Authoritarian is forcing a mother to have a child she doesn’t want! It’s her body! If you force your opinion on something that should be exclusively her concern then you are the “authoritarian”
I think the argument is that there is effectively zero difference in a 39 week old fetus and a newborn baby, so that argument only works if you're willing to extend the logic to getting rid of a newborn to...OR we acknowledge that there has to be a cutoff somewhere in the pregnancy where abortions are no longer acceptable.
Otherwise, we're pretending sentience is magically conveyed as the baby passes through the birth canal, which is silly.
It's not a trick question, it's a recognition that abortion support is rarely binary. The majority of people (even pro-choice) believe there is a point in the pregnancy where an elective abortion would be grotesque and shouldn't be allowed. What drives the divide in the debate is where we should draw that line. Conception? Viability? Birth?
It's the fundamental point in the debate, so it's far from a trick question?
a) You're moving the goalposts by inserting the word "elective" that was not there before.
b) As Mr Buttigieg said, ""If it's that late in your pregnancy, then almost by definition, you've been expecting to carry it to term" - engage with that instead of repeating yourself?
> One singular example of an abortion at 39 weeks where the mother didn't want the baby. I guarantee you can't actually find one even though you claim it exists
> It's the fundamental point in the debate
It is not, or should not be.
> believe there is a point ... shouldn't be allowed.
Again, should be a medical decision between patient and doctor, not a legal one, and not a numeric comparison.
Dr Kermit Gosnell performed a number of elective abortions that late in term, and we only know about those because he was dumb enough to get caught killing a few after delivery.
See this is the trick, the sleight-of hand - is draws you into arguing about unsubstantiated, viscerally affecting irrelevancies and hopes that you won't notice that this diverts from the substance.
The mother decided to have unprotected sex. There’s a reason women get pregnant. This isn’t some magical thing that is forced on women. Cause and effect.
The body inside her body is not hers. Unfortunately biology does not conform to our fantasyland.
Forcing those who are against this to pay a fine is against their will.
This is such bulshit! First and foremost willing unprotected sex is not the only reason for getting pregnant! Contraceptive are not 100% effective and there is rape. Second the body inside her might not belong to her (although… debatable) but her body is still hers and therefore she is entitled to remove anything inside of her. Third sometimes there are medical reasons for abortions (Malta recently almost killed a mother that had a miscarriage… the child was 100% going to die but as long as the fetus’ heart was beating they could not remove it and therefore the mover risked sepsis)
A twisted example based on your comment: should be allowed to remove tumours? They have a slightly different DNA from the host therefore they are not “property” of the sick and therefore should be left there!
I know, a different opinion on a left wing dominant forum. It’s pretty wild.
> First and foremost willing unprotected sex is not the only reason for getting pregnant! Contraceptive are not 100% effective and there is rape.
I address this in another comment below.
> Third sometimes there are medical reasons for abortions (Malta recently almost killed a mother that had a miscarriage… the child was 100% going to die but as long as the fetus’ heart was beating they could not remove it and therefore the mover risked sepsis)
You’re citing very rare events to support the main issue which is the majority of abortions are out of convenience, which is where the main issue is.
For these rare events there can be middle ground found here.
> Second the body inside her might not belong to her (although… debatable) but her body is still hers and therefore she is entitled to remove anything inside of her.
> A twisted example based on your comment: should be allowed to remove tumours? They have a slightly different DNA from the host therefore they are not “property” of the sick and therefore should be left there!
This is arguing the same point in my opinion. The tumor does not grow into a human. The tumor is not able to survive outside of the womb in a NICU as a human.
It was bulshit not because it was a different opinion but because it was a very poor argument!
An embryo is incapable of surviving outside of the womb! A fetus might if it’s old enough!
Nobody anywhere perform abortions at a stage where the fetus could survive without the mother in an nicu!
An embryo I agree cannot survive out of the womb, but what an embryo is, is a stage of human life. It’s still a human. Let’s not start trying to decide who is human enough to live.
In Colorado you can get an abortion up to 9 months. There’s legislation trying to pass abortion allowance up to the moment of birth, and some have been recently successful in passing. Many states in the US allow abortions in 2nd trimester which is where a baby can survive outside the womb in a NICU.
My understanding of the pro life view is that if someone chooses to put sperm in there, they are agreeing to give up some bodily autonomy and carry the child to birth.
Or she was raped, or nobody taught her anything but religious abstinence bullshit and she didn't even know the ramifications.
> The body inside her body is not hers
So if you take that "body" inside her out of her, what happens to it? It dies unless it's the late stages (what, 6 months in?) It's entirely dependent on her to grow to become a human being.
You should stop bringing rape or incest on this subject, it’s not useful to the cause.
Abortion should be a a right regardless of the reasons. It’s not more of a right because the woman was raped. In both cases, they don’t want a thing growing in their uterus, no matter their reasons.
The real problem is, in my opinion: should we force a human to maintain another human against their will? What if we could extract the fetus and grow it in vitro instead of aborting it? In the same vein, does a parent legally have to be an organ donor for their child?
These are questions we can answer and debate on even if we disagree on whether a fetus is alive or not.
Rape is less than 2% of abortions. Even then, because my father was a horrible person I shouldn’t have to die for it. We don’t need to use rare edge cases to validate the 98% of abortions which are out of convenience.
I’m not talking about abstinence, plenty of birth control options are available. Men need to take more responsibility and wear a condom.
> So if you take that "body" inside her out of her, what happens to it? It dies unless it's the late stages (what, 6 months in?) It's entirely dependent on her to grow to become a human being.
Yes this is biology, and? If you ever had to visit a NICU you’ll see plenty of 20 some week old pre-mature babies (or “bodies” in your case) that are just as human as you and I. They are just in a different stage in life. They need food to survive, just like you and I. I have a 1 year old, he is dependent on me to grow and survive.
If they are born it’s not an abortion anymore! Although I do support euthanasia… had I had some serious defect I wish my parents had the decency to kill me early on or have an abortion.
So a human female and a human male copulate and they conceive something not-human? What species is it if it is not Homo sapiens? If it is not Homo sapiens, why does it apparently have human DNA (distinct from either the female and male that were involved)?
Why is it that when two humans copulate, they produce something not-human, but when every other mammal pairs copulate they produce something of the same species?
In your opinion when does it go from being not-human to being human? Is is gradual, on a spectrum? Or is it binary: at a certain point in development there is some characteristic that becomes present
Judaism, as an example, does not consider the embryo to be human, but instead to be 'potential human', and doesn't consider it human or ensouled until it is birthed. A large number of people who believe abortion is murder do so because they are Christian, a religion that spawned from Judaism, yet they don't even understand their Old Testament as well as the Jews do.
En embryo might eventually become a human but is not one yet! You need a decently developer brain at least… being a small agglomeration of cells with human dna doesn’t make you a human! A tumor is an agglomeration of cells with human dna but is not treated as a person!
On general is a gradual process… but like with every fuzzy system it is easy in some case to say if something belongs ta a category or not but when you reach the overlap of categories to becomes harder. Just set the threshold when it is still clear
It's not her body since conception. It's another human's body inside her body.
I personally don't think we should have governments protecting lives or rights or anyone - therefore if abortion happens that's unfortunate but I wouldn't spend resources chasing that.
That said abortion is obviously murder and immoral, no matter how convenient it can be.
That you claim 'abortion is obviously murder' shows you don't even understand the position of those who claim it isn't. Go do more research on the side you don't hold.
An embryo is a stage of being a human. As you say, you were an embryo yourself. It's only because we can't see it that we feel it's not human enough and can be killed. The thought of not being "human enough" doesn't bode well in our history, especially around the 1940s timeframe.
A spermatozoon is a stage of being human… so is an “egg cell” but nobody is forcing people to allow them all to develop into humans! And no… the nazi example has nothing to do with it (and I say it as a person whom all grandparents got sent to concentration camps by nazis)
This argument at its core is trying to justify at what stage of development this is considered human enough to protect. I think it’s a similar line of thinking as eugenics.
