Abortion Discussion, Part Trois

Absolam

oscarBravo wrote: »

Yes. You're talking about termination of the foetus. You.
The rest of us are talking about the right of a woman to decide whether or not to be pregnant, which is the fundamental right at question here.

Well, no, quite a few of us are talking about the right of a person to live. Which is actually the fundamental right at question here; it's the right that exists in Ireland which some posters would like to remove in favour of creating a right of a woman to decide whether or not to be pregnant.

kaftan

oscarBravo wrote: »

It's a valid topic, but it's only the valid topic if the goal is to divert attention from the key topic, which is a woman's right to bodily integrity.

Are there any limitations on the right to bodily integrity? If a foetus is around the viability stage of development, say 22 weeks for argument, does the right to bodily integrity supercede that of the state to confer rights on a defenseless developing human being who has passed the stage of viability? It's a valid question by those who are morally opposed to abortion. As an atheist I do not find the bodily integrity argument that persuasive, however I support a woman's choice to terminate a pregnancy before viability and potential self awareness is established. The latter is a tough call so in legal terms I would err on the side of caution, say 16 weeks.

volchitsa

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Still avoiding the question. You know full well I'm talking about termination of the foetus (the clue is in the bit where I said "terminate the foetus"). Why are you deliberately trying to divert the conversation to termination of the pregnancy without the destruction of the foetus?

Because you can't terminate a fetus, you kill it. The words "abort" and "terminate" refer to procedures, not to people. The alert for a plane that has to suddenly terminate a commenced landing is exactly that "Abort, abort" - they don't intend to kill the passengers, do they?

You are using a word that appplies to the pregnancy and insisting that it applies to the fetus, but it doesnt, not unless you consider a fetus as a procedure and not a person. Which would be a strong pro-choice position, surely?

Absolam

volchitsa wrote: »

Because you can't terminate a fetus, you kill it. The words "abort" and "terminate" refer to procedures, not to people. The alert for a plane that has to suddenly terminate a commenced landing is exactly that "Abort, abort" - they don't intend to kill the passengers, do they?
You are using a word that appplies to the pregnancy and insisting that it applies to the fetus, but it doesnt, not unless you consider a fetus as a procedure and not a person. Which would be a strong pro-choice position, surely?

You could certainly terminate the life of a foetus though. You can abort the existence of a foetus. I think it's fair to say that whilst both Dan_Solo and oscarBravo are happy to use a grammatically poor term, their intended meaning probably isn't terribly obscured give their context? Had they stuck with simply 'termination' as some posters do, there might well be room for misinterpretation. Indeed, some (pro-choice) posters feel that to use the word termination and not cause the death of the foetus is 'sneaky'.
But termination of the foetus can't really be taken to mean the termination of anything other than the (life of the) foetus, even if you're deliberately trying to misunderstand, surely?

Shrap

kaftan wrote: »

Are there any limitations on the right to bodily integrity? ....................The latter is a tough call so in legal terms I would err on the side of caution, say 16 weeks.

I am interested in how you support a woman's choice to terminate a pregnancy before viability and potential self awareness is established, but not a woman's choice to be able to take a priority based decision on whether she and any existing family could go through with a pregnancy resulting in a baby with a severe disability, for example, which as you know only becomes clear at around 20 weeks.

Do you think there are many women who turn around after 16 weeks of a pregnancy and just decide it's not for them? (Rhetorical question really, not an invite for the usual suspects to come up with a "woman who's cat could no longer sit comfortably on her lap so she had an abortion at 16 weeks" bullsh1t story...). I'm getting the impression that you think the bodily integrity argument is supported by women who actually want abortions. Nobody wants an abortion. Plenty of women need them though and that's what the bodily integrity argument is about. Nobody can decide for that woman because they're not walking in her shoes.

Dan_Solo

volchitsa wrote: »

Because you can't terminate a fetus, you kill it. The words "abort" and "terminate" refer to procedures, not to people. The alert for a plane that has to suddenly terminate a commenced landing is exactly that "Abort, abort" - they don't intend to kill the passengers, do they?

You are using a word that appplies to the pregnancy and insisting that it applies to the fetus, but it doesnt, not unless you consider a fetus as a procedure and not a person. Which would be a strong pro-choice position, surely?

Yet another lame attempt at avoiding the question, which you are now falsely and belatedly claiming is confusing for you.
Have you ever seen The Terminator? It about this robot that aborts people. And a quick Google of "terminate foetus" shows that the phrase is in wide usage and confuses nobody else.
Want to try another angle?

Shrap

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Yet another lame attempt at avoiding the question, which you are now falsely and belatedly claiming is confusing for you.
Have you ever seen The Terminator? It about this robot that aborts people. And a quick Google of "terminate foetus" shows that the phrase is in wide usage and confuses nobody else.
Want to try another angle?

Why on earth are you all arguing this point? This ongoing pedantry is what makes the thread a complete waste of time and an exercise in navel gazing these days. Used to be a good discussion thread, now it's a feckin car crash.

The foetus gets killed during an abortion/termination. Anyone got any questions on that? Bloody hope not. It's a pretty straight forward statement.

Dan_Solo

oscarBravo wrote: »

Yes. You're talking about termination of the foetus. You.

The rest of us are talking about the right of a woman to decide whether or not to be pregnant, which is the fundamental right at question here.

Ah yes, this is the guy who now claims the phrase "terminate the foetus" cannot possibly exist and has him too bamboozled to answer any question about it. Odd that he had no problem understanding it, and saying it was irrelevant, just a few hours ago, but there you go.

Absolam

Shrap wrote: »

Nobody wants an abortion. Plenty of women need them though and that's what the bodily integrity argument is about. Nobody can decide for that woman because they're not walking in her shoes.

I don't think that's necessarily true though; there may be a point where you decide a 'want' is sufficiently compelling to be considered a 'need', but I thinks that may be arbitrary?
A woman may want an abortion so she can have the freedom to go to college next year; some might consider that a 'need', some might not.
A woman may want an abortion so she can look good in a bikini on holidays in four months time; maybe less would consider that a need, but some would.
My mother (and probably a buddha somewhere along the way) used to say 'You're not going to die without it, so you don't need it', which might be the most extreme end of defining need; certainly no one could deny that a woman dying because her pregnancy is killing her needs an abortion (though some might argue that needing it doesn't mean she should have it).
So 'need' probably falls somewhere in between, depending on your point of view.
And we can decide for a woman; we're capable of empathising both with her and her yet to be born child. Part of the point of living in a society is that we make collective decisions about how things should be done. Life and death decisions are proverbially important decisions, so it seems to me entirely appropriate that they reside with society as a whole.

Shrap wrote: »

The foetus gets killed during an abortion/termination. Anyone got any questions on that? Bloody hope not. It's a pretty straight forward statement.

You'd imagine, but apparently when a foetus doesn't get killed in the course of a termination some posters feel that's not playing by the rules. That would be a termination of pregnancy, for the purposes of avoiding misunderstandings.

Shrap

Absolam, this is a bit off topic but I note that you have thanked my comment on pedantry and then followed up with a reply, that I reckon is to me but as I don't engage in pedantry any longer (and I'm imagining that you have continued to belabor the point), I won't be adding to my very simple statement above.

Correct me someone else please if I'm wrong on Absolam's comment.......

Dan_Solo

Shrap wrote: »

Why on earth are you all arguing this point?

I'm arguing it because he's refusing to admit he understands a commonly used phrase that he has already admitted understanding. It's a fairly transparent attempt at evasion. It'd be more dignified to just say "I don't want to answer" at this stage.
Anyway, you're actually wrong in that the foetus isn't necessarily killed during an abortion of the pregnancy, even though in common usage just about everywhere outside a medical dictionary this is the commonly accepted meaning. However it most certainly is in the termination of the foetus, which is exactly what I said which it is now being claimed is an incomprehensible phrase to evade the question.

Dan_Solo

Shrap wrote: »

Absolam, this is a bit off topic but I note that you have thanked my comment on pedantry and then followed up with a reply, that I reckon is to me but as I don't engage in pedantry any longer (and I'm imagining that you have continued to belabor the point), I won't be adding to my very simple statement above.

Correct me someone else please if I'm wrong on Absolam's comment.......

It isn't pedantry exactly because the phrases you are using are ambiguous. Depending on whether people think you are "onside" in this thread, people will variously try to pull you up on abortion of pregnancy, termination of foetus etc even when they know well what everybody means. I think the whole point is to shut down any debate at all about the foetus. You're only allowed talk about the pregnancy you see, which makes the terminate the foetus (OK "kill the foetus" for those who refuse to understand that) one minute before delivery question easy to evade.

Dan_Solo

Shrap wrote: »

Do you think there are many women who turn around after 16 weeks of a pregnancy and just decide it's not for them?

Why does it matter whether it's "many" or not? We don't need legislation to cover things that won't happen very often, is that your point?

Shrap

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Why does it matter whether it's "many" or not? We don't need legislation to cover things that won't happen very often, is that your point?

No, that's not my point. I think we should have legislation to determine criteria under which abortion could be carried out after a certain stage of development.

My point was that you and others talk about late term abortions as if they are generally on a whim, whereas the opposite is quite clearly the case and they are almost all due to serious health reasons. You've been shown that before in statistical terms.

Dan_Solo

Shrap wrote: »

No, that's not my point. I think we should have legislation to determine criteria under which abortion could be carried out after a certain stage of development.

My point was that you and others talk about late term abortions as if they are generally on a whim, whereas the opposite is quite clearly the case and they are almost all due to serious health reasons. You've been shown that before in statistical terms.

Well that's because I agree with termination of the foetus for serious health reasons. Or indeed entirely electively before the foetus reaches the stage where I consider it to be a human.
All I'm trying to do (and failing miserably, yes) is to get anybody to answer the question as to whether killing the foetus one minute before it's due to be delivered is morally acceptable to them.
If it is, then what's so fundamentally different about killing it after it's delivered?
If it isn't, then at what stage of development did it actually become unacceptable to electively kill the foetus?

Dan_Solo

Shrap wrote: »

The foetus gets killed during an abortion/termination. Anyone got any questions on that? Bloody hope not. It's a pretty straight forward statement.

volchitsa, could you explain please why you are thanking this post when it says pretty much the exact opposite of what you said here?

volchitsa wrote:

Because you can't terminate a fetus, you kill it.

volchitsa

Dan_Solo wrote: »

volchitsa, could you explain please why you are thanking this post when it says pretty much the exact opposite of what you said here?

No it doesn't, it says the same thing.

oscarBravo

Dan_Solo wrote: »

...at what stage of development did it actually become unacceptable to electively kill the foetus?

This is the rhetorical rabbit hole I'm talking about. You doggedly insist on framing the debate solely in terms of "killing the foetus", and badger people for whom that's not what the debate is about.

It's a deeply dishonest debating tactic. You can keep shouting about how annoying it is that people won't join you in your debating chamber, but a pro-choice philosophy isn't predicated on a desire to kill foetuses.

Women don't have abortions to kill foetuses. They have abortions to end pregnancies.

Kev W

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Well that's because I agree with termination of the foetus for serious health reasons. Or indeed entirely electively before the foetus reaches the stage where I consider it to be a human.
All I'm trying to do (and failing miserably, yes) is to get anybody to answer the question as to whether killing the foetus one minute before it's due to be delivered is morally acceptable to them.

I'll answer that. No. In fact I don't imagine anyone would. Unless there's some medical reason why that would save the mother's life that I'm unaware of.

Dan_Solo wrote: »

If it is, then what's so fundamentally different about killing it after it's delivered?
If it isn't, then at what stage of development did it actually become unacceptable to electively kill the foetus?

Assuming both mother and foetus are healthy and in no danger?

At the point when the foetus become viable outside the womb. I feel like this has been said a few times.

volchitsa

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Well that's because I agree with termination of the foetus for serious health reasons. Or indeed entirely electively before the foetus reaches the stage where I consider it to be a human.
All I'm trying to do (and failing miserably, yes) is to get anybody to answer the question as to whether killing the foetus one minute before it's due to be delivered is morally acceptable to them.
If it is, then what's so fundamentally different about killing it after it's delivered?
If it isn't, then at what stage of development did it actually become unacceptable to electively kill the foetus?

I don't understand why you claim it hasn't been answered. I can only assume it's because you haven't got the answer you want. That's a different thing though.

No, it wouldn't normally be acceptable to kill the fetus one minute before it was delivered (I'd make an exception for certain cases such as FFA where birth would lead to a more painful death, for example a fetus with abnormal lung development who is going to suffocate once out of the womb). Which doesn't mean I'd try to list them all using legislation, in fact it's because of the risk of these sorts of medical complications that convinces me that this should not be a legal decision but a medical one.

However, ending a pregnancy one minute before delivery doesn't in fact lead to the death of the fetus, so your question, as you insist on repeating it, doesn't actually make sense in the first place.

Dan_Solo

oscarBravo wrote: »

This is the rhetorical rabbit hole I'm talking about. You doggedly insist on framing the debate solely in terms of "killing the foetus", and badger people for whom that's not what the debate is about.

It's a deeply dishonest debating tactic. You can keep shouting about how annoying it is that people won't join you in your debating chamber, but a pro-choice philosophy isn't predicated on a desire to kill foetuses.

Women don't have abortions to kill foetuses. They have abortions to end pregnancies.

People do X and Y happens. Therefore X is always acceptable? This is clearly logically nonsense, and a much worse debating tactic. It's OK to be a drunk driver or keep a pet Siberian tiger because you probably didn't mean to kill anyone. Same reasoning.
BTW, I see you have conveniently ignored that you lied about not being able to understand what "terminate the foetus" meant. Care to comment or will we leave it at "don't want to answer"?

Dan_Solo

volchitsa wrote: »

However, ending a pregnancy one minute before delivery doesn't in fact lead to the death of the fetus, so your question, as you insist on repeating it, doesn't actually make sense in the first place.

But now you've deliberately and transparently changed the question to one you are comfortable answering. The vast majority of abortions are not done with any intention at all of saving the foetus. The mother wants neither pregnancy nor baby. So what's so special about the foetus being past whatever age that we should wish or demand it be saved?

volchitsa

Dan_Solo wrote: »

People do X and Y happens. Therefore X is always acceptable? This is clearly logically nonsense, and a much worse debating tactic. It's OK to be a drunk driver or keep a pet Siberian tiger because you probably didn't mean to kill anyone. Same reasoning.

A better example (since it was the backdrop to and indeed source of the 8th amendment) would surely be the Catholic reasoning behind the times when abortion is acceptable to the catholic church : when the fetus is killed "unintentionally (despite that death being an unavoidable side effect of the procedure) then it's fine and is not really an abortion at all.

Oh but that's no good to you, you wanted to show that this logic doesn't exist anywhere. And you're right it doesn't - except in our approach to abortion.

volchitsa

Dan_Solo wrote: »

But now you've deliberately and transparently changed the question to one you are comfortable answering. The vast majority of abortions are not done with any intention at all of saving the foetus. The mother wants neither pregnancy nor baby. So what's so special about the foetus being past whatever age that we should wish or demand it be saved?

How have I changed the question? I've answered it. Word for word. You just don't like the answer.

Absolam

Shrap wrote: »

Absolam, this is a bit off topic but I note that you have thanked my comment on pedantry and then followed up with a reply, that I reckon is to me but as I don't engage in pedantry any longer (and I'm imagining that you have continued to belabor the point), I won't be adding to my very simple statement above.
Correct me someone else please if I'm wrong on Absolam's comment.......

Well, I was addressing your distinction between want and need.... Since you offered the distinction as being significant (and you don't engage in pedantry any more) I guess you don't think the distinction is pedantic.

Dan_Solo

Kev W wrote: »

At the point when the foetus become viable outside the womb. I feel like this has been said a few times.

And similarly to all the other times it's been said it has been presented as a self-evident truth. An "I said so" with no reasoning to back it up.

Dan_Solo

volchitsa wrote: »

How have I changed the question? I've answered it. Word for word. You just don't like the answer.

Come on now, this is straightforward stuff. I said "terminate the foetus" and you answer a question by saying "not terminate the foetus".

volchitsa

Dan_Solo wrote: »

And similarly to all the other times it's been said it has been presented as a self-evident truth. An "I said so" with no reasoning to back it up.

I think you'll find that the reason posters have been taking it as "self evident" is because you appeared to say so yourself :

Dan_Solo wrote: »

The foetal brain appears to "work" like a human at 22-24 weeks.

And this :

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Well that's because I agree with termination of the foetus for serious health reasons. Or indeed entirely electively before the foetus reaches the stage where I consider it to be a human.

Why would someone argue with you over a point that they and you are agreed upon?
if you've since changed your miond, perhaps you'd care to explain what you actually mean now?

Dan_Solo wrote: »

I don't see any specific difference between "inside human" and "outside human", no, and I don't subscribe to this degrees of humanity idea, so I don't see why the charge should be different.
In return, do you believe a foetus one day from term should be terminated electively?

Separate question, something I didn't really notice before : what do you mean by an "inside human" or an "outside human"? And what consequences do you derive from this (lack of) any distinction?

volchitsa

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Come on now, this is straightforward stuff. I said "terminate the foetus" and you answer a question by saying "not terminate the foetus".

Unlike Humpty Dumpty, Dan, you can't redefine language to make it say what you want it to. Or at least you must expect not to understood by others if you do. You'll have to explain this point, because I really can't see what your problem is with my answer : how exactly do you envisage this event happening?

You see, I said that I wouldn't normally agree with killing a fetus one minute before birth but I would agree with the mother being allowed to end her pregancy early - and I just can't see how that doesn't answer your question. So you'll have to explain what distinction I'm missing here.

Kev W

Dan_Solo wrote: »

And similarly to all the other times it's been said it has been presented as a self-evident truth. An "I said so" with no reasoning to back it up.

I presented it an an opinion as an answer to a question. Why does it matter how others have presented it? Does that invalidate my opinion?