For many, it's the recalled memory, for others its because the threat remains.
Michigan Anti-Abortion Bill, 'Most Extreme' In The Country
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For many, it's the recalled memory, for others its because the threat remains.
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The burden of proof wouldn't be on her, but it is on the state. If rape is the exception, then a rape must be proven to have occurred, and that takes time and often is never accomplished. So then how are women who get pregnant by rape going to access abortion?
Yorkist
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Why just this specific instance?
You're missing my point (by the way, didn't mean to imply that you hadn't read it or something, just that I didn't know if you had or not. People have different reading tastes and I don't know yours. Plus a lifetime is not enough time to read every book in the universe and all that). Let me try a few other languages...
/literature major
Hubris.
/maxim
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
/more sci-fi
Exigenesis, by Octavia Butler.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Again, it's a mean, and means have their limitations. However, generally speaking, heightened maternal age carries greater risk of birth defects, complications, and miscarriage. (So does very young maternal age.)
What about women with their own health or egg problems that keep getting pregnant and miscarrying and yet choose to keep trying? Are they selfish, too? Should we send them to government sterilization camps?
These are logical steps in the argument of the narrative that you're using.
You're oversimplifying it. I didn't understand why people wouldn't want a child with Down's syndrome for years. (I've always been pro-choice, so it's not like it got to me, I just wondered, being very fond of Down's folks in general.) That is, until I... well, grew up a little.
Now I get it: it's that there's a really good chance that child will never be capable of independence. What if s/he outlives you?
What if you lack certain resources - financial ones, emotional ones, whatever - to take care of a Down's child?
Making such a choice requires faith that everything will work out alright, and not everyone has that faith.
/writer hat on
I don't understand this flippant disregard for other POV's. Aren't we all writers, here?
Rape is not the only good reason to abort a pregnancy, it's just an easily understandable one. It's one so easy to understand that an adolescent who is not a writer, is not great at critical thinking yet, and has spent exactly zero minutes contemplating gender issues, health care, or pregnancy in general, can say, "Yep. I get that one. Let's keep it."
Think about it like a story. This is the equivalent of a very simple character motivation.
Simple character motivations aren't necessarily bad. The danger lies in not recognizing simplicity for what it is, and in not being able to separate characters and real, actual people.
And Chrissy, haven't you made the exact argument in other threads that the government should not pass laws legislating behavior because it doesn't do any good? You know, drinking and drugs and all that?
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As a person who is pro-choice, I can never understand why people who are anti-choice are willing to make an exception for rape. If zygotes/fetuses are worthy of life, then there should be no difference as to how they "became" - an act of loving or an act of violence - both result in the same situation, yet the majority of people will make an exception for rape.
Why is that? Is it because they find rape more abhorrent than abortion, which seems odd to me given that they call abortion murder. I would like to know why their exception (pregnancy by rape) the only acceptable reason, and a woman seeking an abortion for other (aka selfish) reasons wrong? Both scenarios women don't want to be pregnant, why does anyone beside the woman get to be the arbitrator of what a "good" reason would be for termination?
Why is that? Is it because they find rape more abhorrent than abortion, which seems odd to me given that they call abortion murder. I would like to know why their exception (pregnancy by rape) the only acceptable reason, and a woman seeking an abortion for other (aka selfish) reasons wrong? Both scenarios women don't want to be pregnant, why does anyone beside the woman get to be the arbitrator of what a "good" reason would be for termination?
Edited a bit for brevity, but... I don't think that argument holds much water. The scenarios aren't similar enough in my mind to really compare them. I know the thread sort of devolved from the specific OP and I don't want to eat up too much space, but I did want to echo someone's thought upthread, that I appreciate the general civility of this discussion, and definitely appreciate your participation, Chrissy.
I haven't participated much myself, but I've been following along and it's been interesting and informative and I thank you all for that.This is why I enjoy discussions like this. I had never thought of this, either.
I think it's because many of those people also make exception in cases of health of the mother. And most people can see that forcing a woman to carry a rapist's seed to term would be severely hurting her emotional/mental health (which is already likely in a very damaged, traumatized state).
Edited a bit for brevity, but... I don't think that argument holds much water. The scenarios aren't similar enough in my mind to really compare them. I know the thread sort of devolved from the specific OP and I don't want to eat up too much space, but I did want to echo someone's thought upthread, that I appreciate the general civility of this discussion, and definitely appreciate your participation, Chrissy.
.
Just want to ditto the above.
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Thanks Gypsy, I think you are correct but I'm just musing at the ridiculousness of it all, if you make exceptions for one thing which you (generic you) find traumatic, why would rape be the only traumatic issue in a woman's life, or for that matter, why does it matter if the pregnancy is traumatic, the result is still the same - a supposedly viable pregnancy is terminated. The how or why shouldn't concern anyone but the woman herself.
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I don't think this is the motivation since a lot of "pro-life" people do not regard mental health of the mother as sufficient reason for abortion.
I think it's far more tactical. Rape and incest are so socially repugnant that until recently no one dared propose an anti-abortion bill without those exceptions.
Lately, however, bills without them are cropping up including the one in the OP and this one in the US house.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.1241.IS:
Discussed in this story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/ciana-anti-abortion-bill_n_1383373.html
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Exactly. This is what I meant by putting the burden on her. Meaning, she would carry the repercussions of the rape until it could be proven it was in fact a rape. (I used the phrase "burden of proof" incorrectly.)
Because there is no other instance that is comparable to pregnancy, IMO, which I tried to explain in post #186.
No, that is not logical to me. To me, there is a difference between miscarrying and aborting. Plus, concluding that women should be sent to sterilization camps in tantamount to the slippery slope fallacy.
I don't feel that I've been flippant at all. I certainly don't feel flippant. If that is coming across, I apologize.
Yes, I have. The reason that argument does not apply (and I have often, in my mind, attempted to apply it) is because an abortion is a demonstratable harm to another human being. An abortion takes the life of someone else, if you believe as I do. You can do whatever you want, personally and individually, but when your actions harm another, you've crossed over that line of freedom. IMO.
This subject was why I put my oar in in the first place, several months ago on the Santorum thread. And I do understand the concept that just because a woman is raped, doesn't mean she should end a life, since that's what I believe it is. What I concluded, for me personally, is that a raped woman has absolutely NO responsibility for the life she is carrying. It's the equivalent of me depositing a child on your doorstep and demanding that you care for it. (And physically beating you up in the process.)
Edited a bit for brevity, but... I don't think that argument holds much water. The scenarios aren't similar enough in my mind to really compare them. I know the thread sort of devolved from the specific OP and I don't want to eat up too much space, but I did want to echo someone's thought upthread, that I appreciate the general civility of this discussion, and definitely appreciate your participation, Chrissy.
Thanks.
That whole post about stealing (i.e., having a compelling reason to do something morally and/or legally wrong) was just my random musings, and really, it was more in support of abortion than an argument against it, if you think you about it.Thanks, and back at ya.
I'm meditating on this idea of being anti-abortion but pro-choice. Basically, that's what I am since I have never been a picketer or whathaveyou. In fact, at Planned Parenthood where I live, old, white-haired men stand out on the sidewalk from time to time holding up signs and when I see them, my immediate and visceral reaction has always been, "Oh what the fuck would you know about it! Asshole!" So, go figure.
That is true. I was raised Catholic, and we were taught this. However, I think that if someone who is "pro-life" believes that abortion in the case of rape is morally acceptable, it proves that s/he does not really believe a fertilized egg is a baby.
Actually, my comment was not so much in response to abortion itself, but about health exceptions.
There's been quite a lot of discussion on this thread by you and others about possible health exception scenarios. What makes me uncomfortable is deciding when one woman's health is threatened and another's is not. For every general rule, there are numerous variations that throw that rule into question.
In some cases, eclampsia or pre-eclampsia may be solved by bed rest, but in others it may not. How do you (generic you) decide which is which?
In some cases, a victim of rape may have the personality to carry the baby to term and give it up for adoption. For others, the trauma may be so great as to cause a complete break-down. Who decides that one is an acceptable reason and the other is not?
Those are the decisions that I'm uncomfortable with. I'm even LESS comfortable trying to codify them in to law. There are so many permutations that it's impossible to cover every eventually and exception.
I'm thinking that's more for pragmatic reasons than actual belief, as in "let's let the law have this one exception so it has a good chance of passing, and we can stop [make illegal] the vast majority of abortions."
Oops, I'm too late saying that...
It's like, erhm, ah, like you'd have to be a doctor to make the call, right?!!?
I agree, and I think this is something that's important to acknowledge. Not everyone's circumstances are the same. Not only that, but two women in similar circumstances might have very different experiences and capabilities based on things like genetics, personality, what type of support system they have in place, etc.
When it comes to medical decisions, there needs to be flexibility for individual cases. And I don't think it's fair to assume that because one woman is able to deal with a certain challenge, others will be able to deal with it in the same way.
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But wouldn't that imply that women are individual human beings with their own minds, experiences and capabilities rather than rubber-stamped stereotypes?
This could be the greatest scientific discovery ever. It could revolutionize human interactions with the alien race of women.
Hmm. But if we adopt this revolutionary theory then we would have been mistreating other humans.
That would imply that we did wrong and are doing wrong.
Well, that's an unacceptable conclusion, so your premise must be wrong.
Back to blind sexism.
This message has been brought to you by self-righteous self-justification, damaging the human species for probably longer than we've been human.
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I also don't think concern for the emotional and mental well-being of rape victims is at the heart of the rape exception for abortion. For me, the tell is in the common motif of blaming women for their consensual sex decisions and characterizing abortion as an irresponsible attempt to avoid a responsibility of having had sex. I have heard that argument come from people who also and at the same time argue in favor of the rape exception. To me, that contrast casts the rape exception in a moralistic light in which the exception is based more on the fact that the sex was not consensual and thus the woman did not make a disapproved decision, and not on a concern for her wellbeing after being traumatized.
I am sure there are people who don't think that way and who do support a rape exception on the grounds of the woman's wellbeing, but I don't think that is the majority view among the most vocal anti-choice advocates or their supporting lawmakers.
That is your personal opinion. As someone whose best friend developed chronic liver disease as a result of preeclampsia, I can tell you that at least two women and one man would argue with your anecdata that there is "no physical damage."
I think you are right, but I can't help but wonder why a health exception would not also be included.
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I think muravyets has a solid handle on it. The moralizing subtext is rising up. It may actually be getting worse considering the bills that don't have rape and incest exceptions at all.
I'm concerned that we're seeing the return of the Virgin/Whore dichotomy or its grudging variant Virgin/Married Mother/Whore triad. In this, a pregnant girl regardless of cause is
1. Not a virgin.
2. Not a married woman.
Ergo
3. A whore.
As I noted in my sarcastic post, it's so much easier to see stereotypes then humans and combining this with muravyets point, it's easy and convenient to moralize about them.
This tide needs to be stemmed.
I think that the powers that be just need to recognize women as equally intelligent and responsible as men and trust women to be capable of making their own decisions.
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Well, if we may indulge in the most cynical and bitter of all takes on the issue, just for a moment... If the rape exception is based on moralistic thinking, then the focus of such-minded anti-choice advocates is not actually to save unborn lives, but to punish women for doing things that are not morally approved of (by the advocates). So if a woman did not immorally choose to have sex (i.e. had it forced upon her), then she shouldn't be punished with a resulting pregnancy, but if she did choose sex, then she must not be allowed to escape the "consequence" of pregnancy and childbirth.
Such a moralistic view of women's life choices would seem to have nothing at all to do with questions of women's health.
Indeed, I often see a gap between people who make the moralistic rape-exception arguments and people who argue against health exceptions. I mean that I've seen large areas where the two arguments do not overlap, i.e. are not both argued by the same person. I think it's because they are two very different points of focus in the abortion debate.
Support for the rape exception seems to me to be primarily a moralistic stance. On the other hand, opposition to the health exception seems to me to be primarily a fatalistic stance, suggesting that those who do not favor a health exception treat the many dangers of pregnancy and childbirth as "God's will" or as part of the fate of those who are female and that it is somehow wrong or an over-reaction to the inevitable to abort a pregnancy to avoid those dangers.
Among the few people I have seen favor a rape exception while also opposing a health exception, the two stances seem to share in common a sense of "this is what comes with the package" or "this is the choice you made." In other words, a woman who chooses to have sex just has to take the fallout of the chance of having a baby, too (but if she did not choose, then she doesn't have to take the fallout), and likewise a woman who chooses to get pregnant just has to take the risk the fallout of permanent disability or death, too. We might consider that it is God's will that women who have sex get pregnant, and that it is God's will that women who get pregnant might get terminally damaged by it, but it is not God's will that women should be raped.*
It's a no-backsies kind of approach to determining other people's fate for them.
I'm not exactly sure the above makes sense. It's kind of difficult balancing act to describe, but it's based on the idea that rape exception and health exception usually come from two different focus points.
ETA: I should add that while I think the moralistic view is the main impetus behind the rape exception, I do not think the fatalistic view is the main impetus behind opposition to health exceptions. It is one that I've seen and been utterly taken aback by, because I mean, damn, what can you do with an argument like that? But in general I see more people opposing health exceptions who are arguing from a position of ignorance, because they really do not know or understand just how damaging pregnancy and childbirth can be.
(*Of course, then there are people like Rick Santorum who do think rape is at least partially God's will, or at least that God is omnipotently capable of making lemonade out of lemons, and thus a baby conceived from rape is a "gift" that a woman should be happy to bear.)
Gosh, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
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Yorkist
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By the way, I read a study recently (unfortunately, lost the link) that indicated that substantially more Americans support abortion rights in cases of rape than in cases of mental health. So I both agree with muravyets and also suspect that that says something about our culture's concept of "mental health."
The concept of trauma is familiar, in part because of PTSD's prevalence in the media, IMO. Blah blah militarycakes.
To you.
I actually completely agree, and that's precisely why it needs to be in the hands of individuals rather than the state.
What if that life loss had been preventable?
For example: my ladydoctor keeps trying to convince me to take vitamins "just in case." (There's this growing movement to consider all women of childbearing age "pre-pregnant," which quite creeps me out, thank you.) Well, if I followed his advice, I'd be morbidly obese and pissed off all the time, and I'd never be able to get anything done. All those medicines that make normal people's stomachs hurt make me ravenously hungry - aspirin, antibiotics, vitamins. Even the child vitamins make me hungry. And I don't mean, hungry an hour later; I mean hungry all damn day. So I eat vegetables. Actually, I love vegetables so I'd do that anyway.
Certain vitamin deficiencies have been associated with anencephaly and spina bifida as well as miscarriages.
However, the quality of life issues for me are not worth taking that risk for a pregnancy I haven't chosen (yet) - what am I supposed to do, spend age 20-45 constantly eating? Wonder what my blood pressure'll look like in ten years? Particularly because I have spina bifida occulta, and it's not a big deal - just some lower back pain.
Anyway, why shouldn't the state be able to step in there, as well?
Am I being selfish? Why not?
Still think pregnancy should be any business of the state?
If I were trying to convince you to change your fundamental beliefs, that'd be one thing. But I just don't think you're critically examining those beliefs or your own argument.
I happen to think that this skill is valuable not just for argumentation but also writing fiction.
If you want to write about the special mother-child relationship, for example - if you want work informed with that spirit, a la Amy Tan - you need to think about it from points-of-view besides your own, right?
This is sort of a tangent, but personally - I wouldn't be able to write fiction if it weren't for POV shifts. It's a skill I've had to cultivate.
The concept of trauma is familiar, in part because of PTSD's prevalence in the media, IMO. Blah blah militarycakes.
To you.
I actually completely agree, and that's precisely why it needs to be in the hands of individuals rather than the state.
They're both sad, no? They both end in a potential life lost, no?
What if that life loss had been preventable?
For example: my ladydoctor keeps trying to convince me to take vitamins "just in case." (There's this growing movement to consider all women of childbearing age "pre-pregnant," which quite creeps me out, thank you.) Well, if I followed his advice, I'd be morbidly obese and pissed off all the time, and I'd never be able to get anything done. All those medicines that make normal people's stomachs hurt make me ravenously hungry - aspirin, antibiotics, vitamins. Even the child vitamins make me hungry. And I don't mean, hungry an hour later; I mean hungry all damn day. So I eat vegetables. Actually, I love vegetables so I'd do that anyway.
Certain vitamin deficiencies have been associated with anencephaly and spina bifida as well as miscarriages.
However, the quality of life issues for me are not worth taking that risk for a pregnancy I haven't chosen (yet) - what am I supposed to do, spend age 20-45 constantly eating? Wonder what my blood pressure'll look like in ten years? Particularly because I have spina bifida occulta, and it's not a big deal - just some lower back pain.
Anyway, why shouldn't the state be able to step in there, as well?
Am I being selfish? Why not?
Not when it's actually happened, here, in this country, in conservative "pro-life" states, up through 1974. Roe v. Wade = 1973. Hmm...
Still think pregnancy should be any business of the state?
I don't mean flippant towards me. You're always quite kind. I mean flippant towards the point of view of a woman who chooses abortion. You're not even attempting to understand it; you're just handwaving it as selfish mcselfishpants.
If I were trying to convince you to change your fundamental beliefs, that'd be one thing. But I just don't think you're critically examining those beliefs or your own argument.
I happen to think that this skill is valuable not just for argumentation but also writing fiction.
If you want to write about the special mother-child relationship, for example - if you want work informed with that spirit, a la Amy Tan - you need to think about it from points-of-view besides your own, right?
This is sort of a tangent, but personally - I wouldn't be able to write fiction if it weren't for POV shifts. It's a skill I've had to cultivate.
I like this much better. Planned Parenthood does more to prevent abortions in a day than most pro-lifers do in their entire lifetimes.
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Yeah, well, our attitudes towards mental health are not all that, um, healthy, either.
Maybe I'm just matrixing patterns or something, but I can't help noticing that so much of mental illness is dismissed in the popular imagination as being "all in their heads" (ironically) and that the same dismissal of phantom complaints was made of women's health issues for many, many generations. How long did our forebears have to put up with diagnoses of "hysteria" for real illnesses that actually could and did kill them, and how many people suffering mental illnesses of various kinds have to put up with suspicions of "malingering" and various forms of attention-whoring?
And then I find myself thinking again about dismissals of the complications of pregnancy as if they are no big thing, or even as if they don't exist at all -- arguments that portray pregnancy as something that just flows naturally and easily for women because it's what we were "designed" for, and treat women who don't want to go through such problems as aborting just to keep their looks or to avoid inconvenience -- and I can't help but hear yet again, "silly hysterical dear, it's all in your head."
I understand what you are saying completely.
I was not envisioning a law that would list every possible medical reason that an abortion would be considered necessary to protect the life of the mother.
That whole virgin/whore concept would be highly insulting if you were applying it to me just because I believe abortion should be restricted because I believe the fetus is a life that needs to be protected.
That would be great, for sure, but apparently we don't even know what quantity of soda is good for us.
It's not about making "your own" decisions in this case, IMO, because there is another life involved.
Analogy: Two people are in a relationship. We need to recognize that they are intelligent and capable of making their own decisions. So, if one of those people physically abuses his/her partner, we need to trust that there's a good reason for it, and not get the law involved.
Obviously you are not saying this. Obviously abuse is wrong/illegal. But obviously, people don't always do the right thing by others. Others in this case being the fetus.
It comes down to (as I've concluded before with others on the subject) whether the life in the uterus has any right to be protected.--whether it even is a life.
My bold. This is pretty much exactly what I think, except it's not a matter of blame, it's a matter of fact and responsibility.
Sex can result in pregnancy. This is a fact. I don't see anything "moral" about it. It doesn't mean, oh "you whore," you shouldn't have had sex. It just means that there is a risk of pregnancy in any sex act, and women AND men take the responsibility for that risk when they have sex.
That's why birth control is so important, and like I've said before, using birth control should be treated as important as a life or death issue.
Because the law shouldn't be allowed to step in on the basis of "what ifs." Same reason they shouldn't be allowed to force women to use birth control, or sterilize them.
You gave me an examples of 13/14 year olds who were raped and then sterilized. How is this an argument against protecting unborn life?
You are wrong. How do you know what I'm attempting or not attempting to understand? This subject has been on my brain non-stop for the last 3 days. All of my comments show pretty clearly what I'm thinking and how I'm trying to understand. I've apologized where I've been wrong, I've thanked people for providing information I did not know.
Attack my arguments all day long, Yorkist, but don't attack me.
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