Abortion: Sanctity of Human Life and the Rights of (wo)Man
Yesterday, Ireland passed a referendum that will repeal a constitutional amendment that banned abortions. The government of Ireland will now have the explicit authority (as soon as the results are certified) to legislate matters of abortion directly. This seems likely to lead to a substantially less restrictive stance toward abortion in one of the most restrictive member nations of the EU. It would still likely end up being slightly more restrictive law than in the United States.
Ireland's history regarding abortion's legality is explicitly tied as a counter-reaction to Roe V. Wade, the American supreme court case that found abortion legal until the third trimester under a rights-balancing test under the 9th and 14th amendments (which--implicitly--enshrines a right to privacy and--explicitly--expands that right to the state level, respectively). While this balancing test was later changed to a standard requiring "fetal viability," states and activists through the United States organized against the Supreme Court's decision to create new limitations on abortion.
So today, I'm seeking to sidestep some of that history to wrestle with the core underlying balancing test Roe v Wade and other similar legal frameworks have tried to answer: when is a pregnant woman's rights more or less important than the life of the living being growing inside of her? In what circumstances (if any) should a woman be allowed to choose to end her pregnancy?
I strongly believe a woman should always have the last veto. The simple reason being everyone should have absolute autonomy of their own body. A baby's right (I am using baby purposely) does not override their mother's.
I also wanted to add that a woman choosing to terminate is separate from someone else terminating the pregnancy for her.
I can't tell if I've parsed your comment incorrectly or if you're being a little grotesque. What are you asking?
Most abortions happen early enough on that "removal" would simply mean abortion.
Yes, I think so.
There are a lot of aspects of this topic, and I just don't feel like typing a book about it, so I will just stick to a simple thinking approach instead: miscarriages, nature's natural abortion.
If you believe life begins at conception, then it logically follows that a miscarriage is a death. We don't treat miscarriages as we do the death of a child, no society ever has as far as I know. (Some societies historically didn't even name children until they were one year old or so!)
We don't hear about anti-abortion protestors talking about the crisis of miscarriages, which are far more common than abortions. I think this underscores the hypocrisy of their stance, it's not about "unborn lives" for them, it's more about cultural control. We already have a cultural consensus on when life begins, it's just ignored by the far right as a politically reasonable stance to take that doesn't sound like "sluts need to have consequences for being dirty sluts" which doesn't play well. (I'm ignoring the simple-minded ones who don't think about the logic of their positions and just say "babies lives," reason doesn't work with those who didn't reason themselves into their position.)
Interesting video. However, I dislike metaphors and analogies so much in argumentation... (Germs in this case) I feel they require a high degree of interpretation that is made invisible by their cute shape, so that equivalences seem "natural" or "logical" much more often than they really are. Frequently, they end up being shortcuts that do more damage than provide help by expanding parallelisms that are not really sustainable, I think. /rant
MY point is, we don't have funerals for miscarriages, right? It's sad, and it's something that women really have a hard time dealing with on occasion, but it's not on par with the death of a child.
I have a friend whose family commemorated for several years the miscarriage of a second pregnancy between his mother's first and second children. It was to be named Noah.
Women should be able to choose to end their pregnancies and a care system should be in place to support that.
I don't know how prepared I am to debate that point. It is a significant and wide-ranging issue, and I can imagine losing it into the weeds. But even so, there is my position and I will represent it in more detail if someone asks me to expound along some axis.
I think we often conflate when the government should have the right to choose when it's okay to legislate on this matter with when we are making the moral decisions for ourselves (and how we judge our neighbors for their decisions).
You seem to be saying it should never be the government's right to tell a women when she can make the moral decision to end a pregnancy, is that right? If I'm reading you right, let me press you on the moral decision making. When would you decide that an unborn child's rights were equal to your own (if you were pregnant) or your sister's or partners if she were pregnant?
I'm mildly uncomfortable with differentiating the moral question from a legal one. We should note a red flag when we, a community so far primarily comprised of men, would deign to debate these into occlusive domains such as government and law, fields also dominated by men's thoughts and actions. I will probably attempt to respond to go1dfish, next.
Biologically, there is a tadpole-to-frog sort of determination going on with human children, which to me makes suspect any very specific answers as to when an infant should receive from society official recognition of their right to live on their own terms. At the very least, I do not think that an unborn child can have rights equal to mine. Does that bring you to some response, maybe?
It does. I definitely am not one that believes in neutrality on this sort of issue. I personally believe that this decision is not mine to make (and will never be mine to make), and that the government really should just be there to say "there, there, here's some counseling because evidence shows any part of this process can mentally fuck you up; please be back for some check ups to make sure you're not too physically fucked up too."
Maybe that's a punt on the moral question, and I think it's fair to peg me for that. I just think we need to be treating people humanely because so much about all of this discussion is tied up in feelings about motherhood, the love that we have for our children, and how fucked up little shits they can be sometimes. That's even before we get into the horrible experience that a miscarriage can be for everyone involved.
The reason that I am comfortable distinguishing between what a legal regime says and what a moral response would be is because I recognize that our legal system doesn't provide amazing moral responses all the time. The nature of democracy is compromise between varying beliefs and interests, and what I believe as a person is moral isn't always reflected in law (and is, in fact, often ignored). I am interested in the gendered observation you seemed to be hinting at when talking about issues of government and law. Would you be willing to expand on that?
Honestly ANY lawyer will tell you that the law has NOTHING to do with morality. Don't be deceived into conflating the two because there are distinct. The Christian religious angle on that is "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's..." which clearly defines a separation of Church and State and of Morality and of Law.
You literally have to renounce being a Christian and embrace either Judaism or Islam to conflate the two. The latter two are basically "legal religions" in that they primarily dictate rules for life of all types, moral and secular. That's not what Christianity is about.
The standard medical definition is fetus viability outside of the womb on its own - generally that's NOT the 1st trimester (which is why Roe v. Wade picked up on that definition). Only the 3rd trimester really has much chance of premature survival, and that still runs from 10%-99%.
It's worth reiterating here that third-trimester abortions are exceedingly rare, with 98.7% of abortions happening in the first half of the pregnancy, meaning something obviously less than 1.3% occur in the third trimester.
And that in those rare cases, it's because of some sort of problem with the fetus that would make it unviable.
A bit of a nitpick here: the "render unto Caesar" thing very likely means something considerably different than separation of church and state. Just a quick search for the topic on the internet turns up a number of scholars disputing the interpretation you've described, e.g. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/03/jeffrey-f-barr/render-unto-caesar-amostmisunderstood-newtestamentpassage/
Is it worse that men are debating the issue, or that everyone who is debating it is not an unborn infant? Do they have advocates that are relevant, since they cannot speak?
Yes, I do.
I am reluctant, as I am saying to BuckeyeSundae, to get very specific at all about establishing biological thresholding of any kind in this domain. Our society struggles to treat women humanely in those contexts; we render women as producers and manufacturers and then cannot avoid involving them in the other structures we have designed to manipulate producers and manufacturers. A grotesque: a relief that the cheeses made from women's breastmilks spoil quickly, and so far cannot be farmed or manufactured economically.
I don't know. I think it's really difficult to mandate any sort of function according how much effort or resource need to be directed into keeping an unwanted baby alive, given the conditions that often implies for early life...
But I don't know. I probably wouldn't like to help produce a child.
Only when it is developed enough to survive on its own, ideally. And I don't mean keeping it hooked up to machines for another few months, either. When it is physically ready to be able to survive outside a womb on its own with minimal machine help.
However, most abortions happen before that level of deveolpment occurs.
Because it uses expensive resources that could be put to better use. Like taking care of children that are already born and thriving.
Week 35 is a common for premature birth where, once born, it is less likely to need help, as opposed to say, week 20, where the fetus has yet to develop the capacity to breathe air on its own.
If a fetus is not developmentally capable of living on its own without the help of life support and incubators from birth, if the parent is choosing to abort, then let them.
It's just so strange. People argue for the "rights" of the unborn if someone wants to terminate, but people aren't fighting at all when pet owners take perfectly healthy animals to be put down just because the person no longer wants it. It is illegal for some person to save this animal that already lives, breathes, and grows if the person who owns it says it dies.
But take a human clump of cells and let them not reach maturity? Apparently a huge problem.
Also not against abortion (as I think my other posts in this thread make clear).
I think one reason I am uncomfortable with "needing very expensive medical equipment to stay alive" as a determining factor for viability is that there are plenty of chronically ill and disabled children and adults who fit this requirement, too. And obviously in society we don't feel it is moral to take away a disabled person's wheelchair and ventilator, for example.* So there are additional factors at play that are hard to define (for me, at least).
*In the US we might make them live in absolute poverty in order to access help like SSI and Medicaid, but... that's another thread. (Discussing disability rights/justice would be interesting at some point.)
The level of development and use of resources, tbh. I don't agree with the lengths people will endorse to save an unwanted fetus, but will not endorse programs to take care of children who are already born.
The level of development and use of resources, tbh. I don't agree with the lengths people will endorse to save an unwanted fetus, but will not endorse programs to take care of children who are already born.
The potential cost of caring for a 20 week old fetus to maturity, by the state if unwanted, is very high. This could be going toward medical care and food and shelter and quality care for children who are already born and living life.
Nature basically screwed us over when it decided to put ovulation on a cycle instead of making ovulation into a conscious, at-will choice for women. I wonder sometimes if that's something future medicine might be able to help fix. I have to imagine (not being a woman) that women would prefer it if they had full, conscious control over this entire process.
As for myself, I come down firmly on the side of it being a woman's choice because it's her body. I'm not a fan of late-term abortions, though - that should probably become an adoption, not a termination. I think we also need to give away as much free birth control as it takes to make this sort of thing into a rare event, including contraceptives and morning-after pills. I'd also take that a step further and give away free measures for men, such as vasalgel treatments or full vasectomies.
I don't get into the 'religious' aspects of this argument. Once the fetus has developed a brain and therefore a consciousness, I think that's the point where we need to start thinking about morality. All of this 'life begins at conception' nonsense is a byproduct of mystical soul-thinking and those arguments fail to move me, since they aren't based on rational thinking.
Just a quick note: I tend to think that late-term abortions are a smokescreen, because most (if not all?) happen in cases of risk to the mother or fetal abnormalities incompatible with life. In the first case, attempts are made to induce birth and save both, and in the second the baby will die in either case.
Agreed - in the (thankfully rare) cases where it's medically necessary, that, as they say, is that.
You're right, the vast majority of abortions happen very quickly: 64.0% in the first 8 weeks, with 91.7% within the first 13 weeks, 98.7% within the first 20 weeks. Just 1.3% occur in the second half of the duration of the pregnancy, not even 'just' the third trimester. Increased access to safe abortions has only improved how quickly the abortion is performed.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6108a1.htm
I have heard the measure being when the fetus can survive outside the womb before. Just wondering what your thoughts are with advancing medical care? If we can grow a baby from a petri dish, does that mean we should no longer allow abortion?
As someone who was adopted as an infant and who wishes fervently that abortion would have been an an option for my birthmother, I find treating infants as chattel fairly offensive. You forget that the more minorities avail themselves of the right to abortion that white women do. White babies are the ones in demand. I see little discussion among anti-choice activists about addressing the lack of contraceptive availability and education that contribute the need for accessible pregnancy termination services. As someone who terminated a crisis pregnancy I can tell you that no woman makes the decision lightly. If you don't like abortion, don't have one. If you're not in a position to need an abortion then you probably should have no input into the decision to terminate and you certainly shouldn't if the pregnancy is not the result of you having impregnated the woman who's considering one.
This is a really interesting point you bring up. I also believe, statistically, a lot of minorities don't put up babies for adoption.
In my admittedly anecdotal experience I've found that to be true.
If a woman discovers she is pregnant and wants to terminate early on, you're saying the government should not allow that if there is a wait list for adoption?
Pregnancy is a risky complex thing that has lasting and permanent effects on people and their health. Why should anyone be forced to go through that?
Ah, I sort of glossed over the 'petri dish' statement entirely, I think because I thought you were clarifying the concept of 'termination', not the concept of caring for it. My mistake.
Many define government as a monopoly on the use of violence, myself included, though I do sometimes draw a distinction between a government as an ideal and a state.
I would argue that the violence against the pregnant woman is a much worse than the violence against the, to use a phrase I've heard elsewhere, non-viable parasitic mass in her uterus.
Do you support increased access to sex ed and contraception?
Elimination of public education pretty unequivocally eliminates sex ed. If your solution is replacing public schools with private schools, all that would accomplish is dramatically reduced access to education (especially targeting the poor and minorities) and likely far more biased and indoctrinating courses than we see today. If not private schools, then what? I don't see how public schools could be funded without taxes to nearly the degree that we fund them today.
There isn't a lot of demand for adoption. There is a demand for NEWBORNS.
There are tons of kids in the system waiting for a family to care for them and love them, but people don't want to take a chance on those kids who are already born. They want brand new babies.
But what about the invasion into the woman's body to retrieve this fetus? Should anyone be forced to perform a surgery they don't want or consent to?
Following another thought - what if it doesn't cause the woman additional trauma? In that case, do we end up with the issue of who, for a lack of a better word, owns their genetic material. Currently if you stored embryos for future use, you can decide to discard them. Should those embryos that are already outside a woman's body be donated against the parent's wishes?
I agree in thinking abortion should generally be up to the Individual person to decide (both the person desiring the abortion and the Doctors who perform them) and not the government (Federal/State/Provincial/whatever) except in cases of preventing the loss of conscious human life (which is one of their duties/responsibilities).
However, the "States should decide for themselves" argument holds no water for me because that just allows individual States to discriminate and impinge on that right with no rational cause (e.g. preservation of conscious human life) but instead based on irrational ones (e.g. religious based superstition).
Neither an egg nor sperm is conscious. A blastocyst is not either nor a bilaminar disc. Where in the fetal development stage we should consider it "conscious" is up for debate but I think we should rely on science (neuroscience in particular, where we are making great strides to determine root consciousness) to help determine that, not "gut feelings" and old religious based superstitions.
Government is not a monolith. No social institution is, especially the larger and more complicated they get. The right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing. Not everyone within the structure agrees with every decisions made nor is obligated to follow them. Even decisions made by top-level authorities within the government are rarely black and white, having understandable/justifiable/legal reasons for clauses/exceptions to them (note: I am not saying I agree with mass-spying just that there is potentially a valid, rational, legal reason for it). Etc...
So with that in mind, IMO, to say "the same government doing <opposite of what another government entity decided> is laughable" points towards an inherent misunderstanding about the nature of government or a bias against the idea of government itself rather than a good-faith effort to dissect the issues objectively/rationally.
In defense of federalism (which is to say, States rights to experiment within a spectrum of potential legislation on thorny issues), one of the reasons I think that States probably should be the central focus for any way forward on abortion rights is that California is by no means culturally the same as Utah. What is morally right for Utah's electorate is quite distinct from New York, so questions where you're asking for a government standard on moral behavior would be horribly mismatched democratically if you applied either California's or Utah's standard to the nation as a whole.
Let me try to quantify this problem (and please ignore some of the sillyness of the example for the underlying point). Suppose that you have five states that each are asked to legislate a favorite number on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being one extreme end of the allowed spectrum and 10 being the other. They each give their answers and you end up with a data table that looks like this:
State 1 (or "California") says: 1
State 2 (or "New York") says: 3
State 3 says: 5
State 4 says: 6
State 5 (or "Utah") says: 10
Now the average of all these responses happens to be exactly 5, so one fair answer against Federalism is to say "let's make 5 the standard nationally." What that misses is that states 1, 2, and 5 are all pretty substantially off from this standard you're looking to impose nationally. That means for three of the five states, you're looking like a top-down oppressor that is forcing a national solution on a state problem.
I think it's fine, so long as the spectrum of allowed law is acceptable at a national level, to let the states have their nuance.
I get the argument of State rights from a practical perspective and even at a US Constitutional level already...
however I still think that just beause the prevailing social mores of a region are those in favour of impinging a fundamental human right (choice and right to life in this case) is not a valid enough excuse to inpinge on them. This is the same reason I am against female genital mutilation and various other regional religious “traditions” that violate fundamental human rights despite any regional sovereignty that may be involved.
There are people who believe a government should protect the lives of its citizens but not residents?
In any case, as of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, states do have a right to regulate abortions to a degree, they simply can't regulate an undue burden on receiving one. Not that that has stopped them from doing that.
Allowing states to ban abortions would only bring increased complications and danger. Forcing a woman to travel out of state, especially if they have to travel through multiple states, means later stage abortions, which increases the risk for complications and, if your view is that the point of viability is where abortion should no longer be allowed, you certainly shouldn't support delaying abortions.
It's an issue that has already been handled by the courts. I guess what I'm asking is: What specific action do you support that would 'move' the issue to the states?
I largely agree with much of what you're saying. I strongly oppose the power of capital and the violence of the state (be it the police, ICE, FBI, CIA, NSA, and without question the military). I find myself strongly agreeing with Democratic Confederalism and other federated small-scale democracies.
So is it safe to say you support Roe v. Wade? It seems your arguments line up with it quite well: The subject of viability and late stage abortions being more problematic, as well as not wanting the government to have the right to interfere.
I don't see how abortion is a significant enough 'wedge issue' that we should even consider risking increased violence against women just to push it into the states hands. All that would accomplish is renewing an already dying debate and causing a lot of people to suffer.
Honestly, it feels like you're a bit caught up in ideology here. What difference does it make if the state is the one inflicting violence, or a state is the one inflicting violence? Why should we allow our existing rights be limited just to hopefully regain them at a state level?
(edit: I don't know why the formatting on the first bullet is weird, and have no idea how to fix it.)
(edit2: a noise tag? really? I spent like 20 minutes typing this up - would you explain how it is noise? Maybe i misunderstood the OP's question..?)
So ignoring the legal history, the basic question is when (if ever) is abortion okay?
I find it a difficult question to answer for a number of reasons.
Every person who considers and makes a decision on the question is from a different class than that which is affected most directly by the decision - e.g. the class of unborn children. This is comparable to the progressive argument that for instance an old white man cannot understand what it is to be a young black woman, and therefore should not be making legal decisions that affect her life.
We do not know when an unborn baby is capable of surviving outside of its mother independently. The date keeps moving back earlier and earlier. Arguably children born extremely prematurely suffer greater health risk down the road, but if the question in some people's minds is "whenever it can live on its own" then this should concern you. If the scientific consensus today is that the child can survive on its own after X weeks gestation, and you kill millions of unborn babies just under that mark, and then 20 years from now the scientific consensus has decided it could actually survive five weeks earlier, does this mean you have the deaths of millions of living beings now on your conscience?
Same as the above for thought, feeling, sentience, or consciousness. I've heard some people claim that abortion is okay as long as the baby is incapable of feeling anything - yet this date too is indeterminate. An interesting question on this matter as well is: is killing starfish okay, since they don't have nervous systems at all?
I've heard some people argue that children are not really sentient until around five years old - if the line is sentience, then does that mean it is okay to kill children as old as five years old if they are not truly self-aware? How is sentience measured - are those tests authoritative and unlikely to be updated in the future for accuracy?
We have laws which punish people for abusing or killing animals, who will never be sentient in the way a human can be (except maybe dolphins).
Research in the past couple of years has found indications that consciousness itself may be tied to tiny nanotube quantum computing processors inside neurons which depend on collapsing of wave-functions - and that those little quantum cpus transfer data/functionality epigenetically to children. This one bit of research is an illustration of the dearth of information we have about what we do not know about life.
With the answer of what constitutes life or conscious or feeling life being so indeterminate, I think of something like Schrodinger's cat - where there's a cat in the box and we don't know if the cat is alive or dead, I'm still a bad person if I put that box into a trash compactor and flip the switch.
I imagine that the vast majority of people who consider and come to conclusions on the question of abortion are not qualified for one reason or another - whether they are not qualified from having a complete understanding of biology and the process of reproduction, the mechanisms of consciousness, the viability of a child at various stages of gestation in various circumstances, or unqualified from lacking even a basic background in ethics or philosophy. Again, even those qualified today in biology or neurophysiology may have obsolete knowledge in 50 years.
If a woman who smokes and drinks says "my body my right", and we agree with that, and she has a child with fetal alcohol syndrome... and then another.... and another, and another... and another - is that okay? Does she have a right to create people who are doomed to a life with suffering built-in via this disease? Abortion might be a better solution than that, but then if she doesn't want an abortion, is that her right? What about the rights of those children?
If abortion is okay, what about planned parenthood? You might not have seen this on the news, but at least one clinic has been caught keeping babies alive and harvesting brains and other organs from them to sell for profit. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/19/planned-parenthood-kept-aborted-babies-alive-to-ha/
So, bearing these five things in mind, that I (and everyone else considering this) am not a member of the class most directly affected by this (the class of unborn children), that it is indeterminate when an unborn child is viable independent of the womb - and similarly it is ambiguous when exactly consciousness manifests in the child, that I (and most everyone else) am not qualified, it isn't clear whether woman's right and a child's right are equal wrt fetal alcohol syndrome and other things, and that there are people doing things i consider reprehensible with organ harvesting of live fetuses...
...I think that Occams Razor is probably best here: to act as if life begins at conception, that a woman's body is her own and her choice is to have sex (knowing that a child is a likely consequence of sex, even with protection which is know to fail from time to time). In the case of rape, she's doing it without consent - but there's still a schrodinger's life there which we put into the compactor at our own moral peril.
(Side note: i've spoken to people about this a few times, and it always strikes me as bizarre that the people who feel passionately that pro-choice is the best often assume that thinking anything else on the topic must be because of religious indoctrination, and therefore can be safely ignored because nothing useful ever came from religion. It really bothers me that people can have such a narrow view of such an important topic, because if they're wrong, there is a literal silent holocaust on their hands. to put so little thought into it to assume everyone who disagrees is just a fundie is... reprehensible to me.)
Hi, @mumberthrax. This is one of the most annoying things about tags. Most of us here see your name and associate it with trump supporter. Along with this, very few people here share the same ideas as you, which I found by reading through your maga topic. A lot of the people here can get over this and respect that people have different ideas, but some just can't stomach this. In your other topic, a lot of your comments were deemed 'noise' or 'troll' even though they clearly weren't. Just because you have different/unpopular viewpoints doesn't mean that they don't contribute to the conversation.
Fortunately, once the reputation part of the site comes into effect, and with it tagging accountability, this issue shouldn't be an issue anymore. (As long as the trusted users at that time are not on board with the false taggers) So don't be discouraged by your outcast-ness because a wide variety of opinion is very important.
edit: interesting... noise and troll on this one. it's funny because those are the two i addressed above. i'd be interested to see what i said that was going for a reaction and which part says
like the mechanics page describes the noise tag. i eagerly await the implementation of the trust system so that these tags are finally properly used. the only one i think applies is the offtopic one so go ahead and add that one please.
I'm going to make the opposite argument here: while, as I have posted elsewhere, I'm not convinced that a dielectic on abortion is possible, I think that this post from @Mumberthrax, specifically and as opposed to some others they have made, does not contribute to the discussion here. Whether they are a troll, and doing this intentionally, or are well-intentioned, does not change the effect on the conversation: I personally think it is the latter, however.
The post is a long, rambling post that presents work generally seen as either wrong or verging on ill-formed and pseudoscientific as scientific research (see my other comment), and widely discredited conspiracy theories as fact, expecting responses that take these things for granted. It's a rant that uses the stereotypical bold-sprinkling, not-even-wrong misunderstandings of quantum mechanics, language that seems to sound polite while inflaming others, and questions for the reader that only make sense in their own worldview. I would contrast this with your own posts, which I generally see as being reasonable even if I disagree with them.
Many years ago, I used to be involved in trying to handle crackpot contributors to Wikipedia, something which resulted in many amusing attacks on me (the best likely remains that I was part of a CERN-based assassination squad enforcing Einsteinian relativity murdering physicists who tried to reveal the truth of Galileo), but gave me a perspective on how these discussions generally work. Contrary to what people might expect, posts are generally more along the lines of Mumberthrax's than something offensive: they are polite, they are long, and they are in an entirely different worldview. They expect that others will discuss these matters on their terms, and think that others should take the time to discuss with them at length, because they view their own time preparing the material as making it inherently valuable ("I spent like 20 minutes typing this up").
But it's pointless to try to do so. It simply takes too much time, and it gets nowhere. There is a significant group of people who point to their research papers and their own university in lengthy explanations of how people can literally fly through meditation, and they'll point to people refusing to discuss their views on equal terms with them as being unfair, even though some of them were prepared to do so, on Wikipedia, full time. There are people who insist their research shows that they can diagnose numerous diseases, including cancer, by pulling on a patient's bent finger in specific ways, and want people to discuss this with them within their research frameworks, even in the face of numerous examples of people dying as a result of their practice. These sorts of things just don't result in reasonable discussion.
The problem, I would argue, is that these posts (again, unlike yours) go outside the standards of reasonable discussion, and have a fundamentally different approach to evidence and reason.
I hadn't considered that my name would become a scarlet letter. I had hoped for less of that in a place like this. I do appreciate your kind words though.
I think it's just a temporary product of the nature of that thread's topic, and how profoundly popular that thread was. I wouldn't worry too much about it lasting.
I don't think your name has become a scarlet letter. I think he is reading into situations that don't exist.
While I am not convinced that it is possible to have a useful dialectic regarding abortion, if I can jump in here as a physicist and computer scientist, this is a topic where I think there should be some clarification.
First, when hearing about "research" in the context of discussions like these, I am usually disappointed to find links not to research, but to youtube videos, very poor pop press explanations, and everything except the actual research or a scholarly review of the research. This is very disappointing, as it usually indicates that the "research" is simply something the author has found that supports their views, rather than actually looking into it.
Second, what you seem to be referring to is a popular explanation of Penrose el al Orch-OR theory regarding consciousness. These are widely viewed as wrong by most of the mainstream scientific community, and at times as moving toward the pseudoscientific (particularly with regards to Hameroff). At least for Penrose, I have privately heard comparisons to Einstein continuing on his classical unification ideas in his later years, in increasing isolation, despite continual additions of to the body of evidence against them.
From a physics perspective, for example, see the comments from Reimers et al or the paper by McKemmish et al, or Tegmark's paper. From a computer science perspective, consider Marvin Minsky's comments as an example.
Abortion is a tricky subject. The problem with it is that it doesn't fit neatly into a simple facts-based discussion at all. Instead, it's purely a matter of philosophy.
Why, though? Why is it a matter of philosophy if we're discussing women's rights to choose, bodily autonomy, etc.? Well, it's a question of whether or not the fetus is "alive" and has rights of its own. If so, then abortion would be a form of murder.
So, is the fetus alive? That's where the philosophy comes into play. What does "alive" mean? Living cells? Electrical signals in the brain? Viability outside of the womb? Consciousness? The concept of a soul? For any given cutoff point, what's the difference between that precise moment and the moment that came before? Or the one before that? Why is it that particular straw that breaks the camel's back? I mean, the camel's back wouldn't have ever broken without all of the straws that came before that last one, so why isn't the mere act of conception considered just as important?
In short, we usually see this resolve into two schools of thought:
A fetus is only considered alive after X milestone.
A fetus is always alive because they're a developing human being at all stages, even before X milestone.
Lately I've seen the argument of forcing a woman to carry a baby to term being equivalent to forcing the woman to donate blood or organs, which is illegal. I disagree with this argument fundamentally because you could easily argue that the woman is its blood and organs until birth, so arguably you would be imposing on the fetus' bodily autonomy as well.
Thus we may find ourselves at philosophical argument #2: whose bodily autonomy is more important?
I don't see any objective answers to these questions at all. In fact, I often find myself questioning my own position on this subject quite often. It is, in my opinion, the one controversial subject that should even be controversial at all.
With that all being said, I'm pro choice. I don't need to weigh the potential life of another being when deciding whether or not to have an abortion--women do. It's not for me to say.
"when is a pregnant woman's rights more or less important than the life of the living being growing inside of her? In what circumstances (if any) should a woman be allowed to choose to end her pregnancy?"
As a man - I believe that a woman should have absolute control over her own body, as a basic human right.
Of course, I would personally prefer to see unwanted children put up for adoption, however, it's well acknowledged that putting a child up for adoption is no panacea for the child.
Despite my preference for adoption, a woman should still have that absolute authority.
I don't personally know enough of this topic to give a valid opinion, but hoooo boy I wonder how this thread will turn out. So far everything has been very civilized on here, let's hope it stays that way.
We're having a few other successful political debates already:
That combined with the quite civil display that happened on that Trump supporter, I'm feeling pretty confident about the community's ability to keep things pretty reasonable and civil.
mostly civil - a few hate-filled comments have since sprouted, but it's heartening/surprising there haven't been more.
Fair point. I hadn't checked that thread in the past day or two, but when I checked it last that behavior was at a minimum.
Oh shit. and I just noticed that typo. I meant to add "thread" to that line. I guess Freud would have a few things to say about what was happening on you civilly.
Yeah, that's true, and some of those might even be on the level of abortion controversiality-wise (from an outsider perspective abortion seems to be a huge topic in the US).
I trust @buckeyesundae to keep us informed if anything goes off the rails. He is our resident controversial topic debater.
I really wish he hadn't posted this particular topic on most of our day off though... lol
Stress testing is a thing, you know. ;)
I'm already stressed enough as it is, thank you very much! ;)
Why is it that that it's a
Is the unborn child not a combination of a man and a woman's work? Does the fact that the woman is the carrier give her more rights to the child than the man? I'm still figuring my opinion on this out, but I'm inclined to say that it shouldn't be the decision of just the woman. Of course, this gets into the grey area of a defined relationship in determining if the man gets a say. "A majority of unmarried births now occur to cohabiting parents." (source) So does the fact that they are cohabiting make the man's opinion equally valid? As they are unmarried, the woman could easily say that the relationship is off in order to make her opinion to be the only valid one.
Getting into the ethics side of it, I'm still conflicted on at what point the unborn child gets rights and can be considered human. We all know that, in developed countries, the large majority of embryos become fetuses which become babies. So can we extend human rights to an embryo since we know it will become human? It is already human? An embryo cannot survive on its own, but can a toddler? What characteristics does it need to be considered a human? Maybe I ask too many (faux)-deep questions.
Seeing that I'm just a teenager, my opinion can be discredited; I'm not having kids for a long time, if at all, so my opinion doesn't matter, right? I just realised that I've barely addressed your question, so now I'll do that.
It makes sense that if the woman's life is threatened, her health is more important than the unborn child's. If the woman's health isn't threatened by the child, I think that the two should have equal rights. But what is considered a health threat? An unborn child causes immense changes to a woman's body, both physically and mentally.
As for when an abortion should be 'allowed...' In a case of rape, does this make the child any less of a child? In the case of incest, does the increased risk of mental issues make it less of a child?
tl;dr: I have no idea because there is too much ambiguity in trying to define all these specific things. We, as a species, will probably never agree on this issue.
Simply put... yes. The pregnant person has more rights in this situation. It's their body that will bear the physical consequences, and it's their bodily autonomy at stake.
source
In America, these are the only extra rights I could find that a pregnant woman has compared to a normal person.
Her bodily autonomy was gone the minute she had sex. By having sex, did the man and woman not both consent to having a child and raising it together?
edit: Sure, I'll take the troll tag. I read the mechanics site, and the troll tag comes from saying something just to get a reaction. Even though I was playing devil's advocate from this point on, I was not going for a reaction. I explain myself here. If playing devil's advocate falls under trolling, I'll stop because I'm not a troll. So before others pile on and I get some consequence just read the link I gave.
edit2: this very well explains the difference between a troll and a devil's advocate
You can consent to one act and not be automatically signed up for others. To me, having sex and having a baby are two very different things. Both with there own set of risks. Carrying a baby to term is full of risks to the mother that the father does not and cannot share.
The reason I framed the question like that is because she has the most direct relationship with the unborn living being inside of her. If she dies, that being dies too. I think that when there is a man who is also interested in the outcome of that pregnancy, it makes sense to see him as a partner in the exchange. I would never say he is an equal partner, because the risk to his body is virtually nonexistent, but he is an important partner.
Is there an acceptable place between "equal" and "not at all important"? If so, that's where I'm at on this question.
I would also say that @eladnarra's insightful comparison to kidney donations rings of importance for me too.
For a second, we can ignore the development of artificial wombs and synthetic sperm and whatever else's being made to render humans unnecessary. If a woman dies, sure, the baby will die too. But this doesn't get rid of the fact that both a man and a woman created that baby. Without the man, there would be no baby in the womb. Is this not enough to give him equal opinion?
If the man's opinion is any less than equal, then it is zero. It is a two person decision, and if the woman has the 51% to the man's 49, then the man's 49 goes to zero.
The kidney donation comparison as it was worded here was very confusing, so I looked it up. For a kidney donation, the one in need is sick and needs help. For an abortion, the abortee is not always sick. Instead, the abortee is being terminated by the aborter. The aborter also may or may not be sick. A kidney donation is permanent, pregnancy is not. A kidney is part of someone's body. An unborn child is arguably a separate body. Is this still a valid comparison?
The effects of pregnancy can be significant and long-lasting, sometimes permanent. Even if one makes a full recovery, that still takes time, and pregnancy often involves health effects before birth. It also has a (slightly?) higher risk of death than kidney donation.
The comparison isn't between a kidney and a fetus. The comparison is between the human (adult or child) who requires a kidney transplant to live and a fetus that requires the pregnant person's body to live. We do not force people to give up bodily autonomy to keep other people alive.
Think of donating a kidney as analogous to donating a uterus (and... well... basically your whole body, since pregnancy is a hell of a lot more complicated than a simple surgery to remove an organ).
Did the woman not consent to these risks by consenting to sex? The times where this can be questioned are in cases of no consent.
Did the woman not give up this bodily autonomy when she decided to have sex with a man knowing full well that this can result in pregnancy? If nobody forced you to have sex, nobody forced you to get pregnant. One case is being forced to give up a kidney, but the other had no initial coercion.
No, she didn't. It's a little concerning to me that you think she would have.
Do you give up your right to any bodily autonomy when you have sex?
I think the collision that happens on this topic centers almost as much around our understanding of families as it does around anything to do with a fetus specifically. A conservative seems more likely to say things like "the man would be expected to marry her if he got her pregnant. They are now hitched to the consequences of their passion." A liberal, in contrast, seems more likely to say things like, "If that man is going to be free to leave the woman at any point (and he is), the decision on whether to suffer the consequences of today's choice-heavy society is to give the woman the choice to decide what happens to her body."
Obviously there are more issues in play and more debates being had than just these. I'm just trying to suss out what value priorities are underwriting this specific debate.
I never really make the distinction, but most of my arguments are me playing devil's advocate. I believe some of what I say, but I mostly just try to get people to fully think about their beliefs.
So going back to that, bodily autonomy as I understand it is an assumed right that a person has to decide what to do with his or her body. By having consentual sex, a man and woman each used their bodily autonomy. An unborn baby comes from this decision; the baby doesn't just form, it's a product of the man and woman's work. So why doesn't it make sense that the woman decided to risk her bodily autonomy by having sex?
Would I, as a man, be risking my bodily autonomy by having sex? I don't think so because there is no risk of a baby forming inside me.
Then it would seem reasonable that you also don't get an equal say as to what to do with the results of that risky venture, no? It wasn't your risk.
Any responsible man should take into account that they are risking getting a woman pregnant by having sex. If they both decide that they are willing to risk having a baby, shouldn't they get an equal say over what happens to the baby if it forms?
But the risk isn't equal, as we just established. The risk to your bodily autonomy isn't equal, therefore your consideration matters less than the consideration of the person who stands to lose more in the exchange. That is why they both cannot equally decide what happens to the baby if one begins to form. The man will not be carrying anything for 9 months, nor will his insides be permanently re-arranged, nor will he have risked his life to bring another into the world. So his voice matters less.
That's not even getting into the idea that some men aren't responsible.
I know you want to say it's unreasonable for someone to not have equal say because if it isn't 50% it's meaningless. I do not believe that is the case. I'm not sure it'll be something we can mutually understand, but I'll try anyway.
What people mean when they say "her body, her choice" at womens rights rallies isn't that only the woman matters when it comes to the environment a pregnancy and child rearing will take place. It is a recognition of the fact that it is her body that is going to be wrecked by this process. It is her body that will have its internal organs permanently re-arranged. It is her body that will experience all sorts of hormonal changes. Her body that will have a glorified parasite clinging to a small section of muscle that prevents it from being malignant (most of the time). No male partner in any pregnancy ever has to deal with this.
So yes, in the "liberal ideal" society, a woman who wants an abortion would not have to consult her partner before getting one. But she probably should. Why? Because most women who get an abortion already have birthed a child. These are not women who don't know what it's like and fear the repercussions of a first-time pregnancy. These are often women who have looked at their lives, at their experience rearing a child, at the environment that unborn child would be reared in, and are making the decision that it is best for that unborn child not to enter the world. Many have husbands, husbands who are also part of the dialogue and offer their support and advice. That is good, for that is their role in this particular dynamic.
Thank you for the response. I sorta see where you're coming from. Although I myself do not fully agree with this, it has been brought to my attention that I could be wasting others' time by being the devil's advocate and not presenting wholly my beliefs. It is explained here.
That's a fair concern. I typically treat people at face value unless and until they tell me to do otherwise. So long as you're being true to yourself (or as close as possible) and you're trying to understand my responses, I think we're fine.
I too enjoy playing Devil's advocate. I think it keeps you sharp, and helps strengthen arguments - and it sometimes even reveals new ways of looking at things. I think it's difficult sometimes if a person gets emotionally invested in a particular belief or opinion to tell when someone is engaging in debate like that for the intellectual purpose of it, versus someone attacking them or being frustrating just to be frustrating. I know I've lost my temper at someone who was being particularly annoying with it in the past, and I've certainly annoyed friends of mine by being argumentative (a recent discussion about "flat earth" comes to mind, which i thought was absurd enough that it would be apparent i was just DA-ing, but my friend REALLY did not appreciate it :P).
I'm not sure what the best strategy is, but there's value in being a devil's advocate, imo - even if one has to get into method acting and never reveal it isn't what you actually believe or suspect. Comedy is a really good use case for this sort of thing too, I think.
I have no idea what the official ~ stance on devil's advocate arguments is or will be, so this is just me speaking, but: don't do this. If you want to play games like that, say so from the start so people can decide whether or not they feel like engaging. Otherwise your entire interaction with them is disingenuous.
As someone with a uterus who never wants to be pregnant, I can tell you I've had plenty of discussions with people saying the exact same things as you have, quite sincerely. I don't need help from yet another online discussion to think things through "fully."
Discussing an issue like abortion is hard enough. Don't make it harder by making people guess which parts of your argument you actually believe, if any. At best it's not productive. At worst it feels like trolling, or a way to avoid accountability for anything you say.
Wow, I never thought that being the devil's advocate could even be considered trolling, since there are people out there who have the beliefs I'm expressing. I just love being the devil's advocate since it brings up a full discussion of opposing sides of an argument.
I'm not avoiding accountability for what I say. I will take full responsibility if I'm told that I'm breaking rules because by using the site, I agreed to be governed by the rules written on the docs and elsewhere.
It's productive for me since I get to fully understand the reason behind a certain side of an argument.
Maybe I worded that weirdly, but I, personally, do like when people challenge my beliefs so that I can reevaluate them. I'm not always right, and when someone presents an opposing side of an argument, I can find things I agree with to change my position or just leave it as is.
You do seem a bit degrading to me in the quote above, but it might be because of how I worded my sentence. I didn't intend to be that chiding parent trying to get you to have kids or whatever, and I know that could anger someone if it mirrors their exact home struggle. So I apologise if that's how it came across.
Anyways, I'll taper off on the devil's advocate arguments for now. Good day :)
edit: added quotes
edit2: this very well explains the difference between a troll and a devil's advocate.
When I have sex, I am not consenting to a 9-month medical condition (with potentially life-long effects) in the same way that I am not consenting to contracting a sexually transmitted illness. I may accept that getting an STI is a risk of having sex, but I take precautions against it, and if I got one I would seek whatever medical treatments are available for it. Same for getting pregnant.
So... no. Consenting to sex is not the same as consenting to pregnancy just because it is one potential outcome.
Well you just equated an STI to a child. But why wouldn't consent to sex be consent to pregnancy when the entire reason humans create sperm and eggs is to have children?
And humans created birth control to not have them. It has long been established that having a child is a choice one needs to consciously make. It is not a choice made by having sex.
I'm personally of the opinion that the woman's rights should always come before the unborn baby. It's her body and having a baby brings immense physical and emotional changes not only before birth but afterwards as well. The changes can be pretty brutal even when she makes the choice to have a baby; I can only imagine how much worse it would be if she was forced into it. On a side note, I think that I'm always a little annoyed with people who are anti-choice because it seems like their focus is always on the fetus but rarely on providing any kind of support for the woman or the baby once it is born.
Would you consider choice to be involved in the decision to have sex most of the time?
I consider the choice to have sex and the choice to have a baby to be two completely separate things. The argument that people should not be able to abort because they knew the risks when they had sex is a bit perplexing to me. Does that mean people should only have sex for procreation? Should everyone remain abstinent unless they are okay with getting pregnant? I'm curious to know your thoughts on this.
If you play russian roulette, you know that there's a chance you will die. If you have sex for recreational or pair bonding purposes, there is always a chance for fertilization even with contraceptives - I do not know of any form of contraceptive that has not failed in one instance or another.
I certainly don't think people should remain abstinent - sex is normal and natural, and so is having a child and a family.
One of the problems underlying this whole situation IMO is that we have a society which makes having a child a liability more than a benefit as it was 100 years ago. That plus the problem of deadbeat dads who have no societal pressure to be responsible, and single mothers who have much less societal pressure to be selective about their mates.
Sure, choose an easy question, why don't you. ;)
This may be a cop-out, but I think that even if we assume that a fetus's rights are equal to that of a pregnant person at some point, that doesn't compel that person to remain pregnant. I like the kidney donation analogy; we don't force people to donate kidneys against their will, despite the large number of people on waiting lists who will eventually die if they don't get one. We recognize people's right to bodily autonomy, even in their death.
There are so many safe-guards in place when it comes to kidney donation. There are obviously checks by doctors to make sure someone is healthy enough. I've also read that in the cases of donating to a friend or family members, doctors want to make sure the donating person isn't under outside pressure. If someone comes back a match but doesn't want to go through with it, the doctor can tell whoever needs a kidney that it wasn't a match. Anonymous donating is even stricter, as this article shows with a man who had to talk to a counselor, a psychiatrist, and a bioethicist, as well as be approved by a committee.
Medical consent is a big deal, and I think people who don't want to be pregnant fall under that umbrella. I've seen folks argue that having sex is consent to getting pregnant, but if we compare an accidental pregnancy to what doctors do to get consent for things like kidney donation, this "consent" falls drastically short for me. (For wanted pregnancies, they obviously want to be pregnant and have a kid; plus it is likely folks will be seeking out health checks beforehand like with organ donation and will be more aware of the risks and thus able to properly consent.)
Practically speaking, I think "viability" could be a reasonable cutoff point, with easy-to-acquire exceptions past that point for things like health of the mother or fetal anomalies incompatible with life. In an ideal world with easy-to-access and affordable healthcare, this would give pregnant people enough time to decide, get funds, travel, etc. In our current situation in the US, this is not always the case. Restrictions (such as no public funds for abortions, waiting periods, and various requirements that cause clinics to close) all make it take longer for folks to get an abortion, especially if they lose the window for the less expensive options. In this climate, a cutoff point starts to become punitive.
[Defining viability is the tough thing with newer advances in medicine. If 5% of preemies can survive at a certain number of weeks, does that count? 50%? I don't know, personally.]
This is probably a bit contradictory of me, being fully on the side of bodily autonomy and medical consent but recognizing there may be a cutoff point... My views on this continue to evolve.
I can't reconcile the idea that a fetus is equal to a person who is already living and contributing to society. I love kids, don't get me wrong, but I have seen kids in situations where I think the best interest of the child might have been to not exist.
A woman has to carry the child for almost 10 months. That is a large medical concern that dictates what jobs the woman can hold and her leave options. Even though the law says you can't discriminate, workplaces still do. After the child is born, the mother (in most cases) is the one who will take time off work to take the child to appointments and stay home when it is sick.
Women are expected to rearrange their lives in order to have a child. If that is going to happen, they should be able to make that choice or not, for themselves. Bringing a new person in the world just for the sake of having another person in the world is a terrible reason.
As for "viability", I've always maintained that "viability" is if the fetus can stay alive with minimal help from machinery. A fetus may be able to survive outside the womb, but it will never get the development a womb would provide as if it were carried to term. There comes a limit to how premature a fetus can be that doesn't require even more money to keep alive. Money that could go to feeding and getting medical care for the children that are already born.
I actually agree with you for the most part. I started my argument saying "even if they are equal" simply because some people think they are and the kidney analogy still works (one its strengths, I think).
To me the question of viability is bit more complex than "minimal help from machinery," though. I'm having trouble articulating it.
Yeah, viability is a tough one. But can you really say it is viable if before it even gets to live, it's hooked up to machines for months?
This argument, assuming the fetus' rights are equal to the mothers (though I was trained in catholic school and will never give that possessive an extra s), reminds me of Judith Thomson's famous essay from 1971 before Roe v Wade was even decided.
It's a classic argument for a reason, I think.
I hold such a dumb position on the subject but I feel like it's valid. Tons of people treat every fetus like its the next coming of christ. If someone doesn't want one, but they would later or something, they can just pop another one out. Babies are not finite. I don't get it.
I don't think it is "dumb" if it is consistent with your beliefs, but I think there are quite a few reasons many people will not agree with you. Two that come to mind immediately:
Edit: missing word