Is it? Are you saying that any or all of your rights are forfeit if it means that a child can be saved?
The more people are educated about the use of large doses of progestin (birth control pills) to stop embryo implantation, the more people it becomes moot for. There will still be some who seek surgical abortion. But for many, its prohibition will be kind of a joke.
Before I frequented this board, I confess, I pretty much thought of right-to-life people as an undifferentiated mass of creeps to whom the following description would apply:
BROAD BRUSH ALERT
• Their real concern is not the well-being of unborn fetuses — heck, look at the overall thrust of their social-darwinist, thrive-or-starve-on-your-own politics! If every third-trimester fetus aborted via miscarriage in America could be kept alive at public expense to the age of viability for a tax increase of only 4% above what we each pay now, they’d oppose it, you know they would, they’d say let ‘em die if their family isn’t able to afford the medical cost; they’d oppose Medicare covering it, they’d oppose Medicaid covering it, they’d oppose union actions to make companies provide it as part of their employees’ coverage package. But we’re supposed to believe they’ve got this serious case of the Bleeding Hearts for them poor unborned baybees. Gimme a break.
• Their real agenda, on the other hand, is to do whatever they can to effect a rollback of the sexual and/or feminist societal changes, and a hugely triumphant part of that would be the reestablishment of a world where non-stupid girls keep their knees together until and unless their boyfriend-people (/or they themselves) are sufficiently well-employed to support a family and ready to commit to doing so, which in turn means that they and/or their boyfriends have a specifically eroticized interest in pleasing the individuals and companies who are in a position to offer them employment. It’s a pacifying measure, it instills and reinforces social conservatism, dampens demands for change and improvement, and certainly dampens the cultural association of rebellion / dropping-out and sexual libertinism that characterized the 60s. Under that righteous curtain of fetus-championing they are all really like Randall Terry who openly wishes to also restrict birth control to married couples so that sex will always mean serious-risk-of-pregnancy to single girls. And they’re opposed to sex education that might teach young folks how to have sex without pregnancy as a consequence except when they want to have a baby. And they’re also the same ones who want to re-stigmatize unwed motherhood, see how it all fits in?
[/BRUSH]
What I’ve learned and seen from posts on this board is that there are many people who really are concerned, not so much in a bleeding-heart way for fetuses per se, but for our sense of ethics as people, that we should not be killing people and this is killing people, or at least a sufficiently compelling argument has been made to give them pause on that matter. At the risk of putting words in your mouth, it seems to me that for many of you it’s sort of a precedent issue, a matter of “We need to be a species that doesn’t kill its own, or doesn’t do so without good reason, and this looks like a not-so-good reason. It’s a slippery slope from here to killing other people whenever it’s convenient to kill them and inconvenient not to.” There also seems to be, for a few of you, a sort of “babies are pure and untarnished and innocent so it would be particularly evil of us to kill them” kind of sentiment, which explains in part why abortion disturbs you more deeply or motivates you more strongly politically than, say, wartime killing or the death penalth or high rates of domestic violence killings or whatever. OK, enough of putting words in your mouth, the point here being that I can see that you aren’t cynical, that you mean what you say.
And I respect you for it, although I think you’re on the wrong side of a deeply moral issue.
And I respect the strength of your convictions, although I think you folks should really sniff out the politicians who pander to your votes, because I think my broad brush description applies to a hell of a lot of them even if not so much to you “rank and file” folks.
Oh, and I’d really like it if we could bury the proverbial hatchet (other than in each other’s temporal lobes, that is) and find ways to move that benefit both sides at neither’s expense (minus the broad-brushstroke describees). You do understand that (at the risk of putting words in other pro-choicer’s mouths, I dare to speak for us as a group) what we want, almost universally, is to reduce/constrain/eliminate situations where women end up pregnant when they don’t want to be just because they have had sex — ? Yeah, our agenda is not “more abortions”, it’s “women shouldn’t have the specter of getting stuck with being pregnant hanging over them every time they wanna be open and receptive to sex”. Our agenda is not “we need more dead fetuses in clinical disposal chutes”, it’s “we want to use every available technology at our disposal to establish willful control over our reproductive functions, reproducing only when we want to, without that control depending on not having sex unless we want babies, 'cuz sex is fun and delicious and feels good and we have an innate urge for it, and it’s a total bummer to have pregnancy tied to it as a price tag”.
So if you’re a right-to-life person, consider yourself invited to brainstorm in here about what can be done politically and otherwise that would reduce abortion rates without doing so at the expense of our goals, or, better yet, alongside of furthering them.
I don’t understand your question. Please clarify it and I will try to answer.
The qualifier, “(in the current scenario it must always be a woman)” (if that is what you’re responding to) means to me that if we get to the point that we can, as a society, accept that it is a child—a real human being— and that that life can be subordinated for another’s right, than I can conceivably see people making the claim that they too have a stake in this pregnancy. And, to that end, the outcome may infringe on their perceived rights. The easy one, of course, is the man who says an “unwanted child on my hands” is an invasion of my privacy, and an economic burden. As such, I’m demanding that an abortion take place, or that I be given the right to renounce any obligation to it’s care. (in any form) Parents of teenage children who may ultimately face the burden of the child’s care may demand an abortion, or, in the alternative, may demand that the child be born for religious reasons. Welfare agencies may balk at a welfare recepient bringing more babies onto the welfare rolls.
My point is simply this: If you disount life to zero, than there is nothing preventing other people from making rather compelling arguments that your “right” of privacy and self determination is essentially forcing obligations upon me. (whether “me” is a parent, boyfriend, welfare agency etc) You can’t have it both ways IMO. You can’t make a case that you are not responsible for your choices and in the same breath claim that your boyfriend must be held responsible for his.
YOU find nothing “justifiable”. That’s the key. I might be convinced to get an abortion if I knew the child would be born into a short life of terrible suffering. Jane down the street might get an abortion because she’s got five kids already and has no idea how she will be able to manage a sixth. Frankly, I’d rather Jane abort the sixth foetus and not do a Paula Yates on her family. However, I know a family with 14 kids who seem to manage very well. I remember working in a daycare center and having to report a teen mother to the authorities because her baby had cigarette burns all over her belly and legs. I remember wishing that woman had had an abortion, rather than that poor child existing like that. Every woman is different.
Although I’m sure such women exist, I don’t know any woman who enjoys getting abortions, who make decisions regarding an abortion in the same manner they might make a decision about whether they want Italian or Ranch dressing on their salad. Because I consider it to be a difficult and terrible decision, I won’t judge anyone on that.
Correct. Nothing justifiable* in your earlier post.* I certainly mean to say that the post wasn’t thoughtful or sincere. You didn’t give us the type of examples that you’ve given us here.
If Jane’s fetus is a human being—a child—of what benefit would there be if I kill it now because she might— ala Andrea Yates— kill it later?
As to the teen mother, and there are way too many of them, the solution is better education before hand to avoid reckless behavior, better pre-natal care if she becomes pregnant, and support programs if she gives birth. (including parenting classes) There should be adpotive agencies available if she can’t or won’t be able to care for her child. And in the end, law enforcement and the courts should hold her accountable for her choices. (And I’ll bet you thought I wasn’t “pro-choice”) Even an abused child is better off alive in most circumstances than dead. And in those circumstances the mother needs to be held accountable; and the child placed in another environment. But how is society benefited by killing a child based on the potential that they will be harmed?
What I see in your answers, and others that recognize the fetus as at least potentially a child, is there isn’t a full intellectual legitimacy of the fetus as a child----that it exists not as a human, but as a potential human. It reminds me of the mindset that equated African Americans as 2/3 of a person.
We wouldn’t think twice of killing a young woman’s 18 month old baby because she might pull an Andrea Yates. But there is no intellectual dichotomy in discussing the same thing to the exact same woman’s unborn child.
The unborn child, even if acknowledged as a child, has not achieved the moral and intellectual equivalency of a post birth child. Once that happens, if ever, much of these hypothetical scenarios will be as unthinkable as drowning an 18 month baby because it might be harmed, or that it’s prospects are not very good.
Oops…
I meant to say, “I certainly didn’t mean to say that the post wasn’t thoughtful or sincere.”
Sorry.
I myself believe the point of birth to be somewhat arbitrary, in the same sense that 18 is a somewhat arbitrary point at which people become legal adults. But for practical purposes I accept that we need to draw a line somewhere, and the physical separation from the mother makes as much sense as any other milestone in life. Sentience is the most important criteria for me, but I understand the logic of putting the cutoff line before that to be on the safe side.
In the way that a vast majority understand that the point at which “human” rights are bestowed on the potential human is utterly arbitrary, and that neither conception nor birth automatically guarantees any “special status”. They understand that two cells (sperm and egg) are just as much a “potential human” as two different cells (daughter nuclei after fertilisation and meiosis), and that preventing the latter two cells becoming a human is no different to preventing the former two cells doing so (ie. conception).
(ie. contraception), sorry.
I’m what I call “pro-life without a plan.” I think that a healthy female killing a healthy unborn child is sick. The doctors who do it are monsters, and it says really bad things about our society that millions of such abortions are performed every year.
But I also recognize that it’s politically impossible to change the status quo in the United States, and I would much rather put political energy behind a variety of other causes (social and economic justice) that have a chance of success. I am also not a big fan of telling people what to do. At the same time, I believe that reproduction is not 100% within the individual’s sphere of control: society has the imperative to reproduce itself and regulate its members so that this happens. This opinion clashes, I’m aware, with the uber-individualistic philosophy of the US, but the consequences of bad reproductive policies are already being seen in the shrinking populations of Japan, the US, and nearly every European country (exclusive of immigration, mind you, and in some cases populations are shrinking absolutely: Italy).
But abortion is a special moral case, primarily because the victims are flushed from the system without anyone ever knowing them. They don’t complain, their mothers don’t complain, and mostly no one complains about the individuals. In the case of other acts of violence, the victim him/herself and his or her allies will want revenge.
The dividing line between abortion and infanticide is arbitrary. The Romans simply killed their disabled babies. The fact that we do not do so in the US is due to the same Christian scruples that prevented people from performing abortions for so long. Why should a woman not have the right to inspect her progeny directly after birth and decide whether it is “wanted” or not? It’s her life and her livelihood that are at stake, after all. And the father’s. Perhaps he should have a kill option too. But only after birth.
Most abortions in the US are performed in the name of that great, all-conquering force known as Convenience. I can certainly understand the feelings of a woman who says, “Goddamn it, don’t tell me what I can or can’t do with my body.” But this is a bargain with the devil.
Whether you believe in a moral law like me (karma), or take a completely atheistic view of the matter, you must recognize that those qualms about killing the fetus are there in the species for a reason. Without a generic repspect for life fairly evenly distributed among the population, who lives and who dies becomes a matter of politics.
In the US we have a very odd situation: a population firmly divided on the issue. This allows us to keep our generic respect for life while pretending that abortion is a public illness that will someday somehow be resolved. Japan deals with this in a different way: the shut up and don’t think about it approach. No one in that country really cares about abortion. It’s allowed in the first three months, and after that it becomes “bad” for some reason (obviously, it is more dangerous the longer the wait). Japan’s method of respect for life and maintaining the social contract is unusual in that it is almost untirely unspoken.
What it all comes down to, though, is that people in the aggregate cannot really accept that life and death are to be dealt with in a manner that cynically reflects the political will and the imperatives of social cohesiveness. Let’s look at an example. Feminists say, It’s my body, so I can abort any time I choose. Very well. They also say, My body is to be respected: rape is wrong; sexual abuse is wrong. My personhood is to be respected: sexual harassment and discrimination is wrong.
All well and good, and I agree. The sore thumb in there, however, is the abortion part. Feminists desire a kind of respect that is almost mystical or religious in its implications, yet they demand that this desire to respect and protect be turned off for the fetus. Now, if it is just a matter of political will–we have the numbers to make abortion legal, so let it be legal, and that’s that–others will run with this ball and think, Morality is dead, let’s use politics ourselves to get what we want or accomplish what we think is best for the “people.”
Entire nations have been run on this kind of rationale, and the results are fairly dismal. In both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, there was no generic respect for life; there were merely political goals to be accomplished. I too find the aesthetic of the Bible-thumping pro-lifers to be anything but appealing. Their rhetoric is unacceptable to a thinking human being. The paradox might be, however, that the generic respect for life they preach, grounded now apparently only in outdated superstition, is the only thing that saves the species from itself.
As long as men can never become pregnant this issue will never be resolved.
On one hand you’ve got the Sisters of Providence and on the other you’ve got starving children. Playing on emotions makes me want to make like the act of conceiving.
Life begins at 50!
::boggle:: Astonishing.
I’m certain that you’re fully aware of the implications of what you said, the raindog, but I’m going to elucidate them for our viewing audience, just so we’re all clear. You’d rather that a child experience a lifetime of abuse in the form of physical and mental trauma, abuse that will profoundly affect that individual for the rest of his or her life, abuse that may scar that person mentally and cause psychological trauma, abuse that could be visited onto subsequent generations, than that child never existing at all. And you’d have this abuse heaped upon a child, during formative years when he or she is least capable of dealing with such horrors. Hey, as long as they’re born, right? We can just blame and punish the mother later for her choices, ruining two lives.
To say that I find this position abhorrent is an understatement.
You like to say that you’re “pro-choice,” because you’re all about choices. What about the choices of two people who were responsible, who used multiple forms of birth control, which unfortunately all failed? What about the choice of the pharmacist who refuses to stock or supply birth control pills or the “morning after” pill due to personal convictions? What about the husband who chose a vasectomy, but it wasn’t performed correctly? You’re far too quick to make other people’s choices for them.
dammit. Andrea Yates, not Paula Yates :smack:
You are acting shocked that one person’s rights can come before someone else’s life. I am countering that your rights are very rarely (never?) forfeit in order to save someone else’s life, but you are asking for other people’s rights to be forfeit to save someone else’s life.
You are not forced to donate blood. You are not forced to donate bone marrow. Heck, you aren’t even forced to donate body parts once you’re dead and no longer using them.
You keep saying abortion is “convenient,” as if all of the things that go into pregnancy and childbirth are mere “inconveniences,” mere trifles, something none but the most selfish and immoral would ever complain about. But I don’t see this society, or anyone’s morals, demanding that we all give up our rights so that a child might live. If your name were drawn out of a hat and you were told that for the next nine months your whole body, significant chunks of your time, and considerable amounts of your money were all to be used to keep one child alive, I really, intensely doubt that you’d be on a message board talking about how justified that is, and how immoral you’d be to refuse it.
Heck, most Republicans don’t even feel that their right to one dollar should be forfeit to save the life of a child, and you’re telling me that you’re utterly shocked that someone would be loath to give up much, much more than that.
All of my rights force obligations upon you. But nowhere in my rights is the right to enslave you, even if it means that I’ll die for lack of whatever it is you can provide.
My position is very simple. No one, ever, has the right to take your body and use it for their purposes. In this respect I am simply limiting the rights of the fetus to the same rights the rest of us have. Just as I don’t get to take your blood without permission, or to take a kidney without permission, or even to borrow some organ, temporarily, without permission, so the fetus doesn’t have the right to do any of these things.
Agreed… so, I ask, do you believe that a man, with whom you have a consentual sexual encounter with, should be held financially responsible for the “choice” that you make concerning your body?
I’m pro-choice, but I think you’re making a really specious argument. Nobody gets pregnant at random (omitting rape, for the moment). And no one is forced to raise a child they give birth to, as long as adoption is available.
Who said anything about raising a child? I said give up bodily control, time, and money for nine months.
As for pregnancy being random, well, yeah. It pretty much is.
random: lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance
1000 women can use the same birth control the same way. One becomes pregnant, 999 do not. With perfect knowledge, we’d be able to predict which one, but we don’t have that knowledge now and might not ever have it. That’s pretty random, isn’t it?
You really don’t know what causes pregnancy? Wow.
Regards,
Shodan
random: lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance
1000 women can use the same birth control the same way. One becomes pregnant, 999 do not. With perfect knowledge, we’d be able to predict which one, but we don’t have that knowledge now and might not ever have it. That’s pretty random, isn’t it?