Certainly I would agree that general rights such as the right to life create an obligation to all members of a society. Many people use this general obligation to respect someone else’s right to life to justify things like social welfare, charitable relief, and so forth.
But I don’t believe that assisting someone else in asserting a right to life, even if that other is helpless, necessarily transfers the general obligation of a society’s members solely to the one doing the assisting.
If I stop someone from murdering a stranger, this is not the same as adopting the stranger. In other words, the general obligation of all members of a society to respect the rights of the stranger has not been transferred solely to me.
The only way I can think of to make a single individual responsible for another is if he or she volunteered to do it. I think the argument that pregnant women have a special obligation to allow their uterii to be used as incubators derives from the implied consent they gave when they consented to sex. They knew, or should have known, that pregnancies often result from intercourse, and that no contraceptive is 100% certain. Thus they made (in some sense) an informed decision to take that chance.
I don’t want it to sound like pregnant women should be forced to suffer for having sex - I am presenting the line of argument that shows how obligations are seen to be transferred.
Which I suspect is part of why some pro-lifers allow an exception in the case of rape. A woman who did not consent to intercourse cannot be said to have given any consent to her pregnancy, and therefore incurs no obligation.
Hauss, let me tell you my situation, because I’m curious what you’d think and/or do in my circumstances.
I do not want kids, ever. No debate. As a matter of fact, I am repulsed by the idea and know I’d make a horrible parent. I take pills, and refrain from having sex more than I can absolutely make do with (less than I’d like), and use appropriate precautions, but there is always the .0005% chance I could still get pregnant. I have tried to have myself surgically sterilized in addition to taking my pills, but have been denied every year since I was 20 (I’m now almost 24) because of my age and the assumption by doctors that it’s inevitable I’ll change my mind. Now, let’s assume that at some point, despite all my efforts, I find myself with one of these little parasites growing in me. Because, let’s be honest, it’s not realistic that I’m never ever going to have sex AT ALL, especially since I am with someone that I might possible spend the rest of my life with.
I’ll be your living example – please explain to me why it’s so important that the life of the blob of unwanted, unwelcome, unloved lump of tissue inside of me is more important than my desires and plans for my life. Because I can guarantee you that were I denied the ability to get an abortion, I would do everything possible to either miscarry, deliver stillborn, otherwise injure or destroy the child (via drugs or drinking heavily, for example), and failing all else probably seriously consider suicide.
Please tell me why it’s worth my suffering and destroying my life to bring an utterly unwanted and unloved child in the world, guaranteed to be sick, miserable, abandoned or all three, rather than just quietly destroying it before it ever has a chance to even know it ever existed.
What do you think? What would you do if you were me?
I have three friends who, in college, had situations nearly identical to yours (as described here). They all become pregnant in the span that I knew them.
They all placed their children with adoption agencies.
That may not be the answer you wanted to hear…but in terms of providing a home and love for the child…at the same time not burdening you with parenting responsibilities for the rest of your life…
jinwocked: This is one of the many reasons it sucks to be a woman, IMO! God love 'em…
Seriously, I do feel that your situation, and the possible one you proposed is, in conjunction with a denial of your abortion rights, unfair. But maybe this is the reason you can legally alienate your baby through adoption. Sure, you have to live with the “parasite” for 9 mos. but, then again, life isn’t always fair. It’s a small price to pay in order to give a life an opportunity to live. You can feel good afterwords that you did a noble thing by not aborting, if that would help the crappy situation…
I do not think you understand. Adoption is not an option. I am literally disgusted to the point of insanity by the idea of something growing inside of me like that, not even to consider the birthing process. I will commit suicide before I carry a child, or whatever you want to call it, to term. Honest to your God, I am dead serious. Would you rather have me kill myself or try to poison myself into miscarrage rather than just allow me to end the pregnancy? Truely?
I know my case is extreme and not in any way the norm, but would you really allow a constructive, already underway life to be ruined for a potential person?
Child Vs. unwanted lump of tissue i.e. potential child… there is no sense in debating semantics with me… in my opinion they are synonymous. I’m a writer, I’ve trained myself not to use the same words/phrases over and over. It’s no more complicated than that.
I think everyone here could at least agree that I have no business bearing children. sigh
If I came across as nitpicky, I didn’t mean to. But the “what is it” question is kinda the whole point of this particular thread.
I think there would be plenty of pro choice folks who might suggest that the usage of a term like “child” for “lump of tissue” is not very pc. (Hell I get criticized for referring to the woman as a “mother”).
You are absolutely correct, but it does accurately portray my level of disdain with the thought of bearing children, and my attitudes towards (very young) ones in general. PC or not, it’s how I feel. I don’t hurt other people’s kids, I just don’t want to be forced to have any of my own.
I would probably have less of a problem with anti-choice people, if I didn’t feel like this society is literally trying to force me (as a woman) to breed. I’m denied permanent sterilization on one hand because apparently I don’t know what’s best for myself, and there are those who would deny me the right to terminate pregnancy on the other. These two groups are often one in the same, in fact. So my choices are abstinence or potentially destroying my life, my sanity, and/or my body?
This is the dilemma I’d like hauss to solve. Would someone really ruin an existing life AND a potential life out of spite or principle or logic or whatever, instead of ending one to spare the other?
Okay, let’s go back and revisit this whole “implied consent to be an incubator” thing again. As I understand it, the reasoning is that since I know sex can potentially end in pregnancy, by having sex I have implicitly consented to have a fetus parasitize my body for nine months. Can someone explain to me how this is different from someone who takes a walk in the woods to enjoy the scenery and comes home with a tick embedded in their scalp? Does this person have a right to pull out the tick and kill it? I mean, you know (or should know) that having ticks is often the result of walking in the woods, even if you’ve taken reasonable precautions against them. Doesn’t that mean that you’ve implicitly consented to hosting any ticks that attach themselves to you as a result of your walk in the woods? The tick will eventually gorge itself and fall off, so you’ll get rid of it even if you don’t pull it out. The tick is undeniably alive, so why how can you justify ending this innocent life?
Considering that a very small percentage of doctors actually are trained or willing to perform abortions, what’s wrong with my point? The first OB/GYN I ever visited to discuss it was even a woman, and there was not even the potential for rational discussion with her. She almost literally told me to my face I would change my mind when I was older, would have no talk of it, offered me pills then ridiculed me until I cried. Most people, pro-choice or not, just cannot grasp the concept of someone deciding they never want kids. In cahoots with? Probably not. In sympathy with? Very likely. It is true that the two groups do often intersect. You obviously have no idea how incredibly, insanely difficult it is for a young, unmarried female with no children to get sterilized. The views on this are still very partriarchal in nature (and I am by no means a feminist). In four years, I have encountered these attitudes far more than I care to discuss.
Men are not the ones that have to go through the mentally and physically taxing experience of carrying a child, but it seems so easy for them to make the decisions for the women that do. You make it easy and affordable for me to get myself surgically altered, and I’ll be happy to let anti-choice people legislate abortion until they’re blue in the face.
You might consider refraining from debating this further. If you equate a tick, or a seed or a flake of skin, etc… to a fetus, then you will never understand the stance of a pro-lifer.
And she didn’t self-identify as “anti choice”…yet she STILL wasn’t willing to sterilize you? Amazing. It’s as if there is no connection
:rolleyes:
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Umm so you’re saying most people (even pro choice folks?) have this anti steralization bias? So…ummm, what does this have to do with being “anti choice” again?
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You have offered zero proof for this assertion. I call bullshit.
I absolutely believe that young women have difficulty getting sterilizations. As you declared, it’s probably because it is difficult to reverse the procedure and many docs (male or female, pro life or pro choice) are hesitant to do such a procedure on someone who might change their mind later. Whether that is good or bad policy is a topic for another thread.
Your assertion was that those attitudes of physicians were directly linked to pro life groups…even though you acknowledge that its’s a common point of view among lots of folks…even pro choice folks.
I challenged you to make the connection between pro life groups and the decisions of your doctors (and I’m guessing that if you’ve seen several, at least one of them was probably “pro choice”) not to perform sterilizations on young women.
But, as keeps getting exaplined to you, it isn’t. A “probable future life” does not exist in the present. It’s a conception of the future. And it’s just as ruined by aborting a conceptus as it is by simply not concieving in the first place. The conceptus is no more THE future life than is the imagination of a future life in the mind of people considering having a child.
I think a very good point has been made: maybe there are no right answers, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of wrong ones.
I concede that I have no proof other than my own experiences in discussing people’s own opinions with them, opinions of others that have been shoved on me, and the doctors I’ve spoken to – both in a doctor’s office and outside of one. I am not terribly interested in convincing you otherwise, anyway, since it isn’t integral to my original point that society at large seems bent on forcing young women to become mothers when they might otherwise not. There is a large vocal group of people that are anti-chocie, and a large very vocal group both in and out of the medical profession that think at my age is would be wrong to sterilize me under any circumstances. IN MY EXPERIENCE these two groups often intersect. As an aside, I personally find it absurd that I can right now relatively easily access abortion services, yet am not allowed to just completely prevent the need for them to begin with. My point of view is a strange one in that I personally hope I never have to get an abortion; I’m not going to tell anyone what they may or may not do with their bodies but I do tend to sympathize with the pro-life perspective of snuffing out a [potential] life. An unwanted life, but one that might be, none-the-less. The issue for me is that despite the fact that I would probably feel a great deal of guilt over it, I’d rather end that life than my own. You are arguing with someone who hates the site of her own nipples because they remind me what my breasts are actually there for. I want to just shut down my reproductive system completely.
You can understand then, why I am (I think) justifiably upset at the idea of someone implying that I should endure nine months of torture and agony just to save a “potential” life. I would like someone to explain to me exactly why it is appropriate to ruin or destroy the life of a female solely for the purpose of perserving something that never really was. I am not talking about raising the child to 18, adoption is irrelevant. I am only interested in the 9 months before birth.
jinwicked: The problem with yoru situation is that those docs are not letting you have your tubes tied, or whatnot. That is total insanity. I’m not at all familiar with those types of dealings, but it seems to me that if you ask, they should perform, no questions aked.
What is the reason they will not do the deed for you?
ramanujun: Alright man. You chopped up my post a little too much there… and so much so that at the end you said that I based my morality on one thing, when I actually said I based on that thing, plus something else.
Come back when you can read. I deal with this crap way too much here… it’s gotta stop.
i suggested that you base your moral views on abortion more on the rights of the unborn than you would like to think. then i asked if you really wanted to base your morality on arbitrary probabilities.
