Testing the Rule

H.W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1965), distinguishes five possible senses of "the exception proves the rule." Sense #1 is the legal interpretation "Exception probat regulam [Lat.], the exception proves the rule. A legal maxim of which the complete text is: exceptio probat [or (con)firmat] regulam in casibus non exceptis--`the fact that certain exceptions are made (in a legal document) confirms that the rule is valid in all other cases.'" ; senses #3, #4, and #5 are popular constructions of the saying, which Fowler regards as more or less slipshod. But he thinks more highly of sense #2, which we may state this way: an apparent exception to a rule may serve on closer examination to strengthen it. By way of example he writes:

"We have concluded by induction that Jones the critic, who never writes a kindly notice, lacks the faculty of appreciation. One day a warm eulogy of an anonymous novel appears over his signature; we see that this exception destroys our induction. Later it comes out that the anonymous novelist is Jones himself; our conviction that he lacks the faculty of appreciation is all the stronger for the apparent exception when once we have found out that, being self-appreciation, it is outside the scope of the rule--which, however, we now modify to exclude it, saying that he lacks the faculty of appreciating others. Or again, it turns out that the writer of the notice is another Jones; then our opinion of Jones the first is only the stronger for having been momentarily shaken. These kinds of exception are of great value in scientific inquiry, but they prove the rule not when they are seen to be exceptions, but when they have been shown to be either outside of or reconcilable with the principle they seem to contradict."

The scientific definition, using an apparent exception to a rule to test its strength or validity, is the one I will use in this essay. I’m putting these at the beginning because the rule I am about to test generates strong emotional reactions in most people and I want you all to remember that we are scholars, trained to think critically despite our personal feelings. Any law, principle, or belief that cannot bear close scrutiny and the occasional challenge isn’t worthy of respect. In this age of political correctness, I find it necessary to add this disclaimer: I am not trying to preach or convert, nor disrespect the belief systems of others; I simply wish to examine a highly debated rule and invite my fellow scholars to do the same.

The legal definition above is important to remember because it states that the exceptions to a law actually strengthens and adds weight to the law in ALL other instances. This is important because the rule I chose to examine is the law that would overturn Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal once more. For the purposes of this examination, I will put aside the usual arguments about a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. I will leave the question of how far along in the pregnancy is too late for an abortion for others to debate. Fetal tissue and what to do with it is an entirely separate issue. For the remainder of this essay, I will only focus on the purpose, principle, and exceptions of the anti-abortion lobbyists.

The Pro-Life apologists believe that all life is sacred. They believe that life begins at conception, therefore abortion is murder. They believe that having a law that permits abortion cheapens the value of life, that those who make use of the law use abortion as a form of birth control. They do acknowledge exceptions that they would write into the law, when passed: abortion would be legal in cases of incest, rape, and medical necessity. Some of them have bumper stickers that read “It’s a child, not a choice,” a fairly clear and concise statement of belief.

All life is sacred. I believe that. I also believe that quality of life is important, a vital component to questions of life or death. I have a Living Will, a document that specifically states my wishes in the event of my becoming incapacitated. I agree with Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”. If I will never be able to think or to communicate my thoughts to others, I prefer to donate my organs to those who need them and allow my loved ones to accept my passing.

Others draw the line at constant pain, extreme infirmity, or no hope of cure. There are tests now that can be performed in utero to identify illnesses like Tay-Sachs, an incurable disease that causes the child to live in near-constant pain and die before reaching puberty. If my child had that marker, his life would still have been precious to me, but I may have terminated the pregnancy in order to spare him the pain and suffering. On the other hand, those tests could lead to abortions based on genetic imperfections. There are no easy answers, only more difficult questions.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when the debate centered on the notion of abortion as a means of birth control. My circle of friends included other abused children, trying to survive; we all seemed to recognize each other, without having to say a word. Roe v. Wade happened before we were born, but some of our circumstances included the exceptions and restricted our freedoms. Abortion was legal, if you were an adult or accompanied by a parent or guardian. To a girl whose father broke two fingers for not passing the salt at the dinner table, asking for permission to have an abortion was too scary to contemplate.

My friend Priscilla (all names changed to protect the sources) was the youngest of four children and the only girl. Her father and brothers were alcoholics and her mother was a worn-out shadow who worked two jobs to keep the fridge full of beer. She lost her virginity at the age of eleven, in the backseat of a car at Bryan Park. Sex with older boys and men and bragging about it to friends later was the only attention she got, so she made the most of it. She got pregnant when she was fourteen.

Priscilla was too scared to tell her parents she was ‘in trouble’, and the twenty-five year old man she was ‘dating’ disappeared as soon as she told him the news. My friend Donna decided to go to her mother and ask her to take Priscilla to the free clinic. We were all worried about her; Priscilla was the type to go out and do something stupid. She did. Priscilla performed a home abortion on herself with a coat hanger. Her mother found her the next morning, bleeding out. She survived, but Priscilla will never be able to carry a child to term. When I hear people talk about using abortion as birth control, as though it was a casual choice, I remember Priscilla, who didn’t feel like she had a choice at all.

We may never know whether Priscilla’s parents would have been supportive and helpful in her time of need. Donna still wishes that she had told her mother sooner; perhaps things would be different. To me, it illustrates the flaws in any system that doesn’t take human variations into account. As Leo Tolstoy began his novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If Priscilla had better support, better options, or even someone over the age of fifteen who cared what happened to her, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place.

Priscilla didn’t want to raise a child. There are scared girls all over the country who feel the same fear she did. There is a law in Virginia and other states that allows a mother to abandon her child with no consequences if she does it within the first three days and leaves the infant at a hospital or clinic. This law was created because too many girls kept their pregnancies secret and killed their infants or left them in dumpsters after giving birth. Fear often drives people to extremes they later regret.

Priscilla wasn’t the only girl in my circle of friends to ‘get in trouble’, but she was the only one who was promiscuous; the rest of them had steady boyfriends or had special circumstances. Deena was also the youngest child of alcoholics. She started drinking at the age of twelve. One night, when she was sixteen, Deena and her boyfriend parked at Bryan Park with a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a faulty condom. She and her boyfriend decided to raise the child together. They quit school, found jobs, and moved into a dingy apartment near Azalea Mall.

Deena’s mother had been too busy drinking and living her own life to structure Deena’s life (her mother is fifteen years older than Deena). When I visited Deena, I noticed that she was raising her daughter the only way she knew – the way her mother raised her. The boyfriend went to Florida to look for a better job and never came back. Deena’s daughter got pregnant at fifteen and left the kid with Deena. Deena doesn’t even know where she is or what she’s doing with her life. Deena’s granddaughter has more rules and more supervision than most of her age mates.

Teen pregnancy is an issue that cannot be ignored. When I hear people complain about how children today have no discipline, I laugh. Generally, people do not appreciate the structure parents provide until well into their twenties; before then, they often complain that parents are too strict and that they would never do that to their own children. I have five friends who had children before the age of nineteen, all of whom were permissive parents. That is one of many problems that occur when children raise children. We all wish we had known then what we know now; we would have been stricter with our children because we understand why it is needed.

Leigh was the quiet one, but she was always there because she didn’t want to go home. Her mother would have to track her down and drag her home. When she was thirteen, she found out she was pregnant. We were all surprised because we knew that Leigh stayed away from boys. We bought her the test kit and stayed with her when she read the results.

She went into Donna’s bathroom and helped herself to an entire bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol. She didn’t succeed in her suicide attempt, but it did cause a miscarriage. Her parents sent her to Westbrook Hospital for treatment, but she was never the same. Years later, she told us that she took the pills because she couldn’t stand the thought of carrying her father’s baby. None of us ever thought to tell her she could have gotten an abortion; it was never an option.

Has anyone considered the irony of the incest exception? Leigh’s father woke her in the middle of the night with a knife to her throat and told her in detail how he was going to kill her whole family and then himself if she ever told on him. She still has a scar on her hand from trying to push the knife away. How could anyone expect her to walk into a clinic and tell a total stranger the secret she’s been choking on for years? Most incest victims are under the age of sixteen when they are molested, so they need a parent or guardian present to get the abortion. Which parent should be present, the one who molested the girl or the one who let it happen?

Rosemary had bad-tempered parents. She referred to them as the Gestapo. They believed in using the belt when Rosemary talked back, cursed, forgot her chores, or rolled her eyes. She was not the type to stand still and take her lumps, so she would run when her mom or stepfather got the belt. Their response was to lock her out of the house.

When she got pregnant, she found the college student who used to baby-sit her and paid her fifty dollars to pretend to be her sister. They went to the Fan Free Clinic, wherein Rosemary looked the counselor straight in the eye and told her that her stepfather raped her. She lied because the counselors told her they had to inform her parents – it was the law. Rosemary had taken three years of Drama and used it to pretend to be Leigh for a few hours. What she didn’t know was that the counselor would have her stepfather arrested. The court ordered a DNA test on the aborted fetus and caught her in her lie. Rosemary was released from Bon Air Learning Center when she turned nineteen.

The U.S. Department of Justice in a 1997 summary, Sex Offenses and Offenders, reinforces a striking observation found in several studies: teenagers report the highest per capita rates of exposure to rape and sexual assault. Illustrative of official records, police reports in three states reveal that 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18. To further support the view of youth being at high risk, two-thirds of convicted rapists serving time in state prisons, in one study, indicated that their victims included girls and young women under the age of 18—and nearly four in 10 imprisoned violent sex offenders said their victims included those who were age 12 or younger. Overall, the U.S. Justice department reports that per capita rates of rape and other sexual assault are highest among residents age 16 to 19, low-income residents, and urban residents. For the youngest victims of rape—those younger than age 12—the offender was known to them. Forty-three percent of these young victims were sexually assaulted by family members—about four times the proportion found among rape victims age 30 or older. Victims under the age of 19 were most likely to have been assaulted by a family member or someone known to them (36 percent versus 3 percent).

My friend Sabrina enjoyed sex. She had a boyfriend and spent a lot of nights at his apartment. One night she didn’t want to have sex and told her boyfriend so, in no uncertain terms. He hit her, tied her to his bed, and spent the next fifteen hours raping her. She called her parents the next morning, after he left, and her mother took her to the hospital. The hospital staff examined her, documented her injuries, and offered her the morning-after pill. Her mother, a devout fundamentalist Christian, refused to allow her to take it. Sabrina could have insisted, but her parents would have kicked her out of her home. Fortunately, she was not pregnant, but she has no idea what she would have done if she had been.

I became pregnant at the age of twenty-two. My husband and I were delighted when the doctor’s initial exam confirmed my pregnancy. The follow-up exam revealed that I had three serious medical issues that complicated the pregnancy: toxemia, high blood pressure, and gestational diabetes. The doctors told me that it was not likely that my child and I would live long enough to give birth.

My fundamentalist Southern Baptist mother asked me to terminate the pregnancy, as did my father, my sisters, cousins who hadn’t called me in years, and just about everyone else who heard the news. The only holdouts were me and my husband. We had grown to love the child between visits and the doctors were clear about my only having one chance at childbirth. I spent most of the next six months flat on my back, too sick to think. Erik was born six weeks premature, jaundiced and anemic. We both survived.

“It’s a child, not a choice.” I disagree. I think it’s both a child and a choice. We must choose, whether the law allows or prevents the termination of a pregnancy. Personally, I resent the implication that, given the choice, most people would choose to terminate a pregnancy unless someone intervened.

Let’s examine the exceptions that everyone agrees should be allowed.

Medical necessity seems simple on the surface. If a pregnancy puts the life of the child and/or the mother at risk, termination should be an option. Many medications for the treatment of high blood pressure, diabetes, and mental illnesses cannot be taken if you are pregnant or nursing. To make exceptions for medical necessity, many factors must be taken into consideration. Do we really want to take a paranoid schizophrenic off of medication, for any reason? She would have to be under constant supervision until at least a month after childbirth. Who will pay the medical bills for that?

In cases of medical necessity, I can foresee a different problem. What happens when a birth defect or medical disorder in either parent or child justifies abortion? Would parents who chose to carry the child to term be condemned for it? Would health care for the child be more difficult to obtain because abortion was an option? Would HMOs pay for the abortion but not ongoing treatment? Where would one draw the line between euthanasia and eugenics?

In cases of rape and incest, the problems are more complex and contain emotional minefields. Two thirds of all rapes go unreported. This includes incestuous rape. The secrecy alone complicates matters. How can they make use of the exception we all agree they should have if they cannot even speak of it? Then, many of these exceptions are caused by the very parents or guardians who are supposed to be protecting the children. How can they make use of the exception when the person who must give permission for the procedure may be the perpetrator?

There are a multitude of considerations I have omitted here. I have left out the Pro-Life contingent who would prefer no abortions with entopic pregnancies (which would kill the mother and child) as the sole exception. I have omitted the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal funding for abortions for Medicaid recipients, people who can’t afford health care, let alone children. I have remained silent about the overwhelming numbers of children severely abused by parents who never wanted to be parents. I do not want to spark debate about people who have the power to walk into a clinic and make the hard choices and accept the consequences.

I realize that I am mostly concentrating on people who are under the age of eighteen and need written parental consent, but they are the people I knew growing up. They are the ones who did not benefit from Roe v. Wade. They are the ones who would lose the few options they have if Roe v. Wade is ever overturned. They are young and desperate and not thinking straight. They are children who are in as much need of our protection as any child who has not taken a breath.

These are the exceptions that (prove) test the rule. Do the exceptions support the rule, change the rule, or validate it? The rule, according to Pro-Life apologists, is that all life is sacred and abortion is wrong, except in cases of incest, rape, or medical necessity. The medical necessity exception alters the rule to allow for quality of life and health considerations; it seems to strengthen the rule. The rape and incest exceptions are more problematic. In cases of rape and incest, these exceptions are allowed because carrying the child to term would further traumatize a victim of rape or incest. Yet, less than one percent of abortions are provided for victims of rape or incest. Most of these victims continue to suffer in silence. What does it say about the rule if the exceptions can’t be used?

I believe that life is sacred. I believe that life begins at conception. I believe that quality of life is an important element in making life-or-death decisions. I believe that when people have the right to choose, they will most likely make the most ethical choice they can. I believe that fear robs people of their ability to reason and make ethical choices. I believe that the energy involved in both sides of the abortion debate would be better spent in protecting the children from harm and supporting those we have failed to protect.

What do you believe?