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.
The problem is, you can't have half an abortion, which means there is little ground for compromise. If you believe that life begins at conception, then you believe abortion is murder. And efforts to get around that fact by declaring a fetus as something less than human is akin to the process of dehumanization that is associated with genocide - the first act typically is to declare some ethnic group as less than human so it's easier to justify exterminating them.
So who is Yoda?
Agreed.
So the mother can choose to kill the fetus and not be subject to criminal prosecution. But let's say a third party deliberately caused an action to miscarry that fetus. They would be subject to criminal prosecution. Kinda fails the equal protection test if you ask me, and it's yet another logical deadfall for those justifying abortion.
Right! So lets make it legal, tax it, make some money on it to protect the mother since no one gives a ratsass about the child!!
It is only a matter of time. Someone who seeks an abortion is probably pro-choice. Pro-Choice people are usually left wingers. The kid that they aborted would had probably been left-wing too. Eventually they will diminish their own population to a point where they will become insignificant.
Between that and their own self-destructive behavior, their days are counted.
I see your point entirely. However, I do not believe that a human is alive until it has its first thoughts. Arguably, this doesn't happen until after a minimal number of weeks into the pregnancy, which is the only time I believe abortion should be legal. That is also plenty of time for the mother to make that choice. Anything beyond a few weeks is murder, in my opinion.
As a newbie, I would recommend avoiding starting lightning rod threads(no Zot pun here, I'm series). People don't know you yet and are more likely to write you off as a disruptor. But welcome all the same.
On the contrary, it has basis in both, as well as basis in common sense.
The Supreme Court ruled that women have a "right to privacy" (a right not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, by the way) which is so powerful that it includes a right to terminate any pregnancy. In practice, this has meant "any pregnancy at any stage of the pregnancy.
That's nonsense.
The reason that is nonsense is that, while it may be (and is) debatable in our society whether a blastocyst constitutes "a human being," it is NOT debatable, among reasonable people, that a child old enough to live outside of the womb is a human being. Nor should it be debatable that a developing child old enough to feel pain is also a human being and should be protected by law.
Human beings inherently have rights. The most fundamental of these rights, and the very first right recognized by our Constitution, is the right to live.
The right of one human being to live must necessarily supersede the right of another human being to "privacy."
As for science, science reveals to us the continuum of development from a single cell to a human being fully capable of hearing, breathing, seeing, etc.
If we are ever to protect the lives of fully developed young humans, those who are pro-life must first recognize that we cannot force the sizable portion of our society who believe a blastocyst to be "a mass of cells" to submit to the prohibition of early abortion. (And likewise, those who are pro-choice must accept that they cannot continue to destroy beings who are obviously human beings.
Therefore, a cut-off point, a point of definition, is required. The cut-off point that I have proposed is a reasonable one.
That does not mean that you, as a pro-life person, cannot continue to believe that abortion at 3 weeks is the killing of a human being. But you must accept that a large portion of our society differs with you, and you do not have control over their actions. The extent of your power to intervene is limited to your ability to persuade others to do what you believe to be the right thing.
And there is a very important reason WHY you must accept this lack of control of others' lives during early pregnancy. You must do so in order to save the lives of many children who are obviously old enough to feel pain, and to be human in the fullest sense of the word.
You said:
...it also makes no sense because advances in medicine will always be making that "viability" date earlier and earlier in pregnancy.
Our scientific understanding is now sufficient for us to come up with a reasonable cut-off date that is unlikely to change significantly in the future, unless we are able to come up with artificial wombs that can nurture the single cell all the way to birth age. That, however, is unlikely to happen, for the simple reason it would be too expensive.
In any event, the cutoff point of "surviving outside the body" would then be the point at which a developing child could leave the artificial womb.
Anyway, the date could be shifted a bit in future if necessary. Most importantly, the current situation of legalized abortion all the way through 40 weeks, is barbaric and untenable for a thinking, civilized society. Yet that barbarism is unlikely to change, as long as both sides take an "all-or-nothing" view of abortion. A total prohibition of abortion is untenable in any event, but we must protect the innocent children that we can protect.
He used complete sentences in his post, so odds are he's not from DU.
The lady in the lake?
Hmmm - by your logic, then, we shouldn't bother with prosecuting murder, violence and robbery in poor inner city neighborhoods, because we cannot seem to convice a sizeable portion of that segment of society that such actions are wrong.
Why not just elect you God?
They typically study the issue and then sidestep it in any manner possible.
I don't think he is either. But with the daily disruptor problem and volatile nature these discussions tend to have, I just wanted to throw that out there. I want more people to enjoy FR but taking on a large group from past battles on your first day can be brutal and cause disillusion.
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