Skammer, thanks for responding. In my hypothetical, pro-choice would mean that you would have no problem with a woman having a procedure to “get rid of” an unwanted child, as long as the child survived the procedure. It was an attempt to separate out opposition to abortion based on a belief that it is murder, from opposition to abortion based on the issues discussed in the OP and my first post (being opposed to women’s rights or women’s sexual freedom). My assumption would be that if someone truly opposed abortion only as “murder”, then they would be pro-choice (accepting of a procedure to remove the fetus from the womb), as long as the fetus would be allowed to develop.
Boy, it is difficult to write about this topic when all the words available come with pre-attached agendas.
Thinking about this more, as I walked to the mailbox. Part of it may be to condemn the woman for a needless death. At 8+ months the child should be viable, so why not just deliver the child if you want ‘it’ out of ‘you’ so soon. This is a lot of condemnation of women in the abortion issue.
Another aspect of the above is because a viable alternative now exists, delivery of the child and adoption. Both are a medical procedure, why at this point kill the child.
That’s the thing, though. This is the very thing that anti-abortion side should think about a little more. If a fetus is being aborted at 8+ months, it’s quite likely that its not viable…which explains why it’s being aborted in the first place. It’s quite likely that the poor thing is an anenephalitic vegetable or the victim of some other aberration that, if left unattended, could jeopardize the mother’s health. Or, at the minimum, force her to endure the trials of pregnancy for no practical reason since the infant will be stillborn anyway.
You’ll find very few people who applaud elective abortions at 8 months. Even people who are want to keep it legal (and I do, to allow for it when its medically necessary), find it disdainful. So I smirk when pro-lifers focus so much on it. By doing so, they only validate their opponents position that there are gradiations, there should be nuance when deciding when personhood begins, and that killing a zygote is morally different than nixing a full-term fetus.
And at the same time, they come across as insensitive to women’s health by railing against the one group that is the most likely to need abortion for health-related reasons.
Coming from the position that I do believe God allows abortion for just the sad situation you describe (non-viable fetus or life/health issues), which opens the door to other uses of the procedure.
I see the anti-late term abortion to side step the issue you bring forth. They are sort of playing a game with terms and the like, pulling on the heart strings for the case where the fetus is healthy and viable without risk to the mother.
BUT-
Sort of ironically when the above happens (aborting of a viable fetus), even rarely, it gives them all the firepower they need.
Continuing, the difference between early and late term abortion would be the viability of the fetus upon delivery. So a distinction can be made between “get it out of me” and it has no chance of living outside, and “get it out of me in such a way that prevents it living on it’s own”. The latter is much harder to justify.
No it doesn’t. It actually undermines them because they do more to validate their opponent’s more nuanced position than actually advance an argument for outlawing all abortion.
In the last few years, the pro-life has lost ground to Plan B and the abortion pill. Maybe they need to start asking themselves why.
I see as some would like to outlaw abortion, others in the other camp want to legalize it further encoded into law. Either way is a non-starter. Making it illegal does nothing to stop it and making it legal, lets say as a ultimate a amendment to the constitution, does not take away abortion’s Akillies heel.
That is turning the hearts of the mother to her child. That will undermine abortion at it’s core level. The appeal for the late term is a attempt to engage the heart, admittedly not always effectively, but it is a attempt to raise it beyond legal reach.
The pro-lifers should be on the left. Their tactics and bleeding heart mindset (when not a proxy issue for gender norms) remind me so much of the PETA pro-animal types, vegetarian evangelists, and extreme environmentalists. “Do you know what happens in a __________?!” or showing gross pictures. Yeah, that’s doesn’t work. The pro-lifers back in the '80s should’ve made up rumors that getting an abortion ruins your sex drive or harms the environment somehow. Because no one cares about fetuses or animals. That’s why we abort/eat them. That’s why critiques of meat have turned to environmental damage or health issues.
Something tells me this would be quickly discarded, for two reasons; primarily cost-who is going to pay for all of these ‘wombs’ and who is going to take care of all of the newborns? Essentially these fetuses become wards of the state and presumably become the countries youngest welfare recipients. People complain about the combined healthcare costs of our citizenry already, just imagine if we place millions more on Social security each and every year, you will hear people stop voting with their bible and start voting with their wallets. I would expect to hear calls from the same ‘pro-life’ people trying to pass an amendment banning artificial wombs, under some guise that “god wants that ‘maternal-child’ soul bond” or something similar.
Secondly, I also wonder who will be adopting/nurturing all of these orphans? I have a hard time believing that they won’t be largely left in some type of state hospital/creche/orphanage. Won’t that be a wonderful birth history for them? “I spent the first 18 years of my life in the Oregon Institute for Unwanted Children.” The supply of adoptive parents would be quickly overwhelmed, not to mention all of the ‘socially acceptable’ criteria most pro-life people would want to tie with it.
To the main point, their main desire of the most extreme voices, subconsciously at least, is a sort of societal control. The strongest opponents of women’s freedom to choose tend to be strongly resistant to other tacit acknowledgments of increasing sexual liberty, such as easy access to contraception, HPV vaccinations and more comprehensive sexual education. I personally believe that they are equally concerned by both males and females having ‘improper’ sexual encounters, but since women are the only ones who have to carry the pregnancy, they can be more easily known and singled out for ire and fingerwagging. Their line of reasoning typically revolves around hoping to keep people uninformed and afraid of children and disease as a means intimidating them into remaining chaste.
I think pretty much everyone is ‘against’ abortion, but in my experience if you ask most women whether they feel they should have the right to make their own choice regarding their pregnancy, nearly all feel they should. I’ve known several women who used to be strongly ‘pro-life’, but when they or their family member had an abortion (with real-world, rational reasons for doing so) , they’ve realized their position would have prevented something like that from being an option, and they change to the pro-choice, while still anti-abortion(whenever possible), side. But I can’t think of a single woman I’ve ever met, who was pro-choice, but simply chose to have the child anyway, and then wanted to take away that right to choose from other women.
I’m here to stick my neck out and invite out-of-context quotation by saying:
If one candidate advocated euthanizing children, and also had every (other) social and fiscal policy which I agree with, and the other candidate did not advocate euthanizing children, and did advocate for social and fiscal policies which I think would ruin the country, then I’ll vote for the former.
I’d consider them murderers if they actually did the child euthanasia thing, but that’s a different question than the one “which party should I vote for?” There are a lot of other things to consider in the latter case.
Hmmm… That was a homework assignment in a Philosophy 101 class not a long time ago…
The obvious answer is “no”.
Opponents of choice don’t even want to openly take the last step in punishing the women that exercise that choice. They call the women murderers but if you ask them what should we do about it, they don’t support prison for these women as vehemently as they call pro-choice a “murder”.
Their goal is not to declare a fetus as a human being but to attach a social stigma on women who had sex outside of the norms of Victorian era sexual morals.
Excuses of why they will be opposed to the hypothetical scenario you propose will probably be many and varied. The common aspect in all of them though is the need for a direct or indirect admonishment to the woman who is pregnant, which would be a non-issue if the fetus could develop in an alternate environment in your scenario.
Not really true (unwanted pregnancies are, by definition, not chosen), and not relevant in any case. It’s still their body, and therefore still their choice what to do with it. Limiting their options to end a pregnacy still imprisons and confines them and takes control of their bodies.
My country has a strong current of extreme conservative crazies.
There’s this Facebook page with a “pro-life” cause. The picture galleries within it are filled with photos of happy chubby-cheeked babies smiling and happy hetero parents holding their smiling babies beneath rays of sunlight and family bliss. The comments consist exclusively of gasps and shocking disbelief as to “how anyone could support killing babies” and to “just look at that baby, how can anyone think of bludgeoning it to death?”
One woman actually writes “I have a son and I can’t believe that some people would choose to kill their children”. This kind of stuff leaves me speechless.
In this Orthodox-Christian community, it creeps me out that I, as pro-choicer, am often looked upon as someone who endorses murdering children. They seriously believe that when a pro-choicer sees a picture of a baby that they quickly grab their knife and are ready to stab it to death.
It frightens me that I often see people advocating the death penalty against pro-choicers.
I chalk it down to confusion. In other words, they have not a single clue about what they’re talking about and about the issue at hand. They’re frustrated, overly emotional and extremely willfully ignorant.
Is this true? Do you have a cite? My understanding is that more people identify themselves as pro-life today compared to 10-20 years ago. But I admit my memory could be faulty.
That’s bullshit - did you even read my answer earlier in the thread? If the baby could be saved and allowed to live, I consider that a win-win for the woman and the baby.
Hey, I am a pro-lifer on the left, although pretty moderate left. It sounds like you’re saying they would fit in on the extreme left wing. It just means that the extremes on both sides can be crazy.
It’s true that more people identify as pro-life than they used to, but that doesn’t counter my point that the movement to date hasn’t been very effective in hampering abortion due to their fixation with a minuscule fraction of abortions that are rarely elective anyway.
Not that I advising them to change tactics, mind you.
How often do you think this kind of thing happens? If it occurs only one time out of 50, do you think this jusifies banning the 49 in which the mother’s life is at stake?
This is a interesting way of putting it as I see it as quite the opposite. Aborting their child imprisons women far more, causing guilt and shame and the haunting cry of unborn life that is ongoing. Causing them to try to convince themselves and live a lie that they have been fed in order to go on, that lie being that it was never a life, or just trying hard not to think about it, denying a very part of their life. To deny the truth to themselves, that the child was a natural part of themselves and the only part that allows them to reach beyond themselves.
Luckily there is redemption and healing and restoration always in the truth. There is a way out and a way home for mother and aborted child.
I was referring to the “artifical womb” scenario. In real life, when the mother’s life is endangered it’s not usually possible to save both and if it came to that I would have them do what is necessary to save the mother.
