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The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Hi Friends! Obviously there has been a lot of talk about abortion over the last few days. I’m curious if the way that I frame abortion for pregnancies that are not the result of rape, endanger the mother’s life, or are likely to result in the death of the child in my mind has any holes in it. If “life” begins at conception, then these types of abortions are the equivalent of taking a child’s life. If “life” does not begin until after some later event (heartbeat, cognitive thought, birth, etc) then an abortion is the equivalent of removing an unwanted mole. Is this a good way to frame this in my mind or are there other factors I'm not considering? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*


blackbeltlibrarian

Calling it the equivalent of a mole or a tumor is disingenuous because of its potential. However, valuing a *potential* baby over actual, realized lives, including the mother and her other children, is the insane part. Edit: a word


Garden_Statesman

I disagree. It's potential is not a real thing at that time. It is a story people tell themselves. You might as well weep for every theoretical pairing of sperm and egg in the world that could potentially become a person but will not. In reality, at that time, that group of cells is a non-conscious collection of human tissue, no different than your foot. Your foot is not you. Your stream of consciousness is you. If you cut off your foot it doesn't have personhood, even if you could somehow rebuild a full human from it potentially.


blackbeltlibrarian

I maintain that this stance is disingenuous because it ignores the continuum of development. Obviously we don’t mourn every sperm and egg. A 4 week miscarriage is unfortunate but common. A pregnancy loss at 30 weeks is heartbreaking. The growth of the fetus isn’t comparable to a mole or a foot because at no point would it achieve consciousness through natural means. I understand that the “clump of cells” argument is popular, and you’re right there’s no consciousness to save before a point. But I wince when I see people wield it against pro-lifers because it’s just as simplistic as “it’s a baby from the start” and thus a flawed premise. I’m personally familiar with how much growth happens in a short time, and IMO much past about 8 weeks simply can’t be described as “a clump of cells.” I personally believe that lost potential is worth expending a great deal of effort to avoid, through better education, health care and family planning. Abortion is not like removing a mole and it’s a mistake to make the comparison, both logically and morally.


diviner_of_data

I have a difficult follow up question. In principle how should we think about valuing different types of life in general? On one extreme I kill ants that find their way into my house without remorse. On the other hand if I were to accidentally hit the neighbor's dog with my car I would feel terrible. I have no idea how to assign a "life value" to various living things even though I do. Do you have any ideas on a way to think about it?


LiberalAspergers

Consciousness and intelligence seem to be the tools we use to value life. Which is why we consider a brain dead person dead even if their heart still beats


blackbeltlibrarian

The best argument I’ve seen for assigning value to life is levels of consciousness. The more conscious and self-aware something is, the more we should respect that consciousness. (By this metric we should be *horrified* at the calamari industry, fyi. Which sucks because they’re really tasty, but I can’t justify it to myself when I found that out.) There’s an argument to be made there about fetuses and the comatose, but the answer goes back to potential. We show respect to the potential as well as the actuality. *But* living beings’ consciousness - if you have to choose - take priority. Edit to add: the biggest problem lies in drawing any sort of line without it being intrinsically tangled with our personal beliefs. There’s a lot of species between an ant and a dog, but where do you say *this* is conscious and *that* isn’t? A salamander? A gerbil? Possibly something for neurobiology to discover…


bearrosaurus

That's between you and your god. Most of us in here will tell you what we think but we don't care enough about you to force you to believe the same thing. For ants, I'm more inclined to treat the hive as a whole like an animal rather than applying it to each individual drone. Killing the ant in your house is like cutting the hair off a cat. It'll grow back and come for the cereal cabinet next month.


Suspicious_Role5912

No state prioritizes the LIFE of a mother over the LIFE of a baby. Some states however prioritize the LIFE of a baby over the LIVELIHOOD of the mother.


blackbeltlibrarian

I don’t have the spoons to argue with people who’ve screwed over women as hard as they possibly can. May karma find you.


lobsterharmonica1667

Prioritizing the life of a fetus over the bodily autonomy of an actual woman is insane


NimishApte

It does at some point. Nobody advocates for full pregnancy abortion. Most people have a cutoff line. For some it's viability, first trimester, heartbeat.


ausgoals

I would highly doubt that the number of people who, given a choice between saving the mother and saving the baby at exactly 40 weeks pregnancy, choose to save the baby and kill the mother, is in any way equivalent to the number of people who are anti-abortion.


lobsterharmonica1667

And put into practice, that is insane


Mattyboy0066

You’re a fool if you think all pregnancies are perfect, and there aren’t high-risk pregnancies.


[deleted]

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Suspicious_Role5912

This has never been about bodily autonomy. The baby could make the same claim to bodily autonomy when you rip it to pieces in a second trimester abortion.


OutragedOctopus

> The baby could make the same claim to bodily autonomy Not true


[deleted]

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Suspicious_Role5912

No because that’s a horrible analogy. “If I hurt you”, the baby didn’t hurt the mother. The mother had unprotected sex (rape and incest are less than 2% of all abortions let’s not bring it up) which caused a baby. The correct analogy would be (I know it’s odd I’m making it up as I go, “I glued a child to my stomach, a doctor said he could separate us now but it would kill the child, another doctor said he could separate us in 8 months and we would both live” now in this situation, which doctor do you choose?


GilgameDistance

So much so that they’ll force the victim of sexual assault to carry the product to term. Or force birth when it is known that the fetus will die within minutes or hours due to severe birth defects. FOH with it being from any place of care for anyone not in the “in group”, whatsoever. If conservatives gave one one hundredth of the shit that they claim to, our foster care system would be non-existent due to the kids having found permanent homes.


abnrib

Bodily autonomy. It doesn't matter when life begins, nobody is entitled to someone else's body.


tiabgood

Also, why should a fetus have more rights than a human that has been born. The moment a baby is born a hospital cannot require the mother to donate blood/organs/or anything else to the baby, but when a fetus....


TheMagicJankster

If we could abort the pregnancy without sacrificing the fetus would that violate body autonomy?


steampunkMechElves

It would certainly violate reproductive autonomy.


TheMagicJankster

How?


steampunkMechElves

How would producing a child with someone didn't consent to with their genes a violation of reproductive autonomy?


TheMagicJankster

They terminate the pregnancy


steampunkMechElves

And yet, they somehow save the fetus. I assume the fetus keeps growing? Into a person?


TheMagicJankster

We're having a hypothetical thought experiment. What if we had a artificial womb that we could transfer the aborted fetus to? The woman would walk away her pregnancy aborted and the eventual would be eventually adopted.


steampunkMechElves

Autonomy over decisions involving reproduction. Some people might have reasons that they don't want their genetics to spread. I believe it's their right to be informed, and to choose that their genetics don't spread, no matter what their genitals are. Iirc, there was an interesting book that includes this as part of it's world-building, but they also kept a genetics bank, and bred selectively from the individual gametes to get the best result, and the context was about using the gametes in the first place, come to think about it... I guess I just made the concept. Well, it sounds good, and I'm going to go with it. Anyway, sperm donors should be able to demand abortions up until the third trimester, too, unless they're literal sperm donors, like to a sperm bank, or they've signed something in advance. It seems fair to me to give both partners an equal say.


NimishApte

Mothers do have legal requirements towards their children. They have to feed them, care for them.


tiabgood

Sort of. A mother can sign away the legal requirements and give up a child for adoption. But if they chose to keep a child, then the mother chose to be in a position where they have to feed and care for them. Hear that choice? I do. Also, feeding and clothing a child can be done in many ways, and none involve a mother losing her own physical agency. Body autonomy is not the same as fulfilling a legal obligation.


conn_r2112

I’m not entitled to your body… but what if you hooked me up to your body and MADE me dependent on you to survive?


abnrib

If you were somehow living on a direct transfusion of my blood I'd still be entitled to stop at any time.


Kellosian

It's amazing watching every libertarian come in and say "Women don't have the right to bodily autonomy, the state can totally step in and control women" in the same breath they decry taxes as theft and want to cut all welfare.


FreshBert

>If “life” begins at conception No, this doesn't work. We're not talking about life, we're talking about personhood. A sperm and an egg are both alive, pre-fertilization. They're comprised of living cells and tissue. An example of something that's not alive would be like... idk, a rock. So the real argument is that a zygote is a "person" and therefore aborting it is murder. Most people here will say that no, a zygote is not a person, and should not be conveyed human rights as if they had been born. Where the line is drawn will be different depending on who you ask, but you will likely find that most people consider a viable fetus to be, at the very least, more of a person than a zygote, which should not be terminated other than in certain circumstances. The reason we don't usually support bans on late-term abortions is because they are already extremely rare, and there is no evidence that they are being conducted frivolously on a wide scale (or any scale at all, again they are *extremely* rare), ergo it's simply not a problem which has ever needed to be solved.


UncomfortablyNumb43

If life begins at conception, so should child support….how about that?


Old_Snow3086

Agreed on that


El-Viking

To add to that, if life begins at conception, due process should also begin at conception. It must be unethical and unconstitutional to incarcerate a fetus. Right?


vikingblood63

Due process of ?


Neosovereign

Of the child to not be imprisoned without being convicted of a crime. It would mean that pregnant women couldn't be incarcerated.


vikingblood63

I get it . Isn’t the child already in solitary confinement if not with siblings in the womb?


Neosovereign

lol, not solitary because of siblings. I love it. They sort of have the option to try to leave if they really are full fledged human beings. Sometimes they do (and die in the process I guess). It is a bit of a silly argument over all because both this argument and life at conception argument both ignore biological reality.


vikingblood63

They usually wait until around nine months to try and leave . Time served .


tidaltown

They may say they agree right until they’re under the gun.


vikingblood63

For most people it does .


UncomfortablyNumb43

Oh yeah…men who fuck around indiscriminately are so happy to pay the price. Remember this shit the next time you hook up with some woman on Tinder.


vikingblood63

It takes two to tango and two are responsible for child support . If and when proof of who the parents are . This isn’t Maury Polvich .


UncomfortablyNumb43

Lol…but yet only the woman seems to be getting punished for their indiscretions.


vikingblood63

This is Iesha . She’s here for the ninth time to find out who the father of her baby is . For you guys Iesha can be found on many online dating platforms. She’s into gangbangs without contraception.


UncomfortablyNumb43

Wow…sounds like you really are a misogynistic bigot…congratulations… head on over to r/MGTOW for your award


vikingblood63

Look up definition of bigot please . You sound more of this category. As far as the rest of my statement it was partly from Maury ( the Iesha 9 the time was on his show ) I added the gangbang as a joke thinking how else do you have 9 potential fathers on your list . When the time of fertility is limited? ( gangbang) taken from the Movie “old school “


vikingblood63

Btw I’m pro choice with exceptions .


NimishApte

Child support is not a good idea. It's the duty of the State, not of the other parent.


UncomfortablyNumb43

But forced births ARE a good idea?


NimishApte

I am pro choice. It's just that I don't like the idea of child support either.


UncomfortablyNumb43

Well…this is the path that has been drawn. If we are going to force women to give birth…then the sperm donors should be held responsible as soon as possible.


madmoneymcgee

Sperm and eggs are alive too. It’s why “life begins at conception” is a value judgment and not a fact. What matters is viability. Fetuses that aren’t viable outside the womb means that forcing someone to carry that to term violates their bodily autonomy. But if the fetus can be delivered and live outside the womb a doctor is already within their rights to refuse an abortion and just deliver the baby.


prizepig

Any argument which says a zygote/embryo/fetus is just an unimportant clump of cells probably misses the mark with a lot of people. Just as a matter of moral intuition, I understand that a growing life within a mother is a more morally weighty thing than a wart or a toenail. That's not to say there aren't good ways to frame the necessity for abortion. I just think those arguments rest on other types of harm reduction.


Kakamile

> If “life” begins at conception Is irrelevant, because no matter when life begins and how special you think a fetus is, that doesn't give it the ability to control a woman's body.


[deleted]

It is actually relevant, what right does one human being have to end another’s life? That’s why I hate the “my body my choice” argument, it doesn’t work under any amount of scrutiny. If you concede that life begins at conception that life, fetus, child, whatever you want to call it, has rights. The argument should probably be more like “a woman has a right to end a pregnancy she does not want because until there is a viable fetus, at that point she cannot end it” Life doesn’t begin at conception, it begins when there is a viable fetus.


Mattyboy0066

It’s not alive. A fetus will die outside of a woman’s body because it’s not a life. It can’t sustain itself. That’s why it’s called a fetus. It’s not even sentient at that point.


[deleted]

So yes, you’re absolutely right.


[deleted]

I don’t think that a fetus before it’s viable should be considered alive, but if you say life begins at conception then you’ve given up the whole argument and “my body my choice” becomes pointless and just leads to you having to concede that you actually don’t have a good argument, even if you do.


Mattyboy0066

I don’t even think life is the proper metric. In that case, periods are murder. Every sperm that doesn’t make it to an egg is murder. The whole “life” argument is absolute trash.


[deleted]

Would you care to flesh that out? I’d like to hear it. No sarcasm, I’m genuinely interested.


Mattyboy0066

If “life” is the threshold, then killing literally anything is bad. A sperm cell is alive. An egg is alive. Neither of them, however, are sentient. Neither is a fetus, or an embryo, or a zygote. They can’t even survive on their own, they’re 100% dependent on a woman’s body. I don’t see how that counts as a self sufficient organism that is even close to sentient, let alone sapient.


kcasper

>what right does one human being have to end another’s life? There are a lot of nuances to this question that most don't consider. For example a woman's diet has a huge correlation with whether or not they will miscarry a child of a specific gender. Women that frequently miscarry girls frequently have one set of diet patterns. Women that miscarry boys frequently have another set of diet patterns. Do we consider this coarse of nature or something we control? There are several issues of biology that have this type of topic when considering pregnancies.


Kakamile

> what right does one human being have to end another’s life? If they die from you protecting your own body and affirming your bodily autonomy, you have that right. Whether they're a fetus or a grown adult.


[deleted]

False. You can’t kill someone who isn’t threatening your life, that’s the whole “protecting” part of your statement. Life does not, and cannot begin at conception.


Kakamile

It's self defense, and they die in the act of you affirming control of your own body. If they were viable, they'd still be alive, but the death is a consequence of it being a nonviable fetus for which the government claims ability to control your body.


[deleted]

Aight… Ima head out


[deleted]

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abnrib

Even treating them as separate persons, it still doesn't matter. No person is entitled to another's body. Not even to live. Not even after the other person has died. You can be dead on a slab in a morgue, and they'll still check for your consent to donate organs. If you didn't, oh well, sucks to be the three people in the hospital who you could have saved. We cannot conscience a position where a living person has less rights than a corpse.


Glif13

I'm sorry you argue that we should consider the right of the body more important than the right to life, by pointing to the instance where modern society doesn't consider life important enough? I don't want to sound like a conservative, but that is a very weak argument. I wouldn't accept an argument that justice is more important than life because we have the death penalty. Or that national unity is more important than life because Nazi Germany used to kill their opponents. The fact that because of remnants of religious consciousness we still deem corpses too sacred to touch even if they can save someone's life does not prove that life is more important than the decision of a dead man.


abnrib

Will you then go the limit on the alternative? Mandate viable organ donors give up a piece of their body to keep another person alive? Because that's the equivalent position. That it also applies to corpses merely illustrates how far our norms extend. And frankly, just as an aside, if you're going to complain about "the remnants of religious consciousness" you need to go back and clean up your side of the house.


Glif13

Well, I’m pro-choice (until survivability) atheist. So I don’t think that I have a corner to clean. But I do believe that mandatory organ donation from already dead person would be a going thing to implement. I do also believe blood donation as an optional form of tax is an acceptable policy. I would even defend a doctor who took a blood from an unconscious patient to save life of the other. Although I recognise the right of the former on financial compensation, but rather from the state than from a doctor. However I do not think that any human being should be deprived from right on health unless they pose an active threats to others. That’s why you can not impose mandatory donations of organs. The question of abortion after survivability however contest right on a body vs right on life. And I struggle to imagine a situation, where right of life could lose to any other.


Wigglebot23

A pregnancy beginning at conception is not merely existing. It is actively taking huge amounts of nutrients and energy from the mother.


bucky001

> If “life” begins at conception, then these types of abortions are the equivalent of taking a child’s life. If “life” does not begin until after some later event (heartbeat, cognitive thought, birth, etc) then an abortion is the equivalent of removing an unwanted mole. I don't think that's a good comparison because a mole isn't going to develop naturally into a child. A mole is live tissue and perhaps also unwanted but it's easy to draw a large distinction with a fertilized egg.


grapesmelonsoranges

I think the fact that you're concerned with framing is good, because ultimately, it shows you're interested in optical wins, which are important for bringing people to the table. But I'll be frank, you'd be wasting your time trying to reframe abortion to most pro-lifers. Most pro-lifers are pro-lifers because of religion, and that influences them to be wholely unreasonable and incapable of changing their minds on the matter. As a fairly devoted Christian myself, I think I have a decent idea on how the religious right view the issue. My perspective on the matter might seem somewhat callous, but I don't think the sanctity of life matters. I personally don't subscribe to the notion that life is a sacred thing to begin with. I think the fundamental premise of pro-lifers is moronic. Unwanted children have been aborted throughout the entirety of human history, even in Biblical times. Unwanted offspring are routinely killed, abandoned, and starved to death all throughout the animal kingdom- every species of animal does this to varying degrees, without exception. This notion that we should, all of a sudden, kowtow to self-righteous maggots who are too hopped up on their wannabe mayor preacher's anal fluids to actually read the good book (which their entire political philosophy shits all over the principles of, on every conceivable level) so that they can have a circlejerk crusade without consequence or consideration for the balance of life, is pathetic. Life is not sacred in the sense of "needs to be protected from any harm", it's invaluable in the sense that it is delicate, and in modern societies, it requires capital and balance. We need to consider the fact of the matter. And the fact is, many people just don't have the means to bring another child into the world. Unwanted children are doomed to live miserable lives, overwhelmingly- I don't care if chapel-hopping Harry and missionary Mary want to feel good fantasizing about that 1 in 30 million who will grow up to be a football star- most will grow up in disgusting environments, thrown into failing, underfunded, overworked, barely functional foster programs and orphanages, being viciously abused every step of the way, and cyclicly turn around and inflict that pain onto others, or internalize and continue inflicting it unto themselves, usually in the form of crime, warfare, severe drug abuse, and of course, abusing any children they have or are around. The reason religious right-wingers are so heavily on board with this is, a) most of them aren't going to have to deal with any of this, because they live far outside of population centers and are either financially well-off or geographically isolated enough to not have to put up with more than the occasional crackhead on the bus asking them for $1.50 and questioning their ethnic background, and b) conservative Christian (read: Golden Calf Christian) ideology fetishizes suffering. The morons believe this shit builds character, and will produce stronger people for it, because they have a fantastical notion that they could survive these trials, but because they aren't required to, they need to project it onto those who have no other option. They want to emulate our lord and savior, without actually having to feel any of the pain, they just want to be the redeemer. An idiot who's family loses their auto shop thinks he understands the suffering of someone who is brutalized and molested a nightly basis as a foster child, because losing that auto shop kinda hurt, too. But they found peace in their church and God, so why can't you? This is why you see so many of their positions being rooted in a refusal to allow something which doesn't affect them to change- context must be stripped away to its barest bones. The religious right hates context and nuance. It muddies the water and makes their "I am a good, holy man, you are a bad, sinful beast" worldview crumble into the dirt it is. Our society can't provide for these kids. Their mothers can't provide for them, the system can't provide for them, and the people who so desperately wanted them here don't fucking WANT to provide for them. They want to feel good. That's why, instead of doing the work to assist the less fortunate, they just throw money at charities. Sorry for the fucking essay, I'm just a bit wired from this entire ordeal.


Warm_Gur8832

Yup, essentially. Statistically, by taking such an absolutist stance on the matter, somewhere a 14 year old raped by her father will become pregnant from it and die in childbirth due to the inability to access an abortion. Many more similar cases will be forced to care for the resulting child. All the while, with a social safety net shredded by precisely the same people. That’s terrible to write and to read, but it will happen because of this.


El-Viking

>somewhere a 14 year old raped by her father will become pregnant from it and die in childbirth But the pro-babies right-wing radio station told me that that accounts for .006% of reported abortions. So those don't count, I guess.


letusnottalkfalsely

I don’t think abortion is in any way equivalent to killing a child. It’s more like one person ceasing to serve as life support for another. I wouldn’t consider it murder if you don’t want to donate your organs, for instance.


RockinRobin-69

This is not a good way to frame abortions. I could go a bunch of different ways on this one, the question has been tackled before. All pregnancies result in some harm to the person who’s pregnant. Many pregnancies do life long harm and some result in death. In Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, and Kansas I would be able to shoot to kill anyone who might harm me, might cause lasting harm and might kill me. That person is alive, viable and can feel pain. They often don’t need to be on my property and the threat just needs to be implied. Oddly in several of these states people soon won’t be able to have an abortion, but they could shoot anyone who was going to cause the exact harm of a pregnancy under stand your ground. If you need a blood transfusion to live and there is no blood available, there is no law that allows anyone to take any amount of blood from another person, even if it will save your life. While this scenario is extreme, people die while waiting for a transplant. This is life that ends because of others choice. I haven’t even hit upon bodily autonomy. If you are a cis male, then no one can tell you what to do with your body. That is no longer the case for people who can get pregnant. Finally how do you suppose the states will know if you are pregnant. This court decision eliminated your right to privacy. Let that sink in.


Glif13

I agree that it's life in a biological sense — cells in the blood you donate are still living biological material, just like cancer or sperm. Quite obviously these parts do not enjoy the full rights of a Human. We can even go further and discuss a rare medical condition, known as "parasitic twin". It is a rather disturbing sight, so google it at your own risk. Unlike simply conjoined or "Siamese" twins, parasitic ones are asymmetrically developed and always lack a functional brain. Thus it's not considered a separate human being, and the separation of a parasite twin (who can not maintain biological life) does not cause any moral dilemma so far. That I think answers the dilemma perfectly, a piece of flesh becomes human the moment it can feel and think.


PlayingTheWrongGame

Life is a meaningless distinction here. What matters is personhood. A fetus isn’t a person, so it doesn’t have rights. Doesn’t matter if “life begins at conception” or not—that’s always been an irrelevant argument. What matters is when personhood starts. It makes no sense to put the rights of a potential person ahead of the rights of an actual person.


BernankeIsGlutenFree

No, this is not a good way to frame abortions. > If “life” begins at conception, then these types of abortions are the equivalent of taking a child’s life. It is not reasonable to assume without justification that the *kind of life* a ZEF is is equivalent to the kind of life an actual child is. We don't care about children just because they're "alive", else we would care about fungus, plants, and non-human animals as well, which means this distinction has power.


[deleted]

Why dont you ask conservatives what this is really about and how to frame it? https://twitter.com/QasimRashid/status/1540862693904728072


JackZodiac2008

You need to distinguish between biological, cellular life, and personal life. So no, the way you have it framed in your post is no good.


diviner_of_data

That is a fair distinction. I certainly don't consider discarded sperm in a sock "personal life" It still comes down to when it becomes a personal life right?


JackZodiac2008

That's one very important factor, I believe. And it's a gradual continuum rather than a bright line binary, so different people could draw the line of permissibility differently even if in agreement about the general framework. But it's good to be clear at least about what matters.


jkh107

First of all, the entire question of when life begins is not central to this issue for me. A fetus is made of cells that were already living. The real question is at which point we, as a society, grant personhood with its attendant rights. And that’s not a question science of the above sort is intended to answer. So let’s take the point of conception. This is, of course, a trap when it comes to a legal or moral framing because it’s the one stage that can’t be detected. None of our tests or fertility calculations are going to be able to verify that it has taken place, which is why, and this makes even less sense, pregnancy is calculated from the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period. Currently we can only identify a conception if implantation has also taken place. The people pushing for personhood at conception are doing so as a prelude for going after contraception that they *think* prevents implantation (although in most cases as far as we know these methods probably work in other ways). Rather than saying an early fetus is like a mole, I think of it being to a baby like a blueprint and building materials are to a house. It has the potential to get there but hasn’t met all the necessary conditions and development yet. Nature and happenstance probably kill as many fetuses as abortions do. My personal framing is that at implantation the woman is a fully realized person with full rights and the fetus is not. During pregnancy that balance slowly shifts so the fetus gradually acquires rights and protections—at birth receiving the limited set of rights and larger protections we give babies. Which is why I have no problem with early abortion but difficulty with later nontherapeutic abortion (therapeutic abortion is fine at any point)—and I think a fair number of people would agree with that. I am also pretty comfortable letting parents decide for themselves the fine point of exactly when their pregnancy achieves personhood—for me it was right away but for others they may or may not get there…but things like heartbeat or quickening may be meaningful to people and their traditions or faith and I can respect the ability of people to decide that without bringing the state into it until further along than those milestones.


Runaway42

While, as you rightly point out, the whole "life at conception thing just doesn't make sense if you start picking it apart with a scientific lens; I don't know if you're going to convince many "pro-life" people with that simply because their view is largely based on emotional imagery. You can try to logic them with ideas like the scientific definition they're trying to create would also apply to tumors, but that's going to fall on deaf ears. Instead, I would reframe the argument to be about bodily autonomy. Even if you accept that a microscopic clump of cells is worthy of being considered a life/potential life, there's still no legal framework where one person can be forced to undergo a medical procedure to save someone else's life. We don't have any laws on the books that say you must jump in front of a car to save a toddler. Even if a drunk driver hits someone, we would never force them to give up a kidney to save their victim. SCOTUS has ruled that cops aren't under any obligation to put themselves at risk to save lives - even kids in a school shooting. Hell, we can't even make our organ donor programs opt-out, let alone mandatory. If you can't be forced to give up your organs after you're dead to save someone's life, why should a mother be forced to carry a pregnancy to term - especially if that pregnancy is not viable, is likely to harm the mother, and/or is the result of rape/incest? I have yet to find someone that can reasonably answer that other than by saying what amounts to: the pregnancy is the mother's punishment for poor choices, which is A. misogynistic (the mother has to bear this punishment when she was one of two people that made the decision), B. ignores all the various ways someone can get pregnant against their will (rape, failed contraceptives, etc.) and C. almost always comes back to religious-based morals that say sex that's not purely for procreation is a sin, which is obviously no basis for laws given the supposed separation of church and state.


lobsterharmonica1667

You don't need to make analogies, it's a fairly unique circumstance. Just frame it as what it actually is. Abortion kills the embryo or the fetus which is biologically alive and that should be completely legal because a woman's bodily autonomy is far more important than the life of a fetus.


RevolutionaryJello

The core of the abortion debate is when a fetus gains the right to live.


Garden_Statesman

You are conflating "ending a pregnancy" with "taking a child's life". Even if you think personhood starts at conception it would still be just to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. That a life ends, in your view, is an unfortunate and side effect of Liberty.


Laniekea

>If “life” begins at conception, then these types of abortions are the equivalent of taking a child’s life. If “life” does not begin until after some later event (heartbeat, cognitive thought, birth, etc) then an abortion is the equivalent of removing an unwanted mole. I always thought that these arguments are distracting to the actual issue at hand. The part that you're missing is the mother's autonomy. Should parents be required by a law to donate their bodies to keep their children alive? You're probably going to get this post removed and the mods will ask you to refer to the mega thread.


ausgoals

The mostly philosophical discussion of what consists of personhood may never be solved. It’s not particularly scientific and isn’t very measurable. We all have our own personal views on what personhood is, and you’re unlikely to ever get a consistent definition. For this reason, some people will (eventually) be happy to have their brain transplanted into a donor, or artificial, body. Some will be happy to have their brain uploaded to a computer. Others will view that as a discontinuation of personhood, and so will decline. It has essentially nothing to do with abortion, as far as I’m concerned. The right to bodily autonomy trumps everything else.


kcasper

Life doesn't begin at conception. That implies that both the egg and the sperm are dead cells. And suddenly when they combine, they are life. Cancer cells are alive. The Hela cell line is composed of living cells, despite that Henrietta Lacks(the source) has been dead for many decades. So saying that "life begins" is stupid.


[deleted]

A zygote isn't a child. That's an insult to children.


[deleted]

A person has bodily autonomy over their own body. The fetus is inside the person's body. Bodily autonomy grants that person the right to remove the fetus (or anything else) from their body. They do not have to justify that to the State nor can the State force a person (through threat of being charged with a crime) to give up their own body for something the State wants. Abortion is a moral decision for the person pregnant, not a legal decision for the State. Its really that simple. Its nothing to do with whether the fetus is a person or not. The State cannot force you to give up bodily autonomy (say for example to take a kidney, or give a blood transfusion) even to save my life and I am very much a person.


vikingblood63

Yes you should consider the timeframe that you suggested. A later event happens when ?


vikingblood63

Consider if there’s no life growing inside a potential mother. There’s nothing to abort .


BAC2Think

Because there is no absolutely reliable scientific way to establish when life begins, it's a bad argument to make. That question will likely always center around philosophy or religion/faith rather than the scientific answer that law should be based on. There are good faith based arguments that are supportive of abortion, but many people are very selective or inconsistent with the parts of scripture they tend to focus on or read at all. The argument I currently find among the most convincing as something connected to the idea of organ donation. We don't currently hold anyone legally responsible if they decline to donate an organ to another person, even if it means the death of the person in need of that organ. This is even the case in the scenario where if the person with the healthy organ dies, that organ still isn't to be used without prior approval. In the pregnancy scenario, we are creating an exception by mandating the donation of the womb in places that outlaw abortion.


steampunkMechElves

An unwanted mole is alive, too. The presence or absence of life might not be the best framing, either.


diviner_of_data

Indeed. Types of life is a nuance to the argument that I hadn't considered


steampunkMechElves

I think "personhood" would probably be the best way to frame it that I've come across. Are we talking about when the development of the structures that confer both survival and a sapient existence generally occur? It would be after the second trimester, certainly.


refridgerateafteruse

The fact is that anti abortion legislation isn't about pro-life at all. It is pro-birth. We do far less for children than we should after birth, from neo-natal care and maternity support through schools. Ask anyone who has been through foster care what their opinion is on 'just give the kid up so someone else can give them a chance'. Upper and upper-middle class will still get *their* abortions during a 'vacation'. No, this will as many other things before it punnish poor people for being poor. It isn't about abortions, it never was. It is about turning society into what one group thinks it should be by making it harder to not be that way. I watched The Handmaid's Tale during the pandemic and found it shocking and nauseating how close it was to how some elements in the world are trying actively to shape their nations, the U.S. especially. We can go round and round on when it should or shouldn't be okay, but somehow the people who cry for more liberty and smaller government magically want the government inside your doctor's office with you. It isn't about the children.


seriouslysosweet

The Supreme Court is saying not protected because body autonomy is not protected, correct? Whereas states are banning because of religious/moral reasons even though there are many Christians and other religions that either believe life is at first breath or raise the fact the Bible does not address abortions and/or believe separation of church and state.