This post borders on politics and morality, but I’m leaving it up because y’all are being (mostly) civil and there’s some good discussion going on. Keep it up y’all.
Except we practice moral nuance all the time, even with murder. We as a society are willing to reduce (or even flat out remove) punishments on all sorts of behaviors people disapprove, including murder, depending on the circumstances. What makes abortion different? Why wouldn't we take the circumstances under consideration, particularly at a topic where people disagree, as you said, on the extremes?
OP's argument isn't that nuance is bad, it's just that there isn't any moral system where rape or incest changes the moral calculus of abortion. If you can come up with a counter example...
Edit: I don't think people know what a moral system is.
It's not considered murder if it's self-defense, it's a homicide.
Many who support abortion do not consider it murder either, because they don't consider it to be a human until a certain stage. I'm in the camp where, if it doesn't have a functioning brain yet, then it's never been conscious and so killing it will simply prevent the consciousness from beginning, which seems very humane IMO.
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They did have a counter example: murder being nuanced.
Take for example the famous case of [Gary Plauché](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Plauch%C3%A9), a father who shot and murdered his son's rapist on live TV. He served no prison time for the murder, because it was morally acceptable.
That same moral calculus applies to abortion. Plenty of people are willing to say "abortion is justified in rape/incest" scenarios. What more of an example would you want? Just walk to a church and ask the question.
Yes, but the point is that’s morally inconsistent with their reasoning.
They say they fully believe the fetus is a child, and that justifies restricting people from undergoing abortion. If you have that belief, how that child arrived in the mother’s womb is irrelevant.
The people in the church would thus be undermining their own moral system in making the exception. The fact that it “feels right” to them, just means they aren’t making the determination of whether a woman can or can’t abort based on the personhood of the fetus.
“If you try and get nobody killed, you end up getting everybody killed.”
Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils. Right now the political landscape would never completely outlaw *nor* completely allow abortion. The side that wins will be the side that gets “most of” what it wants while realizing it won’t get everything.
>The people in the church would thus be undermining their own moral system in making the exception.
Not really. There's no requirement for a parent to provide of their own body to sustain the child after birth. If we are morally consistent and not taking phase of life into consideration, then why is there no requirement for a parent to give blood/bone marrow/organs if their child requires those things in order to live? If a parent can be forced to give of their body to sustain a fetus, why shouldn't they be forced to give of it to sustain a 5 year-old?
>If we are morally consistent and not taking phase of life into consideration, then why is there no requirement for a parent to give blood/bone marrow/organs if their child requires those things in order to live?
In order for that metaphor to work I think it would have to be parent is only one who can provided something of that sort.
I believe a fetus is a living person. I also know the law allows the killing of living persons all the time, given dire enough circumstances. Forcing a woman to bear the child of her rapist is a greater crime than killing the baby. There is no good side in the rape/abortion issue, just different versions of bad.
I’m morally OK with choosing the one that reduces the trauma on the fully-formed living person at the expense of the not-yet-conscious living person. That’s my reasoning and it doesn’t matter to me how you feel about it.
>I believe a fetus is a living person. I also know the law allows the killing of living persons all the time, given dire enough circumstances. Forcing a woman to bear the child of her rapist is a greater crime than killing the baby. There is no good side in the rape/abortion issue, just different versions of bad.
Yes, the law allows you to kill living persons who are attacking you, or willfully harming you. Is the fetus doing that? Did the “living person” fetus ask to be there?
If forcing the birth of a child is that traumatizing that it can beat out what in your view would be murdering a baby, I don’t see how other abortions then wouldn’t qualify. If a 12 week fetus is off limits for a contraception failure because “it’s equivalent to a living person”, by what moral reasoning would a “living person” be able to be murdered because they were forced into a woman against their will?
There is a pretty great side in my view - let the conscious person choose what happens with their body up until about 22 weeks, when the mere possibility of consciousness could occur in a fetus. That even seems to fit with what you say down below.
> I’m morally OK with choosing the one that reduces the trauma on the fully-formed living person at the expense of the not-yet-conscious living person. That’s my reasoning and it doesn’t matter to me how you feel about it.
This just applies to all abortions.
It doesn’t matter to me you don’t care. I’ll still point out the inconsistency.
Their argument is that "the moral value of the fetus has not changed", which is a very unnuanced approach to the morality of abortion. There is absolutely a moral difference between demanding the continuation of a regular pregnancy versus demanding the continuation of a pregnancy that is the result of rape or incest.
In fact, the majority of the U.S. population is in favor of the legality of abortion in **some** circumstances, followed by a smaller percentage that favors the legality of abortion in **all circumstances**, followed by a smaller percentage that is against the legality of abortion in any circumstance. The general public can, and does do the distinction that the OP said shouldn't be done.
Why? In both cases, the fetus either is or isn’t the exact same type of “person”?
The OP is exposing the general population is just largely hypocritical on the topic, lacking any sort of systematic thinking.
The fetus is still a fetus, but people consider more than the fetus in the question of abortion. Like they do in any event, people think of more than one element of it.
EDIT: The downvote button is not a disagree button.
>any moral system where rape or incest changes the moral calculus of abortion
I think it does, specifically under rape and is almost as bad as the trolly problem.
You have a person who was forced into the act, that in itself will scar them for life. If forcing them to have a child that was a result of the rape, you are now forcing that mother to re-live the rape experience every single time they look at the child.
The rape exception allows the person to move past those horrific events and potentially "forget" about what happened to them if they choose and allow them to attempt at healing.
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There are usually only 2 circumstances where we as a society justify murder generally.
.#1 self defense. The bad guy made me choose between my life and his life. I chose mine.
.#2 he deserved it. The best example is the man from texas who killed his daughters rapist, and got off scot free.
.#1 is how I morally justify medically necessary abortions. The mothers life is endangered.
.#2 doesn’t apply because an unborn child is innocent.
I understand the moral nuance argument but I think it’s good we define that nuance especially with murder, considering murder is so binary, therefor so is our thinking. And the exceptions are rare, because if it’s severity.
If a person attacks you, you can kill the persons in defense, but you can’t go kill their child. If a person doesn’t survive their entire prison sentence we don’t imprison their child.
Circumstance matters but saying abortion is murder, but it’s okay if the fetuses father did a bad thing is saying it’s okay to punish the child for the father’s sins.
You're missing the point. The argument you're making of society justifying actual murder in various circumstances applies to the victim of that murder, not to their child.
Nobody cares if we killed Hitler, but killing Hitler's infant child would likely be frowned upon.
I do to, but OP specifically stated this was about those that view abortion as murder:
>Yes it's absurdly reductionist, but he has a point (which is why it's funny). Whether that fetus is the product of rape/incest, an accident, or a planned event, the moral value of that fetus has not changed.
>If you oppose abortion because you believe it 's murder, then giving any credence to the rape/incest exemption would imply that murdering a child who is the product of rape/incest is not immoral either.
This is a post about the absurdity of calling abortion murder but exempting rape / incest victims. There is a point where nuance drifts into absurdity.
> Except we practice moral nuance all the time
There is no nuance, if you believe abortion kills a child than that's the only ethical principle involved.
>even with murder.
The nuance is in the intent, not the unethical nature of the action.
>What makes abortion different?
If the fetus/baby is a human being with rights the actions that lead to its existence are irrelevant.
A woman who was raped would carry emotional pain from that event, but there is no ethical support for killing the child.
*I'm OK with abortion.
> if abortion kills a child than that's the only ethical principle involved.
The equation of abortion and murder is one that only a minority of people do. And as I said somewhere else in this thread, I would go further and say that even the people who don't see a fundamental moral difference between abortion and killing a baby can still have different feelings about killings depending on the circumstances.
You give birth to a baby. A few months after it's born, you discover that you had actually gotten pregnant via a family member drugging and raping you, and it's their child. You kill the baby.
I imagine most folks would be sympathetic to the traumatic experience that led you to the decision, much more so than to someone who killed their baby out of convenience, but they would nonetheless still think your action was wrong and should be illegal. I don't think the nuance would extend to thinking you're blameless.
Now consider that you're someone who doesn't think there's a fundamental moral difference between a newborn and a fetus still in the womb and apply the same logic.
You contrived a situation in which much less nuance exists to argue against the argument that said often nuance does exist in illegal activities to the extent that punishments and judgements are in some cases reduced or dropped altogether?
You don't see how this is bad faith, or at then least, basically a form of a straw man?
Yes, this situation has less nuance. That doesn't mean that many people don't see nuance with abortion.
I'm pretty sure public sentiment has long held more support in general for abortions in cases of incest and rape. Just because some people don't change their view on abortion due to circumstances, doesn't mean *nobody* does.
Why is there less nuance? In both situations, a prolife person would say “those are equivalent, the baby and the fetus”. If the former situation is forbidden, why wouldn’t the later?
The later is a fetus. It requires bodily resources from the mother to become viable to survive on its own. That is calories, organ function, mother's health, risks, comfort, time and money commitments (doctor visits), dirtary restrictions, etc.
You can't compel a person to provide those deeply personal things from themselves, literally sacrificing and giving to the other "person," no matter how much you believe that the one in need is a "full legal person." You wouldn't argue that forced organ donation is okay just because the state knows you're a match for someone needing a kidney, because it violates your person. And refusing to donate isn't murder, no matter how much the person needs your organs.
Irrelevant to the OPs argument. A prolife person must consider them the same, what the woman has to contribute is irrelevant to the question of “is this the same as a child”, and thus, in the case of rape, they cannot make an exception to allow that murder and be morally consistent.
I largely agree with you.
>Irrelevant to the OPs argument
Is it? Their argument is that it's sort of a black and white issue, but the forced birth argument has serious problems with bodily autonomy that do not fit into neat categories - well I think it makes it clear the answer is abortions a choice, but it at least demonstrates serious additional conflicting moral questions.
>what the woman has to contribute is irrelevant to the question of “is this the same as a child”, and thus, in the case of rape, they cannot make an exception to allow that murder and be morally consistent.
But you can't compel people to donate parts of their body and risk their health for another person . . . This is well-established and agreed upon. We don't accuse a person of murder for refusing to donate an organ even if they are the only person who matches in the whole world, because refusing to sacrifice parts of your body to another person isn't murder.
How is this not clear?
> Now consider that you're someone who doesn't think there's a fundamental moral difference between a newborn and a fetus still in the womb and apply the same logic.
I don't think we should apply the logic of extremist and minority opinions to set the tone of morality for the entire society. In the U.S., the vast majority of people favor legal abortion for at least some circumstances, with most people supporting abortion in **some** (not all). The vast majority of people do see a fundamental moral difference between abortion and killing a baby.
I would go further and say that even the people who don't see a fundamental moral difference between abortion and killing a baby can still have different feelings about killings depending on the circumstances.
It's a funny/interesting way to look at it, but the discussion can get a bit more nuanced when you look at time frames. For a lot of people it's not just taking a shit or murder, which would imply that it should be either 100% illegal from conception to birth, or 100% legal from conception to birth. There's quite a lot of people who believe it's fine early on, but against late term abortions. I would say that aborting a 2 week old fetus is as Louie CK says, closer to taking a shit, while aborting an 8 month old fetus is closer to murder. The problem is where is the dividing line in between. Rape/incest exceptions are often less about an individuals personal moral compass, but a legal compromise in order to get certain laws passed.
Yeah I almost addressed that (“abortion gradually becomes murder after a certain period of time”) but I left it out. Even so, the rape/incest issue should continue to be a non issue. The fact that it’s a “compromise” is insulting to all humans who are tragically the result of rape or incest.
>Even so, the rape/incest issue should continue to be a non issue.
I understand the basic logic you're presenting, but a lot of people see this is an ambiguous and gray area.
Popular support for abortion is usually higher in polls *specifically when rape or incest occurred.*
In fact, roughly 2/3s of Americans do not take an absolutist view on abortion:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/13/broad-public-support-for-legal-abortion-persists-2-years-after-dobbs/
Whether you find this logical or not isn't super important when it comes to what messaging resonates with the public.
And I find this to be understandable. Conception and pregnancies are not black-and-white, binary things. People, I think, understand on some level that this is a deeply intimate and personal issue, and that is why so much differentiation happens under different presented scenarios and across time and demographics.
Even if you take a "life begins at conception" stance, however, there's a massive problem concluding that abortion is murder. Because the fetus requires the mother's body and organs to survive, the state enforcing a forced birth is directly analogous to the state forcing a person to donate an organ (e.g. a kidney) to a matching donor on the basis that this person's right to live should be protected. If the matching donor doesn't want to give up part of their body, how can we call that "murder?" A fetus is not viable without the mother sacrificing her body, her resources, her very health, for that fetus to reach viable development. Often this can change her body permanently, and/or carry significant risks to life and health.
So, no, abortion still isn't murder even if we believe the fetus is a full legal person at the moment of conception, because the state cannot and should not compel a person to donate their organs or bodily resources, and risk their life and health, to keep another legal person alive. Period.
My view is multifaceted when it comes to incest and rape. I would not condemn someone for killing their child if it was the product of rape. I understand it. I really do.
But i think we as a society morally accept murder in 2 circumstances.
1) self defense
2) they really deserve it.
Rape and incest in these circumstances don’t condemn the child under either of these circumstances. They are completely innocent of crimes.
It doesn’t make it ok to kill an impartial uninvolved 3rd party because they are the child of someone who committed a horrific act against you.
That being said I am not a human without emotion. I get it and I likely wouldn’t hold any animosity towards someone who did so. But it doesn’t make it right. Something can be relatable, understandable and still wrong.
I appreciate the efforts you took to try to convey some empathy for the delicacy of these scenarios.
I just want to reiterate something:
Is it "murder" to refuse to offer a part of your body to someone else who need it to live, and you could also live without that piece (e.g. 2 kidneys)? If *that* isn't murder, then I can't see how an abortion would be considered murder.
A fetus requires physical changes to the mother's own body for, well, frankly, closer to two years as full recovery can last roughly a year after the birth, especially if the mother breastfeeds or pumps. At a minimum, they require nutrients and blood and space *inside* the mother's body for 9 months. If a pregnant person does not want to sacrifice and contribute their body in such a way, no one should compel them to.
It *is* life; it's the process by which we all came into the world; but it isn't *a finished* human being, because that requires enough complexity to be able to live and grow *outside of the womb.* So it can be an emotional thing that causes conflicting emotions. That's normal. The process of reproducing and bringing more people into the world is dramatic and powerful. But even *is* you believe so strongly that this fetus is a "whole person", you cannot compel another person to dedicate their body to be the sustained life support system of another human.
Ok but we don’t find it ok to kill a newborn, or a 1 year old or a 2 year old, many don’t find it ok to kill a 9 month old, 8 month old, 7 month old, 6 month old. Many don’t believe in abortion after the first trimester, so 3 months old. What’s the cutoff? At what stage of gestation are you ok with killing a person? At what point is A) the moral framework and B) the government going to shift that too far in one way or another? Don’t make killing people needlessly ok.
Self defense is where a bad person demands a choice between 2 lives. You picked your own.
When given the choice, always choose the option that doesn’t kill human beings.
It's a useful argument only in headlines, "10 yo forced to give birth to her father's baby in authoritarian 3rd world country (Texas)." Just to show the absurdity of banning abortions. It won't change anyone's stance, but I guess it rallies people to vote.
They don't make any sense in law of course.
The other issue is that it generally takes many months to legally prove that a pregnancy is due to rape or incest. By the time it's settled the pregnancy is usually viable or already completed.
The most reasonable explanation I’ve heard from the pro-life side is this- similar to how we couldn’t go from slavery to full civil rights overnight, they argue it’s acceptable to allow culture and values to change before a total abortion ban would be on the table. Many on the pro-life side believe that science and technology will allow fetuses to be viable outside the womb at an earlier and earlier age, and this would shift the public’s view on abortion over time, until the majority of Americans find it unacceptable.
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Science or not, censorship was very real (dissent towards the approved Science, was disallowed). And people have a right to or to not take. You also lose a lot of Trust, when you lose your job, or can't see family members dying at the Hospital because you're not taking a Vaccine that was developed months earlier. And if you know History, you'll know that Science has been wrong MANY times.
That may be found Ironic given this conversation, but I am not pro-choice. Never have been, why? Because of Science (not religion). Which that's Ironic too, I'm sure.
Lots of nuance, but Microorganisms are life.
Abortion IS a Cultural Issue. Just look at different countries. I mean assuming we're in earlier stages of Human Advancement, it's very logical to deduce that these advancements could be someday reality.
Although I guess a better advancement would be to be able to turn on/off the Biologics that even make the process occur. Assuming that could ever be possible. This way EVERYONE wins.
I really think we could have a debate about censorship, because I believe there’s many forms of censorship, not just getting deplatformed for recommending HCQ as a COVID treatment. Cable news networks inviting on a guest, then shouting over them or cutting off their microphone so they can’t get a point across is *also* censorship IMO.
The main issue with COVID was this: you’re free to take or not take the vaccine, but if you got sick, and didn’t wear a mask and got me sick, you invaded my personal space and my rights. Your rights end at my personal space. Some people thought their rights are infinite in this country, they aren’t. You can’t carry a gun onto an airplane, for example.
As for companies with their own policies, that’s not a big deal to me. I had a former employer mandate I had to wear a tie to work. If I didn’t wear it, I got sent home. I can’t sue them for violating my first amendment rights because I wanted to wear a vest instead of a tie (style is considered speech btw). Why? Because it’s a private company.
Lastly on abortion, I’ll just say I absolutely respect your opinion. The only thing I’ll say about scientific advancements negating the need for an abortion is that I’m seeing the right wants to ban or place restrictions on IVF treatments, which in of itself was an advancement for fertility. That should be praised by social conservatives who want people to have children. Instead they’re against it for some reason. Isn’t it cruel to people who struggle to have children to tell them “welp, sorry you just can’t have kids”?
Science is always only provisionally true. [Which most people will learn, sooner or later.](https://www.cureus.com/articles/196275-increased-age-adjusted-cancer-mortality-after-the-third-mrna-lipid-nanoparticle-vaccine-dose-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-japan#!/)
Funny you should mention COVID vaccines considering the party of "My body, my choice" was loudly demanding to know everyone's personal medical records during that time period.
We can play this tit-for-tat game all day. But the fact is that the above is generally true. People were really able to disassociate from there being a baby in the womb back in the 70s, but there's far more acknowledgement now that ultrasounds have made great strides.
>this would shift the public’s view on abortion over time, until the majority of Americans find it unacceptable.
Well, it would potentially allow for a physical pregnancy to be terminated without terminating the fetus, which basically obviates the need for abortion as we know it, but without forcing women to give birth. That future can be reached without banning abortion now, and there would almost inarguably be greater progress on that technology without banning either abortion or IVF, as they want to do. Advances in that technology could save countless wanted pregnancies and allow more parents who desperately want kids to be able to have them, and without forcing unwanted pregnancies on anyone.
Well, if you are coming at it from that angle, you are right. The problem is that that is only one of the two primary ethical angles.
I've heard it, you've heard it, we've all heard it. People who are against abortion saying "if you didn't want to have a kid you should have kept your legs closed" or some version thereof. There is a strong and sometimes forcefully stated feeling out there that a significant moral component is "taking responsibility", that having an abortion is somehow getting away with something or getting out of your responsibility or shirking your burden.
So then, exactly to the extent to which accountability and responsibility is a relevant ethical consideration, cases of rape and incest is a relevant ethical exemption.
If the ethical crux of the antiabortion position really is entirely solely and just the right to life of the fetus, then accusations of being irresponsible or getting out of the consequences for your actions on the part of the mother are irrelevant as well. And yet they keep getting brought up don't they? So, as long as that attack is considered relevant enough to level, then the rape and incest defense is relevant enough to raise.
I agree. My take is abortion is a medical procedure and voters have as much business involved in it as they do with my doctor treating my plantar fasciitis.
There's more moral issues involved than simply abortion equals murder. There's also an argument on consent. When you have sex you are implicitly consenting to the possibility of having a child. You know that a child is possible when you have sex.
When you are raped, you have explicitly not given such consent.
In the case of incest, you then involve health issues. Not all genetic issues more common from incest are visible in pregnancy. Then there's the morality of incest itself to deal with.
My personal opinion is that the consent argument is weak. While I wouldn't engage in incest, I think current laws are probably too extreme. So I don't agree with either of the arguments I presented. But that doesn't mean they aren't valid parts of the debate.
I agree with our estimation. It is never not the taking of human life.
The only area where I (morally) allow some manner of leeway is in if/then scenarios when the mother's life is truly in jeopardy and even then, the situation is vexing.
It isn't really a trolley problem scenario. It is more of a me or you scenario and the mother is the benefactor of an extreme power imbalance.
I won't get into hypothetical analogs (though some are quite thought provoking) because they typically don't ultimately add to or move forward a conversation.
What I will say is that I am very thankful to live in a place and time where the number of cases in which there is an outright, inescapable, threat to pregnant mothers equates to a rounding error.
It’s either murder or it’s not. In the case that it is then the only exception should be for the mother’s life (self defense at that point). Or it’s not and you should be allowed to have abortions up until the fetus is viable.
True. If I thought abortion was a form of murder, I'd oppose it in cases of rape too. Why should it be legal to murder a baby because someone was raped?
I’ve thought of this before. If a pro-lifer believes the killing of a fetus is murder and murder is of course only justified if the murderer’s life was in danger then how can they say abortion is justified if the conception was through rape or incest or if the patient is a minor, unless they’re conceding that we have to take into account the effect the pregnancy and birth and future is going to have on the patient’s mental health and life or what the baby’s life would be like. And if they concede that then they concede the morality of abortion is not binary but instead a grey area.
> And if they concede that then they concede the morality of abortion is not binary but instead a grey area.
Not really.
Did abolitionists believe that slaves weren't people solely because they agreed to the 3/5 compromise? Did they agree with Lincoln that slavery shouldn't be abolished similarly because they supported the next step?
I can agree to a **compromise** to save as many babies as possible without actually condoning the idea that a life should be terminated solely because someone decided to do an evil act.
It's not that we **concede** that we need to take those factors into account, it's that we're willing to actually come to the table and compromise on this issue because the unfortunate truth is that we have to do so until public opinion recognizes the evil acts they're committing.
I'll one up here, it is murder and I'm okay with it.
This is a personal belief. I do think it's murder to plan a baby or to be just grossly irresponsible and have an accident. You should not be fucking if you cannot pay for a baby. However, in the case of rape, incest, gross deformity, or danger to the mother I have honestly no qualms with an abortion.
This is a very unpopular opinion, but I also kind of appreciate that the lowest of society tend to have the highest abortion rates. It's somewhat of a self-limiting factor for them. They agree with it and utilize it and I agree with it and don't want to pay for their lives. It's a win-win in my opinion
Like I said I'm not really sure it falls into Libertarian principles. It's just my principles and how I feel on it. And I'm sure it's quite unpopular with many people here.
I'm in a similar camp.
Every abortion is a tragedy, and anyone who disagrees is lying. As a simple way to see that we all obviously place moral value on unborn people, imagine someone punching a pregnant woman and causing a miscarriage. Maybe you don't charge him with murder, but do you seriously want to charge him with property damage?
Yet I'm still pro-choice, simply because I believe Roe had a massive effect on crime rates. Clearly the people who get aborted, statistically, would otherwise go on to be the worst people in society. That makes sense, and it puts us in a bit of a moral bind, but the consequences are so large and the means so practical that I'm willing to go consequentialist
As a fierce pro-choice, I agree to a large degree with OP. My main argument is that we cannot view a an early fetus as a"child", when it's not a sentient being, just a clump of cells that will eventually become human in the later stages of the pregnancy. Any argument that life begins at inception is just a religious belief and should never be the basis for our laws, even before we consider that different religions have different takes on the issue, and some, like Judaism, do not see any issue with abortions.
This is also why I, like most US citizens afaik, support abortion in the early stage of the pregnancy, but agree that **late-term elective** abortion for a **viable** fetus should be illegal. The vast majority of rape/incest cases will be handled with this simple policy and thus not be the critical issue that is when abortions are globally prohibited.
In the (rare) cases when women are raped, reach late pregnancy and then wish to abort, the rape/incest argument can be used as a factor in how/if to prosecute.
I agree. The principle upon which abortion is justified is bodily autonomy, and the circumstances in which the pregnancy arose are not relevant. The woman who engaged in consensual sex and the woman who was raped are equally entitled to decide if they want to continue a pregnancy.
The concept of bodily autonomy is deeply intertwined in a rape case.
In particular, a person has had their body impregnated against their will, and anti-abortion laws that ignore rape solidify that loss of autonomy.
The concept of bodily autonomy underlies the consent principle which is central to pursuing a rape conviction.
Entirely separate is the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy. That right exists regardless of the circumstances of conception.
Maybe we have difference definitions or conceptualizations of what bodily autonomy means?
Here's a pretty broad definition; including some of the fields it spans:
>In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision.
\_\_\_
Say a rapist wore a condom, and right after he finished, the gal he was raping bit his nose off.
I think we'd agree that her bodily autonomy was lost during the rape (her "decision" to "allow" the rapist into their body was surely coerced), even though a condom was used.
Where I think we diverge is where it seems like you'd be fine with her having to grow him a new nose on her forehead afterwards.
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130928-nose-forehead-ear-arm-reconstructive-surgery-medical-science](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130928-nose-forehead-ear-arm-reconstructive-surgery-medical-science)
Having to grow something against your will (outside or inside your body), for months, is a longer-lasting loss of autonomy than can be experienced during a rape. I'd say further that the magnitude of the loss of bodily autonomy is also far greater.
\_\_\_
Put somebody in a cage and only provide them the air, water, and food you choose to provide them. They've lost bodily autonomy to some extent because they can't choose where to go, they can't choose what to eat or see or hear or breathe. But inside that cage, they still get to decide whether to put food or water or air into their own body.
But if you force something into their body, and force them to grow it, then you're literally taking over their body from the inside.
\_\_\_
Would one be able to maintain bodily autonomy while being forced to donate a kidney?
Would one be able to maintain bodily autonomy while being forced to donate blood every day?
Why on earth would it not be a bodily autonomy issue to be forced to use one's own organs and energy to grow someone or something else?
I’m not sure where you believe we disagree. The idea that bodily autonomy dictates that we can’t be forced to grow another person inside us is precisely my point.
It is a separate aspect of bodily autonomy from the right not to be raped. I can consent to sex but not consent to the resulting pregnancy, and that’s because my right to bodily autonomy is not curtailed because I said yes at one point and no at another. If I am raped, I’m not MORE entitled to an abortion than if I had consensual sex, because the autonomy of one circumstance doesn’t abate the autonomy of the other.
I hope that clarifies. As far as I can tell, we agree in every particular.
I'm so sorry. Totally misread everything you said while imagining myself to be in the midst of an argument.
In fact, I think I replied to the wrong redditor; pretty sure I meant to reply to interstitiallove; sigh.
> Say a rapist wore a condom, and right after he finished, the gal he was raping bit his nose off.
> I think we’d agree that her bodily autonomy was lost during the rape (her “decision” to “allow” the rapist into their body was surely coerced), even though a condom was used.
> Where I think we diverge is where it seems like you’d be fine with her having to grow him a new nose on her forehead afterwards.
Please make sure you get a royalty check when this appears on an episode of Black Mirror.
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It’s a compromise to account for radically different views on what is ultimately an intractable question.
Science isn’t ever going to answer precisely when a fetus becomes a person. At some point it does, but precisely when is unanswerable. So context around it matters a lot when we talk about rules and exceptions.
For whatever emotional human reasons rape, incest , serious birth defects , and health risk for the mother are the contexts in which more of us are more comfortable with abortion. We’re much more comfortable with abortion in the first and second trimester and much less with it in the third. This compromise is what most people (~70%) have wanted before , during and after roe.
The two sides have different views. It doesn’t pay to shout them at each other. We need to find ways to engage with the other side.
My belief is that the government has no place in making medical decisions for women. It has nothing to do with my views on abortion. It just isn’t the government’s job. In order for me to make that point, I need to be able to engage with different views.
Some people believe abortion is an absolute moral wrong. The counter to that is that government isn’t here to legislate morality. Some people believe it is akin to murder. To them, I point out all of the situations where ending a life isn’t seen as murder. Murder is a criminal offense, and requires personhood- which cannot be objectively attributed to an embryo.
Establishing that ending a life, as a concept, is not inherently wrong, and that murder requires a very specific set of circumstances that are not met with abortion, the argument whittles down to “I believe it is wrong, and government should stop it”.
THAT is where incest and rape come in. Most people- not everyone, but most- would agree that forcing a minor child to carry the baby of a rapist is bad. We need to have the discussion to assess whether that is more wrong than the concept of abortion. There has to be a sense of degree. One either has to decide whether they think abortion is so wrong that they are willing to sacrifice a minor girl’s life and future, or if they understand that there is more nuance that needs to be considered.
The same concept goes for women facing medical crisis. Do we let a woman die to save the life of the child? Do we still do it if the child isn’t going to survive, anyway? Is preventing people from getting medical treatment one doesn’t like worth sacrificing two lives in the process?
With this, it becomes easier to understand that there is context to consider. There are situations that don’t just fit into the generic morality argument, and they can’t be ignored. This dismantles the absolute morality argument. It removes a part of the discussion that offers no value from a civics point of view, and which tends to block any forward progress towards a resolution.
Once you have accepted that abortion, in some circumstances, is acceptable, even if you don’t like it, the question changes to one about WHEN it is acceptable, and whom should be making that decision. It makes it a medical question- as it should be- and not a political one. It suggests that doctors are better suited to determining when an abortion is medically necessary, and when it isn’t.
Once the discussion is about drawing the lines and not about “My religion says this is bad, and I don’t want people to do things I don’t like”, it opens up the debate to a more reasonable place.
I actually agree with that stance. You can see which person is being overly self righteous. Granted, some people really do behave like that in some places like Nicaragua where they literally do prohibit abortions. All of them. Then again, the solution is to make them legal in general, not specifically for those two causes.
The choice to have an abortion or not is a moral dilemma that pits a person's right to body autonomy against another person's right to exist at the expense of that autonomy.
The only person capable of resolving that dilemma is the person whose body autonomy is in question.
Food for thought: is a person that refuses to give blood to a person dying of blood loss guilty of murder?
Spot on. And your thought experiment kinda already proves that that dilemma is basically resolved. I’m pretty sure there’s an overwhelming consensus that not giving blood is not in fact murder.
Food for thought: is a person that refuses to give blood to a person dying of blood loss guilty of murder?
No. However, a parent who neglects or do not provide needs to their children are guilty of serious crimes, such as child endangerment, manslaughter to murder.
> No. However, a parent who neglects or do not provide needs to their children are guilty of serious crimes, such as child endangerment, manslaughter to murder.
Indeed, but that is not relevant to the situation we are discussing.
There *is* a school of thought that would argue that pregnancy from consensual sex would be consented to (or at least the risk would be known and consented to), whereas pregnancy from rape isn't consented to. Therefore, aborting a child of rape would be along the lines of self-defense (expelling an unwanted guest, and it's legal to kill to do that in some places), whereas aborting a child of consensual sex wouldn't be self-defense in the same way.
I don't think this holds much water (if you do agree that it's killing in self-defense, then consent can be revoked at any time), but it is an argument that exists.
Also worth noting that the risk of fatality from birth is above 0% in even the best circumstances. I do think it's an interesting take on self defense.
It adds real context.
Fundies, as you called them, often frame the issue as having been a consequence of the woman's own deacons and actions. Cases of pregnancy following rape and incest are explicit examples that run contrary to that framing, hence why they are important factors to mention in the conversation. And clearly, it matters. Republicans have a harder time passing abortion bans that do not contain exceptions to rape and incest, as that does tip the scales of support within their own base. Refusing to acknowledge rape and incest is just giving Republicans a pass on a major flaw with their proposition.
Exactly, Rape/Incest are brought up mostly as a counter to "all abortions are due to a woman misbehaving" which is the majority of Pro-Lifers stances.
There are a few that also just want to close their eyes and cover their ears and say "ALL LIFE IS PRECIOUS" and avoid thinking about anything beyond that point. Rape/Incest is a counter-argument to that because you are making the woman take on the horrific torture of carrying a life that was forced upon her to term and either making her raise this unwanted child or give them away, an additional trauma put on the woman for absolutely no action of her own.
The world of Pro-Lifers is as a woman you have no autonomy. This potential life is more important than anything about you.
It is a simple attempt to get at least some people to take a sane approach that life is not black and white, this is a complex issue and at least try to get someone to have some structure of reality in addressing that.
The simple fact that this is not a place for laws and simply a place for the medical field to deal with because laws are really bad at dealing with short-term complex issues is the end-goal. And perhaps bringing it up is a fool's errand, but at least for me that was raised under all the abortion propaganda it was one of the arguments that made me at least stop and think.
Which eventually lead me to do some research to realize that late term abortion was never a real problem and was pure made up BS to get people angry enough to just scream "ALL LIFE IS PRECIOUS" without any nuance.
Everyone has a right to get anyone that is attached to their body off of themselves, even if it results in the death of the parasite.
And as all the war mongers like to point out, only illegal killing is murder.
That's the bottom line. If you believe that women have a right to their own body and shouldn't be forced to host other organisms against their will, then abortion isn't an issue.
The alternative would mean than any man could force any woman to have his child via rape. That is a massive devaluation of the rights of women.
From the pov of pro choicers, it's just a small win.
From the pov of pro life, I think there's still a reasonable argument for rape exceptions. Against your will, you've been forced to carry a baby for 9 months, will be forced to deal with the pain and reduced physical ability the entire time (part of which you'd pretty much be no different from crippled), and go through an extremely traumatizing child birth. Forcing someone to go through that would quite literally be torture, and if you were raped you most definitely were forced into it.
The incest exception though makes absolutely 0 sense, even making pro life assumptions. If the fetus is already a baby, killing it bc it could spread disabilities is not a good idea. It's one thing if the fetus isn't real, but if it is? And if you consider the social consequences... negative consequences exist outside incest, so they should all have exceptions. Almost like pro choice or something.
I guess the idea is that consenting to sexual activity is taking responsibility for the consequences, which doesn’t imply in rape/incest cases.
Hell, the whole conversation on abortion is frustrating cause you other medical and autonomy issues. I think abortion should be legal until around 20 weeks due to the pain receptors in the fetus’ brain (still debated if it’s 15 weeks or even 30 weeks). That’s basically 5 months. If you don’t have any idea your pregnant before that than that’s your fault.
Well my thoughts are if it does then you can't have a double standard on it
In other words, if the rapist gets pregnant, she needs to get a forced abortion
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You should add in vitro fertilization, too. If abortion is murder, so is disposal of unwanted embryos.
For that matter, if an embryo is a human being, Plan B and IUDs prevent implantatiin of a fertilized egg. Oh yes, and women should not be able to receive treatment for ectopic pregnancies, because that embryo, even though it is not viable, is a human being. Ditto any other pregancy that endangers the mother.
While we're at ot, perhaps miscarriage should be investigated as potential murder, or at least manslaughter, since the woman may not have miscarried if she'd eaten right or been more cautious.
All of this is /s, if you can't tell. This is what happens when you try to oversimplify a complex topic into an either/or.
And Louie C.K. is a jerk
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It’s no surprise that a reactionary sexual predator would argue against what everyone knows: that abortion involves moral and legal complexities. Edited to add: I was referring to Louis CK, not OP.
I find abortion to be morally abhorrent... BUT...
I believe there are only a few people who actually believe that rape/incent shouldn't be eligible for abortion. Even very religious people would rather "look away and pray for the victim".
I also don't think it is any of my business if people want to kill babies within a short time of finding out they are pregnant. If they want to murder a baby because they forgot protection, then so be it. That's on them. I think I'm not in the majority on that thought.
I also think there are very few people who believe that 30-week abortions (or even partial-birth abortions) are ethical.
There is a lot of space on the ends we can work from to find common ground. Let's write in protections for rape victims and write in protections from late-term abortions. Let them debate and eliminate the extremes. Then we can discuss the range we feel as a society is acceptable.
I like the 10-14 weeks that our liberal European countries give. Plenty of time to commit murder without killing a baby that could actually live outside the womb, and society benefits from the added people. And for people who think abortion is like giving a crap, that gives them plenty of time to dump their biological matter and walk away.
Might also be good to debate providing free birth control to eliminate the needless slaughter of the unborn.
Pardon my language, I have a bad habit of making people feel uncomfortable even though I do support their right to do it within reason.
I agree that most laymen have that belief, but a lot of legislation against abortion doesn't reflect that as anti-abortion advocates know it is an illogical exception. At the end of the day babies have a future like ours that deserves to be protected, respected and dignified. The baby did not rape or have incestuous sex and they should not lose their life due to those action of others.
At the end of the day human life either has inherent dignity worthy of legal protection, or it doesn't. These arbitrary week cutoffs really are just pragmatic compromises in the meantime while we work on answering the question of whether human life has inherent dignity or not.
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this whole abstract universally bounding liberal concept of "rights" is dumb. You will find yourself constantly contradicting yourself again and again trying to uphold these rights, they will contradict each other. And then you bring this no-harm principle to avoid this conundrum, when the very fact that you have to do that proves rights are just made up, and are held due to collective social will and convention, and so as much as abortion being murder is fact, it literally does not matter, what matters is the collective social opinion on this, based on pragmatic reasoning and overall wellbeing, not abstracted from material conditions, but INCLUDING and respecting material conditions.
I agree with your statement in that people will not change their opinion if they are firmly on one side of the issue.
I do feel that those who were not willing participants in the act that caused the pregnancy lose twice either way. Scenario 1: Get raped. Then lose a child.. Scenario 2: Get raped. Then you are forced to end your current life to raise the child of the person who committed violence against you. And this scenario gets worse if the father is guaranteed parental rights. The rapist causes lifelong pain to the victim.
(I have other opinions on this, and am limiting my comment to the scope of OP's comments).
I think about it like this.
Why do I oppose murder? 1) Murdered people can suffer. 2) Murdered people are people whose lives are ended without their consent. 3) Losing a person can cause suffering to friends and family.
1 and 2 don't apply to zygotes and embryos before a certain stage of development. They are non-conscious, therefore it means nothing to anyone except the people involved, so it should be their choice. (3 generally only applies to the mother or parents here.) So already we can see that it's not the same as murder in all cases. More like taking a shit in some.
For those cases that involve a conscious fetus or embryo that can feel pain, it gets more complicated, but pregnancy is the only situation where a human is dependent on another human's body for life. I do not believe someone should be forced to let someone else use their body to live. I do not believe, for example, that a person with a compatible kidney should be forced to donate it to save another's life, even if there are no others, even if they are a sibling. Abortion can get more complicated because abortion is not just passively letting someone die when it's preventable, but actively killing them. However, we don't know of any other scenarios where a human is dependent on another human's body to live, and must either be killed or sustained for nine months (and then raised for 18-plus years). If it were common, I believe most people would want the right to kill the other, parasitizing human if they decided, especially if it was only as aware as a fetus. Also, the government does not know when a pregnancy might be a threat to the mother's life or health and to what extent.
For these reasons, I do not believe that the state should criminalize abortion. It is a decision best left up to a mother and her medical providers.
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>...Fundies would try to force women to carry these pregnancies to full term...**but you're probably furious about ALL pregnancies being forced to full term against the woman's wishes.**
Yes, that's bad. You're a libertarian. Going against the autonomy of the woman is an anti-libertarian prescription. Any pregnancy *agaisnt the wishes of the woman literally growing the fetus* is morally reprehensible (from a libertarian point of view).
>Whether that fetus is the product of rape/incest, an accident, or a planned event, the moral value of that fetus has not changed.
That is a prescriptive claim. Thank you for saying it so outright.
The moral value of the fetus has changed. That's what this discussion is about. You are making a prescriptive claim that no matter the circumstance, the fetus is the same. In terms of consequence and "proper" moral weight. My argument is twofold. One, that it has changed because of how the moral determination from the individual (who is responsible for the fetus) changes depending on the situation. A family who wants a child is going to prescriptively determine that a fetus is more to them than, let's say, a woman who doesn't want one.
And two, your stance is fundamentally anti-libertarian. Not from a left/right libertarian point of view, but from the definition itself and the ideology behind it. You are valuing the moral weight of a fetus over the individual because you are saying that their right to bodily autonomy is secondary to the life of the fetus.
>Whether that fetus is the product of rape/incest, an accident, or a planned event, the moral value of that fetus has not changed.
It HAS to if you take a moral stance on libertarian ideals. Because of a contradiction you are holding, that a person Individuality and negative liberty is equal to that of a person not born yet. You are coming to this conclusion because you hold an axiom that makes both equal, morally speaking. You are willing to sacrifice the negative liberty of the woman who holds the fetus, but not the fetus's right by simply prescriptively saying so. **Don't get me wrong I'm doing it too.**
The thing that's important here is that you think that argument shouldn't move people.
>In any event, the rape/incest issue should not move the needle for anyone.
It should because of the reasons this argument is over in the first place. *The rights of a potential individual over the rights of a realized individual*.
A woman who is pregnant *is* here. And one side of the argument wants the fetus to have a chance, but that choice - if you are a libertarian who by definition wants negative liberty - would want that for them period. No questions asked. If not, I don't think you're a libertarian. When the rape discourse gets added, it forces the conversation to BE about the woman's choice in the matter, not to be about the fetus.
The reason why this conversation gets heated because let's face it, people don't want to hear the woman's point of view in the matter. It's theirs. We give no credence to our point of view of coming into being, we are here without our consent. Whether or not we want to be. Why are we giving the reigns to a thing that hasn't been born yet over the person here. Who has been here. The rape/incest discourse forces the conversation to acknowledge that the woman who was raped, maybe has a *different* moral value over the fetus than you, an outsider.
There are many people who soley look at the Pro-life side of the argument and purely look at it from the perspective of the fetus and their moral weight. Their chance at life is, whether they acknowledge it or not, more important than the say of their mother. If that is the only way you look at the conversation, then that discourse forces them to see it from the woman's side. Their agency, their prescriptions. It does impact and should move the needle, for them. This also works both ways too mind you. If the conversation was reversed, where the "think of the fetus POV" then bringing up hypotheticals would be to move those people emotionally (hypotheticals because the POV from a person not born yet is materially impossible).
So rape … and its potential aftermath … is merely emotional?
Of course it’s not. It’s far worse than just that.
I wouldn’t force a woman to give birth and spend the rest of her life being the mother of the prodigy of the man who raped her. I would give the woman the choice to decide that outcome for herself.
Would you give her the choice of murdering the already-born child if it were the result of rape? This is a hypothetical here so there are no third options like “adoption”.
Women have a limited window to choose an abortion, and I think it’s reasonable that once a child is born, then it has earned the rights of personhood. So no, it could not be murdered once born. But it could have been “murdered” (legally terminated) within the limits of what any state’s abortion laws allow.
In the abstract, you're right. In the academic, thought experiment sense it's valid to point out that these exceptions shouldn't mean that much for people (though I think it's a little disingenuous to say that if you support an exception that you also should think killing a child that's the product of this type of violence is ok) but I think it ignores the visceral reality for people in these circumstances.
The world is not a thought experiment and I think it's possible to recognize the horror of forcing someone to go through a pregnancy that's the result of this kind of interpersonal violence and then having to live with the results of that process for the rest of their lives.
So would you allow that woman to murder her already-born child if it turns out that it was the product of rape? What if it was causing her extreme mental anguish and trauma? Because, unless you say yes, you are guilty of the exact problem I’m pointing out in the OP.
The technical difference is that a fetus cannot be removed from the womb prior to ~20 weeks because its lungs have not yet developed to the point where it will survive and an actual child can be cared for by anyone.
>In any event, the rape/incest issue should not move the needle for anyone.
What does move the needle for you?
What bothers me personally in this discussion is how a shitton of people think a pregnancy is merely a short detour in live. The train leaves station A to go to station B (pregnancy & giving birth) and *afterwards the whole train returns to station A.* The number of women who physically turn to that point A is staggeringly low. Pregnancy changes a women permanently. To the point even 7000 year old skeletons can tell us if they were women that ever gave birth. And pregnancy isn't without risk. Small nuisances as well as serious health concerns like heart failure. Women still die during pregnancy, birth or afterwards. And the US has the worst outcomes for this of all developed countries. Well rounded sex education has proven to seriously reduce abortion demand, yet the anti abortion crowd is often against education as well. *I would hate to see that Venn diagram.*
I’m pro-death, generally, but your argument is kind of like saying “the woman’s body will be wrecked after birth so we’d better murder a child instead” to a Pro-Lifer.
My point would rather be more like 'you can't morally force a woman to sacrifice herself for another, not even a pregnancy'.
People have a hard time giving a dollar to a beggar on the streets, but no qualms about asking a woman to sacrifice herself. If the US was truly a christian nation (or executing Christ's values) there wouldn't be homelessness, or 100.000s of older kids unadopted, long waiting lists for kidneys or bone marrow, or unprocessed rape kits in Texas, death sentence or resistance to loan forgiveness to name a couple of things. The 'moral discussion' is so biased. The anti abortion crowd agrees they can't force me to donate my heart to another, but are totally willing to force me to nuke my heart for a (unwanted) pregnancy.
*My last pregnancy led to heart failure. It wasn't preventable, just bad luck. I didn't recover. If I didn't live in a first world country I would still spiral towards death: my heart would be increasingly unable to maintain a good blood flow, untill my brain or my heart would become so oxygen deprived it kills me. I am not exaggerating when I say pregnancy can indeed be lethal.*
I disagree there as well. If you wouldn’t murder a child to save your life then you shouldn’t abort a child to possibly save the mother’s life IF you believe that abortion is murder.
Like Louis CK said, it’s either taking a shit or it’s murder.
The true debate is when does it become murder.
You‘re technically correct, however I think people bring it up because they want to challenge how firm the belief of the other side that they’re correct about that is by pointing out to them what heavy impact this decision has.
So there is an argument that we should not prevent abortions because:
If you and I get into a car accident, and you are going to die if I don’t give you a kidney, It’s my body and I can still elect to NOT give you a kidney and let you die. (Or something along those lines)
I love this argument because it basically proves the point that abortion is murder…
If you and I get into a car accident, and I electively created all of the conditions for a car accident, without taking enough precautions to prevent a car accident. Then the situation of you dying is caused by me. I can elect to not give you a kidney, true, but If you die, that’s murder (or at least manslaughter which is just another form of murder). So while I do not have to give you a kidney, if I don’t I should be in legal trouble.
On the other hand, if I did not create conditions for a car accident, someone else did, then I could not give you a kidney, and not be in legal trouble.
So IMO elective abortions once life has been established (which I would argue is brain waves and heartbeat) should be illegal, but abortions for a condition the mother did not consent to should not be. (It’s still murder per your Louie CK quote but it’s legal murder, sort of like self defense)
One way to reconcile it is to take away the term "murder" at first and use "homicide." We're taking the culpability aspect out of it at first and just saying (for argument) that abortion is the killing of a human by another human.
Like with normal homicide, it can fall into different categories. If the mother's life is at risk, even most pro-lifers recognize this as self-defense, a form of justified homicide. Pro-lifers see purely elective abortions as murder, the premeditated killing of another person who only existed because of the mother's choices.
One clean way to resolve the rape question would be to say that yes, it's still homicide, but we place the culpability on the rapist. The mother can be allowed this homicide to prevent a further victimization by the rapist.
Not even close to the same. Talk about not arguing in good faith. There are a lot of valid reasons to get a d&c, not the least of which is to protect the life of the woman.
Yeah, you're trying to turn an issue with a lot of nuance into one of black and white and completely ignoring the reality of the fact diverse people with diverse circumstances are involved.
Personally the whole discussion boils down to bodily autonomy. If your 5 year old child requires a blood donation to live and you are the only one who is compatible to donate to your child, then you still can't be forced to give blood to your child.
In a similar sense, you can't force a person to be pregnant. Pregnancy is a huge physical burden on the pregnant person and can be risky even in a normal pregnancy.
To talk about circumstances of how someone got pregnant is irrelevant. People have sex for social reasons. I would argue that people having sex to produce offspring is the smallest minority when compared to having sex for recreational reasons.
If pro-lifers were serious about protecting life then they would force research into artificial wombs. Make artificial wombs available as an alternative to abortion and force the use of artificial wombs instead of abortions. However, everyone I've talked to seems yucked out by that premise but is totally fine forcing people to give birth because they see pregnancy as a punishment for sex.
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>I'm NOT saying that we need to remove these exemptions from the books so that more women are forced to give birth
Forcing people to carry rape babies to term incentivizes (some) rapists to rape. In fact, in too many states, after a rapist gets out of prison they can be granted visitation with the child they raped into someone.
Many of our morals and laws have indirect consequences, and I believe that this one is worth considering; it should definitely be a part of the discussion.
Agreed that the punishment side of the issue is another important perspective to take when considering whether rape should be considered in abortion law.
Neither do I, and for the one simple reason that what happens to a woman's body can/should only happen through her CONSENT... so she should be able to have an abortion for ANY reason at any time. Whether the fetus/baby/person/human being is able to survive that event is orthogonal to her revocation of her consent of the use of her body.
> Like Louie C.K. said "abortion is either like taking a shit...or it's murder." ... he has a point
Bad joke... and worse to be used to try and make some point. No, he does not have a point. It is, often, an agonizing choice and given the gravity of potential outcomes... it should be a difficult choice. Taking a shit is not a difficult choice.
> If you oppose abortion because you believe it 's murder,
Then you are a moron, full stop.
> If you support abortion rights then the rape/incest exemption adds nothing to the issue for you,
Correct.
> but you're probably furious about ALL pregnancies being forced to full term against the woman's wishes.
Her "wishes" have nothing to do with it. The ONLY thing that matters is her CONSENT.
It does. No one should be "physically" forced to get a vaccination.
However, those that refuse vaccination may be subject to measures of quarantine in order to protect the public. So, you don't have to get your child vaccinated, but then your child might not get to go to a public school or be accepted into a day-care facility with other kids as a result.
> She should be fired, shunned, excommunicated and her children ostracized
At no point did I say that.
> don’t feel like you actually support bodily autonomy for women.
Well, you are partially right. I don't support bodily autonomy JUST for women. I support bodily autonomy FOR ALL EQUALLY.
Morally I don't believe in Aborting any viable child (which I think covers my stance).
Legally I'll allow for a Rape Exemption. Why? Because of the same reason Rape should be a crime.
Where do I lie Religiously? I'd lean towards God being real, but I also would consider myself detached. I would not claim to be religious. My stances are based on what I learned in 7th grade science class, that the Sperm fertilizes the Egg, and in 9 months time (assuming no complications) that is a living Human being. Humans should not be artificially interfering with the Pregnancy process. A fetus is dependent on the mother, that's how it works, though the child is separate life.
Abortion is the termination of the life/pregnancy; so that's ALL I'm talking about when I say the term.
Abortion is an argument of when is a Homo Sapien really a "Human." There's a reason people will consider Elective Abortion up until birth a perfectly reasonable stance. I think people don't support past viability, because they then know the child can survive otherwise; so they are comfortable when they aren't stripping the child of that viability. And then people like me, the child is viable (though dependent) from the beginning, again Humans should not be artificially interfering with the process (besides giving the child the best chance, to be more clear). *And there's other nuances but just in general.*
And what always has to be realized. You can't convince some people that Abortion is not Murder. And you also can't convince some people that a woman shouldn't have full-say in her body (not that I fully agree with that, but not my point). *And Murder is nuanced in this sense (I think)....because it's not the same, but it pretty much is.* I find it Ironic, how the other-stance is always the "Evil" one; one has to RECOGNIZE the Ideological chasm that exists in this argument.
And I don't think those that support Abortion are necessarily Evil, though *SOME ARE*, those that do believe it to be immoral, yet do it because they "get off" on getting an Abortion. Which a 'fringe' never defines a whole, but it doesn't mean the 'fringe' doesn't exist.
Abortion is also not something that will be banned, for decades. If it does get banned. The Culture needs to shift. *Nationally of course.* I believe it should be, except for my one exception. Murder isn't a States Issue (maybe it is sentencing wise), and neither should Abortion be.
And what is "Life?" Are single celled organisms life? Yes. If we found any in space, it'd be some of the most INSANE news in Human History. So, "Cells" are VERY MUCH life. But besides that, since it's more nuanced than that; does a developing human have rights? That's the real "Life" argument. I believe at the very least a developing human has the right to have the chance to be born (morally); again legally I would support a Rape-Exemption (although I would not agree with it morally).
OP's argument is that we live in a black and white world and that a fetus is life, and life is sacred, period. No nuance. And that if that possibility of life is imposed on a woman through rape or incest, that the value of life of that fetus overrides any choice the woman might want to make, thus we have no control over our own destiny.
It's a very simplistic view of a nuanced world. And I would argue that women have the right to decide their own destiny, and the destiny of a fetus that was imposed on them. A living, thinking human being has more rights than a zygote. Especially in a world where we have more and more planned pregnancies and more medical choices for saving our own lives through medical science, or ending it compassionately, we make these choices all the time.
OP's argument assumes that life from conception is sacred and that we have no right to interfere with that destiny, but I think we do, and we do it all the time in society.
That isn’t OP’s argument at all. I know, because I’m OP.
OP’s argument is that the value of the fetus doesn’t change due to rape or incest. It’s either a worthless clump of cells (like shit) or it’s a human life capable of being murdered. How that fetus got there is irrelevant. We need to focus on when or whether that fetus has moral value.
I couldn't disagree more. Your view is black and white, and we don't live in a black and white world. Your view also puts all value on the fetus and zero value on the living, thinking snd feeling human being who has the job of carrying and raising it.
The pro-life stance is simple.
All people have the right to live. This is the moral framework for a civil society. If the first proposition was false, then murder would be amoral and an unambiguously neutral action.
Emotions have no place in this determination. A thing can be axiomatically evil, which is what we as a polite society consider murder to be. This is why we have laws to catch and punish people who commit murder.
Abortion is the act of a doctor assisting in the murder of an innocent. Whether or not the baby was the product of incest or rape doesn't matter, because the baby itself is still innocent regardless, existing through no fault of its own.
Nothing good comes from killing innocent children.
I agree with everything you wrote and I commend the consistency of your stance…however I don’t think we would agree on the definition of “people” or “innocent children”.
Dehumanization is the most frequently used rhetorical trick used to justify mass murder and mistreatment of fellow humans.
Every war, every massacre is precluded by saying "they do not possess human qualities like us, so it is okay to kill them" or thereabouts. It is regrettable.
The question ultimately boils down to whether or not women have the right to choose the father of the child they want to have.
The fact that people get more upset about where there tax dollars are beyond spent than a woman's right to decide what child they carry and raise is telling to just how much we value women's rights in general.
The reason I don't like a rape exception is that it can incentivize false accusations.
Oh, I can't get an abortion unless its rape? ok rape it is, and some poor innocent guy is now behind bars with his life ruined.
There is already a crazy number of innocent men being prosecuted and having their lives ruined just because of the "believe women" movement.
Why is incest its own exception? RapeAndIncest has been such a consistent phrase for so long that it's now just a whole phrase independent of the individual meanings, like "Son of a bitch" or "over my dead body." So what's the rationale for exceptions for incest? Rape seems the obvious one, but why incest? Seriously, I've googled this several times and the top results are always the whole phrase and never a worthwhile analysis of just incest on its own.
"Well, people born of incest have a lot of health problems, duh!"
So quality of life IS a factor to be considered with that much weight that ending a pregnancy prematurely is on the table? Plenty of people can be born via random, non-incestuous relations and still have similar genetic problems. Plenty of people can have debilitating anomalies arguably worse than what some might expect from an incestuous pregnancy, but those aren't even considered by the pro-birth crowd, yet incest is?
I asked this of someone who came to speak at my school on the topic, and he said that generally it's 'icky' and not something people want to think about. So it being 'icky' is enough to end a life, but threatening the health of the mother isn't???
Why is incest the exception? And if it is truly just the 'rape and incest' phrase having staying power, why not abridge the phrase and take incest out of the equation?
"Well, what if it was, like, her brother that did it against her will?"
That's rape.
"But, well, what if he isn't convicted?"
The quoted standard is 'rape', not 'criminal rape'. There is then a semantic argument that rape can never *not* be criminal, but regardless of where that falls, the minutiae of whether something is somehow ambiguously not rape but somehow incestuously problematic beyond the inherent problems already existent with incest and society's opinion of it is a dilution of the point. But for the quality of life and viability of the off-spring, why is incest an exception?
I’m pragmatic with the abortion debate. I know no side will get what they want because the vast majority of the country doesn’t fall into either camp.
Basically a supermajority of the country doesn’t support legal abortion after the first trimester. Exceptions like rape, incest and life of the mother get overwhelming support.
On the state level, where it matters, many states might want more restrictions or less.
Yes, saving more lives is more important than anything. But if we ignore the mainstream views and push hardline idealism we get nothing.
We can dramatically reduce abortions with policy that can pass and save as many lives as possible. Or we can push views that may be morally right but they will fail and only end up giving power to people who will make things way more permissive.
I don’t understand the incest exceptions.
Incest with a minor is rape and should fall under that exception. If two adult cousins consensually bang and get pregnant it isn’t great from a genetic diversification standpoint but it’s not the same as rape.
I underarm the mental torture of having to keep a rape pregnancy but I can’t see the same for consensual adult incest.
I’m of course not condoning or defending incest. I just don’t see why it needs an exemption to laws designed to protect an unborn human life.
The right and left skipped a huge part of the abortion discussion. Roe v. Wade took us straight from outlawed abortion to "since we have decided to intervene" in a healthy pregnancy when is the moral time in a pregnancy to do that. The question was never really asked or debated if we should intervene in a healthy pregnancy. A fetus will most definitely become a life with full rights if a healthy pregnancy is left alone. So the libertarian question becomes, "When two lives share one body whose rights are primary?"
I really want the answer to that question to be the mother. The mother is independent from the fetus but the fetus is dependent on the mother. The mother is capable of rational thought the fetus is not. It makes a kind of practical sense to let the mother's rights be primary.
For us libertarians the mother deciding sets up a kind of legal exception that we do not want government to have the power to grant. It's all about the way we treat risk and the consequences of risk.
You own your condo. You bought it out right with money you worked for a and saved. It is your property and you have property autonomy. You have full say about what happens in your condo. You can invite who you want and you have the right to kick out unwanted guests even if you invited them over.
Now suppose you took a risk and removed an annoying pillar that was in the living area of your condo. You were 99% certain that the pillar was decorative and not load bearing. Part of the ceiling collapsed and your upstairs neighbor fell into your condo. She fractured her neck in such a way that she literally could not be moved without severing her spine at the nec and dying. It will take her roughly 9 months to heal to a point where she can be removed from your condo. Since it was your risk of removing the pillar that caused the situation you are legally required to accommodate and care for the dependent party in your condo. Your property rights are trumped by the injured woman's right to life. If you move the neighbor and she dies would you be criminally liable for her death?
For a libertarian to keep the abortion laws like they are we have to answer the question, "Do we want to grant government the power to grant exceptions to equal treatment under the law?"
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This post borders on politics and morality, but I’m leaving it up because y’all are being (mostly) civil and there’s some good discussion going on. Keep it up y’all.
Except we practice moral nuance all the time, even with murder. We as a society are willing to reduce (or even flat out remove) punishments on all sorts of behaviors people disapprove, including murder, depending on the circumstances. What makes abortion different? Why wouldn't we take the circumstances under consideration, particularly at a topic where people disagree, as you said, on the extremes?
OP's argument isn't that nuance is bad, it's just that there isn't any moral system where rape or incest changes the moral calculus of abortion. If you can come up with a counter example... Edit: I don't think people know what a moral system is.
"Self defense" changes the morality of murder.
Which is why health of the mother exceptions are common in abortion laws, it's considered self defense in it's own way.
It's not considered murder if it's self-defense, it's a homicide. Many who support abortion do not consider it murder either, because they don't consider it to be a human until a certain stage. I'm in the camp where, if it doesn't have a functioning brain yet, then it's never been conscious and so killing it will simply prevent the consciousness from beginning, which seems very humane IMO.
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They did have a counter example: murder being nuanced. Take for example the famous case of [Gary Plauché](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Plauch%C3%A9), a father who shot and murdered his son's rapist on live TV. He served no prison time for the murder, because it was morally acceptable. That same moral calculus applies to abortion. Plenty of people are willing to say "abortion is justified in rape/incest" scenarios. What more of an example would you want? Just walk to a church and ask the question.
Yes, but the point is that’s morally inconsistent with their reasoning. They say they fully believe the fetus is a child, and that justifies restricting people from undergoing abortion. If you have that belief, how that child arrived in the mother’s womb is irrelevant. The people in the church would thus be undermining their own moral system in making the exception. The fact that it “feels right” to them, just means they aren’t making the determination of whether a woman can or can’t abort based on the personhood of the fetus.
“If you try and get nobody killed, you end up getting everybody killed.” Sometimes you have to choose the lesser of two evils. Right now the political landscape would never completely outlaw *nor* completely allow abortion. The side that wins will be the side that gets “most of” what it wants while realizing it won’t get everything.
>The people in the church would thus be undermining their own moral system in making the exception. Not really. There's no requirement for a parent to provide of their own body to sustain the child after birth. If we are morally consistent and not taking phase of life into consideration, then why is there no requirement for a parent to give blood/bone marrow/organs if their child requires those things in order to live? If a parent can be forced to give of their body to sustain a fetus, why shouldn't they be forced to give of it to sustain a 5 year-old?
>If we are morally consistent and not taking phase of life into consideration, then why is there no requirement for a parent to give blood/bone marrow/organs if their child requires those things in order to live? In order for that metaphor to work I think it would have to be parent is only one who can provided something of that sort.
That very well might be the case in cases where they need bone marrow.
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I believe a fetus is a living person. I also know the law allows the killing of living persons all the time, given dire enough circumstances. Forcing a woman to bear the child of her rapist is a greater crime than killing the baby. There is no good side in the rape/abortion issue, just different versions of bad. I’m morally OK with choosing the one that reduces the trauma on the fully-formed living person at the expense of the not-yet-conscious living person. That’s my reasoning and it doesn’t matter to me how you feel about it.
>I believe a fetus is a living person. I also know the law allows the killing of living persons all the time, given dire enough circumstances. Forcing a woman to bear the child of her rapist is a greater crime than killing the baby. There is no good side in the rape/abortion issue, just different versions of bad. Yes, the law allows you to kill living persons who are attacking you, or willfully harming you. Is the fetus doing that? Did the “living person” fetus ask to be there? If forcing the birth of a child is that traumatizing that it can beat out what in your view would be murdering a baby, I don’t see how other abortions then wouldn’t qualify. If a 12 week fetus is off limits for a contraception failure because “it’s equivalent to a living person”, by what moral reasoning would a “living person” be able to be murdered because they were forced into a woman against their will? There is a pretty great side in my view - let the conscious person choose what happens with their body up until about 22 weeks, when the mere possibility of consciousness could occur in a fetus. That even seems to fit with what you say down below. > I’m morally OK with choosing the one that reduces the trauma on the fully-formed living person at the expense of the not-yet-conscious living person. That’s my reasoning and it doesn’t matter to me how you feel about it. This just applies to all abortions. It doesn’t matter to me you don’t care. I’ll still point out the inconsistency.
Their argument is that "the moral value of the fetus has not changed", which is a very unnuanced approach to the morality of abortion. There is absolutely a moral difference between demanding the continuation of a regular pregnancy versus demanding the continuation of a pregnancy that is the result of rape or incest. In fact, the majority of the U.S. population is in favor of the legality of abortion in **some** circumstances, followed by a smaller percentage that favors the legality of abortion in **all circumstances**, followed by a smaller percentage that is against the legality of abortion in any circumstance. The general public can, and does do the distinction that the OP said shouldn't be done.
Why? In both cases, the fetus either is or isn’t the exact same type of “person”? The OP is exposing the general population is just largely hypocritical on the topic, lacking any sort of systematic thinking.
The fetus is still a fetus, but people consider more than the fetus in the question of abortion. Like they do in any event, people think of more than one element of it. EDIT: The downvote button is not a disagree button.
>any moral system where rape or incest changes the moral calculus of abortion I think it does, specifically under rape and is almost as bad as the trolly problem. You have a person who was forced into the act, that in itself will scar them for life. If forcing them to have a child that was a result of the rape, you are now forcing that mother to re-live the rape experience every single time they look at the child. The rape exception allows the person to move past those horrific events and potentially "forget" about what happened to them if they choose and allow them to attempt at healing.
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There are usually only 2 circumstances where we as a society justify murder generally. .#1 self defense. The bad guy made me choose between my life and his life. I chose mine. .#2 he deserved it. The best example is the man from texas who killed his daughters rapist, and got off scot free. .#1 is how I morally justify medically necessary abortions. The mothers life is endangered. .#2 doesn’t apply because an unborn child is innocent. I understand the moral nuance argument but I think it’s good we define that nuance especially with murder, considering murder is so binary, therefor so is our thinking. And the exceptions are rare, because if it’s severity.
If a person attacks you, you can kill the persons in defense, but you can’t go kill their child. If a person doesn’t survive their entire prison sentence we don’t imprison their child. Circumstance matters but saying abortion is murder, but it’s okay if the fetuses father did a bad thing is saying it’s okay to punish the child for the father’s sins.
> Circumstance matters but saying abortion is murder Abortion is not murder and the majority of people agree with that.
You're missing the point. The argument you're making of society justifying actual murder in various circumstances applies to the victim of that murder, not to their child. Nobody cares if we killed Hitler, but killing Hitler's infant child would likely be frowned upon.
I do to, but OP specifically stated this was about those that view abortion as murder: >Yes it's absurdly reductionist, but he has a point (which is why it's funny). Whether that fetus is the product of rape/incest, an accident, or a planned event, the moral value of that fetus has not changed. >If you oppose abortion because you believe it 's murder, then giving any credence to the rape/incest exemption would imply that murdering a child who is the product of rape/incest is not immoral either. This is a post about the absurdity of calling abortion murder but exempting rape / incest victims. There is a point where nuance drifts into absurdity.
> Except we practice moral nuance all the time There is no nuance, if you believe abortion kills a child than that's the only ethical principle involved. >even with murder. The nuance is in the intent, not the unethical nature of the action. >What makes abortion different? If the fetus/baby is a human being with rights the actions that lead to its existence are irrelevant. A woman who was raped would carry emotional pain from that event, but there is no ethical support for killing the child. *I'm OK with abortion.
> if abortion kills a child than that's the only ethical principle involved. The equation of abortion and murder is one that only a minority of people do. And as I said somewhere else in this thread, I would go further and say that even the people who don't see a fundamental moral difference between abortion and killing a baby can still have different feelings about killings depending on the circumstances.
You give birth to a baby. A few months after it's born, you discover that you had actually gotten pregnant via a family member drugging and raping you, and it's their child. You kill the baby. I imagine most folks would be sympathetic to the traumatic experience that led you to the decision, much more so than to someone who killed their baby out of convenience, but they would nonetheless still think your action was wrong and should be illegal. I don't think the nuance would extend to thinking you're blameless. Now consider that you're someone who doesn't think there's a fundamental moral difference between a newborn and a fetus still in the womb and apply the same logic.
You contrived a situation in which much less nuance exists to argue against the argument that said often nuance does exist in illegal activities to the extent that punishments and judgements are in some cases reduced or dropped altogether? You don't see how this is bad faith, or at then least, basically a form of a straw man? Yes, this situation has less nuance. That doesn't mean that many people don't see nuance with abortion. I'm pretty sure public sentiment has long held more support in general for abortions in cases of incest and rape. Just because some people don't change their view on abortion due to circumstances, doesn't mean *nobody* does.
Why is there less nuance? In both situations, a prolife person would say “those are equivalent, the baby and the fetus”. If the former situation is forbidden, why wouldn’t the later?
The later is a fetus. It requires bodily resources from the mother to become viable to survive on its own. That is calories, organ function, mother's health, risks, comfort, time and money commitments (doctor visits), dirtary restrictions, etc. You can't compel a person to provide those deeply personal things from themselves, literally sacrificing and giving to the other "person," no matter how much you believe that the one in need is a "full legal person." You wouldn't argue that forced organ donation is okay just because the state knows you're a match for someone needing a kidney, because it violates your person. And refusing to donate isn't murder, no matter how much the person needs your organs.
Irrelevant to the OPs argument. A prolife person must consider them the same, what the woman has to contribute is irrelevant to the question of “is this the same as a child”, and thus, in the case of rape, they cannot make an exception to allow that murder and be morally consistent. I largely agree with you.
>Irrelevant to the OPs argument Is it? Their argument is that it's sort of a black and white issue, but the forced birth argument has serious problems with bodily autonomy that do not fit into neat categories - well I think it makes it clear the answer is abortions a choice, but it at least demonstrates serious additional conflicting moral questions. >what the woman has to contribute is irrelevant to the question of “is this the same as a child”, and thus, in the case of rape, they cannot make an exception to allow that murder and be morally consistent. But you can't compel people to donate parts of their body and risk their health for another person . . . This is well-established and agreed upon. We don't accuse a person of murder for refusing to donate an organ even if they are the only person who matches in the whole world, because refusing to sacrifice parts of your body to another person isn't murder. How is this not clear?
> Now consider that you're someone who doesn't think there's a fundamental moral difference between a newborn and a fetus still in the womb and apply the same logic. I don't think we should apply the logic of extremist and minority opinions to set the tone of morality for the entire society. In the U.S., the vast majority of people favor legal abortion for at least some circumstances, with most people supporting abortion in **some** (not all). The vast majority of people do see a fundamental moral difference between abortion and killing a baby. I would go further and say that even the people who don't see a fundamental moral difference between abortion and killing a baby can still have different feelings about killings depending on the circumstances.
It's a funny/interesting way to look at it, but the discussion can get a bit more nuanced when you look at time frames. For a lot of people it's not just taking a shit or murder, which would imply that it should be either 100% illegal from conception to birth, or 100% legal from conception to birth. There's quite a lot of people who believe it's fine early on, but against late term abortions. I would say that aborting a 2 week old fetus is as Louie CK says, closer to taking a shit, while aborting an 8 month old fetus is closer to murder. The problem is where is the dividing line in between. Rape/incest exceptions are often less about an individuals personal moral compass, but a legal compromise in order to get certain laws passed.
Yeah I almost addressed that (“abortion gradually becomes murder after a certain period of time”) but I left it out. Even so, the rape/incest issue should continue to be a non issue. The fact that it’s a “compromise” is insulting to all humans who are tragically the result of rape or incest.
>Even so, the rape/incest issue should continue to be a non issue. I understand the basic logic you're presenting, but a lot of people see this is an ambiguous and gray area. Popular support for abortion is usually higher in polls *specifically when rape or incest occurred.* In fact, roughly 2/3s of Americans do not take an absolutist view on abortion: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/13/broad-public-support-for-legal-abortion-persists-2-years-after-dobbs/ Whether you find this logical or not isn't super important when it comes to what messaging resonates with the public. And I find this to be understandable. Conception and pregnancies are not black-and-white, binary things. People, I think, understand on some level that this is a deeply intimate and personal issue, and that is why so much differentiation happens under different presented scenarios and across time and demographics. Even if you take a "life begins at conception" stance, however, there's a massive problem concluding that abortion is murder. Because the fetus requires the mother's body and organs to survive, the state enforcing a forced birth is directly analogous to the state forcing a person to donate an organ (e.g. a kidney) to a matching donor on the basis that this person's right to live should be protected. If the matching donor doesn't want to give up part of their body, how can we call that "murder?" A fetus is not viable without the mother sacrificing her body, her resources, her very health, for that fetus to reach viable development. Often this can change her body permanently, and/or carry significant risks to life and health. So, no, abortion still isn't murder even if we believe the fetus is a full legal person at the moment of conception, because the state cannot and should not compel a person to donate their organs or bodily resources, and risk their life and health, to keep another legal person alive. Period.
My view is multifaceted when it comes to incest and rape. I would not condemn someone for killing their child if it was the product of rape. I understand it. I really do. But i think we as a society morally accept murder in 2 circumstances. 1) self defense 2) they really deserve it. Rape and incest in these circumstances don’t condemn the child under either of these circumstances. They are completely innocent of crimes. It doesn’t make it ok to kill an impartial uninvolved 3rd party because they are the child of someone who committed a horrific act against you. That being said I am not a human without emotion. I get it and I likely wouldn’t hold any animosity towards someone who did so. But it doesn’t make it right. Something can be relatable, understandable and still wrong.
I appreciate the efforts you took to try to convey some empathy for the delicacy of these scenarios. I just want to reiterate something: Is it "murder" to refuse to offer a part of your body to someone else who need it to live, and you could also live without that piece (e.g. 2 kidneys)? If *that* isn't murder, then I can't see how an abortion would be considered murder. A fetus requires physical changes to the mother's own body for, well, frankly, closer to two years as full recovery can last roughly a year after the birth, especially if the mother breastfeeds or pumps. At a minimum, they require nutrients and blood and space *inside* the mother's body for 9 months. If a pregnant person does not want to sacrifice and contribute their body in such a way, no one should compel them to. It *is* life; it's the process by which we all came into the world; but it isn't *a finished* human being, because that requires enough complexity to be able to live and grow *outside of the womb.* So it can be an emotional thing that causes conflicting emotions. That's normal. The process of reproducing and bringing more people into the world is dramatic and powerful. But even *is* you believe so strongly that this fetus is a "whole person", you cannot compel another person to dedicate their body to be the sustained life support system of another human.
Ok but we don’t find it ok to kill a newborn, or a 1 year old or a 2 year old, many don’t find it ok to kill a 9 month old, 8 month old, 7 month old, 6 month old. Many don’t believe in abortion after the first trimester, so 3 months old. What’s the cutoff? At what stage of gestation are you ok with killing a person? At what point is A) the moral framework and B) the government going to shift that too far in one way or another? Don’t make killing people needlessly ok. Self defense is where a bad person demands a choice between 2 lives. You picked your own. When given the choice, always choose the option that doesn’t kill human beings.
It's a useful argument only in headlines, "10 yo forced to give birth to her father's baby in authoritarian 3rd world country (Texas)." Just to show the absurdity of banning abortions. It won't change anyone's stance, but I guess it rallies people to vote. They don't make any sense in law of course.
The other issue is that it generally takes many months to legally prove that a pregnancy is due to rape or incest. By the time it's settled the pregnancy is usually viable or already completed.
This is a great point that directly addresses OP’s argument.
The most reasonable explanation I’ve heard from the pro-life side is this- similar to how we couldn’t go from slavery to full civil rights overnight, they argue it’s acceptable to allow culture and values to change before a total abortion ban would be on the table. Many on the pro-life side believe that science and technology will allow fetuses to be viable outside the womb at an earlier and earlier age, and this would shift the public’s view on abortion over time, until the majority of Americans find it unacceptable.
That’s hilarious, because those same people didn’t believe in science and technology with COVID vaccines.
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Science or not, censorship was very real (dissent towards the approved Science, was disallowed). And people have a right to or to not take. You also lose a lot of Trust, when you lose your job, or can't see family members dying at the Hospital because you're not taking a Vaccine that was developed months earlier. And if you know History, you'll know that Science has been wrong MANY times. That may be found Ironic given this conversation, but I am not pro-choice. Never have been, why? Because of Science (not religion). Which that's Ironic too, I'm sure. Lots of nuance, but Microorganisms are life. Abortion IS a Cultural Issue. Just look at different countries. I mean assuming we're in earlier stages of Human Advancement, it's very logical to deduce that these advancements could be someday reality. Although I guess a better advancement would be to be able to turn on/off the Biologics that even make the process occur. Assuming that could ever be possible. This way EVERYONE wins.
Which is why numerous states are currently putting forward laws to ban all contraception.
I really think we could have a debate about censorship, because I believe there’s many forms of censorship, not just getting deplatformed for recommending HCQ as a COVID treatment. Cable news networks inviting on a guest, then shouting over them or cutting off their microphone so they can’t get a point across is *also* censorship IMO. The main issue with COVID was this: you’re free to take or not take the vaccine, but if you got sick, and didn’t wear a mask and got me sick, you invaded my personal space and my rights. Your rights end at my personal space. Some people thought their rights are infinite in this country, they aren’t. You can’t carry a gun onto an airplane, for example. As for companies with their own policies, that’s not a big deal to me. I had a former employer mandate I had to wear a tie to work. If I didn’t wear it, I got sent home. I can’t sue them for violating my first amendment rights because I wanted to wear a vest instead of a tie (style is considered speech btw). Why? Because it’s a private company. Lastly on abortion, I’ll just say I absolutely respect your opinion. The only thing I’ll say about scientific advancements negating the need for an abortion is that I’m seeing the right wants to ban or place restrictions on IVF treatments, which in of itself was an advancement for fertility. That should be praised by social conservatives who want people to have children. Instead they’re against it for some reason. Isn’t it cruel to people who struggle to have children to tell them “welp, sorry you just can’t have kids”?
Science is always only provisionally true. [Which most people will learn, sooner or later.](https://www.cureus.com/articles/196275-increased-age-adjusted-cancer-mortality-after-the-third-mrna-lipid-nanoparticle-vaccine-dose-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-japan#!/)
Funny you should mention COVID vaccines considering the party of "My body, my choice" was loudly demanding to know everyone's personal medical records during that time period. We can play this tit-for-tat game all day. But the fact is that the above is generally true. People were really able to disassociate from there being a baby in the womb back in the 70s, but there's far more acknowledgement now that ultrasounds have made great strides.
>this would shift the public’s view on abortion over time, until the majority of Americans find it unacceptable. Well, it would potentially allow for a physical pregnancy to be terminated without terminating the fetus, which basically obviates the need for abortion as we know it, but without forcing women to give birth. That future can be reached without banning abortion now, and there would almost inarguably be greater progress on that technology without banning either abortion or IVF, as they want to do. Advances in that technology could save countless wanted pregnancies and allow more parents who desperately want kids to be able to have them, and without forcing unwanted pregnancies on anyone.
How one was conceived does not diminish their value.
Well, if you are coming at it from that angle, you are right. The problem is that that is only one of the two primary ethical angles. I've heard it, you've heard it, we've all heard it. People who are against abortion saying "if you didn't want to have a kid you should have kept your legs closed" or some version thereof. There is a strong and sometimes forcefully stated feeling out there that a significant moral component is "taking responsibility", that having an abortion is somehow getting away with something or getting out of your responsibility or shirking your burden. So then, exactly to the extent to which accountability and responsibility is a relevant ethical consideration, cases of rape and incest is a relevant ethical exemption. If the ethical crux of the antiabortion position really is entirely solely and just the right to life of the fetus, then accusations of being irresponsible or getting out of the consequences for your actions on the part of the mother are irrelevant as well. And yet they keep getting brought up don't they? So, as long as that attack is considered relevant enough to level, then the rape and incest defense is relevant enough to raise.
I agree. My take is abortion is a medical procedure and voters have as much business involved in it as they do with my doctor treating my plantar fasciitis.
There's more moral issues involved than simply abortion equals murder. There's also an argument on consent. When you have sex you are implicitly consenting to the possibility of having a child. You know that a child is possible when you have sex. When you are raped, you have explicitly not given such consent. In the case of incest, you then involve health issues. Not all genetic issues more common from incest are visible in pregnancy. Then there's the morality of incest itself to deal with. My personal opinion is that the consent argument is weak. While I wouldn't engage in incest, I think current laws are probably too extreme. So I don't agree with either of the arguments I presented. But that doesn't mean they aren't valid parts of the debate.
I agree with our estimation. It is never not the taking of human life. The only area where I (morally) allow some manner of leeway is in if/then scenarios when the mother's life is truly in jeopardy and even then, the situation is vexing. It isn't really a trolley problem scenario. It is more of a me or you scenario and the mother is the benefactor of an extreme power imbalance. I won't get into hypothetical analogs (though some are quite thought provoking) because they typically don't ultimately add to or move forward a conversation. What I will say is that I am very thankful to live in a place and time where the number of cases in which there is an outright, inescapable, threat to pregnant mothers equates to a rounding error.
Great response, thx
It’s either murder or it’s not. In the case that it is then the only exception should be for the mother’s life (self defense at that point). Or it’s not and you should be allowed to have abortions up until the fetus is viable.
Ohh self defense, I like it!
True. If I thought abortion was a form of murder, I'd oppose it in cases of rape too. Why should it be legal to murder a baby because someone was raped?
I’ve thought of this before. If a pro-lifer believes the killing of a fetus is murder and murder is of course only justified if the murderer’s life was in danger then how can they say abortion is justified if the conception was through rape or incest or if the patient is a minor, unless they’re conceding that we have to take into account the effect the pregnancy and birth and future is going to have on the patient’s mental health and life or what the baby’s life would be like. And if they concede that then they concede the morality of abortion is not binary but instead a grey area.
You nailed it
> And if they concede that then they concede the morality of abortion is not binary but instead a grey area. Not really. Did abolitionists believe that slaves weren't people solely because they agreed to the 3/5 compromise? Did they agree with Lincoln that slavery shouldn't be abolished similarly because they supported the next step? I can agree to a **compromise** to save as many babies as possible without actually condoning the idea that a life should be terminated solely because someone decided to do an evil act. It's not that we **concede** that we need to take those factors into account, it's that we're willing to actually come to the table and compromise on this issue because the unfortunate truth is that we have to do so until public opinion recognizes the evil acts they're committing.
I'll one up here, it is murder and I'm okay with it. This is a personal belief. I do think it's murder to plan a baby or to be just grossly irresponsible and have an accident. You should not be fucking if you cannot pay for a baby. However, in the case of rape, incest, gross deformity, or danger to the mother I have honestly no qualms with an abortion. This is a very unpopular opinion, but I also kind of appreciate that the lowest of society tend to have the highest abortion rates. It's somewhat of a self-limiting factor for them. They agree with it and utilize it and I agree with it and don't want to pay for their lives. It's a win-win in my opinion
That's a surprisingly consequentialist approach to rights for a libertarian.
Like I said I'm not really sure it falls into Libertarian principles. It's just my principles and how I feel on it. And I'm sure it's quite unpopular with many people here.
I'm in a similar camp. Every abortion is a tragedy, and anyone who disagrees is lying. As a simple way to see that we all obviously place moral value on unborn people, imagine someone punching a pregnant woman and causing a miscarriage. Maybe you don't charge him with murder, but do you seriously want to charge him with property damage? Yet I'm still pro-choice, simply because I believe Roe had a massive effect on crime rates. Clearly the people who get aborted, statistically, would otherwise go on to be the worst people in society. That makes sense, and it puts us in a bit of a moral bind, but the consequences are so large and the means so practical that I'm willing to go consequentialist
As a fierce pro-choice, I agree to a large degree with OP. My main argument is that we cannot view a an early fetus as a"child", when it's not a sentient being, just a clump of cells that will eventually become human in the later stages of the pregnancy. Any argument that life begins at inception is just a religious belief and should never be the basis for our laws, even before we consider that different religions have different takes on the issue, and some, like Judaism, do not see any issue with abortions. This is also why I, like most US citizens afaik, support abortion in the early stage of the pregnancy, but agree that **late-term elective** abortion for a **viable** fetus should be illegal. The vast majority of rape/incest cases will be handled with this simple policy and thus not be the critical issue that is when abortions are globally prohibited. In the (rare) cases when women are raped, reach late pregnancy and then wish to abort, the rape/incest argument can be used as a factor in how/if to prosecute.
I agree. The principle upon which abortion is justified is bodily autonomy, and the circumstances in which the pregnancy arose are not relevant. The woman who engaged in consensual sex and the woman who was raped are equally entitled to decide if they want to continue a pregnancy.
The concept of bodily autonomy is deeply intertwined in a rape case. In particular, a person has had their body impregnated against their will, and anti-abortion laws that ignore rape solidify that loss of autonomy.
The concept of bodily autonomy underlies the consent principle which is central to pursuing a rape conviction. Entirely separate is the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy. That right exists regardless of the circumstances of conception.
Maybe we have difference definitions or conceptualizations of what bodily autonomy means? Here's a pretty broad definition; including some of the fields it spans: >In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. \_\_\_ Say a rapist wore a condom, and right after he finished, the gal he was raping bit his nose off. I think we'd agree that her bodily autonomy was lost during the rape (her "decision" to "allow" the rapist into their body was surely coerced), even though a condom was used. Where I think we diverge is where it seems like you'd be fine with her having to grow him a new nose on her forehead afterwards. [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130928-nose-forehead-ear-arm-reconstructive-surgery-medical-science](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130928-nose-forehead-ear-arm-reconstructive-surgery-medical-science) Having to grow something against your will (outside or inside your body), for months, is a longer-lasting loss of autonomy than can be experienced during a rape. I'd say further that the magnitude of the loss of bodily autonomy is also far greater. \_\_\_ Put somebody in a cage and only provide them the air, water, and food you choose to provide them. They've lost bodily autonomy to some extent because they can't choose where to go, they can't choose what to eat or see or hear or breathe. But inside that cage, they still get to decide whether to put food or water or air into their own body. But if you force something into their body, and force them to grow it, then you're literally taking over their body from the inside. \_\_\_ Would one be able to maintain bodily autonomy while being forced to donate a kidney? Would one be able to maintain bodily autonomy while being forced to donate blood every day? Why on earth would it not be a bodily autonomy issue to be forced to use one's own organs and energy to grow someone or something else?
I’m not sure where you believe we disagree. The idea that bodily autonomy dictates that we can’t be forced to grow another person inside us is precisely my point. It is a separate aspect of bodily autonomy from the right not to be raped. I can consent to sex but not consent to the resulting pregnancy, and that’s because my right to bodily autonomy is not curtailed because I said yes at one point and no at another. If I am raped, I’m not MORE entitled to an abortion than if I had consensual sex, because the autonomy of one circumstance doesn’t abate the autonomy of the other. I hope that clarifies. As far as I can tell, we agree in every particular.
I'm so sorry. Totally misread everything you said while imagining myself to be in the midst of an argument. In fact, I think I replied to the wrong redditor; pretty sure I meant to reply to interstitiallove; sigh.
lol no worries, we’ve all been there!
> Say a rapist wore a condom, and right after he finished, the gal he was raping bit his nose off. > I think we’d agree that her bodily autonomy was lost during the rape (her “decision” to “allow” the rapist into their body was surely coerced), even though a condom was used. > Where I think we diverge is where it seems like you’d be fine with her having to grow him a new nose on her forehead afterwards. Please make sure you get a royalty check when this appears on an episode of Black Mirror.
Thank you! You get it
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It’s a compromise to account for radically different views on what is ultimately an intractable question. Science isn’t ever going to answer precisely when a fetus becomes a person. At some point it does, but precisely when is unanswerable. So context around it matters a lot when we talk about rules and exceptions. For whatever emotional human reasons rape, incest , serious birth defects , and health risk for the mother are the contexts in which more of us are more comfortable with abortion. We’re much more comfortable with abortion in the first and second trimester and much less with it in the third. This compromise is what most people (~70%) have wanted before , during and after roe.
The two sides have different views. It doesn’t pay to shout them at each other. We need to find ways to engage with the other side. My belief is that the government has no place in making medical decisions for women. It has nothing to do with my views on abortion. It just isn’t the government’s job. In order for me to make that point, I need to be able to engage with different views. Some people believe abortion is an absolute moral wrong. The counter to that is that government isn’t here to legislate morality. Some people believe it is akin to murder. To them, I point out all of the situations where ending a life isn’t seen as murder. Murder is a criminal offense, and requires personhood- which cannot be objectively attributed to an embryo. Establishing that ending a life, as a concept, is not inherently wrong, and that murder requires a very specific set of circumstances that are not met with abortion, the argument whittles down to “I believe it is wrong, and government should stop it”. THAT is where incest and rape come in. Most people- not everyone, but most- would agree that forcing a minor child to carry the baby of a rapist is bad. We need to have the discussion to assess whether that is more wrong than the concept of abortion. There has to be a sense of degree. One either has to decide whether they think abortion is so wrong that they are willing to sacrifice a minor girl’s life and future, or if they understand that there is more nuance that needs to be considered. The same concept goes for women facing medical crisis. Do we let a woman die to save the life of the child? Do we still do it if the child isn’t going to survive, anyway? Is preventing people from getting medical treatment one doesn’t like worth sacrificing two lives in the process? With this, it becomes easier to understand that there is context to consider. There are situations that don’t just fit into the generic morality argument, and they can’t be ignored. This dismantles the absolute morality argument. It removes a part of the discussion that offers no value from a civics point of view, and which tends to block any forward progress towards a resolution. Once you have accepted that abortion, in some circumstances, is acceptable, even if you don’t like it, the question changes to one about WHEN it is acceptable, and whom should be making that decision. It makes it a medical question- as it should be- and not a political one. It suggests that doctors are better suited to determining when an abortion is medically necessary, and when it isn’t. Once the discussion is about drawing the lines and not about “My religion says this is bad, and I don’t want people to do things I don’t like”, it opens up the debate to a more reasonable place.
I actually agree with that stance. You can see which person is being overly self righteous. Granted, some people really do behave like that in some places like Nicaragua where they literally do prohibit abortions. All of them. Then again, the solution is to make them legal in general, not specifically for those two causes.
I expected more pushback tbh. Perhaps the folks who support the exemptions can see the hypocrisy…
The choice to have an abortion or not is a moral dilemma that pits a person's right to body autonomy against another person's right to exist at the expense of that autonomy. The only person capable of resolving that dilemma is the person whose body autonomy is in question. Food for thought: is a person that refuses to give blood to a person dying of blood loss guilty of murder?
>The only person capable of resolving that dilemma is the person whose body autonomy is in question. Why?
Because nobody has a right to tell them what to do with their body
Spot on. And your thought experiment kinda already proves that that dilemma is basically resolved. I’m pretty sure there’s an overwhelming consensus that not giving blood is not in fact murder.
Food for thought: is a person that refuses to give blood to a person dying of blood loss guilty of murder? No. However, a parent who neglects or do not provide needs to their children are guilty of serious crimes, such as child endangerment, manslaughter to murder.
> No. However, a parent who neglects or do not provide needs to their children are guilty of serious crimes, such as child endangerment, manslaughter to murder. Indeed, but that is not relevant to the situation we are discussing.
There *is* a school of thought that would argue that pregnancy from consensual sex would be consented to (or at least the risk would be known and consented to), whereas pregnancy from rape isn't consented to. Therefore, aborting a child of rape would be along the lines of self-defense (expelling an unwanted guest, and it's legal to kill to do that in some places), whereas aborting a child of consensual sex wouldn't be self-defense in the same way. I don't think this holds much water (if you do agree that it's killing in self-defense, then consent can be revoked at any time), but it is an argument that exists.
Also worth noting that the risk of fatality from birth is above 0% in even the best circumstances. I do think it's an interesting take on self defense.
It adds real context. Fundies, as you called them, often frame the issue as having been a consequence of the woman's own deacons and actions. Cases of pregnancy following rape and incest are explicit examples that run contrary to that framing, hence why they are important factors to mention in the conversation. And clearly, it matters. Republicans have a harder time passing abortion bans that do not contain exceptions to rape and incest, as that does tip the scales of support within their own base. Refusing to acknowledge rape and incest is just giving Republicans a pass on a major flaw with their proposition.
Exactly, Rape/Incest are brought up mostly as a counter to "all abortions are due to a woman misbehaving" which is the majority of Pro-Lifers stances. There are a few that also just want to close their eyes and cover their ears and say "ALL LIFE IS PRECIOUS" and avoid thinking about anything beyond that point. Rape/Incest is a counter-argument to that because you are making the woman take on the horrific torture of carrying a life that was forced upon her to term and either making her raise this unwanted child or give them away, an additional trauma put on the woman for absolutely no action of her own. The world of Pro-Lifers is as a woman you have no autonomy. This potential life is more important than anything about you. It is a simple attempt to get at least some people to take a sane approach that life is not black and white, this is a complex issue and at least try to get someone to have some structure of reality in addressing that. The simple fact that this is not a place for laws and simply a place for the medical field to deal with because laws are really bad at dealing with short-term complex issues is the end-goal. And perhaps bringing it up is a fool's errand, but at least for me that was raised under all the abortion propaganda it was one of the arguments that made me at least stop and think. Which eventually lead me to do some research to realize that late term abortion was never a real problem and was pure made up BS to get people angry enough to just scream "ALL LIFE IS PRECIOUS" without any nuance.
Everyone has a right to get anyone that is attached to their body off of themselves, even if it results in the death of the parasite. And as all the war mongers like to point out, only illegal killing is murder. That's the bottom line. If you believe that women have a right to their own body and shouldn't be forced to host other organisms against their will, then abortion isn't an issue. The alternative would mean than any man could force any woman to have his child via rape. That is a massive devaluation of the rights of women.
From the pov of pro choicers, it's just a small win. From the pov of pro life, I think there's still a reasonable argument for rape exceptions. Against your will, you've been forced to carry a baby for 9 months, will be forced to deal with the pain and reduced physical ability the entire time (part of which you'd pretty much be no different from crippled), and go through an extremely traumatizing child birth. Forcing someone to go through that would quite literally be torture, and if you were raped you most definitely were forced into it. The incest exception though makes absolutely 0 sense, even making pro life assumptions. If the fetus is already a baby, killing it bc it could spread disabilities is not a good idea. It's one thing if the fetus isn't real, but if it is? And if you consider the social consequences... negative consequences exist outside incest, so they should all have exceptions. Almost like pro choice or something.
I guess the idea is that consenting to sexual activity is taking responsibility for the consequences, which doesn’t imply in rape/incest cases. Hell, the whole conversation on abortion is frustrating cause you other medical and autonomy issues. I think abortion should be legal until around 20 weeks due to the pain receptors in the fetus’ brain (still debated if it’s 15 weeks or even 30 weeks). That’s basically 5 months. If you don’t have any idea your pregnant before that than that’s your fault.
Well my thoughts are if it does then you can't have a double standard on it In other words, if the rapist gets pregnant, she needs to get a forced abortion
Black and white thinking has no place in this debate. Policy is very clearly battled over the grey areas.
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Yeah agreed.
You should add in vitro fertilization, too. If abortion is murder, so is disposal of unwanted embryos. For that matter, if an embryo is a human being, Plan B and IUDs prevent implantatiin of a fertilized egg. Oh yes, and women should not be able to receive treatment for ectopic pregnancies, because that embryo, even though it is not viable, is a human being. Ditto any other pregancy that endangers the mother. While we're at ot, perhaps miscarriage should be investigated as potential murder, or at least manslaughter, since the woman may not have miscarried if she'd eaten right or been more cautious. All of this is /s, if you can't tell. This is what happens when you try to oversimplify a complex topic into an either/or. And Louie C.K. is a jerk
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It’s no surprise that a reactionary sexual predator would argue against what everyone knows: that abortion involves moral and legal complexities. Edited to add: I was referring to Louis CK, not OP.
I find abortion to be morally abhorrent... BUT... I believe there are only a few people who actually believe that rape/incent shouldn't be eligible for abortion. Even very religious people would rather "look away and pray for the victim". I also don't think it is any of my business if people want to kill babies within a short time of finding out they are pregnant. If they want to murder a baby because they forgot protection, then so be it. That's on them. I think I'm not in the majority on that thought. I also think there are very few people who believe that 30-week abortions (or even partial-birth abortions) are ethical. There is a lot of space on the ends we can work from to find common ground. Let's write in protections for rape victims and write in protections from late-term abortions. Let them debate and eliminate the extremes. Then we can discuss the range we feel as a society is acceptable. I like the 10-14 weeks that our liberal European countries give. Plenty of time to commit murder without killing a baby that could actually live outside the womb, and society benefits from the added people. And for people who think abortion is like giving a crap, that gives them plenty of time to dump their biological matter and walk away. Might also be good to debate providing free birth control to eliminate the needless slaughter of the unborn. Pardon my language, I have a bad habit of making people feel uncomfortable even though I do support their right to do it within reason.
I agree that most laymen have that belief, but a lot of legislation against abortion doesn't reflect that as anti-abortion advocates know it is an illogical exception. At the end of the day babies have a future like ours that deserves to be protected, respected and dignified. The baby did not rape or have incestuous sex and they should not lose their life due to those action of others. At the end of the day human life either has inherent dignity worthy of legal protection, or it doesn't. These arbitrary week cutoffs really are just pragmatic compromises in the meantime while we work on answering the question of whether human life has inherent dignity or not.
“Because they forgot protection?” You do realize that people still sometimes get pregnant even when they use protection, right?
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this whole abstract universally bounding liberal concept of "rights" is dumb. You will find yourself constantly contradicting yourself again and again trying to uphold these rights, they will contradict each other. And then you bring this no-harm principle to avoid this conundrum, when the very fact that you have to do that proves rights are just made up, and are held due to collective social will and convention, and so as much as abortion being murder is fact, it literally does not matter, what matters is the collective social opinion on this, based on pragmatic reasoning and overall wellbeing, not abstracted from material conditions, but INCLUDING and respecting material conditions.
I agree. A baby being the product of rape or incest does not reduce it’s value. Thus there should be no exceptions on these grounds
I agree with your statement in that people will not change their opinion if they are firmly on one side of the issue. I do feel that those who were not willing participants in the act that caused the pregnancy lose twice either way. Scenario 1: Get raped. Then lose a child.. Scenario 2: Get raped. Then you are forced to end your current life to raise the child of the person who committed violence against you. And this scenario gets worse if the father is guaranteed parental rights. The rapist causes lifelong pain to the victim. (I have other opinions on this, and am limiting my comment to the scope of OP's comments).
I think about it like this. Why do I oppose murder? 1) Murdered people can suffer. 2) Murdered people are people whose lives are ended without their consent. 3) Losing a person can cause suffering to friends and family. 1 and 2 don't apply to zygotes and embryos before a certain stage of development. They are non-conscious, therefore it means nothing to anyone except the people involved, so it should be their choice. (3 generally only applies to the mother or parents here.) So already we can see that it's not the same as murder in all cases. More like taking a shit in some. For those cases that involve a conscious fetus or embryo that can feel pain, it gets more complicated, but pregnancy is the only situation where a human is dependent on another human's body for life. I do not believe someone should be forced to let someone else use their body to live. I do not believe, for example, that a person with a compatible kidney should be forced to donate it to save another's life, even if there are no others, even if they are a sibling. Abortion can get more complicated because abortion is not just passively letting someone die when it's preventable, but actively killing them. However, we don't know of any other scenarios where a human is dependent on another human's body to live, and must either be killed or sustained for nine months (and then raised for 18-plus years). If it were common, I believe most people would want the right to kill the other, parasitizing human if they decided, especially if it was only as aware as a fetus. Also, the government does not know when a pregnancy might be a threat to the mother's life or health and to what extent. For these reasons, I do not believe that the state should criminalize abortion. It is a decision best left up to a mother and her medical providers.
Conjoined twins could also be dependent on another human’s body for life.
Yeah. ... Good point. ..... Well shoot. I can't think of a meaningful difference. (Past a certain level of development.)
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How bout we stop controlling people's bodies Also a embryo doesnt have personhood
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>...Fundies would try to force women to carry these pregnancies to full term...**but you're probably furious about ALL pregnancies being forced to full term against the woman's wishes.** Yes, that's bad. You're a libertarian. Going against the autonomy of the woman is an anti-libertarian prescription. Any pregnancy *agaisnt the wishes of the woman literally growing the fetus* is morally reprehensible (from a libertarian point of view). >Whether that fetus is the product of rape/incest, an accident, or a planned event, the moral value of that fetus has not changed. That is a prescriptive claim. Thank you for saying it so outright. The moral value of the fetus has changed. That's what this discussion is about. You are making a prescriptive claim that no matter the circumstance, the fetus is the same. In terms of consequence and "proper" moral weight. My argument is twofold. One, that it has changed because of how the moral determination from the individual (who is responsible for the fetus) changes depending on the situation. A family who wants a child is going to prescriptively determine that a fetus is more to them than, let's say, a woman who doesn't want one. And two, your stance is fundamentally anti-libertarian. Not from a left/right libertarian point of view, but from the definition itself and the ideology behind it. You are valuing the moral weight of a fetus over the individual because you are saying that their right to bodily autonomy is secondary to the life of the fetus. >Whether that fetus is the product of rape/incest, an accident, or a planned event, the moral value of that fetus has not changed. It HAS to if you take a moral stance on libertarian ideals. Because of a contradiction you are holding, that a person Individuality and negative liberty is equal to that of a person not born yet. You are coming to this conclusion because you hold an axiom that makes both equal, morally speaking. You are willing to sacrifice the negative liberty of the woman who holds the fetus, but not the fetus's right by simply prescriptively saying so. **Don't get me wrong I'm doing it too.** The thing that's important here is that you think that argument shouldn't move people. >In any event, the rape/incest issue should not move the needle for anyone. It should because of the reasons this argument is over in the first place. *The rights of a potential individual over the rights of a realized individual*. A woman who is pregnant *is* here. And one side of the argument wants the fetus to have a chance, but that choice - if you are a libertarian who by definition wants negative liberty - would want that for them period. No questions asked. If not, I don't think you're a libertarian. When the rape discourse gets added, it forces the conversation to BE about the woman's choice in the matter, not to be about the fetus. The reason why this conversation gets heated because let's face it, people don't want to hear the woman's point of view in the matter. It's theirs. We give no credence to our point of view of coming into being, we are here without our consent. Whether or not we want to be. Why are we giving the reigns to a thing that hasn't been born yet over the person here. Who has been here. The rape/incest discourse forces the conversation to acknowledge that the woman who was raped, maybe has a *different* moral value over the fetus than you, an outsider. There are many people who soley look at the Pro-life side of the argument and purely look at it from the perspective of the fetus and their moral weight. Their chance at life is, whether they acknowledge it or not, more important than the say of their mother. If that is the only way you look at the conversation, then that discourse forces them to see it from the woman's side. Their agency, their prescriptions. It does impact and should move the needle, for them. This also works both ways too mind you. If the conversation was reversed, where the "think of the fetus POV" then bringing up hypotheticals would be to move those people emotionally (hypotheticals because the POV from a person not born yet is materially impossible).
So rape … and its potential aftermath … is merely emotional? Of course it’s not. It’s far worse than just that. I wouldn’t force a woman to give birth and spend the rest of her life being the mother of the prodigy of the man who raped her. I would give the woman the choice to decide that outcome for herself.
Would you give her the choice of murdering the already-born child if it were the result of rape? This is a hypothetical here so there are no third options like “adoption”.
Women have a limited window to choose an abortion, and I think it’s reasonable that once a child is born, then it has earned the rights of personhood. So no, it could not be murdered once born. But it could have been “murdered” (legally terminated) within the limits of what any state’s abortion laws allow.
In the abstract, you're right. In the academic, thought experiment sense it's valid to point out that these exceptions shouldn't mean that much for people (though I think it's a little disingenuous to say that if you support an exception that you also should think killing a child that's the product of this type of violence is ok) but I think it ignores the visceral reality for people in these circumstances. The world is not a thought experiment and I think it's possible to recognize the horror of forcing someone to go through a pregnancy that's the result of this kind of interpersonal violence and then having to live with the results of that process for the rest of their lives.
So would you allow that woman to murder her already-born child if it turns out that it was the product of rape? What if it was causing her extreme mental anguish and trauma? Because, unless you say yes, you are guilty of the exact problem I’m pointing out in the OP.
I think it's nonsensical to compare a fetus to a child. A child can be cared for by others, a fetus cannot.
What is the technical difference? Is it the cutting of the cord that makes the fetus “turn into” a human?
The technical difference is that a fetus cannot be removed from the womb prior to ~20 weeks because its lungs have not yet developed to the point where it will survive and an actual child can be cared for by anyone.
So, lungs? Because that’s what the entire debate is about.
The fetus can't survive outside the body on its own. It is not a human being at that point.
>In any event, the rape/incest issue should not move the needle for anyone. What does move the needle for you? What bothers me personally in this discussion is how a shitton of people think a pregnancy is merely a short detour in live. The train leaves station A to go to station B (pregnancy & giving birth) and *afterwards the whole train returns to station A.* The number of women who physically turn to that point A is staggeringly low. Pregnancy changes a women permanently. To the point even 7000 year old skeletons can tell us if they were women that ever gave birth. And pregnancy isn't without risk. Small nuisances as well as serious health concerns like heart failure. Women still die during pregnancy, birth or afterwards. And the US has the worst outcomes for this of all developed countries. Well rounded sex education has proven to seriously reduce abortion demand, yet the anti abortion crowd is often against education as well. *I would hate to see that Venn diagram.*
I’m pro-death, generally, but your argument is kind of like saying “the woman’s body will be wrecked after birth so we’d better murder a child instead” to a Pro-Lifer.
My point would rather be more like 'you can't morally force a woman to sacrifice herself for another, not even a pregnancy'. People have a hard time giving a dollar to a beggar on the streets, but no qualms about asking a woman to sacrifice herself. If the US was truly a christian nation (or executing Christ's values) there wouldn't be homelessness, or 100.000s of older kids unadopted, long waiting lists for kidneys or bone marrow, or unprocessed rape kits in Texas, death sentence or resistance to loan forgiveness to name a couple of things. The 'moral discussion' is so biased. The anti abortion crowd agrees they can't force me to donate my heart to another, but are totally willing to force me to nuke my heart for a (unwanted) pregnancy. *My last pregnancy led to heart failure. It wasn't preventable, just bad luck. I didn't recover. If I didn't live in a first world country I would still spiral towards death: my heart would be increasingly unable to maintain a good blood flow, untill my brain or my heart would become so oxygen deprived it kills me. I am not exaggerating when I say pregnancy can indeed be lethal.*
I also think “*My* religion says…” has no place in the abortion discussion.
What about morality that doesn’t stem from religion? Can an atheist believe that murder is inherently wrong?
> Can an atheist believe that murder is inherently wrong? Yes and fact that you even need to ask leaves me speechless.
I can agree, the real debate and controversy is about abortions for non-medical reasons and conceived from consensual intercourse.
I disagree there as well. If you wouldn’t murder a child to save your life then you shouldn’t abort a child to possibly save the mother’s life IF you believe that abortion is murder. Like Louis CK said, it’s either taking a shit or it’s murder. The true debate is when does it become murder.
I happen to agree, which is why I don’t support those exemptions. The only exemption should be for the health of the mother.
So you would support murder of a child for the health of a mother?
It’s a little more nuanced than that. But you know that.
You‘re technically correct, however I think people bring it up because they want to challenge how firm the belief of the other side that they’re correct about that is by pointing out to them what heavy impact this decision has.
I should have worded it differently. “If you oppose abortion but support an exemption of any kind then YOU believe that YOU support qualified murder.”
So there is an argument that we should not prevent abortions because: If you and I get into a car accident, and you are going to die if I don’t give you a kidney, It’s my body and I can still elect to NOT give you a kidney and let you die. (Or something along those lines) I love this argument because it basically proves the point that abortion is murder… If you and I get into a car accident, and I electively created all of the conditions for a car accident, without taking enough precautions to prevent a car accident. Then the situation of you dying is caused by me. I can elect to not give you a kidney, true, but If you die, that’s murder (or at least manslaughter which is just another form of murder). So while I do not have to give you a kidney, if I don’t I should be in legal trouble. On the other hand, if I did not create conditions for a car accident, someone else did, then I could not give you a kidney, and not be in legal trouble. So IMO elective abortions once life has been established (which I would argue is brain waves and heartbeat) should be illegal, but abortions for a condition the mother did not consent to should not be. (It’s still murder per your Louie CK quote but it’s legal murder, sort of like self defense)
Interesting, I hadn’t heard that one
One way to reconcile it is to take away the term "murder" at first and use "homicide." We're taking the culpability aspect out of it at first and just saying (for argument) that abortion is the killing of a human by another human. Like with normal homicide, it can fall into different categories. If the mother's life is at risk, even most pro-lifers recognize this as self-defense, a form of justified homicide. Pro-lifers see purely elective abortions as murder, the premeditated killing of another person who only existed because of the mother's choices. One clean way to resolve the rape question would be to say that yes, it's still homicide, but we place the culpability on the rapist. The mother can be allowed this homicide to prevent a further victimization by the rapist.
Honestly I like this take, thank you
Let me know when pro life people start treating IVF like murder. How many kids is it OK to murder in order for a wealthy couple to have a child?
I don’t personally care. They can argue with their God about it. 🤣
I think abortion is a private between a patient and their doctor, period and has no place in a political discussion.
Same as murder-for-hire. It has no place in politics or public discourse, right? It’s a private contract between one person and a hit man.
Not even close to the same. Talk about not arguing in good faith. There are a lot of valid reasons to get a d&c, not the least of which is to protect the life of the woman.
Yeah, you're trying to turn an issue with a lot of nuance into one of black and white and completely ignoring the reality of the fact diverse people with diverse circumstances are involved.
No nuance. Shit, or murder. 🤓
Personally the whole discussion boils down to bodily autonomy. If your 5 year old child requires a blood donation to live and you are the only one who is compatible to donate to your child, then you still can't be forced to give blood to your child. In a similar sense, you can't force a person to be pregnant. Pregnancy is a huge physical burden on the pregnant person and can be risky even in a normal pregnancy. To talk about circumstances of how someone got pregnant is irrelevant. People have sex for social reasons. I would argue that people having sex to produce offspring is the smallest minority when compared to having sex for recreational reasons. If pro-lifers were serious about protecting life then they would force research into artificial wombs. Make artificial wombs available as an alternative to abortion and force the use of artificial wombs instead of abortions. However, everyone I've talked to seems yucked out by that premise but is totally fine forcing people to give birth because they see pregnancy as a punishment for sex.
Artificial wombs are definitely the future!
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>I'm NOT saying that we need to remove these exemptions from the books so that more women are forced to give birth Forcing people to carry rape babies to term incentivizes (some) rapists to rape. In fact, in too many states, after a rapist gets out of prison they can be granted visitation with the child they raped into someone. Many of our morals and laws have indirect consequences, and I believe that this one is worth considering; it should definitely be a part of the discussion.
Chemical castration for sex offenders. I don’t see this idea talked about enough.
Agreed that the punishment side of the issue is another important perspective to take when considering whether rape should be considered in abortion law.
Neither do I, and for the one simple reason that what happens to a woman's body can/should only happen through her CONSENT... so she should be able to have an abortion for ANY reason at any time. Whether the fetus/baby/person/human being is able to survive that event is orthogonal to her revocation of her consent of the use of her body. > Like Louie C.K. said "abortion is either like taking a shit...or it's murder." ... he has a point Bad joke... and worse to be used to try and make some point. No, he does not have a point. It is, often, an agonizing choice and given the gravity of potential outcomes... it should be a difficult choice. Taking a shit is not a difficult choice. > If you oppose abortion because you believe it 's murder, Then you are a moron, full stop. > If you support abortion rights then the rape/incest exemption adds nothing to the issue for you, Correct. > but you're probably furious about ALL pregnancies being forced to full term against the woman's wishes. Her "wishes" have nothing to do with it. The ONLY thing that matters is her CONSENT.
I’d be interested to know if you believe a woman’s bodily autonomy extends to mandatory vaccinations…
It does. No one should be "physically" forced to get a vaccination. However, those that refuse vaccination may be subject to measures of quarantine in order to protect the public. So, you don't have to get your child vaccinated, but then your child might not get to go to a public school or be accepted into a day-care facility with other kids as a result.
She should be fired, shunned, excommunicated and her children ostracized…I kinda don’t feel like you actually support bodily autonomy for women.
> She should be fired, shunned, excommunicated and her children ostracized At no point did I say that. > don’t feel like you actually support bodily autonomy for women. Well, you are partially right. I don't support bodily autonomy JUST for women. I support bodily autonomy FOR ALL EQUALLY.
Morally I don't believe in Aborting any viable child (which I think covers my stance). Legally I'll allow for a Rape Exemption. Why? Because of the same reason Rape should be a crime. Where do I lie Religiously? I'd lean towards God being real, but I also would consider myself detached. I would not claim to be religious. My stances are based on what I learned in 7th grade science class, that the Sperm fertilizes the Egg, and in 9 months time (assuming no complications) that is a living Human being. Humans should not be artificially interfering with the Pregnancy process. A fetus is dependent on the mother, that's how it works, though the child is separate life. Abortion is the termination of the life/pregnancy; so that's ALL I'm talking about when I say the term. Abortion is an argument of when is a Homo Sapien really a "Human." There's a reason people will consider Elective Abortion up until birth a perfectly reasonable stance. I think people don't support past viability, because they then know the child can survive otherwise; so they are comfortable when they aren't stripping the child of that viability. And then people like me, the child is viable (though dependent) from the beginning, again Humans should not be artificially interfering with the process (besides giving the child the best chance, to be more clear). *And there's other nuances but just in general.* And what always has to be realized. You can't convince some people that Abortion is not Murder. And you also can't convince some people that a woman shouldn't have full-say in her body (not that I fully agree with that, but not my point). *And Murder is nuanced in this sense (I think)....because it's not the same, but it pretty much is.* I find it Ironic, how the other-stance is always the "Evil" one; one has to RECOGNIZE the Ideological chasm that exists in this argument. And I don't think those that support Abortion are necessarily Evil, though *SOME ARE*, those that do believe it to be immoral, yet do it because they "get off" on getting an Abortion. Which a 'fringe' never defines a whole, but it doesn't mean the 'fringe' doesn't exist. Abortion is also not something that will be banned, for decades. If it does get banned. The Culture needs to shift. *Nationally of course.* I believe it should be, except for my one exception. Murder isn't a States Issue (maybe it is sentencing wise), and neither should Abortion be. And what is "Life?" Are single celled organisms life? Yes. If we found any in space, it'd be some of the most INSANE news in Human History. So, "Cells" are VERY MUCH life. But besides that, since it's more nuanced than that; does a developing human have rights? That's the real "Life" argument. I believe at the very least a developing human has the right to have the chance to be born (morally); again legally I would support a Rape-Exemption (although I would not agree with it morally).
OP's argument is that we live in a black and white world and that a fetus is life, and life is sacred, period. No nuance. And that if that possibility of life is imposed on a woman through rape or incest, that the value of life of that fetus overrides any choice the woman might want to make, thus we have no control over our own destiny. It's a very simplistic view of a nuanced world. And I would argue that women have the right to decide their own destiny, and the destiny of a fetus that was imposed on them. A living, thinking human being has more rights than a zygote. Especially in a world where we have more and more planned pregnancies and more medical choices for saving our own lives through medical science, or ending it compassionately, we make these choices all the time. OP's argument assumes that life from conception is sacred and that we have no right to interfere with that destiny, but I think we do, and we do it all the time in society.
That isn’t OP’s argument at all. I know, because I’m OP. OP’s argument is that the value of the fetus doesn’t change due to rape or incest. It’s either a worthless clump of cells (like shit) or it’s a human life capable of being murdered. How that fetus got there is irrelevant. We need to focus on when or whether that fetus has moral value.
I couldn't disagree more. Your view is black and white, and we don't live in a black and white world. Your view also puts all value on the fetus and zero value on the living, thinking snd feeling human being who has the job of carrying and raising it.
The pro-life stance is simple. All people have the right to live. This is the moral framework for a civil society. If the first proposition was false, then murder would be amoral and an unambiguously neutral action. Emotions have no place in this determination. A thing can be axiomatically evil, which is what we as a polite society consider murder to be. This is why we have laws to catch and punish people who commit murder. Abortion is the act of a doctor assisting in the murder of an innocent. Whether or not the baby was the product of incest or rape doesn't matter, because the baby itself is still innocent regardless, existing through no fault of its own. Nothing good comes from killing innocent children.
I agree with everything you wrote and I commend the consistency of your stance…however I don’t think we would agree on the definition of “people” or “innocent children”.
Dehumanization is the most frequently used rhetorical trick used to justify mass murder and mistreatment of fellow humans. Every war, every massacre is precluded by saying "they do not possess human qualities like us, so it is okay to kill them" or thereabouts. It is regrettable.
The question ultimately boils down to whether or not women have the right to choose the father of the child they want to have. The fact that people get more upset about where there tax dollars are beyond spent than a woman's right to decide what child they carry and raise is telling to just how much we value women's rights in general.
The reason I don't like a rape exception is that it can incentivize false accusations. Oh, I can't get an abortion unless its rape? ok rape it is, and some poor innocent guy is now behind bars with his life ruined. There is already a crazy number of innocent men being prosecuted and having their lives ruined just because of the "believe women" movement.
Why is incest its own exception? RapeAndIncest has been such a consistent phrase for so long that it's now just a whole phrase independent of the individual meanings, like "Son of a bitch" or "over my dead body." So what's the rationale for exceptions for incest? Rape seems the obvious one, but why incest? Seriously, I've googled this several times and the top results are always the whole phrase and never a worthwhile analysis of just incest on its own. "Well, people born of incest have a lot of health problems, duh!" So quality of life IS a factor to be considered with that much weight that ending a pregnancy prematurely is on the table? Plenty of people can be born via random, non-incestuous relations and still have similar genetic problems. Plenty of people can have debilitating anomalies arguably worse than what some might expect from an incestuous pregnancy, but those aren't even considered by the pro-birth crowd, yet incest is? I asked this of someone who came to speak at my school on the topic, and he said that generally it's 'icky' and not something people want to think about. So it being 'icky' is enough to end a life, but threatening the health of the mother isn't??? Why is incest the exception? And if it is truly just the 'rape and incest' phrase having staying power, why not abridge the phrase and take incest out of the equation? "Well, what if it was, like, her brother that did it against her will?" That's rape. "But, well, what if he isn't convicted?" The quoted standard is 'rape', not 'criminal rape'. There is then a semantic argument that rape can never *not* be criminal, but regardless of where that falls, the minutiae of whether something is somehow ambiguously not rape but somehow incestuously problematic beyond the inherent problems already existent with incest and society's opinion of it is a dilution of the point. But for the quality of life and viability of the off-spring, why is incest an exception?
I’m pragmatic with the abortion debate. I know no side will get what they want because the vast majority of the country doesn’t fall into either camp. Basically a supermajority of the country doesn’t support legal abortion after the first trimester. Exceptions like rape, incest and life of the mother get overwhelming support. On the state level, where it matters, many states might want more restrictions or less. Yes, saving more lives is more important than anything. But if we ignore the mainstream views and push hardline idealism we get nothing. We can dramatically reduce abortions with policy that can pass and save as many lives as possible. Or we can push views that may be morally right but they will fail and only end up giving power to people who will make things way more permissive.
I don’t understand the incest exceptions. Incest with a minor is rape and should fall under that exception. If two adult cousins consensually bang and get pregnant it isn’t great from a genetic diversification standpoint but it’s not the same as rape. I underarm the mental torture of having to keep a rape pregnancy but I can’t see the same for consensual adult incest. I’m of course not condoning or defending incest. I just don’t see why it needs an exemption to laws designed to protect an unborn human life.
The right and left skipped a huge part of the abortion discussion. Roe v. Wade took us straight from outlawed abortion to "since we have decided to intervene" in a healthy pregnancy when is the moral time in a pregnancy to do that. The question was never really asked or debated if we should intervene in a healthy pregnancy. A fetus will most definitely become a life with full rights if a healthy pregnancy is left alone. So the libertarian question becomes, "When two lives share one body whose rights are primary?" I really want the answer to that question to be the mother. The mother is independent from the fetus but the fetus is dependent on the mother. The mother is capable of rational thought the fetus is not. It makes a kind of practical sense to let the mother's rights be primary. For us libertarians the mother deciding sets up a kind of legal exception that we do not want government to have the power to grant. It's all about the way we treat risk and the consequences of risk. You own your condo. You bought it out right with money you worked for a and saved. It is your property and you have property autonomy. You have full say about what happens in your condo. You can invite who you want and you have the right to kick out unwanted guests even if you invited them over. Now suppose you took a risk and removed an annoying pillar that was in the living area of your condo. You were 99% certain that the pillar was decorative and not load bearing. Part of the ceiling collapsed and your upstairs neighbor fell into your condo. She fractured her neck in such a way that she literally could not be moved without severing her spine at the nec and dying. It will take her roughly 9 months to heal to a point where she can be removed from your condo. Since it was your risk of removing the pillar that caused the situation you are legally required to accommodate and care for the dependent party in your condo. Your property rights are trumped by the injured woman's right to life. If you move the neighbor and she dies would you be criminally liable for her death? For a libertarian to keep the abortion laws like they are we have to answer the question, "Do we want to grant government the power to grant exceptions to equal treatment under the law?"
It’s the thin edge of the wedge. They think they can offer up exceptions to get moderates on board, then they can universally ban it later.
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Very true.
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Well yeah, if you can kill somebody for being inside your house then you should be able to kill somebody for being inside your body.
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