Why abortions would/wouldn't be legal all the way up to childbirth

Great Debates
1

In a separate thread, the vast majority (86%) of pro-choice Dopers who voted in the poll, voted that abortion should be legal even if a fetus is a person. Others in the thread also said that the mother should have sole say in what happens to, or in, her body, no matter what.

If this is the case, then why should late-term abortions be illegal? Why shouldn’t abortion be legal all the way up until the moment of childbirth?

If it doesn’t matter if a fetus is a person or not, and if “viability” is irrelevant since the late-term fetus is still inside the uterus and the mother gets sole say as to what occupies her body, then isn’t this contradictory?

For clarification, I’m not defending abortion - I’m pro-life. But it is inconsistent to say that fetus personhood doesn’t matter, and that a mother has sole say over what happens in her body, but then also ban late-term abortions.

2

It’s not “inconsistent”, it’s simply unpopular. What should be and what is doesn’t always match.

3

Most of us recognize that the fetus develops over time, and comes closer and closer to full “personhood.”

Allowing the government to restrict late-term abortions is a political compromise.

It’s very comparable to the “rape and incest” exceptions that the pro-life side accepts, for the same reason: political necessity. They don’t believe that an unborn baby, conceived by rape, is any less precious or worthy of saving. They just realize that they can’t press that case, because it would alienate too many of their own supporters.

This is a political issue, and can’t really be resolved by pure logic or reason.

4

To kind of repeat one of my responses in that thread:

Yeah, it’s not philosophically pure. But it’s a result of compromise. If some people are extra-mega-grossed out/upset by late-term abortions, and by limiting them those people would then be mainly ok with abortions for younger fetuses, then maybe no one is purely happy with the state of things, but it’s close enough that we might be able to stop fighting about it long enough to go outside and enjoy the world for a bit.

5

It’s a balancing of competing and irreconcilable interests. The mother has both an autonomy interest and a life/health interest at all times. The fetus has a life interest.

Under US law, the mother’s life/health interest always trumps the fetus’s life interest, and so abortion must be permitted at any time during pregnancy when the mother’s life or health is threatened.

In a pregnancy where the mother’s life or health is not threatened, the infringement that pregnancy places upon her autonomy interest means that abortion must be permitted until the fetal life interest develops to the point where it outweighs the mother’s autonomy. The law basically says that that point is viability, essentially because before then the fetus is wholly parasitic. Its life interest is necessarily less than fully developed, simply because it cannot live on its own.

Note that even before viability, the fetal life interest means that a state can criminally prosecute someone other than the mother who harms a wanted fetus.

After viability, a state (or the federal government) may decide that the fetus’ life interest outweighs the mother’s autonomy, and abortion can be generally banned (with appropriate exceptions). That’s not required – a state may permit abortion up until birth. Seven states and the District of Columbia (if I’m not mistaken) do not restrict late-term abortion.

Rape/incest exceptions arise from a similar calculus. Those cases infringe the mother’s autonomy interest to a greater degree than an ordinary pregnancy, which means that abortion shall be permitted in those cases even in some instances where under ordinary circumstances the fetal life interest would prevail.

Certainly these are compromises, but any outcome would necessarily be a compromise, because the interests involved are irreconcilable. Where they’re in conflict, someone is going to lose no matter where we draw the line.

6

It may come down to just disappointing both sides equally … no one likes being half right but that’s the nature of compromise.

My female relatives tell me I’m against abortion, but it should never be a matter of law.

7

They shouldn’t be illegal at all. A woman should have the right to end her pregnancy at any time.

I’ll note that this does not necessarily mean the right to kill the fetus when past viability.

8

Also … at some point we have to consider the current state of our foster care and adoption systems … free college is nice and all but we do need more focus on a child’s first 18 years.

And of course … child support enforcement … it’s not just the woman’s fault here …

9

I’m a little confused here; the two statements seem to be in conflict with each other. “At any time” would also include “past viability.”

10

He said “end her pregnancy”, he didn’t say “kill the baby”.

Obviously, if you end the pregnancy before viability the baby dies, but if you end it after viability, in this instance, I think the implication is that the baby lives.

11

My point is that ending a pregnancy doesn’t necessarily have to include ending the life of the fetus, when after viability, at least theoretically.

I don’t know the medical details of ending late pregnancies, and I wouldn’t presume to support or make policy without fully understanding them (as well as consulting with women, of course), but philosophically, I believe that the woman’s right to expel anyone or anything inside them at any time should be absolute, but that right is to expel, not necessarily to kill.

12

I used to think that abortion on demand right up until birth was a neat and easy answer until I was pregnant. I hate to admit that it can even happen, but I went off my rocker when I was pregnant. From a physical standpoint, I had a normal and uneventful pregnancy, but I also went crazy. If I had been very young, instead of 38 and pregnant for the first time, there was a good chance I might have been diagnosed as bipolar. As it was, I had enough stability behind me to make it pretty clear that my craziness was pregnancy related.

Now, I didn’t walk into the doctor’s and demand an abortion, but I did think about it a couple of times, and this was a planned and wanted pregnancy-- and I cooled off after I calmed down. These incidents happened late in pregnancy, and I didn’t really want an abortion, I just wanted the psychic trauma to be over-- which it would have, I suppose, but having toughed it out for say, eight months and a week, my doctor would have been better off talking me into a psych consult than prepping me for an abortion. Or even agreeing to an induction and delivering the baby (who when he was born at 41 weeks weighed well over 8 lbs, and probably would have been perfectly healthy three weeks early), on the basis that it was appropriate for my health.

Now, I was an unusual case. I do not represent women who have been seeking abortions for months, and frustrated at all turns, who would not be candidates for late-term abortions, if early term ones had been easy to get, or women who just found out their fetuses do not have brains, or who just got a cancer diagnosis, and want to start chemo immediately in order to try to live for the two children they already have.

It did make me think that a woman who has waited six months can probably wait another day (unless she’s having a heart attack, or kidney failure, or something, and then, get the damn fetus out). Of course, any woman can wait a day unless the law says she can’t or the abortion clinic is 50 miles away.

I wish any woman could make a measured decision about what to do, but a lot of times she can’t because of restrictive laws. If she has days before she goes from 14 to 15 weeks, and abortion is suddenly illegal, then she makes a quick decision, which she is more likely to regret, no matter which one it is. Same for if she makes a quick one because of the distance of the clinic.

So this brings me back to me, my craziness, and the confidentiality of doctor and patient. If my doctor could talk to me about my personal situation, knowing me like she did, a woman who had made a decision to become pregnant, and carefully carried a pregnancy for many months, telling me to wait, to think some more, that’s great. Being able to have a completely different conversation with a 14-year-old who was accidentally pregnant, and has concealed her condition for five months, because she was afraid of her parents’ reaction is just as good. Being able to have yet another conversation with someone whose planned pregnancy has gone terribly wrong is sad, but also good.

Restrictions and rules about what doctors can (or cannot, or even must) say are bad. Rules that make decisions rash are bad.

TL;DR: Rules that restrict abortions are bad and hurt women, and may in fact lead to decisions women regret, both to have abortions, and not to have them.

More to the point of the OP: every fetus is different. Not all of them develop exactly the same, and so even if we invested a lot of money trying to determine a point in time for “personhood,” at best we’d come up with an average, or maybe a mode.

13

Just a nitpick: Deadlines as early as 14 to 15 weeks would be forbidden in the US. (They are common in Europe, though, and I’m not sure where you’re located).

14

Ah! Gotcha; valid point. As incubators get better and better, with artificial wombs not utterly inconceivable (pun not quite intended) such options could fall inside a wider and wider horizon.

15

What? When I was pregnant, I was told the deadline for a fetus without a lethal defect was 14 weeks in Indiana, and this was by the genetic counselor we saw at the hospital. I doubt he would have lied. Especially since he added that in Ohio it was 16 weeks.

It might be unconstitutional under strict interpretations of Roe v. Wade, but that doesn’t mean states can’t pass laws, and they stand unless someone challenges them.

16

Heck, just found out my mom is pro-choice, as did she. She actually said the words that “it should be the mother’s choice” while we were discussing why she herself is against abortion.

I bring that up here because it’s exactly the same sort of compromise. You can be pro-choice but think abortion is wrong.

17

You are referring to the limit of outpatient abortions. Any past the first trimester have to be surgically aborted instead, and require a hospital stay. After 20 weeks, a live fetus must be taken care of by a physician. Said baby receives personhood status becomes a ward of the state as long as both parents claim they would not want to keep a baby.

I knew something must’ve been up. Federal courts have overturned Arizona’s 18 week ban, and the Supreme Court overturned Arkansas’s 20 week ban, albeit with extra restrictions involved. (The 20 week ban in Texas hit a split Court.)

18

The problem with that approach is that viability is not like throwing a switch. While inducing a delivery only a week or two early will result in minimal or no problems for the child, being born months early can have severe and life-long repercussions for the baby like blindness, cerebral palsy, and other disabilities. It is ethical to impose that sort of harm on a human being if it can be avoided?

19

I don’t know. I do think it’s a separate philosophical issue from abortion.

20

Yes and no.

While in the US are you not obligated to act to help or prevent harm to another (an example for our scenario would be if a miscarriage starts a woman is under no obligation to stop it) in general acting in manner that you have reason to believe could cause harm to another is illegal. It’s a punishable act to punch someone in the face. Wouldn’t it also be a crime to act in a manner that could cause a permanent disability such as blindness?

If a woman aborts prior to viability then this doesn’t come up because there won’t be a living person to suffer disability. If she aborts shortly after the beginning of viability, though, the odds of a disability go up significantly. Bleeding in the brain occurs in up to 25% of babies born before 32 weeks of gestation. Only about 1/5 of babies born prior to 25 weeks are NOT disabled in some manner.

If you, as an adult, deliberately performed an action that you knew had a 80% chance of leaving another adult permanently disabled do you think that is ethical or legal?