This is a straw man argument. No one is arguing children need no societal protection. Look at the push for Head Start under Bush, for example.

https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/earlychi...

1. A block that also skews religious, and socially conservative - that could totally work. There's only one problem with that in the present day.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/14/texas-special-electi...

Legal basis? With enough mastery, it can be whatever you want it to be.

This is could be a reason that religious folks and conservatives donate much more to charity, even though their income is less [1].

For cases like childcare, they believe that burdened families are best served by a close community coming together to help each other, rather than government programs.

[1] https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/resource/statistics-o...

They get out of bed for denying care that empirically has a massive effect of reducing suicide for trans people, too.

That is essentially the same argument, just applied to somebody who is very much human.

I don't support this ruling, but I don't believe that argument is any good.

Btw, I agree with you. I believe women should be free to choose until the fetus is able to live independently of the mom.

This is because I don't think a 3 month old fetus is equivalent to a person.

But IF you agree with the premise that a fetus is a person, it follows that they should have the same negative rights as other people (freedom from being killed, for instance), that does NOT mean that the person has to think that every person should have a large set of positive rights (ie rights imply that tax-payers should provide welfare for all people).

That is one way to frame it. Usually, though, abortion requires someone to actively kill the fetus.

And there is another problem with this argument. The sacrifice it takes for the woman to carry the baby for 9 months may not be the real reson people have abortions. Rather, I imagine, the real reason is that they don't want what happens AFTER the child is born.

Let's consider a similar argument: A ship crew on an oil tanker going from Saudi Arabia to Huston discovers an uninvited "passenger" hiding in the ship. A 5 year old girl, let's say. Do they have an obligation to feed this girl until they reach LA, or can they throw her overboard?

Now, from a purely postive rights argument, one could say they're not allowed to throw her overboard, but they also are not required to feed her. But we all know that's not going to happen.

This is what solves the dillemma for me, others may differ.

Maybe you really do not care. After all, neonaticide has been a common practice for poor mothers all over the world, in places where there were no welfare states or orphanages to take children that nobody could or would care for.

And neonaticide doesn't evern require an active act. You can just leave the child in the forest, to be taken by frost or animals.

But for a lot of people, it makes a big difference whether they consider the fetus an actual person, or just a lump of cells.

For an abortion, you turn this on its head. If no action is performed, the fetus will most likely surivive in the womb until it's born.

Now, you may claim that fetus is somehow commiting a crime by extracting resources from the mother's body. The problem with this argument, is that this crime is first of all not voluntary. The fetus doesn't have a way to stop doing so by an act of will. Second, the fetus is not developed enough that we would assign moral agency to it (just like we would not do that to a baby after birth).

Now, if you believe (like me, especially in the first trimester) that the fetus is not a person, and doesn't have the legal rights of a person, it is still probably ok to abort it.

But if you think that the fetus IS a person, it also follows that it deserves the same protections as a person. In other words, the passive right of the fetus to not be "murdered" is in conflict with the passive right of the mother to not have its resources extracted. The fact that the passive right to not be murdered may be considered a stronger right than the mothers right to bodily autonomy.

Also, in this situation, there are two more factors to take into account:

1) This conflict between the two subjects involved was not caused by any actions of the fetus. Unless she was raped, though, the mother most likely played a part in the conception of the fetus, so bears some responsibility for being in such a situation.

2) Even though there is a real conflict of interests, the MOST passive approach is to not abort, while aborting requires active intervention.

So, I would argue, IF the baby is to be considered 100% a person, with exactly the same protections by the law as the mother, it is logical that abortion is banned.

Now, personally, I don't agree with this premise. In fact, I see the fetus as becoming a person gradually, and I'm not even sure if it reaches fully 100% at birth (though close enough for practial purposes, at least as long as the mother is not starving). Personally, I think the fetus at conception should have 0 person-rights. After 2-3 months, maybe similar to a farm animal, and during the 2nd trimester, probably similiar to your favourite pet.

Only during the 3rd trimester, once the baby would be able to survive outside the womb, would I consider it to get close to deserve the same protectino as a baby after birth.

> I wasn't clear then: I don't care in the context of this question. We already don't require you to donate bone marrow to save a specific person.

And with all due respect, I think perhaps what you're really saying is not that you disagree with the reasoning above, but rather that you refuse to seriously consider the premise of the Christian fundamentalists. In other words, I think you refuse to really imagine that you see the fetus as a 100% full person.

Now, I'm not meaning to imply malice on your part. To understand another person's perspective when they disagree with you about something fundamental is hard It requires a lot of empathy to do so, and it is not easy to find this kind of empathy for a perspective or group of people that one has negative emotions for.

As for it being an active action or not: if we instead were to leave the foetus in place, but remove all the connection to the uterus only, it would still die due to lack of nutrients.

You are right that the woman might have been involved with an activity that can cause babies, but then you can get into the weird arguments about liability to third-parties that do not exist at the time of the action, and the feotus in the end is no different (it does not live) as it would have if the woman had choosen to use other means, such as condoms or not had sex at all.

If you listen to the pro-forced-birth side, they claim to be speaking for and defending the most vulnerable “people” (if we are to admit their premise) in our society. They are advocates for the innocent, and abortion needs to be illegal to protect their vulnerable rights. You can see them all over TV today and the internet saying just this.

In fact fetuses are not the most vulnerable “people”; they have significantly more protections than newborn children. Aside from guaranteed food and shelter, fetuses also have the full support of a political party and religious institutions.

Newborn children are guaranteed neither food nor shelter. In America, we even separate newborns from their mothers depending on their immigration status. We’ve even jailed children and put them on trial. Gun deaths are the leading cause of death for children and that’s a problem the pro-forced-birth party doesn’t want to fix.

So all this talk about “protecting the vulnerable children” is clearly just disingenuous. It’s not about protecting the vulnerable at all. It’s about a religious conservative powergrab and we know this by how quickly Clarence Thomas invites challenges to contraception and gay marriage, on the basis of the Dobbs decision.

I'm not American, so I don't know these things. Can you document a single newborn child that, with the knowledge of the government, is starving to death outdoors?

Yes.

(Actually, the latter obligation attaches whether or not you have the former belief, but if you don’t believe that the entity involved actually is a “person” whose life has value, it explains, but does not justify, why you would not also feel the latter obligation.)

If anything, it's more important to me that I refute misinformation in support of things I believe as opposed to argue against positions I disagree with.

edit: fixed typo

This is just a dishonest argument.

1: https://wisqars.cdc.gov/fatal-reports

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_Uni...

Here's how to set up WISQARS for that report:

  2020, United States
  Firearm Deaths and Rates per 100,000
  All Races, Both Sexes, Ages 0 to 18
  ICD-10 Codes: W32-W34,X72-X74,X93-X95,Y22-Y24, Y35.0,\*U01.4

It’s a pill that basically forces a woman to have a period regardless of whether there’s an embryo in the lining or not. You can only do it before an embryo even resembles a human being.

And yet, it’s as at risk as anything else.

Moreover, guns may have outpaced automotive deaths, but they have not outpaced "accidents" writ large.

How many "accidents" cause school shootings? The US is literally the only country where this happens.

> ... until the same protection is applied to children post-birth ...

The same protection is applied to children post-birth. It's still illegal to kill those children after they're born.

---

Edit to respond to comments, because I'm "posting too fast":

Yes, the conservative position on social programs seems inconsistent with being pro-life to someone who believes that government benefit programs are not only helpful, but are the primary mechanism to help the needy.

But not to people who believe, like Reagan, that "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"

They don't look to the government for help for themselves and they don't see it as a mechanism for helping others. For that, they prefer family, church, charity, and community.

They also generally believe, contrary to some extreme positions that have been exaggerated by their opponents, that:

"we would not consider it immoral for a woman to accept treatment that is necessary to save her life, but which may end the life of her preborn child."

https://www.focusonthefamily.com/family-qa/abortion-and-heal...

The law may protect kids from being directly killed consequence free. However, indirectly, these good Christians support everything right up to that (spare the rod, spoil the child).

Edit: To respond to your edit, since you don't want to take the time to actually respond.

Reagan was good with the short quips, yet hardly someone you should look to for a "pro-life" attitude. He actively impeded AIDs research because "ewe, gay people". He has blood on his hands and invoking him in an argument about the sanctity of life is ridiculous.

Further, saying "Oh, let the churches feed the hungry". What would you do for the child of an atheist parent? What would you do if the church (like many of them do!) imposes strict morality clauses before aid is given. What if there is no church giving such aid in a community?

Why do you think there is child starvation in the united states? Because not enough kids know about their local churches and community centers?

It's also laughable that the same people who cheer on dumping 800 billion dollars into the most powerful military in the world are somehow afraid of the consequences of what happens when that money goes into a program to feed children. So what, the government is only scary when the money DOESN'T go towards guns? What kind of backwards thinking is that?

It's legal to force a raped child to carry a pregnancy to term even if they will suffer lifetime damage or fatal injuries.

It's legal to force a raped child or woman to carry to term a child that is the result of incest and may suffer a lifetime of genetic damage and disability.

It's a nonsense argument that is premised of the falsity that a fertilized ovum is somehow a "child". It is not.

> smaller proportions of women in 2004 than in 1987 said that having a baby would interfere with their job or career (38% vs. 50%), that they were not mature enough (22% vs. 27%), that their husband or partner wanted them to have an abortion (14% vs. 24%), and that they and their partner could not or did not want to get married (12% vs. 30%). In both surveys, 1% indicated that they had been victims of rape, and less than half a percent said they became pregnant as a result of incest. [1]

The large number of unborn children that have been killed because of them being perceived as an economical burden, or other personal reasons cannot be ignored. But you ignore all this injustice and make it seem like abortion is all about dealing with rape and incest, while these in reality only account for ca 1% of all abortion cases.

I’m saying killed because we still have a large portion of abortions happening in the second (10-15% worldwide [2]) and third trimesters.

The point here is that a woman’s freedom does not override her child’s right to live. But you seem to think otherwise.

[1] https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2005/reasons-us-wom...

[2] https://www.uptodate.com/contents/overview-of-second-trimest...

If the Pro Choice movement starts a campaign aimed specifically at changing federal law to allow abortions in the situations above, I believe they have a fair chance of getting 60% within 1-2 election cycles.

Anyway, I think that's mostly irrelevant. Say conservatives decided that abortion would be banned nationwide but there would be comprehensive social programs to care for pregnant women and children. The banning of abortion would still be a terrible idea.

Obviously absurd and far beneath the level of rigor I'd expect on HN.

Because, if protecting life was truly the goal you are after, then you'd do a whole lot more to actually, you know, protect life, long after the child is born.

People understand that murder is illegal - but life isn't just two states. Alive or Dead. If we were living in 20,000 BCE then maybe we could be forgiven for thinking this way, but we live in an advanced, modern, (presumably) ethical civilization where life is about flourishing and giving everyone opportunities to thrive.

Focusing on the fetus's rights, yet condemning children to a life that's designed from the start to prevent flourishing is the conundrum people are referring to and pointing out the hypocrisy of.

So where is the child who is raped and impregnated by her uncle, priest, or coach supposed to turn?

Is the government really doing all that much for those victims? Our justice and foster care systems are pretty badly run. Democrats want to throw more money at the broken systems. Republicans want to tear them down. I'd support reforming them, but that is much easier said than done.

I’ve never heard this stance put forward.