XogGyux wrote:How come you don't know? You don't care to know?
More importantly... if you don't know if they are people or not... what is your stance on abortion? Do you support banning abortion or are you OK allowing abortions to continue?
It depends, really.
If fetuses are people, I'd ban on-demand abortion but would allow it in cases like preserving maternal life or from serious bodily harm, if the fetus is dead or so seriously deformed as to be incompatible with life (to spare the mother from the risk of continuing with the pregnancy). In the case of rape, the punishment would go for the rapist and not the victim, as an aggravant.
If fetuses are not people, I see no reason to ban on-demand abortion. I'd discourage it, especially late-term abortion since there are alternatives to killing the fetus and early delivery may be safer for the woman, but that's about it.
Since I don't know if fetuses are people, I don't have a clear position about on-demand abortion as you can see. But even if they are, there are reasons to allow abortion under some circumstances.
XogGyux wrote:You don't need to bother doing such silly gymnastics. I have been very clear since the beginning of the thread (and in the past on other threads) that the line is not mine to draw. I don't think it is the judges to draw either. As far as I am concerned, it is the pregnant woman and her doctors/healthcare providers' line to draw.
I don't know. I don't think this is a good precedent should the question of personhood arise in a different context.
XogGyux wrote:So you are an equal opportunity A hole?
Yes.
XogGyux wrote:The first step would be to get your arguments in order. Arguing personhood as a reason to ban abortion when it has never been a core principle of my support/rejection of abortion is silly. This is, btw, a strawman.
All of this goes in flames when your "approved reasons to get an abortion" none of them are immune to the same personhood argument that you think is important on this question... basically you are defeating your own [admittedly weak] points.
Well, I'd say the fetal personhood problem is precisely why this is a topic at all. I highly doubt many people would care about abortion otherwise.
I don't see how my points are weak. FWIW you can find analogous situations involving adults where we'd accept killing another person is acceptable. Regrettable, undesirable, but acceptable.
XogGyux wrote:Really? The fetus did not harm the woman... She gets to abort it because "it is an inconvenient"? Why do you think that the rape victim should have the power to end the life of a person when this life is not posing any sort of danger to her? The rapist is long gone, maybe even in jail, but you still think this fetus must die?
I can see why we wouldn't want to extend her agony, particularly since she isn't at fault (since she gave no consent). And again, this would not go unpunished, the rapist would get a longer sentence.
And no, this isn't "using pregnancy to punish people". If you accept to become responsible for another person, even implicitly, you have to just face the result of your choices or negligence. But the victim of a crime isn't really responsible if we accept her to be one.
XogGyux wrote:What?
Maybe you should look it up?
XogGyux wrote:So what if he is responsible for the pregnancy?
Let me ask you this... you also support abortions in the case of mothers that got pregnant but their partner is a domestic abuser (NOT A RAPIST, the partner just gets drunks and hit her from time to time).
Its the same shit... a despicable person responsible for getting someone pregnant. These mothers also get the @wat0n special and get to abort for free (from consequences that is)?
No, because if he didn't rape her then she did give consent and assume the risk.
Being an asshole is not enough. Rape has a clear meaning and consequence here.
XogGyux wrote:You keep saying this bullshit. It is time you explain exactly what you mean by "proportionality". It seems to me "I get to choose what I see right and what I see wrong".
XogGyux wrote:Well, this is nonsense. If your argument against rape revolves around personhood, and you spent 3 weeks trying to argue that there should not be any sort of treatment difference between the rights of the unborn and the rights of the born because both are "persons"... but now... when faced with a situation in which the raped woman could potentially kill the newborn... you back down and hide behind this "proportionality" nonsense that you just made up. When I said, that birth is the event that separates the rights of the 2 individuals you keep talking nonsense... now it seems that you are trying to make an argument that birth makes a difference, except... under your paradigm of personhood, it does not.
XogGyux wrote:Well, I don't have to because personhood is irrelevant. The thing that changes when the fetus is born... is that it is no longer tied to the body of his/her mother and thus this newborn's rights can be analyzed and protected as an individual, regardless of wether this newborn is or not a person. Personhood did not change during birth, his "living accommodations" did, and therefore, now his fate is somewhat independent of that of the mother.
Is the damage to the pregnant rape victim to wait for 4 hours to deliver the fetus comparable to the damage to the fetus arising from a late term-abortion? Probably not, FWIW 4 hours could be the same time she takes to schedule and get an abortion so her agony wouldn't need to extend for longer. But waiting for 7 months? I can imagine it is, and if it were possible for the fetus to survive then I'd also be against an abortion and for an early delivery.
And this is not as arbitrary as drawing the line where we care about fetuses at already having the baby delivered. You hinted at it yourself, at e.g. 37 weeks the pregnancy could be ended by just inducing birth since the fetus has already developed for all intents and purposes - you don't HAVE to kill the fetus in the process of terminating the pregnancy for the sake of the woman's bodily autonomy. That argument is clearly not valid here.
You have yet to explain what's the ethics behind killing that fetus, and remember, since you say this isn't about the fetus' personhood, that it obviously doesn't matter at all, so please assume it is one. If it doesn't matter then pray tell me why would you kill another person when you can achieve exactly the same goal without doing so.
In fact, under your definition of when this 37-week fetus is now worthy of protection (
namely, it becomes a child as soon as it's not tied to its mother anymore, meaning it's out of the womb and its umbilical cord has been cut out - your own words, as per the last quote) it would be just fine if you got the fetus outside the womb and repeatedly stabbed it to death, but only if you didn't cut the umbilical cord before doing so, since it would still be a fetus and not a child. I'm open to accept this standard but only if you can explain with detail what makes this moment so special as to make this kind of thing okay, and you are totally free to find a bioethical source that does it for you, if not then this is very arbitrary (far more than what I said about making an exception to abortion in the case of rape) and one doesn't need to accept it at all.
Oh and you're also assuming the fetus isn't a person if you are okay with letting another person, its mother, choose to kill it for whatever reason. You claim personhood doesn't matter but in reality, and you said it yourself, being dependent on someone else to live doesn't make you less of a person. Hence, by simple elimination, the fetus isn't a person under your view. That's okay, it's a legitimate choice to make - but ideally it shouldn't be arbitrary.
XogGyux wrote:And what necessitates that the pregnant woman murders her unborn child?
Sparing her from the grave psychological damage arising from reliving the rape, every time she looks at herself in the mirror, until delivery.
By the way, the "threat to life or serious injury" standard would also apply if a professional acting in good faith assessed the pregnancy was so psychologically damaging for the woman, she'd be likely to attempt to seriously injure herself or commit suicide because of the pregnancy. The standard of proof here would not be lax, but I'd definitely consider this extreme situation to fall within that "risk to life" standard.
XogGyux wrote:But you clearly misunderstand the whole point of the argument. The argument is not there for you to risk stratify how likely it is for this set of events to occur in this particular manner. The argument is there so that you get an opportunity to identify the logic sinkholes of your arguments. From a "personhood" paradigm... a person fetus, is not different from a person newborn. Therefore... why do you make a distinction if I kill it while a fetus or while a baby?
Do you realize this is EXACTLY the case against abortion but just backwards? When you argue that a fetus is a person and thus abortion is murder... this is exactly the issue that you put yourself into.
Then you are not understanding
my argument. It's precisely because I don't know if a fetus is a person or not that I'm putting myself in the case it is. But, honestly, even if the fetus isn't a person I find it hard to justify the late-term abortion when there's a less deadly alternative involved. Clearly, bodily autonomy isn't a good argument when the same goal (terminating pregnancy) can be achieved without killing the fetus. Same for avoiding the continued victimization of this woman, since either procedure will terminate her obviously unwanted pregnancy. So why would you find killing the fetus acceptable, except because we have agreed beforehand it isn't a person and that's it? Can you find
any acceptable reason for having a late-term abortion instead of just a regular childbirth in this scenario you proposed yourself?
Thus far what I'm walking with from our conversation is that we don't know if fetuses are people or not, we can't find a clearly convincing reason either way, but the older the fetus is the more likely it is to be one. I don't find this too helpful if you ask me, but I suppose it's something.
XogGyux wrote:I don't believe you. Only people of conviction twist themselves into a knot of weak arguments to defend their point.
One thing I'm convinced about is that the morality of abortion depends a lot on whether the fetus is a person or not. Yes,
that is something I'm clearly convinced of.
XogGyux wrote:Well, if you think abortion = murder, you should do more than convince, you should prevent at all cost, even jail if necessary. Restraining a person for a few month must certainly be entertained as to save the life of an innocent child doesn't it?
XogGyux wrote:It does not matter, she is pregnant, and an abortion would be murder. You don't get to murder someone because someone wronged you.
XogGyux wrote:But you would punish the person inside her? Capital punishment? Murder is a worse crime than rape, how is it that you are entertaining allowing someone to willfully and knowingly commit a worse crime? This is the "socratic method" that you talk about? Seems pretty barbaric to me.
It depends on why the abortion is being performed, actually. Firstly, not all abortion is murder even if the fetus is a person. Killing someone to save another person's life, or your own, is not murder it's tragic.
Secondly, acting under duress can perfectly excuse killing someone else and I would not count it as murder either. In fact legally it usually counts as manslaughter, I think. And you can avoid any charges in some states if it's not duress but necessity, e.g. you needed to kill someone else to prevent the death of others.
This is true in general, not just when dealing with fetuses. And these are tragic situations.
In the case of rape, I accept a rape victim is under necessity when she seeks an abortion.
XogGyux wrote:Personhood is irrelevant. Furthermore, the decision of wether a fetus is or not a person does not follow from the consequences of them being or not a person. In other words, what you are asking is backwards.
Maybe, but in this case we don't seem to know if fetuses are persons or not. If we don't we can perfectly try an inductive approach (find situations and evaluate how would a reasonable person would act, as if the fetus was a person or as if wasn't one, and try to infer what the rules that define the fetus' personhood could be) instead of a deductive approach (start from premises, if they are correct we arrive to a conclusion).
What you want me to do, then, is to take a premise (e.g. "fetuses are people") and make me assume it's true, when I'm telling you I don't know if that's the case. By
assuming it's true, then if fetuses are indeed persons then this pregnant woman who speeds due to her negligence, crashes and has a miscarriage would indeed be committing a manslaughter since if she was with someone we agree is a person, like her child or a friend, she would likely be. However, I ignore if most people would agree with that type of charge if the only death is due to a miscarriage. Possibly not.
XogGyux wrote:What do you mean? Follow your doctor's advise. Ofcourse she had one.
So what should she do, starve to death? That doesn't seem to be too good for the fetus, though...
XogGyux wrote:Or maybe they were just waiting to see how stretchy her belly gets before having an abortion at the very last minute.
Is this supposed to be a serious argument?
XogGyux wrote:You do have a strong position. If not... what are the last 3 weeks about then?
Sure, my strong position (and I made it clear 3 weeks ago) is that personhood is key to this debate.
XogGyux wrote:That is not remotely what I would say.
Is it okay to kill stem cells?
Is it okay to kill children?