News Article: Obama Lifts Ban on Abortions

[BAMAFAN IN NY]

Besides, when the IRS allows us to claim a fetus as a dependent, then I think the "pro life" crowd will have a case.

If a baby is born on December 31st.. you get to claim it for the whole year.. So technically, they do allow the claiming of a fetus as a dependent.. In fact, you can actually claim a kid for 3 months before they are even conceived.

 

[CrimsonCT]

Yes, it is that simple. The situations may be complicated, difficult, and full of hard choices, but the bottom line is simple. Abortion is taking a life.

No, it's really not that simple.

So tell me, where does life begin and why do you personally choose that event to draw the line?

 

[awesomeman27]

If there is absolutely no chance to save the baby that is one thing. If it is a choice between the mother surviving or the baby surviving then that is a choice the mother literally has to make. Both of those situations are very, very rare. Any other choice for abortion is simply a choice to take a life.

No where near as "rare" as that...

 

[uafan4life]

No, it's really not that simple.

So tell me, where does life begin and why do you personally choose that event to draw the line?

I say conception. Once the baby is conceived, it has a chance for life. If there is a miscarriage, it's called "losing" the baby. How can you lose it if it isn't real, if it doesn't have life?

Once it is conceived, if you choose to abort, you are taking away that chance for life.

It is simple. You have to make it more complicated, by trying to rationalize it by making such arguments as "exactly when does life begin?"

Answer me this: once a baby is conceived, does it have a chance to have a life?

If you say yes, then abortion is taking away that chance. Sometimes nature, misfortune, or a number of other natural factors will take away that chance. Abortion is, by definition, a human's choice to take away that chance.

When couples are trying to get pregnant using in vitro fertilization the pregnancy is considered a success, that is the embryo has a chance to be born - a chance at life, only after successful implantation into the wall of the uterus.

In natural pregnancy, the same rule applies. An egg can be fertilized and for some reason not achieve implantation. Once it occurs, however, pregnancy has occurred and there is a chance for that child to have life.

At three weeks after conception, the baby's heart starts to beat. If you abort after three weeks, you are literally snuffing out that baby's heartbeat.

No where near as "rare" as that...

Then tell me, exactly how rare is it? 1 in 10 abortions, 100, 1000? I think you might be surprised at the number.

 

[uafan4life]

No where near as "rare" as that...

Granted this quote comes from a site that is primarily pro-life, but the people quoted (with reference) are not.

It is only in extremely rare cases that abortion can even be mentioned as a potential means of saving the mother's life. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, stated in a 1996 New York Times editorial that because of the advances in modern medicine, "partial-birth abortions are not needed to save the life of the mother" (1). Sixteen years earlier, he wrote: "In my thirty-six years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be be aborted to save the mother's life." Even Planned Parenthood's Dr. Alan Guttmacher acknowledged, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal illness such as cancer or leukemia, and, if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save, life.” (2)

Not that rare, eh?

 

[Ldlane]

And all of this debate is why it must not be "illegal" so we can keep the government out of our bodies and give people "choice".

 

[CrimsonCT]

I say conception. Once the baby is conceived, it has a chance for life. If there is a miscarriage, it's called "losing" the baby. How can you lose it if it isn't real, if it doesn't have life?

Once it is conceived, if you choose to abort, you are taking away that chance for life.

It is simple. You have to make it more complicated, by trying to rationalize it by making such arguments as "exactly when does life begin?"

The semantic argument in your first paragraph is silly. But regardless, why is conception the magical moment? You've argued only that this definition is convenient to your argument. Convenience can hardly be a firm ethical foundation.

Answer me this: once a baby is conceived, does it have a chance to have a life?

If you say yes, then abortion is taking away that chance. Sometimes nature, misfortune, or a number of other natural factors will take away that chance. Abortion is, by definition, a human's choice to take away that chance.

When couples are trying to get pregnant using in vitro fertilization the pregnancy is considered a success, that is the embryo has a chance to be born - a chance at life, only after successful implantation into the wall of the uterus.

In natural pregnancy, the same rule applies. An egg can be fertilized and for some reason not achieve implantation. Once it occurs, however, pregnancy has occurred and there is a chance for that child to have life.

The potential to life is not morally equivalent to a life that exists in fact. A developing fetus is incapable of life outside its mother (with a caveat being that technology is always enabling this to occur sooner), and is thus an integral part of her until it achieves its independence. Thus, I would argue that the right to autonomy of the woman outweighs the potential autonomy of the fetus, and that abortion is justifiable in that sense. Mary Anne Warren's On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion hits the "potential to life" argument in section 4 of her essay.

At three weeks after conception, the baby's heart starts to beat. If you abort after three weeks, you are literally snuffing out that baby's heartbeat.

Yet it can't breathe on its own. You can't pick and choose vital systems in your argument, as all are necessary for life.

 

[always4bama]

If a baby is born on December 31st.. you get to claim it for the whole year.. So technically, they do allow the claiming of a fetus as a dependent.. In fact, you can actually claim a kid for 3 months before they are even conceived.

This is true in AL, if a woman qualifies for Medicaid to cover the pregnancy she is covered all nine months. If the coverage is not for another life and hers then what are they covering.
Prenatal vitamins, monitoring with an ultra-sound etc., all covered so I guess in some sense the government has already declared that what is inside the woman is another human.

 

[uafan4life]

The semantic argument in your first paragraph is silly. But regardless, why is conception the magical moment? You've argued only that this definition is convenient to your argument. Convenience can hardly be a firm ethical foundation.


The potential to life is not morally equivalent to a life that exists in fact. A developing fetus is incapable of life outside its mother (with a caveat being that technology is always enabling this to occur sooner), and is thus an integral part of her until it achieves its independence. Thus, I would argue that the right to autonomy of the woman outweighs the potential autonomy of the fetus, and that abortion is justifiable in that sense. Mary Anne Warren's On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion hits the "potential to life" argument in section 4 of her essay.


Yet it can't breathe on its own. You can't pick and choose vital systems in your argument, as all are necessary for life.

I got a little off of my argument in my response. I was initially simply answering his question as to when I believe "life" begins. My argument is not as to when "life" begins, but the viable possibility of life.

I like that link you gave, it's a good read. From the section you referenced:

Still, we do not need to insist that a potential person has no right to life whatever. There may well be something immoral, and not just imprudent, about wantonly destroying potential people, when doing so isn't necessary to protect anyone's rights. But even if a potential person does have some prima facie right to life, such a right could not possibly outweigh the right of a woman to obtain an abortion, since the rights of any actual person invariably outweigh those of any potential person, whenever the two conflict.

Using this line of reasoning, you must determine whether a mother's right supersedes the baby's right to life. I would agree that the mother's right to live outweighs the baby's (potential person's) right to live. However, I think it is a difficult stretch to say that a mother's right to avoid the consequences of her actions and/or not be burdened with a child outweigh that child's right to live.

No, an unborn fetus (at least early in the pregnancy) cannot live outside the mother's body, but it can live.

By aborting you are taking away that chance at life. Excepting the handful in a million cases where the mother's life is at risk, you are placing your wants and desires above that child's right to live. You are stating that your convenience, or your right to choose, is more important than the life that child could have. The right for you to take away life is worth more than the contributions that life could provide.

From the link you provided, here is her conclusion for that argument:

Thus, neither a fetus's resemblance to a person, nor its potential for becoming a person provides any basis whatever for the claim that it has any significant right to life. Consequently, a woman's right to protect her health, happiness, freedom, and even her life,' by terminating an unwanted pregnancy, will always override whatever right to life it may be appropriate to ascribe to a fetus, even a fully developed one. And thus, in the absence of any overwhelming social need for every possible child, the laws which restrict the right to obtain an abortion, or limit the period of pregnancy during which an abortion may be performed, are a wholly unjustified violation of a woman's most basic moral and constitutional rights.

I'll give you health. When you are making a choice between your life and someone else's, you can't blame someone for choosing their own. However, her argument is that a mother's right to happiness and freedom is more important that the baby's right to live.

For one, I have trouble seeing how having a baby versus aborting is necessarily a violation of her right to happiness or freedom. If her happiness is affected by having an unplanned pregnancy, well let's look at that. Is it because of having to care for a baby? She can give it up for adoption, so that's a very weak argument. Is it because she is pregnant or will give birth due to an unplanned pregnancy? Excepting rape cases, the choice was hers as to whether or not to have sex, and that is the choice that affected her happiness. The baby didn't just magically appear in her womb, it is a direct result of her actions. The choice, in that case, for abortion is a statement that the mother not having to deal with the consequences of her actions is more important than the life that baby could live.

As for freedom, if it is a result of her choice of actions, the only real argument you can make is that the government is making a decision as to what a woman can and cannot do with her body. There are two problems with this argument. One, it is not just her body, it is her body and the life that is growing within her body. Second, it is a responsibility of the government to protect the rights of the people, or the lives, they govern. The decision is not whether or not a woman has a right to choose, but rather what the rights of the unborn child are.

I believe that an unborn child should have as much of a right to live as a newborn child, as their potential for living a productive life is the same. They will both continue to grow and live until life is snuffed out of them.

Taking a life is taking a life, that is not the issue. There is a difference between cold-blooded murder, involuntary manslaughter, and killing someone in self defense. That is why we have laws governing these instances.

Aborting is taking a life. Taking a life, taking away life, taking away a chance at life - these are semantically different but functionally the same. We make semantic differences because we want to treat them differently, and that's it. Taking a life is taking a life, the end result is that a life is gone.

And over a million times a year, a life is taken away from a child out of pure convenience.

In my opinion, once life is conceived, it has a right to live. If it is a direct result of your choices, then it is merely the consequences of your own actions. If it is not a direct result of your choices, then that's not fair for you. You don't have a right to a fair life. Life just isn't fair.

The question is when do we, as a society, decide that taking a life is acceptable. If I walk down the street and shoot the first guy that ticks me off in the chest and kill him, then I've taken a life. If he was breaking into my house and threatening me and/or my family and I shot him in the chest and killed him, then I've taken a life. The only difference is that, in our society, one is acceptable because we call it self-defense instead of murder.

And at this time taking a life from a newborn baby is different from taking that same life from a fetus just because we call it a fetus instead of a baby. The end result is the same: you've taken away the opportunity for that life to live and possibly have a happy, productive life.

 

[RammerJammer14]

amen, uafan4life. (kinda a double meaning in that name, isn't there

)

 

[Bamaro]

If a baby is born on December 31st.. you get to claim it for the whole year.. So technically, they do allow the claiming of a fetus as a dependent.. In fact, you can actually claim a kid for 3 months before they are even conceived.

But if that same baby was born on Jan 1 you couldn't clame anything for the previous year so there goes your technicality.

 

[CrimsonCT]

I got a little off of my argument in my response. I was initially simply answering his question as to when I believe "life" begins. My argument is not as to when "life" begins, but the viable possibility of life.

But that doesn't directly follow. The "viable possibility" is utterly dependent on circumstance. Take an embryo and put it on a table. It will not live. Take an infant and do the same; it survives due to the absence of that biological dependence. And that is the philosophical distinction between a potential life and an actual life.

Using this line of reasoning, you must determine whether a mother's right supersedes the baby's right to life. I would agree that the mother's right to live outweighs the baby's (potential person's) right to live. However, I think it is a difficult stretch to say that a mother's right to avoid the consequences of her actions and/or not be burdened with a child outweigh that child's right to live.

And this is what your argument boils down to. There really is no objectively correct stance on abortion, since no moral position is unassailable, which makes it a largely unique issue in philosophy.

By aborting you are taking away that chance at life. Excepting the handful in a million cases where the mother's life is at risk, you are placing your wants and desires above that child's right to live. You are stating that your convenience, or your right to choose, is more important than the life that child could have. The right for you to take away life is worth more than the contributions that life could provide... I'll give you health. When you are making a choice between your life and someone else's, you can't blame someone for choosing their own. However, her argument is that a mother's right to happiness and freedom is more important that the baby's right to live.

Yes, I'd argue that a woman's right to control what happens in and to her body outweighs the right of some developing offspring to potentially live. Judith Jarvis Thompson wrote her famous essay, A Defense of Abortion, and hits that issue in section 4.

Aborting is taking a life. Taking a life, taking away life, taking away a chance at life - these are semantically different but functionally the same. We make semantic differences because we want to treat them differently, and that's it. Taking a life is taking a life, the end result is that a life is gone.

It's semantically silly because you haven't set the condition for what constitutes life. And since you'll rarely get two philosophers to agree on these conditions, invoking the word "life" gives your argument a distinctly emotional subtext.

Like I said, no position is unassailable. Probably the best essay I've read in opposition to abortion is Don Marquis' Why Abortion is Immoral. Thompson's essay has has holes, and so does his. That's what makes it a fascinating topic.

 

[jthomas666]

This may well be the best discussion of this issue we've on this board had in years.

 

[Pluck and Grit]

Putting aside the issue of when life begins.....

I'd like for somebody to explain to me why it needs to be legal (as it presently is) for a woman to abort an embryo/fetus/baby/life (whatever you want to call it) for no other reason than that she doesn't want the dang thing and doesn't feel like putting up with the little brat's crap. Right now today, a woman can get an abortion for that very reason, and it's just as legal as getting out of bed in the morning.

Somebody defend that for me. Please. Since it is legal, there must be someone who thought it was a good idea that it should be. I'd like to know his/her reasoning.

 

[It's On A Slab]

A shout out to gmart74: I'll support the anti-choice line if every one of the supporters commits to adopting an unwanted child, be they white, black, Asian, infirm, drug-addicted, ADD.

 

[Pluck and Grit]

A shout out to gmart74: I'll support the anti-choice line if every one of the supporters commits to adopting an unwanted child, be they white, black, Asian, infirm, drug-addicted, ADD.

They couldn't all do it even if they wanted to. In every developed nation, there are more couples waiting to adopt than there are children available for adoption. In the US alone, the commonly seen estimate is 2 million couples looking for a baby to adopt.

 

[Tide n True]

The pro-abortion/anti-capital punishment crowd really gets to me more than anything. They're in favor of killing an innocent (or, if we want to take CrimsonCT's line of thought, a "potential" innocent) but they're completely against killing a guilty person. It never ceases to amaze me.

 

[bamabake]

A shout out to gmart74: I'll support the anti-choice line if every one of the supporters commits to adopting an unwanted child, be they white, black, Asian, infirm, drug-addicted, ADD.

I would retort that a person that uses the term " anti choice " can be labeled anti-life. Furthermore your premise is fundamentally flawed. The abundance of kids to be adopted does not make the slaughter of innocent children right.

Obama, in less than a week has told our enemies we are not at war anymore and made taxpayers money go to killing unborn people. So much for his character and so much for he calling himself a Christian .

Before anyone starts a thread that says " can Christians be anti-life " Let me say that a Christian can be totally ignorant of the reality of abortion but will one day look at the Lord with a bended knee ( as we all will) and saved or not, will account for his actions.


cheers

 

[Tide n True]

I would retort that a person that uses the term " anti choice " can be labeled anti-life. Furthermore your premise is fundamentally flawed. The abundance of kids to be adopted does not make the slaughter of innocent children right.

Obama, in less than a week has told our enemies we are not at war anymore and made taxpayers money go to killing unborn people. So much for his character and so much for he calling himself a Christian .

Before anyone starts a thread that says " can Christians be anti-life " Let me say that a Christian can be totally ignorant of the reality of abortion but will one day look at the Lord with a bended knee ( as we all will) and saved or not, will account for his actions.


cheers

I see you're located in Waco. Tell me, how did you manage to escape that Davidian compound before Reno firebombed the place?

 

[crimson fan man]

What gets me is that you can get in more trouble killing an animal unborn baby then a humans. When eagles were endangered you could be put in jail for messing with their eggs. In my opinion there is not any animal worth a humanlife in that way. I do believe in capital punishment because of their crimes they lost all rights to live. Unborn babies did not hurt anyone.