andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2004-01-18 10:31 pm
andrewducker) wrote2004-01-18 10:31 pm
Abortion
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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Boggle
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 :-)
Re: Boggle
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.
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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.
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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.