There have been studies suggesting that fetuses could very well have the ability to feel pain at 14 weeks and even earlier (keep in mind it was not very long ago in our history that doctors performed painful medical procedures on born babies before we realised they could feel pain, as well as discovering the neurological effects of infant pain is huge as it literally affects the brains development - so we know current scientific consensus can be wrong)

so with this in mind shouldn’t we be erring on the caution? It just seems so barbaric and cruel. A second trimester and even third trimester abortion would be my worst nightmare if I could feel it.

Especially the pro-choice people who acknowledge that it is a human but just believe that fact doesn’t trump their bodily autonomy. Well if it’s a human don’t they deserve to at least die with dignity, after all they aren’t to blame for existing 😞

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8935428/

I just don't understand it. There are so many laws in almost every country that violate bodily autonomy, i.e. specific medical procedures, drugs, recreational activities etc that are illegal and would face repercussions. You are "free" to do those things, but not free of the consequences if you are caught. Similarly, you are free to have an abortion, but with that comes consequences outlined by your government.

And I think where a lot of pro-life people come from is that individuals decided their bodily autonomy at the point of sex. If a man has sex with a woman, his bodily autonomy decided at that point. If a child is born, it becomes his responsibility, he MUST do xyz things otherwise he will face repercussion irrespective of his choice. Similarly, the woman's consequences of sex are out of her hands after having sex without protection (and it was still a choice even if the protection fails!). It's akin to actually having a child; you can't just abandon them in your house and leave them to die - 2 people made the choice to have sex and these are the consequences of that action.

The only reason why I think abortion should be legal is because not having it would be completely impractical in a civilised society, i.e. rape (obvious consequences of either women having to birth a child with their rapist or every women filling out forms claiming they were raped rendering the law pointless).

I think this is the contention of why pro-lifers are so against pro-choice, because it makes 0 logical sense in their reference frame. They may not be able to practice bodily autonomy in the ways they want to; so when someone says "my body, my choice," it makes no sense them. If pro-choicers completely dropped the empowerment of choice, said humanity needs it in-case of rape, I reckon it would go over easier with pro-lifers.

This would be the law on a Federal level. Meaning it applies to all 50 states, and all territories. We take it back out of the states, as that made many pro choice unhappy, and we put it back on the national level.

However we can not just give you back Roe Vs Wade. That made many pro-life people unhappy. We are trying to get a compromise here that can make the most people happy and is the most reasonable.

Day 1 through 40 = All abortion is fully legal. Neurons do not fire for in the brain of the unborn until about this point. So, it is not yet "Intelligent Life". All abortions in the first 40 days are fully legal. A morning after pill would be given for the first 5 days. After that the abortion pill should do the trick.

All abortion pills must be prescribed and administered by a doctor as a witness and physician.

After 40 days is when exceptions come in for legality. Here is a list of all acceptable exceptions. If a requested abortion does not meet one or more of these criteria it is banned. These new rules apply up until full gestation.

1: The abortion pill failed to terminate the pregnancy. This is not the fault of the pregnant woman. Exception granted. It's clear they tried to terminate the pregnancy earlier and the doctor has records.

2: The woman who is pregnant was raped, and they filed a police report claiming to have been raped. There does not need to be an arrest, or conviction. There just needs to be a police report. This report must be dated at some point in the first 40 days after conception. We will go on a blanket "Believe All Women" policy for this when it comes to abortion. If it is dated in the first 40 days from conception. All accusations are believed Abortion granted.

3: The unborn is the product of an incestuous relationship. A DNA test will be taken after termination to prove the unborn was inbred. Further investigation is needed by law enforcement here, and arrests may be made.

4: The life or health of the mother is at a severely elevated risk. This would cover things like an "Ectopic Pregnancy" and other anomalies. Also includes very young mothers if like a 12 or 13-year-old got pregnant.

5: The unborn will have severe disabilities. Anything that would make the child immediately eligible for a disability check, and could prevent the child from living a normal happy life.

6: The unborn is not viable and is already dead or would soon be dead after a full gestation.

7: The pregnant woman already has given birth at least twice. Any woman who has given birth twice or more now has full abortion rights to get an abortion at any time for any reason they no questions asked. Bring in two birth certificates to prove you gave birth twice and the abortion is yours. For more inclusiveness participation in the adoption system also counts for this. So, if a woman has adopted 2 children, or given up 2 children for adoption the abortion is still granted.

8: The pregnant woman was a convicted Felon. at the time of conception This is mostly for things like when a male guard impregnates a female inmate. (The guard needs to lose their job and get arrested too for things like this.)

9: The pregnant woman suffers from severe, although not life threatening disabilities already. Things like a woman with no arms, or a blind woman. Their life is already hard enough and they don't need to put more on their plate. You can't exactly change a diaper so easily with no hands.

10: The pregnant woman is living in a battered woman shelter or there is reports of domestic violence against her by the father of the child. That's not a healthy environment to bring a kid into. This rule would also apply to a woman staying at a homeless shelter or at a drug / alcohol rehab center.

If those were the new abortion rules nation wide how happy or unhappy would you be about them, and why?

My wife is very pro-life. We have good faith arguments on abortion frequently and I feel like we both grow and mature with each. I came to seek input on interesting arguments that I can bring up with her.

Her argument is that once an embryo/fetus is created in utero, if nothing is done to it, it will be born as a baby. And thus, terminating this process is morally incorrect. I wanted to ask if anyone has any arguments against this position, because right now I'm in the middle of it. I've always been a staunch pro-choice supporter but her arguments are rather convincing.

The topic seems to be: what do we define life as? And I don't have a good response, other than "why isn't sperm life as well" which is countered by "sperm, on its own, does not become life."

Thanks for your time! <3

I don't think it makes logical sense, from a morality standpoint, to frame this debate in terms of reproductive rights or bodily autonomy. In doing so, you reach logical contradictions.

For example, if bodily autonomy outweighs the right to life (for the fetus), then IF the fetus does have the right to life, we would be taking away the fetus' bodily autonomy. Thus, it only makes sense to talk about when the fetus actually has personhood.

I'm sure in rebuttal someone will bring up the hypothetical scenario where a doctor claims to need your vital organ to save another random life. But, in this case the person's actions did not cause them to be in that situation.

However, in the case of abortion, someone having sex, did cause that them to be in that position. I'm sure someone will then say that this just comes off as "punishment", but in actuality, there is no moral precedence where you yourself put yourself in a situation where your own bodily autonomy outweighs the life of someone else you brought into the situation.

Therefore, it seems that the only logically reasonable talking points that should be have regarding abortion, should be when the fetus has personhood. I would like to know if there are flaws in my logic.

Edit: By abortion, I mean removing and killing the fetus.

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A lot of words in this debate are dedicated to the term “organism”. “The oocyte isn’t an organism, the zygote is! Therefore latter matters, former doesn’t!”.

----------But what is an organism, exactly, and why does it matter? ----------

The answer might seem simple at first. Surely everyone heard what an organism is, that what school is for! But… That’s not the whole story.

School definition of organism is akin to how solar system is explained to small children. Sure, there is a Sun, which is big, but not much bigger than planets [wrong], it is exactly in the center [it isn’t], the planets move in perfectly round, circular orbits [they do not], and the distance between the planets is more or less the same [it isn’t]!

The idea itself is more or less correct. But if you really is to use this idea for any practical purpose, this model simply will not work. And such model isn’t used by actual astronomers. Same with an organism. Except worse.

So, first and foremost: can we detect what is an organism and what is not? Is it a real term describing real emergent properties, some sort of (strong, presumably) emergence which can be detected but cannot be explained (or predicted) by other factors?

What do I mean by that: imagine we have a simple car. It consists of car body, car wheels and some sort of steering gear. We know that car body holds things together, wheels move the car, and steering gear allows to change direction of the car. It is easily predictable that if you put those things together, the car will move into whatever direction you want. It would be unexpected, however, if upon connecting all 3 parts (and only 3, not 2, not 1) together the car gained ability to teleport. That’s emergence. And emergent property generally warrants a definition for it.

But not all definitions describe emergent properties. We are simple apes with relatively simple brains, we cannot fully grasp complexities of nature. As such, we invent “boxes”. For example, constellations. The stars within a constellation do not have any special properties when put together, they exist within a constellation for our convenience.

So, what group “organism” belongs to – former or latter? Usually it is considered to be of the latter group. Organism per se doesn’t explain any fundamental phenomenon of the natural world – no more than “colony” does, anyway.

It is easy to illustrate: imagine we can replace every single body part with a cybernetic implant which will artificially keep rest of the body alive. We gradually replace every part of the body with the machine. When the organism ceases to be the organism and becomes just a collection of organs artificially kept alive? The answer is: when scientists agree it ceases to be. No real detectable threshold.

This is the reason why the terms “organism” or “biological individual” in biology currently don’t have operational definitions. It also has many alternatives-aka-related-concepts (for example, holobiont), some even argue that we should abandon “organism” altogether. [1-4]

This also explains the recent debate about anthrobots/xenobots. There is no answer to the question “Are these organisms?” because there is no agreement to what it is and whether it even exists at all.

Nowhere the “organism” problem is more evident than in splitting and recombination in colonies of cells, including embryos. If I split embryo made of 4 cells, then in theory I get 4 identical organisms which could be then implanted into women, gestated and so on.

However, if I recombine the very same 4 cells, then the result is – allegedly - one embryo, which will develop just fine. 3 organisms just appeared out of nowhere and ceased to exist without any cellular death. And in ideal conditions I could repeat this process as much times as I want, potentially creating and destroying 10, 100, 1000 new organisms by using just 4 cells. This is simply ridiculous.

----------------------------------

[Edit: I'm editing this part to clarify, because some confusion resulted. Cell is the smallest unit which could be considered "organism". Therefore with 4 cells I could only kill 4 organisms. In above example, logical conclusion is that I could kill infinite organisms with 4 cells. The only thing that could explain it is a particular proposition:

organism isn't something that exists in the material world.

I do not think this is true. Therefore, our understanding of "organism" is incorrect]

----------------------------------

I must add though, this particular problem could be bypassed by granting the status of organism not at conception, but when twinning and fusion becomes impossible, which is in about two to three weeks. Some philosophers do just that. Back to business…

Unless we discover some form of emergence (doubtful), there is no truth as to what organism is. “Organism” is simply made up, like constellation. If I were omnipotent, I could just snap my fingers and replace “multicellular organism” with “colony of highly specialized cells”. Nothing fundamental will be lost. As a matter of fact, a lot of things probably will be simpler.

----------…Now, how it even relates to abortion debate? ----------

Very directly. As I’ve said in the beginning, many PL – and some PC even - put moral weight on the term. But why?

"Organism" is a faulty, artificial category that (barely) exists for reasons unrelated to morality. Since it doesn’t describe any morally-relevant properties, I don’t see [non-metaphysical, e.g. not animalism] arguments for it’s moral relevance. It could disappear or be redefined on a whim.

Or is it because usually entities with full moral status generally fit into this category, however vaguely defined? Then I could say “Adult humans belong to a class Metazoa, therefore all entities within this category ought to have full moral status”.

By the same logic, I could create my own category: single-celled stages of human lifecycle (let’s call them homozoans), which would include gametes and zygote. I proclaim that all homozoans have full moral status. Why? Because they’re in this category!

Can you see? “It’s an organism” is not an actual argument, it’s mere value-by-association.

As a matter of fact, in every other scenario “organism” isn’t a morally relevant criterion. Conjoined twins are typically understood to be the same organism, but they clearly have separated moral statuses. If their moral status was in any way dependent on being an organism, then they would’ve possessed less moral value than 2 normal twins.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, your brain isn’t an organism. At least I don’t think there are biologists who would treat the brain as an organism, but wouldn’t extend the same treatment to, say, kidney. It’s just an organ. However, if we ever find a way to preserve the fully working human brain in some sort of a jar or machine, then such brain would possess full moral status. Despite being a mere organ, not an organism.

I just don’t see any reason why “organism” should be morally relevant, whatever definition we arrive at.

1.       What is an Individual Organism? A Multilevel Selection Perspective, Henri J. FolseIII, Joan Roughgarden, and James D. Thomson

2.       Does Biology Need an Organism Concept? John W. Pepper, Matthew D. Herron

3.       Ontological Butchery: Organism Concepts and Biological Generalizations, Jack A. Wilson

4.       The information theory of individuality, David Krakauer, Nils Bertschinger, Eckehard Olbrich, Jessica C. Flack & Nihat Ay

Every time pro lifers talk about abortion rights they bring up how the fetus is having a decision made for it. How the fetus dosent get a say and that "wrong".

Well as most people know if a fully grown person is incompatible of making medical decisions a medical proxy gets to step in and make those hard choices. This person is usually a parent or spouse. And that person can decide if the person gets surgery, and can even decide to pull the plug and kill that person.

So why in a case where a fetus is definitely not capable of making decisions is the mother not given medical proxy. A mother gets proxy for any living kids, but not a fetus. Why is a fetus's proxy the government, when the second it is born it's proxy is the mom?

I posted a revised version of this to /prochoice. I have seen a lot of misunderstanding around when abortions are necessary in medical care. I'm an OB/GYN. If you don't understand why the bans hurt women then you don't understand the science. First, there are elective abortions, meaning nothing is wrong with the pregancy or the baby, I just do not want the pregnancy. In the US, over 90% of abortions like this are in the first trimester. Then there are dozens of instances when women need an abortion during a pregnancy that ARE NOT elective. The problem with the ban is that it's incredibly vague. "To save the life of the mother". Ok but when? What if you had cancer but I couldn't treat you because you're not actively dying. Then you come back 3 months later with the cancer metastasized all over your body, you're coughing up blood because your lungs are riddled with cancer, you're not eating and you can no longer walk. Then I say ok you're dying now! Here's some chemo, good luck.

When a woman has a miscarriage, she needs to deliver that baby quickly because she's at high risk of bleeding and infection. But if the baby has a heartbeat, doctors are too afraid to do anything because technically the fetus is still alive. The mom at that point may have a 30% chance of dying. The next day it's higher but the fetus still has a heartbeat. Days past and finally the mom has a 90% chance of dying or the baby finally died. So now we get to treat the mother? It's cruel to the baby too. They're inside the uterus, no fluid around them many times if the amniotic sac ruptured. They're feeling the effects of infection, too, the inflammation, the fever. the baby has a sad, painful lonely death. When we would induce women after miscarriages, we would let the parents hold the child until it gently passed. It is an important grieving time for the parents and while it is terribly painful, they know they held their child closely for the short life it had.

Late term abortions - after 28 weeks - only happen in this country in one clinic - I will not post the name because people may try to troll them. There are very few of these. Those that occur are ALL because of fatal fetal anomalies. The doctor that performs late term abortions does it because they believe women have the right to, but they only do it for fatal anomalies. This is the kindest thing for the mother and the child. It is a cruel thing to have a mother carry a child that will be dead after they are born. These are not mild pathologies like Downs syndrome, this is like the baby has no brain. My husband and I tried desperately for 6 years to get pregnant. My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, but my body would not pass the baby. It was agony to wait because we so badly wanted to be pregnant again. I had to take misoprostol several times before it passed. I cannot even imagine carrying a pregnancy to term in those circumstances. If lawmakers want to ban late abortions for selfish reasons, then they should propose that.

My problem with these abortion bans is that the people passing them don't seem to know a damn thing about the science. If lawmakers want to do this, then every doctor in the state should be able to call them all hours of the day and night to ask their opinion on whether the mother's life is in danger. After a 100 calls a day, I guarantee those lawmakers would be going back to redraft their ban. If I was a lawmaker and wanted to pass a bill to ban all violent video games, I think I'd do some research. Are there any studies that show they're directly correlated to violence or mood disorders? How many people play violent video games? How many kids do? The basic level of research on an abortion ban would inform them why their bans are so poorly written. You want to save baby lives? Foster a child, give money to organizations that help poor mothers and their children, donate to the child abuse prevention network. Lawmakers don't get to tell an entire population what to do when they don't know what they are talking about.

Baby's first post. Can't say I'm new per se, but my familiarity was more from papers about stem cell research.

Quote from bioethicist John Harris, his work "THE AMBIGUITY OF THE EMBRYO: ETHICAL INCONSISTENCY IN THE HUMAN EMBRYONIC STEM CELL DEBATE":

’’In an embryo consisting of four cells, all cells (blastomeres) are still ‘‘totipotent’’ (that is, where all cells could become any part of the resulting individual or, indeed, could develop into a whole new individual). Consequently, if you take a four-cell-stage embryo and split it into four cells, each one of these cells constitutes a new embryo, which could be implanted with the potential for successful development into adulthood (…).

Each cell is the clone or identical ‘‘twin’’ of any of the others and comes into being not through conception but because of the division of the early cell mass. Moreover, these four cells can be recombined into one embryo again. This creates a situation where, without the destruction of a single human cell, one human life, if that is what it is, can be split into four and can be recombined again into one. Did ‘‘life’’ in such a case begin as an individual, become four individuals, and then turn into a single embryo again?” Quote over.

I will give a little spin on the situation.

Scenario A: Suppose I work in IVF clinic with some experimental technologies in use. A woman wants 4 identical children, she already has found 4 surrogates for the task.

When I create a zygote and, in time, get 4-celled embryo, I split the embryo. But just before I transport these cells into tubes of the women, I accidentally smash 1 of the cells.

I think few would disagree that post-splitting the cell is a separate entity from the original embryo – that’s how twins form, after all. So, did I kill somebody?

Immediately afterwards I receive a call from the egg donor, who informed me that she changed her mind and now only wants 1 child. I recombine 3 cells into a single embryo.

Scenario B: I receive the call earlier and do not split the embryo. Yet I accidentally destroy one cell – ironically, the very same that would’ve been dead in case A.

So, what do we make of it? Did I injure in B and kill in A, despite destroying the same entity in both cases? Or something else? What happened to 2 of 3 embryos left in case A, when I recombined the cells? Did they die as well?

I also propose a second experiment.

Imagine an adult. I’m a scientist who uses full-body cloning on people, and I have this adult captured in my lab.

Next I clone this person for the first, second, third time. I think it’s safe to say that the clone would always be their own separate person. In total now we have 4 people. Now I bind them together with some gelatinous material, or some fat, in short something organic. Intuitively I would say that this changes nothing – they were persons as entities separate in space, they are persons when they’re tied together.

Next replace the adult with embryonic totipotent cell. If, as PL proposes, 1 totipotent cell, be that the zygote or one of the twins, is a person separately, it would be logical to claim that 4 totipotent cells are 4 persons. How close they’re to each other is irrelevant to their personhood. To claim otherwise is to support “discrimination based on location”, as some say, and the same argument easily could be used to deny personhood of the fetus.

Hence, I conclude that embryo at 4-cells stage is four people instead of one.

Which leads to uncomfortable implications: in natural reproduction there is only one at birth. In most cases, at least. Therefore natural reproduction should be deemed unacceptable, since it sacrifices a total of 3 lives for the survival of 1. IVF with splitting would be the only moral way of reproducing, if this is the case.

It also presents some problematic implications for FLO/potentiality arguments as well. The only line of rebuttal (provided that the original claim is accepted) would be the idea that splitting is artificial intervention and artificial potential cannot count.
To that I say: you likely would have to prove that artificial is less morally relevant than natural, also you would have to reconcile with worthlessness of IVF embryos and embryos/fetuses who would die naturally, but could be saved via fetal surgery or medication. This route could be taken, but I don’t think this line of thought would be accepted by mainstream PL.

Why don't women?

In an equal rights society, everyone should have the same rights, right? And no one has a right to take a lobe of liver, or plasma, or blood, or bone marrow from someone else.

It is illegal to take organs or tissue from a dead body without consent of the deceased or next of kin. It is illegal to use another person's orifices for sexual pleasure or control.

Men are not required to give up rights to their bodies, under any circumstance.

Why should women just because they become pregnant?

So I was actually mostly pro-life because fetus is a human and killing innocent humans without their consent is considered bad.

I still stand by the fact that fetus is a human but I am not sure anymore if killing is bad. For me, non-existence seems better than suffering. So if 2 people who had sex and a woman got pregnant, think that their child will suffer because they are alcoholics, poor or have genetic defects, maybe it's better to kill a child?

Like most Democrats, I am still reeling from Harris loss. I thought for sure we would win even if it were a close race. I am sadly mistaken.

As a pro life (ie whole life) Democrat, while I remain at odds with the party on abortion, I thought given that abortion was front and center during the campaign, it could be an issue that would propel Harris to victory. Yet it clearly did not.

I am wondering if the Democratic Party treats the electorate and particular its members as a monolith that is accurately represented by the extreme left wing of the party. Regarding abortion, it is clear that the American electorate is not moved tremendously by abortion. Even the pro life laws in place were not enough to sway people to vote for Harris given the fact she loss.

I think this could be due to several things:

1. Peoples’ views on abortion could be shifting or coalescing around a center that wants reasonable restrictions on killing the unborn child.

2. People could be getting used to Pro Life laws and perhaps more amenable to seeing the unborn as human beings. (Vote for your daughters to be able to kill your grandchildren may not be the motivation they thought it would be.)

3. The extreme left wing of the party is not representative of the entire party or the American electorate. It sounds good to say that abortion for all nine months is great, but that may be horrific even to many pro choice folks.

I am also wondering why it is that a state may vote to allow abortion, yet then still vote for Trump. I of course don’t understand why anyone votes for Trump.

At any rate, what do you think this election says about abortion and the public’s views on the topic? Why was abortion not the winning issue so many thought it would be?

My hope is that the Democratic Party, after this staggering loss, realizes it needs to talk to and engage with all of us in the party not just the extreme left wing of the party. I voted for Kamala because I thought she was the best candidate by far and even though I don’t agree with her on abortion, I agree with her on the vast majority of positions for which she stands. She would make a great president. I am so saddened by this loss. The party has work to do.

What are your thoughts?

Many Pro-Life advocates quote a study conducted by Steve Jacobs at Chicago University as part of his research for his PHD.

This study emailed over 1000 academic institutions to over 60 000 PHD or MD biologists and he apparently obtained over 7000 replies to his set of questions

Title

Biologists’ Consensus on ‘When Life Begins’ Steven Andrew Jacobs

Available online and to download here https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3211703

After having a careful examination of this 22 page document I have made a two part video pointing out the errors with this paper and the way it is being cited. It also looks at two interviews with Steve Jacobs and how his description of how the study was performed, undermines the results he obtained.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLebh7Slqrmvqur8L-Ak2xaukJziWNrR3V

Essentially I am claiming that this study is void not that I have proved the majority disagree with the premise that human life begins at conception.

It does however seem to be a significantly different result from the (96% of biologist) that Pro-Life advocates are claiming.

I am having some backlash over this and the initial channel I uploaded this to has been suspended for as yet unarticulated reasons.

When does life/human life/a human's life/a person's life begin ?

Is it settled science or is it contested?

Is it really science at all or are we talking about a considered ownership of life ?

Lots of pro-life people sometimes say that it’s okay for abortion to be legal when a mother is at risk of her life, or rape etc. But if your argument is that ‘abortion is murder’ does that mean murder is okay in some cases? And if the answer is yes, fine, but think of it like this. Why should a woman have to be violated to have the rights to her own body, why is she only allowed the rights to her body when her life is at risk? And to those who truly believe abortion should be criminalised, why? Is it because you believe abortion is murder, even though countless times and arguments have been made proving that abortion is not in fact legally murder, scientifically speaking the clump of cells in a woman’s uterus is not conscious and knowing of its being, it has no sense of pain and being. It is not a human, it is not alive. Also, why can abortion not be legal? Like it or not, people will still continue to get abortions even if banned and criminalised, so it is in the best interests of everyone to keep abortion legal until 24 weeks, when the cells are developing into a human. Thoughts? I do not post this with ill intent btw, I am genuinely intrigued to hear the other side of the argument

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To my fellow interlocutors on the pro life side, an honest question for you:

I have heard it argued on occasion that we should err on the side of making abortion illegal? Why?

Factual evidence suggests that pro life policies are not particularly effective at preventing abortion. They result in increased infant and maternal mortality and cost billions in taxpayer money.

Evidence:

https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/despite-bans-number-abortions-united-states-increased-2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/10/23/infant-mortality-rate-dobbs-decision-abortion-bans/

https://sph.tulane.edu/study-finds-higher-maternal-mortality-rates-states-more-abortion-restrictions

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/abortion-bans-could-cost-american-taxpayers-billions-of-dollars-each-year-133500570.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALLIP87TdWV2kYF5tcPwZN6AlEND6_0gIXtlFHdfjbJOX10tIYULpCLjpIrXXSN4muR29vGvSV-TqJATyNvsiRSyV5IhZsU5NLYhUlQWo_HSV-KZa-2HSgNs3HrdVFuOvzMgzc-MV-Vqx9QgJcuL9_rz4K3048PQqWH_I_MAUKy_

Contrast this with pro choice policies that can accomplish a massive 40% reduction in abortion rates, plus a whole host of additional social benefits like increasing high school graduation rates and actually saving taxpayer money ($70 million!) by paying for itself.

Evidence:

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/2015/07/14/what-texas-can-learn-from-colorado-s-iud-experiment/

https://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/30/colorado-teen-pregnancy-abortion-rates-drop-free-low-cost-iud/

Given these facts, if we wanted to err on the side of preventing abortions and saving lives, why would we choose a less effective, more costly strategy that leads to increased infant and maternal mortality when the alternative prevents more abortions with none of the collateral damage or financial cost?

So I’ve been seeing quite a few stories on the internet recently of women dying in hospitals of either miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, etc. My question is why is this happening when Texas law clearly states those are an exception? Wouldn’t this be medical malpractice not a fault in abortion bans? Edit: Furthermore how do we stop this from happening to even more women? How would ending an abortion ban help citizens when they weren’t even killing them in the first place?

If you don’t believe me here is a guide of the abortion laws in Texas for healthcare workers:

https://abortiondefensenetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Texas_ADN-Know-Your-State_Feb-2024.pdf

If I am wrong about the law or missing info please let me know!

hey guys! I’m making this post with no ill intent and am not trying to belittle anybody by saying this. I genuinely hate the division we have in our country currently. I just wanted to ask this question as someone who is pro-life (who also stands with some pro choice arguments)

Anyways, my question is why don’t people use more preventative measures to prevent pregnancy? It seems as though abortion is the form of birth control rather than taking more preventative measures. That’s what doesn’t make sense to me. Abortions, depending on the term of pregnancy, can be from $300 to $2,000. Whereas condoms are about 4-10 dollars for a pack. I understand birth control is tricky, it can be expensive depending on insurance and what type of birth control you get. But wouldn’t you rather pay for that then have to go through the pain and worry of an abortion? And even then there is a free method to prevent pregnancy. I also understand there are failure rates with these preventative measures, but are at a very low percent, from 0.1% to 9%.

I do believe that abortion is not just terminated a bunch of cells, but that it is taking a life. However, I also understand that there are many instances where I would say that, unfortunately, it would be okay to terminate a pregnancy. Such as *ape victims, and medical complications that can end the mother’s life. However, I just think that abortion is viewed in such a relaxed light. Some people don’t take any preventative measures because they know they have access to abort the child. I think that is wrong. If you don’t think you are ready for a child or don’t have the funds, then be more careful and take preventative measures. I feel like that is very simple.

I hope this post does not offend or hurt anybody. That is not my intent. I’m just trying to understand and please let me know if I also claimed something that is false :)

Edit: I appreciate those who answered politely and respectively. Thanks for clearing a lot of things up I’ve learned in the past that are false. Based on some of questions answered, i’ve changed my view on a few things. Also, those who answered this in a rude manner, sorry if I hurt your feelings but honestly I was just asking a question, no need to get so upset.

I am trying to understand where my stance on abortion is. I understand the bodily autonomy argument and agree with it but wonder why not just remove fetus (ie. induce labour) and let it naturally die vs actually choosing to kill it first. To me it feels more ethical to allow people to induce labour whenever they choose and let either the baby die naturally or if viable relinquish it to the state. I also know that technically in early term pregnancy that would just be called an abortion but it gets weird when you get later in pregnancy where abortions have to actively end the the fetuses life before it is removed.

Edit: Thanks for the arguments! I think what it comes down to is looking into data on how much safer and less harmful to the woman “separating” the fetus is. I also need to further look into if there is a way to tell if it will be more harmful (how/why the doctors make that decision in 3rd term). I want to go further into the argument of abortion being self defensive once I get that info.

I am still struggling with the case late term abortions. If hypothetically the dr decides induced labour is safest why does the fetus need to be killed? Also need to search into why human euthanasia would be morally wrong/right vs animal euthanasia when it comes to suffering.

In multiple threads now pro-life have responded to conversations about revoking consent by describing punishments for crimes.

Like if pro-choice give examples of ending consent to sex, policing, firefighting, no longer wanting to keep a commitment to blood donation or first aid or job or guardianship etc,

then the PL comes in and says like "if you DUI you can't drop consent to being arrested."

Revoking consent is that you are allowed to stop driving someone.

Getting arrested only exists as a punishment for breaking a previous law.

But adults having sex is not breaking the law. Do you agree? Would you change that to stop abortion?

What if someone where to start a hypothetical religion where

1. Only women are allowed
2. Allows at will abortion (No other religious rules)
3. Has at least 100K members in the religion
4. a few percentage Doctors from across the country join the religion and their religious right is to perform abortion.

Are religious rights being violated if abortion is not allowed in the hospital? What do courts do in this case?

Any case studies?

So? We let people opt out of everything and anything if they realize they made a mistake

If you get married and decide you don’t wanna be married anymore you can get a divorce

If you get a new job and you don’t like it, you don’t have to work at it 9 months before you quit

If you’re a college student and sign up for a class you think is too hard you can drop it

If you’re a woman who didn’t have an abortion but you don’t wanna raise the kid you can put it up for adoption

Why can’t you opt out of pregnancy if you realize you made a mistake by getting pregnant?

And no adoption isn’t the solution because while I do think it’s a valid choice, abortion is the choice to opt out of pregnancy and childbirth, adoption is only the choice to opt out of parenthood

Texas got a state-wide abortion ban into law before Roe vs Wade was overthrown in June 2022, by SB8 / the Heartbeat Act,- a law that is policed by vigilante justice, allowing any prolifer anywhere to bring a case against a doctor who performed an abortion, where the doctor had to pay costs even if the case was deemed "frivolous", and if the vigilante won, levying a £100k fine against the doctor for each abortion.

So Texas is an early-warning system for the other prolife states which have instituted abortion bans - full annual data for the year 2023 is not yet available.

From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%: across the US as a whole, the rise was 11% (COVID obviously also having an impact).

Neveah Craine was killed because no hospital wanted to take the risk that she might need an abortion to survive - which abortion would leave the doctor who performed it, liable , at the least, to paying the costs of any suit that any prolifer opted to bring against the doctor just because the prolifer heard about the abortion and hoped to get a hundred thousand dollars for it. Neveah Craine was killed by Texas's prolife legislation.

Amber Thurman was killed by Georgia's abortion ban. The Georgia ban specifically made illegal performing a D&C for any other reason than to remove the retained products of a spontaneous abortion. Thurman had legally left Georgia to go to North Carolina to have a legal abortion - but because she experienced a rare complication, and because Georgia's law made illegal providing treatment for it, she died.

Those are just two recent high-profile cases. The Texan rise of 56% means that as time goes on - as the data for maternal mortality and morbidity is revealed for the prolife states versus the states where essential reproductive healthcare is fully available - means there will be more and more cases where a woman dies in hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses who know that an abortion will save her life, but who also know that the law they live under means that if they perform an abortion and she lives, they can be prosecuted for having done an abortion when the woman obviously wasn't actually dying - look, there she is, alive and well!

Prolifers who want to keep state-wide abortion bans should realize that, when those bans are phrased as political statements against abortion - shoddy law, as I noted in an earlier post - they don't leave room for a doctor to perform medically-necessary abortions because the intent there in the legislation is explicitly to ban abortions from being performed - not to ensure that doctors can legally and without fear prosecution perform an abortion if in the doctor's experienced medical judgment, they deem it necessary.

The more awful publicity is given to the lethal effects of abortion bans, and this will only get worse for the prolife movement as more women die horrible and preventable deaths, the more likely the voters in prolife states are to pass into their state constitution, amendments guaranteeing the availability of abortion on terms that the majority in the US agree on - abortion to be freely available up to 24 weeks and after that with the agreement of a doctor that it's medically necessary.

I am angry that women are dying. But I imagine my anger is nothing to the rage of voters who hear prolife politicians blandly upholding their "life-saving" laws that killed young women who were living in the same state, who may have gone to the same high school, who died after being turned away from a hospital these voters also use. Ordinary people feel normal compassion for the innocent victims of the abortion bans. Ordinary voters will terminate these bans by constitutional amendment, state by state, and the status quo will be restored, more strongly than before.

So much is obvious to me. Why then are prolifers not clamoring against these abortion bans, demanding they be amended so that medically-necessary abortions can be performed so that the abortion bans prolifers claim to love have a chance of surviving the wrath of the angry voter? Why are prolifers so consistent in arguing that when abortion bans kill women, it's not the ban's fault - somehow doctors have magically become less competent when living under a prolife ban?

I have debated this for years, and it happens very often that a pro-lifer will say "we're not *forcing* her to do anything, she chose to have sex, we didn't force her to do that." So my question is, do you as pro-lifers recognize that you are trying to force women and girls to carry a pregnancy and give birth against their will? Not forcing them to conceive (unless that *is* what you did), but you are in fact forcing them to carry a pregnancy and give birth against their will.

Can we find common ground on restricting abortion after 9 weeks, except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother's life? Considering the fetus's development (forming fingers, toes, and eyelids), is it reasonable to consider abortion after this point morally objectionable and potentially not legally justifiable?

The one child policy in China infamously led to mass abortions of female babies because there was a preference for a son over a daughter in many families to continue the family lineage. This is widely recognised as a femicidal tragedy as it should be. But what moral misconduct is present in killing a "cluster of cells" solely because she is female? Why can someone be simultaneously apalled by this and not see an issue with a baby girl in a first-world country being aborted because the mother didn't want to raise a kid yet?

What if a mother/couple in a stable situation in a first-world country already had 3 boys and were hoping for a girl. Only to find out they are yet again having another boy and terminate it, to retry until a girl is conceived. Is this wrong? I wouldn't see an issue with it if I truly believed a fetus was lifeless matter.

Explain your position.

I keep seeing PLers commenting here and on the PL sub that Neveah Crain died from medical negligence and that "cowardly," "activist" doctors are to blame. Or that it was medical malpractice.

PLers, your narrative that everyone who is maimed or killed due to your abortion bans is the fault of PC doctors is a joke. No one can take you seriously when you can't even get the basic facts right.

So here they are:

• Neveah Crain was a PL Christian (along with her mom) who sought treatment at PL Christian hospitals

• These religious hospitals do not perform elective abortions

• The last hospital where she died is Catholic, and its practitioners would have dragged their feet in performing even a life-saving abortion because of its own ethical rules which practically made the Texas ban redundant

• In the year since Neveah was killed by PL ideology, her PL Christian mother has had no luck in finding a lawyer willing to take on the case

Here are my questions:

If this is a case of clear malpractice, why has no one taken up the case? Why hasn't the prolife movement offered the poor mother of the deceased legal representation against these "activist" doctors?

IMO, they won't touch the case precisely because these hospitals are religious and PL. To sue these for failing to violate their own deeply held religious beliefs would mean highlighting the fact that the only "activist" doctors involved are PL Catholics and Christians.

Essentially, PLers have killed one of their own. Something I predicted would happen when Texas first became a banned state.

In real life, everyone is presumed to be moral actors. That's why there are juvenile prisons because even children are moral actors. For someone to be presumed innocent, it means that you do not believe that they are moral actors. What is it about a fetus that makes you believe that they are not moral actors? If they are not moral actors why are you trying to save them? I assume that you want to save them because you believe that they are moral actors, otherwise you wouldn't bother to save them. If they are moral actors, they cannot be innocent.