Roe v Wade is on deck

[Emily Lake]

Your turn: how many viable near-term fetuses should die before they exceed the value of a healthy mother’s convenience?

One last note - that’s the wrong question.

Bullshit - it's in the same vein as the question you asked:

HOW MANY WOMEN SHOULD DIE BEFORE THEY EXCEED THE VALUE OF ONE FETUS?

If my question is the "wrong" question, then so was yours.

In both cases, the relevant question is how many people or fetuses actually DO die, and what is their relative value.

Answer your own question. What's the relative value of a healthy fetus just prior to delivery versus the convenience of the mother when there's no identifiable or suspected risks to the mother?

 

[Emily Lake]

If she wants me to back off she can tell me herself; I'm hardly going to take the prosecutor's word for it that a defendant doesn't need a lawyer.

Quite happy to have someone take a firm stance on reading comprehension and rationality. I don't even care if you agree with my view - I appreciate that you call out misrepresentation.

 

[Emily Lake]

It's notable that very little of this debate centres on the question of whether those being killed are, or are not, people.

Actually, that's pretty much the entire basis of my position - at some point in the pregnancy it's not "just a fetus" it's a baby. And at that point, it's not terminating a lump of developing cells, it's killing a person.

I will very happily concede that in most cases of late term abortion, there's a very good and justifiable reason for killing that tiny little person. If the mother's health or life is at risk in any way, mom wins out and it's a very good reason to kill the little person - consider it self defence.

Similarly, if the tiny little person in question has severe birth defects or congenital conditions that make it unlikely to survive or to thrive, then one might argue that it's not actually a tiny little person, it's something that tried but failed to become a person and will never be able to become a person. In which case, it's not killing a person.

But failing those to very broad and very generous situations... I stand by my position that abortions of viable babies is murder - especially when if they were delivered at that stage they would have an extremely high likelihood of surviving!

My position is pretty straightforward: don't kill people without extremely good and compelling reasons. And an infant that will most likely survive outside the womb counts as a people.

 

[Emily Lake]

very little of this debate centres on the question of whether those being killed are, or are not, people.

IKR?
That’s why I have asked the question - which I answered upon request.
It is obviously a matter of opinion, so it is impossible IMO to argue the abortion law thing in good faith without admitting to an opinion. If I get a response objecting to the “bad faith” characterization of a discussant who refuses to render such opinion, it will IMO be further indication of bad faith.
Still waiting.

You're only still waiting because you either don't read what is posted... or your age is affecting your cognition, in which case I apologize for picking on the handicapped.

I actually disagree. There are reasons to have some abortion laws - one of those reason is that at some point in the pregnancy, it's a baby, not a fetus. At some point in development, it's no longer a non-sentient blob of tissue, but is actually a life.

 

[Elixir]

What's your acceptable amount of murder?

Any amount that imposed less death than it causes.

You're only still waiting because you either don't read what is posted... or your age is affecting your cognition, in which case I apologize for picking on the handicapped.

Apology accepted. My handicap is so evident that it causes you to go blind apparently
So I might conclude that your hidden answer to a yes/no question is only hidden from ME because of MY senility?
Right, it cannot be because of Emily’s dishonest reticence to provide straightforward answers to simple questions. Silly me.

There are words for people who demand answers, and once provided, refuse to answer those same questions themselves.
ASSHOLE comes to mind, but I’d never call a “lady” an asshole.
I’ll just sit here and watch her tie herself in knots trying not to express the underlying condition that causes her to want late term pregnancies to be subject to legislators.

you are BLATANTLY mischaracterizing my views.

I’m sorry for your lack of ability to express your contorted “position”. I put it down to the contortion rather than than your lack of mastery of American English.

an infant that will most likely survive outside the womb counts as a people.

Yeah yeah. Repeating that stupidity doesn’t get your fav politician out of the exam room, Emily.
He’s only there to decide if the fetus is “most likely” viable.
YOUR chosen Xpert.
If your congresscritter says it’s viable, it’s a person. Got it. Can’t trust the doctor because doctors are more likely to be on the take or ideologically driven than politicians are.
Fuck that shit Emily. Even YOU can do better.
If you can’t answer the question without the help of a politician, you can’t answer the question “is a fetus a person?” to any practical end.
Your position, in summary is “I’m too much of a weenie to commit to an answer”.

“Views” my ass.

 

[Elixir]

There are reasons to have some abortion laws - one of those reason is that at some point in the pregnancy, it's a baby, not a fetus. At some point in development, it's no longer a non-sentient blob of tissue, but is actually a life.

Blah blah blah.
We all agree that “personhood” is an acquired trait. The difference is that you want politicians to be the arbiters of which fetae are “people”.
I’d love to hear some cogent rationale for that obviously stupid choice of arbiters.
You can’t answer the question of fetal “personhood”. That’s the bottom line.

Emily’s crazy position:
Pass it off to the politicians - doctors are less trustworthy, and besides, they’re unduly influenced by being PRESENT WITH THE PATIENT AND THEIR FETUS, WHERE THEY CAN MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS AND ACT ON THEM.

I’m sure Emily will protest that her “actual” position is something else. But it isn’t.

 

[Toni]

Your turn: how many viable near-term fetuses should die before they exceed the value of a healthy mother’s convenience?

One last note - that’s the wrong question.

Bullshit - it's in the same vein as the question you asked:

HOW MANY WOMEN SHOULD DIE BEFORE THEY EXCEED THE VALUE OF ONE FETUS?

If my question is the "wrong" question, then so was yours.

In both cases, the relevant question is how many people or fetuses actually DO die, and what is their relative value.

Answer your own question. What's the relative value of a healthy fetus just prior to delivery versus the convenience of the mother when there's no identifiable or suspected risks to the mother?

There IS no such creature as a risk free pregnancy or risk free child birth. There just is not. Otherwise healthy women die every day from pregnancy or childbirth related causes.

Likewise there is no such critter as becoming pregnant with zero consequences —whether the pregnancy continues until full term and results in the delivery of a healthy baby or not. Physically, aside from the observable permanent t changes to a woman’s body, she retains some cells, some DNA from every fetus her body carries, even if it is for a very short period of time. Even if the pregnancy ends in an early miscarriage.

A woman’s life changes when she becomes pregnant and those changes do not disappear when the pregnancy ends. In fact, every single day of a pregnancy presents a greater risk to the woman’s life and health.

Aside from physical health impacts, there are impacts to her mental and emotional health, her educational and career prospects, her prospects for finding and/or maintaining a long term romantic relationship with anyone, or to form business or professional relationships. Every relationship she has, including with any other children she might have is profoundly affected by any pregnancy, no matter how it ends.

Not every woman knows when she conceives. Women have found themselves giving birth after being told for years that pregnancy was not possible for them. Pregnancy signs are not always so clear cut or obvious. Sometimes a woman may continue to have periodic bleeding that appears to be and that she believes is a normal period. Some women have such irregular periods that the absence of a period is simply Tuesday. Some women gain very little weight and for some women, weight gain is masked by other physical conditions, including obesity. A former neighbor took her friend to the ER for what they both believed was appendicitis. By the time my neighbor had parked her car and rejoined her friend in the ER, the baby was crowning. Not all babies move around a lot in utero. Early signs of pregnancy can easily be missed. Circumstances change as well. A woman might lose her relationship, her job, her housing, and more. She may discover that she also has cancer and have to choose between undergoing treatment or continuing the pregnancy. Or her partner could be the one with cancer. Or she could discuss that there was a mistake in the due dates and that the fetus was the result of a sexual assault. Or would carry a serious deleterious medical abnormality that would be financially ( and physically and emotionally) ruinous to deal with.

I used to believe that abortion was wrong. And then I believed it was acceptable in only certain circumstances. And now I believe that I can only decide for myself what is and is not acceptable. Believe me, those parameters have changed over the course of my lifetime. I try very hard not to judge.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It's notable that very little of this debate centres on the question of whether those being killed are, or are not, people.

Actually, that's pretty much the entire basis of my position - at some point in the pregnancy it's not "just a fetus" it's a baby. And at that point, it's not terminating a lump of developing cells, it's killing a person.

I will very happily concede that in most cases of late term abortion, there's a very good and justifiable reason for killing that tiny little person.

Gosh, you love poisoning the well. In most cases, that "tiny little person" isn't surviving a day. Usually the risk to the mother is because of the fetus. It isn't like she has a burst appendix and they have to terminate the pregnancy.

If the mother's health or life is at risk in any way, mom wins out and it's a very good reason to kill the little person - consider it self defence.

So do you like traumatizing women or are you actually just that unaware of how your words sound?

The way you phrase it, it presents the woman as choosing her life over the baby, when in fact, the baby isn't going to live 72 hours because of a dreadfully tragic developmental problem. That isn't self defense. That is health care. Calling it "self-defense" is committing an act of misogynic defamation.

I can only hope you've never been so cruel to tell another woman who suffered the trauma of losing her child in the third trimester that you agreed with her decision to commit self-defense and terminate that little person.

 

[Shadowy Man]

“Oh tnoes, I’m not allowed to kill this healthy person who poses absolutely no risk to me legally, I’m going to have to resort to illegal means to muder them! And it’s all YOUR fault that I have to do illegal things to kill them, YOUR FAULT!”

Don't some women die in childbirth? Doesn't that mean that there's always a risk right up to the moment of (and in some cases a short time after) birth? So, I'm not sure what you mean by "healthy person who poses absolutely no risk to me".

This is irrelevant and disingenuous argument. Nothing is ever 100% risk free. It's ridiculous that somehow I need to add every possible word that pedants might conceive as an opportunity to get hung up on.

Well, you added the word to your argument for some reason. Maybe it was pedantic to point it out but it seems much of this discussion relies on pedantry (e.g., what is a person”) so it’s best to be clear here.

 

[Emily Lake]

If I may risk asking an ignorant question, what is the point of asking about personhood when that question has not been answered scientifically to any degree of certainty? Perhaps it comes down to a question of valuation, which is of course subjective. Some people value cats and dogs as persons, some don't. At some point in this thread a quote was cited that said, essentially, "A happy cat is worth more than an unhappy child" - A quote I found reprehensible quite honestly.

Do we know when a fetus becomes sentient, becomes conscious, when it starts to think, to dream, and, most importantly, when is it capable of suffering?

It's capable of suffering quite early on - fetuses experience and react to pain at around 15-ish weeks. They respond to music, to talking, etc.

For the rest... I don't know exactly. I'm not sure there's a bright line. What I do know is that a normal pregnancy is about 40 weeks, and that at 25 weeks a premie has an 80% survival rate in NICU... and a 30 week premie has a 90% survival rate without needing NICU. So pretty much, a baby born prematurely in the last trimester is very likely to survive. I have a whole lot of hesitation when it comes to terminating the life of an infant that would otherwise survive... that's where it crosses from being an abortion of a fetus to being killing a baby for me.

There are still many situations in which a termination is the most reasonable course of action, and I definitely don't want the mother to be endangered by a pregnancy. I just can't get behind having no limitations at all when it comes to a viable fetus that would survive if it were delivered prematurely at that stage.

 

[Emily Lake]

The problem right now is that the federal government never actually passed a law pertaining to abortion.
...
While we're at it... Congress (okay, the 2029 congress, probably not the current one) needs to pass an actual law protecting marriage as well, because gay marriage in the US is based on a similar terminological interpretation, albeit a bit inverted if I recall. I'm not a lawyer, so I might not have the details right, but at no point did anyway say "It's legal for gay people to get married" - there's no actual legal protection in place. Rather, SCOTUS rules that it's not the place of the government to define what marriage means, and therefore that it's not the role of any government - state or federal - to deny marriage to anyone on the basis of their sexuality. Given Dobbs, I'm inclined to think that's as potentially fragile as abortion, and I'd really like congress to make laws regarding both topics.

Good news! Same-sex marriage was enacted into federal law in 2022.

Respect for Marriage Act - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Oh good! I knew there was an interpretation before that, I missed actual law! Fantastic!

 

[Emily Lake]

Everyone ignored or didn't see my previous post, or thought it useless. Let me try again:

Well... not everyone ignored it, just some ones.

When a fetus becomes a person seems to have no certain scientific answer, as far as I can see. That brings it to the point of valuation. When is a fetus VALUED as a person? I would ask the mother first. When does she value her fetus as a person? From there, it's up to her. If she values the baby as a person at conception, then I go along with her. If she doesn't value the fetus as a person at conception, or any point along the way, then I still go along with her.

There was a quote, of some Pete Singer or someone, who said that a happy cat (was it?) Is more valuable than an unhappy child, or some such. Such a view is morally reprehensible. Anyway...

Testing boundaries: What if the mother doesn't value the fetus after it's born? What if the mother doesn't value the child at age five? I think realistically there needs to be some point where it's no longer entirely at the mother's discretion of whether or not she values the life in question.

 

[Emily Lake]

My thought is that the point a fetus becomes a person could be anywhere from 5 to 120 years of age, with a peak of probability around 24 and a lifetime likelihood of about ~50%.

Personhood is about the decision to acknowledge the existence of moral rules and to hold oneself to them.

This is a very strange, very personal, extremely unorthodox, and entirely bespoke concept of what "personhood" means. I do not accept your personal redefinition of it.

 

[WAB]

My thought is that the point a fetus becomes a person could be anywhere from 5 to 120 years of age, with a peak of probability around 24 and a lifetime likelihood of about ~50%.

Personhood is about the decision to acknowledge the existence of moral rules and to hold oneself to them.

This is a very strange, very personal, extremely unorthodox, and entirely bespoke concept of what "personhood" means. I do not accept your personal redefinition of it.

Me neither.

 

[Emily Lake]

Euthanizing a terminally ill patient

This is completely illegal in the US, which is pertinent since this is by far the closest analogue to a medically necessary abortion.

How are you interpreting bilby here? Because last I checked, assisted suicide is legal in several states. So are you assuming bilby means "Oh, you're terminally ill, we get to kill you now whether you want it or not"? Because I think that would be an absurd interpretation with no basis in any reasonable context, nor indicated from bilby's posting history like ever.

Part of the problem with Roe was that it removed the personhood of the fetus from discussion, altogether. The ruling wasn't that a woman's right to privacy overruled whatever might be considered the rights of the fetus, but that her right to privacy precluded government involvement in the decision. The personhood of the fetus itself was not negatively or positively addressed, it was left as a future problem for a future court to resolve. You see the result; in order to challenge Roe, the Court didn't have to overturn a position on abortion as such, only challenge the much more narrow basis of the ruling in Roe. The ruling was always vulnerable to challenge, and the evangelical wing sensed that immediately. Only the roll of the dice that is our Court appointment structure and the general incompetence of conservative lawyers prevented the reversal for as long as it took.

Which is why I want an actual federal law.

 

[Emily Lake]

don't see that as a problem, as personhood is completely irrelevant to the question of whether it's OK to kill somebody.

It's *central* to the question of whether it's okay to kill somebody. Because "somebody" implies "person". Outside of a few nutjobs, we really don't see questions about whether or not it was justifiable to kill a weed, or a fish, or a cow. Even when it comes to animals, it ends up coming down to 1) was the animal owned by someone else so it's a property violation, 2) was the animal in some way protected via legislation (endangered etc.), and 3) was the means of killing deemed unnecessarily cruel and tortuous?

 

[Emily Lake]

No, it's just a requirement. You can't be one unless you decide to be one.

This is retarded. I know, that's not PC, we're not supposed to use that term any more, but I seriously can't come up with a better word to express how completely devoid of reason and sense and basic cognitive ability this argument is.

If your definition were true... then it would mean that a person in a coma isn't a person, that their personhood is revoked. Hell, it would mean that when you're high as a kite on whatever enebriant you prefer, we can all revoke your personhood because you're cognitively unable to consent to being a person.

And just to put the cherry on top of the retardistry cupcake... it would also mean that nobody ever gets to be a person until they're asked about whether they want to be a person.

So yeah. This is nuts.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No, it's just a requirement. You can't be one unless you decide to be one.

This is retarded. I know, that's not PC, we're not supposed to use that term any more, but I seriously can't come up with a better word to express how completely devoid of reason and sense and basic cognitive ability this argument is.

Invalid, wrong, inane, incomprehensibly unviable?

Oddly enough, instead of going with any of those terms, you went with a word that was attempted to be phased out over 30 years ago, so as not to needlessly stigmatize (anymore than they already were) those tiny little persons who suffered from a chromosomal error which would doom them to limitations in intellect and physical abilities (as well as a host of other physical maladies), by referring to their developmental fault as an insult to someone else.

It is actually quite easy to disagree with someone, even strongly, without needing to use a slur.

 

[Emily Lake]

IMO, women who carry fetuses long term rarely, if ever, suddenly decide to abort for trivial reasons, as Emily claims. That their doctors would concur is even more unlikely. .

Rarely, yes. That's already been covered.

But you have literally been shown multiple cases where there was nothing medically wrong with either the mother or the fetus, and a doctor did concur with providing late term abortions.

There are always exceptions to the norm. That is not a compelling reason to legislate to prevent them.

Murder for payment is very much an exception to the norm for human behavioral interactions. I suppose you see no compelling reason to legislate to prevent that?

There are a LOT of laws on the books that address exceptions that are extremely rare. Like it being illegal in Alabama to drive while wearing a blindfold. In many cases, laws exist specifically because of exceptions - they exist because someone, somewhere, actually did something that nobody thought we needed a law for in the first place.

Aside: One of my close friends had to make a house rule of "you may not pee in the heater vent". It's definitely an exception, and in a perfect world that rule wouldn't have to be made... but after several weeks trying to figure out why her six-year-old son's room smelled so bad, apparently they needed a rule for that.

I think many in this thread understand that even though some people will choose options we don't like, it is not a good reason to prevent their choice, even when it means the death of someone else. After all, as bilby pointed out up thread, we let people kill for many reasons. Perhaps letting women get the healthcare they need for their bodies and their life is one of those reasons in this case.

I seriously don't get this insistence on ignoring actual cases in preference for feelings.

Do you see any irony there?

No, I see no irony. Especially given that I fully support women getting the health care they need for their bodies and their life. But given that I also fully support not killing people without extremely good reasons... I tend to view late pregnancy abortions when there's no medical justification as not being a good reason to kill that infant.

 

[Bomb#20]

You actually have to show your work.

Not really. I just have to provide an example showing that the dynamic in question, if extended as a principle, can lead to absurdity. Maybe try some drugs

Toe-may-toe, toe-mat-oh. Exactly which principle that leads to "an alien came to her in a dream" did you extend the "finally able to lay her hands on enough money" dynamic to?