I got that - again, that would be a demonstrably superior form of reproduction, and I’d fully support switching over to that ASAP.
It’s not, because there are horrible taboos about studying this sort of thing; look at the backlash to that Chinese scientist who used CRISPR to make a pair of twins immune to HIV. There are certainly concerns about the particular way he chose to go about that, but much of the backlash wasn’t about that - it was about the very concept of “playing God” in this way.
It’s an attitude that’s beyond stupid and which prevents us from addressing untold amounts of human suffering. There is no reason that in this day and age we shouldn’t be able to screen every single fetus for serious genetic illness.
There is the question of practicality. It is something that I have no doubt we could be doing today if we wholeheartedly started researching it in the early 2000s, for example. But if we can do it in one lab with a proof of concept prototype, that doesn’t mean every person with an unwanted pregnancy can access the technology.
Right, and while we as a species try to overcome our moral failings, laws need to be practical for people who actually live in the real world. The viability standard is a faux-objective standard that in reality is both unclear and could potentially lead to a world where preventing a tiny clump of cells from implanting in the uterus is treated as murder
You seem to be under the impression that if a single example of a fetus surviving can be found that counts as viability.
There are associations of medical professionals that make judgement calls on these sorts of questions, and the age of viability determined by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is 26 weeks, with 20-25 weeks being considered “previable”. This is despite the fact that there are some babies who survived after being born at 22 weeks.
As our technology gets better, ACOG may push that age down (currently a baby born at 24 weeks has a 50/50 shot in the US, and this is an improvement over the past). But if some startup demonstrates a single embryo grown from 12 weeks to term in an artificial womb tomorrow, they’re not going to change the standard. Even if these wombs come onto the market and are available for the mega wealthy, ACOG isn’t going to change their standards.
Damned good questions. I’m a simple person. As I tried to say in the OP (but quite possibly failed to do): To me, abortion is a balance between the woman’s right to decide about her body, and the right of the unborn child to live. And the latter, to me, depends on the developmental stage of the unborn child.
On the one hand, a woman should have the right to decide over their body. On the other hand, there’s an unborn child whose rights increases from zero at conception to something at the level of that of a living human being at birth. My issue is where do you draw the line? When should a woman ethically be free to abort the fetus?
And that ethical condronum is why I thoroughly dislike rhetorical absolutes, whether they come from the pro-choice or from the anti-choice side of the debate. Me, I prefer constructive and nuanced debates.
I totally agree. But let’s take this as a rhetorical exercise.
Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think anyone with a functional mind would oppose abortion if a fetus weren’t viable. Even in the 9th month. Some fundamendal abortion abolitionists might disagree, though. But… “a functional mind”.
Parents have rights to make medical choices on behalf of their children. Heck, spouses and guardians have the right to make medical choices on behalf of other adults.
If a doctor and parents can make the extremely tough medical decision to end the suffering of their 7-year-old child, shouldn’t parents and doctors be able to make the extremely tough medical decision to end the suffering of their 7-month-old fetus? Why does the government get to set hard rules that they can’t?
If you tried again without the well-poisoning, I’d consider it. The issue on my side of the pond is that religious fundamentalists want to ban all abortion. They do this by trying to get people on their side by talking about “unborn children” and late term abortions. Late term abortions are a tiny fraction of abortions that are performed, but they use those to get laws past that affect all women getting abortions.
We should be like Canada – effectively, no abortion laws on the books. Seems to work fine when you leave the decision to women and their chosen medical professionals, rather than politicians and religious fanatics.
As the crowd here might attest, it takes an awful lot to piss me off. You have succeeded.
Your blind misreading of what I wrote or abject failure of imagination, I can’t say which, is embarrassing, and your final dismissive attitude is uncalled for.
Well my answer to the questions I posed is that if you tried to write a law that factored every nuance you can think of in your head, the likely result would be that people who are doing nothing wrong in seeking abortion would be hit with a broad ban because it’s impractical to navigate legal lines on all the nuances in the real world.
So while people can speculate on all sorts of ethical scenarios wirh there personal morality, we be “rhetorically absolute” on the pro-choice side in the laws we create.free
Here is an actual situation. My DIL’s sister was in her fifth month when she was diagnosed with melanomia. For her, the best course would have been to have an immediate abortion and start chemo. She chose otherwise. About the middle of the 8th month, they induced birth, so her daughter was about 6 weeks premature. She started chemo immediately, but died three months later, age 31. The daughter, now age 16, still talks about her mother in heaven. Obviously, this was all long before Dobbs.
There is no “absolute” limit that can be marked on a calendar for every single fetus. You may remember, John F. Kennedy’s third child was born 5 1/2 weeks premature. His lungs were not developed enough to survive. My niece was born 8 weeks premature and survived. My sister’s child died in the womb at 34 weeks. Medical technology, quality of care, preexisting conditions, and just plain luck all go into determining what is viable for any pregnancy.
The OP’s suggestion of a limit on abortion “somewhere between 12 and 20 weeks” is no more or less arbitrary than Roe v. Wade’s guidelines of first, second, and third trimesters.
IMHO this is between the woman, her practitioner & her conscience. IMHO medical association ethics are sufficient to control potential abuses. This malarkey Trump has been spreading about medical practitioners murdering babies after birth is just that. Malarkey. If it were happening there’s murder statutes on the books for that anyway.