I guess "life" and "choice" are just references to things that the respective partisans bring up when arguing. Which would imply that my argument above is wrong: it's not about accurately describing a social situation, but about giving an argument a short name.
Which has a problem of its own. It's limiting. It implies that if you're against abortions, then that's because of the validity of some "life" argument, or the invalidity of some "choice" argument. Over time, it probably makes the debates stupider.
Why give names to arguments (pro-choice, pro-life)? Why not just say pro-abortion, anti-abortion? Because you want to appeal to peoples' preexisting biases? If that's the case, it's a bad attitude towards debate.
> Why not just say pro-abortion, anti-abortion?
Because almost no one is "pro-abortion". It's a horrible and traumatic experience to go through and no one is happy to have one. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have the option to do it. That's why pro-choice works better - it's just more descriptive of the actual issue.
This is not the case. Even if the foetus is a human person, body autonomy tells us that no person should be forced to give up their own bodily well being in ensure the survival of someone else.
Let's say that a person needs a kidney or they will day, would it be OK to force the only compatible donor to donate his because he can survive without it? If not, how is it fine to force a woman to go through nine months of pregnancy? Pregnancy and birth can be harmful to the body, and even put the mother's life at risk.
It's common to say that the "pro-life vs. pro-choice" debate is all about whether the foetus is a person of not, but that's a misdirect. You can resolve that question and still find yourself trying to solve essentially the trolley problem.
I would say exact opposite. It is the key question, because if there is no fetus-person claim, the whole issue is moot as there is no entity to which pregnant person has moral responsibility.
But if we assume a fetus is a person with all personal rights, it is just clash of rights and freedoms of two persons, which may turn out both ways based on relative valuations of these rights in a society. Personal autonomy is a strong card, but there are many cases where it is restricted to protect life of others (involuntary treatment of mentally ill or forced isolation of infected).
Also, the case is stronger as (with the exception of rape) parents are mostly responsible for conception of child. One can say that it was not their decision and contraceptions can fail, but the same can be said for car accidents.
OTOH, the fetus-person position is here only because it is a forced religious idea on secular society. So it is much more clear-cut to just reject fetus-person proposition on secular grounds. (We already did something similar for braindead cases that are biologically alive.) Without that 'pro-life' position has no standing. By abandoning fetus-person debate and making the debate about personal autonomy, the 'pro-choice' side just unnecessary weakened their case.
This question is essentially unsolvable from a philosophical point of view. Laws and people will take their stand about when human life beings, but there is no objective definition that will solve this. Making the debate about an unsolvable question makes the debate unsolvable. This makes it very difficult to change existing laws. This "debate" favors whichever side the current laws already favor.
In liberal society restricting personal freedom requires strong claim of necessity. Therefore it is a burden of 'pro-life' side to make such strong claim. As such claim requires fetus-person claim, the 'pro-life' side would need to show that (or at least show that it is universally hold position in society).
Exactly. I think it helps to steer the debate towards the assumption that the fetus is a human being since it exists. The mother does not have the right to kill it as it would be murder. However, the mother has the right to stop her pregnancy since it is her body. Now the kick is: These two statements are not contradictory! If the fetus is viable then his life can be saved by the doctors, otherwise it will die. In either case, it is not the (legal) responsibility of the mother.
Of course, the mother would be probably a douchebag if she tries to interrupt a pregnancy at 8 months, but that's a different issue.
A newborn baby is pretty much helpless and needs its mother/other. If we go just by that, it means a new mother does nothing wrong if they leave their kid outside in the sun for 5 days until it dies. After all, no-one should give their 'bodily' well being. Yes, you can give him for adoption, etc, but by the logic here it means if a mother just leaves their kids to starve, not kill them directly, but not doing 'motherly' things, it is ok, after all, they aren't fully responsible.
(again, not taking sides in the pro-life/pro-choice argument, just stating it isn't black or white)
EDIT: to clarify, I'm not really unbiased about that and I do take sides: I think that people have the right to control their bodies, and thus women have the right to have abortions. (I also think that abortion is wrong when there's no risk of physical trauma for the woman, but hey, people have the right to do wrong things!)
https://quillette.com/2019/05/21/rethinking-abortion-advocac...
https://m.soundcloud.com/therightsideirl/interview-coleman-h...
Thats a pretty terrible analogy. Getting pregnant is not something you cannot avoid. That would assume that people have no responsibility in their current condition.
The rape pregency is a different matter. Before safe abortions the mother had the baby and treated it as an innocent child. Some would be given up for adoption. Some societies force the rapist to pay. No society killed the baby when it was born.
She got pregnant anyway. The nurses were so incredulous, they tested her four times, said it was impossible, and finally gave her a blood test to confirm.
We caught it very early, and it was ectopic. Her doctor said if she didn't abort it, she would likely die. Even a healthy pregnancy is more likely to kill you than an abortion in the first trimester.
Anyway, my point is that none of this is your or the govt's business. It was between her and her doctor. Someone can be 100% responsible and still be in a regrettable medical situation, and no one should have the authority to say, "You need to die or risk dying for this cluster of cells."
I know what you mean but this triggered me for some reason :)
It was a likely-fatal medical condition. It was impossible to bring to term and produce a healthy baby.
"Caught" implies that we discovered the pregnancy before it progressed into a more dangerous phase. "It" refers to the pregnancy.
Humans may want to see meaning in certain rapidly-growing clusters of cells, but that doesn't make them less dangerous if they're growing in the wrong part of the body.
Unless you promote not having sex at all, then yes, it’s something you cannot avoid. You can take precautions, but contraception fails.
And that still doesn’t even touch topics such as rape.
Except that some pro-choice advocates admit that it is a human life being killed and still insist it is good and necessary. That and most of the rest of the pro-choice activists would never accept being forced into making a determination on when they believe life begins. They don't care when life begins. They care about not restricting abortion.
Edit: I should have read other comments here first. As you can see, many pro-choice people are perfectly willing to acknowledge that they are willing to allow abortion even though it is a person. In other words, actively killing your child if you don't want to support them.
In general, "pro-life" people are not pro-life, they are pro-soul, but they know instinctively that's a debate they can't win, so they change the name. It's, in my opinion, a big, big hypocrisy.
Living people making unwanted intrusions into one’s body, even where one has previously consented, can generally be forcibly stopped from that intrusion. There are basically no circumstances where being alive itself gives someone the kind of claim on someone else’s body necessary to sustain a fetus. So, no, the conclusion you present does not follow from the assumption that the fetus is a living human person with all the rights and privileges usually associated with that status. It still requires assumption of novel, sui generis, privileges.
Even then, not really. Otherwise Pro-Life adherents would push policies that reduce the number of abortions overall—like better access to and education about birth control—over policies that don’t—like making abortions illegal. Instead, they demonstrate that their goal isn’t to actually reduce the number of abortions overall.
https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.h...
Your local puritanical propaganda is winning, it would seem. I'm european. I see the conversation as explicitly pro-abortion and anti-abortion. Now and then the anti-abortionists try to americanize and call themselves pro-life but few buy it.
I am pro-abortion, because I understand that it's a traumatic experience, which nonetheless can be very desirable given some circumstances. If you're trying to side-step the fact that no-one ideally would have an abortion, you're just opening yourself up to counter-arguments attacking exactly that, and that's dumb, because you've detracted the debate from the true point (from a pro-abortion viewpoint) – sometimes it's a necessary sacrifice.
I am also pro euthanasia
Being in favour of something it doesn't mean you hope things will go south
You support their existence exactly because if things go south it's better to have them
I am not pro choice, I am anti anti abortists
... does NOT mean pro-choice. It means "limit the ability to choose in favor of the right choices".
I, personally, like both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" names. These names represent underlying positions well. These names also have a good balance [between brevity, clarity, and highlighting key differences].
I understand the argument that it's wrong to force a woman to carry and bear a child. It seems, though, that the lesser evil of forcing a man to give money to that woman shouldn't be allowed under similar ethical reasoning.
(I.e. if it's okay to kill a foetus, it's okay to economically disavow it.)
But this argument would be very unpopular.
Assuming no rape/nonconsent in either scenario:
Male impregnates a female and regrets it: too bad, you're held responsible and have to help take care of the offspring.
Female gets impregnated and regrets it: you're not held responsible, you're allowed to kill the offspring and don't have to help take care of it if you don't want to.
Chivalry never died, in a strange sort of way. I'm not complaining about this; I just find it interesting to point it out.
This isn't really about rape; it's about the legal power asymmetry in entirely consensual sex. I'm not complaining about this, or advocating any policy positions, I just find it interesting to think about out loud.
Your reaction is interesting, too. Why do you associate the gp post with misogyny?
If it is a bodily autonomy issue shouldn't those choices be responsible for the economical realities of those choices?
It's a clear case of taxation without representation.
compression is the mother of persuasion
This term exists: it's yet another loaded, biased term: one that has been historically used by pro-life advocates to label pro-choice advocates.
“Pro-life” Americans would be well advised to see the movie, as a reminder of what would quickly be happening in their own country if a complete ban on abortions were to happen.
(anyone know how much lead there was in romanian petrol circa 1969?)
While the Ceausescus were hated, it is definitely not a given that popular discontent would have led to their deaths had it not been for that cabal that hastily arranged the trial and executions.
Ceaușescu was killed because the terrorists wouldn't give up otherwise, the terrorists being suspected to be the old secret police, which also wreaked havoc in Timișoara.
Where does it say that? I might have missed it. Abandoning a child for having a leg deformity doesn't strike me as if he was wanted much.
Anyway, the poor conditions in the orphanages and children hospitals were a result of overcrowding and this happened due to Ceaușescu's policies that turned Romania into a baby factory. And there was also the issue that children with disabilities were incompatible with communism's "new man" ideal, so the orphanages for children with disabilities were genuine horrors.
The accident cost him his hand _and_ his parents.
This was a huge social experiment the pro-life vs pro-choice debaters can learn from.
If you want to see a documentary on the subject this is a good one: https://youtu.be/ZgZJ-IV8Et0