Abortion Questions Answered
An old thread of mine recently received a calm, reasoned comment with several questions.
I took the time to reply, but sadly LiveJournal’s comment length cut me off… and thus I just decided to post here and link my reply in the discussion.
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Thanks for your reply.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can share what I personally plan to do.
“Your wife will most likely want sex, and will be fertile three days a month, every month, twelve months a year, until she reaches menopause sometime in her late forties. Imagining that you got married to a twenty-year old girl sometime this year, that is at least twenty years of the potential of getting her pregnant.”
Through techniques such as Sympto-Thermal Natural Family Planning it’s possible to accurately map those windows of fertility.
“Are you going to abstain from sex with her?”
If my wife and I are of the opinion that we’re not quite ready for children, we’ll abstain during those fertile times. That said, we realize that our predictive capabilities are human, and thus potentially flawed, and if a child does come, we would welcome it. If for some reason a child is completely impossible in our lives, then we’d abstain from sex altogether — or to keep it simple, just not get married until we’re at a stage of our lives that we can support and properly raise children.
“Or are you going to impregnate her ever fifteen months or so for twenty years?”
No. First, pregnancy isn’t 100% each time sex happens and second, by abstaining during the fertile periods, the chance of children is low. That said, I would imagine, as we’d want to have children at some point, we’d engage in sex during the fertile periods with the goal of conceiving a child. Overall, I feel that our periods of abstinence would only strengthen our love for one another, for by abstaining during the time of greatest desire, we would recognize that our love transcends mere carnal pleasure and is something more sublime.
“Until that happens… will you kiss a potential fiance when you fall in love?”
Of course.
“Will you hold her hand?”
Certainly.
“Or hug her?”
Definitely.
“Or will you abstain until the moment you both are wearing wedding bands?”
Abstain from sex yes, but not from showing affection via hugs, kisses, flowers, chocolates, romantic poetry, holding hands and the whole host of traditional romantic gestures. Sex is sacred; in a very physical sense two people become one body. For me, it makes sense to save that experience for the one person I’ll be spending my life with.
“Will you abstain from performing cunnilingus on her before marriage since that is not sexual intercourse?”
No, nor after marriage.
“Will you have anal sex, then, since that’s not vagina/penis intercourse?
No, nor after marriage.
“When you are in a relationship, especially when you are in love, or lust- it is extremely difficult to keep heaving petting from becoming sexual intercourse.”
Agreed. That’s why heaving petting should be avoided — and, in my view, it’s the responsibility of both partners to mention that “hey, I love you, and that’s why I’m thinking we might be going to far since we’re not married yet.” It’s primarily the man’s responsibility though, since men typically have a sexual desire that ramps up quicker.
“Abortion is tough choice for any person to make (in my opinion the father of the child needs to have a say in abortion since he helped make the baby.) but it is not to be trivialized into “Well don’t have sex.”"
It is a terrible choice. It pits the life of the woman (in terms of her vision of her life as it were before she found out she was pregnant, not necessarily in terms of her survival) against the life of the baby. We, as a society, should strive to provide resources to women who do become pregnant unexpectedly, so that, even if they’ve been abandoned by the father, they don’t feel as if they are bereft of choices and must abort because they have no other recourse.
“They did have sex, he impregnated her. They make a choice not to have a child because to do so would be a disservice to the child.”
The ‘disservice to the child’ argument is a slippery slope. Why is it a disservice to the child? Because the child might not be born into the best of homes, or experience the highest possible quality of life? Still, the child would experience life. If the woman feels she is unqualified or unable to raise the child, adoption is a wonderful option (and one that needs to be streamlined legally in the US). But saying things such as “it’s a disservice to the child to be born” leads to a slippery slope where people are judged not by their innate dignity of the human person but rather by the quality of life. Following this slope leads progressively to euthanasia, and later to “cleansings” of society. Perhaps, one following this slope might ask, are not the disabled better off not alive? Ask any living disabled person you know if they feel they’d be better off having been aborted before birth. I’m pretty sure you’ll find the answer is they feel there’s been no disservice letting them experience life.
“Also.. what about disease? What if you marry, by chance, a woman who has HIV because of a blood transfusion- through no fault of her own- and since she is probably like-minded to you, thinks she is not the type to have a disease and she infects you with HIV?”
As I understand it, it’s standard practice to test for diseases before marriage. HIV via blood transfusion, to my knowledge, hasn’t occurred for over 15 years as testing protocols have been broadly implemented.
“Condoms, other forms of contraception, and abortion are things that are necessary in this world because life is more complicated that “Well I won’t til I’m married.” What about after you’re married?”
I see condoms and other forms of contraception as taking away something of the unity of sexual intercourse — they put a barrier between spouses, a barrier that says “I love all of you except that pro-genitive part of you.” I prefer a more responsible, more sacrificial love that recognizes that beauty of the human reproductive system and treats it with appropriate respect. If you really want a primer on this view, I’d recommend reading Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary on John Paul II’s “Gospel of the Body”.
Thanks for your reply :)