Late Term Abortion

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Thu Nov 19 09:48:41 PST 1998


Marta raises a point which may be familiar to many but has never come to my attenion regarding the abortion debate.

Insofar as pregnancy is permitted to proceed to the third trimester through other than sheer laziness and irresponsibility on the part of those who don't want a baby, any abortion is in fact directed against the specific foetus in question, presumably out of some dissatisfaction with its health, gender, or other characteristics. Put aside the cases of those who are emotionally torn and change their mind at the last minute, for the sake of argument.

In this light, late-term abortions are really an expression of prejudice against the disabled and in some cases, in some cultures, women.

Data on reasons for late-term abortions would inform this issue, in my view, because why people abort should have some bearing on the laws or lack thereof governing abortion.

Suppose a racist regime promulgated a political campaign to convince and/or bribe members of a certain race or ethnic group that their presence was a bother to society as a whole, and all pregnancies should be aborted, and the targeted group accepted this logic. Would we still say there is absolute right to abort? I grant that this hypothetical is somewhat hyperbolic, but there are arguable real-world parallels, in particular the disability one. Also possibly involving minority groups and indigenous peoples under the yoke of less civilized governments of the world. There may have been nationalist commentary along these lines in the past.
>From this standpoint, natalism is one conceivable
response to race/ethnic/religious oppression.

In my foray into the world of adoption, the general situation was that children of two whites or two blacks were relatively scarce. In the first case, the cause was high demand. In the second, it was because black children born to someone with a functioning extended, working- class black families were seldom given up for adoption. Less desired and more available were minority or mixed-race kids born to parents with serious problems of one sort or another.

Those who assert an absolute right to abort in all circumstances would seem to have the burden of explaining why the person-to-be has no rights. Saying he or she is not a person simply evades the issue by promulgating definitions.

Don't ask me what all this should mean for policy. I don't know how one enforces a ban or restrictions on any type of abortion fairly and effectively. In the event of any type of mandate to carry a pregnancy to term, I would say that the state has a responsibility to support the resulting child in some way or another.

MBS



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