it makes total sense.... my view would be to move in steps here...the first step would be to get rid of abortions that are occuring past the first trimester for these "soft" mental health reasons...like "i'm worried i can't afford this baby." those make up such a substantial majority of post first-term abortions it's ridiculous. they simply should not be happening. and again..i understand getting all philosophical..but i'm not even devling into the issue of abortions done in the first few weeks. though i feel pretty much the same way about those as i do the others, i'm just concerned with stemming the abortions that are happening in month 4 and on. i've volunteered in the clinics i spoke of earlier..i've seen this stuff first-hand. that's why the philosophical stuff doesn't speak very well to me. because of seen it for real, in person, with real faces.
Sorry, Max, but you are taking the term "dependant" way too far. A fetus is dependant on the mother in ways that humans are never dependant on another again. That is the definition I am shooting for and you know it.
no, i don't. i can't believe you, as the father of a new baby, would say that. it was far easier for my wife BEFORE the baby was born than it was after. the care is sorta self-sustaining when a woman is pregnant...but after the baby is born, care breaks out in ways i never imagined before. late nights....bottles....diaper changes...that baby is just as dependent on someone else's support as it was in the womb...maybe more so in many ways.
If you started arguing this from the beginning, you would have had me on your side. I agree that we should do everything possible to limit or eliminate late term abortions. If a woman is to have one, it should happen as early as possible. We could further eliminate abortion by expanding education and contraception availability as has been mentioned earlier in this thread. There are many things we could do to reduce abortions and eventually to eliminate any unnecessary abortions, but a legislative ban is not the way to do it.
You completely detach yourself from reality, thinking that the problem of unintended and frequently unwanted pregnancies is going to be solved by abstinence. So I don't know why you have a problem believing anything. Dream on.
i would venture to guess that the unavailablity of contraception leading to a pregnancy counts for a very small number of ultimate abortions in this country. i would venture to guess that most people in the united states...over 95%...who have sex without protection, know that a baby is a real possibility.
But the baby is not dependant on your wife specifically. It could be cared for by another person just as easily as by you and your wife. Again, if we could remove the fetus and incubate it to the point of birth, I would support an abortion ban because the woman would have the choice of whether to use her body to bring the fetus to term or not.
only if you contradicted your own reasoning. only if you backed away from statements like, "it doesn't matter if it's living or not...it's always the woman's right."
but we're defining life...so who it is dependent on is irrelevant, andy. ultimately, you're saying if it has to be depending on life on another, then it's not really a living thing worthy of protection. i'm saying that's a non-issue...or i'm saying you're advocating killing newborn infants with your logic, who have the same needs for care that it had just minutes ago when it was in the womb. you're saying, again...it doesn't matter if it's life...it's defined by the woman's right...not because it's a life in and of itself.
So what idea do you attach yourself to? When do you draw the line and say, well, this idea is worth holding on to, and these are not. Is it popular opinion? Philosophy? Religion? What makes standards that make it possible for a PETA person to stand up for what they believe and someone who wants to promote abstinence? Ideals. What makes standards for people who want to have sex all the time, do drugs, live life in the fast lane? Ideals. We are all guided by ideas in this world. To an extent, we are all dreamers.
Actually, my point was that teratomas, essentially human cancers but "alive," do have the potential to produce all human cells, and could (if the guy could stomach the incredible swelling in his testis) produce a "normal" human being; it's merely random chance. It's an infinite number of teratomas working at an infinite number of typewriters kind of thing. This is not an obfuscation. A clump of fetal tissue is more likely to result in a "normal" human being eventually, but it is in no way guaranteed to do so (again: becomes swallowed up by another fetus [fetus in fetu, those are cool], becomes detached from placental wall, miscarriage, etc.). Thus, every abortion does not equal a murder, as the signs proclaim. They're just potential, much the same way as me eyeing the prostitute on the corner. Potentially, she and I (if I could raise the requisite capital) could produce a baby. But me walking past her on the way to the market does not qualify as an abortion. One has just a higher chance of producing a human. Your second contention: Wait a minute here. You're not trying to save the manatees, or save the rainforest, or save S. aureus, now. You're trying to save humjan lives. I think it's disingenuous to dismiss the question of what makes a human a human in a discussion of at what point a human becomes a human. You are not arguing about the sanctity of life; you are arguing for the sanctity of human life. Thus, it is essential that what you are protecting must have the characteristics of human life; this is not at all "off the topic." I contend that a mass of 2 or 64 cells possesses no human qualities, and thus aborting that mass carries with it no moral concerns. I concede that aborting a nine month old fetus is probably immoral, because it has begun to develop human-like qualities: consciousness / ability to feel & understand pain, etc. The rub, then, is not that all abortion is immoral and should be banned, but to conclude at what point in the interim between Day 1 and birth does the fetus develop said qualities, and ban all abortions after that date.
I'm curious why before the 4th month is a compromise that you can live with for now? But my real concern is your statement that you want to move in steps. Right now you would be willing to accept abortions before month 4 as legal, but it is clear that this would not be the end of the debate for you. You said yourself that you feel the same way about all abortions. It's because of this that the pro-choicers are afraid to lose any ground and are not willing to compromise.
I think you would be surprised how uneducated the general population is with regards to sex and reproduction. My wife read a book called "Taking Charge of your Fertility" while we were trying to get pregnant and she says that if girls were required to study that book as a part of high school, unwanted pregnancy rates would drop drastically simply from women completely understanding the things their bodies do. Of course, this would never happen due to resistance from many of the same people who are fighting to ban abortions because that book contains the honest to God truth about reproduction.
1. because the compromise is far better than what we're living with right now; 2. yes...i understand that fear. but understand that from my point of view, this is killing we're talking about. it's the taking of another life. i can understand arguments before month 4, even if i don't agree with them. but after that, those arguments start to really fall apart. and by the time we're in partial birth abortion territory, or even just in the last trimester, those arguments look so silly they're laughable.
i'm fighting, andy. why would i want to ban the book? i think you have some notions about people who disagree with you that don't necessarily comport with reality.
If in a male, it seems as if the teratomas would not grow or be nurished in the way they would in the female womb. Does their death equal an abortion? No. This goes back to the difference in intentionality, one does not try to kill a baby that miscarriages, it simply happens, be it bad luck what not; abortion is the intentional killing. I think its simple enough to say that human life comes from being stamped with the DNA of humans. A mass of 2 or 64 cells posses human qualities, I don't really see how you can say it doesn't. What I was referring to as being of topic was this whole philosophy of being speel I go into where I start with Parmenidies and the "to be is to be intelligible" yada yada.
Like andymoon, I think we're largely in some basis of agreement. I agree that abortion should not be used as the routine form of contraception. As Sarah Silverman once noted brilliantly in a SNL Weekend Update skit once, though, I don't think many people do use it for such reasons. No woman, or very few women, I think, wants to endure the pain of an abortion procedure (physical, certainly, much less the moral quandary it provides). I think that fears of being able to afford for a child's well-being are a legitimate concern, though I agree that the decision should be arrived at as quickly as possible. I think it basically comes down to education and the poor quality of health care available to the mass of people in this country. With better education in schools (no more "Just Say No" to basic biological information and contraceptive methods in textbooks) and universal healthcare (and the availability of preventive health check-ups), I think the likelihood of the desire for late-term abortions would drastically decrease, everything else being equal. That said, I don't know whether it is right to ban it in, say, the fourth month or the seventh month. And this is where we still probably disagree. Your inclination, when we do not know and cannot be sure, is to side with the fetus; mine, when we do not know and cannot be sure, is to side with the mother's rights. I base this mostly on my preference for the idea of human consciousness over the pain argument I submitted earlier. I think it's pretty clear that babies don't become conscious of themselves as humans until well after they're born; thus, my tendency to side with the mother while we still are unsure about the beginning of human life in the womb. It is not, as most people in this argument on both sides protest, a clear cut issue.
Personally, If I knew that the pro-lifers wern't going to come back and try to take more I could live with the line drawn at the 5th month. Meaning any abortions after the 4th month are illegal. my reasons are two fold. First I believe that the technology will be there soon enough to support a fetus after that time. Secondly, while it might be an easy call for you, this is a lifee altering decision and many people don't realize that they are pregnant until late in to the 2nd month early in to the 3rd and I don't think that these women should be rushed. This would probably play better into your hands anyway by giving you more time to convice her to keep the child.
