Abortion II

[Nurvingiel]

Let's make sure we're keeping things friendly by remembering to be sensitive towards other people's views.

Please don't call anyone (groups or individuals) names. Also, please remember that not all pro-choice or all pro-life people agree with each other; let's avoid statements that are too generalized.

Please remember it is not helpful to mention arguments you have heard outside this thread. Unless you're linking to an article where that person's opinion can be read by everyone, hearsay is just going to confuse matters.

Very few boards could have a thread like this, so you should all be commended for your respectful debating. Let's just keep it friendly.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Mari

Just a side note and slightly off topic:
I just love how it gets restated that women know the risks when they have sex and that they'll have to face the consequences, but no one talks about the men. They know the risks, but if they are the irresponsible kind, they don't have to face any consequences whatsoever.
The burden of this consequence in too many cases falls on the woman, her family or the state.

Sorry, it's off topic, but it keeps striking me as odd.

I think it just boils down to that a man can run away and not have the baby growing inside of him, while a woman can run away and the baby invariably follows if she's pregnant...

IOW, the man can avoid the results of having sex if there is a pregnancy (and many cads do); the woman has to deal with the results of having sex if there is a pregnancy.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

IOW, the man can avoid the results of having sex if there is a pregnancy (and many cads do); the woman has to deal with the results of having sex if there is a pregnancy.

Kinda makes it easier to appreciate old civilizations that had laws requiring the lout to marry the woman he's impregnated. That shaved off a good deal of his legal irresponsibility.


Nice to see you posting around the debate threads again, by the way! It's been a while. Has Real Life been butting in?

[Rían]

I'd like to shave off a good deal more than his legal irresponsibility ....

[Tessar]

^ What she said.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Kinda makes it easier to appreciate old civilizations that had laws requiring the lout to marry the woman he's impregnated.

Well, the only thing worse than being forced to have a baby would be being forced to marry the lout who impregnated you.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

I'd like to shave off a good deal more than his legal irresponsibility ....

Gaffer, I'm glad we agree on so much. I'll respond to what you said eventually . . .

Same goes for IR .

Sis, I was rather thinking that the guy should be required to marry the girl if she wants him. Sorry for leaving that last part out.

Though truly, sex outside of wedlock is irresponsible behavior for both people involved, and there should be consequences for both, for the preservation of society. If there aren't any laws against it, the behavior proliferates and becomes culturally acceptable, and millions die of STDs and millions more through being aborted . . . it's pretty sick what sexual immorality has resulted in.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Sex inside of wedlock is still an issue in the abortion debate.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Gaffer, I'm glad we agree on so much. I'll respond to what you said eventually . . .

Same goes for IR .

Sis, I was rather thinking that the guy should be required to marry the girl if she wants him. Sorry for leaving that last part out.

Though truly, sex outside of wedlock is irresponsible behavior for both people involved, and there should be consequences for both, for the preservation of society. If there aren't any laws against it, the behavior proliferates and becomes culturally acceptable, and millions die of STDs and millions more through being aborted . . . it's pretty sick what sexual immorality has resulted in.

I'm pretty sure the behaviour proliferates even when there are laws against it.

[Mari]

*points out that there was a lot of raping of servant girls and 'keeping' mistresses going on back in the days*

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Sex inside of wedlock is still an issue in the abortion debate.

Married people desiring abortion is not likely anywhere near so common. However, I agree, it still is an issue in the debate.

Mari, yes, I know that servant girls getting raped did happen back then at times. I doubt that the rape rates were any worse than they are nowadays, though . In modern times, they're horrifyingly high.

Gwaimir, I agree that it happens even if illegal. Especially if it's culturally acceptable while technically illegal. It's much less common if it's both illegal and culturally unacceptable, though it still happens. Conservative Muslim countries like Oman sometimes have extremely low STD rates because sexual immorality is both illegal and culturally unacceptable. Not because contraceptives are readily available.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Lief Erikson

Married people desiring abortion is not likely anywhere near so common.

Humm. I see the conclusion, just not the evidence. On a per capita basis, I haven't seen any recent numbers.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

Humm. I see the conclusion, just not the evidence. On a per capita basis, I haven't seen any recent numbers.

Here we go:

Originally Posted by CDC

For women whose marital status was adequately reported, 78% of women who obtained abortions were known to be unmarried (Table 11).

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5212a1.htm

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

I wasn't clear enough in wording my question. My question would be more like "Unmarried women are x% of the reproductive age population. Married women are y%. Are women who obtained legal abortions disproportionally unmarried?"

But you must be cheered to see the abortion rate declining...even though I haven't noticed the general immorality rate has.

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

And, speaking of the general immorality rate.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/411212

I'd bet a lot of these women would have something to say about choices...if they could. If your choice is between being murdered and having an abortion, well, that's a tough place to be in.

[Mari]

Sis, your article won't work. Can you perhaps copy the text?

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Originally Posted by Mari

Sis, your article won't work. Can you perhaps copy the text?

Homicide a Leading Cause of Death in Pregnant Women

New York (MedscapeWire) Feb 20 — The leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide, according to a study published in the current issue of the Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health.
The study's authors reviewed 651 autopsy charts from the District of Columbia's Chief Medical Examiner's Office for cases from 1988 until 1996. The researchers discovered 13 homicides of pregnant women that had not been reported with the 21 maternal deaths from medical causes (eg, hemorrhage and infection). These 13 unreported deaths account for 38% of pregnancy-associated deaths.

"Few studies have evaluated the prevalence of homicide in women of childbearing age," explains the study's lead author and researcher, Cara Krulewitch, CNM, PhD, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore. "We need to turn our attention to these women and develop a clearer understanding of the magnitude of the problem, especially among pregnant women."

Other findings include:

Pregnant homicide victims are more likely to have been killed earlyin the pregnancy, which can make it difficult to identify thepregnancy and link it with the homicide.

Pregnant homicide victims are more likely to be killed with a gun.

Pregnant teenagers (aged 15-19 years) were more at risk.
Similar results have been found in other areas of the country. In addition to the inability to easily collect data on homicide as a cause of maternal mortality due to cause of death coding standards, Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics do not note if a woman was pregnant at the time of the homicide. This study highlights these shortcomings in identifying and reporting maternal mortality across the nation, which allows this epidemic of violent death to escape scrutiny.

"What pregnant women do not know," said American College of Nurse-Midwives Executive Director Deanne Williams, "is that instead of facing joyful celebration at the announcement of pregnancy, too many face violence and death. We have got to do a better job of identifying this problem and helping the women and their partners not end up with such a horrific outcome."

The authors note that the deaths in the study, although not officially reported within maternal mortality ratios, may truly be pregnancy-related in that the violence might not have escalated to result in death had the women not become pregnant.

[Mari]

Thank you Sis!

[Lief Erikson]

Gaffer, I'm just going to skip by all the parts of your post that I agree with, focusing on the few parts where we seem to differ.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

..or just reflecting the consensus view on the point of basic principle (which is "is a foetus the same as a baby?"), which is my point. People are capable of holding contradictory views. Hardly any anti-abortion campaigners argue that it should be banned in ALL cases, including incest, rape, medical risk and severe disability.

My point in bringing up the various arguments by which pro-choice people have tried to argue abortion's validity is to show that often their views accept the child as a human life in the same way pro-life people do. So while the influence of the pro-choice movement may be causing pro-life people to compromise the logic of their position in various ways, reverse influence does the same among many pro-choice people. It's mainly a result of two different ideological groups meeting, I guess. Whenever that happens, a certain amount of blending often occurs.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

That would more or less be my view I guess. Though there's a logical flaw in your description of it: if it were physically part of the mother, then it's not "clearly a living human" because it is, er, physically part of the mother.

Why wouldn't it be just as valid to say the mother is physically part of it? They're distinct minds. The mother can't use her mind to control her little baby's limbs, and the baby can't use its mind to control its mother's limbs. They each have their own bodily control and their own separate intelligences. They are linked, physically, and are parts of different worlds, while simultaneously they fused with one another. The baby is part of the mother but the mother is also part of the baby. These are just two different ways of looking at it. Neither legitimizes the purposeful destruction of the other part of the unity.

Originally Posted by The Gaffer

Agreed, much as I'm tempted to advocate retrospective abortion for certain members of our species. More later... thanks.

I'm in favor of capital punishment, for some crimes. So there's some commonality there .

I look forward to the rest of your post, and your response to this one.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lief Erikson
There is no logical reason to stop killing children at birth rather than at late adolescence, if we're going by the brain development


Are you saying that the “brain� of a two celled zygote is at the same developmental stage as an adolescent’s?

Of course not. I'm saying that they are both developing, and any point chosen within the time of development to say the person is now a person is arbitrary. So there's no rational reason to pick the two celled zygote for destruction and not the adolescent. Human development is a pretty fluid process, though I grant that there are gigantic developments in the first weeks after conception.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Quote:
If personhood is based on psychological development, logically it should begin in late adolescence when psychological development ends. All life before that should be killable material.


This is a basic error of logic lief. Just because adolescents are different from adults does NOT mean that adolescents are the same as infants or two celled zygotes. Its patently ridiculous to suggest otherwise. You aren’t dealing directly with the question. You have to give a good reason why its NOT ok to abort 2 celled zygotes independent of any definition of “personhood�. If you argument, as it seems to be, boils down to knowing what a person is then you aren’t dealing with the question.

Why in the world should I have to argue that it's okay without any definition of personhood? If we don't use any definition of personhood, I don't have any reason not to kill you if I want to (beyond self-preservation), as you're just another animal. Personhood is at the crux of the issue.

I agree that adolescents are more developed than zygotes, obviously. So are fetuses more developed than zygotes, and 1-year old infants more developed than fetuses, and 8-year old children more developed than infants, and 15 year-old adolescents more than 8-year olds. Any point in the development process is simply a fluid part of the development process. Conception and late adolescence are the beginning and ending points of the development process, so they are the only points for person-now that we could pick that would not be not arbitrary.

The fact that a zygote and an adolescent aren't the same does not mean they don't have equal right to live. Same could be said for a zygote and a fetus and a fetus and an infant and so on.

Out of curiosity, do you think that a 2-year old baby, based on its psychological development state, should have less right to live than an adolescent?

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

Quote:
YES, a zygote should have the same rights as we do. To treat it otherwise is to determine the beginning of personhood arbitrarily, denying people rights based on our view of their biological development rather than on whether or not they've done anything wrong.


That’s a normal part of how we do things Lief. The right to vote. The right to drive. To drink. To join the army. The right to start getting discounts at the movie theater because yer an old geezer, these are all things we, as a society, have decided essentially arbitrarily. Its usually based in part on developmental concepts but as these may be different from person to person it, by its very nature, HAS to be arbitrary. So to use this argument against abortion alone is disingenuous and a red herring really (which I already dealt with the last time we debated about this by the way). Otherwise you need to be in support of giving EVERYONE of any age the right to drive a car. EVERYONE of any age the right to smoke or drink etc. And by the way before you attempt to side step that point by saying well abortion is about ending life and those things aren’t I would counter some of those things certainly COULD end a life if someone developmentally incapable of handling them is given that right. Not to mention theres an age restriction for the death penalty. Why aren’t you arguing against that?

Most of these laws are about what's best for the person, how to make their life better, in view of their biological development. The smoking and drinking ones excluded- and I'd say that smoking probably shouldn't be legal, at least not in public places, and drinking to excess shouldn't be legal either. Abortion laws do the opposite from what most of the laws you described do. Rather than trying to make someone's life better, based on our idea of the person's biological development, it's about making that life worse and then trying to justifying that.

Restrictions preventing children from being allowed to endure the death penalty because of their biological development is likewise an attempt to be kind to them in view of their condition, to make allowances for them, to be better to them. Those laws are intended to benefit them, not to destroy them. That's the key difference between all the other valid laws I know of, which relate to biological development, and the abortion law.

Voting, driving, drinking and joining the army restrictions all exist for the benefit of the child too. As well as for the benefit of the rest of society. They're mutually beneficial, intended to help and to protect, not to destroy.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

But we aren’t talking about birth. We are talking about TWO CELLS. It’s a real reach to attempt to use a slippery slope argument banning everything when you are talking about TWO CELLS. Ill need rational justification why it is we shouldn’t be allowed to abort TWO CELLS. Not because it sets a bad precedent according to you.

Bad precedent is a rational justification. If you can kill two cells, why not three? If three, why not four? Etc.

It's all part of the development process. Any part on the development process is arbitrary, as our Western countries are finding out. The Netherlands, as I pointed out earlier, have already legalized killing mentally handicapped infants. It's a slippery slope that our countries are slithering along.

Another legitimate reason for not aborting the zygote is the human inability to discern on its own judgment when exactly a person comes to exist. Or if there is such a starting point. D. Sullivan mentioned this point earlier. The two-celled zygote could be a person for all you know.

Originally Posted by Insidious Rex

How about this Lief, if all abortions were limited to two celled zygotes ONLY, if you had a full guarantee that not one abortion would occur any time after that first cell division took place, would you support them? You can no longer use the arbitrary line issue as an argument in that scenario. Would you allow abortion of two celled zygotes?

Leaving out the arbitrary line issue, we still have the point I raised before, which is that from human reason alone, we can't know when personhood begins. It's still gambling with a human life for the sake of the mother's social, economic or physical conditions.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

I wasn't clear enough in wording my question. My question would be more like "Unmarried women are x% of the reproductive age population. Married women are y%. Are women who obtained legal abortions disproportionally unmarried?"

If you want to find out more than what I gave you, dig it up for yourself . I have an opinion which is fully valid until you find something to disprove it. I do a LOT of research to back my points on these debate threads. I don't feel like doing more on this one, especially when there isn't yet evidence supporting the disagreeing view.

Originally Posted by sisterandcousinandaunt

But you must be cheered to see the abortion rate declining...even though I haven't noticed the general immorality rate has.

I've heard arguments going both ways about it. I've heard pro-life people say that abstinence-only programs have caused the decline in abortion rates, and I've heard pro-choice people say sex ed. has caused it. I don't know enough about the specifics to judge the merits of either argument.