Abortion

[Akots]

Two things. First, I don't think anyone is arguing that the fetus isn't alive; the point of contention is whether the fetus is human.

You misunderstand. The argument here is "The soul exists, and it is what gives a human unique properties." Belief in a soul is not mere belief in life. (Would that it were so easy... life is actually quantifiable)

Second, I disagree that that's the morally (or ethically) correct choice. We can use "faith" to justify any of a billion mutually contradictory positions. I could propose the existence of "air fairies," and say that you kill one every time you take a breath -- do you stop breathing? That's just as rational as suggesting the existence of souls without evidence. Our choice is either to stick to things we can observe and measure in the real world, or be stuck, paralyzed out of fear that every single action we take will harm some hypothetical being.

My very own man of straw... though I do get your point, proving air-faries exist is the easy part. Even if they did exist, could we prove that they, as with fetuses, have souls?

And unfortunately for the "don't breath! save the faries!" theory, we can confirm that fetuses exist. The issue here is wether killing one constitutes ending a human life.

The rest of your post I agree with.

Jeremy

And i thought nobody liked my punctuation...



Here's one question i really want answered...

Strictly speaking, even an inseminated egg IS an organism, and it is alive. So scientificaly, it's a human being.

Name me one human being that was not, at some point, an inseminated egg. Out of all the countless numbers of humans that have ever been born, can you name any that weren't?

EDIT: Actually, let me emphasise that i really want this answered. After an egg is inseminated, you hav eproduced a livign organism; wether it can survive alone, remain concious, feel pain or do long division is irellevant... you have already produced a viable organism.

So what's the issue? How useful that organism must become before you can no longer justify destroying it?

 

[Q-Source]

Jeremy

If you consider it the same as aborting a fetus 6 weeks in, why not? It seems to me that intuitively you do consider fetal development significant, but are unwilling to articulate that.

I said it before, abortion in the last months of pregnancy is morally wrong, although it is not criminal.

However in both cases, if the fetus is not a person, it is valid to have an abortion.

Yes, I understand that many people feel that way. What I want to know is why. What's so special about those hours of labor that suddenly transforms the fetus into a person and turns the woman into a mother?

It is special because it is the moment when the baby can live by himself. He does not need anymore the woman's body.


Akots

What other use does sex have, exactly?

Are you seriously suggesting that sex should be only used for reproduction purposes?


Thanz

From this, I infer that you are against capital punishment. Why then would you impose it on an unborn child?

IT IS NOT AN UNBORN CHILD. It is a fetus.
You cannot compare the life of a human being with an unconscious fetus. While the fetus is inside a woman's body, she must decide what to do with it, it is part of her body.

There is not a child involved here.

How do you morally justify the killing of a child so that the woman can have a choice as to whether to continue the pregnancy? Isn't death far worse than anything that happens to a woman during a normal pregnancy? And if the two are equal moral agents, why impose the far worse penalty?

why do you think that you have the right to say a woman that she should have a child, and as such forcing her to raise him for the rest of her life?

She hates the product, she abhors the child, why do you think that she should give birth?

Q-S

Edited to change a long sentence

 

[toddjh]

You misunderstand. The argument here is "The soul exists, and it is what gives a human unique properties." Belief in a soul is not mere belief in life. (Would that it were so easy... life is actually quantifiable)

But you said life. I just wanted to make sure it was clear that what I was talking about was consciousness, not merely life.

My very own man of straw... though I do get your point, proving air-faries exist is the easy part. Even if they did exist, could we prove that they, as with fetuses, have souls?

It's not a straw man; air fairies and souls have the same amount of evidence in favor of them, unless you know something I don't. Yet we take thousands of breaths each day without any ethical hand-wringing...so why worry about whether or not abortions hurt souls?

And unfortunately for the "don't breath! save the faries!" theory, we can confirm that fetuses exist.

Of course fetuses exist. But the air fairies were an analogy for souls, not fetuses. Why should I believe in souls any more than air fairies?

Here's one question i really want answered...

Strictly speaking, even an inseminated egg IS an organism, and it is alive. So scientificaly, it's a human being.

There are plenty of things that are alive, yet are not human beings. We have to define what, exactly, a human being is. That's the problem. No one can agree on that definition. I don't think that being alive and containing human genetic material is enough -- otherwise, each individual one of my cells is a human being on its own.

Name me one human being that was not, at some point, an inseminated egg. Out of all the countless numbers of humans that have ever been born, can you name any that weren't?

Name me one human being that was not, at some point, the core of a supermassive star. Should we go on an interstellar crusade to prevent supernovae?

EDIT: Actually, let me emphasise that i really want this answered. After an egg is inseminated, you hav eproduced a livign organism; wether it can survive alone, remain concious, feel pain or do long division is irellevant... you have already produced a viable organism.

So what's the issue? How useful that organism must become before you can no longer justify destroying it?

That's what we're trying to decide. Obviously, the answer lies somewhere between "more useful than any other animal we routinely kill", and "less useful than a human adult."

Jeremy

 

[toddjh]

However in both cases, if the fetus is not a person, it is valid to have an abortion.

Is anyone here disagreeing with that? The only point of contention, as far as I know, is the point at which a fetus becomes a person.

It is special because it is the moment when the baby can live by himself. He does not need anymore the woman's body.

Sure he does. He can't feed himself, maintain personal hygiene, or even move. If nobody cares for the baby, he will die in a matter of days, maybe even hours. Why is it relevant that he gets his food from a nipple rather than an umbilical cord?

And what about my siamese twin example? There's a person who can't survive without his twin's body, literally, yet we consider him a human being with human rights, no? What's the difference? I still don't see what birth changes.

IT IS NOT AN UNBORN CHILD. It is a fetus.
You cannot compare the life of a human being with an unconscious fetus.

What about a conscious fetus? Or does the miraculous transformation that takes place at the instant of birth also magically bestow consciousness on that heretofore inert lump of tissue?

Jeremy

 

[Yahzi]

EvilDave
Make it so that an individual person can reverse the effect on his or her own (without relying a possibly government controlled hospital or chemical), and you've got the *perfect* solution. But I'd go for your solution as it stands, anyway.

nuetrino_cannon

It seems to me that contraceptives, which are scands cheaper than abortions

There are a variety of reasons why contraceptives have not done this.

1. They don't always work.
2. They sometimes have enough side effects that people don't use them.
3. Their availabilty has been severely restricted by social and legal action. Here is just one exampe: To get a prescription to the pill, a woman has to undergo a pap smear - a test for cervical cancer. Does the pill cause cervical cancer? No. Is there any reason you can't sell the pill over the counter instead of by prescription? Only that you have to have a pap smear. Are you starting to get the picture? I can get a prescription to Viagra - a new drug - easier than a woman can get a prescription to the pill - a drug we've been using for 40 years without any major dangers.


Toddjh

the logical reason for this distinction, which seems quite arbitrary to me.

Because it is voluntary. Giving birth to a child is a voluntary act which implies acceptance of the duty of raising a child. Having sex does NOT imply this acceptance.

abortion (as I understand it) is invasive enough to qualify as assault with a deadly weapon against the fetus, completely independently of the woman's body.

So what? If I crawl into your house, do the police have the right to use deadly force to remove me from your property? If that's the only way, yes. If removing you from my property will cause you to die, that's ok to. I don't know if you realize this, but the Border Patrol (the guys that keep other people off our property) carry guns.

Once again you fail to understand that my excersize of my rights does not care about your rights. The woman is excersizing her rights to her body in the only way available to her. How this affects somebody else is not her problem. Your rights end where they interfere with my rights; and your right to life intereferes with my right to my internal organs.

But as I pointed out before, most of the common forms of birth control have a mean time between failures of far shorter than most people's fertile years

OK, you've convinced me. Men and women should only have sex when they are prepared to have children. So we can just dispense with all birth control, and settle for having sex 2.4 times in our lives. While we are at it, let's throw away some more ways in which technology has expanded our lives and our choices.

I don't know why you have this objection to people having an enjoyable sex life, and I don't care. You have no moral grounds to restrict my options just because they offend your moral sensibilities. You must show actual harm to your rights before you can restrict the excersize of mine, and you have not shown how abortion could possibly threaten you. It's not going to set a precedent that will someday cause you to be in danger.

We have created a technology - birth control + abortion - that allows us to escape the bonds nature laid upon us. Your example should be changed to shooting a gun at a rifle range, because if somebody gets hit, it's his fault for jumping the fence. We put up signs and fences; we did our part. And using birth control is putting up signs and fences, and when the fetus-person ignores those and attaches itself to the uterine wall, it's its fault. It doesn't become the woman's fault.

Again, you simply refuse to grant people the option of having sex without accepting the risk of pregnancy, even though we have the technological means to do so. Why not? It hasn't got anything to do with the rights of the fetus. Consider this: can you force a mother to donate a kidney to save her child? Could you force her to lie on a hospital bed and share her blood for 9 months to save her already born child? You are the one making an arbitrary distinction before and after birth: you are granting the fetus rights you would not grant an infant.

Then it should be easy to answer my question,

I am not going to explain undue burden to you. It is a common legal concept. Look it up.

But the contention that some miraculous event happens at the moment of birth that transforms a fetus into a human being

It's not miraculous, it's political. A similar miracle happens when you get pregnant in Mexico, sneak across the border illegally, and give birth in the USA: your child miraculousy becomes a US citizen.

It's not that the fetus wasn't a person before; it's that it was a person without rights (much as illegal alien can be deported to his home country even if it means certain death).


Denise

To anyone who thinks they have a right to stop a woman from having an abortion, I have a right to your kidney. Give it to me now. You only need one, and hey, you have two. Quit being selfish and give me your kidney. I swear I will take good care of it, yep.

Not only will they not give you their kidney... they won't lend you one for nine months, even if you promise to give it back.

Unless you are a fetus - and then you get special rights to other people's stuff. But man, once you're born, you're on your own. They won't even fund Head Start and feed you breakfast.

Ebola
I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I understand your complaint, since I had to put ntech on /ignore for screaming at me about my political position on abortion (even though it is identical to his).

I was just trying to agree with you: I also would prefer that abortions never occurred.

Thanz

Blatant strawman. Pregnancy is unique, that much is obvious

It's not that unique. We routinely deny immigration to people who will die if they remain in their home country. What's the difference from denying immigration to someone that doesn't even have a home country to die in?

What I am challenging is your assertion that it doesn't matter if the fetus is a person.

It doesn't matter. If I keel over in the street, and the doctors decide I need to share someone else's internal organs for 9 months until they can fix me, can I use yours? Is there any way I can legally compel anyone at all - strangers, family, my mother - to share with me? How is pregnancy different?

And don't say that we invited the fetus, because the use of birth control was a clear indication that the fetus was not invited.

The point is, the fetus had no choice in the matter. The mother did.

The mother quite clearly chose not to have a fetus. That's what the birth control was all about. If the fetus ignores that warning, then whatever happens to it is its fault.

If I have a deep, deep hole in my backyard, and I put locked fences around it, and danger/keep out signs, and then you wander in, cut through the fences, pick the locks, move the signs, and then fall into the hole... who is responsible? Am I guilty of any crime when you die?

The concept of negligence is discharged when you excersize due diligence and precaution. Using birth control is due diligence; not having sex is an undue burden which the government cannot compel me to undergo. It would be like the government holding me at fault for the deep hole accident because I didn't have armed guards in my backyard.

Abortion only has to do with women's rights and economics once you have decided that the fetus is not a person.

Not true. For this entire thread, I have argued only from the position that fetus are persons. Persons do not have the rights you are trying to give fetuses.

Abortion has to do with whether you think fetuses have rights that other people don't have, or whether you think pregnancy is a morally inescapable consequence of sex.

And economics rule all of us. Sad but true.

Isn't death far worse than anything that happens to a woman during a normal pregnancy?

This principle does not hold anywhere else in the law. The entire point of rights is that they protect you from depredation. They don't care about why the depredation is taking place. If your rights can be superseded by another person's need, then you don't have rights.

Now in ordinary legal practice, we make pragmatic exceptions. But that does not change the principle, and when the exceptions are no longer pragmatic, the principle must dominate.

Nowhere in American common law does your need trump my rights. You can inconvience me, yes, but you cannot put my life in danger to save your own. (This is why it is so important to not dismiss pregnancy as mere inconvience, and to remember that it is a potentially fatal condition.) Putting my life in danger - even just a little bit - is considered an undue burden on the excersize of my rights.

You can break into my house and eat my food and refuse to come out, and chances are nobody will do anything much. But if you put my life in danger - even just a tiny bit - the cops will shoot you in the face. This is an example of the pragmatic concerns being trumped by the actual principle. Pragmatically, I don't need my closet and that loaf of bread. In principle, I do not have to suffer a risk to my life for any reason of yours.

People cannot be compelled to risk their lives for the sake of others. Except for the draft. Now, if the nation were in danger of disappearing alltogether; if our collective survival were at stake; then we could draft women to have children. But it isn't, so we can't.

You are imperiling the woman's right to life (by compelling her to undergo a risk) to protect the fetus's right to life. There is no precedent for this, and there should not be. An uninvited fetus, like an univited trespasser, does not deserve anything of that magnitude. The woman's right to life is inviolate, and cannot be subsumed to someone else's right to life.

Akots

Would you be more interested in supporting abortions, or more advanced means of supporting a larger population on an existing ecology?

I don't see how they are related. I am supporting abortion as a means of enjoying sex without accepting the burden of children. My comments about world population were not intended to be support for abortion, but an explanation of why adoption works the way it does.

That said, I think there are way too many people on the planet right now, regardless of any technological solutions. There isn't enough space for us and the animals; and frankly, I'd rather have wild wolves in the USA than another 100 million citizens. We've got all the citizens we need; but we are kinda short on wolves.

After struggling to answer this question, I see you've answered it yourself. LOL!

Isn't that what having sex is like? Signing on the dotted line?

No, and why should it be? Who enforces that Microsoft contract? The government. Why? Because Microsoft controls the government and makes them. Who is going to enforce the pregnancy contract? The government? Why?

Futhermore, when I sign on the dotted line, I'm signing for exactly what I bought. I am not accepting the %1 chance that my computer will suddenly require 1,000 watts of power for the next nine months and I won't be able to turn it off.

What other use does sex have, exactly?

Um... if you haven't figured that out... I don't think I'm the one that can explain it to you.

Well... technically, I was never born; I was surgically removed from my mother by cesarian section.

That is legally equivalent to being born. A long established precedent of common law.

Q-Source

It is a difficult question to me if we consider that a fetus is a human being.

I didn't mean to imply the question wasn't difficult.

You left out one option in your list of negative consequences:

3. What about the precedent set by allowing citzens in need to sieze the personal assets of other citizens?

 

[Q-Source]

Sure he does. He can't feed himself, maintain personal hygiene, or even move. If nobody cares for the baby, he will die in a matter of days, maybe even hours. Why is it relevant that he gets his food from a nipple rather than an umbilical cord?

Oh, come on. You were doing a great job defending your position.
A baby outside his mother's body can or cannot survive, but that is another issue. Nothing to do with Abortion

And what about my siamese twin example? There's a person who can't survive without his twin's body, literally, yet we consider him a human being with human rights, no? What's the difference? I still don't see what birth changes.

Well, you cannot apply the same principle here because siamese twins are both human beings. There is not point to discuss this example, the twins are already persons and they have the right to live.

But, if you were one of the siameses, then you couldn't decide over your heart because it does not belong to you completely.

Just in the case, that one of the twins put in danger the healthy one, then it would be ethically correct to finish with his life.

Q-S

 

[toddjh]

Because it is voluntary. Giving birth to a child is a voluntary act which implies acceptance of the duty of raising a child. Having sex does NOT imply this acceptance.

So you keep saying. But why?? Why is no one able to answer this? What is it about the act of giving birth that "implies acceptance of the duty of raising a child?" It's a few hours of some muscle contractions. Why is that relevant at all?

So what? If I crawl into your house, do the police have the right to use deadly force to remove me from your property? If that's the only way, yes. If removing you from my property will cause you to die, that's ok to. I don't know if you realize this, but the Border Patrol (the guys that keep other people off our property) carry guns.

Police won't shoot someone unless every other possibility has been tried -- and in your example, it was the trespassers choice to break into your house. If you get pregnant, it was your choice that caused it.

Once again you fail to understand that my excersize of my rights does not care about your rights. The woman is excersizing her rights to her body in the only way available to her. How this affects somebody else is not her problem. Your rights end where they interfere with my rights; and your right to life intereferes with my right to my internal organs.

I'm not talking about internal organs. Go ahead and dilate your cervix all you want. Like I said, if you can perform an abortion without severely damaging the fetus's body, I'd like to hear about it. It's the fetus's body I'm concerned with, not yours -- and only when there's a good chance the fetus may have developed consciousness.

Incidentally, what do you think about the siamese twin example I gave a few posts up?

OK, you've convinced me. Men and women should only have sex when they are prepared to have children. So we can just dispense with all birth control, and settle for having sex 2.4 times in our lives. While we are at it, let's throw away some more ways in which technology has expanded our lives and our choices.

Try to listen carefully: I am not an anti-abortionist. I know you may have had to trot these arguments in discussions with them in the past, but they don't apply to me. Look at the points I made: people engage is sex using birth control that is more likely than not to result in pregnancy over the course of their lives, despite the presence of better forms of birth control..

Suppose I'm at an Afghan wedding and I want to shoot my gun to celebrate. I could shoot it into the air, where it has an insignificant chance of hitting somebody. But my arms are tired, so instead I aim it haphazardly in a random direction, such that it has over a 50% chance of hitting someone, and pull the trigger. If it kills someone, am I not responsible for their death? If someone chooses to use a relatively ineffective form of birth control, such as the Today Sponge, which was recently re-released, instead of a much more effective form, such as an IUD, is that any different?

I don't know why you have this objection to people having an enjoyable sex life, and I don't care. You have no moral grounds to restrict my options just because they offend your moral sensibilities. You must show actual harm to your rights before you can restrict the excersize of mine, and you have not shown how abortion could possibly threaten you. It's not going to set a precedent that will someday cause you to be in danger.

Ah, so I should only care about myself. What is your opinion of good samaritan laws? I assume you would think I was a fine upstanding citizen if I stood by and watched a gunshot victim bleed to death on the street, like those people at that gas station.

We have created a technology - birth control + abortion - that allows us to escape the bonds nature laid upon us. Your example should be changed to shooting a gun at a rifle range, because if somebody gets hit, it's his fault for jumping the fence.

The most common forms of birth control have over a 50% chance of resulting in pregnancy over a person's lifetime.

Again, you simply refuse to grant people the option of having sex without accepting the risk of pregnancy, even though we have the technological means to do so.

By all means, have sex without accepting the risk of pregnancy! Do what it takes! Get a vasectomy, like I did, and never worry about it again. I'm not going to stop you.

But if you choose to have sex without using an effective form of birth control, then don't come crying to me. Even then, I have no problems with abortion until the possibility that the fetus has human-like awareness is significant.

Jeremy

 

[Thanz]

Thanz

IT IS NOT AN UNBORN CHILD. It is a fetus.
You cannot compare the life of a human being with an unconscious fetus. While the fetus is inside a woman's body, she must decide what to do with it, it is part of her body.

There is not a child involved here.

Already you are forgetting the assumption that we have made to get into this debate: that the fetus is a human life, with the same rights as you or I. So therefore, for the purposes of this debate, it is an unborn child, or whatever you want to call it.

I understand that your position is that the fetus is not a human life, but we are debating under the assumption that it IS.

why do you think that you have the right to say a woman that she should have a child, and as such forcing her to raise him for the rest of her life?

She hates the product, she abhors the child, why do you think that she should give birth?

Q-S

Edited to change a long sentence

Well, I am saying that the child's right to a life is more compelling than the woman's rights over her body for the term of pregnancy. After pregnancy, there are options available for the mother and child that do not involve her taking care of the baby for life.

Again, in your response, you have ignored the central assumption: The fetus is a human life, with the same set of rights as everyone else. Under this assumption, what is the moral basis for killing the child?

 

[Akots]

But you said life. I just wanted to make sure it was clear that what I was talking about was consciousness, not merely life.

My bad, then. Apologies.

It's not a straw man; air fairies and souls have the same amount of evidence in favor of them, unless you know something I don't. Yet we take thousands of breaths each day without any ethical hand-wringing...so why worry about whether or not abortions hurt souls?

When did I ever oppose this concept? Either it's made of straw, or it's irellevant.

Of course fetuses exist. But the air fairies were an analogy for souls, not fetuses. Why should I believe in souls any more than air fairies?

You asked why I shouldn't kill air faries... assuming they exist, it's the same reason not to kill fetuses. If someone believes a tree has a soul, then we start having problems with killing trees too.

There are plenty of things that are alive, yet are not human beings. We have to define what, exactly, a human being is. That's the problem. No one can agree on that definition. I don't think that being alive and containing human genetic material is enough -- otherwise, each individual one of my cells is a human being on its own.

Very true. And this is not merely the point of the argument; it IS the argument. One could define "having a soul" as "the property of being a human being."

So ambiguous of me... when i say "soul" I do not merely mean life, as a soul nessecarily would have to live on after life ends.

Name me one human being that was not, at some point, the core of a supermassive star. Should we go on an interstellar crusade to prevent supernovae?

Isn't all water homeopathic, eh?

I may not be able to prove that all humans came from fertilized eggs, but are you saying it's unscientific reasoning to say they did come from eggs? Out of all the observed births, all have spawned from an inseminated egg. Pretty decent sampling, and easily tested. Unlike supernova atom inheritance.

That's what we're trying to decide. Obviously, the answer lies somewhere between "more useful than any other animal we routinely kill", and "less useful than a human adult."

Jeremy

I fear I was using a sarcastic tone here, implying that human beings oughtn't be valued by the work they do, or the knowledge they accumulate. Practicaly, a human being has a material and functional value; but this is not the "Practical and Quantifiable Forum," and we are more than the sum of our parts. Queaff?

To risk tossing another opinion into the pit, I believe the existance or non-existance of souls is not a religious issue; it's philosophical. I'd argue that one could believe in souls, and not believe in God. And if it were proved, it would impact on all humans similarly; not just particular religions.

Though i imagine different religions would stil lsquabble over it anyways.


And, may I at least emphasise that my argument is not for the existance of the soul itself... i obviously cannot prove it exists. I am aware fo that. My argument is that if a soul is indeed created when a human being is concieved, then the point at which it is created determines the point at which abortion becomes immoral.

if we assume a purely materialistic stance, then strictly speaking, abortion becomes as irellevant as killing fully grown people, except as a loss of labor or companionship.

 

[Q-Source]

Thanz,

Sorry, you are right.
I have to leave now. I will think about the Hard Question and I will give my answer tomorrow.

Assuming that the fetus is a person...

Q-S

 

[toddjh]

Oh, come on. You were doing a great job defending your position. A baby outside his mother's body can or cannot survive, but that is another issue. Nothing to do with Abortion

There's no need to get sarcastic; just address the question. The day before a woman gives birth, the odds are good that the baby could survive if removed from the womb. Does that make it a human then? What about a week before? Or a month? Three months? Where do you draw the line?

What if incubators are developed which can allow an egg to develop fully without ever being in a woman's body?

Well, you cannot apply the same principle here because siamese twins are both human beings. There is not point to discuss this example, the twins are already persons and they have the right to live.

*bashes head repeatedly against the wall*

That is the entire point of contention here!

But, if you were one of the siameses, then you couldn't decide over your heart because it does not belong to you completely.

Why not? Your brother has a heart of his own, it's just malformed. That's not your fault. If you hadn't had the bad luck to be born conjoined, then it would be your own heart. Being conjoined twins certainly wasn't an expected consequence of your actions...so why don't you support the right of a siamese twin to control his own body?

Jeremy

 

[Akots]

We just fixed that drywall, toddj!

 

[J3K]

I'm in favor of abortions for one big reason. I want my child to have a good life, I don't want my baby not eating supper for 2 days because I have to pay for daycare and that cuts on my spending money for food. The thought of making abortion illegal is crazy. If the parents are not in a position to take care of the child and give it a good life(such as teenage parents) abortions should be fine. If my girlfriend were to get pregnant, chances are, she would have an abortion. Because neither one of us want our child not spending its first years with US and not with our parents. We want to raise our children, not our parents. Not to mention that neither one of our families are well off money wise to pay for the costs of another kid. So the options would be, have the child, give it a crappy life. Have an abortion, have a child in the future when our lives are on track and school is behind us, and we have jobs, and give my kid a good life. Ya know, the latter seems a heck of a lot better, for us, and the child. Do anti-abortionists really think children like having to grow up in crap conditions because the mom wasn't able to get an abortion.

 

[Thanz]

Thanz

It's not that unique. We routinely deny immigration to people who will die if they remain in their home country. What's the difference from denying immigration to someone that doesn't even have a home country to die in?

If your country has horrible refugee immigration rules, that doesn't make any difference to the abortion debate.

It doesn't matter. If I keel over in the street, and the doctors decide I need to share someone else's internal organs for 9 months until they can fix me, can I use yours? Is there any way I can legally compel anyone at all - strangers, family, my mother - to share with me? How is pregnancy different?

Pregnancy is different because the parents accepted the risk of pregnancy when they had sex. I didn't accept any risk of you needing my organs. Whether they used birth control is irrelevant. Everyone knows that birth control is not 100% effective. If you can't accept the risk, don't engage in the behaviour.

And don't say that we invited the fetus, because the use of birth control was a clear indication that the fetus was not invited.


The mother quite clearly chose not to have a fetus. That's what the birth control was all about. If the fetus ignores that warning, then whatever happens to it is its fault.

Please tell me that you are not serious about this argument. It is the fetus' fault??? As if the fetus has any choice at all in the matter?? The parents decide to have sex, and send some sperm hurtling towards an egg, and it is the sperm and egg's fault? Should they stop and have a little conversation - so, Mr. Sperm, did you have to sneak around any barriers to get here?

If I have a deep, deep hole in my backyard, and I put locked fences around it, and danger/keep out signs, and then you wander in, cut through the fences, pick the locks, move the signs, and then fall into the hole... who is responsible? Am I guilty of any crime when you die?

This argument makes no sense whatsoever. There are no signs in the uterus. The fetus is not an intruder. It is a natural consequence of your actions (and your partners).

The concept of negligence is discharged when you excersize due diligence and precaution. Using birth control is due diligence; not having sex is an undue burden which the government cannot compel me to undergo. It would be like the government holding me at fault for the deep hole accident because I didn't have armed guards in my backyard.

No, it wouldn't. Using birth control, when one knows that it is not 100% effective, does not absolve you of responsibility for pregnancy. Ask any dad who has tried to use "But I used a condom" as an argument to get out of child support.

Maybe you think that Ford should not have been liable for the Pinto because, well, it made a mostly safe car, and only 1 in 1000 would blow up, so therefore they are not responsible for any that do blow up.

You are imperiling the woman's right to life (by compelling her to undergo a risk) to protect the fetus's right to life. There is no precedent for this, and there should not be. An uninvited fetus, like an univited trespasser, does not deserve anything of that magnitude. The woman's right to life is inviolate, and cannot be subsumed to someone else's right to life.

But, if the fetus has the same rights as you or I, you are completely denying the fetus right to life in favour of a potential risk of loss of life. You have certain death on one hand, and some health risks on the other. The fetus is not an uninvited trespasser - they are the consequence of your actions.

Why is the woman's right to life inviolate, while the fetus right to life can be dispensed with? This makes no sense whatsoever. If they are the same moral agents, you cannot say that certain death to one is preferable to some health risks to the other.

Your examples about kidneys, etc. only make sense if the person from whom the kidney is being asked did something to require the other person to need his kidney (and only HIS kidney) and that this was understood by everyone. Something along the order of "If I do X, then Yahzi may need to use my kidney for 9 months. Should I do it?"

 

[J3K]

I've had a thought, but it seems too basic to really make a difference either way. But when people are talking about a human life and stuff. When do you celebrate being a human and your life? On your birthday, and when is that day, the day you are born. In the first few months, the baby is not going to know that he/she is living and now dying. It isn't formed enough. You don't feel bad when you step on bugs, but they are more formed than a baby fetus.
And no, birth control is not 100% effective, and there is a risk, but saying that if you take the risk, be prepared if it turns out for the worst, I disagree. Abortion is the final thing when it comes down to birth control. It is the person's choice to decide whether or not to do it.
People need to stop trying to control peoples lives like this, it's wrong.

 

[Peter Jenkins]

I am in favour of the womans right to choose to have an abortion. There have been a lot of good posts on that issue, so I won't rehash the arguments.

I just want to say S E X !
People do it. You teach your kids about it. you tell them how to avoid pregnacy and you don't use guilt as a teaching tool. Until British and American society can get it's head around that idea, the number of abortions are going to continue to grow, and people are going to use it as a form of post coital birth control.

Peter

 

[Yahzi]

Toddjh

But why?? Why is no one able to answer this?

I've answered it a dozen times: it is a political choice. We have to choose some random, arbitrary moment: this is the one we chose.

There are other arbitrary times we could chose:

1. Conception.
2. Neural system development.
3. Birth.
4. Age of self-consciousness (about 2 or so).
5. Age of reason (about 8 or so).

Since we are biologically programmed to react to birth and babies with affection, that seems like a reasonable place to draw the line. However, other societies have drawn the line at other places; medival Europe didn't bother to count children under 7, since they were so likely to die of something before reaching 8.

Birth is not the only place to draw the line; it's just a good one. But it's a political decision.

If you get pregnant, it was your choice that caused it.

Says who?

I might as well argue that it's your fault the trespasser is your house. You built a house knowing full well that trespassers might come into it. Now that one has, how do you expect the police to violate his rights just because you screwed up?

You have taken the position that pregnancy is a morally inescapable result of sex. But you have not shown why this would be the case.

Like I said, if you can perform an abortion without severely damaging the fetus's body,

Again, irrelvant. If the only way to protect my rights is violence, I am entitled to protect my rights.

Incidentally, what do you think about the siamese twin example I gave a few posts up?

The same thing Q-source said.

What is your opinion of good samaritan laws?

I oppose them, for the same reason virtually every educated jurist in the country opposes them.

Get a vasectomy, like I did, and never worry about it again.

You seem particularly resistant to the fact that even vasectomies fail sometimes.

Try to listen carefully: I am not an anti-abortionist.

I understand that. The point of contention is that you think the human status of a fetus matters. It does not. Abortion is merely the extension of the right to privacy that you take for granted. Giving a fetus a special right to cease someone else's most private property, soley because of need, is unacceptable. Nor is somehow pretending that the couple who used birth control nonetheless voluntarily agreed to pregnancy.

There is simply no legal basis for seizing someone else's internal organs. That's all there is too it.


Thanz

Well, I am saying that the child's right to a life is more compelling than the woman's rights over her body for the term of pregnancy

On what basis do you make this decision? And why doesn't it extend beyond fetushood? Why does the child's right to use your internal organs cease when it is born - supposing that it continued to require them for another 9 months?

You have arbitrarily decided to take someone else's property and give it to someone who needs it. This is beyond socialism; it's downright communistic. The fact that you only endorse this principal when it applies to women renders your motivations deeply suspect.

The fetus is a human life, with the same set of rights as everyone else.

That's the point! It has the same rights. It does not have special rights. You do not have any right to my internal organs, no matter how desperately you need them. The fetus has exactly the same rights.

 

[Yahzi]

Thanz

Everyone knows that birth control is not 100% effective. If you can't accept the risk, don't engage in the behaviour.

Again with the punishment of sex.

If birth control is taken to mean the pill + abortion, it is 100% effective, and quite safe.

Why do you insist on asserting that getting pregnant is the morally inescapable consequence of having sex? The entire point of technology is that it allows us to control and change natural conditions. You do not object to escaping the bounds of natural existance (such as disease, etc.) in any other sphere but this one.

If we take the fact that pregnancy sometimes occurs despite your best efforts, and that makes you culpable, then this principle must apply to everything. Hence, when the trespasser climbs into your house despite your best efforts, you are now responsible for him. You failed to keep him out (despite building a 20 ft fence and laying mines and barbed wire), hence, you must now feed him for the rest of his life.

You have taken the concept of negligence and turned it on its head: you have defined "failure to prevent the effect" as negligence, regardless of what efforts you underwent to prevent the effect. This is not sound legal or moral theory, for reasons that ought to be self-evident.

Your contention that anyone who engages in sex automatically becomes morally responsible for potential people that might result, regardless of their intentions or precautions, is a religious position, and thus has no place in public policy.

 

[Fade]

I see 0 difference between a young fetus and a virus.

Those who do are looking at the world through emotion coloured glasses.

 

[neutrino_cannon]

I see 0 difference between a young fetus and a virus.

Those who do are looking at the world through emotion coloured glasses.

I see >0 difference between a fetus and a virus:

A fetus has internal machinations and processes for its own growth and maintainance. A virus has no such machinations.

A fetus does not create more of itself when inside a host, with the debateable exception of twins.

A fetus cannot crystalize, a virus can.

A fetus cannot move from host to host on its own, or even without substantial effort. And it would not take advantage of such a switchover without considerable coaxing.

A fetus is multicellular, and a virus doesn't even have cells

A fetus lives because of nutrients it gains from its host. A virus gain nothing from its host but the ability to reproduce.

Now you could say that a fetus is a parasite, but a virus? No.