Wacky Abortions

Abortion, eh? Do you thing anyone will think we’re strange for making abortion the topic of our first posts on this blog? I guess it just goes to show how wacky we are.

I remember once, on the way home from school, I said that there is no topic that the Simpsons hasn’t got a reference to. I challenged my brother to pick a subject and I’d surely find a reference to it in the Simpsons. Richo, just picking a topic off the top of his head, smiled and said “Abortion.” Um…well, since we’re going to get abortion out of the way early on we can get on with reuniting Krusty with his estranged sister-in-law.

Whenever I think of abortion (or IVF or Reese Witherspoon or blonde lawyers) I think of that scene in ‘Legally Blonde’ where they are given the hypothetical of the man who makes a donation at a sperm bank, then later wants to find out about the baby. Selma Blair’s character says something, then Legally Blonde says that unless Hypothetical Man kept track of all the sperm he’s emitted all his life why should he care about this particular sperm? I think that determining the dividing line between the seeds of life, foetus, and human being is what makes abortion such a confusing and divisive issue.

Peter Singer (the doody-o who wrote ‘Practical Ethics’, which was the text for the Philosophy class I half-took) differentiated between humans and persons. ‘Human’ refers to the species as a whole and so includes foetuses. ‘Person’ is a feeling, consciously aware human (he may have also included some animals in there, I forget), so it excludes foetuses and new-borns. Singer is a proponent of utilitarianism, so he values net happiness – some beings have higher propensities for happiness, some less. It seems like an odd place to be in, but that’s where the road led. There are people who say that under the right conditions a foetus will become a person. It could also be said that all the eggs lost during menstruation and all sperm lost in masturbation would have become foetuses, under the right conditions. (I should say here that, though the logic of Singer’s point leads me to agree that babies are not persons, I do not condone terminating pregnancies after the baby is born. I don’t think Peter does, either.)

There are two situations that I can think of at the moment where I would condone abortion, both of them are instances where the well being of the child would be affected: 1. where the child would be born with a debilitating illness or 2. where parents do not want the child.

I believe in euthanasia – not for everyone, but for people with terminal diseases and/or are in lots of pain. Focussing on quality of life over quantity is a good utilitarian perspective. I’d like to believe that it’s only people who’ve led long full lives that have them, but the truth is that children contract them as well. In most countries, if not all (it’s probably all), parents make their children’s major decisions for them up until their early to mid teens. When I drank that bottle of cough mixture, I wasn’t even thinking about going to the hospital, but my Mum decided it would be a good idea. If a child’s mere existence is going to be painful, then they are not going to have a happy life, their parents will not be happy to see them in pain – what would be the gains in happiness? The parents may be doing them a huge favour by sparing them the agony.

On the unwanted pregnancy front, I believe that a child is not going to lead a happy life if it is resented by its parents. There would be people who would change their minds about having children upon realising they (or their wife) are pregnant, and there would also be those who would change their minds after they (or their wife) gives birth. This make a hell of a grey area – people that don’t want to have the baby may be told by the people who may tell them that they will have a different perspective once they give birth. Not everyone’s perspective is going to change.

Some people say that even if people don’t want to keep their babies should just carry them to term, then put them up for adoption. As far as I know there are plenty of orphans already, at least enough for everyone who want to adopt. (Angelina Jolie joke here.)

Ultimately, it is the parents’ decision to do what they think is best for everyone in the long run. If the child would be in heaps of pain or if the child or parents would be (devastatingly) unhappy I can understand people opting for abortion. On the other hand, I can understand people deciding to have the baby because it would make them and the child happy, even if they don’t want to keep the baby, but consider adoption a positive alternative. It gets down to choice - I believe people should have the right to choose and trust they will do what is best for them.