At what stage is abortion immoral?

[AWPrime]

The benefits accrued to one person are not sufficient to justify harm done to another.

The anti-abortion potential argument has been sunk. Wishful thinking doesn't save it.

Even this answer is problematic. Consider a person with no current brain activity, but who will have future brain activity. Is killing them not murder? For example, let's say someone falls through ice into freezing water. Their body shuts down, their brain shuts down. They are no longer sentient. But they can be revived. They can become sentient. Would you not agree that it would be murder to put a bullet through their head while they are in this state?

Actually people at low temperature still have brain activity, your examples need work.

How do you know? Hell, how do you even define sentience?

Because directly after birth there isn't a concept of self. Sentience slowly develops from lower forms to higher forms. This is reflected in almost every system of law, with for example age based laws. As it's assumed that the mind at a certain age isn't developed enough to handle/comprehend certain activities.

So to pretend that a fetus is a full person is preposterous/insane.

So you'd be OK with aborting a 9th month fetus? If so, well, that puts you in a pretty small and extremist fringe group.

The mother will have to live with her decision. Sadly some people seem to forget that its about her, not you or me.

 

[AWPrime]

Why the disparity in responsibility between males and females?

What do you have against same-sex couples?

 

[Ziggurat]

Actually people at low temperature still have brain activity

So does a fetus.

Because directly after birth there isn't a concept of self.

There's no concept of self when your brain shuts down due to hypoxia or severe hypothermia either. Hell, there's not much concept of self when you're asleep.

So to pretend that a fetus is a full person is preposterous/insane.

Now you've introduced a new term: full person. The obvious implication of which is that you can have a mostly person. I was right, even your own position is not actually so black and white as you pretend.

The mother will have to live with her decision.

So that's a yes, but you just don't want to say yes explicitly. Like I said, you're a fringe extremist.

 

[uruk]

And if you feel that way, you probably shouldn't get an abortion. Some people think I'm cheating when I use store-bought pasta instead of homemade. I'm really just choosing differently than somebody else might choose.

Pasta does not quite carry the same moral quenstions that abortion does. A human embryo's life is not terminated whern you choose use a store bought pasta

Sex?

In part. It is interesting to hear people's opinions to what sex is or thier surprise to how important it is to procreation and human life. Very telling indeed.

The important part I refer to is fertilization and human embryonic development. We give great importance to human life, we make laws and great documents and go to great lengths to protect human life and rights, except to the intial stage of that human life.
A human being's life is protected through almost every phase of life and it's development, except to it's embryonic form under certain conditions. I find that to be an odd situation.

So what? Honestly, I don't understand this argument at all. Everyone who is alive today was somebody who has beaten all the odds and been born. Billions of men, billions of women, millions of sperm, hundreds of eggs, hundreds of menstrual cycles, billions of sex acts, and yet they don't all mix together and make babies. Approximately half of all fertilized eggs result in absolutely nothing, as they miscarry naturally. Where is the woe?

The woe is that some of those embryos that have beaten all the odds that nature had against it and became successful embryos and fetuses were pourposly terminated for no more of a reason than it's existance represented an inconvieance to it's parents.

You or I cannot tell wether that growing embryo will become a baby or not, But I say that if it has made it that far it should at least be given the chance to become a fully formed human being.

That certainly depends on the couple and the circumstances, and it's nobody else's business why anybody else chooses to have sex. Sometimes it's for fun, sometimes it's intentionally used to make a baby, sometimes it's a business transaction.

Then why do people who do not want to get pregnant engage in unprotected sex? It is smart to engage in activity in such a way as to incurre unnecessary risks? Ask a woman if an abortion is a pleasant experiance. Why would they then do something in a manner that increases the risk in which they would have to go through that experiance?

They can be bad things, and I'd say that abortion gives people one more tool to avoid neglected children and overpopulation.

Abortion is one method that overpopulated cultures are exercising control over thier problem. I am just saying that it is not a moral solution to an issue that involves self control as another possible solution. I know that will never happen in the real world, but ther are alot of immoral things that go on.

I'm going to pretend I don't hear a subliminal message of "those harlots need to learn to control their selfish tendencies." But how do you know what women do or don't learn from having one abortion? And what do you think men learn from unwanted pregnancies? Do they learn to modify their behavior?

Odd, I did not imply "harlots" at all. My argument is that abortion for the reasons I have specified is immoral. I believe that having unprotected sex is irresponsible and reckless behaviour. I believe that it is not in a persons best interest to engage in reckless behaiviour.

Do you have any statistics on how many abortions are due to sex without protection versus how many are due to rape, incest, failed protection, fetal problems, or maternal health?

From this web site: http://www.alanguttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

"• Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users report correct use.[9]

• Forty-six percent of women who have abortions had not used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant. Of these women, 33% had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy, 32% had had concerns about contraceptive methods, 26% had had unexpected sex and 1% had been forced to have sex.[9]

• Eight percent of women who have abortions have never used a method of birth control; nonuse is greatest among those who are young, poor, black, Hispanic or less educated.[9]

• About half of unintended pregnancies occur among the 11% of women who are at risk for unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives. Most of these women have practiced contraception in the
."

So what?

Who knows what we may lost lost or gain had a embryo not been aborted allowed to become an adult human benig.

Ecologists use essentially a similar argument argument concerning the loss of rainforrests and other such ecological habitats in areas that had not been cataloged or explored before deforestation and displacment.

 

[quixotecoyote]

So does a fetus.

So do moles.

 

[Sun Countess]

Pasta does not quite carry the same moral quenstions that abortion does. A human embryo's life is not terminated whern you choose use a store bought pasta

But do you understand that people have different moral values? I don't like drinking or tattoos, but I don't inflict my moral thinking on other adults.

The important part I refer to is fertilization and human embryonic development. We give great importance to human life, we make laws and great documents and go to great lengths to protect human life and rights, except to the intial stage of that human life.
A human being's life is protected through almost every phase of life and it's development, except to it's embryonic form under certain conditions. I find that to be an odd situation.

Correction. We have laws to protect people. People who have been born and issued appropriate birth certificates.

From this web site: http://www.alanguttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

Thanks for those stats. It looks like most women are behaving responsibly. Only 8% of women having abortions have never used birth control.

Who knows what we may lost lost or gain had a embryo not been aborted allowed to become an adult human benig.

Who cares? I'm not about to have a dozen children just so I can see what the world may gain from their existence. Most women who have abortions go on to have other children, which they may not have had were it not for the abortion.

To me this question is in line with "who knows what we may have lost or gained had my parents had sex on Thursday instead of Friday?" We all beat incredible odds to get here anyway; we don't need to worry about the other trillions of potential embryos in the history of the world that didn't make it. Neither should we worry about any specific fertilized egg or whether a neighbor lady uses an IUD.

 

[fuelair]

That's a nice libertarian sentiment, and I largely agree with it. Small problem: it doesn't actually provide much guidance in the case of abortion. Even from a strictly libertarian position, the question of personhood cannot be avoided. Libertarians don't have a problem outlawing murder because murder infringes on the right to life of the victim. If a fetus is a person, then don't they have a right to live which is being infringed upon by abortion? Why, yes, they do. Which is why infanticide is illegal, and why damned few (if any) abortion advocates are trying to push for legalizing 9th month abortions.

Almost everyone agrees an infant is a person, and almost everyone agrees a 9th month fetus is a person. The disagreement starts getting larger the farther back we go, but given a conclusion that a particular fetus is a person, then prohibiting an abortion of that fetus is NOT simply inflicting your beliefs on the mother, it's protecting the rights of the fetus. It's the mother wanting to abort who is inflicting her beliefs on another person (the fetus). Adopting a libertarian position doesn't solve the difficult problem.

Actually, for me, this should never have become a problem - had it not been for a certain church deciding it would be useful to out-populate the people who figured out it was wrong, followed (in the US for certain) by doctors who wanted to steal the business of midwives in the later (IIRC)1800s. I am firmly (as hopefully is obvious, on the philosophy is cute -and even sometimes fun as a parlour game side, but a woman has/should have the right to decide the use of her body. Anything else makes her a slave to others. NO ONE should be a slave to others - even to a foetus..

 

[MikeMangum]

But do you understand that people have different moral values? I don't like drinking or tattoos, but I don't inflict my moral thinking on other adults.

I see this argument all the time, but I'm sorry, it is a pathetically stupid argument.

I guess those laws against murder, rape, child abuse, etc. should all be removed from the books because they inflict moral thinking on other adults, right? If some adult disagrees that murder is immoral, why should we "inflict" our morality on them by criminalizing it?

What dross.

 

[Loss Leader]

but a woman has/should have the right to decide the use of her body. Anything else makes her a slave to others. NO ONE should be a slave to others - even to a foetus..

But certainly I'm something of a slave to my young children. I have to feed them, care for them, entertain them, clean up their various messes, keep peanuts out of the house because of their alergies, hold them, watch horrible TV shows with them, and a million other things.

If I don't do all this, I get sent to jail. And even if I convince the state to take my kids away, I'll still have to pay over 25% of every cent I make for the next 16 years.

My freedom has been curtailed by their needs. Frankly, they're a whole lot harder to care for now than when they were in the womb. How am I more free than my wife was when she was pregnant?

For the record, I love my children. It is actually an honor to be the one to help them as they grow. But, for the record, my feelings of love may be a biological trick to keep me a little happier during my servitude.

 

[Loss Leader]

Correction. We have laws to protect people. People who have been born and issued appropriate birth certificates.

There are a quite a number of laws in place that protect the unborn. It's a crime to harm a fetus just about everywhere.

New York Penal Law § 125.40 Abortion in the second degree: A person is guilty of abortion in the second degree when he commits an abortional act upon a female, unless such abortional act is justifiable pursuant to subdivision three of section 125.05. Abortion in the second degree is a class E felony.

In some states, causing the death of a fetus under the right circumstances can be considered murder. Then there are tort laws that impose liability on someone who harms a fetus.

And, of course, there are plenty of laws that protect animals, governments, monuments, sidewalks and all sorts of other non-human things.

 

[uruk]

Having an abortion_is_a consequence of an unwanted pregnancy! It's just not the only one. /

Not exactly. An abortion is a choice of action in response to an unwanted pregnancy. I am just arguing that under certain circumstances that it is not a moral choice. I feel there are better choices.

In other words, women's work.

I wouldn't quite characterize it that way.
Evolution has made the female the gestator in our species. With that comes certain responsibilities both biologicaly and to the woman herself. If I were a woman and I did not want to become pregnant, I would use contraceptives during sex and I would insist that the man also use them in order to further decrease the probabiltiy of an unwanted pregnancy.
I would place importance on my body in that I would be taking control of my body and taking responsibility of my actions and I would not be taking the act of sex so lightly.

As a man I would also (and I do) use contraceptives. This is one form of taking responsibility for your actions.

If an unwanted pregnancy occured, I would would be willing to give that growing life a chance to become a human being. As a male I would bear the financial responsibilty and provide any support the woman would need or want during that pregnancy.

I would do these things because I value human life. Even if that life was unintentionaly created.

But not every zygote is a human being. Half are naturally aborted.

I am not concerned witht he ones that are natural aborted. Everybody either had to beat those odds or become a statistic.
Beside you or I cannot determine which particular individual zygote will or will not be naturaly aborted or make it through gestation. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Here's another fun fact: Nobody alive today is at risk of regressing to the zygote stage.

Here is another fact, the zygote is one of the first stages in the development of a human being. No zygote, no human being. Which will be explained a bit further as I address your last statement in this post.

I ask again: so what? If your existence stopped somewhere in the zygote stage, you'd have no idea that you weren't going to be born, and nobody who made it past the zygote stage would have any idea that you haven't been born.

Again the concept of oppurtunity loss shows us that when a potential is lost it can have an effect. We may be unaware of it but it is still a loss none the less. There are many things that we are unaware of that still has an effect on us.

Do you ever stop to think about all the children that you'll never ever have? Out of all those billions of sperm you'll produce, and the thousands of women you'll meet, each with hundreds of eggs to choose from, and yet you'll at most have a handful of children.

I think that this is , for the most part, irrelevent. I don't think the individual sperm or egg is near as important as the unique combination of DNA that results from the union. And if the sperm and egg never meet there is no potential. What I am concerned with is the point after combination and viability that is where the potential exists and where it is lost if not allowed to continue.

But a zygote is not a person anymore than an acorn is a tree or a seed is a flower.

Ah, now we come to the continuum fallacy. (For more info, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy )

At what point does a seed become a tree? At what point does a zygote become a person? All these ideas depend how you define a "person" and that determins where an arbitrary is drawn. And that line can shift very easily. Especialy when it comes to your personal views on abortion.

First, how do you define a person? At which point along a person's development from zygote to adult does he/she become a person?
The last I had a debate on this subject the line was all over the place. Everywhere from the point of conception to when a person can speak and becomes self-sufficient.

Science is not in complete agreement, again because of definitions. People tend to define "person" in the philosophical rather than a biological framework.

Personaly I try to stick to biology and hopefully leave metaphysics and politics out of it. I don't always succeed though.

I draw my line at the point of viability. That is where the chormosomes have combined into a unique sequence and the zygote has implanted into the uterine wall. At that point the potential for a human being to be produced exists. I hesitate to call it a "person" or the "philosophical person" at that point. I prefer the term "human life". To me that is more accurate.

In the terms of rights, I believe that at that point the growing "human life" should be given some level or form of protection. That is it should be given a basic right to exist.
Under certain conditions and situations that right can be abrogated of course.

In reality, living in a society is a balancing act of limiting ones rights against anothers. Sometimes it is necessary to reduce or restrict one persons rights for that of another depending on the situation.
In a perfect world people would do that on thier own when necessary rather than resorting to legislation and regulation, but this is the world we live in.

Again this is not an argument for making abortion illegal. I am not a pro-lifer.

 

[Cactus Wren]

According to you. And that, once again, is my point. You've taken the position that a fetus is a person,

(I think you meant "not a person".)

and the acceptability of an abortion flows from that position. All this stuff about punishing mothers (which, once again, is a meme amongst proponents of abortion, NOT opponents) or not being ready to raise kids is irrelevant, you don't need any of it to justify an abortion.

Conversely, if a fetus is a person, then abortion is NOT acceptable, and the arguments to excuse it (not punishing the mother, not being ready to raise a kid) cannot excuse the deliberate killing of a person.

I note with interest some of the items you've left out of this argument. Let's try re-inserting them:

"Conversely, if a fetus is a person, then abortion is NOT acceptable, and the arguments to excuse it (not punishing the mother, not being ready to raise a kid, rape, incest, gross fetal abnormality incompatible with survival, saving the life of the mother) cannot excuse the deliberate killing of a person."

Unless it reads that way, then I can only conclude that you're taking the position that a fetus is a person if and when you say it is.

Even this answer is problematic. Consider a person with no current brain activity, but who will have future brain activity. Is killing them not murder? For example, let's say someone falls through ice into freezing water. Their body shuts down, their brain shuts down. They are no longer sentient. But they can be revived. They can become sentient. Would you not agree that it would be murder to put a bullet through their head while they are in this state?

I can't speak of others, but certainly I would. The entity to which you refer is a person. Human, born, and alive.

But certainly I'm something of a slave to my young children. I have to feed them, care for them, entertain them, clean up their various messes, keep peanuts out of the house because of their alergies, hold them, watch horrible TV shows with them, and a million other things.

No, you don't HAVE to do any of those things. You can ask your spouse to do them. You can engage a hireling to do them. You can ask your own parents (if living) or siblings (if any) to do them. You can ask a neighbor to do them. You can even turn your children over to the state for foster care. A pregnant woman can do none of these things with her pregnancy.

 

[gnome]

A pregnancy is not the moral or biological equivilent of a wound. A wound does not result in a human being being born.

I already commented on that point, and so you would agree that mitigating the consequences of something is not inherently immoral, it depends on the consequences, so that part of the argument (that it is immoral in itself to mitigate the consequences of risky behavior) can be dropped, and we can move on to the morality of termination.

A sperm by itself will not develop into a human being, neither will an ovum by itself. It is when they are combined does a fertilized egg contain the enitire DNA sequence of a complete human individual.

A fertilized that fails to implant will also not develop into a human being as it will be flushed out durning menstration.

Once the fertilized egg has implanted in the uterine lining the egg has a positive chance of development. That is the point of viability. Before that point viability does not exist. Call it the "proper context" for the initiation of human development.

Of course any point along the way after implantation things can go awry and the fetus may abort on it's own. But that is nature not intention.

Given that, noone can truly say which implanted zygote or fetus will produce a baby and which will not. but I believe that the fetus chances and it existance should given some relative measure of protection under certain circumstances.

Bolding mine--say, there's an idea... we should just ask him.

Ok, seriously...

Where I'm not joining you is why there is a moral consequence assigned to the chance of development. What is the moral importance of something that WILL BE but is not yet? For those that are religious, the reason is obvious--they believe a precious soul is already present. It's a consistent argument even if it's one I don't agree with and that cannot have legal force.

I'm still trying to catch on to where you're coming from on this.

 

[Arcade22]

Considering that wanted children that can be supported by the parents tend more to end better in life, we must conclude that banning abortion will have a detrimental effect on the future.

Have you heard of this thing called 'adoption'?

 

[gnome]

Have you heard of this thing called 'adoption'?

Is there a healthy adoptive home available for every unwanted birth?

 

[kerikiwi]

Have you heard of this thing called 'adoption'?

Do you think that women should be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term?

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Do you think that women should be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term?

Should hospitals be forced to provide medical care to unconscious patients?

 

[Dragoonster]

Should hospitals be forced to provide medical care to unconscious patients?

Is being pregnant a paid and regulated profession?

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

Is being pregnant a paid and regulated profession?

I'll rephrase my question:

Which members of society should be allowed to choose to kill unconscious patients for arbitrary reasons when the patients are expected to make a recovery?

 

[Dragoonster]

I'll rephrase my question:

Which members of society should be allowed to choose to kill unconscious patients for arbitrary reasons when the patients are expected to make a recovery?

None of them. The patient has established his personhood and with that received rights, and since it's expected he'll recover again to the state of personhood his rights can't be suspended.

A fetus has yet to retain any rights, as it isn't a person (imo). Only future potential personhood rights are being quashed, but assigning them to something that's not yet/never been a person (particularly by way of forcing an established person to grant those rights against her wishes) would not be justifiable. And would also outlaw any birth control that kills sperm, masturbation, and some other stuff.