Leading Ethics Journal Floats Forced Abortion For Minors |
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Leading Ethics Journal Floats Forced Abortion For Minors
Forced abortion is what a culture of death has now wrought, and a leading academic journal thought the proposal worth publishing.
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Pro-abortion rhetoric has long rested on a slick focus group-tested “pro-choice” mantra, which claims that abortion is necessary for women to have “bodily autonomy.” But pro-abortion “ethicists” are now asserting that “justice for girls” demands that all underage pregnancies end in the death of the unborn child — even if it requires physically or chemically subduing the mother against her will.
That is precisely the case made in a new essay in the April edition of Ethics, the University of Chicago’s elite philosophy journal. Across 31 full pages, our two authors, Alyssa Izatt, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia, and Kimberley Brownlee, her UBC professor, explain why compulsory abortion is essential for feminine justice. In fact, in two places they explain enforcing this upon objecting females “might then require sedation or physical restraint” even though it “could be traumatizing,” but still, “the use of restraint (chemical or physical) … is justified as a last resort when it is necessary to provide adequate care.” By “adequate care,” of course, the writers mean killing the mother’s preborn child.
You heard that right. Good-bye, “My body, my choice!” Hello, “Do as you’re told, honey!” Leftist patriarchy parading as feminist empowerment. The pro-abortion ethic is growing ever more sinister.
The authors’ reasoning consists of a basic syllogism, which they admit even the most radical pro-abortion warriors have previously failed to piece together.
First, abortion is a fundamental, uncontested good. This prejudice is crystal clear in their paper. The only negative observation of abortion they could muster is this: “Having an abortion can be challenging and distressing, even for adult women.” That’s it. They add, “It can be a life-and-death decision, a reality that is far beyond the scope of appropriate childhood responsibilities.” Can be? They never confess whose life is at stake, but one clearly assumes they mean the young mother if she brings her unborn child to term.
Second, the authors assume that underage pregnancy and childbirth are always wrong because of risks to the mother. While the essay is mum on abortion’s risks, it spends pages detailing the physical and psychological dangers of pregnancy for girls and young women. In fact, the authors boldly state without qualification that “a child’s best interests are served by the provision of an abortion: Prioritizing her wellbeing necessitates that physicians and family members view her impregnation as a malady to be treated and take steps to terminate it.” Note that the authors consistently infantilize any female under 18 as “a child.”
Ergo, forced abortion upon underage girls and young women is clearly the most ethical action because they lack the maturity to realize abortion is life-preserving health care. As such, “medical professionals would be failing a child if they withheld abortion care, even if they did so because the child was averse to it.” That is their case.
And never mind that child autonomy is sacrosanct in ethics journals when it comes to “trans” medical and surgical experimentations, which are profoundly harmful. One ethics journal opined late last year that limits upon children’s choices in so-called “gender-affirming care … are morally wrong” because “ethically, minors should participate in medical decision-making in age-appropriate ways.”
So, why might a young woman be averse to a forced abortion? Izatt and Brownlee warn, “Such a patient might interpret her pregnancy as a baby and feel love for it and a desire to be a mother.” She might then “believe that by having an abortion she is killing her baby.” That nasty maternal instinct.
Izatt and Brownlee are expressly critical, by name, of the otherwise infamously left-wing American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, which all hold that health care providers have a professional duty to ensure their young pregnant patients fully understand their options of adoption, abortion, or mothering. Our self-described ethicists assure us there is only one moral choice. The other two are an unmanageable burden or manipulation. They state without any sense of irony that “abortion care honors the specific goods of childhood that are key to a child’s well-being.”
One of the most glaring manipulations these authors employ is reflexively referring to any female under 18 as a “child” and then treating her as such. They fail to appreciate that childhood is a historic Christian cultural construct. At one brief point, they confess, “[W]e appreciate the inclination to distinguish older adolescents (sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds) from younger children,” yet that recognition stops there.
Izatt and Brownlee utterly ignore the profound moral distinction between how a 10- or 12-year-old girl might become pregnant and how a 17-year-old might do so. It’s all rape to them, and they say as much: “…[U]sually, a child’s situation is the result of specific wrongs that someone did to her, that is, some male raped her (sometimes statutorily) and thereby impregnated her.” Remarkably, pregnancy from consensual peer relationships among close-aged teens is never mentioned. That would cut into their victim narrative.
The reader is struck by the authors’ cocksure righteousness of their proposal. This is why they assert these forced abortions must happen as soon as the pregnancy is determined. No deliberation, no doubt. “What matters is that the harms of gestation are worse than those of abortion.”
They boast, “Ultimately, this is an empirical claim…” Yet in the same sentence, they admit it is empirically unverifiable because “there are no comprehensive data analyses on girls’ experiences of compelled abortion care.” It is utterly lost on these scholars why reliable data on the well-being efficacy of forced abortion doesn’t exist. However, they claim, “This lack of data is arguably an instance of antigirlism.” That is certainly not arguable at all.
Forced abortion is what a culture of death has now wrought, and a leading academic journal thought the proposal worth publishing.
University of Chicago
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