Abortion Argument

[r0ckyreed]

I wanted to know your alls thoughts on the abortion debate.

Case 1: Imagine that a professional basketball player is in a coma from being in a car crash. You happen to have the rare blood type that he needs to sustain his life. Treatment requires you being hooked up to him for 9 months, putting your life on pause. Does the government have the right to force you to be hooked up to him? If so, then does the government have the right to force you to be an organ donor and to give blood every week for someone who may need it? If not, then why do we subject women to carry pregnancy onto birth?

Case 2: Imagine that new scientific technology comes out that allows pregnant women to know whether the fetus is gay, straight, or transgender. Does the woman have that right to abort based off of her homo/transphobia? Also, does she have the right to drink and use drugs while pregnant or should the government step in?

Case 3: Imagine I am an evil time traveler serial killer and I have killed all my victims by going back in time stopping their parents from meeting and having sex. Am I killing you? Is it murder if I stop pregnancy from happening? If so, then by that logic, that means every time a woman has a period without fertilization, they are killing babies. If the answer is no that it isn’t murder, then how is abortion murder?

What do you think of these arguments/thought experiments?

[Salvijus]

4 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

Case 1: Imagine that a professional basketball player is in a coma from being in a car crash. You happen to have the rare blood type that he needs to sustain his life. Treatment requires you being hooked up to him for 9 months, putting your life on pause. Does the government have the right to force you to be hooked up to him? If so, then does the government have the right to force you to be an organ donor and to give blood every week for someone who may need it? If not, then why do we subject women to carry pregnancy onto birth?

If you're the one who ran over a basketball player, then you should be held responsible for his life and make amends and what not. If you got yourself pregnant, then it's your task to handle that responsibility gracefully. Unless you got pregnant against your will. Then it complicates the answer quite a bit. The entire responsibility would fall on to the father then I guess. And if a mother chose to do abortion than the blood would be on his hands. 

4 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

Case 2: Imagine that new scientific technology comes out that allows pregnant women to know whether the fetus is gay, straight, or transgender. Does the woman have that right to abort based off of her homo/transphobia? Also, does she have the right to drink and use drugs while pregnant or should the government step in?

You're free to do whatever you want, if you're willing to accept the consiquences of it. With that in mind, it would be wise if you handled every situation gracefully, if you want to live a gracefilled life. Otherwise your life will be a full of suffering and you'll end up in hell. Nothing wrong with that. 

4 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

Case 3: Imagine I am an evil time traveler serial killer and I have killed all my victims by going back in time stopping their parents from meeting and having sex. Am I killing you? Is it murder if I stop pregnancy from happening? If so, then by that logic, that means every time a woman has a period without fertilization, they are killing babies. If the answer is no that it isn’t murder, then how is abortion murder?

Preventing a birth and terminating a life in a womb is not the same thing. 

Edited Tuesday at 04:38 PM by Salvijus

[r0ckyreed]

5 hours ago, Salvijus said:

Preventing a birth and terminating a life in a womb is not the same thing. 

How so?

[Salvijus]

10 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

How so?

You're not killing anyone by not flying the plane. You're killing passangers when you drop them off the plane mid air. Nature gives a certain time as an opportunity to fly the plane, there's no crime in postponing the opportunity or not using it. But once you used the opportunity to lift off, then dropping the passangers mid air is not cool. It's reckless lifestyle. 

Edited Wednesday at 08:06 AM by Salvijus

[Aaron p]

Murder doesn't exist

[Emerald]

In terms of abortion rights, my argument is purely a bodily sovereignty argument. 

I don't believe the government should control what you do with your own body, even if another body happens to exist within it.

I see people as the sole sovereign governors of their own body.

And as long as the fetus is before viability (at 22 weeks), you should be allowed to abort because the baby requires your body to exist... and you are in control of your body.

Once the fetus is beyond 22 weeks when the baby can survive outside of the womb, you should be allowed to induce delivery and put the baby up for adoption.

Now, the vast majority of abortions happen in the first 6-8 weeks. And late term abortions tend to be for serious medical reasons that threaten the mother or baby's life... or both. 

It would be exceedingly rare for a woman to take the pregnancy to 22 weeks and beyond and decide she wanted to end it voluntarily. 

But even beyond this bodily sovereignty argument, the reality is that when restrictive abortion laws are on the books... more women die because doctors fear being prosecuted for performing a life-saving abortion in the case of serious pregnancy complications.

No woman is safe to get pregnant in a state with strict abortion laws. My advice to women who want to have children is to try to relocate to a state with more lenient laws around abortion, just in case there's a life-threatening emergency.

[Aaron p]

17 hours ago, Emerald said:

In terms of abortion rights, my argument is purely a bodily sovereignty argument. 

I don't believe the government should control what you do with your own body, even if another body happens to exist within it.

(Im not anti-abortion)

Yeah but you have to be careful just with this line of reasoning...I mean there's lots of things the government says you can't do with your body. You can't walk into a library naked, your not allowed to put heroin into your body then virtually all laws in existence that dictate what you can and cannot do with your body (moving it and using it to commit any crime). 

 

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Aaron p said:

(Im not anti-abortion)

Yeah but you have to be careful just with this line of reasoning...I mean there's lots of things the government says you can't do with your body. You can't walk into a library naked, your not allowed to put heroin into your body then virtually all laws in existence that dictate what you can and cannot do with your body (moving it and using it to commit any crime). 

 

I feel the same way about drugs and euthanasia as I do about abortion... for the same reasons pertaining to bodily sovereignty.

I don't believe the government should have jurisdiction over what people do with their own body as long as it doesn't encroach upon the sovereignty and boundaries of others.

But when it comes to public nudity, that's beyond the jurisdiction of personal bodily sovereignty... and is more about a public space where there are certain collective rules and procedures that make existing in that space.

And the government can and should have jurisdiction over the rules of access to public spaces... as can the private owners of a space that's open to the public.

And you can be naked all you want, as long as you are in your own private space.

And committing crimes is also a matter that the government should have jurisdiction over... because it impacts the public in some way and is beyond the realm of bodily sovereignty.

People should be the sole goverenors of their own bodies and matters that pertain to their own body. But the government should have jurisdiction over the laws of public engagement within a society. 

[Basman]

Case 1 is a classic. It's the AK47 of abortion debates.

In relation to case 2, in countries where abortions are accessible, fetuses with down syndrome and the like are almost always eliminated. There is not much difference inherently between aborting a gay-babe and downey besides material consequences for the parents life, the latter being of significant consequence in terms of care and the type of relationship you have with the child. A downey will probably die before you do as a parent and requires life long care. Raising a gay-babe is comparatively inconsequential. If the gayness of one's babe does have consequences for the quality of life of the parents and the child then those consequences are largely cultural, something that is not an issue for western cultures. It would be something else if the context was a middle-eastern country as you could argue a gay-babe as well as the parents would live a worse life due to prejudice.

In relation to case 3, I don't disagree with abortion being a form of elimination of life, I just don't think it is significant or equivalent to killing a person that would justify calling it "murder". A fetus is just the gestation of life. After a certain point though during pregnancy, abortion becomes too hard to stomach for most people I think as you kill something that very much looks like a human baby.

Edited 17 hours ago by Basman