Comment thread for abortion debate

[bkholdem]

From the person who is for legal abortions, I would like to hear their thoughts on the legal impact on the father to be.

i.e. The woman has the 'legal right' to decide prior to birth, pretty much through at least the first 6 months, to cut off all legal and financial responsibilities to the child to be. They have this as a legal right.

However, as the law currently stands, the father to be has no such right. Not only can he not have a legal say in whether or not an abortion should happen, he can not even go to the mother and court and renounce his legal and financial responsibilities. And as everyone will pretty much agree I think, the legal and financial responsibilities are the primary motive for most abortions.

[vulturesrow]

[ QUOTE ]
1. For VR: How would a ban on effect the society if we see the return of underground abortions impacting (specially lower middle class people). Is that a price (the treatment of women with poorly performed abortions, and of course still the extermination of the foetus) that as a society we simply have to agree to pay?

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Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The answer is simply yes. Let me reiterate that pregnancies are a result of a consensual act, and furthermore, abortion is far from the only option that a woman has if she doesnt want to take care of the child when it is born or if she is worried about her financial ability to do so.

[vulturesrow]

[ QUOTE ]
From the person who is for legal abortions, I would like to hear their thoughts on the legal impact on the father to be.

i.e. The woman has the 'legal right' to decide prior to birth, pretty much through at least the first 6 months, to cut off all legal and financial responsibilities to the child to be. They have this as a legal right.

However, as the law currently stands, the father to be has no such right. Not only can he not have a legal say in whether or not an abortion should happen, he can not even go to the mother and court and renounce his legal and financial responsibilities. And as everyone will pretty much agree I think, the legal and financial responsibilities are the primary motive for most abortions.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a great question. I would love for the law to better take into account the father. Im not sure what the practical solution to this is though. If the law is going to continue to place the rights of the mother ahead of the unborn child, its hard to argue against her getting the lions share of the decision making power, being that it is her that is primarily affected by carrying a child. I could go off on a tangent about how fathers get short shrift from the law in general when it comes to family law, but I'll leave it at that for now.

[ACPlayer]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
1. For VR: How would a ban on effect the society if we see the return of underground abortions impacting (specially lower middle class people). Is that a price (the treatment of women with poorly performed abortions, and of course still the extermination of the foetus) that as a society we simply have to agree to pay?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The answer is simply yes. Let me reiterate that pregnancies are a result of a consensual act, and furthermore, abortion is far from the only option that a woman has if she doesnt want to take care of the child when it is born or if she is worried about her financial ability to do so.

[/ QUOTE ]

You do acknowledge though that making abortion illegal will lead to a cottage industry of back room abortions.

I dont have stats (perhaps the other debator does) but I would expect that there are plenty of abortions today that are performed on young girls without enough knowledge about the options, without enough familial or societal support to go through with the pregnancy and without adequate health coverage to provide reasonable neo-natal care. This group of people, who are at the highest risk of suffering the consequences of back room abortions is also the group with the least knowledge of options.

Shake's argument that abortion will provide economic opportunity to women/couples should be rejected IMO. Aborting a foetus for economic benefit is wrong. However, making abortions completely illegal is also wrong (IMO).

Lastly, pregnancies are not always the result of consensual acts.

How do you see the prolife movements stance on a) condom distribution b) sex education in schools? I think these are related to whether abortions should be illegal.

[bkholdem]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
From the person who is for legal abortions, I would like to hear their thoughts on the legal impact on the father to be.

i.e. The woman has the 'legal right' to decide prior to birth, pretty much through at least the first 6 months, to cut off all legal and financial responsibilities to the child to be. They have this as a legal right.

However, as the law currently stands, the father to be has no such right. Not only can he not have a legal say in whether or not an abortion should happen, he can not even go to the mother and court and renounce his legal and financial responsibilities. And as everyone will pretty much agree I think, the legal and financial responsibilities are the primary motive for most abortions.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a great question. I would love for the law to better take into account the father. Im not sure what the practical solution to this is though. If the law is going to continue to place the rights of the mother ahead of the unborn child, its hard to argue against her getting the lions share of the decision making power, being that it is her that is primarily affected by carrying a child.

[/ QUOTE ]

Quite simple IMO. Change the law to reflect that along with the lyons share of the decision making power comes the lyons share of the responsibility.

The rights of the mother come before the rights of the unborn child and the rights of the father.... so do come the responsibilities of the mother. Require her to make substantial efforts to inform the father to be about the pregnancy ASAP (where the father to be will then have the option to legally opt out of all post birth responsibilities-just as the mother to be has this right) or forego any and all legal recourse to involve the father legally, financially, or otherwise.

Equal rights mean equal rights.

[MuresanForMVP]

I just read ShakeZulu's new post on this debate, and found it to be excellent, and very thought provoking. I thought the consent to being mugged argument was very apt. Nice work Shake, IMO.

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but in nine months] he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

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The violinist situation is interesting for discussion, though I think there are some flaws. One of the flaws is that it too closely mirrors the minority situation (that of an unwilling host --- i.e. rape) than one where the host is an active/willing participant.

Even given the flaws of the violinist position, would it be morally appropriate for the host to remove the violinist (assume that the removal itself causes immediate death and that the violinist is an "innocent" in the situation)?

[natedogg]

Abortion is one of the most difficult personal moral issues to wrestle with. As a state issue, it's easy. There's no way to prove anything about souls or moral agency of infants, so the state has no business dealing with abortion. A fetus is not a citizen.

However, on a personal level I find abortion to be very tricky. For instance, is it ok to abort a baby when the pregnancy has reached a stage that some preemies can survive? This is a very very grey area, morally. If it's ok to abort is it ok to abort a fetus 1 month before the due date? 1 week?

Also, everyone knows that the fetus is not really conscious in the same way that a fully functioning adult is conscious. Yes is can feel pain etc and respond to mommy's voice but it is not at the "I think therefore I am" stage. We all know that the fetus getting aborted doesn't miss out on life. It didn't have a conscious life to regret losing.

If it's ok to abort a fetus because it's not really a fully developed moral agent with consciousness, then what is to prevent the same reasoning when applied to new born infants?

A one-week old baby is hardly more conscious than a fetus one week before birth. A fetus is no less conscious than a 90 year old senile person either. If we accept that lack of a developed moral agency is grounds for abortion, why does it not also apply to mentally deficient adults? (I'm not arguing that it does but that we create moral conundrums for ourselves no matter what way we justify abortion)

And the converse is true as well. If we say abortion is NOT ok, it opens up a lot of questions about personal liberty and our moral obligations. Can a person be made into a slave? Can you force me to give blood if you're going to die?

The "violinist" scenario touches on those questions. Say for whatever reason that you need a new liver and there is only one person in the whole world with a compatible gene. They can donate some of their liver to you but they don't want to. Do they owe you anything ? Are you doomed to die just because they don't want to be inconvenienced?

Abortion is not easy. There's no clear answer for whether it is "right" or "wrong".

natedogg

[vulturesrow]

nate, you actually dont have to prove anything about moral agents or souls or any such stuff. It is unarguable that a human life begins at conception. Peruse a couple of textbooks on embryology and see. Given this fact, is it not reasonable for the State, to take a conservative position and prevent abortions from being performed?

[natedogg]

It is totally unreasonable for the state to get involved. On that I see no reason to budge. It's a personal moral decision.

natedogg