Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Stupid Abortion Conversations

She was on birth control and he used a condom. They did everything they could to avoid pregnancy!
Well, not everything. They still had sex.
Why do you hate sex? Why do you want to punish women?
...What?
Pointing out that sex can cause pregnancy is a statement of fact--not a preference, not a moral judgment. Don't try to act like there's no connection between sex and pregnancy and then accuse anyone who corrects you of hating sex. You don't have to hate sex to understand how pregnancy happens, guys.

11 comments:

  1. I was just thinking about this. Suppose I get in a car accident (other driver's fault) and am injured, but my health insurance providers refuse to cover my expenses because I was engaging in risky behavior.

    I counter "but I was wearing a seatbelt, driving the speed limit, using all my signals, and I even wore a bicycle helmet! I did everything to keep from having a car accident."

    And they say "well, not everything. You still drove."

    Of course the whole thing is fundamentally different on a dozen levels, but I think many people in America have come to see sex as a basic need, just the way they view driving. Being in a relationship and not having sex is as foreign to them as walking to the grocery store instead of driving is to me.

    And in that respect, I think they could see a statement like "don't have sex if you don't want to get pregnant" as a moral judgment on the "dirtiness" of sex; you'd sort of have to deny that casual hookups and even sex in long-term dating is a totally normal and natural thing.

    Or those are my thoughts anyway.

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    1. I think you're absolutely right--people see sex as a basic need, and not just *sexual interaction* but actual intercourse. It's one of the fundamental differences between PL & PC views, I imagine.

      I don't see how to overcome that divergent viewpoint, though.

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  2. Reece pretty much covered my thoughts. People on birth control and using condoms are doing everything they reasonably can to avoid pregnancy short of not having sex. Of course, on the flip side you can argue something like if I decide to drop a brick off a bridge, I am responsible for whomever/whatever that brick hits regardless of how unlikely it is that the brick will actually hit something. It really depends on what context we're arguing.

    For example, the brick analogy leads to my belief that defense of non-rape elective abortion by bodily autonomy has to assume fetal non-personhood, but there's other scenarios where I find the whole "you chose to have sex" argument obnoxious.

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    1. Using Reece's analogy, do you see (or do you think other pro-choicers see) a distinction between the need to drive and the need to have intercourse (as opposed to, say, oral or other forms of sex)?

      'the brick analogy leads to my belief that defense of non-rape elective abortion by bodily autonomy has to assume fetal non-personhood"

      Can you elaborate?

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    2. "Using Reece's analogy, do you see (or do you think other pro-choicers see) a distinction between the need to drive and the need to have intercourse (as opposed to, say, oral or other forms of sex)?"

      I would argue that driving is slightly more important to most people's existences than sex, but like Reece said, let's not kid ourselves. People like to have sex, and I believe sex is sort of its own category of 'things people like to do' different from say, shooting, bowling, or making paper mâché cranes, because the vast majority of humans are born with a more or less irrational desire to have sex. That's how our species propagates and quite well I might add. In short, sex is technically a non-necessary risk, but human nature makes arguing that people just shouldn't have sex a silly proposition.

      On further thought, you could probably argue that cars are non-necessary risks because you can just take the bus or walk, both of which are safer. This analogy is complicated :P

      "Can you elaborate?"

      Not only can I elaborate, I can pontificate! Anyways, going off my brick analogy, the man and the woman who had sex are responsible for the fetus' existence and thus its state of dependence on the woman. Therefore, if the fetus were considered a person, removing the fetus from the woman's support would be somewhere between manslaughter and murder. You can argue that the woman has bodily autonomy, which is absolutely true, but for example if I stab a person in the kidney, I can't be required to give them my kidney, but I'm still responsible if they die.

      However, if the fetus is not a person, all of the above is moot, which is the position I take. No sense in putting the non-existent interests of a fetus that has never been cognizant over those of the woman.

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    3. Not to be crude, but in these conversations people tend to see the options as 1) abstinence or 2) traditional intercourse. But I have seen some argue (and I agree) that there are other ways to have sex besides Option 2, including ways that do not risk pregnancy. Do you think that nuance affects the argument?

      It's very interesting that you think bodily autonomy only works if the fetus isn't a person. You are the first pro-choicer I've known to say that. Everyone else says fetal personhood is irrelevant because bodily autonomy trumps personhood anyway, basically. In fact I've had some pro-choicers refuse to even talk about personhood because they felt bodily autonomy takes care of it.

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    5. "But I have seen some argue (and I agree) that there are other ways to have sex besides Option 2, including ways that do not risk pregnancy. Do you think that nuance affects the argument?"

      Anal is off the menu as far as I'm concerned, and blowjobs are fun but definitely not the same. Speaking of crudeness haha.

      "Everyone else says fetal personhood is irrelevant because bodily autonomy trumps personhood anyway, basically."

      I believe this way of thinking results from the fact that debating fetal personhood is complicated, legislating based on fetal personhood would be a mess (I usually use viability as an easy substitute for personhood because it would be much easier to determine/legislate and they roughly coincide based on my definition), and trying to explain a defense of abortion based on fetal personhood to the masses would be nigh impossible and probably be construed by those opposed to abortion as some Hitler-esque attempt dehumanize and eliminate babies.

      And then on the flip side, bodily autonomy is easy to argue (at least on a superficial level) and lends itself nicely to slogans and rebuttals. "You oppose abortion, so you must hate woman, right?" Blarg.

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  3. So I guess if there were some campaign to end drunk driving fatalities by encouraging everyone to just walk all the time, as no amount of safety belts or air bags or engineering will work 100%, then I guess people would question the reasonableness of the campaign? And if these groups were linked to radical environmentalists, maybe they'd question the motives of the campaign?

    But then, how reasonable are your expectations of safety in a top-rated car, wearing a seat belt, driving the speed limit, obeying all traffic laws? Do you have some sort of right to expect safety while engaging in one of the foremost dangerous activities mortality-wise in America?

    I can see how in one sense, someone using hormonal birth control and condoms may be said to be doing "everything reasonable" to avoid pregnancy short of abstinence. I mean, what else can you go, besides add on spermicides and diaphragms etc.? But do they have a reasonable expectation to not get pregnant? It would seem not.

    But then, what do I know :P

    Good to see you, Bryan. I had missed your intolerable reasonableness in vitriolic discussions.

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    1. You make a lot of good points.

      But I wonder how people would feel about driving if the ratio of driving to fatal accidents was as high as the ratio of sex to unplanned pregnancies. ...And if you knew that, should you have an accident, the *only* way to keep the person you hit from dying would be to donate from your body to theirs.

      Do you think the frequency of accidents/unplanned pregnancies matters on a moral level? Or are the principles the same regardless?

      "I had missed your intolerable reasonableness in vitriolic discussions." *chuckle*

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  4. Good to see you too, Reece. You are equally intolerable in your patience and serenity :)

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