Dichroic Reflections

I've been thinking...

I've been thinking about the issues of choice, life and privacy for the past couple of weeks, because of the March last weekend. I believe that there is no provably right answer on this issue, none that can be demonstrated with hard fact and data, so I don't try to change anyone else's mind. There are more profitable ways to spend my energy and everyone else's. I do think that I can explain my position so that those who disagree with it can at least understand intellectually how a rational person can believe as I do, though they will disagree with my basic postulates.

The argument about "killing babies" is pretty potent; there might be people who don't have a problem with that, but I wouldn't want to spend any time with them. On the other hand, literally everyone on both all sides of the issue uses two categories, 'baby' and 'something that has the potential to become a baby', whether or not they admit to it. It's just that for some, that line between categories is crossed at the moment of fertilization, so that only unfertilized gametes (egg and sperm) fall into the second category -- I don't hear too many people regarding menstruation as immoral, though I can think of a few who would if they thought they could get away with it. (You don't hear much preaching against onanism these days, either.) For others, like me, it's difficult to see a twelve-celled blob as anything but a potentiality. (If I believed in the absolute sacredness of life as a whole, I'd spend a lot more time swerving to avoid ants on the sidewalk and I'd be a vegan.) I don't think nature draws hard and fast lines, so for me there's no exact second when you can say "now it isn't - beep - now it is" -- even if you consider fertilization as the line, natural processes are so murky that it's still not as exact as it sounds. I tend to like the old criteria of "quickening", but that's not a firmly held opinion, much less one I'd impose on others. This is not to say I think everyone should have D&Cs willy-nilly; I don't step on ants if I can reasonably avoid it and I wouldn't end even a potentiality without an overriding reason.

The other persuasive side to that argument is that ending a pregnancy means that a certain unique person will never exist. That's a powerful and upsetting thought. I realized, though, on further thought that I can think of two specific extant people (of whom I'm quite fond) who might not exist now if their mom hadn't had the choice. She conceived at eighteen, at a time when she wasn't ready or able to raise a child, and decided to end that pregnancy. Later on when she was ready, she bore two children. If she'd had to face the struggles of early motherhood, I wonder if she might not have had one or both of them. I wouldn't miss them, since I wouldn't have known them, but I do think the world would have been poorer. I don't know what kind of wonderful person might have come from her first pregnancy, but I do know what kind of people came from her last two. To me, this is the sin of playing God: I cannot remove the choice from individuals because I do not have the knowledge to say which baby should get to be born. That needs to be decided by someone with more right to speak in each case.

I also wonder about another friend, who in the same situation made the opposite choice. She thought about an abortion but decided she couldn't go through with it. I haven't met her child since he was a three-year-old with an amazing mind; he'd be a young man now and I'm sure he's fulfilled some of that potential, because I know both of his parents. I wonder whether the difficulties of early marriage and parenting were somehow a little easier for them just because they'd had that choice and had made their decision with eyes open. Maybe. I hope so. I'm sure they and their son have all grown up well, because that's the kind of people they were. The friend I mentioned earlier is one I'm still in touch with, and I know she and her husband (the same man who was her boyfriend when they were eighteen) and their sons are well and happy, good people with responsible lives. How can I look at the two of my friends and say only one of them chose the right path?