I should have made it clear that I was drawing an analogy. I just meant that while I would think ill of a man for doing what I described, I wouldn’t want his actions to be illegal; simiilarly, in this thread , I am wondering whether pro-choicers would ever think ill of a woman for having an abortion even though they believe the abortion should be legal.
That’s a long long way from the Tipperary of a question you DID ask IMHO.
Here, FTR, is what the thread is titled:
No, it’s not. Not unless your ethics are determined by law. It’s about when (and when not) it is ethical to abort. Lots of things are legal that I consider unethical (corporate tax breaks), and other things that are illegal that I think are ethical (adults smoking weed).
Again, no. At least, that’s not how I read it. It’s about when it’s ethical and when it’s not. Again, there are lots of things you may do that I consider unethical; that doesn’t mean I would forbid you from doing them if it were in my power to do so. That screams of an authoritarian power play that I’m just not interested in. I am happy to tell you whether or not I think something is ethical, but whether or not you do it is your decision, not mine.
Should not =/= May not.
I don’t know the way to Tipperary. No Rhymer does. The ability to successfully navigage to places ending in ary was bred out of the family in 1842.
[quote=“WhyNot, post:23, topic:544025”]
No, it’s not. Not unless your ethics are determined by law. It’s about when (and when not) it is ethical to abort. Lots of things are legal that I consider unethical (corporate tax breaks), and other things that are illegal that I think are ethical (adults smoking weed).
Again, no. At least, that’s not how I read it. It’s about when it’s ethical and when it’s not. Again, there are lots of things you may do that I consider unethical; that doesn’t mean I would forbid you from doing them if it were in my power to do so. That screams of an authoritarian power play that I’m just not interested in. I am happy to tell you whether or not I think something is ethical, but whether or not you do it is your decision, not mine.
I never said that.
I DID give a name, and a citation to the specific ethics to which I referm, and gave a reason why.
Which is more than anyone else on this thread (or most threads of this sort) did.
Otherwise, the response boils down to "random person x says y is ethical, and Random Person z says q is ethical. So what if you don’t explain what you mean by “ethical” in a way the purports to be coherent.
It doesn’t even rise to the level of interesting to me when people answer these sorts of questions in that manner - is it interesting to others to get the answer without the explanation?
I knew when I wrote that you wouldn’t let me down 
That’s pretty much where I stand. While the fetus is completely dependent on the mother’s body, it hasn’t achieved personhood in my opinion. If the fetus could be taken out of the womb and with minor medical intervention grow up to be a completely healthy human being, it has achieved a different status than the former parasite; it’s a human being who is just hanging out in the womb for another month or so to add the finishing touches, and to kill it at this point would not suit my ethics. You don’t want to give birth - too bad. Should have gotten the old D & C six months ago.
No.
Pro-choice is about the legality of the situation, not the ethicality. The anti-abortion position is that abortion should be illegal. It is perfectly possible to think that an act is neither ethical nor the business of the State .
But did you anticipate the stunning number of typos? Huh? DID YOU, HOT SHOT?
I can certainly appreciate this point of view, but this position overlooks an important fact: there is a period, prior to birth, when a fetus is definitely alive even though it hasn’t been born yet, and aborting it means killing it. As much as a woman’s womb doesn’t belong to the Dear Leader, it’s also illegal to kill a living thing. You wouldn’t argue, for example, that a woman could kill her newborn baby because doing so is “none of the state’s business,” would you? Well, there’s really no difference between a newborn baby and a nine-month-old fetus that just hasn’t been born yet.
I’m surprised I’m writing this. As a young loudmouthed jerk back in the day, I was very gung-ho about abortion rights and believed that a woman’s right to abort should be (as you said) sacred up until the moment that baby was born. But I’ve really been re-evaluating how I feel about this issue since my wife got pregnant. It’s a difficult topic, I don’t really know where I stand.
Oh, balls. A person who says Abortion should be illegal is obviously going to answer As soon as she conceives to the thread question.
Dammit! I clicked the wrong one. -1 from “first trimester” and +1 to “while it’s not viable outside the womb”, if you please.
You missed the most correct answer – “It is ethically acceptable to have an abortion so long as the medical risks of an abortion are lower than the medical risks of continued pregancy and childbirth.”
I cannot see any way in which such a balance can be struck using a calendar.
And a (different, obviously) person can say “It’s never ethical, but should be legal.”
I went with discernable brain. I remember a column wherein Cecil suggested that the beginning of brain waves made a reasonable bookend to the cessation of brain waves we use in determining death. Granted this does not eliminate all controversy, but it works for me. I’ve cared for so many babies born at a gestational age of 7 months that I could never condone terminating one.
In a sense, it is alive at conception. So what?
We kill a fly without legal or ethical consequence too. Why? Because the fly has no legal standing to contest the killing. Same for fetuses. No one disputes that they are alive, only that they are not at a stage of the human lifecycle where they have attained legal standing. And so there are no ethical consequences that don’t apply to killing a fly, or eating a fertilized egg or whatever, that don’t apply here.
If you want to argue that fetuses should ethically have legal standing separate from the mother, then by all means try to make that case
Not true at all. Some killings are regulate, most are not at all. No one cares if I pull old flowers from my garden, for example, or spary pesticide on the wasp’s nest on my patio.
If you want to make the legal case that killing a fetus is tantamount to killing, say, the father, then you have a tough row to hoe, be it ethical or legal, because bottom line, in our legal system, and most ethical systems, the fetus does not have standing at all, or if it does, it is secondary to that of the mother.
The difference is that thebaby has reached the stage of the human lifecycle where it has been born, and the fetus has not yet reached that stage.
Oh but there is, a very profound difference ethically and legally as I am pointing out.
Wow so your wife gets pregnant, sounds like you guys want the baby, and you are prepared to impose that by law on every single pregnancy because of one data point? Take a deep breath and rethink that
Here in ultra conservative rural CA, there are billboards depicting a baby saying that “I had brainwaves at 7 weeks” or some very low number like that. The implication being that abortion ought be illegal from no later than 7 weeks, when I suppose many are not even aware they are pregnant at all until around that time.
What you are describing is tantamount to the modern anti-choice position, pretty much verbatim.
That is my answer as well.
I consider the current situation(2nd trimester legal, 3rd mostly illegal with a few exceptions) to be a suitable compromise between the rights of the woman over her own body, and the rights of the developing fetus as it exists on the continuum between being an embryo with [virtually?] no rights at conception and a full fledged human being at birth. 6 months seems an ample period of time for the woman to make up her mind. The final trimester where the state gives more weight to the rights of the unborn fetus to be born than the mothers right over her own body does not seem unduly intrusive, considering the length of time she’s had to make a decision.
If nothing else, its nowhere near the most onerous duty a state has placed on one of its citizens involuntarily.
Viability would also work, but thats somewhat arbitrary, and would lead to constant arguments about when a fetus is viable with ever advancing technology. A firm, arbitrary, cutoff date would hopefully reduce the amount of argument on the subject.
Plus, it also has the advantage of being the status quo.
I’m a man though, so i really have no dog in this fight… Just my opinion on the subject.
You left off the option “As long as the offspring hasn’t graduated high school yet.”
I’m mini-trolling, but only a little bit. The first time the offspring has legal rights 100% equivalent to its mother is when it reaches the age of majority. Which, at least in the US, is not too far from when it finishes high school.
As the fully serious poster just above has so neatly pointed out, there are a few obvious milestones along the way, and a few milestones that are mostly legal conveniences; trying to draw bright lines in an otherwise pretty indistinct continuum.
If conception is the first moment the offspring could begin accruing any rights, then the age of majority is when it finishes that process. So just before then is the last moment its rights are incomplete.