In both cases healthy human tissue is being removed.
Execution of choice and the resulting consequences always exists in a willfully constrained context in society.
I’ve no problem with abortion in the cases of rape or medical necessity.
A fetus isn’t a person worth saving any more than a brain-dead person on a ventilator.
The thing that gives value to your body is the thinking consciousness behind the eyes. If a mindless fetus or mindless corpse is destroyed nothing of value was lost.
People typically push back with, “but the fetus will have a consciousness!” To that I’d respond, and an acorn will be an oak desk at some point. But destroying the acorn isn’t the same thing as destroying a desk.
I strongly feel people should communicate better, but if you don’t, that’s on you.
So what? All you’ve managed to prove here is that if you ignore the differences between two things, the remainder is similar. No shit, Sherlock.
We reject your proposed constraint. Not required, thank you.
Why would you allow it in cases of rape? What’s different about the fetus?
To me, the question comes down entirely to whether, and at what point, the fetus becomes a person. Once the fetus becomes a person, he or she has the same rights as any other person, and it’s morally reprehensible to kill him or her. The “bodily integrity” argument is invalid at this point, because the fetus has just as much rights to his or her body as the pregnant woman does, and abortion is a far greater violation of the fetus’s bodily integrity than pregnancy is of the woman’s.
Prior to the start of personhood, there is no moral content, on either side, to the decision, and people can do whatever they want. I still, in typical situations, find abortion in such a situation to be somewhat distasteful, but my distaste is basically irrelevant, as laws should never be based on anything other than morality.
Now, just when is that start of personhood? I confess that I don’t know exactly. I do, however, know that personhood is a consequence of our mental processes, which in turn arise from our brains and the other portions of our nervous systems, so I can say with absolute consequence that an embryo which has not yet developed a nervous system is definitely not a person. A reasonable criterion might be based on brain waves, or on structured brain waves (I’ve been told that there’s a distinct threshold at which fetal brain waves become structured in much the same way as adult ones).
Some might argue that “personhood” begins at birth, because that’s when the baby can survive without the mother, but this is a foolish argument: A newborn baby can’t survive on its own, either, without extensive care from its parents. The logical consequence of that argument would be to consider personhood to start only at the age of majority, a consequence which I believe most of us would consider absurd. And of course, even into adulthood, some people, for various reasons, are still unable to meet their own fundamental biological needs: Stephen Hawking without all of his sophisticated medical equipment would die just as surely and as quickly as a fetus denied the environment of the womb.
Soooo, I should apologize for having this opinion?
I’ve already agreed that abortion should remain legal, what more do you want? That I heartily endorse it? No, abortion is a tragedy, and morally wrong.
And yes, right and wrong are all a matter of opinion. If the world had never evolved humans, and dinosaurs still ruled the earth, what would be right or wrong then?
Definitely pro-choice. I don’t believe in giving a fetus the right to use a person’s body without permission, something no other human being has.
This is the particular branch of antiabortionism that I find most abhorrent. You’ve firmly established that you don’t actually give a shit about “babies” or “humans” or “persons” if you’re willing to see them “murdered” simply because they were conceived by rape. So then you cannot logically or consistently apply any of those arguments to preventing abortions at all. All you’re left with is, “Punish the slut for having sex.”
The fetus has rights to its own body, sure. Not mine. It can be removed and set on that warming table over there, if you like. Bring in anyone you like to care for it, with whatever medical technology we have. If it lives, it has rights. If it dies, it doesn’t.
Of course, in my state, we skip the actual removal and attempt to sustain life by using the medical determination of doctors as to whether this particular fetus might survive or not. And we call that line “viability”. It’s cheaper to use professional opinion than trial and error.
I know you’ve heard the long version before, so I’ll just give the summary: Even my 12 year old daughter has no right to my kidney if she needs it to save her life. Why should a fetus - even if it’s a “person” - have more rights than a 12 year old child, who is inarguably a person?
Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.
I am pro choice at least to the point of viability, after this, I am negotiable.
Surely it depends when “it” is destroyed?
(A) Liberals strongly support abortion.
(B) Liberals strongly support people of color.
© Liberals support subsidizing of abortions through places like Planned Parenthood.
If A, B, & C, are true, how would you feel if someone open up clinics in urban areas and offered women of color free abortions? Perhaps, even incentivized them to have abortions. Would they be good liberals or would they have nefarious intentions?
And worse, ‘punish her by forcing her to be a mother against her will’. How sensible a punishment is that anyway?
I’ve never quite understood the weight given to “the point of viability”.
WhyNot, your 12-year-old daughter does have a right to your parental care, and you legally cannot withdraw that care without first making sure that she’ll get equivalent care from some other source. And if it’s impossible to ensure equivalent care from some other source, then withdrawal of that care is absolutely impermissible.
Oh, and not apropos of WhyNot’s reply, I should also mention that, although I have no objection to a law against abortion past some relevant threshold, I don’t think that such a law is the best or most effective measure to take against abortion. The most effective measure would be to determine why women want to have abortions, and to address those reasons. I haven’t done the research, but I suspect that poverty is a major driver, and so there should be measures both to decrease poverty in general, and to offer a greater degree of specific help for both prenatal and postnatal care. Another common reason is probably pressure from men in the woman’s life, and so women’s rights vis-a-vis those of the men pressuring them should also receive greater attention. A wide variety of preventive birth control measures should also be easily available. The societal stigma against unwed pregnancy should be decreased, as some women feel compelled to have abortions to “hide the evidence”, and so on.
“Hi, and welcome to Planned Parenthood. Have you heard about our Abortion Rewards Card program for non-whites? 10,000 fetus points if you refer a friend!”
You’re moving the goalposts. Your statement was about “the “bodily integrity” argument”. Not about “care”.
Nonetheless, I already addressed the care argument. Remove the fetus, and let anyone else you like take care of it. I do not have to find a caretaker to abandon an infant; I simply have to drop it off at a police station, firehouse, or hospital or other designated area. They can decide who cares for it. Abortions past the point of viability, while vanishingly rare, are not done outside a hospital or medical clinic. So I’m already in one of the places I’m allowed to abandon my infant.
Most of the rabid anti-abortion protesters I’ve talked to think that forcing women who don’t want to be mothers into giving birth and then effortlessly putting their children up for adoption like a sack of potatoes is the way to go. Of course, only let straight, married Christian couples to adopt those babies, increasing the number of older children languishing in foster care.
I can’t put it as eloquently as many of the others have here, but I’m completely pro-choice.
I love 
that folks enjoy sitting up there in their golden towers, telling other people what the fuck they should do. We should all try to remember that we don’t know these individuals (who have to make these personal decisions). We don’t know the demons in their lives or the trials that lay before them. Can we have a little more passion for these people (e.g. our neighbors, cow-orkers, merchants) who are faced with these heart-wrenching decisions?
It’s that little accusatory “If you don’t believe as I do, it’s on you” tag-What’s on me, and why isn’t it on you too if we come to a disagreement on definitions?