Sun Mar 13/05
What's so bad about dying anyway?

Matt Fenwick responds to my "please, oh please, let's not have a national abortion debate" post:

I really don't know how we can get to a stage where we're debating public policy more maturely, but I'm also sure that avoiding contentious topics is not the answer, or the list [of off-limits debates] will continue to get longer.

Theoretically, I guess we'd get there by having a series of national debates on less contentious topics. Gay marriage is less contentious, but obviously still far too contentious, and we are clearly incapable of debating it in a mature, intellectually coherent fashion. Gun control might fit the bill, but as recent events in Mayerthorpe have shown, you cannot debate properly when the debaters believe that one incident can be, or indeed that it must be, proof of something. (See, for example, this darkly hilarious thread on Michelle Malkin's blog.)

Fenwick continues:

And of course, this is not even to mention the million of "hardwireds" who would scoff that the issue of (A) a woman's ownership of her body, or (B) thousands of dead babies, is something to be set aside in the service of playing nicely with others. That Canada's political class has done so en masse is probably a good argument for a debate, not against.

This sounds reasonable, but I disagree almost entirely. People believe all kinds of things that I think are nuts. Here are two: that a woman has or should have sole dominion over her unborn child; and that abortion is not the slightest little bit like murder. Both those positions are hopelessly wrong, in my view, but the fact that people are clinging to hopelessly wrong positions is only a good reason for debate if a better outcome is achievable. Otherwise it's just an argument for better education.

I do not believe that a "better outcome" is achievable in an abortion debate in Canada. Consider upcoming events in the UK: Conservative leader Michael Howard is getting ready to drop his own a-bomb on the House of Commons. The Observer calls it "an explosive foray into the politics of personal morality." I call it pissing up a rope: all Howard is proposing is "to cut the legal time limit for late abortions from 24 weeks — where it currently stands except in cases of serious handicap or risk to the mother's life — to 20 weeks." This is explosive? Changing the date on which fetuses are aborted? Regardless of the outcome, abortion will be almost exactly as legal and obtainable in the United Kingdom as it was before. In my view, that makes the debate a complete waste of time and energy.

If one believes that aborting a fetus at 19 weeks is okay because statistics show that the baby probably wouldn't survive delivery, and that aborting a fetus at 21 weeks is not okay because statistics show that the baby probably would survive delivery, then I suppose I can see how Howard's initiative might have some appeal. Personally, however, I think trying to legislate the rights of a fetus based on its age is nonsensical and desperate. It's a concept based on emotion rather than science — the less human the fetus looks, the less upset people are at its termination. It's a flailing attempt to conjure up a code of conduct for an inherently immoral act.

A truly mature society would not have a debate about abortion only to arrive back at a slightly altered and slightly more self-satisfied status quo. It would admit to itself that abortion is inevitable, necessary and ubiquitous, as old as childbirth itself. It would resolve to live with the moral implications of the act instead of trying to lessen them artificially.

(And to briefly revert to my more simplistic argument, I also don't want a debate because it would feature people like Anne Weyman of the UK Family Planning Association, who delivered this jaw-dropper: "What is the benefit to women, or the potential child, of forcing a woman to have a baby?")