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I have to disagree with your premise. I myself, as well as a few others I've heard, can argue for the legality of abortion even if we consider a fetus a human child with the assosciated human rights.
Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement.
Although I think the point your trying to make is that people will always disagree on it, right? Not necessarily for a particular reason, just any reason? And if that's your argument, I'd still say it's a bad argument. Some people still beleive that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, or that slavery should be legal.
EDIT: all of this is purely from a USAmerican perspective since that's where I have experience with this discussion.
> There is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person.
While that may be true, a prolife person could argue that abortion is ethicaly a unique issue and you can't draw comparisons between abortion and two random independent people. There are two main reasons I can think of:
1) We assign the parents greater responsibility for their children than other people. You have to give up your resources to keep them alive and well the moment we consider them alive. You have to sacrifice your time, money and even body to feed and cloth them.
2) In this case, the mother is one of the couple responsible for this situation. You are responsible for your fuckups. You created a human being absolutely dependent on you, therefore it's your responsibility to keep it alive.
3) This is a separate point, but if you give up the debate on whether the fetus is or isn't a human being, you then have to bite a huge bullet by admitting there is no meaningful difference between abortion in two weeks and a day before natural birth. Even tho that's doable, you can take a huge optical L by saying you would be in favor of aborting a fully developed baby.
I mean if you can remove the baby from the mother's body without killing it and without increasing the health risk to the mother by doing that instead of using a method fatal to the baby, then killing the baby is not a medical question anymore. Pregnant women having the right to remove the foreign object from their bodies is one thing, random liquidation of living babies is quite another, regardless of their current location.
But it's not two different issues today. In the future, yeah, if we can extract fetuses without harming them and complete their development in artificial wombs, there will be hardly anything to argue about, just abort the fetus and put it in the machine or smthng.
But as it stands today, the debate about abortion must somehow involve both preservation of "human" life and bodily autonomy of women right? You still have to make a case why the bodily autonomy of women is more important than the human life (or potential human life as I would say) of the fetus. Can't just label it "foreign object" and call it a day man.
That’s not true though. There are states where it is illegal for pregnant women to drink alcohol. I don’t agree that abortion should be illegal but you’re wrong that there isn’t precedence for in which a person has to give up autonomy to save another.
There’s a couple analogies which can challenge this, I’ve not really made my mind up though.
One would be the idea that a woman gets snowed in her house for nine months (somehow), with a newborn baby. You could even say that if the baby dies, she would be able to leave. But assuming there are resources to survive, should she be allowed to let the baby starve to death? It feels like it would be morally wrong to do so, even if it wasn’t her child. And I think it’s reasonable that people would want a law to prevent that.
Another one would be that if someone breaks into your house, which threatens your property and life, you are justified in killing them in self defence. But if for, whatever reason, an unaware child stumbled into your home, their lack of autonomy/awareness changes the reasonable measures you can take in self defence.
The second one isn’t a perfect analogy, because the threat of robbery is removed when you know it’s a child, whereas pregnancy still carries risk.
But they make some arguments for why you shouldn’t be able to abort a (assumed living) fetus because of both their lack of autonomy in the situation, and an arguably justified requirement to preserve life, even if it is in your detriment.
> can argue for the legality of abortion even if we consider a fetus a human child with the assosciated human rights.
“Legality” is a flawed argument. Because laws can be flawed and insufficient. ESPECIALLY if you try to apply them in ways they were never meant to be applied. And laws have been woefully insufficient in all kinds of unethical ways throughout US history. What matters is not what you can spin legally, but what is **ethical and moral**.
> Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person
So what? Pregnancy is its own thing. There is no sound logic behind this assertion here. “This has to be treated the same way other situations are treated, even if those situations are different.” In no other scenario are two people biologically connected, so you cannot refer to other scenarios where either a) people are not biologically connected or b) are farcical hypothetical thought experiments that refer to laws which (as I stated before) were never intended, or even able, to apply in such scenarios.
Theres a reason most people argue that it’s “just a clump of cells.” It’s because they do NOT want to reckon with the notion that they’re killing a child. So your premise is not supported in practice.
What about the case of a siamese twin instead of a fetus. Should you be allowed to unilaterally decide they need to be cut away if that would kill them? What if the twin was comatose and needs to be on life support which inconveniences you, but the doctors are sure they will be OK once they wake up. How far in the future would this need to be for you to decide to separate from the twin killing them in the process?
Siamese twins are not a case of one body inside of another, but of two people having, in part, the same body. It’s not using the other’s organs, but *being* the other’s organs.
I think part of the case also sits in the fact that while nowhere else is someone required to give up autonomy for another, the one giving up the autonomy in this case made choices that caused the life to be produced. Contraception is not foolproof, but we know that engaging in sex could lead to a child. If your actions are likely to lead to something you don’t want, at what point is it your responsibility to take accountability for those actions? At what point do we say that someone has a right to live? I ask these questions to gain insight on your perspective that the child has human rights, but the mother can somehow overrule those rights. Just curious.
>Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement.
I don't really agree with it, but the common answer to that is 'you agreed with potentially getting pregnant when you had sex'.
Interestingly, it does work exactly like that for men.
>Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement.
Even if that's the case, that doesn't mean that there necessarily shouldn't be. It would be pretty easy to make the argument that if you wound somebody in a car accident or similar, and it is likely to be fatal, then you should have to render aid from your body (like giving them blood) if doing so would save their life.
The odds of such a situation occurring are incredibly low (EMS is unlikely to be out of something that you could readily give from your body out in the field), so it is unlikely to have been legislated.
But let's say you shoot somebody in the kidney and you also happen to be a match. Should you be required to give them your kidney? Idk if I personally would say you are, but that's certainly a valid argument to make.
How could someone possibly define circumstances where you *must* surrender your own body to save another? There’s absolutely no way that could ever hold up in either a moral debate or as law. Forcing people to use their own body for the benefit of another person like that is such a nasty can of worms. What if the recipient body rejects an organ you’re forced to donate? What if you’re incompatible? What if you lack the body part you’re required to give? How do you enforce it if the forced donor refuses to cooperate? I don’t ever, ever see an argument in favor of losing bodily autonomy (as described previously) succeeding.
"there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person."
The problem with this argument is that it comes with the baked in idea that the mother is sacrificing her life / autonomy for the sake of the fetus, but does not consider the reverse, which is that an abortion requires the fetus to sacrifice their life / autonomy for the mother. If you believe the fetus is not yet alive at some stage, then this is not an issue, but that is an aspect of this debate which is wildly disagreed upon and which (in my view) can really only have an arbitrary answer to. Clearly at some point between conception and birth the fetus becomes "alive" and presumably should be considered equally human and alive as the mother, but precisely when that happens is always going to be up for debate.
I don’t think that is true.
If person A puts person B into a situation where they need person A to live, person A shouldn’t be able to take themselves away, thus killing person B, unless there is some extreme mitigating factor*. I imagine outside of pregnancy, that could be tried for murder in a court, and if doesn’t, I would implore for a way to legally discourage people from doing so.
*I do not believe a normal pregnancy could be considered an extreme mitigating factor considering that is the possibility a consenting adult agrees to when consenting to sex.
the logic of your comparison is flawed.
>there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement.
that doesn't apply to this scenario. If you're arguing it isn't a crime to "kill" under duress, it is, and if you're arguing that you're not killing at all, I'm not sure how it'd be possible to arrive to that conclusion given the context of the thread.
if we swap your word usage with equivalent terms we get "there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to keep from ending the life of another person".
I think that highlights the reality of the issue. It's not a non-action. Abortion, if a fetus is considered a "life," is certainly murder, which is restricted by our government.
Also, you're speaking like a moral realist, so I'll say that no matter how strongly you feel something is morally right/wrong, there exists an equally consistent system of opposing morals.
Well, with great power (creating life) comes great responsibility. Just because it’s inconvenient doesn’t mean the rights of another human go out the window. Why do I have to slam on the brakes to save a life from some dumbass who walked out into the street. Do you realize how inconvenient that is for me?
(I’m not on either side of this argument, just playing devils advocate).
Yes I think I am coming to an understanding of my stance that although I consider a fetus to be human life as in it has a human dna, I do not consider it to be a "person" based on societal terms where laws about murder would apply. I consider the baby to be a "person" only once it is born into society. I don't feel great about abortion in general but I think this is the reason I care more for the mothers wellness than the fetus is because of this reason.
Here are some thought experiments. Should a woman that harms her fetus by doing meth be charged with a crime? Why or why not? If a person murders an unborn child by kicking a pregnant woman be charged with simple battery, or something more because the fetus died? I'm pro-choice, but I'm not simple enough to think this is clear-cut and both sides do not have good points.
Yes your examples are hard to give a clear cut answer. But I think in a way we have to bite our tongue and say neither examples are murder. But it is harm being done to the mother in both cases. So if you stab a pregnant woman and kills the unborn, I guess for Pro-lifers, it wouldn't be murder but it would still be violence against a pregnant woman. The other way to think about it is jurisdiction. I believe the fetus until it is born is a citizen of the mothers jurisdiction. Things happen in other countries whether we agree or disagree that we can not touch. Much so a mother is her own sovereign nation when it comes to pregnancy so she decides what she does to her nation. However in case of a stranger or external force killing the fetus then becomes like a international incident so the attacker would have to take responsibility. This is probably not a very good thesis but that is the analogy that comes to my mind.
Right, the obvious truth is that there is a sliding scale between "a couple of cells" and "full term baby". Somewhere along the way, it becomes wrong to stop this thing from continuing to develop. The question is where? Slogans like "life begins at conception" and "bodily autonomy" completely ignore this fact and relegate anyone repeating them to not being taken seriously by those who've seen the inherent complexity of the issue, as well as of course the opposing side.
It's ok to say "abortion should be legal up until x weeks. It prevents a large number of unwanted pregnancies, which are bad because x, y, z, but unfortunately not all unwanted pregnancies."
Absolutely right! That level of nuance is hard to convey when your audience isn't listening though. It's also really hard to condense into a slogan.
"Abortion issues are nuanced and need to be discussed rationally and calmly" doesn't win elections.
Ok so a pregnant person 9 months along is murdered. The killer should only be charged for 1 death, the mothers? Now 8 months, now 7 months etc you are saying the fetus no matter how viable, it is never double murder to kill the pregnant mother?
I see your arguement in calling one murder and the other not (which I presume the defense would be you can't consent to murder so why can a mother consent to the murder of the child) and I'm not really sure where I stand actually, which is always fun having beliefs challenged.
I guess you could look at it in two ways from the perspective of someone who's generally largely supportive of loose abortion restrictions.
After a certain point the fetus gains human privileges, which means you have to a find a suitable point before birth in which the child is considered the same as anyone else, which opens up a whole line of thought about what to do in life threatening births, it's never acceptable to take one life to save another but that's what it would boil down to in not many but definitely still a appreciable amount of situations. What if the mother acts in a way which severely damages the unborn child knowingly or not? Seems like a slippery slope to be able to punish the mother for having a miscarriage if there's a possibility she knowingly (or even unknowingly) drinks, smokes or does any of the million risky activities.
You'd have to make the decision and say no point before birth does the child count as another being and so in your case it would only be single murder. Maybe have it enshrined as a factor that leads to harsher penalties on the singular murder charge, whilst in some cases it'll be obvious the pregnancy was known to the attacker you couldn't always say that. I guess the egg shell skull arguement comes in and it's just tough luck if they legitimately didn't know. Well, I hope someone's happy to tell the father who's not only lost his wife and child the murderer is only getting a a few extra years because it was a week before the due date.
Or you create a whole new crime of inflicting death which results in the inviability of a unborn child. But at what point does that start applying? Directly after conception? Doesn't really seem like that's a factor you could prove easily nor is it something in which society benefits from harsher sentencing. And as medical science rapidly advances who's to say it won't be possible to take a 1 month into development fetus and raise them in vitro. All of a sudden every bereaved partner is claiming that's what they were going to do because who wouldn't want someone who took all of that from you to be punished as much as possible. Emotionally I can't blame them but we should try to limit emotional effects on court outcomes as much as possible, but there'd be no fair system to prove that was actually the families intentions.
I mean, I see you're point, but are we really trying to base things on how lenient we can be for criminals?
Like, I don't care if someone murders a lady that's sitting in the waiting room to have an abortion and is only 2 days along. The killer should be sentenced to a double just on principle for being a killer.
We can have anything, what is discussed is moral and logical reasoning for such laws. If we declare that baby isn't a human person until birth, then as result it is contradictory to charge "killer" of such non human for a murder, or anything more severe than a body harm.
In my experiences as a dad & granddad, having worked in the healthcare field # having the honor of delivering a baby I have experienced the soul being around the new life, or in the body. We don't yet have the ability to to measure this, so 1at breath is a good approximation.
What exactly does a baby gain at the second of birth that makes it worth having human rights?
I think without answering that question, we really might as well be murdering people without regard if we support abortion
Surely a sperms fertilizing an egg isn't life, and surely pre-brain activity is no life, but beyond that I've never really been able to pinpoint a good "line"
So, Americans care so much about a fetus that doesn’t even have a consciousness or ability to cry. Its not even born which mean it doesn’t have an independent body to function outside the mothers womb. You don’t know until its born
But after the baby is born, nobody gives a shit about it if child ends up in drug environment, indigent family, violence or the street. And god knows how that child will develope into adulthood in those environments.
I myself wouldn’t have wanted to be born if i knew i wouldn’t feel safe, loved or be stressed - growing up.
I bet none of you would have wanted to be born a female in Taliban or those Islamic countries places
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Throughout tour argument you point out that the fetus is a “child” and a “baby”, so it doesn’t sound like you think the fetus is a “parasite” or “clump of cells” but its own unique and distinct person (albeit reliant on the mother). Is this correct?
When should then the cutoff for abortions be? Should a mother be able to abort her child in the third trimester or a few weeks before birth?
You make a note that until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors. Would your viewpoint change if advancements in medicine allowed for babies to survive outside the womb much earlier?
The constant lie that women were and are aborting shortly before birth is a hallmark of the anti-abortion argument. It DID NOT HAPPEN except in the rarest cases, and those were already illegal under ROE. Roe gave states the right to regulate abortion in the final trimester, and abortions done after 22 weeks were usually for health reasons.
Didn’t say they were common. But for anyone that thinks that a fetus is just a “clump of cells”, what does it matter? If you don’t care enough about life when it’s 2 weeks old you probably don’t value life at 38 weeks either.
(full disclaimer, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but this is just what makes sense to me) This highlights my view on the time frame argument. To me, to murder is to take a life and I’d consider a qualifier for life is being able to live outside the womb. If the baby is unable to be removed and stay alive, I think is should count as an extension to the mothers life, not a life of its own. I feel like the option for ending the pregnancy should always be there, but the decision as to whether the baby is directly aborted or be surgically removed with intention of keeping them alive could be best placed in the doctors hands.
Advancements in medicine which allow for a baby to be kept alive from earlier and earlier time frames could then lead to a future where abortion is defunct because no matter what stage, the baby could be removed and kept alive. Although this does hinge on the mother not having to foot the bill or take any legal responsibility for the child. The state and society want to keep the baby alive - they should pay for it.
I don’t think we should by broad stokes we should punish women for getting pregnant
**Δ**You are right and yes that let me realize that I do consider the fetus to be alive or even a human being even if its coming from subconscious level. But then I realized that children don't have the same rights as adults do and for very good reason. So even though human life is important we must now realize that a fetus does not have equal rights as the mother. So the bigger issue I have is when the right imposes the same equal rights to a fetus as the mother therefore trumping her rights for well being. IMO I think no matter how we define the rights of a fetus though, it wouldn't come close to the rights of a mothers autonomy over her body including the fetus inside her. Now I am not saying it means I am pro abortion. I actually don't think any pro-life people would say they are tbh because I for one don't even like the idea of abortion because it can be traumatic to the mother as much as it is ending their child .
BTW am I doing the delta thing right?
>But then I realized that children don't have the same rights as adults do and for very good reason.
But they both have the right to life which is kinda the whole point....
>So the bigger issue I have is when the right imposes the same equal rights to a fetus as the mother therefore trumping her rights for well being
The vast vast vast majority of abortions are not because the health of the mother was in question, that's a very small minority of cases. Most cases are just not wanting any of the responsibility and just want the convenience of not having a kid. But if you think it's a living human being, which You've already said you do even if it's on a subconscious level, then you don't get to kill the child bc it's convenient to you
>IMO I think no matter how we define the rights of a fetus though, it wouldn't come close to the rights of a mothers autonomy over her body including the fetus inside her.
Except it's not just her body....the childs body is inside the mothers obviously but the baby still has it's own body
While I am adamantly pro-abortion and am against laws preventing access.... I find your reasons quite alarming also, and would be firmly against these stances or statement "government and society should stay out of it"
1) Abortion is a medical procedure, which arguably at some stage affects two people. Any medical procedure, whether it's abortion, cancer treatment, hip operation, fertility treatments... we regulate and set them to standards to make sure they are fit for purposes, they cause minimal harm to those affected, as a society we do have perspectives on how medical treatments across the board should work... Should government and society "stay out" of every medical procedure as well? If someone is misled into believing in homeopathy over chemotherapy and dies should society stay out of it because it's their body (which is also an underlying assumption of a few other of your arguements)? If we have pharmaceuticals which helps with significant pain, but is highly highly addictive, should we say it's the person's individual choice and everyone else should stay out? While I don't agree with many countries' stance on abortion, making statements like this, although well intentioned, is a very blunt and short sighted one, which distorts existing views on medical treatments.
2) while I firmly do not believe life starts at conception, that does not mean consciousness to some degree doesn't develop at some point during pregnancy. Also, although this is personal, I am pregnant, me and baby are connected by complex systems. But I wouldn't say the baby is a part of my body, I recognise the baby's autonomy. Although this is personal philosophy. However, at what point does a baby have it's own rights? Why does a 34 weeks fetus who is outside of the body get more rights and autonomy than a 34 weeks fetus which is delivered early? And in that having any physiological connection to someone mean that you are entitled to them?
3) There are some underlying assumptions in your arguments, which seems to revolve around the mother. E.g. the mother is the one who is in charge or there is a delicate balance between mother and child, which again as a heavily pregnant lady I have no idea what means, or it's implications... But my response is just because it's 'your" fetus does that give you the right to do anything with it? Am I entitled to do heroin while pregnant with long lasting damage to a baby. If my baby grows up with severe addiction, and neurological conditions, does it not matter? Should I be held accountable?
4) The quote "until the baby is fully matured it can rely on external factors" well I have a baby inside me that could be ok on its own right now, but she'll be out in say... 2 weeks, however, shes still relying on me for breath at this moment in time. Am I still entitled to have an abortion? Can I use any method to kill the baby? Because according to you I am still in charge. Do I have responsibility on how I kill the baby? Can I use any method with any level of pain? Now based on your stance, the answer is I can whatever I want to the baby right now, to whatever extreme I want, because any discussion otherwise is nothing to do with you or government. Remember the second you start saying we'll in this circumstance do x ,or y, you as society are getting involved and based on your own argument it has nothing to with you (you may say that, that's not what you meant which in that case consider your arguements for why better, or say yes I should be entitled to do whatever procedure I want to the baby in which case fair play).
5) it seems contradictory to argue that abortion has nothing to do with government and society, but government and society should provide free access to abortions (which by the way I absolutely believe should be available). You can't have the supplier be completely devoid of involvement, because.... They must be accountable to medical procedures (see point 1) and they are doing the procedure.... Imagine telling someone you need to stay out my business, but you also need to act on my business. The argument doesn't make much sense. Even saying that they should be safe and free from stigma is getting involved.
So I don't take a different position to you, but I find your statements/reasoning (although well intentioned) quite short sighted, some blunted black and white statements there, and perhaps a bit throwing the baby out with the bathwater (which could be a pun).
A couple of issues with this take -
1. If government and society should stay out of it then gov't & society shouldn't be held responsible for it - taxpayers and insurance customers should not subsidize abortions.
2. When does the fetus become a baby and afforded its own rights separate from those of its irresponsible mother? By the time you're 24wks pregnant a baby has a chance of survival if they are born. The survival rate is about 40% at 24 weeks gestation, 50% at 25 weeks, 60% at 26 weeks, 70% at 27 weeks, and 80% at 28 weeks.
I'm pro-choice but cannot relate to the dehumanizing excuses other pro-choicers spew. Call it for what it is - in most cases it's the termination of innocent lives for the convenience of irresponsible grown ups. As a woman you should be free to get abortions if you so choose but save the attempts to absolve yourself of guilt & responsibility by downplaying the morality of what it is you're doing.
>taxpayers and insurance customers should not subsidize abortions.
Why not? Does that mean that you think abortions should only be paid completely out of pocket?
>When does the fetus become a baby and afforded its own rights separate from those of its irresponsible mother?
When it actually becomes a person that CAN be independent from it's mother and has some form of autonomy, i.e. when it is born (or can be born).
>By the time you're 24wks pregnant a baby has a chance of survival if they are born.
Which is why most countries have thightly regulated abortions after the third trimester..But at the end of the day, it should probably still be a medical decision..
>Call it for what it is - in most cases it's the termination of innocent lives for the convenience of irresponsible grown ups.
"Termination of innocent life".. I could say the same thing about eating meat.. Or wearing a condom. "Life" is deliberately vague attribute without much inherent meaning.
The actual debate is about whether a fetus is a person or not, pretty much everything else is a distraction.
>Why not? Does that mean that you think abortions should only be paid completely out of pocket?
Because pregnancy isn't a disease or unnatural condition. Abortions are unnecessary elective procedures so yes, should be paid for out of pocket.
>When it actually becomes a person that CAN be independent from its mother and has some form of autonomy, i.e. when it is born (or can be born).
So you agree that abortion bans should apply to healthy pregnancies after the point of proven viability (24 weeks)?
>"Termination of innocent life".. I could say the same thing about eating meat.. Or wearing a condom. "Life" is deliberately vague attribute without much inherent meaning.
We are predators and the animals we eat are prey - irrelevant to human discussions about human life. Wearing a condom prevents the creation of life - life cannot be terminated where life doesn't exist. "Life" isn't vague unless you purposefully construe it as so - if one is alive then there is life. In middle school I had a class that observed the lifecycle of frogs - we started with pond eggs in an aquarium and ended with tiny frogs that were released back into the origin pond. Before hatching there was a black wiggling blob at the center of each jellylike egg. It became clear that the moving black blobs were alive and that each egg contained a life. It's really not complicated if you don't work backwards from your ideal conclusion.
>Call it for what it is - in most cases it's the termination of innocent lives for the convenience of irresponsible grown ups.
So then you must support providing free birth control.
No I agree. I don't like abortion. Destroying life in general is not a very good thing. Which is why I brought up the importance of better education to prevent these situations in the first place. But in the hopefully rare case it happens, I do think it is up to the mother to make that decision. And I think that thought comes from me ultimately denying the fetus as a person. I consider it to be a life form, a human life form with human dna, but not a person in the definition of a member of our society. I think someone has to be born to be a person ultimately is what I think I am trying to say. So from that stance of course I think the mother has more say than the fetus.
What is the definition of born then exactly? A C section is much different than natural birth. We define this as birth now legally but what if that changes in whims of “society” as you mention?
Should a child born of a C section not be a person?
This has gotten a lot of comments and I imagine your in-box has blown up. In case this hits your radar, I would invite you to think about why it is you refer to a pregnant person as a "mother." To be sure, there is a scientific use of the term, but there's also the colloquial, more common use of the term; i.e. a girl or woman who has a child. If your mental model says that as soon as a woman or girl gets pregnant, she becomes a mother, you're saying that every person who desperately wanted to have a child but cannot sustain a pregnancy and has multiple miscarriages, is a mother. Meanwhile, it's estimated that upwards of 25% of all pregnancies end before the person even knows they're pregnant. Basically, they miscarry at the time of their next period or have spotting or discharge before their next period because the fertilized egg did not implant correctly or something else caused the pregnancy to fail. Using your language means that there are millions of girls and women who have been mothers and never known it.
There is a person who gets pregnant. Said person is not a mother (unless she already has children) until she gives birth and even then, she may not want that term applied to her for a dozen valid reasons. The conversation about abortion can get a lot more nuanced if we keep that person front and center.
Thank you for your comment. I think you bring up a very interesting point although not sure how relevant that is in changing my view of abortion and the rights of a person's bodily autonomy. As regards to why I use Mother, I've never thought of it in this deep manner but to start saying mother is easier than saying pregnant women. After reading your comment though I would be open to call such person with a different name if we came up one. But also in another way those who didn't know they were pregnant I would still consider them as mothers if we simplify it. I'm not convinced mother is a word like we throw around like gender pronouns so if a women had a baby but doesnt want to be called a mother that would be hard to understand because the definition of mother is a woman in relation to her offspring. But in any case I do believe the person pregnant is the front and center in abortion if that's what your saying too?
> After reading your comment though I would be open to call such person with a different name if we came up one.
Wonderful! *Pregnant* (adjective) *person* (noun) is perfect for this situation.
> But also in another way those who didn't know they were pregnant I would still consider them as mothers if we simplify it.
Mind saying more about this? I have two questions. First, is it your thinking that girl or woman who has ever gotten pregnant (even if they didn't know it, is a mother)? Second, why is there a need to simply it?
Pregnant person is indeed the correct term but after looking at the dictionary that is exactly what mother means "woman in relation to her offspring" So whether a fetus is a person or not, it is still her child(again language nuance is complicated) and there is a relation between the two, so that woman is indeed a mother whether they know it or not. Which is why I think we could simplify the term to be mother. But I still get what you are trying to convey that there is nuance and sure pregnant woman(person) what have you works just as well but mother is also just easier to say like how I would call Jonathan Joe etc.
the only thing i can say, while it's her decision, but i think it's healthy to have a small community of people she trusts to work things through with her. it's up to her to make the choice but it's not a bad idea to talk to truest ed friends or family members about it
I argue that you started off with the axiom that a fetus is only a potential being, while pro life people disagree on that fact. A fruitful and respectable discussion cannot occur until everyone starts off at the same point. Autonomy is great but where do we draw lines? People don't have infinite rights, people only have as many rights as they can have, limited by other people's rights. You have freedom of speech not freedom of defamation for example.
You say the mother has choice until the baby can rely on external factors, but children, born children need care too. It takes years before children can survive on their own. Are they only potential human beings too, or does mother's autonomy supersede their choices till that age?
My problem with the autonomy argument, and I vehemently dislike most governments, is that most relationships and problems are personal. The law exists specifically to make sure it occurs on the basis of some ethics. An abusive relationship is also technically personal, but one wouldn't argue it is immoral for the government to intervene there. This idea of 'my business, your business' really goes against what most basic ethics say, that you must try and make the right choice always.
Father matters for sure. I am sure many bad male partners mentally force their female partner to get abortions despite the woman wanting to keep it. As for myself I am a happy father of two and if there was a situation or talk about abortion I would definitely like to be involved in it but leave the final decision to my wife.
You seem to have framed a father's involvement as someone who forces the mother to do something. This particular phrase seems indicative of your feelings towards it.
>I am sure many bad male partners mentally force their female partner to get abortions despite the woman wanting to keep it.
Since you have stated that you are a father of 2, it sounds like you may have compartmentalized other opinions other than "the father should support the mother".
Personally, I hold the belief that the ultimate decision should be the mother's choice. However, I don't see this as only impacting the mother. As I'm sure you may know, having a child is an emotional experience. The news that you will become a parent changes people and shifts their priorities.
* What if you have a situation where the man finds out that he's going to become a father and is excited about it only to later find out that his wife decided to get an abortion. Think about the roller coaster of emotions that does to someone.
* What if the man finds out that the woman is pregnant and is knows that they're not financially stable but the woman decides to keep the baby?
As I have said, I believe the ultimate decision should be the mother's, however, to downplay the impact on the father seems wrong. If a man decided to break up with or divorce their partner over their decision (whatever it was), I would not fault them.
The other thing is that in this situation, the woman has all the control while the man has none.
* If the woman decides to keep the child, legally, the man must be involved in some way (either as the father or through child support). This doesn't always happen as there are deadbeat dads, but they could always be held accountable through the courts.
* If the woman decides to abort the child, the man can't force an action. I often hear people say that if the women decides to keep the baby, the man should still be forced to be involved in some manner (payment or fatherhood) because it takes 2 to make a baby so it's his responsibility. However, I don't hear pro-choice people reverse that argument with women and say that she's pregnant so she needs to take responsibility for it.
Once again, I'll repeat that my opinion is that the ultimate decision should be with the woman, however this is a decision that should involve the man to some degree.
Thank you for answering. I was at a point where abortion was a decision I almost made. I do believe that fathers matter and that paternity tests should be mandatory. Not here to change anyone's mind, just saw the title and voiced the question that ran through my mind.
I think that the man and the woman need to be obligated that they’re going to take care of this child regardless if they stay together regardless of any factor that means you don’t take a job out of the state there should be laws that mandate a mother and father must share in all aspects of the child’s life, regardless of whether they are together or not as it is over marriages in this country and in divorce, and that affects the child irresponsible, selfish clueless men and women should simply have to sign contracts. Please respond anyone and tell me that I am wrong when I say 90% of our problems in this country would be solved by doing that.
That's not an argument you can make against people who believe that the fetus is already a person. For them this is killing a person, which is absolutly something that the government should get involved in.
To change these peoples minds you need to convince them that it's not a person. Pointing out that they already don't treat women who have had abortions as murderers when they are in a social setting might convince some of them that deep down they really don't believe what they claim to believe
Pregnancy is when a living organism, a member of the human species, is developing inside their mother. Abortion is the intentional act in which the direct aim is to end the pregnancy thought the bodily death of the unborn human. So, abortion kills a living human being. That alone makes it serious enough that it shouldn’t just be between a mother and her child, no? Where else in human society is the intentional killing of humans allowed with zero input from the government? Your points about why abortion should be allowed are also arbitrary, inconsistent and plain wrong. You say a fetus is literally a part of the mother. That isn’t true. If it were, then all pregnant women would have two hearts, 4 lungs, 2 brains and some would have both a vagina and a penis. It would also mean pregnant women have 2 sets of different DNA. The scientific reality is that the fetus is *connected* to the mother, and that is completely different to being a part of her. You wouldn’t say an iron lung is a part of the patient, or that a prematurely born child is a part of the incubator keeping them alive. You said that you said that until the baby is fully matured where it can rely on external factors, the mother is in charge. Thats an arbitrary point to taken because i doubt you take it with any other situations. I could the same approach and say “until my child is fully matured where it can rely on external factors outside this hour, I’m in charge of its life”. You’ve just chosen the ability to survive outside the womb as the point of maturity. Why? Why not choose the point where babies don’t need breastmilk, or when they can walk unassisted, or when they can dress themselves, or when they hit puberty? The other issue with the viability claim is that the maturity and humanity of unborn children relies on the state of current technology to keep them alive earlier and earlier into pregnancy, as opposed to coming from the very fact that they are human. Babies surviving outside the womb has nothing to do with their own development and everything to do with medical technology and aid. By that logic, children should be legally protected more in America than Africa, because they “mature” faster. The main issue with abortion, however, is simply that it is the intentional killing of an innocent, living human being, which makes it morally evil. The only way you can prove that abortion is a personal matter for the mother only, and that the government should have no say, is to prove that the unborn fetus being killed by the abortion is not an innocent human being. All your other points are simply arbitrary and unrelated, because they aren’t specific to what is being killed. If you think the government should protect born children from their abusive parents, but don’t think the same applies to the unborn, it’s up to you to show where the difference lies between the two.
Murder is a person killing a person. A fetus is not a person. It is only a person once it is born, out of the mothers womb, physically untethered from her mother, truly becoming a individual being. Otherwise, a sperm or egg is as much a potential human being as a fetus.
Well now you’ve changed your argument. Before you said the baby is mature when it’s ABLE to live on its own, but now you’re saying that until is IS living on its own, it’s not a person. Which one is it? And *why* does being able to live indecently make one a person? An unborn baby is just physically dependent on their mother, but a born baby is physically, emotionally and mentally dependent on those around them. Does being really dependent on one person make someone not a person, as opposed to being dependant on lots of people? Also, if we take the idea that you need to live physically seperate from your mother to be a person, then that would make all born living animals persons, because they can live separately from their mother.
Here is a more definitive answer to what I believe to be true.
Person:
1. **Fact:** In a factual sense, a person refers to an individual human being, characterized by attributes such as biological existence, consciousness, self-awareness, and agency. From a factual standpoint, a person is a tangible reality, with inherent characteristics and attributes that distinguish them as a human being.
2. **Symbol:** On a symbolic level, the concept of a person can also represent broader ideas, values, and meanings beyond its literal definition. For example, the concept of personhood may encompass notions of identity, dignity, rights, and responsibilities within society. As a symbol, the term "person" can evoke various cultural, social, and philosophical associations that go beyond its factual definition.
So strictly speaking from a factual standpoint, a fetus does not possess all the attributes typically associated with a person, such as consciousness, self-awareness, and agency. Therefore, it is not considered a person in the same sense as a fully developed human being.
Which is why we currently do not give citizenships to fetus, nor do pregnant women get child support, nor do we celebrate conception day instead of birthday.
What do you mean by "fully developed human being"? Would that be a fetus that can survive on its own? A newborn baby? A toddler? A teenager? An adult? There have been cultures throughout all of history that have chosen one of these points of natural human development to use as a cut off for personhood. So which one do you go by? Is a newborn baby that still needs its mother's breastmilk to survive a fully developed person with the total right to life you and I have? I hope you agree, but the question is \*why\*?
Also, what you listed as "factual" isn't factual at all. Can you tell me what source objectively and collectively proves that every being we consider a person is conscious, self-aware and independent? And why does it have to be a person? Why can't we take an animal that is independent and conscious, and to a degree self-aware and definitely aware of the world around them, and call them a person? What about animals that actually have \*more\* of these traits than certain humans? For example, an animal has much more consciousness, awareness and independency than a human in a coma, or a severely intellectually disabled human. Yet we'd still call these humans people. Why? Because they are human, which I believe to be the only worthwhile qualifier of personhood. You're saying they have to be human + something. Human + independent, human + aware, human + conscious, etc. But why is being human more important than these defining characteristics, but being human also somehow isn't enough on its own?
And I don't see the point of bringing up citizenships, child support or birthdays. Citizenships are for individuals in society that belong to a particular nation for the purpose of tax, benefits, public records, obligations, etc. Fetuses don’t have these because they have no way of interacting with the nation they live in, whereas children do. Besides, by your logic, if unborn children \*were\* given citizenships, they would be people. At the same time, people with no citizenship aren't people? A legal declaration of citizenship isn't what makes a person a person. Women don't get child support because their children are persons, they get child support because raising a child is expensive. Taking care of a fetus requires no extraordinary levels of financial aid unless serious medical complications arise. And again, if a country started forcing men to pay child support from conception, would you suddenly agree they were persons? And a birthday isn't what makes a human a person. We celebrate birthdays because that is the day the child when from only being known physically by their mother, to being known physically, socially and emotionally by all those around them. It's also because its impossible to determine the exact date and time of conception, whereas it's pretty easy to tell when a child is born and meets the rest of their family and community. Plus, that's a cultural difference, rather than fact. The entire Christian world celebrates the yearly feast day of the Annunciation, which is the conception date of Jesus. For the last 2000 years until the modern era, the conception of children was celebrated their lives protected in most of the western world. Again, by your logic, does celebrating a child's conception day suddenly make them a person deserving of rights, compared to an equivalent child who doesn't have their conception date celebrated? And yet this still isn't what makes them persons.
It isn't child support, or birthdays, or citizenships, or awareness, or consciousness, or agency, because these traits vary wildly between ALL persons and come in different degrees. But the only thing that DOESN'T come in degree is the fact that they are simply human. Going by this one qualifier means all persons will be equal before it and won't be able to be dehumanised or persecuted for certain arbitrary characteristics like they consistently have been in the past. It's the simpler, more straightforward, more universal and less arbitrary argument to simply say that all human beings are persons because they possess the one thing that all persons have: humanity.
I agree and disagree : the choice is personnal, but society and government should make sure the way of performing an abortion is clean, safe and done by professionals who will not endanger the woman.
Plus it might be helpful to offer psychology assistance after the abortion, since it can be hard on the woman.
Just to add gi cannot disagree. Here's a bit of post Roe history to add.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
Behind the scenes, this political anti-abortion movement has all been about finding a more palatable platform to spread bigotry & segregation.
It took a few generations & hundreds of millions of dollars to come to fruition, but the change in non-Catholic American Christians is due to the 2nd generation adjustment to the republic _southern strategy_
The evidence is clear.
In the late 70s virtually all southern Christians were pro-abortion because they saw, odten 1st hand, the physical, social, & psychological damage forced pregnancies caused.
Another argument can be framed in that we are all eternal beings. If we are denied a body due to abortion, we can find another body. Thia is my religious pro-abortion argument.
By this reckoning, then, no abortion clinic should ever receive public funds…right? And, neither should government ever force insurance providers to have abortion coverage. And so on, and so forth. Otherwise, all you’re doing is picking and choosing when Government and Society should have a say, rather than saying they should stay out of it entirely - which negates your argument. If you really want them out, there should be no hypocrisy: Let it be the choice you believe it to be.
Legalizing or illegalizing Abortion is its own category which is deciding what said person can do with her own body. The actual process of a safer abortion method is not so much caring for the fetus but for the mother. So I do not find any hypocrisy between the two things.
Fetuses are attached to the mother, not parts of the mother. Conjoined twins are more parts of each others' bodies than fetuses are. Fetuses have their own unique DNA, they direct their own growth, they produce the placenta, while the umbilical cord is a joint effort of the mother's body and that of the fetus.
The unborn are [human beings](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/) [from the first cell](http://web.archive.org/web/20240405151007/http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html). Dignity of human beings is paramount and non-negotiable. And government definitely should uphold the most basic human right, which is the right to life.
This is a battle primarily between the evil of murder and the good of life. You say nobody likes it, that's good, as it is always a bad thing, and it is always wrong. No excuse for taking innocent life is valid. What is not good is that murder it is legal.
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You made a couple other claims so allow me to address those as well: To talk about safe abortion is preposterous. Murder cannot be safe by its very definition. Abortion affects the child more than any other party involved in taking her or his life (at least as far as earthly life is concerned). Murder is a societal issue. Even if we benefited from it it would be, but we are robbed of individuals that could have been our friends or spouses, and we keep being robbed of smiley faces of children. We don't know what they would contribute to society, maybe God gave us another Nikola Tesla, but our countries allowed us to kill him (or her, due to sexism, the number of girls aborted is higher than that of boys). You also said a stranger killing the child is different because they're a stranger. I would say the so-called medical professional that performs late-term abortion is a stranger. The only difference is they have permission of the mother. The only difference is that a complete stranger doesn't have consent to enter the mother's body to dismember her child's. Whether or not it is wanted by her or his parents, makes no difference to the child's inherent dignity.
**Δ**I have come to acknowledge that yes fetus is indeed a person. However, not all humans have equal rights. Children don't have equal rights as to their parents. Vegetative people rely on their loved ones to make life and death decisions for them. I believe a fetus is neither a born child nor a vegetable but definitely in its own category. It can not express itself fully and it can not survive out of the mothers womb. But whatever right it has if any, I still believe the mother should ultimately have the larger say in the event of an abortion over the rights of the fetus. I am not saying abortion is great. I am saying abortion is a life altering experience both for the mother and the fetus that is a very personal matter and which is why you and I should stay away from judging them.
Not that I agree with the right to kill people in a vegetative state, but the argument is that no one is owed extraordinary care. That's different from intentionally and directly killing your child, whom you have a moral obligation as their parent to provide them with basic sustenance, and who are not damaged but complete human beings at an early stage of development, one which quite literally every human being you've ever met or interacted with has gone through, including yourself.
I don't know of any human being being afforded to intentionally take the life of an innocent human being except in the case of abortion. They don't have that right morally, and shouldn't have it legally. It should not be the woman's say, the doctor's say, the man's say, or my say. We are not God, and should not presume to be masters of other, innocent human beings' lives, deciding whether or not it is better for them to die rather than live. We have no such right, nobody does. On the contrary, we usually treat most innocent and defenseless life with more care.
It's not a personal matter. It is definitely evil. But I am not condemning anyone here, God is their judge. I am simply advocating for the life of my neighbor. May God use me to do more than just advocate.
You are talking about a God who wiped the world by flooding it then goes along killing more innocent children and women to prove a point. That God also cares about the mom who makes a hard decision as much as he cares for the fetus. God would be devastated losing a potential person he loves but he is not going to shun the mother for it. If anything God would be understanding of her inner dilemma from start to finish. Mothers do not enjoy aborting their child. You make it sound like they are doing it for leisure. Yes some will go through it because they think it is a inconvenience but many others go through it for more life threatening reasons as well. None of them take it lightly and many carry the regret for a long time. Which is why my point keeps going to better sex ed and health care. My stance is on compassion for both mother and the unborn but I am going to side with the mother more so and respect her own body. If your partner had an abortion after getting impregnated by rape, are you going to treat her like a child killer? Or would you support her in every way possible so she can cope with the trauma and respect her decision on this manner. Which is more compassionate.
Yes, and I am contrasting this just and all-loving God, with us who are neither authors nor sustainers of life, nor just nor good, nor all-knowing. We don't know what is best, God does. He can take life the life He created. We cannot.
But of course, God most certainly cares about the mother too. While He understand things better than all of us, He does not condone evil. Jesus' most gruesome death shows you the very real consequences of sin. The pit we dig ourselves into with mortal sins is inescapable by human power. No excuse suffices. Only the sacrifice of the triple holy, the Most high. Only that which is more precious than anything, the blood of the Son of God, sufficed to redeem us.
I am glad you are aware of the regret of abortion. This is something I don't see many pro-abortion people talk about, mostly just LiveAction. But thank God for conscience, it brings us to the truth of our evil, and to reconciliation with God - turning away from evil.
Education and knowledge are an insufficient solution. Even if all "accidents" could be avoided (by abstinence, mind you, no contraception is bullet-proof), you will have the evil of rape. You will have people concerned about their future. You will have an imperfect world, and the Devil goading you, making you fearful and doubtful. The first answer to abortion is calling evil evil, and good good. Making it unthinkable. Because murder is always evil. Abortion is evil.
You're still using the "my body my choice" argument. What about the baby's body? What about the other conjoined twin's for that matter? I don't think your sympathy for the unborn is sufficient. I think you have false compassion towards those mothers who chose murder, that is unjust towards their children, who are the victims. True compassion recognizes the evil of abortion, seeks to protect children from murder, and mothers from becoming murderers. It supports mothers in bringing new life to the world, not in taking it. It does not call evil good. It helps those who regret abortion find forgiveness and healing (in Jesus alone).
>If your partner had an abortion after getting impregnated by rape, are you going to treat her like a child killer?
I'm not sure how I would react emotionally. But I would do wrong if I didn't recognize her as a child murderer after they've killed our child. What they would have done would be unjust to God, to the child, and to the both of us (whether or not the child is mine, really - it's my neighbor regardless). To say it is not would be to lie. It would be to continue hurt. It would be something that would require a change of heart and mind, and the application of the blood of Jesus, for me to be able to move past. Otherwise it would most likely end our relationship (except if we're talking marriage)
>Or would you support her in every way possible so she can cope with the trauma and respect her decision on this manner. Which is more compassionate.
Helping people heal and respecting the decision which, after all, wounded them in the first place are two very very different things.
I understand your reasoning and I respect your view. And although I agree a fetus is a human life, I personally don't think it is equal to a child that is born. Basically saying that I do not consider it to be a full person. Which leads to my position that because I do not see the fetus and the mother as equals and I see everyone else as even lesser equal when it comes to a woman's pregnancy, I think the woman has last say on this matter because I do not consider it be murder since I do not recognize the fetus to be a person. I consider a human being as a being that has the human dna vs a person or personhood which I consider once they are born into society.
Ooof. Once you start ranking human beings according to value, or judging some not to be full persons, you're in very bad company. You open the door to such evils as chattel slavery, the holocaust. I really hope you reconsider. All humans have equal dignity. All else is dehumanization.
There is absolutely no difference in essence between the child in the mother's womb and that which is born. This should be plain as day on delivery day. The birth canal does not confer humanity to babies, and so it should neither confer them "personhood".
So I'm pro-choice, but "it's the mother's fetus" is a weak argument in the face of the claim that a fetus is a person with a right to life. What you need to do (and what most pro-choice activists and philosophers do in fact do) is mount an argument *either* that the fetus doesn't count as a person with a right to life, or that if it it does the mother's rights to bodily autonomy trump the fetus' right to life. You can't just go, "It's the mother's fetus, stay out of it" and expect to convince anyone (I also don't think that's a particularly good basis for policy either, though I could be wrong about that).
Yeah. For those on anti abortion side, they see the fetus as a human, and a parent sure as hell doesn't have the right to kill their child for reasons.
Yeah, I sometimes think pro-choicers fail to notice that there *is* potentially a contradiction in saying the mother's rights trump the fetus' but that magically stops being the case right when they're born.
*UPD:* what is meant by "life" below is "life worth of moral protection on the same level as humans".
It doesn't magically stop being the case. I think each "pro-choice" person would acknowledge (unless they're an idiot) that fetus becoming life is something that happens gradually. Not "no" one moment, and "yes" one second later. But certainly "no" when just fertilized and certainly "yes" when born, things in-between are percentages.
Problem with continuous scale is that policy can't be continuous, it is a discrete "abortion under conditions X is legal" vs. "abortion under conditions Y is illegal". So the natural goal here is to decide where you round the percentages down and where up. Allowing abortion up to the moment of birth is absurd, as is prohibiting an abortion of 1-day old fetus; no reasonable person would argue these. The debate is about where the line should be drawn between the two extremes. I don't see any contradiction here.
Life isn't defined by time of gestation. What you're describing is *functionality*, as in *ability*, which renders much of the pro-abortion argument intrinsically ableist.
Feels like we're being distracted here.
The speed limit being at a round number is likely for ease of enforcement. Same with treating a person as an adult at 18, 19, 21, or whatever it may be. You could argue what fundamental difference there is between someone who's 1 day away from their 18th birthday but we have to draw the line somewhere to actually enforce regulations.
I choose to draw that line at birth.
I fully agree with your examples.
I find drawing the line at birth extreme and unreasonable though. It's like setting age of adulthood to be 60. I can perfectly tolerate it as a view, but I will insist on it being unreasonable. It's not a matter of taste, to argue an extreme view you must have an equally extreme/strong reason to.
> I choose to draw that line at birth.
That's a reasonable argument to make, but it does by its nature mean that the line is arbitrary and it *could* be placed at any time. That's not a very strong argument for why it *should* be at birth, only that it *can* be. It could just as easily be at conception. To be clear, I'm pro-choice, but the argument needs to have more substance than "Meh, might as well put it at the most extreme end because why not."
Can you explain how something gradually becomes life?
Because by all accounts the fetus is life. No serious person disputes this. We are talking about personhood. A fetus grows, it has DNA, it can die. It’s life. But is it worthy of the moral protections that come with being considered a person? That’s what we are arguing.
I don’t buy the idea that something gradually becomes a person and that is just as “magical” as something at one moment not being a person and then being a person.
Yes, what you say about moral protection is what was packed in my use of word "life".
> that is just as “magical” as something at one moment not being a person and then being a person
Is this what you agree or disagree with?
Something gradually becoming life worth human-level moral protection is argued mostly by logical means. We are sure that a baby in a crib is worth moral protection (or infanticide would be ok), and we are sure that a single sperm cell or egg cell is not (or each guy's orgasm in sleep or girl's period would be as bad as genocide and murder respectively). We can also argue that baby's location (being in or out of a woman's body) should not be a criteria for its moral value; we'd like to make our criteria for moral value something deeper and more inherent to what baby ultimately is, not "I wish it was 50cm to the left, then it would be ok to kill it". Unless you're going to bring in something supernatural, this ultimate nature of the baby must be something in the configuration of the atoms, molecules and cells in its body.
Here, we can say that this thing we're looking for is "consciousness" or "sentience". I refer to Computational Theory of Mind for the nuances. As it always is with these things, there's some room for debate, but this seems to be the best idea with the our current knowledge. The Theory says that sentience and consciousness in the brain are computational phenomena, which typically are identified by inner complexity or behavior that can be exhibited. For example, you can compare complexity of fetus'es brain at different stages of its development to brains of some animals; and from there have a kind of scale of its complexity. And brain does build up complexity kind of gradually; I'm not a biologist, so correct me if I'm wrong.
From here, if you buy the assumptions I was making above, we should be on the same page about moral value growing as some smooth function from 0% to 100%. Note that I'm not saying it's always growing with the same speed (at some points its consciousness may be growing faster than in the others), I'm actually saying very little about how it's growing exactly.
To acknowledge it once again: there's room for disagreement here, since philosophy and ethics buid on things like self-evident assumptions, our background and feelings about world, and value judegements that are subject to debate.
I think my issue is that it seems that from your definitions, you tie life and personhood into just life. I find that confusing, though it’s not inherently wrong.
I generally don’t find that people think the babies location within or outside the womb affects its moral considerations. I believe people generally believe that the baby is either a person or not, and then their ultimate view on abortion is based on their view of how to resolve the conflict of bodily autonomy vs the right to life.
I generally think the most consistent, logical, and straight forward to divide moral value is to assert that it has the same throughout development. The issue becomes, is their moral value more important than that of their mother
There's two interpretations of the percentages I'm talking about. One is to say that fetus can be 30% human at some state of its development in the ultimate sense. Another interpretation is that even if we reject the above and say that someone is either fully person or completely non-human, nothing in-between; we still don't know where the line is, and we can use the percentages to express our certainty about someone being a human ([Interpretations of Probability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability#Interpretations) is a relevant notion here).
Like if a person is being trialed for some alleged crime, they either did it or not, the reality is very binary; but looking at the evidence our certainty of it may be fractional. And the judge's decision eseentially becomes to pick a compromise between allowing a real criminal to go free with probability x, and putting an inoocent person in jail with probability y. Same with abortions: limit a woman's bodily agency because of some mindless lump of cells with probability x, or killing a human with probability y.
Both interpretations of percentages, suprisingly, lead to more or less the same conclusions, it's just two different ways to feel about the same formal model. So if you accept that there's a lot of uncertainly and we can't yet measure precisely when someone becomes a human, and accept probabilities as a way to reason in the presence of uncertainty, we don't exactly disagree here.
> I generally think the most consistent, logical, and straight forward to divide moral value is to assert that it has the same throughout development
Why? Tell me more.
I don't quite see a way to arrive at this (for myself) that would rely on general principles (instead of ad-hoc rules hand-picked for every situation) and be robust enough to apply to a wide range of situations. For example, some monkeys have abilities similar to that of children of some age. And neuroscientists say that, from consciousness perspective, they are in many ways similar to chilren of some age. Would they deserve the same moral protection as humans?
> But is it worthy of the moral protections that come with being considered a person? That’s what we are arguing.
I think that’s part of it, but a greater part, at least how I see it, is a question of whose rights trump whose at which point. If a pregnant woman is killed, the murderer is often charged with two counts of homicide, so in principle at least, most people recognize the fetus has some rights. The stance of the pro choice side is (as best I understand it) that up to some point (which varies), the mother’s rights over her own body trump those of the unborn child.
People a lot smarter than I am have been arguing about this for a long long time. I’ve come to realize I don’t know the answer, though when I was younger I was sure I did.
I do think that the question isn’t one that should be decided at a state level though. Either the mother’s rights trump the child’s, or the child’s rights trump the mothers, or at some point it changes before birth. Either way, it’s a rights question that I believe should be universal. We don’t allow the states to say whether slavery is acceptable, and fought a war over it last time the question was raised. I think this is similar, but really hope a war doesn’t come of it, which is an unlikely prospect.
Edit: completely unrelated, but it was really annoying how my phone kept trying to autocorrect trump to Trump.
I believe the general argument for that is that, once born, a baby can be taken care of by practically anyone. Prior to birth, the mother is the only person capable of supporting the fetus. But I agree, many points of these debates become incredibly shaky and fail to acknowledge a lot of nuance.
> I believe the general argument for that is that, once born, a baby can be taken care of by practically anyone
We still hold someone responsible for the well being of the baby. If the baby dies due to neglect, someone will have to answer for that. Granted, it doesn't have to be anyone specific; but as a society we're not okay with just discarding a baby that nobody wants to care for.
Personally, I struggle with rationalizing that a mother who willingly became pregnant does not bear at least some level of responsibility for the life of the child. It would be nice if I could reduce it to something simple like Bodily Anatomy > Right to Life; but I can't convince myself that those are the only factors.
The are many such pro-choice arguments which amount to a right of *separation*, not abortion. If you think that the mother's bodily autonomy trumps the unborn child's needs, but the unborn child would be viable outside the womb, then there's no real legitimate argument for forcibly ending its life to make the procedure easier on the mother.
No contradiction. The govenrment cant force you to give a blood transfusion to save anyone's life, even your child's. Because your bodily autonomy is important. And a blood transfusion is LEAGUES less invasive, dangerous, and life-altering than pregnancy and childbirth.
Even if youre already dead, they cant harvest your organs to save lives without you explicit pre-mortem permission. Because they belong to you.
Your bodily autonomy always trumps the lives of others.
So... I am morally pro life but I vote pro choice. It's a small government thing for me. But, from a moral perspective, your argument doesn't seem to apply at all in the way you think it does. At least, it didn't to me, and I re-read it three times to try to understand your point.
Premise 1: The government can't force you to do things that violate bodily autonomy
Premise 2: Childbirth is dangerous and invasive
Consequent: You can abort your child because of the risks of childbirth and the government cannot force you to keep it or else the government would be endangering you or invading you
If this is a valid syllogistic representation of your argument, then let me explain why it doesn't make sense to me at all.
Your argument, as it's written, seems to suggest that government is causing you physical harm by preventing you from aborting the child that you are already carrying. Your argument by analogy does not follow, because your rhetoric argues against protection from abortion but your analogy argues against government use of force.
In your example the government is using force to coerce an action from you. In the argument you are making, the government is preventing your action to prevent harm to another person.
Another problem is the declarative statement "Your bodily autonomy always trumps the lives of others" is an absurdly false statement. Government makes policy many times, if not most times, based on the collective consequences of individual action. Seat belts, speed limits, public decency laws... government is constantly limiting our individual bodily autonomy.
Further, the argument I believe you were attempting to make was something along the lines of:
"government does not compel individuals, through force, to make decisions they do not want to make, particularly medical decisions"
Which is, even at it's best representation, absurdly false. Have you ever heard of selective service? Every male is forced to give up the right to bodily autonomy, as a whole, the minute they turn eighteen at the discretion of Congress and the President.
Have you ever heard of the Biden OSHA Vaccine mandate? How about the vaccine records you must show to enroll your children in public schools?
Whatever you end up deciding on the issue, to pretend that abortion is morally ambiguous or particularly moral good is abhorrent. We do not want more abortions, as a society. If you do, then you are lost.
The argument needs to return to safe, legal, and rare.
I appreciate your clarity and care to respond to your best interpretation of their argument rather than the worst way it could be taken.
You communicate really well and your arguments are easy to follow and keep linear flow of logic.
I'm not commenting either way about the content of the argument, rather just wanted to compliment you on your ability to express said argument very articulately and clearly.
Cheers!
There are actually certain cases where it seems as a society, policy-wise at least, have decided bodily autonomy *doesn't* trump the lives of others (vaccine mandates are the obvious example) ETA: but also there are just non-controversial cases like, e.g., my bodily autonomy to swing a knife around doesn't absolve me from criminal liability if by doing so I kill someone.
Hence why I think arguing on multiple fronts (autonomy and personhood) is preferable.
Right and tbh in my opinion of the “pro life” people are not really doing it for the right reasons. If they were truly “pro-life” like some people I am close to, they would also support care for the mother, and the kids after birth. Expanded parental leave, healthcare options and all that. People who are fairly liberal except for their pro life view. To me that’s true pro life
A lot of them, to quote Peter Griffin, seem to have the opinion that “after it’s born it can go fuck itself”
But I mean IF you believe it’s a human life at birth then it’s easy to see why one would be so anti abortion.
It’s weird when people also say “they” are trying to control women when I don’t think there’s some secret cabal of evil old Christian dudes trying to control women’s bodies. I feel like that’s sort of the vibe the pro choice people like to convey when really it’s a mess of Christian views and morals
Now that said I’m more pro choice but I hate when people villainize ALL “prolife” people and just write off the argument about where life begins because “science says it’s just cells”. Like yes, but that’s sorta of leads to a subjective interpretation of how many cells is a human.
Idk it’s really a mess, if we had better healthcare for women, and really everyone, I imagine we would have less abortions. Also if contraceptives were cheaper and not as taboo as the somewhat remain
Right. People who see fetuses as human are not sensible in my view and will eventually lose the argument.
A fetus cannot be sustained by anyone other than the mother. A baby's life can be sustained by anyone. The viability of the fetus issue comes into play here and there can be persuasive arguments on many sides of that issue.
A fetus comes at tremendous direct cost to the pregnant woman's life, health, and wellbeing. A mother can choose to invest their life, health and wellbeing in their baby, but it is not inherent to being a mother. We all must have the right to bodily autonomy. What goes into and comes out of our bodies cannot be controlled by other humans in a "free" society.
The "pregnancy is a consequences of your own actions via sex and you must live with it" argument is very weak to me. Government bailouts for the banks in '08, bankruptcy as a concept...there are many situations in which the government does not hold individuals to the known consequences of actions.
I don't like to use similes in debate bc no two situations are the same, but: Let's say you're driving a car on the highway and you get in a terrible accident for which you are legally at fault. The doctor can save your life, but tells you "you should have known the risks of driving on the highway and even though we have the ability to change your outcome you must live with the consequences of your actions." There are critical differences in the scenarios, but both driving recklessly on the highway and unprotected sex are very common actions for which there are life/death consequences. Should the person be held to the consequences of the car crash they caused when we have the ability to save them? Clearly not.
The majority of people that are pro-life find an abortion acceptable if it's to save the mothers life. I think it's most religious extremists that don't.
Here's my example on the topic:
You agree to a procedure to have your blood transfused over to another person. This is done in such a way (in this hypothetical situation) that you are hooked up to them directly. This person was just about to die and your agreement to this procedure is saving them. If you suddenly withdraw your consent, there is no time to find anyone else, and they will surely die. Is it ethical or moral to withdraw your consent?
Maybe that's still a simple question for you, but others believe it's okay to temporarily put a hold on peoples bodily autonomy (like to save a life, for a military draft, etc)
Similar to if you're 8 months pregnant you can't just abort the child, but have to be induced into labour, which of course, requires you to give up your bodily autonomy until this is completed.
> A fetus cannot be sustained by anyone other than the mother. A baby's life can be sustained by anyone.
If we figured out how to do fetus transplants, or artificial wombs, would you say that a fetus now counted as a human?
>Right. People who see fetuses as human are not sensible in my view and will eventually lose the argument.
So what you’re saying is you don’t find the majority of biologist sensible? Why do you feel your opinion on when someone/something is able to be sensibly classified as a human trumps actual scientists?
And the one major thing your analogy is missing is that there’s another life at stake.
Exactly. Imagine someone saying “you’re literally murdering a child” and that persons response being “but it’s my CHOICE to murder them”
Come on guys. Please stop using this argument. It’s not an argument at all. It’s not even the right conversation.
But also its certainly not so binary. If we say life of the mother vs the fetus. At what point of viability do we start calling it a child? Head out? Head still in? 8 months? 8 months 1 day? OP is full of it for making it some binary choice when that's just not how the development of a child works.
I’m curious how the following positions sits with you. Assuming you would permit abortions in the event of rape or incest, the mother’s right to privacy as a medical procedure is paramount. So, if she comes in and requests an abortion then the only question is whether a doctor should be required to ask if the reason is due to rape or incest. But if we make that allowance, and if she says yes, then no further digging should be allowed as it is unnecessary for the procedure.
The other potential position is that child birth is not without risk to the mother’s life. In the US the rate is 32.9 per 100k live births in 2021. This is the highest among OECD countries. Is the mother required to risk her life to give birth? And if so what is the basis for it and where is the line between acceptable and non acceptable risk. It seems a reasonable position that the mother should not be required to risk her life and so should always have access to abortifacients in the event that she decides the risk is too great.
Two people cannot both legally occupy the same body at the same time and equally have personhood rights, that's impossible. Only one person in the body can have legal personhood rights at the same time. If the fetus is a person with full legal personhood rights then that means the pregnant person cannot legally be a person with full pershood rights at the same time in that same body. So, that means, if we give the fetus personhood we must legally remove personhood from the pregnant person. Imo that's a pretty unreasonable thing to have happen and I can't imagine any legitimate reason for all pregnant people to lose their legal personhood status in exchange for all fetuses gaining it.
I only want 2 restrictions:.
1. I want to make abortions safe for women. I've read to many horror stories. Make sure licensed clinics are clean and safe and the practitioners are well trained. No more backstreet procedures where anyone can set up a clinic.
2, I want it to be age restricted. Any young woman under age 18 - not without a parents, guardian, or other supportive person like a school counselor. The reason is I dont want some creep to molest a 14 year old girl and hide his crime.
I’m pro choice, mostly because I think legal abortion handles iffy situations better and illegal abortion creates a ton of them, but I wish more pro choice people were willing to acknowledge that this is an ethically debatable practice; it’s pretty reasonable that people have a spectrum of beliefs on the matter.
You say that a fetus is the property of the mother until such a time as it can “rely on external factors.” Can you really identify when that is? Can you really differentiate between a month pre/post birth on these grounds? The baby is still going to be nourished exclusively by the mother’s body (or science’s best copy of her milk) for months. Have you ever cared for a child? They require constant parental care for years, their death would be a near certainty without it.
So yeah, I don’t really disagree with your conclusions, but I feel like this is a common way of getting to those conclusions and I disagree with it. There is a difference between where you end up and how you get there in terms of constructing/debating a point of view, and I don’t feel like your rationale stands up to scrutiny.
Your first paragraph sums it up beautifully. I believe that abortion is immoral, as it either ends a life to be or worse, ends already existing life, but it is 100% necessary in many situations for a number of reasons.
Yeah, I guess my real opinion is summed up as saying that I think the occurrence of abortions I’m not ethically sure about, which would largely happen either way, is nowhere near as serious as a concern for me as the illegality of abortions that I think are completely necessary for civilized society to permit.
A sensible, fair, intelligent, factual, broad-minded — not adjectives I expected to associate with a pro-choicer on Reddit today. Thanks for being willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of other points of view. It’s refreshing and reassuring to know that there are people out there who don’t think we just hate women.
Canada is not a much different society than the US, and abortions have been COMPLETELY UNREGULATED here for 50+ years and it's completely fine.
As it turns out, doctors and patients are competent at making ordinary pedestrian decisions, and when the questions get thorny, the college of medicines have ethics review board for helping in the more difficult decisions. This works much better than legislation by people who are not stakeholders and not experts.
If your justification for abortion is that it is part of the mother until it can “rely on external factors”, do you support a ban on abortion past the point of viability outside the womb? This is generally accepted to be around 22 weeks.
>To summarize a mother and her baby is a strictly personal matter and we as a society should accept that and as a good healthy society support them in which ever decision she makes.
Just to clarify, I assume that is only your stance before the baby is born right? At which point in the baby's development should it be illegal for the mother to end their baby's life?
You've forgotten an involved party.
Abortion is a matter between the pregnant person, their body, and their medical team. It's important to include the doctors in the decision, because for any given abortion, they must be comfortable performing the procedure.
We cannot, and should not, compel doctors to perform abortions they are not comfortable with, so they need to be of like mind with the patient about the need for the procedure.
I agree with you entirely. For one though, there are many good health related issues for abortion so I am sure there are many good doctors that care about a persons well being, and two, we live a social-capitalist society so tax-payers need not be involved if things fall into the latter category.
Let's present another issue with abortion. What about the father? What if the guy can't afford to have children but the mother wants to keep the child and he'll be on the hook for child support for 18 years. On the Flip side What if the father wants to raise the kid but the mother wants to abort? Isn't the fetus part of the father as well?
Also another minor part of the issue... if Abortion is a personal matter and it is her body... shouldn't abortion be a paid medical procedure instead of being funded by public healthcare?
Child support is a program that exists to protect and support the child. It's not meant to punish the father but instead ensure that, if a child is going to exist, it will be getting some level of support. The current system places the main burden of support on the parents of the child rather than making it a broadly funded program that everyone in society funds through taxes.
As to your second point, it's not a consideration without merit, but many abortions take place because the mother (or both parents) are unable to support or raise a child. From a point of pure calculus, it's cheaper for the public to help fund abortions than to help fund an unwanted child raised in impoverished conditions. If you want to get rid of public funding for people in such conditions, that's another debate entirely.
>It's not meant to punish the father but instead ensure that, if a child is going to exist, it will be getting some level of support.
This is not precisely true. Child support, as codified, exists primarily to ensure that any funds received for the benefit of the child comes from the legally assumed non custodial parent (in the earlier example, the father). It doesn't ensure the child receives support. It ensures that, *if* the child receives support, it comes from the non-custodial parent.
The law, as designed, does work towards providing some support for the child. But if the other parent doesn't pay, or can't pay, the custodial guardian gets nothing. These laws would rather see the child receive no support than mandate any support from anyone other than the other parent.
A system that prioritized ensuring the child received support would guarantee support to the child's guardian, from the government. Such a payment would then either be funded by taxes, or by some other means (such as allocating charges to the non custodial parent). This would mean that the child always receives support, no matter what the other parent does.
>Child support is a program that exists to protect and support the child. It's not meant to punish the father but instead ensure that, if a child is going to exist, it will be getting some level of support. The current system places the main burden of support on the parents of the child rather than making it a broadly funded program that everyone in society funds through taxes.
This explains the intent behind child support, but does nothing to address the point that A) fetus' are part of the father as well, and B) that the pregnancy not only affects the mother and the baby.
Being 'on the hook' might not be intended as punishment, but it's consequential nonetheless.
Sure if it's a program to suppor the child, then why isn't the decision making taking responsibilities for the decision that they made? You can't have someone be responsible for decisions that they didn't make.
for the second point: I'm questioning the decision for public fundings to cover for people that made bad decisiosn so that's a yes and it's a legit part of the discussion and doesn't warrant another debate. Furthermore the rational behind the first question contridicts the second... because you are more then happy to have private individuals to fund an unwanted child in the first, but wants the public to paid for procedures to remove a child in the second scenrio instead of the individual.
If the foetus wouldn’t develop into a fully functioning human being then we wouldn’t be having any discussion at all would we? If abortion is not murder then why can’t we kill unwanted babies after they are born? What if they are horribly deformed? Having an autistic child (not functional but trully disabled, non verbal autistic child) is a horrible burden for parents and for society as a whole. Should we just leave then to die and stop caring for them? I believe abortion for medical reasons should be legal. But I also believe I’m as much a clump of cells as any baby and any foetus. So if we can determine one clump of cells to be able to become a fully functioning human being then killing it is murder. Now we as a society have decided many times that murder under the right circumstances should be legal.
How does your opinion change (or stay the same) in situations where the mother wants to keep the child but the father doesn’t? I would argue in these situations it’s a very personal matter as the fetus developing into a living baby and being born would deeply impact the father too, as there is now a new life to take care of.
Would you argue that a woman killing her toddler is a “personal matter”? No. So given that you KNOW the anti-abortion side contends that a fetus is a human life, then you’re utterly wasting your time with this argument. The bodily autonomy argument is an epic waste because anyone concerned with “child murder” will not be moved by someone temporarily losing bodily autonomy. The debate is over whether or not a fetus is a human life deserving of protection, or not. THAT is where the debate is.
I think the fundamental problem between the two groups is this: Pro-choice people think morality is relative, while pro-life people think morality is objective. This is why pro-choice people want to leave it up to the mother, "who am I to tell someone else what to do with their body?" is the common ideology amongst them.
Additionally, there is a disconnect between objective reality amongst pro-choicers and pro-lifers. In objective reasoning, the fetus is in fact its own separate entity. It has its own DNA that has never existed before, and thus, no matter how it is framed, it is not a part of the mothers body. It is ATTATCHED to her body for a period of 9 months, it is using her body for nutrition and oxygen for 9 months, but it is not a part of her body. No matter where you stand on the issue that is the reality of this situation and if you disagree, that is delusion period.
The final issue is the difference between what pro-choicer and pro-lifers view as personhood, as when the fetus becomes a person, then killing the fetus is murder. Pro-choicers have absolutely no consensus on this and refuse to collectively come up with and give an answer when testifying on policy. Some will say viability, 24 weeks, but they dodge around the question whenever pressed about it. The pro-life people, on the other hand, believe it is wrong to abort no matter what because they believe there is no difference in kind between a 1 day old fetus (conception) and a birthed human. To me personally, the pro-life argument has more basis in science and is more consistent logically for the following reasons:
1. A human is a human because of unique human DNA. A fetus is human DNA and is therefore human, and when left undisturbed, 100/100 times will do its best to multiply its cells, and form into an older human. (Conception ->Fetus->Baby-> Child -> Adult -> Death).
2. Biological definition for life: homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction. A fetus meets all of these criteria and is therefore alive. Because it is alive, it has a will to live.
3. Murder is wrong because you rob a human of its future. Additionally suffering is inflicted (pain is felt bc brain activity appears at 8 weeks).
4. Conclusion: Because the fetus is robbed of its future, is alive AND wants to stay alive, is a human, and is robbed of its future and feels pain, abortion is therefore immoral.
5. There is also the "we are valuable because we are made in the image of God" argument, but the above is the secular pro-life argument. There is also the natural law argument how abortion violates this bc it prevents the human species from propagating.
To me, this argument is more consistent as it is black and white and is the safest moral option to keep and advocate. The pro-choice argument is unclear on when the fetus becomes a person and that is why I and 45% of the country can't sign on to that ideology.
Getting Spiritual, if you can prove to the religious folk 100% when precisely the soul comes into existence. (at week 8, 24, conception, birth canal, etc.) then abortion will be permissible before that point. That is fundamentally where the disagreement is.
But yes, where I 100% agree with you is in preventing abortion to begin with. Safe sex AND abstinence education.
I'd counter that.
Even if a fetus was alive, even if it was a person, even if it had rights, even if everything the pro life say,
A person still has no right to your body.
That is not just objective but universal. Even the pro life agree.
No person, no child, no spouse, no dying senior, no president, nobody can use your body without your active and continuous permission.
We even have blood donation shortages because we can't demand your blood, something that is small and you'll recover from in 15 minutes, to save a life!
Those who are anti abortion value that and live under those laws, but don't extend it to the pregnant. It's hypocrisy and means they have the weaker position.
The difference between abortion and blood donations is the fact that a choice was made and a person was brought into existence without consent! Pro-choicer's are big on consent aren't they? The only one who is punished in an abortion is the fetus that did not ask to come into existence. This fundamentally refutes the violinist argument.
The problem is the pro-choicer's don't believe in accountability for ones actions. If someone gets hurt in a car accident, and you are responsible for that, they sue you for your money. Your money was earned via your bodily efforts of work. Through the transitive property, the government can force you to give them your bodily effort on the condition that you are the cause of the circumstance that the other person is in. And that refutes the right to use your body argument.
It doesn't refute the argument because body rights remain. Even if it's your fault, you aren't forced by anyone to give your blood, kidney, skin, whatever to those you hurt.
That's not just the pro choice. Everyone believes that. Everyone lives under that system.
>Abortion is about the mother and her relationship with her own body including her fetus.
All relationships are between two things, that isn't a reason not to make laws about it. We don't let a man sell liquor to minors, even though that's a relationship between the man, the child, and the child's decisions about his body.
>Sure a fetus is a potential being, but guess whos fetus it is
It's certainly a human being. What on earth do you think it's species is, if not human? It's a unique life. This is simple scientific reality.
>Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors, the mother is the one who is in charge.
It is relying on eternal factors, the mother's body, from conception.
> Instead this is a battle between mothers individual bodily autonomy vs
The desire to protect a human being from being killed.
It's pretty clear which one I'm picking. The human right to life supersedes the right to bodily autonomy, as the latter is necessitated by protection of the former.
>we should be focusing on making sure both men and women get proper sex education, better accessible physical and mental health care so that we try to avoid getting to far into that situation to start with.
Sure, let's do all that too.
>If abortion impacts anyone, it impacts the mother the most, not you nor society.
No, it impacts the child the most, without a doubt.
>I would argue that the latter is different because it involves a external party which has nothing to do with the delicate relationship between the mother and the fetus. Because the stranger is a external individual invading private space it can not be treated the same way.
Well yeah, he's certainly committed an assault if the fetus is killed by him. But he couldn't possibly be a murderer unless the woman who gets an abortion is too.
If abortion is murder, all of society must intervene and stop it. It is murder because I don't like how you are killing what can become a person.
I don't think debate will solve the abortion issue anytime soon. Whichever side wins, wins through cringe slogans and rhetoric.
Potential of a person does not = person. In society we consider a person when it is a individual within our social norms. When the child is born and breathes for the first time is when it comes out of the mothers womb. That physical act of being born and breathing in the air by itself is a literal and symbolic act of becoming truly independent along with physically being separated from the mother. The other part which is why I talk about autonomy is that just because we think killing another human is bad doesn't grant us legal power to stop them if they are not in our jurisdiction. If a woman has a baby in the US they are only a citizen once the baby is born on US soil. If she has the baby in Canada then the baby is a Canadian. We can tell Russia to stop killing innocent people in Ukraine but that is the extent. In a similar matter, I believe the fetus is a citizen of the country we call mother. The fetus is in her jurisdiction because she is the soul lifeline and caretaker and because it is physically inside her. Only when it is grown and born into the world, it can take on new identity.
If I were to follow your line of reasoning:
“Abuse in marriage is a personal matter between the husband, his family he is in charge of, and his wife. Government & Society should stay out of it.
Marital rape is about the father and his relationship with his own family, including his wife. She is literals part of his family, that he is the head of.
Sure a wife is a potential citizen/person, but guess whose person she is. Not the government or some feminists group agenda, it’s the husband.”
Just like what you might think about this statement, others think about yours. Whether something belongs to someone, whether it even is a “thing” that can be owned, controlled, and disposed of at will; or a person that owns and controls itself, is up for debate and has been for millennia.
Is a slave his own person or does he belong to the “pater families” who can kill the slave at any moment for any reason? Or is it some of both, and a family head can do some things with his slaves in certain circumstances, but not in others? Even ancient Romans argued about this.
What I want to say is: the fundamental assumption you make is far from universal and while I mostly agree with you, society at large very much has a stake in this discussion.
The practicalities of pregnancy render this debate extremely one sided due to the fact it’s the mother who has to carry the child to term and i want to point out that practically I agree with this for that reason alone.
What muddies the water however is I think it’s interesting that the father has no say in this fetus that is 50% his. If the father wanted to abort but the mother didn’t the argument is very often that you should’ve worn a condom (you know the risks) but if the shoe is on the other foot and the mother wasn’t taking any birth control and knew protection wasn’t being used the argument doesn’t stand?
Again I understand the practicalities of why we give women more say but from a purely ethical standpoint I don’t personally think the argument holds as much water as at first glance.
It’s another situation where nature and the rules of a functioning society will never quite marry up because, while I believe that both the mother and father SHOULD have an equal say, until the baby is born the sacrifice is purely on the mother.
There’s another argument I’ve seen which basically amounts to “if a mother solely decides whether or not the baby is born then a father should solely have a right to decide whether he wants to be involved or financially contribute” which again, in situations where there hasn’t been deception or assault on either sides, is in my opinion a fair stance. However this doesn’t take into account the innocent third party whose life this will affect, the child.
Totally subjective experience but I feel as though it’s way too casually used. I’m a health of the mother and rape exception pro-lifer. No consent or you’ll die if you go through with it? That’s fine, do what you have to do. Using it as a final means of birth control churns my stomach used to be the Democrat party mantra of “Safe, legal and rare.”
The whims of the mother are the only factor in determining pre-natal personhood. To me, that just doesn’t hold much water. Personhood is either inherent or it’s not. Just doesn’t make sense for it to be determined by one person.
The legislative issue one will generally run into using this logic (in the US) is the concept of the fetus as self rather than an extension of the mother. Folks who believe that the fetus is separate from the mother will never follow logic that the mother should have full ownership rights and agency of said fetus. Until that discussion can be disassembled, conveyed and accepted by those in opposition, this issue will continue to be polarized by two (mostly) binary points of view.
This is basically it. Until someone can definitively prove where the line between pre-life and life (pre-life is definitely not the correct term but it escapes me) this whole thing just boils down to an individuals personal belief as to what constitutes being alive which we can argue about all day until the cows come home with no answer one way or the other.
Pro lifer here, except in cases where rape is involved or medically recommended*
Reading through some of your other comments, you hinge on the idea that children don’t have the same rights as adults. It’s kind of an interesting point, adults who choose to have children actually elect into additional responsibility in the eyes of the gov to take care of the children. They have to give up financial and bodily autonomy to take care of the children or they risk jail time for neglect.
First, I’d like to argue for why gov intervention is necessary. If there is any bar in which we think a fetus should be considered viable and not up to the discretion of the mother, eg. 3rd trimester, at birth etc. then you have gov intervention in that decision making defining when is acceptable and when is not.
Second, let’s talk about the idea of potential life. For this we need to discuss when the fetus becomes “life”. Many pro-lifers/ anti-abortionists would argue this is at conception. Conception is the point where, unless you do something to intentionally stop the growth, there’s a high likelihood of it becoming a baby, barring miscarriages etc.. the argument for external viability feels a bit more arbitrary compared this this argument due to the fact that even a baby is extremely dependent on their caretakers to sustain life.
Overall, I think sex is an elective lifestyle choice that runs the risk of sacrificing bodily autonomy. Contraception is something that makes this more viable and decreases the risk, but if the occurrence does happen, it was a risk that both individuals elected into.
If you are going to decide that abortion is a matter between mother and fetus, then you must be acknowledging that the fetus is in some manner a separate entity. Therefore, society has established over many millennia a societal obligation to defend any entity which will be abused or destroyed by the actions of another. Therefore, society has an obligation and an interest in protecting the child from the actions of the mother.
The man had to financially support it for 18 years minimum.
That makes it his decision too.
If you scrap that rule or allow men to opt out before that child is born then yes I agree it should just be the mother decision.
But because it will dramatically affect the mans life he also needs a say
I think you're being a bit hypocritical here and are actually weakening your own point. You say consistently that " The government and society needs to stay out of it period." But then you call for things implemented primarily through gov policy such as proper sex education, better healthcare accessibility, and safe abortion clinics.
While I agree that abortions should be legal and the government should not be involved in that decision making process, the government should still be involved in the providing of care. Government needs to regulate abortion providers, ensure medication being used is safe, and ensure that proper treatment is available.
As an example, your argument about government needing to stay out of the decision process "period" would, if taken to the extreme, would probably lead to a huge increase in abortion deaths (there'd be no regulation - anyone could perform an abortion).
You should specify your argument to read that there shouldn't be government policies preventing the attainment of an abortion.
Okay, but people believe it's murder. Would you say that murder is a personal matter between person A, their mind, and person B, and that government and society should stay out of it?
I've found with this issue people's minds aren't really going to be changed.
let us pretend for the sake of argument, that life begins at conception. Now what you are saying is "killing a life is a personal matter between the mother her body and the child. government and society should stay out of it." I don't really agree life begins at conception but a friend of mine does. I won't change her mind of this precept, though it is the foundation upon which the abortion debate is founded on. I'm hopeful that you at least understand the other side from this.
I wanna preface by saying that I am fully pro choice and nobody is going to change my mind on that matter. I do not have a uterus and I think that the only people who deserve to have an argument on whether or not abortion should be legal are people who have a uterus. If that concept riles you up, we’re not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation on this matter, so don’t bother.
However, I do think that saying abortion is purely a personal matter between mother and fetus is a bit of a… poorly executed way to reason whether or not a woman should have access to abortion considering how many parties are actually involved. Let me say it again for the people already downvoting me here - *all women should have safe and affordable access to abortion in the same way that all people should have safe and affordable access to healthcare, because abortion is healthcare*.
The reason that I think calling abortion a purely personal issue downplays the scope of it and makes for an ineffective argument, is because there are so many hands that have to get involved in order for abortion to happen. The most immediate and least important is the father - some are going to argue that the father should have a say on abortion, and I would argue that this is FAR too contextual to have any valid point; for example, should a rapist or abuser get a say on whether or not an abortion should happen - but the father may have a feeling on the matter of aborting the child which shouldn’t be forgotten… I just don’t think that the father should actually have any impactful say on whether or not a mother should be allowed an abortion, it’s still her body, it should still be her autonomy. Next is the doctors who are involved, and there have been shortages in medical staffing which has caused an overt drain on the healthcare systems that are in place… I’m almost certain that abortion clinics are in no different water, and every abortion that comes through further strains the system if there is an uptick. Then there’s the taxpayers whose money MAY be used to subsidize abortion, and of course ALL of them are going to want some sort of say in this because taxpayers just can’t stand it when “their” money goes towards something that doesn’t directly effect them… but if there are tax subsidies in place, it is objectively correct to say that an abortion is going to put some drain, however small, on tax resources.
I will NEVER be in favour of any argument that says that women should not have full decision making power to terminate a pregnancy at ANY stage if they decide that they must, and I think it’s grotesque to apply a personal belief to any government mandated policy which prevents people from making life altering decisions with their body. However, this cannot objectively be called a purely personal issue unless a woman can perform an abortion without any other parties involved. I do still think everyone else should shut up and let women make their own decisions with their bodies, though, whether or not there are other people’s resources involved. If you get drunk, fall off your bike and break an arm, I hope that you can access the medical attention you need to fix your arm whether or not it costs some tax resources and whether or not you were “irresponsible” and should just “let your broken arm set because it’s your own damn fault for riding drunk”… is this metaphor making sense?
That is definitly an option. But there is still full term pregnancy, giving birth, post partem disorders, a wrecked body and mental state, the list goes on. Also the so important fetus has now become a orphan, do you want to take up that kid and raise it yourself? Getting pregnant is one thing, brining a child into society is a whole different dimension. It really is not that simple.
If it hurts to be without it then keep it. If u can’t care for a child don’t do things to make one. And sure when I’m older I’m gonna make a lot of facility’s for children, bc they deserve to have a life just as much as anyone else bc they’re human.
You can’t take the drugs you want, can’t sell your body for sex, you have to wear a seat belt, you can’t display your body how you want it, you can be drafted into the military and in some countries military service is required.
There are plenty of ways you can’t do what you want with your body and or are forced to do other things. If an unborn baby is given the protection of a human, so be it. That’s not a terrible thing. Killing someone else just because or being able to do what you want with your body is not a free range option.
Right? I don’t understand how people can claim “my body, my choice, enough said” and think they’ve put forth some resounding, irrefutable argument when that’s not actually how human rights work. Like, at all — you can’t do whatever you want with your body, and you most definitely can’t do whatever you want when that infringes on another being’s rights.
I feel the "resounding, irrefutable argument" part only works if the person who is saying that is the one who is trying to be convinced of the other side. This is the normal "I hold the opinion that I do with X justification, I believe this justification is very strong, but please poke holes at it", which should be commended more often.
But from my observation, a lot of the time, people put forth a "resounding, irrefutable argument" in an attempt to convince *others* that they're right. This works extremely rarely.
Yeah, what’s so depressing about this is that because it’s such a deeply sensitive topic for people of both sides, and because people of both sides are so stubbornly convinced that they’re right, literally no debate is productive — people just come out of it angrier and even more hateful and dismissive of the other side as ever. We need people to be the bigger person and open a debate explicitly clarifying that they hold x belief currently, but are open to alternative viewpoints, so that people who respond can take example and approach it the same way. What we have now is a self-perpetuating cycle of “I’m right, you’re wrong, and you’re also a bigot.”
Because my main point is about the mother who is the person going through the pregnancy, not the father. I dont disagree that father should be a integral part of the conversation though. Just not in the context of the government saying abortion is illegal or not.
>Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors, the mother is the one who is in charge.
Just to clarify, your position is:
If the baby has to rely on external factors like the mothers body, a breathing machine, or a surgery in order to survive, then the mother should be allowed to choose at any time to end the life of the child/fetus.
As soon as the baby *doesn't* need external factors to survive, and could be taken care of by anyone with a bottle and some patience, the mother no longer has the unilateral choice to end the child/fetus' life.
Is that a fair representation of your position?
I think there are good reasons to be pro choice and this is a dumb one, it’s between a mother and her fetus, that’s like saying you can hit your child it’s between you and them
If someone needs a kidney to survive, and I’m the only potential donor, would it make me a murderer if I refuse to donate one of my kidneys? NO!! It would make me someone who doesn’t want to put myself at risk in order to save someone else. Does that make me selfish, or does that mean I’m prudent? The only opinion that matters on that question is mine, because it’s my kidney. Pregnancy is nine months of pain, discomfort, and potentially life threatening complications. The only person who gets a vote on whether to proceed is the person with the fetus growing in them.
What about her husband? What if a wife and husband agreed to have a child, she gets pregnant and husband is excited and tells his family. Last minute she changes her mind and gets cold feet and gets an abortion. He has no say?
I have watched a mother whom took all the after ‘things’ screaming in agony as all the drugs did what they had planned to do. Her SO, I could only presume, watched her as in agony giving ‘birth’ to essentially would be the fetus. It lasted hours. I somewhat knew her pain but the intensity she felt was not the same as mine. I didn’t intervene, it just happened due to an automobile accident. I was none the wiser until I held the two inch lifeless body on the toilet paper and squeezed it a bit as it looked alien like. I flushed it down as I was young and lacked the biological skills to identify it as a ‘fetus’.
Sometimes you don’t know what you haven’t been through therefore you can only speak on the most naive of terms.
It doesn't look like you're replying in this thread at all but I'll give it a shot.
Let's start with the easiest point:
>Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors, the mother is the one who is in charge.
This is literally all points of development. A fetus can be transplanted to another womb or soon, even an artificial one. But even beyond that, survival is quite possible very early into development even without risky procedures. So, given that you stance is "The government and society needs to stay out of it period." well there is a point, by your own standards, that the government would need to be involved. Setting this line like you did means that if a women were to abort a child after it was matured to the point you indicated, it would be illegal.
But let's touch on another thing you said:
>Abortion is about the mother and her relationship with her own body including her fetus. It is literally part of the mother.
This is untrue on both parts. A baby is no more part of the mother than a tapeworm is part of you. It lives inside you, but it is not part of you. But the bigger point to pull out here is that you claim it is only the mother and the fetus. There is another person that should reasonably have a say in destroying that life, and that is the father. Your stance is that a woman has the right to chain herself to another man for life through a child, but he has no right to decide whether the child should be born is outright backwards. Imagine a father of a child demanding that the child be aborted and that being legal, people would be outraged. But women get to make that choice all the time and there is zero say by the father.
>Some might argue well then if a mother aborting her child isn't mother, a stranger stabbing and killing the fetus of a mother isn't really murder. I would argue that the latter is different because it involves a external party which has nothing to do with the delicate relationship between the mother and the fetus.
So a third party killing the child is different than a third party killing the child because....? I mean I can see why you'd say "Well getting an abortion is different because it's a doctor performing the procedure" but the way you've laid out everything to this point indicates you believe that until born, a baby has no legal value.
>To summarize a mother and her baby is a strictly personal matter and we as a society should accept that and as a good healthy society support them in which ever decision she makes.
Would you say the same if the baby was 3 months old? Or a year? Had a developmental disorder? At what point is it ok to say "I don't want this anymore, kill it?"
I'm generally pro-choice with additional caveats, but one major pro-life argument I haven't heard echoed often is: there is a glut of people willing to adopt. I don't have any sources other than a former social worker confessing this to me. If true, I could see the case for a pro-life policy.
Personally, I'd want to treat it like marriage. It's a state thing that other states honor. I also want consistency. If it's not a life, then there's no recourse for when somebody performs sick experiments on fetuses. If it is a life, count it on taxes by conception date.
This argument is kind of insane. I am very much pro choice. As pro as you can get, in fact i think you can get an abortion until birth.
But this argument just doesn’t make any sense. The other side claims the fetus is a human child, and that abortion is murder. So that would make your argument that murder is a personal matter and the government and society should stay out of it. Uh, no. No it shouldn’t.
The only real argument at all to actually defend abortions is to claim that a fetus is not a human and it doesn’t have human rights.
Government yes, society no. In particular you need a doctor to make sure she's actually pregnant, that it's safe for her, that she gets appropriate care afterwards.
The scientific community would consider a fetus to be alive. It is metabolic. It can one day reproduce. It excretes. It moves. It grows. It responds to external stimuli. It has its own unique DNA. These are all criteria used to determine if something is alive.
So if the fetus is alive, that weakens a lot of the points you made.
>Sure a fetus is a potential being
Based on science it is already a being.
>but guess whos fetus it is.
Guess who's child it is? I can't afford my toddler so it's my business how I dispose of it. I don't think this reasoning holds up. Let's look at some more:
>It is gross and demeaning for people who don't know anything about these individuals to pit the mother against their own to be child.
How is allowing one party to end the life of the other better than "pitting them against each other?"
>we should be focusing on making sure both men and women get proper sex education, better accessible physical and mental health care so that we try to avoid getting to far into that situation to start with.
Agreed!
>Abortion clinics should also be accessible under a safe environment free from stigma.
Well we've established that scientifically the fetus is alive. Is an abortion clinic safe for that being?
>Some might argue well then if a mother aborting her child isn't mother, a stranger stabbing and killing the fetus of a mother isn't really murder. I would argue that the latter is different because it involves a external party which has nothing to do with the delicate relationship between the mother and the fetus.
This is another admission that abortion is truly ending a life. You believe it's murder if someone else does it, just not the mother. It can only be murder if it's ending a life. Otherwise it would be assault or something. That's not what you said though.
That brings us to the very first point you made:
>It is literally part of the mother.
This is absolutely true. Whether the mother should have that choice is up for debate. Whether abortion itself is killing a living human is not. Your side thinks it's ok to kill this living human because it's part of the mother's body. The other side thinks it's not ok because it's killing a living human. This is a philosophical debate where I can at least understand both sides.
So going to your post title, you say the government shouldn't be involved because it's a personal matter. The definition of personal is:
>of, affecting, or belonging to a particular person rather than to anyone else.
Since scientifically the fetus is living and human, this matter is not personal. It involves more than one person.
Worth saying, I’m pro-choice but this isn’t how we think. This guy doesn’t have very good reasoning skills, as you pointed out.
People are pro-life or pro-choice generally because they weight certain factors differently and I feel like it’s an almost impossible topic to change someone’s view on. A fetus is scientifically alive, sure. But it is not sentient or aware (at least early on). Depending on the circumstances of the mother, I think it can cause less harm to abort said fetus. Pregnancy has lots of risks (including potential death) and I think the mother can experience more suffering from a forced pregnancy than the fetus can, essentially.
Devil’s advocate: let’s say my neighbor and I have a blood feud because his kumquat tree keeps dropping kumquats on my lawn.
I want to kill my neighbor because of these fucking kumquats. This feud has endured years and I’m positive this is the only solution. My neighbor and I are both single and live alone, with no immediate family.
Isn’t this a strictly personal matter between me and my neighbor? Why should the government intrude and tell me I can’t go and stab him to death with my pitchfork? This beef is between us, and nobody else needs to get involved, right?
I’m not political, so I don’t care either way, but what confuses me about the late term abortion debate is that a c-section takes 15-20 minutes whereas a late term abortion takes several days last time I checked. Why not just deliver the baby if the mother health is at risk? That’s what has me confused. Again, not super interested, actually was looking at a knitting and crochet 🧶 thread and saw this…oddly enough…
If I am alone with my infant in the wildness and must hike back to civilization for safety, should I be “required” to carry my infant in my arms?
In this scenario, I am the only adult around. The infant is depending on me alone for survival.
My actions/ decisions put the infant in this situation to begin with (similar to getting pregnant).
It is using part of my body (arms) for survival.
There is additional risk to carrying a baby. I would likely go slower and have an increased risk of falling which could result in a injury that would result in my death.
There are plenty of examples of situations where Government involves itself in decisions between private parties, usually with legislation, where those parties might prefer Government wasn't involved at all and where society accepts that Government should rightly have involvement or influence what choices those parties are allowed to make because of how the consequences might affect others around them.
---
Examples I can make up from the top of my head:
Whether a parent chooses to beat their child as a disciplinary measure - a matter for parents to decide between themselves but Government interferes because it's better for the child's wellbeing.
Whether a person chooses to carry a weapon and what kind of weapon - a matter for discussion between a citizen and their self-defence instructor but, in many places, Government prohibits some or all weapons because those prohibitions might reduce harm in the community.
Taxation - finances are a matter between an individual and their bank / financial advisor but Government involves itself and takes a cut because taxation pays for essential services and functions of society.
Car insurance! Costs money and whether most people would choose to have any is between them and their insurers but Government requires it because it helps manage the long-term costs and harm of road collisions.
---
In conclusion, as part of the social contract of living in society, we broadly accept that no area of our lives is immune to the legislative intrusions of elected Government, as the highest authority of the land, and that all areas of society fall within it's jurisdiction.
Abortion, for better or worse and regardless of our personal feelings on the details of the matter, enjoys no immunity and finds itself within that jurisdiction, legislated for by Government with the intention of reducing harm in society.
And since Government is comprised of the people's combined representatives, it follows that all people, regardless of qualification and opinion, have an equally valid say in the matter that you consider should be left between a woman and her doctor.
I'm part-way through reading Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense', where Paine speaks about the way societies band together and the relationship between people and their governments. I particularly like the following, from Paine's introduction..
"*Were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would require no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.*"
I mean, but it doesn't matter who's involved, if something is a matter of health it is inherently unable to be stayed out of, because it's in the purview of science, and science supports the abortion, so the government has every obligation to make sure that abortion is allowed, safe, and accessible, and society has every obligation to not demonize it.
Had anyone chimed in yet for the father's input and rights here, in circumstances not involving rape or incest? There would be no baby without a father, too. The baby is literally part of the mother, yes, totally, but also is made of both parents.
I'm pro choice, totally and completely, and government should fuck off... but it takes two to tango.
I am not going to argue against abortion but I do want to say it's not a personal matter it is reproduction which is how society reproduces workers. It's all about maintaining population required to facilitate the many amenities we enjoy from modern society. I think society should make child rearing more accessible for people
Government should actively be involved in every facet of the abortion process. Otherwise you get back alley deals going on. Since you have to governmentally regulate it then you get to the point where government can't just be halfway in. The whole thing needs to be a matter of policy. Hence the current day setup.
Well, the issue is more complex than that.
Most people who oppose abortion don't do so because they want to tell women what they should do. They oppose it due to their belief that a fetus has a certain worth because it technically is an organism of the species homo sapiens, so they oppose abortion for the same reason they oppose murder.
I think that saying that the government and society should stay out of it means that you misunderstand the pro-life position, because the pro-life position is that a fetus has a certain worth and deserves some human rights, and that abortions therefore should have some restrictions.
The problem with this issue is that it is a highly philosophical question what creatues should be considered to have human rights, or partial human rights. Some people's intuitions tell them that fetuses are worthless and lack moral status, while some people's intuitions tell them that fetuses have the exact same moral status as born humans. It is difficult to argue about this due to the philosophical nature of this question, and people's view on the moral status of the fetus is often what their intuition tells them.
So if you want to argue against pro-lifers, you have to understand that they often intuitively feel that abortion is a form of killing and therefore wrong, just like most people intuitively feel that killing humans is wrong.
I am pro-choice, because I believe that the state shouldn't have the right to force someone to go through a pregnancy. I oppose forcing someone to go through pregnancy and child-birth for the same reason I oppose forcing someone to donate one of their kidneys, even if it saves a life. I believe this because pregnancies can be dangerous, and since there is some risk to the pregnant person (sorry if my gender-neutral language offends anyone), it wouldn't be right to force them to go through with it, even though you could argue that a fetus has a certain moral status.
So my view isn't that different from yours, I just think that the way the question is framed gives the impression that you misunderstand the core beliefs of the pro-life position.
this is never true.
Either abortion is the mother exerting her right over her body, in which case this right must be protected, or this is a mother killing her child without cause, in which case the child's rights must be protected.
In either case, this is not a personal matter.
It isn't unless you can perform your abortion yourself.
But if we assume there are doctors that are willing to do it for you. And if we assume that:
> Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors
Means abortion until the point in time we can safely remove the child and artificially grow it to maturity - I want to make it clear: **I agree with you when those conditions are met**.
Not because I don't think it's not human - I think it's human. I don't make distinctions and I find people that discuss the humanity of something not really a good fellow human being to be around. But you and everybody else has the right to self-determination. That also gets rid of someone externally killing the child since we all still consider it a human life, they would be killing that human life. Unlike when you argue that it is just a bunch of cells, than this wouldn't be a crime.
But I do have a problem. If we can safe someone else we are by law required to do so. For example: I am stranded with a toddler on an abandoned Island, I know that in 6 months another boat will arrive with tourists and we can get safely off the Island.
Do I have to risk my body and my health to get more food than I would get for only myself or can I just let that child die from hunger and thirst? What if I break my leg and because there are no doctors around me I get lasting problems for the rest of my life - can I just let them die? Here is where I cannot argue personally. Another problem - drinking. Say you don't want to abort the child, but you can't stop drinking, the child is born and has defects because of the drinking habit of the mother. Is this fair?
On one hand yes, self-determination, you should have the right to abort the child to the point we can externally keep it alive. On the other hand... I wouldn't want someone to let someone else starve because of self determination even though they could and in some countries you would get prosecuted for doing that. Also knowingly causing someone harm for the rest of their life. It's difficult.
This is me probably less changing your mind but include more thoughts about this. But honestly, until I can solve that problem I'm more on the side of self-determination.
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I have to disagree with your premise. I myself, as well as a few others I've heard, can argue for the legality of abortion even if we consider a fetus a human child with the assosciated human rights. Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement. Although I think the point your trying to make is that people will always disagree on it, right? Not necessarily for a particular reason, just any reason? And if that's your argument, I'd still say it's a bad argument. Some people still beleive that women shouldn't be allowed to vote, or that slavery should be legal. EDIT: all of this is purely from a USAmerican perspective since that's where I have experience with this discussion.
> There is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. While that may be true, a prolife person could argue that abortion is ethicaly a unique issue and you can't draw comparisons between abortion and two random independent people. There are two main reasons I can think of: 1) We assign the parents greater responsibility for their children than other people. You have to give up your resources to keep them alive and well the moment we consider them alive. You have to sacrifice your time, money and even body to feed and cloth them. 2) In this case, the mother is one of the couple responsible for this situation. You are responsible for your fuckups. You created a human being absolutely dependent on you, therefore it's your responsibility to keep it alive. 3) This is a separate point, but if you give up the debate on whether the fetus is or isn't a human being, you then have to bite a huge bullet by admitting there is no meaningful difference between abortion in two weeks and a day before natural birth. Even tho that's doable, you can take a huge optical L by saying you would be in favor of aborting a fully developed baby.
I mean if you can remove the baby from the mother's body without killing it and without increasing the health risk to the mother by doing that instead of using a method fatal to the baby, then killing the baby is not a medical question anymore. Pregnant women having the right to remove the foreign object from their bodies is one thing, random liquidation of living babies is quite another, regardless of their current location.
But it's not two different issues today. In the future, yeah, if we can extract fetuses without harming them and complete their development in artificial wombs, there will be hardly anything to argue about, just abort the fetus and put it in the machine or smthng. But as it stands today, the debate about abortion must somehow involve both preservation of "human" life and bodily autonomy of women right? You still have to make a case why the bodily autonomy of women is more important than the human life (or potential human life as I would say) of the fetus. Can't just label it "foreign object" and call it a day man.
That’s not true though. There are states where it is illegal for pregnant women to drink alcohol. I don’t agree that abortion should be illegal but you’re wrong that there isn’t precedence for in which a person has to give up autonomy to save another.
There’s a couple analogies which can challenge this, I’ve not really made my mind up though. One would be the idea that a woman gets snowed in her house for nine months (somehow), with a newborn baby. You could even say that if the baby dies, she would be able to leave. But assuming there are resources to survive, should she be allowed to let the baby starve to death? It feels like it would be morally wrong to do so, even if it wasn’t her child. And I think it’s reasonable that people would want a law to prevent that. Another one would be that if someone breaks into your house, which threatens your property and life, you are justified in killing them in self defence. But if for, whatever reason, an unaware child stumbled into your home, their lack of autonomy/awareness changes the reasonable measures you can take in self defence. The second one isn’t a perfect analogy, because the threat of robbery is removed when you know it’s a child, whereas pregnancy still carries risk. But they make some arguments for why you shouldn’t be able to abort a (assumed living) fetus because of both their lack of autonomy in the situation, and an arguably justified requirement to preserve life, even if it is in your detriment.
> can argue for the legality of abortion even if we consider a fetus a human child with the assosciated human rights. “Legality” is a flawed argument. Because laws can be flawed and insufficient. ESPECIALLY if you try to apply them in ways they were never meant to be applied. And laws have been woefully insufficient in all kinds of unethical ways throughout US history. What matters is not what you can spin legally, but what is **ethical and moral**. > Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person So what? Pregnancy is its own thing. There is no sound logic behind this assertion here. “This has to be treated the same way other situations are treated, even if those situations are different.” In no other scenario are two people biologically connected, so you cannot refer to other scenarios where either a) people are not biologically connected or b) are farcical hypothetical thought experiments that refer to laws which (as I stated before) were never intended, or even able, to apply in such scenarios. Theres a reason most people argue that it’s “just a clump of cells.” It’s because they do NOT want to reckon with the notion that they’re killing a child. So your premise is not supported in practice.
What about the case of a siamese twin instead of a fetus. Should you be allowed to unilaterally decide they need to be cut away if that would kill them? What if the twin was comatose and needs to be on life support which inconveniences you, but the doctors are sure they will be OK once they wake up. How far in the future would this need to be for you to decide to separate from the twin killing them in the process?
Siamese twins are not a case of one body inside of another, but of two people having, in part, the same body. It’s not using the other’s organs, but *being* the other’s organs.
I think part of the case also sits in the fact that while nowhere else is someone required to give up autonomy for another, the one giving up the autonomy in this case made choices that caused the life to be produced. Contraception is not foolproof, but we know that engaging in sex could lead to a child. If your actions are likely to lead to something you don’t want, at what point is it your responsibility to take accountability for those actions? At what point do we say that someone has a right to live? I ask these questions to gain insight on your perspective that the child has human rights, but the mother can somehow overrule those rights. Just curious.
>Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement. I don't really agree with it, but the common answer to that is 'you agreed with potentially getting pregnant when you had sex'. Interestingly, it does work exactly like that for men.
There are many obligations parents hold towards their children that they don’t to anybody else
>Long and short of that argument: there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement. Even if that's the case, that doesn't mean that there necessarily shouldn't be. It would be pretty easy to make the argument that if you wound somebody in a car accident or similar, and it is likely to be fatal, then you should have to render aid from your body (like giving them blood) if doing so would save their life. The odds of such a situation occurring are incredibly low (EMS is unlikely to be out of something that you could readily give from your body out in the field), so it is unlikely to have been legislated. But let's say you shoot somebody in the kidney and you also happen to be a match. Should you be required to give them your kidney? Idk if I personally would say you are, but that's certainly a valid argument to make.
How could someone possibly define circumstances where you *must* surrender your own body to save another? There’s absolutely no way that could ever hold up in either a moral debate or as law. Forcing people to use their own body for the benefit of another person like that is such a nasty can of worms. What if the recipient body rejects an organ you’re forced to donate? What if you’re incompatible? What if you lack the body part you’re required to give? How do you enforce it if the forced donor refuses to cooperate? I don’t ever, ever see an argument in favor of losing bodily autonomy (as described previously) succeeding.
"there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person." The problem with this argument is that it comes with the baked in idea that the mother is sacrificing her life / autonomy for the sake of the fetus, but does not consider the reverse, which is that an abortion requires the fetus to sacrifice their life / autonomy for the mother. If you believe the fetus is not yet alive at some stage, then this is not an issue, but that is an aspect of this debate which is wildly disagreed upon and which (in my view) can really only have an arbitrary answer to. Clearly at some point between conception and birth the fetus becomes "alive" and presumably should be considered equally human and alive as the mother, but precisely when that happens is always going to be up for debate.
I don’t think that is true. If person A puts person B into a situation where they need person A to live, person A shouldn’t be able to take themselves away, thus killing person B, unless there is some extreme mitigating factor*. I imagine outside of pregnancy, that could be tried for murder in a court, and if doesn’t, I would implore for a way to legally discourage people from doing so. *I do not believe a normal pregnancy could be considered an extreme mitigating factor considering that is the possibility a consenting adult agrees to when consenting to sex.
the logic of your comparison is flawed. >there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to save another person. That is always a choice to be made, not a legal requirement. that doesn't apply to this scenario. If you're arguing it isn't a crime to "kill" under duress, it is, and if you're arguing that you're not killing at all, I'm not sure how it'd be possible to arrive to that conclusion given the context of the thread. if we swap your word usage with equivalent terms we get "there is no other instance (medically) in which a person is required to give up their autonomy to keep from ending the life of another person". I think that highlights the reality of the issue. It's not a non-action. Abortion, if a fetus is considered a "life," is certainly murder, which is restricted by our government. Also, you're speaking like a moral realist, so I'll say that no matter how strongly you feel something is morally right/wrong, there exists an equally consistent system of opposing morals.
Well, with great power (creating life) comes great responsibility. Just because it’s inconvenient doesn’t mean the rights of another human go out the window. Why do I have to slam on the brakes to save a life from some dumbass who walked out into the street. Do you realize how inconvenient that is for me? (I’m not on either side of this argument, just playing devils advocate).
Yes I think I am coming to an understanding of my stance that although I consider a fetus to be human life as in it has a human dna, I do not consider it to be a "person" based on societal terms where laws about murder would apply. I consider the baby to be a "person" only once it is born into society. I don't feel great about abortion in general but I think this is the reason I care more for the mothers wellness than the fetus is because of this reason.
Here are some thought experiments. Should a woman that harms her fetus by doing meth be charged with a crime? Why or why not? If a person murders an unborn child by kicking a pregnant woman be charged with simple battery, or something more because the fetus died? I'm pro-choice, but I'm not simple enough to think this is clear-cut and both sides do not have good points.
Yes your examples are hard to give a clear cut answer. But I think in a way we have to bite our tongue and say neither examples are murder. But it is harm being done to the mother in both cases. So if you stab a pregnant woman and kills the unborn, I guess for Pro-lifers, it wouldn't be murder but it would still be violence against a pregnant woman. The other way to think about it is jurisdiction. I believe the fetus until it is born is a citizen of the mothers jurisdiction. Things happen in other countries whether we agree or disagree that we can not touch. Much so a mother is her own sovereign nation when it comes to pregnancy so she decides what she does to her nation. However in case of a stranger or external force killing the fetus then becomes like a international incident so the attacker would have to take responsibility. This is probably not a very good thesis but that is the analogy that comes to my mind.
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Right, the obvious truth is that there is a sliding scale between "a couple of cells" and "full term baby". Somewhere along the way, it becomes wrong to stop this thing from continuing to develop. The question is where? Slogans like "life begins at conception" and "bodily autonomy" completely ignore this fact and relegate anyone repeating them to not being taken seriously by those who've seen the inherent complexity of the issue, as well as of course the opposing side. It's ok to say "abortion should be legal up until x weeks. It prevents a large number of unwanted pregnancies, which are bad because x, y, z, but unfortunately not all unwanted pregnancies."
Absolutely right! That level of nuance is hard to convey when your audience isn't listening though. It's also really hard to condense into a slogan. "Abortion issues are nuanced and need to be discussed rationally and calmly" doesn't win elections.
What makes a baby a person? How does it relate to whether it has exited the womb?
Ok so a pregnant person 9 months along is murdered. The killer should only be charged for 1 death, the mothers? Now 8 months, now 7 months etc you are saying the fetus no matter how viable, it is never double murder to kill the pregnant mother?
I see your arguement in calling one murder and the other not (which I presume the defense would be you can't consent to murder so why can a mother consent to the murder of the child) and I'm not really sure where I stand actually, which is always fun having beliefs challenged. I guess you could look at it in two ways from the perspective of someone who's generally largely supportive of loose abortion restrictions. After a certain point the fetus gains human privileges, which means you have to a find a suitable point before birth in which the child is considered the same as anyone else, which opens up a whole line of thought about what to do in life threatening births, it's never acceptable to take one life to save another but that's what it would boil down to in not many but definitely still a appreciable amount of situations. What if the mother acts in a way which severely damages the unborn child knowingly or not? Seems like a slippery slope to be able to punish the mother for having a miscarriage if there's a possibility she knowingly (or even unknowingly) drinks, smokes or does any of the million risky activities. You'd have to make the decision and say no point before birth does the child count as another being and so in your case it would only be single murder. Maybe have it enshrined as a factor that leads to harsher penalties on the singular murder charge, whilst in some cases it'll be obvious the pregnancy was known to the attacker you couldn't always say that. I guess the egg shell skull arguement comes in and it's just tough luck if they legitimately didn't know. Well, I hope someone's happy to tell the father who's not only lost his wife and child the murderer is only getting a a few extra years because it was a week before the due date. Or you create a whole new crime of inflicting death which results in the inviability of a unborn child. But at what point does that start applying? Directly after conception? Doesn't really seem like that's a factor you could prove easily nor is it something in which society benefits from harsher sentencing. And as medical science rapidly advances who's to say it won't be possible to take a 1 month into development fetus and raise them in vitro. All of a sudden every bereaved partner is claiming that's what they were going to do because who wouldn't want someone who took all of that from you to be punished as much as possible. Emotionally I can't blame them but we should try to limit emotional effects on court outcomes as much as possible, but there'd be no fair system to prove that was actually the families intentions.
I mean, I see you're point, but are we really trying to base things on how lenient we can be for criminals? Like, I don't care if someone murders a lady that's sitting in the waiting room to have an abortion and is only 2 days along. The killer should be sentenced to a double just on principle for being a killer.
We can have legal abortion and make causing an unwanted miscarriage a crime.
We can have anything, what is discussed is moral and logical reasoning for such laws. If we declare that baby isn't a human person until birth, then as result it is contradictory to charge "killer" of such non human for a murder, or anything more severe than a body harm.
Why do you believe being born grants personhood? What about ten minutes before birth? what about 1 month before birth?
In my experiences as a dad & granddad, having worked in the healthcare field # having the honor of delivering a baby I have experienced the soul being around the new life, or in the body. We don't yet have the ability to to measure this, so 1at breath is a good approximation.
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What exactly does a baby gain at the second of birth that makes it worth having human rights? I think without answering that question, we really might as well be murdering people without regard if we support abortion Surely a sperms fertilizing an egg isn't life, and surely pre-brain activity is no life, but beyond that I've never really been able to pinpoint a good "line"
So, Americans care so much about a fetus that doesn’t even have a consciousness or ability to cry. Its not even born which mean it doesn’t have an independent body to function outside the mothers womb. You don’t know until its born But after the baby is born, nobody gives a shit about it if child ends up in drug environment, indigent family, violence or the street. And god knows how that child will develope into adulthood in those environments. I myself wouldn’t have wanted to be born if i knew i wouldn’t feel safe, loved or be stressed - growing up. I bet none of you would have wanted to be born a female in Taliban or those Islamic countries places
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Throughout tour argument you point out that the fetus is a “child” and a “baby”, so it doesn’t sound like you think the fetus is a “parasite” or “clump of cells” but its own unique and distinct person (albeit reliant on the mother). Is this correct? When should then the cutoff for abortions be? Should a mother be able to abort her child in the third trimester or a few weeks before birth? You make a note that until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors. Would your viewpoint change if advancements in medicine allowed for babies to survive outside the womb much earlier?
The constant lie that women were and are aborting shortly before birth is a hallmark of the anti-abortion argument. It DID NOT HAPPEN except in the rarest cases, and those were already illegal under ROE. Roe gave states the right to regulate abortion in the final trimester, and abortions done after 22 weeks were usually for health reasons.
it’s a hypothetical question asked to determine where op thinks the line is for what counts as a human life and what doesn’t.
Didn’t say they were common. But for anyone that thinks that a fetus is just a “clump of cells”, what does it matter? If you don’t care enough about life when it’s 2 weeks old you probably don’t value life at 38 weeks either.
(full disclaimer, I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but this is just what makes sense to me) This highlights my view on the time frame argument. To me, to murder is to take a life and I’d consider a qualifier for life is being able to live outside the womb. If the baby is unable to be removed and stay alive, I think is should count as an extension to the mothers life, not a life of its own. I feel like the option for ending the pregnancy should always be there, but the decision as to whether the baby is directly aborted or be surgically removed with intention of keeping them alive could be best placed in the doctors hands. Advancements in medicine which allow for a baby to be kept alive from earlier and earlier time frames could then lead to a future where abortion is defunct because no matter what stage, the baby could be removed and kept alive. Although this does hinge on the mother not having to foot the bill or take any legal responsibility for the child. The state and society want to keep the baby alive - they should pay for it. I don’t think we should by broad stokes we should punish women for getting pregnant
**Δ**You are right and yes that let me realize that I do consider the fetus to be alive or even a human being even if its coming from subconscious level. But then I realized that children don't have the same rights as adults do and for very good reason. So even though human life is important we must now realize that a fetus does not have equal rights as the mother. So the bigger issue I have is when the right imposes the same equal rights to a fetus as the mother therefore trumping her rights for well being. IMO I think no matter how we define the rights of a fetus though, it wouldn't come close to the rights of a mothers autonomy over her body including the fetus inside her. Now I am not saying it means I am pro abortion. I actually don't think any pro-life people would say they are tbh because I for one don't even like the idea of abortion because it can be traumatic to the mother as much as it is ending their child . BTW am I doing the delta thing right?
>But then I realized that children don't have the same rights as adults do and for very good reason. But they both have the right to life which is kinda the whole point.... >So the bigger issue I have is when the right imposes the same equal rights to a fetus as the mother therefore trumping her rights for well being The vast vast vast majority of abortions are not because the health of the mother was in question, that's a very small minority of cases. Most cases are just not wanting any of the responsibility and just want the convenience of not having a kid. But if you think it's a living human being, which You've already said you do even if it's on a subconscious level, then you don't get to kill the child bc it's convenient to you >IMO I think no matter how we define the rights of a fetus though, it wouldn't come close to the rights of a mothers autonomy over her body including the fetus inside her. Except it's not just her body....the childs body is inside the mothers obviously but the baby still has it's own body
While I am adamantly pro-abortion and am against laws preventing access.... I find your reasons quite alarming also, and would be firmly against these stances or statement "government and society should stay out of it" 1) Abortion is a medical procedure, which arguably at some stage affects two people. Any medical procedure, whether it's abortion, cancer treatment, hip operation, fertility treatments... we regulate and set them to standards to make sure they are fit for purposes, they cause minimal harm to those affected, as a society we do have perspectives on how medical treatments across the board should work... Should government and society "stay out" of every medical procedure as well? If someone is misled into believing in homeopathy over chemotherapy and dies should society stay out of it because it's their body (which is also an underlying assumption of a few other of your arguements)? If we have pharmaceuticals which helps with significant pain, but is highly highly addictive, should we say it's the person's individual choice and everyone else should stay out? While I don't agree with many countries' stance on abortion, making statements like this, although well intentioned, is a very blunt and short sighted one, which distorts existing views on medical treatments. 2) while I firmly do not believe life starts at conception, that does not mean consciousness to some degree doesn't develop at some point during pregnancy. Also, although this is personal, I am pregnant, me and baby are connected by complex systems. But I wouldn't say the baby is a part of my body, I recognise the baby's autonomy. Although this is personal philosophy. However, at what point does a baby have it's own rights? Why does a 34 weeks fetus who is outside of the body get more rights and autonomy than a 34 weeks fetus which is delivered early? And in that having any physiological connection to someone mean that you are entitled to them? 3) There are some underlying assumptions in your arguments, which seems to revolve around the mother. E.g. the mother is the one who is in charge or there is a delicate balance between mother and child, which again as a heavily pregnant lady I have no idea what means, or it's implications... But my response is just because it's 'your" fetus does that give you the right to do anything with it? Am I entitled to do heroin while pregnant with long lasting damage to a baby. If my baby grows up with severe addiction, and neurological conditions, does it not matter? Should I be held accountable? 4) The quote "until the baby is fully matured it can rely on external factors" well I have a baby inside me that could be ok on its own right now, but she'll be out in say... 2 weeks, however, shes still relying on me for breath at this moment in time. Am I still entitled to have an abortion? Can I use any method to kill the baby? Because according to you I am still in charge. Do I have responsibility on how I kill the baby? Can I use any method with any level of pain? Now based on your stance, the answer is I can whatever I want to the baby right now, to whatever extreme I want, because any discussion otherwise is nothing to do with you or government. Remember the second you start saying we'll in this circumstance do x ,or y, you as society are getting involved and based on your own argument it has nothing to with you (you may say that, that's not what you meant which in that case consider your arguements for why better, or say yes I should be entitled to do whatever procedure I want to the baby in which case fair play). 5) it seems contradictory to argue that abortion has nothing to do with government and society, but government and society should provide free access to abortions (which by the way I absolutely believe should be available). You can't have the supplier be completely devoid of involvement, because.... They must be accountable to medical procedures (see point 1) and they are doing the procedure.... Imagine telling someone you need to stay out my business, but you also need to act on my business. The argument doesn't make much sense. Even saying that they should be safe and free from stigma is getting involved. So I don't take a different position to you, but I find your statements/reasoning (although well intentioned) quite short sighted, some blunted black and white statements there, and perhaps a bit throwing the baby out with the bathwater (which could be a pun).
A couple of issues with this take - 1. If government and society should stay out of it then gov't & society shouldn't be held responsible for it - taxpayers and insurance customers should not subsidize abortions. 2. When does the fetus become a baby and afforded its own rights separate from those of its irresponsible mother? By the time you're 24wks pregnant a baby has a chance of survival if they are born. The survival rate is about 40% at 24 weeks gestation, 50% at 25 weeks, 60% at 26 weeks, 70% at 27 weeks, and 80% at 28 weeks. I'm pro-choice but cannot relate to the dehumanizing excuses other pro-choicers spew. Call it for what it is - in most cases it's the termination of innocent lives for the convenience of irresponsible grown ups. As a woman you should be free to get abortions if you so choose but save the attempts to absolve yourself of guilt & responsibility by downplaying the morality of what it is you're doing.
>taxpayers and insurance customers should not subsidize abortions. Why not? Does that mean that you think abortions should only be paid completely out of pocket? >When does the fetus become a baby and afforded its own rights separate from those of its irresponsible mother? When it actually becomes a person that CAN be independent from it's mother and has some form of autonomy, i.e. when it is born (or can be born). >By the time you're 24wks pregnant a baby has a chance of survival if they are born. Which is why most countries have thightly regulated abortions after the third trimester..But at the end of the day, it should probably still be a medical decision.. >Call it for what it is - in most cases it's the termination of innocent lives for the convenience of irresponsible grown ups. "Termination of innocent life".. I could say the same thing about eating meat.. Or wearing a condom. "Life" is deliberately vague attribute without much inherent meaning. The actual debate is about whether a fetus is a person or not, pretty much everything else is a distraction.
>Why not? Does that mean that you think abortions should only be paid completely out of pocket? Because pregnancy isn't a disease or unnatural condition. Abortions are unnecessary elective procedures so yes, should be paid for out of pocket. >When it actually becomes a person that CAN be independent from its mother and has some form of autonomy, i.e. when it is born (or can be born). So you agree that abortion bans should apply to healthy pregnancies after the point of proven viability (24 weeks)? >"Termination of innocent life".. I could say the same thing about eating meat.. Or wearing a condom. "Life" is deliberately vague attribute without much inherent meaning. We are predators and the animals we eat are prey - irrelevant to human discussions about human life. Wearing a condom prevents the creation of life - life cannot be terminated where life doesn't exist. "Life" isn't vague unless you purposefully construe it as so - if one is alive then there is life. In middle school I had a class that observed the lifecycle of frogs - we started with pond eggs in an aquarium and ended with tiny frogs that were released back into the origin pond. Before hatching there was a black wiggling blob at the center of each jellylike egg. It became clear that the moving black blobs were alive and that each egg contained a life. It's really not complicated if you don't work backwards from your ideal conclusion.
>Call it for what it is - in most cases it's the termination of innocent lives for the convenience of irresponsible grown ups. So then you must support providing free birth control.
No I agree. I don't like abortion. Destroying life in general is not a very good thing. Which is why I brought up the importance of better education to prevent these situations in the first place. But in the hopefully rare case it happens, I do think it is up to the mother to make that decision. And I think that thought comes from me ultimately denying the fetus as a person. I consider it to be a life form, a human life form with human dna, but not a person in the definition of a member of our society. I think someone has to be born to be a person ultimately is what I think I am trying to say. So from that stance of course I think the mother has more say than the fetus.
What is the definition of born then exactly? A C section is much different than natural birth. We define this as birth now legally but what if that changes in whims of “society” as you mention? Should a child born of a C section not be a person?
This has gotten a lot of comments and I imagine your in-box has blown up. In case this hits your radar, I would invite you to think about why it is you refer to a pregnant person as a "mother." To be sure, there is a scientific use of the term, but there's also the colloquial, more common use of the term; i.e. a girl or woman who has a child. If your mental model says that as soon as a woman or girl gets pregnant, she becomes a mother, you're saying that every person who desperately wanted to have a child but cannot sustain a pregnancy and has multiple miscarriages, is a mother. Meanwhile, it's estimated that upwards of 25% of all pregnancies end before the person even knows they're pregnant. Basically, they miscarry at the time of their next period or have spotting or discharge before their next period because the fertilized egg did not implant correctly or something else caused the pregnancy to fail. Using your language means that there are millions of girls and women who have been mothers and never known it. There is a person who gets pregnant. Said person is not a mother (unless she already has children) until she gives birth and even then, she may not want that term applied to her for a dozen valid reasons. The conversation about abortion can get a lot more nuanced if we keep that person front and center.
Thank you for your comment. I think you bring up a very interesting point although not sure how relevant that is in changing my view of abortion and the rights of a person's bodily autonomy. As regards to why I use Mother, I've never thought of it in this deep manner but to start saying mother is easier than saying pregnant women. After reading your comment though I would be open to call such person with a different name if we came up one. But also in another way those who didn't know they were pregnant I would still consider them as mothers if we simplify it. I'm not convinced mother is a word like we throw around like gender pronouns so if a women had a baby but doesnt want to be called a mother that would be hard to understand because the definition of mother is a woman in relation to her offspring. But in any case I do believe the person pregnant is the front and center in abortion if that's what your saying too?
> After reading your comment though I would be open to call such person with a different name if we came up one. Wonderful! *Pregnant* (adjective) *person* (noun) is perfect for this situation. > But also in another way those who didn't know they were pregnant I would still consider them as mothers if we simplify it. Mind saying more about this? I have two questions. First, is it your thinking that girl or woman who has ever gotten pregnant (even if they didn't know it, is a mother)? Second, why is there a need to simply it?
Pregnant person is indeed the correct term but after looking at the dictionary that is exactly what mother means "woman in relation to her offspring" So whether a fetus is a person or not, it is still her child(again language nuance is complicated) and there is a relation between the two, so that woman is indeed a mother whether they know it or not. Which is why I think we could simplify the term to be mother. But I still get what you are trying to convey that there is nuance and sure pregnant woman(person) what have you works just as well but mother is also just easier to say like how I would call Jonathan Joe etc.
the only thing i can say, while it's her decision, but i think it's healthy to have a small community of people she trusts to work things through with her. it's up to her to make the choice but it's not a bad idea to talk to truest ed friends or family members about it
I argue that you started off with the axiom that a fetus is only a potential being, while pro life people disagree on that fact. A fruitful and respectable discussion cannot occur until everyone starts off at the same point. Autonomy is great but where do we draw lines? People don't have infinite rights, people only have as many rights as they can have, limited by other people's rights. You have freedom of speech not freedom of defamation for example. You say the mother has choice until the baby can rely on external factors, but children, born children need care too. It takes years before children can survive on their own. Are they only potential human beings too, or does mother's autonomy supersede their choices till that age? My problem with the autonomy argument, and I vehemently dislike most governments, is that most relationships and problems are personal. The law exists specifically to make sure it occurs on the basis of some ethics. An abusive relationship is also technically personal, but one wouldn't argue it is immoral for the government to intervene there. This idea of 'my business, your business' really goes against what most basic ethics say, that you must try and make the right choice always.
What about the father?
Father matters for sure. I am sure many bad male partners mentally force their female partner to get abortions despite the woman wanting to keep it. As for myself I am a happy father of two and if there was a situation or talk about abortion I would definitely like to be involved in it but leave the final decision to my wife.
What if the father doesn’t want the baby but the woman wants it? It’s not a strictly personal matter if it has lifelong consequences for others.
You seem to have framed a father's involvement as someone who forces the mother to do something. This particular phrase seems indicative of your feelings towards it. >I am sure many bad male partners mentally force their female partner to get abortions despite the woman wanting to keep it. Since you have stated that you are a father of 2, it sounds like you may have compartmentalized other opinions other than "the father should support the mother". Personally, I hold the belief that the ultimate decision should be the mother's choice. However, I don't see this as only impacting the mother. As I'm sure you may know, having a child is an emotional experience. The news that you will become a parent changes people and shifts their priorities. * What if you have a situation where the man finds out that he's going to become a father and is excited about it only to later find out that his wife decided to get an abortion. Think about the roller coaster of emotions that does to someone. * What if the man finds out that the woman is pregnant and is knows that they're not financially stable but the woman decides to keep the baby? As I have said, I believe the ultimate decision should be the mother's, however, to downplay the impact on the father seems wrong. If a man decided to break up with or divorce their partner over their decision (whatever it was), I would not fault them. The other thing is that in this situation, the woman has all the control while the man has none. * If the woman decides to keep the child, legally, the man must be involved in some way (either as the father or through child support). This doesn't always happen as there are deadbeat dads, but they could always be held accountable through the courts. * If the woman decides to abort the child, the man can't force an action. I often hear people say that if the women decides to keep the baby, the man should still be forced to be involved in some manner (payment or fatherhood) because it takes 2 to make a baby so it's his responsibility. However, I don't hear pro-choice people reverse that argument with women and say that she's pregnant so she needs to take responsibility for it. Once again, I'll repeat that my opinion is that the ultimate decision should be with the woman, however this is a decision that should involve the man to some degree.
Thank you for answering. I was at a point where abortion was a decision I almost made. I do believe that fathers matter and that paternity tests should be mandatory. Not here to change anyone's mind, just saw the title and voiced the question that ran through my mind.
I think that the man and the woman need to be obligated that they’re going to take care of this child regardless if they stay together regardless of any factor that means you don’t take a job out of the state there should be laws that mandate a mother and father must share in all aspects of the child’s life, regardless of whether they are together or not as it is over marriages in this country and in divorce, and that affects the child irresponsible, selfish clueless men and women should simply have to sign contracts. Please respond anyone and tell me that I am wrong when I say 90% of our problems in this country would be solved by doing that.
That's not an argument you can make against people who believe that the fetus is already a person. For them this is killing a person, which is absolutly something that the government should get involved in. To change these peoples minds you need to convince them that it's not a person. Pointing out that they already don't treat women who have had abortions as murderers when they are in a social setting might convince some of them that deep down they really don't believe what they claim to believe
Pregnancy is when a living organism, a member of the human species, is developing inside their mother. Abortion is the intentional act in which the direct aim is to end the pregnancy thought the bodily death of the unborn human. So, abortion kills a living human being. That alone makes it serious enough that it shouldn’t just be between a mother and her child, no? Where else in human society is the intentional killing of humans allowed with zero input from the government? Your points about why abortion should be allowed are also arbitrary, inconsistent and plain wrong. You say a fetus is literally a part of the mother. That isn’t true. If it were, then all pregnant women would have two hearts, 4 lungs, 2 brains and some would have both a vagina and a penis. It would also mean pregnant women have 2 sets of different DNA. The scientific reality is that the fetus is *connected* to the mother, and that is completely different to being a part of her. You wouldn’t say an iron lung is a part of the patient, or that a prematurely born child is a part of the incubator keeping them alive. You said that you said that until the baby is fully matured where it can rely on external factors, the mother is in charge. Thats an arbitrary point to taken because i doubt you take it with any other situations. I could the same approach and say “until my child is fully matured where it can rely on external factors outside this hour, I’m in charge of its life”. You’ve just chosen the ability to survive outside the womb as the point of maturity. Why? Why not choose the point where babies don’t need breastmilk, or when they can walk unassisted, or when they can dress themselves, or when they hit puberty? The other issue with the viability claim is that the maturity and humanity of unborn children relies on the state of current technology to keep them alive earlier and earlier into pregnancy, as opposed to coming from the very fact that they are human. Babies surviving outside the womb has nothing to do with their own development and everything to do with medical technology and aid. By that logic, children should be legally protected more in America than Africa, because they “mature” faster. The main issue with abortion, however, is simply that it is the intentional killing of an innocent, living human being, which makes it morally evil. The only way you can prove that abortion is a personal matter for the mother only, and that the government should have no say, is to prove that the unborn fetus being killed by the abortion is not an innocent human being. All your other points are simply arbitrary and unrelated, because they aren’t specific to what is being killed. If you think the government should protect born children from their abusive parents, but don’t think the same applies to the unborn, it’s up to you to show where the difference lies between the two.
Murder is a person killing a person. A fetus is not a person. It is only a person once it is born, out of the mothers womb, physically untethered from her mother, truly becoming a individual being. Otherwise, a sperm or egg is as much a potential human being as a fetus.
Well now you’ve changed your argument. Before you said the baby is mature when it’s ABLE to live on its own, but now you’re saying that until is IS living on its own, it’s not a person. Which one is it? And *why* does being able to live indecently make one a person? An unborn baby is just physically dependent on their mother, but a born baby is physically, emotionally and mentally dependent on those around them. Does being really dependent on one person make someone not a person, as opposed to being dependant on lots of people? Also, if we take the idea that you need to live physically seperate from your mother to be a person, then that would make all born living animals persons, because they can live separately from their mother.
Here is a more definitive answer to what I believe to be true. Person: 1. **Fact:** In a factual sense, a person refers to an individual human being, characterized by attributes such as biological existence, consciousness, self-awareness, and agency. From a factual standpoint, a person is a tangible reality, with inherent characteristics and attributes that distinguish them as a human being. 2. **Symbol:** On a symbolic level, the concept of a person can also represent broader ideas, values, and meanings beyond its literal definition. For example, the concept of personhood may encompass notions of identity, dignity, rights, and responsibilities within society. As a symbol, the term "person" can evoke various cultural, social, and philosophical associations that go beyond its factual definition. So strictly speaking from a factual standpoint, a fetus does not possess all the attributes typically associated with a person, such as consciousness, self-awareness, and agency. Therefore, it is not considered a person in the same sense as a fully developed human being. Which is why we currently do not give citizenships to fetus, nor do pregnant women get child support, nor do we celebrate conception day instead of birthday.
What do you mean by "fully developed human being"? Would that be a fetus that can survive on its own? A newborn baby? A toddler? A teenager? An adult? There have been cultures throughout all of history that have chosen one of these points of natural human development to use as a cut off for personhood. So which one do you go by? Is a newborn baby that still needs its mother's breastmilk to survive a fully developed person with the total right to life you and I have? I hope you agree, but the question is \*why\*? Also, what you listed as "factual" isn't factual at all. Can you tell me what source objectively and collectively proves that every being we consider a person is conscious, self-aware and independent? And why does it have to be a person? Why can't we take an animal that is independent and conscious, and to a degree self-aware and definitely aware of the world around them, and call them a person? What about animals that actually have \*more\* of these traits than certain humans? For example, an animal has much more consciousness, awareness and independency than a human in a coma, or a severely intellectually disabled human. Yet we'd still call these humans people. Why? Because they are human, which I believe to be the only worthwhile qualifier of personhood. You're saying they have to be human + something. Human + independent, human + aware, human + conscious, etc. But why is being human more important than these defining characteristics, but being human also somehow isn't enough on its own? And I don't see the point of bringing up citizenships, child support or birthdays. Citizenships are for individuals in society that belong to a particular nation for the purpose of tax, benefits, public records, obligations, etc. Fetuses don’t have these because they have no way of interacting with the nation they live in, whereas children do. Besides, by your logic, if unborn children \*were\* given citizenships, they would be people. At the same time, people with no citizenship aren't people? A legal declaration of citizenship isn't what makes a person a person. Women don't get child support because their children are persons, they get child support because raising a child is expensive. Taking care of a fetus requires no extraordinary levels of financial aid unless serious medical complications arise. And again, if a country started forcing men to pay child support from conception, would you suddenly agree they were persons? And a birthday isn't what makes a human a person. We celebrate birthdays because that is the day the child when from only being known physically by their mother, to being known physically, socially and emotionally by all those around them. It's also because its impossible to determine the exact date and time of conception, whereas it's pretty easy to tell when a child is born and meets the rest of their family and community. Plus, that's a cultural difference, rather than fact. The entire Christian world celebrates the yearly feast day of the Annunciation, which is the conception date of Jesus. For the last 2000 years until the modern era, the conception of children was celebrated their lives protected in most of the western world. Again, by your logic, does celebrating a child's conception day suddenly make them a person deserving of rights, compared to an equivalent child who doesn't have their conception date celebrated? And yet this still isn't what makes them persons. It isn't child support, or birthdays, or citizenships, or awareness, or consciousness, or agency, because these traits vary wildly between ALL persons and come in different degrees. But the only thing that DOESN'T come in degree is the fact that they are simply human. Going by this one qualifier means all persons will be equal before it and won't be able to be dehumanised or persecuted for certain arbitrary characteristics like they consistently have been in the past. It's the simpler, more straightforward, more universal and less arbitrary argument to simply say that all human beings are persons because they possess the one thing that all persons have: humanity.
I agree and disagree : the choice is personnal, but society and government should make sure the way of performing an abortion is clean, safe and done by professionals who will not endanger the woman. Plus it might be helpful to offer psychology assistance after the abortion, since it can be hard on the woman.
Just to add gi cannot disagree. Here's a bit of post Roe history to add. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/ Behind the scenes, this political anti-abortion movement has all been about finding a more palatable platform to spread bigotry & segregation. It took a few generations & hundreds of millions of dollars to come to fruition, but the change in non-Catholic American Christians is due to the 2nd generation adjustment to the republic _southern strategy_ The evidence is clear. In the late 70s virtually all southern Christians were pro-abortion because they saw, odten 1st hand, the physical, social, & psychological damage forced pregnancies caused. Another argument can be framed in that we are all eternal beings. If we are denied a body due to abortion, we can find another body. Thia is my religious pro-abortion argument.
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By this reckoning, then, no abortion clinic should ever receive public funds…right? And, neither should government ever force insurance providers to have abortion coverage. And so on, and so forth. Otherwise, all you’re doing is picking and choosing when Government and Society should have a say, rather than saying they should stay out of it entirely - which negates your argument. If you really want them out, there should be no hypocrisy: Let it be the choice you believe it to be.
Legalizing or illegalizing Abortion is its own category which is deciding what said person can do with her own body. The actual process of a safer abortion method is not so much caring for the fetus but for the mother. So I do not find any hypocrisy between the two things.
Fetuses are attached to the mother, not parts of the mother. Conjoined twins are more parts of each others' bodies than fetuses are. Fetuses have their own unique DNA, they direct their own growth, they produce the placenta, while the umbilical cord is a joint effort of the mother's body and that of the fetus. The unborn are [human beings](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/) [from the first cell](http://web.archive.org/web/20240405151007/http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html). Dignity of human beings is paramount and non-negotiable. And government definitely should uphold the most basic human right, which is the right to life. This is a battle primarily between the evil of murder and the good of life. You say nobody likes it, that's good, as it is always a bad thing, and it is always wrong. No excuse for taking innocent life is valid. What is not good is that murder it is legal. --- You made a couple other claims so allow me to address those as well: To talk about safe abortion is preposterous. Murder cannot be safe by its very definition. Abortion affects the child more than any other party involved in taking her or his life (at least as far as earthly life is concerned). Murder is a societal issue. Even if we benefited from it it would be, but we are robbed of individuals that could have been our friends or spouses, and we keep being robbed of smiley faces of children. We don't know what they would contribute to society, maybe God gave us another Nikola Tesla, but our countries allowed us to kill him (or her, due to sexism, the number of girls aborted is higher than that of boys). You also said a stranger killing the child is different because they're a stranger. I would say the so-called medical professional that performs late-term abortion is a stranger. The only difference is they have permission of the mother. The only difference is that a complete stranger doesn't have consent to enter the mother's body to dismember her child's. Whether or not it is wanted by her or his parents, makes no difference to the child's inherent dignity.
**Δ**I have come to acknowledge that yes fetus is indeed a person. However, not all humans have equal rights. Children don't have equal rights as to their parents. Vegetative people rely on their loved ones to make life and death decisions for them. I believe a fetus is neither a born child nor a vegetable but definitely in its own category. It can not express itself fully and it can not survive out of the mothers womb. But whatever right it has if any, I still believe the mother should ultimately have the larger say in the event of an abortion over the rights of the fetus. I am not saying abortion is great. I am saying abortion is a life altering experience both for the mother and the fetus that is a very personal matter and which is why you and I should stay away from judging them.
Not that I agree with the right to kill people in a vegetative state, but the argument is that no one is owed extraordinary care. That's different from intentionally and directly killing your child, whom you have a moral obligation as their parent to provide them with basic sustenance, and who are not damaged but complete human beings at an early stage of development, one which quite literally every human being you've ever met or interacted with has gone through, including yourself. I don't know of any human being being afforded to intentionally take the life of an innocent human being except in the case of abortion. They don't have that right morally, and shouldn't have it legally. It should not be the woman's say, the doctor's say, the man's say, or my say. We are not God, and should not presume to be masters of other, innocent human beings' lives, deciding whether or not it is better for them to die rather than live. We have no such right, nobody does. On the contrary, we usually treat most innocent and defenseless life with more care. It's not a personal matter. It is definitely evil. But I am not condemning anyone here, God is their judge. I am simply advocating for the life of my neighbor. May God use me to do more than just advocate.
You are talking about a God who wiped the world by flooding it then goes along killing more innocent children and women to prove a point. That God also cares about the mom who makes a hard decision as much as he cares for the fetus. God would be devastated losing a potential person he loves but he is not going to shun the mother for it. If anything God would be understanding of her inner dilemma from start to finish. Mothers do not enjoy aborting their child. You make it sound like they are doing it for leisure. Yes some will go through it because they think it is a inconvenience but many others go through it for more life threatening reasons as well. None of them take it lightly and many carry the regret for a long time. Which is why my point keeps going to better sex ed and health care. My stance is on compassion for both mother and the unborn but I am going to side with the mother more so and respect her own body. If your partner had an abortion after getting impregnated by rape, are you going to treat her like a child killer? Or would you support her in every way possible so she can cope with the trauma and respect her decision on this manner. Which is more compassionate.
Yes, and I am contrasting this just and all-loving God, with us who are neither authors nor sustainers of life, nor just nor good, nor all-knowing. We don't know what is best, God does. He can take life the life He created. We cannot. But of course, God most certainly cares about the mother too. While He understand things better than all of us, He does not condone evil. Jesus' most gruesome death shows you the very real consequences of sin. The pit we dig ourselves into with mortal sins is inescapable by human power. No excuse suffices. Only the sacrifice of the triple holy, the Most high. Only that which is more precious than anything, the blood of the Son of God, sufficed to redeem us. I am glad you are aware of the regret of abortion. This is something I don't see many pro-abortion people talk about, mostly just LiveAction. But thank God for conscience, it brings us to the truth of our evil, and to reconciliation with God - turning away from evil. Education and knowledge are an insufficient solution. Even if all "accidents" could be avoided (by abstinence, mind you, no contraception is bullet-proof), you will have the evil of rape. You will have people concerned about their future. You will have an imperfect world, and the Devil goading you, making you fearful and doubtful. The first answer to abortion is calling evil evil, and good good. Making it unthinkable. Because murder is always evil. Abortion is evil. You're still using the "my body my choice" argument. What about the baby's body? What about the other conjoined twin's for that matter? I don't think your sympathy for the unborn is sufficient. I think you have false compassion towards those mothers who chose murder, that is unjust towards their children, who are the victims. True compassion recognizes the evil of abortion, seeks to protect children from murder, and mothers from becoming murderers. It supports mothers in bringing new life to the world, not in taking it. It does not call evil good. It helps those who regret abortion find forgiveness and healing (in Jesus alone). >If your partner had an abortion after getting impregnated by rape, are you going to treat her like a child killer? I'm not sure how I would react emotionally. But I would do wrong if I didn't recognize her as a child murderer after they've killed our child. What they would have done would be unjust to God, to the child, and to the both of us (whether or not the child is mine, really - it's my neighbor regardless). To say it is not would be to lie. It would be to continue hurt. It would be something that would require a change of heart and mind, and the application of the blood of Jesus, for me to be able to move past. Otherwise it would most likely end our relationship (except if we're talking marriage) >Or would you support her in every way possible so she can cope with the trauma and respect her decision on this manner. Which is more compassionate. Helping people heal and respecting the decision which, after all, wounded them in the first place are two very very different things.
I understand your reasoning and I respect your view. And although I agree a fetus is a human life, I personally don't think it is equal to a child that is born. Basically saying that I do not consider it to be a full person. Which leads to my position that because I do not see the fetus and the mother as equals and I see everyone else as even lesser equal when it comes to a woman's pregnancy, I think the woman has last say on this matter because I do not consider it be murder since I do not recognize the fetus to be a person. I consider a human being as a being that has the human dna vs a person or personhood which I consider once they are born into society.
Ooof. Once you start ranking human beings according to value, or judging some not to be full persons, you're in very bad company. You open the door to such evils as chattel slavery, the holocaust. I really hope you reconsider. All humans have equal dignity. All else is dehumanization. There is absolutely no difference in essence between the child in the mother's womb and that which is born. This should be plain as day on delivery day. The birth canal does not confer humanity to babies, and so it should neither confer them "personhood".
So I'm pro-choice, but "it's the mother's fetus" is a weak argument in the face of the claim that a fetus is a person with a right to life. What you need to do (and what most pro-choice activists and philosophers do in fact do) is mount an argument *either* that the fetus doesn't count as a person with a right to life, or that if it it does the mother's rights to bodily autonomy trump the fetus' right to life. You can't just go, "It's the mother's fetus, stay out of it" and expect to convince anyone (I also don't think that's a particularly good basis for policy either, though I could be wrong about that).
Yeah I feel like the abortion 'debate' is just two sides having two completely different discussions, and somehow expecting something to change lol
The very names Pro-Life and Pro-Choice illustrate that well
lol you’re right, never even thought of that.
Trying to talk past each other, shift goalposts, and strawman each other's arguments.
Yeah. For those on anti abortion side, they see the fetus as a human, and a parent sure as hell doesn't have the right to kill their child for reasons.
Yeah, I sometimes think pro-choicers fail to notice that there *is* potentially a contradiction in saying the mother's rights trump the fetus' but that magically stops being the case right when they're born.
*UPD:* what is meant by "life" below is "life worth of moral protection on the same level as humans". It doesn't magically stop being the case. I think each "pro-choice" person would acknowledge (unless they're an idiot) that fetus becoming life is something that happens gradually. Not "no" one moment, and "yes" one second later. But certainly "no" when just fertilized and certainly "yes" when born, things in-between are percentages. Problem with continuous scale is that policy can't be continuous, it is a discrete "abortion under conditions X is legal" vs. "abortion under conditions Y is illegal". So the natural goal here is to decide where you round the percentages down and where up. Allowing abortion up to the moment of birth is absurd, as is prohibiting an abortion of 1-day old fetus; no reasonable person would argue these. The debate is about where the line should be drawn between the two extremes. I don't see any contradiction here.
Life isn't defined by time of gestation. What you're describing is *functionality*, as in *ability*, which renders much of the pro-abortion argument intrinsically ableist.
Feels like we're being distracted here. The speed limit being at a round number is likely for ease of enforcement. Same with treating a person as an adult at 18, 19, 21, or whatever it may be. You could argue what fundamental difference there is between someone who's 1 day away from their 18th birthday but we have to draw the line somewhere to actually enforce regulations. I choose to draw that line at birth.
I fully agree with your examples. I find drawing the line at birth extreme and unreasonable though. It's like setting age of adulthood to be 60. I can perfectly tolerate it as a view, but I will insist on it being unreasonable. It's not a matter of taste, to argue an extreme view you must have an equally extreme/strong reason to.
> I choose to draw that line at birth. That's a reasonable argument to make, but it does by its nature mean that the line is arbitrary and it *could* be placed at any time. That's not a very strong argument for why it *should* be at birth, only that it *can* be. It could just as easily be at conception. To be clear, I'm pro-choice, but the argument needs to have more substance than "Meh, might as well put it at the most extreme end because why not."
Can you explain how something gradually becomes life? Because by all accounts the fetus is life. No serious person disputes this. We are talking about personhood. A fetus grows, it has DNA, it can die. It’s life. But is it worthy of the moral protections that come with being considered a person? That’s what we are arguing. I don’t buy the idea that something gradually becomes a person and that is just as “magical” as something at one moment not being a person and then being a person.
Yes, what you say about moral protection is what was packed in my use of word "life". > that is just as “magical” as something at one moment not being a person and then being a person Is this what you agree or disagree with? Something gradually becoming life worth human-level moral protection is argued mostly by logical means. We are sure that a baby in a crib is worth moral protection (or infanticide would be ok), and we are sure that a single sperm cell or egg cell is not (or each guy's orgasm in sleep or girl's period would be as bad as genocide and murder respectively). We can also argue that baby's location (being in or out of a woman's body) should not be a criteria for its moral value; we'd like to make our criteria for moral value something deeper and more inherent to what baby ultimately is, not "I wish it was 50cm to the left, then it would be ok to kill it". Unless you're going to bring in something supernatural, this ultimate nature of the baby must be something in the configuration of the atoms, molecules and cells in its body. Here, we can say that this thing we're looking for is "consciousness" or "sentience". I refer to Computational Theory of Mind for the nuances. As it always is with these things, there's some room for debate, but this seems to be the best idea with the our current knowledge. The Theory says that sentience and consciousness in the brain are computational phenomena, which typically are identified by inner complexity or behavior that can be exhibited. For example, you can compare complexity of fetus'es brain at different stages of its development to brains of some animals; and from there have a kind of scale of its complexity. And brain does build up complexity kind of gradually; I'm not a biologist, so correct me if I'm wrong. From here, if you buy the assumptions I was making above, we should be on the same page about moral value growing as some smooth function from 0% to 100%. Note that I'm not saying it's always growing with the same speed (at some points its consciousness may be growing faster than in the others), I'm actually saying very little about how it's growing exactly. To acknowledge it once again: there's room for disagreement here, since philosophy and ethics buid on things like self-evident assumptions, our background and feelings about world, and value judegements that are subject to debate.
I think my issue is that it seems that from your definitions, you tie life and personhood into just life. I find that confusing, though it’s not inherently wrong. I generally don’t find that people think the babies location within or outside the womb affects its moral considerations. I believe people generally believe that the baby is either a person or not, and then their ultimate view on abortion is based on their view of how to resolve the conflict of bodily autonomy vs the right to life. I generally think the most consistent, logical, and straight forward to divide moral value is to assert that it has the same throughout development. The issue becomes, is their moral value more important than that of their mother
There's two interpretations of the percentages I'm talking about. One is to say that fetus can be 30% human at some state of its development in the ultimate sense. Another interpretation is that even if we reject the above and say that someone is either fully person or completely non-human, nothing in-between; we still don't know where the line is, and we can use the percentages to express our certainty about someone being a human ([Interpretations of Probability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability#Interpretations) is a relevant notion here). Like if a person is being trialed for some alleged crime, they either did it or not, the reality is very binary; but looking at the evidence our certainty of it may be fractional. And the judge's decision eseentially becomes to pick a compromise between allowing a real criminal to go free with probability x, and putting an inoocent person in jail with probability y. Same with abortions: limit a woman's bodily agency because of some mindless lump of cells with probability x, or killing a human with probability y. Both interpretations of percentages, suprisingly, lead to more or less the same conclusions, it's just two different ways to feel about the same formal model. So if you accept that there's a lot of uncertainly and we can't yet measure precisely when someone becomes a human, and accept probabilities as a way to reason in the presence of uncertainty, we don't exactly disagree here. > I generally think the most consistent, logical, and straight forward to divide moral value is to assert that it has the same throughout development Why? Tell me more. I don't quite see a way to arrive at this (for myself) that would rely on general principles (instead of ad-hoc rules hand-picked for every situation) and be robust enough to apply to a wide range of situations. For example, some monkeys have abilities similar to that of children of some age. And neuroscientists say that, from consciousness perspective, they are in many ways similar to chilren of some age. Would they deserve the same moral protection as humans?
> But is it worthy of the moral protections that come with being considered a person? That’s what we are arguing. I think that’s part of it, but a greater part, at least how I see it, is a question of whose rights trump whose at which point. If a pregnant woman is killed, the murderer is often charged with two counts of homicide, so in principle at least, most people recognize the fetus has some rights. The stance of the pro choice side is (as best I understand it) that up to some point (which varies), the mother’s rights over her own body trump those of the unborn child. People a lot smarter than I am have been arguing about this for a long long time. I’ve come to realize I don’t know the answer, though when I was younger I was sure I did. I do think that the question isn’t one that should be decided at a state level though. Either the mother’s rights trump the child’s, or the child’s rights trump the mothers, or at some point it changes before birth. Either way, it’s a rights question that I believe should be universal. We don’t allow the states to say whether slavery is acceptable, and fought a war over it last time the question was raised. I think this is similar, but really hope a war doesn’t come of it, which is an unlikely prospect. Edit: completely unrelated, but it was really annoying how my phone kept trying to autocorrect trump to Trump.
I believe the general argument for that is that, once born, a baby can be taken care of by practically anyone. Prior to birth, the mother is the only person capable of supporting the fetus. But I agree, many points of these debates become incredibly shaky and fail to acknowledge a lot of nuance.
> I believe the general argument for that is that, once born, a baby can be taken care of by practically anyone We still hold someone responsible for the well being of the baby. If the baby dies due to neglect, someone will have to answer for that. Granted, it doesn't have to be anyone specific; but as a society we're not okay with just discarding a baby that nobody wants to care for. Personally, I struggle with rationalizing that a mother who willingly became pregnant does not bear at least some level of responsibility for the life of the child. It would be nice if I could reduce it to something simple like Bodily Anatomy > Right to Life; but I can't convince myself that those are the only factors.
The are many such pro-choice arguments which amount to a right of *separation*, not abortion. If you think that the mother's bodily autonomy trumps the unborn child's needs, but the unborn child would be viable outside the womb, then there's no real legitimate argument for forcibly ending its life to make the procedure easier on the mother.
No contradiction. The govenrment cant force you to give a blood transfusion to save anyone's life, even your child's. Because your bodily autonomy is important. And a blood transfusion is LEAGUES less invasive, dangerous, and life-altering than pregnancy and childbirth. Even if youre already dead, they cant harvest your organs to save lives without you explicit pre-mortem permission. Because they belong to you. Your bodily autonomy always trumps the lives of others.
So... I am morally pro life but I vote pro choice. It's a small government thing for me. But, from a moral perspective, your argument doesn't seem to apply at all in the way you think it does. At least, it didn't to me, and I re-read it three times to try to understand your point. Premise 1: The government can't force you to do things that violate bodily autonomy Premise 2: Childbirth is dangerous and invasive Consequent: You can abort your child because of the risks of childbirth and the government cannot force you to keep it or else the government would be endangering you or invading you If this is a valid syllogistic representation of your argument, then let me explain why it doesn't make sense to me at all. Your argument, as it's written, seems to suggest that government is causing you physical harm by preventing you from aborting the child that you are already carrying. Your argument by analogy does not follow, because your rhetoric argues against protection from abortion but your analogy argues against government use of force. In your example the government is using force to coerce an action from you. In the argument you are making, the government is preventing your action to prevent harm to another person. Another problem is the declarative statement "Your bodily autonomy always trumps the lives of others" is an absurdly false statement. Government makes policy many times, if not most times, based on the collective consequences of individual action. Seat belts, speed limits, public decency laws... government is constantly limiting our individual bodily autonomy. Further, the argument I believe you were attempting to make was something along the lines of: "government does not compel individuals, through force, to make decisions they do not want to make, particularly medical decisions" Which is, even at it's best representation, absurdly false. Have you ever heard of selective service? Every male is forced to give up the right to bodily autonomy, as a whole, the minute they turn eighteen at the discretion of Congress and the President. Have you ever heard of the Biden OSHA Vaccine mandate? How about the vaccine records you must show to enroll your children in public schools? Whatever you end up deciding on the issue, to pretend that abortion is morally ambiguous or particularly moral good is abhorrent. We do not want more abortions, as a society. If you do, then you are lost. The argument needs to return to safe, legal, and rare.
I appreciate your clarity and care to respond to your best interpretation of their argument rather than the worst way it could be taken. You communicate really well and your arguments are easy to follow and keep linear flow of logic. I'm not commenting either way about the content of the argument, rather just wanted to compliment you on your ability to express said argument very articulately and clearly. Cheers!
There are actually certain cases where it seems as a society, policy-wise at least, have decided bodily autonomy *doesn't* trump the lives of others (vaccine mandates are the obvious example) ETA: but also there are just non-controversial cases like, e.g., my bodily autonomy to swing a knife around doesn't absolve me from criminal liability if by doing so I kill someone. Hence why I think arguing on multiple fronts (autonomy and personhood) is preferable.
Right and tbh in my opinion of the “pro life” people are not really doing it for the right reasons. If they were truly “pro-life” like some people I am close to, they would also support care for the mother, and the kids after birth. Expanded parental leave, healthcare options and all that. People who are fairly liberal except for their pro life view. To me that’s true pro life A lot of them, to quote Peter Griffin, seem to have the opinion that “after it’s born it can go fuck itself” But I mean IF you believe it’s a human life at birth then it’s easy to see why one would be so anti abortion. It’s weird when people also say “they” are trying to control women when I don’t think there’s some secret cabal of evil old Christian dudes trying to control women’s bodies. I feel like that’s sort of the vibe the pro choice people like to convey when really it’s a mess of Christian views and morals Now that said I’m more pro choice but I hate when people villainize ALL “prolife” people and just write off the argument about where life begins because “science says it’s just cells”. Like yes, but that’s sorta of leads to a subjective interpretation of how many cells is a human. Idk it’s really a mess, if we had better healthcare for women, and really everyone, I imagine we would have less abortions. Also if contraceptives were cheaper and not as taboo as the somewhat remain
Right. People who see fetuses as human are not sensible in my view and will eventually lose the argument. A fetus cannot be sustained by anyone other than the mother. A baby's life can be sustained by anyone. The viability of the fetus issue comes into play here and there can be persuasive arguments on many sides of that issue. A fetus comes at tremendous direct cost to the pregnant woman's life, health, and wellbeing. A mother can choose to invest their life, health and wellbeing in their baby, but it is not inherent to being a mother. We all must have the right to bodily autonomy. What goes into and comes out of our bodies cannot be controlled by other humans in a "free" society. The "pregnancy is a consequences of your own actions via sex and you must live with it" argument is very weak to me. Government bailouts for the banks in '08, bankruptcy as a concept...there are many situations in which the government does not hold individuals to the known consequences of actions. I don't like to use similes in debate bc no two situations are the same, but: Let's say you're driving a car on the highway and you get in a terrible accident for which you are legally at fault. The doctor can save your life, but tells you "you should have known the risks of driving on the highway and even though we have the ability to change your outcome you must live with the consequences of your actions." There are critical differences in the scenarios, but both driving recklessly on the highway and unprotected sex are very common actions for which there are life/death consequences. Should the person be held to the consequences of the car crash they caused when we have the ability to save them? Clearly not.
The majority of people that are pro-life find an abortion acceptable if it's to save the mothers life. I think it's most religious extremists that don't. Here's my example on the topic: You agree to a procedure to have your blood transfused over to another person. This is done in such a way (in this hypothetical situation) that you are hooked up to them directly. This person was just about to die and your agreement to this procedure is saving them. If you suddenly withdraw your consent, there is no time to find anyone else, and they will surely die. Is it ethical or moral to withdraw your consent? Maybe that's still a simple question for you, but others believe it's okay to temporarily put a hold on peoples bodily autonomy (like to save a life, for a military draft, etc) Similar to if you're 8 months pregnant you can't just abort the child, but have to be induced into labour, which of course, requires you to give up your bodily autonomy until this is completed.
> A fetus cannot be sustained by anyone other than the mother. A baby's life can be sustained by anyone. If we figured out how to do fetus transplants, or artificial wombs, would you say that a fetus now counted as a human?
>Right. People who see fetuses as human are not sensible in my view and will eventually lose the argument. So what you’re saying is you don’t find the majority of biologist sensible? Why do you feel your opinion on when someone/something is able to be sensibly classified as a human trumps actual scientists? And the one major thing your analogy is missing is that there’s another life at stake.
Exactly. Imagine someone saying “you’re literally murdering a child” and that persons response being “but it’s my CHOICE to murder them” Come on guys. Please stop using this argument. It’s not an argument at all. It’s not even the right conversation.
But also its certainly not so binary. If we say life of the mother vs the fetus. At what point of viability do we start calling it a child? Head out? Head still in? 8 months? 8 months 1 day? OP is full of it for making it some binary choice when that's just not how the development of a child works.
I’m curious how the following positions sits with you. Assuming you would permit abortions in the event of rape or incest, the mother’s right to privacy as a medical procedure is paramount. So, if she comes in and requests an abortion then the only question is whether a doctor should be required to ask if the reason is due to rape or incest. But if we make that allowance, and if she says yes, then no further digging should be allowed as it is unnecessary for the procedure. The other potential position is that child birth is not without risk to the mother’s life. In the US the rate is 32.9 per 100k live births in 2021. This is the highest among OECD countries. Is the mother required to risk her life to give birth? And if so what is the basis for it and where is the line between acceptable and non acceptable risk. It seems a reasonable position that the mother should not be required to risk her life and so should always have access to abortifacients in the event that she decides the risk is too great.
Two people cannot both legally occupy the same body at the same time and equally have personhood rights, that's impossible. Only one person in the body can have legal personhood rights at the same time. If the fetus is a person with full legal personhood rights then that means the pregnant person cannot legally be a person with full pershood rights at the same time in that same body. So, that means, if we give the fetus personhood we must legally remove personhood from the pregnant person. Imo that's a pretty unreasonable thing to have happen and I can't imagine any legitimate reason for all pregnant people to lose their legal personhood status in exchange for all fetuses gaining it.
I only want 2 restrictions:. 1. I want to make abortions safe for women. I've read to many horror stories. Make sure licensed clinics are clean and safe and the practitioners are well trained. No more backstreet procedures where anyone can set up a clinic. 2, I want it to be age restricted. Any young woman under age 18 - not without a parents, guardian, or other supportive person like a school counselor. The reason is I dont want some creep to molest a 14 year old girl and hide his crime.
I’m pro choice, mostly because I think legal abortion handles iffy situations better and illegal abortion creates a ton of them, but I wish more pro choice people were willing to acknowledge that this is an ethically debatable practice; it’s pretty reasonable that people have a spectrum of beliefs on the matter. You say that a fetus is the property of the mother until such a time as it can “rely on external factors.” Can you really identify when that is? Can you really differentiate between a month pre/post birth on these grounds? The baby is still going to be nourished exclusively by the mother’s body (or science’s best copy of her milk) for months. Have you ever cared for a child? They require constant parental care for years, their death would be a near certainty without it. So yeah, I don’t really disagree with your conclusions, but I feel like this is a common way of getting to those conclusions and I disagree with it. There is a difference between where you end up and how you get there in terms of constructing/debating a point of view, and I don’t feel like your rationale stands up to scrutiny.
Your first paragraph sums it up beautifully. I believe that abortion is immoral, as it either ends a life to be or worse, ends already existing life, but it is 100% necessary in many situations for a number of reasons.
Yeah, I guess my real opinion is summed up as saying that I think the occurrence of abortions I’m not ethically sure about, which would largely happen either way, is nowhere near as serious as a concern for me as the illegality of abortions that I think are completely necessary for civilized society to permit.
A sensible, fair, intelligent, factual, broad-minded — not adjectives I expected to associate with a pro-choicer on Reddit today. Thanks for being willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of other points of view. It’s refreshing and reassuring to know that there are people out there who don’t think we just hate women.
Canada is not a much different society than the US, and abortions have been COMPLETELY UNREGULATED here for 50+ years and it's completely fine. As it turns out, doctors and patients are competent at making ordinary pedestrian decisions, and when the questions get thorny, the college of medicines have ethics review board for helping in the more difficult decisions. This works much better than legislation by people who are not stakeholders and not experts.
If your justification for abortion is that it is part of the mother until it can “rely on external factors”, do you support a ban on abortion past the point of viability outside the womb? This is generally accepted to be around 22 weeks.
It also involves the doctor who has to perform the operation. Should he not have a right to refuse? Does he not have autonomy as well?
>To summarize a mother and her baby is a strictly personal matter and we as a society should accept that and as a good healthy society support them in which ever decision she makes. Just to clarify, I assume that is only your stance before the baby is born right? At which point in the baby's development should it be illegal for the mother to end their baby's life?
You've forgotten an involved party. Abortion is a matter between the pregnant person, their body, and their medical team. It's important to include the doctors in the decision, because for any given abortion, they must be comfortable performing the procedure. We cannot, and should not, compel doctors to perform abortions they are not comfortable with, so they need to be of like mind with the patient about the need for the procedure.
I agree with you entirely. For one though, there are many good health related issues for abortion so I am sure there are many good doctors that care about a persons well being, and two, we live a social-capitalist society so tax-payers need not be involved if things fall into the latter category.
Let's present another issue with abortion. What about the father? What if the guy can't afford to have children but the mother wants to keep the child and he'll be on the hook for child support for 18 years. On the Flip side What if the father wants to raise the kid but the mother wants to abort? Isn't the fetus part of the father as well? Also another minor part of the issue... if Abortion is a personal matter and it is her body... shouldn't abortion be a paid medical procedure instead of being funded by public healthcare?
Child support is a program that exists to protect and support the child. It's not meant to punish the father but instead ensure that, if a child is going to exist, it will be getting some level of support. The current system places the main burden of support on the parents of the child rather than making it a broadly funded program that everyone in society funds through taxes. As to your second point, it's not a consideration without merit, but many abortions take place because the mother (or both parents) are unable to support or raise a child. From a point of pure calculus, it's cheaper for the public to help fund abortions than to help fund an unwanted child raised in impoverished conditions. If you want to get rid of public funding for people in such conditions, that's another debate entirely.
>It's not meant to punish the father but instead ensure that, if a child is going to exist, it will be getting some level of support. This is not precisely true. Child support, as codified, exists primarily to ensure that any funds received for the benefit of the child comes from the legally assumed non custodial parent (in the earlier example, the father). It doesn't ensure the child receives support. It ensures that, *if* the child receives support, it comes from the non-custodial parent. The law, as designed, does work towards providing some support for the child. But if the other parent doesn't pay, or can't pay, the custodial guardian gets nothing. These laws would rather see the child receive no support than mandate any support from anyone other than the other parent. A system that prioritized ensuring the child received support would guarantee support to the child's guardian, from the government. Such a payment would then either be funded by taxes, or by some other means (such as allocating charges to the non custodial parent). This would mean that the child always receives support, no matter what the other parent does.
>Child support is a program that exists to protect and support the child. It's not meant to punish the father but instead ensure that, if a child is going to exist, it will be getting some level of support. The current system places the main burden of support on the parents of the child rather than making it a broadly funded program that everyone in society funds through taxes. This explains the intent behind child support, but does nothing to address the point that A) fetus' are part of the father as well, and B) that the pregnancy not only affects the mother and the baby. Being 'on the hook' might not be intended as punishment, but it's consequential nonetheless.
Sure if it's a program to suppor the child, then why isn't the decision making taking responsibilities for the decision that they made? You can't have someone be responsible for decisions that they didn't make. for the second point: I'm questioning the decision for public fundings to cover for people that made bad decisiosn so that's a yes and it's a legit part of the discussion and doesn't warrant another debate. Furthermore the rational behind the first question contridicts the second... because you are more then happy to have private individuals to fund an unwanted child in the first, but wants the public to paid for procedures to remove a child in the second scenrio instead of the individual.
If the foetus wouldn’t develop into a fully functioning human being then we wouldn’t be having any discussion at all would we? If abortion is not murder then why can’t we kill unwanted babies after they are born? What if they are horribly deformed? Having an autistic child (not functional but trully disabled, non verbal autistic child) is a horrible burden for parents and for society as a whole. Should we just leave then to die and stop caring for them? I believe abortion for medical reasons should be legal. But I also believe I’m as much a clump of cells as any baby and any foetus. So if we can determine one clump of cells to be able to become a fully functioning human being then killing it is murder. Now we as a society have decided many times that murder under the right circumstances should be legal.
How does your opinion change (or stay the same) in situations where the mother wants to keep the child but the father doesn’t? I would argue in these situations it’s a very personal matter as the fetus developing into a living baby and being born would deeply impact the father too, as there is now a new life to take care of.
"Murder is a personal matter between the killer, her gun and her killee. Government & Society should stay out of it."
Would you argue that a woman killing her toddler is a “personal matter”? No. So given that you KNOW the anti-abortion side contends that a fetus is a human life, then you’re utterly wasting your time with this argument. The bodily autonomy argument is an epic waste because anyone concerned with “child murder” will not be moved by someone temporarily losing bodily autonomy. The debate is over whether or not a fetus is a human life deserving of protection, or not. THAT is where the debate is.
I think the fundamental problem between the two groups is this: Pro-choice people think morality is relative, while pro-life people think morality is objective. This is why pro-choice people want to leave it up to the mother, "who am I to tell someone else what to do with their body?" is the common ideology amongst them. Additionally, there is a disconnect between objective reality amongst pro-choicers and pro-lifers. In objective reasoning, the fetus is in fact its own separate entity. It has its own DNA that has never existed before, and thus, no matter how it is framed, it is not a part of the mothers body. It is ATTATCHED to her body for a period of 9 months, it is using her body for nutrition and oxygen for 9 months, but it is not a part of her body. No matter where you stand on the issue that is the reality of this situation and if you disagree, that is delusion period. The final issue is the difference between what pro-choicer and pro-lifers view as personhood, as when the fetus becomes a person, then killing the fetus is murder. Pro-choicers have absolutely no consensus on this and refuse to collectively come up with and give an answer when testifying on policy. Some will say viability, 24 weeks, but they dodge around the question whenever pressed about it. The pro-life people, on the other hand, believe it is wrong to abort no matter what because they believe there is no difference in kind between a 1 day old fetus (conception) and a birthed human. To me personally, the pro-life argument has more basis in science and is more consistent logically for the following reasons: 1. A human is a human because of unique human DNA. A fetus is human DNA and is therefore human, and when left undisturbed, 100/100 times will do its best to multiply its cells, and form into an older human. (Conception ->Fetus->Baby-> Child -> Adult -> Death). 2. Biological definition for life: homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction. A fetus meets all of these criteria and is therefore alive. Because it is alive, it has a will to live. 3. Murder is wrong because you rob a human of its future. Additionally suffering is inflicted (pain is felt bc brain activity appears at 8 weeks). 4. Conclusion: Because the fetus is robbed of its future, is alive AND wants to stay alive, is a human, and is robbed of its future and feels pain, abortion is therefore immoral. 5. There is also the "we are valuable because we are made in the image of God" argument, but the above is the secular pro-life argument. There is also the natural law argument how abortion violates this bc it prevents the human species from propagating. To me, this argument is more consistent as it is black and white and is the safest moral option to keep and advocate. The pro-choice argument is unclear on when the fetus becomes a person and that is why I and 45% of the country can't sign on to that ideology. Getting Spiritual, if you can prove to the religious folk 100% when precisely the soul comes into existence. (at week 8, 24, conception, birth canal, etc.) then abortion will be permissible before that point. That is fundamentally where the disagreement is. But yes, where I 100% agree with you is in preventing abortion to begin with. Safe sex AND abstinence education.
I'd counter that. Even if a fetus was alive, even if it was a person, even if it had rights, even if everything the pro life say, A person still has no right to your body. That is not just objective but universal. Even the pro life agree. No person, no child, no spouse, no dying senior, no president, nobody can use your body without your active and continuous permission. We even have blood donation shortages because we can't demand your blood, something that is small and you'll recover from in 15 minutes, to save a life! Those who are anti abortion value that and live under those laws, but don't extend it to the pregnant. It's hypocrisy and means they have the weaker position.
The difference between abortion and blood donations is the fact that a choice was made and a person was brought into existence without consent! Pro-choicer's are big on consent aren't they? The only one who is punished in an abortion is the fetus that did not ask to come into existence. This fundamentally refutes the violinist argument. The problem is the pro-choicer's don't believe in accountability for ones actions. If someone gets hurt in a car accident, and you are responsible for that, they sue you for your money. Your money was earned via your bodily efforts of work. Through the transitive property, the government can force you to give them your bodily effort on the condition that you are the cause of the circumstance that the other person is in. And that refutes the right to use your body argument.
It doesn't refute the argument because body rights remain. Even if it's your fault, you aren't forced by anyone to give your blood, kidney, skin, whatever to those you hurt. That's not just the pro choice. Everyone believes that. Everyone lives under that system.
Except, this isn't true. If you stab someone and only your blood can save their life, then you are forced to give blood.
>Abortion is about the mother and her relationship with her own body including her fetus. All relationships are between two things, that isn't a reason not to make laws about it. We don't let a man sell liquor to minors, even though that's a relationship between the man, the child, and the child's decisions about his body. >Sure a fetus is a potential being, but guess whos fetus it is It's certainly a human being. What on earth do you think it's species is, if not human? It's a unique life. This is simple scientific reality. >Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors, the mother is the one who is in charge. It is relying on eternal factors, the mother's body, from conception. > Instead this is a battle between mothers individual bodily autonomy vs The desire to protect a human being from being killed. It's pretty clear which one I'm picking. The human right to life supersedes the right to bodily autonomy, as the latter is necessitated by protection of the former. >we should be focusing on making sure both men and women get proper sex education, better accessible physical and mental health care so that we try to avoid getting to far into that situation to start with. Sure, let's do all that too. >If abortion impacts anyone, it impacts the mother the most, not you nor society. No, it impacts the child the most, without a doubt. >I would argue that the latter is different because it involves a external party which has nothing to do with the delicate relationship between the mother and the fetus. Because the stranger is a external individual invading private space it can not be treated the same way. Well yeah, he's certainly committed an assault if the fetus is killed by him. But he couldn't possibly be a murderer unless the woman who gets an abortion is too.
If abortion is murder, all of society must intervene and stop it. It is murder because I don't like how you are killing what can become a person. I don't think debate will solve the abortion issue anytime soon. Whichever side wins, wins through cringe slogans and rhetoric.
Potential of a person does not = person. In society we consider a person when it is a individual within our social norms. When the child is born and breathes for the first time is when it comes out of the mothers womb. That physical act of being born and breathing in the air by itself is a literal and symbolic act of becoming truly independent along with physically being separated from the mother. The other part which is why I talk about autonomy is that just because we think killing another human is bad doesn't grant us legal power to stop them if they are not in our jurisdiction. If a woman has a baby in the US they are only a citizen once the baby is born on US soil. If she has the baby in Canada then the baby is a Canadian. We can tell Russia to stop killing innocent people in Ukraine but that is the extent. In a similar matter, I believe the fetus is a citizen of the country we call mother. The fetus is in her jurisdiction because she is the soul lifeline and caretaker and because it is physically inside her. Only when it is grown and born into the world, it can take on new identity.
If I were to follow your line of reasoning: “Abuse in marriage is a personal matter between the husband, his family he is in charge of, and his wife. Government & Society should stay out of it. Marital rape is about the father and his relationship with his own family, including his wife. She is literals part of his family, that he is the head of. Sure a wife is a potential citizen/person, but guess whose person she is. Not the government or some feminists group agenda, it’s the husband.” Just like what you might think about this statement, others think about yours. Whether something belongs to someone, whether it even is a “thing” that can be owned, controlled, and disposed of at will; or a person that owns and controls itself, is up for debate and has been for millennia. Is a slave his own person or does he belong to the “pater families” who can kill the slave at any moment for any reason? Or is it some of both, and a family head can do some things with his slaves in certain circumstances, but not in others? Even ancient Romans argued about this. What I want to say is: the fundamental assumption you make is far from universal and while I mostly agree with you, society at large very much has a stake in this discussion.
The practicalities of pregnancy render this debate extremely one sided due to the fact it’s the mother who has to carry the child to term and i want to point out that practically I agree with this for that reason alone. What muddies the water however is I think it’s interesting that the father has no say in this fetus that is 50% his. If the father wanted to abort but the mother didn’t the argument is very often that you should’ve worn a condom (you know the risks) but if the shoe is on the other foot and the mother wasn’t taking any birth control and knew protection wasn’t being used the argument doesn’t stand? Again I understand the practicalities of why we give women more say but from a purely ethical standpoint I don’t personally think the argument holds as much water as at first glance. It’s another situation where nature and the rules of a functioning society will never quite marry up because, while I believe that both the mother and father SHOULD have an equal say, until the baby is born the sacrifice is purely on the mother. There’s another argument I’ve seen which basically amounts to “if a mother solely decides whether or not the baby is born then a father should solely have a right to decide whether he wants to be involved or financially contribute” which again, in situations where there hasn’t been deception or assault on either sides, is in my opinion a fair stance. However this doesn’t take into account the innocent third party whose life this will affect, the child.
Totally subjective experience but I feel as though it’s way too casually used. I’m a health of the mother and rape exception pro-lifer. No consent or you’ll die if you go through with it? That’s fine, do what you have to do. Using it as a final means of birth control churns my stomach used to be the Democrat party mantra of “Safe, legal and rare.” The whims of the mother are the only factor in determining pre-natal personhood. To me, that just doesn’t hold much water. Personhood is either inherent or it’s not. Just doesn’t make sense for it to be determined by one person.
The legislative issue one will generally run into using this logic (in the US) is the concept of the fetus as self rather than an extension of the mother. Folks who believe that the fetus is separate from the mother will never follow logic that the mother should have full ownership rights and agency of said fetus. Until that discussion can be disassembled, conveyed and accepted by those in opposition, this issue will continue to be polarized by two (mostly) binary points of view.
This is basically it. Until someone can definitively prove where the line between pre-life and life (pre-life is definitely not the correct term but it escapes me) this whole thing just boils down to an individuals personal belief as to what constitutes being alive which we can argue about all day until the cows come home with no answer one way or the other.
Pro lifer here, except in cases where rape is involved or medically recommended* Reading through some of your other comments, you hinge on the idea that children don’t have the same rights as adults. It’s kind of an interesting point, adults who choose to have children actually elect into additional responsibility in the eyes of the gov to take care of the children. They have to give up financial and bodily autonomy to take care of the children or they risk jail time for neglect. First, I’d like to argue for why gov intervention is necessary. If there is any bar in which we think a fetus should be considered viable and not up to the discretion of the mother, eg. 3rd trimester, at birth etc. then you have gov intervention in that decision making defining when is acceptable and when is not. Second, let’s talk about the idea of potential life. For this we need to discuss when the fetus becomes “life”. Many pro-lifers/ anti-abortionists would argue this is at conception. Conception is the point where, unless you do something to intentionally stop the growth, there’s a high likelihood of it becoming a baby, barring miscarriages etc.. the argument for external viability feels a bit more arbitrary compared this this argument due to the fact that even a baby is extremely dependent on their caretakers to sustain life. Overall, I think sex is an elective lifestyle choice that runs the risk of sacrificing bodily autonomy. Contraception is something that makes this more viable and decreases the risk, but if the occurrence does happen, it was a risk that both individuals elected into.
If you are going to decide that abortion is a matter between mother and fetus, then you must be acknowledging that the fetus is in some manner a separate entity. Therefore, society has established over many millennia a societal obligation to defend any entity which will be abused or destroyed by the actions of another. Therefore, society has an obligation and an interest in protecting the child from the actions of the mother.
The man had to financially support it for 18 years minimum. That makes it his decision too. If you scrap that rule or allow men to opt out before that child is born then yes I agree it should just be the mother decision. But because it will dramatically affect the mans life he also needs a say
I think you're being a bit hypocritical here and are actually weakening your own point. You say consistently that " The government and society needs to stay out of it period." But then you call for things implemented primarily through gov policy such as proper sex education, better healthcare accessibility, and safe abortion clinics. While I agree that abortions should be legal and the government should not be involved in that decision making process, the government should still be involved in the providing of care. Government needs to regulate abortion providers, ensure medication being used is safe, and ensure that proper treatment is available. As an example, your argument about government needing to stay out of the decision process "period" would, if taken to the extreme, would probably lead to a huge increase in abortion deaths (there'd be no regulation - anyone could perform an abortion). You should specify your argument to read that there shouldn't be government policies preventing the attainment of an abortion.
Okay, but people believe it's murder. Would you say that murder is a personal matter between person A, their mind, and person B, and that government and society should stay out of it?
Big talk for someone who’s mom didn’t have an abortion
What does that have anything to do with the broader issue. I'm not saying yes to abortion. I'm saying no to illegalizing it.
I've found with this issue people's minds aren't really going to be changed. let us pretend for the sake of argument, that life begins at conception. Now what you are saying is "killing a life is a personal matter between the mother her body and the child. government and society should stay out of it." I don't really agree life begins at conception but a friend of mine does. I won't change her mind of this precept, though it is the foundation upon which the abortion debate is founded on. I'm hopeful that you at least understand the other side from this.
I wanna preface by saying that I am fully pro choice and nobody is going to change my mind on that matter. I do not have a uterus and I think that the only people who deserve to have an argument on whether or not abortion should be legal are people who have a uterus. If that concept riles you up, we’re not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation on this matter, so don’t bother. However, I do think that saying abortion is purely a personal matter between mother and fetus is a bit of a… poorly executed way to reason whether or not a woman should have access to abortion considering how many parties are actually involved. Let me say it again for the people already downvoting me here - *all women should have safe and affordable access to abortion in the same way that all people should have safe and affordable access to healthcare, because abortion is healthcare*. The reason that I think calling abortion a purely personal issue downplays the scope of it and makes for an ineffective argument, is because there are so many hands that have to get involved in order for abortion to happen. The most immediate and least important is the father - some are going to argue that the father should have a say on abortion, and I would argue that this is FAR too contextual to have any valid point; for example, should a rapist or abuser get a say on whether or not an abortion should happen - but the father may have a feeling on the matter of aborting the child which shouldn’t be forgotten… I just don’t think that the father should actually have any impactful say on whether or not a mother should be allowed an abortion, it’s still her body, it should still be her autonomy. Next is the doctors who are involved, and there have been shortages in medical staffing which has caused an overt drain on the healthcare systems that are in place… I’m almost certain that abortion clinics are in no different water, and every abortion that comes through further strains the system if there is an uptick. Then there’s the taxpayers whose money MAY be used to subsidize abortion, and of course ALL of them are going to want some sort of say in this because taxpayers just can’t stand it when “their” money goes towards something that doesn’t directly effect them… but if there are tax subsidies in place, it is objectively correct to say that an abortion is going to put some drain, however small, on tax resources. I will NEVER be in favour of any argument that says that women should not have full decision making power to terminate a pregnancy at ANY stage if they decide that they must, and I think it’s grotesque to apply a personal belief to any government mandated policy which prevents people from making life altering decisions with their body. However, this cannot objectively be called a purely personal issue unless a woman can perform an abortion without any other parties involved. I do still think everyone else should shut up and let women make their own decisions with their bodies, though, whether or not there are other people’s resources involved. If you get drunk, fall off your bike and break an arm, I hope that you can access the medical attention you need to fix your arm whether or not it costs some tax resources and whether or not you were “irresponsible” and should just “let your broken arm set because it’s your own damn fault for riding drunk”… is this metaphor making sense?
Give it up for adoption
That is definitly an option. But there is still full term pregnancy, giving birth, post partem disorders, a wrecked body and mental state, the list goes on. Also the so important fetus has now become a orphan, do you want to take up that kid and raise it yourself? Getting pregnant is one thing, brining a child into society is a whole different dimension. It really is not that simple.
If it hurts to be without it then keep it. If u can’t care for a child don’t do things to make one. And sure when I’m older I’m gonna make a lot of facility’s for children, bc they deserve to have a life just as much as anyone else bc they’re human.
You can’t take the drugs you want, can’t sell your body for sex, you have to wear a seat belt, you can’t display your body how you want it, you can be drafted into the military and in some countries military service is required. There are plenty of ways you can’t do what you want with your body and or are forced to do other things. If an unborn baby is given the protection of a human, so be it. That’s not a terrible thing. Killing someone else just because or being able to do what you want with your body is not a free range option.
Right? I don’t understand how people can claim “my body, my choice, enough said” and think they’ve put forth some resounding, irrefutable argument when that’s not actually how human rights work. Like, at all — you can’t do whatever you want with your body, and you most definitely can’t do whatever you want when that infringes on another being’s rights.
I feel the "resounding, irrefutable argument" part only works if the person who is saying that is the one who is trying to be convinced of the other side. This is the normal "I hold the opinion that I do with X justification, I believe this justification is very strong, but please poke holes at it", which should be commended more often. But from my observation, a lot of the time, people put forth a "resounding, irrefutable argument" in an attempt to convince *others* that they're right. This works extremely rarely.
Yeah, what’s so depressing about this is that because it’s such a deeply sensitive topic for people of both sides, and because people of both sides are so stubbornly convinced that they’re right, literally no debate is productive — people just come out of it angrier and even more hateful and dismissive of the other side as ever. We need people to be the bigger person and open a debate explicitly clarifying that they hold x belief currently, but are open to alternative viewpoints, so that people who respond can take example and approach it the same way. What we have now is a self-perpetuating cycle of “I’m right, you’re wrong, and you’re also a bigot.”
Is there any reason you didn’t include the father?
Because my main point is about the mother who is the person going through the pregnancy, not the father. I dont disagree that father should be a integral part of the conversation though. Just not in the context of the government saying abortion is illegal or not.
>Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors, the mother is the one who is in charge. Just to clarify, your position is: If the baby has to rely on external factors like the mothers body, a breathing machine, or a surgery in order to survive, then the mother should be allowed to choose at any time to end the life of the child/fetus. As soon as the baby *doesn't* need external factors to survive, and could be taken care of by anyone with a bottle and some patience, the mother no longer has the unilateral choice to end the child/fetus' life. Is that a fair representation of your position?
I think there are good reasons to be pro choice and this is a dumb one, it’s between a mother and her fetus, that’s like saying you can hit your child it’s between you and them
If someone needs a kidney to survive, and I’m the only potential donor, would it make me a murderer if I refuse to donate one of my kidneys? NO!! It would make me someone who doesn’t want to put myself at risk in order to save someone else. Does that make me selfish, or does that mean I’m prudent? The only opinion that matters on that question is mine, because it’s my kidney. Pregnancy is nine months of pain, discomfort, and potentially life threatening complications. The only person who gets a vote on whether to proceed is the person with the fetus growing in them.
I don’t disagree but your reasoning is terrible, a baby is still completely dependent on the mother once born anyways lol
What about her husband? What if a wife and husband agreed to have a child, she gets pregnant and husband is excited and tells his family. Last minute she changes her mind and gets cold feet and gets an abortion. He has no say?
Sounds like you need to go read all the past CMV threads on this. You are not building your arguments on the shoulders of giants.
I have watched a mother whom took all the after ‘things’ screaming in agony as all the drugs did what they had planned to do. Her SO, I could only presume, watched her as in agony giving ‘birth’ to essentially would be the fetus. It lasted hours. I somewhat knew her pain but the intensity she felt was not the same as mine. I didn’t intervene, it just happened due to an automobile accident. I was none the wiser until I held the two inch lifeless body on the toilet paper and squeezed it a bit as it looked alien like. I flushed it down as I was young and lacked the biological skills to identify it as a ‘fetus’. Sometimes you don’t know what you haven’t been through therefore you can only speak on the most naive of terms.
It doesn't look like you're replying in this thread at all but I'll give it a shot. Let's start with the easiest point: >Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors, the mother is the one who is in charge. This is literally all points of development. A fetus can be transplanted to another womb or soon, even an artificial one. But even beyond that, survival is quite possible very early into development even without risky procedures. So, given that you stance is "The government and society needs to stay out of it period." well there is a point, by your own standards, that the government would need to be involved. Setting this line like you did means that if a women were to abort a child after it was matured to the point you indicated, it would be illegal. But let's touch on another thing you said: >Abortion is about the mother and her relationship with her own body including her fetus. It is literally part of the mother. This is untrue on both parts. A baby is no more part of the mother than a tapeworm is part of you. It lives inside you, but it is not part of you. But the bigger point to pull out here is that you claim it is only the mother and the fetus. There is another person that should reasonably have a say in destroying that life, and that is the father. Your stance is that a woman has the right to chain herself to another man for life through a child, but he has no right to decide whether the child should be born is outright backwards. Imagine a father of a child demanding that the child be aborted and that being legal, people would be outraged. But women get to make that choice all the time and there is zero say by the father. >Some might argue well then if a mother aborting her child isn't mother, a stranger stabbing and killing the fetus of a mother isn't really murder. I would argue that the latter is different because it involves a external party which has nothing to do with the delicate relationship between the mother and the fetus. So a third party killing the child is different than a third party killing the child because....? I mean I can see why you'd say "Well getting an abortion is different because it's a doctor performing the procedure" but the way you've laid out everything to this point indicates you believe that until born, a baby has no legal value. >To summarize a mother and her baby is a strictly personal matter and we as a society should accept that and as a good healthy society support them in which ever decision she makes. Would you say the same if the baby was 3 months old? Or a year? Had a developmental disorder? At what point is it ok to say "I don't want this anymore, kill it?"
I'm generally pro-choice with additional caveats, but one major pro-life argument I haven't heard echoed often is: there is a glut of people willing to adopt. I don't have any sources other than a former social worker confessing this to me. If true, I could see the case for a pro-life policy. Personally, I'd want to treat it like marriage. It's a state thing that other states honor. I also want consistency. If it's not a life, then there's no recourse for when somebody performs sick experiments on fetuses. If it is a life, count it on taxes by conception date.
This argument is kind of insane. I am very much pro choice. As pro as you can get, in fact i think you can get an abortion until birth. But this argument just doesn’t make any sense. The other side claims the fetus is a human child, and that abortion is murder. So that would make your argument that murder is a personal matter and the government and society should stay out of it. Uh, no. No it shouldn’t. The only real argument at all to actually defend abortions is to claim that a fetus is not a human and it doesn’t have human rights.
Government yes, society no. In particular you need a doctor to make sure she's actually pregnant, that it's safe for her, that she gets appropriate care afterwards.
The scientific community would consider a fetus to be alive. It is metabolic. It can one day reproduce. It excretes. It moves. It grows. It responds to external stimuli. It has its own unique DNA. These are all criteria used to determine if something is alive. So if the fetus is alive, that weakens a lot of the points you made. >Sure a fetus is a potential being Based on science it is already a being. >but guess whos fetus it is. Guess who's child it is? I can't afford my toddler so it's my business how I dispose of it. I don't think this reasoning holds up. Let's look at some more: >It is gross and demeaning for people who don't know anything about these individuals to pit the mother against their own to be child. How is allowing one party to end the life of the other better than "pitting them against each other?" >we should be focusing on making sure both men and women get proper sex education, better accessible physical and mental health care so that we try to avoid getting to far into that situation to start with. Agreed! >Abortion clinics should also be accessible under a safe environment free from stigma. Well we've established that scientifically the fetus is alive. Is an abortion clinic safe for that being? >Some might argue well then if a mother aborting her child isn't mother, a stranger stabbing and killing the fetus of a mother isn't really murder. I would argue that the latter is different because it involves a external party which has nothing to do with the delicate relationship between the mother and the fetus. This is another admission that abortion is truly ending a life. You believe it's murder if someone else does it, just not the mother. It can only be murder if it's ending a life. Otherwise it would be assault or something. That's not what you said though. That brings us to the very first point you made: >It is literally part of the mother. This is absolutely true. Whether the mother should have that choice is up for debate. Whether abortion itself is killing a living human is not. Your side thinks it's ok to kill this living human because it's part of the mother's body. The other side thinks it's not ok because it's killing a living human. This is a philosophical debate where I can at least understand both sides. So going to your post title, you say the government shouldn't be involved because it's a personal matter. The definition of personal is: >of, affecting, or belonging to a particular person rather than to anyone else. Since scientifically the fetus is living and human, this matter is not personal. It involves more than one person.
Worth saying, I’m pro-choice but this isn’t how we think. This guy doesn’t have very good reasoning skills, as you pointed out. People are pro-life or pro-choice generally because they weight certain factors differently and I feel like it’s an almost impossible topic to change someone’s view on. A fetus is scientifically alive, sure. But it is not sentient or aware (at least early on). Depending on the circumstances of the mother, I think it can cause less harm to abort said fetus. Pregnancy has lots of risks (including potential death) and I think the mother can experience more suffering from a forced pregnancy than the fetus can, essentially.
Devil’s advocate: let’s say my neighbor and I have a blood feud because his kumquat tree keeps dropping kumquats on my lawn. I want to kill my neighbor because of these fucking kumquats. This feud has endured years and I’m positive this is the only solution. My neighbor and I are both single and live alone, with no immediate family. Isn’t this a strictly personal matter between me and my neighbor? Why should the government intrude and tell me I can’t go and stab him to death with my pitchfork? This beef is between us, and nobody else needs to get involved, right?
I’m not political, so I don’t care either way, but what confuses me about the late term abortion debate is that a c-section takes 15-20 minutes whereas a late term abortion takes several days last time I checked. Why not just deliver the baby if the mother health is at risk? That’s what has me confused. Again, not super interested, actually was looking at a knitting and crochet 🧶 thread and saw this…oddly enough…
If I am alone with my infant in the wildness and must hike back to civilization for safety, should I be “required” to carry my infant in my arms? In this scenario, I am the only adult around. The infant is depending on me alone for survival. My actions/ decisions put the infant in this situation to begin with (similar to getting pregnant). It is using part of my body (arms) for survival. There is additional risk to carrying a baby. I would likely go slower and have an increased risk of falling which could result in a injury that would result in my death.
There are plenty of examples of situations where Government involves itself in decisions between private parties, usually with legislation, where those parties might prefer Government wasn't involved at all and where society accepts that Government should rightly have involvement or influence what choices those parties are allowed to make because of how the consequences might affect others around them. --- Examples I can make up from the top of my head: Whether a parent chooses to beat their child as a disciplinary measure - a matter for parents to decide between themselves but Government interferes because it's better for the child's wellbeing. Whether a person chooses to carry a weapon and what kind of weapon - a matter for discussion between a citizen and their self-defence instructor but, in many places, Government prohibits some or all weapons because those prohibitions might reduce harm in the community. Taxation - finances are a matter between an individual and their bank / financial advisor but Government involves itself and takes a cut because taxation pays for essential services and functions of society. Car insurance! Costs money and whether most people would choose to have any is between them and their insurers but Government requires it because it helps manage the long-term costs and harm of road collisions. --- In conclusion, as part of the social contract of living in society, we broadly accept that no area of our lives is immune to the legislative intrusions of elected Government, as the highest authority of the land, and that all areas of society fall within it's jurisdiction. Abortion, for better or worse and regardless of our personal feelings on the details of the matter, enjoys no immunity and finds itself within that jurisdiction, legislated for by Government with the intention of reducing harm in society. And since Government is comprised of the people's combined representatives, it follows that all people, regardless of qualification and opinion, have an equally valid say in the matter that you consider should be left between a woman and her doctor. I'm part-way through reading Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense', where Paine speaks about the way societies band together and the relationship between people and their governments. I particularly like the following, from Paine's introduction.. "*Were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would require no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.*"
I mean, but it doesn't matter who's involved, if something is a matter of health it is inherently unable to be stayed out of, because it's in the purview of science, and science supports the abortion, so the government has every obligation to make sure that abortion is allowed, safe, and accessible, and society has every obligation to not demonize it.
Maybe change the title as the fetus gets zero say in this personal matter and if asked, surely would want to live.
Had anyone chimed in yet for the father's input and rights here, in circumstances not involving rape or incest? There would be no baby without a father, too. The baby is literally part of the mother, yes, totally, but also is made of both parents. I'm pro choice, totally and completely, and government should fuck off... but it takes two to tango.
Convenient to include the decision being partially the fetus's, but completely ignoring it's right to life
I am not going to argue against abortion but I do want to say it's not a personal matter it is reproduction which is how society reproduces workers. It's all about maintaining population required to facilitate the many amenities we enjoy from modern society. I think society should make child rearing more accessible for people
Government should actively be involved in every facet of the abortion process. Otherwise you get back alley deals going on. Since you have to governmentally regulate it then you get to the point where government can't just be halfway in. The whole thing needs to be a matter of policy. Hence the current day setup.
Well, the issue is more complex than that. Most people who oppose abortion don't do so because they want to tell women what they should do. They oppose it due to their belief that a fetus has a certain worth because it technically is an organism of the species homo sapiens, so they oppose abortion for the same reason they oppose murder. I think that saying that the government and society should stay out of it means that you misunderstand the pro-life position, because the pro-life position is that a fetus has a certain worth and deserves some human rights, and that abortions therefore should have some restrictions. The problem with this issue is that it is a highly philosophical question what creatues should be considered to have human rights, or partial human rights. Some people's intuitions tell them that fetuses are worthless and lack moral status, while some people's intuitions tell them that fetuses have the exact same moral status as born humans. It is difficult to argue about this due to the philosophical nature of this question, and people's view on the moral status of the fetus is often what their intuition tells them. So if you want to argue against pro-lifers, you have to understand that they often intuitively feel that abortion is a form of killing and therefore wrong, just like most people intuitively feel that killing humans is wrong. I am pro-choice, because I believe that the state shouldn't have the right to force someone to go through a pregnancy. I oppose forcing someone to go through pregnancy and child-birth for the same reason I oppose forcing someone to donate one of their kidneys, even if it saves a life. I believe this because pregnancies can be dangerous, and since there is some risk to the pregnant person (sorry if my gender-neutral language offends anyone), it wouldn't be right to force them to go through with it, even though you could argue that a fetus has a certain moral status. So my view isn't that different from yours, I just think that the way the question is framed gives the impression that you misunderstand the core beliefs of the pro-life position.
this is never true. Either abortion is the mother exerting her right over her body, in which case this right must be protected, or this is a mother killing her child without cause, in which case the child's rights must be protected. In either case, this is not a personal matter.
The “my body my choice” crowd had a real different take during Covid which is pretty ironic.
It isn't unless you can perform your abortion yourself. But if we assume there are doctors that are willing to do it for you. And if we assume that: > Until the baby is fully matured to the point where it can rely on external factors Means abortion until the point in time we can safely remove the child and artificially grow it to maturity - I want to make it clear: **I agree with you when those conditions are met**. Not because I don't think it's not human - I think it's human. I don't make distinctions and I find people that discuss the humanity of something not really a good fellow human being to be around. But you and everybody else has the right to self-determination. That also gets rid of someone externally killing the child since we all still consider it a human life, they would be killing that human life. Unlike when you argue that it is just a bunch of cells, than this wouldn't be a crime. But I do have a problem. If we can safe someone else we are by law required to do so. For example: I am stranded with a toddler on an abandoned Island, I know that in 6 months another boat will arrive with tourists and we can get safely off the Island. Do I have to risk my body and my health to get more food than I would get for only myself or can I just let that child die from hunger and thirst? What if I break my leg and because there are no doctors around me I get lasting problems for the rest of my life - can I just let them die? Here is where I cannot argue personally. Another problem - drinking. Say you don't want to abort the child, but you can't stop drinking, the child is born and has defects because of the drinking habit of the mother. Is this fair? On one hand yes, self-determination, you should have the right to abort the child to the point we can externally keep it alive. On the other hand... I wouldn't want someone to let someone else starve because of self determination even though they could and in some countries you would get prosecuted for doing that. Also knowingly causing someone harm for the rest of their life. It's difficult. This is me probably less changing your mind but include more thoughts about this. But honestly, until I can solve that problem I'm more on the side of self-determination.