I scheduled the email to be sent before I finished editing. Apologies. Here is the final version.
I’ve been thinking about the abortion debate a lot and have opinions on the subject. After I wrote this article I began to think, does my opinion count, will it make a difference, does it make a substantive addition to the discussion. More importantly, do I really need to add my voice to the already saturated discussion. I’m not sure that it does or that I want to, so this may be the last purely political thing I write on this platform (Or anywhere for that matter.)
That said, I already wrote this with the intention of publishing on this platform, and I don’t have anything else anywhere near complete enough to publish today, so here it is, my opinion added to the over-saturated chorus of political opinion.
Our society is not perfect and I don’t think anyone can agree on what the perfect society would look like. “The perfect society” sometimes differs between couples and definitely does between groups. So the argument that a society where only committed couples would have sex, and more importantly desire all the children that regular intercourse produces, is silly and misguided. Abortions, pre or post birth, have been happening since the beginning of recorded history and will continue as long as sex produces babies.
I no longer hold the view that abortion can or should be legislated. I now realize that the world is way more complex and the argument is more nuanced than I think many people are willing to admit aloud for fear that it will weaken the argument that they agree with.
I don’t believe that abortion should be used as a form of contraception. I know some people who have gotten abortions when pregnancy was totally avoidable by the simplest of means. I also know people for whom it was an extremely difficult and fraught decision.
What I’ve been thinking about is how we talk about life.
When does life start? With sperm and eggs? A christian living long ago probably believed that seed needed to be planted in “fertile” soil and masturbating was viewed as a sin (Fiser, et. al). Should we make masturbation illegal as after all, it’s wasting sperm. However sperm die and eggs get flushed with each period as we now know from our more informed understanding of biology. So life starts at conception? What about all the babies that aren’t aborted and don’t live? Stillborn, miscarried, or fertilized eggs that are flushed in the natural cycle (Jarvis). How does one moralize an ectopic pregnancy that threatens to kill the mother at the cost of the child's soul? Should we intervene when we now have the ability to prevent the death of the mother, or do we allow the mother and baby to die in the knowledge that both souls will go to heaven? At this point most sane people would say that, “of course you need to save the mother.”
Where do we draw the line with threat? The argument that the pro-choice movement makes is that any major disruption constitutes a reasonable argument for abortion. That position is totally defensible if you hold that the embryo or fetus isn’t yet alive in the accepted definition of life. So, we have to inspect our beliefs about life.
How do we define life? One of the ways that we define life has to necessarily stem from some outside term and “the soul” works for this purpose. When does the soul get into the body? If you are pro-life there’s probably a pretty good chance you believe it’s at conception. If you are pro-choice, the definition become much more fungible. If it’s self awareness, the ability to introspect and think about yourself in the abstract, should we classify people who not self-aware differently?
I have a somewhat unique window into what it’s like to not be able to introspect and think about your life in the abstract. For a while after my stroke, I couldn’t think outside of myself. I was just living in the moment. I couldn’t think of what might happen and couldn’t think of the past in any meaningful way. I also wasn’t able to take care of myself, having to rely on others for everything.
In fact, if I had remained in that state of being reliant on the rest of society I would have preferred not to continue my life. It would have been preferable to have it ended (This isn’t considering the effect on those around me as that’s not relevant to this discussion.) However, I didn’t remain in a permanent state of living in the moment. I’m now able to reason, think of the future, and realize the consequences of my actions. As I am now, I wouldn’t like to be dead but as I was then, I would have preferred to be. Which leads us back to the question of, “does the potential for human life necessarily constitute a mandate toward preserving that life?” Which in-turn brings us back to the life and abortion question. It’s a cycle that doesn’t have any definite answer or exit point.
People aren’t ever going to agree on when life begins and the sides have such strong differing opinions, both with very valid arguments. I don’t have an answer to what we should do and I don’t expect we’ll ever be able to agree on an answer but I also don’t think the solution is to make a universal rule.
Sources:
Fiser, Harvey L., and Paula K. Garrett. "Life Begins at Ejaculation: Legislating Sperm as the Potential to Create Life and the Effects on Contracts for Artificial Insemination." Am. UJ Gender Soc. Pol'y & L. 21 (2012): 39.
Jarvis, Gavin E. “Early embryo mortality in natural human reproduction: What the data say.” F1000Research vol. 5 2765. 25 Nov. 2016, doi:10.12688/f1000research.8937.2