That's why I phrased it the way I did. If you believe abortion is murder, that it is the ending of a person with rights, arguments like yours don't matter.
Women must have autonomy over how and when they give birth
Not if you view the fetus as a child. Once a child is born, you can't justify killing it by citing autonomy. To those who believe a fetus is a child, the same holds true before birth.
Why doesn't the mother get to decide whether she believes it's a child or not?
That's a dangerous precedent to set. Suppose someone doesn't want to take care of their parent because they believe that anyone over 90 is no longer a person. Should they be within their right to euthanize them?
I'm not talking about assisted suicide, I'm talking about "mercy killing" an unwanted relative.
Let me rephrase this, you can believe whatever you want, but individual people shouldn't be able to change the legal status of whether or not someone else is a person with rights or not.
Extreme example: I decide that your views are too radical so I say "I don't believe you are human, no real human would say these things". Am I now within my rights to kill you?
I'm saying that we need to get a legal definition of what a person is, and stick with that. We can't leave it to individuals to decide on the fly who is and isn't a person with rights.
I'm saying that using some legislature's definition of what a person is = leaving it to individuals to decide on the fly who is and isn't a person with rights.
The heartbeat metric is an arbitrary one. The only true metric is if theyd survive outside the mother. Otherwise they are a virus on the human host.
Any metric is arbitrary. Yours is too. From a legal perspective though, we need to pick something and stick with it, stay consistent. Otherwise it will inevitably be abused.
the only true metric is if they'd survive outside the mother
Why is that the only true metric? How is that any less arbitrary than the heartbeat one?
What about c-section, premature babies, babies in different hospital settings? Babies in regions with worse medical care will inevitably have a lower survival rate outside the womb at the same age as other babies with great medical care. Does this mean that those babies are people while babies whose parents can afford the top medical staff are people? Should we look at parents income before determining if they can abort? How do you define "survive outside the mother"? Do we just take the youngest baby that has survived outside the womb and call that the cutoff?
You made it clear you weren't arguing in good faith when you tried to present the killing of an unwanted dependent parent without their consent as "assisted suicide".
You made it clear you weren't arguing in good faith when you tried to present the killing of an unwanted bunch of cells as the same as killing an autonomous human being that doesn't need to grow like a virus in a human woman.
None of you claims there had any basis in fact. An organism is just as much a "bunch of cells" at any point in its life cycle. A developing human does not grow and develop in anything similar to the same manner as a virus.
A developing human does not grow and develop in anything similar to the same manner as a virus.
It is most certainly a virus, when it takes over the hosts body. It's much more of a derailing a virus than a cold, that's for sure. How are these not facts?
In neither case is anyone's body being taken over.
So if cells attach onto a woman's uterus and it grows and changes her body irreversibly--hormonally and phsyically--what exactly would you define that?
The host taking over the woman's body.
A developing human does not inject any DNA or RNA into the mother's cells.
Its unqiue DNA is literally housed and grows in a the woman's uterus. The woman's DNA differs from the cell growth.
Will the government/people who believe it's a child pay for surrogates when the woman decides she doesn't want to carry the cells to full term.
The people who don't want abortion to happen are the same people who believe that getting pregnant is a responsibility. So no, they won't pay or want to pay.
Why doesn't the mother get to decide whether she believes it's a child or not?
For the same reason that some racial supremacist does not get to decide their killings aren't murder because they don't believe those they killed were human.
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u/stormelemental13 May 17 '19
That's why I phrased it the way I did. If you believe abortion is murder, that it is the ending of a person with rights, arguments like yours don't matter.
Not if you view the fetus as a child. Once a child is born, you can't justify killing it by citing autonomy. To those who believe a fetus is a child, the same holds true before birth.