Aborting Abortions

From September 2008

I hate children, but there’s one point of child rights I absolutely support.

Among my patients is a kid named Kenny. Eleven years old and physically more or less normally developed, he’s so profoundly retarded he cannot even eat – food has to be put in his mouth and his lips pinched shut until his reflex actions make him swallow. Obviously he can’t talk, dress, brush his teeth, or even sit up on his own volition. Left alone, he would lie in one place until he starved to death.

About a month ago, the Indian news media were all full of the story of a pregnant woman called Niketa Mehta who discovered in the 24th week of her pregnancy that her foetus had congenital heart problems that would likely cripple it for life.

So the Mehtas, who aren’t rich enough to bear a lifetime of expenses and heartbreak, decided to get the baby aborted. The problem was that under Indian law, promulgated all the way back in 1971, abortions are only legal up to the 20th week of gestation; after that they’re deemed “unsafe”. Apparently, in Indian law at least, no advance in obstetrics at all has occurred in the past four decades.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and getting the foetus quietly aborted by some sympathetic gynaecologist, the Mehtas decided to approach the courts, thereby challenging the abortion law and its 20-week limit. Predictably, the court, filled as it is with people who might charitably be described as “conservative”, turned down her plea. Sundry individuals and organisations, naturally including the Catholic Church (the Mehtas aren’t even Christian) jumped into the fray, condemning abortion and promising to take the baby off the Mehtas’ hands, pay for its upkeep, etc, etc. Whether any of these promises were meant to be kept – well, your guess is as good as mine.

The point is moot anyway, because shortly after her plea for abortion was dismissed by the court, Niketa Mehta had an alleged spontaneous abortion (also known as a miscarriage). The episode was rather mysterious, with her regular gynaecologist not being present. Now I’m not accusing Mrs Mehta of getting her child clandestinely and illegally aborted, but I would absolutely not blame her if she indeed had done that.

In today’s paper I read that the Indian Health Ministry seems to have finally realised the fact that if you stop people aborting legally, they’ll just go ahead and do it illegally, so the proposal is to raise the legal period up to 24 weeks.

I’ve never tried to hide my dislike of children and my support for abortion – and frankly I don’t give a damn whether an aborted foetus is sentient or can feel pain – and this post isn’t about my feelings about abortion. What I want to talk about is the anti-abortionist woodlice that came crawling out into the light when Niketa Mehta was trying to get her baby legally aborted.

Apart from the Catholic Church, which had no business in the whole matter but whose attitude was predictable, there were all the men (and a surprising number of women) who repeated the same old theme song, which goes something like this:

“How can a mother think about ending the life of her unborn baby, even if it be born crippled for life? It’s her duty to love the baby. If she doesn’t, she’s evil/abnormal/crazy.”

Now I know everyone has a right to their opinion, but I seriously doubt the mother of Kenny (whom I mentioned above) would have decided to go through with her pregnancy if she’d known what was coming. In fact, I don’t have to doubt it at all. I know, from her own mouth, that she’d have aborted him, even though she is a Catholic herself.

And as for Kenny himself, just assume there is a living, thinking brain trapped in that body. Do you think he would’ve loved life like that?

A friend told me of a relative of hers who knowingly gave birth to a child who is deaf, blind and dumb, and can barely stand and walk. The mother thought she was showing “love”. The child, I feel, doesn’t think it’s exactly love. It probably feels its life is an endless scream.

As I said, I hate children, but there’s one point of child rights I absolutely support.

Give the deformed and/or unwanted foetuses freedom. Let them die.

On Abortion

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Back when I was in school I had a teacher who had this brilliant (hethought) argument against abortion. He said “Einstein wouldn’t have been born if his mother had aborted him. How many Einsteins would be born every day if abortion was not there?”

Sure, I thought, so you will make facilities available to those Einsteins to achieve their full potential, won’t you? I didn’t say it, though.

Another time I came across a website that claimed that abortion was some kind of racist conspiracy to wipe out non-white peoples. That ranks as another brilliant argument. Like non-white people are helped by being loaded down with children they can’t care for.

Now here’s my opinion:

Of course abortion should be freely available to any woman who wants one. Anyone opposing it has several questions to answer - and which they virtually never make even an attempt to acknowledge.

If a woman has a non-life threatening but potentially disfiguring tumour or wart, would these pro-"life" people be willing to allow her to get it removed? Of course they would. Even if it was something like an embarrassing tattoo, which was created deliberately, they would never tell her not to get it removed.

So, when she has a foetus growing in her body which, for whatever reason, she does not wish to bring into the world, what business is it of these people - what business is it of anyone but the woman herself - whether she is to abort it or not?

Then: suppose a woman wants an abortion but is prevented from having one by these people, whether they are a state or a group of people outside the direct control of the state. Will these people also undertake to care for and bring up the child, providing for all its needs, because it is in the world only because of them? Of course not.

In fact, I've rather often (in the puerile discussions on Orkut which I long since abandoned in disgust) heard the argument that women with many children are "brood sows" who "breed like flies". But if you raise the question of whether these women should be allowed to abort children they can't raise, what sort of answer do you think you'll get?

This same lot also says often that women who don’t want to get pregnant shouldn’t screw, and if they get pregnant they shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions. Carolyn has discussed this one in some detail, so I won’t repeat what she said, just mention this:

Actually, of course, women worldwide rather seldom have free sexual choice, and I don't mean rape. In many countries the decision whether to have sex is made by the man, and she doesn't have any control over whether he uses contraception. Contraception may not even be available in any form, or affordable. And in countries like Britain with spiralling teen pregnancies, the usual pregnant teenager put out for her boyfriend only because all her friends were doing it too. Is that sexual freedom at all?

Incidentally, I'm not too wild about the anti-abortion gang calling themselves "pro-life". Whose life? Not the mother's! 

In this country abortion, while not cheap, is available on demand. It still hasn't stopped illegal backyard abortions, but the number of those has stayed much lower than what they would have been otherwise. Nobody, but nobody, will ever be able to make a case for banning abortion here.