In Oklahoma
Women seeking abortions in Oklahoma are to be forced to reveal an array of personal information, such as the state of their relationships, how many children they have and their race, which will be posted on an official website…Abortion rights groups have filed a lawsuit to try to block the new law, which requires women seeking abortions to provide doctors with answers to 34 questions including their age, marital status and education levels, as well as the number of previous pregnancies and abortions. Women are required to reveal their relationship with the father, the reason for the abortion and the area where the abortion was performed. Doctors are obliged to pass the information on to the Oklahoma health department, which will post it on a public website.
In other words…a pregnant woman has no rights at all, she is public property because she is pregnant and therefore everything about her is public property and nothing about her belongs to her and no one else. In other words she is not a real person – she is a vessel for a real person, not a real person herself, and her life and her wants and needs are of no significance. It’s everyone’s business whom she had sex with and under what circumstances, why she wants to end the pregnancy, and anything else that The State feels like asking.
Last month a judge struck down a state law requiring a doctor about to perform an abortion to carry out an ultrasound with the screen positioned in front of the mother and to then describe the developing limbs and organs of the foetus. The woman could not be forced to look at the screen but would have no choice but to listen to the doctor’s description. The law required that the ultrasound be carried out vaginally if the pregnancy was in its early stages in order to get a clear picture. Rape victims were not exempted.
In other words the state mandated that women be raped by a machine if they were getting an abortion.
Do they not even have an excuse for why they’re doing this?
Well presumbably it’s because any woman who wants to Kill Her Baby is a murdering whore.
As the man says, religion poisons everything.
I (genuinely) wonder what the attitude of the proposers of this legislation would be to the following alternative proposal: that the State of Oklahoma put an option before any woman seeking an abortion, namely that the state give her contact details of a number of childless couples seeking to adopt, with those couples agreeing to support her financially until the birth/transfer and an agreed time thereafter, with any pre-birth and post-birth terms and conditions agreed to by the parties being legally binding.
As far as I am aware, such options are not available anywhere. BTW, I am not a lawyer, and am completely self-taught in legalese. I hope it doesn’t show. ;-)
I’m from Oklahoma. Lived there most of my life. This kind of bullshit is the norm out there. It really is one of the most backwards states in the Union.
The people out there will claim that this is all about “sanctity of life” or some bullshit like that, but I can assure you it’s not. It’s about shaming the woman. That’s what they want. Is it any wonder that holy, righteous Oklahoma also has some of the highest divorce and teen pregnancy rates in the country?
The whole society out there is messed up. Growing up, the majority of my friends’ parents were divorced. It was normal for girls to get married and start having children straight out of high school. And there’s a frickin’ church on every block, promoting the “family”.
And, of course, those very people demanding that young women should be shamed into having children they aren’t ready to raise are the same people who oppose any attempt to increase welfare or healthcare for the poor. They really are just downright bad people.
That is completely outrageous. If that does not violate the U.S. Constitution, it certainly violates U.N. Human Rights legislation. A quick look: article 12 of the UN Universal Declaration says that no one can be the object of arbitrary violations of their private life. Other articles may be pertinent.
As I have said before, religion is essentially transgressive, because it (incorrectly, of course) assumes a higher truth than any truths that can be achieved by human beings alone. Religions must always presuppose that prescriptions that apply to members apply also to non-members. This is the reason for supposing that Hitchens is right, and that religion really does poison everything.
Ian, your way out of the situation is not only legally naive, it is also morally naive. There are some common law principles involved here, but, more seriously, the asuumption that it is either morally appropriate or legally defensible to establish a contract with a pregnant woman for the disposition of her child at birth is really only an expression of the way in which religions transgress the boundaries of private lives in situations like this.
Women must have complete control of reproduction. This is not only because they must have control of their lives. They must be able to decide whether, in any particular case, they want to bring a child into the world. That in itself is a moral decision of some depth and seriousness. To suppose that it is appropriate to intervene, in the ways describe, in something that is of such great consequence to an individual, by invading her privacy, by making her subject to forcible instruction, and, moreover, by invading her body (raped by a machine, as Ophelia says), is something so monstrous that only religion could be held to justify it. If this law is not struck down, then I tremble for American democracy and freedom. One of the things that seems to be getting lost in the present culture struggles in the US is the role of government in protecting individuals and minorities form majorities. It happened in the election last year in California. Have Americans really forgotten what democracy is all about? Have they forgotten that democracy is not only a matter of majorities, but also a matter of justice and freedom?
With most Americans, it’s not a matter of forgetting, it’s a matter of never having grasped in the first place. Most Americans think democracy means simply majority will and that when there is a tension between majority will and justice, we just have to bite the bullet and give up justice.
Eric, I heartily agree with your comment and applaud your understanding of the importance of the woman’s wants, but I thought Ian was being a bit Swiftian? And that his point was that nobody would tolerate invasions into the privacy of godly married couples in the same way they’d tolerate the same invasions into the life of a dirty slut? Is that what you meant, Ian?
OB: I think in American constitutional jurisprudence, which is the usual mechanism in the U.S. for protecting minorities by law, there’s a lot of emphasis on an extreme relativist position that “justice” has little or no meaning apart from majority will. Ironically, it’s conservatives who espouse this the most (since minority protection is a liberal ideal).
Eric, my suggestion was not for prescription or coercion, but to increase the options available to any woman who may find herself unintentionally pregnant.
“…the asuumption that it is either morally appropriate or legally defensible to establish a contract with a pregnant woman for the disposition of her child at birth is really only an expression of the way in which religions transgress the boundaries of private lives in situations like this.”
It is both morally appropriate and legally defensible if people make it so. Some women might see such an arrangement as being preferable to the more common course of abortion, if it were available to them.
I may be in error, but I cannot see how the second half of the above quote from your comment connects with the first. Everyone knows the record of the churches when they get political power or influence on abortion and reproduction. But I cannot see how what I have suggested is a capitulation to them, or a denial of a woman’s right to the final decision in the matter.
For the record, I do not subscribe to the view that a zygote or embryo is just as fully human as say a newborn or an adult. The fiercely inflexible Catholic Church in its practice displays the same view, otherwise it would be performing funeral rites not only for miscarriages, but for menstrual blood (just in case).
Jenavir, your last post crossed my last.
As I read it, the Oklahoma legislation will apply to all women who seek abortions, many of whom in real life will be married with families, not just young and single. It is, as OB says, misogyny gone wild, and totally indefensible without prior acceptance of the authoritarian ‘morality’ behind it.
Ian, you said: “It is both morally appropriate and legally defensible if people make it so.”
I disagree. If the point is to offer alternatives, this does not do so. It would not, I think, be legally defensible to establish indefeasible contracts as to what would happen to a child on birth. There is a famous case of Baby M, who was conceived by a woman as a surrogate mother, contracted by a couple who were childless. The surrogate provided the egg, and was artificially inseminated with the sperm of the husband of the contracting childless couple. The contract gave rights to the child to the contracting couple. However, the surrogate mother could not give up her child, and she was not required to do so, despite the contract, and it would, in my view, have been immoral to have forced so unnatural a demand upon her.
The point that I am making is simply this. There is no way to make peace with authoritarian morality, and we should not try to do so. The decision must be left up to the woman, whether to carry a child to term or to have a termination at some earlier point. No one has a right to intervene in this deicision making process, least of all government authorities. If a woman asks for assistance in making the decision, there should be someone to whom she can appeal, but there is nothing either legally or morally defensible in making such consultation necessary, much less in making the grossest violation of a woman’s bodily integrity required, as the law in Oklahoma does. This is nothing short of assault, and should be seen to be so. Surely, the Supreme Court could not rule otherwise on such law. This is, as Ophelia says, offensive and inhuman. But, as its source is in religion, this should come as no surprise.
As to democracy, I now see what was wrong with the whole idea of seeding democracy in Iraq, and trying to do the same thing in Afghanistan. In such situations democracy is based on majorities, and if they are religiously repressive majorities, there is nothing much that could be said, given the idea that majorities rule, and rule over minorities. With such an understanding of democracy, Iraq and Afghanistan are doomed from the start, and people are dying for nothing, for the end result, given the context, will undoubtedly be a theocratic majority. It makes the whole thing look madder and madder, and the waste of human life pitiful.
Oh but she was required to – the Baby M case was resolved against the birth mother.
Exactly, about democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve been murmuring about this all along. Democracy was a highly dubious goal.
Jenavir, that’s interesting about the jurisprudence. I certainly knew that about the rhetoric – all that nonsense about the outrageous judges interfering with the Will of the People; but I didn’t know it was part of jurisprudence. Do you know of any references offhand?
Ophelia, I stand to be corrected, of course, but I understood that the contract had been upheld, but then it was voided by a higher court, the argument being that (i) the agreement, after the baby was born, no longer had the character of a volutary agreement, and (ii) the transaction amounted to the buying and the selling of a child. But I could be wrong.
Eric: “No one has a right to intervene in this deicision making process…” (I have never said anyone should have such a right) “…least of all government authorities. If a woman asks for assistance in making the decision, there should be someone to whom she can appeal…” (agreed)”… but there is nothing either legally or morally defensible in making such consultation necessary…” (I have never said it should be compulsory or necessary) “…much less in making the grossest violation of a woman’s bodily integrity required, as the law in Oklahoma does.” (No argument there.)
All I am advocating is maximising options, which I find authoritarians and religious dogmatists are generally loath to do. I do not think that the woman’s choice should be necessarily confined to a. give birth and keep, b. give birth and adopt out and c. abort; particularly when a and b involve considerable financial burdens as present arrangements go.
Surogacy has had its problems, but as far as I am aware has worked in some cases and failed in others.
Eric – Wikipedia tells me that Mary Beth Whitehead, Baby M’s birth mother, was required to transfer custody to the Sterns (the contracting family). However, custody went to the Sterns on “best interest of the child” grounds, even though the contract was invalidated.
Yes, that was my memory of the affair. But of course my point was that the contract itself was voided. That custody was not given to the mother was, for the point that I was making, irrelevant, for it indicates that such contracts could not, at least in the case where the child was really the child of the mother (as in Baby M’s case), and not, say, an implanted embryo, be enforced, since valid consent to give up a child could not be given before the birth of the child.
That seemed to me the problem with Ian’s proposal. The birth of a child changes everything – or at least may change everything – even if initially the woman had intended to terminate her pregnancy. In fact, the birth of a child could bring about precisely the situation a woman may legitimately want to avoid: attachment to a child and a change in her life circumstances. Women’s freedom and empowerment depends upon control over reproduction.
Eric: “In fact, the birth of a child could bring about precisely the situation a woman may legitimately want to avoid: attachment to a child and a change in her life circumstances.”
Aborting the pregnancy can also bring about a situation in which the woman regrets the abortion. One does not have to concede anything to the ‘abortion is murder’ brigade to recognise the legitimate human concerns that can arise. The area is a minefield in some ways.
The self-contradictory position you allude to; of not wanting to develop an attachment of maternal love for the child and so terminating it, is a major moral dilemma I am sure for many women who find themselves in this situation, with an apparently small range of alternatives before them. All I have sought is ways of increasing that range of options.
Neither morality nor legality is carved in stone immutably.
That’s an utterly shocking report and I’m very glad that the law was struck down.
Ian, I’m not saying that abortion should raise no moral flags, but the flags are small in comparison with those raised by infanticide. I simply don’t think there is a good reason to give an inch to religions on this issue. The matter of whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is for women to decide. Full stop. The rest of us may have our moral reservations. We should keep them to ourselves. I approve fully of abortion on demand, no questions asked. I’m fed up with religious self-righteousness on this matter. No, I’m simply sick of it. In Canada the issue is settled, despite occasional outbursts from the Roman Catholic Church. Let them fulminate. It’s none of their business, nor mine.
I do not think the situation I allude to is self-contradictory, despite Christopher Hitchens belief to the contrary. Foetuses are not children. And while there may be personal moral issues involved for the women in question, they do not have to do with killing human beings, and nothing that we should say should let that particular religious camel into the tent.
I have to agree with Eric here–surrogacy contracts shouldn’t be enforced. I don’t think it would truly increase the woman’s options if, during pregnancy, she surrendered her freedom to keep the child after birth. That’s just like adoption, except–because of the financial support given by the prospective adoptive parents–the woman has little room to change her mind. And I would agree with Eric that this is wrong.
Ian, women do have regrets about abortion sometimes, but abortion is unlike a contract in that there is no possibility of going back on it. If a woman regrets a contract, it is in our power to relieve her of the regret by leaving it open for her to renege on it. Also, regrets about abortion are far less common and less painful than regrets about giving up a child. Going through the full nine months of pregnancy and the resulting hormonal transformations does usually result in deep emotional attachment to the child. Indeed, whether or not the child is kept there is a wide variety of physical and mental issues that arise after a completed pregnancy that do not arise out of a terminated one. Because a full-term pregnancy is a bigger emotional and physical deal than an abortion. The book The Girls Who Went Away is a study of women sent to maternity homes and encouraged to give up children for adoption in the days before Roe v. Wade. It is not pretty.
OB: the best example I can think of off-hand is from Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, the case striking down a Texas law banning sodomy in the privacy of one’s home as unconstitutional. The majority opinion subjected the law to “rational basis review” and found that there was no rational basis for this law. Scalia’s dissent says, among other things, that a majority’s belief that certain sexual behavior is bad is a “rational basis” for a law. And goes on to say that disallowing criminalization of sodomy would mean placing laws against incest, bigamy and bestiality at risk of being declared unconstitutional.
Re: the Whitehead case, Mary Beth Whitehead was given visitation rights.
Also, if anyone’s interested, you can check out the brilliantly acerbic Katha Pollitt on The Strange Case of Baby M and what surrogacy means for women’s physical autonomy.
Jenavir, ah, yes, I did sort of know that about Scalia, but forgot that I knew it.
He believes in theocracy, too.
Have read the brilliantly acerbic Katha Pollitt on the Baby M case. Keep the brilliantly acerbic Katha Pollitt in mind when being called a mean nasty aggressive bully; say to self am not either, am acerbic, not mean nasty aggressive bully.
Jenavir: Noted. But nothing you have said in your second par at 2009-10-21 – 10:16:19 convinces me that maximising options for the woman concerned is not the best way to go. Nor do I think there is one easy formula or answer for such situations.
“…abortion is unlike a contract in that there is no possibility of going back on it.”
Precisely.
Ian, of course maximizing options is the best way to go. My only quibble is with how best to accomplish that end.
And OB, I can’t think of a better role model for acerbity than Pollitt–but sadly she gets plenty of people calling her mean, too!