I’m not “wishing” for anything, just pointing out that coalition politics trump ideological principles any day of the week.
But since you brought it up, say it. If gay babies are aborted at the rate of Downs babies, would you support restrictions on abortion to deal with the problem, or is it ultimately the woman’s choice no matter what?
Depends on how we are defining it. I bet you’d actually find a lot that are comfortable with forms of indentured servitude or debt bondage, particularly for noncitizens.
Ultimately the woman’s choice. It really is that simple.
If I’m uncomfortable with the choices people are making, I can start a public education campaign or something. There are usually structural reasons for the choices people make (like dowry being a driver of gender sex selection), and addressing those may help.
I think that’s exactly right, but then I actually am an absolutist when it comes to rights. I’m not sure about most Democrats, because that’s not really part of their DNA. They used to be free speech absolutists, but Citizens United changed all that in a hurry and hate speech concerns are dragging liberals even further into regulation territory on that issue. I can’t imagine their commitment to reproductive rights would survive other PC concerns, if they became significant enough. If gay rights groups are screaming “Genocide!” I don’t think very many liberals will settle for public education campaigns.
Sex selection abortion isn’t a macro issue because there’s no danger of there not being enough females(except maybe in China). Being able to predict sexual orientation in a fetus would be a HUGE game changer that could result in a majority of gays never being born. They’d be pretty much eradicated outside the West and even in more liberal countries most parents would be reluctant to take that on. We’re already seeing movement towards preventing babies being born with disabilities.
Larry, I’m going to let this slide. But this could easily earn a warning. Control yourself, please.
This country is based on Judeo-Christian values – we should follow the guidance in the Bible that very clearly says that life begins when the spirit enters the body at the first breath.
So, you;re good with banning divorce, going back to public stonings and quite a few other atrocities as well, right?
And, well, ‘cite’ that we’re ‘based’ on Judeo-Christian ‘values’ - and exactly what that means.
I see. I have never thought a woman is thinking ‘clump of cells’ when undergoing an abortion. ‘Clump of cells’ is just rhetoric that probably has little weight once a woman is actually faced with the question of abortion. Nearly 100% of the time the decision to have an abortion comes after thoughtful consideration informed by doctors who are concerned with giving their patients the best possible information.
But that’s beside the point. The underlying assumption to these laws that are transparently attempting to put up roadblocks to the abortion is that these women and/or their doctors are behaving unethically or irresponsibly. They aren’t and they have no business enacting laws as though they are.
I’d ask my wife to have an abortion if we found out our fetus was a Republican. But thank goodness a gay fetus test is just as unrealistic as a Republican fetus test. Why don’t you come up with an example that is realistic? Is it because you can’t?
IAN SmartAlecCat and cannot speak for him/her, but I suspect it’s a case of just living up to one’s username.
As in: “Okay conservatives, you think our laws should be Bible-based, well, the Bible says that human life begins with the reception of the spirit in the first breath which occurs after birth, so abortion isn’t actually taking human life, so gotcha”.
It’s not that unrealistic. It’s not unlikely there’s a genetic component to homosexuality from twin studies and the “fecundity genes” hypothesis. So it’s not that hard to imagine aborting if there’s a higher likelihood of a child being gay.
I would suggest that it doesn’t matter about features or size.
What matters, or matters more, is that the woman may not wish to carry to term something implanted in her by a rapist. Or a girl or teen doesn’t want to carry to term something implanted via rape or incest.
And then there’s this case, in which a woman died of sepsis while miscarrying, and the doctors refused to do an abortion that would have save her life (the fetus was already dying):
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/22/1900171/jury-savita-death-abortion-care/
And, of course, the folks who shout about how “abortion stops a beating heart!” don’t realize that it’s not that simple.
This site lists quite a few horrific defects, many of them fatal, some which cannot be detected early on in the pregnancy, which can befall a fetus and sometimes threaten the mother’s life as well:
And those were WANTED pregnancies.
Merely saying “It’s a LIFE!” grossly oversimplifies the whole situation and all the things that can go wrong.
Thank you for illustrating quite nicely the point.
That even "IF’ we were to apply ‘biblical principles’ - we would not have any less debate then we do today - and things would still be ‘complicated’ with no indication of a ‘clear consensus’ on the matter.
My take on human genetics is it’s a huge leap to go from heritability studies to specific genetic loci to making a reliable prediction of behavioral outcomes given this or that set of alleles. Even if all these leaps occurred for homosexuality or party affiliation (a behavior for which a heritability has been estimated more than once) there are so many layers of “environment” between a gene sequence and it’s influence on behavioral development that I am sure we wouldn’t need to resort to abortion to reduce or increase the likelihood our offspring would want to affiliate with a preferred party or preferred partner.
I looked for Fecundity Genes hypothesis and didn’t see anything; a link would be appreciated. I am just curious.
There was already a thread on that. Go look it up. (My view, and the view of the majority, was not to make laws against it, but that it is, still, a really shitty thing for anyone to do.)
Those of us on the pro-choice side don’t feel comfortable compelling anyone to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, for any reason.
Doesn’t matter. Suppose there is a gene that predicts a 30% probability of the child being gay. If we assume that something like 5% of people are gay, that’s 6x the normal odds. Lots of folks would choose to abort. Or, if you know you are a “carrier”, you do in vitro and screen for the embryo that does’ have the gene.
I’m hard core pro-choice, so it wouldn’t matter to me. I couldn’t care less if a woman decides to abort because of eye color. It’s her choice. But most people aren’t so tolerant.
Depends. What rights of the “clump of cells” is being infringed and what rights of the full grown woman are being the reawson for that infringement.
ISTM that if the full grown woman’s life is at stake, the woman’s rights are superior. But in most other case, you are saying that your apple is superior to my orange.
Yep. A difference of opinion. You may believe one thing, and I believe another.
The problem is that the pro-life side is attempting to craft compulsory laws on the basis of their opinion. If you don’t like Brussels Sprouts, don’t eat them…but don’t try to use the power of law to ban me from eating them, 'cause I like them just fine.
I agree and I specified that a consensus doesn’t require universal agreement. You’re always going to have a few people out on the fringe.
The subject of an abortion concerns more people than just a woman and her doctor. My daughter fell for a baby and abortion was a consideration until I said Hell No that is my grandchild we are talking about, the family stopped talking of abortion and how the family could help support our daughter. Our grandson will start college in September and will probably go on to uni. he has the making of a fine young man and his mother AND father are still together.