If nothing is knowable...:
Jr, David R Carlin
ABORTION AND THE LEGISLATOR DEAR CONSTITUENT: HERE'S WHERE I STAND Responding to a Commonweal editorial (Nov. 3), a reader contends, and demonstrates, that not all politicians are evading the...
...Perhaps government has fostered a moral callousness, an insensitivity to our responsibilities to one another, including those to developing human life...
...Your comments would be appreciated...
...that is, she should know the characteristics of a fetus at that stage and should know of the alternatives to abortion...
...I believe that the fetus is deserving of respect increasing respect as it develops over time...
...THE EDITORS It seems to me that the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by which the U.S...
...it includes weighing the untoward effects of widespread violation of the law by those who disagree with it...
...The politician who respects a woman's choice must also recognize society's duty and desire to affirm the dignity of developing life...
...With this we do not agree....[T]he right [to an abortion] is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation...
...The law," said the greatest of American Catholic philosophers, John Courtney Murray, in another context, "is required to be tolerant of many evils that morality condemns...
...But if it is not at all clear that a fetus should be considered a human person from conception, there is no denying that it is developing into a person...
...Those opposing all abortions are so deeply offended by government's subsidizing it that there is good reason for putting some restrictions on the use of public funds...
...Supreme Court set aside state government restrictions on abortion has had mixed effects...
...At the other extreme, some argue that a woman's right to choose on this matter should be absolute and inviolable...
...That will not satisfy people who hold either polar position, but it respects the wishes of the majority and I think it is a reasonable stance to take in a debate that frequently has not been characterized by reasoned dialogue...
...I agree with that declaration of state purpose...
...Notwithstanding my own beliefs regarding the morality of abortion, the argument that from conception a fertilized ovum is a fully human person is not convincing enough to induce me to endorse a governmental ban on all abortions...
...In the early weeks of pregnancy a woman wishing an abortion should not be subject to government intervention...
...To them, a fetus at any stage of development is not a separate person but a part of a woman's body over which government should have no control...
...Government can do better than that...
...But the civil law, in my judgment, should not reflect the position that a fetus is a person from conception...
...More and more it seems to me appropriate to require notification of at least one of an adolescent's parents in such a situation...
...JOHN E. BRANDL John E. Brandel represents District 62 in the Minnesota State Senate and is professor of public affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota...
...on this issue political discourse and posturing tend to extreme positions, even though both reason and majority opinion seem to me to be on the side of rejecting both extremes...
...Even the politician who abhors abortion may conclude that a law tolerating it in some circumstances is preferable to complete abolition...
...The politician's responsibility on this matter is different from that of the moralist or the theologian, and is more dissimilar yet from that of an individual deciding whether to have an abortion...
...3), a reader contends, and demonstrates, that not all politicians are evading the debate over abortion...
...From no later than the time of viability, when sustained life outside the womb is possible, the government should provide protection for the fetus and indeed outlaw abortion...
...The responsibility of the politician extends past considering whether there is a reasonable basis for a contrary position...
...Ironically, in this regard those holding the position that choice should be inviolable reject that part of Roe v. Wade which, while recognizing a right to privacy that would permit abortion, insisted that society has an interest in the developing fetus...
...Large numbers of women now have an alternative to the desperate anguish of lacking control over an undesired pregnancy...
...French law permits abortion before the tenth week, to women "in a situation of distress...
...A woman contemplating having an abortion is considering a particular situation, whereas politicians must enact laws governing a myriad of situations and for millions of people holding a great variety of moral views about the appropriateness of the act...
...At this point there is no way of knowing the content of the proposals concerning abortion that will come before the legislature, but I intend to apply the following guidelines in my decision making: If many citizens hold a position for which a reasonable case can be made, then a politician should seek to accommodate defensible elements of that position whether or not other citizens are strongly opposed to it...
...That is the age of viability...
...argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses...
...This argument has failed to persuade large numbers of Minnesotans decent, reasonable, responsible people...
...society has a legitimate interest here...
...Of course there is no reasonable case for allowing murder, but one can make a reasonable argument that an embryo after a few weeks of gestation is not a human person...
...There is, for example, the matter of public funding of abortions, which I have favored and voted for...
...For these people, permitting abortion is the same as permitting the killing of innocent persons in a word, murder so it should be outlawed...
...In summary, my position on abortion is this: The appropriate governmental resolution of the abortion question is to reject the extreme positions and to craft moderate alternatives...
...In Minnesota nearly 90 percent of abortions occur in the first twelve weeks, which is before the embryo has completed acquiring the physical characteristics of a human brain...
...As that happens, the rest of the society through its government acquires an interest in the matter, an interest in protecting incipient human life...
...The DFL [Democratic- Farmer-Labor] party, of which I am a member, stands not for a libertarian individualism...
...The responsibility of a politician who rejects both polar positions is not to accede to the less objectionable of the two, but rather to put forward alternatives...
...The politician's personal position regarding the morality of abortion does not necessarily imply what public policy ought to be...
...They are real positions, held strongly, in each case by a minority of Minnesotans who are working very hard to prevail in the political arena and prepared to support only those candidates who agree entirely with them...
...Please understand that my receptiveness to different points of view on the issue is not contrived to curry political favor with any interest group nor is my position calculated to increase my prospects for being re-elected...
...Government should not ban abortions in the early weeks of pregnancy...
...Political lobbying is usually left to those with strong views...
...Nonetheless, a right does not necessarily imply a guarantee of public money...
...He is State Senator John E. Brandl of Minnesota...
...After considering the great range of views on this issue, from one polar position to another, I conclude that a more moderate position than either extreme should prevail...
...Public policy should embody society's judgment that resort to abortion is not a matter of indifference and not just a form of birth control, but a deeply unfortunate expedient sometimes justified by compelling circumstances...
...Fewer than 1 percent of abortions take place after that time...
...I fear that in the near future politicians will tend even more than at present to be pushed into one camp or the other and that the legislature will be even more polarized on this issue than it is now...
...A politician who rejects the polar positions must confront all the various legislative proposals not as one issue but many different abortion issues...
...I reject both of these extreme positions...
...Abortion has to do not only with a right of individual women to choose and individual fetuses to live...
...The moment at which to attribute personhood to a developing fetus is disputed...
...These guidelines do not speak to all of the proposals that will come up...
...To state and reject both of the extreme positions on abortion described above is no mere debating trick...
...After that early period there should be a requirement that her consent be informed...
...what follows is a slightly edited version of the letter he has been sending this fall in response to constituents asking his views on abortion-related legislative issues...
...Too many people flatly disagree, with reason, and will act accordingly regardless of what the law says...
...it stands for the proposition that we are a community with responsibilities for one another and that society, through its government, looks out for the weak and otherwise unprotected...
...Alternatives to abortion, e.g., contraception, adoption, and adequate child support, are preferable and should be encouraged by government...
...Similarly, in the past I have voted against requiring that before a pregnant adolescent could have an abortion, her parents would need to be notified or to approve...
...However, an abortion ethic seems to have swept over this country...
...Simply being for or against abortion does not settle these matters as it does for the adherents of the extremes...
...In that decision the Court declared: "[AJppellants...
...That appears to be what the vast majority of Minnesotans desire, but the majority is often uninvolved...
...We come then to the question most difficult for me as a legislator: What should be the elements of a public policy that asserts society's interest and at the same time respects the rights both of a woman who wishes to abort a fetus and of the developing fetus...
...I will continue trying to dissuade people from choosing abortion, but will also continue voting in the Senate to permit that choice in some circumstances...
...Some babies born at twenty-three weeks survive...
...In politics one does not seek to place in law all of one's own moral beliefs...
...The developing fetus deserves increasing governmental protection as it acquires personhood...
...It is as though we are thinking that, having become legal, abortion is no longer a serious moral issue...
...Except to protect the life of the mother, abortions past the twenty-third week should be illegal...
...I intend to vote in the Senate according to my judgment of what is best for Minnesota...
...none born before that age survive...
...At one extreme, some argue not only that a fertilized ovum is a human person from the moment of conception but also that government should forbid all abortion just as it outlaws unjustified homicide...
...Surely it is a tragedy that a million and a half abortions occur each year in the U.S., but for many people the magnitude of the tragedy is diminished by their conviction that a fertilized ovum, or several cells not yet implanted in the uterine wall, or an embryo not yet possessed of a human brain, do not constitute a person...
...I believe neither polar position should or will prevail...
Vol. 116 • December 1989 • No. 21
