The idea of freedom is an interesting one, because it is never the case that all paths are available because how freedom works is contextual, what game you play dictates how you will play it.
To take a less controversial parallel, societies in which there are more formal manners may seem restrictive because much of behavior is considered taboo. But navigating it also opens a myriad of ways to show love (or indeed spite) that a society with absolutely no manners just doesn’t have access to.
Given someone choice does not necessarily only increase their options, it changes what the options are. So in this conversation a woman is not now free to bear gracefully something she didn’t choose. Is it weird that I see a freedom in realising I have to play the hand I am dealt and so now I can focus on how to play it well?
I mean (to take a much more hot button issue) I am glad my only choice was how to be a man (hard enough) rather than Am I a man?
I am a hospice chaplain and I think about this in terms of grieving a lot. Everyone says “there is no right way to grieve” and it seems nice, but what it really means often is “it’s up to everyone to figure out how” where as if we had a culture of holding vigils and periods of mourning or the like, it would free folks up from figuring out what to do, and to focus on doing it well.
I feel like the only thing missing from this was Louise’s ‘myth of female agency’ argument that she has applied to other issues. How would Ann respond to the huge amount of abortion regret that exists because we view pregnancy as a choice, and so often women will make that choice when they don’t have support to make the seemingly much more difficult one to continue with a pregnancy? I grew up in Ireland where abortion was not available and I know so many women who were not able to choose it in circumstances where they may have in England or elsewhere (teenage pregnancy, Down syndrome diagnosis, abandonment by father, poverty) and none of them regret their children, rather in most instances the new life brought joy and healing and healthy responsibility and immense love that offered meaning to their lives. It seems to me that Ann has the agentic personality type and is assuming all other women do too but it’s the mimetic women who ultimately suffer most from the choice approach.
Thank you for pointing this out. I kept questioning Ann in my thoughts, "Is it fair to put the whole burden of deciding whether to birth her baby on the mother?" Especially with young women, some who aren't even legal adults, they are facing a choice that they may not be prepared to make on their own.
True, she may be suffering from inconscious agentic personality bias.
On your point about the women not regretting their children, I know several women who greatly regret their abortions. They were told they were "empowered", "choosing", undergoing a mere "healthcare" procedure and not the termination of a life... and then there were no words available in the feminist lexicon to describe the cell-deep grief they felt, the trauma and moral ambivalence. What enrages me about the normalization of abortion is that it incentivizes more women to have abortions, which then generates incredible amounts of pain and grief that just hang in the ether unacknowledged, like an invisible poison.
Louise, a big reason abortion wasn’t a hot button issue in the UK is because the Christian sects most opposing it, Catholics and Evangelicals, were pretty marginal in the UK with no clout. Mainline Protestants were neutral or supportive, and Anglicans were liberal on social issues. Also, in the U.S., at the time Roe was decided in 1973, Evangelicals were not a major political force yet. Mainline Protestants were neutral or supportive of it. The only religious group really opposing it were Catholics. Actually, even Evangelicals generally supported abortion originally, then they did a moral pivot on it during the later 70s. Republicans used abortion as an issue to steal Catholics and white southern voters away from Democrats after the Civil Rights era. But you’re kind of correct that Christianity was losing its grip beginning in the early 60s (banning prayer in schools, no-fault divorce)
Catholics fighting against a culture of death are essential in this civilizational battle. May all Christians and other allies join the fight against all the invented freedoms that are actually tools to kill as many people as possible.
Is it unthinkable for people to draw attention to the sexual revolution as a precipitant to the abortion movement, in order to free men to demand sexual access without responsibility or consequences? Abortion is fundamentally a men’s rights issue.
Men have always had access to sex without consequences, though, except in the past it was with women from the lower classes, prostitutes, and slaves. And those women were left to deal with the consequences. Now, since the sexual revolution, men have access to sex with women of their own class who are doing it with them willingly. The sexual purity of genteel middle- and upper-class women has always existed in tension with the sexual disposability of lower status women, whether some impoverished girl in a brothel or an enslaved woman in your household or the family’s maid, depending on time and place.
A corollary though is that it made "consequence-free" sex available to many more low status men, who previously had a much smaller pool of lower status women to use. Since that's such a large part of the population it is a sea change.
I’m not sure if that’s really true. At least among the Victorian working classes, for example, it seems people drifted into and out of unmarried relationships all the time — Hallie Rubenhold’s book on Jack the Ripper’s victims covers this well. It’s been years since I read it but Victorian sexual morality really didn’t apply very much to the urban working poor. Like if a woman were widowed, she would likely shack up with what was essentially a boyfriend because maybe he had some money or a job. Also, there was always a rung of prostitute available even for very low class men, like for example Victorian street walking prostitutes or, if we want to venture way further back, it’s speculated that many of the clients at the famous brothel in Pompeii were male slaves spending their pocket money. There are probably other examples I can think of but I’m tired and these are what’s coming to mind. Consequence-free sex was more or less always out there for men of every social strata, but it came at the expense of women usually in more dire straights than themselves in one way or another.
I don’t agree here that men are the main beneficiaries of abortion because they did not campaign for it and push it through.
Abortion is an issue that many women have campaigned for decades. Kate Millet, Gloria Steinem, Helen Gurley Brown and the rest of the feminist gang are the ones who pushed hard to convince women to abort their children. Changing women’s approach to fornication, contraception, abortion, and unplanned pregnancies added fuel to the sexual revolution we are living through.
I think the fundamental question I took away from this debate was; is the humanity of the life within the womb “up for personal discernment” of the pregnant women who is the only one that can care for the baby while pregnant or is it a fundamental truth that the life in the womb is a human being with moral worth. It is a very slippery slope to say that some human lives are fundamentally protected and others are not depending on “context” and “personal circumstance”. We need not look very far in human history to see how that has lead to massive injustice. Of course there will be some very hard or extreme cases where abortion could be understandable. However, that is not unique to abortion, and I’m not sure as to why people fail to see how there are many things in life we do not allow broadly or electively but we understand there may be some hard cases in which we do. It was a very interesting conversation, but I think Anne failed to convince me that “context” can override something so fundamental like a human’s right to life, especially when we’re talking about elective abortions (which are the vast majority of abortions).
I am not sure you will see this question. But it's one I have always wanted to ask a person who is opposed to legal abortion:
Let's say that person X can only survive if person Y donates an organ to person X. And let's say that person Y is the ONLY possible donor. Would you think it is ethical to compel person Y to make the donation?
Hello, that is a very good question, and what you’re getting at is honestly the best argument, I think, for legalized elective abortion. I would like to first specify, I do support abortion if a doctor believes, in good faith, it is immediately necessary or even down the line could be necessary to prevent death or serious physical harm to the mother. I am more opposed to elective abortions, which make up the vast majority of abortions.
Broadly speaking, I do not support the government being able to force another person to give their organ to someone else, even if they are the only person who can give that specific organ. However, I don’t feel that comparison fully encapsulates pregnancy for the mother or for the child. Many people talk about how there is no other situation in which we allow someone to use or take someone else’s organ without their ongoing permission as a way to justify all abortion. While this is true, I think that argument fails to include relevant aspects and the full context of most pregnancies. It also doesn’t speak to the unique circumstance the child is placed in during pregnancy.
The child is also being forced into a situation against their will by their parents. The child is forced, by their parents’ choices, not their own choices, to be trapped within another person’s body with no other means of survival for 6 to 9 months. That is also a situation in which we don’t have a very good comparison within the human experience. It is utterly unique to the experience of being an unborn child. Can you think of another situation in which we allow someone to force another human being to be trapped inside of their body or connected to their body without the other person’s consent besides pregnancy? I can’t. I’m fairly certain it would be a crime to do so.
So, that is why I have empathy not only for the mother, but also the child who are both in an extremely unique position. I feel the modern pro-choice position only takes into consideration what the woman is facing and ignores, almost completely, what it would be like to be the child in that situation.
I suppose I would like to ask you; if someone gambled with your life, without your consent, and made a decision in which they knew there was a very real chance you could become trapped inside of their body or connected to their body for months without any other means of survival, would only their rights and desires matter if that ended up happening? Would you have no rights or claim to be connected to their body when they are the person who forced you to be connected to their body in the first place? Would the government have an ethical duty to protect you as well?
I think that ^ is actually a much more accurate way of looking at pregnancy as opposed to the government forcing someone to give an organ to someone who isn’t already connected to the person and who didn’t force the person to be inside or connected to them in the first place. Does that make sense? I know it’s hard to think about these hypotheticals because pregnancy really is such a singular experience.
Thanks for your time if you read my entire response and for your question!
Hello. Thank you for your response. You asked me this: "I would like to ask you; if someone gambled with your life, without your consent, and made a decision in which they knew there was a very real chance you could become trapped inside of their body or connected to their body for months without any other means of survival, would only their rights and desires matter if that ended up happening?"
I do think that stage of development matters. I understand that only about one-third of all conceptions typically result in a live births. A significant majority are lost at various stages (most before the hosting woman is even aware of pregnancy). Estimates are that as many as half or more of fertilized eggs do not even implant. A process where nature itself is taking away so many fertilized ova from the possibility of life . . . and that, along with the relatively undeveloped form of an embryo at the early stages, I do not find the early forms of fertilized ova analogous to a living person. As to abortions later in the pregnancy, yes, I can agree with laws that limit abortion at that time.
A mother brings a life into the world. People on the anti-abortion side say that there is always adoption for women in difficult situations who wish to not raise the child. But often, giving up the child is not chosen, and there are situations of abuse and neglect with unwanted children. Adoption itself has many attendant problems, and is a source of trauma to the child, even in the best of situations.
These are difficult questions. I can appreciate the sincere arguments of people on both sides.
Thank you for your thoughtful response as well. A few thoughts have come up I’d like to share in response to your points. I believe you touch on a core disagreement between people who are pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-choice individuals do not think of the life in-utero as a human with moral worth and pro-life people do. I think the questions you raise are very good questions and cut to why abortion is such an emotional and debated topic.
To your point about many blastocysts not implanting and nature killing many of them, I think what I would ask in response is, does this mean it’s okay for us to intentionally kill even if nature kills many? One could argue that not too long ago in human history as many as 30% of all born infants would die before their 1st birthday. Does that mean it would have been okay if parents intentionally killed an infant before their 1st birthday? I certainly do not think so.
I also think many pro-life people find the “cut off” lines of many pro-choice people draw to be arbitrary and problematic due to their hypocritical nature that would exclude born humans if we used a similar criteria. Many people talk about consciousness being a standard for personhood and how unborn children don’t have consciousness until later in pregnancy, so it’s justified to commit elective abortions. However, there are born people who also lack temporary consciousness due to an injury or medical condition where they may be in a prolonged coma of some sort. Just because a human is temporarily unconscious doesn’t mean they can be harmed for any reason. And especially if we knew a person, with almost certainty, was going to gain their consciousness in a few weeks or months, wouldn’t that make it even more wrong to harm them?
This is a personal story, but I think it’s relevant nonetheless. For me, what really solidified my own beliefs is when I was pregnant with my own child. It also made me more sympathetic to women experiencing unplanned pregnancies at the very same time, but it also deeply confirmed the humanity of children in the womb. I remember going into my first appointment with my OB at about 7 or 8 weeks pregnant, so it was very early on. And my OB showed me the image of my son on the screen along with listening to his heartbeat. Albeit, he was very small and had a lot more developing to do, but it was absolutely the start of his existence and life. How could we say it was not? And if I went and had an abortion, I would have been ending HIS life, taking away HIS future. I had a front row seat to his development at every single stage, and it was a continuum from the moment I found out I was pregnant until the moment he was born. It was his life the entire time. That clarified for me that we are always human, just at different stages of development and dependence.
Regarding adoption, I agree with you that our adoption system is flawed and has many issues. I would like to see the issues of abuse and harm to children and or/birth parents addressed, but can we solve these issues with violence, just earlier on in the human’s life? I just don’t think it’s an actual just solution. So while I agree with your diagnosis of the problem, I can’t support the means used to try to address it.
I’ll end with somewhere we may have some common ground: (I think this might be controversial as a pro-life person to say, but I’m just thinking out loud here.) Even though I do think the baby in the womb is a human being, I do think we should center the women who are pregnant. But what does that mean to center them and to what extent is fair? As a pro-life person, it means centering the woman if her life is directly threatened or a doctor believes in good faith her life or physical health could be seriously threatened by being pregnant. And although that is a tragedy, I do support abortion then. However, what I cannot support is that for ANY reason, whatsoever, with no restriction, we allow for women to choose to end the lives of their children in-utero. To me, that is not a fair balance that tries to deeply care about women’s health and wellbeing along with their children. It is domination over children where they deserve some consideration as well.
Thank you for your time and for considering what I wrote if you read it. It’s really such a hard issue with well-meaning people on both sides of it.
Great debate! Louise, I have always felt the same as you - walking the personal v. practical line for the argument against abortion. In the last few years though, I’ve become fully pro life. I do not, however, shame or blame women who have had an abortion or will end up having an abortion. As a Christian, embracing suffering is an important part of a faithful life and so is the idea of caring for the elderly and vulnerable in our society. This includes embracing the suffering of women who struggle with the pain of having had an abortion and carry the weight that comes with having made that decision.
This was the most calm, thoughtful, respectful debate on abortion I’ve ever heard. Really well done.
I also cannot imagine denying an abortion to someone who knows her baby won’t survive birth (or will live a few hours in agony and then die). When I was pregnant, I knew I could handle non-fatal disability, but I could not have handled that. I would have aborted for such a diagnosis. To this day, I feel the loss of my child is the one thing I could not survive.
I am generally not in favor of saying “but if we don’t do x she might kill herself” about anything (see “trans”)…. But I do think when we’re talking about a severe mental health crisis and self-harm, we have to consider it a genuine threat to the mother’s life.
Strange to hear Ann Furedi saying that abortion is a matter of privacy and should be left to the person most affected by abortion but meaning the mother when clearly the foetus is the person most affected!
I appreciate this. Louise’s point that this is essentially a referendum on Christianity is clearer and clearer to me. Everything hinges on that worldview being there or not. It’s a horrific thought, but there is something to be said for having no medical abortion option and instead requiring women (or the women or men in their lives) to murder the baby after s/he’s born (as with SIDS). We are forced to understand what we’re really doing and taking that sin upon us. The parallels with assisted suicide and medical abortion become clearer when I look at it that way. Birthing an unwanted baby is the recreation of the Christian arc of redemption, trusting in God enough to make good from terrible circumstances. It’s as close to Mary as we will get.
Ferudi's argument here, that abortion should be entirely a matter for the pregnant woman and her doctors, didn't directly address the idea that the state has a legitimate role in defending the rights of the foetus/unborn child. Obviously there's an element of Spiked libertarianism here, but it would have been good to hear her challenged on this point. I can only assume she doesn't believe a foetus has any right to life at any point in the pregnancy, and so it is therefore acceptable for the pregnant woman to end it in any circumstances.
It's hard to square this against the viability of most premature babies born in the third trimester, and the fact that ex utero a termination would be treated as murder, while in utero it's fine. Then again there is a law moving through Parliament that is broadly in line with Furedi's thinking, so clearly the view is common enough, at least among parliamentarians.
I am giving this a second listen this evening - I like listening to a podcast twice for all the information to sink in. Here are a few of my thoughts.
Around 49:00, Furedi argues for the right to abortion by saying that "part of our dignity as humans is drawn from our capacity to make decisions about ourselves and knowing we are responsible; to take that away from a woman, to say: you do not know what is the best thing, we are not going to allow you to do that - that, to me, is taking away part of her humanity".
This argument is fuzzy, shallow, and emotional (use of the woman/victim card). Just because a woman thinks aborting is "the best thing" for her, for her, still doesn't make it ethical. Many people every day make wrong decisions in full conscience and responsibility. It is not taking away part of their humanity to prevent them from doing so.
Around 1:01:15 she says, "We can have a debate, but I prefer the idea of privately allowing people to do what they think is in alignment with their conscience". But where do individuals draw their "conscience" from, especially in our culture (that JPII aptly called a "culture of death") where abortion has been pushed left, right and center as peak feminist empowerment ? It seems that right and wrong do not exist to her.
I wish she had been pressed harder on those declarations.
It is disappointing but not surprising that the fathers of aborted babies were not discussed at all. On the one side, there are millions of men whose wanted babies were killed by a wife or girlfriend. On the other hand, many women are pressured into abortions by the father. Do these men deserve zero moral weight? As good as Leah was in this debate, she still seems to be operating within the feminist moral frame that men's points of view, morals, and human worth are negligible.
Abortion is one of the few really difficult moral decisions out there I think. I used to think nothing of it but, hopefully older and wiser, know think it should not, in a perfect world, be allowed.
However we don't live in a perfect world and there are, I think, 3 particular issues which make it tricky: underage pregnancy, non-consensual pregnancy and disabled foetuses/babies. Sometimes it is of course a mix of all of those.
Even without these special cases some women (and sometimes their partners) would be determined to get an abortion and so compliance with those special criteria would often be faked and insistence on those criteria could result in many false claims of rape etc.
So my feelings now are that it must be allowed to a degree but only in the following circumstances:
Underage - within a reasonable time (?20 weeks) of conception to allow for the underage (and therefore immature and noncompetent) girl to think things through.
Adult woman - within ?6 weeks of conception (unless women was held captive in which case extended)
Disabled babies - this is more tricky as logically if disabled foetuses could be aborted for that reason then why could disabled babies not be?
However we must get back to a society that tells males and females that pregnancy is a likely result of sex and that they are accepting that risk by engaging in sex and that abortion is NOT a way to deal with pregnancy. Both men and women should wait, as they were encouraged to decades ago, for marriage or at least real commitment from their partner.
Not directly connected to abortion but we also need to advise young women against contraception as it both gives a false sense of 'invulnerability' to pregnancy, damages their health (particularly the Pill) and devalues the whole act of sex (or at least until they are married etc; should go back to the situation where only married women with 1 child are considered suitable for contraception.
Finally we also need to get rid of Gillick competence in all area. It is not only an assault on parental rights but also the logic of child protection (children are by definition not competent) and who the hell is a doctor to decide they can/should take the Pill,
I think we're not that far apart on the facts - which isn't suprising. If you read what I have written in the longer form essays, you will see a longer story about the feelings Ive had toward my own fetuses over the years - out of the 9 I've made, 2 are grown children. [I’VE DELETED A LOT OF PERSONAL INFORMATION I WROTE WHILE TIRED AND EMOTIONAL - APOLOGIES TO THE ORIGINAL READERS OF THIS POST]
My point is that feelings on this, and the practicalities are complex. It is possible to think that something (like abortion) is a sin but still the better of two evils. And not all sins, thank goodness, are illegal for exactly that reason. I do think the matter of abortion is best left to the conscience of the woman and her doctor, at least in the early days. It turns out that about 75% of Americans feel that way too, including religious Americans.
I’m sorry to hear about all of the losses you’ve experienced, no matter how you experienced them. It sounds like those lives do weigh on your heart, at least to some degree. It also sounds like you’re a woman of faith, and I sincerely hope you have found some support and solace there. All of us sinners (myself obviously included) are fortunate to be loved by such a forgiving God. Even as someone who is deeply pro-life, I do not wish anyone to live in the shadow of their shame from abortion. For anyone who is truly repentant, I wish for them healing, love, and God’s comfort in suffering. Even if someone isn’t repentant, I don’t wish them further suffering and/or shame. I hope they can come to know love and peace too. I think that love and peace comes from God, but that is an area where we probably agree that should be left up to one’s conscience to decide ;)
Again, I understand you think abortion can still be a “sin” but it should be a legal one. I understand you think it is a matter of conscience for the woman. I just can’t get to a point of agreeing that something which irreversibly and electively takes the life of another human being is up to the conscience of a person who is not the one losing their life.
I understand that to be pregnant when unplanned, have a child after bonding with them for the 9 months of pregnancy and then to place them for adoption is a very serious interruption both physically and emotionally for the mother. I also just can’t get to the place where I think that interruption comes remotely close to having your entire life and future permanently taken away from you. Many people primarily focus on what would be taken away from the woman if abortion is restricted, but what about what is taken away from the child forever? Women can heal from pregnancy and even grief or loss. It is not easy, but it is at least possible. There is no healing from death. It seems the lack of consideration for the child and what they are forced to sacrifice is the disconnect between our positions.
I also agree that the majority of people probably do agree with your position. However, that also does not impact my moral and legal stance (which I feel are somewhat connected). I don’t mean to sound redundant, but there have been countless moral issues in which the majority of a population or even the majority of the world have agreed upon or wanted to keep as the status quo. Yet, that is not where I determine what is or is not morally just. I think many people do not want to disrupt the current norms of abortion because they are worried about some of the potential negative consequences of restricting elective abortions. I worry about those potential negative consequences as well, but we cannot allow something wrong to continue because it is easier. We must do everything in our power to fight for solutions that do not include using violence. Using violence as a “solution”, even if it brought about some good side-effects is not real goodness or justice.
Continuing on with the status quo we have right now may seem like the path of least resistance, but it does not come without a price. The current price is approximately 1 million lives of unborn children every year in the US alone. Our fallen culture currently rests “women’s empowerment” and “liberation” on the stolen lives of approximately 65 million unborn children. That is a massive, massive price. I understand this is a very easy group to ignore. Unborn children cannot speak. They cannnot hold protests. They are very small. They can be discreetly disposed of. They cannot defend themselves or speak up for their own interests in the way women or other marginalized groups can. On the surface it can appear that widespread elective abortion lead us to more “peace” and a “better world”. However, as many people have said before me, true peace must be rooted in justice. Otherwise, we have not actually created more “peace”. We have merely used the sacrifice of the most vulnerable group of human beings as a facade to create a sense of order, but it is not true peace.
Thank you if you read my entire response. I read the essay you wrote which you shared the link to. Thank you for your honesty and bravery in sharing your story. I’m sure many women felt seen and could relate to your complex feelings on this topic. I think I’ve said all I can say (I’m a bit verbose haha). Take care.
Me too. I’m sorry I wrote so much guff but it’s nice to talk. And yes I’m Eastern Orthodox by birth and have recently returned to church. I’m struggling with these questions and have complex and ambivalent feelings. I’m grateful that we connected. Thank you.
I think Seargeant’s argument fails because essentially no one now, and indeed rarely in history, has ever considered a very early fetus to be a fully human person capable of attracting anything like human rights. IVF and embryo-based research allows for the mass creation and disposal of human embryos up to two weeks GA (four weeks pregnant) with barely a comment from the public or pro-lifers. People seem much more concerned with embryos in utero.
Second, the idea that some abortions are more justified than others, objectively speaking, rings hollow. While pregnancy after rape or pregnancy involving children with disabilities are the paradigmatic examples of “fair” reasons for abortion, there are many women in exactly these situations who have gone on to have those babies willingly, and have considered them a source of joy. The morally salient question is whether or not the pregnancy is wanted.
Louise’s observations about the profound impact of the sexual revolution on all aspects of life are crucial to the question of access to abortion. Dialling back that one right (particularly in the very early stages of pregnancy) in a society so transformed by the sexual revolution is arbitrary and deeply unfair to women qua women. There are good reasons why a 20-year-old woman in the middle of a degree she has worked hard for, accidentally pregnant to a brief boyfriend, may not want to have that baby when she discovers she is pregnant, diligently, at 4W3D. It is not a solution to say she can have the baby and give it up for adoption, because of the trauma for all parties that invariably entails, nor to derail her entire life. Young women in that situation have risked their lives for an abortion since the beginning of time. That seems at least as compelling a case for abortion as any other.
Abortion may be taken to be morally wrong on the basis of philosophical or religious beliefs about the moral status of a human embryo or fetus. It is the rare woman who has an abortion who does not feel that, on some level, it is a wrong. But thankfully not all wrongs are against the law, and some, like abortion or being mean to your mother or what have you, are best left to conscience. On this basis I think Furedi clearly won the day.
Respectfully, I have to disagree that “no one now and rarely in history has ever considered a very early fetus to be a fully human person capable of attracting anything life human rights.” First, before the sexual revolution many counties and states within the US had elective abortion bans. Many states within the US do currently, even for very early fetuses. Poland, an entire country, has bans on elective abortions. These amount to millions of people who view the fetus as a human being with rights. Also, I believe roughly half of women identify as pro-life in the US (maybe a little less??). So even in places where abortions are legal, you have a significant portions of the population that view the fetus as a person. Many Catholics are vocal about IVF and there being a need for this to be practiced more ethically, but I can agree most people are less vocal about this issue. Maybe because most people aren’t aware of the process of IVF, fully? Finally, I think the argument that has been most compelling about ethics on this topic is this; there are countless examples throughout human history, in very recent human history and currently where some groups of people have tried to determine that other human beings are “less human” or “less valuable” than others. This is not new. Arguably, excluding fetuses is just another iteration of this phenomena. I don’t believe it is unique, sadly. I think many western countries and people don’t want to face their version of this exclusion and dehumanization because it would require us to face our own flaws and shortcomings as a society. No society or person really likes to admit that. It is hard to grapple with. Lastly, even if every single society allowed for the dehumanization of unborn children, that also wouldn’t make it inherently moral. Again, there have been so many practices and beliefs that many societies have endorsed, and that does not automatically make something a just behavior. I do agree with you that I’m glad being mean to your mother is not regulated by law, but I think taking the life of another human being is objectively a much more serious consideration. I think we can acknowledge, like we do with other issues, that there actually can be exceptions and hard cases where we may legally permit something, but broadly and for any reason whatsoever, we do not allow certain things. Again, I don’t understand why some people see this so easily with other issues, but think for abortion it is “impossible”. Of course it won’t be a perfect system, but no system is. Thank you for your consideration and for sharing your viewpoint.
I really think that are many quite intuitively obvious reasons why a very early fetus is clearly less valuable than its mother and is not a fully human person. The vast majority of ordinary people share this view. In fact it’s such a huge leap to think otherwise it’s as difficult as convincing yourself about faith in the resurrection of Christ (which I had done but I am a tiny minority of moderns and don’t have a single friend of acquaintance who doesn’t find that odd). It’s entirely beyond the ken of most secular moderns who can’t imagine belief in God that a fetus ought to be regarded as a full person.
I’m not saying these issues aren’t sad and difficult or even sinful in my own reckoning, but that I just can’t see intuitions about the status of the fetus changing any time soon and I think making abortion illegal would be a grave injustice and would threaten families and women everywhere for insufficient reason. I think that as an Orthodox Christian.
I have written about it more extensively on my Substack.
I understand what you’re saying, but I also think it’s intuitive to consider the life inside of the womb to be a human child as well. When I saw my child’s first ultrasound at just 7 or 8 weeks, I knew that was my child. Albeit they were at a very early stage in development, but that was my growing child nonetheless. I don’t understand how that is not also intuitive?? Wouldn’t it make sense for women to see their offspring this way? I don’t think it is that big of a leap of faith to see the fetus that way…I suppose that is why these “intuitive” claims can be tricky.
Lastly, I think I could find common ground with you on the notion that if a mother’s life is at risk from carrying the child, I do support abortion in those tragic circumstances. I don’t think a woman should be forced to sacrifice her life for her child, even if I would consider making that sacrifice. However, the issue I have is that the overwhelming abortions are not happening under those conditions. They are elective. I’m not saying the circumstances aren’t still difficult for the women, but it is still elective. So, it’s not that I think the fetus’ life should be more protected or is more important than the mother’s life. I do, however, think the fetus’ life should be protected over someone’s desires or preferences. Hopefully that clarifies my position. Thanks again for the civil discourse.
I appreciate hearing your perspective, even if I disagree.
The idea of freedom is an interesting one, because it is never the case that all paths are available because how freedom works is contextual, what game you play dictates how you will play it.
To take a less controversial parallel, societies in which there are more formal manners may seem restrictive because much of behavior is considered taboo. But navigating it also opens a myriad of ways to show love (or indeed spite) that a society with absolutely no manners just doesn’t have access to.
Given someone choice does not necessarily only increase their options, it changes what the options are. So in this conversation a woman is not now free to bear gracefully something she didn’t choose. Is it weird that I see a freedom in realising I have to play the hand I am dealt and so now I can focus on how to play it well?
I mean (to take a much more hot button issue) I am glad my only choice was how to be a man (hard enough) rather than Am I a man?
I am a hospice chaplain and I think about this in terms of grieving a lot. Everyone says “there is no right way to grieve” and it seems nice, but what it really means often is “it’s up to everyone to figure out how” where as if we had a culture of holding vigils and periods of mourning or the like, it would free folks up from figuring out what to do, and to focus on doing it well.
I feel like the only thing missing from this was Louise’s ‘myth of female agency’ argument that she has applied to other issues. How would Ann respond to the huge amount of abortion regret that exists because we view pregnancy as a choice, and so often women will make that choice when they don’t have support to make the seemingly much more difficult one to continue with a pregnancy? I grew up in Ireland where abortion was not available and I know so many women who were not able to choose it in circumstances where they may have in England or elsewhere (teenage pregnancy, Down syndrome diagnosis, abandonment by father, poverty) and none of them regret their children, rather in most instances the new life brought joy and healing and healthy responsibility and immense love that offered meaning to their lives. It seems to me that Ann has the agentic personality type and is assuming all other women do too but it’s the mimetic women who ultimately suffer most from the choice approach.
Thank you for pointing this out. I kept questioning Ann in my thoughts, "Is it fair to put the whole burden of deciding whether to birth her baby on the mother?" Especially with young women, some who aren't even legal adults, they are facing a choice that they may not be prepared to make on their own.
True, she may be suffering from inconscious agentic personality bias.
On your point about the women not regretting their children, I know several women who greatly regret their abortions. They were told they were "empowered", "choosing", undergoing a mere "healthcare" procedure and not the termination of a life... and then there were no words available in the feminist lexicon to describe the cell-deep grief they felt, the trauma and moral ambivalence. What enrages me about the normalization of abortion is that it incentivizes more women to have abortions, which then generates incredible amounts of pain and grief that just hang in the ether unacknowledged, like an invisible poison.
Louise, a big reason abortion wasn’t a hot button issue in the UK is because the Christian sects most opposing it, Catholics and Evangelicals, were pretty marginal in the UK with no clout. Mainline Protestants were neutral or supportive, and Anglicans were liberal on social issues. Also, in the U.S., at the time Roe was decided in 1973, Evangelicals were not a major political force yet. Mainline Protestants were neutral or supportive of it. The only religious group really opposing it were Catholics. Actually, even Evangelicals generally supported abortion originally, then they did a moral pivot on it during the later 70s. Republicans used abortion as an issue to steal Catholics and white southern voters away from Democrats after the Civil Rights era. But you’re kind of correct that Christianity was losing its grip beginning in the early 60s (banning prayer in schools, no-fault divorce)
Catholics fighting against a culture of death are essential in this civilizational battle. May all Christians and other allies join the fight against all the invented freedoms that are actually tools to kill as many people as possible.
Is it unthinkable for people to draw attention to the sexual revolution as a precipitant to the abortion movement, in order to free men to demand sexual access without responsibility or consequences? Abortion is fundamentally a men’s rights issue.
Ok, at 25 minutes, finally.
Men have always had access to sex without consequences, though, except in the past it was with women from the lower classes, prostitutes, and slaves. And those women were left to deal with the consequences. Now, since the sexual revolution, men have access to sex with women of their own class who are doing it with them willingly. The sexual purity of genteel middle- and upper-class women has always existed in tension with the sexual disposability of lower status women, whether some impoverished girl in a brothel or an enslaved woman in your household or the family’s maid, depending on time and place.
Good point. The SR allowed men to exploit women of their own class(by removing social stigma), with the aid of abortion. Hooray.
A corollary though is that it made "consequence-free" sex available to many more low status men, who previously had a much smaller pool of lower status women to use. Since that's such a large part of the population it is a sea change.
I’m not sure if that’s really true. At least among the Victorian working classes, for example, it seems people drifted into and out of unmarried relationships all the time — Hallie Rubenhold’s book on Jack the Ripper’s victims covers this well. It’s been years since I read it but Victorian sexual morality really didn’t apply very much to the urban working poor. Like if a woman were widowed, she would likely shack up with what was essentially a boyfriend because maybe he had some money or a job. Also, there was always a rung of prostitute available even for very low class men, like for example Victorian street walking prostitutes or, if we want to venture way further back, it’s speculated that many of the clients at the famous brothel in Pompeii were male slaves spending their pocket money. There are probably other examples I can think of but I’m tired and these are what’s coming to mind. Consequence-free sex was more or less always out there for men of every social strata, but it came at the expense of women usually in more dire straights than themselves in one way or another.
I don’t agree here that men are the main beneficiaries of abortion because they did not campaign for it and push it through.
Abortion is an issue that many women have campaigned for decades. Kate Millet, Gloria Steinem, Helen Gurley Brown and the rest of the feminist gang are the ones who pushed hard to convince women to abort their children. Changing women’s approach to fornication, contraception, abortion, and unplanned pregnancies added fuel to the sexual revolution we are living through.
The ongoing debate between sameness feminism (women are and must be like men and have sex with no consequences) and difference feminism.
I think the fundamental question I took away from this debate was; is the humanity of the life within the womb “up for personal discernment” of the pregnant women who is the only one that can care for the baby while pregnant or is it a fundamental truth that the life in the womb is a human being with moral worth. It is a very slippery slope to say that some human lives are fundamentally protected and others are not depending on “context” and “personal circumstance”. We need not look very far in human history to see how that has lead to massive injustice. Of course there will be some very hard or extreme cases where abortion could be understandable. However, that is not unique to abortion, and I’m not sure as to why people fail to see how there are many things in life we do not allow broadly or electively but we understand there may be some hard cases in which we do. It was a very interesting conversation, but I think Anne failed to convince me that “context” can override something so fundamental like a human’s right to life, especially when we’re talking about elective abortions (which are the vast majority of abortions).
I am not sure you will see this question. But it's one I have always wanted to ask a person who is opposed to legal abortion:
Let's say that person X can only survive if person Y donates an organ to person X. And let's say that person Y is the ONLY possible donor. Would you think it is ethical to compel person Y to make the donation?
Hello, that is a very good question, and what you’re getting at is honestly the best argument, I think, for legalized elective abortion. I would like to first specify, I do support abortion if a doctor believes, in good faith, it is immediately necessary or even down the line could be necessary to prevent death or serious physical harm to the mother. I am more opposed to elective abortions, which make up the vast majority of abortions.
Broadly speaking, I do not support the government being able to force another person to give their organ to someone else, even if they are the only person who can give that specific organ. However, I don’t feel that comparison fully encapsulates pregnancy for the mother or for the child. Many people talk about how there is no other situation in which we allow someone to use or take someone else’s organ without their ongoing permission as a way to justify all abortion. While this is true, I think that argument fails to include relevant aspects and the full context of most pregnancies. It also doesn’t speak to the unique circumstance the child is placed in during pregnancy.
The child is also being forced into a situation against their will by their parents. The child is forced, by their parents’ choices, not their own choices, to be trapped within another person’s body with no other means of survival for 6 to 9 months. That is also a situation in which we don’t have a very good comparison within the human experience. It is utterly unique to the experience of being an unborn child. Can you think of another situation in which we allow someone to force another human being to be trapped inside of their body or connected to their body without the other person’s consent besides pregnancy? I can’t. I’m fairly certain it would be a crime to do so.
So, that is why I have empathy not only for the mother, but also the child who are both in an extremely unique position. I feel the modern pro-choice position only takes into consideration what the woman is facing and ignores, almost completely, what it would be like to be the child in that situation.
I suppose I would like to ask you; if someone gambled with your life, without your consent, and made a decision in which they knew there was a very real chance you could become trapped inside of their body or connected to their body for months without any other means of survival, would only their rights and desires matter if that ended up happening? Would you have no rights or claim to be connected to their body when they are the person who forced you to be connected to their body in the first place? Would the government have an ethical duty to protect you as well?
I think that ^ is actually a much more accurate way of looking at pregnancy as opposed to the government forcing someone to give an organ to someone who isn’t already connected to the person and who didn’t force the person to be inside or connected to them in the first place. Does that make sense? I know it’s hard to think about these hypotheticals because pregnancy really is such a singular experience.
Thanks for your time if you read my entire response and for your question!
Hello. Thank you for your response. You asked me this: "I would like to ask you; if someone gambled with your life, without your consent, and made a decision in which they knew there was a very real chance you could become trapped inside of their body or connected to their body for months without any other means of survival, would only their rights and desires matter if that ended up happening?"
I do think that stage of development matters. I understand that only about one-third of all conceptions typically result in a live births. A significant majority are lost at various stages (most before the hosting woman is even aware of pregnancy). Estimates are that as many as half or more of fertilized eggs do not even implant. A process where nature itself is taking away so many fertilized ova from the possibility of life . . . and that, along with the relatively undeveloped form of an embryo at the early stages, I do not find the early forms of fertilized ova analogous to a living person. As to abortions later in the pregnancy, yes, I can agree with laws that limit abortion at that time.
A mother brings a life into the world. People on the anti-abortion side say that there is always adoption for women in difficult situations who wish to not raise the child. But often, giving up the child is not chosen, and there are situations of abuse and neglect with unwanted children. Adoption itself has many attendant problems, and is a source of trauma to the child, even in the best of situations.
These are difficult questions. I can appreciate the sincere arguments of people on both sides.
Thank you for your thoughtful response as well. A few thoughts have come up I’d like to share in response to your points. I believe you touch on a core disagreement between people who are pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-choice individuals do not think of the life in-utero as a human with moral worth and pro-life people do. I think the questions you raise are very good questions and cut to why abortion is such an emotional and debated topic.
To your point about many blastocysts not implanting and nature killing many of them, I think what I would ask in response is, does this mean it’s okay for us to intentionally kill even if nature kills many? One could argue that not too long ago in human history as many as 30% of all born infants would die before their 1st birthday. Does that mean it would have been okay if parents intentionally killed an infant before their 1st birthday? I certainly do not think so.
I also think many pro-life people find the “cut off” lines of many pro-choice people draw to be arbitrary and problematic due to their hypocritical nature that would exclude born humans if we used a similar criteria. Many people talk about consciousness being a standard for personhood and how unborn children don’t have consciousness until later in pregnancy, so it’s justified to commit elective abortions. However, there are born people who also lack temporary consciousness due to an injury or medical condition where they may be in a prolonged coma of some sort. Just because a human is temporarily unconscious doesn’t mean they can be harmed for any reason. And especially if we knew a person, with almost certainty, was going to gain their consciousness in a few weeks or months, wouldn’t that make it even more wrong to harm them?
This is a personal story, but I think it’s relevant nonetheless. For me, what really solidified my own beliefs is when I was pregnant with my own child. It also made me more sympathetic to women experiencing unplanned pregnancies at the very same time, but it also deeply confirmed the humanity of children in the womb. I remember going into my first appointment with my OB at about 7 or 8 weeks pregnant, so it was very early on. And my OB showed me the image of my son on the screen along with listening to his heartbeat. Albeit, he was very small and had a lot more developing to do, but it was absolutely the start of his existence and life. How could we say it was not? And if I went and had an abortion, I would have been ending HIS life, taking away HIS future. I had a front row seat to his development at every single stage, and it was a continuum from the moment I found out I was pregnant until the moment he was born. It was his life the entire time. That clarified for me that we are always human, just at different stages of development and dependence.
Regarding adoption, I agree with you that our adoption system is flawed and has many issues. I would like to see the issues of abuse and harm to children and or/birth parents addressed, but can we solve these issues with violence, just earlier on in the human’s life? I just don’t think it’s an actual just solution. So while I agree with your diagnosis of the problem, I can’t support the means used to try to address it.
I’ll end with somewhere we may have some common ground: (I think this might be controversial as a pro-life person to say, but I’m just thinking out loud here.) Even though I do think the baby in the womb is a human being, I do think we should center the women who are pregnant. But what does that mean to center them and to what extent is fair? As a pro-life person, it means centering the woman if her life is directly threatened or a doctor believes in good faith her life or physical health could be seriously threatened by being pregnant. And although that is a tragedy, I do support abortion then. However, what I cannot support is that for ANY reason, whatsoever, with no restriction, we allow for women to choose to end the lives of their children in-utero. To me, that is not a fair balance that tries to deeply care about women’s health and wellbeing along with their children. It is domination over children where they deserve some consideration as well.
Thank you for your time and for considering what I wrote if you read it. It’s really such a hard issue with well-meaning people on both sides of it.
No matter, a baby at all stages is a person at a different developmental stage than me so who am I to kill. Sorry I can't get away from that.......
Great debate! Louise, I have always felt the same as you - walking the personal v. practical line for the argument against abortion. In the last few years though, I’ve become fully pro life. I do not, however, shame or blame women who have had an abortion or will end up having an abortion. As a Christian, embracing suffering is an important part of a faithful life and so is the idea of caring for the elderly and vulnerable in our society. This includes embracing the suffering of women who struggle with the pain of having had an abortion and carry the weight that comes with having made that decision.
This was the most calm, thoughtful, respectful debate on abortion I’ve ever heard. Really well done.
I also cannot imagine denying an abortion to someone who knows her baby won’t survive birth (or will live a few hours in agony and then die). When I was pregnant, I knew I could handle non-fatal disability, but I could not have handled that. I would have aborted for such a diagnosis. To this day, I feel the loss of my child is the one thing I could not survive.
I am generally not in favor of saying “but if we don’t do x she might kill herself” about anything (see “trans”)…. But I do think when we’re talking about a severe mental health crisis and self-harm, we have to consider it a genuine threat to the mother’s life.
Strange to hear Ann Furedi saying that abortion is a matter of privacy and should be left to the person most affected by abortion but meaning the mother when clearly the foetus is the person most affected!
I appreciate this. Louise’s point that this is essentially a referendum on Christianity is clearer and clearer to me. Everything hinges on that worldview being there or not. It’s a horrific thought, but there is something to be said for having no medical abortion option and instead requiring women (or the women or men in their lives) to murder the baby after s/he’s born (as with SIDS). We are forced to understand what we’re really doing and taking that sin upon us. The parallels with assisted suicide and medical abortion become clearer when I look at it that way. Birthing an unwanted baby is the recreation of the Christian arc of redemption, trusting in God enough to make good from terrible circumstances. It’s as close to Mary as we will get.
Ferudi's argument here, that abortion should be entirely a matter for the pregnant woman and her doctors, didn't directly address the idea that the state has a legitimate role in defending the rights of the foetus/unborn child. Obviously there's an element of Spiked libertarianism here, but it would have been good to hear her challenged on this point. I can only assume she doesn't believe a foetus has any right to life at any point in the pregnancy, and so it is therefore acceptable for the pregnant woman to end it in any circumstances.
It's hard to square this against the viability of most premature babies born in the third trimester, and the fact that ex utero a termination would be treated as murder, while in utero it's fine. Then again there is a law moving through Parliament that is broadly in line with Furedi's thinking, so clearly the view is common enough, at least among parliamentarians.
I am giving this a second listen this evening - I like listening to a podcast twice for all the information to sink in. Here are a few of my thoughts.
Around 49:00, Furedi argues for the right to abortion by saying that "part of our dignity as humans is drawn from our capacity to make decisions about ourselves and knowing we are responsible; to take that away from a woman, to say: you do not know what is the best thing, we are not going to allow you to do that - that, to me, is taking away part of her humanity".
This argument is fuzzy, shallow, and emotional (use of the woman/victim card). Just because a woman thinks aborting is "the best thing" for her, for her, still doesn't make it ethical. Many people every day make wrong decisions in full conscience and responsibility. It is not taking away part of their humanity to prevent them from doing so.
Around 1:01:15 she says, "We can have a debate, but I prefer the idea of privately allowing people to do what they think is in alignment with their conscience". But where do individuals draw their "conscience" from, especially in our culture (that JPII aptly called a "culture of death") where abortion has been pushed left, right and center as peak feminist empowerment ? It seems that right and wrong do not exist to her.
I wish she had been pressed harder on those declarations.
It is disappointing but not surprising that the fathers of aborted babies were not discussed at all. On the one side, there are millions of men whose wanted babies were killed by a wife or girlfriend. On the other hand, many women are pressured into abortions by the father. Do these men deserve zero moral weight? As good as Leah was in this debate, she still seems to be operating within the feminist moral frame that men's points of view, morals, and human worth are negligible.
Abortion is one of the few really difficult moral decisions out there I think. I used to think nothing of it but, hopefully older and wiser, know think it should not, in a perfect world, be allowed.
However we don't live in a perfect world and there are, I think, 3 particular issues which make it tricky: underage pregnancy, non-consensual pregnancy and disabled foetuses/babies. Sometimes it is of course a mix of all of those.
Even without these special cases some women (and sometimes their partners) would be determined to get an abortion and so compliance with those special criteria would often be faked and insistence on those criteria could result in many false claims of rape etc.
So my feelings now are that it must be allowed to a degree but only in the following circumstances:
Underage - within a reasonable time (?20 weeks) of conception to allow for the underage (and therefore immature and noncompetent) girl to think things through.
Adult woman - within ?6 weeks of conception (unless women was held captive in which case extended)
Disabled babies - this is more tricky as logically if disabled foetuses could be aborted for that reason then why could disabled babies not be?
However we must get back to a society that tells males and females that pregnancy is a likely result of sex and that they are accepting that risk by engaging in sex and that abortion is NOT a way to deal with pregnancy. Both men and women should wait, as they were encouraged to decades ago, for marriage or at least real commitment from their partner.
Not directly connected to abortion but we also need to advise young women against contraception as it both gives a false sense of 'invulnerability' to pregnancy, damages their health (particularly the Pill) and devalues the whole act of sex (or at least until they are married etc; should go back to the situation where only married women with 1 child are considered suitable for contraception.
Finally we also need to get rid of Gillick competence in all area. It is not only an assault on parental rights but also the logic of child protection (children are by definition not competent) and who the hell is a doctor to decide they can/should take the Pill,
I think we're not that far apart on the facts - which isn't suprising. If you read what I have written in the longer form essays, you will see a longer story about the feelings Ive had toward my own fetuses over the years - out of the 9 I've made, 2 are grown children. [I’VE DELETED A LOT OF PERSONAL INFORMATION I WROTE WHILE TIRED AND EMOTIONAL - APOLOGIES TO THE ORIGINAL READERS OF THIS POST]
My point is that feelings on this, and the practicalities are complex. It is possible to think that something (like abortion) is a sin but still the better of two evils. And not all sins, thank goodness, are illegal for exactly that reason. I do think the matter of abortion is best left to the conscience of the woman and her doctor, at least in the early days. It turns out that about 75% of Americans feel that way too, including religious Americans.
I’m sorry to hear about all of the losses you’ve experienced, no matter how you experienced them. It sounds like those lives do weigh on your heart, at least to some degree. It also sounds like you’re a woman of faith, and I sincerely hope you have found some support and solace there. All of us sinners (myself obviously included) are fortunate to be loved by such a forgiving God. Even as someone who is deeply pro-life, I do not wish anyone to live in the shadow of their shame from abortion. For anyone who is truly repentant, I wish for them healing, love, and God’s comfort in suffering. Even if someone isn’t repentant, I don’t wish them further suffering and/or shame. I hope they can come to know love and peace too. I think that love and peace comes from God, but that is an area where we probably agree that should be left up to one’s conscience to decide ;)
Again, I understand you think abortion can still be a “sin” but it should be a legal one. I understand you think it is a matter of conscience for the woman. I just can’t get to a point of agreeing that something which irreversibly and electively takes the life of another human being is up to the conscience of a person who is not the one losing their life.
I understand that to be pregnant when unplanned, have a child after bonding with them for the 9 months of pregnancy and then to place them for adoption is a very serious interruption both physically and emotionally for the mother. I also just can’t get to the place where I think that interruption comes remotely close to having your entire life and future permanently taken away from you. Many people primarily focus on what would be taken away from the woman if abortion is restricted, but what about what is taken away from the child forever? Women can heal from pregnancy and even grief or loss. It is not easy, but it is at least possible. There is no healing from death. It seems the lack of consideration for the child and what they are forced to sacrifice is the disconnect between our positions.
I also agree that the majority of people probably do agree with your position. However, that also does not impact my moral and legal stance (which I feel are somewhat connected). I don’t mean to sound redundant, but there have been countless moral issues in which the majority of a population or even the majority of the world have agreed upon or wanted to keep as the status quo. Yet, that is not where I determine what is or is not morally just. I think many people do not want to disrupt the current norms of abortion because they are worried about some of the potential negative consequences of restricting elective abortions. I worry about those potential negative consequences as well, but we cannot allow something wrong to continue because it is easier. We must do everything in our power to fight for solutions that do not include using violence. Using violence as a “solution”, even if it brought about some good side-effects is not real goodness or justice.
Continuing on with the status quo we have right now may seem like the path of least resistance, but it does not come without a price. The current price is approximately 1 million lives of unborn children every year in the US alone. Our fallen culture currently rests “women’s empowerment” and “liberation” on the stolen lives of approximately 65 million unborn children. That is a massive, massive price. I understand this is a very easy group to ignore. Unborn children cannot speak. They cannnot hold protests. They are very small. They can be discreetly disposed of. They cannot defend themselves or speak up for their own interests in the way women or other marginalized groups can. On the surface it can appear that widespread elective abortion lead us to more “peace” and a “better world”. However, as many people have said before me, true peace must be rooted in justice. Otherwise, we have not actually created more “peace”. We have merely used the sacrifice of the most vulnerable group of human beings as a facade to create a sense of order, but it is not true peace.
Thank you if you read my entire response. I read the essay you wrote which you shared the link to. Thank you for your honesty and bravery in sharing your story. I’m sure many women felt seen and could relate to your complex feelings on this topic. I think I’ve said all I can say (I’m a bit verbose haha). Take care.
Me too. I’m sorry I wrote so much guff but it’s nice to talk. And yes I’m Eastern Orthodox by birth and have recently returned to church. I’m struggling with these questions and have complex and ambivalent feelings. I’m grateful that we connected. Thank you.
I think Seargeant’s argument fails because essentially no one now, and indeed rarely in history, has ever considered a very early fetus to be a fully human person capable of attracting anything like human rights. IVF and embryo-based research allows for the mass creation and disposal of human embryos up to two weeks GA (four weeks pregnant) with barely a comment from the public or pro-lifers. People seem much more concerned with embryos in utero.
Second, the idea that some abortions are more justified than others, objectively speaking, rings hollow. While pregnancy after rape or pregnancy involving children with disabilities are the paradigmatic examples of “fair” reasons for abortion, there are many women in exactly these situations who have gone on to have those babies willingly, and have considered them a source of joy. The morally salient question is whether or not the pregnancy is wanted.
Louise’s observations about the profound impact of the sexual revolution on all aspects of life are crucial to the question of access to abortion. Dialling back that one right (particularly in the very early stages of pregnancy) in a society so transformed by the sexual revolution is arbitrary and deeply unfair to women qua women. There are good reasons why a 20-year-old woman in the middle of a degree she has worked hard for, accidentally pregnant to a brief boyfriend, may not want to have that baby when she discovers she is pregnant, diligently, at 4W3D. It is not a solution to say she can have the baby and give it up for adoption, because of the trauma for all parties that invariably entails, nor to derail her entire life. Young women in that situation have risked their lives for an abortion since the beginning of time. That seems at least as compelling a case for abortion as any other.
Abortion may be taken to be morally wrong on the basis of philosophical or religious beliefs about the moral status of a human embryo or fetus. It is the rare woman who has an abortion who does not feel that, on some level, it is a wrong. But thankfully not all wrongs are against the law, and some, like abortion or being mean to your mother or what have you, are best left to conscience. On this basis I think Furedi clearly won the day.
https://open.substack.com/pub/hestiassecondcoffee/p/essay-reflections-on-abortion-and?r=u77ui&utm_medium=ios
I’ll be sure to take a look. Thanks for sharing!
Respectfully, I have to disagree that “no one now and rarely in history has ever considered a very early fetus to be a fully human person capable of attracting anything life human rights.” First, before the sexual revolution many counties and states within the US had elective abortion bans. Many states within the US do currently, even for very early fetuses. Poland, an entire country, has bans on elective abortions. These amount to millions of people who view the fetus as a human being with rights. Also, I believe roughly half of women identify as pro-life in the US (maybe a little less??). So even in places where abortions are legal, you have a significant portions of the population that view the fetus as a person. Many Catholics are vocal about IVF and there being a need for this to be practiced more ethically, but I can agree most people are less vocal about this issue. Maybe because most people aren’t aware of the process of IVF, fully? Finally, I think the argument that has been most compelling about ethics on this topic is this; there are countless examples throughout human history, in very recent human history and currently where some groups of people have tried to determine that other human beings are “less human” or “less valuable” than others. This is not new. Arguably, excluding fetuses is just another iteration of this phenomena. I don’t believe it is unique, sadly. I think many western countries and people don’t want to face their version of this exclusion and dehumanization because it would require us to face our own flaws and shortcomings as a society. No society or person really likes to admit that. It is hard to grapple with. Lastly, even if every single society allowed for the dehumanization of unborn children, that also wouldn’t make it inherently moral. Again, there have been so many practices and beliefs that many societies have endorsed, and that does not automatically make something a just behavior. I do agree with you that I’m glad being mean to your mother is not regulated by law, but I think taking the life of another human being is objectively a much more serious consideration. I think we can acknowledge, like we do with other issues, that there actually can be exceptions and hard cases where we may legally permit something, but broadly and for any reason whatsoever, we do not allow certain things. Again, I don’t understand why some people see this so easily with other issues, but think for abortion it is “impossible”. Of course it won’t be a perfect system, but no system is. Thank you for your consideration and for sharing your viewpoint.
I really think that are many quite intuitively obvious reasons why a very early fetus is clearly less valuable than its mother and is not a fully human person. The vast majority of ordinary people share this view. In fact it’s such a huge leap to think otherwise it’s as difficult as convincing yourself about faith in the resurrection of Christ (which I had done but I am a tiny minority of moderns and don’t have a single friend of acquaintance who doesn’t find that odd). It’s entirely beyond the ken of most secular moderns who can’t imagine belief in God that a fetus ought to be regarded as a full person.
I’m not saying these issues aren’t sad and difficult or even sinful in my own reckoning, but that I just can’t see intuitions about the status of the fetus changing any time soon and I think making abortion illegal would be a grave injustice and would threaten families and women everywhere for insufficient reason. I think that as an Orthodox Christian.
I have written about it more extensively on my Substack.
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful response.
I understand what you’re saying, but I also think it’s intuitive to consider the life inside of the womb to be a human child as well. When I saw my child’s first ultrasound at just 7 or 8 weeks, I knew that was my child. Albeit they were at a very early stage in development, but that was my growing child nonetheless. I don’t understand how that is not also intuitive?? Wouldn’t it make sense for women to see their offspring this way? I don’t think it is that big of a leap of faith to see the fetus that way…I suppose that is why these “intuitive” claims can be tricky.
Lastly, I think I could find common ground with you on the notion that if a mother’s life is at risk from carrying the child, I do support abortion in those tragic circumstances. I don’t think a woman should be forced to sacrifice her life for her child, even if I would consider making that sacrifice. However, the issue I have is that the overwhelming abortions are not happening under those conditions. They are elective. I’m not saying the circumstances aren’t still difficult for the women, but it is still elective. So, it’s not that I think the fetus’ life should be more protected or is more important than the mother’s life. I do, however, think the fetus’ life should be protected over someone’s desires or preferences. Hopefully that clarifies my position. Thanks again for the civil discourse.
I appreciate hearing your perspective, even if I disagree.