Responding to Anti-Abortion Activists After Our Reproductive Rights are Gone

 First off, thank you.

We’re entering an America where women and girls are forced to carry out their pregnancies. Rape victims will be forced to bear and deliver the children of their abusers. Children will be forced, by the state's power and the threat of criminal prosecution, to relinquish control over their lives.

There are a great number of people who have voted for and helped bring us to this horrific new reality. Most of them lack the basic conviction to own it and admit this is what they wanted, or at least conceded their role in bringing it about. It’s refreshing to see someone who will state that this new situation, however oppressive, is something they have deliberately sought and find desirable.

I don’t agree that it is desirable, of course.

First off, we are not generally required, by law, to give of our bodies to sustain the lives of others. Even if a real, living, breathing human needs a new kidney, a blood transfusion, or a bone marrow transplant - you are not a murderer for failing to provide it.

Every day, in every community, people die. Many of them could have survived, a least a little longer, with interventions that are much less strenuous than a 9-month, dangerous, life-transforming ordeal. Living in a free society means we get to choose when, and how much, we will give of ourselves to sustain the lives of others. As a legal matter, nobody should be forced by the state to use their body to sustain the life of another.

We should (but no longer do) have a right to bodily autonomy. But I agree there are critical moral distinctions around what is and is not a “person” - which is, of course, the crux of this issue.

The progress of sperm and egg combining and growing and gestating and ultimately, potentially, resulting in a live birth of a human baby is relatively well understood. It is also a fuzzy continuum, with an uncertain outcome, that begins in a very un-person-like state. The question of where you draw the “person” line has no fixed, correct answer. 

Nonetheless, I understand that you are prepared to draw that line, that you feel strongly that the line must be drawn at or near conception (please correct me if I’m wrong), and that you feel that this preference of yours must be strictly and precisely enforced by state law and that anyone who fails to abide by it rightly deserves criminal prosecution and imprisonment. 

So, given the inevitable, horrible outcomes of this state imposition - I have to ask: Why are you doing this? What makes you so sure you’re right that you would impose it on everyone and strip away our right to control our own partners, children, and lives? 

Does your certainly come from faith? I’m not religious. I don’t feel that any particular religious text should define American law. But even within the bible, I’m not aware of any passage stating that someone is fully human at the moment of conception. It wouldn’t matter to me, but aren’t such things relevant to you?

Even with contradictory text, you might still claim your conviction comes from a divine source of revealed truth. Even if that’s a firm tenet of your faith, surely you are aware that not everyone shares that faith. Do you believe in religious freedom? If religious freedom means anything, it means that nobody should be compelled by law to surrender control of their lives based on religious beliefs they do not share. The freedom to abide by your own faith is among the rights that are being thrown away.

Perhaps you are so firm in your faith that you would see it imposed absolutely on everyone. You need to recognize everyone who does not share your conviction will be rightfully angry at having their fundamental rights stripped away in the name of your faith. You would object if you risked imprisonment by failing to abide by the arbitrary tenets of some other faith. You should expect similar resistance to the imposition of yours. 

But perhaps your conviction isn’t purely based on faith. Maybe you feel compelled by science or morality. I’ve heard mention of tiny toes and heartbeat-like electrical impulses. The plain fact is that even under natural processes (or divine choice, if you prefer) less than a third of fertilized eggs end up as live births. Many fertilized eggs are simply washed away, unnoticed and unmourned. Often pregnancies result in stillbirth and miscarriages. Both biological and theological evidence suggests that embryos are not particularly sacred. But under our new pregnancy police-state we can be confident that many miscarriages will become murder investigations as zealous prosectors ensure that nobody is feloniously trying to determine the course of their own life. 

If you truly care about “unborn lives”, targeting miscarriages and infant mortality would be much more welcome, and less freedom-destroying projects than criminalizing pregnancy. There’s plenty of work to be done in neonatal care, maternity services, sex education, access to contraception, health care, racial disparities, and anti-poverty. Historically, anti-abortion advocates don’t have a strong track record in supporting these initiatives. They do have a history of opposing women’s rights, opposing women’s equality, and attempting to control the sexual lives of young and unmarried women. These perceptions raise questions about your actual motivations. 

I (mostly) try to be dispassionate in these discussions, but it’s not at all an abstract philosophical issue for me. I’ve been in the room when the doctor informed us that they thought my wife had an ectopic pregnancy. And that it would kill her. We instructed the doctor to terminate that pregnancy. Do I deserve to go to prison? How about the 19-year-old, with a shitty, abusive boyfriend, who makes the same decision? What does she deserve?

Before our sons were born, my wife conceived twins. One of them was stillborn, and the other, our daughter, was born prematurely and died in infancy. In the lived experience of my own life, there’s a profound difference between the two. The little girl who lived, however briefly, will always be loved and remembered by us. The one that didn’t survive the womb, is not. 

This is not at all unusual. Churches, families, parents, and institutions all recognize that actual babies that arrive, alive are people we are excited to welcome into this world. But we also recognize that this is not the outcome for many, the majority even, of pregnancies. These losses can be mourned, but they should not be crimes. 

As another example, let us consider the nice, young, married couple that would like to have a child and have trouble conceiving one. They undergo IVF fertilization, and in the process of creating the child they will raise and cherish, they create and destroy dozens of embryos. Do we celebrate them? Or are they monstrous destroyers of state-protected “unborn lives”?

Not so long ago, when we had protected rights in the matter, these were interesting moral questions that we could debate. That’s no longer the case. Those rights are gone. At the very least, it would be nice to know under what circumstances we can be regarded as murderers, and what the basis, if any, for these distinctions are. It would also be good to have an understanding of under what circumstances we are to be granted by the state a measure of control over the most consequential, profound, and transformative aspects of our own lives.

I notice that you’ve asked me to “Choose life”. I assume this was written in some prior era when we had rights in the matter and there were choices to be made. Pasted into the current situation, where those choices are no longer available and have been replaced with threats of criminal prosecution, your request seems in rather poor taste.

The Choice to Have Children is the Fundamenatal Choice of Our Lives: We'll Miss it Now that it's Gone

 Family is everything. Who do you love? Will you have children together? At what stage in your life will you have children? How many? How will you manage those burdens, those challenges, those joys together? 

More than where you live, more than where you work, these questions about family and children -  whether, when, how, and with whom - are absolutely central to who you are. They are the choices that define your life. 

I find it astonishing, and tragic, that anyone would want to take those choices away. From everyone. It seems impossible that anyone would be so insistent that the right to control your own body does not belong to Americans. I’m saddened that the fundamental choice of with whom you will have and raise children is not contained within their definition of what it means to live in freedom. People who throw around phrases like “liberty” and “limited government” are insistent that the defining choices of our lives do not belong to us. These are not rights that we have. The government gets to make those decisions. 

Everyone who has had multiple (opposite sex) partners, everyone who had sex as a teenager, everyone who had sex, at any time, with someone with whom they were not fully prepared to raise the child that could have been conceived right then and there - and that is a group that includes almost everyone - all of those people benefitted enormously from the rights that they enjoyed. Until now. 

Those fundamental rights have been taken from all of us.

And for what?

To Protect the Life and Health of the Mother

We found out Christine was pregnant in the emergency room.

We wanted to have a baby. But our enthusiasm was dampened by the circumstances that brought us there. Christine had been experiencing severe, crippling abdominal pain for days. We were saddened but not surprised by the doctor's news. They thought it was an ectopic pregnancy. The fertilized egg was growing in one of Christine's fallopian tube instead of her uterus. If allowed to continue, the condition was guaranteed to be fatal to both Christine and the embryo.

The doctors recommended an operation to terminate the pregnancy. Immediately. We agreed.

After the operation we learned that the original diagnosis had been incorrect. It was not an ectopic pregnancy. The pain was caused by a substantial ovarian cyst. Christine was still pregnant.

Six months later we were back in the ER. Once again Christine had been experiencing severe pain. At this point she was 27 weeks pregnant - visibly bulging, but a very long way from the ingested-watermelon-look of a full term pregnancy. Once again we got the news that the pregnancy was killing her. She had HELLP syndrome and was hours away from a coma and death. The cure was to end the pregnancy. Immediately. Again.

Our local hospital was not equipped to handle the situation. We both grew up in Lebanon, New Hampshire and our parents were still living there. We asked that Christine be taken Dartmouth Hospital. The doctors were very concerned about her health deteriorating during the two hour ambulance ride. Ultimately, that's where they took her. Shortly after she arrived, our daughter Mattea was born, and Christine recovered.

Mattea weighted 1 lbs. 12 oz. at birth. Initially, she did very well and had no major health issues other than her low birth-weight. At six weeks, in yet another emergency setting, a new set of doctors informed us that Mattea had necrotizing enterocolitis. Her intestines died. Once again we were thrust into decisions involving the life and death of our child. And once again we really had no choice at all. Five days later Mattea died. She was our first-born child and the only daughter we will ever have. We were able to spend only a short amount of time with her. But we fell in love with her with an intensity that I had not anticipated and that the years without her have not diminished.



Following the murder of late-term abortion provider George Tiller, the blogger, Andrew Sullivan published a series of posts telling the stories of Tillers patients and of other women and families that have faced similar situations. I read through the stories of loving families thrust into impossible situations, of pregnancies gone horribly wrong, of children who could never be. What happened to us was tragic but not unique. The ectopic pregnancy was a false alarm. When Christine's HELLP appeared, the way to save Christine was to deliver Mattea. I have no illusions that another outcome was impossible. If the conversation had taken place a few weeks earlier, the baby could not have survived. A few hours later and Christine might not have.

Bringing life into this world is complicated and often dangerous. We don't often discuss it with anyone but our closest confidantes. But for so many families, pregnancy does not go smoothly. Many couples, many women experience infertility, miscarriages, complicated pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, premature births, pregnancies where the life of the mother is threatened, pregnancies that will not result in a child that can thrive, pregnancies that are the result of rape, incest, coercion, or abuse. It's complicated.

When we talk about pregnancies being terminated, we usually only talk about the unwanted pregnancies. We act as if the inconvenient pregnancies are the whole story. They are not. Biology does not care if you are married or unmarried. It does not care if your baby is wanted or unwanted. Especially in the case of late-term abortions, if you are wondering how anyone could make such a terrible choice, you must remember that sometimes people have no choice.

When these issues are debated in our public spheres and in our august legislatures we need to recognize our limitations. Congress does not have to power to abolish tragedy. It can not legislate right or wrong. It can not save us from biology. They can create laws that compound tragedy with criminal trials and incarceration. It seems inconceivable that legislators would be willing to take tragic circumstances, like we experienced, and call them crimes. But the laws they propose would do precisely that. We have to see life as it really is and not just how we wish it to be.