pro life ; pro choice

[drug_mentor]

drug_mentor, you make some salient points and I like how you are not tolerating vague cliches and forcing people to clarify their position here, myself included.

I appreciate both the compliment and your willingness to engage in civil debate.

Does it really undermine my point that much? If we accept that the right of a human being not to be killed by another human being is, in some sense, a function of their status as highly sapient entities, with their own internal worlds, hopes and dreams which deserve not to be snuffed out, then a fetus (or, indeed, a baby) has none of these things. Therefore while you are no doubt correct in asking me to clarify my phrasing here, I think that if you substitute what I initially wrote for "the right not to be killed by another human being" then the point still makes sense.

(My emphasis.)

I actually think you are getting things the wrong way round here; the sapient status of adult human persons is the source of their moral duties, not the source of their moral rights. Because we have a higher capacity for reason, our actions are held to a higher standard.

Are you familiar with the work of John Rawls? In A Theory of Justice he argued, roughly speaking, that the rules of moral conduct which govern a just society are those which it would be rational for everyone to agree to under the 'veil of ignorance'. 'The veil of ignorance' is a hypothetical position in which nobody is aware of their individual characteristics, such as wealth, intelligence, race, etc. Under the veil of ignorance, it would be rational for everyone to agree to a set of rules which do not privilege any particular subset of society. The idea is something like this: if you don't know you won't turn out to be a minority once the veil of ignorance is removed then it is rational for you to agree to a set of rules which prohibits discrimination against minorities; if you don't know whether you will be wealthy then it is rational to agree to contribute to social safety programs, etc.

Now, everyone knows they will be a newborn baby at some point, so on this view it would be rational to agree to a set of moral rules which prohibit the murder of babies. So, here we have a plausible meta-ethical view which actually imposes duties on adult humans not to kill babies, and this duty is imposed precisely because adult humans are 'sapient' entities which are capable of rational reflection.

I am not a Rawlsian myself (though I have been strongly influenced by his work), but I hope that I have provided some plausible grounds for thinking that you are conceptualising this issue the wrong way. Now that I have fully elucidated the view, I must correct a remark from earlier in this post: "the sapient status of adult human persons is the source of their moral duties, not the source of their moral rights". Call any arbitrarily selected adult human A, call the set which contains all other adult humans S, A's moral duties arise from A's own capacity for rational reflection, A's moral rights arise from the duties held by all the members of S - duties which the members of S hold in virtue of their capacity to engage in rational reflection. So, there is a sense in which the sapient status of humans is the source of both the moral rights and duties of any particular person; I hope the didactic purpose in initially denying this point is clear.

The same could be said of severely mentally handicapped people I think, that although they do not have the capacity to develop beyond a certain point, they do still, eventually, have a wealth of experience that constitutes a certain internal "richness" that entitles them not to be simply killed... whereas a fetus or a baby is a blank slate, relatively speaking. I concede that I am ad-libbing this point slightly though and that perhaps with respect to my initial argument, some severely mentally handicapped people would be denied their right not to be killed by another human being.

Who says that a newborn baby, or even a foetus, lacks a rich inner world? I doubt that you could adduce any kind of proof to establish your tabula rasa thesis. I am not saying it is totally implausible, it might even be correct; but, when we are talking about human lives, is it really such a safe assumption to make?

Before I get on to my main point with this I feel it worth mentioning that framing the argument in this way opens up a whole separate debate about the value of the bodily autonomy of the mother and whether or not it supercedes the right of the fetus not to be killed. For those who do not believe this to be the case, it also serves to justify various arguments regarding the "selfishness" of the mother for putting her own bodily autonomy before the right of the unborn baby to live. For this reason alone I think that the bodily autonomy argument does not really stand on it's own merit. Does society have a right to compel the long suffering parents of a severely mentally handicapped child to continue to endure, rather than taking back full control over their lives by deciding to kill the child?

I don't think it does justify such accusations of selfishness. One's right to bodily autonomy is one of the most important and inviolable rights one has, I don't see how it could possible be construed as selfish not to waive this right. By my lights, it is built in to the concept of a right that one cannot be admonished merely for refusing to cede their rightful claim against others.

Society does have a right to prevent "long suffering parents" of handicapped children from murdering said children, yes. The parents do have the right to put the child up for adoption, just because you can't force the parents to take care of the child does not mean they can murder it. There is logical space between the two extremes.

Let's posit a thought experiment to remove the women's bodily autonomy from the equation- say in the future, human beings can remove fetuses from themselves at the moment of conception, and place them in incubators. A woman chooses to do this almost immediately, so the fetus is no longer any drain on the resources of her body. At, say, 9 weeks, the fetus is the size of a grape, and she (or both parents jointly) decide that they are no longer ready for a child, they could let it grow to full term and give it up for adoption, perhaps, but they don't want to deal with the paperwork and decide to "terminate" it.

My view is that the mother would have no right whatsoever to terminate an incubated foetus. I do not believe that in this case the parents should be compelled to raise the child against their wishes, but again, there is logical space between this extreme and killing the foetus. I do believe that it is no violation of the parents right to impose the inconvenience of some paperwork upon them.

 

[Kittycat5]

In such a situation, there is no way a fetus would be allowed to come to full term. Why waste resources on an unborn life? Abortion is exactly the same.

 

[JessFR]

Jess, i'm not going to keep discussing this with you because i feel like any response i make will piss you off.
I've never come across an expectation before that i should understand a perspective that i totally disagree with, but i guess that's just another point at which we differ.
I sincerely care about people's rights to do what they want with their own body, which is why i don't have any appreciate for anti-abortion activism.
To me it seems to have a strong religious aspect to it, which isn't something i can really grasp. I read the arguments, but it seems like double-speak a lot of the time, to me.
I'm not trying to convert you or anyone, but putting forward a viewpoint that to me is pretty straightforward.

Sigh. You haven't pissed me off. More accurate would be to say you've disappointed me. With a sense of depression.

Very well then, I could go on into details but, I see little point. Curious as I am what the truth is, it really doesn't matter. I know enough to know it's depressing whatever it is.

 

[FuckinAcidMan]

I really do not want children at this point in my life and do not feel I or any of the women I have dated would have made suitable parents. I am definitely pro choice, I think some people are only gonna be capable of fucking their kids up, and probably should just opt out. I really think that abortions should be an absolute last resort though. Many people I have met who are my age, for some reason, don't use condoms very often. So that blows my mind... as that is an easy and cost effective way to avoid impregnating your girlfriend...

Do I revel in the idea of destroying potential humans? No! Do I want a son or daughter? Hell to the fuck no. Not right now, maybe never, I am not a huge nurturer.

I hope to never end up being part of a couple that needs an abortion though. And fuck if I make it to my middle age without having needed one I might decide to keep the kid instead of abort it. I just sure as hell am not becoming a father when I am still in my 20's. I know that much.

 

[nuttynutskin]

Abortion is infanticide plain and simple.

 

[Kittycat5]

Not to me and many others. I really dont get the whole potential for life argument. The number of estimated distinct humans borders on the absurd and the way human DNA can reconfigure itself far exceeds the number of atoms in the visible universe (perhaps by hundreds or even thousands of orders of magnitude). Being alive isnt special but being born is.

 

[JessFR]

Is it? What has really changed between being born and just before being born?

Human development doesn't work in such a way that makes drawing lines particularly easy. Apart from conception, human development is gradual.

That's a big part of my problem with abortion. Where do we draw the line and why? After conception it's a gradual progression. Sure we can do like we do with adulthood, just pick a point and say before then you're this and after then you're that. But it doesn't have much reason for it.

Why shouldn't a parent be able to kill their 3 month old? What is really lost? So much of this is so arbitrary. And people. Fucking asshole people and their fucking refusal to understand each other (yes spacejunk I'm looking at you) and their stubborn insistence that whatever they wanna believe is true and their unwillingness to really put further thought into it.

It's why I hate even discussing it with most people. Cause people are fucking useless.

I gotta tell ya spacejunk. You probably don't care, but you really disappointed me last night. Mainly by suggesting that you shouldn't have an expectation to understand other people's points of view even if you disagree with them. I thought you were better than that. Lack of understanding is at the heart of all the prejudice that I know you fight against and yet you're totally fine with selecting arbitrary viewpoints you deem wrong enough that you need not put effort in to understanding. It says a lot to me. It says you're full of shit. That you have principles that you apply in a selective way out of political convenience and by doing so show that those principles aren't real. They are just political talking points you don't actually follow them.

The kind of person that has a go at people for being prejudice against Muslims when they don't know the first thing about Islam or the more complex realities of immigration and discrimination. Talks about privilege and how people don't appreciate how being a white male benefits them and so forth. But when it comes to other cultures and beliefs and people you deem bad, you show none of the curiosity to understand and know the truth that you might criticize others for on subjects you have more sympathy for. It's shows that you just have your political views and will say whatever and make whatever point you think sounds good. Talking about acceptance or tolerance or inclusiveness and other left leaning points of views. But in truth, you're no different to people who hate gays cause the bible tells them too or any number of other political views you hate on. You might have different political views, but the reasons you hold those views are arbitrary. It's not really about having good reasons for holding those views. It's an arbitrary choice made cause you were raised that way. Opposing others for doing the same but winding up on the other side.

We will never progress as a culture or people so long as we just believe whatever we are told to believe when we are young and don't really put any thought into why or why others believe differently.

But whatever. I've tried to explain this all before. I guess I was wrong.

Maybe you think I'm pissed off with you or that I don't like you or whatever. But that's not true. I was never pissed off with you. I'm not now either. Disappointed, depressed, resigned, apathetic, indifferent. There are lots of things I feel but anger isn't one of them. But hey, that's my problem. It's my issue. It doesn't matter.

 

[ShroomySatori]

Did you read the response I sent you above? It seriously took me like an hour to read through it, process it and write a response. You strengthened my views on this issue more than anyone here, so I thank you for that. You got me thinking about the most important important moment of all in greater detail than I had ever realized before. So you did get through to someone who took the time to really listen and I appreciate that : )

 

[zephyr]

Abortions are quite safe these days and become very harrowing at later term.

The 15 week cut off isnt done by all doctors as by then its a serious operation and needs a lot of anasthetic.

The usual cut off is 12 weeks.

Late term abortions are recommended if the baby is going to die as soon as its born due to defect or if the mother is in danger.

A lot of genetic tests are done at 20 weeks and its far too late for a routine abortion then and the baby is usually induced so its a standard labour. Things are getting better with genetic testing being done earlier and with the mothers blood not amniotic fluid.

Babies can live at 24 or 25 weeks.

A life is a life when the baby can live without the mother. Until then its reliant on her .

 

[LopLover]

I've been a pro-choice activist for many years for a number of reasons. The micro reason I'm pro-choice is that nobody but the woman who is pregnant has the right to make decisions affecting her life. The reality is that, for whatever messed-up reason, our culture has decided to punish women economically for having children without a male partner to stand by them, but has decided NOT to economically punish the men who fathered said children. Now that we can absolutely know who is the biological father of any pregnancy, even pretty early on, there should be NO excuse for failure to pay child support. Yet there are men in Congress who owe hundreds of thousands in support and their fat Congressional wages haven't been garnisheed--why?

The macro reason for my views--how it affects society as a whole--is that denying women the choice of how to proceed, or not proceed, with a pregnancy, effectively silences them from the public sphere. This is how it works: First, every time they get close to banning abortion, which does have an emotional resonance with many people, they make it very clear that they also intend to ban birth control. Even the current "tax reform" bill the House just passed has language in it that will ban ALL abortions, even to save the life of the mother, and ALL forms of birth control except condoms. They have a paper-thin excuse made up for connecting the two, but what it's truly about is silencing women, period. Who is going to hire a woman for any important job when at any moment she might be sidelined with a pregnancy, especially a problem one? Who is going to vote, say, for a female President who might become unable to travel due to pregnancy, or unable to fulfill her duties in the eyes of her political opponents?

I believe that life begins at birth. However, the last trimester of pregnancy, the time when a fetus may be able to live outside of the mother, really should not be used for abortions of convenience, as opposed to medical emergencies. As it stands currently, those performed in that last trimester are 95+% due to the pregnancy having gone terribly wrong. Either the fetus is not viable or the life of the mother is threatened--usually with a concurrent threat to the life of the fetus. Procedures simply are not done at this point in pregnancy simply out of convenience. Those who claim to be "pro-life"--a specious claim, in my eyes--disagree, but I happen to have facts in my corner, while they have emotional arguments that simply are not true. That tends to be the specialty of the anti-choice--what they call pro-life--crusaders.

I refuse to give them the respect they haven't earned by letting them self-label, because, other than wanting to control women using their bodies as a weapon against them, none of their other views seem to be "pro" any form of life other than those dependent upon a woman's body for sustenance. They oppose contraception and fact-based sexual education, the ONLY methods that actually reduce the number of abortions. Any time contraception is made available to teenage girls, as well as education explaining how pregnancy is caused and how it can be prevented, abortions in that group immediately drop in half if not more. Yet "pro-lifers" fight those things tooth and nail.

Why? Because actually they are religious zealots who are against sex, especially against female sexuality, who actually believe that being saddled with a child they can't afford to care for, may not even be able to love--they also insist that pregnancies occurring from rape and incest must go to term as well--and who they will have to raise without a father, is a wonderful punishment for those females who dare to express their sexuality without being in an ownership relationship, AKA marital slavery. This explains why our society, which if you remember was started by Puritans, a group with exactly this worldview, chooses NOT to address the issue of fathers who desert and aren't even asked to pay ANY support for the children they father.

This brings me to a question that I truly fail to grasp. Back in the bad old days, when girls who became pregnant outside of marriage, their options were either a quick, illegal and possibly deadly abortion in a back alley--something that will return if legal abortions are banned--or putting their child up for adoption. (Or a shotgun wedding, and for my money, I think that perhaps dads with shotguns could return to the stage without hurting my feelings, but only if that was what the girl actually wanted. At least daddies who are divorced have a higher percentage of paying child support than those with no legal relationship. And that way it wouldn't JUST be the female who was punished by society.)

I wouldn't want to return to a culture that forced women to give up their children if they didn't want to, of course. But we've gone full-circle to the point where those who do give up kids for adoption are vilified and demonized. Look, some women simply don't want to be mothers, and those who know they don't want children should be congratulated for refusing to bring new, vulnerable lives into a world that is, frankly, falling apart. Especially if they know that the future for them and that child is destined to be life-long grinding poverty, perhaps in combination with drug or alcohol abuse.

They should also know the hidden fact, that the men who come into their lives and want to start relationships with them are, in pretty high percentages, abusers who are only seeking access to children they can molest. It seems that there is a biological imperative that limits biological fathers from molesting their own children in all but the most pathological cases. That imperative doesn't exist for step-fathers, or the category known as "mother's boyfriend." I used to work in the field, and although I can't state the actual stats, when children are sexually attacked by someone they know, under the heading for perpetrator, "mother's boyfriend" is listed in well over 50%. Children really don't recover fully from childhood abuse, especially if--and this happens more than you can imagine--the mother takes the boyfriend's side against the child's. If more women and girls knew that fact before they took on the lifetime job of raising children by themselves, some might make a different decision. At least they would know the danger.

Why, though, has making the decision to give up a child for adoption become so negative? I think it's part of the same dynamic of wanting to punish women publicly, every day of their lives, for having sex. Those who think that an "accidental" pregnancy has to shame a woman's life forever, kind of like the scarlet letter that women were forced to wear in Puritan times, certainly don't care about the future of that child--or that woman. People are begging for healthy babies to adopt--they go all over the world to find them. Adoption has many more choices--open adoption in lots of variations, etc--than it used to. And if a woman is involved in an unhealthy lifestyle, like using drugs, isn't it much better for her child to be adopted from birth, rather than after he's spent years in and out of foster homes, or going from one crack house to another? I'm not talking about forcing the decision on people--it's really a public relations issue. It can be presented as one of several options that are equally morally-neutral. If more girls knew they could finish their pregnancies without having to raise a child alone AND without being treated as a pariah for "giving away her baby," more would opt for that route over abortion, and perhaps more would feel good in making the best decision for their child.

 

[LopLover]

If a fertilized embryo doesn't make it to term that's different, it was beyond our control. And it's VERY different prior to conception. Some of my beliefs still come into play but most of them cease to have meaning before conception. Because after conception it is much more a single, relatively complete individual now in play. On its path to existence, or already existing, however you might want to see

I've read and tried to comprehend everyone's posts, and can't help but respond. Jess, I may owe you an apology. Because my feelings are very passionate, I tend to generalize all "pro-choice" believers. But I have a couple questions and one point to ponder for you. Here's the point to ponder--Is it the fertilization of the egg that begins life, or the implantation of the fertilized egg in the womb? It makes a huge difference, as if it's the actual fertilization, then to be a purist you would have to be against virtually all birth control as well. Pills and IUD's can prevent a pregnancy several ways, but one of them is by making the uterus an unfriendly place for the fertilized egg to land. That's the justification that politicians who want to ban abortion use to want to ban most birth control. Just something to think about...

What are your positions on other issues related to death, rather than birth? If you are truly pro-life in all areas, what do you think about war? about the bomb? about living wills--Do people have the right to sign a No Code? Is that euthanasia or letting nature take its course? What about the death penalty? I ask these because the people who are politically "pro-life," the ones I accuse of using their own religious beliefs to control women, are in general OK with things like war and the death penalty. And for both you and Shroomy--Did you know that, if you would NEVER have an abortion yourself or be in a relationship with someone who would have one, but that you don't want to extend your beliefs to others, (which I think is Shroomy but not Jess) then your position, politically, is still pro-choice?

This has been a fascinating discussion to read, and by far the most civil discourse I've seen yet on this topic. Most people are so polarized with their particular "side," including myself, that it's very hard not to dismiss people with different opinions as stupid or misguided. And not all of them are. Jess, I disagree with your position, but it does appear you didn't just pick it up off a bumper sticker; that you've given it much thought. You deserve credit for that. And Shroomy, from what you are saying, I hope that when you find that One, that you and she have a long and fruitful discussion about your thoughts regarding pregnancy and options, PRIOR to doing anything together that could produce a child. I admire you for wishing to do that--I hope that when you're in the moment, you remember it. That's what's so unfortunate in today's society. We have such mixed feelings about these things--and then when we get into that moment, especially if some alcohol or drugs have affected our thinking, what we truly believe can go right out the window. Namaste to you all...