Originally published at Faith Seeking Understanding. You can comment here or there.
Over at FB, I started a good discussion when I posted the following: Sometimes I wish the world realized that pro-choice is not a synonym for pro-abortion, nor does pro-life mean just anti-abortion. I generally think abortions are immoral but am very much pro-choice.
That was the whole thing. I knew it might start an intense discussion and was a little nervous about posting it. I’m actually very pleased because the discussion was respectful but honest about the real disagreements going on here. Which is really the best kind of discussion. Some people raised some good points, but they’re the kind of things I haven’t figured out how to answer briefly. So I thought I’d make a blog post out of some of the concerns they raised.
Comments
I have a friend who was born with a muscle tone problem and has been in a wheelchair his whole life. His parents were actually advised to abort him because the docs said his life wouldn't be worth living. They were Catholic so they didn't, though, and he's certainly glad to be in life even with the pain (which is severe according to him). When I hear about abortions driven by the child's medical condition I think of him and wonder if it realy is as bad a life as the doctors say it will be. But even in cases like his, if his parents had decided to abort him I wouldn't call it immoral because it was inspired by love and that their child wouldn't suffer. I would think such an act would be tragically mistaken but not the kind of thing I'd want to condemn.
This is exactly the kind of situation that must be evaluated on a case by case basis, looking at the child's prognosis. If we're talking about a case where the child will probably die soon after birth and it won't be a life worth living, then I think abortion may very well be the right course. If they'll live for years but face severe disabilities that's a harder call, but even there I wouldn't call it immoral - it's coming out of love so the decision can be wrong but not really immoral IMO. And even if the parents decide this is more than they can bear up under, well, even there I have a lot of sympathy. I'd want to know the specific details again, like whether adoption is an option in their society and how severe the disabilities are. But if it's immoral at all, there's a lot of mitigation going on. My instinct? In those cases there's still a cost to the abortion, but it's almost certainly outweighed by other considerations like the pain the child would experience, the shortness of his life, and things along those lines.
This is why I was trying to avoid saying "abortions are okay up to this point in time but not okay afterward. I think the further along the pregnancy goes the more justification you need for the abortion. But I also think there are things like serious, fatal birth defects that would justify an abortion even very late in the pregnancy.
It is just that pro-lifers do wish to deny parents that right to choose what is best, what is humane, what is dignified for their own so wished for child. It is not called euthanasia, it is called abortion, plain and simple and in fact it is just the 1% of that total figure of abortions. Yet they rage against such parents from their view point, utterly forgetting that when parents make such a decision because they get to choose what is best for their unborn child out of the human dignity viewpoint. Just the viewpoint you explain how pro-lifers reason. I simply do not get it; I am trying to wrap my head around this as much as I can. But how can they be so hurtful towards those parents? How can they say: take away that option to choose? How can they while those parents grieve for the child that they lost say: you are murderers, you do not value life, shame on you?
Yes. The problem is trying to treat this as something that *can* be regulated by legalities, when it is really an area in which "legal" and "illegal" can't possibly touch on all of the ramifications involved.
I actually think some day the question may actually be solved (for the most part, never 100%) by advances in medicine and science. What if, for example, it became medically feasible to transplant a fetus from a woman who did not want a child to the womb of a woman who did? Or what if a truly reliable method of birth control was developed--one with no side effects, that could be safely taken at the onset of puberty? Lots of "what ifs" and I think that considering the advances in how early in a pregnancy a premature child can now be kept alive it shows some possiblities.
But for now, such a solution is far into the future if possible at all. For now we need to use common sense--raise girls who learn to make responsible decisions, and leave the ultimate decision to a woman and her doctor.
I think your point about pregnancy and technology is very interesting. I think saying a woman has a right to end her pregnancy - to not let this fetus make use of her body - is very different from saying she has a right to kill her baby. Maybe in some cases like the seriously terminally ill cases Rhaps describes above, the parents really can make that choice, but in almost all I'd say they really just have a right to end the pregnancy, not the life. I'd be a lot more comfortable if we could find a way to split up those two and (if there are good parents able to pay the medical costs) put them up for adoption even before they're born.