A clear (but erroneous) argument against abortion bans
The Hastings Center has a new blog which contains a piece by Hilde Lindemann which rightly calls last week's South Dakota legislation banning most abortions a "direct attack on Roe v. Wade." The author says that this law ignores the undue gender inequality of burden on the mother and enforces "specific performance" on the pregnant woman.
I'm not a lawyer, just a family doctor. However, doesn't the use of this doctrine of law involve penalties or the positive forcing of an intentional act that has been promised but is not being done? The prohibition *against the initiation* of an intentional act by a third party by abortion doesn't seem to quite fit.
I'm not a lawyer, just a family doctor. However, doesn't the use of this doctrine of law involve penalties or the positive forcing of an intentional act that has been promised but is not being done? The prohibition *against the initiation* of an intentional act by a third party by abortion doesn't seem to quite fit.
posted by LifeEthics.org at 3/12/2006 12:53:00 PM
2 Comments:
I am growing weary, but the battle is heating up. I feel compelled to respond to such articles as the one that you
allude to whenever I feel strongly that I have something positive to add, including criticism of the authors
viewpoint on the subject. I read her article, and checked her brief bio and have decided not to respond directly to
her here.
Her career has shaped her values and outlook so precisely that it is predictable that she would write what she did.
She raises the morality of personal choice above that of respect for life. In her argument, one made as a professor
of philosophy, she is very consistent in pointing out that value is what we choose to invest in something or
someone. In her mind her grandchild is not special for being her offspring or a human conceived and growing inside
her daughter. No, it is only her daughters choice to invest in this child that makes the child special to them. I
could venture a guess as to what moral or religious philosophy the author aligns herself with based on that alone.
That would be fine if she wasn't also attacking my set of values that place respect for human life above personal
choice.
She goes on to offer a weak and hardly credible legal metaphor of "specific performance" being unequally applied
between women and men. There is a significant difference, though, and that is that nature, not legislature, has
assigned the specific performance of motherhood in the gestational relationship pregnancy requires. Beyond that
biologically defined relationship women are free to be just as neglectful as men toward their children, at least in
our modern society. Again, that is because we respect her freedom of choice. In fact, as many a caring father has
found out, a mother may leave her offspring to him without any obligation for financial support. Why? Because our
social laws never anticipated that mothers would value life so little.
It is telling that Hilde feels compelled to paint the most awful picture of the "normal" environment in which women
are forced to bear children. It is "misogyny" that women's biology is what it is. Frankly, she doesn't even
acknowledge biology but seems to blame pregnancy on a male conspiracy to control. She uses awful-izing to constrict
the parameters by which pregnancy can be viewed as anything other than a horrible disease inflicted on women by men.
It is a combative stance towards men and unborn children that she describes. I'm sorry but I don't see the world
around me that way, Hilde.
What may surprise her is to know that I do favor laws that hold men much more accountable than is presently
required. Though talk of male abortion rights may illuminate the irrational and unequal nature of paternity choice in America
it would be a giant step backwards for society. It is because men cannot equally share in the gestational
relationship that they should be socially bound in other, more specific ways to provide for the offspring they
produce. The conjugal act between a man and woman should be assumed to be a binding contract to invest equal time
and energy into the product of their love making venture. Beyond the nature imposed gestational relationship both
men and women should choose(or be coerced) equally to care for their children as they are able.
I decided to respond to Hilde here because I was certain that my words would fall on deaf ears. The values and
morality she holds are inconsistent with mine. She has every right to them to the extent it does not harm me. But it
is precisely when her views are allowed to prevail that men and society are held captive to the caprice of the
self-serving choice a mother may make that I say she has disrespected so many others. A mother does not have a right
to take the life of the child she created with another man. She does not have the right to harm the father's
interest in his own child based solely on the biological burden imposed on her. Nine months of pregnancy, with all
attendent risks and normal consequences, is not a license to kill.
I think Hilde's article was disturbing enough in my mind that I felt led to purchase a book on Michael Foucult. I believe
he would find her words quite transparent. Her words are not truly concerned with her daughters or grandchilds
well-being. Rather it is the maintenance of her vision of womankind as embattled and fighting for self-actualization that
she attempts to defend. Meaning is derived at all costs from that mode of thought. A mother in her world must give
birth twice: once to herself and once to her perfectable child. Careless timing can ruin it all. Men and society are
immaterial in such a view, save where they cooperate towards achieving this narrow goal. Ultimately a population
conscripted to such a march fails to replace itself fast enough and all chance at meaning and value is lost.
This Lindemann is a horrific person. And there are many who think like her.
But that is part of democracy: the stupid and hateful cry louder and usually have access to mass media to spread their poison.
I agree with j2 (btw very good comment!) except I do not tolerate her like.
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