Abortion

[andrewducker]

Taking some of the thoughts brought up by the post yesterday, I'm going to try and sum up some of my thoughts on the matter.
(Disclaimer 1: when I say "everyone", I'm bearing in mind that there are bound to be some people that feel likewise and actually mean "nearly, but not quite everybody)
(Disclaimer 2: Legalised abortions are necessary, because otherwise women have illegal ones, in pretty much the same numbers, only the women die in much larger amounts.  Which I think we can all agree is a bad thing)

Everyone agrees that killing babies that are out of the womb is wrong.
Most people are fine with contraception, the prevention of the sperm and egg coming together to form a zygote.

In between it comes down to a clash between the right of the mother to self-determination versus the right of the zygote/foetus not to die.

For some people the answer is simple - at any point after conception the foetus is alive and has the same rights as any other person, including the right not to be killed.  To them all abortion is wrong.

For others the answer is equally simple in the opposite direction.  If the foetus is inside the mother it's not alive yet, and therefore has no right to life.  Abortion at any point is therefore fine.

For the rest of us, it's a little trickier - it rests on some measure of life/sentience.  If, for instance, at 25 weeks gestation a baby is born prematurely, is it alive and does it have the right to life?  If so, then presumably it would have the same right while inside the mother.  Could you remove it's right to life by putting it back inside the mother (one imagines a ceasarian taking place with the baby being alive and then pre-natal once again as the baby is raised and lowered).

The simplest measure in the last case is time - after all the complexity and intelligence of the foetus increases over time in a very well understood manner.  Deciding on how many weeks old a foetus needs to be before it's "really alive" is left as an exercise for the reader.

[Poll #235527]

*feels nervous about hitting 'post'*
*awaits the end of the world*

Comments

[broin.livejournal.com]

I'd have to go with 'abortion early on is ok, but I'd really like people to be sterilised'.

I'm really stuck on foetuses having rights.

Re: abortion poll

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the foetus has a right to life".

Personally I think there should be an option "The mother always has the right to choose with possible input from the father."

Not having a womb or a uterus, I can only speak of this as a member of the voting public rather than as someone that it might apply to.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I clicked "all abortion is OK", but actually I meant "all abortion should be legal" for the same reason. I think there is no abortion that is preferable to no unwanted pregnancy in the first place.

unclear

[josephgrossberg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was wondering whether he meant OK as in "legal" or OK as in "ethical".

[nirikina.livejournal.com]

I remember at school in the fifth year some folks came to talk to use on the subject - there were two groups, one pro and one anti. It was mostly factual and not really about how potential mothers feel in these situations. There's so many opinions about this one.

What I feel most strongly about however is that I believe women should have absolute control over what happens inside their bodies.

[kimberly-a.livejournal.com]

I clicked "At some point the foetus becomes sentient enough that it's rights override the mother's right to choose", but with some reservations.

I personally feel that abortions should be freely available up to the point when the fetus might be reasonably expected to live on its own outside of the womb. Up to a certain point, I see the fetus as part of the mother's body (many pregnancies are miscarried, for example, by the mother's body for various reasons in the early months ... should miscarriages be illegal? are they manslaughter?). But after a certain point I consider the fetus an independent creature -- capable of independent survival -- despite its location.

So despite the fact that I do think that late-term abortions should be legal, I think they should be closely controlled, being performed only under extreme circumstances (the mother will die otherwise, the fetus is experiencing extreme pain, etc.).

Just my opinion.

[andrewducker]

I'd go with you on that too.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

My questions are not intended to express any disagreement with those points. I regard the situations you describe as 'out of the ordinary' and therefore subject to the 'extenuating circumstances' point of view.
What we, i.e. society, has to decide is a satisfactory definition of 'normal circumstances'.

[kimberly-a.livejournal.com]

Agreed. It's easy to say the words "normal circumstances" or "extenuating circumstances", but much more difficult to reach any sort of consensus on what those words mean.

[moniqueleigh]

I clicked "all abortion is ok, the foetus has a right to life but it's always overridden by the mother's right to choose" simply because if they're not, women will get abortions anyway.

My personal preference in the case of unwanted pregnancies:
1. Early abortion.
2. For whatever reason abortion has not happened before such time that the foetus could survive outside the woman's body (without extreme medical measures), the woman could have a C-section, etc, unless she is willing to carry to term. The child could then be put up for adoption.

However. It's not always going to be so rosy & pretty. So, I feel abortion does have to be completely legal at all stages. But I do think that there should be much information (written & otherwise) available letting women know their options. I applaud those clinics/doctors who do make such information available.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I reject the notion that abortions should be legal for the reason that "people will do them anyway". There are many laws that people break, but that doesn't mean those laws serve no purpose. In fact, I don't believe that there is any law that has never been broken, so the logic of that point is incredibly slim. People speeding illegally are more dangerous than if speeding were legal and therefore more expected, but that doesn't mean that all speeding laws should be dropped. If there were a legal procedure for robbery, then fewer people might get injured in armed break-ins, but it seems silly to even suggest it.

I believe that a woman has the right to choose not to become pregnant. After that, it's too late.

I also think it's absolutely cruel for a woman to be able to not consider the wishes of the father. It might not be his body carrying the child, but it is still half his child.

I chose 'other' in your poll because I believe that extenuating circumstances, like a child that is so misformed that he cannot live on his own, or a pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother, could be valid reasons for abortion, just like I believe that there are extenuating circumstances under which killing a person is not murder (self-defense or mercy killings).

And I believe that giving an unwanted child up for adoption is an option that is often overlooked in the trauma of the moment, or discarded as a "Little Orphan Annie" hellish alternative.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> I believe that a woman has the right to choose not to become pregnant. After that, it's too late.

Unfortunately contraceptives do fail.
And then there's rape or coercion to take into account as well.

> I also think it's absolutely cruel for a woman to be able to not consider the wishes of the father. It might not be his body carrying the child, but it is still half his child.

Sorry, but I don't think that gives him the right to decide what someone else does with their body.
It's fair and reasonable to discuss with your partner what you're going to do about an unplanned pregnancy, but if the man is allowed to make the decision then the woman has no human rights at all.

You can't compel someone to, for example, donate blood, donate bone marrow or donate their spare kidney, even if it can be proved that another person will die if they don't. Why should a woman be compelled to donate her body and risk her life so that a man can have a child?

> giving an unwanted child up for adoption is an option that is often overlooked

I don't think it's ever overlooked, to be honest, it's just that in order to give a child up for adoption you have to have gone through the whole process of pregnancy and childbirth which is a huge undertaking.

I have kids myself and I believe that pregnancy is a job for volunteers only.
It's not easy. Even in a normal pregnancy there's morning sickness (I lost over a stone in my first pregnancy because I was so sick), back-ache and trapped nerves, fluid retention, anaemia, mastitis, indigestion, heartburn, etc. Your tendons all loosen in the last couple of months in order to make delivering the baby easier, but it also means that you're constantly pulling muscles, twisting your ankle, etc, etc.
All sorts of stuff happens during it, and it doesn't all get better after delivery. Some of it you're stuck with for life.

Nobody I know has come through pregnancy without some permanent effects on their health - most of us have minor things like varicose veins, piles, lost tooth enamel, etc, but two women nearly died, one had a stroke during delivery and is paralysed on one side of her body and one got a cancer that was triggered by the pregnancy hormones. In my view nobody has the right to compel another person to take those sorts of risks.

Then there's childbirth itself. An average of 17 hours of screaming agony for a first labour. If you haven't done it yourself there's no way you'd believe how much it hurts.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Hey Nicky. Sorry, but as a man, I have to pick you up on this.

At what point does what Wolflady said, "I also think it's absolutely cruel for a woman to be able to not consider the wishes of the father. It might not be his body carrying the child, but it is still half his child." become "the man making the decision" or "compelling the woman to..." I think that's a bit of an unfair interpretation.

I'm the first to admit it's ultimately the woman's choice, but I cannot countenance the PoV that woman have the right to ignore the feelings of the man involved. If the shoe was on the other foot, women would be raging at the injustice of that. The man has a right to be involved, and I would hope that he'd have his opinion and feelings respected, while at the same time respecting that ultimately, the woman has to make the decision.

Look at the reverse as well - what if a man inadvertently gets a woman pregnant, and doesn't want the child, and she does? Should any man be forced to become a father because of, as you rightly highlight as a possibility, a condom bursting? Or is there more to that than it simply being "the woman's choice"?

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> a bit of an unfair interpretation

Okay.
It was my reading of it in the context of the whole post, but looking at it again I think you're right - in itself it doesn't imply removing the woman's right to make the decision.

> I cannot countenance the PoV that woman have the right to ignore the feelings of the man involved

Unfortunately, although it is obviously fair and reasonable to consult your partner about these things, I do think it's important that no man has a legal right to compel a woman to either continue or to terminate a pregnancy.

Once you have a child, both parents have rights and obligations, but pregnancy occurs inside a woman's body and I can't see any way that anyone else should be able to tell her what to do about it without it being a gross violation of her most basic human rights.

Will post more later. I had a long debate on this subject with the uk.people.(not fit to be)fathers.
Got to go and buy kids shoes just now.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Kids shoes - fun. We got Con slippers recently that play "The Wheels On The Bus". And one of his favourite words is bus (because it's all he can see from the car window when we drive in Edinburgh), so it's all good.

I'm not talking LEGAL right. I'm talking moral right, emotional right. Honestly, I'm just talking about doing what is right. So many problems would be far more easily resolved if the people involved just did the right thing.

I'll give you the legal right thing - but in that case, a woman should NOT have the legal right to chase a man for child maintenance payments. If he plays no part in the decision process other than to be an unwitting sperm donor, why the hell should a man then have to pay for that for the rest of his life? I mean, seriously - what's the difference between a bloke who donates sperm via a sperm bank, and one who's condom bursts on a one night stand? Why should one be pursuable through the courts for payments, and the other not?

For that matter - define 'parent'....

[nickys.livejournal.com]

I don't think a man is automatically entitled to get away with it completely if a condom bursts, because, after all, the woman doesn't get away with it, ever.
If she gets pregnant she has to deal with the physical and emotional consequences of an unplanned pregnancy and then either a termination or an unplanned child. A termination can have serious long term consequences, including permanent sterility and continuing a pregnancy can have serious long term consequences including disability and death.

Fair enough that if you didn't plan to be a father you should have no obligation to actually be a father in the sense of sticking around and raising the child.
But I do think child support is a good principle from the point of view that if a man makes the decision to have sex then he, as well as the woman, should have some share of the risks involved.
If nothing else, from a pragmatic point of view, having two people actively seeking to avoid causing a pregnancy is more likely to be successful than just one.

It's not as if a man has no choices - he chooses to have sex and he chooses a method of contraception, presumably knowing its failure rate.


As to sperm donors, there's a specific agreement of non-liability made in advance in that case. And the motivations of the sperm donor are completely different to the motivations of someone having a one-night-stand.


A parent, in my view, is someone who raises a child. Being a genetic relative is not a necessary criteria.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I believe that a woman has the right to choose not to become pregnant. After that, it's too late.

One of the problems I have with this argument, is that in its purest form it would prevent the use of emergency contraception (and even taken to its extreme, the use of certain hormonal contraceptives which could have an abortificant effect).

Deciding when the fetus has a right to life is very difficult and I will not attempt to do so, but I will say that I do not believe it is in the first few days of pregnancy, especially given the miscarriage rate in the early stages of pregnancy.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with emergency contraceptives, but I also don't think that they invalidate the statement.

[shannon_a]

My other answer is, "At some point the foetus becomes SELF-SUFFICIENT enough that its rights override the mother's right to choose"

[shannon_a]

(If you went with the sentient criteria instead, abortions would be legal up to about age 25. Or, less tongue-in-cheek, I'm not convinced the criteria would be met at birth.)

[andrewducker]

I'm fairly sure I was 22 when I became sentient.

No, I'm not kidding.

I'm also not sure that the majority of people _are_ sentient.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Mycroft :-)

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

Boy, you took more flak for your post than I did! ...Which is to say, I'm flattered at having been quoted initially, and I appreciate the later poll.

I chose 'at some point the foetus becomes sentient enough that it's rights override the mother's right to choose,' because I believe that once the child could conceivably survive outside the mother, considerations should be made -- considerations that do not include, however, a ban on late-term ('partial-birth') abortions, which are rarely performed for elective reasions and most often performed at a consideration for the mother's life. What angered me so much about the bill that banned late-term abortions was the fact that those who supported the bill seemed up in arms about saving the babies from their cruel, capricious mothers who would damn them mere minutes before they were born hale and hardy, when what they were really doing was damning to death women whose late-term pregnancies go horribly wrong, who now have no medical recourse that involves weighing the life of the mother over the life of the child.

I continue in my strong support of sex education and birth control access, the latter for everyone and the former particularly for women; sarahq's comment to my post is pretty illustrative of why this is so important. Stop abortions not before they happen, but before they're even necessary at all, and then we can come back to a discussion about elective surgery and the right of the child versus the right of the mother. Before that time, it's nearly a moot point.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I chose At some point the foetus becomes sentient enough that it's rights override the mother's right to choose over all abortion is ok, the foetus has a right to life but it's always overridden by the mother's right to choose because I have problems with an eighth-month pregnant woman deciding to have an abortion for reasons other than her health.

Eight months is an extreme and unlikely example of course, but if a woman has the complete right to choose up until birth, it's a scenero that would be allowed.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Possibly you don't understand that a late term abortion is a major surgical procedure for the woman.
It's not something that any sane person would decide to do just on a whim.

At that stage you either have to go through a full induced labour (which is medically the safest, but massively painful and psychologically traumatic) or have the equivalent of a caeasarian section, with all the attendant risks of any major abdominal surgery.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I realise that. (I said it was extreme.) I was just using it as an example of why I ticked the box I did and not the mother's total right to choose box.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

It is alarming how many people still think of abortion as an easy option and that women are somehow getting out of their responsibilities by having one.
Even an early abortion has risks, and a late one is just horrendous for the woman.

If someone is sufficiently desparate to end a pregnancy that they are prepared to go through with all the risks of a late abortion then I really don't think anyone else has the right to forbid them to.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I never said I thought abortion was an easy option.

As to being sufficiently desperate: People want to do any number of things which are forbidden. Being sufficiently desperate to do them usually doesn't override their forbiddeness, let alone allowing the sufficiently desperate to ask others for assistance in doing them. (Just an argument against "sufficiently desperate" being a suitable reason for allowing something.)

[nickys.livejournal.com]

There's a whole load of background issues here, both principle and pragmatic.

The principle, simply stated, is that a foetus cannot be given any independent rights without infringing on the rights of the woman carrying it.

The pragmatic point is that abortion has always existed and, unfortunately, probably will always exist. It's not a nice thing, it's not risk free and nobody in their right mind does it for trivial reasons. It's a last resort when all other options have failed.
As stated in the original post, if you want to reduce the abortion rate then the best thing to do is to reduce the need for abortions - for example by improving contraception education and by removing the social stigma against single parents and their children.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

All of that I can agree on.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

I chose abortion always OK, the foetus has no right to life.

I tend to take a more positive view of abortion and one which is, paradoxically, more concerned about the baby that might be born if an unwanted pregnancy was to continue. In my view, the existance of an unwanted child is a failure on all our parts in intervene. Better a late abortion than an unwanted baby.

In addition to that I believe unshakingly in a woman's right to choose what goes on in her own body. Therefore I admit of no interference from the medical profession, who I see as advisers and technicians in this scenario, nor, I'm afraid, do I recognise the right of the father at this juncture.

When the baby is born the mother and father should automatically have equal parental responsibility. But no-one else gets a say in what happens to my body on the grounds that we bumped genitals once. No sir!

Other

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

The woman always has the right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

At some point, however, terminating the pregnancy will actually be more of a threat to her health than going through a normal delivery would be.

Foetuses don't have rights.

Re: Other

[andrewducker]

A woman doesn't have the right to choose to threaten her own health?

Re: Other

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

She does: but she ought to know exactly what she's risking.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I think abortion should always be legal, although I believe that abortion on the grounds that the woman does not want a child should take place as early in the pregnancy as possible.

As nickys said though, late term abortions are a very major procedure and not one that women are likely to take unless there are compelling reasons to do so. A pregnant woman should always be able to put her own health above that of the fetus, for example.

Ultimately I don't believe that the father should have any legal rights with regard to abortion. A child is not a right, even within a marriage type relationship. In an ideal situation the father would be fully aware of what was going on and have some input, but ultimately the decision lies with the woman only.

[taromazzy.livejournal.com]

"Everyone agrees that killing babies that are out of the womb is wrong."

Hey, if everyone agreed, 2 children a week wouldn't be murdered by their parents!

[derumi.livejournal.com]

As the chances of a baby being birthed through my sexual organs are very low, I don't feel qualified to choose one way or another, except to support any partners I may have that do need to make the decision.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

Has to be 'other' as it's not a black and white issue and all other options given seem to be pretty black and white.

There is far more to it than sentience and rights. It's a bloody tricky one. Personally, I have always gone to lengths to avoid any possibility of having to personally deal with the issue, and that is probably my soundest opinion (and option) given that I cannot, logically, have an absolute yeah or nay opinion, or even one with some conditional logic that I fell woudl cover all situations.

Actually, I should have gone for the 8 foot pole option, but that would have been cowardly.