Because, sometimes abortion is a blessing. Valerie Tarico (boldface mine):
I am pro-abortion like I’m pro-knee-replacement and pro-chemotherapy and pro-cataract surgery. As the last protection against ill-conceived childbearing when all else fails, abortion is part of a set of tools that help women and men to form the families of their choosing. I believe that abortion care is a positive social good. I suspect that a lot of other people secretly believe the same thing. And I think it’s time we said so.
As an aside, I’m also pro-choice. Choice is about who gets to make the decision. The question of whether and when we bring a new life into the world is, to my mind, one of the most important decisions a person can make. It is too big a decision for us to make for each other, and especially for perfect strangers.
As long as women have been getting pregnant, they also have been getting ‘unpregnant.’ Abortion is a part of many women’s reproductive lives, and we should acknowledge that.
mikethemadbiologist
It’s a great article, and thanks for linking back to the “abortion is a blessing” piece. I’ve wanted to keep a copy of that around.
One thing I particularly liked was this:
Amanda Marcotte once wrote a fine rant against the slogan about making abortion “safe, legal and rare”, rightly pointing out that it stigmatizes the procedure. Nevertheless, abortion always represents a failure, whether of reproduction, contraception or consent, and at least the latter two are susceptible of improvement. Still, there are always going to be so many beginners that “rare” may not be a reasonable target.
A further thought inspired by the editing of an embryo, via Ed Yong, who on Saturday does what you do for us every day: if a parent has a lethal allele, it can be handled rather gently at the embryonic stage: abort, retry.