But it’s not separate. You cannot remove it and keep it alive. Once it reaches that point (viability), we generally don’t allow abortions.
It isn’t “someone” until it becomes a person (ie, a human being with recognized rights). Like I said earlier, that’s a subjective determination. But it needn’t necessarily be a person just because it has its own DNA.
The thing that bothers me about this, though, is medical science. We can keep babies alive now at far younger gestation than we used to, and who knows what advances may be made in the next 10, 50, or 100 years? Can we reasonably call something not a human life because it can’t survive outside the mother NOW, when sometime in the not-far-off future, it will be able to do so?
I don’t know, I think being distinct from the mother is a pretty strong case for being an individual.
Personally, I have no problem with that. But it is subjective, I’ll admit. Think about the other end of the spectrum, though Can we really just pull the plug on someone on life support when we may very well able to cure them in 100 years? I say yes, and I think you would, too.
It all depends on how you define “distinct”.
The punishment for murder depends on the circumstances, true. Since the punishment for abortion is likely to be less than the punishment for even lower grades of murder, that part is already considered by proposed laws.
When a homicide is justifiable, there is some moral culpability by the person murdered. An example is murder in self defense. I think you can use this to justify abortion to save the life of the mother (or even to stop a risk of her dying) but not for rape. Now, it is true that even normal pregnancies have some risk, but if you use that argument than all abortions are justified.
If I understand correctly, any conception method authorized by the Catholic Church must have some chance of a pregnancy resulting. Those engaged in sex, even married, must be willing to have a baby result. (Old people might get lucky like Sarah. 
) So, if a married woman wanted an abortion,. the sex then she was not having sex truly open to the possibility of issue. The sex then becomes sinful.
Or, to be crude, the position might be that married women should be barefoot and pregnant. Why else would so many of these people be iffy on birth control, even within marriage?
Right, except I’m not using this as an argument against abortion, necessarily. I’m just arguing with the definition of what a fetus is. As I said, giving it rights is a different issue. If the fetus having viability is what makes it a “baby,” then I think that is a pretty damn fuzzy line. The other end of life is a little bit of a different issue…we may not be able to save them now, but we aren’t going to declare them not a person or not worthy of being saved.
Well, the fetus isn’t a part of her. It’s attached to her, but for about 10 minutes after they were born, my kids were still attached to me in the same way. They are not a growth of her body, but rather formed separately, and then became attached. They have separate DNA, as I mentioned. Seems pretty distinct to me.
For starters, it’s because you guys said this debate was always, only and entirely about protecting the unborn.
You said it wasn’t about the woman’s sexual decision.
If you’re taking that back now, I’m proud of you, and surely you’ll be willing to undo 40 years of massive antiabortion efforts and start over again with your real agenda out in the open? It’ll cost billions of dollars and humiliate most of your leadership, but you’re honorable folks, I’m sure you’re already on it. Thanks!
Sailboat
You would apparently counter that sometimes creating a human and then murdering it is crazy, but sometimes it’s not.
Or is it the “playing” that is the key? You really haven’t answered, from the perspective of the unborn person, what difference it makes to them if they came about due to “playing” or due to a rape.
Were a fetus really a person, and that you could talk to them, how would you explain to one that he was going to die because his father raped his mother, but the second was going to live because his mother simply chose to have sex with his father?
Um if you read my other post you will find that I am pro-abortion, which historically has the view of kill the smaller human for the convenience of the other human.
No, nothing to do with that at all, just the decision of the women to engage in a activity that could produce a life, including sperm banks and turkey basters.
Since my post was about the morality of a particular antiabortion position, I’m a little baffled by your efforts in this thread.
Perhaps you misunderstood me – I was not saying abortion is always wrong.
Abortions for everyone who wants them OR no abortions at all – either position is logically defensible (regardless of whether it is actually right or wrong). It’s only forbidding abortions except in some cases (such as rape) that falls apart.
Sailboat
Why don’t you want to grant the mother control over her body? Why would you force her to harbor a parasite that lives off her through no consent of her own?
Duh. Babies still remember being up in heaven and choosing their parents. Sheesh.
I disagree if you put the consent of the use of the womb as a factor. If that consent was never given the fetus has no right to be there and can be removed, by force if needed. In this case I can’t see how consensual sex would not be that consent.
In point of fact, I do. Entirely.
I’m beginning to think that the word “consent” means something other than you think it does.
Consent to have sex = consent to have sex. Nothing more, nothing less. I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand about this. Most people who have sex are not trying to become pregnant. It is usually an unintended consequence. Just like people don’t eat food just so that they can produce feces later on.
Not to equate making shit with getting pregnant, of course. But they are both biological functions.
To address the “but pregnancy is a natural consequence of sex!” argument: imagine if we were talking about skin cancer instead of pregnancy, and tanning instead of sex.
A lot of people like to sunbathe because they enjoy getting tanned.
Sunbathing carries the risk of sun cancer.
Should someone who lays out on the beach every summer and is eventually diagnosed with a cancerous skin lesion be allowed to surgically remove it?
Why or why not? And how is this situation any different from sex and pregnancy, with respect to the consent issue? I see none.
The Catholic Church says that the purpose of sex is to express love and to make babies, and separating these two things is unnatural and sinful. Sort of like the purpose of eating is to enjoy good food and to nourish the body, but if people try to separate these two things by making themselves throw up so they can eat more, that would be weird. Leaving aside the loss of free will in bulimia and tissue damage from gastric acid in the wrong places, it’s just weird. Abortion, OTOH, is the same as murder, an entirely different and much worse sin. (according to the Church)
Pro-lifers believe a fetus is a person, with just as much of a right to life as you or I. No one believes a tumor is a person.
How about an analogy:
Lucy Lawless tells me that middle-aged, married men make her crazy and would I please spend the night with her. I don’t ask if she’s using birth control, we do it, then a month later she tells me she’s carrying a little MicroXena. I say, “I consented to sex, not a baby,” and start a pit thread about it. Every Doper says, “Tough shit, coffeecat, you’re responsible and you will pay child support.”
Same situation with Lucy, only this time I use a condom. A month later, I find out MicroXena’s on the way; the condom had a hole in it. Still tough shit, right?
Lucy sees me, screams, “Yip-yip-yip-yip-yip,” knocks me out, and rides my unconscious body like a comatose bronco. A month later, she tells me she’s pregnant. My protest that I didn’t consent has more merit now, doesn’t it?
Did anyone happen to read my link to J.J. Thompson’s comatose violinist argument, which I posted way . . . back . . . in . . . time a.k.a. this morning?
I’d be willing to bet that most people who fall on the side of rape/incest exceptions haven’t thought it through to its logical conclusion. It sounds, on the surface, a bit more compassionate than “no abortion”, as if you don’t want to put a woman through further suffering, and that’s as far as they’ve gone with it.
That’s a bit of a broad brush you’re painting with there. There are a lot of us who are fully in support of using the available means to avoid pregnancy. I’d much rather people use contraception than have to decide what to do about it later. I would just also rather have people recognize the fact that none of these is foolproof (and there are a lot of fools out there) and take that into account when deciding on their actions. If you are absolutely not in a position to have or rear a child, then maybe you shouldn’t be taking the chance.
Which is, interestingly enough, key to what I consider a good argument for legal abortion without this kind of exception.
You are not really using consent correctly
Consent:
How is the woman approving or agreeing to get pregnant? How can you have an agreement with something (a fetus) that is not even self-aware? Is a woman who engages in sex, risking getting pregnant? By all means, doesn’t mean she wants to though, maybe she is consenting to let the fetus exist with the fine print stating you are subject to be aborted at any time, I mean what with her having agreements with the fetus and all. Do you realize how ridiculous this logic of yours appears to others?