Abortion is the decision of the mother in concert with the father. If you ask the catholic church they pretend to know whats right. They allowed priests to sexually assault young boys for many, many years. They totally lack standing. (to me anyway) In the book Freakanomics the author noticed a connection to crime and abortion. States that make abortion very difficult have a greater violent crime rate. If you force people to raise a child they dont want and cant afford the results are poor. The mother often understands she is not ready or capable. When the state trumps her right to make the choice it has consequences.
After the first couple of responses to this topic, you see precisely the problem. It’s that one side sees it as a moral problem, and the other sees it as a practical problem. Quite often, this doesn’t jive. This is one of those times. We’re debating a term on (at least) two different definitions, which isn’t going to work without compromise.
The truth lies in the middle. If we do what Fiveyearlurker suggested, a thing I’ve also figured out a little while ago and ignore the radicals on both sides, automatically, we’re a lot closer to the solution. We do that, and talk begins.
So, how do we kick out the radicals?
You could try sticking your fingers in your ear and going “Neener! Neener! Can’t Hear You”. See how well that works for you.
Bryan has it in one - I believe the woman’s choice overules all else. Of course, I’d prefer that a late-term pregnancy end in a prem birth rather than abortion, wouldn’t we all?
But! Said foetus, while still inside the mother, doesn’t have what I’d like to think of as “personhood”, while we can argue about when it becomes “human” all day (I’m at “around the 6 month mark”, I don’t believe it’s a “person”, and I don’t believe the term “murder” applies to it, anymore than “pulling the plug” on a human in a persistent vegetative state.
I support the idea that a woman can change her mind, or circumstances can change their mind for them.
I’ve brought up here before, a friend whose husband died while she was pregnant with the child they were going to raise together. If that had happened in the 8th month, I would still have supported her right to terminate.
I, personally, were I a woman, wouldn’t have an abortion past the 6th month. But I fully support the right of other women to have the choice. I find the notion that , at any stage, a woman can be forced to continue carrying a baby and give birth, the most abhorrent, “Handmaid’s Tale” vision of dystopia. It repels me.
For all those saying that a D&X is medically dangerous, it’s irrelevant. It’s still a procedure that the woman chooses. Many cosmetic surgeries, for example, are dangerous, yet we don’t limit people’s right to choose them for themselves. The only difference here is the personhood of the foetus. But I contend that’s a separate issue from the danger inherent in the abortion itself, and I would hope people would stop bringing it up as though it were relevant.
Lastly, before anyone else brings it up, I’m aware of laws to prevent pregnant women from harming their unborn foetuses’ development, and laws charging people who kill a foetus with some flavour of homicide. Let me pre-emptively say that I’m OK with the former, predicated on the notion that the woman is intending to carry to term, and not OK with the latter, predicated on the idea that I don’t agree about the personhood of the foetus until it’s born.
I understand (but don’t agree with) the “mother as host” pro-choice argument that says the mother gets to decide to abort, and whether or not the fetus is a person is trumped by her position as “host.” I have never understood the argument that says that birth is a fundamental boundary for “personhood,” that a child the moment before birth is essentially different than the moment after birth. You seem to be saying two different things. Can you clarify?
Why? Would you support her right to kill hew newborn if her husband died right after the birth?
What definition of “personhood” are you using? Is it a definition that predates Roe v. Wade, or one that was concocted after the fact?
Once it’s born, though, she can instantly turn it over to various adoption agencies, this ending her legal association with it, can’t she? Your strawman has no spine.
But she could (very likely) do the same if she went into early labor or had a c-section to deliver at 7 months .
This is the crux of why I’m a “viability” voter myself. Once it’s possible for someone - anyone - to take the legal, financial and ethical job of raising a kid off my hands, then I’m no longer the child’s life support system. As long as I’m a life support system, I get to determine what tasks I’m willing to perform. At viability, I become a temporary home to a truly separate individual. Yes, it’s not perfect, as the mother is still forced to undergo pregnancy or delivery while carrying a viable fetus to term, but it’s as close to ideal as I can get.
She can choose to disconnect her life support system of a body for 27 weeks or so, and I suppose theoretically she could try and talk a doctor into delivering her preemie on purpose to adopt it out sooner. If she hasn’t made the choice to disconnect her life support system by then, she has decided to accept temporary guardianship of the person inside her until she can deliver and adopt it out.
This is why I acknowledge that as “viability” changes, so should adoption laws. Once someone else can take custody and care for the baby, I’m ok with requiring women to give the baby up for adoption rather than aborting. But it will always depend on someone else being willing to take custody - whether it be the state or a private individual. Can we support 1 million more people every year? I don’t know. I sort of doubt it. But this is also why I think it shouldn’t be a morally based law.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that we can only find adoptive parents, foster care or state run institutions for 10,000 more babies per year, but 1,000,000 abortions are requested. If we base the law on the theory that the state has a vested interest in preserving the lives of what citizens it needs to run smoothly, then those 10000 adoptions can be run by lottery (or first pregnant, first delivered by calendar year, or some other arbitrary system), and the other 990,000 women allowed to abort on demand. If the state can only support 10,000, then saving 10,000 is in its interest. If, on the other hand, we’re basing the law on morals, then we have to judge that it’s immoral to abort a viable fetus. If we can only find 10000 adoptees, we still have 990,000 immoral abortions, or 990,000 people taxing the system that can’t absorb them. This would create untold moral dillemas and debate.
So, yeah. That’s why I think abortion laws should be written around protecting the mother’s rights of autonomy up until they conflict with the child’s right to life (it doesn’t have a right to life until it’s able to live) first, and the state’s need for citizens second. I don’t think morals should enter into it.
I reject the notion that the woman who is told that she must abort by five months is being “forced”. Under my plan, she had ample time, even assuming she didn’t know about the pregnanacy for quite some time, to abort the fetus.
But, the baby’s life, once it becomes a baby, trumps the woman’s right to choose. You are saying, not to put words in your mouth, that it becomes a baby after birth. I think that this is not remotely defensible from a scientific standpoint. Watch the Nova special, “In the Womb”. You’ll see that after six months, fetal development is more about getting stronger and bigger. But, all of the parts to be considerred human are there.
I’m all for a woman’s right to choose, but have no problem capping that right to choose with a time point that trumps that right because a larger right (I hasten to call it a right to life) of what was a fetus, and is now a baby. Ok. I have some problem with it because it is unfair that women have to shoulder more of the burden than men, but there’s not a lot I can do about that until men grow uteruses (uteri?).
Fiveyearlurker, I feel like we’re about thisclose in our views, and I want to thank your for this interesting (and polite) discussion. I find it interesting how we can share so many fundamental ideas, and yet arrive at different conclusions from them.
It goes along with my ideas that 90% of the world could come together and find a solution, but the 5% on each side scream louder and keep it from happening.
If a D&X procedure is as safe or safer for her than either of those, I’m not inclined to deny her that choice.
The baby has the exact inalienable rights everyone else does; no matter born or unborn. Those rights do not include use of another’s body without permission. To me, it seems more accurate to say that you are seeking to give babies special rights at the expense of (m)others.
Please tell me, if someone takes you (your body) hostage, do you not reserve the right to gain your liberty by whatever means necessary? Would you offer free use of your body to all, or just to those that might need it for life support?
r~
As she could if she, oh, let’s say, delivered a viable child she no longer wants. That’s the essence of my question. Does viability create some boundary that limits the mother’s ability to choose abortion, especially if MrDibble views 6 months as a boundary for “personhood”?
MrDibble offers a circumstance where the mother seemed to have no particular aversion to being a “host,” but might decide to abort because she no longer has a husband, regardless of the point in the pregnancy (or so I interpreted it, perhaps incorrectly). My question is an attempt to clarify the moral syllogism that MrDibble seems to have created. If you still see that as a straw man, I’ll try to live with that horrible shame.
Only to violinists requiring life support.
Suppose for a moment that delivery is as safe or safer. In that circumstance would you deny the choice to abort a viable child?
No. The choice of what medical procedures to undergo is the inviolable right of the woman, unless you can prove her to be legally incompetent. I’d expect an ethical doctor to put her health and choice at highest priority.
That is not the equivalent, of course, of compelling a doctor to perform a particular procedure against their will. This is an issue, I feel, best handled under the umbrella of medical ethics rather than legislation.
I want to thank both of you, as well. Although we don’t agree, you both have reasoned, reasonable arguments, and I appreciate hearing them. 
But in this hypothetical her health is not unfavorably affected in prohibiting the abortion. And certainly you can’t hold that anything the mother might choose with regard to the fetus must be supported.
If a viable baby who can be safely delivered is still within the bounds of a mother’s “right to choose,” then that’s a supreme right indeed. It gives the mother the right to terminate the life of a child who, if delivered a moment later, she would be prohibited from killing.
It is then no longer merely the right to “not be pregnant.” It is the right to say, “I’d prefer this child not live, even if I needn’t be pregnant for that to occur.” A mother shouldn’t have that right, in the same way she shouldn’t have the right to kill her newborn. The line here is a meaningless one, or it is at least one I can understand. Again, I understand (but do not agree with) the pro-choice position that says a mother needn’t be “host” if she prefers otherwise. I don’t understand the moral logic here at all.
You are exactly right, Stratocaster. At this point, the mother is basically only saying “I have the right not to deliver this child I have gestated for 9 months.” And, at the same time, she needs to go through a near-delivery to have it done. There is no moral logic in that whatsoever. As you point out, even if a person disagrees with abortion, it is possible to understand the logic to many of the positions expressed in this thread. This one, however, loses me completely.
I would not offer free use of my body to all, but I would indeed to a baby who was put there through my own action.