Category Archives: abortion

Crazy Day

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I’m sorry to leave this site hanging. I’m having a crazy day, with things getting published and unpublished. I may have more to say later.

I will only comment briefly on Steve Benen’s post on the Right’s outraged surprise at President Obama’s stem cell decision. The Right is acting as if Obama had promised not to mess with Bush’s stem cell policy, but as Steve says, Obama clearly said during the campaign that he would change it just as he did change it.

I don’t think they are really surprised. I think it’s just part of their feigned outrage shtick. Utterly phony.

Update: I’ve written in the past about why I think embryonic stem cell research is moral and stopping it out of some rigid absolutist position is immoral. But if you want to see what is self-evidently wrong with it, see “Vetoing Henry” by Laurie Strongin in the July 23, 2006 Washington Post.

“The absolute position, when isolated, omits human details completely. Doctrines, including Buddhism, are meant to be used. Beware of them taking life of their own, for then they use us.” — Robert Aitken Roshi, The Mind of Clover

B.

How Republicans View Women

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Example: Robert Stacy McCain explains why women shouldn’t use contraceptives. We’re supposed to be out dropping calves, you know.

I’ve written this before, but here it is again —

Tons of data collected around the world over many years reveal that there is one sure way to reduce abortion — increase the use of contraception. From Alan Guttmacher:

Publicly funded family planning clinic services already enable U.S. women to prevent 1.4 million unintended pregnancies each year, an estimated 600,000 of which would end in abortion. Without these services, the annual number of unintended pregnancies and abortions would be nearly 50% higher. Among many other benefits, family planning clinic services also save $4.3 billion in public funds each year.

[Update: See also “Contraceptive Use Is Key to Reducing Abortion Worldwide“]

The irony is that Planned Parenthood may very well prevent more abortions than all of the anti-choice organizations combined.

These are what those of us in reality land call “facts.” R.S. McCain thinks facts are “silly.” I have a word to describe R.S. McCain, but I’m going to refrain from using it.

The Hole Gets Deeper, the Faithful Keep Digging

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I don’t know that the Right has entirely given up their “it’s still a center-right nation” argument, but lately another talking point is elbowing its way to the center of the rightie attention span. The new argument is that it was the Republican Party that voters rejected, not conservatism.

E.J. Dionne has a slightly different take on this. He notes that McCain picked a right-wing running mate and ran a classically “conservative” campaign against Obama. Yet he got clobbered on election day. Dionne continues,

Note that I have been using the word “conservative,” not “Republican.” This is because the Republican Party is now wholly owned by the conservative movement. The new Democratic majority is built in part on voters who once thought of themselves as moderate Republicans but have abandoned the party in large numbers.

In other words, voters rejected the Republican Party because of the extreme conservatism it has come to represent.

Dionne goes on to say that the GOP is splitting between the “ideological” conservatives and the “dispositional” conservatives.

The ideological conservatives hold to a faith linking small government and tax-cutting to extreme social conservatism. That mix is increasingly incoherent and out of step with an electorate that is more diverse and more suburban than ever. Ideological conservatives talk obsessively about returning to the glory days of Ronald Reagan and sometimes drop Sarah Palin’s name as a talisman.

Dispositional conservatives have leanings and affections but not an ideology. They have had enough with rigid litmus tests, free-market bromides irrelevant to the current economic downturn and anti-government rhetoric that bears no relationship to the large government that conservatives would inevitably preside over if they took power again.

Dionne says, and I agree, that the dispositionals will win out eventually, but not right away. In the short term, the ideologicals will still be in control and calling the shots. The GOP hasn’t yet stopped digging the hole it’s in.

Shifting gears just a bit — a few days ago, Dionne wrote another column in which he expressed hope that the Obama administration will help the nation find common ground on abortion.

“There surely is some common ground,” Obama declared toward the end of the third presidential debate.

He argued that “those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, ‘We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.’ ” Obama added: “Nobody’s pro-abortion.”

To which I said, yeah, right. Wake me up when it happens. There have been several attempts to create a “common ground” movement going back to the 1980s, and every time it is attempted it quickly falls apart. Essentially, someone on the pro-choice side makes the same speech Obama made in the third debate. And then the anti-choice side proclaims it doesn’t negotiate with baby-killers. End of attempt.

But today I read at Washingtonpost.com that some on the anti-reproductive rights side are waving a white flag and expressing a willingness to talk. Jacqueline L. Salmon writes,

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Some of the activists are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education — services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

The day after the election I explained why I believe abortion is done as a national issue. That doesn’t mean we won’t still be hearing about it on a national level, and in some regions of the country it still has some clout. But the last election revealed that opposition to abortion has no power whatsoever to swing a national election. If anything, I believe their rigid anti-reproduction rights position cost the GOP quite a bit.

The hard core of the anti-reproduction rights movement is unmoved, of course.

“It’s a sellout, as far as we are concerned,” said Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League. “We don’t think it’s really genuine. You don’t have to have a lot of social programs to cut down on abortions.”

Tons of data collected around the world over many years reveal that there is one sure way to reduce abortion — increase the use of contraception. From Alan Guttmacher:

Publicly funded family planning clinic services already enable U.S. women to prevent 1.4 million unintended pregnancies each year, an estimated 600,000 of which would end in abortion. Without these services, the annual number of unintended pregnancies and abortions would be nearly 50% higher. Among many other benefits, family planning clinic services also save $4.3 billion in public funds each year.

The irony is that Planned Parenthood may very well prevent more abortions than all of the anti-choice organizations combined.

Anyway, whether pregnancy assistance programs will make any measurable difference in abortion rates remains to be seen, but as long as they aren’t coercive, hey — give it a try.

Update: See Steve Benen.

Let’s Target “Stupid”

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Captain Ed says the rate of abortion in the U.S. has dropped again, according to the Los Angeles Times, citing an Alan Guttmacher report. However, the decline has been most dramatic among white women. The rate of abortion among African American women is 5 times that of whites, and among Latinas is 3 times that of whites.

Why? Some experts point to poverty and life stresses in general. Nah, says Captain Ed. These minorities are targeted for abortion services. By way of documentation, he quotes another guy who claims minorities are being targeted for abortion services. Well, that proves it then.

However, everyone’s a bit vague on exactly how minorities are being “targeted.” Are abortion clinics in minority neighborhoods handing out free toasters?

For perspective, see this Alan Guttmacher report of October 2007: “Abortion Declines Worldwide, Falls Most Where Abortion Is Broadly Legal.”

I’d like to repeat that last part — abortion rates fell most where abortion is broadly legal.

For every 1,000 women of childbearing age (15–44) worldwide, 29 were estimated to have had an induced abortion in 2003, compared with 35 in 1995. The decline was most substantial in Europe, where the rate fell from 48 to 28 abortions per 1,000 women, largely because of dramatic declines in Eastern Europe. On the whole, the abortion rate decreased more in developed countries, where abortion is generally safe and legal on broad grounds (from 39 to 26), than in developing countries, where the procedure is largely illegal and unsafe (from 34 to 29). Significantly, the abortion rate for 2003 was roughly equal in developed and developing regions—26 and 29, respectively—despite abortion being largely illegal in developing regions. Health consequences, however, vary greatly between the two regions, since abortion is generally safe where it is broadly legal and mostly unsafe where restricted. …

… The lowest abortion rate in the world in 2003 was for Western Europe (12 per 1,000 women aged 15–44), where contraceptive services and use are widespread and safe abortion is easily accessible and legal under broad grounds. The rate was 17 for Northern Europe and 21 for the Northern America region (Canada and the United States). Africa, Asia and Latin America had the highest regional abortion rates, even though abortion is generally legally restricted and often unsafe in those regions. Abortion rates in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean have declined since 1995, but the estimated number of abortions has increased in Africa because of the increasing number of women of reproductive age and a possible underestimate of abortions in 1995. Because the world’s population is concentrated in Asia, most abortions occurred there—about 26 million yearly; China alone accounted for nine million procedures.

To drive the point home, The uber-liberal, anything-goes Netherlands in 2007 had an abortion rate among residents of 8.6. The most recent data says the abortion rate for the U.S. is 20. It’s higher than that in most nations where abortion is illegal.

I remember reading a report that said abortion rates tend to be higher in cultures that are conservative and authoritarian and lower in cultures that are liberal and egalitarian. I can’t put my hands on that report now, but the stats do tend to bear that out. See also “Abortion in the Netherlands and the United States: Worlds Apart.”

Let’s go back to Captain Ed:

The most interesting aspect of this will be the effect it has on politicians who pay lip service to seeing fewer abortions while blocking any and all attempts to limit them. Will they cheer this drop in abortions, or will they claim that it proves that more intervention is needed to ensure “access”?

We can’t tell from the numbers if the fall in abortion rates in the U.S. is from anything the so-called “Right to Life” movement is doing or if it’s just part of the worldwide trend of falling abortion rates. However, what we see over and over again is that “blocking access” to abortion doesn’t stop abortion. If Captain Ed is serious about lowering abortion rates even further, he should help promote a more liberal culture that openly promotes contraceptive use and makes contraceptives easily obtainable by anyone who is sexually active.

On the other hand, if he wants to increase abortion rates, the way to go is to criminalize abortion to drive it underground, support “abstinence-only” sex ed in public schools, discourage contraceptive use and, even better, make contraceptives difficult for teenagers to obtain without parental permission or a court order. That should do it.

Finally, remember that the report says African American and Latina women have higher abortion rates than whites? I give you this Hot Air commenter: “Crime rate will greatly increase in about 15 yrs.”

In some quarters the stupid rate is already through the roof.

Explaining Obama, Defining Abortion Terms

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One of the reasons we as a nation cannot sensibly discuss the abortion issue is that most people don’t know what the bleep they are talking about. Most American adults seem to know next to nothing about the physiological realities of pregnancy and gestation. They know there is sex at one end of the process and a baby at the other, but what goes on in between is, um, hazy.

Today there’s much hysteria coming from both Left and Right about some statements made by Barack Obama over abortion. Since what he said pretty much squares with my own opinion going way back, I’m having a hard time seeing the Big Bleeping Deal. However, when people like Jeff Fecke, who is normally fairly sensible, makes statements like “So Obama went and said third-trimester abortions shouldn’t have legal protection yesterday,” then I despair of ever having a sensible conversation with ANYBODY on this issue.

Obama essentially said he agreed with the Roe v. Wade guidelines, with one exception. That is, while Roe v. Wade allows for a physical and mental health exception to third-trimester abortion bans, Obama said maybe there shouldn’t be an exception for “mental distress.” And that’s it. But to read some people you’d think Obama just joined the Right to Life movement.

But here goes … Quoting Obama from an interview in Relevant Magazine:

Strang: Based on emails we received, another issue of deep importance to our readers is a candidate’s stance on abortion. We largely know your platform, but there seems to be some real confusion about your position on third-trimester and partial-birth abortions. Can you clarify your stance for us?

Obama: I absolutely can, so please don’t believe the emails. I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother.

Now we have to stop and define “late-term abortion.” What is “late-term”? During their long fight against intact D&E abortions, the Fetus People conflated intact D&E with “late-term abortion,” even though D&E is mostly a second trimester procedure, which in my book is MID-term. In fact, to a lot of Fetus People and even normal people, “late-term abortion” is a synonym for what the Fetus People call “partial-birth abortion,” even though there are other procedures that can be used to terminate a second- or third-trimester pregnancy.

So our first source of confusion is, exactly what does Obama mean by “late-term abortion”? When I use the phrase I mean third-trimester abortion, regardless of the method used. Since the interviewer had just mentioned third-trimester abortion, I’m going to assume that’s what Obama meant by it.

If so, what Obama said basically confirms the Roe v. Wade decision. Roe v. Wade permits states to ban third-trimester abortions, as long as there’s a “life and health” exception made for the mother. As I wrote in a couple of posts last year (“Late-Term Confusion” and “More Late-Term Confusion“), most states have had such bans on the books for a long time, and NARAL has been OK with this, because it conforms to Roe v. Wade guidelines.

And I suppose I had better explain trimesters, because based on comments flying around the web today I’m the only bleeping woman on the planet who has ever been pregnant and knows what trimesters are. A pregnancy is nine months long, right? Stages of pregnancy are divided into three three-month periods. Months 1-3 are the first trimester, months 4-6 are the second trimester, and months 7-9 are the third trimester. There are medical and physiological reasons these three stages are distinctive; they are not just arbitrary divisions the Supreme Court thought up. I will get into more of these distinctions later.

Now, I don’t think that “mental distress” qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions.

This is a departure from Roe v. Wade, because Roe v. Wade allows for a mental health exception as well as a physical health exception in third-trimester abortions. The question in my mind is whether a third-trimester abortion might be helpful for a woman experiencing emotional or psychiatric stress. My thoughts:

There are many reasons third-trimester abortions are different from first- and second-trimester abortions. One big difference is that once the pregnancy has entered the third trimester there’s a likelihood the fetus will be viable, meaning it can survive outside the womb. Most of the time if a third-trimester pregnancy has to be terminated because of the mother’s health, every effort will be made to save the baby. It is unusual, although not unheard of, for the baby to have to be sacrificed to save the mother.

On the other hand, until very late in the second trimester there is zero possibility a fetus will survive outside the womb. From about the last week of the second trimester until about the end of the seventh month — well into the third trimester — survivability is iffy, but possible. After that the odds the baby will survive improve considerably. So are we straight on this point?

The problem with terminating a third-trimester pregnancy because the mother is emotionally or psychologically stressed is that you’re probably going to end up with a live infant, but one with more medical problems than it would have had if the pregnancy had gone full term. And this could cause the woman more stress in the long run. This is not sensible.

Regarding “mental distress” — as someone with intimate experience with severe postpartum depression, I appreciate mental distress as well as anyone. But by the third trimester it’s too late to avoid the physiological effects of pregnancy and childbirth, and if we’re talking about a purely psychiatric condition I suspect, medically, it would be extremely unusual for termination of pregnancy to be necessary or even helpful.

On the other hand, if it is discovered that the fetus has an anomaly that is “incompatible with life,” as the med journal articles put it — meaning there is no way the fetus will survive more than a few hours after birth — and the mother wants to terminate rather than live with the heartbreak, I say let her terminate. That’s a point that needs to be clarified.

Also, please note: In the case of elective abortion — meaning, IMO, a woman aborts because she doesn’t want to go through with the pregnancy — by the time you hit the beginning of the third trimester, you’re too late. You are as pregnant as anyone ever was. You’ve probably put on most of your pregnancy weight. You’ve gone through all the physiological and hormonal changes. Your innie is now an outie. And abortion at that point is a big bleeping deal medical procedure every bit as difficult as childbirth itself.

I’m explaining this because remarkable numbers of people don’t seem to understand why defending a right to elective abortion in the third trimester is insane. No woman in her right mind willingly carries a pregnancy that far and then decides to abort. Doctors won’t perform such abortions, anyway. Even Roe v. Wade permits states to ban third-trimester elective abortions.

And NARAL, please note, is fine with states banning third-trimester abortions as long as the “life and health” exception provided by Roe v. Wade is included in the ban. Again, most states have had such bans on the books for a long time.

However, I believed back in the 1970s that NARAL made a big mistake by not supporting some clear legal gestational limits for elective abortion based on the Roe v. Wade guidelines. Without such clear limits, the Fetus People have been able to market many urban legends about women in their ninth month of pregnancy suddenly deciding to “kill their babies” and terminate a healthy pregnancy. Most states eventually adopted gestational limits, but people are so confused about what’s legal and what isn’t that the urban legends seem credible.

Well, back to Obama —

The other email rumor that’s been floating around is that somehow I’m unwilling to see doctors offer life-saving care to children who were born as a result of an induced abortion. That’s just false. There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the “Born Alive” bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill. The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn’t think it was going to pass constitutional muster.

The various “born-alive” bills are based on the common Fetus People fantasy that infants aborted in the second trimester might live if only they had some medical care. They won’t, until possibly the very last week of the second trimester. Until then, any infant born by any means, gentle or otherwise, will die.

Ever since that time, emails have been sent out suggesting that, somehow, I would be in favor of letting an infant die in a hospital because of this particular vote. That’s not a fair characterization, and that’s not an honest characterization. It defies common sense to think that a hospital wouldn’t provide life-saving treatment to an infant that was alive and had a chance of survival.

Of course it defies common sense, and I very much doubt it ever happens, law or no law.

So that’s what Obama said, and according to RedState Obama is “rejecting at least some of the extremism of NARAL, Emily’s List, and other radical abortion organizations.” The only place where Obama and NARAL actually may part company is on the issue of mental distress, and in that case I might lean in Obama’s direction myself, as I said.

And for the record, I support elective abortion for any reason until about 20 weeks’ gestation, and all data for years have shown us that nearly all elective abortions in the U.S. are performed by about 15 weeks’ gestation.

Boxes

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Today many people are posting this anti-abortion video and noting the subliminal message — that women are just objects, not people.


As Trailer Park Feminist (who has a transcript) says, “And shouldn’t we treat women like property, you know, just in case?”

Conversely, if you thought there was a chance a woman might actually being a fully sentient human being, and not just an ambulatory major appliance … well, I second Mustang Bobby:

I’m not sure which is more amazing; the ease with which the anti-abortion folks can reduce a complicated and intensely personal event such as a pregnancy down to this simplistic and dehumanizing idiocy, or the idea that they can portray women as nothing but a cardboard box and get away with it.

See also Bean (the comments are a hoot).

I’ve written many times before that an absolutist anti-choice position requires denying the autonomy and humanity of women. Certainly people of good will might favor some restrictions, such as gestational limits, on elective abortion. By absolutist I’m referring to the people Ellen Goodman wrote about earlier this year —

Cynics, take heart. We offer you advance word from the troops preparing for Monday’s annual March for Life marking the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The parade’s theme this year is “Thou Shalt Protect the Equal Right to Life of Each Innocent Human in Existence at Fertilization. No Exception! No Compromise!”

No exception! No compromise! Lots of exclamation points!

You can find high-flown absolutist rhetoric declaring that even a zygote has rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That may sound glorious and all, but in real life an absolute “protection” of “human life” from conception requires stripping fertile women of their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in extreme cases their rights to life, also. There are copious real-world examples of women living under draconian abortion laws who die gruesome deaths because of those laws. Clearly, such laws value the lives and humanity of women less than the lives and humanity of embryos. Women in these countries often go without medical help after a miscarriage because they fear persecution by the Womb Nazis. This is nothing other than political oppression.

For that reason, I continue to be astonished at the number of self-identified libertarians who see nothing wrong with banning abortion. The same people who roar with righteous indignation over big, oppressive government have no problem with government treating women like brood animals.

The words libertarian and liberal share the root word liberty. Over the years a great many views and opinions have been labeled “liberal,” but liberty and equality remain liberalism’s cornerstone. As it says here, liberalism’s fundamental principle is that “freedom is normatively basic, and so the onus of justification is on those who would limit freedom, especially through coercive means.”

I bring this up because I want to make it clear that, although liberals may disagree on many issues, no one who wants to criminalize all abortion can rightfully be called a “liberal.” If libertarians like Justin Raimondo want to claim that person, of course, that’s their business. But he ain’t one o’ ours.

Libertarians will disagree, but I say the essential difference between liberals and libertarians is that the latter define oppression as something only the federal government can do. If state governments violate the rights of its citizens and treat women and minorities like chattel, that’s OK with them. Liberals, on the other hand, think oppression is wrong no matter who or what is doing the oppressing. We think, for example, that if a state is denying its African American citizens equal treatment under the law, it’s a legitimate use of federal power to force the state to stop the oppression. Libertarians generally disagree, and would rather allow states to discriminate than concede any part of state sovereignty to Washington or federal courts.

Thus, to most libertarians, liberty and equality are less important than maintaining a weak federal government.

Justin Raimondo asks why “neocons and sectarian leftists” have united to “smear” Ron Paul. I can’t speak for everyone, but I do want readers of this blog to understand what Ron Paul stands for. And he stands for the political oppression of women. His followers seem to think it is enormously significant that Paul wants to keep the federal government out of abortion law and give the states total authority in the matter. I, on the other hand, think Womb Nazis are Womb Nazis, no matter what branch of government they report to.

I have seen people show up at liberal/progressive gatherings with Ron Paul T-shirts and buttons who don’t seem to know anything about Paul except that he’s against the war in Iraq. Well, folks, educate yourselves.

If you agree with Ron Paul’s views (meaning you aren’t one of my regular readers) then vote for him. That’s what republican government is about; you vote for the candidate you think will best represent you. My intention here is to be sure we’re all clear that Ron Paul is no liberal.

Yes, the Iraq War is a vital issue, but it’s not the only vital issue, and Ron Paul is not the only anti-war candidate. The struggle for liberty and equality in this country will continue long after the Iraq War has scrolled off the page into history.

And women aren’t boxes.

It’s Pat!

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I’ve been living away from the Bible Belt too long to claim that I have my finger on the pulse of the Jesus vote. So I can’t say if Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani is the gift-wrapped advantage for Hizzoner some pundits seem to think it is. Perhaps it is, but Robertson’s influence peaked nearly thirty years ago. Today Robertson is mostly a media sideshow freak whose celebrity endures even as memory of whatever he was originally celebrated for fades away. Sort of like Britney Spears.

Gail Collins:

Even within the ranks of the social conservatives, Robertson is regarded as a tad over the top. Who among us will forget the time he claimed that the special protein shake he was marketing had enabled him to leg-press 2,000 pounds? Or the time he said God had given Ariel Sharon a massive stroke because he let the Palestinians run Gaza? (He did apologize for saying the United States should assassinate the president of Venezuela.)

My impression is — and I could be wrong — that these days Robertson claims a following only among a particular subset of Radical Christendom: those who hate Muslims even more than they hate women.

Robertson’s backing will surely give Giuliani a leg up among voters who believe that God sends natural disasters to punish Americans whose school board members believe in the theory of evolution, or who have the bad luck to live near an inclusive amusement park. (He warned Orlando that when Disney World welcomed gay patrons it was letting them in for terrorist attacks, “earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”)

Yesterday, Robertson said that America’s Mayor had won him over because “to me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists.” (So much for judicial activism.) “Our second goal should be the control of massive government waste and crushing federal deficits.”

Now this is the part that I have never been able to get. When did government spending become part of the divine agenda? Is there something in the Bible about smiting down federal bureaucrats?

Keep it straight: Religious righties don’t look to the Bible to learn what to believe. They look to the Bible to justify what they believe.

Steven Thomma and Matt Stearns of McClatchy Newspapers say the Robertson endorsement has “fractured” social conservatives. The Robertson endorsement is significant because it shows the social conservative movement has not coalesced around any one candidate. I suspect this “fracturing” is mostly at the top. As I’ve written before, I think the rank and file of the movement would coalesce around Mike Huckabee if left to their own devices, but the “leadership” is determined to pull their followers in other directions. I can only guess why.

I suspect television bobbleheads, few of whom have ever attended a tent revival, will seize the Robertson endorsement as proof that Giuliani’s support for abortion rights (and his three marriages, and his proclivity for cross dressing, and his gay friends) will not matter to social conservative voters, even though those things probably do matter and Robertson isn’t speaking for anyone but Robertson.

Free to Be

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An anti-abortion rights letter in today’s Washington Post speaks volumes about the right-wing mind. Jonathan Imbody of the Christian Medical Association writes,

If a revival of federalism sent the abortion issue back to the states, states such as Virginia would not be likely to follow the Left Coast’s lead in denying the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the unborn.

Dr. Imbody, exactly what rights to “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness” does a fetus require? (I discuss “right to life” below.)

This reminds me of the scene from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” in which Stan (Eric Idle) announces he wants to be called Loretta.

JUDITH: Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?

LORETTA: I want to have babies.

REG: You want to have babies?!

LORETTA: It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.

REG: But… you can’t have babies.

LORETTA: Don’t you oppress me.

REG: I’m not oppressing you, Stan. You haven’t got a womb! — Where’s the fetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!

LORETTA: [crying]

JUDITH: Here! I– I’ve got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’, but that he can have the right to have babies.

FRANCIS: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.

REG: What’s the point?

FRANCIS: What?

REG: What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?!

FRANCIS: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

REG: Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

A great moment in cinema. Anyway, Roe v. Wade allows states to ban elective abortion when a fetus has reached the point in gestation — late in the second trimester — when it might be viable and survive separated from mother. This is, IMO, a sensible and even conservative point at which one might decide a fetus has “rights.” (Arguably, the “pursuit of happiness” begins when an infant first perceives discomfort and expresses a desire to be made comfortable — at birth, in other words.)

But I wanted to call out Dr. Imbody’s letter because it exemplifies several common features of rightie rhetoric.

First, words like freedom and liberty, not to mention rights, don’t actually mean anything to righties. Such words are merely rhetorical devices, planted like flags in otherwise untenable arguments. For example, to righties, warrantless surveillance is OK if it’s done for “freedom.”

Also, notice that at no point in this letter does Dr. Imbody mention women. When women do appear in rightie anti-choice rhetoric, they are either helplessly brainless children who need men to protect them from their bad decisions, or hopelessly selfish “wacko women” who enjoy killing babies. Remember, once righties take an ideological position, anyone who gets in their way must be demonized, trivialized, and swift-boated. Recently there’s been a trend to simply not mention women at all. (On the other hand, tender solicitation is given to the fetus, which is endowed with sentience, free will, and remarkable verbal skill.)

Dr. Imbody also writes that because only some states would criminalize abortion,

Overturning the injustice of Roe would result in a network of safe-haven states where inalienable rights and equal protection are accorded to all members of the human race.

Translation: Women are not members of the human race with inalienable rights and who deserve equal protection.

Dr. Imbody continues,

As with slavery, Americans regret the injustice of abortion on demand. A Gallup poll released in June showed that an overwhelming (2-to-1) majority of Americans consider it “morally wrong.”

A majority might find abortion morally wrong, but Gallup also found “Most Americans oppose the idea of passing laws to outlaw abortion and they soundly reject the idea of overturning Roe. v. Wade.”

Also, unless Gallup released two polls about abortion in June 2007, Imbody is flat-out lying about the “overwhelming” majority. Gallup: “At the same time, a slight majority (51%) believes abortion is morally wrong; only 40% say it is morally acceptable.”

This illustrates another common feature of rightie rhetoric; several features, actually. The outright lies are common enough. But what is more common is what we might call selective use of facts in support of deceptive conclusions. For argument’s sake, let’s pretend Imbody was not lying that an “overwhelming” majority of people think abortion is morally wrong. He implies — without specifically saying so — that this opinion demonstrates regret over legalization of abortion. “Like slavery,” abortion should be outlawed. A person reading Imbody’s letter would likely conclude that the Gallup organization found a majority opinion in favor of criminalizing abortion. Imbody leaves out Gallup’s finding that “Most Americans oppose the idea of passing laws to outlaw abortion and they soundly reject the idea of overturning Roe. v. Wade.”

This is a variation on warrantless surveillance for “freedom.” In this case, Imbody is telling lies for “truth,” truth being whatever Imbody wants to believe it is. He probably doesn’t consider his lies to be lies, because people ought to be for criminalizing abortion, so it’s just a technicality that they aren’t.

In the real world, life doesn’t sort itself into a series of neat binary choices — good/bad, black/white, right/wrong. We humans are messy and complicated creatures, and we exist within complex webs of relationships and responsibilities that affect our personal and “moral” decisions in countless ways. I think most people understand that, which is why many Americans who consider abortion to be “morally wrong” are still reluctant to criminalize it. We need only to look at the real-world consequences of criminalizing abortion to see the harm caused by shoving abortion underground.

As I argued here, the interests of morality and legality are sometimes the same, but sometimes not. Civilization requires enforcement of some matters — respect for ownership of property, enforcement of contracts, assurance that citizens cannot slaughter each other without penalty. Without these basic social agreements we humans wouldn’t be able to live in communities at all. We’d still be guarding our caves from other cave dwellers. But when governments go too far to control citizens’ behavior, even for benevolent purposes, it can backfire. Restrictions can cause bigger social problems than the ones the restrictions were supposed to solve. Prohibition is a classic example. Many of us would agree that the “war on drugs” is another example. The experiences of women in nations that ban abortions reveal that the bans do nothing to stop abortion but do create other problems — death and mutilation from back alley abortions, a black market for abortifacient drugs, women who hesitate to seek medical help after a miscarriage for fear they’ll be prosecuted for abortion.

Awhile back Scott Lemieux argued,

If the goal of abortion [law] is to protect fetal life, criminalization is at best an ineffective and grossly inequitable means of achieving this goal, and the bundle of policies favoring reproductive freedom (including legal abortion) generally produces lower abortion rates than the illegal abortion-no rational sex ed-limited access to contraception-threadbare welfare state usually favored by the American forced pregnancy lobby. If, on the other hand, you’re in it more for the injuring women than for the protection of fetal life, then criminalizing abortion makes good sense.

What about the “right to life”? The concept of “rights” is one that evolved slowly over the past several centuries. Though Jefferson’s “endowed by their Creator” is a lovely phrase, mankind was not aware of this endowment until some Enlightenment philosophers thought up the Rights of Man.

This essay on Rights from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy makes intriguing reading and demonstrates that we’re still struggling to define what “rights” are and how they are justified. However you define “rights,” they are usually about personal autonomy and the exercise of free will. A “right” extended to an organism incapable of free will, and even of sentience, makes the word right as meaningless as rightie usage of freedom. Also, the rights of one person can clash with the rights of another, which means that the exercise of rights cannot always be absolute.

The philosopher Ronald Dworkin proposed that rights are like a trump card that override other considerations. But the Stanford Encclopedia Essay says,

Dworkin’s metaphor only requires that rights trump non-right objectives, such as increasing national wealth. What of the priority of one right with respect to another? We can keep to the trumps metaphor while recognizing that some rights have a higher priority than others. Within the trump suit, a jack still beats a seven or a three. Your right of way at a flashing yellow light has priority over the right of way of the driver facing a flashing red; and the right of way of an ambulance trumps you both.

This metaphor of trumps leads naturally to the question of whether there is any right that has priority to absolutely all other normative considerations: whether there is an “ace of rights.” Gewirth (1981) asserts that there is at least one such absolute right: the right of all persons not to be made the victim of a homicidal project. For such a right to be absolute it would have to trump every other consideration whatsoever: other rights, economic efficiency, saving lives, everything. Not all would agree with Gewirth that even this very powerful right overrides every conceivable normative concern. Some would think it might be justifiable to infringe even this right were this somehow necessary, for example, to prevent the deaths of a great many people. If it is permissible to kill one in order to save a billion, then not even Gewirth’s right is absolute.

Anti-choice arguments insist that the “rights” of an embryo at any stage of development trump those of its mother. Those of us who are pro-choice think a woman’s well being and free will trump any honorary “rights” of an embryo or fetus prior to viability. Brushing rights aside, plenty of real-world examples show us that criminalizing abortion has a widespread, detrimental impact on the health of women, even women who don’t choose to terminate pregnancies. Indeed, an absolutist “right to life” position is detrimental to the health of embryos. That, to me, settles the argument.

But this takes us to one more point about right-wing rhetoric — the extent to which righties have adopted liberal rhetoric to defend illiberal views. For example, creationists have adopted “liberal” language about “inclusiveness” and “balance” to argue for teaching creationism in science class. Human rights are the most liberal of all liberal values. There’s a kind of evil genius at work when “rights” become an instrument of oppression.

Some Things Can’t Be Legislated Away

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This isn’t actually news — I’ve been ranting about it for years (such as here and here) — but it’s in the news. Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in yesterday’s New York Times —

A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.

Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.

The results of the study, a collaboration between scientists from the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a reproductive rights group, are being published Friday in the journal Lancet.

Other points made in the study:

The most effective way to reduce the rate of abortion is not to make abortion illegal, but to make contraception widely available.

In Eastern Europe, where contraceptive choices have broadened since the fall of Communism, the study found that abortion rates have decreased by 50 percent, although they are still relatively high compared with those in Western Europe. “In the past we didn’t have this kind of data to draw on,” Ms. Camp said. “Contraception is often the missing element” where abortion rates are high, she said. …

… In Uganda, where abortion is illegal and sex education programs focus only on abstinence, the estimated abortion rate was 54 per 1,000 women in 2003, more than twice the rate in the United States, 21 per 1,000 in that year. The lowest rate, 12 per 1,000, was in Western Europe, with legal abortion and widely available contraception.

Where abortion is illegal, it is unsafe.

The study indicated that about 20 million abortions that would be considered unsafe are performed each year and that 67,000 women die as a result of complications from those abortions, most in countries where abortion is illegal. …

… Some countries, like South Africa, have undergone substantial transitions in abortion laws in that time. The procedure was made legal in South Africa in 1996, leading to a 90 percent decrease in mortality among women who had abortions, some studies have found.

Abortion is illegal in most of Africa, though. It is the second-leading cause of death among women admitted to hospitals in Ethiopia, its Health Ministry has said. It is the cause of 13 percent of maternal deaths at hospitals in Nigeria, recent studies have found.

Anti-abortion activists are full of crap:

[Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research at the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund in Washington] said that the major reason women die in the developing world is that hospitals and health systems lack good doctors and medicines. “They have equated the word ‘safe’ with ‘legal’ and ‘unsafe’ with ‘illegal,’ which gives you the illusion that to deal with serious medical system problems you just make abortion legal,” he said.

Let’s repeat one example from above: “The procedure was made legal in South Africa in 1996, leading to a 90 percent decrease in mortality among women who had abortions, some studies have found.”

Guttmacher has been tracking the correlation between illegal abortion and high rates of death and medical complication from abortion for many years. And one would think even an idiot would understand that where women are trying to abort by flushing themselves with corrosive chemicals or sticking sharp and unsterilized objects into themselves, it is likely to be dangerous. But one cannot underestimate the abject brainlessness of Fetus People.

The researchers used national data for 2003 from countries where abortion was legal and therefore tallied. W.H.O. scientists estimated abortion rates from countries where it was outlawed, using data on hospital admissions for abortion complications, interviews with local family planning experts and surveys of women in those countries.

In other words, if women are showing up in hospitals because they are septic or mutilated from a back-alley abortion, it’s not too much of a stretch to conclude that women are getting back-alley abortions. Unless you are one of the Fetus People; in that case, you will likely conclude something utterly off the wall and unrelated.

However, outlawing abortion can have the effect of driving it so far underground that many people (unless they work in hospital emergency rooms) can pretend it isn’t happening, even though it is. And pretending is better than reality for righties. Of course, there is also the daughter effect — having a daughter of reproductive age tends to have a liberalizing effect on a man’s views on reproductive rights. (See also “Oh, the Humanity” — the anti-abortion rights position is based on an assumption that women aren’t real people — especially women who get abortions.)

As Scott Lemieux says,

If the goal of abortion [law] is to protect fetal life, criminalization is at best an ineffective and grossly inequitable means of achieving this goal, and the bundle of policies favoring reproductive freedom (including legal abortion) generally produces lower abortion rates than the illegal abortion-no rational sex ed-limited access to contraception-threadbare welfare state usually favored by the American forced pregnancy lobby. If, on the other hand, you’re in it more for the injuring women than for the protection of fetal life, then criminalizing abortion makes good sense.

Finally, from the New York Times article,

The Bush administration’s multibillion-dollar campaign against H.I.V./AIDS in Africa has directed money to programs that promote abstinence before marriage, and to condoms only as a last resort. It has prohibited the use of American money to support overseas family planning groups that provide abortions or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Which means we might as well be flushing those multibillion dollars down a toilet.