Texas Should Just Abort This Madness

faetal on 3/7/2013 at 12:11

Similar to archeology / palaeontology then?

Chade on 3/7/2013 at 12:24

Quote Posted by faetal

Once the baby is born, it exists in the world, rather than as part of a woman's body.

This is a moral decision, and again, you don't get to claim that your preference should be the default path. Dunno about birthdays, but I would not be at all surprised if society is expected to provide more and more guarantees about fetus health as time grinds on and our healthcare expectations increase.

Quote Posted by Vasquez

Animals are fully developed beings, you can't compare them with embryos or early [up to 3 months] fetuses*, which simply are not developed far enough to feel pain or fear, and they definitely can't be self-aware and conscious. I'm pretty sure that physiological fact will not change with time.

Just to be clear, I'm not in any way restricting myself to the first three months here. In fact, I'm not really talking about any specific abortion plan. I'm pretty firmly in the pro-choice camp. I'm just arguing against some specific statements that IMO trivialise an extremely morally murky topic. We're talking about threatening lives or outright killing babies and/or mothers here.

SubJeff on 3/7/2013 at 12:35

Quote Posted by Shayde

You are still doing it! Your discourse places women as the "other". "They should listen to women as a group."
Why can't "they" be comprised of women? Being a legal/ scientific/ political professional and being a woman are not mutually exclusive.

My problem with your posts is that this is a female centric issue and all discussion/ decision-making should be similarly female-centric and not female-inclusive as your posts suggest.

No, YOU are doing it.

There are 3 groups of people in this equation. Women in general, men in general and the policy makers. The policy makers should be a mixed gender group and they get some say because they should be composed of knowledgeable people.

faetal on 3/7/2013 at 12:44

Quote Posted by Chade

This is a moral decision

I wouldn't call the severing of the umbilical cord and a baby taking its first breaths subjective. They are a defined event, allowing for there to be a before and after. Any pontification about the legal status about the baby's place in society prior to that moment are empty since no one has access to the baby - not even the mother.

Quote:

Who is talking about killing mothers? Any decision as to what the cut off is in terms of time should be based on medical knowledge, not morals, since no amount of caring or opinion will actually make a difference to state of the foetus being terminated. The moral aspect gets far too hung up on the fact that life is being terminated, without taking into account what that actually means prior to birth.

In the grand scheme of things, this is primarily only a problem in a country with silly religious involvement. In many parts of the world, abortion is a process which is used and which works. There doesn't seem to be much of an issue with people wishing they could have an abortion during the third trimester, it just seems to be a hot topic in places where religious extremists deem it ok to try influencing public policy because of their private beliefs and desire to keep inching the limit backwards. In principle, since we can't know exactly what a foetus experiences during a termination, it just makes sense that there should be a time limit which stops well short of the boundary of doubt.

Another aspect which people rarely consider is that terminating late stage pregnancies can also be traumatic for the medics carrying out the procedure since it's unlikely that a person can remain psychologically inert to regularly having to remove dismembered foetuses with recognisable morphology from unconscious women.

[EDIT] As an aside, I did just see this delightful little bon mot on Twitter: "@bitterarab: If only uteruses shot bullets, maybe then the republicans wouldn't try to impose regulations on them."

Chade on 3/7/2013 at 13:15

Faetal, the moment of birth certainly contains a lot of changes, but there is a lot of interaction with the baby prior to birth. Every pregnant women, most dads, plus lots of family and friends, all interact with the unborn child. My wife is carrying our third child right now and is already ascribing personality traits based on her interactions with the baby. They are little people well before they exit the womb.

And no-one is talking about killing mothers. That refers to the baby. I didn't think I had to worry about being so specific ...

Regarding the rest of your post about the realities of the political situation right now, I don't have any particular disagreements. All I really want to defend in this thread are moderates on either side with a genuine concern about the rights of unborn children at some lateish stage of development. Contrary to some posts here, these people do exist, and they have some valid concerns. I don't want to defend the politicians and pro-life activists.

faetal on 3/7/2013 at 13:34

The key word there is ascribing. Individual experience of the indecipherable behaviour of a foetus in the womb isn't something which can be clearly defined by anyone, since there is no way to confirm or prove, you just interpret in way which satisfies you. I'm not saying it isn't possible that foetuses have a personality, I'm just not sure that the interpretation of the foetus behaviour by the people who are obviously invested in it emotionally should be the basis for the termination options of strangers who may have no such investment in their foetus.

Congrats on the incoming child, I look forward to having kids myself in the not too distant future, but do be aware of the unavoidable bias involved with projecting specific notions of personality onto the behaviour of your child in the womb.

In practical terms, we both agree with avoiding late term termination - it doesn't seem to be a huge issue anyway, as most people opt to terminate way before that (obvious health interventions notwithstanding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar) or so you'd hope). I'm just not so hasty to include the opinion of parents as part of the medical reason for not performing late term abortions (whereas it is perfectly valid for individuals to consider as reasons for what they do). I see it as being more for the avoidance of doubt. Again, we're only really having this discussion because of god damned republicans and their ilk making it into an issue because Jesus or some shit.

Phatose on 3/7/2013 at 13:36

Quote Posted by mopgoblin

Oh thank fuck, there are other women in the thread now.

I for one always initiate sex with rigourous statistical analysis of the probable outcomes, yes. But seriously, you're now imagining a world where all women are well-educated about sex, where men are never manipulative, deceptive, abusive or predatory, and somehow in amongst all of this you've got the idea that women should never ever have sex with men unless we're willing to risk pregnancy. And as much as you all are doing to reaffirm that never having sex with men is indeed a top-notch plan, you fail to mention - accidentally, I'm sure - that male orgasms are also involved in conception (more directly than female orgasms, in fact!), and so too is male power. When you consider all of the men who manipulate and pressure their way out of wearing condoms, who covertly remove them, or who don't tell their partner when a condom breaks; who lie to uninformed partners about the risks of pregnancy, who use manipulation, abuse, drugs, or force to rape women; who impede women's access to information, contraception, and sterilisation, both directly and through structural means... well, unwanted pregnancies are in large part the fault of men and of men's sense of entitlement to women's bodies - in fact, the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to empower women to control our own bodies. This is one way you can tell that anti-choicers are ultimately more about disempowering women than about reducing abortion. But either way and regardless of context, consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy, just like consent to a kiss is not consent to sex.

Are you trying to be sexist? Cause wow. Unwanted pregnancies are always the fault of men preying upon poor helpless women who don't realize that sex can lead to pregnancy even with contraception because of some great male conspiracy? What, they missed that day in school, and don't have access to the internet or a library because of some great patriarchal plot?

And no, I don't mention male orgasms. This is intentional, and it's because men don't ever get to choose abortion.

SubJeff on 3/7/2013 at 15:11

Yeah, I agree somewhat Phatose - that is a totally unjustified rant against men. Sure, there are men like that but to choose to frame an abortion debate that affects everyone through the window of scumbag men is anything but sensible.

mopgoblin on 3/7/2013 at 15:19

Quote Posted by Phatose

Maybe the reason men don't get to choose is because it's, you know, not their body! It's almost like we discussed this at some point!

Dude, seriously, sort out your shit. In addition to your favourite hobby of trying to control women's bodies by preventing abortion, you anti-choice fuckers are constantly fighting tooth and nail to destroy sex education programmes, interfere with women's access to contraception and sterilisation, destroy programmes that oppose rape and domestic violence, and further undermine survivors' already minimal chances of getting rapists and abusers convicted, to name but a few. Anti-choicers are anti-woman. I mean, you're basically arguing right here that men engaging in predatory behaviour is not a serious issue, in a society where at least 17% of women are raped in their lifetime and where men commit the overwhelming majority (~99%) of rapes. In fact, you've packed enough ignorance into what's basically a two sentence post that I had to use a year's supply of bullet points to illustrate it:

* High school sex education is in a shocking state in much of the US, and may focus on abstinence rather than convey accurate information
* Some people will indeed have "missed that day at school" if their parents are able to stop them from attending
* Contraception is not readily available in all areas or to all people, and often costs money that some people don't have
* Having contraceptives is not always safe if they canot be hidden from controlling partners and/or parents
* All contraceptive methods have failure rates, these typically vary by usage and that information may not be readily available or presented in a clear manner
* Some men sabotage contraception and this is not always obvious or detectable
* Men can and sometimes do lie about the chance of pregnancy (one look at the Google autocompletes for "you can't get pregnant" should illustrate a range of the myths used)
* Saying "no" to an insistent or aggressive person who is heavier, taller, stronger, alone with you, or who has more social power, economic power, or privilige than you is not always easy, safe, or effective. To most women, men tend to be several of these things
* Women in abusive relationships in particular often don't have a real option to say "no" to sex or to have that respected
* Women in abusive relationships don't have necessarily have safe, private access to the internet or to libraries
* As a group, men are complete shitbags towards women, and they have the power to back up that shitbaggery. This is indisputable, and the notion that we shouldn't use that as a starting point for analysis is, at best, absurd
* This probably isn't even all of the things, but there's only so much I'm willing to type out for you, so I'll go over the most important one: regardless of context, consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy, and furthermore use or attempted use of contraception, successful or not, is an indication that there is no consent to pregnancy

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

Well it's a good thing we have another man here telling us what's what, there was a real shortage of those in this thread up until now

SubJeff on 3/7/2013 at 15:51

If you can't tell that dismissing someone based on their gender is utterly idiotic then that chip on your shoulder must be so big its edging your brain out.

And I'm not a pro-lifer at all. I hate that term actually, it's anti-abortion and anti-choice. So this is quite amusing to me - you and dethtoll are both on my side but by the tone of your arguments it seems that its just a coincidence for him and a necessity for you.