Ship of Fools: The dependency argument in abortion

Thread: The dependency argument in abortion Board: Dead Horses / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

Argument in favor of choice is that the fetus's value is dependent on the will of its mother, as in if it's mother wants it, then the fetus has value.

To criminalize abortion is to usurp the rights of the mother, in favor of the abstract rights of an unborn fetus.

To me this is the strongest argument from the prochoice perspective

But the response given is that if we made the argument based on the fact that a fetus's value is only dependent on its mother, then you can make the same argument that people with disabilities or mental or physical challenges that are dependent on another person namely its caregiver, thus could conceivably lose its right to life, if said caregiver decides so.

My response is that the fetus' dependency on its mother is qualitatively different than a disabled person's dependency on its caregiver.

Any thoughts?

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

Well it's fairly obvious a fetus is more dependent on the woman than a disabled person is on a caregiver, for the very simple reason that another caregiver could take over for the disabled person, whereas with current technology no one else can take over from the woman for a fetus.

Now if we ever get artificial uteruses, like they have in some science fiction, it's a different story.

[ 15. December 2017, 20:32: Message edited by: Nicolemr ]

Posted by sharkshooter (# 1589) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Argument in favor of choice is that the fetus's value is dependent on the will of its mother, as in if it's mother wants it, then the fetus has value.

...

What if the father wants the child? If the mother's will gives value to the fetus, does not the father's will also?

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Asking about the father rather assumes that the foetus has been conceived within a relationship where both partners have discussed willingness to rear children before embarking on a sexual relationship. This does not always happen in this world's hook up culture.

If the couple were trying not to conceive, so the pregnancy is a result of contraceptive failure, does the woman have to incubate the foetus to viability?

If the pregnancy is the result of a one night stand, does the father have a right to insist the woman carries the foetus for 9 months?

Posted by sharkshooter (# 1589) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
...
If the pregnancy is the result of a one night stand, does the father have a right to insist the woman carries the foetus for 9 months?

If she does give birth, she has the right to demand child care payments, so I'd say he should have rights in the decision.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Personally I think people should not embark on sexual relationships without discussing the possibility of becoming pregnant, but that is not the society we live in.

(And no, I am not convinced women should be able to claim child support for a child conceived on a one night stand)

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by sharkshooter:

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Argument in favor of choice is that the fetus's value is dependent on the will of its mother, as in if it's mother wants it, then the fetus has value.

...
What if the father wants the child? If the mother's will gives value to the fetus, does not the father's will also?

No, because the fetus exacts much more of a stress on the mother, than does the father, so the mother's choice is valued much more than the father.

I may want a child, but I as a cisgender male will never ever, experience the direct impact of a pregnancy.

Posted by sharkshooter (# 1589) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:

To criminalize abortion is to usurp the rights of the mother, in favor of the abstract rights of an unborn fetus.

Why does the mother have rights, but the unborn only have "abstract" rights? And what exactly does that mean anyway?

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Because the mother is there, a living human being. The fetus may someday be a living human being, but it's by definition not there yet.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Depending on the stage of pregnancy, the mother is fully human, the foetus is only a potential human, particularly in the first trimester and most of the second trimester. Most neonatal wards consider the limit of viability to be 24 weeks gestation*. In the third trimester a foetus is likely to be viable so has more rights in many jurisdictions.

* Although babies do survive born at 23 weeks, they tend to have significant disabilities long term - those born at 24 and 25 weeks gestation have a 34% chance of not having problems at 2-3 years

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Because the mother is there, a living human being. The fetus may someday be a living human being, but it's by definition not there yet.

Biologically speaking the human foetus is a living human being. It is alive; it is human; it is a being. It may not be a human being in some evaluative sense; if so that has to be defined or established.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

I am not sure how the OP relates to the question of the moral status of the foetus (in the sense of: does it have human rights in the same way that I have human rights).

Is the argument that the foetus has human rights only insofar as the mother chooses to endow it with human rights? If so, although I am on balance pro-choice, I find that rather disturbing.

Or is it arguing that the mother's choice whether or not to value it trumps any human rights it might possess naturally? If so, I find that rather disturbing as well.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

To elaborate on the above. IME pro-choice arguments fall into two kinds: 1) That the foetus doesn't have the same human rights as the mother, and/or 2) that no-one has a human right to impose on another the sort of imposition that pregnancy imposes on the mother.

I thought the OP was of type (2) but people seem to be responding in terms of type (1)*.

For type (2) arguments, I don't the idea is that the mother's choice adds 'value' to the foetus that it didn't have before - rather that the mother's consent keeps the pregnancy from being an imposition.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

There's also the argument that it's private matter. Medical. Nothing more.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
There's also the argument that it's private matter. Medical. Nothing more.

But that is a consequence of the argument about the status of the foetus.

If the foetus has little or no status / rights relative to the mother, then any decisions that are to be made about her pregnancy are quite rightly the province of the mother, and whilst she can and should take advice from her spouse, doctor, and so on, the responsibility must ultimately be hers.

If, on the other hand, the foetus has some status and/or rights that place it if not equal to the mother then somewhere on the same page, then decisions about the mother's pregnancy become a balancing act between the interests of the mother and those of the foetus. And whilst we generally (and rightly) give parents wide latitude to make decisions in the best interests of their children, we don't give them unlimited latitude: there are boundaries.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I also feel that if you, say, do not support pre-natal care, or if you are not willing to pay for child care, child medical health benefits, universal education, and so on, then you are a hypocrite who is interested only in the pre-born. If you advocate for life before birth you had better support benefits for the baby after it's born. Sadly, America is full of people who utterly lose interest in a person the instant it leaves the womb.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Ricardus, doesn't the way foetus develops mean that the decision cannot be neatly divided into your two arguments? In the first and second trimesters the foetus is totally dependent on the mother to survive. In the third trimester the foetus is viable, so less dependent.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I also feel that if you, say, do not support pre-natal care, or if you are not willing to pay for child care, child medical health benefits, universal education, and so on, then you are a hypocrite who is interested only in the pre-born.

Although I instinctively agree with this argument, I'm not sure it's right. Someone can support clamping down on welfare and generally making life hard for poor people, and also support prosecuting someone who murders a poor person without being a hypocrite.

There's probably a difference between positive and negative rights in there somewhere: you have the right not to be killed is different from you have the right to be looked after.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Yesterday the execrable Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House) suggested that most of the US's economic problems could be solved if only women had more babies. Since he has gutted health care, refused to renew health insurance for children, and in general has no use for the poor than a headache, he's a primary example of this hypocrisy. You can't urge people to bear children while simultaneously making it impossible for them to stay alive while doing it.

You cannot be pro-life if the life you care about is only before birth.

[ 17. December 2017, 02:08: Message edited by: Brenda Clough ]

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I also feel that if you, say, do not support pre-natal care, or if you are not willing to pay for child care, child medical health benefits, universal education, and so on, then you are a hypocrite who is interested only in the pre-born. If you advocate for life before birth you had better support benefits for the baby after it's born. Sadly, America is full of people who utterly lose interest in a person the instant it leaves the womb.

Why did you jump straight to that with no evidence that any previous poster held such opinions?

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Harry Blackmun's arguments in the Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade were a sometimes confused combination of privacy and viability. The viability arguments have been much criticised, since it was thought at the time that advancing medical science would lower the viability threshold - or provide means of supporting development to viability outside the womb. There is still truth in that assertion.

The privacy argument does seem to depend on the argument that the foetus is not yet a person, otherwise there is indeed a constitutional right to life, and therefore a state interest in protecting both its rights and the rights of the expectant mother. That would seem to make the argument in favour of a private choice conditional on what rights, if any, the foetus has to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Or at least that is my reading of the legal conundrum.

Personally, I think the privacy argument wins, just, but it has always seemed to me to be a close call. Personally, my wife and I are both pro-life and pro-choice, since neither of us believes our pro-life views should be imposed by law on those who see things differently. We chose to limit ourselves to two children, but never faced the choices produced by an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy, e.g if it had occurred when my wife was in her mid to late forties by which time our two children were already young adults. Frankly, it would have been a very difficult one. But whatever we would have decided, it does seem right to both of us that it should have been our choice. And I would have accepted whatever choice my wife felt was right for her.

Pro-choice arguments often seem to me to be belittled or condemned by those who have never faced the personal challenges of an unwanted or unexpected pregnancy.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Ricardus, doesn't the way foetus develops mean that the decision cannot be neatly divided into your two arguments? In the first and second trimesters the foetus is totally dependent on the mother to survive. In the third trimester the foetus is viable, so less dependent.

Not sure. ISTM most jurisdictions make abortion harder as the pregnancy progresses, which certainly suggests that both arguments become less convincing at a later stage of pregnancy.

(FWIW the asterisk in my previous post was supposed to link to a self-deprecating footnote asserting that there couldn't possibly be a third type of pro-choice argument because that would imply the existence of something I didn't know about, but apparently my mood of self-deprecation didn't last long enough for me actually to write it.)

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I am not sure how the OP relates to the question of the moral status of the foetus (in the sense of: does it have human rights in the same way that I have human rights).

Is the argument that the foetus has human rights only insofar as the mother chooses to endow it with human rights? If so, although I am on balance pro-choice, I find that rather disturbing.

Or is it arguing that the mother's choice whether or not to value it trumps any human rights it might possess naturally? If so, I find that rather disturbing as well.

My argument is that in criminalizing abortion (assuming, first to second trimester pregnancy), is that it is prioritizing the rights of a fetus which if you accept that it is contestable whether or not we should treat the fetus as equal to a living born human being, over the rights of an actual living born human being, namely its mother.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Yesterday the execrable Paul Ryan (Speaker of the House) suggested that most of the US's economic problems could be solved if only women had more babies. Since he has gutted health care, refused to renew health insurance for children, and in general has no use for the poor than a headache, he's a primary example of this hypocrisy. You can't urge people to bear children while simultaneously making it impossible for them to stay alive while doing it.

You cannot be pro-life if the life you care about is only before birth.

To be fair, this criticism can only be applied to right wing evangelicals in which a pro-life stance is coupled with support for libertarian economics which rejects the welfare state.

Roman Catholic pro-life teaching is coupled with a steady support for the welfare state, and the use of government measures aimed to alleviate poverty and injustice.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
[QUOTE]
Roman Catholic pro-life teaching is coupled with a steady support for the welfare state, and the use of government measures aimed to alleviate poverty and injustice.

Teaching, yes. In practice, the RCC members vary quite a bit in their voting and the older, conservative members are more likely to vote against the welfare state. At least where it benefits the young.

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
My argument is that in criminalizing abortion (assuming, first to second trimester pregnancy), is that it is prioritizing the rights of a fetus which if you accept that it is contestable whether or not we should treat the fetus as equal to a living born human being, over the rights of an actual living born human being, namely its mother.

The vagina is not a magic chute nor the labia transformation curtains. The significant difference between a child imdeiately on one side or the other is that it can be seen. Viability is the most logical point of rights. Criminalising abortion before viability is prioritising possibility over actual. After viability it is actual against actual. Though not a completely equal comparison.

Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :

Paul Ryan is, at least in theory, a Roman Catholic. How he squares that with his politics is left as an exercise for the reader [significant quantities of alcohol may be required].

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Roman Catholic pro-life teaching is coupled with a steady support for the welfare state, and the use of government measures aimed to alleviate poverty and injustice.

You need to tell this to Paul Ryan and other Roman Catholics in the U.S. legislative branch.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The significant difference between a child imdeiately on one side or the other is that it can be seen. Viability is the most logical point of rights. Criminalising abortion before viability is prioritising possibility over actual. After viability it is actual against actual. Though not a completely equal comparison.

I really don't think viability is a logical point. Viability depends on the available technology and medical care; rights oughtn't to depend upon available care. Also, there is something counterintuitive about arguing that as soon as the viable foetus is able to survive outside the woman's body the woman is then obliged to retain it in her body.

I also think that the criteria of viability is mutually supportive with an ideal of the self-sufficient individual (historically gendered male and economically property-owning) as the normative human being. That ideal feeds into a lot of right-wing neo-liberal ideology. No infant is capable of independent viability. Most adult humans in the modern Western world are only precariously independently viable separate from the rest of human society.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Also, there is something counterintuitive about arguing that as soon as the viable foetus is able to survive outside the woman's body the woman is then obliged to retain it in her body.

Only if one wishes to take the arguments into the absurd. Nothing will perfectly satisfy everyone.

quote:

No infant is capable of independent viability. .

That is my point. Children do not become reasonable independent for several years and yet we, rightly, consider them full humans.
The logical extension of your objections is no abortion. This eliminates the rights of women far too much and, as history shows, actually increases abortions.
I don't agree with Canada's abortion until birth, but they have a lower abortion rate, so there isn't a lot to complain about with their policies.

Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :

Late-term abortions are only done for medical reasons e.g. health risks or severe malformations in Canada. This is our physicians' standard of practice. Doctors and women decide. What's to disagree with?

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
Late-term abortions are only done for medical reasons e.g. health risks or severe malformations in Canada. This is our physicians' standard of practice. Doctors and women decide. What's to disagree with?

Ah, I thought it was no questions asked until birth. Whatever is happening, a model that produces fewer abortions is one to look to.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
Late-term abortions are only done for medical reasons e.g. health risks or severe malformations in Canada. This is our physicians' standard of practice. Doctors and women decide. What's to disagree with?

Well, just to be clear, though, that's because there are no doctors in Canada willing to perform late-term abortions for non-medical reasons past a certain date. Legally, there is nothing to stop a doctor from performing a late-term procedure for any reason, Canada having no abortion laws.

I believe some women have had to go to the USA to find doctors willing to provide abortions late term. So obviously, there are doctors willing to do them, and there's no logical reason a doctor in Canada couldn't decide to do so at some point in the future.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
Late-term abortions are only done for medical reasons e.g. health risks or severe malformations in Canada. This is our physicians' standard of practice. Doctors and women decide. What's to disagree with?
Ah, I thought it was no questions asked until birth. Whatever is happening, a model that produces fewer abortions is one to look to.

Legally speaking, yes, it is no questions until birth. See my post above.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

And just a bit of history, it's interesting how Canada got to its current extreme laissiez-faire situation on abortion.

It's not quite as simple as the self-congratulatory nationalist narative about how Canadians are just so naturally accepting of a woman's right to choose. What happened was, the previous law(requiring women to appear before a committee before being allowed to have an abortion) was overturned by the Supreme Court as too restrictive, some time in the 1980s. But the court majority explicitly stated that the government could craft another law, also subject to court review.

The Conservative government of the day DID craft another law, requiring a woman to get the OK from two doctors before having an abortion(in effect, a two-person committee). This law was passed by the House Of Commons, but then defeated in the Senate by an oddball coalition of pro-lifers and pro-choicers, both hoping to get a new legal regime more suited to their respective preferences. But no government since than has tried to pass another law, and thus we've been left with a default pro-choice situation.

I suppose it says something about the generally pro-choice nature of Canadians that the pro-lifers have never been powerful enough to get a new law through, but it is NOT the case that an unrestricted right to abortion was ever upheld by the Supreme Court. This has not stopped people, including Justin Trudeau(who should really know better, given that it was his father's own law that was the subject of the court rulig), from repeating that as a solemn fact.

And for the record, I think it was a disgrace that the unelected senate was able to overturn a law passed by the Commons, though they obviously gambled that public opinion would let them get away with it, and they've mostly been proven right.

[ 18. December 2017, 04:40: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by John3000 (# 18786) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Also, there is something counterintuitive about arguing that as soon as the viable foetus is able to survive outside the woman's body the woman is then obliged to retain it in her body.
Only if one wishes to take the arguments into the absurd. Nothing will perfectly satisfy everyone.

quote:

No infant is capable of independent viability. .
That is my point. Children do not become reasonable independent for several years and yet we, rightly, consider them full humans.
The logical extension of your objections is no abortion. This eliminates the rights of women far too much and, as history shows, actually increases abortions.

It was common in the Roman Empire until the fourth century, and in many other cultures, to let unwanted babies die of exposure (on a rubbish tip for example). The logic was that they were not killed but placed in the hands of the gods, to perhaps be discovered and cared for by a passer-by. In the context of the time this presumably seemed a perfectly reasonable way to deal with babies born with deformities or other gross abnormalities, but it was also used for simple gender selection.

This reminds me of Philip K Dick's short story, The Pre-persons, in which the US legalises abortion up to the point the soul is thought to enter the body around age 12. The abortion truck drives around neighbourhoods picking up children who can't present a D-card indicating their parents' desire to keep them.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Also, there is something counterintuitive about arguing that as soon as the viable foetus is able to survive outside the woman's body the woman is then obliged to retain it in her body.
Only if one wishes to take the arguments into the absurd. Nothing will perfectly satisfy everyone.

If an argument can be taken into the absurd the fault is with the argument, not with the person who takes it there.

quote:

quote:

No infant is capable of independent viability. .
That is my point. Children do not become reasonable independent for several years and yet we, rightly, consider them full humans.
The logical extension of your objections is no abortion. This eliminates the rights of women far too much and, as history shows, actually increases abortions.

I think that if your concern is that forbidding abortion eliminates the rights of the woman then argue for that. One shouldn't decide the moral status of the foetus by looking at the answer to a different question. If you're basing your opinion about abortion on the rights of the woman then argue that the woman ought to have the right to abort regardless of the moral status of the foetus.
My suspicion is that legalised abortion tends to go along with better health care for children, better state support for childcare, and better sex education; and that any lower rate of abortion where abortion is legal is due to those factors. Whether or not that's true I think we can agree that anyone who genuinely cares about the welfare of babies (as opposed to women's sex lives that are none of their business) should support those goals.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Well, just to be clear, though, that's because there are no doctors in Canada willing to perform late-term abortions for non-medical reasons past a certain date. Legally, there is nothing to stop a doctor from performing a late-term procedure for any reason, Canada having no abortion laws.

That's an interesting fact to add to the discussion about whether doctors with religious objections should be able to refuse to perform abortions.

Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Argument in favor of choice is that the fetus's value is dependent on the will of its mother, as in if it's mother wants it, then the fetus has value.

I think that there's a lot to be said for that. The important insight there is that being pro-choice doesn't mean that one has to treat the unborn-potential-human as valueless. It is possible, for example, to sympathise with a woman who has had a miscarriage and experiences that as a bereavement, without at the same time thinking that a woman who has had an abortion is a murderer. The fact that value was given to the pregnancy by one woman and not the other justifies the rest of us in taking a different view of what exactly has been 'lost' in either case.

But I think it's also true that this only works if the starting point is that an unborn-whatever doesn't have the same objective value as those human beings that we recognise to be persons (morally speaking). It is not generally an excuse for harming someone that you don't ascribe any value to them - with most people we start from the default assumption that they are worth something, and if we want to justify harming them we often do it by considering what they have done to forfeit that worth. If we start from the assumption that an unborn-whatever has no value except that which a particular person chooses to bestow, then we aren't treating them as we do 'people'.

I therefore think that the argument is only ever going to be attractive to those who are already pro-choice, not as persuading anyone to that position. It's important, though, because if you are pro-choice (which I am) you need this, or something like it, to be able to reconcile thinking that someone should be permitted to terminate an unwanted healthy pregnancy without legal censure, and at the same time honouring the ordinary human moral intuition that the involuntary termination of a wanted pregnancy can rightly be felt as a grievous loss.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If an argument can be taken into the absurd the fault is with the argument, not with the person who takes it there.

Then Russ' responses in Purg are your fault. [Biased]

Really, that is an ridiculous position that might work in a structured debate in school, but doesn't reflect the real world. Any argument can be taken to the absurd and reality is rarely simple and clean.

quote:
I think that if your concern is that forbidding abortion eliminates the rights of the woman then argue for that.

I have, repeatedly. The OP is about the dependency argument.

quote:

One shouldn't decide the moral status of the foetus by looking at the answer to a different question. If you're basing your opinion about abortion on the rights of the woman then argue that the woman ought to have the right to abort regardless of the moral status of the foetus.

Dafyd, meet the Real World. She is messy, unfair, unbalanced ans someone is getting screwed almost no matter what.
Abortion does affect women's rights.
A child has rights.
So it is rational to decide where rights for the later are allowed to trump rights for the former.

quote:

My suspicion is that legalised abortion tends to go along with better health care for children, better state support for childcare, and better sex education; and that any lower rate of abortion where abortion is legal is due to those factors.

Sweden is an anomaly though.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Or is it arguing that the mother's choice whether or not to value it trumps any human rights it might possess naturally? If so, I find that rather disturbing as well.

The specific "right" being asserted by the anti-abortion faction is that the fœtus possesses rights not available to any other person, making it a sort of superior being. Specifically, that an embryo or fœtus has a positive and legally enforceable right to use another person's organs for its own benefit. This is not a "right" granted to anyone else. An adult who filed suit to get access to someone else's kidney or lung wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but for some reason a lot of folks seem to regard the uterus as a form of common property.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Or is it arguing that the mother's choice whether or not to value it trumps any human rights it might possess naturally? If so, I find that rather disturbing as well.
The specific "right" being asserted by the anti-abortion faction is that the fœtus possesses rights not available to any other person, making it a sort of superior being. Specifically, that an embryo or fœtus has a positive and legally enforceable right to use another person's organs for its own benefit. This is not a "right" granted to anyone else. An adult who filed suit to get access to someone else's kidney or lung wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but for some reason a lot of folks seem to regard the uterus as a form of common property.

Yeah, this is not a viable argument. Humans reproduce by internal development of the fœtus. There is no other option for the developing child.
One of the problems with this debate is when people frame it as what is "fair". And it is never going to be completely fair. So what is reasonable should be what frames the argument.
Reasonable is legal abortion with comprehensive sex education and adequate health care for children and mothers.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Or is it arguing that the mother's choice whether or not to value it trumps any human rights it might possess naturally? If so, I find that rather disturbing as well.
The specific "right" being asserted by the anti-abortion faction is that the fœtus possesses rights not available to any other person, making it a sort of superior being. Specifically, that an embryo or fœtus has a positive and legally enforceable right to use another person's organs for its own benefit. This is not a "right" granted to anyone else. An adult who filed suit to get access to someone else's kidney or lung wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but for some reason a lot of folks seem to regard the uterus as a form of common property.
Yeah, this is not a viable argument. Humans reproduce by internal development of the fœtus. There is no other option for the developing child.

I have to go with "so what?" here. There's a big logical leap from "humans reproduce by internal development" (which is true) to " . . . and therefore every human embryo/fœtus has an enforceable political right to develop inside another human being" (which is what the various fœtal personhood arguments of the anti-abortion movement boil down to). That standard is problematic on a lot of fronts. For example, do excess embryos produced as part of IVF treatment also have a right to "internal development"? If so, does that mean the genetic mother is required to gestate six or eight pregnancies herself, or can surrogates be hired? If the genetic mother is unavailable to do so because of health or death, is it the state's duty to protect the right to internal development by hiring surrogates? If there aren't enough voluntary surrogates available can the state conscript them?

And does this argument from medical necessity apply to situations that don't involve the uterus specifically. If someone has "no other option" than a blood transfusion to live does that give them a state-enforceable "right" to take someone else's blood involuntarily? What about a lobe of their liver? Their heart? You can see where the "no other option" standard for the use of someone else's body gets pretty ugly pretty fast, though for some reason a lot of folks regard it as less ugly when they're sure it will only apply to women.

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
One of the problems with this debate is when people frame it as what is "fair". And it is never going to be completely fair.

I'm not framing the question as one of fairness, I'm exploring the ramifications of the assertion that a fœtus has a politically enforceable "right" (a term and context introduced by others into this discussion) to gestate in someone else's body.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

transfusions and transplants involve consenting adults.
Children are not capable of any consent for sometime after birth, not reasonable consent for a year or more and not informed consent for many years after. Which of those points should abortion be legal to?
To get away from absurdity, what is the rational end point for abortion? The most logical point is viability. With the caveats that health of the mother taking priority at any point, and embracing the holistic approach of reducing the need/desire for abortions. Otherwise known as education, rights and healthcare.

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

I don't see what consent on the part of the recipient has to do with anything. You surely don't mean to imply that a child below the age of consent can not be the recipient of a blood transfusion or organ donation?

If you mean consent on the part of the donor, that's the whole point. If the woman does not consent to have her uterus used by a fetus, it's the same as if an organ donor or blood donor did not consent to have their blood or organ donated.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
transfusions and transplants involve consenting adults.

Which is, apparently, something you object to with your proposed standard of medical necessity. Needless to say this is a position full of a lot of potential pitfalls, some of which I outlined earlier.

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Children are not capable of any consent for sometime after birth, not reasonable consent for a year or more and not informed consent for many years after. Which of those points should abortion be legal to?

Yes, a minor wanting an abortion is difficult case, but I'm not seeing the case for taking the decision entirely out of her hands. It seems a bit of a red herring and leads to the interesting situation where a minor could be compelled to have an unwanted abortion by an adult decision maker.

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
To get away from absurdity, what is the rational end point for abortion? The most logical point is viability. With the caveats that health of the mother taking priority at any point, . . .

Well that's an interesting caveat if we proceed from the suggested position that an embryo/fœtus has a "right" to gestation. Why is that right no longer considered in the face of a threat to the health of the mother? Given that pregnancy and childbirth are, in and of themselves, a detriment to a woman's health wouldn't that imply abortion should be available at any stage? Or are you suggesting that termination should only be an option for health risks significantly above those associated with a standard pregnancy? If so, what constitutes the threshold of acceptable risk, and who gets to decide?

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

If you are going to play silly buggers, then I'm not going to bother replying beyond this.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The specific "right" being asserted by the anti-abortion faction is that the fœtus possesses rights not available to any other person, making it a sort of superior being. Specifically, that an embryo or fœtus has a positive and legally enforceable right to use another person's organs for its own benefit. This is not a "right" granted to anyone else. An adult who filed suit to get access to someone else's kidney or lung wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but for some reason a lot of folks seem to regard the uterus as a form of common property.

I don't think anyone is claiming that woman's wombs are common property such that any foetus has a claim on any womb.
If through some accident I end up with someone reliant on one of my organs for nine months through no fault of theirs I think there would be a strong moral case that I should remain attached.

Do you think children have no more rights than adults?

I think any argument about abortion that treats pregnancy as something aberrant is flawed. Humans are placental mammals. Every single human being has been reliant upon somebody else's womb (without asking first)(*).
The fundamental problem for the abortion debate is the long-standing paradigm of the moral agent as a landed gentleman. (As described by Russ, it's a view of morality as adjudicating the boundaries between two landholders.) On the anti-abortion side this is an assumption that pregnancy is something weird that doesn't happen to normal people. On the pro-abortion side, this means that women are welcomed into the class of normal people for whom pregnancy is something weird that doesn't happen to them. Either way the debaters are using moral concepts that are designed to apply to landed gentlement do not help deal with ordinary human life. (See Russ' posts passim.)

(*) Assuming you don't count pre-implantation.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

I don’t think the comparison with organ donation works, for this reason: if one person does not wish to donate an organ, another person can be found who may be willing. OTOH, if a woman doesn’t want to carry a pregnancy to term, no one else can do it in her place. It’s not like the foetus can be removed from the womb and implanted in someone else’s.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
It’s not like the foetus can be removed from the womb and implanted in someone else’s.

Well, at least not yet. There may be therapeutic reasons for developing an 'artificial womb' capability to help those not able to carry to full term. At present, the remedy for some is to have the child delivered very prematurely, with massive developmental problems for the critical first few weeks.

I'm not sure anyone has given too much thought to the possibility of such future technology being used to preserve the life of foetuses at 2nd and 3rd trimester stage if the mother doesn't want the pregnancy to continue. There is a different moral choice involved if there is a third option, of providing the means for the foetus to survive outside the body of the woman who conceived it. There's a difference between saying 'I don't want this baby' and also saying 'And I don't want anyone else to have this baby'.

Of course, this is very speculative, I'm not sure what to make of such a future dilemma. The ones facing us now are complicated enough.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:

I'm not sure anyone has given too much thought to the possibility of such future technology being used to preserve the life of foetuses at 2nd and 3rd trimester stage if the mother doesn't want the pregnancy to continue.

Lois McMaster Bujold has 18 uterine replicators containing the children of raped prisoners of war delivered to the rapists as part of a peace deal at the end of a short, stupid war.

But in general, I think there's a widespread (but possibly misplaced) assumption that a society with viable in-vitro gestation would also have figured out not getting pregnant unless you wanted to.

[ 21. December 2017, 18:22: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The specific "right" being asserted by the anti-abortion faction is that the fœtus possesses rights not available to any other person, making it a sort of superior being. Specifically, that an embryo or fœtus has a positive and legally enforceable right to use another person's organs for its own benefit. This is not a "right" granted to anyone else.

Not entirely. The claim is that the right to the use of the mother's womb belongs to everyone, but only at a specific stage in their life. Just like the right to an old age pension, or the right to be cared and nurtured without having to work for it, belong to everyone, but only at a specific stage of their life.

quote:
An adult who filed suit to get access to someone else's kidney or lung wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but for some reason a lot of folks seem to regard the uterus as a form of common property.

Yes, as I said above I am on balance pro-choice, but I generally find this line of argument unconvincing because it depends on making pregnancy analogous to something else, when ISTM pregnancy isn't analogous to anything other than itself.

(Pro-choice: pregnancy is analogous to X therefore Y; pro-life: ha, but it's also analagous to Alpha therefore Beta.)

To my mind the comparison to compulsory organ donation fails because generally speaking you have more of a moral responsibility for a situation you have created than for a situation you have not created, even if the end result is the same. And except in the case of rape, the mother has created the situation whereby there is a dependent foetus in her womb, whereas I'm not obviously responsible for someone else's kidney failure.

(My other objection to the analogy is that although I don't think it lacks merit, in my experience people have to be persuaded to see the comparison, even if they are already pro-choice by inclination - which suggests it isn't a very natural analogy. Which is admittedly subjective, but ultimately a lot of ethics comes down to gut instinct in the final analysis.)

[ 22. December 2017, 08:24: Message edited by: Ricardus ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Rather it's that the foetus has the right to be born, and that incidentally requires the temporary use of the mother's womb. It's not the womb use that's primary, but the being born.

That's what they say, anyway. If you press them, or rather some of them, different things come out. I remember a politician saying "but then women wouldn't be punished for premarital sex" -- for him, at least, that was the reason for prohibiting abortion. But that's another thread.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Lois McMaster Bujold has 18 uterine replicators containing the children of raped prisoners of war delivered to the rapists as part of a peace deal at the end of a short, stupid war.

Sci-fi of course, but very good sci-fi.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Rather it's that the foetus has the right to be born, and that incidentally requires the temporary use of the mother's womb. It's not the womb use that's primary, but the being born.

That's what they say, anyway. If you press them, or rather some of them, different things come out. I remember a politician saying "but then women wouldn't be punished for premarital sex" -- for him, at least, that was the reason for prohibiting abortion. But that's another thread.

My favorite is conservative politicians and commentators who say things like "The Democrats have cursed this country with high taxes, abortion, and business-killing environmental legislation."

In other words, they apparently think that murder can be listed as on par with taxes and draconian anti-drilling laws.

That said, I have heard one or two "pro-lifers" say that their commitment is such that they would vote for left-wing political parties, if those parties also made protection of the fetus from conception part of their platform. I suspect that they say this, however, knowing it's a pretty safe bet that in the current political scene, no left-wing party is going to do that.

If any American conservstives ever criticized Margaret Thatcher for her pro-choice politics, I completely missed it.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

Looking at the history of abortion, it seems that in every period, whenever there have been unplanned pregnancies, there has always been abortion.

The church by tradition, has condemned abortion historically, but until recently, I understand that it was not universal teaching that the unborn fetus was equal to an alive human being. Critics have stated that abortion was condemned because it was associated with sexual immorality, not necessarily out of a belief that the fetus was an equal human being.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Looking at the history of abortion, it seems that in every period, whenever there have been unplanned pregnancies, there has always been abortion.

Or exposure, or smothering (a Russian Orthodox favorite).

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

Unless you're prepared to compensate the mother to not have an abortion, what have you got to say?

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The specific "right" being asserted by the anti-abortion faction is that the fœtus possesses rights not available to any other person, making it a sort of superior being. Specifically, that an embryo or fœtus has a positive and legally enforceable right to use another person's organs for its own benefit. This is not a "right" granted to anyone else. An adult who filed suit to get access to someone else's kidney or lung wouldn't have a leg to stand on, but for some reason a lot of folks seem to regard the uterus as a form of common property.
I don't think anyone is claiming that woman's wombs are common property such that any foetus has a claim on any womb.

That seems to be the argument being advanced, at least from those proceeding from the premise that a fœtus is entitled to a full set of human rights. In context it necessarily contains the idea that all humans have a general right to the use of someone else's gestational organs. And there are others like sharkshooter who maintain that a woman's medical decisions should be under the control of any man who impregnates her.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
If through some accident I end up with someone reliant on one of my organs for nine months through no fault of theirs I think there would be a strong moral case that I should [be forced to] remain attached.

I've altered your statement to accurately reflect actual anti-abortion arguments.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Do you think children have no more rights than adults?

Regardless of what I think, the argument being advanced by opponents of legal abortion is that an embryo/fœtus has the same rights as a fully developed human being. We may conclude from the way they contort themselves to reach certain conclusions that they believe a mother is a lesser being than her child and preference should be given to the latter in all cases, but we can also see why, from a public relations point of view, they'd be reluctant to state so openly.

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I don’t think the comparison with organ donation works, for this reason: if one person does not wish to donate an organ, another person can be found who may be willing. OTOH, if a woman doesn’t want to carry a pregnancy to term, no one else can do it in her place.

Yet we know that in most cases the number of organs available for transplant falls short of the number of potential recipients. If you're going to argue that people have a legally-enforceable right to use other people's organs by argument of medical necessity, it would suggest that the state is empowered to exercise eminent domain over some people's bodies to make up the shortfall. Yet we don't ever see this argued except in the case of the uterus.

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Yes, as I said above I am on balance pro-choice, but I generally find this line of argument unconvincing because it depends on making pregnancy analogous to something else, when ISTM pregnancy isn't analogous to anything other than itself.

It's not so much an argument in favor of the pro-choice position as a refutation of the anti-abortion argument proceeding from the premise that an embryo or fœtus has a full set of human rights. Unwillingness to accept some of the obvious corollaries of this argument demonstrates its bad faith nature. The argument isn't as applicable to anti-abortion arguments proceeding from other premises.

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
To my mind the comparison to compulsory organ donation fails because generally speaking you have more of a moral responsibility for a situation you have created than for a situation you have not created, even if the end result is the same. And except in the case of rape, the mother has created the situation whereby there is a dependent foetus in her womb, whereas I'm not obviously responsible for someone else's kidney failure.

And yet we still don't harvest organs involuntarily even in situations where the need has been caused, wholly or partially, by specific individuals. If you manage to purposefully or accidentally skewer another person through both kidneys it may be argued that you have a moral obligation to donate one of your own to your victim, but very few would be willing to force you to do so involuntarily using the power of the state. It's very hard not to conclude that the position being argued is that involuntary pregnancy is viewed as a punishment for women who have disapproved-of sex.

It's also amazing how quickly the supposed human rights of a fœtus evaporate if it was created via rape, another indication of the insincerity of the anti-abortion argument from human rights.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Rather it's that the foetus has the right to be born, and that incidentally requires the temporary use of the mother's womb. It's not the womb use that's primary, but the being born.

That's what they say, anyway.

"They" say a lot stuff, mostly anything that will reach the desired conclusion. This proposed "right to be born" has some interesting problems when considering excess embryos created during IVF treatment, which I referenced earlier.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
This proposed "right to be born" has some interesting problems when considering excess embryos created during IVF treatment, which I referenced earlier.

I believe most anti-abortion people who have actually given it any thought are also opposed to the production of extra embryos in IVF. 'cause it's not actually necessary to create extras during IVF. It's efficient to do it that way, but it's not compulsory.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
I believe most anti-abortion people who have actually given it any thought are also opposed to the production of extra embryos in IVF.

I'd like to see evidence of this. When I've brought it up or watched other people bring it up, the anti-abortion activist looks stunned and stands for a bit in apparent lack of thought. You never see protestors outside fertility clinics. You never hear TV evangelists screaming about the evils of fertility treatment. I'd like to see evidence of your "most".

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

They still en't given it much thought. All the spare, excess embryos - 14 optimally - that are never used, that are disposed of or, 'worse', used in research.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
To my mind the comparison to compulsory organ donation fails because generally speaking you have more of a moral responsibility for a situation you have created than for a situation you have not created, even if the end result is the same. And except in the case of rape, the mother has created the situation whereby there is a dependent foetus in her womb, whereas I'm not obviously responsible for someone else's kidney failure.
And yet we still don't harvest organs involuntarily even in situations where the need has been caused, wholly or partially, by specific individuals. If you manage to purposefully or accidentally skewer another person through both kidneys it may be argued that you have a moral obligation to donate one of your own to your victim, but very few would be willing to force you to do so involuntarily using the power of the state.

I dunno, I think if you proposed a law saying that I should have to donate a kidney in that circumstance, quite a few people would be in favour in the abstract - admittedly mostly hang-'em-and-flog-'em Daily Mail types, but these are also the people who are most likely to want to criminalise abortion. Bearing in mind that nearly half the population here want to bring back the death penalty, I suspect resistance to this kind of bodily mutilation would be less than you imagine - rather, practical difficulties, not to mention our ECHR membership, would prevent this sort of proposal from being seriously contemplated.

quote:

It's also amazing how quickly the supposed human rights of a fœtus evaporate if it was created via rape, another indication of the insincerity of the anti-abortion argument from human rights.

I think that would fall under the 'except in the case of rape' in the part of my post you quoted?

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
I believe most anti-abortion people who have actually given it any thought are also opposed to the production of extra embryos in IVF.
I'd like to see evidence of this. When I've brought it up or watched other people bring it up, the anti-abortion activist looks stunned and stands for a bit in apparent lack of thought. You never see protestors outside fertility clinics. You never hear TV evangelists screaming about the evils of fertility treatment. I'd like to see evidence of your "most".

AIUI the RCC opposes IVF for this reason (among others).

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Here is a story pro-life people get all tied up with.

Suppose you are working in a human embryo lab. A fire breaks out, you have to evacuate. As you are leaving the room, you spy a five-year-old boy cowering in the corner. Nearby is a container containing a thousand frozen embryos. You have enough time to save the one but not the other. Do you save the boy or do you choose the embryos?

Nine times out of ten, the pro-lifers will choose to save the boy because he is proven to be alive.

They will also try to weasel out of the story by questioning the idea of working in a lab that has frozen embryos. But no one has said they would chose the container of embryo.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I have a friend who has been implanted with a donated embryo. She and her husband have struggled with infertility and IVF for years. They have accepted this embryo, which is not genetically related to either parent, in token of their pro-life stance. Also, it is part-Asian, like the parents, and so the new one will look like part of the family.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
But no one has said they would chose the container of embryo.

Also, no one will take the unstated third option of saving only yourself. As Fred Clark pointed out this isn't so much an argument as it is a gut-check.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
AIUI the RCC opposes IVF for this reason (among others).

The RCC was against abortion before it was cool, so to speak. The RCC's opposition to abortion is not political. I can't vouch for that for any other abortion foe.

Posted by Luke (# 306) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Argument in favor of choice is that the fetus's value is dependent on the will of its mother, as in if it's mother wants it, then the fetus has value.

To criminalize abortion is to usurp the rights of the mother, in favor of the abstract rights of an unborn fetus.

To me this is the strongest argument from the prochoice perspective

But the response given is that if we made the argument based on the fact that a fetus's value is only dependent on its mother, then you can make the same argument that people with disabilities or mental or physical challenges that are dependent on another person namely its caregiver, thus could conceivably lose its right to life, if said caregiver decides so.

My response is that the fetus' dependency on its mother is qualitatively different than a disabled person's dependency on its caregiver.

Any thoughts?

The problem with this scenario is that it assumes that the person with the most power gets to determine who lives and who dies.

Sometimes people with more power have to make life and death decisions about other people. However just because they have that power, doesn't make their decisions morally good.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Luke:

quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Argument in favor of choice is that the fetus's value is dependent on the will of its mother, as in if it's mother wants it, then the fetus has value.

To criminalize abortion is to usurp the rights of the mother, in favor of the abstract rights of an unborn fetus.

To me this is the strongest argument from the prochoice perspective

But the response given is that if we made the argument based on the fact that a fetus's value is only dependent on its mother, then you can make the same argument that people with disabilities or mental or physical challenges that are dependent on another person namely its caregiver, thus could conceivably lose its right to life, if said caregiver decides so.

My response is that the fetus' dependency on its mother is qualitatively different than a disabled person's dependency on its caregiver.

Any thoughts?
The problem with this scenario is that it assumes that the person with the most power gets to determine who lives and who dies.

Sometimes people with more power have to make life and death decisions about other people. However just because they have that power, doesn't make their decisions morally good.

I'm not sure that's a "problem" that's soluble by the criminalization of abortion. After all, that's simply handing off life and death decisions from those most intimately affected to the metaphorical hands of the state. Why is a legislature the best body to make the decision about whether or not to proceed with a risky pregnancy?

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Life and death decisions are delegated to others every day, sometimes to crashingly unqualified persons. (I speak as an American with a president who has his thumb on the nuclear button.) Since it is the woman carrying the baby, I do not see that the legislature has the right to stick its nose in.

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