The Pro-Life Slippery Slope

[monstro]

@Chief_Pedant

Monstro, you are still a spring chicken, but I’d be curious how you’d consider your own baby’s “rights and protections” if you are two weeks away from term and a mugger kills it by kicking you in the abdomen…

If someone kicks me in the abdomen, regardless if I’m pregnant or not, I’m going to be venomously angry. And doubly so if they kick me when I’m pregnant. So? I don’t think Pro-Choice people are going around kicking pregnant people in the stomach, nor are they advocating such behavior.

And you know what? If someone kicks me so hard that they make me infertile, I’ll probably be especially angry. Probably more angry if they had made me miscarry, to be honest. But what does my anger have to do with the discussion of rights? Are you saying that making someone infertile (depriving gametes the “right to life”) should be a crime simply because people would be especially angry in this situation? If not, then your appeal to emotion has no relevance to the discussion.

The argument is not so much around whether the fetus is “the same as an infant”–the closer it gets to delivery, the closer it is to an infant–as it is around whether or not Mom gets a special dispensation to deprive the fetus of those rights.

Maybe that’s your argument, but many Pro-Lifers seem have a blanket condemnation of abortion. Aborting a blastula is on the same level as a aborting a full-term fetus. Life begins at conception, and all that jazz.

In the ProChoice construct, Mom gets to kill the fetus but nobody else does–at least, without Mom’s sanction. In the ProLife construct, nobody gets to kill the fetus. (This divide is why I think the only workable compromise is going to be that Mom has no restrictions killing the embryo and early fetus; in the middle of the pregnancy some restrictions are allowed; nobody gets to kill it near the end…)

I actually agree that this would be a good compromise (as long as there is some wiggle-room for women’s health). But my problem–which you seem to belittle for some reason–is that it would be nonsensical as well as immoral to worry about a fetus’s murder while caring little about their health. It would be like banning homicide but allowing assault and battery.

Not only that, I don’t see how we can enforce anti-abortion laws without encroaching even more into individual’s personal privacy. How could we enforce have anti-speeding laws if we didn’t authorize police officers to use radar guns? How could we ever enforce shoplifting policies if we didn’t allow store owners to use surviellance? Seems to me that shutting down abortion clinics doesn’t mean anything when you can get someone to kick you in the stomach and you can claim natural miscarriage.

How we will ensure people don’t abort fetuses if we don’t monitor, in some shape or form, what they do to their bodies? I’m frustrated that you Pro-Lifers don’t have a good answer. It’s making me believe you aren’t as commited to “life” as you claim to be.

[Annie-Xmas]

I have been arguing this for years. If you believe that a fertilized zygote should have the right to use a woman’s body for nine months, then every miscarriage would have to be investigated as potential murder. Even menstrual periods could come under scrutuny–maybe a fertilized egg failed to implant because the woman did something wrong, thereby making her guilty of murder. IVF wold be made illegal unless all the eggs were implanted and carried to term.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@Annie-Xmas

I have been arguing this for years. If you believe that a fertilized zygote should have the right to use a woman’s body for nine months, then every miscarriage would have to be investigated as potential murder. Even menstrual periods could come under scrutuny–maybe a fertilized egg failed to implant because the woman did something wrong, thereby making her guilty of murder. IVF wold be made illegal unless all the eggs were implanted and carried to term.

and maybe nobody’s answering because no-one believes it.
If you can’t tell apart miscarriages from abortions, i.e. involuntary vs. voluntary actions…well.
A shameful cracka… those two groups (i.e. representing what you think is 100% of pro-lifers) exist only in your head.

The idea that pro-lifers don’t care about babies after they are born may be the secret password for your meetings, but it isn’t true (if we’re talking about >95% of pro-lifers)

[Lemur866]

@Annie-Xmas

I have been arguing this for years. If you believe that a fertilized zygote should have the right to use a woman’s body for nine months, then every miscarriage would have to be investigated as potential murder. Even menstrual periods could come under scrutuny–maybe a fertilized egg failed to implant because the woman did something wrong, thereby making her guilty of murder. IVF wold be made illegal unless all the eggs were implanted and carried to term.

Why?

Under what system of logic must this neccesarily be true?

This thread contains the greatest collection of straw men, straw women, and straw fetuses I’ve seen since the great animated straw crisis of 1937. Self-righteousness is more addictive than heroin. Doesn’t it make you feel good that the people you oppose are so evil? It sure does, and the more evil they are the more pure and righteous you are. It makes you warm and tingly inside doesn’t it?

[VarlosZ]

@Der_Trihs

I’m reasonably certain that the “pro-lifers” would try to do everything you say, and more. The anti-abortion movement is at it’s core about hostility to women; they won’t stop trying to hurt and oppress women just because of one victory. And outlawing abortion and declaring a fetus the equal of a person will give them powerful tools to inflict that harm.

Most posters here strongly disagree with a libertarian approach, but they all argue that libertarians are simply mistaken, even foolish – except for you, who says that libertarians are sociopaths who just want to get government out of the way so that they can take advantage of other people. Most posters here strongly disagree with the war in Iraq, and many (myself included) even think there’s an ethical obstacle to joining the U.S. military in the context of that war – but you’re the only one (or nearly the only one) who says that all American servicemen are murderers. Most posters in this forum, probably, are atheists, and many of them like to criticize religion in general, and Christianity in particular – but you’re one of a small, vocal handful which maintains that Christianity (and, in fact, Christians) are just plain evil. There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of posters who can’t stand Republicans, but you’re the only one that I’ve seen who explicitly holds that Republicans support the things they do because they are cartoonish, mustache-twirling villains who like to gloat over the suffering of others.

And now, in a completely unsurprising development, you’ve declared that the overwhelming majority of those who oppose abortion rights do so because they hate women.
So I’m really curious: why is it that, on so many issues, those who disagree with you are evil, instead of merely mistaken? Why is it that other people’s errors are driven by greed, spite, or malice, while yours are apparently in good faith?

It’s been a couple of months since I first asked this question, so the answer should be excellent.

[Sarahfeena]

@monstro

How we will ensure people don’t abort fetuses if we don’t monitor, in some shape or form, what they do to their bodies? I’m frustrated that you Pro-Lifers don’t have a good answer. It’s making me believe you aren’t as commited to “life” as you claim to be.

What kind of answer do you want? I think the best analogy to look at people with children. We don’t monitor people’s homes to be sure the children are safe, eating their vegetables, etc. Yet, I think we are all committed to the safety & health of children. The reason we don’t do this kind of monitoring is because we make the assumption that people are doing at least a reasonable job of raising their children, unless we have a very, very good reason to think otherwise (and the situation has to be a lot worse than a bad diet or too much TV). I don’t see why we wouldn’t make the same assumption of a pregnant woman.

As far as miscarriages go, the problem with your argument is that we pretty much don’t know what causes most of them, so it would be pretty hard to pin something on the mother, anyway. The only time we investigate a death as a homicide is if the death is under mysterious circumstances. With miscarriages, not knowing the reason is a typical circumstance, and not particularly unusual at all, so although it may seem “mysterious,” it’s really not. There wouldn’t be a legal leg to stand on to get a warrant to do any investigating.

[JThunder]

@Annie-Xmas

I have been arguing this for years. If you believe that a fertilized zygote should have the right to use a woman’s body for nine months, then every miscarriage would have to be investigated as potential murder.

Y’know, there was a time when abortion was illegal in the USA. Even then though, miscarriages were not routinely investigated as possible murders.

Why? Because that’s not how law enforcement operates. If the law finds a man dead in his home, for example, they don’t launch a murder investigation unless they have good reason to believe that he was the victim of foul play. Since miscarriages are a fairly common occurrence, there is no reason why the authorities would have to treat each and every one as a potential murder. This is borne out by the nation’s history prior to Roe vs. Wade.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Lobohan

I know that registered-Democrat lesbians are hardly at the ***core ***of the pro-life movement. :dubious:

My point is that I am acquainted with a lesbian registered Democrat who is firmly pro-choice. She is hardly anti-woman, contrary to what Der Trihs wrote.

[WhyNot]

@Lemur866

Why?

Under what system of logic must this neccesarily be true?

Under the system of logic which calls killing a fetus murder, and calls a fetus a “person”. You can’t murder a pig or a gnat or a mosquito - you can only murder a person. So if abortion becomes murder in the legal sense, the victim must be a person. And persons are all accorded the same legal rights under the law. That’s the top of the slippery scope according fetuses the same legal rights as everyone else, including the restrictions on being given alcohol or drugs they’re not old enough to legally consume, live in an environment free of abuse, etc.

@UnwrittenNocturne

Further down the slippery slope. Abortion is illegal in State A but legal in State B. Woman travels to State B to get one. And gets prosecuted in State A under a new law that forbids crossing of state lines to get one

Which is very possible, legal and logical if and only if the fetus is legally a person, accorded the rights of a person, a citizen, of that state. The state then has an interest in protecting the life of their unborn citizen even when that person is temporarily in another state. I seriously doubt I could take some born person from Illinois to some lawless desert island and blow out their brains and come home and suffer no legal repercussions at all.

I know people get annoyed with semantic nitpicking in abortion debates, but this is exactly why: persons and citizens have legal rights; humans don’t. If all humans at all stages of life have rights, we’ve got serious issues on our hands and a greased slide in front of us.

@Chief_Pedant

Monstro, you are still a spring chicken, but I’d be curious how you’d consider your own baby’s “rights and protections” if you are two weeks away from term and a mugger kills it by kicking you in the abdomen…

And this is why “Laci’s Law” scares the piss out of me. Laci’s Law, even more than criminalizing abortion, sets us down this slippery slope of “fetal rights”, IMHO. It’s easy to appeal to emotion, and even logic, and say that a person who kills a viable fetus, especially one so close to birth, is guilty of something we’d want to punish…but the Unborn Victims of Violence Act makes no mention of gestational age or viability - ANY violence which affects ANY fetus of ANY age is now punishable as if the fetus were a grown woman - regardless of whether or not the assailant knew the woman was pregnant. That’s some scary shit, right there.

@monstro

Once they formally define marriage as being between a “man and a woman”, then the debate is over and future arguments are shut down.

I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but at some point the rhetoric switched from “a man and a woman” to “ONE man and ONE woman.” Clearly, someone’s afraid of the polygamy push. Once you’re removed “man and woman” from the equation, why is “a” any harder to drop? I can see their point, actually. Like those afraid of “Negro rights”, I think this is a perfectly likely slippery slope.

@lavenderviolet

Knowing that a lot of people on this board rooted for WhyNot’s baby born at 23 weeks, I would hope that you can see why some people find the idea of babies that age being killed horrifying and want to see an end to it - even if you have your own reasons for thinking the practice should continue to be allowed.

Actually, going through it myself only strengthened my pro-choice stance. It was quite clear to me that fetuses at her stage of development don’t have awareness, don’t feel pain and aren’t “alive” apart from either machine or human life support systems in any meaningful way. I would have personally been devastated had we lost her, but I wouldn’t judge a single person for having an abortion even at that stage.

[Lemur866]

@WhyNot

Under the system of logic which calls killing a fetus murder, and calls a fetus a “person”. You can’t murder a pig or a gnat or a mosquito - you can only murder a person. So if abortion becomes murder in the legal sense, the victim must be a person. And persons are all accorded the same legal rights under the law. That’s the top of the slippery scope according fetuses the same legal rights as everyone else, including the restrictions on being given alcohol or drugs they’re not old enough to legally consume, live in an environment free of abuse, etc.

Well gee. We don’t investigate every death to see if it is murder.

It is fucking ridiculous for you to pretend that the logical consequence of banning abortion would be to investigate women every month to see if they’ve miscarried and put them in prison if they have.

You know and I know that miscarriages happen all the time. And that’s just counting the miscarriages where the women know they are pregnant in the first place.

Why in the world would you imagine that when the ayatollahs rule the United States that they would desire to investigate every miscarriage as if it were a death by gunshot? You do know that several countries in the world already ban abortion, right? In which of these countries is every miscarriage investigated as a potential murder? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Franco’s Spain? Pre-1990s Ireland? Turkmenestan? Chile? Nicaragua? Pre Roe v. Wade America?

You all somehow have created this fantasy of what you imagine opponents of abortion would do if somehow they ever were able to ban abortion. But you somehow forget that there are real historical and current instances of various theocratic, authoritarian, conservative, and totalitarian states that have banned abortion and none of them have taken the steps you imagine that American pro-lifers would take, if only they could.

Why do you think that is?

When you make assertions about what people will do under certain circumstances, yet when we look at what other people have done under the same circumstances we find that they don’t act the way you have asserted they will act, why doesn’t that lead you to question whether your assertion is really likely to be true?

Take a look at this wikipedia entry that summarized abortion by country: Abortion law - Wikipedia

Notice that the United States has extremely liberal abortion laws, even when compared to many other first world countries. Are Ireland and Japan real-life instances of “A Handmaid’s Tale”? If other countries can restrict abortion but somehow aren’t totalitarian theocracies as a result, why in the world would you insist that any restriction on abortion would inevitably turn the United States into such a theocratic hellhole?

How is it possible for lots of countries to have “reasonable” restrictions on abortion, yet somehow they don’t slide all the way down the greasy slope imagined in this thread?

[monstro]

@Sarahfeena

What kind of answer do you want? I think the best analogy to look at people with children. We don’t monitor people’s homes to be sure the children are safe, eating their vegetables, etc. Yet, I think we are all committed to the safety & health of children. The reason we don’t do this kind of monitoring is because we make the assumption that people are doing at least a reasonable job of raising their children, unless we have a very, very good reason to think otherwise (and the situation has to be a lot worse than a bad diet or too much TV). I don’t see why we wouldn’t make the same assumption of a pregnant woman.

If you see a child drinking a bottle of liquor, won’t you feel the urge to call Child Services, at the very least?

If we see a pregnant mother drinking a bottle of liquor, should we feel the urge to call Child Services?

As far as miscarriages go, the problem with your argument is that we pretty much don’t know what causes most of them, so it would be pretty hard to pin something on the mother, anyway. The only time we investigate a death as a homicide is if the death is under mysterious circumstances.

But death certificates are always issued. The suspected cause of death is given. The dead person isn’t just swept under the rug, no questions asked. There are formalities even when the death is obviously natural.

And my question is why should it bother you, as a Pro-Lifer, that miscarriages would be investigated? If you believe that 1) abortion is murder and 2) that intentionally aborted pregnancies would often be disguised as miscarriages, then it follows that miscarriages should be investigated. If in fact anti-abortion laws are serious. And if they’re not serious, then what the hell is the point?

With miscarriages, not knowing the reason is a typical circumstance, and not particularly unusual at all, so although it may seem “mysterious,” it’s really not. There wouldn’t be a legal leg to stand on to get a warrant to do any investigating.

What if we have evidence that the mother was seeking out back alley abortionists? Or we saw her taking drugs and doing head-stands right before?

Blood tests, pelvic examinations, and eye witness testimony might give us all the evidence we need to charge someone with a crime.

[Sarahfeena]

@monstro

If you see a child drinking a bottle of liquor, won’t you feel the urge to call Child Services, at the very least?

If we see a pregnant mother drinking a bottle of liquor, should we feel the urge to call Child Services?

Well, first of all, I don’t think the two situations are exactly analagous, but even if I thought they were, calling child services isn’t the same thing as prosecuting someone for a crime. In either case, I think the idea would be to get the person some help.

But death certificates are always issued. The suspected cause of death is given. The dead person isn’t just swept under the rug, no questions asked. There are formalities even when the death is obviously natural.

I’m not seeing the problem here…let’s say a death certificate was issued upon a miscarriage. I can’t imagine that happening, but let’s say it did (and it would only happen if the mother knew she was having one, which oftentimes, you don’t), why would it have to say anything other than “natural miscarriage?”

And my question is why should it bother you, as a Pro-Lifer, that miscarriages would be investigated? If you believe that 1) abortion is murder and 2) that intentionally aborted pregnancies would often be disguised as miscarriages, then it follows that miscarriages should be investigated. If in fact anti-abortion laws are serious. And if they’re not serious, then what the hell is the point?

Well, I’m pro-life by philosophy, but I’m not necesssarily in favor of anti-abortion laws. But even if I were, I don’t see your logic. As I said before, the law doesn’t just have access to people’s most private information. You have to have a warrant even to search someone’s house, much less get private medical information. There’s no way a normal miscarriage would be probably cause to get such a warrant, because they are too common and ordinary of an occurrance. You’d need a whole separate police force to investigate them all.

What if we have evidence that the mother was seeking out back alley abortionists? Or we saw her taking drugs and doing head-stands right before?

Blood tests, pelvic examinations, and eye witness testimony might give us all the evidence we need to charge someone with a crime.
[/QUOTE]

[WhyNot]

@Lemur866

Well gee. We don’t investigate every death to see if it is murder.

It is fucking ridiculous for you to pretend that the logical consequence of banning abortion would be to investigate women every month to see if they’ve miscarried and put them in prison if they have.

I see now that you were replying specifically to Annie_X-mas; I thought you were addressing the topics in the OP. Sorry. I’m more concerned with allegations of fetal abuse from diet, activity and lifestyle choice including recreational drugs like alcohol than I am with the miscarriage = murder issue.

[Chief_Pedant]

@monstro

I’m frustrated that you Pro-Lifers don’t have a good answer. It’s making me believe you aren’t as commited to “life” as you claim to be.

I am not sure quite where you got the idea I am a Pro-Lifer…

[ruadh]

@JThunder

Even if we grant your summary to be completely accurate (which I doubt)

It is completely accurate. What about it do you doubt?

it only means that these particular people opposed these specific measures does not mean that they oppose offering any aid whatsoever to mothers or to fully born babies.

I didn’t suggest that they oppose any aid whatsoever, although it’s for them to demonstrate that they do. I said that they oppose extending the right to healthcare to people who have already been born, which they clearly do if they keep voting against it. It’s not exactly news to most people that right-wing republicans have a problem in general with publicly-funded healthcare.

Congressional voting records are a matter of public record and it’s easy enough to spot a pattern. Here’s a few choice examples of Wayne Allard on the issues:

Voted NO on adding 2 to 4 million children to SCHIP eligibility. (Nov 2007)

Voted NO on including prescription drugs under Medicare. (Jun 2000)

Voted YES on Medicare means-testing. (Jun 1997)

**# Rated 0% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record. **(Dec 2003)

So here is a guy who apparently has never seen a public healthcare measure he didn’t oppose, except when applied to fetuses, and you’re suggesting he just didn’t think the measures he opposed were efficient enough? Come on.

[VarlosZ]

@ruadh

So here is a guy who apparently has never seen a public healthcare measure he didn’t oppose, except when applied to fetuses, and you’re suggesting he just didn’t think the measures he opposed were efficient enough? Come on.

Those positions are not at all inconsistent. One can be generally opposed to increased government involvement in health care, while at the the same time believing that a fetus is a human life deserving of the same legal protections as postnatal infants. The two positions need not have anything to do with one another.

[ruadh]

@VarlosZ

Those positions are not at all inconsistent. One can be generally opposed to increased government involvement in health care, while at the the same time believing that a fetus is a human life deserving of the same legal protections as postnatal infants. The two positions need not have anything to do with one another.

Except that he wasn’t proposing to give fetuses the *same * protections as “postnatal” infants. He was proposing to give some of them more. He refused to support making more infants eligible for SCHIP, while proposing to make fetuses eligible.

[Zoe]

Sarahfeena: …I’m pro-life by philosophy, but I’m not necesssarily in favor of anti-abortion laws.

I find that comforting in a way. I’m just over the line in the other direction. I’m pro-choice, although I can certainly understand the motives of those who are pro-life. Sometimes I’ve gone back and forth through the years.

Someone in my family is the result of a pro-life stance, and if ever a child needed to be in this world, it is she.

Those with good motives do count very, very much. And you are the majority of the pro-life movement.

I wish that more in the pro-life movement could understand that most of us on the pro-choice side give consideration to moral issues also.

[YamatoTwinkie]

@WhyNot

I’m more concerned with allegations of fetal abuse from diet, activity and lifestyle choice including recreational drugs like alcohol than I am with the miscarriage = murder issue.

Well, how often are parents who feed their children McDonalds every day prosecuted?

How about parents that expose their children to second-hand smoke, or let them sit in front of the television/computer all day?

It would logically follow that, if the Pro-life community successfully lobbied to have an unborn fetus be given the same rights as a child, then all of the above would have to be prosecuted FIRST, before the same enforcements are extended on behalf the unborn.

[Magiver]

@monstro

Will they charge mothers with a crime if their children are born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?

Child abuse is prosecutable now which is as it should be.