Pharyngula::Family planning is a good thing

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Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Family planning is a good thing

PZ Myers • 16 Comments

And in particular, when you have the motives expressed in this article, you ought to be sent to jail. Because you're certainly going to be sent to hell.

Kevin is blasé.

But whatever your immediate emotional reaction to this, a moment's thought tells you that it's morally no different from any other abortion. No better, no worse. And since the whole point of human intelligence is that it frees us from relying merely on immediate emotional reaction, surely it's not too much to ask that we do it in this case too.

It's all inspired by this article in the NYT, about a woman who was pregnant with triplets and had two of them aborted.

My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?

I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: ''Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?'' The obstetrician wasn't an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more.

I'm with Kevin. This is no big deal: it is no more an ethical problem than a woman who voluntarily chooses not to get pregnant every year and a half to two years during her fertile years. People have always made choices about reproduction—heck, practically every animal on the planet does. I think this woman made a sensible, rational decision to regulate her rate of reproduction, and should be commended rather than judged worthy of jail, let alone hell.

All I have to wonder is whether Unf is going to be a parent soon. If he has chosen to avoid the responsibility for trivial reasons, such as having career goals or thinking family planning is a good idea, he ought to condemn himself. He's shirking his obligation to have as many children as he is capable, after all.

See also Trish Wilson's Blog for some good discussion of this issue.

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/963/WGtDG5lF/

Comments:

#4678: Andrew Reeves — 07/20 at 07:48 PM
Dude, you know that there is a difference between choosing not to conceive and eliminating a fetus that has already been conceived, and almost every faith but the Catholic one believes that this is a fairly big distinction.

#4679: PZ Myers — 07/20 at 08:07 PM
What would I know about what distinctions different religions make?

As far as I'm concerned, there is no big difference. Why should we think there is one?

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#4681: Brian Weatherson — 07/20 at 08:54 PM
Er, the Catholic Church does think there's a pretty big difference here. It doesn't think that the Pope's a sinner for *not* having children, for instance.

On the other hand, unless you see a big moral difference between a fertilized and unfertilized egg it's easy to agree with PZ's point. And I think those who think there is a big moral difference here have a bit of an obligation to explain exactly what it is.

#4682: — 07/20 at 09:14 PM
... you're a developmental biologist, and you say this?

Set aside the red herring of theism versus atheism for a minute. From a purely physiological point of view, is it a) as medically invasive for the woman not to conceive as it is for her to abort, b) less invasive, or c) more invasive?

The changes in a woman's body that begin pregnancy start pretty much immediately after conception; I'm sure you've *taught* this. Now, for what seem to be purely ideological reasons, you're saying "there is no big difference" between terminating a pregnancy and not conceiving in the first place.

How is this faith-based reasoning any different from a theistically-based position?

I'll note that one can be an atheist and still consider abortion a less preferred form of family planning than contraception, just as one can be an atheist and consider infanticide a less preferred form of family planning than abortion.

C.

#4685: PZ Myers — 07/20 at 09:31 PM
My opinion has nothing to do with religion.

Yes, there are physiological changes with the onset of pregnancy. There are also changes during menstruation. So?

As far as rating the invasiveness on a purely physiological point of view,

no conception < conception + abortion <<< pregnancy

I'm afraid women conceive all the time and spontaneously abort without even knowing about it. While we may have a culturally exaggerated perception of the significance of the event, it's just not that big a deal biologically.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#4690: — 07/20 at 10:31 PM

As far as rating the invasiveness on a purely physiological point of view,

no conception < conception + abortion ~~<<< pregnancy~~

Tsk. When you were on Usenet, didn't you learn to recognize the times when some nitwit creationist would bring in an extraneous case to deflect the topic at hand? It's usually a sign that they're rattled.

Anyway. Not all spontaneous abortions are equal, as I am pretty sure you know. Compare a first trimester blighted ovum versus a second trimester miscarriage. Fuzzing over the differences when it suits you seems to be another creationist bad habit you've picked up.

On the other hand, and especially in the Midwest IME, some women aren't even aware of their pregnancies until they go into labor. Does this mean that biologically, it didn't affect them?

#4699: PZ Myers — 07/21 at 06:28 AM
That's certainly not an extraneous case. If you want to argue that abortion is bad because it's more medically invasive than not conceiving in the first place, then the argument that carrying the pregnancy to term is far more invasive than an abortion is relevant.

"Fuzzing over the distinctions" sounds like a good idea and much more rational than treating them as hard-edged, black-and-white distinctions, and much closer to biological reality. There are no sharp boundaries here. There is no one place where anyone gets to say, "this is not a human being, and now it is". It's all one long fuzzy, blurry, gradual continuum.

No one here is arguing that conception has no biological effect. I'm saying it just isn't that important an effect, and what it has instead is a magnified psychological effect conditioned by culture.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#4700: — 07/21 at 07:00 AM
It looks like my mother will be going to hell, then: she did something even more icky than selective abortion.

My identical twin was born 2.5 months premature, 22 minutes after me, but owing to a medical cockup they'd severed our shared umbilicus 20 minutes before that (they didn't realise it was shared, or even that there was a twin). As a result, he was effectively brain-dead and dependent on life support.

My mother decided to turn off that life support, and I'm glad she did because bringing up someone with the sort of deficits you get when you're born that premature needs a lot of attention, and, dammit, paying for continuous life support is expensive. (I imagine my sister was quite happy with it too because if it hadn't been for that decision she probably would never have existed.)

But this is presumably, in the fundies' books, murder, and thus deserving of instant hellfire or something.

(I'll admit that when I heard of this, this was my immediate emotional reaction too --- for about five minutes, until I realised what effects keeping Steven alive would have had on the rest of the family.

Perhaps the difference between the fundies and the rest of us is that the fundies try to rationalise their immediate emotional response to a situation, while the rest of us don't let it rule us to that extent?

If so, this might also explain why there are so few fundies of this stripe left in the UK. Sure, a lot of them self-exiled to the US, but where are the rest? I think they were killed by the 18th--19th centuries and the intense deprecation of emotion and uplifting of reason that happened then: the period when the `stiff upper lip' was born. Being led mostly by your emotions hasn't had very good press since then.)

#4709: Mrs Tilton — 07/21 at 09:24 AM
Nix,

what happened to your brother is appalling. Under the circumstances, I'm sure your mother made the best decision. But surely she was devastated that the situation had arisen in which that was the best decision? Surely what she would have preferred is that the doctors not make a mistake that destroyed your brother's brain?

That's a big difference to the woman who selectively aborted two of her three triplets because she preferred to have only one child.

Like PZ, I strongly support a woman's right to choose abortion, even for reasons that strike me as wrong (as this woman's do). Unlike PZ, I simply can't think this is no big thing. The choice was hers, and nobody should be able to take it away from her. But nor do we have to like it.

#4718: — 07/21 at 12:19 PM
According to Trish's article (I haven't read the original piece yet), she was eight weeks pregnant at the time. That's a lot different, in my opinion, than making the decision later in the process. PZ, maybe you can give us some idea of what an eight week old fetus looks like.

#4720: PZ Myers — 07/21 at 01:18 PM
Sure thing.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#4721: PZ Myers — 07/21 at 01:23 PM
Note that the "actual length" bar is only going to be accurate at 72dpi.

7-8 weeks is actually a very interesting time developmentally -- you can see that this is the period when the face reorganizes itself from that alien-looking arrangement of pharyngeal arches into something vaguely mammalian.

(uh-oh. Pharyngeal arches and "gill slits"...I hope no creationists are reading this, because they do so want to believe those don't exist. Nor does that tail you see peeking out behind the hindlimb.)

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#4722: PaulH — 07/21 at 01:28 PM
Wow, those fetoes (just trying out some different plurals!) sure are busy in those three days!

Trackback: Amy Richards is a role model Tracked on: Majikthise (66.151.149.25) at 2004 07 21 17:19:30
I'm puzzled by the outrage over Amy Richards' account of selective abortion, When One Is Enough. Pregnant with triplets, Richards elected to abort two fetuses and carry the third to term. Hugo Schwyzer reports Crying With Rage over Richards' decision.

#4729: — 07/21 at 11:55 PM
In defense of those crypto-fascist, insano Catholics, they do believe there is a BIG difference between abortion and contraception. Abortion, the taking of human life, is REAL BAD. Contraception, preventing conception, is bad, but not near as bad. Sort of like murder and, I don't know, cheating on taxes.

#4758: Lindsay Beyerstein — 07/22 at 05:15 PM
PZ, where do birth control pills fall on the invasiveness spectrum?

I object to Carlos' implication that "not conceiving" is a natural kind with an intrinsic level of biological stress. Non-conception through lifelong celibacy would be extremely "invasive." Non-conception through successful contraception is associated with varying degrees of invasiveness, depending on the method.

(Catholic theology questions: If you cheat on your taxes and die before you confess, do you still go to hell? Do aborted fetuses go to Purgatory these days, what with original sin? I heard they weren't being sent to Limbo anymore.)

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Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Family planning is a good thing

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