Hasn’t every person in history also spent at least some time in a house that isn’t theirs? We let the homeowner choose whom to admit, and when. Why give a woman so much less authority over her own body?
First, about the above post, I think it highlights a difference of perspective when you twice use the term “defend” referring to a woman having an abortion. I find it odd to say that the method by which every human exists is an attack on the person’s mother.
This other example is strange as well. It’s not me coming to your house for beers. It is you engaging in an act which created me and requires me to live in your “house” or else I die. The common law deals with this in the “private necessity” doctrine. If you stumble onto my house during a snowstorm and require me to take you in, I must and may not eject you, however you will owe me damages. The law sees the competing harms: my property rights vs. your very survival.
I find it obvious that you have never been pregnant.
I have not. But a hell of a lot of women have who share my view, so this isn’t just about men being stupid men and not understanding it.
There are lots of women who are pro life. Heck, i don’t support third trimester abortions. I doubt many women who have been pregnant would be surprised that i consider pregnancy to be an assault to my bodily integrity.
[genuinely asking]
What if there’s no snowstorm, and a homeless guy just shows up on my doorstep? Possibly walks right through the doorway?
[/genuinely asking]
Obviously you don’t have to take him in. But I imagine I will disagree with the analogy.
It is in no way a basic necessity of life for every woman to carry even one pregnancy to term; let alone for every woman who has multiple pregnancies to carry all of them to term.
And nobody is comparing a wanted pregnancy to “something horrible”. An unwanted pregnancy can indeed be horrible.
Everyone in history has eaten food. That really is a basic necessity of life, for everyone. Yet stealing food is still considered a crime.
And, @UltraVires, I’m still waiting for an answer to my question, here for the third time phrased in a somewhat different form: what about all the people who are prevented from having a life because the person who would have been their mother didn’t have sex?
An abortion is no walk in the park, either. I was there for two friends who had a pregnancy they wanted terminated, but had nobody that would help.
I’m pro choice because people should be able to make medical decisions that impact on them. I’m also aware of what a difficult choice that can be.
Any living thing that is not a human person, e.g., non-human animals and plants. Sorry, I thought the meaning of the term was pretty self-evident.
Every concept of fetal personhood has an on/off switch somewhere in the process. After the switch is flipped, the degree of recognized personhood and rights can gradually increase along with fetal development. But there’s always some arbitrary point at which the degree of personhood is declared to flip from zero to non-zero.
The switch in your model is arbitrarily chosen to flip at the moment of fertilization, when you decree that the minute blastocyst suddenly has almost as much personhood and rights as the fully human person carrying it. (Unless, of course, the zygote was fertilized as a result of rape or incest, in which case its personhood and rights can be totally nullified at the will of the victim of the rape or incest.)
The switch in my model is arbitrarily chosen to flip at some later point after the start of the second trimester, at which point the fetus begins to be considered to have enough personhood and rights to endow it with some legal protection of its life against pregnancy termination. (Although not enough protection to necessarily outweigh dangers to the life or health of the pregnant woman, depending on the medical situation and the extent of fetal development.)
The placement of my on/off switch for fetal personhood is just as arbitrarily chosen as yours, although I think my choice makes much more biological, ethical, and practical sense than yours does. (Especially since mine doesn’t have that hypocritical suspension of recognition of fetal personhood in cases of rape or incest, even though the fetus in that case is just as much an “innocent life” as one conceived via consensual sex.)
I admit, though, that my model does not conform to popular religious conceptions of “ensoulment” at the moment of conception as well as yours does. I don’t have a problem with that, but many people object to it on those grounds.
Buddhism says the soul enters the body around the time of quickening. Judaism holds that the soul enters the body when the baby takes its first breath. Yours is fine.
I disagree. I mean, I think pretty clearly once the child is born it is a person with equal rights to any of us. I hope that isn’t disputed.
But from fertilization through birth, I think we agree that the child/fetus/unborn child (it is not my intention in using any term to cause a side debate) is definitely not fully human (life of woman exception) but again I hope we agree that it is not nothing. It is not an ant, snake, dog and many other things mentioned, Which is why I disagree with this characterization:
I’m not saying it is equal or near equal. I am saying that the balance of the harm falls manifestly more on the fetus/child/unborn child than the mother. So, I find it difficult to say that the convenience of the woman to wait a few years to have a child overrides that entity’s desire to live at all. Especially when the woman engaged in sex knowing full well, as well all do, that it is the very purpose that all mammals do this. The fact that we have viewed it in recent years as a personal source of intimacy disconnected from childbirth, IMHO, should not be a reason to further devalue the entity which needs its mother’s womb to survive, like every one of us did.
[Post snipped]
I don’t think that we’re in agreement that that entity is capable of actually having any sort of desire at all.
I’ve seen people try to derive an ‘Ought’ from an ‘Is’, but I don’t recall ever seeing folks try to derive an ‘Ought’ from a ‘You And I Of Course Know This Is Not Always The Case’.
You mention “purpose”. You realize, I take it, that some women have sex while thinking that they don’t want to get pregnant, and that some of them wind up — not getting pregnant. I’m looking for an ‘all-mammals’ purpose there, and I’m not seeing it; and I’m looking for an ‘ought’ that follows from those ‘is’ facts, and I’m not seeing it, either.
(And I’m still looking for the point of the “like every one of us did” line you keep bringing up — which may well be worthy of its own discussion about deriving an ‘Ought’ from an ‘Is’, but put that aside for a moment. Instead, picture a world where the next generation includes, oh, say, eleven people who got here some other way: would you change your position, or find that to be utterly irrelevant?)
I agree
I agree. And i think it gets closer and closer to being a person as it gets closer and closer to birth.
I disagree completely.
I think the balance of harm falls on the mother, who is a human being with thoughts and hopes and desires. Especially early in the pregnancy, before the development of the nervous system, the embryo doesn’t even feel pain. (Later on, it does, i know there used to be people who thought even newborns don’t actually feel pain, but i think they’ve been disproved.)
Carrying a pregnancy is life changing. It’s not just “inconvenient”. It ages a woman. It changes her entire metabolism. It’s common for women to develop “gestational diabetes”, which often doesn’t resolve after birth. Personally, i gained about 20 pounds with each pregnancy, that i decided was too much work to lose, and my hair has been shorter ever since. Sex is different for women who’ve given birth vaginally. Most women get stretch marks. Many get varicose veins (including hemorrhoids, which are varicose veins in the anus.) Women are more prone to “auto immune” disorders in part because they can have an immune reaction to stray cells from the baby that get into other parts of their body. I suffered PMS from hell, that lasted weeks, and that doctors weren’t willing to treat because it might be risky for the baby. It was so bad the second time that my husband grabbed the first baby and walked out on me, because HE could physically get away from my mental pain. I couldn’t. Post-partum depression is more common than gestational depression.
Pregnancy softens the connective tissues between the bones (so the hip can stretch during delivery) and as a result I nearly killed myself walking to the subway one icy day. My MIL gained a shoe size with each child due to this.
That’s if everything goes smoothly. Sometimes it doesn’t. Women risk death, stroke, and major surgery (a c-section requires cutting open the abdomen) every time they give birth.
And of course, if they keep the pregnancy, they owe the child-it-will-become a level of care that is very restrictive. For instance, i couldn’t treat my depression. I also couldn’t take the NSAIDs i usually took for I’ve problems. So i was in physical pain for most of the pregnancy. Pregnant women are advised not to drink, not to eat cold cuts or many raw foods, not to fly (towards the end) and not to engage in many sports.
If it was just, “don’t drink for 9 months”, maybe it would be fair to call it an “inconvenience”. (But refer to the thread where people thought it wouldn’t be worth going to many parties if they couldn’t drink at them.) But it’s a hell of a lot more than an inconvenience.
TL;DR I am really offended that you dismiss pregnancy as a mere “inconvenience”. Like really, really pissed.
There we go with “convenience” again. I refer you to my posts #232 and #308.
And, for that matter, to @puzzlegal’s posts #315 and #316.
What desire? How can something without a brain have a desire?
You might, possibly, make something of that argument if talking about, say, an eight-month fetus; though whether that’s a creature capable of desiring to live seems to me an open question, and I don’t in any case believe in some mythical woman who willingly carries for 8 months and then aborts, not for serious medical reasons, but on a whim. But you’re also talking about a zygote and a blastocyst and an early-stage fetus. So that argument’s nonsense.
Nothing recent about that. Sex for purposes other than pregnancy is at least as old as our split from the common ancestor with bonobos.
And for the fourth time: what about all the possible humans whose existence is prevented because someone did not have sex?
So when a man commits rape his sole reason is to procreate?
AFAICT, we do not agree on this claim. (I’m highlighting it because I apparently haven’t been clear enough in explaining my view here, although I was certainly trying to be.)
What I have been saying all along is that in my view, from the moment of fertilization to some arbitrary point not long after the first trimester, there should be no more legal restrictions on a woman’s choice to terminate her pregnancy than on, say, her decision to destroy an ant on her property.
That follows logically from my view (which, as I said, I think makes much more biological, ethical and practical sense than yours) that up to that point, the embryo/fetus does not possess sufficient personhood or human rights to qualify for any separate legal protection at all.
So the question of the harm to the early-term embryo/fetus, or the innocence of it, or the naturalness of its conception, or the woman’s consent to sex, or whatever, is entirely irrelevant. Not only is it not a fully human person, but it isn’t even enough of a human person to have any right to life whatsoever independent of the pregnant woman’s wishes.
I completely disagree. I think it is perfectly reasonable to “devalue” the personhood of an embryo/fetus in the early part of pregnancy, because it’s so undeveloped that it makes far more sense not to consider it a person at all, in any meaningful way.
Of course, if a pregnant woman wants her early-term embryo to be regarded as a fully human person from the get-go, I totally support her in that choice, because it’s up to her. But if she doesn’t want to consider it a person at all, and in fact wants to destroy it by terminating the pregnancy, then that’s up to her too and I totally support her in that choice as well.
UltraVires, I really don’t know how I can explain this to you any more clearly, but ISTM that it’s what I’ve been saying all along, and you have been somehow not getting it.
No, the early-term embryo/fetus’s life or rights or needs or alleged “desire” or anything are not entitled to any protection at all, absent the pregnant woman’s voluntary wish to protect them, because it isn’t a person. At all.
That’s what I think. Hope that’s clear now.
No, animals do NOT have sex to reproduce. They have sex because it feels good and they have instinctive drives to have sex and do things that feel good. Animals have no notion that sex leads to babies.
Humans do not have sex solely to reproduce. We do it because it’s fun and it feels good. We do it to establish and strengthen bonds between intimate partners. People unable to reproduce still engage in in sex.
Sex is NOT solely for reproduction, especially in human beings.
If a two people engaged in sex are utilizing birth control to prevent conception and that protection fails I have zero problem with the pregnant party getting an abortion because clearly they were NOT intending to reproduce and had taken steps to prevent reproduction - which failed because nothing is perfect.
No one is obligated to put themselves at risk in order to save another human life. I am not compelled to donate a kidney or a part of my liver to save your life. I’m not even compelled to donate a pint of blood - a much less invasive procedure than live organ donation or pregnancy - to save your life, even if you’ll surely die without it. So why should a woman be obligated to save the life of an embryo? Why is that the sole exception to “you are not obligated to endure harm to save someone else”?