Hats on the ringer. Or something needs to be said without a finger

So since the President can wander into the hornet's nest of a incoherent debate and make it sound presentable, so shall I attempt to make sense.

I've ranted previously on the problems with the framing of the debate surrounding abortion, particularly this false dichotomy of "pro-life/pro-abortion". That's not something I've changed my reasoning for. But I am willing to examine the relevant issues behind the curtain, so to speak.

What it comes down to ultimately is the ability of each individual person to exercise their conscience and make decisions. We recognize that these decisions carry unique and powerful consequences at times, and where these consequences are tragic, painful, and harmful to others, we often have the means and justification to step in and apply a measure of justice or judgment. The central argument of the "pro-life/anti-choice" side is that these harms apply to fertilized embryos and developing fetuses just as they would to any fully formed and helpless infant. Yet we have not established the criteria, either scientifically or metaphysically, for demonstrating what life (in the human sense) is and where on the time line that begins. Each person then is left to that decision themselves.

The supposition becomes that somehow permitting such decisions to be made without overriding legal scrutiny in their aftermath somehow abolishes the difficulty of making them. Or that abolishing the legality of these decisions also abolishes the practice. Neither is true, or ever has been. Procedures for abortions can still be performed in the absence of legality. Often less safely, often without trained medical care, and often at greater expense. But like any other demand we label as illicit, the demand still exists outside the boundaries of law. Likewise, it cannot be said that most women would choose such a path with greater and greater ease. Or in fact that they would often feel that have much of a choice at all in the absence of sensible alternatives (such as would be commonly available to say, the upper middle class with access to proper medical care and precautionary methods reducing the likelihood of making such a problematic situation arise in the first place versus the impoverished, undereducated classes of our society that have neither opportunity afforded them in a sufficiency worth contemplating).

Much as I find I despise the ordinary person, it seems best to afford them the maximum ability to determine their own courses, and to make every effort that that course should be less burdened. I do not say that people who hold a strong and discordant view must be silenced and led out of arenas when they express their dissatisfaction. But I do demand that they be respectful that not all hold their views and that there are reasonable positions that should be listened to, if not perhaps agreed with. Where there are sensible positions that are expressed I will listen. It seems to me the central goal of anti-abortion advocates is to lessen the frequency of such events. I see no reason that a policy cannot be devised to achieve this end, still falling short of legally penalizing the women who seek out abortions or doctors perform them. If that sort of goal is achieved (and in case "they" haven't been paying attention, the rate of abortions per pregnancy has been falling for at least the last 25 years), then I fail to see what the demands are about nor the consistency with which they are made in light of the expressed demands for "government to get out of our lives" in other avenues of life's strange and tumultuous exhibitions.

So to try to understand what these demands have been about, I engaged with those who hold them to try to get at their points of view:

1) Abortion is infanticide.
First off, infanticide is nothing new in both the historical and social spectrum. The ancient Romans and Greeks so often revered in American society were among its practitioners. It was often practiced as a means of population control in smaller societies with scarce public resources available and for which the survival of any extra person could mean starvation for the whole (and thus the questionable survival of a young and helpless infant to begin with). There are sound structural arguments to be made that the health of a society is threatened mightily by the introduction of large numbers of ill-cared for or undesired/unplanned children as the result of pregnancies that were not terminated (and for which a rational prospective mother might still retain a desire for children at a more appropriate time). Crime for example is strained by such an increase in what would psychologically be termed "at risk children". Educational systems, often from lower income areas already pushed beyond their ability to service their students, would likewise require social accommodations. If we are not willing to permit the exercise of choice to have children at a desirable time and ability for prospective parents, then are we not bound to consider the costs that such a cumulative and forcible imposition of our own societal choice has wrought for us at a later date? If we are not, then why would we wish to impose a cost on ourselves for which someone else could ably supply at some other time?

Secondly, and more pressing, it is still not possible to establish unquestionably that human life begins at conception. It doesn't even do this naturally. Every time a measure comes along attempting to punish the few unwilling parents who commit some atrocity to a newborn infant, sometimes after a failed abortion attempt, the laws as drafted are so draconian as to make little differentiation between the natural and tragic personal event of a miscarriage and that of a child killed, or a pregnancy terminated, by deliberate circumstances. Where the circumstances are obvious I should think there are laws and judgments to be made, and we can already make them (just as there used to be a convincing argument to be had regarding existing laws on terrorism, now swept aside in favor of torture, often by the same people who oppose abortion...consistency....consistency people). Where they are questionable surroundings, we may be able to question, but not to intrude with guns blazing.

We have not been able to craft definitive laws on these matters because our legal system has not definitively used a process to declare when a human being is endowed with these natural and unalienable rights prior to its natural live birth. It fundamentally cannot because that determination would make the presumption, however well intentioned and well-founded that may be, that all such developments will take their course and provide a living breathing infant and all the trials or tribulations, as well as joys and wonders, that accompany such things. They do not, even in the natural order. Were we to suggest that habits which increase the likelihood of a "natural" miscarriage, such as say smoking or drinking, be criminalized for a pregnant and prospective mother there would be, or at least one would expect, a public outcry equally divisive and suggesting of a troubling introduction of governmental meddling with the private affairs of its citizens. Simply being over 40 for example is a troubling condition for the development of a fetus into a healthy infant. How would we best attack this problem with the full force of legal powers to protect the developing child with society's blessing? Again we cannot. If we cannot protect and guarantee human life with every contraceptive event through legal authorities then I dare say we haven't yet found it's source in a scientific and metaphysical form. It would be a simple matter at that point. Since it is not a simple matter, it remains instead to allow individuals to exercise as best they may their conscience when the question is put forth in their own minds on how to proceed. For individuals who feel it is a simple matter, it becomes one. They don't have to have abortions. There is no formal or informal state policy of infanticide being adopted like that of the ancient Romans or even the more modern Chinese "one child" policy that is often pointed to with disdain. For everyone else, this decision remains challenging. And we are amazingly still free to make it more difficult still by disagreeing with a particular course of action. Even in public, but ideally without resorting to violence or judgmental acts of disrespect.

2) If we do not endow a fetus with human rights, what is stop someone from deciding freely through the exercise of their conscience that say, Mexicans, are not human and how would we be consistent to punish their actions. Here we have drawn clear legal distinctions. Once a person is alive through birth, we create legal structures as a means of guarding against things like unilateral intolerance and genocidal activity. Again, since there isn't a clear argument that a human being becomes such at the inception of a fertilized egg, there has to be a clear argument agreed upon socially that there is a point where a human being gains their human rights. There are vague legal opinions offered that this occurs at some time before birth and we legally prevent most abortions from occurring past that point, excepting in extreme cases for the health of a pregnant woman for example. At birth, we are permitted the activity of our mind in the pursuit of prejudicial opinions and biases. We are not permitted the depravity to slaughter or abuse others on the sole basis that we feel they are less human or not human. This is a silly point to have to make in a debate, but it comes up frequently made by ardent anti-abortion advocates. As though there is a distributed playbook to run down a series of ridiculous arguments with the idea being that only someone who holds these ridiculous opinions would oppose their viewpoint. It's not the only one

3) No distinction or quarter is to be made between people who allow abortions to go forward by not enacting laws to penalize anyone involved and the actual people who choose freely to have the procedure or to perform it. All are then painted with the broad stroke of "pro-abortion". Most accurately, the label is "pro-choice", with the understanding that a large percentage of such peoples would personally oppose many conditions for having abortions of their own. Even the women who would have them are often in a considerable state of doubt and uncertainty. "Roe" for example became opposed to abortion at a later point in her life. Judging from that sort of turnaround, it seems natural to allow consciences to be exercised free from legal scrutiny and consequence, but it would still be possible to do so with the opposition of society or with the support of its essential members (our friends or family). Such consequences are often more unbearable than anything we could assemble as a legal penalty to exact for a perceived injustice. As such, it remains to assemble a means to make these consequences more infrequent, by providing better and intelligent access to alternatives, and to use social infrastructures without the calcified and inflexible force of legal authoritarians to impose them more freely. They work. Legal authority simply guarantees a series of intractable consequences to the greater society that no one is prepared to deal with and does precious little to restrict the demands of people who would seek out abortions in whatever dire circumstances they feel necessary to have one. Rather it structurally limits who has access to them to precisely the same group that already has sufficient safeguards to limit the need in the first place: generally upper-middle classes of people.

4) Sex should not be "guilt-free" or without consequence.
It remains to understand that an advocacy structured on abstinence will generally fail to achieve its goals, because it often fails to educate responsibly its target audience, and that there is nothing inherently damaging about sex itself that we should be labeling it as a "guilt-free" activity where people must move to remove any perceived damages it creates upon its participants. This assumption that human sexuality outside of some sanctified marriage is somehow automatically bad is itself creating a good deal of social difficulty as it then creates legal and social distinctions on marriage itself (see: gay rights being limited). Sexuality carries already a good number of consequences in the form of transmittable disease risks. Pregnancy is, by comparison, the lesser concern, and also happens to be the concern that is by nature more private. Disease has social implications and costs to be managed by appropriate public response. One such response is to educate. Another is to demand accountable or responsible behavior. This response is based, strangely for what is largely a religious movement, on the ideal human behavior. One assumes that if human beings are largely unaccountable and prone to "sin", that there should be measures employed not merely to "prevent sin" but to account for any damages upon others. We do this in criminal acts and such people are often the first to demand stringent penalties, and yet there is no accountability for a baser human impulse toward sex? Would it not be sensible to assume, even though this is itself a flawed assumption on its face, that all people would seek to engage in sexual practices at some point almost certainly before we have some established social procedure that permits them to do so, at least without malicious intentions, and then design a policy that acts on this assumption? Why the dichotomy between some actions which can harm but one or a few (or even just the self in the form of our drug laws or attempts at "anti-homosexual"/sodomy laws for consensual adults, some of whom would be heterosexual married couples...) and actions which could harm many through ignorance or maliciousness equally?

When this sort of anti-intellectual, "god wills it" culture is subsided and replaced with a greater sense of personal accountability rather than "I will make you feel accountable because MY god says so", I think we'd have a more reasonable approach toward difficult subjects like abortion and I suspect we'd have a lot fewer abortions performed. The hypocritical double standards therein are, based on my previous post, precisely what is so offending people who leave their organized religious institutions behind and precisely why so many people in this country have stratified opinions on this subject that make it virtually impossible to have a coherent debate. Fortunately for all of us so long as there isn't a coherent debate, there won't be much in the form of legal activity. Maybe the discordant shouting is what we all wanted in the first place and so long as there won't be any policies getting made one way or the other, then it's a tossup whether anything will be getting done or not. So we can continue shouting.