10 ms·

I'll just add that many people who are pro-choice believe that the issue of whether a fetus is a person is irrelevant. You would have the legal right to back ou

by elil17 4y ago

I'll just add that many people who are pro-choice believe that the issue of whether a fetus is a person is irrelevant. You would have the legal right to back out of donating a kidney, even if you already agreed to do it and it would save someone's life. Similarly, the argument goes, you should have the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) at any point during a pregnancy.

gruez 4y ago
>You would have the legal right to back out of donating a kidney, even if you already agreed to do it and it would save someone's life. Similarly, the argument goes, you should have the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) at any point during a pregnancy. that's not really a good analogy because prior to donating the kidney, the kidney recipient isn't dependent on your kidneys, whereas at the moment of conception the zygote/fetus is dependent on the mother's body. A better analogy would be being able to take back the kidney after it's been donated, although that's also flawed because you're not really giving anything up when you're getting aborted.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Point-in-time viability isn't the idea behind the analogy. The point the poster is making is that the continued ability to live into the indefinite future is what is contingent.
derac 4y ago
It should be noted that this is a rare and unpopular opinion. The overwhelming majority of people are going to be disgusted by a 32 week abortion on either side of the issue.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  The comment you're replying to didn't make a week-based distinction, just that the "personhood" claim of a fetus is irrelevant to whether or not an abortion is legal. Personally I'd just prefer to base it on fetal viability (which was the standard). That's roughly 25 weeks or so (some variation and debate). If a fetus were to come non-viable after that, or endanger the mother, I think that should be back on the table too.
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    From that comment: "you should have the legal right to have an abortion (...) at any point during a pregnancy."
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      > the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) you left out the "at least induce labor if viability is possible," so maybe we're just interpreting the comment differently
      - iforgotpassword 4y ago
        Indeed, the "at least" made me read it like this would be the minimum acceptable compromise, but reading the phrase without the parentheses would be the actual thing they want. But I'm not a native speaker so that might very well be wrong.
  - derac 4y ago
    The claim is that viability is inconsequential to their argument, meaning a 32 week abortion is morally ok for them. Where did I misspeak?
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      I didn't see that claim, the comment says "(or at least induce labor, if viability is possible)" Can chalk it up to a different in interpretations I guess.
- hgazx 4y ago
  Currently.
  - diob 4y ago
    ?
- spread_love 4y ago
  and you'd think the majority are going the be disgusted by the idea of a 10-year-old rape victim being denied access to healthcare by her state, but counsel for the National Right to Life argued she should keep have kept the child
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    Of course, some legislation could ban abortions while make exceptions for 10-year-old rape victims or other extreme cases. There's a lot of middle ground between banning all abortions and allowing all abortions. We don't need to legislate according to extremes.
    - spread_love 4y ago
      I wish National Right to Life felt the same way. > There's a lot of middle ground between banning all abortions and allowing all abortions Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others?
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        > Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others? As a rhetorical tactic, do you have a lot of luck with obvious deliberate obtuseness?
        spread_love 4y ago
        I'm simply repeating the mantra of the disciples of Kang and Kodos. If you have a problem I suggest you take it up with them.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      We don't need to, but that's the way things are going. Allowing abortion for rape and not in other cases is ideologically inconsistent with the idea that fetuses are persons, and so what we are actually seeing is that state legislatures are passing extreme legislation to maintain consistency with that premise. They are able to do so because states are so polarized that they can pass extreme legislation without any repercussions. Half of the problem here is that reasonable people think this will be a states' rights issue with reasonable exceptions that local people can all agree on, but with which others might differ. Whereas what's actually happening is that extremist state legislatures are seizing on the issue to pass the most restrictive abortion laws they possibly can, and the GOP at the national level is salivating over the prospect of a national abortion ban as soon as they regain control of the government (see statements from VP Pence, Mitch McConnell, and various House republicans). People thought throwing the issue back to the states would be the end of it, but it's clearly not.
- ceph_ 4y ago
  Most people would be disgusted by a slaughter house, but vegans aren't trying to enshrine forced veganism into law.
  - elil17 4y ago
    Well actually some of them are talking about banning meat
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      How many of them are on the Supreme Court?
      - elil17 4y ago
        Thankfully none!
  - derac 4y ago
    Most people value human life over animal life. Also, I'd guess vegans might advocate making it illegal to kill animals for food (I don't interact with many, so I'm spitballing). The only reason they wouldn't is because it's so far outside the Overton window that it seems like fantasy.
    - scarmig 4y ago
      FWIW, I'm a vegetarian who, if made world emperor, would ban killing animals for food, recognizing some caveats and edge cases. But, yeah, it's so far outside the Overton window that I don't think I've ever expressed it to anyone.
- elil17 4y ago
  Is it? It's an opinion I've heard multiple people in real life express to me.
  - derac 4y ago
    Wild. If you're ok with sharing it, what is the general age range and location?
    - elil17 4y ago
      Well multiple was perhaps a strong word - it was two people on two occasions, one 19 and the other 50. Prefer not to give my location but it was a liberal area (and more significantly, they shared the opinion with the knowledge that I would be at least open to the idea).
      - derac 4y ago
        Thanks! I'm from Austin, Texas and that would be considered an extremely rare PoV.
- theossuary 4y ago
  They very clearly stated that after viability, induced delivery is the course. Just like Casey V. Planned Parenthood originally made viability the cutoff. At any point a woman should be allowed to rescind the right to their body from anyone or anything, a fetus included. Whether that means abortion or delivery depends on viability. So your straw-man of a 32 week abortion isn't applicable at all.
  - derac 4y ago
    "the issue of whether a fetus is a person is irrelevant" It's not a straw man. It's a hypothetical test of his reasoning. He says viability doesn't matter to his argument, but throws out that induced birth could be an option. His argument is not that "abortion should be illegal at viability, but you should be able to induce birth". You are twisting his words.
    - theossuary 4y ago
      I'm not twisting their words; you've simply lost the ability to comprehend text that pertains to abortion. > Similarly, the argument goes, you should have the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) at any point during a pregnancy. What does "at least induce labor, if viability is possible" mean to you?
      - derac 4y ago
        He says you should have a legal right to an abortion at any time during pregnancy... Also I support abortion and I'm a social democrat FWIW.
- jandrese 4y ago
  A 32 week abortion is an abortion of a baby with severe medical issues that may be threatening the life of the mother. If you add those details support for the issue is considerably higher.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
That describes me and I've made that exact argument before. I'd ask that anyone who feels gross at the idea that the government should have the authority to mandate organ donation or blood and tissue donations to save a life or disallow backing out of these procedures to understand that this comes from the same place.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  Not really, any mandated organ donation is always going be from dead donors. If you know of any forced donations from live donors in a democratic state, I'd be interested to know.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    There isn't any, but if we take pro-life to its logical conclusion, there should be, at the very least from parents to children, and at least in cases where it doesn't lead to your death. Also, mandatory organ donation after death should be obvious table stakes for a pro-life person, if they were logically consistent.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      I don't think this is true at all. Pregnancy ("creating a life that requires birth" since we're not debating "when does life begin" at this point in the thread) is a predictable consequence of (voluntary) sex. "Organ donation" is not a predictable consequence of sex. There's nothing inherent to the pro-life position that would require mandatory organ donation between parents and children or anyone else whether before or after death.
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        To jump a few steps ahead in the dialogue, I'll posit that simply the medical reality of our ability to perform organ donations, and the consequence of donations saving lives makes have-ing organs a sufficient condition for forced donation. Medical realities currently play a role in viability calculus so it is a perfectly valid analogy in that medical advances in organ donation being a possibility are equally valid.
nxmnxm99 4y ago
This is a weak argument as are most "rationalist" pro-choice arguments - the kidney itself isn't a conscious creature 't dependent on you prior for it's sustenance. Most pro choice arguments fundamentally boil down to "my convenience outweighs any moral imperative" Which is fine, but I'd rather people be honest about their arguments rather than dress it up in pseudo-moralism.
- spacedcowboy 4y ago
  Personally I'm not seeing a foetus as being a conscious creature either. At some point it becomes one when its complexity level can support that, but not early on. Certainly it has the potential for that, assuming all goes well, but at the maximum point of normal abortion in the UK (24 weeks), I'm not buying it.
  - iforgotpassword 4y ago
    I'm fine with abortions being accessible, more power to you, but this is something that makes me uneasy at a philosophical level, if that makes sense. Because you start asking yourself when exactly that moment is. Like, I get it, it's the stereotypical engineer/scientist kind of thinking, but there has to be one moment where the fetus isn't a conscious creature, and one second later it is. Can we ever know? Is a newborn even conscious? It hardly looks like it to me. It's pretty much acting on instincts only.
    - derac 4y ago
      There are levels of consciousness. For instance, a brain dead boy lived for 12 years with a rare disease in which his brain was replaced with fluid. With a brain stem he could still react to light, sound, and other stimulus - but not much else.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    A baby isn't any more a "conscious creature" at 24 weeks than at 4 weeks post birth. The vast majority of the final trimester is spent gaining weight and finishing lung development, not on fundamental brain development.
rcoveson 4y ago
Why isn't it like parenting? If you wanted to give a child up for adoption, and no agency in your state could take on the child for three weeks, you couldn't just stop taking care of it. Parents have a unique responsibility to their own offspring. Is it wrong to extend that to at least very-late-term pregnancies? Requiring a woman to carry a pregnancy from 32 weeks to 38 weeks rather than destroying the fetus is certainly a weightier responsibility than just requiring them to feed and shelter a child for a few weeks while a state adoption agency is waiting on resources, but the two requirements fit in the same moral framework of parental responsibility.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  > Why isn't it like parenting? If you wanted to give a child up for adoption, and no agency in your state could take on the child for three weeks, you couldn't just stop taking care of it. This is actually not entirely true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law "Safe-haven laws (also known in some states as "Baby Moses laws", in reference to the religious scripture) are statutes in the United States that decriminalize the leaving of unharmed infants with statutorily designated private persons so that the child becomes a ward of the state. All fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have enacted such statutes.[1]" I assume these are meant to prevent infanticide among other reasons but yeah, you can just give up the baby. Apparently you can't just drop them off in most cases, as I thought you could, I think in the movies they show parents just leaving them on the steps. You have to find a responsible party to hand them too.
  - rcoveson 4y ago
    That is indeed a very limited responsibility, but I think the salient point is that it's still a responsibility of the parent and that the law protects the child from harm and neglect even though it compels the parents to act at their own expense.
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      I kinda think that the salient point is that the law can and often does provide outs to respect the fact that life is complicated. Post 32 week abortions are debate within a debate because people aren't really talking about the same thing, much more than other parts of the abortion debates. Many on the pro-forced-birth side would have you believe that this is a common occurrence. The pro-choice side would say that abortion is a difficult decision in and of itself and if someone is choosing abortion after 32 weeks, it must be an exceptional case, and we should respect the parent-doctor relationship to make that decision. Being in a situation where I'm at the 32 week mark with my wife, I can't imagine many people choose to knowingly wait this long, and then just have an abortion for "funsies". Pew Research suggests it is less than 1% after 21 weeks (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-da...).
tablespoon 4y ago
> Similarly, the argument goes, you should have the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) at any point during a pregnancy. This is an example of taking some oversimple principle, and applying it too consistently without consideration of complicating factors. If you induced labor at many points after the "point of viability," the baby still has a large change of dying or suffering harm even with long, intensive, and expensive care in a NICU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy#Live_birth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy#...: > Long-term survival is possible after 22 weeks.[59] However, odds of long-term survival between 22 and 23 weeks are 2–3 percent and odds of survival between 23 and 24 weeks are 20 percent.[60] "Intact survival", which means survival of a neonate without subsequent damage to organs such as the brain or bowel is 1% at 22 weeks and 13% at 23 weeks.[60]
swat535 4y ago
Firstly, your kidney donation comparisons is completely irrelevant here, it is not even remotely comparable to the situation of having a living person inside your body. I am not sure how your analogy would be able to backup your claim. That being said, I will _assume_ that you are tying to make a variation of the The Violinist Argument [0] and so I will respond to that instead. This argument claims that the question of fetal personhood is irrelevant because the mother’s right to an abortion would trump the fetus’ right to life even if he is a person. The idea is that this situation is analogous to an unplanned pregnancy: against her plans, the woman finds herself supporting the life of an unwanted person and has the right to deprive that person of her bodily support, regardless of what the result is for the parasite. The key logical flaw lies in its failure to distinguish between killing and letting die. In the context at hand, this distinction corresponds closely to the difference between what might be called ordinary and extraordinary life-preserving measures, whether they take the form of healthcare or some other intervention. Let me give a simple example to illustrate what I mean by ordinary vs. extraordinary life-preserving measures. If you have fainted on the train tracks, it would be admirable for me to dive in front of an on-coming train and sacrifice myself in order to knock you out of the way. But you are not entitled to have me perform this extraordinary act of heroism. If I do not dive in front of the train, no one would say that I was guilty of manslaughter. On the other hand, you probably would be entitled to my assistance if I am standing idly by and see you collapse hours before a train is in sight. Where exactly to draw the line between ordinary and extraordinary life-saving measures might be fuzzy, but the basic validity of the distinction should be readily apparent. Having laid this groundwork, we can see that the “Right to Life” is a right not to be killed. It is not a right not to die. The reason that the woman in the story can sever the tubes without violating the violinist’s dignity is because he does not have a right not to die. The tubes are an extraordinary means of preserving his life, and he is not entitled to extraordinary life-saving measures. However, the woman may not stab the man in the heart and only then sever the tubes. In this case, she would be violating his dignity because he has a right not to be killed. This latter scenario most closely resembles an abortion, in which the fetus is ripped or burned to death while still in the womb and only then removed. Now, why does the abortion procedure go to such great lengths to kill the fetus before removing him? In many early-term abortions, the procedure is simply easier, but not so in late-term abortions. The reason is instructive: leaving a prematurely born infant to die without providing basic care would be illegal, a violation of the infant’s right not to be killed. Like the violinist, an infant is not entitled to extraordinary life-saving interventions, but he is entitled to ordinary sustenance. This includes the baseline level of care necessary for ordinary survival—food, water, oxygen, warmth, etc.—from those responsible for him. Parents who fatally neglect their young children are guilty of killing them, not just letting them die. Regardless of whether the parents want or ever wanted those children, the law understands that they have a primary responsibility to provide the ordinary sustenance to which young children are entitled. If unborn children have the same personhood status as infants, then they should be accorded the same rights. Since the placenta represents the ordinary means by which a fetus obtains food, water, oxygen, and warmth, it follows that he should have the right to remain in his mother’s womb until viability, even if she does not want him there. The abortion debate is very much a question of personhood. When Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun penned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion in the United States, he admitted: > If this suggestion of [fetal] personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] amendment. The appellant was Roe, and the 14th Amendment states that “no person shall be deprived of life…without due process of law.” In other words, Roe v. Wade itself acknowledges this. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion

by elil17 4y ago

gruez 4y ago

>You would have the legal right to back out of donating a kidney, even if you already agreed to do it and it would save someone's life. Similarly, the argument goes, you should have the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) at any point during a pregnancy. that's not really a good analogy because prior to donating the kidney, the kidney recipient isn't dependent on your kidneys, whereas at the moment of conception the zygote/fetus is dependent on the mother's body. A better analogy would be being able to take back the kidney after it's been donated, although that's also flawed because you're not really giving anything up when you're getting aborted.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
Point-in-time viability isn't the idea behind the analogy. The point the poster is making is that the continued ability to live into the indefinite future is what is contingent.

derac 4y ago

It should be noted that this is a rare and unpopular opinion. The overwhelming majority of people are going to be disgusted by a 32 week abortion on either side of the issue.

micromacrofoot 4y ago
The comment you're replying to didn't make a week-based distinction, just that the "personhood" claim of a fetus is irrelevant to whether or not an abortion is legal. Personally I'd just prefer to base it on fetal viability (which was the standard). That's roughly 25 weeks or so (some variation and debate). If a fetus were to come non-viable after that, or endanger the mother, I think that should be back on the table too.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  From that comment: "you should have the legal right to have an abortion (...) at any point during a pregnancy."
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    > the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) you left out the "at least induce labor if viability is possible," so maybe we're just interpreting the comment differently
    - iforgotpassword 4y ago
      Indeed, the "at least" made me read it like this would be the minimum acceptable compromise, but reading the phrase without the parentheses would be the actual thing they want. But I'm not a native speaker so that might very well be wrong.
- derac 4y ago
  The claim is that viability is inconsequential to their argument, meaning a 32 week abortion is morally ok for them. Where did I misspeak?
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    I didn't see that claim, the comment says "(or at least induce labor, if viability is possible)" Can chalk it up to a different in interpretations I guess.
hgazx 4y ago
Currently.
- diob 4y ago
  ?
spread_love 4y ago
and you'd think the majority are going the be disgusted by the idea of a 10-year-old rape victim being denied access to healthcare by her state, but counsel for the National Right to Life argued she should keep have kept the child
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Of course, some legislation could ban abortions while make exceptions for 10-year-old rape victims or other extreme cases. There's a lot of middle ground between banning all abortions and allowing all abortions. We don't need to legislate according to extremes.
  - spread_love 4y ago
    I wish National Right to Life felt the same way. > There's a lot of middle ground between banning all abortions and allowing all abortions Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others?
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      > Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others? As a rhetorical tactic, do you have a lot of luck with obvious deliberate obtuseness?
      - spread_love 4y ago
        I'm simply repeating the mantra of the disciples of Kang and Kodos. If you have a problem I suggest you take it up with them.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    We don't need to, but that's the way things are going. Allowing abortion for rape and not in other cases is ideologically inconsistent with the idea that fetuses are persons, and so what we are actually seeing is that state legislatures are passing extreme legislation to maintain consistency with that premise. They are able to do so because states are so polarized that they can pass extreme legislation without any repercussions. Half of the problem here is that reasonable people think this will be a states' rights issue with reasonable exceptions that local people can all agree on, but with which others might differ. Whereas what's actually happening is that extremist state legislatures are seizing on the issue to pass the most restrictive abortion laws they possibly can, and the GOP at the national level is salivating over the prospect of a national abortion ban as soon as they regain control of the government (see statements from VP Pence, Mitch McConnell, and various House republicans). People thought throwing the issue back to the states would be the end of it, but it's clearly not.
ceph_ 4y ago
Most people would be disgusted by a slaughter house, but vegans aren't trying to enshrine forced veganism into law.
- elil17 4y ago
  Well actually some of them are talking about banning meat
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    How many of them are on the Supreme Court?
    - elil17 4y ago
      Thankfully none!
- derac 4y ago
  Most people value human life over animal life. Also, I'd guess vegans might advocate making it illegal to kill animals for food (I don't interact with many, so I'm spitballing). The only reason they wouldn't is because it's so far outside the Overton window that it seems like fantasy.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    FWIW, I'm a vegetarian who, if made world emperor, would ban killing animals for food, recognizing some caveats and edge cases. But, yeah, it's so far outside the Overton window that I don't think I've ever expressed it to anyone.
elil17 4y ago
Is it? It's an opinion I've heard multiple people in real life express to me.
- derac 4y ago
  Wild. If you're ok with sharing it, what is the general age range and location?
  - elil17 4y ago
    Well multiple was perhaps a strong word - it was two people on two occasions, one 19 and the other 50. Prefer not to give my location but it was a liberal area (and more significantly, they shared the opinion with the knowledge that I would be at least open to the idea).
    - derac 4y ago
      Thanks! I'm from Austin, Texas and that would be considered an extremely rare PoV.
theossuary 4y ago
They very clearly stated that after viability, induced delivery is the course. Just like Casey V. Planned Parenthood originally made viability the cutoff. At any point a woman should be allowed to rescind the right to their body from anyone or anything, a fetus included. Whether that means abortion or delivery depends on viability. So your straw-man of a 32 week abortion isn't applicable at all.
- derac 4y ago
  "the issue of whether a fetus is a person is irrelevant" It's not a straw man. It's a hypothetical test of his reasoning. He says viability doesn't matter to his argument, but throws out that induced birth could be an option. His argument is not that "abortion should be illegal at viability, but you should be able to induce birth". You are twisting his words.
  - theossuary 4y ago
    I'm not twisting their words; you've simply lost the ability to comprehend text that pertains to abortion. > Similarly, the argument goes, you should have the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) at any point during a pregnancy. What does "at least induce labor, if viability is possible" mean to you?
    - derac 4y ago
      He says you should have a legal right to an abortion at any time during pregnancy... Also I support abortion and I'm a social democrat FWIW.
jandrese 4y ago
A 32 week abortion is an abortion of a baby with severe medical issues that may be threatening the life of the mother. If you add those details support for the issue is considerably higher.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

That describes me and I've made that exact argument before. I'd ask that anyone who feels gross at the idea that the government should have the authority to mandate organ donation or blood and tissue donations to save a life or disallow backing out of these procedures to understand that this comes from the same place.

hgomersall 4y ago
Not really, any mandated organ donation is always going be from dead donors. If you know of any forced donations from live donors in a democratic state, I'd be interested to know.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  There isn't any, but if we take pro-life to its logical conclusion, there should be, at the very least from parents to children, and at least in cases where it doesn't lead to your death. Also, mandatory organ donation after death should be obvious table stakes for a pro-life person, if they were logically consistent.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    I don't think this is true at all. Pregnancy ("creating a life that requires birth" since we're not debating "when does life begin" at this point in the thread) is a predictable consequence of (voluntary) sex. "Organ donation" is not a predictable consequence of sex. There's nothing inherent to the pro-life position that would require mandatory organ donation between parents and children or anyone else whether before or after death.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      To jump a few steps ahead in the dialogue, I'll posit that simply the medical reality of our ability to perform organ donations, and the consequence of donations saving lives makes have-ing organs a sufficient condition for forced donation. Medical realities currently play a role in viability calculus so it is a perfectly valid analogy in that medical advances in organ donation being a possibility are equally valid.

nxmnxm99 4y ago

This is a weak argument as are most "rationalist" pro-choice arguments - the kidney itself isn't a conscious creature 't dependent on you prior for it's sustenance. Most pro choice arguments fundamentally boil down to "my convenience outweighs any moral imperative" Which is fine, but I'd rather people be honest about their arguments rather than dress it up in pseudo-moralism.

spacedcowboy 4y ago
Personally I'm not seeing a foetus as being a conscious creature either. At some point it becomes one when its complexity level can support that, but not early on. Certainly it has the potential for that, assuming all goes well, but at the maximum point of normal abortion in the UK (24 weeks), I'm not buying it.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  I'm fine with abortions being accessible, more power to you, but this is something that makes me uneasy at a philosophical level, if that makes sense. Because you start asking yourself when exactly that moment is. Like, I get it, it's the stereotypical engineer/scientist kind of thinking, but there has to be one moment where the fetus isn't a conscious creature, and one second later it is. Can we ever know? Is a newborn even conscious? It hardly looks like it to me. It's pretty much acting on instincts only.
  - derac 4y ago
    There are levels of consciousness. For instance, a brain dead boy lived for 12 years with a rare disease in which his brain was replaced with fluid. With a brain stem he could still react to light, sound, and other stimulus - but not much else.
- rayiner 4y ago
  A baby isn't any more a "conscious creature" at 24 weeks than at 4 weeks post birth. The vast majority of the final trimester is spent gaining weight and finishing lung development, not on fundamental brain development.

rcoveson 4y ago

Why isn't it like parenting? If you wanted to give a child up for adoption, and no agency in your state could take on the child for three weeks, you couldn't just stop taking care of it. Parents have a unique responsibility to their own offspring. Is it wrong to extend that to at least very-late-term pregnancies? Requiring a woman to carry a pregnancy from 32 weeks to 38 weeks rather than destroying the fetus is certainly a weightier responsibility than just requiring them to feed and shelter a child for a few weeks while a state adoption agency is waiting on resources, but the two requirements fit in the same moral framework of parental responsibility.

mikkergp 4y ago
> Why isn't it like parenting? If you wanted to give a child up for adoption, and no agency in your state could take on the child for three weeks, you couldn't just stop taking care of it. This is actually not entirely true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law "Safe-haven laws (also known in some states as "Baby Moses laws", in reference to the religious scripture) are statutes in the United States that decriminalize the leaving of unharmed infants with statutorily designated private persons so that the child becomes a ward of the state. All fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have enacted such statutes.[1]" I assume these are meant to prevent infanticide among other reasons but yeah, you can just give up the baby. Apparently you can't just drop them off in most cases, as I thought you could, I think in the movies they show parents just leaving them on the steps. You have to find a responsible party to hand them too.
- rcoveson 4y ago
  That is indeed a very limited responsibility, but I think the salient point is that it's still a responsibility of the parent and that the law protects the child from harm and neglect even though it compels the parents to act at their own expense.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    I kinda think that the salient point is that the law can and often does provide outs to respect the fact that life is complicated. Post 32 week abortions are debate within a debate because people aren't really talking about the same thing, much more than other parts of the abortion debates. Many on the pro-forced-birth side would have you believe that this is a common occurrence. The pro-choice side would say that abortion is a difficult decision in and of itself and if someone is choosing abortion after 32 weeks, it must be an exceptional case, and we should respect the parent-doctor relationship to make that decision. Being in a situation where I'm at the 32 week mark with my wife, I can't imagine many people choose to knowingly wait this long, and then just have an abortion for "funsies". Pew Research suggests it is less than 1% after 21 weeks (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-da...).

tablespoon 4y ago

> Similarly, the argument goes, you should have the legal right to have an abortion (or at least induce labor, if viability is possible) at any point during a pregnancy. This is an example of taking some oversimple principle, and applying it too consistently without consideration of complicating factors. If you induced labor at many points after the "point of viability," the baby still has a large change of dying or suffering harm even with long, intensive, and expensive care in a NICU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy#Live_birth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy#...: > Long-term survival is possible after 22 weeks.[59] However, odds of long-term survival between 22 and 23 weeks are 2–3 percent and odds of survival between 23 and 24 weeks are 20 percent.[60] "Intact survival", which means survival of a neonate without subsequent damage to organs such as the brain or bowel is 1% at 22 weeks and 13% at 23 weeks.[60]

swat535 4y ago

Firstly, your kidney donation comparisons is completely irrelevant here, it is not even remotely comparable to the situation of having a living person inside your body. I am not sure how your analogy would be able to backup your claim. That being said, I will _assume_ that you are tying to make a variation of the The Violinist Argument [0] and so I will respond to that instead. This argument claims that the question of fetal personhood is irrelevant because the mother’s right to an abortion would trump the fetus’ right to life even if he is a person. The idea is that this situation is analogous to an unplanned pregnancy: against her plans, the woman finds herself supporting the life of an unwanted person and has the right to deprive that person of her bodily support, regardless of what the result is for the parasite. The key logical flaw lies in its failure to distinguish between killing and letting die. In the context at hand, this distinction corresponds closely to the difference between what might be called ordinary and extraordinary life-preserving measures, whether they take the form of healthcare or some other intervention. Let me give a simple example to illustrate what I mean by ordinary vs. extraordinary life-preserving measures. If you have fainted on the train tracks, it would be admirable for me to dive in front of an on-coming train and sacrifice myself in order to knock you out of the way. But you are not entitled to have me perform this extraordinary act of heroism. If I do not dive in front of the train, no one would say that I was guilty of manslaughter. On the other hand, you probably would be entitled to my assistance if I am standing idly by and see you collapse hours before a train is in sight. Where exactly to draw the line between ordinary and extraordinary life-saving measures might be fuzzy, but the basic validity of the distinction should be readily apparent. Having laid this groundwork, we can see that the “Right to Life” is a right not to be killed. It is not a right not to die. The reason that the woman in the story can sever the tubes without violating the violinist’s dignity is because he does not have a right not to die. The tubes are an extraordinary means of preserving his life, and he is not entitled to extraordinary life-saving measures. However, the woman may not stab the man in the heart and only then sever the tubes. In this case, she would be violating his dignity because he has a right not to be killed. This latter scenario most closely resembles an abortion, in which the fetus is ripped or burned to death while still in the womb and only then removed. Now, why does the abortion procedure go to such great lengths to kill the fetus before removing him? In many early-term abortions, the procedure is simply easier, but not so in late-term abortions. The reason is instructive: leaving a prematurely born infant to die without providing basic care would be illegal, a violation of the infant’s right not to be killed. Like the violinist, an infant is not entitled to extraordinary life-saving interventions, but he is entitled to ordinary sustenance. This includes the baseline level of care necessary for ordinary survival—food, water, oxygen, warmth, etc.—from those responsible for him. Parents who fatally neglect their young children are guilty of killing them, not just letting them die. Regardless of whether the parents want or ever wanted those children, the law understands that they have a primary responsibility to provide the ordinary sustenance to which young children are entitled. If unborn children have the same personhood status as infants, then they should be accorded the same rights. Since the placenta represents the ordinary means by which a fetus obtains food, water, oxygen, and warmth, it follows that he should have the right to remain in his mother’s womb until viability, even if she does not want him there. The abortion debate is very much a question of personhood. When Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun penned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion in the United States, he admitted: > If this suggestion of [fetal] personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] amendment. The appellant was Roe, and the 14th Amendment states that “no person shall be deprived of life…without due process of law.” In other words, Roe v. Wade itself acknowledges this. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion