#also I typed out this whole sordid post on my phone which means no readmore on mobile

[exeggcute]

I'm unabashedly pro-abortion to pretty much the fullest possible extent (a term I prefer to "pro-choice," because I am also pro-choice in that sense, but I think "pro-abortion" is more representative of the philosophical approach grounded on the four pillars of ethics whereas "pro-choice" is inextricably tangled up in the verbage of the uber-politicized american abortion debate and is often founded upon well-meaning but unsound lines of reasoning), and I think it's immensely disingenuous when people raise concerns about aborting a pregnancy for the "wrong" reasons as a gotcha-type justification for restricting abortion (because ultimately "I do not wish to be pregnant" should be enough reason to not be pregnant any longer, full stop), but I do think in order to strengthen the pro-abortion argument we need to address some of these objections, both to prevent them from detracting from our argument and to peel back some of the layers to examine a small kernel of truth lying beneath.

there's an idea called "the doctrine of double effect," which I don't fully ascribe to, but I believe can be useful here: that idea is that if something morally good (or even neutral) has bad side effects, it's okay as long as the side effects weren't your goal, even if you knew these bad side effects ahead of time. you can imagine that this principle can be used to a variety of ends: perhaps it is good to give a child medicine, even with the unintended side effects that the child hates the taste (but you are not trying to torment their taste buds, only to promote the child's health; if it were possible to give them medicine without the side effect of bad taste, you would). on the other hand, perhaps it's less permissible to, say, carry out a military operation that will bring great success, but has the unintended side effect of a civilian death toll, even if you did not "intend" for this to happen, simply because the trade-off is too great and morally impermissible.

however, this principle provides a useful rhetorical tool when approaching abortion, in a variety of ways. for one, we could argue that the main goal of abortion is simply to terminate a pregnancy, not to bring about any "harm" to a fetus (harm, of course, being a much thornier issue than I'd like to get into here, especially when considering the tenuous nature of fetal personhood or lack thereof; here, I mean harm more or less colloquially), and that if it were possible to end a pregnancy (goal) without causing the death (intended side effect; and again, "death" in a colloquial sense, since whether a fetus is truly living is not cut and dry) of a fetus. perhaps in the future it will be possible to terminate some or all pregnancies in such a way that the fetus can continue living outside the womb of the pregnant person unimpeded, and that such a choice is equally desirable to abortion as it currently stands; perhaps this will never happen, or would never be practical or desirable or even ethical, since this hypothetical scenario raises its own set of concerns. but as it currently stands, abortion necessarily dictates that a fetus will cease to be (though there is one specific way to terminate a pregnancy without harming a fetus, but we usually call that "birth"), and that's perfectly okay--not even because of the doctrine of double effect, but for other reasons: under the four pillars model, the right to autonomy is generally invoked as the strongest driving force for pro-abortion arguments.

anyway, to circle back to my earlier point about abortion for the "wrong" reasons: people generally bring up these arguments in bad faith, with the goal of weakening the pro-abortion stance. so I understand the reflex to shut these arguments down wholesale, but I think that does us all a disservice. some of these arguments contain reasonable concerns at their core, even if it's cloaked in a fair amount of baggage, and I believe that being able to address these concerns only strengthens the pro-abortion stance overall.

many concerns often touch upon the morality of aborting a pregnancy for "malicious" reasons: generally, getting into territory of eugenics and whether it's permissible to abort a fetus simply because it carries some "undesirable" trait. yes, many of these concerns are often invoked only as a way to shut down pro-abortion arguments and not out of a desire to combat eugenicist thinking, but we can't ignore the issue. the idea that people would use abortion as a means of eugenics should be, for obvious reasons, very bad. the idea of aborting a fetus specifically because it will have a disability, or be gay, or be a certain gender--this has catastrophic implications, both for people who already exist as these things, and for the hypothetical future brought upon by such a eugenicist methodology. we should not strive for a future that readily allows for this kind of methodology; however, the site of the problem is not in abortion itself.

to invert the doctrine of double effect here: perhaps an act can be morally negative, but the mechanism by which the act is carried out is not, provided that the mechanism is not only used to such ends. abortion for the "wrong" reasons (that is to say, abortion that is specifically eugenicist in nature) is wrong for the reasons driving it, not because of abortion itself. if, in another scenario, someone was pregnant with a fetus that happened to have certain characteristics, but chose to abort simply because they did not wish to be pregnant for whatever reason, that is permissible. the issue is when someone wishes to abort specifically because they believe said fetus is inherently lesser as a result of those certain characteristics, and acts accordingly.

the way to fix this is not to restrict abortion outright, or even to require justification to receive abortion, but rather to address the driving forces and oppressive structures that create these attitudes. if someone wishes to abort a fetus on the grounds that said fetus will be born with a disability, because they believe that said disability lessens the value of said fetus's life, we must dismantle the eugenicist structures that lead them to believe that only a certain "kind" of person should live. assuming that, all other things considered, the only reason for this abortion is due to eugenicist reasoning: then, if the person is no longer operating under such a framework, they will no longer be compelled to abort, and they will no longer be acting to further oppressive systems. however, if it just so happens that someone wishes to abort a fetus with a disability, but their desire to abort has nothing to do with this fact (i.e., if they would abort any other interchangeable fetus, not simply this particular one), then the abortion remains permissible, for it is not being used as a vehicle of eugenics. abortion itself is not the issue; addressing the underlying concerns of certain circumstances surrounding abortion allows us to combat such issues, but acknowledging such problems does not detract from the permissibility of abortion as an act. the problem is structural, and needs to be tackled by rooting out societal attitudes, not in restricting an act that could maybe possibly be used to carry out such attitudes. arguments that forbid abortion on the grounds that it could be used for evil are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

ultimately, it's not always this simple. as it stands now, I don't believe anyone should be compelled to carry a pregnancy for any reason, simply because claiming otherwise will lead to extremely morally fraught areas with catastrophic implications. arguments on paper like this often don't reflect the reality of the situation, which is much messier. I often defer to judith jarvis thompson's idea of the "minimally decent samaritan" and that nobody should be compelled to extend their capacity beyond a reasonable level, but certain standards of decency do exist. perhaps there are varying levels of "good" and "decent" and "bad" reasons for terminating a pregnancy, and that some reasons may theoretically be used to bad ends. but as thompson argues, the act of carrying a pregnancy to term is far beyond the reach of a minimally decent samaritan, and is often too much to ask of someone who would otherwise not choose to be in this position. the very desire to no longer be pregnant is enough of a reason to seek an abortion, full stop. but if we wish to be minimally decent, we may need to examine the mechanism for these desires, and perhaps even alter them at the source, without taking down abortion rights as collateral damage.

#sorry for the literal fucking essay but as always I have Thoughts #also I typed out this whole sordid post on my phone which means no readmore on mobile #long post/ in case you blacklist that though