wat0n wrote:Same could be said about any person's morality.
I think though that there's clearly a personal injury if a woman ends up pregnant as a result of rape, and it seems I'm not the only one who believes that. The paper I posted earlier also mentions courts in some jurisdictions that did not establish pregnancy could be a form of tort resulting from rape took the stance that since pregnancy was an inherent result of rape, it wasn't separate from it so it couldn't be a different legal injury. This pushed some states to pass these laws, if anything.
Again, you can throw crap to the wall to see what sticks. The reality is that what you are suggesting is borderline moronic and certainly unethical.
If you crash into my car and I injure my back, you might be responsible for the car damages, and my medical bills for therapy and/or surgery if needed. You might even get some sort of punitive damages if you were negligent, etc.
But if I go for a spinal surgery and during the operation I die or become paralyzed, you don't go to jail for murder. You are trying to invent a weird ass criminal justice system that is illogical, unfair and ultimately it cannot be implemented due to the complexity of the calculations involved.
You can say the same thing while this 37-week old fetus is inside the womb.
No, you cannot. If you stab a 37w fetus inside a womb, chances are you will injure if not kill the mother in the process.
Why isn't abortion an option here? Is it materially impossible?
Impossible? No, I suppose you could kill it and then induce a delivery of a stillborn.
Why wouldn't you respect the patient's wishes to be treated how she wishes if she wants to have an abortion and kill the fetus in the process?
Because we don't live in fantasy land. Abortions are to terminate pregnancy, not to kill fetus. The fetus dying is the "side effect" of the abortion but not the goal. Similarly to having electricity in your home. THe side effect is that you can get electrocuted or your home catch fire with an electrical spark, but neither of those outcomes are the intended goal, the intended goal is to power your house, equipment, etc. The intended goal of an abortion is to terminate a pregnancy. If the pregnancy can be terminated by a (reasonable/safe) delivery instead, it is preferred.
Again, the mother can request a pregnancy termination/abortion, and she might have a few options, but not all options are available at all times.
It is similar to when you want to expell someone from your house. You have many options, you can ask politely the person, you can call the cops, and you can just shoot them on the face. Depending on the circumstances, you might be justified to do any of those, but not all at all times.
Oh so now it would then be okay to deny her the option to choose the treatment she wants?
It does not work that way. You are a patient, you present your case to your doctor, and your doctor offers you the options that are appropriate at the appropriate time. If you go at 20 weeks and want/need an abortion, you might get that option, but you go at 37week, which is basically a term pregnancy, and you won't get that offered to you (* disclaimer, who knows maybe there is a rogue obstetrician that does, he/she would not be representative of the medical community, alternatively it might be an option in case of a pregnancy that is expected to be a stillborn, AKA we find out around week 37 that fetus did not develop a brain, at which case I think it is possible that there might be some abortion-like options as a palliative pathway).
Why wouldn't we ban abortion at the 37th week (or another similar stage of fetal development) except to save the mother's life or from serious injury again?
To save the mother's life you deliver the baby. Again, abortion is a pregnancy termination procedure, not a fetus killing one. At 37week there is little to no difference on the way we would handle an abortion if at all possible.
I agree with you insofar abortion is indeed a way to terminate pregnancy.
Then stop talking nonsense.
And if there's another way to terminate the pregnancy that doesn't kill the fetus, well, it's generally hard to justify not using it. I guess you can still accept not using it if you think the fetus isn't a person, but let's be honest here, normally it would be the preferred procedure.
One day, there might be a way to safely/efficiently/and economically remove the embryo/fetus and incubate it outside of a pregnant woman. Once that day arrives, then we will have to answer your personhood question and have to come to terms with the decision of whether all those embryos/fetuses need to be protected and/or if a subset of them can be discarded.
At this point in time, all of that is irrelevant because the incubator is a human being and the incubator can decline to be an incubator and we should respect that.
Semantics. That's a decision made by doctors.
That is not a decision. If anything, that would be an assessment.
Yes, all up until the fetus is out and the umbilical cord has been cut. Right? That was your position a while ago.
For 999/1000 times, just being out of the mother's body is enough. The umbilical cord only comes into place if you were going to do something to the fetus that could potentially affect the mother through the cord. Aside from electricity, I cannot think of many other things capable of affecting the mother although perhaps there are.
Practically speaking, just being born individualizes the mother/fetus situation. If we are talking about absolutes and/or more unlikely scenarios, then cutting the cord would be the last thing to do.
Just because the precise cutoff for viability is dependent on technology it doesn't mean it can't be operationalized. Here's a few operational definitions of "viability" that are still fairly specific, despite being dependent on technological availability:
Non-zero probability of survival and discharge at 1-year of age
99%+ probability of survival outside the womb
Same probability of survival outside the womb and discharge, with all the available care, as if delivery wasn't artificially induced
These can then be translated into concrete gestational age guidelines every 5 or 10 years just as plenty of other medical guidelines are, sounds like a cool work for a biostats guy. For example, the US government updates dietary guidelines every 5 years.
Why couldn't this be done for viability, even more so since viability is currently a statutory cutoff in several states so there's actually a good reason to have these guidelines for legal purposes?
That does nothing to address the problem. Only hides your motives behind fancy rules. Those "metrics" that you mention are arbitrary, which means whoever is choosing them can come up with whatever numbers they want to help them achieve what their moral/political/etc views are.
Also, this would not be a universal or national standard. Keep in mind, your local community hospital is not going to have the obstetric/gynecological and neonatology services to match industry-leading, top-performing/ranking MAYO clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Brigham Hospital, etc.
I'd even say that if you were called as an expert witness to an abortion trial you could testify that an abortion done at 24 weeks is not done after viability in that specific case, and it's possible a judge would take that view into account.
And you think that would be reasonable? To have an angry mob of people that have nothing better to do but to sue poor women for having abortions and force them to spend their time/money in court so that a doctor can go on the stand and testify that a 24w newborn would have about a coinflip chances of survival with the best medical care available and doing so would still come with about a coinflip chances of having a life-long disability such as lung/heart/brain problems?
Yes, that's exactly what I've been saying ever since you introduced the 37-week example. Both delivery and abortion fulfill the bodily autonomy, so it's hard to choose abortion in this case.
Again, you are assuming that abortion would even be an option. You'd have to evaluate a case-by-case scenario including the motivations and/or need for an abortion. If the reason is "baby does not have brain" that decision was already made for you. I am not an OBGYN and I don't know if there is the possibility of administering a med that would essentially kill the fetus prior to delivery to ensure a stillbirth, that could be desirable from a palliative point of view but again, this very specific scenario is something that lies outside of my knowledge.
To be honest, if a woman at 37w shows up with a perfectly healthy pregnancy and request and abortion, chances are she will be seen by the psychiatrist
.
You were the one who chose to link abortion to bodily autonomy even in this case.
I don't choose to link it. It is linked. It is linked by natural processes, there was no choice.
But now tell me, why would you protect this fetus?
I would protect all fetuses, so long they don't come into conflict with maternal body autonomy.
That is, what are your reasons for preferring inducing labor over doing an abortion assuming both have entail the same level of risk for the woman?
Probably about same I'd reckon, I don't have the statistics, don't even think statistics on "37-week-old abortions" even exists.
I recall you don't consider the fetus a child, so why would you give it this type of protection and basically treat it like a newborn in all but name?
You think people should only care for children?
I care for dogs as well just FYI.
I don't have a problem treating a fetus and a newborn the same except in cases were the fetus come into conflict with parental body autonomy (newborn cannot, see above birth/umbilical cord conversation).