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technobabbler wrote:If Seth MacFarlane really wanted to push the social envelope, Ep. 3 of Orville should have been an abortion episode. Especially as, I don't think this will be a controversial statement---a great deal of people who are pro-choice likely are pro-feminism and left on gender issues.
But abortion becomes a very, VERY different topic in the far future.
Right now, abortion ethics require us to balance the rights of the mother to control her own body vs the rights of the fetus to, well, stay alive. We cannot separate these two, because we cannot currently recreate a womb.
But in the future, it seems likely that we WILL be able to separate the two. At which point the equation changes, rather drastically. If we can keep a fetus alive WITHOUT forcing a woman to provide her womb as a living space, then the case for abortion becomes much, much weaker - why not simply remove the fetus, place it in an artificial womb, and then give it to the parents when it's ready to live in the open air? Everyone wins, and we don't have to unreasonably violate anyone's bodily autonomy to accomplish it.
technobabbler wrote:If Seth MacFarlane really wanted to push the social envelope, Ep. 3 of Orville should have been an abortion episode. Especially as, I don't think this will be a controversial statement---a great deal of people who are pro-choice likely are pro-feminism and left on gender issues.
But abortion becomes a very, VERY different topic in the far future.
Right now, abortion ethics require us to balance the rights of the mother to control her own body vs the rights of the fetus to, well, stay alive. We cannot separate these two, because we cannot currently recreate a womb.
But in the future, it seems likely that we WILL be able to separate the two. At which point the equation changes, rather drastically. If we can keep a fetus alive WITHOUT forcing a woman to provide her womb as a living space, then the case for abortion becomes much, much weaker - why not simply remove the fetus, place it in an artificial womb, and then give it to the parents when it's ready to live in the open air? Everyone wins, and we don't have to unreasonably violate anyone's bodily autonomy to accomplish it.
You do realize, that an abortion is, generally, about avoiding having a child to begin with?
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Well then give it to adoptive parents. The mother doesn't have to bare a child she doesn't want to term, and the child is carried to term in a growth tank and (hopefully) gets a loving home.
Points of Contention:
A growth tank isn't a womb. I will not give this point time of day because it's stupid; a growth tank that is capable of bearing a child to term must be close enough to a womb to allow it to function. Alternatively, we probably will be able to transfer the child to a surrogate mother before we can build growth tanks, so you could pressure for that.
Body rights don't end at your body, they end at your genetic material. If that's the case, then father's should be able to ask for abortions. This opens up even more cans of worms.
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Antiboyscout wrote:Life
Liberty
Pursuit of happiness
In that order for a reason
So what about countries where those ideals aren't couched in that particular pithy statement in their laws, articles and other such documents?
Also, by that logic you could justify concentration camps (provided they're not used to kill) as liberty takes a back seat to keeping people alive. Or how about someone who is in constant agony and suffering? By that logic you can justify imprisoning and restraining them and thus prolonging their suffering purely because you prioritise life over quality of life.
A place where we put people who are a threat to the lives and safety of other people. Like a prison? A place where we remove peoples freedom because the took another person's life or liberty away?
Dînadan wrote:Now you may say these are rediculous examples, but the point is that the importance of that order is only true up to a point. The question is what is that point?
As for the main topic, RomulanRepublic hits the nail on the head I think; the key is at which point does a 'person' begin? I'm not sure of the answer myself, and quite frankly I think there's probably no arbitrary line where it occurs. I'd place it sometime before birth, but how far before, I'm not sure. My best judgement would be whether it can survive outside the womb or not (and by survive I don't mean it'll be able to spend a month on life support before dying). The problem with this though is how well doctors could judge where that limit is, and I'm willing to bet there's a big margin for error, so it may be best (outside of emergency cases), to be conservative with estimating this point, in which case the question is how conservative should it be?
Again, I'm not sure of the answer, so I'll leave it hanging for food for thought.
Are there cases where abortion is justified? I'd say yes:
• the mothers life is in danger; call me callous if you must, but I value the life of the mother over that of the unborn feutus and if complications during pregnancy or labour would kill the mother, then I see nothing wrong with an abortion.
• related to the above point, complications during pregnancy or labour would cause the child to be stillborn or born prematurely at a point where it couldn't survive (or as mentioned about would only last a very short time on life support); in this case it's more humane to abort than put both parents and child through that suffering
• rape; quite frankly I see no reason a woman should be forced to carry the child of her abuser unless she wants to. I'm sure if we looked into things there's plenty of rape victims who loved their child regardless, but I'm willing to bet just as many abandoned or abused them and not an inconsiderable amount who gave them up for adoption.
• the parents not being in a position to support a child; if the parents can't support having a child they shouldn't be forced to have it. Yes they could give it up for adoption, but aren't most countries' adoption/foster systems already over capacity?
1) when the choice is one death or two deaths you pick one death. A fetus cannot survive without the mother.
2) if the fetus is already dead is it still an abortion?
3) If this is the 1% of cases that you use to justify the 99% of other cases then I will give you this one if you stop defending the arbitrary ones.
4) Let's take the gov funding that went to abortions and instead fund foster systems.
Dînadan wrote:There're more, but these are a what that I could think of off the top of my head.
Okay, I've mentioned mother's rights but what about those of the father? Doesn't he have a right to his child? Well yes, but the problem is he's not the one to carry it to term, so unfortunately I feel like the mother's right to her body takes precedence for now; once technology progresses to allow the feutus to be safely transferred to another 'host', I'd be willing to give the father more of a say, and if it also progresses to where artificial means allow a man to carry it then he gets an equal say as it can be transferred to him. Until then however, I'm reluctant to give father's an equal say as, for example going back to the rape point, it'd potentially mean leagally allowing rapists to block their victims from getting an abortion.
There's probably more to add but this is all I can think of for the moment.
Why is rape always such a sticking point. We can write a law with an exception. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Antiboyscout wrote:Why is rape always such a sticking point. We can write a law with an exception. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
The reasonrape is always brought up is because most (or at least the most vocal) people arguing against abortion don't care how the child was conceived and wouldn't even allow that exception.
Also, if it can be agreed that that is an exception, then it opens the debate up for what are other exceptions? How far are people willing to go? To be fair, any exception opens the debate up, it's just that rape is the one that's most likely to get people to agree is one of them and thus the one that stands the best chance of getting ardent anti-abortionists* to agree that there are cases when it is acceptable.
*before anyone says anything I'm not lumping all anti-abortionists in together, I'm just talking about the hardliners in this statement; the less extreme ones probably already acknowledge this point.
I'm gonna say it's possible to set aside the question of where personhood begins and take it back to bodily autonomy.
If somebody can't survive dialysis and is dying from kidney failure, nobody can force me to give up one of my kidneys to save them. They could be a coast guard member who saved a hundred lives in the wake of a hurricane, they could be a freaking saint, and I'm still allowed to keep both of my kidneys just on the off chance that will let me live longer and allow me to drink more. They are mine, they belong to me, they are part of my very living flesh.
If somebody has a rare blood type and is injured in a car crash, nobody can force me to give the blood that would allow them to survive. This is true even if I'm the only donor available. This is true even if I CAUSED the car crash by my criminal negligence. This is true even if they lost the blood from a knife attack and I was the person stabbing them. It is my blood. It doesn't just belong to me, it is literally a PART of me.
If my nephew is dying of heart failure, and I died six hours ago, and my religion says that the corpse must stay intact after death, or that the heart is the seat of the soul, or maybe I'm an atheist who wrote in my will that I want to be cremated and have the ashes sprinkled in my favorite park because I like the aesthetic of that and it's a fuck you to my super christian aunt who wanted me to be interred in the family vault? Tough noogies, innocent dying child. You'll have to expire in the long, long organ donor wait-list hoping that somebody who was unselfish enough to sign up kicks the bucket before you do.
These are each scenarios where the stake is the saving of another life, and in the latter case, it's not even life-changing. It's a minor inconvenience you can recover from by eating lots of spinach and drinking plenty of fluids for a few weeks.
Now we have a case where somebody has another organism growing inside them for nine months, for all the ways that changes their lifestyle, for all the nutrients and bodily fluids that soaks up, for all the dangers and complications that can arise from that pregnancy, for all the damage that can deal to the body before, during, and even after the birth (you don't squirt out a kid and then take up jogging the next day), and you say "no, you don't have the right to stop this, you don't have legal control over this, a life may be at stake"?
You are saying that a pregnant person has LESS rights than I do. You are saying that a pregnant person has less rights than a stinking, bloated, corpse.
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Much like you can't kick out a <18 year old dependent out of your house. Does that mean parents have less rights than those without?
Yes, as they should. Same difference.
