About a month ago, my local paper the Spartanburg Herald Journal ran an editorial by writer Lane Filler entitled Abortion Eliminated, My Way. In it he listed his ideas for what he figured would be good solutions to making abortions a part of America’s past, not it’s present. I was actually astounded that Mr. Filler was allowed to have such a piece printed, and I was appalled by the concepts he proposed. The more I thought about it, the madder I got, so I decided to go pro-active and write about these proposals.
I will go on record first that I believe that abortions should be extremely rare, and that it makes for a very poor method of birth control. The procedure is the most invasive of all methods of birth control, more expensive, offers higher risks for complications, and approaches handling unwanted pregnancies as a reaction, not a prevention matter. To me in a perfect world, all pregnancies would be welcomed, all children would be cherished, all parents willing and able to care for their children. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and the matter of what to do with a pregnancy or a baby that is not welcomed has been a problem for millennium.
I am a person who believes that all life is precious while also believing that all people should be able to make choices, when it came to their bodies, even if they were harmful, knowing that consequences good or bad are always in the mix. I, being more on the side of being pro-life would like to see abortions greatly reduced, or deemed unnecessary. So I can understand others, who are even more pro-life minded then me, when they want to find solutions to ending abortion, even if I have issues with their reasonings. Lane Filler’s op-ed piece attempts to suggest wonderful solutions to this problem. The solutions in the op-ed piece, to me, take a good bit of the matter of human rights and choice right out of the equation. So what are these solutions and what are its problems?
The first two solutions demands that all women of child bearing age be on birth control, or sign a waiver that they desire to become pregnant, and so give up their rights to abortion. It seeks to force insurance companies to supply birth control, or to enact private sector groups to supply birth control. It makes small allowances for women who find themselves on birth control yet pregnant anyway, and for cases of rape or medical emergency.
The next set deals with minors. Parents must put their daughters on birth control. If they opt not to place them thus, they too must sign a waiver. If their daughter becomes pregnant, then they must agree to raise that child themselves. Minors are forbidden from raising their own children. If a minor opts to adopt their own child from the child’s grandparents, once they are old enough, then they must go through a legal process as if it was not their birth child.
There is a short disclaimer admitting that these solutions offer nothing in regards to other contributors to the pregnancies, the fathers. It is instead stated that there is now no forms of contraceptives that works on males as well as they do females. The piece also assumes that adoption will become lucrative as there will be even less babies available to adopt.
After reading these options I have to ask the following questions.
What happens when one’s religion prevents a woman from using contraceptives?
When is the right age to give a young teenage girl her first IUD?
Why is it assumed that just because someone is under the age of 18, that they are incapable of being a wonderful parent?
What happens when a young teenager finds herself pregnant and her parents abandon her because they don’t want to take on the responsibility of another mouth to feed? What are the consequences of such a scenario?
What right do we have to demand what is in essence the mass sterilization, albeit temporary, of half of the nation’s population?
Who right now doesn’t think that adoption isn’t already a very expensive, often lucrative process? Who isn’t worried that the problem of selling babies could very well skyrocket under this system?
Then there is this.
Why do the males in this equation get yet another pass? Instead of forcing girls to take the pill or insert an IUD, why can’t we demand that all males of reproductive age undergo a simple reversible vasectomy? Why can’t it be insisted that both people who started a pregnancy be made responsible, and that the male partner be held just as accountable as the female, and that enforcement of that accountability be held? That way it would at least help ensure that the mother would get at least financial support from the other parent in this deal.
Girls are starting their periods these days as early as 10 years old. So do we start contraceptives then? And is it to be assumed that most girls from ages ten to 18 are sexually active?
Lane Filler’s disclaimer regarding the male role in all this states. “This plan has the flaw of sexism because it puts the responsibility on females and the parents of females, but that’s where science and history have taken us. We’ve never developed medical male contraception and mothers and their families have traditionally been stuck with the majority of the responsibility when children birth children. We’ll give this plan a few years to work, then address that.” In other words, guys have been off the hook forever. It says “Obviously this works just fine for us guys, so we’ll just keep it that way, until we think of something better, some day, maybe. Sorry, ladies.”
Forcing contraceptives on women and girls is not going to work. It is an Orwellian idea, it infringes on personal rights and is completely prejudiced in whom it targets. It would also not end abortions, but drive them back underground where they were between 1900, when nearly all abortions were outlawed to 1973 when the Roe vs. Wade decision was handed down. It is also notable that the Roe vs. Wade decision took the abortion restrictions back to similar standards that were enacted in 1830, when our seventh president was in office. To save you a google search, it was Andrew Jackson. While you are Googling, look up the Comstock law which was enacted in 1873, and finally overturned in 1938.
The solution to reducing abortions in our nation is a combination of several things. Education is of course primary. Education should exist to teach females and males principles on proper respect and preparation when it comes to sex within relationships, and of the responsibilities one faces when engaging in behavior that has certain risks, some of them long term.
Another would be to make contraceptives more affordable, requiring insurance companies to cover it. This was the only one idea of Lane Filler’s that I found worthwhile, although I utterly disagreed with the setting. Many states don’t require insurance companies to cover things like the birth control pill, and those pills without prescription coverage are quite expensive. We could ask that insurance companies don’t require women to buy a rider for pregnancy coverage as some have to do. Purchasing coverage after discovering one is pregnant can be impossible, depending on where one lives and the coverage available.
The last requires a change of attitude when it comes to the matter of abortion itself. We don’t have to like abortion, but we certainly could use more compassion, trying to understand what a woman goes through, emotionally to come to the point to arranging for an abortion. We could stop treating women who get abortions and the people who perform them as immoral and unethical people worthy of only our hatred and scorn. We can work to find common ground between those who treat all life as sacred from conception, and those who believe that all people should be in complete control their bodies, recognizing that both extremes have merit, but that the answer lies in neither extreme. We can also use that common ground to help educate people about sound sexual health practices, and that there are really good solutions to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and the even more undesired, highly dangerous sexually transmitted infections that are still very much a risk in this modern age.
I completely understand that opinion pieces are just that, a person’s opinion on a certain topic. There may be some that completely agree with Lane Filler’s piece and the suggestions that he offered, but I suspect that there are quite a few of us, like myself, who find themselves insulted at the world he proposes; a world were choices and rights are removed from a large segment of the population in order to prevent something that occurs amongst a very small minority of that population segment; a world where accountability and consequences are placed upon a only half of those actually responsible for the issue while giving the other half no accountability at all; and a world conceived by someone who has no idea what it is like to find oneself unexpectedly with child, and therefore seems to have little compassion for those who may find themselves thus. But then, that’s just my opinion.
If dudes bore children, abortion pills would be available over the counter.
What the abortion “debate” comes down to is who has control over a woman’s womb. Until we get around to robotic wombs and fetal transplants, that must always be the woman in question, regardless of any ethical what-if stories.
Not to mention that forcing women to take medication, which always has side-effects, is potentially dangerous. As the average age at which women choose to start families rises, we’ll see an increase in time on hormonal contraceptives – in this case, a woman could be on the pill twenty years (10-30) before starting a family, and then again between the last planned child and menopause. I suppose no one cares about the increased risk of blood clots or strokes?
I went on the pill when I became sexually active and was on it for close to five years, but I never felt right. I think the pill is wonderful and I would want it to be available affordably for everyone, but something just didn’t interact well with my personal chemistry (I can only imagine that it would be far worse if it were the 12-month dose Lane Fisher is suggesting!). My husband and I then switched to condoms. Under this plan, it seems that I wouldn’t get the option to make that choice – to decide what’s best for me and my body.
As far as I am concerned, abortion should be made unnecessary, not illegal. Education and affordability of contraceptives is the first step. The second step is a strong social support structure for women who get pregnant unintentionally and decide that they wish to keep the child.
No one should ever feel like they have no choice, like they have to get an abortion because of circumstances.
I like that “unnecessary but not illegal” Grim. That is what I was trying to say, and you did it in four little words.
I read the op-ed piece, and it sounds like the author was thinking of himself as a very progressive guy. Humble, even.
But you are absolutely right… women have always sought either abortions, or have found ourselves with children we could not support. To say it takes a village to raise a child is an understatement. It takes a support system that lasts a lifetime and is global in its magnitude. Adoption is sometimes an option; but I know a woman who had two little daughters and was pregnant when she was divorced. She was working when her ex-husband was killed in a plane crash, so when her son was born, there was no child support for the new baby. Her boss suggested giving the baby up for adoption, or she would have no job to come back to… this was the 1960s; that poor woman grieved over that baby for over 20 years until they reconnected when her son found her through a birth family search service.
I’ve known many women who’ve had abortions… that have knowingly had to make the choice to go to Planned Parenthood or other services to get safe legal abortions, since they’ve been available, but I have had IUDs…. so — an IUD is just an abortion a little earlier. I remember the incredible cramps, contractions really — what was really happening was that the device was not preventing pregnancy or preventing the sperm from connecting with the ovum; it was just preventing the zygote, the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. I just checked with my friendly local midwife about this — birth control pills, on the other hand, interrupt ovulation.
I think what’s happening is that the people who are old enough to remember what it was like before Roe v Wade, when women died or become sterile from coat hanger abortions, or who were ostracized from society because of single parenthood, or who had a surprise younger sister or brother (this happened to cousins in my family), are not speaking up about what a different kind of society it was. They are not explaining fully what the risks and complications were. It could be that they have had to justify the decisions they made… not that women who have had to make a decision to have an abortion has not had to make justifications for that decision, too.
Poor guy, but he’s going to get all the abuse he deserves. No medical professional would go along with that plan. Too dangerous.
When you deal with human beings, the rules don’t apply. I”m sure this guy could come up with a way to end divorce, or end childhood obesity, or end the immigration problem…but none of them would work. All of those problems defy “good clear” 100% answers because they involve human beings.
Here is the mind-blowing part about Mr. Lane’s op-ed piece. When it came out, I checked the paper’s letters to the editors section for over a week, to see what kind of comments would be stated. And as any typical paper, people have opinions, and boy do they express them, you should read the stuff they say about prayers at county council meetings (a local hot topic).
With this editorial, nothing, nada, not a single word of dissent was printed by the paper in response to Mr. Lane’s piece. As far as I know I am the only local entity that dared write a rebuttal, and I did it at a different publication then that local paper.
I’m glad somebody else brought up the robot uteruses so I don’t have to. :)
Also someone else already brought up the fact hormonal birth control’s risks and side effects, which for some women are prohibitive.
I can’t believe the cowardice and intellectual laziness of “that’s where science and history have taken us” regarding men’s roles in this. “Well, that’s not my problem. Sexism exists, who am I to suggest to change it?”
The male birth control pill exists, or at least it’s nearly ready, but of course it’s hard for them to get funding to finish developing it because birth control is still a woman’s responsibility.
How about my plan: all boys have their sperm collected at puberty and frozen. Then they are given vasectomies. Then, when Billy decides he wants to have babies, he can apply to the government with his partner or surrogate and, if their application is successful, they can have in vitro fertilisation or they can have Billy’s tubes re-attached.
Ta-da! Problem solved!
Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?
I too am shocked that Mr Lane’s piece went without comment. On his ideas – well not much that I an add that has not been stated here already. Excellent post Sylvie.
It’s easy for Lane to perch on the tower of his incredulity of privilege, backed by a history that has given him that privilege, and dictate the behavior of people who don’t share his position of privilege. He is painfully (and perhaps maliciously?) mistaken in claiming there are no effective medical contraceptives for men. Such unfounded justification for male sexual recklessness does serious harm to his purported cause of preventing abortion.
I totally agree with the unnecessary but not illegal position. Wouldn’t that be great!
Last thing: some folks (not you Sylvie!) who espouse concern for the sanctity of human life beginning at conception somehow manage to completely ignore the poverty, lack of access to medical care, and other profound social injustices that shocking numbers of living humans suffer after they are born. They’ll go to great lengths to stop a child rape victim from seeking abortion, but once she gives birth, she and the baby are on their own. I suspect that having strong social, medical, educational, and financial societal safety nets would prevent many more abortions than forcing women to take contraceptives.
I know I said I was done, but awesome post! Ping: http://open.salon.com/blog/anthropologist_underground/2010/08/30/she_thought
@Kitty said: “No medical professional would go along with that plan.”
Maybe not – not now. But cost-cutting Suits would, eventually politicians likely would (though using different language), and the medical professionals could well follow. Right now, “Choice” is the key word when talking about abortion, but it’s quickly fading into disuse in the discussion about the cost of medical care. Utilitarianism is becoming more important. We have less choice about what our medical options are than we used to (anyone remember pre-HMO days?). Is there a logical reason why exerting financial or other pressure to go on birth control will stay out of bounds? I fear not.
It’s not the sort of thing there are lots of figures on, but pretty much every society has practiced infanticide either actively or through selective neglect, abortion is just invisible infanticide. I don’t see how it will ever become unneccesary except in an ideal world. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work towards the ideal though.
It certainly has the appeal of simplicity, which is why only someone extremely priveleged could have come up with it – everyone not on that cosy plateau knows that life is messy!
I think there are some religious qualms with the pill. I know my Mormon friend can’t use it as it’s felt that being on the pill, you are actually “aborting” a fertilized egg….which is abortion (in the opinion of her church).
So, being on the pill IS abortion to some groups.
oh wow, that guys article made me so mad.
Minors can’t raise their own children *at all*?? what about the phsychological effect that would have on the mother (and father possibly) of the baby- or the psychological effect on the baby as he/sh…e grows up?
My mum was adopted into her own family- my ‘Aunty’ was 16 when she got preggers and back then she was put into a ‘mother’s home’ and it was either my mum would be placed into an orphanage until she was adopted, or my ‘Grandparents’ adopted her.
My ‘Granddad’ (being the awesome person he was) decided that they would adopt my mum (against my ‘Nana’s’ wishes).
My mum was raised by a horrible woman who treated her badly, and always knew that she was ‘different’ to her siblings but only discovered the truth when she demanded to know when my sister was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, which can be genetic. But my mum has always felt that she was unloved by her ‘mother’ and abandoned by her ‘sister’ when she found out.
We’ve now started keeping in contact with my ‘Aunty’ who calls my mum her daughter now and my siblings and I her grnadkids (now that my ‘nanna’ is dead). and we’ve since discovered that she went through a horrible time too- watching her daughter being raised as her sister and having to keep it secret for so long. When she got married she asked for the right to adopt my mum back (she was 3 then) and was told in no uncertain terms that it would never happen and a whole bunch of other hurtful stuff.
The man who wrote this article has no clue whatsoever.
@Deb You raise an excellent point in regards to infanticide. I thought about that as I was writing this piece. I also thought about people who murder their children, and wonder if aborting them would have been the more humane end to their little lives then the ones they were subjected to. Couldn’t think about that too long as it just made me weep.
@Tabs What a heartbreaking story, and an example of what can happen when keeping secrets has the apparent motivation of just attempting to maintain a particular social status. I bet your mum is an amazing woman.
As I wrote this I remembered finding myself pregnant at 19. It came out alright in the end, but my family dynamics, my situation was difficult. I guess that is partially why Mr. Lane’s article infuriated me so because he knew not of what he spoke.
I know Lane. I don’t believe he was being serious because he is too much of a libertarian. Remember his views on the public smoking ban? I think he was trying to take an extreme position to make everyone who read the piece analyze why it is they support abortion. I think he missed the mark by making the piece blatantly sexist. Thanks for the analysis.
I’ve read some of his more obviously satirical pieces, and his work can be amusing, but this particular one just didn’t come across like that. A few of my friends and I discussed the possibility of it being a satire, and I sure hope it wasn’t but we simply couldn’t tell. Mr. Lane is usually much more obvious when he’s joking. None the less, there wasn’t a one of my friends who read it, and didn’t get upset or angry, just like I did.
If it was satire, and I sincerely hope it was, then the effort failed miserably.
There isn’t much I can add to this that hasn’t already been said, but I will point out that the forced birth control and sterilization has been tried before:
Indira Gandhi – http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947859,00.html
Terrible things happened under the leadership of Indira, stories of kidnappings where women were forced to undergo abortions and sterilization procedures abound, most of them sounding much like frightening movie.
While the motivation for Indira is different than that of Mr. Filler, I can’t imagine that the effect would be any better.
That being said, I wonder if we can call Poe’s Law on this one? A badly executed joke would certainly be more palatable as an explanation than the thought that someone actually felt this was a reasonable plan. That could just be my inner optimist speaking.
Excellent post.
I was unable to leave a letter to th eeditor of the electronic version of the newspaper so I emailed Lane Filler.
—–Original Message—–
From: Celia
Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 9:35 PM
To: Filler, Lane
Subject: Re; Abortion eliminated my way
How about this:
All boys are required to have their sperm frozen at a national sperm bank and
then have a vasectomy.
When ready for children the man and his partner, wife, or surrogate apply for
the sperm. The application will outline how the offspring will be provided for
and who will have primary responsibility (obviously this will be the man in the
case of a surrogate). Then insemination can take place.
Or:
All males undergo reversible vasectomies, with frozen sperm in a sperm bank as a
back-up?
Then when the man is ready for children he can apply to have the vasectomy
reversed. The application states that any child born with his DNA after the
time of vasectomy reversal will be his financial and personal responsibility.
——Response——-
Agreed. I think those are both reasonable alternatives to what I proposed, and I
would support them.
Thanks for your thoughts, and taking the time to write.
Lane Filler
Mr. Filler clearly has no problem forgoing individual freedoms for what he considers an overriding agenda. Besides that agenda being apalling to many, the easy willingness to cross the line into such a requirement, whether by force or coercion, is repellent and dangerous.