Well that's heartbreaking. There's some tangle of thoughts in my head I can't really put into words yet. A few days ago a ran across a particularly rabid person on reddit saying that all...
Well that's heartbreaking. There's some tangle of thoughts in my head I can't really put into words yet. A few days ago a ran across a particularly rabid person on reddit saying that all pro-lifers are misogynist and deserve to get kicked in the head. And now I see this pretty awful case of misogyny. I guess no matter what you do there's going to be screwballs to take advantage of it.
This seems pretty obviously wrong to me, but is this something we can even prevent? The article mentions that some other countries with this problem just outright ban early gender reveals but it also says that even babies born inside China still have an abnormally higher boy/girl ratio and that people will travel out of country if they need to.
There's no way to prevent sex-selection abortions while also embracing the right to abort. The way to stop it isn't to restrict the abortions themselves, but to change how people think about women.
There's no way to prevent sex-selection abortions while also embracing the right to abort. The way to stop it isn't to restrict the abortions themselves, but to change how people think about women.
I mean not completely, no, but restricting access to the info seems like a pretty good start. Although that might be a problem itself in some places, at least in the US I feel like that knowledge...
I mean not completely, no, but restricting access to the info seems like a pretty good start. Although that might be a problem itself in some places, at least in the US I feel like that knowledge is kind of ingrained in the culture a bit. I think some people even have gender-reveal parties. Or at least cakes, I know I've seen cakes.
E: You know I think what you said applies to a lot things. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, there's a lot of biases and prejudices that we'd all be better off without. But we still have laws against those, because just saying that we need to change the way we think doesn't really solve anything by itself. If you refuse to hire african american individuals, you're going to be in a legal world of trouble, even though the ideal solution is to change the way people think about race.
There are never ideal, perfect solutions but there are partial ones and there are starting points.
I cannot agree with this. As much as I believe in gender equality and hate gender selection, I also will always stand by a woman's right to choose for herself whether she wants to have a baby or...
Exemplary
I mean not completely, no, but restricting access to the info seems like a pretty good start.
I cannot agree with this. As much as I believe in gender equality and hate gender selection, I also will always stand by a woman's right to choose for herself whether she wants to have a baby or not. As far as I'm concerned, she shouldn't have to justify her decision to anyone. If we support women getting abortions because they want to focus on their career, were survivors of rape, don't want children, or are simply not ready, I don't think we can then turn around and say that this reason is no longer "good" enough. Withholding the information of the sex of the baby is also kind of an insulting solution. It has already been happening in parts of British Columbia where some sonographers will refuse to reveal the sex of the baby to asian women. Will forcing someone to have a baby they don't want be in the best interest of the parents or the baby?
I think in the end, we have to look at why sons are more favourable to have and address those issues.
If you refuse to hire african american individuals, you're going to be in a legal world of trouble
I think this is an unfair comparison. Workplaces also protect against discrimination based on physical and/or mental disabilities. Does that mean that parents shouldn't know if there are any abnormalities in their baby for fear that they will abort their baby based on ableism?
I'm not sure I follow the point you're making. There's a big difference between aborting because you can't support or simply don't want to be responsible for caring for a child and aborting...
I cannot agree with this. As much as I believe in gender equality and hate gender selection, I also will always stand by a woman's right to choose for herself whether she wants to have a baby or not. As far as I'm concerned, she shouldn't have to justify her decision to anyone. If we support women getting abortions because they want to focus on their career, were survivors of rape, don't want children, or are simply not ready, I don't think we can then turn around and say that this reason is no longer "good" enough.
I'm not sure I follow the point you're making. There's a big difference between aborting because you can't support or simply don't want to be responsible for caring for a child and aborting because the kid's got the wrong gender. Dragging the hiring analogy back, it's fine to choose not to hire based on skill, but very much not okay to base your decision on race or gender. Some reasons aren't "good enough."
Withholding the information of the sex of the baby is also kind of an insulting solution. It has already been happening in parts of British Columbia where some sonographers will refuse to reveal the sex of the baby to asian women. Will forcing someone to have a baby they don't want be in the best interest of the parents or the baby?
I can understand how forcing someone to have an unwanted baby can be a problem, I'm not quite sure I understand "insulting," though. Could you clarify that at all?
But wrt unwanted kids, even in places with those kinds of laws that make an attempt to prevent gender-based abortions from happening, some kids still just get abandoned. Others "just" get resented their entire lives by their parents. Blocking access to the info isn't a "real" solution. The root problem is that those biases exist, that's the problem that needs fixing. The laws that restrict information, like I said, are more like a starting point.
The reason I brought up the workplace discrimination is because in both cases the laws don't try to change people's minds, that just can't be done through a legal framework. But the anti-discrimination laws exist anyway.
I think this is an unfair comparison. Workplaces also protect against discrimination based on physical and/or mental disabilities. Does that mean that parents shouldn't know if there are any abnormalities in their baby for fear that they will abort their baby based on ableism?
Okay, just up front I'm going to say that I realize I am very biased in this very specific situation, and I'm kind of dodging your actual question here, but I don't think babies should be aborted based on physical/mental disability. I have (had?) a physical birth defect (cleft lip and palate) that would have gotten me aborted in a lot of places.
No. When we say "her body her choice", that applies to everything. Anything less weakens abortion rights, and some women not wanting female babies is not even close to being "good enough" a reason...
There's a big difference between [...] Some reasons aren't "good enough"
No. When we say "her body her choice", that applies to everything. Anything less weakens abortion rights, and some women not wanting female babies is not even close to being "good enough" a reason to justify that.
Huh. I guess we just disagree there. Admittedly, I'm a dude. May never be able to fully understand a woman's PoV. I don't see why it's so important to you that this becomes a 100% all or nothing...
Huh. I guess we just disagree there. Admittedly, I'm a dude. May never be able to fully understand a woman's PoV. I don't see why it's so important to you that this becomes a 100% all or nothing black and white issue.
I think we're kinda hitting on a free speech vs free choice thing here. But with a fun-filled dash of bodily autonomy. Trying again to resurrect the hiring analogy, there are racists in this world. They are free to say whatever they like. But they can't discriminate while hiring. Difference here is that if you ban that kind of discrimination in the process of bringing a new life into things, it'll just end up getting taken out on the kid later. I'm not sure where I'm going with that. But I'd be interested to hear what you have to say on why abortion rights must be all or nothing outside the obvious parenting issues.
I'm not the one you're replying to, but - who are discriminating these woman? Racists can discriminate against some people when hiring - but can one discriminate unborn person? From which point is...
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I'm not the one you're replying to, but - who are discriminating these woman?
Racists can discriminate against some people when hiring - but can one discriminate unborn person? From which point is the baby considered human being with rights? Do woman own her's baby when it's unborn? If yes - why shouldn't she be allowed to know gender and decide abortion based on this? If no - why should we allow abortions at all? You're killing human being!
What if she "owns" the baby - is the baby considered human being? One cannot own human being.
This was very binary pov, so I'll present another one.
When baby has a disability, should be it's mother allowed to abort the baby based on this? What if the family is poor and cannot afford disabled baby, but could healthy one? Stop reading now and actually decide the previous question. Now, what if having female is not affordable by the family? Should the woman be allowed to abort the baby? What if somewhere being woman can actually financially count as disability - meaning raising female is much more expensive, or she wouldn't produce enough money for the family compared to male?
Very interesting points, and I don't have any sane responses to hardly any of them right now. This also went way longer than I intended, sorry about that. I don't see any reason why you couldn't...
Exemplary
Very interesting points, and I don't have any sane responses to hardly any of them right now. This also went way longer than I intended, sorry about that.
Racists can discriminate against some people when hiring - but can one discriminate unborn person? From which point is the baby considered human being with rights? Do woman own her's baby when it's unborn? If yes - why shouldn't she be allowed to know gender and decide abortion based on this? If no - why should we allow abortions at all? You're killing human being!
I don't see any reason why you couldn't discriminate against a fetus. I have family that used to have some farm animals, they would sell off or butcher most of the males while keeping around the females.
Question is, like you said, when does a human fetus gain human rights? I have no idea. Before now my personal opinion (which was and is very fluid since I haven't dumped a great deal of thought into it, that's part of why I like this thread so much) was "They gain the rights of a human when they gain the ability to reliably keep on living outside the mother."
Everyone in this thread seems bothered by the kind of discrimination in the article. And yet a lot of the people who are bothered by this are also very much supportive of this woman's rights to do it, even if they disagree with it. And that's something I can get. The whole "I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" kinda deal. Not quite the same, but I get the sentiment there I think.
But then that makes me think, if it's not a human with human rights then why be bothered by someone discriminating like this at all? That sounds a bit messed up to me but I don't have any response to it. Maybe someone else does? And then your follow up question, if a fetus does matter then why allow abortion at all? Again, no idea.
When baby has a disability, should be it's mother allowed to abort the baby based on this? What if the family is poor and cannot afford disabled baby, but could healthy one? Stop reading now and actually decide the previous question. Now, what if having female is not affordable by the family? Should the woman be allowed to abort the baby? What if somewhere being woman can actually financially count as disability - meaning raising female is much more expensive, or she wouldn't produce enough money for the family compared to male?
Just gonna re-iterate this real quick, that strikes a bit close to home for me so I'm absolutely positive my answers here are very biased towards that.
Like I brought up earlier in the thread, I had a birth defect that very well could have gotten me aborted if I had had different parents. I am incredibly glad I did not get aborted. But by existing I definitely caused my parents (and myself) a lot of pain for the entire first 18 years of my life. Financially, emotionally, in basically every way.
I feel like I'm taking this in the wrong direction because my immediate response to all of that is a completely unrelated issue, which would be health care. If someone wants to live then money shouldn't matter. My parents certainly weren't able to really afford it. I came close to dying several times because my parents weren't equipped to care for me. The first kid's always tough and new but they also had to deal with a kid that was nearly incapable of eating on top of it. Maybe they'd have been better off aborting me but I don't really like that answer. But, their choice and their lives.
Ideally, money wouldn't be an issue and there wouldn't be any defects like that and if there were, that wouldn't immediately disqualify you from life. Practically, money is an issue and if it comes down to it, sure. Where do we draw the line with that? Do we draw a line at all? Lines get drawn all the time, and they're usually blurry when you get up close to them. But dragging specifically this kind of "cosmetic" discrimination next to practical choices for choosing abortion like financial ability there's still a pretty high contrast. Pushing one of those sides a little further (frankly a lot further), do we allow parents to keep re-rolling for a kid until they take home a win in the genetic lottery? What about someone with a breeding fetish who wants it to get a little more realistic without dealing with a kid? And just idle curiosity, would constant re-rolling be better or worse than genetically modifying them from the start to avoid all that?
This goes double for disabled parents. People sneer at aborting disabled babies, they say "Well, it's your right, but you're still ableist to do it", and they never stop to realize that disabled...
What if the family is poor and cannot afford disabled baby, but could healthy one?
This goes double for disabled parents. People sneer at aborting disabled babies, they say "Well, it's your right, but you're still ableist to do it", and they never stop to realize that disabled people get pregnant too. I might, sometime in the far future, maybe have the resources to handle a kid. I seriously doubt that, with all my mental health issues, I could ever handle a disabled child. Guess I'm just drinking the internalized ableism Kool-Aid.
I was with you until this point. I can find plenty of sources that show it's more costly to raise a male and plenty that say it's more costly to raise a female. Both are biased on how much is...
Now, what if having female is not affordable by the family?
I was with you until this point. I can find plenty of sources that show it's more costly to raise a male and plenty that say it's more costly to raise a female. Both are biased on how much is spent on the child, not how much is needed to be spent on the child. At the end of the day, it depends entirely on the kid - a sports loving male might cost more than a homebody female, but at the same time a fashion loving female might cost more than a homebody male.
In the end, it's not being male or female that costs more - it's how much money you have to spend and how your child turns out (what they are interested in).
I agree that it depends completely on the child - but preconceptions matter too. I wasn't trying to convince someone that woman are much more expensive than man (here might be another discussion...
I agree that it depends completely on the child - but preconceptions matter too. I wasn't trying to convince someone that woman are much more expensive than man (here might be another discussion about difference between wages) - I was pointing out that economical factor might actually make a difference whether people decide to have the child.
Not OP, but my thoughts are you can't have full autonomy with exceptions. And I don't believe anyone should ever be withheld information from fear they may make a poor or incorrect choice. Your...
I don't see why it's so important to you that this becomes a 100% all or nothing black and white issue.
Not OP, but my thoughts are you can't have full autonomy with exceptions. And I don't believe anyone should ever be withheld information from fear they may make a poor or incorrect choice.
Your hiring anology is so far off topic that it honestly feels a little disingenuous. For one, an unborn child doesn't have personhood (at least in Canada). And even following you're anology, there's very little controversy around aborting if the unborn child has a disability.
I think we're kinda hitting on a free speech vs free choice thing here.
Can you elaborate on this point? I don't think I'm reading it right.
Fair point, I'll quit using that. Was the closest analogy I could think of but you're right, it's still just a bit too different to be useful because of this point right here. My thinking was,...
For one, an unborn child doesn't have personhood (at least in Canada).
Fair point, I'll quit using that. Was the closest analogy I could think of but you're right, it's still just a bit too different to be useful because of this point right here.
Can you elaborate on this point? I don't think I'm reading it right.
My thinking was, this isn't 1984. People are allowed to think whatever thoughts they like, even if those thoughts are really like morally reprehensible. You can think whatever horrible, vile things you like but there are many laws restricting your choice to act on them(... BUT all those laws keep you from acting on them towards other human beings, like you pointed out). But that's what I was getting at, if that clears anything up.
Basically, I believe that until the baby pops out, the woman has every right - no exceptions - to do whatever she wants with it. If we start forcing people to deliver babies, for whatever reason,...
But I'd be interested to hear what you have to say on why abortion rights must be all or nothing outside the obvious parenting issues.
Basically, I believe that until the baby pops out, the woman has every right - no exceptions - to do whatever she wants with it. If we start forcing people to deliver babies, for whatever reason, that's a very slippery slope that ends up with banning abortion. After all, today sex-choosing might be a "good enough" reason for you, but if that gets banned, than some more extreme groups will start arguing it should be banned for their reasons as well. What makes your opinion more valid than theirs?
Also, judging by your comments elsewhere in the thread, it feels like you have too much of a personal stake in this that you can't see objectively why a ban here would be a bad thing. Would you say that's a fair statement?
This has some very strong moral implications, possibly beyond what you intend. What about foetuses in the third trimester of pregnancy (28 - 40 weeks)? If a foetus is born naturally during this...
Basically, I believe that until the baby pops out, the woman has every right - no exceptions - to do whatever she wants with it.
This has some very strong moral implications, possibly beyond what you intend.
What about foetuses in the third trimester of pregnancy (28 - 40 weeks)? If a foetus is born naturally during this time, it becomes a premature baby with a >90% chance of survival. So, if a woman gives birth at week 35, that baby can probably survive. If the baby was a girl and she tried to kill it, she'd be considered a murderer. If another woman found out her foetus was a girl inside the womb and she tried to have an abortion at week 35, you're saying she should be allowed to.
What's the difference? What's the moral difference between a premature baby girl born at 35 weeks and a female foetus inside the womb at 35 weeks?
To me, there is no killing here. If it's not born, it's not a human yet, merely tissue removal. I don't see a moral problem in your hypothetical - if it's out it has rights, if not it has none.
If the baby was a girl and she tried to kill it
To me, there is no killing here. If it's not born, it's not a human yet, merely tissue removal.
I don't see a moral problem in your hypothetical - if it's out it has rights, if not it has none.
It has a brain and a nervous system. It has functional organs (mostly). If it was aborted surgically, such as via caesarean section, it would probably start breathing. How can you count that as...
If it's not born, it's not a human yet, merely tissue removal.
It has a brain and a nervous system. It has functional organs (mostly). If it was aborted surgically, such as via caesarean section, it would probably start breathing.
How can you count that as merely tissue removal?
For clarity: I am pro-choice. However, I believe there is a dividing line between "tissue removal" and "killing an unborn baby". I may not know exactly where that dividing line is, but I'm almost certain that a foetus which can potentially survive on its own is well past that line. I'm therefore puzzled that you can perceive a foetus which might otherwise be classed as a premature baby as not being entitled to human rights.
This is a reply to @Rez and @Diff as well, since they've basically asked the same question. Even in low-risk pregnancies, caesarean section has about a ~10% chance of adverse outcomes for the...
This is a reply to @Rez and @Diff as well, since they've basically asked the same question.
If it was aborted surgically, such as via caesarean section, it would probably start breathing.
Even in low-risk pregnancies, caesarean section has about a ~10% chance of adverse outcomes for the mother. Why do you think the state should have the right to force a woman to go through such an invasive surgery?
My personal view is simple: the state has no business whatsoever telling a woman whether she must or must not deliver a baby. It's her body, her choice.
If and when the baby is born, then it has rights granted to all humans, but not before. We all agree that a human should have human rights - we just disagree on when the transition happens from tissue to human.
This: and this: Are two separate things. Whether the unborn but viable fetus is a person with human rights and whether the mother's rights to bodily autonomy override the fetus's rights are two...
This:
My personal view is simple: the state has no business whatsoever telling a woman whether she must or must not deliver a baby. It's her body, her choice.
and this:
If and when the baby is born, then it has rights granted to all humans, but not before. We all agree that a human should have human rights - we just disagree on when the transition happens from tissue to human.
Are two separate things. Whether the unborn but viable fetus is a person with human rights and whether the mother's rights to bodily autonomy override the fetus's rights are two different questions. The woman having rights over her body doesn't tell us anything about whether the fetus is a person. It's just a bit easier to justify the former if the latter isn't true. It is entirely possible to hold the position that the unborn but viable fetus is a person with human rights and the position that the mother's rights to bodily autonomy win.
For some, maybe. That's clearly the case for you. I think the mother has all the rights because there is no human on the other side until birth. While that's certainly possible (to the extent...
Whether the unborn but viable fetus is a person with human rights and whether the mother's rights to bodily autonomy override the fetus's rights are two different questions.
For some, maybe. That's clearly the case for you. I think the mother has all the rights because there is no human on the other side until birth.
It is entirely possible to hold the position that the unborn but viable fetus is a person with human rights and the position that the mother's rights to bodily autonomy win.
While that's certainly possible (to the extent anything is possible), in my personal experience pretty much no ever argues for that. The vast majority of people arguing for "fetus rights" do so from a religious perspective and the majority of the "woman's choice" camp argue from a secular bodily autonomy angle, which leaves very little ground for people in the middle.
Still, they do exist - this thread has several of them - I just don't think they are statistically significant in the overall abortion rights debate.
Interesting to see this in writing, as this is actually the view I hold. And off topic, but I personally believe a non-insignificant portion of people do believe this. If "fetus rights" were the...
While that's certainly possible (to the extent anything is possible), in my personal experience pretty much no ever argues for that.
Still, they do exist - this thread has several of them - I just don't think they are statistically significant in the overall abortion rights debate.
Interesting to see this in writing, as this is actually the view I hold. And off topic, but I personally believe a non-insignificant portion of people do believe this. If "fetus rights" were the main points people (religious or otherwise) are arguing from, I believe there would be more debate surrounding IVF.
That may very well be. My only points of reference are myself, a few people close to me and what I see in my choice of media :) There is actually quite a bit of religious opposition to IVF,...
And off topic, but I personally believe a non-insignificant portion of people do believe this.
That may very well be. My only points of reference are myself, a few people close to me and what I see in my choice of media :)
I believe there would be more debate surrounding IVF
There is actually quite a bit of religious opposition to IVF, particularly among Christians. Though I have no idea how popular they are.
Understood. I don't have numbers backing me up or anything either :P I've definitely heard of religious opposition to IVF (thanks for the link BTW), and personally know couples who would never...
Understood. I don't have numbers backing me up or anything either :P
I've definitely heard of religious opposition to IVF (thanks for the link BTW), and personally know couples who would never choose it for their families. So the thoughts are out there for sure, but I don't feel, at least in Canada, the opposition is as "passionate" (?) as they may be compared to opposing abortion.
And my two-cents, I feel if someone is arguing that life begins at conception, it would be an easier sell to deal with zygotes from IVF, where they're not even in a woman's body and thus her health isn't a concern.
What makes us human, the thing that differentiates us from other animals, is our sapience - thought and reasoning. When babies become sapient is a big research area in neuroscience, but even the...
What makes us human, the thing that differentiates us from other animals, is our sapience - thought and reasoning. When babies become sapient is a big research area in neuroscience, but even the earliest estimates put vague signs of consciousness around 1-2 months.
Shortly before birth, the fetus still has little to no sensory input and its most important organ - the brain - is also the most underdeveloped (the majority of brain development happens after birth). At that point, a chimpanzee is more human than it is.
It doesn't tell us why you think the fetus isn't a person.
I hope that cleared things up.
That tells us why you think the mother has all the rights.
This is just a natural consequence of the previous one: If the two sides are a human and tissue, the human has all the rights.
Have you heard of Professor Peter Singer, or read any of his works on ethics? He's a prominent philosopher who happens to be from Australia. He makes a strong argument that babies are not morally...
What makes us human, the thing that differentiates us from other animals, is our sapience - thought and reasoning. When babies become sapient is a big research area in neuroscience, but even the earliest estimates put vague signs of consciousness around 1-2 months.
Have you heard of Professor Peter Singer, or read any of his works on ethics? He's a prominent philosopher who happens to be from Australia. He makes a strong argument that babies are not morally people until they realise their own existence as a separate entity, with the ability to have hopes and plans and likes and wants - and this doesn't happen until the baby is about 2 years old. (yes: years, not months)
I don't necessarily agree with Professor Singer, but I do acknowledge the validity of his argument, and I'm self-aware enough to accept that most of my negative response to that argument is based in emotion rather than rationality (babies are cute!).
I haven't, and it sounds like I should read up on him. It feels like the relentless opposition to my position from multiple people in this thread is also from this angle. P.S: And yes, babies are...
Have you heard of Professor Peter Singer, or read any of his works on ethics?
I haven't, and it sounds like I should read up on him.
I'm self-aware enough to accept that most of my negative response to that argument is based in emotion rather than rationality (babies are cute!)
It feels like the relentless opposition to my position from multiple people in this thread is also from this angle.
P.S: And yes, babies are cute, and I love'em to bits. I don't think anything I've said contradicts that.
What? I don't think that! That's just a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate that a near-full-term foetus is effectively equivalent to a baby. I get that. I'm trying to understand why birth is...
Why do you think the state should have the right to force a woman to go through such an invasive surgery?
What? I don't think that! That's just a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate that a near-full-term foetus is effectively equivalent to a baby.
If and when the baby is born, then it has rights granted to all humans, but not before.
I get that. I'm trying to understand why birth is your dividing line between "tissue" and "human" when a pre-birth foetus in late pregnancy is functionally equivalent to a born baby. In fact, according to your dividing line, a less-developed baby born prematurely is entitled to more rights than a more-developed foetus still awaiting birth. How did you come up with birth as your dividing line?
Here's a horrible hypothetical for you...
Imagine a pregnant woman decides only a week or two before her due date that she really can't go through with having a child, so she asks for an abortion. At this stage, the foetus is too large to be dealt with by her just taking a pill, so the doctor decides to remove it surgically. They cut open the mother to remove the unwanted tissue, but before the tissue can be disposed of, it takes a breath and starts crying.
Can the doctor kill the crying tissue? I assume they can't remove it from the mother and then kill it, because the removal would be equivalent to a birth, which would give the newborn baby human rights. What if they leave the tissue in the mother's womb? Can the doctor kill it while it cries in the womb?
You don't say that, but isn't that what your position would end up with? You don't want to allow a third trimester woman to abort which means you want to force her to have the baby. Or is there a...
What? I don't think that!
You don't say that, but isn't that what your position would end up with? You don't want to allow a third trimester woman to abort which means you want to force her to have the baby. Or is there a third option I'm missing?
Here's a horrible hypothetical for you...
I think it's neither fair nor helpful for you to use appeals to emotion by bringing up a "crying baby". You can easily - and safely - terminate a pregnancy while the foetus is still inside by administering drugs. After that, you can remove it endoscopically with a very minimal cut to the lower abdomen (much smaller than a caesarean section).
Moving on to your actual question:
I'm trying to understand why birth is your dividing line between "tissue" and "human" when a pre-birth foetus in late pregnancy is functionally equivalent to a born baby.
Basically, I believe that as long as the baby is inside the mother, her life matters a hell of a lot more than the foetus' and denying her right to choose means effectively forcing her to deliver a baby she doesn't want, which sounds monstrous to me. That's why birth is my dividing line.
We seem to be talking at cross-purposes. You quoted my hypothetical scenario about a baby being aborted by caesarean section and asked if I thought the state should have the right to force a woman...
You don't say that, but isn't that what your position would end up with?
We seem to be talking at cross-purposes. You quoted my hypothetical scenario about a baby being aborted by caesarean section and asked if I thought the state should have the right to force a woman to go through such an invasive surgery. Of course I don't think a woman should be forced to have a caesarean section or have an abortion!
As for a woman being forced to have a baby... I already said I'm pro-choice. No woman should ever be forced to have a baby.
However, I believe the choice to have or not have the baby should be made before the point at which "tissue" becomes "person". There's a window of a few months within which that choice can be made but, after a certain point (even though I'm not sure when that point is), that window closes. After that point, barring any immediate threats to the mother's life, the baby has acquired the right to live.
I think it's neither fair nor helpful for you to use appeals to emotion by bringing up a "crying baby".
But that is a possible scenario. And we are talking about babies. If you can't handle even the idea of a pretend baby crying before it dies, how can you apply your morality to real babies?
But don't you see this conflicts with this? Isn't this forcing a woman to have a baby "after a certain point"? But it isn't a realistic scenario. Why would a doctor would first deliver and then...
As for a woman being forced to have a baby... I already said I'm pro-choice. No woman should ever be forced to have a baby.
But don't you see this conflicts with
after a certain point (even though I'm not sure when that point is), that window closes. After that point, barring any immediate threats to the mother's life, the baby has acquired the right to live.
this? Isn't this forcing a woman to have a baby "after a certain point"?
But that is a possible scenario. And we are talking about babies. If you can't handle even the idea of a pretend baby crying before it dies, how can you apply your morality to real babies?
But it isn't a realistic scenario. Why would a doctor would first deliver and then kill a baby when they could easily and painlessly terminate it in-utero?
Not really. Not when she already had a few months to make her decision and act on it. My scenario kept the baby in-utero, just with an open cut in the mother's abdomen to access it. The only...
Isn't this forcing a woman to have a baby "after a certain point"?
Not really. Not when she already had a few months to make her decision and act on it.
Why would a doctor would first deliver and then kill a baby when they could easily and painlessly terminate it in-utero?
My scenario kept the baby in-utero, just with an open cut in the mother's abdomen to access it. The only difference was that you could see and hear the baby before easily and painlessly terminating it - which you baulked at. You seem able to kill it as long as it's out of sight, but not when it's visible.
No matter how you phrase it, that's "you had your chance to say no, now we'll force you to have it". As long as it remains inside the womb, I would personally terminate (not kill - because I...
Not really. Not when she already had a few months to make her decision and act on it.
No matter how you phrase it, that's "you had your chance to say no, now we'll force you to have it".
You seem able to kill it as long as it's out of sight, but not when it's visible.
As long as it remains inside the womb, I would personally terminate (not kill - because I reject the notion that there is something to kill) it as long as the woman wants it, regardless of if it was visible or not.
If and when that becomes reality, it clearly wouldn't fall under "woman's body woman's choice", since the maternal DNA provider's body is not involved in the process. I don't know what the ethical...
Test tube babies do not seem to be out of the bounds of scientific possibility
If and when that becomes reality, it clearly wouldn't fall under "woman's body woman's choice", since the maternal DNA provider's body is not involved in the process. I don't know what the ethical answer would be in that case, but I don't think it's comparable to ethics of natural pregnancy.
I have answered this multiple times throughout this comment chain: In my opinion, as long as the foetus is inside the woman, it's her choice and hers alone. As for human rights, I believe they...
How far does "woman's body, woman's choice" go?
I have answered this multiple times throughout this comment chain: In my opinion, as long as the foetus is inside the woman, it's her choice and hers alone.
As for human rights, I believe they should be granted upon birth, not before.
My stated position is only on abortion. I don't have enough data or personal experience to decide on a position on bodily autonomy in general. I've said this before, but I'll rephrase it here:...
In which case if you agree that it is only specific to abortion I'd like to know your reasoning as to why that is.
My stated position is only on abortion. I don't have enough data or personal experience to decide on a position on bodily autonomy in general.
So test tube babies that are fully grown but not born can never have human rights, okay then, we can move on from this point.
I've said this before, but I'll rephrase it here: Since test tube babies are little more than sci-fi right now, I don't have an idea what rights they could possibly have in a hypothetical future.
Most people would be able to take their morals and ethics, and extrapolate those to cover hypothetical scenarios that don't exist. For example, a major ethical principle of mine is "do no harm"....
Since test tube babies are little more than sci-fi right now, I don't have an idea what rights they could possibly have in a hypothetical future.
Most people would be able to take their morals and ethics, and extrapolate those to cover hypothetical scenarios that don't exist. For example, a major ethical principle of mine is "do no harm". If someone asked me whether I would fire a ray-gun at an alien standing in front of me, I would be able to apply my ethical principle of refraining from harm to that scenario, and reply that I would not fire the ray-gun.
Are you not able to extrapolate your ethics in this way?
Despite how condesending this sounds, I'll be charitable and assume you didn't mean it that way. As I've said elsewhere in the thread, the entire abortion rights discussion surrounds a woman's...
Most people would be able to take their morals and ethics, and extrapolate those to cover hypothetical scenarios that don't exist. [...] Are you not able to extrapolate your ethics in this way?
Despite how condesending this sounds, I'll be charitable and assume you didn't mean it that way. As I've said elsewhere in the thread, the entire abortion rights discussion surrounds a woman's body and her autonomy over it.
In the sci-fi tube baby scenario, said woman's body is not involved at any point, so there is no ethical analogy at all.
But, since you insist: There must surely be a point where your test tube fetus - an organism kept alive by machines - gets disconnected and takes its first breath, cries, opens its eyes and so on, right? That can be a nice point where it gets human rights.
I tried as hard as I could to find diplomatic words! So, there's the answer to @Rez's question. Thanks!
Despite how condesending this sounds, I'll be charitable and assume you didn't mean it that way.
I tried as hard as I could to find diplomatic words!
There must surely be a point where your test tube fetus - an organism kept alive by machines - gets disconnected and takes its first breath, cries, opens its eyes and so on, right? That can be a nice point where it gets human rights.
So, there's the answer to @Rez's question. Thanks!
Is there not any limit to that? If prospective mom decides just a few days before the ETA that she wants an abortion, ignoring the fact that the (at this point) baby could live independently,...
Is there not any limit to that? If prospective mom decides just a few days before the ETA that she wants an abortion, ignoring the fact that the (at this point) baby could live independently, that's fine, just tissue removal?
Just want to say, "withholding information" to "forcing delivery" is an interesting point and I'm gonna be thinking about that for a while. Not sure I follow the slippery slope bit in particular,...
If we start forcing people to deliver babies, for whatever reason, that's a very slippery slope that ends up with banning abortion.
Just want to say, "withholding information" to "forcing delivery" is an interesting point and I'm gonna be thinking about that for a while.
Not sure I follow the slippery slope bit in particular, though. For the purpose of the conversation, let's say we ban fetus gender discrimination. What extreme groups come along to say "me too," and what about? If abortion is allowed at all I can't really see the slope sliding any further than "you know what, you have a fetus inside you now, that's all you need to know. Abort or don't, have fun."
Also, judging by your comments elsewhere in the thread, it feels like you have too much of a personal stake in this that you can't see objectively why a ban here would be a bad thing. Would you say that's a fair statement?
Only wrt to the mental/physical disability aspect of it I think but even then I welcome people poking holes in me. I am positive biases exist because of my own experiences and I'm trying to be conscious of that but since I've never had a conversation like this before but I'm still happy to learn. Saying "I might be biased here..." isn't "you're wasting your time trying to discuss anything with me, you'll never take me alive," it's "keep in mind I'm probably starting with some dumb ideas."
It would start with arguments similar to sex discrimination and escalate from that. If we ban sex selection, why not ban aborting fetuses with genetic defects? Isn't that just another...
For the purpose of the conversation, let's say we ban fetus gender discrimination. What extreme groups come along to say "me too," and what about?
It would start with arguments similar to sex discrimination and escalate from that. If we ban sex selection, why not ban aborting fetuses with genetic defects? Isn't that just another discrimination? Then, if we allow that, why not ban abortions for financial reasons? That's just socio-economic discrimination? Further, why not extend that to all parental-choice-based abortions? After all, discriminating fetuses based on their parent's situation also sounds wrong.
Do you see where this is going? The moment you add "... except in these cases" to the law, it will be abused and extended ad infinitum to suit all sorts of agendas.
Saying "I might be biased here..." isn't "you're wasting your time trying to discuss anything with me, you'll never take me alive," it's "keep in mind I'm a dumb kid with dumb thoughts and a lot of questions."
Of course, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. These are just my own opinions after all. I believe there are issues where we as a society (doesn't matter which country) can't give a single inch of leeway when it comes to legal protections. The potential upsides don't sound convincing and the potential downsides are downright scary. Abortion is just one such issue.
See that's where you're losing me on our slippery slope. With genetic defects, there are practical considerations. What sort of quality of life will the kid have? Is it even possible for the...
Then, if we allow that, why not ban abortions for financial reasons? That's just socio-economic discrimination?
See that's where you're losing me on our slippery slope. With genetic defects, there are practical considerations. What sort of quality of life will the kid have? Is it even possible for the family to financially (or emotionally) support the costs of dealing with any medical conditions? Those same financial and emotional cost considerations apply to having a baby at all, not just birth defects. Those are practical, impactful things in the lives of the parents and especially the mother.
But gender? That's almost purely cosmetic as far as the parents are concerned. No extra costs, emotional or financial unless something's screwy in the head with the parents.
I do see where you're going with it, but the law has all sorts of exceptions and special cases. I mean this is obviously a supersimplified view but you could look at the law itself as "You can do whatever you want... Except all these things except in these cases unless you do this other thing as well."
As a more concrete example, in the USA there are protected classes. Discrimination based on membership in any of those classes is illegal in a lot of circumstances. I'm not seeing a sudden slippery slope if you copy/pasted those to apply to fetuses.
Someone else pointed out, there might be a separate (and, to me, pretty steep-looking) slippery slope if we take that particular hypothetical, though. If you're applying anti-discrimination rights to fetuses then why don't they get other human rights?
And like, just gonna say this again, practically, that would cause massive problems. Whether you're withholding information or whatever you're doing, if you're forcing parents to have a kid they wouldn't otherwise want, it's gonna end badly.
Actually no. In some cultures, male children provide more financial benefit than female children. They're able to get better jobs. They join family businesses. Culturally, their sons will stay...
But gender? That's almost purely cosmetic as far as the parents are concerned. No extra costs, emotional or financial unless something's screwy in the head with the parents.
Actually no.
In some cultures, male children provide more financial benefit than female children. They're able to get better jobs. They join family businesses. Culturally, their sons will stay part of the family they're born into, while daughters join their husband's family. In the parents' old age, a son is more likely to take care of them than a daughter (who will look after her husband's parents).
That's why the article says that the phenomenon of gender selection is happening more often among mothers who were not born in Australia: they come from cultures where boys are literally more valuable than girls.
This is correct. I'll add some more. For poor families, a boy can do more work, and also usually earns more than a girl and so can send more money home. In China, the wife usually doesn't take the...
This is correct. I'll add some more. For poor families, a boy can do more work, and also usually earns more than a girl and so can send more money home. In China, the wife usually doesn't take the surname of her husband, but the children usually take the father's surname. Boys are valued more because they will pass on the family name to the next generation. If a family has no boys, there will be no one to pass on their name, and so their family name is essentially severed. Combine this with the fact that until recently families can only have one child, and you can guess the result. There is an old saying: "A married daughter is like spilled water", meaning when she's married, she's out, and you can't get her back in your family. In the past, genealogy books almost never record the names of daughters, or wives for that matter, and when they do it is usually just the surname. Recently it got better though, women are put into the books the same as men, but I bet some people still stick to the old ways.
Yeah, for sure. There are some cultures where the quality of dudeliness is valued very highly. I mean China's the immediate example that comes to mind, that's the whole (well, half) reason they...
Yeah, for sure. There are some cultures where the quality of dudeliness is valued very highly. I mean China's the immediate example that comes to mind, that's the whole (well, half) reason they have those laws the article mentioned. Even the US (and AFAIK the other English-speaking/"Western(?)" cultures), you can probably still find remnants of that kind of stuff in people wanting baby boys to carry on the family name. But I don't think you see people aborting fetuses or abandoning children over it outside of China, because there's not also that other half of the population restrictions. This couple isn't facing that pressure, so I think what I said still holds for them.
It also happens in India. As this article says, "there are higher rates of boys born to mothers who have migrated from China and India". Between those two countries, that's nearly one third of the...
But I don't think you see people aborting fetuses or abandoning children over it outside of China
It also happens in India. As this article says, "there are higher rates of boys born to mothers who have migrated from China and India". Between those two countries, that's nearly one third of the world's population that values boy babies more than girl babies.
Sure, we supposedly enlightened westerners theoretically treat our girl babies the same as our boy babies, but the study in this article showed that it's migrant mothers in a western country whose girl babies are mysteriously going missing.
This couple isn't facing that pressure, so I think what I said still holds for them.
I forgot about the India bit, guess I'll defer to Cirrus there. Sounds like the "legal" pressure of "You only get one kid, make it count" is replaced (or "displaced"?) by other powerful...
I forgot about the India bit, guess I'll defer to Cirrus there. Sounds like the "legal" pressure of "You only get one kid, make it count" is replaced (or "displaced"?) by other powerful cultural/social factors.
Which couple? I'm lost.
The one mentioned by the "one experienced sonographer" specifically.
You used China specifically as an example, but honestly I believe the gender thing matters in USA and Canada and generally western societies too. When someone announces they are pregnant, they...
I mean China's the immediate example that comes to mind...
Even the US (and AFAIK the other English-speaking/"Western(?)" cultures), you can probably still find remnants of that kind of stuff in people wanting baby boys to carry on the family name. But I don't think you see people aborting fetuses or abandoning children over it outside of China, because there's not also that other half of the population restrictions.
You used China specifically as an example, but honestly I believe the gender thing matters in USA and Canada and generally western societies too. When someone announces they are pregnant, they almost always get "Do you know what you're having?",or "Do you want a boy or a girl?". After a gender reveal, it's also often followed up by "are you happy (with the gender)?" And sometimes even the fun "maybe your next one will be X"
I used China since they seem to have a much more extreme like... "disparity" between the genders, but yeah, absolutely. Every bit of humanity still values gender to some degree.
I used China since they seem to have a much more extreme like... "disparity" between the genders, but yeah, absolutely. Every bit of humanity still values gender to some degree.
No, there isn't, in my opinion. I support a woman's right to choose, even if I don't necessarily like the reason for her choice. I will always place a woman's life above that of an unborn child. I...
There's a big difference between aborting because you can't support or simply don't want to be responsible for caring for a child and aborting because the kid's got the wrong gender.
No, there isn't, in my opinion. I support a woman's right to choose, even if I don't necessarily like the reason for her choice. I will always place a woman's life above that of an unborn child.
Dragging the hiring analogy back, it's fine to choose not to hire based on skill, but very much not okay to base your decision on race or gender. Some reasons aren't "good enough."
I still don't think this is a good analogy. I don't believe you can compare hiring practices to having a baby. The reasons I have for being pro-choice just don't transfer well to hiring. For example, I am pro-choice because I believe in body autonomy. There are physical, mental, and emotional risks to having a baby. Women can die, go through postpartum depression, experience anxiety, pelvic floor damage, and the list goes on and on. Even if everything does go well, the mother then has to raise that child for at least the next 18 years. An employer hiring a woman or a minority does not face any of those risks or consequences.
I can understand how forcing someone to have an unwanted baby can be a problem, I'm not quite sure I understand "insulting," though. Could you clarify that at all?
Well, I just have to imagine being pregnant and going for a ultrasound and being told that I'm not allowed to know the sex of my baby because I might make a decision that they don't like. Being an Asian woman, it doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination.
I believe women have a right to get all the information they want and can have before they make their decision. Withholding information is almost like trying to trick them into doing something they otherwise wouldn't do.
Well see, that's the thing though. It's not about her life. Like you say, a child is an enormous responsibility. Bad roll of the dice and you stop existing, that's not something anyone should be...
No, there isn't, in my opinion. I support a woman's right to choose, even if I don't necessarily like the reason for her choice. I will always place a woman's life above that of an unborn child.
Well see, that's the thing though. It's not about her life. Like you say, a child is an enormous responsibility. Bad roll of the dice and you stop existing, that's not something anyone should be taking lightly. But that's pregnancy vs no pregnancy as a whole. I'm not here to debate pro-life vs pro-choice, just understand why pro-choice, for you, means "even the dumb, morally disturbed choices." The gender of the kid alone has no impact on the mother's life.
BUT like I've mentioned elsewhere, it certainly might have an impact on the kid's life. If the parent's got funny ideas about gender, they're going to just resent or even abandon the kid so just for that reason alone, it's iffy. Like you say, "tricking them" into having a girl if they were the kind of person who would abort all their female fetuses wouldn't end any better.
I still don't think this is a good analogy.
Agreed, someone else pointed out it's just a bit too far of a stretch to work well for a few reasons.
Well, I just have to imagine being pregnant and going for a ultrasound and being told that I'm not allowed to know the sex of my baby because I might make a decision that they don't like. Being an Asian woman, it doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination.
If they did that specifically because you were an Asian woman then yeah that'd be pretty awful of them. Even if you weren't and a law like that was blanket applied to everyone, yeah I guess I can still see how that'd be insulting, yeah.
This is fairly tangential to the discussion at hand, but: I'm not sure I understand your perspective here. Based on my own prior-conversations with some Pro-Life individuals, and not to project...
This is fairly tangential to the discussion at hand, but:
Well see, that's the thing though. It's not about her life. Like you say, a child is an enormous responsibility. Bad roll of the dice and you stop existing, that's not something anyone should be taking lightly.
I'm not sure I understand your perspective here.
Based on my own prior-conversations with some Pro-Life individuals, and not to project anything on you personally, I'm interpreting this as a similarly-shaped sentiment behind condemnations of male masturbation, female menstruation, and the drive to maximize offspring. Be fruitful and multiply, and all that.
Little confused, but I can sure try! Pregnancy is a very serious and even hazardous thing sometimes. Historically there's been a good chance of actually dying in childbirth. Now that chance is...
Little confused, but I can sure try! Pregnancy is a very serious and even hazardous thing sometimes. Historically there's been a good chance of actually dying in childbirth. Now that chance is very small but still, bad roll of the dice and poof, no more you. Even ignoring the literal life and death, pregnancy is a massive commitment of time, effort, health, everything. Borrowing a little from Cyhchan, "postpartum depression, experience anxiety, pelvic floor damage, and the list goes on and on."
Was trying to say that I realize it's a big deal for the prospective mother. She has to seriously consider whether she's ready for something like that. Physically, financially, emotionally. If she decides she's not, then she has to consider whether she wants to try anyway (and accept the danger/risks involved) or get an abortion and wait for a better opportunity. Or never if she just doesn't want a kid.
All that to say, I agree with Cyhchan. Pregnancy has deep practical implications for mom's life. Abortion is understandable, and pregnancy is serious and not something anyone should be forced into sticking with.
BUT the kid's gender changes none of that. At the moment I have a hard time justifying allowing people to base their decision based SOLELY on the kid's gender. That didn't come out quite right, because obviously nobody else but mom has any choice but to allow mom to make her choice based on whatever reason she wants, no matter how morally disturbed just for the reason that trapping parents with a kid that they resent and that they wish never existed is a bad idea. But like, ignoring the aftermath parenting side of things.
Thanks for indulging me, I'm following you now; I was certainly misinterpreting a part of the sentiment here. I think that maybe most people here are mostly on the same page. There's clearly some...
Thanks for indulging me, I'm following you now; I was certainly misinterpreting a part of the sentiment here.
I think that maybe most people here are mostly on the same page. There's clearly some disagreement on what constitutes a good reason, but we all seem to agree with the sovereignty of self at the core of it.
Ultimately I think this is about risk and reward. Someone might be willing to risk a lot for who they consider to be a perfect addition for their family. But deviante from their ideal and the...
BUT the kid's gender changes none of that.
Ultimately I think this is about risk and reward. Someone might be willing to risk a lot for who they consider to be a perfect addition for their family. But deviante from their ideal and the amount they are will to risk changes too.
I don't think the tech and knowledge to learn the sex of a foetus is that expensive and difficult to acquire, so that sort of ban would just push people to illegal shops which would pop up in the...
I don't think the tech and knowledge to learn the sex of a foetus is that expensive and difficult to acquire, so that sort of ban would just push people to illegal shops which would pop up in the case of such a ban.
Another thought that pops into my mind is that it's probably better for the baby girl to be aborted than being born to such parents given it's quite obvious how they'd treat her whole her life, but IDK if that's a stupid gut feeling or a defendable position at this moment. I've never heard of something like in this article before, and it's a thing where different rights and moral questions are clashing in a subtle and complicated way.
I think I agree zaluzianskya that only educaiton will help. In a few generations most of the world will be more egalitarian and knowledgeable in sex and gender matters, given how taboos and traditions are falling apart in many places. I think that the best we can do is to be the change we want, tell and explain the changes we want, and wait til the world fixes itself...
We can sure hope so. That really is the only "real" solution to this stuff. No amount of laws restricting whatever info will actually help stomp that out in the end. The people radical enough to...
We can sure hope so. That really is the only "real" solution to this stuff. No amount of laws restricting whatever info will actually help stomp that out in the end. The people radical enough to care in the first place enough to base the decision to abort would almost certainly care enough to break a silly little law to find out.
Such a campaign would become a breeding ground for controversy, and even if you managed to pass it, how would you even enforce it? People would just claim that there's another reason. The doctor...
In an ideal society sex-selective abortion would not be illegal, but for practical reasons we should ban sex selective abortion for now.
Such a campaign would become a breeding ground for controversy, and even if you managed to pass it, how would you even enforce it? People would just claim that there's another reason. The doctor performing the abortion can't read minds, if they're told some other cause then they'll proceed while whoever is getting the abortion gets to not have a girl for sexist reasons. It's an unenforceable law.
The people who hold such a bigoted opinion wouldn't be convinced by such a statement or law as they already often have a low opinion of the government, wherever they live. And why is the...
The government saying "aborting on the basis of gender is not okay" would lead to a lot of people adopting that view and complying with the law, because people trust authority.
The people who hold such a bigoted opinion wouldn't be convinced by such a statement or law as they already often have a low opinion of the government, wherever they live.
And why is the enforceability of a law irrelevant in such a discussion? Implementing laws costs a lot of money and labour. If the cost is too high for the returns, it is an argument against the law and a viable one, even in a discussion like this.
This reads as a scare piece, you've got immigrants and abortion, and a study with marginally significant which I cannot find because the link in the article does not work. It is also interesting...
This reads as a scare piece, you've got immigrants and abortion, and a study with marginally significant which I cannot find because the link in the article does not work. It is also interesting to note that much of the Missing Girl Phenomenon has been disproven which is the lynch pin of this propaganda piece
It starts w/ articles like this, which are used a lever to curtail or restrict and then they are built upon to farther restrict.
For starters, some of those missing girls are still missing. From the article you provided: Please feel free to double-check my arithmetic, but this looks like 35 million expected girls in China...
It is also interesting to note that much of the Missing Girl Phenomenon has been disproven which is the lynch pin of this propaganda piece
For starters, some of those missing girls are still missing. From the article you provided:
A controversial one-child policy that resulted in as many as 60 million "missing girls" in China, the most populous country on Earth.
But in a new study, researchers suggest that around 25 million of these girls aren't actually missing, but went unreported at birth
Please feel free to double-check my arithmetic, but this looks like 35 million expected girls in China are still missing.
I would also point out that the article you're replying to is about an Australian phenomenon, not about something happening in China or India (although it does mention those countries because the mothers involved were often born there). This is based on a study done in a state of Australia (I tracked it down for you), about births happening (or not happening) right here in Australia.
As for being a "lever to curtail or restrict", the article is mostly about the study identifying a phenomenon of gender selection of foetuses. Reading the remarks in there by various official talking heads, we find:
The chief executive of the Australasian Sonographers Association says "if the sonographer was confident in being able to identify the gender, then they would provide that information if asked".
Australia’s chief medical officer says "it would also be unreasonable to deny access to gender information on ultrasounds for the vast majority of people who want a child of any gender".
The man who helped draft Australia’s guidelines banning gender selection through IVF shares this view.
The article even says that:
There appears to be little appetite for a formal change in that protocol that would advise doctors or ultrasound technicians against offering their best guess at the sex of a baby during the first scan or blood test.
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that this article about a study about a proven phenomenon of missing girl babies is somehow advocating curtailment or restrictions.
This is what reproductive freedom leads too. Abort because you lack the funds now and would create a poor baby, abort because your baby would be disabled, abort because you dislike the father,...
This is what reproductive freedom leads too. Abort because you lack the funds now and would create a poor baby, abort because your baby would be disabled, abort because you dislike the father, abort because a female baby won't have as large an economic return. It's a woman's right to decide, clearly not all decisions will be acceptable to society.
Because if we want to promote a world where women can abort children they don't want for any reason they decide then we can't be mad just because we don't like it.
Because if we want to promote a world where women can abort children they don't want for any reason they decide then we can't be mad just because we don't like it.
I guess the next thing I'm missing is why do we want that? Why is the answer "yes, and for any reason you could possibly dream up no matter how scummy?" That's rarely the answer for anything. I...
I guess the next thing I'm missing is why do we want that? Why is the answer "yes, and for any reason you could possibly dream up no matter how scummy?" That's rarely the answer for anything. I can't think of any examples where it is, at least.
Also please don't misunderstand me, I'm just trying to understand why other people feel the way they do because I find that kinda thing super interesting.
Because the woman has (or should have) the final say in whether she carries the pregnancy to term or not. It's her body and no one else but her should be able to decide the matter. Other people...
Because the woman has (or should have) the final say in whether she carries the pregnancy to term or not. It's her body and no one else but her should be able to decide the matter.
Other people can scream until they're blue in the face that they think what she is doing is horrible but have no legal recourse to stand in her way.
Here's the important bit, though. Those "other people" include us.
Of course. Practically, forcing parents to have a kid of any type that they don't want is just going to make them resent the kid and that just won't end well so practically, no matter how much we...
Of course. Practically, forcing parents to have a kid of any type that they don't want is just going to make them resent the kid and that just won't end well so practically, no matter how much we might dislike what these people are doing, even if we did involve ourselves there's no winning with anything here. No matter what, somebody's getting shot in the foot when this kind of prejudice creeps in.
Well that's heartbreaking. There's some tangle of thoughts in my head I can't really put into words yet. A few days ago a ran across a particularly rabid person on reddit saying that all pro-lifers are misogynist and deserve to get kicked in the head. And now I see this pretty awful case of misogyny. I guess no matter what you do there's going to be screwballs to take advantage of it.
This seems pretty obviously wrong to me, but is this something we can even prevent? The article mentions that some other countries with this problem just outright ban early gender reveals but it also says that even babies born inside China still have an abnormally higher boy/girl ratio and that people will travel out of country if they need to.
There's no way to prevent sex-selection abortions while also embracing the right to abort. The way to stop it isn't to restrict the abortions themselves, but to change how people think about women.
I mean not completely, no, but restricting access to the info seems like a pretty good start. Although that might be a problem itself in some places, at least in the US I feel like that knowledge is kind of ingrained in the culture a bit. I think some people even have gender-reveal parties. Or at least cakes, I know I've seen cakes.
E: You know I think what you said applies to a lot things. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, there's a lot of biases and prejudices that we'd all be better off without. But we still have laws against those, because just saying that we need to change the way we think doesn't really solve anything by itself. If you refuse to hire african american individuals, you're going to be in a legal world of trouble, even though the ideal solution is to change the way people think about race.
There are never ideal, perfect solutions but there are partial ones and there are starting points.
I cannot agree with this. As much as I believe in gender equality and hate gender selection, I also will always stand by a woman's right to choose for herself whether she wants to have a baby or not. As far as I'm concerned, she shouldn't have to justify her decision to anyone. If we support women getting abortions because they want to focus on their career, were survivors of rape, don't want children, or are simply not ready, I don't think we can then turn around and say that this reason is no longer "good" enough. Withholding the information of the sex of the baby is also kind of an insulting solution. It has already been happening in parts of British Columbia where some sonographers will refuse to reveal the sex of the baby to asian women. Will forcing someone to have a baby they don't want be in the best interest of the parents or the baby?
I think in the end, we have to look at why sons are more favourable to have and address those issues.
I think this is an unfair comparison. Workplaces also protect against discrimination based on physical and/or mental disabilities. Does that mean that parents shouldn't know if there are any abnormalities in their baby for fear that they will abort their baby based on ableism?
I'm not sure I follow the point you're making. There's a big difference between aborting because you can't support or simply don't want to be responsible for caring for a child and aborting because the kid's got the wrong gender. Dragging the hiring analogy back, it's fine to choose not to hire based on skill, but very much not okay to base your decision on race or gender. Some reasons aren't "good enough."
I can understand how forcing someone to have an unwanted baby can be a problem, I'm not quite sure I understand "insulting," though. Could you clarify that at all?
But wrt unwanted kids, even in places with those kinds of laws that make an attempt to prevent gender-based abortions from happening, some kids still just get abandoned. Others "just" get resented their entire lives by their parents. Blocking access to the info isn't a "real" solution. The root problem is that those biases exist, that's the problem that needs fixing. The laws that restrict information, like I said, are more like a starting point.
The reason I brought up the workplace discrimination is because in both cases the laws don't try to change people's minds, that just can't be done through a legal framework. But the anti-discrimination laws exist anyway.
Okay, just up front I'm going to say that I realize I am very biased in this very specific situation, and I'm kind of dodging your actual question here, but I don't think babies should be aborted based on physical/mental disability. I have (had?) a physical birth defect (cleft lip and palate) that would have gotten me aborted in a lot of places.
No. When we say "her body her choice", that applies to everything. Anything less weakens abortion rights, and some women not wanting female babies is not even close to being "good enough" a reason to justify that.
Huh. I guess we just disagree there. Admittedly, I'm a dude. May never be able to fully understand a woman's PoV. I don't see why it's so important to you that this becomes a 100% all or nothing black and white issue.
I think we're kinda hitting on a free speech vs free choice thing here. But with a fun-filled dash of bodily autonomy. Trying again to resurrect the hiring analogy, there are racists in this world. They are free to say whatever they like. But they can't discriminate while hiring. Difference here is that if you ban that kind of discrimination in the process of bringing a new life into things, it'll just end up getting taken out on the kid later. I'm not sure where I'm going with that. But I'd be interested to hear what you have to say on why abortion rights must be all or nothing outside the obvious parenting issues.
I'm not the one you're replying to, but - who are discriminating these woman?
Racists can discriminate against some people when hiring - but can one discriminate unborn person? From which point is the baby considered human being with rights? Do woman own her's baby when it's unborn? If yes - why shouldn't she be allowed to know gender and decide abortion based on this? If no - why should we allow abortions at all? You're killing human being!
What if she "owns" the baby - is the baby considered human being? One cannot own human being.
This was very binary pov, so I'll present another one.
When baby has a disability, should be it's mother allowed to abort the baby based on this? What if the family is poor and cannot afford disabled baby, but could healthy one? Stop reading now and actually decide the previous question. Now, what if having female is not affordable by the family? Should the woman be allowed to abort the baby? What if somewhere being woman can actually financially count as disability - meaning raising female is much more expensive, or she wouldn't produce enough money for the family compared to male?
Very interesting points, and I don't have any sane responses to hardly any of them right now. This also went way longer than I intended, sorry about that.
I don't see any reason why you couldn't discriminate against a fetus. I have family that used to have some farm animals, they would sell off or butcher most of the males while keeping around the females.
Question is, like you said, when does a human fetus gain human rights? I have no idea. Before now my personal opinion (which was and is very fluid since I haven't dumped a great deal of thought into it, that's part of why I like this thread so much) was "They gain the rights of a human when they gain the ability to reliably keep on living outside the mother."
Everyone in this thread seems bothered by the kind of discrimination in the article. And yet a lot of the people who are bothered by this are also very much supportive of this woman's rights to do it, even if they disagree with it. And that's something I can get. The whole "I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" kinda deal. Not quite the same, but I get the sentiment there I think.
But then that makes me think, if it's not a human with human rights then why be bothered by someone discriminating like this at all? That sounds a bit messed up to me but I don't have any response to it. Maybe someone else does? And then your follow up question, if a fetus does matter then why allow abortion at all? Again, no idea.
Just gonna re-iterate this real quick, that strikes a bit close to home for me so I'm absolutely positive my answers here are very biased towards that.
Like I brought up earlier in the thread, I had a birth defect that very well could have gotten me aborted if I had had different parents. I am incredibly glad I did not get aborted. But by existing I definitely caused my parents (and myself) a lot of pain for the entire first 18 years of my life. Financially, emotionally, in basically every way.
I feel like I'm taking this in the wrong direction because my immediate response to all of that is a completely unrelated issue, which would be health care. If someone wants to live then money shouldn't matter. My parents certainly weren't able to really afford it. I came close to dying several times because my parents weren't equipped to care for me. The first kid's always tough and new but they also had to deal with a kid that was nearly incapable of eating on top of it. Maybe they'd have been better off aborting me but I don't really like that answer. But, their choice and their lives.
Ideally, money wouldn't be an issue and there wouldn't be any defects like that and if there were, that wouldn't immediately disqualify you from life. Practically, money is an issue and if it comes down to it, sure. Where do we draw the line with that? Do we draw a line at all? Lines get drawn all the time, and they're usually blurry when you get up close to them. But dragging specifically this kind of "cosmetic" discrimination next to practical choices for choosing abortion like financial ability there's still a pretty high contrast. Pushing one of those sides a little further (frankly a lot further), do we allow parents to keep re-rolling for a kid until they take home a win in the genetic lottery? What about someone with a breeding fetish who wants it to get a little more realistic without dealing with a kid? And just idle curiosity, would constant re-rolling be better or worse than genetically modifying them from the start to avoid all that?
This goes double for disabled parents. People sneer at aborting disabled babies, they say "Well, it's your right, but you're still ableist to do it", and they never stop to realize that disabled people get pregnant too. I might, sometime in the far future, maybe have the resources to handle a kid. I seriously doubt that, with all my mental health issues, I could ever handle a disabled child. Guess I'm just drinking the internalized ableism Kool-Aid.
I was with you until this point. I can find plenty of sources that show it's more costly to raise a male and plenty that say it's more costly to raise a female. Both are biased on how much is spent on the child, not how much is needed to be spent on the child. At the end of the day, it depends entirely on the kid - a sports loving male might cost more than a homebody female, but at the same time a fashion loving female might cost more than a homebody male.
In the end, it's not being male or female that costs more - it's how much money you have to spend and how your child turns out (what they are interested in).
I agree that it depends completely on the child - but preconceptions matter too. I wasn't trying to convince someone that woman are much more expensive than man (here might be another discussion about difference between wages) - I was pointing out that economical factor might actually make a difference whether people decide to have the child.
Unfortunately not as often as it should, as the poorer you are the more likely you are to have more kids.
Not OP, but my thoughts are you can't have full autonomy with exceptions. And I don't believe anyone should ever be withheld information from fear they may make a poor or incorrect choice.
Your hiring anology is so far off topic that it honestly feels a little disingenuous. For one, an unborn child doesn't have personhood (at least in Canada). And even following you're anology, there's very little controversy around aborting if the unborn child has a disability.
Can you elaborate on this point? I don't think I'm reading it right.
Fair point, I'll quit using that. Was the closest analogy I could think of but you're right, it's still just a bit too different to be useful because of this point right here.
My thinking was, this isn't 1984. People are allowed to think whatever thoughts they like, even if those thoughts are really like morally reprehensible. You can think whatever horrible, vile things you like but there are many laws restricting your choice to act on them(... BUT all those laws keep you from acting on them towards other human beings, like you pointed out). But that's what I was getting at, if that clears anything up.
Thanks for clarifying.
Basically, I believe that until the baby pops out, the woman has every right - no exceptions - to do whatever she wants with it. If we start forcing people to deliver babies, for whatever reason, that's a very slippery slope that ends up with banning abortion. After all, today sex-choosing might be a "good enough" reason for you, but if that gets banned, than some more extreme groups will start arguing it should be banned for their reasons as well. What makes your opinion more valid than theirs?
Also, judging by your comments elsewhere in the thread, it feels like you have too much of a personal stake in this that you can't see objectively why a ban here would be a bad thing. Would you say that's a fair statement?
This has some very strong moral implications, possibly beyond what you intend.
What about foetuses in the third trimester of pregnancy (28 - 40 weeks)? If a foetus is born naturally during this time, it becomes a premature baby with a >90% chance of survival. So, if a woman gives birth at week 35, that baby can probably survive. If the baby was a girl and she tried to kill it, she'd be considered a murderer. If another woman found out her foetus was a girl inside the womb and she tried to have an abortion at week 35, you're saying she should be allowed to.
What's the difference? What's the moral difference between a premature baby girl born at 35 weeks and a female foetus inside the womb at 35 weeks?
To me, there is no killing here. If it's not born, it's not a human yet, merely tissue removal.
I don't see a moral problem in your hypothetical - if it's out it has rights, if not it has none.
It has a brain and a nervous system. It has functional organs (mostly). If it was aborted surgically, such as via caesarean section, it would probably start breathing.
How can you count that as merely tissue removal?
For clarity: I am pro-choice. However, I believe there is a dividing line between "tissue removal" and "killing an unborn baby". I may not know exactly where that dividing line is, but I'm almost certain that a foetus which can potentially survive on its own is well past that line. I'm therefore puzzled that you can perceive a foetus which might otherwise be classed as a premature baby as not being entitled to human rights.
This is a reply to @Rez and @Diff as well, since they've basically asked the same question.
Even in low-risk pregnancies, caesarean section has about a ~10% chance of adverse outcomes for the mother. Why do you think the state should have the right to force a woman to go through such an invasive surgery?
My personal view is simple: the state has no business whatsoever telling a woman whether she must or must not deliver a baby. It's her body, her choice.
If and when the baby is born, then it has rights granted to all humans, but not before. We all agree that a human should have human rights - we just disagree on when the transition happens from tissue to human.
This:
and this:
Are two separate things. Whether the unborn but viable fetus is a person with human rights and whether the mother's rights to bodily autonomy override the fetus's rights are two different questions. The woman having rights over her body doesn't tell us anything about whether the fetus is a person. It's just a bit easier to justify the former if the latter isn't true. It is entirely possible to hold the position that the unborn but viable fetus is a person with human rights and the position that the mother's rights to bodily autonomy win.
For some, maybe. That's clearly the case for you. I think the mother has all the rights because there is no human on the other side until birth.
While that's certainly possible (to the extent anything is possible), in my personal experience pretty much no ever argues for that. The vast majority of people arguing for "fetus rights" do so from a religious perspective and the majority of the "woman's choice" camp argue from a secular bodily autonomy angle, which leaves very little ground for people in the middle.
Still, they do exist - this thread has several of them - I just don't think they are statistically significant in the overall abortion rights debate.
Interesting to see this in writing, as this is actually the view I hold. And off topic, but I personally believe a non-insignificant portion of people do believe this. If "fetus rights" were the main points people (religious or otherwise) are arguing from, I believe there would be more debate surrounding IVF.
That may very well be. My only points of reference are myself, a few people close to me and what I see in my choice of media :)
There is actually quite a bit of religious opposition to IVF, particularly among Christians. Though I have no idea how popular they are.
Understood. I don't have numbers backing me up or anything either :P
I've definitely heard of religious opposition to IVF (thanks for the link BTW), and personally know couples who would never choose it for their families. So the thoughts are out there for sure, but I don't feel, at least in Canada, the opposition is as "passionate" (?) as they may be compared to opposing abortion.
And my two-cents, I feel if someone is arguing that life begins at conception, it would be an easier sell to deal with zygotes from IVF, where they're not even in a woman's body and thus her health isn't a concern.
That tells us why you think the mother has all the rights. It doesn't tell us why you think the fetus isn't a person.
What makes us human, the thing that differentiates us from other animals, is our sapience - thought and reasoning. When babies become sapient is a big research area in neuroscience, but even the earliest estimates put vague signs of consciousness around 1-2 months.
Shortly before birth, the fetus still has little to no sensory input and its most important organ - the brain - is also the most underdeveloped (the majority of brain development happens after birth). At that point, a chimpanzee is more human than it is.
I hope that cleared things up.
This is just a natural consequence of the previous one: If the two sides are a human and tissue, the human has all the rights.
Have you heard of Professor Peter Singer, or read any of his works on ethics? He's a prominent philosopher who happens to be from Australia. He makes a strong argument that babies are not morally people until they realise their own existence as a separate entity, with the ability to have hopes and plans and likes and wants - and this doesn't happen until the baby is about 2 years old. (yes: years, not months)
I don't necessarily agree with Professor Singer, but I do acknowledge the validity of his argument, and I'm self-aware enough to accept that most of my negative response to that argument is based in emotion rather than rationality (babies are cute!).
I haven't, and it sounds like I should read up on him.
It feels like the relentless opposition to my position from multiple people in this thread is also from this angle.
P.S: And yes, babies are cute, and I love'em to bits. I don't think anything I've said contradicts that.
What? I don't think that! That's just a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate that a near-full-term foetus is effectively equivalent to a baby.
I get that. I'm trying to understand why birth is your dividing line between "tissue" and "human" when a pre-birth foetus in late pregnancy is functionally equivalent to a born baby. In fact, according to your dividing line, a less-developed baby born prematurely is entitled to more rights than a more-developed foetus still awaiting birth. How did you come up with birth as your dividing line?
Here's a horrible hypothetical for you...
Imagine a pregnant woman decides only a week or two before her due date that she really can't go through with having a child, so she asks for an abortion. At this stage, the foetus is too large to be dealt with by her just taking a pill, so the doctor decides to remove it surgically. They cut open the mother to remove the unwanted tissue, but before the tissue can be disposed of, it takes a breath and starts crying.
Can the doctor kill the crying tissue? I assume they can't remove it from the mother and then kill it, because the removal would be equivalent to a birth, which would give the newborn baby human rights. What if they leave the tissue in the mother's womb? Can the doctor kill it while it cries in the womb?
You don't say that, but isn't that what your position would end up with? You don't want to allow a third trimester woman to abort which means you want to force her to have the baby. Or is there a third option I'm missing?
I think it's neither fair nor helpful for you to use appeals to emotion by bringing up a "crying baby". You can easily - and safely - terminate a pregnancy while the foetus is still inside by administering drugs. After that, you can remove it endoscopically with a very minimal cut to the lower abdomen (much smaller than a caesarean section).
Moving on to your actual question:
Basically, I believe that as long as the baby is inside the mother, her life matters a hell of a lot more than the foetus' and denying her right to choose means effectively forcing her to deliver a baby she doesn't want, which sounds monstrous to me. That's why birth is my dividing line.
We seem to be talking at cross-purposes. You quoted my hypothetical scenario about a baby being aborted by caesarean section and asked if I thought the state should have the right to force a woman to go through such an invasive surgery. Of course I don't think a woman should be forced to have a caesarean section or have an abortion!
As for a woman being forced to have a baby... I already said I'm pro-choice. No woman should ever be forced to have a baby.
However, I believe the choice to have or not have the baby should be made before the point at which "tissue" becomes "person". There's a window of a few months within which that choice can be made but, after a certain point (even though I'm not sure when that point is), that window closes. After that point, barring any immediate threats to the mother's life, the baby has acquired the right to live.
But that is a possible scenario. And we are talking about babies. If you can't handle even the idea of a pretend baby crying before it dies, how can you apply your morality to real babies?
But don't you see this conflicts with
this? Isn't this forcing a woman to have a baby "after a certain point"?
But it isn't a realistic scenario. Why would a doctor would first deliver and then kill a baby when they could easily and painlessly terminate it in-utero?
Not really. Not when she already had a few months to make her decision and act on it.
My scenario kept the baby in-utero, just with an open cut in the mother's abdomen to access it. The only difference was that you could see and hear the baby before easily and painlessly terminating it - which you baulked at. You seem able to kill it as long as it's out of sight, but not when it's visible.
No matter how you phrase it, that's "you had your chance to say no, now we'll force you to have it".
As long as it remains inside the womb, I would personally terminate (not kill - because I reject the notion that there is something to kill) it as long as the woman wants it, regardless of if it was visible or not.
Thanks for the discussion. (I think there's no more juice to be squeezed from this topic.)
Likewise. I knew my position wasn't universal among the pro-choice camp, but it was still nice to discuss these scenarios.
If and when that becomes reality, it clearly wouldn't fall under "woman's body woman's choice", since the maternal DNA provider's body is not involved in the process. I don't know what the ethical answer would be in that case, but I don't think it's comparable to ethics of natural pregnancy.
I have answered this multiple times throughout this comment chain: In my opinion, as long as the foetus is inside the woman, it's her choice and hers alone.
As for human rights, I believe they should be granted upon birth, not before.
My stated position is only on abortion. I don't have enough data or personal experience to decide on a position on bodily autonomy in general.
I've said this before, but I'll rephrase it here: Since test tube babies are little more than sci-fi right now, I don't have an idea what rights they could possibly have in a hypothetical future.
Most people would be able to take their morals and ethics, and extrapolate those to cover hypothetical scenarios that don't exist. For example, a major ethical principle of mine is "do no harm". If someone asked me whether I would fire a ray-gun at an alien standing in front of me, I would be able to apply my ethical principle of refraining from harm to that scenario, and reply that I would not fire the ray-gun.
Are you not able to extrapolate your ethics in this way?
Despite how condesending this sounds, I'll be charitable and assume you didn't mean it that way. As I've said elsewhere in the thread, the entire abortion rights discussion surrounds a woman's body and her autonomy over it.
In the sci-fi tube baby scenario, said woman's body is not involved at any point, so there is no ethical analogy at all.
But, since you insist: There must surely be a point where your test tube fetus - an organism kept alive by machines - gets disconnected and takes its first breath, cries, opens its eyes and so on, right? That can be a nice point where it gets human rights.
I tried as hard as I could to find diplomatic words!
So, there's the answer to @Rez's question. Thanks!
Happy to help :) This thread went on for much, much longer than I would have imagined, but I'd like to think we all finally understand each other :)
Is there not any limit to that? If prospective mom decides just a few days before the ETA that she wants an abortion, ignoring the fact that the (at this point) baby could live independently, that's fine, just tissue removal?
Just want to say, "withholding information" to "forcing delivery" is an interesting point and I'm gonna be thinking about that for a while.
Not sure I follow the slippery slope bit in particular, though. For the purpose of the conversation, let's say we ban fetus gender discrimination. What extreme groups come along to say "me too," and what about? If abortion is allowed at all I can't really see the slope sliding any further than "you know what, you have a fetus inside you now, that's all you need to know. Abort or don't, have fun."
Only wrt to the mental/physical disability aspect of it I think but even then I welcome people poking holes in me. I am positive biases exist because of my own experiences and I'm trying to be conscious of that but since I've never had a conversation like this before but I'm still happy to learn. Saying "I might be biased here..." isn't "you're wasting your time trying to discuss anything with me, you'll never take me alive," it's "keep in mind I'm probably starting with some dumb ideas."
It would start with arguments similar to sex discrimination and escalate from that. If we ban sex selection, why not ban aborting fetuses with genetic defects? Isn't that just another discrimination? Then, if we allow that, why not ban abortions for financial reasons? That's just socio-economic discrimination? Further, why not extend that to all parental-choice-based abortions? After all, discriminating fetuses based on their parent's situation also sounds wrong.
Do you see where this is going? The moment you add "... except in these cases" to the law, it will be abused and extended ad infinitum to suit all sorts of agendas.
Of course, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. These are just my own opinions after all. I believe there are issues where we as a society (doesn't matter which country) can't give a single inch of leeway when it comes to legal protections. The potential upsides don't sound convincing and the potential downsides are downright scary. Abortion is just one such issue.
See that's where you're losing me on our slippery slope. With genetic defects, there are practical considerations. What sort of quality of life will the kid have? Is it even possible for the family to financially (or emotionally) support the costs of dealing with any medical conditions? Those same financial and emotional cost considerations apply to having a baby at all, not just birth defects. Those are practical, impactful things in the lives of the parents and especially the mother.
But gender? That's almost purely cosmetic as far as the parents are concerned. No extra costs, emotional or financial unless something's screwy in the head with the parents.
I do see where you're going with it, but the law has all sorts of exceptions and special cases. I mean this is obviously a supersimplified view but you could look at the law itself as "You can do whatever you want... Except all these things except in these cases unless you do this other thing as well."
As a more concrete example, in the USA there are protected classes. Discrimination based on membership in any of those classes is illegal in a lot of circumstances. I'm not seeing a sudden slippery slope if you copy/pasted those to apply to fetuses.
Someone else pointed out, there might be a separate (and, to me, pretty steep-looking) slippery slope if we take that particular hypothetical, though. If you're applying anti-discrimination rights to fetuses then why don't they get other human rights?
And like, just gonna say this again, practically, that would cause massive problems. Whether you're withholding information or whatever you're doing, if you're forcing parents to have a kid they wouldn't otherwise want, it's gonna end badly.
Actually no.
In some cultures, male children provide more financial benefit than female children. They're able to get better jobs. They join family businesses. Culturally, their sons will stay part of the family they're born into, while daughters join their husband's family. In the parents' old age, a son is more likely to take care of them than a daughter (who will look after her husband's parents).
That's why the article says that the phenomenon of gender selection is happening more often among mothers who were not born in Australia: they come from cultures where boys are literally more valuable than girls.
EDIT: Fixed a typo (incorrect word order).
This is correct. I'll add some more. For poor families, a boy can do more work, and also usually earns more than a girl and so can send more money home. In China, the wife usually doesn't take the surname of her husband, but the children usually take the father's surname. Boys are valued more because they will pass on the family name to the next generation. If a family has no boys, there will be no one to pass on their name, and so their family name is essentially severed. Combine this with the fact that until recently families can only have one child, and you can guess the result. There is an old saying: "A married daughter is like spilled water", meaning when she's married, she's out, and you can't get her back in your family. In the past, genealogy books almost never record the names of daughters, or wives for that matter, and when they do it is usually just the surname. Recently it got better though, women are put into the books the same as men, but I bet some people still stick to the old ways.
Yeah, for sure. There are some cultures where the quality of dudeliness is valued very highly. I mean China's the immediate example that comes to mind, that's the whole (well, half) reason they have those laws the article mentioned. Even the US (and AFAIK the other English-speaking/"Western(?)" cultures), you can probably still find remnants of that kind of stuff in people wanting baby boys to carry on the family name. But I don't think you see people aborting fetuses or abandoning children over it outside of China, because there's not also that other half of the population restrictions. This couple isn't facing that pressure, so I think what I said still holds for them.
It also happens in India. As this article says, "there are higher rates of boys born to mothers who have migrated from China and India". Between those two countries, that's nearly one third of the world's population that values boy babies more than girl babies.
Sure, we supposedly enlightened westerners theoretically treat our girl babies the same as our boy babies, but the study in this article showed that it's migrant mothers in a western country whose girl babies are mysteriously going missing.
Which couple? I'm lost.
I forgot about the India bit, guess I'll defer to Cirrus there. Sounds like the "legal" pressure of "You only get one kid, make it count" is replaced (or "displaced"?) by other powerful cultural/social factors.
The one mentioned by the "one experienced sonographer" specifically.
You used China specifically as an example, but honestly I believe the gender thing matters in USA and Canada and generally western societies too. When someone announces they are pregnant, they almost always get "Do you know what you're having?",or "Do you want a boy or a girl?". After a gender reveal, it's also often followed up by "are you happy (with the gender)?" And sometimes even the fun "maybe your next one will be X"
I used China since they seem to have a much more extreme like... "disparity" between the genders, but yeah, absolutely. Every bit of humanity still values gender to some degree.
Yeah, I'm not specifically defending China, but just pointing out that gender does matter, though maybe differently.
No, there isn't, in my opinion. I support a woman's right to choose, even if I don't necessarily like the reason for her choice. I will always place a woman's life above that of an unborn child.
I still don't think this is a good analogy. I don't believe you can compare hiring practices to having a baby. The reasons I have for being pro-choice just don't transfer well to hiring. For example, I am pro-choice because I believe in body autonomy. There are physical, mental, and emotional risks to having a baby. Women can die, go through postpartum depression, experience anxiety, pelvic floor damage, and the list goes on and on. Even if everything does go well, the mother then has to raise that child for at least the next 18 years. An employer hiring a woman or a minority does not face any of those risks or consequences.
Well, I just have to imagine being pregnant and going for a ultrasound and being told that I'm not allowed to know the sex of my baby because I might make a decision that they don't like. Being an Asian woman, it doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination.
I believe women have a right to get all the information they want and can have before they make their decision. Withholding information is almost like trying to trick them into doing something they otherwise wouldn't do.
Well see, that's the thing though. It's not about her life. Like you say, a child is an enormous responsibility. Bad roll of the dice and you stop existing, that's not something anyone should be taking lightly. But that's pregnancy vs no pregnancy as a whole. I'm not here to debate pro-life vs pro-choice, just understand why pro-choice, for you, means "even the dumb, morally disturbed choices." The gender of the kid alone has no impact on the mother's life.
BUT like I've mentioned elsewhere, it certainly might have an impact on the kid's life. If the parent's got funny ideas about gender, they're going to just resent or even abandon the kid so just for that reason alone, it's iffy. Like you say, "tricking them" into having a girl if they were the kind of person who would abort all their female fetuses wouldn't end any better.
Agreed, someone else pointed out it's just a bit too far of a stretch to work well for a few reasons.
If they did that specifically because you were an Asian woman then yeah that'd be pretty awful of them. Even if you weren't and a law like that was blanket applied to everyone, yeah I guess I can still see how that'd be insulting, yeah.
This is fairly tangential to the discussion at hand, but:
I'm not sure I understand your perspective here.
Based on my own prior-conversations with some Pro-Life individuals, and not to project anything on you personally, I'm interpreting this as a similarly-shaped sentiment behind condemnations of male masturbation, female menstruation, and the drive to maximize offspring. Be fruitful and multiply, and all that.
Could you expand on your view here?
Little confused, but I can sure try! Pregnancy is a very serious and even hazardous thing sometimes. Historically there's been a good chance of actually dying in childbirth. Now that chance is very small but still, bad roll of the dice and poof, no more you. Even ignoring the literal life and death, pregnancy is a massive commitment of time, effort, health, everything. Borrowing a little from Cyhchan, "postpartum depression, experience anxiety, pelvic floor damage, and the list goes on and on."
Was trying to say that I realize it's a big deal for the prospective mother. She has to seriously consider whether she's ready for something like that. Physically, financially, emotionally. If she decides she's not, then she has to consider whether she wants to try anyway (and accept the danger/risks involved) or get an abortion and wait for a better opportunity. Or never if she just doesn't want a kid.
All that to say, I agree with Cyhchan. Pregnancy has deep practical implications for mom's life. Abortion is understandable, and pregnancy is serious and not something anyone should be forced into sticking with.
BUT the kid's gender changes none of that. At the moment I have a hard time justifying allowing people to base their decision based SOLELY on the kid's gender. That didn't come out quite right, because obviously nobody else but mom has any choice but to allow mom to make her choice based on whatever reason she wants, no matter how morally disturbed just for the reason that trapping parents with a kid that they resent and that they wish never existed is a bad idea. But like, ignoring the aftermath parenting side of things.
Thanks for indulging me, I'm following you now; I was certainly misinterpreting a part of the sentiment here.
I think that maybe most people here are mostly on the same page. There's clearly some disagreement on what constitutes a good reason, but we all seem to agree with the sovereignty of self at the core of it.
Ultimately I think this is about risk and reward. Someone might be willing to risk a lot for who they consider to be a perfect addition for their family. But deviante from their ideal and the amount they are will to risk changes too.
I don't think the tech and knowledge to learn the sex of a foetus is that expensive and difficult to acquire, so that sort of ban would just push people to illegal shops which would pop up in the case of such a ban.
Another thought that pops into my mind is that it's probably better for the baby girl to be aborted than being born to such parents given it's quite obvious how they'd treat her whole her life, but IDK if that's a stupid gut feeling or a defendable position at this moment. I've never heard of something like in this article before, and it's a thing where different rights and moral questions are clashing in a subtle and complicated way.
I think I agree zaluzianskya that only educaiton will help. In a few generations most of the world will be more egalitarian and knowledgeable in sex and gender matters, given how taboos and traditions are falling apart in many places. I think that the best we can do is to be the change we want, tell and explain the changes we want, and wait til the world fixes itself...
We can sure hope so. That really is the only "real" solution to this stuff. No amount of laws restricting whatever info will actually help stomp that out in the end. The people radical enough to care in the first place enough to base the decision to abort would almost certainly care enough to break a silly little law to find out.
Such a campaign would become a breeding ground for controversy, and even if you managed to pass it, how would you even enforce it? People would just claim that there's another reason. The doctor performing the abortion can't read minds, if they're told some other cause then they'll proceed while whoever is getting the abortion gets to not have a girl for sexist reasons. It's an unenforceable law.
The people who hold such a bigoted opinion wouldn't be convinced by such a statement or law as they already often have a low opinion of the government, wherever they live.
And why is the enforceability of a law irrelevant in such a discussion? Implementing laws costs a lot of money and labour. If the cost is too high for the returns, it is an argument against the law and a viable one, even in a discussion like this.
Do you want infanticide? Because that's how you get infanticide.
This reads as a scare piece, you've got immigrants and abortion, and a study with marginally significant which I cannot find because the link in the article does not work. It is also interesting to note that much of the Missing Girl Phenomenon has been disproven which is the lynch pin of this propaganda piece
It starts w/ articles like this, which are used a lever to curtail or restrict and then they are built upon to farther restrict.
For starters, some of those missing girls are still missing. From the article you provided:
Please feel free to double-check my arithmetic, but this looks like 35 million expected girls in China are still missing.
I would also point out that the article you're replying to is about an Australian phenomenon, not about something happening in China or India (although it does mention those countries because the mothers involved were often born there). This is based on a study done in a state of Australia (I tracked it down for you), about births happening (or not happening) right here in Australia.
As for being a "lever to curtail or restrict", the article is mostly about the study identifying a phenomenon of gender selection of foetuses. Reading the remarks in there by various official talking heads, we find:
The chief executive of the Australasian Sonographers Association says "if the sonographer was confident in being able to identify the gender, then they would provide that information if asked".
Australia’s chief medical officer says "it would also be unreasonable to deny access to gender information on ultrasounds for the vast majority of people who want a child of any gender".
The man who helped draft Australia’s guidelines banning gender selection through IVF shares this view.
The article even says that:
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that this article about a study about a proven phenomenon of missing girl babies is somehow advocating curtailment or restrictions.
This is what reproductive freedom leads too. Abort because you lack the funds now and would create a poor baby, abort because your baby would be disabled, abort because you dislike the father, abort because a female baby won't have as large an economic return. It's a woman's right to decide, clearly not all decisions will be acceptable to society.
Absolutely disgusting parents.
Yet, I could not in good conscience forbid them from doing this.
Why's that, if you don't mind me asking? Just because kids with parents that resent them is probably a bad idea or?
Because if we want to promote a world where women can abort children they don't want for any reason they decide then we can't be mad just because we don't like it.
I guess the next thing I'm missing is why do we want that? Why is the answer "yes, and for any reason you could possibly dream up no matter how scummy?" That's rarely the answer for anything. I can't think of any examples where it is, at least.
Also please don't misunderstand me, I'm just trying to understand why other people feel the way they do because I find that kinda thing super interesting.
Because the woman has (or should have) the final say in whether she carries the pregnancy to term or not. It's her body and no one else but her should be able to decide the matter.
Other people can scream until they're blue in the face that they think what she is doing is horrible but have no legal recourse to stand in her way.
Here's the important bit, though. Those "other people" include us.
Of course. Practically, forcing parents to have a kid of any type that they don't want is just going to make them resent the kid and that just won't end well so practically, no matter how much we might dislike what these people are doing, even if we did involve ourselves there's no winning with anything here. No matter what, somebody's getting shot in the foot when this kind of prejudice creeps in.