Abortion

I know there is a thread already made for this, but it's been sent back a few pages so there we go.


This thread seemed to have the start of an interesting debate on the topic.

Here were some interesting points.

I don't promote abortion but I'm not going to murder you for having one - personally I think it's more of a case-by-case thing, but have one major point: if recent world leaders had been aborted, where would the world be today? You coulda just killed the future president. : P -

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I don't think anyone promotes abortion. It's not like "the hip new thing". Pro-choice advocates usually see abortion as a last resort, and think that contraception and sex education are better alternatives, but also that at the end of the day it is the woman's right to decide what goes on inside her body.

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Abortions are emotional difficult situations (hence why therapy is normally involved)

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Personally I am very torn on the subject. I remember a couple years ago my mother told me she had had an abortion a year after I was born. I was shocked at first because my mother had always wanted a large family. I asked if there would have been something wrong with the pregnancy and she said no, it was just the wrong time to have a child with her life situation at the time. I respected her decision, but I couldn't help but be shocked. I mean, my mother must have been around twenty at the time so it wasn't exactly a teenage knock-up. But she was at the time divorcing my biological father and didn't want people to ask questions.

I lean towards both life and choice, and I can't really seem to find a median. I believe in adoption, I was adopted by my step father when I was eleven. I know that life in the system is bad, but at least it's a life. But then again am I saying that they should suck it up, no. But at the same time a child shouldn't have to pay with it's life because of a mother's mistake or "bad circumstances". I think that it deserves a chance at a good life. Though at the same time I think the mother has a choice, it's her life too, and I think she has a choice in it.

Then I think of pregnancies that come from acts of sexual violence and I am really torn. The child is a memory of that person, that child isn't it's parent. I can't help but keep going back to the question of, are children subject to the acts of the parent?

I really don't know.

I'm in that really awkward situation where I hate abortion with the white-hot intensity of a hundred suns but at the same time I really don't think it should be illegalized. Making abortion illegal would just result in a lot of risky back-alley abortions, and that would end with infections, loss of fertility and/or death. Not good.

But, of course, adoption is always a suitable choice, and probably better unless the mother has a life-threatening condition or something along those lines.

I myself support abortion, especially if you're too young or pregnant with the child of incest or rape. My mother and stepmother have both had abortions before, and if they hadn't have, I probably wouldn't be in the state I am today. I honestly find no problem with it, as it is an individual's complete choice.

Flower Doll said:

I'm in that really awkward situation where I hate abortion with the white-hot intensity of a hundred suns but at the same time I really don't think it should be illegalized. Making abortion illegal would just result in a lot of risky back-alley abortions, and that would end with infections, loss of fertility and/or death. Not good.

But, of course, adoption is always a suitable choice, and probably better unless the mother has a life-threatening condition or something along those lines.

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Some really cool lawyer guy on NationStates said:

The short version is that making abortion illegal has little or no impact on the number of abortions that occur (in fact, countries allowing abortions have decreasing abortion rates), but severly impacts the safety of the abortions that women obtain. Some 80,000 women die every year from unsafe, illegal abortions. Here are links to the longer version:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21255186/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301359,00.html
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/12/4/gpr120402.html
http://www.iwhc.org/storage/iwhc/docUploads/BethAbortionComment10.17.07.pdf?documentID=414 (pdf, starts at bottom of page)
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61575-X/fulltext
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/id21.pdf
http://www.medicalabortionconsortiu...ng-abortion-does-save-women-s-lives-1072.html

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But at the same time a child shouldn't have to pay with it's life because of a mother's mistake or "bad circumstances". I think that it deserves a chance at a good life.

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But the potential children who are "killed" every month by the menstrual cycle don't? A zygote is not a child.

newt said:

Phantom, on what moral ground do you find abortion objectionable? How does "the sex wasn't consensual" factor into the matter?

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"on what moral ground" I take that as offensive. None of my words were even close to being harsh, and I never meant them to be. The fact that you attack my moral grounding is an insult at best.

Objectionable meaning wrong? I'm sorry I didn't understand your question. I think you might have misunderstood me. So I'll try to highlight the quote you referenced.

Maybe "torn" was the wrong word for that one. I understand that it wasn't consensual, but you must understand that sexual violence is a harsh matter to deal with. How would you like to birth a child that is the spawn of that terrible experience? At the same time, it's a human life, or a potential human life given time.

But the potential children who are "killed" every month by the menstrual cycle don't? A zygote is not a child.

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Unfertilized eggs do not have the potential for life, a zygote does however. True a zygote is not a child, but a zygote has a hell of a lot bigger chance of becoming one than say... a pencil.

(please do not take that bit seriously it's a bit of a hyperactive hyperbole)


Once again, I'm moderate people. I can't make up my mind.

Unfertilized eggs do not have the potential for life, a zygote does however. True a zygote is not a child, but a zygote has a hell of a lot bigger chance of becoming one than say... a pencil.

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Of course unfertilised eggs have the potential for life (never mind that they are already alive). Eggs can eventually become human beings, just like zygotes can. Sure, zygotes are one step closer, but if you think it's smooth sailing from fertilisation to birth, you are very much mistaken.

"on what moral ground" I take that as offensive. None of my words were even close to being harsh, and I never meant them to be. The fact that you attack my moral grounding is an insult at best.

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What? He asked why you consider abortion in the case of rape any different from abortion otherwise. How on earth is that offensive?

opaltiger said:

Of course unfertilised eggs have the potential for life (never mind that they are alive). Eggs can eventually become human beings, just like zygote can. Sure, zygotes are one step closer, but if you think it's smooth sailing from fertilisation to birth, you are very much mistaken.

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Ah, but fertilisation is a big step. Never said it was smooth sailing though, a million things can change. I'm no biology major though. So I won't get into anything.

Just so you know opal I was never arguing. :D Usually real life conversations about this that I have end up talking about something completely and utterly random and "not-sense-making", which is why I said don't take that bit seriously.



EDIT: 500 errors eating and doubling posts, I swear.

The phrase used I found offensive. "on what moral ground" seems to be questioning the moral standing of the person address, or at least that's how I understand it. The question could have been stated otherwise, as you showed. But in accordance to the question you proposed I've answered it already, in short; the emotional differences.

Ah, but fertilisation is a big step. Never said it was smooth sailing though, a million things can change. I'm no biology major though. So I won't get into anything.

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It's one step. It's not particularly more (or less) likely than any other step (well, I suppose it is for the sperm). I think it is commonly perceived as far more important than any other step (and it is, in some ways, but not in terms of whether or not the egg will eventually become an individual), simply because that's the point of sexual recombination.

EDIT: "On what moral ground" was not meant in the sense of "pfft, you have no ground to stand in!" I suspect he was honestly curious what your moral argument was. I think you're being too sensitive.

I had this argument with a friend on another forum around nine months ago, so I'll try and bring some of our points into this thread:

1) There is a 99.33% chance (in america anyway) that a zygote will become a child. However, there is only a 18.75% chance that a random day of unprotected sex will produce a zygote. That's a rather big step. I don't know how to exactly put it into words, but I think you all know what I mean when I say that having an abortion is not the same as masturbating/menstruating.

2) On the above grounds, I believe abortion is murder. When you have an abortion, there is a 99.33% chance that you're killing a human being. That is high enough to be considered murder IMO. On the other hand, I don't believe that women should be forbidden abortions on two counts: If the baby was conceptualized by rape or similar method, then the mother should not be forced to bear a baby she doesn't want, and if the mother is put at risk by childbirth, then the already live person should be put ahead of the baby, who would stand a high chance of death/crappy life anyway if it happened.

A baby is conceived, not conceptualised (unless it's a hypothetical baby, I guess). Also I'm not really sure that your argument quite follows. It might be true that most zygotes develop into babies, but what isn't true is that the abortion of a zygote is the same thing as the death of a baby.

There's zero percent chance that you're killing "a human being" because what you're killing is a zygote (except in the very strictest sense, and that sense being "it has all the same DNA as a human being" because that isn't what we're talking about here). It's a cluster of cells that could develop into a human being.

A sperm is a single cell that could develop into a human being. So's an oocyte.

Flower Doll said:

I'm in that really awkward situation where I hate abortion with the white-hot intensity of a hundred suns but at the same time I really don't think it should be illegalized. Making abortion illegal would just result in a lot of risky back-alley abortions, and that would end with infections, loss of fertility and/or death. Not good.

But, of course, adoption is always a suitable choice, and probably better unless the mother has a life-threatening condition or something along those lines.

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Y'know, I thought my view was going to be different, but this is pretty much my thoughts on the matter as well.

Harlequin said:

A baby is conceived, not conceptualised (unless it's a hypothetical baby, I guess).

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This is getting siggied.

I would participate in the debate more but there's been a big huge abortion shitstorm over on the NationStates forums since December and I wasted almost all my energy and interest on that already, I barely have enough to contribute to the discussion on abortion in class.

EDIT: More infodump;

Cool NS lawyer guy said:

This and other relevant information are discussed in a systematic review of relevant studies of unborn development by the UK's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in March 2010. Here is a relevant quote:
"In reviewing the neuroanatomical and physiological evidence in the fetus, it was apparent that connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation. After 24 weeks there is continuing development and elaboration of intracortical networks such that noxious stimuli in newborn preterm infants produce cortical responses. Such connections to the cortex are necessary for pain experience but not sufficient, as experience of external stimuli requires consciousness. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero and is kept, by the presence of its chemical environment, in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation. This state can suppress higher cortical activation in the presence of intrusive external stimuli. This observation highlights the important differences between fetal and neonatal life..."

The report also notes that fetal brain, for example, not only hasn't developed, but instead has "subplate zone" (a prominent, transient layer of cerebral wall preventing normal brain function) that does not disappear until after 32-34 weeks gestation.

Similarly, an August 2005 review of studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated:
"Pain perception requires conscious recognition or awareness of a noxious stimulus. Neither withdrawal reflexes nor hormonal stress responses to invasive procedures prove the existence of fetal pain, because they can be elicited by nonpainful stimuli and occur without conscious cortical processing. Fetal awareness of noxious stimuli requires functional thalamocortical connections. Thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, while electroencephalography suggests the capacity for functional pain perception in preterm neonates probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks."

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newt said:

Why would some other person wanting to adopt the kid later in any way obligate the mother to carry it to term now?

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...Can you think of a way for a child to be adopted in which case it doesn't have to be born first?

Pwnemon said:

I don't believe that women should be forbidden abortions on two counts: If the baby was conceptualized by rape or similar method, then the mother should not be forced to bear a baby she doesn't want,

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1. Legally, at least where I leave, if you are under a certain age (varies by where you live, but still) and you have sex it is rape. Or if you have sex while drunk, it's rape (because you couldn't actually give consent).
2. Lots of babies are unwanted. Ever heard of an unplanned pregnancy?
3a.

American Medical Association (1995) said:

sexual violence, and rape in particular, is considered the most under-reported violent crime.

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Do you really think rape victims who didn't report to any authorities is really going to walk into an abortion clinic and demand an abortion on account of being raped?
3b. If the law was that you had to be a rape or incest victim to get an abortion, who would be deciding who got raped? If all of the decisions were made in a court, what if the case was held until the mother was due anyway? What if it couldn't be proven for whatever reason?

Pwnemon said:

and if the mother is put at risk by childbirth, then the already live person should be put ahead of the baby, who would stand a high chance of death/crappy life anyway if it happened.

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Okay, this I actually agree with you completely on. If having the child would threaten the life of the mother, pick the already living mother over the child every time.

dolphinfish said:

...Can you think of a way for a child to be adopted in which case it doesn't have to be born first?

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That's sort of the point.

Well. I am absolutely pro-choice.

I think the thing that a lot of people miss with respect to abortion is that there is nothing inherently evil about ending the life of a "human being". This isn't about when the fetus becomes a "human being". Why is murder, fundamentally, bad? Primarily, three reasons:

1. Generally, it causes great (physical) pain to the individual. A fetus, to the best of our knowledge, is not aware enough to seriously feel pain, making this mostly moot for abortion; furthermore, carrying the child to term would in all likelihood result in far more pain to the mother than is inflicted on the fetus. Furthermore, murder also often involves inflicting great emotional stress and panic on the victim prior to their death, but this is also completely moot for a fetus, which has no ability to consciously anticipate pain or death or feel distress about it.

2. It causes great emotional pain to those who knew the dead, due to their memories of who the murdered was and the knowledge they can never meet them again. However, a fetus has never socialized with anyone; you can't miss someone who's lived their whole life in a womb in any meaningful sense except potentially if you're the mother, and seeing as in that case you're the one who's deciding to get an abortion, well...

3. You are removing the person's ability to subsequently do anything with their life. They had plans, dreams, disagreements that might have been resolved, books they wanted to read, people they wanted to meet, and just simple anticipation of tomorrow (this, to me, is the most important aspect of death). But, while a fetus has the potential to do things with its life in the future, it has no plans, it anticipates nothing, and it would have no regrets if it died, simply because it isn't capable of that. It has potential, but no realization of that potential that makes it cruel to snatch it away.

In addition to a fetus's right to live thus being a rather shady concept, carrying an unwanted child to term is not a matter as simple as just "oh, you can give it up for adoption!" Pregnancy has serious effects on your body and birth is by all accounts a generally horrible experience. I don't want to have kids and a very, very large chunk of that is just because I do not ever want to have to be pregnant or give birth. Suggesting adoption as an alternative is just completely missing the point because it only solves a small part of the problem abortion solves.

Of course people should use contraceptives rather than repeatedly creating fetuses just to subsequently abort them, but the suggestion of using a living child (i.e. one who would actually be born and have feelings) as a punishment for the parents' sexual irresponsibility is appalling and it is ridiculous it should ever be made by the same people who wax poetic about that child's rights when it's in fetus form.

Bachuru said:

1. Generally, it causes great (physical) pain to the individual. A fetus, to the best of our knowledge, is not aware enough to seriously feel pain, making this mostly moot for abortion; furthermore, carrying the child to term would in all likelihood result in far more pain to the mother than is inflicted on the fetus. Furthermore, murder also often involves inflicting great emotional stress and panic on the victim prior to their death, but this is also completely moot for a fetus, which has no ability to consciously anticipate pain or death or feel distress about it.

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My last infodump contained information supporting this point. Babies begin to gain capability to feel pain at about 30 weeks and it isn't fully developed until some time after that.

I agree with everything else Butterfree said too but I would like to say one thing; I absolutely do not support hysterotomy abortions. If a baby is capable of living outside the womb, then the woman should just have a C-section, since the only difference between a hysterotomy abortion and a C-section is that in a hysterotomy abortion, the baby is alive and left to die of exposure.

Pwnemon, two points, assuming abortion is murder:

1. Does this make miscarriage manslaughter?
2. What do you think the legal punishment should be for abortion?

Bachuru said:

1. Generally, it causes great (physical) pain to the individual. A fetus, to the best of our knowledge, is not aware enough to seriously feel pain, making this mostly moot for abortion; furthermore, carrying the child to term would in all likelihood result in far more pain to the mother than is inflicted on the fetus. Furthermore, murder also often involves inflicting great emotional stress and panic on the victim prior to their death, but this is also completely moot for a fetus, which has no ability to consciously anticipate pain or death or feel distress about it.

2. It causes great emotional pain to those who knew the dead, due to their memories of who the murdered was and the knowledge they can never meet them again. However, a fetus has never socialized with anyone; you can't miss someone who's lived their whole life in a womb in any meaningful sense except potentially if you're the mother, and seeing as in that case you're the one who's deciding to get an abortion, well...

3. You are removing the person's ability to subsequently do anything with their life. They had plans, dreams, disagreements that might have been resolved, books they wanted to read, people they wanted to meet, and just simple anticipation of tomorrow (this, to me, is the most important aspect of death). But, while a fetus has the potential to do things with its life in the future, it has no plans, it anticipates nothing, and it would have no regrets if it died, simply because it isn't capable of that. It has potential, but no realization of that potential that makes it cruel to snatch it away.

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To play devil's advocate here, these reasons could justify euthanising a severely mentally disabled person. As long as they a) felt no pain, b) wouldn't be missed, and c) didn't have the capacity to plan, dream and so on, by this criteria, it would be morally permissable to humanely kill people with conditions ranging from alzheimers to autism, as long as it was severe enough that they didn't realize what was going on, and there was nobody to grieve.

I was sure I posted here before, but it must've gotten eaten by a 500 Error - basically, I understand (but disagree with) people who say it's morally wrong in all cases. If they truly believe that every foetus is a human being, then I do understand where they're coming from.

What I don't get are the "it's okay sometimes, like in the case of rape" camp, because they think the foetus has some kind of humanity or else they'd think it was permissable in all cases, but it's about what the mother has done that makes it okay or not. If she was raped (obviously, by a stranger in a dark alley, because maritial rape never happens), it's okay because it wasn't her fault, but if she had a one-night stand, she has to live with the concequences because she's a slut? The debate stops being about the morality of abortion and starts being all about the morality of women having sex.

Bachuru said:

Well. I am absolutely pro-choice.

I think the thing that a lot of people miss with respect to abortion is that there is nothing inherently evil about ending the life of a "human being". This isn't about when the fetus becomes a "human being". Why is murder, fundamentally, bad? Primarily, three reasons:

1. Generally, it causes great (physical) pain to the individual. A fetus, to the best of our knowledge, is not aware enough to seriously feel pain, making this mostly moot for abortion; furthermore, carrying the child to term would in all likelihood result in far more pain to the mother than is inflicted on the fetus. Furthermore, murder also often involves inflicting great emotional stress and panic on the victim prior to their death, but this is also completely moot for a fetus, which has no ability to consciously anticipate pain or death or feel distress about it.

A bullet to the back of the head from a high powered rifle is virtually painless, and you'll die so quick you never knew what happened. This is still tried as murder. On the other hand, there are many excruciatingly painful methods of torture that aren't penalized nearly as highly. And also I can't really think of many people who think of "oh my gosh he must hae undergone so much pain" when they hear someone has been murdered (at least not physical pain) so I think this point is pretty much moot.

2. It causes great emotional pain to those who knew the dead, due to their memories of who the murdered was and the knowledge they can never meet them again. However, a fetus has never socialized with anyone; you can't miss someone who's lived their whole life in a womb in any meaningful sense except potentially if you're the mother, and seeing as in that case you're the one who's deciding to get an abortion, well...

If this is true, then why are miscarriages so emotionally stressing? Not just a mother is attached to a zygote, in most cases, an entire family is. Either way, I don't believe this is the reason murder is bad either, at least for the most part.

3. You are removing the person's ability to subsequently do anything with their life. They had plans, dreams, disagreements that might have been resolved, books they wanted to read, people they wanted to meet, and just simple anticipation of tomorrow (this, to me, is the most important aspect of death). But, while a fetus has the potential to do things with its life in the future, it has no plans, it anticipates nothing, and it would have no regrets if it died, simply because it isn't capable of that. It has potential, but no realization of that potential that makes it cruel to snatch it away.

It has potential though. It may not think to realize it has potential (But do we know this? Late term it may) but every human life has infinite potential, and it's wrong to remove it from the world. What if you had been aborted? You say you don't believe in the afterlife. If you died right now, instantly, painlessly, with no time to realize it, how would that be very different from an abortion (in your own perspective.) You would say it wouldn't be fair, that you had so much potential. But how is it fair for the fetus?

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opal,

1) No. Maybe involuntary manslaughter, but even that involves some idea of it being their fault.
2) A second degree murder charge.

To all you people who say a fetus is not a life until it's born, I don't even get your position. It's not like there's all these separate paths for a fetus to take. Either it gets born, or it dies. It's not like, and suddenly the fetus turned into a television set!