Oh, and on that Catholic thing

No man should hold any views on abortion other than these. Or in the event that they do, then they should seriously consider shutting the fuck up about them until they’re, say, bearing an unwanted child.

This is not an issue on which males have any right to decree what should happen, and only supreme arrogance would lead one to conclude otherwise.

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24 thoughts on “Oh, and on that Catholic thing

  1. This is not an issue on which males have any right to decree what should happen

    I’m not sure that I agree – surely by making abortion solely a ‘women’s issue’, we risk marginalising it and making it something only women have to address? This then runs the risk of encouraging a ‘not my problem’ attitude from people not directly involved. I agree with the point you make that it is very easy to moralise about something that one is never going to have to think about in direct relation to oneself – as per sweeping statements by Mr Howard, The Telegrah and co..

    However, if we could encourage the attitude that abortion is *society’s* issue and take a reasonable look at it – then women who feel that they need to have one won’t be subjected to this prejudice and pressure and media vilification.

    Just MHO.

  2. No, no, no. While I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that politicians should have to live through something before they can legislate on it, it just isn’t reflective of reality. Like it or not, people have opinions on morality and policy. I could make the spurious argument that you shouldn’t be allowed an opinion on the Iraq war until you’d been personally invaded by a foreign power, but that’s just ridiculous.

    Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to ban abortion, but nor do I think it is wrong to express the opinion that every abortion is in some way regretful. That’s really Howard’s point, isn’t it?

  3. Sometimes mothers kill their 6-month year-old babies. Do you think this is a matter on which males should have no right to decree what should happen?

    Suppose for a moment that there were parliamentary moves afoot to legalise infanticide up to 1 year (an ulnlikely scenario I admit). I’m male, and though I recognise that the vast majority of cases of infanticide are acts of desperation rather than cold-blooded murder, I nevertheless would strongly oppose legalisation, as I imagine would most people of both sexes. But perhaps that would be supreme arrogance on my part. Should I shut the fuck up about my views until I find myself, say, in the position of a stressed-out mother of an unwanted, perpetually crying baby?

    The key question is: how good is the analogy? Or to put it another way: to what extent is a foetus a person? Or even more emotively: when does "abotion" become "murder"? This is the heart of the argument, which both you and Aaronovich fail to address. My own view is that wherever one draws the line: conception, cell-differentiation (around 1 or 2 weeks), 20 weeks, 24 weeks, birth, or 1 year after birth is bound to be arbitrary and, of course, open to tortuously difficult cases just the wrong side of it. But that doesn’t mean that any two placings of the line are equivalent. The central questions for me are to what extent, and when, a foetus (or baby) can feel (anything but particularly pain), is conscious (in whatever sense) and (maybe) when it’s capable of life outside the womb. These are matters on which science can help us – it’s just that we may not like the answers.

    I don’t wish to judge women who have abortions: the only certainty is that they must go through a terrible ordeal. But this is difficult moral terrain with unreasonable dogmatists occupying both extremes, and I think it’s perfectly appropriate for the whole of society (i.e men as well) to come to an informed decision on what’s right to do.

  4. However, if we could encourage the attitude that abortion is *society’s* issue

    As I’ve said elsewhere, you don’t have to be a raving libertarian to think that there ought to be some limits on the extent of government, and the cervix seems like a reasonable place to start.

  5. Each child is created by two people, not one. To say that a father should have no say in whether his child is born or killed simply because he doesn’t have a womb is preposterous. Should women be allowed to express an opinion about discrimination against gay men? After all, they’ll never experience it. Can men raise money for research into ovarian cancer? They’ll never experience it.

    Some people live irresponsible lives of careless promiscuity, and, when they discover that they’ve accidentally created a pregnancy, the men involved make it clear that they want nothing to do with the child or the mother. Such men’s opinions on abortion should be ignored. But some of us live in responsible, loving relationships, thanks very much. Any pregnancy in this household won’t be just my wife’s or just mine: it’ll be ours. And that’s not chauvinism: quite the opposite: my wife would be very upset, and rightly so, if I just told her it was all her decision and I’d have nothing to do with it.

    We all of us create the next generation, and we should all have a say in it.

  6. To say that a father should have no say in whether his child is born or killed simply because he doesn’t have a womb is preposterous

    I would never make this claim; however, as a matter of medical fact, abortions kill fetuses, not children.

    We all of us create the next generation, and we should all have a say in it.

    John’s blogroll lists you as a libertarian. Don’t you realise that this argument generalises to support any statist claim I might want to make (for example, do we all have a say in the education of the next generation? its nutrition? its moral instruction? what kind of TV it watches?)

  7. What the hell has statism got to do with it? I was arguing against the claim that men shouldn’t have a say in abortion because they don’t undergo the operation. As an example, I gave my marriage, which, you may be surprised to hear, isn’t a nation-state. Nothing I wrote has anything to do with government.

    The phrase "bearing a child" is usually considered to make sense. Talk to someone who’s had a miscarriage, and they won’t tell you that their foetus died. As a matter of medical terminology, abortions kill foetuses, not children. Definitions are not facts.

  8. Larry,

    Your argument is good, but you miss out the point that, in many respects, a foetus is part of the mothers body (one could say in a parasitic relationship) in a way a baby is not: this is an important distinction.

    What has been bothering me in this debate is that *medical technology* is, by some people, being allowed to define when a foetus is "viable". This is very dodgy ground to my mind: at some point in the future, we are almost certainly going to have the technology to fertilise a human egg outside the womb (probably without an sperm cell being involved) and then "grow" an entire baby in a lab (it’s actually very, very hard to do this, but I cannot see why impossible). At this point, are we going to say that abortion is outlawed? Are we infact going to say that a woman having a period is outlawed: they must report to a lab to have their egg captured, fertilised and grown in the lab?

    Setting a limit to abortions based, roughly, upon when a foetus might survive without heavy medical help seems reasonable: at this point, the boundry between "baby" and "foetus" does become blurred (but I wouldn’t call either a "person" or "human" in any sense). To use medical technology seems rather silly.

    We also, of course, should not be talking about banning anything. We should be talking about giving better sex education and better availability of contraceptives: the vast majority of (non-medical emergency) late-term abortions (of which we’re talking 0.5%, btw) are for teenage girls who have been living in denial about themselves being pregnant. To me, this is where the moral outrage should be: why are these girls getting pregnant to start with? Why not try to drastically reduce the *need* for late-term abortions (or abortions at all) instead of just *banning* them and hoping the issue will go away?

    –Matt

  9. Say there’s a situation in which pregnant woman or foetus will ‘die’ if the other one lives. Should ‘society’ be allowed to to choose the woman to die? Should the father be allowed to make this decision?

    More generally, it’s not that men shouldn’t be allowed an opinion, it’s that they shouldn’t be allowed the final decision.

  10. "To say that a father should have no say in whether his child is born or killed simply because he doesn’t have a womb is preposterous"

    No one has said that a (prospective) father should have no say. But what say he has is up to the private relationship between him and the (prospective) mother. There cannot be a situation where a (prospective) father has legal rights over the (prospective) mother’s body.

  11. > it’s not that men shouldn’t be allowed an opinion, it’s that they shouldn’t be allowed the final decision.

    That’s a world away from

    > they should seriously consider shutting the fuck up about them until they’re, say, bearing an unwanted child

    which is what I was taking issue with.

    > Say there’s a situation in which pregnant woman or foetus will ‘die’ if the other one lives.

    Then everyone will get really depressed. This is exactly the sort of horrible situation in which there’s no nice answer possible. And it can get worse. What if the mother’s in a coma, with no guarantee of ever coming round? What if she has an incurable medical condition and is only expected to survive another couple of years regardless of the pregnancy? What if she’s signed a "do not rescuscitate" order against her husband’s wishes? What if she genuinely believes that she will spend eternity in Hell if she has an abortion, even if it is necessary to dave her life? Yes, sometimes the father should make the final decision, because sometimes he’s the only one who can. Such examples can tell us very little about what legislation is appropriate, because no legislation can provide anything remotely resembling a happy ending. I would want any law to leave some wiggle room for parents and their doctors in such extreme circumstances.

    However, the majority of abortions are nothing like that.

  12. Matt – Already the distinction between a foetus and a (premature) baby is very blurred, and I would argue that it’s unhelpful, since it seems to be based on where the foetus/child is (i.e inside or outside the womb) rather than what it is. I don’t consider that a good starting point at all, though you may disagree.

    Now let’s pretend that we’re living in the distant future and that technology allows babies to be grown from fertilized eggs in labs. Then the difference between a foetus and a (premature) baby completely breaks down. But we’ve still got to decide where to draw the line between abortion and murder: surely the only reasonable approach is to draw a line in the sand before which we can be pretty sure that what we’re killing is not a sentient human being. I’m not certain that where we’ve got it now would be the right place in this futuristic situation, and if medical technology isn’t relevant, then it can’t be the right place now either.

    You say you don’t consider babies "human": well you’re wrong. But whether or not they’re "people" is trickier: but they do have fully developed functional brains, and everything which goes with that: pain, hunger, basic emotions, etc. In any event the law currently considers the killing of a baby in exactly the same light as the killing of an adult. Would you want that changed? Perhaps you’d want to draw the line of possible sentience at more than 9 months after conception. It’s certainly a possibility, but if we do that, then we’d have to live with the consequences: namely that most of the time people wouldn’t bother with antenatal abortions, they’d just wait till the little fuckers were born, and abort them at that stage if they didn’t like the look of them.

  13. It strikes me that to say no person has the right to a view other than that espoused in a New Labour fanzine should fuck right off rather than just shut the fuck up.

    It is typical ‘I’m sorry for being a man’ Ben Elton type shit, and in any case, few working class woman would have much sympathy with the view that abortions are every woman’s right. As it happens, I think 24 weeks is the right cut-off point (leaves time after the 22 week scan in case anything is wrong) and the law is OK as it is. But I don’t need you telling me I can think about it.

    PS What’s funny about this: ‘I’ve even fucked a schoolgirl’s twat’ – your words, not mine, in your Purity Test. Or was that ‘just a bit of fun’. If you want to respect women, try respecting them when they are children too.

  14. Larry,

    You have ignored my point that a foetus is *part of the mothers body*: it’s not very distinct, and is very, very dependent upon the mothers body for its survival. Also, developmental science is increasingly showing how important the mother’s body is in deciding things like various gene-expressions etc.: we are much more than simply our genetic coding in this regard. I would hence say that it *is* important where a foetus is in this discussion; it’s also important to note that to get a foetus out of the womb is non-trivial, and the reverse is not possible.

    …reasonable approach is to draw a line in the sand before which we can be pretty sure that what we’re killing is not a sentient human being

    I think I agree with you here. However, I was arguing that using the point at which a foetus/baby could survive, with the best medical technology, is a profoundly bad way to decide the above point in time. Some people (especially in the last couple of years) seem to have been basing their arguments on precisely this point: survivability and sentience are very different things.

    You say you don’t consider babies "human": well you’re wrong.

    Is a human egg cell or a sperm "human"? Is some random cell in my body "human"? With cloning etc. we’re getting to the point where any of there things could be grow (with the help of a human female) into a fully formed human; surely a baby is simply just further along in this process. Of course, to some extent I’m playing a word game (what is the difference between "human" and "person"?)

    namely that most of the time people wouldn’t bother with antenatal abortions, they’d just wait till the little fuckers were born, and abort them at that stage if they didn’t like the look of them.

    I think, if you really believe this, then you have a fairly fucked-up view of why the absolutely vast majority of women have abortions. I cannot believe anyone sane would wish to kill a baby (espically given adoption possibilities). I can very well understand why a woman would want an early-term abortion. I can understand why, in extreme cases (which is really all we are arguing about) why some women would want latish-term abortions.

    Look, my position here is that we shouldn’t change the law. We should improve sex education etc. to mean that far fewer women seek late-term abortions: very few already do, and (reading in the Indi today for example) very few doctors agree to it. It’s already pretty hard to get any abortion in this country, and women are *not* popping down the clinic at 22 weeks as a form of birth-control!

    –Matt

  15. few working class woman would have much sympathy with the view that abortions are every woman’s right.

    Leave it out. Are you really trying to tell us that it’s only the middle class that has abortions?

  16. D2: I *think* that what Kevin’s "really trying to tell us," rightly or wrongly, is that few working class woman would have much sympathy with the view that abortions are every woman’s right. I *don’t* think that this implies, or even suggests, hints or insinuates, that it’s only the middle class that has abortions.

    But maybe I’m over-interpreting.

  17. Oh, and JohnB: This is your most infantile and shallow post for quite some time. Unless, of course, it was deliberate self-parody…in which case: Good one!

  18. Well, why did he waste everyone’s time bringing class divide bullshit into it, then?

    Oh, and public information time: the words in the purity test are not mine, but the Anti-Nowhere League’s (as also interpreted by Metallica). If I really need to make such disclaimers, I’d also like to make clear that I have nothing against goats, sheep, old men, monarchs (aside from being a republican, natch), homosexuals, or Spock.

  19. The only opinion poll I could find, Mori in 2001, found that 60% of C2DE woman thought woman should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy when they want. It doesn’t say what proportion didn’t, but looking at some of the other results suggest it will be about 20-25%%.

  20. > very few already do, and (reading in the Indi today for example) very few doctors agree to it.

    I don’t think we can rightly say that, if something’s rare, it’s OK. Serial killing is rare.

  21. Squander Two: I think it’s the lesser of two evils; serial killing is a bad analogy; casualties in war is better, where we do indeed both speak about "low casualties" being a good thing, while acknowledging that killing anyone is bad…

  22. Matt –

    I don’t care that the foetus is part of the mother’s body. I’m interested in the consciousness and feelings (if any) of the foetus, which are not part of the consciousness or feelings of the mother, they are totally separate and disjoint. If the foetus was *just* part of the mother’s body, then of course she could do what the fuck she wanted with it, but it isn’t: it’s also an independent, separate, and individual conscious being (at least after a certain stage it is).

    As for human babies not being human: is a baby gorilla a gorilla? Yes! Is your sperm human, well it’s not a human anyway. Your word games do exhibit grey area, but in every respect the differences between a single cell and a new-born baby vastly outnumber the differences between that baby and an adult. In other words the grey area lies somewhere between conception and birth, not after it. More awkwardly for current purposes I reckon that the grey area lies much nearer the beginning of pregancy than most people would like to admit.

    Wee seem to agree with me that what we need to do is "draw a line in the sand before which we can be pretty sure that what we’re killing is not a sentient human being" – it’s just that I’m far from convinced that 24 weeks is such a line.

    As for post-natal abortions: why do you give a fuck? If you don’t consider newly-born babies to be people or even humans, then I can’t see how you could have a moral problem with Band going beserk with a chainsaw in the neo-natal ward (at least the if all the babies there were unloved orphans).

  23. Larry,

    No, I disagree, I still think that it is important that a foetus is part of its mother is important: it means that one HAS to consider the woman in this discussion, so we cannot simply prattle on about the foetus, ignoring the effects of any action upon the mother. Self-awareness occurs somewhat after birth (young babies have less self-awareness than higher apes, though that rapidly changes, obviously). In terms of brain development I disagree with you: the change between conception and birth is less than the change between birth and later, as the brain wires itself with external stimuli. Leastways, I think we can safely say that science isn’t going to definately answer this one terribly soon. Certainly nothing in the last few years has changes our views about self-awareness etc. which again begs the question as to why we wish to mess with the law?

    I would love Band to go beserk with a chainsaw, as long as I can watch. Seriously, I don’t want newly-born kids to be killed at whim as they can and generally do (at least in the West) grow into adults, and don’t fuck about with their mothers bodies and mental health in the process (neccessarily, due to adoption etc.). The same cannot be said of foetuses. However, from a purely logical viewpoint, I don’t want to say that something magical happens at birth, much as something magical doesn’t happen at conception. It’s a process, starting with an egg and ending with an adult human sometime later.

    But the 24-week line is not really an absolute line in the sand: later abortions are allowed in exceptional circumstances, and the fact that (at present at least) women and their doctors are imposing their own line in the sand at a somewhat earlier point. Thus changing the law would basically only have the effect of fucking over some very messed up, often teenage, women. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me: again, why not make sure these women don’t arrive in this situation in the first place?

    Anyway, we seem to be arguing about lines in the sand now, and I believe Band once mentioned on this very blog that such arguments are essentially pointless (an argument, I might note, he seems to have ignored for this post).

    –Matt

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