No. I would have no difficulty with abortion under those circumstances (though I completely understand why someone in that situation might also choose to continue the pregnancy).
As I’ve said, I’m referring to healthy pregnancies in which the mother’s physical and mental health are not at significant risk and the child is likely to live and grow up.
I don’t know where you got the idea that ‘residing’ in another person’s body has anything to do with it. It doesn’t matter if the zygote/embryo/fetus/born person is outside the person body’s or inside (though inside is certainly more violating). It still doesn’t have the right to use the body, body systems, organs or biological processes of another person - without their consent.
Thousands of already born people die every day because they are denied access to other peoples’ bodies in order to survive. Yet, we don’t mandate blood/tissue/organ or other live donor donations in order for them to survive. We don’t mandate it of biological parents who chose to birth their children and assume parental responsibility for them. We don’t mandate it of people who explicitly intended to create embryos via IVF. We don’t even mandate it of corpses who are already dead and don’t even need their body parts anymore! Their consent is required. Why should a corpse’s body autonomy garner more respect than a pregnant woman’s?
You need to make the case for ‘super human-fetal rights’, because ‘personhood’ won’t quite cut it.
The way I’d like to look at it is – we make progress. We learn, and, all too often, we learn from mistakes.
The U.S. enshrined slavery in the Constitution. Then, when we saw the evil that led to, we changed the Constitution. (Took a war, but, never mind…) We made progress. Not hypocrisy, just fixing an error.
Go back to the 1918, and I’d have been one of those favoring the 18th Amendment. Go forward to 1933, and I’d also have been one of those favoring the 21st Amendment. Not hypocrisy by any means: just a painful learning experience.
Last time I checked abortion is just another medical procedure that one can choose in council with their doctor. The government has not authority there. last time I checked.
those that would force their “religion” down others throats. well , let’s wait for Judgment day. OK?
The right to live without being deliberately killed is not a super-human right, it’s a human right.
Didn’t we already do this before? Again, unborn children don’t need a kidney transplant. They need to stay in the womb, where their parents have placed them, until they are able to be born, if they are to live.
But fine, we’ll do it your way and see if it makes more sense:
Since no born child or adult has a legally enforceable right to a kidney donation from a particular person, no unborn child has the right to live.
Not actually any better, is it?
Works for me. No unborn child has the right to life.
Specifically, not when that right infringes on the right of the mother to privacy, medical self-determination, and personal bodily integrity.
Refusing access to your body, organ systems, or biological processes is not deliberately “killing” anyone. Human rights do not confer the right to use another person’s body against their will in order to survive.
No one is arguing that zygotes/embryos/fetuses need a kidney transplant to survive. What a zygote/embryo/fetus needs to survive to viability and birth is far, far more biologically involved and physically intimate than a kidney transplant. Ergo, since we don’t mandate blood/tissue/organ donation which is less intimate, biologically involved than pregnancy and child-birth in order to save the lives of already born people (whose personhood is not disputed, since the biological characteristics and rights of born people is what the concept of ‘personhood’ is actually based on) - it can not be mandated of pregnant women.
I’m not sure why you consider that “my way”. Twisting the argument, because you are incapable of a legitimate rebuttal without mischaracterizing the position being debated clearly seems “your way” at this point.
Let’s try again with what my position actually is:
If no born person’s ‘right to life’ entitles them access to another person’s body, body systems, organs or biological processes in order to survive - then a zygote’s/embryo’s/fetus’s ‘right to life’ does not entitled them access to another person’s body, body systems, organs or biological processes by virtue of ‘personhood’. You need to make the case ‘super-fetal-human rights’ because ‘personhood’ does not confer the rights you are advocating for.
Again, you are just not making any sense. You just keep saying the same thing over and over. I’ve been pregnant and given birth (so have you) and we both know that pregnancy/childbirth and donating a kidney are not the same thing. And we both know that having an abortion is killing the child (or whatever you would prefer to call what you acknowledge is a person inside the mother’s uterus).
Claiming that a person has no right to live because that person requires something different than another person requires to live is nonsensical, and that is what you are explicitly and repeatedly doing.
So I’ll use your method in other scenarios and we’ll see how it goes, OK?
-Adult Americans do not have the right to a free public education, so child Americans don’t either;
-People who aren’t paralyzed don’t have a right to wheelchair ramps so disabled people don’t either;
-People who speak English don’t have a right to a translator when they are charged with a crime so non-English speakers don’t either.
I could go on obviously. Those are all super-human rights, then, because no other humans except the people who need education, wheelchair ramps and translators have a right to them?
By the way and as I’ve said, I do understand people may rationally and ethically come to the conclusion that the baby’s rights are trumped by the mother’s–I disagree of course. But to attempt to wave a word wand and assert that unborn children have no right to live whatsoever, especially when you have acknowledged that they are indeed people, seems to me disingenuous.
How about pregnancies that happen against the woman’s will and consent was not given because said pregnancies were the result of rape?
That is a situation where the mother’s mental health is often significantly at risk and I believe abortion is appropriate if she chooses it.
That is like saying if you don’t allow an acorn to become a tree, you are destroying trees.
The difference between a mugger causing an abortion and a woman seeking one is it is the mothers choice…not the muggers,
Just curious…how many of you here who are opposed to women’s reproductive freedom have a uterus and want other women to breed against their will?
huck,
I am not making the claims you are arguing against -* you are.* I am not the one equating zygote/embryos/fetuses with born children/adults/people - you are. I am not equating pregnancy and childbirth with kidney donation - you are. * Your logic doesn’t follow, no matter how many times you repeat it and argue against false claims of your own invention.* (nor, do you have any knowledge of my experience with pregnancy and child-birth. Say what?) I have never asserted that unborn babies do not have a ‘right to life’. Again, another strawman of your own invention. I assert that if unborn babies are people, they have the same ‘right to life’ as people (aka ‘personhood rights’). You are not arguing for personhood rights for unborn babies, since personhood does not confer the rights you are trying bestow on a zygote/embryo/fetus.
Perhaps you need to review you understanding of the logical argument, because this is the argument I presented, which you keep failing to follow:
Premise 1: Zygotes/embryos/fetuses are morally equivalent to people and therefore entitled to the rights of personhood.
Premise 2: No person’s right to life entitles them access to another person’s body, body systems, organs, tissues or biological processes in order to survive - even if their life depends on it.
Conclusion: If zygotes/embryos/fetuses are morally equivalent to people, then a a zygote/embryos/fetus’s right to life does not entitles them access to another person’s body, body systems, organs, tissues or biological processes in order to survive - even if their life depends on it.
Now, it’s fine if you disagree, but your counter argument and repeated strawman claims do not logically follow.
Your fist rebuttal was that born people don’t need access to another person’s body, body systems, organs, tissue or biological processes in order to survive. Which is patently false - thousands of already born people die every day because they are denied access to another person’s body in order ‘to survive in the only way possible.’ Indeed, blood/tissue/organ donation that would save thousands of born people’s lives is far less physically intimate and biologically involved than pregnancy and childbirth - yet we still don’t mandate it - not even of corpses. What about these people’s ‘right to life’? How come they don’t get the same ‘right to life’ that you afford to the unborn?
You can not grant rights to the unborn by virtue of personhood if those same rights don’t exist for born people. Particularly, when the concept of personhood is based on the rights of born people! Are zygotes/embryos/fetuses people, or not? If so, then the scope of their ‘right to life’ is equivalent to that afforded to people. You need to quit framing your argument in fetal personhood and equating unborn children with born children if you can’t logically support their equivalence.
Respectfully, I think it is your understanding of what you are saying (which has varied somewhat at different points) that is at fault.
The right in question is the right not to be killed. Aborting an unborn child is killing that child.
There is no other circumstance in real life in which actively killing someone is required to disconnect that person from another person’s bodily systems, where the dependent person has been made so dependent by the actions of the person who wants to kill her. So saying that the dependent person has no right not to be killed, because no one else has the right to remain physically dependent on the body of another, is nonsense.
And repeatedly referring to organ donation (and getting mad at me for doing so in turn) takes you nowhere. Refusing to donate a kidney is not the same as killing someone, and the person who refuses to donate didn’t cause the kidney failure.
If it were possible that as a result of you and your significant other having sex Don Johnson (without his consent) could become completely dependent on your vascular system for nine months–and the law pronounced it your right to then kill him by surgically severing the connection, assuming there was no alternative way for Don Johnson to survive–then you would have an argument that that law should also apply to unborn humans.
I happen to doubt that the court would rule that way, however.
And you are correct, my view is based on the idea that unborn humans are people with rights, for the reasons I’ve already stated. It appeared you were conceding that for the purposes of argument.
This isn’t my method, that is your logic fail and strawman
Logic Fail: I am not equating adults and children, paralyzed people with the disabled or English speakers with non-English speakers. I’m not the one equating the born with the unborn - YOU ARE, repeatedly That’s the whole premise of the personhood argument. You can not logically equate them and then afford them different rights based on the very status that makes them inherently different.
Aside from the fact, some born people DO need access to the bodies of other people in order to survive and that access is less intimate and biologically involved than pregnancy and childbirth, and yet, they are still are allowed to die. Honestly, how do you reconcile affording more rights to the unborn than to the born? Why is their death not an intentional “killing”? They both require the use or access to another person’s body in order to live. This isn’t giving something to one and not the other because they don’t need it - they BOTH NEED IT, but under your convoluted logic only the unborn get it.
So killing unborn babies is acceptable if there is a compelling reason?
Yes, sadly. In my view, if the mother’s physical or mental health is at serious risk, then her rights trump the baby’s.
And who should have the authority to decide what constitutes a serious risk to a woman’s physical or mental health?
Doctors, after proper evaluation and discussion with the mother, with the courts to resolve the issue if necessary.
Are these doctors chosen by the mother? What expertise do courts have in assessing medical risk?