Portugal says "meh" to abortion
It's been quite a while since the last update, and I have only recently realized that the reason I found it so difficult to write another blog entry was because I was trying too hard to focus on my "definitions" series. It is much easier to write about news than about political science topics.
So, in that vein, I now bring to your attention the recent referendum in Portugal regarding abortion law. As things currently stand, Portugal has some of the most pro-life abortion laws in the European Union (and more pro-life than the United States, too). Abortions are allowed in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy to save a woman's life or to preserve her mental or physical health. That limit is extended to 16 weeks in cases of rape or other sexual crimes and up to 24 weeks in cases where the child is likely to be born with an incurable disease or malformation (as certified by a doctor other than the one who is to perform the operation). Overall, this seems to be one of the better abortion laws in the world - I wouldn't endorse it enthusiastically, but I do support it and it does seem to fall in line with Christian ethics (except for the part that allows late abortions when the child is likely to be born with an incurable disease, which comes dangerously close to suggesting that some lives are not worth living).
Now, this past Sunday - February 11th - a referendum was held in Portugal on the question of introducing a more liberal abortion law. The left-wing government of Jose Socrates proposed to make abortion on demand legal during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The results were as follows:
Of all voters,
24% said yes
16% said no
60% did not bother to show up to the polls
The result, in other words, was a resounding "meh". This was to some extent predictable, given that abortion is simply not regarded as a major political issue in Europe (unlike in the United States, where it seems to be the cornerstone of the entire Christian conservative movement). I personally lean towards the European paradigm. Though abortion certainly is an issue, it has been blown out of all proportion in the United States.
But that still doesn't excuse people not showing up for a referendum. Jose Socrates has said he will go ahead with his plans to liberalize abortion law because the majority of the people who voted said yes.
Like Prime Minister Socrates, I am a leftist. But unlike him, I was never able to understand the left's infatuation with the legalization of abortion. It probably comes from the fact that the modern Western left has taken an overdose of liberal individualist ideology over the past few decades, and is currently experiencing a mild delusional episode. By "delusional episode" I mean the dogmatic insistence on an individual's prerogative to do anything and everything to his or her own body, even when that may have negative consequences. This kind of ultra-individualist insanity is usually found among libertarians. Leftists should really know better.
A woman's right to choose is often invoked in defense of abortion. But surely, in a developed Western society where condoms and other forms of contraception are widely available, a woman has already made her choice when she decided to have unprotected sex. Abortion has less to do with the right to choose and more to do with the right to change your mind. Now, I'll be the first to agree that people make mistakes and everyone deserves a second chance. That is why there is always the option to give up the child for adoption. So, given that you can make a choice to use contraception before the pregnancy, and you can later change your mind by giving the child up for adoption after the pregnancy, abortion can only be justified when there is some exceptional reason to make a choice mid-pregnancy (such as health issues), or when the initial choice was denied to the mother (such as in cases of rape).
Further information: The BBC has a very informative survey of abortion laws in the European Union.
It's been quite a while since the last update, and I have only recently realized that the reason I found it so difficult to write another blog entry was because I was trying too hard to focus on my "definitions" series. It is much easier to write about news than about political science topics.
So, in that vein, I now bring to your attention the recent referendum in Portugal regarding abortion law. As things currently stand, Portugal has some of the most pro-life abortion laws in the European Union (and more pro-life than the United States, too). Abortions are allowed in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy to save a woman's life or to preserve her mental or physical health. That limit is extended to 16 weeks in cases of rape or other sexual crimes and up to 24 weeks in cases where the child is likely to be born with an incurable disease or malformation (as certified by a doctor other than the one who is to perform the operation). Overall, this seems to be one of the better abortion laws in the world - I wouldn't endorse it enthusiastically, but I do support it and it does seem to fall in line with Christian ethics (except for the part that allows late abortions when the child is likely to be born with an incurable disease, which comes dangerously close to suggesting that some lives are not worth living).
Now, this past Sunday - February 11th - a referendum was held in Portugal on the question of introducing a more liberal abortion law. The left-wing government of Jose Socrates proposed to make abortion on demand legal during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The results were as follows:
Of all voters,
24% said yes
16% said no
60% did not bother to show up to the polls
The result, in other words, was a resounding "meh". This was to some extent predictable, given that abortion is simply not regarded as a major political issue in Europe (unlike in the United States, where it seems to be the cornerstone of the entire Christian conservative movement). I personally lean towards the European paradigm. Though abortion certainly is an issue, it has been blown out of all proportion in the United States.
But that still doesn't excuse people not showing up for a referendum. Jose Socrates has said he will go ahead with his plans to liberalize abortion law because the majority of the people who voted said yes.
Like Prime Minister Socrates, I am a leftist. But unlike him, I was never able to understand the left's infatuation with the legalization of abortion. It probably comes from the fact that the modern Western left has taken an overdose of liberal individualist ideology over the past few decades, and is currently experiencing a mild delusional episode. By "delusional episode" I mean the dogmatic insistence on an individual's prerogative to do anything and everything to his or her own body, even when that may have negative consequences. This kind of ultra-individualist insanity is usually found among libertarians. Leftists should really know better.
A woman's right to choose is often invoked in defense of abortion. But surely, in a developed Western society where condoms and other forms of contraception are widely available, a woman has already made her choice when she decided to have unprotected sex. Abortion has less to do with the right to choose and more to do with the right to change your mind. Now, I'll be the first to agree that people make mistakes and everyone deserves a second chance. That is why there is always the option to give up the child for adoption. So, given that you can make a choice to use contraception before the pregnancy, and you can later change your mind by giving the child up for adoption after the pregnancy, abortion can only be justified when there is some exceptional reason to make a choice mid-pregnancy (such as health issues), or when the initial choice was denied to the mother (such as in cases of rape).
Further information: The BBC has a very informative survey of abortion laws in the European Union.
posted by Veshgard at 11:02 PM
15 Comments:
The Left's 'infatuation' with reproductive choice perhaps comes from the fact that at least half of it is composed of women and a decent portion of the rest of us are feminists. We believe that women are human beings.
Like you, I don't happen to share the Left's obsession with hyper-individualism at all.
While I agree with the Left on economic matters, progressives in the U.S. are far too fixated on things like abortion rights and gay marriage. This is not focus of the Left in other countries.
The Socialist government in Portgual recently rejected a proposal to legalize same sex marriage. In Nicaragua, the left-leaning President Daniel Ortega supported ban on abortion.
It is time for progressives to concentrate on promoting an agenda of economic justice and put the social issues on the back burner. The emphasis on abortion and gay rights is divisive to building an effective worker's coalition since many African Americans, Hispanics and rank-and-file union members hold more socially traditionalist views.
Socrates is not a leftist, if leftism has something to do with socialism. It is not that some socialists in Europe have a high 'dose' of liberal individualism, the SocDem parties ARE RUN BY LIBERALS!!!! They have nothing to do with the working class and are supported mostly by elements of finance capital. If you look into the background of ex-radicals turned (faux Left-) liberals, you see they were often in fleeting Trotskyite or anarchist movements high on ultraleft rhetoric but mostly high on selfish rebellion. The situation is a little better with the Communists, but they also have a lot of liberal influences these days and suppress internal debate on moral issues.
Eugenia, more women are anti-abortion than pro-. The sexual revolution has hurt women most of all, since there are plenty of men who would love to screw w/o responsibility and the women always have to pick up the pieces and many of them don't want the easy way out of killing their creation. Look at the American Black community, do you think women there are better off just because a few can become congresswomen? No.
Socialism has to be based on great moral ideals and man's sacrifice to these principles in order to work.
Great blog, please write more.
I completely agree with you re abortion - though I think it can also be blamed more on modernity, the post enlightenment farce that leads to the idea that man can control all elements of their world, nothing cannot be colonised and controlled by humankind - i just find it strange that people can be against the death penalty and pro abortion, murder is murder. I also do think abortion is blown out of proportion in the US and hijacked by the right wing to ensure support - I am anti abortion but if I was american i would vote democrat.
I think it is hypocritical to tell governments to stay away from the decision regarding a women's right to choose, but then want taxpayers to fund it.
The debate is no longer whether women should have the right to an abortion.
The debate is now whether it can be funded by federal programs.
The Left's 'infatuation' with abortion is fairly easy to understand if you consider women's control over their own bodies important, and understand why people on the Left consider it so.
Many on the Left are feminists, and support women's self-determination. One does not have to be a hyper-individualist to recognize that women as a class (not just individuals) have been used as reproductive resources for all of patriarchal history. Radical feminists have been the most vocal about abortion, yet they tend to oppose liberalism and emphasize women's class status in relation to the male class, rather than their individual choice-making.
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---But the "Left" does not see people's control over their own economic or social situations as something autonomous! Only sexuality! And that is precisely the point, that the "Left" has become far less socialist and far more liberal and offensive to social concerns in recent decades, to the detriment of its popular support. :(
Also, the point with abortion is that there are two lives involved. I also don't believe it should 100% illegal in all circumstances (i.e., even if the circumstances could lead to 2 deaths). But a world in which sexuality is to be celebrated liberally without any spiritual element of a union between two adults or the institutional element of a stable family that produces and raises children that become contributing members of society is an utterly barbaric, backwards, and destructive world!
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---A type of feminism is fine, but how can women have "self-determination" as a group? Do men have "self-determination" as a group? The problem with sexual politics or sexual orientation politics or racial politics is that it always ends by negating class politics - by insisting that women are an oppressed group, whatever their social class, that Blacks are, no matter their social class, that gays are, even if their average income is higher. For these cultural excuses, the "Left" has enthroned corrupt bourgeois women and minorities with affirmative action blind to socioeconomic status, done nothing to help poor Blacks, and fully alienated millions of working class whites. Great job! This is why populist Democrats used to win routinely in the South and now have a 40-45% ceiling!
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---No, when you speak of women as a class, I suppose it is not "hyper-individualism", it is cultural Marxism, which is not Marxist at all. But certainly I find the implication of this sentence somewhat obscurantist and offensive if you think that for virtually all of history until 35 years ago, people had no use for women other than sex and child-rearing. Maybe you should read more classical and historical literature.
Moreover, the large influx of women into the workforce was hardly the work of feminist activists, but rather the provoked and desired demand of grand capital. Men's wages began to stagnate and decline in the early 70s, and more mothers therefore entered the workforce, which exacerbated the pressure on wages. Now, younger female participation in the labour force is near enough full in many Western countries, which has only come to mean that they have NO choice but TO WORK. If anything should be a women's issue, it is the difficulty of supporting children properly when all parents must work full-time.
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---But women are not a class, women are from different socioeconomic classes, and women in those classes tend to behave and act differently (as do men). A poor man from the Ozarks does not have some grand privilege compared to a rich woman in Manhattan. What women share in common is biological.
As I see it, liberal feminism is sinister, socialist feminism is largely okay, and radical feminism is obscurantist/insane.
"A woman's right to choose is often invoked in defense of abortion. But surely, in a developed Western society where condoms and other forms of contraception are widely available, a woman has already made her choice when she decided to have unprotected sex."
This is absurd. Surely you know that no form of contraception is guaranteed to work 100%. Sometimes people take precautions and an unwanted pregnancy still happens. It's not as simple as giving up a child for adoption. An unwanted pregnancy can be traumatic for a woman, and if she (or her partner) is not ready for a child, can be traumatic for the child too. Early-term abortions should be left up to a woman to decide. Late-term abortions can be regulated. Your lack of compassion and empathy on this issue (on an otherwise fairly well-written blog) only indicates to me that you are not familiar with the experiences of women.
Re: what Thomas has posted above: You cannot seriously be ignoring patriarchy and racism as systemic/institutionalized forms of oppression along with classism/capitalism. One doesn't need to be a believer in identity politics to realize this.
As for this...
"But certainly I find the implication of this sentence somewhat obscurantist and offensive if you think that for virtually all of history until 35 years ago, people had no use for women other than sex and child-rearing. Maybe you should read more classical and historical literature."
You can't seriously be telling us that the liberation of women from patriarchal social norms *en masse* has not been a very recent phenomenon. It's a project that is FAR from complete, given that women in Third World, developing countries remain enslaved to patriarchal social norms and the economic and political subjection that they entail. This point is completely trivial.
"By "delusional episode" I mean the dogmatic insistence on an individual's prerogative to do anything and everything to his or her own body, even when that may have negative consequences. This kind of ultra-individualist insanity is usually found among libertarians. Leftists should really know better."
I really do not understand how this relates to the abortion issue. Having an abortion is not even remotely like, for instance, amputating off a limb. There are far more issues at stake than the individual in the decision to have an abortion:
- the birth of another individual who you may or may not be able to economically provide for or be emotionally available for
- the trauma that a woman's body goes through during pregnancy and childbirth and the lack of autonomy during this period for biological reasons which could interfere with someone's studies or work
- the trauma of giving up a child for adoption
- relationship issues: whether the woman's partner intends to stick around or not, or potential persecution by one's community for being pregnant out of wedlock
... and so on.
Yes, of course the right to early-term abortion can be abused, but it is also possible to exercise it responsibly and make a decision that is best for the woman, her partner, her community, and for the unborn.
There are positions on abortion that are much more nuanced than "a woman should have the choice to abort whenever she wants" and "abortion is murder". My personal position is that early-term abortions should be left up to the woman who can consult with her doctor, partner and family/community, and late-term abortions ought to be regulated by medical ethics boards because they do skirt dangerously close to infanticide. A culture of moral culpability and responsibility can be created without demonizing women who feel that an abortion is the best decision for them in the event of an unwanted pregnancy.
Where have my comments gone? They better not be deleted...
"You cannot seriously be ignoring patriarchy and racism as systemic/institutionalized forms of oppression along with classism/capitalism."
--People belong to various groups by choice, biography, geography, and other accidence. Class is the most prominent social distinction, especially of those that can be changed.
Undoubtedly what many radical feminists (not ALL feminists) are upset about is primarily biological.
"You can't seriously be telling us that the liberation of women from patriarchal social norms *en masse* has not been a very recent phenomenon."
---I'd argue women are not actually liberated!!! How do you encourage the liberation of women via social libertinism? When men have access to easy sex without responsibility, what are women left with? They are balancing the consequences of liberal sex with the necessities of life while the men are usually gone!
"given that women in Third World, developing countries remain enslaved to patriarchal social norms and the economic and political subjection that they entail."
---That depends on the country and is hardly universally true of the "Third World". Women in some such societies have more protections than in the West. This is another problem with the "Left", its Third Worldist socialist and arrogant occidentalist liberal tendencies are always clashing, but it tries to maintain a ridiculous synthesis ('that you can't say anything bad about third world nations but their cultures are totally inferior when we want to say they are'). Why not show those societies some respect? When Third World nations object to Western efforts to liberalise abortion in their countries, they are not doing what they are doing because they want to "oppress women". They want to defend their cultures against attacks from the West, such as the long-term well-known attempt to reduce their population.
The official Communist movement always promoted women's rights, and indeed brought nearly all women into the workforce, but it did not preach identity politics, which you, contrary to your disclaimer, are doing.
"There are far more issues at stake than the individual in the decision to have an abortion:"
***We know that, but some leftists and libertarians don't.
"- the birth of another individual who you may or may not be able to economically provide for or be emotionally available for"
***Exactly! Society via the State and charities can support those who are not economically able (this is a Christian Socialist blog, not a Christian capitalist one). But, of course, if you weren't ready emotionally, DON'T HAVE SEX!!!!! That is actually EASY. If you are raped, that is totally different, but in the other 98% of conceptions, this is a terrible excuse.
"- the trauma that a woman's body goes through during pregnancy and childbirth and the lack of autonomy during this period for biological reasons which could interfere with someone's studies or work"
***How crude!!! THE HUMAN LIFE YOU MADE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR CAREER GOALS. Such an attitude is callous and, I think, would make most mothers cry.
"- the trauma of giving up a child for adoption"
***Undoubtedly it is traumatic. But you don't avoid the trauma by KILLING the life inside you. Which do you think is more traumatic?
"- relationship issues: whether the woman's partner intends to stick around or not,"
***That is why you get married and then have sex :) !!! :) !!! Sexual relationships are not about sticking around while you are attracted to someone then getting bored and boggering off. But these are the fruits of "sexual liberation".
"or potential persecution by one's community for being pregnant out of wedlock"
***This is a bourgeois concern. Among the working class, especially Blacks, it has long been more offensive to have it known you had an abortion than to have an illegitimate birth. All your worldly concerns (it will interrupt my studies, my career, people will gossip) are petty, superficial bourgeois worries that we have no interest in feeding.
""a woman should have the choice to abort whenever she wants" and "abortion is murder""
***Sure, there are more nuanced positions. I don't think abortion is necessarily equivalent to taking a baby and murdering him (except partial-birth abortion clearly is). So my position is not 100% like the Catholics, and does not require me to wish it banned even in the case of rape. Abortion is clearly, however, the destruction of human life, something not to be encouraged for the largely petty reasons you have outlined. And the modern leftist-activist position is the libertarian one, that any restrictions or regulation is the patriarchy trying to control women's bodies.
Butters,
It is not my blog of course, and I am sorry if your comments disappeared, but I still have them in my email inbox.
"The Left does not see people's lives as as free as they should be, but they do desire that they should be free. The goal of individual liberty is held by many on the Left"
--If we are simply contrasting Left and Right then this is true. If we are talking about socialism, it is not necessarily so. Those trending towards left-anarcho-communism would agree. Are you a Christian anarchist by chance?
"what is not held is the delusion that people are atomistic rational actors."
--I think typical Leftists do hold the delusion that people are rational actors, but not necessarily atomistic.
"Consider it this way: control over one's own body is a moral principle"
--That is definitely libertarian and atomistic! One could perhaps oppose such a precept on the moral grounds of (1) collective interest and/or (2) recognition that man's egoistic and imperial tendencies must be held in check.
"As for irresponsible sexuality, that is not implied by support for abortion."
--It is the necessary consequence.
"I do not support irresponsible sex at all; in fact, I'm quite an ascetic Christian as far as my views on pleasures of the flesh is concerned. The point is not to protect people's ability to have sex, but to protect women's bodies from control by others."
--If you have a somewhat ascetic personal morality and you believe it is correct, why would you support a policy that leads to the opposite behaviour, which you probably think leads to great suffering, because of an irrational morality based on atomistic individual freedom from coercion?
"I agree that there are two lives involved, but I don't think respect for one life ought to entail control over another's body"
--That makes no sense. You agree there are two lives involved but that one life owns the other?
"To do so implies that women's bodies are incubators that can legitimately be used as resources"
--No. If the State forced women to conceive children, that would treat them as incubators. The "evil social conservatives" discouraging premarital sex are hardly forcing people to have children. If you recognise there is other human life involved, not just a mish mash of chemicals, then it follows to demand people to fulfill responsibilities to the human life they willingly created.
I would continue the discussion, except the moderator has an authoritarian moderating policy. He wants to control my speech like he wants to control women's bodies.
I won't be commenting here any more.
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