The Eternal Shriek

I realize that the title for this blog post isn't entirely appropriate, but I needed to stick with my theme of The Good Place episode titles, so this is where we're at for today. In all honesty, I wasn't going to write a blog post tonight for no other reason than I didn't want to, but that wasn't a good enough reason for my Type A, perfectionist brain so here we are. Thanks, brain. 

A better title for this post could be 'The Eternal Shriek (or not?)', because again we're talking about making a decision to end what could be considered a life. Chapter 4 in the textbook discusses abortions and the legal and ethical arguments surrounding them. When I first thought of bioethics my first thought was "right, so abortions and genetic testing, and other things". A similar discussion happened earlier today when I mentioned to my roommate that I was working on a bioethics reading, she said, "Oh, so do you talk about abortions and stuff?" All this to say that abortion is an issue/topic that most people are at least somewhat familiar with and understand to be an ethical issue. 

Abortion, like so many other biomedical ethics issues, is very easily aligned with a slippery slope. The chapter opens with an account of the Kenneth Edelin case from the 1970s, not long after Roe v. Wade was decided. In the Boston City Hospital, there were researchers performing experiments on to-be-aborted fetuses using the reasoning that since they were going to be aborted anyway, it didn't really matter. This logic is almost identical to the logic used by Nazi researchers and doctors during WWII when they used people in their concentration camps for medical experiments before killing them. The difference here is mainly that the experiments performed during the 1940s in Nazi Germany were on people who had been born and were determined human beings with lives of their own, and the experiments being performed at the Boston City Hospital were not. This raises the question of personhood and what defines a person. What is a person? Do we go with Mary Anne Warren's definition and agree that, "to be a person is to be able to think, to be capable of cognition" (Pence 99)? Or does the definition fit more along a gradient? If we choose to accept the criteria presented by Warren, then does the cognition argument also fit for elderly patients, those with dementia, and/or those in a persistent vegetative state? If not, maybe we should go with the argument of pro-life champions who claim that, "when sperm and egg meet and merge genes, a genetically unique individual is created" (Pence 101)? It's another complicated issue. And like every ethical debate, it's not one where there is a perfect answer.

A few months ago I watched the documentary AKA Jane Roe that follows the story of Norma McCorvey, ]the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade. The documentary went into a lot greater detail on the case than this chapter in the textbook, and discussed religious issues, personal issues, and other circumstantial details. I really didn't know much about the case before hand, but I would definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested. In 1973 the Court decided that  a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy up until the point of the fetus's viability, or about 24-28 weeks. This definition has been upheld by many cases that have followed it, and often is the reference for making legislative decisions involving abortions and abortive rights. 

While I understand the arguments against abortion and can see why an embryo could be determined a life, I think it is far more important for choices to be available to pregnant women. Again, it comes back to the control of care and control over your own body that I've discussed in past blog posts. Also, just because I can understand the justification of being anti-abortion does not mean I understand or condone the actions of some activists and the violence of many anti-abortion protests and movements. Even before abortions were legal, before contraceptive options and "plan B" were available, women were seeking abortions. Only they were often performed in ways that were dangerous and often led to further complications and/or death. Legalizing abortion has greatly increased the safety of these women, whether the pregnancies are ectopic, risky, the result of a rape, nonviable, or whatever the reason may be for the woman to be seeking an abortion. Contraceptives have also greatly decreased the number of abortions every year.

I'm not saying that a woman should always seek an abortion, nor am I claiming to have the right answer on this. But when it comes to personal medical care of a competent patient, their needs and desires should be valued and must be heard. There are many scenarios that can be considered when discussing abortions, I just don't have time to include them all here. But feel free to leave a comment and I'd be happy to chat about things with you! Ultimately, I believe that a woman should be able to make decisions regarding her own medical care that allow her to be in charge of her own body. The potential for life that a fetus may have is worth considering, but unless that fetus is declared viable and can survive outside of the womb it does not have the full rights of a human being and an abortion cannot be equated with murder.

*disclaimer: I recognize that there are people who have uteruses and biologically female organs who do not identify as women. In using the term 'woman' in this post, I am referring to biologically female humans who have the capacity to become pregnant and carry an embryo/fetus and am not seeking to use discriminatory language in any way.

Textbook reference: Pence, Gregory. Medical Ethics: Accounts of Ground-Breaking Cases. 9th ed., McGraw Hill, 2021.