# Why does it have to be all or nothing with abortion? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 4, 2022, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939 "2022-05-04T13:56:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/241 "2022-06-07T19:47:57Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Yes, most people I know celebrate the day that’s a day or two after their parents fucked. It’s a common celebratory day! Conception is often not a precisely-known date and we don’t necessarily celebrate every event. We celebrate the birth day like we celebrate many other random significant events. I might compare it to how people celebrate their wedding anniversary but not the date that they met. They consider the start of their relationship as the date they met rather than the date they got married, but they only celebrate their wedding anniversary. There was some aspect of their relationship which existed before the marriage. We might say that the pre-marriage relationship was not significant, but there was something there. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/242 "2022-06-07T19:51:31Z")
Right, because you only know in retrospect that the date of meeting turned out to be a relationship, just like you only know in retrospect that the date of conception is going to turn into a real person. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/243 "2022-06-07T19:52:27Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > You’ve sorta poisoned the well here by calling it “murder”. If it’s just _killing_ of a person–a person with a limited awareness and life experience–then it starts to make sense to compare the moral cost vs. other alternatives. You’ve poisoned the well by calling it the killing of a person, rather than the abortion of a fetus. ETA: “limited awareness and life experience”?? Give me a break. Zero awareness, until maybe the last trimester, and no life experience. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/244 "2022-06-07T20:01:09Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Yes, and the other effect can be getting an abortion. Why is the choice to murder her baby (using some fairly common pro-life terminology) only available if she was raped or family raped? How much time does she get to choose to murder her baby in that case? Before the fake heartbeat is detected? Before there’s brain activity? Before they reach 21? As I mentioned elsewhere in my post, the reason for those people that she is given a choice after rape or incest is because she did not have a choice when the conception occurred. You may think this is mushy or illogical thinking - many pro-lifers and pro-choicers would as well - but it is how some people I’ve talked to about the issue seem to think. And I don’t think they’re all that rare. > [@RitterSport](#): > > This is a strawman. Whereas there really are lots of people who want to fully ban abortion (for others, of course), you would be hard pressed to find someone who would agree to an abortion, say, while the woman was in labor. You’d have an even harder time finding a doctor to do it. I find it odd that you call what I had said a strawman, since I agree with almost everything you write here. Late-term abortions are rare, almost without exception performed only because of massive fetal abnormality, and only performed by a few doctors in the country in part because of their rarity. What’s more, since the passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion ban act, these are more dangerous to the mother than they need to be. I am also aware that any doctor who hears a patient ask for an abortion while in labor will either engage in or refer that patient to counseling, not to abortion services. I am not promulgating the strawman you claim. What would you consider the axiomatically sound pro-choice position to be? ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/245 "2022-06-07T20:03:43Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > What would you consider the axiomatically sound pro-choice position to be? The choice to have an abortion is between a woman, and, if necessary, her medical provider. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/246 "2022-06-07T20:07:25Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > You’ve poisoned the well by calling it the killing of a person No, I’m using the language that **Northern\_Piper** used to kick off this side discussion: > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > And the same with rape and incest exceptions. If a fetus is a person, it shouldn’t matter how the fetus was conceived. > [@RitterSport](#): > > Zero awareness, until maybe the last trimester, and no life experience. So the third trimester is up for grabs, or not? There’s obviously no significant physical or mental difference between a fetus the day before birth and a baby the day after birth. There’s no switch that flips on giving them extra mental powers. That doesn’t mean the law can’t draw a bright line. But it should recognize that it’s doing so. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/247 "2022-06-07T20:12:49Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > The choice to have an abortion is between a woman, and, if necessary, her medical provider. I agree completely with you on that, even if it’s at 8.9999 months. But emotionally, I feel that the fetus is actually a baby after some point in time before birth. Perhaps a baby with a blank consciousness, but still a baby. But if abortion is the right choice for the person, that’s fine. I would bet that most parents consider the fetus as a living baby at some point well before birth. I’m not sure how many of us here are parents, but it’s very common for parents to refer to the fetus as a baby, speak to it, play with it when it moves around, and so on. They treat it as if it is a baby that just happens to be inside the womb. Emotionally, they don’t think if it as an inanimate object. We can come to the philosophical answer of whether the fetus is alive or not, but emotionally, parents generally think of the fetus as a baby at some point well before birth. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/248 "2022-06-07T20:19:54Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > That doesn’t mean the law can’t draw a bright line. But it should recognize that it’s doing so. The law doesn’t need to draw any bright lines. Canada has essentially no abortion law (there are some medical regulations), and they get along just fine. > [@filmore](#): > > I would bet that most parents consider the fetus as a living baby at some point well before birth. I’m not sure how many of us here are parents, but it’s very common for parents to refer to the fetus as a baby, speak to it, play with it when it moves around, and so on. Of course they do. And that’s why 3rd trimester abortions are so rare, and typically really tragic. And, that’s all the more reason to keep the government out of the decision – essentially no one gets to the third trimester and thinks, “oh shit, I’m going to have a baby. I’ve change my mind! Get it out of me!” What happens is that there are severe developmental difficulties or life-threatening health issues, and all the government regulations do is make it more dangerous for the person carrying the fetus, and, occasionally, leads to that person’s death. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/249 "2022-06-07T20:21:52Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > So the third trimester is up for grabs, or not? I should address this as well. Third trimester abortions are essentially a scare tactic by the pro-lifers. It essentially never happens due to simply choice – there are nearly always severe developmental issues with the fetus, severe health issues with the pregnant person, and so on. Pro-lifers say, hey, what about third trimester abortions? They use that as a wedge and then pass “heartbeat” bills. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/250 "2022-06-07T20:26:18Z")
It’s all alive, sperm, egg, fetus. But the most practical line to draw is that, legally, ones social life (interaction) begins at birth with the breath of life. That worked for thousands of years. Gives potential parents control over their lives and legally protects newborns. A reasonable approach that is probably gone forever. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/251 "2022-06-07T20:35:04Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > The law doesn’t need to draw any bright lines. Canada has essentially no abortion law (there are some medical regulations), and they get along just fine. The bright line’s at birth, then. Works the same way in Oregon. > [@RitterSport](#): > > I should address this as well. Third trimester abortions are essentially a scare tactic by the pro-lifers. It essentially never happens due to simply choice I certainly agree with this. Like any discussion along these lines, there’s sort of the abstract moral side and then the practical side. In terms of how things actually play out, even in places where they are fully legal, third-trimester abortions are basically a non-issue. Crafters of law should take into account the social cost of intricate restrictions on abortion rights. Even if one does view a third-trimester fetus as having a degree of personhood worthy of some protection, that still has to be balanced against other social costs imposed by applying any restrictions. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/252 "2022-06-07T20:36:27Z")
The position that “Life begins at conception” would be a lot more convincing if it didn’t seem like the position, almost, only exists as an argument to make abortion illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/253 "2022-06-07T20:51:44Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > I think this line of reasoning only works if you consider the fetus as an inanimate object. We generally consider that life has some intrinsic value and a person has a responsibility to take a reasonable effort to keep it safe. This line of body autonomy reasoning would imply that if you were holding a child, you could just let it drop to the ground if you didn’t feel like setting it down slowly. No, I don’t think it’s defensible to argue that bodily autonomy is either all or nothing: either you have to be willing to carry a pregnancy to term so as not to destroy the fetus, or you can just drop a child on the ground if you don’t want to hold it any longer. A reasonable view of bodily autonomy wouldn’t have to accept either of those extreme positions. You are right that any position on bodily autonomy that includes any recognition of a right to an abortion is predicated on not considering the life of an embryo or early-term fetus to have the same full personhood that a born person has. Which I think is a reasonable view. The idea that one’s own individual life began at one’s conception is kind of a cultural myth, given that at that moment nobody at all was even aware of the fertilized egg’s existence. ISTM that the only way to make sense of the idea of personhood is to view it as developing over the course of gestation, along with all the other characteristics and growth that differentiate an invisible fertilized egg from an independently living and breathing born baby. I don’t deny your contention that there may be a lot of people who think of themselves as having been fully existent persons from the moment of conception, but that’s a pretty abstract idea generally heavily influenced by religious concepts of “ensoulment” and so on within the ambient culture. Certainly if we as a society really tried to legally implement the idea of full human personhood and rights inhering in a fertilized egg, a lot of the people you’re talking about would find that unreasonable. (For starters: automatic child tax credit for every heterosexually active woman of reproductive age every year, whether or not she was ever knowingly pregnant, because she might have had a conception and a miscarriage without being aware of it. That counts as a person, although a very short-lived one! Tax credit!) ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/254 "2022-06-07T21:10:53Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I don’t deny your contention that there may be a lot of people who think of themselves as having been fully existent persons from the moment of conception, but that’s a pretty abstract idea generally heavily influenced by religious concepts of “ensoulment” and so on within the ambient culture. I certainly don’t think of conception being the point of a fully formed life. It’s the point at which it’s .0001 of a fully formed life. I might compare it the earliest point of when a cookie exists. I might say that’s at the cookie dough stage, but at that point it’s .0001% of cookieness. But I’m not sure exactly at what point it goes from cookie dough to 100% fully formed cookie. While it’s in the oven? The moment it’s pulled out? After it cools? etc. I feel the earliest point of the cookie’s existence was when it was cookie dough, but that doesn’t mean I think of it as a cookie at that point. ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/255 "2022-06-07T21:11:09Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Walk uninvited into a strangers home in a red state in the middle of the night. Or just walk around your neighborhood being suspiciously black. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2022, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/256 "2022-06-07T21:44:14Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > I certainly don’t think of conception being the point of a fully formed life. It’s the point at which it’s .0001 of a fully formed life. I might compare it the earliest point of when a cookie exists. I might say that’s at the cookie dough stage, but at that point it’s .0001% of cookieness. But I’m not sure exactly at what point it goes from cookie dough to 100% fully formed cookie. While it’s in the oven? The moment it’s pulled out? After it cools? etc. A large part of the problem is that many humans strongly want to draw nice sharp lines where they don’t exist. > [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > The position that “Life begins at conception” would be a lot more convincing if it didn’t seem like the position, almost, only exists as an argument to make abortion illegal. And there’s most of the rest of the problem. Basically, it does. And that argument was pretty much created out of politics, not out of religion. Up until and through Roe v Wade, most of the churches now throwing a fit on the subject didn’t take that position. > **[The 'biblical View' That's Younger Than The Happy Meal](https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/)** > > In 1979, McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal. Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception. Ask any ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/257 "2022-06-08T21:55:47Z")
This article about chestfeeding may be inclusive, but I am not persuaded removing the word “women” from abortion discussions is the best move. > **[A Vanishing Word in Abortion Debate: ‘Women’](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/women-gender-aclu-abortion.html)** > > Progressive groups and medical organizations have adopted inclusive language, which has led to terms like “pregnant people” and “chestfeeding.” ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/258 "2022-06-09T03:24:14Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > I am not persuaded removing the word “women” from abortion discussions is the best move. If by “best move” you mean “a move that won’t once again trigger the transphobic movement into a bunch of counterproductive squabbles over admissible ways to use the term ‘women’ while abortion rights continue to crumble away from underneath them”, you are probably right in your skepticism. Unfortunately. However, non-transphobic feminists and abortion-rights supporters in general remain convinced that throwing our transgender brothers and sisters under the bus is not the way forward for supporting abortion rights. Furthermore, the transphobic movement’s incessant complaining that everybody should be just saying “women” instead of using more accurate and specific terms for the categories of people affected by pregnancy-and-menstruation issues is semantically stupid on the face of it. Because, for one thing, a very large percentage of us cisgender women are no longer directly affected by pregnancy-and-menstruation issues at all. There are literally over a million young transgender men in the US alone who are all at astronomically higher risk of getting pregnant, and potentially of needing an abortion, than my 58-year-old cisgender-female self is, for example. Any language police\* trying to claim that discussions about abortion access need to be worded so that they apply to me but don’t apply to those young men are fucking obscurantist dumbasses. Or else their real intention is simply to amplify the implied claim that transgender men are women but transgender women are not. Or—since obscurantist dumbassery and transphobic spitefulness are by no means mutually exclusive—both. - Not of course referring to Dr\_Paprika or anyone else in this discussion, just a general societal critique. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/259 "2022-06-10T19:38:19Z")
In my 65 years of life, I never once asked my parents where or when I was conceived, and I don’t know anyone that has. And I maintain that the viewpoint that there’s something sacred or special about “life” is primarily a religious one. It’s also not a very good argument, because I kill living things all the time. I consider ants and cockroaches to be errant scraps of DNA, and I smush them without a second thought. I agree that there are good reason for society to prohibit people from killing their fellow citizens, but those reasons don’t go to the sanctity of human life, they go to the duty of the state to give their citizens a modicum of safety and security. And the government sanctions the killing of people in all sorts of circumstances, self-defense and punishment and war. So my point is that you can talk all you want about “when life begins”, but I think that’s essentially a religious argument, and it holds about the same amount of weight with me as the belief that abortion should be illegal because it pisses off a coven of invisible witches that set fires when they’re mad. You’re free to believe stuff like that, but codifying it into a law that binds someone that doesn’t believe in invisible witches is wrong and, IMHO, unconstitutional. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939/260 "2022-06-10T19:57:08Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > In my 65 years of life, I never once asked my parents where or when I was conceived, and I don’t know anyone that has. Perhaps not that specific question, but maybe you asked your mom something like, “When you were pregnant with me, did I react to any foods you ate?” That type of question implies a sense of self before birth. But virtually never has someone asked, “When I was an egg in your ovary, did I …?” or “When I was a sperm in your testicles, did I …?”. So that inherent sense of your own self seems to begin at conception rather than at an earlier time and seems to exist before you are actually born. And that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with religion. Many people have asked their parents about themselves while they were in the womb even if they are atheists. I get the sense that most people think of themselves as existing before they were actually birthed. Maybe they don’t ask about the moment they were conceived, but they seem to think of themselves as first existing some time between conception and before their actual birth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-it-have-to-be-all-or-nothing-with-abortion/963939.md?page=14)