Abortion and Dependency
by Jim Hewes
Imagine a toddler at a pool. Three lifeguards are present and on duty. There’s another person present at the pool who has been a lifeguard in the past but isn’t currently on duty. The toddler suddenly runs into the pool in the deep end and is at risk of drowning. The lifeguards immediately spring into action, but the former lifeguard by the pool doesn’t need to help, since her responsibility is lessened because of those officials on duty.
Now imagine a different situation, again with a toddler. This time there’s one lifeguard present on duty. There is a former lifeguard present, but she’s not working. There are no other people in the pool. The toddler runs into the deep end of the pool. The lifeguard is distracted by something and doesn’t realize that the toddler is in the pool. The toddler could drown. In this case, the responsibility of the off-duty lifeguard is heightened because she alone can save a vulnerable person when no one else reasonably can. If she didn’t exercise her heightened responsibility, she would have to live with that tragic inaction the rest of her life.
Dependency and Principled Responsibility
It’s true that the child within the womb is totally dependent on the mother. Nobody else can care for her pre-born child as she can. This situation has heightened her responsibility rather than lessened it. That’s why pregnant women are warned about taking certain drugs which could harm their pre-born children, where other people may not be negatively affected.
Too often in the abortion debate, dependency is treated as a negative value, rather than a natural, often temporary phase of human life. This way of thinking is pervasive in the United States on so many levels. Yet there are many situations in life where one’s responsibility is a positive factor and is heightened, not lessened. In fact, there are at times “lifeguards” present in the form of family, community, churches, and pregnancy centers.
When a baby is born, parents care for this child If they’re unable to do so for one reason or another, the child can be placed for adoption or brought to a safe haven, where others are prepared and expected to take on responsibility for the newborn. Society recognizes that dependency calls forth care, not abandonment.
Pregnancy and Shared Responsibility
Likewise, when a woman is pregnant, her child bears no responsibility for coming into existence. The responsibility rests with the mother, at least until the child is viable. Yet she doesn’t have to face her pregnancy alone. In many cases an unexpected or untimely pregnancy can become a catalyst for addressing underlying difficulties and eventually finding practical solutions. These realizable solutions can offer the woman a fuller and more stable life than she may have imagined before the pregnancy.
Leah Libresco Sargeant captures this powerfully in her book The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (p. 2): “Women’s bodies and relationships are shaped by dependence, which makes us exceptional and unwelcome in a world that expects men and women to be autonomous (or at least pretend to be). A world that is unwilling to acknowledge dependence as foundational to human life is unable to treat women as equal in dignity.”
At various stages and circumstances of life outside of the womb, humans are also dependent upon others. Our value as human beings is not magically bestowed on us when we gain the ability to care for ourselves, nor do we lose our dignity or humanity when we cannot. Newborns, infants, conjoined twins (who depend on one another for survival), people with significant disabilities or serious brain injuries, the elderly with infirmities, especially with dementia, and people under anesthesia during surgery are all fully dependent on others for care and survival. In all of these situations—and many more—dependency increases responsibility, especially when there are no reasonable alternatives. Dependency does not diminish a person’s humanity; it reveals our obligation to protect and care for one another.
Dependency Before and After Birth
In some ways, the baby is more dependent after birth than before birth. In the womb, the child depends primarily on the mother maintaining healthy habits and attending regular medical appointments. After birth, a newborn baby is totally dependent, and their care requires many people and many actions: providing breast milk or baby formula, feeding the baby multiple times a day, purchasing and assembling a crib and placing the baby numerous times in the crib to sleep or holding them if they can’t sleep, buying baby clothes; changing their diapers several times a day, taking them to a doctor, including getting vaccines, and eventually introducing the baby to extended family members and community.
This shows that when dependency exists after birth, society recognizes a shared and unavoidable responsibility to protect life, even when biological parents cannot provide care themselves.
Conclusion: Dependency as a Human Good
We cannot assign or withdraw people’s value (in other words, penalize them) based on how dependent they are at any given moment on life’s continuum. Dependency is a fundamental feature of the human condition, present from the beginning of life until its natural end. Far from being a flaw, dependency is an ordinary and widespread part of what it means to be human.
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Other posts from Jim Hewes include:
Abortion When it Involves a Rape: See the Faces
Presenting about Abortion: Sharing Experiences
Abortion and Other Issues of Life: Connecting the Dots
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Experience
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
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