I am extremely uncomfortable with the ever increasing enshrinement into the law in otherwise progressive countries, European ones, of abortion as a right. Perhaps abortion should be a right in some moral schemas...but the logic around such an idea is questionable.
We, women already have a legal right to say no to sex even to our husbands. I believe this right to say no is essential to our well being. But in my mind saying we have a right to abortion in all cases on someone else's bill is sort of like saying we have a right to liposuction but worse. Just like when you eat ice cream with every meal you risk getting fat, if you have full on penis in the the vagina sex you risk getting pregnant. And it isn't as if this kind of sex just unexpectedly happens so quickly you don't know what hit you. Unless you live in a nudist camp, you have to at least decide to get your clothes off which takes a few seconds. When you decide to use contraception you know full well that there is a risk of contraception failure...
The only real argument I see made for this supposed right to abortion is gender equality...but gender equality is some abstract goal no one would understand anyways. We are born biologically different. Men don't have a right to breastfeed or easily experience multiple orgasms...
There are at least a few ideologically dangerous ideas that come with the 'right to an abortion.' One is that it is normal for a woman to be so weak and unempowered in her relations to men that she can't say no to sex...so she needs abortions to manage her life. If this is the case for women, we need a revolution, not just abortion clinics. Another idea tied up in abortions is that a woman can schedule the pregnancies in her life with ease, which is leading to more and more abuse of women in the workplace...for further commentary check out the soon to be published book White Coats, Black Lies.
Interesting perspective.
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I totally disagree! The difference between gaining some weight and getting pregnant is that after the pregnancy, there's an actually little human. In the case of a person who would've wanted an abortion... An unwanted little human.
ReplyDeleteJust like rehabilitation is a better option for certain people who do certain crimes than incarceration, abortion can be a better option than forcing a woman to deal with her mistake with this harsh penalty. I think the best interest of a person (whether it's the pregnant woman or the baby to be born) is more important than teaching someone a lesson for making a mistake. And we know that for a lot of women, it's not even a mistake. They were on birth control but it didn't work... Or they got raped... Or they are young and ignorant and were never taught about sex - and boy does that need to change! There should be sex-ed in the curriculum, taught little by little at every level of education until the kids are mature enough to get the full-on talk with detailed information.
Religious belief that a fertilized egg, or an early stage foetus should have the same rights as any human isn't my position so I say what I said from this point of view.