I remember reading something by that famously spiritual sage Dan Savage about abortion. He was reporting an argument he had with another guy about abortion, with Savage taking the position that if a woman hadn't gotten around to having an abortion by the time she was in her third trimester then she should go ahead with the birth.
It struck me at the time that this famously liberal, gay sex columnist was taking the stance that as the fetus progressed it became more deserving in rights, and at the time I chocked it up to his Catholic upbringing. But now it makes more sense to me. As a fetus progresses from a potential life to a viable life, the rights of the mother to terminate that life should, in my opinion, decrease. This idea was reinforced after reading Steve Waldman's seminal piece called Safe, Legal & Early - A New Way of the Thinking About Abortion.
He writes:
This belief that life within the womb is on a continuum is not explicitly reflected in the political debates about abortion. We debate whether we should have parental notification--not when we should have it. We question politicians on whether they'd provide government funding for abortion, not ever asking whether subsidies should be provided for early abortions but not late.
And Waldman suggests this way forward on the abortion debate:
My fantasy is that if the political system embraced the safe-legal-early doctrine, a few activists might even accept the legitimacy of part of their opponents' argument. Pro-choicers who accepted this framework would be implicitly conceding that, for at least part of the pregnancy, there's a "baby" in the womb--and the woman's right to terminate that life is neither absolute nor nine months in duration. With early abortions not only legal but easier, pro-choice activists could then have the confidence to accept what many of them have publicly avoided but privately wanted: reasonable, tightly written prohibitions on third trimester abortions while genuinely protecting the life of the mother.
Open minded pro-lifers would take note of these concessions from their "enemies," viewing them as a sign that these pro-choicers--far from being hideous baby killers--fully embrace a moral dimension to the abortion decision.
Meanwhile, any pro-lifers who accept this framework would be making a concession, too. They'd be saying, in effect, that if the other side can concede that something precious is alive - and becoming more alive with each day - then they could, in turn, acknowledge that reasonable people, of different faiths, can disagree about when exactly that baby becomes alive enough to have legal rights.
Waldman may be on to something. My guess is that his proposal will be viewed with suspicion and hostility from both sides - which is probably as good of proof as any that it may provide a way forward for the issue of abortion in this country.
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This is the problem with ignorance, Paul, people such as yourself are easily led into nonsensical, illogical reasoning, which you then spread because you are unable to differentiate between that which is socially productive and that which is not.
Please stop writing these silly articles. Do some research of your own, come to some reasonable and logical conclusions of your own, and then publish your thoughts.
This is NOT a silly article, it is raising a point I've been feeling strongly about for a long time. Government needs to separate the spiritual arguments about abortion from the civil arguments. Until a fetus is viable, the only "citizen" in question is the mother. Prior to viability the fetus is a part of the mother's body and that is all it should and can be in the eyes of the government. At viability it begins to have rights separate from its mother, but not before.
On the other hand, to say that fetus, if left alone, will grow up to be anything but a human being is soul-less. If both sides could make these concessions, we might actually see some real progress toward seriously reducing abortions in this country.
For those who believe that life begins at conception and who want to abolish abortion I ask this question - do you or does your church offer funeral services for miscarried fetuses? If not, then I would suspect your position is more based on the need to control pregnant women than it is about compassion.
Nowhere in your post do I see acknowledgment of the simple fact that, in the US, late-term abortion is only performed when a woman's health is threatened, and it generally involves a woman choosing whether to end a wanted pregnancy or lose her own life as well as that of her potential child.
Does your continuum of fetal viability include compassion for women who must make the hardest choice of their lives? Or does your philosophy of "safe, legal and early" mean some women must die if their health is threatened too late in their pregnancy?
Given the overwhelming support among conservative American Christians for torturing people whom they dislike, I am having a great deal of difficulty believing that they actually care a the slightest bit about the unborn child.
For them, it is purely and simply a matter of controlling all aspects of a woman's life.
Were they to truly care about all life, they wouldn't support torture.
Those of us Christians who actually do respect life need to stop hiding behind the "well, they are just a small but very vocal minority" excuse and strike back. Strike back hard. People who actively engage intorturing American citizens will stop at nothing.
And to think I actually had to listen to people here telling me only a few months back that I was paranoid and had nothing, as a gay man, to fear from the conservative Christians. They were only interested in the good of my soul. Well, now we know what methods they prefer for attending to the souls of those whom they dislike.
To them, seeing a young girl bleed to death on a bent coat-hanger in a back-alley abortion is God's will and they delight in it.
What horrible, horrible fruit has fundamentalist Christianity brought forth in the US.
Dagnabbit, Shelly, I'll be durned! Thar hasn't been a compromise this durn good since they made them thar slave folk three-fifths of an Amarycun citusun. Ya know, fer that ther census thang!
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