In response to my post on Tuesday, I got an e-mail from a reader who wrote that while she had come to the point where she no longer believed in banning abortion, she still considered herself pro-life. Reflecting on how she had been raised (in a conservative Christian household), she noted that she had always been taught that women who undergo abortion will invariably experience regret and depression. Faced with the reality that that is not always the case, my reader writes that she finds it harder not to judge women who don’t experience regret.
One of the hallmarks of traditional sexism is its insistence that “good women” feel certain feelings and not others. “Good girls” are expected to be interested in romance, but not in sex — especially not the latter when it is disconnected from the former. Good girls are allowed, even encouraged, to daydream about marrying their handsome boyfriends; they are discouraged (via shame) from lusting after the hot water polo players in their Speedos. These messages about what the right emotions are for women (compassion, tenderness, romantic longing) and what the wrong emotions are (ambition, horniness, anger) are taught early, usually long before puberty. And the grip of this dichotomy of good and bad feelings can be intense, lingering for a lifetime, passed on to the next generation.
I know a lot of folks who feel as my reader does. In this world view, shaped both by sexism and popular Christian teaching, remorse and regret are prerequisites for forgiveness and understanding. A young woman who has had an abortion will have no trouble finding sympathy in even the most conservative circles if she says the right words. For example, this will do nicely:
“Oh, I was so confused and scared! I had no idea what to do. I I just wanted it all to be over with, and I had nowhere else to go, so I called up the clinic and I went and ‘took care of it.’ I cried afterwards for hours; it hurt so much. At first I felt numb, and then I felt relief, and then I felt this awful sense that I had done something terrible. Every day I ask God to forgive me. I regret it so much, and I wonder if I’ll ever stop feeling so horrible.”
Say that in private — or better yet, tearfully in front of the congregation — and you can expect the outpouring of warmth and forgiveness given to a Prodigal Daughter. The pastor will use you as an example, mingling admonition with a reminder about God’s grace and a wildly inappropriate but inevitable reference to Rachel the Matriarch weeping for her children. Folks will hug you and pat you and say soothing words. “We’re praying for you, sweetheart.” “Jesus loves you.” “You are forgiven.” “Thank you for speaking out; you may have saved another girl’s baby today.” And on and on it goes.
Please understand, I didn’t write the short monologue above to jest. I’ve heard those words 967 times in a variety of settings, and I’m sure that at least a quarter of the time, they were heartfelt. There are plenty of women who have abortions and later regret them for a wide variety of reasons. And as I wrote on Tuesday, there are plenty of people who grieve an abortion but do not regret having had one. Grief says: “that hurt me”; Regret says: “that was wrong of me to do.” Grief is an acknowledgement that an experience was painful and difficult, perhaps leaving an enduring wound — grief is a statement about feelings. Regret is a moral statement in which a past action is judged to have been the wrong one. These two emotions sometimes go together, but frequently not. (As I wrote on Tuesday, I grieve my divorces — and grieve the abortion for which I was partly responsible. But I don’t regret getting divorced or regret that my high school girlfriend had the abortion. Those were the best decisions given the circumstances.)
I’ve known a great many women who’ve undergone abortions. (My Austrian grandmother, born in 1901, talked about having half a dozen of them in the 1920s and ’30s). I’ve been responsible for at least one, and frankly, given the utterly reckless nature of my youth, quite possibly more. I’ve had friends and family members of all ages tell me they’ve had abortions. I’ve gone with teenage youth groupers to doctor’s offices where they’ve undergone the procedure, and I’ve given money to others who desperately needed help paying for it. And I’ve heard just about every possible reaction. Some women do regret, and speak openly of wishing that they had made a different choice. But most don’t. Some women are adamant that they neither regret nor grieve; they are at peace with their decision. Some speak of gratitude for kind nurses and doctors, some speak of relief and even — one or two — of the outright ecstasy of ending a pregnancy that they felt was positively parasitical. And some don’t like to talk about it at all.
Real compassion and real feminism (for me, the two are inextricably linked) means not scripting women’s reactions for them. Someone who is genuinely regretful deserves a thoughtful, non-judgmental hearing. Someone whose only reaction is relief deserves respect as well. The position that some folks who hate abortion but are reluctant to ban it is like that my reader adopts: “Abortion is a terrible sin, but I suppose in this broken world, it may be a necessary one, so if she who undergoes it expresses what I think is the right degree of sadness and remorse, then I will suspend my judgment and replace it with, uh, pity.” That’s neither Christian nor feminist, but it seems to be a not uncommon response. The better response, the more difficult response for many, is to accept that like so many other life experiences, abortion impacts different people differently. There is no “right” response. We must reject the moral dichotomy of appropriate emotion that divides post-abortive women into remorse-ridden good girls and “confident-that-I-made-the-right-choice” bad ones.
It’s been said a time or nine, but I’ll say it again: few of us think abortion is a good thing, in the sense of being a moral positive. The same might be said for cancer surgery, of course. No one wants to undergo a painful procedure, particularly one (like abortion) that ends one particular potential life. (No one denies that it is, at the least, a potential person that is being terminated.) No one weds in the hopes of having that marriage end in divorce. But something does not have to be good in order to be a right. Divorce is awful; the alternative is not infrequently worse. The same could be said of chemotherapy — and of abortion. I grieve my divorces, and I grieve the abortion I was involved in, but I do not regret them. To regret would be to say in that particular situation, with that set of facts, I ought to have made a different decision. And that is not how I feel. It is not, I think, how most women who undergo abortion end up feeling.
The presence of grief is not evidence that a decision was wrong. Similarly, the absence of grief is not evidence of a failure of imagination or of a grave moral lapse. Human emotions are as varied as the people who have them, and despite the very great temptation to condemn the difficult private choices of those with whom we share this planet, we make a grave mistake when we do so.
I really like your delineation between grief and regret and the nonjudgmental portion of me wants to nod vigorously, but I am still curious, then, what motivates regret or grief, or the absence thereof–are there any culturally sanctioned “root causes” involved in the abortion, such as, say, the situation of a rape victim as compared to the situation of a newlywed in a loving, but financially disastrous relationship? Any thoughts on that?
A baby isn’t cancer, and most people know that sex can result in pregnancy even if birth control is used. It’s inappropriate to compare choosing to get an abortion to getting a divorce or undergoing chemotherapy. Abortion is not the same as getting out of an unhealthy relationship or treating a life-threatening disease. Abortion is essentially running from the responsibilities that come with sexual pleasure.
That’s why it’s easier to love the women who feel remorse, because they acknowledge that they could have done something different to prevent conception in the first place, or that they could have given that potential life the chance to actually grow and become a person. Women who are fully confident in their choices to have abortions give the impression that they were helpless victims of a biological process and they needed to be “healed” of their “condition.” It’s harder to love someone who seemingly acts that way when I know full well that the woman didn’t just sneeze and get pregnant, and that a baby is not a disease.
Yes, it’s wrong to judge women because they don’t react the way someone feels they should, but it’s also wrong to judge people for having a difficult time loving someone with vastly different beliefs. Love doesn’t come naturally for everyone; sometimes we have to work for it, and we need to be given the chance and incentive to do so.
No one, that is, except maybe a guy who compares killing a potential person to excising a cancer.
Abortion is essentially running from the responsibilities that come with sexual pleasure.
But why?
Do you have a rape exception? Does that make the child conceived in rape less of a person? If the woman didn’t enjoy the sex and had it to please her overbearing partner, does that make her less responsible?
And who says that abortion is avoiding responsibility, any more than getting a divorce after you’ve promised to stay together forever is avoiding responsibility? What does responsibility mean? Does it mean accepting that the link between sexual intercourse and human reproduction is so great and so obvious that should an egg end up fertiilzed, it is always the responsibility of the woman to carry it to term?
I can’t go that far, so help me — and I say that as both a feminist and as a Christian. I honor those who differ.
Oh, and Charlotte, I’ve never liked the narrative of the “deserving”. Look, if you really believe it is a child being aborted, you ought to have an equal degree of horror — and an concomitant absence of sympathy for the abortive mother — whether she was raped or not. After all, as Alan Keyes says, why punish an infant for his father’s crime? Does the baby’s value hinge on the circumstances in which it was conceived? When pro-lifers say yes — which they do when they back rape exceptions — they undercut the moral weight of their argument. Except most pro-lifers know darned well that that stance won’t fly with the American public, who are stuck in the middle between two warring sides. So the pro-lifers offer the exceptions, in the hopes of moving the ball a few yards down the field — but in the process, they create a two-tiered system of life that doesn’t make a whole mess of sense.
Honestly, I can think of more than fifty women whom I know well (from my grandmother, rest her soul, to girls still underage today) who have undergone abortions. Not one, not one, not one, has made that choice frivolously. For any of us to prescribe for them an “appropriate response” is whopping gall.
I had an abortion almost 30 years ago. I had just gotten married and did not want kids so soon and we decided to abort. There was grief and fear but never regret. It was the right choice at the time…it would not be the right choice later on for me and thus i would not do it. It is unfair to judge why a woman decides to get an abortion… it is sometimes beyond even the words she knows. But it should always be her choice. Pregnancys happen even when every precaution is taken. Taking full responsibility for her body is fully accepting the pregnancy and going to term or deciding to not carry the pregnancy.
I dont regret my abortion though i am sorry it was the choice i had to make… i went on to have 9 more kids and become a big advocate for womens rights and choices as a midwife in an illegal state.
Hugo:
You might want to consider that there seems to be a shift from assessing the morality of an action as inherent in the act itself, or its consequence, to ascribing the morality of an act as inherent, to some degree, in the effort we make to understand whether the act is moral or not. We give enormous credit to those who struggle with ethical dilemmas and not much weight to the right conclusion — because to say there is a “right conclusion” is just plain offensive.
Life is grey; ethics are filled with imperfect choices. And yet knowing this is of limited value unless I do the right thing. So we can say that X is wrong — murder for example — without being required to a. wring our hands in the face of all the greyness that is inherent in this statement or b. map out in what ways moral culpability adheres to different situations in which murder occurs.
Abortion is wrong because it takes a life. The fact that the pro-life movement has difficulty in addressing the very real and very difficult consequences of a pro-life legal platform does not detract from that basic premise.
Steve
Steve, you make it too simple. You and I have argued pacifism in the past, with you rejecting it. War is wrong, the Mennonites say, because it takes lives — sometimes even innocent ones. Christian warriors, applying just war theory, argue that sometimes life-taking is necessary in certain specific instances. Good just warriors often distinguish between what is always wrong (killing) and what may, in a deeply imperfect world, be necessary. Abortion may be similar — wrong in a perfect moral sense, sure, but also necessary in that forcing a woman to carry a term a child she does not want may be “wronger” still.
Hugo — gotta run but if you can define how abortion can be wrong in any other “sense” than moral, I’ll buy you a huge soy latte.
If abortion is killing — and I believe it is — then we START there, not with the inevitable moral conundrums that life throws our way. To argue that I am being insensitive to the complexity of the debate is to make my point, which is that the complexity of the debate does not determine the morality of the action. We slip into a subtle, almost indiscernible, emotivism.
Steve
Abortion is essentially running from the responsibilities that come with sexual pleasure.
So if it was boring and you didn’t come, you can abort with abandon. Good to know!
Real compassion and real feminism (for me, the two are inextricably linked) means not scripting women’s reactions for them. Someone who is genuinely regretful deserves a thoughtful, non-judgmental hearing. Someone whose only reaction is relief deserves respect as well.
Hypothetically, I had a chinchilla as a pet, but I got bored with it, so I killed it. I thought I would feel regret and other negative emotions, but the only emotion I find myself feeling is relief - thank God I don’t have that responsibility any more.
Do you respect me? Or do you think I’m an asshole?
I suspect I know the answer to your question, and I suspect it is an indicator of the vacuole at the center of your reasoned and facially compassionate, but ultimately anti-life, position on abortion. People who kill for convenience or to avoid responsibility are not admirable, and their decision is not justifiable on the basis of their emotional relief.
Oops, that should be “the answer to my question”.
Robert,
Hypothetically, if you tried your best to give the chinchilla away, but absolutely nobody would take it until June, and you feel incapable of caring for it for even another day, I’d say killing it would be the humane thing to do. Better than letting it starve to death. (I don’t know how well chinchillas fare when ‘released’ into the wild - this would possibly be an option.)
Since you stipulate that you ARE capable of caring for it (just bored) and haven’t tried to give it away (Hugo would take it, I presume, as would others), killing it would make you an asshole.
If you show me someone who deliberately gets pregnant and decides to abort the pregnancy because she’s BORED with it, I’ll call her an asshole too. However, this is really hard to prove. Besides, I’d still support her right to abort because there are no alternatives that immediately make the woman non-pregnant yet preserve the life of the child. (And that’s not even mentioning those who don’t want to pass on their genes AT ALL or those who abhor the adoption industry.) On the other hand, it’s easy to prove that buying a pet is deliberate - nobody ‘finds themselves having bought a pet despite taking precautions.’ More importantly: since there are alternatives that immediately make you a non-pet-owner yet preserve the life of the pet , I don’t support your right to kill it.
//If abortion is killing — and I believe it is//
Well, that’s fine for you, then, but it’s a big presumption for everyone else in the world. Not everyone believes abortion is killing, certainly.
Hypothetically, I had a chinchilla in my womb, and it was making me throw up all the time. I was getting backaches and sore breasts, and I had to pee constantly. Plus it would not stop running around in there, and I couldn’t get over the strange feeling of omg-what-is-this-chinchilla-doing-in-my-womb. It was going to stay in there for another eight months, hooked up to my blood supply and giving me weird food cravings, while it considered the possibility of leaching calcium out of my bones. When it eventually emerged it would be in an experience that redefined the meaning of pain, and also redefined my pelvic floor.
The really annoying thing, too, was that once everyone learned I had a chinchilla anywhere, they knew I must be some sort of pervert and made judgements about my sexual choices, and about my fitness to raise chinchillas. Let’s not even get into what PETA thought, and all the nasty looks I got whenever they saw me drinking coffee. “Don’t you know chinchillas can’t have coffee?” they would ask.
Ms. Anon, that’s exactly how I felt through both of my very much wanted pregnancies (except for the coffee part, I can’t stand the stuff, but substitute anything that could even remotely be considered bad for the fetus and the analogy still holds). And the labor is horrifically painful. And all of that is a perfectly normal pregnancy with no serious complications whatsoever. I can’t even imagine having to deal with all of that for an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy. And I wouldn’t.
Call me an asshole, unfeeling, immoral selfish bitch if you want, but if I found out I was pregnant again today, I’d be at the clinic tomorrow getting that taken care of, because I will not be pregnant again. And I honestly don’t think I would feel even the slightest bit guilty or regretful about it, except for the usual ‘I can’t believe I’m such an idiot that my bc failed’ kind of thing, which I imagine lots of women who have unplanned pregnancies (however they choose to deal with it after the fact) feel. But I’m also not the slightest bit sentimental about pregnancy. I love my kids and they were both very much wanted, but I hated being pregnant.
For me, the bottom line is this: I don’t care if it’s a living being, a person, whatever, but if it is living inside my body, I get to decide whether it stays there. And if there’s a way to get it out without killing it (and without unneccesary pain and damage to myself), then by all means, do that. But until we get to that point, the killing part is an unfortunate side effect to the getting it out part.
To echo the point that Ms Anon is making through satire (if I’m reading her correctly), I’m uncomfortable with the analogies being used: a human embryo or fetus is neither a pet nor a tumor, and a pregnant woman is neither an irresponsible pet owner nor a cancer patient. In fact, I think one of the reasons that abortion is so difficult to reason about is that our metaphors are so far off. A potential human life belongs in a moral category of its own.
(An exception, of course, is if someone believes that there is no meaningful status difference between a fetus and an infant, in which case calling abortion murder is not a metaphor but a simple description.)
I appreciate the insight of my own religious tradition, which teaches that abortion is not acceptable unless the pregnancy poses significant risk to the life or physical or emotional health of the mother, in which case abortion is required. What constitutes “significant risk to emotional health” is not always so clear (and should be determined by the pregnant woman, with the aid of her family and rabbi and possibly doctor). Still, if abortion is not a choice but a requirement under certain circumstances, then regret is in no way encouraged, even as grief is acknowledged.
I don’t know how to respond to equating human life with a chinchilla or cancerous growth — or describing it as an unfortunate side effect — other that to suggest that such belittling of human life is troublesome for your argument
Hugo, my point on this post could perhaps be made another way. If you are going to bring into the abortion debate the very real and very emotional realities that impact the decision then fair play suggests the other “side” have some say. Why, then, do we cry foul when pictures of aborted fetuses/babies are used. Unseemly. Divisive. Inflamatory. Possibly, but still true and still reality. And if they elicit that respone, why do they? As one of the most contentious issues in our country, why do we not see a NYT Sunday overview, with those neat graphics, of exaxtly what happens in an abortion? Newsweek? Nope. Time? Nope. etc. etc. Why is that? We pride ourselves on understanding the rich tapestry of influencers on and outcomes of any particular decision. But, we really don’t pay much attention to what an abortion does except with passing statements about “unfortunate side effect” or medical procedures.
If you can share the story of walking your young charge to get an abortion, and share it with difficult realities that weigh heavily in that situtation, why wouldn’t we also be required to really undersand the result of that decision to reach an informed opinion?
Steve
I’m ignoring the chinchilla bit, folks.
Quickly, re: cancer. I don’t think a fetus is perfectly analagous to a tumor! All I meant is that it chemo and abortion are both experiences that most folks, given their druthers would rather avoid — if they could avoid pregnancy and cancer.
And Steve, you’re right. I’m conflating two issues: abortion and the ways in which we expect certain emotions from those who have abortions. Related, but not entirely the same.
Not everyone believes abortion is killing, certainly.
Show me this person who believes that taking a living, metabolizing organism with its own unique DNA, and chopping it into pieces, isn’t “killing”.
Do you mean not everyone believes abortion is murder? That’s certainly true. To believe it isn’t killing requires stretches of cognition, vocabulary and morality that I’ve never personally been able to get someone to cop to.
If you show me someone who deliberately gets pregnant and decides to abort the pregnancy because she’s BORED with it, I’ll call her an asshole too.
I knew a woman in college - a lesbian no less - who bragged about how she “bit the bullet” and had sex with several men just so she could get pregnant and have an abortion as a show of solidarity with her sisters.
Whether or not that was true - and I have no reason to believe otherwise from her - there is one.
Folks, arguing from weird anecdote is probably not the best strategy here.
Hugo, the “running from responsibilities” line is simply a euphemistic way of saying that the slut deserved to get knocked up and she should STFU and take her medicine.
EmilyF isn’t going to phrase it that way, of course, but that’s really what she’s said.
A baby isn’t cancer, and most people know that sex can result in pregnancy even if birth control is used. It’s inappropriate to compare choosing to get an abortion to getting a divorce or undergoing chemotherapy. Abortion is not the same as getting out of an unhealthy relationship or treating a life-threatening disease. Abortion is essentially running from the responsibilities that come with sexual pleasure.
Translation: if you smoke cigarettes, you have a moral duty to let the resulting lung cancer run its course. Otherwise, you are “running from the responsibilities that come with [sensual] pleasure”.
Also, as has been hinted at above, pregnancy is most definitely a “life-threatening disease”, and always has been.
Show me this person who believes that taking a living, metabolizing organism with its own unique DNA, and chopping it into pieces, isn’t “killing”.
A tumor is a living, metabolizing organism with its own DNA. Like a fetus, it is dependent on the host body for its survival.
Frankly, the cancer analogy is a very close fit.
I think the point is, for certain people, abortion (or outside-wedlock childbirth) must always involve pain as punishment.
While there are some consistent pro-lifers who seem genuinely motivated by a philosophy of fetal rights, there is a large punitive strain in contemporary anti-abortion rhetoric.
So for example, persons arguing from a fetal rights position will invoke concepts like “The fetus is special and a blessed gift from God” “Children are wonderful” “Adorable babies”, etc.
However, we also get “You are avoiding the consequences of your actions” (to women who get abortions) “You got what’s coming to you” (to women who give birth) “It’s what you deserve” etc. There’s the concept of the fetus as a “consequence”, of childbirth as punishment, of “Post-abortion-syndrome” or horror-tales about purported “side-effects” of abortion– “You’ll get breast cancer!” and so on. Perhaps it’s the modern-day version of Eve’s curse or the 19th century clergymen who were horrified about anesthesia during childbirth because it was women “weaseling out of their proper punishment for Eve’s curse”.
That’s also, I think, how most people can support outlawing abortion “except for rape and incest” (polls show, for instance, that the number of people who support abortion bans jumps when those loopholes are allowed). If we were arguing strictly from a fetal-rights perspective abortion would be disallowed in either case since there is nothing *inherently* different about a fetus created from rape and one created consensually (that is, if you completely disallow the woman’s point of view!).
But most people get squicked out by the idea of forcing rape victims to carry and birth their attacker’s child. Therefore, since rape victims have “suffered enough” (remember that utterly disgusting South Dakota legislator who enumerated all of the horrible things that would have to happen to a young, virginal woman before she could get an abortion? forcible sodomy was apparently the tipping point), they don’t need to be “punished further” by remaining pregnant and giving birth.
Picador:
No, it’s not. Cancer does not become a human being over time.
Steve
This is where the useful analogy of a stranger needing a kidney transplant and you being the only person with an matching donor profile comes in. Are you morally obligated to give that stranger one of your kidneys (there’s an argument to be made that Jesus would say yes, now that I think about it)? Should you be legally bound to give that stranger one of your kidneys (almost certainly not, I would think)?
If I don’t have to give a stranger one of my kidneys, even if they would otherwise die, why would a woman have to give her entire body over to support another individual? Call it the ‘fetus-as-squatter’ argument.
Well, repentance generally has to come before forgiveness; I don’t think that sexism has much to do with the general principle. The sexism in this situation, it seems to me, consists of shaming the woman without addressing the man’s contribution to the situation.
I see the real problem as much broader. I see the dance you describe as a boundary violation, as the intrusion of an outlook informed, ultimately, by politics, into people’s individual thoughts and feelings. A political movement ought to present arguments about what we should or should not do, but I fear the political (or “mass”) movement that wants to tell me what to think or feel or be.
Forgive me if this is too REALISTIC for you: but
if every fetus in every unmarried woman’s uterus was provided BY LAW with the FULL FINANCIAL SUPPORT of the MALE DNA DONOR, and by that I mean:
$40,000.00 a year FULL SUPPORT (so she can RAISE her child) for the MOTHER, plus a college education ($200,000.00?)
I think a lot of you “oh my god think about the BABY and the SLUT who is flushing it down the drain” folks
would STFU immediately!
as long as the FULL financial and personal BURDEN is borne by the MOTHER (often is IMPOSSIBLE circumstances, ie, high school graduate, minimum wage job, no partner to split child-rearing shifts with) you are OH SO DOWN with FORCING birth;
put the shoe on the OTHER foot; imagine that the responsibility is FORCED TO BE SHARED (the mother spends the TIME, the father provides ALL THE CASH); OR, TAXES provide ALL THE CASH and the public has to foot the bill (though you seem to be all FOR shouldering the financial responsibilty for the IRAQ DEBACLE)
I think you would be crying out of the other side of your mouths,
YOU F*U*C*K*I*N*G H*Y*P*O*C*R*I*T*E*S
(and, THANK YOU, Hugo, for being a decent human being about this painful topic.)
I am trying hard to see this issue from the pro-choice perspective, but calling pro-lifers “fucking hypocrites” is not going to win you any friends. One thing feminism has taught me is that abortion is a way more complicated topic than I comprehended before. I think both sides of the debate would benefit from having a respectful, civilized discussion about how complex and deep the abortion debate really is without resorting to name-calling.
Agreed, Mermade. But respect is not just about language — it’s about what you convey. Making another human feel judged for her choice is just as disrespectful as using foul language; verbal violence is about inflicting hurt, and we can do that with eloquent, grammatically correct language as easily as we can with profanity.
I don’t like the phrase “fucking hypocrites”. But I don’t like judgment from those who have not gone through the experience any more.
Civil discourse is more than the absence of the “f” word. It is the presence of radical humility, a willingness to listen, and above all, a willingness to suspend the use of language that leads the person you’re conversing with to feel judged or condemned.
Indeed, I agree. As someone who is on the more introverted side, I realize that the look on my face can be (and has been) way more hurtful to people than any combination of words I could ever utter to them. You are correct in terms of what it means to be genuinely humble. In regards to abortion, I don’t think either side of this debate can justify being more judgemental of the other side. I don’t like Operation Rescue because they believe they have the right to call abortion doctors “baby killers.” They are out of line. At the same time, it is not fair for pro-choicers to call pro-lifers “fucking hypocrites.” That is out of line. That sort of dialogue undermines both sides and creates more resentment. This is the place I am at: I am not going to call pro-choicers “pro-death,” because that is unfair, and I realize, again, that this is an emormously complicated debate. At the same time, I feel that my position deserves to be heard without people calling me a “fucking hypocrite.” If I called KMTBerry a foul name, I am sure that I would have been called on it and rightfully so.
Well, I think you need to reread KMTBerry to make sure it was directed at you personally; that’s not my reading of it. Her rage is at a group who hold a certain view — though I don’t like the languag either.
Still, I hear the frustration in your voice! It’s what all of us who look for common ground find so exhausting and exasperating, as we wound and offend each other over and over again. And yet, amazingly enough, we make progress.
As a vegan who wishes for an end to animal suffering, I spend my days with carnivores and (on occasion) fur-purchasers. I make my views clear, always drawing a clear distinction between “I think meat-eating is morally problematic” and “I think those who eat meat are bad people, or at the least, ought to be guilt-ridden”. The case for veganism (and the case that the pro-lifers ought to be making) is one in which the judgment of individual choices is not the focus.
I don’t show pictures of slaughter-houses to my meat-eating friends. I don’t say word one when they order steak. I love them every bit as much as they masticate the flesh of a creature once sentient, once loved, possessed — perhaps — of a soul.
My example is a better advocate for veganism than my hectoring.
I never thought her comment was directed at me personally. Let me re-phrase this: If I came on this thread and said the same thing about pro-choicers as a group, I would have been called on it without question. I reserve the right to maintain my opinion about abortion as she does, but we must do it in a respectful tone when conversing with each other about this painful topic. Thank you, though, for acknowledging how frustrating talking about this issue is.
KMTBarry: The right to induced abortion depends on the sovereignty of an individual human being over their own body. As the old saying goes, “not the church and not the state, women must control their fate!” Invoking sums of money has no relevance here, since you cannot buy a woman’s uterus for any price.
I don’t regret my abortion. Based on the information I had at the time, I am sure that I did the right thing for the right reason. I regret that I have ever been in a position that abortion had to be considered, I have remorse over how I beat myself up to make sure I made the decision for what I considered to be legitimate reasons and, maybe, a little sadness that a different decision would not have been right. I was thoughtful and responsible in how I handled the situation and how I came to and acted on my decision.
Interestingly, most of the “pro-life” women I’ve encountered who had abortions freely admitted they terminated their pregnancies purely for convenience (as a form of retro-active birth control), they regret their decisions to the point they do not take any responsibility for them (i.e., blame others for influencing/coercing the decision). They also feel the need to claim anyone who has an abortion was also coerced to do so and any lack of emotional distress over having an abortion is just a sign of continued denial. These people cherry pick arguments to support whatever stance they have and avoid ownership of their own decisions/taking responsibility. They feel we must take away choice because they can not protect themselves from themselves, and resent those of us who are self-aware and not afraid to be brutally honest with ourselves.
Hugo :
Yes, a common scenario in Catholic circles, also. I felt like I was having some flashbacks! You have accurately described the prodigal daughter routine; also a visceral need many have to forgive, even more than condemn.
“While there are some consistent pro-lifers who seem genuinely motivated by a philosophy of fetal rights, there is a large punitive strain in contemporary anti-abortion rhetoric.”
I agree with Ms. Anon’s point above, though I’d suggest that there are far more of the former than the latter. I have heard stories of loyal clinic protesters who have the audacity to seek an abortion at the very clinic they usually protest. They explain to the clinic worker that “Well, my husband and I — I’m MARRIED, you see — already have four children and I got pregnant this time by mistake. But I’m not like those promiscuous girls in the waiting room!” (Even when those “promiscuous girls” might just be at Planned Parenthood for a pap smear or some other non-abortion-related procedure.
The “patient” will then make sure that the clinic worker promises not to tell the other protesters that she herself sought out an abortion. I don’t normally side with an abortion clinic, but I wouldn’t blame that worker one bit if (s)he dimed that hypocrite out.
So the “punitive strain” is alive and well, certainly, within SOME who call themselves “pro-life.” I just don’t think it’s the chief motivator for MOST of them.
It would be interesting to see how age and parenting change the general perspective on the general question of abortion and regret.
I once had a scare in high school. At the time, I was not Christian and was prepared to press my girlfriend to “take care of it”. After all, I had college to attend and big plans. Both my girlfriend and I seemed to understand that the fervid love of high schoolers was ephemeral and would eventually succumb to growing up and moving on.
Given my moral foundation at the time, I am not sure that I would have felt regret, at least at the time. We would have likely felt grief, my girlfriend more than me.
I am now a father with four children. The fourth came post-vasectomy–I am one of the one in a thousand who had the vas deferens grow back on one side following the procedure.
Three children was stressful enough. My wife had quit work and we had downsized our house and my career (still have) to accomodate the three, so four was quite a challenge. We had begun to rack up credit card debt and were very much planning on my wife returning to work to begin to recoup the financial lifestyle we had become accustomed to, as well as plan for some family vacations.
Interestingly, with three of our four children, the Ob-Gyn found some sort of positive test for various risk indicators of Down’s Syndrome or other things I can’t recall.
But with all four of our children, the thought of an abortion was inconceivable (ironic pun intended). We did not pursue follow up tests for Down’s Syndrome or the like because, frankly, it would not have impacted our decision. Similarly, upon finding out about our fourth child, we knew with 100% certainty that we would have our child and set about planning the difficult contingencies that this would require.
Had my wife and I had no moral basis for preferring abortion over keeping our unexpected child, we could have very well been “justified” in terminating the pregnancy, or even three of our four pregnancies. If you throw in the inconvenience, risk of pregnancy, changes to my wife’s body and my freedom, etc., we could have easily justified terminating any and all of them.
The youngest is now almost two years old, and is remarkably cute and spry. As the youngest of four, she is constantly getting into trouble trying to keep up with her big brothers and sisters. As with all of our children before, her smile and giggle melt the heart and temporarily remove one from the stresses of life. Our life would be incomplete without her.
Those who argue that they are evaluating all of the options under the circumstances really aren’t. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, the act of observing something changes the situation. One never knows what the child will turn out to be, or become, and how the child will change the parents (or parent).
And this is what the older, parental types seem to understand when they appear judgmental of abortion. It is quite simple to them–they look at their own children and shudder to think about how things would be without their own children.
bmmg39:
Well, gee whiz, if you’ve heard these stories, surely that means they must be true!
…not sure why you’re getting snippy over an anecdote that supports your side, Xriq. If I can find the blogs (pro-choice ones) that reported the phenomenon a few years ago, I’ll let you take up the matter with them.
Xriq
I have worked as an escort at clinics in which this has happened (on more than one occasion).
I have been at a clinic in which this has happened and the protester-patient had the gall to justify her abortion and moral superiority over all the immoral sluts there to kill their babies (no joke). [ironically, I was at this clinic b/c I was having difficulty with a pregnancy and the office manager wouldn’t schedule me for an exam another 4 weeks because I admitted I wanted to have some pre-natal testing]
Married Tom
Maybe I’m being overly sensitive but are you implying that anyone who decides to terminate a pregnancy is lacking in morals (or disregarding them to justify their decision)?
Sorry, Married Tom. I’m an ‘older, parent’ type myself, and I’m calling you on the not-so-subtle “you’ll understand when you’re a little older” routine.
It is not quite so simple to me. I can’t imagine not having my children. But I also understand that “what if?” is a very big game to play. What if I had used birth control on the night I conceived one of them–does that mean birth control is immoral and that I have the right to be judgmental of people who use it? What if I had stopped at one child - would that make it right for me to shudder at parents who have a single child?
Mythago, I am just providing my personal perspective. At one point in my life I would have gone ahead with an abortion. I now could not under any circumstance imagine doing so. The factors which would keep me from doing so are a) I personally believe the choice to be immoral though I am not in favor of eliminating the freedom of choice and b) when I look at my own precious children, the thought that I could have opted to delete one of them from existence sickens me. In part, this is because the four are so vastly different and unique.
I said nothing about birth control, so please don’t cast me down that slippery slope. I willingly got a vasectomy, actually two, so clearly I have no issue with this. Given my wife’s fecundity, we would probably have 10 by now without it.
You may choose to think this is a “routine” if you want. I am merely trying to provide a perspective on my own changing opinion on the matter and suggest that the attitude towards abortion may be impacted by time and experience with others as it was with me.
Married Tom:
Most people I know who are parents and who have had abortions couldn’t imagine having terminated a pregnancy for one of the children they have and are raising. I had my abortion over 20 years ago and, while my views on life, death and everything in between have evolved over those years, my comfort with my decision to terminate that pregnancy has not. I still think there are reasons I find termination to be an appropriate decision to make and times that I do not. I also know that not everyone agrees with me. Frankly, there are times I think someone who chose not to have an abortion has actually made as cruel and selfish a decision as those who think abortion is murder think a decision to abort is. I have the sense to realize the people who make those decisions will never evolve to think differently of their decision and I wouldn’t dream of suggesting it.
I understand that your views evolved over time and that you sincerely hope that others’ would evolve in the same manner. Unfortunately, a lot of us have been dealing with “pro-lifers” that keep telling us that eventually our opinions will evolve as yours did we just haven’t gotten there yet. In other words, if we don’t see we’re wrong and they’re right now, we will eventually. To be honest, regardless of intent, it’s as patronizing as when evangelical Christians tell me I realize how wrong it is to be Jewish when I come to accept Christ.
As a much younger woman, almost 20 years ago, I had an abortion about which I have never felt anything but relief. I have no question that I was not ready to be a parent then.
Last fall, three very much wanted children later, I had another one. The time I spent trying to make the decision is the second-most painful period of my life–not because, for me, it was a “moral” decision about a potential life, but because of the weight of arguments both for and against in terms of what was best for my family, and what I could handle physically (it was very soon after my most recent childbirth) and emotionally. I made the wrong decision. Again–not as a moral decision, at least to me, but in terms of having made the wrong calculation about what I really wanted and where my happiness lay. (There’s more to it, but it’s not really relevant here). The months since this recent abortion have been the first-most emotionally painful of my life.
I remain firmly pro-choice. Just because I made the wrong call for me at this time in my life, I’m not in any position to say when it would be the right or wrong call for anyone else.
I have noticed, though, that because of the tendency of those who are anti-choice to use the regret issue against us, many on the pro-choice side are, perhaps, overly reluctant to acknowlege that regret is possible. I noticed, for example, that both the nurse at the clinic (when I went for my after-care visit) and my feminist therapist were very intent on characterizing my feelings as “very normal feelings of grief or sadness that many women feel.” I went back to the therapist the following week and said, basically, “I know we may be hesitant to call it this because of the way the other side uses it against us, but I also want to be able to name my own feeling the way it really feels to me, and what I’m feeling is regret.” If I could go back to that day in the fall, knowing what I know now, I have no doubt that I would make a different decision.
Talking about regret or remorse may indeed, in some cases, be a ‘cheap’ way to gain the ‘forgiveness’ of those who are judgmental. At the same time, I have cringed several times in recent months at the dismissiveness with which many of my fellow pro-choicers treat the very idea of regret over abortion. It makes me feel even lonelier…
PK, thank you. And yours is a reminder that we need to continue to make the case that the very real experience of regret, while not universal by any stretch of the imagination, is a facet of some women’s experience with abortion. Our fear that our political opponents will make hay with women’s hurt should not cause us to deny that that hurt is — on occasion — very real. Sometimes, the right choice hurts.
Thank you, too, Hugo. This is the first blog discussion of abortion I’ve felt I could join since my recent experience (mostly, I’ve found myself shying away from reading many blogs I previously frequented), and it was possible to contribute because of the spirit of generosity and care that prevails here.
PK:
I think you touched on a critical point and possibly one that impacts women who have gone through this ordeal regardless of what their beliefs are on the matter now. Until we can be honest, really honest with ourselves about our feelings, experiences, as well as how and why we make the choices we do, without fear of expressing those things being twisted to “prove” someone else’s point, we’ll forget to focus on what’s important, move on and grow.
The truth is, regardless of your view on the morality of abortion, we all need to work together to prevent unintended pregnancies and improve our healthcare system in an effort not only improve the health status of pregnant women (which will also help decrease developmental anomalies and other dangers to the developing embryo/fetus) and the children they bear. We also need to provide the support people need regardless of the decision they make The last thing people need to do is beat themselves up when they make a decision they’re not 100% comfortable with or sure about.
PK, I’m sorry that others have been thoughtless. You shouldn’t have your feelings denied for the sake of turning away propaganda.
Married Tom, you misunderstood my point about birth control. Your feelings about abortion, as you say, are based on “if I’d had an abortion my beloved child would never have been born.” But that what-if isn’t limited to abortion. If I’d chosen to __________ instead I wouldn’t have my child today can be filled in with everything from “used a condom” to “fought off the man who raped me”. That doesn’t mean anything about the morality or immorality of what you fill in the blank–including abortion.
After all, Ursula LeGuin once wrote a very moving essay about how if she hadn’t had an abortion when she was a young, scared student, she wouldn’t have had the loving marriage and the children she has now. That doesn’t mean keeping an unwanted pregnancy is immoral either.
I once had an abortion in between my third and fourth children. My baby was found to have anencephaly which is where only part of the brain develops and the top of the skull is open above the eyes, it is always fatal although babies with this neural-teubal defect have lived for a few hours/days post-delivery. I was 19 1/2 weeks and had an induction of labour. My baby was born 5 hours later, a normal and quiet delivery and she never breathed, thank goodness. Like most labours, it was incredibly painful, despite the pain relief I was given. I suppose even more so because I knew I would not have a living baby to take home.
I was always grateful, that the choice was already made for me. If her deformity had been less severe and not “incompatable with Life” I may have had to make that choice whether to continue with my pregnancy or not. I opted to have a termination because I didn’t see the point of carrying her to full-term (I had small children) and I had spoken to midwives who had told me of the bad old days before ultrasound, when these babies were only diagnosed after birth and sometimes took several days to die (who knows whether or not they felt any pain).
A year or two later, there was a current affairs story about a family with a baby with the same problem, who had opted to give birth to the baby naturally at term, because of their religious beliefs. The couple were practically raised to “sainthood” by the media (I still cannot see the purpose of that story unless it was to inform people how they could prevent having a baby with a neural-tube defect: it wasn’t) and I thought of all the women who had chosen to have abortions for other reasons and how maybe this was calculated to make then feel “bad” (as if you wouldn’t already feel “bad” enough!).
I don’t feel comfortable with late-term abortions, mine was later and I was frightened she may try to breathe. I find it difficult to believe that in this day and age, anyone could let their pregnancy go that long before making a choice, unless something was found to be seriously wrong with the baby.
But I agree, abortion is definitely a woman’s choice, despite the grief of some men when a woman opts for a termination, it is the woman that has to endure the sickness, the pain and discomfort of pregnancy, the birth. We often forget that it takes two to make a baby, and maybe men should think about and discuss what a woman’s feelings would be should an unplanned pregnancy come out of their sexual encounter/s. So easily the woman is demonised and blamed, yet the man gets away with a clear conscience that despite his irresponsibility (?the man needs to take precautions also?) it is the woman who takes the blame and lives the pain (both physically and emotionally)