What I Used to Believe about Abortions

Senator James Lankford (R-idiculous) set off some controversy by arguing that abortion is a men's rights issue, which of course was immediately pounced on by just about everyone.  It reminded me, though, of some things I used to believe about abortion, and so I thought I'd share some conservative arguments from my past that go beyond simple Biblical arguments (which I already dissected in my last post, Unplanned).

First of all, let's talk about the men's rights argument goes.  Basically,

• I had something to do with the pregnancy, too.
• The sperm involved in creating the embryo is an extension of my body.
• The embryo is therefore 50% mine, and 50% her's.
• And since it is equally mine, I should have an equal say in what happens to it.

Which would be a perfectly fine argument if the embryo was being grown in a Petri dish (and if you accept that "mine" doesn't imply property ownership but legal responsibility).  If it was being grown outside of a human being, and if women's eggs could be harvested as easily as male sperm, then the effort put into creating the embryo would be truly 50/50 on the part of the biological progenitors and all of the work would be on the doctors and scientists tasked with successfully growing it to viability.

Of course, that's not what happens except in perhaps one out of every billion or so births, so the argument then proceeds that the role of women in the process must be questioned.

There is a song that came out in 1998 by Everlast called "What It's Like."

The basic premise of the song is that you really have to be in the same situation as someone else to understand "what it's like" to be stuck making the choices that person is having to make.  It tells three stories in between the choruses, and I liked the first and the third easily enough, but the second I mocked.  That story goes like this:

Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom who said he was in love
He said, "Don't worry about a thing, baby doll, I'm the man you've been dreamin' of."
But three months later he said he won't date her or return her call
And she sweared, "God damn if I find that man I'm cuttin' off his balls."
And then she heads for the clinic and she gets some static walkin' through the door.
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner, and they call her a whore.  (source)

And my mocking basically called her a dumb bitch for believing Tom, and saying it was all her fault for getting pregnant.  I wholeheartedly agreed with those who were expressed in the last line, calling her a killer, sinner, and whore.

To summarize what leads to this idea,

• When a woman gets pregnant, it's her fault.  She is responsible for birth control, responsible for declining or accepting sex based on whether or not she would like to get pregnant, and responsible for being able to resist force or coercion, no matter her age.  
• If she slips up on any of these points, she's irresponsible, and should therefore be given more responsibility by forcing her to care for an infant she does not want.  
• Meanwhile, the man should be forced to provide care for the infant, even if that means that the man should be forced back into the woman's life, even if she does not desire that (such as if she was raped or if the man turned out to be an ass who no one would want in the child's life).

I didn't place fault in the hypothetical Tom for failing to wear a condom, or for running the other way.  That's just how a man sometimes behaves.

My favorite line to say in those days was this:

I'm pro-choice, I just believe that the choice was made the day the woman had sex.  She already chose to have the kid.

Which is an awfully easy way of looking at the world.  If every woman actually had that choice, then perhaps that would be a fair way to see things.  It's hopelessly optimistic about the power available to women in this day and age, even while it reflects a willingness to grant men the power to spew their progeny far and wide without repercussions. 

It was, therefore, when I realized that choices could be considerably more complicated than that that I changed my opinion.  I had already accepted rape and incest as valid reasons to get abortions, even though I didn't like it, because of the belief that women should have at least that much control of what happens to them.  But then I started thinking about hypothetical situations, and imagined a woman who had been raped by someone who she didn't feel she could report, for whatever reason - perhaps because the shock of rape by someone she was so close to her left her struggling with complex emotions she had to spend time struggling to work out.  Should this woman be denied access to an abortion, knowing full well that she hadn't dealt with the emotions yet that would enable her to be a fit parent, and knowing that she was raped and therefore hadn't had a choice? 

The answer was a resounding "no," of course.  But, if abortion was only available in the case of rape or incest, then she wouldn't be able to have one unless she either drummed up the courage to report it or she was legally compelled to report it - that is, her report is forced out of her.  Forcing a woman to do anything, especially after she has been a victim of force, seems cruel and unusual.  The resulting realization is that abortion has to be legal just because we can't know the circumstances that led the woman to that place.  We don't have to like abortion to still consider it necessary. 

(and to the haters who say "well, you're describing an extremely weak woman, that's a very negative view of women," I say, "perhaps, but I was a fledgling liberal at that time, so it's certainly possible I still held some negative views of women from my days arguing against abortion rights."  But, I have also since met a woman who had exactly the story I describe above.  I won't name names, and I won't share details of her story.)