While I can, I suppose, conceive of an ethical system that could countenance infanticide (which is essentially what not feeding a newborn is), I can’t agree with it, nor can I agree that a society could be successful with such a rule in place. I have two kids of my own; I can’t even imagine not punishing that conduct. :: shudder ::
beagledave, thanks for the links - I had viewed both threads, neither of which really addressed the South Carolina issue.
Try this link - although it’s slightly off-topic (and admittedly is an ACLU link ;)), it describes the South Carolina law that allows blood test results of pregnant women to be used in SC as evidence of child abuse. In a recent case, a link to which I can’t find, a woman was arrested for murder when she had a stillbirth (at term) and the baby’s blood tested positive for cocaine.
if you are my sister, and you need my blood to stay alive, can any court in this land, under any law or authority, force me to give it to you? Can I be forced to give you my kidney? Can I be forced to give you my marrow? Can anyone ever be forced to give any part of themselves to save the life of another for any reason?
Nope.
Well, just because you’re my kid doesn’t mean I have to let you park in my uterus, either. Go away.
stoid
heartless pro-choice bitch who finds late-term abortion highly objectionable - if you can’t decide by your fifth month, fuck you, give birth and give it away (barring health issues)
I don’t know that it was ignored, but it is a hard way to be pro-choice. That’s like saying we shouldn’t outlaw murder because people are going to kill each other anyway. The law is an enforcable set of morals, of a sort.
Incidentally, I feel the same way about prostitution and drug use: after all, people are doing it anyway, why not make it safer by bringing it into legality?
The issue here is that it is wrong to have an abortion, to sell yourself for sex, or to ingest chemicals without a doctor’s permission. Now, currently, only the latter two are illegal, but all three are considered wrong by some people.
As far as the law goes, in all cases but abortion, human life is very precious. It is easy to make a case for abortion illegalization based on existing laws, but obviously not easy enough to actually get a decision like that overturned. It has been hotly debated since forever.
Personally, I don’t think “back-alley” abortions are as dangerous as the potential drug market that will be created around day after pills, or even hrebs that reportedly are abortive in nature. I think coathangers are the last concern.
Nice post lover. (grin. I bet you wish it was someone else calling you lover)
Here’s an impression I’m getting, I don’t know exactly why, but I wonder if others get the same impression. I feel that some pro-life types give less weight to the rights of the mother who wants an abortion because they have a bad opinion of those mothers. They think of them as sluts, or whores, or drug abusers, or whatever. That makes them think of the fetus as the victim of a criminal mother. I’m not saying that all or even some pro-lifers think this way, I am just saying that for some reason even the most sane and thoughful of pro-lifers tend to give me this impression and I have to make an effort to ignore my, probably false, impression. Am I the only one? Am I revealing an ugly side by saying this? I really try hard not to take this thought seriously, but it keeps rearing it’s ugly head. Sorry. Maybe it’ll go away now that it has been brought out into the light.
What ugly impressions of us pro-choicers do pro-lifers get?
First of all, that only addresses the legality of one’s actions… not their morality.
And second, both the courts AND civilized society recognize that parents have a unique responsibility to their children. You may not ordinarily be required to sustain or save another person’s life, but if that person is your child, then you most certainly DO have an obligation to keep that child alive.
The whiny argument, “But I’m not obligated to protect other people!” falls apart when dealing with members of one’s family – and ESPECIALLY one’s own children.
Incidentally, an abortion does far more than merely withholding care for a child. An abortion DIRECTLY ends its life. There’s a tremendous difference between merely withholding sustenance and actually dismembering* a child using surgical tools.
Please note that I’ve never actually said such a thing on this forum. (FTR, I do believe that life begins at conception, but I haven’t explicitly said so here.)
I’ll confess that I haven’t had a chance to read the web site in question. However, I will point out that the vast majority of abortions occur LONG AFTER conception – in fact, after fetal brainwaves and a heartbeat are already discernable.
I’m still new at this posting and quoting thing, so I’m not even going to try to quote. You readers can scroll up to see what I’m referring to.
(1) Aynrandlover asked for a refutation to Stoidela’s post. Frankly, my response was already stolen BY Stoidela, when she called herself a “heartless pro-choice bitch.” I don’t mean to call you a bitch in general, and I certainly am not applying the label to you because you’re pro-choice. I think the label has merit because your position is… well, heartless. No, no court can FORCE you to give blood to a family member. If you won’t give blood to a family member to save a life, well, bitch seems like a mild term. It’s recognized that no court can order you to give blood, and I assume you’re making the analogy that therefore no court can force you to carry a child to term. Well, obviously. The question at hand (one of the questions) is: SHOULD abortion be illegal? Yes, abortion is currently legal. Thank you for pointing that out.
(2) JTC, a position is often tested for self-consistency by asking hypothetical questions. By saying “the biology of spilled sperm and egg mixing is impossible,” it seems to me that you’re dodging the question. Who knows, maybe one day, such a scenario would indeed be possible. My response is… yes, I’d probably feel obligated to preserve the new zygotes, but maybe not. Perhaps the only thing that would stop me would be the ramifications of literally creating life. I wouldn’t want to start a trend of “counter-top” babies. But, then again, if the biology is advanced enough to make your scenario possible, Even Sven, I’m sure I wouldn’t be a trend-setter. So I guess this question is a little too hypothetical to get an intelligent answer… but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored.
(3) Cantrip, your distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic dependence, to me, is just another arbitrary distinction. I’m not criticizing or attacking it; I’m just stating that, at the core, every opinion about abortion has some decision that is arbitrary, but makes sense for the person who has the opinion. That’s fine. What gets my goat is when pro-choice people paint the pro-lifers as “uneducated,” when the whole crux of the matter does NOT have one Absolute answer. But that’s another topic, and one that has been treated before. Search for posts by Bob Cos if you’re curious… he’s a very eloquent poster.
So which is it. Is it an absolute wrong, or only a opinion? It can’t be both. My opinion is that it isn’t wrong. So I hold that your second statement is true: Abortion is wrong in the opinion of a great many people.
then you said
pop quiz. You have 8 billion of something. Do you consider every single one ‘very precious’?
Really? I’d like to see you try. I’d say that making that case requires to you assume some ‘facts’ that are really just opinions.
I can give up all parental rights and responsibilities, yes? Well, I give up same before the kid is born.
And the above only applies to persons born to me. Under the law, a fetus is not a separate person to whom I have any responsibility whatsoever. It is a parasite.
Actually, you are mistaken. At least in the US, we are under no obligation to give up any part of ourselves to save another, no matter the relationship. Not even something as simple to give as blood. This was tested in the courts by a man who needed his brother’s kidney to live. They were estranged, and his brother refused, so the sick man took his brother to court to try and compel him to give him his kidney, with the argument that without it he would die. The court ruled that the man’s brother’s right to self-determination trumped his sick brother’s right to live. I would love to give you a cite, except that the story is pre-internet by at least a decade.
It is unseemly for you to talk to me as though I am ignorant of the subject. I have had an abortion. Have you? I have stood and held my best friend’s hand while she had an abortion. Have you?
In both cases, there was no “dismemberment using surgical tools” You are using inflammatory rhetoric to demonize. Both my friend and I had our abortions before we were 8 weeks pregnant, which is when the majority of abortions are performed. (actually, most are performed before 12 weeks, I’m not sure what proportion fall in the first 8). For both my friend and I, the procedure was the same: dilation and curettage (scraping the walls of the uterus to remove all the tissue), and the contents of the uterus suctioned out through a very tiny tube. It is possible, even likely, that the very small fetuses were crushed or mangled in the removal process, but what you are describing is what is done in the rare late-term abortion, also known as “partial-birth”, which I have already said I am no fan of.
If you are attached to me, and removing you ends your life, that is not my problem. I have not murdered you, I have removed you from me. That you die as a result is an unfortunate side effect, it is not my goal.
This reminds me of the situation recently with the conjoined twins in England, do you recall it? Very interesting debate…two girls, severely conjoined. One twin * could not live * without her sister, it simply was not physically possible. But, in order for her stronger sister to have a shot at a full and reasonably normal life, she needed to have the weaker sister removed from her. They debated this for quite awhile, because they felt bad because they would be, in effect, killing hte weaker sister. But in the end they did it. They didn’t murder the weaker sister…they simply detached her from her strong sister. Death was the unfortunate result.
I feel pretty much the same way about abortion. No one, even my own child, has the right to use my body for any reason, including to stay alive.
I’m not arguing that I SHOULD deny it to my child or anyone else who needs it, only that it is MY choice and ONLY MY CHOICE to do so or not.
As for morality…that’s a separate topic. I consider it perfectly moral to abort for any reason, or no reason whatsoever in the first trimester. Months 4, 5 - maybe, if you have health issues or you discover that the fetus has severe defects that will either kill it or give it a hellish life. Still moral. Beyond the point of viability ( 6 months and up) you are on seriously shaky ground with me. There’d better be serious health issues or you are just an asshole.
I fail to see how this is relevant. I’m only allowed to have an opinion about things I’ve directly experienced? I’ve never committed rape… am I not allowed to be anti-rape?
Well, I think if you replace the word “dismemberment” in JTC’s original comment with the word “mangling,” you’ll preserve the spirit of what he was saying along with now making it a true statement.
Why don’t you like partial-birth or late-term abortions? Is a 7 month old fetus no longer “parking” in your uterus?
This situation isn’t analagous to a “standard” abortion. The conjoined situation is analagous to a situation where the mother has to have an abortion, or she will die. I think every single pro-lifer I’ve heard, myself included, makes exceptions for cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
Again, I’m confused. You seem to mention viability as the point where you change your mind and suddenly join the pro-life camp. Why? What’s changed? Why don’t you take the position, “Look, it’s MY body and MY choice, I don’t want the kid, I don’t want labor induced, I don’t want to foot the bill for premature baby care, or anything like that. I want the kid gone. Abort it.” After all, that’s your position the rest of the time. You say a person is an asshole if they abort after 6 months, yet they’re not if it’s before 6 months. By all the standards you’ve provided, vehement “It’s MY body and MY body alone” arguments, this does not make sense.
Of course not. But no, you can’t describe the experience to someone who has been raped as though they were clueless.
Sure they are. And I’ve known it for 7 months. If I didn’t want the fetus there, I’ve had plenty of time to make that decision. Just because I believe in a woman’s right to choose doesn’t mean I think it’s ok to wait until the baby is nearly born. For moral purposes, not legal ones, I think it behooves a pregnant woman to make these decisions early in the pregnancy. So far as I am concerned, there is a difference between an 8 week fetus and a 30 week fetus. That’s me, that’s my opinion. I’m not going to make you live with it. You live with what you can live with, and I’ll live with what I can live with. I couldn’t live with aborting a 7 month fetus.
I said it reminded me. I see similarities. I wasn’t using it as an ironclad argument for abortion.
Only because you don’t want it to. As I said earlier, I believe you have to take responsibity and decide early. You will never see the logic in it because you don’t see any logic or reason in abortion itself, and that’s fine. You don’t have to. All you have to do is stay out of it when it comes to ME or anyone else.
My post about legality was to point out that some consider it wrong to have an abortion, just like some consider drug use to be wrong and some consider prostitution to be wrong.
Right and wrong are subjective terms imposed upon amoral acts by the humans that observe them. I do not feel an abortion of any kind is necessarily wrong. Note, necessarily. It is well-nigh possible to come up with a situation that I wouldn’t like to do personally, but I recognize that only I wouldn’t like that…its quite possible you would.
This is where legality comes into it. Enough people feel that prostitution is wrong, and so we outlaw it. That doesn’t change the fact that we are subjectively saying its wrong(ie-that doens’t make it absolutely wrong). So, abortion can both be right and wrong depending on who you ask. I have taken both sides in this thread; one, to see how pro-lifers view the topic; two, to show pro-choicers some possible flaws in their arguments.
Now, I think Stoid has something going on here (as well as the internal and external poster whose name I can’t remember–sorry!). The issue revolves around the responsibility of the mother to care for the child (yes, I am calling it a child). I don’t care if it has fingers, a beating little heart, the beginnings of a fine mammalian brain…it is parasitic both emotionally and biologically. Once the child is born, it is parasitic financially and legally and emotionally. The pro lifers want to make it parasitic legally, emotionally, and biologically in utero. Fine, keep trying. Just don’t expect us to lie down and let it happen.
The issue is essentially an imposition of one group’s morals on a specific issue onto another group. The imposition will be backed by the force of the government and all the guns that back it up. This is the issue.
As a mater of fact, yes. Just page through the previous postings, where I showed that child abuse rose by 500% during the ten years following Roe v. Wade.
How convenient, considering that the pro-choice side has yet to show any evidence that child abuse decreased due to abortion.
Right now, the statistical evidence shows the exact opposite. Admittedly, it’s not absolute proof, but what do you expect? In this case, a causal relationship can only be proven through inhumane laboratory experiments, and I imagine that few people – pro-life or pro-choice – would condone such tactics.
Actually, I don’t know that this statement is true, much as I’d like to believe it. The people who shot Bernard Slepian (name?), for example, clearly have no respect for anyone’s life except other people’s fetuses. That said, I agree that most mainstream anti-choice activists take this position.
No, no, no, this is not true. In this thread, I describe in some detail the various types of abortion. The dismemberment abortion is the “dilatation and evacuation”, which is the standard post-first-trimester abortion procedure and accounts for over 90% of post-first trimester abortions..
Until now.
So what? I mean, of course they do. As beagledave and I finally agreed, a fetal heartbeat is detectable within about 4 weeks of conception - sometimes before the woman has even missed her period.
This is the crux of the matter. If you outlaw abortion because you deem the fetus to be a person whom it is illegal to kill, then why shouldn’t the fetus also be a person whom you could abuse in utero - for example, by smoking cigarettes, or drinking? In the links I’ve posted above, you’ll see that South Carolina is doing this exactly, but backwards - it is protecting the fetus from “abuse” by the mother.
So, if the mother goes on a radical diet that “withholds sustenance” from the child, that’s OK? Is it the surgery that bothers you? Obviously not, but this is a distinction without a difference. If you’ve got an obligation to the fetus, it doesn’t matter whether you break that obligation passively or actively. Conversely, if you have no obligation to a fetus, the method by which you terminate a pregnancy shouldn’t matter a damn.
Quix (and JTC), when you say that the conjoined twin case is different, you’re making a value judgment about which life is more important. You also allow yourself to make the decision to end a life. If you can do so in that case, why is a regular abortion any different? Again, we are talking about morals here. Mine allow me - require me - to support a woman’s right to choose whether or not to abort a pregnancy. Yours don’t, except in certain cases (risk to woman’s life, e.g.). Because reasonable people can and do differ on this issue, your morality should not be forced on me by laws outlawing abortion. Rather than fight to outlaw abortion - which won’t stop anyone but the poor from obtaining them - fight to prevent abortions with good information about preventing pregnancy. Or try to convince people to give up kids for adoption rather than having them aborted. But don’t make it illegal to have an abortion, because what you’re doing is criminalizing something that about half the country does not believe is morally wrong (and therefore outlawing it will express the morality of only the other half).
My problem was that this scenario wasn’t just hypothetical – it was utterly impossible. It is not medically possible to save the fertilized eggs at that point… and therein lay my discomfort about painting a hypothetical scenario where nothing could be done.
For the sake of argument though, let’s assume that the fertilized eggs can be identified, located, and saved, through the use of futuristic technology. If it were scientifically possible to save the zygotes, then YES, they should be saved.
Once again though, I’ll point out that the vast majority of abortions occur long after conception. They occur when the unborn child already has a heartbeat, a circulatory system, facial features, distinct digits, and even motor reflexes. One may quibble about whether life truly begins at conception, but ultimately, that’s merely a fine point that has little impact on the vast majority of cases.
So what? Abortion was not illegal prior to 1973 - it was regulated by the states. Do your statistics show that in states that had previously outlawed abortion abuse increased? Or is it just a global statistic? Did it take into account better reporting? I know some of these issues have been asked before, but I just don’t care about correlation without any showing of causation.
Well, I’m not claiming that, although I would be happy if someone could show it. As a basis for outlawing or not outlawing abortion, what happens to the kids after they’re born seems irrelevant to me - if you’re against abortion because the fetus is a living person entitled to protection, the quality of life after birth shouldn’t matter. Similarly the other way - if the fetus is not a person, the effects of availability of abortion on other people seems irrelevant - the woman’s right to self determination still trumps the fetus’s right to life.
