Also if you beat a woman causing her to misscarry, then we look upon that quite a lot harsher than if no miscarriage occured.
In general we don't tend to value human life or rights when it is inconvenient to do so though.
An interesting note: even in the Code of Hammurabi there's a provision for that, and that's from about 4,000 years ago.
209. If a man has struck a free woman with child, and has caused
her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage.
210. If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed.
211. If by a blow he has caused a plebian's daughter to have a
miscarriage, he shall pay five shekels of silver.
212. If that woman has died, he shall pay one-half mina of silver.
213. If he struck a freeman's female slave and has caused her to
have a miscarriage, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
214. If that female slave has died, he shall pay one-third mina of
silver.> If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed.
You damaged my property — your property will be equally damaged. Justice!
Women wouldn't be treated as equal to men for another 3,500 years or so.
283. If a man be an insufferable pedant, he shall be put to death.Looking at the rest of the code, it seems this sort of action is doomed by the adage, "an eye for an eye" - where a blind man might lost a hand instead of an eye.
To me, the debate seems to have a paradox that can't be resolved using the logic we've inherited from the Enlightenment (mostly). Namely: People have rights to their bodies.
Yes, it's super-duper more complicated than just that, I know. But, to my brain, it seems to boil mostly down to that.
We have to define rights, people, bodies, what 'have' means, etc. Sure, yeah, I know.
But Nature, she don't care about the Enlightenment and all our attempts at reasoning. Nature cares about making babies.
We're mammals. This is how we reproduce, how all mammals do it. We raise our young inside of our bodies until a time comes that they can survive. Then (most) mammals feed our young with our bodies for a while more. Mammals take a long time to get to be totally self-sufficient. We're not fish or crickets. This is the 'tech-debt' that Nature gave us.
If we were dinosaur-people that laid eggs, we would not have these issues between rights and bodies and mammalian reproduction.
We'll see what this debate is like in the future when we have babies born from artificial wombs.
At some point, when they're fully developed to sustain animals, we'll have to move on to human experimentation there.
Care to expand on this? I am not aware of any opinion on this other than general undefined revulsion. Has anyone articulated an actual argument?
I'd say it would be a good idea for people with certain diseases, those with high risks of miscarriage, in high risk professions or environments, or other situations where the development of the baby would be hindered or impacted. The only environment I can think of is somewhere that is not Earth though.
In the somewhat far future, I could see it being routine. You'd all but stop miscarriages, accidents, and have a much greater window into development and how to correct things along the way. That said, you'd strip women of an incredible and deeply human/mammalian (?) experience. Also, there's no telling that it would ever actually work. I imagine something so central to species survival has a lot of things that may make artificial wombs functionally impossible.
I'm going to roe out then.
(I'll see myself out.)
Long overdue.
US lawmakers continue to surprise me!
Let me make my prediction right now that this will never happen.
Additionally, because the doctor and the patient are in an established doctor/patient relationship at that point, the doctor has a duty to act to provide the care that they are able to provide to save the mother. Failure to do so could make them legally liable for the mothers death.
Perhaps that is the difference between Poland and the US. Perhaps over in Poland there is not this duty to act and it is legally acceptable to let a patient die that you can save and juries and judges would accept that condition. Wouldn’t happen over here.
Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person, it’s easier to resolve these “competing rights”.
When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right), yes the issue can appear murky and confusing.
So a homicide of a pregnant woman that has an unwanted pregnancy should be single homicide, not double homicide?
> When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right)
Implying inferior motives for the opposing side makes it easy to dismiss their argument. But this is not about women being "an incubator for your children" — this is about fetuses being "an actual person in their own right".
Here's my argument: in most jurisdictions, a killing of a pregnant woman brings harsher sentence than a killing of non-pregnant woman. In some, it just doubles the crime (double homicide, double manslaughter, etc.) Judging from this, we as a society see at least some value in the life of a foetus.
The issue is a complicated one. We seem to believe fetuses have the right to be born. We also seem to believe that women have the right to their bodies. In the case of abortions, these two rights cannot be achieved at the same time. These are "competing" rights. And while the question of "which right shall prevail" is a classic one for the courts to decide on, people will always go with what they "believe" is right, and disregard the opposing opinion.