There was a discussion about it at Metafilter. I haven't RTFA, but this comment seems pretty damn reasonable: "Somehow "I aborted two of my three fetuses because I couldn't support three kids" is more palatable than "I aborted them because I don't want to move to Staten Island.".".
Ted Cohen once told a class, or maybe just a group of people who were hanging around him after a class (or possibly a different context altogether), that some colleague of his had proposed as a thought experiment a woman who, though it is stipulated that bearing and raising a child wouldn't be much of a burden on her (she's in excellent physical condition and wealthy enough that she wouldn't actually need to take part directly in her child's upbringing), she regularly becomes pregnant (not deliberately, but she doesn't use any contraception), aborts the fetus, and then has it bronzed, or something like that. I'm not sure if you actually could bronze a fetus. The point being to elicit by means of a rather implausible example the intuition that even if you don't think the fetus is "really alive", or that abortion is wrong, or anything of that character, there's still something rather off about this woman's behavior towards hers.
Yeah, let's think up really implausible or unsympathetic reasons why some women might have abortions so that we can pass laws to put them in jail. And so prosecutors can root around in medical files and interview "witnesses" to find said women. That sounds like a fun game.
Who exactly do you think is suggesting that?
Well, first of all, there are only a few circumstances in law when it makes even the slightest bit of sense to consider motive. This isn't one of them: all that it would accomplish is people lying to their doctors so that the paperwork reflects "acceptable" motives. Or is every abortion going to be preceded by background investigations and interviews?
Second, there are lots of things which various religions consider damning which do not in any way fall into the category of things the state should involve itself in. Leave those determinations to the truly omniscient, truly just, truly merciful Final Judge, and let's focus on law being a reasonably good way to keep each other safe and sane.
Yes, people can have inappropriate motives for doing things that they should have every right to do. Consider marriage - there's nothing *wrong* with marrying, right? At the same time, a person marrying for no reason other than money would get some dirty looks, right?
The fact that you object to motive X or Y for having an abortion doesn't indicate that there is something *wrong* with having an abortion. Here I would say that it indicates that perhaps you treat the whole abortion procedure differently from the other question - just like in the marriage example.
Specifically, most think that both marriage and pregnancy should be treated with at least a little respect. Legally people should be allowed to enter/end both marriage and pregnancy for reasons that indicate a lack of respect, but that doesn't mean it's *right* to do so. Neither should be entered into or ended for reasons that are too casual, too selfish, are based on too little thought, etc.
More examples of this same sort of situation exist - it's not really all that strange. Marriage doesn't have to be a holy institution created by God to deserve at least a little respect. A fetus doesn't have to be a full person with the exact same rights as an adult human being in order to deserve at least a little respect.
A libertarian view: "Most fetuses are in the mother's womb because the mother consents to this situation....But should the mother decide that she does not want the fetus there any longer, then the fetus becomes a parasitic "invader" of her person, and the mother has the perfect right to expel this invader from her domain....let us concede...that fetuses are human beings...and are therefore entitled to full human rights. But what humans, we may ask, have the right to be coercive parasites within the body of an unwilling human host? Clearly, no born humans have such a right, and therefore...the fetus can have no such right either."
from: The Ethics of Liberty
by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Editor), Murray Newton Rothbard
these seem to me to be good arguments for keeping the law out of this situation, but what about moral arguments? i'm going to have to think about this a bit before i say anything.
as a pro-choice mother of two, I have to admit this article really turned my stomach. I cannot imagine killing two of three fetuses I was carrying. it struck me as particularly bizarre that she felt the fact that the singleton was a few days older made her feel better about terminating the twins. !?
I wonder if she realized when she wrote it that she was coming off as the most shallow and repugnant person ever. If she didn't like birth control, maybe she should have used condoms, combined with the rhythm method, or something. And it's downhill from there.
Obviously her career and all that is her first priority, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but then why open oneself up to becoming randomly pregnant? And if you want a child, why not just adopt, since then you know the exact number you're getting? People like her always strike me as the type who should get a dog instead of having a kid -- or better, a cat. Low maintenance.
Great minds since Plato have regarded the "dude, that is fucked up" reaction as philosophically salient. Confronting abortion over my Sunday coffee sure put a pall on the crossword puzzle, I'll tell you that.
On the substantive point, Mr. None above correctly notes that people can have bad motives for doing things they have a right to do. But it's also the case that people can possess a right in one circumstance they lack in another. I think that this latter issue helps explain the response of pro-choice people to this horrible woman.
Some supporters of abortion rights have argued for a "there's nothing to see here folks" approach: arguing either that no personhood = no human life = no problem, or advancing privacy as a "trumping" right in all cases. I think this describes the true moral intuitions of almost no one. Most Americans, at least, find abortion deeply creepy. They don't know exactly what to make of it, and would prefer not to think about it. People have a mixed response, and the assessment changes based on circumstances. Some cases (threats to the life of the mother, severely damaged fetuses, etc.) seem almost obviously permissible. Where the circumstances differ – when the danger posed by pregnancy is not death but a life of "shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise," perhaps – the choice appears monstrous.
What's retained in both cases is the sense that something is going on in the womb. The potential child/fetus/whatever isn't a person, maybe, but it's a morally relevant entity, possessing a competing value that should be balanced against the autonomy and privacy concerns of the mother. And when those later concerns are trivial, even strong supporters of choice find abortion unjustifiable.
For anyone interested, I recommend a paper by Rosalind Hursthouse, which discusses how ascribing an indeterminate, not-as-big-as-Churchill-in 1939-but-greater-than-nothing, moral value to a pregnancy influences moral reasoning about abortion.
Just to add to baa's comment, there's also an epistemic issue here: even if the fetus has no moral weight whatsoever, that's not a conclusion we should be sure of, given the disagreement over the issue, the intuitive emotional unease with abortion, and so on. We might think abortion is worth the risk (the risk of doing something seriously wrong, that is) in cases where there's compelling reason to have an abortion, but not in cases where there isn't.
I think this is being rather harsh on the woman. The comments re Staten Island and Costco came across to some as shallow and self -indulgent, I think obscuring her real point. Having triplets is very different proposition from having one baby. She was ,apparently, emotionally and physically prepared to have a baby, but not to have three simultaneously. Multiples can be an incredible burden to care for and many who have them rely on a lot of help from families, friends and neighbors. Not everyone has or can expect to have those kind of human resources available to them, especially if they also have to work to support their children. Nor should women, when they decide to get pregnant, necessarily have to be fully prepared to conceive triplets,a relatively rare occurance. Sometimes it's best to face yourself realistically and judge what you are able to handle, rather than abandon yourself to vagaries of fate, that you may foresee as having bad consequences for all involved.
Something's niggling me. As Fontana and quartz point out, her decision isn't so odd or obscene: having triplets is perhaps qualitatively different from having one child. Fine, but her articulation of the change (Costco, Staten Island) trivializes her own rationale. There's an interesting question here about how one carries one's motives, and the role of the character of the agent in determining how "moral" we find an action, but, that aside, given that Amy Richards isn't just some chickie off the street, but a "feminist activist," could she be provoking us? Is she trivializing her reasons as a way to assert her right more strongly? If so, did she just get closer or farther from hell?
Ogged, you are acute as always. At least I tend to believe your attribution of intention. This is a weird story to just up and tell to the New York Times. And maybe too, she's skewing her report to bait the squares.
Nonetheless, I feel pretty good about judging this person. At least, as good as one can feel given that it is moral evaluation of someone a) I don't know, who b) faces circumstances harder than mine, that c) resulted largely from an ill-timed "yahtzee" from life's dice.
On to the denunciation! Her decision was about convenience, not health or substantial need. And there's a word that doesn't come up in the course of her account. That word is "adoption." All together this adds up to someone who does not, in fact, seem to attribute any moral weight at all to potential life. That's what's creeping out unf and other pro-choice readers, don't you think?
Her decision was about convenience, not health or substantial need. And there's a word that doesn't come up in the course of her account. That word is "adoption."
Yes, the sooner vessel-Americans learn it is their place to provide more (presumably white) children for others to adopt, the better off society will be.
Let's be honest: this woman's motives were the same basic motives behind 98% of abortion: not the mother's health, not a rape, just plain ol' didn't want to have the baby.
I once got pregnant and aborted the fetus. I'm healthy. My boyfriend would have helped. I could give you all sorts of rationalizations, bore you to death about how difficult the decision was, but the final truth is that we simply did not want to have a baby.
That's what so great about the article: someone finally printed the truth about abortion. And if you're pro-choice, like I am, then deal with it.
Convenience is a perfectly acceptable reason to not have children. I simply don't see the objection here.
If you've been following the advances in fertility technology, you know that multiples are common, and that selectivity in implantation is routine, as is selective reduction. Multiples greatly increase risk to both the mother and the fetuses. We don't damn women undergoing IVF for not bearing every single conceptus, do we?
As for medical implications:
Roughly 60% of all twins are born pre-term.
90% of all triplets are pre-term.
If you want to go bankrupt, try having a premature baby. Try having three. This isn't a matter of just having to absorb the costs of an ordinary-sized family all at once, we're talking about a vast increase in expense.
Mortality rates skyrocket with multiples. For single births in the US, death rates at birth are 2.7 per 1,000. For twins, 37; for triplets, 52; for more, 231.
Pre-term multiples tend to be low birth-weight. This is strongly correlated with the incidence of disabilities like mental retardation and cerebral palsy. The mothers also face greater risks of complications like gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. These problems can be minimized by more intensive care during the pregnancy, which the article mentioned.
Seriously, we human beings are MUCH better off having our kids one at a time. We just aren't very good at handling more.
Let me state those statistics from PZ Myers again, in a simpler way: If that woman hadn't aborted two of the three fetuses and hadn't miscarried, each baby would have a FIVE PERCENT chance of dying in its first year of life.
That's more than "a little inconvenience." Each baby has a five percent chance of dying, and even if a baby survives it's likely to have lifelong problems.
Each baby has a five percent chance of dying, and even if a baby survives it's likely to have lifelong problems.
And those percentages are higher on Staten Island.
Adam writes: "Mr. None above correctly notes that people can have bad motives for doing things they have a right to do. But it's also the case that people can possess a right in one circumstance they lack in another."
Adam is absolutely right about that - but we need to be much more specific. The "one circumstance rather than another" being discussed here is based upon motive. I can think of lots of cases where I have a right to do something in one circumstance but not another where the salient difference lies in my legal relationship to those involved (I can spank my kid but not someone else's, I can make decisions about my wife's medical care but not about your wife's medical care, etc.).
So, what precedent is there for letting someone do X based upon one motive but not another motive? I think we could find some, but I don't we would find a lot - in particular when it comes to situations that would be closely analogous to something like abortion (other medical procedures, for example).
Thus, I am very dubious that we would ever be able to construct a sound argument for saying that while there is a general right to abortion, it wouldn't apply in circumstances like this. Moreover, even if we could, we would rely heavily on self-reporting about motives and if certain motives disqualified people from obtaining an abortion, we all know what would happen: women would lie. Thus, legal approaches to this would appear to be inappropriate.
On the other hand, more general social approaches might be appropriate. Leaving aside the medical issues (because the health risks to the fetuses create good reasons for the decision), when a person uses what appears to be very bad reasons for something like this, and we're confident that we know enough about what is going on, it might be appropriate to create some negative public reaction to that sort of thing. To return to my earlier analogy, there are negative social consequences for someone who admits to bad reasons for marriage, so why not the same for someone who admits to bad reasons for abortion?
Adam also writes: "The potential child/fetus/whatever isn't a person, maybe, but it's a morally relevant entity, possessing a competing value that should be balanced against the autonomy and privacy concerns of the mother. And when those later concerns are trivial, even strong supporters of choice find abortion unjustifiable."
That's probably a fair assessment of things. To see how strong it is, just consider a situation where we remove the human element: torturing your dog. Technically it's your property and it's not human, so why shouldn't you be allowed to torture it? Because not being human or a "person" doesn't mean that it isn't a "morally relevant entity."
If you could prove that torturing the dog saved human lives, you'd get away with it. If you did it because you were bored, you'd go to jail. It's arguable that a similar moral calculus goes one when people consider abortion.
That said, however, I must add that when we're talking about *legal* questions there should be a very strong prejudice in favor of female autonomy such that any *legal* case against her decision to abort would have to be very, very powerful. Basically, I think that the scales should be tipped in such a way that there isn't much chance that a woman should be prevented from aborting by the courts or police. Whatever moral interests the fetus might have, it would be difficult to argue that they are strong enough to create a legal right to use the woman's body for nine months, whatever he reasons for objecting.
The message to the surviving child is"Mother's love only goes so far".
Let's back up. This conversation began by unf saying, more or less: "I'm pro-choice, yet I find this story creepy, as do others on the pro-choice side; how come, I wonder?"
Responses have suggested three possible explanations: a) because the motivations seem
Inappropriately light, because the stated circumstance do not reference compelling need or health issues, c) because there's lots of creepy detail (like the idea that the oldest one for some reason is the right one to keep). I suppose I'd describe my position as "all of the above," plus, d) the article implies strongly a view that no value *at all* can be attributed to potential life, and that view is not bedrock moral intuition for most pro-choice people.
The responses to these responses have been, variously:
1. Even though she didn't mention it at all, this woman's story was indeed a medical issue. Abortion was relevant to her health, and to the prospect of healthy children.
2. Sure it's just convenience, but that's what being pro-choice means. Get over it.
3. You are advocating a patriarchal dystopia reminiscent of the Handmaid's Tale. A pox upon you! (well, ok that was just one responder...)
This seems to me to confirm hypothesis d above. There are important, bedrock differences in moral intuition *within* the pro-choice side, that, while often consonant at the level of policy ("we don't trust the government to make these distinctions," maybe being the operative thought), aren't easily papered over when people are just judging conduct.
Or perhaps the conclusion is just: don't talk about abortion. Also, I would add that those who employ sans-serif fonts are helping the terrorists win.
[sorry, none, I wrote this before I saw your comments. I guess I'd say, briefly: the distinction between intention and circumstance isn't probably the cleanest way of demarkating the moral categories, I'd agree. The distinction exists, but isn't perhaps highly relevant here. Basically at issue: what is this act trying to accomplish, what is the gain from doing it, what are the obligations and rights of the actors and subjects in the case? Calling all these things "motivation" doesn't seem right to me. As to the animal rights analogy, I think it's a very suggestive one. Because again, the same kinds of uncertainty about "competing" moral value come up.
I'd like to touch upon something baa writes:
"Sure it's just convenience, but that's what being pro-choice means. Get over it."
and:
"There are important, bedrock differences in moral intuition *within* the pro-choice side, that, while often consonant at the level of policy ... aren't easily papered over when people are just judging conduct."
These two are related, I think. From the second: there's a difference between judging "abortion, the issue" and "abortion, in this specific instance." Pro-choice people tend to judge "abortion, the issue" along the lines that baa writes, "we don't trust the government to decide when and if abortion is appropriate" but might also at times judge "abortion, in this specific instance" along the lines of "hey, should you really be doing that?!?"
However, there will be a lot of variety among pro-choice people about when they will make such a judgement.
This brings me back to the first quote above: how much of this can be reduced to people saying "I approve of you having this right/freedom but I don't approve of the manner in which you exercise it"?
Every freedom we have involves the possibility of it being used in what we feel is an inappropriate manner. Freedom of speech allows for the possibility of someone promoting Nazism or Holocaust Denial. There are real dangers to such things. I don't like them and, frankly, wish that people wouldn't promote them - but they are part of the price of having free speech. Thus, while I would be happy to argue *against* such a person in the specific, I would defend their *right* to be jerks in the general.
To return to what I wrote before about social pressure on people who abort for the "wrong reasons," I guess I should amend/clarify it to say that that sort of thing should (perhaps) be used when dealing with such a person directly ("in specific"), but "in the general" their right to make such a bad choice should be defended to society.
Every freedom we have involves the possibility of it being used in what we feel is an inappropriate manner.
Nail. Hammer. Pow!
It would be only fitting if her son one day deems her a burden in her old age. We reap what we sow.
I never fail to be amazed at the human mind's ability to rationalize any action, no matter how unjust.
This is a pretty cool thread, I wonder what it would have been like had it been posted a year later.
http://www.monsitexxx.com/fetiche/astromag/rape/seed/fantasyrapes.html clothinggamessickening