Abortion

[sees_all1]

It's a little difficult to judge as a man though, sees. A woman has to become a vessel for 9 months and experience some of the most painful things in order to carry and deliver the child. People assume adoption is some miracle cure - it's really not.

 

It seems like we're dipping into the fallacies again - you're oversimplifying it by labeling it as 'convenience'. It's far more than that - having a child is a lifechanging decision that involves spending an extortionate amount of money for proper upbringing and could be considered a time investment. Childbirth is considered one of the most painful things a woman could experience too - we're talking about completely giving up the mother's rights here.

 

The main problem we have now is a society which promotes having unsafe sex but doesn't want the associated consequences - that's what needs to change, not abortion laws.

I'm not trying to be harsh, I'm frustrated with the amount of half truths put out and the attempts to obfuscate language.

It seems my summary still holds true, but you can add in "change the definition of person" to the pro-choice argument.

 

 

I won't do your work for you, but it should be easy to find the talking points here. I'll put some of the strategies in here for both sides. If the people you're debating are incompetent, you'll be able to "win" the debate regardless of the side they put you on.

 

 

 

Common pro-choice strategy include forcing your opponent to defend the "corner" cases - rape, incest, medical "necessities", and the "compassionate" cases - deformities or long term suffering. Your focus needs to be entirely on the woman, paint her as the victim, and marginalize the fact that theres a child within. You can also talk about situations which endanger the life of the mother - such as anemia or ectopic pregnancies. You can also broaden the focus towards a macro view - abortion can "solve" world hunger, poverty, and overpopulation. The more off topic you can pull the debate, the harder it is for the pro-life side to establish their argument.

 

The pro-choice case is weak against a strong personhood argument; if you're on this side you and have to defend against this argument, you need to do the best you can to dehumanize the baby. Never refer to the baby as "baby", he or she, child, human etc. Do the best you can to obfuscate the fact that you're talking about an individual. If it comes to it, you can bring up the fact that the sperm and egg cell already existed before conception, and theres nothing "special" about a one-celled zygote. Don't use that as your original position, more as a last resort, because you'll already be playing into a personhood argument.

 

Also, be careful in your choice of language. If this is a class assignment, I'm unsure how the debate is scored, but don't leave room for your opponent to nail you on the facts - things that can easily be refuted by the simplest of definitions. Your best bet is to use the term fetus, and avoid unscientific terminology or specific terminology. Fetus applies to the entire pregnancy, embryo/zygote/blastocyst only applies to the very start. "Ball of cells" or "Fertilized Egg" are unscientific and are easy enough to refute without much effort.

 

 

 

If you're on the pro-life side of the debate, personhood is your argument. You need to argue that at conception, when the sperm cell fertilizes the egg cell, a new, unique human being forms. If you can get the other side to argue on your terms - when does a human being come into existance - you'll have won; the rest of the argument is very straight forward. You also need to establish your definitions carefully - abortion refers exclusively to induced abortion (not miscarriages/spontaneous abortions), does not include removal of a spontaneously terminated pregnancy, and is not the procedure required for dangerous ectopic pregnancies.

 

You need to be very careful with your language and your position. A successful personhood argument requires that you cannot compromise, even in the difficult cases. You need to make it very clear that the right to live is the most fundamental human right, and it trumps any other circumstance.

If your opponent starts to argue about rape or incest, you can stick to your line about the right to life, or you can attack their argument with stories about cover up and continued abuse. If your opponent argues about compassion, and abortion because of quality of life for the genetically deformed, you can liken their argument to eugenics and by extension the holocaust.

 

If you need more breadth in your argument, different than personhood, you can discuss the dangers of abortion - the percentage of botched abortions, the correlation between abortion and subsequent miscarriages, and the correlation between abortion and breast cancer. If you do this, you must remember that correlation does not imply causation, and that only experiments - not studies - can prove or disprove a hypothesis.

 

You can also discuss the uglier sides of choice - scandals covering up under-age abortion, the disproportionate numbers of minorities receiving abortion / racist roots of planned parenthood, and the disproportionate number of "pro-choice" crimes against pro-lifers.

 

 

 

Last thing - look at and know sources. Anything from the Guttmacher Institute has a strong pro-choice spin to it, usually anything with "life" in their name has a pro-life spin.

[aspeeder]

"But I do not believe that reaching my 16 year dream is a mere “convenience.” It’s my dream and I have worked exceedingly hard for it. I am entitled to enjoy the rewards of my hard work. Suggesting that women have abortions for “convenience” diminishes the hard work of women and is beyond insulting. Living my dream is my right. Not having my body hijacked, especially when I am doing everything possible to prevent pregnancy, is my right. I refuse to be told that my dreams are inconvenient and should be sacrificed.

 

To all the women out there with inconvenient dreams, never stop dreaming and never stop fighting. It is just as much a tragedy when a woman is forbidden from reaching her dream as it is when a man is forbidden. You are entitled to every dream you can dream — dreams are never inconvenient."

 

http://abortiongang.org/2011/03/inconvenient-dreams/

 

How. Dare. You.

"Suggesting that women have abortions for 'convenience' diminishes the hard work of women and is beyond insulting."

Are you arguing that being pregnant isn't inconvenient? Are you arguing that being pregnant is easy? Are you arguing that women that terminate their pregnancies are doing it because it's more difficult than being pregnant, or having a child?

Woman have abortions because it is decidedly more convenient than birthing a child. If carrying a child to term for 9 months was a cake walk, there would be no need for abortion. You, and whoever you're quoting have completely missed the point.

What the author and I are suggesting is that the term "convenient" to describe women following their dreams and goals is a demeaning and insulting term to use. It's convenient to drive to a store rather than to walk to it, carrying around a fetus for 9 months is life-changing and in some cases dream-shattering; for an example of that actually look at the page I linked to.

 

"Living my dream is my right."

And it's all about me me me. Abortion is a selfish decision.

 

"especially when I am doing everything possible to prevent pregnancy"

You know, like not having sex or something...

Yes, because having a proactive dream is incredibly selfish of someone. Life fulfillment is so much less important than a 2 month old embryo. It's pretty easy to say that giving up your existence against your will is selfish when there's no chance of it happening to you.

Also, sex is a primary need, that's the reason people use birth control: to fulfill a primary need without the complications of pregnancy.

[Locke_Superbus]

I'm not trying to be harsh, I'm frustrated with the amount of half truths put out and the attempts to obfuscate language.

It seems my summary still holds true, but you can add in "change the definition of person" to the pro-choice argument.

 

 

Certainly, but one justifies a pro-abortion stance by placing a higher value on present human life the convenience of a woman over the life of her child.

 

 

its like people have no concept of self awareness.....

[Duff]

Also, sex is a primary need, that's the reason people use birth control: to fulfill a primary need without the complications of pregnancy.

People survive fine without having sex. And the act of sex has a purpose: to make a child. There is no primary 'need' to have sex. It's a desire, most likely inherent in us so that we don't fall off the face of this planet.

 

People use birth control to separate the responsibilities and consequences that come from sex (it's whole purpose being the creation of a child) from the pleasure one gets from it. And that, I find, is selfish when coupled with the fact that you will not die solely because you don't have sex.

[Implying]

So people should never just want to feel pleasure? They should, every time they feel the basest instinct, have to create another person?

 

 

Can you imagine what that would do to the human population? It would explode. We already have too many people, we don't need to increase our numbers any further.

[aspeeder]

Also, sex is a primary need, that's the reason people use birth control: to fulfill a primary need without the complications of pregnancy.

People survive fine without having sex. And the act of sex has a purpose: to make a child. There is no primary 'need' to have sex. It's a desire, most likely inherent in us so that we don't fall off the face of this planet.

 

People use birth control to separate the responsibilities and consequences that come from sex (it's whole purpose being the creation of a child) from the pleasure one gets from it. And that, I find, is selfish when coupled with the fact that you will not die solely because you don't have sex.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Also, see that food and shelter is at the bottom with sex. You can also enjoy those without needing to fulfill them to keep living. I can eat something right now, and enjoy it just for the taste rather than to fill my stomach, and it would still be a primary need. Sexual desire is not a part of our nature as animals that we need to suppress, and now we can minimize the risks of sexual contact.

[Randox]

Also, sex is a primary need, that's the reason people use birth control: to fulfill a primary need without the complications of pregnancy.

People survive fine without having sex. And the act of sex has a purpose: to make a child. There is no primary 'need' to have sex. It's a desire, most likely inherent in us so that we don't fall off the face of this planet.

 

People use birth control to separate the responsibilities and consequences that come from sex (it's whole purpose being the creation of a child) from the pleasure one gets from it. And that, I find, is selfish when coupled with the fact that you will not die solely because you don't have sex.

 

Your right in that we shouldn't have sex until we are ready to have a child. That would be the responsible thing to do. But guess what, that's not how the world works. This is why there are condom dispensers in high school bathrooms. People realized that this shouldn't happen, but it does, and rather than going all high and mighty about it, they should try to find ways to minimize the damage. Birth control like condoms and the pill are two of those damage control measures. Aborting is a more extreme version.

 

Sure, the problem shouldn't exist, but it does, so we need to deal with it.

 

 

And to the whole convenience thing...having a child is a decision that will have consequences that could carry on for years, even if you go with adoption. First, you have the actual physical problem of carrying a baby, and that works over about 9 months, but then you have potential emotional and social effects. For your mind, there is a chance of postpartum depression. Socially, if your a young teenage girl, then you have your family to deal with to. There are parents that will disown their children if they find out they got pregnant out of wedlock, and if you carry the baby to term, you can be sure they are going to notice. That's not an inconvenience, that's life shattering. Or maybe you have a girl that is already living on the street, and there is no way she can get the food required to support her and a baby. Or maybe the mother has a drug problem, and there is no way that she is going to be able to go 9 months without drinking, or doing something else, without first being able to go to rehab.

 

Things like adoption are not really a viable option for everyone, and is unbelievably insulting to imply that having a baby is an inconvenience :evil:

[Duff]

So people should never just want to feel pleasure? They should, every time they feel the basest instinct, have to create another person?

Master your desires. Tons of people do it. People should never act solely on their appetites, especially when doing so could, as many pro-choice people in this thread hint at, ruin your life.

 

Can you imagine what that would do to the human population? It would explode. We already have too many people, we don't need to increase our numbers any further.

A woman is not always fertile. You can have sex without creating a child. The problem (that seems like it will never be solved, unfortunately) is that people feel they must have sex, even before they're ready to raise a child.

 

Also, sex is a primary need, that's the reason people use birth control: to fulfill a primary need without the complications of pregnancy.

People survive fine without having sex. And the act of sex has a purpose: to make a child. There is no primary 'need' to have sex. It's a desire, most likely inherent in us so that we don't fall off the face of this planet.

 

People use birth control to separate the responsibilities and consequences that come from sex (it's whole purpose being the creation of a child) from the pleasure one gets from it. And that, I find, is selfish when coupled with the fact that you will not die solely because you don't have sex.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Also, see that food and shelter is at the bottom with sex. You can also enjoy those without needing to fulfill them to keep living. I can eat something right now, and enjoy it just for the taste rather than to fill my stomach, and it would still be a primary need. Sexual desire is not a part of our nature as animals that we need to suppress, and now that we can minimize the risks of sexual contact.

I look at that hierarchy (knew it'd be brought up) and I see those primary needs. Each one, if ignored for a lifetime, would result in death; each one except sex. Why do you think sex is a primary need? Is it because of the pleasure we get from it, or because we need it to keep the human race alive? Your food example does not apply, because food, regardless if you're hungry or not, still gives your body nutrients. You do not separate the act of gaining nutrients from the pleasure of eating something by eating it with the mindset that, "Hey, I'm not hungry, but this tastes good, so I'll eat it." The pleasure of eating it is still coupled with some sort of nutrient gain. It should be the same with sex: you can have sex for the pleasure, but you shouldn't separate this pleasure wholly from what sex is for in the first place.

 

@Randox, I agree with you. I just find abortion and birth control, even though their damage control 'things', as giving more people a reason to have sex without being ready for a child. They have a 'way out', so to speak. I see them as doing more damage then help at this point.

 

I know it won't change anytime soon. And that sucks. :\

[aspeeder]

Master your desires. Tons of people do it. People should never act solely on their appetites, especially when doing so could, as many pro-choice people in this thread hint at, ruin your life.

Yeah you're right, the middle path between reason and emotion mind is a good way to minimize suffering, don't always give in to appetites. But even if you do that to the extent that anyone should be expected, that's still a lot of sex and a lot of opportunities for unwanted pregnancies.

 

A woman is not always fertile. You can have sex without creating a child. The problem (that seems like it will never be solved, unfortunately) is that people feel they must have sex, even before they're ready to raise a child.

Oh. My. God. Are we seriously back to this natural planning [cabbage]? I already answered that in this post. And as for the second part, our society is different from what it used to be. People got pregnant and started a family much earlier in the past, usually right when they reached sexual maturity. Now we put that off to get an education and establish a career before building a family, and in general that's been a positive change for society.

 

I look at that hierarchy (knew it'd be brought up) and I see those primary needs. Each one, if ignored for a lifetime, would result in death; each one except sex. Why do you think sex is a primary need? Is it because of the pleasure we get from it, or because we need it to keep the human race alive? Your food example does not apply, because food, regardless if you're hungry or not, still gives your body nutrients. You do not separate the act of gaining nutrients from the pleasure of eating something by eating it with the mindset that, "Hey, I'm not hungry, but this tastes good, so I'll eat it." The pleasure of eating it is still coupled with some sort of nutrient gain. It should be the same with sex: you can have sex for the pleasure, but you shouldn't separate this pleasure wholly from what sex is for in the first place.

 

Not all food gives the body vital nutrients, a lot of it is eaten purely for the recreation of it. And a lot of time that kind of food comes with negative consequences, so guess what? If I want to avoid those consequences, I do something about it like exercise; I must admit this metaphor is becoming a bit stretched though. Some evidence that sex is indeed a human need might be that NASA must consider the sexual needs of their astronauts in long-term space travel for one thing:

 

Humans have needs, and although the astronauts selected by NASA, ESA and the other international space agencies are highly professional individuals, Dr Jason Kring, a NASA advisor and assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, has pointed out that sexual desire is as potent as the need for water and food. “But the bottom line is that, like hunger and thirst, sex is a basic biological motive,” he said in an interview with the UK’s Sunday Telegraph. “The potential round-trip mission to Mars could take three years. It doesn't make sense to assume that these men and women are going to have no thoughts of it for three years. Nasa and other space agencies should address this in their training and in crew selection.” Kring suggests our future long-term space explorers should replicate what the early polar explorers did and take a colleague as a lover to minimize sexual frustration.

 

@Randox, I agree with you. I just find abortion and birth control, even though their damage control 'things', as giving more people a reason to have sex without being ready for a child. They have a 'way out', so to speak. I see them as doing more damage then help at this point.

 

I know it won't change anytime soon. And that sucks. :\

Sex is a constant in human society, no matter how much it is controlled, endorsed, or discouraged. And seriously, birth control has been a wonderful thing, it has allowed women to control their sexual lives in a similar manner to men. For centuries women have been basically unable to control their lives because pregnancy was always a risk, and now they are a vital and healthy part of our economy, government, and society. Oh, and another point. Even if abortion is illegal, women will try to get one even at the risk of their own lives. 70,000 women die every year from unsafe and illegal abortions, and that kills the fetus as well as the mother. People will always try to find a way out, and making that way out safer and better will only decrease the amount of lives lost; so if you're really pro-life and not just pro-women-suffering abortion would be better off legal.

 

For another example of why premarital sex is a constant in society, and always will be, here's another example:

[spoiler="Everyday Life in the 1800s" by Marc McCuctcheon, Chapter 10 Courtship and Marriage, page 205:]"premarital sex: the late 1700s and early 1800s were marked by a notably higher incidence of premarital sex than in later years. Records show, in fact, that around the turn of the century one third of New England brides were already pregnant when they married, despite civil statutes against fornication. By the 1830s, premarital pregnancies dropped to 20 percent, and then to just 10 percent in the 1850s, suggesting better contraception and more widespread abstinence.

 

1798: The choice of a lover is unexceptional, it is public and the parents hardly take notice because such are the customs of the country. The chosen man comes into the house whenever he pleases. He takes the object of his affections for a walk whenever he likes. He often comes for her on a Sunday in a cabriolet and brings her back in the evening without being questioned as to their doings.

Moreau de Saint-Mery, excerpted in This Was America, p.97"

 

Ok, so from this we know that premarital sex was quite common early in the century, but by halfway through the century it's either become a bit more rare or more folks are using contraception so as to cut down on pregnancy. Probably the latter. We also know from the excerpt that in the late 1700s very little attention was really paid to whether or not young men and women were having sex or not. This attitude undoubtedly carried over to the early 1800s.

 

Looking at the percentages of premarital pregnancies and how they dropped we can surmise a change in attitude towards premarital sex over the course of the century. As just stated, folks apparently paid no attention to if a young couple was having sex or not early in the century, which is shown in the high numbers of premarital pregnancies early on in the century. But by the simple fact of stating that 20% of all new brides were pregnant when they got married in the 1830s and then that dropped down to 10% in the 1850s that leads to the suggestion that views on premarital sex had changed. This is certianly the case late in the century when couples had to be chaperoned on their dates to make sure nothing happened (see page 204 of the same book on the subject of chaperones.

 

Chapter seven of the book is Health, Medicine, and Hygiene. Pages 161-162 has an entry on contraception which might also be of some interest.

 

"contraception: In 1800 a married couple had an average of slightly over 7 children. By 1850, the number had dropped to 5.42. By 1880 it plummeted once more to 4.24.

 

As these numbers testify, precious few contracptive choices existed during the first quarter of the century. Condoms made from pig and sheep intestines were available as early as the 1700s, but they reportedly cost as much as one dollar each and were washed out for repeated use. They were primarily used in Europe. Cheaper rubber condoms, costing six to twelve cents, didn't become widely available until the last quarter of the century.

 

One female contraceptive method used was douching. From the 1830s on, newspapers carried ads for "female syringes" for the purpose. The syringes were typically sold with such chemicals as alum or sulphates of zinc or iron, to kill sperm.

 

A contraceptive sponge with attached thread for easy removal was recommeded by at least one publication, also from the 1830s.

 

Another female device was the pessary, informally known as a pisser. It was sold in over a hundred different varieties (wood, cotton or sponge) in drugstores for the purpose of correcting a prolapsed uterus. However, most women knew its real intent, as evidenced by this letter of helpful advice from Rose Williams to her newly wed friend Allettie Mosher in 1885: "Well now the thing we [use] (when I say we I mean us girls) is a thing: but it hasn't always been sure as you know but that was our own carelessness.... I do not know whether you can get them out there. They are called Pessairre or female preventive if you don't want to ask for a pisser just ask for a female preventive. They cost one dollar.... The Directions are with it."

 

According to one physician writing in 1867, New England brides whose marriages were announced in the newspaper invariably recieved circulars on cantraceptive "instrumentalities." Those who did not, or those who remained afraid or repulsed by "preventives" practiced the simplest and most morally acceptable birth control method of all: coitus interuptus. Physicians warned, however, that "withdrawl" was detrimental to men's health."

 

[Randox]

I'll agree that birth control and abortion do make having sex before your ready easier, because you know there is a way out. That is a legitimate problem.

 

I guess the way I see it though, that's going to happen anyway, and the damage done by ignoring a problem because it shouldn't exist is almost certain to be a lot more then doing something to solve a problem that shouldn't exist.

 

 

And to the women not always being fertile thing, women can ovulate I think as early as day 3 in the cycle, and as late as day 22. So while the window of opportunity itself is about 7 days (considering egg viability time and how long the sperm can survive, which is 2 days + 5 days), unless you actually know when you ovulate, its still a crapshot. The days not covered in that range aren't exactly prime sex days.

 

And just to be extra fun, while ovulation tends to be pretty consistent, its not impossible for it to be delayed, because the universe obviously doesn't want us to be 100% certain about this without inventing a little machine to go in there and check to see if the egg is out yet (that actually sounds kinda cool. Someone invent that).

[Zierro]

People will always try to find a way out, and making that way out safer and better will only decrease the amount of lives lost; so if you're really pro-life and not just pro-women-suffering abortion would be better off legal.

 

This is more or less what my opinion revolves around. While aborting may be a highly questionable practice in many cases, there's no way around the fact that people will still do it, just as they do with drugs and guns. Putting bans on activities like these seems to sprout more problems than it alleviates.

 

Not to mention, we shouldn't prohibit women who have been raped, have medical complications that could result in both the death of the baby and herself, and other circumstances that don't fall under the excuse of irresponsible laziness from being able to continue their lives normally.

 

And lol at sex being a need of equal magnitude to eating. It's a strong innate drive, but that's certainly not a well-founded moral justification for anything.

[Randox]

The sex being as important as say eating is an interesting idea. On the level of the individual, I'd say its total BS. Being abstinent won't kill you. On the level of the species though, it is easily as important as anything that contributes to survival, as it ensures the survival of the species as a whole.

 

But I think the argument shouldn't just be about what is right, because the wrong thing is going to happen a lot no matter what laws you put in place. The solutions need to be the best to deal with problems that you do have, not just the ones you should have.

[sees_all1]

On the level of the species though, it is easily as important as anything that contributes to survival, as it ensures the survival of the species as a whole.

This view is out of place in the point that was trying to be made supporting abortion.

[Giordano]

Not to mention, the human race isn't in danger of extinction any time soon.

 

So everybody shut up about sex = survival. :roll:

[aspeeder]

We are debating this in a philosophical sense, or at least I am, because we're debating what characteristics are needed to give a human full rights. Anyway I've stated what I said is needed to make something a full person, what's your scientific definition?

A person, by definition, is a human being. Once a being is characterized as human (scientifically speaking and under normal circumstances, when a human sperm cell fertilizes a human egg cell), it deserves all the respect and all the rights that every person should have.

Faith in Hiding:

 

Is There a Secular Case for Banning Abortion?

[spoiler=Article Ahead]

 

Summary: In the United States, there must be sufficient secular rationales to justify policy independent of sectarian worldviews, otherwise the First Amendment prohibition against church-state entanglement is violated. Strict anti-abortion statutes that claim embryos are persons with full constitutional rights have no adequate secular justification, and thus are unconstitutional. Nevertheless, pro-life forces, usually motivated by religious convictions, mount seemingly secular arguments for banning abortion which must be exposed as faith in hiding. Naturalism, the natural ally of secularism in matters of policy, is friendly to a woman's right to choose an abortion. See also Peter Wenz's 1992 book, Abortion Rights As Religious Freedom, which makes this argument in convincing detail; reviewed here.

 

Note: a revised version of this piece has been published in the July-August 2007 issue of the Humanist, see here.

 

 

Contents

 

Introduction - Sectarian vs. secular justifications - Secular intuitions about personhood and rights

 

The autonomy right vs. the fetal right to life - Pro-life persuasion, and how to combat it

 

 

 

In March of 2006, the South Dakota legislature passed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act, which bans all abortions except when the mothers life is in danger. Louisiana recently joined South Dakota in adopting a strict anti-abortion measure, scheduled to become law should Roe v. Wade be overturned. These statutes declare, in effect, that a newly-conceived embryos right to life trumps the interests of everyone else party to a decision about abortion.

 

The Declaration of Independence asserts our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but conflicts between these rights are commonplace. The extreme pro-life position states that if theres a conflict between an embryos right to life and the liberty of adults, for instance the freedom not to carry a child to term, life always trumps liberty. Pro-choice advocates obviously believe otherwise.

 

What establishes, they ask, the overriding value attached to an newly fertilized ovum that requires women to bear the children of rapists, and perhaps to sacrifice their health and life opportunities to raise an unwanted child? Why should the continued existence of an insentient group of cells have priority over the interests of a fully developed individual?

 

The pro-life answer their argument against abortion (and embryonic stem cell research) is pretty straightforward: embryos, babies, children and adults are all stages of human life. All these stages are equally alive, all are equally human, and therefore, the reasoning goes, all have equal worth. But does the conclusion follow? Are all stages of human life equally worthy of protection, and if so, why?

 

The South Dakota statute declares that the guarantee of due process of law under the Constitution of South Dakota applies equally to born and unborn human beings, and that under the Constitution of South Dakota, a pregnant mother and her unborn child, each possess a natural and inalienable right to life. Nevertheless, the statute still permits the destruction of the fetus when the mothers life is in danger. This suggests that even pro-life advocates accord more value to a sentient, autonomous individual than a fetus or newly fertilized egg. This is unsurprising, since we quite naturally feel more sympathy and concern for a person with fully developed capacities and a network of established relationships than we do for an insentient embryo which has neither. So it isnt difficult to choose between these two stages of life when faced with a decision about which should live. The psychological and practical costs of death are simply much higher in one case than the other, and the South Dakota statute implicitly accepts this, despite its language about equal rights for the born and unborn.

 

But the question remains whether there are other interests besides the life of the mother that might outweigh the continued existence of the embryo, for instance the interest of the mother in not raising an unwanted child, or, in the case of stem cell research, the potential medical benefits of experiments involving embryonic stem cells which require destroying the embryo. The pro-life forces generally discount such interests, while the pro-choice, pro-research forces think there are many legitimate interests which might count more than the embryos survival. So whos right about this?

 

 

Sectarian vs. secular justifications

 

When it comes to justifying social policy, for instance on abortion or stem cell research, we can draw a distinction between arguments that invoke contested worldviews about ultimate reality, such as faith-based religions and science-based naturalism, and arguments that dont. The former Ill call sectarian, the latter secular. The faith-based claim that god endows a newly-formed embryo with an immortal soul is sectarian, since it invokes a religious worldview that many might not hold in a diverse pluralistic society. The naturalists claim that there is no such soul is equally contested and equally sectarian. By contrast, the claim that an embryo has the potential to become an autonomous individual is secular, since whatever religion or view of ultimate reality you subscribe to, its likely you accept it. Even if we have disagreements about souls, we all agree about the basic biological facts of life.

 

In an open, pluralistic society such as the United States, only secular claims are allowed, or should be allowed, as direct justifications for laws and policies. Our loyalty to an open society stems largely from knowing that in matters of public policy we reach consensus on secular, shared grounds, such that no particular religious or metaphysical view of ultimate reality gets to rule in matters affecting all citizens. It might of course happen that policy lines up with a particular sectarian worldview, but in a democratic society the justifications for policy must have an independent basis stemming from concerns related to this world, the physical and social reality we all agree we inhabit.[1]

 

To allow a sectarian worldview to drive laws and regulations, without a supporting and independently sufficient secular rationale, would violate the First Amendment separation of church and state, since it would permit a contested understanding of ultimate reality to govern public policy. According to whats become known as the Lemon Test, a constitutionally permissible law has to meet three criteria. In Justice Burgers language from his opinion in Lemon vs. Kurtzman, a statute 1) must have a secular legislative purpose, 2) its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion, and 3) the statute must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.

 

This means there must be secular reasons to justify anti-abortion policies which hold, in effect, that an embryos continued existence should trump all other interests, short of the mothers life. To be constitutional, legal restrictions on a womans reproductive choices must be justified on grounds that appeal to values independent of contested worldviews and religions, otherwise the restrictions will unfairly enshrine a particular worldview in public policy.

 

 

Secular intuitions about personhood and rights

 

The debate about the rights of the embryo is often framed as the question of whether or not its a person. If it is, then it has all the rights of other persons, including the right to life. Dictionary definitions of person include a living human, human, individual, and a man, woman or child. Since a newly-fertilized, microscopic human zygote the conceptus is living and human, then according to at least some of these definitions it counts as a person. But of course this is hotly contested. The substantive issue at stake about personhood is whether the conceptus and later stages of the embryo and fetus have the same rights as uncontroversially existing persons. In the context of the abortion debate, the term person simply functions as shorthand for a human entity owed the full set of rights under the Constitution. To assert that the conceptus, embryo, or fetus is a person is simply to assert that it has these rights, which is to assert that all stages of human life should be equally protected under law. This is the principle that strict pro-life advocates are trying to establish.

 

The current secular consensus, however, is that all stages of human life do not merit equal protection. As mentioned above, its an uncontroversially easy choice to allow a woman to live, not her fetus, when that choice is forced by a dangerous pregnancy. And of course Roe v. Wade gives later human life stages precedence over the beginnings of life, since prospective mothers are free to abort for personal reasons up until the 3rd trimester, subject to various restrictions as determined by states. In most practical and legal contexts, the secular consensus is that the embryo is not a person it doesnt have the same rights as sentient individuals. If it did, then as Lawrence Tribe points out, a host of unpalatable consequences follow, including treating abortion as murder, forcing women to take extraordinary steps to maintain fetal health, outlawing certain forms of contraception, and requiring that all embryos created by in vitro fertilization be implanted and brought to term.[2] It would also mean banning all embryonic stem cell research, public and private.

 

The consensus giving precedence to later stages of human life exists because ordinary human psychology generates different levels of concern for different stages. We are generally more protective and concerned about an entity that clearly has sentience and self-pertaining interests than something that clearly has neither. The capacity for such concern is a basic human endowment: we are hard-wired to be protective of beings that manifest sentience and self-interest, especially those close to us and those of our species. Having concern for other individuals is simply part of who we are; its in just about everyones psychological makeup.

 

Given that this shared predisposition is on a par with other instincts related to self and species preservation, it doesnt need external validation from a religious or philosophical worldview to have a claim on us. Few suppose we have to justify, on any additional metaphysical basis, our natural impulse to be protective of newborns, children, and adults. Rather, our default concern for their welfare is among the secular, non-religiously grounded benchmarks of whats moral; it sets an objective ethical standard for behavior, such that when someones welfare is unjustly compromised, for instance by an unprovoked attack or murder, it provokes near universal condemnation. This is a matter of shared, secular human psychology, not a contested metaphysics or worldview.

 

On the other hand, nearly everyone supposes we do have to justify, on some further basis, the claim that we should have the same level of concern for the conceptus. Some evidence for this is that anti-abortion, pro-life advocates are continually engaged in mounting arguments for why that concern is obligatory, and why embryos must be given the same rights as later stages of human life. The project of defending the embryos right to life implicitly concedes that the ordinary secular intuition about the conceptus is that it doesnt merit the same concern, or possess the same rights, as do later stages. The pro-life forces are thus going very much against the grain of human psychology by demanding we accord embryos the same moral status as we do babies, children and adults, beings that we uncontroversially consider persons.[3]

 

 

The autonomy right vs. the fetal right to life

 

An uncontested secular value in our society, one that flows from our innate concern for persons, is the value of personal liberty and autonomy. Whatever their worldview, nearly everyone agrees that, barring certain conditions, babies, children and adults have constitutional rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Unless, for instance, we knowingly and voluntarily break the law, we are presumptively entitled to these rights, among which is of course the right to life itself. This, to repeat, is a categorically secular agreement about a central human value, in that its affirmed by those of many different persuasions about ultimate reality. The protection under the Constitution of what Ill call the individuals autonomy right is based not in the will of god, but the will of the people. Our agreement about rights is driven by our shared psychological disposition to feel concern for persons and their interests, not a shared metaphysics. After all, in the U.S. we are deeply divided on metaphysical questions about ultimate reality.

 

Pro-life advocates insist that however insentient the embryo, and however much it cant represent its own interests, its right to life has a moral claim on us nearly equivalent to the life of a child or adult (nearly equivalent because they concede a mothers life trumps that of the fetus should a conflict arise). Further and this is the crucial point its continuing existence definitively overrides all conflicting personal interests except for the life of the mother. The continuation of life in utero from the moment of conception merits more protection than the autonomy rights granted under the Constitution to each existing sentient individual, including the right of a woman to end her pregnancy before the 3rd trimester as now protected by Roe v. Wade.

 

But whats the secular justification for this claim? Since the conceptus has no sentience or self-represented interests, its secular value only derives from how adult persons such as ourselves value it on the basis of what we agree are shared, this-world, secular concerns. The only concern that could possibly trump the value of the autonomy rights of uncontroversially existing persons as protected by the Constitution is an opposing concern of at least the same magnitude. But unless one has already decided on other grounds, for instance a religious belief in the soul, that an embryo's existence has greater value than a sentient individuals interests, such concern will not be present.

 

Existing interests and the persons that embody them are self-declared, actualized, and uncontroversially real for all of us; they directly motivate the secular conviction that human rights are worthy of protection under law. By contrast, the potential interests of a microscopic fertilized egg are just that potential; and although it exists, it isnt manifest or concretely real for us in the way developed human beings are. Thus, a conceptus doesnt normally generate moral concern sufficient to motivate giving its existence protection that overrides the interests of ourselves or our peers. Pro-life concern for the embryo isnt the normal moral regard generated by a distinct individual in front of us, but typically a religiously-driven concern which then infects pro-life psychology.

 

This psychology then distorts the weights normally assigned to the competing values at stake in an abortion decision. In the case of an unintended and unwanted pregnancy, we must weigh the harm of forcing the woman to give birth to an unwanted child against the harm of destroying an embryo. The forced birth is quite likely a psychologically damaging burden for the mother that could severely limit her life prospects. Destroying the embryo, on the other hand, doesnt destroy a sentient, self-interested being; it doesnt inflict suffering or compromise any self-declared or manifest interests; nor does the embryos destruction inflict harm on the sentient being it would have become, since the capacity to suffer must first exist to suffer harms. Compared to the damage inflicted by a forced birth on the mothers real, actualized life, its destruction is of far less consequence. We intuitively understand this when we judge, uncontroversially, that it is not a human tragedy that a high percentage of fertilized eggs never achieve implantation (up to two-thirds, by some estimates) but are expelled during menstruation.

 

The psychology of the strict anti-abortionist reverses these judgments. For him, the value of the embryos continued existence, as a stage of human life, outweighs the value of the mothers autonomy right, so the harm to the mother of bearing an unwanted child is less than the harm of the embryos destruction. But this reversal of the normally assigned values usually stems from a religious conviction about the god-given sanctity of all human life, starting at conception. This is usually the case since theres nothing in normal human psychology, independent of such a conviction, that could accomplish the reversal. This is to say that theres no secular basis for valuing the continued existence of the embryo over the life interests and autonomy of the mother, or if there is, pro-life advocates have yet to successfully articulate it.** Strict anti-abortionists assert that overriding concern for the embryo is mandatory for all of us, and that the right to life that flows from such concern must be protected, but they are finally unable to justify this assertion on grounds apart from religion. They can, of course, simply declare that fetal life has an intrinsic value that trumps the rights of the mother (the South Dakota statute in effect declares this) but thats not a justification, merely a declaration. Without an explicit, independent basis in secular concerns, strict anti-abortion statutes lack a secular purpose and illicitly advance religion. They therefore violate the First Amendment as expressed in the Lemon Test, and so are unconstitutional.

 

**Some have tried, see here, for instance.

 

 

Pro-life persuasion, and how to combat it

 

Lacking a secular rationale, pro-life forces nevertheless try to marshal apparently secular support for the fetal right to life. One stratagem is to generate moral concern for early stages of human life by playing on their physical similarity to later stages, for instance by displaying images of fetuses that have recognizable human features. If this prompts a sympathetic response in us, we may start to feel on a gut level that to abort a conceptus or fetus before the 3rd trimester is to kill a baby, and babies, after all, are legally persons. So the superficial appearance of uncontroversial personhood is employed to generate person-level moral concern for early stages of pregnancy. Its significant that abortion opponents dont carry posters depicting newly conceived embryos, which when magnified look more like buckyballs than people. To do so would of course motivate intuitions in the opposite direction: this embryo is nothing like a stage of life to which we uncontroversially grant rights, so you neednt be as concerned about it.

 

Another seemingly secular pro-life ploy is to describe fetal life as innocent. An innocent life obviously has done nothing to deserve death, so must be allowed to live, the implicit logic goes. But of course on a secular understanding of guilt and innocence all of us are innocent until proven guilty of some crime, so theres nothing especially innocent about the conceptus. So it doesnt especially deserve to live. Of course abortion opponents are trying to trade on the Christian sense of innocence, the opposite of being fallen or sinful, without explicitly saying so. But again, theres no valid secular sense in which the living are morally inferior to the unborn. Indeed, the unborn arent yet moral agents to whom we can be compared. All told, the appeal to unborn innocence fails as a valid secular argument for granting the embryo a mandatory right to life. Faith cant hide behind it.

 

The South Dakota statute states, ominously, that abortions should be prohibited in order to protect, among other things, the mother's fundamental natural intrinsic right to a relationship with her child. I say ominously since this right, although ostensibly the mothers to exercise, is deemed to supersede any other interests she might have, whether or not she voluntarily asserts the right. So what might sound like an appeal to protecting her autonomy is in fact just the opposite. Once a child is born, then yes, the mother-child relationship has an overriding secular priority, but the obligation to maintain that relationship from the moment of conception cant be assumed without also assuming that the conceptus is the moral equivalent of an uncontroversially existing person. And as argued above, that assumption has no defensible secular justification. Our personal priorities cant, and shouldnt, be legislated in abortion statutes without such a justification, since to do so unconstitutionally enshrines a hidden sectarian agenda in public policy. By contrast, leaving the decision to abort (or not) up to those directly involved in the situation, as does Roe v. Wade, permits everyone to act according to the worldview of their choice, an important liberty right. This is as it should be since the question of whether or not to abort has no demonstrable secular right answer in all cases. Instead, the answer must depend on how much those involved in the decision value the existence of the embryo, weighed against their other interests.

 

Its possible, perhaps because of pro-life persuasions, that a majority of citizens and their elected representatives come to feel the same concern for the embryo as they do for babies, children and adults. They might come to believe that its owed all the rights of personhood, and further that its right to life should trump the interests of the mother, short of killing her. Enacted into law (for instance along the lines of the South Dakota statute), this would count as nominally secular legislation since no explicit religious convictions need be invoked. That it lacks a cogent secular justification would make it vulnerable to challenge, but that wouldnt necessarily prevent it from becoming (bad) law.

 

This is a depressing prospect for pro-choice advocates, but to reassure ourselves we should remember just how much the strict anti-abortion position conflicts with the basic human psychology that drives secular intuitions about personhood and rights. Its an unlikely prospect that the majority of citizens, properly informed, will ever be persuaded that the continued existence of a microscopic, minutes-old, newly implanted conceptus should override the autonomy rights and liberty interests of the mother, father, or any other fully sentient and self-interested party to an abortion decision. But to forestall this eventuality, pro-choice forces must continually keep in the foreground of public awareness the vast objective differences between the conceptus and a sentient human being. They must capitalize on our robust, innate predisposition to feel far more concern for existing individuals than for a few dozen or hundred cells something very close to an abstraction were it not for microscopes. And they must not permit religious ideology to distort the priorities set by normal human sympathies.

 

More generally, pro-choice advocates should make the case that human life is not necessarily a summum bonum to be maximized at all costs. Although life is a necessary condition of having a life worth living, it isnt sufficient. We must acknowledge that the value of sheer existence (our own or an embryos) sometimes places below other secular values, such as our desires to avoid suffering, be autonomous in pursuit of ones life goals, raise only wanted children, protect ones family, serve ones country, and to prevent the world from being overrun by homo sapiens, sometimes described as the planets most successful weed species. The pro-life, religiously-motivated injunction to produce and protect human life no matter what its quality (go forth and multiply) is one of our selfish genes most devious mimetic stratagems: human replicators become infected by the religious meme of ostensibly selfless, spiritual concern for the souls of the unborn, which unwittingly serves the genes reproductive agenda.[4] Pro-life dogma about the fetal right to life is a gene-meme triumph of the first order, an attack on personal autonomy and planetary health which can best be combated by exposing it as such. Why should we sacrifice the quality and diversity of life, ours and other creatures, for sheer quantity?

 

Pro-choice forces must also work to keep certain fundamentalist religious groups and their worldviews from gaining further influence, since after all it is religious convictions, hidden under seemingly secular rationales, that mostly motivate opposition to abortion. In that regard, naturalism merits consideration as an alternative worldview, one thats friendly to this-world, secular concerns precisely because it asserts that this world is all there is.[5] To the extent that naturalism can help displace worldviews that mandate equal rights and a pre-eminent value for the embryo, this will help secure a womans right to choose.

 

 

Thomas W. Clark, Center for Naturalism, July, 2006

 

 

 

**********

 

 

 

Endnotes

 

 

 

Important Note: Peter Wenz's 1992 Abortion Rights as Religious Freedom lays out in detail a First Amendment, church-state separation argument for abortion rights, so I'm mostly reinventing his wheel in this paper, which I wrote before finding his book, reviewed here. A similar tack is taken in Secularism and Sexuality: The Case for Gay Equality.

 

[1] This agreement isnt unanimous, since Christian Scientists believe physical reality is an illusion, and they sometimes act on this belief by denying themselves and their children standard medical care. But many states have criminalized Christian Scientists decisions to forego medical care for children in the case of life-threatening illnesses.

 

[2] Lawrence Tribe, Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, Norton: New York, 1992, pp. 120-130 (paper edition)

 

[3] Even on the assumption that the embryo is a person, it doesnt follow that women have no rights to abortion, as argued by Eileen McDonagh in Abortion Rights After South Dakota, Free Inquiry, July-August 2006.

 

[4] Not that genes literally have agendas, only that its useful to talk about them teleologically. See Keith Stanovichs fascinating book on the conflict between human autonomy and the reproductive interests of genes and memes, The Robots Rebellion, reviewed here.

 

[5] See Naturalism vs. supernaturalism: how to survive the culture wars, Humanist, 66, #3, May-June, 2006.

 

 

Source, including links and sources used.

 

Also I'm aware that this style of just posting articles proves grating for some, it's the way I learned to argue in policy debate. Not that I couldn't digest this article and paraphrase it, but I consider the words of a published scholar to have more potency than my own.

[magekillr]

"They're just concerned with abortion, guys! It's not about birth control at all. We're not misogynists!"

 

That’s partly because the Personhood movement hopes to do nothing less than reclassify everyday, routine birth control as abortion. The medical definition of pregnancy is when a fertilized egg successfully implants in the uterine wall. If this initiative passes, and fertilized eggs on their own have full legal rights, anything that could potentially block that implantation – something a woman’s body does naturally all the time – could be considered murder. Scientists say hormonal birth-control pills and the morning-after pill work primarily by preventing fertilization in the first place, but the outside possibility, never documented, that an egg could be fertilized anyway and blocked is enough for some pro-lifers.

 

Indeed, at least one pro-Personhood doctor in Mississippi, Beverly McMillan, refused to prescribe the pill before retiring last year, writing, “I painfully agree that birth control pills do in fact cause abortions.” Bush does prescribe the pill, but says, “There’s good science on both sides … I think there’s more science to support conception not occurring.” Given that the Personhood Amendment is so vague, I asked her, what would stop the alleged “good science” on one side from prevailing and banning even the pill?

 

Bush paused. “I could say that is not the intent,” she said. “I don’t have an answer for that particular [case], how it would be settled, but I do know this is simple.” Which part is simple? “The amendment is simple,” she said. “You can play the ‘what if’ game, but if you keep it simple, this is a person who deserves life.” What about the IUD, which she refuses to prescribe for moral reasons, and which McMillan told me the Personhood Amendment would ban? “I’m not the authority on what would and would not be banned.” No – Bush simply plays one on TV. And if her amendment passes, only condoms, diaphragms and natural family planning — the rhythm method – would be guaranteed in Mississippi.

 

Bush also says in the commercial that the amendment wouldn’t “criminalize mothers and investigate them when they have miscarriages.” And yet if the willful destruction of an embryo is a murder, then that makes a miscarried woman’s body a potential crime scene or child welfare investigation. What about women whose miscarriages were suspected to be deliberate or due to their own negligence? One Personhood opponent, Michele Johansen, told me she wondered whether she could have been investigated for miscarrying a wanted, five-week pregnancy, because she rode a roller coaster. (Her doctor ultimately told her they were unrelated.)

 

The boilerplate Personhood response, echoed by both McMillan and Bush, is that no woman was prosecuted for miscarriage before Roe v. Wade, so why start now? Of course, there was no Personhood amendment at the time, nor much knowledge of embryonic development. And in countries with absolute abortion bans, like El Salvador, women are regularly investigated and jailed when found to have induced miscarriages.

 

The next front in the abortion wars: Birth control

 

Also see Jezebel: Mississippi Personhood Advocates Are Extra Scary in Person

 

It's also worth mentioning -- as the link does -- that "the number of babies who die as infants in Mississippi is double the number of abortions annually. It also has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy nationwide, alongside a child welfare system that remains dangerously broken." If they really cared about babies, all their energy would be spent correcting that abysmal infant mortality rate. But they don’t.

[IGoddessI]

I can't remember if I posted in this thread somewhere but I'll comment again anyway. I don't have the energy to go read sources and what not and present some wonderful argument but here is the gist: My personal choice is to never abort. I take full responsibility of my actions and will rise to the responsibility. The only time I would abort is if I were raped. However, I'm smart enough to take the morning after pill so I wouldn't be pregnant anyway. Though, the pill is not always reliable, especially when taken with some medications. I prefer if other women didn't abort but it is not my body and not my choice. I am anti abortion, other than rape but I am also pro choice. I choose to live my beliefs and let others live theirs.

[Nomrombom]

Thought I'd revive this with a bit of new info.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime

 

If you're too lazy, it's basically a study that showed legal abortion reduces crime rates starting about 16-20 years after. Anti-abortionists have any thoughts?

[obfuscator]

I'm sure murdering anyone convicted of a crime would lower crime rates too, that doesn't make it right.

 

My stance on this is quite clear and I've made it so repeatedly - I don't know what you hope to gain by throwing more and more hypothetical situations and irrelevant data at this.

[Nomrombom]

I just wondered if anyone would be willing to put aside their... morals I guess, for the benefit of their country.

[obfuscator]

I just wondered if anyone would be willing to put aside their... morals I guess, for the benefit of their country.

 

Would you be?

[sees_all1]

Thought I'd revive this with a bit of new info.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime

 

If you're too lazy, it's basically a study that showed legal abortion reduces crime rates starting about 16-20 years after. Anti-abortionists have any thoughts?

 

The study is bunk.

 

In November 2005, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economists Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz released a working paper, "Testing Economic Hypotheses with State-Level Data: A Comment on Donohue and Levitt (2001).", in which they argued that Donohue and Levitt's study did not estimate the regressions that Donohue and Levitt had claimed that they examined. In particular, Foote and Goetz said that, despite their claims that they had done so, the 2001 Donohue and Levitt study failed to control for influences that varied within a state from year to year (such as the effect of crack-cocaine). Foote and Goetz also point out that Donohue and Levitt accidentally used the total number of arrests, not the arrest rate, to explain the murder rate. Using the total number of arrests does not establish the unwantedness mechanism Donohue and Levitt propose, only that the total number of arrests has changed. After making these two corrections, Foot and Goetz interpreted their results as evidence that violent crime actually increases with more abortions and that property crime is unrelated to abortions. This study received press coverage in The Wall Street Journal[8] and The Economist.[9]

[Assume Nothing]

If aborting a fetus is a crime itself, ofcourse crime rates go up. It would occur by definition.

 

For abortion advocates - would you be supportive of your parents aborting you, had they faced the dilemma in the past?

[obfuscator]

If aborting a fetus is a crime itself, ofcourse crime rates go up. It would occur by definition.

 

For abortion advocates - would you be supportive of your parents aborting you, had they faced the dilemma in the past?

 

I agree if abortion was a crime then all actions of abortion would increase crime rates. However that isnt really an argument one way or the other just a statement of 2 + 2 = 4 :lol:

 

 

And if my parents faced this dilemma id be against it, since you know Im consciously able to think of reasons to be against it unlike an embryonic fetus. However lets say I was a child of parents who were facing the dilemma whether to abort or not, and lets say that they never wanted a kid so they didnt love me and lets say they were poor because of economic opportunities lost due to having a kid. This is the story of many kids in poor families who end up joining gangs or lashing out in other violent ways. Would it be better for society?

 

The real morality stems from the struggle between good for oneself and good for ones society.

 

 

Now this isnt an argument either way, but I ask you which scenario is better for society as a whole regardless of what you consider morally correct.

 

A family that chose when they wanted the kid and when they were best able to financially support that kid or a family who had 1 or potentially many kids when they cant afford it and didnt want the kid?

 

Id like to point out that you havent argued the fact that a lot of criminals are the results of being unwanted kids born in poverty, so I will assume you agree with that. Please fact this into your decision - morals aside which is better for society.

 

Once again: would you put aside your morals for the good of society?

 

Theoretical example: The planet is quickly on it's way to being vastly overpopulated. It would be grossly beneficial to society if all those starving african children were culled, because they're putting a strain on the world and will never amount to anything anyway. Would you participate in such an event?

[Nomrombom]

Not that situation in particular, because they are conscious people. Not fetuses.

 

And how exactly are they straining the world? If you mean because the world donates money, then that's the world's own doing. Nobody makes us give anything.