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Not only "They" think it's murder, we as a society tend to think it's murder too. Here's my argument: in most jurisdictions, a killing of a pregnant woman brin

by maratc 4y ago

Not only "They" think it's murder, we as a society tend to think it's murder too. Here's my argument: in most jurisdictions, a killing of a pregnant woman brings harsher sentence than a killing of non-pregnant woman. In some, it just doubles the crime (double homicide, double manslaughter, etc.) Judging from this, we as a society see at least some value in the life of a foetus. The issue is a complicated one. We seem to believe fetuses have the right to be born. We also seem to believe that women have the right to their bodies. In the case of abortions, these two rights cannot be achieved at the same time. These are "competing" rights. And while the question of "which right shall prevail" is a classic one for the courts to decide on, people will always go with what they "believe" is right, and disregard the opposing opinion.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
brightball 4y ago
This is really the core of it and ultimately the decision to overturn is going to force legislators to finally codify exactly what the rules are. It’s been avoided to this point because both political sides preferred to fund raise off of the issue. Long overdue.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  In the meantime, whilst there's debate on legislation, women will die from ectopic pregnancies and other women's health issues that require the termination of a non viable pregnancy. It's very grim.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    Yes, this is one of the new “talking point” but it literally assumes that entire medical teams are going to sit on their hands all across the country and let women die. Let me make my prediction right now that this will never happen.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      It's already happened in Poland in basically the same situation (a miscarrying woman was left to die from sepsis because the doctors didn't want to risk being accused of aborting). Many doctors would prefer to not go to jail, even if it means risking a woman's life.
      - kcplate 4y ago
        Poland is not the US.
        sofixa 4y ago
        Do you think American doctors would be more willing to go to prison over an abortion? I don't see much difference in the two countries in that regard, if anything American doctors also have to think about their student loans and are probably going to be more religious (Poland has a big Catholic problem but in the US having a religion is basically the norm)
        kcplate 4y ago
        I am saying that no state’s attorney would ever choose prosecute such a case because no US jury would ever convict a doctor that saved a woman’s life by correcting an ectopic pregnancy. Prosecutors have discretion and would take in to account the circumstances. There is not a medical expert in the country who would testify that a ectopic pregnancy is a viable pregnancy that should be left alone to allow nature to take its course…so a conviction would be impossible. Additionally, because the doctor and the patient are in an established doctor/patient relationship at that point, the doctor has a duty to act to provide the care that they are able to provide to save the mother. Failure to do so could make them legally liable for the mothers death. Perhaps that is the difference between Poland and the US. Perhaps over in Poland there is not this duty to act and it is legally acceptable to let a patient die that you can save and juries and judges would accept that condition. Wouldn’t happen over here.
    - sershe 4y ago
  - eloff 4y ago
    Ectopic pregnancies and other medical emergencies are usually excluded from abortion laws. Law makers could always do something dumb though, there's lots of precedent for that.
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      Except apparently in Ohio, which now has a law that forces reimplantation of an ectopic pregnancy, a medical procedure that does not exist.
      - eloff 4y ago
        I had to look that up, because I thought nobody could be that dumb. US lawmakers continue to surprise me!
  - brightball 4y ago
    All the more reason legislation should have been passed at some point over the last 50 years.
Aune 4y ago
Certainly people who suffer a miscarriage when trying to have children suffer deeply. It is clear then that they lost more than some human tissue. Also if you beat a woman causing her to misscarry, then we look upon that quite a lot harsher than if no miscarriage occured. In general we don't tend to value human life or rights when it is inconvenient to do so though.
- maratc 4y ago
  > Also if you beat a woman causing her to miscarry An interesting note: even in the Code of Hammurabi there's a provision for that, and that's from about 4,000 years ago.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    Today I learned that there are actually six provisions in the Code of Hammurabi for that, covering different effects to the mother and (according that system) standing of the mother! 209. If a man has struck a free woman with child, and has caused her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage. 210. If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed. 211. If by a blow he has caused a plebian's daughter to have a miscarriage, he shall pay five shekels of silver. 212. If that woman has died, he shall pay one-half mina of silver. 213. If he struck a freeman's female slave and has caused her to have a miscarriage, he shall pay two shekels of silver. 214. If that female slave has died, he shall pay one-third mina of silver.
    - maratc 4y ago
      This also shows how women at that time were treated as "glorified property": > If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed. You damaged my property — your property will be equally damaged. Justice! Women wouldn't be treated as equal to men for another 3,500 years or so.
      - alexvoda 4y ago
        Let us apreciate that we are not bound by the Code of Hammurabi, and strengthen our resolve to not move in that direction.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hotpotamus 4y ago
Another complication - most of the recent laws against abortion place punishment on the abortion providers, not the women themselves, so they don't seem to think that the woman is culpable in ordering a murder.
Balgair 4y ago
I'm going to wade in on this against my better interests. To me, the debate seems to have a paradox that can't be resolved using the logic we've inherited from the Enlightenment (mostly). Namely: People have rights to their bodies. Yes, it's super-duper more complicated than just that, I know. But, to my brain, it seems to boil mostly down to that. We have to define rights, people, bodies, what 'have' means, etc. Sure, yeah, I know. But Nature, she don't care about the Enlightenment and all our attempts at reasoning. Nature cares about making babies. We're mammals. This is how we reproduce, how all mammals do it. We raise our young inside of our bodies until a time comes that they can survive. Then (most) mammals feed our young with our bodies for a while more. Mammals take a long time to get to be totally self-sufficient. We're not fish or crickets. This is the 'tech-debt' that Nature gave us. If we were dinosaur-people that laid eggs, we would not have these issues between rights and bodies and mammalian reproduction. We'll see what this debate is like in the future when we have babies born from artificial wombs.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Unfortunately the same people use the same argument against use of synthetic wombs for humans. At some point, when they're fully developed to sustain animals, we'll have to move on to human experimentation there.
  - alexvoda 4y ago
    > Unfortunately the same people use the same argument against use of synthetic wombs for humans. Care to expand on this? I am not aware of any opinion on this other than general undefined revulsion. Has anyone articulated an actual argument?
    - Balgair 4y ago
      I'm not very well studied in this area, so bear with. I'd say it would be a good idea for people with certain diseases, those with high risks of miscarriage, in high risk professions or environments, or other situations where the development of the baby would be hindered or impacted. The only environment I can think of is somewhere that is not Earth though. In the somewhat far future, I could see it being routine. You'd all but stop miscarriages, accidents, and have a much greater window into development and how to correct things along the way. That said, you'd strip women of an incredible and deeply human/mammalian (?) experience. Also, there's no telling that it would ever actually work. I imagine something so central to species survival has a lot of things that may make artificial wombs functionally impossible.
twiceaday 4y ago
If there is a period between the fetus cells being created and it being old enough to be covered by personhood, it seems obvious to me that harming the natural growth of the fetus should carry a punishment, at least on behalf of the mother who wanted to raise the child. That doesn't mean its murder.
manicdee 4y ago
We as a society see some value in the success of a wanted pregnancy. Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person, it’s easier to resolve these “competing rights”. When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right), yes the issue can appear murky and confusing.
- maratc 4y ago
  > Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person So a homicide of a pregnant woman that has an unwanted pregnancy should be single homicide, not double homicide? > When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right) Implying inferior motives for the opposing side makes it easy to dismiss their argument. But this is not about women being "an incubator for your children" — this is about fetuses being "an actual person in their own right".

by maratc 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

brightball 4y ago

This is really the core of it and ultimately the decision to overturn is going to force legislators to finally codify exactly what the rules are. It’s been avoided to this point because both political sides preferred to fund raise off of the issue. Long overdue.

gonzo41 4y ago
In the meantime, whilst there's debate on legislation, women will die from ectopic pregnancies and other women's health issues that require the termination of a non viable pregnancy. It's very grim.
- kcplate 4y ago
  Yes, this is one of the new “talking point” but it literally assumes that entire medical teams are going to sit on their hands all across the country and let women die. Let me make my prediction right now that this will never happen.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    It's already happened in Poland in basically the same situation (a miscarrying woman was left to die from sepsis because the doctors didn't want to risk being accused of aborting). Many doctors would prefer to not go to jail, even if it means risking a woman's life.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      Poland is not the US.
      - sofixa 4y ago
        Do you think American doctors would be more willing to go to prison over an abortion? I don't see much difference in the two countries in that regard, if anything American doctors also have to think about their student loans and are probably going to be more religious (Poland has a big Catholic problem but in the US having a religion is basically the norm)
        kcplate 4y ago
        I am saying that no state’s attorney would ever choose prosecute such a case because no US jury would ever convict a doctor that saved a woman’s life by correcting an ectopic pregnancy. Prosecutors have discretion and would take in to account the circumstances. There is not a medical expert in the country who would testify that a ectopic pregnancy is a viable pregnancy that should be left alone to allow nature to take its course…so a conviction would be impossible. Additionally, because the doctor and the patient are in an established doctor/patient relationship at that point, the doctor has a duty to act to provide the care that they are able to provide to save the mother. Failure to do so could make them legally liable for the mothers death. Perhaps that is the difference between Poland and the US. Perhaps over in Poland there is not this duty to act and it is legally acceptable to let a patient die that you can save and juries and judges would accept that condition. Wouldn’t happen over here.
  - sershe 4y ago
- eloff 4y ago
  Ectopic pregnancies and other medical emergencies are usually excluded from abortion laws. Law makers could always do something dumb though, there's lots of precedent for that.
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    Except apparently in Ohio, which now has a law that forces reimplantation of an ectopic pregnancy, a medical procedure that does not exist.
    - eloff 4y ago
      I had to look that up, because I thought nobody could be that dumb. US lawmakers continue to surprise me!
- brightball 4y ago
  All the more reason legislation should have been passed at some point over the last 50 years.

Aune 4y ago

Certainly people who suffer a miscarriage when trying to have children suffer deeply. It is clear then that they lost more than some human tissue. Also if you beat a woman causing her to misscarry, then we look upon that quite a lot harsher than if no miscarriage occured. In general we don't tend to value human life or rights when it is inconvenient to do so though.

maratc 4y ago
> Also if you beat a woman causing her to miscarry An interesting note: even in the Code of Hammurabi there's a provision for that, and that's from about 4,000 years ago.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  Today I learned that there are actually six provisions in the Code of Hammurabi for that, covering different effects to the mother and (according that system) standing of the mother! 209. If a man has struck a free woman with child, and has caused her to miscarry, he shall pay ten shekels for her miscarriage. 210. If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed. 211. If by a blow he has caused a plebian's daughter to have a miscarriage, he shall pay five shekels of silver. 212. If that woman has died, he shall pay one-half mina of silver. 213. If he struck a freeman's female slave and has caused her to have a miscarriage, he shall pay two shekels of silver. 214. If that female slave has died, he shall pay one-third mina of silver.
  - maratc 4y ago
    This also shows how women at that time were treated as "glorified property": > If that woman die, his daughter shall be killed. You damaged my property — your property will be equally damaged. Justice! Women wouldn't be treated as equal to men for another 3,500 years or so.
    - alexvoda 4y ago
      Let us apreciate that we are not bound by the Code of Hammurabi, and strengthen our resolve to not move in that direction.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hotpotamus 4y ago

Another complication - most of the recent laws against abortion place punishment on the abortion providers, not the women themselves, so they don't seem to think that the woman is culpable in ordering a murder.

Balgair 4y ago

I'm going to wade in on this against my better interests. To me, the debate seems to have a paradox that can't be resolved using the logic we've inherited from the Enlightenment (mostly). Namely: People have rights to their bodies. Yes, it's super-duper more complicated than just that, I know. But, to my brain, it seems to boil mostly down to that. We have to define rights, people, bodies, what 'have' means, etc. Sure, yeah, I know. But Nature, she don't care about the Enlightenment and all our attempts at reasoning. Nature cares about making babies. We're mammals. This is how we reproduce, how all mammals do it. We raise our young inside of our bodies until a time comes that they can survive. Then (most) mammals feed our young with our bodies for a while more. Mammals take a long time to get to be totally self-sufficient. We're not fish or crickets. This is the 'tech-debt' that Nature gave us. If we were dinosaur-people that laid eggs, we would not have these issues between rights and bodies and mammalian reproduction. We'll see what this debate is like in the future when we have babies born from artificial wombs.

AstralStorm 4y ago
Unfortunately the same people use the same argument against use of synthetic wombs for humans. At some point, when they're fully developed to sustain animals, we'll have to move on to human experimentation there.
- alexvoda 4y ago
  > Unfortunately the same people use the same argument against use of synthetic wombs for humans. Care to expand on this? I am not aware of any opinion on this other than general undefined revulsion. Has anyone articulated an actual argument?
  - Balgair 4y ago
    I'm not very well studied in this area, so bear with. I'd say it would be a good idea for people with certain diseases, those with high risks of miscarriage, in high risk professions or environments, or other situations where the development of the baby would be hindered or impacted. The only environment I can think of is somewhere that is not Earth though. In the somewhat far future, I could see it being routine. You'd all but stop miscarriages, accidents, and have a much greater window into development and how to correct things along the way. That said, you'd strip women of an incredible and deeply human/mammalian (?) experience. Also, there's no telling that it would ever actually work. I imagine something so central to species survival has a lot of things that may make artificial wombs functionally impossible.

twiceaday 4y ago

If there is a period between the fetus cells being created and it being old enough to be covered by personhood, it seems obvious to me that harming the natural growth of the fetus should carry a punishment, at least on behalf of the mother who wanted to raise the child. That doesn't mean its murder.

manicdee 4y ago

We as a society see some value in the success of a wanted pregnancy. Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person, it’s easier to resolve these “competing rights”. When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right), yes the issue can appear murky and confusing.

maratc 4y ago
> Once you consider the intentions of the pregnant person So a homicide of a pregnant woman that has an unwanted pregnancy should be single homicide, not double homicide? > When you only consider a woman to be an incubator for your children (and not an actual person in their own right) Implying inferior motives for the opposing side makes it easy to dismiss their argument. But this is not about women being "an incubator for your children" — this is about fetuses being "an actual person in their own right".