What would you consider this portion in regards to abortoin

Zyphlin said:

Say you have an individual who holds the following view.

During the first trimester, abortion should be legal for any reason. However, after the first trimester it will be illegal save for instances where the woman's physical health is severely in danger OR in the case of rape and incest where an investigation provides reason to believe they were prevented from seeking the abortion earlier by the perpetrator (which essentially would require the occurence to be reported to the police or child services, and thus verifiable).

Would you refer to this person "Pro-Life" or "Pro-Choice?

Click to expand...

That's pretty much where I stand on abortion. Legal in all cases in the first trimester. Exceptions after that include threat to mother's health, fetal abnormality, rape and/or incest. I call myself pro-choice.

This is pretty close to my own position (except rape and incest should not be factors - the baby is not culpable, and after the first trimester, we have a few weeks of the "gray area"). It is neither "pro-life" nor "pro-choice": both labels are designed to distract from the biological reality of fetus development, where definitive human features emerge gradually.

And this is not any kind of "compromise" - quite the opposite: it is a realistic view, while treating the zygote as a human being or treating the fully-formed baby as an ordinary chunk of tissue is a compromise between reality and ideological statements. Rather, betrayal of the former.

One of the many cases when simple binary, yes-or-no solutions simply don't reflect the nature of the problem.

P.S. There is, of course, a pragmatic argument for extending legal abortions beyond the first 12 or 20 weeks: they will be done anyway, in unsafe and exploitative environment. This, however, doesn't seem to be happening on any noticeable scale in the European countries that limit abortion on demand even to 12 weeks (France, Denmark, Czech Republic).

This is pretty close to my own position (except rape and incest should not be factors - the baby is not culpable, and after the first trimester, we have a few weeks of the "gray area"). It is neither "pro-life" nor "pro-choice": both labels are designed to distract from the biological reality of fetus development, where definitive human features emerge gradually.

And this is not any kind of "compromise" - quite the opposite: it is a realistic view, while treating the zygote as a human being or treating the fully-formed baby as an ordinary chunk of tissue is a compromise between reality and ideological statements. Rather, betrayal of the former.

One of the many cases when simple binary, yes-or-no solutions simply don't reflect the nature of the problem.