Abortion

[andrewducker]

I say that I'm pro-choice, but the truth is that I'm actually anti-abortion. Rather, I'm pro-making sure that women have the resources and education available so that there's no need for abortions save those performed for medical reasons. The best way to stop abortions is to stop the need for abortions -- not with abstinence education that tells girls they're naughty for getting knocked up but doesn't tell them how to prevent it, but with realistic sex education and more resources for young women who find themselves pregnant and unable to afford prenatal care and postnatal expenses of raising a child

Which pretty much sums up how I feel.

Stolen from the ever-vigilant Lady Sysiphus.

Comments

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

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..

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

Foetuses are basically parasites until they are born

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

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

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.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

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).

[heron61.livejournal.com]

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.

[sylphigirl.livejournal.com]

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?

[nickys.livejournal.com]

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.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> 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?

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

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.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

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.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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

[nickys.livejournal.com]

That's right.

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

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> 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.

[andrewducker]

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.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

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.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

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.