At what stage is abortion immoral?

I would argue that abortion is only immoral when it's forced upon a woman against her will.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
It doesn't. As Sagan says in the essay, the existence life is an unbroken chain dating back to the primevil swamp of 4 Billion years ago. A sperm cell is unquestionably alive.
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The argument about when life starts, while engaging, is not morally relevant in the case of abortion. So while you may hold the belief that life starts when the child is born, or when it could survive without the mother, or in the x trimester, the morally relevant question is whether a person has a duty to another (and I'm here granting that a fetus is a person) to sacrifice their time, effort, or use of their body to save that person. And this brings me back to the violinist. I can't see any duty that I have to the violinist.

And while you see it as a shortcoming that I grant a fetus is a person, it defuses many counter-arguments. Most abortion debates get stuck at the point where the 'pro-life' position says a fetus is a person and the 'pro-choice' position says a fetus is not a person. I say fine, a fetus is a person, but tell me why a person has the right to leech off of my body, just because that person needs to. And moreover, tell me why denying that person the right to leech off of my body is murder. Any takers?
 
entrope said:
However, when I think of this, I keep coming back to Judith Jarvis Thomson's example of the violinist:
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Well, to be fair, a pregnancy is almost always the result of choices willingly made. What actions and decisions are commonly understood to potentially result in Joshua Bell sharing your kidneys?
 
MikeMangum said:
Well, to be fair, a pregnancy is almost always the result of choices willingly made. What actions and decisions are commonly understood to potentially result in Joshua Bell sharing your kidneys?
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Well I can cite another example that Thomson offers up in the very same article. Suppose that there are 'people seeds' that float around in the air and into people's windows. They take root in your carpet and grow into people. So, obviously, if you don't want these people seeds, you can merely never open your windows. But of course, people like to open their windows. So suppose there are screens specifically designed to keep the seeds out, and you install these screen at great expense. You are aware that there is always the possibility of a defective screen, however remote. You open your windows and in drifts a people seed and takes root. Do you have a duty to allow it to grow, and subsequently be responsible for raising the person?

I'd say not. You took all the reasonable precautions that could be expected of you. You didn't want people seeds, you purchased and installed the screens. The screens did not work as intended. You had no desire or intention of a people seed taking root in your carpet, and yet it happened. The question then becomes: in light of the fact that you opened your windows, recognizing the risk that a people seed may drift into your house, do you have a duty to the seed, despite the precautions you took to prevent its taking root in your home?
 
Never immoral.

As a male, there is no law in existence (that I'm aware of) that would force me to undergo a medical procedure of any type to save the life of another person. I cannot be forced to give blood. I certainly cannot be forced to give my healthy kidney or bone marrow to somebody that needs it. This strikes me as completely reasonable from both a moral and legal standpoint (which is different from me saying that I wouldn't give blood to somebody that needs it, of course).

If I cannot be forced into a specific medical decision for the benefit for somebody else, I'm not sure why we think we can force other people into a specific medical decision.

I can think of counter arguments. You could argue that the woman accepted additional responsibilities by getting pregnant. That seems like the strongest counter I can think of. I can't say I find it terribly convincing. There are accidental pregnancies, there are medical complications, there is even just changing of your mind. In the end I find it abhorrent that one person's well being is subjugated to another's.

Another poster made the legal/moral differential, which is important. In the above I'm addressing legality a bit more than morality. I don't think any of us would be terribly thrilled with somebody that decided to get pregnant, pursued and achieved it, and then thought "opps, never mind". But let's be honest, that doesn't seem to be the likely reason for the vast majority of abortions. From a practical point of view I don't see how we could legislate against that behavior while otherwise allowing a woman control. In a similar vein, you'd all sneer at me if I refused to give blood to somebody because I was squeamish about needles, but I'd hope that most of you would support my right for self determination in that regard. If you ask me to weight the 'morals' of the situation, I find that a terribly squishy, unproductive word. I just ask, what should we do? To me, in this case, what to do seems pretty clear - let me give blood or not, let the woman carry the baby to term or not (I don't mean to suggest an equivalence in those two - I consider them as opposite ends of a scale, actually).
 
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I think abortion is moral untill the embryo has reached it's 99th year in development. after that nature will take it's course.

I think the basic biological identification of a human being is in it's DNA. After the gametes have fused, the DNA form a combination that is unique to the mother and father. Ok, 50% percent unique to the mother and father. But it is an individual DNA combination distinct from it's parents though it requires gestation in the mother to develop to the point where it can survive outside the womb and continue to develop into to a self-sustaining member of society with assitance from the parents and society-at-large. (Sorry for the legal-ese but i've participated in another thread concerning this subject.)

Therefore I do not believe that at any point after viaibility has been determined that it is moral to abort the fetus. But, it maybe necessary to do so under certain circumstances.

I do not believe that abortion is an example of responsible birthcontrol. It is more responsible to prevent the conception rather than to terminate it after it has already happened.

The women's right over her body is another issue that is tricky and convoluted at best due to the biological fact that the woman's body is the gestator of an embryo that has a distinct combination of DNA from herself.
But what rights the embryo has compared to the mother is up to the courts to decide.
 
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entrope said:
Well I can cite another example that Thomson offers up in the very same article. Suppose that there are 'people seeds' that float around in the air and into people's windows. They take root in your carpet and grow into people. So, obviously, if you don't want these people seeds, you can merely never open your windows. But of course, people like to open their windows. So suppose there are screens specifically designed to keep the seeds out, and you install these screen at great expense. You are aware that there is always the possibility of a defective screen, however remote. You open your windows and in drifts a people seed and takes root. Do you have a duty to allow it to grow, and subsequently be responsible for raising the person?
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You may have the responsibility to allow the people seed to grow but you do not have to take the responsibilty to raise the seed people when there are so many people out there who's homes cannot grow seed people for some reason but want desparetly to have a seed person of thier own.

I'd say not. You took all the reasonable precautions that could be expected of you. You didn't want people seeds, you purchased and installed the screens. The screens did not work as intended. You had no desire or intention of a people seed taking root in your carpet, and yet it happened. The question then becomes: in light of the fact that you opened your windows, recognizing the risk that a people seed may drift into your house, do you have a duty to the seed, despite the precautions you took to prevent its taking root in your home?
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Possibly, especially if you know that the screens and preventatives you installed are not 100% effective.

The only way to be sure is either to not open your widows at all or remove the carpet or surfaces that allow the seed people to take root. (unless your home happens to be the one that the seed people massiah is to be grown in).

When you install the preventatives and you are informed that there is the small chance that seed people may still take root dispite the preventatives. That means when you use the preventatives while your windows are open you are willingly taking a small chance that a seed person may take root. If that happens then you still may have to be responsible to allow the seed person to grow, but you still don't have to raise them. Just ship them off to the seed person orphanage.
 
If it were illegal to destroy a seed person that had drifted onto my carpet and I really didn't want one, I might seek out a shady character to destroy it for me. This character might increase the risk of my entire house burning down with me in it, or the risk of my entire carpet being destroyed so I couldn't raise future seed people if I wanted to start growing them.
 
Sun Countess said:
I would argue that abortion is only immoral when it's forced upon a woman against her will.
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At what point in a woman's life does she cease being a child without a will of her own, that can be morally killed by her mother on any pretext or none at all, and become a woman with a will of her own, upon whom it would be immoral to force an abortion?

I mean, why should will be a factor, let alone a deciding factor? And how do you measure whether or not it's there, or to what degree?
 
theprestige said:
At what point in a woman's life does she cease being a child without a will of her own, that can be morally killed by her mother on any pretext or none at all, and become a woman with a will of her own, upon whom it would be immoral to force an abortion?

I mean, why should will be a factor, let alone a deciding factor? And how do you measure whether or not it's there, or to what degree?
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I'm not quite sure what you're saying in the first paragraph, but it looks like you don't understand the difference between an embryo with two X-chromosomes and a grown human female capable of reproduction. If that's the case, I can't explain any further.
 
uruk said:
Possibly, especially if you know that the screens and preventatives you installed are not 100% effective.

The only way to be sure is either to not open your widows at all or remove the carpet or surfaces that allow the seed people to take root. (unless your home happens to be the one that the seed people massiah is to be grown in).

When you install the preventatives and you are informed that there is the small chance that seed people may still take root dispite the preventatives. That means when you use the preventatives while your windows are open you are willingly taking a small chance that a seed person may take root. If that happens then you still may have to be responsible to allow the seed person to grow, but you still don't have to raise them. Just ship them off to the seed person orphanage.
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Maybe so, but the point of the example is to say that we cannot reasonably expect people not to open their windows. There might be a risk that a people seed could drift into the window, but can we really expect people to live life in a manner so as to avoid any potential undesired outcome? Leaving the house, getting in the car, taking a shower, these are all potentially dangerous activities we all participate in daily. Our choices to participate in them are not governed by our fear of the potentially disastrous outcomes.

To me, saying that the best way to not get pregnant is to abstain from sex is analogous to saying the best way to not get into a car accident is to never get in a car. That may be true, but for most people, its simply not practical. So what do you do? You take reasonable precautions when partaking in activities that have known risks. There really is nothing more you can do.

And just to elaborate on the violinist, we can modify the scenario to make the person partially responsible, and the moral evaluation is no different. Suppose you were well aware that the Society for Music Lovers was looking to kidnap someone to hook up to the violinist. In leaving the house, would you not be taking partial responsibility, knowing there is a chance you could be kidnapped and hooked up to the violinist? Still, despite your partial responsibility, you have no duty to the violinist.

So don't get me wrong - I think that couples who become pregnant bear the responsibility of the pregnancy, but I don't see how responsibility changes the morality of it. Permissible actions are permissible regardless of how you are put in the situation of making a choice to take those actions. I don't see how the mode of conception (forced or consensual, intentional or not) has any bearing on whether an abortion wrongs the fetus or not. This is what we are discussing here, right? The question of, at what point in a pregnancy, if any, does a fetus become wronged by an abortion?

However, I think that getting caught up in these details is irrelevant. It's much the same as an argument as to whether a fetus is a person or not - it misses the point entirely. Personally, I like to look at things in terms of duties. The question of morality is (whether you took precautions or not): do I have a duty to allow another person to use my body to their end?
 
roger said:
Never immoral.

As a male, there is no law in existence (that I'm aware of) that would force me to undergo a medical procedure of any type to save the life of another person.
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Wrong analogy.

It's more like if you have a siamese twin that shares your heart.
 
HansMustermann said:
The thalamocortical connections form in the 26'th gestation week. (Which is actually measured since the last menstruation, so subtract about 2 weeks if you want age from fecundation.) That's when the brain actually gets connected to the sensory inputs from outside. That's when it can possibly start to feel any pain or be aware of its surroundings or even of its own body at all.

(Mind you, the brain is still so demielinated and so much of the final structure is missing, that "aware" here pretty much just means "can receive input", not something like "conscious.")

Until then, it's just some disconnected brain tissue in a (biological) jar.

So the "when it starts feeling pain" argument would put the limit around 6 months. Until then the connections simply don't exist that would relay that information to the brain.

To me that makes a good deadline from other considerations too. Until then, pretty much the little thing never even knew it existed in the first place. The raw data on which it could form a world model (small as his/her world is at the moment) and draw a conceptual line between the "I" and the "everything else", simply doesn't reach the brains yet. It's like having a CPU that's not connected to the motherboard, really.
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This seems like the most well reasoned response I've read so far.



The argument about having a face, on the other hand, seems incredibly silly to me. A Barbie doll has a face too, but nobody would give it any rights based on that.
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gobots>>>>barbie
 
Dragoonster said:
If it were illegal to destroy a seed person that had drifted onto my carpet and I really didn't want one, I might seek out a shady character to destroy it for me. This character might increase the risk of my entire house burning down with me in it, or the risk of my entire carpet being destroyed so I couldn't raise future seed people if I wanted to start growing them.
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People are responsible for thier actions and choices. Actions and choices have consequences. It's amazing that people tend to forget that.

If you do not want a seed person, then take the proper precausions. Do not behaive or do the things that make you supceptable to getting seed people.

If you behaive in such a manner knowing the risks then you are responsible for those actions and consequences.

If it is illegal to destroy a seed person and you do not want to have a seed person but get one anyway due to your actions than take the consequences and the responsibility.

If you decide to go to a shady person who will destroy the seed person then you know that you are chosing to put yourself at risk. You chose to take the risk and you have to take the consequences of those actions.

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Or you can also change the law by challenging the law in a court. Maybe you can call the ruling Hoe vs. Weed.
 
But, but..
Taking the steps to avoid planting the seed is also "immoral"..
Were at's the line between dogma and sanity?
 
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