Personhood and Extremes

When I found out I was pregnant for the first time, I was so excited. I was only a few weeks along, somewhere between 6-8 weeks. In my excitement, I started telling friends and coworkers of my pregnancy. Then I miscarried. I realized I was miscarrying while at work at the US Embassy. I had to go to my supervisor and tell him I needed to leave work because I was bleeding and likely miscarrying. In my shock, I told my husband to stay at work while I went to get checked out. How I wish I had told him to come with me. When the person giving me an ultrasound started talking clinically about my "threatened abortion," I felt awful. My baby was dying or dead already. Based on the final diagnosis of "blighted ovum," my baby never even got past the point of being a fertilized egg. And, oh, sitting alone on a bench in a foreign hospital and crying, how I mourned my child that was not.

I share this to put into perspective something: I voted against the "personhood amendment" yesterday in Colorado's election. It goes too far. I marked "no" with sadness in my heart because I don't condone abortion generally. I certainly don't think public funds should be used for them except in extremely rare cases. I think that a fertilized egg is a form of human life. It's life, and it's human. I'm not sure what else we can call it without dispensing with our standard biology definitions.

But the hard truth that pro-life organizations and politicians must grapple with is that a woman's body is inseparable from a growing pre-born child for nearly six months. Respect for individual rights mandates that we permit a woman to do things to her body that might harm her baby without punishing her for it. There is no way to have a personhood amendment without then putting extreme athletes/coffee abusers/anorexics/homebirthers/obese women/etc. at risk of prosecution for murder.

European countries regulate abortion more than the USA does. We are actually rather extreme in the USA as to what abortions we permit. But the answer is not to swing back and declare a fertilized egg a legal person.

To think aloud a bit, perhaps abortion should be treated legally in a fashion similar to suicide. No one could physically help a woman terminate the life in her, but they could still sell a mother the chemicals she wants to ingest to end her hosting of a forming life and monitor her afterward for complications. We permit gun sales all the time, despite the proven link between gun ownership and suicide. Individual rights are important. Why not allow over-the-counter sales of abortifacients and birth control? Let the individual woman decide what she wants to do to her body, including her uterus. Science has come far enough that most desired abortions could be done via medicine due to how early morning sickness tells most women of their pregnant state. If an abortion requires physical dismemberment or poisoning of the fetus, then perhaps we should accept that the baby is far enough developed that the mother's individual rights no longer outweigh its rights.