Sex, Lies & Feminism by Peter Zohrab: Chapter 11: The Choice/Abortion Myth

CHAPTER 11
THE RIGHT OF CHOICE AND ABORTION

Introduction
Women receive state subsidies to end someone's life (state-funded abortion), but men get arrested for ending someone's life. When it comes to reproductive rights, women have all the power; men and unborn children have none. If, as they say, Feminists really believe in equality, then they must agree that, to the extent possible given the complexity of the issues and the ages of the parties involved, the power must be shared equally among all 3 parties.

This chapter has three sections: Choice For Men, Choice for Men in Abortion, and Abortion. Choice For Men takes over where Feminism leaves off, on the assumption that Feminism has won the war on abortion. The sections on abortion discuss the place of this topic in the context of the sex war as a whole.

Choice for Men
According to the Position Paper on Men's Reproductive Choice:

One out of four U.S. children are born out of wedlock. While 1.6 million U.S. women abort and decline parenthood each year, half a million men have their "paternities established" in U.S. courts and preliminary data indicates that about 33% of U.S. births may be unintended according to fathers. Men have been treated as an under class without reproductive rights.... Denying men reproductive rights is humiliating, oppressive, offensive to the basic principles of human dignity.... (www.rahul.net/c4m/c4m.html)

Men are entitled to as much reproductive "choice" as women, and should be allowed to terminate their paternal rights and responsibilities under essentially the same conditions governing women's right to terminate their pregnancies. Unplanned fatherhood can completely disrupt a man's life. It disrupts his education and mental health – indeed, his entire family life. Psychological harm and heartbreak may result. His mental and physical health may suffer. The unwanted child may also suffer distress. And the man involved may have to carry a social stigma as a result of being an unmarried father.

Unlike Feminists, advocates of choice for men seldom assert a man's right to terminate is absolute. They just advocate that the decision as to whether a particular man will terminate his parental rights and responsibilities is a decision that should be made by that man – in the same way a woman decides whether she is going to have an abortion. This position is not without ethical problems – what is a child going to feel like when it grows up and finds its own father disowned and rejected it? In the case of abortion, at least the child is dead and does not know that it has been rejected and killed. On the other hand, at least the child whose father has exercised his "choice" is still alive!

Another way that “Choice for Men” could be interpreted is to provide men with more access to reproductive technology. I am not necessarily taking a stance in favour of the use of reproductive technology, such as cloning, but if women get access to it, then men should have access to it as well. According to the Dominion newspaper of March 16 2001, an 84-year-old man in Australia, Dr. Frank Hansford-Miller, has been trying to get someone to agree to clone him. This is an issue which will need looking at from a Men's Rights perspective, too.


Choice for Men in Abortion
The pro-choice camp favors choice as long as it's for women, only. When it comes to men, they use the same arguments that the pro life lobby does. This demonstrates their hypocrisy.

They say women must have choice as to what to do with their own fertility, but men have no rights except to pay for the choices women make. If a woman signs an abortion form, then she has robbed the father of his child – whose existence he may not even have been aware of. If she doesn't sign an abortion form, then he is saddled with a child whom he has to bring up, or whose upkeep he has to subsidise willy-nilly – and he may have thought all along she was infertile or protected by contraception.

Such is the dominance women have over western society that their rights override the rights of both unborn children and fathers. The Feminist slogan "her body, her choice" is so widely accepted that anything inside her is hers to do with as she likes. (The Feminists' insistence on this is so extreme that they oppose laws that punish pregnant women who abuse drugs or alcohol.) This ignores the fact that a fetus is only inside her body because a man helped put it there. That man has rights over the fetus as well. After all, there is no widely available alternative at present for a man who wants to have his own natural children – he has to persuade a woman to bear it for him.

The father may have strong views as to whether he wants the child to be born or not, and they should be taken into account. After all, once the child is born the father may well be obliged to rear it, make maintenance payments to the mother in cases of separation or divorce, have some of his estate go to it when he dies, and so on. Simply put, it is inequitable for the mother to have the unilateral right to decide whether to thrust these duties and liabilities on the father. To paraphrase Thomas (1993), would you let someone spend your money to buy an expensive car of her choice, and then let her take it away for her use alone?

There is a parallel here with Roman family law. In Ancient Rome, the father was Head of the Household, and had power of life and death over his slaves, if any, and also over his other dependents, such as his children and his wife. Today, this arrangement is widely viewed with moral outrage. But the parallel with the mother's almost absolute power of life and death over an unborn child in modern societies is very striking. O tempora! O mores! (What times! What customs!)

Abortion
There are at least two types of killing all western societies permit – warfare and abortion. Warfare is when people (mainly men) risk life and limb to kill other people (mainly men) for the benefit of their entire society. Abortion is when women risk very little to kill a defenceless person for their own benefit. This clearly illustrates how modern western societies revolve around the needs of women, even to the extent of decriminalising murder.

Haskell and Yablonsky's (1974) introductory textbook on Criminology contains a section on the decriminalisation of abortion which clearly illustrates the dominance Feminism has achieved over the intellectual establishment in western countries. They wrote it shortly after the United States Supreme Court decision of 1973 on abortion. It ruled that women had the right to abortion in the first six months of pregnancy, and that in the first three months of pregnancy the decision was solely up to the woman and her doctor.

Even before then, however, only fifteen of the fifty states in the US actually punished a woman who got a doctor to kill "her" fetus. Generally, only the doctor got the rap. Compare this with the scenario of a contract-murder, where most states and countries hold both the instigator and the actual perpetrator accountable for the crime. How things have changed:

"(M)edical reasons, rape and incest account for relatively few abortions. Women seek abortions because they are reluctant to interrupt career plans, they lack money, they fear losing personal freedom, or they are doubtful about their relationship with the man involved." (Haskell and Yablonsky 1974, 366)

Here we have an example of what happens to a victimless (my emphasis) crime when a law regulating morality is abolished. The real victim of abortion laws was the poor woman who went for an illegal abortion. The law that was intended to protect her had made her a victim. (ibid, 366)

Considering this is from a textbook for Law students, the authors are remarkably one-sided. How someone can call an event "victimless" when it kills someone who, in a few years' time, might themselves have read this textbook is almost beyond comprehension! Imagine decriminalising contract-murder!

In fact, the authors are well aware that abortion is not a victimless crime; in their next breath they go on to talk about who the "real victim" is. Reading between the lines, it seems clear they are just not fair-minded enough to come right out and say the unborn child is a victim of the abortion, but allude to it indirectly by referring to the "real" victim.

Ironically, the only time Feminists actively oppose abortion and infanticide is when it occurs in Third-World countries and the victims are largely female, as in India or China! They decry abortions which follow ultrasound scans of a mother's uterus in such countries, because the unborn children killed under such circumstances are mainly female babies. In China, elderly people traditionally lived with their eldest son. There is a one-child-per-couple population-control policy in China which is rigidly enforced in the cities. Parents feel they will have no one to support them in their old age if their only child turns out to be female. So female fetuses detected by ultrasound scans are frequently aborted or if the female child is carried to term she is at high risk for infanticide. Feminists abhor this and, under the banner of "eugenics" (evoking memories of Nazi programs) lobby against it. But only where the victims are largely female -- clear evidence of how sexist they are.

The standard Feminist line is that abortion is not murder because the people it kills are not people. This de-humanisation (objectification?) of children is most developed in the case of unborn children, but western courts also tend to act leniently toward mothers who commit infanticide, hence we may witness the gradual extension of "abortion" to children who have already been born: postpartum abortion?

It is not only religious fundamentalists who see serious problems with the Feminist agenda on abortion, though it sometimes seems only the religious right is willing to actively oppose abortion. Some Libertarians, such as Doris Gordon are completely opposed to abortion (www.concentric.net/~bwjass/lfl/ac&lp.htm). Personally, my own objection stems from my abhorrence of murder in principle, not any particular religious doctrine.

Female fragility?
In New Zealand in 1998 (according to the Report of the Abortion Supervisory Committee), 14,965 (i.e., 98.4%) of the 15,208 abortions carried out in that year were authorised to avert "serious damage to the mental health" of the mother. Who are they trying to fool? Is anyone seriously claiming all these women (in New Zealand's small population of 3.6 million people) would have suffered serious mental health problems without an abortion? In an article to appear in the NZMERA Newsletter (http://www.geocities.com/peterzohrab/299enslt.html), Paul Clarke suggests the New Zealand government should set up a public inquiry into the mental health of pregnant women to clarify this serious issue!

Are New Zealand women really that fragile? Or are the Feminists, who run the system, abusing the law, interpreting it as a licence to abort at will? It is a fact in western countries that (male and female) Feminists predominate in agencies which implement social and medical legislation, and they often abuse their power and interpret the legislation under which they operate as they see fit. And they must be interpreting the word "serious" very loosely. Cases of rape and physical health problems of the mother or fetus are not a significant part of the overall abortion statistics in western countries. Most abortions are performed as nothing more than a post-coital birth control technique. How serious is that? As serious as a woman's need for sex? As serious as a man's?

This raises the issue of the "morning-after" pill RU486, which produces a sort of abortion. Anyone who is against abortion would have to be against the use of this pill, too. According to a Boston Globe article archived at the RU486 Files website (www.ru486.org/ru9.htm), Feminists are divided over use of this pill. Some have denounced it as a "dangerous and cumbersome medication that should not be permitted to replace conventional surgical abortions in the United States or elsewhere." This underscores the fact that abortion is indeed regarded by Feminists as a contraceptive measure, and not as a mental health procedure!

Abortion is a very emotional issue, with strong arguments on both sides. At first blush it seems like an issue on its own – virtually separate from the overall debate between Feminism and Masculism. In fact, however, questions of the rights of men and women (as well as the rights of unborn children) are very much involved.

Do many Feminists, deep down, feel very guilty about the abortion issue? Surely, many of those women who have had an abortion themselves must. Could this be why Feminists try so hard to make all men feel guilty about sex abuse, rape and domestic violence? To divert attention away from their own sense of guilt and shame? Someone could perhaps research the psychohistory of Feminism, and look at abortion in this context.

Let's examine some of the arguments involved. I will limit myself to one pro-abortionist's arguments, because hers are among the most cogently argued. Thomson (1980) is a tightly reasoned attack on the anti-abortionists' case. However, her argument depends on making certain dubious assumptions. She analyses the antiabortion argument into two components:

1.The notion that a fetus must be a "person" from the very moment of conception on – because otherwise it is impossible to draw the line separating its early existence as a "non-person" from its later existence as a "person." This argument attempts to refute the traditional notion that a person's life begins at birth.
2.The notion that the fetus's right to life outweighs the mother's right to control what goes on inside her body. The point here is that, in most cases, the mother's actual existence is not threatened by anything that the fetus may do – whereas the reverse is not true.

Thomson disagrees with both notions. She characterizes the first as an instance of the "slippery slope", on which she pours scorn, by comparing it with the argument that you cannot say when an acorn ceases to be an acorn and starts to be an oak tree. Her point is that acorns are not the same as oak trees, so there must be some sort of dividing line somewhere even though it may be hard to say exactly where it is.

That, however, is a false analogy. A fetus is contrasted with an infant or baby and the dividing line is purely and simply the time of birth. This is a social construct rather than a biological condition which marks the moment when human society traditionally got its first glimpse of the person. Ultrasound scans are now blurring that line.

An acorn is and looks very different from an oak tree, but a fetus does not look very different from a newborn and very early on shares many of the same characteristics. Indeed, there is little about the physical nature of a fetus that differs from that of a newborn. Acorns are certainly physically different from oak trees, but fetuses and persons are not such contrasting concepts in ordinary language.

Moreover, there is no established linguistic tradition whereby a baby is a "person" but a fetus is not.
Some suggest one could say an acorn ceases to be an acorn once it sprouts and, likewise, a zygote ceases to be a zygote (and starts to be a fetus) once the cells begin to differentiate, head and neck, nose and toes, a beating heart and hands to hold. This would get around the problem of trying to draw a line between sperm and ova, and tissues such as fingernail-clippings that might be used to clone a new human being, on the one hand, and a fetus, on the other. I don't myself mark such a boundary between the zygote and the fetus, though some people might see that as a defensible position to take.

Regardless, Thomson does not develop this argument, because she believes it would be hard to mark the moment when a fetus becomes a person. My own view is that a fingernail, sperm, or ovum will not spontaneously develop alone into a human being, and so is clearly not a person. Of course, even a fertilised egg needs an (artificial or natural) womb to develop into a human being, but a fingernail, sperm or ovum needs more than that!

Moreover, it is hard to state exactly when an acorn starts sprouting or a zygote develops appendages, because these are gradual processes which don't care about things like providing the sharp boundary we need for the purpose of defining "murder."

So what Thomson concentrates on is the second argument – the relationship between the rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus. Ingeniously, she draws up the imaginary scenario of someone waking up back-to-back in bed with a famous, unconscious violinist. This violinist needs that person's kidneys to do the work his malfunctioning kidneys cannot do, so his circulatory system has been linked to the other person's – against their will – for a period of time which could be nine months (or forever). There is no one else available whose blood-type is suitable for this particular role. So the donor was kidnapped and rendered unconscious while doctors linked their two bodies.
"His right to life outweighs your right to control your own body," the doctor tells the donor.

Thomson assumes most readers would agree this was an unacceptable state of affairs. If this is unacceptable, she reasons, surely terminating a pregnancy that was the result of rape (a similarly involuntary scenario to the one with the violinist) would have to be considered acceptable and right. And if the pregnancy is involuntary, resulting from rape, Thomson asks, is an abortion okay then? If so, why?

There is a logical flaw in her reasoning: aborting a fetus resulting from rape seems more acceptable (to many people) than other cases of abortion -- not because some fetuses have a greater right to life than others, but that the mother's right to control her own body has been violated and a heavy responsibility foisted upon her to a degree which outweighs (in some people's minds) the right of the fetus to life. Of course, men do not get pregnant, so it is not a choice men are directly confronted with. However, the fact that only women ever have to make this choice is not an argument in favour of allowing women to act immorally! Men (particularly in wartime and potential rape scenarios) are often in situations which virtually no women have ever experienced – and no one says this fact excuses immoral behaviour, such as war crimes.

Then Thomson discusses cases where the mother's life would (in the opinion of doctors) definitely end if she gave birth to the fetus/child – including cases where the woman was in this situation as a result of rape. I take the view of "society" with regard to such situations. Thomson, on the other hand, puts herself in the woman's shoes, as it were, and sees abortion as a perfectly justifiable act of self-preservation.

Put into the right context, this can be seen for the self-indulgent attitude it really is. Self-preservation is all well and good, from an individual standpoint – but society takes it upon itself to override the individual's right to self-preservation in certain circumstances. For example, men (never women) are subject to conscription for front-line duties, according to the vagaries of national and international politics. If men are subject to conscription in the public interest, why not subject women to "conscription by conception"?

Were I conscripted in wartime and ordered to participate in an attack which I felt certain would end in my death, I could not kill my superior officer(s) and expect a military court to consider my goal of self-preservation to be a sufficient justification!

Or imagine a wealthy man who has the misfortune to marry a gold-digger who is trying to kill him off by feeding him high-cholesterol foods and subjecting him to the stress of constant nagging, malicious gossip, and so on. Would a court allow this man to kill his wife as an act of self-preservation? Not likely!

Abortion For Men
One recent variation on the theme of choice for men is the notion of "abortion for men," publicized at the website for the Rick Emerson Show (www.rickemerson.com/male_abortion.html):

The Male Abortion...is a simple release form, which is read and signed by both parties at any time before sexual intercourse...be it moments before, or months in advance. The Male Abortion stipulates that the man wishes to remain childless, and that should a pregnancy result from his sexual relation with the female, he is freed from all parental liability and responsibility, and that the decision to be a parent is his, and his alone.

Were Feminists truly pro-choice, we would expect them to embrace this. Were they truly pro-choice.

Conclusion
Criminal law is all about regulating morality. Abortion is an area where the power of one of the parties involved (women) has grown to such an extent that the law has retreated from any attempt to regulate their morality. The anti-abortion laws were meant to protect unborn children from women and doctors. With the growth of the Animal Rights movement, we may be at, or about to reach, a stage where endangered species and laboratory animals will have more rights than unborn human beings! It is time to say, "Let's protect the rights of men and unborn humans first, and worry about the rights of animals second!"