If I were to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'd say you've bought the lies of the liberal abortion defenders and have their perspective when considering matters regarding abortion on demand.I have no personal interest in "abortion on demand", I just do not believe that it is right to force a women to risk her life and health for nine months, regardless of how she happened to become pregnant, just because the final end result of the nine-month-long process is a baby, a person who has equal rights (but not superior rights) to the mother. Everybody wants to talk about how a handful of cells is more important than the person in whom those cells are embedded.
If the pregnancy was not due to rape or incest (thus parents may perceive the pregnancy as involuntary), the little one is not an intruder of force or the presence of the alive little one forcing slavery. Additionally, a crib-bound infant cannot survive without life supportYou're forgetting one thing -- a person cannot legitimately enter into a contract to enslave themselves. Thus, the agreement/consent is nonbinding, and can be revoked at any time, regardless of the mortal consequences to the other party.
You might say that pregnancy is not slavery, that if all goes well, after nine months of pregnancy, a baby is born. This ignores the facts that those nine months aren't exactly a cakewalk; if all does not go go so well, the mother may have her health permanently compromised, or may die.
The state does not generally have a right to force one person to directly endanger themselves to benefit another, even if the risk is low, you always have a choice, always have the right to withdraw your consent.
If the choice is "to not be pregnant", and the unborn child is not developed to the point where the child can survive outside of the womb, can the state force a women to remain pregnant for another six months or longer, in order to give the child time to develop?
Additionally, a crib-bound infant cannot survive without life support ... should women have the right to terminate life support they began by their voluntary actions?That's an invalid comparison. There's a difference in kind between financial support or a ventilator and having somebody literally living off of your bloodstream directly embedded in your abdomen.
To quote myself:
There is no legal tradition that suggests that a parent can be forced to give up part of their liver for a child, that an individual can be forced to donate blood.. . .
... 47 states have enacted "safe haven" laws. Generally these laws allow the mother to anonymous "give up" a newborn, less than seven days old, with no legal penalty.
Back on the slavery theme, MHGinTN wrote:
If you're going to use the term 'slavery', use it correctly; forced servitude is not the relationship of fetal aged child and life supporting mother because the child is there by invitation, albeit in most cases a very tenuous invitation due to ignoring the likelihood of becoming a mother when engaging voluntarily in sexual intercourse.
I'm going to ignore the obvious straight line here (Pregnancy is punishment for having sex, etc, etc), and stick with the "slavery" theme, and the original point of this thread -- the right to self defense.
I could write a long argument showing the flaws in this position, but it's easier to just go back to Thomson's "famous violinist":
Of course it may be said that the case of pregnancy is entirely different from the violinist. In the latter, the victim has been acted upon against his will, while (except in the case of rape) the woman voluntarily enters into an act that could result in the conception of a fetus. Thomson tackles this concern by explaining that the intention of an act can be very different from its actual consequences. She gives the examples of leaving a window open to let the breeze in and later a burglar slips in, too. It is absurd to say that the resident has given the burglar the right to enter the house just because the avenue of entry was opened. She goes on to alter the role of the burglar, who intentionally seeks to enter the house, with that of an innocent individual who accidentally blunders in.(Text quoted verbatim from http://www.mwillett.org/atheism/abortion.htm, I just highlighted the most relevant portions.). . .
While Thomson argues that the perpetrator of the act, whether they be burglars or spermatozoa, have no right to do what they do without permission or having been given the right, she puts forth the idea of the 'Minimally Decent Samaritan". At some point the abridgment of the 'victims' right becomes smaller than the rights of the perpetrator. Thomson says that if the violinist only needed to be connected to your kidneys an hour to be cured and your health would be in no way permanently affected, in fact the only thing you would have to endure is being inconvenienced for an hour. It would be indecent of you to refuse him the use of your kidneys; you ought to help him. But, that said, you are still not morally required to do anything to help the dying violinist. It would be deplorable and even despicable to refuse to lift a finger to help someone in need, but the important thing is, it isn't required. I feel that Thomson introduces this concept due to the fact that, like most compassionate human beings, she is appalled with the senseless killing of another human life. Again, though, she holds that sometimes the killing is justified and that the continued action of the individual killed is more unjust than the death.
The chief difference between Thomson's view and the pro-life view is that of obligation. Thomson holds that we are not obligated to give whatever is needed to sustain another's life while the pro-lifers at least say that we are morally required to give aid or withhold harm from the unborn fetus. In the end, Thomson's Violinist argument seems to be a good one. It addresses the issue of whether or not it is morally permissible to abort a fetus and does succeed in defending her claim that it is sometimes morally permissible to abort the fetus. While the metaphor may be a bit stretched with the violinist (who has already been living) and the fetus (who has not previously existed), it still has much merit. The issue of whether the woman's rights to her body are more important than the fetus's right to life can be examined.
Thomson's Violinist argument has been praised by some and abhorred by others. I feel that her's is one of the better arguments put forth in support of abortion. She side-steps the issue of the fetus's designation as a human being (a source of much controversy between the pro-life and pro-choice camps) by arguing in such a way that it doesn't matter one way or the other. The other being does not have a right to use anything needed to prolong (or begin) its life.
"Everybody wants to talk about how a handful of cells is more important than the person in whom those cells are embedded." Sadly, you toss about typical liberal mischaracterizations, revealing yourself to be of that mindset. You too are but a mass of cells, physically, but we give you the benefit of characterizing you as a member of the human family ... and you've been that since your unique conception. It is important to not lose sight of this distinction since science will soon be able to conceive and life support an individual without ever embedding in a woman's body. It is by design that we humans collectively class our species as of greater value than other species on this blue orb. To purposely dehumanize one age in our individual lifetimes, because the individual humans at that age have utilitarian value for medical applications to treat older individuals is in fact an embrace of cannibalism. Congratulations. Your sounding brass verbiage and tinkling cymbal liberal pleas are disgusting in the main. As a functioning mass of cells, you're failing to follow your own syllogistic standards. For those I pinged to this exchange, the posts of nonesuch would be instructive of the Gordian tangle of mischaracterizations typical to liberals defending abortion on demand as some sacred rite for women.
The unborn baby, being aborted, may come closer to being the fulfillment of her very natural purpose for existence, than anything else the aborting mother is likely ever to achieve.
For my approach to the abortion question, see The Abortion Debate.
William Flax