(Every time I see your username, I have an overwhelming urge to welcome you to the Dope.)
If by allowed you mean legal, yes.
What’s the point in banning it? She still has to find a doctor willing to perform the operation, and she’s still going through labour or a c-section. The chances of a doctor being willing to perform an abortion on a woman about to give birth is slim to none. More likely than not he/she will convince/council her into waiting a week and then giving the baby up for adoption.
Making it illegal does nothing.
What emacknight said. It’s a fake issue, a strawman designed to demonize women. It is the abortion equivalent of “would you torture someone to stop an atomic bomb from going off in an hour?” A contrived hypothetical designed to emotionally blackmail people into saying “yes”, in order to provide a wedge to argue in favor of vile behavior. And to demonize people who say that no, they still wouldn’t torture/would let her get the abortion.
I should also add that not only do you need to find a doctor willing to perform the operation, in a facility willing to allow it, you also need to find a pregnant woman willing to go through it.
Willing to go in for a consult, willing to pressure her physician, willing to shop around until she finds one. Then make the appointment for the operation, scrounge up the cash, etc etc etc
It doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not. If she’s that distraught let her have the freakin abortion. Hell, chances are the stress of the whole thing will put her into pre-term labour any ways.
This:
“I’m pretty sure that at least some 1 year olds are people, and that abortion should be illegal after the 7th trimester.”
We live in a society and our society demands many things of its members…sometimes against their will.
A child is a huge burden and could be deemed harmful to the mother even after it is born. It requires a lot of her time and effort to keep alive and healthy yet no one blinks at society demanding this of parents and we punish people who don’t and are shocked when a young child is neglected.
As a society we claim to value life (yeah I know we like blowing people up too). I cited above where, legally, a newborn is deemed a “person” such that you will be arrested for murder if you kill one…even if it is your baby, even if it was born 10 seconds ago.
Does anyone want to argue that the law should not do this?
If the unborn is 10 seconds from delivery the only meaningful difference is the baby is still attached to the mother. So, unless you argued against the law deeming the newborn a person nothing changes are regards the personhood of the child. Killing it at that point would be no different than killing it seconds after it is born.
No, I do not think hordes of women will seek late term abortions (but as mentioned I have seen some who wanted to so the total is not zero). The point is to see where you think the line is drawn.
Granted it is a fuzzy line but unless there is no restriction whatsoever (such that drawing a line is needless) we try to walk it back and see roughly where that point is.
Also, it is not getting in a woman’s business to hold her accountable for her choices. She has plenty of time to decide to abort or carry the baby. It is her choice and I have literally worked to defend that choice and I am proud of it. As with all adult choices though we expect people to deal with the consequences, good and bad, once the choice is made. Women are not feeble that they cannot be responsible for the choices they make.
Seriously dude. You don’t even know what you are arguing against. You are stuck in reflexive “we all hate women” mania.
Please take your meds, chill and re-read the thread.
bolding mine, and also should answer your final quoted sentence. The fact that it’s still attached is EVERYTHING in your hypothetical. Do you really not see the difference? It’s attached - dependent on her for everything including oxygen and such, while a newborn is dependent on no lungs but its own.
You are repeating an argument that was created for exactly the reasons I say, regardless of your personal position on the matter of abortion.
Whack-A-Mole, how is your hypothetical about aborting a fetus that’s ten friggin’ seconds away from birth anything but a strawman?
Fucking hell.
The point is to determine personhood. To decide when the unborn deserves a measure of protection.
So, you start when it is 10 seconds before birth as a thought experiment. Then you walk it back to see where you feel it no longer deserves protection. Yes, that is a fuzzy, vague line but it can be explored.
Get it?
Read what I am saying and not what you think I am saying.
You are so reflexive on this I wonder if you are really a bot.
We don’t require a mother to continue to support her child. If she chooses to, then she is obligated to care of it. If she chooses not to she may give it up.
There is no need to neglect a child, if you don’t want it then give up your parental rights. We also don’t allow people to mistreat their animals, or their spouses, or their parents. None of this has anything to do with abortion. So let’s clear this up right now. After the baby is born, abortion is no longer relevant to the discussion.
No, that’s perfectly acceptable. But I think in reality the mental state of the “mother” will get called into question. Can you see the difference here between the two cites you had, and someone setting out to kill someone elses’s infant? It’s part of why we have various degrees of murder.
Irrelevant. 10 seconds before the baby is born and abortion isn’t really feasible, and so unlikely it’s not worth discussing. If the woman is in the delivery room the doctor isn’t going to reach in and kill the baby for her. He’s going to have her deliver, which she’ll have to do either way.
You might as well ask what we’d do if the father is an alien and she was impregnated on a space ship.
Again, women asked for them, and were denied by physicians (or their facilities). Legality isn’t relevant.
We don’t need a line, at least so far as the law goes. Let each woman have her own line. If she’s okay with it, what does it matter to anyone else. Then, let each physician have his/her own line. If she thinks the baby is viable, or is able to talk the mother into waiting, great.
There is another reason why the line is meaningless because every infant develops differently. Some times they develop really fast and are ready to go at 8 months. Some times they’re really slow and severely underweight at 9months. So what good does it do to assign some arbitrary date?
The government (or anyone else) doesn’t need to be involved. Up until birth, it’s a medical decision, protected by privacy, and left between the mother and the doctor. After the baby is born the mother can be removed from the equation.
Same goes for some sort of bizarre limit. Should we try to allow only 1 abortion per woman? 10? Where do we draw the line?
It’s an irrelevant discussion, because you have no legal way of knowing how many abortions she’d had.
Okay, so let’s do that.
At what point does the mother stop being a person, and no longer get protection? Can you answer that?
To forbid an abortion means protecting the fetus at the expense of the mother. If you decide that at 8months it’s a person and deserves protection, you’re also saying that the mother stops being a person and doesn’t deserve protection.
Because one of the parties involved is inside one of the other parties involved, you either choose one or the other.
ETA It should be pretty clear that the mother is always a person, from the time she has sex all the way up to and after the time she gives birth. So some how you need to figure out a reason why she doesn’t deserve protection.
Is it just my imagination are has this thread (like all others on the subject) devolved into mostly MEN arguing the fine points of conception/pregnancy, fetal viability, the precise limits which should be placed on womens’ options wrt unintended/unwanted pregancy and other issues involving organs and functions they don’t even POSSESS? :mad: (womb envy much?)
Meanwhile, no-one involved, apparently, gives a shit to hear about or consider the personal details of actual women who’ve chosen abortion…who has the time when they are so busy working out all the proper ethical/moral/religious/legal details of the matter based on hypothetical situations. :rolleyes:
I will re-state my position: If you actually HAVE a uterus and the ability to conceive a zygote/fetus/potential child, then you are free (and should remain so, imo) to decide what, if anything, you choose to do regarding the matter.
If you do NOT have a uterus, then it is ultimately none of your fucking business what goes on in those of others. Get a vasectomy, abstain, always use 2 condoms and/or get with a woman who is sterile, on 100% reliable birth control (doesn’t exist) or ready and willing to bear the product of your orgasm if you are so adament.
In other words, if you are against abortion, don’t HAVE one.
Either you’re extremely badly informed, or you don’t really mean six weeks premature. The odds of a baby six weeks premature (34 weeks) surviving are 99%. Even if we step that back three weeks and go by babies being full-term at 37 weeks rather than the traditional 40 week marker, since MoD uses 37-40 weeks as their definition of full term, the baby’s odds of survival at 28-31 weeks are still 96%. In order to get to your 20% survival rate, you’re talking about babies born at 23 weeks, which is barely half way through a pregnancy.
Turns out I did not remember correctly, my apologies. For the record, the medical community tends to consider viability at 21 weeks. I’ve spent a lot of time looking for better stats and this is what I’ve found as a rough guide:
21 weeks and less 0%
22 weeks 0-10%
23 weeks 10-40%
24 weeks 40-70%
25 weeks 50-80%
26 weeks 80-90%
27 weeks >90%
30 weeks >95%
34 weeks >98%
What’s important to note that although there is a probability of survival, there is also a high probability of server and chronic problems.
ETA From March of Dimes: "Unfortunately, about 25 percent of these [earlier than 7 months] very premature babies develop serious lasting disabilities, and up to half may have milder problems, such as learning and behavioral problems. "
Here’s the cite for the percentages: Top Health Concerns by Gestation (in order of greatest concern):
The problem is that people are seeing choosing abortion as ‘wanting to kill a fetus’ when it’s really about ‘wanting it out of me’. It’s death is incidental. If you can get it out of me, at no risk to me, without killing it, or obliging me to pay for it’s medical care, go nuts.
Clearly this is not the case in the vast majority of abortions. A 16 week fetus is not viable. End of story. This gives me the right to kill it, because that’s the only way to get it out of my body. It does not follow, no matter what it’s gestation, that I have the right to kill it once it’s outside of my body.
(killable)
( ) not killable
As a visual learning I appreciate the graphics.
I agree with this. Reading about men discussing abortions reminds me of blind people deciding on exact shades of blue or women discussing just how painful it is to be hit in the balls. They have no understanding of the terms being used and never will.
Once the baby is out of your body you can give it up for adoption. You can’t do that if the baby is still inside you.
I like **Voyager’s **distinction between pro-lifers and anti-abortionists very much.