Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

Do I support the proposition? (see post #2)


  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .
Status
Not open for further replies.
The obvious question

Well, let us start with what the questions are. Perhaps you're missing something about American culture, but nobody can tell you what it is without knowing something about ... er ... um ... what you're .... ah ... missing.

Right, then.
 
Well, a broader application of what you're suggesting is that society would say, "Well, Billvon died of heart trauma after something pierced his chest", and leave it at that.

Yes, and that is generally murder. Hence it would make sense to investigate it. Miscarriages are generally not.

"Death From Miscarriage" defeats the purpose of LACP

No more so than cancer defeats the purpose of laws against murder.

especially if that miscarriage comes from a foreign object inserted into the uterus, an abortifacient potion, or baseball bat, fists, &c.

Yes. And to use your example, if the miscarriage were caused by "trauma after something pierced the fetus" then it would make sense to investigate it, If the miscarriage were caused by a simple failure to implant (for example) or a spontaneous delivery at 10 weeks then it would not.

Honestly your argument sounds like "we can't have laws against drunk driving unless you take a blood sample from everyone on the road every five minutes - or else someone might get away with it!"
 
Well, let us start with what the questions are. Perhaps you're missing something about American culture, but nobody can tell you what it is without knowing something about ... er ... um ... what you're .... ah ... missing.

Right, then.
Let's see if I can verbalize this coherently.

In my Jurisdiction, Abortion is currently legal in cases where the pregnant woman faces a danger to her life, physical or mental health, or if there is a risk of the fetus being handicapped, in the event of the continuation of her pregnancy. Regulations require that abortions after 12 weeks gestation be performed in a "licensed institution", which is generally understood to be a hospital. Abortions must be approved by two doctors (referred to as "certifying consultants" within the legislation) — one of whom must be a gynaecologist or obstetrician. Counselling is optional if the woman desires it, but is not mandatory within current abortion law. There is no statutory definition of fetuses or embryos as an "unborn child" within our law. There was also a 1982 court case that clarified the embryos and fetuses had no legal status in my jurisdiction thus pro-life parties could not intefere. My understanding is that because of this, certain arguments forwarded in the previous thread hold no ground here.

We came to that after a robust debate in the 70's after the UK legislated for abortion in 1967. In 1983, a pro-life group attempted to get a bill passed into law that from what little I know of it, it attempted to assign a legal status to fetuses and embryos, but the bill was defeated 48 votes to 30. Between 1989 and 1994 Operation Rescue attempted to establish themselves here, but several pro choice groups got mobilized and eventually, because of family stresses, heavy fines, and lack of conservative support here, the group failed.

As far as I'm aware, individuals seeking abortions under the age of 16 are free to do so without parental consent. It's also my understanding that post 20 weeks D&C was ruled unethical, and so induction is used instead - I don't know much more about it than that though.

Yes, there are still pro-life groups here. I know where there's a "Save the unborn" billboard not too far from where I live and there's a pro-life group that protests at my local public hospital every wednesday when they do their abortion clinic. There's also a pro-choice counter protester down there at the same time with his "Ignore them" or "I'm sorry about them" placard. But here's the thing, as I understand it, there's no animosity between them. They go away and have a quiet hot beverage once their done.

Abortion doesn't even come up as an election topic here.

That brings us to what I don't get.

It's this whole bipolar bipartisan thing you've got going on over there. It's the seeming complete absence of the middle ground. Everything has to be either THIS or THAT.

It's true any time a rights issue comes up in the US.
It's true of gun control.
It's true of freedom of speech.
It's even true of your politics.

There's no pissing around to find a hammer of the right size, either you do the job with a carpet tack hammer, or a 20lb sledge hammer.

I've even encountered it during my conversations on this forum. As soon as you suggest a comprimise, where everybody gets to exercise their rights within reason, you're automatically labled a pinko totalitarian communist nut. After all, who would ever settle for a comprimise, when it obviously means that neither party is happy because neither party gets to exercise their rights without restraint. Never mind the fact that all a compromise nececssarily means is that both parties get to exercise their rights within reason.

What's wrong with taking a more moderated approach?
 
A question of heritage

Trippy said:

It's this whole bipolar bipartisan thing you've got going on over there. It's the seeming complete absence of the middle ground. Everything has to be either THIS or THAT.

It's true any time a rights issue comes up in the US.
It's true of gun control.
It's true of freedom of speech.
It's even true of your politics.

There's no pissing around to find a hammer of the right size, either you do the job with a carpet tack hammer, or a 20lb sledge hammer.

Middle ground requires a certain amount of nuance that the marketplace doesn't like. Americans are very dualistic.

The complete absence of middle ground is a relatively new phenomenon. Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) ends his long run in the U.S. Senate, and the reason he lost the Republican primary to Richard Mourdock is that the “Statesman of the Senate” was insufficiently conservative—he dared have a history of working across the aisle.

There are some issues, though, where there is little room to compromise, and abortion is one of those. It might seem well enough to say, “If you don't believe abortion is the right thing to do, then don't have one”, but that is of no comfort to the anti-abortion advocates who believe the woman's right to govern her own body equals the murder of a defenseless person. In other issues, like gun control and free speech, I'll most assuredly point a finger across the aisle. I've even suggested a gun control compromise that basically comes down to, “No accidents; if it's your gun, you're responsible for the rounds fired.” But this is too oppressive for the gun owners I've known and discussed the issue with over the years. There is a reason why I say it's not really about the right to bear arms, but, rather, the right to kill people.

By and large, the underlying problem appears to be one of sloth. It's one of those marketplace circles where consumers reinforce the available products despite longstanding dissatisfaction because they are the products available. Kind of like a life-altering version of “five hundred channels and nothing worth watching”, though in this case it's largely two parties.

But we've done the dualistic thing throughout history, and it essentially comes down to good versus evil. Independence versus Colonialism. Protestant versus Catholic. White versus Red. White versus Black. Christian versus Jew. Men versus women. Americans versus Communism. Liberty versus Islam. Democrats versus Republicans. Think of the triune bit. On, off? Yes, no? Add “maybe”, or the intermediate and alternative state, and people get confused.

In any American political fight, though, watch voters flee nuance. They're coming for your guns, children, wallet, liberty, whatever. Those arguments are fairly reliable. What happened this year, with Obama knocking off the Romney challenge, was unusual, but in the end Romney's cruel classism and concomitant lack of integrity became far too obvious for voters to ignore. People went with the Devil they knew.

Watch as conservatives finally start to flip on marriage equality. Having that discussion twenty years ago would have simply met all sorts of shouting about how the homosexuals are coming to steal your children, or take away your liberty to enjoy supremacist privilege. As Republicans start to get on board with gay marriage, they'll be saying things gays were trying to argue in the nineties—that marriage will solidify these relationships and strengthen the foundations of families built thereupon. They just had to figure it out for themselves. The idea of letting butt-pirates get married was, twenty years ago, far too nuanced. No, really, twenty years ago it was hard to find a homophobe who understood that husbands do their wives that way sometimes. And there was always the sufficiently invisible lesbian; it crushes me how many of the men in the strip clubs in Oregon were homophobic except for when they were watching two women behave sexually toward one another. And, really, if that was too complicated for them, what chance had the subtleties of family dynamics or the complexities of neurotic response to behavioral suppression?

Now, as marriage equality becomes inevitable, many conservatives are reassessing, and what they considered anathema for decades in this social justice argument is now the comfort they seek.

Unfortunately, there really isn't a similar outlet for the abortion question. If LACP, then no exceptions for any reason; not even the life of the mother—once pregnant, she is simply a vessel obliged to the organism growing inside her, and the implications are huge.

Remember, though, the American experience began with a bunch of disgruntled religious people who banished one another from society for daring to have an opinion of one's own. This is a heritage that still, two hundred years later, clings to Calvinism. It is a heritage that justified genocide as God's will. It is a heritage in which piety can be shown by leaving people to suffer. It is a heritage in which self comes first.

Taking a more moderated approach? For many in our society, that is a violation of the American heritage.
 
It's this whole bipolar bipartisan thing you've got going on over there. It's the seeming complete absence of the middle ground. Everything has to be either THIS or THAT.

It's true any time a rights issue comes up in the US.
It's true of gun control.
It's true of freedom of speech.
It's even true of your politics.

There's no pissing around to find a hammer of the right size, either you do the job with a carpet tack hammer, or a 20lb sledge hammer.

I've even encountered it during my conversations on this forum. As soon as you suggest a comprimise, where everybody gets to exercise their rights within reason, you're automatically labled a pinko totalitarian communist nut. After all, who would ever settle for a comprimise, when it obviously means that neither party is happy because neither party gets to exercise their rights without restraint. Never mind the fact that all a compromise nececssarily means is that both parties get to exercise their rights within reason.

What's wrong with taking a more moderated approach?

Agreed. This is my observation too.

This dualism is not limited to Americans, though, and it seems to become more and more widespread in the world.
 
Agreed. This is my observation too.

This dualism is not limited to Americans, though, and it seems to become more and more widespread in the world.

Are you familiar with the idea of "The long war of the twentieth century?"

Basically, the reason it is spreading is this: America won - but that's mostly off topic, although it is, to some degree related.
 
A Longer Version

Trippy said:

Out of curisoity, what's your opinion on my Jurisdictions abortion laws?

It's sort of a mixed bag insofar as I find the criteria—“cases where the pregnant woman faces a danger to her life, physical or mental health, or if there is a risk of the fetus being handicapped, in the event of the continuation of her pregnancy”—restrictive. While the term brings many a shiver, yes, I do believe abortion on demand is a woman's right. It is a logical consequence of the “her body, her choice” outlook. But, to the other, I might be failing to understand something about your description.

I think part of what makes the American debate seem so strange to our international neighbors is that it seems many places are getting over the kind of religious fervor that my domestic neighbors seem to revel in. There is a book by Martin Riesebrodt, and perhaps the title will ping your curiosity: Pious Passion—The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. And, yes, it is a compare/contrast inquiry into the development of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam in those nations.

The American side of the equation is worth considering here. Fundamentalism as we recognize in the modern American evangelical originated in the twentieth century. It is largely reactionary, an attempt to hold back the hands of time. Among the various factors leading to its development, the most recognizable is, of course, Darwinian evolution. This fundamentalism, while diverse in its criteria according to various factions—there are between five and twenty required fundamental articles of faith, depending on who you ask—is exceptionally vulnerable to exploitation: evolution, prohibition, communism, war and peace, medical research, and even cosmology are on the list of things that set these people off.

At its heart is a simple American principle, freedom, that is utterly botched. If you look closely, you'll find a tacit argument reiterating itself over and over when fundamentalist Christianity has a problem with American society: My freedom is violated as long as someone else's freedom is intact.

Abortion: Don't agree with the principle? Don't have one.

Gay rights: Don't like homosexuality? Don't have a gay relationship.

Library books: Don't like a certain book? Don't read it.​

This might seem obvious to some, or obviously cavalier to others, but it's a fairly simple notion that results in everyone getting to exercise their rights. But it is also unsatisfactory to the religious side of the arguments.

Abortion: My right to free Christian conscience is violated if anyone can have an abortion.

Gay rights: My right to free Christian conscience is violated if people can be gay.

Library books: My right to free Christian conscience is violated if that author is not censored.​

There are some considerations within that; should public funds, including taxes paid by Christians, be used for abortions, or to buy books for libraries? Well, okay, I can see that argument clearly enough, but, to the one, what about non-Christians? It took decades to make the point about obligatory prayer in public schools—i.e, Should Christian children be obliged to recite another faith's prayer? In order to enforce this assertion of freedom, well, it's hard to describe. What would be the point of having a public library? I mean, if I can object to keeping the Catholic Encyclopedia in a public library?

Or, to put it functionally: Okay, so no Darwin in the library (evolution). No Heather Has Two Mommies (homosexuality). No Boy's Life by Robert McCammon° (a character named “Demon”). No Starhawk (witchcraft). So, right. I can certainly imagine an atheist petitioning against all sorts of religiously-associated titles. At some point, this outlook on rights runs into a functional problem.

The underlying motif is one in which “equality” is defined as “supremacy”. And here, I might invoke the question of what equality equals for people. For the deprived classes, it is a step up. For the privileged classes, it is a step down. And that step down is what drives this sort of religious politic. Many evangelical fundamentalists consider equality a deprivation because they consider privilege a right.

We might consider the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which held what should be its last opening ceremony this week. The construction site was vandalized, even torched at one point. A local judge tried to stall the opening with some procedural tactic to the point that the federal court had to tell him to knock it off. The whole point of the resistance was that Muslims had no right to build a mosque in town. For the record, though, local officials did stand up for the Center, and a neighboring church, after the arson at the construction site, opened its doors to the Muslim community and offered them a place to gather on Fridays. That is, the pushback was somewhat limited, and the public trust generally stood up for the First Amendment rights of Muslims in Murfreesboro.

Or we can look to what would be a funny situation in Louisiana, except that it's kind of depressing at the same time. The legislature passed, and Governor Jindal signed, a charter schools measure that would allow public funds to go to religious schools. And some of these schools are clearly political to the point of being insane. Dinosaurs and humans, liberalism as a tool of Satan, young-Earth creationism, and all that sort of thing. But the problem for folks in Louisiana arose when a Muslim school applied for and received charter authorization. One legislator who voted for the charter schools bill actually said that if she had known it would include Islam, she would have voted against it. No, really. It comes down to free religion, but only for Christans.

To bring this back to abortion and LACP: In deciding Roe v. Wade, the Court refused to establish life at conception, noting that the history of philosophy and medicine had failed to answer the question:

Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

And this is the battleground. LACP is the insistence of one group that everyone else be obliged to its philosophical outlook, and the assertion is tied to religion in much the same manner as censorship, evolution, gay rights, and other issues: The freedom of the Christian conscience is violated if it is not given privilege over others.

When it comes to tangible things, middle ground is available. But redemptive religion is a peculiar case in which everything else stacks up against the most valuable thing in existence, the eternal soul. One can construe, from the Christian Scriptures, that to leave one's neighbor in sin is to be complicit in sin. Thus, for the Christian, it can be argued—and many do—that to normalize homosexuality is to be complicit in the gay offense against God, or to accept abortion in society is to be complicit in the murder of an innocent “person”. Any potential offense against God's authority, dignity, or Will, can be argued in this form. And for this reason, there are some with whom no middle ground can be agreed upon.

Our Puritan heritage is persistent, but inconsistent. These days, we're arguing about “forcible”, “legitimate”, and “honest” rape when it comes to the abortion question, including the now infamous HR 3, which would have excluded statutory rape from abortions funded by Medicaid. Yet in 1875, Lysander Spooner, in a rant apparently about alcohol prohibitions, noted:

The statute book of Massachusetts makes ten years the age at which a female child is supposed to have discretion enough to part with virtue. But the same statute book holds that no person, man or woman, of any age, or any degree of wisdom or experience, has discretion to be trusted to buy and drink a glass of spirits, on his or her own Judgement! What an illustration of the legislative wisdom of Massachusetts!

Ten years old?° At least we know what was important to our Puritan heritage in the nineteenth century.

More to the point, though, there is a reason abortion access advocates stand such a firm line. Legalized abortion on demand is not without societal benefits. Women's physical health has improved, as has their educational and economic standing in society, and as a result their mental health as well. Some might find the access advocates' arguments about putting women back in their places somewhat hyperbolic, but it is also a logical outcome of granting our Puritan streak free rein.

No standardized sex ed? No birth control for minors? And then there is this whole “personhood” thing that includes hormonal birth control and even intra-uterine devices as abortifacients. To the one, the most apparent solution is for women to just stop having sex with men, but this is impractical and would, over the long run, be unhealthy for women's mental health. The reason American advocates for abortion access fret about conservatives putting women back in their places—i.e., barefoot and pregnant—is that we keep seeing markers of it in society. In 2010, for instance, Michael Reagan, a prominent conservative advocate and, yes, son of the former president, unloaded on Michelle Obama:

If mothers would once again start teaching their daughters the time-honored role of family chef, and fathers would make sure that their wives are honored and cherished for making the kitchen one of their principal domains, we’d be a lot better off.

Instead we have a First Lady who sees her role as First Mother not only to instruct us on what we victuals we should eat, but warns us that the menu at the local fast food emporium is the diet from Hell.

She goes so far as to dig up patches of the White House lawn, formerly the site of the so-called Easter egg hunts, and plant the seeds of what she tells us are the staples of a healthy diet — a diet regimen in the White House kitchens one doubts includes whatever puny edibles grown on the lawn of the Executive mansion.

If she and her fellow radical feminists would devote more time to praising and defending the produce farmers and retailers bring us, and less time playing the role as diet dictators, meals would be family celebrations instead of burdensome chores for the moms who cook them.

Moreover, giving Mom a day off from cooking dinner by a making a family trip to the nearest hamburger joint would be seen as a gift to her rather than one of the mortal sins in an imaginary list of dietary commandments.

Their menu may be fattening, and viewed as one of the Lord’s practical jokes on his children by making such fare lip-smacking good, but enjoying it is not a flagrant violation of the dietary Ten Commandments. Slathered with mustard and ketchup it’s just plain tasty — fattening but tasty.

A happy home is one in which moms teach their daughters how to cook tasty meals for their future families and dads teach their sons that one of their roles in family life is drying the dishes and otherwise doing chores around the house to lighten Mom’s burdens.

Finally, women should understand and act on the time-honored truth that the fastest route to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and not always through the drive-in window at the nearest fast-food restaurant. That’s one way we can begin to put the family — and America — back together.

One might be given to think Mr. Reagan was writing satire, but no, he wasn't.

Or Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party darling who failed to win her 2010 senate bid; she has before expressed that a woman's role is to serve her husband.

Or our neighbor Madanthonywayne, who thinks liberal criticism of such outlooks “is a perfect example of liberal arrogance”. This isn't a lunatic fringe in any statistical sense.

Todd Akin's remark about how a woman's body can actively prevent pregnancy resulting from a “legitimate” rape? That is a theory espoused by a doctor who headed the National Right to Life Committee, the oldest anti-abortion organization in the U.S.

The American debate about abortion might well seem bizarre to our international neighbors; I assure you it seems bizarre to many Americans. We're a country less than twenty years removed from the last abolition of sexual intercourse as a spousal privilege; it was 1993 when North Carolina became the last state to strike spousal exemption from its rape statutes. We are, as a society, severely neurotic about sex, sexuality, and sexual intercourse.

Of course, many Americans reject psychology and the idea of neuroses. That is to say, without such ideas, one has no reason to consider the composite sum of their outlook. One can oppose various advancements of women's rights and, as individual issues, assert some notion of logic; at no point, though, are they obliged to stop and look at the whole of what they are doing.

But for those who accept that there is a valid notion of psychology, and that human behavior can be viewed in thematic contexts, it's horrifying to consider what will happen to women if these issues come to fruition.

In the end, I think what makes the American abortion debate seem so strange is its peculiar boundaries and definition. It is difficult for many people on my side of the argument to not tie the question to a raft of other issues of consequence pertaining to sex and sexuality. For the other side, there is the strong persuasion of the eternal soul, and even those few non-religious folks who stand with the anti-abortion crowd cling to the LACP assertion like an article of faith. If it seems there is no middle ground, it is because that is how the issue is defined, and redefining it is not a task easily undertaken, to speak nothing of achieved.

In that sense of redefinition, though, remember that the reason abortion access advocates don't like the term, “pro-abortion”, is that few, if any, actually like the idea of abortion. But the better way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Redefining the abortion debate in this context would also require major concessions from conservatives on other issues of consequence pertaining to sex and sexuality—namely sex education and birth control access. Otherwise, we're arguing over legislative goals that, taken in sum, degrade women's status in society.

Thus, I do think the abortion policy you describe is somewhat restrictive, unless of course I'm simply missing some aspect of it. But it is also possible that the policy is sufficient if the culture is not so stunted in its address of these issues. After all, I'm looking at it from a context eyeball-deep in the neurotic spasm otherwise known as the American political debate.
____________________

Notes:

° Boy's Life by Robert McCammon — An excellent novel circa 1991 that, for me, marks the end of the latter Golden Age of Horror that began with Stephen King's Carrie in 1974 and reached its height in the middle of the 1980s. In truth, the proper McCammon title to use for this example is Demon Walk, which also includes a character named “Demon”. In the 1990s, before I moved back to Seattle, a parent in Salem, Oregon, objected to Demon Walk in the school libraries because the title and the presence of a character named “Demon” violated her rights as a Christian parent. It wasn't enough that she simply tell her kids to not check the book out; she wanted it banned from the shelves. In other words, her First Amendment rights as a Christian were violated as long as Robert McCammon's First Amendment rights as an author remained intact.

° Ten years old? — One counterpoint I have encountered before is that this somehow makes sense compared to lifespan and childbearing, though I consider that argument downright silly; menarche has been moving younger as time passes in the U.S.

Works Cited:

Blackmun, J. Harry. “Opinion of the Court”. Roe v. Wade. January 22,
1973. Law.Cornell.edu. November 21, 2012. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html

Spooner, Lysander. Vices Are Not Crimes: A Moral Vindication of Liberty. 1875. LysanderSpooner.org. November 21, 2012. http://lysanderspooner.org/node/46

Reagan, Michael. “Kitchen is not a Dirty Word”. The Cagle Post. December 17, 2010. Cagle.com. November 21, 2012. http://www.cagle.com/2010/12/kitchen-is-not-a-dirty-word/
 
Thus, I do think the abortion policy you describe is somewhat restrictive, unless of course I'm simply missing some aspect of it. But it is also possible that the policy is sufficient if the culture is not so stunted in its address of these issues. After all, I'm looking at it from a context eyeball-deep in the neurotic spasm otherwise known as the American political debate.

It is very unfortunate that the polarization/dualism has become what it is in the US, and because of US' influence, also in many other parts parts of the world.

Once that defensive, paranoid, black-and-white thinking takes over, snowballs and produces results as it has, on both sides of the dualism, it would take years and thousands of pages to unravel it. And nobody - neither the two parties themselves, nor a third party - really has the time or resources to do it.

Both sides ended up with defending positions they initially probably didn't intend.
It's in the nature of debate as such that polarity is created, simply because there are two parties, each trying to win, each trying to defeat the other. And it is via this inherent mechanism of debate that each party presents its stance in a way that would oppose the other party, thus creating new, previously unintended emphases or connections and adding ad hoc bridges that can eventually turn out to be damning, yet the party needs to stand by them if they wish to continue fighting in the debate.

IOW, it's acting on the idea that politics be done by debate that may be the real culprit of political discord and everything it brings along. An absolutist monarchy or dictatorship may actually function more smoothly and with fewer absurdities than a two-party parliamentary democracy.

Another poster mentioned the Long War - this is very pertinent.
 
(Insert title here)

Billvon said:

Miscarriages are generally not.

How do you know?

For instance, life at conception in Rh imbalance. The mother's will view the fetus as a foreign invader; the fetus will view the mother's biological response as a threat. Sometimes this problem ends in the death of the mother, but untreated, it always results in the death of the fetus.

The Rh imbalance comes from the father.

Who killed the person that came into being at conception?

Furthermore, does life at conception mean fertilization itself, or fertilization and implantation? Medically, most would lean toward the latter, but many anti-abortion advocates would go with the former. Thus, they disdain hormonal birth control, and there was a case a couple years ago in which a hospital employee was subject to complaints that she was deliberately sabotaging IUDs, and invoking conscience clause in her defense—she considers IUDs abortifacient. And, of course, there is the question of the rights of frozen embryos; in September, a study emerged suggesting that frozen embryos used for in-vitro fertilization show better results than those freshly created.

If we leave the LACP door open for the general presumption that miscarriages are nothing more than miscarriages, the whole purpose of LACP is undermined. Hence—

No more so than cancer defeats the purpose of laws against murder.

—is not applicable.

And to use your example, if the miscarriage were caused by "trauma after something pierced the fetus" then it would make sense to investigate it

To reiterate:

One might certainly point out how complicated this is, and note the difficulty of enforcement. But these are not excuses for refusing to enforce the law. After all, this whole "personhood" suggestion of life at conception isn't just about abortion, right?

If a pregnant woman continues to work, and miscarries after tripping over a plastic chair-mat and colliding with the desk, this must be investigated as a homicide.

If a husband slams on the brakes to avoid a deer running into the road, and his pregnant wife suffers a seat-belt miscarriage, this must be investigated as a homicide.

These are potentially negligent homicides under LACP. The outcome could have been avoided if the mother did not go to work. And what if the husband is found to have obeyed the posted speed limit, yet still be driving too fast for road conditions? (Many states have what is called a "Basic Speed Law", which means you can be driving the posted speed limit yet still be speeding; inclement weather is the most common example.)

If the miscarriage were caused by a simple failure to implant (for example) or a spontaneous delivery at 10 weeks then it would not.

A failure to implant would be exceptionally hard to detect; the fertilized ovum is not intrinsically connected to the woman until implantation, and thus there would be fewer physiological signs of pregnancy.

But spontaneous delivery at ten weeks? Okay, why did it occur?

I have no idea how one would write that postmortem report, but under LACP, we'll have to figure it out.

Honestly your argument sounds like "we can't have laws against drunk driving unless you take a blood sample from everyone on the road every five minutes - or else someone might get away with it!"

Given what that one can be arrested and charged with DUI for a 0.01 BAC according to an officer's discretion, I think you're making a huge leap in comparing that to murder.

I suppose we can sweep all these considerations aside by admitting that LACP isn't really about the "people" inside women, but, rather, forcing women who get pregnant to carry to term. Such a fundamental change of paradigm as establishing LACP under law is not going to be an easy task with a simple outcome. LACP has broad implications, and the more people try to push those aside, the easier it is to believe that the principle really is about putting women back in their places.
 
Miscarriages are generally not.

How do you know?

Medical statistics.

For instance, life at conception in Rh imbalance. The mother's will view the fetus as a foreign invader; the fetus will view the mother's biological response as a threat. Sometimes this problem ends in the death of the mother, but untreated, it always results in the death of the fetus. The Rh imbalance comes from the father. Who killed the person that came into being at conception?

A known medical condition known as Rhesus Disease.

If we leave the LACP door open for the general presumption that miscarriages are nothing more than miscarriages, the whole purpose of LACP is undermined.

Like I said, as much as cancer undermines the laws on murder.

How do you know it wasn't someone's mother who passed on the genes that made her daughter more likely to get cancer? Using your logic, the mother should be on trial. Fortunately few people use that logic.

One might certainly point out how complicated this is, and note the difficulty of enforcement. But these are not excuses for refusing to enforce the law. After all, this whole "personhood" suggestion of life at conception isn't just about abortion, right?

Nope. The contrived scenarios you present are what's making it complicated. And while you can do that sort of obfuscation for anything (cancer, miscarriage, drunk driving) your deciding that it is difficult does not equate to it actually being difficult.

If a pregnant woman continues to work, and miscarries after tripping over a plastic chair-mat and colliding with the desk, this must be investigated as a homicide.

If a husband slams on the brakes to avoid a deer running into the road, and his pregnant wife suffers a seat-belt miscarriage, this must be investigated as a homicide.

Again, only in your mind. I agree, if we had people who thought like that running things, we'd have problems everywhere. (i.e. that woman who must prove in court that she did not contribute to her daughter's breast cancer, lest she be imprisoned for murder.) Fortunately, most people are more rational.

Given what that one can be arrested and charged with DUI for a 0.01 BAC according to an officer's discretion, I think you're making a huge leap in comparing that to murder.

Exactly. It becomes absurd when you take it to those extremes, eh?

I suppose we can sweep all these considerations aside by admitting that LACP isn't really about the "people" inside women, but, rather, forcing women who get pregnant to carry to term. Such a fundamental change of paradigm as establishing LACP under law is not going to be an easy task with a simple outcome. LACP has broad implications, and the more people try to push those aside, the easier it is to believe that the principle really is about putting women back in their places.

What you are doing here is the classic debate tactic called "the strawman." You are creating an unsupported strawman (i.e. "any woman who miscarries might be a murderer and must be prosecuted!") to justify your position (therefore LACP is about "putting women in their place.") The strawman argument is not valid; hence the conclusions are not, either.
 
Last edited:
Middle ground requires a certain amount of nuance that the marketplace doesn't like. Americans are very dualistic.
/.../
By and large, the underlying problem appears to be one of sloth.

Perhaps, but I think fear and a sense of entitlement play an important role too.


There is the fear that going into detail will mean ending up in a relativistic void. It's not uncommon to experience a sense of powerlessness and loss of direction after one has looked at an issue from various angles and in detail. Looking at an issue from various angles and in detail can mean that it will be impossible to decide about it. Hence, in order to avoid the sense of powerlessness and confusion, people may try to "keep things simple."

A sense of entitlement can make people do two things (among others):
One is to avoid thinking about and discussing things in detail, as they feel that they are such good and worthy people that they shouldn't have to explain themselves in detail. Explaining oneself puts one in the subordinate position in communication, and it's only to be expected that people will naturally not want that.
The other is that a sense of entitlement makes people think that they deserve everything to be the way they want it to be, regardless how unrealistic their desires may be, so they end up pursuing unrealistic goals.
 
It's sort of a mixed bag insofar as I find the criteria—“cases where the pregnant woman faces a danger to her life, physical or mental health, or if there is a risk of the fetus being handicapped, in the event of the continuation of her pregnancy”—restrictive. While the term brings many a shiver, yes, I do believe abortion on demand is a woman's right. It is a logical consequence of the “her body, her choice” outlook. But, to the other, I might be failing to understand something about your description.
It comes down to the Mental Health clause and how broadly that's interpreted - a point that I endeavoured to make in the previous discussion, but also one that was missed, or ignored. It's why I kept harping on about the significance of the absence of Mental Health in the Paris statistics.

In my jurisdiction, mental health is the leading reported reason given for having an abortion. To the point where it has led some to question whether it is being used to simply rubberstamp abortions on demand.

I also know that in my Jurisdiction, our abortion rate is lower than in the US.

I think part of what makes the American debate seem so strange to our international neighbors is that it seems many places are getting over the kind of religious fervor that my domestic neighbors seem to revel in. There is a book by Martin Riesebrodt, and perhaps the title will ping your curiosity: Pious Passion—The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. And, yes, it is a compare/contrast inquiry into the development of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam in those nations.
I will admit, you have piqued my curiosity. The idea of the US saying "Na, stuff it, we're a Christian Theocracy." Terrifies me, and yeah, I know, but you know what I mean - things could go a lot further than they have.

At its heart is a simple American principle, freedom, that is utterly botched. If you look closely, you'll find a tacit argument reiterating itself over and over when fundamentalist Christianity has a problem with American society: My freedom is violated as long as someone else's freedom is intact.
Yeah, I've noticed that, I've even had that conversation. It's what I'm talking about, or part of it anyway.

There are some considerations within that; should public funds, including taxes paid by Christians, be used for abortions, or to buy books for libraries? Well, okay, I can see that argument clearly enough, but, to the one, what about non-Christians? It took decades to make the point about obligatory prayer in public schools—i.e, Should Christian children be obliged to recite another faith's prayer? In order to enforce this assertion of freedom, well, it's hard to describe. What would be the point of having a public library? I mean, if I can object to keeping the Catholic Encyclopedia in a public library?
In my Jurisdiction, I can spend 32 USD to go to my GP and get a perscription for a tray of 36 boxes of Ansells condomns, which will cost, I think, an additional 2.45 USD (If i'm unlucky). That's still less than 1USD per box.

To bring this back to abortion and LACP: In deciding Roe v. Wade, the Court refused to establish life at conception, noting that the history of philosophy and medicine had failed to answer the question:

Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
Sounds like sage advice.

When it comes to tangible things, middle ground is available. But redemptive religion is a peculiar case in which everything else stacks up against the most valuable thing in existence, the eternal soul. One can construe, from the Christian Scriptures, that to leave one's neighbor in sin is to be complicit in sin. Thus, for the Christian, it can be argued—and many do—that to normalize homosexuality is to be complicit in the gay offense against God, or to accept abortion in society is to be complicit in the murder of an innocent “person”. Any potential offense against God's authority, dignity, or Will, can be argued in this form. And for this reason, there are some with whom no middle ground can be agreed upon.
I'm going to disagree with you here, although only mildly. I'm going to say that, at least in my experience, albeit in a different society, that this is only true of some interpretations of redemptive religion.

No standardized sex ed? No birth control for minors? And then there is this whole “personhood” thing that includes hormonal birth control and even intra-uterine devices as abortifacients. To the one, the most apparent solution is for women to just stop having sex with men, but this is impractical and would, over the long run, be unhealthy for women's mental health. The reason American advocates for abortion access fret about conservatives putting women back in their places—i.e., barefoot and pregnant—is that we keep seeing markers of it in society.
Over here in NZ, I seem to recall that Sex ED is pretty much compulsory in public schools. Couldn't tell you what the policy is in Catholic schools, but I'm fairly sure it's part of the Health and Fitness curriculum. That said. Permission slips get sent home with the kids that have to be signed with the parents, giving the parents the power to remove their children from it if it violates their sensitivies.

In 2010, for instance, Michael Reagan, a prominent conservative advocate and, yes, son of the former president, unloaded on Michelle Obama:

If mothers would once again start teaching their daughters the time-honored role of family chef, and fathers would make sure that their wives are honored and cherished for making the kitchen one of their principal domains, we’d be a lot better off.

Instead we have a First Lady who sees her role as First Mother not only to instruct us on what we victuals we should eat, but warns us that the menu at the local fast food emporium is the diet from Hell.

She goes so far as to dig up patches of the White House lawn, formerly the site of the so-called Easter egg hunts, and plant the seeds of what she tells us are the staples of a healthy diet — a diet regimen in the White House kitchens one doubts includes whatever puny edibles grown on the lawn of the Executive mansion.

If she and her fellow radical feminists would devote more time to praising and defending the produce farmers and retailers bring us, and less time playing the role as diet dictators, meals would be family celebrations instead of burdensome chores for the moms who cook them.

Moreover, giving Mom a day off from cooking dinner by a making a family trip to the nearest hamburger joint would be seen as a gift to her rather than one of the mortal sins in an imaginary list of dietary commandments.

Their menu may be fattening, and viewed as one of the Lord’s practical jokes on his children by making such fare lip-smacking good, but enjoying it is not a flagrant violation of the dietary Ten Commandments. Slathered with mustard and ketchup it’s just plain tasty — fattening but tasty.

A happy home is one in which moms teach their daughters how to cook tasty meals for their future families and dads teach their sons that one of their roles in family life is drying the dishes and otherwise doing chores around the house to lighten Mom’s burdens.

Finally, women should understand and act on the time-honored truth that the fastest route to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and not always through the drive-in window at the nearest fast-food restaurant. That’s one way we can begin to put the family — and America — back together.

One might be given to think Mr. Reagan was writing satire, but no, he wasn't.
Sadly, I know. Don't get me started on this dross, it's not pretty.

In that sense of redefinition, though, remember that the reason abortion access advocates don't like the term, “pro-abortion”, is that few, if any, actually like the idea of abortion. But the better way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Redefining the abortion debate in this context would also require major concessions from conservatives on other issues of consequence pertaining to sex and sexuality—namely sex education and birth control access. Otherwise, we're arguing over legislative goals that, taken in sum, degrade women's status in society.
My wife is pro choice, but anti abortion. She's in favour of individuals being able to choose for themselves but is unlikely to ever get one except in exceptional circumstances. I think pregnancy, and seeing the twelve week scans strengthened that, but, she still wouldn't stop another woman from having one if she chose.

Thus, I do think the abortion policy you describe is somewhat restrictive, unless of course I'm simply missing some aspect of it. But it is also possible that the policy is sufficient if the culture is not so stunted in its address of these issues. After all, I'm looking at it from a context eyeball-deep in the neurotic spasm otherwise known as the American political debate.
I suspect you are, and I suspect its the mental health clause. As I said in the pervious discussion on this. A lot can come under the category of Mental Health if you find the right Dr. Having said that, a pro life group fearing this did attempt to litigate to that effect, but, the Supreme court essentially found that the Drs were acting properly.
 
Having said all of that, we have, to some extent gone in the opposite direction to the US.

Our right wing is well to the Left of anything in the US, and we have a huge dose of "tall poppy syndrome". And that's without going into our petrol head binge drinking culture...
 
If/Then

Billvon said:

Medical statistics.

And what is the reason these statistics attribute spontaneous miscarriages to?

A known medical condition known as Rhesus Disease.

And generally preventable. Vaccines are generally mandatory; what, then, about Rhogam?

My partner miscarried in 1997 for Rhesus disease; did she kill the "person" inside her, or did I? After all, a simple injection could have prevented that outcome well before the "person" was ever conceived. So which one of us killed our "child" whose heart never started beating?

Our daughter, born in 2002, only exists because her mother apparently forgot that, after the '97 miscarriage, she actually did receive Rhogam.

I know, I know. How do you forget something like that, or not know what a doctor is injecting into your bloodstream? Blows my mind, too, but there you go. The bottom line is that the problem can be corrected with a simple injection.

How do you know it wasn't someone's mother who passed on the genes that made her daughter more likely to get cancer? Using your logic, the mother should be on trial. Fortunately few people use that logic.

I still don't see how that works. I'm talking about the death of a "person" and the Equal Protection obligation of a state to investigate an unexpected death.

Nope. The contrived scenarios you present are what's making it complicated. And while you can do that sort of obfuscation for anything (cancer, miscarriage, drunk driving) your deciding that it is difficult does not equate to it actually being difficult.

I'm not the one who decides it's actually difficult. The logic arguing against Equal Protection under LACP, as presented to me by people who have rejected these implications, is that it is too difficult.

Again, only in your mind. I agree, if we had people who thought like that running things, we'd have problems everywhere. (i.e. that woman who must prove in court that she did not contribute to her daughter's breast cancer, lest she be imprisoned for murder.) Fortunately, most people are more rational.

In the U.S., people are routinely charged with criminal conduct for "accidents".

If a drunk driver runs into the car and that impact causes a miscarriage, the driver will be charged under applicable laws, including fetal homicide in most states where such a statute exists; we can set aside places like South Carolina, of course, where fetal homicide laws are being used to arrest women perceived as reckless during pregnancy.

Please don't ignore that there are already precedents for these outcomes.

At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.

South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.


(Pilkington)

Exactly. It becomes absurd when you take it to those extremes, eh?

Ask prosecutors in South Carolina and Indiana.

What you are doing here is the classic debate tactic called "the strawman." You are creating an unsupported strawman (i.e. "any woman who miscarries might be a murderer and must be prosecuted!") to justify your position (therefore LACP is about "putting women in their place.") The strawman argument is not valid; hence the conclusions are not, either.

It's more of a material conditional argument derived from observable results.

If LACP advocates wish to ignore the larger implications of the principle, then it becomes easier to believe that this really is about misogyny.

It's kind of like the rape exception to anti-abortion laws. As one of our neighbors put it last year, "It's a child, not a choice—but not if you were raped." That was an inevitable question, and we saw in this year's election cycle just what happens when anti-abortion advocates try to address it.
____________________

Notes:

Wikipedia. "Rho(D) immune globulin". October 30, 2012. Wikipedia.org. November 22, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho(D)_immune_globulin

Pilkington, Ed. "Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges". The Guardian. June 24, 2011. Guardian.co.uk. November 22, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges
 
If a three month embryo were to be considered a person, with equal protection but no more under the law, any woman would be entitled to kill it in self defense.

At the very least, have it removed from her body.

But that is a hypothetical situation: essentially no one, anywhere, actually conceives of a three month embryo as a person. That's why the "pro-life" crowd has so much trouble foreseeing the consequences of their proposed legal definitions, etc - they simply never think of the embryo as a person in any context other than abstract debates over willful abortion.

Recognizing that fundamental incoherence might simplify the debate. We are talking about writing delusion or hope into law, then, on the grounds of its superiority as a moral or ethical position if it were ever to be realized. That's not an empty argument.
 
And what is the reason these statistics attribute spontaneous miscarriages to?

Oh, lots of things. Failure of meiosis and resulting chromosomal abnormalities. Uterine insufficiency. Inappropriate immunologic response.

My partner miscarried in 1997 for Rhesus disease; did she kill the "person" inside her, or did I? After all, a simple injection could have prevented that outcome well before the "person" was ever conceived. So which one of us killed our "child" whose heart never started beating?

Neither one; miscarriages happen.
I still don't see how that works. I'm talking about the death of a "person" and the Equal Protection obligation of a state to investigate an unexpected death.

Right. And I used an example of the death of a person and the equal protection obligation of a state to investigate an unexpected death. If you cannot see why a state would investigate a death clearly caused by disease, then you have demonstrated that your premise (that a miscarriage will be prosecuted as a murder) is invalid.

Please don't ignore that there are already precedents for these outcomes.

I'm not.

You've created a strawman (i.e. that such laws require prosecution of women who miscarry.) This sort of argument is known as "reductio ad absurdum" - trying to extend the argument to a ridiculous extreme to demonstrate your point. I used the same logic to point out that if your reduction was valid, you would also have to prosecute women whose daughters get cancer, since their mothers might have passed on genes that made them susceptible to such cancer.

You "can't see how that works." Fair enough - but if you can't see how that works, do not be surprised if other people don't see how your point works.
 
But that is a hypothetical situation: essentially no one, anywhere, actually conceives of a three month embryo as a person.

Then why do some women, upon finding out that they are pregnant, and some men, upon finding out that their wives or female partners are pregnant, and some relatives and friends of theirs,
start preparing a room for a child, start buying baby clothes and other things needed for babies, set up a savings account for the child etc.?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top