This!
The Norwegian "Law regarding the termination of pregnancies starts like this. (My translation first)
Yes, but the OP introduced that comparison with a blatant strawman of an extreme pro-abortion-rights position that he claimed was common in the US:
The OP’s insinuation of hypocrisy among American abortion-rights advocates (because they don’t object to reasonable restrictions on abortion in Europe) rests precisely on this strawman assertion that American abortion-rights advocates do object to all restrictions on abortion in the US.
Which they don’t. There may be an occasional loony on a messageboard here and there who holds such extreme pro-abortion views, but AFAICT there is no recognized spokesperson or advocacy group anywhere in the US abortion-rights movement that opposes all legal restrictions on abortion.
So the OP’s premise about the consistency of US pro-choice views is fundamentally erroneous. Nobody except a few loons thinks it’s “violating women’s rights” to have some reasonable restrictions on abortion, either in Europe or in the US.
It’s a position we see here on this board. And only from Americans. Hardly a strawman. The strawman is your constantly bringing up recognized spokespersons and advocacy groups. Nobody cares about those.
Nonsense. The OP was specifically talking about American abortion-rights activists, not just random American messageboard babblers.
And Asympotically fat, the other poster I was responding to when I brought up this asymmetry issue, explicitly said “the debate has been polarized to the extent that on one side you have [official position of organized and powerful anti-abortion groups] whereas on the other side you have [extreme minority radical view not supported by any recognized abortion rights group]”. In the real world, those are not in any way evenly matched “sides” who are in any way “polarizing” any kind of established public “debate”.
This OP’s argument is absolutely about trying to fake a false equivalence between American support for radical extremist anti-abortion positions and American support for radical extremist pro-abortion positions. Without that false equivalence, there’s no grounds whatsoever for painting the US abortion-rights movement as a whole with the broad brush of hypocrisy for not denouncing legal restrictions on abortion in Europe.
Now, if what the OP or anybody else actually meant to ask was, “Do American pro-abortion extremists think that European abortion restrictions violate women’s rights?”, fine by me. Knock yourself out.
But if so, then you’ll actually have to go find some real-life American pro-abortion extremists who really do oppose all legal restrictions on abortion, and focus the discussion on what they think. Not just rely on lazy broad-brush references to American abortion-rights supporters in general without any qualification.
It’s not just a “claim” - that is the case.
The Supreme Court struck down the criminal law on abortion back in 1988.
The Mulroney government (Progressive Conservative) tried twice to pass a replacement law, but one attempt didn’t even pass the Commons. The second passed the Commons but was defeated on a tie vote in the Senate.
Since then, there has been no federal law criminalising abortion, and provincial attempts to pass laws restricting abortion have been struck down on federalism grounds. Abortion is now treated as just one more medical procedure. It is covered by the public health care plans.
See the wiki article: Abortion in Canada.
Kimstu, you are making things up and then getting mad about them without need. Asympotically fat made no claims of “evenly matched ‘sides’ who are in any way ‘polarizing’ any kind of established public ‘debate’.”
Do these extreme positions exist? Is there a perception of more polarization in the US than elsewhere? A poster who writes that he or she is “shocked at how polarized it seems to an outsider” gives you a clue with the word “seems”.
This is a very interesting and educational thread. We’ve already gotten to learn about abortion laws and perceptions in Europe. And also about European perceptions of perceptions on abortion in the US. I suggest you calm down allow us to continue to learn these things.
To the OP- yes, the countries that don’t allow women and doctors to make decisions about abortion are violating their rights.
This is my belief: every person has the right to bodily autonomy – and that right trumps the rights of anyone or anything who is inside them. Every person (of sound mind, etc) has the right to expel anyone or anything that’s inside them if they want it out, no matter what. It doesn’t matter if it’s a parasite, a fetus, or a tiny violinist- if you want it out, you have the right to get it out.
Ideologically, I might agree (I’m not really sure yet, I remain a little unsure about how to weigh it against the suffering of a baby). But pragmatically, for this to be a law it would need to solve an existing problem. AFAIK, this is not a problem where I live. I have never heard of anyone wanting to terminate a late pregnancy for non-medical reasons. Most of the time you either want a baby or you don’t, you find out you’re pregnant when you miss a period and decide then. No article, not anyone I know, nothing indicates that extending the right of abortion indefinitely solves a problem beyond an ideological one. It’s something that actively interests me, so I think I’d come across it in reading if it were a problem.
I think it is an existing problem- some women in many different countries are not able to get abortions when they want them. I agree that very, very few women get late-term abortions for non-medical reasons, but even they must be given the benefit of the doubt, and the basic dignity and respect that they get to be able to make decisions about their own bodies without legal interference. Whether or not I agree with every single abortion ever, it is their decision, not the government’s, and not mine. And I’ll add that forcing someone to have an abortion (whether by government or by individuals) is just as wrong as preventing them from having one- it’s the decision of the individual and no one else.
Further, this isn’t just an argument for legal abortion at all phases of pregnancy- this is an argument that the personhood of the fetus is irrelevant- it doesn’t matter who or what is inside you… if you want him/her/it out, you can get it out. This principle, obviously, applies to any other object or person (or part of a person!) that may be inside you- if you want him/her/it out, for any reason and at any time (even if you already invited them inside), they must get out!
It’s not a few loonies on the internet. Here’s a couple of instances of calls for “post-birth abortions” from a couple of philosophers in the Journal of Medical Ethics and a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood testifying before a Florida legislative committee.
No one has claimed in this thread that this is the mainstream pro-choice position. But the claim that this is the extreme of that position appears to be well founded and not anything like “a few loonies on the internet”.
[Of note: I believe these two philosophers are actually Europeans, and I don’t know if the premise that there is more polarization in the US than there is in Europe is valid.]
Question I have is about the oft-repeated assertion that the US is to the right of Western Europe politically, and that the right wing of European politics is to the left of left-wing American positions. (This is often cited in the context of discussions of this board’s orientation.)
The implication of statements such as yours is that this is not necessarily the case, and may vary by country and issue.
From the point of view of this Spanish woman, what’s weird is considering abortion as a matter of privacy.
To me, it’s a matter of reproduction rights and of basic healthcare (like the Pill, a DUI, or periodic sonograms), and it is not a matter which affects only the woman involved (neither do the Pill or a DUI: choosing one or the other is often viewed as a shared decision).
I’m pro-choice, so don’t take this the wrong way, but I have a hard time believing there are “very few” abortions in the Netherlands. This site puts the abortion rate at about 1/2 that of the US, but that is still a lot of abortions. If the US had that abortion rate, it would mean about 500,000/year.
While it might be nice to claim that abortion freedom in Canada came forth from a wellspring of respect for women’s rights, it’s actually the result of bitter partisan politics directed against a weakened government that was on its way out.
That’s okay, though - it’s a good result reached in an ugly way.
This is by and large as i’d say it was in the UK as well. Abortion is one of those things which is a “conscience issue” as it comes to politicians, where the party strategists don’t require everyone to vote one way, and by and large that’s probably because there isn’t a massive debate. Likewise with things like gun ownership, less so with gay marriage which was something of a big deal but probably just because it was something new. Though still, seemingly, less of a big deal than in the US. To the extent that abortion debates are ever in the news here it’s news from Ireland. It’d be interesting to hear from an Irish Doper on the matter, actually.
I can certainly understand someone who was strongly in favour of/against any of those things focusing their attention in areas where there is a big push in both or either directions, or where the line is drawn too far in the direction they don’t like.
That’s fair, you’re right that it’s not “very few”. What I mean is that it’s fewer than the US, so you get less noise about it. Plus, like I said, there doesn’t appear to be a huge practical problem of women wanting abortions later than 24 weeks. There isn’t a complication, so there is no debate.
It’s true, is it not, that in the US if you seek an abortion you might have to walk through a crowd of protesters, and you might even get shot by a nut job? That people are trying to take the right away from women? That there are huge amounts of teen pregnancy? All this means that in the US there is a reason for noise to be made about the issue. In the Netherlands, the status quo is ok. The imagined problems are not experienced by the population to the degree that they feel something should be done about it.
There is noise made by doctors, because they have to report any abortions they do after 24 weeks, but not much by women who want abortions after that and can’t get them.
So iiandyiiii has a problem with the rights of Dutch women, but Dutch women, for the majority, don’t. It seems a little like passing a seatbelt law in a land of three cars. Seatbelts are safer, but they’re unlikely to become a law if there isn’t a practical, social problem the law would solve.
Perhaps- I’m a pragmatist, so violating the rights of 11 women bothers me a lot less than violating the rights of 11,000, and it’s reasonable to fight the second a lot more than the first. But I think the point and the reasoning is a good one to explain why I support abortion rights.
I agree with you. Though I’m still not sure I would support abortion at any time, because then I think of a baby and… Just 
Got nothing else. Just
Ideologically, I would just want it to be between a woman and her doctor. Pragmatically, we don’t seem to be running into problems with the law as it is.
That’s OK- you don’t have to support it. You can oppose it, and say and think anything you want about it- that’s bad, it’s murder, it’s evil, etc. What matters is this- are you willing to push that women should be legally prevented from making the decision for themselves?
Your characterization of the Florida Planned Parenthood lobbyist’s position is ludicrously inaccurate. This testimony was in reference to procedures used during a late-term abortion that already conformed to legal abortion restrictions, not any kind of demand for completely elective late-term abortion WITHOUT any legal restrictions at all.
Demanding that there be no legal restrictions at all on abortion is simply not a serious position in the US abortion-rights movement, despite the OP’s and others’ unsupported assertions to the contrary.