posted
Nope, what you're actually saying is "Worthy people can get abortions, but not those stupid sluts who brought it upon themselves and should accept punishment for their actions."
Or you're saying "I think fetuses should have the right to life, but the idea of a victim of rape or incest being then forced to give birth to and raise a lifetime reminder of such a horrific event is so off-putting to me that abortion seems less offensive in comparison."
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posted
Right, but in that case you'd have to necessarily concede that while fetuses have some right to life, it's not equal to the right to life of a child or an adult human, but rather more similar to the right to life of say, a dog. Or a monkey. Something that's not a person, anyhow.
And then you'd have to justify why you get to decide whether other people euthanize their dogs and monkeys or not.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2009
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posted
That's why people against abortion, with exceptions, get edgy when asked about them.
However, your initial statement was pretty screwed up.
But if you're against it with exceptions for rape and incest, what you're saying isn't "a fetus's life is worth as much as that of a child or an adult."
True, although even people willing to permit abortions for rape and incest get more resistant to the notion the farther along the fetus development is. It's not an either/or.
If you were saying that then you'd be okay with executing a five year old kid who was the product of rape and incest. Nope, what you're actually saying is "Worthy people can get abortions, but not those stupid sluts who brought it upon themselves and should accept punishment for their actions." Which is pretty evil in my book.
And no, I offered another viewpoint. Many believe that all abortions are wrong, but in extreme cases abortions may be less wrong. And there are other viewpoints, whereas you've limited everyone to just that one.
Granted, if you believe in allowing abortions at all, for any circumstances, than yes, you believe the fetus has less rights than the mother. Which is also what the law believes, but the fetus gains rights as it develops and the closer to viability and life outside the womb, the more rights the fetus has. You seem to be operating in an all-or-nothing place.
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quote:Originally posted by sinflower: Right, but in that case you'd have to necessarily concede that while fetuses have some right to life, it's not equal to the right to life of a child or an adult human, but rather more similar to the right to life of say, a dog. Or a monkey. Something that's not a person, anyhow.
And then you'd have to justify why you get to decide whether other people euthanize their dogs and monkeys or not.
Or maybe it's worth more than a dog or monkey, but less than a already-born human. Which is, in fact, what many pro-life people quite clearly believe.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: ... And I cannot think of any examples -- short of the death penalty -- where we currently consider it acceptable for the government to violate bodily sovereignty of an individual considered to be an adult.
Suicide/self-euthanasia might be one. Force-feeding detainees at Guantanamo might be another. Both examples are obviously very controversial, I'm just trying to think of examples.
quote: And quite a few historical and/or theoretical/fictional examples where doing so is now considered a heinous crime. (Tuskegee experiments, forced sterilization, etc.)
Actually, I was thinking about the Babylon 5 mindwipes and the alien healing machine, where both were used as methods of punishment. Clearly controversial, but approaching it from a bit of a different angle although historically you could think of it as an extension of the "eye-for-an-eye"-based legal systems.
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quote:Or maybe it's worth more than a dog or monkey, but less than a already-born human. Which is, in fact, what many pro-life people quite clearly believe.
You're right, I'm treating this issue as more binary than it actually is. If it matters, it's partly because in real life the pro-life people I know tell me "abortion is murder," which implies that they think fetuses are people and have equal moral value as already-born humans (several people confirmed this when asked). The idea of personhood/moral worth as a sliding scale makes sense to me, even though it leads to the potentially disturbing conclusion that some people's lives are intrinsically worth more than others.
The view you describe is more justifiable. I'd like to know what those justifications are specifically though (not directed at you). What makes a human of more moral value than a chimpanzee, and a chimpanzee of more moral value than a duck? I can't write out a complete answer yet, but it'd definitely include things like "self awareness" "intelligence" "emotional complexity"-- all things that fetuses don't have.
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2009
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: The problem with saying, sure it's ok if the mom's health is in danger is that the highest danger to mom's health comes near the end and post partum complications. At 3 months (almost all abortions are done before then) the risk factors may not be apparent. In the cases I know of, at 3 months, none of my friends knew the risks. One didn't know until a week after the baby was born. So, when a woman is making this decision, she has to guess at what her chance of death is. And when you find out at say 33 weeks, you have a different decision than at 7 weeks. I have had 2 friends who induced knowing baby would be a preemie with potential problems because the risk got too high. Both have since done permanent sterilization.
That's an excellent point. Nearly all of the friends I have that experienced life-threatening complications knew pretty early on that they were very high risk factors for those complications. The only exception I can think of was my own mother, whose serious complications didn't arise until she was already in labor.
So, I definitely neglected to take that into consideration. Sorry about that!
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: It can even be fatal in the presence of the best possible medical care. Happens all the time. Don't believe me? Look it up.
I'm probably just being thin-skinned, but this seems needlessly snippy to me. I don't need to look it up. You are correct. I wasn't trying to imply otherwise, and I apologize if I did.
quote:And that's above and beyond describing the situation as 'inconvenient'. It's a little strange to me, as a man, with some academic and limited personal understanding how onerous pregnancy can be, describe it in such a way.
I thought I said in my last post that I wasn't trying to marginalize how serious pregnancy can be. Once again, if I had to choose a single word to sum up pregnancy, "inconvenient" would not be it. If my choice of words gave a different impression, that was an error on my part.
quote: So for those who believe the fetus is a person, the analogy is faulty for those reasons. The person chained to you isn't simply an inconvenience, the person is a potentially fatal inconveniece.
Well, "potentially" fatal seems to have a lot of wiggle room. I mean, in my absurd analogy the guy on your back could throttle you to death in your sleep, too. Then it seems like we're in the territory of preemptive strikes, which are somewhat controversial in themselves.
Also since I was writing this, I left, saw a movie, and came back, and now I see Chris has said some interesting things about a fetus being less than a person but more than, say, a dog. A good point, but, as sinflower said, when people say that abortion is murder, that seems to imply that they see a fetus as a person. And being a person, in most other cases, is a binary status. We don't usually say that people with Down Syndrome have less of a right to life than people without.
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posted
The debate tends to be polarizing, which means it is all too common for people to exaggerate the position they actually hold. And of course, SOME people actually do consider abortion to be equivalent to murdering a child or adult. But I suspect those are probably not the same people who believe that exceptions should be made for rape and incest.
quote:The idea of personhood/moral worth as a sliding scale makes sense to me, even though it leads to the potentially disturbing conclusion that some people's lives are intrinsically worth more than others.
Still not what I said. Saying there are two levels (unborn and born) does not necessarily imply there are others.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: ...of course, SOME people actually do consider abortion to be equivalent to murdering a child or adult. But I suspect those are probably not the same people who believe that exceptions should be made for rape and incest.
I think that's an excellent point.
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quote:Still not what I said. Saying there are two levels (unborn and born) does not necessarily imply there are others.
I am confused. What did you mean? You say personhood is not a sliding scale, which means you must consider it a quality with discrete, not continuous levels. I'm not sure how more than two discrete levels ("not person," "person") would be consistent. If both unborn and born humans are under "person," with all the moral worth that that bestows, then why do they need to be distinguished at all? Unless one of them is more of a person. Which would then make three discrete levels ("not person," "slightly person," "wholly person"). Is this the categorization you describe? But if there are different levels of personhood, why would there only be two or three? Presumably a one month old fetus isn't as much of a person as a eight month old one. So then that makes "not person," "slightly person," "slightly more person," "wholly person." Applying the same logic, you'd eventually get a continuous scale. And I'm not sure why that continuous scale would "cap out" at a value most humans attain, either.
As for whether the pro-lifers who allow exceptions for rape and incest are or are not the same ones who claim fetuses are people, my experience suggests that they often are. The vast majority of pro-lifers allow exceptions-- and yet many still claim fetuses are people as much as already-born humans are. But this is testable. I'd really like to see a survey that quantifies the overlap, or else we're all just guesstimating from personal experience.
posted
We have yet to discuss what I actually believe. All I am pointing out is that you keep making assumptions about what pro-lifers believe -- assumptions that strongly differ from the beliefs of those I have discussed this with. And the consistent factor, both when you are oversimplifying and under-simplifying is that in each case it makes it easier for you to vilify them. Aka strawmen.
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posted
I'm not denying that my model of pro life beliefs is flawed. I'm trying to make it better, incorporating your suggestions. But I'm not sure how to incorporate "they don't think personhood/lack of is continuous or binary" into my model of their beliefs. It seems inconsistent to me; I explained why and am now hopefully awaiting clarifications as to why I'm wrong.
If it turns out a subset of them believe "personhood is a sliding scale," and they accept the implications of that belief (some humans are worth more than others) I wouldn't consider that a reason to vilify them. I would actually respect them more, since it takes guts to take your premises to their logical conclusions. I lose respect for people who excessively compartmentalize and hold contradictory beliefs, not those who believe mean things.
quote:Originally posted by rivka: We have yet to discuss what I actually believe. All I am pointing out is that you keep making assumptions about what pro-lifers believe -- assumptions that strongly differ from the beliefs of those I have discussed this with. And the consistent factor, both when you are oversimplifying and under-simplifying is that in each case it makes it easier for you to vilify them. Aka strawmen.
I just want to say that I am also making assumptions about what pro-lifers believe (well, also based on what I've read them say, or discussed in person... more the former than the latter) but my intent was not at all to vilify. I started by saying I actually tend to have more respect for the pro-life position than the pro-choice position, because from what I've seen the most common pro-life arguments are more logically and internally consistent.
This despite the fact that I am actually pro-choice myself.
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posted
Dan_Frank- the pregnancy inconvenience is a big point because frequently in abortion debates, the negatives of pregnancy are minimized. And of course, at 9 months pregnant, I am even more negative regarding pregnancy than a lot of people might be. Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: Dan_Frank- the pregnancy inconvenience is a big point because frequently in abortion debates, the negatives of pregnancy are minimized. And of course, at 9 months pregnant, I am even more negative regarding pregnancy than a lot of people might be.
Oh! Congratulations!
So, yeah. I'm not trying to minimize those negatives at all, I promise. I assure you, I do understand how difficult an experience pregnancy can be, at least from the outside.
My only contention was that if one accepts the common pro-life stance granting embryos personhood, then one should by rights be measuring the negatives of pregnancy against murdering someone. And, in my opinion, once you accept that stance, the instances where an abortion can be justified seem vanishingly small.
My real point in all this is that the kind of pro-choice arguments that are logically consistent and persuasive, to me, all have to do with denying embryos full personhood. If you grant personhood but claim body sovereignty trumps it, I really think you're standing on uneven ground.
That's a general "you," by the way, not specifically saying you've claimed that, Scholarette. Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:I consider imprisonment and external-to-the-body-itself rights fairly distinct from sovereignty over an individual's actual body. And I cannot think of any examples -- short of the death penalty -- where we currently consider it acceptable for the government to violate bodily sovereignty of an individual considered to be an adult. And quite a few historical and/or theoretical/fictional examples where doing so is now considered a heinous crime. (Tuskegee experiments, forced sterilization, etc.)
Why are they to be considered separate? To me that has always seemed a pretty, well, deliberate and artificial distinction. I realize it's a distinction we've decided to make, but it seems pretty arbitrary to me. "I'm going to put you in a cage for fifty years," doesn't seem fundamentally different from violating bodily sovereignty to me, though thankfully I have no personal experience with either that or with loss of organ function.
I genuinely don't know why they should be considered different either, just that many people think they are different.
quote:I'm probably just being thin-skinned, but this seems needlessly snippy to me. I don't need to look it up. You are correct. I wasn't trying to imply otherwise, and I apologize if I did.
It wasn't intended as snippy, sorry if it came across that way.
quote:I thought I said in my last post that I wasn't trying to marginalize how serious pregnancy can be. Once again, if I had to choose a single word to sum up pregnancy, "inconvenient" would not be it. If my choice of words gave a different impression, that was an error on my part.
I realize that, it's just that you say that, but your choice of analogy was really odd given your protest that you weren't trying to marginalize how serious pregnancy can be, that's all.
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quote:Originally posted by sinflower: I am confused. What did you mean? You say personhood is not a sliding scale, which means you must consider it a quality with discrete, not continuous levels. I'm not sure how more than two discrete levels ("not person," "person") would be consistent.
I can try and tackle this part from my perspective. I do think there isn't a sliding scale of human. Something either is a human or its not. I can say that I am confident that an embryo outside the womb is not a human. I am perfectly ok with destroying and researching on them. I am also confident that a newborn is human. The question becomes for me where in between these two states does a fetus become human. All I can say with confidence is that I don't know. I don't think science knows. Its not that I think a 10 week old fetus is slightly human. It's that I don't know what category it falls in. I'm not sure if it has developed self awareness and consciousness. This makes me more unwilling to infringe on a woman's right to her body than I would be with a 39 week old fetus which I have a fair level of confidence has reached human status. If I don't know for sure if something is human or not, it becomes decidedly harder to figure out if abortion should be permissible. I have to weigh the risk of something being human with the amount of intrusion on a woman's right to her body. I am less willing to force pregnancy upon a woman who had no choice in becoming pregnant than to tell a woman who willingly accepted the risk of becoming pregnant she can't back out now because the woman's rights side is higher in one case and weighs more heavily against the risk of infringing on another human's rights.
My personal views on abortion are pretty mixed. I would never have one. I wish others would stop having them. I wish the gov't would do more to make pregnancy less of a hardship on women. I would like to see them banned after the fetus has reached the age of viability outside the womb at which point I feel confident that the fetus has become human. But before that point, I am really torn. I just don't know if the fetus is human or not. I hate to take away sovereignty of body away from a woman but I hate to think of the idea that humans are killed because we don't have the science to know when consciousness is reached. I also struggle with the notion that banning abortion isn't going to actually stop abortions but simply push them underground and make them more dangerous.
Posts: 416 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:I'm probably just being thin-skinned, but this seems needlessly snippy to me. I don't need to look it up. You are correct. I wasn't trying to imply otherwise, and I apologize if I did.
It wasn't intended as snippy, sorry if it came across that way.
No problem.
quote:
quote:I thought I said in my last post that I wasn't trying to marginalize how serious pregnancy can be. Once again, if I had to choose a single word to sum up pregnancy, "inconvenient" would not be it. If my choice of words gave a different impression, that was an error on my part.
I realize that, it's just that you say that, but your choice of analogy was really odd given your protest that you weren't trying to marginalize how serious pregnancy can be, that's all. [/QB]
That's fair. The point of the analogy was that if a fetus is a person, then abortion is exactly on par with killing another human, and at that point any pregnancy complication that isn't life threatening becomes much more shaky grounds for abortion. The goal was to strip the situation down to a very basic level, but clearly it didn't work and was offensive, so, yeah. My mistake.
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Christine O'Donnell: I'm not doing any more national TV interviews. National exposure is now "off the table, because that's not going to help me get votes," O'Donnell told Sean Hannity.
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