| | I realize this discussion is based in the philosophical argument of, is a fetus a living human being who has rights and what is the governments role in restricting a woman's right to choose to let the fetus continue to develop to birth. I agree with Tim that the topic is more complicated and should be discussed with less emotional arguments and with objective reasons.
I realize I haven't considered myself an objectivist for longer than a year and a half and while I've read quite of bit of Rand fiction and non-fiction, I am still in need of practicing and discussing topics so that it becomes clear to me.
With the topic of abortion an aspect of Tim's article that I wish to speak to is the woman's choice in becoming pregnant. I agree that when a person makes the decision to become sexually involved they are implicitly accepting the responsibilities which come with this choice. If one looks at the statistics of abortion, the number of abortions per year are decreasing. In 1995 the majority of the 1,210,883 people who had legal abortions were young, unmarried, white women. Black women tend to have a higher abortion rate than white women, and those of other ethnic cultures are only 1.6 times as often as white women.
As an aside, I'm not certain when objectivists actually consider a child a fully rational, reasonable human being who is capable of making the difficult life decisions and understands the full consequences of what they are doing. From my own personal experience, I would say the age is around five, however, having went through the education system and observing the way children and teenagers act, I would think the age is perhaps higher. I would be interested in knowing when objectivists set this arbitrary age range, since obviously there are children who develop mentally faster and have experiences which can lead them to a view of life that far surpasses their peers.
The point I am interested in however, is the people who choose to have abortions. The majority being young and unmarried, says perhaps that they were not really mentally aware of the consequences of their actions or were not educated in what it means to be sexually active. I concede there are still people who are ignorant of safe sex procedures, or know about them and refuse to use them. With the number of diseases one can obtain through sex, pregnancy should be their last concern. I think it's interesting though, that in the article, there seems to be this assumption that the woman chooses to get pregnant and then decides not to have the child. I realize the assumption is made because if one chooses to have sex then the person should be aware that this could possibly result in the formation of a fetus. I'm not quite sure all young people are thinking of this at the moment, but one automatically assumes the person is capable of making a rational decision in regards to sex.
One might also conclude that if the rates of abortion are decreasing, perhaps it is because there is more sex education available for younger people and they are less likely to go on an impulse and will think about the consequences. This I would have to research more, but it would seem to be a cause and effect.
Most women who we think to be able to make the conscious choice to become pregnant are less likely to be the women in a position to need to seek out an abortion. Notwithstanding, of course, the 1% of the time when the condom or pill may fail, or in the instance of a rape situation which may lead to pregnancy, or the rare instances of when the woman chooses to be pregnant but the pregnancy could be harmful to herself.
Unfortunately in the society which occurs now, children have very few rights even when they are living. A human being in the United States doesn't even receive recognition of all their rights until the age of 21 and with colleges are not considered independent until they are 23 or 24. I mention this only because I am having a difficult time trying to assess when a human beings rights are acknowledged and should be acknowledged. Parents can physically, sexually, and verbally abuse their children with little repercussions. The child may eventually be taken away but they can still have more children and continue the cycle. Until the last few years parents could kill their children without more than a slap on the wrist according to our laws. The laws are becoming a bit tougher, but not by much.
I guess that leads to another question for me? How would an objectivist government, since they would provide the legal system, choose to punish or deter crimes against children?
This is a response that has been compiled on the spot, which is not my normal way of responding, but I would be interested in a response to the questions which would perhaps help me to understand how this issue of abortion could be worked out in my own mind. I am pro-choice, but I have to agree, that so far, the objectivist arguments I have read, as Tim pointed out, do not really give the kind of support which can be successfully convincing.
Jen
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