I do not think that this is where the issue lies. The most frequent stance among the pro-life side of the debate seems to be that human life begins at conception and not a day later. The fact that a fertilized egg ist “a clump of cells” at this point does not really make a difference.
I do not know if it is true that, as you say, most people do not realize that a 3 week old embryo is far more advanced than a fertilized egg. I certainly do. However, I also realize that at this stage it is far less advanced than a tadpole.
The crux of the matter is that there is no exact scientific method to determine when human life really begins. Consequently any decision you make will always be arbitrary. Like John Mace said earlier in this thread I would not support the abortion of an 8 month old fetus, because I believe that this is a fully formed human being. I would not have a problem with aborting a just fertilized egg, because that (to me) is really just a clump of cells. The change from not human to human occurs somewhere in between.
Unfortunately since there needs to be a law that allows or forbids abortion there also needs a decision on when (if ever) it becomes illegal. I believe sich a law should prevent the killing of a fully formed human being, but at the same time give ample consideration to the right of the mother to decide what is happening with her own body. There probably is no perfect way to determine the “right” moment.
My personal preference, as stated earlier, would be to allow abortion up to the end of the first trimester. I consider that to be a reasonable balance between the rights of the mother and the child. The child is not yet really a child at this stage. The trimester gives the woman enough time to make a conscious decision on whether or not she wants to become the mother of that child. If she decides to keep it, she assumes responsibility and should be held by it. If she decides not to keep it, that should be her choice to make, because it is her body after all.
Are you coming from the school of thought that is saying women should generally not have sex, if they are not ready to carry a child to term? You seem to be. At least you seem to be saying that if a woman gets pregnant against her wishes, it should not be her choice what to do with this pregnancy, because she caused it to happen by having sex.
My answer to your question: If she terminates the pregancy early on, she is well within her rights to do so, regardless of how much money the father has. (Exactly 0% wrong, if you prefer that notation.) You seem to underestimate what a fundamental experience a pregnancy and childbirth are. To make a woman go through that against her wishes is a severe interference with her personal freedom. I do not think you can justify that by saying “It’s your own fault - you had sex.”
I’m coming from the school of thought that gender, and sex intercourse, and income level and any other category do not matter. It is a quirk of nature that females can have children and men can not. The sociopolitical distinctions of this are irrelevant to my analysis of the situation:
1- She had sex
2- She is now pregnant
3- She did this willingly
4- She is now carrying a child
It’s 4AM here, I am sleepy, I am in the habit of making comments people don’t like even when I am not sleepy but for the moment please believe me, I am not saying the woman is at fault for ANYTHING… I am saying that through a series of choices & actions between her and another individual (a man) she is now pregnant and has a child inside her.
I am SURE that I am underestimating the strain this places on a woman. Not only am I not a woman, I’ve never been married/had a kid either.
In general terms, if she terminated the pregnancy and the father did not mind my reaction would be, well, I don’t agree with your choice (that would be my internal reaction) but would I say anything to make her feel bad? No. In fact, I would be worried that my hidden bias/bad attitude would come through though I didn’t want it to because honestly, at least in real life, I very very rarely have the desire to make anyone feel bad about anything.
In case you missed my comments elsewhere (it’s been a long post) I think an unborn child is somewhere in between a clump of cells and a fully 100% human being. To me this is 20% a moral issue and 80% a philosophical issue. Philosophically I think if you get pregnant you should have the kid. Morally I will disagree with you if you don’t, but I’d probably never express that to you and under no circumstances would I ever say or think the harsh and callous things some pro life people say.
The one exception I have is if the father wants to keep the child but the mother does not. I think, in that case, he is the one person in the world who does have some legitimate claim to “what she does with her body”. Exactly to what degree has she made a serious mistake? Well, for the moment lets just call it a serious mistake but not use any more harsh language than that.
Your late night posts are better than you give yourself credit for. I do not agree with you, but I can see your position. Let me see if I can work out where we differ:
The problem lies with your point 3: “She did this willingly” What did she do willingly? Have sex? Certainly. Get pregnant? Not so much. If she had chosen to get pregnat after careful deliberation, things would be different. But an unwanted pregnancy usually comes upon a woman as an accident.
Well, she got pregnant when she did not want to. At that level you may say she made a mistake. Why should she not be allowed to correct it?
A woman going through a “normal” pregnancy.
Hormonal issues.(mood swings, morning sickness)
Irreversible changes to her body.
Physical pain, even before the joy of labour.
That’s just a few of the basics.
Where does anyone get off, telling someone else to go through that, against their will?
I personally lean towards no, non-medical reason, abortions after 20 weeks. But I wouldn’t legislate against it, because I’m not smart enough to see all the issues.
Open adoption? That’s your solution?
Hey lady! That baby. The one whom you didn’t want to have. Not only am I going to force you to carry it to term, I’m now going to let its existence follow you around for ever.
Really?
Here is my problem with answering your question rationally, calmly, objectively and answering specifically what you ask: I am very subjective. I am putting myself in the place of the man who wants a child and is not going to be able to have that child. I tend to see all conflicts through the eyes (to the best of my ability) of the person who is being oppressed. This tends to cloud my judgement.
Working upon that principle, if I put myself in the place of the woman, in the situation that I did want to have sex , and, who wouldn’t, no blame at all for that, if I did have sex and got pregnant and hadn’t planned on it and now there was the father/my family/his family or other people telling me “You should have this baby!!!”, regardless of how I felt about it or whether I was prepared for it (in general terms) or whether I was prepared for the nine months of havoc and hardship it would do to my body, I would probably feel very very frustrated and very stressed out and very distraught that people were trying to press me into doing something I was not prepared to do. Let’s add to that that when you take this out of the realm of the hypothetical and put it in realistic terms, that no woman is going to casually decide not to have a child, to have the pregnancy terminated. It’s going to be a very tough decision even under the best of circumstances.
So, have a I changed my position, now, in the past 5 minutes while typing and reflecting on this? Yes, my position has been moderated. Have I completely changed my position? No. But looking at it through the experience that the woman is going to experience I’m coming to see even more and more that it is a complex situation and that the answers are not going to be easy to come by. The best thing we can hope for is to have better understanding of the other side and to separate our (both of us on both sides) opinions from the actual real life concerns of the people involved.
No, it really isn’t always. Lots of women know they don’t want children (either in their current circumstances or ever) and don’t really need to make a tough decision. For many women it is a big deal where they need to weigh all the different choices available to them, but for some it’s just an inconvenient circumstance that needs to be resolved.
If the man had no knowledge that the woman had had an abortion, if she did it privately and it was between her and her and her doctor, or her, her best friend, and her doctor etc, well, for a lack of a better term, what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. I’d have no problem at all with the procedure done in private. If I were the man, I would prefer not to know. Not to restart the debate, I am only stressing the fact that I am looking at the mental stress the man would undergo if he knew, not with blaming the woman for being “wrong”.
Ok well I am kind of thinking it should be a difficult decision but really I have no desire at the moment to start up a big bad debate with you. I will, however, take a look at the article once I get some sleep, I’ll look at it later. Certainly there is a lot about the topic that I am unaware of.
She wouldn’t be wrong at all to make that choice. He’s free to hate her for it if he wants (indeed, he’d be identically free if she chose to have the baby against his wishes), terminate whatever tenuous friendship they have and express his disdain as he sees fit (though she can seek legal action if he moves into libel, slander or harassment).
Whether or not your question in whole or in part is relevant, it’s certainly not difficult.
No, any more than we have to calculate some kind of minor wrongness quotient for the exercise of any other right. If you want to exercise freedom of expression, is that your right, or are you obliged to care about someone else’s calculation that doing so is a teensy bit wrong? There are forms of expression I consider wrong (at least in the sense that I don’t like them, would never use them, and wish they would disappear entirely) but nobody has to take my opinion into consideration, not even to the point of having to express an opinion that my opinion is irrelevant.
I think that’s the problem with the abortion issue: everybody wants a definitive answer to the moral problem, but there really aren’t any definitive answers. The part that I object to is when people then try to assert that the abortion debate is binary, either right or wrong. In reality, the rightness or wrongness of it is probably dependent on the situation.
Beyond that, there’s the greater question of whether to invite government legislators, police agencies, and judges to intervene in a decision that has been decided privately by families since the days of the Sumerian Civilization. History itself doesn’t make abortion right, but it establishes the fact that this act has long been considered within the domain of family planning.
I have previously referred to the decision on whether or not to have an abortion as a “difficult decision” for a woman. My intention being to indicate that I do not believe that women do generylly decide to have an abortion on a whim. The article you linked later is making some good points about why calling it a “difficult decision” may not be appropriate. It might be taken to imply that the decision is one of making a moral choice, something that usually is not true.
For many women the decision is not difficult in the sense that it is hard to come to a decision. After weighing all the circumstances it is probably very clear for most women how they are going to decide, and they are confident that their decision is the right one. My use of the term “difficult” comes from the thought that the decision to have or not have a baby it is a very significant one for a woman to make. (I will probably use “significant” in place of “difficult” henceforth.)
I believe that, even though the eventual outcome is ultimately very clear, women will not go about it carelessly. I disagree with characterizing a pregnancy as “just an inconvenient circumstance”, because that circumstance can change a woman’s life forever.
I feel like this is a bit of a circular argument (lets call it a debate instead), what I mean is both sides are repeating the same points and the problem is with the POV they bring to the conversation initially.
Your comments are perfectly valid and on point for a topic that does not involve a human life. So, from the pro choice POV your comments are valid and perfectly on point. The thing is, not everyone views it the same as you. There has to be some middle ground between totally not relevant and totally completely relevant. I think any honest analysis of the situation would make this claim quite plainly and quite legitimately.
I don’t like hearing the pro life people calling it murder, or saying why kill the baby or demonizing women. I don’t like hearing the pro choice side saying the pro life objections are irrelevant and all that matters is the woman’s choice. Yes, it is her choice but there are several very relevant factors in the situation. To say, “XYZ” is not relevant… well I am not going to accept that.
I think as a matter of practicality lawmakers (and by extension anyone who gets a vote in electing them) cannot simply stay out of the matter. They do not get the luxury to not make a decision. They can outlaw abortion, allow it or choose some middle ground (i.e. allow it under certain conditions). It is not possible to do neither.
As for your excursus into history: You are making it sound as if laws on abortion are a very recent thing. That is not true. As far as I have been able to determine over here in Europe the oldest reference to abortion in a legal document is in Salic law (507 A.D.) In that law someone who causes the abortion of an unborn child after it has been given a name is made to pay a fine of 4000 denars. (I have no idea whether that was a lot of money at the time.) Other parts of the world may very well have even older laws.
You’re correct: the laws on abortion are ancient as well. Nevertheless, it’s been a moral debate for quite some time, with seemingly no end in sight. It’s not like, say, murder or theft which is almost universally prohibited. I’m not really a cheerleader for abortion. What I object to is when people try to simplify the complex, especially when they start inviting religious superstition into the equation.
She would not be wrong in anyway whatsoever. If she does not want to gestate a fetus, she should have full freedom to have the fetus removed from her body.
A sexual encounter between acquaintances leads to pregnancy. They discuss the situation. Will they decide to marry & live happily ever after? Hollywood has shown this scenario but it’s damn rare. Will they agree that neither is ready to become a parent & termination is the best option? Quite possibly. If there’s conflict, I’d guess the woman might be one leaning toward having the kid; if he responds that she’ll get child support & nothing else* if *the DNA tests pan out, she’s got an answer that might dispel her sentimental leanings. How many men would *really *beg to raise the kid themselves? (A biological father has no need to “adopt” his own child; and she’ll still be liable for support, as she ought to be.)
Here’s something you haven’t considered–not all women getting abortions are those single sluts out fucking everybody but you. Some are in stable relationships–even marriages. Yes, it’s the woman’s decision–but she’ll often consult the man responsible. They might decide to adjust things & make room for a kid. Or they might well agree that they don’t want kids. Or don’t want kids yet. Or don’t want any more kids right now–because they’re already balancing work & childcare & trying to maintain a relationship.
(If you’re concerned about the wasted potential of aborted fetuses–there are kids out there now going to waste. They don’t have enough to eat, don’t get good medical care & the schools may fail them. Mostly because the penny-pinching politicians want to “punish” the poor–or just working class. Oddly, many of the same pols who have such tender regard for fetuses also love the taxpayers. Kids already born? They can’t vote.)