Your religious affiliation gave me a bad feeling, because I presume Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in abortion, therefore you would dismiss her paragraph as morally incoherent...which you did.
Her paragraph is morally incoherent only if one assumes people only use abortion as a form of birth control after willfully having sex they know they are unprepared to have, thus creating children they know they are unready to raise. That is not always the case, however. In the most extreme cases, women and girls are raped, usually by men they know and trust (like their fathers, uncles, or the men their mothers bring home). Making abortion illegal will leave those most vulnerable women without a way to reclaim their lives after pregnancy was inflicted on them. (Rich women would continue to have abortions, though; their doctors would write it up as a necessary medical procedure and use some other term. Only poor women and girls would be left to have pregnancy inflicted on them by the men they trusted.) I don't understand why it is okay to sacrifice that life to save one that is not viable, but some folks do not think it is okay to sacrifice the non-viable life for the one that is.
But Lamott's paragraph goes deeper than that. The entire essay talked about how surprised she is (and I am), that what a woman does with her own body is reason for debate and legislation in the first place. Until a fetus can survive outside of a woman's body, it is a part of the woman's body, and as such, is her and only her jurisdiction. It is immoral for anyone else to force her to do or not do anything to her body, and in most cases we would agree with that. What makes no sense to me is that even in the year 2008, people debate about abortion and try to legislate this most personal of decisions (whether or not to continue a pregnancy, regardless of how she became pregnant) as though a woman's body is public domain. I find that reprehensible, particularly when it is done from a position of self-righteousness, and even more so when it is done by men, who don't have to deal with pregnancy at all.
All human life is sacred, not just the one conceived that cannot live on its own.
I think abortion should be a public debate only when those who are against abortion are able to take the fetus from the woman who wants an abortion and carry it to term themselves. When they are able to literally walk in that woman's or girl's shoes, then and only then do they have the right to debate whether or not abortion should be allowed. Until then, it is a private matter between the woman and whomever she chooses to share her decision with, no one else.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 12:12 pm (UTC)Her paragraph is morally incoherent only if one assumes people only use abortion as a form of birth control after willfully having sex they know they are unprepared to have, thus creating children they know they are unready to raise. That is not always the case, however. In the most extreme cases, women and girls are raped, usually by men they know and trust (like their fathers, uncles, or the men their mothers bring home). Making abortion illegal will leave those most vulnerable women without a way to reclaim their lives after pregnancy was inflicted on them. (Rich women would continue to have abortions, though; their doctors would write it up as a necessary medical procedure and use some other term. Only poor women and girls would be left to have pregnancy inflicted on them by the men they trusted.) I don't understand why it is okay to sacrifice that life to save one that is not viable, but some folks do not think it is okay to sacrifice the non-viable life for the one that is.
But Lamott's paragraph goes deeper than that. The entire essay talked about how surprised she is (and I am), that what a woman does with her own body is reason for debate and legislation in the first place. Until a fetus can survive outside of a woman's body, it is a part of the woman's body, and as such, is her and only her jurisdiction. It is immoral for anyone else to force her to do or not do anything to her body, and in most cases we would agree with that. What makes no sense to me is that even in the year 2008, people debate about abortion and try to legislate this most personal of decisions (whether or not to continue a pregnancy, regardless of how she became pregnant) as though a woman's body is public domain. I find that reprehensible, particularly when it is done from a position of self-righteousness, and even more so when it is done by men, who don't have to deal with pregnancy at all.
All human life is sacred, not just the one conceived that cannot live on its own.
I think abortion should be a public debate only when those who are against abortion are able to take the fetus from the woman who wants an abortion and carry it to term themselves. When they are able to literally walk in that woman's or girl's shoes, then and only then do they have the right to debate whether or not abortion should be allowed. Until then, it is a private matter between the woman and whomever she chooses to share her decision with, no one else.