Yawning Bread. 26 July 2008

Singapore's religious rightwing trains its sights on abortion

    

  

 

If anyone still needs convincing that American-inspired religious fundamentalists are on a campaign to impose their will on everybody else in Singapore, look no further than the article by law lecturer Tan Seow Hon in the Straits Times, 24 July 2008.

Time for Singapore to relook abortion law 
By Tan Seow Hon, For The Straits Times 

It has recently been argued that if Singapore wants more babies, one approach that deserves more attention is to render access to abortion harder. This would necessitate that the law, which allows abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy without restriction as to reason, be amended.

What an interesting opening line: "It has recently been argued…" As far as I know, no one has argued this until this writer said it.

In the United States, the only agenda item that equals the Christian rightwing's fixation with bashing lesbians and gays is their determination to criminalise abortion. For 30 years, they have been organising themselves to overturn Roe vs Wade, which was the US Supreme Court's 1973 decision to legalise abortion, based on the principle of a person's right to privacy concerning her body.

Until now, this half of the Christianist campaign has not reared its ugly head in Singapore, but with this article, you can see a decision to go on the rampage. If you have ever wondered if the fundamentalists' hate campaign against gays and lesbians was part of a broader political program to establish their "morals" as the reigning standard in Singapore across all issues, regardless of their minority status, this should disabuse you of any lingering doubts.

 

Lexical leaps

The clarity of the arguments in Tan's article left much to be desired. Here's one example in the third paragraph:

An important reason for legalising abortion in 1969 was the widespread incidence of dangerous backstreet abortions. That, however, cannot in itself justify legalising abortion because a criminal activity should not be legally handed over to a dignified profession that does a better job.

She cast abortion as a "criminal activity" in and of itself, and as soon as that was done, she delegitimised a medical professional doing it. She glossed over the definitional fact that whether abortion is criminal depends only on the state of the law. If the law says it is not criminal, then it is not criminal. Instead of sticking to this simple meaning, Tan used the the term "criminal activity" in a way one would use "immoral activity", where what the law says has no bearing on the moral quality (or disquality) of the act. It is quite typical of religious fundamentalists to be unable (or unwilling) to make a distinction between morality and law.

Criminal law can never be like moral codes. It cannot take a purist position in the face of social realities. It has to balance desired social goals against intrusiveness into personal autonomy and privacy which are equally important social considerations. 

For example, while eliminating cigarette smoking is unarguably a desirable social goal, we still treat tobacco as legal, albeit with restrictions. The Dutch have recently been treating soft recreational drugs like marijuana in the same way. Likewise, Singaporeans in the main think gambling brings serious moral questions with it, yet we have had Toto, horse betting and football betting for decades.

 
Disapprove does not mean ban

Abortion is one of those issues that are truly fraught. On the one hand, we're dealing with a person whose body is the locus of the issue. Should she not have control over her own body; is that not her right? On the other hand, we're dealing with a life in its transitional stages. There is no agreement at what point a foetus becomes a new human life, but many people take the view that viability outside the womb is too lax a test, which hitherto has been a key measure of when during pregnancy abortion should be barred.

I am among those who prefer to use a stricter definition of when life begins, simply because on such matters, I think we should err on the cautious. In this regard, I agree with Tan's statement:

But if the metaphysical question of when life begins is truly unsettled, it would be counter-intuitive not to err on the side of preserving life ….

However, she finished that sentence by saying

…. and disallow abortion.

This I disagree with. To go this far is to dismiss what may be legitimate considerations on the part of the woman. I will discourage abortion -- and I think society can do a lot more to provide alternatives such as contraceptives, and if that fails, adoption (which Tan also mentioned) and child support -– but ultimately, I find it offensive for the state in the name of "society" to trample on the personal liberty of the woman to control her body. She must be provided a reasonable option at the early stages of the pregnancy to end it, however distasteful aborting a foetus may seem to me.

 
No solution to declining birth rate

Tan attempted in her article to justify criminalising abortion as a means to boosting Singapore's birth rate, but I think most people can see through her stratagem. 

Indeed, about 1 in 4 pregnancies are aborted, according to a Channel NewsAsia story from 3 years back, but as the story suggested, women were relying on the procedure as a birth control measure.

SINGAPORE: More women are turning to abortions instead of using contraceptives to avoid unwanted pregnancy.

Also, not enough educated women are using contraceptives, says Singapore's Obstetrics and Gynaecology Society.

The number of tertiary-educated married women going for abortions has tripled in the last 16 years, from some 300 in 1988 to more than 1,000 last year.

Overall, about 14,000, or one in four, pregnancies were terminated each year, according to a National University Hospital (NUH) study.

In 2000, one third (33.2%) of the abortions were repeat abortions - a jump of almost two and a half times from 1996's 13.8%.

This is despite the variety of contraceptive options available in Singapore.

Condoms are found in most convenience shops, pills and intra-uterine devices are available at polyclinics.

-- Channel NewsAsia, 23 May 2005, More women turn to abortions instead of using contraceptives

What will happen if we ban abortions? Will these women carry their children to term? Let's not be naïve. They turned to abortion because they didn't want the babies, so even if we disallow the procedure, they still wouldn't want to get pregnant. Most likely they would become more careful about staying on the pill or insist that the guys use a condom -- not altogether bad outcomes, going by my moral queasiness about the idea of aborting foetuses -- but the key point is that you're not going to get anywhere near 14,000 new babies a year.

And those who still become pregnant will go to the backlanes to get the procedure done. Or Batam. It doesn't solve anything.

Tan wrote:

Another option would be to establish programmes that help women financially and emotionally to put them up for adoption, which would also help couples unable to conceive.

While I don't disagree that these would be good programs to have, this statement is easy to make, but the logic  -- that there are plenty of people who can't conceive and so banning abortions will help raise the birthrate -- is dubious. I've already argued that even if you can persuade the women to carry the babies to term, they still don't want them. 

As for adoption, what chance of getting the babies adopted? Very low, I think. Are there that many couples unable to conceive? I don't think so. As these statistics show, the problem with our birthrate is not one of Singaporeans not having sex, nor not being able to conceive. They do and they can. Singaporeans don't want children for economic reasons. How does adoption solve a cost problem?

The bottom line is: Forcing pregnant women to carry foetuses to term does not make anyone want them more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Added on 28 July 2008: A reader wrote me an email with very useful information from other countries:

QUOTE:

Being an organiser and frequent attendee of medical conferences, I have recently been involved in several O&G conference relating to contraception and menstrual disorders. One major theme that came out of these meetings was to see contraceptives as a means to prevent abortion. Available data from WHO has already shown that with increasing use of contraceptives, abortion rates drop drastically.

I had the opportunity to listen to several speakers from the region and Europe. Notably, two speakers from Korea and Philippines (where influence of the church is particularly strong) have concluded that even though abortion is officially banned in their countries, the actual rate of abortions did not decrease at all. In fact, the Korean speaker presented that when taking the ratio of abortion to live births, Korea had a shockingly high 78:100 ratio. This was way higher than countries where abortion is legal such as China (37.4:100), Sweden (16.9:100) and US (8.3:100). His presented study found that more than three quarters of the subjects had their abortions performed illegally or overseas, such as in China. The Filipino speaker stated that the rate of traditional backlane abortions make up the bulk of abortions.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the strong influence of the catholic church in Philippines on the political scene means that officially, family planning and contraceptives are not allowed or strongly discouraged. Apparently, the concept of taking a contraceptive pill is considered as "sin" and even interpreted to be abortifacient. So much so that a one speaker, quoting from another catholic doctor, commented that the best contraceptive for Catholics is surgical sterilisation, where you sin only once and not everyday.

Interestingly, this runs almost in parallel with your earlier article that having the death sentence does not necessarily mean that the rate of severe criminal offences will be lower. It is totally ironic that it is this group of so-called Pro-Life anti-abortion fundamentalist who are also the loudest in advocating for the death penalty and continued guns access in the USA. I still can't figure out this contradiction.

Either way, banning abortion and discouraging use of contraceptives are not going to see increase in birth rates. All that will increase is the number of illegal abortions and women coming into the ER in severe danger of dying from unsafe abortions. To add more credit to your essay, statistics from Poland have have confirmed that making abortions illegal did not result in increase births (Source: Fratczak, Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics).

 

 

However, I do know one demographic group who would be interested in greater availability of kids and consequently (but not necessarily so) easier adoptions: gay people. However, I'm pretty sure that's not what people like Tan Seow Hon have in mind. She and her ilk would probably be aghast, which only goes to show whether their true concern is the birthrate and raising children -- studies coming out show LGBT parents to be just as capable as heterosexual parents -- or imposing their moralistic absolutism on everybody else.

© Yawning Bread 

 

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