After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?

[Austin]

quining - the point of birth IS a bright line. Prior to birth, the fetus has a direct impact on the body of the mother. After birth, the baby does not.

Another point is that the continuum concept is all well and good, but does little to inform anyone's decision-making. We need to have these silly lines because the law needs to be based upon something, because it is real people who are affected. The abstract is one thing, but we are ultimately left with the unsatisfying subjectivity of these positions in reality.

[emmiedahl]

This is partly my point, quining. It can't be "is life sustainable outside the mother's body" as that is a whole other can of worms. Can we then say it is wrong to abort if surgery could remove and incubate the child, and what justification would we have for saying that?

2xx, we've (collectively, as a species) got a further difficulty with the concept of "personhood". The definition of "person" doesn't mean "someone who it is wrong to kill". Even if we accept that a newborn baby is a person, would it automatically be wrong to kill it?

My impression, and I could be wrong, is that the late term abortion procedures are much easier on the mother's body than a c-section or induced labor. I do think it should legally be her choice. You should not have to endure a more difficult medical procedure than necessary to preserve the life of a parasite.

I think 99.99999999% of women are dealing with issues other than "I decided I don't want the baby after all". And this is significant to me, because it shows that there is no reason for government intervention. Government regulation will pose undue challenges on the women having a late term abortion for health reasons.

We do have to draw the line somewhere. I think the point at which a mother could walk away and leave the care to someone else without any physical consequences is a good line. Until then, the fetus is a guest. Is aborting a perfectly healthy fetus at 38 weeks gestation that poses no threat to the mother morally okay? In my moral system, it is not. But this is my personal, religiously based moral system, not something that I wish to impose upon others. No one should have to justify their health decisions to other people.

You know what kills more healthy humans than late term abortion? Guns. Buckets of water. The cords on your miniblinds. Regulating late term abortion because of a handful of viable fetuses that might not be born is just a way to keep women's health decisions under government control.

eta: the real question for me is: when is it okay for the government to force you to sacrifice your health, even a little bit, for another person? And the answer for me is: never. Once the baby is born, its existence does not affect the mother's body in any way unless she allows it.

[2xx1xy1JD]

chiccy - I read over the entire article to analyze the logic.

I found:

1. Argument via re-definition:

Murder/infanticide gets redefined as "post-birth abortion", which is as much of a fallacy as calling abortion baby-killing. The correct definition is deliberately ignored, the term is misapplied, and the conclusion is that the moral quality of the properly-defined action gets carried over to the re-defined action.

2. More argument via re-definition:

Personhood gets completely redefined. They start mentioning "non-human persons", which I suppose are animals. They say that only a being that can form aims is actually a person, but fail to really make a full argument for this altered definition. WHY would we say that a particular capability defines someone as a person? They really don't say.

There wasn't much logic to the argument. It was just, "if we completely redefine murder and person, using definitions that we pulled out of our ass, then we can argue that killing babies is perfectly fine but killing an animal should bring the death penalty".

[2xx1xy1JD]

Ditto again to emmie.

On a personal level, a mother may evaluate the morality of two choices, and consider gestational age, severity of the issue, likely lifespan, ability of that fetus to experience pain, etc.

That's different than government stepping in to dictate to a pregnant women what they decision will be, by legally controlling what she does with her body.

[JesusFightClub]

What exactly do you mean by "people need to be killed"? It sounds pretty chilling.

Are you talking about self-defense?

Are you describing conditions of war? War has its own hellish dynamic, but I think we can draw a distinction between deliberately killing innocent civilians vs. civilians being killed in a conflict where the aim was not to target them but to stop an enemy attack. There are obviously some very blurry lines, and we know that children are particularly vulnerable to war, so I'd also say that this is a reason that war must be something that we try to avoid if at all possible.

I could think of a few reasons, but the three which are most prominent are war/revolution, death penalty (which there are huge issues with, granted) and self defence.

There are sometimes tactical and strategic reasons for killing civilians. Moral reasons are above my pay grade, as it were, but I suspect there are none. I can think of political, strategic, tactical, but not moral. Unless you count politics as morality...

As we discussed, this is a thorny question indeed. It confuses me a lot, partly because I see a huge disconnect in what people say and what they do, and where they draw lines.

[Elle]

Ah, eugenics. Hitler was a fan. Start allowing "after-birth abortion" of "undesirable" children, and it will expand beyond an issue of euthanizing those with absolutely no chance at a life not lived in horrible pain. It would expand beyond those with no brains in their heads, beyond those with conditions incredibly sinful with pretty much no chance of living longer than a few months. There's a big difference between palliative care and just setting a baby in a room to die. Setting a baby in a room to die is crueler than euthanasia, but there is a better option that doesn't call for a doctor to literally actively kill a baby. Once the Pandora's box is opened...

[quiningseven]

I think the point at which a mother could walk away and leave the care to someone else without any physical consequences is a good line.[\quote]

I guess I just disagree- as I feel that once technology gets to the point where an 8 week fetus can be removed without any more physical consequence to the mother than an abortion she should still be able to decide whether she wants that potential life to continue to develop. I see where you are coming from, though.

[bananacat]

I know that I'm being nit-picky, but it is really driving me nuts that so many people automatically call a pregnant woman "mother". Plenty of pregnant women, even those seeking abortions, have children already, but there are also plenty who don't. Can we refer to pregnant women as just "woman" or even "pregnant woman"?

[celestial]

I could think of a few reasons, but the three which are most prominent are war/revolution, death penalty (which there are huge issues with, granted) and self defence.

There are sometimes tactical and strategic reasons for killing civilians. Moral reasons are above my pay grade, as it were, but I suspect there are none. I can think of political, strategic, tactical, but not moral. Unless you count politics as morality...

But I still don't see what this has to do with babies, unless possibly we're talking about war. The death penalty and self-defence are moot points when talking about whether it's ever ok to kill an infant, as they lack the cognitive abilities to commit a crime worthy of the death penalty, and are not able to physically endanger anyone in a way that would necessitate self-defense. So, the possibility of war aside, when exactly would infants need to be killed? Just trying to understand your POV, as it's really different from my own.

[desertvixen]

the real question for me is: when is it okay for the government to force you to sacrifice your health, even a little bit, for another person? And the answer for me is: never. Once the baby is born, its existence does not affect the mother's body in any way unless she allows it.

This. Completely and entirely.

[2xx1xy1JD]

One other logical fallacy in this argument:

The law doesn't actually say that a fetus is worthless, or that there are no consequences to killing it.

Rather, it permits a pregnant woman to have an abortion.

If someone else beat the woman and caused her to lose the baby, or if a hospital performed an abortion without consent, there would be legal hell to pay.

[DarkAnts]

My issue with this is that my belief in choice is based on a belief in medical autonomy and privacy. Once the baby leaves your body, it is no longer your personal health issue.

I consider it to be euthanization if the child can survive outside the womb. This is the point where the fetus goes from being a parasite to being a baby.

[quiningseven]

I know that I'm being nit-picky, but it is really driving me nuts that so many people automatically call a pregnant woman "mother". Plenty of pregnant women, even those seeking abortions, have children already, but there are also plenty who don't. Can we refer to pregnant women as just "woman" or even "pregnant woman"?

Not nit-picky, it's a good point. It wasn't intentional, just continuing the use from the previous poster.