Another thread about Abortion
 

This is to discuss the ethics (or lack thereof) of abortion. Nobody touches this topic with a ten and a half foot pole because they don't want to get into this kind of discussion. I am debating where to put this because I would love some of our political folks to respond as well.

I am of the stance that abortion is wrong. I pay taxes, so I think the turd I elected to office should delegate how stray cats are handled, not necessarily putting them to sleep. I think abortion should come down to the health of the party involved i.e. Mother or child. The father should have absolutely no say in this.

What do you think about Abortion? Why?

Depends on the situation and that's why I think it should not simply be outlawed. A woman who is raped should not have to bear the child.

That being said, I think there should be a cut off for when the abortion can be done.

Magpie and I had a discussion regarding this topic just last night.

As a man, I would never agree to have any offspring of mine aborted. The way the laws are set up as of now, my opinion doesn't matter and that stinks of misandry, but then that's a whole different discussion.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest that abortion is a casual thing. However, the objections to abortion seem to stem primarily from religious views. If we take that as a given, government has no business getting involved.

It's also my opinion that the welfare of an actual living, breathing and thinking human supersedes the welfare of a potential human. A fetus is not a person yet, and if the would-be mother believes it to be in her best interest to abort the child then that ought to be her choice to make.

There are plenty of unwanted children in the world as it is. I don't understand why anyone would want to add to that pool.

No Dammit, it's not ... I think the laws are just fine like that ...(I hate myself for repeating this as many times as I have) and I did say that in the OP so please, Discuss, rant, rave ... why do you think it's misandry in the case of abortion?

It's a decision that no outside party should make.

It bothers me that men feel they should have a say in an abortion. (Sorry, Martian)
Pregnancy is not a friendly, easy experience for a woman. It's the woman's body that is affected. The man over-riding a woman's decision is the same as saying the woman is no more than his property.


Me personally? I can't see myself having an abortion.

i'm the one guy who says its wrong, i'm against abortion. if you don't want the kid, have it and sell it, give it up for adoption, whatever. just because it is a fetus and cant talk or breathe quite yet does not make it "not a person," in my opinion. it is a living thing, therefore killing it would be murder. yes, i'm kinda also against birth control because the morning after pill is technically an abortion. (oddly, i'm all for condoms and masturbation, even though bazillions of sperms die.)

does anyone have accurate statistics on how many children are born because of rape? i dont think it is that many, and i don't see it as a good reason to have an abortion. being raped is horrible, but have the kid and sell it and use the money for counseling. don't kill a human because something shitty happened to you.

the ONLY way i could justify abortion is if having the baby would absolutely 100% kill the mother, and that is more rare than a female willing to talk to me. sadly, abortion, like anything else humans want to do, will be done whether it's legal or not.

how about we make abortion illegal in the US, and instead of abortion clinics, we have abortion travel agencies that will book you a round trip flight, stay, and abortion in china?

---------- Post added at 06:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:57 PM ----------

it IS the woman's body that is affected. it's also the living thing inside that woman's body that is affected. i'm not saying you (the collective you, not genuinegirly you) cant have an abortion cause you are merely a woman, i'm saying you cant have an abortion cause the human inside you who cant speak should be taken into account. if i didn't believe the fetus is a living human being, i wouldn't be against it.

I chose I don't know.

There are two issues at odds here and I agree with both sides. The right to life issue, abortion as birth control reeks morally to me. It is a right to life issue and I have no reason to oppose it outside the rotten feeling in my guts when I think about if it were me or my SO. This could have to do with the fact that my mother's age and mine are separated by a mere 16 years.

The women's rights issue I agree with as well, a person should have a say in what goes on insider their own body. More importantly than that, their say should trump anyone else's.

For someone to say or act like this isn't a moral issue and women's rights issue, only one or the other, I would have to assume they're being disingenuous or deliberately obtuse.

So who wins? I'm in the camp of the rights of the living trump the rights of the potentially living, but I would never chose abortion for myself or my wife (to be) or my daughters(to be). Doesn't matter though because that decision won't ever be up to me.

Squee, I agree that the unborn life has great value.

I simply disagree with abortion being treated as anything other than a case-by-case personal decision.

When it comes to childbirth and child rearing, there's a definite bias within the Western world towards the mother. I don't agree with that. I see no reason why a man should be considered in any way less capable of raising one or more children single-handedly than a woman. Depending on your beliefs, there has been exactly one or no cases at all of a woman spontaneously conceiving a child without masculine involvement. Men are expected to take a hand in birth control, and are expected to help raise the child if the woman decides to carry it to term (again, regardless of the man's wishes). If a guy gets a girl pregnant and doesn't want the kid, the prevailing opinion seems to be 'you should've thought of that before you fucked her.' Why is there a double standard here? Why should it be any different for a woman?

You say, genuinegirly, that the man being able to have a hand in the decision equates to the woman being property. I understand your point about the hardships of pregnancy and childbirth, but I also understand that there's a very real emotional cost to a lot of potential fathers due to this. I wouldn't dream of asking my girlfriend to get an abortion if the unthinkable occurred and she became pregnant, and I'd be very upset if she didn't take my wishes into account when making her decision. Fortunately I already know her stance on that issue and so don't have to worry about it, but I also know personally at least one man who wasn't so fortunate. I know that the loss of what he considered to be his child haunted him for a very long time, and I know that he's a damn good father and would've been a great dad to that kid. That opportunity was taken away from him, and he had no power to stop it.

Nothing about this issue is easy. Pregnancy isn't easy, childbirth isn't easy. Abortions aren't easy either; there's a very real physical and emotional toll on the woman, and often an equal toll on the man. I'm not saying the father should always have the final say in the issue, since every case is different, but I also don't agree with the idea that the father is automatically persona non grata here.

Martian, I share your thoughts on this matter.

I think it comes down to whether or not a fetus is a person. If it is, abortion should be illegal. If not, it's entirely the woman's choice. I haven't heard a convincing argument either way regarding the personhood of a fetus.

I'm no fan of them.

I'd like to see less of them.

I don't think it's my decision.

I don't think they should be illegal.

I do think there should be a cut off date.

I don't think we should be killing doctors who preform them.

Ah. Yes. Martian, I am not saying that a woman should not consult the father. I am simply stating that there should be no legal requirement of his compliance with the decision to obtain an abortion.

I was raised to be staunchly in favor of a woman's right to abortion, but my position has modified over time. While I agree that the practice should not be illegal, I do believe we would have a healthier society without as many of them. I don't care for any of the words that would commonly be used to modify the word 'healthier.' Not morally, for I do not believe it is necessarily a moral issue. Nor spiritually, because that is too vague. It's more along the lines of an enlightenment or intellectual - psychological - health that I am referring to. I would like to see less abortions because less men and women are creating less doubtful, irrational, ill-conceived (no pun intended) pregnancies. In my mind this can only be induced (again, no pun, I swear) by a sweeping and radical change in the way we view matters of sexuality and, as a consequence, birth control. I think birth control should be free and widely distributed to individuals on demand. Perhaps even delivered through the mail as a public service. I think birth control should be as naturally a consumer commodity and as commonly considered as toilet paper or toothpaste.

Also, I have no doubt that irrational, moral/religious-based attitudes - in concert with a wild, puerile fascination - that we (in this country) have with the subject of sex serves to increase the amount of thoughtless, foolhardy sexual activity and, as a consequence, the number of abortions that we have. That's where the enlightenment comes in.

Do I have any hope that we will ever reach such a lofty place in my or my children's lifetimes? Or ever? Nope. From the looks of it, things are only getting worse.

And one last thing, I understand that it is really hard for a man to lose a child, a fetus, to an abortion that he had no control over. But, I'm sorry, if it ever becomes so bad for a man that he is equally as disturbed and distressed as a woman who has carried to term and given birth to a child against her own will, then I suggest there is more going on in that man's head than is rational and he should probably seek professional help. I will go along with the regret and grieving only so far.

But if the man has no legal rights in regards to the child, then it amounts to the exact situation you're decrying in reverse. At that point it ends up being that the man gets to have a say in the discussion, unless the woman doesn't like what it is.

The most reasonable solution in my mind is for an abortion to require either the consent of both parties, or for the father to abdicate any responsibility. Perhaps a failsafe of allowing the woman to make the decision unilaterally after making reasonable efforts to contact and consult the father, but other than that I don't believe the woman should have the right to make a decision in this regard without the father's consent.


I seem to be in the minority in the way I think on this.

Bingo.

I'll also add: I think abortion is a symptom of something much bigger, and arguing about whether or not we should allow that symptom only allows the disease to go un-looked-into, which I find tragic in the extreme.

Your scenario makes excellent sense and I am inclined to support it. But in this process you fail to address a scenario where a woman does not want the child and the man insists on its birth.

I agree whole-heartedly with the following comment:

I think there are too many people already. It does mess up the economics of the 20th century where the following generation would pay for the previous one to retire, and increase the demand for their homes & land. And while I wouldn't want to be the one who has to perform the procedure, fewer unwanted or unexpected pregnancies would help reduce the population level.

But, the main issue is how do you get women in the third world countries to see that their lives will be better if they wait to have kids and have smaller families?

Then again, better access and education (& religion's acceptance for some) to birth control would be preferred.

I also think a UTI device should be inserted for 5 years minimum after a woman has had an abortion.

I'm in the, "safe, legal, and rare" camp. I do not think abortions should be a substitute for birth control, or a decision to be undertaken lightly. But I don't think they should be performed with wire hangers in back alleys. So I support the right to chose abortion, and oppose unreasonable restriction on that right.

I've had two experience that guide my personal feelings on the issue. In college, I had a pregnancy scare. I had used birth control and all that, but for one reason or another had a late period. I made up my mind right then and there--"I'm having an abortion." A few days later, I got my period, but the experience made me feel like I could squarely count myself in the "pro-choice" column. Then, a few months ago, I had another late period. (again, we used condoms, but you never know) I had just started dating the guy, and absolutely dreaded having to tell him I'd gotten knocked up on our first time. I ended up being several days late, and to put my mind at ease decided to take a home pregnancy test. (That in itself was a new adventure--I've never been great at peeing-for-accuracy) I bought myself the Cadillac of home pregnancy tests (the one with the digital words), I peed on the stick, and waited the requisite amount of time. I walked into the bathroom with a great amount of fear, waiting to read the word "Pregnant" on the little screen. I took a deep breath, looked at the screen, and read what it said--"Not Pregnant". The magic words....and yet, they didn't feel very good. I felt a sense of loss, in a way. I was relieved, of course, and very glad I didn't have to immediately shake up what seemed to be a very promising relationship in its earliest days. But I felt the strangest sense of disappointment as well. And that's when I began thinking what it would have been like to have an abortion--to have read the word "Pregnant" on the screen and made the decision to erase that word. It was then that I realized I might not make that decision for myself. It did not change how I feel about the subject in general--but it did change how I feel about what I would do.

I don't buy the argument that there's too many people already. If Abortion was to be legalized, will it be like getting a tan? "Oh by the way, on my way home I have to get rid of this kid, I might be late for the PTA meeting" ...

That's a common pro-life argument, and also a complete fallacy. Legal or not, abortion is still a surgical procedure that carries inherent risks. Legalization of abortion also does not nullify morality.

I don't want to meet the woman who can commit to an abortion casually.

The risk, the burden, the physical changes and the stigma is all put on the woman. A man cannot be the one to decide something like that. He has no connection to the child. Have you ever met a woman that just learned she had an 18 year old son? Men are donors. Until men can be implanted with the fetus and carry the burden, they should have no right to it. The woman becomes a mother some time during gestation - a man doesn't become a father until that kid pops out.
I'm always questioning myself on the topic of abortion and the death penalty and I can honestly argue both sides with myself because they are both huge moral and ethical gray areas for me.
The one thing that isn't gray to me is the legality of it. I definitely think it should be legal because people are going to do it anyways. Making it illegal is only going to trade abortions for murder convictions and dead mothers from botched back alley surgeries which I can't do.
I hope some day with education and conditioning we can get rid of the need for abortion. It does upset me that there are stupid people out there using abortions as birth control because there are much easier ways.

I wasn't sure what it meant to say that I though abortion was "right." I think the only circumstances necessary to justify an abortion are that a woman is knocked up and that she doesn't want to have the kid and it isn't viable outside of the womb. I voted "I don't care." I meant it in the sense that I don't care if any of you people have abortions. Though perhaps there are some of you that ought to.

A number of things cause my viewpoint, one is I am Jewish and I strongly feel my religion help to shape my values, and we are very pro-life. I do feel a fetus is a life. I know so many who struggle who pray who would give everything for a child, I have had friends, relatives who have spent years struggling for this.

Another major thing is the birth of my daughter the idea of an abortion of terminating a life a child a baby just seems so unthinkable after seeing and experiencing the last 11 months.

Exception I would understand but not exactly say yes would be a case of rape. Questionable would be where mother health is on the line it is then a balance between2 lives, and I am not the person to evaluate but would come down I feel strongly on whose life is likely to survive.

If the man has no legal rights in the matter, then he should have no, or at the least reduced, legal responsibility. The argument that "the guy should have thought of these complications before he had sex with her" applies equally to the woman, unless someone wishes to put forth the argument that women are and should be subjugated to the sexual whims of the man. In short, if you're screwin' someone that you aren't willing to have a baby with, then the plan of action for an accidental pregnancy should be discussed beforehand.

It is not entirely uncommon for the man to expressly say that he does not want a child, leading to the woman's intentionally screwing up the birth control in order to have the kid that she wants. It is also not entirely uncommon for the couple to agree to abort unplanned pregnancies, and then the woman changes her mind when she actually gets pregnant. In such cases, 100% of the decision rests with the woman, despite the man's best reasonable efforts at having a contingency plan. If the woman takes 100% of the decision despite earlier agreements, then she should bear 100% of the responsibility. In other words, if we said we would avoid having a baby, and then you decide to have it in spite of that agreement, you shouldn't feel entitled to come running to me for child support.

With all due respect to Xazy, I would say abortion is actually an issue on which there is not a clear consensus in the Jewish world. Most Orthodox folks I know are at least nominally opposed to abortion, since the Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law tend to be restrictive concerning when and for what reasons a woman is permitted to have an abortion; many if not most non-Orthodox folks I know are more pro-choice, given that non-Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law tend to offer wider latitude in permitting abortion.

Personally, I believe that a fetus is not "alive" until it is at the point of being viable outside the womb. From the standpoint of secular society, I believe abortion should be legal, confidential, and nobody's business but the woman and whoever she chooses to confide in. The only reasoning I have ever heard to outlaw abortion is rooted in religious thought, and therefore IMO has no place in secular government.

On the other hand, while I believe in a secular government that stays as free as possible of entanglements in people's private lives, I believe it is the place of religion to offer moral enrichment and exhortation. And though I think abortion should be legal, confidential, and easily available, I don't think it is always a good thing in the moral sense, and should not be undertaken lightly or misused. I would hope that people's religions would advise them to be strict in the exercise of their right, and offer them solid advice toward prevention and use of alternatives.

In light of shakran's post, for those who feel that abortion is not entirely wrong, would you agree if abortion were to be legalized, then child support laws should also be amended?

I'm personally of the belief that abortion should be legal. Absolutely.

I'm also of the opinion that it's, by and large, a morally despicable act.

I am also using it as a last line of defense should my girlfriend get pregnant.

Full of contradictions, aren't I?

On the subject of men having a say, I absolutely agree with Martian's stance: I think men are way too marginalized in the decision making process.

When it comes down to the man insisting on the child being born, and the woman being adamantly opposed to it...I don't have a solution. It's a lose-lose situation, where either way you're, in my opinion, violating the rights of at least one human being. That being said, I do think it more the crime to force the woman to have the abortion than to force the man to watch his child die. So I kind of agree with what mixedmedia said. Not that the man needs help but...that I think the woman has more of an investment in the decision.

It's a difficult subject, with no 'nice' answer.

I don't have a problem with the parental rights and responsibilities between men and women being unequal. The process of bearing (or not bearing) children is unequal.

I don't think that equality is the aim here, as there clearly isn't any physiological or psychological way to equate things between the sexes. Heck, we don't even have the same genitalia, which is a big part of the problem.

On that same note, I think there are other distinct inequalities between the genders that can never reach reasonable equality. Pregnancy, childbirth, and child rearing is one thing. True equality in the workplace is another. Women are the assumed cornerstone of the family and so many are assumed to not be as fully engaged with the workforce as most men. As a result, men accumulate more experience, have uninterrupted attendance, more flexibility, and earn higher pay. (There are, of course, other unfair reasons for the inequality in the workforce, but there are also unfair imbalances for men when it comes to children and families.)

Basically, true equality between the sexes is a pipe dream. I don't think all of us assume men should have equal weight in all matters pertaining to the female reproductive system. I think the problem is being of no weight, except for a man's weight in matters of earning an income.

Well, when the choice is one of two options (to abort or not to abort), then there is either all of the weight or none of it ultimately. That's not to say that men and women are not capable of consensus, and most of the time I believe there is cooperation and consensus, but when there is not I am fully comfortable with the woman having the ultimate say - because of the 'distinct natural inequalities' between the genders that you mention.

I voted that it is right. Since that was the only postive choice in the poll, but I think it's right that women have the right. There does need to be trimester limits though.

Childbirth and pregnancy is an emotional, mental and physical event in a woman's life. But the emotional, mental and physical effects do not suddenly disappear when the woman gives birth. The thought that the child should be given up for adoption or given to the father is not the end all of the situation. Now you have a women who has spent 9 months bearing a child against her will, and a lifetime of worry, regret, loss and pain at giving that child away.

Why does giving birth end the mother's feelings? She may not want the child, can't afford the child, or doesn't feel she can be a good parent, but I would venture 9 times out of 10, once that child is born, she feels the maternal bond and the unconditional love. So the solution is to continue to hurt her for the rest of her life by having her give the child away. Hmm.

No, I don't believe the father should have a say in whether the child is born. He has no right to use a women's body for his own gain. If he want's to be a father, he needs to find a partner who shares his vision of parenthood and deliberately choose to have children. Really, what man wants to force a woman to bear a child against her will? If that is his route to fatherhood, he's already gotten off on the wrong foot. I also think the instances of the man wanting the child are rare cases and not the norm.

I don't think the majority of women who have abortions do so for purely selfish reasons. I think a major part of the decision comes from their belief that they can't adequately care for the child, whether that be financially, emotionally or wherever their train of thought takes them. I also don't think the majority of women who choose to have abortions make the decision on a whim or take the decision lightly. I think they do understand what they are doing and that is why they make the decision after all.

Is the developing fetus life? I don't know, I'm not a scientist or medical doctor. Is it necessarily right or wrong? I don't know. But I do believe it is right to give the woman a choice.

And to Xerxys - Yes, absolutely the child support laws need to be amended in the case of a women having a child without the man's consent. Some safeguards for men need to be in place where they can have the Court record their wish that the child not be born, that they do not want responsibility, etc. and they are found not to be legally responsible for that child.

If women want the right to to abort a fetus, then they have to allow a two lane road where the man is not responsible (at his choosing) if the woman chooses NOT to exercise that right.

No-one outside of the parties directly involved should have any input to the decision. At all. The female's choice is absolute, but a touch of arbitration with the male seems, well, polite.

The rights of the 'foetus' come into play when, and only when, there is sufficient development of the foetus to give a reasonable chance of development into a well-functioning human being outside the womb.

The current limits of this are, by my understanding, at around 24-26 weeks.

Foetuses can be 'saved' after 20 weeks or so, but the entity left at the end of the process is decidedly less than a minimally well-functioning human being. I take a very broad definition of well-functioning.

So, up to the point that the foetus starts to have substantial capacity to survive properly, the involved parties have absolute rights.

Oh, and gentlemen, if we dip our 'toe' in shark infested waters and we're bitten by a shark, then we cannot complain about the nature of the shark-infested waters. It's like manslaughter; You may not have intended to kill the person, but pushing them near a cliff-edge is behaviour that is likely to result in death. You should know this, as a reasonable person, so you're guilty. If your sperm ends up fertilizing an egg, then you've had a role to play in that, no matter how much protection you were taking.

Unintended consequences abound in life. Deal.

I'm against using abortion as birth control. I know a few women who have done exactly that because they can't be more responsible and I can't understand that.

I'm for abortion if there are extreme complications with the pregnancy, or severe deformities with the fetus, etc...

I agree with it being legal, and don't think anybody but the people involved need to be as concerned about it as they seem to be.

I think the guy who killed Dr. Tiller is a moron, and the people who praise him are even more so. I can't understand killing someone because you're "pro-life"...

This is the basis of the issue. It's all about drawing that line. If we can determine that a fetus is a person, the argument shouldn't exist. I don't understand all of the moralizing and everything else that goes with the debate, I don't care how the mother feels, it's not her life being taken.

It's not that I'm heartless. I think rare cases should be looked at on a case by case basis, ie. rape (maybe), or medical concerns for the mother, but how it affects her lifestyle should never be a factor. We don't let people kill their spouse if they don't love them anymore, or push someone in front of a train if they are suing you. We also don't euthanize orphans to decrease overcrowding. No, it's not easy, but as a civilized society it's a part of "freedom" we give up. It's a different conversation, but it's related to the "we DON'T torture" stuff recently. Don't care if it's effective or not, as a society, we should choose to be above that.

As far as when we can determine that a fetus is a person, I think there needs to be a hard, scientific definition. Chance for viability is variable, and as medicine improves we can go further back.

Personally, I would put the line at the development of a nervous system/brain, where it is no longer a lump of cells and meat, and is becoming a lifeform, even if still dependent. I think this starts to happen pretty early, at around 2 weeks (I think, I haven't looked in a while.)

Interestingly for me, that means that I think the morning after pill should probably be legal, and I'm mostly for stem cell research, though I might still find parts of it distasteful.

EDIT:
According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_development), this happens about 18 days after fertilization.

What bothers me most about this issue is that for the most part men have written the policy governing it.

All central nervous systems are not equal.

Even the Central Nervous System of a 20-22 week foetus can't be made to develop anywhere approaching properly or near acceptably outside the womb even if you can have the entity there _survive_ to a full term 'age' at least. i.e. At that point there's still not enough matter there to kick-start with.

The abortion laws were hotly debated in the UK a few years ago based on distorted evidence presented through certain newspapers... This is how I came to look into it. I may be off on some of my figures, but the gist holds.

And yet it still favors women by a wide margin. We must be incredibly generous.

It's your decision whether or not to have the kid, even if you rigged the birth control to fail so that you could have one. We have no say.

It's then our responsibility to at minimum help pay for the kid that we didn't want and that you possibly tricked us into having. And if we say we didn't want the kid and we don't want any part of it, you can take us to court and have our wages garnished, and in some jurisdictions, get us published in the town paper as a deadbeat dad.

Maybe I should have paid more attention in biology or some other class, but nothing about this description suggests life to me.

I never claimed that this is the point where a fetus can survive without outside help. I know it's not fully developed, but it's human. A full grown cow, with complete brain and everything I'm ok with killing, eating even. It's just the point, to me, where a person (and not their support system/organs) begins.

The reason I make the distinction, (I don't make any laws so all of this is my opinion) is that you don't count your arm as a separate entity from yourself, even if cut off. The difference between biological mass and an individual life is due to the brain/nervous system. That's why the mad scientists talk about brain transplants.

How is it not life? It's organic matter reproducing and growing. My point is that once neural activity exists in a human brain, there's something going on, and I believe it has rights. Where do you draw the line? I think it's silly to say that a baby isn't it's own entity until the cord is cut, or that depending on the hospital it could or could not be viable. I'm just trying to find a specific, scientifically justifiable point.

That might be our problem, as objectively speaking, I might be able to pass on more genes if I were to rape and murder my way to the top without getting caught long enough, but we reject that as a society so there's more to it than that.

This is what we need, but the problem is that fetal development is a gradual thing. Any line that's drawn will be imprecise and somewhat arbitrary. It might make sense to develop a series of legal definitions of personhood, each more restrictive than the last, to govern what can and can't be done at a certain stage of development. (e.g. a class I fetus can be aborted for any reason, a class III can be aborted only if the mother's health is at risk) Of course, this just makes the line-drawing more complicated, and although it may be more representative of biological reality, I'm not sure it's a better moral solution.

This is part of the problem with defining 'human'. If you rely on CNS development, you invite comparisons between humans and other animals. There's a point at which a human fetus is less developed than an adult cow. If you accept this metric (for example) as a justification for abortion, then you can also apply it to humans that are severely mentally retarded or injured. If an adult human has lower neural functioning than a cow, does he lose the right to life? I think most people would say no. Any rule we create governing abortion has to hold in other situations concerning people with diminished capacities.

So after reading this thread, I am coming to the conclusion that there are people out there who believe it is just FINE for a woman to decide to abort a child, without the father's say so, even if HE could be a loving single parent. However if the mother decides to keep the child, and the father doesn't want anything to do with said child, that he is STILL going to be paying out his butt for child support. Somehow I look at this logic as hypocritical. It seems to me that the woman has all the power here, and men just have to come along for the ride.

To say that a man has nothing to do at all with the process is either misinformed, or has not seen the proper combination of parents. Oh I will agree that the physical and hormonal conditions are brunted by the woman, but a proper father is there all the time, doing what he can to comfort and support the woman. Is that not a reasonably equal share of the burden? I was there from conception to birth of all 3 of my kids. I was there for her, sitting up all night brushing her hair, holding her hand when the cramps and pains were too much. I was the one who made mid morning trips to the store for ANYTHING that she asked for, and still got up to go to work the next morning. I was the one who made sure that if there was ANYTHING that she wanted or needed, I took care of it. Are you saying that what I did was meaningless compared to her? After the kids were born I was the one who got up several times through the night to take care of the child so SHE could get a good night rest, and AGAIN went to work, sometimes without a SINGLE minute of sleep. When they got sick, I was the one who made sure they got to the doctor on time, I was the one who took care of them, I was the one who gave them baths while SHE sat and watched her TV, complaining that SHE was tired. So for those who say a man has no equal part in the gestation of a child is WELL misinformed! I was there from the day they were conceived, until today when so far they have grown into WONDERFUL and intelligent children, with a bright future ahead of them all....And if my wife had had HER say in it all, I would only have ONE child in my life. Now which of you is going to tell 2 of my kids that THEY don't have a right to be here because I should have let their mother abort them instead of DEMAND that they be born?

I agree that there is a lot of imprecision with all of it, and unfortunately this is an issue that people will never unanimously agree on. I don't know what best solution is, though I have my personal opinions.

I do want to point out I wasn't using levels of cognitive development as a cut off point. I value even most disabled human above the brightest cow, even if the cow is smarter. Yes, a full grown animal is more developed than a 4 week old fetus, but the animal still isn't human. The fetus is, it just isn't finished growing. That's why I put my line at the start of CNS development. It's past the point of separation for twins, which we know gives different individuals, but at that point the fetus starts to develop what becomes its own brain. It's not from a real doctor, but I agree with the quote: “If the soul exists, it exists in the brain” Dr. Suresh on Heroes

Yes, this is my opinion, but too many people ignore the issue of the child in the name of personal freedom. Most people are against late term abortion under normal circumstances, but then it's all shades of grey. It's just that the same arguments used to support late term are used the rest of the time too, so I don't consider them valid (that's not saying there aren't arguments for abortion that don't apply to late term.)

So this is what you base your opinion on? Sounds hostile, personal and emotional.

well you can see from the way the positions are outlined in this thread the same problem that happens in 3-d between pro- and anti-choice folk: the arguments work past each other, there's no agreement about premise, no points of contact. the upshot of that is that abortion should remain legal and safe.

if you oppose it on principle don't have one.

this isn't to diminish the objections of the communities of folk who oppose the procedure, either. if anything, it acknowledges that within these communities, there are shared arguments/viewpoints that would lead folk within them to not avail themselves of it. nothing about this extends beyond the limits of these communities.

the claim that abortion is murder for example rests upon a sequence of assumptions that are particular to certain communities. there is no agreement about the validity of these assumptions in the broader context. so what that amounts to is basically that *for these folk* abortion is seen in this way--but there's nothing else to acknowledge.

at bottom, i see this as a complex and particular decision. i don't have a general position about it really because it seems meaningless to develop one--this at the level of what i would think were someone i was involved with or was close to me were to confront this choice. there are too many situational parameters that would be fundamental to my thinking. but in the end, i am of the opinion that the choice should be the woman's choice. that's it.

i don't know how i would react were a basic differend to arise over whether or not the procedure should happen--i really don't. but because i do not assume this is a cavalier decision for anyone, i don't think not knowing in advance is terribly important.

That's the difference though for people who are against abortion vs those against drugs or sex or whatever. So long as you do it to yourself, you only affect yourself. Abortion affects the baby, and while some people don't think it's a baby and dismiss it, others don't, and never will.

I oppose heavy drinking on moral grounds, but I don't think it should be illegal so long as you don't drive/attack someone/piss on my house.

I posted earlier about where I think the boundaries are, but what about when it's not as ambiguous? I know late term abortion gets brought up a lot in these debates, but what about a situation where it's not rape or medical, the mother just either didn't know or couldn't decide before? Even if the baby is viable, or at least has a small chance, it's still legal in some states. Should this be a decision by the mother, even though if the baby were removed and smothered in the incubator it would be a crime?

Not trying to attack anyone, just saying again, the argument is "At what point does a fetus become a person?" If it's a person, we have to protect it, regardless who it offends. I say it's before birth, and before most other people would say.

Maybe I should quit posting for a while :)

Man, there's long way between 'before birth' and '2 weeks after fertilization'.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that late term abortions should be strictly regulated, and they are... always have been everywhere except the backstreet, iirc.

I think maybe you should educate yourself about the outcomes for premature births between 16 and 26 weeks.

HINT: They're not pretty at all.

Don't get me wrong DC, The ones opposed to abortion are of the stance that the male shouldn't even have a say in aborting a child. I personally believe that abortion should ONLY be done because a health risk/complication presented itself. Not any other reason around that.

The mad scientists in the 1940's and 50's talked about heart transplants, but it became reality in 1967. I don't think a brain transplant will occur that quickly, but it will happen. Not a question of if, a question of when.



To me, it isn't. Organic matter reproducing doesn't constitute life. Neural activity at that point is, in my opinion, simply electrical impulses and does not equal life.

At it's most base, it's entirely true that a baby is not it's own entity until the cord is cut because the baby relies on the host body for survival, then it's sink or swim.

On this track of thinking, it's saying the rights of the reproducing organic matter trump the rights of the already independent individual host who is of advanced age compared to the organic matter and the host is already a tooth on the cog of the vast wheels that constitute society.

If the host can not decide on the destiny of it's own existence and it's ability to reproduce, than who shall we leave this monstrously massive decision to? Government? Religion? Society?

Government is the umbrella you live under.

Religion is a personal choice not to be pushed on others not of your religion.

Society is how we all live together and respect one another as a whole.

Freedom is the right to choose.

Freedom means our forefathers through blood, gave us the right to question government, have religious freedom and form a more perfect union, society.

latenter: i read the thread and was aware of your post when i wrote what i did. your position operates under the assumption that there is a tipping point in fetal development past which the problem switches from one of the choice of the mother to some "right to life" on the part of the developing child. i don't think there is any such point, mostly because i reject the premise your argument operates from--that there is such a point that can be determined. but that's my view, and it isn't really germaine in the context of the paragraph you quoted. the point there had to do with the question of legality and by extension safety of the procedure.

i also argued that i think it patronizing in the extreme to imagine that unless such a tipping point is determined, women will go around having abortions as a type of recreational activity or some such. that the decision will suddenly become easy..i see that as a fantasy predicated on notions of man's fallennes that i see no reason to take seriously because, while i know the mythology that it comes from, i dont see it as more than a mythology.

this last argument links to my personal view which i outlined in the last paragraph of the post.

so while you are of course free to worry questions of largely hypothetical late-term abortions, the question you raise dont seem to me particularly interesting, precisely because the way you framed your post abstracts the phase of development of the child from all other factors, as if those factors don't matter. i see them as fundamental. that was the main point i made in the last paragraph of the post.

Do you mean to imply that being unlikely to survive outside of a certain set of conditions (which must be provided at some cost by another individual) renders an entity undeserving of life?
What does equal life, in your opinion? And why does the baby become it's own entity when the cord is cut?
Please don't. I think you're bringing up some good points.
I think Latenter's point (and I hope to be corrected if I've misinterpreted) is that the determination of whether or not the fetus counts as a human life trumps all (or most) other factors. If it is a life, than the non-fatal health issues that the woman faces are not sufficiently important to allow abortion, and if it isn't a life, then abortion is not ethically different from having a mole removed. The focus on developmental stage is an effort to determine whether or not a fetus is a life.

You are an entity when you are independent. As long as you are dependent on the host, you are not an entity.

What is life. Big question! I certainly can't answer that. If I could, I'd be wealthy!

I think there is a difference between the definition of "life" and "life as we know it".

There is life, and there is life on the level that we believe ourselves to be equal to, within our abilty to understand it.

I think much larger problems are facing the human race than abortion. Actually, too many who should not keep reproducing are doing just that, and those who have the genes to further humanity are not.

Generally it's wrong. I can't stand people using it as a form of birth control. There are some very few circumstances (health of the mother, rape, severe birth defects) where I can go along with it but otherwise I don't hold with it. Inconvenience certainly isn't a valid reason.

Both my wife and I were pro-choice - until we had our first child and came to understand the process better. Now we would probably fall into the pro-life camp.

Currently, Mrs. Highthief is 18 weeks along with our second child. So this is not just an academic discussion for me on many levels.

I am currently using it as a form of birth control.

My girlfriend is currently on the pill. On occasion (notably when she has been taking the pill less than a week), we use a condom. Perhaps I could use this everytime. Tbh, it doesn't really matter.

If she gets pregnant, we are getting an abortion.


Now there's a couple alternatives to this.

One: we could not have sex until point X in the future (Define point X as marriage, or financial stability, or both (in our case, both)).

Reason we're not doing it: Because it's not coming for a significant amount of time (we're both in college, not even engaged yet, etc.). And we'd like to be having sex during our best years :). Call us irresponsible, but we've made the choice to not put off sex for X number of years. Since I was originally raised pretty fundamentalist Christian, this was a pretty hard choice for me to make since I consider abortion murder.

Two: we could simply carry the child to term if we conceive.

Uh uh, no chance, no way. I am (and she's not, we've separately come to this conclusion, as well as together) NOT going to deal with a baby at this point in our lives. We simply don't have the responsibility/financial resources to do so.

//note: not necessarily directed at you roachboy; more that the bit I've quoted got my gears turning and somewhat provides a context for what I've written and it helps me to be able to express myself more clearly(to me at least) to write as though I'm directing it at you (not you specifically but someone, you just happen to be the person I quoted).

To pick at your brain some - The 'right to life' appears somewhere. We lock up mothers for say...drowning their toddlers in a lake - as retribution for that violation of the 'right to life'. I suppose the 'right' doesn't have to appear, it could have been there from the get go, the whole 'every sperm is sacred' bit. I don't really think that anyone actually thinks that (except for the whole anti-contraception crowd which is generally labeled as loony) and certainly we don't all believe that or we wouldn't have ever allowed abortion in the first place. So then if it isn't in there the whole time, then it is in there at some point later, it has to go in sometime between there? Whether we can label it or not?

That's what the debate really centers around where that mucky unequivocal 'right to life' pops up. Just because we can't agree or a point where that happens (whether you choose to call that point 100% human or 60% human and then say 60% human sufficient cause) or on criteria on to judge what constitutes 'human life' doesn't mean it isn't there. I mean, if things exist somehow now, that is different than before there had to be a transition right? How can you reject the existence of the transition just because you can't identify where/when/how it was.

Although...If you think the position is arbitrary - that it is entirely relative to the individual, then nobody can really tell anyone else when life begins it only makes sense in an individual context. It appears the problem of 'when life begins' strangely seems to annihilate itself. I mean, if everyone is equally right due to the arbitrary nature of the line, then 'right' doesn't really mean anything at all. The practical upshot is it allows us to ignore the pesky right to life question and move on to other considerations: personal liberty, or social duty, women's rights, etc.

This view results in a degenerative morality though - any time we disagree about morality and don't have a clear point of reference (which is never) - anything goes. The only time morality becomes enforceable on say a group level is when we all agree, or at least enough of us to enforce it. This makes me mentally uncomfortable, the idea of there not being a standard morality which we can reference (however it is I seem to think we reference it), although if I'm honest with myself I think it makes me uncomfortable because it resembles reality so well - I must ponder this more.

Whole bunch of stuff to reply to.
Thank you, inBoil. This is my point exactly. I think a lot of people are misunderstanding my argument, and you worded it better than I did.

Not everyone agrees on that. They're still legal in 13 states, and what happens at that point that makes the baby more human than 2 weeks before? I'm not arguing that the baby could survive then, although from week 21 on it is possible. It's besides the point. If late term abortions are distasteful, why are earlier abortions not?

And then we'll have immortality. :) Or, at least, a whole bunch of 250 year olds with Alzheimers. I just meant that the brain is what makes you you. You can get a new heart, or prosthetic arm, but a new brain isn't you anymore (at least until we get way out there in scifi)

How many newborn babies do you know of that could survive if you left them lying on the floor and ignored them? Even most 5 year olds wouldn't survive if you didn't keep providing food to eat. Children are dependent, and though not physically attached anymore are not able to survive on their own.

The "host" still has rights. Those rights do not trump the rights of other adults, and I believe should not trump the rights of the baby. You have plenty of opportunity to exercise reproductive rights. Abstinence (not popular) and birth control are available. So is permanent sterilization. No one is forcing you to get pregnant (unless you're blaming God. Good luck then.) It does happen by accident, but at that point the new life has to be considered. Car crashes happen by accident too, but you have to deal with the results. You can't shoot the other driver to prevent paying claims if you're at fault.

It's this cognitive dissonance I don't understand. Not against you personally, but many pro-choice people seem to be in the same position. You specifically consider it murder, but you're still ok with it? It might make things easier in your life, but in my opinion you can't just pretend what you're doing doesn't impact anyone but yourself.

It seems like many people try to cling to their rights, and pretend there are no other issues to discuss because the implications are ugly.

All abortions are distasteful to me.

Distasteful doesn't even come close to a reason to invade someone else's body with my opinions.

And if we were talking about someone choosing to have a nose job or tattoos or anything else I would completely agree with you. It's just that's it's not your body that's being destroyed, and no one is there to protect the rights of the other party.

'your', 'my' and 'its'.

The possession of a living body requires a sufficiently complex sentience to make the assertion.

There is no sentience in a cluster of cells 2 weeks post-fertilization.

There is no sentience, even to a level of animal sentience (ie. the sensations of pleasure and pain), in a 23 week old foetus. The creatures that emerge from extreme premature births back that up.

A cell is not sentient.
A cluster of cells is not sentient.
A cluster of nerve cells is not sentient.
A somewhat organised collection of nerve cells is still nowhere near complex enogh to make the assertion.

Sentience (subjective consciousness) of a certain critical mass begets sapience (subjective consciousness with wisdom/judgement/aware self-directed purpose/etc).

If you're concerned with the treatment of Homo Sapiens from fertilization, then surely you will accept that an abundance of extremely complex nerves are required to even start on the path up from pre-sentience, through sentience and up to sapience and membership of the Homo Sapiens club? Until there's a point of rudimentary sentience, there is no independent entity there. The host has 100% rights.

If you don't accept that, you're making extreme suggestions as to how we should treat an enormous swathe of animals in the extreme lower orders and perhaps even parasites and diseases...

If you claim that there's something special about the DNA of our species, then you're making privilege assertions for molecules... Which is... interesting. (implications for the sentience of organs in transplants, etc.)

Some of this might seem extreme and even ridiculous, but if you want to push assertions of possession in a materialist manner back even to pre-embryonic stages, then you've charged through a range of credulous levels.

Basically, it seems to me, you're trying to materially rationalise the imparting of a soul upon conception. Be honest about that if you are, but there's no point in trying to look at cell development at 2 weeks post-fertilization or assertions about sentience in that endeavour.

I prefer my arguments to remain wholly and entirely in the known Universe.

--

Also, late term abortions being illegal does not, in no way whatsoever, mean they available on demand without regulation - despite what certain extremists might tell you.

(The Dr who was killed recently was widely denounced in extreme media with regard to supplyinglate term abortion on dubious grounds, which the man was 100% cleared of. Late term abortions from this man were not 'on demand'.)

Outside survivability is an issue, clearly, because if 100% of foetuses at 21 weeks could survive with reasonable outcomes, then there would be no justifiable position to abort rather than remove from the womb and gestate outside the womb. I should hope you'd be in favour of delivery rather than termination, right?

If there is no possibility of the foetus at a particular point developing into a functioning human being, has no sentience let alone sapience and is utterly unwanted, then please justify its rights over the mother and its difference from a parasite?

DNA is not an answer.

If men carried children, abortion pills would be available in supermarkets.

inboil:

i chop this out of your paragraph restating an earlier argument because i think this gets to the crux of what i'm arguing (though in an inverted way).
i reject the idea that absent some "objective" rule or standard that abortion ceases to be an ethical problem. the are several grounds for this, some of which i've already gone through above--but i don't see this as a matter that anyone approaches in a cavalier manner--so it is simply not the case that the anti-choice people and their world view is all that stands between the present and an absolute erasure of any trace of ethics.

(aside: think of the arrogance implicit in this assumption.)

the folk i know who've had abortions made a quite difficult and complicated choice based on the way in which they weighed out a wide range of contextual factors---no-one that i've talked to or read stuff from or heard from indirectly treated the decision as something trivial...la la la today i went shopping for turnips, tomorrow i shall off my child, la la la.

it seems to me that this is a very difficult, complex decision. and i see no basis---at all---why anyone who is not directly involved with such a decision should put themselves in the position of determining what kinds of considerations do and do not count in making it. "am i ready to be a mother?" is no more or less legitimate a question than any other---

if, say, you occupy a position consitent with the current pope's--which i find ridiculous--that sex is a procreation device only and that fertilization of an egg is god's will so that from this initial point onward, what's really at issue is the unfolding of god's will, not the choices of human beings--then NO considerations on the part of the mother are really of any consequence. but there is no way to extend this logic beyond the confines not just of roman catholicism, but of a subsection of roman catholicism--and the argument is itself entirely theological.

given a pluralist context--which the present pope has a Real Problem with in any event--the furthest it seems legitimate to go is to say that if you oppose abortion don't have one--but (again) that the procedure should be legal as a way to insure its safety.


aside: if the idea of original sin is to you a strangely vindictive fable--which is more or less how i see it---then there's no reason to assume that without the Guidance of some Institution that only chaos would happen. social norms come from all kinds of sources and operate in all kinds of registers--it is simplistic to assume that only the Command/Control model is operative. this is really just another way of saying the same as above.

@latenter: I fully cognize the fact that it affects others. Specifically, the unborn child. However, I can sufficiently rationalize this to myself (to help with the dissonance ;)) that I am ok with not putting off sex for several years to prevent the chance of requiring an abortion.

Here are the primary rationalizations:

One: Likelihood. With my gf having a nigh perfect attendance record on her pill (being off by an hour twice...in two years), we should have a 99.7% protection rating. This is lessened slightly by our use of condoms twice. (We're not exactly rabbits since the availability of safe (as in uninterrupted) sex times is infrequent). The chance of actually having to resort to an abortion is relatively miniscule.

Two: Cost-benefit analysis, taking #1 into effect. We could not have sex, and not risk an abortion. Or, we could have sex with the above protections, and risk an abortion. Apply a moral 'cost' to having an abortion. It would be quite high for me and my gf. Now, multiply it by .003 (chance of it occurring). Does that outweigh the benefits of several years of sex?

Three: It's a fetus, and while I am killing a potential life (where the murder aspect of it comes for me)...it's not actually a life yet. It won't understand what I'm doing to it. That makes it more impersonal, and more of a decision I'm able to live with. Could I have sex if I had a .003 chance of having to pull out a gun and shoot a living child (and not be punished for it?). I don't think so. So I guess all three of these rationalizations are needed for me to be ok with it :)

Taking that logical approach to it, I decided it wasn't worth it to wait, despite having a very high moral cost. It's kind of the same way that companies place a value on human lives. Did you know that your insurance company places about $50,000 on yours? Although, if new legistlation is passed, that figure will rise to $129,000.

EDIT: A clarification in light of my new post. I don't intend to say that it being a fetus makes it less of a future person, but that it makes it more impersonal to me and therefore I'm able to table my misgivings far more easily.

I voted "Abortion is right", because my only feeling about abortion is that I wish more people would partake.

My ethical system is very much rooted in the belief of our material limitations, and I try not to ascribe animacy when there is clearly none. It's clear WHY we ascribe animacy to inanimate objects, why we give reasons to things when they are truly coincidence, and why we believe 'life' or 'intelligent consciousness' is present when it is clearly not. It has evolutionary and cognitive advantages, and I'm not in the least surprised why we retain it in our modern psyches.

With that said, I do not believe human life begins until the moment of birth. I have a solid scientific backing and am aware of what it tells about cognitive development in the third trimester, but it does little to convince me that it is 'intelligent life' any more than a believe a virus is. Even if I were to agree with the mainstream belief that 'late term abortions' are unethical (as I do in all cases except in the brutal honesty of internet anonymity), I would still not believe that 'potential life' would trump the rights of the woman. Many times the child may survive, but the woman does not. I believe that in all cases we should attempt to save the woman at the expense of the fetus. There are also cases where women were compelled by law to perform a cesarian section to remove a baby prematurely after the woman was diagnosed with cancer. The logic (and unfortunate legal precedent) is that the woman was largely a 'lost cause' and ought to be sacrificed in order to give the child a chance at survival. After all, if the fetus' host died, it wouldn't survive, either. Had the woman chosen that route, I'd be alright with it; but she was compelled by the DA (ankle shackles and all) to undergo C-section to remove the baby and died as a result.

This is by no means the norm, just as 'abortion on demand' is a misnomer. That said, the posters above are very right in discussing sentience. Without that distinction, we'd have certain ethical dilemmas regarding alreadylegal processes, such a putting down a pet whose quality of life has been determined by its owners to be negligible.

I'm going to bring up a new concept here, that of personhood. Basically, when I say 'person', I mean 'being with the right to life'.

There are a couple criteria I have for ascribing personhood to a being, but critically important of them is self-awareness. They have to be able to differentiate themselves from the world around them, and have a concept of past and future. Clearly, human beings fall into such a category. However, there are several cases where they do not.

A fetus, an infant, and a comatose vegetable all fall into this category of not being a person. None of them are self-aware. Therefore, I don't simply subscribe the right to life to them. An infant, for example, I find it no more appalling to murder than a dog, in terms of what they can comprehend. (I'm not a horrible person, I swear, let me finish lol).

However, I have a concept of 'future personhood', that with reasonable expectations this person will at some point in the future be of such a state that they DO have self-awareness. A fetus and an infant, circumstances notwithstanding, will eventually grow to be adult human beings, with all the rights attributive to such. A comatose man, in certain conditions, will be expected to be revivable (or have the CHANCE to be revivable) to a normal state of consciousness. (Braindead is a separate matter).

Therefore, just as I imagine it is inhumane to pull the plug on a comatose human that has a great chance of being revived the very next day (or an arbitrary point in the future), I believe it is inhumane to abort a fetus or kill an infant. All three are equally immoral to me, because you are violating the right to life of that future person. So how far back does this go? Well, it's arguable. Conception I'd say. Some might even argue prior to: using birth control is preventing that future person from even being conceived, isn't it? But I think you must limit your reasoning at some point.

So while I would never posit that a fetus is 'alive', persay...it will one day be. And that's why I think abortion is murder.

Some great cognitive dissonance there with my current practices, eh?

It would seem those who would defend a fetus should also be vegetarians. Slaughtering animals causes far more suffering than aborting a fetus. Or so I assume.

Wow, this is quickly reaching Wall-of-Text levels, at which debate will be nearly impossible. Anyway:

The problem is that there are inherent disagreements in society regarding the value of humans above other animals. You're pretty much making the assertion that humans are not more special than any other life form except for intelligence. Maybe this is our basic disconnect. It doesn't matter how mentally disabled a child is, they still rank above the sign language speaking gorillas. It's not about just our DNA, it's about humanity itself. We don't grant the same rights to corpses, or amputated limbs, or organs being transplanted.

Fundamentally, yes, I am discussing the "imparting of a soul", but on grounds that are not religious, and you don't even need to believe in a soul to agree with the argument. If you are being so impartial as to rank someone based on the number of synapses firing per second, fine, but that doesn't reflect our society at all. There are intrinsic elements and rights that we grant to human beings, ignoring history or race or disability.

My rationalization for the point I chose is that I see it as the beginning of a distinct individual, dependent, but separate. No longer a possible twin, and having the beginnings of a brain, even if no more complicated than circuit diagrams I could draw in a few hours. That might not be the right spot to choose, but that's my opinion.

Where do you put that point? Yes, I would always be for attempted delivery vs. termination, though with the same consideration taken as with turning off life support on people who will never wake up, etc.

---------- Post added at 04:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 PM ----------

I can appreciate the logic of your process. The argument of personhood in your post after this one is interesting, and I don't entirely disagree with it.

What I want to throw in though, is that it's not an either/or dilemma.
No sex > abortion * 0.003 ; ok, sure, but I would put:
Cost of abortion > Cost of a few months pregnancy then giving the baby up for adoption

Why isn't that an option? It is a big deal, but basically you're trading what? Nine months of her life (less probably, a few of the months of pregnancy won't be that different from normal for most people) and a few months of your life, vs 78 years (average life expectancy in the US) for the baby. Yes, there's emotional toll on top of that, but I think you know which side I end up on.

Also, for the other posters, I never said anything about the decision to abort being flippant. I'm sure in most cases it's the hardest decision that woman has made, often with long lasting repercussions, even if I disagree about the right to make the decision.

Anyway, I appreciate the debate. :)

---------- Post added at 04:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:33 PM ----------

Jozrael: Was just thinking about it and thought it was funny; if you were an insurance company with the new legislation, you would be willing to pay a $32.25 monthly subscription to have sex with your girlfriend ($129k * 0.003 / 12) :)

I'm not arguing that anyone does or should treat abortion with a cavalier attitude. However, I don't see an alternative to an either/or approach on the morality of abortion that doesn't at some point place a fetus' right to life on roughly the same level as the mother's wish to avoid a pregnancy. I see this as problematic, because this logic can be applied to any other putative human that presents an inconvenience: infants, young children, brain-damaged adults and the mentally retarded.
Then what logically separates abortion from from the killing of infants or the retarded? If a line can't be drawn somewhere beyond which lie those who have an absolute right to life (in the sense that we ascribe that right to roachboy and inboil), then what right does society have to punish or prevent murder? I'm normally against forcing one's morals on others, but at some point doesn't society have to say "enough of us find X wrong that we're going to interfere with anyone attempting it"? I understand that to some extent, determining X must be arbitrary. The abortion debate seems to me to be a way of figuring out where that line should be drawn in the least arbitrary way possible. The problem is, I don't see a good place to draw that line. "Am I ready to be a mother?" is a legitimate question, whether in the context of abortion or infanticide, but "does this entity have the right to live?" seems vastly more important to me.

I agree with this, but I see it as a temporary measure. We (society) know that women have rights, and we haven't decided if fetuses have rights, so it makes sense to err on the side of protecting rights that we know exist. But resolving this uncertainty is important; we may be allowing innocent people to be victimized.

As soon as you mix 'soul'/quasi-religious and materialist rhetoric you've disconnected from honesty.

The two arguments do not fit together at all.

Materialism deals with measurable, describable Universe.

Any mention of 'soul' immediately moves into a supernatural, idealistic frame of reference that is completely incompatible with a materialistic description.

If you'd like to justify a position of privilege based on the supernatural, do so honestly.

If you'd like to justify a position of privilege based on the material, do so honestly.

"I believe that the soul begins to inhabit a person at the 'collection of cells with development of the proto-cns' stage of the embryo." is not a reasonable argument.

You can't justify mysticism with science or science with mysticism.

@Baraka: I don't ascribe personhood to (most) animals. A couple varieties of the ape family, dolphins, elephants...there's a handful more.

I don't consider killing dogs, cats, parakeets, cows, pigs, horses, etc. murder.

@Latenter: Tbh that's a possibility I haven't given enough thought, and I should probably bring it up with my gf soon. It's not an ideal scenario, not as 'clean' as abortion...but, perhaps, more ethically viable for us. Thanks for the food for thought and for making me think in ways I haven't recently xD.

I don't think you're reading my posts very carefully. My mention of a soul is on a purely philosophical level, not religious or mystical. There is a difference between philosophy and mysticism.

You keep claiming materialistic arguments, but you're detached from the realities of society we live in. We ascribe human rights that are protected by the constitution, and stated in the declaration of independence. Other countries hold similar values.

My argument is "I believe that at the development of the proto-CNS stage the embryo embodies enough characterists to become a distinct individual, even without full development, which requires us to assign human rights according to our society." Whether you agree with the argument or not, it is a valid argument to make.

You keep attacking my position, but without giving rationalization for your own. Why does the fetus have to be viable to be alive? At that point it has a brain, we know it would develop into a full child barring miscarriage/disease, and it is certainly homo-sapien. You need an argument stronger than "because it's weak" because that applies to many cases that are not reasonable, like the disabled, etc.

It's always great to have a debate where someone actually thinks about the other side, even if they don't end up changing their mind. Too often it's all rhetoric and bashing, without any kind of consideration for what is being said. Thanks!

I try to approach every debate with the possibility that I am flat out wrong, or that the other person has a gem of wisdom that I am currently blind to. Course, I have to be shown this, but I try not to make it unduly hard xD

In my thoughts, I had considered adoption but it was before my gf and I had our big abortion babies zomg chats, so it just never even was raised as a possibility. I have the feeling that she won't be ok with it under any circumstances, but it doesn't hurt mentioning :O. I think it would hurt her more to have the baby and have to give it away than to abort it as early as possible. She doesn't subscribe quite to the same rationale I use, but we end up in the same place so it's all good ^^

This is a diversion from the discussion and I am sorry for that, but personally, I find that the killing of one of the perilously numbered mountain gorillas in Central Africa to be more akin to murder than the abortion of a human fetus.

And who says that we are special...besides ourselves?

I'll assume suffering aside. Shall I also assume you feel these "things" don't know terror and have no particular wish to live? And these animals have the intelligence of small children. Does that account for nothing?

I do feel those animals have a right to be free from torture, since I believe they're quite cognizant of pain. However, no, I don't believe they quite understand what it is to live. They have survival instincts...but they don't have a part of them going 'I'm going to die'.

Latenter:

An honest statement based in materialism starts with an open, unbiased disposition. The next thing is the acquisition of or enquiry into the evidence in an open, unbiased manner, then you frame a narrative that fits the evidence which can then be torn apart by other people looking at the problem.

A dishonest statement based in materialism starts with a proposition, then cherry-picks and distorts evidence in order to fit the prejudices of the person who makes the statement, who then reacts defensively when the obvious flaws are pointed out.

Ok, so, before you even look at the evidence, you presuppose the existence of souls and that at some unseen and unexplained point, through some unseen and unexplained means, these unseen and unexplained souls are imparted upon a freshly fused set of gametes, and it's this unseen and unexplained soul imparting at this particular point that you've chosen in the absence of observation, measurement and means that justifies your special pleading for the cluster of cells that current society says it's perfectly fine to dispose of.

To sum up, your argument goes like this:

There is something material with things happening that obey the laws of nature, THEN A MIRACLE HAPPENS THAT YOU CAN'T SEE OR MEASURE, and then we have a new entity that must be treated in accordance with my set of baseless beliefs, simply because I assert that the miracle happened and other people think the same way.

See where I'm going here?

The fact that a lot of people hold the opinion that souls exist holds no weight whatsoever. A lot of people believe in ghosts, angels, pixies, demons and fairies but that doesn't mean they're right, or that we can/should start going out to justify their conditioned prejudices by trying to cherry-pick evidence.

So, to the point of honesty. If you want to use supernatural/religious beliefs (the existence of souls is a religious belief) to justify a position, then use the language of the supernatural/religion to do that. If you want to use materialist/scientific/empirical arguments to justify a position, then keep unseen, ill-defined, immeasureable ideas out of your thinking and reasoning.

I think I've laid out my position pretty well. Developed, full-grown human beings have absolute rights over their own bodies. At the point that foetuses start to have either sentience or a very good chance of developing sentience _without_ the unwilling assistance of the host, then the foetus starts to acquire rights. This is a process of accretion of rights, not absolutes. If society would like to give the foetus every chance of developing outside the womb and the woman does not want to give the foetus her means of developing, then it's perfectly reasonable to remove the foetus and use society's means - not the woman's means - to do that.

If society doesn't want to do that, then termination is acceptable up to the point that society is willing to do that.

That position, where foetuses start to gain rights, judging from my look at the evidence, starts at around 24-26 weeks. Up to that point, the woman has 100% rights to do whatever she wants.

You don't like me attacking your position? Tough luck.

Oh, and on the 'because its weak' labelling of my position, which is a total red herring, society already has plenty of rules and plenty of experience in the murder of members of Homo Sapiens outside the womb, but dependent on external resources for their continued existence.

Brain Death of coma patients = acceptable removal of support.

The heart still beats, the lungs might still function, the liver still serves as the factory of enzymes for the rest of the body, there are plenty of nerve cells, even massive complexity capable of supporting sentience, but that sentience and sapience cannot be seen.

A living human being, without sentience or sapience, is 'killed' by removal of support.

Embryos/foetuses up to 20 weeks barely possess organs, let alone functional organs with complex interplay that might support independent existence and prop up the capacity for an excess of brain that can support a sentient, conscious entity.

Neither does a fetus. But I disagree with you, anyway. I think the terror response in animals (especially the more intelligent ones) is similar to that of humans. I'm not saying they have concepts of an afterlife or moral virtue, but they do have a sense of life and death. They really want to live. They really don't want to die, and they fear situations where they think that might happen.

Terror can't be that much more or less "instinctual," "automatic," or otherwise "programmed" in other animals than it is in humans.

Regardless, I don't see an aborted fetus suffering anything like what a pig or cow goes through when it's being "prepared for market." It's not murder, technically. They aren't classified under law that way. But I can't see how it isn't a problem. If I were against abortion for the reason of it being murder, it would logically follow for me to adopt a strict vegetarian diet. Otherwise, I'd feel it would be an inconsistency to want to defend something like a fetus from going through that sort of procedure, all the while the meat I would be eating would be coming from animals that suffered a much more horrific fate.

I guess I'd be a Seventh-Day Adventist or a Buddhist or something.

GAH! This post is the same as your last. I think you skimmed mine again. I'M NOT ARGUING ABOUT SOULS! Yes, as a human being, I am biased toward humans. I don't claim not to be. The same way that I would be biased in favor of my favorite sports team, or my company in a negotiation, or my country in a war. You can claim to follow cold hard materialism, throw out all the rules, reevaluate everything society has decided. Fine. That's your stance. Not everyone agrees.

You mention sentience. How is that defined, exactly? Is there a pass/fail test for people who are near that line? If someone's suffered brain damage, but is still partially awake, could a man who can eat and look around maybe even recognize people be classified as non-sentient for otherwise lacking certain characteristics? It's a concept, not a definition.

I haven't mentioned religion once. I mentioned souls as a way to describe an innate value of human life that we don't apply to animals. You can disagree, but it's disagreement with the value I put on life, not that I'm a psycho-moonie-crazy person.

I'm fine with you attacking my argument, but you're not. You're creating a straw man and saying that's my argument. You've made your point, I've made mine, neither of us is changing our minds based on what the other has said. I think I'm done debating these points.

I am going to bring a bit of a unique viewpoint to this and one that some of you will probably not appreciate because thus far from reading this I am the only person who is responding having been in a situation where I was forced to consider having an abortion.

When I was 15 I was a victim of sexual abuse - in blunt terms I was raped. I had not been on birth control prior to the incident as I was not sexually active and those of you that work in medicine or look at the facts know that the morning after pill which is what I was given in the emergency room is not 100% effective.

There is no way in the world I could have carried any child that could have resulted from that to term.

I cried pretty much every day, every time I looked at myself I felt ill thinking that I might have been infested with some parasite that was fathered by those men / boys. That's honestly how I felt about it, to me it wasn't a child it was a parasite, it was the ends of all my hopes for life, if I had been pregnant I would most likely have been kicked out of school (I went to a religiously based school) and I would have major problems going back and doing anything that I had planned for my life with a young child in tow.

If I had been pregnant from that attack every day would be like living the act over again. Would I have gotten an abortion - without a second thought. You can tell me that child has every right to live and that it is just as important as I am and I will admit a big part of me agrees with you but I would have still gone and done it anyway and I still would today.

I know that the situations you're looking at are meant to be in regards to something else other then health and rape related circumstances but put yourself in the shoes of a 14 - 17 yr old girl. In that one positive result you give up a large chunk of your social life (very few people at that age are able to handle that happening to a friend and understanding that no their friend can't go out with them anymore) usually your university or other tertiary study plans for the next few years, perhaps your job and lets not forget the man that you're CERTAIN you're in love with and that you honestly thought loved you - that's with a supportive family to help support the two of you. You're terrified and no matter who else is around you you feel completely alone.

In those circumstances I can see too many yound mothers brining up children that every time they look at they think "there goes my future" and no matter what you say about mothers loving their children it doesn't necessarily happen, just look at the last 6 months in the news. There are enough unloved children in the world without creating more.

After having made that decision and facing a part of me that I don't like very much I find I can't judge anyone else on making a similar decision for their own individual reasons.


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Midnight - Abortion Page 5, 2007

Now this I believe is a key issue - those of you saying that abortion is wrong are imposing your beliefs on others.

Those who are saying abortion should be allowed are not.

Before you jump up and down let me explain those statements:

By denying the right to abortion you are forcing people to have children, abortionists are not saying you must have an abortion they are saying that the option should be there, alot of them partially because they understand that people will get desperate and once again it will go back to the days of coat hangers or bicycle spokes in backyard clinics.

Abortion is not an easy thing to confront and I definitely believe in most situations the father should be consulted, I have friends who have had children they never knew about aborted and only found out after the fact, in every single case the guy in question would have made a wonderful father and now even 10 years onwards in some cases feel that loss keenly.

****


On another personal note I am interested to see a topic such as this come up when it should be obvious to anyone that this is one of those fundamental issues that you will never get everyone to agree on. I'd like to offer a big congratulations and thankyou to everyone taking part cause as yet I have not seen a single post that has been purposefully argumentative or offensive or has degenerated into personal attacks.

"Fundamentally, yes, I am discussing the "imparting of a soul", but on grounds that are not religious, and you don't even need to believe in a soul to agree with the argument. If you are being so impartial as to rank someone based on the number of synapses firing per second, fine, but that doesn't reflect our society at all. There are intrinsic elements and rights that we grant to human beings, ignoring history or race or disability."

You make the assertion of soul (But! but! but!) as soon as you do that, you've thrown your lot in something immaterial. It's perfectly justified to position your argument on that and respond to it as though you've taken a step into another world, which you effectively have.

If you want to talk about sentience, but in the same breath make comparisons of full grown adults, disabled or not, to clusters of cells that have the first rudiments of a nervous system, but nothing that you could actually describe as a nervous system... in the same way a jellyfish has nerves but no nervous system... well that's just odd.

If you want to think about sentience and vialibility, then do you care to give some animal kingdom examples, or are you claiming DNA-privilege? What type of behaviour would an entity have to demonstrate to show sentience in your opinion?

You're the one positing a 2-week old embryo as in some way privileged, so i think it's up to you to justify.

And as for "cold hard materialism" i think materialism, fully grasped, is incredibly warm and beautiful. I'm an atheist, materialist with no hope for anything but for my life to end as and when it will. That doesn't make me 'cold' in any way.

I tend to agree with most of squeeb's major points. It is not just the woman's body. It is also the child's. I'm not totally sure how I feel about the morning after pill, but anything after the first trimester is murder. The minute a woman opens her legs she has to open her mind to the possibility of getting pregnant. The man should get a say, because it is also his child. The woman did not concieve by herself. She had some help. My parents had countless court battles concerning custody of myself; why should an unborn baby be any different? That'd be like if my parents got together, came to the realization that I was socially and financially inconvenient, and consequently decided to shoot me and throw my dumbass in the river.

I never really understood the whole "Rape makes it okay." argument. My father and stepmother were abusive, but that doesn't mean that if I have kids some day I'm going to treat them like shit. Just because someone fucks you up doesn't give you the right to fuck up someone else.

Can I just say, directly, that I think that it would be worth our collective whiles to thank Hyacinthe for her post; not just because that's the first opinion we've heard from someone actually on the front lines of the issue, but also because that can't have been an easy story to relate.

Thanks, Hyacinthe. That was well-spoken, and very brave.

I'm anti-abortion, pro-life and pro-choice. I also think that most who believe that women have the right to choose are against abortions. The official pro-lifers seem to think that the pro-choice folks are abortion-happy. That's just not the case.

Just because I think a woman has a right to make her own decision doesn't mean that she should use it as a means of birth control, but it is her choice to make. As for a man's right, that's just plain bull. Carrying a fetus for ten months is not quite like carrying a backpack, so please don't complain when a woman makes the difficult choice to abort.

If the abortion option hadn't been available, I can't help but think of the many women who made stupid mistakes in their teens. If they'd opted to carry their babies to term, would they have gone to school and succeeded to become what they are today, or would they have been on government assistance because the notified father stopped paying child support? There are so many possible scenarios that don't necessarily end with the child's best interest at heart.

Before we judge others for their choices, let's not forget that it all boils down to what's in the best interest of the child.

Seconded.

Yes, in the real world, not everyone can have equal rights.

Let me elaborate:

An unwed sexually active couple find themselves accidentally pregnant. Beforehand, both had expressed not wanting to have children (one reason why they were unwed), which was why they were using birth control. However, this precaution had failed.

The woman has three options:

1. abortion
2. parenthood
3. adoption

The man has one option:

1. What the woman chooses

In this matter, the woman has ultimate (and unilateral if she so chooses) power of choice for three parties:

1. Herself
2. The child
3. The man

The woman is the only one with the power to opt in or opt out.

There are laws and social expectations that guarantee this.

Actually, I can imagine one situation that doesn't fit into that: the woman wants to give it up for adoption and the man would rather keep it.

levite, tisonlyi

thanks guys - definitely not easy, hence why it's pretty much a cut and paste of the only other time I have spoken about it.

Nice to have this kindof response rather then the flaming I expected to receive

:icare:

Unless you were raped or going to die, it's wrong. Abortions of convenience, which comprise the majority of abortions performed, are wronger than wrong.

i believe that if the woman is raped , it has her complete right to do abortion.....

well, infinite loser, then things are simple.
if you think the procedure is that wrong, don't have one.

I am curious how you appear to say in one sentence that it is only the woman who has the right to choose, but in another sentence say "best interest of the child"...What if the best interest of the child boils down to the FATHER wanting to have the child and be able to give said child a potential of a good life? I am almost SICK to my stomach about the arguments that a father has no rights in having an input to if a child is aborted or not. While I stand by my belief that abortion should be allowed, I ALSO stand by my belief that the father has equal rights in said child being aborted or not.

It's so easy to say "what about the father", but how many teenage single fathers do you know? How many adult single men do you know that have custody of a child, other than after a divorce? We all know about the babies of single mothers who end up neglected because she struggles to earn a living while he takes off, shirking the parental rights he claimed.

Maybe when we start to see more men step up to the plate, things will change, but at this point I'm not seeing it. Equality ain't always 50/50.

I disagree. Equality is 50-50. We just don't have equality on this issue.

Jewels this argument is horribly unfair, sorry but it really is

it is MUCH MUCH MUCH harder for the father of a child to gain single parent custody then the mother, even then the likelihood that he will receive ANY form of financial support from the government or the childs mother is pretty much nil.

Until the laws and attitudes of judges change from automatically awarding the children to the mother rather then the father (except in cases of extreme abuse) then we can't blame men for not being allowed to raise their own children.

And in the case of guys running off when finding out their female partner is pregnant how many female friends do girls loose when that happens - usually over 50% from what I have seen, that's simply becaue suddenly their friend can't go out drinking or shopping or stay up all night. Admittedly there is not the moral obligation that I believe comes with father / mother hood but I'm betting a large number of teenage girls would run away from a pregnant partner if the situation was reversed.

Oh and btw I actually know more single fathers then mothers and these specific individuals are generally much more concerned about the well being of their children then the single mothers I know (won't smoke / drink in front of the kids when the mothers do). Yet they still receive more visits from childrens services for 'check up' visits then the single women.

Explain to me again the rationale behind ignoring what one perceives to be wrong? Just to play around a little bit, let's assume it's the 19th century and a slave owner says to you, "Don't like slavery? Don't own slaves!". Exactly how much stock would you put into that argument?

So that makes it right to just say that a father HAS no rights in the decision? I was a single father for a long time. When I separated from my wife I took both of my daughters who were 3 and 5 at the time, one of which she wanted to abort by the way, and they now are both very well rounded at 14 and 17. Actually the 17 year old is currently in Basic training this summer, and will be attending UT Austin, and my youngest is already on her way to attend Texas A&M. So think for a minute, if I had agreed that a father has no rights to the choice of an abortion, one of those two beautiful girls would not be alive today! Still think a man has no rights to make a decision on abortion? Then come tell my daughters that one of them was a mistake and should not have been allowed to be born!

I feel for you, DC, I really do. But I ask you what to do in a situation where all you know is this:

A woman is pregnant. She wants to abort the baby. The father does not want to abort the baby. Neither will change their mind. She is going to abort the baby and the father sues to prevent her from doing so. What does the court do? What CAN they do?

It's a horrible situation where I don't see a good solution, at all. Either way someone loses terribly. Either the future person and the father's rights or the mother's rights are being trampled.

Other than in cases of blatant abuse (and then not always,) how frequently do courts award custody to fathers and stick the mother with 18 years of child support? How many fathers out there only see their kids every other weekend because our society has decided that women are always more fit than men to be parents?

Err... Surely if your ex-wife REALLY wanted the abortion she would have had it? Or, you know, maybe she discussed it with you, her life partner,and you made a joint decision - which she complied with? The point is, in the end, it was HER decision, or decision to abide by a joint decision.

So while your ex might have had thoughts about abortion, in the end she didn't have one. She chose that, not you.

No matter how you dress it up, the final word is ALWAYS with the woman. Laws or no laws, partners or no partners.

Men just have to live with being out of control for once.

But your scenario is obviously too vague. There are always more details to it than that. Courts will look at more than just "girl pregnant, want's abortion, father says no...ok we will make our decision now"


Actually, yes, my ex really did want the abortion. I told her that if she went through with it, that I would divorce her and sue her for custody of all our children. So she gave in. I tried for days to just talk her out of it and she didn't budge, so I did the only thing I could think of. So her "decision" was forced, not hers alone. I was not about to lose one of my children that way.
While you may feel that the final decision lays with the woman, I am sorry, but I must respectfully disagree with you and say that your belief is wrong. But then again, it is your belief. And I take SERIOUS offense to the last sentence. Nuff said.

Blackmail's okay, though. :rolleyes: Her rights were definitely well-considered. :thumbsup:

The fact you had to resort to the 'relationship-nuclear option' to 'force' her into having the baby kinda proves my point.

SHE DECIDED have the baby and not get divorced at that time, right?

SHE COULD HAVE EASILY CHOSEN THE OTHER OPTION.

When you're wrong, you're wrong.

It is, always, in the end, THE WOMAN'S CHOICE.

(As an aside... Wow... That level of emotional blackmail inside of a relationship simply boggles the mind.)