Abortion Without Regret

Each week, Abort73 receives new testimonies from women who have had an abortion. About ninety-five percent of their stories communicate misery and remorse. The other five percent are "celebrations" of abortion. Last week, one such testimony came in from a woman in Dallas. She began with a broad criticism of ideology and concluded with the following:

I had an abortion back in 2006, and I feel today what I felt then: relief. Growing up, I was bombarded with the potential negative consequences of abortion - leading to an irrational fear. I personally find your information regarding the negative consequences of abortion to be astoundingly inaccurate. My abortion was pain free, easy, and the right decision for me, and 6 years later I would make the same decision for myself.

These are the remarks that preceded her abortion admission:

[Abort73 wants to enforce] a public policy that would have the collective ruling over the individual's uteri - a no-man's land that we must not allow individuals or governments to legislate. SCOTUS (the Supreme Court) has no more jurisdiction over the surface of the moon then they do over the cells growing inside of a woman's uteri. Your web site seeks to make every matter - regardless of how private - [a subject] for public discourse. While your goal to fight for those you feel have been unjustly dispatched (aborted "children") is noble, your method of being intrusively involved in the private matters of women, and your goal of controlling the minutia of human existence is absurd, illogical, and unenforceable. A fetus requires a number of things from its host: for its host to continue living (which inherently [makes] the fetus' right to life dependent upon the hosts' willingness to continue living, it requires its host to not ingest toxic substances, it requires its host to provide nutrients, oxygen, and space to grow. However, there is no law defining a human's right to receive these things from another human. There is no law dictating the sharing of organic matter between two individuals - even if this sharing is required for one of the individuals to live. Hence: one is not required to provide blood to someone who needs it (even if they are the only available source of a rare blood type), a relative is not required to donate an organ to a dying individual (even if they are the only match for such a donation). These cases are true whether (or not) the life of a person will be lost due to non-cooperation. Likewise, regardless of how a fetus came to be inside of a woman's body, a woman cannot be legally or morally required by any law or legislator to provide the organic connection, nourishment, or live herself to facilitate the development of said fetus. There is no law protecting the right of one to occupy another, and there is no right of a third party to dictate the occupancy of a woman's uterus. There is no law protecting the right of one to continue to receive organic matter from another for the purpose of surviving and developing. Many abortions happen spontaneously - without medical intervention - for a number of reasons. Must you seek legal remedy to control those as well? Of course not, that would be futile and absurd. Don't get me wrong - I would fiercely protect and support a woman who chose to keep her child - but I would not stand in her way to abort. I don't have control over other people, much less the womb's of other people. There is a point where government and individuals must relinquish the control they think they have and let individuals make their own choices - welcome to the human existence - where your or any government's control over a woman's body is not an inherent right.

I share her remarks for two reasons. First, Abort73 has no interest in silencing those who disagree with us. Without question, there are plenty of post-abortive women who think exactly as she does – at least publicly. We do not pretend otherwise. If we're going to oppose abortion in the public square, we must have an answer for all the women who say: I had an abortion. It was painless. I have never felt anything but relief. If I had to do it again, I would. The answer, of course, is that even though the misery and regret often experienced by post-abortive women can be a strong deterrent to abortion, the case against abortion does not ultimately depend on their experience. Even if there wasn't a single woman who ever regretted her abortion, that would not change the ethics of the matter or influence our opposition to it. The case against abortion is anchored on the fact that it kills an innocent human being, not on the emotional havoc it can wreak on the aborting mother. The second reason I share her remarks is so I can offer some short responses to them as a help to those who have or will face the same objections. To that end, I've broken up her remarks below and responded one by one. Whenever possible, I lead with a question.

[Abort73 wants to enforce] a public policy that would have the collective ruling over the individual's uteri - a no-man's land that we must not allow individuals or governments to legislate.

If it's wrong for the collective to exert its will over and above the rights of the individual, isn't that a strike against abortion? Abortion, after all, is a situation where the most fundamental rights of individual human beings in the womb are being denied because the collective whole has determined them to be human, "non-persons."

SCOTUS (the Supreme Court) has no more jurisdiction over the surface of the moon then they do over the cells growing inside of a woman's uteri.

Wasn't it the Supreme Court that made abortion federally legal in the first place? It is only because the Supreme Court made the womb its personal jurisdiction that abortion is now considered a constitutionally protected act. And regarding your comparison to the moon, the Supreme Court would have jurisdiction over the surface of the moon if a crime was committed there by or upon a U.S. citizen. If Neil Armstrong had assaulted and killed Buzz Aldrin upon their historic landing, would anyone suggest that the normal rule of law doesn't apply there?

Your web site seeks to make every matter - regardless of how private - [a subject] for public discourse.

When you say "every matter," what do you have in mind beyond abortion? Do you think abortion should not be a subject of public discourse? Unless a woman self aborts (which is illegal in most states), abortion is not a purely private matter. And even if she doesn't involve all the clinic staff who participate in a normal abortion, self-abortion still involves her child and the biological father–whether he knows about it or not.

While your goal to fight for those you feel have been unjustly dispatched (aborted "children") is noble, your method of being intrusively involved in the private matters of women, and your goal of controlling the minutia of human existence is absurd, illogical, and unenforceable.

Since you call our goal of fighting for aborted children a noble one, how could we go about it in a less intrusive, absurd, and illogical way? What is intrusive, absurd, and illogical about offering a website that gives people a better understanding of what abortion is and does? And why do you say it would be "unenforceable" to outlaw abortion? There are all sorts of "services" that doctors and medical clinics are not allowed to perform for their patients. When such prohibitions are ignored, doctors go to jail and/or clinics lose their medical license. Why would it be any different for abortion?

A fetus requires a number of things from its host: for its host to continue living (which inherently [makes] the fetus' right to life dependent upon the hosts' willingness to continue living). It requires its host to not ingest toxic substances, it requires its host to provide nutrients, oxygen, and space to grow.

Do you think it should be legal for pregnant women to engage in behavior that will harm their developing child–things like smoking, drinking, or drugs? Do you think it's wrong for the law to require parents to provide nutrients and a space to live in for their born children? By your logic, parents should never be held accountable to provide their children with the necessities of life.

However, there is no law defining a human's right to receive these things from another human. There is no law dictating the sharing of organic matter between two individuals - even if this sharing is required for one of the individuals to live. Hence: one is not required to provide blood to someone who needs it (even if they are the only available source of a rare blood type), a relative is not required to donate an organ to a dying individual (even if they are the only match for such a donation). These cases are true whether (or not) the life of a person will be lost due to non-cooperation.

Granting your argument that the law cannot force someone to be an organ or blood donor (even if they're the only match and the donation can be made with little risk to their own life), does that thereby give the "host" a legal right to actually kill the dependent? In other words, is there a difference between passively allowing a dependent to die and actively being the agent of their death? Essentially, there are two issues here. The first relates to law; the second relates to compassion. What you're arguing for is the right to be selfish. And in many contexts, the government should absolutely honor a citizen's right to be selfish. But imagine a scenario in which a 5-year-old girl needs a blood transfusion to survive, and for some reason her mother is the only match. Even if the law can't force the mother to give up some blood to save her daughter's life, what kind of mother would she be to let her daughter die because she was afraid of needles or didn't want to take time off of work? The moral outcry over such a decision would be universal and well-deserved. And how much worse would it be if instead of just letting her daughter die, she hired someone to kill her daughter by poison or dismemberment?

Likewise, regardless of how a fetus came to be inside of a woman's body, a woman cannot be legally or morally required by any law or legislator to provide the organic connection, nourishment, or live herself to facilitate the development of said fetus. There is no law protecting the right of one to occupy another, and there is no right of a third party to dictate the occupancy of a woman's uterus. There is no law protecting the right of one to continue to receive organic matter from another for the purpose of surviving and developing.

Why can't a woman be legally required to provide nourishment for her developing fetus? And when you say "there is no law protecting the right of one to receive organic matter from another for the purpose of surviving and developing," are you implying that parents are not legally obligated to feed their children? Parents do have legal/moral obligation to take care of their children after their born. Why should it be any different before they're born? Regarding the legal principles you outline, it must be noted that pregnancy is a wholly unique phenomenon. In many ways, it is incomparable to any other human relationship. We can create hypothetical situations in which one person can only survive by being attached to another person, but none of these scenarios have any connection to reality. Whether you attribute their presence in the womb to God or nature, this is exactly where unborn human beings are supposed to be. There is nothing artificial or unnatural about their being there, just as there is nothing artificial or unnatural about the intrinsically dependent nature of the parent/child relationship.

Many abortions happen spontaneously - without medical intervention - for a number of reasons. Must you seek legal remedy to control those as well? Of course not, that would be futile and absurd.

You've answered your own question. It would be futile and absurd to make spontaneous abortions illegal. Nobody is suggesting that.

Don't get me wrong - I would fiercely protect and support a woman who chose to keep her child - but I would not stand in her way to abort. I don't have control over other people, much less the womb's of other people.

Would you stand in her way if she were trying to "abort" a born child? Would you say the government doesn't have the right to exercise "control over other people" if those people are trying to harm an innocent victim? The primary function of government is to protect its citizens, nor matter how small they are and no matter where they're located.

There is a point where government and individuals must relinquish the control they think they have and let individuals make their own choices - welcome to the human existence - where your or any government's control over a woman's body is not an inherent right.

Should individuals be allowed to make their own choices in the context of murder, rape and violent assault? Why is it reasonable and appropriate for the government to control a woman's (or man's) body if they want to molest young children who are born, but not when they want to kill a young child in the womb?

You'll notice that the only way any of her arguments can work is if she's able to demonstrate that the "thing" being aborted is not an individual human being, but rather a morally insignificant clump of cells – as she asserts at the outset. This point, however, is one she simply assumes. She never provides any evidence to establish its reality (perhaps because there isn't any) and bases all of her objections to Abort73 on this false assumption. The only reason she thinks women should be free to abort is because she sees abortion as more akin to a mastectomy than a murder. It is not. Abort73's opposition to abortion has nothing to do with wanting to control the "minutia of human existence." It has everything to do with wanting to protect the most innocent and helpless members of the human community from violence and destruction.