I’m disappointed that few pro-lifers have taken me up and answered the questions.
Like I said, I strongly lean to the pro-life side, but hesitate simply because I never see this issue addressed.
Most pro-life advocasy wants to make abortion illegal, but stops there. There never seem to talk about what would happen next. what would the consequences be?
Autz, of course there will be problems if abortion is made illegal. We do not live in a perfect world; either way, there will be evils to address. Perhaps no one is replying because you did such a good job laying out the possibilities in your original post.
There is no easy decision here. That is why this issue is so tough. If people don’t die, they can still experience much evil, and the birth of an unwanted person is rife with a lifetime of potential problems. Therefore, I think it would be up to the pro-life groups to band together to aid single mothers and victimized mothers. The collection bag must be passed, volunteers must be solicited, aid must be given, understanding and sympathy must be offered.
The pro-life movements CANNOT call it a day and disband. Their work would only be just beginning. The hard work remains after abortions are illegalized. They must continue to work to assuage any of the harms that might come about as a result of abortions not being available.
The pro-choice movements and non-Catholic prolife movements may want to think about making sure that contraception is available, and may want to further stress the disadvantages of unwanted pregancies so that pre-marital abstinance is more likely. Of course, pre-marital sex will continue to occur, with the consequent problems that entails. We can only work to make things better, not perfect. There is no perfect answer.
This prolifer has spoken.
I think the repercussions could be massive, and I don’t think the “pro-life” movement would be prepared to deal with them.
First of all, while offering financial support to un-wed women who might have otherwise aborted sounds wonderful, the expense would be astronomical. Pre-natal costs, baby supplies, day care so that the woman can work . . . Who’s going to pay for all of this? Even with the best of intentions, the “pro-life” movement wouldn’t be able to afford it.
Secondly, I think that poverty would increase, and so would welfare rolls. Many women would be unable to finish their schooling because of lack of family support, thus limiting their career prospects. Some young girls could be disowned by their families, with no where to go.
Thirdly, there would be a glut of unwanted babies available for adoption. ** CrazyCatLady ** hit the nail on the head: yes, there is a demand for healthy white babies, but what happens when that demand is met?
I’m not sure right off hand what the numbers are, but isn’t it around one million abortions perfromed per year? As far as I know, there aren’t a million couples signing up to adopt each year. What happens to the “extras” that no one wants? The black babies, or the “crack babies” or those with serious health problems, deformities or mental retardation?
And I don’t buy the idea that people will automatically become more sexually responsible. I honestly can’t imagine that many people decide to have unprotected sex thinking, “To hell with it. If I get pregnant, I’ll abort.”
Birth control is expensive, and not fool-proof nor 100% effective. Impulsive acts of passion will still occur, but unlike in the past, a quick marriage is not the first choice of most people if pregnancy occurs.
Fourth, I do agree that child abuse would skyrocket. Giving birth does not automatically ensure maternal love and care. Some women will resent the child which they blame for ruining their lives. If forced to give birth, I think resentment could cause many problems. In studies, there seems to be a correlation between poverty and child abuse, and poverty seems to strike young, un-wed mothers the hardest.
Fifth, I think we’d see an increase in infanticide and abandonment. Young girls who fear their parents’ reactions sometimes restort to giving birth in bathrooms, even now when abortion is available. If the option is removed completely, how many more babies will be found in trash cans?
You paint quite an ugly picture Lissa. Was it that bad pre-1973 in the U.S.?
I’d gander to say our society is a bit different today.
What does DNA have to do with anything?
Probably was, just not as visible. Also, if you go back another decade, the birth control pill was just becoming available. A lot of things were just not spoken about; doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
Pre-1973, and especially pre-1960 or so, if you got pregnant out of wedlock, you were expected to quit school if you were still in school, for starters. Then you went to visit a mysterious and just-now-mentioned relative out of state for just about 9 months. Baby was given up for adoption and Lord knows what ever happened to it. If/When you came back to the same place, everybody knew what had happened and you were a sort of outcast scarlet woman. OR: You dropped out of school and had a real quickie marriage and surprise, surprise, 7 months later had a 7-pound “premature” baby. And everybody talked about you.
Your education and any career thoughts you might have had were over.
If you were a person with a job, like a teacher, well, your career was over right then and there. Married women way back then, were expected to quit their jobs when it became obvious they were pregnant. A single mother would never be permitted to teach or hold any responsible position. After all, she had committed a vile and immoral act.
Or you just left & never came back. Or you went to a back-alley abortionist and with any luck survived intact. Or you went to a back-alley abortionist and died, or developed an infection or a punctured uterus or some such unpleasantness.
In some rare cases, young women remained single and cared for the child alone, possibly with help of family. But everybody thought she was a slut. If the father was known, he became a big shot amongst his cohorts.
Special cases aside, a sperm has only half a set of human DNA whereas a zygote has a full set of complete and unique human DNA. It’s a useful way to discover when an early stage human has been formed.
MLS & LIssa have demonstrated why this is such a painful issue for people to discuss. This is one tough moral decision, to understate things. Each position has it’s attendent evils, and we must engage in some serious moral weighing of such evils to arrive at a decision as to what is right regarding abortion. Each side does a disservice to the other when it ridicules the other.
So because it has human DNA. this non sentient embryo should have the legal right to hijack its mothers body for nutrients for 9 months?
I always find it kind of funny that people suggest more ‘help’ or ‘support’ for women to ‘take their pregnancies to term’.
For a woman who doesn’t want to have a baby, more ‘help’ or ‘support’ in having one is no benefit. It’s not a positive thing, not an incentive, and certainly not something that seems a welcome alternative to not having a baby.
‘We’ll make it easier for women to have babies they don’t want’ seems like an extremely illogical position, and it only works if you assume that women who abort really wanted to have the kid and would have if more support were available.
Therein lies the reason that such a position would never work. There will always be women who don’t want to have a kid.
You bring up two issues.
The first is non-sentience. I personally find this to be a poor test of whether a person is a human or not since there are people who may be “non-sentient” due to some type of mental retardation, and yet I think you would agree that we cannot kill them without a second thought. At any rate, it is not a useful distinction since babies are born in a continuing state of non-sentience, and I doubt you would argue that they can be killed.
Not at all.
Your second issue is “hijacking” as if the embryo were engaging in some sort of aggression against an innocent host. If the embryo were hijacking, it would be guilty of a crime, and the moral decision would be easily made in favor of the mother.
Unfortunately for all of us, the issue is not so clear cut, since the embryo was created against it’s will and through no fault of its own, is held captive in a situation in which it cannot leave without it being killed.
In such a situation, ethics would seem to dictate that no harm should be done to the embryo until “it,” an innocent human, can be removed safely.
No hijacking has occurred. It is a false assumption to ascribe some sort of guilt or responsibility to a being which takes no action of its own that was not caused by others and which bears no malice whatsoever.
Dang. Catsix got in there before I did. Obviously I was addressing Blalron in my immediately earlier post.
You are suggesting that the OP (banning abortion) is a no win situation with evil all around. That’s a fine suggestion. But, I’m suggesting that it can be a less evil situation with help than without help. How is that “funny”?
I’m not suggesting or pretending that it is a cure all. If that were the case, you should feel free to laugh at my naivete.
Well, it is some benefit, not no benefit, if it is a given that an abortion is not available, so it is at least slightly positive. Now, I will grant you that it may not be the desired or preferred benefit of the woman who wants to violate the proposed law and have an abortion.
Let’s not pretend that I have a grander vision than I actually have so that it is more convenient for you to tear down the grander position that I actually do not hold. We make no progress when we refute positions not actually held by anyone.
Perhaps it works with that assumption. It also works if you assume that abortion is murder so you outlaw it, and someone who has an unwanted pregnancy has two choices: receive help or don’t receive help. In such a case, they may want the help.
There are always people who don’t want to obey a law, and some will always succeed. That doesn’t mean we can’t at least offer to help them comply with the law. It seems the moral thing to do given that an abortion is not available as proposed in the OP.
I think the main difference is that a mentally retarded person does not need to drain the physical resources of any particular individual to survive.
See above. Babies, though non-sentient, are physically separate from their mothers. That’s what they have going for them. The state can intervene and pass laws to protect babies without interfering with a womans control over her body.
That doesn’t sound entirely correct. Isn’t it possible they would starve to death?
Unless you correct me, I will assume not, and that physical attachment is irrelevant to you, and that you hold the more mainstream pro-choice view that location is the all-important factor of whether terminating a potential adult is permitted.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, Blalron, but you appear to prefer location-change as either (A) a point at which human rights attach to a potential adult, or (B) a point at which human life begins (and therefore rights attach). The former creates a class of humans without rights, which I think is a philosophically undesirable precedent to set. The latter uses location to define a formation event rather than a structural change which is a more tradition type of “formation” than mere movement.
I prefer not to have a class of humans without rights. I look to the formation of the human as the all-important event at which a human life is created and at which rights attach. When we speak of formation, we are speaking of an identifiable change in structure, namely, when a potential adult is first formed, an event after which it needs only nutrients to become an adult. The rights attach at formation so that all humans have equal rights, and we merely engage in a weighing of whose rights require what action.
So my question to you is: Why is a change of location a better point to define life/rights beginning than when the potential adult is first formed?
Or, do you recognize that the fetus is a human and has rights, but just believe that the fetus’ rights are trumped by the mothers? If this is the case, then we agree on rights, we just disagree on the weighing of those rights.
I recognize that making abortion illegal interferes with a woman’s ability to do a lot of things. The question is, why does the woman’s ability to do stuff trump the life of the potential adult stuck in her womb?
Because actual trumps potential.
“Actual” what? Actual adult? If so, then the life of an adult trumps that of a six-year-old child.
Actual life? Actual human being? Medical science says that the unborn is both living and human. The adult’s interests do not trump its interests, since they are both living human beings.
No, actual life triumphs potential life. My reply was unclear because the original quote was unclear, referring to an “adult” when the distinction betwwen adult and child was unecessary.
Actual human being, of course, and the legal definition thereof. Bringing up medical science is as irrelevant now as it is every time you mention it in a thread debating a legal ban on abortion.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers *
**No, actual life triumphs potential life.
Which is irrelevant, since the fetus is already alive.
So the medical definition of a human being should have no bearing on its legal definition? Good grief.
Besides, if that’s really the case, then please cite the exact legal definition of human being. You say that this distinction rests on that lega definition, so please, show us all the text in question.
Moreover, even if you could cite such a definition, that is ultimately irrelevant. We are talking about whether abortion should be legal or not. By appealing to a current legal definition (if, indeed, one can be found), you are implicitly assuming that the current law is proper and correct. In other words, it is a circular argument.