What’s the problem?
You have solved the problem. How wise you must be ! Why didn’t someone think of this decades ago ?!
The debate is finally over. I wonder what people were arguing about.
While I couldn’t agree more that some pro-life advocates are disingenuous bastards, I suspect that most people who are pro-life are both genuine in their sentiments, and, unbenownst to them are being hypocritical.
It all boils down to something I read (IIRC, in Skeptical Inquirer) about how people don’t really believe what they think they believe. If you ask someone if a fertilized egg is a full-fledged person with all the rights of any born human being, they may say yes. And yet if you ask them if there should be an exception to abortion bans for rape, they may also say yes, never recognizing the huge paradox in their own brains. And I do bet that on some level, many of them have sympathy for virgins and contempt for “sluts,” and this influences their stance.
Sadly, I don’t think many people examine their own thoughts and philosophies, and therefore blithely carry around a lot of mutually exclusive beliefs.
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To me the mother has to grant permission to the fetus for the use of the womb, it is her choice to make (Assuming a free society). Normally this is granted by engaging in activities which could result in a offspring (consensual sex - even w/ birth control unless that birth control is 100% effective, artificial insemination, ect.) In the case of rape that permission was not (necesserally) granted, not to say that she can’t choose to give permission afterwards, and if she wants her offspring out of her body then, if medically possible and within her means that is her choice to make. Her offspring is basically SOL.
Incest is another issue that either falls under the category of rape, which she still can choose, or could be a concentual relationship between siblings, which permission has been granted by their activities already.
Didn’t have time to finish, that above is a idealization, but in reality would lead to too many false cases of rape, too many productive members of society serving time and the eventual colapse of society as we know it. Due to that we either have to ignore the rape or incest exception altogether, or allow the mother to revoke permission and kill he offspring.
Her permission can be rescinded at any point in her pregnancy. She is a human being with basic human rights. An embryo is not. The notion that a fetus is a “baby” is purely a religious belief and the government has no right to impose that belief on its citizens.
While I am pro-death (just as the other side is anti-choice), your statement strikes me as being obviously false, Diogenes- would you include a fetus at 8 months, 29 days in your definition of “not being a [human being]”? And if so, then do you also condone infanticide? There is clearly a point before birth at which the fetus becomes so developed that to speak of it as not being a “baby” is ridiculous. I think the problem here is seeing where to draw that line.
i’ll give the same answer I always give. The woman has the right to remove the fetus from her body at any point. Once the fetus can survive outside the womb, she has a right to induce labor or have the fetus surgically removed, but once it’s out and can survive on its own she has no more authority over it. if the fetus can be removed without killing it, go ahead, I don’t care.
It’s not really a very pertinent question, though, since 90% of all abortions are performed in the 1st trimester and almost all the rest are performed in the 2nd. 3rd trimester abortions are a minute fraction of 1%, and they are virtually never performed unless there is a significant medical reason to do so (usually the fetus is already dead).
As to when it becomes a “person?” I say it’s a person when it’s outside the mother and it’s alive. That might sound arbitrary but that’s the way it goes. We have to draw arbitrary lines sometimes. When does a child become an adult?
Well, one does not need to study ethics to know the answer. The only person who has a say in whether a woman carries to term or aborts is the woman herself. Everybody else needs to STFU; it’s none of their concern.
To me, that assumes too much, wrt what the woman is choosing to do. The only SURE things that a woman is consenting to when she engages in consensual sex, is for her partner to attempt to achieve climax, using her body, and for her partner to attempt to bring her to climax.
Individual women may vary in what they are intending to give consent for when they engage in consensual sex, but IMHO, the above are the only assumptions that may validly be made for the general population of women (Assuming free society).
Every woman (again, IMHO) has the right to make the choice to grant permission to a fetus that she knows exists within her body. Or to withhold it.
They did.
The argument is between those who want to punish women and children for “sin”, or for not being a man, or just for the fun of it , and those who don’t. This is about malice, not morality.
There’s this thread currently running in GD, if anyone wants to weigh in.
As anyone following that thread knows, I weigh heavily on the choice side, for any pregnancy.