How is abortion a states rights issue?

[adanthar]

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If someone sneaks a newborn baby into your house one night, are you somehow responsible for raising it to age 18?

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Why would you be responsible for raising it? We have adoption agencies and foster care services for that.

If the fetus is a person, it's not responsible for the specific method of its conception and privacy arguments go out the window; that's why Roe was, fundamentally, a bad decision. The *liberty* argument is much stronger, but in my opinion, would also not outweigh the killing of an individual, even in the rape/incest cases - it is, again, an innocent third party. Saving the mother's life would seem to be the only valid case where an abortion could be performed.

Again, this is if, and only if, the fetus is a person.

[TomCollins]

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[ QUOTE ]
If someone sneaks a newborn baby into your house one night, are you somehow responsible for raising it to age 18?

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Why would you be responsible for raising it? We have adoption agencies and foster care services for that.

If the fetus is a person, it's not responsible for the specific method of its conception and privacy arguments go out the window; that's why Roe was, fundamentally, a bad decision. The *liberty* argument is much stronger, but in my opinion, would also not outweigh the killing of an individual, even in the rape/incest cases - it is, again, an innocent third party. Saving the mother's life would seem to be the only valid case where an abortion could be performed.

Again, this is if, and only if, the fetus is a person.

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Assume there are no adoption agencies. Its a hypothetical.

Also, if there were an artificial womb available instead of abortion, would that then make abortion immoral?

[bills217]

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If it's false, it's news to me. I just Googled and multiple websites say "gill slits develop at 4 weeks".

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They are not gills - they are simply similar in appearance to gills. They have no known function, AFAIK.

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a fetus without a formed brain is by no means self directed or complete.

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It is both, from the time of conception.

You seem real bent on this whole brain activity = personhood thing, almost like it's some kind of a given, but you really haven't done much to substantiate why that should be the case. It's hardly a given.

Let's say you're right. What separates humans from the more intelligent animals then? They have a considerable amount of brain activity. If worth is only derived from readings on a brain-activity-o-meter, what is special about being human? Seems to me like a dramatic expansion in the legal rights of at least some animals would be in order.

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I don't have a problem with erring on the side of caution and restricting abortions that are close to that point - I simply don't accept it as a person.

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Even if I conceded that you were right here (I don't), that still wouldn't make destroying the embryo right. It would still be selfish and morally despicable. I'm not sure if it would justify intervention, but it would still be abhorrent and make me sad that I lived in a society where a large number of people find that practice acceptable.

OT: Have you ever thought that it's a sad commentary on our society that most of the time we view pregnancy more like a disease than the amazing, beautiful process that it is? Think about it. Why are they called "abortion clinics?" Sick people get treated at clinics. People who go into abortion clinics are not sick!!!!!!

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[bills217]

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Even in cases of rape and incest, even if you grant the fetus personhood, there are many good arguments for legalized abortion for those reasons.

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Wow.

[bills217]

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Saving the mother's life would seem to be the only valid case where an abortion could be performed.

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I know you haven't claimed to the contrary, but it's worth mentioning that the only time this is necessary is in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, in which case the fetus is (almost always) doomed anyway.

[adanthar]

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Assume there are no adoption agencies. Its a hypothetical.

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I mean, if the only alternative was having the newborn baby immediately eaten by wolves, abortion would be fine, but that's not what we're theoretically dealing with.

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You seem real bent on this whole brain activity = personhood thing, almost like it's some kind of a given, but you really haven't done much to substantiate why that should be the case. It's hardly a given.

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Obviously, this isn't something that anybody is going to convince someone of over the Internet. My personal belief, however, is that, if we're going to define human existence, our starting point should be brain activity. We define it there in the equally important 'death' area for many very good reasons, and I see no reason to alter that just because an egg cell happened to meet a sperm cell and divide once.

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Let's say you're right. What separates humans from the more intelligent animals then? They have a considerable amount of brain activity. If worth is only derived from readings on a brain-activity-o-meter, what is special about being human? Seems to me like a dramatic expansion in the legal rights of at least some animals would be in order.

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I certainly believe great apes, dolphins, etc. deserve some legal protection. To take this one step further, if somebody put a computer chip into a monkey's brain and the result was a high school graduate, I'd consider it a full "person", as well. There *isn't* anything special about us except our intelligence; that's what got us out of the trees. It's the determining factor in everything else we do, so why would the particular species exhibiting it make a difference?

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I don't have a problem with erring on the side of caution and restricting abortions that are close to that point - I simply don't accept it as a person.

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Even if I conceded that you were right here (I don't), that still wouldn't make destroying the embryo right. It would still be selfish and morally despicable.

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Why? What's 'despicable' about it? This is a serious question. If you accept that no brain activity != "person", nobody's being harmed. The woman prevents a *potential* person from being born, but she does that every time she lets a month go by without having sex, and her body does that some large percentage of the time when an embryo fails to divide past a few cells for no particular reason at all. If I'm hung up on brain activity, you're hung up on cell division, which seems at least as silly to me as the other way around.

[vhawk01]

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If someone sneaks a newborn baby into your house one night, are you somehow responsible for raising it to age 18?

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would you be responsible for raising it? We have adoption agencies and foster care services for that.

If the fetus is a person, it's not responsible for the specific method of its conception and privacy arguments go out the window; that's why Roe was, fundamentally, a bad decision. The *liberty* argument is much stronger, but in my opinion, would also not outweigh the killing of an individual, even in the rape/incest cases - it is, again, an innocent third party. Saving the mother's life would seem to be the only valid case where an abortion could be performed.

Again, this is if, and only if, the fetus is a person.

[/ QUOTE ]

Assume there are no adoption agencies. Its a hypothetical.

Also, if there were an artificial womb available instead of abortion, would that then make abortion immoral?

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Absolutely. At least to me it would. If it became possible to completely abstain from participating in some way that did not cause the death of the fetus, I think abortion instantly becomes immoral and wrong. Or at the very least, now MY position on abortion becomes moot and anyone using my justification becomes immoral and wrong. I suppose you could still fall back on the "fetus is not a person" argument (which I happen to agree with, I just find it unnecessary to argue).

[vhawk01]

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No knives are involved anywhere, though

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The technical term for it may not be "knife," but it's a knife. In most cases at that stage, the baby has to be cut apart with a sharp instrument performing the same function as a knife before being vacuumed and/or scraped out piece-by-piece.

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See, this sucks, because what I am going to say next is incredibly emotion-invoking and will probably make it impossible for you to take me seriously or consider the point I'm trying to make, but oh well:

If it wont leave willingly, then thats unfortunate but too bad. The fact that it CANNOT leave willingly is irrelevant. You cannot have a right to my blood or body. Unless I have formed a contract with you, if I ask you to leave you have to. If you wont, I will remove you.

Now you are left to argue whether there is an implicit contract initiated by having sex. I dont believe there is.

[adanthar]

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OT: Have you ever thought that it's a sad commentary on our society that most of the time we view pregnancy more like a disease than the amazing, beautiful process that it is? Think about it. Why are they called "abortion clinics?" Sick people get treated at clinics. People who go into abortion clinics are not sick!!!!!!

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Go back to any other human society during any other time period of organized civilization or lack thereof. I guarantee you that attitudes towards pregnancy range from "well, that's it, time to throw myself into the ocean" to "goddammit, this jumping up and down thing better work" to "I hope this one lives until we name it, but I'm not gonna bother till its fourth birthday".

In fact, I think we treat the whole concept better than everyone on the planet ever has, if only because it's the first 50 year period in our lifetime as a species that a sizable number of women haven't been dying in the process.

[vhawk01]

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OT: Have you ever thought that it's a sad commentary on our society that most of the time we view pregnancy more like a disease than the amazing, beautiful process that it is? Think about it. Why are they called "abortion clinics?" Sick people get treated at clinics. People who go into abortion clinics are not sick!!!!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

Go back to any other human society during any other time period of organized civilization or lack thereof. I guarantee you that attitudes towards pregnancy range from "well, that's it, time to throw myself into the ocean" to "goddammit, this jumping up and down thing better work" to "I hope this one lives until we name it, but I'm not gonna bother till its fourth birthday".

In fact, I think we treat the whole concept better than everyone on the planet ever has, if only because it's the first 50 year period in our lifetime as a species that a sizable number of women haven't been dying in the process.

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And seriously, MOST of the time we view pregnancy this way? Thats absurd. MOST people (overwhelming majority) view pregnancy as a wonderful life event. The only times we really view pregnancy in any negative light is when people start trying to make laws legislating freedom of self-ownership.