So,
Veganism is in part about not hurting the fuzzy bunnies for me. But veganism also strikes me as a moral choice to live ‘small on the land’. The calories in an ear of corn fed to me v the calories in an egg derived from a chicken fed on that ear of corn, well, it’s more ‘efficient’ in some senses to get the calories direct from the source. Let alone the meat dimension to this question. Then there’s the health considerations like lowering my risk of heart disease and colon cancer while never having to give a thought to BSE other than “must suck to be a beef eater”.
Now how does this relate to abortion? There are two dimensions here. 1) I would be much happier if every kid that came into the world was wanted and cared for, and we had no one bitching about urchins in the street. We’ve had legal abortion here for many years now in the states. This problem isn’t what it used to be. If you love orphanages and think we ought to have them overflowing with kids getting substandard care, please do raise your hand. Alternatively, if you want the necessary tax hikes to make sure that the new generation of accidental children is properly taken care of, please, do step forward. Not to mention sent off to college, because that’s a nearly necessary step to good pay and good jobs in modern, developed countries. Everything we pay to raising abandoned kids would be coming from the public pocket. With no legal abortion there will be more unwanted and abandoned kids. And I sincerely doubt that kids raised in orphanages are coming out with the same advantages as kids raised by relatives or adoptive parents with equivalent resources. So, we’re talking inefficient/low quality people production. Freakonomics, I hear, makes the argument that the recent decline in crime is a product of Roe v Wade. I haven’t read it myself, but I’d like to.
2) The life of the mother. 9 months is a pretty significant chunk out of one’s life. I hear the pain of birth is pretty substantial too (not that abortion is pain free). Birth control isn’t absolutely effective (speaking as the product of a busted condom). Rape, incest, blah, blah, blah. Look, teen pregnancy sucks. And it happens. And taking the child mother out of society’s eye so she can have her kid before getting back to life is a big opportunity cost in her life. Giving up kids for adoption, in addition to returning us to argument (1) has an effect on the mother too. Different effects for different people.
I don’t like abortion. And, obviously, it’s never been an issue for me. If I get a woman pregnant, you can be assured, it won’t be by accident. Abortion is a shitty choice to have to make. But in many cases it’s less shitty than the alternatives.
And finally, no I am not willing to accord to a zygote, embryo, or fetus the same rights accorded to an infant. We don’t treat infants the same under the law as 6 year olds, who we don’t treat the same as adolescents, who we don’t treat the same as 18 yos, 21 yos, 25 yos, 30 yos, or 35yos (and there are more distinctions, those are just the most obvious ones). I even take a historical perspective on the issue of infanticide. Humans have been practicing infanticide longer than we’ve been practicing agriculture. It’s ugly, it’s nasty, I can’t imagine doing it. But who do we think we’re kidding? This should not have shock value for us.
I think abortion is indeed “killing”.
But, ya know… I’m fine with that.
and I love meat and prefer to kill the critters myself if I can.
I don’t hunt for sport, seems to be a waste of time when I could be bagging something to grill.
-DS
Seconding recommendation for Freakonomics.
The part with the bookish Asian grad student hanging out with the crack dealers is priceless.
While I appreciate your exploration of issue intersection (usually anyway, this one seems very well worn ground to me), anyone who expects your views to follow some axiomatic pattern across all situations is worthy of being pointed out that the important aspects of humanity, culture, language, and well.. most everything that hits the core of sociopolitical issues is not at all axiomatic, and that applying this kind of “logic” to such situations is anything but.
I’d actually go even further, and say that those whose views are based on some axiomatic system probably have no reasonable place in influencing politics and social requirements, since their ability to think about he problem space is essentially nonfunctional.
My borderline-objectivist aunt would have a field day with this post.
You’d come out believeing the same thing you do now, but stating it far more carefully.
Is that good or bad? You know, in an absolute sense.
Giving up kids for adoption … has an effect on the mother too. Different effects for different people.
This is such a key, key point to me (or more specifically to my experience) that it saddens (or even enrages) me that I almost never see it mentioned, so I’m impressed and pleased that you bring it up. Oddly enough, it was something that I read by Germaine Greer about 25 years ago that helped me focus my thoughts there.
What Germaine Greer claimed (this is from memory, as it’s been a while and I don’t have the source at hand) is that there is a bonding that happens over the course of a pregnancy so that by the time a mother has carried a child to term you can’t just take the child away without major psychological ramifications. She went on the say that this might lead to the argument that abortions are a problem in this area, but she said no, on the contrary, what thtis means is that abortion needs to be available easily and early and without difficulty because the longer and harder it is to obtain the more difficult things will be for the mother.
I’m not claiming agreement here (what I’ve seen is that the bonding thing differs tremendously in quality nature and existence in different circumstances), just pointing out my memory of her argument.
What this clarified for me is what I saw a good friend go through after giving up a baby for adoption when she was a teenager (thinking, at the time, that this was the “best thing for the child”). At that point in her life abortion was not an option for her (although this was not true at a later point — in fact, this friend has said “I’ve given up a baby for adoption, I’ve had an abortion, and I’ve given birth to a much-wanted child so I feel uniquely qualified to say that there are three completely different experiences”).
Anyway, this was a terrible awful traumatic thing for her for the next 25 years. This led to a yearly clinical take-to-your-bed suicidal depression that she didn’t even recognize coincided with her son’s birthday the first few times it occurred (funny thing that subconscious). The duration of the depression diminished over the years (from weeks to days) and in time went away. But it was a terrible, awful thing for anybody to endure and must not be dismissed or ignored.
Yes, this is as limitedly anecdotal as possible, and as you say, there are different effects for different people. But I don’t think it’s ethically sound to ignore these effects, as anti-abortion campaigns do. When I see billboards that say “Adoption not Abortion” I shake my fist and scream in my car. It’s a cruel, cruel thing to impose on anybody, what my friend went through.
I agree, personally, if I were to get my girlfriend pregnant…I would feel less guilty about her getting an abortion than trying to give my kid up for adoption and have him/her resent me later in life for being irresponsible (which happens, intentionally or not) and potentially turn into a criminal or other substandard citizen because he/she didn’t have opportunities to excel. Plus putting my girlfriend through the emotional and physical pain of child birth only to give away the product wouldn’t be very nice either. I’m not in a position to raise a child, and when I do have children, I want them to have the best opportunities I can give them. If by chance I make a mistake or something doesn’t work correctly, I’d pursue that option and make sure not to make the same mistake twice.