Except the difference between abusing children or owning slaves and abortion is that bodily autonomy is protected when you provide women with control over their health and medical interventions, whereas abuse or enslavement of others does not support their bodily autonomy.
Also, there is no contention about children and slaves being persons under the law, but the same status for fetuses is disputed, both morally and legally.
Bolding mine. Exactly who are these “pro-abortion people”? You mean people who advocate that pregnant women should choose abortion over any other alternative? Are they appalled by women who give birth instead of aborting their pregnancy? I know many pro-choice advocates, but I’ve never heard anyone actually advocate abortion.
Right, if you don’t think abortion is a repugnant act then it doesn’t apply and talking about bodily autonomy makes sense. Just another medical procedure, no more morally questionable than removing a cyst.
Here’s another weird moral example: people who think abortion is murder, unless the mother is raped, then it’s acceptable to murder the baby for the sin of the father. A lot of the time this is just political expediency, but you can find plenty of people who believe this makes sense. If they’re Christian they believe in original sin, so maybe not too surprising.
Here is the thing though. Abortion is removing the life support system - which is another person’s body - from a person. That isn’t slavery. That isn’t child abuse.
A better analogy is that if you are on life support in a hospital, in a persistent coma, with a feeding tube and a vent - and you can’t afford to pay for your hospital stay because you’ve run out of money - is society obligated to keep you on life support with its money? You might come out of the coma, you might not.
Except we aren’t talking about money and society - we are talking about a person’s body and an individual.
If you want to develop artificial wombs to provide the life support to a fetus that a woman does - and then pay for them - and figure out a way to remove a fetus that is low risk to the woman carrying and doesn’t unduly burden her - I’m all for ending abortion. You’ll also have to figure out what to do with these children until they are self supporting once they are born - because there are NOT enough adoptive parents - particularly when you start talking about non white babies, or babies that were exposed to drugs or alcohol, or babies who have special needs.
And I really think that the consequences need to be addressed before we change the law. Because that healthy white girl going to college who gets knocked up by her swim team boyfriend - her parents will send her to Canada. What do we do with the babies born to heroin addicts in West Virginia? If we don’t address that before we change the law, we WILL have a Dickensonian nightmare that needs to be addressed.
I happen to be pro-choice. And philosophically, I’m pro-choice because I think a woman’s bodily autonomy trumps a fetus’ right to life - just like you can’t force me to donate blood, you shouldn’t be able to force me to be a host. But I’m also pro-choice because I’m pragmatic about the consequences of unwanted children on society.
The anti-abortion crowd claims that life begins at conception. Fine. Induce labor in every woman seeking an abortion and see if a 2 or 3 month “pre-born human” can survive on its own.
Hell, you can kill someone in your house who refuses to leave if you think your life is being threatened.
Or just google “the pill abortions” and see how the anti-abortion crowd feels on the subject.
Bet she would be first in line at the police station if it happened to her …
I always wanted to secret film something … you know the crying moving lifelike infant dolls they use for the ‘can you keep the sprog alive’ classes in some schools? I would LOVE to see what one of the organizers of these anti abortion rallies would do if someone dropped off an infant on their doorstep with a note about ‘you made me keep the pregnancy, you get the kid’ type note. I would be willing to bet that they would be ranting about ‘why me, it is her damned brat’ or something like that.
That doesn’t really work. You could put most adults in the middle of a forest with no tools, shelter, water or food and they’d die too. Humans are social beings and need each other for support, especially children, never mind the unborn.
Everybody knows what abortion is. Not sure why we have to call it a “cyst” or “parasite” or “trespasser” or “non-paying tenant.” Women who wanted to be pregnant and miscarried certainly don’t say “I lost my trespasser parasite.” They lost their unborn child.
If someone doesn’t want, or can’t handle a baby then kill it before it’s born. It’s better than an abused or neglected or deformed kid that’s going to be a burden on society.
I’m pro-abortion. If you don’t want it, can’t handle it, kill it before it’s born. Why sugar-coat it?
When I was in the Social Services waiting room, I met a woman who had listened to the anti-abortion crowd and given birth. She and her three year old daughter were now homeless, living in a shelter, and just in a terrible place. She was trying to get help.
Where were the “pro-life” crowds then? Off harassing some other pregnant person?
For most, it is, instead, a political concession, an actual form of compromise. If they allow the rape and incest exceptions, they get a lot more voters on their side. Without those concessions, they lose so many voters, they can’t get their agenda passed.
It’s a “necessary evil” for them; they’re realistic enough to accept a ban on many abortions, if they can’t ban them all.
(I’ve never actually heard anyone put forward the “sin of the father” argument.)
But why would you make political concessions on murder? Shouldn’t there be a hell of a lot more people at the very least be pushing nonviolent resistance as far as it can go, if not further than that, to stop the tens of thousands of murders yearly? The fact that there aren’t tells me that they don’t really think it is murder.
Likewise - most conceptions don’t result in a baby. Shouldn’t we try and figure out how to stop a disease that kills more than half of all children before they are even implanted in the womb.
The art of the possible, I guess. Do what you actually can do, and grieve over what you cannot.
(Many of us are just as strongly opposed to capital punishment…and we aren’t going to win that battle any time soon. There just isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.)
Here, yes, I quite agree. When they backed off from saying that the doctors and pregnant women should be executed, it was clear they consider it something distinctly less than actual murder. Even they can’t pretend that a fetus – let alone an embyo or a blastocyst – is a “baby.” They use the word, but even they aren’t truly convinced.
The hardcore movements of the pro-abortion movement are extremely scary. Many of them have been documented committing acts of harassment, violence, and theft such as grabbing a sign from and then shoving pro-life protesters.
Some of the most fervent proponents of legalized abortion have moved beyond seeing abortion as merely a necessity a life, to declaring it a positive good that deserves to be “shouted out” and shouldn’t be restricted up to the point of birth.
A pro-abortion organization as mainstream as NARAL condemned a Doritos ad for “humanizing fetuses”.
Some of the most prominent philosophers advocating a pro-abortion position such as Jacob M. Appel and Peter Singer who hold distinguished positions in the intelligentsia have advocated not just legalized abortion but also argued for the morality of infanticide and euthanasia of children.
I don’t know what your position on refugee resettlement in the United States and other developed countries are, but the same argument can be made from a nativist/right-wing perspective on that issue. How would people sympathetic to permitting large numbers of refugees from wartorn areas in the Middle East react if the government dropped off a family of Syrian or Somalian refugees at their doorstep with a note about “You wanted them in, you get to feed and maintain them”? I could just as easily say that a lot of them would be ranting about “Why did they park off these filthy Third Worlders with me” or something like that.
Two can play at this game.
Cite? Google finds several contrary cites, for example a 30% drop in Hawaii’s abortion rate that coincided with major education efforts.
You’re friends with Ivana Trump?
Joking, right? Parody post? Wake me when you have snipers killing protesters or priests, firebombs, nail bombs, acid attacks, severe physical assaults (not shoving, but beating with sticks) and large scale vandalism.
The post was intended as a parody of the one I was responding to. However Annie-Xmas wasn’t talking about clinic bombings in her original post but primarily about harassment presumably since the latter is far more widespread and organized unlike anti-abortion terrorism which is primarily the actions of lone wolves.
My apologies; I’ve got a tin ear for that kind of thing.
ETA: As I noted above, I’ve been spat upon by pro-life activists. Icky.
I wasn’t drawing parallels between abortion, child abuse, and slavery beyond how they are treated as moral acts. The particular details don’t matter. Feel free to substitute any vile act that most people aren’t relativists about. Punching people in the face. Dumping toxic waste into a river. Kicking puppies. Or since abortion is supposed to be murder, just substitute murder. “I think murder is wrong, but I’m willing to compromise and I think others should be able to murder sometimes too. It’s wrong to judge their choices, since you don’t know what they’re going through.”
You identified good reasons for being pro-choice. I find one of the few ways to convince pro-lifers is to show them that banning or restricting abortion doesn’t decrease abortions, it just hurts women, and that countries with the lowest abortion rates have safe and legalized abortion. Maybe you’ve seen this blog post. That’s what cracked the foundation of her belief.
That’s what I said. That’s political expediency. I don’t know what the percentage breakdown is or if there are any good polls out there. I’ve seen plenty of pro-lifers who seemed genuinely supportive of certain exceptions, YMMV.
People don’t put it in those terms, but I can’t think of any other relevant factor beyond people’s disgust at the idea of a woman being forced to carry her rapist’s baby. Feel free to provide others.