(September 6, 2012 at 5:27 pm)genkaus Wrote:

(September 6, 2012 at 5:24 pm)festive1 Wrote: Well, we haven't established what medical means are to be gone to in order to keep those born prematurely alive. A baby born at 24 weeks gestation has a 50% chance of survival, but that's with round the clock advanced medical care, and the child that survives rarely does so without significant long-term problems.

That decision would be up to the the person who has then taken up the responsibility of caring for the child. They'd be the ones paying for it after all.

That's fair, but still problematic. For instance the family is poor and has no health insurance, should their infant receive less care? Who pays for the multi-million dollar NICU bill? Is it even moral or ethical to put the infant through months of intensive treatment? What about the child's future medical bills? What about a family that can't shell out $5-10k for IVF to get pregnant, should they just have to face the fact that they'll never have kids (adoption isn't cheap either)? Is that moral or ethical (assuming that the family could provide a decent home, but just can't scrape together the cash)?
I'm not trying to be obnoxious, I'm attempting to explore these issues to figure out where I stand on them, but there are a lot of tough questions that don't get to be asked very often. Perhaps these are questions for a new thread...

(September 6, 2012 at 6:01 pm)festive1 Wrote: That's fair, but still problematic. For instance the family is poor and has no health insurance, should their infant receive less care? Who pays for the multi-million dollar NICU bill? Is it even moral or ethical to put the infant through months of intensive treatment? What about the child's future medical bills? What about a family that can't shell out $5-10k for IVF to get pregnant, should they just have to face the fact that they'll never have kids (adoption isn't cheap either)? Is that moral or ethical (assuming that the family could provide a decent home, but just can't scrape together the cash)?
I'm not trying to be obnoxious, I'm attempting to explore these issues to figure out where I stand on them, but there are a lot of tough questions that don't get to be asked very often.

Are we still talking about abortion here? These questions don't seem to be about morality but about facts of life. The child would receive care and treatment proportionally to what his parents could afford. The same facts apply to adults. If you don't have enough money for IVF or adoption, then you can't have children.

I don't see morality being an issue here at all. What you have described here is natural course of events. Children die in their infancy. Or possibly live painful lives. And couples who want to have children often can't. Maybe it's not fair, but that's life for you.

The good news is, you don't have to sit back and let nature take its course. The bad news, any alteration in nature's course would come at a cost - maybe a very high cost. The question of morality comes in when you weigh the benefit of the alteration against the cost. So, for example, if you really love that child, then really, there is no amount you should not be willing to pay to ensure its survival. The same goes for the question of having children. Ofcourse, if the price is so high that you cannot pay for it, then the question of choice - and therefore any morality - is out of your hands.

(September 6, 2012 at 5:16 pm)genkaus Wrote:

(September 6, 2012 at 4:55 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: I'm not understanding the criteria by which you distinguish between the unborn (at 8-months for example), which according to you have no rights, and the others which you believe do.

I told you already. Whether it can survive without the mother or not.

It seems to me the right of an fetus to life is confered by the willingness of the mother to give it birth.

If the mother is not willing, then the fetus does not acquire the right. Once the mother commits herself to either giving it birth or an appropriate equivalent thereof, such as caesarisn followed by incubation, then the fetus acquires the right.

A in-womb fetus has no independent claim to any rights except through the intention of the woman of whom it is a part to separate it from herself and add it to the human society. Prior to that the fetus is not part of the society but part of her. So it has whatever right the woman chooses to give to any other part of her body, like her toe nail, or her nose. After that the fetus becomes part of the society and has claim to the rights the society grant to all its members.

(September 6, 2012 at 6:53 pm)Chuck Wrote: It seems to me the right of an fetus to life is confered by the willingness of the mother to give it birth.

If the mother is not willing, then the fetus does not acquire the right. Once the mother commits herself to either giving it birth or an appropriate equivalent thereof, such as caesarisn followed by incubation, then the fetus acquires the right.

A in-womb fetus has no independent claim to any rights except through the intention of the woman of whom it is a part to separate it from herself and add it to the human society. Prior to that the fetus is not part of the society but part of her. So it has whatever right the woman chooses to give to any other part of her body, like her toe nail, or her nose. After that the fetus becomes part of the society and has claim to the rights the society grant to all its members.

I'd disagree on two points. Firstly, since the fetus is in fact a completely new entity, it cannot be considered a part of the woman simply by the virtue of being inside her body. It has its own genetic code and organ system and is using the woman for nourishment and residence. I mean, you wouldn't call a tapeworm in your intestine a "part of you".

That being said, I do recognize the right of the woman to rid herself of the entity - the same as I recognize the right of a person to have any foreign body removed. Whether or not it has a right to live beyond that point, is something to be determined independently of that.

(September 6, 2012 at 8:22 am)festive1 Wrote: HUGE difference between a glob of cells that has to grow and be nurtured in a woman's womb and a child. Babies can survive as long as they have access to food, admittedly for an infant to grow into a functioning, healthy adult they need significantly more than just food, but also being held, interacted with, and taught by the examples of their caregivers with how to interact with other people and their environment. The potential baby has to be fed and grow inside a woman's body. At the very least, whether a woman wants to carry the fetus to term is that woman's decision, and hers alone. Adoption is often seen as the "gentler" solution, but as a woman who has carried two babies to term (one of which was an unplanned pregnancy), I know it is often the case that women become bonded to the fetus long before it is viable outside of the womb. How heart wrenching is it to become bonded to a life then give it up? Far be it for me to say how an unplanned pregnancy should end. I at least allow some room for the woman's feelings. If she doesn't want a baby, and doesn't feel she would be strong enough emotionally to give it up, it's not up to me to decide for her.

P.S. The medical term for miscarriage is "spontaneous abortion."

From my experience, both having an abortion, and making an adoption plan were both extremely difficult.

The abortion was hard because I have already brought four incredible, beautiful, and intelligent children into the world, and I was angry at my body for being too weak to carry it to term. It was an extremely hard decision to have to make. I did it for reasons I have already stated, and I am at peace with the decision now.

The adoption, believe it or not, was much harder. I did grow fond of the little guy kicking inside me, and I loved him just like my others, but I was so swamped. I had a 4 year old boy, a two year old girl, and a 4 month old girl, but it's not that I couldn't have handled it if I had to. It's that I wanted him to have the best life possible. I felt my other children deserved as much attention as I could give them, and so I made a parenting decision that I felt was best for my family as a whole. Being a mother, a woman naturally puts us in positions like that, where we have to make hard decisions.

If my body had been in better shape after having 4 c-sections, I doubt I would've had the abortion. I'm not sure what I would've done. I know I am suing the hospital who performed my tubal ligation. Because of all the internal scar tissue, my doctors now are still having a hard time getting to the bottom of why I continued to get pregnant afterward, but they're sure it wasn't goddidit.

I am pro choice on abortion. As a male I will never have to make a decision on a abortion so I will never judge someone on their choice.

Again, I'm undecided on abortion (I'm actually leaning towards pro-choice) so don't take this the wrong way...but on this argument that the pro-life movement is just an attempt by men to control women, where's the evidence of this? How do you explain the many women who are against pro-choice?

I wouldn't call it an attempt by men to control women (though in practice it may appear to be so this probably has something to do with the number of males in positions of authority or advocacy due to other factors related to this issue).

It is, definitively, an attempt to control the reproductive organs of other human beings (and it just so happens that females are toting the organs in question). Whether or not that's a good or bad thing I suppose, would come down to peoples opinions (and support of those opinions).

We have a pro-life libertarian here on these boards, for example, and I'm guessing we have a pro-choice libertarian as well. We have some folks who are pro-life personally but pro-choice as a matter of policy. Pro life females and pro choice males also exist...so it looks like peoples positions on the matter can be fairly nuanced. Calling it "an attempt by men to control women" probably doesn;t do the reality of the situation any justice (though certainly for some people and their justifications this seems to be the case).

(September 7, 2012 at 11:24 am)teaearlgreyhot Wrote: Again, I'm undecided on abortion (I'm actually leaning towards pro-choice) so don't take this the wrong way...but on this argument that the pro-life movement is just an attempt by men to control women, where's the evidence of this? How do you explain the many women who are against pro-choice?

Those women want to be controlled by men.

The point is, while the pro-life movement is not only about controlling women, the basis is the same. For both - arguing in favor of controlling women and for pro-life - you begin with same premises. The life and rights of the fetus supersede that of the woman's over her own body. Basically, what you are saying is, the right of the woman over her own body is conditional and can easily be restricted and the responsibility of well-being and/or happiness of another entity can be imposed upon her. The same rationale can be used when it's her husband or her family that wish to control her. I mean, if her rights can be done away so easily, why wouldn't they have the same right to do so?

(September 6, 2012 at 5:16 pm)genkaus Wrote: I told you already. Whether it can survive without the mother or not.

That seems to be a very arbitrary measure. And it seems more reasonable to me that many more adamant pro-abortion advocates. Many decisions boil down to a judgement call and I can understand why someone would believe this to be one of them. Generally, I believe people should try to base life and death choices on firmer criteria or at the very least defer in favor of the possibility that we are talking about a human life even if it is unborn. Especially when we are talking about late-term abortions or those currently considered to be on the edge of viabiity. Is there really that much difference between three-months and four. And when we look at an ultrasound of a very early term fetus, for all intents and purposes, it looks human.

With respect to choice, I'm reminded of the movie, Crimes & Misdemeanors. In it, Martin Landow plays a doctor that murders his mistress to prevent his wife from discovering the affair. His brother, played by Jeffery Orbach, arranges the hit. Raked by guilt the doctor threatens to confess the crime. To this the brother replies, "The time to confess was to your wife about the affair. Not now. This is murder." My point is that the time to make reproductive choices is before pregnancy, either by contraception or abstinence. Once a child has been conceived, I believe the parents have tacitly assumed a moral responsibility for the being they created and primary responsibility for the care of the child until it becomes an adult. There are appropriate time windows in which to make choices and a time after which one must live with those choices.

Some other people have argued that by my logic, people should also allow diseases to progress naturally without medical intervention. This argument is severely flawed. Pregnancy is a natural function of the body. A healthy pregnancy is not a disease or bodily malfunction that requires medical treatment.