YAAQ (Yet Another Abortion Question)

Great Debates
61

Marley, I don’t understand your assertion that because the woman had to gestate the fetus for X amount of time before extraction, that she is therefore entitled to greater consideration that other stakeholders in the fetus/baby’s existance.

Can you explain why? I understand that given our current technology, the woman does have special consideration, because the fetus/baby MUST be gestated in her body, and her right to bodily autonomy can supercede other rights that other parties may or may not have…any stipulated human rights of the fetus (which I concede are contested) to life, any rights the father of the baby would have regarding his desire to either parent the child or not parent the child or terminate the child, any particular interests society might or might not have in the child, etc.

Right now all those interests are considered moot. We don’t even bother discussing them, because we have decided that the right of the woman to bodily autonomy trumps all those rights, up to the point were the baby is viable. But if we remove the right to bodily autonomy from the equation, what are we left with? Currently we don’t allow men to kill babies they don’t want. We do allow women to kill unborn babies they don’t want. Why the difference? The only difference is that we cannot compel women to gestate unwanted fetuses, since her right to her own body outweighs everything else. But if the fetus can be removed from her body, and the risks of the procedure are equivalant to the risks of abortion, her right to bodily autonomy has been satisfied.

We can certainly argue that no woman has the obligation to gestate a child. OK. With uterine replicators she is no longer gestating the child. So why should she have the right to kill the child, when it can no longer threaten her health, when it no longer is tied to her physiologically?

Sure, there may be psychological or social ties. She may not WANT to be a parent, just like many men today don’t WANT to be parents. But we don’t allow the men to kill the babies they don’t want, just because they don’t want them. A woman’s right to bodily autonomy and her right to preserve her own health can arguably supercede whatever rights to life a fetus might have, and can supercede whatever parental rights the father might have. But remove those, and why does the mother have any more rights than the father, or the baby, or whoever?

I suppose most pro-choice people here don’t want to concede that a father or baby have any particular rights, since they think that would undermine a woman’s right to abortion. And of course it would, if your justification for abortion is anything other than the bodily autonomy justification. If you argue for abortion because you feel the fetus is a thing, not a human being, or if you argue (like Blalraon) that it’s OK to kill babies even AFTER they are born, then you should be worried, because I would guess that most people don’t justifiy abortion this way.

I guess the reason people are resisting this line of argument is that they start with the premise that abortion should be legal, and then procede to construct arguments for why it should be illegal. But if technological changes remove those justifications for abortion, why SHOULD abortion remain legal? WHY do almost all liberal democracies allow abortion under greater or lesser restrictions? Why is this seen as an important right? Why do men and women have different rights?

Yes, I understand that this particular discussion isn’t very important, since the technology postulated isn’t likely to be developed for a long long time. But it might be here sooner than we think. We are entering into an era of unprecedented biomedical technology. We already have in vitro fertillization, surrogate mothers, sperm donation, egg donation, cloning of mammals, gene therapy, hormone therapy, genetic screening, earlier and earlier medical interventions with fetuses.

I just think that we should recognize that our current laws and ethics regarding abortion are a product of our particular biomedical technology, and what is appropriate for one level of technology wouldn’t be appropriate under another level. Are we opposed to (say) cloning? WHY are we opposed to cloning? If we advance objections to cloning, and technology satisfactorily addresses those objections, should we still opose cloning? If surgical or pharmacological abortion was very dangerous, a woman’s right to personal autonomy wouldn’t seem so important, if she were likely to die if she tried to exercise those rights. If perfect no-fail contraception were available, abortion would only be neccesary if the pregnancy were going abnormally, since the pregnancy would always be wanted. And on and on.

Abortion is just one piece of our biological and reproductive laws and ethics. Yes, abortion under our current technology seems inevitable. But why? Slavery seemed inevitable. Patriarchy seemed inevitable. The feudal system seemed inevitable. 95% of society being employed as farmers seemed inevitiable. I understand why those things existed, but that doesn’t mean that I like that those things existed. I understand why abortion exists, but that doesn’t mean I have to like abortion. Since our current technology seems to make abortion inevitable, then how about we change the equation by changing technology? Abortion is never good, even if it is sometimes neccesary. If technolgy removes one of the major justifications for our current abortion policy, how is that anything but good?

62

I already did. The reason is that I can’t think of a better way to resolve that impasse. Whose decision is this?

I’m still waiting for an answer to this question. Let’s assume the mother and father have exactly equal footing here. What do you do when they differ? Do we start granting the fetus rights and go by a 2/3 majority? :confused:

Of course, we’ve seen other justifications earlier in this thread.

“Fetuses aren’t human beings” isn’t an outlandish argument (do that many pro-choice people argue that a fetus is a person with full rights?), and even if it is I fail to see why that matters.

This returns us, yet again, to the issue of choice, which I guess doesn’t exist to people who think it’s all about bodily autonomy.

Who said anything about liking abortion?

I think you’ve utterly missed the point. I didn’t say the technology isn’t good. I’m opposed to removing abortion as an option.

63

Just off the top of my head, we could decide the impasse goes in favor of the fetus being gestated- as long as either the father or the mother wants to raise the child , the fetus will be gestated. Or the other way- that if either the mother or the father doesn’t want the fetus gestated it won’t be. Or we could decide that we, as a society, have an interest in promoting life that outweighs both the man’s and the woman’s interest in not having offspring and not allow any choice at all.

How do other decisions get made where each party has an equal voice? Well, lets see. My husband and I own our house in a tenancy by the entireties. If one of us wants to sell , and the other doesn’t, it can’t be sold. We have equal authority over our kids, but only one of us needs to consent to medical treatment, ear piercing, field trips etc. We jointly own our bank account, but either one of us could clean it out without the other’s agreement. We could if we wanted to, set up an account that required both our signatures on checks and withdrawals. These impasses don’t get resoved based on gender. The person who doesn’t want to sell the house, or take the money out of the two signature account gets to make the decision. The person who does want to withdraw the money or allow the kid to have her ear pierced gets to make the decision.

64

What’s wrong with granting certain human rights to unborn babies?

I understand what would be wrong with allowing the baby’s rights to trump the mother’s rights to bodily autonomy. So let’s stipulate that whatever human rights the unborn baby has, they don’t outweigh the mother’s right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. But just because the baby’s right’s don’t trump the mother’s rights, why does the mother have the rights of a Roman paterfamilias, who had the legal power of life and death over his wife and children?

Under our current legal system, birth ends this power. Now, why is that exactly? Obviously because once the baby is born the rights of the mother can no longer trump the human rights of the baby.

What sort of legal or ethical regime do we want to have in the future? What sort of standards do we want to have in place? Do we really want parents to have the power of life and death over their children? Why shouldn’t the default position be that, unless the fetus’s existance threatens the life, liberty, or bodily autonomy of some other person, that we have no right to kill it?

I also understand the desire of people to control their own reproduction. If a woman doesn’t want to mother a child it would be nice if she didn’t have to. So…why do we currently require fathers to father children they don’t want to? Why is a woman’s control over her reproduction absolute, but a father’s is contingent? Obviously because the baby is in her body, not his.

I guess I can’t understand why there should be different standards for men and women, when the biological reasons for different standards no longer exist.

65

You know the GD rules. Take it to the pit.

66

In addition to what you say after this, there’s the lack of a reason to do so. Maybe it’s incidental to this debate - actually, it’s not, since terminology is everything - but I loathe the phrases “unborn baby,” “unborn child” and (worst of all in my opinion) “the pre-born.” Depending on its development, it’s a zygote (or earlier), or it’s an embryo, or it’s a fetus. Until it’s born, in which case it’s a person or a baby or whatever you life and can enjoy all the rights and privileges therein contained.

Parents are not being given the power to kill their living children under this scenario. They will potentially have a right they still have, which is to abort a fetus or embryo. There is no talk of extending the non-existent parental right to kill children. Please stop framing this in such a hysterical way.

None of which answers the question I asked- what do you do (hotshot ;))?

67

You set up a default, which would be whatever society wanted it to be. The default could be lots of different things, perhaps:

  1. The fetus is destroyed unless someone pledges to pay for its incubation and raise it, or

  2. The fetus is destroyed unless one parent pledges to provide for its incubation and raise it, or

  3. The fetus is destroyed unless a woman volunteers to become a surrogate for it, or

  4. The fetus is destroyed only if both parents wish it destroyed, or

  5. The fetus is never destroyed barring significant defect and society bears the cost of incubation and raising, or

  6. The fetus is never destroyed and society bears the cost of incubation and raising.
    Once it is out of the woman’s body, the fetus should be regarded as a discrete unit.

68

That’s how I figured it would work. This would, therefore, restrict choice, or more accurately place it in someone else’s hands.

69

Picking up on Marley’s comments re his loathing for loaded phrases such as ‘unborn baby’ (a loathing which may ease somewhat when he is about to become a father himself), I would much prefer we stuck with the old labels ‘anti-abortion’ and ‘pro-abortion’. Much more factual and less ambiguous than ‘pro-life’ (whose life? many anti-abortionists like me support abortion when the mother’s life is is danger) and ‘pro-choice’ (there are generally three central players in this drama - so whose choice?).

Incidentally, our hamster is pregnant again. Neither I nor my daughter refer to the embryos she’s carrying - we refer them as baby hamsters. I don’t know for sure, of course, but I would hazard a guess that most horse-owners, dog-owners and cat-owners would refer to their pregnant pets as carrying foals, puppies and kittens rather than embryos, or whatever the equine/canine/feline equivalent for foetus is.

Now, a vet, that may be different: s/he might have a zillion names reflecting the various stages of development. But for laypeople, we tend to marvel at the creation of animal life and our vocab kind of reflects that. Hundred years from now, we may be able to identify our afflictions by the correct Latin name, but I don’t think we’ll have been persuaded to talk about our “buns in the oven” as embryos or foetuses.

The triumph of wisdom and understanding over knowledge?

70

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?

I’m sorry if the word “baby” has such emotional significance. Yes, “baby” is a loaded word. A “baby” is a human being, a “fetus” is an inhuman thing. Since that is exactly what we are contesting, it certainly isn’t incumbent on me to use the words you prefer, or incumbent on you to use words I prefer.

Yes, parents currently have the power to abort a fetus or embryo. Wait, they don’t. Mothers have the power to abort a fetus or embryo. Fathers don’t. Why is that?

Look, I’m not asking you to defend our current abortion standards. Barring technological or social upheaval our abortion standards aren’t going to change much, no matter who is on the supreme court. You know it, I know it, the American people know it. What I want is to UNDERSTAND our current abortion laws and ethics. WHY are our abortion laws the way they are? You don’t really think an 8 1/2 month fetus is morally equivalent to a tumor. All birth does is chance the location of the baby.

Why do human rights vest at birth? What makes birth so special, in your view? Obviously, once the baby is born, it is no longer physiologically dependent on the mother, right? Or is there some other thing that makes birth important? Birth is no more a bright line than conception is, or blastulization, or turning 18, or losing your virginity. There’s no magic transformation going on, just another step in the process. That’s what I can’t understand about your position. If technological advances take away the physiological facts of in vivo gestation and birth, why in Og’s name should our laws and ethics match what we have today?

Laws exist for a reason. Laws are intended to accomplish something. We have our current abortion laws for a reason. If those reasons no longer exist, why should the laws still exist the same way? Our current laws don’t allow 50% of parents to abort fetuses. Can you please explain why you think that is?

And if it seems like I’ve ducked a question, I apologize…if you repeat it I will attempt to answer.