"Oh God, Not Another Abortion Thread"

[RubySlippers]

I have a good reason for being strict in this we cannot be sure when a human is alive. We are not talking a dog we are talking people the only species line with self-awareness and sentience we are aware of. As a Christian I use the standard at conception but acknowledge ,as the Jewish view is, the life here already takes precent if the mothers life is in danger and I mean by a consensus of medical opinion in each case. Riskier can be countered with better care its when the mother ,in those rare cases, is at risk the balance tips to the mother. I leave that matter up to the mother and her conscience.

But with testing there are now issues in some nations like India they abort unborn girls just because they are girls. China there is the same thing going on. I'm a disabled, gay woman what if they can test for theses and people get the choice to abort just because a child might be gay or might be disabled. I don't want these choices to be in the hands of parents who can often avoid pregnancy in the first place. As for incest and rape those cases are rare you know that and for me the child still must be considered because we don't know, to give the mother and unborn the same equal consideration. Barring the rare case of the life of the mother.

[Jude]

I have a good reason for being strict in this we cannot be sure when a human is alive. We are not talking a dog we are talking people the only species line with self-awareness and sentience we are aware of. As a Christian I use the standard at conception but acknowledge ,as the Jewish view is, the life here already takes precent if the mothers life is in danger and I mean by a consensus of medical opinion in each case. Riskier can be countered with better care its when the mother ,in those rare cases, is at risk the balance tips to the mother. I leave that matter up to the mother and her conscience.

A fetus is not a human anymore than an egg is a chicken.  It cannot be sentient:  we understand what components of neural development are necessary for such cognitive sophistication, and fetuses are not capable of it early on.  I'm not even sure if young babies are capable of sentience, though I'm not fully read up on my child psychology/neurology, so I am unsure (and that's another discussion).

But with testing there are now issues in some nations like India they abort unborn girls just because they are girls. China there is the same thing going on. I'm a disabled, gay woman what if they can test for theses and people get the choice to abort just because a child might be gay or might be disabled. I don't want these choices to be in the hands of parents who can often avoid pregnancy in the first place. As for incest and rape those cases are rare you know that and for me the child still must be considered because we don't know, to give the mother and unborn the same equal consideration. Barring the rare case of the life of the mother.

A case being rare isn't really an excuse to ignore it.  Every law eventually has the implication of force behind it when it comes down to it, so you have to ask yourself if you're OK with force being applied to uphold that law even in the rarest of circumstances because that is what is being required of the government by the passage of that law.

If you vote for abortion being illegal in all circumstances then you are asking the government to, on your behalf, force a woman who was violently assaulted and impregnated in a traumatic, horrible, and life-destroying event to carry her rapist's child in her womb for 9 months and then give birth to his progeny.

Thinking that it's wrong for her to do it is one thing, but supporting the passage of a law barring it results in proxy coercion on your part.  Sometimes that's justifiable (like when coercing with the threat of punishment to make a husband not murder his wife for the insurance money), but in this case I think that's kind of hard to swallow.

EDIT:  As for the screening for homosexuality, it's not currently possible and may never be.  Current research suggests that there is no single gay gene, studies have found that homosexuality is correlated to some genetic (and epi-genetic) phenomenon, but twin studies confirm that the environment the individual experiences during developmental periods is far more influential (Genetic and Environmental Effects on Same-sex Sexual Behavior: A Population Study of Twins in Sweden, Niklas Långström, Qazi Rahman, Eva Carlström and Paul Lichtenstein - published in the peer reviewed journal "Archives of Sexual Behavior").

[DarklingAlice]

Something that needs to be clarified here:
Sentience is  a quality of awareness and perception. It arises with a certain level of development of the brain and I'm going to hope that Ruby was mis-using the term and not saying that for instance dogs cannot experience pain, pleasure, or perceive and categorize their world.

Sapience is the quality of judgment that we attribute as the defining characteristic of humans (thus homo sapiens). Infants may not have it, but sapience is kind of a secondary consideration after the ability to suffer is present, which comes with sentience.

Regardless, an embryo has neither and there is no way to distinguish a human blastocyst from a dog blastocyst from a lizard blastocyst without DNA sequencing. And once again human DNA is not magic or different or special. A fertilized human egg is alive. It's alive in the  same way an unfertilized egg, or a sperm cell, or a tumor is. It is not its own organism, it is not distinguishably human, it does not possess self-awareness or sentience.

Further, I don't see Christianity as having any relevance to this discussion. If Christ had wanted to talk about abortion, he could have. It is not a wholly modern practice and was well discussed in the Greek and Roman medicine of the day. Besides which, the idea that law should be made with respect for a Christian concept with no underpinning is absurd.

[RubySlippers]

Ok show me one case a pregnant human woman gave birth to something clearly not human - a dog, a bird, a lizard etc.? Humans ,as in our species, make humans regardless of what the little person looks like in the mother its going to be if naturally developed into a human baby.

As for the genetic testing ok maybe they can't get the childs sexual orientation if born they can for many diseases and conditions and can for gender, I for one think its a danger to leave mother to choose not to have the child due to likely burden (disease) or gender (they don't want a boy or a girl or that extra child if multiple births). If the child cannot growold enough to be removed from the mother and given neonatal care on its own and the pregnancy is really a serious danger risk (physically) then one could argue the mothers life being established could come first. I just pointed out that is not wrong its a rare and clear case to base a decision on in one major religion and to many Christians who tend to have a practical view on this matter. And its a good NEUTrAL standard that is not complicated the doctors have a medical finding and the abortion is not illegal since its medically justified.

If the mother is a victim of incest or rape and the mother is otherwise healthy, they can carry the child to term and surrender it for adoption. Its rare. And the child in the mother ,who we cannot be sure is a "person" or not, should be given the benefit and be given the same rights as the mother to live.

I would make it illegal in the latter cases and legal for the medical safety of the mother, but note a very young mother might fall into that in the cases of incest and rape.

[TheVillain]

But not sharing everyone shares your religious views, and there's Bodily Domain to consider. Are you really fine with forcing people to give up parts of their own bodies, with potentially fatal results, to satisfy your personal religious beliefs that they may not share?

Nobody is saying you have to like it, but you're talking about a huge invasion and violation of personal liberty.

[dominomask]

I applaud your attempt.  I would argue that #4 gets into a rather dangerous and often-ignored area...namely that one of the big misconceptions about child support is that it is a "I get to see my kid" fee.  It isn't.  The issue of a parent's financial responsibility to a child and their suitability to have contact with that child are, and must be, separate concerns.  I would support government funding of DNA tests to prevent men from being forced to pay for children that are not their own, but I would want there to be some provision to protect a woman from "that was fun, see ya, tough shit" circumstances.  If you're willing to take measures to prevent entrapment of men by women, you have to concede that women get used and lied to as well, and would need some measure of protection.  "Be safe or be sorry" policies need to run both ways.  Men need to share equally in the risks associated with sex.  Biologically, women will always carry an increase in certain risks and costs, so I consider it fair that their rights be more extensive as related to whether a pregnancy need or need not continue.  A man who really cares to see a child born has means of making it worth a woman's while without resorting to nine-months of government-sanctioned imprisonment (which is what it would take, both figuratively and literally).

I have a good reason for being strict in this we cannot be sure when a human is alive. We are not talking a dog we are talking people the only species line with self-awareness and sentience we are aware of.

I would like to point out two things in these sentences that, I feel, help to explain my feelings on the whole "what the hell is life anyway" subject.

The first sentence, in substance if not in spirit, I agree entirely.  But saying that we cannot be sure when a human is alive can not logically defend a mandate that it be assumed to begin at one point over another.  It only defends agnosticism.

You follow that with talking about dogs, and how humans are the only self aware (to the degree that we are capable of knowing, which is only whisperingly better than our ability to objectively determine the beginning of "human" "life" for however you would define either of those terms) beings in existence.  I'm sure many dog owners would disagree.  As would many people who work with chimps, etc.  Setting the bar at "sentience" and "human" begins to demand a definition, and those definitions are very very tricky.  If you set it at language or other self-expression, then many kinds of disabled people become non-human.  Because it is a hard and uncomfortable question, it is tempting to try and answer it emotionally, which is even more dangerous.

I do not mean this next to be considered a compelling point of logic, and I don't mean to offend you so I hope you will be charitable.  It might be worth your while to reflect a little further on the subjectivity of your feelings in this matter, and whether that's a charitable and humane way to determine policy for millions and millions of situations that it is arguably arrogant to think you can, as an individual, begin to intuit in all their complexity.  As you say, we cannot make a meaningful definition for life until we get to the very very small scale of cells or the very very huge scale of biospheres, which makes it unkind to insist on your own arbitrary definition for all people.

I tend to try and define the situation from the other side.  I find death more easily understood than life, and I think we have some decent societal guidelines for what we will tolerate, relative to the necessities of both justice and governance, where suffering and death are concerned.  We know that zero-tolerance for allowing suffering and death is unworkable.  The two things are inseparable from the complex processes of life and living.  Generally we get by by setting some minimal degree of tolerance for situations where we can allow or inflict suffering and death in an attempt to balance the rights of individuals against the needs of the population.  It is the best way to accomodate logic and knowledge (along with its limitations) as well as emotional considerations.  When setting policy for a society, when taking emotions into account, you need to look at ALL the emotions involved in an issue...the empathic sense of wrongness in deliberately killing someone or something must be balanced equally with the empathic sense of justice and social safety when determining if it is acceptable to kill a sociopathic murderer or control animal populations, just to make a severly over-simplified example. 

Which is why I would advise more careful thought on your part as regards your emotions.  As a mother, I affirm whole-heartedly that your feelings about the preciousness of babies, regardless of any knowledge we can have of when that status actually begins in the eyes of objective reality, are as valid and right and good as any of the feelings that can be brought to bear on the subject at hand.  But consider, being who you are, as a woman with no inclination towards sex with men, it is more than a little likely that you cannot weight with sufficient empathy the validity of the feelings of women who would be subject to the laws on which you would insist.

While I am careful to remain open to the possibility of new evidence and insight, when I weigh every variable I am capable of considering at present, zero-tolerance-except-in-very-specific-cases is both socially unworkable and morally insupportable.  It simply does not serve to effect the practical reality that your moral imperative is seeking, and the emphatic-full-stop of "murder is wrong period" is morally incomplete.  In general, a real stance of "pro life" is only cut and dry for people with an unjustifiably narrow definition of life.

[TheVillain]

Touché, Dominomask. Though I would counter that birth control and legal abortion ARE protection from men who are willing to put women in "that was fun, see ya, tough shit" situations.

I'm not saying women shouldn't have such protection, I'm saying they already have it and men should have something along those lines as well.

[Jude]

If the mother is a victim of incest or rape and the mother is otherwise healthy, they can carry the child to term and surrender it for adoption. Its rare. And the child in the mother ,who we cannot be sure is a "person" or not, should be given the benefit and be given the same rights as the mother to live.

I would make it illegal in the latter cases and legal for the medical safety of the mother, but note a very young mother might fall into that in the cases of incest and rape.

I feel like you have not addressed this part of my post:

A case being rare isn't really an excuse to ignore it.  Every law eventually has the implication of force behind it when it comes down to it, so you have to ask yourself if you're OK with force being applied to uphold that law even in the rarest of circumstances because that is what is being required of the government by the passage of that law.

If you vote for abortion being illegal in all circumstances then you are asking the government to, on your behalf, force a woman who was violently assaulted and impregnated in a traumatic, horrible, and life-destroying event to carry her rapist's child in her womb for 9 months and then give birth to his progeny.

Thinking that it's wrong for her to do it is one thing, but supporting the passage of a law barring it results in proxy coercion on your part.  Sometimes that's justifiable (like when coercing with the threat of punishment to make a husband not murder his wife for the insurance money), but in this case I think that's kind of hard to swallow.

Are you OK with being an accessory to that?

[Serephino]

I actually agree with Jude here.  While I don't like abortion, being raped is a traumatic event.  I know women who were raped.  I was raped, though I have almost no memory of it. 

I don't like the idea of a woman consenting to sex knowing full well that pregnancy could happen, and then just getting rid of it.  However, if a woman was raped then she didn't consent.  She didn't have the option of using a condom.  The rapist decided all that for her.  And it would be hard to heal while carrying a constant reminder inside you.  Sure, it's only nine months, but that's nine months that she would be reminded of the event.  Some women can get past it, some can't.  That should be up to them. 

I also don't like the idea of women aborting a baby because of the gender, but that's China and India.  I think it's screwed up, but nothing we can do about it.  I don't think it's wrong to consider it if there's something wrong with the baby though.  You may be disabled, but obviously you can think, type, I'm guessing speak....  What about a baby with something more serious?  What kind of life would it be to never be able to talk, walk, feed yourself, go to the bathroom on your own....?  I'm talking those that are prisoners in their own bodies.   

I don't think that would be much of a life.  It's certainly one I wouldn't want.  I told my boyfriend in no uncertain terms that if I ever get to the point where I'm bedridden in a diaper and can't at least talk to just kill me.  If I had a wife who was pregnant with a child that was going to need round the clock care, maybe dozens of surgeries, and may never have a decent quality of life, I would give it serious thought.  I don't think giving it up to the state is a good option either.  For one, I'd be thinking about the child believe it or not.  Second, if I did that then the cost of that needed care would be placed on tax payers. 

Last but not least, once again, not everyone is Christian.  I'm not.  I quite like separation of Church and State.