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]

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.