In this MMM episode, I’m joined by Ann Furedi and Leah Libresco Sargeant to discuss the question “is access to legal abortion essential to women’s flourishing?”
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.......
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.
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.
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.