Abortion Pill on the Rise
The Washington Post reports:
Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision, a pill that has largely faded from the rancorous public debate over abortion has slowly and quietly begun to transform the experience of ending a pregnancy in the United States.
The French abortion pill RU-486, on the market since 2000, has become an increasingly common alternative, making abortion less clinical and more private. At a time when the overall number of abortions has been steadily declining, RU-486-induced abortions have been rising by 22 percent a year and now account for 14 percent of the total — and more than one in five early abortions performed by the ninth week of pregnancy.
The pill, often called “miffy” after its chemical name mifepristone and brand name Mifeprex, also has helped slow the decline in abortion providers, as more physicians who previously did not perform the procedure discreetly start to prescribe the pill.
OK: but what’s the difference, then, between a normal abortion and an abortion by using this pill? The result is the same, no? It’s still abortion, albeit a quick, clean and easy one.
Beth Jordan, medical director of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals said something that worries me even more: “The impact and the promise is huge. It’s going a long way towards normalizing abortion.”
In other words, it won’t be long before people will consider abortion to be a minor thing; a bit like taking a painkiller when you’ve got a headache. This lady even has the guts to call that “huge…” in a good way. Yes, awesome: if it goes on like this we will all conveniently forget that those who take an abortion pill are actually still killing a human being! That’s indeed a great step forward for mankind.
And why do most people have an abortion? Well, lets just look at this example:
Judi Gilbert, 41, a nurse in Philadelphia, opted for mifepristone in 2005 when she had her second abortion. She had a 3-year-old son and was about to start a new job.
“It was something I could do at home and be with my husband,” Gilbert said of taking the pill. “It was a decision we made together alone, and we were able to take care of it this way alone. It was just a much more private affair.”
She added: “I wouldn’t say it was easy — it’s never easy to terminate a pregnancy. But in the grand scheme of things, it was much more pleasant than a surgical procedure.”
Ah, how nice. She just found a new job. Life-job. Human being-job. Baby-job. Ah, easy: job!
Randall K. O’Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee worded it quite well, albeit with great restraint: “This troubles me. It obviously shows that the marketing efforts have been effective in getting doctors to introduce this into their practices.”
I can’t quite understand how any religious person can consider this ‘progress.’ That doesn’t mean that every religious person should be pro-life, but it does mean that religious people can’t possibly be happy with the destruction of human life, even if they value the woman’s ‘right’ to choose more than anything else.
I’m by no means a pro-life activist, and I doubt I will ever be one, but ‘developments’ like this greatly trouble me.
From what I heard, it’s not that "quick, clean, and easy." It’s painful, slow, and messy. The "success" rate is high (at least 94%, some claim higher) but serious complications, up to and including death, are a possibility.
If you think that it’s encouraging women to have abortions who otherwise would not, that’s troubling. If it enables women who would have abortions anyway to have them earlier, when the embryo is less developed, that’s progress of a sort. The privacy of the act of taking the pill is somehow appropriate; it corresponds to the factual privacy of the decision early in pregnancy, when the "fetus" is still an embryo and the state does not yet have a realistic interest in protecting an individual. The only way to reach into that private space and affect women’s decisions is by a cultural shift.
What’s interesting is that the pro-life movement has had quite a bit of success in bringing about such a shift in awareness, even though most people reject criminalization of early abortion. What’s important is to reject normalization, to make abortion a grave decision that people are anxious to avoid.
(P.S. I’ve <a href="http://ambivablog.typepad.com/ambivablog/2005/01/note_this_essay.html">written extensively</a> on the subject.)
Rats. Link.
I support abortion right, and women right to dispose of their body. Many so-called religious persons have the tendency to dictate their narrow views on others. For the most ludicrous sex is evil, they would forbid condoms and enforce abstinence -unless on purpose-because they want you to shag only to procreate, they would forbid the contraceptive pill because it prevents people to have undesired kids while the latter could fill up the followers rank for their wannabe hegemonic cult, they would forbid abortion because an embryonic fetus is for them an "human being", well no.
“if it goes on like this we will all conveniently forget that those who take an abortion pill are actually still killing a human being! That’s indeed a great step forward for mankind”
Uhmmm Michael, I know you feel strongly about this, but I’m afraid that you’re going to have to accept that there is a considerable proportion of the populace that does not consider an embryo a full-fledged human being. In fact, I’d wager you don’t either, entirely. Do you support a total ban, at ANY level of pregnancy, even for rape victims or iscest victims? Would you prosecute women for murder for taking these pills? I’m betting you probably wouldn’t, while you would do all these things in the case of infants.
You aren’t alone of course, the vast majority of even those who call themselves pro-life don’t treat embryos on the same level as babies.
Personally, I don’t consider an early stage embryo to be anywhere near a baby, though I do understand the missgivings of many people even to normalizing that stage in case it pushes the limit into later and later terms. I of course don’t know where the limit should be, though I do think there should be some limits. Certainly, this pill is no different from an abortion, it IS an abortion, just a much less invasive one.
Michael, if you recall in the blog radio program on abortion, Jason was objecting to the rhetorical use of the term ‘genocide’ by the prolife advocate on the show. While I understand Jason’s point and even agree to a large extent that speaking of it in those terms tends to polarize people too much, I also see very much that it’s the flip side of the prochoice advocates’ use of ‘normalizing’. Those who don’t want abortion restricted have a strong stake in making sure that no one thinks of abortion as anything other than a woman choosing to have a minor medical procedure.
One reason it’s so difficult to find common ground on this issue is that no one can even agree really on whether or not the procedure should be ‘rare’. A lot of non-activists believe that abortion should be ’safe, legal, but rare,’ but how do you get there? Prolifers of course want it to be more than rare and illegal, while prochoice activists won’t accept anything to make it rare other than increasing access to birth control. Unfortunately, even with high degrees of access though, people still make choices which result in pregnancies and they will continue to do so at higher rates if the consequence of an unwanted pregnancy can easily be ‘reversed’ via abortion (either chemical or surgical). A compromise would be for prolifers to not quibble over birth control and education to help prevent more unwanted pregnancies, but prochoicers have to also stop working to ‘normalize’ and trivialize abortion.
Christine, I think part of the problem is that both sides of the issue are in the uncomfortable position of knowing they aren’t entirely consistent.
If pro-lifers think when you abort you kill a full human life, why do they push for anything other than a full ban?
If pro-choicers think that aborting is just one more routine medical procedure, then why do they want to make sure it’s "rare"?
Almost everyone has a position that is, at best, based one third in knowledge, one third in instinct and one third in emotion/upbringing. Almost no one is 100% sure of their position, and those that ARE 100% sure are the extremists, and cannot be reasoned with, one way or the other.
Well, I’m an extremist by your definition then, and a consistent one, because I do support the idea that abortion is never justified except for when the mother’s life is truly at stake (because then it makes no sense to not save one of the two lives- ethically this is quite similar to performing a surgery to separate Siamese twins when it’s clear that one will not survive.)
Hopefully I’m not one of those extremists that ‘cannot be reasoned with’, although I’m certainly not likely to change my mind.
C. Stanley, does that mean you would allow NO exceptions, even for rape or incest? Would you prosecute getting an abortion as first degree murder, as it would be for killing an infant?
Pardon me if I sound a little incredulous, but it strikes me as hard to believe that people really REALLY think of, say, a 5 week embryo as a baby. If I thought that millions of BABIES were being murdered every year, I doubt I’d be able to think about anything else, ever.
It doesn’t quite consume me like that (life has to go on) but it certainly makes compromise pretty unthinkable.
And yes, I do mean no exceptions, because it makes no sense to take the position that a baby is being killed but that’s OK in cases where the mother didn’t choose to engage in sexual activity.
It’s not about punishing the mother; I’d be fine with having no penalty for women but have stiff fines and potential loss of license for doctors or anyone else who performed an abortion.
I do of course have more sympathy for women who find themselves pregnant as the result of rape than those who became pregnant by having unprotected sex, but again it’s not about punishment for any of the women who find themselves in difficult situations. I happen to think that the men involved will be held to a higher degree of responsibility for the pregnancies they instigate if abortion isn’t on the table as a way out. In fact I think one reason abortion has become ‘normalized’ is because it’s far easier for men to say "well, it has to be a woman’s choice" than to say "I made a woman pregnant, now it’s my responsibility too."
All of this means, of course, that society has to take far greater responsibility too- and again, many people find it much easier to say that they personally don’t believe abortion is right but that women have to choose for themselves, even though we’d never think that about any other life (we wouldn’t say, for example, that women could make the decision to euthanitize their born children, even though that would relieve us of having to care for impoverished families.)
So instead of just focusing on what I’m against, I prefer to focus on what I’m for, which is helping to provide support for women in crisis pregnancies and advocating for adoption and pregnancy care centers to help women make the choice that I think is the morally correct one.
"Yes, awesome: if it goes on like this we will all conveniently forget that those who take an abortion pill are actually still killing a human being! That’s indeed a great step forward for mankind."
Some moderate talk, here.
I’ve already shown that the situation we have now is preferable to a ban and that all pro-lifers can’t do anything before they drop the desire of a ban completely.
"Ah, how nice. She just found a new job. Life-job. Human being-job. Baby-job. Ah, easy: job!"
VERY easy. 41, nurse, already has a child. She probably made the most rational and egoistic decision and I find her far more moral and ethical for this than those who would deride her.
"That doesn’t mean that every religious person should be pro-life, but it does mean that religious people can’t possibly be happy with the destruction of human life, even if they value the woman’s ‘right’ to choose more than anything else."
This ‘destruction’ is hypothetical. The ‘right’ to choose is not.
If abortions become less harrowing and problematic that means that more kids, on the whole, will start their childhoods when theya re good and ready, and most of the aborted entities don’t have an impending childhood to be robbed of – they are not human at the time, simple as that.
I take no glee in the worries of the pro-lifers, but if they are going to speak so one-sidedly about stuff like this I am going to become indifferent.
That pretty much rules you out of my definition of "crazy extremist" then
, though I disagree with you on the matter. Still, regardless of abortion itself, encouraging more responsibility both in terms of sexual activity (though you’re more abstinence oriented and I’m more birth-control oriented) and parental responsibility, is an excellent idea.
utsu= commenter formerly known as Xel?
Those are the best areas for finding common ground, don’t you think? I’m willing to say that prolifers should place more focus on prevention of pregnancy (even if that involves moral choices we don’t agree with.) Likewise, if prochoice activists are truly motivated by helping women who find themselves dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, then it seems they should be willing to help those women make whatever choice is really appropriate for them (I truly find that to not be the case with some ardent prochoicers, who really think the only valid choice is abortion.) A bit more emphasis on that would help convince prolifers that the prochoice moniker is real- that they aren’t actually pro-abortion. In fact aside from concern about the lack of respect for life of the fetus, many prolifers also feel a great deal of concern for the aftereffects of abortion on women who weren’t really given enough access to information or weren’t encouraged to really explore whether they might regret the decision.
A compromise would be for prolifers to not quibble over birth control and education to help prevent more unwanted pregnancies, but prochoicers have to also stop working to ‘normalize’ and trivialize abortion.
Very, very well said.
What I tried to say is that, apart from any absolute right to life you do or don’t ascribe to a conceptus, you actually do undermine the value of all lives, very definitely including your own, when you make it a simple "choice" whether to let a conceived individual go forward. If that’s the case, then your own existence is equally meaningless and contingent. You’re here? Well, you’re just lucky. Pro-choicers may claim to believe that, but they don’t act that way about their own precious lives and rights — in fact, no one could. We all viscerally feel that our being here is destined and meaningful, even if we don’t think it. Abortion cancels any claim to legitimacy that feeling might have had. Do you see?