"Good" abortion vs. "bad" abortion?
Feb. 11th, 2008 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseAn interesting op-ed piece from a couple years ago on the morality of abortion because of medical problems with the fetus vs. financial or other personal reasons, and specifically the refusal of many women who choose the former to acknowledge that they're making the same choice as those in the latter category. For those who are too lazy to click, here's the meat of the matter:
The prejudice is widespread that a termination for medical reasons is somehow on a higher moral plane than a run-of-the-mill abortion. In a 1999 survey of Floridians, for example, 82 percent supported legal abortion in the case of birth defects, compared with about 40 percent in situations where the woman simply could not afford to raise another child.
But what makes it morally more congenial to kill a particular "defective" fetus than to kill whatever fetus happens to come along, on an equal opportunity basis? Medically informed "terminations" are already catching heat from disability rights groups, and, indeed, some of the conditions for which people are currently choosing abortion, like deafness or dwarfism, seem a little sketchy to me. I'll still defend the right to choose abortion in these cases, even if it isn't the choice I'd make for myself.
As Barbara Ehrenreich (who, incidentally, wrote the fantastic working-class exposé Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America) points out, it seems a bit odd for women who decide to abort a fetus with Down's Syndrome to not consider it a "real abortion" - they may want a child, but if they don't want the specific child they're carrying and choose to abort it, then what they're doing is exactly that - exercising their right to choose.
Pretty much no one who reads this blog will be surprised to learn that I fall on the "abortion for medical reasons is just as valid as any other" side of the fence. But seeing a woman who's had an abortion put herself morally above others who have for any reason - because it was for medical reasons, because she's an active pro-lifer who's probably saved hundreds of other babies, because she's spent every day of her life since regretting it - makes me feel truly sorry for her, because she apparently feels the need to justify a very personal and often painful choice to others.
And, sadly, because it's that very kind of hypocrisy that often motivates those who are loudest about denying others the same choice.
The prejudice is widespread that a termination for medical reasons is somehow on a higher moral plane than a run-of-the-mill abortion. In a 1999 survey of Floridians, for example, 82 percent supported legal abortion in the case of birth defects, compared with about 40 percent in situations where the woman simply could not afford to raise another child.
But what makes it morally more congenial to kill a particular "defective" fetus than to kill whatever fetus happens to come along, on an equal opportunity basis? Medically informed "terminations" are already catching heat from disability rights groups, and, indeed, some of the conditions for which people are currently choosing abortion, like deafness or dwarfism, seem a little sketchy to me. I'll still defend the right to choose abortion in these cases, even if it isn't the choice I'd make for myself.
As Barbara Ehrenreich (who, incidentally, wrote the fantastic working-class exposé Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America) points out, it seems a bit odd for women who decide to abort a fetus with Down's Syndrome to not consider it a "real abortion" - they may want a child, but if they don't want the specific child they're carrying and choose to abort it, then what they're doing is exactly that - exercising their right to choose.
Pretty much no one who reads this blog will be surprised to learn that I fall on the "abortion for medical reasons is just as valid as any other" side of the fence. But seeing a woman who's had an abortion put herself morally above others who have for any reason - because it was for medical reasons, because she's an active pro-lifer who's probably saved hundreds of other babies, because she's spent every day of her life since regretting it - makes me feel truly sorry for her, because she apparently feels the need to justify a very personal and often painful choice to others.
And, sadly, because it's that very kind of hypocrisy that often motivates those who are loudest about denying others the same choice.
