yguy

Not to be dismissive, but rehashing the same points with the same person is something I find tedious. If you're interested enough, I believe we debated this in the Politics forum, so a search on your posts with "yguy + abortion" in them would probably get you pretty close to the original discussion.

Silent Acorns

You also said that you would have no problem with aborting a zygote if you could be convinced that it didn't have a trace of human consciousness. This suggests to me that the question of whether or not the zygote is conscious is far more important to you than the fact that the zygote is biologically alive.
One of the clinical definitions of death is the cessation of all brain activity (the other definitions involve cessation of heart and respiratory function). If you can accept that death occurs when the brain stops funtioning, why can't you accept that life (human conscious life) can't start until the brain starts functioning?

yguy

You are repeating yourself. I've answered this as best I can.

I don't, necessarily, as I think I made clear in the "When does life begin" thread.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by TheBigZoo
And I don't see why the result of birth control failure should be the death of a baby,

I think there's a difference between a zygote and a baby.

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by themistocles
I'm not a doctor, but I fully expect that it's clear what "common sense" means

I'm afraid it isn't, because different people may have different ideas of what common sense dictates that they should do.

and what would constitute a "serious consequence".

Serious consequences to you may not be serious consequences to someone else, and vice versa.

I only provided morning sickness and death as examples of extremes and I would expect that people more knowledgable and with greater concern for such issues would know what health concerns constitute normal and (relatively) trivial in nature, and which concerns are of a nature which is of great concern to the mother.

If you and I do not know what health concerns are of a nature which is of great concern to the mother, perhaps the mother should be the one making the decisions regarding her pregnancy.

I think the principle of my argument is clear, it would be laborious and feckless (as insignificant the effect of my argument will have, anyways) for me to consider every possible illness that might be occur when a broad generalization serves the purpose better.

When determining what women can or cannot do regarding their bodies, I find it better to take details into account, rather than making sweeping generalizations.

No it wouldn't, because not all abortions occur for health reasons, not all pregnancies are likely to kill the mother.

The very fact that some do occur negates your statement that abortions are done because of convenience.

I'd certainly wager that most to nearly all abortions (in this country, anyways) occur for reasons of convenience only.

Any evidence to back that up?

abe smith

A post of Themistocles's about 25? july mentions "what about the Mother who drowns her children...?"
I'd like to add ref. here to the documented fact that in "classical" (= Greek & Roman) times the Pater familias, who was LEGALLY the head/boss of the family unit, had absolute authority to kill, have-killed, expose, let-die ... any infant born, whom he the Father decided was not to be allowed to live. This took care of the problems of "defective" Persons, for whom their lives may have been considered to be an intolerable burden to themselves and to the community.

Altho I am not able at the moment to call-up my recollections (read decades ago) about what various human culture-groups (and indeed *non-human animal* mothers) do, I "think" the tradition of *exposure*, to leave the matter in the hands of "Mother Nature" or of "Fate" or of "The Gods", is a standard & long-during (certainly pre-Christian) solution. No-one refers to all-this nowadays.

I infer that in such "marginal-survival" cultures as that of the Inuit, for example, these matters were dealt with by the FEMALE in-group, silently by consensus or by the Wise Woman/Women, without too much verbiage; and that the males were not obliged, nor *allowed* to have any say about it. In many groups which we now label "primitive", there was, it seems, very sharp social barriering between the males & the females (even to the point of the two groups using different sub-group LANGUAGES!); and that "female-bodily/reproductive" matters were sequestered from the male-gender-subgroup's knowledge & INTERFERENCE by powerful taboos (cf. Mosaic laws about whaddyecall, contamination = the menses, the lochial fluids, childbirth, all-that).

We-here-now need, I think, to remember that these very-primary human "matters"(sometimes labelled "problems") have been present to our (= human-) kind probably ever-since we differentiated as a um, social species... And, to remember also that the choice of "solutions" (Oh, sweet christ! Hitler's "final solution"!) have varied in different times & places.

I remember w/ what shock at about the age of 11? I read Pearl Buck's THE GOOD EARTH, in which the female protagonist
(O Lan?) gave birth at the edge of a field to her female infant, saw that it was harelipped like herself, and strangled or smothered it. I DON'T want to start a new thread to discuss , for example, presentday female infanticide..... Ought we to (presume to) do that? as we seem to be willing to pontificate here about everything-else?

Vylo

It will be born.

A fetus is soleley dependent upon the health of a mother, but in most cases, it is not a serious threat to the mother's health.

Just to poke a bit of fun, I think some parents would say their infant is also a direct threat to their health, expecially in the respect of sleep .


Reasons Women Choose Abortion (U.S.)




Wants to postpone childbearing: 25.5% - convenience

Wants no (more) children: 7.9% 0- convenience

Cannot afford a baby: 21.3% - convenience

Having a child will disrupt education or job: 10.8% - convenience

Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy: 14.1% - convenience

Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy: 12.2% - convenience

Risk to maternal health: 2.8%

Risk to fetal health: 3.3%

Other: 2.1%



Source:Bankole, Akinrinola; Singh, Susheela; Haas, Taylor. Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: Evidence from 27 Countries. International Family Planning Perspectives, 1998, 24(3):117–127 & 152 As reported by: The Alan Guttmacher Institute Online


There you go QoS.

Loren Pechtel

Nothing about #1-#6 say whether it was due to not using birth control or due to a failure of birth control. I do not consider the latter to be using it as birth control.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by Vylo
1. Wants to postpone childbearing: 25.5% - Don't have reckless sex if you don't want a kid. Would only allow abortion if adequate evidence of contraceptive use was provided.

In other words, the child is punishment for the woman's behavior that you don't approve of. I hope you like child abuse because this surer is a formula for it.

themistocles

I'm not arguing from an esoteric position, common sense is not an arbitrary term, it is "common" by definition. If your opinion is that "the threat of death" is not a "serious consequence" of pregnancy, then we probably have more fundamental issues to discuss than pregnancy.

Since slaveowners would be most adversely affected by abolition, moralistic abolitionists and agriculturally-ignorant industrialists should leave the decisions to the slaveowners.

And how is a potential mother to be more knowledgable about health than, say, a doctor, who may provide the "common sense" to what constitutes a "serious consequence" that you give the impression is so elusive?

Well it avoids the spirit of my argument in favor of using an issue of gray area as more relevent and worthwhile to generalize above the spirit of the original argument. I assume, because you feel that it's unclear what constitutes a serious health issue, that abortion is therefore moral...?

:banghead:

So if a few abortions are done because of health reasons, you argue that all abortions are.

:banghead:

You're living under a rock if you believe that even a sizable minority of pregnancies are aborted for "health concerns of serious consequence". I turn the question on you, can you prove that even a sizable minority of women have abortions other than because they don't feel ready for being a mother, they can't afford it, they don't have the time, and so on...