They’re both cruel to anyone “below” them (this is a simplistic argument.) They’re easy to cry wolf about in order to draw people over to your side, people who vote and act emotionally
The thing I’ve yet to figure out about the abortion debate, and what likely gets me labeled as a right-wing bigot for even daring to ask, is where ‘pro-choice’ people draw the line. The ‘pro-life’ view is clear: life starts at conception. However, I don’t know where the left draws the line, and in my mind, refusing to do so seems to suggest it would be fine even a day before birth, which seems like an equally extreme position.
If we have reached the day prior to birth the person carrying doesn’t want an abortion. It’s therefore fine to leave the decision to them and their medical team.
Not everyone agrees on an exact time, typically the viability of the fetus outside of the womb is the consideration.
This would mean a baby that would be just premature wouldn’t be aborted. As you move back the viability would end up varying for each pregnancy, which is why after a set point doctors are involved. They then make a medical judgement balancing the viability and safety to the carrier.
So there is no hard date. The insistence on getting one simplifies a complicated issue where nuance is important.
I’ve noticed that a lot of anti-abortion laws target doctors, specifically to make the fuzzy nature of the cuttoff difficult.
For at least pro-choice voters, many are more concerned with the line being drawn by doctors, and not by politicians. So it’s less about where the line is being drawn and more about who, with the proper education, is doing the drawing.
Maybe I should’ve been more specific - I meant the point after which you need to consult a doctor to go ahead with an abortion. I think most people agree that a fetus just a few weeks old is barely a living thing, so aborting it is hardly different from, cumming in a sock. However, there is a point after which we’re no longer talking about a lump of cells but a sentient being, and to me at least, it seems reasonable that after that point, you’d need a medical reason to do it.
Where I’m from, that line is at 12 weeks. Until then, you’re free to do it for whatever reason you want. The unwillingness to draw any line like that means they’d be okay aborting an 8 month old too even for financial reasons and that just sounds fucking insane to me.
For all the left people I know, including myself, The reason we don’t want a line drawn is because sometimes special circumstances arise. There may be medical complications in the third trimester that would result in the mother’s death and it’s not feasible to exhaustively list every scenario that could land her in this situation so it’s better to just not a put a limit on it so she doesn’t have some bullshit hoop to jump through later while she’s dying.
That said, I don’t think there’s anyone genuinely arguing that people should be allowed to get abortions super late into the pregnancy just for funsies. Third trimester is the logical cut off to me, and most of the people I know agree or want it slightly shorter. We just don’t want the law to specify that since it can cause legal complications. It’s better that it be considered a medical standard.
I don’t think that drawing a line means it wouldn’t be allowed under any circumstances after that. Before the line, it would be at the mother’s discretion, and after passing the line, you’d need a statement from one or two doctors and a valid medical reason for it.
Where I live abortion is legal untill 12 weeks and after that you need a medical reason for it and a statement from 2 doctors. What’s wrong with this?
You need to prove you’re going to die to 2 different doctors? Sounds like you need to be lucky which is exactly what we don’t want.
How do you know you’re going to die due to pregnancy without visiting a doctor? You’re not going there to prove anything. You’re going there for a diagnosis. Doctor is the medical expert, not the mother.
That doctor also needs to have it confirmed by another doctor though? Seems odd, and also sounds like the perfect way to deny abortions to women who need them.
I don’t know what hellhole you live in, but where I’m from, doctors don’t arbitrarily deny abortions to someone whose life is in danger. The reason you need a second opinion is because you had three months to decide whether you want to keep it or not. If it’s been more than that, the child is already so far developed that you’ll need a medical reason to abort it, and at that point, ‘I changed my mind’ is no longer a good enough reason to end the life of a living, feeling being. Also, after that point you generally also need surgery to remove the dead fetus.
You must be lucky to not live in one of the many American states which have laws actively causing many women to die.
are you a sleeper account? 7mo old acct & in 1h you’ve responded 2x to emotionally charged political topics with sidelining , near-no-commitment comments that take up space & try to dilute the issue
Abortion is a human right. Death penalty is cruel & horrifying.
Death penalty is justice. Abortion is cruel & horrifying.
See? That’s how convincing your reasoning is. Luckily the other people responding are atleast addressing the question.
Revenge is rarely justice. You also entirely avoided there comment.
Well I’m not going to defend death penalty because I’m against it. My point was to illustrate how poor argument that is.
I replied to their accusation on another thread.
Clear and simple makes things easy, but easy is not always better. Also, the “life begins at conception” position only seems clear on the surface, but if you look deep enough things get quite muddled.
For example, is a zygote a single person? What if it later divides and becomes twins or triplets: did the twin’s life begin at conception? Did one life become two? Is a zygote a ball of life that can become one or more people?
What about miscarriages? It’s thought as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, but most happen so early that the carrier is not even aware they’re pregnant. If you come across a family with four kids, do you assume they likely had another 3-4 lost lives via miscarriage and hold a funeral for them?
Should people start getting child tax benefits as soon as they have a positive pregnancy test? Or is “life starts at conception” only relevant when we’re talking about abortion, but conveniently ignored everywhere else?
And what if there is a complication with pregnancy, where if an abortion is not performed both the carrier and developing human will likely die, but if an abortion is performed only the developing human will likely die? Is it now permissible? What if the carrier is a 14 year old who was raped, is suicidal, and has a high chance of stabbing themselves in the abdomen to try to self-abort if they’re not able to get an abortion: should they be restrained in a padded room until the baby is born, forced to serve as an incubator for a baby that the state will then take?
Even when your cutoff is strict, it is not always “clear” because this is a complex issue without a clear answer.
But to answer your question specifically:
Pro-choice people generally recognize that abortion is not desirable, but disagree exactly what the rules should be. Abortion does the least harm when the pregnancy is a single cell (zygote,) and in the embryo stage where most abortions occur the developing human is essentially a collection of multiple cell lines becoming differentiated into tissue but not yet developing functional organs (you’ll often hear this called “a clump of cells.”)
As the embryo develops into a fetus, the heart and brain develop and start functioning, which is where some pro-choice people start to draw a line. Others point toward viability: at about 22 weeks, a few fetuses have been known to survive with extraordinary health measures. By 36 weeks, fetuses can be live born without any extra health issues from being born early. So starting about 20 weeks, we start to recognize that pregnancies become more and more viable: that’s where a lot of people draw the line.
A very small percentage of abortions are done late in pregnancy, typically for health reasons. Not all pro-choice people are in favor of legalizing this, but many feel that in these situations, abortion is a tough decision that is best made by a patient in a careful discussion with their doctor, not by a politician they will never meet. So while these pro-choice people may not wish to see an abortion performed within a week or two of natural birth, they do not want to outlaw it so that the option is there for people who truly need it.
I mean the pro-life stance is clear in the sense that they generally don’t accept abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger. So when someone is ‘pro-life,’ I know what that means. However, when someone says they’re ‘pro-choice,’ I don’t always know what they mean. I’ve assumed most people draw the line somewhere around three months, after which you’d need a medical reason and a doctor’s statement to proceed. But based on the replies I’ve gotten here, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Many seem to suggest that no such lines should be drawn at all and even go as far as calling the baby a parasite, which seems a bit crazy to me to put it lightly.
I know such lines are arbitrary and there’s no practical difference between one day and another but what seems obvious to me is that a total ban and allowing it at 8 months for any other that a serious medical reason are both equally extreme stances and the ‘truth’ is there somewhere in between.
To answer your question. They consider the argument of “where do you draw the line” to be a red herring.
Consider the following: if a person is in need for a kidney transplant, or else he would die, would it be ethical to force someone to donate their kidney against their will? I think not.
Same applies to abortions. You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process. And not having an option to abort would be to take away your bodily autonomy.
As for the line, I think that the person making that choice is the one that draws that line. It is not for us to decide.
Surely you can get rid of that ‘parasite’ in the first few months instead of waiting for the last minute? I don’t see how drawing the line at, say 12 weeks now somehow takes away a person’s bodily autonomy.
Speaking of a red herring, a comparison to a forced kidney donation is completely irrelevant here.
You are being forced to feed a parasitic being in your body, a being that destroys your body in the process.
Okay, let’s take this reasoning even further then. Why can’t this same logic be used to a 3 year old?
Because a 3 year old is SENTINENT. It can FEEL things, unlike a fetus.
I’m pretty sure an 8-month-old fetus can feel things and is sentient, so that’s a moot point unless you’re going to argue that sentience appears at the moment of birth - which we both know isn’t true.
So… Why can’t we abort 3 year olds?
The same logic does work on a 3 year old. A parent is not forced to feed it and can have someone remove it. They just don’t call it abortion. https://adoption.com/how-to-give-a-child-up-for-adoption/
Maybe some day a fetus can be removed without killing it, but 3 year olds already have that ability.
Then have the child and give it up for adoption? If you don’t want to keep it, you can freely abort it until, say, 12 weeks, after which you’d need a medical reason and a statement from one or two doctors. I don’t see what the issue is here.
I’m not saying this is exactly how it should be, but something along those lines. The idea that someone should be free to abort a 7-month-old fetus if they choose seems quite extreme to me.
deciding what others can or cannot do is a whole other moral discussion.
My understanding is that they consider it ok to kill someone who committed a heinous crime but not ok to kill someone who is completely innocent.
This is exactly how I used to see things when I grew up in a conservative echo chamber.
And now that I recognize a person’s right to choose and tend to think capital punishment should probably* not be legal, I’ll add that it’s not that my underlying beliefs changed, just how I now understand things. Some people do deserve capital punishment. And innocent people should be protected. But personhood doesn’t start at conception, a person conceiving has a right to decide what happens to their body, and the state can never be trusted to administer capital punishment.
*I say “probably” because I also think it might be necessary to allow it in extreme cases. My reasoning is that if people don’t believe the justice system will adequately punish, they have incentive and no ultimate detergent for taking justice into their own hands.
It doesn’t work as a deterrent though. In states that have the death penalty people still do bad things.
But should we even punish?
I don’t mean to troll, so let me explain. Why do we punish? I think it’s two fold, we punish to deter crimes and we punish to exact revenge. But the fear of punishment doesn’t deter crime https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence and that leaves revenge as the only both intended and actual outcome of punishment.
Is the current costs of running a complicated criminal justice system really worth it, if all we get from it is revenge? Does revenge make society better? I don’t think so.
I’m not advocating for anarchy either. There should be consequences for criminals. I’m just not sure what the consequences should be, but punishment is ineffective. I get that we have personal responsibility, and free will. And I’m not trying to excuse criminals, I’m just saying that punishment doesn’t work.
Lots of people never reach more advanced stages of moral reasoning. They don’t do bad things to avoid being punished, or maybe because they have a simple understanding of “it’s against the rules”
The current justice and prison system is abhorrent, but something needs to happen if someone tries to murder someone else. Most people are alright but there are a lot of anti social people out there, too. And a lot of people who would be alright if they were in more stable circumstances
I’m all about scientific research, especially when it goes against the grain, but the idea of getting caught being a bigger deterrent than the punishment is just, weird?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
If there is no punishment, why would you be afraid to be caught?
I think the idea is that the thing that stops you in the moment is “I likely won’t get away with it” more than “if they catch me there’ll be hell to pay … but only if”.
I mean you’re (as in the informal general usage of “you”, not as the second person pronoun) not going to pull out your phone while driving, if you’re next to a cop. But if there’s no one around that even looks like an undercover traffic cop?
Human brains are bad at thinking in long term consequences, but immediate consequences? Those we understand.
One aspect of punishment is retribution for the victims when there is nothing else and another is to keep people that are harmful away in order to keep other people safe.
Here in Sweden we have a current massive problem with organized crime that are now systematically abusing our criminal justice system that is built on humanitarian ideals for rehab and protecting suspects and criminals rights to the absurd. So yes, in those cases I think punishment will do. Cynically abusing protection measures of society deserves punishment. It may not change those individuals for the life they have chosen for themselves but it will keep them out of making even more damage to society and violent crime against individuals and I honestly see no problem in harsh consequences for their own decisions.
As someone recently told me, they don’t worry about saving lives, they worry about saving souls.
You need to abide by the quaint rules of the magical sky daddy for that, even if they don’t make sense.
But the Skyfather himself has given us directions to induce a miscarriage with a tabernacle dust smoothie.
Except clearly any aborted fetus would immediately go to heaven based on what’s written in the bible. In fact, heaven should be absolutely completely full of dead babies based on miscarriages, stillbirths, etc. if you believe that they get a soul at the moment of conception.
So that logic doesn’t really make sense either. Which is par for the course.
Uhh no? Non-baptized souls go to limbo according to Christian theology.
Catholics
That depends on which flavor of Christianity you’re looking at, but even the Catholics don’t think they go to Limbo, the pope had an entire study done on it, and the result was “we hope they go to heaven but we don’t know”
A lot of the other denominations don’t subscribe to the original sin shtick, and therefore babies would go to heaven even without being baptized.
I always loved the “do uncontacted remote tribes that haven’t heard of God or Jesus go to heaven?” question. So far everyone has answered yes. And then you realize that Christians could save everyone, everywhere, forever, just by destroying all their literature, not teaching religion, and letting it die with them. One sacrificial generation and everyone is saved forever.
But they won’t do it because of greed and pride, the core aspects of their belief system.
Lots of them believe it is written on our hearts and uncontacted tribes have rejected Jesus.
I was juuuuuuust about to explain how making sense isn’t a requirement to them, until I saw your last sentence. Then I knew you already get it.
Actually, nobody goes to heaven when they die (according to the bible). Everyone must wait until judgement day when all the graves, etc, open and we all face judgement at that point. This surprised me when I first learned it because it goes against all the Christian culture I’ve ever been taught and experienced.
So grandma isn’t currently in heaven no matter how good she was.
That’s a huge relief that perhaps my grandparents haven’t seen my embarrassing moments after all.
I dont think it really has anything to do with that. A state recently sued due to abortion and teen pregnancy reduction efforts leading to decreased teenage pregnancy rates arguing something along the lines of our populations are going down and it will cost us in population, political representation, and federal resources.
This is about cheap/free labor, disenfranchising women, and maintaining a permanent disabled and poverty-stricken underclasses that keep everyone on up in line with the hierarchy
Stop being right!
sounds left to me
I blame religion.
Because people receiving the death penalty theoretically did something wrong, and fetuses did not. I’m neither against abortion nor pro death penalty, and I don’t really see a contradiction there.
Former Christian here.
This is it. Criminals have (theoretically) been proven guilty. Some crimes are worthy of death.
A fetus (ahem unborn baby) has cast no sin and does not deserve death.
Christians would also say that they would never get out to death because they would never do anything wrong but when you bring up the fact that Jesus himself said you should be willing to suffer even to the point of suffering on a cross, they start changing the subject.
That wasn’t so hard, was it? People tripping over themselves to find a gotcha and forgetting to use a little common sense.
To be fair to those people (which I’m really not inclined to be), I’m pro-choice but strongly against the death penalty. So I guess it swings both ways.
it doesn’t swing both ways. They are claiming the position of being “pro life” which is clearly hypocritical. No one on the other side is claiming to be “pro death” or “anti life”.
Arguably, an unborn baby cannot be guilty of anything. But an adult sentenced to death is often guilty of some horrible crime. So if you accept killing as a punishment, there is no contradiction.
Until you realize that our court system is FULL of false arrests, and the courts have some stupid high number like 98% conviction rate.
They say “take the deal, or the court will fuck you”.
2 years vs 30 years.
And then later they run a second trial for something else that has a death penalty as the outcome. The jury is shown this guy, already in prison, for a semi-related charge. Already convicted of the other charge. So his ability to appear innocent is already swayed. And now suddenly there’s no deal. The court goes full hammer. The jury is made to believe he did it 100%.
And he can’t say he didn’t do it, and wasn’t even there, because he ALREADY pleaded guilty to the other charge which would place him there.
So now you got a populace, who wasn’t in either court session, not seeing how this escalated, and not willing to believe our court system may be flawed. Just kill the criminal and move on, right?
You are overstating it. all evidence I can find is only a small percentage are not guilty. Of course that small possibility is enough for me to be against the death pentalty. If we had a way to be 100% sure of guilt I’d favor death but since we don’t I can’t go that far.
It’s not all the same people: Roman Catholics, for example, tend to oppose both.
Roman Catholic doctrine opposes both, but the bishops don’t go around threatening to withhold religious services for politicians who allow the death penalty like they do with pro-choice politicians…
I could have sworn that there was a news story of Peloci being denied the sacrament due to her supporting an abortion bill.
Makes more sense when you realise it isn’t about life, but about punishing women for having sex.
Because it’s not about saving the lives of unborn babies and it never has been.
It’s about curtailing choice.
There’s no logical contradiction between believing that some people should be killed and believing that other people shouldn’t be killed. You might as well ask why a soldier would shoot at his enemies but not his allies
(I’m not picking a side in the “Are fetuses people?” debate here. They are from the point of view of the people against abortion.)
welcome to high school debate class, where we think about issues with more nuance than most politicians.
They want men to choose who lives or dies. They absolutely do not want women to be in charge of anything. That’s why no exceptions in the case of rape and incest. A man made a decision, they don’t want a woman to have the power to reverse it.
It’s not about ethics, it never was. It’s about CONTROL.
