Steven,
“Let’s assume that abortion is fully legal, right up until the point of birth.”
It is. The combined Supreme Court Decisions handed down the same day, Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton make abortion legal all the way through pregnancy. This has been the law of the land since 1973.
This is a much fairer question, BTW.

First, Prof. Nadal is incorrect about the current status of a late-term abortion. They are not legal in most states and SCOTUS has allowed for the consitutionality of restrictions. Even the Roe/Doe test (which exists in theory only) allowed for restrictions on late-term abortions.
As for the question, I’d have no moral objections to a woman choosing freely to have an abortion even one day before it would be born. It is, after all, about the right of women to make health decisions without coercion from the government.
My moral and legal preference would be to have no abortions after viability, which is essentially what we have now in the U.S., with the usual life of the mother, rape, incest exceptions.

Michael, why would you view “viability” as the dividing line for your personal decision?

I don’t believe “personhood” attaches until viability. Up until that point, the fetus is clearly a part of the mother’s body and I believe women should be able to make decisions about their bodies and their healthcare.
Once we reach viability, the moral ground shifts and I do think we are talking about a human person. Aborting at that point and after is morally treacherous because we are talking about the competing “rights” of two human persons, as opposed to abortion at an earlier stage where it really is the balance between a human person and a potential person. If the fetus can’t exist without the body and blood of the mother–and only the mother–than it is a part of the mother’s body and she should have the autonomy to make that health care decision without coercion from the state.
I find abortion to be a tragedy regardless of when it occurs. But I also think it is a tragedy for the state to coerce a woman into not obtaining health care she seeks. So it becomes a balancing question, and viability seems to be the point where the balance shifts. It is the approach that is used in other Western developed countries and it is likely–if abortion had not become the culture war battleground it is–the place where the U.S. would have landed.

Michael,
The restrictions on late term abortions are for certain procedures, not all. The Doe decision held open the door for the life and health of the mother, which is sufficient room to define in any particular request for a late term abortion.
Building on Steven’s question, may I very respectfully ask you a few more.
1. With changes in technology, viability has become possible at ever earlier gestational stages. Given that, does the nonviable baby aborted twenty years ago have the same legal and moral status as it would today at the same developmental stage that technology makes viable?
2. If you consider the Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus).
The organism is Danaus plexippus at every stage of its life cycle: Fertilized Egg, Caterpillar, Chrysalis and Adult. The caterpillar does not require the adult form with wings, or nectar sucking capability v. leaf-munching to be considered Danaus plexippus. Indeed, Danaus plexippus is the entire life cycle of the animal. No organism need display all of its potential capabilities at every stage of its life cycle in order to be considered a distinct organism of that species.
Do you not see the same for members of the species Homo sapiens? Why do pro-choicers see the need to deny the species membership and uniquely distinct organismal status of a member of our species solely because that animal is acting consistent with the earlier developmental stage it is currently in and not acting consistently with a latter developmental stage?
3. Do you see the human embryo and fetus as a distinct animal progressing through distinct developmental stages and doing so based upon an intrinsically ordered set of genetic instructions?
God Bless.

I’d never feel comfortable 1 day before the baby’s birth…
For me the date would be a blurry date around the estimated time that the developing child shows a functional brain waves that show that true fetal thinking begins…smart folks say that uniquely human brain waves are measurable and they begin at about 25 weeks.

Timmy C.
Most of us accept that the brain is the central organizer and director of bodily function. Certainly in the mature form of the animal this is so.
But the DNA, the genome, is the central organizer and director of development from the single-celled stage forward. It is the genome that is our most fundamental level of identity and driving force developmentally until the day we die. The brain does so secondarily.
Therefore, the genome of the zygote is the vitality, the central driving force of animal development. That’s why pro-life scientists and scholars see the brain as a false indicator of individuality and human identity.

Gerard, I’m not interested in getting into a biology conversation with a biology professor and I’m not really that interested in the questions of species and genus and the Monarch butterfly.
Yes, the point of viability has changed but I don’t think that complicates things that much. One could still choose a 24-week gestation or a 22-week gestation point and it would achieve essentially the same point. If–in 50 years–viability occurs at 18 weeks, then the law can adapt to that change.
I’m more concerned about the rights of the woman. At what point does that woman’s rights conflict with the rights of person who can exist outside the woman’s womb. As long as the fetus cannot exist outside the woman’s womb–and thus is completely dependent on the woman’s body–it is morally problematic for the state to coerce her into not getting the health care she wants.

“Let’s assume that abortion is fully legal, right up until the point of birth. Would you feel morally comfortable aborting the fetus one day before the birth date?”
Yep.
“Under what circumstances?”
Signed consent.

I have trouble seeing how this is an “ethical riddle.”
“Moral comfort” is not an either-or proposition.
I imagine that most pro-choice people would feel perfectly comfortable during week 1, slightly less comfortable during week 2, and so on, eventually becoming perfectly uncomfortable toward the end of the pregnancy.

Gerard:
I’d agree that the dna or genome is a map for making a human being.
But I don’t use the ability to think as the “central organizer” metric, as much as the following logic:
Human death is now defined best by the permanent cessation of brain function…even though other organs may go on living, if the brain ceases to function, the Person that was has ceased to be.
Thus central to being a living Person, is the working brain and for consciousness to exist, and for the ability to think.
Therfore:
A developing human being in a crucial way is not complete — not fully made, not fully human — being until it can think.
Thus the death of a fetus before roughly 25 weeks is a tragedy, and a moral loss, but as it is not yet a fully made, fully human being, it is a loss that is less than taking a true human being’s life.
It might be akin to killing other forms of deeply valuable, but non-sentient life, such as a felling of a beautiful tree. But it is not murder.
This gels very well with my understanding of ancient Jewish traditional thinking on the subject, and with Augustine and Aquinas’s view that the human being is not fully a human being until “the quickening” which is roughly at this time frame.

As someone who is personally pro-life, but politically pro-choice I would agree with Michael. The viability standard, although not nearly perfect given the uniqueness of each fetus, is the best standard we currently have.
Additionally, it seems the majority of abortions occur before viability. The latest statistics show that there were only about 2100 abortions that occurred after the 21st week (note: I am not trying to downplay this number when I say ‘only’, but when this number makes up 1.6% of all abortions it is a relatively small number). So, I am not inclined to alter the standard.
Sticking to viability, while also allowing for medically necessary procedures after viability seems to be the best option that guarantees both the right of the woman and the fetus.

Viability is important ethically. It is a dividing line which should change the way in which the fetus is regarded legally.
Are there circumstances after viability in which abortion should be permitted? Yes, but the law should define and limit abortion following viability to issues of severe health risk to the mother. Where a fetus can be delivered rather than aborted after reaching viability, a method of extraction which results in a safe life birth should be done preferentially to abortion.
The following wikipedia reference will probably be of interest to readers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-term_abortion

This is a trick question. The answer is in the back of the book. The problem is, as it is with all of life’s trick questions, we don’t get to the back of the book to learn the answer until we die and cross over to the other side — where we (hope to) receive all the answers
This choice is nothing more than a crap shoot of emotion and faith; one involving multiple lives. We may be able to legislate whether or not we can shoot craps with the unborn, but what gets too often lost here is that there may be an even higher court involved in the end.

Gerard, I swear, you should not be let loose upon freshmen.
No, I don’t want to see a late-term abortion. I don’t want to see any abortion. But I am neither competent nor do I have the remotest standing to tell a woman what to do with her body.
Now that it is possible…oh, my paws and whiskers, I just realized that if I finish this sentence, John Howard may join this conversation…well, I’ll plead youth and inexperience together with maturity and long service if he does. And blame it on you conservatives, here.
Here goes: Now that we can clone, the step to asexual reproduction having been taken, should not the argument be made that all eggs (polar bodies? slippery-slope, anyone?) and all spermatozoa (and their precursor diploids…be protected? Our technology now places them firmly in the same group as the chrysalis, at least.
Personally, I have to take the stand – I am a gay man. I am in a monogamous relationship with my husband. I am incapable of becoming pregnant, thus I have no standing in the matter.
I would permit a woman amicus curiae status, she at least can or once could have become pregnant, but the only one with standing is the pregnant woman herself.
Now, if pushed, I would agree with the Jewish position that before quickening, there is no soul involved. This also lines up with the statistical distribution of spontaneous abortions perfectly – within the first three days it runs (depending on whom you ask) between 5 to 9 out of ten pregnancies are aborted without being noticed to that late, heavier period which we all know was a failure, just not quite so often, on and on until somewhere after 12 weeks it will take a serious outside problem in nearly all cases to end the pregnancy.
The more pertinent question is, why have the conservatives (who had control of the US government since Reagan) not done anything to make it economically feasible for a woman in serious trouble to keep the child? If this were a genuine concern and not just a desire to oppress women, they would have set up social nets to make it possible to bring the baby to term and then see the child adopted. They haven’t because they really don’t care one bit. It is all about withholding the rights of women.
I become absolutely furious with conservative Christians who dare to say my husband’s kiss is a perversion of God’s will. How much more must a woman feel it is nobody’s business except her own when she is the one with the baby in her body?

“Let’s assume that abortion is fully legal, right up until the point of birth. Would you feel morally comfortable aborting the fetus one day before the birth date?”
What, exactly, does the extra factor of legality add to this debate? Morality and legal systems have only the vaguest relationship to each other.
Regardless of whether it is legal or not, I feel morally uncomfortable about this scenario. After all, give the woman a shot of oxytocin and you have an instant live birth. No incubator required.
But I must recognise that this lack of comfort on my part is culturally conditioned, not the inevitable outcome of some immutable moral law. The ancient Greeks had no qualms about exposing newly-born infants the day AFTER they were born. Among the Bushmen of the Kalahari, a child is not even given a name until its first birthday, since it will probably die anyway. Our current attitude towards chidren, that they are somehow inviolate, is quite a rarity, historically speaking. Hey, I prefer it that way too; I am also part of the same culture.
Now there may well BE an immutable moral law, and I’m sure Gerald and others could advance an argument for its existence. But the question as stated asked me, personally, about my feeling of moral comfort. A really fuzzy concept, to be sure. It varies with my personal level of involvement, with my current level of frustration, oh with all sorts of extraneous factors. If there is an objective moral law, then violations of it would be wrong regardless of how I or anyone else feels about it. It would be wrong even if we unanimously agreed that it was right. So, what exactly is my moral comfort supposed to prove?
Still, let’s take the thought experiment further. A week before the birth date? A month? A trimester? Two trimesters? How about ten minutes after conception? Yes, I started feeling more and more morally comfortable as we went along. OK, so now what? Have we proven anything?

If the religious conservatives truly wish to be taken seriously, they need to actually, aggressively and with purpose fund programs to help women who are pregnant but don’t/can’t keep the child.
Do they?
No.
Why?
Because it isn’t about the child, at all. It is only about oppressing women.
There is absolutely no reason why a woman should need to abort one day before birth, arrangements for adoption could easily be made. The question is truly irrelevant.

Hi Panthera,
How have you been? So, I’m too much for freshmen, eh?
Great commentary, as always. A few thoughts. I do believe that we need to back up our pro-life rhetoric with substance in aiding pregnant women in dire straits. Certainly much has been made of this here and elsewhere, and rightly so.
Having worked with homeless, unwed teen mothers in Times Square back in the ’80′s, I was part of an organization that walked the walk. In that time I also saw the effects of the pendulum swinging too far in the assistance direction; young mothers EXPECTING that others will bear the responsibility for their behavior, including two, three and four children by age twenty.
I’m not certain I know where that balance lies. But it exists within a very narrow spectrum. Callous detachment exists on one side and irresponsible, even reckless procreative behavior and parenting on the other. We don’t want callousness for ourselves. Nor should our charity cross a line into facilitating irresponsibility in others.
The charity dimension has often been used as a gun to the head re: abortion. Unless we’re talking rape, it was voluntary activity that led to the pregnancy, and it is the woman herself who bears responsibility for the outcome.
I do see one difficulty with the analogy to your husband’s kiss and the baby in the woman’s body. You and your husband chose each other. Every person is entitled to a religious interpretation of that choice, but decency dictates that you be left to live your lives in peace and not hounded by the pitchfork mob.
There are also two humans involved with pregnancy. Unlike you and your husband, the baby didn’t get a choice about its partnering with a mother. The right of that baby to continue its life, a life already underway, ought not be a function of the mommy lottery. Lucky me, my mother was advised and could have had an abortion in 1960. She prayed to St. Gerard Majella, patron saint of expectant mothers. I was born fine and she named me in honor of the saint whose intercessory prayer brought me through whatever made the doctors recommend a therapeutic abortion.
If I may, very respectfully as always, offer this insight. Your anger at conservative Christians is understandable, even laudable given what you have shared with me over time. However, even your tormentors may stand for something that is genuinely good and holy, such as the right of all babies to live; even if they do it for all the wrong reasons.
Anyway, it was good to see you pop up. I’ve been wondering where you’ve been. My best to you and your husband.

Hi Gerard,
And I am always glad to read your posts.
Yes, you are quite right – there are two humans involved after the quickening. Which is why I draw the line at 12 weeks, as does most of Europe.
And yes, I do tend to apply the precise same rod to measure conservative Christians as they do to me. It just can not come from God when one attacks, beats, murders, rapes and tortures gays and transgendered while at the same time insisting that unborn life is of greater value than that of the mother.
But, yes, what to do, what to do? In my country, we do our best (through education, freely available contraception and instilling a since of self-worth) to prevent unwanted pregnancy. And when a woman does become pregnant and doesn’t want the child, her doctor must meet with her some time prior to the abortion and present her with alternatives which are actually available, to her – and in her village.
Yes, there are some women who play the system. I would rather see a few jerks get away with stealing tax payers’ money, tho’, than go back to the bad old trend toward ever more abortions.
And that, I fear, is where, once again, the difference between our cultures arises. Here, we have fewer abortions, less divorce and more personal freedom.
America has more abortions, more children born into poverty, enormously higher divorce (especially among heterosexual partners. We, astonishingly, run at least 10% behind the heterosexual marriages across Europe in the divorce rates – and that includes some countries where we have had the right to marry or engage in civil union for years.
But I digress.
The main thing is, how do we get this awful abortion rate down? I should think by now it is clear that the current approach to the matter from conservative Christians is not working.
Strange this world, no? My mother managed two children in a span of 30 years of trying. Two. Both of us healthy. But the difficulties she faced to manage even two – my folks wanted six, heaven only knows why – and got two. I am very glad your mother was able to bring you to term. Therapeutic abortions back then were advised when the woman’s life was at considerable risk.
Wow.
Good for her.
You know, we need to get people together on this who are able to compromise. That is going to be very hard, indeed. But I see no other way -

Gerard: “There are also two humans involved with pregnancy. Unlike you and your husband, the baby didn’t get a choice about its partnering with a mother. The right of that baby to continue its life, a life already underway, ought not be a function of the mommy lottery. Lucky me, my mother was advised and could have had an abortion in 1960. She prayed to St. Gerard Majella, patron saint of expectant mothers. I was born fine and she named me in honor of the saint whose intercessory prayer brought me through whatever made the doctors recommend a therapeutic abortion.”
This paragraph touched me, Gerard, for a couple of reasons. One, we share a birth year. I came into this world in August of 1960, some three years after a doctor told my mother she would never have children. Truly the world seems small at times.
Also, your statement regarding the child not choosing to be conceived at that time touched me deeply. So many times I hear fiscal conservatives, and yes a good number of evangelicals as well, call for cuts in safety net programs that promote, in their words “irresponsibility”. You allude to this in talking about your experience in Times Square. Yes, there were indeed some women who came expecting others to take care of them and their children, and who continued to have children even when they could obviously not support them. Yet…the children did not choose that situation. A child born to an irresponsible, lazy mother is still deserving of care every bit as much as a child born to a responsible, caring mother.
I think this is where so often we lose sight of a central truth that the pro-life community should be proclaiming. The same child that deserves protection in the womb, that did not choose to be conceived, and did not choose to be aborted, also did not choose to be born to a poor mother, or to a mother who was too young and too irresponsible. It seems to me that a consistent pro-life ethic would continue to push for the needs of the child once it is born into this world, and those needs likely include medical care, food and shelter.
If the pro-life community can lobby and protest to help insure that the child escapes abortion, can they not also do the same to insure that the child does not suffer from being born into a less than ideal situation?

Now, as to answer the question in this post. A woman wanting an abortion the day before the child is to be born? Hmmm…I would have her sign consent forms that include language regarding her giving up title to the contents of her womb. Then I would put her under and do a c-section. The baby would go immediately to an adoption agency and find a loving home, and the woman would go home childless, as she requested.
Yes, I know…a contrived answer at best. But this (and the previous question) are both contrived to push the envelope. A better discussion for both sides would be to move the time frame back to the week before viability, or the week before quickening. Let us discuss the issue from these two vantage points. Or let us move to the situation we saw unfold earlier this year in Brazil and talk about abortion in an instance like that.
Certainly I think we can agree that these three situations are far more likely to reflect reality than the “day before being born” or the “zygotes vs. infant” scenarios.
“The main thing is, how do we get this awful abortion rate down? I should think by now it is clear that the current approach to the matter from conservative Christians is not working.”
Agreed to a point. There are conservatives who are doing more than calling for abortion to be illegal. These people need to be heard in the debate, and they need to be encouraged to engage and participate more in helping reduce abortions. Likewise there are liberals who are also doing more than lobbying to keep abortion legal, and these people need to be at the table as well.
Will this happen? I certainly hope so.

I concur. Just, spend 30 minutes searching the archived material here and the hatred, arrogance and mean-heartedness of the christianists towards women and gays, transgendered and Negroes springs out at you like a slap in the face.
I think this will be a very gradual process. One fought on many pitched fields of battle at once.
If those of us on the “left” are not better treated than we have been up till now, dialogue will remain impossible.
Every time I am told I am not a Christian, every time I am told my salvation doesn’t count, my marriage not real, that my husband would be taken from me by force if possible, I am reminded with whom I am dealing.
And that is the hatred and venom gays confront. Just imagine how people who advocate giving women control over their own bodies are abused, for them the christianists reserve their bombs and murder, all in the name of God.
How do we build trust with people who physically attack us?
We saw what the last eight years did to America. These culture wars must cease.

RJohnson,
I’m an August baby too. August 24, ‘A date which will live in infamy’, as Roosevelt said ;o)
No we cannot cut the safety net. I’m glad to have been a part of it for five out of my seven years in Times Square. However, when I see illegitimacy rates approaching 80% in the African American community, and see all of the secondary sequellae and pathologies that flow from fatherless households and illiteracy among the mothers, then as I said to Panthera, the pendulum has swung too far.
I don’t see how it is morally acceptable to fund the current pathology simply because the gun of abortion is put to our heads. And, actually, African Americans while constituting 11% of the population have 37% of the abortions; some 18 million since 1973.
As I said, there is a narrow bandwith between callous indifference and the pathology currently besetting the African American community, among others.
O for the wisdom of Solomon!
God Bless!

Greetings, young whippersnapper! I have you by 10 days, Gerard! You share a birthday with my old friend from my high school daze.
“I don’t see how it is morally acceptable to fund the current pathology simply because the gun of abortion is put to our heads.”
I’m with you if you can find a way to defund the pathology without harming the children who are born, against their will, into the hands of dysfunctional parents. If we accept the statement that a child that does not have a choice about being conceived should not be aborted, then should we also accept that the same child should not be denied healthcare, food and shelter?
Far too many of the “welfare reform” ideas are simply designed to cut finding while avoiding the question of how to care for these children. A woman may well be abusing the system, being reckless sexually, and having child after child with no intent of supporting them herself. She deserves to be held accountable for her actions. How do we do so in a way that does not penalize her children, none of whom asked to be born into her household?
Do we take children from her? Forcibly sterilize her? Revoke her citizenship (assuming she is a naturalized citizen)? These are all suggestions I have heard over the years from folks who are frustrated with the pathology you have witnessed first hand.
I’m with you in that much of what we have in the way of poverty prevention is an abject failure. The problem comes in changing the system without harming:
1) those truly trying to play by the rules, and simply needing help to get by until they get on their own feet,
2) those finding themselves impoverished against their will (due to divorce, abandonment, or other cause beyond their control), and
3) the innocent children in these situations.
Many have pointed to the faith community as the ultimate solution to this. But seriously, is the faith community, Christian and non-Christian together, up to this challenge…especially when many loud voices against publicly-financed welfare are coming from within the faith community?

RJohnson,
And Amy Welborn has us by a month! Seems 1960 was a vintage year!
“Many have pointed to the faith community as the ultimate solution to this. But seriously, is the faith community, Christian and non-Christian together, up to this challenge…especially when many loud voices against publicly-financed welfare are coming from within the faith community?”
Again, for the Wisdom of Solomon!!!
We certainly could be doing a better job in the churches of helping with financial assistance, mentoring young mothers and fathers (married or not!!), etc.
The Catholic Church is good at funding and running social service agencies, and that’s a good thing. Having worked in one, it’s a bandaid at best. Meaningful, lasting effects come from community.
Still, at the same time we need to loudly condemn the lifestyle that perpetuates this problem. Cardinal O’Connor was quite correct when he admonished that good morality is good medicine.
“Do we take children from her? Forcibly sterilize her? Revoke her citizenship (assuming she is a naturalized citizen)? These are all suggestions I have heard over the years from folks who are frustrated with the pathology you have witnessed first hand.”
These are certainly abhorrent. I WOULD make all public assistance contingent upon identification of the father and put an end to this nonsense. Young men would be forced to work and pay for child support before any supplemental benefits would be forthcoming from the government, or else they can rot in prison.
Sound monstrous? So is impregnating a woman and leaving her and the baby high and dry.
That would be the first coherent statement made in a long time about the value of a woman, a child, and the proper role of a father. It would also reaffirm human sexuality, that it is not only for fun, but for procreation.
If the young woman can’t or won’t name the father and can’t support the child, then I would think that taking it away would send a chill through young women and make them think twice about allowing their bodies to be treated like a McDonald’s dive thru.
Might abortions spike initially? Perhaps. But reintroducing sanity, morality and decency should not be held hostage by the threat of abortion. In very short order, I believe the number of out-of-wedlock pregnancies would plummet.
I don’t mind paying to help a woman in trouble. It happens. But when it becomes the norm, and my paying for what the fathers refuse to pay is demanded and makes me complicit by force of law, then something has to give.
Of course, repealing abortion would bring virgin virtue back into vogue in three nanoseconds.
Be Well.

Gerard,
I hate to tell you this, but the experience of those countries in which legal abortion is not possible, shows that abortion continues. It only becomes more dangerous. The means of inducing an abortion are available everywhere in today’s world. Two minutes on the web were enough to turn my stomach…
Those three nanoseconds were not given 200 years ago, today, they are beyond discussion.
So where does that leave us?
I don’t think taking away citizenship is anything any country does, apart from Nazi Germany. In fact, it is one of the few things which can never be taken from a citizen in most civilized countries, naturalized or to the State born.
Taking a child away from parents who can not or will not support it is more practical, but my-o-my, I guess that is one of those cultural thing-ys again. It turns my stomach to know that such occasions arise.
What we need is to attack the problem from several flanks at once.
One, we need to decrease the level of unwantted pregnancies, drastically.
No pregnancies, no abortions. That we agree on.
How we do that is akward.
The solution put for by the conservative Christians – abstinence, no sex education, no birth-control methods has failed and failed utterly.
Cutting back social services just to drive the hateful agenda of the Republicans and the conservative Christians has also failed.
It is not fair or appropriate to expect the Church (I mean the Roman Catholic Church, none of the conservative Christian churches give a flying you-know-what about helping people) to do all the heavy lifting.
Why not convene two conferences?
One, to tackle the tough issues between us. That one will fail, of course, but at least you Catholics will get a good belly-full of the Mormons and conservative Christians who have made life hell for the rest of us these last years.
Schläft einer mit einem Hund, wacht er auf mit Flöhe.
The second conference is charged explicity with dealing with the social issues arising from the pre-natal, birth, natal care and further care of the child and his or her family. There, I do think we might all find some common cause and move on.
What do you (or any of the sane folks around here) think?

Panthera,
I don’t claim to be one of the sane people around here. My wife says she concurs! I’ll take a stab at it anyway.
My years in Times Square did more to sway me to conservatism than all other experiences combined. (I do not believe homophobia and intolerance to be conservative principles. They are added baggage carried by the less enlightened who find common cause on more enlightened planks in the conservative platform).
In my years working there, I heard lots of what WE are going to do about teen pregnancy? What are WE going to do to prevent HIV/AIDS? What are WE going to do about teen homelessness etc?
My snarky response was, “Don’t have sex with them.”
But the larger point is made there. We do great damage to people when we enter into a relationship that is characterized by removing solid expectations of decency and moral rectitude. When WE allow THEM to place on US THEIR responsibilities for THEMSELVES, WE ALL have a problem.
That’s what has happened. I know the warmth you have for conservative Christianity Panthera, but seriously, if we tease the bigotry from the moral norms of Scripture, we have the best framework for proceeding.
That begins with the concept that all persons possess free will and conscience. There is no problem in this culture with people exercising their free will. It’s the formation of conscience that is in tatters. PC moral relativism in a community of 80% fatherless households and rampant maternal and paternal illiteracy fuels the fire.
The answer isn’t more condoms and birth control. The answer is giving people back their dignity, by challenging them to close their legs and open their minds and hearts. Sexual intimacy is one of the deepest expressions of love between two people. Handing teens contraception ad remaining “value free” (a lie, as that itself is a value) destroys the very values necessary for developing and maintaining whole, intact and functional families.
If WE are going to do anything, we need to hold out a vision of hope. We need to hold fathers accountable for the lives they create. And yes Panthera, We need to help people get on their feet, but not subsidize a lifestyle that we would not want for our own children.
In the African American community, 18 million abortions, 80% illigetimacy, graduation rates that trail whites by 25% or more at every level of education, 25% of black men being dead or imprisoned by age 25 is a Holocaust of unspeakable dimensions.
President Johnson’s Great Society Programs did much to replace fathers with big government, and have catalyze the destruction of a once proud and great people. One more generation of this and the African Americans will have lost their viability as a people.
The only answer is to place the burden back on them as a community and ask, “What do YOU want to do about YOUR community? How do YOU plan to fix this?” That’s mature, dignified, and respectful. I really see no other solution.
Do You?

Gerard,
I often fear there is no solution, at all.
You know Western Europe, you know that we also have mixed populations and our record with the Sinti and Roma is unpardonable.
Truly, tho’, our principle of social help to maintain the basics and then requiring of people that the obey the laws and treat other people fairly and decently works.
And that is where I think the American system fails. Let us see what would happen to me here in my country, were I to suddenly become a pregnant, unmarried 16 year old girl whose parents won’t or can’t help me.
Right, ok, so first: If I were still in school (likely, given that compulsory education extends past 16), the school would be responsible for me five or five and 1/2 days a week (our students study quite a bit longer each year than do American students).
They would not, of course, permit discrimination against me by the teachers and any students who were nasty would quickly discover that “ve haff our vays” need not involve corporal punishment.
So, a safe place to be, warm food and shelter during the day.
I would have a place in a small group for pregnant girls who have no other home. There would be social workers and nuns or social workers and lay people or social workers and volunteers (or all three, the Catholic church here is too busy doing God’s work to bother with the extremists in Rome). I’d have my own bed, desk, cupboard, shelves for my belongings, door key, clothes, small allowance, pre-natal care, health insurance, anyway…
When my baby came, I would have the option of staying with the other girls for awhile until I was able to take care of the surprisingly long list of things you have to learn with babies. All at once. Without making any serious mistakes even once.
I would have food, insurance, shelter and protection and be together with other young women in my situation. My baby would have the same.
I could, of course, as the State to help me find a place on my own, but under 18, it would take quite a bit of convincing to get a judge to grant the request. This is granted, but only when you have a situation which is overriding.
Anyway, by the time I’m 18, my baby is two, I have finished school, my darling child is healthy and happpy and ready to spend a few hours a day in a child-care center while I either continue my studies or go to work full time learning a trade.
By the time my child is in school full-time, I will be on my feet and living without government assistance.
The fact that insurance is available (not free, but nowhere near the absurd cost in the US where pregnancy is a “pre-existing condition”), that shelter and food and safety are provided for children and unwed mothers or those who fall on hard times means that we have a relatively small group of people permanently on the dole.
Compared to the hopeless situation for Negroes in America or anyone who falls on hard times with no support, a sane, safe, solid solution. One which promotes the welfare of society and makes it possible for unwed 16 year old girls to chose to have a baby instead of an abortion.
Too much needs to change in the US.
And I deeply fear that much of the problem is simply racism. Not from you, but from too many of the conservatives who have controlled the country for too long.
I firmly believe in people pulling themselves up by their boot-laces, that is our culture – we are more productive than Americans by a great margin. But we recognize that when everything goes wrong at once, you have to help people or they will never get back up on their feet.
Of course, you and I will continue to disagree about contraception, but you know – our culture instills a since of dignity and self-control (we are big on that) in people, including in those who have made mistakes. In America, one misstep and you are a convicted felon for life. One sexual experience, and you are condemned to poverty – along with your child – for life.
The zero tolerance, punish but don’t rehabilitate mentality is what keeps Negroes down. No good jobs are open to them with the appalling state of education in the American inner cities. Because most (!) dark-skinned men will have criminal convictions – nearly all for marijuana – before they are 21, they can’t get college aid grants. They can’t get decent jobs.
Sigh.
Oh, no wonder we get along despite our differences. Sommer kids are just naturally advantaged.

“Let’s assume that abortion is fully legal, right up until the point of birth. Would you feel morally comfortable aborting the fetus one day before the birth date?”
I don’t think “comfort” has anything to do with abortion/choice.
But I’m not someone who can get pregnant, so frankly I think I should stay out of other people’s private decisions altogeher.

You really think people have abortions up until the day before due date?
One other thing about this “Safe, legal, early” idea — you’d probably have the unintended consequence that someone who might have had an abortion at 3-1/2 months buys the idea that she shouldn’t but then changes her mind and has an abortion at 5 months. When she starts to show.

the point of being pro-choice is that i don’t believe that i have the answers to everyone else’s problems, be they moral or physical. but for me, i am staunchly pro-choice. i would “abort” the day before my due date if i discovered that i would have a very, very high chance of dying while giving birth. or if i had been raped in prison or something and i had been released the day before my due date, i dunno.
however, the question is sort of a straw man, or, dare i say, a stupid question. not one pro-choicer i know is advocating for such a thing. and if abortion was made more accessible, without laws that required 24-hour waiting periods, or laws that prohibited poor women from getting federal or state aid to get an abortion, or laws that prevent women in the military from getting abortions from military doctors even if they pay out of their own pockets (which they have to, even if raped), then late term abortions would be far more rare.

gerard:
“If the young woman can’t or won’t name the father and can’t support the child, then I would think that taking it away would send a chill through young women and make them think twice about allowing their bodies to be treated like a McDonald’s dive thru.”
yeah! those sluts! they deserve whatever they get, and so do their babies, if they can’t name the baby daddy. no mother who is a Slut is capable of loving her child, of course, because only Good Girls who have a certain amount of sex with a specific number of partners–whose social security numbers they memorize and can provide upon request–deserve social assistance. that’ll teach them!
of course, if they were gang-raped, or the father is a family member, or a teacher, or a priest, or an authority figure, or abusive, and the mother wants nothing to do with him, or does not want to pit elements of her family against each other or what have you, then she DESERVES to lose the baby.
no wonder so many women choose abortion. to be a single, young mother, or a single mother of any age, is to be Judged by people like Gerard. Too old? why didn’t you get your act together? too young? SLUT. don’t know the baby daddy? SLUT. do know the baby daddy but decided ultimately not to be with him or have anything to do with him because he is a jerk? slut with Bad Judgment who Should Have Known Better.
When women who choose to become single mothers are treated as though they are worhty of respect, and when single motherhood doesn’t de facto disqualify women from a middle-class life or higher education, maybe less women will seek abortions. until then, with people like Gerard judging them and the system dooming them to poverty, abortion is the most sensible choice.

You ask a valid question. I see some good ideas so our culture can begin to think about balancing the rights of women with the rights of a developing child, the rights of the individual with the demands of cultural/religious ethics, the responsibilities of a parent with the obligations of society.
I am certain we will never reach a consensus on any of these as long as we cling to absolutes. I am equally certain we will never be willing to do what is necessary to balance these questions. We will always choose half-hearted measures, half-baked policies, & worn-out misty theologies (from MEN who neither sustain committed a FAMILY partnership with all the endless negotiations a good relationship requires NOR the awesome unrequited responsibilities of parenthood) that apply band aids rather than real solutions.
Furthermore in my crankiness, I really think men, when talking about women’s reproductive experiences, should never be allowed to split hairs endlessly about women’s reproductive experiences. Instead men should talk endlessly about supporting the development of inexpensive, effective methods for men to control their sperm’s fertility. Why isn’t this subject included in discussions about abortion? SOME PROMISING METHODS ARE UNDER DEVELOPMENT BUT DRUG COMPANIES LACK SUFFICIENT PROFIT MOTIVE TO RESEARCH, TEST & MARKET THEM.
But, just for fun, let’s also have some moral questions for “pro-lifers”: “Let’s assume you win the legal battle and abortion is fully criminalized up to the first second of conception:
1) How would you fell about a threat to the womb’s (er, we mean, um, mother’s) life? Would you permit an abortion to save her life? If the child’s development is defective so that s/he will not survive, would you permit an abortion to save the mother’s health?
2) How would you feel about paying more taxes to guarantee the child is born into a family able to provide everything (emotionally, financially, spiritually) to ensure that child’s absolute right to a decent environment for his or normal development? TIHS WOULD REQUIRE A DRASTIC REORDERING OF AMERICAL SOCIETY, INCLUDING ECONIMIC & SOCIAL JUSTICE ANTITHETICAL OF THE CURRENT SYSTEM: HOW WOULD YOU ACCOMPLISH THIS AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, WILL YOU BE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT?
3) How would you feel about extending the “right to life” to ALL humanity, including victims of war? Would you be willing to extend all your resources to peacemaking? Would you be willing to divert taxes from war hardware to humanitarian efforts that ELIMINATE much of the causes of war? Would you commit your government to justice in all its dealings?
4) How do you feel about extending the “right to life” to all humanity, threatened by overpopulation and global warming? HOW will you change YOUR lifestyle to ensure millions (billions?) of fellow (born) humans will not become refugees, die from the impending lack adequate food or water, hereby helping life on earth avoid the dreadful consequences of drought and mass starvation?
5) Similarly, Would you extend the “right to life” to ALL life on earth, threatened by global warming & mass extinctions, from human over-development, overpopulation, habitat destruction, and environmental devastation? What will YOU do to ensure your children’s children do not endure a world full of suffering, without even the songbirds for comfort?
Well, whatever, just asking.
If we’re going to be absolute about life (and not merely controlling women’s reproduction), let’s do it right.