I would indeed oppose any restiction such as this, since it limits an adult’s option to make a personal decision that harms/affects no other human being. Of course, abortion doesn’t fall into that category.
Your arguement fails on two points:
First, bone marrow, a kidney, a lung, or any other lung will not given any environment become a human being. A fetus, allowed to progress naturally will.
Second, there is a big difference between “allowing someone to die” and killing them. If you choose to allow your 8 year to die because you refuse to give them some bone marrow it is NOT because you have a right to your body as much as the government can not compell you to help someone. If on the other hand you take action (or authorize someone to do so on your behalf) to kill another Person you are committind murder.
Your position is simply that as long as the fetus is inside the woman, it is “her body” and therefore her dominion. Others would disagree.
I stand by my original answer to the OP.
i fail to see where the issue of a woman having an abortion affects you to the point where you as a man must stop me legally from having that choice in my life. If you think it is wrong, that’s fine. You have a right to your opinion and to your choice. Don’t have one or if your male marry a woman who would. God will sort me out if he thinks i have done the wrong thing.
Try looking a little harder. If you kill your toddler, it likely affects me not at all. That is not grounds for making it legal, don’t you agree?
Pretty much exactly the same argument that many southern slave owners said to northern folks who didn’t own slaves.
Why should non slave owners care about what slave owners do…if they don’t like slavery, then don’t own one.
This is why no one wins these arguements. I don’t think one can logically compare the two. Others disagree. The legal and social gray areas one runs into when one considers this problem is what makes it so hard.
For example, last year my mother started a sexual relationship with a guy who lied to her. He told her he was infertile but she ended up pregnant. She, a 42 year old woman, should have had this child? Despite all this? No. This situation was bad bad bad from all sides. No one should be brought into that, and that comes from someone who was born into a relativley bad situation myself. BobCos, Beagledave? What should my mother have done? (Not being snarky, genuienly want to know)
P.S. Sorry I can’t spell
I’ve read a lot of abortion debates, mostly here on the Straight Dope, that get pretty heated, and I think that the reason is because people on the pro-choice side see their opponents as trying to outlaw all forms of contriception, and people on the pro-life side see their opponents wanting to pull one-week-from-their-due-date babies halfway out of their mothers and lop their heads off. I think that the reality is that most people are somewhere in the middle. (I personally am with the ‘OK for the first trimester, after that only for extreme circumstances’ crowd (although who determines what is extreme enough? Therein lies the rub.))
As a hijack (and a hint for whoever wants to do it), I’ve always wanted to make a web page where people could vote for where they personally think that the line should be drawn. There would be several dozen options, ranging from abstinance, no contraceptives, abortion pill, 1 week, etc., on one end, to the extremes of 1 week before birth, 1 week old*, 1 month old, 1 year old, etc., at the other end, with everything in the middle. (Having the options for such extremes is necessary to get every viewpoint. However, on second thought, going all the way to so many years after birth will probably only invite jokers.) People could vote, and see results. I imagine the results would form a bell curve that peaks around 3-5 months, but it would be interesting to see.
Another note, in retrospect, I think that there would have to be 2 different votes per person: 1 assuming that the baby is healthy, and another assuming that there is a problem with the baby.
I don’t have a web site, or the expertise to do this, so if anybody wants to do this, please let me know. I’d like to see the results.
- Is there any reason why killing a 1-week old child who was born 2 weeks premature is worse than aborting a child in the 40th week of pregnancy? Is there something about passing completely through the birth canal (or stomach) that automatically confers the right to live that an unborn child doesn’t have? (And now, upon reading more of the thread, I see where JamesCarroll answers this in regards to the 14th amendment.)
Well, since you asked, she should have accepted the fact that an innocent human life depended upon her support and protection, despite the fact that she may have strongly preferred that this responsibility not exist.
For the third time, JamesCarroll cited the portion of the 14th Amendment that shows that U.S. citizenship is bestowed only upon those born or naturalized in the U.S., a notion that is beyond dispute. This does not, NOT, NOT mean that only those born, or only U.S. citizens, have rights or that only those same people are granted legal protection. We cannot kill non-citizens with impunity, for example. The 14th Amendment cite provided clarifies this thread’s argument not at all. OK?
I wasn’t saying that his answer was necessarily correct, just trying to circumvent the inevitable posts about this. Too late…
I just don’t understand why termination is considered a better choice than adoption. Very rarely is abortion about the health of a mother. It’s more typically inconvenient or financially unfeasable. Why not turn a bad situation into a wonderful gift? I am obviously a hard core pro-lifer and have a tough time understanding why this solution isn’t used more often. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do with their body(singular), but when there are additional lives involved, yes I wish I could.
To help IWLN understand:
1.) I don’t think that most people would consider carrying a child to term, delivering it, and giving it up for adoption more convenient or financially feasable than having an abortion as soon as they find out that they are pregnant.
2.) Is the demand for children to adopt greater than the supply? (I don’t have stats handy. Sorry for sounding crude using market terms, but if there are more children waiting for adoption than there are parents willing to adopt them, (As I suspect is the case) then it’s not a gift many people want.
3.) (In my opinion) the crux of the debate is when the fetus becomes another life. People have differing opinions on this.
Well this has been a very interesting read. And I have to say that EVERYONE is pretty convincing.
I suppose I should present my personal view: that abortion should be allowed at any point for any reason unless the doctor feels that the fetus can survive outside the womb, in which case it should be delivered and put up for adoption. For me, the whole “when is a fetus considered a human” debate is clear cut. And stop with the “kill your baby by abandoning it on the side of the road” debate, that is stupid. When people say “survive outside the womb” they do not mean that the baby can survive on its own. They are simply referring to basic survival such as breathing and digestion of food and such.
Yes, there may be some people who would abuse this right and offend the morality of the majority by aborting very late term pregnancies. But there are many people who do horrible things to children, and those people live outside of what most people (pro-life OR pro-choice) consider to be a moral life. We as a society cannot remove all deviants, or control them. Oppressing the majority to control a minority is not a good solution.
So. To my point. I think that this issue has two sides: a moral debate, and a legislative one. As far as the moral side goes, well, its like religion. You may think you are 100% right, but someone out there disagrees with you 100%. We all know that governments are totally impotent when it comes to telling people what their religion should be. I think the abortion issue is similar. So what is left is a regulatory issue. To use the religious angle, governments are most successful when the laws they pass do not regulate the religions themselves, but behaviors such as murder, child abuse, etc.
So, to take a very libertarian attitude, I think we are all better off if the government stays out of it at this point. Let morality and values dictate the decisions that women are going to make. Protect the right for every woman to educate herself about ALL of her choices. Protect the rights of doctors to provide the services that women are asking for. And leave it at that. That puts me in the staunch pro-choice camp, but what I am really saying is that our government tries to control us too much! Let freedom and liberty be a reality for all americans, and instead of legislating morality, allow the people (and the free market) to decide for themselves.
It’s pretty simple, I think.
One side of the debate feels that a woman should have the right to control what happens to her body in all cases, period. Most people who take this side would also agree that killing unborn children is not necessarily a good thing, but the right of a woman to control her own body takes precedence over any rights the unborn child may have. Those who agree with this side focus exclusively on the right of the woman, calling themselves “pro-choice,” and ignore the issue of the rights of the unborn child.
The other side of the debate feels that unborn children are human beings and should not be killed, period. Most people who take this side would also agree that a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her body, but the rights of the unborn child take precedence. Those who agree with this side focus exclusively on the right of the unborn child, calling themselves “pro-life,” and ignore the issue of the rights of the woman.
It’s really not an either/or debate at all. If you’re pro-choice, you’re not necessarily anti-life, and if you’re pro-life, you’re not necessarily anti-choice. Somebody can easily be both pro-choice and pro-life. The question is simply a matter of which side you think deserves precedence.
The problem comes when people either try to force an exclusive “anti-” label on the other side, or else refuse to acknowledge that their own position can, in fact, directly impact the other side. Pro-choice and pro-life are not polar opposites, but they can only coexist if each side is willing to make concessions to the other.
Barry
Recall my point: settling the question of whether or not the fetus is a person will not end all debate on abortion. You may disagree with the moral assumptions of that argument, but it does show this point: there are arguement which do not rely on the moral status of the fetus.
Regarding your two objections, the first seems to stem from a misunderstanding of the arguement. The donated material is not the life in question, the life of the other person is in question. Recall the argument:
You, and you alone, have the capacity to save your 8 yo child’s life by donating your bone marrow. Currently, you can not be strapped down and forced to donate. I find this to be a morally defensible (do you agree?). Hell, you can’t even be fored to donate tissue after death, much less when you’re alive.
This flys in the face of an abortion ban, however. It would force pregnant women to use their body to support another. Even if you consider the fetus to be a person, it is inconsistant with the above position.
Regarding your second objection, why do you consider abortion active, rather than passive, killing? If you could show that some abortifacient worked by denying the fetus with a supply of blood from the mother, is it morally different from another abortifacient which inhibited the fetal uptake of oxygen (the former being passive killing, the former active**)? I disagree that there is a significant moral distinction between active and passive killing in the case of abortion.
**footnote: active and passive methods paralleling the end-of-life case. Denial of life-preserving items–food, water, drugs, etc.–is considered passive.