You theem to be doing jutht fine by yourthelf.
Regardth,
Thodan
I would abide by the rules of this compromise readily enough. (pro-choice). Any right-to-life folks signing up yet?
I would say furthermore that if modern (and future) technology can be used to keep the embryo or fetus alive, I have no objection to compromise language that says it must be used – as long as using doesn’t impose additional health risks to the pregnant woman. The no-compromises area is “No one has to remain pregnant against their will”, not “Death to Embryos” 
Would also work with pro-life people on sexual responsibility / public information campaigns teaching people to cause pregnancy to occur only when they want babies.
As has been pointed out, the compromise isn’t much of a compromise so I wouldn’t expect RTLers to sign up - this compromise doesn’t prevent the “murder of unborn children” which is at the heart of pretty much all objections to abortion.
How does that fit with your allegedly pro-choice stance I thought the pro-choice argument was ‘her body, her choice’? You’re not pro-choice if you’re pro-telling-a-woman-what-she-can-do-with-her-own-body.
(FYI, I am pro-legal-abortion, I’m just arguing that this compromise is not really a compromise. I’m not pro-choice since I find the arguments used by pro-choicers morally repugnant)
The reason people think that it is even possible to have a compromise such as this is that they are viewing the question of abortion through screens of current politics and women’s rights. You have to realize that for any “moral” person, there is only one question, “Is the fetus a living person?”
If you say no, then there is no defense, other than perhaps religion which is supposed to be separated from American politics, for restricting abortion. It is just a medical procedure like removing an appendix.
If you say yes, then you are killing a child. Pro-choicers are not anti-lifers. They do not support baby killing, they simply do no think that is what is happening. In this case it is difficult to support abortion even if the mother’s life is at serious risk. Then you get into the question of “Who’s life is more valuable?” If it is guaranteed that the mother will die, then abortion is the only choice, but if it is just likely… well who knows. That is why some pro-lifers take this stance on pregnancies that may cause the mother’s death, a stance that most pro-choicers find baffling.
So now, the only way you can have a compromise between these two sides is to say that the fetus is human, but less human than the rest of us. I know the world isn’t black and white, but frankly that sounds way too much like the arguments used to support genocide and slavery to be palatable to me.
I do not think there is any other way to compromise. Thus, you have to decide, without letting your feelings on women’s rights or your friends or preacher get in the way, is the fetus a baby? If you say yes, then not doing your best to eliminate abortion makes you complicit in the murder of innocents, you are a German citizen watching the holocaust happen. If you say no, then not dong your best to ensure the legality of abortion means you are letting people try to strip away a basic freedom of over half the population. You are saying that the government has a legal right to control their bodies.
This is not an issue looking for a compromise. If anything there are too many people sitting on their asses saying that, “I wouldn’t have an abortion as I think it’s wrong, but it is up to the mother to decide if it is the right thing for her,” because it is popular, convenient, and means you don’t have to do anything. I am sorry, but I have to say I see this as a completely idiotic stance. I do not believe in forcefully imposing my beliefs on others, but in some instances it is necessary. It is right to force your idiology on others when others are killing children, and it is right to force it on others when they are taking away the rights of half of the population.
Either innocents are being killed or people are trying to squelch the rights of women and turn them into second class citizens. Where is the compromise here? It seems that most people take the idea that they would not do it but won’t force others not to, not because they have any kind of strong conviction on this, but because it is a moral escape. This way they don’t have to do anything and can still feel like a good person. If abortion were currently illegal I think most of them would take the attitude that abortion is wrong for everyone, thereby relieving them from any kind of moral obligation to do anything about it.
This is an issue that demands a choice be made and fought for.
Riboflavin, I think AHunter was perhaps thinking of a future technology that would keep the fetus alive outside of the woman’s body, hence his words
This would mean he wasn’t telling her what she had to do with her body, just telling her she could choose to be pregnant or not be pregnant. If the technology exists to keep it alive when she chooses not to be pregnant, she can’t override that and kill it anyway.
If I’m wrong about AHunter’s words, I apologise and hope he corrects me. FWIW, I agree with the above line of thinking.
Sorry Flight, but it just isn’t that simple. I personally see no difference between a fetus and a baby, other than time and location. It’s human, it’s alive, it’s an individual being. I still believe in the right for a woman to have an abortion. Yes, I recognise that each abortion is killing and still support abortion rights. It just isn’t as simple as asking “is it a baby, yes or no?”
No, Flight that isn’t the only way to compromise. I believe the fetus is human, just as human as any other person walking the planet. I don’t believe in ‘less human’ arguments. I still support abortion rights.
Please don’t blindly think that it’s a simple black or white argument. Understand there are many different shades of grey, many different ways of thinking and many different opinions. You are looking at a problem, creating the two opposing sides’ arguments and then demolishing one of them. It’s a strawman argument, because there are many people who aren’t thinking or arguing what you are saying they are, therefore some of the arguments you are demolishing aren’t even relevant. It is not a black and white only issue.
It isn’t? What factors did you consider to reach your conclusion?
You have not qualified your support for abortion, so I take it that you consider it to be an absolute right. If this is the case, please explain why you aren’t in fact using a ‘less than human’ factor in your decision making.
Perhaps this thread may explain my position a little more fully, but the condensed version is :
No one should be forced to provide, nurture or donate the use of their body to anyone, even if that results in the death of the other person. Once there is a method for removing the fetus from the woman without causing the fetus’ death, I’m all for it. Until then, I believe the woman has the right to deny the use of her womb to a fetus, just as she has the right to deny the use of her kidney to her two year old child, or her bone marrow or blood to her 60 year old mother, should she choose to do so. The fetus is no more less human than the two year old child, or the 60 year old woman, hence nobody is ‘less than human’. It’s an issue of having the right to your own body, the right to choose to allow another person use it or not, not an issue of anyone being ‘less human’ than anyone else.
Goo correctly interprets my previous post.
In addition to which, I am in agreement with Goo in the subsequent posts. I, too, do not claim that zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are not human or are not alive. Yes, it’s killing. No, not all killing is murder. I believe the authority to determine when this particular killing is necessary and appropriate lies with the pregnant person, the mother.
I find the compromise thoroughly repugnant from a pro-choice perspective. The government has no right to insinuate itself into a woman’s decisions about her own reproduction and that’s the end of it. We sure as hell don’t need patronizing “counselling” sessions from anti-choice fanatics intent on browbeating women out of their decisions. No woman should be obligated to listen to a religious lecture as a condition of health care.
There is also the access problem, which means that having to have counselling and then return three days later effectively prohibits many women from getting an abortion. (They live too far away from the nearest provider, and taking two trips in 3 days or having to stay there for 3 nights would be prohibitively expensive or physically dangerous if the wrong person(s) found out.)
If Germany’s providers are spread out enough - they’re not going to have that problem.
Pardon me, but have you read any of the previous SDMB threads on abortion? A number of people say that abortion is justified, even if it means ending a human life. You’ll find people arguing that same viewpoint on the talk.abortion newsgroup.
Personally, I consider that viewpoint to be morally repugnant and utterly reprehensible. Competely, utterly reprehensible.
—Pro-choicers are not anti-lifers. They do not support baby killing, they simply do no think that is what is happening.—
I think something that, for all I care, you can call a baby, is being killed. You can play with prejorative definitions all you like.
I just don’t see how it makes any sense at all to accord this particular being the same moral consideration as a born and developed human, let alone a resonably intelligent animal.
But then, I’m not precisely conventionally pro-life. I think the “it’s my body” argument is utterly empty nonsense. I think hurting a fetus is far worse than killing it, and all other things equal, hurting or killing a fetus is wrong. All other things aren’t always equal, however, and I think the harm done to a fetus has to be compared to the harm done to any being of similar capacity when considering where society should set legal barriers. We face not a bright line at all, but a continuum of human behavior. We have to come down somewhere in that continuum, but I think it hypocritical to come down in it in a place labeled “killing and suffering are wrong… only, wait. Not entirely. They are only wrong when they happen under certain conditions: to beings I happen to identify with.”
Goo and AHunter3
As I have not previously read the sites you mention I had not heard that argument. I must say I find it disturbing. It seems to support killing for convenience. The pro-choicers I know tend to support a “sanctity of life” stance, but here it seems you are saying that preventing the death of an innocent has no intrinsic value. Should people be forced to save a life, seems to be what you ask, but I find it unconscionable that if I am the ONLY person who could save someone from a certain death that they in no way brought upon themselves to say no, I don’t want the burden.
It is true that saying yes puts a heavy burden upon the mother, but this seems to be more of an argument for free health care and support for expectant mothers than a reason for abortion.
I was not attempting to create a strawman, I just never concieved of the argument that the baby should die because the mother does not want to take care of it. Perhaps you will say that I am comparing two very different things, but how does this differ from a mother abandoning a newborn because she does not want to have to take care of it? In both cases you admit they are just as human, and in both cases it is a choice by the mother that she does not want the responsibility of the child. It is true that once the child is born it is easier to put it up for adoption than when you are staring at nine months of pregnancy. The only separation I can see that would differentiate the two is if you say that a human is not worth the nine months of time.
And you have every right to think whatever you like of the person, as will I. I just strongly believe that they shouldn’t be legally forced to do so, though I guess almost everyone would argue that it would be the ‘right thing’ to do. Unconscionable, yes I can understand that view, making it a law that you have to ? Nope.
No, there is no difference. The mother is legally allowed to abandon a newborn, as long as she does so at certain places (hospitals, etc) or arranges an adoption, should she no longer wish to care for the child. She is not allowed to kill it and dispose of it simply because there are other options available.
Goo, I must admit that much of what I am arguing is done as a devil’s advocate. Without a belief in a higher power there is no basis for a universal right and wrong. You can argue “benefit of society” but you cannot say that any action, including murder for no reason, is in itself wrong. As I am Agnostic I can only state certain things as being right and wrong from my personal moral compass, which does not necessarily coincide with anyone else’s.
Thus, I made a statement, that while seeming rational to many, is basically flawed. It assumes that all things being equal people should follow a certain path. I do not have any basis for saying this other than personal morality. When you expand these concepts to the larger world you see that other than religion there is no moral basis for law. It is society imposing its will upon the individual for what it sees as the common good, and this view is not immutable but changes with society.
There was a time when it was considered perfectly reasonable to abandon a newborn to die, though now we find it reprehensible and punishable by law. Thus, we as a society have stated, and are in the process of adapting, what we feel to be right and forcing it upon others. We as a culture believe and have accepted that murder is wrong and only allowable in extreme circumstances, such as when defending your own life or the lives of others. If one takes your view that a fetus is its own individual human life than abortion is killing and in order not to be punishable murder would require a caveat on what we as a people see as murder. In fact, even if we state that it is only the continued support of the mother that keeps the child alive and she is simply removing that support, then abortion would fall under “depraved indifference” which is generally taken under murder.
So, in order to support the right to abortion while holding that the fetus is a living person (a view I at least have not seen forwarded by pro-choicers) one would need to redefine what we call depraved indifference. This has significant ramifications for the rest of society as we are opening the possibility to justifications for murder that the continued life of the victim placed an undue hardship upon the killer.
So, I have no absolute moral right to tell another that they cannot have an abortion, but it seems that the views of society and law are contrdictory to it, and that unless a good bit of the law is changed, will remain so.