Abortion: can a mother hurt the embryo?

[KWED]

The issue is simple

1 the woman has the right to kill the fetus right?

2 so should by that logic should she have the right to hurt the fetus ? (without killing it but causing serious long term harm?)

In both cases “it´s her body her choice” so why not?

In your bizarre example, does the woman intend to carry the foetus to term, give birth to it, and raise the ensuing child within the context of a modern society (the US or UK, for example)?

 

[leroy]

Disagree. You asked, "Abortion: can a mother hurt the embryo?" I answered no, and gave my reason. If you only intended those who agree with you that the two acts are equivalent, then perhaps you shouldn't have asked for other opinions.

Yes your answer was good enough for me , intention is relevant, no all pro choicers think that way, many (perhaps most) say that the woman should have the right to abort independently of her intend.

The OP is just for those other pro choicers, not for you

You consider the difference between being in utero and living outside of a host irrelevant. Many others seem to disagree. If one could remove a fetus without killing it, the moral calculus changes.

When I find a cockroach in my home, I kill it. If I find one stuck in the dog's bowl, I release it outdoors. Why? Because I recognize the creature's right to live, but not in my home. In the first case, I cannot remove it from my home without killing it, and so I do. In the second, I have an option, and I reject gratuitous killing. The moral calculus has changed.

We are talking about who is a person and who is not a person, al I am saying is that location doesn’t determine personhood, a person is still a person inside the womb, and a none person would be a none person outside the womb. Any disagreement?...

Yes but the cockroach is still a cockroach in both cases, because location is not relevant to determine if something is a cockroach or not, in the same way a non-person is a non-person regardless of it´s geographical location and a person is a person regardless of his location.

Location maight be relevant to decide if we should abort or not, but it´s not relevant to determine if someone is a person or not

Being sentient in this moment is not the pro-choicer's argument for why abortion of a presentient embryo or fetus is moral. We can make a distinction between a presentient conceptus and a temporarily (or possibly temporarily) unconscious "person," and have different standards for the ethical treatment of them.

Agree,

So being not sentient in this moment doesn’t makes you a non-person agree?

 

[KWED]

No. It's not her body. It's a new person. Unless there are some definitive evidence that the foetus is not a person yet.

On what basis do you claim that an 8 week foetus is "a person". Do you have some definitive evidence that it is "a person"?

 

[KWED]

Well if a baby that was born premature at 25 weeks is considered a person with rights , why wouldn’t a 25 weeks fetus be also a person with rights? …. One doesn’t stops being a person just because it´s geographically located in another place (inside the rather than in a hospitals incubator for example)

Do you know what the cut-off point for non-clinically necessary abortions is?
And do you know why it is that stage?
From your arguments I can only assume the answer to both is "no", which raises some problems with your position. If the answer is "yes", then it seems you are debating in bad faith by being dishonest.
Either way, not a good look.

 

[KWED]

You are correct. But do you think anyone will change views because of this? A more compassionate approach is needed in my view.

I notice your "compassion" does not extend to the woman who is forced to carry an unwanted foetus to term. It only applies to an insentient cell-mass that cannot survive outside the womb.
So, nil points for content, but full marks for irony.

Killing babies has always been a thing.

Aborting an early stage foetus is not "killing babies". (Remember that about 90% of abortions are within 10 weeks)

make dull arguments as to why they should kill another human life.

It always makes me laugh, the hypocrisy of people who support capital punishment for minor or non-crimes getting so outraged over aborting an early-stage foetus.
"Yes, torturing someone to death for 'spreading mischief' is perfectly acceptable, but allowing a woman to medically terminate an unwanted pregnancy at 8 weeks? That's inhumane!!"

 

[Subduction Zone]

And what do scholars say about that passage?, those who understand the original language in the proper context, what do they say about it?

Care to site a single scholar who concludes that the bible is supporting abortion?

O wait I forgot you don’t answer questions,

From what I have seen most seem to favor the "miscarriage" interpretation. In fact just about any honest person can see that the miscarriage interpretation is the correct one. The question is, can antiabortion people be honest with themselves. Most can't when the Bible shows that they were wrong. Look at the resistance to A Test of an Unfaithful Wife being a forced temple abortion.

You should realize that laws are made to deal with the most likely first. Codicils are added later to deal with rarities. For example if you go over the speed limit a police officer was to issue you a ticket. "But it was a medical emergency and a police officer was leading the way". Okay. then no ticket. If a person has a reasonable excuse he is apt to get off. Do you understand this?

 

[Subduction Zone]

You seem horribly confused here.
Women are only allowed an abortion with the approval of two medical practitioners who agree that it is in the woman's best interests. And it must be carried out or supervised by qualified medical professionals. She can't simply do it herself.

And it's "penis", not "pennies".

Hope this helped.

Shh!! Ixnay on the rammargay explanationsway. Wondering what a woman is going to do with her pennies and why she is so poor is one of the more interesting questions to ask in a thread like this.

 

[KWED]

Why not? It´s his company, he can produce whatever he wants. You can produce as many unsafe cars as you want (as long as you don’t sell them as good complete cars)

Quite frankly the answer is simple

1 no a mother doesn’t have the right to hurt her son (even if it´s located inside the womb)

2 no the mother can’t kill her son


This is not suppose to be controversial, the problem is that by accepting abortion you give up rational thinking and immerse yourself in all sorts of absurdities.

If you can do whatever you want with your own body, why making an arbitrary exception with the fetus? (unless of course you reject the claim that the fetus is part of the mothers body)

If the foetus is to be terminated, then yes, the mother should be able to do what she likes to it, just as she can to any other part of her body. In some cases, the foetus does have to be dismembered before removal. A sad but sometimes necessary process.
However, the termination of a pregnancy is tightly controlled and it is illegal for anyone other than a registered practitioner to perform it, so your question is moot.

So there we are. Your objection has been overcome.
Was there anything else?

 

[KWED]

Meh. Evil can't see it's own nature. This is the real problem. It will always side with the ambiguous over the clear and take falsehood side on issues due to blindness of intelligence. He proved the foundation is bogus in the OP. You can not see it because you love conjecture and rely on it.

Holy books are useful in seeing those who set things aright and those corrupt and cause havoc in the land.

But keep God out of your legislation and put devil worshipers to legislate, and see where your society will go.

Gosh!

 

[KWED]

You can't become pregnant without knowing it, or without consenting to it?

That is a spectacularly stupid claim.

Well, you must have heard the old saying "spectacularly stupid is as spectacularly stupid does".

 

[KWED]

What is the collective noun for circular reasoning fallacies? There's a string of unevidenced assumptions in there.

Spiral reasoning?
Ever-decreasing circular reasoning?
Wormhole reasoning?

 

[KWED]

You mean on the first hour of fertilisation, one week, two weeks, months? When does it "become" a human? On what basis? Is there any definitive scientific evidence? It will be interesting to read up on the conclusive scientific facts on this topic if you could please point out.

Thanks.

 

[Subduction Zone]

A difficult question. It reminds me of the famous trolley problem.

Yes, it is a version of that. Except where in the trolley problem one has to take an action to save more lives but it is an action where one does kill others in this one he got a choice of which life or lives to save. Since one has to take an action in either case, in the trolley question you could simply say "not my problem" and let the trolley splatter the many innocent people.

By the way, if that is too difficult you here is the first video in a series where you and others can have a role in which way a trolley goes. It is too late to have an actual effect, but when it was started as a series people had an input. Hidden by a spoiler:

Spoiler

 

[KWED]

Ofcourse is a stupid question, nobody has the right to harm innocent people.

But it is ok to harm "guilty people"?

 

[leroy]

You keep calling it a person, despite the fact, as you seem to admit, that is not settled.

By your logic we would not only not demolish the building, we would keep searching so long as someone thinks there might be a person in there somewhere. And no amount of fruitless searching would make any difference, because even the slightest possibility that there might be someone there, even a claim from someone that can't back it up, overrides any benefit that might be gained from the demolition. In your world all the old buildings would stand there forever. Maybe they would have built a hospital on the site?

Obviously I am not talking about being 100% sure, I am talking abut “knowing” beyond reasonable doubt.

If there is reasonable doubt on whether if that shadows belongs to a human, on wouldn’t demolish the building until the doubt is removed with additional evidence

So the point is that given that there is reasonable doubt on whether the embryo is a person or not we should play safe and not kill it, until we know beyond reasonable doubt that it is not a human

First, I don't think there's any hope of establishing personhood based on science. Science can tell us things like when the fetus starts feeling pain

Well it doesn’t has to be science necessarily,

We manage to establish beyond reasonable doubt that blacks, woman, jews, etc. are persons worthy of human rights, despite the fact that these where controversial in the past

So perhaps in the future we could solve beyond reasonable doubt if the fetus is a person or not

That said, and granting what you say for the sake of argument, let's add a few things. John, if he is honest, will know that he's wasted a lot more than his own time. What about all the women whose lives were negatively impacted? Mike might feel bad to some extent, but he may comfort himself by thinking of all the good that has been done to adults.

Well most woman don’t regret not having an abortion, it´s hard to imagine a woman with a 5yo child claiming “I wish I would have aborted this child”

But sure John could feel some guilt, just not as much the one who caused the death of so many innocent persons.

All I am saying in is that given the controversy and given that “we don’t know” if it´s a person or not, not aborting is the safe alternative with more potential goods and less potential bads , than aborting.

 

[KWED]

I haven't followed all of this, but I'll throw this in for what it's worth.

There is one thing where the fetus is different from every other part of the woman. It has different DNA (yes, yes, half of it). That would seem to suggest a separate organism, not a part, like her liver.

Have I missed the point?

I think that "entirely dependent on" is more accurate than "a part of", and probably the concept held by most pro-choice supporters, but that wouldn't suit the OP's position.

 

[KWED]

Most spontaneous abortions happen because the fetus is not viable. others because of a problem with the mother.

Elective abortions are a matter for the mother to decide, however they are a small minority of all abortions.

The human population of the world is growing at an exponential rate. Abortions are only a minor way to correct this balance. Starvation, and premature deaths from poor health and conflict far out weigh the contribution from abortions.

I can see no logical reason to prevent children being born as unwanted and probably deprived children.

It is interesting that the "pro-lifer's" concern for the "child" ends at birth. As long as they have forced the sinful woman to suffer the fruit of her sin, the resulting child can be abandoned to the tender mercies of the already critically unfit care system, for all they care. They have done their bit.
It is their barefaced, smug hypocrisy that gets me the most.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It is interesting that the "pro-lifer's" concern for the "child" ends at birth. As long as they have forced the sinful woman to suffer the fruit of her sin, the resulting child can be abandoned to the tender mercies of the already critically unfit care system, for all they care. They have done their bit.
It is their barefaced, smug hypocrisy that gets me the most.

That is happening in Louisiana right now. There is a woman that needs an abortion because if she does go to term her baby, and it will be a baby when born, will quickly die a painful death if birth alone does not kill it. The fetus has practically no skull:

Woman denied abortion in Louisiana for foetus with no skull speaks out

"A pregnant woman in Louisiana has revealed she was left with no choice but “to carry my baby to bury my baby” after being denied an abortion for a foetus that has no skull and no chance of survival."

This is no some "baby killer". This is a woman that was planning to have her fourth child. But due to a rare tragedy it cannot survive. She wants to spare both her and her fetus as much anguish as possible. She will have to go out of state for an abortion.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

We are talking about who is a person and who is not a person

You are. I'm avoiding the term in discussions of the ethics of abortion except with you, because you keep coming back to it. I don't have a scientific definition of person, and neither do you or anybody else. I use the word to mean human beings I might encounter, or if they are deceased, that their contemporaries might have encountered. I don't know when else I would use the word. I wouldn't call a pregnant woman two people, although I also wouldn't object to others so doing, since the meaning of the term is vague and contextual.

But this doesn't map onto my understanding of whom it is ethical to abort, since I include late term fetuses with people as I have just indicated I use the word. So, in order to try to speak to you using my understanding and your language, I am calling the latter group people - the born and the late term unborn. As I understand you, people are things that cannot be ethically aborted. You want to call anything in a uterus a person to protect them all, but I've explained that I don't allow nomenclature to affect my ethical judgments. So, rather than modifying my definition of moral to conform to your preferred meaning of person, I'm modifying the word person to conform to my understanding of whose lives cannot be deliberately ended without cause.

I am saying is that location doesn’t determine personhood, a person is still a person inside the womb, and a non-person would be a non-person outside the womb. Any disagreement?...

If personhood means immunity from abortion, then location matters very much, as does mental status.

Location might be relevant to decide if we should abort or not, but it´s not relevant to determine if someone is a person or not

If you're not tying personhood to immunity from abortion, why are you using the word? I'm using words like intrauterine and presentient. These are the relevant factors, not who somebody calls a person.

So being not sentient in this moment doesn’t makes you a non-person agree?

Yes, if by non-person you mean ethical to abort.

Why are you persisting in this line of inquiry? I've already explained to you that whatever you mean by personhood isn't relevant to me. It doesn't matter to me for the present purpose who you call a person or a nonperson. No more references to personhood, please. As you can see, the topic is irrelevant to me in this context and uninteresting, I have nothing more to add to that, you have nothing more to add to your argument, and a return to this topic of personhood would be a waste of both of our time. If you return to this, I probably won't respond again. If you'd care to discuss the ethics of abortion in terms that are meaningful to us both, if there are any such words, then I will be happy to continue.

But not this. We're stuck in a loop here, and the choices are to keep repeating ourselves indefinitely as we talk past one another, or change the rules of engagement and try something else. How about you making your argument using the words like presentient, embryo, and fetus instead of person, since those are the parameters I use in deciding such issues. If you can't or won't do that - if you intend to return to personhood - then we're done.

 

[crossfire]

And what do scholars say about that passage?, those who understand the original language in the proper context, what do they say about it?

Care to site a single scholar who concludes that the bible is supporting abortion?

O wait I forgot you don’t answer questions,

I just posted that passage with the Hebrew and the English along with Rashi's commentary from the Jewish site Chabad.org on this post:
State Senator Proposes Mandatory Vasectomies for Nebraskans
Here is a direct link to the passage and interpretation at chabad.org
https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9882/showrashi/true