By definition, yes it is. A miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion.
And for the record, I’d take the deal. I think once you pass a certain point, abortion should only be legal for health reasons. (Not sure when that point is, my medical knowledge is pretty slim)
However, donnie darko, the abstract point is that when the baby is born, it’s a separate entity. If you were to crawl up inside my body and depend on me to stay alive, I’d consider it my right to expell you, even if it would lead to your death. When something is inside your body, it’s YOUR decision.
Yes.
A short life in unimaginable pain could be argued to be better then no life at all. I think the pregnant woman, the women who has to take care of the severely deformed, miserable baby and watch it’s suffering should be the one to decide. Pro-choice.
The law.
Also, it’s the point at which the fetus no longer needs another human’s body to survive and stops being a parasite. So, the law and common sense.
This has NOTHING to do with US abortions. Its like being against marriage because in some countries young girls are forced into arranged marriages. One does not logically follow the other.
This only happens in an abstract sense; black women get abortions so that does, in fact, reduce the number of non-whites. But it’s not part of a plan. There’s no serious movement to abort non-white fetuses because of their racial makeup. It doesn’t happen.
Pro-lifers often say it occurs, but those are lies.
Yep! Isn’t it wonderful?
In a perfect world, no one would ever parent unless they wanted to. In the meantime, this is a good start.
I wouldn’t take it. My pro-choice stance is based on the fact that my medical decisions are between my doctor and myself.
A lot of prenatal tests cannot be performed until specific points in pregnancy. For example, tests for chromosomal disorders happen around 16 weeks. The in-depth anatomy scan, which detects all kinds of defects, happens at 18-22 weeks. In some cases, later abortions are about unexpected health problems, not laziness or irresponsibility.
I believe if you read my post, you will have your answer. Don’t think you can shame me into stepping back. There’s nothing in my position to be ashamed of.
It’s the most dramatic change in a fetus’s mode of existence. It’s also the most dramatic change in a human’s mode of existence. Where else could you possibly put the line?
The spectre of the late term abortion is a parade of horribles that doesn’t really exist in nature. People don’t just up and decide to have an abortion at 30 weeks for the hell of it. Late abortions happen for one of three reasons. Either extrinsic circumstances make the nurturing of an infant significantly more fraught than it had been (boyfriend dies in Afghanistan, husband gets drunk and stabs you, that sort of shit), prenatal testing shows the infant would have serious genetic or other birth defects that will turn your life upside down and quite often lead to a lifetime of suffering, or the disingenuous “regulation” of abortion by conservative legislatures bent on its destruction that make it impossible for people who want abortions to get them in any sort of reasonable amount of time.
I think the pro-life position essentially boils down to “no fetus should be killed”, and the pro-choice position essentially boils down to “no mother should give birth against her will”. As things currently stand, it’s impossible to reconcile these two positions. There can’t really be any meaningful compromise. But that doesn’t mean there can never be a compromise, because eventually we shall develop artificial wombs into which fetuses can be transplanted. When this happens, it will be easy for us to inflict draconian penalties on abortionists, because no one will have any reason to seek their services. Unless there’s someone who just really hates her kid and wants to destroy it, not just remove it… but hopefully such people will be rare.
How do you plan to “transplant” a fetus without cutting the woman open? How is forcing that any less a violation of her person than forcing abortion or pregnancy?
No, the anti-abortion side boils down to “suffer, slut!” They don’t care about reducing the number of abortions, the welfare of the fetus or whether or not the fetus is even alive; they just care about hurting the woman as much as possible. Which is where you get things like forcing rape victims to undergo “transvaginal ultrasound”; they can’t quite get away with ordering the woman chained down and raped again, so they go for the next best thing.
And who is going to pay for the operation, the artificial womb, and raising the child that has been forced into the world? Certainly not the so-called “pro-lifers”, their interest in “the unborn” ends at birth.
The fact is however an artificial womb is a nightmare for the anti-abortionists, because it would greatly limit their ability to use the fetus as club to beat women down with. And that is all they actually care about.
How is that having it “both ways”? If you’re referring to my comment to donnie darko, that’s the best way I can think of to describe the difference between aborting a pregnancy and an actual independant infant. I know it’s not perfect, but like I said, the best I could think of.
Never said the fact abortions are used for gendercide is relevant to abortion in the US. I just said it was ironic that a practice that’s by far the weapon used most often against the female sex is something that feminists consider a precious asset and an inalienable right.
And I know for a fact Planned Parenthood is strategically positioned in black communities. There’s a huge PP center in my city in the blackest part of town.
Abortion is eugenics dressed up in the sheep’s clothing of civil rights. I personally oppose it as a practice but I realize that criminalizing it would be futile and I would say the wrong approach to stopping the practice.
The whole “dependency” argument is really weak. Let’s say I had a conjoined twin who was somehow dependent on some organ in my body, but I somehow wasn’t dependent on any of his. Would I have a right to murder him?
There are a lot of people who are pro-choice but abhor late-term abortions. I’m one of those. I’d take that deal in a heartbeat, provided there was actual enforcement. If you never inspect an abortion clinic then the law is meaningless.
22 weeks is just as arbitrary as any other point. The best way to do it, for logical consistency, is to define life in some way that is measurable. Currently, we define life as measurable brainwave activity. That is, someone is legally dead when there is no longer any detectable brain activity. I don’t see what would be wrong with defining that criteria as the moment when life begins, when brain activity can be measured. At which point you go from having an abortion, to killing a human being.
The idea that an egg and a sperm colliding is a human being is patently ridiculous, and for a while, that mass of cells is not a human. But after a while longer, it most certainly is, and I think brainwave activity is a good way to define when a human life begins and ends.
But I am not a medical expert (is brainwave actually what it’s called, for example?), so if I’m off base here I would love to be corrected. At least it seems like it would be consistent.
Yes, except I’d say 24 weeks rather than 22. This happens to be the law in GB and it’s a pragmatic solution. The date isn’t arbitrary, either; it’s the time when foetuses are usually viable. It gives time for a woman to know she’s pregnant and have tests to give better (though obviously not complete) information about the health of the foetus.
It should also be paid for by the state because that is way cheaper than paying for an unwanted pregnancy and baby or a woman suffering complications from a cheap back-street abortion.
Many serious conditions in the foetus can’t be detected until around the 20-week mark. Further tests may then be necessary, plus some time to make a decision - for many women (and their partners) that won’t be an overnight decision.
Occasionally pregnancy is also masked by something else. For example, in my first pregnancy I had no idea I was pregnant because I had used contraception, continued using the pill and continued getting periods until 10 weeks in. This was actually one of the reasons I chose abortion that time.