Yup. Parasites for the rest of their lives, apparently. My kid still wants me to pay his cell phone bill, but doesn’t bother even asking how I’m doing when he calls.
Of course, I’m being flippant here. But the point is the implications for carrying a pregnancy to term rest solely on the mother’s shoulders. Since she will have to bear the physical burden of it, she must also be prepared to deal with the emotional toll of it. If she’s considering abortion, there’s probably (or rather better be) a damn good reason for it. There are a multitude of damn good reasons. And that choice also comes with an emotional toll. But once she’s committed to the pregnancy, there are any number of physical, emotional, and practical consequences of that choice, both good and bad. Anyone else could walk away from it at any time, but after a certain point, she cannot.
You sure about that? I’m not sure you realize that there a very early pregnancy can miscarry without anyone even being aware that one was even present. The frequency of these early spontaneous miscarriages probably isn’t something you considered. As a matter of fact, some forms of birth control don’t even prevent conception. Rather, they prevent implantation making pregnancy inviable.
Not so, actually: up to 50% of fertilised eggs are lost.
For anyone positing that such organic matter be considered legal “people”, note that this means that miscarriage is an epidemic killer of humanity of Holocaust proportions. Surely trillions of dollars should be funnelled into research which might save these billions of innocent lives every year by genetically modifying the number of chromosomes, as we can already do in other mammals?
Lots and lots of money is spent doing just that. There’s a good argument that we’re doing the best we reasonably can to prevent natural pregnancy termination.
Edit: minus the silly genetic modification part, of course.
Another Edit: “Billions” of lives a year is way, way off, even if 100% of fertilized eggs remianed viable until birth. If 50% of pregnancies are lost, that means that in order for even ONE billion fertilized eggs to be lost in a year means that at least one billion fertilized eggs become successfully born babies. Obviously we aren’t seeing even one billion babies born a year.
That’s like trying to hold someone responsible for all the deaths after the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean a few years ago.
Okay, I did underestimate how many pregnancies are miscarried. However, that doesn’t negate my point, that those looking to get an abortion are typically far along enough to have enough reason to think they might go to full term.
Just know, I agree with B.E.G.… abortion should only be carried out for those with a DAMN good reason.
And I know all about parasites, I have two of my own. (and I self inflicted a vasectomy, so we wouldn’t be burdened anymore.)
Point taken, Mosier - I retract “billions every year” in favour of “over a hundred million every year”.
But if we can interfere to save a life, just as we can and do in everyday medicine, surely we ethically must?
And those deaths have indeed been partly attributed to the absence of an early warning system, which is now being employed. If there was a way of saving innocent lives lost by miscarriage, we should employ it, yes?
It’s not at all. It’s a thing, not a person. She needs no more justification for destroying it than she would for stepping on the same mass of cockroaches. And as far as I’m concerned, given the kinds of obligations, risks and effort involved in having children, the default on children should be ‘no’. I see more of a moral problem in having children than in aborting them.
They are exactly alike, in the only way that matters : there’s no person there, no one is home.
The mother’s, for any reason whatsoever. Because life without mind is just meat that’s not dead. It’s is NOT the equal of mine, because I’m a person, and it’s not.
All abortions that aren’t medically necessary are technically for “convenience”. If you wish to disregard *your own * convenience, knock yourself out. Mine is none of your business. As far as I’m concerned, not wanting to spend the next nine months of my life inconvenienced by pregnancy and the bare minimum of eighteen years after that inconvenienced by raising a child is damn good enough reason.
I think if the decision rests solely on the mother then the responsibility should rest solely on the mother.
For example, a mother wishes to abort and the father wishes to see the child come to light then the decision is the mothers and the baby is aborted.
Next example, a father wishes to abort and a mother wishes to see the child come to light. The mother is now the only one involved in the life of this child. No child support, no taking the father’s last name, no rights or responsibilities for the father at all. He just washes his hands of the whole matter.
This is fair because, in light of the first example the father’s opinion/input/parenting role is put on a shelf and denied. In the second example the father’s opinion/input/parenting role is also denied. The decition is completely maternal. Where a father cannot and should not force an unwilling mother to carry a child full term also stands that a mother cannot and should not force an unwilling father to assume any role what so ever in the child’s life.
People certainly have the right to give up custody and parental rights of their children if they think they’re too much of a burden to be worth it. Giving up physical custody of a fetus means its death, sure, but that’s a (for now) unmutable side effect. And given the true nature of a zygote (not the religious or philosophical or potential natures), I’m okay with that. It doesn’t suffer, it has no more complex brain structure or activity than animals we eat for food (far less, actually, than a full grown pig).
Someone asked if we’d be pro-choice in the womb. Me, absolutely. A sentient fetus would be a sign of a higher power running the world in astonishing ways, and I’m sure S/He could recycle me or tend to me Itself. Better to go back to the bosom of Og than be born to an unwilling, unprepared parent. I just don’t think death, particularly the death of something that’s never tasted life, is to be feared.
Revenant Threshold has got some really great points here that I haven’t seen articulated before, by the way. Thanks for sharing them.
I would agree with you there. The only particular that would bother me is if the abortion was the result of gross mismanagement/lack of pregnancy preventative options. That is, women who take no responsibility to prevent pregnancy and utilizes D&C as a prophylactic measure are morally bankrupt, IMHO. She’s certainly not responsible enough to handle pregnancy and parenthood, regardless. The first time, and at a young age, maybe not. But repeatedly, certainly. I’m not convinced there are a significant number of women doing this, and not a reason to outlaw abortion, but there it is.
My reasoning, though, has more to do with the social and personal ramifications of induced abortion than with the disposition of the zygote/fetus. In my mind, it should always be considered a last resort option after other less intrusive and emotionally charged options have failed. And, of course, none of that applies to pregnancies resulting from violence against or forced coercion of the female.
It may be fair for the parents, but is it fair for the children, for society?
This is one of the hardest things to reason with regard to abortion. I’m very supportive of fathers’ rights and I have a hard time with the situation you describe. Ideally, both people that contribute to the pregnancy, should have equal say in the disposition of that pregnancy. But forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy she doesn’t want has ramifications that forcing both parents to care for a child does not.
The law does not agree with you. Short of placing a child up for adoption and effectively shifting the burden to adoptive parents, the rights of a child to be supported by their birth parents, however unwillingly, takes precedence over the right of either birth parent to walk away from it. Like it or not, the birth father’s name is going to be on the birth certificate. That right there establishes responsibility. When the birth father’s responsibility is not met, the burden often shifts to society. Does that sound more fair to you? That you, as a taxpayer, should pick up the tab for a father that chooses not to support a child he helped created?
Both parties created the pregnancy and both parties are burdened with the responsibilities that come with offspring. Unfortunately, nature makes the burden fall inequitably, but that’s the way it works.
I dunno, if someone is truly “brain dead” then they are in fact dead and no longer possess rights as far as I am concerned (though their families may have rights over the appropriate disposal of their bodies).
A 3 day old baby already has a functioning conciousness.
One can no more damage a fetus than one could damage a person’s eggs or sperm (say by sterilizing 'em with radiation) - yet egg and sperm have no “rights”.
The definition problem won’t go away just because you don’t like it. The problem is this: at one end of the spectrum you have egg and sperm, which (mostly) everyone agrees has no rights; at the other, you have a baby, which everyone agrees does have rights. Some point along the line the one becomes the other. To my mind, there are at least five natural points along that journey where interruption of further development can be considered morally wrong:
The point of sex. This is I think the position of those who find birth control to be “morally wrong”.
The point of conception. This is the traditional one for two reasons - the point at which a “soul” is created, and the point at which a genetic pattern is established.
The point at which a conciousness is developed in the fetus. To my mind, this one makes the most sense, because it is conciousness which creates rights.
The point at which the fetus could be viable outside the womb.
Birth.
[The ancient Romans had a sixth - the point at which the father recognizes the child as legitimate - but as far as I know, few societies practice exposure of infants these days]
Thing is, reasonable people can disagree over exactly which point is significant. I myself genuinely believe it is the third.
This argument would not weigh with me at all if I actually thought abortion was “murder”. After all, a person may well discover that having a child is a huge inconvenience after it is born, yet as a society we do not condone infanticide because caring for a child is “inconvenient”.
However, to my mind there is no such dilemma with the usual form of abortion.
Argh. The current Roman Catholic church does not “tradition” make. Even they have moved the point of “ensoulation” several times throughout their history.
Here’s a link to a page with a good summary of various historical and religious beliefs about fetuses and abortion. While abortion was considered murder by what was essentially the Roman Catholic church in the 2nd to 4th centuries, their Roman, Greek and other contemporaries did not agree. They gave up that notion with St. Augustine in the 5th century, and early term abortion was completely acceptable within the Catholic church until 1869 - after the Civil War (in the US).
The Mormon church is older and more established than the Roman Catholic stance against abortion! (Not that the Mormon church is terribly pro-choice*, but the Morman church is new enough that many people consider it “made-up” nonsense, is my point. Hardly old enough to be “tradition”.)
*“It allows abortion if the woman’s life or health is threatened, if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest or if the fetus is severely malformed and would not live long after birth.” http://www.religioustolerance.org/lds_abor.htm
I don’t know why you’re insisting on arguing this particular point. It isn’t relevant to the discussion, and only serves as “gotcha!” ammunition for your ridiculous (but quite entertaining!) mass-murder-by-masturbation scenario.
So what do you say? Is a fetus an inhuman parasite the day before it’s born, and a human being protected by the law the day after it’s born? Why use such an arbitrary threshold? Why use any threshold at all?
