The comment thread on this post is open to anyone who opposes abortion as murder on grounds that a fetus (at the stage it is performed) is a person. Please either
(i) confirm that the correct response of society is to indict and prosecute the mother who arranges it for capital murder (premeditated) (if you like capital punishment, presumably with that sentence), or
(ii) explain why anything less isn’t either hypocrisy or sacrificing the lives of innocents and moral principle for political expediency.
Links to abortion opponents taking position (i) publicly would be nice.
Never mind explaining why a fetus is or isn’t a person; that’s for another place and time.
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I’m not the guy you want - I favor abortion on demand. But I think this is the link you want: http://powerofaith.com/abortion.htm
My attitude has not changed one whit since I became aware of the problem in the 1960s. It is the mother’s decision. If anyone tries to force pregnancy, they should not only be liable for all costs of rearing the child, but, also, pay compensation to the mother for pain and suffering.
No pay, no say.
There are a variety of (ii)-style answers. Here’s one: imagine you were
made dictator of a country where infanticide was widespread and widely condoned, like Han-dynasty China or ancient Greece. Would you institute the same penalty as for (other types of) murder? My sense is that a lot of modern, infanticide-condemning Westerners wouldn’t, at least at first.
RK, your answer sounds to me a justification based on political expediency, so it doesn’t seem to satisfy (ii).
I’m pro-choice, but putting myself into anti-choice shoes, here’s my best type ii argument.
If we think the purpose of laws is to reduce the incidence of crimes, as opposed to vengeance or justice or whatever, then presumably we want to choose the mildest punishment that will be effective. To me, that argues for punishing women who choose abortion with a year or two in jail and hefty fines, on the theory that deterrence will be more effective with these types of “criminals” than with, for example, thieves. I don’t think this is hypocrisy. Is it hypocrisy to distinguish between murder and manslaughter, both of which are intentional killing?
With respect to (ii), anyone who’s read Gonzales v. Carhart knows full well that paternalistic misogynism that refuses to acknowledge women to be moral actors is alive and well in abortion “analysis” and is, in fact the primary concern driving the abortion views of the median Supreme Court Justice. If pregnant women aren’t considered moral actors but rather mere unwitting dupes who need to be protected from themselves then there’s nothing hypocritical about viewing abortion as murder but not indicting women who get abortions for murder. In the eyes of someone who accepts the method reasoning of Justice Kennedy in Carhart II it’s no different than not indicting a six year old or a severely mentally retarded person for murder.
Consider the case of a fetus in her 33rd week of life. We should be clear from that question that Michael either believes that fetus isn’t a person (which would mean that infants are not persons), or that that Michael doesn’t oppose her abortion. [edited for site policy]
Hm, that would be me, with the following provisos:
1. Only post-viability, with viability being judged in the individual case. A non-survivable defect in the fetus would render it legally pre-viable through the whole pregnancy.
2. Provision for self-defense abortions, if an independent medical evaluation established the need for it. No evaluation by somebody chosen by the abortionist or the mother would be acceptable.
Since we’re confidently assured by the abortion industry that genuinely elective late term abortions are essentially non-existent, this should cover everything but really evil mad dog killers who happen to be pregnant, right?
Trying harder to put myself into anti-choice shoes, I think the answer doesn’t stop at “women aren’t moral agents.” Even if women aren’t moral agents, they still need someone to control and regulate them. And historically, the answer is that women are the property of their husbands or fathers. Nowadays husbands and fathers don’t have sufficient tools to do that, but in the good old days, they had sufficient power that there was little need for the criminal justice system to intervene. Husbands or fathers controlled women’s property and could confine them to the house or an institution if they disobeyed.
Hence, if you’re looking for ugly views among the anti-choice crowd, don’t look for attempts to criminalize women’s behavior. Instead look for attempts to take away their autonomy more generally. Making divorce more difficult is one attempt that springs to mind, but I imagine that the traditional values crowd has other plans too.
Monsters, I’m pretty sure that at some point between (i) wine and roses and a gleam in the eye and (ii) a second after birth an egg becomes a person and killing it after that point is murder. I don’t have the certainty of many as to when that point is. I think you do, and that you think it’s very early, but that’s another question. So should we or should we not hang women who deliberately arrange to kill their fetuses that we judge to be people?
In response to Michael O’Hare’s 11:55 comment, we do not look for when an egg becomes a “person,” and then ban abortion at that point. We decide at what stage of embryonic or fetal development we wish to ban abortion. Perhaps, by “person,” Michael O’Hare means merely the point at which we decide to ban abortion, but, if that’s the case, then we can dispense with the label “person.”
Also, the decision at what stage to ban abortion must take into account what no one in this thread has mentioned: the right of the mother, as opposed to the government, to control her body. It makes a difference that an embryo and a fetus are within a woman’s body.
Henry, for all practical purposes, I would agree with you. But I *could* imagine a situation in which a child was able to develop maybe 6 months to a year longer in the womb - maybe with a little videoscreen or cellphone to play with: still within the woman’s body, but definitely having taken on “personhood” in the sense that it would presumably be developing complex thought and interacting with society.
Henry@11:04 am: RK, your answer sounds to me a justification based on political expediency, so it doesn’t seem to satisfy (ii).
I don’t think the intuition against punishing infanticide like murder in these societies is based on political expediency. I think it’s based on the notion that an immoral act is less culpable when it’s endorsed by the prevailing morality. That’s why we’re relatively forgiving of sexism when it comes from the elderly, or racism when it comes from Thomas Jefferson.
“the right of the mother, as opposed to the government, to control her body. It makes a difference that an embryo and a fetus are within a woman’s body.”
It makes a difference pre-viability. Post-viability, abortion isn’t the only way of ending the pregnancy, and the determination to abort rather than deliver becomes a choice about the end state of somebody else’s body.
I think it’s possible that abortion falls somewhere between murder of a fully developed person and the killing of mere cells with no moral standing at all. It is possible, then, to believe in restrictions on abortion on the grounds that the act is a serious moral offense without arguing that it is equivalent to murdering a fully grown person. It seems that personhood develops over time; one doesn’t suddenly go from being a non-person to a person. Abortion could, then, be restricted without imposing the punishments we apply for murder.
Even if it is all-or-nothing and abortion could only be restricted on the grounds that fetal humans are fully persons, there still could be good reason for stopping short of the severest punishments. Perhaps the women undergoing abortions have suffered enough. The law could acknowledge the difficulty and pains of their situation without making the procedure completely free of penalty. If you think, as most pro-choicers appear to, that fetal life doesn’t count for anything (unless it’s wanted), even lesser penalties would of course be unacceptable. But if you think fetal life has some moral standing and cannot well be completely ignored in our laws, then some kind of middle-ground compromise seems inevitable.
I followed the link that dave schutz gave, and it reminded me of the time I picked up a hitchhiker who was running for President of the United States (sort of a grass roots campaign). He wanted to empty the prisons on the grounds that vengeance is the Lord’s, to abolish money and replace it with barter, and, on the issue of abortion, he had a solution which was not without its originality. He wanted to take all aborted fetuses, grind them up, process them into hot dogs, and force feed them to women who said that they were nothing but lumps of tissue. He had some other planks in his platform, but we arrived at the intersection he needed to go to before he had a chance to expound them.
I believe that abortion is murder of a real person. I come to conclusion # 1, that a mother who has her baby aborted should be brought up on capital murder charges. In fact, I wanna go one further. I think the father should also be brought up on charges of murder in most circumstances, unless the father had absolutely no knowledge that the mother was pregnant with his baby and was planning an abortion. The abortion “doctor” should also be brought up on charges of murder. You’re right Michael O’Hare, anything else would be inconsistent with my worldview and position on the issue and would make me either a hypocrite or turning a blind eye to murder. I’ll be completely consistent and I call on all those who believe abortion is murder of a living human being to also be consistent. I can’t think of a web link to an abortion opponent taking a position like this publicly, but until abortion is illegal it’s kind of beside the point, so I guess I’m not surprised I don’t hear this. If abortion was made illegal on grounds that it was murder, what other punishment would there be for abortion?
“Post-viability, abortion isn’t the only way of ending the pregnancy, and the determination to abort rather than deliver becomes a choice about the end state of somebody else’s body.”
Brett, let’s say that viability begins at six months. (I’m just making up the number.) For the government to force a woman to carry a child for three more months is an imposition on her liberty. I’m not claiming that that settles the issue, but it is a consideration that we should not ignore when we decide the question.
Surely prosecuting for murder would both reduce human population pressure on the planet, and have many, many more maladjusted, miserable people born to people who don’t want and/or can care for the child(ren). Sounds good for fewer people, bad for a higher percentage of miserable people infecting our populace. And what about the little snowflakes waiting to be born? Who out there is making their wimminfolk bear these little snowflakes???
Not all the names of the commenters on this thread identify their sex, but all those that do are men’s names. Maybe that’s why I am alone in recognizing a woman’s right to control her body. Let’s hear from some women.
Try this website
http://www.abort73.com/end_abortion/punishing_illegal_abortion/
Here is the money quote:
“(2) A more severe punishment should be given to the abortionist, as he or she is the one profiting off the abortion practice and would likely have a much fuller understanding of what an abortion does to a developing human being in utero. Past statutes normally punished with a long prison sentence.
(3) A less severe punishment should be given to the woman found guilty of inducing abortion, with increasing severity for repeated offenses. However, since convicting someone of a crime requires evidence, and there likely would be little material evidence in abortion cases, it may be appropriate to offer the woman impunity or a lesser charge in exchange for testimony against the abortionist.”
And no, I do not endorse the above views.
So, Bux, is a miscarriage (medically known as a spontaneous abortion) something that should be investigated by law enforcement? A human being has died, and should have a death certificate with the cause of death on the appropriate line of the form. That cause of death has to be certified, since there is an unexplained fetal demise. The percentage of recognized pregnancies that end in miscarriage is in the neighborhood of 15%. The rate of early embryo loss (which is never recognized as a pregnancy) is more difficult to quantify, but infertility doctors estimate this to be in the neighborhood of 40 %.
Ideas have consequences; if a fertilized ovum is a human being, we need big government to track down cases of pregnancy loss and rule out foul play, the same as we do with unexplained deaths in general.
Post viability, you don’t have to wait, you can induce labor. So, no, it really IS about killing the baby.
Good point too Ed Whiteney. I agree.
By the way, folks do realize that there have been cases in which a pregnant mother was murdered and the offender has been prosecuted for two murders. Why would this be if the fetus is not a real human life? Should be only one murder. And yet this happens under the law now.
As to Henry’s comment, a woman’s opinion is irrelevant if abortion is murder. Remember Michael O’Hare started out this specific post with assuming that abortion is murder and not arguing that case here. So if we assume abortion is murder (and again, that’s the big “IF” that we’re not asked to debate in this particular post) then how is it relevant what a woman has to say about the rights of her body. I don’t know anybody who would argue that a woman does not have a right to her own body. Pro-lifers simply argue that women do not have an absolute right to their body at the expense of taking the life of another body.
Balloon boy…it makes all the difference in the world on what’s inside
Post viability, you don’t have to wait, you can induce labor. So, no, it really IS about killing the baby.
So you’re in favor of forcing women to submit to a potentially dangerous medical procedure against their will? They’re breeding an interesting sort of “libertarian” these days.
Of course, this all makes a lot more sense if I just keep in mind that you believe women aren’t people.
Here’s a thought experiment for the rest of you commenters, who as far as I can tell are men:
You know that there’s a dangerous kidnapper about, but because you’re unlucky, or you were drunk and didn’t take enough precautions, or you were careless, you are knocked unconscious and attacked by the kidnapper. When you awake, you find yourself connected by tubes to some other person. Now your body is supporting both your life and the life of another person- maybe you’re a human dialysis machine or something like that. At any rate, the other person will die if you are disconnected. If you opt to stay, you have a nonzero chance of dying, and will almost certainly be uncomfortable and throw up a lot.
Can you cut the tubes and leave, or do you have to stay there for nine months against your will? If you want to, you may assume that the other person was not involved in your kidnapping, did not choose to be hooked up to you, but now wants you to stay.
If you think you can leave, how is that different from my having a birth control failure and having an unwanted pregnancy.
@ Brett
Is this really true? I mean, first of all, there’s viable and there’s viable - the achievements in medicine’s ability to rescue extremely premature babies are wonderful, but they aren’t magic. A very premature baby is going to require a lot of very expensive care, will be at great risk, and will have real problems, despite everyones’ best efforts; my (lay) understanding is that at the edge of what we can do to rescue premature births the resulting person will be afflicted for life by their premature removal from the womb. So, just because the fetus has progressed to have a reasonable chance of viability doesn’t mean it would be ethical to end the pregnancy by removing it; it makes much more sense to say that once the fetus has crossed this threshold it has gained more rights to be weighed against its mother’s rights. Also, is “induce labor” even the right term? Again as a layperson, I’d suspect that surgery would be a much safer bet to extract a viable fetus months before it is ready to be born - safer for the baby, and maybe also for the mother.
@ Bux
Ah, the flipside of the belief that women aren’t really moral actors: it’s the potential father’s decision what happens with the potential mother’s body. Good to know. Can we go after the manufacturers of pregnancy tests next? Surely they’re culpable. Maybe the manufacturers of alcoholic beverages, who have no doubt contributed to many pregnancies, should be liable if abortions result.
Thank you Bux, for your internally consistent response.
As best we know, breastfeeding does not prevent conception, only implantation. Which is to say, it causes the death of a human being. What punishment would you see meted out upon women (murderesses) who rely on breastfeeding for “contraception”?
Michael, if I read you correctly, you think that some abortions, late in pregnancy, are murder. How do you solve the problem you’ve identified?
Cardinal Fang, can we just refer to the standard responses to Thomson’s violinist thought experiment? Abortion debates would go much faster if we assigned numbers to all the arguments, and listed the ones we found convincing at the beginning.
The polls are pretty inconsistent, but in general, women’s attitudes towards abortion don’t seem to differ sharply from men’s. In particular, they’re not markedly more pro-choice. Obviously this isn’t fatal to pro-choice arguments (at least the good ones), but if you’re a pro-choicer, I’m curious to know whether you think it’s an inconvenient fact, and whether you have an explanation for it besides false consciousness or whatever. (Of course, if your answer to the first question is no, you might not think it needs an explanation.)
Apologies for derailing the thread even further, but it looks like Professor O’Hare’s original restriction on this comment thread (only people who oppose abortion as murder) fell into desuetude a while ago.
How come the words Christian, Christ, Jesus haven’t appeared once yet in this thread?
Crikey, someone here has to play the devil’s advocate:
What would Jesus say?
Maybe I should also get out ahead with what I believe is the fundamental whitey-righty answer:
To hell with Christ, any chance we could burn her at the stake?
Which is all to say Michael, when you strip the thing bare naked as you have tried to do with your post, then one needs to strip the answers just as bare too. For most white-right bigots my answer does just that. After all, most Christians aren’t really Christian are they? For the more educated southern white-right bigots, driven by the need to clothe their primitive faith in logic, see R.Johnston’s post upthread at 11:18 am. That post on white-boy paternalism/justification is just brilliant…
For the record, the Catholic church practices the spiritual equivalent of this. There have been at least two cases recently where children (ages 9 and 11, respectively) were pregnant with pregnancies that threatened their lives, and after having lifesaving abortions, the girl and doctor and, I think in at least one case, the girl’s mother, were all automatically excommunicated. If I recall correctly, at least one of the rapists responsible was not excommunicated, because he’d gone to confession. So that was all right then. In the Catholic worldview, excommunication puts the soul at risk of being condemned to Hell, so I would argue that this is the spiritual equivalent of capital punishment.
Similarly, a nun who approved a lifesaving abortion was excommunicated recently in the US.
Just a couple of links:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,505183,00.html
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Media/church-excommunicates-nun-authorized-emergency-abortion-save-mothers/story?id=10799745
RK, are you asking whether I think it’s inconvenient that women aren’t markedly more pro-choice than men? Do you mean, inconvenient when assessing the validity of my pro-choice point of view? No. Or do you mean inconvenient when I try to persuade people to agree with me? Maybe, but that is an uninteresting tactical discussion.
Bux: “By the way, folks do realize that there have been cases in which a pregnant mother was murdered and the offender has been prosecuted for two murders. Why would this be if the fetus is not a real human life? Should be only one murder. And yet this happens under the law now.”
The Wikipedia article on “Feticide” contains a link, http://bit.ly/3B5tX1, to a summary of state laws from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Alabama, for example, but only because they are first on the list:
Ala. Code § 13A-6-1 (2006) defines person for the purpose of criminal homicide or assaults. The law defines person to include an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability and specifies that nothing in this act shall make it a crime to perform or obtain an abortion that is otherwise legal.
So, whether a fetus is a “person” or not, killing one is murder in many states - with an exception for legal abortion.
Michael, was it a more interesting question when you didn’t think it had any relevance to your position? You are someone who opposes some late-term abortions because, at that stage, the fetus is a person. So, will you confirm that you hold what you say is the correct response, and wish to prosecute those mothers who arrange such abortions for murder? Or are you a hypocrite, as you’d have it, and inclined to think a different penalty appropriate?
Bux, how do you view bombings of abortion clinics? I assume that if an individual entered a public school and began killing children you would have no moral issue with taking his life. If the moral equivalence is complete then acts of violence against abortion providers would seem consistent with your views. What about the killing of Dr. Tiller?
As to the viability question: Obviously a fetus at six months gestation is going to require extraordinary medical care. Add to this the reality that a woman is hardly likely to bring a fetus to that point and then opt to discontinue the pregnancy unless the problems for that fetus are some where between substantial and insurmountable. All of this extraordinary care is realistically going to cost in the millions or tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
So the question is, who is going to pay for all of this? In a time when productive adults with families dependent on them are denied lifesaving care because society is unwilling to pay a couple hundred thousand dollars why does this unformed individual deserve an amount of money dedicated to it’s suvival that could save the lives of many more people who we seem willing to wash our hands of?
Here is the problem with the debate about abortion: We are trying to pretend we can have this debate in a vacume. The real qustion to start the debate is: Why do women chose to abort a pregnancy?
*When it is a matter of health the choice seems less a choice and more a matter of necessity.
*When it is a personal choice it gets complicated. It usually boils down to money. Money for health care, child care, restriction of ability to work or get education, adequate housing. It always amazes me when people with good resources act as if people without those resources should just whip them up out of thin air. And so often these are the same people who want to eliminate funding for the forty year old truck driver who needs a transplant.
So start by admitting that nobody want abortions to happen. The sad reality is sometimes they are the best option. The way to eliminate abortions is to try to eliminate the conditions that create the circumstances that make an abortion the lesser of two evils.
*Provide universal health care. This is probably the one thing that would do the most good for pregnant women as well as everybody else.
*Affordable day care so a mother can work to support her family.
*A mandated livable wage. Somebody making $400 a week at 7/11 isn’t going to be able to feed and clothe themself and a child.
In the USA we seem to find these things impossible but somehow the rest of the civilized world manages to do them and still keep the trains running on time better than we do. The point is that true morality has less to do with what we forbid individuals to do and more what we as a society are willing to do to create an environment where people can thrive. In such a place people will be more likely to choose the moral path to all of our benefit.
Michael O’Hare: I appologize for ignoring your prescription of qualification on this thread but that horse seems to have left the barn some time ago.
Ed Whitney: Now what I really want to know is, did the guy win that election?
I’m the guy who posted under “Anonymous” “As to the viability question…”
I don’t know why my name gets dropped off sometimes but I usually don’t notice until after I’ve posted. Darned annoying it is!
Women get abortions because they either don’t want to be pregnant, or don’t want to have a child. Their range of reasons for not wanting one or the other is rather wide, from simple convenience, to dire medical necessity. The problem is that the latter desire, after some point in the pregnancy, involves killing somebody.
I think we can all agree that better contraception would solve part of the problem. It won’t solve the entire problem, because sometimes people change their minds after it’s too late.
“millions or tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.”
I think you’re getting a little loose with those zeros, fella. Delivering a baby and putting it up for adoption isn’t THAT expensive.
There are only 2 positions on abortion. Pro-abortions by doctors in clinical settings or pro-abortion in back alleys. Either way abortions are going to happen. Alleys or hospitals are the only really choices. I’m pro-hospital. Most republicans are pro-alley.
It is entirely possible to be OK with abortion in the first (or even second) trimester and not in the third, and be both logically consistent and respectful of women’s rights to be our own moral decision-makers. Why? Six months ought to be long enough for a woman to make up her mind; period. The exception would be when the fetus is never going to be viable (which doesn’t represent, therefore, a moral choice about the fetus’ survival) or when the mother’s life is or may be threatened by continued preganancy and that fact doesn’t become apparent until after viability. Then, as Brett Bellmore points out, the fetus can be delivered rather than aborted (usually by C-section). This in fact happens fairly often, due to pre-eclampsia, heart disease, kidney disease, etc. The results may not be optimal for the fetus, but the fetus will die anyway if the mother does.
Tyler is right, but “alleys” is mostly a metaphor; when abortions were illegal in some states, they did not, for the most part, occur literally in alleys. Women who could afford the travel expenses went to states or nations where they were legal. (It must be the same today to some extent, where some states make abortions more difficult to get than do others, and some women — minors, for example — probably travel to other states for them; as usual, as with the prohibitions on government funding for abortions as well, conservatives oppress the poor.)
I don’t know what poor women who could not afford hotel expenses most often did when abortions were illegal in some states. Some used wire hangers at home. Some doctors may have done illegal abortions in their offices, without the proper equipment, which only a hospital or clinic would have. Is there anyone knowledgeable about this?
All this talk about viability is nonsense. It’s a nice buzzword that pro-abortionists like to throw around in an attempt to minimize their culpability for murder, but it makes no sense. The dictionary definition for “viable” is: “able to live on its own”. A 6 week old newborn baby can no more survive 48 hours without a caretaker than an early second trimester embryo can survive without biological connection to the mother. Leave a 6 week old newborn in a closed room by himself/herself for 48 hours and see what happens. Sure the newborn can draw breath on its own and doesn’t have a biological connection to the mother in the strictest sense of things, but that newborn in a very real sense is no more viable than the unborn embryo. And then there are the incredible stories of unborn babies who are all but declared not viable but are brought to term and turn out just fine. By making a decision on who is viable and who is not, we are playing god. Let’s leave this whole misleading viability stuff out of the discussion.
Tyler, as to your point, this is one of the silliest false dilemmas I’ve ever heard. You think by criminalizing abortion to the point that it’s a murder and carries a life sentence or longer, that we can dramatically reign in back alley abortions? Sure, they’re still going to happen, just like murder and rape will always happen. So should we say there’s only two options, either we legalize rape or let it happen in back alleys? No, of course not, we don’t settle for that kind of logic. We make rape illegal even though it’s still going to happen. Similarly, if we believe abortion is murder, then we make it illegal and provide a penalty that will deter most offenders.
sven, of course I don’t believe in bombing abortion clinics; it solves nothing. In your example you give, shooting one lunatic who comes into a school to shoot at children would stop that problem right dead in its track. Problem solved, bad guy dead, children saved. But bombing one abortion clinic is not going to end abortion in America. It’s only gonna get me in jail. So we have to be more strategic about our approach in systematically ending the practice of abortion, which does not involve violence right now. But, as I believe Brett Bellmore said in one post, there may come a day where we have to resort to civil war in this country over this issue, just as we did over slavery before. I pray to God that he pours out his grace and mercy on us as a country, where we can resolve this and protect the sanctity of all human life without such a deep and violent divide in this country. So no, again, I don’t believe bombing abortion clinics is the right approach. It’s a kind of vigilante justice that does no good.
Bux, there is a flaw in your analogy between rape and back alley abortions. In back alley abortions, the “criminal” often becomes the victim. This is because the women — generally young, poor, and desperate ones, because others will find a safe way to get an abortion — often die or suffer serious injuries from back alley abortions. Of course, you can reply that that’s a risk they choose to take. That’s most conservatives’ attitude to poor people.
I think Bux provided the consistency that Michael was looking for. I’m not sure there’s another way of going about it.
But what if we changed the premise to “opposes abortion as killing an innocent person - *but realizes that personhood is controversial and accepts that many don’t share his view and thus cannot be considered murderers*”
I say this because I’ve always felt the abortion debate analogous in many ways to that of animal rights (and one in which I move to the side of the prosecution). Many believe meat is murder, especially if the animal is suffering. But one can also allow that it is a form of murder which is (like abortion) relative to one’s worldview. And that before we can accuse anyone of murder, we must establish in society a sufficiently convincing case that meat is indeed murder. We have not done that, and so we must allow people to eat meat.
And we may never do that. It is simply not immediately apparent that animals should have the same rights to life as people. There have been many issues over which society has been slowly moved to condemn, such as slavery, women’s suffrage, miscegenation, etc. But I think those are cases in which it seems reasonably apparent that a right should exist. Now, hindsight may be 20-20, but something as abstract as the personhood of a fetus or the consciousness of a lower mammal seems a pretty steep mountain to climb.
That is a risk they choose to take Henry. It irks me how we’ve become such a victim society, where everybody wants to cry “I’m the victim”. I guess next you’re gonna say that the bank robber who gets shot in the process of his botched robbery is a victim. So we need to make bank robbery legal because a robber runs a decent probability of getting hurt in the process? Now if the crime is reported and we arrest the shot bank robber (or the hypothetical criminal woman having a back alley abortion) in the process, I see it as our responsibility to provide medical care to bring them back to health alongside bringing them to justice. In the case of abortion, the medical community should also see what they can do to bring the baby to health if it’s a botched back alley abortion that is caught in the process.
Eli, I am pro-choice with regard to abortion and also believe that killing animals for food, unless one is stranded in a place such as a desert and has nothing else to eat, should be illegal. That is not to say that “meat is murder,” which I do not think that any animal rights advocate means literally, in the sense that it should be treated legally as murder, as Bux would treat abortion. But morality is not determined by majority vote.
To advocate that killing animals for food should generally be illegal is not to assert that “animals should have the same rights to life as people.” That should be apparent from the exception I acknowledge for people with nothing else to eat. If one must choose between saving a person or an animal from a burning building, one need not flip a coin. The point is that no one should kill an animal for a frivolous reason, and enjoying the taste of meat is a frivolous reason as compared with the life of an animal, as well as the lifetime of suffering of factory-farmed animals. There is no other reason for eating meat; it is certainly less healthy than a vegetarian or vegan diet.
Bux has raised the possibility of a civil war over abortion, just as there was one over slavery. Slavery was legal in some states and illegal in others. If Roe were reversed, the whole issue would revert to the states. Abortion would be legal in some states and not in others. Would the abortion states secede from the union if they felt threatened by the non-abortion states? How would the armies align? Would there have to be a federal law criminalizing abortion? Would there have to be a federal law prohibiting women from traveling across state lines to obtain abortions from states in which it is still legal, or from traveling abroad to seek abortions from countries in which it was legal? Veterans of the pre-Roe days can tell you about women traveling to places where they could obtain legal abortions. Exactly how much power is Bux willing to vest in the federal government to ensure that pregnant women stay pregnant until term?
@Brett- I was referring to (some place back in this thread) the idea of viability. There is a point where “viability for survival” gets sketchy. Someone posited that a fetus at six months gestation can be considered viable to survive outside the mother. But of course that is contingent on a vast aray of medical services and staff to administer them and more so on what the health of the baby is.
If you go back and read my post you will find I stated that IMO few women would allow a pregnancy to progress to a late stage and then decide to terminate the pregnancy unless there was a serious medical problem that emerged. Usually such a problem involves serious developmental problems with the fetus/child. When you combine very early premature birth with severe developmental disabilities you get costs that run into the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
In my personal expierience I was involved as a board member and volunteer at a facility that offered therapy to children in just these kinds of hopeless situations. They require round the clock medical care for all their short lives, all paid for by tax dollars (that the GOP is always trying to slash) Their lives are spent strapped into wheel chairs with life support eqipment and their families are compleetly absent or put their noses in the door so infrequently that it would probably be better if they were. I could go on but you get the picture or some corner of it.
So who wants to adopt this little bundle of joy? In the years of my involement I saw one little boy who did get adopted because he was cute and his afflictions were not so dire and he didn’t seem destined to die too imedeately. One. That was it. And God knows there are plenty of non-disabled children languishing in what we euphamistically call “homes” waiting for all of the concerned, loving people who are lining up to adopt them. But they are black or older or “troubled” so who would want them. Just damaged goods don’t ya know.
It seems to me that a lot of people have very simplistic ideas about how complicated and hopeless and terrifying life can really get in the blink of an eye. Count your blessings if you don’t have first hand knowledge of these things (I have more knowledge than I want) and don’t be so quick to say what is right and wrong. Sometimes right and wrong are very hard to weigh in the real world, where all choices are full of pain.
I seem to recall a guy on this site who thought his right to have an extended clip for his target practice gun out weighed the rest of us being a little safer on the streets. That guy told me that absolutist arguments should be regarded as junk and dismissed out of hand. Should we dismiss his absolut abhorance of all abortions or instead understand that his heart is sincere and try to find some sane middle ground.
God grant us more sincere hearts and the wisdom to find sanity.