Potpourri of Abortion Commentary
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Two posts ago I did a long one on abortion, in particular the new anti-abortion laws which had recently been passed by Georgia and Alabama. It was not my intent to return to the subject so soon, but I got a fair number of comments, both here and via email that seemed to require a more in-depth response, and so rather than replying in the comments where very few will see it, or via email where only one person would see it, I thought I’d make a post out of it. (We’re still in a position where not many people will see it, but I get a post out of it.) I’m going to bounce around a lot, so be warned.
1- Abortion, the Sex Recession, and Fertility Rates
To begin with one of my readers made the connection between a previous post where I talked about young men having less sex, and making abortion illegal. His theory was that the cost of raising a kid is greater than ever, and that this is already exerting a downward pressure on sex and intimacy. If this is the case, then what happens when you no longer have the option of abortion? Won’t that make things even worse, he reasoned, causing still more men to go their own way, and yet lower fertility?
On its face this theory seems reasonable. To begin with, one of the major theories for declining birthrates is the expense associated with children. In particular children have gone from being an asset (additional very cheap labor to help you work the farm) to a liability. And yes, kids are more expensive than ever, though the perception of that expense is worse than the reality. BLOGThis website seems to indicate that in inflation adjusted terms the cost of raising a child was 203k in 1960 compared to 233k in 2015. That said, I think there's a valid argument to be made that the real massive increase has been in time and attention, and other less quantifiable costs. For one thing, it generally takes two incomes to cover things now, where in 1960 one income was sufficient.
Still, when you bundle all of this together how much of an impact does it have on the sexual activity rate of young men? My sense is that the problem is not that there are plenty of women who are willing to have sex, but young men are declining because it might lead to a pregnancy, and that pregnancy might lead to a child, and that child would be really expensive. Rather, my sense is that the chief obstacle is step one, finding a woman in the first place. And while there has been some tightening of abortion availability even before the recent flurry of laws, it seems hard to imagine that this is what’s behind the tripling of young men under 30 who aren't having sex over the last ten years.
The reader also pointed out that downstream of all this was the issue of fertility, where I have also expressed concerns. And there are some interesting questions to consider in this arena. What will Georgia’s fertility rate look like if the recently passed law survives the inevitable legal challenges? Does it go up because of all the births which otherwise would have been ended by abortion? Or does it go down because they’ll be even less sex now that the danger of an unplanned pregnancy is greater. Or as my reader said:
It's not hard to envision all kinds of delicious dysfunction later in life where, in a white hot heat of frustration and rage, the parents tell the unwanted child that they exist only because "UNFORTUNATELY we lived in GEORGIA! The government made me keep you!"
In any event, these are questions I would be interested in the answer to. Of course that will only be possible if the law isn't struck down and we have the data to make a comparison, which for my money is a consideration which should actually carry some weight in this whole debate, though, to be clear, not very much. If all this happens, I’m not sure what I expect to see. It was never very easy to get an abortion in Georgia, so I’m not sure that the law would make an appreciable difference in terms of fertility. On the other hand, as I pointed out, I don’t think the unplanned pregnancy consideration is much of a factor in young men not having sex, but maybe it’s a bigger deal than I think.
The key point is that there is a lot going on with fertility, how much sex people are having, and morality in general. It would be interesting to consider an alternate world, of absolutely enforced Catholic morality: no birth control and no abortion. What does the fertility rate look like in this world? Is it dramatically lower than our current world because almost no one has sex? Because they know that if they do there's a good chance they'll end up saddled with a child? Or is it dramatically higher because all of the kids that were avoided or aborted in our world now exist? I don't know. I suspect the latter. But in this day and age I wouldn't be surprised to be wrong either.
2- Slippery Slope Arguments
The reader who emailed me brought up one more subject, which I’m including because I think it is something I could do better:
I noted the difference between your slippery slope response with respect to transgender protections--"Where does it end??"--versus a very relaxed stance about the admittedly vanishingly small number of women who would actually be imprisoned for life for getting an out-of-state abortion.
It is very easy to fall into a trap where you apply the slippery slope argument when it’s convenient, but then go on to ignore it when it isn’t. But I think looking at the specific examples of transgender protections and women who might be imprisoned for out of state abortions illustrates some of the criteria I hope to apply when making that particular argument.
To begin with, we have actually experienced what happens when abortion is illegal. We can look back to the 60's and early 70's and see whether there was a slippery slope back then. Were there large numbers of women imprisoned, only to be freed by Roe v. Wade? Did the states where it was illegal resemble A Handmaid's Tale? As far as I know neither of these things happened the last time abortion was illegal, which inclines me to believe that they won't happen the next time it's illegal either. I do have some concerns that the nation can’t survive much more drama in this area, which is a whole other issue. But if it can, then not only do I foresee nothing resembling A Handmaid’s Tale, I also think Roe will be reinstated in some fashion even if the pro-choice side does achieve a temporary victory at the Supreme Court. (My prediction is that if Roe is overturned that it will be reinstated within 10 years, assuming that the repeal doesn’t trigger some political black swan.)
On the other hand, when we look at the changes we're making to accommodate transgender individuals, it's historically unprecedented. In spite of this, there is still a good chance that we'll end up in some sort of equilibrium, that there will be no slippery slope. But given that we have no experience in this area, I think the we need to take the slippery slope argument more seriously than in the previous example. A lack of data makes it harder to know which outcome to expect, and I think the vast majority of things I talk about fall into this category. To put it another way, it's taken over 45 years for the first significant challenge of Roe to emerge, and even if it somehow manages to succeed, it's mostly just going back to conditions we already have experience with. If there is a slope in this area, it's not a very steep one. On the other hand there are several measures of transgender trends that look essentially exponential.
If I had said there's a slippery slope towards an increasing number of late term abortions that would be more interesting, and more controversial. There have in fact been academic papers arguing that post-birth abortions should be legal as well, but I think people's opinion about this has remained pretty static, though I might be tempted to argue that the pro-choice side is moving towards later abortions at about the same speed as the pro-life crowd is moving towards overturning Roe.
3- Bodily Autonomy Leading to a Lack of Support
Moving on, a comment from Mark made a couple of intriguing points, to start with he points out that a principle of absolute bodily autonomy may have some unintended side effects:
I saw some guy talking about how he knocked up his girlfriend. She asked him what he thought about whether she should continue the pregnancy or have an abortion. He was proud to report he told her the whole thing was none of his business and he wasn’t going to try and influence her decision one way or another.
He was proud that after participating to create a difficult situation for her, when she craved counsel and support the most, he abandoned her?
This is an interesting and believable second order effect of the push for women to have absolute right over their pregnancies, one which probably deserves further examination. Also it might be useful to imagine all the ways in which men might react, based on their various ideologies:
Selfish Progressive: Demands woman get an abortion because he doesn’t want to risk having to pay child support.
“Enlightened” Progressive: As above. Maybe with the addition of offering to pay for the abortion if that’s her choice.
Compassionate Pro-life: When asked, advises her to keep the baby, offers marriage, and help.
Fire and Brimstone Pro-life: Tells her she’s going to go to Hell if she gets an abortion, perhaps abandoning her when she suggests it’s an option.
I’m sure there are probably more than that, and those that I’ve listed are also something of a caricature, but if we agree with Mark’s point that the “guy” in question shouldn’t have abandoned the girl, which of the other three would pro-choice advocates recommend? Presumably none of them. So if the abandonment approach isn’t ideal, what is the ideal approach, again, from a pro-choice perspective? I’m genuinely curious.
4- Showing Insufficient Concern For the Women Involved
This is the area where the criticisms were the most justified. To begin with, as you can probably guess the unintended effects of absolute bodily autonomy was not Mark’s primary point, but it does lead into it:
With abortion I feel like there’s all this oxygen wasted about whether or not the State should allow/endorse/fund it. And the real tragedy is that the debate keeps people on both sides from supporting women in making difficult choices. If a woman has an abortion she’s either condemned to burn in hell, or she should be applauded for dealing with the inconvenience.
But this isn’t like the decision to buy a new cell phone, and it’s not as morally straightforward as whether to strangle defenseless old ladies. (Hint: don’t strangle old ladies.) The decision will have lasting consequences either way, and pretending there’s no decision here, or that the decision is less impactful than, say who you marry, doesn’t just ignore the problem, it is the problem.
This is a reasonable criticism of most abortion commentary but particularly my own, and it’s closely echoed by that leveled by another commenter, Andrew:
Your proposed punishment seems like you think abortion is akin to a luxury purchase. You also admit that for all practical purposes the laws we’re talking about will criminalize all abortion and yet you have stated your moral position isn’t absolute. This seems a strange take. I don’t think I have a counter to something that seems so conflicted.
Other than saying you want mercy shown to women who have abortions illegally, you seem to have no thoughts on how abortion or lack of abortion availability impacts the mothers, families and by extension, society at large. Moral stances without thought for practical impact is folly.
There’s a lot going on in this comment, much of which I will get to in a second, but as he does point out, other than when I said, “I would want the greatest possible mercy shown to [the] women [having the abortions].” I didn’t spend any time talking about how enormously consequential the decision is, as Mark points out, or about the potential impact of abortion restrictions on pregnant women, their families and society, as Andrew mentions.
I should have talked more about that, and it should be a part of any discussion of abortion. I understand that these are real individuals making a very difficult decision. In fact as an illustration of how difficult that decision is, it’s interesting to note that while there are many behaviors which used to be completely off limits for depiction by TV and movies, but which are now depicted sympathetically or even positively. For example, things like divorce, teenage sex, adultery, drug use, etc. Actual abortions are still rarely depicted, and when they are, almost without exception, they’re framed as being very sad and awful. (I understand the movie Obvious Child is an exception, but I’ve never seen it. And I’m not aware of any other exceptions.)
On top of all this, I’m definitely libertarian enough to recognize that having the government insert itself into a difficult decision makes that decision way more difficult, and onerous, and terrible. So both Mark and Andrew are saying that I should have talked more about some other aspect of the abortion controversy either instead of, or in addition to the things I did talk about. And I agree, as I said, that’s a reasonable criticism, of not only discussions of abortion, but of most discussions period. The question is, after taking that criticism into account, what should I have done differently? How should I have talked about things?
5- General Principles of Discussion and Practicality
Let’s turn again to Andrew’s comment, since he brings up both things I could have done better, and places where I’m going to stick to my guns:
Your proposed punishment seems like you think abortion is akin to a luxury purchase.
He’s responding to a suggestion of mine that even though I am in favor of abortion providers being punished that I didn’t say anything about the severity of the punishment (in an earlier comment he accuses me of wanting to “bring down the hammer”.) The suggestion I made was that you could imagine abortion carrying $1000 fine, which would be large enough to act as a deterrent, but small enough that safe abortions, if really necessary, could still happen. But of course the point is not to get into the weeds of a he said/she said argument about this tiny point, but to examine whether I could have done better.
In this case, I will freely admit that I screwed up. It is fine to toss out a quick example to clarify things, but in my haste to come up with something which fit, I ended up proposing a scenario which is completely unrealistic. There is no conceivable scenario under which abortion doctors are lightly punished for abortions in what are essentially pro-life states, and then go on to continue operating in spite of these light punishments. Even if the law worked that way. (And here I think both of us could have done better, speeding carries a fee, is it considered a luxury purchase?) The polarization is too great. And given that polarization is my primary villain I ended up weakening my central point rather than strengthening it.
Moving on:
You also admit that for all practical purposes the laws we’re talking about will criminalize all abortion and yet you have stated your moral position isn’t absolute. This seems a strange take. I don’t think I have a counter to something that seems so conflicted.
Indeed my moral position isn’t absolute, but I don’t think there’s any conflict, because the laws aren’t absolute either. Despite what Andrew says the laws in question don’t criminalize all abortions, they only criminalize all abortions in Alabama and (effectively) Georgia. This is an important distinction, but one I think most people, perhaps including Andrew, overlook because they feel that there is one correct way of handling the abortion question, and that we should just implement that “correct way” across the entire nation. But I would argue instead that it is precisely because this is a super contentious issue where absolute morality is difficult to arrive at which means we may not be able to have a one size fits all policy.
In fact, at the risk of coming across as insufferably arrogant, paradoxically it’s humility that seems most missing from discussions of abortion, moreso even than the concern for women facing that difficult choice, which I mentioned previously. People are fixated on this current battle and deciding things permanently and for all time. But it takes humility and maybe a dose of realism to admit that this is not going to happen. That Alabama and Georgia are ***not*** everywhere. That the abortion issue doesn’t need to be decided ***for all time*** in May of 2019. That yes, any delay in deciding means bad things might happen, but also that a lot of people are making the credible argument that bad things have been happening since 1973. That the pro-life/anti-abortion crowd is not going to go away, and that this issue is not going to be decided once and for all, anytime soon, which takes us to Andrew’s final sentence:
Moral stances without thought for practical impact is folly.
As you can guess, based on what I just said, I don’t think I ignored the practical impact at all. Though I may have been looking at practical impacts at different level. As I said, I should have spent more time talking about the actual human cost of abortions. The difficulty of the decision, and the way in which the actual women facing it end up being abandoned by both sides of the issue, but I’m also going to argue that it’s entirely possible that other people spend too much time in this area, and ignore the fact that abortion is an incredibly thorny moral issue with no easy answers, which was the central point of that previous post.
And of course if we really want to discuss what’s practical, then practically I can’t imagine that I have any impact on the debate; I can’t imagine any laws will be passed or overturned based on my writing; and I’d be extraordinarily surprised to find out that I’d prevented even a single abortion. And even though all these things are undoubtedly true, I think the larger discussion, and the small part I played in that discussion is important. Whatever I might have implied, I’m glad for the comments that were made. And in the end I hope I contributed something useful however tiny that contribution might be.
This is more acknowledgement of error than I usually engage in (though still far less than what would be expected). If you’d like to support that sort of thing consider donating.