Shhhh. I didn’t want to depress him.
Viability and personhood???
A baby one day after being born isn’t viable on its own, its still only survivable under the jurisdiction of its caregiver, I think it should be up to whoever is caring for the thing to determine whether it lives or not. If they want to get rid of it, it should be their choice.
Viability of child on its own probably doesn’t occur unti about age 5 or so, until then, if the caregiver wanted to terminate the child, they should have the choice.
I posted that, not heatmiserfl. If you are going to insist on responding to things from three pages back, the least you can do is attribute them to the correct person.
No. You’re the one asserting belief in a fantasy - you provide a cite that your belief is not as utterly absurd as it sounds. No woman would wait that long to abort - that’s an insane idea. So before anything else, give us a cite for your fantasy.
And no, the fact that there are 100 or 1000 or 10000 abortions late term abortions doesn’t help you, unless you can prove that at least one of them was elective rather than a medical necessity. So, CITE?
Well, you’re wrong. “Viability” is just a technological benchmark not a moral one, the point where technology can keep the preemie alive. That doesn’t make them a person; as I said earlier, at some point you’ll be able to pop the thing in an artificial womb from day one.
And they said that fetuses didn’t have them.
Again, it isn’t the job of other people to try to prove a negative. Why don’t you provide a cite that there ARE elective third term abortions?
I’ve corrected this quote in the original post and in begbert2’s post. I guess with nested quotes back online, there’s going to be a lot of this.
Meh. There’s always been a fair number of misattributions even without the nested quotes.
I think if anybody can find a cite either way they should go ahead and post it. Even if there are 1,000 of these procedures a year and not 100, it’s not common and given the personal nature of the decision to have an abortion and the controversial nature of late term abortions I don’t know if anybody has attempted a survey. And if there is no cite it really does not change the core contention that late term abortions are extremely rare, and I don’t think anybody believes a large number of those abortions are elective.
So is the analogy of the 60 year old guy hooked up to you during your sleep but we deal with absurd hypotheticals for a reason.
Yeah, if you include stuff like emotional distress as medically necessary.
You see this is the problem. There are some hard core pro-choice folks on this thread. I just don’t see as many hard core pro-life folks and yet a significant portion of the pro-choice argument is being directed at hard core pro-life positions that haven’t been argued in this thread.
The reason the pro-life movement had more succeess at stirring up shit about partial birth abortions a the approximately 1000 third trimester abortions is because that is the stuff that folks like me find really offensive while the first trimester stuff which doesn’t bother me enough to step on someone’s autonomy. Where the pro-lifers have to convince folks like me is the line we draw during the second trimester. In much the same way that I am for legalizing marijuana but not for legalizing ALL drugs, I can be in favor of fetal rights in the third trimester without having some nefarious plan to take away reproductive choice before that.
Well for comparison, we execute about 50 people a year in this country.
We average about 600-700 troop fatalities/year in Iraq.
Marijuana causes ZERO deaths per year.
Is there any level of third trimester abortions that would bother you? If not then the number means nothing to you in this debate.
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Why do they call it a fetus then? What is the difference between a fetus and and an embryo?
I agree if anybody can find such a cite they should post it. I don’t have one and am not looking, because I don’t care enough about trying to persuade the unpersuadable to take his burden of proof upon myself.
I’m prepared to defend your right to make that choice.
Because we think we can use them to weasel our opponents into agreeing with us? 
Seriously- I find arguments by analogy are a waste of time in most situations.
Would you like to cite that?
This whole thread started with an argument against a position that practically nobody takes.
I question your approximation. Where did it come from, again? And yes, I understand why the pro-life movement has had success in stirring up shit about late term abortions. I was pointing out that if their goal is reducing or eliminating abortions - I think we can agree that’s the goal, right? - then they’re focusing on the most emotionally charged part of the issue because that’s the best way to upset people.
I’m in favor of legalizing marijuana, against the death penalty, and I was against the war. What is your point? “A lot” is a fungible number and does not mean anything concrete, that’s all I’m saying.
No.
Different names are used as prenatal development progresses. I’m not sure how the terms came into being. It doesn’t affect the debate, I just thought we should be correct on that point.
Doesn’t make them not a person either. Christopher Reeve had to rely on technology to keep him alive; that didn’t make him any less a thinking, feeling human being. The mere fact that a baby’s respiratory system or whatever else isn’t yet developed to the point where it can operate on its own in no way proves that it doesn’t have feeling and/or consciousness. In case you hadn’t noticed, children need support for many, many years before they become fully viable on their own. Should that mean will can kill them at will because they’re not yet able to function without support?
And this “You can’t tell me what to do with my own body” crap such as people like DianaG love to spout is an utter fallacy. Just because a woman’s body houses someone else’s body (a body which they created, no less) that other body is still a separate human entity. Just because that body is housed within yours that doesn’t give you the right to mistreat or kill it at your pleasure. (Ironically it’s often people of this same ideological viewpoint who are the quickest to revile someone else for smoking or drinking alcohol while pregnant. Where is their belief in the right of a woman to do whatever she wants with her own body then?)
Now having said all that, I am still fairly comfortable with early-term abortions where it’s clear that no conscious, thinking, feeling human being has yet developed. Should technology develop to the point where we learn otherwise, I would revise my point of view accordingly.
How so? I thought I was always talking about abortion after viability. If I said anything else, I didn’t mean to.
Well if you don’t give a shit then you don’t give a shit. But when someone presents the ridiculous 60 year old man hooked up to you in the middle of the night scenario, then you have to ask what if that 60 year old man no longer needs you to survive. The answer for some on this board has been “well we can still kill him because he is still hooked up to me, not because there is some risk of my death or disability but because I “elect” to do so” I find this position difficult to defend.
The analogy would also work better if the 60-year-old man was attached to you as a result of something that you did. Obviously, getting pregnant is a reasonably expected result of prior activity and not something that you just wake up one day and find a doctor did to you.
I’m not saying that I’m against abortion; I’m just saying that we need to acknowledge the consequences of our actions.
My wife is 11 weeks pregnant with our third child, which was VERY unplanned and the timing pretty inconvenient. Abortion is not an option for us, but to say that everybody should think like us is pretty ridiculous.
That’s already been accounted for in the analogy, without discernibly changing the results. Which makes sense, because the “you asked for it” argument only makes sense from the perspective of wishing to punish the woman for the indiscretion of getting pregnant without wanting to bring a child to term.
To use yet another analogy, with the express purpose of separating out the “you asked for it” argument from other factors so it can be examined separately: If you invite a stranger into your house, you are not obligated to let them stay until they decide to leave of their own accord. Much less if you merely leave your door unlocked in an area where vagrants are known to wander around trying doorknobs. Sure, leaving it unlocked is foolish - but it doesn’t morally obligate you to eschew simple and easy ways of dealing with the intruder. Excepting from the view of people who to take personal satisfaction from seeing you suffer for your foolishness, anyway.
So. The “you asked for it” argument is clearly empty, when taken on its own. Now would be the time to protest, “But you’re not just evicting the vagrant, you’re killing him!” Give or take the details, you’re correct - however that doesn’t effect the “you asked for it” argument in the slightest. If it’s bad to kill the intruder, it’s bad because killing the intruder is bad anyway - not because the fact you ‘asked for it’ makes it somehow worse.
So yeah - while it may seem natural to feel that the woman deserves to be punished with pregnancy for the crime of getting herself knocked up, it’s not a sound argument.
Sorry my SDMB fu is weak.
No. You’re the one asserting belief in a fantasy - you provide a cite that your belief is not as utterly absurd as it sounds. No woman would wait that long to abort - that’s an insane idea. So before anything else, give us a cite for your fantasy.
And no, the fact that there are 100 or 1000 or 10000 abortions late term abortions doesn’t help you, unless you can prove that at least one of them was elective rather than a medical necessity. So, CITE?
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Well, can’t I just say that your belief that there are no elective abortions is a fantasy. What do you have to support the notion that MY assertion is a fantasy and YOUR assertions are gospel?
Considering the fact that the vast vast majority of abortions are elective why should the presumption be that there are absolutely NO elective abortions after the 24th week? Maybe you’re right but based on what we DO know, I would have thought the burden would be on you.
I’m going to have to reevaluate my position when that day arrives. I still don’t think I would have a problem with abortions during the first trimester but I haven’t heard enough arguments with that technology in place, I just know I don’t think the "life begins at conception " argument is very convincing to anyone that doesn’t WANT to be convinced.
I thought they said that fetuses didn’t feel pain or have dreams before the 24th thru 28th weeks.
I googled “elective third term abortion” and I got a few things but almost all of them link to pro-life sites and they tend to use cutoff dates that improve their numbers (so to speak) and I don’t know if anyone on this board (including myself) will automatically trust them but here goes:
http://clinicquotes.com/site/story.php?id=173
"“From May to November 1988, I worked for an abortionist. He specializes in third trimester killings. I witnessed evidence of the brutal, cold blooded murder of over 600 viable, healthy babies at seven, eight and nine months gestation. A very, very few of these babies, less than 2%, were handicapped…I thought I was pro-choice and I was glad to be working in an abortion clinic. I thought I was helping provide a noble service to women in crisis…I was instructed to falsify the age of the babies in medical records. I was required to lie to the mothers over the phone, as they scheduled their appointments, and to tell them that they were not ‘too far along’ Then I had to note, in the records that Dr. Tiller’s needle had successfully pierced the walls of the baby’s heart, injecting the poison what brought death…one day, Dr. Tiller came up the stairs from the basement, where the mothers were in labor. He was carrying a large cardboard box, and ducked into the employees only area of the office so that he wouldn’t have to walk through the waiting room. He passed behind my desk as I sat working on the computer, and he turned the corner to go around a short hall. He called out for me to come and help him. the box was so big and heavy in his arms that he couldn’t get the key into the lock. So I unlocked the door for him, and , pushing the door open, I saw very clearly the gleaming metal of the crematorium- a full sized crematorium, just like the one’s used in funeral homes. I went back to my computer. I could hear Dr. Tiller firing up the gas oven. A few minutes later I could smell burning human flesh. Mine was the agony of a participant, however reluctant, in the act of prenatal infanticide.”(3) "
"Here is a quote by the late famous late-term abortionist Dr. Tiller:
“We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.”(8)"
I don’t know if this is part of the equation in determining whether an abortion is for health reasons but its something that has been brought up in some literature:
“The safety of abortion is well established, with infection rates less than 1%, and fewer than 1 in 100,000 mortalities occurs from first-trimester abortions. At every gestational age, elective abortion is safer for the mother than carrying a pregnancy to term. Medical abortions, or those performed primarily by medication prior to any surgical intervention, are even safer than surgical abortions at the same gestational age.”
Well you can steal their thunder by expanding the Partial Birth Abortion Act to cover all third term abortions as well.
If they are getting so much mileage from third term abortions, and if it happens so infrequently that it doesn’t even matter and if none of them are elective anyways, then why not get rid of elective third term abortions?
How so? By taking parts of analogies and running with them mostly. You adopted the “the day before birth” goalpost from the OP, the “post-birth infant” surfaced earlier in the thread possibly before you arrived, and the ten-year-old was all your own.
As for viability, define “viability”. With the right equipment we could in theory keep your heart alive for weeks at a time on life support. And life support is usually needed to keep a significantly premature infant alive. Expecially if you’re talking about week 24 and stuff like that. And this is of course not mentioning the invasive surgery you would be likely inflicting on the woman to get the fetus extracted intact,
IF.
What’s that big ‘if’, you ask? That if? That’s “if there actually are any elective abortions done at such a late date anyway.” And yeah, that’s a pretty big if.
I’m not saying that a woman should be punished with a pregnancy because “she asked for it.” I was just pointing out a weakness in the analogy.
In my personal experience, we are not keeping the pregnancy because we asked for it. We’re not aborting it because we believe that this child is a gift to us from God, and we could not possibly throw that away. Obviously, these are purely religious reasons.
That is why I am pro-life, but perfectly content for abortion to be legal. Nobody’s religious views should be forced on others via legislations. Thanks 1st Amendment!
I don’t know if you’re just taking the piss or what but there were societies that kinda felt that way.
Yeah, but I’d just like him to blame it on his mom and not me.
I was quoting Wikipedia which claimed to be citing Guttmacher. Its possible that there was a typo or something but the “late term abortion” article in wikipedia said that 0.08% of all abortions were performed in the third trimester.
Its impossible to prove a categorical negative but it is possible to prove a negative. Prove that none of the 1000 houses in my neighborhood are red. I can do that. Prove that none of the 1000 third trimester abortions from last year were elective, you can do that.
The information is sketchy but it appears that many third trimester abortions were elective in the sense that carrying the pregnancy to term would not have caused the death or physical disability of the mother.
Clearly - you did it again, this time attributing my words to you. Preview is your friend, and failing that, edit is. (I use edit a lot.)
You can say any silly nonsense you like, about burdens of proof or otherwise - I certainly can’t stop you. However you’re not going to persuade me of anything by doing so, and Thor willing other people will apply critical thinking too.
And it shouldn’t be news to you that by far the most common cause of an abortion or abortionlike procedure at the end of pregnancy is medical reasons. There are two - count 'em, TWO alive surgeons in the united states who are even willing to perform third trimester elective abortions. Whereas there are tens of thousands who would preform a surgery of that type if it saved the life of the woman. Who do you think is doing them all?
Oh right - you pick the answer that makes your position less absurd. Silly me.