The Guns of Auguste

In trying to begin this post, I told a friend that I’d like to just write “Because I can’t think of a reason not to be” but that it wouldn’t exactly liven up the discourse. And heaven forbid I deprive you of paragraph upon paragraph of my thoughts on the matter. I’m going to organize them chronologically and not necessarily in order of importance.

First of all, you know what’s really fun? Sex without consequences.

Oooh, that stunned you, didn’t it? Well, some of you it didn’t, because you’re on the same page, but I know many many pro-choice people (much of my family included) who nevertheless are very much attached to the idea that sex is a Bad Thing unless, at the very least, someone somewhere might someday have to take responsibility for it.

But why? What’s inherent in sex that requires that it, alone among all recreational activities except maybe hard drug use, be somehow paid for in kind, whether it be pregnancy, fear of pregnancy, broken hearts, disease? Because I’ve got to tell you, there is no feature of sex that isn’t readily available by other, less-freaked-out-about activities.

Is it the nakedness that’s a problem? In high school and college, I had to get at least partially naked in front of women backstage all the time (and they in front of me), and there was no prurience involved. (Said lack of prurience is borne out by the fact that I had sex with distressingly few of said women.) The oxytocin? You can get similar hormone rushes from skydiving or riding rollercoasters. As for the exchanging of bodily fluids - Have you ever played basketball against a 35-year-old man with no shirt on? I can’t imagine much sex-related that’s grosser than that, and I’ve read some pretty fucked-up newsgroup posts. Disease? Put out your cigarette, quit eating trans fats and cholesterol*, move out of the smog-filled city, never drive again, and then talk to me about how sexually transmitted diseases, in a developed country**, are any particular reason to stigmatize sex as a recreational activity.

“Auguste, you ignorant slut,” I hear you saying, “what about the emotional connection? There’s no other activity which carries as much emotional weight as sex does.” Well, yes and no. I won’t deny that in some cases, even a lot of cases, someone is gonna get hurt, and hurt badly. But there are so many ways in which this dynamic is not inherent in sex and is driven by the very patriarchy that leads to the anti-choice culture, I barely know where to start. Suffice it to say that the patriarchy demands that men hurt and women be hurt by sex, which is really the point anyway - why do we do this to ourselves? A broken heart is bad enough, but an unprepared-for baby? I don’t see how the fear of eighteen years of unplanned-for struggle is any less emotionally damaging than worrying about how the culture is going to react to the fact that you found someone you wanted to have an orgasm with.

So after the orgasm, we have conception. That mystical, magical moment when a flagellant haploid cell - one out of millions - manages to fuse with an ovum, creating a diploid cell which then has approximately a one in two chance of implanting in the uterus***. Sigh. Such a miraculous moment. Who are we to meddle in the biological processes created by God?

Look, I don’t know when the “spirit” or the “consciousness” or the “humanness” enters a fetus or an infant, and neither do you, but one thing I am sure of - with a certainty so powerful that no light can escape - is that the “cluster of cells” stage is NOT IT. Oh, I’ve listened to your arguments, just like I listen to that homeless guy in the bus mall who’s telling me that he has two hearts and a weredog named Steven, and none of them hold even a molecule of water. So no, don’t bring your “birth control is de spirito abortion” crap here, thank you very much. You are crazy.

As for when the fetus does become a “human”, shit, man, I dunno. And I used to worry about it - not enough to become anti-choice, but enough to half-heartedly support the “safe, legal, and rare” doctrine which leads to the “partial birth abortion” controversy. I still think it should be rare, mostly due to its rarity corresponding to economic liberation and availability and popularity of birth control, but if the “anti-partial-birth” movement were so righteous, why would they argue in such bad faith?

So, no, given that we can’t know the unknowable, by definition, I’m going to go ahead and err on the side which actually seems to give a shit about the people they claim to give a shit about.

But let’s say you decide - even plan - to keep the baby. We did, Augustienne and I. We were happy about it. And then we went for the first ultrasound.

“No heartbeat,” we were told. “Go home and wait for the miscarriage. Have a glass of wine, it’ll calm you down, and it won’t hurt anything now.”

So yeah, that was fun. Augustlet turned out fine and the radiologist is buried in the crawlspace under our old house****, but it made me think. What if things had been different? What if the embryo had died, but was too old to spontaneously abort? What if we had been in this situation?

Over the next 17 hours I labored to deliver Thomas’s body. It was a painful experience, but the only option given to a woman at 24 weeks gestation.

You should read that whole post*****. But suffice it to say that if you read it, and you still decide that you and your government belong involved in the decisions a woman and her doctor make - well, you pretty much suck.

As I was looking through my philosophy stuff for an appeal to authority closing thought, I “remembered” something attributed to Karl Popper. (Thanks Wikiquote!)

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations******.

And Garrett Hardin, of Tragedy of the Commons should-be-fame:

Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.

I’m pro-choice because it would be unethical not to be.

——-
* And NOT for reasons of figure.
** Also, quit interfering in safe-sex efforts in the developing world. “Pro-life” my ass.
*** Totally not a scientist.
**** Dear authorities: No.
***** Thanks Ilyka for pointing me towards that post.
****** You know what? It’s only attributed, so I hope it turns out to be apocryphal, because if Popper didn’t really say it, then I will. And then I will live forever.

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