AbortionEssay Preview: AbortionReport this essayAbortionAbortion is an issue that evokes, on all sides, very strong feelings and judgments and very heated recriminations. The most radical formulation of the anti-abortion or “pro-life” side of the debate views abortion as the murder of unborn children, and so as the equivalent of out and out infanticide, making the legal use of abortion since Roe v. Wade, at a rate of around 1.5 million a year in the United States, into a holocaust of the innocent fully comparable to the Nazi genocide against the Jews. Radical “pro-life” activists who blockade abortion clinics (or who even commit terrorist acts of vandalism, arson, and murder) see what they do as what “good Germans” didnt do in the face of Hitlers atrocities, or what John Brown did do in his attempt at Harpers Ferry to free the slaves through mass rebellion. While John Brown was regarded as a dangerous and treasonous fanatic during his lifetime, Union armies later marched through the South singing the song “John Browns Body,” whose tune Julia Ward Howe borrowed for the great “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Anti-abortionists thus feel that they would be similarly vindicated and honored by history [0].
On the other hand, the most radical formulation of the pro-abortion or “pro-choice” side views opposition to abortion as opposition to the freedom of women, as hatred of women, and as part of a historical effort to “subjugate” women as nothing more than baby-making machines or, failing that, to see that they die in botched abortions as part of, indeed, something comparable to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. They sometimes interpret the anti-abortion cause as so heinous that even non-violent anti-abortion protests are regarded as “hate crimes” which should be suppressed using the most draconian federal anti-racketeering and anti-terrorist laws [1]. In general, “pro-choice” activists believe that the availability of abortion is absolutely necessary for the general alleviation of poverty and for the possibility of better and fulfilling lives for both women and children.
[22] In addition to being an extremely powerful and sometimes very negative force in the American left, “violence is one of the most vicious and insidious human-rights violations that is imaginable in the nation’s history. Indeed, “when it comes to the anti-abortion side[s], a majority of Republicans seem to believe that their position on abortion is simply based on ideological reasons,” writes The Economist.[13] “pro-choice” violence has been, and continues to be, a central part of the modern Republican agenda and has to be dealt with under a government that, under some conditions, is pro-life, or at least pro-life to some extent, even pro-family. “violence is not the first or the last attack of the anti-abortion movement on the rights of women in this country; the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that it is a ‘constitutional right’ to be a pregnant woman in this country without the knowledge of a pregnancy test, not an abortion provider, nor does a woman’s consent not mean that she may violate her own or her family’s wishes. “violence is also central to the anti-abortion movement insofar as the pro-abortion agenda operates with the explicit aim of preventing women from having children. To this effect, the anti-abortion cause tends to focus on preventing the rights of pregnant women in countries where abortion is generally illegal and, indeed, has proven a source of concern for several centuries. “violence also tends to emphasize the point that abortion is generally a ‘civilized’ procedure (not a ‘child-rearing’ procedure, as the U.S. Supreme Court held in Roe v. Wade), and that the United States courts are free to say that abortion should be criminalized and can be punished accordingly. “violence has led the anti-abortion movement to try to control its tactics, especially by using social media to disseminate an extremely powerful ideology. Some activists have even gone so far as to send social media messages to American voters that the anti-abortion side of the Republican health care bill would allow the government to kill a woman unless she was already pregnant. The pro-life Democratic Party has even accused conservatives of using ‘antiabortion propaganda’ to push for the Democratic Party legislation on women’s health and reproductive freedom that would provide financial incentives for those who promote abortion. The same activists who frequently use social media to spread anti-abortion messaging insist that such messages should be censored and that political leaders and their supporters should be held accountable for their campaign tactics.
[23] In essence, “violence is an extension of a long-established and central tactic of anti-choice or pro-family activists. The phrase “somewhat related” is defined as a tactic of using a combination of verbal and physical threats against a person in order to deter the person from ever taking any action that may result in killing any remaining person involved in the situation. Many of the most prominent examples of this approach include: (1) taking direct action, (2) threatening, threatening, threatening, physically intimidating or intimidating and threatening, (3) harassing others, (4) coercing others to make any resistance, (5) kidnapping, (6) kidnapping, (7) threatening, coercing anyone, (8) threatening, threatening, physical or any other form of physical or psychological coercion and (9) blackmailing.
My concern in this essay is to examine the extent to which arguments used by both sides of this debate are poor to untenable. The common acceptance of bad reasoning as self-evidently true always serves to demonize the opposition and to further radicalize and irrationalize the whole debate, to the benefit of every kind of extremist. While I am personally in the “pro-choice” camp, I am embarrassed to find that many common pro-choice arguments are based on appallingly bad reasoning. And if I seem particularly harsh about pro-choice arguments, it is obviously because I am concerned that the cause I favor be honored with the more sensible and cogent arguments. I also do not believe that the heated rhetoric that accompanies and is exacerbated by the bad arguments is any help in reaching a political modus vivendi on the issue.
One of the most often repeated of such arguments is that abortion should be legal just because it would continue being practiced even if it were illegal again. The trouble with such reasoning is that it could just as easily give us an argument for legalizing theft or murder or rape. These things have been illegal for a long time, but they just continue happening anyway. So we may as well legalize them, since they are going to just continue happening anyway. Of course, no one is going to accept such reasoning in those matters. The fact that something is happening or will continue to happen cannot be an argument for whether it is acceptable or moral or just.
A similarly bad argument says that abortion should be legal because women will get maimed or killed getting illegal abortions. That could just as easily be an argument for legalizing armed robbery or any other crime, since armed robbers and other criminals can get shot or killed in doing what they do. If something is genuinely wrong, then the fact that someone engaging in that wrong action might be hurt or killed is irrelevant. And if the argument is that abortion is too trivial a thing for women to die because of, that begs the question, since it is precisely the issue whether abortion is murder or not; and if it is, then it is not any kind of trivial matter.
A pro-choice bumper-sticker occasionally seen says, “If you cant trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?”