Reply #117: I think DoNotRefill is getting a bum rap

[iverglas]

First, let me say that I am not a diehard DoNotRefill fan, to understate the matter somewhat, and that the vicey versa is equally true. Anyone interested in further details may visit the gun dungeon.

There has been one other occasion, quite recently, when DNR and I enjoyed a mutual-respect fest, and I offered a 21 firearm salute to mark it. We had an exchange of thoughts about the rather arcane issue of how the self-defence justification for assault/homicide might apply to pregnant women. "Fetal homicide" laws came into the discussion, and he indicated his disagreement with them. I did not doubt his adherence to the principle that pregnancy is a phenomenon of a woman's body and life, and a matter in respect of which decision-making authority belongs to her alone. I am less sanguine about some gun nuts who plainly proclaim their allegiance to "choice" only as a self-serving preface to their opposition to restrictions on access to firearms.

I don't think that DNR was intending to write the complete statement of why women must not be denied the exercise of reproductive rights. I think he was simply expressing an insight he'd had into the importance of those rights -- possibly something that had heretofore been a matter of mere "intellectual" understanding, and that he had now had a somewhat more visceral contact with. Wanted pregnancy is a source of great happiness; unwanted pregnancy can be a source of equally great unhappiness.

"We" often assert that men cannot understand this fact, or anything else about pregnancy, because they cannot experience it. But empathy does not require that we have, or be capable of having, an identical experience. We human beings are capable of analogizing and inferring. I can feel empathy for people subject to discrimination that I will never be subject to because I am not black or lesbian, or for people with disabilities when I have no disability, for the old when I am young, and so on.

Empathy is fundamental to our survival as individuals and as a species; it is an inborn part of our hard-wiring, and it is a crucial part of our subsequent personality development. We have it thrust upon us as part of what the species needs in order to survive and thrive, and we cultivate it as part of what we as individuals need in order to survive and prosper. I think that DNR was actually experiencing and expressing empathy, not "pity" as some perceived it.

So when DNR said:

"This got me thinking about people who end up having abortions, and how their reactions and feelings are undoubtedly as strong as ours were, but how it could be a response of terror instead of joy as it was in our case. To me, that's a pretty powerful thought, the idea of somebody being as terrified as we were happy at such a visit."

... I don't think it's fair to address that as if it were the only thing he might think, or have to say, about reproductive rights.

I think that he'd had an experience that reinforced what he already believed, and that's what he was talking about. Remember, this is the first pregnancy DNR has been personally involved in, and his first personal experience with all of the minutiae of the actual phenomenon and the emotions that accompany it. I might react somewhat the same if, although already firmly believing in the value of cultural diversity, I found myself experiencing happiness in some expression of my culture and it hit me that I lived in a society where people of other cultures could not experience that happiness because of fear of stigma, or fear of violence. If I chose to say "celebrating christmas makes me happy, and it's just occurred to me how public celebrations of christmas might make a devout follower of another religion feel sad and afraid", when I had never advocated public celebrations of christmas and in fact had opposed them, I would hope that no one would leap on me for trivializing freedom of religion.

I mean, others might feel like saying "well duh, this just occurred to you?" Because after all, empathy is one of the foundational underpinning of "rights" -- the concept of rights involves demanding not only that our own ability to act in our own interests be protected, but also that others' ability to do so be protected. So surely it's obvious that freedom of religion is important because that is one way we ensure that others are not made to feel sad or afraid, right? Well yes, of course. But the visceral understanding of what that actually means isn't something that everyone is exposed to all the time. Freedom of religion is good, well, because it's good; reproductive freedom is good because it's good. That's how we think about those things on a day-to-day basis.

People who do not support things like freedom of religion and reproductive freedom are sometimes told "well I just hope that something horrible never happens to you, so you never have to know how it feels" (or does happen to you, so you know how it feels). Or are just told "you don't know how it feels, so shut up".

I don't think that the latter response is productive. I think we need to encourage empathy. Without it, commitment to rights can be jeopardized. Freedom of religion and reproductive freedom aren't good just because they're good; memorizing that isn't going to make someone want to defend them.

When DNR said:

"I've always been pro-choice. I still am, 100%. But I wish (in my dream-world) that there wasn't so much of a demand for abortion services, because every pregnancy was a wanted pregnancy. The option needs to be there and be legal, I just wish humanity didn't need to use it so much."

... he may have expressed himself a little awkwardly. It sounds a little like that "safe, legal and rare" bullshit when the phrase is heard in the mouths of the anti-choice -- like abortion should be "rare" because it's bad. But I don't think that's what DNR meant.

I think that DNR was more trying to express what I'd say myself -- that abortion "should be" rare in the same way that kidney transplants "should be" rare: because life would be just peachy if nobody's kidneys ever failed, and if nobody who didn't want to be pregnant was ever pregnant. Not because either abortion or kidney transplants are bad.

If DNR had a scary health problem and the tests showed that it wasn't kidney failure after all, just a urinary tract infection, he'd likely be very happy. He might also have a sudden insight into how it must feel to learn instead that one's kidneys had failed and one needed a transplant. If he knew that the right to have organ transplant surgery was under threat, he might feel an urge to speak out in favour of the right to that surgery, even though he didn't know how it felt to need it. I'd hope that people who did need transplants wouldn't say "you don't know how it feels, so shut up". (I'm not saying that anyone has actually said this to DNR, just hyperbolizing for effect.)

He might even say how he wished that no one ever needed a kidney transplant. And it might indeed be understandable for people who did need kidney transplants to be a little irked by that statement, especially if there were people in the world telling them that their kidney failure was all their own damned fault and they should have just lived a healthier lifestyle and they wouldn't be needing kidney transplants. (Then there'd be the anti-transplant people who made an exception for people whose kidneys were destroyed in car crashes ...) But he really isn't one of those people, I don't think.

Up at the top of the thread, he said he agreed with everything I'd said about unwanted pregnancy being a fact of life and a matter for women to deal with as they determine to be in their own best interests, and that it should be dealt with as such by public policy. I don't think that recognizing that fact *precludes* agreement that the "lot of other issues" that Woodstock mentions (post 113) are indeed in play, for instance that some pregnancies are "unwanted" because of inequities that some women suffer, or what the real-life effects of compelling women to continue pregnancies against their will, or of imposing ever more fascistic restrictions on their ability to make choices, might be.

I don't think DNR was "agonizing about abortion" at all. He really was not saying anything about his approval or disapproval of women's decisions about the outcomes of their pregnancies, or whether his feelings on that matter should play a role in public policy. That's what I'd see as "agonizing about abortion" -- the annoying urge that some people have to express their feelings about other people's personal choices in this matter, and maunder on about them a while before concluding "but don't let me stop you" ... if that's what they conclude.

I think he was doing pretty much the opposite. He was saddened that some women have to make choices they don't want to have to make: are pregnant when they don't want to be. If I may offer another analogy: it's sad that my family had to cremate my father's remains last spring -- not because it would have been better if we'd buried his body, but because he died. It's sad that some women have to have abortions -- not because it would be better if they continued their pregnancies, but because they were pregnant when they did not want to be. But death and unwanted pregnancy, sad as they may be for the individuals affected and for whatever reasons they happen, are facts of life, and things that force us to make choices we'd rather not have to make.

Not the world's best analogy, granted: death cannot be fixed and is always sad; unwanted pregnancy can be fixed by terminating it or creating conditions in which it is wanted, and so is not always sad, if those options are available. I think DNR was speaking to the sadness and fear that women who had neither of those options would experience, and that some women certainly experience even when the option of termination is available.

Who knows, maybe I've read far too much into what DNR said, and he'll just come back with another complaint about verbosity (or decide to just wipe his brow in gratitude for avoiding the guillotine this time). Given that I do read what he says with a pretty jaundiced eye, and make a habit of both not reading in what isn't there *and* not letting obnoxious subtext pass unremarked, I don't think I have.

Empathy isn't always expressed articulately and people who feel it may still be naive and underdeveloped in terms of understanding and accepting where their duty to the people with whom they empathize lies. Yes, empathy could be subverted into pity on the part of people who don't understand or accept that duty; yes, "they don't need your pity, they just need your support", exactly. But I don't think we oughta thrash them, right out of the starting gate, when what they've done is more likely experience, and try to express, empathy.

.