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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[Polycarp]

L, Just read it.

[Question_Assumptions]

Because the great dangers of allowing governments to make such judgements has been seen over and over again.

And the great danger that even more arbitrary individuals may make such judgements is why we tolerate governments. That danger has been seen over and over again, too.

Maintaining freedom of individual choice in things like abortion will ensure that the results accurately reflect the beliefs of the people as a whole.

Not at all. Putting abortion into the democractic process would allow abortion laws to reflect the beliefs of the people, as a whole -- which would probably make neither side happy.

[newgeezer]

They didn't all mis-dose themselves.

I wonder.

Of course, the moral issue is the fertilized egg. It is a new creation, a new soul God has blessed us with.

Not so fast. Some argue that the moral issue is with any efforts at unnatural contraception. Still others are unconvinced the soul appears at the moment of conception.

And how do we welcome this? With a uterus chemically altered to be inhospitable to life., resulting in the demise of the new life.

Are you sure about that? Again, I may be relatively ignorant on the subject (it's not on my radar screen). But, as I understand it, the one-a-day dose of The Pill fools the body into thinking it's pregnant. (Probably an oversimplification, but...) So, isn't the uterus still quite "hospitable"? Shouldn't it take the "large" dose of The Pill to cause the demise? Or, is it such that the "real" pregnancy combined with the "fake" pregnancy brought about by The Pill and its hormones is typically enough to kill, sooner or later?

Maybe this never happens to you and your wife.

Impossible. (Just to be clear, I'm not biased by any personal motivation, or arguing for any sort of justification.)

[Question_Assumptions]

Fewer than half of Americans agree with your premise, though all certainly realize that they were once fetuses themselves. I don't care to empower government to overrule individual citizens in such important and personal matters.

Would you allow parents to handle their born children as they see fit, up to and including torturing or killing them? How about up until the point where the child gains full human consciousness? Clearly raising one's children is an important and personal matter but I think the government has a role in protecting children from their parents. Yes, the important question is how intrusive government should get but that's the real issue. It isn't as neat as saying that government should have total control or no control.

[Roscoe]

B2.

[palmer]

Characteristics of humanity are those that trigger our empathy. It's true this has great potential for abuse, both by rationalizing what are and are not human characteristics and from lack of or a warped sense of empathy. It's quite possible to empathize with animals: to feel pain at their unecessary suffering. As is often the case the liberals at PETA see the suffering of an animal while being blind to the suffering of humans elsewhere. I try for a balance to meet human needs while minimizing the suffering of animals. I don't yet hunt, but I fish (often with bread instead of worms).

As for the sense of empathy, a racist may not empathize with other races, but that's a social and individual sickness, it's not normal. You can outlaw racist acts but you can't outlaw racism. Abortion is a sign of societal sickness and though laws would motivate better behavior, they won't cure the sickness.

[GovernmentShrinker]

There's a difference between morally acceptable and legally acceptable. According the more extreme PETA people, there is no justification for killing animals for food, or for wildlife and pet population management. Who's to say they're not on the moral high ground with that position? But since the vast majority of Americans disagree, the law continues to permit killing animals for these reasons. We simply cannot have a legal system that ignores the core beliefs of a majority of the population -- sooner or later this leads only to violent revolution, and a new legal system which does recognize the beliefs of the majority. BTW, I'm a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and would only kill an animal for food if my survival really depended on it. But I accept that the law represents the conflicting position of the majority, and I have to be satisfied that I have the freedom to make this choice for myself.

[newgeezer]

Well, certainly that should give pause to anyone who defines the moment of conception as the point at which the moral issue begins.

[mvpel]

His Chapter 4, The Emergence of Humanness, is about 17 pages long. I still wonder what we are before we are humans.

This is a common semantic issue in this discussion, I've found. What he means when he's saying "humanness" would better be described as "personhood," "sentience" or "self-awareness." A brain-dead human is still a human organism, but not a "person" in the common sense of the word, as the brain is the seat of personality.

[mvpel]

I'm in the process of filling out 25 pages worth of essay questions as only one small part of a home-study process to qualify to adopt a child.

There are considerable legal hurdles to adoption.

[Question_Assumptions]

We simply cannot have a legal system that ignores the core beliefs of a majority of the population -- sooner or later this leads only to violent revolution, and a new legal system which does recognize the beliefs of the majority.

The assumption for many here seems to be that America is a pro-choice nation. If you look at polls that actually detail abortion beliefs (as opposed to "for" or "against" being the only options), you'd see that people are far more pro-life than many in the media give them credit for. And the opinions are hardly evenly distributed. Four states had legal abortion before Roe. Up to a dozen might have it if Roe were overturned. But putting it back in the democratic realm is more likely to give us abortion laws that don't ignore the core beliefs of the majority and the judicial fiat that rules now is certainly not the answer if that is what you really want.

[Question_Assumptions]

Well, certainly that should give pause to anyone who defines the moment of conception as the point at which the moral issue begins.

Anyone who tells you that abortion is an "easy" issue, that it has an "easy" solution, or that there is a solution that doesn't have any downsides either (A) doesn't understand the issue very well or (B) hasn't spent much time discussing the issue with people who don't agree with them (often both A and B).

[newgeezer]

Have you met Luke Skyfreeper? ;O)

[Question_Assumptions]

Characteristics of humanity are those that trigger our empathy.

That varies from person to person, far too much to be entirely useful. I personally prefer the discomfort test. "How uncomfortable does this point of view make people, even if their whole culture does it." The Romans practiced infanticide yet they knew something was wrong with it. Americans practiced slavery but they knew something was wrong with it. In my experence, Americans have abortions but most know that there is something wrong with it. It isn't difficult to make people squirm, which is why the most common response to the abortion issue is, "I don't want to think about it."

[Question_Assumptions]

I'm trying to be nice. I think his fundamental problem is that he's picking something that he vicerally feels comfortable with and then looking for a way to justify it rather than looking at the issue to determine what's right. Frankly, I think he really needs to read that logical fallacy page and figure out that you don't argue a position simply by asserting that you are right.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

THIS THREAD WON'T DIE

Lol, it's true!

Maybe I'll have time to respond to the last hundred comments or so later -- I made it almost through the first 300 earlier before running out of steam! :-)

[palmer]

I agree. People especially don't want to see pictures of fetuses.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

I'm trying to be nice. I think his fundamental problem is that he's picking something that he vicerally feels comfortable with and then looking for a way to justify it rather than looking at the issue to determine what's right. Frankly, I think he really needs to read that logical fallacy page and figure out that you don't argue a position simply by asserting that you are right.

QA, I don't have time now to address your many posts (though I'll try to do so later), but this one caught my eye as I was posting the quick response to the post about "the thread that wouldn't die."

1) I stand accused by you of committing logical fallacies. I'm not up on all of your posts, but if I understand right, I think your chief gripe is that I have made a statement without accompanying it with proof (adequate to meet your standards as to what should constitute such proof).

I was not aware that this was a hard-core formal debate forum in which any statement one might make is required to be accompanied, upon its initial statement, by unassailable proof.

2) You also state your suspicion that I chose my position, then found a way to justify it. I could easily accuse you of the same thing.

Anyway, for your information (and newgeezer might be interested to know this as well), I started, years ago, from a fundamentalist Christian, vehemently anti-abortion position. I held that abortion of any kind was murder, plain and simple. I have since changed my mind. Are you two capable of changing your minds as well?

My current position is the result of years of reflection upon the issues and consideration of the best way forward in the debate.

I do not believe that pro-lifers will ever be successful in criminalizing early-term abortions. Different people have different interpretations of the meaning of early-term abortion. Under these circumstances, our system will not allow such prohibition, because one group of people is not allowed to impose their entire world view on another group of people. That is simply the reality of American politics and the American system.

I also believe that pro-life insistence upon doing so contributes to the tooth-and-nails, to-the-death opposition of pro-abortion people to any restriction on abortion, no matter how small. Pro-abortion people are not dumb; they know that a great many pro-lifers view a ban on partial birth abortion as only the first step in an incremental prohibition of all abortion.

I also believe that some actions are worse than others.

Pro-lifers, in my opinion, would face an easier struggle to eliminate the most horrible and outrageous forms of abortion (late term and partial-birth abortion) if they didn't adopt an all-or-nothing stance.

You can say my view is outdated by pro-life focus on such things as PBA. The all-or-nothing responses on this thread testify strongly otherwise.

In any event, your supposition that I first chose what I was comfortable with, and then sought to justify it, is entirely false.

[AnAmericanMother]

I'm telling you - I don't NEED to look up the facts. I've lived it, and I thoroughly researched everything while I was in the middle of the mess. I can't speak for the country at large, but I can speak with authority for the situation in Georgia.

Plenty of kids with handicaps, and certainly kids of all races and mixed race, are getting adopted. The "perfectly healthy white infants" idea may be true for a few persnickety yuppies in Atlanta who want a 'trophy child', but not for most folks who want to adopt.

The specific problems causing kids not to be adopted are (1) the bureacracy of the child protective services, specifically the reluctance to terminate parental rights and the inability to process children out of foster care and into adoption; (2) the court system that allows mothers and even illegitimate fathers to have "second thoughts" and "take it all back" - even when the kid has been with the adoptive parents for years. If those problems are fixed and the adoption process streamlined, all the parents who are going to China to adopt because they are terrified by the process here will stay home. No "white infants" in China by the way, and certainly not all of them are healthy - many have birth defects and disabilities, and (because they are abandoned girls) have been neglected.

I'm afraid that this "millions of unadoptable kids" is largely propaganda put out by people who don't want anyone to consider adoption as a viable option.

Now, who do you think would gain by spreading that story? Cui bono?

[AnAmericanMother]

As a matter of fact, no, taking the pill for other reasons is NOT the equivalent of taking it for birth control.

I have discussed this at some length with my OB/GYN (a faithful Catholic) and my priest, because I am in the same boat.

Without getting heavily into doctrine and technical terms, what it boils down to is the difference between an intended result and a "side effect". When the intention is to relieve your wife's suffering, the fact that taking the Pill may possibly prevent a fertilized egg from implanting on some occasions is an unintended side-effect of the measures taken to alleviate her illness. Some NFP advocates will argue that the Pill is not really a good treatment for endometriosis . . . but my OB/GYN recommended it, and it works, so I think they're letting their scruples outrun their common sense (they also probably have never suffered from endometriosis!)