The Right to Abort is the Moral Position (1 Viewer)

[HacTao]

Abortion arguments tend to go a few ways; life, personhood, and law.

I'm going to grant the pro-lifers a few things.

1. Life begins at conception, and possibly before. There is evidence to suggest sperm and eggs are actually alive; they are selective, and our understanding of this is nascent.

2. It is a human life that is being ended.

Now. The pro-lifers have to do two things. First, they must prove that that life is worth protecting; and second, that bodily autonomy is not paramount to our society and laws.

The life argument is irrelevant. It can be diluted down to insanity.

Let's assume for a moment abortion is made illegal, 100%. We know a plurality of conceptions ends in miscarriage. This is undisputed scientific fact. Now, in this dystopian society, let's assume that there is a diet in this dystopian society, they discover a diet that absolutely increases the likelihood a pregnancy is carried to term. In this society, logic follows, women can be imprisoned for negligent murder of a miscarried baby, for refusing to use this diet.

Additionally, since we know sperm are a form of life, men could also be penalized and jailed for masturbation. Of course, this expulsion of life, and, by all reasonable standards, mass murder of human life, is a necessary function of the male body; if a male does not ejaculate for a long period of time, the body actively expunges those sperm via nocturnal emissions. This in turn dismisses the argument that life is something inherently worth saving, if our bodies are designed to expunge life on a mass scale every few weeks.

But let's get beyond that, and look at the most important moral imperative: Bodily Autonomy.

I am going to argue that Bodily Autonomy is the basis for all of our rights, and as such, bodily autonomy must be protected at all costs.

For this, I am going to display two scenarios for you, with the same protagonist.

Becky. Becky is a 24 year old college girl at a party. While at the party, Becky grinds up on Steve. Steve turns Becky on, Becky decides to join Steve in the bathroom. Bam, they ****, she ends up pregnant.

Becky drives home. On her way, she speeds through a red light, and smashes another car. She wakes up on the sidewalk.

Now - this scenario includes two situations wherein the known possibilities or outcomes are accepted by Becky. She knows if she drives, she can get into an accident. She also knows if she has sex, she can get pregnant.

While laying on the sidewalk, Becky is approached by an EMT, who says to her, unequivocally, the man in the other car is going to die unless Becky agrees to a blood transfusion.

Thanks to bodily autonomy - Becky can, and in this scenario, indeed does, say no. The other party dies.

Becky cannot be penalized for this. She cannot be fined, nor jailed. She cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy. She can indeed be penalized for running the red light. She can be fined, she can have her license suspended. But she cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy.

In the scenario of her pregnancy, Becky is under no legal obligation to provide her body to the entity inside her, and thus, can absolutely act to abort the pregnancy. Our moral imperative in this situation indeed is to protect her right to bodily autonomy. She can't be penalized for ****ing Steve, although plenty of right wing fascists would love to criminalize sex outside of marriage, they just don't want to admit that's the end goal.

Now - to those who want to dispute her right to abort, if we end the protection for bodily autonomy, imagine this scenario.

Rob passes out at the mall due to a panic attack. He wakes up in the hospital, 47 days later. On a drip. In the room with another human being on a gurney. The nurse says to Rob:

"You had a panic attack and have been here for 47 days. This man, Matt, is on a drip from your blood stream. You were a perfect match for Matt, and thus, we decided to rig you up to him so you could keep him alive long enough to get him a transplant."

In this dystopian world right wingers would create for us, this can all logically become law.

And that is why it is our moral imperative to enshrine bodily autonomy as a right - period.

Pro-choice is thus the moral, legally, position.

 

[tylerTeach]

I just got into Vaush and he did something like this very recently, not sure if you got it from him, but if not, I bet you'd like his content.

 

[Triton]

I don't think an individual should have the right to deny blood transfusion unless they have a good medical reason (to be honest, I don't give a **** about people's religious reasons). Blood is a renewable resource of the body and is frequently replaced by the body itself. There is nothing sacred about blood. I am saying this so someone doesn't go "oh so what if you are a perfect match for a kidney?" Significantly different scenario, as there is a good reason that we have two kidneys and living a life with only one kidney can be permanently debilitating, plus surgery comes with its own inherent risks.

However, for the same reason a kidney shouldn't be donated by force, I don't think someone should be forced to carry an unwanted fetus. It is a very permanent situation which can be permanently debilitating for both mother, father and child.

 

[danielpalos]

An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, is the more ethical position.

 

[Irredentist]

I don't think an individual should have the right to deny blood transfusion unless they have a good medical reason (to be honest, I don't give a **** about people's religious reasons). Blood is a renewable resource of the body and is frequently replaced by the body itself. There is nothing sacred about blood. I am saying this so someone doesn't go "oh so what if you are a perfect match for a kidney?" Significantly different scenario, as there is a good reason that we have two kidneys and living a life with only one kidney can be permanently debilitating, plus surgery comes with its own inherent risks.

However, for the same reason a kidney shouldn't be donated by force, I don't think someone should be forced to carry an unwanted fetus. It is a very permanent situation which can be permanently debilitating for both mother, father and child.

What if they just don't like the person and don't want to give blood to them?

 

[Triton]

What if they just don't like the person and don't want to give blood to them?

A part of being an adult is understanding that society rapes you into doing things you don't like, like paying stupid fees for stuff you don't need, taxes that go to things you don't support, etc. It has to do with the greater good, yada yada.

Actually making another person survive is one of those things. But it's a nuanced issue. Maybe you don't like the person because you are a faulty human being, in which case it is hard to morally justify not helping them. Or he is a pedophile who raped your children. Hmm. I wouldn't even give CPR to the latter, even though it is legally required of me. But sometimes simply not going to jail is the moral thing to do. Sometimes.

 

[CaughtInThe]

many people have proved to us that they don't think life is sacred.

 

[weaver2]

Abortion arguments tend to go a few ways; life, personhood, and law.
I'm going to grant the pro-lifers a few things.
1. Life begins at conception, and possibly before. There is evidence to suggest sperm and eggs are actually alive; they are selective, and our understanding of this is nascent.
2. It is a human life that is being ended.
Now. The pro-lifers have to do two things. First, they must prove that that life is worth protecting; and second, that bodily autonomy is not paramount to our society and laws.

The life argument is irrelevant. It can be diluted down to insanity.

I am going to argue that Bodily Autonomy is the basis for all of our rights, and as such, bodily autonomy must be protected at all costs.
For this, I am going to display two scenarios for you, with the same protagonist.
Becky. Becky is a 24 year old college girl at a party. While at the party, Becky grinds up on Steve. Steve turns Becky on, Becky decides to join Steve in the bathroom. Bam, they ****, she ends up pregnant.
Becky drives home. On her way, she speeds through a red light, and smashes another car. She wakes up on the sidewalk.
Now - this scenario includes two situations wherein the known possibilities or outcomes are accepted by Becky. She knows if she drives, she can get into an accident. She also knows if she has sex, she can get pregnant.
While laying on the sidewalk, Becky is approached by an EMT, who says to her, unequivocally, the man in the other car is going to die unless Becky agrees to a blood transfusion.
Thanks to bodily autonomy - Becky can, and in this scenario, indeed does, say no. The other party dies.
Becky cannot be penalized for this. She cannot be fined, nor jailed. She cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy. She can indeed be penalized for running the red light. She can be fined, she can have her license suspended. But she cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy.
In the scenario of her pregnancy, Becky is under no legal obligation to provide her body to the entity inside her, and thus, can absolutely act to abort the pregnancy. Our moral imperative in this situation indeed is to protect her right to bodily autonomy. She can't be penalized for ****ing Steve, although plenty of right wing fascists would love to criminalize sex outside of marriage, they just don't want to admit that's the end goal.
Now - to those who want to dispute her right to abort, if we end the protection for bodily autonomy, imagine this scenario.
Rob passes out at the mall due to a panic attack. He wakes up in the hospital, 47 days later. On a drip. In the room with another human being on a gurney. The nurse says to Rob:
"You had a panic attack and have been here for 47 days. This man, Matt, is on a drip from your blood stream. You were a perfect match for Matt, and thus, we decided to rig you up to him so you could keep him alive long enough to get him a transplant."
In this dystopian world right wingers would create for us, this can all logically become law.
And that is why it is our moral imperative to enshrine bodily autonomy as a right - period.
Pro-choice is thus the moral, legally, position.

For the sake of argument why isn't a woman's assessment of the suitability of the situation for raising a child the most important? 60% of all women who get abortions already have one child. They understand a child's needs, the families's needs and their own capacity to provide for them. 75% of all women that get abortions are living at or below the poverty line. The cost of raising a child or another child puts them in jeopardy of permanent poverty. 10% of those who get abortion are between 15 and 19 years old and have stated they are not mature enough to be a good parent. 100% of the abortions were unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. Since abortion intimately concerns the woman and her family and nobody else, why are her knowledge, experience, resources, judgement and wisdom not the most important imperative in deciding the morality of abortion?

 

[HacTao]

I love vaush and he got this argument from a philosopher.

 

[maquiscat]

An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, is the more ethical position.

Which is all fine and well, but even prevention measures can fail.

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[danielpalos]

Which is all fine and well, but even prevention measures can fail.

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Yes, they can; however, right wing obstruction for simple prevention only exacerbates the problem.

 

[OceanBlues1]

An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, is the more ethical position.

Okay. You're actually right, it is better to prevent unwanted pregnancy to the best of one's ability, and birth control was designed to do that.

However, since no birth control method is 100% guaranteed against unwanted pregnancy, it can and often does happen, even when a woman uses BC correctly. Since it is the woman who takes on all the health risks and potentially life-threatening complications of pregnancy and birth if she continues the pregnancy, only she has the right to decide for herself whether or not to continue it. No one else should ever have the right or authority to make that choice for her.

 

[OceanBlues1]

Which is all fine and well, but even prevention measures can fail.

Exactly. No contraceptive method is 100% guaranteed against unwanted pregnancy. Which means that even when prevention (aka protection) is used, unwanted pregnancy can still happen.

 

[weaver2]

I am going to argue that Bodily Autonomy is the basis for all of our rights, and as such, bodily autonomy must be protected at all costs.
For this, I am going to display two scenarios for you, with the same protagonist.
Becky. Becky is a 24 year old college girl at a party. While at the party, Becky grinds up on Steve. Steve turns Becky on, Becky decides to join Steve in the bathroom. Bam, they ****, she ends up pregnant.
Becky drives home. On her way, she speeds through a red light, and smashes another car. She wakes up on the sidewalk.
Now - this scenario includes two situations wherein the known possibilities or outcomes are accepted by Becky. She knows if she drives, she can get into an accident. She also knows if she has sex, she can get pregnant.
While laying on the sidewalk, Becky is approached by an EMT, who says to her, unequivocally, the man in the other car is going to die unless Becky agrees to a blood transfusion.
Thanks to bodily autonomy - Becky can, and in this scenario, indeed does, say no. The other party dies.
Becky cannot be penalized for this. She cannot be fined, nor jailed. She cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy. She can indeed be penalized for running the red light. She can be fined, she can have her license suspended. But she cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy.
In the scenario of her pregnancy, Becky is under no legal obligation to provide her body to the entity inside her, and thus, can absolutely act to abort the pregnancy. Our moral imperative in this situation indeed is to protect her right to bodily autonomy. She can't be penalized for ****ing Steve, although plenty of right wing fascists would love to criminalize sex outside of marriage, they just don't want to admit that's the end goal.
Now - to those who want to dispute her right to abort, if we end the protection for bodily autonomy, imagine this scenario.Rob passes out at the mall due to a panic attack. He wakes up in the hospital, 47 days later. On a drip. In the room with another human being on a gurney. The nurse says to Rob:
"You had a panic attack and have been here for 47 days. This man, Matt, is on a drip from your blood stream. You were a perfect match for Matt, and thus, we decided to rig you up to him so you could keep him alive long enough to get him a transplant."
In this dystopian world right wingers would create for us, this can all logically become law.And that is why it is our moral imperative to enshrine bodily autonomy as a right - period.
Pro-choice is thus the moral, legally, position.

While the above reasoning makes sense and the examples clearly explain how it works it's opening, unnecessarily, a new concept that may not quash the intrusion of endless quarrels over the religious morality of abortion.

Abortion is either legal or not. If it is illegal it goes underground and is impossible to control and expands. The only way to control abortion is if it is legal. If legality is a given then the focus becomes the regulation of a medical procedure so it balances the needs of mothers to get an abortion and the potential legal person. This eliminates the endless discussion of whose morality is more moral and allows decisions and compromises based on real information from biology, embryology, neurology, economics, sociology, psychology, criminology and anthropology.

 

[Mashmont]

The life argument is irrelevant. It can be diluted down to insanity.

Let's assume for a moment abortion is made illegal, 100%. We know a plurality of conceptions ends in miscarriage. This is undisputed scientific fact. Now, in this dystopian society, let's assume that there is a diet in this dystopian society, they discover a diet that absolutely increases the likelihood a pregnancy is carried to term. In this society, logic follows, women can be imprisoned for negligent murder of a miscarried baby, for refusing to use this diet.

Additionally, since we know sperm are a form of life, men could also be penalized and jailed for masturbation. Of course, this expulsion of life, and, by all reasonable standards, mass murder of human life, is a necessary function of the male body; if a male does not ejaculate for a long period of time, the body actively expunges those sperm via nocturnal emissions. This in turn dismisses the argument that life is something inherently worth saving, if our bodies are designed to expunge life on a mass scale every few weeks.

But let's get beyond that, and look at the most important moral imperative: Bodily Autonomy.

I am going to argue that Bodily Autonomy is the basis for all of our rights, and as such, bodily autonomy must be protected at all costs.

For this, I am going to display two scenarios for you, with the same protagonist.

Becky. Becky is a 24 year old college girl at a party. While at the party, Becky grinds up on Steve. Steve turns Becky on, Becky decides to join Steve in the bathroom. Bam, they ****, she ends up pregnant.

Becky drives home. On her way, she speeds through a red light, and smashes another car. She wakes up on the sidewalk.

Now - this scenario includes two situations wherein the known possibilities or outcomes are accepted by Becky. She knows if she drives, she can get into an accident. She also knows if she has sex, she can get pregnant.

While laying on the sidewalk, Becky is approached by an EMT, who says to her, unequivocally, the man in the other car is going to die unless Becky agrees to a blood transfusion.

Thanks to bodily autonomy - Becky can, and in this scenario, indeed does, say no. The other party dies.

Becky cannot be penalized for this. She cannot be fined, nor jailed. She cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy. She can indeed be penalized for running the red light. She can be fined, she can have her license suspended. But she cannot be penalized for exercising her right to bodily autonomy.

In the scenario of her pregnancy, Becky is under no legal obligation to provide her body to the entity inside her, and thus, can absolutely act to abort the pregnancy. Our moral imperative in this situation indeed is to protect her right to bodily autonomy. She can't be penalized for ****ing Steve, although plenty of right wing fascists would love to criminalize sex outside of marriage, they just don't want to admit that's the end goal.

Now - to those who want to dispute her right to abort, if we end the protection for bodily autonomy, imagine this scenario.

Rob passes out at the mall due to a panic attack. He wakes up in the hospital, 47 days later. On a drip. In the room with another human being on a gurney. The nurse says to Rob:

"You had a panic attack and have been here for 47 days. This man, Matt, is on a drip from your blood stream. You were a perfect match for Matt, and thus, we decided to rig you up to him so you could keep him alive long enough to get him a transplant."

In this dystopian world right wingers would create for us, this can all logically become law.

And that is why it is our moral imperative to enshrine bodily autonomy as a right - period.

Pro-choice is thus the moral, legally, position.

Although I think Becky and Rob both have a moral obligation to help the other people stay alive through their transfusions, the fact that the law doesn't reflect this is irrelevant. They didn't intentionally set the table for the transfusion needs to occur, unless in Becky's case she was drunk from the party in which case she has all kinds of legal liability. Otherwise it cannot be assumed driving home would likely cause an accident, whereas it CAN be assumed pregnancy is a significant possible result of sex. In Rob's case, that situation is so silly and unlikely as to not have to be addressed. 47 days and Rob is the only match for Matt?

 

[OceanBlues1]

While the above reasoning makes sense and the examples clearly explain how it works it's opening, unnecessarily, a new concept that may not quash the intrusion of endless quarrels over the religious morality of abortion.

Abortion is either legal or not. If it is illegal it goes underground and is impossible to control and expands. The only way to control abortion is if it is legal.

Agreed, on all points. It should remain the right of each woman to make her own choice about a pregnancy, whatever it may be.

 

[Mashmont]

Agreed, on all points. It should remain the right of each woman to make her own choice about a pregnancy, whatever it may be.

Should it be the right of each man to make his own decision about whether to commit rape or not? It's his body, isn't it?

 

[OceanBlues1]

Should it be the right of each man to make his own decision about whether to commit rape or not? It's his body, isn't it?

NO, it shouldn't. Rape is a crime. Abortion is not a crime, nor should it ever become one, no matter what you personally believe.

 

[Triton]

Should it be the right of each man to make his own decision about whether to commit rape or not? It's his body, isn't it?

The personal freedoms of the individual stop when the freedoms of others are reasonably harassed.

 

[Scrabaholic]

A part of being an adult is understanding that society rapes you into doing things you don't like, like paying stupid fees for stuff you don't need, taxes that go to things you don't support, etc. It has to do with the greater good, yada yada.

Actually making another person survive is one of those things. But it's a nuanced issue. Maybe you don't like the person because you are a faulty human being, in which case it is hard to morally justify not helping them. Or he is a pedophile who raped your children. Hmm. I wouldn't even give CPR to the latter, even though it is legally required of me. But sometimes simply not going to jail is the moral thing to do. Sometimes.

People (the general public) are not legally obligated to give blood or CPR.

 

[Scrabaholic]

many people have proved to us that they don't think life is sacred.

It isn't. What's so sacred about it? If it were sacred, there'd be no wars, no death penalty and we'd not be allowed to kill in self defense.

 

[Scrabaholic]

Should it be the right of each man to make his own decision about whether to commit rape or not? It's his body, isn't it?

Rape harms another person and is illegal. Abortion does not. Good Lord.

 

[Triton]

People (the general public) are not legally obligated to give blood or CPR.

I know they are not but they are generally speaking morally obligated. CPR laws are different where I am from.

 

[maquiscat]

Should it be the right of each man to make his own decision about whether to commit rape or not? It's his body, isn't it?

Is the person he is raping taking of his bodily functions prior to said rape? Since the answer can only be no, that is not a comparable example.

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[CaughtInThe]

It isn't. What's so sacred about it? If it were sacred, there'd be no wars, no death penalty and we'd not be allowed to kill in self defense.

can you join the abortion threads please? you're the "Conservative" voice that's needed.