Abortion

I am getting more interested in abortion rights since the murder of Dr. George Tiller on May 31, 2009.

Pro - Life groups have an argument that interests me. They argue that the legalization of abortion defined fetuses as nonhuman and, thus, not subject to protection under the law. You can't have a doctor kill your two year old child, they say, so why can you have a doctor terminate your 6 month old fetus? They compare legalized abortion to eugenics laws, such as those in nazi Germany, that defined the disabled, homosexuals, gypsies, and Jews as nonhuman and unworthy of legal protection. The Nuremburg trials declared that all people will be required to use their own moral sense, not merely the law, to determine if actions they take are illegal in the larger sense. If they fail this test they can be rightly and legally executed after later legal prosecution. That makes this a very grave matter for all people - if you make the morally wrong choice, even if you follow the law or you follow your orders, you could be rightfully hanged by some future tribunal!

So, Pro Life activists argue, they must act to stop abortion since it is, in their eyes, tantamount to the genocide imposed by the nazi regime. They even argue that, since violence can be justified if it helps to stop a genocide, violence against abortion providers can be rightful.

I have two rebuttals.

My first rebuttal regards the role of state power. The role of state power and coercion is exactly and diametrically opposed in the two cases. In abortion, the mother decides on the fate of her pregnancy and the state may not interfere with her decision. In the nazi genocide the state sent armed men to tear babies from the hands of mothers, to starve mothers with their children, and to burn them together. In the case of abortion a woman makes a difficult and often sad decision about how best she can give herself, and any children she choses to have, the best lives she can. I cannot see two more opposite social phenomena than that. It would seem to me that conservatives should be especially opposed to any government forcing women to have unwanted babies. In the most extreme and awful example, Pro Life advocates would demand that the state send armed men to force little girls who have been raped by their own fathers to bear the unwanted babies that could result.

My other rebuttal concerns the status of a fetus. I believe that a fetus is, certainly, human life. But I believe it is a special case of human life. Fetuses cannot possibly perceive the world the way a postpartum child or adult does. This is simply demonstrated by the fact that the fetus spends nine months in extreme confinement, dark, and immersed in liquid. These conditions would be completely intolerable to a baby or adult and they approximate some people's worst and most primal fears of being buried alive. If fetuses were aware of discomfort they should have a nine month long claustrophobic panic attack, and we could measure their racing hearts and soaring cortisol levels. Thus, comparing the treatment of fetuses and children leads to some absurd conclusions. One could argue that, if you packed your two year old child into a rubber bag in darkness and underwater for nine months you'd be indicted for child abuse, therefore it should be illegal to carry a fetus to term.

The brains of fetuses are in the earliest possible state of development, never having begun to coordinate sensory inputs from vision, language, or motor feedback. No one remembers being in the womb, probably because the fetal brain is not developed enough to form memories. I would assume that this state would be like a coma. But of course no one can know.

What I do know is that there are worse things than never being born, and all of them are more likely to happen to an unwanted child. I think that a child who is never really loved is a greater tragedy than a life that never really gets started. A recent study I read showed that people who had experienced any form of childhood trauma, even if they had merely entered foster care at some point, had a many times higher risk for suicide than other people. Suicide is a leading cause of death in our society. How much misery could be alleviated if every child could experience stable, secure, and loving childhoods?

Surely it would be worse if the government forced women to bear unwanted children than to give women a second chance to start their families when they are prepared.