Beto O’Rourke on Third-Trimester Abortions: Should be Decision the Woman Makes

[MamaJewel]

Give me the reason a zygote/embryo/fetus has the right to exist in a woman’s womb against her will.

If it is a person, well, no person has the right to demand the exclusive use of another person’s body for direct aid/maintenance of his or her life. We don’t force any class of people to directly donate their bodies for direct use by another person. That’s why I say the woman has the right to choose and that the state can’t force her to maintain a pregnancy.

I don’t believe that the fetus is worth more or less than the woman who carries it. If the woman was using the fetus’ body for her body’s maintenance, then I would say the fetus has the right to choose.

I’m not saying that the state has the responsibility to terminate her pregnancy.
Nor does the state have the right to force doctors to perform elective abortions.
When the state places mandates on outpatient clinics for licensing, those mandates should apply to all outpatient clinics.
I don’t think the high court has the right to tell a state that it must suspend mandates for one type of clinic (an abortion clinic) , because it will place an undue burden on someone trying to obtain an abortion. Doing this results in substandard care.

While I believe in a woman’s right to choose, I also believe in a doctor’s responsibility to do no harm and to do good. I also believe that society is a stakeholder in the abortion issue and has the responsibility to mitigate circumstances that drive women into believing they have no options other than elective abortion. The abortion issue needed to stay between a woman and her provider (not some shanty-azzed center), where informed consent could truly take place, and medical care could be given for the patients best interests.

And I think Beto stinks!

I appreciate your intensive research. Thank you for taking the time to do it. I must admit, though, that I don’t understand why women with threatened abortion/missed abortion who used medical abortion to terminate their pregnancy are being coded with elective medical abortion in Florida.

 

[Cathoholic]

MamaJewel . . .

If it is a person, well, no person has the right to demand the exclusive use of another person’s body for direct aid/maintenance of his or her life.

Just a few posts ago you were saying (about the mother but not the baby) . . . .

“It’s her life and health on the line.”

.

Now when someone’s (the baby this time) life and health is on the line, you are going to complain about using someone else’s body.

You are all over the map on your attempts
to keep killing these helpless babies OKed
by the State.

Depersonalizing a person.
It is just what ALL these bad ideas in this realm do.

 

[Cathoholic]

It is important to affirm all persons as persons.

FirstFiveEighth. You have done a great job reflecting this!

Keep up the good work.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

Give me the reason a zygote/embryo/fetus has the right to exist in a woman’s womb against her will.

So first off, ask yourself the question, zygote of what? Embryo of what? Fetus of what? The answer is a human being. You are simply listing different developmental stages of life, and in this context, human life. Since this is the internet and our conversation can’t occurr quickly, for the sake of expediency I am going to assume that we both agree that all human life after birth has value and it is wrong to end that life. Life is the basic building block of our entire existence, so you need to have a very good, concrete reason why we should be able to end that life before it passes through the birth canal, but not after. It seems you have provided one reason so I will tackle that one; that a woman should be able to end the life of her child because it is dependent on her while in her womb. To use your words:

If it is a person, well, no person has the right to demand the exclusive use of another person’s body for direct aid/maintenance of his or her life. We don’t force any class of people to directly donate their bodies for direct use by another person. That’s why I say the woman has the right to choose and that the state can’t force her to maintain a pregnancy.

Why should a zygote/embryo/fetus have the right to use its mother’s body for, well, everything? Because that is exactly what it is supposed to do and it is exactly where it is supposed to be. There is literally no other place that a zygote, embryo, or fetus can exist and remain alive. And it is the biological and moral duty of the mother to nurish and protect her child. Only recent advances in medical science have allowed us to save the lives of babies born too early at all. What you are essentially arguing is that it is unnatural and parasitic for human beings to develop in a womb, that motherhood is unnatural. You might as well argue that children have no right to parents.

The relationship between a mother and child, especially the relationship between a mother and an unborn child, is not at all the same as that between a woman and some random person on the street. No one is forcing this on the mother. Unless it was a case of rape, the mother was complicit in the creation of the child, and even rape does not render the child an inhuman alien invader.

To address the broader point, you essential argument is that if a human being is forced to be dependent on others for the basics of life, ie nutrition, shelter, protection, it does not have the right to live. So let’s take this argument and apply it to a one year old. A one year old is totally dependent on someone else, whether it is the mother, father, another relative, or a stranger. It has to have someone else provide it with food, water, shelter, clothing, and protection. To put it in your words, someone else is forced to have to care for this child. Do you then think it is ok to kill this one year old if the person it is dependent on doesn’t want to care for it anymore? If so, why? If not, why not?

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

FYI, character limits are killing me. I literally could not fit one more sentence in the above post.

One more point I want to make. You argue that because the unborn child is completely dependent on the mother, it has no inherent right to exist, to be alive. I would posit the complete opposite. Because the unborn child is so completely dependent on the mother for life and is at its most dependent stage of life, she has an increased responsibility to care for and protect her child. In no other scenario do we work off the presumption that the more innocent and dependent a person is, the less right they have to help. Why does this principle suddenly reverse itself when it comes to unborn children?

I must admit, though, that I don’t understand why women with threatened abortion/missed abortion who used medical abortion to terminate their pregnancy are being coded with elective medical abortion in Florida.

I don’t know what you mean by “threatened abortion/missed abortion”. What are you referring to?

As for the coding part, I don’t know why you are assuming it is being coded incorrectly. An elective abortion is an abortion for other than medical reasons. A medical abortion is for any medical reason. Why are you calling these “medically elective abortions”? That is not what anyone that I have seen has called them and as far as I am aware is a made up term and is not used in any statistics.

 

[MamaJewel]

"It’s her life and health on the line." No MamaJewel. There are TWO PEOPLE whose life and health are on the line here.

TWO people! Two PERSONS.

It is BOTH their life and health on the line.

From an ethical standpoint in medicine, yes there are two lives on the line. However, only one life is totally responsible for the other’s life and there isn’t reciprocity. So the course of care will be directed toward the woman. There are fetal surgeries that can be done to improve the health of the fetus, but a pregnant woman is not compelled by medicine or law to subject her body and/or the body of her fetus to them. So while there are two lives, the consideration isn’t the same as if these lives existed separately.

From a legal standpoint, the court says it’s the woman’s body that comes first because she has the right to privacy, bodily integrity, and bodily autonomy. The woman’s body can live exclusive of the fetus, but the fetus cannot live exclusive of the woman’s body. That doesn’t happen until birth.

From a legal standpoint, whose rights and liberties comes first? The mother’s, unless she chooses otherwise for the fetus. Why? Because the fetus is subject to the mother’s body through her existence. Until viability, the fetus can’t live outside of her body. To give the fetus the same consideration/legal agency as the mother would result in the mother losing her rights to her body. It would subject the mother’s body to the fetus’ best interests from a legal point of view.

That’s why the law currently ignores the life of the fetus until viability in most states.

I understand that I am on a catholic forum and respect your positions. I once believed that any fetus I carried had just as much of a right to life as I did. In fact, I believed that my fetus came first and that his or her life should be saved before mine if it came down to that.

I appreciate that I am welcome to share my pov here and am grateful for your kindness.

 

[Cathoholic]

MamaJewel . . .

I believed that my fetus came first and that his or her life should be saved before mine if it came down to that.

Appealing to emotion.

Calling her by her developmental stage instead of her as a person.

Depersonalizing her.

 

[Cathoholic]

MamaJewel . . .

The woman’s body can live exclusive of the fetus, but the fetus cannot live exclusive of the woman’s body. That doesn’t happen until birth.

That’s a lie.

I am not saying YOU are lying.

Others have put this forth and you may have internalized it. But a lie it is. At least regarding the third trimester aspect.

The baby CAN live “exclusive of the woman’s body”. That is exactly the reason NO Third trimester murder of a baby is medically indicated.

 

[MamaJewel]

Why should a zygote/embryo/fetus have the right to use its mother’s body for, well, everything? Because that is exactly what it is supposed to do and it is exactly where it is supposed to be. There is literally no other place that a zygote, embryo, or fetus can exist and remain alive. And it is the biological and moral duty of the mother to nurish and protect her child.

I don’t buy the argument that a woman has the duty to maintain a pregnancy because she had intercourse and her uterus is where the zygote/embryo/fetus is supposed to grow. The woman is a human being, not an incubator.

If a parent, particularly a mother, has such a biological and moral duty to protect her child, why don’t we force mothers to give their body parts/tissue/blood to children they have born?

If a one year old needs a bone marrow transfusion, do we force a parent to donate marrow?
Would we say the parent killed the child if that parent didn’t donate marrow? No, we wouldn’t.

Why?
You might argue that it’s not natural to get a bone marrow transplant. Ok.
But wouldn’t the parent still have a moral and legal duty to help her child from your line of reasoning?

Why doesn’t law compel a duty for a parent to make a tissue/organ donation to her child living outside of the womb?

What’s the difference between a fetus who is about to emerge from the birth canal and a neonate whose just taken its first breath? Wouldn’t a mother have the very same responsibility to give of her body to the just-born neonate as she did the soon-to-be born fetus moments before birth?

Comparing the murder of a toddler because the parent doesn’t want to provide care isn’t the same as pregnancy. The parent can sign the child over to the state, unlike a woman with a fetus. She can’t just hand it over to foster care or to the father.

 

[MamaJewel]

Appealing to emotion.

Calling her by her developmental stage instead of her as a person.

Depersonalizing her.

I had so many pregnancies and nobody offered me the chance to legally name each embryo/fetus. Not the state nor the Church. But I had names for them.

Please don’t accuse me of depersonalizing, when the very religious institution that I belonged to had no formal mechanism for me to give the person (by its standards) I was carrying a legal name.

That’s a lie.

I am not saying YOU are lying.

Others have put this forth and you may have internalized it. But a lie it is. At least regarding the third trimester aspect.

The baby CAN live “exclusive of the woman’s body”. That is exactly the reason NO Third trimester murder of a baby is medically indicated.

Respect.
But in the literal sense of the word, the fetus cannot live exclusively of the woman until birth.
I understand viability. What I’m saying is that as long as it is in the mother, the fetus utilizes her resources.

As far as a fetus with severe anomalies living outside of the uterus, some live and others don’t. Some make it through the birth process and others don’t. But even if these women facing such tragic circumstances are induced (to abruptly end the pregnancy), the termination of their pregnancies will be considered an abortion.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

I don’t buy the argument that a woman has the duty to maintain a pregnancy because she had intercourse and her uterus is where the zygote/embryo/fetus is supposed to grow. The woman is a human being, not an incubator.

…why don’t we force mothers to give their body parts/tissue/blood to children they have born?

What are you on about. A female human being is literally designed to bear children. A pregnant woman is literally an incubator for her child. What do you think an infant incubator is trying to mimic? A refrigerator? No, it is a device that provides a controlled, protective environment for a child. A child that was born prematurely, where it would have otherwise received a controlled, protective environment from its mother’s womb to continue development.

We don’t force mothers or fathers to donate tissue to their child for several reasons. First, as you noted, such transplants are not natural. It is an extra form of care to give and receive a transplant. The state of pregnancy is natural. The child is supposed to be in the womb. The mother automatically nurtures it. Anything that interrupts this process is either a deviation from what is supposed to happen or is unnatural. Second, a child can receive a transplant from anyone who matches their profile. If a mother does not give her child a transplant, the child can receive it from someone else. It is not even likely that a parent is the best transplant match for their child, so this isn’t even likely to be a decision the parents can make. Let’s also not forget that being an organ, bone marrow, etc donor is not going to kill the donor. They continue to live as well. No one else can carry a mother’s child for her. She is the only one. These are not even remotely the same things. You act as though a woman is totally separate from her uterus. As though she just woke up one morning and some unrelated baby magically appeared inside her against her will. She is her uterus. It is her baby. Full stop.

And yes, a parent has a moral duty to help their child. I don’t know what world you live in, but in the one I live in, parents actually like their children. While a parent is not legally obligated to give a transplant of some form to their child in your scenario, do you really think that a parent who is a good match for their child’s life saving transplant would decide not to give it? Do you think this parent would be looked kindly upon by the entire world if they could save their child’s life by giving a bone marrow transplant, and they said “nah, not feeling it” and let their child die? I’m pretty sure we would all look at them like a selfish scumbag. Getting away from transplants, what kind of parent would just let their kid die when they had the means to save them? In the world I live in, parents do everything up to and including sacrificing their own lives to save their children. Your transplant analogy is bunk.

Listen to yourself. You are arguing that a child who depends completely on its mother for its very life has no right to his mother’s care BECAUSE she is the only one who can give it. This is so backwards it boggles the mind.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

Comparing the murder of a toddler because the parent doesn’t want to provide care isn’t the same as pregnancy. The parent can sign the child over to the state, unlike a woman with a fetus. She can’t just hand it over to foster care or to the father.

Almost like pregnancy has certain inherent responsibilities. Nothing is the same as pregnancy. That’s why we use analogies. We are also testing your logic. You argued that an unborn child can be terminated because it is dependent on the mother for nutrition and shelter. So we applied this to another situation. A one year old is totally dependent on others for it’s survival. Is dependency really the deciding factor in whether one can be killed or not?

So let’s keep this analogy going. The woman signs the child over to the state. The state is now forced to care for the child. Does the child have the right to live or can the state decide to kill it? Can the state kill the child if it doesn’t want to provide for it anymore? Let’s say the mother can find absolutely no one who wants to be “forced” to care for the one year old. I know this is unrealistic because the world isn’t populated totally with psychopaths, but remember we are making analogies to pregnancy. So nobody steps forward to care for the one year old. Can we now kill the one year old since no one is willing to provide for it? Why?

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

What’s the difference between a fetus who is about to emerge from the birth canal and a neonate whose just taken its first breath? Wouldn’t a mother have the very same responsibility to give of her body to the just-born neonate as she did the soon-to-be born fetus moments before birth?

There is no difference but time. That is why I am arguing that both have a right to life. So yes, a mother has the same responsibility to both. Why do you think this is a problem?

 

[Jeanne_S]

Ahh so now we get to the crux of the issue.You view the fetus as a parasite.Seriously.? We all started out the same way.God gives that fetus the right to nestle in it’s mothers womb.To grow and develop into a fully formed human being. That any child in the womb would be considered anything less,regardless of anomalies or not is why we have progressed to this point of infanticide.Justifying it at any cost.God have mercy on us!

 

[Annie]

I had so many pregnancies and nobody offered me the chance to legally name each embryo/fetus. Not the state nor the Church. But I had names for them.

Please don’t accuse me of depersonalizing, when the very religious institution that I belonged to had no formal mechanism for me to give the person (by its standards) I was carrying a legal name.

I am so very sorry you lost your babies. The pain of miscarriage is very great and I am sorry you had to suffer through that.

You have, however, chosen to enter into discussion on this topic which might cause you more pain.

First, from what you have said, it seems that in dealing with your losses, you reduces the pain you felt by reducing the meaning of your unborn babies. You switched from being pro-life to being pro-choice. That does not seem healthy. You seem to be thinking that since you lost your babies, others should be permitted to kill their babies. This is tragic.

Second, you seem, by what you have written here, to have a serious problem because you were unable to legally name your babies. Other aspects of the differences with how unborn babies are treated legally have also been brought up by others. I think that people who believe the unborn are unfairly treated legally should advocate for changes in the law which provide for equality for the unborn, such as the chance to register their names, tax breaks, etc., rather than to advocate for an even greater inequality, which is withdrawal of the protection against being killed.

 

[Annie]

when the very religious institution that I belonged to had no formal mechanism for me to give the person (by its standards) I was carrying a legal name

The Church has no way of giving a person a legal name. All that the Church does is to record and ratify at baptism the name the parents have given.

There are people in the Church working towards a more comprehensive treatment of the deaths of unborn babies, but the Church already has provisions for these very sad deaths.

 

[Cathoholic]

MamaJewel . . .

I had so many pregnancies and nobody offered me the chance to legally name each embryo/fetus. Not the state nor the Church. But I had names for them.

Please don’t accuse me of depersonalizing, when the very religious institution that I belonged to had no formal mechanism for me to give the person (by its standards) I was carrying a legal name.

Sorry to hear about your suffering MamaJewel.

Never the less, my wife and I have been through a miscarriage also.

My wife and I, well know all the pains you are articulating here. (My wife and I named our miscarried baby too! We invoke its prayers for us daily as well.)

Yet this gives myself, nor you. . . . absolutely no authority to pronounce that a baby is licitly subject to being premediatively murdered! Nothing!-

And you continuing to appeal to mere emotions in this paradigm is inappropriate.

You also said . . .

But in the literal sense of the word, the fetus cannot live exclusively of the woman until birth.

That is absolutely irrelevant. It can be delivered.

Remember we are talking about third trimester premeditatively murdering viable babies here.

Me against and you favoring this murderous abomination, at least you civically.

And you are wrong favoring allowing premeditatively murdering pre-born babies civically.

The routine about earlier in pregnancy is also irrelevant (for this thread).

If you want to do that subject, those are differing arguments. Start the topic on another thread, and I will show how THOSE ideas NECESSITATE de-personalizing . . . . well . . . A PERSON too.

And I have shown how you have de-personalized (other people’s babies) here.

And on THAT (new first and second trimester) thread, I will still show WHY you would be wrong to de-personalize those first and second trimester babies too.

And how you would be attacking the baby, AND attacking the mother (just like third trimester premeditated killing of pre-born babies does).

 

[Cathoholic]

An appeal to readers here (not necessarily to do with any poster here–just general thoughts).

This pro-abortion evangelization is NOT about “helping women”.

“Evangelizing” to murder innocent people in ANY stage, even (and maybe especially) when they are pre-born, HARMS WOMEN.

These ideas are ENEMIES of women.
It is NOT “feminine” nor “manly”.

If a white supremecist said something like . . . .

"Well I think it is necessary in society that
ONLY BLACK pre-born babies, er I mean ah, fetuses,
be allowed to be killed off,
um, oh, I mean “aborted”.

. . . . Everyone would be able to see through her to see that she is an ANTI-BLACK PERSON.

Likewise when people who have interiorized these virulent ideas, attempt to apply them to women in general . . . We ought to call it just what it is. . . . an ANTI-PERSON bigot.
Just like we call out the anti-black racist bigot!

Don’t fall for the pro-abortion arguments out there.
And the veiled pro-abortion arguments in society
may be the most insidious of them all.
These ideas run the risk of metastasizing even deeper in society
without easily being able to be discerned and cut out by many.

GENESIS 3:1a Now the serpent
was more subtle
than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God made. . . .

.

Reject the false message of the confused, and others.

Challenge your fellow man to love, respect, cherish, and preserve life.

DEUTERONOMY 30:19 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that
I have set before you life and death,
blessing and curse;
therefore choose life,
that you and your descendants may live . . . .

 

[KS_Housewife]

I believe that for modern day physicians the taking of the Hypocratic Oath is an option, but it no longer required.

 

[MamaJewel]

I am so very sorry you lost your babies. The pain of miscarriage is very great and I am sorry you had to suffer through that.

You have, however, chosen to enter into discussion on this topic which might cause you more pain.

First, from what you have said, it seems that in dealing with your losses, you reduces the pain you felt by reducing the meaning of your unborn babies. You switched from being pro-life to being pro-choice. That does not seem healthy. You seem to be thinking that since you lost your babies, others should be permitted to kill their babies. This is tragic.

Second, you seem, by what you have written here, to have a serious problem because you were unable to legally name your babies. Other aspects of the differences with how unborn babies are treated legally have also been brought up by others. I think that people who believe the unborn are unfairly treated legally should advocate for changes in the law which provide for equality for the unborn, such as the chance to register their names, tax breaks, etc., rather than to advocate for an even greater inequality, which is withdrawal of the protection against being killed.

Thank you for your empathy regarding the miscarriages.
At the time, it bothered me immensely. It didn’t help that I was unaware that “abortion” was medical terminology for what I experienced, so when my providers used that “A” word for my first miscarriage it was very stressful. I was so stressed about that first loss that I eventually called Project Rachel because I couldn’t find any support networks online.
That made things even more stressful, because Project Rachel was there for women who had elective abortions, not for a pro-life woman whose pregnancy was very much wanted.
I remember feeling like people perceive the unborn to be a baby only if the mother wants to abort it.

The miscarriages don’t bother me today because I have children that wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t miscarried. Plus, I’ve had several science classes since those days and now have a simple, basic understanding of fetal development. That, mixed with my miscarriage experiences and seeing the developing embryos at different stages, I no longer consider those miscarriages to be the loss of a baby because they were not babies. I feel it is disingenuous to call them anything other than what they really were, embryos.

I don’t have any problems with the church or the state not having any formal means of naming or claiming those embryos.

Finally, I am pro-choice because I believe that a person has the right to his or her bodily integrity and to be free of any person being in it or on it without his or her consent. I don’t believe that another human being should be able to demand that you allow him/her direct use your body for their benefit.

I do not believe law should compel one person to provide the direct use of his or her body for the benefit of another. No compelled organ donations. No compelled tissue donations. No compelled blood or bone marrow donations. No compelled pregnancies.