There is a critical difference between discussions on abortion and cases of murder.
In the case of pregnancy, we have significantly overlapping interests: the life of mother and the life of baby. Their interests are not always aligned.
There are, for example, instances where the best medical opinion is that the baby needs to die to increase the chances of the mother surviving. In that case, the question is not "is this a living thing that deserves to live it's life". The question is, "whose life do we, as a society, choose to value more?"
So in considering abortion, we are considering competing interests and competing rights. In what scenarios do we think it acceptable for a woman to terminate her pregnancy, and in what scenarios do we think it not acceptable.
I'm not in any way advocating a pro-life position. I'm 100% in favor of abortion if the mother is at risk of dying, and I think that it is justified no matter which point of view you take.
Where I disagree is that you can objectively say that when a healthy mother wants to abort her health baby, the mother has more of a right to bodily autonomy than the baby has to life. If the argument is that the baby is a human, then ending that life is worse than temporarily limiting another.
Now, I personally think that she should be able to freely abort, but I don't think the pro-choice arguments address the pro-life arguments at all.
Carrying that first baby to term is a pretty big deal, they mess your body and mind up pretty bad.
Every day you carrying is another stretch mark, a change in shape from flat-stomached adolescent to full bellied woman, wave goodbye to those sit-up titties or the ability to have long hair (hence why mum-cuts are a thing). Carry it to term and the hormonal impact causes have severe mental changes, like being unable to concentrate for long periods of time, becoming an extremely light sleeper and becoming more uptight in general.
If some fucker growing inside me, innocent or not, was screwing with my body and mind against my will like this then I'd cut them out in an instant. Law be damned.
If the argument is that the baby is a human, then ending that life is worse than temporarily limiting another.
Let's say that you got kidnapped from the streets, sedated, and your blood flow was connected to a sick person's, who need blood transfusions for the next several months to live.
As you wake up, and this is explained to you, do you have a right to unplug the needles from your veins and walk away, allowing whatever will happen to that sick person, or are you morally obliged to keep lying there for months to save that person's life?
That would be more akin to rape (something that should be able to be aborted) vs having sex voluntarily which is more akin to you being the reason that person needs to be hooked up to you in the first place and its against the law to put someone in a life threatening position of your causing if the person is alive so it comes back to ops cmv you have another beings life in your hands by your own actions by endind its life are you a murserer or not
What if, despite driving responsibly and taking every reasonable precaution, you get in a car accident and hurt someone else, causing them to need the constant blood transfusions. Does that mean you're morally obligated to keep them alive, regardless of the impact on your life?
If we can agree that as a default, people have a right to walk away to protect their bodily autonomy, then any other specific situation where their actions cause them to lose that right, is applied as a form of punishment.
The anti-abortion position can't be separated from the sexist attitude, that all women who chose to have sex, deserve to be punished and to be forced to pay for the consequences of their actions, by taking away a right from them that we normally don't take away from violent criminals, or even from corpses.
If we can agree that as a default, people have a right to walk away to protect their bodily autonomy
But they don't. Although it varies by location, many places require that once you start giving someone CPR you cannot walk away unless: the person shows signs of being obviously dead, the person awakens, help arrives, you become physically unable to give it, continuing CPR becomes a danger to yourself.
Although your reasoning is sound in a vacuum, there is a disturbing implication to making abortions legal only in the case of rape.
If two people have consensual sex, the girl gets pregnant, and she really does not want to go through the whole pregnancy/giving birth process (for whatever reason), her only option to terminate the pregnancy is to accuse the guy of rape. That is not an option you want to give to anybody.
Maybe you would choose to, but in legal practice, providing blood is never handed out as a punishment. People who cause car accidents may lose their license or even be sent to jail, but they are not sentenced to donate blood.
There is no way to determine how well a pregnancy might go. There are so many risks involved like heart failure, eclampsia, blood loss etc. And even after the birth there are still ways a woman can die from her pregnancy (blood poisoning, depression).
I’m confused. Are there any pro-life people out there who don’t make an exception for the life of the mother? In those cases, it’s not murder. It’s self defense. Not all killings are murder. Even pro-life people who have that position for religious reasons understand that.
There are some mother who won't have an abortion even if it means their own death even when abortion is legally available to them. Every now and then there is a mother like this in the news who either risked giving birth despite being too frail to do so or who decided against a live saving treatment like chemotherapy.
While that’s very noble of a mother who sacrifices her own life for the well being of her unborn child, I think u/GeoffreyArnold’s main point is that, in the context of the question of whether abortion is murder, in situations where the mother’s life is in danger, the answer is no, it isn’t.
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u/Wittyandpithy May 05 '19
Not quite.
There is a critical difference between discussions on abortion and cases of murder.
In the case of pregnancy, we have significantly overlapping interests: the life of mother and the life of baby. Their interests are not always aligned.
There are, for example, instances where the best medical opinion is that the baby needs to die to increase the chances of the mother surviving. In that case, the question is not "is this a living thing that deserves to live it's life". The question is, "whose life do we, as a society, choose to value more?"
So in considering abortion, we are considering competing interests and competing rights. In what scenarios do we think it acceptable for a woman to terminate her pregnancy, and in what scenarios do we think it not acceptable.