We can make all the philosophical and scientific arguments that anyone might want, but ultimately what it all reduces to is a simple question: do women have autonomous control of their bodies or not? Even if I thought embryos were conscious, aware beings writing poetry in the womb (I don’t, and they’re not), I’d have to bow out of any say in the decision the woman bearing responsibility has to make.
This Is My Body from Jason Stefaniak on Vimeo.
For the sake of your sanity, do not read the comments. The Catholics have descended upon it.
Why wait for that? The Bring Twins Two-Fer with a coupon to Orange Julius is a better value.
I’m tempted to say you’re an idiot, but you are much, much worse than that. You’re a deliberately ugly, malicious* person who would much rather trade on the life of women than grant them full human status. Very ugly indeed, Cupcake.
Yes, I deserve bodily autonomy, full stop. What I do or don’t do with my body is none of your business. I have never murdered anyone, either. That’s why I’m not sitting in prison. You’re the one screeching “murder!”, so it’s more than obvious how you view women. You don’t get to backpedal on your own filth, either. It’s all right here, in black and white, for everyone to read.
*As you’re so fond of the word, I thought I’d use it correctly for you.
How do YOU deserve to kill the injured victims of an auto accident – which you cause by choosing to drive carelessly – when you refuse to donate your red blood cells which they need to stay alive in that emergency ?
How do YOU deserve to kill people by walking away from the medical center when there’s a matched patient in there who is going to die if s/he doesn’t get a bone marrow transplant from you ? Why can’t you be forced to go through with it, even after you’ve taken all the steps to get yourself tissue-typed, get on the donor list, sign all the paperwork, and go so far as to walk into the hospital on the scheduled morning of the operation ? How can you be allowed to change your mind when you had clearly consented to all the activities that led up to the actual operation ?
How do YOU deserve to kill your own child by refusing to donate one of your kidneys ? Why can’t you be forced by the government – for the greater good – to donate for your child who is going to suffer and die if you don’t ? It’s clearly the greater good – two people live (perhaps just the slightest bit less healthy) but two people living through it is clearly a greater good than just you living on.
Since you’re so smart, explain why your country has not forcibly tested every single citizen as a potential bone marrow donor.
Do you think “bodily autonomy” might have something to do with it ?
““malicious failure to use contraception”?”
Just trying to cover all the bases. Could also include various forms of negligence or outside sabotage, but none of these things happen much and I digress.
“The “person” you think is being murdered never existed. Never existed.”
I consider murder to also have a moral definition. Laws are (sometimes) based on morals.
I agree with this. However, the hypothetical still matters, especially because to our enemies it is the truth. The view among my pro-choice allies that bodily autonomy justifies all horrors gives credence to my anti-choice enemies who often believe (or at least argue) that embryos are people.
“And we don’t apply it in many cases that involve deliberate death-dealing, and in cases that occur a million times every day involving creatures much closer to sentience and more capable of suffering than a human fetus. ”
I completely agree. This is why anti-choicers are ultimately totally wrong, while the people on my side are only peripherally wrong. It’s mandatory to be right, but you also should care about being right for the right reason. (i.e. that legal abortion serves the greater good).
“Fucking barbaric bullshit, it was, politicians sending kids to die in some jungle on the other side of the world to prop up a government that wasn’t any better than the one we were fighting.”
Yes. That is why I support the draft in those awful cases (such as, probably, WWII) when war best serves the greater good and oppose it in all other cases. The US has been lucky enough to have only once ever needed to fight. On the other hand, there are a lot of cases when the US had the ability to do good and refused to. (What if the US were to overthrow both the Viet Cong and the other government, and help set up an actually good one? Would never happen, but it’s the theoretical better-case scenario and must not be overlooked.) I think that countries outside the US have more frequently needed to fight to survive; the lack of an on-continent rival means that the US probably does not ever need a draft to protect itself (though it might to protect others).
“(Care to speak about real women and real fetuses, rather than real women and hypothetical (imaginary) fetuses?)”
The “No Hypotheticals” argument is itself a fallacy although bullshit hypotheticals are also fallacious. I am ultimately speaking about real women and fetuses, because of how people will view the two sides in this very important debate. We would do best to be the side that does not advocate killing anybody, even hypothetically. And this particular hypothetical matters because as far as the anti-abortion idiots are concerned, they think it’s real.
“2. Bitchez lie about taking the pill
So that they can take advantage of the buy two-get the third one free coupons that they give out at the abortionplex?”
While very rare, I think this has happened at least once. THough i assume that in most such cases the women were born to married parents. It’s irrelevant to my arguemnt, however; I was talking about men sabotaging, not using, or pressuring/coercing women to accept not using contraception, as well as rape, because these all constitute situations in which somebody did not consent to the increased risk of pregnancy AT ALL.
im –
Learn to blockquote, you malicious turd.
im:
1. I made no such argument; rather, I made a parenthetical rhetorical question the which you have ostensibly responded to but in fact evaded.
Since you did seize on it, I ask again, this time not parenthetically and rhetorically: Care to speak about real women and real fetuses, rather than real women and hypothetical (imaginary) fetuses?
2. If you are, it’s certainly not in that quotation to which I responded; also, do you not realise that how people may or may not view things is irrelevant to the reality of how things are?
3. There is no such advocacy, since fetuses are (definitionally) unborn and not yet people.
(You really don’t see how you value rhetoric over logic, do ya?)
4. That’s as ridiculous as arguing that crackers are deity-flesh because as far as the Catholic idiots are concerned, they think it’s real.
So what? They usually think god is real too. Nothing is gained by humoring false beliefs.
Having sex does not constitute consent to pregnancy, regardless of use, non-use, or failure of birth control.
im:
Fuck off and die.
Tethys:
QFMFT.
That having sex entails consenting to possible pregnancy is an example of the naturalistic fallacy.
(Way back in the day (lo these many years ago) I argued that the ability to separate sex from procreation is one of humanity’s greatest achievements to date — no surprise though that in general it’s women who viscerally appreciate this achievement, though it is not they alone who it benefits.
If having sex = consent to pregnancy, then eating in a restaurant = consent to food-poisoning and driving a car = consent to being killed in a road accident. And if the moon is made of green cheese, then I’m a Dutchman.
I’ll tell you why I hate those hypothetical near-birth abortion scenarios. It’s not that they’re stupid, or that they never happen, or even that there’s a real world problem of them encouraging the antichoicers to think of this nonsense as a real thing. All of which are true, too, and seriously annoying. But not why I get the white-hot HATE.
The hate is because the hypothesizer is just so damned keen to find some way, some very very special exceptional circumstance, in which it’s OK to remove my bodily autonomy. It’s very much like asking me when is rape OK.
Never? Really never? Ok, supposing she were the last fertile woman on earth… Or maybe there was a ticking time-bomb nuke and raping this woman would totally prevent it because a secret code has been tattooed on the inside of her vagina by some crazy mad supervillain in invisible ink and only your special semen can reveal the antinuke codes…
Awww c’mon, pretty please, surely there must be ONE situation in which a woman can be reduced to a piece of livestock?
NO. FUCK OFF. IT IS NEVER OK.
Why are you being so meeeeean to me for just asking?
Why are you so damned insistent on finding that one special circumstance when it’s morally OK for you to do something horrific to me? Why is it so unacceptable to you that I have bodily autonomy in all circumstances? NO, there isn’t a circumstance that makes you the rightful owner and master and torturer of me.
Just stop it right now.
What if the woman got attacked and the pregnancy got terminated in the process. Is the attacker guilty of “just” violence against the woman, or also against the fetus, with deadly consequnces and the appropriate penalty?
Was the death of the fetus only wrong because it was against the woman’s will?
What if, irrelevant to the discussion. NO HYPOTHETICALS. TALK REALITY, OR SHUT THE FUCK UP, AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE YOU HAVE NOTHING.
Stop being boring and answer the dillema. If you think no woman ever gets attacked while being pregnant, it’s time to get back from planet Colob.
STOP BEING BORING AND PRESENTING FUCKWITTED AND IRRELEVANT HYPOTHETICALS. With every hypothetical you concede the reality of the fetus always being inferior to the woman as far as personhood goes. We win, you concede defeat…
btw I really like “Alethea H. Crocoduck Dundee” response and it does weaken my attempt to cling to hypothetical situations. I didn’t look at it this way, for me those are just thought experiments to test the boundaries of an ethical position.
Mindless irrelevant mental wanking, defining nothing due to lack of reality, and not changing anybody’s mind due to lack of evidence. If you like mental wanking, try a philosophy blog, not a science blog, where evidence, not mental wanking, rules.
Sorry to bother you with thought experiments, you seem immune to them. My points in #13 above still stand open to a response. I don’t expect it from you though, you seem to be comprised of flesh and insults only.
It isn’t just me. Most of the commenters have essentially told you to fuck off due to your lack of evidence to support your goal. Also, this is a science blog, not a mental wanking blog for questions that shouldn’t have be asked due to being unrealistic. Why are you here, and not at one of those? AGENDA. You must make us see your inane point, and by “asking questions”, especially stupid and unrealistic ones, think you will get to that “gottcha” moment. But not here. We’ve seen too many of your ilk to succumb.
Then please re-read Alethea’s response over and over and over again until you understand that JAQing off about thought experiments as abstract debate techniques can be very, very insulting and degrading when the subjects of your oh-so-abstract thought experiments are sitting round the table with you right here right now wondering when they get to be full people in your eyes.
Re-read. Do. Please. Then stop faffing around with unhelpful and insulting hypotheticals.
Alethea, I’ve bookmarked your comment for ALL the future references.
absolute, what does your question have to do with abortion?
(The sort of abortions being discussed are something the woman chooses, not an attack against her)
The USA had drafts during WWI and the Vietnam war, off the top of my head…
So bodies are only there for the greater good? Hey, I think you’re a useless git who’s existence is counterproductive to the Greater Good, can we harvest your organs? My left shoulder is sore…
So you think the violinist example only works with a willing donor, but pregnancy it doesn’t matter. Case in point.
And your point would be…?
Who the hell have you ever met that thought bodily autonomy justifies genocide?
It also drafted for Korea and the Civil War. Are you just an ahistorical nitwit?
It’d still be stomping all over the Vietnamese’ right to national self determination. They fucking elected the communists. But don’t let that stop your war fantasies.
Which fallacy, and in what way?
STOP. This is not merely a contest of ideas, an impersonal logical debate. It’s a real matter that affects real people, and you sound horribly condescending when you presume to have the authority to determine how much of a person a woman is allowed to be.
Well, either that, or you’re YET another nitwit with an agenda, looking for a “gotcha” moment you can cling to, so you can declare us immoral or something.
@absolute and im
I am astounded that you both claim to be pro-choice and yet still insist upon engaging in ridiculous hypotheticals that you have the privilege of abandoning when they become tiresome for you. Other people here, as Althea pointed out, don’t have that luxury. The legislative effects of these “debates” have real impact on real people HERE. You have to realize that trying to find a hypothetical way around our bodily autonomy is disgusting and dehumanizing. The answer is and will always be the same: her body, her choice. There is no magical scenario in which it is morally okay to circumvent that. Read the wiki link that appears several times on the previous page – THAT is what can happen when a woman’s decision about her own body is overridden by people who think they know better. Assholes.
I’m no longer clinking to the one extreme hypothetical situation, not because I’m tired of it, but because Alethea convinced me it’s counter-productive in this case. Believe it or not, I want to be defeated in this argument. I’m sorry to say you’re not putting up a good fight.
My points in #13 stay unchallenged. They also are a form of abortion. Where are all the people comapring – to make a point – the fetus to cancer now?
I can also add another scenario. If the woman acts carelessly – smoking, heavy excercise – throughout the pregnancy, and the fetus dies, should the woman be punished by law, or should the bodily autonomy argument be invoked.
No, all you points was answered. You didn’t like the answers. You have no real points in your hypotheticals, just fantasies meaning nothing.
Oh, and you have to convince us you are right, which you can’t do without evidence. Not the other way around, which is religious thinking. More evidence for your concern trolling, and lying and bullshitting.
You are trying to conflate a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, to criminal assault? And you are “confused” as to why you are being insulted for making such an asinine comparison.
The horde will engage a valid argument, but since you don’t have one perhaps you should fuck right off.
‘Surely there must be SOME scenario that gets the woman punished for SOMEthing! There’s got to be a way to make it HER fault!’
*spits*
To actually run this line of bullshit, first off, you’d still need a whole
criminalmedical justice system to determine whether any given instance of miscarriage was the damned woman’s fault, or whether environmental conditions, lack of money, lack of treatment, lack of social support for addictions such as smoking or similar had significant contributions to the miscarriage; or to a live infant’s poor health, since that’s the next step in this particular line of victim-blaming bullshit. Miscarriage does not work that way. Medicine can’t always give 95% certainty of a cause – ANY cause – in individual cases, and lots of deficits or outright fatal conditions in fetuses arise randomly. Even birth trauma can cause permanent disability in infants.http://miscarriage.about.com/od/faqs/f/misccauses.htm
—
http://boingboing.net/2012/06/20/the-only-good-abortion-is-my-a.html
—
Besides, the greatest contribution to the unconscionably high infant mortality rate in the US is… poverty. Why not blame all the congressghouls taking birth control and health care away from these women and their kids?
(emphasis mine)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0908-06.htm
—
from a Congressional Research Service report of April 4, 2012.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41378.pdf
—
If you FIRST fixed the world such that pregnant women had plenty of health care, prenatal care, good nutrition, could actually take time off from work to have their babies, and could actually get away from the stress and damage imposed by abusive partners, AND improved medical care to reduce chromosomal abnormalities, common diseases, and damage from birth itself, then MAYBE there’d be a reason to think the woman’s behavior was the main contributor to a given fetus’s health problems.
Until then, STFU with your victim-blaming fantasies.
Your #13 didn’t HAVE any worthwhile points whatsoever.
You are trying to conflate a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, to criminal assault?
This is the first and so far only attempt to address #13, and sadly not a very good one.
Conflating or not, criminal assault on who? That’s the point. If you wish to mention the fetus in the assault scenario, why don’t you want to deal with it in either the careless pregnancy or the mood-based late abortion.
And I bring the careless pregnancy scenario into the mix precisely to be able to describe the same effect without the assault scenario.
@Pteryxx
What if it was proven that smoking killed the fetus, was it still OK on the grounds of the bodily autonomy of the woman? Every one of you claims both the right and the responsibility for the decision for the woman, but it seems you leave no way to actually hold her accountable for anything.
absolute, you clearly fail to understand the concept of body autonomy, and you further fail to understand that a fetus is not an autonomous being, but part of a woman’s body which may in time become a baby.
In short: a fetus is not a baby, and trying to make arguments on that basis is inane.
(You are arguing from ignorance.)
Every time someone talks about hypothetical about when would abortion be immoral, I think they are doing to try and make those scenarios happen. Like, well if the fetus is conscious or considered a person then we can define it as such or use science to look at brain waves and prove it that way!
UGH.
There is no scenario whatsoever that would make abortion immoral and no situation I would make it illegal. None. Don’t bother asking, I’m not giving up my bodily autonomy for any one or anything.
Still not one iota of evidence from Absolute, piss poor scientific debater. Argument is not evidence, especially idiotic and unrealistic hypotheticals, it is OPINION. Your OPINION is that of a anti-choice fuckwit who has no understanding of bodily autonomy and fetal development. You convinced me nothing but your arrogance, ignorance, and duplicity. Good job of doing that, which I don’t think was your goal.
And you’re desperate to find any way to blame, punish and criminalize pregnant women. Supposed concern for a fetus is just cover for that goal.
By the way, your harmless hypothetical isn’t either.
http://www.fwhc.org/roseweitz1.htm
—
http://www.drugtext.org/Gender-issues/the-criminalization-of-pregnant-and-child-rearing-drug-users.html
—
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/magazine/the-criminalization-of-bad-mothers.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Yes. Laws that add on equivalent penalties for “feticide” are simply a door to get fetuses put at a higher level than the women carrying them, as you are so aptly demonstrating here. Every single one of those laws that exist now were written and enacted with a huge anti-choice lobby behind them. You could add penalties for causing extra mental anguish to the woman, but no, you can’t say violence against the fetus is equivalent to murder. There, happy now?
(“Yes” meaning “guilty of just violence against the woman)
Yep. Another idiot with an agenda.
Sorry, we aren’t going to admit a “gotcha” scenario where the woman is denied her personhood in favor of the fetus.
Her body.
Her choice.
Full stop.
End of text.
Finito.
And you’re desperate to find any way to blame, punish and criminalize pregnant women. Supposed concern for a fetus is just cover for that goal.
Nope, I’m just checking if you can find any exceptions for your moral position, or is it… absolute.
see #12 above.
Still no evidence presented that you are right, just more unjustified attitude about your fuckwittery, lies, and bullshit. Your moral position is absolute. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be worrying about finding a loophole in our rock solid thinking. Yours is the thinking that has a problem as it demeans half the population for those not yet part of the population.
Alethea @12 (on this page) — WOW!!! That was fantastic! yes, that is exactly it.
“How many different ways can I phrase this in which to make women less than human?”
Why is it important for anyone to come up with a hypothetical to make women incubators?
I am standing on my couch cheering you!
Personally, I see these hypotheticals as only taking male babies into account as “those who matter”.
If a woman gives birth to woman who gives birth to a woman, ad infinitum, every woman therein is simply a thought experiment and not an actual person. We’re all just broodmares in Hypo-Theti-Land.
Fetuses only matter if they’re male, is what I pick up. Otherwise, female fetuses will just become women and will have to be theoretically policed as much as their mothers and grandmothers.
As my mother says, this is crazy-making.
You think having to undergo an abortion is rainbows, lollipops, and sunshine?
The need to submit to an abortion procedure, an invasive medical procedure with risks that can and do include permanent disability, sterility, and death, along with the attendant costs in money, time, travel, etc, is accountability enough.
No need to put state tyranny into it.
It is wrong in this case because it was a part of the woman’s body that was injured/damaged/destroyed without the woman’s consent, in the same way that someone chopping off your hand without you agreeing to it is wrong.
It is wrong because it is a violation of the woman’s personal bodiy autonomy.
I sincerely apologize that we are not sufficiently hypocritical or logically inconsistent for you. I will however advise you that usually that is seen as a positive and not a negative. I’m pretty sure that every question you posed was answered in my post about how I don’t like you blaming us for our positions in hypothetical YOU think up.
Ing, next he’ll say that since we consistently hold the same position, we are dogmatists just like the religious! Score! Because holding that people are all equal as an inviolate principle is just like interpreting some old collection of writings in any way you want.
Especially when that collection appears to be mostly silent and/or approving on the subject you disapprove of….
That collection actually specifically brings up the example of the pseudo-scenario posited in #13, and that collection specifically says that the lost fetus in that circumstance is NOT human, but rather an article of property with a value approximately equivalent to a cow.
(emphasis added)
Than please move to a world in which there are no actual women actually going through this situation. Seriously. If your responses to a debate on abortion boil down to “Hey, I’m just tryin’ to have a little fun here!” then you really should go away from all women, everywhere, until you get why that’s repulsive.
Oh, and please don’t try to claim you just didn’t know you were being repulsive – just in the few posts I’ve read in response to you, you’ve been told that repeatedly.
Presumably, you either can’t or won’t read that about yourself, or you’re completely convinced that your sense of morality is vastly superior to everyone around you – which enables you to ignore their opinions. Either way, again, please take yourself away until you can learn to be a human being.
Why? Are you planing on skating said boundaries? I think most of us prefer to stay well within where we think the boundaries are.
If the thought experiment does not actually have any grounding in reality, then it cannot actually test in any meaningful way any boundaries to any ethical position.
@Amphiox
We actually have a term for that “Space Whale Aesop”
I have looked but I cannot find a comment wherein absolute stated xis position.
Curious minds want to know…
@Chigau
Too lazy to bothered but he’s said he wants to lose the argument because he’s prolife but has serious concerns or something I dunno I wasn’t convinced.
Ing
Yeah.
I kinda got that “something I dunno” impression, too.
@Chigau
Well he said that but I don’t believe it. Because I’m an untrusting asshole. Also experience. But mostly the asshole.
Of course it has concerns. It is a godbotting anti-choice fuckwit. Typical of both style of argument and idiocy of hypothetical approaches. Example, note the lack of acknowledging that doctors not only should, but must inform third trimester women of the possibility of inducing early labor or it can be considered malpractice. It presupposes that such information is not transferred or considered. Dishonesty all the way down.
Fuck I’m late to the party, but I’m ready to play and play, I shall!
Here’s your #13:
You need to define your terms, Wronskein.
1) How old was the woman?
2) How far along was her pregnancy, in hours?
3) How many attackers?
4) What were their ages?
5) How strong were the attackers (how much could they bench/press)?
6) How did they attack her? Specifically.
7) What injuries did the woman sustain?
8) How was the woman treated for her injuries?
9) Where was the woman treated for her injuries?
10) How long after the attack was the woman treated for her injuries?
11) Did the woman receive therapy after the attack?
12) How was the pregnancy terminated? Specifics
13) Did the woman have any genetic defects? Specifics
14) Did the husband have any genetic defects? Specifics
15) Did the zygote/fetus have any genetic defects? Specifics
16) When was the last time the woman was examined by her OB/GYN?
17) What was the result of the examination?
18) What proteins were present in the uterine fluid?
19) What did the woman have to eat the day she was attacked?
20) When was the last time the woman suffered stress and/or trauma before the attack?
21) What was the nature of the stress/trauma?
22) Did the woman suffer from morning sickness?
23) Was the woman in a committed relationship?
24) Where did the woman plan on having the baby? Specifics.
25) Was the woman’s pregnancy supported by her family?
26) Was the woman’s pregnancy supported by her friends?
27) Did the woman have a support network?
Seriously, I got all day. You lose. Take your bullshit, simplistic hypothetical situation and cram it up your misogynistic ass. Oh, and you want to talk about murder, talk about your god. That fucker killed more innocent people than abortion doctors EVER will.