The only people who believe that “life begins at conception” are people with odd, unprovable religious ideas about “souls” and the like. The scientific, provable facts are that until fairly late in gestation the nervous system of a fetus is incapable of feeling pain, be aware of what is going on, or to even think in any way. Most people don’t consider tumors, sperm, or bacteria to be “alive” (even though they are) because they can’t think or perceive. Therefore there is a SCIENTIFIC consensus on when life begins- sort of gradually during the late stages of gestation sometime after 24 weeks but definitely a few weeks before birth.
While I (reluctantly) come out on the Pro-Choice side of the abortion issue, I find this this thinking troubling as it supports abortion up into the moment of birth minus one minute, or one second. That, I find a a pretty disgusting position.
I think the think that makes the most sense with this very sensitive, and personal, issue is to have a compromise guideline. I find extreme positions on either side—no abortion under any circumstances or abortions allowable even very late in the term—to be equally anti-empathetic and grizzly.
While I basically agree with where you come out on this, the rationale you offered troubles me. Yes, there is a religious position in the debate, but even if you remove religion altogether you are still left with a quandary. And while I agree that we should look to science to inform our decision, we should all acknowledge that at the end of the day the issue is one of morality, not science.
No, the qualifier means that “due process of law” is that each individual person gets their say in court before having their liberty or life taken away. People who want to outlaw abortions period are saying that everyone who simply happens to be born a woman and who experiences a rape or a birth control failure will automatically be sentenced to a nine-month term of being forced to be an incubator. That’s not “due process of law” that’s akin to slavery.
Spamforbrains: post 99.
Not true. cite:
I have noticed that when your statements of fact are refuted, you simply ignore the refutation. Why is that?
See post 99.
you mean the legal definition of being a person? This mostly revolves around when we can kill people who aren’t trying to actively hurt us. It’s about whether there are higher brain functions. If your aunt smashes her car and ends up on life support with no higher brain functions you, in consultation with doctors, can end her life by removing life support. If she still has higher brain functions, you cannot. Fetuses have no higher brain functions. In consultation with doctors, you can end their lives by removing life support.
I mostly ignore comments about “when life begins” and “are fetuses persons” because I think the human rights violation of forcing a woman to become an incubator FAR override any of these concerns. As I tried to explain before, EVEN IF a fetus is fully aware and a person (which it is not), a woman has every right to kill it in order to avoid being forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth.
I also think most anti-abortionists (I refuse to call them pro-life) aren’t actually against abortion. They are trying to force women into de facto slavery. For example, explain why so many anti-abortionists allow for abortions in cases of rape?
Again, since you are claiming this is a legal standard, I am asking you for the specific statute or case law which lays out this standard.
I’m very strongly pro-choice…but I don’t hold this exemption to be a major charge against the opposition. I think it’s a “realpolitik” exemption, necessary to get people to side with them. In their deepest moral hearts, most of them believe that a fetus begotten of rape is fully as deserving of life as a fetus begotten willingly. But if they take that hard line, they lose a lot of moderate support, and their political position becomes totally untenable.
It isn’t really a weakness, then, in their ideology. It’s just something they have chosen to accept, to keep their crusade politically viable.
For myself, the answer is practicality. Abortions for cases of rape or incest are together less than one percent of all abortions. I would certainly prefer to save the vast majority of unborn lives and concede the ground on rape or incest as a matter of practical compromise.
Yup.
If they were really trying to force them into de facto slavery why make an exception for rape? That would run contrary to that perceived “forcing”
I also find it troubling. But I can’t think of a logical argument that says a two month old fetus isn’t alive but a seven month old fetus is. Bricker and other lawyers can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe life is legally regarded as a binary state. You’re either alive or you’re not alive - you can’t be somewhere on a scale in between.
I’m aware that some people hold to a viability standard; that a fetus should be considered alive when it could live outside the womb. But fetal viability in cases of premature births generally relies on artificial life support. And if you argue the standard for viability includes life that is sustained by means of technology until it develops the means to sustain itself, then how would you argue that a frozen sperm sample is alive - with the proper technology those sperm cells will go on to become a human being.
It’s strange to me pro-life proponents don’t legislate against me jacking off. In my balls I have millions of potential children with human DNA. A porn mag and a few minutes in the bathroom and I’ve almost killed more human lifeforms than were lost in the Holocaust. They are human life and yet they don’t matter to anyone at all. Curious.
Do you know under which principle* Roe v Wade *was decided in the first place? Hint: It starts with a “D” and ends in an “W”.
The state has a legitimate interest in protecting natural areas like National Parks. Does that mean National Parks have rights?
I don’t think it’s argued that “life begins” at some intermediate point. It’s only a legal issue: the state has a gradually increasing interest in protecting the fetus. Even that is only a compromise, but it helps to avoid the scary idea of extreme last-second abortions with no medical need. Most of us on the pro-choice side will agree that it’s bad for a woman to wait until the last second for an elective abortion. If it’s going to happen, then the earlier, the better.
Nah. Again, I’m totally pro-choice, but I don’t see this as an issue in any way. To begin with, men can’t help but emit sperm cells. You pass thousands of them every time you take a pee. Millions are discharged with an involuntary nocturnal emission.
There really is a difference between unfertilized haploid cells and a fertilized egg that has begun cell division. I believe it’s totally absurd to refer to an eight-cell blastocyst as a “person,” but I don’t think it’s hypocritical of anyone to refuse to refer to a sperm cell as a person.
I don’t buy it. This is a “nobody goes there because it’s too crowded” type of response. If people didn’t actually believe abortion in the case of rape was okay, there would be no “realpolitik” necessary to win over “moderates”. Are moderate pro-lifers not real pro-lifers? Are the majority of pro-lifers not pro-lifers? Who’s winning over whom here?
I don’t agree with this AT ALL. From everything I’ve heard from the ‘pro-life’ crowd, and all of their actions and proposed laws, in their deepest moral hearts they believe that women seeking abortions are sluts who should be punished for having sex, and the baby is the instrument of that punishment. While there is a certain amount of ‘well, if she got raped she must have been dressed like a slut’, they’re more willing to forgive a woman for being raped than for being a slut, so don’t think she needs the punishment.
If you really believe the fetus is a person, you shouldn’t support giving it the death penalty for the crimes its father committed, period.
^^^ this.
I used to think that but that’s one thing that my years on SDMB have changed. I still think when it comes to the leadership of the pro-life movement, most of them (including Randall Terry and John Cardinal O’Connor of NY and several others) are (or have been) against sexual freedom for women, they regard women who have sex outside of marriage to be sluts and the baby as just punishment. (Many of them aren’t particularly subtle about it. They’ve set out to make contraception illegal for unmarried people as well). But from my conversations on this board I’ve come to realize a great many (probably a majority) of the rank and file believe what they say, and were brought to a pro-life position by how they felt about the killing of fetuses (“unborn children”). They’re sincere. I respect them for their position.
I do think some of them, despite their sincerity on that, are also harboring attitudes towards women who have “wanton sex” and that whether they’re aware that their slut-blaming attitudes play a role in their pro-life sentiments or not, they do.
I also think some of them buy into the notion that adult women are sinful creatures in a way that “innocent unborn children” are not; adults are impure whereas the unborn / innocent babies / newborn children etc etc haven’t had the chance to do many sinful things. This is different from slut-blaming (although in my experience the “adults as sinful creatures” thing is often weighed more heavily against female adult people). You see a lot of this attitude when pro-life people say things like “But how can you kill the poor innocent unborn child? It hasn’t done anything wrong.” The pregnant woman potentially seeking the abortion on the other hand has, — no, not necessarily that she had sex, although it’s probably a consideration, but more that it has to be true by default because all of us are sinners and by definition have racked up a track record of grevious sins by the time we’re old enough to reproduce.
Call it “innocence fetish”, if you’d like. The notion that young children are “pure” and “blameless” and, although also “born in original sin” and whatnot, are not defiled by the impurities that will take them to wickedness soon enough. “Unborn babies” would be the ultimate in such “purity”, the youngest and most “innocent” possible. A similar strand of thought leads some people to say that in a difficult pregnancy you should always save the baby at the cost of the mother’s life instead of the other way around. Which reminds me also of…
Unbaptised babies don’t get to go to heaven, or so I’ve been told. Unborn babies have not been baptised. Sinful-but-churchgoing mommies have presumably been baptised and if they are properly repentant & all, will. Hence in a difficult pregnancy you save the baby at the cost of the mother’s life because she’ll go to heaven but if the baby died it would go to limbo. So by extension I guess abortion bothers them a lot because the unborn child hasn’t been baptised.