ת Abortion: Requiring the Mother to See the Body Parts. James Q. Wilson, I think, proposed some time ago that any woman wanting an abortion be required to view pictures of what a fetus looks like at her particular time of gestation. She could then make a more informed decision as to whether her particular abortion was moral. A variant on that would be to require the woman to view, after the abortion, the fetal body parts removed from her. This would require her to face up to what she had done. If the abortion was an early one-- say, 2 weeks-- this would not be too difficult, though still significant. At 6 months it would be quite a solemnity and, I think, a deterrent.

I thought of this after coming across the following article. I warn you--- it is not crude, and in fact is deliberately understated, but the last sentence is disturbing, and you may not wish to read it.

Vancouver doctor Jonathan Cope, who presented a paper called "Late Abortion Techniques" at UBC's Medical Symposium on Abortion in 1997, lists a number of reasons women have late-term abortions: "women are awaiting results from genetic testing, women don't know they are pregnant, woman are abandoned by the father which is a common reason, particular areas (of British Columbia) give women difficulty getting referrals (for an abortion), (there is) fear of parental retribution, or that the husband (of the pregnant mother) wants a boy."

He explained that second-trimester abortions "in British Columbia tend to be concentrated in just a few hands because late-term abortions are physically unpleasant. They aren't popular among surgeons" because, as he described in his symposium presentation Secrets for a Successful Evacuation, infants are almost fully developed, clearly look like babies, and can survive outside the womb.

Cope wrote, "It is advisable to use the biggest forceps that you can get through the (woman's) cervix to morcellate (a medical term meaning to cut up) the fetus.... Visually check all the parts as they are retrieved.... This is part of the reason that second- trimester abortion is not popular among surgeons. All those here who do second-trimester abortions will agree that the most difficult ones are those between 14 and 17 weeks ... there is a tendency for the uterus to form an `hourglass' and the head (of the baby) or part of the trunk to be trapped in the upper part and difficult to retrieve. The passage of large, recognizable fetal parts by the woman some hours or days later is extremely distressing for the woman and her family."

My idea raises an interesting question, though. Suppose we decide that abortions at 6 months are a good idea. Should we then protect the woman's feelings by concealing from her what she has done? Just as we do not think it useful to require beef eaters to view a slaughterhouse, so maybe we should not require the aborter to view her baby. But there is a difference. The revulsion a person feels at a slaughterhouse is, I think, on account of the gore, rather than on account of being reminded of something the person has tried to suppress. It is like viewing a video of one's gall-bladder operation--- quite disgusting, but nobody is going to be deterred from having the operation by it. Also, it is immaterial whether the cow or gall bladder is one's own or someone else's. But the aborted fetus is one's own in a far more special way, and the revulsion would not be just on account of the gore. The blood could be cleaned off and the pieces sewn together, and the emotional impact might be all the greater.

This idea, by the way, is no more just an anti-abortion one than Professor Wilson's. Most people are not going to be much affected, I think, by viewing a picture of a 2-week fetus or the output from a morning-after pill. Thus, this idea gives little comfort to the advocates of "life begins at conception".

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.01.01b.htm . erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

 

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