My point still stands: it’s precisely because the mother stands to lose/gain a lot (depending on her point of view) if the baby is born, that makes her an unobjective observer who can’t be trusted to make a fair decision.
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I see.
So… you’d be fine with a more impartial objective decision-maker deciding that, for example, 16 year old Cindy Example should have an abortion against her will, having examined all the relevant issues and having concluded that it would be best for all involved if an abortion took place?
You don’t think the pregnant person in that situation should have the final say, the authority to say “dammit, I am having this child” ?
You know where this is headed. Go ahead and answer the follow up question.
No, because I don’t think “who makes the decision” is really the question that matters. For me, the important question is “is it OK to knowingly take innocent human life, except in self defence”.
The lack of objectivity of the mother only matters in the negative sense, to counter the pro-choice argument that she is uniquely well suited to decide.
OK. But who has the wisdom and moral authority to decide on a meaningful definition of when a fetus is “human life” when neither medical science nor philosophy have ever been able to do so? Those who are so inflamed by religious conviction and knee-jerk emotion that they think they know, when no one else does, and no one can agree? No thanks. Those would be the last people I would ever want involved.
The case of Terry Schiavo is still fresh in my mind. Here medical science was clear that she was permanently brain-dead and in no sense a sentient human being. But the parents – understandably affected by wishful thinking – insisted they could see her respond, and all the religious nutjobs and then the usual gang of pro-lifers and the Republican establishment came to the rescue, sternly opposed to cutting off life support. When her insentient biological body finally died, an autopsy was done, and it was determined that her brain had atrophied to nothing and was clearly non-functional throughout the coma. So the Holy Rollers, getting their guidance from Biblical dogmatism instead of from science, were wrong again. Completely and totally wrong. These are the folks who are going to be the arbiters of pro-choice morality and tell us exactly what constitutes human life when science and philosophy cannot? Again, no thanks. We have enough threats to liberty without these self-appointed moralists.
But why need it be self-defense? Self-defense is not the only situation in which killing is not necessarily murder.
Would these hypothetical alternative decision-makers only allow abortion in cases where the mother would otherwise die? That might be your standard if you, yourself, were selected as the uninvolved detached decision-maker. But suppose it were me? I, having no emotional attachment (hormonal or otherwise) to the possibility of bringing this life to term, no vested interest of the sort that one might have if it were flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood and whatnot, might feel that in the absence of any nefarious plot to deceive or to use the possibility of abortion to extort money from some other party, there are too damn many people on this planet as it is. God will just send the same soul back in another wrapper anyway, no loss. Next!!
I’m just as uninvolved and detached from the specifics of the situation as you are.
… I think the pregnant person has the most reason to defend that potential baby with her life, the most personal vested interest of anyone. Yes, she also has the most to lose by involuntary pregnancy, it’s her body.
I think it is a life or death decision. I don’t make light of it. I’m not the kind of prochoicer who treats it like a sneeze: What issue? Just tissue! Toss phlegmy mass into trash can, nothing to see here. No, it’s real enough, a no kidding life or death decision.
Biology puts that decision in her hand. That’s where it lies in the absence of interfering regulations. The unfettered free market of procreation, if you like.
It’s the right of women to make that life or death decision. It’s the flip side of being the one who gets UTIs and decades of periods and the thrills of childbirth contractions.
Yep. I’m 4. I don’t think that we shouldn’t kill unborn babies because they’re people. We shouldn’t kill babies because they’ve done nothing wrong. Through no fault of their own they’ve ended up some place dangerous, and we shouldn’t kill people merely because their presence is inconvenient to the people who put them in that situation in the first place.*
However, I do think it’s okay to take an innocent life if it spares a person great physical suffering, so I support the right of the terminally ill to take their own lives or to request another person assist the in the same, and the only moral reason I can think of to have an abortion is if you learn that the fetus has a disorder incompatible with life that will result in a short life full of agony if they’re born.
As for the death penalty, I support it in a limited fashion. If you’re a spree killer or mass murderer, or tortured your victims before killing them, or you’re a criminal boss/terrorist leader who got others to murder for you, I’m okay with you being put to death. I’m fully aware that you’re still a person, but you’ve proven yourself dangerous and humanity doesn’t need you badly enough to risk you possibly killing your guards or fellow inmates, or managing to direct people on the outside to continue to kill for you even if you never escape jail though that happens on rare occasions too.
rape & incest are the reason abortion is sought in just 1% of cases even according to Planned Parenthood’s own statistics
Note on the above: “The Cold Equations” may seem like an odd choice for my analogy.
a) The stowaway is not precisely “innocent”; she knew she was breaking the law when she crept onto the ship; and
b) The inconvenience of others, in this case, rises to a high level that most prolife people have already said constitutes an exceptional case: if the stowaway is not jettisoned, everyone else dies; hence the situation is analogous to aborting to save the life of the mother and then some.
But let’s play with it. Let’s say the stowaway had been konked on the head by Some Evil Person and stuffed into a hiding space on the spacecraft. She is now innocent. It’s totally not her fault that she’s in that situation. She still has to be jettisoned, right?
Her innocence doesn’t make it not OK to kill her. Killing her doesn’t constitute murder.
So sometimes it is OK to kill people, even innocent people. Sometimes the killing of innocent people does not constitute murder.
In Cold Equation, which is a work of fiction, there was a nearly 100% that everyone on board would die if they didn’t get rid of the stowaway. In the US the maternal mortality rate is 0.019%.