August 22nd, 2007 @ 10:16 am by: Marc
Abortion: There are Two Sides to Every Story
Abortion is one of the touchiest subjects of our time primarily due to widely varying beliefs concerning the exact moment at which “life” actually begins. The pro-choice community agrees with the point of view that abortion helps prevent young children from being born into unhappy homes. The pro-life supporters, however, would strongly disagree with this statement, instead taking the stand that abortion can be compared to ripping someone’s life away without giving them a choice or a chance. In reality there is a vast grey area in between these two extremes. My best friend once told me, “There are two sides to every story.”
I disagree with the labels of pro-choice and pro-life. Their strict affiliation with the subject of abortion is nonsensical. I’ve never met someone who is not in favor of life. Likewise, most levelheaded people realize the importance of liberty and free choice. With the exception of certain stubborn radicals, most people have a fundamental value system that trickles over the lines which divide the pro-choice and pro-life ideologies.
It all depends on circumstance. There are situations where abortion makes sense, just as there are situations where it does not. Most rational minds are able to analyze a specific circumstance and easily make the distinction, thus supporting the decision that matches the circumstance at hand. I believe that the people who argue against the concept of “individual circumstance” lack a comprehensive understanding of the inherent complexities and situational variation from one case to the next.
I used to fully support abortion in my teenage years and early twenties. Now I stand firmly by the philosophy of “individual circumstance”, and tend to support abortion far less than your average pro-choice supporter. I’m not an extremist when it comes to the topic of abortion because I have a fairly concrete understanding of both sides of the argument. Pro-choice opinion by itself makes a great deal of sense to me, but when you stack the philosophy up against specific circumstances, even the most diehard pro-choicer would need a moment to reflect.
So why did I have a change of heart? What circumstance interfered with my old way of thinking? Well, I met someone who shattered my isolated perspective and directly connected me into a different reality. This person I refer to is now my best friend. Many moons before we met, she was conceived by a woman who was unfit and unprepared to be a mom. Instead of abortion, her biological mother chose the route of adoption.
She was adopted into a happy home as an infant and grew up to be an intelligent, successful human being. It’s now impossible for me to fully support abortion, because doing so would be accepting the fact that my best friend should have had her entire life flushed away for no reason at all. I have a copious appreciation for every reason why her biological mother would have wanted an abortion. Yet when my best friend stands before me today, I whole heartedly appreciate the fact that she didn’t.
It’s easy to have compassion for a pregnant teen who desperately wants an abortion. At a glance you see a young girl who is just a child herself. This girl is obviously incapable of being a mother. Abortion in that split instant seems to make complete sense; at least it does to me. But when you look into the eyes of someone you respect and realize their biological conception met the stereotypical conditions for a routine case of abortion, your attitude on the subject changes. All of the sudden a different reality hits home. You realize abortion can change someone’s life, your life, and can alter history, your history.
I believe that people should have the choice. But I also believe that too many irresponsible people abuse their rights of having this choice. There will always be circumstances, such as rape and illness, where abortion makes 100% sense. Regrettably, there will also always be heartless fools who use abortion like the rest of us use a condom. Thus, this controversial topic will always rest in a grey area lacking an absolute right or wrong judgment call.
Abortion should never be muddled by the influences of religion or law. It should be an unadulterated decision pertaining to the responsibility and capacity of an individual in their own unique circumstance. Even then, I’m sure someone will have a difference in opinion. Just like my best friend once told me, “There are two sides to every story.”
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13 Comments
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I think your article was well-written, but it misses the main point of the pro-choice movement - which is, uh, the woman. A woman in an awful situation shouldn’t be forced to abort any more than a wealthy, comfortable woman should be forced through pregnancy.
And the “good thing I am/(s)he is here” argument is just… naive, I think. We could play the “what if” game indefinitely. What if a different sperm had made it to the egg first? What if mom had been on some serious doses of alcohol, drugs, or even just coffee? Hell, what if another baby whose mother wanted to abort grew up to become a rapist/murderer who eventually would attack you or your friends/family?
Even if we could tell which fetuses would become which kind of people, it wouldn’t change the fact that no woman should ever be forced one way or the other.
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:26 pm
@Joy: Your points are logical. My stand on this topic does leave room for subjective interpretation. I just feel that far too many people abuse the system. Sure, I know mistakes happen. But when the same women exercise their right for an abortion multiple times, we have a problem. I agree that we don’t want government regulations or laws forcing women into a corner. What we need is a world full of responsible, compassionate people. Oh well, maybe I dream too much…
August 23rd, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Marc’s point was one of responsibility…my addition to his point is that a couple needs to be held responsible as much as the situation that the couple created.
Don’t want to have a kid…use a condom…or other form of birth control…planned parenthood is passing it out like crazy….for free!
Condom breaks and “can’t afford” a kid…there are many great families willing to adopt there is no reason to kill innocent life.
Too poor to get condoms…BS every clinic and school in America passes out condoms
Poor or uneducated don’t understand the consequences or the old ‘heat of the moment” excuse…In the heat of the moment if you decide to cross the street with out looking both ways that is a choice too…
Modern Science allows for a “fetus”, or as like to call them, a child, to live outside the mother after just 22 weeks (earliest recorded child birth)…that is 5 1/2 months…if you make a immature and
Abortion is not a form of birth control. It should be used only in extreme cases such as rape or serious illness…there…that line just made you all realize I am not a religious zealot who only believes in the pro-life side of the argument…
However the choice as all choices needs to be made by the couple…not just the woman and not forced by the man or parents…the choice that got a woman to this point needs to be made by the parties involved.
Affluence, greed, and selfishness should never be the reason for an abortion…that is being lazy! I am serious when I say this…you are lazy if you have a abortion due to not planning for sex…(once again rape and illness trump this statement…but that is never the woman’s fault!) if you go out to a bar and willingly “hook up” with out protection and then use this choice (abortion) as a form of birth control then you are killing innocent life!
It is hard work being a parent…Being a parent is never a convenience…it is the greatest job we will ever have as humans…I can only speak from the male side of this argument…Men need to stand up and be fathers…not sperm donors or baby daddies…Men need to be held accountable for their decisions and support their children as fathers…there is no excuse why they can’t! I am sick of men not taking responsibility for their actions and be Dads…that is a true root cause of our societal woes…
Final note is that we are all responsible for our actions…if you do not adhere to this you will continue to feed the problem…death of innocent children for nothing more then convenience is wrong!
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Well, now we’ve heard from both ends of the spectrum…
In either case, I think the practice of increased responsibility is the key.
August 25th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Marc, I take exception to the assumption that women are having abortions because that’s what they want to do. If you asked the women sitting in the waiting room at a Planned Parenthood and asked, “Is this what you want to do?” you’d probably get some pretty incredulous looks. They’re there because they feel trapped, not because they particularly want to go through with the abortion.
But with abortion readily available and celebrated as a right, as liberating, as some sort of wonderful, society can feel as if we’ve discharged all our obligations to the women by simply allowing Planned Parenthood to set up shop. We no longer feel any responsibility to provide any real help.
When I got pregnant in 1983, I kept trying to screw up my courage to call PP and set up that appointment. We’d sold our wedding rings already to buy food for our daughter. How could we afford another baby? Thank God that my husband’s best friend was prolife. He was able to think much more clearly than we were. He saw that our problem wasn’t that I was pregnant. It was our apartment. He had to browbeat us into apartment hunting, since we were sure that there was nothing better to be had in the area. But Eddie was right, we quickly found a better place, and our financial difficulties quickly got sorted out. And my son is now in the Navy.
I thank God every single day that I didn’t have a “prochoice” friend to “help” me by “supporting me through a difficult decision.” Eddie looked past the despair and sense of helplessness to what we really needed.
I think every woman is entitled to that.
But that takes actually caring. Which is work. It’s much easier for everybody around the woman to just pat themselves on the back for “keeping abortion safe and legal.” Once she gets scraped out, it’s over for them. But it’s never over for her.
Women deserve better.
August 25th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Even if we could tell which fetuses would become which kind of people, it wouldn’t change the fact that no woman should ever be forced one way or the other.
Joy, do you extend that to the woman feeling forced by her circumstances? Don’t you think that we ought to be helping women who want to avoid abortions but feel trapped and are too stressed out to see other options?
August 25th, 2007 at 8:04 am
I agree that we don’t want government regulations or laws forcing women into a corner.
But what about being forced into a corner by a scumbag boyfriend, an unsympathetic employer, a university that doesn’t make accomodations for pregnant and parenting students, a doctor who doesn’t want to deal with a high risk patient or a baby with disabilities?
The current system slants everything in favor of women who actively want abortions, and stacks the deck against women who don’t want to abort but lack resources. Where’s the justice in that?
August 25th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I’m not for extramarital sex, but… if you’re going to do it, guys, at least ask or figure out or get her involved in discussing her fertility cycle. It’s not so hard to figure out, and it doesn’t take any outside interference from pharmaceuticals or third-party fertility blockers. NFP, baby!
August 26th, 2007 at 9:27 am
@Christina: Thanks for sharing your story. I completely agree with you. Further progress needs to be made in order to give pregnant women more options and routes for support. Women should have the choice, but there should be easily accessible objective resources out there to help them with the decision.
September 20th, 2007 at 8:32 am
[…] and Angel presents Abortion: There are Two Sides to Every Story posted at Marc and Angel, saying, “Abortion is one of the touchiest subjects of our time […]
September 21st, 2007 at 12:13 am
I agree with what you say. I’ve held a similar opinion on the issue of abortion. Our society emcompassing as varied strata of people as it does today, it is virtually impossible to have a blanket law that works for everyone. But then, does the right to abort or give birth be vested with the individual. In my world, yes. However, in a state, such a choice places colossal faith on people’s discretion, and therefore, is liable to be misused. To look for a solution is to try to figure out an optimal answer–one that is a bargain or an acceptable trade-off. There can never be a comprehensive solution.
I saw this movie called “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days,” which is set in Communist Romania in the late 80s. It revolves around a pregnant teen, her friend, and an abortionist. I understood the consequences of a draconian law in a society where free expression is stifled. When the state legislates without careful consideration, people devise ways to circumvent, and sometimes entire industries are borne out of such a status quo. The people can be punished for breaking the law or governments can be castigated for formulating laws that cannot be regulated. In the end, though, its human existence that suffers.
September 21st, 2007 at 1:12 am
I discussed this issue on another person’s blog, and the comment I made there is relevant here as well. It’s a long comment, so hope you’ll bear with it and seek to understand it.
1) To say that an entity has no rights is not to say that the entity should be slaughtered, killed, or disposed off recklessly or wantonly.
2) Rights are moral principles that pertain *only* to action–specifically, to freedom of action. Life is a process of self-generated action; thus, right to life is the right to *act* towards self-preservation and self-sustenance.
3) Rights are moral principles that are applicable to only human beings since only humans are moral beings; further, “individual right” is a redundancy (albeit a necessary redundancy) because only individuals can have rights; half-an-individual, parts of individuals, or groups of individuals can have no rights.
3) One man’s rights imposes only a negative obligation on others to not violate his rights. No one’s rights can ever conflict with each other. Thus, one entity’s right to life cannot conflict with another entity’s right to life.
4) Rights cannot exist where force exists. Thus, criminals have limited to no rights; for example, I can kill a criminal in self-defense if he threatens my life.
5) Since rights pertain to actions, and some actions are beyond the abilities of young infants and children, the voluntary parent (who chose to have children) or voluntary legal guardians are entrusted with the responsibility of administering the rightful actions of their children.
Given all of the above, a fetus has no rights because it is not an individual but a part of its host; it lives not as an individual entity but as a part of an entity; parts of entities have no rights (e.g., hands, livers, kidneys, etc.)
If a fetus were granted the right to life, it would conflict with the existing and actual rights of an actual, individual, independent, moral, entity, i.e., mother. Remember that Rights among individuals do not conflict. In the face of a contradiction, one of the premises is wrong. Since it is false to deny that the mother has the right to life, the premise that the fetus has a right to life must be false.
If a fetus had the right to life, then it would create an *active* obligation on the mother to sustain the life of the fetus inside her and administer legal obligations on behalf of the fetus *against* her own wishes, i.e., by force and not voluntarily. Rights cannot exist under force and do not create *active* or positive obligations or duties on people. This is another conflict arising due to faulty premises.
Finally, to say that a fetus has no rights is not to permit wanton and reckless slaughter of fetuses–that would be immoral albeit not illegal. It should not be illegal to kill and eat animals or conduct animal fights as a sport, although it is immoral and pathologically depraved to find pleasure in wanton killing of animals or enjoying the bloody sport. All criminal acts must be legally punished; all immoral acts must be vociferously condemned and not tolerated. Aborting a fetus is not a criminal act (although, if done wantonly, recklessly, and repeatedly, it becomes grounds for moral condemnation).
September 21st, 2007 at 9:17 am
@satyajit and Ergo:
Thanks for the comments. I don’t even feel the need to comment further. Your points are well stated and well received at my end. They are some of the most well thought out opinions I have read on this controversial topic.
The bottom line is that there is an inevitable catch-22 between the balance of rights and morals when it comes to abortion, thus leaving the topic endlessly muddled in a grey area of subjective confusion.
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