No one should be compelled to commit abortion

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Everyone can agree that no one should be compelled to commit murder, right? Well, why is it that when some of us disagree on the definition of murder, many of the same people who join me in opposing war and opposing the death penalty think that it's perfectly all right to require who believe that abortion is murder to perform abortions?

If you don't believe it's murder, I'm not stopping you from performing or having an abortion. (Yes, I know some people are trying, but many pro-lifers are trying through purely legal means like changing the laws, or doing what I do and working instead to support alternative.) But I don't think anyone the right to compel someone else who thinks it's murder to do it (except in the case where the mother's life is in danger). I live in a society where abortion is legal. I wish it weren't, and I work and give money to make alternatives to abortion more available. I don't interfere with anyone's legal right to get an abortion. Why should people interfere with the rights of conscience of people like me?

Saying something is legal should not mean people are actively compelled to do it. Execution is legal in many states (including mine, to our shame), but that doesn't mean medical personnel should take part in it—and in fact they are legally banned from doing so, as I understand the matter.

Those of us who believe a fetus is a living human being with rights do not have a legal right to interfere with others' abortions, but we should have a right not to be compelled to participate in abortions. Medical professionals should no more be forced to participate in elective abortions than to participate in executions, compulsory sterilization, or experiments such as the Tuskegee syphilis study. (I'm talking about people actively involved: doctors and nurses, not pharmacists or their assistants, office staff, etc.)

If all medical personnel followed their consciences at all times, we should have had a lot fewer crimes in the twentieth century, including in our own country—and that's true even if you believe there's nothing wrong with abortion.

I have known doctors who would not perform abortions and nurses who would not assist, and indeed the doctors may have avoided OB/GYN as their specialty to limit the possibility of being put in a position where they could be forced to participate in abortion. Some of them contributed their time, effort, and even medical supplies to care free for pregnant women who lacked—guess what?—insurance! I strongly do not believe the world would be better off if they were forced to choose between remaining in the medical profession but having to participate in abortion, and leaving and being unable to help all their patients in so many ways besides abortion. Do you really want these doctors and nurses to feel they have to give up their practices—both paid and charitable?

I've heard many analogies. If you don't believe in taking human life, you shouldn't join the military. True. But it's pretty darned obvious that the military takes human lives, isn't it? Is it obvious that the medical profession should take human lives as well as save them? You can tell me the fetus isn't fully a human being, and we can agree to disagree. But you can't tell me it's not alive, and that it's not human.

I'm really surprised that so many people seem insistent that any medical professional should have to perform abortions, and that any medical facility should have to have them there. Doctors and to a lesser extent nurses can choose specialties. They can say that there are procedures they are not comfortable performing: lots of medical personnel don't choose to do plastic surgery, or bypass surgery*, because it's not what they want to do. Hospitals can choose to offer or not offer services. More and more US hospitals have no emergency room, for financial reasons, which I think is terrible—but as far as I know, it's totally legal. I don't see Americans up in arms that any hospital MUST provide an emergency room. It is not discrimination to say "I will not perform abortions" or "This hospital will not perform abortions" in the same way that it would be to say "We will not treat African-Americans" or "We will not treat gays" or "We will not treat Republicans."

I suggest that it is discrimination to say that it's okay to choose not to do plastic surgery, but it's not okay to choose not to do abortion.

I do not, of course, include non-elective abortions: if a patient's life is in danger, then any qualified medical personnel has a duty to assist, whether it's by performing life-saving skin grafts or doing a bypass or performing an abortion because that's what the mother needs to live. Any doctor or nurse who is not qualified to perform or assist in a particular procedure, of course, should not.

* I think I'm not referring to heart bypasses in quite the right way, but I'm not sure where I've gone wrong.

Comments

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I think that a lot of pro-lifers have gone completely down the wrong path. I cannot imagine abortion laws truly changing significantly in my lifetime. I can understand why some people oppose it in the way they do, although I do not agree with some—and I neither understand nor in any way condone violence or illegal tactics.

If all the pro-life people who went to rallies and marches and pray-ins and gave money to political campaigns gave that time and money instead to helping with sex education (if they're comfortable with that—some are, some aren't), assisting pregnant women, and helping families with young children, I think we could see a real decrease in abortion and improvement for the lives of mothers and fathers as well as babies and small children. I only wish they'd see it the way I do.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, though: one of the reasons I feel compelled to speak up is that I'm speaking both for myself and for a lot of other people who give greatly of their time and money to help women in crisis pregnancies, newborns, and teenagers facing tough choices about sex. An awful lot won't speak up because they're afraid they'll be pilloried, and with good reason. I have received some very nasty tongue-lashings for the views I'm airing here—but not on LJ. I speak up here so that people can't forget that people like me exist, and to encourage others who agree with me to speak up too. And because it encourages me to know that people can disagree with me and not denounce me and drop me from their friends' lists, so that I feel I can speak in public, in person, too.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

What bothers me most about a lot of the vocal pro-lifers is that they don't seem to care at all about the life or health of the woman involved. Just as pro-choice people get accused of caring only for the woman and not the baby, so often pro-lifers (I hate that term too, pro-choice people are also pro-life, very few people think abortions are the Best Thing Ever) seem to insist on choosing the life of a fetus, even one that will never survive outside the womb, over the life of the mother. I don't think the government should have any role in that decision - it should be between the woman and her doctor and, ideally, also the father, though the woman should trump him since it's her body and her life. [I think the ban on so-called "partial birth abortions" and essential ban on third trimester abortions that got pushed through borders on criminal]

If all the pro-life people who went to rallies and marches and pray-ins and gave money to political campaigns gave that time and money instead to helping with sex education (if they're comfortable with that—some are, some aren't), assisting pregnant women, and helping families with young children, I think we could see a real decrease in abortion and improvement for the lives of mothers and fathers as well as babies and small children. I only wish they'd see it the way I do.

Yes! There's some very blatant studies that pretty clearly show that rates of teenage pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies go down the more comprehensive the sex ed is and the more available contraceptives are (and we won't even get into how many health insurances will fund viagra but not birth control).

I wish the anti-abortion movement was mostly people like you - we'd have a very, very different country if it were.

I mean, ultimately, I can't ever agree with it being illegal. Unless you can give me a world where there is no gender disparity in medical research, treatment or care. A world where there is no sexual assault or abuse or manipulation, no rape, no incest, no coercion for sex. A world where no woman will ever have her physical or mental well-being threatened by a pregnancy and every fetus will be born as a viable, healthy child. Where contraceptives are easy to access, easy to use without any side effects, and 100% effective.

Unless you can give me that world, I will never be willing to consider making abortion illegal.

I am glad you speak out though, and I wish enough of the ones like you would take over the anti-abortion movement from the people who bomb clinics and hang 12 foot pictures of dead fetuses on college campuses.