All life is sacred until the woman dies in a forced pregnancy. Then she’s just a stat that really doesn’t matter very much. You’re ignoring the fact that a woman must make sacrifices if she get pregnant. This includes a very real possibility of major surgery, serious illness and death. You have no problem with forcing her to make that sacrifice because you don’t think she deserves the same protection as other forms of life.
So yeah all forms of life are sacred but some (fetuses) are more sacred than others (fertile women). Again you are not pro-life. You are anti-abortion. I am grateful that even you admit that most people do not agree with you. Most sane people place the lives of women above the lives of fetuses.
It wasn’t a book it was the distillation of various definitions that one can find if you look for them, try Google and go from there. If you disagree with my definition please propose your own, I am sure we can work this out.
On the contrary, I weigh her need for protection and safety as equal to any other human being’s.
Now, when you say “very real” possibility, what are the numbers involved? How many pregnancies actually involve serious illness and death, as opposed to the number of pregnancies that proceed without major complications? How serious is this risk?
No – you switched scenarios, and tried to get me to apply the rules relating to assuming risk when rescuing someone to the rules concerning self-defense when attacked in your home. Why should I let you change the goalposts like that without comment?
I feel like it’s worth pointing out that the First World way of giving birth is not particularly dangerous, but the human way has filled many graveyards. In the absence of modern obstetrics the mortality rate is about 1%, and even today there’s places in the world where the odds are even worse than that. In any event, several hundred thousand women die of pregnancy/childbirth complications every year - just not here.
In some ways I feel that the outstanding success of modern obstetrics has convinced people that pregnancy is really not a big deal. A pregnancy that’s going along fine can suddenly turn out to not be fine, and there may not be time to consult the appropriate politicians before a decision needs to be made.
Bricker, I’m still wondering why the fuck should anyone care if fetuses are killed. You haven’t answered that. You obviously don’t care if some women are killed or put through a traumatic and dangerous experience. Why give a damn about fetuses? Really, its not like they’re going to fight back or anything
Ok- let’s continue this analogy (bear with me here… this is going to get a little silly). Let’s say someone engaged in some sort of behavior some might disapprove of or call risky (let’s say a young man was drinking in a bad part of town), and he wakes up in the driver’s seat of a car. Next to him is a drug mule strapped into the passenger seat. The drug mule has a tiny bomb attached to him. A note says “get this drug mule over the border in 3 hours or the bomb explodes”. Let’s say the little bomb poses no risk to the driver, but in order to get over the border in 3 hours the driver will have to drive in such a way that will increase his chance of death by a small but significant amount. And let’s say that this part of town has no police access, the guy has no cell phone, etc.
It seems to me like you’re saying this guy is not allowed to get out of the car and run for it.
But your entire premise is that all human life is equally sacred. When you tell women to take any kind of risk for another, you don’t really follow through with that belief. She is less sacred to you and less important.
You simply can’t get around the fact that the fetus doesn’t live in a sky farm somewhere and that women aren’t sitting around with bee-bee guns taking potshots at them.
A fetus exists inside of a woman. You want us to adhere to your belief that women should be forced to take the risk of bringing it to term if she does not want to. In forcing her to do so against her will, you are violating your ridiculously sanctimonious delusion that you believe that all life is equal. You really don’t. You want to force her to assume risks for your religion and moral beliefs. The guilty woman should be coerced into bringing the innocent fetus to term.
If I were to find out I was pregnant tomorrow, I and I alone would decide what to do about. My medical decisions are frankly none of your fucking business. You and your fellow fetus worshippers would be far happier if you would leave me alone and stop worrying your pretty little heads about my reproductive choices.
My decisions about what medical risks to assume for myself are mine alone. The fact that you feel free to dare tell me otherwise is nothing more than your own repulsive sexism.
Because anti-abortionists like Bricker view the fetus as innocent and the woman as guilty. She’s a worthless whore who had sex. The fetus is all that is good and holy to them. She has no business killing it. She has to risk her life and her to pay for her sins. You know the sin of being a woman and having sex.
That’s why he casually dismisses the deaths of seven hundred American women each year in childbirth. He’s playing a numbers game. All life isn’t equally sacred. He keeps telling us that. And then just shrugs at seven hundred dead American women each year.
What he and his fellow anti-abortionists really should do is help look for ways to make childbearing safer. As the article I pulled up points out, it has actually gotten more dangerous to bear children in the US over the two decades. But people like Bricker don’t give a damn about that issue. They care about making themselves feel morally good by proclaiming about how much they love life. And not very much else.
If I ask you to undergo a pinprick on the ball of your thumb in order to save the life of another person, I’m not weighing your life against hers. I’m weighing a very brief moment of discomfort for you against her life.
Obviously, I don’t agree, and obviously, at least some measure of my view is making its way into the legal system. Depending on where you live, you might have to at least see an ultrasound of the unborn child before you decided to kill it.
So that wouldn’t be “you and you alone,” would it?
In fact I did ask about an assumption of risk and discomfort in the “drowning” scenario by adding an element (albeit an unlikely one) that made it closer to the actual circumstances of pregnancy. It was in post #192. You did not respond to that (flippantly or otherwise) but when you later said “True. But the danger can’t be speculative”, I asked about the possibly knife-wielding trespasser, since there was nothing about your use of “the danger” to suggest it applies only in drowning cases. In fact by implication you clearly mean it to apply to pregnancy cases, i.e. the pregnant woman is not in danger the way a person trying to rescue a drowning person might be, hence she cannot abort her pregnancy while the rescuer can abort his or her rescue efforts.
My point being that “danger” is not a readily quantifiable state. Maybe the person trying to rescue the drowner wouldn’t really be pulled under. Maybe the pregnant woman wouldn’t really be hurt by the pregnancy. Maybe the shiny object in the trespasser’s hand isn’t really a knife, but a cellphone he is using to call his wife to tell her “Gosh, honey, I must have walked into the wrong house. It looks like I’ll be a little late getting home from teaching bible class. Give our six kids a hug and tell them I love them.”
Of course, he never even gets to finish dialing before the justifiably concerned knife-assuming homeowner hits him with a golf club.
Besides, I never said “when attacked in youjr home”. That’s your embellishment.
Bomb can’t hurt driver? Driver has no chance of death because of proximity to drug dealers? Driver’s sole risk is a slightly dangerous drive?
Yeah, I regard the driver who leaps out of the car and leaves the unwilling drug mule to certain death as contemptible.
Here’s the relevant part of post 87:
I’m saying that ten unborn children’s lives could be balanced by one mother’s life; I’m weighing (in that example) the life of the woman as worth ten unborn children rather than the other way around.
I was simply responding to the hypothetical. You have no right to paint me into any corner of implication.
Yes, danger is not readily quantifiable. Agreed. So what?
No, but you said: “There’s a trespasser in your home holding a shining object that might be a knife. Can you speculatively respond or must you wait until you know it’s a knife?” It’s an absolutely permissible inference that a trespasser in your home is there to do you harm. Still your point is well-taken. “When threatened in your home…” is a better summary.
I’m strongly pro-choice and disagree with Bricker’s position and disagree with an enormous number of the ways he argues and debates on the SDMB and have said so at great length on my occasions… but your claim is groundless, patronizing and insulting. If we start with the premise that any embryo or fetus is a human life, which I emphatically do NOT but which I can’t dismiss out of hand, then a law forcing women to carry pregnancies to term is balancing CERTAIN DEATH for one human life versus a very serious impact on another human life, but one which is enormously smaller than CERTAIN DEATH. I think it’s entirely possible for someone to come to the conclusion that the ethically correct position is to force the woman to carry the baby to term, with absolutely no judgment about her being a whore being present or relevant at all.
I swear the pro-choice people in this thread are going out of their way to make facile and easily-dismissable versions of the pro-choice argument for some reason.
And I imagine the folks that agree with me will have their own reasons for doing so.
If I can convince enough of them, then I’ll get laws favoring my position.
I do appreciate your view, though, in that it’s an unflinchingly honest appraisal of abortion: the need to kill a human being (quickly, mercifully) to avoid small risks on the part of the mother. I just don’t agree it’s the correct moral calculus.