Abortion

Cenna

Cenna

Well-known member
Should abortions be legal? Should it only be acceptable in specific cases? Is it truly the woman's choice? Is the infant even a life?

Realize this is a very touchy subject and should be carefully debated in that no slandering name calling ect. Be professional and submit your opinion. If you disagree with someone say so and tell us why. 

 
I generally believe the child isn't alive until the brain begins to function, and am in favor of emergency case abortions even post-brain functionality if the birth threatens to kill the mother, or has a massive defect, as such a being would be a drain on the parent's financial resources. Pre-brain functionality, I'm full in favor of it, as a person without a brain(literally here) is not a person. By Brain Functionality, I mean when electrical signals start getting fired in the brain.

 
I think if the fetus was conceived forcefully (in cases such as rape or incest) the mother should have a right to an abortion. If negligence was the cause such as not being prepared for a baby or not taking preventative measures such as condoms. Then the abortion should be illegal in that case.

 
I am generally in favor of it because it's a burden the woman has to go thru & society (in america) is presently is rather ill equipped to support children who aren't taken by their original parents, so creating more children whom aren't wanted by their parents seems to be a very poor decision morally to me since you'd be knowingly willing to put that child thru many hardships without proper support or care and forcing them on their parents is worse morally than that even imo, and then finally because I don't believe life is formed is at 'the moment of conception' & then defining when it becomes a child is morally gray area, and calling it a child when it depends 100% off their mother to survive seems off to me since life should be something capable of supporting itself to some extend.

Additionally I entirely support it being allowed at minimally for cases of rape, incest, risk to mother, defects showing child would likely die very young only knowing pain, or would never be able to function in life w/o constant support from parents, brain  functionality, or such extreme defects.

 
People on the pro side often frame it as purely a women's rights or an autonomy issue. But opponents of abortion are usually concerned with something much bigger. Imagine if fetuses were so developed after a couple months that you could talk them and they were going "Please don't let mommy abort me" - would you let abortion happen anyway because 'her body, her rules'? Or tell the baby that it's the product of rape, and we can't reasonably expect your mother to deal with that, so down the toilet you go? The real source of the disagreement is usually whether or not abortion is murdering a Person, which is unjustifiable, or discarding a clump of valueless cells, which anyone should be able to do on a whim, or something inbetween. Those on one extreme end who think a fetus is as valuable as an adult will never accept abortion, and those who think a fetus has no value at all will push against all restrictions.

So we have to decide what exactly makes a person a person. There's some special quality that you and I have that makes it a moral negative to cause harm to us, but something that nobody cares about like an ant has none of this special quality, whatever it is. Is it consciousness, awareness, intelligence, being biologically human, having a 'soul', or some mix of those? This is a philosophical question, there's no provable right or wrong, everyone has their own answer. But whatever that answer is, I think it must be a single consistent one. If you change your reasoning in every situation so that it matches your gut feeling, then you have no reasoning at all. So we can poke at each other's answers with thought experiments.

For example - if you don't think brain dead adults and babies with anencephaly have to be cared for, I think you should be willing to abort a fetus without brain activity.

And is the mere presence of brain activity enough? Is that the distinction that makes a fetus worth protecting? If so, should every organism with a working brain get similar protection?

And to go even further, suppose like most people you're not overly concerned with animal shelters euthanizing dogs nobody wants to care for, because dogs just aren't that smart. Then what's your opinion about humans that are dumber than dogs?

That's the road my reasoning goes down. The most defensible conclusion I've got is to say that life should be valued based on its position on some vague scale of consciousness and intelligence, as best as we can measure those things. Since I don't think babies in the womb fall anywhere on that scale that I'm remotely worried about, women can buy an abortion kit over the counter at 8.5 months for all I care. But if someone else stops at step 1 and says that any living human is sacred, or if they say that a 3rd trimester fetus in their opinion has enough mental development to deserve some rights, those can be reasoned and consistent positions too.

 
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I am against abortion because there's always another way. It's a human life no matter what stage. My argument Is "two dead things can't make a living thing" let me explain. If two dead cows sperm and egg are combined a calf will not be made the same can be said for a human thus proving the sperm and the egg are a living being at conception. Another look is that a single celled organism on Mars means; life on Mars! life on mars! We don't even know that that life would be anything other than a cell but a baby that we know if left alone will become a human is not life until a certain point? Yes it's inside the woman but if someone stabs her stomach they get charged for 2 accounts of murder. Abortion is a very disgusting act. If the baby is to big (when the brain is developed) they rip the baby apart in the womb peice by peice ripping the arms and legs then the head and eventually pulling it out. That would be considered torture in all other instances but not for a baby. 

 
I would also be pretty okay with a specific exceptions only situation if the gov't would actually help provide for child care(which it currently doesn't). What I find extremely annoying about Republicans that are anti-abortion is this: They claim they are pro-life, but refuse to support people who fall in the cracks that society inherently has, refuse to support the children that they are demanding people give birth to(thereby restricting the right to have sex to the upper classes). and support the death penalty, In reality they are pro-birth.

 
I feel as though abortion is murder, regardless of stage of pregnancy. Two living cells from the parents react after sex, that forms a living pair of cells, those in turn grow into a living cluster of cells that soon develops brain activity and becomes a living human being. I think abortion is murder because, inverse of Cenna, two living things cannot create a dead thing that then becomes life. 

Now, I do support "necessity" abortions in instances where there is an extremely high probability the child will kill the mother. That is the only situation I am currently aware of that I would approve of abortion. Because it is better to save the mother who can have more children than to save the child the doctors don't know will live.

You can't charge a drunk driver with two counts of murder and then turn around and say that if she had lived then she could have gotten rid of the fetus because it isn't a living thing yet. You can't have it both ways, in my opinion. I see that as a flawed element in our laws in the United States. 

As japan pointed out, being pro-life should also come with solutions as to how to care for these small children. Now, I am a huge proponent of states rights over federal rights. I hold to the Constitution that, if not specified by the US Constitution as federal jurisdiction, then it is the state's responsibility and the states alone. This is also why, although I see the possible benefits of national healthcare and a national education curriculum, I do not support it. Because the US Con. does NOT give the federal powers that be the rights and abilities to regulate or govern that. So, with that established, I believe that each state should sponsor, fund, or otherwise provide these services (child care, medical benefits, in-home help, therapy, etc.). Some women are choosing abortion because they cannot care for their offspring; if we want to take out what they see as one solution, then it is crucial that we give them another, an alternative. Otherwise we only do harm by being pro-life. 

Thoughts on those things?

 
IMO, it's a slider based on different circumstances and not a binary yes/no answer.

Third trimester fetuses are self-aware. And yet you can argue that human babies are not even sentient until 1+ years after birth. So even if abortion is as bad as killing a newborn, newborns aren't fully persons yet.

I really dislike the "it's ok if they were raped" argument. Because the controversy is usually about whether abortion is murder. So it's basically saying that it's okay to murder a pseudochild for something someone else did.

The biggest pro-choice argument is that babies and children take a lot out of someone's life. A child is as life changing as college and needs years of maintenance just to survive. If the parent isn't willing to do that before they're born, there's slim chance that the baby will live well throughout its life, without facing abuse from its parents or forced into crime.

 
In response to @Patrick MacFarlane, while I am more of a proponent of a national minimum system(in which the national gov't sets minimum bars, and the states and other judicial groups have the right to go above and beyond them), I can generally agree with your statement. The problem with your solution atm is the fact that in a State like Texas, getting an expansion of spending for anything that doesn't help companies(subsidies, etc) is virtually impossible. For example, in 2008 Texas cut funding to education, and has not even restored the funding to education despite it being 8 years later.

 
japan77 said:
In response to @Patrick MacFarlane, while I am more of a proponent of a national minimum system(in which the national gov't sets minimum bars, and the states and other judicial groups have the right to go above and beyond them), I can generally agree with your statement. The problem with your solution atm is the fact that in a State like Texas, getting an expansion of spending for anything that doesn't help companies(subsidies, etc) is virtually impossible. For example, in 2008 Texas cut funding to education, and has not even restored the funding to education despite it being 8 years later.
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I can agree with a national minimum. But to add to that, the federal govt could also provide incentives to encourage states to increase funding to these programs. It would not be a guarantee but it would help.  

 
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