Not to sound like a stuck record, but again: what he said. Abortion is “taking responsibility” by my understanding of the word.
No moral problem. If it’s a desert island, I hardly see how legality comes into it.
Indeed. In fact, ignore the food poisoning analogy above.
STDs are a risk of having sex. You have a responsibility to yourself and your partner to play safe, but sometimes, no matter how careful you’ve been, that fails. You do not then have the “responsibility” to suffer or die from a condition for which a cure exists.
You added that twist after the fact. That’s a different scenario.
Agreed.
She has the right. I’m not talking about punishment, or legal rights - I’ve said several times I’m pro-choice.
I don’t think it’s responsible, though, to pretend that because the fetus is not yet human, it’s not deserving of any concern. The woman’s convenience being paramount in solving her problem is, frankly, chilling in my book.
What if your dog has, say, a painful hip condition, that you cannot afford to have fixed. Obviously a dog can’t speak, but is it unreasonable to suggest it might prefer death to a life of pain?
After all, there are many people every year who wish for death over life, hence the whole euthanasia debate. It’s clear that in some cases, there are people who would prefer death to life.
1984 much?
Not any action. But abortion (assuming it’s medical rather than DIY) is a grown-up approach to the problem, if you phrase the problem as “How do I get rid of this unwanted thing inside me ASAP”
I disagree - euthenasia for animals is not irresponsible. The consequences? One less mistreated pet. Dogs and cats are things we created for our convenience. I don’t think they should be mistreated while alive, but have no problem with them being put down for any reason. I’ve put down animals for reasons of convenience before. Granted, those were fish, but I don’t see the difference at all.
Maybe a different analogy? I think my moral compass points to a different North.
I think you’re the one who has it all wrong
You do if you’re pregnant and you do not wish to be, and choose to avail yourself of the procedure known as abortion. It’s alive, it’s human, hell, call it a person, whatever. Some individual abortions may be murder, but many of them are just pruning actions. The big moral issues relevant to the individual situation are in good hands when they are left in the hands of the individual pregnant people. As for the big moral issues relevant to the situation in general, it is a massively evil thing, an abomination in the eyes of God, to impose upon the species what gets imposed when you forcibly prevent women from ending pregnancies that they would choose to end.
Oh, I think a great many of their leaders do. Many of them make no secret of it.
I, on the other hand, am because I believe that a fetus doesn’t have anything invested in that life yet (although other people certainly may), making the death of a fetus a not particularly tragic thing in and of itself. (When expectant parents are devastated by miscarriage or etc, then it becomes a tragedy).
Death itself is not a tragedy. If it were, every life would be tragic.
Mind you, no offense taken that you should share your views, I’m only firing back because of the “have it all wrong” thingie: perhaps you should consider "have it all wrong in my opinion, instead?
I’m pro-choice, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the personhood of the fetus. I don’t believe that fetuses are sentient or self-aware, I don’t think infants are either (my second-youngest couldn’t pass the red-dot/mirror self awareness test that any chimp can pass until he was almost 2), but I still think it’s not a good thing to kill them, if for no other reason than the destruction of potential.
But it doesn’t matter. Fetuses could be self-aware and able to communicate with those outside the womb by sign language and I’d still be pro-choice, because the alternative is too terrible. If abortion is treated as murder, the only right thing to do is to investigate practically every miscarriage to make sure it was in fact accidental and not somehow induced or due to negligence. I also don’t think any person should be forced to endure pregnancy and childbirth if they don’t want to, just as I don’t believe a person should be forced to donate a kidney even if they are the only person in the world who can save the potential recipent’s life. It IS about personal choice and respecting a person’s right to control their own body for me.
If medical technology ever reaches a point where an embryo or fetus can be removed from the womb in a procedure as simple and safe as an abortion and raised somewhere else (implanted in a volunteer or in a synthetic womb), I MIGHT re-consider my stance on abortion, because then it has nothing to do with your rights to control what’s in your body and more with your rights to choose whether or not to produce progeny, and that’s a lot more complicated. But as things are now, abortion is the only way to end a pregnancy, and thus must be legal.
I thought MrDibble’s “if no other options exist” (which you accepted without correction in your reply at post #90, asking instead to clarify a different point) implied that the situation was dire. Obviously if the island has fifty tons of freeze-dried provisions, including 5,000 servings of baby formula, options do exist. In that case, if the child is her legal responsibility and she can serve that responsibility without putting herself at grave risk, she definitely does have a positive duty to its care. That’s not a twist I added. Without a threat to survival forcing hard choices, there’s no point to the whole “desert island” scenario in the first place.
Well, put on a sweater, because I’m not pretending. I’m completely indifferent to whether or not the fetus qualifies as human, or what definitions of “human” anyone wants to apply that either includes or excludes it. There are rare circumstances where killing another human is justified and this is one of them, even if you grant humanity to the fetus. If the fetus isn’t human, the issue is moot, and if it is… so what?
If you want to know what I find chilling, it’s the denial of the rights of others to individual freedom in the name of some vague moral point. You say you’re pro-choice; fine, I believe you. You say this makes you uneasy? Fine, I’m not going to criticize you for the set of moral guidelines you’ve established for yourself, especially since they’re not particularly extreme. I’m rather less fine, however, with attempting to muddle the issue by playing definition games with the word “responsibility” or trying to come with hair-splitting justifications that, in fact, give ammunition to those who would be thrilled to remove the rights of others.
To me it’s fairly simple:
Premise: A woman is pregnant.
Problem: She doesn’t want to stay pregnant.
Solution: A safe medical procedure exists that can arrange this.
Why the OP of this thread feels this is wrong and why it’s better to find a more complex route to the same end escapes me.
It seems there are only so many logical positions to stake out:
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Anything defined as “alive” or having “life” has rights, including the right not to have that life taken away.
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Defining the point at which life begins is more emotional, philosophical and theological, than biological. Science isn’t much help.
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So it follows:
3a: If you believe life begins at conception, then you’re 100% pro-life.
3b: If you believe life begins at birth, you’re 100% pro-choice, up to and including late term abortions.
3c: If you believe that the point at which life begins is somewhere in between, then:
3c(1) You pick a fairly arbitrary point, and allow abortion before that point, but not after; or
3c(2) You pick 2 fairly arbitrary points, and say that between those points a fetus may be alive, but does not have 100% human rights; and allow abortion during that time.
3c(2) gets you into some sticky moral dilemmas.
None of the above, though, support an exception for rape/incest. Why do the circumstances of the conception affect the morality of whether or not the abortion should be performed?
The scenario as posed was not one of limited resources; let there be abundant food, but nobody else to provide essential care for the helpless infant; she just decides that she doesn’t want to perform the role of parent any more. In the same way that a pregnant female may decide that she doesn’t want to be host to the fetus any more (except in that case, the inbability to hand it over to someone else is restricted by technology, rather than geography).
Nope; that’s a serious stumbling point right there; the ants in my garage are alive; the mould on the Camenbert in my fridge is alive.
This question is pointless. When a woman chooses to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, no child ever comes into existence. You can’t victimize imaginary children.
Diogenes, I have a question about your position. If a woman gives birth to a baby, and then decides on the first day after birth that she doesn’t want it, can she destroy it? If not, what makes the moment of birth so decisive? If so, how long can you wait until destroyng the infant is unacceptable? My point is that no matter what your personal convictions may be on when one crosses the threshold into, shall we say, ‘nondestroyability’, the issue matters and surely where the threshold is set should be very relevant for anyone who regards the killing of actual human lives abbhorent.
Lama Pacos, why would anyone consider birth to be a *less * sensible dividing line than conception? I don’t have the right to kill anyone *else * who lives outside of my body, so once born, why is this person any different?
Exactly; so what actually changes in the entity during the second in which the fetus on the inside of the vagina becomes a baby on the outside?
Um… the being outside? I thought I was clear about that.
Its location?
Right, but why is that a meaningful line to draw when deciding whether an entity is destroyable or not? Wouldn’t a more sensible line be drawn at the moment that advanced brain functions kick in?
Thw right of the woman is to have the thing removed from her body. The reason women get abortions is not to destroy something but to stop being pregnant. Her autonomy is over her own body, not the fetus, per se. Questions about the rights of fetal enties once removed from the body have no relevance to abortion rights.