In that way, the pro-life crowd has at least a closer framing of the issue. The pro-choice crowd is talking about religion, privacy, social safety nets, etc. But that's all beside the point. If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters. We should all try and at least agree upon the framing of the issue and argue from there or we'll never get anywhere.
This is irrelevant to my personal views on abortion because I believe that individuals have rights over their own body which supersede anyone else's rights to their body. We hold this as true in all other facets of bodily autonomy. I have no legal responsibility to risk my life to protect my fellow citizens. I have no obligation to regularly donate blood or bone marrow. I can't be compelled to donate a kidney. I can even arrange for all my healthy organs to be thrown in a fire or buried underground after my death rather than allow them to be used to save the lives of multiple people. This is all because my body is mine and I can control what happens to it. If I refuse to allow it to be used to support another life, that is my choice.
The child is literally feeding off the mother until birth, taking energy, nutrients, maybe even killing the mother. I don't necessarily want to frame it this way, because I want to view the relationship as mutualistic or commensalistic, rather than parasitic, but I could see how it might be biologically a parasitic relationship.
However, a quick search shows that people against abortions say that biologically it must be "an organism that attaches to a member of a different species and feeds off that organism in a manner that is physically injurious to the other organism."
While it may not fit the dictionary definition of a biologically parasitic relationship, I believe it still can "feed off that organism in a manner that is physically injurious to the other organism."
So I think there could be an argument for self-defense.
But I do believe that some people who are pregnant and would like abortions may perceive the child as being parasitic (not a parasite, as I also don't like to attach strict labels of badness to one's identity but to focus on behaviors).
So I agree it sounds crass and yet think if others want to use self-defense for other arguments defending their harm to others, I don't see why that same argument couldn't apply here.
No, the court remanded the lawmaking decision to the states, as it should be.
There's this section of the CA-NV border known as "state line", which has a litany of casinos just right on the NV side of that border. The notion that different states have different laws is a fact we've accepted since the founding of our country.
When AZ bans abortion, Arizona women will be mildly inconvenienced by a three hour drive to the CA border, as other matters of state law divergence have always been. Nobody has lost their rights.
Cynically, I'd suggest that abortion rights aren't even the issue at hand - lots of people seem very angry/afraid that after a century of DC slowly arrogating all available power and authority to itself, that this power might flow back the other way.
I'm ok with this argument, as I believe that legislatures, national and state, should write laws to address these issues, not rely on court precedent.
> Cynically, I'd suggest that abortion rights aren't even the issue at hand - lots of people seem very angry/afraid that after a century of DC slowly arrogating all available power and authority to itself, that this power might flow back the other way.
I disagree that this is the main reason, because SCOTUS just basically said the NY state law against guns in public was unconstitutional, and Congress is passing a national gun law as we speak.
So I find it hard to believe that it's just about state's rights, because it's giving states some rights in one week while also taking away other rights.
I don't want to characterize pregnancy this way, I also don't want to characterize almost any human interaction this way. I prefer to believe that we all have good intentions and sometimes accidentally hurt people and that most of us are trying our absolute best to minimize pain and maximize joy, especially to those around us. So what can hurt me is how so many mothers may feel pain whether they keep the baby or abort, and we often demonize them for making one of the hardest and most gut-wrenching decisions in their lives. That's not to say I don't feel pain for the unborn child, I also feel the pain of the lost life. But I also feel the pain for the child who is born and kills the mother, or who is born and is resented by the mother or abandoned.
I feel pain all around the situation and it hurts me that we can be so quick to demonize the unborn child or the mother.
I doubt that argument would get far in the case of most abortions, but it might work in cases where the mother's life is at much more risk than is normal for pregnancy, especially where the pregnancy has gone so wrong that there is almost no chance the baby is going to make it.
Notably the same argument has been used to set the precedent that male rape victims are also compelled to pay child support to their rapists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer
There the alimony decision was based on the rape victim giving consent from the standpoint of the civil laws which also govern parental relationships. That did not matter for criminal law because the victim was underage.
Not that I agree with the court here, but it is completely different from what you described.
But there are a bunch of similar decisions here: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
And the common theme is just because the parent is raped, doesn't override the rights of the child.
It's easy to see how that logic would be extended from child support to abortion.
If you believe that abortion is murder, how the child came to be is irrelevant.
The only way that the mother's conscious choice to have sex factor's into the equation is if the intent of abortion laws is not to protect children, but rather to punish women who choose to have sex.
But just strictly going from the legal sense, I imagine there's a lot of leeway in defining self-defense with regards to whether one chooses to enter into a situation where one is likely to be attacked.
I also don't feel very clear on what are the relevant trade offs, but maybe it's more clear to you. What do you see as the relevant tradeoffs?
Component 1: human life is valuable, and ending a human life is a serious matter not just for the individual, but for society
Component 2: personal autonomy, esp wrt control of one's own body, is one of the most profound of freedoms, and one of particular importance to the American people
Most Americans would probably agree that these two components explain the majority of the 'moral variance' on the issue. So then it's a matter of making an uncomfortable choice between them: when do we value human life less than autonomy? Answering that question will almost certainly require some further difficult reckoning:
Sub-component 3: what really counts as a human life? A person born without a brain? A brain dead patient? A patient reduced to the level of an animal due to Lewy Body Dementia? A 8.9 month old unborn baby? A 4 week fetus? A fetus that isn't viable outside the mother's body?
Sub-sub-component 4: what do we count as viable? What amount of medical intervention is allowed for a fetus to be considered viable?
And then things like:
Intersection {1,2}: What about when a person wants to exercise autonomy to end his own life, but is unable / unwilling to do so by himself? Should it be legal to enlist someone to help?
Etc. Tradeoffs all the way down. Seems more productive to admit that they exist and that you're taking a position. I agree with you that when making a legal ruling metaphor may be required (e.g., saying that the right to commercially transact is a kind of free speech), but in the current context it seems totally gratuitous. Specifically, if we're talking about making exceptions when the mother's health is at risk, that's easy to discuss explicitly -- human life is important, but the fully realized adult life is more important than the nascent life of the fetus.
> This is irrelevant to my personal views on abortion because I believe that individuals have rights over their own body which supersede anyone else's rights to their body.
It absolutely is relevant, because you view collapses into nonsense unless you believe a fetus is a not an individual and that it has no rights. If the fetus is a person, then you're in a situation where their rights to their own body are getting superseded by another's right.
> We hold this as true in all other facets of bodily autonomy.
No, not all. You totally have the legal obligation to provide for your children, if you have them, and that almost always involves using your body in some way.
You are not legally obligated to donate your organs to your children, fwiw.
I think the discussion of ethical and legal obligation cannot possible be given broad swath of "no one is obligated to anyone" nor "you are entirely obligated to someone in every way". This isn't how reality works. Parents are considered obligated to their children, unless they choose not to parent their children and withdraw their parental responsibilities under existent legal frameworks. At the same time, parents are not entirely obligated to their children, as parents are not fined or jailed for not donating their blood or organs.
If you have a child, and you are the the only good potential donor match, and that child will die without, say, a bone-marrow transplant, you are not forced to donate your own bone marrow. Saying "You totally have the legal obligation to provide for your children, if you have them, and that almost always involves using your body in some way" is a poor analogy that really doesn't encompass what it is to have another being living inside you.
That's why I think the "viability" standard is the only one that makes sense, and also why that as technology has improved that I think the cutoff date for abortion should be lowered to the new age of viability. Any human should have the right to remove another from their own body. In the case of a child, if we have no technology to allow that child to survive outside the mother, so be it, but I think the much better analogy to forced birthing is actually slavery.
What a bizarre and morbid misunderstanding. You have the legal obligation to use that "flesh" to acquire food to feed your children.
Also, it's not like a fetus eats its mother's flesh from the inside (until I suppose it emerges from the husk like a xenomorph?).
What about when the child rips open the mother's vulva on the way out? If it's a person, should it be possible to try it for assault?
[1] https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/hellp-syndrome.as...
Probably something like, you are responsible for the creating of the fetus/baby/whatever so you have more of an obligation to it than you do to other people.
It is mostly a personal responsibility thing, as I understand it. You are responsible for creating the baby so you must give up some of your rights like bodily autonomy.
Birth control and sex education are not really related to that at all as far as I can tell.
If that's what you believe, then don't terminate your pregnancy. As far as anyone else is concerned, it's none of your concern.
I mean, I personally agree with you.
However, there are very few true libertarians in our society and almost everyone has views that they wish to impose on other people. The pro lifers are not different than anyone else in this regard.
And more's the pity.
If you're talking about not just "women who have sex" but "~women~ people who have sex without regard for the children whom they may conceive", then yeah I'm against that kind of sex.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_HIV/AIDS
Edit: I suppose the Catholic Church is sex-positive when it comes to their clergy and underage parishioners. Disclaimer: I went to Catholic school for 11 years.
Not really. Catholic doctrine might, American Catholics, especially, do not:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2016/09/28/poll-finds-...
> Even in areas of the world where AIDS is rampant.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/health/zika-pope-francis-cont...
(Benedict XVI made somewhat similar comments in 2010 regarding AIDS in Africa.)
This is unfortunately true (but unsurprisingly so, especially these days). That doesn't mean that they're somehow right; they don't speak for the Church.
Correct.
> They are not sex-positive, they are procreation-positive.
They are both. "Sex-positive" doesn't mean "anything goes".
> I suppose the Catholic Church is sex-positive when it comes to their clergy and underage parishioners.
No, the Church is harshly critical of this kind of thing. The fact that individual offenders have been shuffled around for decades is to our shame and to the shame of their bishops, but nonetheless the Church is not "for" this kind of thing in any way.
> I went to Catholic school for 11 years.
At least in America, I'd say the majority of Catholic schools are only nominally Catholic.
I prefer to judge the church on its actions, not on its words. The bishops/cardinals in question got lofty appointments as their "punishment"[1].
[1] https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-churchs-grim-histor...
> Cardinal Law was neither indicted nor arrested. Instead, Pope John Paul II transferred Law to run one of the Vatican’s most cherished properties, the Basilica of Saint Mary, essentially rewarding Law for his deft cover-up of the abuses in Boston.
The best way to ensure that children are treated with appropriate regard is to ensure that fewer unwanted children are born.
The US government can compel you to sacrifice your entire body ( organs and all ) for the greater good of other citizens should they wish. [0]
...I'm not saying I agree or disagree with anything in this thread, I just think this particular chain of comments is funny.
But if you’re asking directly if I think someone should be able to prioritize their own life in place of someone else’s, well yes, yes I do.
[1]: https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-... anyone who wants to rail about late-term abortions without knowing the pain and suffering that is involved for the women that have to get them needs to read that interview. All of it. Then read it again. And then think about why the focus of this debate is on the extremely-rare scenarios that are not about people changing their minds and not wanting to bring a child into the world, but are terribly sad medical scenarios.
This 2016 interview with a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks after she found out her fetus would not survive outside the womb and who then had to suffer through 24 hours of labor and have her dead child ripped from her womb (and prior brain surgery meant she couldn’t push), really paints a picture of the terrible reality for anyone forced to be in a position to terminate a pregnancy at such a late stage: https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-...
When crafting law it is vitally important to understand how this would realistically affect people.
If we go back to coat hanger abortions and render fetuses “unviable” that way, is everything peachy keen?
If not, then are miscarriages now occasion for criminal investigations?
Pro-life logic is garbage
In several states, this is now true
The reasonable thing would just be to deliver the baby and put it up for adoption, but don't you have the right to, say, disconnect the placenta (it's your placenta), and also not have your abdomen cut open to help out some other individual who just happens to be stuck in there?
It's hilarious to me that the same crowd that fights for gun rights under the banner of "individual liberty" is very quick to invite the government into the womb.
Well you cannot ban abortion. You can only ban safe abortions.
This is what they want. They don't want an end to abortions. They want an end to safe abortions. If more women die in labor, they are ok with it.
I do support this kind of abortion because the only situation I could imagine it happening is in a life saving one.
And you can perform the abortion yourself. After all, what right does a doctor have over what operations you can do on your own body?
The scenario you've described is approximately the same as a suicide. Consider that people still do that even though it's illegal. Heinous shit will happen, but if you're genuinely interested in minimizing human death and suffering, safe and legal abortion is a necessary component to that.
I'm not positive that allowing no questions asked abortions 1 day before the due date will minimize human death and suffering. Instead, I think it would provide an avenue to take for people who have, basically, cold feet about being a parent.
In fact, I have to wonder if OP thinks they have the right to abandon their already-birthed baby in the wilderness. After all, what right does that individual have to force another person to take care of it? I'm an individual after all. If I refuse to allow my body to be used to support another life, that is my choice.
Wheresoever these rights meet, we have, as a society, chosen the right of bodily autonomy. No one may compel you to donate your blood or organs, even if they might die without them. Even if they are your children. Even if you will be dead when they are taken. We have made a strong cultural choice that the body is yielded only with specifically granted consent.
Abortion is a place where these two fundamental rights connect. The mother's right to control herself and the child's to exist. Under our culture's normal choice of bodily autonomy, it is an unfortunate consequence that the child will not live.
It might be entirely reasonable to frame laws encouraging that children deemed viable should rather be birthed so long as there is not risk to the mother. But this is not, of course, what they have done.
Instead we have re-opened a chapter once closed. Of horror stories with women being denied abortive procedures for ectopic pregnancies, or known failed pregnancies, forcing them instead to carry their dead child until it is naturally expelled. Horrors that would be easily taken care of by the woman simply having that natural choice over her own flesh.
Desperate women without resources to flee oppressive laws will resort to the same sorts of dangerous remedies they did in pre-Roe days. These frequently went wrong, and many that spoke in favor of Roe when it was passed cited such stories.
Women will die and families will suffer under the laws that have become active today, and those laws that will be soon certified into action or freshly written to take advantage of Roe's absence. The people insisting on these laws will take no measure of responsibility for the terrors they inflict, insisting instead it is the fault of the victims of these laws. Many seem to take some perverse glee in it.
That one of the justices has insisted in their concurrence that we review and vacate laws enshrining similarly protected rights for millions of Americans, it seems sure the current path will lead only to more misery, bigotry, violence and horror if those pushing this poisonous legislation have their way.
I think it is fair to force a point of no return in a pregnancy after which we prohibit abortion (edit: beyond situations that threaten the mother's life). The most important aspect to me is that the person has the time and freedom to make that decision that is right for them. If we are trying to be scientific about it, viability occurs around 24 weeks so that seems like a reasonable deadline for a decision.
What I'm trying to get to is that "My body my choice" is a nice thing to chant at a protest, it's also a pretty damn bad argument, I can't believe we are still doing this AFTER covid. I'm 100% for abortion but I find it hard to argue outside a "the fetus is not a sentient being at that point" frame.
It's really not a bad argument if you consider acute vs routine circumstances. Otherwise how could we argue against blackout restrictions[1] in cities now that WWII has happened?
[1] http://pbchistoryonline.org/page/local-response-blackout-res...
Which is why I would be charged with murder if I go punch a heavily pregnant woman in the gut and kill her child.
There's a line somewhere between total bodily autonomy and being compelled by the state to experience: nausea, swelling, muscle and back pain, weight gain, incontinence, depression, and laceration to you genitals.
> parents are still allowed to circumcise their children
Indeed, propertarianism where parents do not own their children would also proscribe surgically mutilating them, for example. However, parents would not necessarily be obligated to take care of their children; this is also the basis by which abortion would be permitted. Propertarianism where parents do own their children (which strikes me as unreasonable) would a fortiori also allow abortion, as well as other more universally reviled practices such as post-birth infanticide.
You're missing the point that your choice to have sex created the fetus/life in the first place. That changes the debate and invalidates all of your examples.
By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a crash, the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries, because after all, it was their choice to drive.
I'm pro-choice but this does not follow from that logic, which is that choosing to take action that might result in another living thing temporarily being dependent on you to survive, does come with at least some level of obligation not to rip that support away such that they die. Your analogy doesn't address that at all.
Moreover, "living thing" is the key word here. A fetus IS a living thing. So is a cow, a cockroach, an intestinal parasite. We kill those, and we support industries that kill them, without thinking. And while there are extremists who support protecting a broader segment of "life," that is not what the pro-life movement is about. If I breed cows for a living, I have a legal and ethical right to kill those cows. And if I have a baby attached to my uterus, I should have the legal right to do what I want.
But if you instead put the baby in your uterus, of your own free will and choice, you are responsible for it.
Rape accounts for less than 0.5% of abortions. While it's important to consider, it doesn't remove the responsibility in the other 99.5%.
I am under no more ethical obligation to preserve the life of a fetus in me than I am to preserve the life of an intestinal parasite that I've ingested.
Yeah, obviously, but it barely matters for the overall argument. It's misdirection, not a substantive refutation. Is anyone on the pro-choice side happy with only allowing abortions in cases of rape and incest? I'm not. I'm pretty sure that falls under the pro-life umbrella, in fact. All this shows is that one part of the pro-life camp may have a better-reasoned position than another.
> Moreover, "living thing" is the key word here. A fetus IS a living thing. So is a cow, a cockroach, an intestinal parasite. We kill those, and we support industries that kill them, without thinking. And while there are extremists who support protecting a broader segment of "life," that is not what the pro-life movement is about. If I breed cows for a living, I have a legal and ethical right to kill those cows. And if I have a baby attached to my uterus, I should have the legal right to do what I want.
This still doesn't address the argument. In fact your keying in on "living thing" and trying to build on that as an argument is pure semantic mumbo-jumbo. Replace that phrase with "baby" (which I avoided so we wouldn't immediately have that other ridiculous, pointless discussion) and all that junk about cows is irrelevant, which it was anyway.
Again: I'm pro-choice, to be clear. I just find most arguments from "my side" totally fail to address the "other side"'s actual positions, which is frustrating if, like me, you hope for your position to gain support. Bad arguments just make us look like we're wrong.
2. Fetuses are not babies. Babies are people, from a legal and ethical perspective; fetuses are not. If it were otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, as abortion would already be considered murder. So yes, fetuses are living, but that does not afford them any rights, any more than cows have rights by virtue of being alive, and it certainly doesn't afford them rights that supersede those of an actual person.
In other words: in our society, we give rights to people, not to mere "living things."
It's not that that faction's negligible, it's that the argument isn't helpful for refuting "the mother does have some obligation to a life that was created and became dependent on her through her own actions" because someone who holds that position probably doesn't disagree with you that rape and incest are exceptions. It's a distraction not from the broader debate, but specifically from substantively addressing this particular position.
> 2. Fetuses are not babies. Babies are people, from a legal and ethical perspective; fetuses are not. If it were otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, as abortion would already be considered murder. So yes, fetuses are living, but that does not afford them any rights, any more than cows have rights by virtue of being alive, and it certainly doesn't afford them rights that supersede those of an actual person.
This is precisely the point of contention, and it is far from clear-cut even on the pro-choice side. That's why 3rd trimester abortion rights are far less popular than the rest—even to many pro-choicers, the is-/isn't-a-baby question is settled at some point before birth, but after the 1st trimester.
The argument that abortion is tolerable in cases where the women does not choose to have sex shows your hand: the pro-life movement was never about protecting life, it has always been about punishing women. You are okay killing fetuses as long as the woman didn't actually have the temerity to enjoy sex.
[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states...
[1] https://www.axios.com/2022/05/14/abortion-state-laws-bans-ro...
It's often exhausting trying to get people to think with their brains rather than with the tips of their tongues, and all the bad arguments muddy waters.
Just because you believe this doesn't make it true. I struggle to believe that a single pro-lifer would say this is the reason behind their beliefs. As a pro-lifer, I can attest that it has nothing to do with my beliefs. Believing it may "demonize" prolifers, and help you feel good about fighting for your stance on abortion. But the reality is, blind beliefs like this are the cause of division and hate that seems to be ever increasing.
Of course they wouldn't say it out loud: that would be giving the game away. Instead, judge them by their actions. The same crowd that wants to prevent abortions also wants to prohibit contraception, allow unrestricted gun ownership, and cut back on any social programs that support families.
These actions are consistent with a puritanical, anti-sex society; they are not consistent with a "commitment to life."
Stop listening to what prochoicers say prolifers believe, and start actually listening to what the prolifers are saying. I (and most prolifers I know) don't have some secret agenda.
When the cop beats you bloody while declaring that it's "For your own protection," you are justified in questioning his motives. When the right claims to care about "life," but their actions totally contradict the stated goal, I get to declare them at best hypocrites but more likely just fascists.
I see this kind of thought process all the time: when some people don't get traction with their arguments on a particular issue, they ascribe other beliefs to their opponent and call those into question. This is both ad hominem and whataboutism, and it doesn't win over anybody's heart or mind, it just "others" the opponent, further entrenching tribalism.
The "crowd" is diverse and contains multitudes. If you want to change minds, engage with the arguments, not with the arguers.
If you don't want to be judged as a tribe, you need to take a stand. If you support contraception and gay marriage, then support them. Right now, though, the right is supporting more and more extreme ideologues.
Is the intent behind child support laws "a desire to punish men for choosing to have sex"? If a man has a one-night-stand with a woman and a child is born, he could be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of 18 years.
> By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a crash, the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries, because after all, it was their choice to drive.
If a person refuses to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and does not have COVID, should doctors / hospitals be allowed to give that person lower quality-of-service and/or refuse elective treatments? After all, the person made a choice not to get a COVID vaccine which is proven safe and effective.
Irrelevant comparison. There is no procedure to legally "undo" a child who has been born, in which case one should pursue the wellbeing of the child (which may or may not be well-served by child support laws). However, if a child has not yet been born, and the child is not wanted, abortion prevents health risks to the mother, while also preventing an unwanted child from a life of hardship. If there's a procedure that helps everyone involved, why not do it?
> If a person refuses to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and does not have COVID, should doctors
Bro this makes no sense at all. If the patient doesn't have COVID, then the decision to not take the vaccine has no bearing on their elective treatments. If a woman has sex, she has not surrendered the right to her body.
Incest can be nonconsensual, in which it was also rape and so would be covered under a rape exception.
Incest can also be consensual, in which case what is the logic to treating conception by incest any different than any other circumstances of conception?
Why? In what way?
Did you have rights over your own body when you had sex and started the process of conception? Why do your choices only matter depending on the result of conception?
The argument is that at some point the fetus is no longer the same body. Arguing for "bodily autonomy" ignores the crux of the debate. A mother cannot kill their 1 year old, and parents have obligations to their young children, otherwise social services will intervene if those obligations aren't met. What obligations does a mother have to their unborn child? That is the debate that needs having.
"""
> I also don't really agree with this definition either. This train of logic leads to the justification of euthanizing less intelligent humans.
How so? less intelligent humans have cognitive ability so they have rights.
> It also doesn't adequately address why a human with microcephaly or no frontal lobe has rights, but a dolphin or octopus or killer whale does not.
The question is not why the law is the way it is but the way that it should be. As it is now, It has rights because it is a human, we make our laws for ourselves and sometimes for other species, and I would definitely say that animals should have protections/rights (and they do). A law is also a custom or an enforced custom and certainly animals have customs. At least in america, many families take the toll of taking care of their family members with many deformities. the state should not enforce termination of these, but it should be optional for those that do take this unfortunate toll in their hands. (criminalization != decriminalization)
> It also allows for the justification of cruelty against animals who can feel pain but aren't intelligent enough to pass some arbitrary test of intelligence.
On the contrary, as a cognitive animal capable of pain. it indicates that you should not do so, I would say the capability of pain is the most important aspect to life. given that it is usually an indicator of the will to live.
> To be clear, I don't know the answer, I am hesitant to label anything as "innately valuable". I think that there is however a sliding scale of what is "ethical".
Neither do I. Abortion is euthanasia, and it certainly has merit. both economically speaking and in the sense of well being for humans. Given that human childbirth is probably one of the worst around on the animal kingdom.
It would be nice if we just relegated pregnancies to artificial wombs, but until the technology is there. I guess we'll be having this abortion "debate" forever. """
Just seems wrong that you think that the mother could kill it up to the last moment of birth, for even the most absurd reasons.
When does the offspring gain rights over its body?
I think you’re trying to ask a poignant question, but it misses the point.
The fetus’ body is not the mother’s body, and bodily autonomy dictates one isn’t obligated to give their body for another’s survival.
Removing the fetus from the womb results in termination of the fetus if done prior to viability, but at no point does any violation of the fetus’ body need to occur for this outcome to happen.
Umm ... well, maybe.
My views on this are definitely coloured by having three kids, but watching the process of creating new humans starting off with a discussion about "shall we try and start a family", the next bit <cough>, a result on a test kit, the highs and lows of pregnancy, feeling your unborn first child kicking along to music in my wife's almost comically round tummy while we sat in a concert hall a few weeks before the big day ..
.. through to revising algebra and geometry at the breakfast table with my eldest this morning prior to an end of term maths test.
> The fetus’ body is not the mother’s body
Indeed, although the fetus survives due to the cord that connects them.
I've personally been in the room for all our three kids' births, cut the cord for two of them. #1 needed the doctors in a hurry after his birth, I just sat out of the way, watching in awed and stunned silence.
Life is wonderful, and complicated, and at times messy and confusing. Sometimes just downright awful. Pregnancy is some or indeed all of those.
Like everything we do there are edge cases and I don't think we should design our societies to leave anyone feeling they are left with no choices. "Look after those who can't look after themselves" is something that goes beyond the technical discussion of when is a fetus viable, I've spent enough time feeding and changing babies to know that just because they can breathe unaided it doesn't mean they can survive unaided.
TL;DR: I would be just as uncomfortable with a complete ban on abortion as I would be with unlimited easy access to it without any time limits.
And I get what you mean with survival, it’s a commonly discussed point in these debates. I think for the pro-choice side, if the technology existed to incubate outside the womb or to transplant from one person to another who wanted to give birth, we’d be for it. We are not pro-termination. But when it comes to the pregnant person’s autonomy, that takes precedence.
After viability and birth, others besides the mother and father can care for the child. And society owes its children that.
I believe the vast majority of pro-choice supports a limit at viability except when the mother’s life is in danger. Only 1% of abortions happen in the third trimester and nearly all of those are due to a threat to the mother’s life.
On the other side, I believe the majority of pro-life supporters want a complete ban.
If your beliefs are between the extremes, I think only one side represents that.
You do understand how this can be twisted for __very__ bad things, right?
Whenever someone would die soon if they did not get an organ transplant the government would check the records to identify all people who would be good donors. Those donors would all receive a notification that someone has dibs on that organ. If one of those donors died while the person with dibs was still alive their organ would be used to save the life of the person with dibs.
When that happened, or when the person with dibs dies before getting a transplant, all the people who had been potential donors were notified that no one had dibs on their organ any more.
Most of the time for most people they would occasionally get notified someone had dibs on some organ of theirs and then in a week or two they'd get a notice that it was resolved and their organ was no longer under dibs.
Rarely, someone who had an organ under dibs would get a notification that a second organ was under dibs.
Most of the time that would end like the single dibs case. Two or three weeks later they would be back to normal with no organs under dibs.
Very rarely someone with two organs under dibs would get a notification that a third organ was under dibs. In that case they were required to give up their three organs to save the lives of the three people under dibs.
The ONLY KNOWN METHOD OF HAVING CHILDREN IS: ::drumroll:: Sexual Intercourse.
There is no other natural method of having children; intercourse is it.
The choice lies in choosing NOT TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE.
That is the proper framing. If the choice /not/ to have sex was followed there would be no pregnancy, and no cause to terminate a life.
The choice was prior to conception, not after.
The choice was prior to the crash, not after.
You can't find a middle ground with religious extremism.
What does this have to do with religion?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/29/us/30abortion...
There's no compromise available on the table.
The reality is that what we consider a "life" is graduated, and the fetus progresses along that continuum during gestation. Most people know this intuitively, which is why popular opinion generally falls where it does. (See, for example, the Pew polls on the subject of abortion and trimesters.)
We struggle to draw a bright-line to say, "this is where life begins," because there is not really a point where life "begins," merely a long series of points where it shifts by degree from "no life" to "life."
As a society though we still are tasked with drawing this line and it is an arbitrary line. But it is illogical for it to begin at the very start of the continuum, or at the very end. The beginning because it is silly and unscientific to pretend as though some tiny clump of cells has any more life than a wart, and it comes at great cost to women's autonomy; the end because it is illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to birth is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after. To believe that the moment is at either end is thoughtless dogmatism.
Where should the line be? Pick a point. Give the woman enough time to be able to know that she is pregnant, to plan and provide for her bodily autonomy to make her own life choices, and to deal with lead times at clinics. And then draw a line where the choice has been made. Most people believe that line is somewhere around the end of the first trimester or early part of the second.
But in your own words, isn't it similarly illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to that point is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after.
Moreover, whatever your opinion of abortion rights, Roe vs Wade was not based on solid legal reasoning and it was foolish for liberals to depend on it over the last half century instead of explicitly codifying it into law or the Constitution.
This is the general case on most topics. Accepting the other side's framing is tantamount to "losing the argument" to most people. Often that framing defines the other side as essentially evil and thus not worth listening to or reasoning with. There are precious few places where actual debates where primary arguments are understood and rebutted by mutually respecting parties.
This is the blue dress vs gold dress of politics. There is no communication because the two sides see the world in fundamentally different ways.
After that, I switch to a much more consistent version of "pro-life" which includes a moral imperitive not to cause undue (frivolous, even) suffering or harm to any living thing.
Neither can you with liberal extremists, we have people in this thread who literally advocate for abortion less than 24 hours before delivery.
Unless you are going to pretend that there is no such thing as liberal extremists, in which case I am not sure how to respond.
"If the fetus is a life," you say, but of course it's alive, it's made of living cells. That's not even the issue really. Something being alive doesn't necessarily say anything about how we should treat it. We don't treat bacteria with respect, or mushrooms, or even most animals. So given that a fetus is alive, does that entitle it to any rights? And if so should those rights have primacy over the rights of the person who is carrying the fetus?
I didn't mean to say whether the fetus is alive is the relevant question, so apologies for the confusion. It's whether the fetus is a person, in which case, yes being a person does entitle it to rights, none greater than your right to life. That takes primacy over other rights of the mother to terminate the person (assuming it is a person).
It's true that there's no clear answer, but I suggest that this is the question to answer, regardless of where you fall on the debate. Some people think its "heart beat" however you define that, other think its viability outside of the womb, and I'm sure other people have different criteria. But we should look to answer this question and get to a sensible policy.
This is basically the argumentation why many treat conception as the start of life. If you can't know the exact point, then disallow people from guessing and potentially getting it wrong.
There is one side that is fighting very hard to not only make it at conception, but potentially even before conception (there are reasons to believe that the supreme court might come for birth control next - and there are large portions of the same religious community that put them in power that want that).
For many people on the other side the fetus doesn't get rights until it is born. And up until that point, it is a bundle of cells wholly dependent on the mother, and therefor part of her body (and thus, her bodily autonomy). Indeed, there's a reading of the bible that supports this interpretation - it mentions multiple times a baby becoming alive "at its first breath".
For many people, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but it's not clear at all that those people represent a majority.
The issue touches on strongly held moral beliefs on both sides - rights to life, right to bodily autonomy, and questions about when life starts.
There is no simple universal framing that we can all agree upon.
----
And even aside from framing, even if we could agree on a framing, the issue gets really complex, really fast. Lets say we do agree that the question is about when a life becomes a life.
Pregnancy is dangerous, as I well know. My wife and I lost three pregnancies. One of them was at 20 weeks. My son was already dead by the time we got to the hospital, but they had to remove his body from my wife's body or it risked a deadly infection. The medication they used to do that, in this case to trigger labor, was an abortion medication. The procedure they would have performed had that failed, was a DNC - an abortion. Both are already being banned by trigger laws in many states. In a room down the hall, a dear friend of ours who'd been struggling with infertility and loss was having a DNC the same day we lost our son, due to yet another failed pregnancy. Again, without that procedure, she would have died.
So you very quickly get into other complexities even when you do boil it down into a question of when life starts. And even then, the argument for banning it the way many states are (completely, with no exceptions) becomes hard to make about anything but control.
You can say it's about saving the life of the child - but we don't force dead people to donate their organs even when it would save a life. These laws will force women to die, even when there is no living child left to save.
Reasons like Justice Thomas explicitly and clearly saying they should reconsider the ruling that prevents states from banning them.
From the NYT:
>Then, [Justice Thomas] took aim at three other landmark cases that relied on that same legal reasoning: Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 decision that declared married couples had a right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 case invalidating sodomy laws and making same-sex sexual activity legal across the country; and Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case establishing the right of gay couples to marry.
>Justice Thomas wrote that the court “should reconsider” all three decisions, saying it had a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents. Then, he said, after “overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions” protected the rights they established.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/clarence-thomas-roe-gr...
"For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sodomy], and Obergefell [same sex marriage]. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents."
They ARE COMING for it next. They just said so.
The right to bodily autonomy is not believable because there weren't a whole lot of people campaigning against vaccine mandates because they were pro-bodily-autonomy.
As for your examples, surely even pro-life people don't care about "abortions" of babies that are already dead? If laws are interpretable in that way it seems like an easy wording fix. Not many people would care about that even if religious.
Vaccines are something that touch on community health. When one person chooses not to get vaccinated they are putting everyone around them at risk. At the most extreme extent, abortion affects the potential parents, the potential life, and their families. It's a different risk calculation. A woman pursuing an abortion is making life and death decisions for (at most - because not everyone believes the fetus is a life with rights) two people. Someone not getting a vaccine in a deadly pandemic is making decisions that impact life and death for their whole community.
Yet, again, odd silence from the pro-choice crowd. Clearly they don't believe in choice nor bodily autonomy.
Abortion on the other hand does always affect other people, if you believe the fetus is a person.
But most importantly, yes you do have to be consistent. If you can't be consistent because you feel it requires adopting extreme positions then you need to rethink your moral code, because clearly, you may find that your position isn't as morally clear as you thought.
Ok then, the fetus is my enemy.
I also think you're dismissing privacy too quickly. How much privacy would you give up in the name of saving lives?
In regards to bodily autonomy, again if the fetus is a life, you have to be a good steward of the life. I don't think you have a (moral) right to harm your body to the detriment of the life, much like you don't have a right to drive off a cliff with someone inside your car with you. And if someone assaults you and results in you losing your baby, I don't think that's the same as a regular assault.
How is the government going to know which people have fetuses in them, and how long they've been there, without some loss of privacy? (Do you think menstrual cycles are private information, for example?)
And how does the government know what people do (or plan to do) to their own bodies without some loss of privacy?
> In regards to bodily autonomy, again if the fetus is a life
Well yes, you can argue against bodily autonomy as a compelling argument for legalizing abortion. My initial point was that you were just ignoring it.
That said...
> you have to be a good steward of the life
Says who? Compelling someone to use their body as a host (not "steward") of another life is a violation of their bodily autonomy.
If you're going to use car analogies, we also don't say that anyone involved in a car crash must donate blood or organs to save other victims.
The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck about that now.
This is a pretty weak argument which could be used to justify any number of things. Can you rape or murder behind closed doors, and invoke the right to privacy when the authorities try to stop you?
Just because X happens in private doesn't make it legal and protected by privacy rights.
There are plenty of illegal medical procedures. You can't have a doctor remove a kidney and help you sell it, for example.
> The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck about that now.
If you're going to make the argument that privacy requirements protect abortion procedures, then that would also mean that vaccine mandates are not allowed for the same reason. You can't have it both ways.
Originally we were talking about many people forced to give up privacy in order to possibly prevent some potential future deaths.
You're talking about one person consenting to give up privacy in order to prevent multiple certain deaths.
It's curious that the definition of human life is different in every state. The circumstances around brain death, euthanasia, and suicide are decided locally, not federally. In fact, I think before ROe v Wade, the Supremes never before tried to define what is "human" and what is not. Even the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th amendment (which decided the citizenship and equal protection under law of black people) was not decided by the Supremes but by the states.
Probably, now, it would be better if the states wrote legislation that clearly defines human life, thereby taking such an important issue out of the hands of unelected politicians like the Supremes.
Even if we agreed that life begins at conception, it's not at all clear to me that the bodily autonomy and privacy issues would go away.
> it would be better if the states wrote legislation that clearly defines human life
Except there's no objective answer in reality, because "human life" is a fuzzy made-up concept. I doubt some arbitrary legislation would settle things down. People would still disagree just as vehemently.
Giving birth is a life threatening process. Even under fairly routine births, women endure significant bodily harm, often irreversible. Look up prolapse. Your organs literally push out of you vagina. This impacts 20-35% of women and for many of them this condition is permanent.
If you are allowed to shoot someone in Florida because they threatened your bodily autonomy, why shouldn't a women be allowed to terminate a pregnancy for the same reason?
Think about it; you are not required to help somebody if they're in an accident or a fire; you're not required to donate blood, but you would require a woman to donate blood and nutrients, spent several months of hardship and have a small but non-zero risk of serious health problems.
At some point it changes; in my mind, around viability. If the baby is delivered, you cannot kill it (you may be required to take care of it, although many states allow you to give up your kids).
Somewhere around 6 months, we might require a woman to give birth... Maybe
7 people shouldn't have the power to command millions of people.
It's better to persuade, discuss, debate, change hearts and minds, than to dictate top-down.
I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver seat.
I fail to see how that conclusion follows the reasoning. If anything them having a dog in the race would make their opinion biased, and thus void. The discussion is not whether if women should have control over their bodies or not, it's about the morality of exercising that control over a living human being that might or not be considered conscious to some degree.
Any group when facing the option of giving itself more rights will be biased towards the positive and surely impartiality ought to be important in this kind of matter?
Note that this isn't something I desire, as I see it the whole of society has a say on how things are run, and so we all discuss things such as education even if we aren't going to undergo any more education, it's just if you want to make this a special case and make a differentiation, anyone capable of pregnancy should be the first group out the door.
But surely there's another participant that deserves a voice. If it's a person (or even partly a person), then its most precious possession, it's life, is to be taken. Surely its voice cannot be dismissed outright. That's why I believe this issue is not as simple as letting only the mother (or the courts) decide. Historically, abortion has done a lot of harm, irrespective of Roe v Wade.
Personally, I think we need to try harder to minimize the injuries inherent in abortion. Let's not make a complex issue binary, as merely right or wrong. Technology and creativity are our friends. I believe it's possible to find 'cures' that do far less harm than is done now and to work toward even better ways until the rights of everyone involved are served.
I don’t think this is that complicated of an issue. The moment when the parent decides they want to keep the baby, is the moment when the fetus becomes a person. That precise time is when the fetus has someone that loves and cares for it, holds attachment towards it, etc.
However if the parent carrying the child is not allowed to make that decision form them self, then this becomes unnecessarily complicated.
It was a wedge issue when the GOP picked it up and made an unholy alliance with the raving fire-and-brimstone preachers of the South that got Reagan in office. It has continued to be a wedge issue that the GOP has relied on to get their asses in office for pretty much my entire life.
The only winner in the partisan fight are the elites in both parties. We need a working class party to resist both of the parties of American capitalism.
If you have money, or a network of help, and a safe home situation...
It's easy to say "everyone in a regressive state should move". It's easy to say "everyone in a regressive country should move". Not everyone has that option as readily available as you might imagine.
The GOP is working their hardest to send everyone back to 1970. Or further. 1850 looks pretty good to them.
I wonder if this one has a partisan axe to grind
A typical Catholic Mass lasts less than one hour. Most of the Mass follows a fixed, prescribed set of prayers and readings, that have nothing to do with politics. In the middle there's a sermon, that usually lasts about 15 minutes, that might include references to news or to politics.
Either you ended up at a very atypical mass, and by very atypical I'd say borderline heretic, or you don't remember well.
> with new political agenda of the Catholic Church.
New? Like it or not, the position of the Catholic Church on abortion has been extraordinarily consistent through the centuries.
But this isn't what gets mentioned in Hacker News comments. And it certainly isn't what is upvoted. The internet boosts grievances and fourth sigma event reporting.
That's not even remotely true!
For the vast majority of the history of the Catholic Church early term abortion was acceptable. It was only the 1588 that it was outlawed, and that didn't last long, only a few years. Another ban was instituted in 1869.
At the timescale of the Catholic Church, the current extremist position on abortions is extremely recent. Far less established as precedent than say Roe was.
That's more than 150 years ago. Matches pretty much my definition of consistency.
Even before, there might have been some doctrinal adjustments, but abortion was condemned by many Fathers of the Church, in the very early centuries.
So out of a 2000 year history, "consistency" means something that was invented 150 years ago? That seems like an absurd definition of consistency.
I mean that was 500 years ago. It's hard to argue inconsistency when it's been the same for 500 years.
Look up the Koch brothers. They're largely responsible for much of the chaos we see in our country today.
Me when Catholicism incorporates local facist evangelicalism: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
I grew up going to church multiple times per week. Today's church is a cult and it is a cult about hate. I learned in Sunday School that God is love and that we should help each other. Today the message is righteous indignation. They don't believe in the Bible or follow Jesus' teachings but they are very very adamant that the "sinners" must be converted to their way of thinking. It is nothing but hypocrisy and if pointed out, Christians have decided that they and they alone have the right to decide what parts of the Bible matter and what doesn't.
Much more concerning to me is the states who have enacted the actual bans with whatever passes for a democratic mandate. And it's that system which presumably will be the only tool that people have to protect themselves.
It is a powergrab. Christian conservatives have the Supreme Court. This was all planned. Don't kid yourself.
This was a democrat party talking point to show supporters and fundraisers how indebted they should be for being "given" a right. No one owes any politician anything.
Sorry, for not capitolizing Democrat, since you seem to see such great offense in it.
Can you point to somewhere that Democrats have claimed to "give" rights? Democrats aim to "protect" rights, but the Constitution is where rights are enumerated and/or it is recognized that there are rights that may exist beyond what is enumerated. Further, if you were to read the party platform of the Democratic Party, you would see that protecting and enhancing rights is a fundamental core value.
>Sorry, for not capitolizing Democrat, since you seem to see such great offense in it.
It's "capitalizing" not "capitolizing" and it's not its state as a proper noun I was noting. The party is not "The democrats" or "democrat" it is the "Democratic" party. Sure, it's just words, but if you are going to repeatedly call out a party in a thread for some grievances, it's useful to call them by their actual name.
> It occurred to me that all of this must have been carefully planned at the highest levels of both the church and political/financial benefactors that support it.
I'm curious if we'll see leaks confirming this. Otherwise this might be an anecdote stretched a little too far. It's far more likely you've experienced some bad pastors.
For a Catholic, the Catholic Church is the intermediary between him/her and God.
"Biden, the sitting POTUS, is a jackass" is probably ok.
"Don't vote for Biden in 2024" is absolutely not ok.
unsurprisingly, the majority of Justices are now Catholic - Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor (liberal, not a FedSoc pick), Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.
What's surprising is the American Catholic priesthood tends to go after pro-choice politicians, but not pro-death-penalty ones, despite the church seeing both as similarly objectionable. The political bent is fairly new.
The Pope has messaged that he'd rather they butt out. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/world/europe/pope-francis...
Why they focus so much on abortion is suspect indeed.
[EDIT: This first paragraph is incorrect as is pointed out in a response; it is left unchanged for context of the discussion.]
They are not viewed as “similarly objectionable”. The death penalty is viewed as being within the legitimate power of government doctrinally, but the present leadership of the Church views prudentially that the conditions which allow it do not occur in the modern world. Direct abortion is viewed as doctrinally prohibited. This is an important theological distinction because the Church heirarchy is viewed (borrowing some language from law) as having binding authority on doctrine, but only (very strongly) persuasive authority on prudential application of doctrine to particular material contexts.
That being said, you are correct that the political actions of the American Catholic heirarchy (more the bishops than the priesthood, and not all of them) are rather unbalanced (and not just on this pair of issues) in a way which is not easily explained by any coherent appeal to the actual social teaching of the Catholic Church.
Respectfully, no. The catechism reads, "the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person"[0]. This is a recent revision, and what you say reflects what was officially taught until 2017.
[0]: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/01/20/capital-punis...
Arguably, the most these writings about what has been implicitly infallibly taught and therefore cannot be changed by a Pope despite the absence of an explicit dogma tell you is what the author is very concerned that there is an insufficient commitment to among the heirarchy and probably a risk of imminent change by a Pope, which the author is lobbying against.
(Or, as in this case, what has recently been actually changed by a Pope that the author wishes everyone to pretend has not.)
If one views the argument that the prior teachings were infallibly proclaimed as incorrect, than there is no need to reconcile them; the prior teachings were simply in error.
Unsurprisingly, Francis has not only identified the previous approach as in error, he has both explained where the error is and provided an (unnecessary) explanation of what led people to make the error.
> there is considerable confusion about this change throughout the church and Pope Francis has not really offered any clarification
No one is confused or has any need of clarification. “It is per se contrary to the Gospel” isn’t the kind of statement that leaves a whole lot of room for different readings.
What there is is disagreement.
You are incorrect, but this is also a specious argument. The list of religious that were anti-slavery was short at the outset of the 19th century and a mile long by the outset of the 20th. Church doctrine is not immune to influence by popular sentiment.
It occurred to me that all of this must have been carefully planned at the highest levels of both the church and political/financial benefactors that support it. A long and patient process put in motion years ago. I realize This is somewhat anecdotal but speaks to perhaps the planning that culminated in todays decision. This is about power and control operating under the auspices of religion. SCOTUS are just run-of-the-mill sycophants playing along.