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

[andrewducker]

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.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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

[andrewducker]

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?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.

[andrewducker]

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)

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

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.