequently dismissed the large majority of them due to logical fallacies, etc... It does not stem from my desire for my beliefs to be true, but from my rational deductions that they are in fact true.
I would not cringe at the thought that I honestly want to be proven wrong. God knows where I am if he wants to change my mind. He's the one who constructed me with a keen sense of skepticism, and in all honesty it doesn't take much for me to toss that out the window. A miracle here or there, just a simple suspension of the laws of physics. I'm not asking for much. If he's actually all omnipotent and whatnot, I don't see why he wouldn't go to the trouble of sticking his head through my bedroom wall and saying "Hey Nathan, just so you know, you've had your head up your ass these last few years. Just a quick FYI. Carry on."
I really think it'd be nice to have an omniscient omnipotent all-loving creator keeping one of his infinite eyes on me, but none of religion's arguments stand up to the razor sharp steel blade of rational thought and the scientific method.
As stated before, I am indeed an agnostic. I do not pretend that I am absolutely correct with my views, nor that they are somehow "proven". This ties into the whole concept of science, that there are various levels of certainty which humanity operates with.
Time to ship the computer off to get fixed, so I'll have to end my rambling.