Centerfield

I really hate this issue. It’s been how many years since Roe? The country is still split nearly in half over the issue. Abortion needs to go away, not be made illegal. From what I've seen the number of abortions have been going down for the last 15 or so years. There are a lot of different theories on why this is happening but my personal belief is better birth control, Depo, implants, better pills, ect. Eventually someone will find discover the solution to a male birth control pill. Once you eliminate most unwanted pregnancy abortion goes away, judicial or legislative involvement is neither required nor desired. Abortion required for a woman’s health performed at major hospitals just like any other life saving surgery.

That’s my thought and I refuse to consider a candidates position on abortion when I vote. Its depressing to think about how much money the Pro-life/choice people waste to not change anyone’s position when the money could be spent on research that would eliminate the issue completely.

Posted by: Bernie at July 6, 2006 04:29 AM

To me, although I'm a progressive, the centrist position--and the one I advocate--is to overturn Roe and leave it to the States. You'd end up with 30 or so states (just a guess) where abortion was banned, and another 20 where it was allowed.

Why is this centrist? Because it diffuses the issue--it wouldn't be such a big part of national politics if Roe were overturned. People would still be able to get legal abortions, but conservatives would still feel good about doing as much as possible to limit them.

Yes, research should continue into programs encouraging other options, etc etc. And yes there are logistical issues with the poor having access to remote states to get a legal abortion. But this is the best solution I've come up with.

Posted by: JP at July 6, 2006 08:38 AM

I agree with JP to the extent that the centerpiece of any centrist position on abortion has to be the withdrawal of the courts from this supremely non-judicial area of public policy, although naturally enough, I don't quite agree on what happens next. ;) I certainly agree that removing it from the sphere of national politics is highly desirable (I continue to believe that the extent to which the Federal government has any involvement in abortion policy is extremely limited), although I think it's a bit of a pipe dream to hope that it will ever "just go away" as an issue.

I'm not entirely sure what Bernie means by "eliminate the issue completely," but I am quite sure that he writes from an implicitly pro choice position: even when it is performed justifiably to save the life of the mother, only those who are (or ought to be) pro choice could say it is "just like any other life saving surgery." It is no such thing; the closest comparable procedure, the separation of conjoined twins where one is likely to not survive the procedure, would not be considered "just like any other" surgery. It is sometimes necessary, but it is never routine. To consider an abortion, even one performed in circumstances I would accept as legitimate - to be "just like any other" surgical procedure requires one to dehumanize the life that is taken by the procedure; to contend abortion's equivalence to any other surgical procedure is to contend the equivalence of what is removed from the mother in an abortion to what is removed from the patient in any other procedure.

A centrist position, surely, cannot be nothing more than an old pro choice position dressed up in new rhetoric; it cannot be little more than the dreaded "personally pro choice, politically pro life" position, which is in practise a pro choice position insofar as it concedes the operative (and false) premise that abortion is a question of choice. A compromise, by definition, involves both sides ceding ground, not finding new ways to describe the same ground. Nor, on this issue, can a compromise be the status quo.

However, with that having been said, the goal here is to find centrist solutions, and I take it that Bernie's is essentially a variant on the Clintonian "safe, legal and rare" formulation; I always thought that phrase silly (it is not, of course, safe - indeed, it is fatal - for one of the two people most affected by the procedure), but insofar as I would prefer "legal and rare" to "legal and common", I would accept that as a reasonable position, if it were also part of a package to restigmatize abortion as a choice acceptable only in the most extreme circumstances. As I see it, the extinguishing of abortion on demand - and the mindset that fuels it - have to be a part of the solution. If Bernie rejects coercion by statute, surely he must climb aboard the social opprobrium train, or else remain standing on the platform at Pro Choice Station?

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 09:18 AM

I think the continuing legality of abortion should be a function of viability outside the womb. So long as the only substantial and realistic hope for extending the life of a fetus to birth as a human relies on the woman's womb, the decision should be kept out of the hands of the federal government, whether the government be federal, state, or local. The decision should be made among the concerned parties, which should consist of the potential mother and father. If either is a minor, parents deserve a say in the matter. If there's no agreement among parties, the decision should be left up to an arbitrator or otherwise adjudicated.

Ultimately, I can't support forcing a woman to give birth. Nor can I support forcing the prospective parents to legally become parents with all the challenges and responsibilities that brings.

If any government of the people decides that nascent life must be preserved despite the wishes of the prospective parents, then its up to that entity to take full legal and financial responsibility, as well as immediate physical custody. If it can't do that, it has no business being involved.

I think THAT is the proper centrist position...that if we are going to move from a condition where the decision rests with the directly involved parties to one where governments get to make the decision, then we must insist that the decisionmaker accepts ALL the consequences of the decision.

BTW, I find the chosen excerpt a little bizarre. I wonder how many Americans and how many democrats actually support abortion on demand until the moment of birth. My guess is that people who hold this position are a shrinking minority.

Posted by: bk at July 6, 2006 09:33 AM

One item I would insist on is that if the mother is faced with grievous injury (such as inability to walk or sterility) a possible consequence of the pregnancy, she should be allowed to do whatever is necessary to prevent that injury. Period.

Posted by: Scott Smith at July 6, 2006 10:00 AM

Ultimately, I can't support forcing a woman to give birth.

That general statement is in tension with at least two other positions taken elsewhere in your post:

I think the continuing legality of abortion should be a function of viability outside the womb.

One of the concerns Justice Brennan had with Blackmun's early drafts of Roe was apparently that Brennan considered abortion to be purely a matter of choice, and by tying the right to the limit of viability, Brennan foresaw that as medical science advanced, the right to abortion would diminish as our ability to preserve the life of the child expands. On this much, at least, Brennan was correct: the limit of viability today stands at about 23 weeks. Clearly, then, any abortion subsequent to 23 weeks must constitute infanticide under your standard (which I think is a reasonable start at compromise, although I would push for the beginning of the second trimester, and to be clear what is being compromised, would prefer the beginning of the first trimester) - but to so define and punish the "choice" is to remove the choice - ipso facto, forcing a woman to give birth.

The decision should be made among the concerned parties, which should consist of the potential mother and father. If either is a minor, parents deserve a say in the matter. If there's no agreement among parties, the decision should be left up to an arbitrator or otherwise adjudicated.

I agree with parental involvement where minors are concerned, but your suggestion of involvement by the father (and a fortiori, arbitration and ajudication) removes the "choice" from the sole discretion of the woman - ipso facto, forcing a woman to give birth.

Surely, any position that you take other than abortion on demand can be characterized as forcing a woman to give birth. Any curtailment of access to abortion imposes the "substantial burden" of forcing a woman to give birth. To accept any position other than abortion on demand, it seems to me, is to make your peace - however uncomfortably - with the practical reality that you are advocating a policy which does force women to give birth.

I wonder how many Americans and how many democrats actually support abortion on demand until the moment of birth. My guess is that people who hold this position are a shrinking minority.

I take it, then, that you agree with the opinion of Justice Thomas' dissent in Stenberg (or at least, that of Justice Kennedy), and will join me in celebrating when that case is overruled and "assigned its rightful place in the history of th[e] Court’s jurisprudence beside Korematsu and Dred Scott"? Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 10:37 AM

As a pro-life Democrat, it's a tough political situation. Those of you who are know what I'm talking about. It's a shame that this issue has become so partisan, and that the debate can become so bitter, on both sides. Good people can disagree on the issue (although I wonder how one can justify partial-birth abortion). For me, it's really nothing illiberal about being pro-life. It's about protecting the unborn.

One of the main concerns I have, and I believe many others have, about this debate is that of limits? Are there any limits that the pro-choicers will suffer to be placed on abortion? The idea that it's easier for a young girl to get an abortion, than an aspirin is ass-backwards. You need parents' permission to go on field trips, for heaven's sake.

Posted by: Rafique Tucker at July 6, 2006 11:05 AM

JP and Simon:

One of the main reasons that the debate has been such a wreck on the issue, is that many feel (with good reason) that there never really was a debate. With Roe, the courts sidestepped the democratic process, and established legal abortion by judicial decree. Roe must be overturned, and left to the states. Do you really think New York would vote to overturn abortion?

As far as the "personally pro-life/politically pro-choice" argument goes, that indeed fails to hold. I watched Kerry during that third debate. Watching him try to explain his position on abortion was like watching an animal being tortured. It was beyond painful.

Posted by: Rafique Tucker at July 6, 2006 11:14 AM

I wonder how one can justify partial-birth abortion

By denying personhood by virtue of transposition. It it moves sixteen inches, it's a person; otherwise it's a choice.

One has to presume that this absurd dehumanization is necessary to overcome the cognative dissonance that arises from attempting to reconcile the belief in unfettered "choice", in the abtract, with the horror-movie reality of its consequences. It is not hard to imagine the reaction of those who support partial-birth abotion - most of whom are also abolitionists - were someone to propose that even the worst of society's criminals should be executed by being locked into a dark chamber not much bigger than their body, whereafter they would be firmly grasped by steel restraints, their skull either drilled or sliced open, and then their brain sucked out through the ensuing hole. I rather imagine the adjectives that would be used to describe such a form of execution - and the person proposing it - would be unprintable. And yet, there are those among us who declare the commission of this atrocity - against not guilty criminals, moreover, but against the most innocent of all - to be a constitutional and human right. Many of these people would object to animals being treated in such a way, let alone criminals. Such people forefeit the right to be taken seriously in this debate;

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 11:21 AM

Roe must be overturned, and left to the states. Do you really think New York would vote to overturn abortion?

I think it would, but in any event, that is a decision for the people of New York to make.

As far as the "personally pro-life/politically pro-choice" argument goes, that indeed fails to hold. I watched Kerry during that third debate. Watching him try to explain his position on abortion was like watching an animal being tortured. It was beyond painful.

Right. I've talked about this before, see Compromising on abortion, 12/23/05, pp.2-4. Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 11:26 AM

Surely, any position that you take other than abortion on demand can be characterized as forcing a woman to give birth.
Yup, if you want to be a theoretical d$&ck about it instead of living in the real and practical world. Characterize all you want. What I was trying to indicate is that the benefit of doubt and responsibility of the decision should rest most strongly with the capable adults most directly involved, and that no goverrnment should make dictates demanding that all pregnant women should give birth.

IMO, unless it's medically possible to remove the fetus and nurture it successfully without the mother's ongoing involvment, the decision should rest with the mother, at least in the first trimester and probably in the second trimester. However, she has the moral responsibility to accept in good faith the input of the father. So there is little of the tension you imagine. What tension there is exists against a backdrop of changing medical ability, which IMO is the best hope for resolution of this conflict.

I doubt that I agree with Justice Thomas. As I'm certain you know, I'm cognizant of the fact that most people are of far more mixed minds on this issue than Justice Thomas or yourself. Whether or not I celebrate any demise of Roe v. Wade depends entirely upon what policies replace it.

First and foremost, should it fall, does this mean we go back to a state of having no legally declared right to privacy? Regardless of the suspect nature of the process by which we were granted such rights, their granting is IMO a splendid and indeed essential idea.

I agree with JP to the extent that the centerpiece of any centrist position on abortion has to be the withdrawal of the courts from this supremely non-judicial area of public policy

I disagree completely. I see the necessary involvement of the courts in protecting the individual right of privacy. The courts in RvW interceded to protect individuals from powerful government interference in what I believe should be a relatively private matter. I believe that any centrist position which contemplates the withdrawal of such protection should very, very, strongly advocate what the terms of such a withdrawal should be. I am decidely unsanguine on the prospects of "let's shoot down RvW and see what happens."

I cheerfully concede all the points that can be made about the suspect process by which we arrived at our right to privacy, but as you know, when push comes to shove my pragmatic nature is that usually I'll care a little more about product than process. Product affects peoples lives in direct and concrete ways. Process? In this case it affects the way people feel about the product. Regrettable yes, bu t IMO somewhat less consequential. (and yeah, we need not have this argument again...)

Supposing that RvW is a weak and rotting timber, it nevertheless supports a porch of important ideals which I believe must be protected. I'm not going to advocate that we just pull the beam and see what happens to the porch and everything on it.

If RvW is to be struck down, I believe it should first be supplanted by something more durable which conclusively establishes a right to privacy #1, and establishes a more flexible and durable policy on abortion #2. If you have a rotted deckpost to replace, you put something else in place before you pull the rotted post, to protect the porch from collapse.

There are plenty of Americans who either don't understand or don't give 2 brown plops about civil liberties. They can't wait to yank the rotted post. I hope for the sake of such folk that they never have to be disabused of the notion that there's no danger in yanking that post and watching civil liberties recede a little bit more. OTOH, maybe they need to find out the hard way.

Posted by: bk at July 6, 2006 11:29 AM

Simon, I didn’t intend to dehumanize the life that is taken by the procedure. I guess I came off as heartless when my intent was to be concise. I don’t believe that any woman desires to have surgery performed, especially in that area of the body. I would like to see an elimination of unwanted pregnancy. Male birth control would be a big step in achieving this by adding another layer of prevention. A pill form would be nice; an additive in beer would be ideal. If you significantly reduce demand for abortion then the abortion clinics shut down or switch to more profitable work. If a man had a way of ensuring that sex did not lead to pregnancy there would be no escaping the responsibility for any child.

Arguments over when life begins are something I’m not qualified to think about, much less form an opinion on. Although this article says that said around 60% to 80% of fertilized eggs fail to implant or spontaneously abort on their own after a few days. Discover magazine It’s a scientific type article, not political but it brings up some pretty interesting questions.

Now I need to go figure out what a social opprobrium train is.

Posted by: Bernie at July 6, 2006 11:40 AM

Such people forfeit the right to be taken seriously in this debate

Well Simon, your screeding is in rare form today. A long as you're reasonable, I guess. :-)

As usual, you get most of your mileage from bright lines: its either a person or its a choice. Once it's a person, all rights and privileges apparently MUST apply. Simple. Can we therefore assume that you feel there is no need to consider such matters as sentience, be it of an animal, a murderer, or a nascent human life? Because if you feel that way, perhaps it's YOU who should forfeit the right to be taken seriously, at least if the domain is reason and not the domain of faith and its related delicate sensibilities.

Don't you ever tire of roasting your self-crafted straw images of pro-choice supporters who support so-called "abortion on demand" while insisting upon protecting lab rats and murderers?

At any point does the notion bubble up into your mind that this cherished and easily dispatched caricature bears little real-world resemblance to the preponderance of those who support continuing to allow women to make decisions about the outcome of their pregnancies?

Posted by: bk at July 6, 2006 12:36 PM

One side says every little sperm is sacred, or at least every fertilized ovum, and any intentional prevention of that fertilized ovum maturing is single-cell homicide. The other side says killable until fully delivered. The bulk of Americans in poll after poll are somewhere in between--but those are the lines the "official" pro-life and pro-choice camps draw.

Sometimes, particularly in later stages of pregnancy when the first-trimester "choice" is long gone, that "choice" is between the life and/or health of the mother, and an unborn child. Who gets to set that priority, eh? Mom, ya gotta have that baby, even it kills ya both!

Bright lines look good in law. In real life they're not nearly so bright. Pre-eclampsia and associated conditions can kill both mother and baby (or fetus, if you prefer). The only "cure" is ending the pregnancy, and that means delivery or abortion. Which is more dangerous to the mother is situational, no bright line, a medical call and a personal risk-priority call. Do you force a woman to deliver by law, when the delivery can kill her? That's just an example--there are several other conditions just as dangerous for the mother. Do you use the law to force her to face a high risk of death to carry to viability?

From the other side, in a perfectly healthy mother carrying a perfectly healthy baby, that can survive outside the womb, that she suddenly decides she doesn't want, do you authorize killing that baby as a matter of "right?" Heh.

No bright line there, except for True Believers. Real choices, difficult ones for all parties, depending on the situation.

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 12:59 PM

Tully,
A very simple bright line rule - one that still compromises a great deal of ground - covers both your examples: no abortions after the end of the first trimester unless it constitutes an imminent or foreseeable direct endangerment to the life of the mother. The pro-life side concedes the first trimester, and the other side concedes the notion that it's a choice. Neither side leaves happy, but on the plus side, the most serious objections of both sides have been met (and best of all - there's a bright line).

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 02:12 PM

Presuming (only for the sake of this discussion, I don't actually presume this) that a bright line rule is desirable, an equally simple one would place the temporal deadline at the same moment in time when the survival rate of preemies without lasting subsequent lasting deficiencies is, say, 50% or 75%.

That would roughly bring us up through the 2nd trimester, give or take. And surprise, surprise, it would roughly duplicate the predominant current practice.

BTW, does anyone know what percent of legal abortions occurs in each of the trimesters, or by some other determination that breaks gestation into fractional time periods? How many abortions (and what percent of them) would Simon and I be quarreling over depending on whether abortions were allowed only in the first trimester versus the first 4 months, or 5 months?

Posted by: bk at July 6, 2006 02:31 PM

Surely, any position that you take other than abortion on demand can be characterized as forcing a woman to give birth.

Yup, if you want to be a theoretical d$&ck about it instead of living in the real and practical world. Characterize all you want. What I was trying to indicate is that the benefit of doubt and responsibility of the decision should rest most strongly with the capable adults most directly involved, and that no goverrnment should make dictates demanding that all pregnant women should give birth.

How amusing. My point was that in practical terms, what you prescribed in theory would amount to a contradiction of the basic right you claim to want to protect, and yet I'm the one who gets called a "theoretical d$&ck"? The bottom line is that if you are endorsing any circumstances in which "a woman's right to choose" can be abridged, by definition you are requiring the woman to give birth in those circumstances when you would refuse her access to an abortion. A pregnancy can only end in one of three ways - abortion, miscarriage or delivery. Absent the misfortune of the second, if you deny the first, you require the third. How is that a theoretical concern?

IMO, unless it's medically possible to remove the fetus and nurture it successfully without the mother's ongoing involvment, the decision should rest with the mother, at least in the first trimester

I'm willing to accept that as a basic foundation for a compromise.

However, she has the moral responsibility to accept in good faith the input of the father.

Assuming we are not talking about minors, then to make good-faith efforts to inform the father, yes; to listen to and consider his view, yes. But I can't get on board with the assigning the father a veto. To the extent that it is a choice at all, it is a choice justified purely and exclusively by the mother's interest in controling her own body. If we are going to compromise so far as to render it a choice in the first trimester, it comes too close to compromising the woman's fundamental independence to make it anyone's choice but hers. Counsel, yes, but not control.

I doubt that I agree with Justice Thomas. As I'm certain you know, I'm cognizant of the fact that most people are of far more mixed minds on this issue than Justice Thomas or yourself. Whether or not I celebrate any demise of Roe v. Wade depends entirely upon what policies replace it.

Actually, I was talking about Stenberg ("I take it, then, that you agree with the opinion of Justice Thomas' dissent in Stenberg"); even Justice Kennedy, who supports Roe, and helped author Casey, and who presumably is therefore pro choice (or at least, pro "the Constitution requires choice whether I like it or not") refused to accept the conclusion that partial-birth abortion is protected by the Constitution or by Roe-Casey.

If RvW is to be struck down, I believe it should first be supplanted by something more durable which conclusively establishes a right to privacy #1, and establishes a more flexible and durable policy on abortion #2. If you have a rotted deckpost to replace, you put something else in place before you pull the rotted post, to protect the porch from collapse.

That depends wholly on whether you think the porch is worth saving. Simply overruling Roe and its progeny will not establish, but is in fact a prerequisite to a "more flexible and durable policy on abortion"; until those cases are gone, we are stuck in the very quagmire that has poisoned the well for three decades. There is no way out unless or until we are willing to drain the swamp. What we then build on that ground is someone that can legitimately be debated and disagreed over, and eventually, compromised over - but no amount of debate or compromise is going to get anything built until the ground is fit for a foundation. Drain the swamp, or continue to thrash around in it.

The right to privacy is a separate issue -- even if there were such a generic right in the Constitution, it would not cover abortion -- and we need not reach that question for our purposes today.

As for your implicit suggestion that overruling Roe will destroy civil liberties, such a conclusion strains the limits of credulity; the republic not only survived, but was doing pretty nicely without the need for the Holy Writ of Roe for just shy of two hundred years. The idea that somehow society today depends for its continued vitality on an action which can legitimately be said to have done more damage to the American polity than almost any other single event in the last century is simply preposterous.

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 02:45 PM

A legal bright line, maybe. In real life not so bright, and both sides would still fight the definitions tooth and nail. Indeed, they do so now.

Brian, this is from memory so don't write it in as gospel, but 90% of all abortions are "first twelve weeks" and roughly 0.01% (1 in 10,000) are after 24 weeks, the "line of viability." There's a slight "bulge" in the distribution at the 18-22 week timeline that reflects abortions performed for major genetic defects after the amniocentesis results have come back, or after other tests indicate a non-viable fetus condition leading to future "womb death." Amnio is usually done at about 16 weeks, and the results aren't instant.

I would particularly like to note the many second-trimester abortions performed for cases of fetal non-viability. These are pregnancies that will NOT result in a live birth, regardless. The patient can choose to abort, or (much more risky for the patient) wait for nature to do the job, but they still count in the stats as abortions.

Late-term abortion is rare, late-term abortion for simple contraceptive reasons not involving major fetal abnormality or medical health of the mother is exceedingly rare. Even in cases of late-term "simple contraception" abortions there are usually other considerations in play, such as rape, incest, or parental incapacity.

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 02:55 PM

Brian,
These figures are a little out of date, but for sake of argument, they should suffice (they are also, I have to assume, the most recent CDC has.

For sake of ease of working within the CDC's data, let's say that the first trimester ends at the end of the 12th week. On that premise, 88.5% of abortions are carried out in the first trimester, and nearly 30% are carried out in the first 6 weeks of pregnancy.

"Only" 11.5% are carried out subsequent to the end of the first trimester (what is it that abolitionists say about the death penalty? That if one innocent man goes to his death, that is sufficient indictment of the system to shut down the death penalty?), but with 854,122 abortions carried out in a year, that 11.5% represents 98,225 children who won't be dead if some kind of compromise can be reached. That does not fully satisfy me -- it still leaves a minimum of 524,431 who are aborted after the heart has begun to beat outside our protection, and there is something more than a little macabre about a "compromise" that permits slaughter on such distressing scale to continue unabated -- but I would accept that as a starting position, not least since in order to make that compromise, we would have to abandon the Roe-Casey framework entirely. Not ideal, but as a compromise, it is a beginning. And we have to begin somewhere. Any progress is progress.

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 03:06 PM

The right to privacy is a separate issue -- even if there were such a generic right in the Constitution, it would not cover abortion -- and we need not reach that question for our purposes today.

Let me get this straight, you get to say this with a straight face, and I am the one that's straining credulity? OK got it. I'll assume from this that you are simply not serious. There's no rationale way to discuss the supposed existence of a right to privacy without talking RvW. None.

And since you've both ignored my raising of the issue of sentience and characterized abortions as slaughter, I am further bolstered in my view that you are not willing to entertain any discussion that does not toe your bright line between life and choice. I find this ironic given that it's you that speaks of compromise, yet you're unwilling to enter into any calculus that sets any value on any fetus less than 100%.

BTW, I agree with you that while the input of the father is desirable, ultimately, he can't have veto power over the mother's decision either way, unless the fetus is viable.

You really need to drop the hyperbole several notches Simon. You read into my comments the "implicit suggestion" that overturning RvW would "destroy" civil liberties. I didn't imply that, you read that into what I said. The credulity-straining part consists entirely of the extra part that you read into my comments, not what I said. "The republic was doing quite nicely...blah...blah...blah." Whatever. I'm simply suggesting that overturning RvW could have an adverse affect on civil liberties because it is in fact RvW which tenuously (even dubiously) established the constitutional right to privacy. This status, such as it is, currently EXISTS legally. This is blindingly obvious and there for all to see if they care to look.

This is indeed inconvenient for your arguments, which is why you try to sweep it from the thread with a dissmissivew bruch. But there it is. Look everyone. The constitutional right to prvacy, dubiously declared, right there in RvW. What a bother, eh?

Posted by: bk at July 6, 2006 03:40 PM

but with 854,122 abortions carried out in a year, that 11.5% represents 98,225 children who won't be dead if some kind of compromise can be reached

Wrong. I'm tossin' the hyperbole flag on that one. Even without abortion involved a major percentage of those pregnancies will never result in live births. Many of the rest, such as anencephalics, will not survive long past birth, hours at most, if they make it that far. Representing all late-term abortions as being healthy babies killed before birth is bull. They mostly aren't. Late-term abortion of healthy pregnancies is a very small fraction of all late-term procedures.

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 03:53 PM

There's no rationale way to discuss the supposed existence of a right to privacy without talking RvW. None.

Really? It's intriguing that the Court managed to invent the right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut without referring to Roe once. Intriguing, but hardly surprising, given that Griswold was handed down eight years prior to Roe. Do you want to revise your comment that we can't talk about a "right to privacy" without talking about a case that didn't come along for several years after the court had declared this right to be protected by the Constitution?

I am further bolstered in my view that you are not willing to entertain any discussion that does not toe your bright line between life and choice. I find this ironic given that it's you that speaks of compromise, yet you're unwilling to enter into any calculus that sets any value on any fetus less than 100%.

How can you seriously suggest that a compromise which protects only around 12% of those who would otherwise be aborted (and in point of fact, probably less than that: as others have pointed out, there are exceptions even within that 12%), and which leaves the remaining 88% beyond protection, is no compromise at all? A compromise which permits total maternal discretion in the first trimester concedes the pro choice side practically everything. What exactly is the concession that you're prepared to make? The mind boggles as to what kind of compromise you're looking for if 88% and exceptions for imminent threat to life and health is not enough. If you want more, that seems desire for less a compromise than for surrender "leavened" by more-or-less gracious rhetoric from the winners. Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 03:58 PM

but with 854,122 abortions carried out in a year, that 11.5% represents 98,225 children who won't be dead if some kind of compromise can be reached

Wrong. I'm tossin' the hyperbole flag on that one. Even without abortion involved a major percentage of those pregnancies will never result in live births.

Fair to say. But even if the savable number reaches only 50,000, is that not enough? How many is too few? What is the threshold? Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 04:01 PM

PS--"first trimester" is considered 13-14 weeks. Third trimester begins at 28 weeks. Normal gestation is 40 weeks +/- 2 weeks. The 24-week "viability" line is somewhat questionable, falling into a grey area, with intensive medical intervention and support required for ANY survivability. Pre-third-trimester is generally not considered "viable" by OB's unless there's a state-of-the-art neonatal unit handy.

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 04:06 PM

You're using more imaginary numbers there, Simon. Do you want to mandate that parents (and society) MUST deliver and provide medical care for babies with anencephaly? Potter's Syndrome? Infantile Tay-Sachs Disease? Are you ready to tell a pregnant woman she MUST carry to term, even if it means she's running a 40%+ chance of dying before she gets there? These are real issues, and not rare ones at all.

The overwhelming majority of late-term procedures ARE done for the reasons mentioned--threat to maternal life/health or severe fetal abnormality. I have no problem with restricting healthy women with healthy pregnancies involving healthy babies from not aborting in the third trimester viability range. But that's NOT why most late-term procedures are performed.

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 04:16 PM

Looks like I was wrong. I didn't know about Griswold.

If the RtP was previously eztablished, then indeed you Can talk about it without mentioning RvW. I don't know why you would, though.

I am totally unable to follow your argument about the 88% though. Why do you believe that all fetuses deserve the same merit and respect as all other human lifes? Why is it that the value of an adult life with all its connections does not deserve consideration over a fetus with no sentience or very dubious sentience?

Posted by: bk at July 6, 2006 04:30 PM

The overwhelming majority of late-term procedures ARE done for the reasons mentioned--threat to maternal life/health or severe fetal abnormality

Perhaps I wasn't clear when I suggested what my policy preference would be absent the necessity to compromise. If it were left to me, any abortion would be illegal, in the third, second or first trimester, other than in genuine cases of serious threat to maternal life and health or severe fetal abnormality. I don't think we can ever know when life really begins, and so I think we have to err on the side of caution and presume that from the point that it is possible, it is protected. That would be my "God for a day" solution. And let me emphasize - I'm a moderate on this issue. I'm willing to talk about compromise; I'm willing to put in exceptions. But what Brian is militating for, it seems to me, is no compromise at all. Reciting the pro choice liturgy is not a compromise. It isn't finding a centrist solution.

The reason, by the way, that I hedge on the health exception is that the problem becomes that to put an unqualified health exception in laws has always had the practical effect of permitting abortion on demand - what are we supposed to do, say "no, we really, really, mean it"? As I said above, I'm a moderate on this issue. I'm not willing to say that if a pregnancy will kill a woman, she should be forced to carry it to term, although I'd argue that every effort should be taken to save both lives. It continues to frustrate me just how clearly the point is being missed: this is continually presented as some bizarre attempt to subjugate women and exercise irrational control over their reproductive choices. It is no such thing. I accept that banning abortion "places a invasive, draconian and discriminatory burden upon women," Compromising on Abortion, supra, at 2, but "I believe the interests of the woman must be balanced against the life of the child that abortion kills," and I believe that is sufficient justification for imposing that burden in all cases where the abortion is out of choice rather than medical necessity. That position "is a statement that the child's life has some worth to be considered, not a statement that in any way reduces the value of the life of the mother."

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 04:40 PM

Gang,

Rights are not invented, the founding fathers, in their wisdom, explicitly made part of the constitution the notion that simply because a right is enumerated in the bill of rights, that it does not mean that other rights don't exist. Do your copies of the constitution have the 9th written in invisible ink?

What about other “rights” no in the constitution? What about the right of “Freedom of Association”? Where did that come from? I don’t see it in the constitution.

If a basic right of privacy is not a right that is unenumerated (yet suggested implicitly as the very reason for the 4th amendment) then the 9th has no standing whatsoever, you might as well rip it out because the 9th was put there to halt the whole, “..but it’s no where in the constitution” argument in its tracks. Yet we see it being used here in one way or another on this very thread.

Posted by: Rick DeMent at July 6, 2006 04:43 PM

Looks like I was wrong. I didn't know about Griswold. If the RtP was previously eztablished, then indeed you Can talk about it without mentioning RvW. I don't know why you would, though.

Because the right to privacy and the right to obtain an abortion are completely separate. The latter cannot be derived from the former without an abstraction even more tenous than the abtraction from the Bill of Rights necessary to create a generic right of privacy. That's part of what made Roe so totally outrageous, even built on top of Griswold.

I am totally unable to follow your argument about the 88% though. Why do you believe that all fetuses deserve the same merit and respect as all other human lifes? Why is it that the value of an adult life with all its connections does not deserve consideration over a fetus with no sentience or very dubious sentience?

As I indicated in my previous comment, because I doubt "we can ever know when life really begins, and so I think we have to err on the side of caution and presume that from the point that it is possible, it is protected." The life of the mother should indeed be valued over the life of the fetus, but what you are arguing for is not a trump card so much as an automatic victory. When it comes right down to it, if the choice is that the child can be saved or the mother can be saved, I would say that the mother should be saved. What I argue for is best analogized to the conjoined twins example given above: when separating conjoined twins, doctors make every effort to save both. They are ultimately regarded as having equal inherent value, and if the ultimate decision has to be made, the decision is made in terms of which has the greater chance of survival. In my view, in the abortion context, that should automatically be considered to be the mother. As I mentioned before, I'm a moderate on this issue, but I think that's the appropriate resolution.

Thus, seductive though it may be, I couldn't honestly offer a total ban on discretionary abortions as a compromise, because that really doesn't concede anything. I think that abortion should never be available as a question of "choice", but it should be available (if only as a last resort) in case of genuine and utterly compelling medical necessity, as adjudged by a pro-life doctor.

We may have to consider the possibility that there may not be a compromise position. We're the moderates and we can't get a resolution; if you can't convince me, and I can't convince you, what chance do you have of convincing Jane Roe, and what chance do I have of convincing Nan Aron? Can there a solution that works for both sides, or do the underlying premises of each position deny enough movement to compromise?

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 04:55 PM

Rick,
Not this again. The Ninth Amendment enjoins the disparagement of rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution. One view of the Ninth Amendment is that to disparage those rights not enumerated is to say that the Constitution must protect all these unenumerated, nubulous rights which will be divined by judges as time goes on; another view is that to disparage rights is to say that the only kind of rights that the people have are those protected by the Federal government. One of those two views makes sense viewed in the context of the overall structure that the Framers put in place 1787-1791; the other one is yours.

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 05:01 PM

as adjudged by a pro-life doctor

It's difficult enough to train decent high-risk maternal-fetal medicine doc. Major shortage of 'em. You're already placing an ideological litmus test on professional MEDICAL qualifications, and insisting that only the politically correct doctors can make the call.

But your "medical neccesity" escape hatch still doesn't cover it, Simon. IT'S NOT THE DOCTOR'S CALL, which is the whole point. In real life, that decision isn't usually "required to save" the mother. It's a percentage call at best, with no way to know which woman will win the bet and which will join the Choir Invisible along with her in-womb progeny. You can't just throw that decision at the "pro-life doctor." It's the woman who is gambling her life--you're handing the dice to someone who has nothing at stake.

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 05:06 PM

And where do you set that percentage bar? 10% chance of death or serious injury? 50%? Where? Knowing that under your scenario, the physician making that subjective assessment of risk is already inclined to one side of the question?

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 05:11 PM

Re: Rights--I have the right to go berserk and paint all Hum-V's in America purple, don't I? It just hasn't been discovered and enumerated yet!

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 05:16 PM

you're handing the dice to someone who has nothing at stake.

I'd hand it to someone who is not predisposed in favor of abortion, and who is only going to use it where there is a genuine and compelling need, yes. Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 05:30 PM

And where do you set that percentage bar? 10% chance of death or serious injury? 50%? Where? Knowing that under your scenario, the physician making that subjective assessment of risk is already inclined to one side of the question?

As we are seeing, the doctor will be inclined to one side of the question, one way or another. This thread is already making it painfully clear that there is no middle ground: people have an opinion, one way or another. So what is the alternative? Do you leave it to chance and hope that a pro-choice doctor is going to err on the side of caution? I'm not a moron, I realize how it looks to type "an attending pro life doctor", but the results speak for themselves. Pro choice doctors have transformed health exceptions into abortion on demand, so what are we to do?

I have still yet to hear anyone make a proposal in this thread that does not essentially ratify the status quo.

Posted by: Simon at July 6, 2006 05:34 PM

Sometimes the status quo IS the true balance, Simon. Even when it fully satisfies nobody. It's called "pluralism." Democracy is messy, not bright-line and simply defined.

Your odds of finding a qualified (board-certified) maternal-fetal medicine sub-specialist who is ideologically "pro-life" in the sense you mean it are miniscule to non-existent, BTW. Those guys and gals take at least a decade of intensive post-graduate training to produce. It is not a theoretical decision to them, but they would be the physicians most qualified to make it, and usually ARE the physicians who are treating the patients in that position. Which is why they are so disinclined to buy into ontological arguments--they have to work with real patients in real situations, not theoretically healthy pregnancies to which one can assign bright-line judgements.

I know several MFM-boarded OB's. I do not know a single one of them who would assist with aborting a pregnancy at that stage of the game unless there was an overwhelming medical consideration involved. And it's not something they'd do at earlier stages--they have better things to do with their time, and first-term abortions don't require a sub-specialist. They'd refer the patient out.

As we are seeing, the doctor will be inclined to one side of the question, one way or another.

Yeah--the patient's. By oath. Unless you're going to require a political litmus-test oath of doctors. Then you'll either have lousy doctors, or a lot fewer of them.

Posted by: Tully at July 6, 2006 05:59 PM

Because the right to privacy and the right to obtain an abortion are completely separate. The latter cannot be derived from the former without an abstraction even more tenous than the abstraction from the Bill of Rights necessary to create a generic right of privacy.

Ahh, proof by declaration. One of my favorites. Well done Simon, well done!

Unfortunately, RvW is a prominent case that deals with the RtP. So they're not "completely separate," which you implictly concede by admitting that they can be connected by what you characterize as "tenuous abstraction." What you mean to say is thay your opinion is that they SHOULD not be connected, which is quite a different point. Currently, today, as we speak, they are DEEPLY connected, by law. Any change to the status of RvW affects the health and legal status of our tenuous RtP. You're doing your best to avoid coming reight out and saying that you don't think it exists, or that you don't think that legally it currently deserves to exist. My point on this, as always, is this:regardless of whether it legally deserves to exist under the terms of the democratic processes as they were intended to unfold, Americans indeed do eserve the right to privacy, and we need to do a much better and more comprhensive job of establishing what that means. Before tapping out the rotted post.

On pro-life docs, I'd love to find 100 pro-life teens and send them to medical school to become ob-gyns, and see what the experience does to their pro-life views. We could let 50 remain or become ensconsced in a personal pro-life social culture, and embed the other 50 in a personal culture that revolves around the issues that doctors face. I wonder what we'd find out.

Simon, I find your suggestion that we should only allow pro-life docs to mediate to be the real "your slip is showing" indication of bias that doesn't permit compromise. You are saying that we should place the decision in the hands of someone with a declared bias. That's quite a laughable suggestion for compromise. I agree with Tully that any such person MUST give input on such decisions only on the basis of their sworn oath to the patient (or patients, if you prefer).

As regards the status quo, I'm with Tully. The main objectionable part of the status quo, IMO, is the unmitigated vitriol between the wings. If RvW is overturned, I expect that the vitriol will NOT be reduced, it will go up, as we get 50 battles on a state by state basis. And then we'll see an extension of vitriol into the lifes of people who had previously been allowed to make pregnancy decisions without overweening government interference. Now this might ultimately be a path to lesser vitriol over the long term. But in the short term it'll be VERY ugly.

The status quo is always under-rated in America. I was just thinking about this the other day. I came to the conclusion that it's actually an essential component of modern democracy in the busy 21st century. Even glacial change can only occur when constant criticism of various inequities leads to general disastisfaction, constant complaining, and cynicism. I think this point really goes to the American supertruth that democracy is the worst system, except for all the other ones humans have tried so far.

Posted by: bk at July 7, 2006 10:27 AM

You're doing your best to avoid coming reight out and saying that you don't think it exists, or that you don't think that legally it currently deserves to exist.

I'm doing no such thing; I have said here many times that I don't believe that there is a constitutionally-protected generic "right to privacy", and I saw no need to get into that fight again today for much the same reason I didn't see any need to get into an argument about whether Jimmy Smith or Barbara Dennerlein is a better organist: because it isn't germane to the subject at hand. Even Blackmun hedged as to how or why abortion was protected by the Constitution; I would overrule both Roe and Griswold, but I do not accept that if either falls, the other must necessarily fall too. But if it makes you feel less like I'm hiding something, certainly, I do not accept that the Constitution of the United States presently protects a generic right to privacy, and even if it were amended to explicitly protect "privacy," I would not construe that protection to create a constitutional right to abortion.

I find your suggestion that we should only allow pro-life docs to mediate to be the real "your slip is showing" indication of bias that doesn't permit compromise.

I find it no less astonishing than I did yesterday (comment, 03:58 PM) that you can seriously suggest that I'm not willing to compromise. As I said then - a point you have still not answered - "[h]ow can you seriously suggest that a compromise which protects 12% of those who would otherwise be aborted (and in point of fact, [protects] less than that: as [Tully] pointed out, there are exceptions even within that 12%), and which leaves the remaining 88% beyond protection, is no compromise at all?" How can you, with a straight face, accuse me of being unwilling to compromise when I have offered several areas on which I'm willing to make compromises on, including several that are distinctly unpalatable and cede far more ground than I would prefer, and yet you have not only rejected those compromises, but refused to cede any ground yourself? Can you identify any way, shape or form in which you are willing to compromise? What concessions are you willing to make? So far, I have seen none, and you have the sheer gall to accuse me of being unwilling to compromise?

The main objectionable part of the status quo, IMO, is the unmitigated vitriol between the wings

The main objection to the status quo is that the status quo is an illegitimately-imposed legal regime imposed by an ever-dwindling majority of a committee of nine, unelected lawyers (all of whom, as Reagan might have observed, have been born) that has prematurely snuffed out millions of lives. If there is ANYTHING on which society should be vitriolically divided, it is abortion: either my side is right, in which case see the preceding sentence, or your side is right, in which case there is a mass movement in this country to impose an "invasive, draconian[,] discriminatory" and totally indefensible restriction on the freedom of women, and it must be fought and resisted as if it were the devil himself. Simply put, if abortion is not worth fighting over, nothing is worth fighting over. No other issue has such massively important stakes.

Worse yet, even if you are not inclined to share the conclusion that this illegitimate regime constitutes a state-approved genocide, at very best, the legal regime remains an illegitimately imposed - as even many ardent supporters of abortion rights concede - straightjacket, wherein states cannot even impose restrictions on abortion that enjoy overwhelming support. Society is divided on abortion, with - I will concede - a majority in favor of retaining abortion in most circumstances. But society is not divided over partial-birth abortion, and it is not divided over parental notification. There are regulations on abortion which enjoy overwhelming support, but which cannot be instigated without falling afoul of the Roe-Casey-Stenberg straightjacket. There cannot be a compromise of any sort which does not include repudiating Stenberg and at least modifyinng the Casey framework, even if one retains the core "right to abortion" holding of Roe.

At the risk of manufacturing a straw man, it seems to me that you argue that the status quo is a compromise, or that somehow the status quo is a "balance" that has developed; no clearer illustration of what kind of "compromise" you have in mind can be found than describing the status quo as a compromise. The status quo gives the pro choice lobby everything it wants. "We'll take everything we want, and you can live with it (if you survive pregnancy)" is not a compromise, Brian. It may or may not be desirable, depending on your view of the issue, but it is assuredly not "balance", and it is absolutely not a "compromise."

If nothing else, this entire frustrating exercise should make abundantly clear that there evidently is not and cannot be a compromise position on abortion; to that extent, nobody who is pro life can vote for "Unity '08", since - as you make clear - even if it claims to take no position, it stands squarely on one side of the abortion question. If it declares itself as taking no position on abortion, it declares itelf for the status quo; the status quo is abortion on demand, thus the claim to be taking no position is to accept the pro choice position sub silentio. At least now we know what we're up against: I wonder what other aspects of policy this kind of "compromise" is to be applied to. Perhaps it will be applied to fiscal policy: as a compromise between fiscal conservatives who want to cut spending and liberals who want to raise taxes, we'll raise taxes and raise spending. As a compromise between social conservatives who don't want gay marriage and liberals who do want gay marriage, we'll simply say that governments can't prevent gay marriage and leave it at that. As a compromise between militant atheists who want to banish God from every corner of the public domain and the rest of society which is far more sanguine about it, we'll just remove all invocations of the almighty from every public building, coin, pledge, oath and symbolic happening. As a compromise between the liberals who want to immediately withdraw from Iraq and everyone else who doesn't think unilateral surrender is such a good idea, we'll just pull our troops out of Iraq immediately. And, of course, the big question: abortion. Conservatives want to stop abortion, liberals want abortion on demand, and most of society - being more moderate than either camp - want to regulate abortion. So as a compromise between the three, we'll have...Abortion on demand! The sheer majesty of compromise, ladies and gentlemen - the crown jewels of centrism, steering a delicate middle path right down one side.

Posted by: Simon at July 7, 2006 12:16 PM

BK,

I, myself, have somewhat conflicted feelings on the abortion issue. But one thing that has always puzzled me is how a right to have an abortion can be construed as a "privacy issue".
I honestly cant fathom how the two are related?

To use an analogy, if you were running a crack lab in your basement.... your right to privacy might prevent the police from entering your home to search it without a warrant but it wouldn't protect the actual act of running a crack lab, would it?

Now I can certainly understand the concept of a person having a fundemental right to make medical decisions about thier own body (I'm not sure whether it's covered in the Constitution specificaly but certainly seems like it AUGHT to be a basic human right to me). However, that seems like an entirely seperate and unrelated issue to a right to privacy.

Posted by: cengel at July 7, 2006 01:17 PM

My guess is that the words for a proper addition to the bill of rights conclusively establishing the right to privacy would sound an awful lot like the lyrics to Ain't Nobody's Business.

[Notwithstanding the fact that the original lyrics suggest that perhaps wife beating isn't an issue unless the wife herself complains.]

So medical decisions, for example, aint nobody's business if you do. And that makes them matters of privacy. I don't really get why some people have a trouble connecting the right to privacy to the idea that certain spheres of decision-making shouldn't be subject to government interference, or should be subject to such intererence only under carefully proscribed extraordinary circumstances. IMo, it's a matter of personal sovereignty, which is what I connect to privacy. WQhat's the point of privacy without its relation to personal sovereignty (freedom, in other words)?

And I'll cheerfully concede that I don't know exactly what circumstances would and would not be covered. We'd have to work that out. It's one of those "we know 'em when we see 'em" ideas, and we'd have to add it to list of things we keep trying to figure out as we go along.

Posted by: bk at July 7, 2006 02:43 PM

How can you seriously suggest that a compromise which protects only around 12% of those who would otherwise be aborted (and in point of fact, probably less than that: as others have pointed out, there are exceptions even within that 12%), and which leaves the remaining 88% beyond protection, is no compromise at all?

Just to be clear, what I'm saying is that procedures in that under-12% would be almost entirely surgical (hospital) abortions of NON-healthy pregnancies, performed for a compelling medical reason. "Medical exceptions" under most views. If you want to stop abortions of healthy pregnancies, you're back in that 88%+. Late-term abortion of healthy pregnancies is an extremely small fraction of late-term abortions. Restricting late-term procedures will save very few healthy babies, no matter how you figure it.

Y'all can argue the law and the ethics and the ideals. I'm just providing some reality context here. A total ban on abortion won't stop it, any exception will be utilized WAY "above and beyond" by doctors, and illegal abortions will skyrocket, with attendant health/mortality problems.

Latin America is a case in point. In most of Latin America, abortion is tightly restricted at ALL stages of pregnancy to the "life and health of the mother" exceptions. So, LA has a lower rate of legal abortions than we do? Hollow laugh. Not even close. Legal abortion rates in Latin America are twice or more that of the United States, and the death rate from illegal abortions is considerable.

It's fine to argue for bright lines. Be sure you know the practical result of exactly what you're arguing for.

Posted by: Tully at July 7, 2006 03:24 PM

Abortion is a complex issue. However, any blogger who seriously considers themselves to be enough of a lefty to usually vote Dem, but who "sincerely hopes" Stevens will be replaced by a GOP nominee, is either monumentally stupid or, more likely, surreally tunnel-visioned.

SCOTUS is about a hell of a lot more than reproductive rights. The idea of someone who thinks of themselves as conscientious (or, indeed, sentient) but who welcomes throwing yet another vote on to those who would condone torture and the imperial presidency, for one issue, destroys their credibility.

I've maintained for a while that least terrible of all the terrible solutions is to move reproductive rights to the state legislatures and have them slog it out with their own constituents. Mississipians who hate that sex is fun are not going to be thrilled when Massachusetts opens drive-through 3rd trimester abattoirs, and flat-chested Radcliffe Feminazis are going to boil when Utah legislates that women must have their cliteroses removed, but in the end, there's always the moving van.

Posted by: Greg63 at July 7, 2006 04:26 PM

Simon, let's consider the extent to which each of us is willing to compromise against the backdrop of where our initial views are. I started from a point that was already comfortably in the middle from choice versus life. meanwhile ou've been talking about slaughter and murder. If I'm already in the middle after giving the issue considerable thought and you're way out on the wing in terms of your ideal view, why would I try to meet YOU halfway?

Now if I were in favor of so-called "abortion on demand," then maybe the idea that we should meet halfway would have more merit.

But I'm talking about restricting abortion based on the medical line of realistic viability. If that's not a compromise position already, I dunno what is.

Posted by: bk at July 7, 2006 04:30 PM

Latin America is a case in point. In most of Latin America, abortion is tightly restricted at ALL stages of pregnancy to the "life and health of the mother" exceptions. So, LA has a lower rate of legal abortions than we do? Hollow laugh. Not even close. Legal abortion rates in Latin America are twice or more that of the United States, and the death rate from illegal abortions is considerable.

Just to follow up on Tully's comments (and please note; I'm pro-life) WHO stats from several years ago pointed out the number of legal abortions worldwide equaled the number of illegal ones. And both numbers are large. It really points out the difference between "picking away at Roe v. Wade at the edges" such as "partial birth abortions" and parental consent versus actually signficantly impacting the total number of abortion performed.

I can fully appreciate (and in fact support) the attempts to legislate things like Intact Dilitation and Extraction ("partial birth abortion") but lets be honest, its going to have only a minimal impact on abortion numbers.

I get in trouble with my Christian friends (at least the pro-life ones) when I bring this up. I get in deeper trouble when I suggest that greater access to contraception will have a signficantly greater impact on the number of abortions.

Posted by: c3 at July 7, 2006 04:46 PM

Brian,
In other words, you've reached your position having really, really thought about it, and after long and careful consideration of the matter, you've reached the reasonable, measured and thoughtful normative preferences that you have reached. How much better that is than those weirdo pro life folks, who are just throwing stuff off the top of their heads in a slapdash fashion that merits no real serious engagement. I think we can all agree that you shouldn't compromise, because your opinion is already the reasonable one.

Because that's our motto as centrists: "when you're right, you don't need to compromise."

You can certainly maintain that your position is the right position, Brian, and you are certainly within your rights to demand that your normative position be social policy - but to do so is absolutely the polar opposite of centrism, or of being a moderate. That makes you precisely the same as virtually everyone else on both sides of the abortion debate: an ideologue who won't budge from their own convictions. And that's okay: that just means that you're the same as millions of other Americans. But it also means that what you can't do is maintain such a position while decrying absolutism in other people - and you certainly can't criticize anyone else for being unwilling to compromise when you yourself have decided that your opinion is just too damned reasonable to require you to compromise.

Posted by: Simon at July 7, 2006 05:16 PM

BK,

I've got to admit that is a pretty alien way of looking at the right to "privacy" for me. Privacy has always seemed to me about the right to exclude people from obtaining certain information without your permission.....it's never, in my mind, extended to the content of the information... just the act of obtaining it.

For instance things written in a diary and stored in your home are generaly considered "private". You might write in your diary a detailed account of how you murdered your boss. Access to your diary would be protected by your right to privacy (the government would need to have probable cause and a warrant to be able to access) but the content of it, i.e. the murder of your boss, wouldn't..... and the government could prosecute you for it if it was able to come by that information through some legal means (say you showed your diary to a co-worker who could then be called to testify against you).

Note, I certainly support the idea of personnel soveriegnty in general and specificaly a right to make medical decisions for yourself.... but I certainly don't equate that with "privacy rights". The two are entirely seperate issues in my mind. Not all matters of personnel soveriegnty are "privacy issues". For instance, I support the right to keep and bare arms... but I don't happen to consider that as a privacy right.

In the case of medical decisions, I generaly support your "aint nobody's business" standard.... with the caveat that it only applies so long as no one else is DIRECTLY affected by the decision. For instance, if you made a decision to have a kidney transplant....it would certainly be the business of the person who's kidney you were taking.

That's the real question with abortion. Is the fetus which is being aborted a "person" or not?
To me that's something which seems a very grey area... which I certainly don't believe I am wise enough to judge with any certainty.

The only thing I'll say, which I think is true for most people,... is that the further along in term, the more person-like it becomes to me.

Posted by: cengel at July 7, 2006 05:44 PM

That's the real question with abortion. Is the fetus which is being aborted a "person" or not? To me that's something which seems a very grey area... which I certainly don't believe I am wise enough to judge with any certainty.

That's really the whole thing, right? If we knew with absolute certainty where the fetus ceases to be a mass of cells and instead becomes an actual living "person," then this entire debate would resolve itself rather cleanly, wouldn't it? But the devil is always in the details, and we can't say with any moral or scientific certainty precisely where that magic transition takes place.

On one extreme, people argue that the soul attaches at conception, and so we're immediately dealing with a new and fully-privileged person as soon as the sperm cell enters the egg. (Actually, further to that extreme, there are some who oppose male masturbation because it constitutes the killing of a potential life-- I'm not kidding, either). On the other extreme are those who would deny the fetus "personhood" until after it leaves the womb, regardless of whether it was viable, thinking, moving, hearing, seeing, and feeling as a human. And in between, as always, there are the great masses of us who don't really know when human life begins, but we know it happens sometime after sex and sometime before natural birth.

Perhaps with time, technology will allow us to "look" deeper into the womb-- maybe a scientifically-developed telepathic converter device will allows us to communicate with plants, animals, and the unborn, and thereby making it clear precisely when the fetus starts thinking and becomes human (as in, "I'm hungry. I wish this lady would eat something to share with me!") At that point, or if God appeared and told us, "It becomes human after x days," I really don't think there'd be much of a constituency to destroy the unborn child-- after all, we would know it is human.

Absent this huge scientific breakthrough, however, we're stuck with our human-developed compromise solutions and in this case, I think the pro-lifers may have more in common with the pro-gay marriage community than they would like to admit. When it comes down to it, those in favor of gay marriage are asking us to redefine something that has never really existed-- marriage as the union of two gender-irrelevant people, something other than the union of a man and a woman, which is how society has always defined marriage. Gay marriage advocates think they're arguing on principles of fairness and justice (and in some ways, they really are), but fundamentally, they are asking our civilization to re-define the very concept of marriage. Similarly, the pro-life community believes they're arguing on principles of fairness and justice (for the unborn human), but they're doing so by demanding that we completely re-define what we view as a human-- that is, they want us to see a two-week old fetus and immediately consider it to be a "human." Unfortunately for their cause, society has never believed that (we only recently, as in the last few centuries, have come to believe that humanity even begins before birth).

Thus, compromise on this issue (like gay marriage) is impossible between ideologues. Until society believes that marriage is defined as something other than the union of a man and a woman, gay marriage advocates are going to be disappointed. Until society believes that human life begins at conception, some form of abortion will always be available. It seems to me that if you want to change the law, you need to start by changing how society thinks about these most basic concepts.

But what do I know...

Posted by: Bobby at July 7, 2006 06:33 PM

Exactly, Chris. We can legislate all we want, but the reality is NOT going away. If all abortion were banned in America tomorrow, the actual abortion rate would not drop all that much. A lotta women would be getting D & C's for "menstrual problems," and a lot would be showing up in ER's with complications from illegal procedures. And some would just be found dead.

I was astounded by the illegal-abortion-related mortality in Brazil, one of the few LA countries that keeps good records. At least as many women die in Brazil from the complications of illegal abortions as die in car crashes in the US. And those are just reported hospital/clinic reports. No good take on how many deaths outside of the clinics and hospitals are never correctly attributed.

In 2004 in Brazil, where abortion is tightly restricted, some 244,000 women were treated in public hospitals for complications from clandestine abortions. The mortality rate was almost 10% among those cases, making illegal abortion the fourth-leading cause of maternal deaths in the country. That's just the officially reported damage.

Posted by: Tully at July 7, 2006 06:42 PM

Thus, compromise on this issue (like gay marriage) is impossible between ideologues.

The trouble is, with abortion, the subject matter is so visceral that apparently everyone is an ideologue on the issue, even people who have convinced themselves that they are "comfortably in the middle" of the debate.

[T]he pro-life community believes they're arguing on principles of fairness and justice (for the unborn human), but they're doing so by demanding that we completely re-define what we view as a human-- that is, they want us to see a two-week old fetus and immediately consider it to be a "human." Unfortunately for their cause, society has never believed that (we only recently, as in the last few centuries, have come to believe that humanity even begins before birth)

I don't think that's entirely true. As long as there have been treatises on the common law, the common law has been understood to protect the rights of the unborn from quickening onwards, that is, from the middle of the second trimester, which is even stronger a protection than the modern idea of protection from viability onwards.

Describing the common law's view of homicide in his thirteenth century treatise Laws and Customs of England, Bracton wrote that "if one strikes a pregnant woman or gives her poison in order to procure an abortion, if the fœtus is already formed or quickened, especially if it is quickened, he commits homicide" ("especially," of course, denies exclusivity - that is, abortion was certainly homicide after quickening, and could be homicide even before). II Bracton p.341. A few centuries later, Blackstone added that "[a]n infant in ventre fa mere, or in the mother’s womb, is supposed in law to be born for many purposes." I Blackstone p.126. Moreover, said Blackstone, "[l]ife is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb, or if any one beat her, whereby the child die[s] in her body, and she consequentially miscarries]; this, though not murder, was by the ancient law homicide or manslaughter. [Although] at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, [] it remains a very heinous misdemeanor." Id. (emphasis added).

Such was the state of the common law inherited by the young Republic from our British forebears. In 1803, tiring of a common law definition which protected the unborn only after quickening, Parliament passed the Miscarriage of Woman Act of 1803, 43 Geo. III c.58, the purpose of which was to prevent the "[i]ntent[ional] [] procure[ment] [of] the Miscarriage of Women". The act provided, inter alia, that:

if any Person or Persons ... shall wilfully and maliciously administer to, or cause to be administered to, or taken by any Woman, any Medicines, Drug, or other Substance or Thing whatsoever, or shall use or employ, or cause or procure to be used or employed, any Instrument or other Means whatsoever, with Intent thereby to cause or procure the Miscarriage of any Woman not being, or not being proved to be, quick with Child at the Time of administering such Things or using such Means, that then and in every such Case the Person or Persons so offending, their Counsellors, Aiders, and Abettors, knowing of and privy to such Offence, shall be and are hereby declared to be guilty of Felony, and shall be liable to be fined, imprisoned, set in and upon the Pillory, publickly or privately whipped, or to suffer one or more of the said Punishments, or to be transported beyond the Seas for any Term not exceeding fourteen Years, at the Discretion of the Court before which such Offender shall be tried and convicted.

That act was later amended by the Offences against the Person Act 1861, 24 & 25 Vict. c.100, which made explicitly contemplated "self-administered abortions as a felony." §58 declared that:

Every woman, being with child, who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage, shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, and whosoever, with intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman, whether she be or be not with child, shall unlawfully administer to her or cause to be taken by her any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable ... to be kept in penal servitude for life.

But that, of course, is only Britain. Meanwhile, in America, we inherited the same common law understanding of abortion at about the same time that Britain was expanding the common law understanding with the 1803 act. As the states increasingly moved to codify their laws, the common law conception of abortion also went into the statute books, starting with Connecticut in 1821. By the time of the Fourteenth Amendment, as Rehnquist's Roe dissent mournfully highlighted, 36 of 38 jurisdictions had adopted bans on abortion.

I would suggest that the innovation here is on the pro choice side, not the pro life side. After at least eight centuries - containing the entire history of this country - wherein abortion was at best homicide and at worst murder, in the last thirty-five years, we have first - incredibly - declared that the Constitution of the United States protects a right which was considered homicide at common law when the Bill of Rights was adopted and was illegal in every jurisdiction that had a law on the subject when the Fourteenth Amendment (Roe), then moved protections from quickening back to viability (Casey), and finally, eliminated all protections before and even - astonishingly - during birth (toes, knees and shoulders all being delivered in the intact D&X procedure). The modern liberal position on abortion - and Brian's vaunted "status quo" appears to be as follows: until every limb and extremity clears the mother's body, it's not a child, it's a choice. If this logic knows any bounds, I have yet to find them; I can only extrapolate that from the modern liberal's point of view, a child becomes a child - and gains the protection of the law - as its pinky toe clears the labia majora, and at any time prior to that, is subject to the whim of the mother.

Posted by: Simon at July 7, 2006 09:29 PM

Simon,

Apparently I stand corrected. I'm (obviously) not a lawyer, but when I was a teenager buzzing around a fundraiser dinner with my parents, I do remember a very prominent California Republican (I'm not going to say who it was) making the rough point that "they" (I'm not sure if "they" referred to liberals, Democrats, or some combination thereof that were serving on the state or federal bench) were hypocrites, because for all their desire to decry stare decisis and to overturn legal precedents with centuries of tradition, they clung to old antiquated common law definitions of what constitutes a "person" in order to justify their support for aborting a fetus which (he believed) was a person.

Based off Justice Blackmun's mention in Roe about how the Constitution only mentions "person" in the context of being born (never unborn), I naturally assumed that the common law precedent that the guy was talking about was that someone had to actually be born to be considered a person-- something that I know he opposed.

But, apparently, either I misunderstood him (I was just a teenager, after all), or your citations are indicative of only a strain (and not the consensus) of common law legal rulings, or he was just plain mistaken. I guess it shouldn't surprise me if it was the latter. For all that he went on to accomplish-- and he was a big player in Republican circles, adored by the conservatives that Pete Wilson would later notoriously call "F-ing Irrelevant"-- as I got older, I came to realize that he really wasn't as brilliant as people claimed. That he was worshipped by the conservatives was only that much harder for me to understand.

Posted by: Bobby at July 8, 2006 05:41 AM

Not to get immersed here, but to reconcile the equally correct points made by Simon and Bobby.

The common law did not consider a fetus a "person" unless it was born alive. However, in most jurisdictions, once it was born alive it was then considered to have been a person from the moment it was conceived. This issue most often arose in inheritance cases. If an old man left all of his property to his grandchildren who were living as of his death, for example, that would include the children born, say, 7 months after he died. But if his daughter was pregnant when he died, and miscarried thereafter, then for purposes of the will, the miscarried fetus was not a "person". If the child was born, however, and took so much as a single breath after being born, then he was a person as of conception and his heirs would inherit his share of grandpa's money.

It also would (and still often does) apply in tort cases. If you cause an injury to the mother, which also causes damage to the fetus, then if the fetus is born alive (takes a single breath), he has a right to sue you just as his mother does. But if he is stillborn, only the mother has a cause of action to sue you.

Hope that clears that issue up, and I am NOT joining in the rest of the conversation...

Posted by: PatHMV at July 8, 2006 10:33 AM

The trouble is, with abortion, the subject matter is so visceral that apparently everyone is an ideologue on the issue, even people who have convinced themselves that they are "comfortably in the middle" of the debate.

I categorically deny that considering the foreseeable and likely real-world effects of current law and/or any change in the law makes me an ideologue on the issue of abortion, and defy any attempt to parse any of my above commentaries into any consistently ideologous position other than pragmatism and an understandable human concern for the well-being of everyone involved, a field which extends FAR beyond just the mother and child.

You certainly can be "comfortably" (a word choice containing its own seperate value judgement, and thus not truly valid) in the middle of the uncomfortable debate, even by simply not being at the extremes, where the arguments tend to be completely ideological.

Whichever way you move, the real-world effects of abortion law extend far beyond the fetus and the mother. Whatever position you advocate, you OWN the predictable results. You will not find ANY "costless" position. Law aside, you are arguing over which set of adverse results you favor. Advocating the minimization of overall adverse results is not an ideologuos position other than as stated above.

Posted by: Tully at July 8, 2006 01:42 PM

Simon,

You've got me awfully confused. When you asked about compromise, I assumed that you were talking about a compromise position between the extremes, between so-called abortion on demand and the pro-life "no abortion ever" position.

If that were the compromise you were asking about, then YES, I do think my postion, such as it is, represents legitimate compromise between the extremes. It wasn't clear to me when you were talking about compromise that you were actually talking about a compromise wherein I'd move further to the right to come closer to your position. My bad.

So to be clear, that's what you meant, a compromise wherein our culture's laws would move from the status quo further towards the right. Correct?

By the way, you're off on in (MIS-)stating my position in several respects. First, since my position suggests that evolving medical science would impact policy, my position can't really be characterized as hardened and unmovable. It has change due to evolution built in. [Down goes Frazier....]

And second, since this position suggests that viability outside the womb is a determinant, it means that if science and government can take over nurturing, then the woman loses her choice, since the choice becomes a choice to terminate a nascent life that's viable without her involvement. I don't see the choice, as you describe, as a matter of location, but as matter of viability. Nice trotting out of labia majora, though. Very colorful.

But please try better to understand the compromise I've described. State involvement in the decision would be a function of viability of the fetus outside the womb. As I've said, and as Tully has shown in his stats, the status quo roughly approximates this. Admittedly, very roughly. But 3rd trimester abortions are relatively rare, and generally do not involve healthy fetuses. I believe that the viability of preemies is in the same developmental range...the survivial rate of preemies declines the more premature they are, and I belive it's pretty poor if they are more than a month or two premature. I don't know what the exact scope of that is.

Posted by: bk at July 10, 2006 08:23 AM

If that were the compromise you were asking about, then YES, I do think my postion, such as it is, represents legitimate compromise between the extremes. It wasn't clear to me when you were talking about compromise that you were actually talking about a compromise wherein I'd move further to the right to come closer to your position. My bad.

What do you understand a compromise to be, Brian? To me, it has always meant that two sides start with their normative preference and look for areas where they can make concessions, in order to hammer out an agreement that neither side is entirely happy with. You, on the other hand, seem to understand a "compromise" on abortion as being pro lifers agreeing to drop the issue. Given your behavior in this thread, I see no other conclusion that's available to us. It's as if you have your hands around my throat, and you're saying "why won't you compromise, Simon? I'll stop strangling you if you stop breathing!" Some compromise.

Frankly, your theory that your position represents any kind of compromise, legitimate or otherwise, honestly baffles me. In a debate where one side is fighting to keep the status quo and the other to curtail it, you support the status quo as an acceptable normative proposition, and you are unwilling to accept any kind of regulation on abortion which has the practical consequence of "forcing a[ny] woman to give birth." That not only puts you distinctly on one side of the debate, but also, as I already demonstrated (ante, at July 6, 2006 02:45 PM), it simply isn't possible to hold such a position and accept any restrictions on abortion. Ergo, Brian, if you won't accept restrictions on abortion, you're pro choice. Unless you are using some hidden, alternative definition of which I'm unaware (in which case, feel free to enlighten me), your position is the definition of being pro choice - you are pro giving people the choice of whether or not to obtain an abortion. You may not be actively and militantly in favor of people having abortions, but you're still pro choice. And this isn't pedantry, it isn't careful parsing of language, it is absolutely and practically compelled.

Let's go back to one of your earlier posts:

Simon, let's consider the extent to which each of us is willing to compromise against the backdrop of where our initial views are.

Well, that's a good idea. My initial views, as I described above are simple - no abortions, period, other than for dire and unavoidable medical necessity; your initial view appears to be that the status quo (which is, in practical effect, abortion on demand, with no state able to impose any kind of regulation no matter how popular) will do just fine. I have offered several compromise positions; you have accused me of unwillingness to compromise (and, indeed, of having hidden motives), while making, in fact, no concessions. Are you still sure you want to "consider the extent to which each of us is willing to compromise"?

Of course, that isn't how you see it. You see it thusly:

I started from a point that was already comfortably in the middle from choice versus life. meanwhile ou've been talking about slaughter and murder. If I'm already in the middle after giving the issue considerable thought and you're way out on the wing in terms of your ideal view, why would I try to meet YOU halfway?

Why indeed, Brian; if you're already in the middle, why, why, why would you need to compromise. If you're in the middle, I mean.

You think you're in the middle?

Brian, you can tell yourself that you're compromising all you like, but the simple fact is that you're pro choice. You stand 100% with the pro choice side of the abortion debate, and you have showed zero - nothing, nill, null, nada - on which you are willing to compromise. You seem to think that just because you don't agree with me but you also think that Kate Michaelman comes on a little strong that you've made a compromise in some real sense. You haven't, and your feint about post-viability is just that: a feint, and not even a sincere one. You say that you're only "talking about restricting abortion based on the medical line of realistic viability" - well, if so, does that mean you're willing to curtail late-term abortions, however few they may be? I doubt it. If you're only talking about restricting abortion based on the medical line of realistic viability, then you must be willing to do two things that you have shown no willingness to do thusfar: to curtail late term abortions, you must be willing to carve out an exception to your refusal to "forc[e] a[ny] woman to give birth" rule, and you'd have to accept overruling Stenberg. Unless you're willing to take those steps, you have to accept late-term abortions. Are you willing to overrule Stenberg and ban post-viability abortions? If you aren't, then you're deceiving yourself if you think your position is only "restricting abortion based on the medical line of realistic viability."

So I think we can certainly say you're pro choice, but does that equate to being in favor of abortion on demand? I think it must. If you are not in favor of abortion on demand, Brian, please explain how your position stands in contradistriction to an uncompromising pro choice position. What are the substantial and salient differences, not between your position and mine, but between your position and what you understand to be the mainstream pro choice position?

In short:

So to be clear, that's what you meant, a compromise wherein our culture's laws would move from the status quo further towards the right. Correct?

Leaving aside the fact that I mentioned in the opening post that is is fallacious to try and categorize one's views on abortion as right or left, leaving that aside for a moment, the status quo is unvarnishedly, unapologetically, unmitigatedly pro choice. Anything that maintains the status quo, by definition, is not a compromise by the pro choice side. A compromise will necessarily involve change. You can argue that the change should be minimal; you can even argue that just replacing with state legislation what now exists by court fiat is a compromise. But you cannot maintain that accepting the pro choice status quo is a compromise; that is surrender by one side.

Posted by: Simon at July 10, 2006 02:29 PM

Ok, Simon, I give up.

You're right. Letting pro-life doctors decide when abortion is OK, that's a compromise. People will (and should!!) flock to embrace this suggestion.

I''m wrong. Suppose we were, as I suggested, to establish a policy going forward wherein any decision to allow an abortion would be based on fetal viability as medical science evolved. That's NOT a compromise position. ( From what you say, I guess it must be the mainstream postion that everyone agrees with, but I'm just too stone-dumb to see it).

You've convinced me by the force of your repeated logic. I haven't been salient. The mainstream position is tantasmount to abortion on demand. And by golly, that's my position too, I'm just too ignorant to understand it. You're right, and you're a genius, and I admit it. I give up, and I expect that the rest of America will capitulate by the end of the week, or by next Tuesday at the very latest.

Can I kiss your ring now?

Posted by: bk at July 10, 2006 03:24 PM

Bravo, Brian - more insults. Instead of offering compromises, or even suggesting where you might be able to compromise, we get no actual engagement with the point, just a breezy dismissal, and cherrypicking of what you presumably see as the weakest part of my argument to sneer at.

None of which is illustrative as to how your position stands in contradistriction to an uncompromising pro choice position, and none of which highlights a single substantial and salient difference between your position and what you understand to be the mainstream pro choice position.

Is it really so difficult for you to find differences between your viewpoint and the pro choice viewpoint? I'm sure that if I asked you to list a few ways in which your viewpoint differed from mine, you'd have an embarrasment of riches; your hardest task would be figuring out where to being. Yet asked to list a few ways in which your viewpoint differs from the pro choice mainstream, and suddenly, mum's the word. Why might that be?

As to the invocation that yours is the mainstream position - the mainstream of American society wants to ban partial-birth abortion. Whether or not you do too -- in a real sense, rather than a rhetorical one, by which I mean a willingness to accept the attendant costs of banning partial-birth abortion -- is just yet another question you elide by hurling a few more insults in my direction and hoping fervently that no one notices that you haven't actually answered any of the questions posed above.

Posted by: Simon at July 10, 2006 03:51 PM

Bobby,

Simon is correct that in European history, at least as far back as the middle ages... there has been the concept of "quickening" which is when the soul is supposed to have attached to the body of an unborn child. This, not uncoincidentaly I think, was adjudged to occur during a term in the pregnancy (in the 2nd trimester) where there is a period of rapid fetal development...and AFTER the portion of the pregnancy when the majority of miscarages would happen.

I'm not saying that historicaly, people were wiser back then or arguing that is what WE should go by. I'm just saying that is the history behind it. Simon is pretty much correct that as far as social acceptability goes it is pretty much only the development of the last century or so where abortion after the period of quickening was considered acceptable. That is not to say that it probably didn't happen ALL the time on the sly.... just that it probably wasn't discussed openly.

Gotta remember that before the Reformation, Cannon law pretty much defined social morality....as well as having serious real world ramifications for people who might run afoul of it.

Posted by: cengel at July 10, 2006 04:33 PM

What part of

"establish a policy going forward wherein any decision to allow an abortion would be based on fetal viability as medical science evolved"

is NOT a compromise position?

You've called it an insincere feint, but apparently I'm not supposed to take that as an insult and respond in kind? Is that how it works? You get to insult, but I don't? Up yours.

It's a clear statement, and it means what it says. It means what i've said repeatedly here. Did you miss this, which I've said above:

"if science and government can take over nurturing, then the woman loses her choice, since the choice becomes a choice to terminate a nascent life that's viable without her involvement." [emphasis added this time]

Or are you just being intentionally opaque? Yup, that's another insult, and you deserve it. My position differs from the mainstream view, it's more informed of the science and the data, and it's NOT 100 pro-choice in favor of abortion on demand. You keep trying to make it so, and you keep ignoring the salient substantive difference I keep trying to nudge you toward acknowledging, all the while denying that I've been able to come up with one. The best you've come up with so far is the unsupportable dismissal that its an insincere feint. Which as you know, is an insult.

Posted by: bk at July 10, 2006 04:39 PM

It isn't a compromise position, because you don't mean it, Brian. If you genuinely believe that post-viability abortions should be banned, then that might be considered a compromise position - but you have repeatedly refused to accept overruling Stenberg, and you have repeatedly said that you will not "forc[e] a woman to give birth." Unless you're willing to give up Stenberg and have a law which "forc[es] a woman to give birth" after viability, then yes, your "compromise" - which is actually your normative position, and thus no compromise at all - is absolutely a meaningless feint. It enables you to distinguish yourself, at face value, from those who believe in abortion thorughout pregnancy, by saying "hey, look, I oppose abortion after viability," but while at the same time refusing to make the practical concessions necessary to make such a ban happen.

So, you say that your position is a ban on post-viability abortion, but are you willing to make the concessions necessary to make it a reality? If not, you might as well be turning down a bad date by saying "of course, I'd love to go into Central Park for a picnic," while fully aware that it's raining buckets outside. "If it weren't for this damn rain, which is beyond my control, of course I'd go for a picnic." "If it weren't for Stenberg, which is beyond my control, of course I'd ban third trimester abortions." If you won't follow through practically, it's rhetorical only.

You say I "keep ignoring the salient substantive difference [that you] keep trying to nudge [me] toward acknowledging," but again - no actual substantive difference between your position and the pro choice mainstream is offered. You think that the pro choice mainstream would disagree with you that "if science and government can take over nurturing, then the woman loses her choice, since the choice becomes a choice to terminate a nascent life that's viable without her involvement"? The pro choice movement is interested in the physical and bodily autonomy of the woman, not killing fœtuses; in the main, pro choice folks aren't deliberate baby killers, they don't advocate abortion as a positive good in society. The rational mainstream amongst them simply takes the view that the woman has a right to reproductive autonomy which includes terminating a pregnancy and any successive responsibilities which would inhere in it. If the child could be removed from the woman using a procedure no more physically dangerous than is an abortion, and the mother be absolved of financial responsibility for the child, I suspect that would satisfy the pro choice lobby entirely. The only way you can think that such a position is not pro choice is if you think pro choice people are actually pro abortion - and I thought that was supposed to be a canard offered by my side?

Posted by: Simon at July 10, 2006 05:24 PM

If the child could be removed from the woman using a procedure no more physically dangerous than is an abortion, and the mother be absolved of financial responsibility for the child, I suspect that would satisfy the pro choice lobby entirely.

Unfortunately for the entire foundation of your extremely weak argument claiming that I am either a liar or an idiot who doesn't know his own mind, your suspicions of what the pro-choice lobby wouldaccept don't don't make my position a match for mainstream views. Mainstream means that most everyone thinks so, and is saying so.

My views stated here do not represent a commonly stated mainstream view. The issue of viability is seldom viewed by the mainstream as the crux of the issue.

I'd like to address the issue of your insults in my next post, so that others tired of our spat can be warned to skip it.

Posted by: bk at July 11, 2006 08:22 AM

[Others such as Dan may feel free to skip this response to Simon.]

Simon, I don't even know/remember what Stenberg is.

You're mistaken to assume that I have encyclopedic recall of every legal precedent you happen to bring up. If, the first time you brought up Stenberg in this thread, you'd reminded me what it was about, I might have bothered to address that point. But from what you're saying, it sounds to me like I've already said on some prior occasion that I don't believe in doing that. Without knowing what the ruling is, I can only speculate that we might have a quarrel about methodology.

In this thread, I have not addressed the issue of just how any changes to abortion laws might reasonably unfold over time. Only such statements could speak to the issue of what ruling I might support overturning. I suspect that I'd say there are many paths towards the goal that I've repeatedy said I support, while I'd guess that you probably believe only one path makes sense, and that this path MUST go through Stenberg. But that's just a guess.

It's awfully disappointing to me that you're willing to repeat your declaration that my plainly stated views are "insincere." In other words, that I am lying for the sake of gaining some rhetorical advantage. I admit that it's insulting for me to say the following, but I have to admit that I feel this is either paranoia on your part or bespeaks a complete lack of any good will in our discussion. Lousy either way.

I've plainly stated my view and repeatedly said that I mean just what I say. I don't know what more I can do. I'm simply not willing to let you continually badger me with your claims that you have some special knowledge or reasoning which somehow proves that I don't mean what I am quite plainly saying.

Why must I by defend myself over and over, re-stating what I've said, only for you to once again claim that I don't mean what I say? I declare that I mean precisely what I say, and I DENY that you have any special knowledge or reasoning which allows you to see inside my mind and thus declare that I don't.

It's pretty clear to me that the reason you are trying to deny that my position is a compromise is that it's a threat to your usual very rigid views on how things must change. My position is eminently reasonable, and it IS a salient and substantive difference from mainstream views. And you have failed to show otherwise, unless you count your imagining of what the pro-choice lobby wouldsupport.

My position is that time and science can progressively whittle away at the number of pregnancies that are terminated. (to say nothing of whittling away at the number of unwanted pregnancies that occur in the first place). That's demonstrably a position that respects life much more than so-called "abortion on demand."(BTW, that's a phrase which I had never used until you started bringing it to the table. You brought it, and now I'm clobbering you over the head with it. Bummer for you.)

The possibility that many pro-choice advocates might, as you suspect, be satisfied by such a path does not mean that my position is 100% pro-choice. That's another extraordinarily weak argument on your part. in fact, I'd go so far as to say it holds NO water whatsoever.

A compromise is supposed to provide some measure of satisfaction to both sides. And my positon would, according to you, satisfy the pro-choicers. [I suspect it would do so far less than you suspect, unless you think pregnant women would submit cheerfully to what they'd likely view in sci-fi terms as "extraction" and in civil liberties terms as "seizure."] You've also conceded that it would provide some mitigation in numbers of abortions, which would provide some measure of satisfaction to pro-lifers. How much I dunno.

Since the above paragraph (less MY suspicions) is pretty much uncontroversially true, all that remains of your argument against my compromise position is that you don't believe I'm sincere in stating it. You're of course entitled to keep maintaining that position. However, I happen to know for a fact that you are 100% incorrect in this belief.

Posted by: bk at July 11, 2006 08:54 AM