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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: How could the Pro-life movement have wider appeal?
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Giving up trying to do this on a tablet and try again on the laptop.
If we are defining terms, technically, abortion means failure of pregnancy, a miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion. The meaning of "abortion" we bandy about colloquially is medically a "termination of pregnancy" or TOP.
The other wrinkle is that many women don't know they are pregnant until after implantation has taken place, particularly if they were using contraception. The time required to realise and make appointments means that several weeks elapse. That the vast majority of medical abortions in the UK occur in the first trimester, and within the first 10 weeks, suggests that those vast majority of terminations are accidental unwanted pregnancies.
Terminations of pregnancies are not ideal, but we live in a world where people are sold consequence free sex and a belief that everyone is having an amazing sex life; they are missing out if they don't. And that's the attitude that needs changing - with education. (I do this, I tell all the kids I work with that they should not have sex unless they are prepared for pregnancy and plan what they will do if that happens. And that they need to be aware of STIs.)
The other debate about the legal dates of late terminations is another issue. Until I started debating this on the Ship, I believed that we should move from 24 weeks gestation to 12 weeks, along with others. But I read the input from North East Quine and birdie, and realised how late women discover their babies have severe problems, and now I would probably say 22 weeks would be sensible. (Currently, the neonatal wards consider 24 weeks gestation the point at which to strive to keep premature babies alive, at 22 weeks gestation there are generally worse outcomes if they do survive, and most do not.)
This is where I found the figures for zygotes not implanting
Here is a post containing the link to the articles saying 2/3 of women seeking terminations were using contraception.
And this post is a link to a comment on late abortions, linking to the stories from birdie and NorthEastQuine
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But I read the input from North East Quine and birdie, and realised how late women discover their babies have severe problems, and now I would probably say 22 weeks would be sensible.
There's a couple of really serious conditions (spina bifida and hydrocephalus) that can go undiscovered until birth. For this reason the Netherlands currently allows infanticide in such circumstances.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
It is worth noting that there are already exceptions to even the 24 week limit in the UK for foetal deformity, meaning foetuses with Down's can be aborted right up to birth, something which I find rather disturbing.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
If it's clear that the 'human' has lost / not yet gained cognitive function to such an extent that it's clearly inferior to that of the more developed animals, then I wouldn't really tend to regard it as truly human in a sense of regarding it as Person. The upshot of this is that I have no qualms about abortion, because the cognitive functioning of the developing fetus is generally regarded as being significantly below that of the higher animals.
The problem is that this "rational" approach a la Singer is defeated by the monstrous conclusions it leads to. For we then should have no qualms about killing newborns (arguably even toddlers), the demented elderly, the mentally severely handicapped... Indeed, we may even wonder whether a very drunk person has not forfeit personhood and can be killed without qualms. Our moral instinct clearly suggests that more must be going on in our moral calculus than just an assessment of "cognitive capacity".
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
We're with you Macrina. There's a difference between accepting unquestioningly a woman's complete rights over her own body, and what you can accept when there is the body of someone else involved. To take an extreme example, no-one would accept that a woman could forcibly castrate her partner as a form of birth control. We have no objection to a woman using any form of contraceptive or other birth control method available to her, but look at it differently once conception has occurred.
Because a foetus isn't a person and - this is the important bit - has no legal standing. Valuing a non-person over an actual person is the clearest sign of the misogynist.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
As an aside, the ethics of abortion should be decided by people who could get pregnant. A cisgender* man's opinion is frankly irrelevant - he's never going to be in a position where he needs an abortion.
*a man who was designated male at birth
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As an aside, the ethics of abortion should be decided by people who could get pregnant. A cisgender* man's opinion is frankly irrelevant - he's never going to be in a position where he needs an abortion.
*a man who was designated male at birth
To me that seems like begging the question. If one assumes that the foetus is not a human being, and the question is one of who should make choices for women, then that view makes sense. If, on the other hand, the foetus is a human being then it makes no sense at all.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
And that's where viability comes in. If the thing cannot live outside the mother's womb, how is it different from, say, your finger? Which clearly is not capable of independent life severed from your hand.
There is a moment when the fetus is viable. I have no problems with conferring humanity at that moment.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As an aside, the ethics of abortion should be decided by people who could get pregnant. A cisgender* man's opinion is frankly irrelevant - he's never going to be in a position where he needs an abortion.
*a man who was designated male at birth
But that is a double standard. A man has no say, but has legal responsibility if the baby is born?
I do not think that men should control women's rights as as been the case for so long. But unless you wish to legally relegate men to being merely sperm donors, they are part of the equation thus should be considered.
As the most affected party, the ultimate decision is the woman's, but to completely dismiss men as irrelevant is wrong.
There is no perfect solution here, IMO.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And that's where viability comes in. If the thing cannot live outside the mother's womb, how is it different from, say, your finger? Which clearly is not capable of independent life severed from your hand.
There is a moment when the fetus is viable. I have no problems with conferring humanity at that moment.
A baby growing inside the womb can't be compared to a finger as the baby has its own identity while the finger doesn't. The baby may be conscious of its mother's proximity and movements, and may hear her voice. A finger could not. Whether or not the baby is viable outside of the womb, it is a living growing human being.
This is true regardless of any legal status we give it.
The baby has at least two parents who should be allowed a say in its welfare, as well as the voices of the wider society. It works both ways: if others are expected to provide welfare and care for the mother, why would this not extend to the child?
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
It also seems to me that your own definition is in danger of being totally arbitrary: Why is anything that meets a biological definition of 'human' a morally relevant person? Seems arbitrary to me. What about angels? Demons? Do you have a list of finite length that lists morally relevant species? What happens if we encounter many different species of alien life in future? At that point what would you use to decide if any given alien species was classified by your moral code as being morally relevant persons or not?
The human species, barring discoveries of homo erectus or homo neanderthal populations on remote islands somewhere, is a well-defined category. Personhood appears far more arbitrary to me. Where does one draw the line? Babies seem to me to more urgently raise practical moral concerns than angels, demons, and alien species do.
To be honest, I think the concept of a moral person is problematic on account of its history in a moral philosophy that privileges adult able-bodied (straight cis-) European property-owning males as the epitome of human value, and judges other human beings as of more or less concern as they approach that ideal. The attributes of a 'person' that makes them morally worthy are very much the attributes of homo economicus - that abstract philosophical entity capable of rationally distributing resources across their desires. I don't think that's a desirable moral outcome.
It is justifiable to place moral weight upon the biological because we are biological entities. Flesh and blood is what we unquestionably are. Any imaginable human society, barring fundamental technological advances, will nurture babies that are incapable of language and reasoning. We all have been such babies. In particular, by contrast with most other primates, human babies are unable to cling to their mothers' hair. In most other primate species, a baby that is found not clinging to its mother is subject to summary infanticide. (The other exceptions are marmosets, a group of species in which the feminist primatologist Hrdy notes much of the childcare is done by males.) Considering human babies worthy of care and moral respect must be a fundamental feature of human sociobiology.
(I refrain from direct application of all that to the morality of abortion, as I don't know the answer. I think most arguments to the effect that the foetus is morally negligible are misguided; it does not necessarily follow that the foetus is morally absolute.)
[ 04. May 2015, 19:07: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Nicely argued, Dafyd. I think these complications in arguments in part led to the bodily dependency arguments, which elide or circumvent questions of viability and personhood. However, the dependency arguments are also fiercely opposed, as you would expect.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And that's where viability comes in. If the thing cannot live outside the mother's womb, how is it different from, say, your finger? Which clearly is not capable of independent life severed from your hand.
There is a moment when the fetus is viable. I have no problems with conferring humanity at that moment.
I think viability is seriously problematic as a criterion for several reasons.
One is that there's something perverse about saying that the point at which the woman can't have the foetus removed from her womb is just the point where the foetus could potentially do without.
Another is that there isn't a definite point at which the foetus becomes viable. As has been said upthread, babies that are seriously premature are prone to disability, which risk gets greater as they get more premature. Furthermore, viability depends upon the current state of medical science and available resources. There simply is no definite point at which one can say now the foetus is viable.
Most importantly, in my mind, no baby is viable on its own. All a neonate can do to look after itself is root and cry. Babies don't become independently mobile until they're nearly a year old, give or take. And even then it's questionable whether that counts as independent. In fact, it's questionable whether adult human beings are independently viable. We're social animals. Were I dropped into the wilderness with no other human society I am not convinced I would survive for very long; I suspect that goes for most posters in this thread. The idea that independent viability is a positive value for human beings is I think a right-wing fantasy - one that is obviously virulent in Ayn Rand, but which causes general malaise in much of our economics and politics.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
We're with you Macrina. There's a difference between accepting unquestioningly a woman's complete rights over her own body, and what you can accept when there is the body of someone else involved. To take an extreme example, no-one would accept that a woman could forcibly castrate her partner as a form of birth control. We have no objection to a woman using any form of contraceptive or other birth control method available to her, but look at it differently once conception has occurred.
Because a foetus isn't a person and - this is the important bit - has no legal standing. Valuing a non-person over an actual person is the clearest sign of the misogynist.
1. What you state as facts are simply your opinions.
2. I cannot see why a man has no right to have an opinion on these matters. Again, you are stating an opinion as a fact, but give no explanation for it.
3. What the legal position may be in any particular part of the world is not really relevant. We are not discussing the legal position but the moral one.
4. Would you like to engage in a debate about + Peter Carnley's suggestions? It seems to us - and us here means me and Madame, who is most definitely female - that there is a lot there worth exploring.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Starlight
Shipmate
# 12651
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The problem is that this "rational" approach a la Singer is defeated by the monstrous conclusions it leads to. For we then should have no qualms about killing newborns (arguably even toddlers), the demented elderly, the mentally severely handicapped...
As I mentioned, if someone has become a "vegetable", I have no issue with euthanasia. If there is almost a complete absence of higher cognitive function, due to it not yet having developed, or having been permanently lost, then euthanasia seems fine to me.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The human species, barring discoveries of homo erectus or homo neanderthal populations on remote islands somewhere, is a well-defined category.
In the present, yes. Given 100 years and some genetic engineering, it might well no longer be a well-defined category.
Such criteria would seem to allow for potentially terrible treatment of animals on the grounds that they are not human.
It would also seem to allow for arbitrary subcategories of humans to be selected: eg by race. Why say that all humans are persons of moral worth and not just say that white people are? (Or, how would you argue against someone who held such a viewpoint?) After all white vs black was an extremely well-defined category difference to the colonialists and in the US.
I guess I'm saying that I don't understand what the motivation is for seizing on the biological human species as being the measure of morality. Seems like an arbitrary thing to seize upon.
Posts: 745 | From: NZ | Registered: May 2007
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
... 2. I cannot see why a man has no right to have an opinion on these matters. Again, you are stating an opinion as a fact, but give no explanation for it....
Because men don't die in childbirth?
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But I read the input from North East Quine and birdie, and realised how late women discover their babies have severe problems, and now I would probably say 22 weeks would be sensible.
There's a couple of really serious conditions (spina bifida and hydrocephalus) that can go undiscovered until birth. For this reason the Netherlands currently allows infanticide in such circumstances.
That is horrific and I am amazed it hasn't recieved more public notice.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
But I read the input from North East Quine and birdie, and realised how late women discover their babies have severe problems, and now I would probably say 22 weeks would be sensible.
There's a couple of really serious conditions (spina bifida and hydrocephalus) that can go undiscovered until birth. For this reason the Netherlands currently allows infanticide in such circumstances.
That is horrific and I am amazed it hasn't recieved more public notice.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Macrina
Shipmate
# 8807
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The problem is that this "rational" approach a la Singer is defeated by the monstrous conclusions it leads to. For we then should have no qualms about killing newborns (arguably even toddlers), the demented elderly, the mentally severely handicapped...
As I mentioned, if someone has become a "vegetable", I have no issue with euthanasia. If there is almost a complete absence of higher cognitive function, due to it not yet having developed, or having been permanently lost, then euthanasia seems fine to me.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The human species, barring discoveries of homo erectus or homo neanderthal populations on remote islands somewhere, is a well-defined category.
In the present, yes. Given 100 years and some genetic engineering, it might well no longer be a well-defined category.
Such criteria would seem to allow for potentially terrible treatment of animals on the grounds that they are not human.
It would also seem to allow for arbitrary subcategories of humans to be selected: eg by race. Why say that all humans are persons of moral worth and not just say that white people are? (Or, how would you argue against someone who held such a viewpoint?) After all white vs black was an extremely well-defined category difference to the colonialists and in the US.
I guess I'm saying that I don't understand what the motivation is for seizing on the biological human species as being the measure of morality. Seems like an arbitrary thing to seize upon.
There is a huge difference between turning the machines off which are keeping a brain dead person alive whilst also trying to keep them comfortable as nature takes its course and actively intervening to kill a human that would otherwise be capable of living without medical support. The former is assisted dying, the latter is euthanasia.
Posts: 535 | From: Christchurch, New Zealand | Registered: Nov 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
In that case IngoB God is pretty immoral allowing all those human beings to be naturally flushed down the loo, wouldn't you think?
I wouldn't think so. Because I neither believe that God is a moral agent, nor that God's goodness is defined by obedience to some human moral code. To me that is putting the cart in front of the horse. I would furthermore claim that the common Christian conception of God as being "morally perfect" is (1) incoherent nonsense, and (2) easily disproven by the usual "argument from evil". To me billions of humans dying without even being recognised is rather just one more uncomfortable fact about nature that joins a myriad other uncomfortable facts about nature. It has little impact on my conception of God or my Christian faith. But I know that this is contentious (from other discussions) and I would suggest that it is mostly off-topic here.
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
For example, if we observe Creation, and find that something has been biologically set up to work a certain way in all animals (eg the body is programmed to self-abort pregnancies if an abnormality is detected, conceived eggs regularly fail to implant etc), then we might well come to believe that God meant it to work that way, and that therefore he is quite okay with pregnancies being prevented or terminated.
Your assertion that God has any strong objection to this sort of thing happening would seem unlikely at face value when the fact that the entire created order works this way is taken into consideration. If God objects strongly to the termination of pregnancies, then it seems surprising he hasn't taken the time or effort to intervene to prevent them happening so often naturally.
We can indeed conclude that God did not intend for us to be bothered by naturally occurring failures to implant. But not really because that happens frequently, since lots of bad things happen frequently, like say a heart attack. We do not conclude from the frequency of occurrence that heart attacks are good, much less that it is licit to cause them! Rather we analyse the good of the person having the heart attack, conclude that he would be better off not having one, and feel compelled to treat this condition medically to the limit of our ability. However, the failure to implant is not obvious to us at all, indeed, will generally just escape our notice. A natural failure to implant is clearly "designed" to be below our typical cognition threshold. This allows to conclude that even though we can recognise that human beings are dying there (an evil), we are not compelled into action (an evil that is not our business). So we do not have to frantically develop drugs that increase the chance of implantation, in order to "fix" this. That is not morally required of us. Yet if we cause the failure of implantation, if that happens because we have done something like giving a drug, then we have de facto made this evil our business. It is then not nature who is responsible for what is going on, rather we are. Instead of humans dying of natural causes, we then are looking at humans dying due to human action (if one considers these human entities to be human beings, as I do). And obviously that is morally problematic.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
... 2. I cannot see why a man has no right to have an opinion on these matters. Again, you are stating an opinion as a fact, but give no explanation for it....
Because men don't die in childbirth?
But men may well be there as grieving partners, possibly rearing motherless children. I don't see how either is a necessary precondition to having an opinion.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Starlight:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The human species, barring discoveries of homo erectus or homo neanderthal populations on remote islands somewhere, is a well-defined category.
In the present, yes. Given 100 years and some genetic engineering, it might well no longer be a well-defined category.
Such criteria would seem to allow for potentially terrible treatment of animals on the grounds that they are not human.
Given that you were earlier arguing that we as a society don't have much problem with killing animals for whatever reason, I don't think you have a strong case using this as a criticism now (even if you do consider yourself a proponent of animal rights in parentheses).
Merely because biological species is one criterion does not exclude others. I'd say it's wrong to vandalise a tree just for the sake of it. And if a tree is among the last of its species or of particular age I'd say we owe it more moral concern than that. Yet trees do not as far as we know feel pain or have much cognitive function.
quote:
It would also seem to allow for arbitrary subcategories of humans to be selected: eg by race. Why say that all humans are persons of moral worth and not just say that white people are? (Or, how would you argue against someone who held such a viewpoint?) After all white vs black was an extremely well-defined category difference to the colonialists and in the US.
Race was not a well-defined category difference to colonialists and in the US. They wanted it to be, but they had continually to deal with mixed-race people. As well as with other awkwardnesses: South Africa declared Japanese people were officially white. The discourse about race in racist societies is terribly dominated by the continual need to shore up walls that keep slipping down. (The same thing happens to the need to ideologically define heterosexual male and heterosexual female cultural roles in a patriarchal society.)
That all human beings can participate in each others' cultures up to and including breeding and child raising is important.
I'm unsure about the idea of looking for criteria for what counts as being of moral concern. It seems to me that the question is rather what does moral concern mean in any particular case. And moral concern I think arises out of the conditions of human existence, rather than being imposed upon the conditions by disembodied reason.
quote:
I guess I'm saying that I don't understand what the motivation is for seizing on the biological human species as being the measure of morality. Seems like an arbitrary thing to seize upon.
Really? Do you think the distinction between doctors and vets is arbitrary?
It may be that in the view from nowhere all human moral distinctions are arbitrary, but we are not moral in the view from nowhere.
You favour cognitive ability? But I think you'd agree that once someone is past a particular threshhold cognitive ability suddenly becomes completely irrelevant. A Nobel Prize winner is not more deserving of moral concern than someone who left school at sixteen with learning difficulties (assuming that person has passed your threshhold). That's arbitrary.
Morality is not about cognitive ability. Morality is about how we live and die; and we live and die because we are biological flesh and blood. We live and die the way we do because we are humans, a biological category, though one that gives rise to inexhaustible cultural variations.
We talk about common humanity as a basis for morality because we think that's morally important.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As an aside, the ethics of abortion should be decided by people who could get pregnant. A cisgender* man's opinion is frankly irrelevant - he's never going to be in a position where he needs an abortion.
*a man who was designated male at birth
To me that seems like begging the question. If one assumes that the foetus is not a human being, and the question is one of who should make choices for women, then that view makes sense. If, on the other hand, the foetus is a human being then it makes no sense at all.
You give too much credit, there. Even on the assumption that the foetus is not a human being, Pomona's argument is stupid and sexist.
There is a good argument (basically, the default pro-choice position) that if a foetus is not a human being then the individual most affected by the pregnancy gets to decide what happens about it. There isn't a good argument for Pomona's (apparent) position that those people who share a gender with that individual get to tell her what she's allowed to do, and the others don't. The fact that they might potentially be in a similar position themselves doesn't trump either her autonomy (on a pro-choice view) or the rights of the unborn (on a pro-life one). The average, unrelated, woman is no more directly concerned in a particular pregnancy of a stranger than is the average man.
On a pro-life view, of course, abortion is violence to a member of society, and therefore any member of society, male or female, has a right to object to it. There's probably room for a few words of caution about men pontificating about a situation that they won't ever personally face, but that doesn't take us very far. There are all sorts of temptations I don't personally face, but, if I exercise a modicum of humility and empathy, I can still possess a valid opinion about them.
And it is, completely untrue that because they might potentially become pregnant themselves, women form a class or interest group concerned for the welfare of pregnant people generally, and that men are excluded from that class. There are women who, for medical or personal reasons will never be pregnant, and there are many men (probably the majority) who, though they won't personally be giving birth, are still directly affected by the outcome of a particular pregnancy. Including many who will find it extremely convenient for their partners to have access to abortion.
Pomona's argument that one gender has an interest in the moral and legal question of abortion and the other doesn't, is ill-considered and offensive.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
It's really sad, isn't it? Macrina posted a serious question in the OP. But virtually the entire thread since has ground depressingly round the ring of this particular dead horse circus, abortion itself, what rights a foetus has, whose right to choose is it etc., etc., etc., drone, drone, drone.
I thought she was saying, 'if I'm a feminist, but don't like abortion, do I have to change my mind? Does being a feminist oblige me to pretend I support abortion even though I don't like it? But if I don't like abortion, most of the other people who don't like it are people I'm out of sympathy with in so many other ways.'
Have I got that right?
Look, nobody, I hope, likes abortion. People think it should be absolutely forbidden, permissible in a few extreme circumstances (e.g. rape, severe illness of mother or foetus) or more generally allowed as an unfortunate concession to human frailty. Their spiritual, ethical and philosophical takes mean they position themselves in various places on that spectrum, but nobody likes it very much. There isn't, as far as I know, a 'come-on-in the water's lovely, everyone should have one' lobby.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
There's probably room for a few words of caution about men pontificating about a situation that they won't ever personally face, but that doesn't take us very far. There are all sorts of temptations I don't personally face, but, if I exercise a modicum of humility and empathy, I can still possess a valid opinion about them.
I don't think that's quite fair to Pomona. It may well be the case that you can exercise a modicum of humility and empathy. Nevertheless, there are a lot of men who don't. Furthermore, I think the subject on which anyone is most likely to be in error is the amount of humility and empathy they are exercising on any given occasion.
Obviously, I do feel able to express opinions around the general area of abortion, even if I don't have a settled opinion on the morality of abortion itself. But it does seem clear to me that a lot of people, especially on the pro-life side, are not exercising either humility nor empathy. Indeed, some of them seem to care more that there are appropriate 'consequences' for women who have sex rather than about the fate of the babies. Given that there is rather a lot of that kind of misogyny about in the debate, and rather little self-awareness on the point, I think Pomona's point of view has more to be said for it that you are allowing.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
To stick more closely to the OP then: how about Feminists for Life: "We are dedicated to systematically eliminating the root causes that drive women to abortion — primarily lack of practical resources and support — through holistic, woman-centered solutions. ... Established in 1972, Feminists for Life of America is a nonsectarian, nonpartisan, grassroots organization that seeks real solutions to the challenges women face. Our efforts are shaped by the core feminist values of justice, nondiscrimination, and nonviolence. Feminists for Life of America continues the tradition of early American feminists such as Susan B. Anthony, who opposed abortion."
A similar and connected organisation appears to the the Susan B. Anthony list, though they seem to be more a political pressure group and their previous support of Sarah Palin presumably puts them beyond the pale for most people here.
All the above without any endorsement from me, I wasn't aware of these organisations before cranking up the search engine.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
Pomona's argument is stupid and sexist.
It isn't stupid. Shortsighted, as you later say, yes. From her logic, she would have less say in the debate than a straight woman as her odds of facing the choice are considerably lower.
There is a hierarchy in which groups are most likely affected and how. But it is not women v. men.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
But it does seem clear to me that a lot of people, especially on the pro-life side,* are not exercising either humility nor empathy.
The pro choice side has more than enough people who operate with arrogance and lack of empathy to negate the "especially".
*Bold mine
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
To stick more closely to the OP then: . . .
A similar and connected organisation appears to the the Susan B. Anthony list, though they seem to be more a political pressure group and their previous support of Sarah Palin presumably puts them beyond the pale for most people here.
They're not so much a "political pressure group" as a candidate advocacy organization. Their more or less sole purpose is to get candidates elected to various levels of the U.S. government who favor criminalizing abortion. Going back to the OP, the organization is anti-contraceptive, most of its leadership is anti-same-sex marriages specifically and anti-gay generally. They're not particularly interested in helping women generally, as evidenced by their leadership's opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and it wasn't their support of Sarah Palin so much as it was their support of candidates like Todd "legitimate rape" Akin that put them beyond the pale for a lot of folks. Their one major achievement (other than getting a lot of anti-abortion candidates elected) seems to be a Supreme Court ruling that factually false political ads are protected speech under the First Amendment.
So I'm not sure which of Macrina's concerns from the OP you feel are addressed by this organization.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
Because a foetus isn't a person and - this is the important bit - has no legal standing. Valuing a non-person over an actual person is the clearest sign of the misogynist.
A thought. What are the legal issues surrounding conjoined twins. Here, we have two different people, and let's assume they've grown to adulthood to make them fully competent legal adults, who share some body parts.
What legal duties does one twin owe the other? Anything?
I suspect there is rather a lack of case law in this area.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
So I'm not sure which of Macrina's concerns from the OP you feel are addressed by this organization.
And I'm not sure which part of "All the above without any endorsement from me, I wasn't aware of these organisations before cranking up the search engine" you do not understand?
The connection to the OP is simple. These are the organisations that came up when I surfed for "feminist" plus "pro-life", so I thought I should mention them. And whatever else one may think about their current ventures, it is at least interesting to look at their key claim that many of the "original feminists" were anti-abortion. It is perhaps inevitable that in the US all this ends up being a partisan political affair now. But for Macrina it should be interesting if the original feminists were not so easily sorted into political camps concerning abortion.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As an aside, the ethics of abortion should be decided by people who could get pregnant. A cisgender* man's opinion is frankly irrelevant - he's never going to be in a position where he needs an abortion.
*a man who was designated male at birth
Notwithstanding that 'cisgender' is a rare and recently invented term, there are more nuances to this question.
But the question here is whether a man is never part of an abortion decision (we have no laws at all about abortion, it is only a health issue, nothing more*). The answer is of course, yes, sometimes men are part of it. If there is a relationship and if the relationship has any form of decent and deep intimacy, the couple will discuss it and jointly come to decisions, without pressure but with mutual understanding. To do other may be to harm the relationship.
A parallel holds when one person in a couple is choosing sterilization. It is normal to discuss together the family planning in this regard, and normal in abortion. It is also normal to discuss most other health issues in healthy relationships.
*having abortion be only a health issue is the Canadian situation; Canada has lower abortion rates than many other jurisdictions where lawyer and governments have laws about it.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
I wonder if we're not overlooking some important history here. To whom does a fetus belong?
Two or three centuries ago, a married woman "belonged" to her husband; she was in a real sense his property, and so were the children she birthed, provided the husband acknowledged them as his issue. If the couple divorced, the children remained in their father's custody, presumably because he alone would have the means / responsibility to support them.
I don't know about elsewhere, but here in the US, it's virtually routine these days for children of divorced parents to remain in their mother's custody, or in joint custody. Joint custody is expensive, complicated, and often a source of continued friction between parents who no longer get on with each other.
Maternal custody, as is well-documented, tends to send divorced mothers into reduced financial circumstances, while elevating those of divorced fathers.
One way to reduce abortion, then, might be to place substantially more responsibility on boys/men who beget children for their offspring's maintenance and care. I imagine condom sales would increase.
It would also help if more girls/women understood the concept of "choice" as beginning with "No, I don't have to have sex with you."
It would help still further if we could, along with the much-recommended sex education, offer some actual training in relationship-formation and maintenance, and could persuade pre-teen-through-college-students that sex is not how to begin couple-hood, but a step taken only when one is considering a long, perhaps life-long, commitment.
[ 06. May 2015, 01:56: Message edited by: Porridge ]
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Re the title question:
(And this is directed at the pro-life movement, not the OP.)
--Don't guilt anyone. Make a space where girls/women can find out about their options without pushing them in any direction.
--And don't *ever* display pics of aborted fetuses again. I haven't seen them for a long time, and maybe the pro-life folks don't do it anymore. I'm MOTR on abortion. But I swear, every time I saw those pics, I got madder and madder *at the pro-life folks*.
--And as for dramatic protests in front of Planned Parenthood, etc.: a) some girls/women go there for other purposes than abortion; b) why terrorize someone who's already desperate?; and c) if you scare a pregnant girl/women badly enough, she might lose the baby
--Improve foster care and adoption. If girls/women choose to give birth to kids they're not prepared to raise (for whatever reasons), those kids are going to need good, safe loving families or care centers.
--Expand the "safe surrender" network. (In places in the US that have it, a girl/woman who's recently had a baby, can't keep it, and can't/won't go through channels can go to a fire station, hospital, and maybe some other places to relinquish the baby with no legal consequences. This is only available for a certain amount of time after birth.) If someone avoids abortion, and regrets it or finds out immediately that she just can't cope, she can take the child to a safe place.
--Enforce child rape and statutory rape laws, for all combinations of adults and kids. Some years back, there was news that when underage girls get pregnant, the guy is often an adult. ETA: enforce those laws, too, when the adult is a woman raping a boy--both for the boy's sake, and because the woman might get pregnant.
--Provide a wide variety of *free* contraception to anyone who wants it, and teach them how to use it. Even kids: they may be in a bad situation, or simply be starting early--and they start much earlier these days, and hit puberty much earlier. (Probably not hormonally-based contraceptives for kids, though, due to side effects.)
--I don't remotely know what could be done about this...but friends who've confided in me about past abortions said that the guy either wouldn't be a fit parent or wouldn't be available--and my friends were in situations where they couldn't deal with all that on their own. Maybe services for single parents?
--Realize that different people in different situations may legitimately and morally need different options.
[ 06. May 2015, 06:07: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
As an aside, the ethics of abortion should be decided by people who could get pregnant. A cisgender* man's opinion is frankly irrelevant - he's never going to be in a position where he needs an abortion.
*a man who was designated male at birth
Notwithstanding that 'cisgender' is a rare and recently invented term, there are more nuances to this question.
But the question here is whether a man is never part of an abortion decision (we have no laws at all about abortion, it is only a health issue, nothing more*). The answer is of course, yes, sometimes men are part of it. If there is a relationship and if the relationship has any form of decent and deep intimacy, the couple will discuss it and jointly come to decisions, without pressure but with mutual understanding. To do other may be to harm the relationship.
A parallel holds when one person in a couple is choosing sterilization. It is normal to discuss together the family planning in this regard, and normal in abortion. It is also normal to discuss most other health issues in healthy relationships.
*having abortion be only a health issue is the Canadian situation; Canada has lower abortion rates than many other jurisdictions where lawyer and governments have laws about it.
To be fair, No Prophet etc, the inventor of that word probably got promotion from lecturer to associate professor out of it.
It's strange that a word invented to describe all but a miniscule proportion of the population seems to be used as a dismissive epithet. And if Pomona's argument were correct, a transgender male to female could not express a relevant opinion on these questions as she could not be in a position to need an abortion - nor to die in childbirth either.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
So I'm not sure which of Macrina's concerns from the OP you feel are addressed by this organization.
And I'm not sure which part of "All the above without any endorsement from me, I wasn't aware of these organisations before cranking up the search engine" you do not understand?
The part where you cited SBA-list as addressing the concerns listed in the OP. These were, if I may summarize:
- 'getting into bed' with the anti-gay marriage lobby
- blatantly religious tone of the propaganda produced
- the vitriol directed at people who are sincerely trying to help women
- refusal to advocate for contraception
- refusal to advocate for . . . sex education
- not caring about the life of the baby once it's born
With the possible exception of "blatantly religious tone", that seems a list of criticisms almost tailor-made for SBA-list. There was also mention of not "want[ing] to deny women healthcare, or contraception", something SBA-list has been working very hard at denying women. Anti-ACA action, particularly against contraceptive coverage, now seems to be one of their major current activities.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
And whatever else one may think about their current ventures, it is at least interesting to look at their key claim that many of the "original feminists" were anti-abortion.
Except that it's largely a spurious claim made for PR purposes. There's no clear evidence any nineteenth century feminists advocated using the state's criminal justice apparatus to force women to carry pregnancies to term. That simply wasn't a debate they were having at the time. It's somewhat akin to using ambiguous historical accounts to claim Abraham Lincoln was secretly gay and that therefore he'd advocate same-sex marriage if he were alive today. There is, of course, a group that makes exactly that claim, though recently they've been embarrassed into scaling back their claim to simply representing Lincoln's principles of "liberty and equality". I can understand the appeal of having an authority figure of historical standing advocating a group's position, but shouldn't that position stand or fall on its own merits? I don't see anyone trying to revive the Temperence Movement just because it was advocated by Susan B. Anthony (and much more clearly and frequently than a few ambiguous and out-of-context quotes).
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Like others above have pointed out, research shows that most fertilised ova are not taken up and no pregnancy occurs. If the new life commences at conception rather than at fertilisation, taking steps in that 10 to 12 day period would not amount to abortion; a woman can take the morning after pill without concern that she is bringing a life to an end.
To clarify my own language usage above: for me "conception" is basically a synonym for "fertilisation" here, it is not a term that implies both fertilisation and successful implantation. If "conception" is take to denote the latter, then my point above has been that biologically speaking a new human being comes into existence with fertilisation. And furthermore, I attach full moral / theological human status to that being, though I have not argued that much here. Consequently, the distinction made between an implanted and non-implanted human being would be morally false for me: the "morning after pill" is hence not morally neutral.
You said before this you weren't being influenced by the meaning of words.
I think you are, because as I understand the position you are now taking is not one the church has historically taken. The church did not, historically, define the start of human life in the way you are defining it. Not least because for a long time the processes around fertilisation weren't fully understood.
But I've seen literature indicating that even after that, the church did not regard a little bundle of cells as a human being. It appears that the view that a human comes into existence at fertilisation is a very recent invention, within the last couple of generations of conservative Christians.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
Given that the "morning after" doesn't prevent implantation but rather impedes ovulation, isn't that whole discussion moot?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The part where you cited SBA-list as addressing the concerns listed in the OP.
Except I didn't. I said "how about Feminists for Life". And then I quoted from their website what they claim they are about, which seemed close enough to the OP's concerns. I mentioned the SBA list only as a connected organisation, and already qualified them as being "associated with Palin" (which is what I saw from googling for a few minutes). And finally I made explicit that I have no particular opinion about these organisations, but simply found them by searching around.
So what I actually did do was to invite an open discussion of "Feminists for Life". That would make your contributions welcome, were it not for the fact that you focus on a side remark about SBA, and so in a pointlessly combative mode.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Except that it's largely a spurious claim made for PR purposes. There's no clear evidence any nineteenth century feminists advocated using the state's criminal justice apparatus to force women to carry pregnancies to term.
The Wikipedia page seems rather one-sided to me, and your summary of it relies uncomfortably on the word "largely". Furthermore, Anthony might be the most prominent name, but "Feminists for Life" make claims about many other early feminists, see here. Finally, your historical assertion makes a distinction that is not warranted. One can be against abortion without being for the criminalisation of abortion. Whether your unsupported claim is true or not hence does not really tell us whether early feminists were against abortion or not.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I think you are, because as I understand the position you are now taking is not one the church has historically taken. The church did not, historically, define the start of human life in the way you are defining it. Not least because for a long time the processes around fertilisation weren't fully understood.
But I've seen literature indicating that even after that, the church did not regard a little bundle of cells as a human being. It appears that the view that a human comes into existence at fertilisation is a very recent invention, within the last couple of generations of conservative Christians.
The traditional teaching of the Church both East and West, all the way up to modernity, has been that all abortion is grave sin, without qualifiers. How the Church has dealt with grave sin has varied with time and place, but this judgement hasn't. There was universal condemnation from the earliest Church Fathers to the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which decreed that abortion was to be treated in the same way as murder, and this continued on through time. For example, Aquinas while famously considering the question of late ensoulment with regards to the immaculate conception, did not make any distinctions concerning abortion. And Aquinas and other theologians, as respected as they are, should not be confused with the magisterium either. However, it is correct that canonical penalties have varied, and indeed have been clearly patterned according to the understanding in the respective age of human development.
This distinction between "moral doctrine" and "canonical penalty" should not be difficult for you as a lawyer. In secular terms, what I'm saying there is that the Church has been entirely consistent in condemning all abortion as (morally) gravely wrong, but has varied in what it has declared to be criminal (an offence punishable by Church law). There is of course a kind of evaluation implicit in elevating something that is wrong to the status of criminal. But on the one hand Divine guarantees concern (if at all) Church doctrine on morals, not the canon law provisions derived from it. And on the other hand reasons for criminalising certain wrong behaviours, but not others, go beyond narrow considerations of the morality of the act itself.
What we have seen in recent times is that the Church has listened to the modern biological discoveries about human development, as well as to more modern philosophical and theological analyses, and has adjusted its canonical penalties accordingly. Actually, this has much simplified the situation: nowadays the judgment of grave immorality in all cases, which has always been there, is directly reflected by a canonical penalty for all cases, unlike before. Anyhow, I see zero mileage in all this for "pro choice" supporters.
If you want a detailed discussion of the Church history on this issue, see here.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Except that it's largely a spurious claim made for PR purposes. There's no clear evidence any nineteenth century feminists advocated using the state's criminal justice apparatus to force women to carry pregnancies to term. That simply wasn't a debate they were having at the time.
The Wikipedia page seems rather one-sided to me, and your summary of it relies uncomfortably on the word "largely". Furthermore, Anthony might be the most prominent name, but "Feminists for Life" make claims about many other early feminists, see here. Finally, your historical assertion makes a distinction that is not warranted. One can be against abortion without being for the criminalisation of abortion.
"One" can be against abortion without being for the criminalization of abortion, but neither FfL or SBA-list are.
Given that your cited examples both attempt to project themselves as the true heirs of the nineteenth century feminist movement in order to criminalize abortion, it seems pretty relevant to ask if this position is one nineteenth century feminists would have endorsed. That's more or less the whole point of their citations from various suffragettes: to imply that FfL/SBA-list's pro-criminalization agenda is one that early feminists would endorse.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I know nothing about early American feminists, but social conditions were so different then that I think it is impossible to draw any conclusions.
In Britain, early feminists used the high incidence of abortion to argue in favour of the provision of contraception (usually the cap) to married women. Early birth control clinic workers commented on the number of pregnant women turning up, under the impression that "birth control" = abortion. (No online link, but this is covered in Clare Debenham's Birth Control and the Rights of Women; post suffrage feminism in the early twentieth century a book which I highly recommend.)
Secondly, abortion was inevitably dangerous; women died of sepsis, of lead or mercury poisoning, of blood loss, of infarctions when foreign substances entered the blood stream, and in a myriad other horrible ways.
Thirdly, there was money to be made. Look at any C19th newspaper and see the adverts for assorted quack medicines for gout, or hair loss, or whatever. See the ones addressed to women to "restore regularity" or "remove obstructions" priced at 6d but "worth more" The women who bought those believed they were buying abortifacients, and sometimes they were. But the ones that worked often poisoned the woman as well.
For all these reasons, I think it is impossible to second guess what early feminists thought and why they thought it.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
History is interesting and informative, but the position of early feminists is irrelevant.
It is completely possible to be a feminist and to wish it were extremely rare, and to work towards making it so.
The things mentioned above like education, access to birth control, financial equality, support for girls and women, etc. All those things which reduce abortion are also feminist goals.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
If all abortion is and always has been considered evil, then I fail to see why birth control is not dispensed like candy in churches. Condom tubs, on offer in the narthex, would solve all these problems.
Because remember nobody sets out to have an abortion; it is always forced by a pregnancy. Preventing all unwanted pregnancies would trim the abortion rate enormously; you would then be left only with the medical ones and the ones resulting from assault.
But we can easily see that this happy state of affairs (the tub of condoms on offer) is not a reality. Why?
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Ingo, your entire lengthy post isn't even about the point I raised. I didn't suggest the church had ever said some abortions were okay. I suggested the church hadn't regarded a human being as coming into existence at the moment of fertilisation. Completely different idea.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
There's always Exodus 21: 22 which says that if brawling men cause a woman to miscarry no harm is done. The malefactors may be due to pay a fine. The passage goes on to the eye for eye and tooth for a tooth quotation. Which suggests that there was minimal value placed on an unborn child.
This verse is always conveniently forgotten by many upholders of the Biblical truth.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Well, the bible's value on life is a tad variable anyway.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
"One" can be against abortion without being for the criminalization of abortion, but neither FfL or SBA-list are.
For all I know you are correct, but you have certainly not demonstrated this here, say by actually quoting their published materials. You have simply asserted. And where you have made factual claims so far, those were about the SBA List. You have provided one piece of evidence for one of these claims, and best I understand the legalese there, your summary was biased. The Supreme Court did not rule that factually false political ads are protected in general, it ruled that the Ohio law as it stood made it unduly easy to shut up a political opponents by litigation via the Ohio Elections Commission. And both the Sixth Circuit and the Supreme Court agreed that SBA List did not "lie or recklessly disregard the veracity of its speech", they merely disagreed on whether that on its own was enough to protect them from litigation. And the only thing I find on SBA List vs. Lilly Ledbetter Act with a quick google (here) does not say that the leadership of the SBA List were against this (though they might have been), but rather that some political candidates endorsed by the SBA List voted against this Act. There's a difference. Since the SBA List seems to have been hijacked by Republicans and Republicans voted (with one exception) against this Act, that's to be expected as part of partisan politics.
Anyway, none of the above is intended to defend the SBA List, which I Palin-ed from the outset, and which does seem to be (or have become) a partisan conservative organisation. It is merely to show why I don't trust your comments on these matters. There usually is truth in what you claim, but to sort out the facts and the reasonable conclusions from the bias and the unsupported assertions just eats up too much time...
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Given that your cited examples both attempt to project themselves as the true heirs of the nineteenth century feminist movement in order to criminalize abortion, it seems pretty relevant to ask if this position is one nineteenth century feminists would have endorsed. That's more or less the whole point of their citations from various suffragettes: to imply that FfL/SBA-list's pro-criminalization agenda is one that early feminists would endorse.
First, I'm not sure what you would call "pro-criminalisation". If everything but free and unrestricted access to abortion is called "criminalisation", then it is likely that these organisations are "pro-criminalisation". There is however a wide spectrum between "anything goes" and "all is forbidden", and I neither know where these organisations stand in this spectrum (or if they even stand anywhere officially), nor do I believe that it is particularly useful to represent this spectrum by its binary extremes. (FWIW, I personally am undecided how my conviction that all abortion is morally wrong would be best rendered into civil law. The morals are clear to me, but not how the common good would be furthered best here in a pragmatic / social engineering sense.)
Second, it is obvious that FfL is citing early feminists speaking out against abortion to make plausible and bolster their own claim to be feminists speaking out against abortion. But you have neither shown that this fails for some reason, nor that their extensive claims about early feminism are false.
And this brings us back to the OP: one can obviously have the opinion that all true feminism must support abortion rights, and if any early feminists didn't, then only because they were caught up in their times in that regard. But one can also see it the opposite way: maybe it is rather the modern feminists who got caught up in their times in that regard, and in the early feminists we can perhaps find some inspiring "pro woman" opinions unadulterated by later partisan trench warfare. At any rate, it is certainly interesting to look at these historical claims, if one wishes to carve out a "pro woman, contra abortion" position in modern times, as the OP apparently does.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Ingo, your entire lengthy post isn't even about the point I raised. I didn't suggest the church had ever said some abortions were okay. I suggested the church hadn't regarded a human being as coming into existence at the moment of fertilisation. Completely different idea.
First, my post was on topic. I basically explained why your comment was irrelevant for the discussion at hand. Second, as my previous post also detailed, the statement you are making about the Church there is simply misleading. There was nothing in the doctrines of the magisterium that would have specified the moment when a human came into being. There were only provisions in the canonical penalties that reflected the understanding of human development then current. And there were also theological speculations, including by some very famous theologians of the time. But "what the Church teaches" ultimately only concerns the first, not the second, and not the third. If there are now other canonical penalties, and theological speculations have changed, then this does not indicate that "the Church" (in the sense of the Divinely instituted hierarchical body) has changed her mind. The mind of "the Church" is measured by what she officially declares to be true about faith and morals, by nothing else.
As it happens, there were other theological opinions on this precise matter in the Church, even though at least the West for the most part went along with Aristotelian biology. So called "Traducianism" (Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, ...) held that the souls were passed on by sperm and egg, and combined into a new soul when these combined in fertilisation. Obviously in this scheme, the fully human soul is there from fertilisation. That this was a topic where theological opinion varied once more shows that "the Church" had not really spoken on the matter.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Wow. Well, thanks for policing the scope of the discussion for me, Ingo. Much appreciated. I don't know what I would do without you.
Even though I wasn't actually the first person to raise the point. In fact, what I commented on was your own response to someone else's posts on the exact same issue, distinguishing fertilisation from implantation. Why the hell are you involving yourself in a line of conversation that you're now declaring irrelevant?
[ 07. May 2015, 09:50: Message edited by: orfeo ]
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Even though I wasn't actually the first person to raise the point. In fact, what I commented on was your own response to someone else's posts on the exact same issue, distinguishing fertilisation from implantation. Why the hell are you involving yourself in a line of conversation that you're now declaring irrelevant?
What I actually did was to clarify that for me there is no difference between saying "human being from conception" and "human being from fertilisation". And the reason I clarified this is because Gee D introduced a distinction between these two words, a distinction that applied to my prior posts would lead to wrong conclusions.
You introduced something different to the debate, namely the question what the Church has historically taught about the beginning of human life, and how that may impact the "modern" position I'm holding. But your comment was both imprecise (neither did the Church make official doctrinal statements concerning this, nor has there been a uniform theological opinion among members of the Church) and irrelevant at least for my concerns (I'm discussing whether abortion is gravely immoral, and both Church doctrine and theological opinion until modern times has affirmed this uniformly and with no qualifications).
I thought it worthwhile to point out why the objection you have raised doesn't faze me particularly. How that amounts to "policing the scope of the discussion" for you shall remain your little secret, I guess.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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