My two “sides” were deliberately chosen as the most extreme-case scenarios. It’s not the middle-grounders I’m worried about, because they may be able to come together. I didn’t mean *all * people on either side of the debate believe what I said, I mean that’s how far the debate ranges. I forget that sometimes you have to be ultra-literal on this board. :rolleyes:
Yes. It is the only way that I can see feasible, that those who don’t like abortion can just not do it. How is banning it a common ground? Then no one can do it. Govermnent doesn’t need to have this kind of power…the government that can force you not to have an abortion can also force you to have one. Anyway, I’m not here to debate abortion. You made a lovely argument about red hair, etc., but it’s not relevant to the argument. Can you suggest a better common ground?
To all: don’t forget that abortion would be less prevalent if doctors would be more cooperative in other aspects. I’m 28 and I would like to get my tubes tied. It will be a difficult road ahead of me, as the prevalent opinion is for doctors not to do it “just in case”. Same with birth control…if it was easier to get, obtain. If sex education wasn’t anathema and was taught…so kids know what causes pregnancy before they started having sex. It’s 2004 and kids still think “the first won’t do it” or jumping will abort the fetus.
The discussion is not: is abortion good or evil? is saving every baby regardless of outcome good or evil? The debate is: What is the common ground? Can anyone come up with a good common ground for us?
The first analogy that occurs to me is people going to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. They want health care of a sort that is not available in their home state, so they travel to get it. I don’t see that their rights have been denied in any way.
Roe v. Wade did not simply establish that women had the right to get abortions. It said that the states had no authority to regulate it, except as the Supreme Court allowed.
So Roe v. Wade is overturned, and Utah outlaws abortions. So Utah women who want abortions have to go to Nevada. So? Or they can lobby their state Congress to overturn the ban. I expect it would be easier to get a hearing at the State Capitol than from some Congress-critter two thousand miles away.
Certainly an overturn of Roe v. Wade would cause NARAL and the like to go ballistic. Again, so? It is much easier to convince five Justices that 51% of fifty state legislatures, but who ever said living in a republic was easy?
I also don’t see why the “live and let live” argument doesn’t apply to states as well. If one state decides one way and another a different one, why can’t the states that want to allow abortions do so, and not try to force other states into compliance?
Yes, it would be less convenient. But I don’t see why NOW can’t spend some of the money they spend lobbying Congress and staging seminars (sorry, “ovulars”) on persecution of Third World Rosicrucians on bus tickets for people in some pro-life state who got carried away by passion for the third time this semester.
States’ rights has a dirty name because it has been associated with racism. But it remains an important part of the Constitution, in my opinion, and ought to be the default locus of reaction to questions like that of abortion.
Shodan- I suppose the reason why your proposal is unworkable to me is that many of us consider women’s reproductive health- and that includes birth control, pregnancy, and abortion, if it comes to that- to be part of basic health services. A woman should not HAVE to travel to another state to receive basic treatment.
And as we’ve covered in the many gay marriage debates, some things should not be up to a vote in a free society. While I understand that the political reality is quite often very different, forcing people to lobby for basic rights seems disgusting to me.
Lastly, I see that you got a jab in at the end of your post about people ‘getting carried away for the third time this semester’ and their need for abortions. Once again, this proves to me that the pro-life (anti-choice) side is a whole lot less about the welfare of children than the punishment of people (women in particular) that have sex.
Only as long as it goes purely intrastate and nobody decides to push thru a Federal Defense Of Life Act against interstate procurement, arrangement, soliciting, facilitating or payment of abortion. And even then Utah may try to outlaw travelling elsewhere for the purposes of procuring abortion, or aiding and abetting such travel (including by parents of minors). Sure, the Nevadan doctors and authorities will then tell the guy who calls from Utah to get them to help him enforce his law to go “enforce this, decaf-breath”, but you wind up bringing the Fed Courts back into dealing with the issue.
Abortion has most certainly been “resolved” in the vast majority of indutrialised democracies worldwide, at least those without a recent strong Roman Catholic tradition.
That the debate still goes on at all in the US is testament to its curious political backwardness on many issues, which is possibly due to its similarly curious (nay fanatical) veneration of a document written more than two centuries ago.
Then by all means use that to convince your state legislators to allow abortions. If you can get them to agree with you, you are home free.
There we disagree. Anything that is not clearly assigned to the federal government by the Constitution should “be up to a vote”. Or at least resolved at the state level.
Your point would probably be better taken if I were pro-life. But I am a strict constructionist.
The CDC report in 2003 showed that almost half of all abortions in America were being performed on women who had previously undergone the procedure. So yes, multiple abortions are far from rare. Sorry, but there it is.
First, I would like to agree whole heartedly with Ahunter3 . That is the answer I have been giving for quite a while. Universal (both male and female), highly effective, low or no effort birth control should be a major goal for all reasonable pro-lifers. I would add Element Four : Society has an acceptable solution for caring for all infants born to parent(s) that do not want them.
Second, to understand the lack of a middle ground, you must realize that abortion is a true slippery slope situation. This slope has only two hard stops, conception and birth. Between these two it is a gradual change. While only a few fanatic pro-lifers argue that a fertilized egg that has not been implanted is a child, it is just as rare for any pro-choicers to argue that it is perfectly acceptable to vacuum out the brain of a healthy 9 month developed fetus as it moves down the birth cannel. Of course there are some religions that argue that birth control is murder and some ultra liberals that think parents should be able to abort children up to 18 months after birth.
Slightly off topic, but addressing part of the OP, the idea that letting those that want abortions have them freely could be an acceptable middle ground is ridiculous. Think of this way, if children were returned to the status of property (as they have been in the past), would any of us be satisfied with option of letting those who wish to abuse, sell, or kill their children do it, because we can jus choose not to do it to ours? The OP acknowledges that some pro-lifers see the fetus as a child, yet expect them to be willing to accept that what they believe is infanticide is none of their business.
On a final note, my personal belief is that abortion should always be legal for cases it is necessary medically, but that abortions of convenience are abhorrent. I believe that everyone should have a right to choose their reproductive destiny, but that the choice should be made before anyone’s life is on the line. I believe that all people (male and female) should decide before they have sex whether or not they are willing and ready to deal with any consequences. As realist I know this is unlikely to happen for most people, so I am strongly in favor of research
into better and more reliable contrecpetive methods.
I believe the issue will slowly go away. Once upon a time, there were strong religious objections to the use of anaesthetics during childbirth. You don’t hear much about that anymore. One day, abortion will be just as accepted, as it already is in large parts of the world.
But that’s the point. Common ground means that everybody agrees on the approach. Your pro-choice idea (which I happen to agree with, by the way) is not common ground because pro-life people will never agree with this approach.
Since people will never agree, there will never be common ground.
“Live and let live” isn’t working at the individual level, so I see no reason why it would start working at the state level. To dust off the redhead strawman: if you were opposed to the murder of redheads, and knew that redheads were being murdered in an adjoining state, you probably wouldn’t take much solace in the fact that “well, at least they’re not being murdered here.”
Possibly true, and it would come from both sides (if Roe v. Wade were overturned and the decision whether or not to ban abortion was left to each state).
Utah would be upset that they are killing babies in Nevada, and Nevada would be upset that women are being oppressed in Utah.
I don’t think opposition to abortion is likely to survive as a significant political force in the very long run.
I find it very likely that within the next century, artificial intelligence will be developed to the point that it can perfectly emulate humanity. At some point, intelligent programs will demand rights; even if this does not come naturally, there are sure to be people eager to design such a desire into them.
As a society, we may be forced to decide wether personhood is contingent on some aspect of thought and/or awareness or on being a member of the biological species homo sapiens. These are not mutually exclusive per se, but I suspect the desire for bright moral lines will eventually compel a choice.
Intellectual arguments have little bearing on this sort of moral dilemma. However, if AI can learn to look and act sufficiently human to activate our instinctive and subconscious reactions to other humans, people will have a very difficult time not taking it at face value. I don’t think the entities that are able to actively argue their own case are likely to lose this one.
There will be societies that reject this option, just as there are those today which place adherence to religious tradition above the advantages of modern life, but they will fall behind those that make full use of every technology available. Eventually they’ll evolve or die.
Widespread use of a morning-after pill, or abortion pill, may make the entire debate moot. If the decisions are made pharmaceutically in the privacy of the woman’s home, there won’t be any abortion clinics, so no protests. It’ll truly become a to-each-their-own, live-and-let-live process.
But like I said, would Utah then be legally empowered to seek to impede access to Nevada for its pregnant citizens? It once again punts to the Fed Court.
Resolved in what way? That the percentage of those opposed to it are lower, less organized or vocal? I find that peculiar.
But Catholicism has never cornered the market on opposition to abortion. Perhaps there is that perception because of their unflinching policy on abortion, or their sheer numbers. But there are many million non-Catholics who feel as strongly as any Catholic on the subject.
One need not be fanatical, or venerate any document to come to a rational, intellectual and moral conclusion that the fetus is a child and should enjoy the rights of any other human being; and should be protected from being murdered by a woman who might find his/her birth inconvenient.
If it’s not, I agree with you 100%. Dance around it all you want, but until that central question is resolved there will be little or no common ground. In this board several times now I’ve seen posters acknowledge that is, or might be, a child. That’s remarkable! Look at ouisey’s post earlier in this thread. It says in part,* “However, I do know that in life we sometimes have to make difficult choices regarding those who live and those who do not.”*
That’s simply remarkable. There are posters here (more than one) who are postulating that the individual right (in the current scenario it must always be a woman) of the woman is greater than the life of the child. That’s amazing.
In every [civilized] society there is the recognition that “rights” will often be on a collision course. A good example (in the US) is that the sacrosanct right of free speech must sometimes be curtailed----i.e. “hate speech”, or yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. There are many other examples where different rights may see a convergence where society, through laws, must arbitrate and determine which “right” takes precedence. Essentially laws must have a hierarchy of sorts.
Now if a person doesn’t intellectually accept that the fetus is a child—a human being— that’s one thing. (And I presume, for example, would be opposed to Scott Peterson being charged with murder of Laci’s unborn son Connor—but that’s a side note.)
It’s another thing entirely to say that this is indeed a child, and when these two “rights” collide----the [civil] rights of the fetus/child and the rights of privacy and self determination for the woman—the rights of the woman must be superior.
We’re not talking about the worn concept, “What about incest or rape?.” If I’m understanding this correctly, we’re saying that a woman’s rights of privacy and self determination are so superior that a child’s life can be ended simply because it would be an inconvenience to go to term and give birth. One doesn’t need to be a religious fanatic to see that human life is being denigrated.
Lastly, if a civilized society comes to the medical, intellectual and legal conclusion that the fetus in the mother’s womb is a human whose rights must be protected (no less than any one of us) it is certainly reasonable to require the woman to take responsibility for her choices. If that is punishment to you, have at it.
I tend to think that, when she figures she doesn’t really feel like being a mother right now, and subsequently has the child’s life ended, it’s really the child who’s being “punished.”
