Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site watmath.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!watmath!saquigley From: saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Abortion (continued..) Message-ID: <6951@watmath.UUCP> Date: Mon, 20-Feb-84 01:08:52 EST Article-I.D.: watmath.6951 Posted: Mon Feb 20 01:08:52 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 20-Feb-84 08:40:08 EST Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 121 Abortion: Part 4 In the last article, I concentrated my attention on fetuses in the abortion debate. In this one I will look mainly at mothers. Some people would allow women who get pregnant as a result of rape to have abortions if they so desire but not other women. Let us look at the possible motives for such a decision: 1 - A fetus conceived from an act of rape is less human than another fetus, or a fetus conceived in such a way can be killed to "pay for its father's crime" or something equivalent. These positions are clearly non-sensical. A rapist's fetus is in no way responsible for its father's crime, and it would be criminal to punish the father via his fetus. Therefore the reason for allowing the mother of this fetus is not related to the nature of this fetus, but to the nature of the mother. 2 - A woman who has been raped is more likely to suffer extremely from the rape, and the existence of this fetus would be a daily rem- inder of this horrible experience. The child born will very likely be given up for adoption or grow up unloved. While adopted children do not necessarily end up suffering too much because of this fact, it still remains that they are at a disadvantage from the moment of their birth because of our society's emphasis on the importance of "blood" relations, and because of the fact that no matter how unimportant it might be, it is never nice to feel unwanted by one's own parents. While it is probably true that the mother and child in a rape conception have a greater chance of suffering as a result of this rape, suffering is not limited to women who have been raped. It is quite conceivable that a raped woman might suffer less than other women as a result of being pregnant. For example, it is quite common for wife-batterers to start battering their wives as they are pregnant (why this is so, I do not know); continuing such a pregnancy would make the wife and child even more vulnerable to battering as a wife usually depends more on her husband the more children she has, since she needs more economic help to support herself and the children then she would just to support herself; For this reason, she may decide to stay with him, something she would not have done if it hadn't been for the existence of the child; the suffering will probably not be lim- ited to the mother: in many wife-battering situations, children also end up being battered (by either the father or the mother). Therefore, if the reason for allowing abortions to women who have been raped is to alleviate hers and the child's suffering, we must, if we want to be fair, allow it to other women who would also suffer "as much" from their pregnancy. This involves being able to assess suffering. Suffering, however is highly subjective, and even if it wasn't and it was possible to determine a measure of suffering, this could only be done with present suffering. Some of the suffering con- sidered in making a decision as to whether or not one should have an abortion is actually present such as the physical and emotional and economical discomforts of being pregnant, but most of the suffering being assessed is future suffering, what effect the child's presence will have on our lives as well as what effect our rejection partial or total, physical or emotional of that child will have on him/her. This is something which can only be guessed, and the persons who can guess best are the ones directly involved: the mother, the child, and more remotely the father, or the families of the parents. The idea of letting people so closely involved determine what amount of suffering is tolerable for them repels many people because they are afraid that this concept might be abused, and that women might decide on the whim of the moment not to have a child, even though the presence of that child would not disturb them very much, and use the excuse that only they know how much they will suffer, to get rid of it. While this is a very valid point theoretically, and while there might actually be cases where this might happen, the reality is that abortions are not trivial processes emotionally and involve a fair amount of suffering from the mother's part (and hopefully as little as possible from the fetus' part). To find out about this, one only needs to ask women who have gone through one. Some of this suffering is brought upon by society's insistence on inducing guilt on a mother who has decided that having an abortion is the best solution for herself, but some of it also seems to be simply caused by the abortion itself in the sense that the mother feels a real loss when she is not pregnant anymore and sometimes goes into a period of mourning. The loss felt varies greatly with each woman, but for most it is definitely there. Not only is the loss felt after the abortion, but many women (most of the ones I know) realise before the abortion, or before even getting pregnant that they would feel such a loss. Most women I know who support abortion on demand also feel that even though their position is clear on their right to have an abortion is they so desire, they are not as sure about whether they would be able to stand such a loss if they were faced with having to make that decision themselves. I do not have any data on this, but my impres- sion is that most women do realise beforehand that some amount of suffering is involved in having an abortion, and do make their deci- sions with this knowledge in mind. This point will be fairly obvious to most women, I believe, but it is something which many men are not aware of, this is why it needs to be made. Many people like to depict women choosing to have abor- tions as heartless creatures who have no concern for the suffering of others. Of course, some are like that, but my feeling about it is that most of these women do have some concern over others' suffering, but it is a more complex concern than the simple "I will not kill because that's bad" concern that the people criticising them have. The only evidence I have supporting this point of view is from the people I have known or heard of. It is not good enough to be "signi- ficant" in a statistical sense, but the evidence that has been put forth so far by people disagreeing with me on the matter has been even less significant: none of them ever bothered speaking to the women they were accusing of being insensitive. To recapitulate what has just been said, if women who are raped are allowed abortions so as to alleviate some of their suffering, oth- ers who would also suffer should also be allowed abortions. Therefore if abortions are allowed only to women who have been raped, the reason for allowing such abortion must be other than to alleviate their suffering. It is those reasons that I will analyse in the next chapter. Sophie Quigley watmath!saquigley