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rocketronnie
Joined: 06 Sep 2006
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http://www.whwest.org.au/docs/abortion_law_reform.pdf
An interesting exposition of the history of abortion law reform in Victoria with some useful statistics regarding maternal mortality in Victoria over the years.
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"Only the weak believe that what they do in battle is who they are as men" - Thomas Marshall - "Ironclad". |
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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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| rocketronnie wrote: | This thread is all so much bullshit. This is not an elegant academic argument that can be solved logically no matter how much you lot abstract it. Abortion exists because there is a social need for it. Women get pregnant all the time, some want it, some don't. Some of those that don't, have abortions. For some women, pregnancy is an absolute disaster for a whole complex of reasons. It is the women's right to decide whether she bears a child or not. If David's twisted logic prevailed these women are forced to a pregnancy they neither wanted nor want to continue. So would the victory of Catholic ethics 101 end abortion if it prevailed? Of course it wouldn't - it would just force women into the hands of backyard abortionists just like existed prior to the legalisation of abortion. A legalisation campaign led in this country not so much by feminists but by doctors who were painfully aware of the mortality and complications rate that many women were subject to as a result of being forced into the hands of crude backyard abortionists.
The trouble with this elegant little debate is that its so divorced from the social reality of what your discussing. Whether one or the other can logically 'prove' one way or the other the rights or wrongs of it matters not at all. Abortion is legal because there is a clear social need for it and it is far greater social good that it is done safely and legally than not.
Abortion has always existed in history because there has always been a social need for it. For example, the highest rates of abortions in Australia was not since it has been legalised, despite what the anti-abortionists hysterically tell you, it was the period 1930-1938 when having another baby could spell disaster for families already under immense pressure due to the depression. As documented by pioneering doctors of the time the mortality and complications rate was very high.
Personally I'm bored witless with your essentially irrelevant debate. To me its just another signpost showing just how abstracted and irrelevant academia has become in this country. |
I don't think that's fair - we are indeed discussing the lives and futures of countless numbers of women and (for those who believe in some kind of right to life for a foetus at certain stages of development) other lives as well. It's a huge issue and I would suggest that we only have the laws we have now as a result of a considerable amount of rigorous academic, legal and scientific debate.
As for backyard abortions, I think there's a pretty clear chain of events here. The priority is that society has to decide whether there ought to be laws pertaining to certain phenomena. If society thinks that abortion is wrong, say, at certain stages, then "but it's just going to happen anyway" isn't a great argument for avoiding legislation. People do a lot of things that are illegal, quite possibly unsafely and at a greater risk to their own health and well-being than if the activity were legalised - yet, the laws exist because society deems their existence to be necessary. In any case, we live in a very different time now, where access to contraception, counselling, financial assistance and many other services would offer the kind of support that barely existed (if at all) in 1938 - which is not to say that 'backyard abortions' might not still occur, but certainly not to the extent that they once did.
In regards to your penultimate paragraph, there were, as you say, huge extenuating circumstances that explain this result, i.e. the great depression and all that it entailed. I'm not sure how relevant this actually is in the context of the debate, but that external factor means that you can't really use it as evidence for legalisation reducing the number of abortions. I don't have any data on this issue, however, and I can only deal in hypotheticals - but one would think that, logically, the illegalisation of abortions would have to have some impact on the number thereof. It would certainly require some bizarre steps in logic to argue the opposite.
I think it's particularly unfair to label my logical thought processes 'twisted', and also incorrect to claim that my arguments imply support for the hard-line anti-abortion stance. While abortion is something that doesn't sit well with me in a lot of ways, none of my arguments in this thread have been in support of the extreme pro-life stance - I have simply sought to present the differing views as basically as possible (and fairly, in my opinion), and then question elements of the hard-line pro-choice argument, particularly its framing as a primarily feminist issue, which I contest.
Oh, and as much as I appreciate the link to the paper above (which might shed a considerable amount of light on these issues - I will try to read or at least skim through when I get a chance), why is that piece of academia 'interesting' when our 'academic' debate here is 'irrelevant'? 
| pietillidie wrote: | | Yes, that's what I want to debate. But as I've said, we can never know by logic if the violation of forced pregnancy and motherhood exceeds the violation of terminating a human fetus. Hence we leave the decision to the subjectivity of the woman concerned. |
Why not? What understandings of the biology and stages of development of the foetus are we lacking? Why can we not ascertain exactly what a foetus is, exactly what place it has within the structure of human rights, and exactly which rights it is entitled to independent of its situation? If we can define those things, then we can define exactly what a termination of a foetus means. Don't get me wrong, we might well end up in exactly the same legal situation as we are now, or even a more hard-line pro-choice one - but the point is, there is no reason why we cannot and should not attempt to define these things. After all, if you give any credence to my earlier argument, it could very well be the crux of this issue.
| pietillidie wrote: | | An infant demonstrably has less rights than an adult, though it is granted the right to life. When is the last infant you've seen voting or taking its parents to court for disciplining it against its will? But what good does that does us when discussing a fetus? You seem to think the only difference is development, when once again the difference is actually personhood, not simply a matter of being of "less development" as if we're dealing with a fractal phenomenon. The difference between personhood and non-personhood is as great as the difference between embryo, zygote, fetus and child. That difference is not one of scale but one of substance. |
The rights to vote, drive, drink and give sexual consent are withheld from children because it is viewed that those rights require certain mental and biological capabilities. Yet, the right to life remains constant - that fundamental right remains the same from birth through childhood through adolescence to adulthood. The breaching of that fundamental right, as far as I am aware, results in an equal sentence regardless of age - in fact, it might well be the case that killing a child is considered more heinous a crime, not less. But getting back to your point, how do you define 'personhood', and when, in your opinion, does it start? If we are talking in terms of definable personality, capacity for independent thought or self-sufficiency, then we're going to have to move the bar far beyond birth and infancy, at least.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't come up with any definition of 'personhood' that is removed from stages of development and states of biological and intellectual complexity.
| pietillidie wrote: | | But it's impossible for us to pretend that this is so and move on. The fetus demonstrably commandeers the mother's body at all stages of the pregnancy. If you grant the fetus rights, you grant it personhood, and if you grant it personhood, you grant it special rights no other person has, namely the right to commandeer another human body. It's insoluble whichever way you go. |
If you grant it 'personhood', you grant it the same fundamental rights as any other human - rights over its own body (as well as existence). The acknowledgement of that fact does not reject the right of the mother over her own body, it simply acknowledges that the two rights are in direct conflict, and thus, need to be resolved - hence the abortion debate.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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rocketronnie
Joined: 06 Sep 2006
Location: Reservoir
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| David wrote: | I don't think that's fair RR - we are indeed discussing the lives and futures of countless numbers of women and (if you are someone who believes in some kind of right to life of a foetus at some stage of development) other lives as well. It's a huge issue and I would suggest that we only have the laws we have now as a result of a considerable amount of rigorous academic, legal and scientific debate.
As for backyard abortions, I think there's a pretty clear chain of events here. The priority is that society has to decide whether there ought to be laws pertaining to certain phenomena. If society thinks that abortion is wrong, say, at certain stages, then "but it's just going to happen anyway" isn't a great argument for avoiding legislation. People do a lot of things that are illegal, quite possibly unsafely and at a greater risk to their own health and well-being than if the activity were legalised - yet, the laws exist because society deems their existence to be necessary. In any case, we live in a very different time now, where access to contraception, counseling, and many other services would offer the kind of support that barely existed (if at all) in 1938 - which is not to say that 'backyard abortions' might not still occur, but certainly not to the extent that they once did.
In regards to your penultimate paragraph, there were, as you say, huge extenuating circumstances that explain this result, i.e. the great depression and all that it entailed. I'm not sure how relevant this actually is in the context of the debate, but that external factor means that you can't really use it as evidence for legalisation reducing the number of abortions. I don't have any data on this issue, however, and I can only deal in hypotheticals - but one would think that, logically, the illegalisation of abortions would have to have some impact on the number thereof. It would certainly require some bizarre steps in logic to argue the opposite.
I think it's particularly unfair to label my logical thought processes 'twisted', and also incorrect to claim that my arguments imply support for the hard-line anti-abortion stance. While abortion is something that doesn't sit well with me in a lot of ways, none of my arguments in this thread have been in support of the extreme pro-life stance - I have simply sought to present the differing views as basically as possible (and fairly, in my opinion), and then question elements of the hard-line pro-choice argument, particularly its framing as a primarily feminist issue, which I contest.
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You really have no idea do you? Abortion law reform in this country has nothing to do with these basic ethics 101 debates you and Pietilidie and others are (self) indulging in. This kind of debate is (and always has been) irrelevant to Abortion Law and women's choices to have one or not. Nothing you've written hasn't been said before by the Catholic Church's tame ethicists. The only difference between you and the hysterical placard waving loonies outside the abortion clinics is that you intellectualize the debate while they just scream out the bare basics of it.
As for your attempt to separate the issue from Feminism i find that laughable. It is an intrinsic Feminist issue in that it involves women's right to control their own reproductive biology, For most Feminists its a key issue. Your attempts to intellectualize this away betray a deep ignorance of Feminist Theory and its key precepts. Basically you can't twist Feminism to suit yourself.
You completely misunderstand my points about backyard and illegal abortionists. The point was that Abortion law reform took place, not because a philosopher could prove how many angels danced on the head of a pin, but because its illegality gave rise to a series of social evils such as higher rates of maternal mortality and complications, to law enforcement corruption and a lack of medical liability for negligence in abortions. Legalizing abortion and largely eradicating these evils was seen as a social good.
My point about the 1930's figures was that women seek abortions for pragmatic and practical reasons, not as a result of deciding that the pro-abortion arguments in ethics 101 were correct.
Your points attempting to minimise the impacts of re-criminalizing abortion are just glib. Contraception will stop some unwanted pregnancies for sure but 'pro-life' counseling has always been a religious based intervention pushing guilt trips on often vulnerable women in crisis during an unwanted pregnancy.
Whilst maternal mortality rates may never reach 1930's and 1940's levels the phenomena will certainly rise again. Access to abortions pre-criminalization was always class based and this is likely to re-occur. Wealthy women in the pre-legalisation days accessed private gyno clinics, middle class women certain doctors while the poor were forced to access backyard abortionist because thats all they could afford (remember if its re-criminalized there will be no Medicare subsidy making abortions accessible). There is little to suggest that these phenomena will not occur again. And if they do, they will be followed closely by law enforcement corruption feeding off illegal abortionists and a lack of recourse to the law for any medical negligence occurring as a result of medical incompetence.
Your argument for the re-criminalization of abortion skates over another important point. If abortion was re-criminalized, then you have to philosophically justify the social evils that will inevitably arise from that act. Or don't they matter?
Recriminalising abortion will not stop them occurring. Abortions have always occurred because women need them and access them with scant regard to the law and threat of punishment or reified philosophical argument, and often at some risk. I consider your arguments twisted because they are so reified that they are totally divorced from any empathy for the women in a very difficult position. In fact if your arguments were ever adopted (and we all know they never will) they would force women into even more difficult situations and into criminality also as they seek out illegal abortionists to satisfy their needs. Your lack of empathy is typical of anti-abortion proponents and like I said earlier, I consider your position and that of the loons only a difference of degree.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Davidson
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"Only the weak believe that what they do in battle is who they are as men" - Thomas Marshall - "Ironclad". |
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rocketronnie
Joined: 06 Sep 2006
Location: Reservoir
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| David wrote: | Oh, and as much as I appreciate the link to the paper above (which might shed a considerable amount of light on these issues - I will try to read or at least skim through when I get a chance), why is that piece of academia 'interesting' when our 'academic' debate here is 'irrelevant'?
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Its interesting and relevant because its well grounded in the historical facts of the matter - whilst your debate is abstracted from the realities of the matter, is little more than cold clever intellectual debate, and largely irrelevant as a result.
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"Only the weak believe that what they do in battle is who they are as men" - Thomas Marshall - "Ironclad". |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| David wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | Yes, that's what I want to debate. But as I've said, we can never know by logic if the violation of forced pregnancy and motherhood exceeds the violation of terminating a human fetus. Hence we leave the decision to the subjectivity of the woman concerned. |
Why not? What understandings of the biology and stages of development of the foetus are we lacking? Why can we not ascertain exactly what a foetus is, exactly what place it has within the structure of human rights, and exactly which rights it is entitled to independent of its situation? If we can define those things, then we can define exactly what a termination of a foetus means. Don't get me wrong, we might well end up in exactly the same legal situation as we are now, or even a more hard-line pro-choice one - but the point is, there is no reason why we cannot and should not attempt to define these things. After all, if you give any credence to my earlier argument, it could very well be the crux of this issue. |
As is integral to my position, it's not a problem of a lack of technical knowledge. "Personhood" is not out there floating about in the Platonic universe; it's either negotiated with or on behalf of an entity. The problem is both the entity and the term personhood are vague (a very good indicator of an ontological problem). Thus you can never know if you're terminating a person or not. That has to be negotiated.
| pietillidie wrote: | | An infant demonstrably has less rights than an adult, though it is granted the right to life. When is the last infant you've seen voting or taking its parents to court for disciplining it against its will? But what good does that does us when discussing a fetus? You seem to think the only difference is development, when once again the difference is actually personhood, not simply a matter of being of "less development" as if we're dealing with a fractal phenomenon. The difference between personhood and non-personhood is as great as the difference between embryo, zygote, fetus and child. That difference is not one of scale but one of substance. |
The rights to vote, drive, drink and give sexual consent are withheld from children because it is viewed that those rights require certain mental and biological capabilities. Yet, the right to life remains constant - that fundamental right remains the same from birth through childhood through adolescence to adulthood. The breaching of that fundamental right, as far as I am aware, results in an equal sentence regardless of age - in fact, it might well be the case that killing a child is considered more heinous a crime, not less.
But even this is very easy to deconstruct because thus far we've just accepted your definition of "the right to life" without actually analysing it. Does the right to life entail the requirement to sustain life? According to the state there is a giant difference between killing and sustaining life, hence we allow parents to forfeit their parenthood. So is a fetus being killed or simply no longer sustained? And if fetuses and children are ontologically identical as you claim, then it can be argued the state ought to have provisions for holding fetuses in care when mothers can't cope with them. But of course neither the state nor anyone sees a fetus and a child as identical. In fact, you'd also have to argue the state has to start taking fetuses away from women who are physically and psychologically unfit to hold them.
But getting back to your point, how do you define 'personhood', and when, in your opinion, does it start? If we are talking in terms of definable personality, capacity for independent thought or self-sufficiency, then we're going to have to move the bar far beyond birth and infancy, at least.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't come up with any definition of 'personhood' that is removed from stages of development and states of biological and intellectual complexity.
It's an extremely complex and subjective notion, but it is one we depend on. It involves biology and intellect, but only insofar as they enable the forming of relationships. This is because identity is developed in dialectic with the world. Interestingly, the movie Avatar has a bit of a go at at it; the Navi are considered people, but it takes intelligence (calculation), knowledge (content), experience (shared subjectivity), corporeality (shared morphology/physiology/ontology) and culture (shared world view; note the initiation rite, too) to bridge the gap. This aspect of the movie seems to be taken from debates in the field of AI. And those five aspects do arguably define full personhood. Presumably the reason you've never had a relationship with a fetus is because a fetus lacks most of those to very significant extents.
(Interestingly, at this point we could bring Stui's personal experience into the mix: by holding a stillborn child in his hands he presumably has realised more of the criteria than if he hadn't have done so, hence more of a relationship, hence more personhood, hence less ambiguity in his mind - Stui?).
Take one of the simplest elements of personhood that distinguishes us from animals and robots, namely choice. I doubt a fetus can check that one off the list to any degree. Choice, autonomy, the ability to plan the future - these have all been suggested as fundamental to full personhood.
This would also explain why it is naturally far more traumatic for a woman to decide to terminate than for her partner; she can detect the personhood more easily because she can check off more of the personhood boxes. But that still doesn't get you to full personhood; it only means that women are naturally less likely to make the decision unless it is genuine. In fact, it doesn't take much to imagine that if abortion favoured men, women would be forced into abortion against their will, and in fact have been throughout history. This would have me arguing against abortion and is another reason why I think you're putting your weight on the wrong side of this debate (in addition to my specific objections and all the other health and social problems others have outlined).
| pietillidie wrote: | | But it's impossible for us to pretend that this is so and move on. The fetus demonstrably commandeers the mother's body at all stages of the pregnancy. If you grant the fetus rights, you grant it personhood, and if you grant it personhood, you grant it special rights no other person has, namely the right to commandeer another human body. It's insoluble whichever way you go. |
If you grant it 'personhood', you grant it the same fundamental rights as any other human - rights over its own body (as well as existence). The acknowledgement of that fact does not reject the right of the mother over her own body, it simply acknowledges that the two rights are in direct conflict, and thus, need to be resolved - hence the abortion debate.[/quote]
That's what I've been saying. But you think you can resolve it and I think you can't because you can't know what you're trading off. I only need ambiguity and subjectivity for my position; you've got a far heavier burden to bear than me.
And here's where I think people confuse engineering with understanding. In business or many of the sciences we can ignore ontological problems and simply bludgeon things into line through trial and error, theorising as we go. But by taking an objectivist (non-constructivist) stance, once you hold people to the same degree of inconsistency as you yourself withstand, you then actually have the burden of proving something is true, meaning ontologically true. And this is an impossible standard to meet and the reason why morality reflects power, not truth. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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Now I have to defend David from RR even though I disagree with David  I agree with you RR these debates are a wank in the end, but it is the Vic Park Tavern after all! David's only arguing a POV, as I am.
David, one point of agreement with RR is that this debate cannot be understood outside women's history and feminism. Feminism (and by extension cultural and queer theory) brought academics and Neanderthals like me kicking and screaming from the dark ages and is probably the pre-eminent intellectual and social movement of the last 40 years (in our culture).
And the core focus of feminist analysis has been to document and demonstrate the pervasive suppression of subjectivity through false discourse and false "rationality". Or in RR's terms, disregard for the actual experience and needs of women. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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Does anyone actually get any sleep here? Look at the posting times! 
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
Last edited by David on Sun Jan 31, 2010 2:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| pietillidie wrote: | | As is integral to my position, it's not a problem of a lack of technical knowledge. "Personhood" is not out there floating about in the Platonic universe; it's either negotiated with or on behalf of an entity. The problem is both the entity and the term personhood are vague (a very good indicator of an ontological problem). Thus you can never know if you're terminating a person or not. That has to be negotiated. |
Is the personhood of an adult, or a young child, vague? If so, should homicide laws reflect this vagueness?
| pietillidie wrote: | | But even this is very easy to deconstruct because thus far we've just accepted your definition of "the right to life" without actually analysing it. Does the right to life entail the requirement to sustain life? According to the state there is a giant difference between killing and sustaining life, hence we allow parents to forfeit their parenthood. So is a fetus being killed or simply no longer sustained? And if fetuses and children are ontologically identical as you claim, then it can be argued the state ought to have provisions for holding fetuses in care when mothers can't cope with them. But of course neither the state nor anyone sees a fetus and a child as identical. In fact, you'd also have to argue the state has to start taking fetuses away from women who are physically and psychologically unfit to hold them. |
This is a difficult question to answer - obviously technology might be developed down the track that might make this possible (i.e. the relinquishing of the foetus without killing it). At the moment, it's a more problematic issue and I agree that it opens up grey areas in what a "right to life" implies.
| pietillidie wrote: | It's an extremely complex and subjective notion, but it is one we depend on. It involves biology and intellect, but only insofar as they enable the forming of relationships. This is because identity is developed in dialectic with the world. Interestingly, the movie Avatar has a bit of a go at at it; the Navi are considered people, but it takes intelligence (calculation), knowledge (content), experience (shared subjectivity), corporeality (shared morphology/physiology/ontology) and culture (shared world view; note the initiation rite, too) to bridge the gap. This aspect of the movie seems to be taken from debates in the field of AI. And those five aspects do arguably define full personhood. Presumably the reason you've never had a relationship with a fetus is because a fetus lacks most of those to very significant extents.
Take one of the simplest elements of personhood that distinguishes us from animals and robots, namely choice. I doubt a fetus can check that one off the list to any degree. Choice, autonomy, the ability to plan the future - these have all been suggested as fundamental to full personhood. |
I've never had a relationship with a 1 year-old old baby, either, and that entity too lacks most of those elements and abilities. Sorry to keep bringing up this analogy, but it seems that a lot of your arguments apply to (at least, very) young children as well as they do to foetuses. How do your theories of personhood apply to young children, and do you view them as slightly ambiguous beings as well?
| pietillidie wrote: | | In fact, it doesn't take much to imagine that if abortion favoured men, women would be forced into abortion against their will, and in fact have been throughout history. This would have me arguing against abortion and is another reason why I think you're putting your weight on the wrong side of this debate (in addition to my specific objections and all the other health and social problems others have outlined). |
Of course, as you say, this has happened throughout history, and it still happens today (even if the male influence may be at times more insidious and less physical - but I'm sure that that happens, too). Allowing abortion allows many things like this to take place - it may be in the minority of instances, but does the existence of this phenomenon not make you at least question a pure pro-choice philosophy, especially in regards to your second sentence above?
| pietillidie wrote: | | And here's where I think people confuse engineering with understanding. In business or many of the sciences we can ignore ontological problems and simply bludgeon things into line through trial and error, theorising as we go. But by taking an objectivist (non-constructivist) stance, once you hold people to the same degree of inconsistency as you yourself withstand, you then actually have the burden of proving something is true, meaning ontologically true. And this is an impossible standard to meet and the reason why morality reflects power, not truth. |
I think we should still strive for a maximum of logical consistency where possible. It may be a goal that can never be reached, but I certainly think that it's something we should aspire to.
It's certainly not because of an over-application of logic that we have fundies harrassing people outside abortion clinics - actually, it's my belief that a purely rational discourse may even act as some kind of antidote to that kind of thing.
| rocketronnie wrote: | | The only difference between you and the hysterical placard waving loonies outside the abortion clinics is that you intellectualize the debate while they just scream out the bare basics of it. |
The only difference between anyone who takes an intellectual stance and the inevitable placard-waving loonies or people who support ideas without properly understanding them is the same, and no topic of intellectual debate is free of it. Are you saying that Peter Singer, for example, is no better than the PETA lunatics (who are in many ways comparable to hysterical pro-lifers)? Every debate has its extremists - the important point is that some do choose to consider and debate the issues.
| rocketronnie wrote: | | As for your attempt to separate the issue from Feminism i find that laughable. It is an intrinsic Feminist issue in that it involves women's right to control their own reproductive biology, For most Feminists its a key issue. Your attempts to intellectualize this away betray a deep ignorance of Feminist Theory and its key precepts. Basically you can't twist Feminism to suit yourself. |
I have never disputed this point - I am well aware of how central this debate has been to the feminist movement over the years, and also of why this was the case. My argument is that the feminist framing of this debate may need to be reconsidered in 2010. Society has changed, and it is possible that the parameters of the debate need to be adjusted. In other words, now that women's rights as a whole have been achieved in many areas, can we now look at the abortion debate through a different, more relevant prism?
| rocketronnie wrote: | | Your points attempting to minimise the impacts of re-criminalizing abortion are just glib. Contraception will stop some unwanted pregnancies for sure but 'pro-life' counseling has always been a religious based intervention pushing guilt trips on often vulnerable women in crisis during an unwanted pregnancy. |
How is that relevant? Obviously the kind of counselling I would be advocating in this theoretical situation would have no religious element, would not incorporate any kind of moral judgementalism and would simply be about informing the woman of her options (e.g. adoption) while simultaneously offering substantial welfare benefits for women who found themselves in this situation. If abortion (or some forms of abortion) were to be made a criminal offence (and keep in mind that this is a hypothetical, I am in no way necessarily advocating such an outcome), I would be the first to push for generous financial concessions and every structural support possible for women with unwanted pregnancies.
| rocketronnie wrote: | | Whilst maternal mortality rates may never reach 1930's and 1940's levels the phenomena will certainly rise again. Access to abortions pre-criminalization was always class based and this is likely to re-occur. Wealthy women in the pre-legalisation days accessed private gyno clinics, middle class women certain doctors while the poor were forced to access backyard abortionist because thats all they could afford (remember if its re-criminalized there will be no Medicare subsidy making abortions accessible). There is little to suggest that these phenomena will not occur again. And if they do, they will be followed closely by law enforcement corruption feeding off illegal abortionists and a lack of recourse to the law for any medical negligence occurring as a result of medical incompetence. |
Then it would be the responsibility of any government that passed such a law to ensure that this was not the case, and that these results could be prevented before such a law was enacted.
| rocketronnie wrote: | | Your argument for the re-criminalization of abortion skates over another important point. If abortion was re-criminalized, then you have to philosophically justify the social evils that will inevitably arise from that act. Or don't they matter? |
Sorry, my argument for what? Where have I taken that stance? I have simply presented pro-life arguments at times as illustrations, much as I have done with arguments from the other side. I'm far from confident enough in my own assumptions to give any kind of support to re-criminalisation - at the moment, I'm just trying to explore aspects of the debate, particularly those that appear (to me) to be logically flawed.
| rocketronnie wrote: | | Your lack of empathy is typical of anti-abortion proponents and like I said earlier, I consider your position and that of the loons only a difference of degree. |
Even leaving my response above out of this, how can you claim that my arguments portray a lack of empathy? I can only conclude that you misunderstand my position entirely.
It's also worth noting that there is considerable little concern for the fates of even viable, late-term foetuses among pro-choice advocates in this thread.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange
Last edited by David on Sun Jan 31, 2010 5:44 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Proud Pies 
Joined: 22 Feb 2003
Location: Knox-ish
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| 5150 wrote: | Proud Pies telling me what to do with my erections. (sorry PP - used only as an example!)  |
I'm not even going there  
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Proud Pies
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| stui magpie wrote: | OK, fair enough. ta for that. I still don't think the question is stupid hence let me pose a different situation to you.
Woman is in a relationship, gets pregnant, wants to keep the baby.
At 30 weeks the woman finds out her partner has been cheating on her, breaks the relationship off and decides she no longer wants to proceed with the pregnancy.
Does she have the right to terminate the pregnancy? |
sorry, i've been away for a few days.
Stui, I can't answer that question. According to the law, she doesn't have that right unless there is actual harm to her mental or physical health and that's a whole other issue.
I haven't been in that situation, so i couldn't give an opinion on it, i don't know anyone that's been in that situation, so i couldn't give an opinion on it.
Stui, although I keep saying, my body = my choice; woman's body = woman's choice, it's not as simple as that.
There are many factors to take into account, not least are the hormonal changes. The decision is not one that is generally taken lightly....either to terminate or to continue with the pregnancy.
It's not like.......oh shit, my wisdom teeth are coming through and i don't want them so i'll go get rid of them.
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Jacqui © Proud Pies 2003 and beyond |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Proud Pies wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | OK, fair enough. ta for that. I still don't think the question is stupid hence let me pose a different situation to you.
Woman is in a relationship, gets pregnant, wants to keep the baby.
At 30 weeks the woman finds out her partner has been cheating on her, breaks the relationship off and decides she no longer wants to proceed with the pregnancy.
Does she have the right to terminate the pregnancy? |
sorry, i've been away for a few days.
Stui, I can't answer that question. According to the law, she doesn't have that right unless there is actual harm to her mental or physical health and that's a whole other issue.
I haven't been in that situation, so i couldn't give an opinion on it, i don't know anyone that's been in that situation, so i couldn't give an opinion on it.
Stui, although I keep saying, my body = my choice; woman's body = woman's choice, it's not as simple as that.
There are many factors to take into account, not least are the hormonal changes. The decision is not one that is generally taken lightly....either to terminate or to continue with the pregnancy.
It's not like.......oh shit, my wisdom teeth are coming through and i don't want them so i'll go get rid of them. |
Cheers Jac, that's all you needed to say for mine. 
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| David wrote: | | I've never had a relationship with a 1 year-old old baby, either, and that entity too lacks most of those elements and abilities. Sorry to keep bringing up this analogy, but it seems that a lot of your arguments apply to (at least, very) young children as well as they do to foetuses. How do your theories of personhood apply to young children, and do you view them as slightly ambiguous beings as well? |
And if you don't accept that you have to accept that the argument going the other way applies to zygotes, human tissue and even robots. Every sperm is sacred, don't forget! And I can't be bothered arguing about the components of life and components of homo sapiens and when a whole identity is reached - it's clearly the same identity conundrum exported to a new location.
(BTW, of course you can have a relationship with a one-year old; people even bond with teddy bears or their car; again, it's the nature and extent of that relationship and the individual's subjective experience thereof that matters).
The thing which is plainly clear to me is that this whole debate as you construct it is simply a modernist game. There is no check mate because there is no agreed definition of the entities under discussion. Surely you've noticed by now that it doesn't matter which way you argue you are going to be inconsistent. And if you're going to have your way based on such inconsistency, you're going to have to enforce it by violence of some kind against someone else whose subjective determination differs from yours.
So you've got two choices. You can do a Hitchens and mistake all this to and fro as evidence that you've removed the ambiguity and your position is objective, or you can bite the bullet and question your conception of the nature of the universe.
Again, poststructuralist feminism arose as a reaction to modernist essentialism claiming it had intellectual check mate when in fact all it had was power to force compliance. The very clear arguments demonstrating the inconsistency of its logic had simply been dismissed. Hence to a feminist this whole modernist game is just another dick-waving contest dressed up as academics.
And as I say, if we were facing an engineering problem I wouldn't care so much; what works works and the reasons why are irrelevant even if it would be useful to know. But here we're imposing a moral position on others so we actually have to be right, or alternately concede to subjectivity. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Or we can accept the fact that no matter how much data we gather, how many scientific viewpoints we gather, there is no way to win this argument.
You can't come to an academic conclusion and claim a "win".
It's like arguing about religion or politics, facts just get in the way of opinion.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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| pietillidie wrote: | | David wrote: | | I've never had a relationship with a 1 year-old old baby, either, and that entity too lacks most of those elements and abilities. Sorry to keep bringing up this analogy, but it seems that a lot of your arguments apply to (at least, very) young children as well as they do to foetuses. How do your theories of personhood apply to young children, and do you view them as slightly ambiguous beings as well? |
And if you don't accept that you have to accept that the argument going the other way applies to zygotes, human tissue and even robots. Every sperm is sacred, don't forget! And I can't be bothered arguing about the components of life and components of homo sapiens and when a whole identity is reached - it's clearly the same identity conundrum exported to a new location.
(BTW, of course you can have a relationship with a one-year old; people even bond with teddy bears or their car; again, it's the nature and extent of that relationship and the individual's subjective experience thereof that matters).
The thing which is plainly clear to me is that this whole debate as you construct it is simply a modernist game. There is no check mate because there is no agreed definition of the entities under discussion. Surely you've noticed by now that it doesn't matter which way you argue you are going to be inconsistent. And if you're going to have your way based on such inconsistency, you're going to have to enforce it by violence of some kind against someone else whose subjective determination differs from yours.
So you've got two choices. You can do a Hitchens and mistake all this to and fro as evidence that you've removed the ambiguity and your position is objective, or you can bite the bullet and question your conception of the nature of the universe.
Again, poststructuralist feminism arose as a reaction to modernist essentialism claiming it had intellectual check mate when in fact all it had was power to force compliance. The very clear arguments demonstrating the inconsistency of its logic had simply been dismissed. Hence to a feminist this whole modernist game is just another dick-waving contest dressed up as academics.
And as I say, if we were facing an engineering problem I wouldn't care so much; what works works and the reasons why are irrelevant even if it would be useful to know. But here we're imposing a moral position on others so we actually have to be right, or alternately concede to subjectivity. |
Fair enough.
I think it's safe to say that the debate is spent at this stage (or close to). Frankly, if I could come to terms with this issue myself and come up with a stance that I was totally comfortable with (and after all, it might be something I have to vote on some day... for better or for worse, societal opinions on matters change over time, and I would want to make sure I was backing the right side if this were to ever come up), then I would feel that I could lay it to rest and never so much as mention the word 'abortion' again.
I suppose for all this theoretical debate, the fact remains that if a girlfriend of mine became pregnant and decided to terminate the pregnancy, I would have no choice but to respect her decision and support her in it. The law allows it, and I am in no position to force my own beliefs onto another person. Simultaneously, it is also probably a decision that would upset me greatly, and I don't think any amount of debate or hypotheticals will ever change that fact. Sometimes rationality and logic can only go so far.
I still believe that somewhere out there, amongst all the emotion, anger and theorising, there is a rational solution to this debate - but that has more to do with my long-held, perhaps unsupportable belief that there is a rational solution to every argument and every question, a fact which even if true does not really necessarily imply that we will ever reach that solution. Perhaps, indeed, Western societies did 40-odd years ago when they legalised abortion up to a certain stage, and we are carrying on an argument that no longer needs to be fought.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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And one thing I have discovered is that abortion debates prevent sleep. 3 in the morning last night... ridiculous. Damn foetuses.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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