I maintain that debating fetal personhood is a huge mistake because it goes down a philosophical road where you can’t clearly define things like when someone feels pain.
There is a much simpler reason to make abortion legal- for the same reason it is not legal to harvest a corpse’s organs without the person’s consent before they die or the reason you can’t be forced to donate a kidney. Being forced to use your organs for someone else’s benefit against your will is illegal in every other situation. Even if it means a human will die without them. That doesn’t matter if it is something that will eventually develop into someone with full human rights or if it has them already. It’s just not relevant. It’s about the rights of the person whose body will be used.
It was mostly just Catholics who were anti-abortion before the 70s. Then the Baptists discovered it was an issue they could latch onto and others followed.
And it wasn’t just a political reason the Baptists latched on to it. They realized legal abortion meant less white babies because you’re a lot less likely to be able to get one if you’re poor.
Even then water is only wet sometimes. Extremely cold ice isn’t wet for example. It’s quite dry until you reduce increase* its heat enough for it to become wet again.
Most of water on earth is wet. It’s not a default property though.
It’s actually a pretty simple question, and has a simple, straightforward answer. The fetus does not become alive until its survival needs can be feasibly met by someone or something other than the mother. Until it is biologically capable of surviving the death of the mother, it is alive only as a part of the mother’s body.
An infant does require considerable support. It will die if neglected. But, the support an infant requires can be provided by any caregiver. Dad, grandma, or an older sibling can feed an infant. Doctors can provide it with IV nutrition.
To you it seems simple, but this is a philosophical question that hasn’t been answered for over a century. You can reason for any point in time to be the point it becomes a person.
Either way, the fetus of a woman who wants an abortion is up her vagina without consent and is therefore a rapist. Deadly force is permissible in the act of removing a rapist from their victim.
If it is a person, then yes, it could be considered a rapist, and subject to forcible removal at the mother’s will. If it is not a person, it is merely an unexpected growth, and subject to forcible removal at the mother’s will.
The ridiculousness of the former scenario tells us that, for purposes of deciding whether the mother is entitled to remove it, the fetus should not be considered a person.
I love that bait, hahah. Rape aside, woman had to take into account possibility of a child when she had sex. Same with her partner. Sorry, but that’s the biological reason sex even exists, and denying it because we found good methods of contraception does nothing because even these methods are being advertised as not 100% effective.
So, no victims there other than the poor unborn child.
That “rape aside” is doing a lot of heavy lifitng there and conveniently sweeps away the need to actually address anything that isn’t the “had sex, your fault” narrative you seem to be espousing here.
Especially given that there is little to no effort being given to exemptions of any kind.
Nobody is denying that sex is how babies are (usually) made, i mean apart from the “this book is the literal truth” christians i suppose.
or you’re trolling, in which case, congratulations…i guess.
I slightly do troll - in a sense of presenting fully opposite view to the one provided.
And the"rape aside" is meant to do the heavy lifting. It’s there as a heavy notion that shit happens. Forced sex, rapid health declination, getting too drunk to think logicaly (…although from what I know, then it’s also rape, no? Or I misunderstood), or simply finding out your body can’t handle birth. These are all valid reasons for abortion.
But by all means, consequence of sex is having a child, and people - this is my own fully subjective opinion - seem to be bewildered by this notion. By all means, people always should take into account that sex ends with children without precautions, and still may end with children with, and be responsible about it. Not call a consequence of their actions a parasite.
Is she obligated to report that rape? Is she obligated to accuse someone? Is she obligated to prove she has been raped? Is she obligated to cooperate with an investigation into her rape? Is she obligated to even claim she had been raped?
The answers are “No, No, No, No, and No”. Since she is not and should never be under any sort of obligation to do any of these things, you don’t know and can’t know that she was raped. Yet, by your argument, as a victim, she is entitled to an abortion.
With your philosophy, you could presume that any particular woman seeking an abortion has been raped, and is simply not reporting it for whatever reason. She is entitled to her abortion.
I didn’t aim to proclaim “women need to admit to rape to get healthcare”. I countered instead calling fetus a rapist - an actively and wholly out of control of a woman agressor. No, unethical situations aside, both parties knew what consequences are there. No use getting pissed at someone/thing because of your own stupidity.
I put rape aside because it wasn’t aimed at discussing this part in depth but…if you want, why not.
First of all, women, as you wrote, are not obligated to admit to being a victim of rape. And yes, in the way I described it above, it’s suggested that rape victims are entitled to abortion.
However, the mental jump to then switching the logic around that any woman looking for abortion was raped is simply illogical in the same manner that saying only alcoholics buy alcohol is.
In the dystopian version of the world where abortion is fully illegal except for unexpected and unethical situations like rape, I think that yes, women would have to admit to being a victim to receive medical help. There’s simply hardly any other way.
However, the mental jump to then switching the logic around that any woman looking for abortion was raped is simply illogical
I agree, but I didn’t say that they were raped. I said you could presume they were raped. You are perfectly capable of making and choosing to make that presumption.
I think that yes, women would have to admit to being a victim to receive medical help. There’s simply hardly any other way.
There most certainly is another way. You are under no obligation to ask. You don’t need to create an obligation for her to tell. Even if you did ask and she did tell, she could have some reason for lying and claiming it was consensual when it actually wasn’t, so you can ignore any answer she gives.
The “other way” is to allow you to presume that she meets whatever criteria you believe necessary to justify and permit abortion. If you need to believe she was raped, presume she was raped. If you need her life to be in danger, go right ahead and presume her life is in danger.
One last point: You are under zero obligation to presume that her sexual encounters were consensual. If you choose to presume consent, I’d like to know your rationale for doing so. And I’d like to know how fairly you will be treating a rape victim seeking an abortion if you presume consent that was not granted.
About presuming she met any criteria: If our aim is to limit unneeded abortions, then this approach is not only invalid, but also damaging. It will work against the target of removing casual abortions while also removing a lot of weight behind act of rape. The second part is dangerous because it could lessen actual amount of help for victims. Also, this means that woman would have to prove she’s a victim - by gaining second opinion, most probably with the help of police, maybe could be done by medical specialist. I’d honestly rather lean onto the other, to remove need for criminal investigation if such is unwanted by victim.
About last point: I choose to presume consent because great majority of children is conceived consensually, and as such this is default, and I’d treat a rape victim as a rape victim, not much to say about that one. Case by case.
The only “unneeded” abortions are those that are forced on the mother against her will. Every other abortion is “needed”. (We have not previously considered forced abortions in this discussion, and I see no compelling reason to delve into them now. I mention them only in demonstration that the mother’s needs are valid, so the only abortion that is “unneeded” is the one that she has determined to be unneeded: an abortion forced upon her without her consent.)
The second part is dangerous because it could lessen actual amount of help for victims.
The only “help” our hypothetical victim has requested is an abortion, and she hasn’t requested it from you. She has requested it from someone ready, willing, and able to provide that help. Neither she nor that provider want you to be involved at all. She hasn’t asked for your help; she doesn’t want your help. Why are you choosing to involve yourself? What “help” are you going to force on her against her will?
About last point: I choose to presume consent
I’ll stop you right there. The rest of your argument is likely true, but the truthfulness of that second part does not justify the first part. You don’t get to make that “choice”.
The only time it is reasonable to presume consent is when you are actually presuming innocence. Where an individual is accused of committing a crime by acting without consent, presumption of innocence requires us to presume consent until proven otherwise beyond the shadow of a doubt. As our situation does not involve anyone accused of a criminal act, there is no valid justification to presume consent.
#You may never infer consent from silence.
If your personal code of morality only allows you to accept abortion in the case of non-consent, you may presume non-consent. You can satisfy your own morality by accepting the possibility that she was raped, and just doesn’t want to talk about it. You can simply presume she meets your arbitrary criteria; you have no need to actually prove her status to any degree of certainty.
Water touches water and therefore makes it wet
Killing humans who have no nervous system is fine. It’s only immoral if the human is a person
I maintain that debating fetal personhood is a huge mistake because it goes down a philosophical road where you can’t clearly define things like when someone feels pain.
There is a much simpler reason to make abortion legal- for the same reason it is not legal to harvest a corpse’s organs without the person’s consent before they die or the reason you can’t be forced to donate a kidney. Being forced to use your organs for someone else’s benefit against your will is illegal in every other situation. Even if it means a human will die without them. That doesn’t matter if it is something that will eventually develop into someone with full human rights or if it has them already. It’s just not relevant. It’s about the rights of the person whose body will be used.
Most of these people would be okay with harvesting a dead person’s organs so long as they aren’t theirs.
That’s always the issue. https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
It is mainly a religious argument from people who think I knew you in the womb means something but discard all the other verses in the Bible
Which was entirely made up and pushed through a concerted effort back in the 70s. Goldwater even warned of it.
It was mostly just Catholics who were anti-abortion before the 70s. Then the Baptists discovered it was an issue they could latch onto and others followed.
And it wasn’t just a political reason the Baptists latched on to it. They realized legal abortion meant less white babies because you’re a lot less likely to be able to get one if you’re poor.
I’d show the fundies a plucked chicken and assert its personhood but I don’t think they’d get the joke.
Thanks. I havent heard that argument yet.
Tbf, I think organ donation should be opt-out, and you should be ineligible to receive any organ or tissue (including blood).
Wetness it as a property liquid can only give to another thing, not to itself. When water touches water, you simply have more water.
That’s not true
denying it doesn’t change the fact :(
I don’t think water touches water because it’s all water.
Otherwise you touching a person would make you two people, because the skin is touching skin.
Water is H2O. It absolutely touches other H20.
Even then water is only wet sometimes. Extremely cold ice isn’t wet for example. It’s quite dry until you
reduceincrease* its heat enough for it to become wet again.Most of water on earth is wet. It’s not a default property though.
Is that water or is it just made of water?
Don’t you mean increase?
Yes, yes.
Yes.
Is second one H twenty? Hah!
Which opens the debate: when becomes an embryo a person?
Difficult question. And research on that topic would be immoral at least.
It’s actually a pretty simple question, and has a simple, straightforward answer. The fetus does not become alive until its survival needs can be feasibly met by someone or something other than the mother. Until it is biologically capable of surviving the death of the mother, it is alive only as a part of the mother’s body.
An infant does require considerable support. It will die if neglected. But, the support an infant requires can be provided by any caregiver. Dad, grandma, or an older sibling can feed an infant. Doctors can provide it with IV nutrition.
Nobody but mom can “feed” an immature fetus.
To you it seems simple, but this is a philosophical question that hasn’t been answered for over a century. You can reason for any point in time to be the point it becomes a person.
Either way, the fetus of a woman who wants an abortion is up her vagina without consent and is therefore a rapist. Deadly force is permissible in the act of removing a rapist from their victim.
An unwanted/planned child is a rapist? You can’t be serious.
If it is a person, then yes, it could be considered a rapist, and subject to forcible removal at the mother’s will. If it is not a person, it is merely an unexpected growth, and subject to forcible removal at the mother’s will.
The ridiculousness of the former scenario tells us that, for purposes of deciding whether the mother is entitled to remove it, the fetus should not be considered a person.
Come on. Have you seen what’s going on on college campuses right now? I’ve heard far less serious things being said with absolute sincerity.
We’re reaching the point where victimhood is the only trait people aspire to achieve.
It’s not a child. A child is defined as having been born. It’s a fetus. A parasite.
I love that bait, hahah. Rape aside, woman had to take into account possibility of a child when she had sex. Same with her partner. Sorry, but that’s the biological reason sex even exists, and denying it because we found good methods of contraception does nothing because even these methods are being advertised as not 100% effective.
So, no victims there other than the poor unborn child.
That “rape aside” is doing a lot of heavy lifitng there and conveniently sweeps away the need to actually address anything that isn’t the “had sex, your fault” narrative you seem to be espousing here.
Especially given that there is little to no effort being given to exemptions of any kind.
Nobody is denying that sex is how babies are (usually) made, i mean apart from the “this book is the literal truth” christians i suppose.
or you’re trolling, in which case, congratulations…i guess.
I slightly do troll - in a sense of presenting fully opposite view to the one provided.
And the"rape aside" is meant to do the heavy lifting. It’s there as a heavy notion that shit happens. Forced sex, rapid health declination, getting too drunk to think logicaly (…although from what I know, then it’s also rape, no? Or I misunderstood), or simply finding out your body can’t handle birth. These are all valid reasons for abortion.
But by all means, consequence of sex is having a child, and people - this is my own fully subjective opinion - seem to be bewildered by this notion. By all means, people always should take into account that sex ends with children without precautions, and still may end with children with, and be responsible about it. Not call a consequence of their actions a parasite.
I ate tapeworm larvae for science and got tapeworms in my intestine. So it’s not a parasite?
Nope, a science project apparently, was it not?
Ok. So she has been raped.
Is she obligated to report that rape? Is she obligated to accuse someone? Is she obligated to prove she has been raped? Is she obligated to cooperate with an investigation into her rape? Is she obligated to even claim she had been raped?
The answers are “No, No, No, No, and No”. Since she is not and should never be under any sort of obligation to do any of these things, you don’t know and can’t know that she was raped. Yet, by your argument, as a victim, she is entitled to an abortion.
With your philosophy, you could presume that any particular woman seeking an abortion has been raped, and is simply not reporting it for whatever reason. She is entitled to her abortion.
I didn’t aim to proclaim “women need to admit to rape to get healthcare”. I countered instead calling fetus a rapist - an actively and wholly out of control of a woman agressor. No, unethical situations aside, both parties knew what consequences are there. No use getting pissed at someone/thing because of your own stupidity.
I put rape aside because it wasn’t aimed at discussing this part in depth but…if you want, why not. First of all, women, as you wrote, are not obligated to admit to being a victim of rape. And yes, in the way I described it above, it’s suggested that rape victims are entitled to abortion. However, the mental jump to then switching the logic around that any woman looking for abortion was raped is simply illogical in the same manner that saying only alcoholics buy alcohol is. In the dystopian version of the world where abortion is fully illegal except for unexpected and unethical situations like rape, I think that yes, women would have to admit to being a victim to receive medical help. There’s simply hardly any other way.
I agree, but I didn’t say that they were raped. I said you could presume they were raped. You are perfectly capable of making and choosing to make that presumption.
There most certainly is another way. You are under no obligation to ask. You don’t need to create an obligation for her to tell. Even if you did ask and she did tell, she could have some reason for lying and claiming it was consensual when it actually wasn’t, so you can ignore any answer she gives.
The “other way” is to allow you to presume that she meets whatever criteria you believe necessary to justify and permit abortion. If you need to believe she was raped, presume she was raped. If you need her life to be in danger, go right ahead and presume her life is in danger.
One last point: You are under zero obligation to presume that her sexual encounters were consensual. If you choose to presume consent, I’d like to know your rationale for doing so. And I’d like to know how fairly you will be treating a rape victim seeking an abortion if you presume consent that was not granted.
About presuming she met any criteria: If our aim is to limit unneeded abortions, then this approach is not only invalid, but also damaging. It will work against the target of removing casual abortions while also removing a lot of weight behind act of rape. The second part is dangerous because it could lessen actual amount of help for victims. Also, this means that woman would have to prove she’s a victim - by gaining second opinion, most probably with the help of police, maybe could be done by medical specialist. I’d honestly rather lean onto the other, to remove need for criminal investigation if such is unwanted by victim.
About last point: I choose to presume consent because great majority of children is conceived consensually, and as such this is default, and I’d treat a rape victim as a rape victim, not much to say about that one. Case by case.
The only “unneeded” abortions are those that are forced on the mother against her will. Every other abortion is “needed”. (We have not previously considered forced abortions in this discussion, and I see no compelling reason to delve into them now. I mention them only in demonstration that the mother’s needs are valid, so the only abortion that is “unneeded” is the one that she has determined to be unneeded: an abortion forced upon her without her consent.)
The only “help” our hypothetical victim has requested is an abortion, and she hasn’t requested it from you. She has requested it from someone ready, willing, and able to provide that help. Neither she nor that provider want you to be involved at all. She hasn’t asked for your help; she doesn’t want your help. Why are you choosing to involve yourself? What “help” are you going to force on her against her will?
I’ll stop you right there. The rest of your argument is likely true, but the truthfulness of that second part does not justify the first part. You don’t get to make that “choice”.
The only time it is reasonable to presume consent is when you are actually presuming innocence. Where an individual is accused of committing a crime by acting without consent, presumption of innocence requires us to presume consent until proven otherwise beyond the shadow of a doubt. As our situation does not involve anyone accused of a criminal act, there is no valid justification to presume consent.
#You may never infer consent from silence.
If your personal code of morality only allows you to accept abortion in the case of non-consent, you may presume non-consent. You can satisfy your own morality by accepting the possibility that she was raped, and just doesn’t want to talk about it. You can simply presume she meets your arbitrary criteria; you have no need to actually prove her status to any degree of certainty.