Are you serious? It’s not murder when someone dies of natural causes. I’m shocked that you don’t understand that. Where is the outcry from you about the fact that every single person on the planet is going to die?
Our local independent newspaper SN&R is running a (somewhat long) story now about how anti-abortionists are gradually gaining ground and making access more difficult, leading to women even in CA taking these sorts of risks:
Right to Lose: How anti-abortionists are winning
More than 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a woman’s right to choose, that right is being challenged in great swaths of the country. California remains a progressive holdout, but that doesn’t mean it’s a reproductive-rights utopia. It’s more like an outpost, where the barriers are nuanced and disproportionately insurmountable to the state’s impoverished and socially vulnerable. California isn’t exempt from potential encroachment if a Republican reclaims the White House next year, either.
It goes on to compare California to Texas - see the statistics graphic:
*% of counties without a known abortion provider 2011:
[ul]
[li]CA - 21[/li][li]TX - 92[/li][li]US - 87[/li][/ul]
% of women aged 15-44 living in a county without a known abortion provider 2011:
[ul]
[li]CA - .01[/li][li]TX - 31[/li][li]US - 34[/li][/ul]*
Access to information is becoming as big an issue as access to care and services.
I wouldn’t argue with that.
First of all, it’s not my opinion. But secondly, if you’d prefer to say that the folks against abortion think it SHOULD BE murder instead of that it IS murder, that’s fine. Doesn’t change the substance of the argument.
The data comes from a single online survey, relatively small sample size. 779 women answered the survey, 1.7% said they had induced abortion on themselves. That would mean about 14 women said so. From those 14 answers, the researchers deduce that at least 100,000 Texas women have induced their own abortions.
Further, the survey included women up to age 49, so the induced abortions may have been decades ago.
I prefer that abortion be legal up to a reasonable point in pregnancy, but am not going to go apoplectic about this particular survey. Texas Republican legislators wish to block abortions, and are using a ‘death by a thousand regulations’ approach since they can’t do so directly. Democrats and Republicans across the country use the same approach to try to ban everything from coal to guns to manure. I could get mad about every dumb regulation, but outrage fatigue would set in before too long. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason why regulations on abortion are more outrage-worthy than regulations on a hundred other things.
Are you serious? Of course I’m not suggesting that people who claim to believe that abortion is murder should also believe that death by natural causes is murder. It’s not, obviously.
I’m just pointing out that if someone sincerely believes that fully human personhood begins at the very moment of fertilization (which is the only logical justification for considering abortion to be morally equivalent to the murder of a born human person), then that belief would manifest itself in their concern for the survival of pre-born lives in general. Not just for the ones that are getting murdered (i.e., aborted).
But no such concern is shown. If, say, some epidemic or genetic abnormality were slaying 50-70% of born babies in their first three months of life, humanity would be rocked to its foundations in grief and dismay. We wouldn’t think it was no big deal just because the dead babies were victims of natural causes rather than murder.
The fact that vast numbers of all pre-born “babies” are destroyed by natural causes at an equally appalling rate before they even have a chance to be born, and that neither abortion-rights opponents or anybody else thinks this is even worth noticing, demonstrates that on the whole, neither abortion-rights opponents nor anybody else really considers pre-born human lives to be fully equivalent to born ones in importance and personhood.
This inconsistency is evident even in your own rhetorical question:
You are automatically assuming that the premature deaths of all these vast hordes of pre-born persons every year is no bigger deal than the fact that every born person is bound to die eventually.
As I noted above, if it were one-half to two-thirds of all born babies dying of natural causes before they’re out of their cradles, you better believe we’d all be outcrying our heads off. Even though it wouldn’t be murder, it would be a humanitarian disaster of unimaginably catastrophic proportions, and there’s no way that anybody who cares about human life would respond by just shrugging and saying “oh well, that’s natural causes for you”.
If “pro-life” advocates were really serious and consistent about regarding pre-born human life as fully equivalent in its importance to post-born human life, they would be similarly treating the premature annihilation of a huge percentage of all pre-born humans by natural causes as a humanitarian disaster of unimaginably catastrophic proportions.
But they don’t, do they?
The arguments being made in the OP are straightforward. What is happening in Texas is that access to abortion services has become so constrained by legalistic maneuvering that it has pretty much disappeared and become unavailable in practically the same way as if it was actually illegal. Which of course was the goal.
The position that “some people think abortion is murder” is completely moot. Some people think a lot of stupid things that I don’t agree with. Should I be forced to live my life according to those beliefs? We could – and we have – had many long pages of arguments about how to balance diverse beliefs about abortion with the law of the land, but the fact is that the Supreme Court has ruled on the most basic of those issues, and now it’s a done deal. What Texas is doing is an unconscionable legal run-around that violates the intent of those rulings.
If the OP wants to change the wording of his OP to align with that, he is welcome to come back into the thread and do so. But even that would be a silly argument to make since abortion, even under the newer rules, will not "pretty much disappear’ unless you ignore the availability of abortion in major cities like Houston, Dallas and Austin.
Where did I say that I thought you should? I don’t. But if your argument is that we should allow 1M abortion/year to take place because some much smaller number of women will die getting illegal abortions, then that’s not a very affective argument against the premise that abortion is murder.
That’s quite possible. But the SCOTUS did not say that abortion needs to be legal so that women don’t hurt themselves getting illegal abortions. They said that a woman has the right to have an abortion under certain conditions.
As for the particular law in Texas, the SCOTUS said that states cannot place an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions. If I had to bet, I’d put money on it being ruled unconstitutional. I wouldn’t call it a fact though. Not yet.
[Sorry, but that is simply argumentum ex silentio.
You do realize that he was offering this as a reason why abortion should be legal, right? As an argument in favour of abortion rights, ‘people need to be able to get abortions so that they don’t risk having unsafe ones’ is unconvincing, to say the least. As noted above, you could use that line of argument about any activity, including murder. I’m not interested in making the world safe for would-be murderers.
How accessible must abortion be? And do we apply the same criteria to other health care matters?
In this article from The Atlantic about women inducing their own abortions in Texas one woman from the Rio Grande Valley area of south Texas is quoted saying:
This makes the argument that long trips are burdensome, but makes the same point about short travel even across town. If a trip of 250 miles is too far, is a trip of 10 miles across town also too far?
And thus what rule can a judge craft about the availability of abortion? Need all women live within X miles of an abortion provider? What should X be? Must we have abortion clinics in large numbers like so many Starbucks or Subway to satisfy the access argument?
My brother had a serious health condition and had to travel 250 miles for treatment. Were his Constitutional rights violated due to limited access? I think not. And I think the limited access due to distance to travel is a losing argument on the abortion front.
Regulate abortion clinics in like fashion to other outpatient surgery centers performing medical procedures of comparable risk. Require licensed doctors and medical professionals. Require an acceptable standard of care in available personnel and equipment for the planned procedure and common complications. Require the facility to have a plan for what steps to take when things go wrong because if you stay in business long enough things will eventually go wrong. Inspect facilities in like manner to other medical facilities, no fear or favor.
And then see where providers choose to practice. No guarantees from government that there will be a provider in any particular community.
You’re misunderstanding the concept of argumentum ex silentio. It means arguing that something about which we have severely limited documentary evidence did not exist, merely on the grounds that there’s no surviving evidence that it did exist. Obviously, that kind of argument is a fallacy, because if the surviving documentary evidence is severely limited, there may have been supporting evidence that we no longer have access to.
But that reasoning doesn’t apply to the issue of what “pro-life” activists consider important. We have abundant, vast, unlimited evidence of what they consider important. We are living right here in the contemporary world with them, and there are mountains of documentation about what issues they are and are not trying to address legally, politically, socially, culturally, you name it.
And that abundant evidence makes it clear that there is no societal outpouring of concern for the constant massive destruction of non-aborted pre-born human lives on the part of abortion-rights opponents. It’s not that such an outpouring might be happening and we simply haven’t noticed it or don’t have enough evidence to determine whether it’s happening or not. It’s just not there.
Once again, the well-known facts are these:
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Massive percentages of all pre-born human lives are being prematurely destroyed by natural causes every year;
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If similarly massive percentages of all post-born infant human lives were being prematurely destroyed by natural causes every year, pro-life activists (and everybody else) would be unspeakably dismayed and frantically demanding action to address the catastrophe;
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No pro-life activists are expressing any noticeable dismay or demands for action whatsoever to address the equivalent catastrophe that’s actually occurring to pre-born human lives.
Ergo, it is clear that on the whole, pro-life activists (and everybody else) don’t actually consider the massive premature destruction of pre-born human lives by natural causes to be anywhere near as disastrous or tragic as similarly massive premature destruction of post-born human lives by natural causes would be.
Ergo, pro-life activists (and everybody else) don’t actually, sincerely and consistently believe that pre-born human lives from the very instant of fertilization are just as important and just as entitled to full personhood and human rights as post-born human lives are.
Millions of elderly grannies die every year, and yet I’ve always found the law unwilling to accept that cold, hard fact when I try to expedite the process. Foeti may die of natural causes rather often and it may be that it’s largely fruitless to try to prevent it; that’s not even beginning to be a good argument to justify killing off the ones that were doing just fine.
I think I’ll now retire to the gallery and just observe the usual process of bad-faith arguing, ad hominems, and talking past each other, that characterises just about every single abortion debate on the Internet. I pretty much lost my stomach for this discussion years ago.
I should have added “…and accessible to all” after “legal” in my OP. So there are many reasons that abortion must remain legal and accessible to all, but this is one of the most important.
It’s funny that the people who argue that Roe v Wade can’t tell states what they can/can’t do often also argue that marijuana is illegal on a federal level regardless of what the state’s think.
It’s a good argument against having fake-o regulations on abortion clinics under the guise of “protecting women’s health.” I can’t understand how these people can say that with a straight face.
Again, this is misleadingly conflating the inevitable end of life in old age with the premature deaths of infants. We human beings do not generally regard those two types of death-by-natural-causes as comparable in terms of what we should try to do about them.
[QUOTE=Your Great Darsh Face]
Foeti may die of natural causes rather often and it may be that it’s largely fruitless to try to prevent it
[/quote]
If half to two-thirds of all born infants were dying of natural causes before they were three months old, there’s no way you’d be taking that complacently fatalistic tone about it.
[QUOTE=Your Great Darsh Face]
that’s not even beginning to be a good argument to justify killing off the ones that were doing just fine.
[/quote]
I am not claiming that this argument morally justifies abortion. As a matter of fact, it does not. There are plenty of logically consistent positions to take against the deliberate killing of human fetuses, if you happen to be morally opposed to that practice.
What I am claiming, correctly, is that this argument invalidates the frequent claim that pro-life advocates are being logically consistent when they oppose abortion on the grounds that “abortion is murder”.
If you do not insist on treating pre-born human lives in ALL circumstances—not just abortion—with the same attention, reverence and concern that born human persons are entitled to, then you are not credible when you claim to believe that the pre-born are fully human persons endowed with the same human rights as other humans from the moment of conception onward.
And then bang goes your attempt to argue that abortion is murder in the same way that killing a born human person is murder.
If the pre-born are not really fully human persons—and the positions of pro-lifers about them outside of the abortion context clearly indicate that they don’t consistently regard them as fully human persons—then aborting the pre-born may still be considered morally wrong for various reasons, but it is not logically defensible to describe it as equivalent to murder.
[QUOTE=Your Great Darsh Face]
I think I’ll now retire to the gallery
[/QUOTE]
Suit yourself. Bye.
[QUOTE=Kimstu]
The fact that vast numbers of all pre-born “babies” are destroyed by natural causes at an equally appalling rate before they even have a chance to be born, and that neither abortion-rights opponents or anybody else thinks this is even worth noticing, demonstrates that on the whole, neither abortion-rights opponents nor anybody else really considers pre-born human lives to be fully equivalent to born ones in importance and personhood.
[/QUOTE]
I am also about as pro-abortion rights as you can get (second only to John Mace, of course :)), but this is a pathetic argument.
It assumes that a natural phenomenon is equivalent to human intervention, and further assumes that anti-abortion rights folk don’t support any research/spending on tackling conditions that result in infertility/spontaneous abortion. One might as well castigate NARAL for lack of attention to other women’s health issues in its fundraising letters.
Regarding the OP, whether or not tens of thousands of Texas women are starting to induce their own abortions :dubious:, it’s inevitable that this practice, as well as an increase in what used to be called back-alley abortionists will occur as state legislatures use phony health concerns in order to shut down licensed clinics providing abortion services. That is a legitimate health concern, given the horrific complications and death that can and often do ensue when safe, professional medical care is unavailable.
Along with a bit of extra skepticism about the numbers, this paragraph puts my main concern into better language than I did.
And just to be clear, I don’t for second think that these types of regulations are about protect the health of women. The folks making these laws want to limit abortion, any way they can. OTOH, if you accept that they really do believe abortion is murder, can you blame them?
And if you we want to immune their belief, I always thought the best argument is for those who support the exemption for rape or incest. If you think abortion is murder, then it shouldn’t matter. Now, not all pro-life folks support those exceptions-- and that would include Pope Francis and any Catholic who actually sticks to Catholic doctrine on the issue.
No, it doesn’t. It does not make any comparison at all between premature natural death and abortion in terms of moral status.
What it does is to point out that when people show wildly different levels of concern about premature natural death affecting the pre-born and the post-born, that undermines their claim that they consider the pre-born just as fully human as the post-born.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
[…] and further assumes that anti-abortion rights folk don’t support any research/spending on tackling conditions that result in infertility/spontaneous abortion.
[/quote]
No, it doesn’t. What it does is to point out that anti-abortion rights folk don’t treat the catastrophically huge rate of premature natural death among the pre-born with even a tiny amount of the concern that they’d show for such a catastrophically huge rate of premature natural death among born infants.
Again, that undermines the anti-abortion rights folk’s claim to consider the pre-born just as fully human as the post-born.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
One might as well castigate NARAL for lack of attention to other women’s health issues in its fundraising letters.
[/quote]
If natural causes were prematurely killing half to two-thirds of all women every year, and NARAL members as a body treated that catastrophe as completely unimportant and unworthy of remark next to the issue of whether the surviving women could get access to abortions, we’d be perfectly justified in castigating NARAL for not really caring about women’s health or well-being except as a pretext to push their own views on abortion legislation.
Jackmannii and John, I think you and perhaps some other posters here have so internalized our society’s longstanding view of embryos and fetuses as being fundamentally different from babies, in crucial aspects of their personhood and rights, that it’s just not registering with you how radical it is for someone to claim that embryos and fetuses and even fertilized ova should be considered exactly the same as babies as far as their personhood and rights are concerned.
We say to ourselves “Yeah sure, fertilized eggs die all the time, no big deal, why should we expect anti-abortion advocates to be more concerned about that than we are?” And the answer is: if you are literally claiming that fertilized ova are just as much full human persons as babies are, then the rate at which they’re being prematurely wiped out by natural causes IS a big deal.
Think again about that hypothetical of 50-70% of all babies dying of natural causes before they’re three months old. That would be a cataclysm, a humanitarian disaster. And that, without any hypothetical, is exactly what’s happening to 50-70% of all fertilized ova here and now in the real world.
Now, I personally don’t give too much of a shit about 50-70% of all fertilized ova being prematurely wiped out by natural causes (except naturally I feel sympathy for the parents if they wanted the ova to survive). But that’s because I don’t believe that fertilized ova are fully human persons with full human identity and rights beginning at the moment of conception.
If somebody claims to believe that fertilized ova do have that fully human status, then when I see that person quite obviously not giving any more of a shit than I do about the constant mass destruction of most of those fertilized ova from natural causes, I call bullshit.