Musings on floods and reproductive rights

[neadods]

I saw a bit of footage about the tsunami today. Unlike the Hollywood images of a wall of water slamming into a town like Godzilla, this showed water just rising. No waves, no ripples at all, just rising - and rising and rising and rising, at the rate of about an inch per half-second. Slow, quiet, relentless.

I have a sudden understanding of the Genesis flood story. I know that Bob Ballard supposedly discovered "how the Biblical flood happened," but can't you also see this? Another earthquake. Another tsunami. The water washes all into the sea, and over time the story goes "the village was covered and almost all died," to "the island was covered and they all died" to "the world was covered," to "the world was covered and stayed covered for a week" "No a month!' "Forty days and forty nights..." And so on, whisper-down-the-alley style until legends are put into writing.

Closer to home, I'm ending up in a reproductive rights sidebar fight/discussion with someone in ginmar's comments. Basically, she asked for Gin's comments on her thoughts on abortion. (Boiled down: for the life of the mother/cases of rape=okay For contraceptive failure=not okay. In those cases, the mother should bear the child and put it up for adoption or otherwise face the consequences. She later pointed out that she meant "consequences" and not "punishment" because kids aren't really all that bad.)

She got my comments instead, and you can probably imagine them. (Kefir, I did mention your brother as a rebuttal to the notion that kids are naturally good.)

I've invited her here to discuss the issue, or at least to look at the news I've found on the subject. This is the open thread for discussion on the topic.

Comments

People like that, IMO, are not really pro-life ...

[fiona64.livejournal.com]

They are merely anti-choice. The translation of the "life of the mother or rape is okay" argument really is "How dare you have *consensual* sex without intent to procreate?" I don't give a damn how many times they say "consequences is not the same as punishment" -- it's abundantly clear that punishment is exactly what is meant.

As for the "put the kid up for adoption" argument, that's pretty ridiculous. There are 125,000 kids available for adoption in this country right this minute, according to AFCARs. How does increasing the surplus help at all? (And for those who argue "But people want baybees," I say "Too bad for them." If they are that desperate to be parents, they should be willing to accept an older child.)

Argh.

[faireraven.livejournal.com]

okay, personal feelings on the whole reproductive rights thing.

First, in the case of the life of the mother or rape or incest, it should always be okay to abort. If a mother will not survive the birth, then I don't see the purpose in possibly having two deaths on your hands when she tries to give birth, and I also would not ask a person to carry a child to term when it was due to rape.

Now, the tricky bit comes when you try to define "contraceptive failure". What defines failure? Failure to use, failure of the contraceptive, what?

Mind you, I do not like the idea of people using abortion as a method of contraception, but I cannot in good concience stand in the way of someone getting one... especially if that contraceptive failure was due to no fault of their own (even someone who's on several forms of contraceptives has a minor chance of getting pregnant). And I firmly believe in being able to use the morning after pill.

Quite honestly, while I wouldn't do it myself unless put in a position where I had to (face it, at this point in my life while a child might put a crimp in my lifestyle, I could afford to have the kid. The only thing that might make me think otherwise were if whatever meds I'm currently on would be guaranteed to produce a child who wouldn't live long or who would have horrible nasty health problems for life as a result of those meds), I think I would never even try to stop someone in the first trimester from having an abortion. I personally believe that until that kid is of an age that it is viable outside the womb, I don't consider it to be a problem. However, once that kid is more than halfway through "cooking", you have a possibility that the kid could survive outside the womb, and in that case, I honestly think that they need to finish and carry the kid to term.

The problem is, most people see it as either black or white. Either you allow abortion or you don't, because if you allow abortion only in certain cases, you have the slippery slope thing. Personally, if I had to make a choice between allowing all abortions or not allowing them at all, I'd allow them, albeit reluctantly in the latter half of pregnancy.

I can kind of see the point she's making (without actually looking at the original), but at the same time, there's that "black and white" issue dealing with it that just throws things all up in the air.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense today, so let me know. ;)

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'm more reminded of Atlantis than Genesis. You can imagine an island civilization being covered with water. I believe that geologists say two of the islands have "moved."

[butterflykiki.livejournal.com]

Personal take:
While I have issues with people who do use abortion is a form of birth control (it's safe, but not as safe as contraceptives; it's such a waste of potential; religious issues, which I still can't resolve) I will always come down on the side of abortion remaining legal and available. The alternatives are horrible. The number of attempted abortions wouldn't go down, but the number of women who'd survive them would. This may be a societal problem, that there aren't enough homes for those un-adopted kids, that we value babies and the illusion of 'always ours' over creating a family. It might be a problem with the shame some feel, still, over having unplanned kids, and the utter lack of social services when it happens... doesn't matter. Some children, are, sadly, unwanted. Until those guys at Operation Rescue are willing to pony up child support, they should shut up. Maybe if they protested more for decent day care, drug abuse treatments, and welfare, I'd be able to take them seriously.

Ahem. That may sound a little militant. Especially in light of the aforementioned religious issues. But that slippery slope goes both ways, if it exists at all. Personally, I look at it as a slope with a lot of mountaineering clamp-ons along the slide down.

I've never heard how Pro-Life people feel about the morning-after pill given to rape victims, either. It seems to be something they don't talk about, if they don't make the rape=okay-to-abort distinction. Given that fertilization hasn't happened within the first 24 hours, why do they have a problem with someone taking RU-249 even if they haven't been raped? *sigh*

"Abortion is sometimes necessary, sometimes not, always sad. It is to the woman what war is to the man -- a living sacrifice in a cause justified or not justified, as an observer may decide. It is the making of hard decisions-- that this one must die that that one can live in honor and decency and comfort. Women have no leaders, of course; a woman's conscience must be her General. There are no stirring songs to make the task of killing easier, no victory arches and medals handed around afterwards, merely a sense of loss." - Faye Weldon, The Hearts and Lives of Men

Weldon sounds like she doesn't support abortion there, but I think she makes some good points. Abortion is too personal a decision to be left in the hands of those who "think they know best". We should always debate it, always question if it's necessary. But forbid it outright? No. The day we cease going to war, we can make that 'moral' choice. The day we cease executing criminals. Until then, we life in an imperfect world where these choices have to be left in the hands of those it effects most.

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

I posted my thoughts about abortion last November in my journal here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/beckyzoole/91898.html).

I hold certain principles to be true:

1. Just as death occurs at brain death, so life occurs at brain life. At the beginning of the second trimester, the normal fetus begins to exhibit electrical activity in the structures that will develop into the brain. Before that point, I have absolutely no moral qualms about abortion for any reason.

2. It is not right to be kinder to a pet than to one's own child. If the child will be born with a severe, debilitating condition -- particularly one that will lead to an inevitable early death -- then it is better to abort as early as possible, rather than let that child suffer at length.

3. The mother's life and health must be preserved. If there is a good chance that continuing the pregnancy would be dangerous to the mother, then an abortion is a medical necessity.
Note, I am not talking only about emergency situations. Last year I attended the visitation of a lovely and much-loved 24-year-old woman. Recently married and pregnant with her first child, her doctor had advised her to abort the pregnancy, since the epilepsy medication she took could be harmful to the child. The young woman was a religious Baptist, and would not consider aborting. Instead, she discontinued her medications. During her fifth month of pregnancy, she had a severe seizure while she was at home alone, and suffocated. I wish she had had an abortion, instead.

4. The mother's life and health may be endangered by severe depression and shame, as well. If a woman is very distraught over an unplained pregnancy, it may be life-saving for her to get an abortion. I cannot tell what may be unbearable for another person; that must be left up to each woman who finds herself in that awful situation.

5. Adoption is an option, but a very, very difficult one. Immediately after birth, a new mother's body is typically flooded by "bonding" hormones, that make her extremely attached to the new baby. According to my OB/Gyn, who has been practicing for 30 years, he has known many patients who intended to give a baby up for adoption but could not bring themselves to do it once the baby was born. He has known only one patient who actually signed the adoption papers -- but she changed her mind shortly afterwards, and after a nasty legal battle got the baby back from the adoptive parents. Once the hormonal effect wears off, many women are amazed that they did not go through with their plans. Without an intensely negative social stigma against keeping the baby, most women will not give the baby up for adoption, no matter how economically difficult it is.