I am talking about pregnancies in women that will die if they give birth, but the fetus could very well survive. These are not ectopic, and there is no guarantee the fetus will die - in fact it could be very likely that it will survive. However, proceeding with the pregnancy will put the mother in grave physical danger.
ETA: And yes, I mean removing them before they are viable outside the womb - sorry for being unclear. I mean “viable” in the sense that if carried to term they would be OK.
IMO, this is grossly inadequate and its the whole problem when people try to defend these beliefs. From this scientist’s perspective, your answer leads to an even greater absurdity; you’re creating a definition which defies logic in any other circumstance only because you can’t define it at some place along the development stages. Shouldn’t the answer be, I don’t know but it surely can’t be an embryo? It can’t. Right?
My moral compass is simple; reduction in suffering. What suffers more, a woman forced to have a baby or a fertilized egg that doesn’t develop further? That’s how I think of it. I honestly doubt (but don’t know for sure) that late term fetuses even suffer much. They barely have a cerebral cortex formed. Surely laboratory mice suffer more. I think Roe v. Wade was quite conservative in protecting women’s ability to have an abortion only in the first trimester. Could have easily gone into the second. But I’m willing to compromise.
It seems to me that you have a problem drawing a line somewhere along development because of some special attribute of a human something or other even before it’s clearly not a person. So special that you go to an extreme demarcation (a point in which there’s clearly not a person) to defend it. What is that specialness? Special enough to allow government intrusion? This is the question I never get an answer to.
I think that once you really, really mull this over, you’ll see that the debate (even my side of the debate) becomes so abstract that you should feel uncomfortable about the government intrusion.
I know you say, “Well the government intrudes on a lot of things.” However, this anti-abortion laws are a major intrusion on women and I see no practical benefits to society.
This thread is moving way too fast.
I tried Google, but could not come up with anything really definite. My google-fu is not working today. I think the gestation limit varies by state.
ETA: I think 23 weeks is way too far along to have an abortion.
Yes, most people do.
And my answer is: it’s never ok to deliberately kill a person to save another person.
However, it is ok to perform whatever medical intervention is necessary to save the woman’s life, even if the result is almost certainly going to be the death of the fetus, because that death is not the goal. It’s not intended. We’re not blind to the near-certainty of its happening, but we don’t intend to do it, nor try to make it happen. We are trying to save the life of the mother, and if the fetus dies, that was an unintended (even if virtually certain) secondary effect.
One limit currently in the news is Indiana’s new law which bans abortion after the 20th week. Many states allow them later.
Wow. I’d really prefer you didn’t do that.
Send them all the money you wish, but not in my name.
Does (s?)he know your IRL name? Cuz I don’t think an internet handle is in the same ballpark.
Yes. I see that he’s attempting to answer in a subsequent post but it’s still not good enough for me. Actually I think I’m trying to find out what the moral basis is for being worried about movable demarcations or a set one such as birth is so wrong. What is the moral wrong of killing a fetus. Suffering or the special human sauce? I think it’s the special human sauce but I’m not sure. If so, what is the special human sauce and why is it so special?
I find that overly Jesuitical.
If the entire procedure is removing the fetus, then it’s hard to claim it is a “unintended side effect” of saving the mother. That’s like doing an amputation and then claiming you weren’t really trying to kill the limb. Perhaps it works as a religious tenant, but it would provide me no comfort if I truly believed in full person-hood at conception.
I have been reading along this whole train wreck and I have a question. I am a Canadian. If I choose to have my baby (or an abortion) it is paid for by our public health system.
I have heard Americans complain that just giving birth in a hospital can cost thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars (if there are complications).
To me, that you would have to pay for the health care of the pregnancy if you were to maintain it would be a major obstacle to giving your child up for adoption, would it not?
Are there some other legalities or realities about the American health care system that I am missing that make it more feasible to maintain the pregnancy?
I absolutely agree that you’ve articulated a defensible position.
But surely you agree it’s not an objective one – by which I mean it’s not one that is derived from some provable scientific truth. You’ve chosen to predicate decisions on what causes the least suffering. But why must I accept this standard?
Yes. And I readily acknowledge that this standard of mine is also bereft of objective proof. I believe, but cannot prove, that any human life is worthy of legal protection – that we as a species suffer a moral diminuation when we allow ourselves to watonly kill that which we identify as also human. Of course, our entire history as a species is filled with doing just that – but I also believe that as we continue to develop standards, we reject more and more of that mindset.
I seldom say this, precisely because I cannot prove it. I simply believe it.
As you believe that the correct hallmark is to choose the path of least suffering. I agree with you, in a sense – I simply believe that over the longer term, more suffering will result from your method than mine.
Would anyone like to answer this question?
Would you mind explaining how, and whose suffering?
I tried to in post 783. I think it varies state to state, I could not find anything definitive on google. Maybe someone else will have better luck.
Totally good with it. If you can get it out of me without killing it, that’s fabulous, but if you can’t, it dies.
People are not actually especially rare or precious. Certainly not enough so that they get to live inside me.
It all depends though. If the mother has developed eclampsia her placenta could rupture and the baby would die as well. You cannot say with any amount of certainty that a fetus will survive in the mother’s body as the fetus inhabits that body so any medical condition puts the fetus at risk.
Perhaps this is why I don’t look to your comfort as a touchstone on these issues. It’s not hard at all to say that the death is an unintended side effect, because that’s precisely what it is.
Our entire legal system is predicated on the same concept: mens rea, the guilty mind, is a necessary component of almost every crime. If you throw the power switch to turn on the light, and unknown to you that also closes a circuit that electrocutes a person, you’ve committed no crime at all. The precise same action, with the same switch, is murder if you intended for the death to happen.
What you intend as a result of your actions is absolutely critical in determining whether they are permissible.
It depends. A woman in my family had a late abortion many years ago. She caught German measles during the pregnancy. Her (Catholic) doctor did some kind of test to figure out if the baby had been harmed, and then refused to give her the results. By the time she stopped fighting with him to get them and just went to another doctor to have the tests performed again (and discovered that the baby would indeed be born with severe birth defects, if it lived at all), she was about that far along, I think, and she still chose to terminate the pregnancy.
Nowadays, a doctor who refused to give you your test results would get into a boatload of trouble, much more than that one back in the 1970’s did. But if he did it anyway, it could in fact be pretty late by the time you learned of a problem.
perfectparanoia, generally the adoptive family pays the pregnancy-related medical expenses of the birth mother.
Yes, I would mind. I don’t believe this audience would be particularly sympathetic to my belief, which is why I said:
In debate, my reasons would constitute unsupported, gratuitous assertions. And as my debate teacher in high school constantly reminded us, “A gratuitous assertion may be equally gratuitously denied.”
Sorry for being unclear, I meant as just dealing with an unwanted pregnancy/form of birth control. Severe defects is another story entirely.