Your reliance on morality demonstrates you have no valid argument to make. Not everyone shares your idea of moral nor has your moral qualms. That's strictly a 'you' problem. It seems you think you are some arbiter of what is right or wrong?
It is not a complicated issue. A fetus is alive in utero. That's a scientific fact. Birth confers legal personhood. That's US law. It's also biblical truth. This is a 1st amendment issue not a moral one. If religious conservatives can pass a law saying the fetus is a person then they can declare abortion murder of a person and control women's reproductive lives. There is nothing moral about the issue. It is a straight up religious control issue.
And right there is the point where you realize the abortion issue isn't about saving little unborn babies. It's about gaining control over women's reproductives lives.
No, this can't work for you. Pregnancy includes molar pregnancy, in which there is embryonic and placental tissue but not an embryo. It includes cases of incomplete spontaneous abortion, in which the natural abortion that the squeamish non-scientist or ordinary lay person calls a miscarriage is not over. That can only be treated by abortion.
I'm not talking about human life. I'm talking about a person. A person is an individual that does not need a biological parent to survive. This definition works even in a case of conjoined twins that cannot be separated, because in that case, both heads are functional and either head could be removed and the body still survive, but we have no right to remove either one because both are persons.
Breathe air means breathe oxygen from the common source available to all humans, mammals, etc. That the embryo or fetus has to receive oxygen from a person's blood means that it has to get consent. That's the difference between an embryo and a person.
I didnt ask what the law was. And not once have I made a religios argument.
Yes. The end of a pregnancy is the end of a human life.
No one is challenging the notion that individuals can be dependent. A premature infant is dependent on medical personnel socially and a medical machine biologically. We're saying that human individuals, i.e., persons, do not need to depend on a biological parent for survival.
In a nation without the value of human liberty, but only the value of human life, it would be possible to claim that anyone can rape a girl or woman and impregnate her or that marriage did not require the consent of a girl or woman. Men could just rape any woman they wished, including your wife or daughter, and get her pregnant and she'd have to give birth to it unless she committed suicide.
The pregnancy isn't ended when a woman has a molar pregnancy - there isn't an embryo growing in the woman. In the case of an incomplete spontaneous abortion, the embryo or fetus may still be partly implanted, but it's dying and can't go back to being implanted, and it's threatening the woman with death.
The breastfeeding issue is moot. Once born, you don't need your biological mother to survive, even though it's much better for the infant to breastfeed for at least six weeks. Nonetheless, the government can't force a birth mother to breastfeed her infant, at least in the states for which I know about this. A key reason you can't is because sometimes women don't have breast milk, and sometimes breastfeeding is too dangerous for their health. Make it illegal not to breastfeed your child and every safe haven in the US will be overwhelmed with a population of infants larger than they ever thought possible.
And what does a molar pregnancy have to do with anything.
I'm arguing moral reasoning. The appeal to moral reasoning is necessary when discussing rights and ethics. The abolition of slavery was driven by moral arguments that transcended the legal norms at the time. The strength of an argument in moral discussions does not rely on your agreement but on the rational justification of the principles involved. The fact that not everyone shares the same moral view does not invalidate the need for moral reasoning. Laws were not created in a vacuum - many criminal laws stem from moral principles such as the idea that people shouldn't cause harms to others and the moral reasoning surrounding it. I view the laws today permitting abortion as relying on faulty moral reasoning.
In New York State, the law says that, if someone is trying to kill you and you have the situational ability to flee without harm, you have a duty to flee, but if you don't have that ability, lethal force if necessary is allowed not just in self defense, but in defense of a third party - which we see when a cop kills the person trying to kill you.
Back in the middle ages the activities of old women and cats were morally reprehensible and the church after much moral scrutiny recommended they all be killed. American religious leaders had a similar go at killing witches in the New England, most of whom turned out to be nubile young girls. In more recent times the church after deep thoughtful moral scrutiny decided that women really weren't smart enough to vote and prevailed upon government to pass laws putting them in jail for suggesting such a morally reprehensible act. They also kept women out of universities, medical colleges, piloting air planes , advanced technical manufacturing and right now religion is busy with its moral scrutinizing of women, yet again, and they've declared that fatuous old men should be in charge of controlling young women's reproductive lives. Is this the kind of logical moral reasoning you are talking about. On the surface it looks like religion has a problem with women especially young women.
That's because you do not value liberty. I don't know why you are willing to stay in a country that does. There are quite a few autocratic, dictatorial "republics" where you could enjoy forcing women to give birth even if they will become permanently disabled or will die from medically foreseeable causes as well as forcing 9 year old girls to give birth to rapist babies and have broken pelvises for the rest of their lives. You'd love it!
We live in a semi-patriarchal society and it is a relevant question. The vast majority of women who favor banning abortion are Catholic,, Evangelical, or married and the married were mostly married in religious ceremonies, not just secularly. These women voluntarily accepted something patriarchal or semi-patriarchal for society.
Your apparent sense of irony combines with a lack of higher values, so you see contradictions where people don't see them if they believe in liberty. But you don't have any respect for personal liberty. We get that.
You're saying that YOUR morals are superior to others.
.... but the entire issue is about changing the law so it reflects the religious thought of religious conservatives. You want abortion discussions based on morality. Whose morality?
There isn't one single pro-choice advocate that doesn't know that abortion ends human life. That's the whole point of an abortion. It ends a life that a woman has recognized she cannot care for with the resources she currently has . And the abortion debate is not about conferring life on a fetus. The fetus is alive, nobody disputes that. The fight is over whether religion is going to be allowed to control women's private reproductive lives.
This is not about relying on current laws as the ultimate moral arbiter. It is about saying that other independent individuals do not agree with your morals or your ethics. Ethics is part of philosophy, and philosophy does not agree that life is the absolute moral arbiter. You are advocating for the involuntary servitude of women and should admit that outright.
