Why shouldn't all late-term abortions be legal?

There are multiple threads going on about the recent New York law in GQ and GD - I don’t want to derail them and so I am starting a thread in IMHO to put some distance between here and them:
The usual argument against late-term abortions is “viability;” that at a certain point the fetus is capable of life outside the womb independent of the mother’s body. But even if so, there are still multiple factors that still apply in late-term abortions like early-term ones:

[ul]
[li]The mother may not *want *to go through a C-section or childbirth, and prefer abortion. Why should the doctor be able to dictate to her, “You want an abortion, but we insist on you delivering a live fetus?”[/li][li]The mother may not *want *to raise the child or give it up for adoption - financial cost, family reasons, social reasons, etc. etc.[/li][li]There have been many instances in which a woman was pregnant but didn’t even know it until childbirth (just Google “woman didn’t know she was pregnant”). Suppose, then, that a woman doesn’t know she is pregnant until her 8th month or so. In such a situation, the woman *couldn’t *have made an informed decision about abortion (since she didn’t know she was pregnant) and now has no choice but a late-term abortion (if an abortion is what she wants.)[/li][li]Regardless of whether the fetus is in its 1st, 2nd or 3rd trimester, it’s still in the woman’s body, so why shouldn’t it be considered able to terminated all the way up until the point of birth?[/li][/ul]

Because almost everyone is opposed to the killing of a child at that stage.

Note that all your points discuss what the mother wants, and none mention the rights of the child.

Nm

This could also be true after the baby is born.

This would make personhood a matter of location.

I think the vast majority of Americans find infanticide morally objectionable and believe it should be illegal. And if it’s the same baby immediately before and immediately after it comes out of the womb, why should its life be protected one place but not the other?

Well put. I would like to suggest that there is a continuous scale from conception to adulthood to death. Societies put a different value on life at different points on the scale. Most modern societies dislike imposed death on adults, but have less reservations about pre-born, especially extremely pre-born, when the “life” may be only a blastocyst. So it’s only a matter of degree.

Where do we draw the line? Should religion and ancient mores be considered? If you think ALL life is sacred, and I don’t, should you dictate my decisions?

Because I’ve taken care of too many babies born at 35 weeks to support that.

The child isn’t conscious to make decisions about it.

So if you’re in a vegetative coma, may I kill you as well?

May I ask what your position is on this subject?

Which is why society as a whole makes decisions on the child’s behalf.

I’ve supported Pro-Choice for nearly my entire adult life. I feel strongly that the morning after pill should be made readily available to any woman that needs it.

There’s also the abortion pill that can end an early, unwanted pregnancy. Women have several options available to them.

Late term abortion is an entirely different subject. Babies born prematurely have a very high success rate of survival in a modern NICU facility.

It’s unbelievable too me that anyone would suggest late term abortion isn’t wrong. It’s sickening to even contemplate.

I’m concerned late term abortions will have a very adverse effect on support for Roe v Wade. The backlash from legal late term abortions will be swift and devastating for the Pro Choice movement.

It will certainly cause me to rethink my continued support.

[quote=“Velocity, post:1, topic:828889”]

[ul]
[li]The mother may not *want *to go through a C-section or childbirth, and prefer abortion. Why should the doctor be able to dictate to her, “You want an abortion, but we insist on you delivering a live fetus?”[/ul][/li][/quote]

Because preserving an innocent human being from being killed is more important that a woman’s wish to avoid labor or a C-section.

[quote]
[ul]
[li]The mother may not *want *to raise the child or give it up for adoption - financial cost, family reasons, social reasons, etc. etc.?"[/ul][/li][/quote]

Because preserving an innocent human being from being killed is more important than a woman’s desire to avoid financial, family, or social consequences.

[quote]
[ul]
[li]There have been many instances in which a woman was pregnant but didn’t even know it until childbirth (just Google “woman didn’t know she was pregnant”). Suppose, then, that a woman doesn’t know she is pregnant until her 8th month or so. In such a situation, the woman *couldn’t *have made an informed decision about abortion (since she didn’t know she was pregnant) and now has no choice but a late-term abortion (if an abortion is what she wants.)?"[/ul][/li][/quote]

Because sometimes if you wait too long, circumstances change, and you can no longer choose from the same options. Even if the reason why you waited too long isn’t your fault.

Because it’s an innocent human life, and therefore is not just a matter of the woman’s body.

Regards,
Shodan

This.
Which applies to soooo many situations in life.

That. Everyone can have a jolly time debating on when an embryo becomes a person, but a zygote ain’t a person.

Yes - Thank you

It’s because we have taken positions that are logically very strong, but emotionally very weak. (And that’s both sides.) The reason we have done this is because the scientific evidence does not really support what we believe, so we have to get creative. Scientifically, a zygote is its own thing. It’s not a part of the mother. It resides within the mother. It has its own DNA and if we were to invent an artificial womb, it would eventually learn how to type on a keyboard and make political arguments on Facebook. This differs from say a tumor that if we put it in a suitable environment it might grow a tooth, but that tooth would not register for a political party. Science says human development is a continuum. We constantly change and there is no real point at which a zygote flips a switch and becomes ‘human being.’ A 12 week fetus and a three month old baby or a three year old toddler or a 13 year old adolescent are all just the same thing at different developmental stages. They may have different abilities, but there is no fundamental difference between them. When we talk about fetuses then, we have to invent a concept we call ‘personhood.’ This is a philosophical or religious concept, so that means that we fight about it. We are not able to detect any mystical aura that suddenly inhabits a fetus and flips the switch from ‘non-person’ to ‘person.’ Most of the things that we can measure regarding ‘personhood’ that people try to use as hard and fast dividing lines are shady and can apply to humans that most of us can agree are people at different stages of life (A paralyzed person that can’t feel pain as an example does not become a non-person, or as mentioned above, someone in a coma doesn’t become a non-person or a 1 month old baby which basically is a fetus that is living outside of a womb isn’t a non-person.)

What happened in the US is that abortion was decided by courts instead of by legislatures. This is really great if you want to ‘win,’ but not so great if you believe in nuance. Since abortion is a subject with a lot of nuance, this court victory basically screwed up the debate for 50 years. What happened on the pro-choice side is that instead of making arguments to a legislature which can inject nuance into a law about perhaps young girls in bad situations and how people were suffering from unsafe abortions (The arguments that were used pre-Roe v. Wade.) The rhetoric had to shift to ‘fundamental human right.’ Well, that’s stupid, because most people then and now probably don’t see abortion as a fundamental human right. Most of us acknowledge that there are appropriate and inappropriate times to have an abortion. “The dad is black and I don’t think a black baby goes with most of my wardrobe.” or “I don’t like girls and the baby is a girl” probably bad reasons. “The fetus tested positive for ‘I’m in pain every second of my existence disease.’” or “I’m starving to death and live on the streets and a homeless guy raped me.” probably good reasons. What happens though is that the court decision forced us to make the argument a ‘rights issue’ instead of a ‘public good issue.’ A ‘public good issue’ would let us say, “Hey, a 40 week old fetus, ain’t a fetus. It’s a baby and you’d better have a damn good reason for wanting to kill it.” while at the same time saying 'You poor thing, you were raped and it’s not right or in the public interest to have you carry a baby to term and co-parent it with your rapist." A rights issue though makes us say, “This is a fundamental human right guaranteed by the Constitution that shall not be infringed.” and it doesn’t give a rip whether it’s a 12 year old rape victim who can’t comprehend what’s even happening, or a 25 year old who thinks condoms and birth control suck and her parents keep paying for abortion as birth control. The courts did realize that what they were saying ended up being pretty gross, so they inserted a viability clause (Which is itself the dumbest thing in the world. When the artificial womb exists-and it’s coming soon-does this fundamental human right just disappear? Not so fundamental then, is it?) Human rights rhetoric forces us to say, “Why does a woman lose her right to choose just because the fetus looks like a baby?” and there’s not a good answer for that. The wingnuts then say ‘There is no good answer! Kill em all!’ but the reality is that most people, even on the pro-choice side recognize that there is a difference between a zygote and a 40 week old fetus and aborting a 40-week-old is pretty abhorrent. (To be fair, the pro-life wingnuts have the same issue in regards to rape. ‘A person’s a person no matter how small.’ forces some abhorrent things itself.)

So, to answer your question. A 40 week old fetus is a child. We all know it. Let’s not pretend differently for the sake of our rhetoric. 40 week abortions shouldn’t be legal because we don’t kill children. It’s gross and my culture sees such as immoral. I sympathize with the women who didn’t realize they were pregnant, but, we don’t kill children.

To be fair, I have always identified as pro-life, but I’m not in favor of making abortion illegal. I recognize that there are times when abortion is the best option and criminalizing something that someone does out of lack of options to me is like criminalizing stealing bread to feed your family (which I recognize is still stealing and currently criminalized, but should it be? I digress.) I do think that more regulation than ‘It’s the Wild West.’ is appropriate and that abortion should be seen as an extreme measure and not a common one. I have a problem when 1/3 of all pregnancies in New York end up in abortions. That’s not a few people scared and making mistakes. That’s cultural normalcy and that to me isn’t OK. In my ideal world, the laws would be the same, but birth control would be free, cheap and easy and culturally an unwanted pregnancy would be greeted with “What is in the best interests of this child?” rather than “What time does the clinic open?”

Yup. Since there is no way to “prove” at exactly what point after contact an egg and sperm become a human, we as a society have determined an arbitrary cutoff point to say, in effect, “We deem these cells to be human at this point in development and unnatural death after that point is punishable as a crime”. In the same manner, our society has said one must be 16 to drive a car, 18 to be legally an adult, or 21 to drink alcohol. There is nothing magical that happens at any of those points in time to make one “ready to drive/adult/drink”, but we assign an arbitrary point in time to differentiate between legal activity and illegal.

Of course, that’s the whole problem. We recognize that say ‘21 to drink’ is arbitrary and that plenty of 18 year olds can and do drink responsibly or frequently even pre-teens can have a drink with dinner in some cultures. The consequences of forbidding a 20 year old to drink are seen as minor and the penalties are generally mild. We acknowledge that a drinking age of 18 (or 16 or 14 or none) works in some places.

It’s a much different thing when the arbitrary age determines whether you get to live or die. The consequences of a 20 year old not being able to buy a beer are fairly mild. Beer is wonderful and all, but the overall impact to his life and freedom are pretty small. If we’re screwing up the drinking age, it’s something to discuss and amend and really the harm is relatively negligible. If on the other hand we’re screwing up the arbitrary abortion age, we’ve just killed a heck of a lot of people. If the aliens ever come down with their magic technology machines and say, “Oh, you know what, it’s really not a big deal to let 16 year olds drink.” We’d say, “Oops, our bad. I guess that was silly of us.” If they come down and say, “Oh, you know what, zygotes are people.” We’d say “Holy crap, we just perpetuated the largest mass murder in the history of humanity! We have created an efficient and wide-ranging mass murder industry!” “Oops, our bad,” might not cut it as a response.

"We don’t know, but we can’t afford to make such a potentially horrible mistake because somehow, sometime, somewhere someone will reveal information we never suspected existed in the first place?
The trouble with this kind of “logic” is that it is used so selectively. For instance, what if alien cockroaches or mosquitoes land in the future and ask to see their ambassadors? What if we find out in the future that trees have been sentient all this time, but we had no means to find that out? There are thousands of silly scenarios out there that follow the pattern of logic you are trying to apply to the situation in the OP-“We don’t dare X because we might find out Y in the future!”. Guilt tripping over something that might be revealed in the future? No, thank you.

The problem is that we acknowledge the arbitrariness of the decision. If we said, “Ants are worthy of rights, but termites aren’t.” because “You just have to draw the line somewhere.” I think that if the termite aliens pop down, we would have some serious moral culpability. If you’re going to be arbitrary about a decision that literally takes lives, then you need to err on the side of caution. If it were not an arbitrary decision, then there is less of a problem. We say that trees don’t have human rights, because they aren’t human. It’s not arbitrary to say “Humans possess things which endow them with rights that non-humans don’t have.” This is not necessarily true and it’s arguable, but it’s not arbitrary. Secondly, there is no hint that trees are sentient and should have rights. If you’re someone that believes that all sentient beings should have rights, then I think it’s reasonable and even necessary that you should advocate for the rights of any species that we might have a reasonable guess is sentient. Saying that ‘dogs need protection, but not pigs’ is arbitrary and I think that it does become abhorrent if the magic pig aliens come down and say, “Hey, pigs are sentient too. Why the heck are you eating them?” And it’s especially dangerous if the arbitrary decision is being made because it’s beneficial to another group to make an arbitrary distinction at that point. Again, if you’re arbitrarily protecting dogs and not pigs because pigs are delicious and you like the benefits of killing them and dogs aren’t, then the culpability is especially egregious.