Posted on 06/06/2003 9:46:51 AM PDT by Luke Skyfreeper
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.
Great. To prevent infant deaths, we should kill more babies. Brilliant.
[that a mother somehow has an inherent right to decide upon the humanity of the fetus that she has helped to create]
Who better to decide? The government? You?
The same question can be asked when the child is 5 years old.
A womans REPRODUCTION SYSTEM is a system for reproduction up to the moment of conception - from that moment until birth it is a LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM.
www.jenerette.com
Note: If the child is wanted, the right to terminate the pregnancy is denied.
On the other hand, and my main point, conventional birth control "medicine" can indeed be taken in high doses literally the "morning after" having sex. This has come to be known as "morning after" "emergency contraception."
My point was that regular old every day birth control pills can cause the expulsion of fertilized eggs, and are morally no different than any other procured abortion.
SD
And people like you with make sure that abortion remains legal, because you are absolutely unwilling to compromise. Any thinking person would see the choices you offer (all or none) and choose to keep abortion legal over small but important matters (such as rape or incest or life of the mother).
You are missing a critical point here. We accept an absence of brain waves as death because people don't generally recover from a lack of brain waves. In other words, they won't get better. If people regularly recovered from an absence of brain waves in, say, 9 months, do you really think that we, as a society, would accept brain death as legal death?
In the original Star Trek, there was an episode where some aliens reduced two crew members into little innert foam blocks. The aliens crushed one block but restored the other back to life using the same device. Accepting the premise of the device, did the alien "murder" the crew member that was reduced the block that they crushed and could not restore or were both crew members legally dead the moment they were reduced to innert blocks of foam? The episode expected a particular viewer reaction and it is not the one that your argument would support.
For the purposes of society, for most cases, there never is dispute over the definition of death. (24 hours without brain wave activity).
I think there is less agreement on this issue than you think. Japan, as a country for example, uses a stopped heart to signify death. That is why they have a shortage of useful organs for transplant. And don't underestimate the influence transplanted organs have had on being quick to accept brain death as legal death.
Drawing from science fiction, again, there is an interesting scene in the original Rollerball where the main character refuses to pull the plug on a brain dead team mate.
Accepted.
I don't think someone with her whole life ahead of her should...
I don't think her other children should do with less...
If she chose to have her child, I would certainly support and encourage that choice.
Inconsistency alert! Make up your mind. Do you think those women SHOULD have an abortion, or do you think they SHOULD keep the child, but want abortion to remain a legal option? Up until this post, you claimed the latter, but your statements here reveal your real agenda.
There are very different in one way. In the case of the pill, there is no way to tell if there was a pregnancy to terminate. In the case of an abortion, a child loses its life. It's like the difference between firing a bullet into the air and firing a bullet into someone's head.
I hadn't thought of that. How could I forget? :-)
I had in mind the story of the man who killed his pregnant mistress in 1966 (Her body was found in 1999).
The position regarding abortion, that it was murder, helped make it illegal in most states prior to Roe v. Wade. Only upon the Supreme Court downplaying the humanity of a fetus was abortion made into a federal "right" - yet people like me are why abortion is going to stay legal.
Interesting logic.
Any thinking person would see the choices you offer (all or none) and choose to keep abortion legal over small but important matters (such as rape or incest or life of the mother).
So you are saying that I am "unthinking?" Typical liberal insult against opponents - to downplay their intelligence. But it seems the real problem is that people are thinking way, WAY too much about this issue, thinking about ways to alter the humanity of the fetus to justify killing it for convenience.
Your "intuitive factors" are useless for public debate since different people will often intuit different answers.
Does it mean the developing child should be able to forage for its own food and own its own living? Certainly not -- infants and children are easily recognized by everyone as fully human, though they are dependent on their parents for many years.
Your premise is flawwed. Any number of cultures and prominent philosphers disagree with your premise.
As for your "intuitive factor", a pro-choice woman that I used to debate with on the Internet mentioned explaining abortion to her child who responded, naturally, "That's killing a baby." Look at the polls. People's intuition is not what you think it is.
By the way, one of my favorite questions for pro-choice people is that if you crash-landed on an island and the only survivors were you and an infant, would you be obliged to take care of the infant or could you leave it to die. You might (or might not) be surprised at the number of "no obligation" pro-choicers out there.
Actually, it's more like playing Russian Roulette. We know that the pill might cause the demise of a new human. Or it might not.
Would you push a button if you knew that you had a 50/50 chance that pushing it would kill someone else? 80/20? 95/5? 99/1?
SD
I think it's morally different to most people. The father is asked to give up property to support a fully humanized newborn. But by restricting the earliest abortions you are requiring a woman to accept your legal requirement of full humanity at conception. But it's hard to make a moral case for humanity with no human form, no human pain, no movement, etc.
This is a red herring to avoid debating the issue on merit. A classic TV moment was when a pro-choice woman insisted that all pro-life people were motivated by religious motivations only to be confronted by Nat Hentoff (bless his sole) describing himself as an atheist Jew and the pro-life organization guy describing himself as agnostic. The woman simply would not recognize their point and ignored them. One of the most successful mind changes I've had on the topic was an atheist friend. Indeed, without any afterlife to look forward to, he felt that life was even more precious.
Do you really want to put people in the business of anticipating the future quality of someone else's life and then making decisions about whether they get to live or die based on that?
However, if the father doesn't provide for the child, it still can survive. But if the mother aborts it, it's dead. Seems there is a higher imperative to require the mother to carry the baby.
But it's hard to make a moral case for humanity with no human form, no human pain, no movement, etc.
It's not hard at all. Left undisturbed in the womb, the fetus at any stage will become a baby, barring complications.
See, that wasn't so hard, was it? What's far more convoluted is the reasoning that makes a fetus something less than human, and the "logic" attempting to support such.
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