THE LUKE SKYFREEPER ABORTION DOCTRINE

Luke Skyfreeper (vanity) | June 6, 2003 | Luke Skyfreeper

[Luke Skyfreeper]

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Years go by, and the abortion struggle rages on.

I would like to suggest that the following doctrine is a basis for an uneasy resolution to the political conflict; one that may eventually come to be accepted by all.

Abortion should be legal, but only up to a certain date. We need to define, as best as we can, when we are dealing with a human being.

The current definition of the law afford NO recognition that a developing child is a human being until the moment that child leaves his or her mother's womb. Anyone who pays the faintest attention to what we know through medical science can readily recognize that, at full term, this is far, far too late.

If a developing child is old enough to survive outside of the womb, even with medical assistance, then it's a human being. Obviously.

If the developing child is old enough to feel pain, regardless of whether or not an anesthetic is administered, then it is developed enough to be a human being, and destroying the said developing child must be illegal.

Practically, this means that for humane reasons, all abortions after a certain date (somewhere between 8 and 24 weeks) should be made illegal. This is only humane, and even 8 weeks would allow more than a month for decision making and getting an abortion appointment (although I suspect that a medical consensus would put the development of pain later than that).

The vast majority of abortions already take place before 24 weeks now. However, it is currently legal to destroy developing children at any stage of development, as long as at least part of the child is still inside the mother's body.

I believe this is the basis of the solution to the abortion problem. Part B is that accurate information must be provided to women considering an abortion. Potential adverse effects must be covered, and other options, including adoption, must be adequately presented. A waiting period may also be appropriate.

None of these takes away choice. The choice is still there whether to have a baby or have an abortion.

One can therefore be pro-choice and pro-life at the same time.

I also argue for use of the term "developing child" (which is intuitive, completely accurate and fully descriptive) rather than use of the term "fetus."

Political wars are won and lost on the choice of words.

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[dirtboy]

I'd be pretty offended by being compared to Hitler.

I am comparing the language of dehumanization used to justify abortion and genocide and noting both their similarity and their net effect of the deaths of millions. If you don't like that, tough.

[dirtboy]

Who better to decide? The government? You?

Maybe the fetus itself - by allowing it to go to term.

[stuartcr]

As I said before, that is true.....but those that choose abortions will not have very good medical care.

[chimera]

But the poster imposed no such condition, only survivability outside the womb. Even a "clump of cells" can do that, for a time. My point is that if you're going to make ex-vitro survivability your ethical lodestar of personhood, you'd better join the pro-life movement, because you've moved the timeline back to the point of conception (whether you realize it or not). Otherwise, you're going to have to walk the logical plank of defining (and defending) another arbitrary point in time, i.e., how long is long enough in terms of survival ex-vitro and why? That's hopeless, because we can logically argument that point into non-existence.

[dirtboy]

Like I said, I'm not willing to (or capable of) argue with those who are certain that life begins at conception. I can never argue my way out of that.

I just see a distinction between being totally dependent on someone else's body for being alive, and being dependent on one's own body to be alive.

So we just therefore rationalize killing that "thing" to avoid all those messy consequences. Kuba-frickin-ya.

One requires the consent of another, the other doesn't.

I know of plenty of fathers paying child support against their consent because they provided the sperm. But women somehow have a right to kill the fetus when they supplied the egg.

It's a completely separate issue, and one that will ALWAYS exist, whether you like it or not.

So will many, many other human problems. The issue is, do we rationalize killing our little fetus problems or do we devise a way to deal with them without that rationalization?

[Luke Skyfreeper]

It's entirely possible, medically speaking, to measure the brain waves of a developing baby (fetus, whatever you want to call it). (and usually brain wave activity starts in the first trimester, I believe, if memory serves) I would propose legislation that would outlaw abortion in any case where brain waves could be detected.

Your solution to the problem is essentially the same as mine -- differing only in the yardstick used to define when a developing child must be recognized as a person, and begin to enjoy the legal benefit of having a recognized right to live.

And I'm not particularly hard-nosed about the actual standard, only that it be a reasonable one.

In your case and mine, the essential idea is the same: Early-term abortions are not going to be bannable. However, we must recognize that at some point in pregnancy, a developing child becomes quite identifiably a human being. Those abortions need to end, and there exists (or at least, should exist) the political will to end them.

[palmer]

More likely that giving blacks less legal rights was derived from religion. My point is that legal protection has to be based on something and I would like it to be based on the humanity of the individual being protected. We can all identify with fellow humans who are recognizable and can suffer pain. I personally cannot identify with a single-cell human in that way.

[newgeezer]

Married couples use the pill which causes many conceived "could have been babies/egg sperm combinations/pick your favorite emotional buzz phrase" not to survive.

From that description, I suspect you're referring to RU-486 (the "morning after pill"), rather than "the pill" (which, unless I'm mistaken, prevents conception altogether).

Is this murder like a partial birth abortion? Not to me.

Messing with God's plan is certainly a hard subject, and not easy to settle to the satisfaction of all His people.

[GovernmentShrinker]

It's easy to judge me and my wife, have you taken any of these children in and raised them yourself? . . . Taking on more would bankrupt us.

No, and I'm also not insisting that we force women to carry more of them to term. Nor have I added 4 more children to the crowded competition for responsible parents. Each one you have is one that you can't adopt that gets left in the system. As for bankrupting you, society as a whole is on the road to being bankrupted by the rapidly expanding and mostly futile "social welfare" programs which are needed to deal with these kids, and with the criminals many of them become.

[palmer]

So let's play your game here. Let's confine a woman against her will and have her declare that the fetus growing within here is not human. The child is born - does the fact that the mother decreed the child to not be human make that child less human?

Sorry that's your game. The fetus will obviously gain more humanity early in the pregnancy and the woman's argument will become moot.

[dirtboy]

Just look into the real cases -- it's not a matter of what I believe. Last year in NYC we had a few months old baby dead-on-arrival at an emergency room. Its 12-year-old mother had breast-fed it all that she produced, but it still starved death before she and whatever sorry excuses for adults she was living with, noticed that anything was amiss.

So, gee golly whiz, let's just kill 30 million fetuses so we don't get a few thousand problem children. Let's destroy the village to save it, while we're at it.

If we don't look out for the interests of society as a whole, we'll just see more and more and more if this.

Ah, so the needs of the many supercede the right of a fetus to live. Why don't we just identify the problem children you are referring to and shoot them now and get it over with? Can't have that drain on society, you know.

[chimera]

Well, then, it seems like your definitions really aren't that at all, or are perhaps poor ones, because they seem very fuzzy, a kind of patchwork quilt of "potentialities", intuition, and exceptions. Even Peter Singer recognizes that a system of ethics which provides no (or little, I might add) guidance for our actions is pretty much useless. Better try again. Here's a hint: the pro-life position is the one most defensible from a logical and ethical viewpoint.

[BabsC]

Then I guess you two won't be having abortions. Your choice.

[chimera]

Sorry for the incorrect use of terms in the last post (and perhaps earlier). Ex-vitro should be ex-vivo.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Hmmm. So we should then allow the mob to rule. Maybe we can bring back legal slavery if a majority decides it to be OK.

Of course not. Ours is, and should be, a constitutional republic, and a representative democracy, rather than a mob-rule democracy.

I don't care to define what a fetus isn't, because it is the same exercise, and one that has led to 30 million deaths since 1973.

Then I take it that you are content with allowing abortion to continue through all 40 weeks of pregnancy...

[GovernmentShrinker]

Who the heck is going to adopt all these kids? If there are plenty of adoptive parents available, why do tens thousands of kids age out of the foster care system every year? And that number is with abortion being legal and widely practiced.

[small_l_libertarian]

Okay, here are a couple off the top of my head:

A married mother has an ill-advised affair with a man that will produce an instantly-identifiable child that is obviously not her husband's. I don't believe that she should endanger her existing family over a stupid mistake.

A teenager becomes pregant because she's stupid. I don't think someone with her whole life ahead of her should throw it away because she made a dumb mistake with a boy who probably already realizes he made a dumb mistake.

A poor woman with children becomes pregnant for the upteenth time. I don't think her other children should do with less just because she's an idiot. I also don't think that the rest of society should have to pay for her being an idiot.

All of these situations assume that the woman or girl did not CHOOSE to give birth. If she chose to have her child, I would certainly support and encourage that choice. However, I can certainly see the justification for having an abortion in any of these cases.

Yes, I know there are crisis pregnancy centers, etc. That doesn't mean that crisis pregnancy centers are the BEST choice for any of these hypothetical people.

[Alberta's Child]

The problem is that a term like "recognizable" is very subjective. Laws should not be based on subjectivity like this. Your standards of recognition are also subjective in nature -- why not use something that is clearly defined like the presence of a heartbeat, the presence of a unique genetic code, etc.?

Regardless of whether you "recognize" a human zygote as a human being, it is, in fact, a human being.

[dirtboy]

Sorry that's your game.

Hardly. You were given the mother the power to decide on the humanity of the fetus. I was demonstrating the absurdity of that concept.

The fetus will obviously gain more humanity early in the pregnancy and the woman's argument will become moot.

Ah, so at what point does that happen, eh? Let's say after 16 weeks it looks pretty much human. Well, gee, it still is absolutely dependent upon the mother to live - so much for your argument there. It could still be ripped out and killed by an abortionist. But somehow, to her and to you, it has crossed some threshhold of humanity and is now deserving of legal protection.

[AnAmericanMother]

That's a nonsensical, ad hominem argument.

How familiar are you with the foster care and adoption systems? Unfortunately I am very familiar with it. Do you have numbers on these supposed tens of thousands of what you call "damaged" kids?

For your information, many of those kids are unadoptable because the parents will NOT surrender their parental rights, although they have lost custody. Sometimes they surrender their rights and then "take it all back" - and if there was any problem, no matter how minor, with the paperwork the courts will back them up, even if the child is already 5 or 6 years old and never knew their bioparents.

Most of these kids are "unadoptable" not because of any defects or "issues" they have, but because their abusive/neglectful bioparents just can't let go, or don't want to officially admit they are "bad parents". Termination of parental rights is an intricate, time consuming process that can last for years and cost thousands of dollars. DFACS only resorts to that process for the most heinous cases of abuse and neglect - they are overwhelmed.

I have to conclude that you are simply repeating what you have read and heard in order to "score points" as you see it with Zavien. How many kids have YOU adopted?