Abortion Discussion

robindch

Sarky wrote: »

"Life begins at conception" is a really, REALLY poor axiom.

It may well be a dreadful axoim, or at least one that's hard to argue in favour of, but it's still an axiom that some people have decided is true for the purposes of making some ethical choice. In that, it's structurally identical to people making a different choice that life "begins" at some equally arbitrary later point.

robindch

lazygal wrote: »

When one's goal is birth at any cost, one doesn't have room for any niggly doubts or grey areas.

Well, again to return to the "pro-life" position, when an ethical decision is declared that "life" begins at the point of conception or some time soon after that, then while the "life" of the foetus obviously depends on the life of the potential-mother-to-be, nonetheless, it's an easy ethical choice to decide that the "life" of the foetus and the life of the potential-mother-to-be are equally worth preserving - in such a case, it's easy to see why somebody might think that the emotions of the mother must take second place to the existence of the foetus.

As above, I'm not arguing one way or another on this, but I think this whole debate would be much easier if both sides recognized that both they and the other side are choosing an arbitrary point as the beginning of "life" (and therefore, the point at which a human's rights inhere), and both sides are deriving from that initial declaration, the rights of the foetus, the rights of the potential-mother-to-be and their ethical behaviour towards both, and their support, or otherwise, of both.

Sarky

robindch wrote: »

It may well be a dreadful axoim, or at least one that's hard to argue in favour of, but it's still an axiom that some people have decided is true for the purposes of making some ethical choice. In that, it's structurally identical to people making a different choice that life "begins" at some equally arbitrary later point.

You can't just pick a point where life begins when there isn't actually one. Well you can, but it's very foolish. That whole mode of thinking is a major part of what's wrong; too concerned with having clear black&white answers, no matter the cost. It never ends well.

robindch

Sarky wrote: »

You can't just pick a point where life begins when there isn't actually one.

You certainly can, and that's what the "pro-life" people have done -- a simple position, albeit an hard-to-argue-these-days one. It's no different from the "pro-choice" side deciding an equally arbitrary point prior to birth.

Another way of looking at it is to note that most people will agree that a baby, just after birth at nine months, certainly does have a "life" (and the rights that go with it). And therefore, that presumably just before birth a few minutes before, the same position holds with respect to the yet-to-be-born, but very-well-developer foetus. Same for a foetus delivered prematurely, at some survivable point before nine months -does the position of the foetus with respect to the mother's body confer rights or not? I believe both sides agree that it probably doesn't. Anyhow, once "life" is declared to exist when the foetus has not yet been born, then, well after that, it's just a question of each person deciding for themselves the arbitrary point at which "life" "starts" and its concomitant rights inhere. And the downstream positions line themselves up pretty much automatically from there.

This, btw, is the reason why I don't really intervene in this debate on one side or the other -- seems to me that neither side is really listening very carefully to the other, despite both sides doing structurally very similar things in declaring a war of rights and perceived rights of variable arguability and consistency.

Sarky

"Life begins at conception" really is nowhere near something like "Without brain function there's nobody to HAVE any rights before X weeks". If one is harder to argue, why is it no different to a view where the point is less precise, but far more accurate?

Please tell me I'm still feverish and I've missed something terribly important you're saying here

Piliger

robindch wrote: »

It may well be a dreadful axoim, or at least one that's hard to argue in favour of, but it's still an axiom that some people have decided is true for the purposes of making some ethical choice. In that, it's structurally identical to people making a different choice that life "begins" at some equally arbitrary later point.

Well no it is not equally arbitrary. Choosing conception is irrational and illogical and fully and completely arbitrary. Choosing a time in a reasonable, logical and commons sense way is not arbitrary. A bundle made up of a couple of cells being treated as human life is preposterous. It is also a complete copout from having to decide when human life begins and when it becomes entitled to be protected by society, and this is the core reason why the Catholic Church chose conception.

Lots of things in life are not certain. In fact few things of any importance are certain. I hate certainty. Life is shades of grey and that is how it is and always will be.

At some time between conception and 9 months later, there is no doubt in my mind that there comes a time when a foetus gains enough humanity to merit being consider as human, and society saying this life has rights. The difficult thing then becomes the decision of when. The truth is no one knows exactly when and no one will ever know when that change comes about, between a life form that has potential to become a human, and a life form that is reasonably identifiable as a human. So no answer is 100% right. It is a simply impossible task.

But that does not mean we (society) can cop out. We must make a decision and a choice, because otherwise there would be chaos, and appalling abuse of women and of foetuses. That choice must be based on reason and Science and common sense. Not on woo woo. In my own personal opinion the UK legislation, broadly speaking, has it about right. It may be wrong a few weeks this way or that. But again, I believe it is impossible to know exactly.

Then the question becomes how huch rights does it have and how do we balance that against the right of the host mother. Of course there is a difference between what society makes a collective decision about, and what individuals are entitled to believe. Individuals are entitled to hold their own view and if they believe in conception as the beginning of life, then so be it. They should not have an abortion. No one is forcing them.

But society is entitled to come to a view because that is what society is there for. I have no doubt about that in my mind. Society has a responsibility to offer rights and protection to new borns, to small children and to adults. So, it has a responsibility to offer rights to a foetus.

One of those rights that I believe is correct, is to assign the foetus the right to it's life not to be ended by a 3rd party from a relatively early time. Perhaps 6-10 weeks. An attacker who kills the foetus after that time should rightly be guilty of a criminal offence. Whether that should be full murder, from the get go, is not so certain in my mind. A woman who deliberately ends the life of her baby a month, for example, before full term should also be guilty of a criminal offence. In this case I would consider it full murder, subject to the same penalties and balancing circumstances.

But when society chooses that point in time, be it 24 or 26 weeks, it should be based on reason and common sense. Before that point in time, the woman host should have a full right to terminate her hosting (subject 'possibly' to other limits that society believes are in everyone's interest, such as gender selection) and after that point in time there should be a transition of rights away from the mother host to the foetus. That transition should involve a right to have the foetus removed and have the foetus take it's chances. Later that right should be stronger, and if the baby survives in reasonable physical health, then society should have the responsibility to take control of the delivered baby if it is rejected by the mother. The rights of a mother who's life in in danger of, say, cancer, also need to be balanced. But numbers of weeks need to be put on these decisions. They may not be perfect but they need to be made i order to protect everyone.

In my view no foetus should have it's life 'automatically' terminated, no matter when it's hosting is aborted, except out of humanitarian/moral considerations based on it's health being below a threshold needed for a reasonably fulfilling life. That decision should not be the mother's. It should be society's to make. And that's another moral maze in itself.

oldrnwisr

koth wrote: »

Yeah, the lack of brain really isn't that big a hurdle:rolleyes: (although YD almost prove that sarcastic remark to be true :P)

they're also stating that 90% of women where the foetus has terminal illness/fatal foetal abnormalities carry the pregnancy to term

The say that the number of 1500 on primetime is over-inflated, and should be about 700. I'll leave that aside and just see where they go with the 700.

They say only 36 women aborted out of the 700. They use the number of women with Irish addresses who aborted for Ground E as recorded by the HSE to prove their case.

That assumes that all 700 women, 1) gave Irish addresses.

2) went to England or Wales (don't know if all hospitals are recorded in those countries in HSE number, e.g. private hospitals or abortion clinics).

3) Had the abortion recorded under Ground E when they had the abortion.

There are supposedly 4,000 Irish women having abortions per annum. Are we really expected to believe that only 36 out 700 in the group outlined above had abortions?

and they have the cheek to complain that RTE treat the public as idiots! :rolleyes:

I don't think the numbers is the big problem with this argument. Even a cursory examination of the most recent UK abortion statistics shows that the numbers quoted by YD are plausible.

In 2012, there were 3982 women who claimed Irish residence and travelled to the UK for abortion. Of these, 96% were performed under ground C with just 142 (adjusted for scale) being performed under A,B,D & E combined. So I don't think that YD's claim of 36 is a million miles out.

The problem here is the logic of the underlying argument. As lazygal points out, they're saying that because most parents choose to continue the pregnancy that all parents should have to. That's just an argumentum ad populum. It's silly.

On a side note, I can understand why the numbers in cases like these are so low. Quite often these conditions are diagnosed in later stages of pregnancy at which time the emotional impact of such a diagnosis will be higher. I don't agree with the idea of continuing the pregnancy to satiate your own emotional state but I understand it.

robindch wrote: »

Well, again to return to the "pro-life" position, when an ethical decision is declared that "life" begins at the point of conception or some time soon after that, then while the "life" of the foetus obviously depends on the life of the potential-mother-to-be, nonetheless, it's an easy ethical choice to decide that the "life" of the foetus and the life of the potential-mother-to-be are equally worth preserving - in such a case, it's easy to see why somebody might think that the emotions of the mother must take second place to the existence of the foetus.

As above, I'm not arguing one way or another on this, but I think this whole debate would be much easier if both sides recognized that both they and the other side are choosing an arbitrary point as the beginning of "life" (and therefore, the point at which a human's rights inhere), and both sides are deriving from that initial declaration, the rights of the foetus, the rights of the potential-mother-to-be and their ethical behaviour towards both, and their support, or otherwise, of both.

I really dislike the use of the word arbitrary in this context. Arbitrary means "Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle".
I don't think any group within the debate would agree that their dividing point is arbitrary although like Sarky I think that the pro-life idea of "life begins at conception" is poor and is closer to arbitrary than any other point.
The problem for me is if you define conception as the dividing line based on the characteristics of the embryo (well, zygote) at that point then it becomes difficult to separate the unified organism from its component parts. More importantly, however, defining life as beginning at conception is a fallacy of equivocation. The embryo is not alive at this point in the sense that we commonly accept people as being alive.
This is why I advocate week 12 as a more sensible dividing line. It is around this point that brain patterns first become distinguishable. For me there is a nice symmetry here since we already use brain activity as a legal means of determining death so it makes sense to use it to determine life.

Cabaal

robindch wrote: »

Well, again to return to the "pro-life" position, when an ethical decision is declared that "life" begins at the point of conception or some time soon after that, then while the "life" of the foetus obviously depends on the life of the potential-mother-to-be, nonetheless, it's an easy ethical choice to decide that the "life" of the foetus and the life of the potential-mother-to-be are equally worth preserving - in such a case, it's easy to see why somebody might think that the emotions of the mother must take second place to the existence of the foetus.

This isn't about life though, thats a smoke screen used by the vast majority of the so called pro-life side.

This is about religious faith and beliefs and always has been,

The same people shouting about the wrongs of abortion in every case (rape, incest, risk to life) are the same people that said contraception was wrong and they are the type of people that made it illegal in Ireland.

Lets not forget that a shop could be and were fined (Virgin Megastores as an example) up until the mid 90's just for selling condoms, all because some religious people thought that stopping sperm from entering a women's body is the worst thing in the world!

In short we're in a situation where a bunch of people just want to push their beliefs onto others, its no different to a group of strict Muslims demanding that all women should wear the Hijab even if they are not of the muslim faith or people not of the catholic faith being shunned by the locals for having sex and getting pregnant outside of marriage....oh wait thats actually happened in Ireland already.

Morag

Some women choose to travel to spain, I know some who traveled to france as they had family there.

gaynorvader

A well-balanced article with some very interesting stories. It's amazing the amount of guilt/shame they all seemed to feel and how many later realised that it was foolish to feel that way. http://nymag.com/news/features/abortion-stories-2013-11/

old hippy

The Black Oil wrote: »

I get why the more vocal pro-life advocates stick to their guns. What I don't get is how they seem rather heartless at times.

aidan24326

robindch wrote: »

It may well be a dreadful axoim, or at least one that's hard to argue in favour of, but it's still an axiom that some people have decided is true for the purposes of making some ethical choice. In that, it's structurally identical to people making a different choice that life "begins" at some equally arbitrary later point.

To be fair it isn't a dreadful axiom. It's difficult to say exactly when 'life' begins as there is no absolute definition of what life is. Therefore any attempt to say when exactly it begins will inevitably fall foul of this uncertainty.

However, the human mind being what it is, and its fondness for cut-off points and discontinuity, it's inevitable that we would ask that question. And for me, conception is the only reasonable answer. That moment of conception may not be where I 'became' who and what I am but it was the moment when the probability of my my sittiing here now typing these words suddenly went from astronomically small to being very real.

And as much as I'm pro-choice that's a reality that we can't hide from.

Bannasidhe

aidan24326 wrote: »

To be fair it isn't a dreadful axiom. It's difficult to say exactly when 'life' begins as there is no absolute definition of what life is. Therefore any attempt to say when exactly it begins will inevitably fall foul of this uncertainty.

However, the human mind being what it is, and its fondness for cut-off points and discontinuity, it's inevitable that we would ask that question. And for me, conception is the only reasonable answer. That moment of conception may not be where I 'became' who and what I am but it was the moment when the probability of my my sittiing here now typing these words suddenly went from astronomically small to being very real.

And as much as I'm pro-choice that's a reality that we can't hide from.

But, and this is the crux for me, why are 'pro-lifers' not protesting about people who are declared 'brain dead' having their life support removed? In some cases this means allowing the person to starve to death as sustenance is withdrawn - if 'feeding' via a tube was continued such unfortunates could 'live' for decades.

Medical science and the Courts generally consider these people to be, to all intents and purposes, 'dead' - why is an embryo without any brain activity any different?

If 'life' begins at conception and brain activity is not a factor then surely those already born who no longer have any brain activity are as 'alive' as any embryo and are simply dependent on a machine rather than a womb to continue to be 'alive'? Therefore, logically, they cannot be 'deprived of their right to life'.

Of course, this would effectively end the donation of organs as - open to correction here - it is my understanding that the body has to be 'alive' just prior to harvesting the organs...

pauldla

aidan24326 wrote: »

To be fair it isn't a dreadful axiom. It's difficult to say exactly when 'life' begins as there is no absolute definition of what life is. Therefore any attempt to say when exactly it begins will inevitably fall foul of this uncertainty.

However, the human mind being what it is, and its fondness for cut-off points and discontinuity, it's inevitable that we would ask that question. And for me, conception is the only reasonable answer. That moment of conception may not be where I 'became' who and what I am but it was the moment when the probability of my my sittiing here now typing these words suddenly went from astronomically small to being very real.

And as much as I'm pro-choice that's a reality that we can't hide from.

It's a reasonable viewpoint, and probably not too far from my own if I stop to think about it. But there are other viewpoints on the matter.

Sarky

Bannasidhe wrote: »

But, and this is the crux for me, why are 'pro-lifers' not protesting about people who are declared 'brain dead' having their life support removed? In some cases this means allowing the person to starve to death as sustenance is withdrawn - if 'feeding' via a tube was continued such unfortunates could 'live' for decades.

Medical science and the Courts generally consider these people to be, to all intents and purposes, 'dead' - why is an embryo without any brain activity any different?

If 'life' begins at conception and brain activity is not a factor then surely those already born who no longer have any brain activity are as 'alive' as any embryo and are simply dependent on a machine rather than a womb to continue to be 'alive'? Therefore, logically, they cannot be 'deprived of their right to life'.

Of course, this would effectively end the donation of organs as - open to correction here - it is my understanding that the body has to be 'alive' just prior to harvesting the organs...

Sort of. The body should be alive, that is to say the cells should still be working away on whatever nutrients are left without blood pumping them around. They tend to keep tipping along for a while after death, because that's what they do, whether there's a brain there or not. If they stop, they die and begin rotting, and you've got a lump of dead meat instead of a useful organ. With many organ transplants you're fooling the organ that it's still in its original healthy body as much as you're fooling the recipient's body that its original liver/heart/whatever suddenly got better all by itself.

Think of that lovely video that did the rounds a couple of months ago of the really, REALLY fresh squid dish in Japan- it was definitely a very dead squid, but when you poured soy sauce on it the salt in the sauce caused a load of still-alive nerves to fire off and move the tentacles around. If squid transplants were a thing, that's the kind of fresh you'd be aiming for.

The person who used to own the body, not terribly important in such cases how long ago they shuffled off. Big difference between a clump of a few trillion living cells that make up a grown human and the person occupying them.

But of course pro-life birth-fetishists don't like to think about that.

Pherekydes

aidan24326 wrote: »

To be fair it isn't a dreadful axiom. It's difficult to say exactly when 'life' begins as there is no absolute definition of what life is. Therefore any attempt to say when exactly it begins will inevitably fall foul of this uncertainty.

However, the human mind being what it is, and its fondness for cut-off points and discontinuity, it's inevitable that we would ask that question. And for me, conception is the only reasonable answer. That moment of conception may not be where I 'became' who and what I am but it was the moment when the probability of my my sittiing here now typing these words suddenly went from astronomically small to being very real.

And as much as I'm pro-choice that's a reality that we can't hide from.

Did you, as you are now, come into being at the moment of conception? What makes you you? Surely you're a collection of memories, experiences, learning and so on, that you collect throughout your life? We are all born as blank slates. We have to learn everything.

At conception, your gender isn't even set. At conception, you are not yet you.

mbiking123

Pherekydes wrote: »

Did you, as you are now, come into being at the moment of conception? What makes you you? Surely you're a collection of memories, experiences, learning and so on, that you collect throughout your life? We are all born as blank slates. We have to learn everything.

At conception, your gender isn't even set. At conception, you are not yet you.

When do you believe a person comes 'into being'

Sarky

mbiking123 wrote: »

When do you believe a person comes 'into being'

It's an ongoing process. You're still doing it. So am I. Won't stop until we're dead. This is why arbitrary lines are a stupid way to go. But it mostly started once you had brain function some time after 10 weeks or so in utero.

Bannasidhe

mbiking123 wrote: »

When do you believe a person comes 'into being'

For me it is when they become self aware.

'I' am hungry.
'I' am cold.
'I' am happy.
'I' am sad.

'I' am thinking.

aidan24326

Bannasidhe wrote: »

But, and this is the crux for me, why are 'pro-lifers' not protesting about people who are declared 'brain dead' having their life support removed?

Not exactly the same thing. A person declared brain dead should absolutely have their life terminated as they no longer have any possibility of living a normal life. They had their chance though, the terminated embryo didn't.

Medical science and the Courts generally consider these people to be, to all intents and purposes, 'dead' - why is an embryo without any brain activity any different?

That's a tough one. At what point does an embryo/foetus have brain activity? How do we define brain activity? A 6 month foetus can hear sounds, suck its thumb, respond to music etc Can a 4 week embryo? Obviously not. But how do we draw an arbitrary line in the sand that separates the 4 week embryo from the foetus/baby/person it is to become? Because any such line can only be drawn arbitrarily. People will say that a foetus is just a parasite but a newborn baby is little better as it is totally helpless and left to its own devices will certainly die.

mbiking123

Bannasidhe wrote: »

For me it is when they become self aware.

'I' am hungry.
'I' am cold.
'I' am happy.
'I' am sad.

'I' am thinking.

so therefore with that view an abortion one day before delivery is ok

Pherekydes

mbiking123 wrote: »

When do you believe a person comes 'into being'

For me, it would have been some time between 2 and 8. Many of my values were learned or instilled in me during this time. Though the old saying goes, you never stop learning. And changing.

Pherekydes

Bannasidhe wrote: »

'I' am thinking.

Cogito ergo sum.

mbiking123

Sarky wrote: »

There's a big difference between winning a debate and everyone realising they're talking to a brick wall and refusing to waste their time with your crap.

I'm not entirely sure you've quite grasped that just yet.

...

mbiking123

Pherekydes wrote: »

For me, it would have been some time between 2 and 8. Many of my values were learned or instilled in me during this time. Though the old saying goes, you never stop learning. And changing.

So is post abortion ok, since thinking did not start until 2 ?

GCU Flexible Demeanour

aidan24326 wrote: »

It's difficult to say exactly when 'life' begins as there is no absolute definition of what life is.

I'd agree that's part of the issue.

I do see the point that some are making about use of the term "arbitrary"; it's not that anyone is just throwing a few dice and taking the score as the start of life. Everyone has some rationale for what they plump for. But I think we can still reframe the same essential point, that there's no uncontestible natural starting point.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Medical science and the Courts generally consider these people to be, to all intents and purposes, 'dead' - why is an embryo without any brain activity any different?

I think the difference is in the potential. In a few months time, the brain dead patient will still be brain dead. However, in a few months time, that embryo will have brain activity. And, a few months after that, the embryo will be a citizen of Ireland.

Maybe that does or doesn't require a different response. But brain death at the end of life is a different concept to 'brain death' at the start.

Pherekydes

mbiking123 wrote: »

So is post abortion ok, since thinking did not start until 2 ?

My own position is that abortion should be up to the woman. The individual woman.

Sarky

aidan24326 wrote: »

But how do we draw an arbitrary line in the sand that separates the 4 week embryo from the foetus/baby/person it is to become?

Brain activity can be measured. So can the level of connectivity within the brain. We've established when a foetus brain undergoes a rush of increasing the connections between cells (synaptogenesis, I believe it's called), and when it's finally complicated enough to be called a life. Without those connections, all you have is a lump of wobbly grey matter that's as much a person as the liver or pancreas it shares a body with.

Now there's no hard and fast timeframe for this to occur, it happens slower for some embryos, faster for others, and when you give or take a few days on nailing down exactly when conception occurred, you have a week or two window where this growth spurt happens. And even during the growth spurt there's no one point from non-person to person. Life just doesn't work in the black and white spectrum people so often want it to.

But it's a much more thought-out point than "life begins at conception".

Bannasidhe

aidan24326 wrote: »

Not exactly the same thing. A person declared brain dead should absolutely have their life terminated as they no longer have any possibility of living a normal life. They had their chance though, the terminated embryo didn't.

Define 'normal' life?

In Ireland this is not taken into consideration when discussing abortion - if it were there would not be a case on the way to the UN now would there?

That's a tough one. At what point does and embryo/foetus have brain activity? How do we define brain activity? A 6 month foetus can hear sounds, suck it's thumb, respond to music etc Can a 4 week embryo? Obviously not. But how do we draw an arbitrary line in the sand that separates the 4 week embryo from the foetus/baby/person it is to become? Because any such line can only be drawn arbitrarily. People will say that a foetus is just a parasite but a newborn baby is little better as it is totally helpless and left to its own devices will certainly die.

New born babies can and do express a sense of 'self'. I am hungry being the most frequently voiced.

Bit of a developmental leap between a 4 week embryo and a 6 month fetus - who here has advocated termination of a 6 moth pregnancy unless the fetus has no chance of living what you call a 'normal' life - so what is the difference between them and the 'brain dead' person on life support? Neither will ever be sentient and both will be utterly dependent their whole existence so Why 'protect' the life of one, but not the other?

mbiking123

Pherekydes wrote: »

My own position is that abortion should be up to the woman. The individual woman.

The question was post abortion up to 2 years of age. Are you really saying it should be up to the woman ? I think possibly some crossed lines here !