In the comments to Pro-choice and pregnant, Robert said
Oh, and congratulations on the baby. I’m glad you’ve decided not to kill it.
Ignoring for the moment the question of whether that was intended as deliberate provocation, I wanted to address the question of whether it’s even accurate. I’m not sure it is.
“Decided not to…” implies that the possibility has been given some consideration, however fleeting; I might say, for example, “I thought about buying the Kaiser Chiefs album but decided not to.” If the option hasn’t been consciously considered and rejected, it doesn’t really make sense to imply a decision has been made. I wouldn’t say that I’ve decided not to move to Milton Keynes, become a chartered accountant or take up underwater basketweaving, and nor would I say that I’ve decided not to terminate this pregnancy.
Before I became pregnant, I spent a long time considering the possibility of having a baby. I passionately wanted a family, and although I don’t believe there’s anything special about biological, as opposed to adoptive, parenthood, I decided the simplest way to have a baby of my own was to give birth to one. So to say that I “decided not to adopt” is completely reasonable: I considered the possibility and rejected it.
The decision to become pregnant was less positive: the timing never seemed to be quite right and I wasn’t sure I had the right to inflict myself on a child. I hesitated, and circumstances came together to help me decide. I had the opportunity to have unprotected sex at the appropriate time of the month. I took it, and three nervous weeks later a blood test confirmed my pregnancy.
Abortion never entered my mind as a possibility. Pregnancy was something I’ve longed for, hoped for and occasionally put myself at risk in search of for most of my adult life. Now that I finally have what I always wanted, why should I consider throwing it away? If the pregnancy had been especially difficult or scans had revealed a problem with the fetus, I might have had to examine the option, but so far everything has gone smoothly and I’ve had no reason to consider abortion.
So why does Robert think I “decided not to kill” my baby? Does he believe that every woman, pro-life or pro-choice, who sees a pregnancy through to the end has decided not to have an abortion? If it’s unreasonable to say that a woman at the farthest extreme of “fetuses are people too” pro-life philosophy has decided not to kill her baby, what makes it more reasonable to say it about someone who made a deliberate choice to become pregnant but respects the choice of other women to avoid pregnancy?
There’s another distinction to be made here, as important as the one between a wanted and an unwanted fetus: the distinction between wanting to do something yourself and supporting the right of others to do it. I am pro-SSM, but I wouldn’t even consider marrying a woman. I believe in free speech, even speech that I personally consider repugnant. And I am pro-choice, despite the fact that my choice was made long ago.
Why do I support a right I have zero desire to exercise for myself? All sorts of reasons. People I care about may well make a different choice, and I want it to be open to them if they need it. I don’t want to live in the kind of world where women can be forced to sustain a pregnancy against their will to satisfy someone else’s idea of morality. I want the world to know that I’m having this baby because I deeply and passionately want it, not because I couldn’t get rid of it.
Being pro-choice doesn’t mean you think abortion is wonderful. It doesn’t mean that when the doctor’s receptionist confirms a very much wanted pregnancy you immediately think “of course, I could always have an abortion”. It simply means you believe the decision whether to become pregnant or the decision whether to continue with a pregnancy is the woman’s to make as she sees fit.
Larry, I don’t want to be “brought together” with you. I find your tactics and particular obesessions on these threads creepy, to say the least. At any rate, the issue of child support has been exhaustively discussed on this board. Feel free to find those threads and discuss it there, or write your own post.
And the hijacking continues at post 200. Except now he’s testing the waters before hijacking aparently. Its kind of like “don’t mind the gentlemen with guns and black ski masks. I assure you this isn’t a hijacking.”
Robert:
Fair enough.
Larry, if you want to discuss “choice for men,” my suggestion is that you considering responding to one of these posts, rather than trying to discuss it on this thread.
I may have missed it, but it doesn’t look like anybody has brought up what I found most illogical about one of Robert’s arguments:
This set of quotes implies that the nourishment and bodily support that a woman provides to a fetus is not causing some change in that fetus. You have removed the woman (the adult human being) from the equation, much as many pro-lifers do. Robert, providing daily nourishment and protection is not an uninvolved event. A woman’s body is actively interfering with (aka “molesting”) the situation, causing that fetus to grow and change and become what it will become. There is nothing “unmolested” about a fetus in a uterus. It is constantly being interfered with by its nature of being cared for by the owner of the uterus.
Robert: thank you for your apology.
mark: are you really suggesting that the man who inseminated me and has been running from the consequences ever since should have equal say with me in the future of my baby? He may have contributed half the DNA, but I’ve contributed virtually 100% of the chemicals that make up the baby. You might like to rethink what’s important here.
Men already have rights in parental choice. What they don’t have is the right to impose their choices (one way or the other) on a woman’s body.
Be patient, Larry. I’m planning an essay on just this issue, and when you comment on that one, no-one can cry hijack.
Bean:
I do think that someone who is willing to say women (or “certain women”) should be forced to undergo pregnancy, with all of it’s potential risks (to health, psychological well-being, financial status), and are willing to say that to do otherwise is “killing” someone should be ideologically consistent and do the same when it comes to organ/marrow donation.
The difference is choice. (Name a random woman) didn’t incur a moral debt to your relative who needs bone marrow; he has no legitimate claim on her. (Name a random pregnant woman) who consented to heterosexual vaginal intercourse, on the other hand, chose to engage in a specific behavior that has a predictable outcome.
Women who are the victims of rape or coerced incest, of course, most specifically did not choose to engage in that behavior. That’s why most pro-lifers are willing to make an exception for those circumstances.
This applies 100 percent to men, as well. If a man has heterosexual vaginal intercourse with a woman, then he is choosing a behavior that he knows can lead to fatherhood.
The statistic from the AGI report that really caught my attention is that six out of ten women who have abortion are already mothers. What this suggests to me is that the decisionmaking about the majority of abortions is being made by women who are very much aware of how pregnancy and childbirth will impact their bodies and lives. Only 19% of abortions are performed on women between the ages of 15 and 19 (fewer than 1% for women under the age of 15). I would be interested in knowing how many of those women were 18 or 19, and thus not subject to parental notification/consent laws.
Is the woman’s word that she was raped enough, or would pro-lifers require an actual rape accusation or even conviction? (Again, my point that allowing abortion only during specific cases would pressure some women to lie about the actual reasons stands.)
I guess the moderate pro-life argument against abortion is really just that women who have chosen to “be bad” and have sex deserve the possible punishment, so to speak (no cop outs allowed, you chose to have sex, now carry to the term!). That is why I don’t find the usual moderate arguments on either side very logical. The how much rights should a fetus have when compared to the woman is much better way to approach this (Fetus = person is at least logically coherent, as are the various fetus becomes a person at week x -approaches). Of course I favor the pro-choice position that women’s sexual autonomy is more important (it makes most sense to me).
The difference is choice.
We’ve been here before, and you still can’t let go of it.
We do not make ‘choice’ relevant to the rights of a born child. If I am raped, end up in a coma, and wake up five years later to discover I am the mother of a four-year-old as a result of the rape, I do not have any legal right to kill the four-year-old.
>>Is the woman’s word that she was raped enough, or would pro-lifers require an actual rape accusation or even conviction? (Again, my point that allowing abortion only during specific cases would pressure some women to lie about the actual reasons stands.)>>
Doesn’t seem terribly counterintuitive, does it?
And wouldn’t there be some due-process issues in allowing the exception based on a woman’s word alone? If a woman is raped, there’s generally a rapist somewhere in the picture. I don’t think the courts could have such a huge double standard between choice for her and conviction for him, especially if the law otherwise considers abortion to be murder.
Piny:
I assume that too (trying to goad the pro-lifers to show their true colors, or expose hypocrisy ;) ). Which would of course mean that some women who were raped would be forced to carry their rapists’ child to term. Brrr.
Tuomas:
I guess the moderate pro-life argument against abortion is really just that women who have chosen to “be bad” and have sex deserve the possible punishment, so to speak
Well, it’s you “so to speaking”. You can characterize women who have sex as “bad” and the natural consequence of their choices as “punishment” if you wish – but it’s you doing that. The language (and logic) I’m using are quite divorced from moral judgment in that sense.
Bean:
Robert, so you’re admitting that the “pro-life” stance has nothing to do with “saving lives,” it has to do purely with “responsibility” and punishment for sex.
I am admitting that the pro-life stance is nuanced and that it tries to take into account the rights of all the parties to the situation. If you want to turn that into an absolute, hey, go nuts. It’s your brain.
Similarly, if you believe that pregnancy is “punishment” for having a specific kind of sex, that’s your prerogative. I don’t feel that way. There is a distinct difference between a natural and predictable consequence, and a punishment.
Why do you put “responsibility” in scare quotes? Do you disagree with the proposition that adult humans incur a responsibility when they eagerly engage in the one activity that is known to lead to pregnancy?
Mythago:
We do not make ‘choice’ relevant to the rights of a born child.
That’s true, we don’t. That the moral calculus changes as the circumstances change – a rape victim versus an eager participant, a four-year old versus an embryo – ought to be unsurprising. Perhaps I’m missing your point.
Piny:
And wouldn’t there be some due-process issues in allowing the exception based on a woman’s word alone? If a woman is raped, there’s generally a rapist somewhere in the picture.
Indeed. Such issues are among the reasons why I don’t think making abortion illegal per se would be productive.
Robert, we don’t punish women for being sluts. The only possible reason for a third party (as in you) to have any say at all in whether someone has an abortion is whether or not a second being’s life is at stake. If it’s okay for “someone” to authorize the killing of that second life you have failed to address why that someone should be someone other than the person most affected by the decision. That is to substitute your ethical guidelines for hers. And more important, you have failed to address why any of us should take the initial premise seriously at all, as I have said at least three times, because we don’t condone intentional killing of already born persons, and your way of framing the issue strongly suggests that you admit the issue is at least ambiguous, that is, that the fetus is less than a person.
This is the logical conundrum of the pro-life movement: Unless you adopt a bright line that no one can cross (whether having been raped, subject to coerced incest, or whatever, save changed circumstances such as a developing health risk to the mother), wherever that line is, you are left in the position of making judgments not about the value of the fetus but the conduct of the woman, something that completely contradicts the whole premise upon which you base your right to intervene. If you say, “you can’t have an abortion at 14 weeks because your birth control failed but you could if you had been raped,” you are not protecting innocent life, you are punishing presumed guilty actors. The fetus of a woman who has been raped is every bit as innocent as the fetus of a woman whose birth control failed.
So in addition to all the other issues raised by Tuomas as to why this is such a bad idea, it doesn’t even bear a rational relationship to the interest you are purporting to protect.
Barbara:
Robert, we don’t punish women for being sluts.
Sigh. How come it’s the feminists and pro-feminists around here who are always calling women hateful names based on their sexuality?
If it’s okay for “someone” to authorize the killing of that second life you have failed to address why that someone should be someone other than the person most affected by the decision.
Actually, I specifically did address it. You might not like my suggested reasoning, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
That is to substitute your ethical guidelines for hers.
Actually, to substitute the ethical guidelines of the society for hers. As we do in many other arenas, for many other people. I believe it was Alsis who demanded that her moral code should be the sole determinant of her behavior. That only works in Ayn Rand novels.
because we don’t condone intentional killing of already born persons, and your way of framing the issue strongly suggests that you admit the issue is at least ambiguous, that is, that the fetus is less than a person.
But we do condone the intentional killing of born persons. The death penalty. War. The authorization of the use of deadly force against prisoners to prevent escapes. Self-defense. A few other scenarios.
These are all a balancing of the rights of multiple persons, as is abortion. There isn’t going to be a “bright line” test, because these are difficult and nuanced questions where absolute positions are not morally tenable.
This is the logical conundrum of the pro-life movement: Unless you adopt a bright line that no one can cross (whether having been raped, subject to coerced incest, or whatever, save changed circumstances such as a developing health risk to the mother), wherever that line is, you are left in the position of making judgments not about the value of the fetus but the conduct of the woman
The conduct of the woman (and the man) is morally relevant.
something that completely contradicts the whole premise upon which you base your right to intervene. If you say, “you can’t have an abortion at 14 weeks because your birth control failed but you could if you had been raped,” you are not protecting innocent life, you are punishing presumed guilty actors. The fetus of a woman who has been raped is every bit as innocent as the fetus of a woman whose birth control failed.
That’s true. But the moral relationship between the mother and the fetus is different in the two scenarios. As noted, these are difficult questions, not simple ones.
I might be misreading you, but it seems as though you’re desiring there be no middle ground, no attempt to balance and reconcile many competing desires and interests and rights. Instead, it has to be a bright-line binary – abortion is murder always and everywhere and women who conceive under any circumstances must bear their child, versus abortion is a trivial act with no moral consequences and should have the same invisibility to the law and the culture as the question of whether or not to chew gum.
I’m sorry, but I can’t oblige that manichean view. It is complicated and there are subtleties and nuances; characterizing those complexities as “punishing the sluts” is no more helpful than screaming about murdered babies.
>>These are all a balancing of the rights of multiple persons, as is abortion. There isn’t going to be a “bright line” test, because these are difficult and nuanced questions where absolute positions are not morally tenable.>>
Actually, these all involve the balancing of the _lives_ of multiple persons. Exceptional permission for abortion in the case of rape–if we accept the pro-life definitions involved–is the only case where someone’s right not to carry to term a pregnancy for which she was not responsible supercedes another person’s right to live.
Robert, to me, your argument sounds like this: Because I can’t really define the interest at stake (i.e., the worth of the fetus) I am going to let my guidepost be the moral worth of the mother (her conduct). A fetus has a value worth protecting or it doesn’t (apart from who gets to decide), but arguing that it deserves protection and then proceeding not to protect it at all based on what its mother did or failed to do makes no sense to me. It eviscerates your rationale for having the RIGHT to interene in the first place.
Sigh. How come it’s the feminists and pro-feminists around here who are always calling women hateful names based on their sexuality?
I mention it, because I have been called hateful names for being an unmarried mother. I think it’s relevant. I also resent the glossing over of this issue (harsh judgement against unmarried women who have sex); abortion doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If you don’t think some women are choosing abortion because they don’t want to be Exhibit A in ‘sluttiness’, you are deluding yourself. Go back and read that link on “pro-life” women who have abortions.
But the moral relationship between the mother and the fetus is different in the two scenarios.
In other words, it really is about punishing women for having sex. Because the pregnancy will “prove” who the sluts are. Why else would people who claim to be anti-abortion fight so vigorously against birth control and sex education, both of which are tried-and-true methods of reducing the abortion rate? I wonder if anyone will do a study on Illinois and its abortion rate, now that health insurance plans in this state are required to cover contraception? My guess is that the abortion rate will go down, as more women who would otherwise use only condoms because of the expense factor are now free to choose more reliable methods like the Pill, or a diaphragm, or the IUD for the same (or less) money.
Anyway, there already is a clear middle ground in the practice of abortion in the United States. First trimester, few restrictions. Second trimester, more restrictions. Third trimester, for health/lifesaving reasons only. Quit trying to paint the picture otherwise. We already have the middle ground; it’s called being pro-choice.
Because I can’t really define the interest at stake (i.e., the worth of the fetus) I am going to let my guidepost be the moral worth of the mother (her conduct).
Except that I can define the interest at stake quite exactly.
A fetus has a value worth protecting or it doesn’t (apart from who gets to decide), but arguing that it deserves protection and then proceeding not to protect it at all based on what its mother did or failed to do makes no sense to me.
The value of the fetus is a constant.
Under one set of circumstances, the value of the mother’s right to autonomy outweighs the value of the fetus.
Under a different set of circumstances, the value of the mother’s right to autonomy does not outweigh the value of the fetus.
The mother’s right to autonomy, like other peoples’ right to autonomy, is partially predicated on her behavior and the set of reasonable expectations surrounding that behavior. People who are the victims of a mugging bear a different responsibility for their physically damaged state than do people who get into a boxing ring for fun. The natural consequences of a choice, versus the imposed consequences of a crime, bring different moral factors into play.
Seems pretty clear-cut to me; at any rate, I can’t explain it any more clearly than that.
It eviscerates your rationale for having the RIGHT to interene in the first place.
Noncomprehension is not an argument. Nor have I argued for a right to intervene. It might help in making sense of my arguments to address what I am saying rather than things that I haven’t said.
Robert, if the value of the fetus is constant then the only thing being judged is the mother’s conduct. You are not protecting the fetus. You are punishing conduct. To put it in legal speak, your proposal to curtail a woman’s autonomy over her person bears no rational (much less a compelling) relationship to the purported basis of that curtailment, i.e., that there is a second being worthy of protection, because similarly situated beings equally worthy of protection are treated differently in a fundamental way based on extrinsic circumstances that are independent of their value and beyond their control. In other words “something else besides the desire to protect innocent life is motivating you” and that something else is not something that normally leads to the curtailment of basic civil liberties — to wit, differentiating the rights of women depending on whether they had sex for pleasure.
Let me put another hypothetical to you:
Person A gets into a boxing ring and is injured during the match.
Person B jumps into a boxing ring out of an excess of excitement and is intentionally decked by one of the fighters out of an excess of pissiness.
Person C gets mugged walking on their way home from the bus stop after work.
Person D gets mugged while trolling for drugs in a bad part of town after disputing the price of his desired purchase.
Person E gets mugged after mugging Person D.
Believe it or not Robert, in the eys of the law Person B, C, D and E are entitled in theory to the same legal protection related to the assault on their person whether they deserve it or not. Person A might deserve protection, for instance, if his opponent “goes too far.” Thus, even Person A’s intent (willingness to risk injury) is not determinative of whether or not he is the victim of a crime, even in a boxing match, even though it is probably highly foreseeable that certain opponents use excessive or outside of the rules force (think hockey games where good players are intentionally assaulted — criminal prosecution has in fact occurred).
The original intent of person A is ultimately not what determines whether his injuries are actionable — it is the intent of the opponent (e.g., using ordinary versus clearly excessive or out of bounds force) and this would be true even if the TYPE of injury inflicted is no worse than the type of injury that person A might normally expect to sustain and which, ostensibly, he was willing to risk.
The intent of the mother and others in the antecedent event (sexual contact) is irrelevant to their subsequent actions (terminating the pregnancy), because the subsequent action is a separate action with a separate consequence. The consequence (death of the fetus) of the second intentional act doesn’t become okay or not okay because the antecedent act that set the pregnancy in motion was itself blameworthy or not, or consented to or whatever standard it is you are applying.
You are going down a path that is foreign to Anglo-American jurisprudence. The existence of bright lines is, indeed, extremely important when criminal prosecution is a potential consequence of crossing the line.
Barbara:
You are not protecting the fetus. You are punishing conduct.
I am protecting the fetus to the extent that protection does not infringe upon the woman’s right to autonomy. I am arguing that people who voluntarily engage in heterosexual vaginal intercourse are voluntarily reducing their own autonomy by engaging in behavior that is known to lead to the creation of new human life – a voluntary reduction in autonomy that is not engaged in by the victim of rape or coercive incest.
You may attempt to frame the obvious natural consequences of vaginal sex as “punishment” as long as you like, but that frame will continue to be inappropriate.
To put it in legal speak, your proposal to curtail a woman’s autonomy over her person bears no rational (much less a compelling) relationship to the purported basis of that curtailment, i.e., that there is a second being worthy of protection, because similarly situated beings equally worthy of protection are treated differently in a fundamental way based on extrinsic circumstances that are independent of their value and beyond their control.
Nope. There are no similarly situated beings. The product of a rape and the product of a voluntary coupling are not similarly situated. Since the assumption is false, the logic falls apart.
In other words “something else besides the desire to protect innocent life is motivating you”…
That is true. IN ADDITION TO the desire to protect innocent life, there is a desire to protect the autonomy of women who have not consented to sexual intercourse. These desires are balanced.
Believe it or not Robert, in the eys of the law Person B, C, D and E are entitled in theory to the same legal protection related to the assault on their person whether they deserve it or not.
Hooray for legal theory. Let me know when you find a cop, DA or judge who gives a shit that a mugger got beat up on.
The intent of the mother and others in the antecedent event (sexual contact) is irrelevant to their subsequent actions (terminating the pregnancy), because the subsequent action is a separate action with a separate consequence.
I invite my cousin, with whom I have a great relationship, to drop by my house tonight, telling him “just come on in”. My neighbor calls his cousin, with whom he has a long and hostile relationship, and instructs him to stay the hell away from his house tonight, and threatens to harm him if he sees him on his property. Later, our respective cousins arrive and just walk through the front door. I and my neighbor are both startled by the intrusion; we both shoot our cousins dead. These killings are separate actions from our original invitations/disinvitations, and they have separate consequences.
For your principle to hold up, the law will have to treat me and my neighbor identically. However, as both common sense and the legal record show, that will not happen. The law will treat me significantly more harshly than it will treat my neighbor. We were both intruded upon, but our past pattern of behavior and our specific actions combined to create differential expectations of our immediate behavior. I was way out of line in shooting my cousin; my neighbor, considerably less so. Hell, in Texas they might not even arrest the neighbor.
The existence of bright lines is, indeed, extremely important when criminal prosecution is a potential consequence of crossing the line.
Yeah, it would be. And if I was advocating a change in the law – in fact, if I wasn’t pretty much specifically and explicitly disavowing the belief that abortion ought to be made illegal in most of my comments, this would be a reasonable point.
So I’m left to wonder: do you not understand that I am not advocating the criminalization of abortion? Or do you understand that, but are simply using the legal frame as a rhetorical tool, despite its obvious inappropriateness?
Interesting Hypothetica, Barbara. I like it.
(An aside before I go into this- Tuomas, I understand your criticism. I do want us to have discussions that change each other’s opinions and make each other reconsider our views. I am enjoying doing that here with you and everyone. I merely meant that that particular belief [when ‘life’ begins] is one we have no real proof for either way, and is essentially ‘faith’ based, therefore we’re not going to be able to change his mind that way. I would prefer to appeal to other methods.)
Yes, I would agree that, in many ways, the allowance of abortion in the case of rape or incest does seem somewhat inconsistant with the belief that abortion is killing. That ‘child’ is just as entitled to life as those whose parents had sex willingly.
OK, let me think this through. Again, these are not my beliefs, but I am trying to explore their implications.
So… we are willing to ‘kill’ a baby of a woman who was raped. I would guess the reason behind this is that going through the pregnancy would be traumatic, a constant reminder of the horrible event. To alleviate the suffering of one person, another will die.
Pro-Life people will ofter put the burden in this sort of odd judgement call on us pro-choicers. For example, they push us to make us say when a fetus can and can’t be killed, whien it’s old enough that we would consider it murder, etc. Well, here is one they can answer for us- exactly how much suffering is worth a human life to you?
Barbara is 100% right. The real truth is that Pro-Life people are not Pro-Life at all- they’re Pro-Morality. Pro-their-personal-Morality. It has nothing to do with the ‘life’, and everything to do with punishing the selfish people who can’t take responsibility for their actions.
Robert, when Barabara says it eviscerates your right to intervene, you said she had not addressed what you had actually said. Yes, I see your point, you had never said abortion should be outlawed or stopped legally, you just wanted to ( I suppose the word would be) shun women who do it without a certain set of justifying reasons.
I think what she means is that you lose the moral high-ground when you arguement shifts from ‘trying to protect an innocent human life’ to ‘trying to punish the irresponsible’.
If a fetus’ worth is really constant, why abort ANY that do not jeopardize the mother’s life? Federal funding to pay for the medical and psychological care of pregnant rape victims, with optional extra help with adoption, could save that life you are willing to end. But the rape victim does not deserve ‘punishment’ so she is not forced to have the baby. Which, essentially, equates having a baby with punishment.
What if a raped woman has twin fetuses inside her? Would that outweight her suffering? Triplets?
Seriously, it seems it’s more about rubbing a dog’s nose in it’s mess than it is about saving any lives. If we want to save more lives, let’s stop abstinence only education and teach children about brith control, do things to work on preventing pregnancy. If all the money spent on anti-abortion was put to helping prevent pregnancy, or even (dare I say it?) trying to make life better for the children who are actually born… well, it would be a better country, that much is sure.
Well, Robert, of course I’m generalizing and extrapolating from your comments, but lay off the straw men “you can characterize them as…”, you’re smart enough to know what I was referring to was not my view point. You haven’t answered my criticisms at all, all you do is grasp at rhetoric tricks like that one. Telling.
Let me ask you: Why would you not allow women who choose to have sex to not be able to choose an abortion if they wish to, (let’s not even go to federally funded ones, suppose she pays for it herself) if you are so free of moral judgement towards having sex?
Jordan: Thanks for understanding, and thanks for your contributions. (I like your points, and I made a similar point lot earlier, I think it’s nearly impossible for people who genuinely think fetus is a person to understand the pro-choice position, and vice versa, but the moderates, and indeed most pro-lifers, seem to be more or less “Pro-morality” as in legislating their moral choices over others, than actually pro (fetal) -life)
Damn, the italics didn’t close…
Robert, I’m with Barbara; you may say that the fetus is the constant, but by placing the woman as a variable, you are, in fact, punishing her for having sex. By saying that women should not have abortion as an option because they voluntarily had sex, is like saying that pedestrians who walk in (or homeowners who live in) rough neighborhoods should not have police protection as an option because we live in these neighborhoods voluntarily; if we want enforcement of the law we should only go to or live in “safe” areas.
But traditionally, that isn’t the view society takes of folks who been mugged or had their houses broken into. No, the only folks traditionally judged like that are women who have sex. Original sin and all that, don’t’cha know.
When you say that all abortions aren’t the same, what you’re really saying is “I want an ‘out’ for “my” women, in case they need one! I just want those sluts to be punished.” No, you didn’t come out and use the word “slut”. But I’m saying that anyone who has qualms about unmarried women who have sex doesn’t have to come all the way out and say the word; their action toward us “sluts” will belie their true feelings.
You may say that you don’t view pregnancy as a punishment. Fine. Many folks in the United States do, and there are any number of stock colloquial phrases that illustrate that point. You say you want society to pressure women into not having abortions. Well, society didn’t pressure me into shit; I had my daughter because I wanted to. But I’m still the “slut” for being an unmarried mother. I don’t run in conservative circles, but I do live in a conservative area of the country. My daughter is five years old, and is now getting old enough to notice this. Her lessons on sexism are just beginning.
Robert, saying that in fact equal treatment doesn’t result for the muggees in the above hypothetical is a complete dodge so I won’t even comment on it. The point is to illustrate how intent and morality generally operate in determining illegality of conduct. You wouldn’t have gotten very far in my criminal law class in which we had to discuss hypotheticals like attempted murder by use of voodoo dolls.
And I get that you are not trying to make abortion totally illegal, but you appear not to appreciate that the standards that you would superimpose on whether or not abortion should be illegal flow not from what it is that gives society a legitimate right to intervene in a party’s private conduct (harm to third parties) but on whether or not the woman abused her autonomy by consenting to sex — which is something that we do not prohibit or normally punish (punish being used in the broadest sense of the term — which is to say, make one’s legal status or rights contingent on whether one engaged in the conduct or not).
In a previous post you rejected my contention that you couldn’t say what a fetus was worth until you knew what it’s mother had done or failed to do to bring it about, and now you are pretty much agreeing that the value of the fetus does depend on the mother’s antecedent action. Well, it has to be one or the other. To say that the fetus that is a product of rape is dissimilarly situated is a joke. It is not. It is not a moral agent of any kind and its biological functioning, development and processes are indistinguishable from the fetus that is a product of any other kind of sexual relations. It has no responsibility for the bad conduct of its father and there are far less drastic actions that could be taken to protect the mother’s mental status, etc.
The differentiating factors have nothing to do with the fetus and everything to do with the woman’s antecedent conduct. Ergo this is in fact what you are judging and you are making abortion illegal in circumstances that depend on the mother’s antecedent actions and not the act of abortion itself. So the same act when intentionally done by one person is legal but it is illegal when done by another and the driving force in determining its legality is not the intent of the act itself (abortion, which is quite intentional in either circumstance) but the intent or morality of antecedent actions (what one did or failed to do at the time the pregnancy was set in motion), even thouugh those actions are not in and of themselves punishable (again, used in the broadest sense).
Your goal of saving fetuses is just a pretext because fetal death is irrelevant to the analysis. And I’m telling you that this is so not how we judge the legality of any other action under our entire criminal justice system. It is actions not intentions that give rise to illegal conduct.
If you are setting this up as an extralegal system I must have missed something, because insofar as I can tell you are talking in terms of legality. If you aren’t then it is of no concern to me — people will agree with you or not, and so far as I can tell, in the real world (that one that is so important to you when it comes to protecting muggees) people don’t agree with you, at least not if one judges by what they choose to do in their private lives. If society had a consensus then we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
I’d like to add that there is simply no reason for a woman who is pregnant as the result of rape to believe in the inherent fairness of someone who is already looking at her pregnancy as their own moral proving ground. Why on earth would I want a total stranger to have the right to determine whether I was “raped enough” to permit what the rapist has already denied me: The right to autonomy and control over my own body. Why on earth should I have to place my trust in this person to judge me fairly ? By assuming the right to play judge and jury with me at all, this person has already overstepped their rights and already dispensed with common decency. I have no reason to believe that their sense of common decency would suddenly kick in when it was time for them to give me some kind of “right to kill” because of a rape which THEY get to decide the truth of.
Rape is tough enough to prove under the current justice system as it is. Men of all political stripes seem to have way more concern for the man’s rights than the woman’s. This attitude is all over this blog. Now I have to place my reproductive rights in their hands, too ? Forget it.
Yep. What you said, alsis.
It’s beyond arrogant to expect the right to judge and decide for me if my situation makes me worthy of getting a medical procedure done.
Barbara, that may just be the best evisceration of the moralist pro-life position I’ve ever read. Take a bow!
Barbara and Robert certainly keep things interesting. Thanks to both (and to our gracious host, as always).
Since Robert does not seek to criminalize abortion, maybe tort law provides the better model for discussion than criminal law. Under tort law, we generally have no duty to help a stranger, no matter how badly the stranger needs the help. But we do have a duty not to harm, and a duty to help those with whom we have certain special relationships. Seems straightforward, but applying these principles drives libertarians (and, honestly, everyone) a little crazy.
No Duty to Help vs. Duty Not to Harm: Where does “no duty to help” end and “duty not to harm” begin? The boundary consists of vague social norms about autonomy and the distinction between active and passive conduct. The pro-choice side argues that abortion is permissible because a woman has no duty to engage in pregnancy for the benefit of a fetus. The pro-live side argues that pregnancy is merely a passive state, and that abortion represents active harmful interference with that state. (An entire separate discussion
discussion is dedicated to the proposition that pregnancy does not merely consist of refraining from impinging upon a fetus’s autonomy; it involves active sacrifice of the woman’s autonomy to an extent that … well, that defies analogy.)
No Duty to Help vs. Special Relationship: Which relationships as sufficiently “special” to overrule the “no duty to help” standard? Again, it’s all about mushy social norms that, honestly, can be hard to rationalize. But a relationship may arise where someone engages in voluntary action, even if the boundaries of that duty might not have been apparent to the person engaging in the action. Thus, you may not have a duty to rescue a drowning man; but once you start to swim out to him, you may thereby create a relationship that will subject you to liability if you quit.
Here I sense Robert is arguing that the relationship between the woman and the fetus differs in the two instances. In the case of rape, the woman has not volunteered to enter into any relationship to the fetus. In the case of consensual sex, Robert argues, the woman (and the man, presumably) constructively consent to a relationship of aid to any resulting fetus and child.
Thus, in this discussion I sense Robert is not focused on the woman’s wrongful act of recreational sex. Rather, he is focusing on the breach of duty to aid. The duty to bear a fetus does not depend upon the “value” of the fetus any more than the duty to rescue a drowning man depends upon the value of the man. And a woman’s autonomy is not degraded when she gets pregnant any more than a swimmer’s autonomy is degraded when he starts to rescue a drowning victim. Rather, they are both called upon to fulfill a duty that they constructively accepted. (What does “constructively” mean? That’s just a lawyer’s way to avoid saying “a duty that mushy social norms may impose on you whether you like it or not.”)
So far, so good. But see the next post for a footnote.
Admittedly, the swimming analogy breaks down under analysis. The duty to continue the rescue of a drowning man is triggered by concern for opportunity costs: if you refrain from beginning to swim out to the drowning man, someone else may leap to the rescue. The drowning man has an existing interest to be protected, and your wrongful conduct in starting something you won’t finish harms that man’s interest. In legal shorthand: 3d Party relied on Defendant’s deceptive conduct to the detriment of Plaintiff/Victim’s interests.
Applying this analogy to a fetus requires supernatural reasoning: Who is the Plaintiff/Victim here?
Not the fetus. Whereas a drowning man has an interest in you not engaging in a false rescue, a fetus has no interest in the woman not engaging in false pro-creation; the fetus would not be born in either event. No detrimental reliance here.
Maybe the man’s sperm or DNA is the Plaintiff/Victim. If only Woman X had refrained from having sex, the man might have declared, “If you won’t put out, I’ll find someone who will!” and then had sex Woman Y who might be willing to bring a (different) fetus (involving the man’s sperm) to term. But instead, the man (3d party) relied the willingness to have sex (deceptive conduct) of Woman X (Defendant) to the detriment of the sperm/DNA’s interest in self-perpetuation (Plaintiff/Victim’s interest).
Maybe the fetus’s soul is the Plaintiff/Victim. Maybe souls exist prior to fetuses, and are dolled out to fetuses in order of conception or something. Thus the soul has an existing interest in being allocated to a fetus that will be born, and they rely to their detriment when people create fetuses that they don’t bring to term because they lose the opportunity to be assigned to some different fetus. That is, the soul allocator (3d party) relied on the pregnancy (deceptive conduct) caused by the man and woman (Defendants) to the detriment of the soul’s interest in being born (Plaintiff/Victim’s interest).
In short, I think the swimming tort analogy doesn’t work. But there are other social duties – most obviously, the duty of a parent to care for a child. I didn’t use it as an analogy because that duty seems infinitely mushy. For example, I am not aware that a parent has a duty to donate a kidney to his kid, even if the kid would die otherwise, but I’m also not aware of a court that has ruled on the question. With so much ambiguity about the extent of the relationship, it’s not very useful for an analogy.
nobody.really… that was wonderful. Very thoughtful.
IN ADDITION TO the desire to protect innocent life, there is a desire to protect the autonomy of women who have not consented to sexual intercourse. These desires are balanced.
In no other way do we allow somebody to intentionally and deliberately take a human life because they wish to “protect their autonomy.”
If a fetus is innocent life, then the woman’s autonomy is irrelevant. Period. I realize you do not like that argument, because then you have to admit that rape victims shouldn’t be allowed to kill their babies, and it makes you look like a great big meanie.
By the way, both you and your fictional neighbor are guilty of the same crime.
In no other way do we allow somebody to intentionally and deliberately take a human life because they wish to “protect their autonomy.”
Nonsense. A person about to be victimized by rape is certainly empowered, under most circumstances, to end the life of (probably) her attacker. (Under some odd circumstance where she could easily and safely escape, most people would generally expect her to do that instead…but not all of us. I’d have no problem with her pulling the trigger.) Rape is certainly a violation of autonomy, and protecting that autonomy is valid self-defense.
Nations fight wars to defend their autonomy.
A slave who kills his master is striking out to re-assert his autonomy.
Autonomy is one of the things that we most often kill to defend, it seems to me. Certainly it is one of the most defensible reasons for killing.
If a fetus is innocent life, then the woman’s autonomy is irrelevant.
I am capable of weighing two conflicting values. A fetus can be innocent life, and a woman’s autonomy can be important, at the same time. That this makes the moral decision difficult does not have causal power to make one of the moral considerations involved irrelevant. YMMV.
Oh, if you really believed in the concept of YMMV outside abstract discussions, Robert, I think a lot of bandwidth could have been saved over the last several months. :/
Nonsense. A person about to be victimized by rape is certainly empowered, under most circumstances, to end the life of (probably) her attacker.
This is called “self-defense,” not “protecting her autonomy.” The law does not recognize a waste-the-bastard justification, however you or I might feel about it. Nor does it ground the right of a rape victim to defend herself on her “autonomy.” Rape is rightfully considered great bodily harm, and that’s a situation where deadly force is justified.
Your ignorance of the law aside, if the issue in abortion is the taking of an innocent life, then the woman’s autonomy is irrelevant, just as you admit that you believe “But I forgot to use birth control!” would be an irrelevant argument.
A pro-lifer would feel sorrow for rape victims forced to carry to term, but would acknowledge that, terrible as such a thing might be, it cannot justify the murder of a baby. A faux-lifer says “well, abortion is OK in cases of rape or incest” because their opposition to abortion hinges not on the value of a human life, but on the mother’s sexual behavior.
if the issue in abortion is the taking of an innocent life, then the woman’s autonomy is irrelevant
Nope. Balanced rights. If your moral compass won’t permit two conflicting values, then you have my sympathy.
But mine does permit it, and so I reject your reductionist characterization as incorrect.
Nope. Balanced rights.
Ah, then you are a supporter of Roe v. Wade, which is grounded in balancing the state’s interest in preserving fetal life and the woman’s right to autonomy?
Please explain, again, how the mother’s ‘autonomy’ trumps an innocent baby’s right to life as long as that baby hasn’t been born yet.
So, Robert doesn’t believe abortion should be criminalized.
Robert believes that women getting abortions for certain reasons should be shunned by ‘society’, though he has left what exactly that is vague. Her family? Neighborhood? Country?
Now, how much shunning are we talking about? Robert is currently under no obligation to, say, speak to his wife, daughter, sister, etc, ever again if they have an abortion he disapproves of.
On the other hand, how far can he go before it falls under discrimination or abuse laws?
This conversation keeps dancing between personal morality and action. Whenever one seems to be reaching a point, it dances back the other way.
Ah, then you are a supporter of Roe v. Wade, which is grounded in balancing the state’s interest in preserving fetal life and the woman’s right to autonomy?
I would be amenable to a law in my state that attempted that balance in a democratic fashion.
Please explain, again, how the mother’s ‘autonomy’ trumps an innocent baby’s right to life as long as that baby hasn’t been born yet.
It doesn’t.
You can speak in terms of trumps and absolutes and moral equations where only one factor has value and all the rest are irrelevant all day long, mythago. Your view of this (if this is your view, and not just a rhetorical ploy whose point escapes me) is flawed, and I don’t endorse it. I’m not going to accept your incorrect framing.
I would be amenable to a law in my state that attempted that balance in a democratic fashion.
This isn’t a Congressional hearing, Robert. You can just say you think that the courts shouldn’t touch abortion but you think that the legislation in your state should mimic Roe.
Your view of this (if this is your view, and not just a rhetorical ploy whose point escapes me) is flawed
You keep saying that, yet you back it up with nothing other than platitudes (“I am capable of weighing two conflicting values”) and snippiness (“If your moral compass won’t permit two conflicting values, then you have my sympathy”). Oh, and a blatant misunderstanding of the law regarding killing in self-defense.
It’s not a rhetorical game, Robert: it’s simple logic. If a fetus is an innocent human life, then we give that fetus the same rights and protections that we extend to all human life, and we don’t permit anyone to kill a fetus unless we would give that same permission for killing a born human being.
To say that abortion is acceptable in cases of nonconsensual sex only is to treat an unborn life differently than a born life, and to allow justifications for taking unborn life that we do not extend to born life. Your claim that the law permits killing to “protect autonomy” is nonsense.
As soon as you start looking into the circumstances of conception, you have stopped treating the fetus as a human being–with all the protection the law grants a human being–and started basing the worth of its life on the mother’s sexual behavior.
As far as “weighing rights” goes, if a fetus is a human life, then we weigh rights the same way we do with babies. A woman should absolutely have the right to abort if she is in danger of grave bodily harm or death from the pregnancy and the abortion is necessary to save her life. That is self-defense. Unless you are willing to say that mothers should be allowed to kill their five-year-olds if the kid affects their “autonomy,” of course.
As soon as you start looking into the circumstances of conception, you have stopped treating the fetus as a human being”“with all the protection the law grants a human being”“and started basing the worth of its life on the mother’s sexual behavior.
Since we’re making an exception for rape or nonconsensual incest, it seems like we’re basing it on the FATHER’S sexual behavior, not the mother’s.
But of course, that equally valid framing doesn’t permit abortion hardliners to sputter about punishing women.
It’s not a rhetorical game, Robert: it’s simple logic. If a fetus is an innocent human life, then we give that fetus the same rights and protections that we extend to all human life, and we don’t permit anyone to kill a fetus unless we would give that same permission for killing a born human being.
We permit the killing of innocent human life, when that killing is necessary or subordinate to some greater good. Your argument depends on their being some absolute prohibition on such killing – but there is no such prohibition.
Instead, we have a very strong cultural value against killing innocents – but an explicit recognition that occasionally it is directly necessary, or is tragically-but-acceptably part of seeking some greater good. Innocent people died digging the Panama Canal, and the people sending them there knew that it would happen. In fact, innocent people die on ANY construction project more involved than a one-lane road – engineers can generally project how many deaths and maimings there will be.
In the case of society permitting abortion in the case of rape, we basically say “there is a good which we wish to protect – the life of this innocent creature. Unfortunately in this case, your right to autonomy has been compromised, by the actions of an external agent. Because of this, our society will accept your decision to end the life of this innocent creature – a decision we would normally condemn – because we value your autonomy and your right to decide whether or not to open your body to new life.”
Sometimes – depending on the circumstances – one right is weighed more heavily. After birth, we don’t permit rape victims to kill their children – because after birth, there are other options available and it is not necessary to infringe on the mother’s rights to protect the right of the child.
“Simple logic” is inadequate for moral reasoning.
Other examples of innocents whose deaths we permit:
Cops kill bystanders, by mistake or by accident. (Like that Brazilian man gunned down in London – who may or may not have been innocent.) The loss of life is tragic and regretted – but is better than the alternative, of creating an environment where the police never use deadly force and the “bad guys” take full advantage of that fact.
In wartime, soldiers kill innocents – sometimes by the thousands. Sometimes this is a case of a misguided bomb. Other times it is a case where a decision is made to attack a target despite the presence of innocents in the area. The loss of life is tragic and regretted – but better than the alternative of losing the war and having MORE innocents destroyed.
Firefighters sometimes have to make awful decisions – do we hose down THIS row of houses, or THAT one? Do we charge into the Trade Center and try to rescue people, or do we stay out and protect our own? Either way, innocent people run the risk of dying.
Protection of innocent life is a strong cultural value; it could stand to be made stronger. Part of that strengthening ought, in my view, to be a renewed commitment to nurturing young life and children. But regardless of that, this cultural value does not rise to the level of an absolute trump card – “that would kill innocent life, and is thus forbidden”. It is an unfortunate necessity of life that innocent lives are sometimes risked, and sometimes lost, in the service of values which temporarily or situationally are more important than the protection of life.
That said, it IS refreshing to see you advocating so strongly that innocent life should be protected.
Robert, as you well know, we are not advocating the protection of innocent life at all costs, for much the same reason that you stated: it’s not a trump card that overwrites all other values and priorities. These other losses of innocent life (some of which I wouldn’t really characterize as such) are tolerated generally by reason that they are considered to sometimes be necessary for the protection of others — thus, taking out a gunman on a roof that ends up killing an innocent bystander (by either the gunman or the police) would usually be characterized as an unfortunate but unavoidable effect of actions taken in the greater interest of public safety. All of your other examples are similar. The fact that they are abused (as in, for instance, not enough advance planning being done to avoid civilian losses during wartime or too hasty of a judgment to engage in war in the first instance) does not vitiate the underlying principle in toto.
I do not understand the greater social good that is being advanced by letting some women but not others have an abortion. I don’t know how or why you came to the conclusion that pregnancy is more threatening emotionally or physically to a woman who has been raped than it is to any other woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy. By harping on the “voluntariness” of the act (the one thing you can know for certain about a pregnancy that isn’t technically the result of rape) you are clearly buying into the notion of pregnancy as punishment, for all of your denials, because you would make rights contingent on antecedent willingness to engage in sex. It also helps you to avoid pesky questions like, well, what if it wasn’t rape but it was done to avoid getting into a nasty fight with a sometimes abusive partner? It’s your own personal bright line.
To try to summarize: If the pretext for intervening is the protection of innocent life then giving permission to abort to some bearers of innocent life but not others is nonsensical, especially if one subscribes to the view that pregnancy is naught but a nuisance and an inconvenience (which is how many permit themselves not to bother worrying about harm to the mother from continuing a pregnancy).
If pregnancy is more than an inconvenience and a nuisance, then to forbid abortion to those who have been careless simply on the grounds that they have been careless (whatever else their situation) is akin to refusing to assist those whose peril is the result of negligence (like refusing to try to rescue someone in a car accident because you know that they were drinking while driving). Why should the police or fire or rescue squad risk their own lives to save such a miscreant?
And this is to overlook that there are many, many people who really don’t agree that the unborn has sufficient worth at each stage of its being to overcome the normal right one has to do with one’s body what one pleases, or that such a metaphysical question is one that we normally leave to the judgment of those most affected by how one might answer it. There is a societal consensus Robert, and it is that at around the time of viability (and really a few weeks or even a month beforehand), what is inside a uterus is sufficiently close to a newborn that we do limit the choices one has in its disposition. But the focus is on the fetus — and women who have been raped are just as much subject to that consensus as any others as, in my judgment, they should be.
There are many on this board who don’t agree with that consensus, just as there are many who don’t agree with societal consensus on any number of important life and death issues (capital punishment, for instance).
Robert-
The examples you give don’t seem analogous to allowing a rape victim to get an abortion. When a police officer kills a bystander, that is an accident. When non-combatants are killed in war, they are not (supposed to be) targeted directly. When an abortion is performed on a woman who was raped, the intention is to kill the fetus, and that intention is directly carried out.
The events you list are unfortunate accidents that society has to cope with. In this argument, they would seem slightly more analogous with making the raped woman HAVE the baby. She would be the ‘victim’ in the ‘greater good’ of protecting all life.
Because, again, how does one quantify how much suffering is worth taking a life? There are alot of lines to be crossed and redrawn before I would say that argument is logical.
What if a raped woman has twin fetuses? Does her suffering outweight two lives? How about if they were triplets?
What is a raped woman is held by her rapist for eight months before she can escape? Can she still abort?
You are saying raped women can ‘protect their autonomy’ by aborting a fetus, but non-raped women must surrender their autonomy to society and keep their baby. The argument being that the consensual sex-having women entered into the pregnancy willingly.
Let’s shift the analogy you used… a woman wants to have sex. THAT is her intention, not pregnancy, and not abortion. The sex is the goal. Just as, in war, the goal is… what ever the goal may be. To topple a dictatorship. To free a people. To take over a country. Whatever. Now, she can plan out her ‘attack’ so she reduces the risk of pregnancy, by using brith control. But sometimes, accidents happen, and innocent lives are lost.
Or, to use an older analogy of yours – a woman is driving and is taking all precautions with ehr driving, but by some freak accident she kills a pedestrian. Now… is that woman going to go to jail? That person is 100% dead, and all so this woman could drive to the store for some ice cream. But before she is convicted of vehicular manslaughter, you’d have to prove some sort of negligence on her part. If she really took precautions and drove safely, she would not be blamed. Would she be shunned by society for having killed a man for ice cream? No, I sort of doubt it.
Do you understand how your view seems inconsistant? You are saying that a fetus has a fixed value, a value worth protecting, but not in all cases. We don’t see how you could feel that way, and REALLY care about the fetus. If a woman is raped, why not federally fund her pregnancy and therapy, and help with adoption? With abortion, the baby, an innocent, is killed!
Basically, when it comes down, it’s because I don’t think of a fetus as being a person. So, I don’t feel the need to protect it. But when I think of real innocent people, I would not kill them to protect someone from trauma. If a raped woman was held for nine months, and had the baby, I would not allow her to kill the baby, regardless of the ammount of suffering she would incur from it’s continued living (and I don’t think you would either, of course). I mean, I am very VERY against the killing of innocents. I just don’t see a fetus that way.
Oh, one more thought.
If a criminal has a hostage, it would be in the greater good for the police to allow the hostage to die in order to catch the criminal. Right? So if they come out of the bank or whatnot, carrying the person in front of them, the police should just open fire. The one innocent person will die, but the greater good is served – that criminal is not allowed to run free.
This, to me, is equal to the argument for abortion for rape victims. I would not support the police opening fire on a hostage, because I have put a value on innocent human life.
Since we’re making an exception for rape or nonconsensual incest, it seems like we’re basing it on the FATHER’S sexual behavior, not the mother’s.
Your own comment on the subject was “I am arguing that people who voluntarily engage in heterosexual vaginal intercourse are voluntarily reducing their own autonomy by engaging in behavior that is known to lead to the creation of new human life – a voluntary reduction in autonomy that is not engaged in by the victim of rape or coercive incest.”
But if you’re looking at the father’s behavior, then what you’re really saying is that whether a woman may abortion depends entirely on the behavior of the man; she has no say nor influence in the matter. Gee, that’s an improvement.
We permit the killing of innocent human life, when that killing is necessary or subordinate to some greater good. Your argument depends on their being some absolute prohibition on such killing – but there is no such prohibition.
No, Robert, that is not my argument at all. My argument is very simple: if a fetus is an innocent human life, then it is deserving of the same value as a born human life, and we may not kill a fetus unless we could kill a born human for the same reasons.
“The mother’s autonomy,” or “the baby was the result of rape” are not reasons we permit the death of a born person. Necessity, coercion, self-defense; these are justifications for homicide. We don’t permit a mother to kill her child after birth not because there are alternatives, but because “loss of autonomy” is not a justification for killing. If it were, then a woman who could not get anyone to adopt her child would have a justification for murder.
Yes, there are many situations where we permit the loss of life. There are very few where we excuse an affirmative act whose entire purpose is to end a human life that would continue without that affirmative act. “Loss of bodily autonomy” is not generally one of them.
That said, it IS refreshing to see you advocating so strongly that innocent life should be protected.
I always did. I just don’t have much patience for the notion that the relative value of the innocent life depends on how it got into the womb.
(My TV is turned off right now, but it’s still a functioning TV – I’m not going to call a repairman and complain “it’s not functioning” because it’s turned off.)
Amp, that’s nice of you, but I did satellite tv tech support for 2 years and people do that ALL THE TIME.
In response to Robert’s continued plaint that women want to control men’s sexuality but won’t let him control theirs–
It all comes down to the other people. The only parts of male “sexuality” that I want controlled are rape and abuse, scare quotes because it freaks me out to consider violent perversion in the same category as loving and/or pleasureable, consensual sex. The reason for this desire comes from that fact that when a man (or a woman, though this is much less common and should be acknowledged as such) exercises his “sexuality” by raping someone, he has violated their bodily autonomy.
I suppose that this could be summed up with the old “your rights end where mine begin.” I have no interest in telling men what to do with their bodies. I don’t want to outlaw certain sexual positions or fantasies. Masturbate as you like, have sex with whoever you want, as long as that’s what they want too. But rape is wrong. Not because I said so, but because it forcibly denudes another of their rights.
I do not believe that a first trimester fetus is a person. As does Amp, I believe that personhood occurs gradually, and so am more willing to obstruct third trimeser abortions than first. But as far as I’m concerned, a first trimester fetus is not a person. Thus, abortion does not infringe on their rights, because they don’t have them.
Outlawing abotion, then, controls women’s sexaulity, which infringes on their rights. Expecting men to not rape women does not infringe on theirs. As far as I know, the only people who do want to control male sexuality are the homophobes and bigots.
Also. Birth control, if used properly, is 96% effective. We do many things in our daily lives that are far more risky. Therefore, to force a woman who has properly used birth control but still become pregnant to give birth is morally repugnant.
Pingback: Pinko Feminist Hellcat: Abortion is wonderful