The political debate on abortion has for several decades focused on the wrong moral question: Does life begin at conception? Those who believe it does, oppose abortion. Those who don't, or think the question is unanswerable, believe the pregnant woman should make that choice.
Yet consider this statistical couplet. According to a 2007 survey commissioned by a progressive think tank called Third Way, 69 percent of Americans believe abortion is the "taking of a human life," but 72 percent believe it should be legal.
Let that soak in. Most people think abortion is taking a human life and yet most favor the procedure being legal. How grotesque! Are we Americans utterly immoral?
Actually, what the data proclaim is something that politicians and activists can't: Most Americans believe there are gradations of life within the womb. Some living things are more alive than others, and so the later in the pregnancy it gets, the more uncomfortable people become with the idea of ending it. But in reality they believe both that a life stirs very early on and that a one-week-old embryo is more "killable" than a nine-month-old fetus. For them, determining whether "life" begins at conception really doesn't determine anything.
A handful of surveys get at this. According to a 2003 Gallup poll, 29 percent of the people surveyed believed abortion should be illegal in the first three months of pregnancy, 68 percent thought it should be illegal in the second trimester, and 84 percent in the third trimester.
Many women who have had abortions wished they could have the procedure earlier. In a 2006 survey of 1,209 abortion patients by the Guttmacher Institute (a pro-choice but widely respected nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues), 58 percent said they would have preferred to have done it earlier--including 91 percent of those who had abortions in their second trimester.
Surely part of the reason for this preference is that later abortions are more complicated, dangerous and expensive. But that's not all. Consider the reasons offered to researchers in that study by this 21-year-old, low-income woman:
"I do [wish I had had the abortion earlier] because when I came here last Friday and they told me, like, 'You're in your second trimester,' and I'm like...'Goodness, now what am I going to do?' Because I didn't want to go into my second trimester, because it's like, basically, really becoming a baby, you know. I just really didn't want to do it that late."
She did have the abortion. Her failure to get the abortion right away didn't lead her to carry the pregnancy to term but rather to end it -- uncomfortably -- when her fetus was, in her own eyes, "basically, really becoming a baby."
This belief that life within the womb is on a continuum is not explicitly reflected in the political debates about abortion. We debate whether we should have parental notification--not when we should have it. We question politicians on whether they'd provide government funding for abortion, not ever asking whether subsidies should be provided for early abortions but not late.
The debate has evolved that way in part because of the fundamentally religious nature of the pro-life activist position. The essential point about the position of pro-life activists -- including the Catholic Church and conservative evangelicals -- is not that they believe "life" begins at conception. It's that they believe a life that God creates on Day One is morally equivalent to a life at month one or month nine or 18 years. "The whole point of pro-life reasoning," says Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life, "is to encourage people toward intellectual, ethical and scientific consistency: A life is a life, no matter how small."
Meanwhile, many pro-choice leaders have embraced a mirror image of this approach. The woman has a right to choose, whether the pregnancy is in its first day, first month or ninth month.
Instead, an abortion policy matching the values implicit in the polls would focus less on rights or numbers and more on timing. Success would be measured on the basis of moving abortions earlier in the gestational cycle -- even if that conceivably means more overall abortions. It would be not about whether, how or how many, but when. Not "safe, legal and rare" as Bill Clinton once said, but "safe, legal and early."
In a longer piece that first appeared on PoliticsDaily.com, I argued that:
--Some pro-life policies actually lead to more abortions in the second and third trimesters
--Some pro-choicers have abandoned the true spirit of Roe v. Wade, which did not envision an inviolable, 9-month-long right to choose
--Policies should be geared toward shifting abortions earlier in the cycle.
Please read the rest of the piece here and let me know what you think.
If conception has already occurred, it works to (abort) stop the implantation of the embryo.
It is certainly not the best scenario for those who get aborted.
The problem with so many people who are against abortion are also against prevention.
I agree that emphasizing the goal of early terminations is the pragmatic approach that would keep abortion legal.
Regarding the motivation of the right in it's virulent anti-abortion stance -- IMHO if you peel back the veil it is easy to see that it is really about S E X. While there are, of course, some Kansas housewives who protest abortion clinics and who truly just love babies, and maybe have even taken one or two crack addicted foster children into their homes -- God bless them -- they are not hypocrites.
but sadly, that is the minority.
The "pro life" population is, generally speaking, a sexually frustrated group (mostly MEN) who are angry at women, teenagers and gay men who appear to be having great, happy, lusty, spiritually fulfilling sex lives. They are so angry that this must be stopped -- preferrably by getting these sexual hedonists pregnant as soon as possible, so they can join their ranks of the sexually frustrated.
This also explains why they are so interesting in enacting laws against gays, etc.
Lastly, if they were really PRIMARILY about preventing abortions and "saving babies", then logic tells you that they would want to INCREASE access to contraception and sex education. The fact that they clearly DO NOT -- a stance which clearly causes MORE abortions to happen...proves this uncomfortable fact:
these people simply need to get laid properly.
But how do come to the conclusion then that you are pro-choice?
What difference does it make that the rich can always avoid the law? That doesn't invalidate a just law.
It makes no difference whether the mother was rich or poor. When their fetus is killed, it is still a dead fetus.
(Or did not put it, as the practically nonexistant sexually mature male is proficient in nonejaculatory tantric intercourse. The question is, who benefits from the inability of male humans to grow up sexually, and how, and why?)
Much cleaner that way.
We can make a lot more progress in the abortion debate if everyone would understand both sides of the argument (as Mr. Waldman does) rather than exchanging venomous and inaccurate accusations against the other side.
The question we need to focus upon in the abortion debate is "When does human life begin such that an abortion should be prohibited?" Maybe it is not as simple as just "at conception" or "at birth." Maybe, there is a gradation during pregnancy such that life does not start precisely begin at any one particular second but, rather, it slowly develops over time. We need to answer this question because it truly is the only question that matters in the abortion debate.
Who thinks it is at the sperm level? Show me some evidence.
No body is trying to protect sperm. That isn't the basis of being against birth control.
This is just an ad hominem attack.
As to women having control over what happens to their bodies, that applies to more than just being compelled to carry a child to term. It is only recently that there has been a legislative recognition of a little thing called marital rape. You're right, the struggle has been long.
However, there are medical cases that develop after the "early' stage has passed, and accomodation needs to be made for that, to protect the life of the woman.
But, I think this could be a place where I could compromise. I wouldn't like it, but in a true compromise...everyone has to give something up. I think it is fair to say that abortion should be completely unrestricted in the first trimester. Slightly more difficult to get in the second. Extremely difficult in the third (for instance, if the life of the mother is in danger or very, very serious birth defects are detected.)
The problem is...I don't see the pro-lifers being willing to take this step as well. I think they will continue to say that life is life and there is no compromise. Please prove me wrong but, as always, I think the hardcore right are unwilling to compromise and the left is far more willing.
A person is a person no matter how small. Killing them for convenience is always wrong.
The left is more willing to compromise because they make their decisions based on their interests, not their morals.
By the way, one less kid on this planet IS moral. A fifteen year old not having a kid IS moral. Not having a kid you can't afford IS moral. Our morals may be different from yours (in that ours come from reason rather than fairy tales) but they are still morals.