The Kinder, Gentler Abortion
Jacob Sullum | December 6, 2006, 5:54pm
The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, which the House is expected to vote on today, has provoked splits on both sides of the abortion debate. The National Right to Life Committee supports the bill, which would require doctors to inform women undergoing abortions at 20 weeks or later (counting from fertilization) that "there is substantial evidence" the fetus can feel pain and offer her the option of fetal anesthesia. Operation Save America, by contrast, says the NRLC is a bunch of pussies for implying that murdering unborn children is OK as long as you don't hurt them while you're doing it. Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation are predictably opposed to the bill, but NARAL Pro-Choice America has taken a "neutral" stance that sounds like an endorsement: "Pro-choice Americans have always believed that women deserve access to all the information relevant to their reproductive health decisions," says NARAL President Nancy Keenan. "For some women, that includes information related to fetal anesthesia options." NARAL's stance has provoked angry disappointment on left-liberal blogs.
Given its moral premise, Operation Save America (an outgrowth of Operation Rescue) makes the most sense to me, opposing not only the fetal anesthesia bill but all other namby-pamby tenth-measures that stop short of a complete ban. If you believe abortion is murder, how can you in good conscience take any other position? The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, for instance, has always struck me as a cynical, unprincipled P.R. move built on a false moral distinction. It was effective at putting groups like NARAL on the defensive in the short term and perhaps at gaining legitimacy for national restrictions on abortion (except among the dwindling few who care about the Constitution), but at the cost of implying that "out of sight, out of mind" is the right approach to abortion: Sucking out a fetus's brain and crushing its skull when it's partly outside the uterus is beyond the pale, but dismembering it inside the uterus and removing it one piece at a time is A-OK. Promoting fetal anesthesia likewise could make abortion seem more rather than less acceptable, which may help explain NARAL's position.
Clarification: The constitutional problem with national abortion restrictions that I had in mind was the lack of congressional authority to pass such legislation, not a conflict with Roe v. Wade.
pyromaniac1069 | December 8, 2006, 11:37am | #
Toxic has the right idea here, but he doesn't follow through to the conclusion. A baby's status as in-utero or ex-utero(?) does not change it's right to protection from violence. If a fetus is born prematurely, say at 6 months, it is considered a person with the right to be free from harm even while hooked to medical equipment in the ICU. (Interestingly, the hospital must take care of the child even if no one can pay for the care. How is the mother's obligation any less? Unless we don't consider pregnant women mothers anymore, but I digress....) So given this, how can anyone make a case for 'aborting' a 7 month old 'fetus' just because it didn't have the good fortune to be born life-threateningly early in the pregnancy?
Only people who doesn't want to reap the consequences of their behavior, that's who. So, if you engage knowingly in any risky activity that might carry negative consequences, do we not, as a society, decide that those people must bear the consequences of their actions? If you were to accidentally kill someone while hunting, would you not be guilty of manslaughter? Is hunting not a recreational activity with a possible negative consequence? Why must the hunter suffer the consequences of his actions but not the mother of a child? Isn't this the responsibility (Oh-no, not THAT word!) of the Consenting Adults?
All this business about 'reproductive rights' is smoke & mirrors. Try on the phrase 'reproductive responsibility' instead, because mature adults live up to their obligations. There's too much posturing in the 'How can I define this best for ME' vein. Why don't we as a society try to figure out what the most JUST solution to the problem is? (As opposed to a solution catering to the loudest subgroup.)
The REAL question that helps us get to the bottom of this issue is 'What is a human?' If we solve this question of fact, then the issue dissolves and the solution emerges. Since I don't want to bore people anymore than I have to, I won't cover all the wrong criteria we could use to answer this question. I'll only posit what I think is the right answer. Sentience is the quality that seems to be the best candidate to me. When a child starts thinking is when it becomes human. An 8 celled blastocyst is not human, but a 6 month old fetus seems to be, so what' the difference? A functional central nervous system & brain, that's what. (This implies that brain dead people are no longer people, but the mentally retarded are, and people in coma's are somewhere between maybe.) Christian Scripture does not address this question of fact directly, as I understand it, anyway. A Jewish text (not sure which) apparently does. (This point is blatantly plagiarized from a book I've read somewhere, I think it was "The Science of God: xxxxxxx ") According to Jewish traditional text, God imbues the soul of a person at about the 40th day after conception. Strangely, this does agree well with current medical evidence that the central nervous system and brain of fetus begins operating around day 40 of gestation.
So there you have it, a book for just one point. A person isn't one until approximately 40 days after conception. (Thunderous applause... but only because he stopped talking....)
