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Originally Posted by Felicity It is a life being formed. It is not yet a baby. Nor is it yet a human being. |
An unborn child is in possession of a complete human genetic code from the moment of conception,
just as you and I ar
e.
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Originally Posted by Felicity I will assert that elective abortion should be legal in the United States for any reason from conception to 20 weeks, and for medical reasons concerning the fetus and/or the woman seeking the abortion at any point in the pregnancy. I will further assert that mental health reasons for a woman's choice to abort should be legal at all stages of pregnancy and that her medical privacy precludes that information from being accessible. I cite the preamble, Article 4 sections 2&4, 4th amendment, the 9th amendment, and the 13th amendment of the US Constitution as my basis for my assumed claims. |
The woman's "right to privacy" is irrelevant as pertains to the abortion issue, because abortion is not a "private" matter.
Abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being; as such, it is my contention that abortion is anything
but a private matter, since the state always has a compelling interest in preventing murder.
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Philosophically (as separate from the legal argument), I will assume the claim that the person in the position of seeking an abortion can do so because it is within her ability to do it and it is her sole responsibility as to how her body is maintained.
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By framing this issue in terms of a woman's right to control (or, as you put it, "maintain") her own body, you deny what seems to me to be undeniable: the fact that there is more than one body affected by an abortion.
When the rights of one person come into conflict with the rights of another person, the right to life should always take precedence.
It's true that in most cases, women (and, in fact, all people) have the right to bodily sovereignty.
But abortion is an exception to that rule (or
should be), because unlike other methods of exercising control over one's body, an abortion infringes upon not only the body of the pregnant woman, but also on another body and, in fact, another human life.
There is not (or oughtn't to be, in a civilized society) any constitutionally protected "right to privacy" that involves eviscerating and dismembering children, regardless of their age or developmental level.
If you noticed your neighbor dismembering his child in his back yard, would you hesitate to intervene, simply because it's
his child,
his backyard? Would you be concerned about violating his privacy, violating his right to control his body?
He is violating
your rights, and the interests of society in general, by wilfully killing an innocent child, regardless of whether it's
his child, regardless of whether this act is taking place on
his private property.
You have a right and a
duty to intervene.
Why should a pregnant woman be considered any different?
Roe-v-Wade was wrongly decided, and needs to be reconsidered in light of recent medical advances that society has made in the interim: the introduction of more efficient contraceptives, technology that allows fetuses to be considered "viable" at ever-earlier gestational ages, 3-D ultrasound technology that reveals much more about the development of babies in utero than was known in 1973, etc.
If and when the case is re-examined, I believe the Supreme Court will decide that women have no "right to privacy" that involves the right to deliberately and wilfully kill innocent people, any more than
men do.