I Doublethink Not

1984 is one of those novels that sticks with you. And, given that I use the book with students, I've reread it, perhaps too many times. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate and even like the novel. I think it conveys an important message and I can sympathize with Orwell's pessimistic tendencies. But I find that I, like so many other people, would often rather live life like Parsons, rather than Winston. And, I don't like to face the fact that I do this. It's easy, reading the novel, to criticize the masses who act like sheep and readily embrace contradictory ideas because it makes their life easier. It's much more difficult to accept that the same criticism could and should be applied to myself. So, I'm not going to focus on myself. I'm going to focus on other people who are even better at the game than I am.

A couple of nights ago I was talking with Dan about politics, generally a depressing topic for me, and I started thinking about what I consider to be a double plus good capability for doublethink among the far right. Nothing exemplifies it better for me than a clip from The Daily Show where several republicans claim, without batting an eye, that the government should be less involved in people's lives and people should have the right to choose what they believe, but abortion is wrong and should be illegal. Two plus two is apparently five.

Here now, I actually feel the need to explain that in spite of an embryo/fetus's parasitic status, I am a sucker for all things small and needy and find it hard to imagine a circumstance where I would have an abortion. That said, it is my body and, dare I say it, my parasite.

So, maybe I'm exaggerating just a little. If I really thought a fetus was a parasite I would probably be happy to get rid of it as quickly as I would worms, for example. But it does lead to my point (I'm getting there, I promise).

Most people agree that it is wrong to kill other people and some would say it's even wrong to kill yourself. But the discord arises when we have to decide what constitutes a person.

I realize that for the purposes of law and religion, the strictest definition is often the most desirable because it leaves the least amount of room for legal and moral ambiguity. However, maintaining such a definition is not always the most compassionate thing to do. Compassion, in my opinion, is more important than law or religion, and it's a shame it isn't inherent in both.

A fetus of 12 or even 18 weeks cannot, to my knowledge, survive outside the womb. So we might, therefore, make the analogy to decisions about life support - consideration is often given to the potential future a person might have and the cost of the support that would give them that opportunity. With respect to a fetus, potential future cannot be guaranteed. I would even argue that, given the right wing propensity for cutting social support systems to the ground, a fetus's potential (for productivity, happiness, etc.) may be significantly reduced in some cases. The cost of maintaining a fetus, and later a child, is enormously high when you factor in the physical and emotional impact of bearing a child, and the financial cost of adequate pre and post-natal care. Needless to say, we haven't even got to the cost of feeding, sheltering and clothing the child once it is born! But here I must come back to my point. Decisions to end any life are not black and white, but it is easier and more comforting to see them that way. Because they are not black and white, they are extraordinarily complex and difficult decisions to make and live with.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for the decisions to take someone off life support or have an abortion, but there would also be no war, no rape, and no hunger. It seems absolutely inhumane to force someone to carry and bring a child into the world and then leave that child to fend for itself. If people oppose abortion because they truly believe that every life is valuable, then they need to put their money where their mouth is and cherish and support that life until it ends naturally.