When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
The thing is, even an exception for the life of the mother shows that same moral inconsistency. If allowing a mother to come to harm through intervention that preserves the life of the fetus is acceptable, the other way around – allowing the fetus to come to harm through intervention that preserves the life of the parent – is just as acceptable. And it makes no difference if that preservation of life is 85 years or 15 minutes – the right to life isn’t contingent on how long your life may be.
These fake ethicists try to claim there’s a fundamental difference between performing an abortion and prohibiting an abortion, but both of these are positive actions taken by the state that engages in trading lives. If you want to argue on the morality of what a doctor or pregnancy’s choice to be part of an abortion, have at – there’s reasonably room for debate there – but there must be no intervention from the state.
I think it’s immensely charitable for a person to carry a baby to term. One of the most selfless things you can do. If you carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because you feel you owe it to this total stranger growing in you, you’re a damned saint. But our society does not mandate that kind of charity.
And pregnancy can be incredibly hard on a woman. My wife’s pregnancy was really tough. Especially with morning sickness, which she had for the whole nine months. She wanted a child as much as I did, but I never even broached the subject of having another kid, because of how hard it was for her to have the first one.
Some people love pregnancy. Some pregnant women go through their pregnancy feeling terrific. They’re the lucky ones.
I’d like a lot of these anti-abortion people to look up what an episiotomy is. And watch a video of a C-section. Even safe pregnancy in a medical setting is really unpleasant and painful in so many ways.
Slight tangent that I feel worth mentioning. There is recent good news for women like your wife. After being ignored by medical science for who knows how long, a more solid understanding of the underlying cause of pregnancy sickness has been reached. The hormone human chorionic gonadotropin or sensitivity to it.
The lead researcher has a pretty tragic past due to having severe, intractible pregnancy sickness. I heard an interview the other day with her where she recounted being so ill that she was unable to even speak. At the same time, she was told by her doctor that it was all in her head and she was doing it for attention. Her pregnancy sickness got so bad that she was unable to carry to term and was very much at risk herself.
But out of her fucked up situation came her drive to prove that the cause was biological and, with this breakthrough, there are now targets for medications and therapies that can be explored.
Ah well. We’re in our middle forties. Too late for her now (not technically, but not a good idea). I’m glad other women will not go through it though.
Yeah. Likely late for my wife as well but, still nice to know that it is a definitively biological thing and that there is real hope for it to be treated for others.
I like your reasoning here and I will keep it in mind if I get sucked into another one of these conversations, since I don’t have a uterus and don’t think I should ever have any say in what people who do, choose to do with them. The only thing I’m uncertain about is:
I’ve always felt the opposite. Maybe I’m just a contrarian or a misanthrope, but deciding to be a parent always seems selfish to me. It may just be my limited experience, but for all their good intentions, even looking past minor character flaws, I’ve never seen a parent raise a child in a truly flourishing environment. It always feels like they’re trying to relive their youth vicariously through their kids and I see so many negative traits and fears reinforced until they become personality flaws. I’ll have to think about this more.
Well, that’s a little sad, that you’ve only seen the bad side. Personally, I’ve seen good parents that let their kids be themselves, and bad parents that try to relive their childhood through their kids or turn them into mindless copies.
I think they’re right that the action itself is selfless. But just like a person can donate to a charity just to make themselves look good, one can carry a child for the attention.