Further thoughts on abortion

Here are a few more.

• Consent to have sex is not the same as consent to become pregnant any more than consent to drive is the same as consent to be in a traffic accident. Indulging in the former naturally carries with it the risk that the latter may occur, but they are not the same thing. We have technologies at our disposal to help mitigate that risk. So much of the pro-life movement seems to exist under the assumption that the pregnant woman was asking for it. But ultimately it just feels to me like they want to punish women for having sex.

• Pregnancy and childbirth is the most intimate human experience possible. Even women who have very easy pregnancies and fast, easy, painless births experience a kind of intimacy with their fetus that is quite literally unimaginable for those who haven't been through it. The sensation of having another being living inside you for nine months cannot be adequately described. Birth is even more intimate; I completely understand why women who have had terrible birth experiences talk about PTSD and "birth-rape." Forcing a woman to go through the experience of pregnancy and childbirth is, in my opinion, more of a violation than rape. It doesn't matter to me why she got pregnant or why she feels she cannot carry the fetus to term, if a woman wants to end a pregnancy, no one should be able to force her continue it.
  

• A blastocyst is not a human individual, it's a ball of cells. And the rights of a ball of cells should not trump the rights of a woman to bodily integrity. On the other hand, a fetus that is ready to be born is a human individual, and at that point the fetus' right to life trumps the mother's right to bodily integrity. So, at some point between week 3 and week 37 (or so), the scales tip. I don't know when that is, although I think there's a lot of merit to the idea of age of viability, which is currently around 25 weeks. It makes sense to me that if a fetus is capable of life outside the womb, it should no longer be considered a part of its mother, but rather an individual with its own rights. That is why efforts to delay or postpone abortions, like waiting periods and limiting access, piss me off so much. They just make the matter murkier, pushing fetal development closer to that indistinct tipping point. It's not about educating the mother at all, it's about forcing her hand. Which is a violation of her bodily integrity (see point 2).

• The new ultrasound laws are patronizing and misogynistic. It assumes that the pregnant woman is a child or an imbecile, someone who doesn't understand her body, the procedure, or basic biology. It is also a punishment. A shaming technique absolutely intended to provoke feelings of guilt and remorse. I can't imagine a woman who is seeking an abortion doesn't know what she's doing any more than a man who orders a steak doesn't understand what he is doing. So let's pass a law mandating that meat-eaters watch a video of a slaughter house before they are allowed to purchase ground beef or order filet mignon, shall we? Sometimes there's a good reason for not wanting to be able to accurately visualize the consequences of our actions.

So those are the thoughts that have been stewing in my brain for some time. Also, I just started poking around Angie's blog, but I like this post on her pregnancy experience. I'd never heard of that kind of birth control tampering before.