The Abortion Impasse (revised Sept 2010)

If an issue cannot be resolved, it must be cleaned up. As with the Chernobyl nuclear accident: It will be a radioactive mess for eternity, so it just gets contained in a lead and concrete shield. Similarly with abortion: The issue cannot be resolved, so it can only be contained. Abortion is generally tolerable when the mother's life is threatened; but who is to say when the mother's life is threatened? Who are the most qualified people? And the answer is obvious: Women who have experienced childbirth and raised children, but who have also had an abortion. So we organise them to contain the issue. Cont...)

The most hideous nightmare human beings can experience is for parents to watch their daughter growing up and spreading her wings. Then one evening the daughter doesn't come home. The parents phone around and get told conflicting stories. Next morning she still doesn't appear. Their enquiries lead nowhere. The following evening she still doesn't come home.

Having a daughter go missing must be worse than being told she is dead. And the only person who can be of assistance isn't some goof like me saying, Cheer up old thing! but another parent who has been in the same position. So we organise these people with special experiences into support groups, and use them to contain the situation. When your child goes missing, you have a contact to phone. At least they know what you're feeling. It may not be much but it's better than nothing.

Similarly with abortion. There are now millions of mothers who have had children and raised families who have also had abortions. And they constitute a specially qualified group whose experience we would be foolish to waste. So we organise them into support goups or Motherhood Advisory Committees (MAC's) and use them to process the abortion business. When a woman is thinking of an abortion, she contacts a MAC, and thereafter everything is behind closed doors. The rest of us~~men, Feminists and Real Women~clear off and mind our own beeswax.

Then abortion would be processed under the right to kill in self-defence. Abortion would be against the law, except when the mother's life is threatened. And who is to say when the mother's life is threatened? The MAC's! Other women who have experienced the abortion issue from both sides.

(In Canada today I believe the police have the task of ruling whether a homicide is in self-defence. Once the police/crown counsel's office charge you with murder, it is difficult to plead self-defence: You must accept you did the killing. But I digress. I don't think it farfetched to allow that kind of discretion to an administrative body.)

Everything about abortion looks and sounds hideous. At least this way we can get the issue out of the public face. Abortion would be against the law except in self-defence: not just when the mother's life is threatened but her basic functioning. If a woman has ten children and would snap it she had another; or if it would drive her insane to bring to term a child conceived in a case of rape or incest: It's a trade-off: There is no benefit to society. But we don't legislate these exceptions: We leave them to the good sense of toofer women. If they can't handle the issue, Who can?

Abortion is close to absolute evil; but there are circumstances when it is right. And when evil is right, we are intellectually and morally paralysed. There is no absolute theoretical or legal solution to the abortion conundrum. We have to be satisfied with an administrative partial solution: Which can be morally satisfying in its own way.