{"id":44,"date":"2002-04-11T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2002-04-11T22:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=44"},"modified":"2002-04-11T17:05:00","modified_gmt":"2002-04-11T22:05:00","slug":"abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

When virtualexile<\/a> surprised me by announcing that he’s pro-life, the first thought that flashed through my mind was “Really? But he didn’t seem<\/i> like a fundie lunatic.” And he still doesn’t. So, to negotiate my feelings, I feel compelled to articulate my thinking on this issue.
\n
\nSetting aside the slogans, hyperbolic names, (really, who is “anti-life”, or “anti-choice”?), and unusual special cases (rape\/incest, serious birth defects, dangerous to the mother) let’s look at the practical angle. Undesired pregnancies happen. What consequences does the mother have to face, and what consequences should we force them to face? Abortions surely occur more often when abortion is legal, but, I suspect, and any woman who has had an abortion or given birth can attest or deny, pregnancy either ends early, or it ends in pain, sometimes both, and I suspect few women make a hobby out of it. If she has a child she strongly wished to avoid, what are the consequences for the child? And, to my mind, from policy perspective, the most important question is, what are the consequences for a society?<\/p>\n

The unborn child is taking up residence inside<\/i> the mother’s body: consuming the mother’s nutrients, nauseating, discomforting, and seriously inconveniencing the mother during the various stages of pregnancy. It is, for those 9 months, a parasite. After it is born, she could theoretically give the child up for adoption, so post-natal inconvenience is arguably irrelevant. But, many would be (or would-rather-not-be, as it were) mothers will turn to illegal, ungoverned abortions, which are likely to be far riskier than the legal ones, which I don’t believe are totally safe anyway, but I really don’t know. <\/p>\n

At what point does the unborn child become enfolded under the protections of the law as an individual? Is a woman who drinks while pregnant guilty of forcibly feeding alcohol to someone who cannot legally consume it? Obviously not under the current law, but there’s a point here, which those who accuse would-rather-not-be-mothers of murder are failing to appreciate. The consequences for the child are that it either will not be born at all, or that it will be born to a mother that would rather not have it. While having an at best indifferent mother sucks, I think that looking at the child’s welfare alone, I’d favor an anti-abortion stance. <\/p>\n

Let’s now look at the cost to society as a whole. There’s enforcement expenses. There’s criminalization of a significant, though not overwhelming, number of young females. There’s an increase in births, but particularly in births of underappreciated children. There’s a decrease in marketplace employment, particularly female, with an increase in domestic labor that is probably even greater, which leads to reduced taxes, and thus reduced public sphere development, though that’s a stretch, and probably a marginal factor. There’s a tangential issue relating to paternity suits, and payments, but I don’t really think that’s directly relevant. <\/p>\n

It’s scary to me that some view the use of birth control as wrong, because it denies the potential for life. Early stage abortions, prior to the development of a nervous system more sophisticated than that of a jellyfish, strike me as no more morally troublesome. Late stage abortions, are somewhat heartless, but not more evil in my book than throwing your ex-druggie, brain-fried, little brother, who can’t find a job, out of your house because you don’t want to or can’t put up with him, his use of your space, and his consumption of your food. And from the big picture, I think legal abortions provide for a more sustainable rate of population growth and a better public sphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When virtualexile surprised me by announcing that he’s pro-life, the first thought that flashed through my mind was “Really? But he didn’t seem like a fundie lunatic.” And he still doesn’t. So, to negotiate my feelings, I feel compelled to articulate my thinking on this issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,33],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-politics","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}