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The framing of this debate is often religious, but it doesn't have to be. The fact is that at some point between inception and time of delivery, the fetus becom

by bko 4y ago

The framing of this debate is often religious, but it doesn't have to be. The fact is that at some point between inception and time of delivery, the fetus becomes a person and has some rights. Most people agree that it's probably not inception and it's probably not the moment before birth. So the question is when does this happen? In that way, the pro-life crowd has at least a closer framing of the issue. The pro-choice crowd is talking about religion, privacy, social safety nets, etc. But that's all beside the point. If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters. We should all try and at least agree upon the framing of the issue and argue from there or we'll never get anywhere.

hobs 4y ago
Why do you think that we need to agree on framing the issue when a significant minority will only agree to framing it at conception? You can't find a middle ground with religious extremism.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  I think it's hard to draw that line on extremism. Conversation and finding consensus are much easier if people build their world view and values on as small base assumptions as possible. If we cannot agree on base assumptions and values it's much harder to have a fruitful conversation especially if these assumptions cannot be violated because they were hand down from god. Religion generally makes numerous and very large assumptions.
- bko 4y ago
  I don't understand your point. If you want to convince someone that believes that the fetus becomes a life sometime in the gestation period, screaming about religion and privacy won't get you anywhere. What does this have to do with religion?
  - sidlls 4y ago
    In the US? Almost everything.
  - hobs 4y ago
    There was no attempt in my comment do to that, simply straight forward truth: the religious right have decided life begins at conception and will kill to enforce their rules. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/29/us/30abortion-clinic-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/29/us/30abortion... There's no compromise available on the table.
- ceilingcorner 4y ago
  There are many people that aren’t religious extremists who think that abortion is, at best, extremely morally problematic. It’s fundamentally a question about the definition of life, not the adherence to certain religious beliefs.
  - mediaman 4y ago
    Poll data suggests that the plurality of the population do not support third-trimester abortions, but neither do they support a prohibition on first-trimester. The reality is that what we consider a "life" is graduated, and the fetus progresses along that continuum during gestation. Most people know this intuitively, which is why popular opinion generally falls where it does. (See, for example, the Pew polls on the subject of abortion and trimesters.) We struggle to draw a bright-line to say, "this is where life begins," because there is not really a point where life "begins," merely a long series of points where it shifts by degree from "no life" to "life." As a society though we still are tasked with drawing this line and it is an arbitrary line. But it is illogical for it to begin at the very start of the continuum, or at the very end. The beginning because it is silly and unscientific to pretend as though some tiny clump of cells has any more life than a wart, and it comes at great cost to women's autonomy; the end because it is illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to birth is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after. To believe that the moment is at either end is thoughtless dogmatism. Where should the line be? Pick a point. Give the woman enough time to be able to know that she is pregnant, to plan and provide for her bodily autonomy to make her own life choices, and to deal with lead times at clinics. And then draw a line where the choice has been made. Most people believe that line is somewhere around the end of the first trimester or early part of the second.
    - tromp 4y ago
      > the end because it is illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to birth is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after. To believe that the moment is at either end is thoughtless dogmatism. > Where should the line be? Pick a point But in your own words, isn't it similarly illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to that point is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after.
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
  Yep. And if people think that fundamentalists will only try to enforce this in the South... No man these people want the whole country.
  - poulsbohemian 4y ago
    This is something I wonder about... do they really want the whole country or do they want to make things so unpalatable that the country balkanizes and disintegrates? It's frankly really hard to get a read on what these extremists want, because if you play it out far enough, it looks pretty ridiculous, IE: be careful what you wish for as a lot of those right-wing states are going to be even poorer and more backward than they are now.
- SubiculumCode 4y ago
  The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the other side's arguments, and thus there is no communication. Moreover, whatever your opinion of abortion rights, Roe vs Wade was not based on solid legal reasoning and it was foolish for liberals to depend on it over the last half century instead of explicitly codifying it into law or the Constitution.
  - brewdad 4y ago
    > The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the other side's arguments, and thus there is no communication. This is the blue dress vs gold dress of politics. There is no communication because the two sides see the world in fundamentally different ways.
    - SubiculumCode 4y ago
      It is not just that they see the world differently, their language does not even try to counter the opposing side's argument.
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      I have to disagree. I more or less understand the pro-life point of view, which is that a fetus is a precious life. Since I'm not religious, it's clear to me that the fetus is alive, but I don't see it's life as important until it is capable of thought, emotion, and sentience, in general. I would say this is the essential difference between most pro-life and pro-choice philosophy. After that, I switch to a much more consistent version of "pro-life" which includes a moral imperitive not to cause undue (frivolous, even) suffering or harm to any living thing.
  - BackBlast 4y ago
    > The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the other side's arguments, and thus there is no communication. This is the general case on most topics. Accepting the other side's framing is tantamount to "losing the argument" to most people. Often that framing defines the other side as essentially evil and thus not worth listening to or reasoning with. There are precious few places where actual debates where primary arguments are understood and rebutted by mutually respecting parties.
- jtdev 4y ago
- cehlen 4y ago
  This is not a religious argument. The 14th amendment prohibits the states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The first question is when does a fetus become a person. I don’t know the answer to that for absolute certainty and pretty sure everyone else commenting on this does not either. If we can agree that no single person can identify when a fetus becomes a person, keeping in mind lots of people think they know everything about all things. The ultimate question that needs be answered is what number of people need to agree when life begins? Only one person decides when life begin i.e. the mother, nine i.e. the Supreme Court, or thousands i.e. we the people vote on it. I would argue we in U.S. tend lean more towards the more significant the issue the more people are required for consensus.
  - hobs 4y ago
    It's been the religious right stated strategy for decades, I don't know how I could take any of your argument as credible without acknowledging that fact.
    - cehlen 4y ago
      My friend, two things can be true at the same time. The religious right can have a strategy to end abortion for their own reasons and the 14th amendment can be an essential right that must be protected.
- swat535 4y ago
  > You can't find a middle ground with religious extremism. Neither can you with liberal extremists, we have people in this thread who literally advocate for abortion less than 24 hours before delivery. Unless you are going to pretend that there is no such thing as liberal extremists, in which case I am not sure how to respond.
  - hobs 4y ago
    When that's a possibility that's actually on the table we can talk about it - today we have the opposite problem.
simondw 4y ago
You're conveniently leaving out one major concern of the pro-choice side: the bodily autonomy of lives that are uncontroversially people. I also think you're dismissing privacy too quickly. How much privacy would you give up in the name of saving lives?
- bko 4y ago
  I never understood the privacy aspect. If an alien were to come down and have human biology explained and was asked about their thoughts on abortion, I doubt they would invoke privacy. Maybe bodily autonomy, but not privacy. Perhaps I'm missing something. In regards to bodily autonomy, again if the fetus is a life, you have to be a good steward of the life. I don't think you have a (moral) right to harm your body to the detriment of the life, much like you don't have a right to drive off a cliff with someone inside your car with you. And if someone assaults you and results in you losing your baby, I don't think that's the same as a regular assault.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - brewdad 4y ago
    The privacy aspect is simple. You have no right to know anything about my discussions with my doctor nor to dictate courses of action. The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck about that now.
    - lkjdsklf 4y ago
      The privacy argument is tenuous at best. We regulate how and what medical procedures can be performed all the time. > The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck about that now. If you're going to make the argument that privacy requirements protect abortion procedures, then that would also mean that vaccine mandates are not allowed for the same reason. You can't have it both ways.
    - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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altruios 4y ago
starkd 4y ago
There was a time when the democrat party stood for abortions being "legal safe and rare". None other than Bill Clinton said this. Perhaps this decision will now allow state legislatures to pick a reasonable time limit. This does not have to be a wedge issue.
- egypturnash 4y ago
  Hahahahaha no. I live in Louisiana, which had a law passed a while ago that said the moment RvW was struck down, all abortions are illegal. No exceptions for rape or incest or risk to the mother; someone put a baby in that womb, and you, as womb-bearer, will carry it to term no matter what. It was a wedge issue when the GOP picked it up and made an unholy alliance with the raving fire-and-brimstone preachers of the South that got Reagan in office. It has continued to be a wedge issue that the GOP has relied on to get their asses in office for pretty much my entire life.
  - starkd 4y ago
    It's also not 1970 anymore. There's a prophalactic pill, there's morning after pill, and there's freedom of movement between states. Women are capable of exerting self-responsibility over their reproduction, and they are not helpless victims.
    - tmountain 4y ago
      Birth control is next on the chopping block. Justice Thomas already stated that Griswold v. Connecticut should be reconsidered.
      - starkd 4y ago
        Wrong. Read the decision. They specificaly rule it out.
        tmountain 4y ago
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contraception-supreme-court-clarence-thomas-griswold/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contracep... https://www.businessinsider.com/justice-thomas-said-the-court-should-reconsider-rulings-on-same-sex-marriage-2022-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/justice-thomas-said-the-cour... https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitution... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/clarence-thomas-roe-griswold-lawrence-obergefell.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/clarence-thomas-roe-gr...
dbingham 4y ago
Except that's not the universal framing. There is one side that is fighting very hard to not only make it at conception, but potentially even before conception (there are reasons to believe that the supreme court might come for birth control next - and there are large portions of the same religious community that put them in power that want that). For many people on the other side the fetus doesn't get rights until it is born. And up until that point, it is a bundle of cells wholly dependent on the mother, and therefor part of her body (and thus, her bodily autonomy). Indeed, there's a reading of the bible that supports this interpretation - it mentions multiple times a baby becoming alive "at its first breath". For many people, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but it's not clear at all that those people represent a majority. The issue touches on strongly held moral beliefs on both sides - rights to life, right to bodily autonomy, and questions about when life starts. There is no simple universal framing that we can all agree upon. ---- And even aside from framing, even if we could agree on a framing, the issue gets really complex, really fast. Lets say we do agree that the question is about when a life becomes a life. Pregnancy is dangerous, as I well know. My wife and I lost three pregnancies. One of them was at 20 weeks. My son was already dead by the time we got to the hospital, but they had to remove his body from my wife's body or it risked a deadly infection. The medication they used to do that, in this case to trigger labor, was an abortion medication. The procedure they would have performed had that failed, was a DNC - an abortion. Both are already being banned by trigger laws in many states. In a room down the hall, a dear friend of ours who'd been struggling with infertility and loss was having a DNC the same day we lost our son, due to yet another failed pregnancy. Again, without that procedure, she would have died. So you very quickly get into other complexities even when you do boil it down into a question of when life starts. And even then, the argument for banning it the way many states are (completely, with no exceptions) becomes hard to make about anything but control. You can say it's about saving the life of the child - but we don't force dead people to donate their organs even when it would save a life. These laws will force women to die, even when there is no living child left to save.
- native_samples 4y ago
  Here's the thing. It's easy to believe that one side truly believes in the right to life, at least for innocents. Being against killing, at least for non criminals/enemies, is pretty common. The right to bodily autonomy is not believable because there weren't a whole lot of people campaigning against vaccine mandates because they were pro-bodily-autonomy. As for your examples, surely even pro-life people don't care about "abortions" of babies that are already dead? If laws are interpretable in that way it seems like an easy wording fix. Not many people would care about that even if religious.
slg 4y ago
>If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters. This is irrelevant to my personal views on abortion because I believe that individuals have rights over their own body which supersede anyone else's rights to their body. We hold this as true in all other facets of bodily autonomy. I have no legal responsibility to risk my life to protect my fellow citizens. I have no obligation to regularly donate blood or bone marrow. I can't be compelled to donate a kidney. I can even arrange for all my healthy organs to be thrown in a fire or buried underground after my death rather than allow them to be used to save the lives of multiple people. This is all because my body is mine and I can control what happens to it. If I refuse to allow it to be used to support another life, that is my choice.
- hatware 4y ago
  > I believe that individuals have rights over their own body Did you have rights over your own body when you had sex and started the process of conception? Why do your choices only matter depending on the result of conception?
- karencarits 4y ago
  This is very close to the violinist example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  I think the pro life crowd sees a significant difference between a fetus/baby/whatever and a random person. Probably something like, you are responsible for the creating of the fetus/baby/whatever so you have more of an obligation to it than you do to other people.
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    If that were really the argument, it would look entirely different, as things like actual sex education, easily obtainable birth control, etc, would all be uncontentious. However, those are also very much subject to debate by the “pro life” crowd.
alangibson 4y ago
In the middle ages it was considered to become a person at the 'quickening', when it started to move. The reasoning being that the soul had entered the body at that point.
Bud 4y ago
That's not a "fact" at all, actually. I can tell that you tried hard to frame the issue in such a way that you could present this "fact", but it's still just an opinion. In fact, for many centuries, a lot of people have felt and thought and believed that personhood is not conferred until birth.
TylerE 4y ago
I would take the pro-lifers arguments a lot more seriously if 98% of them weren't pro-military and pro-death penalty.
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adammichaelc 4y ago
I agree; I also think it's important to allow the people to decide these kinds of hot, controversial issues. 7 people shouldn't have the power to command millions of people. It's better to persuade, discuss, debate, change hearts and minds, than to dictate top-down. I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver seat.
- randcraw 4y ago
  I appreciate the primacy of the mother's opinion over the father's or the courts' (since pregnancy affects only her body among those three parties), but I hate to dismiss the father as if he were just a bystander. But surely there's another participant that deserves a voice. If it's a person (or even partly a person), then its most precious possession, it's life, is to be taken. Surely its voice cannot be dismissed outright. That's why I believe this issue is not as simple as letting only the mother (or the courts) decide. Historically, abortion has done a lot of harm, irrespective of Roe v Wade. Personally, I think we need to try harder to minimize the injuries inherent in abortion. Let's not make a complex issue binary, as merely right or wrong. Technology and creativity are our friends. I believe it's possible to find 'cures' that do far less harm than is done now and to work toward even better ways until the rights of everyone involved are served.
- Levitz 4y ago
  >I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver seat. I fail to see how that conclusion follows the reasoning. If anything them having a dog in the race would make their opinion biased, and thus void. The discussion is not whether if women should have control over their bodies or not, it's about the morality of exercising that control over a living human being that might or not be considered conscious to some degree. Any group when facing the option of giving itself more rights will be biased towards the positive and surely impartiality ought to be important in this kind of matter? Note that this isn't something I desire, as I see it the whole of society has a say on how things are run, and so we all discuss things such as education even if we aren't going to undergo any more education, it's just if you want to make this a special case and make a differentiation, anyone capable of pregnancy should be the first group out the door.
zuminator 4y ago
I disagree that there is a "point" at which a fetus becomes a person, no more than there is a point where a slowly accumulating pile of sand becomes a hill. Both hill-ness and personhood are artificial concepts that we give meaning to, and we can define them as precisely or as nebulously as we wish. Another example is adulthood. We have chosen to define it at 18 in the US, even though we all know 25 year olds who are less mature than some 16 year olds. In some cases (heinous crimes, emancipated minors) we will legally confer some aspects of adulthood to people under 18. In other cases (smoking, drinking), we will delay the privileges of adulthood. We do this because we know that a single "point" can't account for the full complexity of the transition to adulthood. And there's nothing stopping us from treating the onset of personhood as a similarly complex issue. Which is what the Roe v Wade regime did, for the most part. "If the fetus is a life," you say, but of course it's alive, it's made of living cells. That's not even the issue really. Something being alive doesn't necessarily say anything about how we should treat it. We don't treat bacteria with respect, or mushrooms, or even most animals. So given that a fetus is alive, does that entitle it to any rights? And if so should those rights have primacy over the rights of the person who is carrying the fetus?
- bko 4y ago
  > So given that a fetus is alive, does that entitle it to any rights? I didn't mean to say whether the fetus is alive is the relevant question, so apologies for the confusion. It's whether the fetus is a person, in which case, yes being a person does entitle it to rights, none greater than your right to life. That takes primacy over other rights of the mother to terminate the person (assuming it is a person). It's true that there's no clear answer, but I suggest that this is the question to answer, regardless of where you fall on the debate. Some people think its "heart beat" however you define that, other think its viability outside of the womb, and I'm sure other people have different criteria. But we should look to answer this question and get to a sensible policy.
  - zuminator 4y ago
    Even if we accept that a fetus is a person at stage X in its development (whether that is conception or later), that doesn't necessarily mean we will give it all the panoply of rights that we give to those residing outside the womb. In the US, citizens have certain rights (and sometimes, responsibilities) that non-citizens do not have. Are fetuses citizens? That's an easy one to answer: No, at least not by the standards of the 14th amendment, where it decrees: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
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Siira 4y ago
I don’t agree with your framing. In my opinion, at some point between a baby being born and going to preschool, the child will become intelligent enough to warrant being called a real person. It’s quite probable that treating a just-born baby as a full human has its advantages, but that is certainly not biologically true. A baby is less aware than cows, and people eat cows all around.
adamc 4y ago
No, they aren't irrelevant. The fetus is an obligate parasite. It could be a person and still not have the right to force the mother to carry it to term.
runarberg 4y ago
> The fact is that at some point between inception and time of delivery I don’t think this is that complicated of an issue. The moment when the parent decides they want to keep the baby, is the moment when the fetus becomes a person. That precise time is when the fetus has someone that loves and cares for it, holds attachment towards it, etc. However if the parent carrying the child is not allowed to make that decision form them self, then this becomes unnecessarily complicated.
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jayd16 4y ago
This is such horse shit. No one in this issue is for taking a life so to presuppose that that is where the issue lies is plainly insulting. The pro-choice movement doesn't believe its a life. Understanding the greater social impacts of limiting abortion doesn't muddy that.
okaram 4y ago
Even when the fetus becomes a baby, it still matters. You are forcing another person to help that baby, in a much stronger (albeit temporary) way than any other. Think about it; you are not required to help somebody if they're in an accident or a fire; you're not required to donate blood, but you would require a woman to donate blood and nutrients, spent several months of hardship and have a small but non-zero risk of serious health problems. At some point it changes; in my mind, around viability. If the baby is delivered, you cannot kill it (you may be required to take care of it, although many states allow you to give up your kids). Somewhere around 6 months, we might require a woman to give birth... Maybe
qqqwerty 4y ago
No, the framing should be around the women's right to bodily autonomy. In Florida, they have a "stand your ground" law. If someone threatens your life, or even great bodily harm, you are allowed to use lethal force. Giving birth is a life threatening process. Even under fairly routine births, women endure significant bodily harm, often irreversible. Look up prolapse. Your organs literally push out of you vagina. This impacts 20-35% of women and for many of them this condition is permanent. If you are allowed to shoot someone in Florida because they threatened your bodily autonomy, why shouldn't a women be allowed to terminate a pregnancy for the same reason?

by bko 4y ago

hobs 4y ago

Why do you think that we need to agree on framing the issue when a significant minority will only agree to framing it at conception? You can't find a middle ground with religious extremism.

ajmurmann 4y ago
I think it's hard to draw that line on extremism. Conversation and finding consensus are much easier if people build their world view and values on as small base assumptions as possible. If we cannot agree on base assumptions and values it's much harder to have a fruitful conversation especially if these assumptions cannot be violated because they were hand down from god. Religion generally makes numerous and very large assumptions.
bko 4y ago
I don't understand your point. If you want to convince someone that believes that the fetus becomes a life sometime in the gestation period, screaming about religion and privacy won't get you anywhere. What does this have to do with religion?
- sidlls 4y ago
  In the US? Almost everything.
- hobs 4y ago
  There was no attempt in my comment do to that, simply straight forward truth: the religious right have decided life begins at conception and will kill to enforce their rules. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/29/us/30abortion-clinic-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/29/us/30abortion... There's no compromise available on the table.
ceilingcorner 4y ago
There are many people that aren’t religious extremists who think that abortion is, at best, extremely morally problematic. It’s fundamentally a question about the definition of life, not the adherence to certain religious beliefs.
- mediaman 4y ago
  Poll data suggests that the plurality of the population do not support third-trimester abortions, but neither do they support a prohibition on first-trimester. The reality is that what we consider a "life" is graduated, and the fetus progresses along that continuum during gestation. Most people know this intuitively, which is why popular opinion generally falls where it does. (See, for example, the Pew polls on the subject of abortion and trimesters.) We struggle to draw a bright-line to say, "this is where life begins," because there is not really a point where life "begins," merely a long series of points where it shifts by degree from "no life" to "life." As a society though we still are tasked with drawing this line and it is an arbitrary line. But it is illogical for it to begin at the very start of the continuum, or at the very end. The beginning because it is silly and unscientific to pretend as though some tiny clump of cells has any more life than a wart, and it comes at great cost to women's autonomy; the end because it is illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to birth is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after. To believe that the moment is at either end is thoughtless dogmatism. Where should the line be? Pick a point. Give the woman enough time to be able to know that she is pregnant, to plan and provide for her bodily autonomy to make her own life choices, and to deal with lead times at clinics. And then draw a line where the choice has been made. Most people believe that line is somewhere around the end of the first trimester or early part of the second.
  - tromp 4y ago
    > the end because it is illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to birth is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after. To believe that the moment is at either end is thoughtless dogmatism. > Where should the line be? Pick a point But in your own words, isn't it similarly illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to that point is a fundamentally different being than at the moment after.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Yep. And if people think that fundamentalists will only try to enforce this in the South... No man these people want the whole country.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  This is something I wonder about... do they really want the whole country or do they want to make things so unpalatable that the country balkanizes and disintegrates? It's frankly really hard to get a read on what these extremists want, because if you play it out far enough, it looks pretty ridiculous, IE: be careful what you wish for as a lot of those right-wing states are going to be even poorer and more backward than they are now.
SubiculumCode 4y ago
The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the other side's arguments, and thus there is no communication. Moreover, whatever your opinion of abortion rights, Roe vs Wade was not based on solid legal reasoning and it was foolish for liberals to depend on it over the last half century instead of explicitly codifying it into law or the Constitution.
- brewdad 4y ago
  > The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the other side's arguments, and thus there is no communication. This is the blue dress vs gold dress of politics. There is no communication because the two sides see the world in fundamentally different ways.
  - SubiculumCode 4y ago
    It is not just that they see the world differently, their language does not even try to counter the opposing side's argument.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    I have to disagree. I more or less understand the pro-life point of view, which is that a fetus is a precious life. Since I'm not religious, it's clear to me that the fetus is alive, but I don't see it's life as important until it is capable of thought, emotion, and sentience, in general. I would say this is the essential difference between most pro-life and pro-choice philosophy. After that, I switch to a much more consistent version of "pro-life" which includes a moral imperitive not to cause undue (frivolous, even) suffering or harm to any living thing.
- BackBlast 4y ago
  > The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the other side's arguments, and thus there is no communication. This is the general case on most topics. Accepting the other side's framing is tantamount to "losing the argument" to most people. Often that framing defines the other side as essentially evil and thus not worth listening to or reasoning with. There are precious few places where actual debates where primary arguments are understood and rebutted by mutually respecting parties.
jtdev 4y ago
cehlen 4y ago
This is not a religious argument. The 14th amendment prohibits the states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The first question is when does a fetus become a person. I don’t know the answer to that for absolute certainty and pretty sure everyone else commenting on this does not either. If we can agree that no single person can identify when a fetus becomes a person, keeping in mind lots of people think they know everything about all things. The ultimate question that needs be answered is what number of people need to agree when life begins? Only one person decides when life begin i.e. the mother, nine i.e. the Supreme Court, or thousands i.e. we the people vote on it. I would argue we in U.S. tend lean more towards the more significant the issue the more people are required for consensus.
- hobs 4y ago
  It's been the religious right stated strategy for decades, I don't know how I could take any of your argument as credible without acknowledging that fact.
  - cehlen 4y ago
    My friend, two things can be true at the same time. The religious right can have a strategy to end abortion for their own reasons and the 14th amendment can be an essential right that must be protected.
swat535 4y ago
> You can't find a middle ground with religious extremism. Neither can you with liberal extremists, we have people in this thread who literally advocate for abortion less than 24 hours before delivery. Unless you are going to pretend that there is no such thing as liberal extremists, in which case I am not sure how to respond.
- hobs 4y ago
  When that's a possibility that's actually on the table we can talk about it - today we have the opposite problem.

simondw 4y ago

You're conveniently leaving out one major concern of the pro-choice side: the bodily autonomy of lives that are uncontroversially people. I also think you're dismissing privacy too quickly. How much privacy would you give up in the name of saving lives?

bko 4y ago
I never understood the privacy aspect. If an alien were to come down and have human biology explained and was asked about their thoughts on abortion, I doubt they would invoke privacy. Maybe bodily autonomy, but not privacy. Perhaps I'm missing something. In regards to bodily autonomy, again if the fetus is a life, you have to be a good steward of the life. I don't think you have a (moral) right to harm your body to the detriment of the life, much like you don't have a right to drive off a cliff with someone inside your car with you. And if someone assaults you and results in you losing your baby, I don't think that's the same as a regular assault.
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- brewdad 4y ago
  The privacy aspect is simple. You have no right to know anything about my discussions with my doctor nor to dictate courses of action. The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck about that now.
  - lkjdsklf 4y ago
    The privacy argument is tenuous at best. We regulate how and what medical procedures can be performed all the time. > The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck about that now. If you're going to make the argument that privacy requirements protect abortion procedures, then that would also mean that vaccine mandates are not allowed for the same reason. You can't have it both ways.
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altruios 4y ago

starkd 4y ago

There was a time when the democrat party stood for abortions being "legal safe and rare". None other than Bill Clinton said this. Perhaps this decision will now allow state legislatures to pick a reasonable time limit. This does not have to be a wedge issue.

egypturnash 4y ago
Hahahahaha no. I live in Louisiana, which had a law passed a while ago that said the moment RvW was struck down, all abortions are illegal. No exceptions for rape or incest or risk to the mother; someone put a baby in that womb, and you, as womb-bearer, will carry it to term no matter what. It was a wedge issue when the GOP picked it up and made an unholy alliance with the raving fire-and-brimstone preachers of the South that got Reagan in office. It has continued to be a wedge issue that the GOP has relied on to get their asses in office for pretty much my entire life.
- starkd 4y ago
  It's also not 1970 anymore. There's a prophalactic pill, there's morning after pill, and there's freedom of movement between states. Women are capable of exerting self-responsibility over their reproduction, and they are not helpless victims.
  - tmountain 4y ago
    Birth control is next on the chopping block. Justice Thomas already stated that Griswold v. Connecticut should be reconsidered.
    - starkd 4y ago
      Wrong. Read the decision. They specificaly rule it out.
      - tmountain 4y ago
        https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contraception-supreme-court-clarence-thomas-griswold/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/24/contracep... https://www.businessinsider.com/justice-thomas-said-the-court-should-reconsider-rulings-on-same-sex-marriage-2022-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/justice-thomas-said-the-cour... https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitution... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/clarence-thomas-roe-griswold-lawrence-obergefell.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/clarence-thomas-roe-gr...

dbingham 4y ago

Except that's not the universal framing. There is one side that is fighting very hard to not only make it at conception, but potentially even before conception (there are reasons to believe that the supreme court might come for birth control next - and there are large portions of the same religious community that put them in power that want that). For many people on the other side the fetus doesn't get rights until it is born. And up until that point, it is a bundle of cells wholly dependent on the mother, and therefor part of her body (and thus, her bodily autonomy). Indeed, there's a reading of the bible that supports this interpretation - it mentions multiple times a baby becoming alive "at its first breath". For many people, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but it's not clear at all that those people represent a majority. The issue touches on strongly held moral beliefs on both sides - rights to life, right to bodily autonomy, and questions about when life starts. There is no simple universal framing that we can all agree upon. ---- And even aside from framing, even if we could agree on a framing, the issue gets really complex, really fast. Lets say we do agree that the question is about when a life becomes a life. Pregnancy is dangerous, as I well know. My wife and I lost three pregnancies. One of them was at 20 weeks. My son was already dead by the time we got to the hospital, but they had to remove his body from my wife's body or it risked a deadly infection. The medication they used to do that, in this case to trigger labor, was an abortion medication. The procedure they would have performed had that failed, was a DNC - an abortion. Both are already being banned by trigger laws in many states. In a room down the hall, a dear friend of ours who'd been struggling with infertility and loss was having a DNC the same day we lost our son, due to yet another failed pregnancy. Again, without that procedure, she would have died. So you very quickly get into other complexities even when you do boil it down into a question of when life starts. And even then, the argument for banning it the way many states are (completely, with no exceptions) becomes hard to make about anything but control. You can say it's about saving the life of the child - but we don't force dead people to donate their organs even when it would save a life. These laws will force women to die, even when there is no living child left to save.

native_samples 4y ago
Here's the thing. It's easy to believe that one side truly believes in the right to life, at least for innocents. Being against killing, at least for non criminals/enemies, is pretty common. The right to bodily autonomy is not believable because there weren't a whole lot of people campaigning against vaccine mandates because they were pro-bodily-autonomy. As for your examples, surely even pro-life people don't care about "abortions" of babies that are already dead? If laws are interpretable in that way it seems like an easy wording fix. Not many people would care about that even if religious.

slg 4y ago

>If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters. This is irrelevant to my personal views on abortion because I believe that individuals have rights over their own body which supersede anyone else's rights to their body. We hold this as true in all other facets of bodily autonomy. I have no legal responsibility to risk my life to protect my fellow citizens. I have no obligation to regularly donate blood or bone marrow. I can't be compelled to donate a kidney. I can even arrange for all my healthy organs to be thrown in a fire or buried underground after my death rather than allow them to be used to save the lives of multiple people. This is all because my body is mine and I can control what happens to it. If I refuse to allow it to be used to support another life, that is my choice.

hatware 4y ago
> I believe that individuals have rights over their own body Did you have rights over your own body when you had sex and started the process of conception? Why do your choices only matter depending on the result of conception?
karencarits 4y ago
This is very close to the violinist example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
wilsonnb3 4y ago
I think the pro life crowd sees a significant difference between a fetus/baby/whatever and a random person. Probably something like, you are responsible for the creating of the fetus/baby/whatever so you have more of an obligation to it than you do to other people.
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  If that were really the argument, it would look entirely different, as things like actual sex education, easily obtainable birth control, etc, would all be uncontentious. However, those are also very much subject to debate by the “pro life” crowd.

alangibson 4y ago

In the middle ages it was considered to become a person at the 'quickening', when it started to move. The reasoning being that the soul had entered the body at that point.

Bud 4y ago

That's not a "fact" at all, actually. I can tell that you tried hard to frame the issue in such a way that you could present this "fact", but it's still just an opinion. In fact, for many centuries, a lot of people have felt and thought and believed that personhood is not conferred until birth.

TylerE 4y ago

I would take the pro-lifers arguments a lot more seriously if 98% of them weren't pro-military and pro-death penalty.

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adammichaelc 4y ago

I agree; I also think it's important to allow the people to decide these kinds of hot, controversial issues. 7 people shouldn't have the power to command millions of people. It's better to persuade, discuss, debate, change hearts and minds, than to dictate top-down. I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver seat.

randcraw 4y ago
I appreciate the primacy of the mother's opinion over the father's or the courts' (since pregnancy affects only her body among those three parties), but I hate to dismiss the father as if he were just a bystander. But surely there's another participant that deserves a voice. If it's a person (or even partly a person), then its most precious possession, it's life, is to be taken. Surely its voice cannot be dismissed outright. That's why I believe this issue is not as simple as letting only the mother (or the courts) decide. Historically, abortion has done a lot of harm, irrespective of Roe v Wade. Personally, I think we need to try harder to minimize the injuries inherent in abortion. Let's not make a complex issue binary, as merely right or wrong. Technology and creativity are our friends. I believe it's possible to find 'cures' that do far less harm than is done now and to work toward even better ways until the rights of everyone involved are served.
Levitz 4y ago
>I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver seat. I fail to see how that conclusion follows the reasoning. If anything them having a dog in the race would make their opinion biased, and thus void. The discussion is not whether if women should have control over their bodies or not, it's about the morality of exercising that control over a living human being that might or not be considered conscious to some degree. Any group when facing the option of giving itself more rights will be biased towards the positive and surely impartiality ought to be important in this kind of matter? Note that this isn't something I desire, as I see it the whole of society has a say on how things are run, and so we all discuss things such as education even if we aren't going to undergo any more education, it's just if you want to make this a special case and make a differentiation, anyone capable of pregnancy should be the first group out the door.

zuminator 4y ago

I disagree that there is a "point" at which a fetus becomes a person, no more than there is a point where a slowly accumulating pile of sand becomes a hill. Both hill-ness and personhood are artificial concepts that we give meaning to, and we can define them as precisely or as nebulously as we wish. Another example is adulthood. We have chosen to define it at 18 in the US, even though we all know 25 year olds who are less mature than some 16 year olds. In some cases (heinous crimes, emancipated minors) we will legally confer some aspects of adulthood to people under 18. In other cases (smoking, drinking), we will delay the privileges of adulthood. We do this because we know that a single "point" can't account for the full complexity of the transition to adulthood. And there's nothing stopping us from treating the onset of personhood as a similarly complex issue. Which is what the Roe v Wade regime did, for the most part. "If the fetus is a life," you say, but of course it's alive, it's made of living cells. That's not even the issue really. Something being alive doesn't necessarily say anything about how we should treat it. We don't treat bacteria with respect, or mushrooms, or even most animals. So given that a fetus is alive, does that entitle it to any rights? And if so should those rights have primacy over the rights of the person who is carrying the fetus?

bko 4y ago
> So given that a fetus is alive, does that entitle it to any rights? I didn't mean to say whether the fetus is alive is the relevant question, so apologies for the confusion. It's whether the fetus is a person, in which case, yes being a person does entitle it to rights, none greater than your right to life. That takes primacy over other rights of the mother to terminate the person (assuming it is a person). It's true that there's no clear answer, but I suggest that this is the question to answer, regardless of where you fall on the debate. Some people think its "heart beat" however you define that, other think its viability outside of the womb, and I'm sure other people have different criteria. But we should look to answer this question and get to a sensible policy.
- zuminator 4y ago
  Even if we accept that a fetus is a person at stage X in its development (whether that is conception or later), that doesn't necessarily mean we will give it all the panoply of rights that we give to those residing outside the womb. In the US, citizens have certain rights (and sometimes, responsibilities) that non-citizens do not have. Are fetuses citizens? That's an easy one to answer: No, at least not by the standards of the 14th amendment, where it decrees: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

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Siira 4y ago

I don’t agree with your framing. In my opinion, at some point between a baby being born and going to preschool, the child will become intelligent enough to warrant being called a real person. It’s quite probable that treating a just-born baby as a full human has its advantages, but that is certainly not biologically true. A baby is less aware than cows, and people eat cows all around.

adamc 4y ago

No, they aren't irrelevant. The fetus is an obligate parasite. It could be a person and still not have the right to force the mother to carry it to term.

runarberg 4y ago

> The fact is that at some point between inception and time of delivery I don’t think this is that complicated of an issue. The moment when the parent decides they want to keep the baby, is the moment when the fetus becomes a person. That precise time is when the fetus has someone that loves and cares for it, holds attachment towards it, etc. However if the parent carrying the child is not allowed to make that decision form them self, then this becomes unnecessarily complicated.

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jayd16 4y ago

This is such horse shit. No one in this issue is for taking a life so to presuppose that that is where the issue lies is plainly insulting. The pro-choice movement doesn't believe its a life. Understanding the greater social impacts of limiting abortion doesn't muddy that.

okaram 4y ago

Even when the fetus becomes a baby, it still matters. You are forcing another person to help that baby, in a much stronger (albeit temporary) way than any other. Think about it; you are not required to help somebody if they're in an accident or a fire; you're not required to donate blood, but you would require a woman to donate blood and nutrients, spent several months of hardship and have a small but non-zero risk of serious health problems. At some point it changes; in my mind, around viability. If the baby is delivered, you cannot kill it (you may be required to take care of it, although many states allow you to give up your kids). Somewhere around 6 months, we might require a woman to give birth... Maybe

qqqwerty 4y ago

No, the framing should be around the women's right to bodily autonomy. In Florida, they have a "stand your ground" law. If someone threatens your life, or even great bodily harm, you are allowed to use lethal force. Giving birth is a life threatening process. Even under fairly routine births, women endure significant bodily harm, often irreversible. Look up prolapse. Your organs literally push out of you vagina. This impacts 20-35% of women and for many of them this condition is permanent. If you are allowed to shoot someone in Florida because they threatened your bodily autonomy, why shouldn't a women be allowed to terminate a pregnancy for the same reason?