[Puffer Fish]

Discrimination based on whether or not someone has passed out through the birth canal - what could be sillier than that??
Are we really going to discriminate against a certain group of people based on their physical location?
This is the silliest form of discrimination yet, if we just stop for a moment to analyze it.
That's how oppression has always operated in history - people find a way of setting apart other people into a separate group, based upon some readily identifiable feature. So we have the "born" and "unborn" - the latter of whom don't have any rights at all.

[Pants-of-dog]

Discrimination based on whether or not someone has passed out through the birth canal - what could be sillier than that??
Are we really going to discriminate against a certain group of people based on their physical location?
This is the silliest form of discrimination yet, if we just stop for a moment to analyze it.
That's how oppression has always operated in history - people find a way of setting apart other people into a separate group, based upon some readily identifiable feature. So we have the "born" and "unborn" - the latter of whom don't have any rights at all.

In any place where abortion is banned, the unborn have more rights than the born.

I will explain:

Banning abortion obligates the pregnant person to use their blood and organs to keep someone else alive.

The unborn person has the right to obligate the pregnant person to do so.

After a child is born, the law no longer obligates the parent to use their blood and organs to keep the child alive.

Born people do not have the right to obligate their parents to do so.

[AFAIK]

@Pants-of-dog If a woman doesn't want to incubate another life she can abstain from sex, use contraception or get an abortion before reaching whatever cut off date applies.
______

Can a conjoined twin undergo a separation that will kill their sibling?

[Pants-of-dog]

If a woman doesn't want to incubate another life she can abstain from sex, use contraception or get an abortion before reaching whatever cut off date applies.

This is true.

Please note that this does not contradict my point about the unborn having more rights than the born.

[Potemkin]

In any place where abortion is banned, the unborn have more rights than the born.

I will explain:

Banning abortion obligates the pregnant person to use their blood and organs to keep someone else alive.

The unborn person has the right to obligate the pregnant person to do so.

After a child is born, the law no longer obligates the parent to use their blood and organs to keep the child alive.

Born people do not have the right to obligate their parents to do so.

The spirit of Ayn Rand approves of this post!

[wat0n]

The spirit of Ayn Rand approves of this post!

And Murray Rothbard's as well

Children's rights and parental obligations

In the Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard explores issues regarding children's rights in terms of self-ownership and contract.[108] These include support for a woman's right to abortion, condemnation of parents showing aggression towards children and opposition to the state forcing parents to care for children. He also holds children have the right to run away from parents and seek new guardians as soon as they are able to choose to do so. He argued that parents have the right to put a child out for adoption or sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract in what Rothbard suggests will be a "flourishing free market in children". He believes that selling children as consumer goods in accord with market forces—while "superficially monstrous"—will benefit "everyone" involved in the market: "the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents purchasing".[109][110]

In Rothbard's view of parenthood, "the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights".[109] Thus, Rothbard stated that parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation and should be free to engage in other forms of child neglect. However, according to Rothbard, "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children". In a fully libertarian society, he wrote, "the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum".[109]

Economist Gene Callahan of Cardiff University, formerly a scholar at the Rothbard-affiliated Mises Institute, observes that Rothbard allows "the logical elegance of his legal theory" to "trump any arguments based on the moral reprehensibility of a parent idly watching her six-month-old child slowly starve to death in its crib".[111]

What does @Puffer Fish think about Rothbard on child neglect? Should the government force people to take care of their children?

[Puffer Fish]

What does @Puffer Fish think about Rothbard on child neglect? Should the government force people to take care of their children?

The government already does so, in the form of child support.

In the US, if the woman chooses not to get an abortion and not to give away the baby to adoption, the man becomes on the hook.

[wat0n]

The government already does so, in the form of child support.

In the US, if the woman chooses not to get an abortion and not to give away the baby to adoption, the man becomes on the hook.

Do you support this?

[Pants-of-dog]

The government already does so, in the form of child support.

In the US, if the woman chooses not to get an abortion and not to give away the baby to adoption, the man becomes on the hook.

Then the US and similar countries should provide the necessary child support without involving the inseminator in any way.

This way, young people with penises could impregnate as many people as they want without paying anything.

[AFAIK]

So a child with parents has more rights than orphans!?!
We need to add another -ism to the list.

[snapdragon]

The government already does so, in the form of child support.

In the US, if the woman chooses not to get an abortion and not to give away the baby to adoption, the man becomes on the hook.

Yep. Men should always be aware they have no birth control choices after having sex.

[B0ycey]

Yep. Men should always be aware they have no birth control choices after having sex.

Not that I disagree with abortion laws, but isn't that the point Pufferfish is making about women? Any other system of discrimination in law is sexist and yet on this you think it is OK? Interesting.

[snapdragon]

I didn’t invent the way human reproduction works.
It’s nothing to do with equality laws.

If it was, I’d be the first one arguing that there should be an equal health risk to both men and women when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth.

[B0ycey]

I didn’t invent the way human reproduction works.
It’s nothing to do with equality laws.

If it was, I’d be the first one arguing that there should be an equal health risk to both men and women when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth.

It has everything to to with equality laws actually. Biological laws would state a fetus was indeed human given the genetic makeup of it was human. It is a human construct that declares a fetus as non human because otherwise we would have to produce death certificates for miscarriages. Also, a man could well use the same argument you made to GET AWAY FROM PAYING MATENANCE actually. He could say it isn't his responsibility to pay for his child due to how the human reproduction system works and that conception isn't due to sperm but the birth canal in any case. That isn't my argument, given I am playing Devils Advocate here. However I am highlighting your contradiction by making the argument.

Also abortion also isn't a natural event in any case. It is a surgical event. And given that, it is a social contruct and not a right to have an abortion. However that doesn't mean I am against abortions. I think we have the balance right. However once 20 weeks have past I also think the fetus should have rights. And that would be to protect it except for certain circumstances. Because the idea that a woman has rights beyond logic or fairness to fetus is someone who advocates torture. A fetus has nerves beyond the third trimester.

[snapdragon]

Of course it’s human, but it’s not a person. It’s occupying the body of a person to the detriment of her health and well being. If she doesn’t want it in there, then she can get it taken out.

People don’t occupy the bodies of other people. Not ever.

Both parents are equally obliged to pay maintenance towards their children whenever possible unless both parents agree to give them up.
The simple fact is, boycey, women have birth control choices after sex that men cannot be given.

Women can undergo an abortion so that no child comes into existence.

Men cannot do that. Your argument is silly.

[B0ycey]

Of course it’s human, but it’s not a person. It’s occupying the body of a person to the detriment of her health and well being. If she doesn’t want it in there, then she can get it taken out.

People don’t occupy the bodies of other people. Not ever.

Well legally it isn't human. And if it were, you would be charged with neglect the same way a baby is unable to survive on its own without feeding is neglect if you just didn't care for it.

The point is abortions are subject to the law and not biology and as such your argument fails. Not that I care. By and large the law has it right and the only people (in the UK at least) that seem to want to change it are female. Seems they appreciate fetus rights. I doubt a deadbeat Dad does.

[AFAIK]

If she doesn’t want it in there, then she can get it taken out

How did it get there, though? By your logic we should only allow abortion in the case of rape and demand that women who do not wish to be pregnant practice abstinence or use contraceptives.

@B0ycey
If we were to grant rights to fetuses on the basis of being human would those same rights apply to embryos? What about sperm and eggs?

[snapdragon]

Well, a born baby is a person.
It functions at the same basic level as all people, even if they need the help of medical equipment to stay alive.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. You’re saying because the law restricts abortions in many countries, then that makes a foetus a person, which it doesn’t

Nobody becomes a parent until they have a born child, which is when their financial obligations begin.

Years ago, it was a simple matter for men to refuse to acknowledge their children and simply walk away as if they didn’t exist.
DNA testing put the kibosh on that.

Far from being the good old days, it caused a lot of grief all round and not just for the mother.

A man my father knew bumped into his grown up daughter suddenly one evening . She was the living image of his own mother. It was only then he realised what he’d missed all those years.

[late]

Goofballs to the Left of me, goofballs to the Right, volley and blunder...

The way our brains are wired up, we want order. Reproduction is not orderly, it's messy by nature...

Science isn't much of a help, either. When does a foetus become a person? Choosing birth resolves a lot of problems, but that choice is one of convenience.

But while we can't eliminate the messiness, we can still deal with it.

You do that by attacking problems; it's almost always about solving problems, kids. So what's the first problem? It's money. If we provide health care and child support, that makes an unwanted pregnancy less of a crisis. A person will be less likely to be driven into poverty, or deeper into poverty if they're already poor.

You can easily look to Europe for an array of options to do this, we should have done this a couple generations ago. You know, about the same time Republicans went wacko and started cutting social programs...

The Catholic church, for centuries, said the spirit entered the fetus at the quickening. Then abortion came along, and the Church changed it's mind. The church needed cannon fodder...

You see this is the politics of power, always has been. The moral arguments are just a cover for a power grab, always has been.

But here's the reality, we're not going back to the Dark Ages, and there lots of ways to reduce the number of abortions. Unless you're one of those Right wing sociopaths obsessed with power, of course.

[snapdragon]

How did it get there, though? By your logic we should only allow abortion in the case of rape and demand that women who do not wish to be pregnant practice abstinence or use contraceptives.

How did you work that out? It doesn’t matter how it got there. It’s there and if she doesn’t want it there, she can get rid of it.

If she decides she wants to keep it, then that’s up to her.

She’s the only person involved in her pregnancy. Nobody can take it over.