So give me a case of “justifiable abortion.” When the fetus is pointing a gun at you?
I acknowledge that a threat to the mother’s health due to pregnancy is a legitimate exception - I’m talking about things like rape and incest, which basically say that it’s fine to “commit homicide” against a fetus if the fetus is really really inconvenient instead of just a little inconvenient.
I see a coherent self-defense argument for allowing abortion in cases where the pregnancy itself threatens a woman’s life, but not otherwise.
I don’t see any coherent argument based on the manner of conception. A woman may defend herself against a rapist, of course (shoot him dead, please). But if a rape is accomplished and pregnancy results, the fetus can’t be a moral actor any more or less than that in a merely unwanted, unintended pregnancy.
:shrug: Because they see it as homicide, not murder? Because they see it as a broader societal harm? Because they see it as murder but don’t feel that should automatically trump every other consideration?
As soon as we say “abortion is bad m’kay” and then make an exception for the health of the mother, we’ve opened the door to exceptions. And the moment we say “ok, maybe no abortions past viability” we’ve placed limits on a woman’s bodily autonomy.
Maybe there should be no exceptions; maybe there should be no limits. But most folks don’t take absolutists positions.
So apply that to abortion. Explain how some abortions might be considered acceptable but not others. Feel free to use hypotheticals.
Nice slippery slope.
The exception for health of the mother is a legitimate moral dilemma. A mother’s life may be balanced against that of a child’s. No other exceptions involve that dilemma, do they?
You can’t just say that. There are two pretty damn absolutist positions involved that are damn hard to compromise with - “abortion is murder,” vs. the right of a woman to her bodily privacy.
I await your examples of how they can easily by compromised with exceptions and such.
What about a situation that threatens the woman’s health, perhaps permanently, but not her life? Or what about mental health? Post-partum depression kills all on its own; I think an argument can be made that carrying a rapist’s child to term and delivering it can cause an awful lot of demonstrable suffering.
But that argument could apply to any and all pregnancies.
On the other hand, if one believes abortion is murder, murdering a child is not justified just to protect a mother’s mental health. (Though some mothers of born children might disagree :o )
The obvious answer to your query is political expedience. If you really think abortion is murder, but you know that you won’t be able to get it all banned, you’re still reducing the number of murders by getting most abortion banned.
I agree that it’s hard to see a purely ethical basis for rape or incest exceptions.
Well, that’s an honest answer.
And that’s the problem, because the entire basis of banning abortion in the first place is predicated on ethics. The exceptions destroy the premise and the credibility of those supporting it.
And so you end up enabling rapists to force their victims to have their babies. Because make no mistake – that’s what you’re doing. And it’s fucking evil. You’re trampling all over the woman’s right to control her body, forcing her into a lifetime of servitude to her rapist by proxy. You are not a good person. Yeah, you can say 'abortion is murder" all you like, but it does not change what you are doing, or make it any less evil.
That’s why moral people are willing to let the most affected party … the woman … make the decision.
So would it be okay to kill a baby after it is born simply because it was the child of a rapist? (A rhetorical question - I’m not saying I am anti-abortion).
Rape is irrelevant. Either you think abortion is murder - all the time - or you think a woman should have the choice without justifying it based on how she was impregnated - all the time.
Neither side of this debate should be talking about rape.
I sort of agree and sort of don’t. I think women should have full control of their bodies, which means deciding who or what gets to go in their bodies or stay inside, at all times, without exception (assuming they’re of sound mind). I think this right to full control of one’s body overrides the rights of anyone inside their body who is unwilling or unable to exit when the woman chooses, including fetuses.
Restricting this right (e.g. restricting abortion rights) is very bad, but a total restriction is worse than restrictions that allow for rape and incest exceptions; and restrictions only on 3rd trimester are better than only rape/incest exceptions; and so on. In my opinion, anyway.
All I’m saying is that anyone who thinks abortion should be restricted should oppose exceptions, otherwise they are hypocrites. Your position is a political compromise based on desperation - you’d fight against all restrictions if you could. Your position is not inconsistent because you also don’t talk about rape. You’d only consider it if you had no other choice.
Only if you assume that a political compromise someone is willing to accept (or even propose in the first place) somehow must align perfectly with their ideal moral solution. Did people who claimed they wanted single payer health care but voted for Obamacare because it was the best compromise feasibly reachable reveal themselves as hypocrites?
A lot of Americans, myself included, think it depends on the development of the fetus. Ending the division of a glob of cells is not murder. Ending the life of something that is basically just a smaller version of a baby is. I’m fine with first trimester abortions but after that I think it should be restricted.
As for a woman’s body, I think we should all agree that at the point of viability the baby can be removed alive. Women have a right to evict unwanted babies from their bodies, but they do not have the right to see it killed after it’s gone. Once it’s gone, it’s none of their business to put it bluntly.
President Obama’s budget is a 9% spending hike over last year’s actual spending:
Last years’ numbers:
Why did you post that in this thread instead of somewhere in MPSIMS?
I’m saying it’s a tough moral dilemma either way and we shouldn’t have busybodies imposing their tidy little just-so solutions on the central party, i.e., the pregnant woman.
Second trimester feti are still typically not viable without heroic measures. Really, if you want to restrict pregnancy termination in a fair enough way, you would have to draw the line at viability. The most important issue is that the decision to terminate can be a difficult one: the woman must first be aware that she is carrying (as in the case of my aunt who was five months along before she was certain she was pregnant), then, once she is certain, she should be given a decent amount of time to make a decision.
As far as the original post on this particular subtopic, we must be careful about using “humanizing”. In the commercial in question, I am not seeing the fetus being “humanized” any more than your cocker spaniel or your parrot or iguana. It is displaying behavior that is relatively basic, that any given critter might display. That a fetus reacts or feels pain does not really elevate its existence above your garden variety squirrel or newt.
The problem there is that advancing technology will eventually create an artificial womb that pushes viability back to conception.
Militant atheist though I am, I think that Genesis got this one right. It says that Adam, although possessing a fully formed adult body, became a “living soul” only when the breath of life went into his nostrils.
Accordingly, IMO the cutoff should be when the removed fetus is capable of breathing on its own. AFAIK, that’s after five months, since the youngest surviving premie was 21 weeks, and was respirated and fed artificially.
ETA: Right-to-Lifers, suppose there WAS technology that allowed aborted fetuses to survive, no matter how young. Would you be willing to pay more taxes to pay for this very expensive treatment? It would probably come to billions a year in the US alone.
And then what happens to them after they’re out of danger?
Because a 9% increase in spending is a very dumb liberal idea.