Two Arguments in the Abortion Mixer
Continuing to chew the abortion issue with some amiable conversation partners, Mr Boonton suggests that there is a significant problem for the pro-life communities seeming disregard and nonchalance over the fact that a significant fraction of conceptions result in no implantation (naturally) and that even after implantation spontaneous abortion remains a possibility in a significant fraction of pregnancies. Often the parents are unaware that they have conceived and a essentially symptomless termination of the pregnancy occurrs. He suggests that money well spent on natal care of ailing infants is rightly not diverted to research and development to halt this, apparent, outrage … if after all if early fetal life is worth “the same as an adult (or infant)” then not wanting to halt this outrage is … outrageous (or hypocritical).
However, consider for a moment what would have to transpire for such occurrences to be avoided. First of all it would have to be detected. So sexual intercourse must move from a transporting event, sacramental, that meeting of body and soul of which the poets and artists aspire to encircle … to a medical endeavor. To be done, tested, and verified and diagnosed. To be rushed to the auspices of technology and medicine to arrange, order, and judge. In this rush, dignity and humanity goes to the wayside. And that loss is crucial and devastating. If the one of the purposes of government is to secure happiness … and happiness is to be found in the perfection of virtue … then the dignity of man is clearly essential. That for one is surely an important reason that one doesn’t seek prevention of natures spontaneous abortions … that there is no way to prevent them and to maintain dignity.
The second issue raised was about privacy and the smallest society possible is that between a mother and her fetus. In my notions of pushing authority to the local communities it was suggested that most local of societies is to move the authority for an abortion to that between a mother and her unborn. Well, that doesn’t make sense, frankly. Unless the mother is living alone in desert solitude (and how then one might wonder did she get pregnant) a larger community will be affected by the decision to abort. Father, acquaintances, future children, parents, cousins, friends, and neighbors will all be affected by the decision to abort. Sex is not a private act. It affects the community surrounding them. Abortion as well is not “private.”
Jouvenel, as I noted just a few days ago, offers a fresh look at political theory. In doing so, he devastatingly critiqued the prevalent foundational theories of modern democracies that had been offered by Hobbes and Locke. His critique of Hobbes is relevant for the notion of the extreme individualism offered in the prior paragraph. Hobbes suggested an anthropological origin for power, that men gather together in society and yield some of the rights to the collective to allow the government collectively to protect and shield from circumstances, poetically noted as being a life that is “nasty, brutish, and short” outside of the collective society. However, Jouvenel notes that is anthropological rubbish. Men in the first societies didn’t do anything like that. What they did, of course, is to grant authority to one or a few in their tribal gatherings in whom they found qualities of leadership.
Likewise, there is no pregnant woman who exists in a society of self and fetus. For that matter the woman, her fetus, and her partner do not unless live in isolation outside of the rest of the society of men. That too is an anthropological fiction. A case study for those who ponder the nature of men absenting their thoughts from the reality of man.
Filed under: Abortion • Mark O.
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