JThunder: Actually in order to keep with the argument at hand, you would have to prove that personhood begins before week twelve of gestation.
I have stated in other threads on this board that even I would be in favor of severely restricting abortion post the extra-utero viability time to cases of only mortal danger to the mother or very severe fetal abnormality (hydrocephaly, for example).
We’re specifically dealing with the first twelve weeks here, which is within the first trimester of pregnancy (gestation normally being 40 weeks), so asserting personhood in say, week 22 is not really relevant.
No, because I’m not the one who claims that “personhood” is the deciding factor, and neither do any of the pro-lifers here. The definition of personhood proposed is entirely a pro-choice claim.
The pro-choicers are the ones who claim that an unborn human being is not a person. The responsibility of demonstrating that definition to be well-established rests firmly on their shoulders. This requires citing well-established precedents, rather than just reiterating the claim or citing abortion “rights” laws.
Take a nebulous concept like the ‘personhood’ of the unborn and demand that people disprove it. Conventionally, of course, it’s those who wish to change the status quo who bear the burden of ‘proof’ - no wonder the shuffle, otherwise you’d have to prove the nebulous concept of the ‘personhood’ of the unborn.
For the n’th time, WE are NOT the ones invoking PERSONHOOD. This is entirely a pro-choice line of attack.
It does no good to insist that the unborn is a non-person, and then foist the burden of disproof onto your opponents. This is YOUR argument. YOU cite the precedents which prove your claim to be well-established.
It is clear that you can’t, and so instead, you are demanding that the pro-lifers disprove your assertion. You have provided no evidence that an unborn human being – indeed, any human being – can be considered a “non-person.”
I never claimed that personhood was the deciding factor. In fact, though I don’t believe a fetus is a person, I have argued that even if it is, it still does not have any right to live inside a woman.
Robyn is right about what pregnancy does to the body of a woman, and because of those things, the ultimate decision to go through with a pregnancy and labor belongs to the pregnant woman.
You argued for a while that you had no obligation to help other people, then when you were proven wrong, you decided to change tactics and argue that the fetus is not a person.
I am shocked by this pro-choice position that believes that although a fetus is a human life, it still is not a person, therefore it has no rights. I always thought that once the scientists/doctors define a fetus to be human life, the battle would be over, but I guess not. Scary! So in what situations could I stop being a person?
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You are ignoring the fact that in order to avoid “those things” you must destroy a human life. Which is worse?
It seems from your previous arguments that one of your main concerns would be the lengthy public process that would be involved with allowing an abortion to occur when the woman’s life really is in danger. But this isn’t necessary at all! The doctor should be allowed to make this determination. It certainly falls under the subject matter of the hippocratic oath. Of course, doctors fraudulently using this authority to perform illegal abortions would be held accountable, just as they would be if they unjustly pulled the plug on somebody. Then the matter of your illness and the fetus and the abortion would stay private, between you and your doctor. I hope that alleviates most of your concerns with our position.
No, I still assert that I have no obligation to undergo serious risk to my health in order to provide sustience to what is effectively a parasite. I have not been ‘proven wrong’ in that regard, because the law most certainly does not require a woman to provide her body against her will to a fetus, regardless of the personal beliefs of the anti-choice crowd.
I have repeatedly stated that whatever rights one believes a fetus has, it does not have more rights than a woman does to use her body as she sees fit. A fetus’s rights, if you believe it has them, do not take primacy over mine.
Worse? How about the fact that I see my own death as preferable to living a life without my career, without the things I’ve worked for, and without my family? Worse to me is the damage done to me by having no choice, rather than terminating a pregnancy that never had a role in society, never had hopes, never had dreams, never worked hard to succeed.
How, without public scrutiny, would you find out whether the determination fit your criteria? How would you hold the doctors who used fraud accountable without doing further harm to the women who trusted those doctors?
No, it makes me more afraid. Afraid of the day that comes that my medical records are unsealed so that you can ‘hold accountable’ doctors who didn’t do things to your standards. Afraid of the day the bomb drops and my life suffers even further damage. It’s the kind of thing that would ensure I didn’t seek medical attention anywhere covered by this law. If I’m going to risk my life, I’m doing it on my terms, not yours.
As one grounds. I have repeatedly stated in this and other threads that I do not believe that a fetus is a person and does not have the same rights that people have, but that even if it were a person, it’s rights do not supercede the rights of the person whose body it is inside. If the person whose uterus it is doesn’t want a fetus living in there, for whatever reason, it’s her choice. I will not do further trauma to someone by placing unnecessary roadblocks in the way of medical attention.
What happens when paternity is undetermined? Before the putative father gets to exercise his “say,” would the courts be empowered to compel DNA testing of the fetus in order to find out if this particular man has standing? Can of worms, no?
OK, I think part of the reason that these arguments are going around in circles is that we never know if you are talking about a general “I” (pregnant women in general) or about you, specifically. If you were talking about yourself, specifically, then for the umpteenth time, most pro-lifers would have no problem with you getting an abortion if your health was in serious jeopardy. But if you were talking about pregnant women in general, surely you cannot consider normal pregnancy to be a “serious risk to your health”.
One person’s right to live always takes primacy over another’s right to convenience. You do not always have the right to use your body as you see fit, I don’t know where you got that idea. There is a legal concept called negligence that I think you need to familiarize yourself with. Yes, sometimes you can get in serious legal trouble for not doing something.
OK you seem to be mixing up your specific situation with the general public again.
You started by saying: (paraphrased)
“because of what a woman’s body goes through, women have the right to choose”
I responded with:
“but you must recognize they are making that choice over another life’s right to live”
Then you replied with:
“In my situation, the sacrifice would be too great.”
Fine. But we have already agreed that your situation is one where we’d approve of abortion, because of your health concerns. If you were to disregard the health aspects, I’m sure that you are overestimating the effects of a pregnancy, aren’t you? Your career does not have to be over, you don’t have to lose everything you’ve worked for, and your family is not going to abandon you. That is a tad melodramatic, don’t you think?
The same way these things are usually done, when there are multiple complaints from various trustworthy sources.
OK, even if your version of this came to pass, and your records were unsealed and examined by people who don’t know you and will never meet you, how is this worse than your previous vision of going to court and having a judge declare you “fit for abortion”? Your privacy would be protected by law because these are medical records. It seems like you are being stubborn for the sake of stubbornness.
Not much of one, no. Amniocentesis, the procedure to procure fetal material for genetic testing, involves no small risk of miscarriage and is generally not done before the 14th week of pregnancy.
Thing is, the Dopers on this board would only know that my health could be put in serious jeopardy because I told them. So, out there in real life, where catsix has a face, a name, a Social Security Number, a job, a doctor, and a family, those of you who ‘would have no problem’ with me getting an abortion wouldn’t know that. I would look like a normal person with a normal pregnancy unless I let you explore the intimate, personal, gut wrenching details of my life.
My question to you is, why should I have to do that? Why should anyone have to divulge those very personal turmoils and create more pain and suffering for herself?
According to the current law of the land, the fetus does not have the right to inhabit the woman’s uterus without that woman’s consent. Morally, I don’t believe it ever has the right to occupy a uterus without the consent of she who owns the uterus.
Since you are the one advocating that current law be changed, it’s incumbent on you to satisfactorily demonstrate why. Continually restating your belief does not accomplish that.
Pardon me if this sounds a little rude, but what makes you think your approval matters? What makes you think that I or any other woman would ever find it necessary to invite you into something that personal and that painful? It sounds nothing but arrogant that you even made the statement ‘we’d approve’. Your approval is not necessary, and the effort needed to get it in ‘real life’ would be so far from worth it that I can’t think of a cirucmstance in which someone should bother.
That’s not something you, not knowing the first thing about me, would know, is it? There are millions of women in this country whose situations you do not know and cannot possibly ever know. Are you going to assume that they’re all being melodramatic if they tell you their families will abandon them or that they could lose their jobs? Is that a gamble you’re willing to make? If it is, I’m amazed. I can’t imagine making a pronouncement like that knowing that I couldn’t possibly tell with any certainty whether or not a total stranger was being a ‘tad melodramatic’ about her life.
Which is how? You would have to assume that anyone other than the woman herself. her doctor, and any necessary people to assist that doctor (such as nurses) would ever know about she was pregnant. Who would the other complaints come from?
Because sealed records don’t always stay sealed. Because I don’t trust the law to protect my privacy once the government’s gotten its hands on my medical records. Because I don’t see any need to involve big brother in this decision and because I think that once the decision gets entered into court record it will become public regardless of what ‘guarantee’ I was given. The more eyes prying into ensuring my ‘privacy’ the less privacy I have.
You can call me stubborn all you want, but there’s no way in the world the government belongs in this decision. By the time all the legal wrangling is done, it’ll be the argument that now it’s ‘too late’ in the pregnancy to perform an abortion, there will be the chance that the judge’s personal views will cloud their professional duty, and women will get only more and more desperate.
Tell me, how much suffering at the part of women who face unwanted pregnancies will satisfy you? How many hoops do you really want them to jump through, and how much pain do you think they should face? Why do you think this is your decision?
I can see a can of worms there. In an effort to prevent abortion from ever happening, anti-choice men start going to court demanding paternity tests on any woman they can possibly identify as intending to have an abortion. They tie the thing up in court, regardless of their actual paternity, until such time as they can argue that the pregnancy is ‘too far along’ to allow the abortion.
Something like that would work great under a system where a woman already had to petition a court to get judge’s permission to abort, because her name would be public.
Am I paranoid? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. There’s something a little fear inspiring about people whose position seems to be that a woman’s medical history has to be examined by a judge before a doctor can help her.
I don’t think fetal DNA testing is going to be practical. The means to obtain material for testing is invasive to the woman, and does carry a small but significant risk of miscarriage and birth defects. Requiring a test to prevent abortion that might cause miscarriage defeats the purpose. Also, because it is invasive, only one sample can be taken. When that runs out, that’s it.
That said, I do see the potential for abuse of the judicial system by men with no other interest other than to prevent an abortion. This has been done in cases where a person is on life support; people have petitioned the courts to prevent termination. There would have to be a mechanism in place to limit involvement to those with an existing relationship with the woman. And if a man can block an abortion, then part of the proceedings should include financial support to the woman, (to include health coverage for maternity care and the first 120 days of the child’s life) child support (to include health insurance for the child), and visitation. Because, honey, if you care enough to force the woman to bear the child, you’re gonna give a damn enough to support it, both financially and with your time. Otherwise, all the morals in the world don’t mean shit.
Robin, with all due respect to you, your previous post is something to behold.
Abortion, by definition, is an invasive procedure leading to the death of the fetus. So by that reasoning, would it really matter if the fetus mascarried? The end result would be the same. The woman would lose the baby and she would live happily ever after.
If the father wanted to do that, that would show a desire to be a father, and he should be able to do just that. Nobody else, though. Just the father. I think that the father should have the ability to compel the mother to bring the baby to term if he genuinely wants the child.
Amen. We finally agree on something about this topic.
There are some serious flaws in your argument overall, which I tear apart regularly, but there’s no fault to be found in the end. The father has an obligation to support the child. Period, full stop, end of discussion.
However, to get to that point, the child must be brought to term and born, and that is where our opinions differ.
I think Robin was responding to what I had said about someone who was a pro-life activist but not the father in this case. Someone who would claim to be the father only to force the pregnancy to continue until it could be argued that it was too late term for abortion.
We also disagree on the point that the father should be able to compel the woman to continue the pregnancy. This is one of the many instances in which life is not fair, and pregnancy does not have the same impact on a man as it does on a woman. It’s not his health that will be at risk, it will not be his body that goes through irreparable change, and it will not be he who has to alter his entire lifestyle. Because he doesn’t have the same direct physical involvement, he doesn’t get the same amount of say. He gets the amount of say the woman is willing to give him.
Speaking for myself, knowing what I do about my own feelings regarding having a kid, well, I can easily see myself becoming self-destructive.
The current law is based on the fact that the fetus does not have the same rights as other humans. Throughout this debate, you have been asserting that even if the fetus did have the same rights as other humans, you would still be OK with denying it the use of your uterus. That is what I’ve been arguing against.
OK, that’s not what I meant AT ALL by “we’d approve”. I meant “we would agree with you that it would be morally acceptable”. And you’re right, our approval doesn’t mean diddly squat. But if the fetus is defined by the courts as a human life with rights, then someone’s approval certainly starts to matter in a case where you must weigh the risk of one life versus another, whether that someone is your doctor or a lawmaker.
Let’s be serious here, you’re talking about maybe 1% of the population. And I would rather that 1% of the population endure a little suffering in exchange for the millions of human lives that are extinguished by abortion. Also, if these women are losing their jobs, or being abandoned by their families, there are other problems here. The pregnancy is not the real problem, the employer/family is. And the unborn baby is certainly an innocent party.
Well, I imagine that under this system, some discrete doctors may be able to get away with performing abortions for years. But there would certainly be many opportunities for other people to know about what was going on… friends of the woman, people working in the office, women who considered abortion but changed their mind, lots and lots of potential witnesses.
Where do you live now that you have complete and total privacy, no matter what legal situation may arise? I suspect you live in Fantasyland.
I agree, the government does not belong in this decision. That is why I proposed we leave it to the doctor’s discretion. There is no legal wrangling, if the doctor feels you need an abortion to protect your health, end of story - the abortion is done. All the legal wrangling can happen after the fact, and then only if the doctor is suspected of aborting babies in healthy women.
No suffering, no hoops, no pain. (no more than now) I don’t think this is my decision at all. But I don’t think it is solely the woman’s decision, either, because there is another life involved. And that life needs someone to protect it.
