See, we could all yap all day, and I think never reach any kind of agreement, because we disagree so fundamentally on this premise. Pro-lifers believe just the opposite…that life is paramount, and liberty follows after it. (Just like we say in the U.S…Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…with life, comes liberty, and with liberty comes the ability to pursue happiness. I don’t believe those 3 concepts exist independently, or even that it was an accident that they were placed in that order.
I apologize if I misjudged you…but you DID make it sound as if you were pretty immovable on the subject (is immovable a word? I think so…but anyway, it fits what I am trying to say. )
This part of your post kind of made me laugh. I am just the opposite…if it’s only first trimester, you won’t see me picketing anyone (although I would still work at my volunteer work helping women who have crisis pregnancies), if it was cutoff at 5-6 months, I’d certainly be working to change the legislation. And up until birth is just unacceptable.
Well, that’s a lot more interaction than I’ve ever been aware of or experienced. It’s still possible that you’re reading too much into the fact that he only lets his dad do this, though. My daughter only lets me zerbitt her, for instance, and will complain bitterly if even my wife does. Yet I did not zerbitt her in the womb.
Not to sell your (touching, I promise you) son/father thing short, but that is just one data point. Still, a pretty good one. Food for thought, for me, certainly.
Does anyone else have similar anecdotes, or (reliable i.e. peer-reviewed) cites to flesh things out.
That’s not necessarily true. It could be something in brain development that’s specifically triggered by being ex utero, or by the interaction itself. Not saying it isn’t, but just that the “*must *be present” is, to me, a bit hasty.
I see where you’re coming from. Hell, I think your tolerance of 1st-trimester abortions puts you leagues ahead of most pro-lifers I’ve encountered. I can respect that, even if I disagree.
It should be no surprise that I’m not a life-at-all-costs advocate. But I am a proponent of personal choice and reponsibility, so you can see where I’m coming from. So I believe that it is choice that should be preserved at all costs.
Luckily, we’re both willing to be practical and try and reach compromise.
This is part of the problem I have with brain activity & viability arguments…medical science is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was even 10 years ago. Who knows where we will be 10 years in the future? What if we find a way to keep babies alive who are born after 2 months gestation? Stranger things have happened in science. And any argument that involves the rights of the mother not to have to gestate a baby does not hold up once it is out of the womb…I don’t care how many brain waves it has.
The issue of parental desire is another area I find problematic. Not sure I have an answer for your specific question, but I don’t like the idea that the worth of a baby/fetus/call it what you will, is valuable if and only if it is valuable to the mother. People have inherent value that should not be predicated on having someone who loves you & will protect you.
I figure once it’s born, it’s a person, though as is the case even with adults, the next-of-kin can authorize the withholding of heroic medical treatments. I have no problem with the parents of an extreme preemie (or even a full-term baby) with numerous health problems, with the advice of a doctor, withholding treatments of uncertain effectiveness and no long-term benefit.
Well, since the brain activity roughly coincides with the current age of viability outside the womb, it’s, as Joey Tribbiani would say “a moo point” in most instances.
As a practical matter, doctors will judge the viability of the specific fetus, based on estimated size, recent fetal movement and the reason for the preterm labor as well as the ability of that particular hospital to provide neonatal intensive care or the possibility of medvacing the baby to another hospital in time to be useful. If, in their professional opinions, they think the fetus can be saved, they will offer that as an option to the parent. If they judge the fetus to be non-viable, they will help the mother deliver and generally leave the baby with the family to hold and grieve over as it dies.
Hospitals will offer this care regardless of the ability to pay, or whether or not you have insurance. They worry about care first, and money later. Does the hospital end up eating the cost for uninsured preterm babies sometimes? Yes, just like they eat the cost of uninsured heart surgery, or broken legs. It’s part of their cost of doing business.
Because I equate viability with “state has an interest in this body as a citizen”, I do think that the state should pay for those citizen’s medical care in the same porportions and situations they do anyone else’s.
My own daughter was born at 23 weeks and 6 days. Legally in some states, we had 3 more weeks to choose to abort her for non-medical reasons. (In Illinois, I couldn’t have aborted her because two docs agreed she might be viable.) We were given the option of a c-section delivery and trying to save her, and a vaginal delivery which would have killed her (this is legal, where actively aborting her wouldn’t be). IRL, these decisions are made case-by-case, as I think is only proper. It was obvious, as I related in another thread, that she did not feel pain or discomfort, nor did she interact with her caregivers or surroundings until she was about 4 or 5 weeks old. I would have no moral, ethical or other judgement against a woman who might choose to abort at that stage, having seen the “pre-personness” of the fetus and its development first hand.
BTW, MrDibble, I agree with everything you said in reaction to my last post. Yes, it’s only one anecdote, and yes, I might be misinterpreting it and yes, it may be the ex-utero environment. But those are the reasons why I think the way I do, and until presented with evidence otherwise, I see no reason to change my mind when it all works the way I want it to!
See, and I hold both arguments simultaneously. I agree (as I did in the other thread which spawned all this) that as technology changes, so should abortion law. When the fetus is viable earlier, then it should be saved and adopted earlier. My only practical concern is finding adoptive parents for a million more babies a year and funding for all that intensive care. But philisophically, we agree that when a woman’s body is no longer held hostage, she shouldn’t kill the fetus.
While I agree with you, I don’t think it answers the question. The question is, if you remove the parents from the equation, should the state fund NICU care? If the parents abandon the preemie (as sadly does happen), should the hospital continue to care for it at their own or the state’s expense? Does the state have an interest in the baby?
IMO, unless that far-future tech includes a magic baby-out-of-womb transporter, you still violate the woman’s right to choose (not to undergo a medical procedure, in this case)
Agreed. Thus, to answer WhyNot’s question to Bryan I’d have no problem if the state chooses to undertake care of an abandoned premature baby.
Because, regardless of who you regard as human or not, placing the choice with the woman is the only logical and moral conclusion to reach.
Whatever force you believe put us all here as we are has seen fit to grant to women the power to bear children to term. By what possible rationale can anyone claim that the power to NOT bear children to term, or to make decisions regarding either power, ought to rest with some other entity?
I have to admit, I don’t have a problem with it either, though debating the cost of state health care is even more of a digression than capital punishment.
In practice, I don’t think it would be “the state” that determines the best course of care per se, but a court-appointed guardian who (hopefully) will seriously consider the advice given by the NICU doctors and determine if medical treatment will serve any purpose.
A civilized society is based on liberty and justice and equality for all. No one has disputed the rights available in other situations of life-support or threat to health; I am not willing to give up those rights for myself.
Any position that would make specific exceptions to “all” is extreme.
No. Are you suggesting that you can have liberty if someone restricts your bodily autonomy?
I suppose it’s a liberty of sorts, since my bodily autonomy (and yours, I’ll wager, though I don’t know where you live) is already restricted. I am not permitted to partake of illegal drugs. I can’t make a living as a prostitute (legally and from a very practical perspective ;)). Does your passion for bodily autonomy extend to these restrictions or is “live free or die” not equivalent with “free to use illegal drugs”?
Despite the fact that I am not permitted unfettered liberty with regard to my body, I still feel reasonably free. Since you asked.
That force has also given those same women the power to kill her toddlers. Or not. Does your syllogism extend to that scenario?
Come now. Try just a little bit harder. Even if you don’t agree with it, I’ll bet you can come up with a rationale that supports the claim that there is another entity with a little skin in this particular game.
No, because a toddler is inarguably its own separate entity. A fetus? Let’s just just say its separate existence is arguable since it has been continually, vehemently argued for going on thirty-five years now.
Not to any extent that they have say over someone else’s body. Unless you are willing to state that you would have no problem with a system that allowed an outside party to force a woman to have an abortion against her will, you have no business promoting one that allows an outside party to force her not to have one.
Does its laws in fact specifically make it a crime to ingest or otherwise consume the drugs? Most laws I have seen say you can not, in effect, create, distribute, receive or possess them, but the actual taking of them is only restricted as a side effect of these other restrictions.
With regard to prostitution, the law does not restrict you from having as many other people’s body parts inside of yours as you please. They just can’t be paying customers.
Fine. Then the syllogism you suggested previously is hollow, that’s all. Your rationale for abortion ultimately has nothing to do with any power some force has conferred upon mothers of the world everywhere.
No, you need to try just a little harder now. I’m not asking you to believe the position, only to search your imagination to see if you can identify another entity, someone other than the mother (come on now, think!), who has a stake in the process of abortion. After all, you were the one who said:
It’s Pennsylvania. Feel free to show that I’m talking out of my ass (I may well be; I didn’t check before I posted).
Can you provide any sort of a cite that suggests this is common? That may be tough to do. But I have heard of people who have been arrested for possessing small amounts of narcotics.
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