Podcast recap: “That’s The Personhood Debate” with Let Them Live
Emily Berning invited me onto the Let Them Live podcast to talk about making the secular case against abortion.
Emily runs Let Them Live, an organization that comes alongside women in financial crisis who are considering abortion, and she told me the group has helped more than 1,200 women choose to parent instead.
We covered a lot of ground: my path to pro-life atheism, the personhood question underneath the abortion debate, what the Turnaway Study actually found once you read past the headlines, and why people should be careful to be less glib about adoption as an answer to abortion.
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Key Takeaways
- Most people who say fetal personhood doesn’t matter don’t actually believe that. Once an embryo or fetus seems like a baby to them, they change their minds, which suggests personhood is doing more work in their reasoning than they may say.
- The Turnaway Study’s most reported finding is that women who got abortions mostly didn’t regret it. Its equally important but less reported finding: 98% of women who were denied abortions and went on to raise the child said they no longer wished they’d aborted.
- Adoption isn’t a substitute for parenting support. Emily explains that, of the more than 1,200 women Let Them Live has helped choose to parent instead of abort, only one has gone on to place a child for adoption. Women in crisis pregnancies mostly need help parenting.
Summary
“That’s the personhood debate.”
I argued that the abortion debate is fundamentally about when a human being get rights, and why.
Many pro-choicers will claim “It doesn’t matter whether a fetus is a person, because no person can use your body against your will.” But, as I argued in this podcast, they often don’t seem to truly mean this, because once they perceive a fetus as a baby (e.g. after 20 weeks, or in the third trimester), they tend to support restricting abortion. That change in position suggests this isn’t “personhood is irrelevant” so much as “I don’t think this embryo or fetus is a person yet.”
Personhood is doing more work in this debate than people admit or even realize.
“Tell them the whole information.”
We spent a long stretch on the Turnaway Study. It’s widely cited for finding that women who got abortions rarely regretted the decision. Far less publicized: 98% of women who were denied abortions and raised the resulting child said they no longer wished they’d gotten one.
This stat isn’t an argument for restricting abortion. (We think abortion should be restricted because it kills human beings, not because women don’t regret being unable to abort.) But women’s positive retrospective evaluations of being denied abortion are relevant to informed consent. If a woman is trying to decide whether to abort, abortion advocates argue she should know that most women didn’t regret aborting. Shouldn’t she, then, equally know that most women who couldn’t abort didn’t regret it either?
“Which of my kids do you think I should give to a richer couple?”
The Turnaway Study had found women’s satisfaction with their situations (whether they aborted, or couldn’t abort and instead parented) increased over time. In contrast, I told Emily about a study that found, on average, birth mothers’ satisfaction with their decision to place for adoption declined over time.
Emily was unsurprised. She explained that Let Them Live regularly has posts fundraising support for vulernable moms, and often pro-lifers will reflexively comment “adoption.” Emily finds these comments unhelpful, and Let Them Live’s own numbers back that up: of the more than 1,200 women they’ve helped choose to parent, only one has gone on to place a child for adoption.
Adoption can be a beautiful option for the families who choose it, but the decision should be driven by the birth mother’s desire to place for adoption. It shouldn’t be offered as a substitute for women who really would rather parent with sufficient support.
Additional Resources
- Secular Pro-Life’s Abortion Debate Index on fetal personhood arguments
- Related SPL blog articles:
- “Adoption Stories”: interview series by Secular Pro-Life
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