The only time an abortion should be considered morally acceptable is when the mother’s condition presents an imminent risk of death and the termination of the pregnancy (rather than they early delivery of the baby) is the only option to save the life of the mother.
To be clear, my definition of abortion may not match some people’s definition, or even some medical terminology. I have heard that some women have “abortion” on their medical record when what they had done would not meet a pro-lifer’s definition of abortion. I know of two women who had stillborn babies that were considered abortions. These mothers had their children tragically die in utero at stages in pregnancy in which, had things turned out differently, an emergency c-section could have saved them and they may have been viable babies. The procedure they needed following the deaths of their unborn babies were considered “abortions” on their medical record. If an unborn baby is not alive from natural causes, any procedure following that should not be called an abortion and I don’t consider it one even if the doctor has to or choses to call it an abortion.
A procedure to rectify an ectopic pregnancy is another instance in which the word abortion doesn’t apply. Generally speaking, the exception for the life of the mother should apply only to an unborn baby that is alive, is non-viable, whose continued presence in the mother’s womb is a danger to the life of the mother, AND it has no chance of becoming viable without a continued presence in the mother’s womb, which would present a danger to the life of the mother. Those cases are extremely rare. Like exceedingly rare. Much more likely is a baby that is viable but his continued presence in the mother is life threatening. In those cases, an abortion would not be allowed, only an early delivery (via natural means or cesarean section). According to obstetricians that perform natural deliveries, c-sections, and abortions, an emergency c-section is usually the safest option for a mother latering in pregnancy in imminent harm.
An embryo that came from an egg and sperm fertilized in a lab for the specific purpose of implantation, but is frozen and can be used later has not lost any viability and has not put anyone’s life in danger.
On the other hand…
An embryo in an ectopic pregnancy has no chance of becoming a viable baby and ectopic pregnancies are commonly deadly if left untreated.
Not sure where you’re seeing the inconsistency.
Artificial womb technology is progressing and hopefully that means someday we’ll be able to save the lives of embryos that unfortunately turn into ectopic pregnancies.
If the 12 year old’s pregnancy doesn’t fall into the exception I outlined above, it shouldn’t be terminated. Just because an experience is physically difficult, mentally traumatic, and it’s happening to someone very young doesn’t mean it justifies ending a life.
The more difficult question for the 12 year old is what to do after the baby is born. If a teenager that is going to have a hard time taking care of a baby has one, you would hope that the teenager’s parents are going to help out since they are already required to care for that teen until she is an adult. In the case of rape/incest, the parents of the teen are often responsible (in the case of a dad as offender, fully responsible) for the rape, so you wouldn’t want them helping to take care of the baby. Obviously, as a society we would prefer all young teens that aren’t capable of caring for a child put their baby up for adoption so that it can grow up in a home with a supportive mother and father, but when the teen refuses, what circumstances have to be present to force that solution. I don’t have an easy answer for that. It is a a very much case-by-case sort of thing.
If the 12 year old’s pregnancy doesn’t fall into the exception I outlined above, it shouldn’t be terminated. Just because an experience is physically difficult, mentally traumatic, and it’s happening to someone very young doesn’t mean it justifies ending a life.
Well, in the case of the 12 year old, I think it is probably an easy answer for you then, since it is inherently bad for their on-going physical development to even be pregnant, let alone give birth. Though maybe it isn’t easy for you, if it isn’t explicitly “life threatening” in all cases.
Sometimes there are only “bad answers” – but the less bad answer (i.e. most humane) would be to terminate the unwanted pregnancy and reduce trauma for the child as much as possible. To force a child to carry a pregnancy seems pretty monstrous.
I’d say forcing someone to stay alive who doesnt want to be alive seems pretty monstrous too. Yet there are laws specifically fobidding such people from escaping their trauma, to the point we’ll incarcerate people specifically to ensure they do not… And in those cases, unlike that 12 year old, there isnt even a third party being fatally affected.
I’d say forcing someone to stay alive who doesnt want to be alive seems pretty monstrous too. Yet there are laws specifically fobidding such people from escaping their trauma, to the point we’ll incarcerate people specifically to ensure they do not… And in those cases, unlike that 12 year old, there isnt even a third party being fatally affected.
So you’re saying that because some other inhumane law exists, that it supports the idea of a different inhumane law?
The epitome of self-righteous indignation is forcing women to carry to term against their will.
Roe does not establish that life doesn’t begin until birth, neither did I. It made a perfectly reasonable ruling regarding privacy in the first trimester, emphasis on health during the second, and allowing for restrictions in the third.
No dubious implication – the new laws being enacted in various states basically say that life begins at fertilization. They don’t make a distinction about viability or even the necessity to implant. It’s unbelievably stupid to consider any level of life at that stage.
It makes sense if you don’t equate a clump of cells to a child.
I find your thoughts pathologically insane. It shows an almost complete lack of empathy toward the victim of a horrendous crime, and a lack of understanding that carrying a forced pregnancy to term will be a constant life-long reminder of how it started and that it was not wanted. Not only was a woman violated by the rape, she’d then be getting violated again by society for an additional 9 months of her life, and then for the rest of her life just knowing that her child is out there somewhere. As a man I can only imagine the anguish and anger this could cause, but at least I can empathize and not force additional harm upon that woman. Maybe you’d change your mind if you yourself got physically violated, perhaps more than once to remind you of how it feels.
While I agree that taking out a fetus that died of natural causes is hardly an abortion, this procedure IS an abortion – it uses chemicals to terminate the fetus-forming process or surgery to take it out. Just because the pregnancy is not viable and will kill the mother doesn’t mean that the procedure is not an abortion. Also ectopic pregnancies are not as rare as you think, especially with assisted pregnancies like IVF being so common.
That’s completely mental. I would say you might reconsider if you could manage to imagine yourself being that 12-year-old girl in that situation, but based on what you wrote I doubt you have the capacity for such empathy.
Sure. But assisted suicide is a thing and it’s legal in some places. Not wanting to be alive isn’t straight-forward either – I think most of the time it’s caused by depression, which can be corrected and the person would be grateful. But in some other cases they really should not be forced to stay alive.
It’s easy for me because the 12-year old’s life isn’t threatened. I draw a clear line. If both mother and baby can live, they should live. If mother doesn’t want to sacrifice her LIFE for her baby, she shouldn’t have to. If mother doesn’t want to sacrifice her health (short of losing her life) for her baby, too bad. One person’s health isn’t more valuable than another person’s life.
Here’s the thing. You keep coming up with hypotheticals that you think prove your point, but they don’t mostly because they don’t exist. Females can give birth at 12 years old without dying. Females have been giving birth 9 months after they have been able to get pregnant since the beginning of time. Obviously it’s not physically ideal for females to have babies until they have completed puberty, but our law deals with that in other ways. The man who impregnated the underage female is guilty of rape. That is a pretty significant deterrent. Sure, we have to address uncommon situations when writing laws, but that isn’t the focus of the law. If that is the thing you want to focus on, you are clearly sensing the problem that abortion rights activists have when just trying to convince the electorate that over 50% of abortions should keep taking place when most people, if they knew the circumstances of the mother in those cases, would think pretty poorly of her choices.
The worst part of the trauma she experienced isn’t going anywhere considering what she went through in becoming pregnant. I’m saddened in your quest to reduce trauma, you aren’t also considering the trauma women go through after getting an abortion, as if every single woman that gets an abortion is always happy she did it all the time for the rest of her life.
How many 12 year old girls when told they have a baby inside them after being raped immediately jump to, “can I kill it?” I don’t think it’s 100%. So you may call carrying the baby to term “monstrous,” but some of us call the alternative “monstrous.” I can see where you are coming from and I don’t think you’re a terrible person for holding your views. But have you stopped to think for a second and tried to see where I’m coming from?
But have you stopped to think for a second and tried to see where I’m coming from?
You just wrote an entire page of text attempting to justify why you think it is OK for society to force a 12 year old child to have a baby, because you think life begins at conception.
Am I misrepresenting that?
I grant that the 12 year old example is intentionally extreme. But it does happen.
Rape of adults is certainly more common – but I don’t think you are really on the high ground to try and decide for rape victims whether they find it more traumatic to decide to terminate the pregnancy than carry a pregnancy to term and give birth to an unwanted baby. Seems like that should be up to the rape victim to make the choice for themselves.
But that wasn’t their job. Their job is the interpretation of the constitution and there was nothing in the constitution for the Justices to hang their hat on when creating the trimester standard. Liberal legal scholars including RBG acknowledge that and Casey acknowledged and abandoned it as well, unfortunately creating a new, even more unworkable and unconstitutional standard, which will also be erased by the likely forthcoming opinion.
In your view, when does the clump of cells become an unborn baby?
Talk to a victim of rape that didn’t become pregnant and ask them if they need something to be reminded of that experience.
This is where you and I differ. I see where you are coming from and even though I actually believe you are advocating the murder of an innocent human be allowed in some terrible circumstances, I don’t see you as a terrible person and would never insinuate harm or a terrible experience on you in order to get you to stop advocating something I believe is gravely immoral. I, on the other hand, am advocating that no one be killed (except maybe the rapist, but that’s a discussion for another day), and you suggest that maybe I should experience something terrible myself multiple times to get me to STOP advocating against death.
I never said ectopic pregnancies are rare.
These are fair things to talk about when forming laws. Semantics matters, but mostly understanding where each of us stands matters most. The reason I don’t call it an abortion is because pro-lifers are against abortions and aren’t against procedures to save mothers from deadly ectopic pregnancies. If you insist on calling it an abortion, fine. It will just have to be written in as an exception. I have never met another pro-lifer that said they don’t want women to receive the required medical care to preserve their lives during an ectopic pregnancy. Good luck finding one if you think they exist.
If I were to put myself in her shoes, I sure hope I would have the strength to eschew all the toxic people around me telling me to abort my baby for my own sake. I hope I would have the self-awareness and will to put it up for adoption so it could grow up with a supportive mother and father.
You are completely ignoring the terrible and sometimes abusive boyfriends, husbands, and parents that convince women to get abortions when they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s a very common thing. I’m sure you know that and just weren’t thinking about it when you made that comment.
No. You’re just using hyperbolic terms to describe the advocacy of a policy that prevents someone fom killing their own child.
I didn’t say one thing was more or less traumatic than the other. I’m just pointing out that killing a baby doesn’t take away trauma that happened as part of the baby coming into being and creates a whole heck of a lot of trauma for the baby.
Two people on here have now tried to get me to put myself in the shoes or think of the feelings of a woman/girl in a terrible situation that often results in them choosing an abortion thinking it would get me to see things differently. It really epitomises the disconnect between pro-choicers and pro-lifers.
Pro-lifers have all tried to put ourselves in that position and that is exactly why we believe what we do.
Do you guys think all pro-lifers are like fake “pro-life” republican politicians that vote for abortion restrictions and then pay for their mistresses to fly to NY and get an abortion? You do realize that some people actually believe in what they are fighting for any aren’t the same as hypocrite lying politicians willing to do whatever they can just to get reelected, right?
I didn’t say one thing was more or less traumatic than the other. I’m just pointing out that killing a baby doesn’t take away trauma that happened as part of the baby coming into being and creates a whole heck of a lot of trauma for the baby.
It certainly takes away at least 9 months of additional on-going trauma related to the rape.
My response wasn’t about their job, simply that my or Roe’s arguments were not
that glitch wrote in his response to me. I might even agree that the Roe decision should have been done by the legislature instead of the courts, but the rules themselves were not unreasonable at the time and IMO have withstood the test of time, i.e. still reasonable today.
When it can survive outside the womb. I think that’s ~26 weeks if you live near a NICU with the required equipment and staff, and probably closer to 37 weeks if you do not. And, in my view, the rights and health of the mother supercede those of the unborn baby until birth (though I suppose the mother should have the right to give up her rights). AND I’m not even mentioning the ability to pay for the NICU, which probably costs $5K/day. It’s fine if you’re insured, not so if you’re not.
I don’t follow, as I don’t think they want any reminders. Are we in agreement on this point?
Our opinions and positions are derived from things that seem perfectly logical to us, but that logic is derived from our life experience, circumstances, and knowledge. Your opinion is logical to you, because it is not informed by these other experiences and circumstances. For some people it is sufficient to simply imagine themselves in a situation to understand it better. But not everyone is capable of such imagination and empathy, which is why I think the only way to change your opinion is to actually experience it personally. I do not wish that upon you, only stating that you just might change your mind if it did happen to you. And if not you personally, then a lot of people who take the same position as you, including the politicians who vote to ban abortion then pay for their mistresses to have one.
Two people on here have now tried to get me to put myself in the shoes or think of the feelings of a woman/girl in a terrible situation that often results in them choosing an abortion thinking it would get me to see things differently. It really epitomises the disconnect between pro-choicers and pro-lifers.
Pro-lifers have all tried to put ourselves in that position and that is exactly why we believe what we do.
Do you guys think all pro-lifers are like fake “pro-life” republican politicians that vote for abortion restrictions and then pay for their mistresses to fly to NY and get an abortion? You do realize that some people actually believe in what they are fighting for any aren’t the same as hypocrite lying politicians willing to do whatever they can just to get reelected, right?
I would argue that pro-lifers are doing a really bad job of empathizing, then, if they all share your views on abortion for rape victims (and especially child rape victims)
No, I don’t think that normal everyday pro-lifers are by-and-large hypocrites in terms of flying their mistresses off somewhere for secret abortions. But I do find it hypocritical to put so much importance on the preservation of an undeveloped life (that has a non-trivial chance of self-aborting via miscarriage in the early stages) – over the well-being of already living people.
I honestly don’t think that pro-lifers have an actual religiously consistent argument for the extremity of the stance, either. There simply isn’t much in the way of biblical reference for it. (Judaism takes a stance that fetuses are special, but NOT of equal value to a human life, and Islam allows for abortions up to four months, as they believe a fetus gets a soul at 120 days exactly)
That said, we don’t live in a theocracy, so there isn’t a great deal of justification for the government to prevent a medical procedure elected between a competent adult and their medical provider, during at least the first trimester.
Nonsense. It merely acknowledges that there is more than one stakeholder in the equation. While virtually every one of your arguments are entirely selfish - this is what I want for myself, so dammit I better get it!
I know, my body my choice, right? Well there’s two bodies involved, both deserving of that choice. However, while you are arguing based on how you prefer things to be, the other just wants to not be dead.
Tell that to all the mom’s who have suffered involuntary abortions, ie miscarriages. Go ahead and try telling them that since their baby was less than 37 weeks they need to just get over it because it wasn’t really a baby.
People can empathize yet still reach a different conclusion than you. I’d argue that [most] pro-lifers are in fact empathizing with everyone involved, while it’s you who is limiting your empathy to only one side of the equation.
The first trimester is an arbitrary timeframe, which is only chosen because it’s a reasonably round number (as far as being 1/3 of a pregnancy). Using it only shows there is no tangible basis to the argument being made.
Where did I use the word child interchangeably with the word zygote and embryo? I specifically remember using the word embryo when we were talking about embryos.
But we don’t make that determination based on time. If you’re going to put time into your “is reducing trauma worth it?” in your equation, you have to be honest. Is reducing someone’s trauma by 9 months equivalent to reducing someone LIFE by the number of years the average person is expected to live? I would argue it’s not.
Yes it was. You referred to the rule that Roe created. Their job was to rule on the constitutionality of of the Texas law at the time. They took it upon themselves to create rules around abortion. You claim that the rules are reasonable. The question of whether or not something is constitutional doesn’t hinge on whether its reasonable or not. Ask 100 people if its reasonable to criminalize misgendering someone on YouTube and you’ll get quite a few answers. Ask the 9 justices on the supreme court if that’s constitutional and you’ll get a unanimous “No.”
So none of the other developmental milestones matter? When it has a heartbeat? When mom can feel it move? When you can tell its a boy or a girl? When it has tiny little fingers with tiny little finger nails? When it can feel pain?
You couldn’t have stopped with “when it can survive?” You had to go put your foot in your mouth about when you think that is without even googling? How have you come up with such a staunch viewpoint when you don’t even know at what age a baby has reached viability?
I was about to ask you why you made the distinction of NICU requirement and cost as if the age a clump of cells becomes a baby is dependent on where the mother is located and how much money she has, but I see that’s not actually the determining factor for you on what constitutes an unborn baby. The ONLY thing that matters when determining if a clump of cells has become an unborn baby to you is whether or not the mother wants it to live. I’m honestly surprised by this answer coming from you. You so often look to objective science when arguing your position, yet completely throw it out the window and go with the most subjective measurement possible when it comes to this topic. Why is that?
But what would happen if I didn’t change my mind? Considering the fact that there are women who are raped that don’t chose to abort their babies, that’s well within the realm of possibility. Does that mean those women should go around telling people like you that maybe you’d change your mind if you got physically violated, perhaps more than once, but still thought it was your responsibility not to kill the individual living human being that resulted from that violation?
You can put different people in difficult situations over and over again and maybe they would hold to their principles and maybe they wouldn’t, and maybe they’d switch back and forth. Its impossible to know about the other person and its impossible to know about yourself. So I honestly don’t see the point in making that suggestion in an argument unless you are just trying to accuse the person your’re speaking to of being a hypocrite, but just not yet being guilty of it. If that’s not what you’re doing when you say that to me, fine. But that sure is how it comes off.
What I said was in response to your claim that a rape victim having their rapist’s baby would be a constant reminder. I’m just pointing out that rape victims don’t need to have a baby from that rape in order to remember that they were raped. Having a baby from a rape doesn’t necessarily make that rape any more memorable and not having a baby from a rape doesn’t make that rape any less memorable. So your argument, that a rape victim should be allowed to kill her unborn baby because doing so will help her forget her rape, doesn’t hold water.
But to swing back to your original post on this, I once again feel the need to point out how little you have tried to understand my view based on the arguments you are making. You called my thoughts pathologically insane when they are clearly completely logical when you look at my premise. You keep harping on empathy for the victim of rape, but you refuse to acknowledge the fact that when a woman is impregnated during a rape, I see an innocent victim of rape and an innocent baby. And to abort that innocent baby is creating a second innocent victim that we should also have empathy for. I recognize that you don’t see that innocent unborn baby as a victim, so I don’t call you pathologically insane for not showing empathy towards it. Yet you do that to me. Why are you having trouble following the logic here?
My apologies. Rereading that paragraph, it indeed looks like I said that. That was not what I meant. The first sentence about ectopic pregnancies was meant to stand on its own. Its a specific medical condition that I was naming and it is indeed quite common. I’m not saying that because I went and looked it up after you pointed it out. I knew it then and just did a bad job of separating the two thoughts.
The condition that is rare is a living non-viable baby that can’t become viable without imposing a lethal danger to the mother (this qualifier isn’t necessary for an ectopic pregnancy because ectopic implantations can’t become viable under any circumstances). Even more rare is the living baby whose continued presence in the womb is a danger to the mother that isn’t better served by an emergency delivery rather than an abortion.
See above. When empathizing, we also empathize with another party that you don’t believe deserves empathy. That may seem unempathetic to you since you don’t acknowledge the other party we are also empathizing with.
The “well-being” of someone already born is important. The right to LIFE of a person not yet born is more important. Being alive trumps being well. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather my wife and I be unwell than me be well and her be dead. I’m not sure where you find the hypocrisy in that logic.
We’ve gone back and forth on this for a while and I don’t remember once appealing to my faith or the bible while trying to explain any of my views, so I’m not quite sure where this little diatribe is coming from. Based on how unscientific the viewpoints of many on the pro-choice side are, I think it’s much more fair to characterize the “abortion isn’t immoral up to the point of birth” stance as a religious stance than the pro-life stance that human life begins at conception. There’s a lot more science supporting life begins at conception and zero science that the 3-6 inch trip down the birth canal turns a clump of cells unworthy of protection into a baby worthy of the right to life. Yet that seems to be what quite a few people on the pro-choice side say. I don’t know who the god of the abortion-on-demand religion is, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s the god of sex-without-consequences.
Yes, I would want to not be raped. Oh no, how terrible it is to want that.
Yes, as much as any other virus.
That has nothing to do with what I wrote. The loss of a wanted future baby is devastating even if at the time it was technically just a clump of cells. But the risk of a pregnancy is known, most women don’t even announce their pregnancy until like 5 months in, at which point it becomes much more likely to get to term.