Roe v. Wade

While I nurse the hangover I acquired largely from tequila at a 2L's birthday party last night, what better light-hearted, uncontroversial topic to talk about than...abortion!

Today is the 32nd anniversary of what is probably the most famous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade, which effectively legalized abortion in the United States.

Instapunk laments this decision by noting that over 44 million abortions have been performed in the United States since this decision. There's a pretty gruesome picture posted there so don't click on the link if you have a weak stomach.

I'm not sure how to post about abortion without spending an hour on the topic, but my personal view is this: I really don't like abortion, I wouldn't ever have one if I was a woman, and I don't think it should be used as an escape for people trying to shirk personal responsibility. That said, I am by default pro-choice, although over the last year or so I've found myself more and more sympathetic to the pro-life position, I can't really get myself over the last libertarian hurdle of not imposing your views on others.

Now, the pro-lifers counter this argument by claiming that abortion is murder and therefore the morality of it isn't relative - everyone agrees that walking down the street and shooting someone in the head randomly is wrong, and just because someone honestly disagrees doesn't mean it's okay.

The problem with this argument is that it presumes that there's a consensus about what constitutes a human life, with all the rights and privileges thereto attached. This is another very complicated problem because I don't happen to think human rights apply to the fetus at the moment of conception...but I also can't accept that the process of coming out of the womb is the moment when they apply either.

Which, of course, gives rise to another problem: arbitrariness. Hardline pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike seem to pick convenient points in time, since it makes the rest of their arguments much easier. If you're pro-life, if life begins at conception, of course abortion is murder. And if you're pro-choice, you can do whatever you please to a fetus until birth because of course it isn't yet a human.

Pro-choicers usually rely on the argument that a woman's body belongs to her, and therefore she can do with it as she pleases. This is a very compelling argument on the surface - the same reason, from a libertarian standpoint, why we let people smoke and drink and eat fatty foods. But in all those cases of personal automony, there isn't another life being directly affected. So does this change things? Is a fetus an independent being that is entitled to the positive right to get what it needs to live from the mother's body? Or does the mother's negative right to not have to keep something else alive trump that right?

Part of this can be resolved if we view abortion as a contractual arrangement, i.e. when you have sex, you are signing a contract that says you are agreeing to accept any consequences that flow from doing so. This would essentially mean that you could only have an abortion if you were raped (because there would be no contract), or if giving birth would jeopardize your life (on the grounds that one life saved is better than none). Philosophically speaking I find this option attractive, but legally I think it's a nightmare - if the only way to have an abortion was to have been raped, then people would start lying about how they got pregnant etc.

I can see why abortion is the ultimate wedge issue, because it's about very sacrosanct things - innocent human life, and control of our bodies, depending on your point of view. Compared to abortion, same sex marriage is almost trivial. For pro-lifers, the thought that murder occurs in a state-sanctioned form every day is very unsettling. For pro-choicers, the idea of not being able to exercise full control over their own body is the same. And not being someone who likes to ever sit on the fence, this makes trying to sort out my view on abortion to be so agonizing.

Two things I will say, based on blogospheric observations today. I don't like it when people call abortion "murder", because murder is reserved for the killing of human beings where there is a consensus that it's a human you're killing. Saying "killing fetuses" is fine - because killing isn't the same as murder. Saying, "terminating life" is fine, because biologically speaking there's no question that abortion is killing life - it's just that there isn't agreement about what exactly that life is. I don't like arguments that assert subtle things like this.

Secondly, with respect to gruesome abortion photos, two things. First, I don't have a problem with them being circulated. People who say that it is a "scare tactic" may just not have the stomach for gorey photos. And on the other hand, it isn't true that because you don't want to see the photos, you should automatically oppose abortions. I eat hamburgers but it doesn't mean I like to watch cows being slaughtered. What's important is that people understand what it entails, not their gut reaction to it.

The best idea I've heard to solve the abortion issue once and for all is to make same sex marriages mandatory! Think about it. There'd be no more pregnancies, so there couldn't be any more abortions. True, we'd be extinct in a generation, but this would solve overcrowding and pollution problems. The environmental lobby would love it!