Good pro-choice post from The Fifty Minute Hour:
Even if we were to accept the premise that a fetus is a person, it may have a right to life, but it doesn’t have the right to subject another person against her will to painful and dangerous medical consequences. If I needed a kidney transplant, I might be able to get the organ I needed to survive by stabbing someone and forcibly removing one of theirs. But even if they recovered with no ill health effects after the attack, I’d be guilty of a moral (and legal) wrong for subjecting them to it in the first place. Those people who want to consider fetuses person must remember that even another person with a right to life doesn’t have the right to that life at the expense of another person, not even if that person is the child’s parent.
Read the whole thing..
Holy shit.
Ms Philips writes that “The anti-abortion side is able to essentially write off the suffering of pregnant women by saying that they shouldn’t be able to kill a fetus just to avoid carrying it for a few months”, but then attempts to justify her own opinion by implying that one has a moral right to be able to avoid suffering by killing a person.
She also states “Those people who want to consider fetuses person must remember that even another person with a right to life doesn’t have the right to that life at the expense of another person”. But surely one must then also claim that severely disabled people, who could not live other than at other people’s expense, have no right to life worth talking about. Their “right to life” need not be respected, and we should feel no pangs of guilt if we decide to let these people die.
This is distasteful to me, but these are the consequences of her argument.
We, as a people, have a moral responsibility to help those who need help. If we do not, we have failed.
I’d like if people remember that Ms Phillips argument and my own are made accepting (for the sake of argument at least) that a foetus is a person.
But surely one must then also claim that severely disabled people, who could not live other than at other people’s expense, have no right to life worth talking about.
I think there’s a difference between the ‘expense’ of effort, money and time, which can be shared throughout a family or community (this is the support we give to a disabled person) and the physical danger, damage and suffering associated with giving birth, which must be born by one person, a person who may have taken on that burden already, many times, and may be physically incapable of taking it on again.
I compare it to a fireman who just can not go back into a burning building to rescue anyone else. Although the people inside may die without his rescue, we can not compel him to go back into the fire over and over again.
To use your fireman example, why should we expect him to go into that building at all? Why should we expect anyone too?
David Barrett:
“To use your fireman example, why should we expect him to go into that building at all? Why should we expect anyone too?”
How are firemen hired? I thought they volunteered of their own free will, but maybe there’s some kind of fireman draft where the government fills a quota by randomly condemning people to a life of burning buildings. If they want to retire early due to psychological harm, too bad! Hey, someone’s got to do it!
I think you’ve either missed or misunderstood the last sentence.
Why should we expect anyone to help anyone else?
In response to David Barrett:
I guess I’m just not sure what either you or Alison are trying to achieve with that slightly off-topic example.
In the case of firemen, police officers, doctors, and other vital, heroic professions, I guess we can expect them to help us because they are paid to do so, and they likely enjoy the feeling of having freely decided to make a fundamental contribution to someone’s well being.
I further generalised into “why should we expect ANYONE to help anyone else?”. This is not just limited to such professions. It is generalised to cover all people.
I still think the entire question is drifting away from the main point, but alright:
There is no reason to expect anyone to help anyone else if they are not legally forced to. To go back to the original example, I should not expect my brother to donate his kidney in order to save or improve my life, even after he accidentally damages mine while we were horsing around for fun. It’s a decision he might regret, but it’s his choice, and I’m sure you’ll agree that the state has no right to dictate how he will use his body in this instance.
David, quit being so disingenuous. You know there is a big difference between someone being forced to risk their life against their will, and someone voluntarily helping someone else. You know that the phrase “at the expense of” in that context meant that it was one life balanced against another, rather than simply the expenditure of time or effort. I understand that anti-abortion people view it as being so important that any deception is justified, but it’s really painful to watch you do damage to your own cause. In the future, please honestly contribute the wealth of your accumulated wisdom to discussions, or remain silent.
There’s also a difference between what we may expect of moral people and what we may compel people to do. I would expect that any moral person would donate blood in an emergency to save the life of another person, but I can’t force them to do so, nor should I be able to. I don’t accept that a fetus has the same legal rights as a person. However, even if I were to grant that premise, a crucial one in most pro-life arguments, it doesn’t follow that we can compel someone to undergo physical hardship and risk to themselves to gestate a fetus. If I did believe that a fetus had the same legal rights as a person, I might morally condemn a woman who had an abortion to save herself the discomfort of pregnancy, but that doesn’t give me the right to force her to endure the pregnancy under pain of imprisonment.
I think the core of the argument is flawed: what a woman (or a couple) who wants an abortion is refusing isn’t pregnancy, it’s motherhood. (BTW, at least in Canada, more married or attached women have abortions than single ones, mainly because they have more chances to get pregnant. In the case of couples who decide that they don’t want another child, or a child right now, what they’re refusing is parenthood, not pregnancy).
Pregnancy is nine months: parenthood is, for better or for worse, from the time the kid is born until your death or its death. What’s being rejected isn’t the physical sacrifice of pregnancy: what’s being rejected is the lifetime responsiblity to rear the child that comes after it. Adoption doesn’t undo this tie: if the women I know who’ve made this choice are anything to go by, you never stop worrying about the child. You’re a mom. You just don’t raise the baby.
I’m pro-choice for the very obvious reason that no-one should be forced into parenthood; it’s a HUGE responsibility and should only be shouldered by the willing.
Oh, and may I point out that the freedom to have an abortion does not imply that all other choices are eliminated: women who get pregnant can decide to 1) have the baby and raise it themselves, with a partner or with help from family, 2) have the baby and give it up for adoption (a very tough choice) or 3) have an abortion. Several posts on this board imply that 3) have an abortion becomes the ONLY choice a woman can or will make. The word is choice, people: if you want to reduce the number of abortions, work to get support for young mothers or families struggling to raise kids (ie, you’re looking for the 80,000.00 plus that it costs to raise a child to the age of majority).
As an alternate, let me play devil’s advocate: I’d be perfectly willing to accept that the state has the right to dictate to all women that all eggs fertilized MUST be carried to term, no exceptions. But this would only work if parallel legislation was passed that would force every man who fathered a child to pay the complete costs of that child’s care, from birth to death (not just a couple of hundred dollars child support: the full cost, for the full life of the child). If the father can’t do it, then his family’s assets would be seized or garnished; if a man is fathering more kids than he can afford he should be forced to undergo an vasectomy, so that he can no longer father children. This goes for all cases: if he didn’t know the girl wasn’t on the pill, too bad; if she was a hooker, too bad; if birth control failed, too bad; he was drunk out of his mind and 16, too bad.
I suspect that you’d scream blue murder at this kind of invasion of physical and financial privacy; but if the state has the right to force women to accept the physical and financial responsibility of having children against their will, then it also has the right (and indeed must do this to be egalitarian) to force a man to accept the physical and financial responsibility of having children against his will.
Personally, I think this sounds draconian and totalitarian, but if you really want the world to control wombs, then you’d better be prepared to have it control penises.
“However, even if I were to grant that premise, a crucial one in most pro-life arguments, it doesn’t follow that we can compel someone to undergo physical hardship and risk to themselves to gestate a fetus. If I did believe that a fetus had the same legal rights as a person, I might morally condemn a woman who had an abortion to save herself the discomfort of pregnancy, but that doesn’t give me the right to force her to endure the pregnancy under pain of imprisonment.”
Yup. I first heard this line of reasoning years ago and it’s been the most compelling to me ever since. We don’t force a father whose kid needs a kidney transplant to survive to donate a kidney even if the father is a perfect match, even if the kid would die without it, and even though the father’s choice to have sex at one point is the reason the kid exists. Likewise, we shouldn’t force mothers to donate their bodies against their will.
Period.
I like these analogies, but they fail to highlight one of the great and obvious strengths of the pro-choice argument on this line, a strength I rarely see used in such debates for some reason.
When you donate a kindney, rescue someone from a fire, or help a disabled person, you’re saving the life of someone who has a personality, a history, emotional depth, memories, opinions, skills, a useful place in a social network, etc. Basically all the things that REALLY make you human.
A fetus has none of those. Unless the mother wanted it, it’s a non-loss.
There’s a problem with this line of reasoning.
Assuming as above that the fetus is a person note:
A pregnant woman (who wasn’t raped) made a decision (to have sex) which has a certain chance of resulting in her having a person dependent on her for life. This leads to some responsibility for this person.
Now we all make lots of decisions that have a certain chance of resulting in someone dying as a result of our actions and its still moral to do them so long as the odds are low enough. For example, it’s ok to drive even though you might kill someone. In fact, if you drive and get in a wreck and the person you hit needs a kidney transplant you’re still not morally obligated to give them your kidney even though you chose to drive.
However, if you drove drunk the situation is entirely different. You chose to behave recklessly and someone got hurt and it is your responsibility to do what you can to rectify the situation. In this situation i think yes, a drunk driver who injured someone should have to donate their kidney to save them.
So I think if you follow this through in the abortion situation (again assuming the fetus is a person) you conclude:
a) abortion is totally fine in the case of rape
b) abortion is ok when you’ve behaved responsibly and used adequate birth control.
c) if you don’t use birth control and get pregnant you behave recklessly and have a responsibility to the fetus to cary it to term.
(Furthermore, in the case of a threat to your own life it would still be acceptable to have an abortion due to some sort of self-defense exception. Similarly the case of birth defects comes under your opinion on euthenasia for the severely disabled. The point is that if you believe that all fetuses are people then you should conclude that some abortions are murder and some are not.)
There’s a guy in Texas who has organized a boycott of building contractors in an effort to block the building of a much needed planned parenthood center. His efforts have caused some of these contractors to receive 1000’s of calls from around the country threatening loss of business if they don’t stop working on the Planned Parenthood facility. I’ve already given him a call at his place of business; but if you would like call him and let him know what it feels like to be pressured by this kind of abuse, please feel free to call him. Here is his contact information:
Mr.Danze of
Maldonado & Danze Inc
(512) 837-9677
9506 Brown Ln
Austin, TX
Oh and please feel free to repost this note elsewhere. Thanks!
Jo: Not all women are necessarily avoiding mere parenthood (I use “mere” in a tongue-in-cheek manner, of course). Some are avoiding pregnancy. For me, being pregnant would be just about one of the worst things in the world, and if I found myself pregnant (pretty tough to do, since I’ve had my tubes tied and use condoms), I’d want to NOT BE PREGNANT as soon as humanly possible. Beyond that, yeah, I don’t want to parent, but the most immediate concern for me would be to “get this thing out of me right now!”
Noah: Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy. Yes, there are many risks to having sex – contracting diseases, getting (someone) pregnant, even death (heart attack mid-orgasm? What a way to go!). But consent to sex is not ipso facto consent to death, and if someone dies while having sex, would you say to their survivors, “Well, they shouldn’t have had sex – they knew there was a risk.”?
Besides, Noah, even if we except that a woman who consented to sex w/o birth control is morally obligated to carry her child to term, that doesn’t have a bearing on if she is legally obligated, which I thought was the point.
Jo, don’t forget men who are raped, and whose rapist becomes pregnant. They better support the fuck out of that baby, because it is God’s will.
I am prochoice and have been all my life. I am prochoice because I don’t believe that anyone has the right to impose their morality on my body- period.
Each attempt to personalize the argument for choice by trying to offer analagous situations actually may have the opposite effect for someone who is prolife or wavering. In fact after reading the discussion above, I find myself questioning my prochoice stance- and it is one that I have held forever and never thought I would question.
The core arguments of the prolife stance that need to be addressed are:
1. when life begins (There is no way to prove when life begins and therefore it becomes your own personal moral decision- which you can’t (should not be allowed to) inflict on someone else)
2. abortion is an easy way out- ( pick up any literature from any clinic performing abortions and you will find that it is not an easy clinical procedure. Any thinking person will be affected by undergoing this procedure- and would you really want to force someone who could under go an abortion with no thought or regret or questioning to be a parent? I don’t mean this as any slam for someone who has had an abortion. I think that prolife arguments have painted a completely false picture of abortion as an easy, scottfree method of birth control and it isn’t.)
3. That an unwanted child can easily find a home or there are a multitude of options for people who find themselves pregnant and alone.
4. That pregnancy is a glorious wonderful thing with few, if any, negative ramifications. (As Amy Phillips’s said, it is a medical condition that can have serious long term consequences of the physical, and mental health of a person.)
5. That sex for the sake of sex is evil or immoral. (this is the underlying warrant which fuels the attempts to limit access to birth control or sex ed which could actually do more to cut down on abortion than making it illegal. If prolifers were really consistent in their desire to see abortion ended, they would be 100% behind sex education and easy access to birth control…)
These underlying assumptions fuel the prolife argument. There are probably more, but my 9 month old is awake and I need to go.
One more note-
A newer tact to take is the one that has been illuminated here and that is that the abortion topic has become politicized- that is it is no longer really about outlawing abortion (for the politicians) it is actually pandering to the prolife consituency.
There’s a whole book on this argument: Breaking the Abortion Deadlock by Eileen McDonagh (Oxford University Press, 1996). In a 1999 issue of the Albany Law Review (Volume 62, Number 3), Prof. McDonagh published a compelling and streamlined condensation of her thesis. Here’s a quote from the introduction to the article:
“If a woman does not consent to pregnancy, the fetus’s effects on her body constitute serious harm impinging upon her bodily integrity and liberty. The quantity and quality of the fetus’s harm to a woman when it imposes a nonconsensual pregnancy on her justifies the use of deadly force to stop it. Bodily integrity and liberty are fundamental rights. Although the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not obligate the state to protect a person’s bodily integrity and liberty, the Equal Protection Clause does mandate contingent protection. Namely, if the state protects the bodily integrity and liberty of some people, the state is obligated to provide protection to others who are similarly situated. When harm results from a fetus, that harm similarly situates a woman to other people who have suffered harm to their bodily integrity and liberty. The state does act to protect people from harm in most situations: hence, the state is obliged to act to stop harm to a woman’s bodily integrity and liberty resulting from the fetus. The state’s refusal to fund abortions as the necessary means to stop that harm is thus an unconstitutional deprivation of equal protection.”
Sounds like the Phillips post is just a plagiarized version of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous article “A Defense of Abortion.” (Read about it here.)
Anyway, the analogy fails for numerous reasons:
1. The fetus is not an aggressor taking the mother hostage. The fetus didn’t ask to exist in the first place. The only reason the fetus exists is because the mother and father chose to engage in reproductive activity.
2. Unless the mother and father are utter morons, they had to know that reproductive activity sometimes leads to, well, reproduction. They both therefore bear the responsibility for the fact that the fetus exists.
3. Abortion is not even remotely equivalent to politely declining to donate a kidney to a stranger. Abortion is the deliberate killing of a fetus that exists only because of the mother’s and father’s choices. Thus, the situation is more like this: You deliberately or accidentally stab someone in the back such that his kidneys are destroyed. Thus it’s your own fault that the person is in the position of needing a kidney to survive. Then, when it is requested that you donate one of your own kidneys to help out the person you injured, you instead pay someone to hack him to death or have his brains suctioned out with a vacuum. THAT’s analogous to what happens with an abortion.
4. Here’s what the whole argument boils down to in the end: Yes, the fetus is a human life, but it’s just too damn much trouble to take care of her when she’s not born yet, so it should be legal to have her killed at that point. Isn’t there something odd about claiming not only that parents have no duty to take care of a child, but that they can have the child put to death in situations where the child is too much trouble? I mean, children can be a hell of a lot of trouble after they’re born — why isn’t that an excuse to kill them then too?
Three replies…
First for Bree, who characterised my argument as “Well, they shouldn’t have had sex – they knew there was a risk.”? And argued “Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy.”
Please look back over my argument and you’ll see that I agree with you taht “sex is not consent to pregnancy.” However sex with no birth control is engaging in behavior with a very very high risk of resulting in pregnancy and thus is quite a lot like consenting to pregnancy. There’s a subtlety here, no one thinks you’re responsible for the consequences if they were extremely unlikely, however, at some undefined point the higher risk means you’re acting completely negligently. Think about the rules for negligent manslaughter as opposed to 1st degree murder.
Secondly to Razner who wrote: “Besides, Noah, even if we except that a woman who consented to sex w/o birth control is morally obligated to carry her child to term, that doesn’t have a bearing on if she is legally obligated, which I thought was the point.”
Well, things like murder are illegal precisely because they are terribly immoral. Whether given our above assumptions the harm caused to the fetus by abortion on someone who was negligent is enough to make it illegal has nothing to do with this argument and instead has to do with your opinions on what wrong things should be illegal.
(Don’t forget that this argument assumes that fetuses are fully people, an assumption I don’t believe at least before vitality.)
Finally for Joe:
Unless you’re a total moron you know that driving sometimes leads to death. So every time you’re in a car accident you bear responsibility for the accident and you should be thrown in jail. I suspect that the pregnancy rates when using good birth control aren’t much worse than the serious injury rates when driving cars.
Also, try this as a new twist on the analogy: You leave your door unlocked (for whatever reason) and someone breaks into your house. You bear responsibility for this since you knew leaving doors unlocked might result in someone steeling your stuff. Now you come home and find that someone is taking your stuff and shoot them. Is that ok? Sure it’d be more generous to give them your stuff, but it isn’t murder. Sex with good birth control is like leaving the door unlocked, it might lead to pregnancy but almost certainly won’t. And someone steeling your stuff is analogous to a fetus steeling nutrition and sustenance from the mother.
Uh, Joe, to statements 1, 2, and 4 I answer with one word: RAPE
To number 3 (and part of 1) I just say phooey. Indeed the fetus didn’t ask to come into existence. However, since it can’t say, think, or feel ANYTHING relevant, neither it nor I will say, think, or feel anything when it is terminated.
Then, when it is requested that you donate one of your own kidneys to help out the person you injured, you instead pay someone to hack him to death or have his brains suctioned out with a vacuum.
And someone steeling your stuff is analogous to a fetus steeling nutrition and sustenance from the mother.
Wow. I mean…wow. Metaphors and similes are important communication tools, but my God, they have to create some sort of reasonable parallel, or at least make sense. I’m just…wow.
When I hear pro-life arguments like these, I become more and more confident that reproductive rights will never be eliminated.
Paul: “Uh, Joe, to statements 1, 2, and 4 I answer with one word: RAPE”
Your response is irrelevant because of two things: 1) Almost all pro-lifers would make an exception for rape. 2) Rape accounts for a miniscule number of abortions anyway.
Paul: “However, since it can’t say, think, or feel ANYTHING relevant, neither it nor I will say, think, or feel anything when it is terminated.”
Fetuses can’t talk, that’s right. But this whole debate is premised on the assumption that abortion is OK even if the fetus is a human person. Are you asserting that not being able to talk means a person can be killed?
As for whether fetuses can think or feel, you might be interested to learn that brain waves can be detected around 47 days post-ovulation. There is apparently some dispute over whether that means that the fetus can feel pain, but given the presence of brain waves in a human life, I’d prefer to err on the side of NOT killing it. Would you agree that abortion could be made illegal after 48 days?
Bree said:
For me, being pregnant would be just about one of the worst things in the world, and if I found myself pregnant [snip], I’d want to NOT BE PREGNANT as soon as humanly possible.
I have to say I find myself totally in agreement with this sentiment.
But Joe, if you conceed that rape is an exception, then your moral argument is crippled. The fetus STILL didn’t ask to come into existence, and yet you’ll let someone “kill” it in this instance?
As for talking, don’t simply and distort what I said. You knew very well what I meant, and excluded those other qualifiers, THINKING, and FEELING.
Even if brainwaves are present (I seem to recall that this was one of the often discredited claims of the Silent Scream) they mean nothing without relevant thought and identity. They are the proverbial blank slate, waiting for significant, sustained, meaningful sensory imput to begin forming an identity, and until that imput nothing can be killed because nothing existed.
Noah: I should have said that moral obligation does not necessarily mean there should be legal obligation. I find legality to not be a matter of morality but of practical social consideration. For instance, murder isn’t illegal because it’s immoral, but because a functioning society can’t have people just killing other people all willy-nilly.
Anyway, to Sam, back in March I posted on how life beginning at conception was a logical absurdity, and later a more technical post on how life beginning at any specific point is not a logical necessity. So that should more or less take care of the “When life begins” part of the pro-life argument.
i’ve pretty much decided atrios cannot be sid blumenthal or even gene-O lyons, ’cause both of those fellers make enough bucks not to resort to panhandling for laptops and Enya cds.
Huh? And that is relevant because . . .?
All of these back-and-forth arguments…
What’s the entire point to this argument? Religion and moral convictions, or personal privacy and freedom of choice in one’s life?
Why someone’s decision to terminate a pregnancy is anyone else’s business is beyond me.
Unless the pregnant woman has brought their own religious beliefs into the equation, the rest of us need to leave our religious opinions out of it.
For the women I know that have terminated their pregnancies, religion wasn’t even a thought in their minds. They were more concerned about the future of their lives; whether or not they would survive the pregnancy and birth, whether or not they would be able to financially support themselves and a child, whether or not their partner was going to stick around for at least 18 years, whether or not they would be able to finish high school and/or college, and so many more issues. All of these things are highly personal issues, issues that require personal contemplation and evaluation. The only outside help needed is loving support and perhaps financial support.
Pro-lifers are quick to judge, as I’m sure pro-choicers are. Instead of just immediately saying a women shouldn’t terminate a pregnancy because God says it’s wrong, they should be asking each individual woman why they believe abortion is the best choice for their situation. If it’s because of money, then we should either offer financial help or shut the fuck up and mind our own business.
Why does a woman’s personal life have anything to do with any of us? How am I harmed by a woman (or a woman and her partner) that terminates a pregnancy? What business is it of mine to meddle in their affairs?
Who am I to judge? Who am I to say what a person can and cannot do with or to their bodies?
What everyone seems to want to sidestep is responsibility. Yes, women should have the right to do with their own bodies what they want to. Tattoo’s, mauling, plastic implants, the works.
The invisible elephant that everyone seems to be sidestepping is why we, as a society cannot be more responsible for our actions?
A woman gets rid of her baby because it is not convienient…she shouldhave thought of that moments B4 she hit the sheets.
A little self control and we wouldn’t even have this conversation.
Yeah, SEO James, those women, the dirty whores, wanting to have sex! If they’d just freaking strap on their damned chastity belts and be seen and not heard until they can find a man to marry and then pop out loads of children, we wouldn’t have this problem!
Very realistic, not to mention compassionate, non-chauvinistic, and fair.
SEO James,
And what about the responsiblity of the man involved? That is a the big invisible elephant you are avoiding.
You imply that it is the woman who must take all the responsibility for her actions. There are two people involved. What about men taking responsibility for their actions as well? Men are just as capable of putting on a condom and making sure that pregnancy doesn’t happen.
Why are there dozens of forms of birth control for women, but only one for men? Well besides abstaining, but I don’t seem many men advocating that route!
Why do anti choicers always step around MY invisible elephant: That a fetus is OBVIOUSLY not a person?
I’m curious: what do you think would happen if abortion is made illegal in all circumstances except rape and incest? If the *only* way a woman could have an abortion would be to say she was raped?
Further, if having an abortion is murder, why does it suddenly become okay to commit murder if the woman is a victim or rape/incest?
It’s okay because of the new po-mo Levitican approach, flea. It states that in cases of rape and incest, you also get to kill the rapist and/or daughter-fancier. It’s a kind of anti-Bad-Seed approach.
Neat, huh ? In some states, they even let you choose between using electric carpentry tools or good old-fashioned stone-throwing on the man, depending on how nostalgaic you get while watching those old Charlton-Heason-As-God flicks.
(Gallows humor is all I can manage these days. I blame the tranks and Daylight Savings. Possibly the Lunar Eclipse in the bargain.)
I am pro-choice, and I do not believe the fetus is a person. However, I confess that arguments like Phillips’ and Thomson’s make me uncomfortable. Are pregnancy and giving birth–activities which a woman’s reproductive system is designed for, which every single one of us has been the beneficiary of, and which are still necessary to the continuation of the human species–really morally equivalent to a kidney transplant, or to somehow finding oneself hooked up to a stranger’s life-support system? Perhaps so. Perhaps it makes sense to treat the fetus as nothing more than a stranger whose connection to its mother is completely adventitious. But to me such a view seems insufficient somehow, though I can’t articulate my dissatisfaction philosophically. And I doubt that most Americans–including those who are pro-choice–would be any more comfortable with this view.
Also, as someone (possibly Ronald Dworkin) pointed out, most (all?) abortions are not just a matter of “withdrawing life-support” or the equivalent of not donating an organ: the fetus is actively killed. True, some philosophers argue that there’s no moral distinction between killing someone and passively allowing them to die (if I’m not mistaken), but that’s not the law’s viewpoint, nor is it the viewpoint of most Americans. (As I said, I don’t believe that the fetus is a person, so I’m not saying this as an argument against abortion.)
It’s heartening to find that, for the most part, all of the arguments here are polite and well mannered.
This is not what I’m used to. In one debate I asked an opponent to presume, for the sake of argument, that the foetus was a person. He said no, because a foetus wasn’t a person; obviously misunderstanding the phrase “for the sake of argument”.
But there’s a lot of catching up to do.
jo wrote “I’m pro-choice for the very obvious reason that no-one should be forced into parenthood; it’s a HUGE responsibility and should only be shouldered by the willing.”
This is a flawed argument. First of all, if a foetus is a person, then they are already a parent. Second of all, what happens if the father is unwilling? He has no legal right to refuse parenthood, yet jo’s statement covers both (potential) parents.
I’m not saying that the father should have a say. But I think the issue of parenthood is irrelevant to the argument. Certainly jo’s statement over-reaches.
Paul wrote “Why do anti choicers always step around MY invisible elephant: That a fetus is OBVIOUSLY not a person?”
First of all, the term “anti-choice” is spurious. Why should someone to choice, from that groups point of view, should we have the “choice” (more accurately, “right”) to kill another person?
To some level, we are all “anti-choice”. Unless you support total anarchy, society must deny people at least some set of choices.
Second of all, how is a foetus obviously not a person and a child obviously one? This is a serious question. Unless you can set unequivocal standards for determining the “personhood” of an entity, which are beyond question, then you cannot exclude edge-cases like a foetus automatically.
Annie J. wrote “How am I harmed by a woman (or a woman and her partner) that terminates a pregnancy? What business is it of mine to meddle in their affairs?”
How are you harmed when a stranger is robbed by another stranger? How are you harmed when a stranger murders another stranger?
If all you are truly concerned about is any potential harm that may come to you, then you are selfish beyond belief. But if that was the case, surely you wouldn’t be arguing for another person’s right to terminate a pregnancy?
I put it to you that we cannot be so uncaring as to be only worried about our own problems, and also that you argument cannot stand on the basis that you almost certainly wish the state to “meddle in the affairs” of other people to prevent societal harm, such as theft, murder and rape.
“Unless you can set unequivocal standards for determining the “personhood” of an entity, which are beyond question, then you cannot exclude edge-cases like a foetus automatically.”
It should probably be pointed out at this time that without those unequivocal standards you also cannot include a fetus automatically. The argument of the personhood of the fetus is entirely speculative at this point… and speculation about what might be is not a reason to deny a woman the right to make a personal choice regarding her own body.
To answer your question about what happens when the father is unwilling, well, frankly he doesn’t have to stick around. The law doesn’t force him to. Society doesn’t expect him to. He has nothing to lose by leaving. And he can do it as many times as he wants to. Don’t you ever watch Maury Povich?
I agree that we cannot define a point at which human life starts, only that we can agree that it is at conception or at some point after that. But that does not make our own personal “truth” true.
Presume there is some question about whether or not a mine has people in it or not. If we wish to flood the mine, we should at least try and rule out this possibility. Otherwise we are being grossly negligent.
I have never heard a single definition or set of definitions created by people that “proves” that a foetus is not a person, that does not include creatures we would traditionally (and accurately) call people. I’m excluding ridiculous ones such as those that would exclude a foetus based on it’s location.
We should accept our ignorance, and not risk killing people.
I’ve never heard of Maury Povich. It’s worth bearing in mind that I’m European. And the father still has to pay child support (I hope and assume).
I agree that we cannot define a point at which human life starts, only that we can agree that it is at conception or at some point after that. But that does not make our own personal “truth” true.
*sigh* I already linked in this discussion to this thing I wrote which logically proves that life cannot begin at conception if we accept that that what makes a person human (hence having a life worth protecting) is a permanent state and includes individuality. And also this post showing that there is not necessarily a specific point where life begins at all, since time is densely ordered.
Sorry, but I’ve addressed this in a way that I consider satisfactory and as best as I can in the two posts linked above.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t time a linearly ordered set; which can be mapped to the naturals as the smallest unit of time is the Planck second?
If so, then the “Genesis point” argument falls due to a premise (time being densely ordered) being false.
I presume “densely ordered” means it is like the rational numbers?
Your first argument does not discuss the possibility that when one embryo splits into two embryos, it is one person turning to two people. This may seem bizarre, but there’s no good reason to discount it immediately.
…because there are plenty of bizarre things we accept as fact, or possible. Quantum physics and string theory are fields with pretty bizarre ideas if you ask me, but that doesn’t automatically mean the ideas are incorrect ones.
This thread just proves all over again why there can be no real debate about abortion. One’s positions comes down to a matter of faith and belief on when human life starts and what constitutes a person. Faith, not fact.
Yeah, I suppose that we would all agree that abortion is murder if we could all agree that a person is created at the point of conception.
Just like we could all agree that abortion is perfectly acceptable right up until birth if we could all agree that a person is created at the moment of birth.
It just ain’t gonna happen. I’ve never seen a debate of Judaism vs Christianity that changed the faith of either side.
The only thing that will change people’s minds is some sort of solid proof of when human life begins (not that I think that it’s likely). And even then I have my doubts.
Much as I believe that it is morally, ethically & legally correct to ensure a woman’s right to choose, I realize that it is based on my belief (faith, if you will) that a fetus is not a person.
Faith/Belief.
“We should accept our ignorance, and not risk killing people”
Or, we should accept our ignorance and not allow people who we know for sure are thinking, feeling, decision-making, living human beings (for example, women) to be forced against their will to do something or to otherwise have their rights and their rightful social equality undermined.
Dan, that just rings of irresponsibility.
To use my previous example: we’re not sure the mine is clear of people, but presume we know that if we flood the mine it will be of benefit to us. Should we then flood the mine?
There’s only two responsible answers to that question, and they’re “No” and “I don’t know”.
David,
This is why analogies suck. I can read yours to be equating a fetus w/ people in a mine while equating a woman w/ a mine. A little bit offensive, no?
You ain’t convincing anybody that you’re belief is correct who doesn’t already agree. Same goes for me. But, lord, that’s a terrible analogy.
Yeah, it’s a terrible analogy. When I wrote it I realised that interpretation was a reasonable one, but I had already painted myself into a corner by using it (in a much better way) earlier.
But do you understand what I was going for?
It’s not so much that the analogy is offensive as that it simply doesn’t work, unless we:
1. Presume that a fetus is a person from the very beginning. We already know that miners are people, so flooding the mine would be killing people, who we already know for a fact are people.
2. Accept that the mine in question is also a person and has therefore all of the rights and freedoms that go along with being a person.
Now, if flooding the mine will be of benefit to the mine (how it could be of benefit to us is sort of baffling and irrelevant in this case) and we don’t know for certain whether or not there are miners inside, it seems to me that the number of responsible choices has somewhat increased. So why not leave it up to the mine to decide?
I notice that the men who post are talking about philosophy, and the women are talking about experience (lived or possible).
Interesting, no? In what other aspect of human existence do we value one person’s idea about what *might* be so far above another person’s lived experience of what *is*? Further, does anyone have the moral right to make a decision for someone else that they will never have to face themselves? I keep coming back to the bumpersticker wisdom of “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
Also – a woman is fertile for 25-30 years of her life, and there is no reversible birth control that is 100% effective. This means that getting pregnant is often a matter of chance, not choice. (If it were truly a choice, then there would be no need for infertility clinics, right?) I’d also argue that in Noah’s example the couple who didn’t use birth control & didn’t want a child (instance #3, I think) should be the *last* people who should be denied access to abortion if they want it.
David, I don’t ignore the possibility that an embryo begins as one human and then becomes two (note I say human, to indicate the quality of having life, and person, to indicate the physical body), because that possibility is specifically negated by the axiom that once a person becomes a human, it remains a human for the remainder of its life. That axiom really has no reasoning behind it, that’s why it’s called an axiom, so you could possibly deny it. But it seems to me that that is a reasonably universally held belief, so you’d have to have a good reason for rejecting it.
Secondly, what a dense ordering means is that if you have x
Crappity, I put a less than sign in that last post and lost the second paragraph.
Okay, here’s what I wrote, from memory, a densely ordered set is one in which if you take any two elements, there is an element between them (like the rational numbers, or the real numbers). Although it’s entirely possible that there is a discrete smallest possible value for time, typically when one refers to time outside the context of a labratory, it is referred to as a continuum, which is a stronger assumption than being dense. So I don’t think assuming time is densely ordered is too far-reaching.
I notice that the men who post are talking about philosophy, and the women are talking about experience (lived or possible).
You mean, aside from Amy Phillips, who was quoted in the initial post?
I’m leery of making any “men act this way, women act this way” arguments. Because not all do.
Dan, the question posed was based on a lack of knowledge… we do not know if the mine contains people or not. But yeah, this analogy is pretty retarded. So I think we should leave this argument for now until someone can come up with a decent analogy or alternate means of continuing it.
Raznor, the same (flawed) assumption could be made of space. It is too far-reaching because it is (if I recall correctly) incorrect, even though it is “obvious”.
bgd, I cannot talk about experience of this matter, but crikey, you might as well argue that only people who have had abortions should be allowed to decide if abortion should be legally permissable. Which is crazy.
David – I wasn’t saying that, but I do think women are more uniquely qualified to understand what it’s like to be pregnant, and what it’s like to decide to have an abortion.
So, no, I don’t think that people who would never have to make a decision about whether or not to have an abortion (because they can not get pregnant) should have more power over whether or not a woman who can get pregnant may get one. I don’t know if it’s because abortion is perceived as a “women’s issue,” or what, but most (not all) of the people I know who are outstandingly pro-choice are women, and, well, we all saw who was depicted (and who was missing) when George Bush signed into law the banning of a procedure that is medically necessary to save a woman’s life.
Perhaps the ‘if women don’t want to get pregnant, they shouldn’t have sex’ argument should be turned on its head. Men, if you don’t want to your partner to abort your ‘child’ then it’s your responsibility to either wear a condom or not have sex. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an anti-abortion male advocate this type of logic – why is that?
Because, bgd, men are innately superior. I mean, name one war not started by a man. Yep, superior. (cough, cough)
David, whether there is a graininess to space is still a matter of debate. In some senses, it is scientifically useful to think of space as being made up of discreet particles, in other, if I’m correct, space would for all purposes consist of all Lesbegues measurable subsets of euclidian 3-space. (which would be dense though not continuous) But what space is viewed as for practical purposes and what space is are not necessarily so parallel. And the debate is as much philisophical as it is scientific.
of all Lesbegues measurable subsets of euclidian 3-space
I guess for that to really make sense, I’d have to say that say all subsets of 3-space of positive Lesbegues measure, since those would be the ones that would have value from a scientific standpoint. But who wants to get that technical.
I think it’s pretty fair to say the two of us have wandered a little bit off topic, Raznor.
David,
Oh come on. I think non-zero Lebesgue measurable sets are soooooooo totally on topic!!
For Briana and free credit report:
BEGONE SPAMMING POOPYHEADS!!!!
And for Christ’s sweet sake, learn how to compose a coherent sentence. Once you do that, you may be able to get a real job. Sheesh.
i just held my daughter after an abortion a few months ago she is 18 she wanted it but her health at the time because she kept it a secret and did not tell us right away she lives on her own at school well her health was very bad anorexia 80 pounds and the doctor said she need to abort for her health and most likely a deformed baby one way or another well we did it and she came through health wise but her family has split over the decision and she has been put through a mental hell here what i want to tell people it is no ones business if a woman wants an abortion she should be able to get one quietly orderly and safely by a doctor that is it pure and simple done that is it it is a womans choice end of subject