I’d love to see this justified. If it’s killing a “person”, and killing a “person” is OK if they are the product of rape, then why stop at birth? I should be able to kill anyone who was conceived during a rape no matter how old they are with no consequences, right?
(not directed at you, just joining in the pile-on)
<deleted>
Only if they are living inside your body. Hell, you can legally kill someone if they come into your house unannounced and are posing a real or implied threat to your general well being.
My favorite analogy was written by Judith Jarvis Thompson, “A Defense of Abortion”:
In the spirit of the OP, I’d still have to think of it as a relatively less important than a lot of other issues. Even if it is regarded as all but the most extreme version of evil that some will paint banning it as, it still only affects a relatively small number of people, where issues like education, economy, and standard of living, while relatively less serious, affect everyone. Personally, I don’t have such an extreme view about it, and while I think a blanket ban is bad, I think a straight ban does less overall harm to the population and freedom in general than a lot of other potential issues facing a nation.
I think it comes up a lot in modern politics precisely because so many other major issues are “solved” and it’s the sort of issue that helps energize people into getting involved in politics, but at the same time isn’t likely to really progress far, so politicians who make pledges with regard to it, but inevitably fail to do so can continue to claim to have a strong stance about it without actually being held accountable. And it’s the same sort of issue, where the sides aren’t simply disagreeing on the answer, but they’re disagreeing on what the fundamental issue is, and as so, it’s easy to demonize opponents as hating freedom, hating women, hating live, being immoral, or whatever. Easily demonizing groups of people, like we see done with gays, muslims, immigrants, big business, etc. drives people to the polls.
There’s two ways of looking at the importance - the practical and the symbolic.
The practical importance depends on the country, and the person impacted. The abortion ban in Ireland has always been of less practical effect than it could have been, because of the practice of travelling to Great Britain for an abortion. That’s not to say it has no practical impact, but it lessens it.
The de facto prohibitions in the United States, with many rural areas having no abortion provider anywhere near, have disporportionately impacted the poor. A state by state actual ban would impact the poor more, because they would have less opportunity to travel. It would also disproportionately impact those in more marginal situations already, such as abused wives, who might not be able to travel.
When and where abortion is illegal, abortions still happen. They’re just easier for the wealthy to get than the poor.
Now the symbolic effects of an abortion ban are more widespread. Banning abortion is placing into law the idea that a woman is less important than a collection of cells which exists only because of that woman. It is indicative of how women are treated in that society, and I find it hard to believe that attitude does not spill over into other areas. And in Ireland, I seem to recall abortion prohibition was put into the constitution - that sends a massive message about the importance of women.
Yeah, well, that’s what you get for listening to classical music. You know, you could have used earplugs and not heard the violins at all, then you wouldn’t be in this mess. Now, you’d better not unplug yourself – you’re only getting what you deserve.
ETA: to Blalron
I always find it very telling that many of the groups working to make sure I can’t have an abortion are the same groups trying to limit my birth control choices and refuse contraceptive education and access to teens who need it the most. You’d think if you don’t want women to have abortions you’d be all over birth control, if the motives of the pro-life movement were as they say they are.
A post is not a cite. If you don’t have a cite, your post is worthless.
Further… A 6 month old fetus is not a “brainless lumps of cells”. In fact, brain cells appear quite early in fetal development. There is no one objectively true, scientific definition of what a “person” is. That is the problem.
I don’t have strong feelings about abortion, and neither approve nor disapprove. But whether a woman is raped or has sex consensually, it doesn’t really make a difference biologically. The sperm and egg don’t care, so to speak.
I don’t understand why you’re talking about things like “deserved”, or where I ever called anyone a slut or made any sort of moral judgment at all. It’s not a question of karma. Pregnancy’s not a punishment, and people don’t “deserve” to get pregnant or not. If sperm’s in the fallopian tube when the woman ovulates, there’s a chance that the sperm will fertilize the egg, and there’s a chance the fertilized egg will implant in the uterine wall. It’s biology. Deserve ain’t got nothing to do with it.
Good post, except for the last paragraph. Banning abortion would only imply the woman is less important than the fetus if pregnancy = death. We deal with trade off of rights all the time, and this is one of them.
If we ban abortion at 8 months, are we saying that 8 month old fetuses are more important than women? No.
But a zygote is “a brainless lump of cells” and something like the Morning After pill will expel the zygote before it gets much further (maybe it’ll make it to the blastocyst stage but that’s about it).
Granted there is a gray area where “personhood” could be said to begin but I think it is safe to say at the edges the distinctions are clear (very early not a person, very late a person).
I’m not sure it’s a great analogy though. For instance, I go to bed at night with zero expectation of waking up hooked up to someone else for use of my kidney. However, when one has sex, even when using birth control, any reasonable person understands that pregnancy is a risk. So, one could argue that there’s some implicit consent, as part of accepting that risk, that is missing from that analogy. Some might say it’s insignificant or meaningless, but I think this actually is a major sticking point for a lot of pro-life people. And to make it equivalent to the violinist analogy, the abortion scenario would be, to avoid rape complications, to wake up to find that someone had artificially inseminated a woman in her sleep.
OTOH, there could be some expectation on the part of the involuntary donor for compensation, or that it could be negotiated for compensation. For example, one may be upset about the kidnapping aspect, but when you make it aware that you intend to disconnect him, on his behalf, perhaps through power of attorney or whatever, one could make an agreement for compensation for the violation. A fetus is utterly unable to do so. So, to make it equivalent again, there would have to be an absolutely solid “there will be absolutely no compensation” clause, and perhaps, rather than being a violinist (who, inherently has some value), to some random unknowable person, as any unborn child could grow up to be a violinist, but could also turn out to be perfectly average or even a bane on society.
So, I get the point that it’s trying to illustrate, that the right to life does not entail the right to use someone else’s body without their consent, and I agree with that sentiment. The problem is, abortion isn’t that simple of an issue. Some see it as a very simple issue, but I think most people, regardless of what side they come down on, see it as a much more complicated one.
And, rape victims?
We do all sorts of things that come with an implied risk. That does not mean if the undesired outcome of that risk comes to pass we don’t want to seek to undo it. Maybe you are doing carpentry work and manage to slice your finger off. It is a risk you accept when working with saws. That does not mean you just accept it and go on with life with no finger. Most people will pick up the finger and go to the hospital to see if it can be reattached.
Agreed.
No, because personhood is a legal, not a scientific term. It is based entirely on the moral assumptions you make, and that is not at all clear in this case.
Now, I’ve made my moral decision based on certain assumption and have come up with a clear stance that abortion should be legal up to (or just before) viability outside the womb. But I can’t claim that my conclusion is objectively true, because they depend on the assumptions I have made. Other people, starting with other assumptions, will reach different conclusions.
Which is why I don’t believe a country with a third trimester abortion ban, for example, is sending the same message as a country with a full abortion ban. I don’t necessarily support either, but when people talk of abortion bans, they tend to be talking about the latter - a complete restriction on abortion.
I realize law makers can make a law say whatever they want it to but that does not make it so. They could pass a law declaring celery to be poisonous and ban its sale. We’d all have to abide by the celery ban but just because they deem celery poisonous does not make it poisonous.
Bad analogy. We can determine, scientifically, the toxicity of celery to humans. We cannot determine, scientifically, when an embryo or fetus becomes a person.
Yes, it is true that politicians could roll the dice to determine what a person is, but they don’t do that. There are principled arguments on both sides of this issue.
Getting back to the OP, I would say that abortion rights are pretty high on the list for me. It’s very difficult to define a 3 month old fetus as a person (in the legal sense) without invoking some religious concepts, which I strongly favor keeping out of politics.
We can determine, scientifically, that a zygote has no differentiated cells, no nervous system, no brain, etc… Without that consciousness of any sort is flatly impossible.
Applying “personhood” to that small cluster of cells is an amazing stretch. May as well call it murder when you bleed.