Sorry begbert2. Checkmate.
Hey, feel free to give the fetus all the rights you want - drinking, voting, serving in the military, etc. But there’s ultimately going to have be some kind of final authority, and I’m more comfortable with that being in the hands of the woman than in the hands of the state.
In theory, there are some concerns that could trump the woman’s right to choose - she could be mentally incompetent, for example, and all of her medical decisions in the hands of a guardian or conservator. Less remotely, I can imagine some kind of Children of Men scenario in which birth rates plunge to the point of putting the continued survival of humanity in jeopardy. My position does not have the absolutist unthinking rigidity you imply - I simply don’t see a compelling reason why a competent woman should not be trusted to make this extremely personal choice.
Are induced deliveries and/or ceasarians the better medical option for the woman, i.e. the option that puts her health at the lowest possible risk? If not, I don’t see why she must be compelled to face extra risks. Can she voluntarily terminate all parental responsibility at the instant of delivery? If not, I don’t see why she must be compelled to take on the not-insignificant financial burden of an unwanted child. I realize the third trimester is a bit late to be making these decisions, but it’s conceivable to me that she develops health problems late in her pregnancy that make inducement or ceasarian risky (you allow an exception for the woman’s health, but this just boils down to the educated but arbitrary opinion of the doctor, doesn’t it?), and I can imagine her finding out late in her pregnancy that she’ll be financially on her own (i.e. the father has bolted, her parents have kicked her out of the house, etc.) and I can even imagine her not learning until late in her pregnancy that she is pregnant…
It’s not clear to me that the state needs more citizens to the point where it has justification to intervene.
Anyway, you’re comfortable with your proposed formulation. That’s fine. I’m comfortable with the actual formulation, as it exists in Canada, and were this formulation to be widely adopted across the U.S., I don’t expect it would pose any problems for that nation at all.
Human life begins at conception.
Personhood (that life having full status as a person, which I define as a being that can live on its own outside the womb without ludicrously over-the-top sci-fi measures that border on an artificial womb) begins at 6 months of gestation.
Therefore abortion should be permitted for the first 6 months of gestation, although I wouldn’t scream too much if there were more restrictions on it in months 5 and 6, since 4 months is plenty of time to decide to bail for personal reasons. By months 5 and 6 you really need a good reason for why you waited so long.
FYI: I am not a mother, by choice. I had my only abortion at 7 weeks’ gestation.
My best friend has two children and is such a rabid pro-choicer and fears the “slippery slope” so much that she’s for abortion on demand at any point prior to natural labor starting.
I think mine is the reasonable view that balances the concerns of everyone to some extent.
I’m not sure why you think its a crap argument other than the fact that you don’t like where it leads.
Yeah that’s one opinion, here is another one:
“The Court held that the constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state’s two legitimate interests for regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting the mother’s health. Noting that these state interest become stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the mother’s current trimester of pregnancy”
I don’t bring up Roe v Wade to throw current law in your face, that is not the point of this debate. I do it to show that the state interest question doesn’t “quite clearly” fall on your side of the argument.
I think that is the balance we are all trying to achieve.
I’m not sure what the “cost” would be in this case? The legislative energy it would take to pass the law?
And what is the cost of passing the law?
I thought we had established this after pages and pages of your side denying that any of this EVER occurred. I thought that we had established at least enough to shift the burden to your side of the argument that this doesn’t occur. Now you are going back to, “well it doesn’t occur a lot” without anything to back up that claim other than your WAG.
The life of the fetus. Just because you have trouble rationally addressing this issue doesn’t mean you can simply dismiss it as an inconvenient truth.
You are correct, the right to an abortion is not an absolute right. I mispoke, it is a right that outweighs the rights of the fetus in the first trimester but does not trump the rights of the fetus in the third trimester.
We’re not talking about bad ideas in the “buying a car you can’t afford sense” we are talking about bad ideas in the “killing babies” sense.
I agree, murdering a fetus isn’t as bad as murdering a father of 4 or one of those 4, so?
Maybe its just me but you don’t seem all that impartial.
So you are boiling down my entire position to an emotional, faith based kneejerk reaction? You simply haven’t made your case. You haven’t provided any evidence that third trimester abortions are as rare as you want to believe. You haven’t provided any rational argument why there isn’t a state interest in life. You haven’t provided any argument for why we should entirely dismiss the rights of the fetus.
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Why are you letting the woman tell that to the man, then?..
I think you can understand why this seems like a very self-contradictory position for you to take. So what are your thought processes here?
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Yes I understand why you think my position is inconsistent. Mostly because it IS somewhat inconsistent. I generally give more credit to the person that carried the baby for 9 months than the person that contributed the sperm, perhaps this is unfair. I guess we could give fathers the right to an abortion as well.
There MUST be a limit to what the state provides. We cannot demand endless bounty on the backs of the taxpayer.
You obviously are not aware of my opinion on adoption. I consider adoption as practiced in Western culture where babies are taken away from their families and cultures and given to alien people the most vile practice on earth below even cannibalism for sport (after all that would only be killing a body, not killing a spirit). Yes, I do think it is better to kill a fetus that let it be gestated to birth, stolen away from its true culture and ancestory, and raised to call kidnappers mother and father.
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Babies are not taken away for adoption, they are given up for adoption.
True culture and ancestry? WTF are you talking about? I know plenty of adults that were adopted and I don’t see dead spirits or stolen identities. I see (for the most part) regular folks who have the typical range of relationships with their parents.
Once again we are talking about elective third trimester abortions. The number of these almost certainly does not exceed 1000/year. A ban on third trimester abortions is not going to turn poor women into incubators for rich women.
And you think that it was inevitable that he turn out this way given his parental situation? I know plenty of good kids in rotten family situations, I mean if we’re going to go by anecdotal evidence, I can provide plenty of counterexamples.
Simply put because there is another life at stake.
As for your non-rigidity, you have to come up with a science fiction scenario to find a situation where you would infringe on the woman’s right to abortion.
Are induced deliveries and/or ceasarians the better medical option for the woman, i.e. the option that puts her health at the lowest possible risk? If not, I don’t see why she must be compelled to face extra risks.
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Yes, I believe they are, they certainly have lower mortality rates and the morbidity rates seem lower with induced birth or ceasarian versus third trimester abortion. I believe we had about three or four posts where I cited to the relevant statistics.
Yes all health issues should be determined by a doctor and I don’t think there is anything “arbitrary” about it.
adoption
Well then she can induce or have a ceasarian if she does not want to carry to term.
That is not what is meant by state interest.
The formulation I propose is noticably more lax than the system we currently have in the USA. The fact that Canada has overturned a law that effectively banned abortions as a practical matter doesn’t mean that abortions are freely avaialable: Third-trimester abortions are not generally available Abortion in Canada - Wikipedia
But can we really tell someone that they must carry a baby for 9 months and give birth? Isn’t that also a moral consideration?
Both sides have rabid “slippery slope folks”
Sure. So? A number of civil-rights issues have life-and-death aspects to them.
I actually suggested two scenarios, the first one being quite realistic. If you have other scenarios to suggest, I’m not stopping you.
I’m not sure how to reconcile these with a proposed third-trimester abortion ban. It’s up to the informed medical opinion of doctors - except when it isn’t.
Not a perfect solution, and in fact non-responsive to the issue I raised - the pregnant woman tossed out by her parents. Her putting the child up for adoption does not guarantee reconciliation.
And then she’ll have a child she may not want and cannot care for and possible repercussions with her family, employer, etc. It’s unclear to me that “adoption” will cover all such cases and give the newborn a safe haven.
Feel free to elaborate and define “state interest” and then describe how abortion (or just late-term abortion) is against those state interests.
If this is simply “the state has an interest in preserving life”, I won’t ask further, though I’ll be unmoved.
I figure that’s a failing on the part of the USA, then.
But they are legal, and our society has not been undermined as a result, or indeed suffered any negative repercussions that I’m aware of and I invite you or anyone to point such out to me.
Let’s start with Argumentum Ad Populum being a logical fallacy, shall we? Wow, that was hard.
But actually, that’s not even the worst problem with your crap argument. The real problem is, your question is designed to con those polled. “Ask anyone you meet on the street if they would have minded being aborted, they might not have had an opinion when they were a fetus but they certainly do now.” This is what we call a bait-and-switch; you are asking them to assess the value of their entire life to date, and then you’re trying to feed me that inherently-fallacious poll as an answer to the entirely different question as to the value of a life that hasn’t happened (that is, the fetus’s life).
I’m of the opinion that fallacious arguments based on the imagined answers of people being deliberately and fraudulently asked the wrong question are crap argument. If you don’t like that, tough.
I must also say I’m disappointed to see you resorting to the “potential person” argument in this thread; you truly must feel that your back is to the wall to use an argument that blows away your own “allow it for two trimesters” position. The argument that a person is glad that they weren’t aborted in trimester 3 is equally strong argument against trimester 1 abortions, very obviously. Are you 100% anti-choice now?
Because if not, you shouldn’t present arguments you don’t believe in yourself. It’s poor form, to put it as delicately as possible.
Uh huh. It’s a “state interest” that they have relatively little interest in, based on the totality of how the law deals with fetuses. They simply aren’t people until somebody starts squalking about abortion.
Right. But I think your notions of the costs involved are not correctly assessed. Among other things, based on your habit of using standard hyperbolic anti-choice propaganda terms like “killing babies”, I think you may be being swayed by emotions and preconcieved conclusions a little bit.
It’s the same sort of cost (in kind, not necessarily degree) as when we ban religion and throw people in prison without trial. Non-monetary costs.
Not to mention I think that it have a few costs with regard to modifying the doctor’s choices in which operations to offer, discouraging them from fairly assessing risks and costs our of fear of punitive legislation. However I can’t quantify that in real numbers or anything; besides being merely speculative, it also mostly involves occasionally imperilling the lives of full adult women, which we apparently don’t care about much, possibly since it wouldn’t occur a lot.
WAG my ass - everyone knows that third-trimester abortions don’t occur “a lot”. That’s a hard and fast proven and cited fact. Even before we take note of the fact that the vast majority of such abortions that do occur are done for reasons of medical necessity.
A few third-term abortions happen. Not a lot. A few. Very few - by any standard other than “even a single one is too much to tolerate”.
The government doesn’t often take the attitude that “even a single one is too much to tolerate”, did you notice that? Take criminal courts. Almost axiomatically, some innocent people will be convicted, sent to prison, in some cases even executed! This is universally considered something to be avoided. But it’s not so much to be avoided that we discard the judicial system, and the reason for that is because we deem the number of innocents convicted to be too few to justify the cost of taking extraordinary steps to avoid convicting them.
So. I’m of the opinion that the number of fetuses killed in frivolous third-trimester abortions is too few to merit tearing the decision from the hands of the woman and her doctors. You disagree, and that’s spiffy for you, but if you want to change my mind on this issue you have to deal with the fact that you have not demonstrated that there’s a significant problem for the government to address here.
…and I’ll add that making bullshit ad-hominem misrepresentations of my arguments to date is not exactly a good way to convince me that there’s a real problem for the government to address here. In fact your statement here leads me to believe that you know my arguments to date have proven the problem to be insignificant, because otherwise you wouldn’t feel the need to pretend I haven’t made them.
Would you care to detail what part of the “the life of the fetus” issue you feel I haven’t rationally addressed? I believe I’ve noted that the fetus is living human tissue from the moment of conception (or arguably before), but that doesn’t really matter since just being living tissue is no big deal. I believe I’ve argued that the fetus wouldn’t mind being aborted, and I’ve argued it so well that you’ve felt compelled to bring out a crap ad populum bait-and-switch anti-choice ‘potential person’ argument that would destroy your own position too, in a pathetic attempt to refute my unassailable position. I believe I’ve competently argued that the state has a marked tendency to confer personhood at birth and not before, particularly when it’s not faced by anti-choice public opinion and can thus act its own ‘mind’. And I believe that I have driven the final nail in the “life of the fetus” argument by noting and accepting that there is the probability that a handful of sentient non-person fetuses might get frivolously aborted, and then rationally addressing that with an assessment that not enough of them would die for this to be an issue worthy of being banned by the state, with the problems that that entails.
You certainly haven’t accepted my arguments as compelling. You may even not accept all of them as valid. But to pretend I haven’t made them is dishonest argument of a caliber that suggests you know your position is not defensible by any less desperate measure.
If you do not feel you have been pressed this far to the wall, then perhaps you should reasses your argumentive approach to avoid implying that you have.
And now you’re completely ignoring the content of the post you’re quoting in order to spout canned talking points instead. You aren’t a politican by chance, are you?
And I was talking about bad ideas in the “letting full adult people injure and kill themselves and others” sense. Several violent contact sports are legal, stock car racing is legal, riding a motorcycle on a mountain road in the snow is legal. (Even if you’re pregnant!) Let’s not fallaciously pretend that killing fetuses (not “babies”) is in a class by itself here.
So that’s a pretty solid argument for legalizing abortion all by itself. If letting someone kill their fetus die is no more a problem for society than letting them kill their horse, then there’s no compelling reason for the government to restrict it.
I’m aware that you cavalierly dismiss this argument, but thing is I don’t. So if you want to persuade me of anything, you can’t dismiss it as you like.
It’s just you.
Cute, but you weren’t talking about abortion. You were talking about the right to unilaterally dissolve one’s legal connection/obligation to the fetus after the birth - “birth” in this case including 7th-month c-sections imposed by the gestapo. Do try to keep things straight.
And what “credit” do you give the woman for her 6 months of pregnancy? The right to rob the father of 18 years of child support payments? That’s pretty random; I don’t see any possible argument for a logical connection between the two.