I daresay the question answers itself - how could it be less reasonable than something that is ridiculous?
Your gotcha is laid out quite clearly in the post you quoted, right after the associated colon.
Becuase it is based on the univerally acnowledged fact that the woman’s organs are being used by the fetus up to that point, and the less-universally-acnowledged fact that the woman has a strong right to control what is done with those organs.
Probably because it’s common knowledge. Personally I feel that your claim to the contrary is the more outrageous, and thus the burden of proof of it is on your shoulders.
I’m talking about elective abortions after viability. I;'ve seen about half a dozen posts all claiming that THIS NEVER HAPPENS and I have yet to see a cite.
Which goalpost you’re talking about at any given moment moves rather a lot.
I’ve addressed this repeatedly, and so have other posters. After birth, you have something with an independent existence. After birth there is no pregnancy to put the mother’s health at risk. After birth there is no longer a potential conflict between their rights: they’re both individuals with separate rights. Hell, “my body my choice” no longer applies because it’s not in her body anymore. It doesn’t get much more basic than that.
Personally I don’t care.
No, I don’t agree with it.
And we’ve now come full circle again. The first two posts of this thread included the following:
Let me put it clearly: If, one hour after the baby is born, the law can compel you to breastfeed your baby to keep it alive (if that’s the only way for it to stay alive), then, one hour before it is born, the law should be able to compel you wait one hour and give birth in order to keep it alive. (If of course, the birth does not endanger the life of the mother)
Yes, these are extremely hypothetical and almost zero-probability events, but the fact of the matter is that if we are to have principles guiding our laws (and not having laws that tell us to do stuff “just because”) then it is important to explore the “corner cases” resulting from these principles.
From a practical standpoint, these extremes don’t matter, but neither does this entire discussion. Abortion in the US is legal, it occurs in different trimesters with decreasing frequency, and this is a practical state of affairs and will continue no matter what we say here.
Let’s assume it does on occasion happen.
My follow-up question is: So?
The law can indeed compel you to wait. Heck, it can prevent you from getting an abortion entirely, if so written! (It currently isn’t, but it could.) The law can compel a lot of things. It’s worth noting that it doesn currently compel the latter scenario you present, though.
If instead of what you said, you meant something else about what morality or common decency or that sort of thing should be doing, that’s of course different. Morality and common decency dictate that we should allow the woman to choose, and that the woman should (probably, in many circumstances) choose to just wait the hour. By her own discretion. In many circumstances.
I don’t agree that morality and common decency dictate that (in this wait-one-hour-for-birth case)
Why not?
Well, morality and “common decency” are relative, so there is no way to tell what morality would dictate in this case unless we polled people in one country, so we can get an idea of what morality would dictate in that country.
My guess, for the US of today, is that most people would say that the woman should just wait the one hour and give birth (again, if it doesn’t endanger her life), and would not be inclined to give her the option to choose to cut it up and vacuum it out if it is that close to birth.
I don’t have a cite, of course, but neither do you, which is why you just can’t declare what morality and common decency dictate in this case.
(One indicator of what people might say in this case, is the fact that the “late term abortion” meme has traction with people, and as much as pro-choice people hate that term and the campaign around it, people do seem to be bothered by the imagery it invokes, and want to put legal measures to prevent it)
Cite? Could be, but it’s the first I’m hearing of it.
Seriously. Bored now. Wanna go get drunk and screw? I’ve already made an appointment with Planned Parenthood in May, just in case.
Still waiting for a legal opinion on this. That’s why I said “if the law can compel you…”
So in other words, if I’m reading you right, we can agree that neither of us is qualified to decide what morality and common decency dictate in this case.
I agree. However, somebody has to make the determination in this case, obviously enough - and obviously the person with the closest personal interest in this case, that is capable of voicing an opinion, is the woman. So thus, logically, the final decision will fall to…
…wait for it…
…her doctor, who will stall for an hour.
Jeez louise. You leave a thread alone for five minutes…
As I said in response to your draft analogy, you’re conflating two senses of the word “use”. One refers to altering or destroying the object in question; the other refers to employing the object as a tool. Think of it this way: I can use a log for woodchips, or I can use it as a doorstop. Society sometimes overrides our right not to be “used” as a doorstop; it never, as far as I know, overrides our right not to be “used” for woodchips. Or to put it back in human terms, society sometimes compels us to do something or be somewhere against our will, but it steadfastly refuses to compel us to offer up our body parts.
Not to put too fine a point on it: breastfeeding is the “doorstop” sense of “use”. Being pregnant is the “woodchips” sense. To say breastfeeding is “just like” being pregnant because in both cases you’re providing nutrients is ridiculous.
Ah, yes. The Grapes of Wrath scenario. I don’t know what the law would say about it, either. If she could be compelled to share her food if he could chew (and I’m not sure she could), then I could see a case being made that she could also be compelled to share her breastmilk. Because again, it’s breastmilk, not part of her body, not something she needs to survive, not even something her body can use. And so to answer your initial question, I certainly feel she could be compelled to breastfeed her baby. She would be withholding food from it, plain and simple, and to provide that food would not alter her physical integrity in any way. It’s not like she’s being asked to feed it chunks of her flesh.
I would respond: Since the law cannot compel you to donate an organ, or even just your blood, to your baby to keep it alive one hour after it is born, then, one hour before it is born, it should not be able to compel you to donate a whole host of organs and tissues in order to keep it alive.
But the important point that I think is being missed here is that, if a woman were to choose to end her pregnancy one hour before it’s born (and is somehow not already in active labor), I am certain it would be done by inducing labor, not an abortion, not least because that would be far and away the safest course of action. All this talk about abortion of viable fetuses has me picturing women gleefully cackling as the doctor chops up and sucks out a chubby, healthy, full-term infant. And these women? They’re all made of straw. It’s not like the doctor says, “We can either deliver or abort; which do you prefer?”
And DirkGntly, I messed up the quote, but suffice it to say, I already addressed your objections upthread. I’m perfectly willing to say that even if you offer your body as life support to someone else, you still have the right to rescind that offer later. Having the right to choose how your body is used is not a one-time-only deal.
I’m okay with this. Actually, I figure any competent doctor hearing a woman demanding an abortion within an hour of delivering will figure (not unjustly) that the pain and discomfort are motivating her to say something she doesn’t really mean. It may seem a touch patronizing, but so be it.
Yep. I agree. I notice the arguments keep shifting from third to second trimester. I would only add that Polaris is playing tricky too with the “breastfeeding a baby in the cabin” and insisting on the one day before birth scenarios. Goalposts flying all over the place.
Oh and now I see that DirkGntly has sanctified the Potential for Personhood. I see no reason to place the importance for a potential to become a person above the right of a woman to her own body. Hell, I see no reason to find the a potential to become a person important or interesting unless I was trying to have a baby or I knew someone was trying to have a baby. To put some kind of moral or philosophical importance on this is very strange to me.
The quotes are screwing up for some reason so I’ll just make two comments to Damuri Ajashi. First you make a claim that Der Trihs advocates killing newborns based on a single linked post from another thread. The post itself does not suggest that he advocates killing newborns. It needs context of the discussion. This is not useful for an honest discussion (let alone relevant since you were trying to use it as some sort of strawman to suggest that pro-choice people are for killing babies or that newborns and fetuses are EXACTLY the same). Second, you stated that the woman’s body is the only argument for all pro-choice supporters. This is clearly not true. In this thread, the only one who appears to be in that camp is DianaG. Even Heart of Dorkness admitted to feeling uncomfortable about very late term abortions but has decided that letting the woman decide instead of the fricking Department of Justice is the better way to go.
So again, this thread is even worse than some of the pit threads on this subject. It is becoming a dishonest and wasteful discussion.
Well, not quite.
I’ll cop to this as well - with the note that my motivation is not a lack of concern for nearly-born-babies, but instead because I think it’s attempting to address a problem that doesn’t exist. As I said earler, you might as well make a law against a man on foot running faster than 75mph - it’s just not a problem that happens enough to need correcting. It only gets mentioned as part of moving goalpost or otherwise fallacious arguments anyway.
I’ll add that prior to this thread, I would separate out late-term abortions for special treatment, only allowing them in the case of medical necessity or the like. But this thread has shown me the light - it’s a ‘solution’ in search of a justification, and not something worth complicating the law more for.
Red herring since nobody aborts a fetus anywhere near birth except for medical reasons which render the issue moot.