Gregor, you are free to express your views in a forceful manner in this forum provided you remain civil. Personal insults, however coyly expressed, will not be tolerated. Don’t do this again.
No, and no.
It is not reasonable because a fetus is not a “person” by a reasonable definition of the word.
If the primary issue for a woman is the cost/risk of being pregnant and giving birth, adoption is an irrelevant suggestion. For a woman mainly concerned about not being ready to raise/support a child, adoption would be appropriate to offer as a solution.
As for putting one of their children up for adoption because they can no longer afford all of them. From a cost-saving perspective, the oldest child would be a better choice than the eventual infant. Is that what you were suggesting? Unless they were going to sell the child, in which case the infant might being in more. Though if they’re going to sell children, perhaps they should consider renting them instead? The would bring in extra money. Maybe mom could work as a sex worker charging premium rates for pregnancy and lactation fetishists. There are many ways to hack the scenario if all you want to do is find a way to not abort, damn the consequences.
Do I callously sentence a pig to death when I eat some delicious bacon? Of course I do. In fact, I’d wager some pigs are with it enough to not want to die as they’re being slaughtered. My desire to dip their charred flesh in the yolks of chicken ova is apparently sufficient to warrant their deaths acceptable. Why? They lack that je ne sais qua that would make them a “person”. A fetus doesn’t have it, either.
Does what steps a woman took to cause or prevent unintentional pregnancy have something to do with whether they deserve access to abortion?
Gregor:
Raising false issues does not help your argument.
All pregnancies carry risk to life and health.
All pregnancies limit pursuit of happiness.
It does not matter which choices were made.
It does not matter how the pregnancy occurred.
It does not matter whether a fertilized egg is alive or human.
It does not matter when a fertilized egg becomes alive or human.
What matters is whether others have the right to use your body without your permission.
I suspect you will not readily give up that right for yourself.
I suspect you might respond, “My rights most certainly DO trump the ‘rights’ of someone that will die without using my body.”
Yeah, of course they do, as far as you are concerned.
Note: If I am somehow mistaken, please simply post your name, address, and blood type. I am sure you do not want it on your conscience that living human people are dying because of your insistence on preserving your inalienable rights.
The question is not whether there are good arguments for abortion.
The question is whether there are good arguments to make abortion illegal.
The only arguments I have seen are based on denial of inalienable and self-retained rights.
There is no middle ground.
Either all or not all have equal right of liberty.
No one has the right to use another’s body without permission of that person.
Peace
rwjefferson
Abortion is a sin, not a crime.
I still don’t see where SeanArenas has argued to make a blanket ban on abortions.
What I think I see is SeanArenas asking if circumstances of pregnancy matter? Some of you are clearly saying that circumstances of pregnancy don’t matter, abortion should be legal right up to birth.
Fine, but then one wonders that when abortion is effectively limited to pre-viability, why then are cases of rape and incest granted special status. If circumstances of pregnancy don’t matter, then they shouldn’t matter whether the legal point is birth or viability or conception.
But that goes right to the heart of the question I am trying to answer - when does the developing thing* become a person?
*For lack of better neutral terminology.
What about the state of care for premature births? That is the sticky issue termed “viability”. While there currently is a developmental limit to viability driven by lung function, what happens as medical science advances, and premie care can handle earlier cases, even to removal and surrogate care or artificial wombs? “Viability” becomes a liability to the strict “Woman’s right to autonomy” crowd. Suddenly, they have the same options as after birth, i.e. transfering care to another.
I certainly agree there.
I’m not particularly concerned over abortions in the first trimester, regardless if the reason is “I’d rather have a cat”. The condition of an unexpectedly hopeless late-term abortion, however, does trouble me. I’m not ready to draw a line yet, but I would like have the best understanding of what the situation actually is before making a moral determination about any specific case. And yes, I probably would allow some medical loophole all the way to birth.
How do I justify that seeming contradiction in my position? Because I do recognize that pregnancy is unique, and that in any situation where two lives are at stake and have conflicting needs, the moral determination is complicated. I would be hard pressed, for example, to find fault with any emergency situation where the doctors had to choose between saving the baby and saving the mother.
This has already been covered. No birth control method is 100% effective. People can make choices that limit their risk and still end up pregnant.
Even in industrialized western countries, this still occurs. The rate of incidence may be fairly low, but it happens. I guess the questionable term is “many”.
Being uninformed is not being stupid. Being legally barred from certain actions does not make the people stupid.
I win!
While many blacks were taken into slavery in Africa by other blacks, they were brought to America in slavery, they were retained in slavery, and their children were born into slavery in America. So your point, while pendantically precise, is irrelevant.
Because that person is no more identifiable as a person than a mole on my arm? Because that “person” is more liable to be spontaneously [strike]aborted[/strike] miscarried than to be carried to term?
That carries a permanence that does not always apply. For instance, a 20 year old in college may wish to have a family later when older and career established, but not at the moment be prepared for the time and financial burden a child would bring.
Irishman:
Have you by any chance read post #103 yet?
You might find these distractions have already been addressed.
Peace
rwj
Except “transfer” in the case of a fetus would still involve an invasive surgical procedure to separate it from the woman. The rhetoric of the War on Drugs as undermined the human right to bodily autonomy (amongst others), but I still can’t see a path to requiring someone to undergo a surgical procedure against their will. This thread touches on the issue of forcing someone to undergo a surgical procedure for the reason of benefiting someone else but has veered off into the legal status of fetal homicide.
IMO, the “best understanding” is that if it’s not your “actual situation”, your “moral determinations” are irrelevant. Which sounds snarkier than I intend, but I don’t like the implication that someone has a duty to justify themselves to others.
Arbitrarily coming up with a list of which rights you think are important like they are your picks for song of the week does not make for good policy or evidence principled or sophisticated political analysis. If a fetus is a person (as you assume), and the mother’s freedom trumps the unborn person’s right to live because pregnancy is onerous, why stop there. I’m sure raising a child to adulthood is more onerous than carrying one to term. Why not say that the rights of parents trump the rights of children and allow parents to kill their children if they become a burden? Why not say that the rights of the strong trump the privileges of the week to live if the week should be felt to be a burden? I think that your argument leads inexorably to the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade if you argue it logically and consistently. Fortunately, I don’t think you are being logical or consistent.
Compared to all this, my assertion of the right to use any drug I want in the privacy of my own home seems pretty tame. I can’t see how any rational human could say the convenience of some trumps the right to live of others, and yet have a serious problem with me doing something which hurts no one with the possible exception of myself.
All embarrassing spelling mistakes in my previous message are a result of timing out. “Week” instead of “weak”… blech!!!
ThomastheRhymer, I hope you realize I was writing that for another poster (Quepasa), and not myself. I am trying to understand the other poster’s point of view, it’s certainly not my own views.
Read through my post and I think you will realize that you want to address your points to Quepasa and not to me.
You are correct that there is a distinction between sin and crime. All it would take to make abortion a crime is a law.
I have read it. I don’t believe they are distractions.
But there is a duty to justify your actions to others. This in implicit in functioning society. Many morals and behavioral restrictions are codified into laws. Society as a whole determines what gets made into a law, what remains a mere taboo, what is frowned upon but allowed, etc. When I spoke of making a moral determination about a specific case, I was speaking of generalities, of trying to find the moral reasoning behind different positions. I was talking about society determining as a whole if it makes sense to retain the current quagmire of inconsistencies with regards to the legal attitude toward fetuses. I was talking about using specific situations as case studies to understand the issues involved, rather than making a blanket determination based purely on hand-waving. I was not talking about walking up to a woman, giving her a detailed quiz, then making my pronouncement about her situation.
My moral determinations are as relevant as any other member of society when it comes to reaching a concensus on moral attitudes. I may agree or disagree with the concensus, but my votes contribute to the whole as much as any other individual.
While we can hold you accountable for your actions against others, we cannot force you to account for them. Right to remain silent, etc.
Certainly society as a whole could make whatever laws it chooses, and we’ve made some stinkers over the course of history. What then are the guiding principles that seem to distinguish “good law” vs. “bad law” or what’s better left to informal social control? “Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins.”
Murder illegal? Good law. Euthanasia illegal? Debate rages.
“Good law” is built around the idea of harm to someone against their will being a Bad Thing™. While arguably euthanasia causes harm, it is not cause it against the will of the person being harmed. It’s not clearly a Bad Thing™. Similar observations can be made about drug laws or gay marriage or, yes, abortion.
I disagree with the idea that law is, or should be, a codified reflection of moral consensus. I’d describe it as a system of conflict resolution and redress of grievances. In situations where one or both of those conditions are not clear cut, we find bad law.
This thread no longer seems to be about Cecil’s column but has become a more general debate on abortion. So off it goes to the Great Debates forum.
bibliophage
moderator CCC
Rape and sabotage are really the only one that are against the woman’s will. Contraceptive failure is a possibility that she knew about ahead of time and decided to take the risk any way. (Fact: Abstinence is 100 percent effective, if she did not want a kid she could abstain)
The truth is, abortion may be murder.
It may be a human being. In alot of ways their is no way for us to truly know if it is.
I personally believe that if we cannot know we should err on the side of caution. Rape is a horrible crime, murder is worse. I would advise any friends that I have not to abort their unborn child, for it may possibly be a human. It goes into the area of philosophy, when personhood is granted.
I do not really know whether or not it should be illegal though, I do not think a law is an effective way to stop abortion.
Ah, the classic ‘the slut should keep her legs shut’ argument. If she doesn’t want a kid, she should abstain for the rest of her life.
Yes there is, and it’s not. It’s a thing, not a person. There’s not enough functioning in the brain for there to BE a person. At least, not before the third trimester - and that’s being extremely conservative.
Funny how “caution” in this case translates as “risk the life and health of the mother”.
And within limits, we CAN know. We DO know. The anti-abortionists just don’t care.
It always comes down to this: either a woman has the right to her own body or she does not. The rest is legalism, semantics, and often an ill-concealed desire to control women’s reproductive behavior, to portray a sexually active woman as careless and immoral.
Abortion is, at best, a necessary evil. Both the words “necessary” and “evil” are important. I’ve had 2 children, I know what it means to be happily pregnant, and to regard the foetus as a “baby”. But that was my experience and not anyone else’s. I have no right to tell any other woman what she may or may not do.
If a tithe of the energy spent on attempting to abolish abortion was spent on sex education and easily obtainable safe birth control this world would be a better place. The best outcome is not to make abortion illegal, but to make it unnecessary.
I totally agree with your response to Cecile. I would like to add…
I dispute your blithe dismissal of the argument of a woman’s right to determine the destiny of her own body. It is not “foolishly radical” to desire self-determination, free from a government intervention that is based on entrenched religious dogma and a patriarchal political system. To put it in another perspective: By quoting the Supreme Court’s language, you infer that a woman’s decision-making power is diminished by state interest in the unborn. This automatically presumes therefore, that the government has an interest in the person and bodily functions of any male or female. If it applies to women, why then wouldn’t it also apply to men? As there is no parallel subjugation of men’s right to self-empowerment/self-determination, women automatically have less right to their own bodies than men, making them second class citizens.
BTW, it’s somewhat amusing that the argument is made that women who don’t want to get pregnant should forgo sex. Let’s say that actually happens (a modern take on Lysistrada)–women who don’t want to get pregnant (regardless of whether using birth control makes it less likely). One has to wonder about the resultant impact of substantially less sex on men. Somewhat ready-access to sex with women would no longer be the case, rather very strictly limited. Sex would become what many in the religious right desire: sex for the purpose of procreation only. Men, out there, I ask you: Is this what you want–no more sex because it feels good?
On the other hand, I challenge men to avoid sex w/ women to avoid pregnancy. Take on thesame responsibility you expect of women. Go ahead. Do it.
A married couple might find your “abstinence only” message slightly unrealistic for their family planning.
Risk management is generally built around the idea of reducing harm. Your “caution” seems to cause a lot of real harm to other people, while not balancing that against anything.