When One Is Enough

July 18, 2004 2:10 PM

That damn Costco mayonnaiseI like the East Village, but is Staten Island really that bad?
posted by MattD (57 comments total)

It is a shame that children are a financial burden on parents, it may not seem obvious but for much of history having kids was a financial boon to the parents. But today there is no financial incentive to have kids indeed one can expect to have a lower overall standard of living. Being single affords a higher standard of living, more freedoms and indeed some might say higher social status as someone who is so enlightened to not contribute to the population problem. Is it any wonder the population of industrialized countries is on the decline?

Who is benefiting from this system? The Corporations. They get an unlimited supply of talented labour for free without having to pay back into the system that raises and trains the kids, putting to burden on parents who pay for it with a reduced standard of living. No wonder people choose not to have kids.

What we need is a better system for the community (including the Corporations) to reward parents .
posted by stbalbach at 2:33 PM on July 18, 2004

Well, MattD, children do get raised in the East Village all the time. Despite the fact that there's young people around partying, it dosen't mean that families stop existing. And Staten Island (Fresk Kills notwithstanding) isn't a bad place, but like the East Village, it ain't for everyone. My Uncle Genio lived out there in the 70's. I spent the summer with him and it was just fine. The beauty of New York is you're never more than a subway ride away from the kind of neighborhood that suits your mood.
posted by jonmc at 2:40 PM on July 18, 2004

You're insinuating that she should have made sacrifices to raise a litter that she didn't want instead of one child that will be comfortable and not resented? And you're insinuating that the difference is as simple as changing neighborhoods and buying generic? You're oversimplifying and you're baiting.

I'm very happy for her, and I wish that anyone facing children that they don't really want or can't provide for would do the same thing. If people can't be bothered to take an ounce of prevention, I'd rather they take a pound of cure rather than have a child they'll resent.

I know that it's proper when taking a pro-choice stance to say "Oh, abortion is reprehensible but it's necessary. I feel so bad but it's the only way!" I say screw that. Abortion is just fine with me. Don't the murdered babies souls go right to heaven to play with Jesus anyway? What's there to be sad about?
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:40 PM on July 18, 2004

I have friends with triplets. Triplets are very hard work, especially for one person. Both parents stayed at home, and they would have found it extremely hard to survive without large amounts of family financial support; and they were living a pretty basic lifestyle at the time.
posted by carter at 2:58 PM on July 18, 2004

Despite Peter’s seeming approval of her decision to quit the pill, I believe it was irresponsible of her, and him, to not take adequate precautions (condoms or other forms of BC).

My heart still cringes when I hear of voluntary abortions such as these. They accepted the risks and yet still committed, in my opinion, an act of last resort. Part of my concern is that abortions eventually become standard, accepted practices with absolutely no social/personal/psychological implications. I believe that there should remain some form of private stigma associated with the action. Although I understand that some women never forget events like these.

What bothers me most was this: was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year.

According to her own reservations, she can’t really afford a single child, nor was she willing to accept a major change in lifestyle to accommodate for a pregnancy she knew was possible.

I realize that this just one story, which is why I’m hard-pressed to pass judgment on women or people in general regarding “lifestyle abortions”. But a story like this still upsets me because of her specific happenings and reactions thereafter.
posted by BlueTrain at 3:01 PM on July 18, 2004

I'm as pro-choice as the next guy, but there's something about her wanting to "get rid of one or two of them" that made me shudder. It would be interesting to see how things turn out with the child that they did have.
posted by PrinceValium at 3:27 PM on July 18, 2004

Reading the essay, PrinceValium, I can't help wondering if that third child isn't the unlucky one of the bunch after all.

I too am pro-choice, but this reads very coldly to me, and I can't help but wishing both these prize-winning parents go through at least one good, long conscience-induced bout of contemplation.
posted by John Smallberries at 3:42 PM on July 18, 2004

FESTERING FETAL FOLLY! IT'S AN ABORTION THREAD!
posted by quonsar at 3:45 PM on July 18, 2004

I too am pro-choice, but this reads very coldly to me...

Get over it. It's her body, AND you don't ever have to deal with her so it's of no consequence to you whether her attitude was clinical or emotional. If you want to editorialize on how she makes her choice, you're not really pro-choice.
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:51 PM on July 18, 2004

Mayor Curley, I'm implying (and not so deviously that it should be read as "insinuating") that Richard's notion of hardship is profoundly perverse ... a 34-year-old woman who doesn't want to become so uncool as to shop at Costco or live in the suburbs, or, God forbid, ask her boyfriend step up to spell her a few gigs on the college-feminist lecture circuit.

It's funny, though, is that I think I have a better sense of how George W. Bush totally pisses off the left -- Richards' blithe assumption (and assertion) of values which read as night-is-day (to me), the willingness of the establishment press to relay them without further comment.
posted by MattD at 3:51 PM on July 18, 2004

If you want to editorialize on how she makes her choice, you're not really pro-choice.

Please. Allowing people choices does not mean we have to agree with them, nor does it deny us the right to voice our opinion. That's borderline fascist thinking, man.
posted by jonmc at 3:59 PM on July 18, 2004

Or, to give a good analogy, that's like saying unless you approve of every shooting, you're not really in favor of the right to bear arms.
posted by jonmc at 4:01 PM on July 18, 2004

I guess what disturbs me about the tone of this is how it's all about her - her life, her job, her social life. There's nothing reflecting any thought at all about the wellbeing of the kid(s). Somehow "I aborted two of my three fetuses because I couldn't support three kids" is more palatable than "I aborted them because I don't want to move to Staten Island."

It almost reads like anti-abortion propaganda actually.
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:04 PM on July 18, 2004

Signing up to get pregnant is not the same as being willing to carry a litter. Carrying three children is risky, for the mother way more than for a singleton. Plus the kids are more than likely going to end up in the NICU for a significant length of time, despite all efforts to keep them in the womb as long as possible.

If she's the kind of person who would feel overwhelmed by three at once, and quite possible resent the children (maybe all three), then I think it's better off if she just has one. Would you rather that she had more than she could handle and felt that her life was completely taken over?

Single children have a way of doing that on their own - I can only imagine what it must be like to have three infants at once. If the mother is left totally at her wits' end, I can see that the situation would be ripe for abuse and/or neglect, and/or severe postpartum depression (which can turn into psychosis when extreme - Andrea Yates, anyone?).

Not every mom is Supermom, and not every mom should have to be. Letting moms opt for what they feel they can best handle is one of the great things about abortion freedom.
posted by beth at 4:18 PM on July 18, 2004

The article is so off-putting because there is nothing in the mother's writing that hints at any moral dilemma she may have faced in making her choice.

I can't believe she didn't think about the ethical implications, and even wonder if her kid might not have enjoyed having siblings...yet nothing like this appears in her essay. Was the elision her choice as a writer, or did she really have no qualms, moral or otherwise, about her decision to abort a couple of her fetuses?
posted by kozad at 4:28 PM on July 18, 2004

Great. More fetal tissue to save W. when he gets Alzheimers.
posted by Slagman at 4:31 PM on July 18, 2004

As I get older (37) and ...I am a man. JP and I discuss this. We could not find a way to eliminate the twins. JP and I often discuss children. I smile when I see children walk by me doing what they do, even when they're crying... screaming...sometimes. But those imaginations are not ....I am not going to continue those thoughts.

Was Staten Island the only place she could move? No Westchester or Nyack? No affordable place in Long Island?

A very disturbing article -- I am pro-choice.

Rape, young mistakes -- but to terminate twins when couples out there are PRAYING for children? If the author's health were a danger to herself via pregnancy than anything goes, but this almost cavalier testimonial is indeed off-putting.
posted by RubberHen at 4:38 PM on July 18, 2004

"If the mother is left totally at her wits' end..."

Or starts out completely witless, as this story reads.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:40 PM on July 18, 2004

MattD: I think you and I probably agree in our feelings about this woman and her article, but I think you underestimate the New York Times. For whatever political biases that live in their newsroom, they are genuinely one of the most intelligent news agencies in the country. They aren't printing this because they 'agree' with the writer, they're printing it to show what is to be pro-choice. If you are pro-choice, you have to agree with people's right to chose, even if those people can have awful priorities, etc. They are challenging their readers, in my opinion, which is a good thing.
posted by cell divide at 4:43 PM on July 18, 2004

Eh the armchair opinionists ..the more I think about what I should write here the more I realize I never was anywhere near her conditions and that I am not the one going to carry the burden on enjoy the benefits of having three kids.

Neither do I feel what she felt , I can only imagine.

Bottom line: we can't decide for others all the time, yet it would be absolutely great to find an exact moment in time in which we can tell "this is no longer a mass of cells , but it's a human being that has rights" ...maybe just to fall later in the paradox of protecting a manifestation of the concept of life, while quickly forgetting to help the actual human being (carrier of life) have a good happy life.
posted by elpapacito at 4:54 PM on July 18, 2004

Eh the armchair opinionists

I'm not sure what this means, since I think we all hope to never actually endure the same situation as the original author. When friends give you advice, do you marginalize their opinion if they haven't actually been through a similar situation?
posted by BlueTrain at 5:14 PM on July 18, 2004

The thing is, she may not have written very emotionally, but the considerations she put forth aren't a matter of mere convenience. A single pregnancy can be difficult, bedrest with a single pregnancy can be difficult; the more children you add, the harder it is. We're talking about bedsores or having someone constantly roll you because you can't roll on your own to prevent them, taking oxygen treatments because the babies and pregnancy weight crush the lungs when you're on bedrest, we're talking about months spent on one's back with a very real possibility, if not probability, of contracting pneumonia.

The more fetuses, the more likely a woman is to develop gestational diabetes and hypertension, both conditions which can remain even after birth. We're talking about stressors on the kidneys and the bladder from which women sometimes never recover, and that's on top of the usual agonies of bone spreading, hemmoroids, sciatica, hormone-based headaches and edema, not to mention morning sickness, which is more likely to last the life of the pregnancy rather than dwindling after the second trimester when you're talking about multiples.

I know very few *married* women who can afford to take the time off of work to stay in bed for four to five months- I was very lucky in that regard, in that I worked from home anyway. (TMI warning...) Two years after my daughter's birth- nearly three years now since I had to spend four months in bed to make sure that daughter could be born, I still suffer from hemmoroids, a weak bladder and high blood pressure. It's not just a couple months in bed, it's a lifetime of vast physiological changes a woman has to take into consideration when she has one child, let alone multiples. And these are all what come before you have to manage a completely new body along with helpless children.

She did not choose what I would have chosen; personally, I would have chosen to keep the twins, but I live in a ranch house in the suburbs, close to my parents who could help me with the staggering task of taking care of two newborns post-recovery. Choosing to get pregnant doesn't, and shouldn't, mean being forced to have a litter of children all at once. I have two eight years apart, and it's a challenge; having three in diapers, on the breast or bottle, walking, potty training, renting school books, hitting driving age, hitting college at the exact same time when you're neither financially or emotionally prepared is an invitation to give three children an opportunity to experience poverty and fewer opportunities, and why on earth should she choose that when she can give one child everything?

It seems to me like she's being punished in this thread because she didn't suffer enough. Her suffering is there, her doubts are there- the sad fact here is, she made a reasonable, if drastic, decision, but explained it poorly. Shame on her for being an inelegant writer, but good on her for figuring out what she could do and still give one child a good life instead of three merely survival.
posted by headspace at 5:40 PM on July 18, 2004

I can't believe she didn't think about the ethical implications

It's pretty absurd to assume that. Most Americans who are pro-choice have come to this conclusion through quite a bit of inward examination - it is one of the most interesting ethical questions of our time, after all. Furthermore the article mentions she discussed something, abortion and/or adoption, with her boyfriend before she went off the pill.

Now I'm not at all surprised that there are people who are a bit shocked by the tone of this piece, but you should remember, that's its intention... and it's not abnormal for women to view pregnancy in quite negative terms, to consider the threat to her health a fetus poses, the economic and physical debilitations it entails, etc.

As for the ethics of elective termination, well, I certainly understand those people who think abortion is a horrible thing which is nevertheless an acceptible option in cases like rape or endangerment of the mother; but there are plenty of people who simply aren't swayed by rhetorical arguments about the sanctity of a 10 week old fetus. A pragmatist considers that any human considers the value of various categories of life in the context of the prevailing social mores, which are based on rhetoric. In slave owning cultures, killing slaves isn't particularly evil. From a vegan's point of view, killing an animal for food is quite evil. It's largely a matter of chance that we are now discussing the ethics of abortion (and the death penalty, our other "big question"), because these questions recur at all levels, and therefore seem to me matters of convention.
posted by mitchel at 5:45 PM on July 18, 2004

Most Americans who are pro-choice have come to this conclusion through quite a bit of inward examination - it is one of the most interesting ethical questions of our time, after all.

Not neccessarily. People under 30 can't remember a time when abortion wasn't legal. To many of them, it's just the way things are.
posted by jonmc at 5:51 PM on July 18, 2004

Anyone who discussed the reasons for their abortion would come under fire in a public forum. If you support that it's a choice, you have to accept that people will make that choice for their own reasons.

Though I am a liberal, I will admit that abortion makes me uncomfortable. Reading this woman's reasoning, and contemplating the identical twins who will never be born and the child that was, is difficult.

The idea that the government should forbid abortion, based on the certainty of the religious that life begins at conception, bothers me more. If your God tells you that every sperm is sacred, by all means demonstrate your faith with your own actions. But I can't support that certainty being codified into our laws.
posted by rcade at 6:16 PM on July 18, 2004

xpost

Well john, we can certainly agree to disagree. In the late 80s, my schoolmates in our affluent, conservative midwestern suburb held various views on this subject, it was a question under debate in popular culture, there was strong feeling that Roe would be overturned, Madonna had a hit song about it, etc.

Contrast this with, say, birth control, which I do think most young people do consider quite normal and beyond ethical reproach, apart from those who are born into households with firm religious views against it.
posted by mitchel at 6:23 PM on July 18, 2004

Oh, I'm not saying it's not a contentious issue among lots of people, mitchel, but there's always a large portion of people who just shrug and accept things because that's the only way they've ever known them to be.

In the context of being a young person in America right now, supporting legal abortion would be more or less the status quo position, am I right?

(disclaimer: being pro-choice, I'm fine with this, more or less, although a part of me believes that I respect you more if, evif your position is diametrically opposed to mine, that at least it's not an unconsidered one. Just kinda spitballing.)
posted by jonmc at 6:33 PM on July 18, 2004

In the context of being a young person in America right now, supporting legal abortion would be more or less the status quo position, am I right?

Not at all. It's not like, say, condemning torture, which flows fairly obviously from basic conventions of ethics shared by a majority of our society. It is a confusing issue because it lies on the outer edge of our current conceptual framework of what sorts of human life are inviolate (along with death penalty for murderers, which remains contentious, and euthanasia, which is less publicized now that Kevorkian is inactive).

And the exact statistical figures aren't important, but surely there's something like a 65-35 split on the issue. This means that people are free to choose what they believe, and will not feel hardly any societal status loss if they switch sides on the issue (though they certainly may within their family or immediate circle of acquaintances).
posted by mitchel at 6:44 PM on July 18, 2004

do you marginalize their opinion if they haven't actually been through a similar situation?

Bluetrain: I guess you're not referring to marginal utility in economic sense rather to "putting to a side" or "give less or no weight or value" to one advice instead of another because of the source's lack of personal experience on the subject.

If the above is true : I usually give more weight to personal experience , expecially if the source is the person who actually had that experience.

I also usually give less weight or no weight to intermediated experiences, because often (so I found out so far during my life) the intermediate source is less likely to report the experience in all its details or (if you prefer) is more likely to introduce error or omission in report. (Sometimes intermediate sources also add emphasis to part of report, an often bona fide effort to single out the points that most affected them or that they understood better.)

As for advices coming from people with no personal experience in the subject, I don't automatically assing a value of zero, but I give them less weight in the context because (even if the advice could have an abstract good value) the lack of personal experience suggest me that the person giving the advice hasn't evaluated the actual weight of the advice in the context of the experience.

In other words: between good theory and good practice there's (usually) an ocean. General advices that could be valuable in many context may (and usually )have different weights in different contexts.

For instace:

A " In my experience driving SUVs is a dangerous practice because they tend to roll over.Pay attention !"
B Have you ever drived one SUV ?
A "No"
B How do you know they tend to capsize ?
A "By statistics/Cause three friends of mine capsized"

I'd hold A in consideration because of the possibility he has got credible sources and insight in the matter.

If a source C who actually drives or drove a SUV tells me "This thing tends to roll over even without rain, pay a lot of attention when steering" I would give more weight to his advice as he actually experienced driving instead of just reffering me about things he heard of.

It may as well be that the value of C's advice is 0 , if he's a bad driver..that's why we get more then one advice ; yet if he's telling the truth the SUV actually behaved badly in his hands and he can report that from personal experience and not from intermediated sources.
posted by elpapacito at 6:53 PM on July 18, 2004

Amy Richards, author of this article.
posted by Dreama at 7:10 PM on July 18, 2004

I'm not just pro-choice, I'm pro-abortion (in especially the first trimester). This was only eight weeks; I don't think there was in any sense "lives" that were ended. This is contraception, effectively, in my estimation. She made a perfectly acceptable, rational, and, I think, (nearly) correct decision.

However:

"If you want to editorialize on how she makes her choice, you're not really pro-choice."—Mayor Curley

...deserves a resounding "fuck you, you arrogant prick." Do you really think that all enlightened women are sleeping more soundly tonight knowing that Mayor Curley is on thought patrol?

Anyway, I, too, found myself reacting negatively to the piece. Mostly because she does seem to implictly humanize the fetuses at the same time she palpably abhors them; and her explication of her reasoning drips with repugnant, unnecesary (but revealing) class-conscious condescension and narcissism. This is not someone who should be having any children at all, it seems.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:35 PM on July 18, 2004

What headspace said.
posted by dejah420 at 8:04 PM on July 18, 2004

Cell Divide: you may well be right. There've been a few pieces like this in the Times over the past couple of years, which in a (very indirect way) share the "what are the limits of pro-choice ideology" theme.

The pieces about sex-selection abortion in India and China, of course, have a more overt theme of women-oppressed and feminism-unborn, which draws more attention.

The Richards piece is quite a bit more overt in pushing the debate. To defend her is to stand pretty naked in a debate where a lot of people like to clad themselves in much thicker garments of ambiguity and ambivalence. I suspect that most of the Letters to the Editor won't really defend her, so much as they will try to show her out to be an outlier, thus anticipating and trying to parry the attacks of pro-life Letters to the Editor. (I expect the suggestion to be made that many women who live in Staten Island and shop at Costco have abortions, too, presumably for less frivolous reasons than Richards').
posted by MattD at 8:16 PM on July 18, 2004

And for the less (shall we say) nuanced discussion, forthwith the Free Republic thread.

Couldn't find a Democratic Underground thread, but I can't access their search engine (it won't suprise you to learn I'm not a red'd user there...)
posted by MattD at 8:19 PM on July 18, 2004

Abortion is just fine with me. Don't the murdered babies souls go right to heaven to play with Jesus anyway? What's there to be sad about?

You talk as if the only ethical consideration here is the fate of a soul which you don't actually believe in.

At least the woman in the article, for all her faults, actually realizes there were two human heartbeats that she chose to shut off in order to avoid a hellish pregnancy and serious life changes.

And good grief, not once was adoption even brought up in the article as a way to avoid the later if not the former.

I can understand pro-choice. I can't understand pro-choice without any grappling with ethical issues.
posted by weston at 8:28 PM on July 18, 2004

Ethereal: Declaring that a person "is not someone who should be having any children at all" is pretty arrogant, too.
posted by rcade at 8:54 PM on July 18, 2004

And good grief, not once was adoption even brought up in the article as a way to avoid the later if not the former.

How would adoption prevent a high-risk pregnancy with mandatory bedrest?

As long as abortion is legal, it's the woman's choice and her reasoning doesn't matter. In the case of this article, however, I don't think she made a very informed choice as far as discontinuing her birth control. She didn't like the Pill, she said, so she decides to play Russian Roulette. There are other, non-hormonal methods of birth control, for heaven's sake.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:27 PM on July 18, 2004

I'm on Mayor Curley's side here: good for her and screw everyone else. The fewer unwanted kids the better, and no, it doesn't matter why it was unwanted. Does it matter if you are neglected because your parents are at work all day or because they just have better things to do? To outsiders maybe, but to you it would just be neglect.

Really, fetuses aren't people--they're parasites and no woman is obligated to give herself over if she doesn't want to. Life isn't some special magic and I can't say that the world would miss most people who are on it today.
posted by dame at 9:27 PM on July 18, 2004

I'm on Mayor Curley's side here: good for her and screw everyone else

It wasn't Mayor Curley's position on abortion that irked me, so much as his saying that others were not entitled to our opinion. The issue itself dosen't matter so much, or rather, it spawned a side issue for some of us.
posted by jonmc at 9:32 PM on July 18, 2004

Oh jeebus that reads like such a troll. Aplogies; I have a massive dislike for the whole "life & babies really sweet and special and worth just about anything" tripe, and kinda lost it.

jon: I think you are entitled to your opinion in the sense that everyone has the right to think whatever they want, but in this case, I don't think anyone else's opinion really matters. There were fewer unwanted kids and I think that's the another step into civilization.
posted by dame at 9:40 PM on July 18, 2004

I wouldn't disagree with that, and I'm kind of a sucker for the whole "babies really sweet and special and worth just about anything" tripe, so I should probably step carefully in these kinda debates. But you're right, unwanted kids probably have a higher chance of being treated poorly and adding to the suffering in the world, so I guess as someone who loves kids, I should support reproductive freedom strongly, which I do, despite personal reservations.

But my pet issue is freedom of though and speech, so I got irked. We're all entitled to editorialize on everything up to and including peoples taste in tablecloths, but it also does mean nothing ultimately to anyone but the editorializer. which I suppose is enough to justify the editorializing.

Is that coherent? Forgive me if not, I was just traumatized on my back porch. My neighbor really needs to wear a bathrobe when wandering around his kitchen.
posted by jonmc at 9:53 PM on July 18, 2004

The idea that the government should forbid abortion, based on the certainty of the religious that life begins at conception, bothers me more. If your God tells you that every sperm is sacred, by all means demonstrate your faith with your own actions. But I can't support that certainty being codified into our laws.

Hey, how about we ditch the ridiculous straw man that the only reasons to oppose abortion are religious, eh, asshole? This atheist anti-abortionist finds it fairly obnoxious.

I have a massive dislike for the whole "life & babies really sweet and special and worth just about anything" tripe, and kinda lost it.

I hate babies. Despise them. Would die happy never seeing one again. But I despise quite a few adults of my acquaintance as well; that doesn't mean I support murder when it's "for the best."
posted by IshmaelGraves at 10:03 PM on July 18, 2004

How would adoption prevent a high-risk pregnancy with mandatory bedrest?

I didn't say it would. In fact, I specifically said that it would only address lifestyle impact, not the pregnancy.

But I'll ask a question of my own: how does that fact that it only addresses one of the two problems account for the fact that it doesn't even seem to cross her mind? That a lot of people don't even mention it? That a number of people who've responded by saing "the fewer unwanted children the better" seemed to just assume that the shot of potassium chloride was the sole way to make sure there weren't any unwanted children around?

No, adoption does nothing to address the very real issue of the impact of a pregnancy on health of the mother. But for the issue of the impact of the responsibility of childrearing, leaving out the option of adoption is a huge blindspot. It bothers me that it didn't figure at all into the calculus of the event -- that it doesn't even seem to have occured to her that it wasn't necessarily a strict choice between the potassium chloride and the costco mayonaisse. Maybe that's because health really was her overridding concern. Or maybe it's because the potassium chloride was too easy.

Really, fetuses aren't people--they're parasites and no woman is obligated to give herself over if she doesn't want to. Life isn't some special magic and I can't say that the world would miss most people who are on it today.

It's funny you should bring that up. A huge part of the abortion debate on the pro-life side is the worry that treating an incipient human life casually says something about ones general valuation of human life... and here you are providing a spectacularly apt demonstration of that in your phrasing.

I really doubt that you're actually that casual about the lives of the people you come face to face with, and I don't think that being pro choice automatically turns you into a sociopath who'd knock off someone without thinking twice.

But like jonmc said... what will it do to our culture over time?
posted by weston at 10:14 PM on July 18, 2004

On review, dame, I see your retraction, and it's reassuring, but I think even the outburst shows how easy it is to slip that direction.
posted by weston at 10:38 PM on July 18, 2004

Really, fetuses aren't people--they're parasites and no woman is obligated to give herself over if she doesn't want to. Life isn't some special magic and I can't say that the world would miss most people who are on it today.

Whether it reads like a troll or not, I largely agree. Life is cheap, and we do the world no favors by randomly raising ethical questions about tiny balls of cells. Abort all you want; I could freaking care less.
posted by Epenthesis at 10:47 PM on July 18, 2004

Yep. Really easy.
posted by weston at 11:00 PM on July 18, 2004

Life is cheap, and we do the world no favors by randomly raising ethical questions about tiny balls of cells.

This is the very antithesis, the voracious enemy, of liberalism. Epenthesis and Mengele would have seemingly found a great deal of common ground.

I strongly disagree with the conclusion that embryos are human lives in any sense. But I take the question seriously; and I prefer to live in a world and a society in which such questions are taken seriously.

If life is cheap, I bet I could still get enough for yours for a burger and beer. And I'm not the only one hungry and thirtsy.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:10 PM on July 18, 2004

I find her choices absolutely normal. A fetus is just a fetus, no more.

I also wonder what your position on abortions would be if you would have lived in Communist Romania, where any method of protection (condoms, pill) and abortions were outlawed, thus making illegal (and through dreadful methods) abortions the norm. Some women had up to 15-20 abortions. Some died because of the methods they used.

Abortion is a normal and logical right. It has no ifs and buts attached. If you do not want that fetus to become a baby, you can abort it. No matter what the reasons are.

P.S. The Decree that outlawed abortions was signed into law in 1967. At the time, the Romanian dark humor nicknamed all the kids born in 1968 decretei (decretees). After a year, the Romanian inventivity solved the abortion problem through its own ways. Abortion remained illegal until communism fell.

P.P.S. I might have derailed the thread, and I'm sorry for that. I just wanted to bring another perspective into things.
posted by Masi at 1:17 AM on July 19, 2004

ethereal bligh:...deserves a resounding "fuck you, you arrogant prick." Do you really think that all enlightened women are sleeping more soundly tonight knowing that Mayor Curley is on thought patrol?

How did you manage to condense ANY point into two lines? Unfortunately, you don't do "quick and coarse" any better than your obsessive-compulsive polemics.

And what rcade said: pot. kettle.black. "fuck you, you arrogant prick," indeed.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:34 AM on July 19, 2004

As for everyone suggesting that I'm stifling free speech: I'm sorry that I said that dissenters should be kept quiet by force. Or that I essentially told people to "shut up" about others choices if they're truly pro-choice. I forget which one of those two that I did, but they're obviously completely analogous.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:37 AM on July 19, 2004

I can't believe this woman doesn't like Costco. That place is grebt.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:50 AM on July 19, 2004

That thinking stuff is all sort of confusing, isn't it, Curley? That's okay, you try your best.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 6:06 AM on July 19, 2004

"That thinking stuff is all sort of confusing, isn't it, Curley? That's okay, you try your best."

You got up from your seat at the Algonquin Roundtable to say that? I'm assuming that being an expert at everything includes being an expert at snark. Do more than make a literal interpretation of my sarcasm. I do appreciate the brevity, though.
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:46 AM on July 19, 2004

Hey, how about we ditch the ridiculous straw man that the only reasons to oppose abortion are religious, eh, asshole?

Charming.
posted by rcade at 6:55 AM on July 19, 2004

My retraction was of the tone, not the substance. I think it is okay to remove fetuses because I don't think fetuses are babies, and considering the state of humanity, preventing them from becoming babies is probably better for us all.

As for life being cheap: just because I'm all for fetus-removal, does not mean I think that you can do anything you want to a human. Once a human is already there, we ought to do what we can to make sure their life isn't miserable, which certianly means avoiding murder and medicalized torture (thanks, EB). But really, humans have been fucking and reproducing and suffering and dying for millions of years, smart and dumb, useful and lame, competent and incompetent alike. It isn't so magical.
posted by dame at 7:00 AM on July 19, 2004

It's not murder or torture if it's not committed against a "person", is it? If life is "cheap", then we incur no unreasonable "cost" in defining "life" narrowly rather than widely. A great deal of the misery of the included could be alleviated by the elimination of the excluded. Thus has it always been.

Every prior generation in every culture has defined those who were, though similarly shaped, not "persons" and were excluded. None of those definitions, to my knowledge, wholly corresponds to the definition of "person" here and now. Were they all wrong while we, finally, are right? Or is it more likely that we, too, are wrong? By what standard could we decide who is "right" and "wrong" today by which we could also become accepting of all the judgments of our ancestors? Is not the lesson of history—if there is one—that it is better to err on the side of cautious inclusion than rash, self-satisfed and traditional exclusion?

Life may be cheap, but it is beyond value to each to whom it justly belongs.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:27 AM on July 19, 2004

I'm disturbed that this woman is having any kids at all, since she seems to be still one herself, mentally, not concerned at all with anyone but herself. I mean, yes, there are valid risks with multiple pregnancies, but all you see in the article is her whining about is how having three kids would make her, like, totally uncool ohmygod.

I mean, she writes for the NYTimes, lives in the East Village and when she's able to fly is important to her, so it's safe to assume she is RICH by any real standards, you think she could give up a couple months to bring two more healthy children into the world, if she doesn't want them I know there are tons of people who would absolutely love to adopt a healthy white infant.
posted by dagnyscott at 9:39 AM on July 20, 2004