Abortion: A Non-Religious View
Those of you who have come here regularly know my personal feelings on the subject of religion. It is very difficult to approach an issue like abortion without talking about religion. So many of the justifications either way are based on religious views. However, I know so many readers are tired of religion. I get it. So, I will do my very best to avoid the subject completely.
My main source of frustration with this subject is how each side has been mislabeled. The pro-life side is not and really never has been pro-life per se. They are pro-birth. The issue of life is a continuum. It includes quality of life issues for children in general, it involves issues with access to health care, and it involves issues as it pertains to the death penalty and wars of choice. Obviously, it also involves end of life issues. Whatever the source of one’s beliefs, it is very difficult to defend a position of pro-life if one is against easy access to health care, easy access to food and shelter, against the sanctity of life for those accused of murder and other crimes, and against abstaining from international conflicts we have no business of being a part of. To be pro-birth and then anti everything else is really cherry-picking the pro-life position.
Pro-choice is not really a good label either. In an absolute sense it is. Abortion is a privacy issue where each person has dominion over their own bodies. So, the essence is correct in that I acknowledge there is a choice and I acknowledge that it isn’t mine. From there it gets dicey because the opposition wants to call pro-choice people pro-abortion. I don’t know anyone that is pro-abortion. None of us run around and recommend abortions to random strangers. Simply put, if I’m not involved then it’s none of my business.
What is so maddening is that most people want the same thing. In the general sense, we all want fewer abortions and when you look at abortion rates, they consistently have gone down during Democratic administrations. In fact, the rates have fallen more under Democrats than they have under Republicans. That could be random, but I think it has more to do with policy choices and posturing. If you want to reduce the rate of abortions then you reduce the demand for abortions.
You do this through comprehensive sex education and easy access to birth control. You acknowledge that abstinence is the preferred choice, but you also acknowledge that people are going to be sexually active. They might as well know how to do so safely while also knowing the physical and emotional implications of sex. That includes both the good and the bad.
After someone becomes pregnant they should get easy access to top-notch medical care. They need to be treated with love, grace, and respect. That means calmly and lovingly laying out all of the choices they have before them. It means giving them the facts about all of those choices and not alternative facts. If we want them to make the “right” choice then we need to make sure none of the choices are beyond their capabilities. Most importantly, it means completely removing shame from the process.
That’s been the best way and the only way to reduce the amount of abortions that occur in the United States and Texas. Instead, the good folks in the legislature and the governor have chosen a path that won’t really reduce abortions and will just criminalize behavior that’s perfectly normal and reasonable. More than the criminalization is the shame that’s getting attached. Pregnancy is a scary enough time for anyone. Including shame is just cruel and hateful.
Well said, Nick.
I have 1 other thought to add: abortion isn’t a “choice”; it’s a decision, and it’s likely the most difficult decision a woman may ever have to make. But unless she is ready physically, financially, educationally, and emotionally to bear and raise a child, it’s a decision she should have the right to make.
1The anti abortion issue has never been about protecting
2life, it has always been about controlling women. And, it was never a religious issue until religious leaders and politicians got in bed together. I know first hand that before that time Southern Baptist did not give a rat’s ass about abortion.
Yes, well said, Nick, and I agree with djw! Words have their own ‘triggers’ and ‘weight’ and an abortion for those involved is definitely a decision.
3I agree with all of the above and that Nick wrote exceptionally well. I want to add that it has been long enough since Roe v Wade that most people never experienced life before it. I did and will never forget the 10 year old who died in my arms of suffocation because she was too small to carry the baby to term. The doctors appealed to the courts for an abortion on this basis in her first trimester but were denied because her very important father, who had raped her but didn’t admit it, wanted his daughter to learn from her poor choice. I lost other people through botched, back street abortions or because the court acted too slowly when a woman developed a critical complication. Much as I wish we lived in a world in which abortion is not used as birth control, I do not want to go back to the bad old days when women had to die because men wanted control over them, even the little girls. Like the rest of you, I don’t know how to fix this other than voting out the varmints who pass such laws.
4Anti[-abortionism is usually a syndrome, a cluster of symptoms that indicate an underlying pathology. In the case of the so-called “pro-lifers,” it is that their hatred and fear of abortion is so great as to preclude care for actual human beings.
Their knowledge and fear of their own complete disappearance in death is so great that it would, as Ernest Becker said in “Denial of Death,” paralyze them. So they deal with it by acting out an allegory– Abortion represents Death, the fetus represents themselves, and they represent God. If God can vanquish Death in this allegory, they will not pass forever into the shades where billions of others have vanished. So, it’s very important for them personally to be effective in their role as God.
And of course they are very, very sick people.
5Abstinence is not the best choice. It’s ridiculous. Human beings are going to have sex whether anyone likes it or not, so demanding abstinence is counterproductive. The better way is to accept sex as a fact, educate your people from a very early age, provide them with hygiene products, birth control and a healthy respect for consequences. It would be very constructive indeed to teach little boys respect for girls and women and address seriously violence against them.
It’s a continuum. Many of our issues stem from our basic inability to acknowledge that we are all sexual beings, and that everyone is entitled to be left alone about it – other than serial killers and rapists, obviously. But everyone else, yes.
6When you give your government the right to tell you that you cannot get an abortion; you have given them the right to someday tell you that you will have an abortion.
7“You acknowledge that abstinence is the preferred choice.”
No, I don’t. What an utterly ridiculous thing to say. It isn’t even a good choice for Catholic priests, who are told to fear eternal damnation for not being abstinent. People have sex. People are going to have sex. The sex drive is primal because it must be for a species to survive. Utterly ridiculous, Nick.
And everything that Tata wrote, above.
8So many people act like abortion is birth control – I don’t think that is the dominant reason women seek one. I’ve known two women, for example, who were advised by their doctors to have one because the baby had a problem and would have died before or immediately after birth. I also know a woman who teaches home-ec and special classes for high school girls with babies and she said many of the babies are the result of incest! We count the number of abortions, but I think there’s a unique and necessary reason behind each one.
9As a slowly lapsing Christian who sees it being used in the worst possible way I will say,” I am not for abortion but remember the horrors before Roe vs. Wade I feel it is not my businesses or any one else to tell another person what to do in their personal life.”
I despise those who do. No one knows what another person goes through.
10Mr. Carraway, nice commentary. Permit me to possibly add to this.
Pro life = oxymoron per far right, repub usage
This group, by their stated positions, define it as no application to pre or post natal care. Of several reasons for this stance is money they perceive as coming directly from their pockets for which they can not see as having any direct benefit to them.
Perhaps they also perceive this as a supply source for the untermenschen slave laborers.
While all nations, groups, thruout history have their equivalent seperatist divisions, I am still looking for someone to be able to show, prove, demonstrate but not opinionate to me how they were able to be born who they are and being provided with some sort of superiority over others.
Next, why are these “ inferior” babies punished even before they are born much less after birth? If they are born innocent (yeah, I know about original sin), why are they punished from the get-go? And if these superior peoples can successfully demonstrate their control over their superior birthing, why can’t others do it? Why would someone choose to be born non-white who make up about 3/4 of the world’s population along with most of the attendant downsides?
Any challenges, corrections, welcome but not any POET* method retorts.
* posterior orifice extraction throwout
11I agree with almost everything you said, Nick, and most all of the comments. To me, the thing that is so hypocritical about the repugnantican party is their insistence on defunding and closing down planned parenthood. I’m no expert but I believe planned parenthood’s number one objective is just as their name suggests, and abortion is a last resort. But as is the case with repugnantican priorities, they make no human sense.
12They loathe Planned Parenthood because it gives non-wealthy people access to healthcare, and women the possibility to control their own bodies.
I will always support Planned Parenthood. I’m alive because of them.
13Opinionated Hussy, I appreciate your comments so much. As a baby boomer married for over 50 years with 2 kids, I always appreciated planned parenthood, but we did not need to use their services. So many others did and do now and more than ever. We need to put our money where our mouth is because they are under attack. We can’t probably change the texas type states but we can give the support. We all need to do that.
14So called “pro-lifers” like to claim that there is no “constitutional” right for a woman to have an abortion. I say that there is, in the very underused 9th Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The “conservatives” of the Supreme Court are very scared of the 9th Amendment, that’s why as far as I know, there has never been a decision based on it.
15Abortion is one half of the choice dilemma.
16Suicide is the other one.
Care to comment, Nick?
What has been said so often lately about Republican policies, particularly those involving women and children, is certainly true about the anti-abortion laws in Texas. “The cruelty is the point.”
17ANY XTIAN who is against abortions is a st00pid (as he can’t read) and a lying hypocrite, as their BigBook o’BS has no problem condemning thousands of fetuses to death!!! As well as instruction on how to get one!
18Ormond,
I don’t want to duck your question. My grandmother ended her life that way so it’s a delicate subject. Consistency would dictate government stay out of both ends of that one. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of emotional baggage to consider on a lot of different sides and I don’t know that I’m capable of articulating a coherent response.
19I have been ranting about the issue of sex education for a long time. You can talk abstinence until pigs fly, but people WILL have sex. To tell teenagers, like sex ed classes in Texas did when my sons were teenagers, that condoms do not work and do not protect against disease (cue the slide describing in detail the horrors of the various diseases), pills are dangerous and will kill you, etc. etc., to tell these hormone-loaded teenagers that abstinence is the only thing that works, is insane. You want to end abortions, Texas, then provide every child with correct and clear information about sex and birth control and make that birth control readily available and if not free, then inexpensive.
It’s all well and good to talk about how we need to keep the population growing, but unless we do something NOW about reducing carbon emissions, the world will be an awful place to live and I know (having talked to my own millennial kids and their friends, a lot of people do not want to bring a baby into a world of pollution, deadly storms, fires, and extinction of the plants and animals that make this world a wonderful place to live. I would love to have grandchildren, but I get it and I don’t question their reasoning.
20Before Roe a woman who could afford private care and trusted her doctor could say she was experiencing pain or unexplained bleeding (wink wink). The doctor would perform a diagnostic procedure called dilation and curettage (D&C) involving scraping the uterine lining. If she had been pregnant (wink wink) she would no longer be afterward, “if” being the key word. I guess we’re back in the time of deception and conspiracy. And we owe it all to the Republicans and their culture of lies.
Poor women will just have to get on a bus to Mexico.
21Grammar police, I know I neglected to type an ending paren.
22Buttermilk Sky #21
If that poor woman hops a bus to Mexico to get an abortion, she had better not have told anyone, or let anyone so much as guess, that she might be pregnant–at least in Texas. Anyone she told could get her in serious trouble by turning her in on the Snitch Line, and get money for their dirty deed. This law is insane.
23Not THAT Bellevue. Religion should be taught in EVERY classroom! That way everyone will forget about it……like geography and history.
24I first want to thank everyone for their comments. I particularly liked the change from choice to decision. That’s absolutely right. I think some people misunderstood the reference to abstinence and while I fully understand the misunderstanding, it needs to be addressed.
Obviously, there are programs that focus on it and they often paint sex as an evil activity outside of marriage. I agree those programs are harmful. There are also programs that have a more balanced approach. They acknowledge that kids will mostly be sexually active. The point in bringing up abstinence is in the same vain as with options post pregnancy. We include all the facts about sex and as long as the facts are actually facts I’m generally good.
In Health, before our district went to abstinence only education, they taught us that contraceptives worked an overwhelmingly majority of the time, but abstinence worked 100 percent of the time. They didn’t tell us not to have sex. They didn’t tell we’d be evil if we had sex. They just said that if we had sex there were ways to do it safely, but acknowledged that no method was safe 100 percent of the time. Obviously, that changed after we left school and conservatives took over. Just understand that when I bring up abstinence it is in conjunction with the other methods and messages we know work.
25Cruelty and hate are the point. Being able to cruelly force a woman to do that which is hateful to herself, like carrying a pregnancy caused by rape or incest to term, demonstrates power and control.
Even better if the pregnancy causes the woman to die a slow, painful death. The fetus dying is the cherry on top. Having women suffer and die is the pinnacle of authority and control. It is payback in hate for the feeble generative power allowed males.
It is all of a piece: the religious right, incels, authoritarians, white supremacists, misogynists, jealous lovers, macho men. They are offended because they can’t create life. So they control and force suffering and death upon those who can.
Cruelty is the point.
26Art, very well put! Exactly what the repugnantican party stands for today.
27Nick, here’s another thought for you: My daughter showed me today that 1 of my nephews has posted to Facebook that he has had 2 abortions, and he thinks it’s time men stood up and admitted that they had been party to them, too. I think that’s brilliant: If the woman is lucky, the decision isn’t hers alone, but the men who support them in that decision need to step up now, too.
28‘Pro-life’ has always been a euphemism. They originally described themselves correctly as ‘anti-abortion’. Someone figured out back in the 1980s that being ‘anti’ anything didn’t sound so good, so they came up with ‘pro-life’. Truth has never mattered at all to them. Messaging is everything.
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