In yesterday’s Wise Madness I was lamenting being isolated, so what happened? I got a call from Katherine who invited me to join her in the City. We didn’t do anything special, just coffee and walking the neighborhood but what matters is the human contact and the cappuccino, and the snacks. I shocked Katherine by choosing the vegan energy balls she did, they were chocolate and peanut, and none of the pastries were either. I don’t avoid things just because they are healthy, I just prefer what’s tastiest. To my surprise the peanut was much better than the chocolate. The cappuccino was the best part. It was at the unpretentiously named Joe’s Coffee. Quality time with a friend is the thing I needed the most.
The subway ride down there was one of the worst trips for mask compliance I have experienced. I usually complain about half the people not being masked but, on that trip, it was everyone but one person of the people I could see on the car. I have a thermostatic response, the less careful others are, the more careful I am. I’m not that worried, I plan on going to the movies this week, but I’ll wear a mask when I do. Things in New York City are getting better. The positive test rate is down to 3.44% and decreasing over the last week. Over the last four weeks, it’s 4.21 days. As usual people seem to be overestimating or underestimating the danger. People are terrible at judging risk. Eight people are dying a day of COVID-19, which is bad, but that’s lower than a year with typical seasonal flu. More people get the COVID-19 vaccine, and a good portion of the people are wearing masks. I’m not saying that I’m right but what I do is wear a mask indoors and live my life. Things are far better than they were last year but thanks to the Delta variation, not as good as it looked things would be earlier in the year. Delta has convinced more people to get vaxxed, that’s a silver lining. The days of mass deaths are over in the high vaxxed part of the country and nowhere is it what it was in the early days of the pandemic.
Let’s get everyone mad at me, I’ll write about abortion. Along with sex and religion it’s one of the things that make people stupid; that’s not surprising as it involves both sex and religion. Before I start, I’ll make my position clear; I am very strongly pro-choice. There is no rational reason to consider a zygote a person. It has no more claim to personhood than any single human cell. It has no consciousness or even a nervous system. On the other hand, it would be vastly different if the fetus was about to be born. That’s why the Supreme Court wisely made distinct levels of controls depending on trimester. On the other other hand, women aren’t casually deciding to have an abortion I the last trimester, it’s virtually always because of unusual circumstances; discovering a serious birth defect or risk to the mother’s health. It makes sense for the woman at the center of the risks and rewards to make the call.
OK, so that’s where I am, strongly pro-choice with a weakening certainty as the pregnancy progresses though the only questions are in the third trimester. Disagreeing with this is not what I’m talking about when I say that abortion makes people stupid. That comes in when people think about those on the other side of the divide. Notice that most often when discussing abortion the pro-life camp emphasizes late term abortions, which are rare. The real stupidity of the pro-life camp is assuming that pro-choice people don’t care about baby and that there are no stronger reasons to have an abortion than convenience. That’s how they put it, that women have abortions because they don’t want to be inconvenienced, like having a baby is no big deal. They find it inconceivable that people don’t think of a zygote as a person so having an abortion is motivated by callousness about human life; thus, the name for themselves, pro-life.
So far few of my friends will disagree with much of what I said, so why will people get mad at me? It’s because many people that are pro-choice, assume the worst of the pro-lifers. They can’t conceive that anyone would think of a fetus as a person that needs protection so the real motivation for all pro-lifers is oppressing women for the sake of it. How often have you heard it phrased as being about men controlling women’s bodies, when there is not a large difference between the sexes on opinions about abortions. The reason you see a room full of men making the laws is because there are fewer Republican women in office. The people I know who are strongest against abortion are women. That doesn’t prove anything except that it’s not all about wanting to oppress women. The misogyny is more subtle, it’s about not putting as strong a value on a woman’s autonomy. It’s the same reason we put dangerous and unpleasant public facilities nearer black communities than white. It’s not trying to punish anyone; it’s not internalizing their sacrifice. But the prime consideration is considering the fetus a person. None of us would be in favor of infanticide to give women more freedom of choice but that is exactly what the pro-lifers think is how we think.
I know many people that would never have an abortion, but don’t think they have the right to make that choice for anyone else. I have no personal qualms and strongly supported a friend that chose an abortion, I couldn’t be with her, but I was on the phone with her during a medical abortion. I had no concerns about the morality of her decision. It’s what I would have chosen in her place.
Some of you are probably asking, “where was the father?” It was a complicated situation. Things are often more complicated than people think they are. Many people that think a woman has a right to choose, think that a minor should need parental permission. Why should a girl need to get her parents’ consent for an appendectomy and any other medical procedure but not an abortion? They don’t think past that the facts on the surface and think it through. No parents are going to disown their child for getting appendicitis, there are some that will for getting pregnant. Even more, those that think of the fetus as a baby, will choose the life of the “baby” over the radical changes that giving birth would entail for their child. Even if you aren’t aware of it, you know women that had abortions as a minor. Is there any woman you know that you think would have a better life now if they had a baby when in high school or even middle school? Abortion is not something that can be compared to other situations. A fetus is not a baby and it’s not a part of the woman’s body. People don’t want to think about it that way. They want their morality to be obvious and easy. It’s not.
Wise Madness 