posted
I assumed that if I was capable of accepting that some people might consider abortion to be murder, given what that implies about people who have elective abortions, it would be okay to use what I consider to be an equally absurd analogy (since miscarriage is not deserving of anything but sympathy) to illustrate how I feel about "abortion = murder.".
You're still missing my point, which is that before you got all high and mighty I'd already been (unknowingly) insulted, but I didn't call anyone's statements "horrific and insulting," because, well, that's really rude and doesn't help the discussion. I just accepted that some people believe, very strongly, that my parents are murderers, and then tried to put that out of my head as best I could.
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Tres just dealt with it in exactly the right way. I think his criticism of the analogy is perfectly valid (since I think the analogy is ludicrous and used it precisely for that reason).
Maybe I should have made it more clear that I think the analogy is absurd, sure. But if you don't see that your initial post is more than a little unfair in the context of this thread then clearly I'm not the only one who is insensitive to the feelings of others.
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quote:I think "I'm having a baby because I happened to get pregnant" is not a good reason to have one.
You're already having one at that point. The person is already pregnant. It cannot be undone. If you exterminate the bunch of cells or small defenseless life, the woman was still pregnant, and the man still sired a child on her.
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I am sorry I used that analogy. I obviously misjudged how hurtful it would be, since I thought it would be okay in context.
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quote: If abortion is completely banned, women will still get abortions. These abortions will necessarily be less safe. Therefore, by banning abortion we are needlessly endangering at least some of their lives.
I disagree. I fact, I think as far as early abortions go the issue is getting kind of moot. All you have to do is look in a childbearing herbal, find which herbs you should avoid because they cause miscarriage. ( admittedly I say that from the place of a person who wouild never seek an abortion, unless it were my physical health at stake)
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quote:As for the pro war with a specific war. How is it ok to be for killing innocent people because they are on the wrong "side" in a war but be against terminating a pregnancy because the unborn child is innocent? I don't agree you can not be for random killing of innocent people on one hand and against it on the other. All wars involve individuals who are not part of the fighting but are killed in the process!
Will you at least pretend to read and respond to the reasons people have given about this before repeating the same argument?
For the record, here it is again:
quote:The primary pro-life premise is that unborn children are living humans due certain protections that most other living humans are afforded. That premise says nothing about whether or not killing a person in a particular situation is morally or legally justified. You say you are a pacifist. Do you think we should do away with self-defense exceptions to the homicide laws?
In other words, the pro-life position is not that "innocent life shouldn't be killed." It is that "unborn children are living human beings; we should apply the same rules with respect to the intentional ending of their lives that we do to other living human beings."
Many people agree that we shouldn't be allowed to kill whomever we feel like but that killing in self-defense, or in just wars, or in other situations may be morally justifiable.
quote:Originally posted by Brettly10: As for the pro war with a specific war. How is it ok to be for killing innocent people because they are on the wrong "side" in a war ... All wars involve individuals who are not part of the fighting but are killed in the process!
Now less than ever, but, more importantly, if the War is preventing someone from running rough shod over millions of people, then it is absolutely justifiable to allow a bunch of civilian casualties.
Obvious example of a war that a pro-life person could support: WWII.
But more importantly, you are missing the clear distinction between someone getting harmed accidentally (collateral damage) and someone being actively and specifcally killed.
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quote:I am sorry I used that analogy. I obviously misjudged how hurtful it would be, since I thought it would be okay in context. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you. That's all I was hoping you would understand. And, I wanted to add that I wasn't just looking out for others' feelings in this matter, but I have feelings of my own about the subject. Trust me when I say that the idea that a woman who's had a miscarriage should be charged with manslaughter is also personally insulting.
Consider the situation dropped on my end.
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quote:Are you really trying to say that it is the states that have made all
My thoughts on state and federal decision-making are outlined in my post on p. 1 of this thread made at 9:14.
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quote:Well again I don't miss the distinction rather we have a different definition of certain terms. I don't agree with you on when life begins. So that is rather not a missed distinction but rather a known difference!
When you accuse someone of hypocrisy, which you have done here, you are, by definition, speaking only of the views held by the person being accused. Hypocrisy is not about whether a person's espoused moral views are correct, it is about whether they are sincerely held and, in a looser sense, self-consistent.
posted
It's true, though, that fetal protection acts are sometimes used against mothers who miscarry. If, for example, a woman's doctor told her that she had to get bed rest, and she (for example) had to go to work at her menial job, she could still be tried to neglect (and manslaughter, too, I think) if she has a miscarriage.
I don't think having to carry a fetus to term (when there are options available to not have to) is the perfect and appropriate punishment for anyone who has sex. Birth control does have a failure rate, of course, and so does the morning-after pill. Considering that we have another viable backup plan for women who do end up pregnant (and really, seriously don't want to be) is all to the best.
I think that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness very much does include a woman's right to make a choice of what medical procedures she wants to have, when or if she wants to have children, etc.
Insisting that biologically sex generally leads to pregnancy isn't really a good answer. When we don't like biology or nature, we do what's in our power to change it. The ancient civilzations, for example, allowed for the exposure of unwanted children when women couldn't raise another. Abortion is a more civilized form of the same.
It seems to me very important that women be allowed to do what's best for their own life and for the life of the children they A) already have or B) plan to have in the future.
Somebody has to make a decision about what's the best decision for each person. I like a system in which each (sentient) person is allowed to decide for him or herself. One woman is free to have a baby, and another woman is equally free to not have one.
A blanket decision (either way) strikes me as the worst kind of tyrrany.
I don't trust the government (local or federal) to know what's right for me at my current stage of life better than I know for myself.
I trust that the majority of women are doing the best that they can to make the best choices for themselves, and I don't see a reason to take away their options.
If they choose to have a child, they will be responsible for that child forever, which includes balancing their own needs against their children's needs and each child's needs against each other. Letting them start that time of responsibility with that same sort of balancing act seems like the best way to me.
The majority of women don't run around having abortions because there's nothing else to do on a dull afternoon. Accidents happen, people make mistakes, and it seems to them as though it would be a tragedy or a disaster to have a child right now. Maybe they will be fine and triumph over circumstances if they do have a child. Maybe it will be the disaster that they fear. Most women consider it a tough choice whichever way they choose. Lots of women who think that they would never have an abortion do, and lots of women who think that it would be an easy choice in favor of abortion decide that they just can't do it.
When it's that close, when it's just not clear-cut, it seems to me completely appropriate that each person should have to decide what it is that they can live with.
Posts: 1751 | Registered: Jun 1999
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quote:Ok first no abortion is an abortion of convenience. The consequences to the individual making the choice are deep. It may appear to be convenient but it is not an accurate term.
As for the pro war with a specific war. How is it ok to be for killing innocent people because they are on the wrong "side" in a war but be against terminating a pregnancy because the unborn child is innocent? I don't agree you can not be for random killing of innocent people on one hand and against it on the other. All wars involve individuals who are not part of the fighting but are killed in the process!
Hypocrisy is usually not something you consult someone about. Tends that they don't have the same beliefs and therefore don't feel that their opinions contradict. Like I have said this is one of the places where peoples minds don't get changed by others arguments. So my POV will be very different than Dag's or another’s.
I did not say that abortions turned out to have been convenient, trouble-free decisions, Brettly. But it's absurd to think that abortions are not carried out because the woman or couple just isn't ready for a child and anyway, it's not really a human life anyway so why not?
I assure you, there are couples who have felt that way, and who have had repeated abortions for reasons purely of convience. I have met them.
As far as warfare is concerned, yes, innocent people will die. It is tragic, and all but the most fanatical, inconsiderate fools mourn their loss-on both sides. However, one can still be in favor of a specific war given the likely outcome of not going to war. For instance, let's use that old favorite, WWII. Let's even set aside questions of the morality of things like Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Let's say for argument's sake that the atomic and conventional bombings of those cities and others like them never happened before.
Do you still say that it is hypocritical of someone to have been in favor of prosecuting that war, and still be opposed to abortion? If so, I'll be blunt: it's not a hypocritical set of beliefs to have, and it is absurd to say so. Here's why: wars may sometimes be necessary. Abortions are in all but a very, very small percentage of cases, both easily and cheaply avoidable with minimal outlay of resources and minimal planning.
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quote:Those who were on the wrong end of the atomic bomb might not agree with the its ok to kill in war to protect others!
The people their soldiers would have gone on raping, murdering, conquering and dominating for decades throughout the region might scoff at your ivory-tower morality.
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quote:Originally posted by dean: ancient civilzations, for example, allowed for the exposure of unwanted children when women couldn't raise another. Abortion is a more civilized form of the same.
Dean, I think we agree here, but your supporters may want a word with you .
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posted
When my husband was young, he had a neighbor who routinely went to have abortions. They were her chosen method of birth control, not even trying anything else.
quote:Now less than ever, but, more importantly, if the War is preventing someone from running rough shod over millions of people, then it is absolutely justifiable to allow a bunch of civilian casualties.
What exactly is the ratio of harm to one versus deaths of another? If it's okay to kill a percentage of one group of people to secure the safety, security and rights of another (larger) group of people....? Isn't that what abortion is?
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we got a pretty good discussion going... let's not get too riled here... </self appointed abortion thread peacekeeper>
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quote:The ancient civilzations, for example, allowed for the exposure of unwanted children when women couldn't raise another. Abortion is a more civilized form of the same.
Just because one social practice is more civilized than another by no means makes that second practice civilized.
quote:I don't think having to carry a fetus to term (when there are options available to not have to) is the perfect and appropriate punishment for anyone who has sex.
I don't think it's about punishment at all. I feel it is about protection and uncertainty, namely that innocent lives should be protected, and we are uncertain where life begins.
quote:Considering that we have another viable backup plan for women who do end up pregnant (and really, seriously don't want to be) is all to the best.
Considering the quite low failure rate of various forms of birth control, particularly when they are used carefully, I don't see why a 'backup plan' that involves the possible extermination of an innocent life 'all for the best'.
quote:I think that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness very much does include a woman's right to make a choice of what medical procedures she wants to have, when or if she wants to have children, etc.
Isn't it strange that those three rights aren't found in the US Constitution? And where in the Constitution-or even the Declaration of Independance-is the right for anyone for freedom from the consequences of one's own choices guaranteed?
quote:Somebody has to make a decision about what's the best decision for each person. I like a system in which each (sentient) person is allowed to decide for him or herself. One woman is free to have a baby, and another woman is equally free to not have one.
A blanket decision (either way) strikes me as the worst kind of tyrrany.
I don't trust the government (local or federal) to know what's right for me at my current stage of life better than I know for myself.
One consideration which you are totally ignoring is that there is a second person involved in that decision, who cannot speak.
A blanket decision which no one has advocated sounds stupid to me as well.
I don't trust the government to know those things either.
quote:The majority of women don't run around having abortions because there's nothing else to do on a dull afternoon. Accidents happen, people make mistakes, and it seems to them as though it would be a tragedy or a disaster to have a child right now. Maybe they will be fine and triumph over circumstances if they do have a child. Maybe it will be the disaster that they fear. Most women consider it a tough choice whichever way they choose. Lots of women who think that they would never have an abortion do, and lots of women who think that it would be an easy choice in favor of abortion decide that they just can't do it.
You insist on not mentioning the other possibility, dean. That there may well be someone else involved. And anyway, people have more control over their state government than their federal government, so by your argument-that individuals should be given more control over their own choices-shouldn't Roe v. Wade be overturned?
Or do you only stand by that argument when it means people should be allowed to have abortions as they are now?
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What exactly is the ratio of harm to one versus deaths of another? If it's okay to kill a percentage of one group of people to secure the safety, security and rights of another (larger) group of people....? Isn't that what abortion is?
No it's not.
If you genuinely can't see the diffference between stopping holocaust-perpetrating totalitarians from their stated goals of world domination (WWII) and preventing oneself from having to deal with the responsibilities of an "accident" (abortion) then I'm afraid I can't really explain it to you in detail at the moment.
but going into the act itself... as I and others have repeatedly said... collateral damage casualties are accidental... no one is TRYING to make them happpen (or, if they are, they are a war criminal). Abortion directly and specifically targets a human fetus and says "goodbye".
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Hypocrisy is not by definition from the POV of the speaker.
If by speaker you me "the one stating views which are being inspected for hypocrisy" then you are flat out wrong. Look up the definition of hypocrisy some time.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:by your argument-that individuals should be given more control over their own choices-shouldn't Roe v. Wade be overturned?
No. If abortion is freely available, then women are free to choose it or not as needed and however their values direct them. If Roe versus Wade is overturned, I, for example, would likely not be able to have an abortion should I need one because, living here in Alabama, it will certainly be made illegal statewide.
If women do indeed have a right to an abortion, then the courts need to protect that right no matter how unpopular it is. Whether women have that right is the real question here.
If I had to have an abortion, it would be well within the first trimester, within the first six weeks if I could manage that. In the first trimester, the fetus is not particularly viable, and is certainly not something that I feel I must respect as equally sentient and valuable as myself. Dogs are more sentient than the average fetus and more capable of surviving on their own, and yet we euthanize them every day.
Yes, it's a tragedy to have an abortion. Yes, it's a tragedy to euthanize millions of animals. I do what I can to limit the scope of these tragedies. I use birth control. I adopt animals and have my animals all spayed and neutered.
But when push comes to shove, life is sometimes one bad choice against another bad choice. You make the best choice you can and move on. One person will make one choice and another person will make another choice. It's their life and they have to live with it. Sounds reasonable to me.
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posted
See my posts above, I've repeated myself enough here.
I will say, in answer to this:
quote:If she doesn't feel a child is a living human until the first breath of life then that is fine.
That it is not ok if the fetus is demonstrably a living human individual. This is at best (for the prochoice argument) unknown, and all the empirical evidence says is in favor of the prolife stance.
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So your view really isn't that people should have the maximum possible control over all of their choices, but just women over abortion?
Because that's what Roe v. Wade did, among other things-took away from the states what would've been something controlled by them, and by the people who elect them. You have more control over state government because you are a part of a much smaller group of people voting.
By supporting Roe v. Wade, you are disregarding the rights of states-and thus the increased right of individuals-to govern themselves.
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quote:For the record Rak keep Ivory-tower morality stuff to yourself. I am giving my perspective and have never indicated my morality is greater only that it is different.
Of course you do! You've said more than once that to support both a specific war and oppose abortion equals hypocrisy. How is that not indicating your morality is better than that of another?
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No, Brettly, it is, quantitatively speaking.
Qualitatively it may not be, but we really don't know, nor do we have any way of knowing at this point.
It is alive, it is human, it is genetically unique.
We don't know anything about its experience except that we know it reacts to stimuli as early as we can record the reaction.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Wait we should allow the elected officials to decide what is right not the Supreme Court. Oh man if that was the case we would still be in segragation. Women might not have the right to vote and a million other horrible things would be ok. The point is elected officials should not be making those decisions. The shouldn't swing from one term to the next. The supreme court doesn't worry about polls or re-election so they are the best to decide for the long term. Over time things may shift but wow just think how many times this would have changed since 1973 if the elected officials made the decisions.
You are slightly mistaken. If we let the court decide these things then we would have plessy vs ferguson, and the dred scott decision. If we had corrupt people in the legislature and uber good men in the judiciary, then fine lets do it that way. But typically it is not always that cut and dry. The court says "constitutional/unconstitutional, and WHY thats IT. The legislature says "we need THIS law in place, and submits it to the president for approval, if its approved its law, afterwards the Supreme Court MAY say IN our OUT. Often they avoid the issue.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Claudia Therese asked a question in an abortion debate thread long ago that I've never heard answered. Namely, among those who see zygotes as fully human, why is there no outcry, no millions being spent, no huge campaigns to study and prevent the very serious problem of some 30% of these full-humans dying naturally from lack of implantation? If 30% of newborns were dying of some terrible disease like SIDS, wouldn't our society be investing enormous amounts of effort and money into rescuing them? Does the fact that nobody really seems to care, or think it's advisable to rescue those zygotes which don't implant, or to study and understand the causes of non-implantation and combat them one by one, rather lead to the conclusion that people don't truly value those zygotes as much as they do newborns?
We could do much much more to prevent abortions than we do. We could provide better birth control education, more access to contraceptives, and better pre-natal care. We could do research toward better more effective, easier to use methods of contraception, with fewer side effects. We could provide better adoption options. Families who want the children could pay for the room and board, a healthy environment, pre-natal care, and all medical expenses to pregnant women who were willing to give up their children for adoption, for instance. If we really cared about children born unwanted into poverty and neglect, we could take better care of them. We do a certain amount of this, but much less than we could do. It seems to me as though most pro-life advocates care for fetuses, but once a child is born into poverty and neglect, their caring stops. Our country does not tend to rescue babies from situations like that, to give them a better chance. There are millions of unadopted and unadoptable orphans, are there not? Where is the outcry among pro-lifers about this situation? Why don't we fix it?
I agree that it's a terrible thing when an unborn child has to die. I disagree, however, that banning legal abortion is a good way to combat this problem. I feel that the loving means we have of making abortions unnecessary are badly underutilized. Criminalizing abortion is a punitive, unloving approach toward someone who is already, perhaps, in a desperate situation. There's simply no moral way to take free agency away from a pregnant woman. Whatever the courts do, lock her up, force her to eat good food, withold sharp objects, etc. in the interest of her unborn child, she still can harm herself and the baby. You can't force someone to bear a child. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of mothers' choices, trying to force women to bear children against their will is wrong. The cure, in this case, is worse than the disease.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Claudia Therese asked a question in an abortion debate thread long ago that I've never heard answered. Namely, among those who see zygotes as fully human, why is there no outcry, no millions being spent, no huge campaigns to study and prevent the very serious problem of some 30% of these full-humans dying naturally from lack of implantation?
I've attempted to answer this as best I can several times. My old running from the bear hypothetical was one attempt to approach it obliquely. The best I can offer is that 1) it doesn't seem terribly possible to intervene in this process safely - the testing alone would likely cause more deaths than eventual remedies might save given the difficulty of detection; and 2) the fact that an event occurs naturally does not automatically make it morally acceptable to intentionally cause that event to occur.
Ultimately, though, this is irrelevant to the abortion debate (although not the morning after pill debate) because abortions do not happen before implantation.
quote:It seems to me as though most pro-life advocates care for fetuses, but once a child is born into poverty and neglect, their caring stops. Our country does not tend to rescue babies from situations like that, to give them a better chance. There are millions of unadopted and unadoptable orphans, are there not? Where is the outcry among pro-lifers about this situation?
This kind of statement, quite frankly, really pisses me off. Most of the pro-life advocates I know spend far more time on charity work the average person. This kind of thing gets tossed around a lot, and there's no evidence for it.
I wish the two party system didn't force us to choose between legal murder and viable programs for supporting people in crisis pregnancies (not that I consider most of the Democratic programs viable, but at least they offer some). But it does force that choice.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Tatiana, I was unaware that 30% of zygotes fail to implant, but I see tons of money spent combating endometriosis and the like... and also see many embryos cast by the wayside in attempts to perform in vitrio fertilization and by using fertility drugs (which I also oppose for this very reason). I wonder if the implantaion failure rate is so high on what I will for lack of vocabulary call a "natural" pregnancy.
But I think you are right that people do not value zygotes as much as newborns... and that is a shame, but legalizing abortion certainly does nothing to improve how people value zygotes.
As for what pro-lifers don't do to support poor people, I have already said I think that's rather sweeping and inaccurate generalization (though not in those exact words), but more to the point, it doesn't imply that they are wrong. I personally, have done very little to combat abortion (in the ways you recommend, or even arguing the point on this forum) in the last few years because I've had my hands quite full with my own life and family's welfare. That doesn't make me wrong nor even hypocritical in opposing abortion's legality.
That having been said, I don't think it's going to go away, anyhow...I would be very surprised and happy to see it limited at all... and even if it becomes illegal, you are certainly correct in pointing out that the things that make women choose abortions NEED to be addressed, and always will.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:It seems to me as though most pro-life advocates care for fetuses, but once a child is born into poverty and neglect, their caring stops. Our country does not tend to rescue babies from situations like that, to give them a better chance. There are millions of unadopted and unadoptable orphans, are there not? Where is the outcry among pro-lifers about this situation?
See my earlier post about the organization I volunteer for and give money to that does indeed help the mothers who need financial assistance. We do not stop caring when the baby is born.
As to the embryos that naturally don't implant - I don't think it's necessary to interfere in a natural process, nor is it feasible, as Dag said. There is a huge difference between embryos that are formed naturally, and due to circumstances beyond anyone's knowledge or control fail to implant and deliberately removing or destroying embryos known to exist.
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posted
I would like to take a moment here to congratulate this group. I am thankful this whole argument has moved away from the arguments I've heard elsewhere.
That argument is not that this is pro-choice vs pro-life, but it is pro-sex vs anti-sex. There have been a limited number of conservative loudmouths, those who only think that they are connected with the true moral issues of this debate, who's main concern is that abortion will lead to more sex. They see unplanned pregnancy as a punishment inflicted on loose women for thier sin. No pregnancy is a punishment from God.
What you will hear more often than this perverse argument is the straw man believed in by many pro-choicers that all pro-life conservatives fit this mode. There are some pro-choice liberals who write off whole groups of thoughtful caring people as mere nosey vengeful prudes.
The flip side of this is the sexually overactive person who only wants abortions legal as a way of escaping responsibility for thier actions. These selfish libertines believe that the choice in pro-choice involves how many sexual partners they can have, not how they need to take care of their own body.
And you get the pro-life groups who have grabbed on to thin minority, and paint the entire pro-choice movement with their ugly face. They disregard large numbers of socially motivated caring individuals as sexual addicts willing to kill for booty.
The result is, instead of rational conversation like we are mostly having here, we get two groups of moral and caring individuals not talking to each other, but laying accusations at each other. Worse than not talking, they are not listening.
That's how the politicians take control of the groups involved, and build their careers not on answering the difficult questions, but on keeping the debate hot and active.
The biggest fact that has to be faced before Roe-vs-Wade is ever reconsidered is not, "Where does life begin" or "Who owns the body, the mother or the unborn?" but this..."This issue is splitting the country in half because both sides have good rational and real concerns."
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quote:Rakeesh, Jim, Belle, and Dag: While I do not agree with your POV I do recognize its validity for your belief system...However as I am not religious and some of you are
I actually think the pro-life posters in this thread have made a good case without saying anything about religious morality. I certainly agree with them, and I'm an atheist.
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I was just saying that it's possible they've made their decision fairly independent of their religion, since I've come to the same conclusion as an atheist.
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It wasn't religioius beliefs that made me convinced that abortion was wrong - it was the ultrasound of my 10 week old daughter in the womb.
Before that time, I considered myself pro-choice, believing that first trimester fetuses weren't "really" babies. At the moment I saw my daughter on the screen, I knew I was wrong. Subsequent thinking about and reading up on life before birth now has me solidly convinced that life begins at conception.
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posted
I don't think the debate has ever been over when life begins, though I understand you're likely using it as shorthand, but when human life begins.
While I definitely understand your position, I hope you can understand why many people have trouble seeing a single cell (or a small glob of a dozen cells) as a human life.
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quote:You however are trying to imply that I have and do believe I am superior which is wrong. All I am saying is stay on topic and keep the ad-homs for another discussion. I can understand your position without agreeing. You seem to be unable to do the same.
Labelling other people's beliefs hypocritical is not both an attack and a statement of their belief's inferiority? I notice you entirely glossed over that part.
Before it was, "This belief is hypocritical." Now it is, "This is just my belief, that's your belief." My calling you on that is certainly not an ad-hominem attack, and your resorting to that defense tells me you've decided not to answer my question: do you think beliefs which aren't hypocritical are of equal quality to beliefs which are consistent?
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Dagonee, the question of why we don't spend funds and do research into nonimplantation of blastocysts (which I believe is the correct name for the clumps of cells that the zygotes have become by the time of implantation) is not meant to be an analogy to abortion of unwanted pregnancies. Rather, it's a question that illuminates people's true feelings about the full-humanity of zygotes, when compared to newborns.
Even if it occurred naturally through disease or mishap, the death of 30% of newborns would cause a great groundswell of demand for intervention, for research, for something to be done to save these babies' lives. The fact that no corresponding concern is evidenced for the zygotes, even among people who claim to consider zygotes fully human, does lead us to reexamine their claim.
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Reading Tatiana's post on the last page made me think of maternity leave.
I think *any* move to re-criminalize abortion would have to be accompanied by full, paid maternity leave for pregnant women and stringent controls ensuring their jobs would be available after that period, on the same terms and conditions as before the pregnancy and that promotion opportunities would not be affected in any way. This would be for every job - including long-term casual employment.
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I'm aware of that, Tatiana. As I've said, I've tried on several occasions to articulate the reasons why there is no moral imperative to increase the implantation rate even though those are human beings.
The techical infeasibility, the fact that it generally happens without people knowing, and the fact that it is a natural part of life all help differentiate it from a childhood disease.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:That argument is not that this is pro-choice vs pro-life, but it is pro-sex vs anti-sex.
Incidently, I think that once you reach the point where an abortion is necessary, it is already too late to decide you don't want a baby - just as it is too late to turn back after the baby is born. Ethically speaking, that decision should be decided BEFORE you decide to have sex.
In this way, I think this issue really should be about sexual attitudes. And if we really think banning things is the only way to alter those attitudes, we should instead ban the instances of sex that initiate the situation, before those situations can reach the point where we must make the tough choice between allowing abortion and risking the death of a human life - a choice that has no good answer. Ban premarital sex or sex by anyone unwilling to be a parent, but then legalize abortion. That seems like it might be a good compromise to me, although largely unpractical. (Practically speaking, such a ban could not be enforced well - but then again, neither could a ban on abortion. Practically speaking, no legal ban will solve any of these problems because people will find ways to secretly violate any of the bans.)
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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I have a question - back when abortion was illegal, what charges would a doctor or layperson who performed one face if arrested?
I'm just wondering if abortion were criminalized and people faced possible life imprisonment or even the death penalty in some states how many people would really provide abortions anymore.
I don't know how many people are aware of this, but access is the biggest challenge to those who support legal abortion for all. The abortion industry is in very big trouble, more than half of current practicing providers are over 50 and fewer medical school graduates are entering the field.
Mississippi had two abortion providers in the entire state, when the license of one was suspended after the investigation into the death and injuries of several patients, they dropped down to one. And that doctor whose license was suspended also had his license suspended in Alabama - where he worked several days a week, bringing Alabama's number of providers down as well.
The abortion industry is having trouble attracting providers now, how many do you think would really do it if they could go to jail for it as well?
Information on the shortages of providers can be found below, the information is from a pro-choice medical student organization.
I personally see this as a positive move - I think it's because we are more aware of life in the womb and that many physicians feel that destroying that life is wrong.
Now, I'm not naive, I know that if it were criminalized some people would still provide them, (especially if there's money in it) but I would hope that those of us on the pro-life side would step up and provide free pregnancy testing and counseling, and help women with unplanned pregnancies find the right option, be it adoption or keeping the baby, and discourage them from seeking illegal, unsafe abortions.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Belle, there was a very powerful movie out not long ago about a doctor in rural US in the 30's who performed an abortion (due to a incest or rape, not due to one girls sexual experimentation). It was very powerful. I just wish I could remember its name.
Permenant loss of medical license and imprisonment were standard fines for doctors that commited abortions, which is why it is so hard to determine statistics on abortions before Roe VS Wade. Doctors would mark the operation as something else, and not the loss of the child as an incidental outcome. It also put a lot of strain on doctors who were forced to choose between taking the fetus to save the mothers life, but risking losing their livliehood, their freedom, and their ability to help others.
I know a lot of people here agree that if there is a medical choice between saving the life of the mother and that of an early stage fetus, the mother's life should come first. What I question is whom do we trust with this decision. Whom do we trust to define these terms? Is it the government? The doctors? Or should it be the people most involved--the women who's lives are at stake? The same people who argue that "You can manage your money better than governmental beaurocrats" are also saying that these definitions, and the answers to these big questions, should be taken from the hands of the women involved and put into the hands of those untrustworthy beaurocrats.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Belle: of course, part of the question is, if people on the pro-life side "would step up", why aren't they doing it to the same extent now, when abortion is legal, making the need in some ways greater?
Some are, yes, and I applaud those who adopt children, who work to help children get adopted, who provide family planning services, who educate about birth control, et cetera (notably including providing funds for these efforts), but there's clearly a gigantic gap between current quality and volume of these services and needed quality and volume.
Is this gap suddenly going to be closed by an influx of funding if/when abortion is made illegal (or at least, made possible to be made illegal)? I don't see a big push for it.
The most politically powerful agents in the pro-life movement fixate on Roe v. Wade and negative laws -- ones which penalize, restrict, and forbid. Those are the laws getting passed by anti-abortion political movements, not funding bills to support adoption.
Pro-life people aren't the only ones who need to step up to the plate now or in the future, of course, but they're mostly the ones who've got the biggest moral pedestal riding on it.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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