Bill of INDC took a break from his usual rounds of righteous pictoral mockery of the Giant Puppet People to survey the recent pro-choice march in Washington. Bill is trying to articulate his own pro-choice attitudes – something I can relate to; my own opinions aren’t that easy to map* – so the series (Part I, Part II & Part III) has a bit of heft to them. I seriously suggest reading them.
Moe
*Essentially, I’m fine with the practical guidelines of Roe vs. Wade (with somewhat stronger restrictions on third-trimester abortions), but almost by accident. My concerns are driven by the need to establish when a life becomes a human life… because at that point said life also becomes an American citizen, at least when we’re talking about gestations within our borders. IOW, abortion is among other things a civil rights issue, which means that I want the federal government to resolve it, not the states.
Well, Moe, I agree with you: Roe set up the framework to eliminate 3rd term abortions. It’s right there in the language.
I simply don’t understand my fellow lefties’ reluctance to accept this. It will not weaken the pro-choice position. On the contrary: it shows that you accept the premise that people should be responsible for their actions.
Anyone who takes 6 months to decide that she wants an abortion doesn’t deserve any sympathy. The technical term is LOSER!
I’m surprised that you’d heed to the semantic argument Moe. Human life begins at conception. Sure you can produce evidence that shows a zygote is apparently indistinguishable from other life forms, but the fact remains that a human ovum, if fertilized will be human, and nothing else (at least not yet). Any attempt to place the creation of life between conception and birth is inherently subjective, and potentially opens the doors to other just living verses sentient being arguments.
More importantly, and like Bill and evidently you, I happen to be pro-choice, I believe the semantic argument only serves to excuse women (sometimes couples) from what should be a thoughtful, if agonizing decision-making process. It’s not come cyst being removed nor a mole being cauterized. Abortion is not a standard form of birth control, including RU482, it’s a months after medical procedure. Far too often, however, it is viewed as just that, and the dehumanization of that growth in a woman’s womb serves as a toxic moral pacifier.
On an ancillary note, how I wish we had elected officials who could go beyond the rhetoric and actually legislate a rational Roe v. Wade. Pipe dream, I know – they cant even produce common sense tax laws…
Mac: Anyone who takes 6 months to decide that she wants an abortion doesn’t deserve any sympathy. The technical term is LOSER!
Actually, that’s the misogynistic term, Mac. Terminations carried out in the third trimester of pregnancy are done (in the vast majority of cases) because the fetus is unviable. In some cases (cite) because not only is the fetus effectively dead already, the choice is not even between forcing a woman to bear a fetus that cannot survive outside her body and permitting her to terminate the pregnancy in the sixth month, but between this unviable fetus and the babies she could have in the future.
(And I’m tired of pro-death anti-women activists campaigning against safe legal abortions describing themselves as pro-life. Let pro-life describe only the many who are for fewer abortions – a goal which I support, and which will never be achieved if pro-deathers continue to muddy the issue by claiming that it’s necessary to make abortions illegal. It’s not.)
Well, didn’t all of that neatly encapsulate the reason why abortion’s one of the third rails of American politics. 🙂
Moe
PS: As to the semantic argument… semantics are always important, of course, but in this case they’re extremely so. One of the duties of a nation-state is to establish just what a citizen of it is. Now, I may personally suspect that a particular bundle of cells is an unique human life, but until they come up with a device that can detect souls I do not expect the government to take that suspicion seriously. Said government (over the last thirty years) has instead fumblingly come up with empirical rules of thumb that most people can accept; it’s not perfect, but in this case it’s better than letting the states decide.
Or something like that. 6:25 AM here, people. 🙂
Aside from the point at which a fetus becomes a citizen, which has an angels and pinhead quality about it, what about the following scenario:
Tomorrow you wake up in a hospital to find that you have been attached to another individual in a way that you provide vital biological processes to the other individual. If you disconnect yourself, that other individual will die.
Should you have the choice to diconnect yourself?
Should the state have the right to tell you that you are forbidden to do so?
double-plus-ungood,
what about the following scenario:
Tomorrow you wake up in a hospital to find that you have been attached to another individual in a way that you provide vital biological processes to the other individual.
I’ve never seen the pro-abortion argument framed quite this way, as if pregnancy was a spontaneous event that the mother had no way of foreseeing and no way of taking steps beforehand to prevent.
I don’t think you’ll persuade too many people with it, but it’s certainly original.
…as if pregnancy was a spontaneous event that the mother had no way of foreseeing and no way of taking steps beforehand to prevent.
Okay, let me rephrase it. Imagine that you had sex once, and woke up the next day in the hospital…
The rest remains as is. Does that cover your observation?
double-plus-ungood,
Okay, let me rephrase it. Imagine that you had sex once, and woke up the next day in the hospital…
Be careful, you’re coming dangerously close to acknowledging that there are choices that can be made before the pregnancy occurs as well as afterward. =)
The ridiculous face of leftism shows itself once again. People who are opposed to abortion are now “pro-death”.
I think that for rhetorical purposes, though, we should be categorized as anti-life. Calling somoeone “pro-” anything gives a positive connotation, you know. Can’t have that.
Be careful, you’re coming dangerously close to acknowledging that there are choices that can be made before the pregnancy occurs as well as afterward. =)
And if the pregnant individual used faulty birth control? Or the sex was not consentual?
I see that line or reasoning artificial. One’s rights regarding one’s biological processes should not be conditional on past events. Or are you proposing that limitations of one’s rights over one’s own body by the state are determined by previous behavior? Should, for instance, the government force prisoners to use medication on the basis that decisions they made in the past to commit crimes abrogate any rights they might have to refuse it?