Fine, let’s assume all abortions take place at 30+ weeks and are purely elective and the fetus is fully sentient.
I’m still pro-choice because I find protecting the woman’s rights are more important.
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You’ll want to keep those around, because it’s worth remembering that there are (at least) two separate arguments in favor of pro-choice: That babies aren’t being killed, or that the woman’s rights over her body would justify abortions regardless. Either argument alone is enough to defend the pro-choice position - but they’re completely distinct arguments, and a person can hold one without the other, or hold both.
It might be handy if the people arguing against pro-choice remained clear on which argument they are opposing - thinking back sometimes I have a hard time keeping track.
Someone upthread mentioned two of them.
I provided a cite as biased as it may be. Now you can either tear apart one of your own. So one side of the debate has provided less than airtight evidence and the other side refuses to provide any at all. But the side that has provided nothing but an assertion that elective abortions NEVER occur keep pretending like all the facts are on their side? :rolleyes:
Sure just wave away everything on that page, its easier if you get to make up the facts as you go along.
/sigh
Wait. WHAT!?!?! I’m the one that is being dogmatic? I think abortion is fine in the first two trimesters and I"M the one being dogmatic? :smack:
I provided a cite. It had enough information to create a presumption. You can rebutt it but I would think it would have to be with more than “I know it to be true”
According to this cite http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/ib14.html (it was a footnore from the wiki article) someone estimates that there were over 1000 abortions after the 24th week in 1992
Car accidents cause more death than murder, why do we bother outlawing murder? If you don’t have an answer and you have your mind made up that even if the worst accusations of the pro-lifers turned out to be true, you still wouldn’t care then just say so.
I have said that if it turns out that there are no elective third trimester abortions then I would have to drop my argument. What if anything would make you drop your argument? If your answer is “nothing would make me drop ym argument” then do you really think it is fair to say: “I have you pegged as arguing from a position of dogma, such that I don’t think you can be convinced by dogma”
Well then how about providing a few facts. I would love to be proven wrong. I would love to find out that there are NO elective third trimester abortions. That ALL third trimester abortions are to prevent death or physical disability but I have not seen evidence that this is the case and I have seen plenty of evidence that this is NOT the case.
OK so the number is small but it is not zero as some people seemed so sure it was.
If someone can show me that the number is very small (I am still a bit thrown off by the 10,000 (over a lot of years) number mentioned by Dr. Tiller).
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Some places define late term abortion to mean anything past 16 weeks or so.
That’s fine, I think its a minority view but at least its honest.
I think where we get confused is that I basically presume that viability means human being (and I think viability has a very specific meaning, able to survive outside the womb), now if we ever develope the technology where we can grow babies in vats then my outlook on viability will evaporate but hopefully by that time we will have figured out a foolproof means of birth control so that you don’t get pregnant unless you want to get pregnant.
After I recognize a human being, I subordinate choice to life. In the absence of a person, I clump of human tissue to a woman’s choice.
Bullshit. I’ve heard lots of anti-abortion people say this. Their belief systems force them to image that a woman can go through nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, and giving her baby to strangers with no physical or emotional after effects. They’ve told me “Every woman regrets abortion but no woman regrets adoption.” If that ain’t bullshit, then bulls don’t shit in the field.
No pro-choice person is trivializing murdering babies. I’ve yet to meet a pro-choice person who agrees with murdering babies.
Indeed. And in regard to those two separate arguments, I am (along with several others here) espousing only the latter: that a woman’s rights over her body would justify abortions regardless of whether or not babies are being killed. And one of the reasons I am so firm in this position is that in our society, everyone, not just pregnant women, has rights over their own body even if it entails the death of another person.
As I’ve noted several times, the law cannot* force you to give blood to another person, even if it will save their life, even if you’re the only person on earth with the right blood type, even if you’ve donated blood to them in the past, even if the person only needs your blood for one more day, and even if the person is your own child.
Therefore, the law should not be able to force you to give blood, tissue, and the use of most of your organs to another person, even if it will save their life, even if you’re the only person on earth who can provide these things, even if you’ve donated these things to them in the past, even if the person only needs these things for one more day, and even if the person is your own child.
I am fully prepared to say that, in certain circumstances, you might well be the Greatest Asshole Ever for refusing, but the last time I checked, being an asshole is not illegal, nor does it make your human rights null and void.
I’ll take my t-shirt now, please.
So let me ask you this - if you subordinate choice to life when it is a pregnant woman’s choice and an unborn human being’s life, then where do you stand on other “choice vs. life” issues? Do you think the law should force you to donate blood, if it will save someone else’s life? How about a kidney? What if the donation was only temporary? Does it make a difference to you if the life saved is a stranger’s? Your spouse’s? Your child’s? If you think these situations are completely different from pregnancy, how so?
Again - I’m not asking what *you *would do in these situations, but what you think the law should be able to require people to do.
*At least, this is my understanding; if someone knows otherwise, please correct me.
Donating blood will take about an hour out of your life; an organ, about a month, not nine months. And you probably won’t think about your donated blood or kidney every day for the rest of your life.
And again, that’s nonsense. Viability has nothing to do with personhood or “being a human being”.
If you are a Jehovah’s Witness pregnant with a fetus that will need a blood transfusion at birth, their stand is to carry it to term and then let it die after birth.
Well… how many babies?
Just kidding.
And under what conditions. I would have no qualms at putting a baby to death if the alternative would result in the deaths of adults or older children.
Noone in this thread is sayign taht pregnancy is a minor inconvenience, OK?
Let me rephrase that, its like saying that the only way to be pro-choice is to trivialize killing a viable fetus.
Life began eons ago and even if you believe the Geneses account it would have been at least 5,000 years. Human life is passed on through the families genealogy. A fertile egg is not a baby. Once the fertile egg has become a child that is a different argument!
This is a good question. here aer my thoughts. There is generally not a duty to rescue, the law does not usualy require you to lift a finger to help anyone else no matter how easy it would be. However, there are all sorts of laws that prevent you from causing harm even if causing that prevent you from causing harm even if causing that harm would relieve you of some discomfort or burden. There are exceptions for things liek self defense (which I think is the basis for at least some of the pro-choice argument).
The arguments I have encountered in this thread (at least the ones that allow for the possibility that a fetus might be a person with some rights) seem to view the fetus as a parasite or cannibal that is actively causing harm to the mother and the mother may either permit this parasitism/cannibalism if they want or they may defend themselves by getting rid of the fetus and there is no reason they can’t use deadly force even when a less lethal method is available.
I think the law can do a lot. I think the law can require people to buy health insurance, I think the law can make people serve in the military, I think the law can make you carry a 6 month fetus to term unless your life or health are threatened. In fact the law does (or will do) all of these things today. The question we are debating is whether the law SHOULD be able to do these things.
That sounds like an opinion (a dogmatic one at that). I think viability is significant.
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Well at least in the case of the mother, we already allow for that exception even up to the moment of birth.
How exactly will a birth ever cause the death of anyone else? You realize that adoption is an alternative, as is getting an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy.
That would be their position, yes.
But, what we do is have a judge order the transfusion for the infant. The JW gets a ‘church pass’ since the decision was taken out of their hands. We will let the mother die, though, if that is their wish.
You’re presumably familiar with the phrase “died in childbirth”? I assure you, it still happens.
I appreciate your response, but you didn’t answer my questions. And yes, as you point out, I’m asking “whether [in your opinion] the law SHOULD be able to do these things”:
- Do you think the law should force you to donate blood, if it will save someone else’s life?
- How about a kidney?
- What if the donation was only temporary?
- Does it make a difference to you if the life saved is a stranger’s?
4a) Your spouse’s?
4b) Your child’s? - If you think these situations are completely different from pregnancy, how so?
5a) Or, to put it more pointedly:
If you think the law *shouldn’t *force you to donate a kidney to save your already-born child’s life, why do you feel the law *should *force you to be pregnant with your not-yet-born child? What do you see as the difference between donating a kidney and being pregnant that makes forcing the former unacceptable, but not the latter?
Of course, if you think the law *should *force you to donate a kidney to save your already-born child’s life, then question 5) is moot.