Abortion

[migrendel]

I will re-affirm my stance I have taken on prior occassions. I believe a woman possesses the fundamental right to end her pregnancy, at all stages of fetal gestation, pursuant to Constitutional rules on liberty, equal protection, and citizenship. I believe that the government, under the same equal protection logic, is obligated to fund elective and therapeutic abortions. I believe the recently passed Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is ill-conceived, because I believe that those procedures should be legal under all circumstances, and they show an inimical bias against womankind. I think that is a fairly comprehensive overview of my view on abortion, and I suppose you all knew all of this before I wrote it down.

[migrendel]

In 1967, Great Britain decriminalized abortions in the first 22 weeks of the pregnancy.

[migrendel]

While a legal decision issued in 1933 allowed for abortions in certain cases where exigent circumstances existed, the decriminalization of elective abortion was achieved by an act of Parliament. I'm aware of the Democratic support of the ban, but that in no way affects my opposition.

[migrendel]

While I have said I cannot concur with the legal logic of the Griswold decision, I do not believe the results of the decision are insupportable by a valid legal theory. While the case does not have the same equal protection and fetal personhood bases that Roe has, because, after all, it only involved contraceptives, the Ninth Amendment could have liberated contraception from the dogma of the state. I do have to admit that some of Roe was awfully legislative in tone. The trimesters system devised by the majority very much resembled a policy decision and was not based upon a logical interpretation or even rational inferences from the text of the Constitution. I believe a more rational and judicial holding would have been to declare laws criminalizing abortion unconstitutional per se, rather than sitting as a body to decide whether what was criminalized in terms of abortion by a statute was acceptable or undesirable. I must say that Roe was to a large extent incorrectly decided, with the Court seemingly trying to strike a balance that would be acceptable to people across the spectrum, even though in hindsight, that hasn't quite happened. It depresses me to see people trying to defend a decision that protects so little, when so much needs to saved from the arbitrary lack of governmental imprimatur.

[migrendel]

While you are right that abortion would not be illegal across the board without Roe, it would be complicated. The Supreme Court would have to review criminal abortion laws of perhaps many states and compare them to their standard. Also, as Nym90 pointed out, it would essentially create a two-class system among women, with wealthy women able to travel to places where it is legal and have it safely performed, and poor women going surreptitiously to abortionists who probably purchased the lion's share of their obstetric tools at a restaraunt supply store. I don't know how a government can countenance women being butchered. I think some women need this just to keep body and soul together. I don't see, supersoulty, how we can force women to be mothers and at the same time respect feminine dignity. I believe it is thoroughly undignified to be forced to bear a child you do not desire.

[migrendel]

I oppose parental notification. I believe that it has the unhelpful effect of involving adversarial parents into a situation which could be potentially explosive. I also concur with the findings of the Florida Supreme Court that such a law violates what they term a right to privacy, by infringing upon a girl's reproductive freedom and physical autonomy.

[migrendel]

To dazzleman:
I fail to see the apparent and vested liberty interest in taking aspirin. After all, no one ruled aspirin consumption part of the right to privacy.
To Christopher Michael:
My graces, you have a fetish for these unicellular organisms. I'll have to just address your ideas, one by one, onerous as that task might be. I'd like to contest your idea that a zygote is a viable organism and a person. First of all, a person isn't even technically pregnant at the point because the zygote or blastocyst hasn't implanted itself in the uterine lining. That's why pharmaceuticals like Birth Control Pills and Post-Coitial Contraception are called contraception and not abortives. But getting back to the issue of viability, it cannot be considered viable because if it was removed from the fallopian tube or uterus, it would not survive. As you know, viability is the point at which something can survive independently. Also, you said you would restrict funding to any state that allows abortion. Is it really that important that many states would enter into fiscal crises over arcane debates over the point of the beginning of personhood? Now for your downright scary idea about the allocation of Medicaid funding. I don't see how the death of a fetus, assuming it was alive in the first place with a life to take, would justify the death of another person. As for disallowing private insurance companies from doing that, I daresay that the Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee could tell you why that is at odds with free enterprise and a free market. I now have the distinct displeasure of addressing the statement that just won the Nobel Prize for Hypocrisy for this year. You emblazoned upon your post, in bold letters, one of the Ten Commandments, Thou shalt not kill. While in Cambridge we refer to them as the three suggestions, I will accept their validity for the sake of argument because you say you do. If you honestly believe in those words, how can you justify your stand in favor of capital punishment? Someone is being killed, and it does say kill. I know you Christians do try to run circles around the wording of that commandment, by saying it only refers to murder, but that just amounts to second guessing what it says. What I think is that you will bang that commandment over our heads whenever it is convenient to you, but whenever it isn't quite suitable to your reactionary agenda, you disown it like some poor relative. I cannot stand such wishy-washiness, and I'm eager to see you defend it, while you say I am complicit in the murder of innocent babies. Now I'm going to do something I haven't done in a while. I'm going to get down on my knees and pray. My prayer will be that the revealed intentions of God that Christopher Michael will be President, disclosed in His lengthy conversations with him, will never come true, because if it does, we'll be screwed six times over.

[migrendel]

Perhaps, Demrepdan, the reconceptualization of abortion as a contraceptive method is just part and parcel of the shift in a society's attitudes. Like you said, a girl may have sex because she wishes to attend to her desire. If she becomes pregnant, I don't see why she can't just end the pregnancy. It would allow women both autonomy over their bodily and economic affairs and allow them to just enjoy an affair when they have one. I believe this reflects a positive movement away from the notions of stodgy responsibility that have been the true villains in the debate over the politics of pleasure.

[migrendel]

I just see abortion as one method of resolution, like bearing the child or miscarrying, for example, would resolve the situation. I used that phrase to just find a nice, alliterative way of showing how even basic and primal aspects of everyday life are politicized.

[migrendel]

I could use more choice words, but I consider you a murderer of the human spirit, willing to crush the hopes of those in the most desparate straits. Let's face it, you're just not a nice person.

[migrendel]

Isn't he such a wit? I think we have a real Dorothy Parker on our hands.

[migrendel]

I'm not betraying my founding form of government. I believe I'm standing foursquare behind the text of the Constitution. I think you might think you're defending the Constitution, but I think you're misguided.

[migrendel]

Well, Miamiu, I'm sure that should come as an epiphany.

[migrendel]

I will defend third-trimester abortion, because I believe it to be a component of liberty that cannot be renounced.
I will begin by contradicting the reasoning of Roe and Casey. They seem to show little understanding of Constitutional principle and are primarily a reflection of what the Supreme Court wanted in the way of policy. The Constitution's text has a fairly absolute mandate as to abortion: Legal at all points before birth. Section 1 of Amendment XIV settles the question of fetal standing before the law. It says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." Fetuses are thus not citizens as defined by the Constitution that the state has a compelling interest in defending. It never fails to amuse me that the same Conservatives who deny rights to illegal immigrants because of their lack of citizenship will twist the meaning of this clause to accomodate fetuses. Amendment IX states "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed so to deny or disparage others retained by the people." I find this to be a perfect example of legal language which protects the rights of women from an overzealous legislature intent upon hallowing fetuses at everyone's expense. Also, the Equal Protection Clause seems to protect abortion because criminalizing it would be tantamount to sex discrimination. It would seem apparent that the consequences of bearing children are very different for men and women. Study after study shows that women bear a much greater economic hardship as a result of reproducing. With this empirical evidence firmly in mind, the failure of the government to provide for relief in the form of abortion to pregnant women would result in a disparate impact, and thus a violation of equal protection. So, to mandate that abortion be a right throughout the pregnancy would merely be abiding by the pure dictates of the law.
Abortion can also be conceptualized from a philosophical perspective. Utilitarians, in the line of Jeremy Bentham, can argue that the happiness of the mother outweighs the rights of the prospective person. Libertarians, in the line of John Stuart Mill, can say that a woman's self determination is a fundamental right. A Kantian definition of Categorical Rights would say that the right to an abortion is an inviolable principle. Even Catholic philosophers, such as St. Augustine, who said fetuses had rights after hominization, and St. Thomas Aquinas, who felt female fetuses were persons after 40 days and males after 80, defended some vestiges of a concept denying fetuses full rights. Of course such a decision might grow in complexity as a fetus ages in gestation, but that is precisely why it should be left to the individual who knows their circumstances.
Personally, I feel that defending a woman's physical autonomy is a moral duty of government. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. I can see no justification for allowing an unwanted pregnancy to obstruct something so innately personal and so circumstancially imperative.
In closing, abortion would rightfully be included in the pantheon of rights considered fundamental to humanity. However, some wish to fob it off like a poor relation. I fear for the future. I fear for the day when humanity's flickering candle of personal dignity goes out. That is why this right must be defended so vigilantly, and gestation should not take priority over all that is so important.

[migrendel]

I'd like to know how the hell you came up with mandatory abortion for imperfect fetuses. It would help if you'd take the time to actually show your reasoning, but I'll work in the blind here. I believe that a right to life is established at birth, and that is what allows for abortion. I believe the right of liberty allows for an individual to make their own decisions regarding reproduction. The sterilization of the mentally retarded without consent would be impermissible because it would violate their right to make their own choice about future heredity. If one can show consent for a mercy killing, I believe that is totally permissible because the right to decide whether one wishes to continue their life, when ravaged by disease, should be fundamental. I don't believe abortion should be mandatory. I believe it should be a personal decision. If someone wishes to keep a defective fetus, that should be their right, but I would on the other hand allow for someone to voluntarily terminate that pregnancy. I don't know how you came up with those ideas. I personally feel you simply decided to put down a host of things that you think will either malign me or reflect a non-textual inference you made about my legal views. In any case, I hope your knowledge of my actual legal views on those topics assauges you.

[migrendel]

Also, if anyone could use my post from last night to support bejekuy's claims, please tell me. Perhaps I'm missing something I should see.

[migrendel]

I believe drugs should be decriminalized in keeping with bodily self-determination, if that's any consolation. I also don't see any point in this PD. You've decided to label abortion murder, and no force of nature, let alone logical argument, will sway you. I'll just let you keep those views. I see no reason to concern myself with fruitless debate.

[migrendel]

I decided to make a preemptory strike, bejkuy. Rather than allowing you to make the typical statements about Planned Parenthood, and its founder, Margaret Sanger, being a racist organization, I'll put her views on civil rights in context and rebut all the common use of quotations that seem to show racism:
Sanger and Eugenics
Eugenics is the science of improving hereditary qualities by socially controlling human reproduction. Unable to foment popular opposition to Margaret Sanger's accomplishments and the organization she founded, Sanger's critics attempt to discredit them by intentionally confusing her views on "fitness" with eugenics, racism, and anti-Semitism. Margaret Sanger was not a racist, an anti-Semite, or a eugenicist. Eugenicists, like the Nazis, were opposed to the use of abortion and contraception by healthy and "fit" women (Grossmann, 1995). In fact, Sanger's books were among the very first burned by the Nazis in their campaign against family planning ("Sanger on Exhibit," 1999/2000). Sanger actually helped several Jewish women and men and others escape the Nazi regime in Germany ("Margaret Sanger and the 'Refugee Department'," 1993). Sanger's disagreement with the eugenicists of her day is clear from her remarks in The Birth Control Review of February 1919:

Eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her first duty to the state. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother (1919a).

Margaret Sanger clearly identified with the issues of health and fitness that concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement, which was enormously popular and well-respected during the 1920s and '30s, when treatments for many hereditary and disabling conditions were unknown. However, Sanger always believed that reproductive decisions should be made on an individual and not a social or cultural basis, and she consistently repudiated any racial application of eugenics principles. For example, Sanger vocally opposed the racial stereotyping that effected passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, on the grounds that intelligence and other inherited traits vary by individual and not by group.

In 1927, the eugenics movement reached the height of its popularity when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, held that it was constitutional to involuntarily sterilize the developmentally disabled, the insane, or the uncontrollably epileptic. Oliver Wendell Holmes, supported by Louis Brandeis and six other justices, wrote the opinion.

Although Sanger uniformly repudiated the racist exploitation of eugenics principles, she agreed with the "progressives" of her day who favored

incentives for the voluntary hospitalization and/or sterilization of people with untreatable, disabling, hereditary conditions
the adoption and enforcement of stringent regulations to prevent the immigration of the diseased and "feebleminded" into the U.S.
placing so-called illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, and dope-fiends on farms and open spaces as long as necessary for the strengthening and development of moral conduct
Planned Parenthood Federation of America finds these views objectionable and outmoded. Nevertheless, anti-family planning activists continue to attack Sanger, who has been dead for over 30 years, because she is an easier target than the unassailable reputation of PPFA and the contemporary family planning movement. However, attempts to discredit the family planning movement because its early 20th-century founder was not a perfect model of early 21st-century values is like disavowing the Declaration of Independence because its author, Thomas Jefferson, bought and sold slaves.

Sanger's Outreach to the African-American Community
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W.E.B. DuBois.

Beginning in 1939, DuBois also served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which was a "unique experiment in race-building and humanitarian service to a race subjected to discrimination, hardship, and segregation" (Chesler, 1992). The Negro Project served African-Americans in the rural South. Other leaders of the African-American community who were involved in the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The Negro Project was also endorsed by prominent white Americans who were involved in social justice efforts at this time, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the most visible and compassionate supporter of racial equality in her era; and the medical philanthropists, Albert and Mary Lasker, whose financial support made the project possible

A passionate opponent of racism, Sanger predicted in 1942 that the "Negro question" would be foremost on the country's domestic agenda after World War II. Her accomplishments on behalf of the African-American community were unchallengeable during her lifetime and remain so today. In 1966, the year Sanger died, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger's early efforts. . . . Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.

Charges of racism against Sanger are most often made by anti-choice activists who are unfamiliar with the history of the African-American community or with Margaret Sanger's collegial relationship with that community's leaders. The tangled fabric of lies and manipulation woven by anti-choice activists around the issues of class, race, and family planning continues to be embroidered today, more than three-quarters of a century after the family planning movement began.

[migrendel]

Now some quotations from the family planning movement and their true meaning:
Published Statements That Distort or Misquote Margaret Sanger
Through the years, a number of alleged Sanger quotations, or allegations about her, have surfaced with regularity in anti-family planning publications. The following are samples of especially pernicious distortions, misattributions, or outright lies that Margaret Sanger's enemies continue to circulate.

"More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief issue in birth control."
A quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this statement was made by the editors of American Medicine in a review of an article by Sanger. The editorial from which this appeared, as well as Sanger's article, "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?" (1919b), were reprinted side-by-side in the May 1919 Birth Control Review.

"The mass of ignorant Negroes still breed carelessly and disastrously, so that the increase among Negroes, even more than the increase among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear their children properly."
Another quotation falsely attributed to Margaret Sanger, this was actually written for the June 1932 issue of The Birth Control Review by W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Taken out of the context of his discussion about the effects of birth control on the balance between quality-of-life considerations and race-survival issues for African-Americans, Dubois' language seems insensitive by today's standards.

"Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the race."
This fabricated quotation, falsely attributed to Sanger, was concocted in the late 1980s. The alleged source is the April 1933 Birth Control Review (Sanger ceased editing the Review in 1929). That issue contains no article or letter by Sanger.

"To create a race of thoroughbreds. . ."
This remark, again attributed originally to Sanger, was made by Dr. Edward A. Kempf and has been cited out of context and with distorted meaning. Dr. Kempf, a progressive physician, was actually arguing for state endowment of maternal and infant care clinics. In her book The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger quoted Dr. Kempf's argument about how environment may improve human excellence:

Society must make life worth the living and the refining for the individual by conditioning him to love and to seek the love-object in a manner that reflects a constructive effect upon his fellow-men and by giving him suitable opportunities. The virility of the automatic apparatus is destroyed by excessive gormandizing or hunger, by excessive wealth or poverty, by excessive work or idleness, by sexual abuse or intolerant prudishness. The noblest and most difficult art of all is the raising of human thoroughbreds (1969).

It was in this spirit that Sanger used the phrase, "Birth Control: To Create a Race of Thoroughbreds," as a banner on the November 1921 issue of the Birth Control Review. (Differing slogans on the theme of voluntary family planning sometimes appeared under the title of The Review, e.g., "Dedicated to the Cause of Voluntary Motherhood," January 1928.)

"The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
This statement is taken out of context from Margaret Sanger's Woman and the New Race (1920). Sanger was making an ironic comment — not a prescriptive one — about the horrifying rate of infant mortality among large families of early 20th-century urban America. The statement, as grim as the conditions that prompted Sanger to make it, accompanied this chart, illustrating the infant death rate in 1920:

Deaths During First Year

1st born children 23%
2nd born children 20%
3rd born children 21%
4th born children 23%
5th born children 26%
6th born children 29% 7th born children 31%
8th born children 33%
9th born children 35%
10th born children 41%
11th born children 51%
12th born children 60%

"We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."
Sanger was aware of African-American concerns, passionately argued by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, that birth control was a threat to the survival of the black race. This statement, which acknowledges those fears, is taken from a letter to Clarence J. Gamble, M.D., a champion of the birth control movement. In that letter, Sanger describes her strategy to allay such apprehensions. A larger portion of the letter makes Sanger's meaning clear:

It seems to me from my experience . . . in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, that while the colored Negroes have great respect for white doctors, they can get closer to their own members and more or less lay their cards on the table. . . . They do not do this with the white people, and if we can train the Negro doctor at the clinic, he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results. . . . His work, in my opinion, should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County's white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us. The minister's work is also important, and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation, as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs (1939).

"As early as 1914 Margaret Sanger was promoting abortion, not for white middle-class women, but against 'inferior races' — black people, poor people, Slavs, Latins, and Hebrews were 'human weeds'."
This allegation about Margaret Sanger appears in an anonymous flyer, "Facts About Planned Parenthood," that is circulated by anti-family planning activists. Margaret Sanger, who passionately believed in a woman's right to control her body, never "promoted" abortion because it was illegal and dangerous throughout her lifetime. She urged women to use contraceptives so that they would not be at risk for the dangers of illegal, back-alley abortion. Sanger never described any ethnic community as an 'inferior race' or as 'human weeds.' In her lifetime, Sanger won the respect of international figures of all races, including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Mahatma Gandhi; Shidzue Kato, the foremost family planning advocate in Japan; and Lady Dhanvanthi Rama Rau of India — all of whom were sensitive to issues of race.

"The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy"
This is the title of a book falsely attributed to Sanger. It was written by Lothrop Stoddard and reviewed by Havelock Ellis in the October 1920 issue of The Birth Control Review. Its general topic, the international politics of race relations in the first decades of the century, is one in which Sanger was not involved. Her interest, insofar as she allowed a review of Stoddard's book to be published in The Birth Control Review, was in the overall health and quality of life of all races and not in tensions between them. Ellis's review was critical of the Stoddard book and of distinctions based on race or ethnicity alone.

[migrendel]

Ms. Sanger did not hate Catholics. I don't know who told you that, but it's just not true. Her opposition was to Catholic dogma. She was born in 1879, in a world vastly different from our own. She was raised a Catholic in a strict Irish family, and she saw the consequences Catholic ideology had on women. Her mother bore 11 children, and died a slow and miserable death because of it. Do you know why Mrs. Sanger's husband didn't use the then available prophylactic devices, and she didn't use the antiseptic douches and pharmaceuticals by then available? Their church stood foursquare against it. A thoroughly silly canon based upon intellectual rubbish cost that woman her life.

[migrendel]

So, supersoulty, your statement that a woman of Irish ethnicity hated Irish people sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

[migrendel]

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What does "fitness" mean if not racial/genetic purity.  Margret Sanger also despised ALL Catholics especially the Irish.

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I'd like to note this is the first time I've used a quote mechanism in all my time here. I did this to preserve the initial statement of supersoulty in case he edits it. So he apparently meant to say "Margaret Sanger despised ALL Catholics, especially the Jewish"? I think not. I think he made an extrapolation with no factual support, and now is trying to run away from that with his tail between his legs. I cannot speak for Mrs. Sanger's train of thought. That was more than a century ago, but I think Margaret Sanger might be the most reliable source. I also think I went overboard when I called it intellectual rubbish. If something is based in faith (a word often paired with the word blind), it has no intellectual basis.

[migrendel]

Yes, they did. But you have to question the values of someone who feels that keeping the population at a sustainable level is somehow objectionable and discrediting.

[migrendel]

I haven't pointed out your spelling and punctuation errors. That would petty. But if you allege a typographical error to change the meaning of an easily renouncable statement, then it becomes imperative for me to show a level of scepticism. I didn't see your post, and in theory in think mending fences sounds wonderful, but with the nature of our discussions, I find it highly inviable in real life.

[migrendel]

Malthus was wrong to an extent. He was right in the fact that species, such as Maple trees, mussels, and humans will continue to reproduce. But he is wrong in the fact that war, poverty, disease, and famine are the only things that can mitigate this trend. If people responsibly decide their future, and plan ahead with prudence, that would be unnecessary. Population would exist in a reasonable state of stability, its equilibrium punctuated only by truly revolutionary events in the life of the planet. That would be normal, of course, because the Darwinian paradigm of gradualism is being increasingly replaced by a more realistic view of change in population and the gene pool. If you risk this, you play Russian roulette with the health of everyone who lives. I do not see how you could turn your back on those already born in favor of those yet to come into existence.