Then to be really consistent, they should be anti war. After all, a bullet stops a beating heart.
Of course not. Even the issue of whether or not Adam and Eve had navels hasn’t been resolved and you can still get an argument about it in many places.
Perhaps. Or maybe they see war as being potentially justified, but what they see as infanticide as not being justifiable?
Nobody has to lend out their own bodies to keep somebody else alive. Just as you can’t strap a mother to a gurney to give blood to save her infant child, neither can you force her to give blood to her unborn child. Would you suggest otherwise?
Again, for the sake of argument, let us assume that you are right – that nobody should have to lend their body out in that manner. Does this justify killing the “guilty” party, without any benefit of due process? Do remember that in modern society, civilized people demand that the punishment must meet the severity of the crime.
So, again for the sake of argument, even if we posit that it is not moral right off the bat to abort, we have already posited that a woman is not obligated to provide uterine space, nutrients, etc. So, say a woman who doesn’t want to give up vital resources (for the sake of argument) has the umbilical cord surgically cut. After all, you have already conceded for the sake of argument she is not obligated to keep it attached. So, we are according to argument allowed to starve fetuses and remove them once they have spontaneously aborted or miscarried depending on timeframe, but not actually induce abortion. Did I miss anything?
Just for emphasis, I’m only granting that for the sake of argument. Not for one moment do I acknowledge it to be true.
In fact, you have missed several things, and so let’s get them straight. It’s only called a miscarriage if it occurs during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy; otherwise it is called a premature delivery. Second, ia miscarriage is the same thing as a spontaneous abortion, and so you’re presenting a false dichotomy between the two.
Second, in the event of a miscarriage or premature delivery, the physician is obligated to do everything possible to save both the mother and the premature infant. Before 20 weeks of gestation, this is not always possible, although babies have been successfully saved at only 17 weeks of gestation. So even if a miscarriage or premature delivery occurs, the physician cannot simply say, “Oh, well” and then leave the fetus to starve.
And third, by highlighting this case, you have exposed a false dilemma in this old pro-choice argument. If the mother does not feel that her body should be enslaved to this fetus, then at best, it would only justify abortion very early in her pregnancy. After 17 weeks or so, the mother can free herself from this so-called “enslavement” by having a premature delivery, and then placing the child on external life support. So even if that argument were valid, it would only do so in rather narrow cases, and would not justify abortion in general.
Finally, you’ve ignored what I said about punishment being meted out in accordance with the severity of a crime. Even if the fetus is indeed guilty of enslaving a woman, this was done unwittingly and unwillingly. (Indeed, it is the mother’s own actions which caused the fetus to come into being, so the fetus cannot be reasonably held to blame.) Moreover, abortion amounts to an irrevocable death sentence–one which is meted out without any benefit of due process whatsoever.
Life is the most fundamental of all human rights. It is is the one right without which no other rights (the right to vote, to free expression, and so forth) cannot be exercised. Even in cases of capital punishment, this is typically meted out only when the defendant has been deemed guilty of murderous offenses. While I do not consider the pregnant woman’s suffering to be trivial by any means, it simply does not merit the taking of another human being’s life.
Yes.
When pro-life people end the absurdity of claiming that a wad of cells with no nervous system has moral interests and killing those cells is akin to murder.
When pro-choice people end the absurdity of claiming that fetuses feel no pain, have no awareness, and have no moral interests at any stage of their development.
When pro-choice people stop using the ridiculously empty argument that personal ownership over ones body has any bearing on whether or not it is okay to kill something with moral interests.
Then maybe we’ll see some progress. Until then, only nonsense.
That’s interesting. It seems that would be the start of all justification for action, from war, to self-defense, to abortion.
Not in that sense, it wouldn’t. The point is that you can’t kill another human being just because it places a physical burden on you. Self-defense (life of the mother at stake if she bears the child) certainly makes sense. But this “it’s my body, so I can legitimately take actions to kill something that’s inside it” line just doesn’t hold water. Whether or not a fetus should be considered as morally important as a child is another matter, and in that case it might be that killing a fetus is less wrong than it causing a lot of pain and suffering and burden. But if a fetus is a being with moral interests then you can’t just automatically moot them because it’s co-mingled with yours and you happen to be more powerful.
That’s a bit of an understatement. That’s like saying you can’t go to war just because you don’t like another country. It trivializes the issue at hand.
I don’t think that has ever been the justification for abortion. There’s no will to power argument going on here. Another life is dependent on a woman’s body. Up to a certain point, that woman should have control over it because her body is in her interests, and an unwanted pregnancy would certainly act against that. For me, after a period of time the “right” to abortion definitely fades–I mean, you’ve known you’re pregnant, if you wanted to terminate the pregnancy then why wait until the third trimester, you know? But before that point, the fully-integrated adult definitely trumps the non-integrated, not-fully-formed, wholly dependent life. We have two competing interests: that of the woman, and that of the fetus (ignoring AHunter’s qualifications for the ease of typing). A decision must be made as to whose rights are more valuable. I hold it axiomatically true that a decision should only be made on how choices/qualities differ. So in that case, the power one holds over another is definitely something to consider in such a choice–it is what makes the two individuals distinct and should not be tossed aside at all.
Since it’s established that a woman doesn’t have to supply uterus space and nutrients to a fetus, and before the point of viability this termination will cause a fetus to die no matter what, doesn’t this establish that women have a right to have an abortion before a fetus is viable? And doesn’t that back up what the Supreme Court said in Roe vs Wade?
And that’s where your error lies. This most certainly has not been establish. That premise was granted earlier, but only for the sake of argument, as I repeatedly stressed. In fact, I repeatedly and emphatically said that I do not acknowledge this premise to be true.
No, I don’t think it does. Physical and emotional burdens are not accepted excuses for murder in any other case, so why would they be here?
But if a baby has moral interests, then it isn’t just her interests that matter. In fact, in a very real sense, she’s sharing her body: it has a dual interest not wholly unlike cojoined twins. But can such a twin legitimately say “well, the liver we share is mostly mine: I’m going to cut you off, you’ll probably die, but it’s my body ultimately.”
But knowledge or how the baby got there doesn’t change the situation.
But except in rare cases, we aren’t weighing the same rights against each other. The right of the woman to body modifcation and to avoid pain and stress not the same as a being’s right not to killed.
I just don’t see the logic. Bargaining power is relevant pragmatically, but since when it is relevant morally?
The OP question was, “Does anyone see a way out?”
The answer to that question seems obvious from the tenor of the thread in which abortion, pro and con, is discussed and not whether anyone sees a way out.
“Never” is a long time, but this sure looks like one of those never ending issures.
Bumping this ancient thread because the Pew Research Center came out with this report in January.
That bolded part could be the answer. The abortion issue might ultimately be “resolved” not by disagreement fading, but by interest fading. Which amounts to final victory for the pro-choice side.
Here’s my (belated) opinion.
Let me use a metaphor by comparing overeating with a drinking problem. Now if you have a drinking problem, you can address it by going cold turkey. You can stop drinking any alcohol. That’s not an easy thing for a drinker to do but it’s simple and direct.
Compare it to what an overeater has to do. He can’t stop eating cold turkey. He has to keep consuming the substance he’s addicted to several times every day and learn to stop in the middle of consuming what he craves.
A person with a drinking problem only needs to stop the behavior he’s addicted to. A person with an eating problem needs to learn how to control the behavior he’s addicted to.
And here’s the relevant comparison in my opinion. Slavery is analogous to drinking and abortion is analogous to overeating. (Which means I’ve probably offended four different sets of people with one sentence.) With slavery, you can impose an absolute solution and simply end it completely. A difficult job but one which has a final resolution.
But abortion will always be an unresolved issue. People will continue to get pregnant and as long as people get pregnant, abortions will still be an issue. A certain amount of pregnancies will be unwanted and that means you’re either going to have abortions occurring or you’re going to have people who wanted an abortion.
So, no, I don’t think the abortion will ever be finally resolved. And least, not until there are fundamental changes in human reproduction.
No, that means abortion will always happen. It does not mean it will always be a political/social issue.
Not necessarily. Lack of widespread public interest could also mean less activity in opposing legislative actions to limit the circumstances in which abortion is legal, or regulatory actions that raise the costs of running a clinic that provides abortions.
I wonder if a so called pro-life person has a funeral for an early Miscarriage. If they think the frozen embryo is a baby. Then what is the difference between a fertile chicken egg and a zygote. In many cases the morning after pill is taken there is a large chance the woman is not pregnant. It is just a safe guard.
When abortion was not legal there still were many abortions and some women died and left a child motherless. Abortion is a religious issue and Separation of Church should be the norm.