#in case it's not clear above i'm pretty firmly pro-choice

[liskantope]

I have a feeling that picking over my distinction between "X is a great thing" and "X has a net positive outcome", both as a general concept and on the object level of applying it to abortion, is likely to lead us to one of those intellectual impasses that can't be overcome regardless of effort and sheer frustration, much like my experiences arguing with people over "lesser of two evils" voting (in fact, the concepts are probably related). But I'll take a stab at explaining my position in this reblog, at least for as much time as I can afford before getting back to work.

(See replies for more context of this discussion.)

When I hear someone say something is great, I take it to mean that something is intrinsically a positive, wonderful thing, mostly regardless of circumstance or alternate possibilities. This is a much stronger assertion than claiming that something is better on the net than most other reasonably likely outcomes. So for instance, kittens are great (we could say that I <3 kittens); beautiful sunsets are great; libraries are great.

Note that "X is great" -type statements, to my interpretation, come with a little less intellectual rigor than "X has positive effects on the net, in a situation of realistic alternative possibilities" statements: they are just expressing a feeling and ignoring downsides that might "behind the scenes" be unavoidably associated with the thing we love (e.g. the existence of kittens, which is a happy thing, leads to the existence of cats dying, which is sad; beautiful sunsets involve clouds which are probably making the view gloomy somewhere else; public libraries require taxpayer money and trees and a human-made structure taking the place of natural habitats). The point is that, in the here and now, the thing we are talking about is a lovely, happy thing. But also, even though "X is great" statements lack some of the rigor, I still call them overall stronger statements than "X is beneficial on the net", because usually the downsides really are minor and the better alternatives really are relatively unrealistic.

I'll expand on this a bit further in the most down-to-earth example above of (public) libraries. Someone could (rightly) point out that everything comes with a downside, and that libraries are no exception: they cost taxpayer money, and they involve building a structure that damages local ecosystems. But only a fairly extreme libertarian type values libraries so little or abhors taxation so much as to see the former as a reason to abolish libraries (more reasonable libertarians would still say that publicly-accessible libraries are great but we should find a way to make them privately funded yet still widespread and accessible somehow). And only a fairly extreme environmentalist opposes the building of public libraries on previously unused land (and in most actual situations nowadays, it would not be previous unused land, and may even be an already existing building). And then someone could say, "Well, a world with libraries in it still isn't as good as an alternative world where any book one wishes to browse can sprout inside one's own home at a whim", but that is clearly still a fairly unrealistic hypothetical. (All books being freely and easily accessible by online download is a more realistic scenario but creates problems of its own with the entire book industry, and there's nothing quite like holding a physical book in your hands anyway.)

I would argue that abortions are not at all like kittens, beautiful sunsets, or libraries. I think this boils to several points. One is that the actual process of having an abortion is pretty unpleasant and potentially leaves a permanent effect on the body (also, usually expensive unless we're looking at a scenario with free health care). Secondly, there is an intrinsic aspect of the idea of destroying a fetus and ending the timeline of what probably would have been an independent human being that is disturbing to many, and that includes many who are pro-choice. We could argue about how much of that is to do with socialization and prevailing attitudes and whatnot, how much is to do with natural human emotions and instincts towards anything that we understand to be its own lifeform and which looks somewhat like a human baby, and how much of it has to do with the ethics of abortion actually being a philosophically gray area perhaps determined case by case (I lean towards saying a lot of it, though not all of it, is the latter two). Regardless, it is objective reality that a ton of people, including pro-choice people who get abortions, feel this way and may even find getting an abortion to be deeply traumatizing in a way that most medical procedures aren't. (I would add that it seems extremely alienating and disrespectful to them to act like those feelings don't exist or are just silly irrationality -- see my exchange with deerydear in the replies.)

Another crucial feature of the question of whether or not "abortions are great actually" is that of hypothetical alternatives: unless you disagree with my whole last paragraph and think there are zero unpleasant aspects to getting an abortion, it's clear that you would rather nobody was in a circumstance that compelled them to get an abortion in the first place; in other words, it's better not to have an unwanted pregnancy. The "<3" statement that the pro-choice position best maps onto is really "access to abortion is great", and that's a very different statement from "abortion is great"! The former says that in the bad situation of having an unwanted pregnancy, being able to choose to get an abortion is good because getting an abortion might well be the lesser of two evils; it's better than the realistic alternative of having to carry the fetus to term. That seems to me like a super, super important distinction. I get the impression that for you (and a bunch of others like you) with your feeling of "it's just like any other kind of health care, I don't see why it should be considered any different", it may be easy not to see the distinction.

But then, even if abortion were just like any other health care, each one of them (rather than the freedom to choose to have them) would still not intrinsically be a nice, lovely, good thing. Using medicine is always just the lesser of two evils, chosen under the unfortunate circumstance of having an ailment. We can consider surgery in particular: surgery itself is an unpleasant, painful, time-taking thing often physically traumatizing to the body, and it's widely acknowledged that nobody wants to have to get it. But access to surgery if one needs it is a very good thing. And moreover, the invention of and mastery of surgery and surgical techniques is a wonderful thing, one of the most fantastic achievements of humankind! That doesn't contradict the fact that we'd pretty much all rather live in a universe in which nobody ever needed it! Anyway, the distinctions between all these statements are pretty vast in my eyes.

(Compare this whole discussion with the frequently-held one about lesser-of-two-evils voting: there is a big difference between a sticker saying "I <3 Trump/Biden" and "I'm going to vote for Trump/Biden because he's not as bad as the other guy" or even a "Trump/Biden 2024" sticker. In fact, possibly a majority of voters for each candidate this November will be in the "lesser-of-two-evils" camp rather than the "<3" camp.)

Where political strategy goes, I'll just say that, as I asserted above, it seems to be objective fact that huge swaths of people, including many who are undecided, lean pro-choice, or are even staunchly pro-choice, regard abortion as an unpleasant and potentially traumatizing thing, whether we like it or not, and it would seem that "legal, safe, and rare" rhetoric would be the best way to go here. It seems certainly more realistic and feasible than changing hearts and minds to your point of view, in which you seem to find it obvious that abortion is no worse or any more difficult to choose than any other type of health care (a view that I suspect, admittedly without evidence, is held by a minority even of firm pro-choicers).

I recently saw a student at the university I work at with a backpack or laptop (I don't remember which) with a sticker on it that said "I ♡ Abortions".

I get that college is a time to be edgy or whatever, but this isn't a great way to win hearts and minds over the pro-choice cause, dude.

[getoffthesoapbox]

Hello dear I want to ask you something about Yuki. I think you do really great analysis! I read somewhere about Yuki and her guilt complex and I've always feel like she feels guilty over kaname and his shit, but not over Zero and her awful deeds she put him through. I never see how she found herself undeserving his love, it always was just like "oh Zero, I'm sorry but I can't so let's wait another decade"! It's disgusting. And Zero OK with it? It's too unrealistic for me

Hello right back at you, my friend! I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed my analyses! Thank you for reading them! 

I agree with you that as things currently stand right now (especially with the reader having been firmly shut out of Yuuki’s head since Night 88), it’s hard to understand Zero and Yuuki and whatever their “it’s complicated” relationship is right now.

Right now it’s clear Yuuki isn’t pulling her weight and Zero’s doing all the heavy lifting. However, Zero seems to be in no rush and at ease with the situation, which makes it difficult to determine what, exactly, is the hold up. Now, to be fair, Zero does seem to regress by the time we get through the 36 black box years between VKM 3 and VKM 1′s scene with Yori——he’s back to being bitter about Kaname. 

Unfortunately we’re suffering a bit from the fact that Hino didn’t know she’d have a full series to flesh out when she wrote the initial special chapters that make up the first volume of VKM. These chapters are predominantly pandering to please fans and aren’t necessarily good indicators of what’s really going on behind the scenes in Yuuki’s and Zero’s relationship.

That being said, I do think we’re starting to see subtle signs that Yuuki has a lot of guilt toward Zero. I like to call the focus on Kaname the “red herring” to the real problems that lay between Zeki. Kaname is the lowest hanging fruit of the many, many issues they have yet to work out. 

Zero’s also not helping the situation by enabling Yuuki. =P (We’ll just set him aside for now.)

Before I dig into VKM’s evidence that Yuuki feels a deeply entrenched guilt toward Zero about everything that happened in VK, I want to go back to VK itself and just highlight a couple scenes that get overlooked because Kaname’s a drama queen and steals the show in the latter half of volume 19. 

When Yuuki takes Zero’s memories, she apologizes and cries. After she confirms that Zero is stable in Night 89, she has an exchange with Kaito where he basically calls her the scum of the earth. She smiles, implying that she agrees with Kaito’s assessment. So we know for a fact that Yuuki post-Night 88 feels she is scum because of what she did to Zero. We also know from Nights 79 and 89 that Yuuki feels responsible for all of Kaname’s actions since the initial Rido incident, which means she feels personally responsible for Zero’s family’s murders and Zero’s pain. These things carry into all her actions for the rest of VK and into VKM. She reaffirms this later when she blasts Kaname when he confesses in Night 89 to regretting that he didn’t dump her onto Zero sooner (before she got to Zero’s memories) after he had Isaya turn her. Yuuki thinks both she and Kaname are scum for what they’ve both done to Zero.

You can see this further justified in Night 90. When Zero arrives, Yuuki huddles in her covers and doesn’t want to greet him, which is a classic sign of guilt. She reaffirms this after Kaname parades her in front of memoryless Zero, reminding Kaname that they have no right to even show their faces in front of him. This implies two things: 1.) she thinks both she and Kaname have messed with Zero’s life like the arrogant Purebloods they are and b.) that both of them have betrayed Zero so egregiously that they’re not even worthy of his presence. (This also implies Yuuki feels guilty for sleeping with Kaname, but that’s neither here nor there.)

After all this, Zero manages to get his memories back and then tries to save Kaname for Yuuki. If you think this girl didn’t feel she was unworthy before this, imagine how much worse she feels after this. After all she did for Zero, he still tried to save the man who ruined his life for her, even after all she herself put him through. Pretty huge stuff. Zero was already a saint in her eyes (see her response to Night 90), but his actions in Night 92-93 would basically paralyze her because she views herself as so far “beneath” him. 

That’s where we land at the end of the original series. VKM picks up where we left off, and so far here are the hints we’ve gotten that Yuuki’s actually not all that comfortable with Zero’s sudden full acceptance of everything awful she’s ever done:

She runs off on him immediately after he assures her that her having Kaname’s child doesn’t change his wish for them. Yori hints in VKM 1 that the reason Yuuki did this was because Zero’s kindness is difficult to understand (meaning Yuuki feels Zero should be angry at her/resent her, and the fact that he isn’t makes her feel even more guilty toward him).

Yuuki apologizes to him twice in VKM 3′s bench scene about not being able to have a child with him yet. She wouldn’t do this if she didn’t feel guilty toward him about it. 

Yuuki gets upset on his behalf in VKM 5 for being so loving and affectionate toward her when she isn’t ready to fully respond to him. She tries to let him know he’s free to leave her (which is a subtle implication that she may actually be afraid his feelings for her aren’t real——see Night 86 and Zero’s question about their feelings being manipulated; this may still be playing in to Yuuki’s fears about Zero eventually feeling “trapped” with her).

Also in VKM 5, Yuuki admits to peeking at the first pages of Zero and Ai’s exchange diary and being touched by Zero’s thoughts about Ai’s birth. This implies two things: 1.) that Yuuki and Zero have never actually discussed how Zero feels about Ai (this implies Yuuki is afraid of Zero’s true feelings about some of the not-so-pro-Zero things she’s done) and 2.) that Yuuki has been afraid that Zero all along resents Ai and is relieved to have found out he doesn’t. Both of these imply that, whatever her feelings for Ai and Kaname, she feels guilt toward Zero about Ai and Kaname.

Yuuki flips out at Ai when Ai merely offers an innocent question about whether Zero is staying away because he’s angry at Yuuki for still holding on to Kaname. This is not a natural response for a woman who’s just slowly moving on from a previous relationship, and it implies that Yuuki has a lot of emotions where Zero’s feelings about her feelings for Kaname are concerned. Obviously we’ll eventually find out more about this in future chapters.

Yuuki appears to deeply appreciate the role Zero played in “saving” her from the darkness Kaname’s semi-suicide put her in. She appreciates him standing by her side. She also seems disturbed in the flashback that Zero would consider making huge sacrifices that go against his own principles in order to bring Kaname back for her.

This is where we’ve sort of left off in VKM. As you can see, there’s a lot of subtle evidence that’s beginning to stack in favor of Yuuki having a deeply entrenched guilt complex toward Zero. She thought she treated him like scum, he’s never once reproached her for that, and he’s been nothing but an angel to her ever since. She likely feels completely unworthy of him. 

The reason Hino is focusing on Yuuki’s guilt toward Kaname right now is because Yuuki committed another deeply entrenched crime in Kaname’s case——she could never give him her heart. She drove Kaname to suicide because she couldn’t love him romantically the way he wanted. Yuuki’s got to deal with her Kaname issues first before she can then work with Zero to overcome the deep inferiority complex she now has toward the man who has literally saved her over and over again, and continues to wait patiently by her side. 

(Not only the above issues, but Yuuki also has several other issues that are potentially still active in her relationship with Zero. One is her fear that he really just loves the human Yuuki and that the vampire Yuuki has never been his preferred choice. The other is that his feelings may or may not be real, that they may be manipulated, and that perhaps one day she will drive him into a corner from which he cannot escape much like Kaname did to her. These are other factors that play into Yuuki keeping Zero at arms’ length that I believe will begin to surface once the Kaname tip of the iceberg has been dealt with.)

I went off on a bit of a ramble, but I hope this helps a bit. =) I do think Hino will address all of this by the time VKM is over, but for now we all have no choice but to hold our frustration at bay and bide our time. =)