Thanks for the thoughtful response. In the real world I’m not sure how my ‘philosophical answer’, which supposes some option (future tech or something) in which ending a pregnancy after viability is no more likely to cause problems for mother or child then waiting until full term, would apply. In the real world this isn’t so, so my philosophical response isn’t quite valid.
Assuming a situation where the mother decides she doesn’t want to be pregnant any more, and the fetus can be delivered in such a manner that it is no more risky than a normal delivery, who supports the baby? I assume we are not going to let the mother opt out of child support, just like we don’t allow fathers to opt out of child support now.
Regards,
Shodan
The mother, if she so chooses, or she gives it up for adoption, I would think. Isn’t that how it’s already done with mothers who bear children that they do not want to care for?
Hmmm…pretty sure that’s implied in the term “pro-choice”. You can choose to not be for abortion.
One might ask why the abortion (or extraction to an incubator) took place so late. Not all women even know they’re pregnant right away, and there are cases of women who give birth, without ever knowing they were pregnant at all.
We might be less sympathetic to a woman who couldn’t make up her mind until later, or a woman who, having lost her job, decided to abort for financial reasons. Yet even then, many of us hold that the principle of bodily sovereignty must prevail. We do not want the state to have the power to compel a woman to continue an unwanted pregnancy.
People do lots of completely legal things that are horribly unethical. Look at the crap parents teach their children. (Racism, creationism, etc.) They’re doing real and serious harm to their children, but there is no valid legal way to prohibit it.
This article, written by Carl Sagan years ago, addresses this issue and largely shaped (and changed) my opinion on abortion. For the record, I voted that I’m pro-choice, but in that scenario, abortion should be illegal.
Yes. The responsibility for supporting a child financially belongs to both parents, no matter which of them wants or doesn’t want the child, unless both parents agree to give the child up for adoption.
At present, a pregnant woman who decides she no longer wants to be pregnant, if she makes that decision after the legal time limit for elective abortion, is stuck with carrying the pregnancy to term. And then she’s stuck with the financial responsibilities of parenthood, just as the father is.
Having some kind of advanced incubator system that would allow safe delivery of a viable fetus much earlier than the expected delivery date wouldn’t do anything to change those parental responsibilities once the fetus is living outside the womb.
This is complete anti-choice bullshit. Women can simply take a pill up to 10 to 16 weeks into pregnancy, and after that a so-called “surgical abortion” takes about 5 minutes and does not require a hospital stay-it’s basically a vacuum out the uterus sort of non-event. A 20 week old fetus is not viable; there have only been two recorded instances of a fetus delivered prior to 24 weeks (both at 23.5 weeks) that lived despite intensive life saving efforts, and many doctors think the gestational age of these two cases was incorrectly recorded. Most fetuses delivered at 24 weeks die despite intensive efforts, and those that do live usually have permanent severe mental and physical problems. Science tells us that prior to 28 weeks gestation the brain of a fetus is so incomplete it does not even respond to painful stimuli; it’s a mindless lump of tissue. The vast majority of late-term abortions are performed for medical reasons, and laws restricting late-term abortion simply result in poor medical care.
Women are not walking incubators and if they don’t want something growing inside their body, they can have it removed. At any time for any reason. If you believe otherwise you are advocating for a serious violation of women’s rights. No one likes abortion or wants to have one, but the fact remains that women have rights. Forcing a woman to incubate something is a horrific unethical and immoral act. If men could get pregnant, they’d suddenly realize this. The WHO has recently been making statements about the fact that any laws against abortion are a serious human rights violation.
This is an excellently written post. Thanks…super informative.
Do you have a cite for this? I couldn’t find it on their website.
Were you looking on the right site?
Maybe what spamforbrains is talking about is WHO policy guidance stating the necessity of abortion rights as part of ensuring women’s health and bodily autonomy, as well as public health in general.
BigT:
True, but you can’t be pro-choice and think that abortion is murder.
That’s a very informative link, but it doesn’t address her claim that “any laws against abortion are a serious human rights violation”.
That’s my claim. How anyone can think forcing a woman to be walking incubator isn’t a human rights violation is beyond my comprehension.
WHO has made a number of statements indicating they think laws against abortion are a human rights violation. Most recently, they criticized Northern Ireland for their treatment of one woman forced to carry a deformed fetus to birth as a human rights violation and they have also stated the antiabortion/anticontraception laws in countries hit by Ziki virus are human rights violations.
There is a lot that’s factually wrong here.
My daughter was born at 21 weeks 6 days fetal age (23 weeks, 6 days gestational age) more than 11 years ago, and was given “about 50/50” odds of survival. She’s perfectly fine, and didn’t even make the news. Little Amillia Taylor, born a year and a half after my daughter, made the news because her mother told a lie to force doctors to save her. And while it’s true that the news reported her as “the youngest preemie ever to survive,” that’s bullocks. James Elgin Gill was born at 21 weeks 5 days fetal age, in 1987, and survived, healthy. Trevor Frolek was born at 23 weeks in 2014, as was Megan Ayles. So…there’s five at least, and I’m sure my daughter isn’t the only one who doesn’t make the lists because she didn’t make the news.
At 24 weeks, more than half (55%) of micropreemies survive, and fewer than half (45%) have moderate to severe disabilities.
No one has any clear idea when a fetus begins to feel pain. The neocortex is developed at 24 weeks, and is widely considered the precursor for the ability to feel pain. But there’s much argument as to whether they feel pain at 24 weeks or later. I can tell you that if my daughter displayed all the same behaviors that a child, adult or animal would to indicate pain at the equivalent of 25 fetal age weeks - 27 weeks after my last period.
I’m as pro-choice as they come, and that was only strengthened by my experiences with my micropreemie daughter, born before the cutoff for abortion in my state. But we shouldn’t be misrepresenting facts to win our arguments.
It’s not absolutely certain that even newborns “feel pain” in an organized sense. They aren’t aware of the experience of pain in the way adults are.
Some very, very young babies tear their own hair out, not able to comprehend that it is they, themselves, who are performing the action that hurts them.
A newborn baby is, in a sense, still “fetal,” still un-developed. This has led some to argue that infanticide is not immoral. However, infanticide doesn’t have any virtue of necessity. Even the most horribly deformed and defective babies, once born, can be given some basic level of care. There might be some argument that infanticide would spare such babies from lives than can never be anywhere close to “normal.” But this is still very, very much a minority viewpoint.
Your claim is without basis.
The WHO has not said that any laws regulating abortion are serious human rights violations.
They simply haven’t.
Well, yes. That’s the point of that statement. Velocity seems to think otherwise.
I’m fine with late-term abortions being legal. I’m fine with abortion up until the moment of birth. I’m also an outlier