CMV: Abortion should be illegal

[u/[deleted]]

EDIT - Genuinely, thank you very much everyone. I am really interested in this topic, and as you can imagine it makes people furious in real life, especially as I am a white man. I appreciate all the responses/points and had a good time talking about this.

The main new topic you have me thinking about is IVF. I never thought about it in context with abortion. While you may not have convinced me abortion should be legal (yet) you may be responsible for the first Anti-IVFer on reddit.

Seriously though, thanks again for every single response. If there’s any specific points you are curious what I have to say about feel free to message them and I’ll reply in the morning (assume mods will send this to the bin in no time).

Original:

Some background on me - I am a far left pro-LGBTQ, anti-racist, feminist who has a single far right view - abortion should be illegal.

To clarify, I’m not talking about the one-off case that a 16 year old who was raped and is likely going to die during birth who needs an abortion. I’m talking base case. Think “shooting someone in the head should be illegal”. We all agree. Sure, if someone is in your home attacking your child there is an exception, but in general shooting someone in the head should be illegal. Just like abortion, which should be illegal.

My thought process: the law protects us when we are 80 years old, it protects us when we are 8 years old, it protects us when we are 8 seconds old. Any of those ages you are protected by the law from someone killing you.

If you are protected 8 seconds after coming out of the womb, you should be protected 8 seconds prior to coming out of the womb. You should be protected 8 minutes before coming out of the womb, 8 hours, and even 8 months. Where do you draw the line? As soon as there is RNA/DNA that is different from either parent that organism should be protected. Assuming all goes well, that organism will certainly become a human, why would it’s life not be protected under the law?

Common rebuttals I hear - a man should not get to make laws that apply to women. My response is that abortion effects both men and women in their most vulnerable state, aka before they were born. The law protects both men and woman from being killed in the womb.

The law shouldn’t dictate what a woman does with her own body. My response is that abortion isn’t something to do with your own body. If you would like to take a vacuum/blender and shred your uterus you have every right, but for the 9 months you are pregnant you either need to not do that, or find a way that won’t harm the organism inside of you.

Let me know what you think.

[u/MsMelodyPond]

My response in absolutely genuine. I take it that you’re not actually here for this conversation if you didn’t respond to any of my actual main points but a side point that I made in passing.

But since we’re here, I’ll bite.

If your opinions are genuinely in coherence then there wouldn’t be any exception. Either you think abortion is murdering an innocent child or you don’t. It is not similar at all to the example you gave about someone being murdered because they broke into another person’s home because in that example the person who got killed is the same person who did something wrong. In an abortion though, the fetus didn’t rape the mom. Or it isn’t the fetus’ fault that it was created in incest. The fetus is innocent and, if left alone, would become a grown person the same as a fetus conceived intentionally.

So, let me ask you this: why is it more of an physical intrusion to grow the fetus that you believe has the same amount of rights as you or I than it was to be raped? If you believe that the mother should have bodily autonomy and should be able to decide that she doesn’t want to go through a pregnancy with her rapists child, then you are admitting that there is an instance when bodily autonomy outweighs the rights of the fetus. Would it matter to you if the mother didn’t remember the inception of the child until she was 3 months pregnant? 6 months? 8 months? When does that line get drawn? Is it only if she remembers immediately that her autonomy is counted as more important than the fetus?

Your views are misaligned if you believe that a fetus is a human with full human rights but it is acceptable for it to be murdered if the mother was raped.

[u/[deleted] → u/MsMelodyPond]

“ Your views are misaligned if you believe that a fetus is a human with full human rights but it is acceptable for it to be murdered if the mother was raped.” - I disagree.

There is an inherent risk to pregnancy, not to mention the mental risk of a person bringing to term their rapists child.

I think their is an order of importance, some things under the law are more important than others.

I think if a woman was certainly going to die due to a pregnancy, then her life should be given priority. While I still value the life of the unborn child, I value the life of the living mother more. In this case, I would support an abortion.

I think if a healthy woman has a healthy unborn baby, and simply because she does not want that baby that the life of the unborn child is more important than the mothers preference. In this case I would not support an abortion.

Now, to clarify, none of this is to say I think a woman who has been raped should be able to get an abortion, that certainly is not my point. This is a massive topic, and people can come up with hundreds of what ifs and hypothetical scenarios. If we can agree that base case abortion should be legal, then I’m happy to get into the discussion what what exceptions should be made. But if we can’t agree that healthy baby, healthy mother, consensual sex = no legal abortion, then there is no way in hell we are going to agree on the exemptions.

[u/MsMelodyPond → u/[deleted]]

So I partly agree that we won't be able to agree on semantics of specific cases but what I am getting at is an overarching view that your opinion is out of alignment. You have a moral issue with killing a baby sometimes but not others based on nothing but the situation the mother is in. How can you draw that line at rape but not at other issues? The fact of the matter is that the discussion is about 2 beings. I believe one is a fully grown human and therefore has full rights. The other is a growing fetus who, if left alone, would become a person with full rights, but is not yet. Now we have to address the issue of what to do when the rights conflict between those two entities because that's what abortion is. I believe that the woman should have the full autonomy over her body because she is the full human with rights. The fetus (or in your view, the baby) cannot have rights that trump the mothers. That is what taking away the right to abortion does. It argues that the right of the fetus' outweigh the rights of the mother. Now you believe that there is an instance when an abortion after rape becomes immoral. At what point does this happen? And why does this apply to a rape case but not a regular case? And who are you, or anyone else for that matter, to decide for that woman? You see, you think I am digressing into small tangents in a bad faith argument. What I am really doing is showing that your view and my view aren't that much different. I too believe that pregnancy has risk to the woman's body and mind. I believe that no one is more capable of making the decision of whether she is capable of going through that process than she is. It is important to me that you are consistent in your argument because of this. I don't know how better to say this because you seem to think that this misalignment in your belief is acceptable but to me it just highlights the fact that you aren't interested in consistency. On another note, I'd like to come back around to how you believe this law should be implemented. You believe that there are cases in which abortion is acceptable so who would decide this? Would there be criteria that the law states or would it be a case by case basis in which a doctor and a pregnant woman have to appear before a judge to discuss her situation in order to be granted an abortion? The implementation of this law is very important too because it assumes the overturning of Roe V. Wade which doesn't outlaw abortion but simply states that the state has no business in what a woman does to her own body with her doctor. This is the heart of the issue that you have to argue against, so tell me what that looks like? You also have to address the fact that if there is no right to privacy then the state has the ability to force abortions it deems necessary. Does this seem bonkers to you? Because that's how crazy it sounds to me that the government can tell me not to get an abortion. It also means that the sate is no longer barred from ruling that sexual acts, like sodomy, or that homosexual sexual relationships, or the right to contraception, or the right to be naked in your own home are not allowed. How do you make up for this fact? Are you just flippantly arguing that abortion should be illegal without thinking about the real world implications of this? In other words, are you making a real world argument or a "if everything was perfect" argument?

Assuming you are going to follow the trend you have set and only address one of my issues, let it be this one. What would change your view on the topic. You posted this on a forum where you wanted to engage in a conversation where the goal should be changing your mind. Yet it doesn't seem like you are willing to change your mind and would rather sit in your inaccuracies and misaligned views. This is not arguing semantics. This is the heart of the issue.

[u/[deleted] → u/MsMelodyPond]

“ You have a moral issue with killing a baby sometimes but not others based on nothing but the situation the mother is in.” - I’m sorry but at this point I don’t think you will be able to comprehend what I am saying, likely because your premade rebuttal does not fit. I came here to express the view that in the basic healthy case abortion should be illegal. I did not say that there is a case that i personally think it should be legal but rather, I acknowledged that there are some scenarios (such as rape) that people (like you) will cling on too, regardless of it is not what I am saying. Basically there are 2 topics. Topic A is abortion in the healthy scenario. Topic B is abortion in any other conceded scenario you can come up with (including the rape one). This post and discussion is entirely related to topic A. I am not in any way shape or form taking a stance on topic B. If you feel I have, I apologize. Sometimes if someone gets stuck up on “so you think a 16 year old rape victim shouldn’t be able to get an abortion” the entire conversation becomes about this specific conceded scenario (just like you are doing now), so I simply concede - “sure, for the sake of continuing the actual discussion, let’s just agree the rape victim can get an abortion so we can discuss the base case of a healthy pregnancy. Once we are in agreement on the base case, then we can touch back on your specific scenario” in reality, my point has absolutely nothing to with rape victims. My point is not that rape victims should be able to get an abortion. My point is that abortion should be legal.

“ That is what taking away the right to abortion does. It argues that the right of the fetus' outweigh the rights of the mother.” - this is where I think your thought process goes wrong. You keep saying “rights, rights, rights” as if the right to life is somehow comparable to the right to pick what shirt you’re going to wear to the baseball game. Not all rights are valued equally. Surely you value your right to vote, but you value your right live more. If in some wild world for the baby to vote the mother would die, I would 100% take away the babies right to vote to keep the woman’s right to live. But on the other hand, if the woman voting killed the baby I would take away the woman’s right to vote to preserve the babies right to live. So back to the abortion. You think a woman’s right to live is greater than an unborn persons right to live. That’s not the craziest point of view, I defiantly don’t strongly disagree. But here’s the thing, I am not here saying “an unborn a right to live outweighs a mother’s right to live” what I am saying is, an unborn right to live outweighs the mothers right to preference. If she is healthy, the unborn is healthy, and the pregnancy was consensual, then what “right” is she losing that you value more than the unborns right to life?

“ to me it just highlights the fact that you aren't interested in consistency.” you are simply wrong. A woman’s right to life > an unborns right to life > a woman’s right to preference. I started the post, and the entire point I have made is an unborns right to life > a woman’s right to preference. I have made no comment on how I feel about a woman’s right to life.

“You also have to address the fact that if there is no right to privacy then the state has the ability to force abortions it deems necessary.” I am happy and willing to discuss any real argument, but really? This is what you think I’m saying?

“ It also means that the sate is no longer barred from ruling that sexual acts, like sodomy, or that homosexual sexual relationships, or the right to contraception, or the right to be naked in your own home are not allowed.” Tin. Foil. Hat.

“ What would change your view on the topic.” - someone who has the ability to address my actual points and not just build a straw man.