Abort This!

October 5, 2004

Abort This !
Well, the news is full of talk about abortion rights again. The quadrennial pre-election marches and demonstrations are in full swing. Thousands of people demonstrating in Detroit (makes sense since none of them have jobs left to go to). The Detroit News reported on it yesterday and said "Experts on both sides have said the country is at a critical moment in history for the abortion issue". And it probably is because whoever gets elected President will get to appoint a bench-full of Supreme Court Justices.

So once again the nation will be confronted with the question of how best to cross the Potomac: Row vs. Wade. I should research this.

I just looked in my Constitution. Yep, there it is:

Amendment IX: Congress shall pass no law infringing upon the right of an individual to shoot heroin or abort a fetus or do any other damfool thing they want to do so long as it does not infringe on the rights of any other individual.

And Amendment XIV says: And neither shall any state government.

Roe v. Wade is bad law only when it starts attempting to make medical pronouncements. (Blackmun went to med school before he realized that lawyers made as much money and didn't have to get up in the middle of the night and deal with bloody body parts.) The constitution says that a citizen is someone born (or naturalized) (Art.14). There is no suggestion that any constitutional rights attach to a fetus at any point before birth so the trimester distinctions are gobbledygook (although no sillier than many others routinely made by the court.)

But a right to privacy? (Or whatever you wish to call it.) That is what the entire Bill of Rights and constitutional framework of our government is about. For those who believe in a social contract -- those are the terms of the deal: The government is to keep its nose out of our individual affairs so long as we don't infringe on anyone else's individual affairs and in return we won't shoot at members who practice government in public.

You want it as a syllogism?:
Major Premise: The Constitution protects the individual's right to do as (s)he pleases so long as it does not infringe on the rights of another individual;
Minor Premise: Abortion during the first trimester does not infringe on the rights of any other individual;
Conclusion: The Constitution protects the individual's right to an abortion during the first trimester.

You can argue with the major premise and say that the Constitution doesn't say that. But I that is in essence what Amendment IX (and the whole Bill of Rights) says and what it most emphatically originally meant. Such rights exists "as inherent rights, conferred by nobody, preempting any contrary law of a besotted legislature or misogynic Baptist judge."

Those rights are exactly what the IX Amendment protects.

You can argue with the minor premise and say that a fetus is an individual, but I think that that is where you have to torture the Constitution. There is no suggestion of any sort that suggests that the fetus has such standing or was ever intended to. You can cross out "during the first trimester" and it is still probably just as good a syllogism. This is where Roe v. Wade made stuff up, deciding that rights sort of gradually attach.

But enough of such pedantic claptrap. There are more interesting things going on here. The abortion debate is bigger than the Constitution. This is the classic clashing of two giant heroic evolutionary myths. Two entire world views in dramatic conflict. It is more fun to watch than to scrabble about. A major cultural identity crisis that seeks to determine who we believe we are and where we're heading.

On the one hand, you have the myth that man is evolving, perhaps predeterminedly, towards ever greater autonomy and freedom. It was this myth, fed, in Western culture, by certain religious mucktruck together with the economic revolution of the last few hundred years, that has brought recognition and demand for respect from individuals wherever they may societally be located. It is what unshackled the slaves, destroyed the hard lines of class distinctions, coerced the Magna Carta, unleashed the American Revolution, wrote the Bill of Rights, and generally allows participants in the Western culture, particularly Americans, to believe that they, individually, are entitled to the absolute maximum freedom and autonomy possible and that even more should be possible in the future. I tend to identify with this myth and to root for it, although I am concerned that it is only a temporary trend purchased by our current high economic situation.

On the other hand, you have the myth that man is evolving, perhaps predeterminedly, towards ever greater compassion and humaneness. It was this myth, fed, in Western culture, by certain religious mucktruck together with the economic revolution of the last few hundred years, that has brought recognition and demand for moral treatment of individuals wherever they may societally be located. It is what unshackled the slaves, destroyed the hard lines of class distinctions, halted the practice of killing girl babies at birth, instituted minimum wage and age work laws, unleashed the cradle to grave welfare state and all anti-war movements, encouraged the personification of whales and other animal species, and generally allows participants in the Western culture to believe that every living entity is entitled to the absolute maximum care, kindness and compassion possible and that even more should be possible in the future. I actually do tend to believe that man is becoming a more humane creature although I often feel that this is simply a current, perhaps temporary luxury purchased with our current higher standard of living.

But these are two of our most basic western cultural myths. They have often worked in concert to get us where we are, but like male pups of the same litter, the bigger they've gotten, the more scuffling and tension there is between them. In the abortion debate, they are head to head fighting for Alpha dominance of the pack. (Freedom and rights of the woman to control her own bodily functions and the compassion and humaneness towards the prehuman fetal matter in formation ... known to prolifers as "a baby". Neither side can accept or countenance a society that does not protect ... indeed worship ... their vital myth.)

Not that the placard waving actors have the foggiest idea of what myth they are roling in, of course. Many screaming for the woman's right to abort firmly believe in curtailing the liberties of everyone else and others would gladly throw themselves in front of the clubs to save a baby seal. And many of those gesticulating wildly to save the poor little babies would willingly club the baby seals.

But the myths are far more important and ascendant than the actors. And its great fun to watch! The irresistible force meets the immovable object. The battle of the titans.