I dont really care. I am male. I dont have to worry about it. HA.
HaHAAAAA I just killed 620,000 sperm!!! take that.
Even though I know it’s flame-bait… can’t… resist… commenting…
OK. A human cell is not a human being. A skin cell is not a human, even though it has human DNA. An egg cell is not a human being, a sperm cell is not a human being.
But perhaps this is missing the point. We are not trying to define “human”, we are trying to define, “person”. Meaning, someone who is entitled to our legal protection. If we define “person” as “human” then we’d be entitled to shoot aliens, or superintelligent dolphins, or sentient computers.
Now, everyone agrees that a newborn baby is a person, even though it cannot speak, it cannot care for itself, it will die without human care. Everyone also agrees that an egg cell is not a person, neither is a sperm cell. But beyond that…let me say that I can’t get behind the idea that a fertillized egg is a person. It just wouldn’t make sense.
You know how doctors have tissue cultures? You take a cell sample, and keep it alive with nutrients. Well, I’ve read about one cell line, taken from pancreatic tumor cells, that has become a pest in laboratories. It will infect cultures of other cells. Here we have cells that were once human that are now effectively protozoans. Each cell is completely human, with all the chromosomes, yet these cells are clearly not people.
So, I’ve got to say that a single totipotent cell cannot be a person. Sorry, fertilized egg. Everyone except the catholic church agrees that contraceptives that prevent the sperm and egg from meeting are moral, and I think contraceptives that go a step further and prevent a fertilized egg from implanting are also moral.
But later? What then? Going at it from the other end, I can’t imagine anyone would argue that a 9 month old fetus is not a person. After all, all you have to do is remove the person from the mother, no other adjustments needed, and you clearly have a person. Same with an 8 month fetus, and a 7 month fetus. Six months…we’re getting murky here, but everyone can agree that a third trimester fetus is a person. If you don’t agree, I claim that you aren’t being reasonable. Does anyone really think this?
OK, you might have a few objections. What if the mother is in danger? If the 7 month fetus is a person, then we can’t allow abortion which might save the mother’s life, so therefore the fetus cannot be a person. But that need not be so. We can decide a 7 month fetus is a person and still allow her to be killed if the mother’s life is in danger.
Suppose a person were trapped in a fire. Well, if there is no danger then you are obligated to help. But if there is danger, you are not required by the law to put yourself at risk to save another person. If the fetus is endangering the mother, she has the right to self-defense. If there is a medical procedure that would save her life but kill the fetus (say, chemotherapy), that is also moral.
But what if the 7 month fetus/baby is deformed or severly handicapped? Well, you could argue that abortion should be possible in those cases, but we should be clear that what we are talking about is euthanasia. If it would be moral to terminate the life of a newborn infant with the same condition, then it would be moral to abort the same fetus. If it is not moral, then it would also not be moral to abor the fetus.
So, we’ve disposed of several problem areas. But now we are reaching territory where science and logic are more difficult. Zygotes are not people, third trimester fetuses are people. But there’s a very large grey area.
As a practical matter, I don’t see how we can outlaw early abortion. If no one knows you are pregnant there are several medications you can take to stop being pregnant. As a privacy issue, I don’t see what we can do as a society. How can we stop this without unnacceptable invasions of privacy? And it will get worse in the future. There will be a whole shelf of drugs that will terminate pregnancy safely, quietly, privately. We could make this a crime, but how will we prosecute it? When you kill a baby, you’ve got a dead baby to dispose of. When you terminate a four-week pregnancy, you’ve got a clump of cells smaller than a grain of rice. It strikes me as a practical impossibility to stop, whether you agree that the embryo is a person or not. Maybe we have a person who deserves protection by the state, but the state does not even realize that such a person exists.
But we’ve got another problem. Most abortions are not that early, since usually even the mother doesn’t know about the pregnancy that soon. I don’t know what to do about abortions in the middle, even if we outlaw late abortions and permit very early ones.
But it is not just the mother’s body. We’ve got another body involved. It is not between a woman and her doctor, there is a baby here, and arguably the father as well. Well, what if someone moved into your house against your will? Couldn’t you have them evicted, no matter what might happen to them?
Well, yes. But this tenant didn’t barge in against your will, it was invited in. Every time sperm cells are deposited into the female reproductive tract, there is implied consent for the consequences. Even if you are using birth control, you must realize that it can sometimes fail. Even if you didn’t want to be a father, or mother, you are still responsible. If you didn’t want this to happen, then you could have prevented the genetic material from getting together. Of course, this depends on consent. If you did not give consent…implied or not…then you are not liable. If a woman sneaks into your bedroom at night and steals some left-over genetic material while you are sleeping, you are not responsible for that child. If a male implants genetic material into your body without your consent, then you cannot be held responsible for carrying that child, no matter how much we might wish you would.
I would hold that the implied consent given by engaging in heterosexual intercourse obligates a person to carry a child for these “gray areas”. Because you have given consent, even if you didn’t want a child, you are still obligated to carry it during the problematic 3rd-6th months. And of course, you are prohibited from terminating a pregnancy during the last trimester because we have clear example of personhood. Very early pregnancies are not people, and even when they might be we would have no knowledge of that person anyway. We can’t prevent it, so there is no way we can criminalize it.
I just wish people wouldn’t be so quick to assume that this is a simple issue. This is a complex issue, and people make it very difficult when they “know” they have the right answer.
Lemur, I agree with some of your post, but I’m not sure I understand the connection between tissue culture and a zygote. The culture is a bit of human tissue extracted from a person. The zygote is the bit of human tissue COMPRISING an individual member of our species. Doesn’t that make these two VERY different cases? If not, then in what sense are YOU different than a tissue culture?
Do you think a rabbit zygote is not a new rabbit in the earliest stage of its development? Can you point to a single biology paper that has taken this view? (Obviously, I’m speaking generally, it doesn’t have to be a rabbit.)
You leap rather blithely from “But beyond that…let me say that I can’t get behind the idea that a fertillized egg is a person. It just wouldn’t make sense” to “So, we’ve disposed of several problem areas…Zygotes are not people”. But this is THE central issue for a lot of people: At exactly what developmental stage do we recognize that the developing entity has a claim on our conscience? Many, many people feel that a new individual begins with fertilization, and my point was, that is not out of line with the thinking of modern biology as applied to other species. (The issue is tactfully avoided with humans - it is labeled a medical issue. Biologists aren’t idiots!). I think you need to make a much more compelling argument before dismissing the idea that a zygote is a living, individual, member of our species.
The question really is “is it a person” and not “is it human”, and neither society or the government treats an unborn fetus as a person in any non-abortion context.For example, I had a miscarriage. Did people act the same as they would have if even a 2 day old baby died? Not unless you believe the parents of infants who die are commonly told " Don’t worry, you’ll get pregnant again" and expected to be emotionally recovered within a week or so.If a baby was born at 11:59 pm 12/31/99, that baby was a dependent on the 1999 tax return, but if the birth was 12:01 am 1/1/00, it wasn’t , althought the costs incurred in 1999 were the same. If a baby dies a few minutes after birth,it can be claimed as a dependent but not if it’s stillborn.A pregnant woman on welfare gets an additional allowance, but not the same amount she’ll get after the birth.At best, society is conflicted as to whether a fetus is a person. Another example is pro-life people who make exceptions ( rape, incest, mother’s life) If they completely believed it was murder, they wouldn’t make those exceptions. It is however, entirely possible to believe abortion is imoral without believing it to be murder.After all, most people believe stealing is morally wrong, but don’t feel they have to call it murder
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But do all of you who are pro-choice believe that the father of the baby (fetus, whatever) should have any input on whether there is an abortion or not? Assuming he is willing to take full responsibility for this child once it is born, do you believe he has the right to ask the mother to go through the 6 or 7 months remaining of the pregnance so that he will not be deprived of the child he wants?
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In this example, obviously the two parties disagree, and someone has to break the tie.It seems to me that should be the person who’s most involved . I have to say, though I am biased. I had complications during a pregnancy which could have killed me, and I don’t really think the non-risk taker should have the deciding vote.
I live in a community that is considered to be very conservative by the rest of the state. There are many active “pro-lifer’s” here. Most of the ones I know are the ones who would question the morals of the women who choose to have their babies and stay unmarried. Many of these people use the S(lut) word (I believe this word was invented by men to denigrate women; the only word that people apply to men that even comes close to this same meaning is stud).
I have talked to many people of many differing opinions over the course of the twenty-five years I worked in a factory in this conservative community. Many of the “pro-life” people I spoke with, ironically, were also pro-capital punishment. And many of these same people continually complained about welfare benefits paid out to unwed mothers.
And, as a sideline here, an interesting scenario: there are people in this very Catholic community who, in a choice between saving the life of the mother or the child in a dangerous childbirth situation, would save the newborn baby’s life over its mother’s life, so the infant could be baptized.
The whole abortion issue is highly emotionally charged, and I believe there are many more issues involved than the surface issue. So: until a better world exists where
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little children have enough to eat and good medical care
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unwed mothers (or those in poor health, or those who simply are not emotionally able to handle a pregancy) have all the non-shaming support they need
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sex is viewed as a normal, natural and beautiful body function, and not something dirty and shameful
I believe that women will continue to choose to have abortions, and I will support our right to do so.
They do.
One of the warmest hugs I ever got in my life was after speaking to a NARAL volunteer at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair. Twelve years ago, I found myself facing an unplanned pregnancy. I excercised my right to choose, and chose not to have an abortion. I continued the pregnancy, and relinquished a beautiful baby girl for adoption. I told the woman my story, and she stepped out from the booth, hugged me, and said “That is exactly what we are all about.”
“Pro-choice” absolutely does not mean “only choose abortion if you get pregnant and don’t want to be.” It means “make a choice that you can hopefully live with.” For many, that choice is not aborting, and that is fine. That is your choice, that is your right. I personally am just as much against forcing anyone into an abortion they do not want as I am against preventing them from getting an abortion they may want or need.
As for the man’s input, I believe that if he is around, his opinion should be considered and taken in to account. But the final decision as to whether or not to abort ultimately lies with the woman, because it is her body that will undergo either the abortion or the pregnancy. I also believe that if men got pregnant, they would no doubt demand the same consideration.
If you go back and read the thread, I think the word “human” is mentioned a few times. That’s part of what we’re debating here.
So what is a person? You say a fertilized egg isn’t one. What else is one, and what isn’t?
Everyone, Lemur? Are you sure you want to assume knowledge of the moral code of everyone who is not the Catholic Church?
Some people argue (falsely, IMO, but anyway) that someone who has not yet taken a breath of air, or something to that effect, is not fully human.
Have been through this. Mother of baby carried her son as long as was feasinle, then delivered him. Doctors gave him 0 chance of survival (for reasons stated elsewhere). If the mother is in danger you deliver the baby as soon as is feasible, IMO, provided the mother won’t have died by then.
It will be interesting to see how it is handled in the future if a baby who has attached him/herself to the womb of one woman can be implanted into another.
IMO, on the fire bit, you do what is reasonable . . . if it is not possible to come close to the individual without certain death, you save one life by not trying to rescue the person. But you do try your level best to save their life.
And re: chemo, I haven’t been in a situation like that, so I don’t consider myself educated well enough to offer my opinion. Note here that I am not trying to cop out; this would be rather like me discussing polo strategy: I know 0 about polo.
Handicapped/deformed I’ve run into. Carried as long as possible, delivered (with damage already done to the mother) and we knew long beforehand that there was, scientifically, no way on Earth this baby would live very long. We were right: 15 minutes. But for that 15 minutes my aunt had the son she had hoped and prayed she’d be able to hold since she was not too old herself. I wouldn’t take that feeling away from anyone.
What is your definition of person, if you’re going to say zygotes are not people? How do you differentiate, in this case, between a zygote not being a person and a 3rd-trimester baby being one?
We’ve done similar things with rape, incest, child abuse, drug use, pornography, etc. Granted some of those are not quite as private as abortion.
There are already dozens of preventative measures that, for all intents and purposes (in my opinion) either terminate the pregnancy or do their best to prevent such.
The fact that it’s hard to enforce doesn’t make it right.
My mother used to work in a hospital doing medical transcription . . . “products of conception” . . . beyond that and that she was trying to conceive with my dad at the time I won’t comment.
I agree with you on it being not just the mother’s body, but I’ve seen compelling arguments for it being partly hers. The baby is inside her.
However, you could use the same argument to argue against breastfeeding, among other things. And piggyback rides, and carrying things, etc.
And if someone loved into your house you’ve got a legal right to kick them out, and it’s not going to be so devastating as it would be with an abortion . . . kicking someone out of the house usually doesn’t kill them.
So you would kill an unborn baby despite the fact that s/he has done nothing wrong but to exist (which I don’t believe to be wrong, but some might)?
How do you figure very early pregnancies are not people? Did you already conclusively define “person”?
And it may not be possible to prevent it, but by criminalizing it you at least make it harder to do. You also make it much more dangerous . . . which would hopefully dissuade people from doing it.
Thank you for not taking the road of “it’s not my problem” or “it’s a simple issue”. Debating is how we get educated.
I had a brilliant reply written, and I erased it. Let me try again…
I agree with Lemur to a point. When does a fetus become a person is really the question. We all seem to agree that a baby at full term is a person, and that sperm and egg are not. But somewhere in between is where the problem arises. If we accept the opinion that a baby in the early stages is not a person, when does it become one? Let’s say that up to day 150 of pregnancy, it is merely a mass of cells, but on day 151 it is a person whose abortion would be criminal. As the father of three, I only knew the conception date of one of my children. If we had chosen to get an aboution with one of the other two, we might have “killed” a person because we had made a mistake as to the date of coception. I am not comfortable with that estimation, so I choose to err on the side caution, and say that at conception, life begins.
Having said that, I think that abortion should be legal. If we were to make abortions illegal, they would only move underground. Mothers and babies would die because of abortions being performed in unsafe ways or by untrained people.
Abortion is not in and of itself the problem, it is a symptom of deeper social ills (fodder for another thread), but making it illegal would do nothing.
Could someboby here who is “pro-life” explain, why “your side” is also against birth control & the “morning after pill”? How is birth control “muder”? And the “morning after pill”, could you really say that some 16 undifferetiated cells are a “person”?
Daniel, you’re making the assumption that all pro-lifers are anti-birth control. I assure you that is not true. Sometimes they believe both, sometimes not. I personally believe in birth control (on the pill, myself), am against abortion-as-birth-control (would not have an abortion if I accidentally got pregnant) and haven’t yet made up my mind about the morning after pill.
And you speak without knowing them either. You know, most people who judge groups of others without knowing them arrive at that contorted logic because of narrow-minded bigotry.
Of course, you might have arrived at your self-serving moralisms honestly.
Perhaps you might consider that the world is a complicated place and many people in it arrive at different opinions. The fact that others have a different opinion than your own does not make them dishonest. It doesn’t even make you dishonest.
Tris
Another gem lost to keyboard malpractice. I recommend you sue for lost brains.
I think, in addition to this, a lot of mothers would see that it was unsafe and decide it wasn’t worth the risk.
On a related note, I was reading a brochure on abortion (and this was not “why not to have one” but facts about abortion) and it talked a lot about one woman who tried to have an abortion. The surgeon or doctor (or whatever it was) failed to kill the woman’s baby and instead chopped off part of her arm. The baby was delivered successfully som time later (in other words, I don’t know how much later).
If something is so dangerous as to risk human life that badly, I both hope and think people weigh the disadvantages as much as the advantages. There is little worse than being uninformed when you’re having a medical procedure performed on you.
I don’t think I can prove this at all, but I think that making it illegal would dissuade a lot of people from doing it. I don’t know that overall more or fewer people would die. But I can hope for a day when it is not legal to kill a human being.
But abortion is not the biggest problem. The bigger problems are, as you said, social (and psychological). To fix them would require that a lot of people admit they exist and work toward solving them. As there are still a great many people who don’t either want to see these problems or don’t want to fix them . . . it may be a while.
[N.B.: I was not addressing any doper I know in that previous paragraph,]
Triskadecamus,
Not quite. I am judging a position on an issue, and the true positions of those who claim to hold it. There has been more than enough discussion of the abortion issue in America for anyone to have an opinion on the motivations of the groups of people who would take any position on either side.
In fact, at the risk of questioning your sacred honesty, I would bet that there are many groups of people who you do not know personally, but are willing to judge based on their publicly stated positions and actions.
I explained in my earlier post to missbunny, how one might tell someone opposed to abortion but in favor of freedom to have it, from someone who genuinely favors abortion. But I will add that when I see such pathetic attempts at justifying this position such as yours, it reinforces my conviction.
Very self serving. And, you forgot to mention, sanctimonious.
It doesn’t make them dishonest. But they might also be dishonest anyway. Fortunately other evidence exists on this score beyond their disagreement with me.
Frankly, I don’t care whether you personally are dishonest, or whether you think I’m dishonest or self-serving or whatever. It’s a shame that you’ve chosen to focus on such matters.
**
I don’t mean everyone, I mean all reasonable people. I can’t imagine a reasonable opposition to birth control for adults who are entitled to have intercourse with each other. I know the Catholics do, but they are unreasonable. And sure, you can be opposed to birth control for minors, or unmarried couples or whatever, but if under your moral system a couple is entitled to have intercourse with each other, then in god’s name why would you deny them birth control? If someone wants to correct me, and explain why birth control (for married etc) is immoral, good luck. I can’t imagine anyone doing a good job on this.
**
Yes, but this is ridiculous. If you remove the baby from the womb during the third trimester it will be able to take that breath of air, perhaps with some help. Anyway, we’re talking about reasonable people, not idiots. Does anyone who has spent some time thinking about the ethical implications of abortion really think this? I don’t think there are any. I hereby declare that a third trimester fetus is a person, anyone who disagrees should state that they disagree, not that a theoretical stupid person might disagree. Note that because of other factors this does not mean that under certain circumstances the babies life is always protected, just like a post-birth baby might sometimes die. See my post above for thoughts on this.
**
I’m not saying that the baby should be killed as it is removed. If your life is threatened, you can remove the baby, and whatever happens, happens, there’s nothing you can do and you are not obligated to risk your life to save the baby’s life, any more than the doctor is. We will try to save the baby’s life, but that might not happen and if it doesn’t happen then no one has done something immoral.
**
I’m not saying that such babies should be killed, far from it. I’m equating removing the baby from the mother’s womb to removal of life-support equipment from a post-birth baby. If it would be moral to remove life support equipment from a person because there is no hope, then it is similarly moral to remove the organic life support equipment of the mother’s womb. Obviously, different people would put that at different points. But we do allow removal of life-support legally, and abortion should be legal under the same guidelines…brain death, no hope, etc. We allow these babies to die, but we don’t kill them. If you want to call it premature delivery followed by the decision to withhold medical care instead of calling it abortion that’s fine, but it amounts to the same thing.
**
OK, I can see I didn’t explain the zygote thing enough. We all agree, sperm and eggs aren’t people, 3rd trimester babies are people. In fact, you can usually be charged with at least manslaughter for killing an unborn baby. I know of a case here in Seattle where a man shot and killed his pregnant wife as she was filing for divorce. He was charged with first degree murder for killing her, and manslaughter for killing the unborn baby. I can’t recall how far along the baby was, but I believe it was at least second trimester, if it had been first trimester I don’t think anyone would have known.
But back to zygotes. Here we have a genetically unique totipotent cell. Why isn’t this a person? Well, we have other examples of genetically unique cells that we don’t consider people, if I take a cell sample from you and you die, then that cell sample is now genetically unique. But it doesn’t become a person when you die. Genetic uniqueness doesn’t guarantee personhood, otherwise one of my sisters would not be a person since they are naturally occuring clones.
In fact, the whole question of individuality is not so clear when we look at the biology. Is a single blade of grass an individual? Well, it often grows up from the roots of another grass blade, it is genetically identical and physically connected to the other grass. It might make more sense to call a whole patch of genetically identical grass an individual. But you can physically separate the grass, say with a shovel, and they do fine. So what is an individual member of the species “grass”? It is hard to say, in fact we could argue that the term individual is not useful when describing grass, or any number of plants with the same habits. There are animals that work the same way…corals for example. Is an individual coral an individual polyp, or a whole head? The polyps are genetically identical, and share resources, but they can live separately if they need to. So biology teaches us that clear cut lines do not neccesarily exist.
We could also imagine a single cell in your body becoming totipotent for some reason. Just because it is genetically identical to you means nothing, clones are people too. The fact that the cell will not develop into a person means nothing, it could develop into a person, your identical twin, if it was placed in the right environment. But we don’t consider your cells to be people, that’s crazy since your cells are dying, sacrificing themselves by the millions every day. Every multi-cellular life-form is a sort of super-organism, every cell has the potential to create a whole new organism. But 99.999999…% of the cells in your body do not become new organisms.
What makes the fertillized egg special? It is really the same as all the other cells that die every day, except it has extra nutrients, and it’s genetic machinery is “primed” for development, the blocks that prevent the 99.999…% of your other cells from turning into babies are not active. This is biologically significant, but it is not morally significant. I mean, we could theoretically step in and genetically “turn off” the zygote’s machinery, and it would stop dividing and growing into a person but not be killed. We haven’t killed anything, we haven’t destroyed anything, we’ve merely changed the growth pattern of a cell. It isn’t killing a person any more than stopping one of your liver cells from dividing is killing a person. In fact, killing your liver cell is not killing a person. So how can killing a zygotic cell be killing a person? It makes no sense, there is nothing magic about the zygote.
I agree, later we will have an unarguable person. But at this stage we clearly do not. At some point the baby’s brain will develop, at some point it’s heart will start beating. But not yet, there is no heart, no brain, just a cell. Yes, that cell has the potential to become a person, but so do all your other cells, it’s just that the other cells will not develop into people naturally, they’ve voluntarily chosen not to.
Pro-life people cling to the moment of conception because it is the only clear dividing line in the continuum of development. But it is not a significant dividing line. There is no dividing line between a cell with no rights and a person with rights, at some point it becomes unreasonable to keep arguing that the mass of cells is not a person. When the cell mass begins to walk and talk it is a person, everyone agrees. When it is a third trimester fetus, it is unreasonable to argue that it is not a person, even the most fanatical pro-choice people become uncomfortable here. The only reason they deny the baby personhood at this point is because they don’t want to deny life-saving abortions. But I have shown, I think, that we can call a third-trimester fetus a person and still cause it to die if the circumstances are severe enough.
A second trimester fetus…well, now we are in unarguably arguable territory. There is no clear line, no stopwatch you can click down. I would say that if there was consent to have heterosexual intercourse, then there is also implied consent to care for the arguable person that might be created. Yes, mothers have rights to their bodies, but we are talking about a person. You can dismiss the arguments that it is a person, you may put the line somewhere else, but that is a matter of opinion, there is no clear line, you might be making a mistake.
And of course, without implied consent we cannot do anything to prevent the termination of the pregnancy. Yes, the baby will die. Yes, it did nothing wrong. It is a tragedy, but we cannot force the mother to care for this baby, any more than we can force her to care for a baby someone dropped on her front porch. We might hope that she would care for the baby if there is no other home for the baby, but we cannot force her to do so. Even though the baby will die, we don’t have the right to force her to continue the pregnancy. We do have the right to force her and the father to care for children they conceived willingly through engaging in voluntary heterosexual intercourse, we have child abuse laws, etc.
OK. Rape is not private, child abuse is not private, since they cannot take place while a person is alone. They involve second parties, they are not a matter of conscience, as citizens we can demand that the government enforce our rights to not be raped and abused. Incest could be considered private if it occurs between consenting adults. But if it involves minor children then it is not private because it involves second parties who are not able to give consent.
Drug use is private, it should be legal. Pornography is private, it should be legal, providing no laws were broken during the creation of it…if you have to abuse a child to create a photograph, it is a crime. If you rape, abuse, whatever, another person to create it, it is a crime and is not private. Absent that, it is private and is/should be legal.
At some point, we have to look at the not-human fertillized egg, the ball of 16 cells, the blastula and gastrula, and say that they are not people. But there is no dividing line between person and cell culture. I am saying that we can only do so much. As a practical matter, there is no way to ban abortion this early, since there are so many ways to quietly stop embryonic development short of surgery. We can ban these drugs, but I don’t think any drugs should be banned under libertarian grounds. So how can we ban drugs that might have the side effect of termination of embryonic development? At some point, we as society are forced to recognize our responsiblity to protect the rights of other people, but how can we do this when these people are unknown and unknowable to us?
We cannot test every woman every day to see if she is pregnant, it would be a violation of our privacy. If she takes an overdose of legal birth control pills and prevents a zygote from implanting in her uterus, what can we do about that? Nothing, even if we feel that the zygote has some special status. Making it illegal because it would be more dangerous that way is crazy.
At some point, our presumption of the fetus’s personhood reaches down to protect the unborn baby. At some point, our presumption of a cell culture’s nonpersonhood reaches up to prevent our intervention.
I know I may not have convinced anyone, but I hope I’ve shown that we cannot call the zygote a person without argument, it is not that simple, there is no bright line, even at the moment of conception. We can’t call the zygote a person, we can’t call two, four, eight, sixteen cells a person, we will have no knowledge that such a person exists even if we wish to call it a person. How can we protect that “person” when we cannot know it exists without instituting totalitarianism? And totalitarianism means that individual rights to life are meaningless anyway, a totalitarian government is just as likely to shoot the mother as protect the fetus.
So, we’re left with a compromise given our current lack of uterine replicators or fetal adoption. First trimester abortions, especially chemical ones, cannot be banned without destroying our freedom. Third trimester abortions are always banned, absent the various circumstances that would also apply to babies that are already born. Second trimester abortions are likewise banned, because the mother’s right to privacy is outweighed by her consent to carry an arguable human person.
I know you don’t like it, but what else are we going to do?
It’s my first post, so please excuse my lack of knowledge on how to format messages here. I’ll ask a poster I know later.
I’m iampunha’s mom, a “fathead” pro-life woman. (Seriously, I’m not offended – I think it’s hilarious!) BTW, I’m also a feminist. But that’s another story.
iampunha posted:
“Techchick, as for your point about being there of having a scare, I’m minus one possible living cousin because of an abortion. My aunt called my mother almost literally the night following her abortion asking for moral support.”
True.
“This while my parents were trying to conceive.”
Nope. iampunha, you were in utero, about six months along. For the record, my husband and I had had a miscarriage two years before. iampunha is the first child to whom we gave birth. We were living 3000 miles from family.
My sister decided that she needed my comfort, but she evidently didn’t think about my situation. 'Sokay. She was desolated and just wanted phone hugs from her sister.
“Does that count as me being there? Yes and no.”
You were there, iampunha. You weren’t understanding what was going on, but you had to feel my distress. Babies are much more sensitive than most adults think.
“From what I know of the situation, it would have been quite possible for my aunt to carry this baby for seven months or so and give him or her up for adoption.”
Sure, to me and my husband. But she didn’t ask us first, and she said afterward that she wouldn’t have done it. If she didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy, she didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy. She seemed to thinkt hat having us adopt her baby wouldn’t have helped her at all.
She had the abortion because she was in grad school and felt that having a baby would mess up her life. She had another one a year later.
This is all just for the record.
phantomdiver
too new to have a sig
Hi Izzy. I’m pro-choice, anti-abortion here, and I’ll do my best to explain it to you.
I stay away from both the “pro-choice” and the “pro-life” movements because of rhetoric and corollary beliefs on both sides.
I’ll try to address pro-choice first, then anti-abortion, and then a bit about men’s role in the issue.
I believe that the “pro-choice” movement makes a big mistake when they try to pretend that abortion - ending a pregancy - is the same as getting a tumor or polyp removed. Somehow the attempt to decide when a blob of tissue becomes a child seems beside the point to me - in the case of a ** wanted ** child, the mother loves the little blob of tissue and possibility as soon as she knows it exists.
It’s no secret that many people within the “pro-life” movement are also anti-contraception. I’ll say that not all pro-lifers are like this, but many are, and it’s their rhetoric that you hear most often because of the association between the movement and the Catholic Church. They want to limit women’s choices about all kinds of things - the choice to have sex outside of marriage, the choice to have sex for pleasure rather than procreation, the choice to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, and the choice to terminate a pregnancy if she has no other option.
I’m pro-choice on all of these issues, and I don’t want any government or religious institution making my choices for me or other women.
Abortion isn’t a sterile, easy surgical procedure like getting your tonsils out. Abortion is an indicator of human misery. For example:
Your partner abuses you and your other children, and you don’t want to have another child. Your birth control fails. You’re 15 years old and your daddy comes into your room at night. You are raped. You can’t afford to take care of a (nother) child. You are addicted to drugs. You have a serious illness, and pregnancy could kill you. You are mentally ill and unable to care for a child. Your husband is about to leave you. You are too old to raise another child. You are non-white and know that the chances of someone adopting your child are nil. Your birth control FAILS.
Some of you will come along and say “well, these people shouldn’t be having sex.” And I think most of you would agree (I’ve read the welfare mother rants) that they probably shouldn’t be having children.
A lot of people on the fence claim that they oppose abortion, but they would support legislation allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest or when the health of the mother is threatened. Think about how few of these crimes are reported, how difficult they are to prove, and how long the judicial process takes. By forcing a rape or incest survivor through the judicial process to ** prove ** rape or incest before she can have an abortion, the state will de facto force her to have the child. A person with major health risks would be dependent on doctors to make the recommendation. What if your doctor is pro-life and won’t make the recommendation for you? What if you can’t afford to go to another doctor? What if it takes so long for a decision to be made that you get past the point where abortion is safe? Putting situational qualifications on the right to abortion requires the state to become extremely intrusive into painful and private areas of people’s lives.
It would be nice if no one needed to end a pregnancy, if all children were wanted and loved. But people turn to abortion out of desparation, in the worst times of their lives. I believe they have a right to seek safe, legal, and PRIVATE medical care no matter what their decision. If you want to eliminate abortion, eliminate poverty and ignorance. Improve access to contraception and prenatal care. Yes, people should live with the consequences of their actions, but an unwanted child shouldn’t be a punishment inflicted on someone by the state.
But being pro-choice doesn’t mean that I am pro-abortion. I would love to make the world a place where poverty and misfortune didn’t make abortion necessary.
I am adopted. All I know about my birth mother is that she was 17 years old. I was born when abortion was legal - I could have not existed at all! I admire her courage and her patience for giving up 9 months of her life so that I can have a whole life of my own. For me, an abortion would be a violation of my own existence. But I am lucky: healthy, educated, white, middle class. I’ve got access to resources and contraception that would make a “desperation” abortion unnecessary, and I would have no problem finding someone to adopt a child if I did become pregnant. At college, I volunteered in a program to help girls that became pregnant while in school make it through and have their babies, usually giving them up for adoption in the end. I’m glad that these women braved parental and societal disapproval and decided that a person’s life is worth 9 months of inconvenience and suffering, and I wish I could help more people carry this through. These women weren’t treated like they were doing something brave - they were treated like outcasts, sluts, people who should be ashamed - and the stigma made them consider abortion more than once.
As for men: Abortion lets 'em off too easy. The whole “it’s a woman’s choice” argument allows men to back off from any responsibility if a partner gets pregnant. Don’t feel like paying child support? Don’t feel like being a father? Tell her to have an abortion. Negative consequences of unwanted pregnancy affect men too, and now they can have even less responsibility - putting a painful decision all in the woman’s court. But hey, we asked for it!
I believe abortion is never the happy, carefree option for anyone, at best it’s the least of the evils facing the mother and child. I think the more choices we make available to women, the less often they will have to make this choice of last resort. But I believe in protecting their right to that choice of last resort - save, legal, and private abortions.
Hmmm… I’ve always wondered if “pro-life” can be re-written as “anti-choice”. Doesn’t spin as positively that way, though.
Now, I’m pro-choice, and make no bones about it, and I’m also anti-abortion; and I see no contradiction in that. (For gosh sakes, I felt badly about having my cat fixed when she was pregnant!) I don’t feel abortion should be used as a method of birth control. I do feel that subverting a woman’s body - the most personal possession any person has - as a life-support system for another person, without her will, is kind of pushing things. How many pro-life women are willing to volunteer their own bodies as surrogate mothers to carry unwanted fetuses to term?
If abortion is truly wrong, then rape and incest have nothing to do with anything. The woman’s body stops being her own, and belongs to the unborn baby, whether she wants it or not, or even had it forced on her in a criminal act. By allowing abortion under such circumstances, we’re killing an innocent child, since a fetus cannot be held responsible for the circumstances of its conception… Or so the “pro-life” contingent would have us believe - it’s merely taking their stance out to its logical conclusions. Would they feel the same way if it was their own wife/sister/mother/daughter who was raped? Even Dan Quayle said a “D&C” would be okay then…
It’s interesting, too, how often the pro-lifers are the ones cutting child-support services (welfare, food stamps, Smart Start, etc.) for the babies they saved. Apparently, once they’re breathing on your own, that’s the last many pro-lifers want to have to do with them.
Carl Sagan, in his last book Billions and Billions, wrote an extensive essay on this subject. His conclusion was basically that until the fetus starts exhibiting human-style EEG waves, it isn’t fully human yet, it only has the potential to become fully human. Since something like 3/4 of all pregnancies spontaneously abort - often without the mother ever knowing it - should heroic efforts to save and preserve each one of these potential human lives be undertaken? Since each human egg and sperm constitutes 1/2 of a human life, should similar activities be undertaken as well? It’s not hard to see how ridiculous this could become.
Perhaps the final point I’d make is: Instead of pro-lifers saying “Put unwanted children up for adoption”, how many of them say “I’ll adopt them”? When the money follows the mouth, my respect goes up a lot.
magdalene,
There is some confusion here about the term “pro-abortion” and “anti-abortion”. We are using them in different ways, confusing the issue. I will try to explain more fully.
There are, as I see it, three positions that have been taken. 1. Abortion is morally wrong. The rights of a woman to her body do not outweigh the rights of a fetus to it’s life. Therefore society should protect the fetus’ rights and outlaw abortion. 2. Abortion is not morally wrong. The rights of a woman to her body do outweigh the rights of a fetus to it’s life. Therefore society should protect the rights of a woman over her own body and keep abortion legal. 3. Abortion is morally wrong (or ambigous). However, society should not take any stand on this issue. The morality of this issue should be left in the hands of every individual woman to decide for herself.
By my definition, position 1 is “anti-abortion”, position 2 is “pro-abortion”, position 3 is “anti-abortion but pro choice”. Position 3 is the only one which involves opposition to abortion. It is frequently adopted by Catholic politicians who wish to find a way to reconcile their religious beliefs with their liberal political inclinations. (I can’t say this for sure but I’d bet that current VP candidate Joe Lieberman is spouting a similar line.)
I believe this position (“position 3”) is for the most part a fraudulent one, for reasons mentioned earlier. 1. One would expect people who genuinely believed that abortion is morally wrong would express that in their attitudes and words and actions. In reality, this line is only trotted out for use in abortion debates. 2. The idea that an action involving two competing interests should be left in the hands of one of them to decide has no parallel in our society.
Now your definitions. You are defining “pro-abortion” as someone who wants as many abortions as possible to take place. Anti-abortion means someone who wants as few as possible to take place. By these definitions you are not pro-abortion. I would imagine that very few are. But you appear to accept that abortion is morally proper. So by my definition, you are pro-abortion.
So to reiterate using different terminology: those who claim to belief in a woman’s right to chose, while simultaneously denying that they have made a judgement that abortion is not morally wrong, are for the most part deluding themselves and others.
BTW, the position of the Catholic Church on contraception is completely irrelevent to this discussion. This opposition does not have anything to do with the Church’s position on abortion. The constant dredging up of this issue by pro-abortionists is nothing more than a scare tactic.
Guy S. Tanzer
Equally interesting are all the people who oppose infanticide, but who still won’t support additional food stamps and welfare etc. Strange, the compromises we make.
This is equally pointless. The fact that many people cannot afford to bear the consequences of other’s irresponsibility does not mean that they must support any attempts to eliminate those consequences.
But you will no doubt be interested know that Senator Jesse Helms adopted a paralyzed child in order to give him a better life. No doubt your respect for him will go up alot.
I am male and have no intentions of becoming pregnant in the near or distant future. Laugh if you must… snicker, snicker. In a male dominated society (i’m not bitching!) this type of situation if likely to occur. The basic issue laying before us is right to one’s own body. Who here would welcome having the government determine what is best for your own body? Anyone? Who here would welcome the goverments control over only pregnant females?
I can tell you right now that the majority of persons voting on this could never possibly have it occur to them.
I realize there is also a moral issue involved here, but that cannot supercede the need for common sence.
The moral right has no right to my body or anyone elses but their own.