I think the solution is simple. Women you need to evolve an oviposter so we can shift to external fertilization. Being placental mammals we may have trouble adapting to externally gestating the young but like our brave lob finned fish ancestors who crawled out on land to be eaton by giant primitive cockroaches it’s clearly the brave change we need to make everyone happy.
Time to get work people. Anyone with a proto-oviposter like appendage get to breeding! Chicks with dicks I think this means you.
If you suffer massive organ failure as a result of the actions of any person (man or woman), you cannot force said person to allow you to be hooked up and provide a life support system for you.
As far as I know, there has never been a case where frozen embryos were placed into a womb against the womb owner’s will. If you believe the anti-abortion crowd, those embryos are every bit as much of a person as a fetus, yet the courts have ruled time and time again that a woman cannot be forced to carry them to term.
ETA: In Davis v. Davis, a case where the estranged husband didn’t want the embryos implanted and his estranged wife did, the lower court ruled that the woman should be allowed to have them implanted if she wanted it. Junior Davis appealed and the higher court reversed the ruling, saying Mr. Davis did not have to be forced into fatherhood against his will. Maybe he should have thought about that before putting his sperm in the cup!
I didn’t see any anti-abortion group protesting that decision.
Gregor, I pretty much agree with you 100%. I’ve always said that proponents of abortion truly have no logical argument. Sure, there are many arguments, but none logical for abortion. That being said, this thread is one confusing, screwed up mess, I will say that much more.
What sort of tortured logic is it to say that men are second class citizens because they can’t have babies? We are not talking biological destinies, we are talking about government interference in a woman’s right to determine if she wants what you consider a “privilege”. Who are you to define that for every woman? A man isn’t a 2nd class citizen because he can’t have a baby. He’s not tied to his sexual organs by virtue of someone like you making a generalization that your opinion is the penultimate one.
Too bad men can’t be forced to have children. Not yet, but who knows where medical research will take us. Perhaps womb transplants will be available. Someday, those men who think childbirth is the domain of the female can be forced to carry an embryo the woman doesn’t want.
Are you looking forward to that?
But that’s not what I’m doing. I’m responding specifically to your notion: “If it cannot have responsibility or accountability, how can it have rights?” I don’t imagine my question is anything other than an attempt to see if you really do hold this position consistently. I can’t imagine that anyone would, but perhaps you can clarify.
Yes, you can ask “how could a fetus have rights?” just as much as “how could an infant have rights?”. What exactly is your question?
Assuming we agree on the proposition that rights naturally convey upon achievement of “personhood”, we could try to determine exactly when “personhood” occurs and draw our line in the sand. Unfortunately, “personhood” is a very fuzzy I-know-it-when-I-see-it kind of concept, so there isn’t really an exact line. So, looking at a fetus/infant per se, what’s the difference with respect to “personhood”? Not much. I’ve stated previously (and/or in other threads) that the “personhood” line probably lies, IMO, on some collection of developmental milestones that occur some number of months after birth. “Personhood” is not how I would choose to place the line, for the subjectivity problems already noted.
A zygote, which is not a person, is in much the same circumstances as a fetus up until the moment of birth. A X month/year old, which is a person, is in much the same circumstances as an infant from the moment of birth. Given that birth (i.e., when a fetus is separated from a woman) is a pretty easily identifiable occurrence, it’s a clear choice for where to put the demarcation line.
I think I follow. Since for you, personhood in all likelihood occurs sometime after birth, setting it at the point of birth doesn’t create any harm to the fetus (who is not a person yet) while protecting the woman’s rights. I’m sure you know (or suspect) that I wouldn’t set the line for “personhood” after birth, so I can’t proceed from your premise. I believe both an unborn child and an infant have rights, by virtue of being human beings, but I’ll acknowledge that it’s to a large extent axiomatic for me. But I think I understand your point now.
I would expect that was the case. Or at the very least an “err on the side of caution” type argument being (over) extended to include the unborn.
I’d agree “human beings have rights.” is axiomatic… an issue would be what it means to be human and whether it’s appropriate to apply the “human being” label to the unborn. And all the other things about supersession of women’s rights by fetal rights, the inconsistency of granting exclusions for certain conditions (e.g., rape, incest, abnormal fetal development, life/health of the mother), etc.
It occurred to me this morning what makes these four situations different.
To you, they are the same, because a woman is pregnant against her will. How she got pregnant is not important to you.
There are three degrees of murder in most states in the U.S., and they carry different penalties. In any of the different degrees, the end result is the same: Someone ended up dead against their will. But the law views each of the degrees differently because of the intent behind the act. How they got dead is important.
Did the person think about it ahead of time and plan it, or was it an act of passion, or was it a total accident? That matters to the jury and the judge, and it matters to a lot of people who care about the victims.
IMHO, it’s the same thing here. Contraceptive failure is someone who is trying to not get pregnant. People who are repeatedly having sex without protection are trying to get pregnant. (What else can you call it?) People who get pregnant this way, then get abortions, then get pregnant this way again, then get abortions again … are repeatedly killing fetuses with intent. They know the end result (because it’s happened 2 or 3 times before) but they keep doing it, rather than changing to one of the alternatives. I think it boils down to intent.
Keep in mind, I’m not arguing that abortion should be legal or illegal, I’m merely trying to hold a discussion on the different points that people point out in their arguments for or against. I think people only think about one situation and not the others. It’s easy for you to say it doesn’t matter how they got pregnant, but I’ll bet when you consider abortion law, you’re really considering one of those scenarios - the one that’s most important to you.
I promise that there are people who will hold another one as more important. A rape victim will probably only focus on how the law will affect herself and other rape victims. A couple with contraceptive failure will probably focus on their situation. It’s natural and understandable to have empathy for people in your situation and to try to consider them first, but often those people are arguing for a law that will affect other people they aren’t thinking about.
((Yes, I’m very much of the mind that if a couple has an abortion due to unprotected sex, that after that experience, they should be very much aware of what actions led to the pregnancy. If they go and have unprotected sex again, get pregnant again, and have to have another abortion, that they are doing this intentionally.))
I have a pretty good idea how she got pregnant. I have a feeling you can figure it out, too.
You’d lose that best just as surely as you’d lose that bet if you made it about people who argue in favor of the freedom of speech for Illinois Nazis. Surely you’d not argue in favor of limiting speech based on some intangible measure of popularity or social acceptability?
That’s what you seem to be doing here. If the price of liberty is a few morally repugnant individuals marching about in SS costumes and having late term abortions at a method of birth control… so be it. If you run into them in real life, tell them exactly what you think of them, and count on collective disapproval of their (completely legal) actions to be sufficient to keep such behaviour rare.
Uh… pray and pull? Shitty sex ed (or none at all)? ‘He said he shot blanks’? I think the site for Plan B has a whole list of them.
If a couple doesn’t want to use regular BC for whatever reason (health, cost) but end up having an abortion every year, what can you do? Knowing many of the severe health effects of hormonal BC, it could very well be less expensive and traumatic than a daily pill.
How about “Having fun while using poor judgement” ?
Not really, because killing a fetus ( with the mother’s consent ) is not a morally significant act. Intent or otherwise. No more than killing a fly is; does it matter morally if you kill a fly on purpose or by accident ?
Now you’re being silly. I wasn’t being silly when I asked it. I didn’t mean the biological method by which someone gets pregnant, but the logistical method - did it happen due to rape, consensual protected sex, or hot lurid monkey sex?
I would think the not-silly portion of my response, or the not-silly replies from Cat Fight or Der Trihs would warrant more attention than the silly bit. They do, after all, deal with the Serious Business you want to discuss.
And so you can see how something silly like this can detract from the rest of the conversation.
After reading this line, I didn’t feel inspired to respond to the others.
It’s obvious that some people feel strongly about the things that are important to them. Things important to person A aren’t so important to person B, so when person B makes a judgment about something, it’s made based on what’s important to them, without taking into consideration person A’s feelings or situation (or attributing less value to them). The comments you refer to make me feel more strongly about that.
Saying that killing a fetus is not a morally significant act is the exact opposite of other people’s feelings. Person A believes it’s equivalent to killing flies, person B believes it’s equivalent to killing human beings.
So, when it comes time to think about whether or not it’s murder to kill a fetus, person A will say no, and person B will say yes.
Who’s right? Person A thinks person A is right, and person B thinks person B is right.
So who makes the laws? Person A thinks person A should make the laws, and person B thinks person B should make the laws.
So who’s subject to the laws? Persons A, B, C, D, etc.
We’ve all kind of said our points by now - some people think it’s murder, some don’t. Both Cat Fight and Der Trihs seem to think it’s OK to use abortion as a method of birth control, I would prefer it if people who get an abortion are counseled by their doctor as to what causes a pregnancy and how to prevent it, so that they can make a choice as to how they act in the future. But I’ve already made repeated calls for people to act more responsibly - if not the first time or the second time they get pregnant (and get abortions), then by the third or the fourth.
I can picture a couple getting pregnant because they were having lurid monkey sex, going, “Duh, we didn’t mean that to happen,” and needing an abortion.
I can even envision them getting pregnant again in the same circumstances. (I can envision this easily, because two couples I have known in the past have done this exact thing).
But you’d have to imagine that after getting pregnant and getting an abortion … someone, somewhere, must have explained to one or the other of the couple how babies are made. Maybe when the girl is talking to her friends or her mother and she explains to them, “I don’t know how I got pregnant. I mean, we had sex dozens of times, and then I was pregnant. I see no cause and effect…” maybe then, someone could have told her what causes pregnancy and how to avoid it. Or when they’re getting the first, or maybe the second abortion, the doctor can explain it and they can understand the choices in the future.
I find it hard to believe that many people would actually like using abortion as a form of birth control.
Previously you were complaining about we were focusing on women getting pregnant because of contraceptive failure and ignoring other less probable paths. Now you’re complaining about the discussion of abortion-as-birth-control because it seems unlikely to you. :dubious:
If we let Alice make the laws, Betty’s right to choose remains intact. She would not choose abortion, but that’s okay. Alice isn’t interested in forcing her views on Betty. Does it work out the same way if we let Betty make the laws?
Alice makes her choice based on what’s important to her.
Betty makes her choice based on what’s important to her.
Alice and Betty make different choices because what’s important to them is different.
Why should Alice have to make her choice based on what’s important to Betty?
You completely misunderstand my points. All I’m saying is that people should consider more than one point when making a decision.
This has been going on since the beginning of this thread.
As for your other points, we’re strangely in agreement.
I agree. Whether something is a “sin” or not I don’t care. My point was that it is relatively easy to change the status of whether abortion is a crime or not. All it takes is a law. That does not address the question of whether it should be a crime.
If a fetus is a person, then yes. Now we’re back to the question of when personhood is achieved.
Stratocaster already addressed this, with the comparison to a newborn.
Rights and responsibilities have different threshholds for when they activate. Different “rights” have different threshholds. A child under the age of five does not have freedom of assembly, or freedom of association. They are under the control of their parents.
When does the right to live come in to play? What responsibilities and accountabilities are associated with this right? The responsibility not to infringe upon this right of others? (Note that “rights” are a human invention and the universe is not required to comply.)
No, it comes from the human practice of forming analogies in order to understand the current situation/problem. In this case, some conditions of newborns are appropriate for comparison to late term fetuses, some are not. That’s the inherent problem of analogies - there are always ways they are not identical, and those points of dissimilarity can be sticking points.
And this is perhaps the sticking point for this conversation. There’s no where to go, because parties to the discussion cannot agree on the conditions and assumptions in those arguments either way.
The same sort of tortured logic that says that women are second class citizens because restrictions on pregnancy don’t control men. You said:
It does apply to men, as soon as men can get pregnant.
I rather think the medical technology will go to artificial wombs that don’t require either the mother or father to carry the pregnancy. Then a transplant could occur in the embryonic stage. Now the invasiveness of the procedure is no more complex than the abortion itself, and the result is that the mother doesn’t have to carry the child. It is effectively allowing “adoption” for embryos.
That is certainly a line of reasoning that defines a clear point. It is, perhaps, the one with which the majority of society agrees.
Says you. That is, in fact, one of the main points under discussion.
But if we let Alice make the laws, then Alice forces her views on Fanny. Now Fanny is only a fetus, so Alice doesn’t care that she’s forcing her views on Fanny, but Fanny might care, if she were given a vote.
Or Fanny might be incapable of caring, in which case suggesting giving it a vote is ridiculous. Add on to that the problems of giving Betty proxy power for Fanny’s vote, and then having Betty’s vote supersede Alice.
We’re back to the “Alice having to choose based on what’s important to Betty.” situation, just exploiting the fetus as a proxy.
It kind of isn’t. I mean, what happens when it’s “born”? The problem of abortions is dealt with, more or less. But now we have many new children in the world, who are legally entitled to many rights - what duty do their parents have to them? If they are still required to give aid, I suspect that abortion will still be common. If they aren’t, then i’d point out that the adoption services are swamped enough as it is. Medical technology, sadly, provides options but no real answers to this particular problem.