No problem then! I’m sorry to have assumed intended offense where none was offered.
I’m afraid i’m not really sure what you’re saying. If it’s that generally our own premises tend to lead to conclusions that fall in line with our own moral ideas, whatever those may be, then sure, that makes sense, given that our premises are usually based on those ideals in the first place. But it depends; in some cases it may be felt that something is wrong, but that nevertheless is acceptable for one reason or another, and in other cases something is wrong enough that it is never acceptable. In the latter case that a moral dilemma may be led to is enough for some to reject it as a reasonable conclusion.
Of course, this is assuming i’m understanding you right.
While i’m on your side in this, I don’t really think that letting everyone decide for themselves is all that good an argument. There are people that think legal abortion is, literally, institutionally accepted murder on a massive scale. If I were put myself in their shoes, I don’t think that I would consider the fact that people may decide for themselves whether or not to participate in murder to be enough to tip the scales the other way.
The choice of when on the continnum between conception and birth a fetus becomes a “child” and thus deserving of (legal) protection; and
Whether abortion is thereby made (legally) possible.
The second is not, in my case, driving the first.
In short, were I to be convinced by cogent arguments that a fetus is a “child” at the moment of conception, I’d have no choice but to be anti-abortion in principle, in spite of the fact that this would cause hardship to many - which would be I think a real moral dilemma.
Thankfully, I am convinced that, on the contrary, a fetus is not a “child” until it has developed capacity for conciousness. Thus no moral dilemma develops.
Because early on, that IS all that it is. It’s not an assumption; that’s what all the evidence shows.
First, regardless of your intent, oppression is what you’d get. And second, equating a lump of flesh with people denigrates actual people; there’s no way around that. A tumor is also life; are you going to insist that doctors no longer remove them ? And it undercuts the whole concept of rights, by undercutting the idea that there’s any reason for them.
But whether or not an early term fetus has a mind isn’t one of them.
WE are. A fetus isn’t.
So ? As pointed out, the existence of grey areas just means that you leave a margin for error, not that you pretend that black and white don’t exist.
And in the near-impossible scenario where it happened, it would be ethical to do so. Just as it would be ethical to kill adult humans if you could prove they were mindless automatons that just faked sentience really well. Neither is a situation I ever expect to see in the real world.
Ah, fair enough then. I suppose i’m in the somewhat uncommon position of actually not even considering there to be any age at which a human is/should be guaranteed rights, but that’s kind of a tricky thing to get into. But I do understand where you’re coming from on that (I think :)).
If abortion was freely permitted with no stigma against it, it would take upon itself the role of an expensive form of contraception. This would inevitably lead to people being more casual about having sex (if that’s humanly possible), though they’d still want to use normal contraception as it’s easier and cheaper.
It would reduce the population growth of developed societies slightly…but not much, and even less among people old who are actually responsible enough to raise a child.
There would be some small number of men who are oppressed by the idea that the woman is “killing their boy”. It’d be hard to have much sympathy for them, though.
And, err, people would have to think up other ways to meddle in other people’s business?
Forgive me if I’ve overlooked something, but I’m not sure you’ve addressed the concept that no method of birth control is 100% effective, and possibly least of all abstinence; after all, abstinence, like any other method of birth control, is only effective so long as it’s used correctly and consistently 100% of the time. Speaking as a Planned Parenthood employee conducting pregnancy testing and options counseling for many, many women who reported “abstinence” as their chosen method of birth control, abstinence is most definitely not used correctly and consistently 100% of the time, and due to the completely functionally useless “abstinence-only education programs” often practically guarantees a pregnancy scare. Teenagers who have never been taught about, or have no access to condoms or birth control pills have no way to protect against pregnancy when hormones take control. This is a system that’s been working successfully for, what, 65 million years? You best believe that no matter how hard they try to avoid it, women following all the rules sure do sometimes find themselves facing positive pregnancy tests and, tangentially, you can’t condemn people who have never been taught comprehensively how to prevent pregnancy for… not being able to prevent pregnancy.
What would you say to a woman who was using her method of birth control correctly with absolute, 100% compliance, used emergency contraception within minutes when a failure was suspected (well before conception), then sought an abortion the very day her hCG levels were high enough to confirm a conception had occurred, despite every possible effort at avoidance? At that point, her quivering mass of cells wasn’t even visible on ultrasound. Leaving aside her reasons for not choosing to continue the pregnancy, would you still call her pregnancy intentional, or purposeful–assuming your use of quotes with the word “accidentally” is intended to suggest that no pregnancy is truly accidental?
What about a couple where both partners are surgically sterilized, and still manage to conceive? Would you claim they secretly intended to get pregnant or that she should also “accidentally” lose her right to choice in the matter?
Neither of those scenarios are hypothetical, if that matters to you.
Something else to think about: those of you who are arguing the “life begins at conception” stance, please don’t ever even begin to think that a “pro-life” or “anti-abortion” or “life begins at conception” or “every conception is sacred” mentality precludes having an abortion. I myself have counseled not a few women who “don’t believe in abortion” but are still willing to make the choice to have one when it’s her uterus that’s occupied. And you know what? That’s okay with me; I’m happy the option is available for her when she needs it.
I’m not saying any of you would choose to have an abortion, or calling you hypocrites, I’m only saying that the belief that “conception”=“human” doesn’t necessarily preclude the believer from choosing to terminate that “human” for reasons of their own.
Say that one day, while camping in the wilderness (3 day journey by backpack)with my infant son, I suddenly decide that parenthood is too much of a burden to be worth it. I don’t want to care for this “parasitic” organism one second longer. I abandon my child there in the wild to fend for himself. My child later dies on his own.
Obviously, I’d (justly) get charged with reckless endangerment or much worse. Even though the child was now an unwanted burden, it was still my responsibility to safely see the child the 3-day journey home, to give to someone who would be able to care for him.
How is 3 days really all that different than 9 months?
If pregnancy only lasted a month to get to full-term, would we really be having this conversation? How about a week?
Well, here’s the tricky part. It’s a little hard to explain so read carefully:
One is three days.
The other is nine months.
When the time comes when we have sufficiently advanced genetic engineering that we can effectively reduce gestation time, I invite you to raise the point again.
Because during much of the 9 months, it’s a mindless fetus, and not a baby. And because carrying a child inside you for months is a lot harder on the body than backpacking. And because it’s roughly 90 times as long.
This isn’t like picking out colour swatches. In one state, you’re inside another human body and in another, you’re not. I leave it to others to debate what can or should happen during the transition phase.
And yes, I’m pretty sanguine about there being no restrictions on abortion, simply because the idea of a nine-month purely elective abortion is so ridiculously unlikely that trying to ban it would be like banning people from flapping their arms and flying. It’s far more common for the mother to kill the child after birth then seek to do so immediately beforehand.
Canada is completely without an abortion law, yet we haven’t experienced these “one second” situations. It’s a pointless argument, used to justify bad laws because if one second is considered shocking, why not one day? Or one week? Or one month? Or three months? Or the whole nine? There’s your arbitrary standard.
It seems a lot of these arguments boil down to “arbitrary points”. How long do you believe a parent is obligated to care for an unwanted child before being legally/morally absolved of the consequences of abandonment?
What if I was snowed in all winter in a remote cabin with no outside communication (phone lines down, etc)? Enough food/water for the both of us, but only barely ?
