The Ultrasound Mandate and Personal Responsibility
The Idaho legislature (among others) is considering a bill to require women considering an abortion to have an ultrasound procedure. The resulting political firestorm has lessons for both sides — as well as the debate about governmental mandates for health care.
First of all, I am not in support of this law, even though I understand and sympathize with the motivations. Advocates believe that if women considering an abortion could see that it isn’t just “fetal tissue,” but a very tiny baby, with a heartbeat, it will motivate at least some women to reconsider. Ultrasound requirement proponents hope to discourage what they call a second holocaust — the 35 million abortions (or more than 50 millions by some estimates) since Roe v. Wade (1973). Until the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the states can only pass laws that discourage abortion.
Compare mandatory abortion waiting period laws to gun waiting period laws: Proponents in both cases know that they can’t prohibit what they consider evil, but they can make it more difficult. Opponents deny that there is any evil in the underlying act, and regard these discouragements as outrageous attacks on fundamental rights.
Do these laws work? Pro-lifers claim that 72% of those committed to an abortion change their minds after the ultrasound, and point to a survey performed in pro-life pregnancy crisis centers. I am skeptical because many women who go to explicitly pro-life centers are committed to abortion. They probably have serious misgivings about abortion, or they would have gone to Planned Parenthood. This would be like to taking a survey about vegetarianism at a steakhouse.
Other studies claim that ultrasound requirements make no difference in attitudes towards abortion; 84% of “254 women who viewed sonograms said it did not make the experience more difficult, and none reversed her decision.” This may be because first trimester embryos don’t really look much like a baby yet, or perhaps because by the time a woman goes into an abortion clinic, she has made her decision.
The parallel to the health-care mandates should be obvious. As a nation, we are currently arguing whether the national government has the authority to mandate that individuals buy health insurance. Similarly, can the national government require employers to either directly or indirectly pay for contraception?
Conservative opposition to the national mandates is vigorous and principled, and will be heard by the Supreme Court this term. Conservative support for the ultrasound mandate can be defended on the grounds that states enjoy much greater constitutional authority than the national government. To those who do not appreciate or even fully understand the concept of federalism, this looks like rank hypocrisy.
Opponents of the ultrasound requirement, overwhelmingly liberals, are put in a most interesting situation: they argue that an ultrasound mandate invades the private relationship between a woman and her doctor, but hold that the national government may interfere in other aspects of health care. Liberals attempt to come up with nuanced distinctions between interfering in the patient/abortionist relationship and interfering in the employer/employee relationship. Again, it looks pretty hypocritical to those who are not paying careful attention to the subtlety of the argument. I find myself thinking of the punch line of the story Winston Churchill told. “Madam, we’ve already established [what you are]. Now we are haggling about the price.”
What bothers me even more than bad political theater is something more fundamental: why is the need for abortion still so widespread? In 2007, there were 1.21 million abortions in the U.S. If there were no cheap and reliable methods of contraception, I could understand the fierce defense of easy and common abortion. But condoms are readily available, and cheap: less than thirty-five cents a piece from Amazon (with the added bonus of substantially reducing the spread of STDs). Even if you have no moral qualms about it, abortion is a terribly inefficient method of birth control: first-trimester abortions cost $350 to $550. That will buy a lot of condoms, won’t it?
Even ignoring the cost differential, women have a lot to lose, even with abortion readily available. There are significant infection risks, damage to the uterus or cervix, and the anesthesia risks. Why would you not use condoms, and use abortion instead? I think I know the answer: many women do not feel that they can tell a sexual partner, “You want sex? Here’s a condom.” (I am discounting rape because there were 84,767 rapes in 2010. About 8% of rapes result in a pregnancy; this would be no more than 0.5% of abortions.)
It also does not say much for men that they are not doing their part. When I was young, getting a woman pregnant out of wedlock would have been at least embarrassing. You would have felt obligated to get married; if nothing else, because you were going to be paying child support payments for eighteen years. (You might as well enjoy the benefits if you were going to be paying the costs.)
In that sense, making abortion readily available is valuable not only to irresponsible women, but also to irresponsible men. And this may be the saddest part of this whole madness — that we are rewarding the hopelessly irresponsible. If you think that I am exaggerating the extent of this irresponsibility, let me share with you a couple of quotes from a 2005 Los Angeles Times article about an abortionist in Arkansas.
His first patient of the day, Sarah, 23, says it never occurred to her to use birth control, though she has been sexually active for six years. When she became pregnant this fall, Sarah, who works in real estate, was in the midst of planning her wedding. “I don’t think my dress would have fit with a baby in there,” she says.
The last patient of the day, a 32-year-old college student named Stephanie, has had four abortions in the last 12 years. She keeps forgetting to take her birth control pills. Abortion “is a bummer,” she says, “but no big stress.”
These outrageous statements are part of what moved me from the reluctantly pro-choice to the reluctantly pro-life side. I can sympathize with a 14 year old who could not figure out how to say no to her horny boyfriend. I can sympathize with a rape victim. I can sympathize with someone who had a contraception failure. I have no sympathy for men and women who refuse to be responsible.
before a doctor empties the uterus(whether for elective abortion, for incomplete spontaneous abortion, or for non viable pregnancy), he or she should do an ultrasound: to identify if the uterus is retroflexed, if there are multiple pregnancies, to check the date of the pregnancy,to check for fibroids/uterine abnormalities, and to check if there is an ectopic pregnancy.
True, some of this can be discerned by a simple pelvic exam, if the woman is relaxed, cooperative, and thin. But you would be surprised how much we docs miss on routine pelvic examinations in nervous and chubby women…which is why most ethical physicians who do abortions will perform a routine ultrasound.
I have read (since I wrote this) that Planned Parenthood requires an ultrasound before performing abortions in many states, to make sure of how many weeks along the baby (excuse me, “fetal tissue”) is.
Your pronouncement that men too are irresponsible for permitting an unwanted conception, is asking too much from human nature. I am 90 years-old and my primary raison-d’etre throughout my life (save for the first 15 years)has been to get laid. Am I alone in this? Am I an immoral person? Would I do it differently if I had my life to live over (not a chance)? Or am I just a male homo sapiens doing what I was designed to do? Whatever your response, I don’t care. Montesquieu said that if a person resists temptation, it is due to the weakness of his passion, not to the strength of his will. Right on, Monty.
I would not judge a person due to one aspect of their life, but in this aspect, you are indeed a male animal. What you are not is a human being.
Civilization is a concept that may be beyond you.
I sincerely pity the women who are or have been in your life as I have survived subhuman males in my life so can readily speak to your lack of humanity…..contrary to your animal instincts, women are not “things” for your personal pleasure and then to be discarded because they no longer provide the pleasure you once derived from their ABUSE. And Yes, I meant to use That word…. what you are doing IS ABUSIVE!!!!!
Anyone who wants to legislate fully-informed decisions about pregnancy should force happily pregnant women to watch films about post-partum depression, post-partum psychosis resulting in infant murders, and generally dreary materials about regretful mothers who would stay childless if they had it to do over again. What, you want pregnant women to be fully informed about their decision, don’t you?
Actually I’m not against this. My wife was barraged with all sorts of information about the dangers of pregnancy. She still wanted the baby. Throw in there information on how you can put your child up for adoption and information no how you can leave a baby at a church or hospital. (Safe havens or whatever they’re called)
Fully informed patients are always a good thing. But the risks of abortion receive almost no attention in our society.
Physiology is a science. Psychology (with exceptions) is not.
You obviously aren’t familiar with OB clinic routine because of course this is exactly what we get. Pregnant women get counseling and especially information on post-partum depression so that we can recognize it and get help, and OB docs ask about our mental health during each visit. There are discussions about “who will be around to help you? Do you need contraceptives afterward? Are you going to be financially able to care for your child?” (snark backfire)
I agree, the irresponsible Sarah sounds like a great future mother and we should do everything in our power to ensure that her stupid antics land her with an entire football team of children she can bring up to be just like her and who will live deprived and unhappily ever after, if not at home, in the local kids home, or on a street near you.
(…)
As heartfelt as your opinion is, it all breaks down at the point where the fact of the matter is that some people just do not want children, and they so much don’t want them that they are prepared to kill them when it’s still legal.
Quit bellyaching about abortion — start thinking how to convince and enable people to want (and be able to afford) kids and keep life as normal families together.
Because that’s the real problem: people don’t want to marry and have kids, and so they don’t have them, whether they abort or use contraception the result is: no kids.
Guilt tripping people with ultrasound therapy isn’t going to change the reality that having kids nowadays is a bad decision for the majority of people that is more likely to bring misery than happiness, just because of the way society is set up — bad schools, women need to work to make ends meet, men get enslaved by divorce settlements and so on, the list of sensible and compelling reasons against having children is pretty long alas.
What I hoping for is a bit more responsibility in using contraception. I am never going to be happy about abortion, but I find the sheer scale of it profoundly disturbing.
Agreed. The economics of it are stupid as well, because birth control has got to be cheaper than abortions. I have toyed with the thought of having every male 14 year old or older have some sort of surgery/implant to prevent them from making women pregnant until they turn the system on. Put it on the men you know?
Such a mechanism does not yet exist. But condoms are readily available, and if there were some consequences for getting a young lady (or a girl, as is more likely with 14 year old male) pregnant, I think it would help a bit. But realistically, parents need to start being parents again: supervision for teenagers, to make sure that they are not having sex. I am impressed how many parents I knew in the Bay Area who just didn’t see that there would be a problem having a mixed bunch of teenagers spend the night in the same room. As one of these mothers put it, “What could happen?”
By the way, 14 is a bit late. Increased fat levels mean that boys and girls are reaching puberty increasingly young these days. There are surprising number of 11 and 12 year olds who are capable of getting pregnant, or impregnating.
Thuis is unfair to young men who behave morally and wait until marriage. In some communities, an unwed pregnancy is still on te level of a scandal.
I am glad to hear that there are such places. I live in rural Idaho. It sure doesn’t describe where I live.
The children are already there. It is heartless to say that they are better off being murdered than born into that household. And furthermore, what of the mother? Is her heart so hard that she would let her babies die of neglect or even murder them outright after she sees them? If so, let it be. Let her show herself to the world to be a monster, and be punished accordingly. In no way legitimize the evil of her actions.
One reason I find abortion disturbing is that there is no argument made for allowing abortion, that cannot be made for allowing the murder of three-month-old children.
Indeed, occasionally a pro-abortion person will come out with an essay describing why abortion shouldn’t be limited to just “fetuses” in the womb.
No, in the example she is getting married. She just wants to put off children for longer.
Sorry, one can’t make assumptions about what type of parents people will be, certainly not if they are a married couple.
And there is still adoption. For example, I have not succeeded in having children. I will happily take her baby. This second.
No patient should ever be forced by politicians to undergo a medical procedure that she and her health care providers would not otherwise have performed.
You can be strongly pro-life without politicizing medical examinations.
My position exactly.
Sonograms are a standard part of the prep for any surgical abortion.
You don’t want a “doctor” scraping a uterus without knowing what’s up there, after all.
I hardly seams intrusive to say that the women should see that sonogram before proceeding with the abortion.
It is no more intrusive than saying any patient scheduled for surgery should see the imaging (x-rays, cat scans, etc) that were used to recommend it.
I thought we accepted abortion because the alternatives are much worse. Abortion is not about rewarding irresponsible people, but to mitigate the consequences of their actions. Imagine what society would look like if all people behaved responsible at all times!
You will notice that Americans are increasingly adopting from overseas, instead of adopting American babies. Giving up babies for adoption would mitigate these “problems,” would it not?
When my wife and I were taking Lamaze class for our first child, there was a 15 year old in the class with us, and the childless couple that were going to adopt her baby. I was not pleased that a 15 year old was pregnant. It was a bad situation, but at least some good came out of a bad situation.
Unfortunately, a year or two later, the childless couple were murdered by an illegal alien intruder. The baby, at least, was left alive.
Here’s a pertinent fact. Many years ago, New Jersey reformed welfare (before the Clinton/Gingrich reform). The Church had misgivings because they were afraid there would be more abortions. So the legislation was set to take effect nine months after passage.
Result: Not only did unwed births go down, but abortions went down. That’s right, when it hit their pocketbooks all of the irresponsible people miraculously became responsible.
Reproductive rights trump all pro-life arguments. Forcing women to have children against their will is obscene. The fact that irresponsibility with regard to birth control on the part of both men & women is rampant is rather beside these points. JMO.
Can we persuade men and women to make more use of condoms, then? Please?
Your argument makes sense if the people being killed were not human beings with a God given right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For your “right to kill your children” argument to work you have to foresake the humanity of the people being so cavlierly brought into the world, inside their mothers, and then killed. I can’t buy it as a “right” to kill your children for your own convenience and alot of people can’t either. Preserve the humanity of all your fellow humans. We go the route of the Nazis and whose to say where the murdering stops. Some “scientists” in Holland or Denmark are now arguing that the right to kill your children in the womb justifies killing them and the old folk out side the womb. Slippery slope. Protect the humanity of everyone. It just makes easy moral sense. I agree that it would help by requiring all pregnancies to require the listing of the father, and then the father is to be taxed or penalized for every pregnancy outside marriage. The mothers have a duty to make sure the fathers do not skate, particularly where the mother is a minor herself. Simple morality is not that hard.
Asserting something does not turn it into a fact. And your using a nonsensical term like “reproductive rights” (are we stopping them from reproducing?) doesn’t help.
Furthermore, we routinely punish men (even rape victims!) with babies. Anyone who can say both “reproductive rights” and “deadbeat Dads” is nothing but a bigoted female chauvinist.
As I see it, the whole issue of “my having control over my own body” IS ALL ABOUT Personal Responsibility. My Right to control what happens in and to My Body BEGINS in the Horizontal Position, where ever that may take place. Reproductive Rights BEGINS With The Decision to Engage In Sexual Behavior NOT AFTER It Happens. Reproductive Rights speaks More Loudly to Responsibility than Any Other argument. RIGHTS HAVE NEVER COME WITHOUT ASSOCIATED RESPONSIBILITIES.
If you skip right to their goal of defining penalties and sentencing for illegal abortions, then the moderate majority would be far more appalled than they ever could be from having to witness one. The right to abortion would quickly be made safer than ever.
Actually, the goal of pro-lifers is to make abortion go away rather than send people to prison. In practice, that isn’t going to happen. But as with any criminalizing of an action, the numbers fall because you can’t advertise an illegal act. Even simply making advertising or offering of abortion illegal would substantially reduce the number, because it would be more difficult to find. There would still be abortions, without question. But certainly fewer.
And what if we set up the penalties such that only the abortionist is subject to criminal penalty?
I thought before Roe v. Wade the only people being punished were the abortionists? Remember, Roe v. Wade from the perspective of those who pushed for and imposed it was not about protecting women from punishment. It was specifically about protecting government from supporting and imprisoning, eventually, unwanted and unraised children. Alot of racists were promoting it to get rid of or reduce the unwanted races. In China there is only one race, so abortion goes the way of sex-selection. Anyone who thinks it is a wonderful idea to defy nature like this is crazy. Abortion is the poster child of anti-environmentalism since Mother Nature hates to be fooled, or fooled with. The Butcher’s Bill is going to be Hell to pay. Sorry for all the mixed metaphors.
Clay, the answer to your question, “Why is the need for abortion still so widespread is this: The spirit of Baal remains prevalent throughout the world today and Baal has always required a blood sacrifice.
First of all, can I be in the mushy middle on abortion?
Meaning, I don’t have much of a problem with it when the fetus has the size and neurological complexity of an earthworm, but I’m beginning to get nervous when it has a heartbeat. And I’m REALLY nervous about the difference between a third-trimester abortion and a six-month premie saved by heroic medical effort.
That said, remember the old feminist slogan, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”?
Well when I was a horny single guy desperately chasing tail, and mostly not getting any, and definitely not too particular – abortion was durn near a sacrament. It was the single-and-not-too-particular guy’s get-out-of-jail-free card.
Now I’m facing life as a single father of two small children, in less than ideal circumstances. There is no conceivable reason I would ever want to go back and cancel their existence.
Dear Mr. Cramer:
I’m curious as to where you obtained your statistic of 35 million abortions since 1973. The number currently is at over 54 million in the U.S. alone, and is going up as I write this. These statistics — if we can ever be so morally destitute as to consider human beings as nothing but numbers — are easily attainable to anyone with an internet connection.
Right here: http://www.numberofabortions.com/
And, yes, these numbers actually morph any other genocide in the history of civilization, including the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust against the incurables, the handicapped, those deemed by the state as “life unworthy of life,” religious and political prisoners, and finally, the Jews. It is difficult not to view the wholesale killing of pre-born human beings, currently lumped into a single group and declared as “unwanted” or “unfit,” as anything other than a Holocaust, a Holocaust of historically unprecedented proportion.
While it is perfectly within your rights to defend against any discouragement to killing babies in the womb, it would seem to strengthen your argument if you at least used accurate statistics. Being off by nearly 20 million human beings seems almost intentional.
Sincerely,
Kyle-Anne Shiver
I am guessing 35 million was some years ago. I am not surprised the count has gone up since then.
Dear Mr. Cramer:
Your statistic is a gargantuan statistical error. Please issue a formal correction asap.
If “guessing” is how you arrive at quoted statistics, please make note of your “35 million” properly as nothing but a “guesstimate.”
Thank you,
Kyle-Anne Shiver
Are you suggesting that 54 million is a tragedy, while 35 million is sort of okay?
When I said “guessing” I meant that I used to see the number 35 million cited by pro-life groups for the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade. I am not surprised the number has increased since then.
Keep in mind that even before Roe v. Wade, there were a lot of abortions being performed by doctors, even in states where it was certainly illegal. Not like the numbers now, but still substantial.
“Like taking a survey about vegetarianism at a Steakhouse.”
Not really. Thats too simple. Sounds like you are simply “pro choice”.
Some of the women who show up at the Crisis Pregnancy center would have murdered their child. The ultrasound helped them make the final decision not to. The Biblical cliffs notes of the purpose of government is to punish evil and promote good. Its that simple. Which one is this?
Unfortunatley big government is a part of the way we live. Grabbing this crumb off of the table does in no way affect the bigger picture. Yoiur “consistency” on the issue seems contrived.
I do not doubt that there are women who were considering abortion when they showed up at a pro-life pregnancy crisis center. But seriously, do you think that the ones who were already fully decided on getting an abortion are going to go to a place that is clearly on the side of life?
Mr. Cramer, some women show up at crisis pregnancy centers because they are on the fence or do not know how to read literature. They think that “abortion alternatives” means alternative ways of performing an abortion. Crisis pregnancy centers perform miracles. You do not seem to know much about them. And yes, some women change their minds when they see an ultrasound and realize that they too, began tiny and grew. Abortion is religious sacrament for progressives who deep down inside want to exploit women and don’t think much of motherhood.
You have a lot of confidence that an ultrasound will change the minds of women not smart enough to realize that a pro-life organization doesn’t perform abortions.
I would like to see some data that isn’t tainted by where the data is gathered, which was the same problem that I have with the claims that the other side makes about this.
The real problem is irresponsibility and abortion. I am really skeptical, absent some actual proof, that ultrasound requirements make a big difference.
I think Mr. Cramer has singlehandedly raised the most crucial subject, the one missing from virtually all discussions of this painful issue: reaching out to young men. Asking more of them.
We are having a national debate about reducing abortion without considering either the irresponsibility or responsibility of 50% of the participants. And a substantial reason for this silence is the libertarian preference to merely complain that men have no power over these situations because their rights have been “taken away” by mean feminist women. It’s a poor and irrational excuse. Abortion, like parenthood, is about a whole lot more than law.
Satisfying as it may be to eternally parade one’s perceived victimization, asking more of young men is also good for young men and respectful of young men. It is a principled, affirming, virtuous choice. It is also one that will work. The continued refusal to ask more of men will continue to fail and continue the record of “soft anti-male sexism disguised as victimization” that has unfortunately become a weird indulgence of the right.
I promise you that there are seven simply words that will dramatically reduce the incidence of abortion in this country, and they are not “nurse, go bring in the ultrasound machine.”
They are: “let’s get married and have the baby.” Teach your sons to say this. Tell them you expect this of them. Pro-life? Good for you: you’re surely doing this. Anti-feminist? Put down your bitterness; turn your attention temporarily from ‘all the things feminists have done to you,’ and put that energy into teaching your sons to be strong and honorable and life-affirming. Teach them to take responsibility for their actions because it’s the right thing to do.
Lay down your arms. Cut the irrelevant nattering about rape. Stop pretending that young males’ non-involvement in reproductive choices is the fault of everyone but them. What would you rather do: teach your sons that they are victims of some cabal of women sitting in Washington, or teach them that they have the power and responsibility to sustain life they create through love and commitment? We have all failed to make young men a positive part of the solution for the losses of abortion. All of us. Not “feminists.” All of us.
I know many young women and young men who have experienced this crossroads. They all need guidance.
It’s time to start talking about the male role in abortion. It’s virtually always an absence of involvement and a failure to offer commitment and take responsibility. Clayton Cramer has opened the door to changing this. His is a positive and empowering suggestion. Why be so angry at it? Try it, instead.
There are several concepts that are never considered or discussed in our national disaster, abortion.
From a constitutional legal viewpoint, the SC destroyed their reputation in Roe v. Wade. Even pro choice legal scholars scorn their thinking. In every decision, the SC owes the nation two written concepts: a correct decision, and legal guidance, for thousands of lower court cases. Inventing a non existent Constitutional right, “Privacy” based on penumbras and emanations, was just stupid, worse that the Dred Scott decision. This was another wholly political finding; it led to our Civil war.
Abortion was, and is, essentially a State jurisdictional matter. The laboratories of democracy, had they been allowed to evolve, would have resulted in far more equitable solutions to a social conduct problem.
The second concept is that all morally repugnant acts, may, or may not be civil offenses. 1 st degree murder is certainly a concern of the sovereign, cussing is not (or should not be). Historically, the stigma of acting irresponsibly, in a peer group, has been the constraint on rotten conduct. Our nation’s problem is that these institutions; family, school, church, civic groups, has broken down. For many, there is no shame involved in despicable acts. A large cohort of Americans are fat, undisciplined, ignorant slobs.
The last concept is money. Planned Parenthood makes most of their income from abortions, and is the driving force to make Uncle Sam write the check. Their sole alternative is to bill mostly irresponsible people for payment. However, it may not be possible to repay our national debt without a national default. Our money may well become worthless. Thus we must decide whether to fund irresponsible fun, with a real possible consequence that Americans will shortly starve to death. There is not enough to go around; decisions must be made.
Full disclosure: I am pro life and disgusted with my government’s abortion policies.
Unfortunately, Roe v. Wade amplified what was already becoming a major problem in America: a moral collapse. It was not that abortions were rare in 1973, and suddenly became common. They were already surprisingly common, even in states that theoretically only allowed them to save the life or health of the mother. Oregon, for example, had 199 abortions per 1000 live births in 1970. It is unbelievable that an abortion rate that high was required to save the life or health of the mother.
I concur. It is easy to wander into the weeds but you touch on another important issue. Our SC has ruled that the ability to slide into a size 6 dress is a mother’s health issue. Upon this stupidity rests the enormous costs being carried by all taxpayers due to Obamacare, compounded stupidities. If the “life of the mother” limitation becomes the legal basis, all abortion costs will drop to less than 1% of the current bill.
It is a reasonable basis of insurance to cover legitimate costs for victims of ill health. It is obscene for tax payers to fund other’s recreation.
Are there no adults in Washington D.C.?
Historically, our government has been run by people with zipper control problems.
Section 1 of the 14th amendment states:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
There was a time when we referred to the baby as a baby. It was an unborn person who is protected by the 14th amendment. This new baby, shall not be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor denied the equal protection of the law. That is, we referred to him/her as a baby until it became inconvenient to do so. All of the other arguments about what the mother wants/needs, about pro-choice or pro-life, or anything else should be looked at thru the lens of the constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Does anyone actually remember the Roe decision??? The woman who would later be outed as Roe, NEVER wanted an abortion. Her “case” was hijacked by someone with an agenda and millions of babies have paid the price since. What a legacy we have as a free country…
You are confusing two different plaintiffs. McCorvey (“Roe” in the terminology used for anonymous people in a court case) did not want an abortion, but lied about the circumstances that led to her pregnancy. Doe v. Bolton, combined with Roe before the Supreme Court, involved a woman named Sandra Cano who says that she did not even want an abortion, and that the case was filed on her behalf, without her knowledge.
Typo. McCorvey wanted an abortion, but lied about the cirumstances.
I stand corrected on the Roe v Doe… However, the poing still stands. Doe’s case (decided at the same time Roe’s was) was filed without her knowledge. If I remember correctly, one of the opinions given in these cases indicated that a state needed only to declare the personhood of the unborn baby and the SC decision would be moot.
The whole sequence of events involved with Roe and Doe reflects very badly on the legal system–although almost everything about the Supreme Court decisions of that era reflects very badly on the legal system. Even when the Court managed to reach the right conclusion (as in Griswold v. Connecticut) they used absurd reasoning to get there, leading to great errors such as Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas.
God, what a mess. What it all comes down to, though, is not just an epidemic of abortion but an epidemic of irresponsibility. Birth control is easier than ever to obtain, condoms are free in many places, and people are still wiping out children as a way to save their own butts from the consequences of their actions. Whatever happened to ‘as ye sow, so shall ye reap?’
I don’t know. I’m scared. I’m only a year older than the Sarah in the article, and my peers are overwhelmingly unconcerned by this kind of behavior. Sometimes I feel like the designated old fart in the room, saying “I don’t know, isn’t that kind of irresponsible?” None of this would be happening if people actually owned up to their actions.
Actions should have consequences, but much of liberalism is an attempt to prevent consequences.
Also, the good news is that 51% of Americans now see themselves as “pro-life” although they are not terribly consistent on this. About 3/4 of Americans believe that there should be restrictions on abortion, at least in the third trimester, which means that 3/4 of Americans are not consistently “pro-choice.”
My impression is that a lot of younger women don’t see abortion rights as quite the desperately important issue that their mother’s generation did.
I disagree.
I think that a majority of Americans, in aggregate, are opposed to abortion but believe that attempting to end it through legal action would fail to do so and destroy general liberty as collateral damage.
The fact is that even most ardent pro lifers don’t really believe that abortion = murder, because if they did believe that they would be arguing for prison sentences for women that have abortions. Only an infinitesimally small number of them have the consistency to do that.
“Murder” has a specific definition and yes, few people believe that women getting abortions are committing “murder”. Some folks probably believe that it rises to “voluntary manslaughter” but most of us recognize that pregnancy is a very stressful, vulnerable time in a woman or girl’s life. It’s a time when women and girls are susceptible to pressure from boyfriends and family members. A few years ago, I was looking at a “Project Rachel”-type website and found some statistics (they’re like nectar to us mathematicians): there was a survey for post-abortive women. The most common answer by far, to the question “Why did you have an abortion?”, was “I didn’t think I had a choice”. Now, given that this was a site for women who needed some kind of recovery from their abortions, we cannot of course extrapolate to the population of post-abortive women in general. But it does mean that quite often, “choice” does NOT happen.
I agree.
I was just pointing out that the issue isn’t as black & white as most pro-lifers pretend that it is.
Most would reject emotional distress or post partem depression as an excuse for infanticide and want to see women guilty of that imprisoned.
I’d like to see more pro-life groups co-opt the choice meme, as in reaching out to pregnant women and showing them that they do have choices other than abortion and helping those women make the right choice.
Why not make the killing of a baby a party with cake, balloons, and get a hot barbque going…so that they can have a ritual cannibalistic snack on the dead baby.
The murderers can ritualistic songs – bring the kids! Let the kids revel in the fact that a simple chance allowed them to be there to sing…because but there, but for the Grace of Their God Obama, there go they…
Brains sucked out, dismembered, decapitated…then ground up into food products such as Pepsi, Cadbury chocolate…and thousands of others.
The Circle of Life, right, liberals?
http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/03/05/barack-obama-president-baby-killer/
Take a gander – then All Heil Obama the Baby Killer!
Fetus parts are not used in Pepsi. Pepsi contracts with a company (Semonyx? I’m too lazy to check the name, sry) which uses fetal cells from aborted babies to “taste” Pepsi. The fetal cells react to different tastes in different ways. Still creepy but not exactly the same.
Okay, I looked it up. The company is called Senomyx and the cells come from someone named HEK293 who was aborted in the 1970s in the Netherlands.
Listen to me. I was a teenager who got pregnant by my boyfriend. I was advised that an abortion was no big deal, that it was just a blob of tissue. To the contrary, it was a horrible ordeal! I blocked it out of my mind, and eventually married and had 2 more children. I have suffered from chronic depression, went through a divorce, had an affair with a married man, and then I became so depressed I couldn’t function. I went through counseling and the abortion surfaced. I can’t tell you how devastated I felt. Full of guilt, full of remorse and feelings of unworthiness. Full of anger at myself and the father of the baby who insisted I get an abortion, but I had to borrow the money to have it done. I would give anything, ANYTHING, if I had seen an ultrasound of my baby. I was 10 weeks along.That was back in 1975. What I want you to know is that I would have kept my baby if I knew the truth. It isn’t about a women’s reproductive rights. It is about a LIFE! PERIOD! That trumps any other argument. I am staunchly an advocate for the unborn. Don’t justify the termination of a life because a woman has the ” right” to. Pro choice works both ways. CHOOSE to be responsible BEFORE a life is created in the womb. The argument about unwanted children doesn’t hold weight anymore. There are plenty of couples that wish to adopt. There is always a better way than death to a baby.
When the movie An Officer and a Gentleman came out, my wife and I were on vacation in Fallon, Nevada. We went to see it, and the scene where one of the cadets tells the woman, “I’ll do the right thing… I’ll pay for an abortion.” produced uproarious laughter in the audience. Maybe in Hollyweird that was “the right thing” but not in Fallon.
Abortion is a way to eliminate little reminders of irresponsibility and mistakes made. It clearly works more for the benefit of men than women. When my wife and I were undergraduates, she would hear discussions between traditional aged students between classes. It was apparent that guys were putting a lot of pressure on the women for sex, and, “I could get pregnant” was apparently being met with, “You could have an abortion.”
This is the crux of the matter right here. One heart stops and another breaks. Abortion is not done for women. It is committed against women. He just zips up his pants and goes on to the next woman, but her? That’s another story. What would the baby have looked like? How old would she be? You calculate the baby’s birthday. He’s long since ceased to think of the matter at all. Others tell you to get over it, but I doubt that you ever do.
Until we see abortion as what it is, a boon to men and a tragedy for the woman it is committed upon, we cannot judge the damage to any of the parties involved, except for the one who is inconvenient to the others. The baby’s damages cannot be recouped. In the law you would talk of “making the injured party ‘whole’. Appropriate, isn’t it? But given the methodology of all sorts of pregnancy enders, not likely possible.
Mrsoc. You have a remarkable insight into what a post abortive mother experiences over the years. You also nailed it when you stated that abortion is an act AGAINST women. In my own experience, I was a naive teenager that was lied to. That does not erase the seriousness of the choice I made, nor does it justify what I did. I live with the regret every day! My child would be in his mid thirties by now. Would he have brown eyes like his younger brother and sister? Would he have played music? Would he have been athletic like his father? I often imagine what he would have looked like. I would hope that Mr. Cramer will reconsider his position. Protecting the life of one so precious and who hasn’t the ability to speak for itself, should be a civilized society’s priority.
Always a controversial issue, isn’t it? My own ideas about abortion were formed, well, just like the potential aborting mothers might have their ideas formed: by finding out the facts. What happens during an abortion? What does it look like?
When the hope and change economy took over, I had to start doing medical transcriptions to help make ends meet. This was the first time I had worked on D&C procedures, which are the commonest form of abortions. It was quite an eye-opener. The fact is, nearly all of those types of abortions use ultrasounds as part of the procedure — it’s easier to see what you’re doing. In fact, that’s what the film “Silent Scream” is, basically — a recording of the ultrasound of an abortion.
Regardless of rights or whatever, just looking at the procedure was enough for me to decide, well, I can’t be in favor of THAT. I’ve been anti-abortion ever since.
My experience with people who favor abortion rights is that every time I start to explain exactly what happens during an abortion, they immediately throw their hands up to their ears and yell at me. They don’t want to know, period. Why not?
The historian Paul Johnson once described intellectuals as people “in love with ideas more than people.” Unfortunately, intellectuals have a much easier time with beautiful abstractions than the grubby details of how real people live.
I thought he said “liberals.”?
Nope.
Why is this a problem? Because it commits the universal crime: “I don’t want to be like you!”
It seems the one thing that makes us happy becomes a fixation which we must share with (foist upon) others at all cost to ourselves, even if it violates others rights and pursuit of happiness. Whether it’s kids, crack, or a religion they’re selling, some people just won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
Well even if we ignore all the bloodshed that results from disobeying the command to choose between faithful marriage and celibacy, let’s go to a practical answer: You have no business taking Social Security if you are actively hostile to raising the next generation, who will have to pay that Social Security. If it is necessary, I owe support to my parents and grandparents. I do not owe such support to the couple that murdered their children, or who sterilized themselves so they wouldn’t have children, and it is wrong for the government to force me to support them in their old age.
In that case, the only fair number of kids for any couple to have is 2, or perhaps 2.1 on average to account for death before reproduction. More than 2 grows a population, less shrinks it. (We could even reduce this to 1 child per person, but let’s pretend relationships still matter.)
These examples assume people have no right to affect demographics with their personal choices, which I don’t necessarily disagree with.
You obviously aren’t “pro-choice”.
Just musing. One mustn’t get sucked into these sordid issues. It’s better to free people from them.
I agree with your thesis, Mr. Cramer. There are valid reasons for some abortions, and I believe with all my heart that they should be performed by trained medical personnel in clean, medical settings. In my young days, they were performed in motel rooms and back alleys by people with no medical training. But to use abortion as form of birth control, or gender selection, or mere convenience, is morally wrong, and a sad indictment of our culture today. There’s nothing wrong with abstinence, but abortion because of these reasons is especially wrong when there are so many forms of easy, cheap birth control available.
And what would those be? What medical condition is cause for an abortion? Why is a C-section not possible? Why can’t the child be delivered alive, premature though he/she may be? I submit that direct abortion is never permissible, and every reasonable effort must be made to deliver the child alive, no matter how premature. If the child is already dead, then extract the corpse by whatever means is most effective or easiest, but you must never intentionally kill a child.
There are countless cases where the mother is too ill to give birth or have a C-section. I am speaking of danger to life, not the vague “medical necessity”.
But “Doctors” Gosnell, Hodari, etc show that legalizing abortion isn’t what made abortion more physically safe for the abortive mother; it’s well-recognized that antibiotics are what reduced maternal deaths and complications in the years before and after 1973.
Clayton,
What you’re missing is that there are two categories of contraceptives, for the purpose of the discussion here: there’s the stuff that doesn’t work, and there’s the stuff that’s bad for you. The stuff that’s bad for you, that is most commonly used is VERY bad for you if you smoke.
There are also two categories of people who don’t want to have children. There are adults, often married, who don’t want to go through the hassle of raising children because Social Security is available from “other people’s children” (side note: this is also why Social Security is going bust of course, since everyone is relying on those increasingly rare “other people’s children”). They usually have become capable of reliability, so they’re consistent in their use of contraceptives and the rate of children born in wedlock has accordingly shrunk in the past 50 years or so.
There are also the young: Just as Paul VI warned in Humanae Vitae, section 17, young people have become much more promiscuous in the past 50 years or so. When premarital sex skyrockets, so do premarital pregnancies because even if teens were able to reliably use contraceptives (which they AREN’T), the huge increase in premarital sex means a huge increase in premarital pregnancies. Folks who think that “if contraceptives were more available, out-of-wedlock births would go down” aren’t thinking it through. I offer the past 50 years as evidence. Also, how could you make contraceptives more available?? I know, I know, the magical kind that you get from taking away Catholic’s First Amendment rights will somehow begin to reverse the trend that “contraceptives on demand” has wrought?
The abortion debate is just like the slavery debate of old. Either human beings have God-given value or they don’t. It’s really that simple.
Jesus started to be Jesus at his miraculous conception, not at his birth. When did you become you?
One of my favorite feast days (I’m Catholic) is the Feast of the Visitation, where John the Baptist the Fetus leaps with joy at the arrival of God the Son, the Embryo.
Yes, once again PJM readership (or, more precisely, PJM Commentership) mirrors, for the most part, its writership. That’s expected, of course, and a good thing when both writers and readers are dealing with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Very often, and very thankfully, that’s what PJM offers – including from the majority of its Commenters. However, as I have shown here several times recently, there are also essays (and subsequent Comments) where only some of the truth is offered and carefully examined. Sadly, once again, that has occurred here with Mr. Cramer’s abortion essay.
The missing, and most essential truth ignored by Mr. Cramer – and most of his responders – today (though not by Regrets abortion, mrsoc and a couple of others) is revealed in these signatorial sentences: “I can sympathize with a 14 year old who could not figure out how to say no to her horny boyfriend. I can sympathize with a rape victim. I can sympathize with someone who had a contraception failure. I have no sympathy for men and women who refuse to be responsible.”
No doubt Regrets abortion and mrsoc saw what I saw just as immediately as I did (and Andrew Klavan would have, but he chooses not to chime in on Comments threads). Mr Cramer wrote an essay today about sympathizing with what he sees as “good” reasons for murdering unborn children (preferably,at least for him, only the ones who don’t yet happen to resemble the children he is most accustomed to seeing; i.e. the older ones who look more like him) but to Mr. Cramer, “good” reasons to murder unborn children are those that produce offspring accidentally rather than irresponsibly. The fact that those offspring who are produced are, in every case (whether accidentally or irresponsibly), no less human than he is as irrelevant to him (and most of his readers) as using birth control is to a rapist.
Mr. Cramer has no concept of the capital moral crime of murder that is committed during an “abortion” (what a delightfully sanitary and convenient euphemism that word is) because those who are being murdered during abortions (at least as Mr. Cramer would prefer them) don’t yet resemble most of those who are murdered in death camps, gulags or armed robberies. Mr. Cramer (and his yes-minions) see in the womb only that which the Nazis, the Stalinists and Crips see: inconvenient tissue masses with which he cannot “sympathize.”
I had more to write on another Comment thread last week…
http://www.christianpost.com/news/aborting-womens-rights-72373/
… where my handle is “Unimportant.” The blog citations I offered there were on a different (but similar) topic, but interested readers can also visit Another Slow News Day’s blog pages devoted to the subject of infanticide (I mean “abortion”) by navigating ANSD’s Update Topics / Culture / Abortion menu tree. I doubt we’ll see Mr. Cramer there (his response to Regrets abortion, for example, completely ignored her essential point, just as he did in his essay) but for those with eyes to see, you are welcome.
You probably got few responses because you write poorly. Also, several commenters agree with you that abortion is wrong so it seems you don’t have enough respect for your intended audience to actually read what we’ve written. Humility is a virtue, not a weapon.
You seem to have something into what I said that I did not intend. I can sympathize with the 14 year old who can’t say no to her horny boyfriend; that doesn’t mean that I approve of her getting an abortion. That hides that the boyfriend was having sex with an underage girl (often a crime), and that both sets of parents aren’t doing their jobs of providing appropriate supervision.
Author: What bothers me even more than bad political theater is something more fundamental: why is the need for abortion still so widespread?”
Why is the government involved AT ANY LEVEL on this issue. Instead of more “right wing” social engineering and MORE big government to police it, just abondon this as a lost cause and save the money.
Our government is to big and spends to much… that is why the United States is going down the tubes…
I suppose the same argument could have been made against the anti-lynching laws. Because if governemnt is not there t oprotect life, it has no purpose at all.
If you believe that the government should not interfere in murder, then your position is perfectly logical. If you want to argue that this isn’t murder, then you have taken a perfectly logical position. But even in California, killing a fetus is a criminal offense…except if it is performed by a licensed physician with the permission of the mother. Can you think of any other situation where the distinction between murder and “not a crime” is based on a third party’s approval? Even slavery wasn’t at this level. It was technically murder (and sometimes led to convictions) to kill a slave except in self-defense.
Speaking as someone who is infertile and who has never been pregnant, no, I do NOT sympathize with abortions for rape victims or those whose contraception has failed.
Why punish the baby?
And why deprive infertile couples of the chance to become parents? That’s just plain SELFISH.
I cannot speak to rape victims, but I agree. You don’t want the baby? Call me. Now.
(And the same people have no problem punsihing men with a baby, including male rape victims.)
The premise of the article, the one the author would lead you to believe is being addressed – ultrasound prior to abortion – seems to be a thinly veiled attempt at moralizing. Yes, responsibility is to be encouraged but anyone who didn’t spend the ’70′s with “mother thumb and her daughters” reading a book on the topic (and avoiding the pictures) knows it is far more complex than that.
The topic at hand, abortion, really isn’t the issue as it is a decision not for the public realm but rather at an individual level. Nature is cruel and sometimes choices can seem to be so also, but it is just so much projection of ‘personal’ ideals.
I am guessing that the vast majority of those opposed to abortion are also the first charging forth with the ‘make HIM pay’ mantra – true ‘blue pill’ individuals who worship those with internal genitalia. If society really wanted to address the issue they would have to step back and take a look in the mirror and ask some honest questions regarding why this occurs with such frequency.
Before one can do that it has to be acknowledged that:
1) women have always been the ‘gatekeepers’ of child bearing.
2) the number of contraception options available to women far outnumber those available to men
3) rewarding undesirable behavior invariably creates more of the same
All parents seek to protect their children, which no doubt accounts for the plethora of comments alluding to the ‘he got her pregnant’ perspective. The truth is that SHE probably drug him to the bed tugging at his belt the whole way (daddy’s little girl really isn’t a princess). It has always been that way and today’s gender raunch culture simply makes it visible. What changed was society’s tolerance and deference to that behavior.
There was a time when an unwanted pregnancy was frowned upon as it was a burden on the woman’s family, but then came government entitlement. When it became obvious that women were choosing ‘motherhood’ as a career path there was public outcry for a new law to address the problem. The solution – dad as a perp and Child $upport.
If the author of this article and it’s reader’s want to put responsibility back into the social equation then you need to begin by supporting the abolition of the subsidy that rewards it – the government Child $upport apparatus. Do that and women will be a bit more judicious in their choices.