Disclosure: I’m libertarian and I belive that people should have sovereignty over their own bodies. I’m torn on the issue of abortion. I can’t decide whether or not I consider it to be a “victimless crime.” Theoretically, another human being is involved besides the woman making the actual medical decision and this sends my faith in natural rights into confusion.
So… can there be a compromise? Would it be medically possible to extract the child and put it on some sort of life support? Would that appease both sides? Could we have pro-life abortions in this country via technology?
Many thanks in advance to the much-smarter-than-me people who will respond.
No. On the pro-choice side, they would oppose it because it forces the woman to undergo a particular medical procedure, because it would likely be more dangerous and expensive than abortion, and because who would support the resulting child ? Not the “pro-lifers”, that’s for sure.
And the “pro-life” people would oppose it because the real point is to punish and control women. The only way they would support it would be if the procedure was dangerous and preferably extremely painful, with a good chance of permanently harming or killing the woman.
There are plenty of other like-minded folks on this board.
Technically, of course, it’s a fetus until after it is born.
We’ve had this discussion before, and if you join, you can use the search function to find those threads. Most people seem to think that would be a compromise, but we’re a long ways from having the technology to do it. There are, however, other issues to consider, like who is financially responsible for the incubation and then for raising the kid once it is “born”.
For me, I’m comfortable saying that the fetus is not a person (a human being with rights) until it is viable. Most abortions (around 90% IIRC) are done in the first 2 months of pregnancy, and even though the fetus looks like tiny human being, the brain just isn’t functioning at a human level yet. Right now, viability doesn’t occur until rather late in the pregnancy, but if it does occur earlier (thru improved technology), then I might have to rethink the issue of personhood, but I there has to be stage (from my perspective) where personhood is an unreasonable thing to assign-- eg, when the embryo is literally just a clump of cells.
Well, I’m trying to espouse libertarianism here so I would hope that only those who wanted to pay to “support” the child would do so. Kinda like a charity.
Considering that my statement is about other people’s behavior in a hypothetical future scenario of course not. Nor does anyone else, unless they have a time machine.
Do you have a cite for your claim that this is how they act?
A specific cite, mind you. A cite which conclusively demonstrates that pro-lifers would only support it “if the procedure was dangerous and preferably extremely painful, with a good chance of permanently harming or killing the woman.” (Hint: Merely saying “They don’t like abortion!” doesn’t cut it.)
I am absolutely pro-life and would welcome the situation Dostoyevsky theorizes. Control of woman isn’t a part of the pro-life mentality any more than a fascination with infanticide is part of the pro-abortion camp, **Trihs. ** It’s merely a convenient fallback belief for hacks lazy and small-minded enough to not attempt to consider the origins of a belief they don’t share.
First, the fact that they oppose abortion IS a cite, since forcing a woman to give birth is more dangerous than abortion. There’s the Mexico City Policy, which puts US economic pressure on foreign medical facilities to not mention or perform abortion, on pain of losing all funding; among other things, that kills women since those medical facilities don’t dare give pregnant women medical care for fear of losing their funding if she miscarries. Then there’s their willingness to murder doctors who perform abortions and shelter the killers from the law. And then there’s the terrible way women and children are treated any place or time they have the power to do so. And then there’s the fact that they are largely backed by misogynistic religions.
Where’s your “cite” that they are not hostile to women ? Oh, let me guess; I’m supposed to prove my opinion, but you are not.
The origin of the belief is that they are woman hating members of woman hating religions. Not that it matters, since it’s a vile position regardless of where it come from.
It always falls upon someone making a positive declaration to prove themselves.
Where do you get this idea from? You don’t hold the belief, so obviously it’s not from personal experience. Has someone told you: “I’m against abortion, because I hate women”?
I just did. Their behavior is consistent with people who hate women. Claiming they don’t requires serious denial of reality.
:rolleyes: The history and dogma of Christianity and Islam seethes with misogyny. And yes, some of them do out and out say they want to hurt women; I recall Randall Terry saying in Time magazine that “Every woman who dies is a victory for morality”, in his defense of the Mexico City Policy as I recall.
If you’re trying to espouse libertarianism, what do libertarians do when people have conflicting natural rights? If I take your viewpoint that a fetus is a person with natural rights, then you have a conflict between the fetus’s natural right to life and the woman’s natural right to control her own body.
I’ve seen plenty of libertarians argue that their natural rights shouldn’t be infringed even if doing so would result in saving a life. Why is this any different?
BTW, some pro-choicers (Margaret Sanger, for example) were advocates of eugenics. Perhaps we should draw conclusions about pro-choicers in general based on what “some” pro-choicers espouse.
You equate certain tenets of the most extremist beliefs with a necessary basis for belief. Both Mr. Terry’s statement and killing abortionist doctors aren’t necessary parts of being pro-life.
Let me make another parallel to the pro-abortion side: most pro-abortionist view abortion as a necessary evil, requiring tough decisions and generally undesirable. Then there are those people, yourself included, presumably, who really don’t see any difference between an abortion and a tooth extraction. It would be a grave disservice to lump that callous attitude towards developing life with those people who merely allow realpolitik to intrude on their morality.
As for the rest of your ‘citations’, The Mexico City Policy isn’t a misogynistic policy, despite assertions that it may inherantly have negative consequences for women. The key factor preventing the abuse of women and children (or the weak, generally) is societal morality… reinforced, of course, by those religions which are against abortion.
I did a quick search for threads with “abortion” in the title, and couldn’t find the one I was thinking of. Maybe someone else will come along who remembers the thread.
And folks, let’s not let Der Trihs turn this thread into yet another religion = evil rant. His post is his cite, so take that for what it’s worth.