Entry tags:

abortion access

Productive interneting yesterday (abortion politics)
there were a couple long discussions at Daily Kos-- a lot of the usual unproductive discussions and arguments. I did many variations of my usual reply: Medical Standards, not Laws. There's no good way to write good laws about abortion, because it isn't something for legislation. Someone else took that thought and said it better than I was:

The fact that there is no black and white here means that this should be a matter for medical ethics -- in other words, laws are designed to determine what situations are black and white. Medical ethics, or any other ethical field, for that matter, are designed for situations in which there is no such thing as black and white.

A late term abortion can't happen without help. In almost all cases, it's a mercy abortion, it isn't really a woman, on a whim, looking for a doctor who'll take her money. Or if it does happen, that isn't a reason for writing laws that put a greater burden on 99.99% of women ... when medical standards would do the job without creating that burden. But, of course, the anti-abortion people search out these "abortion mill" clinics (some of which are only a little better/safer than backalley abortions) and trumpet the abuses ... as if abortion were the problem rather than abortion care being pushed out of hospitals, far enough out of the mainstream to make the abuses possible.

Birth control methods aren't 100% effective (even sterilization), and there are a lot of abortions that can be arguably termed "abortions of convience" and there's arguably some moral ambiguity there. However, it's a lot more immoral the way Nature (natural selection) rigged the system for "whatever species creates the most babies" rather than "good of the individual". I really don't think there's much moral goodness in a sacrifice if the person doing a sacrifice isn't doing it willingly.

In my opinion, the bad ethics of Nature overrules any ethical imperative to the woman. Since women are biologically forced to expend resources for the next generation and men are not similarly forced by biology, I see unlegislated reproductive choice is a kind of "affirmative action" that is necessary for a culture to (attempt to) be equitable. On the other hand, to people who think "things happen for a reason", being born a girl rather than a boy is a rather large Sign about "what God means for me". So when I have these discussions with people who think like that I get puzzled looks and questions about "you're a woman; why do you want to be a man?"

Bottom line: Medical Standards, not Laws.