Can a fetus sustained in an artificial womb be casually evicted? Without the continuing intervention of high-tech gadgetry, that fetus won’t grow into a baby.
Of course, where I’m going with this is connecting the high-tech-constant-intervention artificial womb to the low-tech-constant-intervention natural womb (which is actually a much more sophisticated gestational device than anything we’re likely to invent anytime soon). If the owner of the womb (artificial or otherwise) decides to no longer share it with a tenant, what rights does this “landlord” have?
Define inconvenient. Not completing high school or university? Getting fired? Ripping your perineum? Throwing up every day? Constant nausea and diarrhea? Severe depression? Long-term back and joint problems? It’s not like a woman decides ‘Well if I have this baby, I won’t be able to enjoy Disneyland in eight months.’ There’s a whole host of medical problems and life-altering inconveniences that can pile up before you get to life-threatening.
Actually, put aside issue of endangering the mission, which makes it more clear-cut. Let’s say I’ll toss the kid if he has blue eyes, and let him stay if he has brown eyes. In fact, think up the most arbitrary, pointless, selfish, offensively meaningless reason for tossing the kid, and then chew on this - I don’t recognize the requirement to explain my decision to you or anyone else. Cat Fight gives some good reasons, but good reasons aren’t necessary.
For those interested, here is a breakdown of the reasons women give for having an abortion. The two most common reasons in the US are: 1) postponement of childbearing, at about 26% and 2) prohibitive costs of parenthood, at about 22%. Disruption of work or education comes in at about 10%.
For that spaceship analogy to work, you still need to be advocating the right to space the kid if you left the boarding hatch wide open, or if you put a blow-up Mickey Mouse at the top of it, or even if you thought at the outset that it would be a nice idea to have a kid on board but you’ve changed your mind.
So that’s about 2% “burden of pregnancy is iniquitous” in the States, then.
No, it would work if it was some mindless alien parasite that infested you while you were exploring. A fetus isn’t a two year old; it’s a thing.
And I would say that one would have to be a monster to force a woman to carry a fetus to term against her will. It’s worse than murder as far as I’m concerned; more sadistic.
The spaceship just proves that bad analogies hurt this case more than the case itself would ever have been capable of. Any analogy that starts with “what if I did this and that to a kid for this and that reason” is fundamentally flawed: it’s not a kid. It’s a cluster of cells that may or may not grow into a healthy child, over a period of months. You, and others, may consider it a good idea to give that cell blob the same rights (or arguably, more rights) that a born child has; I, and others, would argue that this cell blob ought to be granted the same rights as any other cluster of cells, namely, none.
No analogy will let any of us bridge that conceptual gap: some people see a fertilized egg as a human being, some people see a fertilized egg as, well, a fertilized egg. My emotional investment in such an egg is zero. It may become a human – but frankly, if everything that could become a human needs to be preserved, we’re unlikely to get anything else done.
The question, to my mind, is whether anyone should pretend to be able to decide for other people such a fundamental question. I’m not trying to force other people to have an abortion, while you’re desirous of preventing them from having one; therefore you are violating my rights, and I’m doing nothing to yours; that, from my perspective, seems a morally unambigious problem. But then you think that I’m violating my fetus’s rights, and we’re back at step one.
You give him too much credit. He didn’t say they respected all forms of animal life, he said all forms of life. Most vegans are perfectly happy to rip lettuces screaming* from the ground. His claim about pro-lifers, if interpreted literally, implies that they are hardcore Jainists.
Anti-abortion people believe it is reasonable to expect a woman to carry an unwanted fetus to term if the only alternative is having an abortion. :rolleyes:
Absolutely not. I might even toss a coin. Heads, and Little Billy can swim back to Earth; tails, he gets to stay. Of course, I reserve the right to ignore the result of the coin toss if I feel like it.
My point is that it’s absolutely none of your business what criteria I use to make my decision. I could have an excellent unarguable position (there’s only enough air for one person, and if I sacrifice myself in his favour, Little Billy won’t know how to fly the spaceship so he’ll crash and die anyway) or a frivolous one (my breakfast Alpha-Space-Bits spelled out “FROLENDO”, which I think might be Sanskrit for “space the brat”) and it’s no-one’s business because it’s my spaceship.
One of the common pro-life tactics (well, all of them, really) is an appeal to emotion. Should I defend the rights only of people I feel sympathetic to? Does a raped virgin deserve more freedom than a promiscuous college student? I think a mature person would have to say “no” and put aside personal feelings.
I don’t care if the “child” (if you wish to call it such - it doesn’t matter) is the most cuddly, adorable, sympathetic creature in all existence. I don’t care if the mother is the most selfish, narcissistic, brainless slut in all existence. The former is parasitically (physically parasitically - this is not a metaphor) living off the latter, and since I wouldn’t like it if someone demanded I support a parasite, however cuddly, I have to defend her rights as if they were my own.
So you’re not being whooshed. I value her rights more than I value protecting you from being shocked. I’m willing to deal with the icky reality of the situation and those seeking to ban abortion are clearly not, wishing instead for a ideal world that does not and has never existed.
So would I. That’s why I don’t consider it to be a right that has to be derived from some more fundamental right. A person has the right to decide to become unpregnant, and to do as she wishes in order to implement that decision, not as an extrapolation or application of some more general right, but precisely because it is this. It’s primordial. While I’ll grant that the right to not be killed is also an innate & primordial right, it just doesn’t outrank this one.
This is exactly the quandary that advancements in reproductive science present to the human being (life) at conception argument. Cloning and genetic engineering pretty much destroys the idea of a unique human being created at conception. I am curious to know the pro-life stance on IVF and the fate of the remaining unused embryos. Do couples have the right to destroy them, donate them for stem cell research, or should the woman be forced to attempt implantation and a successful pregnancy.
At the risk of being repetitive, nothing has liberated women more than reproductive control.
If terminating a pregnancy conflicts with a woman’s personal morals then don’t do it, but don’t try to force those moral beliefs on everyone else through legislation. A man who wants to make abortion illegal is only trying to control women through arbitrary morality.
Really? You don’t see the right to control your own destiny and not be forced to do something against your will as a more general statement of the idea, and the right to have an abortion as a subset of that idea? It seems pretty obvious to me that it is such.
It’s good that you explained your position clearly, because I see that we completely disagree.
If I find a kid had accidentally come onto my spaceship, I would need some good reason to toss him out, if I did toss him out.
Your position of “no reasons are needed” sounds inhuman, and I wonder how many pro-choice people feel this way.
As a reminder, this is not about a fetus. This is about a 2 year-old kid. It is a hypothetical example, but it has been useful in demonstrating the gaps in attitudes towards abortion.
That is, if someone like you is OK with killing a 2-year old, without the need to give any good reasons, just because the kid wondered onto his spaceship, then of course he would have no problem with abortion for any reason, since a fetus isn’t fully human yet.
This example has also been useful in showing a fundamental disagreement (on how one should treat humans) and in showing that no further discussion is possible between me and you on this topic.
I should remind you that the scenario was a hypothetical, to see peoples’ attitudes in the case where the “thing” involved is a full human being. And this has been useful because, as Bryan shows, even in the case of a 2-year old he would have no qualms killing the 2-year old because he didn’t like his T-shirt.
Notice that I never mentioned or advocated forcing anyone to carry a fetus to term against her will.
Well good for you.
For me, when someone eats cheese sticks, or pets a puppy, that’s worse that murder; more sadistic.
And “it’s my body, I can’t be forced to suffer through a pregnancy for nine horrible months” is not an appeal to emotion?
If someone does not want to appeal to emotion they can say “I don’t give a fuck about the feelings of a woman who was raped and is forced to carry a fetus to term”.
You can’t prove that he is wrong. You can’t be wrong (in the logical sense) for not caring about others’ feelings. But people would rightly condemn such an attitude, and the condemnation would come from an appeal to emotion, that is, from the fact that we know that it would be horrible to experience getting raped and forced to carry the fetus to term.
“One of the common pro-life tactics (well, all of them, really) is an appeal to emotion” my ass.
Then she went on to an example to demonstrate what she meant.
And that is when I introduced the spaceship example. Not to show that a fetus is like a human being, but that, if there is a human being that is dependent on you, and got in that situation without giving their consent, then, morally, it is not that easy to just kill them off.
Which is why I said, in post #19
“Of course, a lot of people say a fetus is not a person, and I think that is the crux of the issue,”
Again we are coming up against the fundamental issue of whether a fetus is a human being.
Because, if it is, then, all this talk about “I’m not trying to force other people to have an abortion, while you’re desirous of preventing them from having one; therefore you are violating my rights, and I’m doing nothing to yours;” is useless.
It’s like a parent who likes to beat his kids with his belt, and he says “I’m not trying to force other people to beat their kids with a belt, while you’re desirous of preventing me from doing so; therefore you are violating my rights, and I’m doing nothing to yours”
As I said, this all goes back to the point of whether a fetus is a human being or not.
(With the exception of Bryan if course, and others I assume, who would not change their opinions irrespective of whether the fetus is a human being or not)
