In the past, I had criticised idiots like right-wing Christian fundamentalist law lecturer Yvonne Lee from the National University of Singapore for slinging ludicrous logic against decriminalising anal sex between men. Today, I give you another right-winger -- yet another law lecturer, which seriously renders the ilk from the law profession rather questionable -- who dared yet again to pontificate about the good of society, but this time, wearing the cloak of social welfare. Her article appeared in the Straitjacket Times on July 24.
I am rather late in commenting on Idiot of the Day, Assistant Professor Tan Seow Hon, trumpeting her moralistic wares on higher ground, as Alex Au has already written a superb piece critiqueing her argument, in fact, peeling it apart with embarrassing aplomb to reveal her clearly fundamentalist undertone. However, my good friend P recently commented that my blog's frivolity quotient has gone up, and so I thought I should get off my lazy arse and say something that's been bothering me way before this Idiot wrote her essay. There was an earlier article by a Straitjacket Times journalist who made a similar remark about restricting abortion, just without Tan's dubious legal and philosophical logic - which is not as bad, because at least he wasn't attempting to make his uninformed opinion sound academic.
In Tan's essay, she gives a slew of reasons (all sketchy) for why the current law in Singapore which permits abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy without restriction should be amended, i.e. to make it harder for a woman to abort her foetus. Now, I have always and I still maintain that "foetus" is the most appropriate term for defining any in-utero life yet unborn. I agree with Alex Au (Yawning Bread. org) that the question of when life begins is hitherto controversial, but what does "err on the side of caution" mean? For Tan The Idiot, it is crystal clear -- it is to err on the side of "preserving life" and - drumroll everyone - "disallowing abortion".
Tan The Idiot basically questions the viability of the arguments that had facilitated the 1969 and 1974 Abortion Acts. Her entire premise for calling on the government to abolish -- oops! I meant amend the Abortion Act is that Singapore society today has changed and therefore current realities do not correspond to the social and economic conditions of the 1970s which justified the law then.
Alright, here's my take before I take my shot at her. She's using the logic that arguments that had previously justified changing or enacting a law should be amended if they are no longer justifiable because current realities have rendered them obsolete or simply untenable. I have no problems with this principle, because many of our laws have been either abolished or updated for this reason, 377 of the Penal Code being one case in point. But hang on a minute before we start putting carts way ahead of our horses. Even after heated and very emotional debate over the abolition of 377A (sodomy between two males) which involved covert acts of email-terrorism on the part of the right-wing Christian Fundies, 377A remained de jure even though our Prime Minister publicly made a guarantee to the nation that it would NOT be enforced legally.
Huh! That pretty much means that when emotions run high, most notably when one very loud and noisy faction of society (idiots like Tan and Yvonne Lee) complains that the moral backbone of society is going to hell, that diseases like AIDS are gonna strike us innocents down, that 10 year old boys are going to fuck one another in the asses if we remove an archaic law that has today been completely rubbished and condemned in the very Western nation that GAVE us this law to begin with, what you get is the government pussy-footing over something that should be a no-brainer: amend an outdated law that tramples on the rights of homosexuals to exercise their sexual preferences without causing harm to innocent people.
Anyway, Idiot Tan gave these reasons for doing away with abortion. She criticised the arguments made by Chua Sian Chin in Parliament back in 1974 by for legalising abortion, pausing to trumpet opposing parliamentaran Ng Kah Ting's (clearly a hippy-era Fundie, if that can even exist) objections. In ascending order of stupidity:
#1. 1974 Pro-abortion argument: Allowing abortion of "unwanted" babies leads to a more socially fit society, where every child born is more likely to be nurtured and socialised by responsible and able parents. "Unwanted children" (presumed those who are born rather than aborted) tend to come from broken homes, and grow up amidst anti-social elements and become social deviants. Therefore, Singaporean society should minimize this scenario.
Idiot Fundie Anti-abortion counterargument: This is clearly a eugenic perspective, it's unfair, and most of all, it's unfair to the UNBORN child who doesn't get a CHOICE to find out whether he's going to be a junkie when he grows up, or a rocket scientist.
Idiot Fundie Anti-abortion Recommendation Disguised as a Societal Benefit: Send the woman for counselling so that she will WANT to give birth to the baby! Nevermind that she is likely unemployed, or a low-wage worker and hence unable to afford prenatal medical care (yes, it isn't cheap to be pregnant these days, my dear SINGLE Professor Tan), nevermind that she is likely single and therefore will be stigmatised by her conservative Asian family if she walks around pregnant while unmarried, and nevermind that females usually suffer ambivalence and depression when it is time to give away their newborn child to the adoptive agency or parents. Nevermind all that, all we need to do is COUNSEL the poor woman not to vacuum her foetus and all will be well. Hallelujah!
#2. 1974 Pro-abortion argument: if the foetuses that would become mentally and physically handicapped are aborted, the overall net quality of the population would improve. **My opinion on this is that it's a rather crude argument, not fashionable in today's world of human ethics and universal rights, but I accept abortion of foetuses with no chance of living a quality life on grounds of humanity, not of social determinism or eugenics.
Idiot Fundie Anti-abortion counterargument: It's a slippery-slope!
Idiot Fundie Anti-abortion Recommendation Disguised as a Societal Benefit: Nevermind if the foetus will be born without functioning vital organs, will be attached to machines in order to breathe, nevermind if the baby will never live with physical (forget mental) functioning ability, nevermind if we KNOW the baby/child will live up to 5-10 years max, but live in excruciating pain, be on medications daily, suffer countless surgeries, and still die before puberty. Nevermind all that! It's better to be alive, and so we think it's RIGHT to be alive than dead.
**By the way, this is not a counterargument to why foetuses with terminal diseases or risk being born with either terminal diseases or severely debilitating illnesses should be aborted in-utero. Although Chua's 1974 logic for allowing such abortions sounds highly morbid and Nazi now, the Idiots have not argued convincingly why it's in the best interests for a child to live life as a vegetable in great pain, rather than not live at all. The slippery slope is really the difficulty in defining what constitutes a life worth living. According to a Dutch study* on euthanasia and the current Dutch Penal Code that allows legal euthanasia in Holland, it was found that individuals who wanted to die had their own interpretation of what is intolerable suffering, compared with their physicians' interpretation.
#3. 1974 Pro-abortion argument: We have to prevent a population explosion for economic reasons.
Idiot Fundie Anti-abortion counterargument: We have a low birth-rate problem today.
Idiot Fundie Anti-abortion Recommendation Disguised as a Societal Benefit: Restricting abortions will give us a higher birthrate, yay!
Idiot Fundie Anti-abortion Recommendation Disguised as a Societal Benefit: Restricting abortions will give us a higher birthrate, yay!
As Alex Au already pointed out, people who seek abortions are not necessarily going to have a kid just because you tell them they can't get an abortion. (Now do you begin to understand why I have to call these people Idiots? They are graduate professionals, they are law professors, but they fail to notice that there are more than 2 ways of looking at a problem.) These people can fall into a few loose but non-exhaustive categories:
(1) Single women under 18
(2) Single women over 18 with a lot more to lose than a shot at tertiary education
(3) Married women who cannot afford more than 1.29 kids
(4) Married women who can afford more than 1.29 kids but have a lot more to lose if they get pregnant before they achieve their career goals.
(5) Any woman who got raped
(6) Any woman who is carrying a foetus that has a certain risk of being born disabled or with a debilitating or terminal disease.
Here's a thought experiment for the Fundies, what will you do if you were to fall into one of these 6 categories and can't get an abortion? Hmmm, let's see, for categories 1-2 and 5:
(1) Have my baby for adoption, and get disowned by my parents;
(2) Have my baby, face societal disapproval and stigma, not be entitled to maternity leave, maternal social benefits, and in the long run endure a lower economic well-being which results in less resources for my child;
(3) Hide my pregnancy, have my baby in the toilet and throw it in the rubbish;
(4) Go get an illegal abortion in Batam;
(5) Take drugs to self-induce abortion at the risk of my own health;
(6) Kill myself
For categories 3-4, and 6 obtaining an abortion in another country is just a matter of financial cost, something that is much more desirable than the opportunity cost to one's career and personal goals. For those in category 6, it is improbable that denying them an abortion will help the birthrate. If the overall objective is to add numbers to Singapore's productive workforce, I would subtract one currently productive person for every handicapped child born, because that is the minimum cost of providing care to it.
A final note on the completely asynine assumption that restricting abortion rights would increase the birthrate. Western countries like Germany have in place even stricter rules than Singapore in the cases of women seeking abortions. In Germany, you not only have to go through a thorough psychological evaluation, you are only permitted to undergo abortion only if you can prove that you are financially, socially (in terms of providing care) and psychologically UNABLE to bring up a child. Germany today has one of the lowest TFR (total fertility rate) in Europe and surpasses our 1.29 only by a hair's breath at 1.41 in 2008. By the way, Germany is also nation with the 5th lowest rate of unprotected sex at 30% (India and Hong Kong are top), amongst the countries polled by the Durex international sex survey. Singapore is midway down the list at 41% below Malaysia, Vietnam and China. No points for guessing why - abortions are a contraceptive choice for the squeamish, less-educated, and ill-prepared. Japan's rate is a higher 47% but that's only because it's harder to get birth control pills and other contraceptives there! Conclusion: restrictive abortion laws do NOT increase the birthrate, as demonstrated by the German case.
Hmmm. Pop-quiz: if the fundies cannot get the goverment to abolish abortion, will they try for a ban on condoms and the pill next? Answer: very unlikely, because their primary agenda is not an altruistic concern for the nation's population woes, but a religiously-driven plot to annihilate liberal, humanistic values in favour of their own version of what is morally good for humankind.
Bottom line, people: the issue of the birthrate is not one that is going to be easily solved by banning abortions or throwing money and maternity leave at people.
Likewise, reducing or reversing abortion rates is not going to boil down to how available abortion is. This kind of thinking is solipsistic and really churlish. In a separate demographical study**, it was shown that restricting abortion reduced overall abortion rates in 4 European countries, but did NOT INCREASE the total fertility rates.
So to the doctors, lawyers, academics, government officials and anyone with a right-wing attitude: leave it at the door and save us your good-citizen routine. There is no room for moral or religious sermons when it comes to arresting our falling birthrates. The only thing you really succeed at arresting is the intellectual quotient of the nation.
Footnotes:
* Keown, J. 1992. “The Law and practice of euthanasia in The Netherlands” 108, Law Quarterly Review, vol 51: 51-57.
** Levine, P.B. and Staiger, D. 2004"Abortion Policy and Fertility Outcomes: The Eastern European Experience", Journal of Law and Economics, vol. xlvii: pp 223-43.
