If you are thinking the mother has a legal contract to carry the fetus to term, please be advised that:
Minors ccannot have legal contracts.
Nobody can force anyone to perform a service as a part of a legal contract. Even if I agree to sign for you and sign a contract, you cannot force me to do so. The best you can do is sue for breech of contract, which is not relative with a minor child.
Sure they can; they’re voidable (at the election of the minor), not void. Minors cannot be bound to contracts (until they reach the age of majority), but they can bind adults to contracts.
Huh, did not know that. Interesting tidbit unrelated to this whole issue- thanks!
I’d be careful in going down that road.
At what point does a newly born baby become a person then? There’s not a lot of difference, sentience-wise between a fetus and a newborn baby, you know.
Or what about severely mentally handicapped people? Or formerly sentient ones who have suffered brain damage?
Should we “disassemble” them for parts?
No problem. Surprised me too.
We don’t know, but it doesn’t matter much. Once born the baby is no longer totally biologically dependent on the mother alone, so the moral context changes.
We DO dissemble the latter for parts; in fact, those are the only humans we disassemble that way. Again; that’s what “brain death” means. As for the former, the question isn’t likely to come up since a baby born that badly handicapped probably won’t survive long enough for their organs to be useful. We aren’t talking about someone who is just severely disabled; we are talking about what is in essence a breathing corpse.
It’s been known for well over 40 years that the unborn at all stages are human beings. It’s not a big secret.
No it’s not. That’s just something pro-choicers throw out to make the issue unnecessarily complex. Anyway, “invaded without her consent”, you say? What a load of crap. A woman has to, barring rape, actively choose to engage in sex before a pregnancy occurs (and, no, for those smart guys among you, we ain’t talking about IVF). Yet, for some reason, you negate the existence of this choice, instead choosing to seemingly believe that a woman magically awakens in the morning to find herself pregnant (“Pro-choice”, indeed!). It makes little sense when you get down to it. You’re trying to somehow assume that the woman has some negative right to not be acted against by the unborn, which would be true if the unborn began to act upon the woman of its own volition outside of any actions by the women. Of course, we all know how untrue this is. Pregnancy isn’t a situation in which one simple actively acts upon the other against the other’s will; rather, it’s a situation in which one is dependent on the other because of the actions of the latter individual (sex). To ignore this point is dishonest. In essence, your entire argument is that the woman has a right to act greater than the right of another individual to not be acted against. What sense does that make? There is no situation or circumstance outside of abortion in which you can actively choose to partake, and then kill a third party because you didn’t like the consequence of your choice. That should tell you something.
Okay, fine. Consenting to sex means consenting to being held responsible for that which results from sex. Better?
Except it’s not false, no matter how many times you say this.
If she has responsibility for a situation, doesn’t (or shouldn’t) she also have authority over the situation as well?
It’s the largest study ever conducted on the subject, though there are smaller ones which also point out that women who abort tend to be more abusive than the ones who don’t.
So you’re saying that women who get abortions are more prone to make impulsive, short-sighted decisions and abuse their children than are women who don’t? Didn’t you earlier insinuate that women are more likely to abuse children they didn’t want but weren’t allowed to abort? Accepting that as true, it would mean that women who abort-- who by your own words are more likely to make impulsive, short-sighted decisions-- have a predisposition to being abusive, which could be evidenced by the way they treat any pre-existing (or even future children). Not accepting this as true, then one could theorize that women who abort have no predisposition to being abusive, but rather that having an abortion reduces the mother-child bond, which will also spill over to affect the bond between the mother and any pre-existing children she does have, resulting in more abusive tendencies between the mother and her child. I’d be willing to bet it’s a combination of the two, myself.
No. While it says that in the abstract, it actually measures how abusive mothers are to their children based on past abortion history, not how abusive some third party is to her children based on past abortion experience (see: here and here).
No, I stopped.
And I’d still like to see this study about how restricting abortion leads to higher instances of child abuse.
Workable. Now get around the fact that a person can revoke consent for sex mid-act, and eject their partner.
By analogy, a woman can revoke consent for the result as well, and eject the fetus.
Perfect sense. Whether it made a conscious choice or not (and the fact that it CAN’T make a conscious choice argues against it being in possession of a full panoply of rights, IMO), the fetus is actively taking life from the mother during the course of pregnancy, and she has the right to end that at any time.
Imagine a scenario where you were going to die unless you received constant transfusions by being hooked into a person’s circulatory system. You agree to pay me $1000 if I allow you to hook up to me for nine months–a contract, with consideration on both sides. Leaving aside the legality of contracting for that kind of service, your argument is equivalent to saying I can’t legally break that contract described above–which would be bullshit.
Amazing. You’re telling me that abortion is unique, because only pregnancy potentially results in the creation of a new human being? And here I thought we reproduced by spores as well.
The situation IS unique–it’s not a surprise that we have to treat it uniquely.
Relative to what’s in the best interest of that she is responsible for.
You know, I’m perfectly willing to grant you this. Now what about the other 99.5%+ of other abortions 
Yes I agree 100%.
No sense, actually. You do not get to negate the choice a woman makes before pregnancy can occur, acting as if it doesn’t exist. Doing so is simply dishonest. Anyway, to quote myself:
Right now, you’re merely arguing that the mother’s right to act in any way she sees fit trumps the right of another individual to not be acted upon by the mother in any way she sees fit. How does that work? To take it to the extreme, your argument is one where a woman can purposefully become pregnant, only to abort. Surely, you wouldn’t agree with that?
Also, what do you mean by “actively taking life”? The mother’s body diverts nutrients towards the unborn, and only if the mother becomes significantly malnourished will the unborn “steal” nutrients from her. The propensity of pro-choicers to turn pregnancy into a mother vs. unborn deal is astounding, really.
Assuming such a contract was at all legal, legally you couldn’t as you’d be subject to all sorts of damages.
Every situation is unique, but we don’t make up different rules for how individuals are treated in each one of them. We, at the very least, strive for some uniformity. Simply stating “oh, but that’s different!” is a complete intellectual cop-out.
And, pregnancy doesn’t “potentially result in the creation of a new human being”. By the time a woman is pregnant, and even before then, a new human being already exists.
It tells me that this scenario is unique and should be treated differently to the other (some frankly ridiculous) scenarios as depicted as hypotheticals in this thread.
The woman did not choose to get pregnant, she chose to have sex. Pregnancy was an unwanted consequence of her choice and, as she has complete control and rights over her body, she can then do what she wants with the baby\fetus\orgulfrum growing inside her.
So, you’ve got nothing?
Excuse me, but I think most of the posts (including my own) have been slightly of topic. The OP is asking whether it is possible to equate a foetus with a baby and still be pro-choice, not whether, or under which circumstances abortion should be allowed, or why.
I think most of us have missed an important aspect of this question:
Anyone who truly considers a foetus morally equivalent of a newborn infant must either believe that it is immoral to kill either, or that there are circumstances in which the killing of both can be condoned. Thus, those of us who claim to agree that a foetus literally equals a baby, and to be pro-choice, are forced to accord mothers the right to commit infanticide. Anyone who finds infanticide immoral, but remain pro-choice can only defend this position by arguing that a foetus isn’t actually a baby yet.
Well, if this is the largest study with only 237 observations, I’d have the same problems (only more so) with smaller studies. All it takes is five or ten women in the “never had an abortion” group who won’t admit to abusing their kids to bias the results. Further, consider that all these women were already getting attention from social services, rather than being women selected randomly from the general population. There’s an excellent chance some would downplay abuse because they see the admission as something that’ll get them deeper in trouble, even with assurances that their responses would remain confidential.
No, you have it backward, and I’m confident I was clear the first time. I’m suggesting women who make impulsive, short-sighted decisions are more likely to get unintentionally pregnant (with abortion being one resolution) and, independently abuse their kids. It’s the poor decision skills that can lead to situations where abortion is considered, not a willingness to abort that leads to poor decision skills.
And to clarify even further, getting an abortion is not inherently a bad decision. The bad decision was doing something that got you pregnant in the first place.
And even further… among the group of women described, it seems plausible to me that the incidence of rape might be higher than among the general population (i.e. these women are poor and undereducated, suggesting they generally live in worse neighborhoods, etc.) A woman who has been raped could get an abortion, and the trauma of that assault makes her more violent with her children. I daresay this could be a significant factor, yet the word “rape” doesn’t appear anywhere in the study report. Was it even considered?
I think I suggested it, rather than insinuated it, but no matter. An unwanted pregnancy that is not aborted leads to an unwanted child… that abuse could follow doesn’t seem that much of a stretch to me. Heck, it’s also completely possible that unwanted pregnancies result in fulled loved and wanted children. I just figure that if a woman is already poor (and the women in the study overwhelmingly are), having another child isn’t likely to help her get un-poor (and in fact likely to keep her poor), and since poverty correlates with child abuse… The authors of the study are trying to dig out abortion as a factor, but by their own admission:
Seems to me that the act of trying to control for all of the above introduces enough random noise that what remains is suspect at best.
Again, you’re stating it backward. My premise is not that abortion makes women abusive. It’s that poor decision skills can lead to them getting pregnant and/or abusive.
It’s conceivable, but you keep trying to force abortion to the head of the line as a causal factor and this study doesn’t convince me that it should be so.
As an incidental note, the data for this study was drawn from a much earlier study conducted in 1984-5, and of the women in study who’d had on more more abortions, the average time elapsed since their first abortion was 7.6 years. I daresay abortions performed in the 1970s carried more stigma than they do now, so that’s another potential problem with using this study to speculate on current attitudes - it’s basically analyzing women who got abortions in the years just after Roe v. Wade. Is there a difference between how those women felt and how a woman getting an abortion in 2005 might feel? I suspect so.
It’s not just in the abstract. From the “Methods” section:
And in “Data description and procedure / Physical abuse segment”:
And in “Conclusions” (indeed, the opening sentence):
Somewhere along the way, the distinction between women who personally abuse their kids and women who let others abuse their kids (admittedly, I figure there could be a big overlap) gets buried.
Oh, I’m confident that trying to prove a direct link will be difficult. Rather, I’d go for a transitive approach, in which I cite studies that show:
That is, if my pro-choice stance was based on trying to prevent child abuse, which it is not. Rather, I’m for individual rights and self-determination, including the right to not have to continue an unwanted pregnancy. That the woman is poor or not, that she might already have children or not, that she might have future children or not… all irrelevant.
Excellent post! This is pretty much the most intelligent reply I have read on this whole thread…aside from my replies that is…just kidding:D
I thought that was kind of obvious. What else would the issue be? 
