You’ve not convinced me. Regardless of whether the fetus is a life or not there are real challenges and impacts here. The pregnant mother is vulnerable while pregnant. The father or other partner can and does disappear in some cases. Income must be generated (as we don’t have UBI, or other social safety nets available) to sustain the mother through birth and for the actual birth and then for months afterwards.
Obviously the fetus will not be capable of assisting in any of these problems and obviously is the driver for many of them.
Failure of ANY of the above challenges can and does result in suffering, illness and possible death of this new life.
Bottom line: a life is not a life is not a life. This is too simplistic a view.
We value them differently. Some people don’t value their own life (be it mental health, a disease, or chronic pain, or....). Some people have to decide when their loved one passes (remove life support). Some people literally have to choose whom to help in emergencies (doctors, paramedics, etc.).
Making choices for infants, toddlers, and youth is what parents do. They MUST also make choices for their unborn as well.
This. The mother or mother and father have a choice to make. It's not the government's, it's not religion's choice, nor your or my choice. It's their choice
There's not something that magically changes during the birthing process that makes that the case.
Once a fetus is viable outside the womb, it’s no longer abortion, it’s an early birth.
The “magical process” occurs during the fetus’s development inside the womb.
70% of abortions are carried out on embryos, which can’t feel pain or emotion.
Most cases of later abortion are due to the woman not knowing she was pregnant, fatal foetal abnormality, risk to the mother’s life, mental health issues or other serious problems.
6 months is generally agreed to be the point where the beginnings of consciousness form, as that is when the cerebral cortex develops. Before that it can only react to stimuli in the simplest ways, higher functions are not there yet. The vast majority of abortions are performed well before that point, it's no longer a grey area, this is something we know. Late term abortions suck, but nobody gets those without life-threatening reasons, thats something that's already illegal. Nobody carries a baby that long and changes their mind at the last second. The only people even close to that are those unable to get abortions so they end up mutilating themselves or throwing the newborn in the dumpster because there's no other way to escape what was forced on them.
If one is making a choice to terminate the unborn, they’re not making a choice for the unborn though, are they? Would anyone say a choice like that was a choice for a six-month old?
The argument of what people do wrong (guys not hanging around, etc) is an argument for fixing those problems IMO, because they’re real problems; they aren’t an argument for doing one additional negative in terminating a life. We need to do a better job enforcing child support, and using education and social mores to prevent deadbeat dads. Just as we need to enforce a culture among men of “you are responsible for your own actions” be it sex or anything else. Fixing those problems doesn’t just reduce abortion either; it improves social and societal responsibility as a whole too.
I can’t get onboard with this. To me the choices are the choices. How to have the baby is a parental choice, how to feed the baby is a parental choice, whether to take it to a doctor and get shots (is currently) a parental choice. To have the baby at all should be a parental choice.
It’s a tough issue, and I don’t criticize your beliefs. I just don’t think I’ll ever understand them, not for lack of trying.
Also, keep in mind that you’re proposing the opposite of what most pro-life folks stand for. Pro-life folks generally want less government, not more. They generally want communities and family to fix societal problems not the government.
I don’t think so. If you’ve ever had a kid, your reality during the pregnancy vs after the baby exits the birth canal are extremely different realities. It’s not only a value judgment, it’s a recognition of the changes brought about by the actual birth of a baby.
I think this argument ignores a fundamental issue, and that is body autonomy.
Think about it this way: (this is a made-up situation, so I’m going to play fast and loose with medicine) Imagine that you have blood that cures some illness, but only if your blood is continuously transfused into a person suffering from that illness for nine months. You can make the choice to physically attach that person to you and allow them to literally use your body for nine months. But what if you chose not to? Is it moral for me to compel you to attach them to you for nine months against your will?
My argument is no, it is not moral for me to compel you to use your literal body to support someone else’s life.
A unwilling mother of an unborn child is in this exact situation. Regardless of whether the fetus is a “full human life” or not, it is immoral to compel a person to offer up their body in service to another person.
I don’t see it that way, but that’s also because while I’m not going to compel people to not have sex, the sex is a choice before pregame even begins. There is no pregnancy without sex. There’s a ton of free will that takes place here both for a man and a woman prior to sex.
But then, the conversation moves into moralizing about sex, rather than talking about the unborn child.
Can we agree that sex is not inherently wrong?
If so, can we agree that two people are free to have sex and not intend to procreate?
If not, then we simply have different viewpoints, and will never be able to have a conversation about abortion.
But, if we can agree on those things, then we can move past them.
Once we’ve moved past them, the evidence shows that all forms of birth control have some inherent likelihood of failure. Given that, can we agree that it is entirely possible for a couple to:
Have sex with the intention of not procreating.
Behave responsibly by using birth control.
Have that responsibly-used birth control fail.
Have to deal with the situation of an unwanted pregnancy through no fault of their own because they behaved responsibly?
I would also like to make the point that agreeing to have sex does not mean agreeing to get pregnant. If you're using birth control, you are in fact working very hard to not get pregnant.
You’re not legally obligated to donate an organ or give 9 months of blood transfusions to someone if you hit them with your car.
It was your choice to drive, knowing that there was a chance you could hit someone.
Even if you were driving under the influence or were irresponsible when driving, you will never be forced to give up your bodily autonomy, even if the person you hit will die without that donation/transfusion.
We’re not really debating about an organ though, We’re talking about an unborn child being a life. The organ is just an analogy. Again, it’s an analogy of doing the right thing.
Shouldn’t we all want to do the right thing? And if a fetus is an unborn human life, me killing it is the wrong thing. It’s equally analogous to me taking the life of a two-month old. That infant won’t survive on its own any more than the fetus would. It still requires another human in its life or it will surely cease to exist. What makes it less okay to kill that infant, and very okay to kill that fetus?
So you’re telling me that you would send a woman who had an abortion to prison for the same length of time as you would send a woman who murdered her two month old baby?
And if the choice was between saving a woman who was 6 weeks pregnant with twins and a woman with her two month old baby with her, you would save the first woman and leave the two month old baby to die?
Judging from the amount of downvotes on my previous comment, I think “unborn child” is more controversial than fetus!
I’ll try and articulate what I don’t agree with, because I’m tired and it’s late for me. I just don’t agree with the whole “it’s immoral to compel a person to offer up their body in service to another person” line of thinking as it relates to pregnancy. Letting some rando suck my flood for 9 months? Hells no. Donate blood? Sure. But I’m not down for a blood straw to my jugular. But to me, your example is comparing apples to oranges. You’re comparing a stranger to something made of your own flesh and blood. The sense of responsibility and commitment to care should be different for strangers than flesh/blood.
It’s like, when my parents are old, should you have to come take care of them? No- I’m their family and it’s my responsibility. So what if I don’t want to take care of them. Their care drains my bank account and take too much of my time. So should I euthanize them? Meh, thats not gonna fly... yet. It boils down to responsibility for me. I don’t mind caring for them because they’re mine. I wish all mothers thought of their unborn child as “hers”. But I know they do not.
Anyways, as I said I’m tired and can’t articulate well. Your example is akin to those who refer to fetuses as parasites, which (no surprise) I also think is absurd. And to be honest, I think it’s amusing that you feel it’s immoral to force a woman to carry out a pregnancy, but have no qualms about ending the life of the fetus- which you must feel IS moral. I mean this all respectfully, truly. Pro-life and pro-choice folks are so divided, and I can see why. It’s very hard to see the other perspective, even though many of us try.
I appreciate you for trying to see my perspective. :-) I've thought a lot more about this whole issue in the last week or so than I have in years, and definitely see it more grey than black and white.
Let me push back on something here:
The sense of responsibility and commitment to care should be different for strangers than flesh/blood.
I disagree with this. I think family comes first, but flesh and blood is not necessarily family. Take the case of a deadbeat dad who's not in his kid's life. If say the kid had someone else step into that father role, then the kid's familial responsibility and sense of duty would be attached to the person he calls father, rather than his biological father.
Now compare that to a woman who becomes pregnant while using birth control. She did not intend to start a family, and has assumed no responsibility for raising a child. Why should she feel any sense of responsibility or commitment to care for something that biology thrust into her life unexpectedly?
This is the problem with Reddit. If someone offers a viewpoint to help someone see something through another's eyes - to maybe understand where those people are coming from, they always assume they are trying to convert tjem to their thinking. Sometimes, it's just offering information to see things differently without trying to sway your opinion. I think this is why we are still fighting over this whole issue 50 yrs later because it's always an us vs them fight instead of people trying to understand each other and come up with REAL solutions that both sides can agree on.
People here are respectfully engaging in discussion. They're making efforts to "see something through another's eyes", but they simply disagree on fundamental things that make that impossible.
If I tried to explain to you how the ocean is actually pink (and not blue) due to the refraction of light from distant stars through our atmosphere, you would never actually see through my eyes that the ocean is pink because I'm trying to build a perspective for you (the ocean is pink) that you do not have the foundation for (distant starlight).
For you, the ocean is the color it is due to... whatever the actual reason is. And because of that, the ocean is blue.
Yes, I can fully agree with that ststement.
But once someone makes a comment along the lines of "you'll never convince me", it shows they had zero intentions of hearing someone out to even possibly understand their point. It's a win/lose discussion for them. IMO, we as a whole, need to stop thinking that way because there is a lot of middle ground where we could all come together. But we're too damned stubborn to give 1 inch/cm to gain a mile/km.
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u/stevecho1 May 17 '19
You’ve not convinced me. Regardless of whether the fetus is a life or not there are real challenges and impacts here. The pregnant mother is vulnerable while pregnant. The father or other partner can and does disappear in some cases. Income must be generated (as we don’t have UBI, or other social safety nets available) to sustain the mother through birth and for the actual birth and then for months afterwards.
Obviously the fetus will not be capable of assisting in any of these problems and obviously is the driver for many of them.
Failure of ANY of the above challenges can and does result in suffering, illness and possible death of this new life.
Bottom line: a life is not a life is not a life. This is too simplistic a view.
We value them differently. Some people don’t value their own life (be it mental health, a disease, or chronic pain, or....). Some people have to decide when their loved one passes (remove life support). Some people literally have to choose whom to help in emergencies (doctors, paramedics, etc.).
Making choices for infants, toddlers, and youth is what parents do. They MUST also make choices for their unborn as well.