Where could we compromise? You need a convenient date to please the pro-choicers, and a life-beginning biological event to please the pro-lifers.
Here are at least some of the possible abortion cut-off points ranging from rabid pro-life to rabid pro-choice:
Conception (sperm contacts egg);
Conception (last DNA pair matches up to produce a complete set of totally new human DNA);
Cell differentiation;
End of first trimester;
Sufficient brain development;
Viability outside the womb;
End of second trimester;
Partial passage through birth canal;
Complete passage through birth canal.
Any others?
Not sure when sufficient brain development (5) would be considered to have occurred or how that could be tested.
Viability (6) changes with technology, and will inevitably equal the time of conception.
Trimester borders (4 and 7) seem a little arbitrary and without reason.
Partial birth (8) and birth (9) involve the physical location of the fetus, which seems silly as a definition of life to your average prolifer.
Conception (1 and 2) seems silly to your average pro-choicer since we are still talking about a “mass of cells” likened to a tumor (the different, complete set of human DNA notwithstanding).
At any rate, 1, 2, 8 and 9 are hardly compromise positions.
That leaves 3-7, with cell differentiation being a possible candidate. I have no idea when that occurs, but I suspect that it occurs too early for pro-choicers to be happy with that as a potential compromise, as they need a convenient date to allow the mother sufficient time to exercise her rights to keep herself free from the responsibilities of child birth.
Why not just put it square at the halfway point? Closer to conception than birth - abortion permissible. Closer to birth than conception, not. Isn’t halfway a reasonable “point of no return?”
Nonny “not really naive enough to think it’s that simple” Mouse
I just checked out Sagan’s article. Thanks for attracting my attention to it, Dragline.
Interesting stuff. He does indeed draw the line at the existence of brain cells and linkages sufficient for thought, which according to him, occurs around the 6th month. He also states that viability (primarily the ability to breathe) occurs earlier, so the Roe v. Wade approximation of viability is more conservative (which may be good), but flawed because thought is what differentiates us from the animals, not breathing. Interesting stuff.
Of course, if a viable fetus is born before it can think, and therefore isn’t human life, doesn’t Sagan’s theory open the door for some true barbarity?
At any rate, you have to give him credit for analyzing the issue at something less than a yell, which is too infrequently done, IMO.
I wouldn’t neccessarily have opposed a ban on ‘partial birth’ abortions if the legislation had been proposed in the spirit of compromise, which it certainly was not. If ending that procedure is really that important to pro-lifers, they should back off on their other afforts against abortion. Instead, the bill could be characterized as ‘legislative harrassment’ designed to portray its opponenets as ‘extremists’, to chip away at abortion rights, and to give a morale-boosting victory to pro-lifers.
So the question pro-choicers should ask is, “Why should we compromise with them if they have no intention of compromising with us?”
Spiritual Survivor I’m not 100% sure what it is that you’re advocating. It seems that you think the only time people should engage in sex is when they actively want to have a child. Is this correct ?
FWIW, I don’t think a compromise is possible, simply because there are extremists on both sides who won’t budge on their positions. If we ignore the extremists, there may be a position that a ‘majority’ of pro-life and pro-choice people can agree on, but I doubt that very much.
I’d even grant “viability” if I never had to hear another word about life begins at conception. But if that life at conception is sacred, there is not compromise. I understand that.
My post clearly stated that if we cannot come up with a reason for a law other than a moral one, there should be no law. Murder violates the rights of the person being murdered. It is illegal for that reason. The fact that some people consider it to be “wrong” is irrelevant. Rape, slavery, and assault all have the same reasoning for laws behind them. A law about abortion should be based solely on whether or not a fetus has rights. The choice for an individual to not have an abortion can be a moral one, but the law should not be based on morality.
I daresay that morality is the only thing that we can ultimately legislate. If the law is not based on principles of right and wrong, however indirectly, then they are arbitrary and capricious. Any just law must be rooted in a sense of right and wrong; otherwise, it has no foundation other than someone’s arbitrary preference.
Why is murder a crime? Is it merely for pragmatic reasons? No, because the law recognizes human life as a fundamental right – something that intrinsically deserves protection. If there were nothing wrong with murdering another human, then the law would have no basis for prohibiting this act.
Even the speed limit and jaywalking laws are rooted in right and wrong – namely, the need to avoid putting other people in danger. Now, one might protest the justfulness or implementation of a particular law, but the motivation behind such laws is still a matter of right and wrong.
I think this betrays a serious inconsistency in your claims. You are clearly divorcing morality from the concept of human rights. This is a false dichotomy. Human rights exist because it is immoral to violate those rights.
You say that rights should be protected. I ask you, WHY? If there is nothing wrong with violating those rights, then why do we even bother to protect them?
A careless thinker might say, “Well, bad things happen when we violate those rights.” That kind of shallow thinking does not hold up, though. There are a host of problems that can be solved if an abused woman were to murder her rapist. Heck, the world might even be better off as a result. Nevertheless, it would be WRONG to violate the rapist’s most fundamental right, despite the tremendous good that may result.
Certain behaviors have to be restricted if we are going to cram 270 million people into a plot of land the size of America and not have people constantly fear for their safety. Individuals can decide what is “right” and what is “wrong” according to their own moral code. The government only needs to restrict behaviors that would impede the smoothness with which society flows.
Ah, but you’re dodging the question. WHY should you not have people constantly fear for their safety? Why not have a totalitarian state instead? Is it because it’s WRONG to oppress these people?
According to what standards? Society flowed quite smoothly when slavery was enacted. Society also flows quite smoothly in nations where freedom of worship is restricted. In fact, it would arguably flow more smoothly if parents had the right to kill mentally retarded or otherwise disabled children, thereby freeing society from the need to support these individuals. In fact, many laws seem to impede the smooth flow of society, insofar as they complicate our economic, financial, legal and legislative systems.
Quite simply, laws are not enacted merely to make society smoother. Quite the opposite, in many cases. This is why we have a Department of Justice, rather than a Department for Making Society Go Smoothly.
It is worth making the distinction between “flowing smoothly” and “moral laws” as it does exist. It is surely not “good” to drive on the left or right side of the road, but it is going to make things flow smoothly if we impose a standard.
Making a distinction between moral lws and arbitrary ones seems crucial. I can think of no general criteria.
I don’t think that supports your case. WHY should we impose a standard? WHY should we make things flow smoothly? We impose driving conventions because of the moral imperative to avoid harming or hindering other people.
That’s the problem with trying to avoid morality in legislation. Any just law is ultimately founded on some notion of right and wrong. The exact foundation may not be obvious, but it is there; after all, without such a foundation, it can hardly be considered just.
BTW, just in case it’s not clear… there’s no moral imperative which says that we must drive on the left side of the road, as opposed to the right. However, the selection of a standard is morally justified, in order to protect the safety of innocents. In this situation, the particulars of a law (e.g. choosing between the left and right sides) may not be dictated by morality, but the principles of that law still are.
I define what is appropriate by how I interpret the Constitution. The rights of the government are extremely limited the way I interpret the Constitution. When the government makes a moral law, it infringes upon a right. I see nothing wrong with totalitarian states, but America is not meant to be one of them simply because our Constitution says so.
And personally I see no reason why people should not have to constantly fear for their safety. Being afraid is a fault with the scared person not the person doing the scaring. People can learn to overcome any fear, but most never even try. It is because of the fact that most never even try that we have a system that caters to these people. They make up the majority and have the largest voice. They would rather have no murders around than get over their fear of death.
As for the “wrongness” of oppression, the government should not oppress because the Constitution says so. People that choose to live in this country do so under the assumption that what it says in that document is true. If they prefer a system of oppression, they can choose to live in a country that will provide it. When it comes to individuals causing oppression, I consider that a right. People have the right to be as rude and obnoxious as they wish and the government should not interfere. If murder had not been made illegal (i.e. we had not removed fear from society) we could always kill the people that we found too obnoxious. Allowing people to live without fear is the same thing that made them feel bold enough to oppress others. If there were no laws regulating either behavior, fear would keep people in check (e.g. imagine how much less likely you would be to insult a person if you had to constantly worry whether he would kill you for it).
You are right, many laws impede the smoothness with which society flows. These laws have come about because of the increasing acceptance of morality in laws. Slavery, drug use, prostitution, the killing of children by their parents, these would all allow society to flow more smoothly and I support the repeal of any laws on the subjects. I would not partake in them for my own reasons, but see no reason why the government must make such moral choices for everyone. More and more laws are passed each year and few are ever repealed. We slowly lose more and more freedom so that we can have safety and a morally sound society instead. But the fact that morals can be opposed means that no society will ever be morally sound for everyone. To impose a law enforcing the morality of one group is to oppress another group. In America oppression is not what the government stands for.
My original point was that no law should exist solely on moral grounds. If a law has a non-moral function then it has a reason for existing even if has a moral function as well. That does not mean I will agree with that law, but it is easier to accept.
And since you have asked “Why?” many times in your posts, I think it is important to point out that there is no good reason for anything. When you ask why to something and then ask why to the answer and then ask why to that answer and so on, you will always reach a point where there is no good answer. All decisions are arbitrary. In order to care about anything at all, you have to make an arbitrary decision at some point. That is why all opinions are worthy of taking into consideration and why there are no right or wrong opinions.
I notice that you’re still dodging the point. HOW can a just law have a foundation other than what’s right or wrong? You keep asserting that this should not be the sole foundation, as though this were sufficient to prove that point.
In fact, your own statement,
is both ludicruous AND a tacit admission that your claim is indefensible. Moreover, it is self-refuting. If there is no good reason for antyhing, then there is no good reason behind your argument that laws should not be based on morality. What’s worse, it also means that there is no good reason for your claim that there is no good reason for anything!
Once again, note that I’m asking WHY the law must protect individual rights, apart from moral considerations. Merely asserting that it should does nothing to answer that question – and does nothing to defend your claim that the law should not be based on moral rules.
After asking the why question to everything I encountered including the answers to the previous questions I asked myself, I concluded that there was no good reason for anything. You will always reach a point where you can not come up with an answer to the Why question without saying something stupid like, “Just because” or “Because God said so.” Those are not real reasons but just dead ends. Let me ask you this, when all species on earth are extinct, what will matter? Will any of the things that we fight so hard for still be making a difference at that point? Everything we debate about has only temporary significance and will not matter in the long run. It only took a short time after concluding this for life to become extremely dull. Life is very boring when you care about nothing, so I decided to make a few arbitrary decisions so that I would have something to care about. I took a copy of the Constitution and interpreted it the way that I felt was appropriate. That is now what I fight for. I know it doesn’t matter in the long run, but it gives me something to do. Honestly, how long is the U.S.A. even going to be a country? Odds are it will only be a matter of a few hundred to a few thousand years before this country falls and then everything I will have fought for will make no difference. That is why nothing matters.
As for “right” and “wrong” I define those as feelings. People feel that something is right or wrong and frequently do not solely think that something is right or wrong. I trust decisions made devoid of emotion and anytime a person feels that something is right or wrong, they are using emotion rather than pure thought. Now I am probably overanalyzing these two words, but that is the way I view them. I consider “right” and “wrong” and “good” and “evil” to be opinions formed through the fallacy of emotion. For that reason, I do not take them seriously. A law can be based on something other than “right” or “wrong” if it is made by a cold-hearted government machine that is devoid of emotion. Individual rights should be protected because the Constitution says so. The Constitution is a document and therefore has no emotions. It is not right or wrong, it just is. It may have been formed by people that believed in right and wrong, but those people are now dead and the Constitution still exists. This country was formed around that document and thus that document should be followed whether it is “right” or “wrong”.
I may be foolish trying to step into Procacious and JThunder’s dogfight, but I think the OP raises an interesting point. I do think there are common goals that pro-choice and pro-life people can work together on. It seems that most pro-choice people support women’s rights to abortions, while recognizing that it can be a painful and very difficult choice. Women don’t have abortions for shits and giggles, y’know. And it seems that most pro-life people, while finding abortion repugnant, recognize that unintended pregnancies are a common occurence and that most people are going to have sex before marriage/just for fun/without wanting to get pregnant, however much pro-lifers wish that wasn’t the case.
I think that both sides could work towards researching better birth control methods and making effective birth control cheaper and more widely available. Demanding that insurance companies cover the Pill, for example.
I also think that both sides could work on making adoption a more attractive choice. They could provide counselling services for birth mothers and fathers who choose to give their babies up for adoption, encourage childless couples to consider adoption as an alternative to infertility treatments, etc. Both sides could work on reforming the system so that children actually get placed with loving families, rather than languishing in group homes or institutions. There could be a special emphasis on counselling parents who are willing to adopt children of another race. (Healthy white babies go fast, but minority children have a much harder time getting adopted.)
Neither of these suggestions would be a panacea, but I do think they could be a starting point.
Maybe this is a little too simplistic for Procacious & JThunder, but laws are pretty much made when one persons rights have the possibility of infringing on anothers. Which is why the two sides of the issue can never really meet. For Pro-Choicers, abortion does not infringe on anyone’s rights, because the fetus is not a person yet, so they have no rights. Laws are made to protect people, so it’s not a matter of whether the law is based on morality, or what is right and wrong, but whether or not their exists someone to protect. For Pro-Lifers, abortion infringes on the fetuses life because the fetus is a person and has rights. I think you guys are now just arguing for the sake of arguing and have left the actual issue at hand in the dust.
Yeah, we are pretty much just arguing for the sake or arguing. I only kept replying because he kept asking me questions. And I agree that many laws are designed to protect people’s rights, but sadly a large number of laws infringe on one person’s right in order to protect another’s (e.g. if a fetus was considered to have rights, then no matter which way the law swings either the mother’s rights or the fetus’s rights will be violated). It is often hard to know who’s rights should take precedence.