Liberal conflict about multiple abortions. Free registration required.
The New Republic Garance Franke-Ruta Post date 11.25.05
When Amy got pregnant during her freshman year of college, she knew that, at 18, she wasn’t ready to be a mother. So she had an abortion. “That was a very easy decision to get to, but a very difficult emotional experience, both before and after,” she says from San Francisco, where she now lives. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.” Six years later, she says, she was living and working in New York City when, after a condom failure, she found herself with a second unwanted pregnancy. “That time, it was like, ‘Oh, no! This sucks. Let me just take care of this.'” She had another abortion. “Oh well, that’s over,” she recalls thinking immediately afterward. “And then I didn’t think about it very much.” She didn’t talk about it very much either, and, even today, she is loath to reveal it. “I rarely talk about the second abortion because of society’s judgments about women who have a second abortion,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re allowed one mistake.'” But not two….
Olympiada – this is an excellent article, well worth reading in full. It’s main point is that while the number and rate of abortions are declining for the overall population, they are not declining among lower income and minority women. Most of the repeat abortions are ocurring within these subsets of the population, the reasons are tragic, and neither the traditional pro-choice or pro-life movements show little interest in addressing the troubling causes for these abortions.
Those causes for these repeat abortions are largely social and economic. The pro-choice organizations are appallingly indifferent to the troubles in these women’s lives reflected by their repeated unwanted pregnancies. These troubles include their single unmarried status, their meager income and financial resources, and the unwillingness of the men to stay with them. All the pro-choice groups care about is that these women have the freedom to get as many abortions as they want. Pro-life groups are faulted for treating these siuations solely as a moral issue to be solved with scolding, while also ignoring the social and economic causes.
The article argues what I have maintained for a long time – that abortion should be dealt with as a public health issue. If we can marshall the money and resources to change peoples behavior in order to reduce smoking and HIV, isn’t changing behavior to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortion equally worthy of a similar but even greater effort?
I posted it because 1) it reveals the misgivings about the moral rationales used to justify abortions; and 2) it shows that these moral rationales don’t speak to the real reasons women have abortion; coming from the pro-choice side.
It takes some courage on their part. It has got to be difficult to consider that the people they considered hopelessly ignorant might, after all, be right.
It also shows that the pro-life arguments are winning hearts and minds.
Dean you say “The article argues what I have maintained for a long time – that abortion should be dealt with as a public health issue. If we can marshall the money and resources to change peoples behavior in order to reduce smoking and HIV, isn’t changing behavior to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortion equally worthy of a similar but even greater effort?” That is exactly the position my father took as Health Director for Wichita/Sedgwick County, Kansas for twenty plus years he was in that position. As a result, Planned Parenthood did not have a chapter in Wichita during his directorship. As soon as he was forced to retire, in they came and Wichita has become the late term abortion capital of the United States thanks to Dr. George Tiller.
You have an excellent, pragmatic take here that could be part of the solution, but how do you insitute it when the abortion lobby will fight any public policy that could cast any light on abortion that could be construed as negative?
There is much more being done by pro-life folk than you think however. I offer in evidence a pan-Orthodox ministry in Wichita, The Treehouse, which deals with the very women you identify to support them economically, educationally, and socially to allow them to build a better way of dealing with sex, life, and working. The ministry is growing fast and is receiving a lot of non-Orthodox support within the community.
The Treehouse is one ministry there are many others that address the physical and emotional needs of women in a loving Christian environment.
Michael, all the help for women with problem pregnancies comes from the pro-life side. Pro-choice organizations offer only abortion as a solution. Ever see Planned Parenthood do anything except provide condoms and abortions, apart from their endless lobbying?
Seems to me that the peculiar stresses during and after the abortion and the colder reaction second time, are like the experience of those who kill adult humans.
The first kill is wierd. It changes you, you don’t forget it, usually. The others come easier. Now you are a murderer.
Even in legitimate combat this is often the case. Perhaps some of the motives of the kill in the context aren’t that legitimate, though the fight may be.
Whatever.
It also supports the anti-abortion position that some kind of harm follows on the emotional level. First she finds it very disturbing, not like a normal medical procedure would be. Later she is more damaged, in that she is not disturbed at all.
That the motives are economic and no one is helping is unfortunate, the same is true for people who kill adults.
She will have to answer for the shedding of innocent blood – her baby – at The Judgement after death and the abortionist will answer more severely. But those who act under pressure are probably judged less harshly than those who act casually – yet, her second abortion was more casual and less conscience.
She might not identify that emotional upset as conscience, since she has nothing to tag it to in terms of official accepted by her knowledge of what she did, but SOMETHING felt damn WRONG and instead of listening to her gut she went ahead and accepted the evil she had done as okay.
Other women have gone through this and turned anti-abortion.
Note 6. Mary. Well said. You might appreciate my review of the book “Unspoken Grief: The Hidden Pain of Abortion” titled Women are Abortion’s Second Victims.
Note 2, Dean, Indifferent to trouble in these women’s lives?
You criticize what you claim is the response of pro-life groups to women who seek abortions through this statement:
Firstly, as Fr. Jacobse has noted, it is the pro-life groups that have built and funded homes for women with unwanted pregnancies. These homes provide support and care through the delivery and beyond. To claim that pro-life groups are indifferent to the plight of women with unwanted pregnancies is contra-factural, or FALSE.
Secondly, you obscure the moral aspects of the situation by again, as is the liberal wont, eliminating the role of moral choices and individual responsibility for “repeated unwanted pregnancies.” The problem is “unwanted pregnancies” the problem is the willingness of women to kill their unborn babies rather than bring them to term and allow adoption by loving parents. A process which is demanding but which ends after nine months with a living child in a loving home. Murder is chosen over nine months of inconvenience. This is the choice.
Let us look at the “troubles” that Dean points to as the cause of “unwanted pregnancies” or rather “inconvenient helpless human lives.”
The first “trouble” is their “unmarried status.” People over 18 have the choice to marry or not to marry; similarly, they have the choice to engage in sex or not to engage in sex. When did that change? Since when is being unmarried
a source of trouble? Dean relegates Christian moral teaching to “scolding” completely ignoring the effect of th cultural Left’s normalization of unwed motherhood and normalization of non-marital sex.
We mustn’t mention that cultural and moral degradation and we mustn’t hold the cultural Leftists responsible for the consequences of teaching our children that sex is a sport, a form of entertainment to which they have an absolute right regardless of the consequences. To do so, would be to commit the far worse sin of “scolding.”
If scolding saves a human life, I say “scold away.”
The second “trouble” is their meager income and financial resources. As noted the pro-life homes for unwed women answers this problem by providing pre-natal care, funds for a proper delivery, legal help in adoption and post-pregnancy services to help the women get on her feet after the pregnancy.
The last trouble is “the unwillingness of men to stay with them.” Again, it is the cultural Left which has devalued marriage and committment. It is the cultural Left that made a mockery of chastity before marriage and which now suggests that only the mentally unbalanced would attempt to remain chaste outside of marriage. The vaunted “unwillingness of men to stay with women” is the result of that cultural shift. Again, there is no social shame in abandoning one’s offspring, as sex is a form of recreation, and the woman has violated the rules of the game by becoming pregnant.
Our culture has capitulated to the forces which have trivialized sex and devalued the life that naturally results from it. The pro-life forces have attempted to address this, the forces which favor killing one’s unborn child have offered nothing more then more efficient ways to kill one’s unborn child.
Missourian, replying to Dean, said
This is confusing. You’re quoting a statement from him about pro-choice groups as if he made it about pro-life groups.
Note 9, Juli, point taken
You are right, my comment was confusing. Let me try again. Here is the quote:
The pro-choice organizations are appallingly indifferent to the troubles in these women’s lives reflected by their repeated unwanted pregnancies. These troubles include their single unmarried status, their meager income and financial resources, and the unwillingness of the men to stay with them.
Dean is criticizing pro-choice groups. However, Dean proceeds to express his own take on the issue.. Dean’s implied observation is that the “troubles in these women’s lives” either are a cause of the unwanted pregnancies or that the troubles mitigate the sinfulness of the act of abortion.
So you are correct. Dean is criticizing pro-life groups, but, I am criticizing Dean’s invocation of the “troubles in these women’s lives.” I think it shifts the moral analysis away form individual responsibility towards what Dean wants to treat as amorphous almost environmental causes. Dean wants to look to the “root causes” of “unwanted pregnancies.” Even refering to the unborn child as an “unwanted pregnancy” distances the reader from the reality of the life that is at stake. Dean’s analysis moves the focus away from the actual act and renames it to make it more acceptable. I intended to move the emphasis back to the truth of what is involved.
Note 10, Are there degrees of sinfulness of abortion?
Is an abortion by a poor woman less sinful than an abortion by a well-to-do woman? I say no.
The Anglo-American common law tradition does not mitigate the crime of murder because the murder might decrease economic hardship or increase economic status of the murderer.
Is murder committed by a low income person for the sake of collecting insurance proceeds less sinful than a murder which does not generate an economic benefit for the murderer? After all, the person was suffering from a low income and the murder allowed them to move up to a better standard of living from the insurance proceeds. We should be more understanding of the crimes of low income people who are just trying to improve their situation in life.
Forgiveness? yes, Rationalizations? No. Dean comes close to rationalizing and excusing the choice to kill ones’ unborn child.
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