Your lack of comprehension of what it means to consent is creepy.
Clearly, in your example, the woman didn’t consent. This is where your argument fails over and over again. This woman has consented to treating morning sickness; she has not consented to an abortion. In the same way, a woman consents to have sex; she does not consent to pregnancy.
Think of it this way–if a government has the power to prevent you from getting an abortion, it also has the power to force you to get one.
A particular religion? Your description sounds an awful lot like Christianity. Even if it’s not specific, it’s still religious in nature.
You keep saying this as if it’s a logical conclusion. Agreeing to have sex is not the same as agreeing to be pregnant. It is definately not the same as agreeing to have a body surgically attached to you.
Ever heard of intent? The “purpose” of sex is not to get pregnant, unless that is what you are intentionally trying to do. What a woman has responibility for is the care of her body. By outlawing abortion, you take that away.
Why? Why does a clump of cells deserve more consideration than a grown woman? Getting an abortion is medical care.
Well, as you saw, I picked the healthy baby. I don’t see how that equates to your being consistent when you say that there is no difference between a blastocyte and a baby.
That’s not its sole purpose, though. There are releases of endorphins and whatnot that have some value in themselves, whether or not conception takes place.
Statistically speaking, a desired pregnancy is a very unlikely outcome of sex. Say a 40 year sex life, sex twice a week, give about 4,000 sex acts. (YMMV ) The average couple has two kids, say 10 tries per kid, or 20 actual attempts to get pregnant. So, roughly 1/2 of 1% of sex involves trying to get pregnant.
Now about responsibility. Every time you drive, there is a chance that you will be in a crash, and get hit. This is not an excuse for a doctor to refuse to treat you because you should have known better. Yeah, you didn’t intend to get hurt when you drove, but I’ve just shown that most people don’t intend to start a baby when they have sex. We can make similar arguments for similar riskly behavior. Having a low probability but negative outcome of a behavior doesn’t mean that the damage can’t be made whole. You might object to my calling an unwanted pregnancy damage, but that’s how it can be viewed, and with justification.
O for godsake. Did everyone miss the “strictly biological” part? Why did we evolve a function that involves tab A going into slot B? For reproduction, not for releasing endorphins.
I’m pretty sure I wrote somehting about this earlier, and this was just a (too) short restatement.
My original point was that, in this day and age, sex and procreation are not linked the way they used to be. We have sex for numerous reasons that have nothing to do with reproducing. Sex leads to pregnancy in a mechanical sense, but that’s not its overarching “purpose”.
Hey, there’s no strict biological purpose to posting on messageboards, either. Your point was narrowly focused to the point of complete irrelevance and contributed nothing to this thread except an opportunity for wisecracking responses.
In other words… duh.
When abortion was prohibited before Roe vs. Wade, in many jurisdictions rape was an exception, and I’m sure if the abortion ban was to be brought back a rape exception would be made as well. There are a lot of anti-choice people whose motivation is not so much preservation of the unborn as punishment for casual sex, and anti-choice people who have enough logic left in them to think about it when someone says “But what about if your daughter was raped?”.
I saw an article written by an abortion provider recently, I wish I could remember where, that talked about anti-choice women who come in for abortions. They frequently demand special treatment, or to be kept away from those other women, and always have some excuse as to why their abortion is different. I honestly don’t believe those women think they are murdering a child, and when they are talking about other women’s abortions that’s not what’s on their mind, no matter how they state their beliefs. They just think it’s wrong for women to avoid the consequences for what they see as a dirty or sinful act. I understand the mindset, when I was anti-choice that was indeed part of my reasoning - “You don’t want to get pregnant? Don’t have a baby!”. It was the same teenage mindset that causes statements like “Smoking is unhealthy, so you should just quit smoking”. Everything is in absolutes for them, some people outgrow that mindset but some never get a chance to.
A quick poll around here would show lots of people who have lots of sex with no intention whatsoever of getting pregnant ever. Whatever sex may have been invented for back when human time began, it has evolved into something of a pasttime.
No; as I’ve said, there is no other means of sustenance available for the infant; if the mother decides she does not wish to continue being a parent, it will die from neglect, exactly the same as if the pregnant woman decides she does not wish to continue the pregnancy, the fetus will die because it is technically impossible to sustain it.
I’m not asking you to restate anything, just state it once, but you keep answering questionsthat are not quite the one I’m asking.
The resources are not limited, but the question is this: why do you say she has a positive duty to her child, whereas the pregnant woman has no similar duty? Remember, I’m not asking about what the law currently is, I’m asking what it should be.
If a pregnant woman can decide not to continue the pregnancy, resulting in the death of the fetus, cannot a mother of a newborn infant decide not to continue being a parent, even if this decision results in the death of the child? if not, why not?
If she’s not on a desert island, this is not the case for an infant, so are we still only discussing desert-island scenarios?
Well, the way the law currently is, is that positive-duty relationships exist and that once born, an infant is invested with various civil rights and whatnot. Are you asking why I feel an infant gets these rights while a fetus does not? It’s because I think birth is a useful and obvious benchmark, with not a lot of grey area to confuse the issue. Prior to birth, I feel, the over-riding concern is the mother’s rights. Afterward, when the mother and child are two physically distinct entities, the child can get some rights of its own.
As for what it should be… I dunno, I’m pretty good with it the way it is.
To be really pedantic about it, nothing in biology has a “purpose.” Biology doesn’t intend anything and there’s no designed “purpose” to any of it. There are only incidental results. Reproduction is an incidental result of sex and if a particular species finds sex pleasurable or desireable it will incidentally result in more offspring but that doesn’t mean that sex has a “purpose.” In evolutionary terms certain organs and characteristics can change entirely in how they benefit a species…i.e. they change their “purpose.” The same goes for any kind of specific behavior. The “purpose” of behavior is whatever the desired goal is. If the goal of sex is to bust a nut then that’s it’s purpose.
Incorrect, or we’d be like cows; in heat for a little while, with near-certain pregnancy. In humans, sex in primarily social, not reproductive. We like it all the time, and have a low fertility.
In the book Freakanomics the author gathers statistics and applies them to places unexpected. He noticed a corelation between tha availability of abortion and saw that crime rates in the future dropped markedly. He further noticed that states that fought the abortion availability the most had less or no crime decline.
The conclusion is that people forced to have children that dont want them or are not ready for them ,do a poor job of raising them. Society faces these children when they grow up.
The people that got abortions generally had children later. These kids were not statistically more likely to be criminals. Anti abortionites must be willing to raise the children they want brought into the world over the objection of their parents.
) The average couple has two kids, say 10 tries per kid, or 20 actual attempts to get pregnant. So, roughly 1/2 of 1% of sex involves trying to get pregnant.