Globally Pro-Choice

Last week, I was walking across Georgetown's campus when I was stopped by an acquaintance and asked if I would give a minute for "Global Health Day."  Behind her, a large banner proclaimed "Half the world lives on less than $3 a day... that is what we spend on a cup of coffee."  After filling me in on several additional depressing statistics regarding starvation, malaria, and infant mortality, this well-meaning girl asked if I would help global health awareness by writing down something that I believed everyone in the world deserved.  Without pausing, I wrote "access to birth control."

My response was met at first with a smirk, then with irritation, as she suggested that I write something else. "Please take this seriously," she pleaded, implying that my answer had deliberately mocked the plight of millions of starving children worldwide.  It was as if I had suggested sending vibrating cock rings and flavored lube to the war-torn Congo.

http://www.foogle.biz/starving_world/starving.htm

Poverty and global health are issues that we love to talk about.  Starving children in China/Africa/Southeast Asia are eternally the subjects of guilt-tripping rhetoric.  Droves of celebrities and well-meaning high schoolers descend on developing nations each year, all seeking to "combat hunger" and "fight AIDS" in fairly non-specific ways.  Images of barefoot toddlers crying in the muddy streets of Delhi and Lima rouse us to donate to a myriad of international charities.  Yet in all of this discussion of child poverty, there is no mention of the children themselves being a compounding factor.

The correlation between high fertility rates, poverty, and low life expectancy is well established.  According to the UN TFR Ranking (2009), the top twenty nations in terms of fertility rate per woman include Niger, Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan; each of these countries has a fertility rate more than three times that of the U.S. and Western Europe.  The UN TFR has also provided this helpful visualization of average fertility rates worldwide:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_rate

Anyone who has taken a class in logic knows that correlation does not imply causation.  With a little imagination, though, it's not difficult to picture how a rapidly growing population coupled with a finite number of resources keeps literacy rates low and poverty rates high, fuels political unrest, and greatly facilitates the spread of disease.  And that's not even touching the impact on the women who are actually bearing these children.

http://www.glpinc.org/Web_pages/Illiteracy_Globally.html

Unfortunately, the international community is unlikely to embrace worldwide family planning measures any time soon.  For one thing, one of the world's most powerful men, Benedict XVI, would not approve.  A large number of charities aimed at alleviating poverty are religiously affiliated, and these groups prefer to combat world hunger by collecting canned food, building new churches, and praying.  Contraception, of course, is not in the Catholic or Evangelical vocabulary.  This view has played no small role in the House's recent defunding of the United Nations Population Fund.

It's not just the right wing that's to blame, however.  Even liberal and pro-choice groups shirk from advocating contraceptive use abroad, less they be accused of promoting eugenics or forcing Western practices and culture upon the developing world.  Additionally, the realm of international charity seeks to project itself as bipartisan, eschewing controversial issues such as contraception.  Food, water, health, and education are all hot topics of conversation, but one of the best long-term solutions remains, for now, grossly overlooked.

At the end of the day, it's touching and inspiring to see a a picture of volunteers building a school abroad or serving food to little brown children.  It's very difficult to evoke the same feelings with a picture of a couple using a condom.

The Barren Middle Ground

I am glad that I have access to adequate dental care should I need a cavity filled.  That said, having a tooth filled is a pain in the ass:  it's expensive, time-consuming, and just generally unpleasant.  This is why I floss.

Stripped of its surrounding controversy, abortion is essentially the same as a tooth filling or root canal:  it is a medical procedure you're glad is available, but you hope you won't have to take advantage of.  No matter how pro-choice you are, I can guess that you aren't hoping to be put in a position that requires you to choose an abortion.

This is a perfect example of the often-overlooked middle ground between the typically so starkly-divided choice and life camps.  Both sides agree that abortion is not an inherent good, and that the fewer that are needed, the better.  From religious, social, economic, and medical perspectives, limiting the need for and occurrence of abortions, both legal and illegal, should be a common goal.  In place of debates on the legality of late-term abortions, technicalities of "forcible rape," and issues of spousal and parental notification, discussions of preventative measures against unintended pregnancy - contraception and education - might bring us farther in the effort to improve women's health.

But those interested in achieving any degree of compromise in  are few and far between.  Instead, discussion gives way to incoherent shouting, and polarizing rhetoric fuels the fight on both sides.  Arguments addressing "a woman's right to choose" are shot down with appeals to "a child's right to life."  Clever and incendiary bumper stickers stare each other down in the nation's parking lots while accomplishing absolutely nothing.    Ultimately, the issue has polarized us so much that the idealism on both sides - but particularly on the right - refuses to bend for the sake of practicality.

http://www.bible.ca/oral-birth-control-NO.gif

The pro-life movement is generally disinterested with preventing the need for abortion through access to birth control and education, because as I've said before, this movement is as much about sex as it is about abortion.  Sex is a sin, as is abortion:  religion is not a relativist institution, and it knows not how to choose "the lesser of two evils."  For many, the sole measure acceptable for the discussion of pregnancy prevention has long been, and continues to be, abstinence.  Efforts to increase access to birth control, to develop programs for comprehensive sex education, and even to provide the potentially life-saving HPV injection to adolescent girls have all been viewed by the right-wing as an invitation to, and tacit approval of, premarital sex. Statistics that show abstinence before marriage to be an unreasonable expectation do little to change religious arguments, and sexuality continues to be discussed only in normative terms.  Pro-life leaders are too idealistic to compromise, and no solution can be acceptable if it acknowledges the inevitability of extramarital sex.

http://www.nicodetourn.com/img/abstinence-life-control.jpg

Accordingly, numerous family-planning measures have recently been felled before the unwavering sexual idealism of the right wing.  In addition to the widely-publicized defunding of Planned Parenthood, and last year's decision to continue funding abstinence-only education programs, a measure to provide monies to the the United Nations Population Fund also floundered in the House just last week.  Interestingly, this organization does not provide funds for abortion.  Instead, it grants access worldwide to family planning resources, sex education, and maternal care, with the expressed goal of decreasing the number of unsafe abortions.  This is a cause we could, and should, all get behind.  Unfortunately, this extending of the olive branch is unlikely to happen any time soon, since it would mean acknowledging that sex does not necessitate marriage, and that pregnancy need not follow sex.  Lest you were wondering, the Ten Commandments are ever-present in our legislature... though I know not of any measures based on the presumption that we do not covet.

Sex: Crime & Punishment

It appears that the U.S. is experiencing a disturbing trend with regard to beliefs on abortion.  According to the Gallup Values & Beliefs Survey, 2009 marked the first year that more Americans self-identified as "pro-choice" than "pro-life."  Remarkably, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as "pro-life" has been climbing gradually since the mid-90's.

This change over time is so depressing to those of the pro-choice persuasion that it's barely worth talking about.  However, what I find more interesting is another result of the Gallup survey:

Evidently, the percentage of Americans who see the issue completely in black and white, who feel that abortion should be strictly legal or illegal, is relatively small.  The majority of those polled actually believe that abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances.  These "certain" circumstances always boil down to exactly two:  1) To save the life of the mother, and 2) In cases of rape or incest.

First, it is fairly difficult to find someone opposed to abortions performed to save a mother's life (although  the pale green line at the bottom of this graph indicates that these folk do indeed exist).  This is one circumstance rarely (and thankfully so!) subject to public debate.

The second clause is one that has generated a great deal of discussion, particularly recently.  Just this past month, the House got its panties into a wad over the precise definition of "rape," arguing whether federal funds should be allocated for abortions in all cases of rape, or merely for those cases John Boehner deems legitimate.

Biologically, a fetus is a fetus, whether it was conceived through rape, incest, or consensual sex; it is the same entity in question.  However, in these certain cases, an abortion crosses a fine line from the "murder of innocents" to an understandable and necessary course of action.  What is it that sways public opinion in these cases?

Ultimately, it is the willingness of the mother.  If a woman was raped, and presumably did not enjoy the violent act, then she need not be burdened further with bearing and raising a child she did not intend to conceive - she need not pay the price for a crime perpetrated against her.  On the other hand, if a woman had consensual sex, and especially enjoyable sex, then the subtle implication of the "in all cases except rape and incest" argument is that an unwanted pregnancy is the punishment she deserves.

Ultimately, the abortion debate is as much about sex as it is about the termination of pregnancy, because the one act so clearly predicates the other.  To me, this smacks not of sincere people genuinely concerned with innocent fetal life, but rather of those who view sex as a crime, and pregnancy as just desserts for loose women.  If you are going to be truly pro-life or pro-choice, at least be consistent in your arguments.  Either that, or acknowledge that the issue is a thousand shades of gray.

"Life," and other such loaded words

Does life begin at conception?

It's a ridiculous question.  It is impossible to deny that a newly-fertilized zygote is alive, simply because it is not the clear alternative.  Cellular metabolism occurs from the beginning, and replication, the classic hallmark of life, soon follows.  Similarly, one must acknowledge that an unfertilized egg is also alive.  In fact, each one of a human female's 1 to 2-odd million ova has existed in a state of "suspended animation," somewhere between Meiosis I and II, since sometime early on in her own development.  Furthermore, since every living cell is the product of a mitotic division which produces two (usually) identical daughter cells, every ovum, sperm, or neuron, for that matter, is a sister of the very first primordial cell, traceable back through an unbroken and living line, bringing the "lifetime" of that single ovum to approximately 4 billion years.  Yes, a zygote is alive.

But this is not the true debate.  A bacterium is also undeniably alive, as is a cancerous tissue (as well as the chicken to be slaughtered and served for the church potluck), yet this biological definition of life is irrelevant.  The true question under consideration is whether "human-ness" begins with the fusion of a sperm and an ovum.  This is the question currently (and perpetually) at the heart of the debate on abortion, emergency contraception, and stem cell research.  An extreme version of this debate recently waged in Colorado, where lawmakers tried to pass a piece of legislation known as the "Fetal Personhood Amendment" (Amendment 62), a measure which would confer full legal standing on a human zygote, with understandably wide-reaching implications.  Yet this bill failed, perhaps because many of us, no matter how conscientious, no matter how religious, have an inherent difficulty equating a fetus with a person endowed with all the honors of human-ness.


To many, this human-ness is nothing other than a soul, a mystical essence of being which forms (or is in some way imparted by God Himself) precisely at the moment of fertilization, and persists in the individual until a car wreck or cancer forces it out of the lungs and up into Heaven.  Fortunately, most souls do not have to wait too long to make this escape - of all fertilized embryos, 50% do not implant in the uterus, and another 30% or so abort spontaneously because of congenital defects.  Most of these miscarriages occur even before the mother knows she is pregnant.  Thus, for every one child born, there are four zygotic or embryonic souls in Heaven.

http://docinthemachine.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/embryo-brochure.jpg

This is an 8-celled human embryo.  In which cell does the soul live?

Human-ness necessitates a capacity for feeling, for thought, and most importantly, for self-awareness - all functions which require a developed central nervous system (and more than 8 cells).  This is a quality that arises gradually, through the development of sensation and cognition and the acquisition of personal experience.  One might recall Aristotle's three-fold soul (vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual), whose layers each give rise to the next, and of which only the intellectual confers humanity.

I don't eat meat, but for those who do (and those who care to validate this practice), a plausible justification for the killing of beings fully capable of sensing pain is that animals - with some notable exceptions - do not possess the self-awareness necessary to fear death.  But then how much more so is this true for the fetus?