Should abortions performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy be a crime?

Great Debates
221

No but they do keep referring to a pregnant woman as a ‘mother’ regardless of whether or not she actually has any children. If they’re going to use the term ‘mother’ for a pregnant woman, I’m going to use the term ‘anti-choice’ for someone who doesn’t believe my reproductive decisons are up to me.

So someone who doesn’t know me and wants to make a blanket prohibition of abortion because the ‘vast majority’ of pregnancies are not life threatening isn’t ignoring the well-being of pregnant women? The point of ignorance in making a law that prohibits abortion is that there is no room for someone like me under that law. If I stop taking my medicine, my immune system attacks every part of my body, and I begin to have difficulty breathing when my lungs swell up. There’s not a doctor I’ve spoken to who can predict whether or not my immune system would attack the fetus itself. But because ‘most’ pregnancies don’t cause those risks:

The problem I see with this is that this is something that would be traumatic enough for me without having to go to a judge and prove that significant risk to my life exists. It opens up what is a very painful and very personal medical condition to public scrutiny that, quite frankly, there’s no good reason for. There’s no reason to be in my doctor’s office with cops and lawyers and judges to decide if my reasons are good enough. It’s the kind of thing that makes me feel trapped and desperate, and I’d venture I’m not the only woman in the world who’d feel that way if she had to go get a court order to have her doctor help her. Where’s the acknolwedgement of that devestation? There’s no regard here for what it would do to someone who had to air their whole life in front of a judge to appease your moral belief.

Then they need to leave those decisions to the person who’s most familiar with the concerns, the pregnant woman. By the way, is it really necessary to use the emotionally charged term ‘mother’?

Again, what qualifies you to say that the life of a fetus supercedes my concerns? You cannot possibly ever know a stranger’s situation well enough to make that determination. That’s why it has to remain a personal decision.

And I should have to drag something like that out in public so that you can decide, or some legislator in a suit can decide, that my reason is good enough not to have objections?

Sorry, but no. That’s not an intrusion that’s justified, and it’s not something I’d inflict on someone else. I wouldn’t subject someone to the social stigma of being ‘That woman with the mental problems who went to a judge and got him to let her kill a baby’. Do you understand that something like that could very easily do a lot more harm than good?

And if the truly improbable happens and my birth control fails, why should I not have an option? Or would you just look at me and assume I was lazy and uninformed or just too irresponsible to use birth control?

It isn’t you who’d have to live with (or die with) the outcome if I got pregnant because my birth control failed, so please understand that where your balance tips doesn’t matter much to me.

There is no mother involved because until birth, there is no baby.

222

On the grounds that life is the most fundamental of all human rights, without which no other rights can be exercised. Mere inconvenience – even grave inconvenience – does not justify taking a human life.

We’ve been over this many times before. How often do you need it repeated for your benefit?

223

From www.dictionary.com
Mother

  1. A woman who conceives, gives birth to, or raises and nurtures a child.

Baby
1.
a. A very young child; an infant.
b. An unborn child; a fetus.
c. The youngest member of a family or group.

224

Well then, I guess ‘anti-choice’ stands.

Throwing the term ‘mother’ around seems to be only a ploy to get people to react emotionally and think it’s awful that a ‘mother’ could ‘kill her baby’.

Regardless of what dictionary.com says, I don’t think that someone who is pregnant and has no born children yet is a mother. When she intends to keep the baby, it’s typically referred to as ‘mother to be’.

It’s also a point of contention as to whether or not a fetus actually is a baby, and I don’t think dictonary.com qualifies as either a medical or legal source.

225

You don’t like what you’re hearing, so you’re dismissing it. I give you the definitions of the words you’re using, but because they don’t agree with your point of view you disregard them. I think that shows that your opinion on this topic is more emotional than logical.

226

Joel is exactly right. If one chooses to concoct arbitrary definitions of “mother,” “baby,” and “person” – not to mention the unfounded claim that one has no legal obligation to help other human beings – then there can be no possibility of meaningful discussion.

Changing one’s arguments in mid-stream doesn’t help, either.

227

Right on the money, Mr. Hicks.

The unborn is a human being, according to science and medicine. Even educated pro-choice debaters acknowledge this. Now, if someone claims that this human being is nevertheless a “non-person,” then the burden of proof rests on that individual to cite valid, well-established precedents for that claim.

Note that I emphasize the need for precedents – that is, definitions of personhood which were not concocted for the sake of defending abortion. Any fool can claim that some group of humans are not “persons”; indeed, this was done against blacks, to justify slavery. Without any well-established precedent for a definition which specifically excludes the unborn, such claims have no foundation, being firmly rooted in mid-air.

228

Sorry, but that’s now how the law works, and it’s not how civilized society works. No civilized nation would say, “The prospective killer is most familiar with the concerns at hand. Let the prospective killer decide if killing is warranted.”

Because, as has been repeatedly explained, it is the fetus’ LIFE that’s at stake, and life is the most fundamental of human rights. Unless your own life is similarly endangered, then your concerns do not justify ending its very existence.

By that logic, the courts should never prosecute ANYONE for killing another human being. After all, they can not claim to know the stranger’s situation either. Why should women contemplating abortion have this magical immunity that other prospective killers don’t?

So you publicly advocate killing another human being, but you cringe at the idea of having your motivations presented before a court of law? Good grief.

229

What would make you people happy? No, really.

What would catsix do if she found herself pregnant and having to get consent from a judge to abort? What if the judge were taking the same positions as you and denied her permission to do so, on the basis that the fetus is a person and its rights supersede those of catsix? Should she be expected to risk a very real chance of death to have the baby she doesn’t want in the first place because the contraception she’s taking to prevent that pregnancy failed?

Or, consider this. The judge grants her permission to abort. Word gets out in the courthouse, and catsix finds her home at the center of an anti-choice demonstration, with herself as the target. Her name and face and address make the newspaper and the Internet, and the harassment increases.

Abortion is a desperate act committed by a desperate person. No woman I’ve ever known who’s had an abortion has done so out of “convenience”, nor was it approached with the cavalierness that some of you have claimed. Every woman I know(and I’ve known more than a few who have faced this choice) has weighed the options available to her and chosen this particular path because it’s what was best for her. And very few have regretted it.

If women are expected to go before a court of law, which is composed of human beings, and lay out their entire lives for public consumption before being given permission to make a choice on what to do regarding their own reproductive system and reproductive freedom, then I humbly suggest that men do the same before masturbating.

Robin

230

J Thunder

I don’t need you to endlessly state your position - “any fool can” endlessly state their position - I’m asking that you establish it, possibly without declamatory language, extended analogies, appeals to nebulous authority, switching of burden of proof and glossings-over “concocted for the sake of” attacking choice.

231

You asked why the fetus’ rights trump those of the woman. I merely answered your question, even though it had already been repeatedly stated for your benefit.

Note that the explanation – namely, the fundamental nature of the right to life – does NOT require any declamatory language, extended analogies, and so forth. You have yet to refute the fact that life is the most basic of all rights, and that the mother’s desires do not deserve primacy over the right to life. The fact that you keep bringing up these tangential issues merely betrays the bankruptcy of your own case.

232

Here we go again.

Let’s get one thing clear. We have stated, time and again, that if a woman’s life is in TRUE jeopardy, then we would have no objection to an abortion in this case. Why this continues to elude you, I have no idea.

Second, we have repeatedly emphasized that a physician’s duty should be to save both infant and mother, if at all possible. In other words, the mere possibility of harm to the mother is not sufficient grounds to kill an innocent life. A conscientious physician should attempt to preserve both lives, to the best of his or her ability. Is this truly so difficult to grasp?

And third, even if one grants that abortion is justified in catsix’s case, that decision would only apply in such rare and unusual situations. As we have emphasized numerous times already, this would not be a valid justification for abortion in general.

Pro-choicers often appeal to these rare and unusual cases, such as endangerment of the mother’s health, in an attempt to justify abortion. Such reasoning is specious. It’s like saying that because speeding is sometimes necessary (e.g. in the case of a medical emergency), that we must abolish speed limits altogether. Any fool can see that such reasoning has no merit.

233

J Thunder

Oh dear, my appropriation of some of your language does seem to have offended you in some way.

Well, I agree you answered my question - in the sense that an answer to the question “What’s the weather like?” could be “Aardvark”. In other words, it’s an answer, just not a responsive answer.

The thing is, J Thunder, it’s not up to me to refute anything, it’s up to you to establish that the rights of the fetus should prevail over the right of the woman concerned. Just going on saying it doesn’t establish it, I’m afraid.

At the core, of course, is your assumption that the fetus, at all stages, is a human being in the sense that a fully developed and separate entity would be. I’m supposedly to accept that as a ‘given’ but I can see nothing, other than repetition, to lead me to do so.

You may see this problem I have with your position as purely tangential. Perhaps you’d explain just why that is the case?

I had thought that the only tangential element in my situation was that there is absolutely nothing you can ever do - thank goodness - to prevent me having an abortion, should I ever decide to have one.

234

Giggle. This is a hoot. You claim that the term “mother” shouldn’t be used to decribe pregnant women…even though it’s a commonly established term.

You then claim that a fetus is not a baby.

And you use that particular “logic” to justify the use of the term “anti choice”

Oh what the hell…I’ll play.

D.r William Sears is probably one of if not the most famous pediatricians in the U.S. Taking a gander at his web site…we see…gasp

Damn. You better get on the horn and straighten that guy out.

:rolleyes:

235

One wonders what maternity clothing is for as well… (although I’m guessing you don’t want to look up the definition of “maternity”). :wink:

236
  1. The fetus is a separate entity. Although connected by the umbilical cord, it’s not just another part of a woman’s body like her heart and lungs.
  2. Underdevelopment = not a human being?
    So if a baby is born underdeveloped, then it wouldn’t be a human being either?
237

Blackstone goes on to note that under the common law, the killing of an unborn child after this point had earlier been considered manslaughter, though not murder, and was later deemed a misdemeanor. I’m not quite sure exactly when the “quickening” or movement which permitted the rights of the fetus to be recognized under the common law took place. From the post made by Joel above, this might be as early as the seventh week, when “the embryo begins to move spontaneously”, or as late as the fourth or fifth month, when “the mother will…be able to feel movement”. At the very least, the common law standard clearly seems to provide precedent for ruling out any criminal penalty for abortions performed in the first six weeks of pregnancy; more broadly, it provides a precedent for making distinctions about the permissibility of abortion based on the length of the pregnancy and the degree of fetal development, and was cited in Roe v. Wade:

238

Joel

Saying “the fetus is a separate entity” (repeatedly) is merely saying “the fetus is a separate entity” (repeatedly), it’s not establishing that “the fetus is a separate entity”.

I had said “developed and separate entity”, the ‘and’ should be taken to imply a joint condition, that’s why I used a conjunction.

239

You have not satisfactorily demonstrated that a fetus has a right to life which does deserve primacy. As it’s you who wishes to change the status quo, in which a fetus does not have an over-riding right, the burden of that proof is on you.

Elude me? The one thing it demonstrates to me above all elese is that you don’t really care what damage is done to someone’s life, whether they lose their job, lose their family, find themselves being attacked by protestors by having to prove to you that their life is in ‘true’ jeopardy. What eludes me is why you would want to add insult to injury and further damage someone who’s already going through something traumatic.

Considering that it would be possible for me to know I was pregnant and schedule an abortion within less than six weeks, there is no possibility of saving the fetus.

At what quality of life? A conscienctious physician does his or her best to alleviate the suffering of his patient, in such a case of my birth control failing, that patient is me.

[quoteAnd third, even if one grants that abortion is justified in catsix’s case, that decision would only apply in such rare and unusual situations. As we have emphasized numerous times already, this would not be a valid justification for abortion in general.[/quote]

What makes it valid to leave the decision as a personal choice made between a woman and her doctor is that requiring someone to drag the intimate details of their life into full public view and scrutiny will do that person more damage than good. It’s a callous disregard you have for the damage that could be done to someone by airing that laundry in public. What if she loses her job? What if she loses her family? What if she becomes a pariah in her community? Or do you think those are just consequences she’s got to bear in addition to the trauma of being pregnant and aborting?

Remember that health includes mental health, and that backing someone up against a wall where her only choices are to continue a pregnancy she doesn’t want and deliver a baby she doesn’t want or air all her private life in public in front of a judge is bound only to make someone feel trapped and desperate.

I cannot entirely separate logic from emotion, but I can tell you as a woman how terrifying that concept is. On the one hand, my hopes and dreams for the future are non-existant because I would be forced to alter my life so significantly that I couldn’t participate in the things required to climb the ladder with my career. On the other, I would very likely lose my job over the publicity something like that would bring the company I work for, and my family would turn on me for dragging the family name through that mud. Those things are enough to make me willing to risk my life to abort, do you understand?

Is that logical? No, not really, desperation rarely is. According to you, I may have a legitimate medical reason to abort and probably would get a judge’s approval. However, in the interest of honesty, it would push me beyond my mental breaking point to have to open what is already a very painful personal problem up to the public magnifying glass. I would much rather do something illegal and probably risk my life than become a modern day Hester Prynne. And that’s just talking about someone who’s already an adult.

I live in the real world, where things are not pretty and I know what restrictive laws against abortion will drive someone to. I can give you te example of a friend of mine who, when he was 18 and his girlfriend 17, were sexually active and using birth control. She was on the Pill, he used condoms, but it still failed once. Pennsylvania requires minors to notify their parents before an abortion can be performed. This young couple, terrified of the fallout should their families find out, broke the law and crossed state lines. They drove a few hundred miles to a state that didn’t have a parental notification restriction and she had an abortion. Is it really your intention to turn abortion into something that a desperate person risks their life for? Because your well-intentioned idea is going to have dire consequences.

240

MEBuckner, I asked for a precedent for considering the unborn to be a non-person. What you cited says nothing about personhood. And even if it did, it would still ruin catsix’s claim that personhood does not begin until birth.

Moreover, note that I used the word precedent – that is, a situation outside of abortion-related claims or legislation. Obviously, one can not validly defend pro-choice claims of non-personhood by citing abortion-related legislation to defend a particular definition of “person.”