That you can howl and moan that it isn’t fair all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that for some things, arbitrary cut-off points need to be set. If you have a better solution, then by all means post it, but moaning about unfairness isn’t a counter-argument.
That depends on where you are in the world. For many nations, scheduling is far more a vague concept than it is in the US and they would view our fixation on rewarding and punishing based on such a hard line to be amazingly tight-assed.
Fetuses don’t feel pain until 24 weeks, at the earliest. Plus a fetus is a dependent organism while a child is independent of an adult, to a degree.
But the exact time you are expected at work is pretty arbitrary.
I can poke the shit out of this argument. Watch:
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Assuming we leave aside special circumstances based on things like bond or conscription, it is generally recognized in morality that an individual does not have the obligation to sacrifice their life for another. If there was such a thing as a perfect circumstance where you had to take a bullet for someone else and there were no other outcomes (either you get shot or another person gets shot), the law would not penalize you for refraining from it and preserving your own life. In most circumstances, self-defense trumps all.
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This principle extends also to bodily autonomy. Barring truly exceptional circumstances (such as conscription), there are no principles that can force a person to undergo assault, battery, or other violence. If another person needs your kidney to live - if the two potential outcomes are ‘you are sans one kidney, they live’ and ‘you keep both kidneys, they die’ - then you are not compelled to give up your kidney. This goes down, I think, all the way - you can’t be compelled to donate blood, either.
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If you accept this prior statement, then this applies seamlessly to abortion. If a person cannot be forced to donate blood to save the life of another, then they can’t be forced to use their body for the purposes of gestation. And since the only way to relieve a woman of the burden of gestation is either abortion or delivery, and since in the early phrases of pregnancy, induced delivery would have the same outcome as abortion, then abortion must be permitted as a consequence of freedom from bodily compulsion.
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Meanwhile, the OP’s argument is a false equivocation for the same reasons that doreen pointed out - once the baby is born and there is no gestation physically binding it to the mother, then and only then do we consider the well-being of the baby, whose wants and needs scale against the mother’s in an ordinary priority. When considered in that sense, then the mother has an obligation, if they don’t want to care for the baby, to give it up for adoption or put it in the arms of the state, even though that might inconvenience her somewhat.
Got it in one, hey?
But why does the mother have that duty to the baby, but not (for example) some random homeless starving drunk who turns up at her doorstep asking to be fed. Assume she lives somewhere miles from anywhere else in North Dakota in the winter time.
ETA: First post with this -------/
For the same reason she can’t neglect her dog (even if she lives in the middle of North Dakota in the winter and has no phone to call an animal rescue group) , but doesn’t have any responsibility to a stray dog that shows up on her doorstep. Because as a society , we have decided that we want neither dogs nor babies neglected and even though we require no one to take in a dog or deliver a baby, once a person has taken in a dog or decided to deliver a baby, we will impose a duty to at least get the dog to a shelter or the baby to a safe haven rather than neglect it.
Oh and this
I’ve never heard. You’re correct that if this was someone’s reason for being pro-choice, it would make logical sense to allow all parents ( fathers as well as mothers) to neglect their children at any age. But I’ve never heard that as a reason for a pro-choice position. The more common belief is that a woman should not be forced to use her body to continue a pregnancy. It’s a small, but important difference.
First, she does have a duty towards him - it’s just that it’s more practical and less intrusive to fulfill that duty through taxes or charitable contributions. Second, if she feels no such duty towards that baby, she can put it up for adoption. And third, unlike when pregnant, once the baby is born the wishes of the father are just as important as her own.
It’s used to point out that even if a fetus was a full fledged person like the anti-choice people claim, the woman would still have the right to abort it. It’s the same principle as some guy who needs a new kidney not being allowed to have one of yours forcibly transplanted into him. Or having you forcibly hooked up to him as some kind of living dialysis machine.
I think that position makes sense. However suppose there is a society where abortion is illegal, or perhaps there is a bizarre situation where someone doesn’t know she’s pregnant for whatever reason and gives birth.
In those situations do you still think there should be a duty to look after the baby?
I don’t see how those duties are fully discharged unless the government/charities are perfect.
That’s silly; no one and nothing has a duty for perfection. That’s humanly impossible.
Which is why I said
I don’t actually mind forcing people to keep others alive by paying taxes - I just don’t think they should be forced to use their bodies.
I can’t imagine why a society in which is illegal to have an abortion wouldn’t impose a duty- it makes no sense to force someone to have a baby, but then allow them to neglect it.
As far the bizarre situation, laws are written for the general state of affairs and judges and juries will have to figure out what to do in the bizarre cases such as the woman who claims she had no idea she was pregnant and then neglected the baby.
Howling and Moaning? Unfairness? where did you get that? Please Reread. I was clarifying his point. chill man.
I think, as unpleasant as it may seem to say, that the reason you can let someone else starve but can’t let your baby starve, nor your dog, is that society considers them your property, and has certain minimal standards of what you must do to maintain your property. Those standards change based on just what kind of property it is – you don’t have the same requirements of caretaking for your dog as you do your child – but nevertheless there are standards.
The only way you can avoid the responsibility is by renouncing your ownership. People do that with dogs and cats by driving to the next town and dumping them on the street, and most are never called on it even though it is likely an illegal act. You can abandon lands and homes, but since life isn’t as risk, the state won’t do much except take your home away if you haven’t paid taxes on it.
The rules on renouncing your children are much more specific, and the penalties for disobeying them much higher, as are the penalties for abusing and neglecting them. Why this is – is a whole 'nother thread.
But it boils down to property. Maybe it shouldn’t but it does.
Full stop this assumption is wrong so everything that follows is poor logic.
Begin again.
As in all things, it comes down to location, location, location.
You are missing one step in the process: women who choose not to have abortions or adoptions are accepting their duty to take care of that baby, a woman can pop out a baby and give up all responsibility for it if she wanted to. There is no duty to look out after the baby unless she accepts it.
I’m just saying - the OP read to me like particularly unsubtle and obvious form of “candid” pro-life argument, not entirely unlike concern trollery. It is functionally no different from saying “Well, since women are allowed to end pregnancies, they should be allowed to murder anyone, because after all there is no significant difference between a clump of barely organized cells and a human being that I can see. It’s all life, innit ?”
Forgive me if I’m not impressed.