The Happy Heretic has an article about this very subject, at http://www.thehappyheretic.com/4-99.htm.
Warning: The above-linked-to article is basically a rant against the Catholic church’s somewhat hypocritical stance on birth control drugs (which are “against God’s will”) vs. fertility drugs (which are apparently okee-dokee with God). But selective reduction is the cornerstone of the Happy Heretic’s argument.
Grab a dictionary and look up ‘hypocritical’. Then tell me how the RCC’s uniform stance against abortion, the death penalth, war, and euthanasia could be considered ‘hypocritical’.
Tip: When an act involves a human deliberately harming another human, I will bet good money that the RCC is oppossed to said act.
Does anyone else find this wildly funny, historically speaking?
Amen to that.
She has the legal right to abort one child. But—yech. What a wretched person she would be, if she were to do that.
Some women may want more than life than sitting around the house poping out kids and raising babies. Just because you don’t believe a career is worthy pursuit, that does not invalidate this womans choice.
“inconvenience” as you call it is the primary reason people have abortions in the first place. The inconvenience of having no money, having to drop out of school, having to raise a baby as a single mother or having to raise a baby with a birth defect.
Now I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this womans choice. As materialistic as I am, the pursuit of a career for its own sake does seem like a rather hollow pursuit to me. What good is being a wealthy CEO if you have no one to share that money with or no life to spen it in?
That’s only something that people who don’t own stocks think.
I think she is being naive. I would not trust that they could do a selective reduction reliably, and not injure the remaining fetus. Remind me of the time one of the women I work with said she was getting amniocentesis. She had been trying to get pregnant for years and years. I asked wasn’t she afraid that they might injure the baby and she said that the risks were worth it. I shook my head and stopped participating in that conversation. Not long after that she miscarried. Not surprising considering the stats on amniocentesis, especially on women who have had difficulies carrying in the past.
I can’t imagine aborting a pregnancy that had been intentionally started, short of finding that the fetus was anencephalic. I find the idea of doing so morally repugnant. Aborting one of twins, is more repugnant because you do risk damage to even the one you chose to live. Choosing to abort a few of septuplets because you might not be able to carry any long enough if you don’t could be a morally sound choice, but one of 2?
Still, I don’t think abortion should be illegal. Too many shade of grey and too many noses sticking into the private lives of others as it is.
—The “fetuses and cows”-discussion was very funny. I do not know why, but I am still laughing!—
It’s not like I wasn’t perfectly serious, and don’t think it’s a perfectly appropriate comparison of moral evil in this situation. If you aren’t willing to stretch your mind and try to deal with thought experiments and alternative arguements, you’re never going to wrap it around huge moral problems like abortion.
WV_Woman,
My I make a humble suggestion? If you are going to advocate adoption as an alternative to abortion - educate yourself about it. I’d suggest reading some books by birthmothers (“I Wish You a Beautiful Life” is a good one) and adoptees (“Seeds from a Silent Tree”) (my son is Korean, so both of these are Korean focused, but good books). Then perhaps you’d stop making ignorant and offensive comments about adoption - because you aren’t doing my side any favors.
For the record, people who adopt come from all walks of life. Many are by no means rich. Many are fertile themselves.
And adoption is a bittersweet thing - far from the perfect answer, it creates all sorts of its own problems - problems that are going to be compounded if you seperate twins.
Choosing adoption for another human being is as bad as choosing abortion for another human being. Its a choice only the birthparent can make.
Why not? Either the lump of cells is or is not a human. If it’s not a human, then killing it is not much different than killing any other similarly cognizant entity. A prawn, for example. Just a mass of cells, right? Those who have no issue killing prawns for, say, food, shouldn’t have a problem. Or else it is human, in which case killing it is not better than killing a newborn - they’re both human. Basically, if abortion is murder, then aborting one half of twins is murder. If abortion is hunky-dory, then aborting one half of twins is hunky-dory.
And sometimes, things are just black and white. Not everything is relative. Your “conflicting interests” argument, to someone who is pro-life, is about as convincing as saying, “I killed my wife because the insurance policy would really make paying off my bills more convenient.”
I have serious qualms with equating a fetus with scampi, but I guess that avenue has already been covered in the Great Cow Discussion aspect of this thread. That being said, I don’t quite buy your “a little bit wrong” argument, any more than I would buy that killing someone in a coma for convenience is “a little bit wrong”, as compared to killing someone who’s retarded, which is “kinda pretty bad”, compared to killing a nun, which is “really bad”, and so on.
No, not all killing is equally bad. Killing someone who’s about to kill you is fine. Killing in the realm of war sucks, but is understandable. But most people agree that killing the defenseless and innocent is pretty bad. Then there are those who think that killing isn’t too bad at all. Unless you can convince me that this fetus is going to grow up to become Stalin, you can’t do much to justify it’s killing over any other fetus’s.
An interesting comment I frequently see. Here’s an experiment for you: Go find 1000 adoptees. Ask them if they wish they’d been aborted instead of put up for adoption. I’m curious to see the numbers.
Jeff
[flexes persuasive knuckles]
Prepare yourself for stompage, ElJeffe. You better explain why a fertilized ouvm is a person, and an unfertilized one isn’t.
And remember, if I can do a search/replace for your explanation, and replace fertilized ovum with somatic cell, or tumor, than you have no argument. Trust in apos and accept that not everything is black’n’white. It’s less painful that way.
Jeff,
I wasn’t speaking about abortion. I was speaking about the choice to make an adoption plan. It is an independant choice from the abortion/carry to term decision.
—Why not? Either the lump of cells is or is not a human.—
Whether it’s “human” or not (whatever THAT means) is irrelevant. What matters is WHY it is wrong to kill IT.
—If it’s not a human, then killing it is not much different than killing any other similarly cognizant entity. A prawn, for example.—
No, it’s like a prawn morally if it’s like a prawn otherwise in capacity. You seem to want to define something’s moral worth before you’ve even taken a look at what it IS!
—Just a mass of cells, right? Those who have no issue killing prawns for, say, food, shouldn’t have a problem.—
Sometimes they do though. And I find it kind of crazy that they’d get all upset about killing a zygote when they happily kill many other things that have actual lives, feelings, and even relationships.
—Or else it is human, in which case killing it is not better than killing a newborn - they’re both human. Basically, if abortion is murder, then aborting one half of twins is murder. If abortion is hunky-dory, then aborting one half of twins is hunky-dory.—
Nope. I think you’ve sort of missed the boat on this one. You’d like the safety of a nice essentialism, wherein you can just dump something into a convient category like “human” and pretend that does all your work for you. But I don’t buy it. We call only specific things murder because we’ve developed a specific rationale, not from creative wordplay with the word “human” but because we have decided that killing those sorts of beings is so wrong as to almost never be justifiable. Trying to dump fetuses into that rationale is not as easy as simply dumping them into the caetgory of “human.”
What I want from any serious arguement is an explanation of why a nine week old fetus is actually of more moral worth than, say, an adult pig. That means making an arguement based not on what species it belongs to, but rather what sort fo being is actually is. You treat this question as a joke: but that’s only because you refuse to think about actual beings, retreating to an empty categorization.
—And sometimes, things are just black and white. Not everything is relative. Your “conflicting interests” argument, to someone who is pro-life, is about as convincing as saying, “I killed my wife because the insurance policy would really make paying off my bills more convenient.”—
Now you’re just being silly. A fairer recount of my arguement would be “I killed this fly because it’s buzzing was pissing me off.” or “I killed my wife because she had a knife to my daughter’s neck and if I didn’t shoot she was just about to slit her neck.”
—I have serious qualms with equating a fetus with scampi, but I guess that avenue has already been covered in the Great Cow Discussion aspect of this thread.—
Only “covered” in the sense that people have said that it’s simply something they refuse to think about.
—That being said, I don’t quite buy your “a little bit wrong” argument, any more than I would buy that killing someone in a coma for convenience is “a little bit wrong”, as compared to killing someone who’s retarded, which is “kinda pretty bad”, compared to killing a nun, which is “really bad”, and so on.—
That’s probably because you seem to have no idea what I’m saying. Killing a retarded person is just as bad as killing a nun. How wrong killing someone in a coma depends on that person’s previous wishes, how likely they are to ever wake up, and such. If they are likely to wake up, or desire not to be killed if in a vegitative state, then it’s pretty much just as wrong as killing a nun or a retarded person.
But a fetus at the stage we are discussing has none of the capacities that we commonly define as moral interests, certainly not those of born humans. To the degree it does, it certainly doesn’t have them to a higher degree than most animals. And it certainly doesn’t come to have them to the degree that their lives are far MORE valuable than any animals but man until much later in their development.
—Unless you can convince me that this fetus is going to grow up to become Stalin, you can’t do much to justify it’s killing over any other fetus’s.—
I hardly see the relevance of that. I never said anything about the fetus in this case being any particular fetus. This may be a real situation, but for us it’s basically a hypothetical, paradigmatic example.
—Trust in apos and accept that not everything is black’n’white. It’s less painful that way.—
I wouldn’t want anyone to trust me, much less “in” me (whatever THAT means). And I’m not really arguing that things aren’t black and white: more that in many real world situations we face are not an alternative between black and white, but rather a choice between two blacks of differing size.
I thought a fertilized ovum, robertliguori, was called a zygote.
AFAIK it’s only an ovum if it’s unfertilized.
Yes. Very true. And?
What are they going to do… flip a coin, enie meanie minie moe?
What happens if the one they keep ends up with some horrible defect?
I’m pro choice, but something about this strikes me as wrong.
This is what I’m interested in. People who see this as worse than other abortions. Why?
Or people who are pro-choice but this situation as different and more morally repugnant. Why?
If you are opposed to all abortion and are opposed to this just the same, do you see any difference in this situation and any other abortion?
Does anyone see this as better than most other abortion situations?
autz, I’m pro-choice, and I DO see this as different. As my post (well) above indicated, I’m not really sure why. I know it indicates some sort of hypocrisy, but my gut reaction is that it IS more ‘morally’ questionable, even though I am completely comfortable with abortion under all other circumstances. It doesn’t necessarily follow some sort of logical progression. It is not the ‘loss’ of a child that makes me squirm, it is the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind the decision that leaves a lot to be desired I think!
I suspect this seems worse because the woman is willing to go through the pregnancy for one child.
Much of the pro-choice rhetoric has to do with being forced to endure a pregnancy you don’t want. Although the mortal risks of a pregnancy are low, there are significant economic risks to many woman. And there are lesser physical risks (including some purely cosmetic ones). And social risks - if you are unwed, there is stigma no matter if you make an adoption plan or parent, if you are married, but choose not to parent the child, there is stigma.
This woman has none of those risks. She is willing to undergo the pregnancy. The second fetus doesn’t seem to be at risk or pose significant harm to herself or the twin(at least in this example - we don’t know what her doctor actually told her - for an older woman twins is almost always considered a high risk birth and perhaps this is the factor in her decision - but its coming through the gossip chain as “career woman chooses selective abortion cause she only wants one”).
Personally, I think the situation is pretty doomed no matter what she does. Its a rare woman who could abort one child in this manner and not be reminded of it when she looked at the twin - and to live the life she gives herself regretless. Seperating twins at birth is asking for big problems with both twins. And choosing to parent both twins means that she is going to resent the demands the twins place on her. Her best bet - if she could afford it - is to hire help to get her through her children’s toddlerhood. She sounds (given the information we’ve been given) like one baby is going to open her eyes to how difficult babies (toddlers, preschoolers, young kids, teenagers, young adults) are to parent.
I also suspect there is something wrong with this example - I can’t figure out who would share that they were going to selectively abort one twin with anyone outside of their doctor and spouse unless there was some sort of risk.
Sorry for the hijack, but how do you “pro-choicers” feel when women use this so-called right in other controversial ways.
If a woman wants to use her right to an abortion to abort a girl because she wants a son instead, does it nevertheless remain her right?
Incidentally, this is a real world example that happens very often.
How frivolous does the reason for an abortion need to be before the pro-choice lobby says anything against it?
What the hell do abortion, the death penalty, war, or euthanasia have to do with birth control drugs and fertility drugs?!
I say again: The Catholic Church says that birth control drugs, which alter the time or frequency at which a woman ovulates, are somehow against the will of God. That very same Church also says that fertility drugs, which also alter the time or frequency at which a woman ovulates, are perfectly okay and not against the will of God. Therefore, the Catholic Church is hypocritical.