Voluntary Fertility
Abortion issues are again in the news this election cycle. They usually are, but the noise level is getting higher than its been for some time. The continuing low level betting pool for which Supreme Court justice will drop out and who will be president when that happens has been around for about six years now. It is commonly assumed that Roe v. Wade is just one vote from being overturned, and it is a liberal who is the current best-bet for leaving the bench.
Raised as I was, I take voluntary fertility to be one of the best things that modern medical science has given us as a species. The ability to prevent conception in the first place, followed by the ability to terminate a pregnancy, are two things that have done wonders. It has allowed women, a full half of the potential work-pool, to have a much greater impact on our monetary, information, and scientific economies very much for the greater good.
Unfortunately, these are very modern revolutions and our culture, based as it is on how Grandma had it back when she had a Grandma, hasn't really assimilated them fully yet. It wasn't until the 20th century that women had a reasonable expectation of controlling their own fertility and all that entails. In the words of a fantasy author known for his gritty realism, on life in the preindustrial feudal system:
In a heartening form of progress, the definition of rape has expanded over the last hundred years. Rape inside the marriage is now considered possible, and people have been sent to prison for it. The "she was asking for it," defense, referring to the attacker's perception of the woman in question asking for their unwelcome attention through either dress, actions, or lack of either, no longer carries nearly the weight it once did. The concept of 'age of majority' and 'statutory rape' are also new innovations designed to give underage victims another weapon against their own attackers.
In another generation or two we will probably find that the debate over the morality of birth-control will be a lot quieter. In fact, since hormonal birth control made its break out in the 1960's (?) the debate has dampened down a lot. A previous rant touched on the FDA's decision over the Morning After Pill, and it does show that the issue of disease prevention has gained priority, from a public health standpoint, over the issue of pregnancy. That is a significant move, but I'm still trying to figure out if it is a good one or not.
In other events, we now have a generation of activists who do not remember the bad old days when abortion was completely illegal. The number of physicians willing to perform abortions goes down every year due in part to the immense pressure these doctors, and the institutions who train new ones, are put under by the anti-choice crowd. There is something galvanizing about having a close friend die of sepsis after an unhygenic back-alley abortion, and ironically the lack of such people since 1973 has taken the bite out of the pro-choice movement.
One of the big disconnects between both sides of the debate is the impact of the pregnancy on the mother versus the infant that will be born. The 'killer app' for this particular argument would be if science can somehow find a way to either artificially replicate a uterus (Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan universe touches on such a technology), or some way to move an implanted embryo to a new mother. This would allow a mother to say, "I'm not bringing this embryo to term, YOU do it," and allow the mother to not have such a high impact to her own life and allow the embryo to come to term. Both methods are no where near ready, much less in the pipeline, so we get to debate this topic for probably another century.
The impact to the pregnant mother is very great. The pro-life crowd proudly points out that there is quite a market for US-adoptions, and that the mother doesn't have to raise the kid if she doesn't want to. The biological impacts to the mother are also very great; a friend who blogged extensively about her own first pregnancy provided me with an excellent view of what kind of 'great' it is. There is also strong cultural pressure to raise a kid, unwanted or not, and not give them up for adoption.
The adoption option has its own problems. The two big questions parents who give children up for adoption face are, "why didn't you want me," and, "what will we do when they show up on our doorstep one day." Another friend of mine took this option when she got pregnant at age 18ish and has recently been contacted by the child. This is another form of emotional stress that can be very difficult to live through, no matter how strongly worded the "do not contact me" note is in the file.
The task of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term is a task that women have been facing since the dawn of humanity. The fact that it is now possible to avoid this historic task just makes it that much more hard to take when it does happen. With the modern view of pre-natal care you can start neglecting your child well before they are born, and that itself carries a new stigma that our grandmothers didn't get to face.
Oh yes, voluntary fertility is such a wonderful thing. I'll support it wherever I can.
Raised as I was, I take voluntary fertility to be one of the best things that modern medical science has given us as a species. The ability to prevent conception in the first place, followed by the ability to terminate a pregnancy, are two things that have done wonders. It has allowed women, a full half of the potential work-pool, to have a much greater impact on our monetary, information, and scientific economies very much for the greater good.
Unfortunately, these are very modern revolutions and our culture, based as it is on how Grandma had it back when she had a Grandma, hasn't really assimilated them fully yet. It wasn't until the 20th century that women had a reasonable expectation of controlling their own fertility and all that entails. In the words of a fantasy author known for his gritty realism, on life in the preindustrial feudal system:
I realized that of all the women I know, every single one of them had been raped at some time.Even now rape has not gone away, stuff a person from 1820 would consider rape is still happening. Rumors of our own soldiers raping Iraqi women in custody have surfaced. Rape camps in the Bosnia conflict have spawned War Crimes trials. Countless tribal and civil feuds in Africa contain organized rape as a method of oppression. And that's just armed-conflict related rape, something that humanity has been doing since the dawn of time.
In a heartening form of progress, the definition of rape has expanded over the last hundred years. Rape inside the marriage is now considered possible, and people have been sent to prison for it. The "she was asking for it," defense, referring to the attacker's perception of the woman in question asking for their unwelcome attention through either dress, actions, or lack of either, no longer carries nearly the weight it once did. The concept of 'age of majority' and 'statutory rape' are also new innovations designed to give underage victims another weapon against their own attackers.
In another generation or two we will probably find that the debate over the morality of birth-control will be a lot quieter. In fact, since hormonal birth control made its break out in the 1960's (?) the debate has dampened down a lot. A previous rant touched on the FDA's decision over the Morning After Pill, and it does show that the issue of disease prevention has gained priority, from a public health standpoint, over the issue of pregnancy. That is a significant move, but I'm still trying to figure out if it is a good one or not.
In other events, we now have a generation of activists who do not remember the bad old days when abortion was completely illegal. The number of physicians willing to perform abortions goes down every year due in part to the immense pressure these doctors, and the institutions who train new ones, are put under by the anti-choice crowd. There is something galvanizing about having a close friend die of sepsis after an unhygenic back-alley abortion, and ironically the lack of such people since 1973 has taken the bite out of the pro-choice movement.
One of the big disconnects between both sides of the debate is the impact of the pregnancy on the mother versus the infant that will be born. The 'killer app' for this particular argument would be if science can somehow find a way to either artificially replicate a uterus (Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan universe touches on such a technology), or some way to move an implanted embryo to a new mother. This would allow a mother to say, "I'm not bringing this embryo to term, YOU do it," and allow the mother to not have such a high impact to her own life and allow the embryo to come to term. Both methods are no where near ready, much less in the pipeline, so we get to debate this topic for probably another century.
The impact to the pregnant mother is very great. The pro-life crowd proudly points out that there is quite a market for US-adoptions, and that the mother doesn't have to raise the kid if she doesn't want to. The biological impacts to the mother are also very great; a friend who blogged extensively about her own first pregnancy provided me with an excellent view of what kind of 'great' it is. There is also strong cultural pressure to raise a kid, unwanted or not, and not give them up for adoption.
The adoption option has its own problems. The two big questions parents who give children up for adoption face are, "why didn't you want me," and, "what will we do when they show up on our doorstep one day." Another friend of mine took this option when she got pregnant at age 18ish and has recently been contacted by the child. This is another form of emotional stress that can be very difficult to live through, no matter how strongly worded the "do not contact me" note is in the file.
The task of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term is a task that women have been facing since the dawn of humanity. The fact that it is now possible to avoid this historic task just makes it that much more hard to take when it does happen. With the modern view of pre-natal care you can start neglecting your child well before they are born, and that itself carries a new stigma that our grandmothers didn't get to face.
Oh yes, voluntary fertility is such a wonderful thing. I'll support it wherever I can.
posted by Corwin at 12:29 PM
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