The Effect of "Abortion Rights" on the Political Landscape

[KLB]

And the remaining 95.7% are elective, ex post facto birth control for people too lazy or stupid or entitled to take precautions

Or unlucky when they did.

 

[jamil]

Or unlucky when they did.

We had a neighbor years ago who kept complaining that she kept getting pregnant while on the pill. But she liked to get liqueured up often enough that we wondered if she took them faithfully.

 

[KLB]

We had a neighbor years ago who kept complaining that she kept getting pregnant while on the pill. But she liked to get liqueured up often enough that we wondered if she took them faithfully.

None of them are 100% effective.

 

[jamil]

This is specious, you have incorrectly identified exactly who is considering the odds over the stakes. If an activity (unprotected sex) has a possible consequence of death during childbirth, wouldn't the logical course be avoidance of the activity that involves a chance of death rather than rely on medical intervention to save ones life?

It is just another pretty lie to try to give some cover to the idea that a child can be killed because the 'mother' finds the circumstances of being pregnant inconvenient.

If only there were some way for the 'mother's' appetite for risky behavior to not involve pregnancy at all. How does that go? "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"

It seems more that instead of incorrectly identifying exactly who is considering the odds over the stakes, perhaps the difference is the priority that you both assign to which odds/stakes. Again I suggest that this is an issue of worldview which determines that priority.

I agree with you that it's immoral to **** without regards to consequences, and just to think so lightly of the potential to create a life. Irresponsibility is a moral failure, and in this case, people dismiss the responsibility by saying, oh well, we'll just get an abortion.

 

[jamil]

Yeah…those careless 10 year-olds just need consequences for being too sexy around their stepfathers.

Your position is so extreme your entire state voted against even considering it again…ever.

Even your precious orange god-emperor knows your position is self-defeating and he is desperate to keep that albatross from around his own neck. Look… as stupid as trump is even he knows your position leads to more legal abortions and fewer won elections for your side.

I can’t thank you enough, you write my arguments for me.

Maybe he's including rape victims as being irresponsible. I kinda don't think so. So he's right as far as people having the attitude that to heck with responsibility, we'll throw caution to the wind and just get an abortion if we lose the bet.

 

[jamil]

Just because I find the whole debate over the exact line of where failure to provide sustenance to another's life switches over to murder, and because I haven't made enough posts in a row already, I have a hypothetical scenario I'd like to ask about, on the off chance that any of my interlocutors in this thread are still reading my posts and I haven't already thoroughly destroyed any desire they have to further respond (my apologies! Brevity has never been my strong suit.)

Suppose you are out at sea in your sailboat. Far enough from shore that a typical man couldn't swim to shore without drowning, but close enough that you can get back reasonably quickly in your boat. There are no other boats within sight. The weather forecast says a storm may be coming soon, so you decide to head for land. You hear a splash then a thump behind you, and turn around to see that, without bothering to ask permission first, a man has climbed out of the water into your boat. Exhausted and panting, he explains that his boat sank, and he had been swimming for hours before managing to get to your boat. His speech is barely audible, as he almost completely lost his voice from yelling for help while he was still too far away to be heard. Looking around, you assess the situation. It's your boat, and he doesn't have a right to be on it without your consent. There is also a very small, but non-zero chance that the storm blows in more quickly than expected, and his extra weight ends up being the difference that keeps you from making it to shore in time, so you both end up dying in the storm. Given that this is your boat, after all, you decide that you are the only one who should decide the odds, and you decide you don't like them. So you decide to voluntarily withdraw your consent for him to be on your boat, and grabbing a plank, you forcefully assist him over the side of your boat into the water, and then immediately head for shore as fast a you can, while he futilely swims behind attempting to catch up, and eventually drowns.

What do you think? In this scenario, did the hypothetical "you" commit murder? Did "you" do anything wrong at all?

Question. Is the fellow that came on board a human being at the zygote stage?

It's a tough scenario. I think it would be immoral to cast the person overboard. I wouldn't owe him a ride in the boat, but it would be morally irresponsible to let him die when the risk to myself is so low. And, if his weight makes the difference between making it or not, the risk isn't much different whether it's with or without him. But that's just a hole in the analogy that we can fill with imagination.

 

[AndreusMaximus]

Question. Is the fellow that came on board a human being at the zygote stage?

No, he's a full grown man. This analogy isn't specifically meant to address the abortion question alone, it's meant to give some thought to some of the deeper moral questions that we've waded into, not just with the abortion debate, but with the debate over whether or not pulling life support is morally equivalent to killing someone, etc.

Questions like: Is a person ever morally obliged to provide support another person's life? Should one ever be legally obliged to do so? Where does the line between failure to provide support vs. outright killing lie? If I'm holding someone's hand as they lean over the edge of a cliff, and suddenly I let go causing them to fall to their death, have I murdered them, or have I just withdrawn my consent to support their life with my body?

It's a tough scenario. I think it would be immoral to cast the person overboard. I wouldn't owe him a ride in the boat, but it would be morally irresponsible to let him die when the risk to myself is so low. And, if his weight makes the difference between making it or not, the risk isn't much different whether it's with or without him. But that's just a hole in the analogy that we can fill with imagination.

Actually, I meant it as a feature of the analogy that the odds of his weight making the difference between drowning or not are incredibly low, basically negligible, in fact. The difference his weight makes in the speed your boat heads to shore is almost nil. But it's not quite nothing. I'm curious if you think that makes a difference in the analogy? Are you obliged to bring him to shore if the cost to you is absolutely nothing? If yes, does that change if there is a possibility, however remote, that bringing him along will cost you your life? I'm even more curious about @LeftyGunner's take on this, since he's the one who brought up the odds of dying during childbirth as a factor in arguing the morality of abortion.

 

[jamil]

No, he's a full grown man. This analogy isn't specifically meant to address the abortion question alone, it's meant to give some thought to some of the deeper moral questions that we've waded into, not just with the abortion debate, but with the debate over whether or not pulling life support is morally equivalent to killing someone, etc.

Questions like: Is a person ever morally obliged to provide support another person's life? Should one ever be legally obliged to do so? Where does the line between failure to provide support vs. outright killing lie? If I'm holding someone's hand as they lean over the edge of a cliff, and suddenly I let go causing them to fall to their death, have I murdered them, or have I just withdrawn my consent to support their life with my body?

Actually, I meant it as a feature of the analogy that the odds of his weight making the difference between drowning or not are incredibly low, basically negligible, in fact. The difference his weight makes in the speed your boat heads to shore is almost nil. But it's not quite nothing. I'm curious if you think that makes a difference in the analogy? Are you obliged to bring him to shore if the cost to you is absolutely nothing? If yes, does that change if there is a possibility, however remote, that bringing him along will cost you your life? I'm even more curious about @LeftyGunner's take on this, since he's the one who brought up the odds of dying during childbirth as a factor in arguing the morality of abortion.

I think moral responsibility requires actions that may risk on’s life.

 

[AndreusMaximus]

I think moral responsibility requires actions that may risk on’s life.

Agreed.

 

[LeftyGunner]

Regarding this principle of bodily sovereignty, I have a real-life example I want to ask you about, but first, if you'll humor me, can I ask you about a ridiculously contorted and far-fetched hypothetical?

Oh, absolutely…I love a good thought exercise!

Suppose there is a woman driving to an appointment for a late-term abortion at 7 months pregnant. She gets in a car wreck, which throws her into labor. An ambulance arrives, and she delivers the baby in the ambulance just as they reach the hospital. The doctor who was going to perform the abortion comes to see her, and she pleads that she really doesn't want this baby, can we do anything about it? The doctor thinks for a second, and then says, well, if you'll let me do a sort of "reverse C-section", I'll open your womb and put the baby back in. Once the baby is back in your body, that's your sovereign domain, so if you want I can just snip the baby's neck, then pull it back out, and viola! problem solved. The women immediately agrees, and the doctor carries out the procedure, just as he described.

In your view, should what the doctor did in this scenario be illegal? Would you consider it murder?

Yes, I know this above hypothetical is ridiculously contorted and far-fetched, and I'm also pretty sure that I already know the answer regarding how your perspective would classify what the doctor did as wrong. I'd just like to hear it, in your own words, to be sure I'm understanding you.

Okay, so…there’s a lot to address here.

That really is a most absurd scenario.

I would argue mom has a right to seek a late term abortion.

I would question the morality of both the woman seeking the procedure, and the doctor performing the procedure, though, if either of them were considering the procedure for anything less than genuine medical necessity.

I think the only moral justification for a surgical abortion is genuine medical necessity.

Once a woman has survived delivery she has no valid reason to fear dying during childbirth, so her justification for killing her child is removed.

So, in your scenario, I would first argue that mom had no medical justification (for herself or her child) to re-insert her (now independent AND air-breathing) child back into her uterus, which would necessarily subvert any legal justification for her actions as well.

So, yeah…murder, medical malpractice, and probably insurance fraud as a topper.

(And lucrative publishing deals all around…holy Amazon Prime courtroom drama Batman)

Is there any limit regarding how high the odds of death have to be before it grants one the right to kill another human?

…another human living entirely inside my body and entirely dependent on my individual cooperation for survival at all?

Only as high as I am willing to tolerate. I don’t think that should be anyone else‘s decision…especially not the government.

I think I can at least grasp the idea behind the bodily sovereignty idea (though to me it still doesn't explain what happens to the unborn child's bodily sovereignty)

It belongs to the mother…the child’s sovereignty is an extension of her own until birth.

but the idea that abortion can also be justified due to a minuscule chance of death during delivery is bit more out there, to me.

Every day people on this very forum ready themselves to kill others for fear of that same minuscule chance of their own death.

Pregnancy nearly killed my wife, but I have never been faced the genuine threat of deadly force at any point in my life…

…which fear is more legitimate?

For instance: Hypothetically, every single living human right now is producing carbon dioxide, and if one believes that carbon dioxide can create a warming effect on the environment that could produce more severe natural disasters, then every other human being drawing breath right now is, albeit by the most infinitesimal amount, increasing my odds of dying. Of course this doesn't mean that we just go around killing each other, so what is the bar? What percentage chance has to exist that another human being will cause my death before I can kill them?

From my perspective bar is clearly defined: The other person has to be living entirely inside your body and entirely dependent upon your cooperation for survival in order for the bodily sovereignty argument to be valid.

 

[AndreusMaximus]

Oh, absolutely…I love a good thought exercise!

Thank you very much for you thorough answers.

Okay, so…there’s a lot to address here.

That really is a most absurd scenario.

I would argue mom has a right to seek a late term abortion.

I would question the morality of both the woman seeking the procedure, and the doctor performing the procedure, though, if either of them were considering the procedure for anything less than genuine medical necessity.

I think the only moral justification for a surgical abortion is genuine medical necessity.

I understand that your position is that the state should not intervene, under any circumstances, and a woman has the right to make the call no matter what, correct? So I take it that in the above, you are just talking about morals that you would hold personally, that is, choices you would make yourself or advise others to make, but you don't think they should be compelled by force of law, right?

So that being understood, how do you define, for your own personal morals, "genuine medical necessity"? Even if a pregnancy is 100% normal and healthy as far as doctors can tell, there is always still that tiny chance that something goes wrong during childbirth. So do the inherent risks, even in a normal, healthy pregnancy, constitute sufficient reason for a late-term abortion, if the mother changes her mind at the last second and decides she doesn't want to go through with childbirth? (Again, I am asking regarding your personal, moral beliefs, not what should be legal or not.)

Once a woman has survived delivery she has no valid reason to fear dying during childbirth, so her justification for killing her child is removed.

So, in your scenario, I would first argue that mom had no medical justification (for herself or her child) to re-insert her (now independent AND air-breathing) child back into her uterus, which would necessarily subvert any legal justification for her actions as well.

So, yeah…murder, medical malpractice, and probably insurance fraud as a topper.

(And lucrative publishing deals all around…holy Amazon Prime courtroom drama Batman)

So, I'm getting a bit confused on how the two arguments you are making relate to each other. On the one hand, you have the "bodily sovereignty" argument, but on the other hand you have the "risk to the mother" argument. I had expected that your answer to my far-out-there hypothetical would relate to the fact that the baby is now outside the mother's body, and thus now has his/her own bodily sovereignty and can't be forced back into another person's body. The fact that the risk to the mother now being gone is the bigger factor for you kind of surprised me.

…another human living entirely inside my body and entirely dependent on my individual cooperation for survival at all?

Only as high as I am willing to tolerate. I don’t think that should be anyone else‘s decision…especially not the government.



It belongs to the mother…the child’s sovereignty is an extension of her own until birth.

So, I'm still not sure I completely understand the "bodily sovereignty" argument, at least I don't quite understand how it relates to the "risk to the mother" argument. Is the "bodily sovereignty" argument dependent on the "risk to the mother" argument, or does it stand on its own? In other words, if we hypothetically reached a point where medical science had advance so far that there were literally zero deaths due to pregnancy/childbirth, ever, would you still think abortion should be legal? Is a woman's bodily sovereignty alone enough to justify abortion being legal, or does it depend, also, on there being at least some risk to her? (Here I am asking more specifically about what you think should be legal, vs. what your personal morals are.)

Every day people on this very forum ready themselves to kill others for fear of that same minuscule chance of their own death.

Pregnancy nearly killed my wife, but I have never been faced the genuine threat of deadly force at any point in my life…

…which fear is more legitimate?

Which fear is more legitimate? Well, a quick google search by me turns up reported number of murders per year ranging from about 17,000 to 21,000 annually in recent years in the USA, and maternal mortality ranging from 800 to 1200 annually. You can interpret those numbers how you will, and I don't know what the fair way is to judge them per capita, but at the end of the day I really don't think the question has any relevance at all, because there's no real comparison to be made here. The people on this forum preparing themselves in case they should have defend themselves against an attacker are only doing just that: preparing. They aren't using that miniscule chance of their own death to justify killing someone. They aren't going out and profiling potential attackers, then taking them out pre-emptively. On the other hand, you are trying to use the potential chance of death during childbirth to justify killing any baby in the womb at any point. This is in no way a fair analogy. If you want to argue women should be allowed to keep abortion pills on hand in case their baby goes rogue, fashions a makeshift shiv out of bits of placenta, and starts stabbing her in her sleep one night, then fine, I guess. But apply the same standards in both cases: Self-defenders aren't justified in killing someone unless that person is in the act of trying to kill/harm them or another innocent person. I don't remember the last time an unborn baby tried to commit murder, or threatened anyone with a deadly weapon.

From my perspective bar is clearly defined: The other person has to be living entirely inside your body and entirely dependent upon your cooperation for survival in order for the bodily sovereignty argument to be valid.

So why even bring the risk to the mother into the argument? Does it change anything? If a woman has sole authority to decide what happens inside her body, then why is the level of risk even relevant?

 

[KLB]

From my perspective bar is clearly defined: The other person has to be living entirely inside your body and entirely dependent upon your cooperation for survival in order for the bodily sovereignty argument to be valid.

If the baby could survive outside the woman's body, why would death for the baby be OK?

 

[jamil]

I'd like to address this a bit more.

No, he's a full grown man. This analogy isn't specifically meant to address the abortion question alone, it's meant to give some thought to some of the deeper moral questions that we've waded into, not just with the abortion debate, but with the debate over whether or not pulling life support is morally equivalent to killing someone, etc.

Questions like: Is a person ever morally obliged to provide support another person's life? Should one ever be legally obliged to do so? Where does the line between failure to provide support vs. outright killing lie? If I'm holding someone's hand as they lean over the edge of a cliff, and suddenly I let go causing them to fall to their death, have I murdered them, or have I just withdrawn my consent to support their life with my body?

Actually, I meant it as a feature of the analogy that the odds of his weight making the difference between drowning or not are incredibly low, basically negligible, in fact. The difference his weight makes in the speed your boat heads to shore is almost nil. But it's not quite nothing. I'm curious if you think that makes a difference in the analogy? Are you obliged to bring him to shore if the cost to you is absolutely nothing? If yes, does that change if there is a possibility, however remote, that bringing him along will cost you your life? I'm even more curious about @LeftyGunner's take on this, since he's the one who brought up the odds of dying during childbirth as a factor in arguing the morality of abortion.

This is an excellent analogy to address the topic. There is a such thing as moral obligation. If you have the opportunity to save a life, but doing so is an inconvenience, so then you just ignore the person in need, you're failing to perform a moral obligation.

As I said awhile ago, I think golden rule is an objective moral. It's a root moral from which many other moral principles can be derived. And one of the morals derived from that is the idea that humans have a moral obligation to help others in need. This is an instinctive moral, though it does get overridden with other competing instincts, like selfishness. Which can't be demonstrated much more than people taking video of people dying instead of helping them.

If you're the one about to drown, you desperately want the guy in the boat to save you, despite the risk to himself. So if you're the one in the boat, how could you possibly shove the desperate one out of the boat? Treat others as you want to be treated. But that's purely an issue of human morals, and not something that should be codified in law. People have developed the capacity for empathy for a reason.

Some jurisdictions have "good Samaritan" laws which punish people for not helping when they could have. I don't agree with those kinds of laws. But, the boat scenario would be a different situation. If the boat guy pushed the swimmer back into the water, knowing full well that he would drown, I think he could be charged with murder, and it would be a just charge. Not that abortion, per se, is murder. I think in most cases, it's violating moral responsibility.

I'd like to alter the scenario to get to Bug's point though. Let's say a guy in a rowboat was getting ready to go out and fish. He really didn't like fishing alone so he asked a total stranger if he wanted to go fishing with him. The stranger said, sure. The boat owner did not do the due diligence to check the weather, and they found themselves in the middle of a strong storm. The boat owner had to row hard to get back to shore. As he tired from rowing, he thought, well, sure would be easier to get back to shore if that tub of dough (the stranger was fat) weren't in the boat. So the guy shoved the stranger out of the boat and rowed towards the shore.

It's his boat. Shouldn't he be able to remove consent, even he invited the stranger to go with him? The boat owners moral obligation to the guy is even greater when he invited him to go with.

I think LG's thinking is a turnoff to most people because it seems like he's claiming that there is no moral responsibility for the mother to the unborn. It is as much a turnoff to people that it's equal to forcing a 10 year old girl to carry the product of rape to term.

Now if LG's point isn't that it's not immoral, but that the woman has a right to chose not to be moral, that's true to an extent. But late term is depraved, unless it's medically necessary.