Is it possible to be Pro-Choice AND think that fetus=baby?

Great Debates
321

Firstly, I’d just like to point at that in the post you’re quoting I weren’t refering to innocent babies at all, but to myself; DianaG said she’d rather I were dead than she were pregnant, and I felt that was a bit harsh, and possibly not a very good argument either.

Secondly, I don’t think we can avoid discussing morality if we want to figure out what to do with people who have abortions, because if we can’t agree on whether having an abortion is is immoral or not, we obviously won’t be able to agree on what to do with people who have abortions.

Finally, I think you’re as much off topic as the rest of us. This thread wasn’t originally about whether to punish women who have abortions, or how, but simply about whether it is possible to think of a foetus as a baby and still defend the right to abort it.

322

I’m mildly curious how it would work, myself. Some maniac tells Diana “Stay pregnant or I’ll kill Quia” ? If she gets an abortion, the maniac kills you? I don’t see Diana’s moral imperative to play along with an unreasonable demand, nor why she’d have any reason to trust the maniac will follow through (and kill you) if she aborts, or keep his word (and not kill you) if she doesn’t.

Perhaps the fetus she’s carrying is the only creature on Earth who could be the donor of a bone-marrow transplant that saves your life. Even then, I don’t see her obligation to you, let alone the fetus’s.

Don’t do anything to them. Don’t even bother collecting their names. That was easy.

I think several people, including myself, have done this. Regardless of whether the fetus is a baby, there’s a greater issue involved.

323

I disagree, because “pro choice” isn’t about whether you think abortion is morally wrong, it’s about whether you think abortion should be criminalized. Since I’m not willing to criminalize abortion, then I’m willy-nilly pro-choice. My thoughts about whether the baby is really a baby or something else then become a sideshow.

324

I think you’re right and mistaken at the same time now. I understand that the pro-choice position is all about the legality of abortions, not the morality. Obviously everyone who’s against criminalizing abortion is pro-choice, and this category obviously includes everyone who finds that abortions are morally correct. It can also include anyone who is in doubt, or who thinks that abortions are immoral but also a private matter. But (as I’ve already pointed too many times by now) it won’t include those people who think that abortions are so immoral that it can’t be allowed to be a private matter. You can’t completely seperate laws from ethics.

325

I’ve read this over a few times and can’t make much sense of it, nor do I understand why “ethics” is stuck on the end there like a decrepit caboose.

326

I just reread it, and I think I see what you mean. What I was trying to say is that all laws (that I can think of) are based on ethical considerations to some extend. They are, in a sense, codified and enforced moral imperatives. Whether we think a law is fair or not depends on whether we agree with the moral foundation of that law, and for this reason I think Lemur866’s claim that moral arguments are superfluous when discussing abortion legislation is incorrect.

I agree that the pro-choice stance encompasses several moral positions on abortion: if you think having an abortion is perfectly ethical, or if you think it has no moral implications whatsoever, you’re automatically pro-choice, but it is also possible to be pro-choice if you think abortions are immoral, or if you just aren’t sure. What matters is that you are prepared to admit that it is basically a personal choice; ethically correct or not, it remains a private matter and the state shouldn’t interfere.

The only position that the pro-choice stance can’t include is the one that sees abortions both as immoral and as a public matter. If one sees abortions as a situation in which one person causes severe and ireparable injury to another person (the foetus) then it shouldn’t be that difficult to understand that one might draw the conclusion that abortion should be considered on a par with other forms of interpersonal violence which aren’t, generally speaking, considered private matters. If this doesn’t seem to make sense, consider how most of us, pro-life or pro-choice, wouldn’t want to abolish laws prohibiting homicide, assault, sexual abuse, and so on, because we don’t think those are private matters, the morality of which everyone should be allowed to decide for themselves. In those cases we would want the state to interfere, and so we make it a public matter through legislation.

Here again the issue of how a foetus is defined pops up. It is the belief that the foetus should morally and legally be considered a person, combined with the opinion that killing another person can never be condoned, no matter what the circumstances, which takes the matter out of the sphere of private morality and makes it a crime. If you don’t share either one, or the other, or both of these beliefs (which I don’t) then you have no problem arguing that abortions should remain legal. But in order to convince someone who disagrees with you, you would have to dissuade him or her of at least one of those two beliefs. If you wan’t to do that, then neither moral arguments, nor the person/non-person status of the foetus is irelevant.

I hope I’ve made myself clearer, even if I’ve mostly been repeating what I’ve already said before. Also, I’d like to apologise if I’ve come off sounding condescending; I just meant to make sure my point is as obvious as possible.

327

::raises hand::

I think a fetus is a human being. An embryo is a human being. I’ll even stipulate that a blastula is a human being. I would not usually say “baby” but I’m guessing this is close enough to your intended meaning. I’m radically pro-choice.

We accept that there are situations where it is OK for one person to kill another. As long as the person making the decision is the pregnant person, I am fervently and strongly inclined to include pregnancy as one of the circumstances under which it can be OK to kill another person, that other person being the blastula / embryo / fetus. I would not say it is always, invariably OK to do so but I would say the person authorized to make that decision is always, invariably, the pregnant person.

Yeah it’s killing. So?

It should be legal until she (the mother) acknowledges that she has given birth to a live baby. (She should have a finite and short time after the birth to make such an acknowledgment).

328

Lots of people are fine with abortion. Many get uncomfortable at the mention of late term abortion. And once the kid is out in the world you can’t throw him in the garbage or put him on an ice floe. But why not? We are biologically programmed to bond with him and see him as a little person to further the species. So suggesting such a thing means you’re a monster. But I think we trip these instincts up with our ability to plan ahead and abort using technology (or in older times, specially prepared plants/herbs) that’s completely disconnected from the baby itself. But philosophically the same logic that applies to abortion applies to a newborn baby. It’s basically a reverse argument from when religious people claim that the soul enters at the moment of conception, except with the birth itself.

329

I am only going to reply to you. Not to any other responses.

I was at one time very pro choice. So pro choice in fact that I volunteered at my local Planned Parenthood clinic as a patient advocate. I was a nursing student at the time. If a woman terminating a pregnancy needed a supportive woman in the room with her during her abortion, I was there for her. I would hold her hand. Put a cool cloth on her forehead. Tell her she was going to be OK. At first, I felt good. I was helping a woman get through a difficult time. Then, gradually, after more experience, my perception changed. So many women were young, negligent with contraception, and having their 3rd abortion. What kind of reproductive choice is this? So, I stopped volunteering after 6 months or so. I burnt out. Other than that, I did not give it much thought, I was too busy in my studies.

A few years later, I became an RN. My very first job was in neonatal intensive care. I cared for those 22-23-24 week preemies of which you speak. And it was during those years that my opinion about abortion changed. I offered my care and support to parents and grandparents who were in the position to grieve the worst of birth defects, or the worst of post delivery life long sequela, and too often, the death of a baby. Their baby. But this alone was not the impetus of my change of heart and mind.

I spent hours caring for 24 week preemies, sometimes even younger. I often worked nights. 11 PM to 7 AM. Just the baby and me. The sick ones were 1:1 care. It was this experience that deepened me. I would talk to these babies. Sing to them. They would look at me. It was often a very spiritual moment. It was during these moments, alone with a baby, I reminisced about the many abortions I witnessed. I felt “the friction” that you describe. I changed. I became an advocate for the baby, not the abortion.

My hope for you I that you are courageous enough to change. When you have 2 conflicting ideals/beliefs/principles you are being called to look at your priorities. And sometimes we must choose. It does not show much integrity to choose both options.

I am not telling you what choice to make. See, I am pro choice.
I am just sharing my change of mind, and how I came about my choice. I am anti abortion. I am pro baby.
This was not so much an intellectual journey. I made my choice looking into those deep set eyes of babies struggling for their lives. I am a baby advocate.

Take care.

330

I can’t see how anyone would disagree that a foetus is a human being; it would be ridiculous to try to prove, even at an early stage in the foetus’s development, that it doesn’t belong to the human species, biologically speaking.

But does a human being always equal a person? I think a lot of people who are pro-choice think that this isn’t the case, and that personhood (what a silly word) develops at some point, either after birth, or quite late during gestation. It is possible to think that killing a person is wrong, and maintain that abortion is fair game, because it only entails killing a non-person human being (that sounds even sillier, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be true).

I don’t follow the last part of your argument at all: if a woman has given birth to a live baby (whether she wants to recognise it or not) she is no longer ‘the pregnant person’, and I don’t see why she should be allowed to “abort” it at this point, when she can simply put it up for adoption.

331

It’s not silly at all, presuming you imagine “humanity”/“personhood” to be a quality of a conscious mind rather than a quality of biology that attaches to all members of species homo sapiens. Again, we’re at axioms–by which I mean, unprovable-by-definition statements/assumptions on which an argument rests.

332

There exist several situations where it is indeed permissible to kill a human being. Even if one really must insist that a fetus is a human being (something I routinely stipulate to, since it doesn’t matter), I just figure this is one of those situations. Fetus a person, fetus not a person… it doesn’t matter.

333

The general idea is that “personhood” is the word for the point at which the state develops an interest in protecting the existence of the creature in question. It was widely discussed in the oral arguments for the execrable bit of law known as Roe v Wade (really, is there any other case that’s so thoroughly reviled by both sides of any debate?). Because that ruling legally recognized that states do need to keep their birth rate up and they do have an obligation to see to the welfare of people in their boundaries, and at some point, a fetus goes from mom’s business to the state’s business - that point is “personhood”. Some states use weeks or trimesters to define it; more rational ones use viability.

“Personhood” is the quasi-legal term used to cheat and give the state an interest in their welfare, since we can’t call them “citizens” until they’re born (definitions of citizen including the words “born in” or “naturalized in” a specific place.) And it’s widely considered the “barn door” that Roe v Wade left open. There are currently states attempting (and likely to succeed) to pass “personhood” laws declaring fetuses “persons” from the moment of conception. Which will, of course, give the state a compelling interest in *all *pregnancies and allow them to ban abortion.

I don’t really know any but the most extreme pro-choice people trying to win an argument who place personhood *after *birth; most place it around viability and a few at birth.

334

Unprovable-by-definition aside, ‘humanity’ and ‘personhood’ aren’t interchangeable terms: humanity means ‘pertaining to the human species (homo sapiens)’, while only personhood, though usually an attribute of human beings, corresponds to “a quality of a conscious mind”, in my opinion. This is obvious when considering a corpse, which is still human, but no longer a person.

335

I’m sorry, I found your post very interesting, but I don’t think I quite understood the implications of the above sentence. Are you saying that you think ‘personhood’ is a moral construct designed legitimate abortion legislation? Does that mean that you reject the concept of ‘personhood’? Or have I just misunderstood you completely? I really hope you’ll explain, because now I’m really curious.

336

I feel like the whole “personhood” issue would have been better off avoided entirely. I wish Roe v Wade had simply said that abortion is a private matter, so the state should stay out of it. I feel like they invented personhood to give the state a new class of…entity…that they can be “responsible” for, since the unborn are not citizens, but that responsibility has been limited to abortion restriction, not tax deductions, housing rights or the other things that states usually accord to their actual citizens. I feel that personhood was an *intentional *open door to allow states to restrict abortion while temporarily mollifying abortion rights activists. It was how they tried to please both sides and ended up pleasing none.

Sorry, I don’t think that was any clearer, really. I don’t like “personhood”, although I’ve been known to use it because it *is *in law. I prefer more concrete terms like “pre-viable fetus” and “post-viable fetus”, and think that abortion should be restricted to pre-viable fetuses because a post-viable fetus can be removed from the uterus and given to another person to care for, not because a post-viable fetus is a “person”.

Clear as mud?

337

Perfectly clear now, thank you. When you put it like that I agree with you completely. I never thought personhood was a decisive factor in determining the morality of abortions, just that it has a certain relevance because some people find it an important distinction. Also, I think the concept has its merits when it comes to discussing how non-human higher primates should be treated, and why.

338

Beautiful post!