William Saletan (Slate) has an interesting and thought-provoking article on the murder of abortion provider George Tiller; worth reading, it seems to me, whether one is pro-life or pro-choice. I should say, though, that the argument in the closing paragraph is too glib:
The reason ... pro-life groups have held their fire [in arguing for violent defense of fetuses], both rhetorically and literally, is that they don't really equate fetuses with old or disabled people. They oppose abortion, as most of us do. But they don't treat abortionists the way they'd treat mass murderers of the old or disabled. And this self-restraint can't simply be chalked up to nonviolence or respect for the law. Look up the bills these organizations have written, pushed, or passed to restrict abortions. I challenge you to find a single bill that treats a woman who procures an abortion as a murderer. They don't even propose that she go to jail....
If you don't accept what [Tiller's murderer] did, then maybe it's time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it's the latter.
It seems to me that there's a third option that the piece deliberately omits — that abortions, whether all abortions, late-term abortions, or some other subset of abortions — are not quite murder but should still be forcibly prevented. I take it that is the view of many generally pro-choice people about late-term abortions. There is very broad support for criminalizing such abortions but not, I think, for treating them as murder. I think that the article is right in saying that even most pro-life people don't really view abortion as morally tantamount to murder; but that doesn't mean that it has to be just a "tragedy."
One can debate the logical basis for this distinction, just as one can debate the logical basis for any lines one draws in the abortion field. Having three options (murder / crime short of murder / not a crime) rather than two (murder / not a crime) requires some slightly different justification, but not, I think, of a character that's radically different than the justification required for the two-option solutions.
Those three options are the same as infant / late term fetus / sperm. By drawing a distinction between murder and late term abortions, you also must say that a late term fetus is not a infant. That is, a late term fetus does not have all the rights accorded to an infant. But you never hear that in their rhetoric, rhetoric that exhorts that late term fetuses are the same as infants.
( "killing of infant -> crime of murder" is the same as "not a crime of murder -> not killing of infant" )
This wouldn't change the (alleged) fact that the fetus is fully human. But if the mother and doctor don't believe this is the case, how can they be accused of deliberately killing a human being?
I haven't heard any pro-choice activists ever argue that a woman can abort a child on the eve of childbirth merely because it would be more convenient to do so. I have only seen one person argue (badly) that a woman whose life is threatened by a pregnancy should not have access to an abortion. So the question is not whether we believe there is or is not a right to an abortion. Pretty much everyone agrees that this question depends fundamentally on the circumstances. So while there is a fundamental difference of values (life of a non-person vs liberty of a person), the public policy disagreement really involves where, among the infinite shades of grey, we draw the line.
I think your point is interesting but ultimately I don't think it works from a legal POV. After all, I don't think one would be able to legally defend murdering a homosexual or an african-american or whatnot on the basis that they are not human beings, even if you wholeheartedly believed that to be true.
However, one can assume that abortion is homicide while noting that preemptive defense of others is not an affirmative legal defense for a person accused of murdering an abortionist.
1. How many abortions occur every year after the 7th month of pregnancy?
2. Of those, how many occur when there is strong evidence that both the woman and the fetus would both be physically healthy post-delivery?
3. How many women die or are crippled or rendered infertile every year already by the continuation of a pregnancy where a late-term abortion was medically indicated due to the current lack of late-term abortion service providers?
Considering that we have thousands of abortion related deaths a year that the American public is supposed to "man up" and accept, just what is the big deal ?
One more death of an "inconvenient"
Whether abortion is the moral equivalent of the murder of an infant/adult/disabled/gay/retarded/white/Hindu human being is not necessarily the same question as whether we are morally required to give killers of all types humans the same prison sentences. I don't believe that the Catholic Church has ever demanded that Caesar treat killers of the unborn and the born exactly equally. The Fourteenth Amendment probably says that we must, but the Fourteenth Amendment isn't the boss of my soul
As a practical matter, I think it's reasonable for pro-lifers to sacrifice consistency to avoid making the perfect the enemy of the good.
I think Gabriel McCall got it right in the first comment:
Hilzoy at the Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog had a more detailed explanation, including the following:
It would require the creation of one or more additional classes of justifiable homicide. If a fetus is a person, than any killing of the fetus is homicide, but not necessarily murder. The case of saving the life of the mother vs. losing both lives is an easy one to justify. They get progressively harder after that.
The personhood question is one reason there is so much agony over viability, what viability is and when it happens. The fact that medical technology keeps pushing viability earlier means this argument is unlikely to go away. And what happens when we can breed humans in vitreo, a-la Brave New World?
Same rationale that allows us to prohibit torturing animals or bludgeoning your puppy to death.
If someone killed a homosexual or a member of a different race and then revealed that he doesn't believe such people are fully human in the way a straight or white person is, the court would probably find him innocent of murder by reason of insanity (assuming, of course, that he really thought they weren't human). Even though it was a deliberate act on his part, he did not have the knowledge that the person he was killing was a person.
Now of course I don't mean to suggest that women who have abortions or the doctors who perform them are insane. The issue of the humanity of the fetus is a very controversial issue in Western culture, so people who don't recognize it aren't insane because of it. But it would mean that they aren't guilty of murder because they did not deliberately take the life of a human being.
What did George Tiller "deserve"? If you follow a standard Christian understanding of Man's fall and salvation, then Tiller "deserved" no more or less than anyone else: nothing. And by "nothing" I mean "not even the right to exist." We don't have the right to life - and we certainly don't have the right to salvation - by dint of our actions, good or bad. None of us "deserves" anything that God gives us. Tiller "deserved" what we all deserve. But that doesn't give anyone the right to give him - or anyone else - what he deserves.
And I don't believe that there's ever a "moral imperative" to kill anyone. Killing may be morally permissible under certain circumstances, but I don't think it's ever mandatory. Prayer and fasting is always an acceptable option.
Horseshit. Doctors in the Netherlands who routinely off old and disabled people walk the streets just as freely as do abortionists.
The mother can have an abortion anytime she wants, from conception to 1 millisecond before birth. But then she must sign away any and all parental rights (its an abortion, right?) so that the fetus (and future baby) will be raised by the state. I would compare it to laws that some states have that let mothers abandon babies (up to a certain age) at hospitals, no questions asked.
Not many. Only 3 (now 2) doctors do them, and they are illegal in most states and most advanced countries.
In many cases the newborn baby would not be healthy, though in many cases the baby might be restorable to health. The patients I've seen referred to Kansas mostly carried fetuses with congenital heart disease (curable with surgery) and came to prenatal care late, leading to late diagnosis.
Almost none. Maternal indication is an indication for interruption of pregnancy in all US jurisdictions, and the mother's life and health is to be preferred over that of the fetus. It would be rare to have a situation where actively killing the fetus (as opposed to allowing a fetus to die by not doing a cesarean section) offers health advantages to the mother over more standard management of vaginal delivery.
I don't think that insanity defense would work unless there were other beliefs still in existence. As long as they appreciated the fact that the law treated the victim as a human, I think whether the accused agreed with that treatment would be irrelevant. He'd still understand the nature and the quality of the act, just not have the same moral compulsion about it that you or I would have (and no irresistable impulse).
Why wouldn't the rationale be that we are uncertain whether an unborn child / embryo / fetus is fully human or not, and that we recognize that the rights of another person are impacted? Isn't that basically the rationale for the trimester approach of Roe v. Wade (which of course has been criticized heavily by those on both sides of the debate, but it does not seem completely meritless)? The rationale would be that "we" are explicitly making a compromise because of this uncertainty and the balancing of rights. Thus, we could treat the abortion of embryos as a moral wrong but not on the same plane as murder.
(And for the record, so there's no confusion, the anonymous person behind this moniker is pro-choice, though I think Roe v. Wade probably was wrongly decided. Just pointing out above that the rationale for EV's "third way" seems straightforward)
Also, we do put many stray animals to death, don't we? So doesn't that suggest that a strong countervailing reason would overcome the presumptive harm of killing an animal? I think the prohibition on animal cruelty is more about the means of causing death than about causing death itself. So this justification would warrant regulating the means of abortion, but not restraining abortion itself.
Interesting point, and certainly something of an elephant in the room.
We know the state already does all kinds of things to prevent adults from doing things to their body... specifically the drug war. So forbidding certain types of abortion based on other criteria than murder seems plausible.
Which brings me to a question I'm unclear on- how does the Right to Privacy, penumbra deal intersect with drug use? This is off topic, but if there is a fundamental right to privacy that involves cutting bits out of my body (even bits that might belong to 'someone' else, putting inanimate matter into my body seems significantly less problematic.
Has this been settled by the courts?
This is where "health" and "life" exceptions cloud the debate. There is broad support for "life" and "health" exceptions to any prohibitions on abortion. This is likely because of a mistaken believe that any act that kills a fetus is an abortion, and thus chemotherapy and other treatments would be illegal to perform on pregnant women absent a health/life exception. However, as NowMDJD points out, the circumstances under which a surgical abortion - i.e., the deliberate killing of the fetus - is indicated are vanishingly small, if they are ever indicated.
Generally, the a treatment that may ultimately kill a fetus is either (a) getting the fetus out (pre-viability), or (b) administering a drug that will kill the fetus. In neither circumstance is the death of the fetus willed as either the means or the end of the treatment. For an explanation on why this is morally permissible, you can read up on the principle of double effect.
That's a fair observation. I was merely using the animal analogy to point out that the being need not be of human variety for us to extend certain protections to it. The reason the protections get extended and the breadth and depth of those protections depends on the society's moral judgment of the worth of the being being protected, and the cost the portection imposes on other beings.
For better or worse, we allow people to kill rats by snapping their necks (that is how most mousetraps work). But we would be aghast if people put dogs or cats to death in a similar way. Similarly, most people have no trouble consuming beef or poultry, but have an issue with eating horses (in fact there was a bill in Congress to prohibit slaughtering horses for meat). Objectively these distinctions make no sense. But they reflect our society's moral judgment on the value of the beings in question.
The society's judgment on abortion similarly expresses its judgement as to the value (if any) of the fetus, and the consideration of countervailing costs (if any).
You guys are probably right, I don't know anything about legal philosophy. I just suspect that someone who kills people but doesn't consider it murder because they're not really human would be insane. Whether they'd be legally insane, I don't know.
But surely the woman is equally or more culpable in the act than the doctor? So are all you anti-choice folks willing to convict a woman who chooses the type of abortion now legal of murder (including, perhaps, a death sentence?)
While abolitionists aided and abetted escapes of slaves, there are few instances of abolitionists using deadly force to do so (John Brown is famous because he as an exception). There's little question that abolitionists thought that slaves were unlawfully imprisioned. However, we don't see abolitionists as being morally inconsistent for failing to use deadly force in the same way that a person aiding a hostage would.
Modern day pro-lifers, like 19th century abolitionists, are not willing to use deadly force to prevent a murder for pretty much the same reason that 19th century abolitionists were not willing to use deadly force to free slaves/hostages.
Many killings and killers are excused to some extent or entirely depending upon the circumstances. In addition, most who consider themselves to be pro-life are also believers in law and order. They also know that even if they see abortion as murder, the majority of society disagrees with them to varying degrees. If you are a pro-life advocate and you push the abortion-is-murder button you know you are going to end up with more killings, not less. Down that road lies the jihadist.
Thank you for that one. I'd like to point out that a) euthanasia, unlike abortion, requires the consent of person/being/whatever who is about to die, and b) that Dutch abortion law is in several respects more strict than US law. No chance whatsoever that you can get a 7 month abortion here unless either the mother's life is in danger or the feutus turns out to have a severe genetic defect that will cause it to suffer miserably and die shortly after birth. (Also, there's a mandatory 6 day waiting period, and a number of rules that are meant to assure that the woman makes a free and informed decision, and that she receives sufficient aftercare.)
Let's unpack this a bit:
On one hand, you have the doctor, who is a medical professional. Four years of medical school, and a residency of some sort. He or she does abortions on a regular basis for pecuniary gain. He or she wakes up, showers, has breakfast, drives to work, aborts a couple of fetuses, then drives home.
On the other hand, you have a woman who in many cases is scared half to death of childbirth, being pressured by her husband/boyfriend/parents, and has no idea how she will possibly raise this child. She's told that this is her constitutional right, that there's nothing morally wrong with it, and that those who tell her there's something wrong with it are religious nuts who just want to place their rosaries on her ovaries.
The woman - often, teenage girl - is equally or more culpable? Not in my book.
I agree this argument fails as originally stated, but I'm not so sure this phrasing doesn't work with minor tweaks. For example, if the accused sincerely believed that the person he killed was a robot that would be a defence. Or, ever so slightly more plausibly, if I shoot and kill you while sincerely believing you are a marauding bear this mistake would mean I am not guilty of murder.
If an accused sincerely believes homosexuals or members of different races are not people (and sincerely does not understand the law treats them as people) then I would suggest:
(1) He does not have the mens rea for murder; and
(2) He will be found guilty anyway because it is virtually impossible to believe the defence.
The problem with applying this argument to abortion is the defence only works based on a mistaken belief of fact. Suppose I abort my fetus, knowing it is a fetus, and the law says that a fetus is a person and that abortion is murder. I have committed murder even if I sincerely believe a fetus is not a person. Here my mistake is one of law, and so it is not a defence. In contrast, if I sincerely believed the fetus was a parasitic alien growing inside me, then I would suggest that would be a defence.
The current self defense affirmative defense takes care of reasonable likelihood of substantial bodily harm or death to the mother.
We would probably need a new affirmative defense for unborn children who cannot survive outside the womb, but who do not pose a reasonable likelihood of substantial bodily harm or death to the mother.
The hard one is dealing with pregnancies arising from incest and rape.
Contrary to the crap that you hear from people like Kathryn Lopez and other dimwits, it is exactly the same in the US. There are no doctors who just perform abortions on women 7 months along where there are not extreme, extreme circumstances. Fact.
Assuming it was consensual incest, why is incest a tough case?
But look at his argument further, what the practical effect of it might be, were the whole pro-choice side to start making it. Is it more likely to result in a bunch of pro-life folks going "yep, well, he must be right, I must not really believe life begins at conception," or is it more likely to push a few twisted extremists a little further round the bend? "So they think that if I really believe abortion is murder, I need to start killing the abortionists? I'll show THEM who is really serious about believing life begins at conception."
I've often pointed out the personal hypocrisy of folks like Al Gore, who don't really act, in their personal lives, like cutting back CO2 emissions is all that important. That's a legitimate argument. But if I were to say that Al Gore must not really belief in global warming because he hasn't engaged in eco-terrorism against coal plants, that would be ludicrous. And that's the exact same argument which Saletan is making.
If you really believed in the Bible, you'd be off killing non-believers! If you really believed in the Koran, you'd be committing jihad right now! Is this truly the kind of society he wants to promote? Insane.
But at least a good part of the pro-life coalition might not. You don't need to be weak-kneed to oppose George Tiller's murder, you just need to be a rather devout Catholic, who opposes both abortion and capital punishment. So even if a Kansas doctor was killing old people, the Catholic church would say that he should not be executed for those crimes.
But surely the woman is equally or more culpable in the act than the doctor? So are all you anti-choice folks willing to convict a woman who chooses the type of abortion now legal of murder (including, perhaps, a death sentence?)
I agree. I have never understood the double standard of "punish the doctor, not the woman," for it is the woman who is solicting the "murder" of her unborn. Abortion doctors don't willy-nilly drag women into clinics to abort their fetuses. It's the woman who goes into the clinic and makes the decision to kill her unborn child. She is probably guilty (at a minimum) of solicitation to commit murder and conspiracy. No doubt the felony murder rule would also apply. I think the distinction is based on the fact that most doctors are male and the women are portrayed as helpless "victims."
I have equally never understood the "health/life exception." If abortion is murder, and a woman dies in childbirth, it is simply part of life's plan. To commit an abortion to "save the life of the mother" is simply to say that one life is more valuable than another. Who is
to say which life is more valuable?
Those who oppose Roe v. Wade and say the abortion issue should be "returned to the states" are dodging the real question of whether abortion is or is not murder. If abortion is evil, then the states per se cannot allow abortions. It must be banned.
A quick glance in Wiki and German statute law shows that their law is even stricter: Abortion on demand only in the first trimester (3 day waiting period), afterwards abortion is only possible if there is a medical necessity on the part of the mother (which could be psychiatric). Interestingly, until 22 weeks abortion is a crime for the doctor but not for the mother.
The issue is that medical care is getting good enough that the age where an unborn child can survive outside the womb is getting closer and closer to conception. I've read of premies of 20 weeks old, about 55% of the way through a normal pregnancy, surviving and prospering.
Viability is an odd question, imo. Do we allow people to kill grievously injured individuals? And individuals that we have put into a state of being grievously injured?
Add in universal health care, and at what point does abortion of a "viable fetus" become disallowed due to the fact that Obama is going to pick up the medical bill and the doctors can bring an extremely premature baby along to full health?
What about the woman's right to self defense?
There's a deep hypocrisy in picking a particular aspect of civilization to rebel against while comfortably enjoying the protections of that same civilization. People like Roeder are relying on the fact that not many people share their view and thus government remains intact to protect them from the predations of others.
While many people shrug off "rule of law" as some kind of irrational obssession that inflexible, uncreative political activists have, this case helps bring its meaning to the forefront. Advocating murder for legal actions is to advocate the collapse of government, which could be a much greater injustice, and shying away from that result doesn't make one's beliefs insincere.
"Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"
What really brings home the point that anti-choice folks don't truly consider abortion murder is that you almost never hear them talk about treating the pregant woman as a murder. And this thread is a good example of that. It's always the doctor, ominously labeled "the abortionist."
But surely the woman is equally or more culpable in the act than the doctor? So are all you anti-choice folks willing to convict a woman who chooses the type of abortion now legal of murder (including, perhaps, a death sentence?)
Joseph Slater,
Your rhetoric doesn't usefully advance the discussion here...
Consider the following: What really brings home the point that [anti-life] folks don't truly consider [killing-young disabled children] murder is that you almost never hear them talk about treating the [parents] as murderers. And this thread is a good example of that. It's always the [extermination technician], [euphemistically] labeled "the doctor" [in the most chilling Orwellian sense, as in "Dr. Joseph Mengele"].
But surely the [parent] is equally or more culpable in the act than the [exterminator]? So are all you [anti-life] folks willing to convict a [parent] who chooses the type of [extermination] now legal of murder (including, perhaps, a death sentence?)
That's the equivalent case from the other side. Your inflammatory language doesn't help your point.
I'm puzzled at how you deny agency to the pregnant woman and put it all on the doctor. What if a woman hired a hit man to kill her three-year old son?
I didn't "deny agency to the pregnant woman." I didn't put moral blame exclusively on the doctor. You asked about comparative moral culpability. I answered that the doctor is more morally culpable in most circumstances. My position that the doctor is more culpable does not imply that the woman is not culpable.
I think the proper term to use in place of murder is infanticide - a crime defined as killing an infant for the purpose of avoiding having to care for it. Historically, infanticide has always been treated mush softer than murder or perhaps even manslaughter.
Effectively killing a newborn (or abandoning it to die) was abortion before medical technology was advanced enough to make the practice easier - essentially performing the act on something we can't see. And some cultures even permitted it, or at least turned a blind eye.
But I agree, there is definitely some middle ground here. We already make all sorts of moral divisions regarding the taking of human life. Even an act of first degree murder will be treated differently if is the President you are killing (assasination) or a member of a race you despise (hate crime).
Those laws don't elevate the life of a President or police officer or minority because they only apply when the offender knows that person is a specific classification.
On the other hand, don't expect to shed a tear for him. I don't know how sincere Tiller's faith was, but for his good it would be better there's no afterlife.
Why don't you mention the mother in all this? She is the one paying him for his services.
rick.felt:
OK, you think the mother is "somewhat culpable," but culpable of what? Murder? If not, why not? And I'll ask again: how would you distinguish a woman who hired a hit man to kill her three-year old son? Surely that woman is equally culpable as the hit man.
If we are to keep the current practices in place, it would also need to include abortion at the simple discretion of the mother as justifiable homicide. That's the one that gets really icky.
There is another fly in this ointment, in that the law in at least some jurisdictions has stated, in effect, that the fetus is a person. Some states allow prosecution for murder for the killing of a fetus.
I think an argument can be made that you can't have it both ways, so if killing a fetus is murder, then a convenience abortion is either justifiable homicide or murder.
Then a person who mistakenly kills his hunting buddy is a murderer? He had the mens rea to bag a bear.
Leaving aside accidents, if a person believes I am a bear, then they are so deluded about the actual facts, that I don't believe mens rea is possible. It is an insanity or mental defect defense.
Hmmmm. Good point. I hadn't thought of that.
Title 18 U.S.C. § 1091. Genocide
(a) Basic Offense.— Whoever, whether in time of peace or in time of war, in a circumstance described in subsection (d) [[relating to territorial jurisdiction]] and with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such—
(1) kills members of that group;
...
(5) imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group; or
...
or attempts to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).
(Oh, and:}
...
(c) Incitement Offense.— Whoever in a circumstance described in subsection (d) directly and publicly incites another to violate subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
I've seen a very well done paper arguing that the resolution to the abortion debate will come not through politics, but through technology: if there's a viable option to decant a fetus into an artificial womb, there's very little remaining justification, in most cases, for killing it. Abortion will be replaced with eviction.
You don't even need to oppose capital punishment. You merely need to think that murder is not a good idea.
When the Althing in Iceland declared that Iceland was a Christian country, the two major concessions made to those who had not yet converted was the continued legality of infanticide and the allowance of private (but not public) pagan sacrifices.
OK, you think the mother is "somewhat culpable," but culpable of what? Murder? If not, why not?
Murder, possibly. But that just returns us to the basic question in this discussion: whether it makes sense to treat abortion as murder under criminal law. And if you look up, you can see many excellent explanations for why I might not want to treat abortion the same as murder of adults, even if I thought it was the moral equivalent. I don't believe, for example, that positive law must track moral law proportionately. It can't. Positive law is too crude of an instrument.
And I'll ask again: how would you distinguish a woman who hired a hit man to kill her three-year old son?
Depends on the mother's mental state. I certainly would treat a mother suffering from post-partum depression differently from a mother who just got tired of having a kid after a couple of year. I'd treat them differently because the situations are different. Again, the positive law may be too crude to accomplish what we would wish to accomplish from a moral standpoint.
But if you really want to back me into a wall on this one, how about this: abortion, whether procured or performed, is punishable by up to one year in prison. A woman getting her first abortion will just get probation, like any other first-time offender. But it won't take long for a provider to rack up enough consecutive sentences that he or she spends a long time in prison.
A better hypothetical is a man who hires an assasin to execute his child. There's a strong bias toward infantilising women in the pro-life community, so you'll avoid endless rationalizing about the sacred role of mothers and other Freudian crap if you leave the girls out of it.
When Tiller and his patient confered, the legal guidelines designed to protect the viable but unborn child were shredded.
Perhaps it depends on whether he is poaching or has any required license and permit and believes that killing the bear would be lawful. ;)
Because doing so advances the ultimate political cause of stopping the abortions better than branding them murderers (or killing abortion doctors) does.
(The use of the term "anti-choice" is so childish and absurd that anyone using it probably should be ignored, but I figured I'd answer anyway.)
What does it mean to stop abortions from happening? I presume you mean enacting laws criminalizing them.
to say which life is more valuable?
What about the woman's right to self defense?
What is the woman defending herself against? What crime has the fetus committed against her? The fetus is not intentionally killing her. Being born is not a criminal offense.
Rick.felt:
I'm honestly not trying to back you into a corner. But you do seem to be saying that you would treat a woman who got an abortion quite differently than your typical murderer.
And that was my only point. That even people with fairly strong anti-choice convictions don't really think the mother should be treated as we treat normal murderers. Which makes me think that those anti-choice folks don't really think of what the woman is doing as murder, in the full legal sense of the term.
I can't believe you really wonder this. Its not very hard to figure it out.
Its because they do not want to repel people who don't like abortion but don't want women to go to jail. Its strictly practical.
Now, a more interesting question is why do pro-abortion folks always ignore the baby?
Tiller was killing babies so late in the term that they could have been born alive and been sent home right away, not even going to ICU. Even more of his abortions would have had a few days only in the hospital and would have had zero long term problems. He was not doing first term abortions where you can argue that the woman has a greater right.
So, why do you ignore this?
You let them off too easy. How many intentional murderers (as opposed to accidental killings) get only a year or probation?
The problem with Health/Life is that you get people like Tiller who stretch its meaning to include virtually anything unpleasant.
Yeah! Because the Catholic Church's anti-abortion position is characterized by a warm embrace of Sigmund Freud!
Because most people who are pro-choice believe it's a fetus. If you believe its a baby, then do you support murder charges for a pregnant woman who got an abortion from Tiller?
Would someone please provide some kind of evidence of this, please? I have seen this charge now at least a few times here. I have seen no indication that it's actually true.
I don't understand why you think her life is automatically more important than the baby's right. Up until very recently (in historical terms) women died in childbirth all the time.
...and this was a good thing?
I would not say the act of being born is an "attack" or committing violence. The baby is not attacking the mother during the birth process. The mother is certainly attacking the baby if she gets an abortion.
That's what this whole discussion is about: why hypothetical positive law would treat abortion differently from the way it treats murder of adults. You can read; I'm not going to repeat every argument made here. The arguments tend to be either "there is a moral distinction" or "we're not going to get very far with outlawing any abortions if we advocate trying scared sixteen-year-olds for first-degree murder."
Additionally, I gave a reason for treating pregnant women who don't want to go through pregnancy and childbirth differently than doctors who want a new Mercedes.
But I'm not going to have this conversation with you if you continue the "anti-choice" stuff. Endeavor not to insult your opponents.
I can only hope that at some point Sotomeyor talks about getting an abortions as a Latina woman.
And Sarah Palin works in there somehow as well.
No, it wouldn't.
A sizeable number of states recognize that killing a viable fetus is murder. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Morris, 142 S.W.3d 654 (Ky. 2004) (Killing a Viable fetus is murder); Commonwealth v. Cass, 392 Mass. 799, 467 N.E.2d 1324, 1325-26 (Mass. 1984) (viable fetus is a "person" under a vehicular homicide statute criminalizing causing the death of "another person"); Hughes v. State, ; 868 P.2d 730, 731 Okla. Crim. App. 1994)(viable fetus is a "human being" under statute defining homicide as the killing of a "human being"); State v. Horne, 282 S.C. 444, 319 S.E.2d 703, 704 (S.C. 1984) (viable fetus is a "person" within statute defining murder as the killing of "any person").
Similarly, a sizeable number of states recognize wrongful death civil actions for killing a viable fetus. See, e.g.
Rice v. Rizk, Ky., 453 S.W.2d 732, 735 (Ky. 1970); William J. Cason, May Parents Maintain an Action for the Wrongful Death of an Unborn Child in Missouri? The Case for the Right of Action, 15 Mo. L. Rev. 212, 218 (June 1950).
I found these cites in about 3 minutes research. I don't know if a majority of the states' laws so hold, but, if they are minority doctrines, they are sizeable minorities.
I found Saletan's piece sophomoric and offensive. There are a lot of reasons why people choose not to kill those whose conduct they find morally reprehensible. These include abiding by a principle that killing is wrong absent some extreme justification. That Tiller, over the course of his career, performed some 60,000 abortions and was paid $Millions is reprehensible. But, by itself, in a nation that accepts as legal his right to do so, that does not justify murdering him. I never shed a tear for Oswald, but have no doubt that Jack Ruby deserved life without parol (and unlike Saletan's opinion that Tiller was "brave" -- for terminating the life of the defenseless and making a forture doing so -- Ruby at least was willing to face the consequences of what he did. He had no hope of escaping and a very good chance of dying when he murdered Oswald in the Dallas police HQ. That's a lot more braverly than Tiller ever showed. But, that wouldn't justify a lesser punishment for Ruby.)
While Saletan doesn't seem to understand the point -- the rule of law means accepting that one's opinions aren't necessarily the legal standards, so you either grin and bear it, or try to change the law by legal means.
In most US jurisdictions as well, abortions after viability are not permitted, or ar permitted only in the most extreme circumstances.
But even now, states may differ at the edges as to what is murder. And except for abortion, the federal government does not proscribe punishing activity that a state might consider homicide.
As a practical matter, all legislation regarding termination of pregnancy might best be left to the states. If you believe that abortion is (or isn't) murder, convince your legislature. And the outcome in Arkansas doesn't have much of an impact on us in New York, or vice versa. On the other hand, when this is a national political issue, people are elected, or nominated to courts, for their positions on abortion. This detracts from choosing the best people to resolve other issues of general importance that need to be settled at the federal level.
Not necessarily. From a moral and political POV, it would be sufficient that no one has one. They could become socially unacceptable, or medically obsolete.
Deepthought:
It is not necessary that a crime be committed against you to defend yourself. You can pry off the fingers of a drowning man rather than let him drag you down.
Blue:
Isn't would be within the capability of the criminal justice system to discern the facts in cases like Tiller?
Deepthought:
There is the matter of comparative risk. The optimal solution is the one where the maximum number of people survive. In the case where the life of the mother is at risk, the risk of losing both is excessive. The only general exception I can see to that would be a risky childbirth, but the medical community already has sufficient means to deal with that while saving both.
Add me to the list that isn't happy with removing the pregnant woman as a moral actor from the abortion decision. (Something, I would add, that conservatives never do when the woman is applying for welfare benefits.) And I dare say it's because putting girls who have had abortions in jail is a political loser. But why (under the abortion is murder theory) solicitation of an abortion would not be a crime escapes me entirely.
Sure he had expenses, but I think it is safe to say Dr. Tiller made a tidy little living out of his chosen profession.
Why don't we simply revert back to how the issue was dealt with before Roe vs. Wade?
People seem to talk about the abortion issue as if it has always been the way it is now and that proposing any sort of changes is going into scary unchartered territory as opposed to simply turning back the clock 40 years.
In fairness, I'm young and not overly passionate about the issue, but whenever pro-choice people start arguing "what would you do if...", I simply shrug and say, "I don't know, whatever they did in 1972".
At some point I also have to remind them that the phrase "back alley abortion" referred not to some homeless person in a dark alley with a coat hanger and table salt, but rather to a licensed OB/GYN who would sneak patients into his clinic through a back door (perhaps at night) and perform abortions which were prohibited by law in that jurisdiction, but otherwise typically conformed to the norms of the practice (with whatever inherent risks that applied at the time as to available medical knowledge and technology). An example would be Michael Caine's character in Cider House Rules.
Perhaps this will help you understand. I had to terminate an ectopic pregnancy using methotrexate, which is the lowest risk way to treat the condition but that some misogynist in the Catholic church has declared to be impermissible abortion. In the best case scenario, the embryo would have "gone away" on its own. Otherwise, it would have ruptured my fallopian tube and caused me grievous injury, if I didn't bleed out and die before I could get medical attention. There is no scenario that would have resulted in a live birth. My choice was to risk serious injury to myself and my future fertility, including my possible death, or terminate the pregnancy early on. Most antiabortion folks (except for the aforementioned Catholic misogynists) can understand the difference between an abortion in this situation and what they would consider elective abortions. I suspect Deepthought does as well, but I find his posing distasteful, offensive, and unhelpful, not to mention guaranteeing that what has been a surprisingly civilized series of blog comments will quickly degenerate into a flamewar.
We can do this without the faux outrage, right, Lazarus? Awesome!
I wasn't talking about Tiller specifically. I was saying that there is a reason for the law to treat a sixteen-year-old who's being pressured into an abortion by her parents and boyfriend differently than a doctor who chose to make his living performing abortions.
I'm not in favor of "removing the pregnant woman as a moral actor from the abortion decision." Good gravy, do you live your life in a binary world where someone can only be completely morally culpable or completely morally blameless? Where everyone is either completely damnable or completely innocent?
It's so weird. The anti-abortion folks are blasted for being callous if they advocate punishing women who get abortions, and blasted as inconsistent if they show compassion for women who face a pregnancy they do not want by not advocating for them to be charged with first-degree murder.
How about... we don't want babies to die, and we're willing to make practical concessions to accommodate the least-culpable party in the abortion transaction if it means greater success in reaching our goals?
Your Catholic misogynist is outside the mainstream of Catholic physicians on this issue.
As far as I know, there are no laws that require helping another if that would put the potential rescuer's life in grave danger. It is difficult to justify a legal act to force somebody to sacrifice their own life to save another.
Of course, if the woman were at Dr. Tiller's clinic, it's likely that the fetus was malformed and not viable or even already dead. How long should those would-be mothers serve in prison.
What I was trying to say is that its impossible to completely eliminate abortions. Good luck with the "socially unacceptable." As for "medically obsolete," two words: black market.
I welcome the day that the early commenter stated that abortion would become a matter of eviction. Then all of the pro-lifers can walk the walk and actually care for those children who are unwanted and would have been aborted. Sounds like a fine solution to me. You don't want abortions to occur - great. Raise the resulting unwanted children yourself.
http://www.cuf.org/Faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=57
"The majority of Catholic moralists reject MTX and salpingostomy on the basis that these two amount to no less than a direct abortion. In both cases, the embryo is directly attacked, so the death of the embryo is not the unintended evil effect, but rather the very means used to bring about the intended good effect. Yet, for an act to be morally licit, not only must the intended effect be good, but also the act itself must be good. For this reason, most moralists agree that MTX and salpingostomy do not withstand the application of the principle of double effect."
Not to mention the pathological inverse relationship in the US between opposition to abortion and opposition to capital punishment, police killings, torture and war crimes.
The second question is whether abortion done in contravention of the law is murder. Few seem to actually think so when it comes to proposals.
Finally the question of valuing lives can center around objective value. The simple fact of the matter is that the best way to protect the baby is to protect the mommy. Generally you don't have a choice of who to protect. It is Mommy or Nobody (I have heard this from several OB's). So the questions of valuing the mother's life over the fetus's life is rather misinformed.
It seems to me that the best way forward is to agree that:
1) It is better if abortion is avoided and
2) The crazies on both sides should be ignored.
Then we can actually start working on reducing the abortion rate by encouraging earlier access to prenatal care, options for those who might choose them (charities covering medical expenses for mothers who choose to give up the child for adoption instead of aborting it), better access to contraception for teenagers, etc. This doesn't really require legal bans and a lot of work could be done now.
My morals would not allow me to have an abortion, but I recognize that I do not have a right to impose my morals on others. Whether abortion at any stage is illegal is a matter of policy and law, not morals. I can lobby and campaign for such that suit me, but I cannot force them. I cannot condone murder under any circumstances.
I'm not a religious person, but one waffling between agnostic and atheist, so I'm immune to the religious arguments surrounding this issue.
One problem I have with abortions after viability is that they often differ from premature delivery only by the fact that the fetus/baby is deliberately killed. This is the choice of the pregnant woman who seeks a late-term abortion.
One thing I desire of policy/law is that it be consistent. If one can be charged for causing the death of a fetus in cases of vehicular homicide -- an unintentional act -- why is the intentional act treated differently? The only answer is that the deciding factor is the intent of the mother.
The intent of the mother is, to me, not a valid legal reason. Though I thoroughly understand (from experience) the bodily changes a pregnancy inflicts, I do not consider a normal pregnancy a threat to the life of the mother or to the integrity of her body.
I am addressing health of the mother issues where intent is concerned. A woman experiencing pre-eclampsia knows that the only cure is termination of the pregnancy. Since this affliction is mostly experienced late in the pregnancy, how is the mother protected by first killing the fetus and then inducing labor, or by simply inducing labor and giving the fetus a chance to live?
Though it is certainly not true of all, even the pro-choice movement must admit that a number of late term abortions are done simply for convenience, not for health. If the health of the mother is preserved delivering a living baby as well as by delivering a dead fetus, why is there a legal reason for the mother to have such judgment that the law recognizes differently elsewhere?
If my way was law, preventing pregnancy would be paramount. I have little sympathy for those calling themselves pro-life who also want to prohibit birth control being easy, cheap, and convenient to women.
And yeah, I'm not holding my breath waiting for my way to become law.
Abortion is and will remain a politically a losing issue. On the order of half of all women of voting age have had an abortion. That means that you have to convince two thirds of everyone else (men plus the half of women who have not had an abortion) to vote against abortion. That is not going to happen. Any time legal abortion appears to be in danger politically, at least half of all women will become one issue voters, if they aren't already.
Careful there. The people who are against paying taxes for the social programs also tend to be the ones who do the most voluntary giving.
Many late-term abortion cases seem to be issues where congenital problems are discovered late in pregnancy because a woman didn't get prenatal help early on. It seems to me that the major goal ought to be to get women in to see a doctor early in the pregnancy, etc.
There are crazies on both sides of the debate, but I think that one of the issues in the pro-life movement is the fact that there is a section of the movement that doesn't want women to choose not to have an abortion for rational reasons but wants to force the matter for solely legal and moral reasons. This is the same group that opposes easy access to birth control for teenagers and the like.
My sentence is not clear/ not well stated. Should be something like: Opposition to abortion is a politically losing issue.
Is there a source for this? That number seems awful high.
That's simply untrue. Go look at the statistics for late term abortions from the Texas Dept. of Health if you don't believe me.
1) Baking bread. It kills millions of yeast cells. Who is to say their life is less valuable than bread?
2) Washing your hands. Millions of bacteria die in this process. Is the life of millions of bacteria worth less than the minor inconvenience of dirty hands?
3) Walking. Think of all the living things you step on.
No, it is not to say that one life is more valuable than the other. It is not a comparison of value in any way. Whatever value the fetus has, the woman's right to control her womb is absolute. There is no right to the use of another's body against their will -- regardless of how serious the need is.
CUF? You're going with an unsourced statement on CUF as your basis for your belief that most Catholic physicians and hospitals oppose the use of methotrexate?
Really? CUF?
Golly. I've heard all I need to hear.
I read this profoundly moving article by a pro-life Christian woman who ended up needing a late-term partial birth abortion. She was carrying twins discovered to have serious problems late in the pregnancy: the larger twin was not viable but was consuming all the nutrients of the smaller one who would have a 5% chance of survival without the other one. If she did not abort the larger one, they both had a 0% chance of survival.
She specifically benefited from the vilified "dilation and extraction" procedure because it was the only way they could preserve an intact body for her to grieve over.
These are extremely tragic, highly complex ethical situations. Politicians have no business making blanket statements and exploiting them to stir up "the base"
Me
Constantin
My reasoning as follows (round numbers)
Population of the US: 300 Million.
Half female or: 150 Million
Age expectancy: about 75 years
So in every one year age cohort there are about 2 million women.
The number of abortions since Roe (1970?) is usually stated by those opposed to abortion as over 1 million per year. That amount of time roughly corresponds to a woman's entire reproductive life. A rate of 1 million per year can be maintained for that many years only if half of all women in the US have an abortion sometime in their reproductive lives.
The reasoning does depend on the number of abortions had by each woman who has an abortion, and I'm estimating that number to be closer to 1 than to 2.
I'm also estimating that the tendency is for a woman to have an abortion early in her reproductive life rather than later.
And of course women of voting age roughly corresponds to those who are in or have completed their reproductive years.
There was also a survey a while back that found that 40 per cent of women have had an abortion, and I think the response rate for such a survey would be low.
I could not agree more that women should have access to early prenatal care. However, what congenital (and genetic) problems justify killing the fetus?
For example, does Down Syndrome make one less of a human? Autism? Spina Bifida?
If a woman does not have prenatal care until late in her pregnancy and finds out then about a congenital defect and is allowed to abort that child, is not the woman who has no prenatal care at all and gives birth to a live child with the same defect entitled to demand its death at the time of birth?
It's this arbitrary timing and reliance on the mother's wishes that bothers me. I don't, however, pretend to have an answer.
Moreover, CUF is not the only site, just one of the many, many Catholic sites stating the same position, with citation to prominent Catholic ethicists and theologians, that came up in a quick Google search of "ectopic catholic" or "ectopic pregnancy catholicism". Catholic bishops in 1994 and 2001 stated that any treatment that constitutes "direct abortion" is impermissible, even to treat an ectopic pregnancy that will inevitably result in the death of the embryo anyway. IN doing so, they declined to elaborate on what a direct abortion was, but Catholic tradition (including the explicit language of the bishops' 1971 statement on the matter) basically includes anything that directly excises or stops the development of the embryo in a way that is not a mere side effect of excising something (uterus or fallopian tube) of the mother's. Methotrexate and surgery that removes just the embryo and not all or part of the tube act primarily by stopping the growth of or removing the embryo, which by most definitions constitutes a "direct abortion". Of course, Catholic bishops COULD clarify their position - they've had ample time to do so, since methotrexate and salpingostomy have been standard of care for quite some time - but they've chosen not to and most Catholic moralists have gone right on spouting their misogynistic nonsense.
Moreover, CUF is not the only site, just one of the many, many Catholic sites stating the same position, with citation to prominent Catholic ethicists and theologians, that came up in a quick Google search of "ectopic catholic" or "ectopic pregnancy catholicism". Catholic bishops in 1994 and 2001 stated that any treatment that constitutes "direct abortion" is impermissible, even to treat an ectopic pregnancy that will inevitably result in the death of the embryo anyway. IN doing so, they declined to elaborate on what a direct abortion was, but Catholic tradition (including the explicit language of the bishops' 1971 statement on the matter) basically includes anything that directly excises or stops the development of the embryo in a way that is not a mere side effect of excising something (uterus or fallopian tube) of the mother's. Methotrexate and surgery that removes just the embryo and not all or part of the tube act primarily by stopping the growth of or removing the embryo, which by most definitions constitutes a "direct abortion". Of course, Catholic bishops COULD clarify their position - they've had ample time to do so, since methotrexate and salpingostomy have been standard of care for quite some time - but they've chosen not to and most Catholic moralists have gone right on spouting their misogynistic nonsense.
"dislike paying for quality educational programs for underprivileged youths"
If only the pay correlated with the quality!
Also, Ponnuru weighs in.
Personally, I really think we got linked from a few outside pages and got a bunch of drive-by comments.
Looking at the Kansas reports, there have been about 200-300 abortions past 22 weeks gestation each year in which the fetus was judged viable (and less than 200 in which the fetus was judged non-viable). The vast majority of these abortions were for out-of-state clients. ~85% of the abortions in Kansas were performed in the first trimester; ~5% past 22 weeks gestation.
Given that Dr. Tiller was supposed to be one of three late-term abortionists in the US, this was not the Holocaust that I was expecting given the degree of outrage expressed over late-term abortions.
"Given that Dr. Tiller was supposed to be one of three late-term abortionists in the US, this was not the Holocaust that I was expecting given the degree of outrage expressed over late-term abortions."
So if 200-300 prematurely-born infants died yearly because the ICU equipment they were hooked up to was substandard, and the manufacturers knew it was substandard, that wouldn't ptoduce any "outrage"?
Dude, if an infant chokes on some part of a toy that was never meant to be separated from the rest of it in the first place, there will be a massive lawsuit. I think you can take it as read that anyone whose product resulted in 200-300 late-term miscarriages yearly would be bankrupt within a year; that anyone who killed 200-300 premature but live infants yearly out of the womb via mere malpractice would be in severe, deep legal doo-doo; and that anyone who did the same killing deliberately would be called a mass murderer.
How many dead bodies does it take to impress you?
I agree with that, but we can hope to make them rare.
I ain't holdin' my breath. But there are undesirable side effects to abortion. There are psychological and medical risks to the mother. The abortion industry expends a lot of effort to keep this from the forefront. Increased utilization of counseling might allow more potential mothers to decide that it is not the right choice for them. That would be a win-win situation in my mind.
No, better medical techniques that allow more unwanted fetuses to be removed alive and nurtured to independence. I kinda think that an innocent life that can be saved ought to be saved, even at considerable cost.
I can't imagine a serious moral argument that a healthy fetus should be destroyed if it can be saved.
Betty1:
Why stop there? Why not also liquidate those social parasites. Think how much more we could save. It's not as if they were productive.
There are many people who would jump at the chance.
I would argue that, medical technology permitting, if the mother is permitted to terminate the pregnancy, she should not have the authority to determine the fate of the fetus. If the fetus can be extracted and saved, then every reasonable medical effort should be made to do so, just as every reasonable medical effort should be employed to preserve the mother.
This position removes most of the argument about rights vs. murder.
Danny:
To me, that's a no brainer. You save what you can, or have the best chance of saving.
The principle that seems to apply is, "Do the maximum gor or the minimum harm." Easy to say - hard to thread that needle in the dark.
UterusWithLegs:
I'm not sure I even accept that. Certainly the population of mopes you consulted had a misogynistic opinion. [SHRUG] I guess I never was a very good Catholic. My approach would be to tell them to pound sand. In the end, the conscience that matters is your own.
It's past my bed time. I'm going to safeword and inspect my eyelids for pinholes.
Not true at all. Very few pro-lifers are calling for a vigilante killing of Dr. Kevorkian or the many doctors in the Netherlands who perform euthanasia, which is often done without the patient's full consent and, in 20% of the cases (IIRC) without that patient's knowledge.
I do find it terribly ironic that those who think that abortion should be legal* do not understand why pro-lifers see no reason to punish the mother. In their view, it is acceptable to end a human life (hopefully, no one is so deranged as to think the unborn child either not alive nor not human) because there is no point at which a woman is deemed to have consented to allowing her body to be used by another, but, in their world, it's NOT okay for us to use the same justification to outlaw abortion but not prosecute women for it.
Truly comical... it's a losing argument for the anti-life side. If they can't understand why a pregnant woman is not in the same position as an abortionist, then they have no place arguing for legal abortion.
*given that they call us "anti-choice," which is untrue and deliberately ignores our respect for human life, I'm tempted to refer to them as the "anti-life" or "pro-baby-killing" crowd....
I'm pro-choice, but is it really so black and white you can't see it from the other side? For example, couldn't you make an estoppal argument for the fetus' right to use the womb based on the woman's assumption of responsibility by consenting to sex? (Obviously rape wouldn't apply.)
You may not consider it to be, but it sure as hell is. Being forced to be the host for a foreign body for nine months is a terrifying prospect, and is a complete assault on bodily integrity. You can't dismiss that reality by simply noting you don't believe slavery to be so bad.
You are normally more fastidious about definitions.
A pre-eclamptic woman can be so sick that she cannot risk labor or c-section. In that case the safest course is to remove the baby through the vagina without putting the mother into labor. And you can't get an intact head through an undilated cervix. So, "partial-birth abortion."
One woman who had this happen tells her story here. A close friend of mine who works with the Pre-Eclampsia Foundation says that she personally knows of "at least a dozen" women with similar stories.
I was radically pro-life for many years before I learned of this and similar phenomena. As I was shocked to discover, the idea that medicine has completely eliminated maternal-fetal conflict is a pro-life myth, equal parts wishful thinking and ideological disinformation. Although I still find myself disturbed by stories of abortion for severe birth defects, such as Tiller performed, I now realize that nobody who is not a medical expert is equipped to judge the best course in these cases. Indeed, in most of these types of discussions I see some ignorance of even the basics of pregnancy. For example, the reason such abortions are inevitably late-term is that the defects in question cannot be reliably diagnosed until about 20 weeks gestation; there goes the argument that it's the women's fault for not getting "early screening."
None of this touches the questions of "personhood" or murder as such. But whether a mother whose wanted and planned-for child can only be born to a brief, agonizing life should carry it term and watch it die or have it euthanized in the womb (which is basically what George Tiller did) is not a fit subject for a court of law, I think. To bring it to that venue would only add to the parents' agony. As with some forms of accidental child neglect, the thing itself is punishment enough. That some percentage of us think we would act differently in their shoes is not enough to warrant legal sanctions. Why bring judicial and political actors into it, trampling on the most intimate and painful aspects of life, with no consensus that the results of doing so will be morally better anyway?
Perhaps this is some of what Justice Kennedy was talking about.
And, for the record, though I'm probably wasting my time, there is a difference between pro-choice and pro-abortion. I would imagine that very few people are in favour of abortion. They just don't want to have the government take that decision on behalf of everybody. That is why the label "anti-choice", though childish, is factually accurate.
Pro-life, on the other hand, as a general proposition is undiscriminating since presumably everyone is in favour of life. If pro-lifers were truly pro-life, they'd be demonstrating at executions as well.
I really can't be bothered to go on. You're simply misinformed.
So the criticism of the label "pro-life" is that pro-lifers aren't pro-life in areas other than abortion?
Okay. But doesn't that mean that the "pro-choice" label is inapt for those who oppose the right to choose outside of the abortion context, like the right to choose to own a handgun or purchase raw milk?
And even if it was, you still can't make that argument in anything resembling a polite society. We reject slavery contracts, rape contracts, and even selling kidneys. Even if we did allow selling kidneys, I'm pretty sure we would allow the seller to back out at any time. I can't imagine we would try to hold him to his contract.
Yes, it is completely black and white. It only gets fuzzy once the fetus is capable of living without the mother's help. At that point, you can start to make arguments that the mother is obligated to give the fetus the opportunity to live without her if that is possible.
Is it a fourth, libertarian/counter-majoritarian option that where the lines are incredibly difficult to draw, the government should stay safely away from the line? It's politically unrealistic, but what libertarian social policy isn't?
It depends on the circumstances: in the case of premeditated murder, one is sufficient.
What's not clear in this case is whether Dr. Tiller performed late-term abortions in circumstances where there was not sufficient medical justification. (It does appear clear that he did not do so out of malice.)
One thing I noted when looking into this case is the involvement of Dr. Paul McHugh, the psychiatric expert employed by Kansas AG Phil Kline to impugn Tiller's decisions. Kline brought charges, based on McHugh's analysis, that 15 of Tiller's abortions had been illegal.
From an AP news report:
Kline was "fortunate enough" to get the most respected Catholic psychiatrist in the nation... McHugh's analysis was not necessarily incorrect, but he is known for his strong opinions (e.g., regarding Terry Schiavo and his opposition to Sexual Reassignment Surgery).
Eh. I think there are a lot of people who have concerned themselves with the political fracas of abortion and behave as if they're for abortion. Reason being, if so many people hate abortion and that this sentiment isn't exclusively a pro-life premise, why do so many people make excuses to dilute the nature of abortion? I mean, you'd think the culture war that has built up around this issue would be largely unnecessary because the vast majority of people really dislike and disagree with abortion as a moral endeavor. If this was just a legal issue, I don't think it would be such a contentious debate. People would diverge on whether or not it should be legal, but...it is legal. It's going on 35 years being legal. So why all the dissent and anger between the two not-all-that-different groups?
Because a lot of people are, in fact, pro-abortion.
Yes, if he's already allowed them to take the kidney and transplant it, he's allowed to back out! He's allowed to have the recipient chopped open without the recipient's consent! Furthermore, to make the situation exactly parallel, he's allowed to do so in the way that maximizes the chances of the recipient's death, and if the recipient manages to survive, he's nonetheless "non-viable" and therefore the donor is allowed to demand that he be dumped in a closet somewhere until he dies. (According to our current president, anything else than the last is a "burden".)
Your rights stop when you demand the right to perform operations on others for your own benefit.
Because one of them wants to make abortion "not legal", which the other group objects to on the grounds that, essentially, this issue is much too difficult for the government to settle it by fiat.
That's not completely true. Most pro-lifers concede that abortion should be legal to an extent, but they feel more restrictions should be placed on them. And anyway, pro-choice advocates wont even dissent with abortion in an ideological sense.
The reasoning that you wish to apply to me (as a pro-lifer) applies equally well to the anti-life side - i.e. they are not pro-choice in other areas, and are certainly not for giving the foetus a choice to live, so why call them pro-choice?
Or, to put it another way, I'm also pro-choice, so why should the pro-legal-abortion side get that label? I'm pro-legal-contraceptives, all for giving women options to parent and get an education (unlike the anti-lifers, who hate groups like Feminists for Life), and think that the entire abortion debate is stupid - if women were actually using the zillions of options available to them to avoid pregnancy, it would be a moot point. So how is that anti-choice?
Planned Parenthood performs 186 abortions for every adoption that it helps to facilitate. It does not help women with the legal and logistical hurdles to parenting during a crisis pregnancy. That's anti-choice: the only choice that women are given is to abort.
The way I see it, we can call y'all anti-life and anti-choice and myself pro-life and pro-choice. Or we could just use the labels that each group would prefer... but, then again, you would rather be "childish."
If two lifeguards see someone drowning and one swims out to save him, do we let him change his mind when it's too late for the other lifeguard to act? Not unless his own life depends on it. When someone assumes an obligation of dependent care for another person, we hold him to it until he passes it off to someone else, and that does no violence to the 13th Amendment. There are separate and obvious policy objections to rape contracts and organ sales.
It's only black and white if you stipulate, as you and I believe, that until viability a fetus isn't a complete person with all attendant rights. But for the millions (billions ?) of people who sincerely believe a fetus at all stages is indistinguishable from any human being, I don't see how you deny colorable counter-arguments, even if, as again you and I believe, they don't carry the day.
As I already said, this argument only applies when the woman is the only way the fetus can survive. A hypothetical where there's more than one way the man can be saved is not comparable.
In my hypothetical, by the time the lifeguard wants to change his mind he's the only way that man can be saved.
I'm not sure I understand that.
After a certain point, an extracted fetus would be viable. That point is becoming earlier and earlier as medical technology advances. Did I miss your point?
At the point that a fetus becomes independently viable, how can one argue that it doesn't have all the characteristics required to be considered a person?
This point raises an interesting argument. I think a strong argument can be made that an entity's status as a person should not depend on the state of engineering skill, but is intrinsic to that entity. So if last year, we could preserve a healthy fetus at 26 weeks, and this year we have learned to do so at 22 weeks, the fetus did not become a person earlier, it already had been one. This goes back to the argument about when life, or personhood begins.
I'm willing to bow to practicality, I am an injunear after all, but practicality does not change an entity's status, either.
The specific argument I'm making, the one that sees no black and white and no room for honest disagreement, only applies when the fetus can live no way other than inside the mother's womb. And I agree, time may make this argument obsolete.
Of course, that would be more persuasive if it wasn't a Republican's summary of a Republican (Canady)'s summary of a Dutch study that is not cited and that no one even really knows existed. Not to mention that it doesn't really help theobromophile's case, since - even if it does say what Rehnquist says it says - it concerns the situation long before the current system was enacted in 2002.
In jurisdictions where abortion is considered murder, the woman who had the abortion would be just as guilty as the abortionist.
In such a case, the abortion would be justified due to the unjust threat by the unborn.
I never heard anyone claim that the lives of unborn are sacrosanct.
The abortion was justified because of the unjust threat to life posed by twin.
Well, if I saw a militant Islanist sand Nazi terrorist running at you with a large butcher knife, whose life is more valuable?
If I kill the terrorist, does that mean your life is more valuable than his?
Being a unjust threat to one's life is an offense worthy of death.
Of course, if the unborn have the right to matricide, why not teenagers whose mommies won't let them go to an all-night party?
Tiller was doing Y, I think Y is grotesque and murderous, therefore Tiller was a bad man.
Which is it? What the hell was Tiller doing?
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