If you favor originalism, the the 9th amendment guarantees unenumerated rights which were deep rooted at the founding. Abortion before “quickening” was legal in all 13 states at the signing and had been part of common law for hundreds of years, so the 9th applies. The 14th amendment should apply that to the states, and the argument some originalists make about resetting the clock seems dumb to me.
So here are two very reasonable paths to the right that don’t involve the question about when laws start or some vague notion to the right to privacy. I think you need to have both an activist reading of constitutional law and a disregard for security of ones person to sidestep both arguments.
That banning abortion leads to the deaths of thousands of young women.
Pretty sure we all agree that a girl's life starts before she can get pregnant.
Many will consider a girl chosing a dangerous, illegal procedure as a criminal and therefore less worthy of consideration. More so than an innocent child who had no choice in its conception. My guess is they won't seriously consider the argument until they themselves, or their adult daughters, are literally in the situation of needing an illegal abortion themselves. (And possibly only in an extreme circumstance like molestation or rape, as some are taught self shame and hatred every week at church.)
2. even if you accept that there would be "deaths of thousands of young women", I doubt those deaths would sway the opinion of someone who thinks each abortion is murder (ie. 629,898 "deaths" from abortion vs "thousands" of "deaths")
backalley abortions.
i'm 100% anti-clotheshanger.
it is interesting that a lot of people on this site need to be intellectually spoonfed into understanding that this is the major issue that most pro-choice people focus on.
you can't magically turn all those abortions into unproblematic births without seeing deaths due to backalley abortions. it is like arguing that by banning drugs you can make drug use go away. you just discount the desperation those women are under and consider them criminals and are okay with the stochastic death penalty.
thanks for clarifying, but I still need a source for the "deaths of thousands of young women" claim. The best I could find with a cursory search is:
"In Brazil, where abortion is also illegal, it’s estimated that 250,000 women are hospitalized from complications from abortions, and about 200 women a year die from the complications"
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/how-many-...
>it is interesting that a lot of people on this site need to be intellectually spoonfed into understanding that this is the major issue that most pro-choice people focus on.
Or maybe you should clearly state what the basis of your numbers are the first time around, rather than asserting a number and letting your reader figure out what the basis is?
Claiming that no time period was specified makes the statement true, but also makes the statement so weak that it doesn't really mean anything.
>Also, you seem to be demanding precision when you haven't even specified a threshold you would find acceptable. Is it OK for you that "merely" hundreds of women die needlessly? Instead of trying to make others chase your ever-receding goalposts, perhaps you should try making your own persuasive argument.
I already have, in my previous comment.
>2. even if you accept that there would be "deaths of thousands of young women", I doubt those deaths would sway the opinion of someone who thinks each abortion is murder (ie. 629,898 "deaths" from abortion vs "thousands" of "deaths")
That might be a good-faith argument if we were allowing eons, but we're actually talking about years to (at most) decades.
> I already have, in my previous comment.
No, not really. You've regurgitated a number, but only as an appeal to emotion. You haven't connected it to the subject of this thread, which is the idea that even a fully formed human has no right to require physical sacrifice of another. Persuasion means connecting things in a way that might sway an interlocutor, not merely bashing them over the head with claims that you find compelling.
uhh what? I'm not advocating for one side or another. I'm only pointing out that if you think that aborted fetuses are "deaths", then a few extra thousand deaths pales in comparison to the number of "deaths" from abortions.
>You haven't connected it to the subject of this thread, which is the idea that even a fully formed human has no right to require physical sacrifice of another.
1. That's an nice argument and all, but it certainly wasn't in "the subject of this thread". I traversed through all the parent comments and couldn't find any comment that made an argument to that effect.
2. since we're already bringing this topic up, the obvious response I can think of would be: really? no "physical sacrifice" whatsoever? What about mask/vaccine mandates, which require some token/small amount of sacrifice? Obviously wearing something over your face/getting jabbed isn't equivalent to carrying a baby to term, but the argument (at least as you presented it) seems to take an absolutist position rather than some sort of cost-benefit analysis one.
>Persuasion means connecting things in a way that might sway an interlocutor, not merely bashing them over the head with claims that you find compelling.
Again, you seem to think I'm trying to convince people that abortions are bad. However, if you read my original comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31883521) more carefully, see that I'm only trying to point out that the "deaths of thousands of young women" argument isn't persuasive.
You can't just take the number for live births and apply it to abortions. The actual number from people who making direct observations instead of committing statistical malpractice seem to be around 0.7 deaths per 100K abortions. The authors say it might be even lower; there's certainly no rational reason to believe it has gotten worse since the last numbers were made available. (BTW I do wonder why they're no longer available, and suspect political pressure was involved much as with tracking gun deaths.)
https://scdhec.gov/risks-abortion
Besides considering the difference between safe vs. unsafe abortions, a real comparison of abortion vs. live-birth death rates would also have to consider pregnancies that end in miscarriage, and the fact that the availability of safe abortion in high-risk cases improves prognoses for live birth. A particularly instructive example is Romania, which saw abortion death rate go from 20/100K to 148/100K when abortion was restricted in 1966, and then back down to 9/100K after the restrictions were removed in 1989.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2709326/
BTW note that the abortion death rate in 1965 Romania was lower than the live-birth death rate in modern US. It's currently a safer option for the mother in a great many cases, but would become much worse if it had to go underground, and some of us think that matters.
I agree it'll be nearly impossible to convince people who already see abortion as murder.
"Core" does not have a clear meaning here, so let's be more precise: everyone agrees it's an important issue, but not everyone agrees it's a decisive issue. Many pro-choice people believe that no person has a right to demand part of someone else's body for themselves, so even if a fetus is a person the mother still has the right to remove it. Comparisons to the illegality of forced organ donation are often made here.
Note that I'm not taking a position here. I'm just explaining a position many hold. To the extent that you ascribe a different reasoning/motivation to pro-choice folks, I think your "everyone believes" is not a valid axiom. Whether intentionally or not, it comes across more as an appeal to (questionable) popularity, and pretty much make Mezzie's point about how impossible it is to talk about this.
Yes, the core issue is here. Though no-one seriously argues that a foetus is not human, nor alive: the issue is "is it a person (yet)?". Is it something, or someone? Answering that question - not an easy one - makes one swing one way or another of the issue.
A thought experiment.
You get too drunk and pass out in a bar.
I take you home a f hook you up to a person with failing kidneys so that you filter their blood.
If you unhook yourself they will die.
Should you go to prison for unhooking yourself?
I'm not American, so forgive me for barging in, but it seems to me you have two core issues:
First there is the debate over when a Fetus should be considered a person and receive the rights that come with it.
Secondly there is a debate over states rights and what topics the federal government should get a say in.
Should any random person A be forced to lose their bodily autonomy to keep random person B alive?
I think no. I shouldn't have to give you my kidney. Even if I can have it back in 9 months.
If I'm a parent of a small child, and I decide to completely stop feeding it, and they die, did I do something morally and/or legally wrong? I think most would answer yes on both fronts. So the question is, is there an inherent difference between these two situation?
The majority of Americans do not support elective abortion at 39 weeks, so that means by definition they support some regulations. In other words, there has to be a line drawn somewhere. The question is, where?
I don't think its unreasonable that a fetus, being a clump of cells that cannot survive and is not independently living, has less rights to life than a minor child
The mother is the fully independently living human in this case with full rights, those should not be overridden by a clump of cells with potential
If we judge everything by it's "potential" then we need to start charging men for masturbating and not saving their ejaculate and charging women for having menstrual cycles
So at what point should abortions be regulated? 39 weeks? 24 weeks? 16 weeks? Something else?
See this is the trick, the sleight-of hand - is draws you into accepting a simplistic falsehood: that a specific line has to be, should be or can be drawn.
Medicine is not law, and law is not code. Or at least, when done well they behave differently.
there is no sense in a code `if (fetus_weeks <= 16) return true else return false;` being law and then being medicine. That's 2 category errors right there.
A decision between doctor and patient based on specific circumstances is what's called for.
Pete Buttigieg said it quite well in this case:
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/pete-buttigieg-shut-down-t...
Hypotheticals are a waste of time, bring an actual example or stop wasting my time
The mother takes priority up until that baby is breathing on its own. Always
And then we wonder why the pro-life crowd insists the pro-choice crowd are baby killers.
I don't care about hypotheticals that have no basis in reality just like I don't give a shit about what the founding fathers thought, who were rapist-racist-sexist-slave owners who didn't want blacks, women, or poor people to have any say. Yea the document written by them is flawless lol sure. The constitution is out dated but the clowns in government make too much money off it and keep us peasants fighting about pointless shit like abortion while they loot the country
I love how you just ignored the rest of my statement and can't bring up that example that you just know exists. Get off that clown shit and show me a real example
So where is it? These examples of abortions where the mother didn't want it at 39 weeks
Quit lying
You're making an argument for infanticide (abortions at 41 weeks <---your words) and wondering why I didn't follow the rest of your arguments?
Still waiting for that one singular example. Where are your citations for your evidence?
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/pete-buttigieg-shut-down-t...
>owned and operated the Women's Medical Society Clinic, a non-compliant abortion clinic
>Gosnell was convicted of the murders of three infants who were born alive after using drugs to induce birth, was convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of one woman during an abortion procedure, and was convicted of several other medically related crimes.[3][4][5][6][7]
This dude should never have been a doctor in the first place and this is your shining example? Brilliant
>2011, Gosnell, his wife Pearl, and eight employees were charged with a total of 32 felonies and 227 misdemeanors in connection with deaths, illegal medical services, and regulatory violations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell
I can't tell if you're a bad faith actor yourself or you just believe the nonsense put forth by the nationalist extremist party
You said it never happens, but it does. Most doctors that offer the late term abortions don't get in trouble because they're not as sloppy as him.
So the question remains, the one you refuse to answer - why would we not restrict ELECTIVE abortions after a certain point in a pregnancy? What is the argument against that? Nobody is arguing against it if they're medically necessary, I'm asking specifically about elective abortions beyond the point of viability. That's it. That's where the breakdown occurs for most people.
Sounds to me like he patients were not aware of what he was doing
And he was doing a hell of a lot more than just abortions
>The DEA, The FBI, and the Office of the Inspector General also sought a 23-count indictment charging Gosnell and seven members of his former staff with drug conspiracy relating to the practice's illegally prescribing highly-addictive painkillers and sedatives outside the usual course of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose.
So again, you pick out one guy who should not have been a physician who did not inform his patient of what he was doing
And this detail is pretty important, these were not abortions but murders after birth
>They arise because of the "born alive rule", a principle of common law which stipulates that by default, for legal purposes, personhood arises – and therefore unlawful killing constituting murder becomes possible – immediately upon the victim's being born alive
Pointing this guy out is like pointing out that old veteran who's like 110 years old and smokes and drinks every day and claiming nobody gets cancer from smoking and drinking
You are aware that murder, killing people who are already born, is already illegal? These examples were not abortions, plain and simple
Only the "41 week old abortions" were treated as murder, the 39 week old ones weren't. My question is - what's the difference? In your mind, how do you justify a 39 week old elective abortion?
That's not an abortion
Not only is it derailing of a serious issue, it is deliberately visceral, disturbing, which makes it harder to debate logically about. Standard tactic: wind them up so they don't notice the inconsistencies.
And you still haven't answered - what is your logic for not having a problem with a 36, 37, 38 week etc elective abortion? What is the argument for allowing them?
You're asking trick questions. Proof above; "aha! that's infanticide!!" So clever.
That's also why the poster didn't respond to the person who commented about Beto. They have no real response, position, or evidence. Their only position is fake outrage at something that doesn't exist in reality
Everyone believes that the start of human life is a core issue. It’s the basis for the pro-life movement. It’s also a core component of the pro-choice movement (that it doesn’t start that early, thus not killing babies, etc).
There are other things some people believe are core which others don’t believe even exist:
* many people are happy with this ruling because they want to bring mens’ right to “paper abortion” to the front. The argument is if she can do whatever with her body and not be subject to something undesirable for nine months, than he should have the same right since his hardship can last 18 years. The supporting arguments include absolute control means absolute responsibility (if pregnancy was accidental and she decides to keep it, responsibility is hers) and others, along with the greater discussion of perceived bias in family court. Opposing arguments mostly center around the welfare of the child. * some people are of the opinion that “if you’re not a woman, shut up”. Others are using that phrase to support their opinion on trans recognition. Still others are using that phrase to highlight situations where women have gained influence in what many men might call “mens spaces”
The reality is pregnancy is a two-party result and so it’s impossible to expect one party to quietly step aside, more so when there is skin in the game. This involvement in fact helped win R v W in the first place!