A victory for fetus rights!!!

Great Debates
21

Glad you brought this up. Back in the early '90s, the pro-lifers were agitating for something that kanicbird would have considered an even bigger ‘victory’: funerals for all aborted fetuses. (To be precise, they’d have regulated disposal of the remains in the same manner as the state does the remains of those who die after they’re born.

If applied equally to miscarriages, it would have upset a hell of a lot of recently (but no longer) expectant mothers.

It occured to me at the time that one could do a great survey of pro-life women based on this:

Q0. (Verify sex and age of interviewee. If not female and >18, end interview.)

Q1. Would you describe yourself as (a) pro-life, (b) pro-choice, (c) other?
(If (b) or (c), end interview.)

Q2. Have you ever had a miscarriage? (If no, end interview.)

Q3. How many miscarriages have you had?

Q4. (Ask for each miscarriage up to the answer given to Q3.) How far along was your pregnancy when it terminated?

Q5. (Ask once after each time Q4 is answered.) Were the remains (a) disposed of by a hospital, doctor’s office, or other medical facility where the miscarriage occured or where you went after you miscarried; (b) disposed of informally at home or at some other location; (c) buried; or (d) cremated?

Kinda wanted to see whether pro-lifers really believed fetuses were ‘person’ enough to bury or cremate, as they were ready to demand that others do.

22

Point/Counterpoint: “U.S. Out Of My Uterus” vs. “We Must Deploy Troops To Jessica Linden’s Uterus Immediately”

As for the OP, I think he’s right; we should issue death certificates for aborted fetuses, along with miscarriages, ghost pregnancies, and placentas. Since the existing medical establishment is clearly incapable of dealing with the mass of paperwork this would entail, I suggest they farm it out to contractors. As it happens, I’ve just started a franchise issuance for generating death certificates en masse. For $20k you can buy your own franchise (including a free seminar on “How To Become Wealthy By Taking Advantage Of The Lack Of Public Education In Science”, and I guarentee it’ll pay it’s own cost in weeks.

Stranger

23

Well, yes, I do regard old age as a horrible disease that kills billions. Especially since the people who die from it are people, not clumps of cells. Miscarriage and the death of an actual person simply don’t compare.

24

Is preventing or treating a stroke playing God? I’d like for once to get a firm definition of what does and does not constitute playing God. The rules, as it were.

25

[digression]
My grandfather died two months ago from a bleed in his brain. He was 91. The hospital did keep him on life support for a few days to see if he would come out of it, but instead he deteriorated suddenly, & that was that. At no point would the doctor operate, because in his experience 91-year-olds could not survive the surgery. I don’t consider this attitude to be equivalent to refusing to set a broken bone or treat an infectious disease in a younger person.

I know there is a movement of people who think that death from old age is some kind of plague, but I think they honestly must have no real knowledge of gerontology.

My grandfather didn’t die before his time. It’s not like he died of smallpox. He lived a long life, & died in a mercifully quick way without suffering a long mental deterioration. I could hardly hope for better.

Human beings are mortal; we deteriorate. We just do. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in God or not; realistically, we do not live forever. It’s a fact of life. And with new human beings being born all the time, it’s a good thing, too. I suppose that maybe some Daoist masters really became immortal, which would violate this rule. But to conquer death for all, we would have to lose birth. And that would be a horror, for it would cost us the joy of youth & newness.
[/digression]

I accept mortality. I accept gravity. I accept that the atmosphere on Mars is too saturated with carbon dioxide for me to breathe & survive. I accept that not every conception results in a viable fetus. To paraphrase my grandma, why wish for impossible things?

To accept that old people die is not to claim that the murder of anyone over 75 should be legal. To accept that death is natural is not to claim that murder should be legal. To accept that death by infectious disease is (normally) natural causes is not to consider biological warfare morally acceptable. To accept a certain statistical incidence of infant mortality as inevitable is not to consider infanticide justified. To accept that >1/3 of pregnancies spontaneously abort is not to consider induced abortion a moral act. Kimstu’s argument is based on false assumptions.

In fact, I’ve known some social conservatives who didn’t believe in vaccinating their children. I don’t find it odd that someone would accept God or nature taking away his child, but not another human being attacking his child. So this whole, “If you’re against abortion, you should try to save every incipient pregnancy,” line is just dead wrong. It’s not even something you believe, or something anyone with basic medical knowledge believes in, just a ridiculous attempt to mock someone else’s worldview–& maybe you just don’t understand theistic/non-humanistic morality.

All that said, the law in the OP is deeply deeply silly. Abortions, spontaneous & induced, happen all the time for a variety of reasons, many fetuses simply can never survive to full term anyway, & which ones can’t always be determined; therefore full legal rights should not be granted until very late in pregnancy in any case.

26

<ahem> mee mee mee mee…
(singing)
Every sperm is sacred
Every sperm is great
If a sperm is wasted
God gets quite irate.

27

My mother in law died a year ago, at 90, of pneumonia, quickly and without pain, right after a very happy birthday. So I understand how some deaths can be welcome. But how would you feel if the government tried to keep your grandfather alive, against medical, because some politicians had the religious conviction that life should be preserved at all costs?

Pro-choice does not mean that we feel everyone should get an abortion, or even that everyone should feel the way we do. All it means is that we want politicians and pro-lifers, however well meaning, to keep the fuck out of decisions a woman has to make with her doctor. That is all we ask. Is it too much?

28

Well, I didn’t mean to say that I was opposed to pro-choice stands, nor that I supported this kind of law. I just thought Kimstu’s argument was ridiculous, & was responding to that. Sort of a digression to scold his digression, which was a poorly considered argument that he apparently thought quite clever. I wasn’t trying to represent myself as a pro-lifer, but there was a little bleed between talking about my own point of view & talking about pro-life or religious points of view. That was unclear, & poorly argued, & I apologize.

As far as the OP goes, I think, & have said in this thread, it’s a silly idea. It’s one of those things that pro-lifers latch onto as a “tactic” that ends up looking cheap, stupid, & poorly considered, because it is.

I prefer not to identify as either pro-life or pro-choice, both because I’ve been in environments where it was a huge identity politics thing, & because I don’t really believe in the underlying assumptions of the ideologies: Seamless Garment nor “total reproductive freedom.”

29

But Kimstu does have a very valid point, which is that pro-lifers are not consistent in their treatment of a fetus. Let’s say someone was in favor of infanticide in a society where there is a lot of early infant death, due to infections and low birth rate and such. Wouldn’t you want to work really hard at eliminating both infanticide and early infant death? Our society as a whole certainly does. The new laws which allow mothers to drop off their newborns at hospitals without fear of prosecution are right in line with our efforts to save newborns who are sick.
But pro-lifers don’t act as if the fetus were a human life, except when someone wants to voluntarily terminate (or more and more often, just prevent) a pregnancy. If they were really serious they’d be funding ways of pulling an at-risk fetus out, and learning to grow it outside the womb. Or improve maternal health and nutrition. Or sponsor education to keep future mothers off drugs and alcohol. As has already been said, that miscarriages are natural is no excuse, since we fight nature’s way all the time in hospitals.

I think they are more driven by a feeling that people who abort are violating god’s will than a desire to oppress women - but that is not any better an excuse.

30

It’s wonderful to be concerned about the weak. I’m always a little confused about the strong opinions of anti-abortionists regarding the embryos and fetuses which do not progress to become human bodies.

My observation, unscientific, is that the overwhelming number of those opposed to abortion are religiously inclined. The more vociferous they are, typically the more religious they are.

Of those opposed, the nearly universal position I’ve heard them take is that embryos and fetuses are human from conception, and have a soul.

This religious viewpoint nearly always also embraces some concept of eternal life, and frequently embraces a concept that some souls end up in a heaven, and some in a hell.

In that paradigm, its universally accepted that the souls of these immature human bodies wind up in heaven; typically this based on some sort of notion that their demise occured before they were mentally able to reject the religious belief that enables them to attain heaven.

The consequence of this belief structure is that abortions, spontaneous or medical, keep many souls from going to hell. In a value system where the ultimate good is the permanent consequence of where you end up for eternity, embryonic and fetal demise is a very postive outcome, since you are dead before you can screw up your eternal life with bad choices, and since eternal life is much more important than temporal earthly life.

Abortionists have saved more souls than Billy Graham (depending on how you do the numerical accounting, but you get the idea…)

31

Wait a second…I wasn’t going to get one before? Oh, man! Glad I saw this thread!

:wink:

32

And those 88-year-olds are issued a death certificate, and given a proper burial. Until right-to-lifers insist on the same for miscarried fetuses as well as aborted ones, their position is fatally inconsistent.

33

Some have brought up that miscarriages happen, and when granny is on her deathbed every medical effort is made - so why not the same effort. Answer is that the woman’s right gets in the way. For women who chose that effort is made, going all the way of implantation into her uterus.

Now at least for granny she can chose for herself if such efforts are to be made, a fetus has to depend on the mother to make the choice.

As for no birth certificate, I don’t see any requirement that one have been issued before a death certificate be issued, also if they want they can issue one as still born, which would mean the death certificate time of death will before the time of birth - sounds strange but you will get over it - citizenship will be established at the time of the still birth. No name - no problem people who’s names are not known die sometimes.

I do like the idea of a funeral for those little guys too.

34

Hmm, with the social security number of both parents on the certificate?

35

Speaking of proposed foolish and coercive state laws:

South Dakota (whose citizens had the good sense to overturn the legislature’s sweeping abortion ban) has a bill pending that would compel women to view a fetal ultrasound before having an abortion.

Here’s an idea for an amendment to the bill: Require legislators to view graphic photos showing the consequences of illegal septic abortions and pregnancy-related fatalities, before voting on any abortion-related legislation.

36

That bill was already proposed (in Virginia): Bill Tracking - 2005 session > Legislation (Not to test every woman, but to have all miscarriages reported to the police.)

37

The point being, nothing’s stopping pro-lifers from having funerals for miscarried fetuses already. And to the best of my ability to tell, it ain’t happening. (At least not before the point of viability, when it can be classified as a premature birth where the infant didn’t survive.)

When pro-lifers bury their miscarried fetuses as they would any other family members that died, then I might actually have reason to take seriously their claims that they regard fetuses as being just as much a person as the rest of us.

38

And then they’ll turn around and bitch about how doctors order too many unnecessary medical procedures, so we need less generous health insurance to hold costs down.

39

Catholics often do, and are encouraged to…here are a couple cites for you:

http://www.rcab.org/OfficeForWorship/PastoralNotes/Deceased_stillborn_miscarried_infants.html

http://www.catholicchronicle.org/archives_article.asp?ID=453

Personally, I think the death certificate idea is kind of goofy…but it is a huge misconception that miscarried babies are not considered a huge loss. I have had two, myself, and if medical science could have prevented it, I would have been very, very happy. I don’t know why early miscarriage is not being studied more, but if I knew of a way to support research in this area, I would definitely contribute. And not just because I am pro-life on moral principles, but because I know firsthand how hard & disappointing early miscarriages are.

40

Aside from making you feel good, what purpose does making all this paperwork mandatory serve?