Nothing like a good abortion discussion to get me out of studying.

Izzy,

You must have read wrong, I have never said, nor do I believe, that the mother should die to avoid an abortion. In case you missed it the first time, let the record be corrected with this. As far as who should decide, that’s easy, her doctor. If her life is truly in danger, and abortion is the only option to save her life, than an abortion should be allowed to save her life.

Again Izzy, you’re response just gives me your limits, but doesn’t explain why you have those limits. I gave you my reasons above, now I want your reasons. You write,

I think that if the fetus is in a stage where it cannot survive (and this would be a gray area which would need to be adjusted to reflect current medical advances) then it should be ok to have an abortion.

Why should abortion not be allowed if the fetus could survive outside the mother? Please explain why, not just restate your beliefs. Afterall, even if the fetus can survive outside of the mothers body, by making abortion illegal at that point you are still, to use your words, “forcing a woman to carry an unwanted fetus then child and undergo the whole pregnancy phase of life to make someone else happy” So why in this case is this okay?

Remember Izzy, I don’t want your limits, I want to know why you have those limits. To simply say they are ‘personal’, and you don’t want to give them, is to avoid the question, and why even have an abortion discussion at all if both sides don’t have to give their rationale for having their limits.

I eagerly await your response.

I never understood what you were asking for and tried my best to explain what I thought was fair and what I thought the limits should be.. You kept trying to imply that I had some hidden reasoning behind it.. My beliefs are personal.. not some generated from a pamphlet or derived from someone elses beliefs directly or indirectly…

I think that if the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman carrying the fetus.. then abortion should be an available option in ALL cases…

I think that if the fetus is in a stage where it cannot survive (and this would be a gray area which would need to be adjusted to reflect current medical advances) then it should be ok to have an abortion.

If a pregnancy is achieved through rape, incest, or other methods deemed illegal.. then abortion should be an available option.

I think that forcing a woman to carry an unwanted fetus then child and undergo the whole pregnancy phase of life to make someone else happy.. is wrong. Mistakes happen.. (an this is not counting illegal forms of achieving pregnancy) and yes if women/men abuse the system, they should be held accountable.. how? This is where we should focus and make it an unwanted option. Just like the 3 strikes law in california or the driving under the influence law… Deter would be abortion seeking woman away.. but do not remove the option all together.

Removing abortion as an option will have an impact against the social services and the legal system… if you wish to ignore them by wearing tunnel vision goggles then be it… but reality still exists and those issues will arise.. and yet you have never or anyone who is in the anti-abortion community ever addressed. You can educate everyone all you want.. It’s a mute point if they don’t listen. How do you enforce them to listen? You cannot.

Well I’ll be damned, imagine the chances of us bumping into each other all the way over here. If I remember correctly, in our last abortion discussion, you refused to give your reasons for wanting to limit abortion. I would give you mine, but when pressed, you wouldn’t give me yours. You would only say that it is because you personally don’t like them at certain stages, but won’t explain why. Do you still respond the same way? If so, than based on that response, I could equally say the same thing, and this discussion would go nowhere. So if we want this discussion to go somewhere, we both have to give reasons for our views, just as I have to defend and give mine and can’t simply resort to “because I personally don’t like them at that stage”, you also have to give reasons for your views, and can’t simply resort to “because I personally don’t like them at that stage”. So again I ask you Izzy, what are your reasons why you want to limit abortion?

With that out of the way, allow me to respond to what you said, and give you my reasons why I believe as such, you write,

You have made it clear in previous posts (haven’t read all of the above) that you are against abortions which would save the woman’s life. You feel she should just be let to die… period

Where did I say this? This is not true, and in fact most (all?) pro-lifers make exception in cases where the mothers life is truly in danger. So I do believe in allowing ‘abortion’ if the mothers life is truly at risk, but this is not really an ‘abortion’ in the normal meaning of the word. When the mothers life is truly at risk, the goal is to save both lives, but because saving the babies life will cause the death of the mother and in doing so also put the babies life at risk, it is better to save the mothers life so as to increase life, and the chances of someone living. It is like a medic in war who only has one life saving syringe yet two patients, he is going to choose to use that syringe on the patient that has the highest chance of living, and in this case, that would be the mother.

Contrast that to what abortion really means, in an abortion, the mother is not going into the abortion clinic to save a life, but for the sole purpose of killing her unborn child. So in one case your goal is to save lives, in the other your goal is to end them.

Second, you ask, Our social services system (welfare and food stamps) is already overloaded.. who is gonna support all the abandoned children..

All of these questions are secondary to the issue of abortion. If abortion is wrong, than it should be stopped regardless of how packed our current welfare system is, or how expensive it would be. To argue in favor of abortion based on how expensive it would be to support all of the children that may result, would be like arguing in favor of slavery based on how expensive it would be to re-educate all of the slaves, or support such an uneducated citizenry. Clearly, as in the case of slavery, the expense to society is secondary to the much greater issue of abortion.

Izzy, you keep saying that I “always dodged this one too” over and over again, yet those who remember our discussion on abortion would say that it is you who dodges questions, not me. So since I directly answered all of your questions above, and did not ‘dodge’ any of them, can you please now tell me WHY (I want to know why you have your limits, not what those limits are) you believe abortion should have certain limits? Why shouldn’t abortion be allowed for any reason at all, at any stage of pregnancy whatsoever?

I trust that you will answer these questions directly, and not dodge them.

I’m sorry but knowing that your stance is that ALL abortions are wrong and should be done away with is clearly a close minded type of mentality.. considering you are not affected in any way directly.

Too bad our old arguements are no longer available since DD’s site got raped and is now gone.

But just to toss in a lil tid bit for the heck of it..

You have made it clear in previous posts (haven’t read all of the above) that you are against abortions which would save the woman’s life. You feel she should just be let to die… period.. but you never explained how you would cope with such a huge negative backlash from that.. considering in our surrent society.. most households require both adults in a household (assumeing they are married and all) are income providers.. due such a harsh law implication.. to not abort and well let die anyways (the fetus would die without a living woman) both the fetus and the woman would cause a very negative result for her (the woman) family being her husband, already born children, parents, etc…

Also another negative result that would happen.. and you’ve always dodged this one too..

Our social services system (welfare and food stamps) is already overloaded.. who is gonna support all the abandoned children.. you can’t force a mother who delivers a baby to keep it… or support it.. What put her in jail.. our jail/prison system is overloaded too (if you didn’t notice) and it would be worse.. considering the would be illegal abortion giving docs would be there too.. and their nurses.. and what about he foster homes? do yu see a decrease in their head count?

I agree with you think we need to maybe give the abortion thing a revision.. and maybe tighten up the requirements (due to current and evolving technology and medical advances which would allow a fetus to survive if removed from a woman at an earlier stage in devlopement) but to remove the ability to choose all together has too much a negative affect which overshadows any possible gains you and your group is seeking.

The benefit of a few should never outway the benefit of the masses.

your arguement is designed to funnel the debate
narrow it down to one fundamental arguement
and ignore all other input, perspective, experience or concern
only ONE attribute of the debate is legitimate and the approach is intended to isolate and distinguish this attribute from any other

fundamentalism is radicalism, and like all forms of radicalism
it deserves inspection and has value when considered among other logic processes – in fact i believe radicalism is provacative and incites necessary debate
but is no-less a dangerously exclusive and mongering logic and method if it defines the parameters within which any dialogue or debate can occur

by ignoring all other attributes and realities that do not fit into the ‘box’ / parameters created by fundemental logic, the benefit of dialogue and debate is irraticated.

i could go onward from here and continue (more thoroughly for that matter) to address each one of your points and references as countless others have before me, there is enough material out there to provide us each side of this arguement because the mandate of this arguement has been set and continues to be compelled by fundamentalist logic over and over and over again

what i am arriving at is, that there is no benefit to the nature of this debate

the benefit and purpose of debate is to include all views and logic processes, experiences, implications and consequences with the outcome being that common concerns are factored in, diverse concerns are addressed and solutions are presented that (through the course and process of the information sharing) come to exhibit and engender the most of the many implicated and/or involved in the issue at hand

a debate that is reduced to a fundamental fragment of the issue, is less likely to result in solutions but in the case that it does it will be a solution that represents the fewest and the least

if we (herein) debating the issue of abortion outside that box, with the purpose of constructivism, the whole debate would have curtailed into a discussion about the potentials in the proposal of regulated vascectomies – because this proposal engenders and meets the concerns of both of us (involved at this time in the debate)

however, solutions do not appear to be the purpose of your need to debate the issue – so that means that i’m engaged in a counter-constructive and (sorry but) meaningless debate

though i highly appreciate your intellegence and that of those who provided input throughout this string, and i respect that anyone who would engage with this debate obviously has an interest in hearing a variety of views – the fact is that we could on for years in the box you have created surrounding these issues and all the while bounce up against those walls without ever dismantling the barriers between semantic football and progressive comprehension that leads to new and gratifying solutions

the debate we are now having is merely a replication of a debate
the recounting of a ping-pong match confined in a small (very small) room
and does not attempt to expand or transcend the conundrum that is confined within the walls of that box

i am more interested in having a new mandate and compelling reason to have this debate… i am more interested in learning something new and arriving at new ways of thinking about things… i am more interested in dynamic debates that work toward solutions – than i am in arguements that aim soley to prove that one viewpoint is more ‘correct’ than another

why not assume that the ‘two camps’ you say we represent have common interests and start there?

for now i MUST go be a responsible student, parent, individual – and blog off

my regards,

i won’t have time to reply to this; mid-terms
but to say that i’ve addressed each of your points
and the bottom line is: you “believe” in a certain perspective
no matter what the complicated and diverse issues surrounding the issue are
and this makes the whole debate one that is anything BUT directed toward problem solving

u say murder must defined, i say it has been, then u say it must still be defined, and i say it already has been… questioning law is good, yes… but the extent to which this particular law has been examined is beyond that of most any other ever implimented – because the diversity of what people believe is overtly implimented in the investigation… the subject of whether this is murder of not has been and con’t to be thoroughly re-investigated is not neglected nor are such laws arbitrarily constructed

one more thing: when comparing pregnancy issues to that of slavery, look up the definition of slavery, look up the process of pregnancy (not to speak of parenting) and tell me that the definition isn’t most similar to the relationship that women have with pregnancy… the foetus is not enslaved by the mother – precisely the opposite is biologically, psychologically and emotionally true. The foetus dependency is (to a large extend) not one that the host voluntarily agrees to, the foetus TAKES and the host body involuntarily provides. if the health of the mother is in question, the foetus will in fact suffer LAST as it is automatically provided what it is needed FIRST.

its not a sufficient (logically) comparison or metaphor to start with – but since it is paramount to your view it seemed to warrent comment.

i’ll come back when there is more time to

a bientot…

Sorry for taking so long, I have a cold, and have been using alot of my free time to rest. But I did find time to respond, and I appreciate your patience.

Feminism” has a history linked with women’s activism from the late 19th century to the present (regardless of the examples you have noted)….And yes, the feminist movement has a diverse and culminative history – but we can save that for another debate.

I agree with what you say above, my only point here is that the early feminists, specifically the ones that fought for the right of women to vote, were pro-life, not pro-choice.

Shorter to the point is that even tribal societies had abortion methods, norms and ethics. Written and even pictorial histories portray various abortion methods – and of the countless billions of women that have carried that ‘option’ forward throughout known history, how many of them can u confidently stick into the ‘sanctity camp’ or ‘choice camp’… ?

I don’t see why you bring this up. For example, lets again say we were discussing slavery, would you consider it an argument in favor of slavery for the proponents of slavery, the pro-choice advocates, to (correctly) argue that slavery has happened in all continents and have included practically all people in one way or another?

The issue came to public debate when the issues of legally regulating the function and morality of women’s bodies arose. This arose out of and due to sexism. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that. You and others may not generally subscribe sexist viewpoints, but the debate and legal conundrum has its origins there. You will be pleased to know that the western, contemporary feminist movement includes bioethics and the ‘status of the foetus’.

Oh great, the “I have been oppressed” argument. Yes, you are right ricia, this all probably has to do with ‘the mans’ ultimate goal of controlling women, and keeping them bear foot and pregnant, working in the kitchen all day.

To say that abortion has always happened and it wasn’t until sexism got involved that it became wrong, is about as narrow as someone saying that slavery has always happened and it wasn’t until the anti-property rights advocates got involved that it became wrong.

I’ll stick to the ‘murder is always wrong’ argument.

Yes, I would be against infanticide as a general rule, if I were in the position of needing to so do. Notwithstanding (and as I said) an embryo is not an infant.

But why ricia, don’t you realize how hard it is for a mother to raise a child? How high a toll it takes on her? What about the mothers ‘right to choose’, aren’t you being a bit moralistic, or to use your words, “the law and moral authority are subjugating that woman’s life to an idea”? Aren’t you really just trying to oppress women? Infants have been killed throughout civilizations since tribal times, as well. How dare you force your morality on the mother!!!

As my comments show, it is whether or not this is murder that is of paramount importance, and only after that is decided can one move to other discussions of oppression and so forth. So lets stick to the core issues, and leave all that secondary stuff out, shall we?

An embryo is cellular material that is inherently and inseparably connected to the flesh and vitals of its host, and can be spontaneously expelled / aborted without cause but for that which is occurring on a cellular level. It is (by all definitions) a different form, a seed.

Aren’t we all, scientifically speaking, cellular material as well? And how does being “inherently and inseparably connected to the flesh and vitals of its host” deem anyone a non-person? Doesn’t this go back to my original post, the pro-choicers belief in “Might Makes Right”? In addition, the infant is also very dependent on the mother for survival, and throughout history and in several countries, say for example Africa, it is highly likely that the infant will also spontaneously die, yet you still classify the infant in the same category as you do an adult (person). If you accept this comparing an infant to an adult, than why can’t I do it comparing an embryo to an infant? Certainly the gap with dependency and spontaneous death is alot smaller when comparing an embryo to an infant than it is when comparing an infant to an adult (especially in underdeveloped countries), yet you allow the (large) gap when you compare an infant to an adult, so by your logic, I should be allowed the same thing when comparing an embryo to an infant, hence the personhood of the embryo.

In addition, all scientists would also consider an infant a ’seed’ of an adult as well, the infant does not currently posses the functions that make one a person. Now, granted, the embryo may not look like an infant, but the infant doesn’t look like the adult either. We each look different at various stages of our life, and that is expected, but the point here is that the stage of our life does not make us person or non-person, it is being a human being that makes us a person.

Remember ricia, to use your own words, “firstly, where the concept of a spirit is not raised in debate among scientists, they all agree that a” infant is not a person. In other words, while you personally may consider the infant to be a person, the very scientist that justify the killing of embryos would not consider the infant a person either. So your justification for classifying the infant a person, or atleast one who is not to be killed, is just like my justification for deeming an embryo a person. Thus, your dilema.

The very same Dr’s and scientist you quote to support abortions, the ones that classify the embryo as a non-person, also classify the infant as a non-person. So, like the pro-lifers predicted years ago, your justification for abortion must necessarily go too far, it must necessarily justify infanticide. As Professor Of Philosophy at Boston College, Peter Kreeft said, “I know of no argument justifying abortion that does not also justify infanticide”. Many in the science community fully accept the logical conclusions of their new quality of life ethic, and do not find it morally repugnant to kill an infant, you obviously do.

I’d also like to take a moment here to address this concept you have of consistency. Do you take prescription pain killers? Are you a vegetarian? Do you wear leather? Do you walk through flowerbeds? Do you own a car? Do you buy products made through slave-labour or made of plastic? Do you support the preservation of swamp land and rain forests? Did you vote Republican even if it supported the ongoing murder of faceless humans across the globe? Because these (among many countless other) habits and choices contribute to the death of living matter. Is this not contradictory when residing in the “sanctity of life” camp?

If abortion is murder, it is of the worse kind. Not only is it the direct intentional killing of an innocent person, but it involves both, the most innocent of people (children) and is done by the one who should care the most for those innocents (the mother). As Mother Theresa said, “If abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong”. So when I say consistency, the better question is why do people who, for example, support animal rights, why aren’t they also pro-life, not the other way around. Or to say it another way, you can be against killing infants, but that doesn’t necessarily make you against killing chickens, but if you’re against killing chickens, that should necessarily make you against killing infants.

Since, a number of cases have raised the rights and the interests of the fetus in being born healthy over the autonomy and wishes of the mother. Some have also employed the Roe v. Wade ruling to do so. Most sensationally, that of children being entitled to sue the mother for experiences while en vitro, and forced caesarean cases.

One could turn this around, and say that abortion laws have given handicapped children the right to sue their mothers for refusing to abort them when they could have. In fact, France just allowed this very thing to take place. So this threat does not seem to be a pro-life or pro-choice specific issue.

Joan Mahoney points out that no court has ever made an order attempting to enforce a competent adult to donate an organ.

The ‘being forced to donate an organ to someone else’ argument doesn’t cut it in the abortion discussion. I’ve blogged on this before, but here, allow me to paste the relevant material here.

…if I take your response to its logical levels, it would be fatal to family morality, which has as one of its central beliefs that an individual has special and filial obligations to his offspring and family that he does not have to other persons.

Philosopher Christina Sommers writes:

For it [the volunteerist thesis] means that there is no such thing as filial duty per se, no such thing as the special duty of mother to child, and generally no such thing as morality of special family or kinship relations. All of which is contrary to what people think. For most people think that we do owe special debts to our parents even though we have not voluntarily assumed our obligations to them. Most people think that what we owe to our children does not have its origin in any voluntary undertaking, explicit or implicit, that we have made to them. And “preanalytically,” many people believe that we owe special consideration to our siblings even at times when we may not feel very friendly to them . . . . The idea that to be committed to an individual is to have made a voluntarily implicit or explicit commitment to that individual is generally fatal to family morality. For it looks upon the network of felt obligation and expectation that binds family members as a sociological phenomenon that is without presumptive moral force. The social critics who hold this view of family obligation usually are aware that promoting it in public policy must further the disintegration of the traditional family as an institution. But whether they deplore the disintegration or welcome it, they are bound in principle to abet it.(Sommers, “Philosophers Against the Family,” 744-45.)

In addition to being anti-family, it also has other problems. For example,

Furthermore, assuming that there is such a thing as a special filial obligation, a principle that does not have to be voluntarily accepted in order to have moral force, it is not obvious that the unborn entity in ordinary circumstances (that is, with the exception of when the mother’s life is in significant danger) does not have a natural prima facie claim to her mother’s body. There are several reasons to suppose that the unborn entity does have such a natural claim.

a. The unborn entity is a human being who by her very nature is dependent on her mother, for this is how human beings are at this stage of their development.

In other words, pregnancy, unlike removing someone’s kidney to save the life of another, is a fact of nature, it is such a normal occurence in everyday life that it lays certain responsibilities on the people involved. We are not asking the mother to do something out of the ordinary (donate a kidney), we are asking her to do something that is done everyday in society, to be a good mother.

b. This same entity, when she becomes a newborn, has a natural claim upon her parents to care for her, regardless of whether her parents wanted her (see the story of the irresponsible father – below). This is why we prosecute child abusers, people who throw their babies in trash cans, and parents who abandon their children. Although it should not be ignored that pregnancy and childbirth entail certain emotional, physical, and financial sacrifices on the part of the pregnant woman, these sacrifices are also endemic of parenthood in general (which ordinarily lasts much longer than nine months), and do not seem to justify the execution of troublesome infants and younger children whose existence entails a natural claim to certain financial and bodily goods that are under the ownership of their parents. If the unborn entity is fully human, why should the unborn’s natural prima facie claim to her parents’ goods differ before birth?

As Stephen Schwarz points out, “the mother “does have an obligation to take care of her child, to sustain her, to protect her, and especially, to let her live in the only place where she can now be protected, nourished, and allowed to grow, namely the womb.”(Stephen D. Schwarz, The Moral Question of Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990), 118. )

I am not saying that the unborn entity has an absolute natural claim to her mother’s body, but simply that she has a prima facie natural claim. For one can easily imagine a situation in which this natural claim is outweighed by other important prima facie values, such as when a pregnancy significantly endangers the mother’s life. Since the continuation of such a pregnancy would most likely entail the death of both mother and child, and since it is better that one human should live rather than two die, terminating such a pregnancy via abortion is morally justified.

Things become even more problematic when you factor in that in most cases the mother had something to do with the pregnancy herself:

Suppose a couple has a sexual encounter that is fully protected by several forms of birth control short of surgical abortion (condom, the Pill, IUD) but nevertheless results in conception. Instead of getting an abortion, the mother of the conceptus decides to bring it to term, although the father is unaware of this decision. After the birth of the child, the mother pleads with the father for child support. Because he refuses, she takes legal action. Although he took every precaution to avoid fatherhood, thus showing that he did not wish to accept such a status, according to nearly all child-support laws in the United States he would still be obligated to pay child support precisely because of his relationship to this child. As Michael Levin points out, “All child-support laws make the parental body an indirect resource for the child. If the father is a construction worker, the state will intervene unless some of his calories he expends lifting equipment go to providing food for his children.”(Michael Levin, review of Life in the Balance by Robert Wennberg, Constitutional Commentary 3 (Summer 1986): 511.)

But this obligatory relationship is not based strictly on biology, for this would make sperm donors morally responsible for children conceived by their seed. Rather, the father’s responsibility for his offspring stems from the fact that he engaged in an act, sexual intercourse, that he fully realized could result in the creation of another human being, although he took every precaution to avoid such a result. This is not an unusual way to frame moral obligations, for we hold drunk people whose driving results in manslaughter responsible for their actions, even if they did not intend to kill someone prior to becoming intoxicated. Such special obligations, although not directly undertaken voluntarily, are necessary in any civilized culture in order to preserve the rights of the vulnerable, the weak, and the young, who can offer very little in exchange for the rights bestowed upon them by the strong, the powerful, and the postuterine.

In the same fashion, there is a certain responsibility tied to the actions of the mother.

So if abortion laws are really just sexist laws against women, than by that same logic child support laws are really just sexist laws against men. Are you with me in fighting against child support laws, being that you support gender equality and all?

As you must be fully aware, an extension of legal rights to the foetus above the rights of the mother will reposition women as vassal possessions wherein the lifestyle, diet, and conduct of the mother can also be regulated, monitored and criminalized under the same pretenses. This is not as simple an issue as you continue to insist it is.

This is also not true. Beckwith writes, “My view on this is the same as the one proposed by Schwarz in “Moral Question of Abortion”. Schwarz draws an analogy with the “born child [who] has a right to good health care, proper diet, protection from harmful effects.” He points out, however, that although “to some extent this right can be enshrined in law, to a large extent it cannot. We cannot have police at the family dinner table ensuring that the child gets all the nourishing food and vitamins he needs. Nor can he be protected from all harmful effects in the home, parallel to the harmful effects for the preborn child from his mother’s smoking[or drinking, or whatever diet]“. Yet, Schwarz concludes, “surely the born child’s right to live must be enshrined in the law, and given the same legal protection the rest of us enjoy. Exact the same applies to that child before he is born”.

In addition, this doesn’t help you, since even pro-choice advocates claim the fetus is a potential person. So whatever the mother does to the child, regardless of your position on abortion, will still affect the child after birth. In other words, even with laws that allow abortion, one could still make laws that state that if a mother is going to have the child, she should watch what she eats, smokes, and drinks, etc. So if this is a slippery slope argument, it is a slippery slope argument for both of us, since we both agree that after birth the child is a person.

As it has best been said: It is ludicrous to believe that we can, within a single moral framework, answer to both individual and collective responsibility.” – Or something to that effect. Do me a favour and remember to go back to the comments that refer to this being a complex human issue? This debate has been quite typically reduced…. poo.

I still completely disagree, I see it as a simple question of, is murder right or wrong, simple as that. Just like the slavery debates of the past, while the people at the time may have thought slavery was more complicated than it really was, pro-choicers giving historical precedence for slaves, arguing that abolishing slavery will wreck havoc on private property laws, etc, in the end, it was a simple question of whether owning another human being is right or wrong, simple as that.:)