Interacting with a pro-choice individual on their terms

[Muze]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m anti-abortion, and I think the unborn ought to be afforded fundamental rights including life.

However, since the actual scientific argument about when life begins becomes a mire, I came up with another tack for dealing with the pro-choice argument on their terms.

Effectively, they say that abortion is a woman’s right because it’s her body and she has the right to do what she wishes with it.

Well, here’s the counter argument:

When a woman engage in coitus with a man and willingly allows him to release sperm into her reproductive system, she consents to to use of her body to gestate a fetus to term. And thus, even if a woman has a right to her own body, the consent given means she has an obligation to fulfill.

It doesn’t matter what means she took to prevent pregnancy, it is universally known that sex produces offspring. And, as such, when offspring are produced, the woman contented to it forming there and consented to the use of her body until birth.

And thus the argument about a woman’s right to her body falls apart on the issue of her consent to give up that right for a period of time.

 

[Muze]

I think I’ve come up with a good analogy:

I have the right to go where I wish in public spaces. However, if I choose to board a subway train, regardless of the purpose of boarding that train, I have consented to being taken to the next subway station, even if I did not want to go there. Thus, I gave up my right to go where I wish (temporarily) when I consented to the subway train taking me to a particular station by getting on the train.

 

[Least]

“Consider the notion of abortion. Many would argue that it is a woman’s right to choose
what she does with her body. Except that, even with today’s scientific and technological
advances, nothing can surpass the success rate of intercourse as a manner of human conception, and nothing, short of sterilization, guarantees its prevention like abstinence. Abortion therefore, is just a small symptom of a larger problem, which is irresponsibility, and feigned ignorance of
the significance of the previously mentioned activity.
Human conception, resultant children (new people) and posterity are often the, overt,
primary drivers for a society. The overt drivers. The author here posits that they are the only
true drivers for maintaining societal agreement for the reason must extend past today, by
definition, and tomorrow by logical conclusion.
The driver for a continued societal agreement that extends past tomorrow will include
new generations of people. Thereby, more people (new generations) compound exponentially the need for, and the individuals involved in the agreement (the trappings and blessings of society). The consequence of this interrelation is paramount to the continuance of societal armistice. To ignore this, or downplay its importance is to risk societal agreement [invite ruin].
Continuing with the example; it cannot be said, that a woman can ignore or discard the
societal agreement she has formed with a person of her invitation [her child], but maintain or value the societal agreement she maintains with the Author, or another. It is no small matter to say that the life [by handicap] of an individual entered into societal agreement [by default/proxy] is meaningless, yet that of another is valued. Ergo, if you want to chuck this ‘supposed’ small part of our agreement, the Author might be willing to chuck the rest.
Figure 13
Therefore, by the same example, if a woman has been given the right to CHOOSE
intercourse [uncorrupted by compunction], and the Author fully supports the assumption of the complete weight of choice, risk, and consequence of each and every party to it, jointly and severally, then again, by the self-same choice, the woman has also chosen the overwhelming possibility to create another person. For, wheresoever by mutual intercourse the pairing is mutually responsible for the activity, still, ultimately, and by the self-same choice the woman is INDIVIDUALLY liable for the creation [outcome/consequence] until at least the fruition of labor.
If a person [in this case, the most obvious example, the woman] has chosen intercourse,
and, in her opinion, blown-it, then the Author contends, the woman should not be given further opportunities to make ‘bad’ choices.
If a woman’s choice for intercourse has been usurped, or if her life is threatened by
continued carriage, then society cannot ask her for anything else in this matter [3].” (TERMS, J.M.Thomas R., 2012)

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m anti-abortion, and I think the unborn ought to be afforded fundamental rights including life.

However, since the actual scientific argument about when life begins becomes a mire, I came up with another tack for dealing with the pro-choice argument on their terms.

The argument about when life begins becomes a mire? Doesn’t life obviously begin when there is an organism, that is, a zygote? How could the line possibly be drawn anywhere else?

Most sophisticated pro-choicers do not insist that life begins later; they just claim that embryonic life is not the life of a person.

Effectively, they say that abortion is a woman’s right because it’s her body and she has the right to do what she wishes with it.

This is a bit of a straw man, but OK.

When a woman engage in coitus with a man and willingly allows him to release sperm into her reproductive system, she consents to to use of her body to gestate a fetus to term. And thus, even if a woman has a right to her own body, the consent given means she has an obligation to fulfill.

But you can only have an obligation to entities. The entity she has an obligation to is, say, an embryo. The crux of the issue, then, is this: is the embryo a person, with personal rights, or an animal, with animal rights? If it is merely an animal, then the obligation to gestate the fetus to term may be a relatively insignificant obligation, similar to our obligations toward cows.

Mind you, I believe that the embryo is a person. But pro-choice arguments get pretty subtle, and I’m not sure we can avoid confronting them on the personhood claim.

 

[Muze]

The argument about when life begins becomes a mire? Doesn’t life obviously begin when there is an organism, that is, a zygote? How could the line possibly be drawn anywhere else?

Most sophisticated pro-choicers do not insist that life begins later; they just claim that embryonic life is not the life of a person.

Correct.

This is a bit of a straw man, but OK.

What’s straw man about it? You’ve never heard this argument?

But you can only have an obligation to entities. The entity she has an obligation to is, say, an embryo.

Yes. And?

The crux of the issue, then, is this: is the embryo a person, with personal rights, or an animal, with animal rights?

Doesn’t really matter. Each entity has a right to be treated as the entity that it is. If I consent to care for and milk your cows for a month, I don’t have the right to kill them because they are inconvenient to me.

If it is merely an animal, then the obligation to gestate the fetus to term may be a relatively insignificant obligation, similar to our obligations toward cows.

So, we have an obligation to treat cows like cows, spiders like spiders, and a human fetus like a human fetus. That’s fine.

Mind you, I believe that the embryo is a person. But pro-choice arguments get pretty subtle, and I’m not sure we can avoid confronting them on the personhood claim.

I haven’t made a claim of personhood. I’ve made a claim that the woman consents to gestating a fetus when she voluntarily engages in activity that leads to pregnancy. The fetus doesn’t have to be a person for the argument to work.

 

[polytropos]

However, since the actual scientific argument about when life begins becomes a mire, I came up with another tack for dealing with the pro-choice argument on their terms.

The problem is that it’s not even a scientific argument. You can’t find dignity or rights in an unborn child using science not because the unborn child doesn’t have dignity or rights but because you couldn’t find them in an adult human either.

It is a philosophical claim that human fetuses are not human persons. Any metric for determining personhood (law, intelligence, capability to feel pain, etc.) is necessarily arbitrary and constructed. Such a metric cannot be more substantial than the claim that human fetuses are persons.

Effectively, they say that abortion is a woman’s right because it’s her body and she has the right to do what she wishes with it.

Well, here’s the counter argument:

When a woman engage in coitus with a man and willingly allows him to release sperm into her reproductive system, she consents to to use of her body to gestate a fetus to term. And thus, even if a woman has a right to her own body, the consent given means she has an obligation to fulfill.

It doesn’t matter what means she took to prevent pregnancy, it is universally known that sex produces offspring. And, as such, when offspring are produced, the woman contented to it forming there and consented to the use of her body until birth.

And thus the argument about a woman’s right to her body falls apart on the issue of her consent to give up that right for a period of time.

I agree with your argument, although I’m not sure it would convince anyone who is pro choice.

Some pro choice individuals make the argument that no one can force a woman to use her body for gestating a fetus in the same way that no one could force a person to donate an organ, ie. if someone needs one of your organs to live and you don’t want to give it to them, then you are free not to give it to them. The problem with this situation is that it is not actually an analogy. As you note, the possibility of pregnancy is admitted during sex. Once one is pregnant, it is not a matter of choosing not to provide your body (to take no action) because to take no action is to continue with the decision you’ve already made. Positive action, in this case, is taken to end a life, which is not acceptable.

 

[Muze]

I agree with your argument, although I’m not sure it would convince anyone who is pro choice.

Some pro choice individuals make the argument that no one can force a woman to use her body for gestating a fetus in the same way that no one could force a person to donate an organ, ie. if someone needs one of your organs to live and you don’t want to give it to them, then you are free not to give it to them. The problem with this situation is that it is not actually an analogy. As you note, the possibility of pregnancy is admitted during sex. Once one is pregnant, it is not a matter of choosing not to provide your body (to take no action) because to take no action is to continue with the decision you’ve already made. Positive action, in this case, is taken to end a life, which is not acceptable.

It isn’t necessarily to convince a pro-choice person, but rather to disarm their “she has a right to do what she wants with her body” argument. Once you disassociate that claim to rights from their argument, it becomes increasingly harder to defend.

 

[polytropos]

I haven’t made a claim of personhood. I’ve made a claim that the woman consents to gestating a fetus when she voluntarily engages in activity that leads to pregnancy. The fetus doesn’t have to be a person for the argument to work.

Not exactly. Your argument still requires the insistence of some of the fetus’s rights.

Pregnancy is a known consequence of sex. Those who willingly engage in sex know that pregnancy is possible. All that this demonstrates in and of itself is that it would be reasonable to disallow abortion, because people have already consented to pregnancy through the sexual act. It does not really suggest that the status quo must change, just that the burden placed on women would be reasonable and fair.

Here is an analogy: Gaining weight is a known consequence of eating McDonald’s everyday. Those who willingly eat McDonald’s everyday know that it is possible that they gain weight. This does not in itself make it wrong for someone who eats McDonald’s everyday to get liposuction; liposuction would have to be in some way immoral in itself. However, one might argue that if liposuction were immoral, then these would be reasonable grounds to ban it.

 

[Deus_tecum]

It is an absurd notion that the baby in the womb is “the woman’s body.” It is a separate human being she is carrying in her womb. This does not matter to the pro-abortion advocates. Yes, I said pro-abortion. I don’t mince words. If someone supports “choice” and one of those choices is abortion, they are supporting abortion. I get really tired of those types who say “I am against abortion but I am for choice.”

Anyway, no argument seems to work to change the mind of the pro-abortion advocates. They have set their minds on a lie and surrounded it with lies. True information doesn’t get in.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

What’s straw man about it? You’ve never heard this argument?

Of course I’ve heard this argument. But it’s absurdly weak, and it makes the pro-choice side look particularly weak. I’d rather look at the best argument pro-choicers have, and find holes in that.

Doesn’t really matter. Each entity has a right to be treated as the entity that it is. If I consent to care for and milk your cows for a month, I don’t have the right to kill them because they are inconvenient to me.

The “consent” idea here is good, but your metaphor doesn’t work. If you say that a woman who has sex consents to take care of the embryo that results, this is question-begging; pro-choicers will just deny the premise. They will say that the woman consents to an activity which has the unintended result of creating an animal. But suppose I breed a cow – does this mean that I have no right to slaughter it? Of course not, under conventional morality.

So we have to talk about what kind of entity the embryo is. Otherwise, we are dealing with an animal rights issue.

 

[Least]

Originally Posted by Muze
Don’t get me wrong, I’m anti-abortion, and I think the unborn ought to be afforded fundamental rights including life.

However, since the actual scientific argument about when life begins becomes a mire, I came up with another tack for dealing with the pro-choice argument on their terms.

The argument about when life begins becomes a mire? Doesn’t life obviously begin when there is an organism, that is, a zygote? How could the line possibly be drawn anywhere else?

Most sophisticated pro-choicers do not insist that life begins later; they just claim that embryonic life is not the life of a person.

Consider the matter in a different matter: In vitro fertilization.

“Again, temporally, the most important questions reveal themselves when the argument is
drawn into tomorrow (stretched out past today). Thus is demonstrated: Consequence in the immediate versus consequence in the indefinite.
Thereby, when viewed in the known entirety, of artificial insemination, at least one major
question stands, and that is: even with 100% success, throughout the machinations of artificial insemination, what happens, and what should happen, to what is never used in the creation of others” [the remainder]? What is the remainder product? What does societal agreement withstand as to its disposition?
What, in truth, is the sustainable shared-value of our physical minutia? Clearly, as
proven in the relatively momentary history of artificial insemination where no better than one in four embryos are used to create people, what we figuratively and actually are, has lost value.
Strangely enough too is that, in seeking to create others, and in, also, being so devalued,
man, (mankind, members of societies), in his physical minutia, has also managed to become currency in common commerce. **That is to say, that which is us can be quantified by a pecuniary sum, and thereafter be physically traded for money.**The flag can then be thrown “Who cares? “Are we not sacrificing [in PRIORITY] to
create progeny that not only, in themselves, require tomorrow, but also require my further outlay [in priority] to provide it”? “Does not my notion that MY children will specifically cement fast MY notion to the idea of tomorrow than the prospect [idea] of supporting anyone else’s children?”
The answer is only possibly. However the Machiavellian approach is a poison pill in the
furtherance of [a] society, or the furtherance of a society that can be furthered.
Holding the tattered lineage of it up against the timeline of human history it does not
equate with any other society that has managed to eek out continued existence within the
construction of tomorrow.” (TERMS, J.M. Thomas R., 2013) [emphasis mine]

 

[Joe_5859]

I don’t think you’re going to get much mileage out of this approach. The pro-choice person is likely to immediately counter with cases of rape/incest. Those women consented to no such thing. If this is the foundation of the pro-life argument, we’d have no choice but to accept that abortion in the cases of rape and incest was acceptable.

Further, I don’t think that they’re going to find it particularly convincing that women consent to such a possibilty when they use birth control. I think you’re right that the very nature of the act itself is open to life --whether or not the person tries to frustrate the process. But you’ll have a hard time convincing them that a person is consenting to that which they took active steps to prevent.

It all comes down to personhood. I like the SLED test. The only difference between the born and unborn is Size, Level of development, Environment, and Degree of dependency. None of those differences render a person a non-person.

And if there’s another person in there, it’s not just the woman’s body we’re talking about.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I don’t think you’re going to get much mileage out of this approach. The pro-choice person is likely to immediately counter with cases of rape/incest. Those women consented to no such thing. If this is the foundation of the pro-life argument, we’d have no choice but to accept that abortion in the cases of rape and incest was acceptable.

Not really. An analogy: If I agree with a group of people that a certain portion of killings are morally reprehensible, this does not mean that I’m claiming that *only *those murders are morally reprehensible. If we could win the battle to say that MOST abortions are cases of murder, I think that would be a partial battle worth winning.

I mean, sure, we want more. But hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

 

[Joe_5859]

Not really. An analogy: If I agree with a group of people that a certain portion of killings are morally reprehensible, this does not mean that I’m claiming that *only *those murders are morally reprehensible. If we could win the battle to say that MOST abortions are cases of murder, I think that would be a partial battle worth winning.

I mean, sure, we want more. But hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Fair enough. I don’t disagree with you. I’m just trying to anticipate the response to the OP’s argument. I feel like any time the rape/incest “exception” gets brought up, we’re already losing the argument on the emotional level – even if not the logical level.

But, yes. if we managed to ban all abortions except those in the case of rape and incest, we would be eliminating somewhere around 97% of all abortions. So, yes, that would definitely be worth winning.

 

[BillP]

Well, here’s the counter argument:

When a woman engage in coitus with a man and willingly allows him to release sperm into her reproductive system, she consents to to use of her body to gestate a fetus to term. And thus, even if a woman has a right to her own body, the consent given means she has an obligation to fulfill…

So you’ll accept abortion in cases of rape?

 

[Muze]

So you’ll accept abortion in cases of rape?

No, but that’s a different argument.

 

[Muze]

I don’t think you’re going to get much mileage out of this approach. The pro-choice person is likely to immediately counter with cases of rape/incest. Those women consented to no such thing. If this is the foundation of the pro-life argument, we’d have no choice but to accept that abortion in the cases of rape and incest was acceptable.

Not necessarily. That just requires a different (and easier) argument.

Further, I don’t think that they’re going to find it particularly convincing that women consent to such a possibilty when they use birth control. I think you’re right that the very nature of the act itself is open to life --whether or not the person tries to frustrate the process. But you’ll have a hard time convincing them that a person is consenting to that which they took active steps to prevent.

I haven’t to this point. I just characterize birth control as an attempt to avoid what they know they’d have to consent to. (I even thought of asking whether women would use birth control when they know plan B and oral abortion are available… The obvious answer is “yes”, but then the question is “WHY”?

It all comes down to personhood. I like the SLED test. The only difference between the born and unborn is Size, Level of development, Environment, and Degree of dependency. None of those differences render a person a non-person.

You don’t have to argue personhood in my argument. It’s intended to disarm the claim that a woman has the right to do with her body as she chooses.

And if there’s another person in there, it’s not just the woman’s body we’re talking about.

Right… and the first step is to disassociate the idea of a woman doing what she chooses with her body from that including abortion by showing that she willingly gives up that right when she voluntarily engages in coitus.

 

[Muze]

Fair enough. I don’t disagree with you. I’m just trying to anticipate the response to the OP’s argument. I feel like any time the rape/incest “exception” gets brought up, we’re already losing the argument on the emotional level – even if not the logical level.

I usually ask the pro-abortion person to set aside that 3-5% of abortions for the moment, as that’s another argument and deal with the 95-97% of abortions that are from voluntary pregnancy.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Fair enough. I don’t disagree with you. I’m just trying to anticipate the response to the OP’s argument. I feel like any time the rape/incest “exception” gets brought up, we’re already losing the argument on the emotional level – even if not the logical level.

I think we’re losing it on emotional level because we don’t fight back emotionally. Simply say the truth, right? Nearly all of the abortions of this country do not occur because of rape or incest. Suppose that we said that some other type of action should always be legal because it should sometimes be legal? Are we allowed to kill people generally simply because *some *killings are justified by self-defense?

To be sure, I like broader arguments, too. But we’re not going to win the fight over abortions in the case of rape anytime soon, so I think we should put it on the back burner.

 

[polytropos]

Further, I don’t think that they’re going to find it particularly convincing that women consent to such a possibilty when they use birth control. I think you’re right that the very nature of the act itself is open to life --whether or not the person tries to frustrate the process. But you’ll have a hard time convincing them that a person is consenting to that which they took active steps to prevent.

Except almost anyone using birth control realizes that it is not 100% effective. Pregnancy is a potential consequence of any sex, “protected” or not. The fact that someone has taken measures to reduce its frequency does not absolve them from acknowledging that it is a possibility. They are still consenting to the possibility of pregnancy.

In other words, the argument that anyone is forcing anyone else to be an “incubator” holds no water. When you have consensual sex, birth control or not, you have consented to all potential consequences of sex. Any limitations on abortion, so long as they are promulgated, are not forcing women to be incubators for babies that they don’t want.