Jun. 1st, 2009 10:08 pm
Crazy people with guns
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textualdevianceYes, this is political, and should be on my other journal, but I wanted to weigh in on the Dr. Tiller shooting.
For the record, right off the top, I want to emphasize that I believe every case of abortion is unique, and thus the choice to have one should be entirely up to the posessor of the uterus in question. No one should be forced to use their body to sustain some other life, and that goes equally whether the other life is someone in need of a bone marrow transplant or a fetus in its host's uterus. This is most definitely not a decision that can be made by random lawmakers or judges or laypeople. The responsibilities parents have to their children after they're no longer physically attached are matters of law, yes, but bodily integrity is just not something you go messing with, and that's why the owner of a given uterus has total control over what happens to it.
That said...
What has me so pissed off about this shooting, and about the late-term abortion debate in and of itself, is that it's entirely predicated on lies and myths about what late-term abortions really are.
These are not "convenience" abortions, folks. They are not some woman just blithely deciding in her 32nd week that she doesn't want to be pregnant anymore. They are, in virtually every case, extremely traumatic decisions that must be made to deal with a pregnancy that has gone horribly wrong.
Looking at the statistics, it's glaringly clear: First, abortions after 22 weeks are only a very small percentage of overall abortions (the vast majority are prior to 8 weeks.) Second, only about half of those post-22-week abortions involve a viable* fetus. Third, every single one of those "viable" abortions are done because if they weren't, the mother would suffer grave injury or illness. (And these range from brain damage to paralysis to kidney failure, among many, many things that can go wrong during a pregnancy.)
Most abortion bans allow for exceptions for the life of the mother, but few allow for exceptions for a woman who, for instance, has breast cancer and needs chemotherapy before the tumor grows so big that she'll have to have radical surgery to remove it. Or one who suffers a broken back or pelvis and whose spinal cord would be damaged if she had to carry the weight of a full-term fetus. These are the cases that McCain derided with his smirking, airquoted snark about women's health during the debates.
And these are the women whom Dr. Tiller served. They are women who overwhelmingly wanted their pregnancies, but who could not continue them because either the fetus was grossly deformed, or because they were going to be on dialysis for the rest of their lives if they didn't abort.
Now, this is not to say that these women have more moral high ground to have an abortion than a teen who couldn't be bothered to disentangle herself from her boyfriend long enough to fish a condom out of her backpack. Again, each case is unique, and people--especially young people--make mistakes. They shouldn't have to sacrifice their bodies for those mistakes.
But there's this bizarre notion among the anti-abortion lobby that there's some sort of epidemic of women and doctors who apparently get off on mutilating healthy, near-term infants. This completely, totally wrong idea is what leads otherwise-sane people to vote for late-term bans, and mildly nutty people to go completely batshit and start equating Dr. Tiller and others who do these procedures with the worst genocidal maniacs history has to offer.
The more we allow this myth about late-term abortions to continue, the more fuel whackos like the guy who killed this doctor have for their delusions. Ideally, we'd stop discussing the motivations any woman has for wanting an abortion, because they're none of our business, but I do think getting the word out about what late-term abortions are really about will help push back some of the mushy middle folks who can't be stopped from judging what goes on in someone else's uterus, but who might at least have the decency to back off from telling a cancer patient that she can't have chemo. And on a practical level, I think that's essential to ensuring that the women who desperately need these procedures can get them.
*And "viable" includes fetuses that, while they would survive after birth, wouldn't live very long, or would have a quality of life that's less than that of your average lobster.
For the record, right off the top, I want to emphasize that I believe every case of abortion is unique, and thus the choice to have one should be entirely up to the posessor of the uterus in question. No one should be forced to use their body to sustain some other life, and that goes equally whether the other life is someone in need of a bone marrow transplant or a fetus in its host's uterus. This is most definitely not a decision that can be made by random lawmakers or judges or laypeople. The responsibilities parents have to their children after they're no longer physically attached are matters of law, yes, but bodily integrity is just not something you go messing with, and that's why the owner of a given uterus has total control over what happens to it.
That said...
What has me so pissed off about this shooting, and about the late-term abortion debate in and of itself, is that it's entirely predicated on lies and myths about what late-term abortions really are.
These are not "convenience" abortions, folks. They are not some woman just blithely deciding in her 32nd week that she doesn't want to be pregnant anymore. They are, in virtually every case, extremely traumatic decisions that must be made to deal with a pregnancy that has gone horribly wrong.
Looking at the statistics, it's glaringly clear: First, abortions after 22 weeks are only a very small percentage of overall abortions (the vast majority are prior to 8 weeks.) Second, only about half of those post-22-week abortions involve a viable* fetus. Third, every single one of those "viable" abortions are done because if they weren't, the mother would suffer grave injury or illness. (And these range from brain damage to paralysis to kidney failure, among many, many things that can go wrong during a pregnancy.)
Most abortion bans allow for exceptions for the life of the mother, but few allow for exceptions for a woman who, for instance, has breast cancer and needs chemotherapy before the tumor grows so big that she'll have to have radical surgery to remove it. Or one who suffers a broken back or pelvis and whose spinal cord would be damaged if she had to carry the weight of a full-term fetus. These are the cases that McCain derided with his smirking, airquoted snark about women's health during the debates.
And these are the women whom Dr. Tiller served. They are women who overwhelmingly wanted their pregnancies, but who could not continue them because either the fetus was grossly deformed, or because they were going to be on dialysis for the rest of their lives if they didn't abort.
Now, this is not to say that these women have more moral high ground to have an abortion than a teen who couldn't be bothered to disentangle herself from her boyfriend long enough to fish a condom out of her backpack. Again, each case is unique, and people--especially young people--make mistakes. They shouldn't have to sacrifice their bodies for those mistakes.
But there's this bizarre notion among the anti-abortion lobby that there's some sort of epidemic of women and doctors who apparently get off on mutilating healthy, near-term infants. This completely, totally wrong idea is what leads otherwise-sane people to vote for late-term bans, and mildly nutty people to go completely batshit and start equating Dr. Tiller and others who do these procedures with the worst genocidal maniacs history has to offer.
The more we allow this myth about late-term abortions to continue, the more fuel whackos like the guy who killed this doctor have for their delusions. Ideally, we'd stop discussing the motivations any woman has for wanting an abortion, because they're none of our business, but I do think getting the word out about what late-term abortions are really about will help push back some of the mushy middle folks who can't be stopped from judging what goes on in someone else's uterus, but who might at least have the decency to back off from telling a cancer patient that she can't have chemo. And on a practical level, I think that's essential to ensuring that the women who desperately need these procedures can get them.
*And "viable" includes fetuses that, while they would survive after birth, wouldn't live very long, or would have a quality of life that's less than that of your average lobster.
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