
A Woman's Rights - johnny313
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/pregnancy-women-pro-life-abortion.html
======
Alex3917
From the perspective of traditional family values, in Ancient Rome you had 8
days after the child was born to decide whether to keep them or to leave them
on a mountain to die from exposure and get eaten by vultures. But you
couldn’t, say, abuse the child during the first 8 days regardless of whether
you were going to keep them or not.

I think the NYT is conflating the idea of personhood and equal rights here.

There is no logical reason why other rights shouldn’t kick in before the right
to life, in the same way that, say, the rights to drive or vote kick in
afterwards.

Even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of fetus personhood, I don’t see any
reason why that should change current abortion policy or somehow grant a fetus
equal rights, whatever that would mean.

------
benmcnelly
I don't see anything. Is there a non subscription way to read about this?

~~~
stuntkite
Incognito mode works pretty well.

------
xoa
I wonder if anti-choicers have really thought through the implications of
their position, or if they just feel that it will never apply to them and thus
don't care? Even if we take as granted that a fetus is a full human at
conception, fundamentally anti-choice is about having the government use its
effective monopoly on physical force to compel one human to suffer pain, risk
of death, and have their bodily fluids harvested to save another against their
will. It's true that anti-choicers want to restrict this to just a certain
class of humans (women), but the logic can certainly apply to far more then
that. There are objectively often significant shortages of organs and critical
fluids (including both blood and plasma), and the lack results in suffering
and death amongst humans (including children). This could be reduced if the
government could just forcefully harvest from any person under their
jurisdiction at will. Even if we restrict it to only cases where risk of death
would be the same or less then pregnancy, that still leaves a lot on the
table. I can't speak for anyone else, but that would be a scenario I'd deeply
oppose. I have donated blood before, I have my organ donor card filled out and
with me when I drive, and I honor those who volunteer to take on risk and pain
for others in general. But that doesn't mean I would be comfortable with it
being forced rather then volunteered, not even given the clear fact that it
would surely save some children's lives.

Pro-choice doesn't mean pro-abortion, just that someone doesn't support the
government using violence for forceful body harvesting [1]. In fact I strongly
suspect that most pro-choice people are anti-abortion, either for moral
reasons or even simply because they view it (I do) as an unfortunate scenario
brought on by bad luck, limitations of our current medical technology and
societal choices. For example, ideally we'd have invested all the money spent
on this debate into trying to develop far better birth control methods for
both men and women and then made that available for free to everyone. If we
imagine something based on stents and implantable long lasting induction
powered valve systems then perhaps something like a reversible-on-demand
vasectomy/tubal ligation would become possible, or something else we haven't
even considered. If constantly involuntarily active near perfect birth control
was ubiquitous that would likely significantly reduce the incidence of
abortions. If our medical technology was more advanced we could cover a wider
class of in-utero conditions that current present tough choices for mothers.
If we had better universal healthcare and UBI that might save some people from
certain life critical financial choices too. Etc etc. Heck, maybe someday
we'll have full on synthetic womb technology at a level where someone who
doesn't wish to carry to term can just not even in the first week yet have
development happen anyway.

There are lots of potential constructive avenues for those who truly wish
there to be fewer abortions. I find it hard to see how it's justified to bring
shooting women/doctors/whomever into the picture frankly, and the whole
spectre of forcefully harvesting one human for another should be more then a
little off putting even for men.

\----

1: That's not hyperbole, that's just what it means for something to be
"illegal", there are of course lots and lots of intermediate steps and
pressures government will generally apply first, but at the foundation of the
whole endeavor is force. And I think "make it illegal" is treated far too
casually in modern society.

~~~
belorn
Pro-choice or pro-life are both about framing the question.

Pro-life side of the argument is about framing the issue into what right and
responsibilities a person has. They want universal rules that can be applied.

Pro-choice side of the argument talk about the result, and the choice
(exclusively by women) to decide if they want to raise a child or not. A
planned parenthood by women for women.

Synthetic womb technology won't resolve the issue. This year a group of
prenatal and midwife medical council here in Sweden made a decision if nurses
were to be allowed to do life-saving care to aborted children when the
abortion has been delayed to the point where the child life could in theory be
viable after the abortion, and the decision was no. They decided that the
woman choice to not raise a child needed to be respected, even if the child
could be kept alive outside the womans body.

------
oh_sigh
Just thinking about the first anecdote in the article - you can't have a fetus
be a life when you want and just some tissue mass when you don't want.

If a drunk driver runs into my pregnant wife and only minorly injures her but
kills the nearly-born baby, what should the punishment be? I think it would
need to be similar to if a drunk driver runs into a woman and injures herself
and kills her nearly-born baby.

------
taxicabjesus
The whole "debate" is a classic divide-and-conquer campaign.

People in the one reality tunnel [0] believe one thing, while people with an
incompatible reality tunnel have different beliefs. Both sides have their
valid points. Both sides are confused about other aspects of the situation.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel)

One of my more memorable taxi driving experiences [1] started with a woman
trying to leave her sober living facility, and her friends saying, "You'll
never get your baby back, if you leave..." Her newborn had been taken by CPS
at birth two weeks before, on account of her already having a child in the
state's custody.

This woman hadn't had a miscarriage/stillbirth/aborted her baby, but she was
nonetheless traumatized by losing the child she'd delivered. Most children do
better when they're not raised by the state: parents/adoptive parents > foster
care. I don't think many pro-life activists dedicate themselves to raising
other peoples' children.

[1] [http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-
boys-...](http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-
girls.html)

A simple reframe of the issue could end the effectiveness of this divide-and-
conquer campaign. Both sides need to acknowledge that it's better to not need
an abortion, that women throughout history have developed not-very-safe
methods of dealing with inconvenient pregnancies [2][3], and that the post-Roe
v. Wade divide-and-conquer campaign actually amplifies the number of
abortions/miscarriages/stillbirths/hurt women.

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
induced_abortion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-induced_abortion)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide#In_ancient_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide#In_ancient_history)
\- Greece and Rome:

    
    
      "[...] These babies would not be directly killed, 
      but put in a clay pot or jar and deserted outside 
      the front door or on the roadway. In ancient 
      Greek religion, this practice took the 
      responsibility away from the parents because 
      the child would die of natural causes, for example 
      hunger, asphyxiation or exposure to the elements."
    

Maybe conservatives will realize the futility of their efforts to put the
technology-genie back in the bottle, and shift to supporting pregnant women
who have no support (thereby giving women who might otherwise abort an
option).

Maybe liberals will find non-medical ways to help women manage their menstrual
cycles without doctors. Some progress was being made by feminists in the
mid-20th century, but this line of investigation/development shut down when
"the pill" was approved... My friend called me in a panic once when she missed
her period, but she got it to come back by herself.

------
stmfreak
I wish liberals and conservatives could reconcile the intellectual dishonesty
around their views on vaccines and abortion. They are on opposite sides of
both issues. Either a person’s body is their own or it isn’t. I know I would
prefer my personal rights be recognized and if letting others have abortions
and decline vaccines is necessary to protect my rights then so be it.

