Roe vs Wade - getting overturned?

[SteveH]

But it's still my body my choice.
If someone needs a kidney can we hook them up to you to share your kidney function?

Completely irrelevant comment.

[Nearly Sane]

Completely irrelevant comment.

Why?

[SteveH]

Why?

What has someone needing a kidney got to do with abortion?

[Alan Burns]

However everything becomes very straightforward when you consider that the zygote is just that, a zygote - it isn't Bob or Jim or Eric nor is it Sara or Jill or Erica. It has the potential to become one, or more of the above or two zygotes have the potential to become one of the above, but the zygote itself isn't any of them yet.

zygote, embryo, foetus, baby, infant, teenager ....

These are all just labels assigned to different stages of human life which began at the moment of conception.
Deliberate termination at any one of these stages has the same result - a life that no longer exists.

[Aruntraveller]

zygote, embryo, foetus, baby, infant, teenager ....

These are all just labels assigned to different stages of human life which began at the moment of conception.
Deliberate termination at any one of these stages has the same result - a life that no longer exists.

Back at your God. Why does he exterminate so many poor children?

[SteveH]

zygote, embryo, foetus, baby, infant, teenager ....

These are all just labels assigned to different stages of human life which began at the moment of conception.
Deliberate termination at any one of these stages has the same result - a life that no longer exists.

Indeed. So what?

[Sriram]

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/07/03/abortion-law-roe-v-wade-history-orig-dp-kj.cnn

**************

The Catholic Church once allowed for abortions. Everything changed in 1873

Until the 1880s, abortions were morally acceptable and legal, with even the Catholic Church approving of the procedure before 'quickening.' Historians say the desire to ban the procedure had more to do with business than women's health.

**************

[Outrider]

What has someone needing a kidney got to do with abortion?

It isn't the need for a kidney that's the equivalence, it's the idea of forcing someone to serve as a dialysis machine for someone else being compared to forcing a woman to be an incubator for a baby that she doesn't want.

I feel it's a little more complicated than that - no analogy is ever perfect - but I also figure it's an awful lot more complicated than the 'life begins at conception' line of thinking gives rise to as well.

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

What has someone needing a kidney got to do with abortion?

I may be wrong, but BeRational may be alluding to the seminal pro-choice essay on the matter by Judith Thomson. This uses the analogy of a famous violinist in need of a kidney.

If you've not read it I suggest you look it out as it is very good - it starts from a presumption that a foetus has a right to life but its conclusion, using the analogy, is that this right cannot over-ride a woman's right to have jurisdiction over her body.

[ProfessorDavey]

zygote, embryo, foetus, baby, infant, teenager ....

These are all just labels assigned to different stages of human life which began at the moment of conception.
Deliberate termination at any one of these stages has the same result - a life that no longer exists.

I note you have completely side-swiped my point about twinning and fusion.

So which is it AB.

1. The zygote is Bob or
2. The zygote is something that may (or may not) become Bob at some later stage.

You don't seem to want to address this key point, presumably because by answering 1 (the RCC official line) you end up in the untenable situation of having to argue when Jim's life starts (for twins) or what happens to Sarah and Jill, if they are two zygotes that fuse and result in a single person.

[ProfessorDavey]

I think it's the potential to be a person that pro lifers are arguing should be preserved.

In some cases but not all. The official RCC line isn't that the zygote has the potential to become a person, it is that the zygote is a person and that all stages of development from the zygote are morally equivalent because all are the same person. AB is parroting that line.

[jeremyp]

Agree with this, but the last sentence cuts both ways: I am not impressed with the common slogan "my body, my choice", because, as you say, "we are not talking about one life but two".

But one is definitely a person with all the rights thereof. I don't think the other one is, at least not for around 24 weeks.

[jeremyp]

I think it's the potential to be a person that pro lifers are arguing should be preserved.

How a medical ethicist thinks this is all ''straightforward'' is a tad frightening.

Every time a woman has her period, a potential person goes down the toilet. Around half off all pregnancies end in miscarriage, often without the mother knowing it. More ends of potential people. Your god is a monster.

[ProfessorDavey]

How a medical ethicist thinks this is all ''straightforward'' is a tad frightening.

It wasn't my intention to suggest the whole argument about the moral status of an embryo or foetus is straightforward. Actually quite the opposite - I was railing against those that come out with the simplistic (and to my mind untenable) argument that "life begins as conception". Coming out with such a glib and simplistic claim ends up with you tying yourself in biological and metaphysical knots as I indicate. The straightforward part is to strip all that away by recognising that an argument that "life begins as conception" is logically untenable. But don't just take my word for it - Mary Warnock spent two years looking into this for her report that lead to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act also took this view. And, this also from Jean Porter:

"until the possibility of twinning is past, we cannot say that this presently existing [embryo] is definitely identical with one specific human being which will exist in the future"

None of this provides an answer as to when life does begin, and I think that is an incredible complicated question that doesn't lend itself to a simple answer and likely we cannot ascribe any single point that defines when life begins, but we can see a gradual development of important features that are critical for personhood and we may therefore consider that the rights of the developing embryo or foetus also develop over time. Actually trying to determine some arbitrary point when life begins seems to be missing the point - the key issues seem to me to be:

1. What is the moral status of the developing embryo and foetus at various stages of development
2. What rights does the developing embryo and foetus at various stages of development
3. How do those rights conflict with the rights of the mother and how do we resolve those conflicts

[ProfessorDavey]

Every time a woman has her period, a potential person goes down the toilet. Around half off all pregnancies end in miscarriage, often without the mother knowing it. More ends of potential people. Your god is a monster.

Indeed - if you end up in a discussion of potential, why should potential only start with the zygote. While it is certainly true that the zygote could become a person if certain things happen (e.g. implantation, development of a primitive streak) and other things don't happen (e.g. spontaneous abortion etc), the same can be said for an oocyte or a spermatocyte - the difference is that one further thing (fusion with spermatocyte or oocyte) needs to happen. An oocyte, a spermatocyte and a zygote all have the potential to become a person.

[Spud]

It wasn't my intention to suggest the whole argument about the moral status of an embryo or foetus is straightforward. Actually quite the opposite - I was railing against those that come out with the simplistic (and to my mind untenable) argument that "life begins as conception". Coming out with such a glib and simplistic claim ends up with you tying yourself in biological and metaphysical knots as I indicate. The straightforward part is to strip all that away by recognising that an argument that "life begins as conception" is logically untenable. But don't just take my word for it - Mary Warnock spent two years looking into this for her report that lead to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act also took this view. And, this also from Jean Porter:

"until the possibility of twinning is past, we cannot say that this presently existing [embryo] is definitely identical with one specific human being which will exist in the future"

None of this provides an answer as to when life does begin, and I think that is an incredible complicated question that doesn't lend itself to a simple answer and likely we cannot ascribe any single point that defines when life begins, but we can see a gradual development of important features that are critical for personhood and we may therefore consider that the rights of the developing embryo or foetus also develop over time. Actually trying to determine some arbitrary point when life begins seems to be missing the point - the key issues seem to me to be:

This is ridiculous. Whether it becomes two individuals or one, a Zygote is still life.

[Spud]

1. What is the moral status of the developing embryo and foetus at various stages of development
2. What rights does the developing embryo and foetus at various stages of development
3. How do those rights conflict with the rights of the mother and how do we resolve those conflicts

Think of it from this foetus' perspective, for a moment: it is female but its parents want a male. Does she have the right to live? Yes, even if she is an inconvenience to her parents.
So the only moral situation in which a fetus can be terminated is if the mother's life is endangered.

[ProfessorDavey]

Think of it from this foetus' perspective, for a moment:

To have 'perspective' requires sentience and higher consciousness. So if we are talking about a zygote or very early embryo then asking about its perspective is completely meaningless. The zygote or embryo may develop perspective, but it doesn't have it during the early stages of development.

[ProfessorDavey]

This is ridiculous. Whether it becomes two individuals or one, a Zygote is still life.

It isn't ridiculous - it is incredibly important if you subscribe to the view that the zygote is Bob, not just that the zygote has the potential to develop into Bob. The claims of individual continuity of personhood are completely derailed by twinning and fusion - see the Jean Porter quote.

[ProfessorDavey]

... a Zygote is still life.

You need to be more specific as to what you mean by 'life' Spud. Sure a zygote is alive and genetically human, but so are the oocyte and spermatocyte that fused to form it. And for that matter are the cells in a blood sample (even in the case where the donor might have died so they may be the last cells with that genetic make up left). So you need to be far more specific as to why the zygote is life in a manner that the gametes (or blood are not).

Rather than implying that it is somehow self evident that "life begins at conception", as if anyone claiming otherwise is bonkers, why not argue your case. Because I do not agree, so try to persuade me with a cogent argument as to why "life begins at conception" rather than glibly asserting it as if this is some kind of self-evident truth. It isn't.

[Nearly Sane]

Think of it from this foetus' perspective, for a moment: it is female but its parents want a male. Does she have the right to live? Yes, even if she is an inconvenience to her parents.
So the only moral situation in which a fetus can be terminated is if the mother's life is endangered.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1543409662816665600.html

[SteveH]

Think of it from this foetus' perspective, for a moment: it is female but its parents want a male. Does she have the right to live? Yes, even if she is an inconvenience to her parents.
So the only moral situation in which a fetus can be terminated is if the mother's life is endangered.

How you get from "no abortion if it's the wrong sex" (with which I agree) to "only if the mother's life is endangered" is a mystery. 

[SteveH]

It isn't the need for a kidney that's the equivalence, it's the idea of forcing someone to serve as a dialysis machine for someone else being compared to forcing a woman to be an incubator for a baby that she doesn't want.

I feel it's a little more complicated than that - no analogy is ever perfect - but I also figure it's an awful lot more complicated than the 'life begins at conception' line of thinking gives rise to as well.

O.

It certainly is more complicated. People have to take some responsibility for their actions - no woman has to get pregnant nowadays, and if they do, they should not regard abortion as just another form of contraception. However, I think the morning-after pill should be available over the counter, since it is ridiculous to think of the 24 hours or less old embryo as a human life: it cant suffer, so doesn't need protecting from suffering.

[SteveH]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1543409662816665600.html

That is an extremely silly analogy. Women are biologically designed, by God or evolution, to carry a foetus for nine months. That's just the way thigs are: sexist of evolution or God to design them that way, maybe, but we're stuck with it. We are not designed to have interchangeable kidneys; that's only been possible for a few decades, thanks to modern surgery. The compulsory donation scenario is very similar to ones dreamed up by people desperate to find fault with utilitarian ethics, and is just as ridiculous.
The arguments of the extreme abortion-on-demand brigade and the extreme anti brigade are alike stupid. A position somewhere in between is the only reasonable one.

[Nearly Sane]

That is an extremely silly analogy. Women are biologically designed, by God or evolution, to carry a foetus for nine months. That's just the way thigs are: sexist of evolution or God to design them that way, maybe, but we're stuck with it. We are not designed to have interchangeable kidneys; that's only been possible for a few decades, thanks to modern surgery. The compulsory donation scenario is very similar to ones dreamed up by people desperate to find fault with utilitarian ethics, and is just as ridiculous.
The arguments of the extreme abortion-on-demand brigade and the extreme anti brigade are alike stupid. A position somewhere in between is the only reasonable one.

  It covers the idea of refusing abortion. We are 'designed' to be able to donate organs, once we have developed the technology. Your teleological approach to women is just the same. It's just your discomfort with the consistent logic that is the problem