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So about those hard cases . . .

So about those hard cases . . .

Last updated on: March 26, 2016 at 4:05 pm by Jane the Actuary

So about those hard cases . . . 2016-03-26T16:05:47-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Here’s what Chris Christie had to say at the latest GOP debate, as quoted by Time:

“I believe that if a woman has been raped, that is a birth and a pregnancy that she should be able to terminate. If she is the victim of incest, this is not a woman’s choice. This is a woman being violated. And the fact is that we have always has believed, as has Ronald Reagan, that we have self-defense for women who have been raped and impregnated because of it, or the subject of incest and been impregnated for it,” he said. “That woman should not have to deliver that child if they believe that violation is now an act of self-defense by terminating that pregnancy.”

Here’s what bothers me about this:

Should abortions be permitted in the case that a woman’s life is endangered? Yes. Well, except that I’m not an expert on the topic, and, from what I understand, the issue is whether, even in these (rare) circumstances, an abortion — that is, the intentional killing of the child — is necessary, as opposed to other lifesaving actions which may, as a consequence, result in the child’s death, through the principle of double-effect. And the other issue is what to do when a woman depends on a medication (or chemotherapy drugs, for instance) which are feared to cause birth defects if administered while pregnant. So it’s actually not so simple.

Should abortions be permitted when a woman’s health is endangered? This is where the disputes begin. Certainly, any pro-life supporter worth her salt knows that the Supreme Court has defined “health” to mean not just physical health but any circumstance in which her “emotional health” would be impacted, or the “health” of the family potentially burdened by an extra child. Various laws try to define health more narrowly — a permanent, severe impact to physical health, for instance — but I’m not going to play expert here on what conditions might qualify here.

And then we get to the third in the triad of abortion exceptions: rape and incest. Intuitively, it makes sense to say that, in ordinary circumstances, a woman who becomes pregnant, intentionally engaged in an act that, as a potential consequence, can result in pregnancy, but a woman who is raped didn’t make this choice.

But what troubles me is that this line of reasoning veers awfully close to the abortion rights accusation that pro-lifers “just want to punish women for having sex.” Sure, it’s not exactly the same claim, but it’s too close for comfort: “a woman who was raped is innocent [of having sex] so it’s morally acceptable for her to get an abortion” says, in its implication, “a woman who got pregnant due to consensual sex is guilty.” Yes, it’s not meant to say this, but, in hearing Christie’s statement, it jumped out at me for the first time.

Maybe we don’t really mean this. Christie’s statement is certainly jumbled. Maybe we really just are thinking of the fact that for young girls who become pregnant due to the paring of early puberty and abuse, pregnancy poses particular health risks. And for women who are raped, the assumption (though this is disputed) is that nine months of pregnancy will be emotionally traumatic, so it’s essentially a form of “health exception.”

(On the other hand, some women who were pressured into abortion following a rape-resultant pregnancy describe this as a “second rape.” Whether there have been any long-term studies of raped women who got abortions or didn’t, I don’t know.)

But at the same time, if we’re honest, there are also still some pretty old-fashioned attitudes at work here. “A woman shouldn’t have to bear her rapist’s baby,” for instance — as if the baby is something out of a Stephen King novel, the demonic spawn of an evil act. Or that the rape is so shameful that, just as Middle Eastern families feel they need to honor-kill their raped daughters, the unborn child must likewise be killed to preserve the woman’s honor, especially in situations in which the woman is unmarried/not in a relationship, so that a pregnancy would raise questions about the father and the woman’s behavior.

The ABC show “Jane the Virgin” (which, admittedly, I’ve never watched) raises an interesting hypothetical: so far as I understand the premise of the show, Jane, a virgin, who has resolved to wait until her upcoming wedding, is, through a chain of events requiring more than the usual suspension-of-disbelief , accidentally impregnated during the course of what was supposed to be a routine GYN appointment. She wasn’t raped. It was essentially the equivalent of the mythical impregnation due to sperm at the swimming pool. Taking the pro-life point of view as a given, does she have a “moral right” to get an abortion?

Having said all this, though, the question remains: what should Christie, or the other candidates, have said?

I believe that human life begins at conception, and that no one has the right to intentionally take another’s life, except for narrow circumstances of self-defense or in the context of military defense. At the same time, we are a democracy, and I fully understand that the consensus of the American people is neither to ban all abortions, nor to allow for abortion at any time up to childbirth, as the Supreme Court permitted and my opponent supports, but somewhere in-between. Certainly the American people reject the government funding of abortion that my opponent supports. As president, I will work to implement the reasonable restrictions on abortion that the majority of Americans support. I will also ensure the future Supreme Court appointees are not the pro-abortion ideologues my opponent will appoint!

Eh, it’s too wordy, isn’t it? And there’s no good sound byte or pithy twitter-able 144-character quote here.

But you see what I mean? Pro-lifers take the “rape and incest” exception be as plain as day, and abortion rights supporters attempt to cudgel pro-lifers who don’t subscribe to this exception as the worst of the worst. But it’s not that simple.

So let’s talk. (And by the way, comments that simply take the abortion rights viewpoint that all abortions are always morally right really don’t further the discussion.)

Image from from https://www.flickr.com/photos/92334668@N07/11368402995 by flickr user tec_estromberg — just to be unconventional.

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