Abortion

Yes, I would also like to hear an answer to this. It appears to me that if a clump of cells is an innocent human being, then it is an innocent human being regardless of the circumstances of its conception.Personally, this position has always seemed to me to be an admission that the real intention is to regulate sex and reproduction.I may take some flack for this, but I have more respect for the Catholic position, which consistently advocates protecting all "humans", than these pseudo-pro-lifers who clearly want control over women's bodies for the sake of controlling morality.

this is my take on the issue {Legal Death, Legal Life, Personhood and Abortion} thread (I started)as a summary note on the issue of when life begins, over 2/3rds of zygotes (a fertilized egg) do not make it past the 12th week under normal conditions, so it is an extremely poor predictor of human life, and carries about as much meaningful information as saying that human life doesn't start until the age of 10 (when a person begins to become self-sufficient).(see info here: msg 45 on the thread)I see no reason to change my position from that posted on the above thread: that the issue should be decided by the family, based on their beliefs, their feelings and the specific information of the case at hand.I also feel they should be able to decide to donate any portion of an abortion to be used for medical purposes, such as organs, and stem cells.Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Look,Everybody keeps thinking we have to rationalize things about abortion. Rationalize "what is life." Rationalize "what is a person."Views on life and abortion are not fundamentally based on logic. Behind all the logic are some underlying assumptions about what is valuable, unsupported notions from which people initially derive their motive to action. Arguing abortion idealistically is like arguing moral systems--there is no fundamentally "right" answer. To search for a "solution" or "meeting of the minds" on the ideals behind abortion is to ignore and fail to accept the underlying assumptions and differences of different people, and that's not OK.Abortion is not an issue of ideals, it's an issue of living together. It's a question of setting up our culture, through cultural agreements, rules, government, whatever, however we want to handle it. And like any such situation, it's a practical, no-win situation. It's about compromise and finding a way to live together--nothing more, nothing less.So, instead of "arguing" ideals (i.e. evangelizing), why not talk about some realistic solutions to the problem, about ways to live together. For example, what about an abortion tax? Discourage people from being stupid by putting a monetary fine on it. That's a way to compromise. If people can't afford to pay the tax, throw them in jail.And fundamentalists, please don't tell me how "unwilling" you are to accept the death of a "person." You simply CAN'T impose your morality on other people. It's your job to keep your people--the people who want to belong to your sub-culture--in line.And those on the left, please don't tell me you shouldn't compromise on what is a "basic human right to choose"--that's just as made up as the fundamentalist position. Everybody has to make sacrifices in a compromise.We live in a culture. We share our lives. We impose arbitrary restrictions and limitations on each other. Ideals are not part of the equation. It's about knowing what different groups of people want (REGARDLESS of the reason) and accepting that the solution lies in none of those things. It lies outside of what you want. That's compromise.BenAbE: Fixed darn subtitleThis message has been edited by Farva, Thursday, 2005/08/25 10:40 PM

I am morally pro-life because I believe a fetus should have the full status of a human being. I am legally pro-choice because I believe a woman's organs belong to her and it is her right to decide whether to share them with someone else or not.This is why I am absolutely opposed to some forms of late term abortions. To me, it is the same thing as murder.

I don't take that stance, but that was the law in most states prior to Roe vs Wade. The idea, I think, is that to force the mother to have the baby would be further victimization of her.

I believe that you should be pro-life if you think life begins at conception, or anti-abortion for whatever point you do think life begins. To have a different stance is to countenance legalized murder.If you don't believe the baby is human, then you are morally free to be for granting women the right to kill it, but I don't think the arguments are too good for maintaining the right to kill your baby after a certain point in development.

I was with you 100% up to a certain point, and then started back the other way... That's a compromise? Jail poor people who are less likely to have/afford contraceptives in the first place, while letting educated, rich people have as many abortions as they want?Wayyyyyyyyyyy off. Think about this stance carefully, those two paragraphs are logically contradictory. If people don't have a basic human right of "choice", it is made up, then others certainly do have the ability to impose morality on others.In effect your argument becomes not that there is no morality and this is a practical issue, but how do we practically create a moral system for the nation to be imposed on the individual, using a system of compromise. At least in the US, this is not supposed to be the case. While what you might idealize for others to do, you can't make them do, you are supposed to be able to practice what you feel is ideal for yourself. Those are what form our "rights" and are placed beyond "compromise". That is in essence what the Bill of Rights is all about, placing certain ideals for onesself beyond compromise in the public square.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

First let me put in a nod to RAZD's earlier thread on the topic. It was very well reasoned.My own personal opinion is pretty different than most people's so I figure I should throw it in here.To me it is not about the offspring, but about the parent. All babies are an extension of the lives of the parents. That is reproduction, and the closest thing we get to physical immortality on this planet. As such reproduction should be at the control of the parents, and particularly the mother, whose life is put at risk in this act.Parents have the right to choose how their reproduction occurs, including factors such as the physical health and environment (physical/social) that a child would be born into.Because of this I am accepting of termination of pregnancies, as well as early infanticide.Of course, I understand others do not share this view and like Farva said, this comes down to practical compromises in law. We must balance the freedom of individuals to make reproductive choices, that is the best possible offspring for ourselves, with not violating the rights of other persons (which children eventually do become).In my mind one of the best put together arguments for such a compromise is in RAZD's thread, where the concentration is on a consistent definition of personhood, to effectively draw a line during gestation on where terminations should no longer be allowed.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Brave position. But where is your cut-off? Immediately post-birth? Or at the end of "dependency"... you could be waiting a long while before you can be sure your mother's not going to throttle you!

To be honest I haven't completely worked it out, as it has had no practical use within the modern world.I definitely agree with immediate post birth, as that is sometimes the first time one becomes aware of tragic deformities and conditions. How far after would depend (in my mind) on analysis of a child's cognitive/physical abilities. After birth there is still a period where the child is still "forming". That would seem to be appropriate.And there could be logical extensions based on success or failure of procedures to correct certain birth defects.Like I said though, I am certainly willing to compromise on this position.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Ok, so is the proposed infanticide purely defect-related? Surely this is just euthenasia? Or would it be based on the quality-of-life of not just the child but also the parent?

Hey holmes, thanks for the comments. I find that levying a general criticism against all aspects of a system is a weak way to criticize a specific policy. Yeah, this happens a lot in the US. It sucks, but that's the way things are. Rich people can also afford better representation in court. They can afford to pay fines levied much more easily. They can afford to pay lawyers to avoid accumulating traffic and losing their license. They can afford health care. They can...The point is to give people a strong reason to avoid abortion. That means, penalize them. Here's another idea; how about if you have an abortion, then we sterilize you? If you don't want kids and you're not taking the measures to avoid having them, it seems like a reasaonable penalty to me.And as far as your comment on contraception... I think that's an excellent point, and one that should be addressed as well. Do you have any ideas on an effective (both results-effective and cost-effective) way we could do it?----- Sure, they do. Think of it this way; stable cultures are like standing waves (like when you shake a rope up and down). If you don't shake the damn rope just the right way, you get nothing stable, nothing consistent. You just get a bunch of motion that never works together to produce something, you get destructive interference.Back to what you said... yes, people can do whatever they want to each other. But there's only certain stable ways to survive together. That's where society and culture comes from in the first place. If we DON'T compromise, if we don't work together, things get a lot more likely to fail. We expose weakness both to nature and to other countries.So ... cessation / civil war is always an option. No doubt about it. But it's not the best one (at least, not at this point). We'd all be weaker if we split into two countries. I don't know why you want to call it a "moral" system... it's a system dictating certain agreements on how we all agree to act. The underlying reasoning or whatever doesn't matter. That's how social settings have to be; there has to be an agreement (whether explicit or implicit) on how to act. If not, the system can't stabalize and won't survive.I think the difference between "anarchy" and systems with government is simply the difference between having implicit policies and having explicit policies. Anyway, I guess I'm not seeing your objection / reason for comment well.------- There's always going to be a tension between individual rights and social agreements. We don't live individualistically, with no dependencies on each other. We derive our strength, instead, in sharing our lives. Once we share our lives, we have to establish policies and compromises that impinge on our individual freedoms. I have to be able to count on you in order to agree to work with you.One policy that we institute across the country is that of killing. It's not within your rights to kill. And this isn't globally instituted just for people either, we establish animal rights as well. If there's a group of people who find abortion to be equivalent to killing, then a compromise has to be reached.If you want to argue that having a global policy about killing is against the Bill of Rights, and that we shouldn't have to compromise the freedom to kill, then I can understand your objection. But otherwise, I don't see what the problem is.-----As long as you've agreed to live with certain people, you have to address them, no matter where their ideals come from. The basic options are to compromise or to end our willingness to live together (through war or split).I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this.BEN

I feel a bit awkward trying to work this issue out here, but I'll try. The primary reason for infanticide would generally by defect related, which one could think of as euthanasia, but that is just as controversial anyway.I personally understand and would allow for parental concerns for social concerns regarding the child. For example that the child would not have the proper access to food/shelter/protection that the parents would want for their child, and indeed would be harmed if allowed to live.That is different than just saying "I don't want to be bothered with the kid". Indeed I think if it ever managed to be allowed under law, it should require the consent of a doctor or other professional to sign off on a reason for the action. Casual murder for temporary ease in one's own life, is not a reason. The child (since it is now alive) could easily be placed elsewhere.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I don't understand how this position is not imposing a moral position on others. What reason do we have to want to give people a strong reason to avoid abortion?In any case it seems to me that there is already a strong reason to avoid it, its an operation that sucks and will usually involve some social consequences. Isn't that penalty enough?It would seem to me one could simply make alternatives to abortion even more appealing such that abortion looks even worse in comparison. Yes. First of all we can emphasize nonprocreative sex for those just looking for enjoyment. It really is fun and cheap. Next we can as a society have a better healthcare system in general, which provides free contraceptives for all females, and males when they become available. I'm agreeing that to form a functional society, that there will have to be compromise. However not everything must be on the table for compromise.You can think of the Bill of Rights in this way. One desires a society in order to better obtain and preserve life liberty and personal happiness (LLP) for onesself. If in order to have society one must sacrifice LLP, then society is not worth the effort. One is better off fighting unorganized jerks coming to step on you, then an organized state doing the same thing. The Bill of Rights is a description of those things that make up basic pursuit of LLP and so kept off the table for any compromises required to form the society. That depends on where and how you want to live. You can go live in the Boundary waters between MN and Canada and not depend on anyone else. I have a relative in the mountains of CO that does not require dependence on anyone to live well.Personally I want a lot of goodies and so I will depend on others. Most people are likely to do the same. In the end though it is always a choice.All we need to do in "sharing our lives" is deal with common issues, those things that will effect both of our lives. My choosing to have an abortion has absolutely 0 effect on your life, and so is not a common issue. In fact I am uncertain what moral concern there is which is a shared issue such that one's govt must act on it, except perhaps acts or communications directly in the public square (meaning it forces everyone to see or hear it).There is no necessity for sacrificing individual freedoms, except to preserve the nation itself in an immediate sense. Again, this is the point of the Bill of Rights. This is only partially correct, though I see where you are coming from. We can't simply accept what some moral group believes and so have to compromise. If a growing number of reincarnationists held that killing cockroaches was murder, or jainists that the mere act of eating was murder, it is unlikely that society would feel compelled to compromise in a legal sense.What's more, there is a direct difference between a gestational entity and a person, the latter is what we normally define as an organism capable of being murdered. The gestational entity may not even have a separate existence from a host. Indeed a fertilized egg may not even implant.Thus before there is a compromise on the issue of what to do about the "killing", one has to have a practical concept of what a person is, and how rights attach to a person.Unfortunately that is the exact kind of argument you wanted to avoid by appealing to the practical of how two groups get along. And remember I did agree with that. In that case we have to ask how abortion actually impacts two groups getting along such that it requires compromise. Isn't the practical question then, how do we handle an activity where two groups differ on its offensive nature? That is correct, but there are limits to the compromise, as I hope I have advanced well enough so far.Nice post by the way. Keeping me on my toes.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Here's something I put together for another forum a while ago, that sums up my thoughts on the issue. Let's add that, when I first considered my position in the abortion issue, I was in principle strongly against it, while still putting the final choice with the mother. Let's call it pragmatic. Over time, I have started considering abortion in itself as less absolutely negative.Hope someone finds it useful
====================================================I would say abortion is one of those issues where there is a huge difference between how we would like it to be handled in Utopia, and how we are sort of 'forced' to handle it in practice, our flawed and imperfect "greyscale" reality.A fundamental value that I believe in, is that people's right to live or die does not depend on the opinion/choice of other people. What has therefore always fundamentally troubled me about abortion, is that you get into a situation where this decision IS made by someone else.Of course, in order to make it possible to make abortion more ethically acceptable, one is willing to argue that the aborted 'thing' is not a person yet. Wherever you put the boundary. But ultimately, I felt this always is a situation where the defendant is judge at the same time. The problem is that, no matter how much we want it, there IS no alternative. Only in Utopia, we would HAVE a magical moment where the "person" is created. Only in Utopia, it would not be a "choice" by society, but an undeniable fact that EVERYBODY accepts without doubt. Sadly, reality is not such (proven by reality itself; religion just doesn't cut it, not surprisingly). So society is forced to take the responsibility to make a CHOICE.If this fact [that the Magical Moment is merely a CHOICE] would be the only "issue" of our reality vs Utopia, then I would be in favour of strictly taking the moment of conception as the start of a new human being with personhood. Why? Because it is pretty clearly defined, and also much more relevant and independant than most other possible choices. [note: I really don't buy the argument that masturbation is comparable to abortion in terms of preventing potential babies, lol. I mean, there is a not-to-be-ignored difference in degree of potential here, if you're honest]But Reality differs from Utopia in a whole lot more issues, which again complicate matters. We don't live in a world of black & white, but in a world of greyscales.First of all, this imperfection degrades some of the 'absoluteness' of certain ideas. For example, although conception seems to be a good candidate for a "sacred" moment of 'creation' (never thought I would use that word) of a person, we have to acknowledge the fact that a huge number of spontaneous abortions happen. This puts the impact of a human-induced abortion into a slightly different perspective. They literally disappear in the sea of spontaneous abortions and miscarriages. Embryos can also do some strange things early on, like splitting and even melting together again. Does it make sense to talk about individuals when those things can still happen?Or take the fact that, if we would leave everything to nature, a lot of babies would be born with the most horrible defects. Human beings who's life would only be suffering, with no chance of ever having any quality or typical human interaction. Is it ethical to 'allow' a human being even if you know that it will only suffer? This could be considered torture. So human intervention in whether something is allowed to become a person, CAN be result of a positive motivation also.Secondly, the everyday world of greyscales differs from Utopia in that fundamental rights & values often overlap and conflict with each other. They are not automatically in harmony. So very often we find ourselves in the position that careful balancing is needed. And I think the ultimate goal should always be to try to go for the option that causes least harm. Sometimes, this actually means that abortion should be an option.There's an abundance of examples of very negative consequences of strictly choosing the moment of conception as the moment when we have a "person":- the use of embryonic cells, which have great promise in medical research, would be impossible. We would throw away a great chance to relieve the suffering of a great number of unlucky people.
- there is the huge number of fertilized eggs that are "wasted" as a by-product of very positive initiatives to give caring parents with fertility problems their own children. Does the negative outweigh the positive here?
- accidents happen even if people/women take reasonable precautions; depending on the situation, the consequences of bad luck can be totally out of proportion for the woman
- the conflict, in general, between everyone's personal physical integrity, and an unwanted pregnancy
- situations like rape
- overpopulation & the additional problems poor people experience with big households (anticonception should be optimized here, but again there are factors (ironically mainly actors who want to BAN abortion) that currently make this very difficult)
- more for sure ...Thirdly, the experience in the everyday world of greyscales proves that a pragmatic approach ultimately often shows better results than dogmatic and absolute reasoning. The question here is: do we prefer to soothe our conscience with an unworkable legislation that totally bans abortions but is ultimately ineffective, or do we add water to the wine because it shows to result in less abortions?International statistics show that in the developed countries where women have FREE ACCESS TO ABORTION, abortion rates are the lowest. ["developed countries" meaning that women have equal rights, are independant, have access to anticonception and are educated about sex&reproduction without taboos]Considering all this, I think all people with some sense for reality and realism, and the necessary skepticism towards absolute truth and dogma, will decide to adopt a pragmatic approach. An approach that replaces a simplistic 'total ban' by efforts to lower the number of abortions as much as possible by the most effective means. An approach that carefully weighs pros and contras, and results in the least possible harm in general.And ultimately I don't think you can come up with something that doesn't include pro-choice. That's just not going to work because the negative side-effects will always outweigh the success. A successful approach will always concentrate instead on the circumstancial factors: poverty, women's rights, independance, anticonception.