My life has come a long way since my childhood, which was marked by tears and pain. I’ve achieved many accomplishments — PhD from Princeton, a tenure-track job at a research university, fellowships, grants, awards and two children. Many people who are against abortion rights would look at me, and say, “See — you’re here and have accomplished so much.”
I can't speak for all pro lifers, but it's eugenic to suggest that a person has to be a certain success level to justify their non-aborted status.
“I wish you had never been born. I should have had an abortion.”
I can’t remember the first time my mother told me that. But I do remember the first time I responded differently, other than freezing in place or bursting into tears.
Her mother deemed her unworthy of life. Recognizing the hypocrisy of continuing to live when her mother wished she had never existed, the author advocates that an abortion sentence be carried out on others, while she enjoys a tenure-track job. I view it as extreme arrogance as a pro-choicer "chooses" themselves to live, while advocating the death of others.
Again, this suggests some sort of eugenics as we're drawing a line between those that should have been aborted and those that we feel have good enough lives to justify their non-aborted status. Keep in mind that by "we", I mean third party observers passing judgement on the lives of others, and telling them whether they should have been aborted or not. The lower classes of people you mention could end their lives if they deem their circumstances too much to bear.
However, given that there are millions of people on welfare, doing drugs, homeless and uninsured, these people are not choosing to end their lives. As such, they are deeming themselves worthy of life. Would you pass judgement and take it from them?
You have been very selective in citing from the article. What you didn't note or understand is that she thought her mother should have had a right to an abortion of the embryo or fetus that became her own body.
I'm just guessing, but I suppose she realizes that being forced to continue a rape pregnancy is possibly why her mother wasn't able to have the wonderful life she herself went on to have in adulthood. That is, I think she realizes that pregnancy and childbirth alienate part of a woman's own life, a part that would be hers to live if she didn't have a child that took her place instead.
As for worth, I think it's clear that she didn't judge as you do and didn't think she had made the world a better place by coming into it despite any accomplishments she appeared to have. She thought, and I think, that it is the woman's prerogative to consent or refuse to consent to pregnancy, just as it is her prerogative to consent or refuse to consent to sex or marriage.
We are here in this world not because we chose to come or this world is worthwhile. It is rather lovely to think that our parents wanted us and prayed for us to come and received us as answers to their prayers, because then we accomplished something by coming as an answer to prayers though we don't deserve credit for it. But I don't think of some as more worthy than others.
Rather, I think an embryo is nothing but a biological blueprint for making the body for a baby and that pregnancy is the process of making it. Until pregnancy is over, the making is unfinished, so the fetus is unfinished until it's really ready to come out. Preemies aren't finished, either, and that is sad, because the body isn't really ready for the human conscious awareness, perception, and expression by which we know it's a person with both life and liberty rights.
I think that it's no one's business but the woman's if she doesn't want to use her body to make a body for a future child, but that, if she's already made it to the point in pregnancy of fetal viability, others can reasonably ask that she give birth to it so long as it is not drastically deformed or disabled and the birth is not especially likely to cause her death or serious impairment of her health.
I think people who support laws banning abortion before viability are no different from rapists, are among the most selfish people on earth, and ultimately deserve what they propose for others. Use force, be forced, put women or doctors in prison for violating your will on this, be put in prison for violating others' will, insult pro-choicers and be insulted, etc., etc. Get it?
