Liberals: Personhood Starts With Paul Ryan’s Jizz

[Asher]

Is anyone on Apolyton a proponent of late term abortions?

[loinburger]

I'm pretty sure Chegitz was, but he was kind of dumb

[MichaeltheGreat]

A lot of vocal pro-choicers (which is why it appears more pro-choices are against late term restrictions) make a lot of noise about late term abortion restrictions being a restrictrion on a woman's right to choose.

Part of it is the underlying reality behind all the posturing on both sides. It's pretty hypocritical for a total pro-life type to sponsor a bill that restricts only one kind of abortion procedure that is rarely used. The real goal is perceived (rightly) as a ratcheting where it becomes the norm for legislatures to regulate and restrict medical procedures in that area.

Personally, I think the fight over partial dilation & extraction abortions is one the pro-choice crowd should have avoided. Or at least offer a compromise that the performing physician must certify medical necessity and that no less invasive procedure was medically sound in the specific circumstances.

[Jon Miller]

"Killing people by drowning should not be illegal as only a few people are doing it."

JM

[MichaeltheGreat]

"Killing people by drowning should not be illegal as only a few people are doing it."

JM

Which nicely sidesteps the issue of whether and at what point a given embryo or fetus is an independent, legally cognizable "person" for purposes of abortion law and virtually no other purpose.

In the case of the partial dilation & extraction bill, your correct analogy would be "killing people by drowning should be illegal, but any other method of killing them is legal, because we really don't like drowning."

[kentonio]

Jon you have very strong opinions on the abortion issue, so let's be fair there is unlikely to be any form of abortion that you would accept, no?

From the American pro-choice people I know, any fighting to protect late term abortion is purely because the anti side are so stridently in favour of banning all abortion that they don't feel they can give an inch. Personally I'd have set the bar earlier (with the exceptions MtG described) and then refused to move past that, but I can at least understand why many people are reluctant to do so. It's hardly easy to have a grown up conversation about it while people are shooting doctors and bombing clinics.

[snoopy369]

"Killing people by drowning should not be illegal as only a few people are doing it."

What???

[Jon Miller]

Obviously it should be when science recognizes him/her as a human being with a functional mind, which occurs before the 3rd trimester.

Saying "we won't recognize that a person in this specific situation is a person due to the fact that it would make a handful of people murderers" is shear lunacy.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Or "will someone think of the poor woman who is getting her rights constrained, obviously she should be able to permanently remove the rights of another so as to not have her rights constrained for an additional month/etc."

JM

[Imran Siddiqui]

Personally, I think the fight over partial dilation & extraction abortions is one the pro-choice crowd should have avoided. Or at least offer a compromise that the performing physician must certify medical necessity and that no less invasive procedure was medically sound in the specific circumstances.

Agreed. It kind of hurt the pro-choice side as being tarred as extreme... even though they won that battle.

[MrFun]

As a side note, why do liberals act like pro-lifers just want to put women in chains as if the abortion debate isn't about a axiomatic disagreement about the commencement of life?

Here's my question. For so many conservatives, why do they call themselves pro-life, when they treat life as being sacred only until after the baby is born?

[MrFun]

That covers most of the pro-life crowd in the US. The intermediate goal is to ratchet the restrictions as far as politically feasible at any given time, then come back for more. Most of the pro-choice crowd in the US (most, but not all) support late term restrictions on abortion.

I'm pro-choice, but I don't support late-term abortion.

[MrFun]

Have you bought into the notion that everything that disagrees with a conservative viewpoint is "liberal?"

Nobody has a monopoly on hypocrisy. The issue isn't disagreement about commencement of "life," since neither dead eggs nor dead sperm do anything. The issue is where does the state gain a legitimate interest in the whatever it is at that stage that's developing in the womb, such that the state controls certain aspects of what the woman can do. For "pro-lifers" who disapprove of exceptions for rape and incest, the issue is that the state has the power to give superior rights to the non-sentient blastocyst/embryo/fetus, because it does not matter whether the woman in question (remember her?) ever consented to being impregnated.

There are typically two layers of hypocrisy - first, social conservatives who want to regulate the hell out of abortion typically are hands off regulating business and more public activities, and insist on individual rights re how to raise your kid, how many guns you have, etc. So, like hard core lefties who want to regulate the hell of out some things, but not others (e.g. smoke dope and **** whoever you want, but (the entity in the sky who can not be named) forbid you try to start a business.

The second layer of hypocrisy is that the only regulation is typically abortion - oh, we must protect God's little love drop, but feel free to eat like ****, smoke, drink while pregnant, engage in medically unsound faith healing practices. After all, we're in the liberty business. So Pro-lifers typically don't give a **** about anything other than the abortion decision.

The other thing you're conveniently forgetting is the recent history prior to Roe v Wade. Roe came only 6 years after Griswold. It used to be common that a married woman could not get a birth control prescription without her husband's permission. There's liberty for you. Also used to be common that single women would be denied birth control prescriptions by her doctor, or the pharmacy. Single women were supposed to be chaste and wait for the right fellow to come along and make proper wifeypoos of them, you know?

QFT

Let's not forget the hypocrisy of many anti-choice people who talk about how life is sacred, but then couldn't care less about the baby after it's born.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Obviously it should be when science recognizes him/her as a human being with a functional mind, which occurs before the 3rd trimester.

Saying "we won't recognize that a person in this specific situation is a person due to the fact that it would make a handful of people murderers" is shear lunacy.



JM

Yes, it would be, which is why nobody's saying that. It is also sheer lunacy to say a fetus is a legally cognizable person only for purposes of abortion law, but for no other purposes.

What constitutes a "functional mind?" and how do you specifically test for that? Justice Blackmun chose viability because there was broad medical consensus that that point could be clearly defined and agreed upon. Technology for testing fetal brain function was essentially non-existent in 1972, and even now, you have limits in testing technology and questions of interpretation.

Other than life-threatening or severely health-threatening (e.g. paralysis, organ damage, sepsis, etc.) situations, I think restriction on abortion should be legal at some earlier point around mid-second trimester, somewhat before arguable viability or some arbitrary level of brain function.

[loinburger]

Here's my question. For so many conservatives, why do they call themselves pro-life, when they treat life as being sacred only until after the baby is born?

This question should be addressed to a conservative who has expressed the viewpoint in question, not to just any random conservative. (Unless you're merely asking a rhetorical question, in which case there's no point in addressing the question to anybody.)

"Here's my question. Why are so many liberals lazy and stupid?"