I actually do, under all circumstances i believe in the fundamental right for women to have abortion on demand. To be in full control of their own reproductive cycles at all times.
Do you not think that some jilted, upset boyfriend may demand a continuing pregnancy (albeit under lab conditions) to hound, guilt, emotionally blackmail his ex partner?
The outcome of an unwanted pregnancy should be decided by the woman. The male should support her decision not try to impose his will.
The zygote or fetus has no right to be born if the woman doesn’t want this
Apart from the fact that an embryo/zygote/fetus is not a a baby. I think we will have to respectfully agree to disagree.
Viable eggs are fertilized often, (if you insist I will hunt out some cites) but too late in the cycle are are expelled during normal menses. This is just nature.
My main point is that a woman should have the right to control her reproductive cycle, nature notwithstanding
I don’t know many women who use regular abortion as a method of contraception, its generally a heart searching decision.
It goes on for years in some cases. But i still believe that this decision should be left to the woman, If the male wants to breed then it would be better all round that he finds a new partner with whom to breed and not force a continuing pregnancy in a laboratory.
Setting aside the rights of the father, are you claiming that the developing embryo/fetus never has any rights whatsoever under any circumstances? To take an extreme point, surely you don’t think that it’s ethical for a mother to demand the abortion of a perfectly viable 8-3/4-month fetus on a whim?
Strangely enough, the argument against late-term abortions is not a “fetal rights” issue, but a “government rights” issue. The government, not the fetus, is the legal entity that has an interest in the continuation of the pregnancy.
The fetus, even in a pregnancy that’s 99.99% to term, has no legal standing. Only the government has any standing to intervene against an abortion at that point.
(The father has none at all.)
This is why the pro-life ideology is a really big contradiction for people who want to limit the government’s power to regulate our lives.
IANAL, but I believe the theory underlying that is that the government is responsible for protecting its citizens, especially those unable to protect themselves. So the government claims its rights because it is protecting a little future voter. But I may be wrong.
Late term abortions I class as over 26 weeks and are generally performed when the the woman’s life or developing fetus is at risk of catastrophic danger.
bit of info for americans.
I was more thinking about this poor lady refused assistance at 17 weeks
Yes, fetuses never have any rights under any circumstances. They aren’t people and only people have rights. However, you can’t really abort a healthy 8 and 3/4 month fetus; you have to deliver it by inducing labor. And as soon as it starts to breath air and scream, it’s a baby and does have rights. The mother can then sign a form terminating her parental rights and leave.
Quite a few women who want to deliver on their own terms and their own timeline undergo “scheduled deliveries” that are slightly premature, based on their “own whims.” This wouldn’t be much different.
Practically all late-term abortions are performed for medical reasons-the mother is dying, the fetus is dying or is severely malformed, and something has to be done, fast. All laws against late-term abortions do is hinder medical professions and harm women in making the best decisions and undergoing the best treatment. They don’t do any good at all. I don’t understand why people go around worrying about them or why they are so concerned about trying to regulate the medical decisions women make about their uteruses. Women are perfectly capable of making their own decisions about their own body parts and medical care and to pretend otherwise is incredibly sexist.
Men should also have the absolute right to terminate an embryo when there is no incremental physical risk or inconvenience to the egg-donor (aka, the embryo is not inside the woman). In a perfect world, no one should be forced to become a parent and people have the right to control what happens to their genetic material.
In the real world, certain other factors tend to come into play.
What bothers me about hypotheticals like these is that they all sound like “what do we have to jigger in order for men to reclaim ultimate reproductive authority?” Well I’ll tell you what: let men incubate, birth, and nurse children. Then they can have ultimate reproductive authority.
The symmetry-breaking is biological. Women happen to be the ones that incubate, birth, and nurse children. Too bad; live with it. Men are biologically taller and stronger. So women and men can’t compete in sports together, and more people want to watch men’s basketball than women’s basketball. Do we go all “Gee, what can we jigger to make men smaller and weaker so they no longer have height and strength superiority?” No, no one would ever debate that.
But let women have a tiny advantage in one area, and whoa nellie, how can we equalize that advantage?!?!
I also think that the poll is fundamentally flawed, I would had preferred other qualifications added, for example, the split between males and women expressing a viewpoint, and also, wtf does “other” mean?
its weak and uninformative. I suspect its agenda driven
Assigning speculative sinister motives with no evidence whatsoever is weak sauce.
If you can’t see the value in a hypothetical (and hardly far-fetched) technological scenario that may help us think more clearly about the complex interplay of ethical issues here, then that’s your loss.
Yes. It’s comparable to how we have laws prohibiting the mistreatment of animals – but the animals themselves do not have any “rights” under our system of laws.
Part of the true genius of Roe vs. Wade was that it showed how the government’s interest in protecting the unborn gradually increased over time. It was a brilliant compromise: it limits the mother’s rights a little, in the later stages of pregnancy, but protects them fully in the earlier stages.