andrewducker | Abortion

Reducing the need for abortions is a good idea for many reasons, but there will always be a need for abortions. No method of birth control is 100% perfect, and human beings will never exercise perfect judgments. We don't just need to keep abortion available -- we need to make sure it's available on demand, and without guilt or apology.

Oh, absolutely.

I agree with the doctor from Cider-House Rules.

Abortion shouldn't be necessary, but it is, so it should be made as painless as possible.

I believe in abortion being readily available without guilt or prejudice with the caveat that it is NOT and never will be the ultimate form of birth control.

I hate to break up this cosy liberal consensus but why exactly?

Either you do, truely, believe that a womans body is hers and a foets has no legal personality till it is born or you don't. it's on/off, not a sliding scale.

Of cousre abortions are undesirable because they're operations ad have risks eg of asociated infertility etc.. but that's the woman's choice. Finance apart (which is a big but) if a woman really wanted to use abortion as her primary nmeans of birth control, then wy not?

What many people don't actually think about is that the morning after pill, which is a major effecive contraceptive in the UK at least, is an abortifacient NOT a contraceptive..

The law has to draw a line somewhere. I don't pretend to know where it ought to be, but surely at some point the woman's body is no longer hers alone. It has to be shared with the life within her.

Why does the law have to draw a line?
Laws are what people make of them - they are not natural or in some way god-given.

Any line drawn as to "the time it is too late to have an abortion because the foetus has rights now" is fundamamentally arbitrary (the last developmental age that is non arbitarty as I understand it is at about 8 days old :-) and therefore open to lobbying to reduce it by illiberal factions, from say, 28 weeks to 24 weeks to 20 weeks - there has been a long history of such attempts in UK, US and Canada. The effect of this tends to be to burden the stupidest/most vulnerable/poorest woemn with babies who then prevent them becoming autonomous wage earners - smarter or richer women will either have got it done earlier or pay for a late abortion in a private clinic where in practice, you can get anything you like.

I repeat : you either believe a women's body is her own and ONLY her own, or you don't. Think about the consequences of other positions. Will you charge the woman who procures a late abortion (and her abortionist) with murder? will you put her in chains to prevent her injecting herself with an abortifacient flor the last two months of her pregnancy? will you allow her ex partner to take out an interdict against her restraining her movements , or forcing her to stop smoking or drinking (say) if he fears she may procure such a remedy? or is otherwise harming the foetus? these are all logical consequences of regarding the foetus as a legal person at *whatever* date of gestation.

It is way way too easy and pat liberal to say, "the rights of the woman and the foetus should be balanced". They should not. Foetuses are basically parasites until they are born (this is fact - I like babies :-) The only justification for such a breach of fundamental liberty is a religious conviction many or most people do not subscribe to. Having a liberal abortion law does not FORCE anyone to have an abortion, if your own beliefs will not countenance it.

The law in the UK is (for once) suprememely sensible on this matter - the limit is effectively that at which an abortion becomes dangerously late for the woman, in the sense that it is a real operation , not just a D and C. Effectively this does (sensibly) discourage the use of abortion as lazy contraception at the point where it involves severe chance of side effects (and also, secondarily of the birth of a living viable baby, at which point the baby now being a person who cannot be killed & indeed must positively be kept alive if possible, life gets difficult).

I get annoyed at this one as a semi woolly liberal myself because for once the knee jerk, compromise, liberal position is actually, if you examine it morally and practically, just wrong.

Foetuses are basically parasites until they are born

Foetuses are basically parasites until they are capable of surviving outside the womb.

I also felt this, but it raises the question of how they survive outside the womb? With the help of the parents? With the help of intensive care in a baby unit? When they can survive on a hill outside Rome for one night?

It's still arbitrary and I say this from the point of view of a person who doesn't like it being arbitrary.

Are we using the dictionary definition of the word parasite? If we are, then my cats are parasitical to me. As also a child continues to be for some years.

Actually I can't bear by this stage not to admit that you have reinvented the concept of viability which does i fact exist in the law (or did - it's a little vague now).

I agree 100%. Then again, I also don't see human life in itself as in any way more sacred or special than the life of any other complex organism. OTOH, I place great value in human experience and sentience, but not in the lives of mindless or near mindless beings that happen to share human genetics, regardless of whether they are irreparably brain-damaged vegetables or fetuses. Until a child is born the only wishes that I consider to be of any import or moral worth are the wishes of the woman whose body it is in. Until it's born it should be treated no differently from any other body part. The only coherent arguments that I can see or treating this situation differently are religious ones from faiths that I neither share nor agree with.

you are treating the idea of "when a child is born" as a fixed term, but births happen at all kinds of times, regularly while the baby is not fully developed and in some cases where it cannot survive without medical aid. however, without further complications, a baby can finish its development and survive without that aid.

so at what point while the baby is still inside the mother and capable of survival using medical technology is it acceptable?

UK law defines human existance as starting from birth - that's when your birth certificate says you became a member of society. Doesn't matter at what gestational age you are born.

This does cause problems for premature kids - I know a couple of children who were born around 26 weeks gestation and who were forced to start school at the age of four (due to the inflexibility of the current education system), which is bad enough, but even worse when you consider that they were actually only the equivalent of three and a half years old in developmental terms.

However I don't see how else you could organise the system, unless you want to completely deprive women of all rights to an independent existence from the moment they enter puberty.

Hopefully, my personal point of view is not a 'knee jerk, compromise, liberal position'. I have had many years to try to evaluate a worthwhile opinion. The one thing that is uppermost in my mind is that everybody, especially the putative parents, should accept responsibility for their own actions. This is obviously more complicated and emotional for the woman as at some stage she should consider the rights (if indeed there are any) of the unborn child.

> at some point the woman's body is no longer hers alone.

As a nineteenth century woman wisely asked:
"What is it to me to have the right to vote, to own property, etc, if I may not keep my own body and its uses entirely within my right?"

You can't seriously be suggesting that pregnant women be exempted from having human rights?

In no way am I suggesting that. I did not even mean to imply it. I am just trying to address the thorny issue of 'right to life' of the foetus/unborn child.

Well, that's really the whole problem.

Since the foetus exists inside the woman any rights it might have automatically deprive the woman of her right to control her own body. You can't treat the foetus as a separate entity because it isn't a separate entity.

It only becomes a separate entity at birth.

In effect then, you deny the foetus a right to life. Surely that is overly harsh and denies that the woman is 50% responsible for its exixtence.

As

green_amber and I have pointed out repeatedly, you can't give the foetus independent rights without taking them away from the woman.
There is a direct conflict of interest.

So, in effect, you DO deny that the foetus/unborn child has any right to exist at all.

That's right.

It can't have independent rights until it becomes a separate entity.

Your opinion is honest, straightforward and to me incomprehensible. I shall have to think about it for some time.
Bearing in mind the information available to us with the benefits of modern medical science, we should be aware that the foetus/unborn child is actually a sentient being in it's own right from the current legal 'late abortion' gestation period of 26 weeks, if not sooner. To me, stating that the woman has the right to cut off 'life-support systems' without consideration of that entity is like saying that the computer controlling atmospheric and temperature control in a space station has the right to cut off life-support sytems to the crew because they are not necessary to it's existence.
Perhaps I am one of those whose judgement is clouded by sentiment, but surely only serious medical or social reasons should motivate terminations at such a late stage.

> only serious medical or social reasons should motivate terminations at such a late stage.

Only serious medical or social reasons do motivate terminations at such a late stage.
As has been pointed out elsewhere a late termination is a major operation and has serious risks.

Anyone who finds themselves accidentally pregnant and simply does not wish to continue the pregnancy will obviously save themselves the trauma of a late termination by having an early termination.
It's only in exceptional circumstances that anyone ever finds themselves in need of a late termination.

As to
> the right to cut off 'life-support systems'

I suppose the nearest equivalent I can think of that might apply to a man is that say, for example, someone is dying of kidney failure and their only hope of survival is for you to donate one of your kidneys, and suffer some potential risks as a result yourself.
It would be a good thing for you to do if you agreed to donate, but it would be utterly morally abhorrent for the law to force you to donate.

I suppose the nearest equivalent I can think of that might apply to a man is that say, for example, someone is dying of kidney failure and their only hope of survival is for you to donate one of your kidneys, and suffer some potential risks as a result yourself.

Actually, there's a better one - once you have begun performing mouth to mouth on someone to keep them alive, to then cease doing so. I remember being told on my first aid course that it was illegal to do so, but my memory may be faulty.

That can't be correct.
Resuscitation teams in hospitals, for example, make decisions to stop that sort of thing all the time, and there's no legal come-back.

Anyway, I'm not sure resuscitation is really equivalent to pregnancy, because the worst that'll happen to the person performing it is that they'll feel faint if they don't remember to breathe enough themselves.
Pregnancy is a potentially disabling and life-threatenning condition.

The only equivalent risks men might take for the sake of others are probably kidney and bone marrow donations.
Or possibly going in to a burning building to rescue someone - which, again, is not something the law can or should force anyone to do.

My apologies if I did not make myself clear, I was referring to 'late' abortions in particular. My reservations do not, and indeed should not apply to 'timely intervention'.

Kidneys? Hmmm, expressed in those terms, your opinion is much easier to understand, thank you.

In contrast, wrt morality, I see abortion as absolutely neutral and no more immoral than trimming one's toenails. I see it as a risky (as is true of any surgical procedure) and unnecessarily complex and difficult form of birth control, given that there are far simpler options, so promoting safe, effective, and easily accessible birth control is obviously just as important as promoting safe and easily accessible abortions. The only moral component I see wrt abortion is that anything that reduces the numbers of humans born that does not harm people (and from my PoV clusters of cells are in no way people) is a moral good because reducing our population is very much a moral good.

my PoV clusters of cells are in no way people

Well, some of them are. My flatmates, for instance.

Ah, I definitely should have added "non-independent" and "inside someone else's body" to that particular comment.

The two aren't the same.

At, for instance, 26 weeks of gestation, around 95% of babies _are_ capable of independent life. They just happen to be inside a woman.

Quite true, but the rights and life of the actual, fully sentient person with actually memories and experiences IMHO, completely and totally outweighs any rights this being has. Such beings are still part of someone else's body and so should not in my view be considered as separate organisms in any legal or moral sense.

Certainly, should it be the case of "life of the mother or life of the 26 week-old foetus" the mother wins every time.

But when it comes to "Both live, or just one lives, at the whim of the mother, for no medical reason" then I'm not there.

But when it comes to "Both live, or just one lives, at the whim of the mother, for no medical reason" then I'm not there.

Then when you get pregnant, you can choose not to have an abortion. I'm completely supportive of that option. Until then, it's not really relevant to you, is it?

And if I decide to kill someone, you have no say in the matter.

Ok?

If you decide to join the military, I certainly don't, no.

If you decide to commit a crime, any lawabiding person does, yes.

And this has what to do with your choice not to have an abortion if you get pregnant?

To reply a little less abruptly - I firmly believe that once they pass around 25 weeks of gestation they are alive. And unless there's a good reason for them dying, they shouldn't have to.

Which doesn't tend to be a problem, what with the vast majority of abotions happening much, much earlier than that.

To reply a little less abruptly - I firmly believe that once they pass around 25 weeks of gestation they are alive.

And you are fully entitled to believe exactly what you like.

And you're entitled to believe what you like.

I didn't think our right to free thought was in question here.

Obviously it's not.

Then why tell me what I was allowed to believe?

Seems like an odd thing to do.

Does it?

Stepping back _slightly_ from sarcascm, we were discussing a matter of morals. To then say "Well, yes, you're allowed to believe that" doesn't add anything to the discussion. Morals are intrinsically subjective. We can all believe anything.

Surely the point is either to engage in a meaningful way and persuade the other that ones viewpoint is correct, or to argue back and forth until both of us are agreed on a reasonable belief is the point? Thesis + Antithesis eventually reaching some kind of Synthesis.

To say "Believe what you like" is an abandonment of the debating process, saying "You may believe as you wish, I shall believe as I wish and all discussion of the topic is outwith the area of possible discussion" in which case why join in the discussion in the first place?

You made what appeared to be a "factual statement" - not a moral point - when you stated "I firmly believe that once they pass around 25 weeks of gestation they are alive."

Well: yes. And?

I responded to this assertion as I would have responded to the assertion that "I firmly believe that God created the world in six days exactly as described in Genesis" and for much the same reason - it's an assertion that's completely undisprovable. If that's what you believe, that's what you believe. My belief is completely orthogonal to yours: I see no point in continuing the discussion.

Your belief is at right angles to mine? Do you mean diametrically opposed? Or am I being confused?

I've seen babies that are 25 weeks from conception. Definitely alive. Not coping 100% well with the world, but then who does when they're born?

No, I mean at right angles. That's what orthogonal means.

I knew that, I just can't see how your view is orthogonal to mine.

Aah, is it because we're using two criteria that aren't at all connected to each other?

If I were arguing for or against the point at which a foetus "really" becomes alive, we'd be either in agreement or in opposition.

But I'm not: I'm arguing for a woman's right to choose. This is orthogonal to the argument about the point at which a foetus "really" becomes alive.

Aaah.

I'm all in favour of rights, up to a point. But black and white statements of rights usually don't work for me. I don't think the universe is anywhere near that simple on the levels we work on.

Reality would seem to disagree with you.

I disagree entirely, reality definitely agrees with me. It's fuzzy, fractal and never black/white.

green_amber is reality! ;-)

Um, pardon??

Read the parent to that post, where I say that reality is "fuzzy"

Also fractal and never black/white. Not a goth.

I was just trying to introduce a leaven of silliness into a very heavy discussion...

After I posted that comment I went away to see if

reality was taken, and it is. It just occurred to me it would be really cool to have a username that meant I could post comments saying "I disagree with you - Reality".

But what I meant was, that in this country and in the US, and in many other countries round the world, we have effectively got a reality where "a woman's right to choose" operates just fine: limited, in fact, only by our technological capacity. So, well, reality disagrees with you: the universe deals with women having the right to choose an abortion or not just fine.

That's not reality, it's a social agreement by some people.

I have pretty much no interest in "what the law says" when it comes to making moral decisions. No more than I have any interest in what The Bible says or what my father says. It's just another opinion about what's right and wrong.

If you start depending on The Law as your guide to what reality is like then you'd have to stop asking for changes to it...

So women aren't really having abortions, they've just got a social agreement to pretend they do? Where do the babies get warehoused when they're born in your "reality", since in your view the abortions aren't "really" happening?

If you start depending on The Law as your guide to what reality is like then you'd have to stop asking for changes to it...

Who said I did that?

reality?

I said that _rights_ were too black and white, and that reality wasn't as simple as that. You disagreed and said the universe was as simple as that.

Whether people are having abotions isn't in question, whether foetuses have rights (and whether mothers have them) is.

You then said that reality was fine with the right to abortion as it was legal here. Which indicated that you believed that legality was somehow a defining force in reality.

Which is odd, because I wouldn't have thought you'd think that at all...

Well, that's an interesting interpretation of the discussion.

Here's how I understood it:

You claimed that "rights" were too fuzzy and the universe didn't work like that.

I pointed out that in practical terms, the universe was working like that: we live in a reality where women who want to have abortions can have them. And do.

You said that wasn't reality, it was a social agreement.

I asked (tongue in cheek, I admit) that if you believed women weren't "really" having abortions, just a social agreement, where did you think all those babies who were "really" being born were being warehoused?

Reality is fine with the idea of abortion by choice because abortion by choice is part of reality. Deny that, and I have to ask you: where are all those foetuses who aren't "really" being aborted going?

I believe the abortions are hapoening, but whether it's "right" or "wrong" is nothing to do with reality.

Rights and morals being something that exist purely in mental space and having as little to do with anything in reality as possible.

We have a social agreement that allows people to have abortions, but that social agreement doesn't mean that it's somehow part of the fabric of the universe that a woman has a right to choose.

(This isn't helped by the fact that I don't really believe in rights at all and nowadays find arguing about them a bit like arguing about whether Santa Claus could beat up The Tooth Fairy)

We have a social agreement that allows people to have abortions, but that social agreement doesn't mean that it's somehow part of the fabric of the universe that a woman has a right to choose.

Well, that depends how you define the fabric of the universe, doesn't it? If women getting to choose to have abortions in reality are somehow separated out from the fabric of the universe, you're right. If the fabric of the universe includes everything just the way it is, you're wrong.

whether Santa Claus could beat up The Tooth Fairy

Santa Claus could beat up the Tooth Fairy, but wouldn't, because he'd be afraid of losing his licence to operate elves, without which his toy manufacturing empire would crumble.

If women getting to choose to have abortions in reality are somehow separated out from the fabric of the universe, you're right. If the fabric of the universe includes everything just the way it is, you're wrong.

Not whether they get to choose (that's a physical act), but whether them doing so is right.

To choose an over-the-top example Hitler killed 6 million jews - was he right to do so?

Not whether they get to choose (that's a physical act), but whether them doing so is right.

Ah, I see what you mean. No, values of right or wrong are not part of the fabric of the universe.

What about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, then?

Well, being agnostic I should theoretically hold to the claim that they may, or may not exist, that it's impossible to prove that things don't exist and that in an infinite universe anything is possible.

But let's say that I'm fairly sceptical.

Me too... ;-)

Further to the above, I'm in favour of a woman's right to choose.

And a baby's right to life.

Sometimes, if you look at it in certain ways, those two rights conflict.

If you equate "foetus" with "baby", yes. I don't.

Well, exactly, it's all about the decision as to when the foetus becomes alive.

If you believe it's impossible to be alive while inside something, then yes, it's not alive and has no rights.

If you believe that life is something that occurs at a sufficient level of complication then you can make a general statement by time since conception.

Or there could be another way, but it's not occurring to me right now.

On a slight tangent, I wonder if a woman deliberately took thalidomide during her pregnancy, knowing the effect it would have, if her child would be able to sue her later.

Well, see, you're arguing your faith - but your faith is orthogonal to mine.

So I can no more argue with you about this than I can argue with a creationist.

You stated that the foetus would have a right to life
"If you equate "foetus" with "baby", yes. I don't."

So then the point comes down to how the difference between a baby and a foetus is decided. As I already said:

"If you believe it's impossible to be alive while inside something, then yes, it's not alive and has no rights."

Which, while stated in a slightly skewed way is what you're saying, yes?

See, this is the problem trying to argue with orthogonal beliefs. It's the problem creationists have: rather than sticking to the one grand undisproveable statement "God made the world!" they look at evolutionary theory and try and assimilate it into their beliefs to make their beliefs more convincing in the light of current scientific knowledge. Doesn't work.

I believe that a woman has a right to choose to abort a foetus at any point in her pregnancy.

I believe a foetus becomes a baby when it's born.

Your beliefs seem to involve a lot of messing around with "when life occurs" and so forth: fine. I think you can argue back and forth, depending on your criteria for "life", from sperm and ova are alive to a baby doesn't become fully human until twelve months from conception. This is, in an abstract sense, an interesting discussion - but it doesn't affect my beliefs with regard to abortion.

Then why did you state that a foetus would have a right to life if it was a baby?

It would. In the same sense as I would have a right to your paycheque if I were you. But I'm not you, and a foetus isn't a baby.

It would. In the same sense as I would have a right to your paycheque if I were you. But I'm not you, and a foetus isn't a baby.

Can you please explain why not? This is, I'm fairly convinced, the crux of the matter (and Robert Anton Wilson agreed with me, so I must be right).

Is your difference simply "A baby has been born, a foetus hasn't." or is there something more complex than that about it?

Is your difference simply "A baby has been born, a foetus hasn't." or is there something more complex than that about it?

No, that's it.

In reality there are practical decisions to be made: at some point in a pregnancy having an abortion will go from a simple easy operation to a more complex one, and will eventually turn into something fairly major. At each stage a woman making the decision needs to be fully equipped with the facts. But these are details that can and should be worked out by a woman in consultation with her doctor.

To me, the birth of the baby changes nothing about the baby except for its location. It's less dependent on the mother, but only marginally. The baby itself is no more aware or alive the moment after the birth than it had been the moment before the birth. The baby being born is more a property of the mother than it is of the child.

I think that you are understating the difference between a foetus and a newborn baby - whether deliberately to make your point or not I can't tell. But there you go.

I probably am, a bit. But recent studies have shown that foetuses pay attention to their environment, cry and respon to stimuli from quite an early age. If the difference between a foetus and a baby is something to do with the {whatever} itself then I think that the developmental changes in it are much more important than whether it's inside a person.

I think that is because you can't get pregnant. ;-)

I also can't be a foetus.

And I don't want to have kids, ever.

Out of interest, how does aj's suggestion here strike you?

As a solution that could end up looking like Nicolae Ceaucescu's Romania (http://eileen.undonet.com/Main/7_R_Eile/Romania.htm). It's not a new idea. I think it's an example of how far some people will struggle to refuse to accept that a woman does and should have a right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Or possibly (and this is merely a suggestion and I know it seems remarkably unlikely) they _disagree_ with you.

I know, I know. But in an infinite universe, anthing's possible.

Andrew, are you seriously saying you think that in the whole infinite universe I'm the only person in it who believes in a woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy? And that anyone who advocates anything else is therefore disagreeing with me?

Even I don't see myself as that central to the universe.

Like it or not, a woman's right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is one of those basic feminist ideas. It showed up as one of the Seven Demands back in the 1970s: it marked a clear need that a lot of feminists got behind in the 1960s in the fight for legal abortions: it's been around as part of feminism for decades. It's not just my own personal quirk.

I wasn't saying that the entire world disagreed with you. I was saying that just because someone has made a suggestion it doesn't mean that they are somehow saying women have no rights over their bodies.

You said "I think it's an example of how far some people will struggle to refuse to accept that a woman does and should have a right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy."

And my reply was supposed to indicate that they weren't trying to worm around some kind of absolute right, they were simply disagreeing that it _was_ an absolute right.

(and it's not, in this country, late-term abortions aren't nearly as easy to come by as early-term abortions)

And my reply was supposed to indicate that they weren't trying to worm around some kind of absolute right, they were simply disagreeing that it _was_ an absolute right.

Actually, it seemed to me that they were thinking up methods by which even more unwanted foetuses could be brought to term. Hence my reference to Nicolae Ceausescu.

I have no problem with a woman's right to choose. Until it conflicts with the right to life of the unborn. My question is trying to establish when that is most likely to be so.

I don't see a conflict. A woman's right to choose overrides any "rights" invented for a foetus.

All rights are invented.

All rights are really "rights".

I feel the need to charter an airplane and sprinkle the world with tiny tags with "IMHO" on them.

Um. I tend to assume people will take the tag "IMO" for granted - of course it's my opinion, why else would I be saying it - but maybe your aeroplane is a better idea. Mix the tags up: IMO, IMHO. IMNSHO...

What about the woman's right to accept responsibility for her own actions? Under 'normal' circumstances, she is presumably 50% responsible for the pregnancy in the first place.

Strange how anti-choicers keep equating "a woman accepts responsibility for her actions" with "a woman forced to have a baby she doesn't want". I really don't see the equation - the two don't seem to me to have anything to do with each other.

I don't think I have stated anywhere that I am anti-choice. I am just asking questions as to when the rights of the foetus/unborn child begin.

Why would a foetus need rights?

Forgive me for the confusion: due to some piece of Jungian humour, I have been arguing with anti-choicers who used that very equation several times: that forcing a woman to have a baby she doesn't want somehow equals the woman "accepting responsibility".

OK, so someone who happens to be bigger, stronger, faster and more co-ordinated than yourself decides that they have the 'right' to decide whether you live or die. What then?

I'm not a foetus.

That fact accepted, what is your answer to my question?

That fact accepted, your question has nothing to do with this discussion: if you want to start a new discussion over on your own journal, please let me know.

Already did, yesterday.

The only two discussions I can see you started yesterday also have nothing to do with the question you asked me.

Pardon me for playing Devil's Advocate and asking for an opinion from the foetus' point of view.

Are you also going to ask for an opinion from the dilators?

The foetus doesn't have an opinion, no more than the tools used to induce an abortion have an opinion.

Prognosticate then.

Predict the future?

If the pregnancy is not terminated, if the woman doesn't have a spontaneous abortion, if the foetus is born, then a baby exists. If the baby is born in the UK, the odds are that the baby, once adult, will be of the opinion that a woman has a right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy: that appears to be the opinion of the majority of people in the UK.

But the foetus, as a foetus, has no opinions, and never will. That is a sure prediction - unlike the demographic guess that if the foetus stops being a foetus and becomes a baby, in twenty years time the adult the baby grew into being will probably be pro-choice.

I'm beginning to think that we are discussing at cross-purposes. What is your definition of a n unwanted pregnancy?

If the woman who is pregnant doesn't want to be pregnant, it's an unwanted pregancy. What's your definition?

Is this a wind-up?

No.

You asked me what I meant by an unwanted pregnancy, and I've told you. Then, which seems fair, I asked what you meant.

Your answer is far too simplistic for me. I do not seek to change anybody's opinion, I am trying to learn, to understand why people think and feel the way that they do. As I am sure you are aware, this is a very contentious issue, and I take it very seriously. To be honest, and without wishing to be rude, your replies have taught me nothing at all.

To answer your question, where there is pressing medical or social need.

Your answer is far too simplistic for me.

My answer is what I believe. I decline to make what I believe more complicated to suit other people.

I do not seek to change anybody's opinion, I am trying to learn, to understand why people think and feel the way that they do.

Well, that's a lifetime's job. But why would it be hard to understand that many women would not want to have their human rights taken away from them by fiat, regardless of whether or not they're pregnant?

As I am sure you are aware, this is a very contentious issue, and I take it very seriously. To be honest, and without wishing to be rude, your replies have taught me nothing at all.

Fair enough. I wasn't attempting to teach you anything, nor aware that you expected me to teach you anything.

To answer your question, where there is pressing medical or social need.

That seems to me to be a very odd way to define "unwanted".

"I decline to make what I believe more complicated to suit other people."

I don't ask that you make your beliefs more complex, just that you help me understand them more accurately.

Regarding learning being a lifetime job, I fully concur. I am 51 years of age, and all my assimilated experience wisdom does is to confirm that I know almost nothing at all.

My definition being 'odd' may be a result of the previously mentioned 'cross-purpose'. I was specifically referring to late term abortions. If a woman wants a termination just because she doesn't want the child, I would hope that would have been addressed much earlier, i.e. before the foetus is sufficiently developed as to make the procedure a 'serious operation'. Under that specific circumstance I would totally agree that the woman has the right to decide whether anyone likes it or not.

I don't ask that you make your beliefs more complex, just that you help me understand them more accurately.

Well, when I've gone into more detail, you've dismissed my beliefs as "rhetoric".

I was specifically referring to late term abortions.

Every time I try to follow through an argument about at what age a foetus "deserves" legal protection from abortion, it ends up getting more and more fiddly with tiny little points being counted as if they were major changes, simply because there is no one point in the entire gestation period that anyone can point to and say "Now that foetus is a person, and the day before it wasn't."

The really big (literally "sea-change") point is, in fact, the obvious point: the moment of birth. (Well, okay, not "moment" - the whole process can take hours or days or if you're lucky only minutes, but certainly not a moment.) That's my reason for picking that as the time the foetus ceases to be a foetus, with no rights, and becomes a baby, with all the rights of any human being.

The issue is not how developed a foetus is, but it's location. As long as it's inside the body of a woman it cannot be given independent rights without directly denying those same rights to the woman.

The law generally accepts that nobody is obliged to put themselves at risk, even to save a life. Nobody is forced, for example, to donate a spare kidney, or to donate bone marrow, or to dive into the sea if they see someone drowning. People do these things, of course, but it has to be of their own free will.

Similarly, nobody should be forced to continue a pregnancy - it has to be a choice that is freely made.

Pardon me for being an idealist sometimes, but I like to think that a middle ground could be found somehow. I have no desire or intent to deny any woman her rights, but I would think the world a better place if viable foetuses were allowed rights too. After all, medical science allows life to many children who would not have been viable without significant intervention.

Unfortunately, as we've pointed out repeatedly, there is a direct conflict of interest between the woman and the foetus while it is in her body. It is impossible to give the foetus independent rights without depriving the woman of her rights.

I'm tempted to add that at 26 years the average male is also capable of independent life & is also sometimes inside a woman. Does that mean we can kil 'em (seh said brightly ? :-)

Being 31 I'm fine with that :->

My turn to say 100% agreement.

Shall we get hitched??

Lately I have spoken to several young men claiming to be pro-choice. My main irritation is that by in large they have mistaken the term pro-choice to mean pro-abortion, if I have been give the right to choose why is it suddenly wrong to choose LIFE?

It is a common confusion: there is also the confusion where the anti-choice people are claiming to be "pro-life" and "anti-abortion"... there are a lot of strong feelings around it.

But really, there are two places to stand: pro-choice, which means you believe a woman who is pregnant has the right to choose for herself what to do, and anti-choice, which means you believe a woman's decision what to do about her pregnancy ought to be taken away from her.

The one thing guaranteed to make me genuinely angry is a man making any generalised comment* on abortion other than to say "it's up to the woman who's pregnant, surely".

*generalized: Obviously a man who is involved with a woman who is pregnant has a right to comment on/discuss his specific relationship to this specific pregnancy, at the time or afterwards.

"The one thing guaranteed to make me genuinely angry is a man making any generalised comment* on abortion other than to say "it's up to the woman who's pregnant, surely"."

Surely that's gender-neutral? Why should one woman be allowed to have an opinion on what another woman should do with her pregnancy, if men can't?

It's never going to be entirely gender-neutral, because women can get pregnant, and men can't.

You mistake me, though. I wasn't expressing a moral or ethical judgement when I said that men sounding off in a generalized way about abortion make me angry. I was just pointing out that they do. For obvious reasons: these are people who have never once thought about abortion in terms of "I might get accidentally pregnant: how would I feel then?" Men sounding off in a generalised way about abortion generally come across as smug bastards speaking from a great height about an issue that will never directly affect them but which they feel they have the right to preach about.

My ethical position is that, for any pregnancy, there is exactly one person with the right to decide what to do about it, and that is the woman who is pregnant. She may and she should take advice from her doctor, other medical advisors, and people she's involved with, but it's her decision.

Mistakes will ALWAYS happen. That's Chaos Theory for you.

I'm anti-saddling a poor kid with a parent or parents that couldn't give a toss about it. That's a far bigger crime than abortion, IMHO.

I think both you and Lady Sysiphus need to have a look at that phrase, "Anti-Abortion", and consider a new one....

I am anti-abortion.

But I also consider it necessary.

Just like I'm anti-killing, but still see occasions when it can be necessary.

this is not a black and white issue. a fetus is not a mindless thing, as far as popular science has led me to believe. it has a brain, and senses, and experiences. while it does not have full sentience the point is that left without intervention, it will 99% of the time develop full sentience. whether you believe a baby in the womb is a person or not, you cannot argue with the fact that by having an abortion you choose to prevent a baby from becoming a person. abortion is making a potential person die.

the moral question then surely arises from the moment the child is conceived, and the hair splitting around what constitutes a thing with rights is irrelevant to the moral debate?

rambling now...

Strictly speaking you don't have a foetus at the moment of conception. What you have is a zygote. Then an embryo.
It isn't a foetus until about 11 weeks after conception when the major organs have formed.

> it will 99% of the time develop full sentience

No, about 1/3 of pregnancies end naturally in the first trimester due to either the embryo or placenta not forming properly.

> abortion is making a potential person die

I'd be wary of saying anything like that because that has also been used as an argument against contraception.

You could equally argue that not giving blood (or bone marrow or a spare kidney) makes people die.

Contraception is also "making a potential person die."

Do you really want every sperm to be sacred? How often will you have sex if every pregnancy is an inviolable life?

You either consider foetuses persons and limit the autonomy of born people (women) or consider the foetus not a person and allow sexually mature women to be treated as adults not slaves to a bunch of cells inside them.

Everything else in this discussion is sentiment. It's a straight choice in logic and law: it or you because it depends on you.

You either consider foetuses persons and limit the autonomy of born people (women) or consider the foetus not a person and allow sexually mature women to be treated as adults not slaves to a bunch of cells inside them.

I don't think that foetuses are persons at 2 weeks, I think they are at 26 weeks.

It's purely a personal judgement of course.

But it's a bit more complex than your approach.

It isn't. That's exactly the point I'm making. It';s an on or off choice, whether you like it or not, IF, you are intersted in adult women having the same rights as all other adults (ie men- I'm afarid..)

It's complex if you consider it from the point of view of the foetus-as-person - as a believing catholic would.

Giving rts to foetuses inherently makes all adult sexualy active women potetially subordinate to someone/something else.-

J is for once right, in that there is no comparable situation for men. How would you feel if you were told that you could never leave the house again, or that you had to stop using the Net, or that you had to start drinking wine or stop eating chocolate (to pick something more trivial) or else a little boy in Vietnam might die? or be born handicapped? or never go to school? And that laws would enforce what you did in favour of the little boy in VIetnam? That's the kind of loss of autonomy you'd potentially be subject to.

The reason in law viability is or was the limit of abortion was because the kiling of a child who could survive outside the wonb was deemed murder by English statute. This was nothing to do with abortion law, but it inter-acted to put a cap on till when abortion was lawful. I *think* it was repealed by the last abortion reform so in fact abortion in specuial circs eg to save the life of the mother ,right to the last breath, is now lawful - but I'd need to check.

Where you could more interestingly go with this debate is why we are so hung up on the rights of new born babes who are essentially blobs. Pure sentimentality. They don't have dreams and hopes, they don't have autonomy, and I think we both think/know they don't have souls. Potential isn't enough, or you condemn condoms. Many sophisticated societies have practiced exposure of new babies where their birth was unfortunate - as Mike points out :-) I'm not sure postnatal abortion is always such a bad idea. the main reaso we think it is is because we have a ready market for new born babes on the adoption market. If having a baby was the ruins of all your hopes and dreams, as it once was, and abortion illegal, post birth termination starts to look fairly sensible.

We're talking about the period between 20-odd weeks and 32 weeks, not an eternal sentence. If I had to not drink wine (or something I liked, even) and curtail my activities for 2 months or cause someone's death, I'd do it.

And then make damn sure it never happened again.

And of course it's sentimentality, most things in life are sentimental. Rape's only a worse crime than assault because of an emotional reaction that says that sex is somehow important (taking an extreme example). It's all down to feelings in the end.

It's all down to feelings in the end

THis you talking???!!

Actually, historically rape was worse than assault because you were violating the property of whatever man the woman "belonged" to - husband or father. Property crimes have always been regarded as more heinous than crimes to the person in English law :-)

I've had the discussion where I said that either you end up with circular reasoning or assumptions you can't prove, yeah?

Well emotions are the assumptions we make in everyday life.

And yeah, it's property damage originally. But hopefully it's not that any more.

> And then make damn sure it never happened again.

Well, that's another difficulty.

If you tell women that if they get pregnant then their rights to control their own bodies will be taken from them for the duration (or even for the two months you're proposing - and two months is a b****y long time, especially the last two months of pregnancy, believe me...) then quite a lot, especially the more intelligent ones, will simply opt for never having children at all.

Or women will conceal pregnancies from the authorities, and therefore not get the ante-natal care they need.

Isn't that what we do do? I could have sworn that getting an abortion after 20-odd weeks was nigh impossible. Not completely impossible, but certainly very, very hard.

Getting an abortion after 20 weeks is difficult, but since the criteria for permitting abortion in the UK is "damage to the physical or mental health of the mother or her existing children" it is still possible.
As pointed out elsewhere, nobody in their right mind has a late abortion for trivial reasons.

And difficulty in getting an abortion is not the same thing as saying pregnant women should be prevented from drinking wine or smoking cigarettes or whatever else the (predominantly male and elderly) judges of this country decide they have to do for the duration.

> making sure that women have the resources and education available so that there's no need for abortions save those performed for medical reasons.

Education is definitely very important (and currently a bit lacking in some areas, although the UK isn't nearly as bad as the US).

I think it's important to inform people of all the risks they're taking. Like all activities, sex has it's risks.
If you choose to climb mountains for fun you might fall off one, if you choose to have sex for fun then you might get pregnant (or cause someone else to become pregnant).

Another point is that it's also good to educate men about their contraceptive options and to point out to them that they also have a responsibility to take care to avoid causing an unwanted pregnancy.

Although the CSA is deplorable in many ways, one good effect it has had is to cause young men as well as young women to be much more aware that sex without contraception could have a long term effect on their lives.
There has apparently been an increase in condom use among adolescent males in the last few years because of fears of having to pay child support.

It's interesting that the number of terminations performed in the UK in the first year that abortion was legal was almost exactly the same as the estimated number for the previous year, when it had been illegal. All that changed was the number of women who survived the procedure.

It's reasonable to conclude from this that (outside of American soap operas anyway) almost noone has an abortion for trivial reasons, and that women who have abortions are almost always sufficiently desparate to end the pregnancy that they would do so even if the only option was a dangerous, illegal procedure.

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