Pro-choice people also understand the logics of biology. The observation that life develops is really basic. What's missing from this logic are the human individuals who are the primary decision-makers and emotional actors in an abortion scenario.

I'm entirely willing to accept that the moment I choose to call it "human being" or "baby" rather than "foetus" is arbitrary. What I don't accept is that this is the important factor when it comes to abortion.

Please elaborate, fellas.

Coming up with some definition of human and then demonstrating that it applies to foetuses doesn't say anything about the morality of killing them. And it isn't the properties that they share with humans/people/babies that we're interested in. It's the differences that matter. And the list of differences are obvious enough to make it clear that the way we treat foetuses needn't (and shouldn't) be the same way we treat all human beings.

Most elaboration falls increasingly outside politics into philosophy and religion.

The fact a fetus develops inside an individual woman until viability outside an individual woman is elaborate enough to inform the discussion.

If you needed something even as simple as a blood transfusion to save your life, and that getting a pint of blood was necessary and sufficient for saving your life, we still consider it barbarism to take that pint of blood from someone by force. We don't even take the organs of the dead without their consent in advance. We grant adults absolute ownership of their own bodies, and the needs of others are not given any consideration in this. Consequently, even if we grant the full personhood of a fetus, that fetus has no right to the use of its mother's body if she doesn't want to grant it, or even if she changes her mind and withdraws her consent for that fetus to use her body that she had previously given.

I guess that's where I'm at on this issue as well. I have no idea if or when the kid becomes a living human being. If you're comfortable thinking of the fetus as just a bunch of cells, then there's really no problem. You should probably also be fine selling it for a profit like blood or semen, and apparently we can get good money for our feces these days too!

But if you think it's alive or are unsure, then it comes down to other practical issues like who is responsible for it and where that burden lies. I rationalize my pro-choice vote in much the same way I support legalization of drugs and assisted suicide. We shouldn't be allowed to legislate what a person can do with his/her own body. You simply cannot force a woman to carry a child to term and give birth. That's too much stress to force on a person, even if it means saving another person's life. We see what happens when abortion is made illegal: desperate women will find ways remove the fetus, sometimes in dangerous ways.

Compare this to after the kid is born. We do expect the parents to care for an infant, and if they were to abandon it to die we would charge them with murder. This is still putting stress on the parents to provide for the child, but a big difference is they have other practical options, and that changes the ethics. If they choose, instead of ending the child's life, they can give it up to adoption or to the care of the state. I believe if or when biotech advances to the point a fetus can be saved at any point of the pregnancy, either through fetal transplant or in an incubator, the practicality of the issue will change and abortion will no longer be considered ethical by most people.

Do you think we should be allowed to sell our fetuses for profit? Do you think we should charge someone for murder if they beat up a pregnant woman and she loses the baby?

Because it's and interesting and important subject and I've stopped acting like such a dip****?

Good post but many countries (including I would say usually pretty reasonable ones like the UK) have restrictions on late abortions because they are seen quite differently to forcing someone to give blood. If they saw them as the same they could use possibly use your type of argument to explain why people should be forced to give blood when it's needed - I'd be very surprised if no-one ever argues we should be on utilitarian grounds and/or rights/responsibilities grounds.

There is a real debate about dead people not having to consent to giving organs and at least one notable poster has argued on utilitarian grounds that live people should sometimes be forced to give organs.

Very late, a woman should be entitled to a c section of a premature but viable fetus. Abortion is sensible when the fetus could not survive.

Some see it that way and some don't. if we're going to get past opinion there needs to be some argument as to why and it can't just be that some have decided we have absolute right over our bodies because others disagree.

Also it's not as simple as viable or not. If another few weeks increased viability greatly then absent some other reason I doubt you're entitled to a c-section or an abortion in many countries (pretty sure you're not in the UK) and it doesn't seem to be a great concern to the liberal/feminist/pro-choice side - maybe I've missed somethign but its only the pro-lifers who seem to be greatly upset with the system

It's not a cold position despite being rooted in plain fact. Empathizing with a pregnant individual is quite warming as is understanding a person might make a choice you would not make in the scenario. That's what makes the histrionics and guilt trips you were lampoon previously ITT seem so rather partial and immature.

TLDR it all; foldn gets successful troll award.

Some people might consider it a much greater form of barbarism to deny giving your own flesh in blood a transfusion if it would save your baby's life. Competing morals in play.

Ironically, Jehovas Witnesses believe the soul resides in the blood, so they won't allow blood transfusions even if the baby is certain to die, for fear of polluting it's soul or something. Religions are weird.

In England it's called "child destruction", and carries maximum of life, but it's a very rare charge. I'm fine with that. I think it should carry a much harsher penalty than a typical assault. Forcibly destroying the foetus of someone pregnant is an abhorrent crime and not similar to abortion. It's akin to comparing rape and consensual sex.

I'm not keen on creating markets that lead to the exploitation of desperate people, so I'd possibly be against the idea of individual women making profit off having abortions. The planned parenthood situation doesn't offend me at all. There are costs to them in preserving and transporting suitable tissue and they can claim contributions from the researchers that want them. Ultimately, those researchers are presumably working toward some profitable end from the foetuses, but I don't think there should be any real difficulty in coming up with proper checks and balances.

I'd have problems with some middle group buying up all the PP foetuses and selling them on at a mark up. I don't have any problem with legitimate research groups obtaining them directly.

Compelling stuff, honestly.

Let me play devil's advocate...

The same logic doesn't extend to pregnant women because conflating a medical emergency (blood transfusion) with pregnancy is so disparate it drives different conclusions. This analogy fails because you're using exigent circumstances, on one hand, to inform what should happen where none exist, on the other.

People usually have months to decide to donate a kidney to another person to save their life, and there may only be one known match. We don't take that kidney.

For an extremely obvious and poorly executed troll thread?

Man, your standards are low.

Continuing my advocacy...

There is just so many non similarities in your analogy to merit as the same scenario. You are comparing apples to oranges.

You have to account that in this analogy, in order for it to come close, that the person who needs the kidney is your own child, and that you have the matching DNA to provide the kidney, and secondly that you're responsible for giving the person a bad kidney. Even with that in mind it still is not a favorable analogy to your view. The mother OUGHT to do it. Anyone who views this analogy and sees that the mother refuses to give the kidney in order to save the child's life is not only a horrible mother but I'm sure there will be an uproar they she is a murderer for not doing so. If anything your analogy supports our position.

Yeah, and it's not as bad as giving a kidney, more like giving blood. Harder than giving blood obviously, you get fat and then there's the whole push the watermelon out of the vagina thing, which sometimes leads to pretty tough complications especially as you age... okay, so it might be closer to giving a kidney.

Anyway, it is hard to think of many mothers who wouldn't give a kidney for their kid, or many people who wouldn't scorn the crap out of a mother who was like, "Nah, let junior die, never loved him that much anyway." But that said, we don't make laws solely on what is considered shameful, or we'd be locking up a bunch of gold diggers and telemarketers. Laws need to be practical too, and so even if we do assume a fetus is a person, you simply can't force one person to save another, even their own flesh and blood. You also can't stop people letting them know how they feel about it.

Foldn, did the imaginary thinking fetus in the Trump thread creep you out?

No more than the imaginary thinking infant...

An interesting thing about the language used in this issue....when a person stakes out "life" as the basis of the position to socially control reproduction, they create a fallacy which casts anyone who thinks that "choice" is the basis for individual reproduction is therefore opposed to life.

It's like a linguistic shortcut around reality to the top of moral mountain.

In reality, life is involved implicitly at every stage of reproduction. Having a choice is an essential part of life, living, and humanity.

The language of pro-life is just riddle with this kind of nonsense. It creates a dilemma of negotiating between "murder" and "not even a misdemeanor". May as well lose our minds in recreational activities than have to face the challenges of thinking and feeling through the nonsense.

Being anti- abortion doesn't create a short-cut to being supremely moral about Life. But calling anti-abortion pro-life sure does create shortcuts to having control.

Got into my first abortion discussion with a pro lifer the other day and was hit with arguments mostly having to do with the fetus being a human and therefore deserving the right to life, and some indirect implications that the woman should take responsibility for her sexy time actions and not abort. Obviously the latter was more easily dealt with.