Considering the legal framework for abortion

[ajaxfetish]

and that is what I would want for my child if I was a woman carrying it as well.

A rather cavalier statement to make when you are not a woman and have never been pregnant.

Children are a large responsibility; human life in your care. It is not something that should be entered into lightly or without love.

And yet you think a mother should be legally obligated to risk sacrificing her life for the unborn child, meaning it would grow up without a mother to take responsibility and care for it. In situations where there is no father in the picture, this seems particularly inconsistent. Children are a large responsibility . . . which you should just hope someone will accept on your behalf.

I think most men and women out there would give their life for their children. Is it right to kill a baby who has ~100% chance at life when you have a <50% chance of living as well - to sentence that baby to a 100% chance of death so that you can enjoy a 100% chance at life even though it is likely that you will live?

I hope you're right, and that most men and women would be prepared to give their lives for their children. I'm sure that at least a great many are. But should the government tell them that they have to? Is it really a sacrifice if you're forced to do it, anyway? Again, it's very easy for a man, who will never face this risk, to decide that others should be required to give up their lives for the things he cares about.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this point at all, Vuk.

Ajax

edit:

You have no right to deny someone life because YOU think their life is not worth living.

As I noted above, that sounds an awful lot like what you yourself are doing, though only on a probabilistic level.

edit 2: As far as other posters' contributions, I find BG's and PVC's arguments both very compelling. I think this is a very tangled and morally difficult question, and I have been unable to fully determine my own thoughts on the matter. I shall definitely be considering your posts as I leave my thoughts on this to continue fermenting.

[Vuk]

A rather cavalier statement to make when you are not a woman and have never been pregnant.


And yet you think a mother should be legally obligated to risk sacrificing her life for the unborn child, meaning it would grow up without a mother to take responsibility and care for it. In situations where there is no father in the picture, this seems particularly inconsistent. Children are a large responsibility . . . which you should just hope someone will accept on your behalf.


I hope you're right, and that most men and women would be prepared to give their lives for their children. I'm sure that at least a great many are. But should the government tell them that they have to? Is it really a sacrifice if you're forced to do it, anyway? Again, it's very easy for a man, who will never face this risk, to decide that others should be required to give up their lives for the things he cares about.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this point at all, Vuk.

Ajax

edit:

As I noted above, that sounds an awful lot like what you yourself are doing, though only on a probabilistic level.

Because I am not a woman and have never been pregnant I cannot know that I would be willing to risk my life for and sacrifice for someone I love? I have been in situations before where I have had to put my life at considerable risk to save a family member. I can say with certainty that I would put everything on the line for them, and I know for a fact that they would put everything on the line for me. It is not cavalier; it is family. You have a responsibility to your family. You have a responsibility for the safety. My dad died when I was 14 and I had 3 younger brothers and two older sisters who looked up to me in many ways for the security and leadership that he used to provide. I was put in a position where I was largely responsible for the safety of my family if any should happen, and I was committed to fulfilling that responsibility, even if there were risks. I am not saying I am a great person (as I said, I know anyone in my family would put it on the line for anyone else in the family), but simply that I do not have to be a woman to understand what it is like to risk one's safety or one's life for their family.
I had no choice in being born into my family, but still felt a responsibility toward them. If someone doesn't think they can handle that responsibility, they simply do not have to get pregnant!

You would not be forcing people to sacrifice (pregnancies with a high chance of harm or death to a woman are extremely rare), because they would choose to get pregnant or not. You would simply be forcing them to take responsibility for the life they create. To reiterate, if they do not want the responsibility, they do not need to create the life.

[ajaxfetish]

Because I am not a woman and have never been pregnant I cannot know that I would be willing to risk my life for and sacrifice for someone I love?

That's a very bizarre conclusion to come to, since I said nothing of the kind. Your original quote was:

That is what I would want for my child, and that is what I would want for my child if I was a woman carrying it as well.

In context, you said that you would want your wife to risk dying to bear your child, and that if you were a woman in that circumstance, you would want to risk dying yourself. I did not at all claim that you cannot know whether you would be willing to risk your life for someone else, I suggested that you cannot know how you would feel if you were a pregnant woman. Would you want to take the risk? Maybe. But it's awful hard to know how you would react in an extremely emotional and dangerous situation you've never been in, and guesses from the safety of a computer seat might be way off the mark. One way or another, it's not a risk you might ever actually face, and so it's not particularly flattering that you would demand that others face it. It's rather like if I were disabled in such a way that I could never be put into the military, and I argued that our forces should have a no-retreat policy and all be forced to die in a losing battle, because I would want to die for my country rather than run away if I were in their position.

Ajax

[Viking]

We treat our own species differently from a moral perspective.

Until we have encountered another specie considered just as smart as humans, we haven't really tried out moral dilemmas like that. I think the moral equation would have a different perspective then; and that's why I seek out creatures of similar intellectual capacity as foetus. It is what an abortion kills, only that it is part of the same specie as us.

Btw, 'eating' here implies 'killed'. What you do with the dead cow is not important in this aspect..

[Viking]

Until we have encountered another specie considered just as smart as humans, we haven't really tried out moral dilemmas like that. I think the moral equation would have a different perspective then; and that's why I seek out creatures of similar intellectual capacity as foetus. It is what an abortion kills, only that it is part of the same specie as us.

Btw, 'eating' here implies 'killed'. What you do with the dead cow is not important in this aspect..

To elaborate: since I find nothing wrong in killing a younger foetus in itself, the limiting aspect would have to be what impact abortion has on society. Thus, disallowing abortion above a certain number of weeks could make sense because abortion may indirectly dehumanise society otherwise.

[econ21]

This is an interesting moral issue and I am grateful to BQ and PVC for thoughtful posts on it. They both seem to start from a common "all or nothing" premise that a fetus is a human being with a right to life from conception. Consideration of practical issues leads them to nonetheless advocate legal abortion up to some point, whether 12 weeks or 24. I find their conclusions attractive, although I am not fully persuaded by their premise, which appears to come from religious doctrine that I don't follow.

From a non-religious ethical perspective, the development of the unborn from conception to birth seems a continuum. At conception, the fertilised egg has the potential to be a person but I do not assign much moral significance to it's existence. It would not grieve me - as a dispassionate moral observer[1] - if for some reason, it was terminated; for example, due to natural abortion. To me, it's just a collection of unfeeling, unthinking cells albeit with tremendous potential. However, at birth, all of us would regard the baby as having the same full rights and importance as other people. And we would regard it as a tragedy if ill befell the newborn. The difficult question for the non-religious is deciding at which point the transition arises. I suspect no hard and fast demarcation can be found - the unborn's development is continuous, not discrete. As such we are dealing with a moral variant of the general philosophical problem of "the paradox of the heap" (when is a pile of grains of sand a heap? not two, but how many exactly?).

Legislation (and BQ in his practical considerations) often looks at viability outside the womb, but this does not seem compelling when determining moral value. The issue is about whether the fetus should be allowed to continue inside the womb, so it is not obvious why a counterfactual of life outside should be relevant. Nor is it obvious that improvements in medical technology mean the same fetus should have greater moral value.

PVC mentions brain activity and this seems to me a more relevant criterion, although given his pro-life premise I suspect he is may partly be using it as a debating point to constrain pro-choice advocates. I think there is an analogy here with the animal rights, another case where we consider the moral value of beings that are not as developed as ourselves in certain respects[2]. Whether a being can feel pain is relevant if we are considering an act that may harm them. The case of using anaesthetic in later abortions seems prima facie overwhelming. But for killing, rather than hurting, I would look at their capability for feeling pleasure and the value of their experiences. I know people talk of the unborn responding to music, their parents' voices and since newborns experience pleasure at feeding, can expect some later fetuses may also enjoy basic pleasures. Consequently, I think one can make case for regarding the unborn, at least beyond some stage of development, as having lives of some moral value that ought to be protected. Quite how many weeks this would be, I don't know but suspect it lies somewhere in the range from PVCs 12 weeks to BGs 24 weeks. Consequently, as I say, I incline to support BG and PVCs conclusions, albeit starting from a very different premise.

[1]I know that as potential parent one might be very grieved by this.
[2]I write that as a vegetarian.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Until we have encountered another specie considered just as smart as humans, we haven't really tried out moral dilemmas like that. I think the moral equation would have a different perspective then; and that's why I seek out creatures of similar intellectual capacity as foetus. It is what an abortion kills, only that it is part of the same specie as us.

Btw, 'eating' here implies 'killed'. What you do with the dead cow is not important in this aspect..

Well, a newborn has significantly lower mental abilities than a puppy, so I don't think there's a lot of milage in your attampt at analogy I'm afraid.

When did establishing a legal framework become a chance to throw morals and moralistic blackmail around?

Well, while we should not "legislate morality" in the sense that we should not tell people what to think our legislation should still be morallly robust.

PVC mentions brain activity and this seems to me a more relevant criterion, although given his pro-life premise I suspect he is may partly be using it as a debating point to constrain pro-choice advocates. I think there is an analogy here with the animal rights, another case where we consider the moral value of beings that are not as developed as ourselves in certain respects[2]. Whether a being can feel pain is relevant if we are considering an act that may harm them. The case of using anaesthetic in later abortions seems prima facie overwhelming. But for killing, rather than hurting, I would look at their capability for feeling pleasure and the value of their experiences. I know people talk of the unborn responding to music, their parents' voices and since newborns experience pleasure at feeding, can expect some later fetuses may also enjoy basic pleasures. Consequently, I think one can make case for regarding the unborn, at least beyond some stage of development, as having lives of some moral value that ought to be protected. Quite how many weeks this would be, I don't know but suspect it lies somewhere in the range from PVCs 12 weeks to BGs 24 weeks. Consequently, as I say, I incline to support BG and PVCs conclusions, albeit starting from a very different premise.

[1]I know that as potential parent one might be very grieved by this.
[2]I write that as a vegetarian.

For the record, I am not utterly convinced that it is an "ensouled", to use the Christian term, human being at conception, but as we don't know I would much rather err on the side of extreme caution.

[rory_20_uk]

When did establishing a legal framework become a chance to throw morals and moralistic blackmail around?