Abortion

Dannyalcatraz said:

I believe that life begins at conception, but recognize that reasonable folk can differ. While I oppose abortion, I pragmatically accept that an absolute ban is highly unlikely.

So I support:

1) exceptions in the case of the life of the mother
2) bans after a certain period of gestation (I have not settled on a particular time period)
3) general policies that reduce the societal pressures leading to someone deciding to abort
4) general policies that streamline the adoption process

Click to expand...

I think those are well considered reasons, though I always push people to not merely consider the life of the mother, but also the health of the mother since a pregnancy may threaten her health, particularly reproductive health, more than her life. There are pregnancy complications that can ruin a woman's fertility and I think it's generally preferable to abort a non-viable pregnancy that could ruin her chances of trying again and having a healthy child.

For me, our general failure at #3 convinces me to support access to safe abortions on the woman's choice.

Not to mention that illegality means a return of "coat hangers" as birth control.

goldomark said:

Danger to the doner is irrelevant. Forcing a parent to donate blood to its child or stranger is still impossible, so is forcing someone to give bone marrow and those aren't very risky procedures.

Click to expand...

Danger to the donor is never irrelevant. Ethical concerns aside, it also raises an inescapable constitutional issue of deprivation of life or liberty without due process.

Remember, bone marrow transplants are a surgical procedure. Even though they are low-risk compared to other surgeries, all surgeries carry some risk of death or serious injury.

So what? From organdonor.gov: There are lots of death related to the need of organs. Why not force living people to give organs, blood or bone marrow if it doesn't kill them? Why not "force" the dead who really do not need those? Why not at least force parents when it is there own kid? Why stop "forcing" at birth?

Click to expand...

Again, in the USA, there is no affirmative duty to save the life of another unless it is your job or you placed the person in jeopardy of loss of life in the first place.

If a kid needs a kidney and is dad is a compatible donor, the kid still has no say in what his dad will do and he has a better legal status than a zygote.

Is the dad being an ass? Sure, but that ain't illegal.

Click to expand...

In most- not all- cases, if the Dad says no, the kid still has a reasonable chance of survival if another donor can be found. A familial donator is always preferred, but isn't necessary.

In contrast, with current medical technology, a child in utero essentially has no other option for survival outside the womb until it reaches a certain age. Even then, premies are at increased odds of certain medical conditions the rest of their lives.

There are all sorts of risks associated with pregnancy, some less apparent than others. Necessity is relative. But that point is irrelevant.

Click to expand...

I'm well aware of the risks. And risk is never irrelevant.

It is a woman's uterus, she does what she wants with it.

Click to expand...

In the USA, no right is absolute. The is always a balancing act between rights and duties, between individual needs and those of the population in general/the state.

And yes, I do fully realize that in this case, we are talking about the state invasively protecting a person/something* within the body of another human, so the bar has to be set pretty high. My personal, considered opinion is that when the taking of life is involved, the stakes are legitimately high enough to warrant it, at least granting a stay of execution until the baby is viable and can be placed for adoption.




* depending on your view of the personhood of a fetus

goldomark said:

Not to mention that illegality means a return of "coat hangers" as birth control.

Click to expand...

That may be overstated.

But abortificants (historically, poison, taken to induce an abortion), were a serious problem. A modern abortificant isn't a poison; what was taken in the 19th century was.

What was presented in the college course that I took was that stopping abortions is pretty hard: Women will take extreme risks to terminate pregnancy.

(To say: The consequences of an unplanned pregnancy was much more harsh in the 19th century, at least here in the United States.)

Better education and health care, including access to contraceptives, would probably have a huge impact on abortions. I'm of the opinion that, as a practical matter, focusing on abortions diverts resources from their most efficient use.

Thx!

TomB

tomBitonti said:

That may be overstated.

But abortificants (historically, poison, taken to induce an abortion), were a serious problem. A modern abortificant isn't a poison; what was taken in the 19th century was.

What was presented in the college course that I took was that stopping abortions is pretty hard: Women will take extreme risks to terminate pregnancy.

Click to expand...

Contraceptives and abortifcants- functional or not- have been around since the Egyptians. They're not going away.

Better education and health care, including access to contraceptives, would probably have a huge impact on abortions. I'm of the opinion that, as a practical matter, focusing on abortions diverts resources from their most efficient use.

Click to expand...

That's where my opinion gravitates, as well.

I'm not so sure if greater AVAILABILITY of contraception is needed so much as education in their proper use and the ethics & consequences of their non-use. If nothing else, the guys have to realize that it is as much their responsibility as that of their partners. And that STDs don't play favorites or care about how good a time you had.

We might also have to include laws making it a lot tougher for guys to escape responsibility if a pregnancy results.

Snark-free answer: Abortions should be legal and easily accessible, at the choice of the mother. I value the actualized person that is the mother more than the potential person that is the embryo. I don't believe in any sort of 'soul' that is lost if a bundle of cells incapable of existing outside of a womb fails to develop into a child.

That said, if the mother wants the child, let's also make it less likely for the mother's life to be ruined by the cost of child care, or the child's life ruined by its parents' inability to afford to raise it. It's galling to me that many people are all for 'protecting the sanctity of life' by forbidding abortions, but the moment the child is born they refuse to lend any aid to help it have a good life.

It's galling to me that many people are all for 'protecting the sanctity of life' by forbidding abortions, but the moment the child is born they refuse to lend any aid to help it have a good life.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't respect that position, either. If you're going to demand a scacrifice in the liberties of the unwilling or unable mother, you necessarily incur at least a MORAL duty to not throw a metic ton of societal hurdles in the way of the life you fought so hard to bring into the world.

Put differently: If life begins at conception, duty does not end at birth.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Yeah, I don't respect that position, either. If you're going to demand a scacrifice in the liberties of the unwilling or unable mother, you necessarily incur at least a MORAL duty to not throw a metic ton of societal hurdles in the way of the life you fought so hard to bring into the world.

Put differently: If life begins at conception, duty does not end at birth.

Click to expand...

It does seem rather odd that most of those who decry abortion are also the ones who want to keep the government out of their pockets because they don't want to be supporting 'those Welfare cheats', doesn't it?

Drives me nuts. I find it an amazingly un-Christian position.

What makes it even weirder is the overall tendency of social conservatives to donate more to charitable organizations than their social progressive counterparts. Which, of course, begs the questions: what charities are they donating to?

Can't say that I've ever seen a breakdown, but tithing would certainly count under the heading of "charitable donations."