From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: A mirror for Adrienne Regard's NO OTHER HUMAN...
Summary: The right to bear children compared with the right to bodily autonomy
Keywords: puberty, surrealistic
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 15 Aug 92 13:31:53 GMT

In a recent follow-up to "Another good reason not to vote for Bush", 
Ms. Regard harped on a theme she hammered away at a little over a month
ago.  Back then she posted a statement which went about like this.

"NO OTHER HUMAN BEING on this planet has the right to occupy a woman's
body against her will, yet you would give fetuses that right?  I think
that's bogus."

Compare that to the following statement:

"NO OTHER HUMAN BEING on this planet has the right to have a fetus occupy
his/her body, yet you would give women and
girls past puberty that right?  I think that's bogus."

[I decided not to mention the will of the fetus.  When last I checked, 
Ms. Regard seemed to have the opinion that fetuses cannot will anything.]

Like Ms. Regard, I have carefully isolated the class of humans that is
physically capable of the act in question, and lumped everyone else into
the OTHER HUMAN BEING category.  Not too long ago, I could also have
said "pre-menopausal" before women, but what with the news that a woman
has borne the child of her daughter [the blastocyst was implanted into
the womb of the grandmother-to-be/mother-to-be...this gets confusing...]
I don't know whether that insertion would be correct.

Admittedly, my statement sounds a bit surrealistic because we in the USA
take the right to bear children for granted.  It is quite otherwise in
China, where women are strongly encouraged (with financial inducements, 
etc.) to bear at most one child, and are generally compelled to submit 
to abortion if they become pregnant after having two.  

This results in many more otherwise unwanted abortions ["every abortion 
a wanted abortion," I say!] than might seem at first glance.  Say a woman
finds out that her first child will be a girl unless she aborts.  
Chances are, she badly wants her firstborn to be a boy; for one thing, she
is afraid of just how strong the inducements to stop at one child are going
to be, and does not want to have to face them.  And, despite all the lip
service paid to women's rights in China, and despite some real advances
in their status, the old desire to have at least one male child is
something that is almost impossible to eradicate.  

So she is strongly tempted to have her first unborn child 
[by the time of amniocentesis, I think this apellation is justifiable] 
aborted, and hope the next one will be male.

But suppose she has heard that in Czechoslovakia, where abortion obtains
under much better conditions for the mother than in the USA [see two
paragraphs hence], "Roughly 25 percent of the women who interrupt their first
pregnancy have remained permanently childless," [Pre-1989 statement
by the Czechoslovak Deputy Minister of Health] and "...permanent 
complications such as chronic inflammatory conditions of the female
organs, sterility and ectopic pregnancies are registered in 20-30 percent
of all women..." [according to a 13-year study done by a Prague university
hospital, again under the old regime].  

Then she might well decide not to abort, have her daughter, and hope that
(1) the next one will be male, and (2) she will be able to cope with the
additional difficulties imposed on those with two children.  But if her
second pregnancy also comes up "girl", she'll really have her back against
the wall.  Even though she is not legally required to abort, her desire
for a male child, coupled with the continued benefits of having only one
child, will practically amount to a coerced abortion for her.

[Under the old Czechoslovak regime, abortion done in the first trimester was
by vacuum curettage; the patient kept under observation in the hospital for
3-5 days; ordered to take bed rest for one week at home; and paid by 
insurance for her lost wages.  Yet there were still all the problems 
mentioned above; compare that to the risks of a 2nd or 3rd trimester 
abortion in China, which is what we are dealing with above.]

Can't happen here, you say?  But already we have cases where women, in
order to continue welfare payments at the usual rate, have had to submit
to Norplant embeddings.

[By the way, Ms. Regard, in case you are reading this: should a woman have
the right to use *LETHAL* force, if necessary, to prevent a Norplant 
from being implanted in her body against her will?]

Also, a father can legally compel a daughter, in some cases, to submit
to an abortion of a pregnancy due to incest at his hands.  In my
COERCED ABORTION post last month, I mentioned a South Carolina state
law governing 3rd trimester abortions, which stated that unless an
incest victim is deemed competent [and who does the "deeming"? the
abortionist?], her consent to an abortion performed on her 
"must be waived."

I am currently trying to find out whether this applies to incest abortions
all through pregnancy.  It makes a macabre sort of sense: what with the
added risks of late abortions, even an abortionist should want to get
things over early, and not wait for the 3rd trimester to bring such a
"consent must be waived" clause into play.

A final note.  In Aldous Huxley's _Brave New World_, humans are raised
in artificial wombs, contraception is mandatory, and pregnancy is 
punished by banishment.  In such a world, it is my statement that is
realistic, and Adrienne Regard's that is surrealistic.

Huxley's novel is set 6 centuries in the future.  At the rate we have
been going this century, we'll get there ahead of schedule, if the
pro-choice myrmydons keep having their way.