You know, as obvious as that issue is, it never even occurred to me before. That’s an excellent point! Question: Were there ever such laws on the books, and if so, how were they actually implemented? I know that rape victims are generally screened by a doctor to determine if a rape occurred, but the test can’t be that accurate, can it?
And what about allowing abortion in the case of incest? If it’s a rape by a relative, then that’s covered by the rape clause. So, is there something about incest that is thought to be inherently “evil”, such that baby will be an abomination? Maybe people assume that incest baby = deformed freak, without realizing that there is only a slight increase in the risk of genetic defects.
I agree. What would a pregnant woman claiming to be raped have to do to get an abortion? What’s the burden of proof, what would the doctor need to lawfully perform the procedure? After all, under much the same logic that states that a raped woman shouldn’t be forced to carry a pregnancy, I’ve heard it said that a woman shouldn’t be forced to submit herself to a police investigation and subsequent trial if she doesn’t want to.
If the bar is set too low, of course, I’d expect that the number of women claiming to be raped, by strangers they can’t identify and without submitting a police report, would climb pretty damn high.
I’m not being cowardly at all. First of all, I am a pretty nonmilitant pro-lifer. I realize that the law follows the culture, and that a situation where abortions were prevalent but conducted underground would hardly be a victory for my side.
I also was arguing far more a moral point than a legal one.
Still, I stand by what I said, and if there is some explaining to do, perhaps you ought to do some yourself. Your defensiveness on this point is revealing. And while I wouldn’t accuse you of being a liar, I would certainly accuse you of being in denial - of the basic humanity of the unborn child.
I’m pro-life and I don’t get the “rape and incest” exception. A fetus conceived by rape isn’t any less human or valuable than one conceived by consensual sex; if it’s wrong to abort one then it’s still wrong to abort the other. It’s a raw deal for a rape victim who gets pregnant, no doubt, but, well, being victimized doesn’t somehow confer the right to kill someone else.
These kind of exceptions give credence to the idea, expressed upthread, that pro-lifers don’t really care about the value of a fetus’ life, they just want to stick it to women who have extramartial sex and think they can get away with it.
Please substantiate your claims, Der Trihs. First, please provide support for your claim that pro-lifers decree that rape victims are guilty of fornication. Second, please substantiate your claim that they would probably choose to have the rape victim executed for this deed.
I think many, if not most, of the pro-choice crowd here has a well thought-out position which takes into account when “humanity” is the right term to use for the zygote/embryo/fetus/baby. Becoming human is a process, not an event, even if you assume “humanity” is bestowed on a fertilized egg. Most of us pro-choicers put that “humanity” moment well into the term of the pregnancy, and for good reason.
Just saying that people are “in denial” is a pretty insulting position to take in a debate such as this. Why not instead simply ask how any given poster reaches his or her position on the issue?
“Never”? I don’t think it means what you think it means. Because, yeah, I referred to my daughter as a fetus while I was pregnant. It was even her honorary DoperName for a while: WhyFetus. Then she was born and it became WhyBaby.
Point the second: most baby showers are held late in the pregnancy, when abortions are already ill-advised and illegal. Post viability, I don’t actually have a semantic problem with the womb dweller being called a baby. If it could conceivably live outside the womb, then sure, it’s a baby.
Finally, people use words colloquially in their daily lives all the time. That doesn’t change the technical, legal, or literal meanings of the words.
Is a slab of raw meat a “roast” before it’s cooked? Not at all, yet people everywhere say things like “I’ve got to get the roast in the oven before 4:00 so it’s ready for dinner.” I know dozens of people who use “itch” as a verb (as in, “She was itching her arm where the mosquito bit her and it got infected.”) Doesn’t mean they’re right.
A fetus that’s wanted and cherished may be called a baby by its parents and those who care about them (or those who are being polite); that doesn’t make it a baby in a technical, legal or literal sense, any more than my daughter is now “a little monkey” or her little friend Sam is her “boyfriend”.
I didn’t assume you were making a legal point, to be honest. I thought your point was, well, what I said; you think that many pro-choicers secretly believe babies have humanity, but lie to themselves (and then others) about it. The “cowardice” aspect was in that you tried to hint this rather than say it clearly.
I generally get quite defensive when someone accuses me of lying, certainly. I don’t think i’ve ever made that a secret, though.
Ah, so i’m just lying to myself. Lovely.
See, while this “Aha! Your defensiveness betrays you!” point would be excellent (aside of course from the fact you’re also calling me a liar), it would probably work a little bit better on someone other than me. Because I don’t deny that fetuses are human. Certainly they are. For me, the big point is personhood, as it happens, which includes a conscious mind among other things. Unless you’re accusing me of secretly thinking all fetuses actually have born-level minds, in which case you think i’m an idiot. Which I doubt. It’s just liar.
No, I think the problem is your argument is foolish. Ever said “Who’s a good girl?” to a dog? Well, you’re just betraying your secret feelings that dogs are subject to a moral standard, that they’re small female children, and that you’re expecting a reply to your question. That’s what everyone really means when they say it. Sometimes - shock horror - we say things for emotional or social reasons that we don’t actually mean.
When pro-lifers say things like this, they sound like PETA nutjobs accusing pet owners of enslaving or denying the rights of animals. You adopt an extreme, irrational, personal belief and then assume a self-righteous, judgemental attitude towards anyone who doesn’t share it. Just because someone does not buy into your own purely religious belief that zygotes are imbued with magical spirits doesn’t mean that they are “denying” anybody’s humanity.
To draw an analogy, it’s like adopting a belief that cows contain the souls of reincarnated humans, therefore eating cows is evil and anyone who disagrees is “denying the humanity” of cows.
You speak of a “convention of language” as if it doesn’t reflect the values of the people speaking. I don’t think I’ve ever met expectant parents who didn’t view the thing growing in the womb as anything less than a baby. You can even met some who will refer to the fetus by name once they’ve determined the sex and long before the due date. ie. “Susan sure is kicking the hell out of my bladder today.”
Though it might not be scientifically valid there are people who look at the fetus as a baby. I don’t find it to be a lame argument at all and I’m very interested in why it’s a fetus when it’s unwanted and a baby when it’s wanted.
As to the OP, I’ve also found it interesting that some people are pro-life except when it comes to incest or rape. It seems rather inconsistant to me. If you’re going to argue that abortion is wrong because it’s muder then are you telling me that the child of rape or incest deserves to be killed? Can we retroactively abort them?
Well, I don’t know if I’d call it the lamest argument, but it isn’t really a valid argument to make in a debate. It’s basically the fallacy of appeal to emotion.
And note that calling it a “fetus” does not automatically make it abortable. A viable fetus that is not a health risk to the mother is generally not abortable, nor do most pro-choicers want it to be. Maybe a few on the extreme end of this issue want to extend the right to abort up to the moment of birth, but those people would be few and far between.
Some people refer to their cats as “babies.” It’s a term of affection. It doesn’t really mean those people think their cats are literally human babies.
Some people who want and expect to carry a pregnancy to term will speak of the fetus as a “baby” because they actually think it’s already a baby, some people mean it more figuratively, but neither case changes the fact that it’s NOT a baby, and no, it does not betray any inconsistency of belief on the part of pro-choicers who refer to their own fetuses as “babies.” If you press them on it, they’ll tell you it’s a fetus. Thinking about the devloping fetus as the baby it will become is just a natural preparation for parenting it.
I’m pro choice and I think the rape/incest rationale works this way:
If a woman gets pregnant because she willingly had sex and by negligence or design got pregnant, then one could say that carrying that pregnancy to term is a consequence of her own decision or negligence. Rape victims did not choose to become pregnant. Similarly, victims of incest are often too young to even give consent in the first place, much less arrange for contraception. I don’t think the point is that one fetus has more of a right to live than another, but rather that women who get pregnant unwillingly shouldn’t have to put themselves through it.
The way I currently view it, ‘Normally’ the female would agree to sex, sex has a chance of creating a new life, so by willingly engaging in sex you accept that possibility and the fetus has IMHO a moral claim to develop there. This still applies to contraception, as no method is 100% effective and the chance is still there.
In the case of rape (assuming the female was the one raped), there was never any choice of the mother in any form, the fetus was not ‘given’ any consent to use the mother to develop and has no moral rights to be there.
I see WhyNot has already made the point I wanted to make, but since I generally have so few points to make, I’ll go ahead and amplify it here.
There is nothing that lays bare the motivation of anti-abortion people to tag one on the dirty little fornicating whores more clearly than the rape exception. If it’s murder, it’s murder no matter what. If a living child has a father who commits rape, we’re not allowed to kill the child, and it should make no sense to suggest that such be done.
The only rationale that would allow a rape exception for abortion is some sort of sense that it wouldn’t be fair to attach a scarlet letter to someone who didn’t choose to fornicate.
Judith Jarvis Thompson’s argument works although, as cowgirl pointed out, a rape exception would in practice be unworkable.
If the whole point of pro-life were to punish women who are dirty whores, wouldn’t some pro-lifer, somewhere, be saying, “abortion only if you’re married”? How about we all assume that the opposition really believes what they say.
“The fetus was not ‘given’ any consent…” I’m not even sure what that means, but in the case of an unintended pregnancy, the fetus was not given any consent by the woman to take up residence anyway.
Should there be a prophylactic exclusion? If the woman took steps to prevent pregnancy, can she be said to have consented to pregnancy then?
And BobLibDem, isn’t it really the rights of the unborn that matter? Since when did the rights of unwilling (or willing, for that matter) women matter to anti-abortion folks? And if it is a matter of whether the women were willing to have a pregnancy or not, doesn’t that get us back to the larger population of women who are going to have an abortion anyway? Aren’t those pretty much the women who were unwilling to become pregnant?
Doesn’t this make it clear that the bottom line is whether or not they were willing to have sex, not willing to get pregnant, and that we should make things easier on those women who did not willfully and wantonly engage in sex?
I think that anti abortionists typically attatch rape and incest exceptions as a way to compromise with the rest of us. They think they’re giving ground by allowing these exceptions, and if you think about it they’re mostly right.
I agree. This is an emotionally laden issue, and shouldn’t be too surprising that people have mixed motivations in coming to their positions. I’m sure there are quite a few pro-lifers who think sex out of marriage is bad, and that the availability of abortion makes premarital sex a more attractive option. But that needn’t change the fact that they honestly believe a one month old fetus is a human being. I don’t agree with them, but our definition of when human life comes into being is necessarily subjective.
“The fetus was not ‘given’ any consent…” I’m not even sure what that means, but in the case of an unintended pregnancy, the fetus was not given any consent by the woman to take up residence anyway.