"You gotta be
Cruel to be kind in the right measure
Cruel to be kind it's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind means that I love you
Baby, you gotta be cruel to be kind."Nick Lowe, "Cruel to be Kind," 1979
Today's guest post by Herb Rothschild includes the words:
"God is the great abortionist. The number of fertilized eggs that in the course of nature never come to term far exceeds those that do."
I am in a busy period with my new vineyard project. I am doing important but tedious and repetitive work, putting grape vines into workable form, and it gives me time to reflect on bigger issues.
Herb Rothschild writes a local newspaper column. He has returned to the theme of abortion several times, here making the point that we should not frame the abortion issue as an ideological matter of rights. Instead, we should think more humanely about it, thinking of it as a matter of care. We want to be kind, not cruel. How best to do that?
Today's post is part one. I am quick to see analogies and metaphors. I am pruning grape vines, cutting weak canes so that the plant puts energy into stronger ones. I am cutting strong canes where there are three of them, because only one can survive. More about that tomorrow.
Rothschild has a B.A. from Yale, and a Ph.D. from Harvard. He taught English Literature at Louisiana State University. He is the author of The Bad Old Days, a memoir of his years as a Civil Rights activist in Louisiana. He lives in Talent, Oregon. A version of this guest post was published in the Ashland Daily Tidings. After the Tidings shut down, the nonprofit Ashland.news rose in its place, and Rothschild has a weekly column there.
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We have framed abortion as a rights issue—Right to Life versus Right to Choose. The former “right” logically dehumanizes the mother, dismissing almost all regard for her physical and mental well-being. She becomes an incubator. The latter “right” logically dehumanizes the unborn up until the moment of birth, including those last weeks (ever-increasing) when the process of abortion may result in a live birth unless the foetus is deliberately destroyed.
This zero-sum conceptual approach has had dreadful consequences. It has pitted Americans against each other in an ideological and political contest with no end in sight. And it has obscured, even from ourselves, what the great majority of us in reality feel about abortion. We do care about mothers, and we begin caring about the unborn as they develop toward maturity.
Careful polling reveals areas of significant consensus. Few of us want to force a woman to carry to term the product of rape or incest. And few of us sympathize with women (there aren’t many in this country) who use abortion as their birth control method of choice. Few of us care what happens to a zygote, whether it fails to attach to the uterine wall thanks to an IUD or never gets into a uterus because of in vitro fertilization. And few of us would be emotionally easy with the surgical killing of an eight-month foetus before it is expelled. Our practice reflects these feelings more accurately than do our debates.
In sum, once we move from rights to care, from the isolated individual to the connected community, areas of agreement and possibilities of resolution open to us.
We might begin by acknowledging that God is the great abortionist. The number of fertilized eggs that in the course of nature never come to term far exceeds those that do. Thus, there is no basis in reality for humans to legislate that they must. That acknowledgement should allow us to view the “morning-after pill” as a huge asset in avoiding a journey across what is an inherently difficult terrain. Along with more vigorous promotion of contraceptive technology, we should make the morning-after pill readily available and promote its use when circumstances indicate.
Framing abortion as a rights issue tends to convince each ideological camp that it has a monopoly on care. Right to Lifers brandish photos of late-term fetuses. Right to Choosers brandish coat-hangers. It’s not their care that’s the problem; all care is commendable. It’s their pride. You’d think we would experience humility before the immense joys and sorrows of life and death, and therein affirm our common humanity.
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4 comments:
Some legislators want to make a fertilized egg a person who is protected by law. Okay, then they should be included in the census.
Roe was a compromise, neither side of the issue was particularly pleased, but while Pro Choice advocates accepted it, the "Pro-Life" contingent did not and embarked on a crusade to repeal it.
The uterus is an arbitrary result of evolution and biology. "God" is also the greatest murderer. Historically, millions, perhaps billions of women have suffered and died in childbirth. We have now the means to alleviate that and who knows maybe in the future our science will free women from this risk completely. Who knows where the debate on "personhood" will be then, but rest assured there will still be regressive morons who will oppose it as against "Gods will".
The notion that even embryos are people raises an interesting question about what to do with the countless frozen embryos produced by in vitro fertilization that nobody wants. Maybe they could all be sent to Alabama.
And speaking of cognitive dissonance, Republicans are ideologically opposed to big government being involved in healthcare, except when it comes to dictating the terms of women’s reproductive health.
It's really sad that abortion is an election issue. To me, it is a very expensive form of birth control in some instances.
There are many ways to prevent pregnancies, but unfortunately, we have the "abortion" available to terminate a pregnancy resulting from a fertilized egg that turns into an embryo, and eventually a child if allowed to be born.
Thru time, birth control was forbidden by some. Now we have very safe methods like the condom, abstinence, birth control pills that prevent the production of eggs, etc.
Abortion is useful for terminating pregnancies to save the life of the mother, or to prevent the birth of a deformed/handicapped baby. It's also helped to deal with an unplanned pregnancy due to rape or incest.
Unfortunately, abortion has also become an accepted way to terminate a pregnancy because the mother has changed her mind.
That's what we have today in politics. An action that is used to influence voters to determine who best to represent them or to lead our country.
I do believe there are certain reasons to allow abortions. Regardless, that is not what helps me decide who to vote for. For some, unfortunately, it is the single issue that determines who to vote for.
I sometimes wonder the true motives of "right-to-lifers" and "righ-to-choosers".
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