I wish I had a first-hand account of yesterday’s march to share with you (feel free to use this as an open thread to share your experiences if you were there). I’ve attended previous marches in Washington focussed on preserving a woman’s right to choose, but didn’t attend this one. It sounds like I missed quite an event:
Massive March in Support of Abortion Rights
The turnout was among the largest seen in a city with a fabled history for such gatherings. Authorities no longer offer official crowd estimates, but various police sources informally estimated the throng at between 500,000 and 800,000 in the mile-long stretch of green space between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.
Perhaps most significant about the gathering (which included the usual mix of politicians, celebrities, and true believers) was the focus on “mobilizing a new generation of women to the fight.”
Organizers had made a point of reaching out to younger women, concerned that the first generation of feminist warriors is aging and a new leadership needs to prepare to accept the mantle.
Roughly one-third of the participants were high school and college students from across the country.
Buses from Boston pulled in before sunrise, a couple of them filled with more than 100 students from Northeastern University. They were armed with pink pompons and placards assembled during a recent sign-making party. Sustained by trail mix and nutrition bars, they said they were marching to preserve a right that had been law for longer than they had been alive.
“I’m scared the rights my parents and grandparents fought for will be lost for my generation,” said Adrianne Ortega, a 21-year-old senior and president of the campus Feminist Student Organization.
“The Bush administration has been blatant in expressing they want abortion to be illegal,” she said.
Acknowledging recent polls showing an erosion of support for abortion rights among college-age women, Ortega said apathy was a greater problem than dissent. She noted that of 10,000 students on campus, only 100 are members of her organization.
“We should have so many more,” she said. “Our generation has dropped the ball.”
And this next quote could be used for a variety of issues today (I find myself uttering something similar about so many things), but perhaps is most appropriate with regards to the issue of abortion rights:
“It’s unbelievable we even have to come here and do this,” said Gabrielle Davis, 42, a law professor at the University of Toledo, who drove all day Saturday from Ohio with five other women, encountering cars full of others heading to the same destination. “I felt like the goal was accomplished, like the civil-rights movement. But it wasn’t.”
I’m anti-Abortion myself, and of course I’d love the law to be anti-Abortion, but I don’t like the way the Bush Administration works on religious grounds rather than anything else. You’re immediately refusing to even listen to a huge amount of people. That’s not democracy. I’m as Catholic as the next man (providing the next man is my clone – and, hey! he is. Hi, James!) but I think politics needs to be very, very separate from religion.
And vice-versa, should any Catholic Bishops, who are thinking of banning Kerry from receiving communion, be reading this. Atrios mentions a good point on this story.
I just don’t want people to do things for the wrong reasons. And if that sentence isn’t an opportunity to mention Iraq, WMD and a few governments, I don’t know what is.
How can we keep politics separate from religion?
What moral compass should politicians use in that instance?
BTW, CNN only reported 300,000 at the march… atleast last night they did.
I’m pro-choice myself: and wish I could have been on that march. Looking forward to reading other people’s accounts of the day.
As for right-wing Catholic groups who are trying to have Kerry be publicly denied communion, I think that Jeanne at Body and Soul has the best take on this: “My Bible, I’m afraid, is in the other room. Could somebody find me the famous passage where Jesus told his followers to threaten their neighbors?”
Women’s lives are more important than potential lives. Anti-choicers seem to have lost sight of this fact (I won’t dignify their stance with the false term “pro-life”).
Can I ask a stupid question?
What is so good about celebratin’ the right to kill a whole lotta unborn babies?
Now, true, there’s a lotta nice, polite, honest folks who happen to be “pro-choice” (Hate that Orwellian phrase — choosing what?)
And granted, I ain’t interested in throwin’ mothers in jail, and I ain’t too keen on throwin’ doctors in jail, but, jeez, why is it a good thing to revel on the premise that 1.3 million little gals and girls (who cain’t defend themselves) gettin’ sucked outta the womb each year is sumptin’ to value?
Seems kinda bizarre to me.
Myself, I’m kinda fond of babies.
why is it a good thing to revel on the premise that 1.3 million little gals and girls (who cain’t defend themselves) gettin’ sucked outta the womb each year is sumptin’ to value?
Well, gosh, how could anyone ever disagree with that characterization of the event, Navy Davy?
Myself, I’m kinda fond of babies.
The posting rules prevent me from giving this the response it so richly deserves.
I know you don’t mean it as such Navy, but your comment could serve as a brilliant parody of the “pro-life” argument (which is no less Orwellian a term than “pro-choice,” mind you).
What is so good about celebratin’ the right to kill a whole lotta unborn babies?
No one in the march was celebrating the group of medical procedures collectively known as “abortion.” That’s a gross misrepresentation of the issue at hand. The purpose of the march was to demonstrate how strongly people feel that abortion should continue to be a legal option for the nation’s women. The idea that people are celebrating the medical procedure is ridiculous. What, if anything, the march celebrated was the right (now threatened) for each individual woman to make a very private choice for herself.
Let me turn the question around on you: Individual freedom, free of religious or ideological prejudice, what’s not to celebrate about that?
Myself, I’m kinda fond of babies.
As am I…and I still support a woman’s right to choose. They are not incompatible positions.
I’ve noted before that I would counsel a woman who asked me for advice to have the baby and not have an abortion. It’s the individualist in me, what can I say?. But all my friends know I feel that way and that would inform whether they ask me or not.
Regardless, I’d tell her that’s only one opinion and the ultimate choice should be hers and she can count on me to support her no matter what she decides.
But if a woman chooses to terminate her pregnancy (for whatever reason…it’s truly not my business), I’d support her right to make that choice. I can’t walk in her shoes. I don’t feel I have any right to offer an unsolicited opinion about her personal health care.
This is not a baby. Hell, this isn’t a baby. This is close enough to a baby that I think it’s OK to start drawing lines in the sand, absent absolutely having to save the life of the mother. This is absolutely a baby, and anything you do at this point to terminate a pregnancy is functionally indistinguishable from delivery, so I have no problem drawing real hard lines there.
The argument, as has been stated on this website on at least two occasions as I recall, boils down to at what point one classes the contents of the womb as human life, or as a separate human life. I think it’s got to be the governments that decide that, and I do believe, OdysseusinRTP, that one can separate politics from religion, otherwise one starts to sound as though claiming only the religious can have morals, or understand them.
Now, of course, my argument would be that the safest course of action is decide that life begins at conception; and I’d say that after all, if people who disagree with me are wrong, then that’s a human life being destroyed.
But, it’s not actually totally black and white. Abortion appalls me, but there are grey areas, I admit that. I don’t claim those who say they are pro-choice are condoning murder, and I respect those in that camp who don’t think I love telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies.
It’s a contentious issue, lots of people have strong views – the march is a good thing if it means the subject is debated, as is clearly the case.
Women’s lives are more important than potential lives
I have no problem with this. But when potential lives are inconvenient is where I struggle. In any event it never should have been decided by the courts.
“‘It’s unbelievable we even have to come here and do this,’ said Gabrielle Davis, 42, a law professor at the University of Toledo, who drove all day Saturday from Ohio with five other women, encountering cars full of others heading to the same destination. ‘I felt like the goal was accomplished, like the civil-rights movement. But it wasn’t.'”
It’s pretty unlikely, though not impossible, that Roe v. Wade will be overturned in the forseeable future. It certainly won’t be by the present court. Could President Bush or a future anti-abortion President appoint Justices who will overturn R. v. W? It’s certainly conceivable, but stare decisis puts it on the unlikely side. (Though obviously not, perhaps, less so than was Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson; the minor point then arises of what defines an “activist judge.”)
Incidentally, I think it’s easy to make the case that the “goal” of the civil rights movement has not been “accomplished.” Unless I’ve switched universes again to one where racism, sexism, and other isms are no longer a factor in America, one where there is no longer any defacto segregation in housing or education, one where poverty is no longer a problem.
there were no “palestinian women for abortion rights for the release of mumia” such types…
Meaning that there were only “average Americans” Bender? It’s hard to tell from the media images….which tend to be of the most outrageous people in the assembly…
Totally off topic – sort of – but I want to state something extremely important about this protest: there were no “palestinian women for abortion rights for the release of mumia” such types…
I agree wholeheartedly with Edward’s view of abortion. And, just as I hope the creator doesn’t judge me overharshly for my forgetfulness in my lightturningoffitude, I hope not to be judged that this view wasn’t strong enough, cause its as strong as I think it ought to be.
Having said that, Jes, we don’t agree on many things and that’s ok, and I know going in that your opinions (as well as your belief in the correctness of your opinions) are pretty strong, but I don’t think that I can just let this go:
Women’s lives are more important than potential lives.
Aren’t everyone’s lives pretty clearly only about their personal potential? The potential to do…whatever. I mean, once you state that one life is more important than another you start a conversation that starts at “why bother jailing DNA convicted murderers when they could be executed?”, moves on to “why should doctors in a field hospital bother treating an injured terrorist brought in with injured Polish coalition troops?” and ends with “what’s the point of spending the money treating terminal cancer patients?”.
I’m with you as long as the right to choose based on a woman controlling her own body, no matter the motive, but I can’t agree if you insist that the fetus has any less right than the woman hosting it does to a life’s potential.
I’m with you as long as the right to choose based on a woman controlling her own body, no matter the motive, but I can’t agree if you insist that the fetus has any less right than the woman hosting it does to a life’s potential.
Someone once challenged me on my support for the right of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy with “Suppose your mother had aborted you!” to which all I could say was: “Well, in that case, I wouldn’t be around to care, would I?”
I have to admit the following statement isn’t mine. I’ve effectively cut-and-pasted it from a lot of sensible things friends have said in discussions about this in the past year. But it does represent what I think about it. (What I feel about abortion is another matter.)
Everyone agrees that killing babies that are out of the womb is wrong.
Most people are fine with contraception, the prevention of the sperm and egg coming together to form a zygote.
In between it comes down to a clash between the right of a woman to self-determination versus the right of a zygote/foetus not to die.
Any line drawn as to “the time it is too late to have an abortion because the foetus has rights now” is fundamamentally arbitrary (the last developmental age that is non-arbitrary is at about 8 days old) and therefore open to lobbying to reduce it by illiberal factions, from say, 28 weeks to 24 weeks to 20 weeks – there has been a long history of such attempts.
The effect of this is to burden the stupidest/most vulnerable/poorest women with babies who then prevent them becoming autonomous wage earners – smarter or richer women will either have got it done earlier or pay for a late abortion in a private clinic where in practice, you can get anything you like.
Either a woman’s body is her own and only her own, or when she gets pregnant, the fetus owns it. Think about the consequences. Should a woman who procures a abortion (and her abortionist) be charged with murder? Should a pregnant woman be put in chains to prevent her injecting herself with an abortifacient for the last two months of her pregnancy? Should an ex-partner be allowed to take out an interdict against her restraining her movements, or forcing her to stop smoking or drinking, or otherwise harming the fetus? these are all logical consequences of regarding the foetus as a legal person at whatever date of gestation.
The only justification for such a breach of fundamental liberty is a religious conviction many or most people do not subscribe to. Having a liberal abortion law does not force anyone to have an abortion, if their own beliefs do not countenance it.
As a nineteenth century woman wisely asked:
“What is it to me to have the right to vote, to own property, etc, if I may not keep my own body and its uses entirely within my right?”
Every time I try to follow through an argument about at what age a fetus “deserves” legal protection from abortion, it ends up getting more and more fiddly with tiny little points being counted as if they were major changes, simply because there is no one point in the entire gestation period that anyone can point to and say “Now that fetus is a person, and the day before it wasn’t.”
The really big (literally “sea-change”) point is, in fact, the obvious point: the moment of birth. (Well, okay, not “moment” – the whole process can take hours or days or if you’re lucky only minutes, but certainly not a moment.) That’s my reason for picking that as the time the foetus ceases to be a fetus, with no rights, and becomes a baby, with all the rights of any human being.
Every time I try to follow through an argument about at what age a fetus “deserves” legal protection from abortion, it ends up getting more and more fiddly with tiny little points being counted as if they were major changes, simply because there is no one point in the entire gestation period that anyone can point to and say “Now that fetus is a person, and the day before it wasn’t.”
Jes, surely that is an argument for saying “Well, since we don’t know, we ought to play on the safe side”?
As for your decision to say birth is the obvious point to take – you can’t be saying that the contents of a womb one day before birth is not a distinct human life. I find it extraordinarily difficult to believe such a dodgy belief of you. Is being born what makes us human? If delivery takes place eight weeks early, why is that entity more human than it would have been in seven weeks and six days? Just because it can breathe oxygen?
Perhaps because it’s not connected to its mother? But then, what about siamese twins? They are dependent on each other. Are they one being or two? Does human life and the rights to such classification only begin once the umbilical cord is severed?
James, read my post in full for why I believe the fetus has no legal rights until it is born. But the short form is: because any legal rights granted to an unborn fetus are rights to be exercised on its behalf by someone who will use them to infringe on a woman’s legal rights. That’s a matter of biological, unchangeable, ungettaroundable, fact.
Final point, which I guess I should have included: I believe abortion is a decision which should rightly be left up to the woman involved, with the advice of the physician of her choice.
Hi Jesurgislac – I did read the post in full… the final bit just didn’t make as much sense as I thought it should. I think a lot of the stuff you presented in the comment as black and white is actually greyer than you paint it, but didn’t want to quibble everything, which was why I only commented on the bit that left me incredulous.
How do you address the point of the woman’s rights adversely affecting that of the unborn child? Surely not by saying “Well, the woman’s already got rights, you see”?
But this is the stumbling block that always comes up between so-called pro-Choice and so-called pro-Life: “You’re not allowing the woman rights over her body!” “Well, YOU’RE saying the woman’s rights over her body are more important than the unborn child!” and it goes round. Of course, the woman’s rights exist – it’s just that some people are saying there should be rights for the other life too. That’s the difficulty; deciding which side to favour at which points.
Now, as I think von said a while back, at some point you may have to say “Well, this pregnancy is actually endangering the woman’s life” and then it’s a toss-up in a sense, and a decision has to be taken on the chance of saving either life.
But if you decide to say, “Well, we don’t know when life starts, so let’s play on the safe side,” then you do infringe some rights, and you do consider the killing of this entity as the killing of a human being – maybe not murder per se because those involved might not consider the entity to be a life.
That’s why it has to be the Government who decides, and I’m not sure how, but it musn’t be for religious reasons. Because the lawmakers should decide what abortion constitutes.
May I point out that in a sufficiently short number of years that we cannot predict precisely, but can put a firm upper limit on — say, within one hundred years, mark — it is an absolute surety (excluding the destruction of a significant part of civilization) that we’ll be able to painlessly, unobtrusively, and swiftly pluck a fertilized egg out of a woman’s body and raise in in artificial circumstances, whether that be on day one of fertilization, or thereafter?
Does anything think this will or should affect the “abortion argument” in that day?
I dunno, Gary… in that the woman wouldn’t have to carry the child… but then there’d still be the issue of upbringing.
I mean, in this future case, one would then have to make a decision pretty quick (but then one does anyway; not as quick, mark you, but…) on whether one wanted the child, because presumably few women would choose to bear the child, and so the egg would be removed pretty early on; this would then cause problems with the trampling on women’s rights arguments, I suppose.
Except… and this is me just trying to see how I might be wrong (which strangely, doesn’t take that much effort) – if one had a severed thumb, that’d still belong to oneself, right? So it could conceivably (no pun intended but what a corker, eh?) be said the egg was still part of the woman.
Aren’t there some bonding things that happen while the child/foetus is in the womb? Side question.
How do you address the point of the woman’s rights adversely affecting that of the unborn child? Surely not by saying “Well, the woman’s already got rights, you see”?
Well, again, read my post: I meant what I said, and what I said addresses that point completely.
GF: I think tehnological issues will drastically affect the abortion debate, and in ways we can’t forsee now. Hell, they already have, if only for the pictures of shiny happy fetuses. I don’t think they ever should be affected as much as they are, though, since the majority of the people affected by the decision will never have the access to the same technologies as the people making such decisions.
Jesurgislac: then if your argument is that any pre-birth distinction is “fundamentally arbitrary” and only justifiable on religious grounds, I expect you’re going to find a lot of scientists who’ll disagree with you on both points. I would also add that – in my opinion – that’s a dangerous stance to take.
The pre-birth issue (trying to legislate at which point a foetus could survive if “extracted”)strikes me as SF nightmare territory…as if the body inside a pregnant citizen could be harvested independent of the citizen’s wishes, making the citizen essentially a vessel for the state…and then the extracted being becomes, what?, property of the state?
Come on folks…isn’t that sort of thing better left to bad midnight movie scripts?
Ah, Edward – it is because you lack the will to believe that we will dominate you.
I don’t actually think anyone here was suggesting removing the eggs against the mother’s will – certainly I didn’t take Gary’s comment that way, which was why I said the decision on whether the mother wanted to have a child or not would have to be taken pretty damn quickly if everyone in the future had fertilised eggs removed early in order to avoid the chore of pregnancy.
I’m not worried so much about eggs, James…the question I’m asking is whether a foetus, which with science at the point it is now supposedly could survive if extracted any point into the third trimester by some accounts, belongs to the state (i.e., is a citizen entititled to protections against its mother’s own wishes).
I don’t want to get into discussions of “partial birth abortions” here (I’m totally against the procedure unless the mother’s life is at risk), but the idea that as science gets better, the pregnant woman’s choices are more and more limited, begs the question of whether we’d force a woman to subject herself to having the foetus extracted and put on life support to protect the foetus…and then who would be responsible for the foetus at that point?
The big problem I have with anti-abortion arguments in this area is they offer up science to support their claims of viability but avoid the messier aspects of that science and its social implications…just because we could extract a foetus and medically force it to mature, doesn’t mean that’s any less horrifying a concept than abortion.
just because we could extract a foetus and medically force it to mature, doesn’t mean that’s any less horrifying a concept than abortion.
Hmm… would it be ‘forcing’ – genuine question. Don’t the cells do their developing and dividing thing anyway? Sorry for the quibble over a word. It’s just that that seems the natural thing for the foetus to do; if you’re saying science would ‘force’ it, surely then the womb environment does too.
I’d also say surely it’s a less horrifying concept than abortion if abortion does indeed involve the killing of a human. But that’s a matter of opinion, of course.
“…since the majority of the people affected by the decision will never have the access to the same technologies as the people making such decisions.”
Never? That’s kinda long time. Are you really that confident of your ability to predict the economics of five hundred years from now? Or even one hundred? Or even fifty? (Fifty, I might buy, slightly.)
Time was, you know, that only the elite and wealthy could afford condoms. Before that wacky “plastic” stuff was invented. I’m sure someone predicted with equal confidence that never would they be available to the masses for, well, free upon asking (in industrial nations, to be sure).
“Jesurgislac: then if your argument is that any pre-birth distinction is “fundamentally arbitrary” and only justifiable on religious grounds, I expect you’re going to find a lot of scientists who’ll disagree with you on both points. I would also add that – in my opinion – that’s a dangerous stance to take.”
Factual distinctions can clearly be made, James. Moral distinctions are less of a science, as yet.
Edward, I wasn’t suggesting fertilized eggs or embryos should be removed against the will of the mother, or anything of the sort. I was simply noting that it’s forseeable that a significant number, though by no means all, of the issues surrounding abortion at present will be gone.
If getting the fertilized eggs out is as quick , easy, and painless as having a pee, a certain number, though hardly all, of the issues go away. This has nothing to do with changing the law to authorize invading bodies, which is more the province of nightmare scenarios than anything I brought into the conversation; I was discussing the fact that voluntary removal will be simple, that’s all.
Obviously it does nothing about such issues as right and responsibility of parents.
I happen to be quite thoroughly “pro-choice,” by the way.
Hmm… would it be ‘forcing’ – genuine question.
It would certainly be intervening, in a non natural way.
I’d also say surely it’s a less horrifying concept than abortion if abortion does indeed involve the killing of a human.
My particular aversion is to the social questions. Who’s responsibility is the stuggling foetus? Does the woman become the “mother” at that point or lose any parenthood claims? Who pays for the hospital bills? If after a while, the foetus still dies, does the woman reclaim the body? Could she sue the hospital?
Until these questions have answers, all the science in the world is besides the point IMHO.
“…just because we could extract a foetus and medically force it to mature, doesn’t mean that’s any less horrifying a concept than abortion.”
Wait, you’re saying that you’re horrified by the tens of thousands of adults walking around today who started as eggs fertilized in a test tube and raised in a surrogate womb?
Have you chatted with any of the parents at fertility clinics, or the grown-ups themselves about this?
I’m not clear how “force” enters the picture, either.
“It would certainly be intervening, in a non natural way.”
What, like birth control? Or fertility treatments? Or artificial insemination?
What are you saying, Edward? You oppose all these things? Have you thought this through?
Is there a larger class of voluntary medical procedures you object to as being “non-natural”? Surgery? Injections? Drugs?
Factual distinctions can clearly be made, James. Moral distinctions are less of a science, as yet.
What do you mean by ‘factual’ distinctions? Which facts…? Because the definition of a human being isn’t a matter of ‘fact’. Yes, you can say ‘these are the differences between the foetus at this stage of development and a new-born child’ but that isn’t really saying it’s not a human being… just as one can’t say a human needs to have two arms, two kidneys etc. to be human.
I suppose in that case, what constitutes a human being is perhaps more moral than ‘factual’, if that’s what you mean…
By the way, it’s really good to have seen the various points here. Helps me question my own beliefs and consolidate or otherwise. It’s always a shame that most discussions of this kind don’t stop the next time this topic is discussed from starting off more or less at Square One again.
Here’s a typical place where they’ve had 979 births through surrogate parenting.
A drop in the bucket of the tens of thousands of people who wouldn’t exist, and the hundreds of thousands of members of their families.
I don’t know what to say to Edward’s implied assertions that this is, apparently, a “forced,” “non-natural” and “horrifying” thing.
“Who’s responsibility is the stuggling foetus? Does the woman become the “mother” at that point or lose any parenthood claims? Who pays for the hospital bills? If after a while, the foetus still dies, does the woman reclaim the body? Could she sue the hospital?”
You can’t possibly be saying you’re opposed to the procedures by which the majority of gay parents have biological children; I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you don’t know the answers to these questions, that they’re not, generally open legal questions any more (okay, to some extent, but surely you’re not saying people should not use surrogate parenting until… when?).
Let me restate here, as I’ve succeeded in clouding my point.
I’m horrified by the concept of a state (that outlaws abortion) resorting to extracting a foetus from a woman who would otherwise terminate her pregnancy.
That is in essence what we’re logically arguing for when we say a foetus could survive after the third trimester with current science…
The choice to use testtube technology or other science is not my complaint.
It’s the social implications surrounding the logic that a foetus should be legally declared as viable after the third trimester because it could survive outside its mother. Taking that concept a little further some very messy social questions arise.
“What do you mean by ‘factual’ distinctions? Which facts…? Because the definition of a human being isn’t a matter of ‘fact’. Yes, you can say ‘these are the differences between the foetus at this stage of development and a new-born child’ but that isn’t really saying it’s not a human being… just as one can’t say a human needs to have two arms, two kidneys etc. to be human.”
“I suppose in that case, what constitutes a human being is perhaps more moral than ‘factual’, if that’s what you mean…”
Essentially, yes.
I was responding your comment:
“…then if your argument is that any pre-birth distinction is ‘fundamentally arbitrary’ and only justifiable on religious grounds, I expect you’re going to find a lot of scientists who’ll disagree with you on both points.”
I was agreeing with you that there are “scientific distinctions” to be made in the growth of an embryo/fetus. They don’t, however, answer any of the questions, by themselves, about what is the applicable degree of moral concern to consider about those distinctions, or what acts should or should not morally follow.
Similarly, there are day-to-day scientific distinctions in a person with a fatal disease, but that doesn’t give us any answers, per se, as to when it might or might not be morally admissible to offer them help in committing suicide.
I expect you agree that science doesn’t answer moral questions; it merely provides information for consideration.
Gary – think I agree with your last comment in toto.
“I’m horrified by the concept of a state (that outlaws abortion) resorting to extracting a foetus from a woman who would otherwise terminate her pregnancy.”
Thanks for re-stating. But is anyone here suggesting disagreement with you on this point?
“That is in essence what we’re logically arguing for when we say a foetus could survive after the third trimester with current science…”
Um, after the “third trimester,” the nine months, it’s not usually an issue, is it?
🙂
James, all I am saying is: a fetus has no rights. None at all. And the distinction between a fetus and a baby is the moment of birth. There is a clear and obvious change at that point between a fetus that cannot survive without the womb, and a baby that can survive without even its mother (babies don’t need moment by moment assistance to breathe: fetuses do).
There is a wobbly area in between where vastly premature babies exist, but I’m with Edward.
A late fetus can, at this point in time, be removed from the womb and brought to maturity by artificial lifesupport. But the idea of doing that to a woman who has decided that she wants to terminate her pregnancy is abhorent to me – again, it shows that granting “rights” to a fetus necessarily involves infringing on a woman’s rights. Abortion is a decision for a pregnant woman to make, and hers only.
James, all I am saying is: a fetus has no rights. None at all.
I agree. How could I not?
granting “rights” to a fetus necessarily involves infringing on a woman’s rights
I agree.
What we disagree on, and this is the crux between most people on the sides of this debate, is whether the foetus should have rights and whether, if it did, certain of those rights would inevitably take priority over certain of the rights of the relevant woman.
“James, all I am saying is: a fetus has no rights.”
This opens up the sticky philosophical question of where “rights” come from. I’m not going there. However, it’s probably due, by anyone arguing any side, more than a simple proof-by-assertion.
Or are you simply asserting present American law? (That one gets into a reversed sticky wicket; a mother’s legal rights to an abortion are limited in the third trimester.)
The better debate is the philosophical one, which is far more basic than the mere question of abortion.
Are “rights” “granted” or “inherent”? Can “rights” be “granted” and be “rights,” rather than “privileges”?
Oh, and in case you missed it, Wonkette has a link to a site with the audio from Jon Stewart’s lampooning of the Bush Administration’s newest manipulation of the WoT …
Let’s take it back to philosophy, then: A fetus should not have legal rights, because any such rights would have to be granted by infringing on a woman’s rights. I am, in any case, not clear that any court has actually granted a fetus legal rights.
And with that…
fetusmart
A fetus should not have legal rights, because any such rights would have to be granted by infringing on a woman’s rights.
Is that supposed to be a definitive argument? I’m not sure it is one. Surely one should say, if being purely philosophical, that one should examine the question of whether or not the foetus should have rights in isolation from anything else first…
Is that supposed to be a definitive argument?
Only if you agree that it is wrong to legally discriminate against women by arbitrarily removing their rights.
Surely one should say, if being purely philosophical, that one should examine the question of whether or not the foetus should have rights in isolation from anything else first…
If the fetus could exist in isolation from anything else, we wouldn’t be having this argument… 😉
If the fetus could exist in isolation from anything else, we wouldn’t be having this argument… 😉
He does have his moments, our Jesurgislac…
“Let’s take it back to philosophy, then: A fetus should not have legal rights, because any such rights would have to be granted by infringing on a woman’s rights. I am, in any case, not clear that any court has actually granted a fetus legal rights.”
That’s not philosophy. That’s reasoning.
“Only if you agree that it is wrong to legally discriminate against women by arbitrarily removing their rights.”
That’s neither philosophy nor reasoning. That’s the fallacy of begging the question.
I’m sorry, but you can’t derive a proof by assuming it is true.
Perhaps you’d like to try comedy. It’s three doors down the hall.
To assert a right, you must first lay the foundation as to what is the source of the right. I’ve no formal training whatever in philosophy, but just a few seconds on the web suggests you could engage thus, thus or thus or thus or thus, just to pick some almost random possibilities.
Or we could ask Matthew Yglesias to come play, or some of the boys and girls of Crooked Timber.
That’s neither philosophy nor reasoning. That’s the fallacy of begging the question.
No: it’s a statement. 🙂 I do not believe it is right to discriminate against women, regardless of whether the excuse is that women are inferior or that this woman is pregnant.
“I do not believe it is right to discriminate against women, regardless of whether the excuse is that women are inferior or that this woman is pregnant.”
I happen to believe that statement, as well.
I also do not believe that it is right to call Nova Scotia smoked salmon “lox.”
Now we’ve both make equally valid assertions.
Should I take it, then, you are dropping your argument asserting “the right of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy” and regarding “fetal rights” and are not prepared to defend or ground such terms and arguments? You’ve fallen back to simple personal preference?
If so, that’s fine, but a preference isn’t an argument. Just so we’re all working from the same page.
Gary, out of curiosity, what do you see as the core positions of ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’; are you heading towards saying they’re preferences? Not that I want to argue with that if so – I’m just curious to know how you see it. I would imagine it does come down to something like that, otherwise I suspect the argument wouldn’t be a) so long-lasting and varied b) so easily emotional.
“Gary, out of curiosity, what do you see as the core positions of ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’; are you heading towards saying they’re preferences?”
No. I digressed into the exercise of trying to prod Jesurgislac into making a logical, grounded, argument, rather than simply asserting a personal preference. I could do the same to a gazillion anti-abortion folk. Or to anyone trying to make a case based upon a “right,” when they don’t have a grounding in what a “right” is. (It’s a tricky and complex subject, but people toss the term around like cotton candy; this makes me itch.) I could similarly prod anyone attempting to make any case that isn’t soundly grounded; that also makes me itch.
The core positions seem to be, more or less, “all human life is sacred and must be defended, particularly innocent life; a fertilized egg is an innocent human life” and “the right of a woman to have control of her body is absolute and must be defended.”
I reserve the right to restate or withdraw those characterizations entirely.
I think there are sound arguments that can be made for either side of the abortion debate, and many result in deadlock because they proceed from conflicting axioms of belief which are inarguable.
I also think there are many unsound arguments on both sides, as there are about everything, that proceed from unthought-out assumptions, or from emotion, or from external sources (so-and-so-whom I respect feels this way, so it must be correct).
I digressed into the exercise of trying to prod Jesurgislac into making a logical, grounded, argument, rather than simply asserting a personal preference.
And I decline: on abortion, I think personal preference rules. :-p
“And I decline: on abortion, I think personal preference rules. :-p”
As may be, it’s not a way to persuade someone who doesn’t already agree with you, is it?
As may be, it’s not a way to persuade someone who doesn’t already agree with you, is it?
In my experience (long) of discussing abortion, no one ever does persuade anyone else.
Not so often, but significantly above “never.” I’ve certainly known many people in my lifetime who have gone so far as to flip over to the other side; people on both sides. Changes is clearly possible, though not, as a rule, as an immediate result of hearing an argument and slapping one’s self upside the head, and declaring “I never thought of that!”
What was your goal in posting and arguing on the topic, if you believe that “no one ever does persuade anyone else,” may I ask?
What Gary said.
Wouldn’t it be useful if there were one brilliant, definitive, rational argument.
I tend to feel most debates on this issue start at the same point. At least this one has got here. Much as abortion appalls me (and I’m not saying pro-choicers adore it), it’s important for me to accept that people opposed to me are operating on feelings just as important to them as mine to me; and that they’re probably not missing some vital point I need to make to them.
There are certain misconceptions about both sides that can be usefully discarded, however. I thought Kevin Drum’s recent post on the subject was a little weirdly generalised for him.
What was your goal in posting and arguing on the topic, if you believe that “no one ever does persuade anyone else,” may I ask?
I’m a sicko pervert.
I really enjoy arguing, and can be tempted to do it even on topics such as abortion where people come to the table with their minds firmly made up and generally without ever admitting to a whole shitload of ulterior motives. I do realize that it is an utterly futile exercise. Effectively both sides become trolls to each other (or possibly one side are trolls and the other side are dwarfs, but which is which?) and the whole thing turns into one big Koom Valley*, especially if everyone arguing is taking it all very very seriously.
Take a look at this – a clearly laid out argument, based on solid facts, why people opposed to abortions should support legal abortion: because open access to legal abortion saves lives and demonstrably tends to minimize the number of abortions carried out.
Judging by the comment thread that follows it, it convinced no one who wasn’t already convinced.
*Quoting Terry Pratchett. Another addiction of mine.
“I’m a sicko pervert.”
Oh, okay. Me, too.
“I do realize that it is an utterly futile exercise.”
It really isn’t. That is, it depends upon who you are arguing with, but, even so, long-term effects of what slow accumulation of ideas will slowly do to someone over, say, five, ten, twenty years, is quite unpredictable, as a rule. People quite often change their minds on such “rock-solid” issues over such a time-frame.
Also, conversation in a non-one-on-one medium are, of course, heard/read by others than those you are directly engaged with.
Terry is a very nice guy, by the way. Though, unsurprisingly, he tends to prefer hanging out with the general sf fans, rather than those primarily dedicated to worshipping him.
“I thought Kevin Drum’s recent post on the subject was a little weirdly generalised for him.”
How so?
In what sense did I think the post was more generalised than normal? Or, in what sense do I think Kevin Drum doesn’t normally generalise like that?
It was the following para:
Ponnuru is right: if abortion is murder, then anyone who gets an abortion should be jailed. Anybody who performs an abortion should be put on death row. Anybody who supports abortion rights is little better than a mobster or a terrorist.
I wasn’t sure if Mr. Drum was being sarcastic or not, though it reminds me of one of Jesurgislac’s posts above. If Drum believes that pro-lifers believe this, then it’s a gross generalisation. I appreciate I may be wrong in my reading of this. “If abortion is murder” is sort of a faulty first premise – might manslaughter be a better place to start? And anyway, doesn’t either term imply some legal protection that doesn’t exist? The only place you can start is “If abortion is killing a human being”.
Secondly, it’s assuming anyone who’s anti-abortion is pro-capital punishment. Well, I’m not. Is that true in the US?
Oh, and I’ve never actually spoken to PTerry, but he does seem like a nice guy.
“If Drum believes that pro-lifers believe this, then it’s a gross generalisation. I appreciate I may be wrong in my reading of this.”
I don’t speak for Kevin; far from it; he even dropped me from his blogroll.
But my reading of what he was doing there is, in his view, extrapolating what he believes is the logical extension of the attributed beliefs, very much not asserting that many people believe his extrapolation, by implicitly wondering why they do not.
He was, as I read him, saying, in my own paraphrase of him, “if you believe A, why don’t you believe B, since obviously B is the inevitable follow-on to A?”
“‘If abortion is murder'” is sort of a faulty first premise – might manslaughter be a better place to start?
That may be so, but the fact is that we commonly see “Abortion Is Murder” as perhaps the most common poster-sign at anti-abortion rallies; I would guestimate that hundreds of thousands have been displayed in the past decade alone. I’ve never seen a “Abortion Is Manslaughter” poster.
And, actually, since abortion is deliberately plotted, so to speak, there would seem to be a pretty good case for the accusation to properly be murder, not manslaughter, though I think I see how you’re going in suggesting the reverse. But that doesn’t seem to be a view held by anyone inclined to wave a sign over here, at least.
“And anyway, doesn’t either term imply some legal protection that doesn’t exist? The only place you can start is ‘If abortion is killing a human being’.”
I’m sorry, I’m not following you there, possibly because I’ve been up all night, and will likely shortly knock off for a bit of that “sleep” thing Moe spoke of that I hear so much about.
“Secondly, it’s assuming anyone who’s anti-abortion is pro-capital punishment. Well, I’m not. Is that true in the US?”
It’s certainly not uncommon for an anti-abortion activist to also be pro-death penalty, on the basis that fetuses (“unborn children”) are innocent, but murderers are not. It’s by no means a universal view in the anti-abortion movement here, however. I have no idea what the percentages of opinion are.
I’ve recently read articles explaining the Church’s catechisms on the two, which essentially say, so I’m told, that abortion is universally wrong, whereas the death penalty is less wrong, because it is allowable when it is the only means possible to protect society from the criminal (which wouldn’t logically seem to me to apply to someone in prison, but that’s another argument).
“Oh, and I’ve never actually spoken to PTerry, but he does seem like a nice guy.”
I’ve not spoken to him in person or orally, myself, though we have plenty of mutual friends. All my various exchanges with him have been online, generally on Usenet, and a smattering of e-mail. I’ve gotten a fair sense of him, superficially, of course, from that, and accounts of mutual friends. Oddly, pubs seem to feature in perhaps 92% of these accounts. Very strange, isn’t it?
I’ve not been active in the forum for several years, but it used to be not uncommon for Terry to hang out in rec.arts.sf.fandom, where he was more or less treated as just another respected poster; he tended to avoid all the Pterry forums, where he was treated as a god.
It’s uncomfortable being treated as a god.
So I hear.
By the way, I just noticed a bit ago that it’s frigging snowing out here. That’s Colorado for you. Last two years, as well (the only ones I’ve been here for), there was also always at least or two last “goodbye” snows in May, usually late in the month.
And for any Reagan fans reading this, Nancy Reagan just vetoed the proposed building of “Ronald Reagan University” in Denver. I’m just so crushed.
And, actually, since abortion is deliberately plotted, so to speak, there would seem to be a pretty good case for the accusation to properly be murder, not manslaughter, though I think I see how you’re going in suggesting the reverse.
Okay, in that case, I won’t – it’s not that difficult a deduction, I should imagine. With regard to definitions, I meant that killing an unborn child is not, presently, legally classed in the same way as killing, say, a 25-year-old man.
Yeah, I can see what you mean about what Kevin was doing. That was essentially why I didn’t post a comment on his site. The more sensationalist ways of ‘making a point’ aren’t terribly useful.
I also understand the points about positions taken by some pro-lifers in the United States.
Right; got to go now. To quote a man* I once had something to do with, and regret the passing of, “I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle”, so I’d best sort it out.
*The author, not the character