And here’s some news from July some of you may have missed:
[quote]Federal officials announced Tuesday that they are investigating two more cases of California women who died after using the abortion pill RU-486 and warned emergency room doctors to be on the lookout for unusual infections among women who have taken the pill.
At least five women have died in the United States after taking the pill since it began selling in 2000, including 18-year-old Holly Patterson from the East Bay, who died in 2003 after initially being sent home from a Pleasanton hospital where she sought treatment for abdominal pain.
Four of the deaths occurred in California and resulted from bloodstream infections. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it suspects that those four were associated with a bacterium that lacks some of the usual signs and symptoms of infection, including a fever.[/quote]
This is silliness. With those kinds of stats, then we should have already banned guns, and airplane and car travel. What about women who died because they didn’t have access to the morning after/abortion pill and decided to make a go for it with a coat hanger or God knows what other method?
This is silliness. With those kinds of stats, then we should have already banned guns, and airplane and car travel. What about women who died because they didn’t have access to the morning after/abortion pill and decided to make a go for it with a coat hanger or God knows what other method?[/quote]
[color=blue]b[/b][/color] I agree with you that Comrade Stalin’s reference to the health risks associated with a given drug are not relevant to the larger question of whether what is being done is the taking of a life.
If someone has a health problem, and decides to undergo medical treatment that may be dangerous, then that is up to the individual making the decision. Similarly, if what is being done is the taking of a life, then it shouldn’t matter whether the method used to take victim’s life at the same time endagers the life of the killer. The murder (if that’s what you considered it to be) would be wrong in either case.
[color=blue]b [/b][/color]Your references to “coat hangers or God knows what” is also irrelevant. If the baby/fetus/embryo/zygote/egg is a human being, then ending its life is murder. There are no defenses for murderers who argue “Well if you hadn’t let me commit the murder this way, then I would have chosen some other method that could have endangered my own life!”
If, on the other hand, you believe that the baby/fetus/embryo/zygote/egg is not a human life, then references to “coat hangers” and so forth are also beside the point. Because if you believe that terminating the pregnacy is not murder (i.e. that the thing being killed/removed is not a human being), then there is no legitimate basis for the government to stop you from doing it (and that would be true whether the threat of coat hangers existed or not).
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]While the primary aim should be good sense, the reality is that mistakes happen. These mistakes should not force the hand and determine the lives of people in a society that clearly has the science and sense to offer alternatives.
Personally I see attempts to stifle choice as being in no way different to Islamofascists trying to limit the shape and nature of political discussion/freedoms and the freedom/rights of woman and others.
HG[/quote]
:bravo: Look at what is happening now in South Dakota. So now what will women do ? go to another state.
If abortion has been legalized, it was to protect the life of so many women who were aborting in horrible condition. Many of them died.
The RU 486 avoids the traumatic surgery for a woman. But is not without any consequence. The RU 486 should be given under prescription as there are risks.
When politicians talk about passing anti abortion laws, I, as a woman, can only take this from those who are not going to kill innocent lives in deliberate other ways.
Do not think women are happy to abort. Some will psychologically suffer for years
Good points hobbes which I suspect some would prefer to ignore. This story from Scotland is one that I think shows just how problematic this life/no life thing really is. The woman involved has admitted killing her new born baby. She had been planning an abortion but it hadn’t happened. Why does the birth make such a difference, or in British law, 20 weeks? For this woman it seems that going through the pregnancy was not the major issue, it was the baby at the end that was always the problem. So whether terminated before an arbitary date or after, its the same result.
This is silliness. With those kinds of stats, then we should have already banned guns, and airplane and car travel. What about women who died because they didn’t have access to the morning after/abortion pill and decided to make a go for it with a coat hanger or God knows what other method?[/quote]
[color=blue]b[/b][/color] I agree with you that Comrade Stalin’s reference to the health risks associated with a given drug are not relevant to the larger question of whether what is being done is the taking of a life.
If someone has a health problem, and decides to undergo medical treatment that may be dangerous, then that is up to the individual making the decision. Similarly, if what is being done is the taking of a life, then it shouldn’t matter whether the method used to take victim’s life at the same time endagers the life of the killer. The murder (if that’s what you considered it to be) would be wrong in either case.
[color=blue]b [/b][/color]Your references to “coat hangers or God knows what” is also irrelevant. If the baby/fetus/embryo/zygote/egg is a human being, then ending its life is murder. There are no defenses for murderers who argue “Well if you hadn’t let me commit the murder this way, then I would have chosen some other method that could have endangered my own life!”
If, on the other hand, you believe that the baby/fetus/embryo/zygote/egg is not a human life, then references to “coat hangers” and so forth are also beside the point. Because if you believe that terminating the pregnacy is not murder (i.e. that the thing being killed/removed is not a human being), then there is no legitimate basis for the government to stop you from doing it (and that would be true whether the threat of coat hangers existed or not).[/quote]
Hobbes, thanks for being a voice of reason on this issue. Your analysis is spot on, and yet Sharlee’s very next post made the logical errors you just exposed.
If the zygote/fetus/etc. is a human being, just as you or I am a human being, then the fact some women resort to barbaric methods to kill that human being when abortion is illegal has nothing whatosever to do with the argument. I get so tired of hearing about how “back alley abortions” will come back if abortion is made illegal. Lots of criminal activities go on in back alleys. Murder of adults, rape, drug deals, etc. Why? Because criminal conduct their activities out of the public’s eye whenever possible. To say that abortion should be legal simply because women will resort to back alley coathanger jobs if it’s not is equivalent to saying murdering adults should be legal because otherwise murderers will kill their victims in back alleys.
The only conceivable way that abortion should legal is if we accept that the zygote/embryo/fetus is NOT a human being. All other arguments are irrelevant. The mantra of “choice” makes no sense whatsoever. If the zygote/embryo/fetus is a human life, then the mother can’t just kill it because it’s inconvenient for her, any more than she could kill her born children if they become too inconvenient or expensive. The “condemning the child to a life of poverty” argument is also illogical, for the same reason. Parents can’t kill their children because they’re poor. The entire argument centers on one question and one question only: is the object inside the mother’s womb a living person?
[quote=“SHARLEE”]Look at what is happening now in South Dakota. So now what will women do ? go to another state.
If abortion has been legalized, it was to protect the life of so many women who were aborting in horrible condition. Many of them died.[/quote]
Women won’t be going to another state if the US Supreme Court rules in favor of South Dakota and throws out Roe v. Wade, which is possible. Your comment about women dying in illegal abortions misses the point. If the zygote/embro/fetus or whatever else you want to call IS A HUMAN BEING, then destroying it is MURDER. That a woman harms herself in the process of murdering her child is irrelevant. If a woman harms herself while trying to drown her one year old child, should that lead to the legalization of child murder? I mean, after all, maybe some women have died while trying to kill their born children.
Once again, this is an irrelevant statement. If a mother psychologically suffers after killing her born children, that does not excuse the murder of those children. If unborn children are human beings, then the fact a woman suffers psychologically after killing this child likewise does not excuse the killing. I’ll say it again. The entire issue centers around one single question: Are unborn children human beings?
I was not reacting on the legal aspect of the whole thing.
But there is a big hypocrisy in my eyes to say a woman is committing a murder while finding it normal to invade a country and kill innocent lives.
Now ok, let s suppose a zygote is a human life. You would have to ban most of the pills sold that do not block the ovulation, sterilet etc.
Hope you are prepared to have a vasectomy
Fair enough, Sharlee. You are quite right that --at least my comments-- have been focused on how society deals with this issue from a legal perspective (i.e. what should be allowed). If you are making another point – for example that back alley abortions are a terrible tragedy – then I don’t think we would disagree at all.
If you are saying, as a general statement: “Well maybe the murder of babies is wrong, but so is murdering innocent people in an unjust invasion”, then I think we agree as well. (We would, at that point, presumably move on to looking at the morality of each of these issues in the context in which the discussion was taking place.)
It would be important to note, however, that defending Wrong Act A, and condemning Wrong Act B, does not mean that wrong act B is justified.
[color=black]Example 1:[/color]
A confessed murderer writes an article from his prison cell saying “I think that the murder of Theo van Gogh was wrong”. Surely you would hardly think it a persuasive defense of the van Gogh murder to say “Oh yeah? Well the murder that you committed was wrong too!” Because, of course … it could be that both are wrong.
[color=black]Example 2:[/color]
Great Britain sells weapons to some terrible dictator.
Germany sells weapons to some other terrible dictator. You say: “It was wrong for Great Britain to sell weapons to that dictator” I say: “Oh yeah? Well it was also wrong for Germany to sell weapons to that other dictator!” Question: Has my statement done anything at all to establish that Great Britain’s sale was right? Answer: [color=brown]No. The hypocrisy “argument” may be a fun way to personally attack an individual on the other side of a given debate. But it does nothing to deny the legitimacy of the original point.[/color]
[color=black]Example 3:[/color]
-1- You steal something.
-2- I steal something.
-3- You tell me: “Stealing is wrong.”
-4- I tell you: “Well you stole something too.”
------ Query: Is there anything in this that could possibly indicate that stealing was right?
Part of me says that these examples could go on forever, and there really is no point in giving more because the idea is so incredibly simple.
On the other hand… I so often see the “Well that other little kid did it too! so what I did wasn’t wrong!” point trotted out in the middle of otherwise intelligent discussions, that perhaps it really doesn’t hurt to belabor the point.
A person can be hypocritical and be correct at the same time. And while the hypocrisy may influence your view of the person, it does nothing whatsoever to the legitimacy of the argument.
[color=darkblue]Thus the limited usefulness of the “hypocrisy argument” in any serious discussion of right and wrong…[/color]
I suppose I’ll have to leave this to others to answer. Unfortunately I have not yet come to a definitive conclusion on where the line should be drawn on where human life truly begins. I do know that I don’t think it begins so early as to make contraceptives illegal. And I do know that I don’t think it begins so late as to allow a woman to abort an 9 month old unborn baby. However, I am depressingly humble in my claims to know the true nature of what makes a life. Nobody ever said it was easy. :s
Hobbes, once again, you hit the nail on the head in your analysis of the arguments. Now regarding this part here:
I more or less feel the same way. Late term abortions in my opinion are immoral…perhaps even murderous. But I don’t think that contraceptive pills that prevent ovulation are murder. Someone mentioned that Britain allows abortion in the first twenty weeks. I don’t know the details of their current laws regarding abortion, but I know that in ancient Britain the test was whether the child had “quickened”. If it had grown to the point of having the look and manner of a child, then it was considered a human life in the fullest sense of the term. If a man murdered a woman whose unborn child had quickened, then he had committed two murders. If he attacked the expecting mother and killed only the quickened unborn child, it was also murder, even if the mother survived.
I think the “quickening test” is a pretty fair standard.
[quote=“gao_bo_han”][quote=“SHARLEE”]Look at what is happening now in South Dakota. So now what will women do ? go to another state.
If abortion has been legalized, it was to protect the life of so many women who were aborting in horrible condition. Many of them died.[/quote]
Women won’t be going to another state if the US Supreme Court rules in favor of South Dakota and throws out Roe v. Wade, which is possible. Your comment about women dying in illegal abortions misses the point. If the zygote/embro/fetus or whatever else you want to call IS A HUMAN BEING, then destroying it is MURDER. That a woman harms herself in the process of murdering her child is irrelevant. If a woman harms herself while trying to drown her one year old child, should that lead to the legalization of child murder? I mean, after all, maybe some women have died while trying to kill their born children.
Once again, this is an irrelevant statement. If a mother psychologically suffers after killing her born children, that does not excuse the murder of those children. If unborn children are human beings, then the fact a woman suffers psychologically after killing this child likewise does not excuse the killing. I’ll say it again. The entire issue centers around one single question: Are unborn children human beings?[/quote]
While this is true, the vast majority of people who say that unborn children are human beings show by their actions that they believe no such thing.
The South Dakota law is a perfect example-here is an action that is premeditated murder, according to the bill’s supporters, yet there is absolutely NO penalty for this horrendous crime.
I’ve heard of victimless crimes, but never punishmentless crimes.
Oh, wait, say the supporters- the penalty is on the doctors who actually do the killing.
So if a woman finds her child inconvenient or so stressful it’s damaging her health, and hires a hitman to blow it away, she should face no punishment? And what about her husband- if he agrees he is a co-conspirator- again, no penalty.
And the penalty for doctors is up to five years imprisonment
Any other cases of premeditated murder in South Dakota where the maximum penalty is 5 years?
Are a few cells a human being? No, they are not a human being. They are cells with no legal protections.
I’m not sure how apt this analogy is as I’m just working my thoughts around it, but consider this: if a man dies, is the body a human being? Certainly there are still living cells on him, but are these cells a human being worthy of legal protection? I don’t think so. They are just cells. If I cut up a dead body I may be charge but not for murder.
Consciousness seems to plays a large part what we consider human as brain dead people can legally be taken off life support despite the fact they are living. We know that a small child has consciousness. A group of cells does not.
Of course it gets more troublesome as the fetus grows. But surely we can come to some agreement, based on science and sentiment, as to when a fetus gains consciousness and becomes something we want to give the legal protection we would a born child. The distinction will be arbritrary but then so is the legal concept of adulthood. At 18 you are an adult. At 17 years 364 days and 23 hours you are not. And all kinds of legal ramificatiosn result from the distinction.
Another troublesome issue concerns the soul. Does the soul enter the egg at the moment of conception? Maybe. But this is only an issue for the religious. The law, being secular, does not and recognize the existence of the soul, and a great many people, including myself, do not recognize it either. If you insist on forcing me to accept your doctrines I will consider you on par with Islamic fascists who want to insist that their decrees (such as prohibitions againt depicting Mr. M ) apply to everyone at all times and in all places.
So the question for the law has to be at what point, at what stage, at what step in the egg’s journey to full independent life outside the womb, are we to say that now it is a human being worthy of legal protection? I can say this much: the last few months for certain. The first few days, and weeks, no.
I think this is fair. We live in a secular society, not a Christian theocracy, and so a scientific test should be employed. I would propose that once the child has a greater than 50% of surviving on its own, apart from the mother, it should be classified as a human being and accorded all the relevant legal protections.
Hey, this is related to the subject matter - has anyone been reading about the new state law in South Dakota that outlaws abortion in ALL cases even rape and incest - the only exception is when the woman’s life is endangered. Will try to find an article, and if you all think this is inappropriate for this thread, please speak up. I’ll start an new one.
[quote=“Muzha Man”]
Of course it gets more troublesome as the fetus grows. But surely we can come to some agreement, based on science and sentiment, as to when a fetus gains consciousness and becomes something we want to give the legal protection we would a born child.[/quote]
Maybe in Canada, but not in the US. Your post makes perfect sense to me, but the abortion issue in the US is too divisive and emotional at the moment for me to believe we are anywhere close to agreement.
Your reasoning was used by the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade when it came up with its trimester schedule for abortion rights. The state’s right to restrict abortion is least in the first trimester and greatest in the last trimester as the fetus nears birth.
In light of medical advancements, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 US Supreme Court case, removed the trimester schedule from the equation and recognized viability as the point at which the state’s rights to restrict abortion outweigh a woman’s right to an abortion.
The court vote was 7-2 in Roe v. Wade, and 5-4 in PP v. Casey. If taken today, these decisions could very well be reversed. Was it simply a coincidence that as soon as O’Conner left the Court, South Dakota passed a law that prohibits nearly all abortions? The smell of her perfume still resonated in the air and South Dakota passed a law that violates one of her most famous opinions, written jointly with Souter and Kennedy in PP v. Casey.
If we (Americans) can’t even agree on the morning after pill, I see little chance of reaching agreement on the right of a woman to abort her pregnancy in week 10.
[quote=“MikeN”]The South Dakota law is a perfect example-here is an action that is premeditated murder, according to the bill’s supporters, yet there is absolutely NO penalty for this horrendous crime.
I’ve heard of victimless crimes, but never punishmentless crimes.
Oh, wait, say the supporters- the penalty is on the doctors who actually do the killing.
So if a woman finds her child inconvenient or so stressful it’s damaging her health, and hires a hitman to blow it away, she should face no punishment? And what about her husband- if he agrees he is a co-conspirator- again, no penalty.
And the penalty for doctors is up to five years imprisonment
Any other cases of premeditated murder in South Dakota where the maximum penalty is 5 years?[/quote]
I have not read the South Dakota law myself. But I have read articles about it, and based on those articles I am just as confused as you are about the penalties, MikeN.
If the doctor is willfully killing an innocent human being, then I can’t see why the maximum prison sentence is so lenient.
If the doctor is not taking a life, but only removing tissue from a woman’s body (at her request), then I don’t see why there should be any jail time at all.
I think this is fair. We live in a secular society, not a Christian theocracy, and so a scientific test should be employed. I would propose that once the child has a greater than 50% of surviving on its own, apart from the mother, it should be classified as a human being and accorded all the relevant legal protections.[/quote]
[quote][url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14preg.html]“Pregnancy is absolutely central to reproduction, and yet pregnancy doesn’t seem to work very well,” he said. “If you think about the heart or the kidney, they’re wonderful bits of engineering that work day in and day out for years and years. But pregnancy is associated with all sorts of medical problems. What’s the difference?”
The difference is that the heart and the kidney belong to a single individual, while pregnancy is a two-person operation. And this operation does not run in perfect harmony. Instead, Dr. Haig argues, a mother and her unborn child engage in an unconscious struggle over the nutrients she will provide it.
. . . . . . .
In the 1970’s, Dr. Trivers argued that families create an evolutionary conflict. Natural selection should favor parents who can successfully raise the most offspring. For that strategy to work, they can’t put too many resources into any one child. But the child’s chances for reproductive success will increase as its care and feeding increase. Theoretically, Dr. Trivers argued, natural selection could favor genes that help children get more resources from their parents than the parents want to give.
As Dr. Haig considered the case of pregnancy, it seemed like the perfect arena for this sort of conflict. A child develops in intimate contact with its mother. Its development in the womb is crucial to its long-term health. So it was plausible that nature would favor genes that allowed fetuses to draw more resources from their mothers.
A fetus does not sit passively in its mother’s womb and wait to be fed. Its placenta aggressively sprouts blood vessels that invade its mother’s tissues to extract nutrients[/url]. [/quote]
Then, I would propose that once a child has a 50% survival rate, if the woman wants her body back, she should have that option, and let the fetus take it’s chances on it’s own.
OK, not really. But, you can see how emotional this conflict over abortion is in the US by my flippant comment (and I meant it initially b/c I was angry). I think it is outrageous for people to tell others - yeah, you must have an unwanted child (unwanted for whatever reasons), and then offer no help or remedies for that. Instead of an abortion, we now have a human being, a child, who may be neglected (intentional or not) and what kind of potential does that child have? what quality of life? These questions in the context that abortion is LEGAL, and so obviates the question of is this taking a life or not.
I do not advocate abortion as a form of birth control, but you know to force a woman to carry the fetus of the man who raped her (father, brother or stranger) is ludicrous. And the whole issue of birth control and how pro-life advocates have blocked pre-pregnancy forms of it - WTF?
I for one am not interested in going back to the “good ole days” when women and children were considered men’s chattel/property to dispense with as they saw fit.
[quote=“Chewycorns”][quote=“Jaboney”]
You’re right; life is life, but there is a difference. The morning after, a cluster of maybe 4, 8, 16(?) cells sees and feels a whole lot less than a third trimester fetus. Neither one nor the other would be better, but if there’s going to a choice, it’s a pretty simple choice.[/quote]
But at the end of every termination, there’s something that ends up in the bucket or the toilet. We can bicker about whether that something is a ‘human life’ before or after a viable birth, but it’s a potential, a something – different from a tumor or a rotted tooth.
I disagree with your “spinning” of the morning after pill as a “friend” of working-class women. I would argue that the majority of the women using it are , middle- to upper-class princesses from the suburbs that were too lazy,stupidd irresponsible to do proper birth control planning and want to make sure nothing comes of their mistake.[/quote]
Hey, sounds like you’re talking about immaculate conceptions here. Yeah those fuckers, how dare they get themselves pregnant!!!
[quote=“gao_bo_han”]Hobbes, once again, you hit the nail on the head in your analysis of the arguments. Now regarding this part here:
I more or less feel the same way. Late term abortions in my opinion are immoral…perhaps even murderous. But I don’t think that contraceptive pills that prevent ovulation are murder. Someone mentioned that Britain allows abortion in the first twenty weeks. I don’t know the details of their current laws regarding abortion, but I know that in ancient Britain the test was whether the child had “quickened”. If it had grown to the point of having the look and manner of a child, then it was considered a human life in the fullest sense of the term. If a man murdered a woman whose unborn child had quickened, then he had committed two murders. If he attacked the expecting mother and killed only the quickened unborn child, it was also murder, even if the mother survived.
I think the “quickening test” is a pretty fair standard.[/quote]
Quickening is the term given to the time in pregnancy when you can feel the baby move. This is generally around the 4th or 5th month.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the time of quickening varies amongst women. If it is the woman’s first pregnancy, quickening, or her awareness of the baby’s movement inside comes later in the pregancy, whereas a woman who has had other pregnancies and is more familiar with feeling a baby inside her usually feels movement at an earlier time in the pregnancy.
I used to feel this way. I thought, “Hey, if my wife gets raped and pregnant by the rapist, I’d want that fetus aborted.” But once again, the question centers around whether or not the embryo/zygote/fetus is a human being. If it is not a human being, then it can be removed at the mother’s request. If it is a human being, then it does not matter one ioata who the father is. Think of it this way: the rape victim does not abort the fetus, and it’s born. A blood test proves that the father is the rapist. Is it then her privilege to smother the child to death? Obviously not. As I said, the entire question is whether that mass of tissue inside the mother is a human being, not a human being, or “something in between”.
One of my favorite actors is Liam Neeson. In his movie “Rob Roy”, he plays a character whose wife gets raped and becomes pregnant by the rapist. She tells him that she was going to abort the child, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. He looks into her eyes and says, “It’s not the child who deserves to die.” I think that pretty much sums up my feelings on the issue.
Your argument about the child’s prospects are likewise centered on the assumption the fetus is not a human being. If the child is born, and it is apparent it has little prospects in life, that does not then give the parents the right to kill it. I know I keep coming back to the same question, but it seems to me that all of the other issues are tangential: is that mass of tissue a person or isn’t it?
