Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

joefromchicago wrote:

To conduct the debate on the level of "personhood" is to conduct the debate on the anti-abortionists' terms. No one can, with absolute certainty, claim that a fertilized ovum is or is not a "person."

Joe, what possible definition of "personhood" would include individual cells?

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Are you then saying that, if a fertilized ovum is considered a person, there is no valid argument in favor of abortion?

If a fertilized egg is a person, then it could only be aborted in self-defense, for the greater good of society, or if it were suspected of harboring terrorists or weapons of mass destruction.

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Terry wrote:
Miscarriage would be involuntary manslaughter unless it was caused by negligence, in which case a woman could be arrested for not getting prenatal care. Many forms of birth control would be outlawed. Chance, not choice, would determine who became parents, and when. Forget that career, if you want to enjoy sex you must be willing to chance involuntary motherhood. Thousands of new schools would have to be built to accommodate a million extra children per year, and landfills expanded to hold billions of extra diapers!

All excellent public policy reasons for not prohibiting abortions, but why should one take a consequentialist approach to this issue rather than an absolutist approach? You've talked of rights before, why aren't you talking of rights here?

If it were determined that an influx of unwanted embryos would harm a society, it could declare war on the foreign embryos invading the bodies of its female citizens and abortion would be justified even though it would result in the death of legal persons.

Otherwise the right to life of embryos would take precedence over the rights of their unwilling hosts, and society would be obligated to accommodate them regardless of the cost.

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KellyS wrote:

Terry wrote:
The fact that cells and embryos are not human beings IS the point. They do not have any of the qualities that a real person has, such as awareness of itself and its surroundings and the ability to interact with others.

Can you show that the baby does not have an awareness of its environment?
The baby most definitely is interacting with its environment. It draws nutrition and oxygenated blood from the uterine walls, or the specific lining generated every month just to support the possiblity of pregancy. The baby secretes its wastes for disposal by its environment.
On the gruesome baby picture angle, many movies in various technologies have shown the babies attempting to retreat from the abortion instruments. That is most definitely interacting with others.

I did not say that embryos do not interact with their environment, but that they can not interact with others. Fetuses do not produce the kinds of brain waves that indicate awareness until at least 24 weeks.

Fetuses do not "attempt to retreat from abortion instruments" since they do not have the motor skills to do so even if they had the intelligence to know what was happening. Any object floating in a fluid will appear to move away from an instrument because the current pushes it. Do tea leaves "attempt to retreat" from your spoon?

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KellyS wrote:

The Ten Commandments say "Thou shall not kill", or if you prefer the other translation, "Thou shall not murder". Either translation supports my contention that you should not kill another human.

Odd that you should use the Bible as an argument against killing. Laughing

If you had actually read it, you would know that soon after issuing the 10 C's to Moses, God ordered the Israelites to invade neighboring lands and slaughter all of the men, women and children living there. Tens of thousands of pregnant women, babies and children were killed mercilessly.

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Asherman wrote:

How far can/should ... "ought" ... society and government regulate the personal affairs of citizens? What is more personal than one's sexual life? If government can say to a woman, thou shalt not abort a fetus, then why shouldn't government require birth control until a woman is married and licensed to have a child? Once we begin legislating how people live their intimate lives, we can easily all be deprived our most essential liberties.

The Catholic Church would undoubtedly object to any government requirement for anyone to use birth control, but if there were a completely safe and effective method, I would be in favor of strongly encouraging all women who did not want babies to use it. Unfortunately, the most effective methods may cause health problems and the relatively safe methods are unreliable. For some women who wish to be sexually active without becoming mothers, using barrier methods with early abortion as a backup is safer than hormones.

A century ago, the government would not even allow information on birth control methods to be disseminated (Margaret Sanger was arrested for doing so) and now we are discussing a government requirement to use it!

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KellyS wrote:

Frank Apisa wrote:
But you still maintain that once a woman is pregnant...she loses her rights as regards her own body????

To a great extent, as long as the baby does not threaten her physical life, YES! That is why it is SO important that the woman have full control and rights to her body before conception, so she can decide before conception whether she will have a baby or not.

If you prefer, I am pushing the argument that a woman needs all the control of her body that the pro-abortionists are arguing for BEFORE she gets pregnant.

What if she decides before conception that she does not want to have a baby, uses birth control, and gets pregnant anyway?

What if she did not intend to have sex, but gets too drunk at a party to insist that her partner use a condom?

What if she is only 14 years old and incapable of controlling access to her body or asserting her rights against an older, stronger, or more persuasive male?

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But I'm not backing down on my belief that killing a baby is murder, regardless of the age of the baby. If this is interferring, let me get a bigger bat.

Well, we all agree on that. What we don't all agree on is whether killing cells, embryos, or fetuses is murder, and if it is justifiable homicide in certain cases.

Suppose that you believe that eating pork is immoral, killing cows is sacrilegious, using chimpanzees in experiments is unethical, allowing insect parts in processed foods is disgusting, or selling genetically modified corn is evil. Should society make laws that force everyone to conform to each group's most restrictive tenets? If I am a decent person who sees nothing wrong with things you find appalling, and vice versa, neither of us has the right to impose their beliefs on the other unless it is a matter of public interest.

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KellyS wrote:

If you will consult the medical literature I think you will find that the only definitive point which can be watched is the penetration of the egg by the sperm. Everything else is observed as having already having happened. This is not pulling something out of the air. Rather it is staking a belief on what is well documented scientific evidence.

This makes no sense. Every milestone in the fetal development process has been observed and documented, from the first heartbeats to growth of fingers to the earliest brain waves to the actual birth of a baby. Most are continuums rather than distinct points, but so is the penetration of an egg by a sperm.

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How old does a person have to be before you are willing to recognize them as a full human being?

Born, legally. Third trimester, ethically.

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The grizzliest aspect is that the baby's head is delivered from the vagina so the doctor can get the instruments into the baby's brain through the back of its neck. Another minute, to allow the baby to fully exit the woman's body and the law calls that murder.

Such ignorance. Rolling Eyes

It is not easy to dilate the cervix enough for a large fetal head to fit through, so the whole point of sucking the brain out is to collapse the head enough so that it can be pulled through a partially dilated cervix, into the vagina and then out of the body. If the fetus is going to die anyway, why not perform the abortion in a way which causes the least trauma to the woman?

While having my first C-section, I asked my doctor what they did before surgery was available if a baby could not be delivered because its head was too big. He told me about skull crushers and said that before they were invented, the women (and the babies stuck in their wombs) died in agony.

I don't know how anyone can believe in a God who has watched millions of women die in childbirth and is still too stupid to figure out that the pelvic opening needs to be larger than a baby's skull.

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I'm sorry, Terry, but you seem to misunderstand me. I'm not in favor of government interferance in people's personal lives except under the most pressing of circumstances. We may have gone too far already in turning over personal responsibility to government. I favor a strong central government, but one that is primarily concerned only with those great issues that clearly affect the whole nation. The Federal Government needs to manage the national economy, conduct foriegn affairs and provide for the safety and security of American interests by maintaining a strong, capable, and credible military. The States should manage the affairs within their own boundries, and leave the local communities to govern themselves within the framework of the Federal and State Constitutions. Our whole system of government, meant to insure the greatest liberty possible, is built upon the idea that individuals can and should be responsible for their own affairs. Individuals can and should make their own choices in life. Sometimes they will do very well, and should be able to reap the rewards of their thrift, and efforts. Sometimes they will fail. That is too bad, but we are strong people able to take the heavy blow and recover. Failure isn't forever, unless we accept defeat.

My personal feelings in regard to this issue is that the States, not the Federal Government, have the right and responsiblity to regulate the use of abortion within their own borders. Some States may restrict a woman's right to choose very tightly, and others may concern themselves only with insuring good and safe medical practice.

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Asherman wrote:

...........
My personal feelings in regard to this issue is that the States, not the Federal Government, have the right and responsiblity to regulate the use of abortion within their own borders. Some States may restrict a woman's right to choose very tightly, and others may concern themselves only with insuring good and safe medical practice.

got to disagree 'heartily' here Ash;

government should govern, and support; it has NO 'rights'! (regardless of level; federal, provincial/state, local) it has responsibilities imposed upon it by the people!

And the 'people', as individuals have the right to decide everything to do with themselves, so long as it does not interfere with the rights of another;
and, in my simple little world, the rights of an unborn child (to any age before birth) 'are' the rights of the mother.

[she deserves all the support she can get; but is the final arbitor of what happens to her own body.]

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I'm a Federalist, and don't really expect that many will agree with my conservative politics. There has, in my view, to be a balance between the rights of society and the individual. When there is no balance, there is a danger of chaos. Too much power for the State, and the People become slaves. To much power vested in the individual, and organizational effectiveness is lost. In the absence of strong representative government, political policies, programs and decisions are too much influenced by mob emotionalism. The Founders were quite right to be anxious about the nation becoming too democratic.

There must be balance, and the Constitution is the flywheel. Our change in the system for electing Senators was in my view a mistake. The advent of polls and emphasis on popular opinion has undercut the necessary authority of the legislative and Executive branches. We ought not elect leaders to "do the Will of the People", but to adopt and implement the best policies for the national good in spite of popularity. The decision to fight the Civil War to prevent the secession of the Southern States wasn't popular, but it was the right decision. As the casualties rose to over 500,000 many would gladly have made peace, but Lincoln stayed the course and that was the right decision.

Who should regulate the practice of medicine? (a) The Federal Government, (b) The individual States, (c) the practitioners of medicine, or (d) the patient. My answer is "b".

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Asdherman, I agree with your staement of balance between individual and society. The devil is in the details. A conservative and a liberal may never agree how it's best administered.

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BoGoWo wrote:

Asherman wrote:
...........
My personal feelings in regard to this issue is that the States, not the Federal Government, have the right and responsiblity to regulate the use of abortion within their own borders. Some States may restrict a woman's right to choose very tightly, and others may concern themselves only with insuring good and safe medical practice.

got to disagree 'heartily' here Ash;

Amen!

This is the same argument the states used when they argued that individual states, not the federal government, should decide if black people could be held in slavery.

Some issue simply cannot be left to local governments. Some, like this one, should be decided in most aspects by federal legislation.

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A further consequence of such a policy would be that poor women could effectively be excluded from the abortion option, while those with the price of the procedure and domestic air fare would not be hindered. At any event, at the heart of Roe versus Wade is the concept that states may regularte the procedure, but not prohibit the practice.

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Terry wrote:

Joe, what possible definition of "personhood" would include individual cells?

A definition that includes those cells that can become persons.

Terry wrote:

If a fertilized egg is a person, then it could only be aborted in self-defense, for the greater good of society, or if it were suspected of harboring terrorists or weapons of mass destruction.

It seems that, in this thread, even your jests are feeble.

Terry wrote:

If it were determined that an influx of unwanted embryos would harm a society, it could declare war on the foreign embryos invading the bodies of its female citizens and abortion would be justified even though it would result in the death of legal persons.

See above.

Terry wrote:

Otherwise the right to life of embryos would take precedence over the rights of their unwilling hosts, and society would be obligated to accommodate them regardless of the cost.

What rights? You talk of rights but you never specify which ones you're relying upon.

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Joe, what exactly is your definition of a person? If a cell can "become" a person, then it must not be a person to begin with.

My point was that society determines the circumstances under which persons may be legally killed. Generally, persons may be killed in self-defense, if you are at war with them, for economic gain (such as killing ethnic groups and appropriating their land/resources), for political gain (not currently accepted in the US), or as retribution for certain crimes.

If embryos were considered persons but it was found to be expedient to abort them anyway, society would have to come up with a plausible justification for doing so. They could be declared aliens and refused admittance into the country without a permit under pain of death or charged with the capital crime of invading someone else's body. If they were not persons, they could be defined to be lower animals subject to legal extermination or declared to be property that could be disposed of by its owner.

The right to life (actually a guarantee that the government will not kill you unlawfully and will attempt to avenge your murder) is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and has since been extended to all citizens - even those who are not free white men. The right to control over your own body stems from the rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness as well as the right to be secure in your person. You are probably more familiar than I with the numerous legal decisions upholding and expanding these rights.

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Terry wrote:

Joe, what exactly is your definition of a person? If a cell can "become" a person, then it must not be a person to begin with.

If you have to ask that question, then it is evident that I haven't explained myself very well. My point is that the pro-choice side has nothing gain by arguing at the level of "personhood." For the pro-choice side it is a no-win argument, while for the anti-abortionists it is definitely a no-lose argument. As long as the pro-choice side debates about "personhood," it is, in effect, buying into the anti-abortionist argument.

I have little interest in the definition of "person," at least in terms of the abortion debate. Rather, I believe that the pro-choice position can only be effectively defended by arguing that abortion should be an option even if a fertilized egg is a person.

Terry wrote:

My point was that society determines the circumstances under which persons may be legally killed. Generally, persons may be killed in self-defense, if you are at war with them, for economic gain (such as killing ethnic groups and appropriating their land/resources), for political gain (not currently accepted in the US), or as retribution for certain crimes.

If embryos were considered persons but it was found to be expedient to abort them anyway, society would have to come up with a plausible justification for doing so. They could be declared aliens and refused admittance into the country without a permit under pain of death or charged with the capital crime of invading someone else's body. If they were not persons, they could be defined to be lower animals subject to legal extermination or declared to be property that could be disposed of by its owner.

Yes, you're right: society would have to come up with a rationale for lawfully killing persons in the case of abortion. Your suggestions, however, are hardly plausible.

Terry wrote:

The right to life (actually a guarantee that the government will not kill you unlawfully and will attempt to avenge your murder) is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and has since been extended to all citizens - even those who are not free white men. The right to control over your own body stems from the rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness as well as the right to be secure in your person. You are probably more familiar than I with the numerous legal decisions upholding and expanding these rights.

Well, the right to life is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, but it is protected by the Constitution. But the right to control one's own body is not absolute. The question, then, is: what is it about abortion that makes control over one's body a higher-order right than protection of life?

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Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

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