mrJack writes:
First off, it's not a personal decision. It's a decision to terminate the life of another human being. Individuals do not have the right to make that decision.
The problem is that abortion is not necessarily terminating the life of another human being. This is one of the points that was made early on. It is the decision to terminate the gestation of what will become a human being. But until the moment of birth whether it will even be born a live human being is unknown, much less whether the mother considers it a full human being.
Again, you have used the vague "human being" to support you argument. You have also failed to mention why malformed children are considered less than human beings if they are allowed to be terminated at a later time. If it is due to compassion, then how does compassion not count for the mother and child in other circumstances?
mrJack writes:
Secondly, I fail to see how you can consider an abortion a better result for the child than being born and living their life.
First of all, you say you support abortion up until the second trimester, how does your above statement not hold true for them?
Second, you have said that abortion very late in pregnancy is allowed in the case of deformity or when it was a product of rape or incest. The last two cases in specific seem incongruous with the statement above.
The fact is you seem capable of determining when abortion is appropriate. Nothing that ends a pregnancy is "better" for the gestational child. But one can ask whether the longterm situation into which the child will be born would be better than not entering that situation at all. And a mother can determine whether carrying out the pregnancy would be better for herself and for her child.
Please provide evidence that society's determination of which point is the appropriate point to terminate a pregnancy has ever offered a better result for mother or child, than allowing it to the mother in question.
I also want to add that humans are not communal organisms. They reproduce as individuals, so why is this choice not considered personal... and sacred as a personal choice? It seems that nothing could be more important for an individual (besides how to die) than under what conditions one wants to reproduce, including the conditions into which a child will be born.
mrJack writes:
Society has allowed all sorts of shit over history. We can, and should, try and make our society better than that.
You seem to have missed my point. You say reproduction is not the right of an individual, but rather so important that the best choice must be made by society.
My point is that society has never shown itself capable of making a better choice, or even a consistent choice, than leaving it up to the preference of the mother.
According to the argument you have just laid out, if society (which is simply the majority of the ruling party) decides infanticide is mandated, that would be a good decision, or a better one than the mother's. While this may be unlikely, presently third term abortions are legal and you find society wrong. Hmmmmm. Which is it then? Is society right, or are you wrong?
Or if you are trying to argue that the opinion of society should be able to be changed, and so come to a better opinion, please show any evidence that this has occured in history. Knowledge may increase, but societal values change back and forth over the course of time.
Again we have gone from no restrictions, to the ultimate restriction, to some restrictions. We are not zeroing in on any equilibrium, as can be seen by the growth of anti-abortion sentiment. Are each of these right and better choices?
I would also like to ask how you define society. Is it the village you are in? The county? The State? The country? The world? Which level of society is appropriate to make the best choice? Currently it is the state. But it seems to me that if you believe it is anything less than the world (or at least the nation) then why can the decision making community not logically come down to the immediate family?
mrjack writes:
I suspect you would find a strong concensus among most people that a third trimester child is, in some sense, human and worthy of our protection. You'd also find something in the way of scientific backing for the view, based on brain development. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to tell when the child becomes conscious.
There is no doubt this is true. And where I go to societies that do not allow abortion at all they find something in the way of scientific backing for the view (based on other development criteria) that it is human and worthy of our protection.
That is the very nature of subjective opinion.
While one day we will certainly be able to track the development of the brain, and tell when consciousness begins, we will still never be able to tell when it is a human. Or more than likely we'll discover that "consciousness" becomes another vague concept to argue over. Do you mean when brain patterns start? Because if you meant self-awareness that is pretty clearly not till well after birth.
mrjack writes:
In short then, I don't believe we support either humanity or civil rights by ignoring the childs claim. I don't believe the woman's desire to change her mind at the late stage of pregnancy outweighs the child's claim in any way.
Once you find me an unborn child making a claim I may start siding with you. Until that time I only see fully grown people anthropomorphising a gestational entity, in order to say they are making a claim for it.
And what do you say to those people who come forward to support the "child's claim" to life in the case of deformities, rape, or incest? Don't you hear them pleading in the voice of the child "don't kill me, I'm a victim too..."
Once you deny them the right to make claims for the child, you deny your own. If you accept them once they become the majority, then you are incapable of denying forced abortions (if that becomes the will of the majority).
This is why it is all about humanity and civil rights. Once society gets its hands on people whatever mistake is being made will now be made society wide, and certainly over the will of many mothers. At least by keeping reproductive rights free mistakes will be left to the individual and FOR CERTAIN the rights of the one being we KNOW IS HUMAN will not have her rights trampled on.
mrjack writes:
I was unable to track down figures on the survival rate of premature babies, but it my understanding that a premature baby is significantly less likely to survive than a baby that remains in the womb.
This misses the point entirely. A premature baby by definition has made it through childbirth. It is now struggling to survive as a wholly separate entity.
An unborn child is a total unknown. While it may have a higher survival statistic than a premature baby struggling to survive on the outside, that does not mean there are any guarantees that it will live through to childbirth.
Your other stat (on death during childbirth) is missing the point as well. I did not mean just death in childbirth itself, but survival up to and including childbirth.
There is certainly a higher mortality rate for that. But it will be smaller than 40% that's for sure. Maybe less than 10%. How does that make the individual woman's decision regarding whether she wants to continue the pregnancy any less important? Until we have clairvoyants on staff at hospitals, a decision that this pregnancy will certainly not be that % is patently ridiculous.
And the % that results in the death of the mother? Did you look that up? If even 0.0001% resulted in death of the mother, who is society to make that call? Society buys lottery tickets with less chances to win than that. Yet now when a woman's life is on the line such a percentage really looks small... compared to the maybe life of the child, born into conditions that will not be socially positive?
mrjack writes:
Because the child has no ability to stand for itself, it's moral claim can only be protected by society.
Each cell of your body is truly separate, just like an unborn child. You can see that by cutting some off. You can keep them alive if you want. You can even grow more. In 50 years you may even be able to grow a whole new you.
Shall society be able to stand up for those poor cells who have no ability to stand up for themselves? After all their moral claim can only be protected by society.
It seems to me one reason the unborn cannot make a claim for themselves is they are not human beings to start with. Just because a group gets together to say it does, how does that make them correct? The implications toward individual body parts is immediately above, and for infanticide/noabortionrights are further above.
Without question there are groups that stand up for the rights of the children who are the product of rape as well as the deformed. What makes them less right?
mrjack writes:
By the third trimester the mother has already chosen the responsibility of bearing a child. Hell, a pregnant woman at any stage (excepting of course the special case of rape) has already chosen this path. Of course early in pregnancy the moral value of the child is such that we are quite happy allowing her to change her mind.
This is only an assertion of your own opinion. The last sentence alone is contrary to the fact there are abortion protests regardless of stage of pregnancy.
Some physical development problems are not determined until late in the pregnancy. Some will not be able to be determined until after birth (something that must weigh on the conscience of all mothers). Some mothers will find social conditions (or personal psychological conditions) change near the end of pregnancy.
While I agree for the most part pregnancies ought to be done early, conditions may arise later on which are totally unforseen.
As far as getting pregnant being a sign they chose the responsibility of carrying a child, that is simply heartless. Contraceptive methods fail.
mrjack writes:
I do not see why any great value should be attached to whether the mother is feeding the child on the inside or the outside
One is inside feeding off the biological reserves of the mother, the other may be shuttled off to an orphanage to be fed by kindly nuns if the mother doesn't feel like it. These are two completely separate situations which are not interchangable.
mrjack writes:
A late term baby is an indentifiably seperate individual, it has it's own heart, it's own genome and it's own brain patterns. The structure of the placenta, and womb, are contrived to maintain this seperation.
You are equivocating here. It is separate in the sense that there is a boundary between the two, but it is not in any way shape or form seperate from the mother to be cared by other individuals as social situations warrant.
To be frank, this comment belies why men should not weigh in on the subject at all. Only complete ignorance of the physical ties a woman has to the growing entity inside her can allow one to make this claim. Either that or a delusional anthropomorphization of that entity.
It is very clear. Until birth, the mother and child are bound together... physically.
mrjack writes:
I would be disturbed if men were not allowed to stand in such a jury... I do not believe men are in any less of a position to evaluate the moral claims of the unborn child than a woman is. Would you be excluding infertile women, or women with no children from your list?
Are men really in a position to evaluate the moral claims of the mother? This is a competition between rights by the way, or are women's rights swept away completely by the fact that the unborn child has some?
And how can men make any moral claims based on development of an unborn child when not one man has ever felt the development of a child? Women have the privileged position of a physical tie to the unborn. They can sense activity men cannot even measure, sometimes sensing problems long before doctors can find them.
As far as your last question, this cannot be leveled at me as I do not believe society should have a say in personal reproductive matters at all. I don't think anyone other than the individual pregnant woman has any way of knowing what the situation is for the mother or the child.
You have still not answered the charges I made against your position. Talk about the inconsistencies of "compassion" regarding mothers and children, which allow for the termination of a human being.
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holmes
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