whose right to choose?

[fpb]

Believe it or not, I do not like to post about abortion. The subject itself makes me sick, and there is nothing to be gained by posting about it except the opposition and often the hate of those who are committed to it, and more rows and more fights.

However, a story I have stumbled upon is significant both because of itself and as a kind of strange, bitter comment to my articles on the Massachusetts mass pregnancy. There is a man in Kansas called George Tiller, who is a hate figure to anyone who opposes abortion. He has built a vast fortune on his willingness to abort anyone who asks, at any time; anti-abortionists call him "Tiller the Killer", both because of his eagerness to destroy viable babies in the last few months of pregnancy, and because the sloppy conditions in his clinics are said to be a real threat to the health of the mothers. However, Tiller is very politically active, and has made large donations to many leading political figures in the state. It is certain that he has Kansas' Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, in his pocket: she has fought an unprincipled fight that has lasted for years against a State prosecutor who had tried to apply existing Kansas law to Tiller's clinics, not only sacking him, but packing the state Supreme Court with cronies against him. (Whatever I may think of George Tiller, I loathe Kathleen Sebelius. I regard her as a female version of John Kerry, a repulsive, glass-smooth hypocrite who tries to use her supposed Catholic identity as an electoral asset while breaking every Church law she pleases, and whose use of power is as ruthless as it is heartless. Unfortunately, she is said to be a favourite for Barrack Obama's VP.)

Now the story has broken that Tiller's clinic has aborted the baby of an unwilling sixteen-year-old girl who had been dragged there by her mother. The details aren't clear, but it seems that both the girl and her boyfriend - also sixteen - wanted to keep the baby, and the girl's mother was the only one who wanted it dead. She used her power as brutally as Governor Sebelius, and dragged her daughter to Tiller's slaughterhouse; the father got there too late to prevent the killing.

Any pro-abortionist who objects to this is a hypocrite. Anyone who has studied abortion knows that a large share of abortions are "chosen" not by the mother but by her family, or even by her employers, as a matter of convenience. Things are rarely so cold and so brutal, but it comes to the same thing. However, the conscious resistance of mother and father and the fact that it was only an older person who wanted the abortion seems as though it might share something with what I read in the Massachusetts mass pregnancy.

Comments

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

"a large share of abortions are "chosen" not by the mother but by her family, or even by her employers, as a matter of convenience"

I'd be curious to know more about that. What are your sources? According to your sources, is that a phenomenon observed specifically in the USA, or perhaps in Italy or western Europe at large? what is the geographical area concerned by those studies?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do not speak of "studies". You really are too keen on these things. Look around. How many women who have abortions have them because they do not want children? I have only ever met two who said that - and they never got pregnant in the first place. Every single case of abortion I ever met was caused by fear of losing one's job, one's partner, one's career, or by pressure from one's family. One case I knew saw a sixteen-year-old girl thrown out of the family home by her own father for refusing to abort her child. One medical student got pregnant and was horrified that it would interrupt her course (and that her family would regret the money they had cost). One woman had one to please her husband; as it happens, ten years later her marriage fell apart. These are all things I saw myself, not things I read in a paper. But if you want papers, I can find you dozens.

The sixteen-year-old girl

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Oh, and when I say thrown out, I mean permanently. It was not a matter of hot words in a row: it was "Well, since you insist, you can bloody well deal with the bastard yourself". The girl left school, had to get a job in a factory, and did not see her father or family again for almost ten years.

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

sorry for having misinterpreted "studied" in your initial post. I thought it meant you had researched the topic in a more systematic manner.

My experience from myself and girls around me who either considered abortion or had an abortion goes against yours, so I guess it might depend on people. I could not say for the rest of the world, but in the few cases I have knowledge of, I'd say not feeling ready to be a mother was the main reason: both on practical (no money, no place to live, etc) and emotional (no stable relationship, not feeling adult or responsible or capable of loving a child) grounds.
Rarer, but still significant, some girls I know do not want children (and thus might be led to have an abortion if they became pregnant accidentally) because of health reasons: particularly genetic conditions they do not want to transmit to another living being.

I think personal fears of the consequences of a pregnancy should not be put in the same category as direct pressure or intimidation from other people.

If I decide to have an abortion because I'm afraid it will destroy my career and /or damage a relationship which I think is not strong enough yet to cope with raising a kid, well, my reasons may or may not be crap, but it's still a personal choice, not the pure result of external pressure going against my will.

Now that's completely different from the case you mention, which is downright bullying if not physical aggression and shows how necessary PRO-CHOICE policies are. The story would be just as horrible if the mother had forced a girl who wanted to abort to go through with the pregnancy and keep the baby afterwards.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

"Not feeling ready?" That is one of the biggest pieces of self-deception ever invented. Have you ever met anyone who was "ready" for any responsibility whatsoever? Only self-deluded people imagine they are. Nobody is ever "ready" for anything. And that being the case, one has to wonder who taught them this nonsense about being "ready" for a child, and what are the unspoken reasons that cause them to hide behind that piece of nonsense.

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

I strongly disagree with that view. Being ready or not is not a mere delusion. However, we might disagree merely superficially because we do not have the same definition of what readiness entails, so I'll try to be clearer and give some examples.

By being ready I do not mean being certain one will deal with the situation admirably, which would indeed be a delusion. I mean something like a degree of maturity which means you're now willing to do things which would have scared you out of your mind or repulsed you when you were younger.

The clearest example I can think of right now is sex: there was clearly an age when I might have been "old enough" legally or from other people's perspective but I did not feel ready for it and I think it would have been a mistake to have had sex at that age, even with someone I was genuinely in love with. And when I was ready, I knew it without doubt.

Another example is living on one's own: I started living on my own because it was the best choice available at the time, but I would rather have shared a place with someone, and well I was not ready. I'm coping with it of course, I'm not going to commit suicide because something is not going well, but it's more difficult because it's something I have to endure (less now, but very much so at first) and not something I can embrace.

I'm not saying these are directly comparable to being ready to have kids, but they're just emotional stages in someone's life, some more important than others, and yes sometimes you feel ready and sometimes not.

It's very true for marriage for example: some people get married without really feeling they're ready for it (or on the contrary they avoid commitment precisely because they don't feel ready), and others, even relatively young, feel they're fully willing to make that kind of life-long commitment and to accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

I'm sorry if it's not very clear: as always when dealing with emotions, it's not very easy to communicate one's impressions to others.

If you want another example, it's like knowing if you are in love with someone. It's often hard to describe how you know it, but you just know it.

Feeling ready is a bit the same: you can't always pinpoint when it changed or why, but you feel you're now willing to approach things which used to feel alien. It's like you started taming these things.

At least that's the way it works for me and when I had a fright thinking I might be pregnant one year ago, my whole self was screaming at me "NOT READY!".

You never felt that way (either feeling ready or not) about anything?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

IN a word, no. And if I had a list of all the situations I have been thrown in with no idea of what I was being asked for and no option except to sink or swim, it would go from here to Edinburgh. That is just not my experience of life. And that includes love. (There is a reason why all the women I ever fell in love with have ended up hating me.)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid some situations in your life you're never ready for. You are never mature enough to handle them... you have to go through them in order to develop that maturity.

You just have to go into the breach, trusting the situation to teach you and being willing to accept that teaching.


We can't always grow up when we decide we're ready. That's a great luxury. :)

[lyssiae.livejournal.com]

I like the way you worded this. Thank you.

Reading the original article made me wonder whether mum felt ready to become a grandmother.

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

well, yeah it is a luxury, definitely.

Then again, it's a desirable one I think, at least for the most important things. I mean having sex when you're not ready, getting married when you're not ready, having kids when you're not ready. A lot of people do it and consequences are not necessarily bad because sometimes it just forces you to grow up slightly quicker and then you're fine, but sometimes it's just too hard to cope and you wish you'd have waited a bit longer.
Although I must say "waiting" is misleading here: you can't just sit on the ground and wait for maturity to descend on you, you've got to work on it, confront your fears and issues and, I don't know, get some experience from life I suppose.

I must admit I'm quite afraid of taking uncalculated risks in general so if at all possible, I usually try to get ready for something before jumping ;)

Even for death, I mean that's definitely something that scares me and that I'm not ready to accept yet, but ideally -- and you may have noticed I'm a rather idealistic person in some respects -- well, ideally I would like to be able to accept it before it happens: which means both coming to terms with the idea of it and trying to do things in my life in such a way that I will have no cause for regrets or remorse.
That'd be like, I don't know, "ultimate maturity" I guess.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Well if we're using personal experiences, I know several people who had abortions because they didn't want children (or more children).

And I really do believe that somebody who chooses to have an abortion for fear of screwing up her career is still choosing to have the abortion. It's not her work making the choice for her. Yes, it is unfair that she would be forced into making that choice, but she could have gone 'sod work, I'm having the baby.'

Yes, I would agree that in the examples you've used, it isn't much of a choice for the woman. But there is still a choice, no matter how unfair the choice is!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Certainly. And a man who gives his purse to a mugger is also choosing to give his purse. He does not like the alternative.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

But that's possibly a life and death situation. It's somewhat different to having to leave a job/husband/school/etc.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And losing a job, home, husband, is not a life and death situation? Does it not change your life, and much for the worse? Especially in the modern world? And it does not brand you with a number of undesirable brands, from "failure" to "unemployable"?

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

It's still not technically a life and death situation. If the mugger kills you, you're dead. You have no chance for having a better life. If you lose your job, then you still have the chance (however remote it might be) to get a new job, or gain new skills or, be happy as a stay at home mother.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

ACtually, I had better rephrase what I said. There are plenty of studies that confirm what I said; and I did mention "studying". I apologize for responding aggressively (I will leave the answer above in, undeleted, because it would not be correct to pretend I haven't answered as I have). If you want, I will find you some. But the thing is, first, that I am sure the opposite side has papers of its own "proving" the exact opposite; and second, that one ought to make up one's own mind based on what one sees around oneself. The pressures on women not to be mothers are multitudinous and mighty. And you ought to know that when a person claims to want something, it is not always because of a profound inner need. There are dozens of ways to stampede or convince someone into thinking that they want something - to own a house, to have holidays abroad, to drink one drink rather than another. The pressures on women not to have children, especially the false dichotomy between children and work, are of this kind. At best, they will tell you that they want a certain thing because things being as they are, that is the best choice; and at worst, they will have internalized them to the extent that they genuinely believe that it is worse for them to have a child than an uninterrupted career.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That is not to say that there aren't situations where such choices are concrete and important - where a woman really has to choose between a family and a career. But when that is the case, it is not the "career" in the abstract that is important; it is a set of real, tangible things that such a woman can or should do, with which a family would interfere. Katharine Hepburn had to choose, not between family and an abstract career, but between family and making such movies as Morning Glory and Adam's Rib, The Philadelphia Story and Long Day's Journey into Night. Achievement is always concrete and individual; and a career, in that sense, can be the most delusive of all abstract categories. It means keeping you working with the distant suggestion that there is somehow something in common between your toil and the work of an Ann Douglas or a Jane Austen.

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

oops! was in the process of answering when you made that correction, only saw it afterwards.
I take your point for studies contradicting each other but personal experience does just the same, I'm afraid.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

And with studies, there is at least the hope that the researcher tried for some degree of objectivity and tried to have an unbiased sample.

Nobody's personal experience is in any way unbiased.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And human beings who are biased produce reports that are unbiased about other human beings who are biased? Some hope.

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Well some researchers declare their biases at the beginning of the report. It's better than nothing!

On the topic of research, my thesis is irritating the hell out of me. The more I look at it, the more I feel like the entire thing is wrong and needs re-writing and why don't I just re-interview people as well because my methodology sucks.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Can you get on AIM and we can have a talk?

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

Most importantly, it's usually possible for the critical mind to know if the research is sound or not: from the way people manipulate figures, from the way they move from one idea to a deduction, from their willingness to acknowledge data or opinions going against their own views, etc.

The results cannot be absolute truth in sociology or psychology, but it's still possible to make the difference between personal ramblings and a reasonable hypothesis based on facts and logic.

I have always the greatest admiration for people who manage to write really sound and solid research even on areas of knowledge where certainties are rare; for example in the philosophy of language, I find Searle pretty impressive... but I digress ;)

[curia-regis.livejournal.com]

Right now, I have admiration for anybody who can finish a piece of research to a coherent standard!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I want to add that I spoke of "a large share of abortions" as being a deliberately vague term, because I think that to be exact in terms of numbers in a situation where motivation itself is debatabl would be a fallacy. I simply intend to say that, however you reckon it, you cannot get away from external pressure as a major motive. So the question is: are you willing to state that "a large number of abortions" are NOT caused by external pressures?