Kaiserschmarrn wrote:I can't comment, because the graph doesn't tell us how many were killed by their mothers. I had a quick search but couldn't find those statistics,
Yes, that was the best I could do as well. The rest were articles describing several cases of infanticide as an argument for repealing the law you mentioned and replacing it with a more serious law.
Suffice it to say that infanticide is qualitatively different from late term abortion in two distinct ways:
1. It does not involve the right to security of person, i.e. the body of the pregnant person is not being used.
2. While rare, infanticide occurs. So far, elective late term abortions do not happen.
although on a related note I came across this article which states that:
Which is the romantic notion of mothers I mentioned earlier and an awful double standard.
Yes, I came across that too. I would like to hear some of the arguments for making this a separate crime from homicide and for the reduced sentence.
I haven't read every post of yours in this thread but quite a few of them and you certainly seem to base your argument in part on this. You also do it later in this post (see below).
As for the law in Canada, if it has indeed no provision whatsoever to deal with the murder of an unborn baby, I suspect that if such a crime happens in the future, the law would be changed, as there would be rightly quite a lot of outrage that both the doctor and the mother could get away with it.
Well, I will now clarify that my argument is based on the right of security of person. It is the same argument used by the SCC in the Morgentaler case that got rid of the abortion laws in Canada.
The argument is that a pregnant person’s right to security of person was violated by the government by the Canadian laws in abortion at that time.
This then resulted in the aforementioned social experiment and lack of elective late term abortions despite their legalisation.
The fact that no elective late term abortions occurred in the last thirty years is a refutation of the criticism that elective late term abortions would occur if you got rid of abortion laws.
We've now gone full circle and I'm going to refer you back to my response to your post where you brought this up the first time.
Is there an argument I did not adress or refute?
I've never said this. For instance, I think there should be laws preventing people from acquiring weapons of mass destruction even if nobody has acquired them up to the point the law is introduced.
Sorry, I sincerely believed that
you had replied to @Godstud with this rebuttal when he discussed some of the possible negative impacts from bans on abortion.
If you now say that possible negative impacts that have never occurred should be part of policy, then I will drop it.
So your argument does depend on whether healthy babies are killed or not. I thought nobody was arguing based on that?
Again, my argument is not based on this. My argument is based in security of person. The fact that healthy unborn babies are not being killed is a refutation of a possible criticism of the argument.
If you didn't have the option to get somebody else to care for your child - which is the case for a pregnant woman - you would not be able to abandon your responsibility. A good comparison would be you leaving your infant somewhere to die refusing to keep it alive and you'd go to prison for that.
Suffice it to say that I am not compelled by the state to donate my blood or organs or the use of these in order to protect my child.
And since this is the case, it is incorrect to say that the unborn baby is being deprived of their rights, since this is not a right enjoyed by anyone.
If the health of the mother is at risk at any stage during the pregnancy, we allow abortions.
And so does Canada.
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:Nobody has the right to abandon an born infant to die either, so by the pro-abortionist's logic the rights of parents do not matter. They don't have the right to take their bodies to the pub and have a pint with their mates if they have an infant at home! So unfair.
Your arguments are seriously defective.
I have no idea how you built this strawman out of anything we have said.
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Nonsense. You knew I was discussing the USA as I mentioned it time and again and used terms only applicable to the US. You argued back about the effect on the US constitution. You were not confused at all. Your assertion is disingenuous.
You are also not speaking about Ireland. In Ireland the constitution can be changed (as it just was) by referendum; an easier and more directly democratic method than the US or Canada. You also ought to read about the Canadian constitution in your spare time. You will see how it can be amended too.
Your US-centric jibe is just the last gasp of someone who is badly loosing an argument and without any other means to hit back.
You seem to think I was saying that a bill of rights cannot be amended. This is not what I was arguing.
I was arguing that a liberal democracy uses several means to ensure that certain rights are protected no matter what the majority thinks.
And this is true because of how we define liberal democracies.
If you remove these safeguards, you have a different type of democracy where people do not actually have what we could consider liberal rights.
The act of amending your constitution
in order to remove individual liberties would be an illibeal act, even if it were a democratic one.
As a practical matter, the US, Canada, and Ireland are supposedly liberal democracies. So, because these countries already have these safeguards, you cannot simply take away someone’s rights “because democracy”.
It is a silly argument to try to conclude that we do not require humans to use their bodies to protect other humans. Google "selective service". We have done it for generation.
I do not see pregnancy and selective service as comparable. Can you explain how this comparison works?
Stupid question. Why don't you point out where a child is offered more rights than born people? I hope you are not going down the 'mother's body" rabbit hole. That is just silly. ALL OF US concede that late term abortions should be allowed to save the life of the mother. However we do not agree that we should kill a child because the mother finds it inconvenient.
We have already shown that unborn babies have the right to access the body of their parent without consent while born babies do not. Except in Canada.
Your repeated use of the term “inconvenient” to describe the shallowness of the motives of the pregnant person is a good example of emotionally manipulative language.
Even if we ignore reality and pretend that there are actually elective late term abortions in Canada, and pregnant people are getting elective late term abortions out of convenience, this does not affect the argument from security of person, nor does it affect the argument from equal rights.
True. What is your point? Do you somehow equate carrying a child for a couple of months with giving an organ? If that is the best you can do I think you are all done arguing.
It is an example of where an unborn child is offered more rights than born people. Just like you asked for.
She has ample opportunity to prevent this before the child is viable. She can start with abstinence, forgo that for birth control and then abort the fetus in the first trimester. Only after she has ignored those remedies is she required to suffer the inconvenience of carrying the viable child to term. She need not even see the child after birth, pay for it, or raise it.
You seem to think that because the pregnant person has had their right to security of person respected in all these other situations, that this right can be ignored in this specific situation.
I find you position interesting. To me it speaks of a real contempt for the value of women. It also is an extremely right wing position. Hard core libertarians and tea party folks should absolutely agree with you. You are carrying personal rights to the kind of extent they relish. You are equating human rights with property rights. Your position that a woman's body is little more than her property is disturbing.
As an old-fashioned conservative Christian, I have no problem believing that laws regarding humans should not us property law as the standard. I believe that women can have some rights that others cannot have. For example they should have legal protections when pregnant. Women receive paid health care when pregnant. Men do not get free health care. And why to the do it? Because we as a society feel we have a stake in seeing children born healthy. That is unless their mothers kill them first.
1. I have already explained to you that the argument from security of person is not based on the idea of property, even though it is very similar to Rothbard’s defense of abortion.
2. In non-barbaric countries, not only do men and women get free health care at all stages of life, but they also get paid parental leave for both parents.
I do not think her position is progressive.
1. It puts property rights over human rights.
2. It follows a strict libertarian ethos which always but the individual ahead of others/community.
3. It is monumentally selfish.
4. It allows the pain and suffering of another human being for individual convenience.
5. It denigrates the role of mother.
6. It virtually eliminates the role of the father during pregnancy and perhaps eliminates it entirely.
About the only progressive notion is that it is extremely permissive while downplaying any notion of personal responsibility and consequences.
1. See above.
2. See above.
3. Your feelings are noted and irrelevant in a debate aimed at arriving at truth.
4. And since you have not presented a single example of elective late term abortions, this is an imaginary problem.
5. Your feelings are noted and irrelevant in a debate aimed at arriving at truth.
6. No. As a father in Canada, my opinion on abortion and my role in the pregnancy was never limited by this law. It could have been if I were the type of fellow who did not make the effort required to convince the mother that I was a person whose opinion is worth respecting.