A Request Directed to Sciforums' "Atheists"

[Bells]

There are three possible standpoints.
1. You believe that the foetus is an individual human being, and you oppose abortion.
2. You believe that the foetus is just a bundle of cells, and abortion is not a problem.
3. You believe that the foetus is a human being, but one which should not survive without the consent of the mother.

The law reflects a communal assessment of which standpoint is just and right.
The current UK law sets the normal limit for abortion at 24 weeks, after which the foetus has legal rights.
It is not a matter of giving it personhood, but giving that foetus legal protection.
That really is the nub of the argument.

Ah yes, foetal rights and foetal legal protection in the UK..

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is an Italian national who come to Britain in July last year to attend a training course with an airline at Stansted Airport in Essex.

She suffered a panic attack, which her relations believe was due to her failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition.

She called the police, who became concerned for her well-being and took her to a hospital, which she then realised was a psychiatric facility.

She has told her lawyers that when she said she wanted to return to her hotel, she was restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Meanwhile, Mid-Essex NHS Trust obtained the court order in August 2012 for the birth “to be enforced by way of caesarean section”, according to legal documents seen by this newspaper.

The woman, who says she was kept in the dark about the proceedings, says that after five weeks in the ward she was forcibly sedated. When she woke up she was told that the child had been delivered by C-section and taken into care.

In February, the mother, who had gone back to Italy, returned to Britain to request the return of her daughter at a hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Her lawyers say that she had since resumed taking her medication, and that the judge formed a favourable opinion of her. But he ruled that the child should be placed for adoption because of the risk that she might suffer a relapse.

Pray tell, where are the mother's rights in all of this?

Where were her rights to not be held in a psychiatric facility without her consent, forcibly sedated and forced to have a c-section without her consent and then to top it off, have her baby taken into care and put up for adoption, again without her consent?

Last summer a pregnant Italian mother flew to England for a two-week Ryanair training course at Stansted. Staying at an airport hotel, she had something of a panic attack when she couldn’t find the passports for her two daughters, who were with her mother back in Italy. She called the police, who arrived at her room when she was on the phone to her mother. The police asked to speak to the grandmother, who explained that her daughter was probably over-excited because she suffered from a “bipolar” condition and hadn’t been taking her medication to calm her down.

The police told the mother that they were taking her to hospital to “make sure that the baby was OK”. On arrival, she was startled to see that it was a psychiatric hospital, and said she wanted to go back to her hotel. She was restrained by orderlies, sectioned under the Mental Health Act and told that she must stay in the hospital.

Five weeks later she was told she could not have breakfast that day. When no explanation was forthcoming, she volubly protested. She was strapped down and forcibly sedated, and when she woke up hours later, found she was in a different hospital and that her baby had been removed by caesarean section while she was unconscious and taken into care by social workers. She was not allowed to see her baby daughter, and later learnt that a High Court judge, Mr Justice Mostyn, had given Mid-Essex NHS Trust permission to arrange for the child to be delivered. Essex social services had obtained a care order as soon as the baby was born the next day. In October, at a hearing before another judge, she was represented by lawyers assigned to her by the local authority and told she would be escorted back to Italy without her baby.

All this was such a shock to the mother that, back in Italy, she resumed taking her medication and embarked on a legal battle for the return of her daughter, which has by now involved lawyers in three countries, all of whom I have spoken to at length to establish the facts of this remarkable story. The High Court in Rome expressed outrage at what had been done to an Italian citizen “habitually resident” in Italy. But the judge there concluded that, since she had not protested at the time, she had accepted that the British courts had jurisdiction – even though she had not known what was to be done to her, was deemed to have no “capacity” to instruct lawyers because she had been sectioned, and had only been represented by solicitors assigned to her by the local authority.

Where were her rights?

Or do the mother's rights cease to exist once her child obtains legal rights and protection?

And it's not just in the UK. In the US..

LOCKED-UP IN MENTAL HOSPITALS

• A woman goes to her nearby hospital voluntarily seeking help for her opiate addiction. Despite the fact that her addiction posed no significant risk to the health of the fetus, she is reported to the state, sheriffs take her into custody and she is sent to a locked psychiatric ward away from her husband and son and where she receives no prenatal care;
• A woman is held in a locked psychiatric facility because she did not obtain a recommended follow-up gestational diabetes test. The facility never administers the test;
• A woman about to be released from a mental hospital because she has been determined to be sane is, nevertheless, kept in the institution through a civil child welfare proceeding in which the state argued that she should remain institutionalized because the state alleged she would not properly care for the fetus still inside of her.

DEPRIVED OF LIBERTY & SUBJECTED TO MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS INCLUDING SURGERY

• A woman wishes to avoid unnecessary surgery if she can. She seeks to deliver vaginally but is denied access to any hospital unless she agrees to give up her right to medical decision-making and schedules cesarean surgery. Her attempt to labor and delivery at home is discovered and she is taken into custody by a sheriff while in active labor, transported against her will to the hospital with her legs strapped together, and forced to have the surgery;
• Despite knowing that forced cesarean surgery could kill her, a court orders a pregnant woman to undergo that surgery – and both she and the baby die;
• A hospital obtains a court order forcing a woman to undergo cesarean surgery. Her opposition is so strong that hospital staff ties her down with leather wrist and ankle cuffs while she screams for help.

So, where are the rights of these women?

How about Martina Greywind?

Martina Greywind, a twenty-eight-year-old homeless Native American woman from Fargo, North Dakota, was arrested when she was approximately twelve weeks pregnant. She was charged with reckless endangerment, based on the claim that by inhaling paint fumes she was creating a
substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death to her unborn child. After spending approximately two weeks in the Cass County Jail, Greywind was able to obtain release for a medical appointment. At that appointment Greywind obtained an abortion, despite widely publicized efforts by abortion opponents to persuade her to carry the pregnancy to term. Following the abortion, Greywind filed a motion to dismiss the charges. The state agreed to a dismissal: “Defendant has made it known to the State that she has terminated her pregnancy. Consequently, the controversial legal issues
presented are no longer ripe for litigation.”14
According to news reports, the prosecutor in the case stated that since Greywind had had an abortion, it was “no longer worth the time or expense to prosecute her” (Orlando Sentinel 1992).15

Where were her rights when she was imprisoned and felt compelled to get an abortion because it was clearly the only way she would get out of prison? Where are her rights?

And Alicia Beltran?

Alicia Beltran cried with fear and disbelief when county sheriffs surrounded her home on July 18 and took her in handcuffs to a holding cell.

She was 14 weeks pregnant and thought she had done the right thing when, at a prenatal checkup, she described a pill addiction the previous year and said she had ended it on her own — something later verified by a urine test. But now an apparently skeptical doctor and a social worker accused her of endangering her unborn child because she had refused to accept their order to start on an anti-addiction drug.

Ms. Beltran, 28, was taken in shackles before a family court commissioner who, she says, brushed aside her pleas for a lawyer. To her astonishment, the court had already appointed a legal guardian for the fetus.

“I didn’t know unborn children had lawyers,” recalled Ms. Beltran, now six months pregnant, after returning to her home north of Milwaukee from a court-ordered 78-day stay at a drug treatment center. “I said, ‘Where’s my lawyer?' ”

Under a Wisconsin law known as the “cocaine mom” act when it was adopted in 1998, child-welfare authorities can forcibly confine a pregnant woman who uses illegal drugs or alcohol “to a severe degree,” and who refuses to accept treatment.

Rights of the child...

So please, spare me the rights of the child arguments. There are hundreds of cases where women are denied their basic and fundamental human rights based on the State's belief of 'rights of the child'.

 

[Capracus]

Well, his argument as I understand was meant to illuminate the gaping ethical flaw about your ludicrous positional postulations on abortion: I interpret his posed question to read what if one were to shove the kid back in, thereby wetting its feet again? Could the mother murder it in such a case? I appreciate that it seems ludicrous on glance, but while I think it falls short of its objective it does have a certain satirical point to make.

Geoff, maybe you could teach our neighbors how to peel an onion. Spot on with your summation.

 

[Enmos]

I thought this thread was supposed to be about atheists...?

 

[Kittamaru]

This thread lost any sort of "point" when it became a "he said she said" dido situation

 

[gmilam]

He’s just highly opinionated.

Is this the politically correct way of saying "arrogant asshole"?

 

[GeoffP]

Who would you like to pretend to fool today? No, really

Oh, that was an apology was it? And slander you?

It certainly was; and you did.

So this isn't slander? This was part of your supposed apology..

Well that's just a political twist of the knife, which is a phrase I think you've heard before. But, really, it's not. You're engaging in apologetics for an unspeakably nasty idea. I apologised for claiming you invented it. That's the job done.

I see, in GeoffP land, this isn't slander.. And only in your twisted mind where using murder as an analogy to women's right to choose and women's rights in general is this an apology...

Ahhh, I knew this was coming. So you don't have the moral stature to apologise to me for slandering me, above. Well, as I say, I can't pretend I didn't know this was coming.

Your position is clear. You wish to limit a woman's rights over her body if she is past 27 weeks pregnant. I believe women should have rights over their body all the time, pregnant or not. You obviously disagree.

Oh, well spotted.

Had you read the other abortion thread in question instead of leaping on the 'amg someone is against Bells bandwagon' that you often do, you'd have understood my position right from the start. Instead, you have done what you do, which is jump on the popular bandwagon without any knowledge and understanding of what it is you are even complaining about. So much so that you are demanding I resign for being pro-life after you falsely attributed things to me and you continued to do so knowingly.

No no, I think you should resign for holding a reprehensible stance on which there can be no sensible quarter. But in truth, there are all kinds of reasons you ought to take a walk.

I was going to trash the rest of your post out here, but instead I'm just going to dissect it so you can see the kind of thing you're saying.

You have also joined the popular and disingenuous religious pro-life side of applying ridiculous analogies to women's rights.. All of which completely disregard the mother's right and at times, remove her from the equation.

So I am now disregarding - completely - the mother's rights. And you think this is balanced or accurate? If so, you are to debate what Fox News is to reporting.

You are so desperate that you are even asking for the definition of the word "ban". Could you be more desperate? Could you possibly be more ridiculous?

Actually, I'm trying to parse down your statements so that they're comprehensible. I think this would be a better way to advance than simply lashing out with whatever emotionally charged language comes to hand.

No, I do not believe that abortions should be restricted based on the personal opinions of men such as you who have nothing to do with the woman's right, her life or anything to do with her.

Excuse me for a moment here: what does my sex have to do with it? (emphasis above) What do you have to do with a woman's right, or her life, or anything to do with her? Please explain. Do you want to start tossing around arguments from false authority? Sounds fun.

In short, your opinion is your own. You think abortion is wrong after 27 weeks? Fine, don't have one. But don't think that it is acceptable to impose your beliefs on the rights of women and it is certainly not right for you to impose it on their wombs.

Excuse me, but why is your opinion then not your own, and nothing more? You're approaching the argument as if somehow you spoke for all women, or all pregnant ones. I don't believe that you do. Why should I take this DF policy you advocate as being some kind of default moral stance? You have said nothing at all to recommend it as a just or reasoned position. This is required if you wish to present it as an alternative to existing law and more.

You have clearly not paid much attention to the women's rights movement and the reproductive rights movement because had you done so, you would have clearly recognised the dangers of arbitrary timelines

Arbitrary? In what way do you now think the 27 week deadline is arbitrary? Surely a perusal of say, thirty seconds in the relevant literature would suggest several biological waypoints of importance to this debate vis-a-vis the DF policy. Should I conclude you are ignorant of these points? But you seem to be assuring me, above, that you are conversant with the issue. Why do you now consider this arbitrary? Or: do you wish me to conclude that this was forgetfulness, or deliberate omission?

Since you clearly did not bother to read the other thread or take part in it, you have instead jumped on the bandwagon

Ooh, ah loves a good bandwagon.

of the psycho who also failed to recognise what was meant by 'dry foot'. What dry foot means is that while the baby is inside the mother, her rights over her body and herself are paramount since you know, it's her body. Yet for some bizarre reason, pro-lifer's like you seem to believe that it means she can apparently abort during childbirth.

This is another deliberate misrepresentation on your part: I say 'deliberate' since you have been given ample warning of my position. The only option left is that you are misrepresenting it. I appreciate, as I've said previously, that you and another moderator on here - one of our neighbours - don't mind a little of that, couched as 'a political twist of the knife'. Unfortunately, the functional definition you appear to be using is 'deception'. What you are advocating is that a mother is free to kill the unborn child up to partum. During childbirth really doesn't enter into it, sorry. You'll have to try something else. Oh, and don't now pretend that you're not accusing me of that position: your language above makes it very clear that you misrepresent my understanding on this issue. I have asked you to refrain from this kind of thing, but you are now at the borderline of being a liar, outright. The next choice is yours, of course. Oh, puns.

When the response and appeal to reality is given in response

What 'appeal to reality'? What are you talking about now?

, people like you protest because it doesn't fit into the twisted and frankly sick and perverted analogies you decide to dream up. Unless of course you think that past the 27 week period, a woman is solely deemed an incubator and her rights over her body should disappear?

So apparently I protest... because it doesn't fit a hypothetical scenario that was brought up to challenge the essential illogic of your DF policy. You are developing new uses of language well outside the reality you're giving lip service to. Have you considered a career in politics? I was also amused at the contrast: so if I don't adhere unthinkingly to your ridiculous scenario, I now consider a woman just an incubator. Really?

Or how about pregnancy not be criminalised?

All right, please explain - in detail, with references - how the above criminalises pregnant women. I'm a little sick of this political nonsense - which appears to be the place in which your philosophy truly lives - and so ultimate definitions are required.

Because once you give personhood to a foetus which often occurs with arbitrary time limits

And I am arguing arbitrary limits here? Please, enlighten me as to their arbitrariness. I suspect rather that you consider any challenge to DF as 'arbitrary', without recognising the absurdity of that very stance. Let's stick to the nonsense of the case itself, without bringing in fantasy, shall we?

Rigghhttt...

So he kept attributing it to me afterwards is what? A giant boo boo?

Please illustrate where I continued to attribute it to you when you'd finally gotten around to explaining that you were merely an apologist for the monstrous stance. If I have used such loose language in this discussion, then I do apologise. Hate to bring up old matters but: how's that apology for slandering me coming? Are you ready to post a first draft?

I referred to Capracus' analogy of 'what if you reattached the umbilical cord and stuffed it back in' to be what a psycho would say. Or do you disagree?

Oh, gee, what to say here. So you think he was offering this up as a procedure or circumvention, do you? And you really, legitimately believe that? I've answered your question. Let's see if you can answer mine.

 

[GeoffP]

Rights of the child...

So please, spare me the rights of the child arguments. There are hundreds of cases where women are denied their basic and fundamental human rights based on the State's belief of 'rights of the child'.

Well, if you're suddenly enamoured of numbers, there are even more cases where, by the statue, foetuses are denied their basic and fundamental human rights (to clarify, because I think your attention is wandering: those aborted past the usual deadline). I don't wonder as to whose you feel should invariably triumph, but why you believe this. Or: spare us all the hyperbolic nonsense, please. Try reading the issue as it reads, just once, without trying to expand the case to anything you can think of which it does not represent.

 

[GeoffP]

Geoff, maybe you could teach our neighbors how to peel an onion. Spot on with your summation.

Thanks. Look, I'm sorry my summation didn't support your stance as explicitly as I now think it should: I hadn't delved into that thread and was operating under the illusion that Bells was being partly honest in her characterisation. Mea culpa: still without reading it, I can't believe I let myself get taken in by this sort of thing again. I do this kind of thing all the time on SF; this forgetting for a moment, or even a long moment, who I'm dealing with here. I guess it's partially reinforced by the fact that I know I will now be tarred with that same ignorant brush; and that fear, too, was dishonourable.

Why am I so credulous of these kind of people? I just enter into all these goddamned things under the assumption that the other guy is going to be just as forthright and explicit and honest as me. Every. Fucking. Time. Or, even if I do realise what I'm talking to, I still give credulity on their individual statements. It's so engrained it's ridiculous; and you would think, you would really think, that this was a good thing, wouldn't you? You really would. 'Hey, he thinks people are honest... that's a positive and constructive social value... good for him!'

No, no, NO, NO. It is by all accumulated reckoning, NOT a good thing in dealing with people. Take their fucking word - what am I, insane? Why in the hell would I take anyone's statements at face value any more? What possible observations would lead me to conclude that's a reasonable stance? People are bastards. They lie, not quite constantly, but about half the time so far as I can tell. This is the sociality thing, isn't it? That web of connections and bullshit and calculation and warped misrepresentation that every other primate on the planet seems to have grasped, but not me. Why can't I stop believing people? What the hell do I not get about the fact that a plurality of them are lying assholes? Jesus, this bothers the hell out of me.

So again, I'm sorry. I hereby edit the above now to read:

Well, his argument as I understand was meant to illuminate the gaping ethical flaw about your ludicrous positional postulations on abortion: I interpret his posed question to read what if one were to shove the kid back in, thereby wetting its feet again? Could the mother murder it in such a case? I appreciate that it seems ludicrous on first glance - and this is as much attention as you have seemingly paid it, Bells - but it has a relevant satirical point to make.

 

[Kittamaru]

Well, if you're suddenly enamoured of numbers, there are even more cases where, by the statue, foetuses are denied their basic and fundamental human rights (to clarify, because I think your attention is wandering: those aborted past the usual deadline). I don't wonder as to whose you feel should invariably triumph, but why you believe this. Or: spare us all the hyperbolic nonsense, please. Try reading the issue as it reads, just once, without trying to expand the case to anything you can think of which it does not represent.

Pretty sure she would gladly spare the "hyperbolic nonsense" if only the rest of the people in the thread *cough*Capracus*cough* would/could do the same.

 

[PhysBang]

What you are advocating is that a mother is free to kill the unborn child up to partum.

Any other position is reprehensible.

Either women are human beings or they are not. Male-dominated societies do not have the right to force them to give up their bodies, the only thing that exists of a person that a society can verify exists.

Well, if you're suddenly enamoured of numbers, there are even more cases where, by the statue, foetuses are denied their basic and fundamental human rights (to clarify, because I think your attention is wandering: those aborted past the usual deadline).

Humans do not have the right to use the bodies of other humans without their consent.

 

[GeoffP]

Pretty sure she would gladly spare the "hyperbolic nonsense" if only the rest of the people in the thread *cough*Capracus*cough* would/could do the same.

It's not even hyperbole. It's misrepresentation. I say: past the 27th week and Bells says all women all the time. I finish off a point - about the non-relevance of my sex in this discussion, say - and Bells just comes right back with it as if she never read it. And rinse, and repeat. And it's enough.

Is another definition of hyperbole sheared of all relevant facts?

 

[Kittamaru]

My statement was in regard to the almost humorously bad hypothetical situations that have been put forth by Capracus (and picked up by a few others).

Regarding the idea of the 27th week being the cutoff - I dunno... as I said, I am against abortion for the sake of abortion, but I recognize a need for it because of extenuating circumstances. I do not think Abortion should be treated as a form of "birth control" though... but the problem there is it requires a sense of responsibility, something a lot of young adults, especially in lower income areas or who come from single, zero, or abusive parent families, tend to be lacking.

 

[cluelusshusbund]

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...theists-quot&p=3189188&viewfull=1#post3189188

Originally Posted by GeoffP
Well, his argument as I understand was meant to illuminate the gaping ethical flaw about your ludicrous positional postulations on abortion: I interpret his posed question to read what if one were to shove the kid back in, thereby wetting its feet again? Could the mother murder it in such a case? I appreciate that it seems ludicrous on first glance - and this is as much attention as you have seemingly paid it, Bells - but it has a relevant satirical point to make.

Seems a simple enuff hypothetical to answr to me:::

I thank killin a reinserted kid woud be murder... ie... if its murder then... why woudnt it be murder if the kid was killed befor it had exited the woman.???

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Rights legally given to the foetus are not arbitrary.
They are set at approximately the same length of gestation at which a premature baby might be expected to survive.
That's in the UK. 24 weeks at present.
This avoids the ethical dilemma of having two healthy foetuses delivered on the same day, in the same hospital,
one of which is aborted, and the other carefully placed in an incubator.
I'm talking about separate births, not twins.

 

[GeoffP]

Any other position is reprehensible.

Either women are human beings or they are not. Male-dominated societies do not have the right to force them to give up their bodies, the only thing that exists of a person that a society can verify exists.

I regret to say that I do not believe this is so. Women certainly are human beings, but the special condition of pregnancy - in conjunction with legal representation of this moral position - means that they also carry an additional human being. Society has, through its legalities and challenges thereto, indeed settled on a definition of this personhood that prevents extreme late-term abortion. Or are the limits not predicated on the actual concept of 'personhood'? Is this a taboo word in the debate? Either way, I think there are other ethical challenges to this that can exist - the 'sleeping man', perhaps? I'm sifting through other analogies but haven't settled on one that would act as a metaphor for other law yet, to illustrate my stance. I do have one but I don't know that it's representative.

It should also be understood that at no point are women "giving up their bodies" for this, unless we really are all packed into bioelectric chambers and fed a nauseating overlay of false virtual reality, like The Matrix or maybe The Housewives of Orange County or Duck Dynasty or something even worse, like Flip This House.

And how strange that these are all on Bravo....

 

[GeoffP]

My statement was in regard to the almost humorously bad hypothetical situations that have been put forth by Capracus (and picked up by a few others).

Regarding the idea of the 27th week being the cutoff - I dunno... as I said, I am against abortion for the sake of abortion, but I recognize a need for it because of extenuating circumstances. I do not think Abortion should be treated as a form of "birth control" though... but the problem there is it requires a sense of responsibility, something a lot of young adults, especially in lower income areas or who come from single, zero, or abusive parent families, tend to be lacking.

Well, here we certainly agree. There's no reason to think some extenuating circumstances should not apply.

 

[GeoffP]

Rights legally given to the foetus are not arbitrary.
They are set at approximately the same length of gestation at which a premature baby might be expected to survive.
That's in the UK. 24 weeks at present.
This avoids the ethical dilemma of having two healthy foetuses delivered on the same day, in the same hospital,
one of which is aborted, and the other carefully placed in an incubator.
I'm talking about separate births, not twins.

That's a more concise and explicit summation than I ever could have produced, if I use my own posts as a guide. Thanks Kremmen.

 

[Kittamaru]

*nods* The problem as I see it though... yes, the foetus has rights as a living thing... but the woman carrying it does as well. The question is, whose rights should win out... and that's where the hangup is coming from.

My personal belief is, if you were irresponsible, got pregnant, and didn't do anything about it for over 6 months... well, that's on you. Killing the child at that point is NOT a way out.

HOWEVER

There are some issues with this. Rape, for one. For another, it is possible to get pregnant even while on birth control. Add to that the fact that it is possible (though uncommon) for a woman to not KNOW she is pregnant until later in the pregnancy (and there are articles about women not knowing until they actually go into labor... which admittedly confuses the hell out of me)...

In an ideal world, abortion would be unnecessary. People would be responsible for their actions, rape wouldn't exist, women wouldn't be coerced into having kids out of some twisted sense of "duty", etc. Unfortunately... that world just isn't the world we live in.

 

[GeoffP]

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...theists-quot&p=3189188&viewfull=1#post3189188



Seems a simple enuff hypothetical to answr to me:::

I thank killin a reinserted kid woud be murder... ie... if its murder then... why woudnt it be murder if the kid was killed befor it had exited the woman.???

Well, within the area of the "deadline", I suppose I don't have a good counter to this argument. Why would it not be?

 

[Kittamaru]

Well, within the area of the "deadline", I suppose I don't have a good counter to this argument. Why would it not be?

That's the rub, isn't it. When, by law and science, does the foetus cease to be simply a parasite and become a human life? Some people think it is upon birth. Others think it is after a certain amount of development. Myself, I feel it is a "person" after the point at which the brain, body, and nervous system have developed to the point at which it is "aware"... not knowledgeable of its surroundings obviously, but capable of awareness, consciousness, et al.