My hope is that it helps us understand what it is we disagree about. Without this starting point there is no productive debate. There is almost no support for abortion in the third trimester, which is a reminder that much of the substantive debate isn't about whether a woman should control her body or not, but about when we should say there's a body and when we should say there are two human bodies. Or, to paraphrase CS Lewis, it is not that people don't object to killing witches, it is that people don't believe witches exist. ("You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.")
On your question about "grave moral evil". the first thing I did was to stop thinking about people onvolved in efforts to prohibit legal abortion as involved in evil. the second was to refine the differences between the two "sides", rather that people were commited mor to one positive value more than another. The two values are respect for life and respect for women's moral agency. There may have been a time in history when ethical dilemmas came down to obvious choice between good and evil. That time is mostly over; instead we are faced with competing goods where both can not be honored. Whichever one is chosen, ther is loss and we regret the loss. It is hard to maintain this balance as it requires not thinking your value is the better one.
"Whichever one is chosen, ther[e] is loss and we regret the loss."
Good point. I made a similar point to my husband earlier. Perhaps I should make, "Don't pretend loss didn't happen just because it was the best we could do," a motto.
I'll add that I've noticed mutual distrust between the pro-life and pro-choice side when it comes to protecting the mother from severe injury from a pregnancy. The pro-life side tends to suspect that medical exemptions from abortion restrictions will be abused as cover for elective abortions, the pro-choice side worries that pro-life law would hold medical exemptions under such suspicion that doctors may hesitate to save pregnant women's lives while those lives are still easy to save.
The US is a country with strong self-defense norms, and I got to thinking, just how much threat does someone have to feel from another before homicide in self-defense is justified?
Honestly, I don't think it's all that much. If a senile granny mistakenly stumbled into a house one midnight and the homeowner shot her as an intruder, the homeowner would plead self-defense. In Jewish law, a fetus threatening its mother's life has the status of "rodef", "pursuer", one pursuing the mother with intent to kill her, who may be killed to defend the one pursued. If a pregnant woman must be much more threatened by her pregnancy than, say, a homeowner would be by an intruder, in order to abort in self-defense, I couldn't justify that double-standard.
The mother's life has value, too. Whatever abortion laws in the several states end up being, there must be medical exemptions of some kind. Is it still possible to build trust that those exemptions will be honored?
“Don't pretend loss didn't happen just because it was the best we could do.” — This. So much this. For all the things. I think I need to join you in making it a motto (and in reminding myself of it, too!)
What do you hope you can learn about people on the other side of this debate?
I don't live in a bubble, so I've always heard, listened to, and read, opposing views.
How do you hope this debate will prepare you to talk to people you love, who disagree with you about abortion?
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't tend to talk political disagreement points with the people I'm close to. The points of agreement and non-political discussions matter far more.
I find it very hard at the moment to have an abortion discussion with anyone who is unwilling to discuss the idea of men bearing the brunt of anti-abortion legislation.
As Gabrielle Blair, Mormon mother of 6, puts it, "men are 100% responsible for unwanted pregnancies". In her ages-ago twitter thread, she contemplated getting boys vasectomies at puberty, which, if you consider abortion a grave on-the-scale-of-slavery moral evil, sounds absolutely reasonable. Her excellent thread: https://designmom.com/twitter-thread-abortion/
Once you start discussing any legislation that impacts *men* or requires any sort of intervention on mens bodies, its amazing how quickly men (and women!) are repulsed. It calls to mind the many trials of male birth control that are stopped because of the side effects experienced in the trials, side effects that are minute compared to those tolerated by millions of women on birth control today.
Of course, we don't talk about vasectomies or male birth control in the context of the abortion debate. Because it's not actually about abortion. It's about state power. And specifically, it's a desire for the state to impose the will of "the Church" (catholic / orthodox / evangelical, definitely Christian).
In the leaked opinion it's about not just abortion, but nullifying gay marriage, reinstating sodomy laws, giving states the chance to ban birth control, taking trans kids to re-education camps. It's not a return to the 1950s, it's a police state on a scale that is almost unimaginable.
To answer your question - what I'd hope to learn is just how how clearly anti-abortion folks see the illiberal society they hope to impose. Are they horrified by banning birth control, or do they embrace it? How about taking away their guncle's ability to marry?
And I honestly wonder if anti-abortion folks understand the dream of what our pluralistic democracy could be. The hopes the majority of our country has for our nation's future. And the heartbreak of its destruction.
I think proposing male vasectomies as the solution to abortion is like proposing male behandings as the solution to domestic violence. In both cases, the claim is that the solution to male capacity (for good and evil) is mutilation, not character.
Vasectomies are relatively painless (less painful than any pregnancy, and less than injuries men regularly endure for sports) and are completely reversible. If we are talking about a horrifying moral evil, it's well worth the harm. Especially balanced against the harm the anti-abortion legislation will directly result in.
Okay, I’m honestly curious: do you believe that mandatory vasectomies would really be “worth the harm” if it could prevent a horrifying moral evil? Let’s say that it turns out there’s a gene that causes pedophilia and we can test for it: should we force everyone who Carrie’s that gene to be sterilized? I realize this isn’t the main question on the table, but I’ve been wondering about it ever since I saw the original vasectomy thread.
For me, as a person who believes abortion is a grave moral evil, the mandatory male vasectomies is a no-go for the same reason that I don’t support pregnant women in “protective” custody to keep them from getting abortions or taking drugs, and the same reason I don’t want to see all families put under 24/7 video surveillance to prevent child abuse: while such draconian strategies might prevent a grave harm from occurring, they would also create other grave harms, and I’m not utilitarian enough to be okay with that. Which is also why, though I want to see abortion banned, I also very much want to see legislation explicitly preventing women from being prosecuted for obtaining abortions, because that seems like the only way to prevent nightmare scenarios like women being jailed for miscarriages.
It's a tough counterfactual, since I vehemently oppose state violence (and interfering with a person's bodily autonomy *is* state violence).
But... if I thought that abortion was of similar moral gravity to slavery or the holocaust and if I thought that the supreme court overruling Roe v Wade was a step in the right direction, despite horrific legislation on the books or already implemented, yes, I think then I would be open to discussing state mandated vasectomies seriously. I truly think state mandated vasectomies are roughly equivalent to forcing women to get illegal abortions or carry a pregnancy to term.
I do hear your desire for better policy than what we'll get in a post Roe world. Sadly, women are already prosecuted for miscarriages. Many many more women will be. More importantly, women will die - they'll die because hospitals deny necessary care for ectopic pregnancies or brutal infections. And they'll die of botched abortions. We *know* that maternal mortality will increase.
I also think it's no small thing that the leak set the stage for rolling back a whole host of other legislation. I don't see this as being much about abortion at all, but much more about the rapid and vicious expansion of state power, and state violence.
I think it's worth pointing out that vasectomies are, in fact, relatively painless only on average (about 1% of men who get them experience severe chronic pain) and are often but not reliably reversible. If I had a vasectomy at 13 and got it reversed at 29 around the time I got married, I'd be looking at only a 25% chance of being able to have kids.
To be fair, there may be a form of male contraception that is completely, reliably reversible, but vasectomy isn't it.
A friend of mine was married, his wife had an affair, but they were trying to repair their marriage. A child was conceived when they were patching things up. The father was overjoyed, and thought the mother was too although she did seem less enthusiastic. A number of weeks later the wife secretly got an abortion, but my friend found out and was heartbroken. Is this truly a case if the man being 100% responsible for the "unwanted" pregnancy?
I’m really sorry for your friend and everyone involved. This is such a deeply personal situation, I don’t feel comfortably talking about it specifically.
That said, I recommend reading Blair’s whole thread. It’s very possible to avoid getting someone pregnant who does not want to be.
My point is that actually that it is completely possible for abortions to occur in the context of marriage, and for it not to be apparent that the pregnancy is unwanted by the woman. In addition, there is a big lack of resources/support for men grieving children lost thru abortion.
I think it's important to note, only somewhat relatedly, that getting a person pregnant is a common tactic in abusive relationships (married and otherwise). In one 2010 study, 20% of the women going to a family clinic said their partner/abuser had interfered with birth control methods to try and get them pregnant. More than half reported some form of violence from their partner.
My hope is that it helps us understand what it is we disagree about. Without this starting point there is no productive debate. There is almost no support for abortion in the third trimester, which is a reminder that much of the substantive debate isn't about whether a woman should control her body or not, but about when we should say there's a body and when we should say there are two human bodies. Or, to paraphrase CS Lewis, it is not that people don't object to killing witches, it is that people don't believe witches exist. ("You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.")
On your question about "grave moral evil". the first thing I did was to stop thinking about people onvolved in efforts to prohibit legal abortion as involved in evil. the second was to refine the differences between the two "sides", rather that people were commited mor to one positive value more than another. The two values are respect for life and respect for women's moral agency. There may have been a time in history when ethical dilemmas came down to obvious choice between good and evil. That time is mostly over; instead we are faced with competing goods where both can not be honored. Whichever one is chosen, ther is loss and we regret the loss. It is hard to maintain this balance as it requires not thinking your value is the better one.
"Whichever one is chosen, ther[e] is loss and we regret the loss."
Good point. I made a similar point to my husband earlier. Perhaps I should make, "Don't pretend loss didn't happen just because it was the best we could do," a motto.
I'll add that I've noticed mutual distrust between the pro-life and pro-choice side when it comes to protecting the mother from severe injury from a pregnancy. The pro-life side tends to suspect that medical exemptions from abortion restrictions will be abused as cover for elective abortions, the pro-choice side worries that pro-life law would hold medical exemptions under such suspicion that doctors may hesitate to save pregnant women's lives while those lives are still easy to save.
The US is a country with strong self-defense norms, and I got to thinking, just how much threat does someone have to feel from another before homicide in self-defense is justified?
Honestly, I don't think it's all that much. If a senile granny mistakenly stumbled into a house one midnight and the homeowner shot her as an intruder, the homeowner would plead self-defense. In Jewish law, a fetus threatening its mother's life has the status of "rodef", "pursuer", one pursuing the mother with intent to kill her, who may be killed to defend the one pursued. If a pregnant woman must be much more threatened by her pregnancy than, say, a homeowner would be by an intruder, in order to abort in self-defense, I couldn't justify that double-standard.
The mother's life has value, too. Whatever abortion laws in the several states end up being, there must be medical exemptions of some kind. Is it still possible to build trust that those exemptions will be honored?
“Don't pretend loss didn't happen just because it was the best we could do.” — This. So much this. For all the things. I think I need to join you in making it a motto (and in reminding myself of it, too!)
What do you hope you can learn about people on the other side of this debate?
I don't live in a bubble, so I've always heard, listened to, and read, opposing views.
How do you hope this debate will prepare you to talk to people you love, who disagree with you about abortion?
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't tend to talk political disagreement points with the people I'm close to. The points of agreement and non-political discussions matter far more.
I find it very hard at the moment to have an abortion discussion with anyone who is unwilling to discuss the idea of men bearing the brunt of anti-abortion legislation.
As Gabrielle Blair, Mormon mother of 6, puts it, "men are 100% responsible for unwanted pregnancies". In her ages-ago twitter thread, she contemplated getting boys vasectomies at puberty, which, if you consider abortion a grave on-the-scale-of-slavery moral evil, sounds absolutely reasonable. Her excellent thread: https://designmom.com/twitter-thread-abortion/
Once you start discussing any legislation that impacts *men* or requires any sort of intervention on mens bodies, its amazing how quickly men (and women!) are repulsed. It calls to mind the many trials of male birth control that are stopped because of the side effects experienced in the trials, side effects that are minute compared to those tolerated by millions of women on birth control today.
Of course, we don't talk about vasectomies or male birth control in the context of the abortion debate. Because it's not actually about abortion. It's about state power. And specifically, it's a desire for the state to impose the will of "the Church" (catholic / orthodox / evangelical, definitely Christian).
In the leaked opinion it's about not just abortion, but nullifying gay marriage, reinstating sodomy laws, giving states the chance to ban birth control, taking trans kids to re-education camps. It's not a return to the 1950s, it's a police state on a scale that is almost unimaginable.
To answer your question - what I'd hope to learn is just how how clearly anti-abortion folks see the illiberal society they hope to impose. Are they horrified by banning birth control, or do they embrace it? How about taking away their guncle's ability to marry?
And I honestly wonder if anti-abortion folks understand the dream of what our pluralistic democracy could be. The hopes the majority of our country has for our nation's future. And the heartbreak of its destruction.
I think proposing male vasectomies as the solution to abortion is like proposing male behandings as the solution to domestic violence. In both cases, the claim is that the solution to male capacity (for good and evil) is mutilation, not character.
Vasectomies are relatively painless (less painful than any pregnancy, and less than injuries men regularly endure for sports) and are completely reversible. If we are talking about a horrifying moral evil, it's well worth the harm. Especially balanced against the harm the anti-abortion legislation will directly result in.
Okay, I’m honestly curious: do you believe that mandatory vasectomies would really be “worth the harm” if it could prevent a horrifying moral evil? Let’s say that it turns out there’s a gene that causes pedophilia and we can test for it: should we force everyone who Carrie’s that gene to be sterilized? I realize this isn’t the main question on the table, but I’ve been wondering about it ever since I saw the original vasectomy thread.
For me, as a person who believes abortion is a grave moral evil, the mandatory male vasectomies is a no-go for the same reason that I don’t support pregnant women in “protective” custody to keep them from getting abortions or taking drugs, and the same reason I don’t want to see all families put under 24/7 video surveillance to prevent child abuse: while such draconian strategies might prevent a grave harm from occurring, they would also create other grave harms, and I’m not utilitarian enough to be okay with that. Which is also why, though I want to see abortion banned, I also very much want to see legislation explicitly preventing women from being prosecuted for obtaining abortions, because that seems like the only way to prevent nightmare scenarios like women being jailed for miscarriages.
It's a tough counterfactual, since I vehemently oppose state violence (and interfering with a person's bodily autonomy *is* state violence).
But... if I thought that abortion was of similar moral gravity to slavery or the holocaust and if I thought that the supreme court overruling Roe v Wade was a step in the right direction, despite horrific legislation on the books or already implemented, yes, I think then I would be open to discussing state mandated vasectomies seriously. I truly think state mandated vasectomies are roughly equivalent to forcing women to get illegal abortions or carry a pregnancy to term.
I do hear your desire for better policy than what we'll get in a post Roe world. Sadly, women are already prosecuted for miscarriages. Many many more women will be. More importantly, women will die - they'll die because hospitals deny necessary care for ectopic pregnancies or brutal infections. And they'll die of botched abortions. We *know* that maternal mortality will increase.
I also think it's no small thing that the leak set the stage for rolling back a whole host of other legislation. I don't see this as being much about abortion at all, but much more about the rapid and vicious expansion of state power, and state violence.
I think it's worth pointing out that vasectomies are, in fact, relatively painless only on average (about 1% of men who get them experience severe chronic pain) and are often but not reliably reversible. If I had a vasectomy at 13 and got it reversed at 29 around the time I got married, I'd be looking at only a 25% chance of being able to have kids.
To be fair, there may be a form of male contraception that is completely, reliably reversible, but vasectomy isn't it.
This got me thinking - someone should write an article for folks who aren't in the know about all the 'common' outcomes of childbirth.
In the meantime, here's a list: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/labor-and-delivery/in-depth/postpartum-complications/art-20446702
And here's some helpful details about prolapse, which ~50% of women experience after birth: https://www.thewholemother.com/prolapse-all-your-questions-answered/
Yes, actually! It's called Smart RISUG. Very intriguing.
I'd also note that long term complications from pregnancy and childbirth are much more common.
A friend of mine was married, his wife had an affair, but they were trying to repair their marriage. A child was conceived when they were patching things up. The father was overjoyed, and thought the mother was too although she did seem less enthusiastic. A number of weeks later the wife secretly got an abortion, but my friend found out and was heartbroken. Is this truly a case if the man being 100% responsible for the "unwanted" pregnancy?
I’m really sorry for your friend and everyone involved. This is such a deeply personal situation, I don’t feel comfortably talking about it specifically.
That said, I recommend reading Blair’s whole thread. It’s very possible to avoid getting someone pregnant who does not want to be.
My point is that actually that it is completely possible for abortions to occur in the context of marriage, and for it not to be apparent that the pregnancy is unwanted by the woman. In addition, there is a big lack of resources/support for men grieving children lost thru abortion.
Absolutely.
I think it's important to note, only somewhat relatedly, that getting a person pregnant is a common tactic in abusive relationships (married and otherwise). In one 2010 study, 20% of the women going to a family clinic said their partner/abuser had interfered with birth control methods to try and get them pregnant. More than half reported some form of violence from their partner.
Here's the summary of that study: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/domestic-abuse-abusive-men-sabotage-birth-control/story?id=9639340
Here's a round up of domestic violence & abortion, which includes a link to a study that 34% of domestic violence survivors reported interference with birth control methods: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/domestic-abuse-abusive-men-sabotage-birth-control/story?id=9639340