I was kind of blown away by Candice Bergen last night on Boston Legal. I’ve long regarded her as an uber liberal yet her character last night questioned some of the aspects of pro-choice, and I’ve no doubt she wouldn’t have consented to play the part if she didn’t have peripheral reservations herself.
The first issue is parental consent for abortion. Just how big a deal is that for the pro-choice people?
The second issue that I’d like to see some debate on is sex selection via abortion.
Its not a stretch to assume a society can have a preference for sons over daughters. Assuming that is the case in America, how can the problem be addressed without infringing on entrenched civil rights ?
The third issue, if you can call it that, is that a lot of pro-choice people need Roe vs Wade in order to use the ruling to justify abortion on demand. I can see it.
I’m against parental notification as a matter of law. I think the ideal parent/child relationship would include the ability of a daughter or son to notify parents of what’s going on, especially in the daughter’s case, but I have to admit that most parent/child relationships are far from ideal and if I’m going to err anywhere it is on the side of the pregnant girl who needs the most help. If someone insisted that there must be some substitute for parental notification, like, notify your parents, grandparents, legal guardian, or a counselor, I wouldn’t be totally against it if the options were realistically broad enough.
I have no problem with sex selection mechanisms at all, though treating abortion so casually is weird to me.
It is a big deal. A very big deal to them. I used to work for a women’s health clinic and they would provide counseling to all women seeking an abortion. Part of that counseling was a noted push for the woman to seek parental guidance and, barring that, guidance of some adult which would preferably be a family member but could be a teacher or someone else the woman was comfortable with. In NO way was this forced on the woman, just encouraged. Their internal statistics suggested that the majority of women discussed their issue with a parent. Add in the woman talking about it to some responsible adult as opposed to going it alone and very nearly all women sought guidance from somebody about it. Mind you this was back in the early 90’s…I do not know the stats today but would be surprised if they have changed much.
I seriously doubt this happens much but I have no cites. I think it is relatively rare for someone in the US to value a male child over a female so much they would abort in order to get the “preferred” sex. Of course I am sure in such a large society it has happened somewhere, sometime but I do not see it as remotely common.
That said not sure what you can do about it. A woman seeking an abortion need not give her real reasons for it. Seems a lousy choice to make to abort based on the sex of the child but I guess we have to accept those fringe cases in order to ensure access to abortion overall. Don’t see how else it could be worked.
They do not use Roe to “justify” abortion. They use Roe to protect their right to an abortion. BIG difference!
I found it difficult to concentrate on the underlying ethical issues because I was distracted by the character of the “15-year-old daughter,” who was suspiciously well-informed and armed with abortion-related statistics, and who I was certain would reveal herself as some kind of feminist activist in her mid-twenties who wasn’t even pregnant.
Turns out she was just a bad actress in a poorly-written role.
Sex selection via abortion should be a non-issue for Americans. If you want a baby of a particular gender, then there is no need to roll the dice, wait until gender can be determined, then abort the baby if it’s the wrong gender. Many REs (reproductive endocrinologists) offer sex selection as one of their services. There are many ways to accomplish this (sperm spinning, IVF with PGD, etc) but none involve using abortion for sex selection.
A prime example is Dixie Carter as Julia Sugarbaker on Designing Women. Dixie is a republican and rather conservative as opposed to the outspoken liberal Julia. I’ve heard that she cut a deal with the producers that would let her sing during an episode for each ‘liberal tirade’ that Julia would go on.
Left-wingers who think abortion is the greatest thing since sliced bread DON’T “need” Roe vs. Wade. They just embrace it because it gave them almost everything they ever wanted.
The people who “need” Roe vs. Wade are liberal Catholics like Mario Cuomo, who want to have it both ways. As it now stands, they an say “I’m PERSONALLY opposed to abortion, but hey, Roe is the Law of the Land, so what can I do?”
If there were no Roe vs. Wade, the “personally-Opposed-But…” crows would ahve to stand up and be accounted for.
THOSE people are terrified of being forced to cast a vote or sign a bill that would make them take a stand and say where their loyalties really lie.
Or Kelsey Grammar, whose entire career has been based on a very liberal character (Frasier Crane), while maintaining very close relationships with the Republican Party in his real life.
Very big deal. Parental consent creates a host of problems, not the least of which is, if parents can forbid an abortion, can they also force one?
I don’t think this is an issue, both in that I don’t think it’s a deciding factor for most people, and that if it is, I just don’t care that much. People can have abortions for whatever reasons they like.
I tried really hard to figure out what you’re saying here, and the best I can come up with is that I don’t think that “justify” means what you think it means. Can you clarify the question?
Pretty big. One Pro-Choice horror is a girl needs her father’s permission to abort HIS child. Parental notification is only upheld when the girl has other avenues - i.e. a judge’s permission - basically because of the parental abuse situation. I think asking an abused girl who has been protecting her parents to go to a judge to get permission for an abortion is asking a lot of the girl.
This is a huge issue in other countries - less in the U.S. Gender selection via abortion is seen as a global feminist issue, since its usually female fetuses that are aborted.
I think Pro-Choice people would like to see Roe v. Wade upheld because as a states rights thing it creates an unfair and burdensome situation. A well off woman will always be able to travel - out of the country if necessary - to procure HER abortion. A poor woman pregnant by her abusive boyfriend in the middle of South Dakota may not be able to get to a state when abortion is available.
My question would be - what are the parents and teens rights with regards to other medical procedures? Could a teen refuse to have any more chemo if the parents wanted it to continue? If the parents otherwise have control over the teens medical decisions, why would abortion be singled out?
I don’t see that this is a large problem in America. I don’t see that there would be much way to challenge it other than education. I suppose you could refuse to do sexing until an abortion is no longer possible.
Any law that allows something is also considered by some people to also legitimize it. That’s why there’s so much flak over gay marriage. There’s no call to make illegal gays getting married in religious ceremonies. Only that the government not do it, as that would be seen as somehow condoning and even promoting it. This is a dangerous attitude to have, because it curtails many freedoms. Freedom isn’t about allowing others to do what you approve of. It’s allowing people to make their own choices about what is right for them, whether or not you think it’s right. The curtailment to this should never be people’s sensibilities, it should only be where a behavior would cause harm to another or infringe on other’s freedoms.