Abortion is morally wrong

[Losty]

If I must give an opinion, I don't think a fetus' right to live should ever trump a woman's right to ownership and control over her own body

To much of "the abortion debate" is decided by emotional appeals based on the physical similarity of a fetus to an infant.

"Future personhood" does not exist. Too often I hear, often from teenage mothers, that if their (coincidentally teenage mother) had chosen not to have them, they would not exist.

Which is technically correct, but it assumed the person having the thought existed prior to their own viable conception to the same extent that they're able to make such an observation.

It's a romantic, highly emotional idea, but it's also a thought error. If a zygote or fetus is aborted, by natural or artificial processes, there is no "I." There's nothing there to develop a sense of self. The selfhood of a fetus only exists because adults can imagine their conception and being carried to term. It hasn't happened yet, that "self" would never have been.

Your average "pro lifer" has consumed 2.5 chicken embryos before making an argument about the sacrosanct nature of human life, gobbled them down without a second thought, and got on with their day.

But then again, I'm a biased non-breeder.

Well of course that opinion was on late term abortions only. The only reason that debate comes up in the first place is because it's easier to play on someone's emotions when talking about something that looks a lot like a baby.

There's really no reason to debate the non issue. As far as abortion over all, I don't think a fetus has a right to live. I certainly agree that emotions and politics shouldn't mix. I don't want someone else's emotions factoring in on my personal decisions. Keep your emotions out of my bed, my place of worship(or lack of), and my uterus. I will likewise keep my emotions to myself.

[bennyboy]

I have an interest in this argument.

I also believe abortion is morally wrong, except in cases of severe birth defect or rape, or maybe a couple other excepts.

That being said, my wife recently had one. We are too old, too busy trying to build our family's finances, and we feel our two kids are exactly the ones we want. I had originally asked my wife to go on the pill or something if she didn't want any more, but she was worried about messing with her hormones. I didn't think it was my place to impose a decision like that.

It bothers me that people who are fine with abortion think it's dysfunctional not to be fine with it. Reproduction is one of the central features of our evolution, and of the lives of the majority of human beings. I'm okay with my discomfort. In fact, I chose to accept what I knew would be uncomfortable in order to mediate some of the burden on my wife in making a touch choice.

In the end, I'm kind of stained forever. But I've been stained before, and will be again, by a variety of other necessary concessions and compromises that disillusioned me from the fairy tale of a morally or socially perfect existence.

[GrandizerII]

In the end, I'm kind of stained forever. But I've been stained before, and will be again, by a variety of other necessary concessions and compromises that disillusioned me from the fairy tale of a morally or socially perfect existence.

Sometimes the way to alleviate suffering is to adjust the way you see certain things. You see abortion as sort of a curse. That might be playing a role in your discomfort. Just saying.

[Esquilax]

Assuming the fetus is a person (which I don't think he grants), Esquilax uses the analogy of should anyone be forced to be an organ donor, or to hook their body up to anyone else to provide life support. I would say not. There is no such moral duty.

But, I think it a false analogy. After all the fetus didn't demand the mother take it in at gun point. A better analogy might be this. You are clutching a rope in danger of falling into an abyss and certain death. You caught the rope. Someone else caught your ankles. You can't support both of you. Is it moral to kick them loose. I would say yes.

The point is that it doesn't matter how the situation came about. You could spend every day of your life specifically causing someone to have organ failure so that they require a transplant, and you still wouldn't be forced to give up one of your own. That's a situation in which there's a direct, intended causative link, and still we respect a person's right to their own body. There's a reason for that.

But suppose someone has grasped your hands and will not let got and you are now both sure to be saved. Is it moral to kick the person clutching your ankles loose now? I would say not. Sure, your arms might hurt more and it might even dislocate your shoulders but the inconvenience is temporary.

A fetus will take up more time than it will take to be pulled up off the rope, but while you might suffer from some bodily changes, it's a temporary inconvenience and nothing like having your shoulders dislocated.

Could we not try to minimize this, here? It's a little dishonest to characterize this as "temporary inconvenience," as though there aren't significant health repercussions involved in pregnancy and childbirth.

I would go even farther than this though. The hypothetical person clutching your ankles didn't get there because you did something. The fetus is something the woman (absent rape---which might push us back to the organ donor analogy) was complicit in causing the fetus' dependent position. That changes things. Failing to provide this temporary loan is more like child neglect.

And I'm so goddamn tired of hearing these arguments too, which, I'm sorry, are no different from "well, the little slut should have kept her legs together if she didn't want to get pregnant!" except that the phrasing is nicer. We don't take this attitude with any other situation, and yet now I'm suddenly supposed to accept this "there are never any mistakes, and you have no right to mitigate the consequences on yourself now," attitude when it comes to abortion?

We don't leave drunk drivers dying on the side of the road near their crashed cars, we don't just not accept police reports from mugging victims if they were flashing their cash around dark alleys, we don't refuse to treat self inflicted wounds, we don't go with this "now you must face the worst case scenario for your actions no matter what!" nonsense anywhere else, so why does the argument suddenly become valid with abortion?

[Jenny A]

Whether a fetus is ever a person is an entirely separate question from what rights it might have, were it a person. Unless you reach yes on the question of whether it is a person a some point, there's no more ethical question about the decision to abort than there is about removing a tumor.

I want to make it clear that I do not think a fetus is a baby just because it has a little beating heart, much as new parents are thrilled to hear that heart or how attached they get before the fetus if born. Nor do I think how it looks has much to do with the issue. What suggests to humanity to me is a human mind as a aware and functioning as a full-term baby or premi that is aware enough to respond to its environment similarly to a full term baby. I think that that point is pretty darn late in the pregnancy cycle, but I don't know where it is.

Losty is quite right that having had two babies (and a couple miscarriages) doesn't make me an expert in determining when that moment is. But there are cognitive studies of prematurity babies that would give us an indication.

I think however, when the fetus can live outside the mother, is a red-herring. That is completely dependent on current technology. The original supreme court opinion Roe v. Wade pinned that moment at the beginning of the third trimester. The problem is that medicine keeps pushing that date back. Should be reach the point the we can clone animals in an artificial uteruses, we will have pushed that all the way back to the zygote. Ooops.

---

Esquilax, I'm out of time this morning, so I won't reply til evening.

[Esquilax]

Whether a fetus is ever a person is an entirely separate question from what rights it might have, were it a person.

So what's the point of the "a fetus is a person!" argument in the abortion debate? The argument is supposed to work in a way that attributes the right to life to the fetus (poorly, as I've argued, but that's beside the point), and if you then have to argue that the fetus must have special rights above and beyond what we give to people, well, then you might as well have just argued that and left the personhood claim by the wayside. You might as well be talking about, well, anything if we're arguing for special rights; being human isn't required for that.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Just asa with any other discussion of morality, this issue is both subjective and relative. Because of that, absolute pronouncements on the morality of abortion (aside from baldly expressing one's own feelings, and not declaring those feelings to be The Yardstick), is the only meaningful discussion to be had.

I find it pretty disturbing and it doesn't feel right to me. I wouldn't dream of imposing my views on a woman when I can never be confronted with this decision in such an immediate manner as her.

[No_God]

[Ryantology]

It bothers me that people who are fine with abortion think it's dysfunctional not to be fine with it.

But, that isn't a true representation of many pro-choice people. Probably not most. It's okay to not be fine with it. What's not okay is thinking that not being fine with it gives you the right to force someone else to carry a baby to term against their will. It's a personal decision.

I personally do not like abortion nor would I want my wife to have one unless it her life depended on it. She feels the same way, but I don't feel it is my place to force her (or anyone else, for that matter) to carry a baby to term, even though I am the father.

[Mister Agenda]

Forcing a woman to carry her fetus to term against her will is, maybe too literally, 'forced labor'. It reduces her to an object. In theory, you would have to be willing to confine her and strap her down to make sure she delivers. This is what the 'pro-life' position is about, ultimately: forcing women to deliver against their will.