quote:Originally posted by Omega M.: How do the pro-lifers here respond to women who say things like this?
quote:Who else doesn't own my uterus? A fetus. Any fetus, ever. Even embryos do not own my uterus. I understand this is difficult for you to grasp; a fetus is after all a potential life, and there are American voters--some of them who might even vote for you--who think that as a potential life a fetus has a right to move into my body and not be evicted. I however am not a potential life. I am an actual life, a real living human being, a woman. No one and nothing is allowed to take up residence in my body without my consent. This is kind of like how you can't show up at an apartment, summarily move in, and demand the property owner let you stay there as long as you would like. It is also kind of like how you can't demand someone lend you their kidney for nine months. I, as a sovereign human being, have the right to deny access to any part of my body at any time. I also have, as a sovereign human being, the right to make that decision on my own, regardless of what my family, doctor, and pastor think.
(I've heard this view from many people; I just picked this woman as a representative example.)
I agree that "No one and nothing is allowed to take up residence in my body without my consent." I agree that in cases of pregnancies by rape, abortion should be allowed.
The fetus isn't potential life; it is actually living. Our laws allow for the mother's rights to her body to be tantamount until the fetus reaches a certain age; then it has rights.
It is an arbitrary and hypocritical distinction, in my opinion.
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I don't think it's arbitrary. As was pointed out earlier:
quote:Miscarriage is the loss of a pregnancy in the first 20 weeks. About 15 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, and more than 80 percent of these losses happen before 12 weeks.
This doesn't include situations in which you lose a fertilized egg before you get a positive pregnancy test. Studies have found that 30 to 50 percent of fertilized eggs are lost before a woman finds out she's pregnant, because they're lost so early that she goes on to get her period about on time -- in other words the woman doesn't realize she was pregnant at all.
Given how likely it is for a fetus to die from natural causes early on, on top of the fact that brain activity doesn't start till 8-10 weeks in (which is approximately the same time the miscarriage rate drops off), I don't see any hypocrisy in making a legal distinction at somewhere near the 10-week mark. (Afterwards, the only cases where I think exceptions are warranted are the extreme situations we've been discussing).
quote:I don't think abortion discussions in general are pointless.
They're only not-pointless if both parties are willing to consider fundamentally altering their way of thinking. (The only times I've seen anyone change their mind as a result of debate was in case of people who were already unsure, weren't thinking critically about the issue and were being persuaded by bad arguments that just sounded good).
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quote:They're only not-pointless if both parties are willing to consider fundamentally altering their way of thinking.
That's not true.
There are many good reasons to state your position on a controversial issue, among them that a view needs to be stated and defended in order to still exist and be part of the dialogue.
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True. But abortion is a particularly controversial issue that I see people get into way more often that is necessary or helpful. I've had English teachers who banned us from writing essays about abortion because they were so sick of the same arguments over and over and over and over.
I think it's valuable for the people in DC to continuously state their positions, because those people have a chance to impact policy. I think it's valuable for everyone to get in a few random discussions about it to help them formulate their views and at least understand what the opposition is. But multiple arguments with the same group of people aren't much more than a (fun?) mental exercise.
I know I've been in at least 3 abortion debates on this forum alone. I can possibly justify the second one because no one really knew or cared who I was the first time around and maybe now they know me well enough to remember what my stance is, but even that's pushing it.
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I don't think any debate is pointless, especially controversial ones. Now, at some point any given debate becomes a meaningless circle, but I have to say that in new debates, I often see new perspectives from both sides of the table. Frankly, this is one of those debates that makes people put their hands over their ears and sing "La La La" at the tops of their voices. There are relatively few people who are willing to get into it this far in the first place. Controversial issues rarely get discussed. When they do get discussed, they often get bogged down in strawmen and other meaningless distractions.
As a case in point, I switched my opinion from strongly pro-life to strongly pro-choice very gradually over the course of about 10 years. If you would have asked me my freshmen year of college about whether a rape victim should be able to get an abortion, I would have told you it wasn't the baby's fault his mother was raped. If you'd have asked me about the life of the mother, then i would have answered that she should die for her baby -- the only initial caveat i would have given was that if they were BOTH going to die, you may as well save one of them.
At this point, I am still torn on the idea of aborting a fetus after the point of viability, which is why I started this thread. That's quite a switch, and it took a long time, but it happened.
I'm not sure if it would have happened faster if anyone would have actually been willing to talk openly and honestly about it, but in those 10 years I probably only got into 3 or 4 actual debates or discussions.
There was no one debate that changed my mind. But the seeds of possibility were sewn in me and gradually, I began to see things from both sides.
When I think of controversial debates, I think of a line in one of my favorite musicals, 1776: "I've never seen, heard, nor smelled a topic that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about! Hell yeah, I'm for debating anything."
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I think scifibum's position was that when a child is only going to be alive for a few hours and is going to spend that time with heavily drugged, it's capacity for experiencing love is essentially nonexistent. (Even assuming I'm understanding scifibum's position, I realize this is going to come down to fundamentally different views on what love is and why/when it is worthwhile, which no amount of arguing can address)
I don't have a lot to add to the subsequent discussion, but that's exactly what I meant. The child can't decide for itself, and gets nothing out of living a few hours on morphine. So if the parents choose to let the child live a few hours on morphine to avoid agony, for the purpose of having a few hours to hold and love a living child, we're not talking about the kid's rights anymore. We're talking about the parents' right to make a decision in line with what they think is best. (Which I support.)
(Of course, it seems clear that this isn't necessarily about rights for some people, but rather seems to be an application of a directive: do not kill. As in not euthanizing someone who wants to die now instead of in a few days. If that's the case, then it might help to be clear about it.)
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Yeah, I'm not sure what right exactly is being respected when a terminally ill, fully cognizant adult human going through extreme pain is denied the choice to die.
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Edit: I've been very careful not to equate the struggles of Not Dead Yet (which is something I support) with the late-term abortion debate, because although I can see similarities, they are not the same, and I'm pretty sure NDY does not treat them as such. I recommend people do the same.
I agree that "No one and nothing is allowed to take up residence in my body without my consent." I agree that in cases of pregnancies by rape, abortion should be allowed.
You could say that if a woman freely chooses to have sex, she's implictly invited a fetus into her body for nine months. But then we must ask whether the government should be allowed to force anyone to give their body to someone else to the degree that pregnancy requires.
I agree that calling a fetus a "potential life" makes no sense. It's clearly alive and clearly a separate organism. But the woman I quoted doesn't seem to concern herself too much with precise definitions; in the comments she declares that "Partial-birth abortion is an invented right-wing term for what a doctor has to do when a fetus has died inside a woman's uterus and will cause a fatal infection if not removed." (As we've discussed already, fetuses aborted by partial-birth abortion are usually not healthy; but I didn't think they were already dead. If they were dead, what would be the problem in removing them?)
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quote:Originally posted by sarcasticmuppet: really?
Edit: I've been very careful not to equate the struggles of Not Dead Yet (which is something I support) with the late-term abortion debate, because although I can see similarities, they are not the same, and I'm pretty sure NDY does not treat them as such. I recommend people do the same.
The issue is definitely different, but it'd been brought up before in this thread by people who stated emphatically that euthanasia was absolutely morally wrong on the same level that murder is.
That said, the article about the ramifications of allowing euthanasia (specifically about other people encouraging disabled people to kill themselves) was definitely interesting and I'm less sure of my position now. I think there are ramifications on either side - on one hand I can see how this is one place where "Slippery slope" is a real concern with disabled people being treated like second class citizens, on the other I think a suffering, terminal person absolutely should have the right to end their own life. The issue may be complicated but not for the reasons that were presented earlier.
[ June 05, 2009, 05:29 PM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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Arguing that a very disabled child is better off dead and should be killed, even medical help is possible so it isn't in pain, is very, very close to arguing that a very disabled adult is better off dead, even if medical help is possible.
The difference, of course, that the child doesn't even get the chance to choose whether or not to ask for death. It is decided by someone who has a definite interest in its death.
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"It is decided by someone who has a definite interest in its death. "
Also its life. People with a definite interest in the life or death of the person whose life or death is being decided is who makes decisions about end of life care thousands of times per day in hospitals around the country.
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quote:The difference, of course, that the child doesn't even get the chance to choose whether or not to ask for death. It is decided by someone who has a definite interest in its death.
The other difference is that the adult has a lifetime of experiences and relationships, whereas the child in (hypothetical) question only has a few hours, period. I find a fundamental difference in the fact that an adult CAN choose whether to live or not. The infant is not voiceless here because she/he is mute, the infant is voiceless because it literally does not have the cognition necessary to choose, and in this case never will.
Again, fundamentally different value systems at work here. I know the above paragraph won't matter to you, but it matters to me.
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quote:Originally posted by sarcasticmuppet: really?
Edit: I've been very careful not to equate the struggles of Not Dead Yet (which is something I support) with the late-term abortion debate, because although I can see similarities, they are not the same, and I'm pretty sure NDY does not treat them as such. I recommend people do the same.
I do actually see some overlaps, depending upon how you spin the issues. Although, and this may sound strange, but I would be more inclined to discuss euthanasia in an abortion debate than abortion in a euthanasia debate.
But the overlaps is this: Is life itself so valuable that it matters more than any other concern?
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Arguing that a very disabled child is better off dead and should be killed, even medical help is possible so it isn't in pain, is very, very close to arguing that a very disabled adult is better off dead, even if medical help is possible.
The difference, of course, that the child doesn't even get the chance to choose whether or not to ask for death. It is decided by someone who has a definite interest in its death.
Or life, as the case may be.
But this may not be a difference at all. A severely disabled adult may not be able to speak for himself either. This is why people often create living wills for themselves while they are capable of making those decisions, but even then there is a lot of iffyness and gray area.
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I think that we should not overestimate our ability to alleviate pain. Often in adults the amount of pain medication needed to make the pain level tolerable is fatal itself.
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My only input into this discussion is to say that until this event, I had been more and more swayed by the pro-life arguments against late-term abortion, and I was pretty accepting of the idea of a ban on late-term abortions, provided there was an exception for the health of the mother.
The articles quoting, and written by, women who have had late term abortions have given me new insight into how heart rending this decision is, and how unexpected conditions can result in many more situations than I had thought possible where a late term abortion is the best solution available.
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Its genetic structure is vastly different from that of the woman it's inside, and it's made up of many cells that work together to take in nutrients and grow. These facts seem to be enough to make it count as a separate organism. Of course, it's a parasitic organism (not to be offensive) since it gets its nutrients from food partially processed by the woman. But I'm not an expert in this area; what about a fetus makes it not count as a separate organism? If it isn't, is it part of the woman's body?
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quote: How do the pro-lifers here respond to women who say things like this?
With not much difficulty, really. Her argument is founded on stating as absolute truths a variety of things which are either quite subjective or simply not true at all.
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The fundamental problem with the woman's position is that she is coming from a place where whether or not it's a parasitic organism, or part of the woman's body, or whatever, is the only consideration, period.
Like, y'know, pretty much everything to do with human beings, it's just not that simple.
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The fundamental problem with the woman's position is that she is coming from a place where whether or not it's a parasitic organism, or part of the woman's body, or whatever, is the only consideration, period.
Like, y'know, pretty much everything to do with human beings, it's just not that simple.
I don't believe that's true -- that this is the only consideration. It's just the one she was focusing on and it may even be her bottom line. I don't think anyone thinks this is simple, although I do often see that in the end, the abortion debate boils down to "When does life begin?" The more sophisticated version of that (for middle-of-the-roaders) is something along these liens: "When does life begin and what rights does it have when in conflict with another's?"
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quote:...I do often see that in the end, the abortion debate boils down to "When does life begin?"
Actually I think a lot of pro-choice advocates will agree that life has already begun at any point in the timeline. Conception and gestation are part of life. A blastocyst is alive. It's all "life."
The real question is when personhood begins; and the more fundamental disagreement is indeed about how the rights of one person or proto-person weigh against the rights of the mother.
This is a nitpick, but I think it is a helpful distinction. I can imagine someone being frustrated by a belief that someone else doesn't believe that life has begun once the fetus has fingernails and a heartbeat, for instance. This is not really the pro-choice position. (While it might be true that some pro-choice individuals will agree that there is disagreement about when life begins, I don't think this is the predominant thinking. I think "pro-choice" is a very carefully chosen and mostly accurate label.)
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quote:I don't believe that's true -- that this is the only consideration. It's just the one she was focusing on and it may even be her bottom line. I don't think anyone thinks this is simple, although I do often see that in the end, the abortion debate boils down to "When does life begin?" The more sophisticated version of that (for middle-of-the-roaders) is something along these liens: "When does life begin and what rights does it have when in conflict with another's?"
I don't see how you can arrive at the conclusion that she was considering anything else based on what she wrote, Christine. First, there was no hint of any other consideration in what she wrote. Second, in just one paragraph she stacked up repeated justifications for abortion based on the same consideration. Finally, that consideration is to her the only reason necessary to her conclusion. Nothing else can trump it.
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It isn't a an independent organism until birth. It is, almost by definition, the opposite of an "independent organism".
I'd like to second (or third, or whatever) the statement made about supporting abortions. I don't support them, I think they are horrific, traumatic,a nd are usually the last option. I wouldn't want my wife to have one unless she had to, and if she ever HAD to have one it would have long reaching effects on BOTH of us.
I DO support the right of people to choose to have them though, because I don't think I should be allowed to make that type of decision FOR someone, AGAINST their will.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: That said, the article about the ramifications of allowing euthanasia (specifically about other people encouraging disabled people to kill themselves) was definitely interesting and I'm less sure of my position now. I think there are ramifications on either side - on one hand I can see how this is one place where "Slippery slope" is a real concern with disabled people being treated like second class citizens, on the other I think a suffering, terminal person absolutely should have the right to end their own life. The issue may be complicated but not for the reasons that were presented earlier.
A doc can pull a feeding tube from a patient and artificially bypass the moral issue by letting the body starve to death in a protracted fashion and they can do this in any no-hope situation (and many 'no hope only because the patient has no money for expensive treatment' situations, no less, but that's a different moral issue somewhat) where it is obvious that the intent is to end the life of the patient. They can end this patient's life this way. They could not, in contrast, give the patient a life-ending dose of morphine. They have to let the body die of starvation.
Sometimes the artificial distinctions employed get so ridiculous that a doctor purposefully ending the life of a patient by removing a breathing tube is legally and morally 'acceptable' where if they were purposefully ending the life of the patient by pinching the feeding tube shut, they could be charged with murder and incite a furor.
I think that at the very least that it's silly to have a system which absolutely unquestionably commonly relies on the purposeful termination of human life, yet it structures itself towards only ending the lives of those patients using methods that are designed to weasel around moral objections, and then these weasel methods become a-o-k while other methods artificially remain criminal and terrible. The way we do things now actually makes a serious argument for ending the pretense.
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quote:It isn't a an independent organism until birth. It is, almost by definition, the opposite of an "independent organism".
Nor is it an independent organism AFTER birth.
quote:Sometimes the artificial distinctions employed get so ridiculous that a doctor purposefully ending the life of a patient by removing a breathing tube is legally and morally 'acceptable' where if they were purposefully ending the life of the patient by pinching the feeding tube shut, they could be charged with murder and incite a furor.
This is actually called "civilization." Rules that may appear arbitrary but actually are indications of morality that lies under much of what we do. Here-- the act of removing life support according to a patient's wishes, allowing for the slim expression of hope that his body may continue to breathe, but most likely terminating the patient.
Vs.
The active termination of the patient by effectively strangling him.
It takes some subtlety to understand the differences, and why the distinction isn't "weaseling."
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quote:Originally posted by Omega M.: How do the pro-lifers here respond to women who say things like this?
quote:Who else doesn't own my uterus? A fetus. Any fetus, ever. Even embryos do not own my uterus. I understand this is difficult for you to grasp; a fetus is after all a potential life, and there are American voters--some of them who might even vote for you--who think that as a potential life a fetus has a right to move into my body and not be evicted. I however am not a potential life. I am an actual life, a real living human being, a woman. No one and nothing is allowed to take up residence in my body without my consent. This is kind of like how you can't show up at an apartment, summarily move in, and demand the property owner let you stay there as long as you would like. It is also kind of like how you can't demand someone lend you their kidney for nine months. I, as a sovereign human being, have the right to deny access to any part of my body at any time. I also have, as a sovereign human being, the right to make that decision on my own, regardless of what my family, doctor, and pastor think.
(I've heard this view from many people; I just picked this woman as a representative example.)
Or by pointing out that just because someone or something is using your body doesn't necessarily give you absolute, unchecked moral authority to see that it lives or dies for a whim.* And that if the moral authority doesn't necessarily exist, perhaps nor should the legal authority.
*I say 'whim' here because, according to that reasoning, a whim really would be sufficient justification for terminating a pregnancy.
Someone might further point out that her analogies of people moving into the body and apartment squatters fails, because in almost every case they're invited. That perhaps the consent she speaks of so readily was given when she consented to have unprotected sexual intercourse with a man.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: That perhaps the consent she speaks of so readily was given when she consented to have unprotected sexual intercourse with a man.
No. Having sex does not mean a woman gives up the right to her own body.
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quote:It isn't a an independent organism until birth. It is, almost by definition, the opposite of an "independent organism".
Nor is it an independent organism AFTER birth.
Um....yes, it is. How long it can last without help is debatable, but from a biological (rather than a sociological) standpoint it becomes one at birth. I ceases to be supported by it's mother's heartbeat, lungs, and endocrine system.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: That perhaps the consent she speaks of so readily was given when she consented to have unprotected sexual intercourse with a man.
No. Having sex does not mean a woman gives up the right to her own body.
Although I'm sure I will regret it, I will also point out that the women may not be having unprotected sex and that in fact, there is a failure rate in every form of birth control that, across a populations of millions of people, will fail many thousands of times.
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You know the answer to that, right? Birth control is never and never claims to be anything more than a probable prevention, not a guaranteed.
A man or woman who has sex is doing something that leads to a baby. That may not be the WANTED consequence, but that doesn't change that it IS one. "That's not the consequence I wanted." isn't a good defense. It's like getting your car repossesed and saying "But I didn't want that to happen when I stopped making payments." Or, more like, it is like driving your car with the lug nuts off and saying that you didn't want the wheels to fall off.
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There doesn't have to be a defense. At least not a legal one. Even people who have done stupid things, even people who have done some evil things do not give up the right to refuse to let someone else use their body.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: You know the answer to that, right? Birth control is never and never claims to be anything more than a probable prevention, not a guaranteed.
I knew I didn't want to get into this.
Let me refer you back to the comment to which I was responding....
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: That perhaps the consent she speaks of so readily was given when she consented to have unprotected sexual intercourse with a man.
So I suggested that many women who get abortions may not have had unprotected sex at all.
Although regardless, I don't believe anyone gives up control of her body because she had sex, protected or otherwise, even if there are consequences.
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quote:No. Having sex does not mean a woman gives up the right to her own body.
While it's a given to me, you'll note that for the sake of argument I carefully said 'perhaps'
quote:There doesn't have to be a defense. At least not a legal one. Even people who have done stupid things, even people who have done some evil things do not give up the right to refuse to let someone else use their body.
People who have done stupid or evil things don't necessarily have the right to kill something to deal with their evil or stupidity, either.
----
Christine,
quote:Although regardless, I don't believe anyone gives up control of her body because she had sex, protected or otherwise, even if there are consequences.
That's a viewpoint I can understand, though I don't necessarily share it. However, I certainly don't think this belief is strong and right enough to state it as an absolute certainty, as the only thing that matters, like the woman in the blog did.
Anyway, the people we're speaking of here - those who properly use effective birth control, yet still end up with a pregnancy - are a very, very small minority. I'm not convinced that the violated rights of that tiny minority are sufficient to justify continuing the potential* killing of human babies for the overwhelming majority.
Looked at from another direction, minorities that small are sufficient to make it very, very difficult to for example put someone to death, or let the guilty go free.
*Potential as in, we don't know if they're human beings or not, or when.
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We don't know if they are human beings or not, or when, so therefore we should force women to give up control of their body? Essentially force them into slavery for nine months? A slavery that carries with it permanent physical and chemical changes to their body, along with a variety of serious health risks, up to and including death?
Sorry, but that's not a medical decision you can make for someone because "Well, it might be a human being inside you."
I think, if you are going to take the position that a woman gives up control of her body for nine months by having sex, you HAVE to take the position that, from conception, the zygote is a human being fully protected by the rights of a person. There's no other way that a balancing of rights such that abortion is illegal makes any sort of sense.
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quote: Essentially force them into slavery for nine months?
If pregnancy were slavery, I doubt thousands of women would be trying to achieve that state as we speak. I know you meant it as an analogy, but I'm not sure you realize the kind of emotional button you're pushing, Paul.
I've had the baby ache off and on since I was 18. Every couple years, the hormones just get together and scream "Baby!" in my head for a couple months. Though this last time, they got sneaky. They said things like, "Everyone always makes a huge deal out of everything. I bet babies aren't that much work. You could handle it."
The vast majority of women have at some time desperately wanted to achieve this state. Even with my rational mind screaming, "Of course they're that much work!" and me continuing to take my pills, for a couple months I wanted to experience what seems to me to be a highly spiritual condition. How intimate must it be to hold your child that close to you and care for them as you care for yourself?
Maybe the luster comes off after you've done it. I don't know. But a huge part of the female experience is tied up in the knowledge that other people expect you to not only be pregnant but to want to be pregnant at some point. So when you call it slavery, I don't hear, "I respect your body," like I know you meant it. I hear, "There's no point for you to be a woman."
Just so you're aware. That's my gut reaction, anyway.
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Slavery is an involuntary state. If you don't want the pregnancy, but are forced to go through it, I'm actually fairly sure that slavery is an appropriate word.
Just to be very explicit about it: I am only calling pregnancy slavery in the case of a woman who is forced, against her will, to carry the fetus.
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quote:Although regardless, I don't believe anyone gives up control of her body because she had sex, protected or otherwise, even if there are consequences.
That's a viewpoint I can understand, though I don't necessarily share it. However, I certainly don't think this belief is strong and right enough to state it as an absolute certainty, as the only thing that matters, like the woman in the blog did.
Anyway, the people we're speaking of here - those who properly use effective birth control, yet still end up with a pregnancy - are a very, very small minority.
How do you know who gets abortions? Are there statistics somewhere? If so, I'd love to see them.
It seems to me that whoever usually gets abortions is largely based on who's making the argument. Pro-lifers talk about it as if it's a form of birth control. Pro-choicers talk about times when the mother's life is in danger or else she was raped.
I honestly do not know who gets abortions. I'm sure it happens in a lot of different ways and I don't know who gets them the most.
As far as certainty goes -- I say very little with absolute certainty. When it comes to whether or not a woman gives up control of her body I think the bottom line is that I'm not going to get into a situation where specialized subsections of the law allow for abortion in the case of blah. You can either do it (legally) or you can't. The rest is on the mother's conscience and is between her and her god, should she believe in one.
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What about mothers whose children are already born who don't want them anymore? If they just abandon them or kill them, they are charged with a crime. Do you consider parenthood in general slavery?
Christine: In the case of uncertainty, if there has to be a margin for error, it should be on the side where we don't kill people.
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(disclaimer: I know nothing about that site -- I just found it on a google search. So I don't know if it is pro-choice, pro-life or neutral. Just thought I'd offer it up because you were seeking information)
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Thanks, Farmgirl, although those stats don't touch on what (if any) form of birth control was being attempted. I did find separate statistics that indicated in the year 2000 there were 4,058,814 live births. If there were 1.31 million abortions that same year, it seems likely that a great many women are not properly using birth control, though I could not find a direct statistic indicating whether or not this is the case.
What those numbers indicate to me is that we need to stop making sex and birth control taboo. Looks like, if you take the position that the fetus is human, that we could stop about 1,000,000 deaths per year by making birth control less taboo and more available. Frankly, I think the pill out to be available over the counter.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Frankly, I think the pill out to be available over the counter.
Could you, technically and medically, do that? I mean, my understanding is that dosage has to be adjusted to each individual woman. It isn't like Advil.
Myself, I could never take the pill -- I tried it and have very bad side effects. So back when I had to practice birth control, I had to look at other options. And I don't know how someone could properly do that without a general health overview by a doctor. It is so individual.
Posts: 9538 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:How do you know who gets abortions? Are there statistics somewhere? If so, I'd love to see them.
Well I could refer that question right back at you - how do you know how many thousands of millions of people get abortions through faulty birth control - but here's my answer: I know how effective properly used birth control is, and therefore I can make a solid approximation of how many people end up pregnant in spite of birth control.
quote:
As far as certainty goes -- I say very little with absolute certainty. When it comes to whether or not a woman gives up control of her body I think the bottom line is that I'm not going to get into a situation where specialized subsections of the law allow for abortion in the case of blah. You can either do it (legally) or you can't. The rest is on the mother's conscience and is between her and her god, should she believe in one.
I didn't say you were advocating that much certainty, I said the woman from the blog is. As for the rest, that's all well and good if it turns out to be proven somehow that a fetus isn't a human being.
What if it turns out the other way? "Whether or not the mother (or the father, through strong persuasion) kills the baby is on their conscience and is between them and their god, should they believe in one." That could well be the reality of the situation. I don't know, but you certainly don't either. If it is, though, it's definitely not a matter just to leave up to the mother's conscience.
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Paul,
quote:Slavery is an involuntary state. If you don't want the pregnancy, but are forced to go through it, I'm actually fairly sure that slavery is an appropriate word.
Oh, OK. So now all involuntary states are slavery? I've got a cold right now. Involuntarily sick. Slavery, right?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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