Abortion

[tracer]

A debate as to whether there is a secular case against abortion (from an atheist website):

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/carrier-roth/

[lindsay]

And your point is?

We all look out for number one. Might not be pleasant to recognize, but that is how it is.

[SarumanRex]

In a previous post I made a series of rhetorical questions and answers to which pinqy made a series of retorts.

Rex: Is it wrong to force a pregnant woman to carry a fetus for any amount of time against her will? Yes

pinqy: Setting aside rape, sexual intercourse is a voluntary action and it is common knowledge that pregnancy can result even with birth control. So, by her own actions the woman becomes pregnant (even if that was not the intent). So who is “forcing” anything? Nature if anyone.

Rex: Is it wrong to force a pregnant woman to give birth against her will? Yes

pinqy: Again, who is doing the forcing?

I should clarify that laws prohibiting abortion force women to carry unwanted fetuses and give birth to unwanted babies when they would have chosen to abort the pregnancy if given a choice.

Rex: Is it wrong to bring an unwanted person into this already overcrowded world? Yes

pinqy: Why is this “wrong?” Is a person’s worth dependent completely on whether or not someone wants them? Some have indeed carried the argument of “being wanted” to the extreme of condoning infanticide.

IMHO our world society does not want or need any more people, we’ve already got 6 billion. If you are a helpless infant and own mother doesn’t want you (and I recognize that this situation is subject to change, in either direction) then you are screwed. In case I have left any doubt as to your other comment, infanticide is also wrong. There is no right thing to do once an unwanted life has begun, murder is wrong, abandonment is wrong, and pretending to love somebody just doesn’t cut it.

Rex: Therefore, abortion is not a question of right and wrong but one of wrong and wrong. What is the right thing to do when confronted by a choice between wrong and wrong?

pinqy: And here’s the crux of the matter. Which wrong is worse? The whole debate boils down to what moral status is assigned to the fetus.

Only God can know which wrong is worse in any given case. I think the debate boils down to which course of action will result in less human suffering and misery in the long run. Only God could answer this question with absolute certainty and only on a case by case basis. Unless God enlightens a woman, she’ll have to make up her own mind with the information at her disposal, I have no advice to give her.

On a side note, some staticians are attributing some of this nation’s drop in crime to “missing criminals” who were aborted years ago by poor unwed teen mothers. It would seem the effects of an abortion can be long reaching indeed.

[Nilvedman]

The question I have is, at what point does the “fetus” (quotes used because I am using defined terms, not because I’m denying the idea of a “fetus” as a stage of human development) become a “baby”? Is a “fetus” human? And where, exactly, is the cutoff point where a fetus becomes human, and thus gains moral standing? If it were an issue of self-sufficiency, I know some 18-year-olds who wouldn’t make the cut…

If you accept the argument that such a point does exist, how can you be sure that a given “fetus” is not, in fact, “human”? And wouldn’t you always want to err on the side of not killing a “human” needlessly?

(In case you’re wondering, I run this argument back to the point of conception, saying, “But is it human now?” Before that… well, it’s just what you believe, right?)

[lindsay]

What possible relevance does quotes from the bible have to do with anything? I can find quotes in that book that justify having your 12 year old kid stoned to death for back talk, killing ones’ neighbor for working on the sabbath, and for slavery, on and on.

That book was written ages ago, and was very good at coercing people to fork over their money to the church.

The pope, that desexed old man, and others have no say in what one does with their own body.

Abortions were available long before Roe v Wade, it is a medical procedure and is legal.

I believe people have a right to not be forced to become parents against their will. After all, most of them just wanted to have sex, not a kid.

[divemaster]

**

A few questions.

1- is a miscarriage the same as an “early abortion”?

2- Ectopic pregnancy, if there has to be a surgery to remove an ectopic zygote, is it abortion?

3-If a woman gets pregnant on or near her period, and the lining schluffs off, is that also abortion?

-Sam
**

1. A miscarriage would be considered a “spontaneous abortion,” as opposed to a surgical or procedural abortion. Miscarraiges are more common than one would think and really have no bearing in the abortion debate (unless you are talking about deliberate acts to effect a miscarriage?)

2. An ectopic pregnancy has no chance for viability. The fetus will not live. I’ve never seen the abortion debate revolve around an ectopic pregnancy.

As an aside:

From, the March 1998 issue (88:401-05) of The American Journal of Public Health: A 3-year French study involving 1,955 women found a 50% increased risk of ectopic (or tubal) pregnancy among women who have undergone abortion, with an even greater risk among women who have had more than one previous abortion. Other risk factors included smoking, pelvic surgery, use of an IUD, and pelvic inflammatory disease.

3. If it happened before implantation, no. If it occured after implantation, it would be considered a miscarriage (see 1).

[divemaster]

for tracer, who seems to think:

The Dilation & Evacuation procedure used for the so-called “partial birth abortion” kills the fetus before any part of it is poking out of the birth canal. Thus, by the time the physician is at the point where he sucks the brains out of the fetus, the fetus is already dead.

Well, in the direct words of one of the pioneers of the procedure, Dr. Martin Haskell, from a 1993 interview with the American Medical News:

AMN: Let’s talk first about whether or not the fetus is dead beforehand.

Dr. Haskell: No it’s not. No, it’s really not. A percentage are for various numbers of reasons. Some just because of the stress-- intrauterine stress during, you know, the two days that the cervix is being dilated [to permit extraction of the fetus]. Sometimes the membranes rupture and it takes a very small superficial infection to kill a fetus in utero when the membranes are broken. And so in my case, I would think probably about a third of those are definitely are dead before I actually start to remove the fetus. And probably the other two-thirds are not. (bolding mine)

In an interview quoted in the Dec. 10, 1989 Dayton News, Dr. Haskell conveyed that the scissors thrust is usually the lethal act: “When I do the instrumentation on the skull… it destroys the brain tissue sufficiently so that even if it (the fetus) falls out at that point, it’s definitely not alive,” Dr. Haskell said.

This is not unsubstantiated hearsay. On July 11, 1995, AMN submitted the transcript of the tape-recorded interviews with Dr. Haskell to the House Judiciary Committee.

[noggins74]

**
What possible relevance does quotes from the bible have to do with anything? I can find quotes in that book that justify having your 12 year old kid stoned to death for back talk, killing ones’ neighbor for working on the sabbath, and for slavery, on and on.

That book was written ages ago, and was very good at coercing people to fork over their money to the church.
**

I assume you’re referring to the passage I posted from Psalms. Like I said in my reply to Pinqy, I was answering a question that someone else had posted asking about what information there was in the Bible on the subject. I never expected to convert anyone with the passage.

And as far as your claim to those other quotes…I’d like you to post them, and give the context and background information that surrounds them. Christians on this board have been accused of making uninformed statements regarding science. In the same way, I believe that if you’re going to make statements like you did about the Bible, you should be informed and be able to support what you have posted. Have you ever actually studied the things you claimed, or did you just hear it somewhere?

[pldennison]

On a side note, some staticians are attributing some of this nation’s drop in crime to “missing criminals” who were aborted years ago by poor unwed teen mothers. It would seem the effects of an abortion can be long reaching indeed.

I have only a passing familiarity with this research, having heard some of the debate when it was originall published, but just on the face of it it seems to make a specious claim of causation where there might be only correlation. As astorian once pointed out, who are the folks having the abortions? And who are the folks having the babies?

The women who are from groups most commonly associated with the predictors for violent criminal behavior – poor, urban, minorities – are the ones having the most children. According to 1996 figures from the CDC, the women having abortions were predominantly white and unmarried, but only 20% were 19 or younger. And while I can’t find any stats regarding socioeconomic status, I would be willing to bet that a significant percentage of abortion patients are middle- to upper-class.

There might eventually be some merit in that research, but right now it appears counterintuitive. It strikes me as akin to arguing that if one has an abortion, one is killing the next Einstein/Beethoven/Hitler/Bundy/whatever.

[Stratocaster]

**
Please explain exactly why atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Wiccans, neo-Pagans, etc, should find Biblical arguments against abortion persuasive. And, although the cynic in me doubts it, do you have a purely secular argument against abortion, to include why you consider life to begin at conception? This really is important, since the anti-abortion movement wishes to make abortion illegal for all, a secular argument is necessary for any kind of justification.

pinqy
**

This is the syllogism I’ve constructed (and I don’t mean this to be flippant in any way). If someone can disute any point (and all subsequent points rely on the prior ones), I’m very interested in your logic and feedback.

1. At some point after conception (perhaps immediately after) this entity becomes a human entity. All but the most strident pro-choice advocates seem to concede this, although the “point” is hotly contested. The zygote does not become a platypus or a table lamp–it “becomes” a human child.

2. There are all manners of rights that are legitimate ones (for example, the right of a woman to decide her own destiny). But many rights are subjugated to others, given a set of circumstances. If there is such a thing as an absolute right, it is the right of an innocent not to be killed. No other right subjugates this one, none I can think of.

3. Given the the supremacy of the right noted in #2, unless we are certain that human life does not exist (again, very few disagree that at some point human life emerges), we must assume that it does. Put another way (to summarize): if we know that an inexorable progression toward human life is underway, an abortion is justified only if we can demonstrate that life does not exist.

If you buy this syllogism, the principal question to be answered is not “Why do you believe it’s human life?”–it’s “Why do you believe it’s not?” I’ll answer the former anyway, just for the heck of it: I don’t believe I ever existed in a form that was not essentially human, and I’m not sure why I should abandon that belief.

[tracer]

divemaster wrote:

From, the March 1998 issue (88:401-05) of The American Journal of Public Health: A 3-year French study involving 1,955 women found a 50% increased risk of ectopic (or tubal) pregnancy among women who have undergone abortion, with an even greater risk among women who have had more than one previous abortion. Other risk factors included smoking, pelvic surgery, use of an IUD, and pelvic inflammatory disease.

A “50% increased risk”? In most of these studies, that means a 1.5-to-1 association. If so, it qualifies only as a weak association and probably isn’t something you could hang your hat on. How big was the “even greater risk” for multiple-abortion women?
Oh … and I honestly thought that something was done during the late-term D&E procedure to kill the fetus before it emerged. It seems I was misinformed.

[evilbeth]

**
Psalm 139:13-16 (New International Version)
"(13)For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
**

I guess, then, that this debating over when life begins (according to the Bible) actually comes down to which definition of “womb” you want to use.

[tracer]

Well, it’s official now.

The U.S. Supreme Court just, today, declared laws banning Intact Dilation & Extraction abortions (the so-called “partial birth” abortions) unconstitutional.

Here’s the news article: http://dailynews.netscape.com/dailynews/cnnnews.tmpl?story=scotus.partialbirth0628.html
And the text of the judicial decision: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=99-830