Hi E! I hope you are having a lovely holiday season. I thought of you and our abortion discussion when I saw this article online. Now I know you don't want to get involved in another argument about abortion--it just pertained to what we were discussing, so I thought you might like to read it.
Abortion debate in need of some ultra-sound advice
December 17, 2004
PRO-CHOICERS in the abortion debate courageously revived by Tony Abbott misfire with the argument: "Been there. Done that. Let's not revisit twice-trodden ground."
The terrain has changed since the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade decision (which effectively set the agenda in Australia also) asserted a "right" to abortion derived from it being a woman's prerogative to do as she chooses with her body.
We have not been where ever-expanding knowledge about fetal life is now able to take us. There is new ground to be trodden, new reason to consider whether we would do what was done in 1973. Would a US Supreme Court judge refer to a human fetus, as Justice Anthony Scalia did in a later abortion-related case, as "this thing that we don't know what it is"? Would any judge in 2004 support Justice Harry Blackmun's comment in the majority 7-2 Roe v Wade decision: "There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth. This was the belief of the Stoics."
Even judges, you'd think, would baulk at calling expert witnesses from 300BC. Science, as related to fetal medicine, has made substantial advances since the Stoics. Drawing from several sources but in particular from a widely quoted article in Psychology Today by Janet L. Hopson, a fetal psychologist, I learn that the unborn possess skills and attributes undreamt of by Scalia.
By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to external stimuli, like vigorous movement in the mother's vicinity. At 10 weeks it moves its arms, stretches and yawns. It experiences, like adults, the rapid eye movement sleep of dreams. Many researchers, says Hopson, believe it actually is dreaming.
At six months, the fetus can hear. Pregnant women often report a sudden fetal kick in reaction to a slamming door. The fetal heartbeat slows when the mother is speaking, suggesting that her voice has a calming effect. The cadences of a story read aloud frequently, not necessarily by the mother, have a similar effect.
From about three months the fetus is an inveterate traveller around the womb. A young friend who recently had twin sons recalls that they moved around so much the technician managing her ultrasound imaging had to chase them back and forth across her belly with the control in order to acquire an image of separate individuals.
"Image" is a key word in appreciating the progress made towards understanding fetal life. Ultrasound scanning, which enables moving pictures of the fetus within the womb to be displayed on a screen - like a reality TV show, I guess - has been routine procedure since the early 1980s.
Some medical professionals believe expensive ultrasound scanning is overused, there being numerous other techniques available for monitoring fetal progress. However, complex surgery is now performed on fetuses in the womb with the assistance of ultrasound.
Critics sometimes speak disparagingly of "fun scans", conducted to give expectant mothers - and fathers - a thrill. The fact that these swirling images on a screen are, indeed, thrilling - as well as being valuable tools for scientific observation - will have a strong influence, I believe, on the new phase of the abortion debate.
Another young friend, remembering the sight of her first baby on the ultrasound screen, says she was slightly repelled by the disproportionately large head and the imperfectly formed facial features. Then she saw a tiny hand. "A human!" she silently exclaimed, somewhat relieved.
I'd be surprised if the current debate does not focus inescapably on the baby-in-the-making (equipped with all the genetic material needed for its making when sperm and ovum were joined). This may force the contending schools (both pro-life and pro-choice strike me, incidentally, as euphemistic and self-righteous labels) to retreat from entrenched and essentially irrelevant positions.
When, for instance, pro-lifers deplore the absence of medical reasons for most abortions, they unfairly treat as trivial parents' fear of the cost of raising a child and of pregnancy's disrupting career or education, and also wander from the key issue of the fetus's humanity.
The pro-choicers similarly evade consideration of the fetus as a person rather than a thing by asserting women's ownership of part of themselves - unsustainable theory in the light of accumulating scientific knowledge.
Moreover, with the fraying of the women's ownership stance, men may join more actively than before in the abortion debate. As the Bill Murray character said of the exaltation of fatherhood in Lost in Translation: "Nothing you've done before matters."
After seeing my own first child, I walked alone for two hours in the early morning streets. I couldn't talk to anybody, possibly fearing the bends if I descended suddenly from high altitude.
Does my being a Catholic shape essentially anti-abortion opinions? Possibly. But lobotomy doesn't come with baptism.
theaustralian.news.com.au |
