Four Possibilities About Abortion:

[DavidHume]

This could be categorized as fetus=person, abortion=self defense.

The problem with this view is the implication that the mother-child bond is not intrinsically good, but is seen as something flowing from the mother’s will. For example, the mother can look on the child as a blessing, if she wants to, then it’s a blessing. Or she can look on the child as a parasite, if she wants to, then it’s a threat. In this view, there is no intrinsic nature to the mother-child bond; it can be a blessing or threat; a joy or a sorrow. The determining thing is the will of the mother. The nature of the mother-child bond flows from the mother’s brain.

A more Catholic view is that the mother-child bond is good and sacred because it is a part of the plan to continue the human race. The mother may recognize this or she may not, but her will is not what determines its nature. The mother-child bond has a nature of its own which is intrinsically good and which is independent of the mother’s will.

There is a book, The Architects of the Culture of Death, by Benjamin Wiker and Donald DeMarco, which contains a chapter on Thomson’s essay.

I like this post a lot – thanks for sharing it. It’s a very powerful argument for Catholics and Christians, but I am not sure it stands on its own as a justification for prohibition of abortion in civil law.

 

[gardenswithkids]

…From a practical standpoint, I don’t think it is a good idea to ban abortion in civil law, since there are only a few possible implementations:

• A criminal penalty similar to that for murder, filling prisons with women who attempt or succeed at getting an abortion.
• A criminal penalty similar to that for murder – but one that is rarely used – leading to a legal system where statute doesn’t match the application
• A minor criminal penalty, such as for a lesser felony or misdemeanor – thus making the penalty not fit the purported crime.
• No criminal penalty – what would be the point?

Here’s another option: Heavy criminal penalty for the persons who profit from abortion and who typically repeat the procedure, with lesser penalties for the preganant women who often turn to abortion in desperation while under mental and maybe even physical duress.

 

[Janet_S]

If abortion were illegal, the abortionist would be the one prosecuted. That’s the way it was in the USA for many years. Just like Dr Kevorkian was prosecuted for assisting suicides.

 

[RedSoxFan]

I actually don’t like to argue this topic at all. I was merely pointing out that “fetus is a person implies that abortion is murder” is not self-evident. By the way, “what a load of garbage” does not constitute an effective rebuttal.

From a practical standpoint, I don’t think it is a good idea to ban abortion in civil law, since there are only a few possible implementations:

• A criminal penalty similar to that for murder, filling prisons with women who attempt or succeed at getting an abortion.
• A criminal penalty similar to that for murder – but one that is rarely used – leading to a legal system where statute doesn’t match the application
• A minor criminal penalty, such as for a lesser felony or misdemeanor – thus making the penalty not fit the purported crime.
• No criminal penalty – what would be the point?

I was just pointing out that I wouldn’t possibly be swayed by that argument and I doubt you would have either…in a million years…if we held guns to your head.

But to check out your rationale:

Interesting. I like your arguments. But your missing some things.

Abortions would be brought way down and so the jails I doubt will be filled with women who had illegeal back street abortions.

In this case abortions could be treated as addictions. Don’t believe me? I have had friends who had 4+ abortions. Counseling would help her more than jail time. I would also like to point out that not every law is enforced. IE border control. I don’t think the goal of such legislation is to send people to jail. It’s to save lives of the unborn.

I am interested in what you see as being the possible punishments for the doctors. How does this fit into your argument?

~RSF

 

[DavidHume]

I’m assuming that a ban on abortion would result in the majority of current abortion providers obeying the law and ceasing their operations. But abortions would continue, just as they did for the hundred years between the Comstock Law and the Roe v. Wade decision. In the majority of cases, there would be no one to prosecute besides the woman and her family/friend, so you can’t use the Moloch-worshipping doctors as a scapegoat.

Simple question: A woman wants an abortion and a friend assists her in performing one. How long do they go to prison?

 

[DavidHume]

In this case abortions could be treated as addictions. Don’t believe me? I have had friends who had 4+ abortions. Counseling would help her more than jail time. I would also like to point out that not every law is enforced. IE border control. I don’t think the goal of such legislation is to send people to jail. It’s to save lives of the unborn.

You can do that without banning abortion, just like you can counsel gambling addicts and alcoholics without banning those things.

I am interested in what you see as being the possible punishments for the doctors. How does this fit into your argument?

I don’t think the majority of abortions would be conducted by doctors if abortion were outlawed.

 

[JimG]

You can do that without banning abortion, just like you can counsel gambling addicts and alcoholics without banning those things.

I don’t think the majority of abortions would be conducted by doctors if abortion were outlawed.

The abortions that occurred prior to 1973 were mostly done by physicians. Roe v Wade just meant that they could go into the abortion business almost exclusively and make a lot more money.

Each state had its own laws to regulate abortions. Abortionists were punished for violations of the law, not women.

Some organizations were pushing for the liberalization of abortion laws, but not many, and they weren’t having much success in the state legislatures; that was the reason for the phony court case. Before Roe, there wasn’t much abortion controversy at all. Controversy (and abortions) only erupted in a major way after Roe v Wade.

(In those days NARAL was the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. They got what they wanted from seven men, and the controversy has ensued ever since.)

Now, a majority of Americans do not even agree with the abortion on demand regime of Roe, and yet we have no vote on it.

 

[Nino]

I have never heard of a developing baby inside of the temporary host to not NOT be a human being…have any come out of the womb as a chimp,or tiger,or what? It was the supremes that changed the deftintion of ‘personhood’ so that he or she would not receive protection under the USConstitution…they changed the words meaning but not the actual baby and so its murder and will always be…no matter how cute the sophistry. Finally even the Psych.Association has returned to its original meaning of homosexuality…that is no longer is a gene but a learned response…this we were taught in college back then…but for a change ,truth has returned…maybe in this discussion it also will rather then these on and on boring discussions of the when does life begin…if one has a belief that…does that not make it OK…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…our nation has lost many wonderful people thru abortion that may have discovered the cure for cancer,aids etc but instead they were murdered by ‘logic’ as so posted above…go figure…brave new world indeed.

 

[JimG]

In reality, the U.S. Constitution says nothing about abortion. The Court should have realized this and refused to take the case. Instead the found privacy rights hiding among penumbras and inferred that these must also include abortion. They could just as easily have decided that equal protection must apply to the unborn, but they took the opposite tack.

When a Court tries to legislate out of whole cloth, this is what happens. The entire issue should be returned to the States.

 

[Janet_S]

This is an excerpt from Wiker and DeMarco’s book, the Architects of the Culture of Death, (pp 155-158):

Thomson’s approach to philosophy is curious. She abandons existential realities and takes flight into the realm of the phantasmagoric. There, ensconced in that self-created world, she makes pronouncements about how people should live and act in our real world. Her view of things proceeds independently from any recognition of an order of either reality or Providence. People-seeds blow into our houses, take root in our carpets, and ask us to be their caretakers. This is science fiction, not the real world. The greatest danger in her thinking, however, is not her approval of abortion, but her portrayal of a world that is so frightening in its arbitrariness and utter inhospitality that the only refuge we can take is within our own isolated will. Thomson’s defense of abortion is also, perhaps unwittingly, a defense of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud. “This body is my body”, she exclaims, indicating that what she wants to safeguard is not motherhood or children or the family, but her body. It is not so much that this moral view is selfish as the fact that it is born of fear, fear that the normal processes in life might turn against us with savage fury and utter irrationality. This is not philosophy, but hysteria.

At any rate, Thomson’s series of analogies brings her to the conclusion that the right to life does not include the right to occupy another person’s body. Again, she has a point, but it is an irrelevant one. It is irrelevant because her concept of “right” does not capture what is primary in the sphere of morality. One might consider the following scenario to test the practicality and even degree of humanity of her position.

The Carpathia arrives at a specific location off the coast of Newfoundland, where it finds the survivors of the Titanic. Through his bullhorn, the captain announces to the sick, anxious, and grieving survivors that he fully respects their right to live, but regrettably, since they do not have tickets, they have no right to board and occupy his ship. There really is not sufficient room, he goes on to explain, and adds that it would be unfair to the paid passengers to deprive them of the pleasant sea voyage they had in mind when they purchased their tickets. How would history remember such a captain? As a pro-rights, pro-choice naval officer? As a clear-eyed, rigorous moral philosopher? Or as a sociopath who is entirely devoid of human sympathy?

The above analogy, however imperfect, is far closer to the situation of a mother with an unwanted pregnancy than is the violinist case. A world of individual rights where each person imagines himself to be a kind of Robinson Crusoe is not livable in any human sense. We can respect individual “rights” and still be inhumane. A world of “rights only” is stunted, inhuman, and tragic.

Morality begins when people are generous and loving, when they exercise their duties to be decent, rather than their rights not to be inconvenienced. Thomson asserts that “we are not morally required to be Good Samaritans or anyway Very Good Samaritans to one another.” Her mindset is always legalistic. She completely misses the point that personal love and generosity are primary and that law, rights, and obligations are secondary.

 

[Janet_S]

I’m assuming that a ban on abortion would result in the majority of current abortion providers obeying the law and ceasing their operations. But abortions would continue, just as they did for the hundred years between the Comstock Law and the Roe v. Wade decision. In the majority of cases, there would be no one to prosecute besides the woman and her family/friend, so you can’t use the Moloch-worshipping doctors as a scapegoat.

Simple question: A woman wants an abortion and a friend assists her in performing one. How long do they go to prison?

The purpose of a law is to orient people in a society to do the right thing. Just because there are some people who ignore a law doesn’t mean we should do away with it. Look how many people steal, kill, and take drugs. I’m sure the number of those people exceeds the number of abortions we would have if it were illegal. And yet I don’t hear anyone using that as a reason to decriminalize stealing or killing.

I’m not sure what the penalty should be in the case above. I would imagine even now in the US, with our extemely liberal abortion laws, the friend of that woman would be prosecuted for some crime. Should it be okay for anyone to perform an abortion?

 

[DavidHume]

The abortions that occurred prior to 1973 were mostly done by physicians.

That’s because they were the only ones with the knowledge. With the Internet, that will no longer be the case.

Roe v Wade just meant that they could go into the abortion business almost exclusively and make a lot more money.

 

[DavidHume]

The purpose of a law is to orient people in a society to do the right thing. Just because there are some people who ignore a law doesn’t mean we should do away with it. Look how many people steal, kill, and take drugs.

Just because something is wrong doesn’t mean there should be a civil law against it. Look at how many people commit adultery, gamble or drink to excess, emotionally abuse their family, engage in gluttony, or commit blasphemy. These things are wrong and yet there is no civil law against them.

 

[st_lucy]

Just because something is wrong doesn’t mean there should be a civil law against it. Look at how many people commit adultery, gamble or drink to excess, emotionally abuse their family, engage in gluttony, or commit blasphemy. These things are wrong and yet there is no civil law against them.

Yes, but in all the cases mentioned above no one is being brutally butchered to death.

 

[DavidHume]

Yes, but in all the cases mentioned above no one is being brutally butchered to death.

I’ll be sure to mention that to any woman who’s gone through a miscarriage (technical term: spontaneous abortion) – “I know you didn’t have any control over it but your child was brutally butchered to death.”

Should be a powerful argument for atheism, since it’s you-know-who that’s doing the butchering in that case.

 

[st_lucy]

I’ll be sure to mention that to any woman who’s gone through a miscarriage (technical term: spontaneous abortion) – “I know you didn’t have any control over it but your child was brutally butchered to death.”

Should be a powerful argument for atheism, since it’s you-know-who that’s doing the butchering in that case.

Well you are talking to a women who has had three children die from miscarriage. And I can tell from seeing my dead children non of them where missing limbs or had a pair of scissors stabbing their heads.

 

[fix]

I’ll be sure to mention that to any woman who’s gone through a miscarriage (technical term: spontaneous abortion) – “I know you didn’t have any control over it but your child was brutally butchered to death.”

Should be a powerful argument for atheism, since it’s you-know-who that’s doing the butchering in that case.

Is there no difference between direct abortion and spontaneous abortion?

 

[gardenswithkids]

I’ll be sure to mention that to any woman who’s gone through a miscarriage (technical term: spontaneous abortion) – “I know you didn’t have any control over it but your child was brutally butchered to death.”

Should be a powerful argument for atheism, since it’s you-know-who that’s doing the butchering in that case.

I see you listed “atheist” as your religion. You may not be familiar with the Biblical understanding of how death came into the world. According to our Catholic faith, death came into the world through sin. The argument that “there must not be a God or He must not be very nice since He allows death” is the subject for a different thread, but since you brought it up I thought I would touch on that here.

Catholic believers who have miscarried (including people like st lucy and I), do not think that God killed our babies. Rather than turning my against my faith, my miscarriages had quite the opposite effect. They helped teach me the precious value of human life and fertility. I learned not to take life for granted and I realize that all of us will eventually die. But God is more powerful than death; I place my hope in Him. Children are blessings from the Lord, and I hope to meet my miscarried babies one day in heaven.

Unlike an abortionist (who can only take away life), my God gives life and defeated death. He alone can restore what was lost through sin. You should get to know Him better. He isn’t the brutal murderer you accuse Him of being.

 

[DavidHume]

Thank you very much for your post, gardenswithkids.

I am sorry to hear of your loss and of st lucy’s losses. My wife and I went through the same thing, but we are fortunate to have a baby daughter now. Naturally, I don’t think God had anything to do with either situation.

 

[JimG]

Well you are talking to a women who has had three children die from miscarriage. And I can tell from seeing my dead children non of them where missing limbs or had a pair of scissors stabbing their heads.

Yes, there is a great difference in having a child die of a miscarriage, and having a child chopped up at the hands of an abortionist.