Then why do quite a few of the women who plan and execute abortions suffer with that decision for years? On another note, I asked about you. I don't get upset when my wife goes shopping and doesn't come home with what she planned to get. Why should it be more complex than that? If it is all just about how she feels about it because it is only part of her biology, why should you feel bad one iota?
With a "woman's prerogative" to change her mind, many of us could be in trouble when our mothers next visit...
They probably didn't think about their belief system until they had taken that road. Because they BELIEVED it was wrong, they tortured themselves with guilt. This suffering still does not justify banning abortion. Just because YOU feel guilty about something does not make it wrong for me. If you believe that women should not go in public without being covered from head to toe and escorted (like they do in arab cultures), I have no obligation to follow that belief. What gives you the right to force YOUR personal morality on someone else? Because I am thinking of it in more than just the present. I have the ability to project to a time when it WILL be an infant (a life), a toddler, and even a teenager. BTW, I don't get your shopping analogy.
So the child's method of taking in nutrients is the key. After that point, the mother has no choice? If a baby can artificially take in the nutrients provided by the umbilical cord, it still isn't alive?
I was just exploring the outer edges of your belief system. You present your argument in defense of your little parasite's life so clilnically, I was trying to find out if you had any tenderness towards your child now. And if so, why? It has a truly unique combination of andymoon's and Mrs andymoon's DNA. All you have to do is not kill it and it will probably come squealing into this world ready to learn the cross-over dribble. You give so much power to the mother over Life and Death, I wondered why you would even care. As regards the crack about our mothers, I was just carrying goopher's concerns to the extreme.
As long as the fetus is part of the biological processes of the woman, it is part of her body and she should have the choice up until the point that it can survive on its own. As discussed earlier, if there were technology that would allow us to remove a fetus and bring it to term artificially, THEN we could talk about banning abortion in favor of the new technology.
Of course I do. As much as I feel for the potential life now incubating in my wife's womb, I still would not ever stop her from choosing to abort, no matter the reason. I truly dream that one day s/he will eventually be able to cross the Jordans or Swoopes of her day over. I still do not see it as killing, I see it as a medical procedure to remove something that is unwanted up until it can survive on its own. If I had the power, I would give responsible adults, men and women alike, absolute domain over their own bodies.
Would it make it any more of a life if the technology could sustain it? As far as I know the fetus is not necessary for the mother to survive. Therefore, how can you claim it is part of her body?
i thought i was done...apparently i'm not. abortions are performed late in the game...my understanding from your points, andy, is mixed. at one point i asked if you would extend the rights to the mother past what Roe v. Wade extended...you seemed to indicate yes...later you said, if the baby could survive on its own outside the womb, then it would be wrong to abort it at that point. which one is it? premature babies can live outside the mother...babies born as early as 20 weeks can live. so what do you do with that, given your take on this? if it is "viable"..if it could live were it born today...then how do you come down on that?
No, but it would obviate the need to make that distinction. The appendix is not necessary for the woman to survive, yet it is part of her body.
The only point at which I would call it "wrong" to abort would be if the fetus was mature enough to survive outside the woman's body. As far as I am aware, most states have laws that ban abortion after the first trimester. If a preemie can live at 20 weeks, (seems a bit early to me, but I will take your word) then I don't think it should be aborted except for medical reasons (problems with the fetus, the mother, or both).
ok..clearer. i guess my problem is that we simply don't know...anyway we go we're guessing. is it viable one day but not the next? day 29 of month 3 you can abort...but day 1 of the next you can't? again...very arbitrary distinctions for something so precious as human life. i don't think it's good policy to guess and err towards destroying what might be human life.
All of that is predicated on the ASSUMPTION that it is a human life at that point. My contention is that if we don't know, we have to give preference to the one we KNOW for a fact IS a life, namely the woman. What gives anyone the right to take away HER life (or even mandate that her life change extensively, even for 9 months) for a POTENTIAL one?
1. yes..it's an assumption...i'm assuming the positive...but you are assuming the negative. we're both assuming. don't act as if i'm the only one making assumptions...or one side of the argument is the only one making assumptions. 2. because we don't know we're intrinsically playing fast and loose with human life when we say it's ok to terminate it 3. if it is a life...then its right to exist trumps the mother's rights to convenience. the western world would value life over inconvenience. our courts do the same. our society does the same. 4. we're not taking away her life...you're intrinsically talking about taking away the life of the potential life, though...forever. not for nine months...but for forever. 5. again...because we're both assuming we're left guessing. guessing at when it is and isn't life. that's arbitrary. and arbitrary rules dealing with whether or not a potential life should be extinguished or not are reckless to me.
The vast majority of the time the woman (and man) actively engages in an act that may produce a child. The vast majority of the women (and men) know this. The vast majority of the women (and men) know that the only 100% certain method of birth control is abstinence. If the woman (or man) does not want the responsibility of the child then she (or he) should not engage in the act that may produce one. What gives her the right to participate in an act that she knows may produce a child only to terminate it because it may inconvenience her? We know that the conception will eventually become a human life (or unfortunately be miscarried). What gives anyone the right to NOT protect this potential life or (as many believe) give this already existing life the protection it deserves? There are arguments as to WHEN it becomes a life, but there is no argument that it WILL become a life (providing, of course, there is no miscarriage). The last statistical info that I saw indicated that well over 90% of all abortions were "after the fact" birth control". A relatively small percentage had to do with the mother or child's health, rape or incest.
