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Voting Pro-life

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  • mousethiefmousethief Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    I heard on the radio that one spokesman in one debate (hard to keep track of all the states at the moment) answered a question about IVF embryos in vitro by claiming that the fertilised egg out of the womb was not a pregnancy and so the killing of it did not count as an abortion criminalising the doctor. I only heard it once, and I may have the details wrong, but the person reporting it said that that showed that the pro-life people were not really concerned about the embryo, but only about controlling the women.

    I believe it was a US legislator but I don't remember the name.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    I heard on the radio that one spokesman in one debate (hard to keep track of all the states at the moment) answered a question about IVF embryos in vitro by claiming that the fertilised egg out of the womb was not a pregnancy and so the killing of it did not count as an abortion criminalising the doctor. I only heard it once, and I may have the details wrong, but the person reporting it said that that showed that the pro-life people were not really concerned about the embryo, but only about controlling the women.

    I mentioned that earlier and made the same observation. Details are at the link.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Sorry about that - it may have been your post I was remembering!
    And I'm trying to find the Guardian piece about a US representative at the UN spotting a Yemeni putting forward word for word the argument.
    Here: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/may/16/cfam-rightwing-white-house-anti-abortion-un
  • Trump seems to be saying he supports exemptions for rape and incest. Do you think he is nervous about a total abortion ban? There would be a lot of angry women.
  • Trump seems to be saying he supports exemptions for rape and incest. Do you think he is nervous about a total abortion ban? There would be a lot of angry women.

    Is it too crude to suggest he is just seeking to cover his back for future... personal problems?
  • Trump seems to be saying he supports exemptions for rape and incest. Do you think he is nervous about a total abortion ban? There would be a lot of angry women.

    Is it too crude to suggest he is just seeking to cover his back for future... personal problems?

    I think he is calculating votes, and a total abortion ban could be a vote loser.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Trump seems to be saying he supports exemptions for rape and incest. Do you think he is nervous about a total abortion ban? There would be a lot of angry women.

    Is it too crude to suggest he is just seeking to cover his back for future... personal problems?

    It might not be his future personal problems he's worrying about. A lot of folks who would still vote for him if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue might hesitate if they found out he'd ever paid for an abortion.
  • All the David and Cyrus comparisons strongly suggest that so long as he keeps appointing terrible judges and approving awful laws they don't give a pellet of 3 week old shit about his personal behaviour.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    You know, I keep wrestling with three items as I try to wrap my own personal head around the morality of abortion. I'll just say that, at gut level, I am not personally entirely comfortable with abortion -- even though I have had one. Neither am I comfortable denying someone else access to abortion; I don't want that kind of responsibility over someone else's life when the consequences (not suffered by me) could be enormous.

    Here's item #1: if life is sacred, why doesn't that apply to all life -- particularly as human life is dependent on other life forms? If we're talking about a religious basis for the notion "sacred" -- that is, that life springs from some divine source or is an expression of divine will, then what makes it fine to push other entire species to extinction -- something we are doing at the rate of multiple victim species per day -- as we accommodate some percentage of humans whose existence is unwanted by their own progenitors? Are human fetuses more sacred than any other life form? Are we in fact more sacred than the other life forms on which our own lives depend? How can that be?

    Here's item #2: If we're going to posit that life is sacred (and positing otherwise does in fact raise a whole host of legal-moral-ethical-quandaries it scares me to contemplate), then when does it begin? I don't recall much of the biology class I took nearly 60 years in high school, but"life" is what you've got when an entity moves, grows, eats, breathes, excretes, reproduces, and reacts to changes in its environment. If that's life,
    is an embryo alive? It does all these things, but it doesn't do them all independently.

    3. My third item has to do with what goes on in order to produce this embryo / life / protohuman / entity / whatever. The purely biological processes which result in a human egg being fertilized, then implanted in a uterine wall do not give a hoot about the intentions (or lack thereof) of the progenitors. Likewise, there's no check or balance on maternal preparedness or willingness. I've read that a cat, or was it a rabbit? can re-absorb fetuses if it turns out that conditions are too adverse for the pregnancy to have a successful outcome (though I confess that this sounds like nonsense to me -- anybody know if this is just as old husband's tale?) Yet AFAIK, this is impossible for humans. If specifically human life is so damn sacred, why did its divine, all-powerful source not ensure that each such life had at last a decent shot at survival? How is it that victims of rape, incest, disease, starvation, domestic violence, and on and on are so designed that viable fetuses can get produced in such conditions in the first place?


  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited May 2019
    Ohher wrote: »
    Here's item #2: If we're going to posit that life is sacred (and positing otherwise does in fact raise a whole host of legal-moral-ethical-quandaries it scares me to contemplate), then when does it begin?

    In the American context there isn't (or at least shouldn't be) any legal quandaries about the sacredness or non-sacredness of life since the government (the entity that produces and enforces laws) is not considered to be a competent judge of what is and isn't "sacred".
    Ohher wrote: »
    I've read that a cat, or was it a rabbit? can re-absorb fetuses if it turns out that conditions are too adverse for the pregnancy to have a successful outcome (though I confess that this sounds like nonsense to me -- anybody know if this is just as old husband's tale?)

    For most placental mammals miscarriage seems to be a more common reaction to adverse conditions than re-absorption. Of course a more common form of re-absorption is maternal cannibalism, something that is typically discouraged in humans though not physically impossible. I'm not sure a biological survey is going to be overly helpful here.
  • I just don't want to tell a woman what she should do with her body. That's it for me, I don't have that right of intrusion.
  • I just don't want to tell a woman what she should do with her body. That's it for me, I don't have that right of intrusion.

    Just as a thought experiment, does that apply to a woman who wishes to remove a healthy limb? My recollection is that doctors have refused to do that, saying it would violate their oath/rules.
  • Colin SmithColin Smith Suspended
    Ohher wrote: »
    You know, I keep wrestling with three items as I try to wrap my own personal head around the morality of abortion. I'll just say that, at gut level, I am not personally entirely comfortable with abortion -- even though I have had one. Neither am I comfortable denying someone else access to abortion; I don't want that kind of responsibility over someone else's life when the consequences (not suffered by me) could be enormous.

    Here's item #1: if life is sacred, why doesn't that apply to all life -- particularly as human life is dependent on other life forms? If we're talking about a religious basis for the notion "sacred" -- that is, that life springs from some divine source or is an expression of divine will, then what makes it fine to push other entire species to extinction -- something we are doing at the rate of multiple victim species per day -- as we accommodate some percentage of humans whose existence is unwanted by their own progenitors? Are human fetuses more sacred than any other life form? Are we in fact more sacred than the other life forms on which our own lives depend? How can that be?

    Here's item #2: If we're going to posit that life is sacred (and positing otherwise does in fact raise a whole host of legal-moral-ethical-quandaries it scares me to contemplate), then when does it begin? I don't recall much of the biology class I took nearly 60 years in high school, but"life" is what you've got when an entity moves, grows, eats, breathes, excretes, reproduces, and reacts to changes in its environment. If that's life,
    is an embryo alive? It does all these things, but it doesn't do them all independently.

    3. My third item has to do with what goes on in order to produce this embryo / life / protohuman / entity / whatever. The purely biological processes which result in a human egg being fertilized, then implanted in a uterine wall do not give a hoot about the intentions (or lack thereof) of the progenitors. Likewise, there's no check or balance on maternal preparedness or willingness. I've read that a cat, or was it a rabbit? can re-absorb fetuses if it turns out that conditions are too adverse for the pregnancy to have a successful outcome (though I confess that this sounds like nonsense to me -- anybody know if this is just as old husband's tale?) Yet AFAIK, this is impossible for humans. If specifically human life is so damn sacred, why did its divine, all-powerful source not ensure that each such life had at last a decent shot at survival? How is it that victims of rape, incest, disease, starvation, domestic violence, and on and on are so designed that viable fetuses can get produced in such conditions in the first place?


    I suspect very few people are 'comfortable' about abortion, but people make choices I'm not comfortable with all the time: voting for the Conservatives, chatting to friends in the supermarket and blocking the aisle, and liking Barry Manilow, for example, but I'd be reluctant to prevent them from doing so.

    All life is not sacred. Nature couldn't operate like that. The only organisms would be photosynthesisers and bacteria. For practical social reasons we grant human life a much higher value than other forms of life, though that needs some rethinking as we realise many other species are surprisingly human-like in many ways. The question then becomes, is a zygote, embryo, or foetus, human or sufficiently human-like to be given the same value we give to a human? I argue that it isn't because it does not possess those qualities that, in total, seem to set us apart from the vast majority (though perhaps not all) other species. These qualities are: empathy, complex reasoning, complex language, and so on.

    Regarding your last point, there is considerable evidence that many of us began life as a twin but our twin did not survive. That, and frequent problems in egg implantation
    indicates that human reproduction itself does not have special regard for 'life'.
  • I just don't want to tell a woman what she should do with her body. That's it for me, I don't have that right of intrusion.

    Just as a thought experiment, does that apply to a woman who wishes to remove a healthy limb? My recollection is that doctors have refused to do that, saying it would violate their oath/rules.

    Do you find such analogies helpful? I have to admit that they make me even more confused.

    I sit next to a woman at work. Am I entitled to know her menstrual history? Well, no. If she conceives, the pro-life people seem to be saying that the state now has the right to intrude, and force birth. It sounds insane to me.
  • Interesting point that you can get mifepristone and misoprosol online, which will induce abortion. So will this be declared illegal in various states?
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Purgatory Host, Circus Host
    I’ve long had a lingering idea in the back of my mind that the only thing that might bring Trump down with the Religious Right is for one of his mistresses to come out of the woodwork and say that he coerced her into having an abortion.

    Please understand this is pure speculation on my part, but it strikes me as the sort of thing a person like Trump might have done, IYSWIM.

    But even then, I somehow suspect the Religious Wrong would find a workaround for God's Chose Agent for White America.
  • I just don't want to tell a woman what she should do with her body. That's it for me, I don't have that right of intrusion.

    Just as a thought experiment, does that apply to a woman who wishes to remove a healthy limb? My recollection is that doctors have refused to do that, saying it would violate their oath/rules.

    Do you find such analogies helpful? I have to admit that they make me even more confused.

    I sit next to a woman at work. Am I entitled to know her menstrual history? Well, no. If she conceives, the pro-life people seem to be saying that the state now has the right to intrude, and force birth. It sounds insane to me.

    My issue is that I find the bodily autonomy argument a bit wobbly, as we seek to prevent other instances where people seek to cause themselves harm. The only way to explore the validity of arguments based on a generalised principle such as this seems to be to apply them to another situation and see if they still stand up.

    For me, the pragmatic arguments on abortion are sufficient: banning it causes considerable harm, and given how divided opinion is it's unreasonable to use legal prohibition to impose the view of (at most) a slim majority on a substantial minority. If we're seriously interested in reducing abortion then there are a lot more low hanging fruit than trying to make it illegal (access to contraception, good free ante-natal and neo-natal care with well-supported roots both to adoption and to caring for a young child while continuing in education).
  • Yes, I remember the violinist argument, which caused a stir but seems to have receded somewhat. The pragmatic points seem solid to me. In fact, some argue that banning abortion, actually increases the number of abortions, but I haven't got the stats. Also more women die.

    Matt Dillahunty has an interesting point that banning abortion commits a naturalistic fallacy, in other words, a woman is in that situation because of nature, therefore should remain there. But this is meaningless to many pro-life people.
  • And the six week bans seem actually cruel to me, since many women don't realize they're pregnant after 6 weeks. Are these meant to be sadistic measures? Or maybe aiming at Kavanaugh. The misogyny is breath-taking.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    edited May 2019
    I just don't want to tell a woman what she should do with her body. That's it for me, I don't have that right of intrusion.

    Just as a thought experiment, does that apply to a woman who wishes to remove a healthy limb? My recollection is that doctors have refused to do that, saying it would violate their oath/rules.

    That’s right. It’s a medical decision, made by the doctor. Just as abortion should be.

    Politicians should all butt out.

  • Yes, I remember the violinist argument, which caused a stir but seems to have receded somewhat. The pragmatic points seem solid to me. In fact, some argue that banning abortion, actually increases the number of abortions, but I haven't got the stats. Also more women die.

    The difference is that that violinist is an illustrative hypothetical. There are actually people who suffer dysphoria to the extend they want a healthy limb removed.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    edited May 2019
    Yes, I remember the violinist argument, which caused a stir but seems to have receded somewhat. The pragmatic points seem solid to me. In fact, some argue that banning abortion, actually increases the number of abortions, but I haven't got the stats. Also more women die.

    The difference is that that violinist is an illustrative hypothetical. There are actually people who suffer dysphoria to the extent they want a healthy limb removed.

    Yes - and, as I said above, it’s a medical decision and entirely between doctor and patient. As abortion should be.

  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    I just don't want to tell a woman what she should do with her body. That's it for me, I don't have that right of intrusion.

    Just as a thought experiment, does that apply to a woman who wishes to remove a healthy limb? My recollection is that doctors have refused to do that, saying it would violate their oath/rules.

    For some reason this brought to mind Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes. Sometimes consenting to something extreme, like amputating an otherwise healthy limb just because you're tired of being called "Lefty", is in and of itself prima facie evidence that you lack the mental capacity to give meaningful consent. Even so, I'm not sure the reasonable solution is to turn all decisions about amputations to legislators.

    On the other hand there are circumstances under which otherwise healthy organs are removed. Women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes getting prophylactic mastectomies is the first example that comes to mind.
    My issue is that I find the bodily autonomy argument a bit wobbly, as we seek to prevent other instances where people seek to cause themselves harm.

    Except that abortion itself doesn't fall into this category. Carrying a pregnancy to term is always riskier (i.e. more potentially harmful) for a woman than terminating that pregnancy.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Except that abortion itself doesn't fall into this category. Carrying a pregnancy to term is always riskier (i.e. more potentially harmful) for a woman than terminating that pregnancy.

    That is, of course, true (unless, ironically, the woman is poor and lives somewhere abortion is illegal).
  • Martin54Martin54 Deckhand, Styx
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Trump seems to be saying he supports exemptions for rape and incest. Do you think he is nervous about a total abortion ban? There would be a lot of angry women.

    Is it too crude to suggest he is just seeking to cover his back for future... personal problems?

    It might not be his future personal problems he's worrying about. A lot of folks who would still vote for him if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue might hesitate if they found out he'd ever paid for an abortion.

    Yeah but he's repented.
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