Comments Elsewhere

Hugo: Anyone on the pro-choice side want to make a case that what this woman did was morally defensible?

Yes. If you think (as I do) that abortion is part of a woman’s moral right to control her own body, then why would you have any particular indignation about Amy Richards’ decision?

Your reaction makes sense on one common anti-abortion view (the view that abortion is a grave evil, but that women who feel constrained to choose it by dire circumstances deserve compassion rather than condemnation). It doesn’t make very much sense on the most common pro-choice views. It seems to me that the disagreement on this case will have a lot to do with general attitudes towards abortion and very little to do with Amy Richards’ circumstances specifically.

The pro-choice position does not depend on whether you feel sorry for the poor girl or not. It’s based on respect for women’s choices.

candace: And the sad thing is, I would bet that Amy Richards’ little boy would, too.

This is preposterous arrogance. You don’t know Amy Richards and you almost certainly will never know her “little boy.” He didn’t ask you to speak on his behalf and I can’t see where you got any particular knowledge or authority that would make it appropriate for you to do so. If you want to make a case against abortion you should feel free, but using a stranger’s child as a ventriloquist’s prop in trying to make it only undermines your efforts.

joe: In getting off the topic, I was hoping to draw a comparison to those of affluence (education) and those less affluent (little education) and its impact on society. Do the enlightened ideals of abortion and contraception, which are probably used mostly by the well-to-do, a benefit to society?

There’s no need to speculate about who “probably” uses abortion and contraception. Data is publicly available. As it happens, you’re correct about contraception but mistaken about abortion: poor and low-income women are more likely than “well-to-do” women to have abortions (see: Alan Guttmacher Institute: Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000-2001 in the Findings under “Women’s Characteristics”); the rate of abortion per 1,000 women decreases fairly steadily as annual income increases. Anyway, I’m unclear what any of this has to do with whether abortion should or should not be legal. If birth rates decline in proportion to increases in female literacy and education, then that must mean that women, given the resources and options to make a meaningful choice, are choosing not to have as many children as they had previously had. The women making these choices are human beings, not machines for maximizing whatever demographic statistics you happen to find important; each and every one of the women in question has her own life and her own reasons for choosing to have fewer children, and I can’t imagine where policy-makers would get the knowledge or the virtue or the right to tell her that she needs to abandon those reasons in order to make quota.