I have a few things to say about the Amy Richards story.

First of all, this is what it is, boys and girls. Abortion in America. I've read a sampling of the articles about people who are shocked—shocked!—about the story of Amy Richards and the selective reduction she had when she found out she was pregnant with triplets.

When I found out . . . I felt like: now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it.

I think the problem people have is with the apparent nonchalance, the sort of frivolity they see in her decision.

My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?

Ultimately, she decided to kill her two twins and let the singleton live.

But the fact is, most abortions are had because of a much smaller level of inconvenience. A lot of abortions are chosen by high school girls and college women who could easily make adoption plans and deliver healthy babies. They could give this gift to the world and themselves by delaying less than a year of schooling. And in most cases, they wouldn't even need to go on bedrest.

The problem people are having is with the attitiude. Society's stance is, "I don't mind young women having abortions as long as they feel bad about it. Provided they agonize over the decision, it's okay."

Say what? "We don't mind your terminating the pregnancy, but you must feel some guilt."

I have a friend who got pregnant when she was in college. She did the expected thing and got an abortion. They stayed in touch. She once told me she felt sentimental about this particular guy, though they'd broken up long before.

"Why?" I asked.

"You know," she replied. "Blood of my blood."

"If you're so weepy about it, why did you guys kill the baby?" I asked.

We want our daughters to do the convenient thing. We want them to eliminate the fetuses, because it would break their little teenage hearts to give their babies away. We want sentimentality, but only in short, staccato bursts. ("She shouldn't have to give her baby away. So we're encouraging her to kill it.")

Plenty of women have abortions for reasons a lot more frivolous than selective reduction. At least in the case of selective reduction there is a significant chance that one or more babies would die anyway. Not so with a healthy singleton inside a 20-year-old girl.

We need to re-think our approach as a society, because our current position is, "hey, one term in your college education is worth more than a human life. It's your body. This entity is no more significant than an appendix."

Then we are surprised when someone socialized in this culture takes us at our word.

There is no "safe, legal and rare." We are way beyond that kind of thinking. It is a dodge. It is a lie.

Where we are is, women and girls put their own convenience ahead of the lives growing inside them. And the men in their lives—and often their own parents—pressure them to do it.

Why do we want so much to pretend that it's something other than what it is?

Secondly, I'm tired of hearing abortion compared with the raising of a child. That's a false dilemma, and most of you know it. Women should have these children and let them be adopted into loving homes.

And, third, this is all too real to me. I had an abortion when I was 19, mostly because my boyfriend made it clear that he would make my life miserable if I gave birth to the baby. (He did anyway, but that's another story.)

I felt no regrets until a few years ago, when the failure of my infertility treatments led to to realize that was my one chance to have a biological child. And now, married and living in a nice house in the suburbs, I've been waiting for six years, and must resign myself to another long wait—a year or two, they say—while the adoption process rolls along. It wouldn't take so long if more girls and women made the right choice. And I'd feel much better asking them to do the right thing if I had myself.

Reading the original comments on Michele's entry made me cry over the tragedies of those who have suffered miscarriages and infertility: a new life is a gift. It really is. We should, at the very least, accord it some respect.

And twins and triplets? I've wanted mutiples since the moment my husband and I decided to have three "pre-embryos" put inside me during our first in-vitro cycle, knowing we would never selectively reduce, unless my own life was in danger. I had to think long and hard about whether I could manage bedrest and a high-risk pregnancy. I'm 5'1", and at this time I weighed maybe 110 pounds. One implanted, and I was pregnant for a few days before it died. That was two years ago. I went through two more IVF cycles. No dice.

Even now, though, I hope: at the adoption agency I wrote down that we want twins. The odds are long, of course.

In conclusion, I'm a hypocrite. Because I'm just as appalled by Richards' brutality and callousness as anyone else is. And I would have adopted her twins in a trendy, intellectual New York minute.

Repeal Roe v. Wade. Take this issue back to the states. And let's slow this thing down. Please.

UPDATE: I finally got a chance to read Michelle Malkin's thoughts on this. She has a useful post on the article, and some thought-provoking comments by readers as well.

Posted by: Attila at 01:47 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I hate to link back to another blogger in two consecutive posts, but it's going to happen on occasion, especially with people like Dean Esmay and James Joyner.

This time it's Dean, who's written an especially thoughtful entry on abortion. I think that most of us can agree that the Roe v. Wade case was especially destructive to the national psyche, in that it was not a thoughtful decision legally--and that it Federalized something that should have been left to the states. It exacerbated tensions on the matter, and has kept the wound festering for forty years.

Official bias statement: I'll stipulate that I'm pro-choice, except in the case of partial-birth abortions, which I would prefer to allow only if the woman's life is in jeopardy. (I'd love to leave the language "life and health" intact, but health is often interpreted very loosely. [That is, sometimes it's taken to mean the woman's fertility. Others, it's taken to mean "mental health," which in practice equals "if she'll be upset by a live birth in any way, she gets to kill the baby."])

Dean discussses the gender gap on the issue, which falls contrary to where stereotypes place it: more women are pro-life than men. This has often been atrributed to various factors: 1) men are more likely to be interested in "no strings" sex (I'm unconvinced that this is the case WRT women in their teens and early 20s); 2) women carry children, and this experience (or even sometimes its potential) is more likely to give women a certain reverence for nascent life; 3) older women will sometimes get married, get pregnant, look at the ultrasound pictures, and have a "holy fucking shit!" moment. That is: "if it's a baby this time around, what was it that first time?" Answer: a baby.

I have something to say about each side, here. First, I'll look at something I see among some pro-lifers. I'm always confused--and perhaps even taken aback--by those who say that they are adamantly pro-life, but favor exceptions for rape victims. If your position is that the rights of the fetus should be respected, how is it different for a fetus that was conceived during a violent act? He or she can hardly be held responsible for that. To me, this position appears to represent the point of view that pregnancy is a punishment for sex. Since the woman isn't responsible for the sex act, she shouldn't have to endure the "punishment" for it. If that's your position, fine. But please acknowledge it for what it is. And admit that you only want to protect some unborn children, and not others. I don't think it's a position without merits, but it has an intrinsic contradiction, and there's a faintly sex-negative smell to it.

I also want to say a word to the pro-abortion people. One of the concerns that the anti-abortion people have is that the word "choice" is used a lot by those who would give young women no choice at all. That is, "I want my daughter to have a 'choice,' so I can pressure her into getting an abortion." Or: "I want my girlfriend to have a 'choice,' so I can threaten her with awful consequences if she doesn't terminate the pregnancy." After all, the debate over counseling usually comes down to neither side trusting the other to counsel young girls in a truly neutral way.

There is a tendancy for the "adults" around a young woman to go into histrionics at the idea that she might experience nausea that could affect her GPA. Or that she could have a rough trimester and have to take a term or two off from school. There is such a concern about the slightest delay in her getting that all-important education.

Say what?

I live in the richest country in the world. I belong to a gender that out-lives the other by years and years. If there is one thing we should have time and money for, it's having babies. (And, believe me--if you're young and pregnant, there are Christian groups [Catholic and Protestant] that will help you with prenatal care and the other costs you incur by carrying this baby to term.)

Graduate a little later. Have the kid, and have it placed. Years later, if you can't have children because you waited too long, you'll feel better asking young women to let you raise the kids they bear.

Trust me on this.

There's also that "selective sentimentality" thing, wherein young women are encouraged to feel so sentimental toward the little lives inside them that they can't possibly "give them up for adoption." But they can kill them. The most loving thing you can do when you haven't yet finished your education is to allow someone who has to raise that baby in a good environment.

What if we were to take the words "safe, legal and rare" seriously? What if we really tried to make that a reality, and stopped pressuring women and girls into having this procedure?

I think we'd be better off. I really do.

Posted by: Attila at 03:47 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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