Abortion - An age old issue

[Vitriol]

I also support euthanasia but the distinction between that and abortion is that the severely damaged person did once have a will, even if he no longer does, and therefore there is that will to take into account and thinking about "what he/she would have wanted". An aborted fetus never had a will or desires to take into account at all.

Im not sure i see the relevence- if the decision is based on what someone hypothetically would have wanted were they not damaged/in vitro, then as sombody else observed life inherently wishes to continue. We ascribe a human right to life- euthanazia centres on the right of the indivual to surrender that right. In some places we may allow the indivdual to grant someone else the power to make that call, but we only do so where the individual will never be able to make that decision themselves. this is clearly not the case with abortions where the right to life is supposedly never assumed.

If your example was correct and the abortion was distinguished by will there would be no need to prohibit late term abortions or infantcide.

It must instead relate to personhood.

Concerning to problems with Fetus, I think @HypeBeast meant that if the home made abortion failed, the fetus will be born with lots of problems potentially.

As for rape and the court of law...court of law isn't always right or just.

I think if you proceed on that logic all social policies fail. Courts might not be 100% accurate but its the best solution we have to contested claims.

For me the biggest problem with having the courts do it is the time- rape trials typically take longer than a year.

 

[Pikimon]

What do you mean by this? Are you saying that an individual could be better off just not reproducing or are you just saying that it is stochastic?

Reproduction is superseded by an individual's survival even at the biological level with plants and animals containing several mechanisms of either preventing or terminating birth.

 

[Womacker]

It's the one issue that I am unwilling to budge my conservative stance on. I think it's wrong but I really don't care enough to argue about it on the internet.

 

[Pikimon]

It's the one issue that I am unwilling to budge my conservative stance on. I think it's wrong but I really don't care enough to argue about it on the internet.

I can respect that.

 

[Papa Nier]

The problem with the abortion debate is that it's really something that we can't reach a compromise on. One side is saying it's baby murder and should be made illegal while the other side is saying that making it illegal oppresses women. Stating the obvious here, I know, but you can't come to a peaceful agreement when both sides are so fundamentally different.

I personally have mixed feelings on the issue, but I currently lean slightly to the pro-life side despite being pretty left-leaning in pretty much every other issue. Not for any religious reason, mind, and I think we should still keep women's clinics open because they help so many through means other than abortion, but I don't think I could ever have an abortion myself. While I don't think of a fetus as a conscious being, I still think it's a life. But that's just me. As someone who doesn't ever plan on having children, the idea that women are obligated to become mothers disgusts me. I understand the ethical problems of forcing a woman to have a child she doesn't want, especially if it's through rape, but it also leads me down a very depressing road of thought where I start to wonder if I'm a hypocrite for being okay with terminating a healthy pregnancy only some of the time. I don't think women who have abortions should be shamed just as much as I think pro-lifers have a right to (peacefully!) protest in public. Nothing about my opinion is consistent, except for maybe my thinking more attention and funding should be put into public sex education and the adoption / foster system to mitigate the problem at the source.

TL;DR I'm a big weepy flip-flopper who deserves all the autistic ratings.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

As for rape and the court of law...court of law isn't always right or just.

Well that is a problem with the court of law. You shouldn't say that because there are false negatives and false positives that it means that you can just call whoever a rapist with no justification. I still think that it is more reliable than just asking the accuser whether someone is a rapist.




I think that overall the abortion debate is not really fruitful because prochoicers tend to be arguing for a single issue and usually talking about early term abortion. Prolifers on the other hand tend to talk about late term abortions and bring in other issues such as gender roles that often would be so strongly suppressed by the leftists that discussion would be otherwise impossible.

I take a different position completely in that I think that there either needs to be both parents consenting to an abortion or one parent and a judge. I take the side of Pro-Life because I am against the leftist suppression of discussion of gender roles but in general I think that the abortion debate is basically just a more politically moderate more offline analogoue to gamergate in how unrelated the debate is to the actual issue

 

[Ariel]

Well that is a problem with the court of law. You shouldn't say that because there are false negatives and false positives that it means that you can just call whoever a rapist with no justification. I still think that it is more reliable than just asking the accuser whether someone is a rapist.




I think that overall the abortion debate is not really fruitful because prochoicers tend to be arguing for a single issue and usually talking about early term abortion. Prolifers on the other hand tend to talk about late term abortions and bring in other issues such as gender roles that often would be so strongly suppressed by the leftists that discussion would be otherwise impossible.

I take a different position completely in that I think that there either needs to be both parents consenting to an abortion or one parent and a judge. I take the side of Pro-Life because I am against the leftist suppression of discussion of gender roles but in general I think that the abortion debate is basically just a more politically moderate more offline analogoue to gamergate in how unrelated the debate is to the actual issue

Why did you make a thread about it then OP?

 

[HypeBeast]

What do you mean by this? Are you saying that an individual could be better off just not reproducing or are you just saying that it is stochastic?

I think that it is acceptable to euthanize someone all the way up to the age of 18 as long as both parents consent to it. I think that there is nothing to justify birth being a significant point and that likewise all the possible abortion justifications can be given for euthanizing a child under 18.

I never understand why it seems like everyone here is an advocate of eugenics

But why does it matter what happens to the fetus if it would otherwise be dead?

Court of law

Not so much an advocate of eugenics as much as an advocate for people using contraceptive until theyre ready to care for a child and raise them in a stable home. Contraceptives first, abortion as an unfortunate last resort.

@SpacePanther above clarifies what I meant. That illegal abortions can fail, leading to the birth of deformed fetuses.

And as for court of law in regards to rape. Court of law can be wrong and many rapes go unreported out of fear so I dont think that barring abortion that way would be helpful. Plus court and rape kits can take weeks, so this person would just be getting further along in her pregnancy while waiting for the court system. Things start getting problematic.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

Why did you make a thread about it then OP?

There is a gamergate thread and there is actual content to gamergate albeit far less than many think, there is more substantial content to the abortion debate despite there being little though.

And as for court of law in regards to rape. Court of law can be wrong and many rapes go unreported out of fear so I dont think that barring abortion that way would be helpful. Plus court and rape kits can take weeks, so this person would just be getting further along in her pregnancy while waiting for the court system. Things start getting problematic.

I am supportive of late term abortions and even up to infanticide in order to ensure that the baby gets proper due process. The purpose of rape abortions is to deny the rapist reproductive success and because there is a life on the line we need to be sure to have the trial first before the abortion because the abortion is irreversible. It is the same reason why we don't execute suspected mass murders first and then put them on trial. Because I believe in the idea of innocent until proven guilty I only see reported and convicted rapes as legitimate basis for infringing on the rights of the suspect.

 

[Alberto Balsalm]

I would rather be killed before being able to fully comprehend my existence than spend my formative years being raised by someone who would have murdered me if it were legal.

If the adoption system worked, of course, that would be a different matter. My personal experience with it in America is that there's so much goddamn red tape that most people don't even bother, and that's not even accounting for the problems overseas services are said to have. And even then, whether there's enough willing parents out there to balance out the amount of unwanted children is a question one would be hard-pressed to answer with "yes".

 

[AnOminous]

When my mother was pregnant with her youngest child she was in her early forties. It was a high-risk pregnancy and the baby she was carrying had a high risk of possible disabilities, including a high risk of Down syndrome. I overheard a conversation she had with my father where she said she would probably abort the fetus if amniocentesis turned up positive.

Parents have as much of an obligation to their current actual children and other people in their lives, as well as society itself, not to bring children into the world who will inevitably consume disproportionate resources in return for a vastly diminished quality of life.

While there is, of course, an obligation to give the best care to existing children and a number of reasons why infants may be born disabled, deliberately bringing disabled children into the world is perverse and should be regarded as an evil.

 

[Mungo]

Perhaps the thing that justifies abortion most for me is the fact that, during the first twelve weeks of the fetus's existence, the fetus is not alive. It does not move or respond to its environment (one of the seven characteristics of life) until at least the thirteenth week of pregnancy. To me, this completely invalidates the argument that an early abortion is murder, since the fetus hasn't actually displayed all of the characteristics of life.

This is not, however, to say that I am against abortion after the twelfth week. Pregnancy is perhaps the most difficult thing that the human body can undergo, and it is entirely understandable that a woman could be unable or unwilling to go through that. A doctor's responsibility, above all else, is to ensure the safety, well-being, and comfort of their patients, and indeed, one of the lines of the modern Hippocratic Oath is this:

"I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick."

Abortions do not only help the mother. I believe that the benefits of a legal, easy to access abortion (the saving of lives, the aid it can give to troubled or impoverished families) are tremendous, and outweigh any sort of negatives that could in any way result from abortion being legal.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

respond to its environment

We do not know for sure whether they do but it is quite possible that their growth can be changed by environmental factors so as a result they may very well respond to their environment. Response doesn't necessarily mean neurological response

 

[Mungo]

it is quite possible that their growth can be changed by environmental factors

This is true. However;

1. A fetus's environment (the womb) is internal and only indirectly affected by environmental factors.
2. The brain of the fetus isn't developed enough to have several series of behaviors at this stage, a behavior being a complex set of responses.
3. Any changes made by environmental factors would fall more into the category of an adaptation rather than the development of a behavior.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

This is true. However;

1. A fetus's environment (the womb) is internal and only indirectly affected by environmental factors.
2. The brain of the fetus isn't developed enough to have several series of behaviors at this stage, a behavior being a complex set of responses.
3. Any changes made by environmental factors would fall more into the category of an adaptation rather than the development of a behavior.

If these are necessary for something to be life then likewise several microorganisms, plants and even animals wouldn't be considered life. Also the how is the womb not a real environment in itself

 

[Mungo]

If these are necessary for something to be life then likewise several microorganisms, plants and even animals wouldn't be considered life.

How so? Not all living things have brains, but all living things have some form of behavioral modification. Microorganisms have the nucleus, plants have a system of electrochemical reactions that change cells in response to stimuli, and simple animals like jellyfish have nets of nervous systems or the like in place of a central nervous system. Fetuses, which are incomplete humans, have only an incomplete brain, which, before a certain point in fetal development, is incapable of changing behavior, as evidenced by how fetuses don't move of their own accord or kick for the first 12 weeks.

Also the how is the womb not a real environment in itself

I meant that the fetus's environment and the mother's environment are separate in that one does not directly affect the other.

 

[melty]

I don't think abortion is a big deal.
Even the most hardcore pro-lifers seem to passively acknowledge that fetuses aren't real people. In the flint water crisis, many women experienced miscarriages due to the contaminants in the water. You hear a lot about the poisoned children of Flint but virtually nothing about the dead unborn babies, because nobody reasonable gives a shit. Pro-lifers don't even want to jail women for having abortions. If you paid someone to kill your infant child, you're going to jail for a long time, but if you pay someone to kill your fetus, you shouldn't go to jail? Only they should? If fetuses are equivalent to babies, that makes no sense at all.
The natural rejection rate for fertilized eggs is around 50%. On top of that, a large amount of women carrying a fertilized egg naturally abort it before realizing they are pregnant. A lot of pro lifers sperg about how every human life has a soul at conception or something, but half of those "souls" get flushed down the drain with no one even noticing. I don't see how that is god or anything ethically notable and if it were we should probably be trying to fix why 50% of our species dies before birth for unknown reasons.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

How so? Not all living things have brains, but all living things have some form of behavioral modification. Microorganisms have the nucleus, plants have a system of electrochemical reactions that change cells in response to stimuli, and simple animals like jellyfish have nets of nervous systems or the like in place of a central nervous system. Fetuses, which are incomplete humans, have only an incomplete brain, which, before a certain point in fetal development, is incapable of changing behavior, as evidenced by how fetuses don't move of their own accord or kick for the first 12 weeks.

But the brain doesn't have to be what is changing behaviour. Hormonal changes can do the same thing. If you deny hormonal changes as fulfilling that requirement then you need to deny that plants and fungi and microorganisms are life.

I meant that the fetus's environment and the mother's environment are separate in that one does not directly affect the other.

That is the case. The fetus adapts to the womb not the external environment. Some adaptations may have later effects associated with the external environment but the fetus likewise doesn't just do what is in the interest of the mother but what is in its own interest so it is responding to the environment as opposed to simply being an extension of the mother.

Pro-lifers don't even want to jail women for having abortions. If you paid someone to kill your infant child, you're going to jail for a long time, but if you pay someone to kill your fetus, you shouldn't go to jail? Only they should?

Who said this? I completely think that women who get illegal abortions should be punished and so do many other pro lifers.

The natural rejection rate for fertilized eggs is around 50%. On top of that, a large majority of women carrying a fertilized egg naturally abort it before realizing they are pregnant. A lot of pro lifers sperg about how every human life has a soul at conception or something, but half of those "souls" get flushed down the drain with no one even noticing. I don't see how that is god or anything ethically notable and if it were we should probably be trying to fix why 50% of our species dies before birth for unknown reasons.

I think that the main reason for this is that prolifers don't use consequentialist ethical arguments against abortion. Even consequentialist arguments might be successful because we would simply be unable to practically eliminate these miscarriages but fundamentally abortion is murder and murder can be wrong even if letting die is legal. It is the difference between not personally shooting someone vs spending days of your life to find and warn someone about an accident that might happen to them. It is good to do the latter but it is not a duty whereas the former is a duty and as a result someone can be held accountable for failing to live up to it. That being said I also think that the abortion debate is an excuse to talk about things that otherwise would be completely suppressed in politics such as gender roles

 

[Joan Nyan]

The natural rejection rate for fertilized eggs is around 50%. On top of that, a large majority of women carrying a fertilized egg naturally abort it before realizing they are pregnant. A lot of pro lifers sperg about how every human life has a soul at conception or something, but half of those "souls" get flushed down the drain with no one even noticing. I don't see how that is god or anything ethically notable and if it were we should probably be trying to fix why 50% of our species dies before birth for unknown reasons.

There's a big difference between a natural death that's unnoticeable and unavoidable, and purposeful killing.

 

[KingGeedorah]

Abortion is cool and it feels awesome to be alive in a time when it's happening all around us. Like a little miracle every day!

Seriously though, if you're a female and you want an abortion, go for it. Your body, your right. If the kid doesn't like it, survive the abortion and wait 18 years and sue I guess.