Why the focus on abortion?

[QwertyGirl]

Well I think it should always be morally and legally acceptable. But I am one person. I am not Catholic, either. So I am probably not the best person to ask.

My objective is not to fight about whether abortion is a moral good or evil, or whether or not it should be legal. However, I do provide corrections when I see the misconceptions some hold about the reasons why woman may choose an abortion. I listed 4, just from situations I know of, personally. I am sure there are at least 104.

I do this because I honestly believe mutual understanding is the key to solving the issue of abortion. And that goes for both sides of the debate.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

However, I do provide corrections when I see the misconceptions

Yes, I see that now.

 

[MamaJewel]

How about other things like finances or services?

What do finances have to do with body to body life support?

One must first be alive before this autonomy can be experienced.
Therefore the right to life is first.

Umm, science can’t definitively say when life ends/ begins.

But a human body, it has right to integrity/autonomy:
even when it’s self-determination is based in biological processes,
when it isn’t conscious,
when it doesn’t have a brain, or even a heart,
when it’s alive and well or sick and frail,
when it’s brain dead,
when it’s about to donate organs or be removed from life support,
and even when it’s dead and decomposing.

I stand with bodily integrity/autonomy as the foundation in the overall scheme of human rights.

Then you can’t violate the bodily integrity of the fetus.

That’s what I’ve said regarding my own personal philosophy on other threads. While I don’t believe law can mandate that a woman be pregnant and give birth, as in, do this or go to jail, I wouldn’t procure an elective abortion either. I also wouldn’t work in a medical facility that did them.

I can also assure you that abortion bans are very problematic. They put the lives of women with true medical necessity for termination of pregnancy at great risk. With abortion bans, doctors are forced to wait until the fetus is dead or the mother is in such physical distress that current medical technology can’t save her life.

 

[EXdrinker]

I was referring to the statement that women seek abortions for personal pleasure or gain.

I meant the choice of participating in the intimate act as the personal pleasure or gain not the abortion. It was written poorly as it could be read either way. I do not think women have abortions for personal pleasure.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

What do finances have to do with body to body life support?

It uses the logic of ownership, which is inherit to all these things.

 

[MamaJewel]

That decision was waived when they became pregnant through voluntary actions

This logic also permits a mother of 6 month old baby to walk out of house and let the baby die.

No. Not even if the woman consented to sex. Each person has the right to decide how much their body will be directly given for the benefit of another. Pregnancy doesn’t happen in a vacuum within the woman’s body. It literally comes out of her bone, blood, etc. Right to self-preservation of one’s body is not waived unless you’ve committed a crime. Having consensual sex is not a crime. Heck, a woman doesn’t even have to be conscious to get pregnant. She doesn’t have to be fertile in the moment either.

Also, if the mother wants to leave, she can turn the child over to the state. She’ll be in jail for child neglect and abandonment if she doesn’t.
But your reasoning is one of the primary reasons women have abortions.

If you use your autonomy to engage in an act that knowingly can result in another person being created and will grow inside your body then you have made the choice to allow that life to be formed. Why do you then think it moral to selfishly kill that life that you willfully allowed to be created? Why would a civil society want such a selfish person who makes narcisistic choices for personal pleasure or gain at the expense of others to be allowed to act in such a manner?

The fetus lives at the expense of the woman’s body. Why does it have any more right to her body than she does? Why should a fetus be able to use her body for its own benefit, at the expense of her body? She had sex, which is a normal human function. That doesn’t mean she intended to get pregnant. She might have been on birth control.

Why is it not selfish to kill a life you helped create?

You speak as if this life was created in an instant and then immediately became a full person able to sustain physiological function outside of the womb. Pregnancy is a long-drawn out process. I would agree with you that it is selfish to kill a life you helped create because this implies that birth has occurred. Until its born, its being created using the woman’s body. So quit calling women selfish.

It uses the logic of ownership, which is inherit to all these things.

I still don’t follow. Ownership is about property. We own guns and corporations, not bodies. Bodies have bodily integrity, autonomy, life, privacy…not ownership.

I don’t know where you’re trying to go with this, but it makes me feel grossed out. Like when I was an 11 to 14 year old child and was frequently solicited for prostitution by men in my neighborhood. A human body is not to be used as a means to an end.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

not ownership.

If you don’t own it then it doesn’t make sense that you have any rights to it at all.

I don’t know where you’re trying to go with this, but it makes me feel grossed out. Like when I was an 11 to 14 year old child and was frequently solicited for prostitution by men in my neighborhood. A human body is not to be used as a means to an end.

I’d rather not bring things like that into this.

 

[MamaJewel]

If you don’t own it then it doesn’t make sense that you have any rights to it at all.

I’d rather not bring things like that into this.

Well, the way you spoke about ownership has brought it up for me. So it’s here now.
I didn’t own my body as an 11 year old and I still don’t own it 4 decades later.
But, I have the right to my body. I have the right of bodily integrity/autonomy, life, privacy, liberty, all those wonderful ideas that my forbears fought and died to have.

I got it.
It was the pimp.
He owned those prostitutes that walked the streets.
I walked those streets, too. To go to school.
But the pimp, he didn’t own me.
He protected me though.
He’d get ugly with the men who were soliciting me, if he caught them.

I have the right to my body. Even after I am dead, my body has the right to be treated humanely, with dignity.
I am not owned, not now, not ever. And I have the right to my body so I can have a right to live my most true, authentic life.
I am not owned.
I am free.

 

[Aquinas11]

Each person has the right to decide how much their body will be directly given for the benefit of another.

And she decided to give her body for benefit of a baby when she decided to engage in activity where that is foreseeable consequence.

In same way a person decides to gain weight when they decide to eat food where that is foreseeable consequence

You don’t seem to believe women are capable of recognizing the foreseeable consequence of their voluntary decisions and that they are able to recognize a decision to engage in an activity is a decision to accept foreseeable outcomes of said activity. That’s a pretty low view of women’s cognitive function

 

[vz71]

Umm, science can’t definitively say when life ends/ begins.

It is not disputable that from conception all characteristics of life are displayed.

So again, the right to life is first.

 

[vz71]

The fetus lives at the expense of the woman’s body. Why does it have any more right to her body than she does? Why should a fetus be able to use her body for its own benefit, at the expense of her body?

What exactly do you think the reproductive organs are built for?

 

[MamaJewel]

It is not disputable that from conception all characteristics of life are displayed.

So again, the right to life is first.

It is very disputable when life begins and ends. An organism’s ability to maintain homeostasis is one of the unmistakable characteristics of life. It is probably one of the top three markers of life, including cellular structure and metabolism.

Are you saying that a developing embryo/ fetus isn’t alive because it can not maintain homeostasis without utilizing the woman’s body? It’s fact that if a pregnant woman’s body cannot maintain homeostasis and she doesn’t have medical intervention, she and the fetus die.

So again, the right to bodily integrity/ autonomy comes first.

What exactly do you think the reproductive organs are built for?

I have heard this argument made before. Reproductive organs are built for reproduction.

I have heard the counter-argument that a woman’s body doesn’t contain all of the necessary organs to carry a pregnancy. That the placenta is an organ that forms to sustain the pregnancy/fetus and it doesn’t originate from the woman’s body. Hence, the “nature fallacy” because the placenta isn’t natural to her body and neither is the tissue of the fetus.
Which leads to the argument that no one has the right to connect to the organ of another without consent.

Then MamaJewel peeves everyone off because she has to state that the placenta is 90% fetal tissue and 10% maternal decidua, which results in a discussion on biological processes and consent, yada, yada…

Again, I’m standing with bodily integrity/ autonomy.

 

[vz71]

It is very disputable

You are in the very uncomfortable position of explaining how something that shows signs of life is not alive.

The right to life is the first right. For without life, none of the others can be experienced.
Autonomy is simply a condition. One must be alive to experience it.

 

[vz71]

Reproductive organs are built for reproduction.

So they are not built for the mother at all.

 

[MamaJewel]

And she decided to give her body for benefit of a baby when she decided to engage in activity where that is foreseeable consequence.

You don’t seem to believe women are capable of recognizing the foreseeable consequence of their voluntary decisions and that they are able to recognize a decision to engage in an activity is a decision to accept foreseeable outcomes of said activity. That’s a pretty low view of women’s cognitive function

Women are quite capable of seeing outcomes. I also know that women have sexual intercourse for many reasons, and many times it doesn’t have to do with their own personal pleasure or gain or the desire for pregnancy.

That said, consent to sexual intercourse is, well, consent to sexual intercourse.
It’s consent to sex in the agreed manner in which sex will be performed.

You know, if the moment a woman conceived, she actually had a baby inside of her, I might agree with your argument. But it’s not a baby. It’s potentially a baby. It’s potentially a person.

As far as it being human, we can scientifically say that it is a human zygote/embryo/fetus before it’s able to live outside of the woman. Once the fetus has reached a stage of viability, we can fairly say that the woman owes the developing human inside of her a level of beneficence.
But certainly that beneficence is not extended beyond the the woman’s right to her bodily integrity/ autonomy.

Nobody is legally obligated to give their body for the direct use by another under any circumstance. Not even the most hardened criminal. Criminals can be convicted and given the death penalty but they can’t be mandated to provide their organs or body for science.

In law, we have to treat each person equally. Society doesn’t suspend the rights of people with legal capacity unless they have committed a crime or are legally deemed incompetent by a court with jurisdiction over their case.

Are you saying being pregnant is a criminal activity? Or that pregnant women are incompetent?

 

[IQ170]

Nobody is legally obligated to give their body for the direct use by another under any circumstance.

How many times does this need to be repeated?

Even if a criminal volitionally causes harm which threatens the victim’s life, the criminal cannot be compelled to give even renewable bodily resources (like blood or plasma) to save the life of the victim. If the criminal happens to die in the attack, and some of his organs could save the life of the victim, his organs cannot be harvested without a prior consent.

Now it could be argued if this right to bodily integrity (which extends beyond the grave) is a good idea, or not, but for the time being this is the status quo.

 

[MamaJewel]

You are in the very uncomfortable position of explaining how something that shows signs of life is not alive.

The right to life is the first right. For without life, none of the others can be experienced.
Autonomy is simply a condition. One must be alive to experience it.

You are in that uncomfortable position as well because the developing human embryo/zygote can’t maintain homeostasis in and of itself, so it isn’t biologically alive by your logic. That’s why we have the term “viability”. Also, because a human in the early stages of development doesn’t meet current standards of consciousness, it can’t experience life, which means it isn’t really alive in many folks way of thinking.

I may agree with you in part that autonomy is simply a condition, if you are making that argument in support of self-determination alone.

When I mention bodily integrity/ autonomy, it supports that a person has the right to an intact body, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and the ability direct one’s life through self-determination, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Human beings have the right to their body, whether alive or dead. Think about it, we have to have a body to have any chance of life. We determine if something is alive or dead by observing it’s body.

Just so I know what page you are on, please define for me what you mean by right to life?

Reproductive organs are built for reproduction.

I’m not following you.

I once told my health provider, “Just take it out!”, referring to my obstinate uterus.
Health provider’s response, " We don’t just do that anymore".
Reproductive organs are built for us. Help keep the heart healthy, among other things, from what I’ve been taught. At my age, Aunt Flo is a blessing, not a curse. Come on, estrogen!

As far as the placenta as an organ of pregnancy is concerned, we don’t know. But thinking about it, what if it is there for the mother’s benefit? Good scientific hypothesis to start with.

 

[vz71]

You are in that uncomfortable position as well because the developing human embryo/zygote can’t maintain homeostasis

Homeostasis is not a sign of life. Life can well exist without it.
Growth however is…among other signs.
From conception, we are very clearly dealing with life.
And it is from the assurance of this that all else can be experienced.

 

[vz71]

When I mention bodily integrity/ autonomy, it supports that a person has the right to an intact body, physically, mentally, and spiritually, and the ability direct one’s life through self-determination, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

But you do not mention the right to not have their life ended by another.
How does one have self determination with no life?

 

[Aquinas11]

But it’s not a baby. It’s potentially a baby. It’s potentially a person.

Nobody is legally obligated to give their body for the direct use by another under any circumstance

You’ve refuted your own argument - above you say it’s neither a baby or a person inside the woman thus there is no “another”, per your argument, that the woman is giving her body to

Women are quite capable of seeing outcomes

Not according to your argument that they only consent to an act (sex) and not foreseeable consequences of said act (pregnancy).