Abortion on the Ballot:
Voters in three states will consider ballot initiatives on abortion this Fall. The most aggressive is in South Dakota, where voters will consider a virtual ban (with exceptions for rape, incest, and threats to the mother's life). Anti-abortion activists hope to use the law as the basis for an eventual Supreme Court challenge to Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, California voters will consider a parental notification requirement, and Coloradans will consider whether to define "person" as "any human being from the moment of fertilization." All three will be worth watching.
But, even in the case of a rape, if it is your personal belief that life begins at conception and that the unborn should have rights, what about a rape should deny an unborn child the right to life? Is "my mom was raped" considered due process or something? I certainly understand that people want to chip away at abortion and want to appear "moderate" by giving exceptions so that they can get their foot in, but if you accept any exception to your opposition to abortion besides a threat to the life of the mother, then your whole position simply becomes incoherent.
And don't worry, the pro-abortion position is just as inconsistent.
As to the logical coherence for an incest/rape exception for those who are pro-life, I look at it (particularly in the rape situation) as being a form of justifiable homicide. It is still one person killing another, but there is a justifiable reason for doing so.
The most immediate repercussion that I don't think the backers of that law are expecting is that it will make fertility clinics (and presumably visiting them out of state) illegal. Subsequent to that, once you follow that train to its logical conclusion, you can dictate everything a woman does to her body at any time on the basis of whether or not it would even affect her chances of implantation. Truly a nightmare.
That said, though, I note that even implantation is a silly point to take, scientifically. Developmentally, there is no mind to be a person in until at least 28 weeks, when synaptic connections begin to form. Theologically, you can't even have a unique soul, because identical twin splits can happen for as long as 14 days after implantation.
Though I'm pro-choice, I've never been especially bothered by parental notification laws. My guess is that one passes narrowly.
Would they legally be considered one person? Or would the parents (or government) decide which one gets to be a person and which one has no legal status as a person?
Or maybe the mother would be guilty of illegally cloning a human being?
The Coalition for Secular Government just published an issue paper on it "Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life: Why It Matters That a Fertilized Egg Is Not a Person" by Ari Armstrong and myself. It's available for download HERE
Diana Hsieh
Coalition for Secular Government
http://www.seculargovernment.us
Lefties have trouble accepting election results, which is why they prefer to legislate through the courts.
Now we'll see if right-to-lifers and conservatives will accept what's coming to them, or join with lefties in denouncing election results as evidence of ignorance and prejudice.
As for the issue of the fetus's lack of mental abilities at the time of conception (and for some time afterward), this is irrelevant to the issue of the mortality of abortion. A fetus is a developing human being; in time, if left alone, it will (barring accident or disease) develop the mental abilities that this argument presupposes are necessary to bestow human rights. As such, intentionally killing the developing entity is tantamount to kllling the developed entity; i.e., it is murder.
As for the issue of identical twins, this too is irrelevant to the morality of abortion. Killing an individual who later splits into two individuals is still murder.
Ah, yes, the classic liberal judicial activist argument. No matter how often it is proven that there are "activist" judges of both liberal and conservative ideology, the right will continue to milk this for all it's worth. Here's the truth: liberal judges "legislate" liberal positions, and conservative judges "legislate" conservative issues. Lori A. Ringhand, Judicial Activism: An Empirical Examination of Voting Behavior on the Rehnquist Natural Court, 24 Const. Comment. 43 (2007).
Consider vanishing twin syndrome. A fetus is not a human being at conception or for some time afterwards. When it becomes human is a metaphysical issue.
More interestingly, could a pregnant woman in Colorado be prosecuted for leaving the state, having an abortion in some jurisdiction where that is legal, then returning? Would it be conspiracy to commit murder if her husband drove her to the airport?
It's silly to argue that it's not a human - what else is it, a zebra? A wookie? Of course it's a human, that's defined by the DNA. Is it guaranteed to survive? Nope, but neither are old people on their deathbeds or people in comas.
If our social contract is defined by 'all men are created equal' (not born equal) and we value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in that order, it's not possible to justify the taking of life for the benefit of liberty or happiness. I don't see how one can define a workable social contract that promotes liberty or happiness over life without necessarily forfeiting the first two.
Can the argument be made that no pain is felt in the absence of brainwave activity? Maybe, but we don't yet have the SQUID-type technology necessary to measure it and that measure fails to address the creation problem. One can embrace very early abortion and euthanasia and be morally consistent, but since the latter doesn't fit in our social contract neither does the former. It may be applicable to a society organized under different terms.
Similarly, if a homeowner finds a starving baby in front of his home, he is not required to feed him. But if the same homeowner kidnaps a baby and does not feed him, he would be liable for murder (as well as kidnapping).
It's not a human any more than an egg is a chicken.
The chicken eggs we eat aren't fertilized.
No, it is a LEGAL issue, and it is the real issue being proxy-debated every time abortion comes up.
As such, I applaud Colorado for actually trying to touch on the real issue. Of course, I think their suggested solution is impractical for a great many reasons (several mentioned in this thread), but it's a start.
I've put a lot of thought into this issue, and I don't really have "the answer", but I'll give (what I hope are) some useful guidelines and pieces of information:
1. When life begins - there are several possibilities
-A. Fertilizaion - as pointed out, it is a unique human being at this point. As also pointed out, a great many zygotes are lost naturally.
-B. Implantation - much more workable than A, but many are still lost naturally. The earliest point that I would consider remotely reasonable.
-C. Second Trimester - the current de facto standard in many places, this position is somewhat nebulous and almost impossible to determine accurately (medically speaking)
-D. "not dead" - whatever you use to determine when life has ceased, use the same measures to determine when life begins. Besides the intellectual consistency, it is also (conveniently) a similar timeframe as C
-E. Viability - if they can live outside the womb, just take them out and put them up for adoption instead of killing them. Makes good sense, but is almost impossible to define and measure accurately in edge cases, not to the mention the medical bills invoilved in those edge cases.
-F. Birth - the ONLY thing this has going for it is the "bright line" concept: it's an easy standard to apply. Can result in heinous and obviously immoral acts (see the case of the pro-lifer who got an aborted fetus, with plans to document and properly bury it, who was raided by the police for infanticide... oh, this baby was killed in the womb instead of outside? ok, no crime. WTF?)
I would support B, D, or E, but D is really my favorite.
2. Rape/incest
-A. Incest - not relevant, but included because most people don't stop to think about non-statutory-rape incest. See next point
-B. Rape - I had a hard time with this exception for a while, too, but if you apply the "person drowning in a pool" analogy, if makes sense.
--If you walk by someone drowning in a pool, you have no legal obligation to risk yourself for their sake.
--If you PUSH someone into a pool, you are responsible for their condition
Consensual sex is both the man and the woman pushing the baby into the metaphorical pool - they are both responsible. Rape is just the rapist pushing the baby in, and (assuming the woman is the victim) the woman has no obligation to risk herself for the baby's sake. If the baby is aborted, this would count as an additional crime for the rapist.
Hope those thoughts help.
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