talloulou

Changing the outcome, the end result, is the whole point!
If Roe vs. Wade were abolished the abortion issue would revert to the individual states unless the Supreme Court replaced Roe vs. Wade with something else. Either way abortion would be front and center in the media nationally. People who don’t normally talk about or think about abortion would start paying attention. All that attention is exactly what the abortion issue needs. Simultaneously science and technology are on the verge of demanding our society answer questions that were thrown aside in 1973.

Questions regarding when a human becomes a human being and thus a person will have to be answered. The fact that Roe v Wade abandoned the one issue at the very heart of abortion is ludicrous.

Well that’s an assumption. I do believe very few states would entirely outlaw abortion. However the aftermath beyond that is up in the air. While I agree that most people would favor abortion rights when the mother’s health is at risk and in cases of rape once you begin to discuss “convenience” abortions the tolerance level drops considerably.

With advancements made in birth control and the morning after pill it’s quite possible that our society could decide the mother’s health and rape are the only circumstances where surgical abortion is justified.

Repeatedly we hear people claiming that they themselves are opposed to abortion but they make allowances for others. Likewise you will hear someone put forth a compelling argument for abortion and then moments later hear the very same person turn around and balk at women who have had repeat abortions! If there was nothing wrong with the first one then why is the idea of 2, 3, & 4 loathsome? Clearly something in our collective conscience rejects the notion that there is nothing wrong with abortion.

Furthermore much of the talk used to defend abortion on demand is repugnant and occasionally downright obnoxious. Most don’t view the fetus as a parasite, a clump of tissue, or a lower life form. How many of us do you really think would equate the unborn with a fly, rat, or mosquito as is often done on the abortion forum here? Society recognizes exactly what dies during an abortion despite any and all attempts at obscuring the science.

You pointed out that abortion numbers dropped in the 90’s but failed to note that the number of abortion providers was in decline during the same time period.

“From 1996 to 2000, the number of abortions fell by 3% to 1.31 million, and the abortion rate declined 5% to 21.3 per 1,000 women 15-44. (In comparison, the rate declined 12% between 1992 and 1996.) The abortion ratio in 2000 was 24.5 per 100 pregnancies ending in abortion or live birth, 5% lower than in 1996. The number of abortion providers decreased by 11%”
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3500603.html

Planned Parenthood vs. Casey appeared to be a divided decision. Additionally, as with Roe vs. Wade, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey has problems too.

Consider this:

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State” Justice Kennedy in citing a prior Supreme Court ruling.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...=505&invol=833

So basically it seems the Supreme Court is saying that even though the concept of “personhood” is a political and legal construct we can not rely on science to unravel the “supposed mystery” of human life and instead we should leave that up to each individual’s spirituality or lack there of!
Well this debate is discussing the ramifications of overturning Roe vs. Wade. Nevertheless I am convinced Roe vs. Wade should be overturned even if only for the sole reason that it is bad law.

That’s precisely because they are continuously attempting to force the Supreme Court to re-evaluate Roe v Wade.

Korimyr the Rat

The problem is, the only new outcomes that would be allowed by abolishing Roe v. Wade are ones that are politically undesirable. The compromise decisions you're referring to, finding a point which the American public will accept, are already possible under the guidelines established by Roe v. Wade.

This is a classic case of legislators focusing on the controversy instead of the problem; we could have resolved this decades ago if there had been any interest on Capitol Hill.

While it would allow the States to pass more restrictive laws than allowed by Roe v. Wade-- which, remember, already allows for more restrictive laws than people believe it does-- it would in no way force the issue to revert to the States. It would do nothing to prevent people from seeking to pass anti-abortion measures on the Federal level; do you think people from South Dakota, Utah, or Georgia are going to sit back and allow New York, California, and Vermont to maintain legal abortions when it undermines their own anti-abortion laws?

Removing the Supreme Court's standards on this matter may very well turn up the heat on this issue, but it won't provide any light.

I fail to see how. While the people already paying attention would surely become more vocal, the people who are ignoring this issue today would continue ignoring it tomorrow-- only they would have a harder time doing so as the advocates of either side became more aggressive.

Resolving this issue requires answering touchy philosophical questions that most people are simply uninterested-- or possibly afraid-- to address. The lack of nuance and the simplistic, emotional positions adopted by both the right-to-life and the pro-choice movements show how people are averse to examining the exact sorts of issues you think overturning Roe v. Wade would open for discussion.

Certainly. However, I do not think that very many States would choose to outlaw all "convenience abortions", either, choosing instead to set limitations on the timeframe in which they may be sought. The heavy focus on "partial-birth abortion" and the arguments about viability suggest that these are important concerns to most people interested in the abortion issue.

Tell me, what is the moral difference between surgical abortion and the use of abortifacient drugs?

They both involve killing the fetus. If it were defined as a legal person-- as you are suggesting-- it would surely be impossible to allow it to be poisoned to death.

And yet, if the fetus were defined as a legal person, making an exception for rape would be just as bad as allowing any other abortion in the first place. Are the children of rapists not people? Are they expected to pay for the sins of the father?

When does a child conceived by rape become a person and deserve the legal protection you are seeking for other fetuses, and why are they different from children conceived by the intimate act of a married couple, or by drunken teenaged fumblings in the backseat of a car?

Or, if it is the trauma of rape that allows a woman to kill her children, would a woman who has been raped be justified in going home and killing her three-year-old?

This compromise you are seeking, the basic protection of both women and unborn children, becomes impossible when you attempt to define the fetus as a legal person with rights.

Or, perhaps, it shows us what the true issue behind most abortion arguments is-- the reason the right-to-life position is supported mainly by religious conservatives and ignored by child-protection advocates and personhood advocates. It shows us why we're willing to make an exception for the victims of rape, but not the victims of failed birth control.

Opposition to abortion has very little to do with the life of the unborn child, and a lot to do with our culture's disdain for what we consider "immoral" sexual conduct.

It also explains why opposition to abortion so often goes hand-in-hand with opposition to homosexuals, and why it is so often linked with opposition to sex education in the schools and the distribution of birth control-- despite that both of these measures are demonstrably effective in reducing teenaged pregnancy rates and thus reducing abortion rates.

And it also partially explains why the political party primarily associated with the right-to-life movement is also not the political party which is associated with prenatal care for needy mothers or daycare programs for working mothers.

You can see this logic in the legal reasoning behind Roe v. Wade, in which the Justices saw this issue in terms of the State legislating reproductive and sexual choices instead of in terms of whether or not unborn children qualified as people.

Certainly so, but while society recognizes what is killed, it doesn't seem overly concerned with it, either. The fetus itself, its potential life, and the life of its mother are all too often regarded as nothing more than pawns in a larger political and cultural struggle.

And that's the real tragedy of this debate.

And why would that be? I can think of only two explanations: either doctors themselves had become more opposed to abortion and less willing to practice it, or the people themselves had become more opposed to abortion and less willing to pay for it.

Both explanations suggest that there is no overall national trend toward increasing abortion-- despite the continuing excessive liberalism of our abortion laws-- and that the exact opposite may in fact be occurring.

Abortion rates were rising in the years prior to Roe v. Wade, and it does not appear that legalization prompted any great surge in abortion rates. Since 1990, with no real change in abortion laws-- only the legal reasoning supporting their absence-- abortions have steadily decreased on their own as well.

We haven't touched on the issue of women killed in illegal abortions, but the evidence is clear that the increased risk is negligible. Unless you'd care to claim an increased risk to women for either legal or illegal abortion, we can ignore the issue.

Thus it appears that the status of the abortion laws does not have a significant effect on the deaths of either fetuses or young women. Overturning Roe v. Wade-- or passing the laws that it would allow-- would neither save nor cost a significant number of lives.

This seems only sensible to me. If personhood is a legal and political construct, there is nothing in the realm of science that could prove either way the personhood of any entity. That only leaves us with our own spirituality to fall back upon.

Remember, government agencies and corporations are considered legal persons as well in this country-- separate from the persons which work for them-- and not only are they not human beings, they are not biological in nature at all.

This is a question which must be answered by faith and by personal moral values; while I don't think this makes it an invalid subject for State interest like some do, I do think it means that science will have no answers for us.

This is certainly a valid argument, and I might support overturning Roe v. Wade on those grounds as well. However, this debate is on the implications of doing so, and it is clear that there would be little benefit from overturning it and several distinct problems caused by doing so.

It is bad law and should be discarded, but we can not claim that the results of doing so will be anything other than negative-- unless and until a more sound legal decision replaces it, which would be unlikely in the current irrational and polarized climate.

edit: Removed redundant "and".

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FallingPianos

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talloulou

A strong argument can be made that Roe v Wade is “politically undesirable” and has remained so for 30+ years.
I disagree. Despite the fact that the unborn constitute living human organisms, members of the species homo sapiens, Roe v Wade essentially declared them insignificant.
Presently there are those who argue that unborn humans aren’t “human beings.” Generally, these are the same people who have no problem insinuating that even the born whom are very young, very old, or severely disabled don’t qualify as “human beings.”

Thus the incendiary argument that we have no idea what exactly is developing in the womb runs rampant. The goal is primarily a semantic effort that attempts to justify the notion that some humans aren’t human beings. The logic follows that since these unborn humans are not human beings it is okay to deny them the rights of personhood. Biologically the argument is weak yet Roe v Wade endorses the presumption of these unfounded assertions.

It is possible and even likely that attempts will be made to ban all convenience abortions and these attempts may have significant public backing. However attempts to ban abortions where the mother’s health is at risk or in cases of rape will inevitably fail.

I disagree. If the courts are forced to answer the question of when human life begins and when a human becomes a human being it will be increasingly difficult to continue to deny the unborn personhood and protection.
I don’t accept the notion that they're uninterested or afraid. I allege there are many people who currently don’t see the point in discussing abortion because they feel Roe v Wade will never be abolished so to them it’s like beating a dead horse.

Also the media and the pro-choice movement today have worked hard to push propaganda suggesting it is only the radically religious who oppose abortion. This campaign helps keep many who don’t want to be defined as such from speaking up.I have no doubt that the abolishment of Roe v Wade would motivate a more diverse group of people to express their opposition to abortion.

I don’t see the morning after pill (MAP) as an abortifacient. Really it’s just a stronger dose of birth control and in most cases it would prevent pregnancy. The MAP is only effective for the first 72 hours after sex. While it is possible for the MAP to cause an abortion it’s unlikely. And, even if an abortion were to occur it would be preferable to the surgical termination of a pregnancy older than three days.
Are you kidding? Abortion always causes the death of a fetus. The morning after pill is only useful 3 days after intercourse. There is no fetus at 3 days and in most cases the MAP will prevent pregnancy vs. terminating pregnancy.
I agree with you. However the majority of people appear to believe that just as abortion is justified when the mother’s health is at risk it is justified when the pregnancy was the result of a sexual assault.

I refuse to accept the idea that simply “not wanting to be pregnant” constitutes a mental health risk for pregnant women nevertheless I am willing to concede that in cases of rape a pregnancy could be very detrimental to a woman’s mental health. I, myself, would prefer adoption for such cases however this is one of the areas where I’m willing to compromise since the majority of people feel abortion in such cases is justified. Very few rapes culminate in pregnancy and if women receive medical treatment after a sexual assault the likelihood of pregnancy is miniscule.
The two are not the same.The child conceived of rape is a reminder of the sexual assault and as well the child carries the genes of the man who assaulted her. While none of that is the child’s fault one could see how that might affect the mother’s mental health. It is also meaningful to note that the percentage of abortions relating to cases of rape like those related to the mother’s health are meager especially when compared to the vast majority of abortions which are of the convenience type.
Depends on what type of protection you are talking about. Forcing a woman to carry a child to term affects her life for 9 months at which time she can put the child up for adoption. Abortion terminates the life of a human being. The two are not comparable. Deciding that the life of an individual human is worth more than the inconvenience of being pregnant for 9 months does not mean the unborn are given a higher value than the women who carry them.
The religious are not the only ones who see something inherently wrong with abortion.

Right, this is the assertion that all those who are pro-life are prudes with sexual hang-ups. What we really want is for people to stop having sex, right?

Most opposed to abortion don’t fall so easily into that category. There is a difference between wanting people to take responsibility for their sexual liberation vs. believing people should not be sexually liberated.

Can you prove that most people who are pro-life oppose homosexuals? I certainly don’t. This is more of a campaign supported by the media and the pro-choice movement which continues to promote the idea that only the radically religious are opposed to abortion on demand.

If Roe v Wade were abolished and suddenly a real opportunity for change developed on the abortion front you would see a greater more diverse group of people coming out in the open to discuss their opposition to abortion.

Meanwhile the idea that pro-lifers don’t care about “born children” is simply the newest campaign roar of the pro-choice movement in an attempt to vilify and demonize the pro-lifers. While some have ideas that are misguided…like opposition to birth control…..most are all about “family values” and ways to keep families together because time and again it has been shown that children raised in a loving healthy family unit do better emotionally, financially, and scholastically then those who come from broken homes.
The fetus is alive. Talk of potential life is absurd. It is alive until it dies naturally or is ripped from the womb.

talloulou

talloulou continued.......


If you want to talk about political pawns you should research the “Roe” behind Roe v Wade -Norma McCorvey. She never aborted the child she carried that set Roe v Wade in place. That child has since made her a grandmother and she is adamantly opposed to abortion today. How tragic is that?
That statement is cockeyed and groundless. For almost the first two decades after Roe v Wade the abortion numbers steadily increased.
Well it would be ridiculous if all the advancements in birth control did little to cut down the numbers of abortions at some point.

This is an assumption that you have yet to prove.
The law defines personhood precisely because it is a legal and political construct. It is the law, and only the law, that determines who and what qualifies as a person. Thus the law should be forced to answer the question of why or why not when it comes to “personhood” of the unborn.
All science can tell us is that the unborn from conception onward are developing human beings, homo sapiens like you or I. Throughout history legal attempts have been made to devalue certain groups of humans. History has always looked backed on those decisions with disdain.

FallingPianos

note to mods

someone had closed this debate, but an extension had been given until 7am est saturday. I got shaumort to open it up again for me. please do not close it again until that time.

here is the PM exchange between tecoyah and myself:

Korimyr the Rat

Except, as I have already established and you have not disputed, our currently unacceptable laws are not a result of Roe v. Wade itself but of our legislators focusing on overturning it instead of passing the more sensible abortion laws that it allows.

If you think our leaders are genuinely concerned with the fate of our unborn children-- whether they are right-to-life or pro-choice-- you are sadly mistaken.

Aside from the issue of euthanasia-- which is only supported in so far as it is wholly voluntary-- I can think of no credible political movement in America that claims that the very young, very old, or severely disabled aren't persons or aren't human beings.

When we look at things like party affiliation, you'll also note that the parties that align themselves with the pro-choice movement are also those which struggle for more rights for the very young, the very old, and the disabled.

Regardless of whether or not they are human beings-- which they rather obviously are-- we still have not resolved the issue of whether or not all human beings are people, and whether or not the unborn posess any rights which must be protected by the government.

Nor have you established how abolishing Roe v. Wade and allowing the States to pass whatever abortion legislation they see fit will save the lives of a significant number of fetuses.

Despite the logical and moral contradiction of the latter position-- that fetuses are real people with rights and deserve to be protected, unless their father was a rapist.

This only reinforces that the right-to-life position is based more on sexual mores than on any perceived value of the unborn-- a claim which you have disputed-- and thus falls under the concept that the State has no business making reproductive decisions for its citizens.

I seriously doubt that any American citizen who holds a strong moral opinion on abortion-- religiously motivated or otherwise-- keeps that opinion to himself for fear of being labelled a religious radical.

The moral disapproval of abortion in this country, even if it does not translate into political opposition, is too strong for anyone to be marginalized by expressing it. The vast majority of the pro-choice movement believes that abortion is both a sin and a terrible tragedy; they are only concerned that allowing the State to interfere would be an even greater tragedy.

My own moral position on this issue is an aberration, and I am fully aware of it.

That's because when the pregnancy is the result of a sexual assault, it means that the woman was attacked-- was victimized-- instead of choosing to engage in "irresponsible" behavior.

It only serves to reinforce my point that the opposition to abortion in this country is primarily motivated by sexual mores-- which are shared by more than the religious right-- and not the inherent value of the unborn.

Absolutely. It's every bit as much a strawman as right-to-lifers' opposition to partial-birth abortion in anything but cases of the mother's life; a contingency to cover a negligible fraction of cases.

I don't consider it significant to the debate, except that the significance placed upon it by pro-choicers and the exceptions made for it by right-to-lifers help demonstrate how the debate is framed by principles other than the rights and well-being of the unborn.

You refer to the risk to the mother's mental health in cases of children conceived by sexual assault, but the traditional American understanding of self-defense does not allow us to kill other people in defense of our mental health.

No, they are not, and I am sorry if I left that impression. However, the compromises acceptable to the mainstream right-to-life movement, and the rhetoric used when discussing women who've had abortions, clearly shows where these arguments are coming from.

You can even see it in the aversion that even the most pro-choice individuals hold for women who've had multiple abortions. It's like you pointed out, people can accept one or two, but after that they grow disgusted.

That's because one unwanted pregnancy might have been an accident. More than that and the woman in question "must be a slut".

How many people really believe that killing one person is okay, but killing two or three is disgusting?

I didn't say it.

But it is the only explanation of pro-life arguments and reasoning that is consistent with the fact that politically, most pro-lifers' interest in the child ends the second they draw a breath-- and then they condemn the mother for having had children she couldn't afford to raise.

You can deny this all you want-- and indeed, from our previous conversations I do not believe it applies to you-- but the simple fact is, the moral and political positions of most vocal right-to-lifers are not consistent with the reasons they give for being against abortion.

Or is it because those "family values" are part of the same set of cultural attitudes towards sex and reproduction that determined their position on abortion in the first place?

Don't get me wrong-- I applaud their efforts to keep families together. There aren't enough people working to do that in this country. But when they combine "keeping families together" with "cutting benefits for poor children" and "keeping birth control away from teenagers", their motives become suspect.

I was referring to the life it could lead, if it were born-- something that the staunchest advocates of the right-to-life are suspicously silent about.

Continued next...

Korimyr the Rat

As they had been increasing in the years prior to Roe v. Wade, as a result of an increasing population and an increasingly liberal attitude towards sex.

I have amply demonstrated why this is the case.

1) Roe v. Wade did not cause a significant increase in abortions, as demonstrated by the number of legal abortions in 1972 compared to the number in 1973.
2) The vast majority of illegal abortions in 1972 were performed by licensed physicians; there's no reason to assume that the vast majority of illegal abortions in 2007 would be any different.
3) Abortion rates have steadily decreased for the last fifteen years, despite the fact that our shockingly liberal abortions laws have not changed since then.
4) A reversal of Roe v. Wade would still leave abortion legal in more states than in which it was legal in 1972.

There's simply no grounds to claim that overturning a Supreme Court decision would have any great impact on our cultural attitudes towards either sex or abortion, and I have already demonstrated how laws against abortion have only ever had a negligible effect upon the abortion rate.

Thus, overturning Roe v. Wade would not save the lives of a significant number of fetuses. The same women would have the same fetuses aborted by the same doctors as they would have if abortion remained wholly legal.

Leaving us only with the effects that I have predicted: further polarization of the political discourse on this issue, the passage of morally and politically intolerable laws-- which would also be thankfully unenforceable-- and a very small strain on public welfare and healthcare budgets.

In other words, as I said in my earlier post, a lot of heat but no light.

If the law, and only the law, can determine the personhood of a human being, then the only answer for the question of "why or why not" is "because the law says so".

Our law says that only postnatal human beings are persons with rights-- not only in Roe v. Wade but in the Constitutional definition of citizenship-- and noone has been able to demonstrate that changing this fact would provide us any benefit whatsoever.

Noone has tried, because the main thrust of this argument is not the welfare of unborn children-- despite the fact that I honestly believe that's your motivation-- but an attempt to "punish" the sexual behavior of women by subjecting them to unwanted children.

And that does more to demean the value of a child than any number of abortions could ever hope to accomplish.

FallingPianos

korimyrs last post is late, but will be allowed due to a private exchange between talloulou and I:

this debate is now closed