Real questions about pro choice

[vhawk01]

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A zygote has a much higher probability of creating life than a skin cell - a high enough probability to consider this argument a ridiculous comparison.

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True in 1107, true in 1407, and true in 2007, but how about in 2107?

[vhawk01]

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jeesh.. A zygote is the start of a baby.

A skin cell is the start of nothing - it's not dividing to create a baby.

There's a difference.

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Yeah, the zygote is placed into an organic baby-making factory. Are you telling me that when we put our skin cells into inorganic baby-making factories, the 'organic' nature of the factory will be of fundamental moral import?

[vhawk01]

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Weeeee wweeeee weeeee
A forming human life is indeed 'a relatively small clump of cells' - that will grow into a fully grown human if it's not halted.

This 'relatively small clump of cells' holds the necessary parts of the father and the mother - fused together, that is forming a child - I'm one for the zygote! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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The point of all these arguments is that you are NOT ALLOWED to use any facts or features about what it may become in forming your moral judgments. You admit that on the one hand and continue to do it on the other.

[vhawk01]

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Personally, I think neurulation is a reasonable cutoff. At least you know there is no suffering involved before that point.

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Causing suffering shouldnt be too much of a factor when considering abortion. Obviously, causing suffering to innocent creatures should be avoided. But if the aborted fetus is the equivalent of an insignifigant animal, than the suffering it endures during an abortion is negligible against protecting the woman holding it.

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I disagree. If the woman choses not to have an abortion then she is taking some responsibilty for what happens next. Suffering caused by a later abortion can't then be dismissed as suffering of an insignificant animal any more than causing suffering to a pet dog can.

Freedom to chose doesn't mean freedom from the consequences of that choice.

chez

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This is absolutely true and something I think a lot of pro-choice advocates are dead wrong about, or at least do not give proper consideration to. I personally think abortion is morally acceptable until birth, but it is CLEARLY better earlier.

[brashbrother]

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SOME pro-choicers would argue that they are not persons until some point, and they use less or more arbitrary guidelines for establishing personhood.

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Absolutely. Personhood is a vague concept that we confer rather than discover when it comes into being and when it ceases.

The mistake repeatedly made by pro-lifers is thinking that there's some matter of fact out there. The other mistake is thinking that even if there is a matter of fact which cannot be determined it follows that we can't find stages before personhood is attained.

chez

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I am being very specific as to the "matter-of-fact" I am targeting. Personhood debate is a non-starter, at least for this thread.

If you are indeed Pro Choice, please tell the court when you take the Choice away from mom and award said rights to the fetus? You have to choose a time from Last Menstrual Period to Birth, by convention using # of weeks. The US courts have chosen 13 weeks. If given the option, when would you choose, and why?

Can it be agreed that any rational human would say that 39 weeks is all fetus, all the time? 30 weeks, too? If this can be agreed, as we then get to fewer and fewer weeks, my understanding is that the prochoicers get off the bandwagon at about 13 weeks...just wondering why.

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I've answered already although you either noted my answer and moved on or ignored it. Birth. But then, I also explained that there IS no debate about when something becomes 'life' since it is life the entire time. You can't call the personhood debate a non-starter...thats exactly the debate you are pursuing. At what arbitrary date do we decide the fetus is a PERSON. It is alive the entire time, and anyone who would argue otherwise needs only a dictionary.

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So then, you would feel OK about a mom choosing to abort a fetus at 39 weeks? Assuming the labor process has not started, and she introduces something within her to terminate that pregnancy, she is not guilty of anything other than procrastination?

I would submit that this is a less common pro-abortion stance. Roe vs. Wade specifically allows a woman and her doctor to choose regarding abortion in the first trimester; it also allows the states to determine about any laws regarding abortion after the first trimester, if it affects the health of the mother. So, I was using the 1st trimester designation to begin this discussion.

To address your stance, did you know that a baby is considered medically Full Term at 37 weeks? Hypothetical: Mom decided at 36 weeks to abort, which in your world is legal. Her advisers recommend something be introduced to poison the fetus. Dose is not fully effective, but labor ensues, and delivery occurs. Kid is breathing, crying, whatever, it's alive. Now what?

[vhawk01]

Wow, I decided to catch up on the thread and address points one by one as I came to them, and I really got carried away. Sorry for the incessant posting, guys, won't happen again.

This is the last one.

No more.

[vhawk01]

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SOME pro-choicers would argue that they are not persons until some point, and they use less or more arbitrary guidelines for establishing personhood.

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Absolutely. Personhood is a vague concept that we confer rather than discover when it comes into being and when it ceases.

The mistake repeatedly made by pro-lifers is thinking that there's some matter of fact out there. The other mistake is thinking that even if there is a matter of fact which cannot be determined it follows that we can't find stages before personhood is attained.

chez

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I am being very specific as to the "matter-of-fact" I am targeting. Personhood debate is a non-starter, at least for this thread.

If you are indeed Pro Choice, please tell the court when you take the Choice away from mom and award said rights to the fetus? You have to choose a time from Last Menstrual Period to Birth, by convention using # of weeks. The US courts have chosen 13 weeks. If given the option, when would you choose, and why?

Can it be agreed that any rational human would say that 39 weeks is all fetus, all the time? 30 weeks, too? If this can be agreed, as we then get to fewer and fewer weeks, my understanding is that the prochoicers get off the bandwagon at about 13 weeks...just wondering why.

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I've answered already although you either noted my answer and moved on or ignored it. Birth. But then, I also explained that there IS no debate about when something becomes 'life' since it is life the entire time. You can't call the personhood debate a non-starter...thats exactly the debate you are pursuing. At what arbitrary date do we decide the fetus is a PERSON. It is alive the entire time, and anyone who would argue otherwise needs only a dictionary.

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So then, you would feel OK about a mom choosing to abort a fetus at 39 weeks? Assuming the labor process has not started, and she introduces something within her to terminate that pregnancy, she is not guilty of anything other than procrastination?

I would submit that this is a less common pro-abortion stance. Roe vs. Wade specifically allows a woman and her doctor to choose regarding abortion in the first trimester; it also allows the states to determine about any laws regarding abortion after the first trimester, if it affects the health of the mother. So, I was using the 1st trimester designation to begin this discussion.

To address your stance, did you know that a baby is considered medically Full Term at 37 weeks? Hypothetical: Mom decided at 36 weeks to abort, which in your world is legal. Her advisers recommend something be introduced to poison the fetus. Dose is not fully effective, but labor ensues, and delivery occurs. Kid is breathing, crying, whatever, it's alive. Now what?

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Now the mother can decide to act in its best interests or she can cede decision-making capacity and the baby can become part of the health system and eventually the child welfare system. Hospitals are not allowed to deny care to emergently ill people, so the baby would have to be treated. The mother is no longer able to make decisions which will harm the child, this is abuse.

I hope you can understand the difference? The key point in Thomson's thought experiment, and in my position, is that no one can be forced to be complicit in any sort of medical procedure or anything regarding their person. Carrying a child in your uterus is absolutely being complicit in a medical procedure (using procedure broadly, but thats entirely irrelevant). The woman must be allowed to 'disconnect' from the child at any time, just like I must be allowed to disconnect from the violinist. Once disconnected, I cannot go kick the violinist in the balls, or vaccuum-suck his brains out.

In other words, abortion is morally acceptable, killing a fetus isn't (if we grant it personhood, a battlefront I don't enjoy fighting on but can if you insist). But if killing the fetus is an unavoidable consequence of the abortion, then thats all the worse for the fetus.

[jogger08152]

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A trimester is 13 weeks. How old does that make the (whatever) during the 11th and 12th trimester?

To elaborate, my point is that "viability" in terms of months in the womb would be just as arbitrary a cutoff as 13 weeks is. I would think that true viability - that is, the ability to survive "on one's own" - cannot exist before age three or so as a bare minimum. In other words, viability requires about 2 trimesters in the womb, and, at the bare minimum in the most exceptional case in the most non-threatening environment, another 11 or 12 more trimesters outside.

In still other other different words, by extension, an argument for viability as the cut-off ought to extend to about age 3. In my post, I mentioned that some people find "viability" palatable, and therefore plausible. I think its palatability (for some) is the only thing lends it any credibility (to those who find it credible) whatsoever.

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Thats not even close to what viability means. This is particularly important to my own pro-choice stance. There are always parents awaiting children.

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Viability seems an especially strange choice, even among a list of arbitrary choices, since the range of survivability is both broad and in itself subject to arbitrary qualifications. For example, in vitro fertilization plainly demonstrates the ability of a conceptus to survive outside the womb quite literally from the moment of fertilization, perhaps indefinitely. At the other end of the spectrum, eight-month-old infants clearly cannot survive "on its own" outside the womb for more than a hundred hours or so.

Among its other relatively obvious defects, from a practical standpoint, viability-based criteria (if they were broadly accepted) would incent certain abortion proponants - for instance, politicians who use the issue to appeal to a certain demographic they view as important to the continuation of their career - to take steps like cutting funding for research into techniques that would help preserve the lives of premies born under 22 weeks.

[Subfallen]

Fels -

Our opinions on abortion are pretty compatible, so I don't have any substantiative objections to your last post.

But I do disagree with your framing here though:
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If you are going to agree to her right to an abortion, then the suffering of the baby has no impact.

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I think it's silly to polarize the fetus as either being an "insignificant animal" whose suffering is irrelevant; or a "human" whose suffering is as valid as the mother's.

The situation is more like a "lesser of two evils" problem to me. Both the suffering of the fetus and the mother are worthy of concern. All suffering is regrettable and should be avoided if possible.

But in the case of abortion someone is going to suffer in some way. And IMO the mother has the greatest moral prerogative to decide how that suffering will be shouldered.

[Subfallen]

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Wow, I decided to catch up on the thread and address points one by one as I came to them, and I really got carried away. Sorry for the incessant posting, guys, won't happen again.

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Au contraire, you can only assuage my injured sensibilities with further lucid contributions!