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Seeking Clean Discussion and to Understand Pro-Choice Stance

AlphaOmega said:
Great. I did miss it. So when a man assaults a pregnant woman and her unborn dies...it is definitely not murder.
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Already answered.

As I said some states have feticide laws that protect the states interest and perhaps the woman’s/ parents interest in the potential life of the unborn who is not a person. So the unborn has no rights.

If you are thinking of the famous Scott Person case.

Californian made killing a fetus a crime.

They said a human being or a fetus.
They clearly denoted the fetus is not a human being.

According to US Code only the born are a person/ human being/child/ individual.

Here is the California fetibcide law.

Cal. Penal Code § 187 (a) defines murder as the unlawful killing of a human being or a fetus with malice aforethought.

Of course, medical abortions are excluded from both the murder and enhancement statutes, so long as the pregnant woman consented to terminating the pregnancy.
 
Cordelier said:
The way I figure it - and from a purely constitutional perspective - a fetus cannot be considered a person. If it were otherwise, then citizenship would be granted at conception, would it not?
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I would like to see citizenship-at-conception bills start to find their way into law in these anti-choice states. Seems only fair. Oh and while we're at it, the man who knocked her up should be required to pay for at least 50% of the woman's medical bills. After all, that would help keep the mother and the fetus healthy, which would increase both's probability of survival. Should not prolifers be all about life?
 
AlphaOmega said:
Consent to sex is consent to agreeing that pregnancy may be a possible outcome.
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An outcome that can be stopped.

Herpes is also a possible outcome. If there was a vaccine to stop that would the Republicans be trying to ban it?
 
AlphaOmega said:
Your fellow pro choicers are saying it is a listed factual disease. Who is correct you or them?
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I can only answer for myself. Why would you assume otherwise?

Now, pregnancy can cause a whole host of diseases and physiologic damage to the woman's body to a large amount of women every day from hemorrhoids to deadly blood clots and bleeding.

Unless you live under a rock, you can acknowledge that pregnancy causes a huge number of disease processes that range from nuisance to deadly.
Having been healthy and privileged to have great resources (social and medical) then been subject to the deadly end of consequences......I find this all rather nit-picky.
 
To help explain the "my body my choice" stance, I see it as saying this. If you don't believe in abortion (for reasons like yours or not) you do not need to even consider it when deciding the fate of a pregnancy. No one is forcing that upon you, saying that you need to get an abortion. But if someone wants to get one, regardless of their reasoning, they should be able to. It's a medical procedure that is optional. If you believe that abortion is wrong, then by all means, don't get one. But that doesn't mean that the government needs to regulate it.

I'm open to discussion, this is simply how I view the "my body my choice" argument.
 
Out of curiosity, how do you think this ties to separation of church and state? If your reasoning for banning abortion is backed up mostly with religious materials, why should that be considered when, according to the law, church and state are separated?
 
caro said:
To help explain the "my body my choice" stance, I see it as saying this. If you don't believe in abortion (for reasons like yours or not) you do not need to even consider it when deciding the fate of a pregnancy. No one is forcing that upon you, saying that you need to get an abortion. But if someone wants to get one, regardless of their reasoning, they should be able to. It's a medical procedure that is optional. If you believe that abortion is wrong, then by all means, don't get one. But that doesn't mean that the government needs to regulate it.

I'm open to discussion, this is simply how I view the "my body my choice" argument.
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Just say body autonomy.

Short and sweet.

You should not have a say in what you do with my body.

I should not have a say in what you do with your body.
 
caro said:
To help explain the "my body my choice" stance, I see it as saying this. If you don't believe in abortion (for reasons like yours or not) you do not need to even consider it when deciding the fate of a pregnancy. No one is forcing that upon you, saying that you need to get an abortion. But if someone wants to get one, regardless of their reasoning, they should be able to. It's a medical procedure that is optional. If you believe that abortion is wrong, then by all means, don't get one. But that doesn't mean that the government needs to regulate it.

I'm open to discussion, this is simply how I view the "my body my choice" argument.
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year2late said:
Just say body autonomy.

Short and sweet.

You should not have a say in what you do with my body.

I should not have a say in what you do with your body.
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I agree.

I just want to add...

That body autonomy means a person has control over whom or what uses their body, for what, and for how long.

And I would to welcome caro to the debate politics forum.
 
AlphaOmega said:
Her original reason still stands. She doesn't want to bear the responsibility of the child. What has changed when the head comes out?
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Someone else can take care of it.
 
Tlrmln said:
Which law? There are lots of laws that I'm aware of indicating that some things trump bodily autonomy.
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You're dodging the bigger point so I will repeat it with emphasis:

Phys251 said:
It doesn't matter. Fault or no fault. It doesn't matter. There is not anywhere in America that forces you to donate an organ to another human, even to save their life. Bodily autonomy, it's the law.
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Tlrmln said:
I agree with that conclusion, but it doesn't help the analogy which is constructed as a mechanism to debate that conclusion. The analogy leaves out an important element, which is personal responsibility.
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Phys251 said:
Yet again that does not matter whatsoever. Hell I could have modified the analogy to, someone drove their car into me, was clearly at fault, smashed my kidneys, and was the only one who could donate a kidney, and they still should not be forced to give up a kidney. Bodily autonomy is the single most important thing here.
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Do you see it now? Or are you going to deliberately ignore the point?
 
Phys251 said:
Do you see it now? Or are you going to deliberately ignore the point?
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I saw it a long time ago, and also saw a long time ago that you're the one missing the point.

What do you think the point of the analogy is?
 
Tlrmln said:
I saw it a long time ago, and also saw a long time ago that you're the one missing the point.

What do you think the point of the analogy is?
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About what? Go ahead and try to convince me that there exists literally any situation whatsoever where one of my kidneys must be forcibly taken away from me and put inside another person. Go ahead, I dare you.
 
Phys251 said:
About what? Go ahead and try to convince me that there exists literally any situation whatsoever where one of my kidneys must be forcibly taken away from me and put inside another person. Go ahead, I dare you.
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Yup, you're definitely missing the point, and being a d&%k about it to boot.
 
For government legal and protective purposes, I fully support the recognition of an individuals life to begin at the point of registering the birth. Prior to the creation of that document, the Woman alone is the sole sovereign authority over bringing her creation to fruition, at which point our government then becomes the sovereign authority over the life of newly documented member of society.
 
year2late said:
I can only answer for myself. Why would you assume otherwise?

Now, pregnancy can cause a whole host of diseases and physiologic damage to the woman's body to a large amount of women every day from hemorrhoids to deadly blood clots and bleeding.

Unless you live under a rock, you can acknowledge that pregnancy causes a huge number of disease processes that range from nuisance to deadly.
Having been healthy and privileged to have great resources (social and medical) then been subject to the deadly end of consequences......I find this all rather nit-picky.
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Strawman. I never claimed once pregnancy cannot cause complications. The claim by the pro choicer was....normal pregnancy is a disease. It is factually not a disease.
 
AlphaOmega said:
Strawman. I never claimed once pregnancy cannot cause complications. The claim by the pro choicer was....normal pregnancy is a disease. It is factually not a disease.
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From an interesting article:

Actually We Should Think of Pregnancy as a Disease

Many people consider pregnancy to be a natural thing. The phrase “Pregnancy is not a disease” is thrown around frequently. Pregnancy is thought to be just a normal part of a woman's life, especially in the Netherlands where I live. But I've begun to think this view of pregnancy is totally wrong.
....
Yes, women have been getting pregnant forever, but that doesn’t mean pregnancy has always gone well. In fact, many times it goes terribly, terribly wrong.
...
So let's not disrespect women who develop genuine medical conditions while pregnant, or dismiss their concerns about their own health and that of their babies.
..
Maybe pregnancy IS exactly like a disease, or at least like a medical condition. I should know: I’ve been pregnant and I’ve been sick, and sometimes it was impossible to tell one from the other.
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Read more:

Mom.me
 
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AlphaOmega said:
A cut on your finger can lead to amputation but a cut on your finger is not a disease. Same as pregnancy.
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I never said it was a disease but it needs to be closely monitored because it can become life threatening very quickly.



Any pregnancy can take a turn at a moments notice and put the woman’s health and even her life at risk, at a point where an abortion once the symptoms are there will be too late to prevent a death of the woman or lifelong major irreparable disability.

That’s why no woman should be forced to take the risk if she wants an early elective abortion it should be her choice not to risk the pregnancy. Some women can sence there is something wrong ahead of time.


Life threatening complications aren't rare up to 8 percent of all pregnancies affected by pre- eclampsia or one of it's variants including HELLP syndrome.

We never know when a pregnancy might take a turn and become life threatening to someone we love.

Another 1 to 2.5 percent of pregnancies are ectopic pregnancies which are also life threatening.

So about 1 out 10 pregnancies can be life threatening just from 2 of the many types of life threatening complications.... eclampsia variants and ectopic pregnancies.

My daughter had HELLP syndrome with her pregnancy and she was very close to death when they performed the emergency
C section.

She went to the ER a few weeks before her due date because she was getting a horrible pain in her back just below her ribs which was caused because her liver was being damaged from the HELLP syndrome.
Usually there is pain the upper right part of the abdomen but her pain was in the back because her liver was swelling and shutting down.
They were worried her liver might fail.


Her OB/GYN was shocked when her test results came back showing she had HELLP syndrome. She had just seen him a couple days before and everything with the pregnancy appeared fine then.

My daughter was one the up to 8 percent of women in the US who every year developes 'preeclampsia, eclampsia, or a related condition such as HELLP syndrome." Thankfully she was not one of the roughly 300 US women who do die from the syndrome every year but she was one of the roughly 75,000 women every year who are counted as near misses.

From the following article:

Every year in the U.S., up to 8 percent, or 300,000 of pregnant or postpartum women develop preeclampsia, eclampsia, or a related condition such as HELLP syndrome.

Roughly 300 women die, and another 75,000 women experience “near misses” —severe complications and injury such as organ failure, massive blood loss, permanent disability, and premature birth or death of their babies.
Usually, the disease resolves with the birth of the baby and placenta. But, it can occur postpartum—indeed, most maternal deaths occur after delivery.
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Beyond Downton Abbey: Preeclampsia Maternal Deaths Continue Today




A little more about HELLP Syndrome:

HELLP syndrome is a life-threatening pregnancy complication usually considered to be a variant of preeclampsia. Both conditions usually occur during the later stages of pregnancy, or sometimes after childbirth.

HELLP syndrome was named by Dr. Louis Weinstein in 1982 after its characteristics:

H (hemolysis, which is the breaking down of red blood cells)
EL (elevated liver enzymes)
LP (low platelet count)

HELLP syndrome can be difficult to diagnose, especially when high blood pressure and protein in the urine aren't present. Its symptoms are sometimes mistaken for gastritis, flu, acute hepatitis, gall bladder disease, or other conditions.

The global mortality rate of HELLP syndrome has been reported to be as high as 25%.
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HELLP Syndrome: Preeclampsia Foundation

HELLP Syndrome: Preeclampsia Foundation

Now many women like myself and my daughter continue our pregnancies because we choose to become parents.

But I cannot support a law or a country that did not allow elective abortions and thus forced women to continue a pregnancy that may very well put her long term health or life at risk.

On the other side of the coin I could not support a law or a country that would force a women to have an abortion against her will even if her unborn were so malformed that if it did survive birth it would cost taxpayers millions of dollars in medical care.

Each woman should have the legal option to choose whether or not she wishes to continue her pregnancy.
 
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wolfsgirl said:
Can a living breathing person be forced to donate bone marrow, organs, or even blood to keep another person alive? No.

To remove organs from a corpse to use for another person you have to have consent from the person that dies or their next of kin. So why should a woman have less rights to her body, organs, and blood than a corpse does?

Look at it another way.
If someone moves into my house without permission I can evict them, I can even kill them. Why should I not be allowed to evict or kill someone that moves into my body without my permission?
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And if they had your permission initially?
 
The 'unborn' are a convenient group of people to advocate for.
They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn.

You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe.

Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."
- Dave Barnhart
 
Wow. Opening-poster here. This thread has grown. I haven't been online over the weekend and won't be able to take the time to read up on all this until after Wednesday (have to study for exam for a graduate degree), but I wanted to at least add one thing.

I've been thinking a lot over the weekend about the idea of 'bodily autonomy'. And, as I think about it, I think it's a "necessary evil" sort of law. (That might be too strong, but I'll elaborate.) Some laws exist to enforce good behavior, like don't kill, don't steal, etc., and to make sure other citizens don't take away our rights. But some laws exist to make sure the government doesn't go overboard and take away our rights. Sometimes those laws might not be best from an objective morality point-of-view (and I fully admit many people believe in subjective morality or some variant thereof), but they're needed because the government is not infallible. Bad Example: even if someone didn't like freedom of religion (and I'm NOT saying that is my view), I would think they'd want it because you can't trust a government not to oppress or eventually oppress you; even in times when Christianity was a legal religion and others outlawed, there's examples of an emperor taking fancy with an idea and suddenly all the other Christian groups that were formerly legal are now illegal (e.g., Byzantine Empire with Arianism or Iconoclasm).

Bodily autonomy seems similar in that we don't want the government (or any other) to force us to use our bodies wrongly or unfairly.
I was asked a while ago (page 1 or 2 of this thread) if I thought I should be forced to give my kidney to save someone's life. After pondering, I think the answer is "in an ideal situation, yes". We aren't in a government free of bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption, and I don't think such can exist, so an "ideal situation" can't exist. But if an ideal government could exist, I think it would be reasonable to have a law saying someone should give an organ to save another's life, assuming minimal risk (akin to a normal pregnancy or extracting a kidney for donation. Not a doctor so unfamiliar with actual relative risk.)
Side note: thank you for this point, in that it did really get me thinking. Also, to avoid being a hypocrite, I think I need to figure out how to go about routinely donating blood.

So, to go back to relation to abortion, I think 'bodily autonomy' is a legal right because it's necessary for some protections. But I don't think it's a natural right we should take advantage of. (I expect many will disagree with that, and I understand that your views probably come from your beliefs and mine from mine, so it's reasonable and logical that we disagree since we have different foundations.) Thus, I don't think it's a reason to abort.
And, thus, I think bodily autonomy should have pregnancy as an exception. In a sense, once pregnant, your body is not just your own. Maybe an analogy of suddenly becoming a conjoined twin, in the situation where both are viable but death would occur to one if it were extracted... Eh, it's hard to find good analogies.
 
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