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[Frumple]

Those things do not correlate.

It's not the same as a kidney donation, or blood donation. Nobody is asking you to give up or cripple part of your body, or forcibly take something from you to save someone, somewhere, that you hold no responsibility for.

I mean, you can stop there, because necessary transfusions or organ replacements after an assault or wreck or sports injury or whatever qualifies for significant/total legal or ethical liability are a thing. There are very much cases where direct and unquestionable responsibility exists, but we still refuse, by and large absolutely, to even consider medical coercion to save a life. Not even to the extent of mandating some degree of goddamn caretaking, nevermind anything approaching as strenuous, damaging, or risky as a pregnancy.

It's just something you cannot escape from -- even in cases where a direct chain of responsibility exists, and there's no question about whether the one in need is human or not, just about every nation in the world refuses to consider coercion... except when it comes to women and pregnancy.

It can't be an issue of whether there's another human life involved, because even in cases where the burden and risk are much less (such as with simple blood donation or infusion or even simple temporary caretaking or somethin') and there's zero question on whether the needy are human or not, there's functionally just no argument medical coercion is acceptable. It's pretty much always and only with women and their bodies.

And, like, that's not even getting into organ donation, specifically mandatory donation in the case of the deceased. Folks are less willing to coerce a corpse than they are to coerce a woman, even when it would save the lives of people that are unquestionably human. Hell, not even for immediate relatives or actual living children, which would be an obvious extension to pregnancy if saving human lives were the actual concern.

Claiming it's an issue of something constituting human life just makes no damn sense given how we treat other situations. It's not how we interact with the issue of human life and medical ethics on any other issue I'm aware of, even where every prior or related concern is more or less the same.

[Bumber]

Is there not a significant difference between choosing not to save versus choosing to kill?

I think a closer issue is deciding to pull the plug on a comatose patient.

[Eschar]

Not really, except that often more parties* bear responsibility for a death in "chose not to save" situations.

*including "consequences of how the world/health works" though, which is a cause but not really a party.

[WealthyRadish]

[The debate is] whether or not an unborn child intrinsically constitutes a human life.

Those kinds of categorical arguments fail in my opinion, because they rely on seemingly convincing "strongly worded statements" that are only made possible by placing concepts similar in one respect into a label that assumes relevance in other aspects (using verbal shorthand to bridge false equivalence between concepts that are only partially transitive, if that makes sense).

It's very difficult for me at least to take these arguments as more than a proxy for belief in a soul, which does for many logically require one-to-one correspondence with human life, but is a much weaker argument to make towards non-believers than borrowing from the concept of human rights. The basic motivations and arguments for placing a high value on "human life" and respecting it in others just don't map equivalently to a fetus, even in our modern era of very low infant mortality where we have the luxury of treating them with similar weight.

[Dunamisdeos]

It doesn't matter if it has a soul or not. At all. And you're very pointedly leaving out the second half when you say things like "women and their bodies". It's "Women and their bodies and the body of the child therein" (by my own belief, mind you). I could care less whether it has some kind of divine spark or whatever, but I do care where we decide that human life begins and ends. It is NOT a question of spiritualism or religion. No matter what you believe, it is we and we alone who decide what a human being is worth. That's the crux. Kidneys do not grow up.

A woman must always have agency over their body. A woman has agency over whether they had sex in this scenario. There is no coercion here, there's the consequences to your actions, nothing more. And if you're looking for verbal shorthand, look no further than the language used in the above posts. "Host" insinuates that the fetus is a parasite. "The one" in need. The language in the arguments above against are by necessity tied to the dehumanization of the fetus/baby even when it's not intended. The entire issue is centered, 100%, around the idea that a human life is or is not lost during abortion.

The only thing you're not being allowed to do is declare a human life as irrelevant because it makes it easier to terminate the pregnancy. We're in a period of awakening right now on this very subject. Human lives do not become worthless when they are the wrong color, or on the wrong side of the border, or in a different tax bracket, or on the wrong end of the law. They DO, however, somehow cease to matter when they interfere with our sexual activity. My wife was NOT healthy enough to have a baby. Then she forgot her pill, I forgot to check even though I suspected she'd forgot, and hey, turns out she's pregnant. We got LUCKY in that it ended up not being necessary, but we had to very seriously consider an abortion. If our son or my wife had died there it would have been because we fucked irresponsibly. Hard Stop. I completely agree with Bumber in that it would have been akin to pulling the plug on a loved one.

If Biden said he was raising my taxes by 5% tomorrow to pay for better sex education and post-natal/foster care, I'd support it without thinking twice. THAT is what we need. The idea that a woman even has to think about terminating a viable pregnancy due to something like financial need or simple unavailability of health care is unconscionable in a modern society. And I fucking hate that our government cares more about using abortion as a talking point then putting resources into any sort of solution. I believe that a human life has intrinsic value. This drives me to oppose racism, it drives me to support treating migrants and immigrants like human beings, it drives me to have compassion for people less well off than me, and it drives my beliefs on abortion.

TLDR: I couldn't care less if it has a divine soul or a divine chicken sandwich. Women should always have agency as well as the final say according to what the law allows. Our nation's care for pregnant women and children is atrocious. Babies die during abortion.

[Lidku]

Honestly out of all the discussions centering around so-called, "American politics".... Abortion bores me the most. It seems pretty clear cut that women should have the ultimate say on what they wish to do regarding pregnancy, and without interference from me and others who aren't of that sex at all; considering the fact males will never understand pregnancy or give birth at all. 

I thought America was supposedly the "land of the free"? What's with all the bother with interfering with abortion, in regards to the female citizenry of this country?

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean, I feel like everything that's going to be said has been said above. We've gone down this way before.

People in this thread have differing opinions on the subject. I think we can at least agree that our nation's care for pregnant women and children is atrocious from any angle. Also that the whole 30-day law that sparked this conversation is ass.

[Frumple]

Ain't no argument there, nope.

[Bumber]

I guess it seems clear cut that unborn humans don't deserve any rights whatsoever. What irks me about the abortion "debate" is that it's rarely about weighing female autonomy versus the unborn. It's about others imposing their will onto the woman, and brushing aside the implications about what an abortion does.

I thought America was supposedly the "land of the free"?

As Democrats are fond of saying with regards to gun control, you don't have an unrestricted right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater.

considering the fact males will never understand pregnancy or give birth at all. 

Uh-oh! Transphobia!

[MrRoboto75]

I thought America was supposedly the "land of the free"?

If you happened to be a rich, white, male landowner, maybe it was.

[Lidku]

I thought America was supposedly the "land of the free"?

If you happened to be a rich, white, male landowner, maybe it was.

Yes, and that's exactly why it's more slogan than anything else; considering exactly as you allude to, most persons in the past and still a lot in America aren't "free" right now.

[Doomblade187]

I guess it seems clear cut that unborn humans don't deserve any rights whatsoever. What irks me about the abortion "debate" is that it's rarely about weighing female autonomy versus the unborn. It's about others imposing their will onto the woman, and brushing aside the implications about what an abortion does.

considering the fact males will never understand pregnancy or give birth at all. 

Uh-oh! Transphobia!

And what rights would you give the unborn, Bumber?

And for the record, most transition care renders people at least reduced fertility. Getting pregnant in these cases is most likely very intentional, but the cases of extreme good/bad luck also deserve abortion or prenatal care as desired.

[Bumber]

And what rights would you give the unborn, Bumber?

Well, fundamentally, there's the right to live if they can be supported artificially outside of the womb and removing them intact via c-section wouldn't risk the mother's health. Existing tech makes this possible at 22 weeks old. (Third trimester starts at week 27.)

Beyond that, the earliest baseline for when it becomes morally questionable (to me) to abort is when the fetus has a brain that is capable of a certain degree of thought, or can store memories. That's a very muddy area, given how little we know. Reportedly, some people can remember being in the womb, but it's not clear if those memories are real, given how rare it is. I don't believe in souls, so anything before that (including a heartbeat) is meaningless to me.

Obviously I don't have any experience of the psychology of wanting an abortion if it doesn't compromise the mother's health or if it's incest (compromising the baby's future health.) In the case of rape, there's a deep trauma associated and it was forced against their will. That's understandable. But is waiting to remove the fetus at the point of viability and never having to see it or contribute to its survival an acceptable compromise? Likewise, for accidental pregnancies and the financially troubled, are foster care or financial assistance sufficient?

For now, we have people going uncared for already, so providing for those takes priority over unborn children. Republicans tend to be especially hypocritical in that regard. Ideally, we should want to and be able to take care of both. I'll settle for acknowledging that abortion is a more complex issue than just a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her own body.

[Doomblade187]

And what rights would you give the unborn, Bumber?

Well, fundamentally, there's the right to live if they can be supported artificially outside of the womb and removing them intact via c-section wouldn't risk the mother's health. Existing tech makes this possible at 22 weeks old. (Third trimester starts at week 27.)

This violates bodily autonomy, and is therefore not an option.

[Bumber]

This violates bodily autonomy, and is therefore not an option.

Abortions violate bodily autonomy and kill, and are therefore not an option.