The only thing more outrageous than a woman casually obtaining abortion after abortion—using abortion as a birth control method—would be compelling the kind of woman who would use abortion as birth control to bring a child into the world after she hit the “sane limit” of abortions allowed her under a plan designed to prevent women from obtaining too “obscenely large” a number of abortions. (Exact number of abortions allowed to an individual woman TBD… but by whom?)

Would a woman who ran out of abortions really be a fit and loving parent to the kid(s) born to her after she hit her abortion limit? What kind of a mother would that woman make?

104 replies on “Aborted Logic”

  1. @36:

    That is such a load of BS – NON-judgmental? I have never heard ONE WORD from that mouth of an anti-abortionist that WASN’T judgmental, what between “you’re going to hell!”, “sinner!”, “murderer!”, “baby-killer!”, “slut!”, and all the rest. You and your ilk are hypocrites, plain-and-simple.

    @41 strikes the nail on the head: anti-abortionists don’t give a shit about the “life of a child”, because if they did, they’d do everything in their power to ensure that EVERY CHILD born was wanted, loved, and properly cared for. But, they don’t. They just want to impose their morally rigid standards of sexual behavior on everyone else, and punishing women for exercising control over their own bodies is one way they hope to achieve that.

  2. Everyone has failed to mention this and yet advocates it as a solution…

    Has anyone here (female) tried to get an elective sterilization without first having children or – even with children – at a “young” age (under 35)? It’s nearly fucking impossible.

    “Young women with no children may have difficulty finding a surgeon to perform the procedure.” http://www.birth-control-comparison.info…

    http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book/c… Contains only a reference to the ABUSE of sterilization procedures.

    Women who are probably not good candidates for tubal ligation include those who:
    * Are younger than age 30, especially if they have never had a child. http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/t…

    In addition, a brief scan of many other sites referred to “couples” and “you and your partner” making this decision. Bullshit. If abortion is the woman’s choice, so is sterilization, but it’s constantly refused as an option for people who don’t have 6 kids already.

    (Beyond the scan of the internet, I have also been turned down by 6 doctors in the last year for elective sterilization. Wink and a nod and a “you’ll change your mind” from most. One said he wouldn’t turn me into a whore. Nice, huh?)

  3. Also, furthering 47’s point, Planned Parenthood probably prevents far more abortions than all megachurches combined, and not only because they offer proper sex education and birth control. When a pregnant teen (or pregnant anybody) goes into planned parenthood, they’re given a pamphlet that has info on ALL their options: info on prenatal care if they want to keep or adopt the child (and info on adoption), info on abortions, etc. They don’t just point these people to the nearest abortion clinic. They’re not some sort of abortion nest like anti-choicers always say they are. Just because they provide ALL the legal options, and not just some…

  4. The casually aborting woman is a myth. Just another example of fear mongering scare tactics used to undermine support for women’s reproductive rights.

    Even if somewhere (probably where unicorns, jesus, and the boogy monster live) this one woman does exist she does not need an abortion limit. She needs mental help! Get her to a therapist who can help sort out the delusions that are causing her to believe abortion is the best form of contraceptive.

  5. Maybe we can just legalize late term up until say, 8 years old. The little monsters aren’t real people yet, and those that are talked out of abortions by right wing zealots or christians could still make a sane decision later.

  6. I can back up the story @42: I was the nun.

    @53: I have multiple friends who are 100% positive they will never want children (and believe me, it’s for the best). They can’t find a doctor to tie their tubes. Even finding one to give them IUDs when they were in their mid-to-late 20s was an uphill battle, because “you never know when you’ll change your mind and want children!” It’s nice to know that deep down, all we are to these people are wombs.

  8. I should probably add the background that I am in my late 20’s, grad-school educated, have a solid career, own a home, own a car (why? Eh, hangover from Midwest upbringing…trust me, it’s the last one I’ll ever own), have a high credit score, have a stable relationship where this issue has been discussed…and after all that good decision making, I can’t be trusted with this decision. I mean, I could have chosen to be an underwater basket weaving major and royally screwed up my life, but I managed to choose and follow through with an educational course that has set me on a path to success (and was trusted to make that decision at the tender age of 18). I could have decided that a number of “easy” jobs I had throughout school were more fulfilling than the difficult but rewarding job I have now, but I didn’t (and I would have been trusted with that decision). I could have opened and maxed out credit cards for which I couldn’t afford to pay the bills, but I only used credit as necessary and never excessively (and major multinational banks trusted me with that decision). Hmmmmm…good stuff.

  10. “it’s difficult to envision the circumstance where the need to have such a late-term procedure would be truly justified.”

    really? it’s that difficult? does this clear it up?

    comments here really (wisely, i’m sure) limit the number of links per post, because i could go on. and on. late-term abortions are not, by and large, late because women can’t make up their minds, or take the decision lightly. it’s because they’re wanted pregnancies that end badly, or because their access to abortion is so limited that time itself is the enemy.

    and dan, fer fuck’s sake – what kind of mother would *anyone* be WHEN THEY DIDN’T WANT TO BE ONE? the judgment snap isn’t necessary, or relevant. no one wins in an unwanted pregnancy, right? so someone who chooses abortion over and over isn’t less moral than someone who chooses unwanted children, over and over. it’s her life. she can live it however she sees fit. she’s qualified to decide for herself what that is. women are full-on people and everything.*

    *if the story that’s relayed is true, which has a very strong urban-legend ring to it. the simplistic, suspiciously straightforward-sounding cases like, ‘woman barges into ER cavalierly demanding sixth abortion’ does not pass the sniff test for b.s. just FYI.

  11. Seems to me that the State would have could reasonably require a woman who “ran out of abortions” to be sterilized (either permanently or temporarily, but preferably permanently).

  12. it’s well documented that half of women having abortions have had at least one previously.

    So? Birth control fails.

  13. In over 20 years of doing abortions I have only met one woman who was doing it over and over (I did her fifth). Even so, I wouldn’t have described her attitude as casual—she was more studiedly indifferent than that. I have long-since learned that I don’t know everything inside someone’s head, or wherever she had buried her rationale.

    When I was presented with her case, I wanted to say “NO WAY!” but wiser heads pointed out that this was the last person who should become a mother. (Who knew Dan Savage would years later be quoting my med school professors?)

    BTW 53 and 59, I’ll do your tubal, but I don’t live in Seattle….

  15. @53, @59 – I got a tubal at 31 while having no kids, because the doctor forgot to ask me that question. She was actually running really late the day of the surgery (OB/GYNs pretty much are always running late), and remembered only when the anesthesiologist was about to start administering the drugs. “You do have kids already, right?” I replied, “No, and I intend to keep it that way.” So I kind of lucked out. But that was the 5th OB/GYN I’d requested a tubal from.

    By the way, I highly recommend the tubal. It’s been AMAZING never having to worry about birth control for all these years.

  18. I enjoyed the original story: The “good” couple knew that they had a “chromosal” (chromosomal) reciprocal translocation that would kill 75% (not 50 or 66%) of their fetuses, but went ahead and got pregnant repeatedly anyway. In essence, she was using abortion to prevent giving birth to a genetically damaged baby. The only difference between her and someone who gives birth to a Down Syndrome baby is that here the translocation kills the fetus earlier (many Down syndrome fetuses also die in the womb). She’s using God to do her repeated abortions for her, so that’s morally OK, according to her.
    Lesson learned:
    Abortion by God: good. Abortion by science: bad.

    In fact, the ability to get an abortion ALLOWS more children of couples like the “good couple” in this fable to have normal children, e.g. couples of carriers of things like Tay-Sachs Disease would never risk having ANY children, if they don’t have the potential emotional and financial resources needed to take care of a deaf, dumb, blind, paralysed child that dies at age 2.

  19. You know, I heard about a girl who used hot dogs as dildos and went to the emergency room over 50 times to have hot dogs removed from her vagina. I am SHOCKED and DISGUSTED that she is abusing the ER with her sexual irresponsibility.

    Think of all the innocent orphans that could have been fed with those hot dogs!

  22. I’m a little slow. What’s the problem with having an abortion (even as a “birth control method”)?

  23. Apparently, no one commenting on this thread is aware of the correlation between women who get repeated abortions and women who are trapped in abusive relationships.

  26. 76,

    No, more likely 74 is talking about this correlation. 25% – 45% of all women who are battered are battered during pregnancy. Pregnancy can cause an escalation in the violence, so terminating the pregnancy can de-escalate the violence.

  29. @ 76,
    No, abusive in the fact the man who got her pregnant doesn’t want kids but refuses to use a condom. Abusive in the fact that if she gets birth control, the man will beat her “for cheating on him”.
    http://jezebel.com/5123504/nyc-women-rid…

    Also, the only place I’ve heard of Abortion being used as birth control was the former USSR. Oddly, enough back in the days of the commies, couples were encouraged to have breed as many children as they could, and so birth control pills and condoms were illegal. However, since abortion was legal and health care was free, abortion was used as birth control and the average abortions a Russian woman had in her life was around 10. Since legalizing other forms of birth control/contraceptives after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the number of abortions performed in Russia has dropped but it has the highest number of abortions in the world.

  30. The idea that a woman who has had an abortion is therefore unfit to be a mother is so ridiculous. You guys can argue about details, but do you have any real sense? What does the care of a child have to do with the abortion of a fetus? You’re victims of the propaganda of a vast minority. Back up and take a look at yourselves.

  31. Who cares if the occasional woman has “too many” abortions. People who have an issue with that can deal with all those damned frozen embryos and get over their dramatic finger waggin at all the imaginary naughty naughty sluts out there. And if the abortion issue bothers them so much and they want to make compromises then what the hell are they willing to give up? Are they really prepared to make compromises to those of us who find the concept of embryonic personhood to be ethically bankrupt? Especially in a world that is overly taxed by a large population that consumes way too much. Can we talk? I would like to qualify their private decisions please? Such compromises might give woman number one, the “saintly mother” in Sullivan’s trite little story some problems.

    #20 – It is not the responsibility of women to give birth for others, too bad if there are plenty of people out there who want to adopt. Women, even the “bad” ones, don’t owe them anything.

  33. Three more anecdotes to add to the ‘denied sterilization’ sub-topic.

    1) My younger sister, had one child and damn near died delivering him. Asked for sterilization and was denied because she might change her mind. Got pregnant a second time, almost died three times carrying her and was on bed rest for I believe three months because the baby wasn’t “attached” well (they were afraid the baby would fall out is how it was explained to me). Asked to be sterilized again, and was denied again!

    2) My mother had three children back to back in a row, despite repeatedly requesting to be sterilized after the first one (she was in her 30’s and didn’t want to risk another surprise). Eventually she got them to see sense… after she stopped using the catholic run hospital in the area.

    3) Sister of one of my brother in laws has been trying to get sterilized for 10 years now, and in spite of the fact that she’s addicted to more substances than I can name (meth, crack, and alcohol are the three I know for sure… probably, almost certainly, there are others), in spite of the fact she has had 6 children by probably as many men (she doesn’t actually know who any of the fathers are) all of which have been taken by the state and are being raised by her parents, and in spite of the fact that her parents are freaking loaded and are perfectly willing to pay it all up front in cash if need be… can’t find a surgeon to do it. She might get cleaned up, meet a nice boy, and decide to be freaking June Cleaver after all.

    *shrug* — females really are just walking wombs in this country.

  34. @53 yes, i did.

    i’m lucky i had kaiser, i can’t imagine my request having gone over well if i was going to ‘sacred heart’ … or ‘providence’. or ’emmanuel’. for obvious reasons.

    i was discouraged in such feeble ways that i didn’t consider it serious attempts, more of a litmus test of how determined and how aware i was of the permanence of the surgery. including a private meeting with the OB who would do the surgery, because he wanted to sniff out if there was a man behind my choice. (there was, though he was behind me in the sense, ‘if that’s what you want, i’m all for it.’)

    these roadblocks were minor and delivered more in a CYA manner. i was twenty-three.

    so if anyone’s having trouble getting a tubal they want, i recommend hitting up a kaiser OB.

    and i second whoever it was that said having that done was a huge relief. it’s been amazing, not to have to worry about that for so many years. it took (almost) all the threat of monthly panic away.

    re: ‘the woman fails the birth control’ by Some Idiot Above, why is it that men don’t fail at birth control, only women? fer fuck’s sake. EVIL WIMMIN, they loves them some painful, expensive surgery! (wtf?) for whatever it’s worth to you, and i’m sure it isn’t much, one of the nurses on the surgery unit was careful to point out that even tubal ligation was NOT 100% effective. “why, there’s a nurse right on this floor who had hers about 20 years ago and just got pregnant a few months back!” well, thanks for the warning. i’ll just do the best i can, all right?

  35. But abortion is just a woman’s choice, and it’s not a life … just tissue. Why is there anything obscene about getting abortion after abortion? What, in the pro-choice moral framework, allows you to pass judgment on someone who uses abortion as birth control?

  36. @20 re the many people waiting to adapt infants:
    I’d suggest Dan’s own memoir about adopting. White infants whose mothers behaved exemplarily during pregnancy, people want those babies. A woman who drank, took drugs, didn’t eat right, even smoked, etc, because she didn’t care about the resultant progeny? The lines eager to adopt those babies are short. Very short.

    If you think someone is an irresponsible jerk, why would you want to force them to raise a child OR be responsible for a fetus’s healthy development?

  38. For those childfree people who are having problems getting a doctor to sterilize you: if you claim that you’re already raising six step-children or your deadbeat sister’s six kids, you’re a lot more likely to get a sympathetic doctor. The doctor’s not going to come to your home and verify this. Also, don’t be snippy–pun intended– when the doctor asks you what will happen if you change your mind about having children. The doctor is trying to avoid a lawsuit, so cut him/her some slack. The best answer to that question is a confident, “I’ll adopt.”

    There’s a female OB-GYN in Everett, Dr. Smith, who will do tubal ligations on childfree women. I don’t recall her first name but she did/does the actual surgeries at Providence in Everett. There’s also a Planned Parenthood on the south end that will do them; I’m pretty sure it’s the Federal Way one. Dr. Mary Beth Whitman in Kirkland and Dr. Megan Kelly in Des Moines will also do them.

  39. @90: I wonder why they haven’t instituted some kind of medical waiver. It would take the pressure off a lot of poor doctors who have to deny services to so many women just because of a few suffering remorse.

    Or hell, how about a waiting period? You have to book surgery months, maybe a year, in advance. Suffering 12 months for a lifetime of carefree sex (well, in terms of pregnancy anyway) is an acceptable compromise if it means more women can get what they want at all.

  41. So I got through comment 17 & 18, , both of which repeat one of the strangest, yet most oft-repeated lines of argument in these discussion that was also implicit in Dan’s post; namely, that the abortion is, in a way, good for the baby, too, because of what a horrible life the baby would have once it was born (because of the horrible mother, or b/c of poverty, etc.)

    The logic of this argument seems so patently twisted and absurd to me that it’s hard to know where to begin, except to say that there cannot be any good or bad result for the baby, as the baby is now dead. Of course, inherently valuing death more than life might be the necessary premise upon which this argument could be logical. But, hey, why keep the hypothetical speculation about future misery and it’s relationship to whether life’s worth living to baby’s in the womb — how about adjudicating, say, whether the homeless or diseased or just plain dumb people in the world would benefit from being killed? I’m sure we all have a list at the top of our heads we could come up with…

  42. The people who go on and on about giving a woman her reproductive choice must think babies just appear out of nowhere. After a half-dozen abortions would it be alright if the woman would CHOSE to stop having sex without birth control?

  43. @ 93 you should really go back and read my other comment @ 48.

    It is not inherent that these unwanted children will go onto have miserable lives, no, but it is most likely. Children are extremely intuitive. They know when they are not wanted and it is horrifying. Do you know how many of these children hate themselves for being angry with their parents? They hate their parents for not wanting them, for not loving them, they resort to things like self mutilation, drugs, alcoholism, promiscuous sex and even prostitution to punish themselves, to drown out their pain, to override their depression. Many of them do not want to live and they never grow out of that feeling. They don’t value their own lives. They need help, if there is any to give. Had they not been born, as horrible is this might sound to you, they would never know this miserable life. The people that may or may not be attached to them now would not know them, remember them.

    Also go back and read @88 adoption is not generally an option for these unfortunate souls.

    Also note, that removing unwanted tissue from within your body is not killing anything. You need to remove this idea in your mind.

    If you want to move onto our fucked up psychiatric and treatment centers in this world, our vengeance over treatment mentality, and the way that the system just dumps the mentally ill on our streets without a second thought, well that is an entirely separate issue which has nothing to do with this perfectly legal, safe procedure.

  44. 53 and 59, drive down to Portland, call the Lovejoy Surgicenter. They did my tubal when I was 22, no fuss. Best thing I ever did for myself.

  45. I’m sort of shocked by the attitude of some of the pro-choice commenters. Surely people realise that, in an ideal world there would never, ever be abortions, because there would never, ever be unplanned pregnancies. Abortion is better than totally removing a woman’s right to control her own body, but it’s better in that it is the lesser of two evils. Just because something isn’t the WORST option doesn’t make it a good one, the fact that it isn’t a good option is why there is something inherently sick-making about the idea of a woman who’s willing to repeatedly, and instead of taking other measures, undergo invasive and potentially dangerous surgery as a form of birth-control. I am in the unfortunate position of knowing such a woman, she is 37 years old, schizophrenic and a heroin addict, and she has had around 29 abortions, because she believes other forms of birth control are evil. She is also the LAST person you would ever want carrying a child, so the fact that she does have access to these abortions is a good thing, but there is still something extremely off-putting about her illness and her total lack of responsibility, and regard for personal health.
    I believe all women should have access to safe and legal abortions, but I also really hope for a day when sexual education and contraceptive technology have got us to the point where we no longer need them.

  46. I wish I could still be shocked, 97, but I’m too jaded. I wonder if some of the abortion advocates posting these comments about the wretched unwanted children would go up to any adult who has lived through foster care (I have several friends) and say “you shouldn’t have been born.”

    I got disenchanted with the “pro choice” movement when my birth mother (I am adopted) went to a “feminist” magazine with her story about how she had put me up for adpotion and was told by the publishers “we’re pro-choice, not pro-adoption,” which doesn’t sound like much of a choice to me. When I had my own first pregnancy scare, I realized the strenth and courage my birth mother had to make her choice, and I decided any group of poeple who disparaged that could do without me.

    What a lot of pro-choicers, even well intentioned ones, don’t seem to realize, is that if a woman is poor and the father won’t pay child support or she’s working/in school and can’t get daycare, what choice does she have? And if women are “choosing” to have abortions because there is no other choice, doesn’t that mean there is something wrong?
    And as long as the emphasis is on making abortions easier to get, the easier it is to say, “Why should we focus on fixing foster care, pushing employers to provide maternity leave/daycare etc. when all these women could just get abortions? ”

    Sure it doesn’t help that there are a lot of batshit evangelical “pro-lifers” out there bombing abortion clinics and trying to make it illegal for unamrried women to get birth control. But somewhere amidst all the howling on both sides of the abortion debate we have lost what I think should be a basic truth: that abortion is an unnecessary tragedy that we should be focused on preventing, not promoting. When a woman has to “choose” between her own wellbeing and that of her child, something is wrong. And, while I think this particular story is bullshit, if there are women out there having repeated abortions, I think somebody should intervene. It’s what we do with alcoholics and other people whose choices harm themselves and others, right?

  47. @98: It’s a great idea you’re pushing, but fixing poverty is huge. Fixing domestic violence is huge. Fixing gender equality is huge and Jesus, so is fixing sex education (as evident in the discussions on Slog).

    *Preventing* women from getting abortions isn’t going to stop her husband from beating her, help her graduate from high school, or suddenly find her a job that pays a living wage. Nobody suggests that abortion *solves* any of these problems, and nobody suggests that by providing abortions, we think, “Aha! Now everything is OK.” (Ok, there might be some people, but who says I agree with them?)

    I’m pro-choice, but that doesn’t necessarily make me part of any “group.” Hell, I’m pro-adoption, rabidly so. And being pro-adoption — as you say you are, if I read right — doesn’t necessarily mean I *want* children in the adoption system, any more than I *want* women to abort just because I’m pro-choice.

    I wish there weren’t any children in the adoption system at all, because a lot of children never get adopted and languish in crappy foster homes. But the fact is there are kids there, and there are more every day, and I want them to find loving homes. That’s why I support adoption. It doesn’t mean I support the problems that lead to it in the first place.

    Likewise, plenty of commentators here have acknowledged that abortion is a last-ditch choice, a traumatic procedure, and an extremely difficult decision. Practically every other woman commenting has also emphasized the extreme caution they take in avoiding an unwanted pregnancy in the first place precisely they don’t *want* to have to make the “choice.” The idea any of them, in that way then, are “promoting” abortions does a massive disservice to them all.

    “And as long as the emphasis is on making abortions easier to get, the easier it is to say, ‘Why should we focus on fixing foster care, pushing employers to provide maternity leave/daycare etc. when all these women could just get abortions?'”

    If that were true, employers would pay for your abortion. Hell, by that logic, they should pay for your birth control, since it’s cheaper than an abortion and lets you stay on the job. Yet, from what I know, this isn’t true for a lot of employed women.

    I live in Toronto. I work for the government, but I’m on contract so I have no insurance. So now I buy my birth control from a women’s health clinic. My co-worker, who moved from the other side of the country, told me she wasn’t able to get cheap birth control from her local clinic because they only sold it to women under a particular age. She’s freakin’ 25.

    You can try and tell me that it’s in the best interests of employers and businesses to stop women from having children so they don’t have to provide adequate mat leave or daycare, but I sure as hell don’t see it.

  48. 98 – For many women abortion is not that bad and unwanted children have nothing to do with the decision. It is often about not wanting to be pregnant and give birth. And the kind of abortions Dr. Tiller frequently performed were necessary tragedies. Silly anecdotes about women having multiple abortions and third trimester abortions aside, women are their own moral agents and there is nothing wrong with thinking that an embryo is not a person. For these people “you should never have been born” is not much different than saying “you should never have been conceived”.

  49. I’m the woman who wrote “serial abortions”.

    For your readers, let me assure you first of all that what I wrote is the truth. I unintentionally misled some, however, by not making clear that the woman was in fact coming in for another in a series of abortions – I don’t know if it was late term or not. The hospital we went to was a community facility in Northern California, and so yes, they were in fact doing abortions at that time. I can’t speak for now.

    Point taken about government imposition of an arbitrary limit. Few would argue, however, that six is an inordinately and abusively large number and likely speaks to a philosophy of the use of abortions as first-line birth control. This is another of the ethically-charged slippery slope limits our society has failed to come to terms with – either with education, extensive family planning services, pre-and post-pregnancy counselling, or viable adoption options.

    By the way, I am a union-affiliated U.S. History teacher, a lifelong Democrat, supported Obama’s candidacy actively and believe the Bush administration was largely vile in nature. I think upon searching you would find many others who self-identify as liberals who are similarly conflicted. Does the term “trolling” refer to a scam of some sort? I can assure you such is not the case, although the very nature of the Net precludes my being able to prove it. So in the spirt of better times, please take me at my word.

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