I recently saw a statistic that was fairly startling to me; that 40% of American women have had an abortion. I did a small amount of web-based research that suggested maybe the number is more like 30%.
This made me recall a conversation I had recently (with another guy) where we were musing about the strong reaction to the War on Women (or caterpillars, if you prefer) that was engendered when access to birth control was implicated. Whereas support for access to birth control is fairly strong, support for access to abortion is often very tepid even among those who support such access as an intellectual exercise. My friend said that abortion was just something that felt so alien.
If that statistic is accurate, maybe it’s something that’s alien to middle aged guys but not so alien to America’s women. I’m one of those people who support access to abortion as an intellectual exercise because I don’t regard a fetus in its early stages to be morally equivalent to a human even though it has the potential to become human. But, I don’t have the emotional response to restrictions on abortions that I do to restrictions on birth control because the former is nothing I’ve had to deal with directly and, so far as I recall, only one person I know has talked to me directly about her own experience.
It’s easy for me to say because I don’t have to deal with the backlash, but I think we could have a more honest discussion about abortion if the people having them were more open about the experience. The unknown horrors conjured up by your brain in ignorance are usually more terrifying than reality. I’ve told the story before about how I was something of a homophobe before getting to know some honest to god gay people. (Or, rather, people I knew were gay — I had known them, I just didn’t know that I knew them.) In much the same way, I expect that real atheists are less foreign to believers than whatever notions they have in their heads in the absence of real-world examples. And, I expect the people who actually have abortions present more sympathetic cases than the baby-murdering monsters currently occupying the void and informing public discourse.
You can still condemn abortion if you’d like, but such condemnation should be informed by the reality that 30-40% of the women you know may have participated in the exercise.
I’m against abortion, and I totally agree with this point. Regardless of the thing you want to change (abortion, tax rates, class basketball), too many of us find it easier to say “You’re an evil asshole” instead of “I disagree with your views on this subject”.
Absolutely right. Racism declined (not enough, granted) when blacks and whites began going to school and working side by side; the biggest impetus for improved gay rights was wholesale “coming out.” It’s harder to demonize Aunt Zelda than some evil stranger.
It’s maybe less common, but for the sake of “balance,” I’ll go ahead and note that I’m not a huge fan of atheist movement types who seem to hang out with other atheists, talking about how benighted abstract Christians are.
We all do it to a point though. Dems read Krugman and watch msnbc, Repubs read Ann Coulter and watch Fox News. This confirmation bias has helped polarize our population and has helped contributed to the current ravine between people of different political spectrums.
I read Krugman and Coulter but I hardly ever watch FOX or MSNBC, Hmmm what does that make me? Oh Yeah as my old 7th grade history teacher would say I am a Republicrat!
Abortion is such a troubling issue. I know women who were 100 percent for abortion then after they have a child will suddenly turn around and be against it. I have known women who have had them and stated it was no big deal and others who wish they had not had them. I worked with a guy who was a big advocate (actively working to end abortion clinics) against abortion, had twelve kids and was having problems in his marriage due to money and kid problems. I find it interesting that it is mostly men who have make the laws governing women’s bodies. I find it hard for me to support abortion but I truly cannot imagine what it feels like to carry a baby in a womb for 9 months. Truly an issue that should be decided by the fairer sex in my book.
I agree that it would be better if women took a more active role in politics and lawmaking. That being said, it appears that women’s views on abortion vary from men by only a small degree. It appears that other factors, like education and age, trump gender in thoughts on this matter.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147734/Americans-Split-Along-Pro-Choice-Pro-Life-Lines.aspx
Seems like if you’re against nanny-state government; regardless of your views on the propriety of abortion, you should be against laws restricting other women’s ability to get them.
The exception to this is if you believe that a fully human life begins at conception – then restrictions aren’t necessarily arising out of nanny-state concerns; but rather as a policy choice between one person’s life and well-being versus that of another who is unable to speak for him or herself. However, I don’t think this view really allows for rape or incest exceptions — if the fetus is a fully human life, it’s not the fault of that human that he or she came into being through rape or incest. Furthermore, the penalty for abortion under this view should probably be the same as for manslaughter or murder.
Alas, I have had to perform the same tortured logic, and while I at times hoped the logic came up with a different result, I have not found it. If one believe that life starts at conception, it is difficult to allow for any exceptions to abortion being outlawed.
I’ve had an interesting experience to, on several occasions visit a Planned Parenthood clinic to talk to the doctors and staff about the functions and services actually performed and deliveted and about the people who make use of or have need of those services. I’m pro-reproductive rights, but the experience of going behind the talking points and really learning was invaluable. I wish that more people who oppose reproductive freedoms could at least learn more about the issues and the real stories of the women using services like Planned Parenthood.
The Guttmacher Institute’s abortion statistics are probably the most thorough and widely quoted. Both pro- and anti-abortion groups generally agree on their accuracy.
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/presskits/abortion-US/statsandfacts.html
They were eye-opening for me.
I am pretty fiercely anti-abortion, but I cringe when some preacher-boy gets on a stemwinder about “them” having abortions (which, by the way, the Southern Baptist Church did not oppose when it was perceived as a Catholic Cause). “Them” almost certainly includes a substantial percentage of the women within the sound of his voice. It’s dangerous to assume that you’re preaching to the choir, quite apart from the danger of promoting pride and partisanship if you’re right.
I’ll resist the temptation to write a treatise about the shaky foundations of Roe v. Wade (I know Doug’s readers are not “the choir” and I don’t want to spend all day writing rejoinders), but if nothing else, its aftermath taught (with the help of C. Everett Koop and the late Francis Schaeffer) taught the evangelical world that there are worse things than being visibly pregnant, or having a toddler in tow, while unmarried.
As a seemingly unlikely source (Lily Tomlin) put it, “Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.”