Recently, there has been a Pit thread that did the abortion debate for the umpteenth time on this board. If you want to rehash the standard arguments for either side, please go there.
What makes those arguments standard is the emphasis on individual rights: the right of the unborn human to live, and the right of the woman to do what she wants with “her body” (scare quotes because another body is involved, IMV).
I call myself pro-life because, ultimately (and with recognition given to the possible exceptions of rape, certain genetic diseases, etc.), I think a healthy woman killing her healthy progeny (often with encouragement of the father) is the act of a mentally sick species (you don’t even have to believe in God to agree with this).
I do have sympathy for the other side. I don’t particularly enjoy telling other people what to do, and I don’t particularly like being told. Our society is quite bossy enough as it is. Plus, those difficult cases (I am not saying here that I agree that any one of them is or is not a just reason to abort) are not black and white; there is a continuum such that, even should society allow abortion for certain reasons, those falling just on the disallowed side of the line perceive that they are being treated unfairly, often with good reason.
But here’s the debate.
Americans are the ultimate pissers and moaners when it comes to individual rights, and, as stated above the abortion debate consists of both sides claiming the high ground in that regard. We forget–or perhaps some disagree in the first place–that society as a whole also has rights, or rather, prerogatives.
In particular, a society, much like an organism, attempts to survive. If couples don’t have babies and raise them to be good members of their society, then the society dies.
Falling birth rates now threaten many of the world’s societies. Here is a link that summarizes the issues well (message board post of an article that no longer seems to be up on the Web).
For the longest time in the 20th century, falling birth rates were seen as a blessing, inasmuch as people thought that populations were too big and the world too small to support any more people. Such thinking was not wrong in and of itself, but population is at the same time an issue both global and local. However much we may wish that the world’s population shrink a bit, it does not follow that we wish for any particular country or culture to disappear.
Yet the issue is no longer academic. Birth rates in most of the world’s developed countries are below replacement. Italy’s population is already shrinking, and Japan is setting itself up for an outright demographic disaster. Keep in mind also that a population can be growing but still shrinking long-term. In Japan young people aren’t having babies while the oldsters are all living into their 80s; once this older generation starts dying off, the population will shrink by tens of millions in just a few decades, while the burden of working people to support the elderly only gets worse.
I know from personal experience how people feel about raising children in Japan, having lived their eight years. It is now “common sense” that two children is the absolute maximum that the average family can afford, and even having one child is a significant financial burden. Of course, with “common sense” like this, you will halve the population within a century.
The link above describes the syndrome pretty well. Developed societies, for reasons that I don’t think anyone fully understands, simply don’t support a “breadwinner wage”; i.e., both parents have to work. This seems paradoxical to me, since why should families experience a greater overall toughness of making ends meet when technology and productivity have only improved? Maybe a Doper will have an insight.
At the same time, there are more and more people like my friend, who just turned 34, has lived with his girlfriend for about three years, but has no intention of getting married to her or having kids with her. (He says that, in the future, if he finds the right person he may want to procreate. Suuuure.) They go double Dutch with the pill and condoms, such is their fear of pregnancy. (Note to friend: In the not-so-distant past your relationship would have been called “common-law marriage.”)
Modern society, whether in the US, Europe, or Japan, has created a lethally population-depressing cocktail:
Part one: Reasons not to have children
- Less-rigid societal roles for both women and men (i.e., the disappearance of pressure against women’s working)
- Outright social pressure for women to work (i.e., being a homemaker isn’t good enough, “I don’t stay home and bake cookies,” etc.)
- Economic pressure for both parents to work
- Increased expense and inconvenience of raising children (health insurance, reduced tax credits, etc.)
- The dissasembly of the social system that virtually required everyone but priests and nuns to get married and have children: Acceptance of cohabitation, homosexuality, asexuality, and simply less pressure to find a fertile mate when young
Part two: Methods to avoid having children
- Contraception
- Sterilization
- Abortion
(4. Abstinence?!)
The developed world gave itself a boost with this program–it allowed half the population, women, to participate in the workforce and grow the economy–but it is now killing itself with it. When one looks at the big picture, the dual role of abortion becomes rather clear: It serves as a backup to contraception and at the same time prevents the genitically or socially inferior (“retards” and “gimps,” or drags on the economy and society) from entering the population. Although the latter factor is perhaps a boon from an amoral perspective, the former factor is a mixed “blessing.”
In short, contraception and abortion serve the same purpose, with abortion in most cases simply being simply a messier form of “birth control” (note the difference between “contraception” and “birth control” concepts). Now, if couples throughout society employ these two things so as to have just the “right” number of children (that is, the number that will shrink or grow society at the ideal rate), then all is well, with only the moral or spiritual issues remaining (which we are purposely avoiding discussing here).
Yet it is clear that all is not right, if one grants that societies ought not shrink to oblivion. The combination of contraception and abortion is allowing the mass of individuals in developed societies to shrink those societies. Further, abortion is no more to blame in this regard than contraception.
Where does the above get us?
In the United States it gets us a big-booming, sparks-a-flying collision between the cult of individual rights and economic and social realities. In the current age, people really do feel they have the right to do anything they want so long as it does not hurt other persons (the fetus is not a person, hence no harm, no foul). Americans consider an action not a sin it all if it merely hurts society as a whole in the longer term. Especially if the sin is one of omission instead of commission.
But, as I suggested earlier, society is an organism with needs of its own. And every organism attempts to survive. Society must, if it wishes to live, neutralize the poison in the cocktail mentioned above. It can do so by lessening the reasons not to have children or trying to eliminate the means. Unfortunately, whereas the reasons not to have children arise from complicated factors that have not purposely been established as a matter of policy, society will likely attempt to suppress the means of avoiding having children, as they depend on technologies, that is, physical objects that can be identified and manipulated.
Further, abortion is likely to receive the brunt of such pressure for two reasons: There is no reason to disallow contraception while allowing abortion (the reasons for this should be obvious), and in any case disallowing contraception would be extremely difficult and wildly unpopular.
Moreover, inasmuch as over a million abortions are performed a year (cite), eliminating abortion alone is (it would seem–I haven’t done the complicated calculations) enough to nudge the birth rate back above the replacement level.
Conclusions
People are liable to dismiss hard-core pro-lifers as evangelical nuts and zealots, but look deeper and I think they are an important voice of the organism. It is a mathematical fact that developed societies cannot sustain themselves under the current system.
Working this out is going to be extremely painful. Although no individual can be commanded to procreate, society can still do its best to survive by making sure that those who are pregnant give birth. The reasoning under which this is done may consist of “Abortion is bad and yucky,” or it may be stated flatly and rationally in terms of cultural survival.
Some of the pro-abortion side are so fanatical about their position that I have little doubt that they would rather see their own society dwindle to nothing than have their precious “choice” be compromised.
I, on the other hand, think that it is not the individual alone that is important. Society as a whole is as well. There are things that our society calls us to do that we ought to do, while in turn society supports us both as its members and as private individuals. Put simply, we have both rights and duties.
But there is a genuine lack of balance right now. Reduced infant mortality and increased life expectancy will henceforth require that some form of contraception be in use to prevent people from having too many children. At the same time, for any desired level of population, the stark mathematical fact is that, on average, every woman out there must have two or three kids to keep society alive.
Our economic system needs a hell of a lot of work. It is hardly fair to say to women at this point in time, “Don’t abort,” when that same society keeps them unable to afford children. Hence, while I am pro-life and think that abortion is a sign of sickness in the species, I don’t think the primary cause is a “culture of death” or any fundamental depravity. I think the main cause is an economic system that makes having and raising a family an extreme burden for many.
Tell me what you think.