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Comment by s1t5 | Hacker News Reader

The terms aren't arbitrary, they're used and propagated deliberately to turn as social issue into a political one. Using a term like "pro-life" creates a false dichotomy which leads to the false and simplistic conclusion that if you oppose pro-life then you must be anti-life.

> Why not just say pro-abortion, anti-abortion?

Because almost no one is "pro-abortion". It's a horrible and traumatic experience to go through and no one is happy to have one. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have the option to do it. That's why pro-choice works better - it's just more descriptive of the actual issue.

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The term "pro-life" may creates a false dichotomy when put in that way, but if you think at it as the crux of the argument not so much. Case in point you kind of miss it in your last sentence and have it in the opposite: if a foetus is a life (i.e. a person) from day one, then it follows women shouldn't have a choice (because it's not their body anymore, in that context, like a weirdness of nature that a different person with normal rights inhabits a mother's body). They are not saying it will lead to a happy experience either to raise that child, but that's an unfortunate consequence of the "life" argument, hence "life vs choice". Edit: But I agree it's not a good way to frame the debate, "Person at conception vs Person at X weeks/months" would be more relevant to each side position IMO.

The counter-argument I've heard to that is even if a fetus is a life (debatable), "pro-lifers" are requisitioning a person's body against their will to sustain that life. Which is inconsistent with what we as a society would do in any other similar situation. For example, organ donation. We don't even assume consent to use the organs of dead bodies, let alone force live donors to surrender their spare kidneys.

You could argue landlords should not be able to evict tenants willy nilly if they change their mind about the lease.

Isn't that already the case? You can't evict tenants in the middle of a lease if they have honored all the terms of the lease. It's a contract.

To be more specific, this argument was popularized by Judith Jarvis Thomson in her essay "A Defense of Abortion".

https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.h...

Cool, I didn't know where this argument originated from. Thanks for the source.

That’s why I like “anti-forced-birthing” more than “pro-choice”.

> if a foetus is a life (i.e. a person) from day one, then it follows women shouldn't have a choice

This is not the case. Even if the foetus is a human person, body autonomy tells us that no person should be forced to give up their own bodily well being in ensure the survival of someone else.

Let's say that a person needs a kidney or they will day, would it be OK to force the only compatible donor to donate his because he can survive without it? If not, how is it fine to force a woman to go through nine months of pregnancy? Pregnancy and birth can be harmful to the body, and even put the mother's life at risk.

It's common to say that the "pro-life vs. pro-choice" debate is all about whether the foetus is a person of not, but that's a misdirect. You can resolve that question and still find yourself trying to solve essentially the trolley problem.

> Let's say that a person needs a kidney or they will day, would it be OK to force the only compatible donor to donate his because he can survive without it? If not, how is it fine to force a woman to go through nine months of pregnancy?

Thats a pretty terrible analogy. Getting pregnant is not something you cannot avoid. That would assume that people have no responsibility in their current condition.

I come from a country were people are still often denied abortions after being raped, so maybe my perspective is a biased (though the laws say they should be allowed). But even in other cases, I assume if a person is looking for an abortion they didn't expect to get pregnant, so I can hardly say that they chose to get pregnant. If someone gets pregnant because of lack of education or faulty birth control products, I really find it hard to say they are entirely responsible for the pregnancy.

It is entirely their responsiblity. There is a reason why most societies/religions encourages only sex after marriage. To engage in sex before marriage then blame the birth control products or lack of an education doesn't really add up.

The rape pregency is a different matter. Before safe abortions the mother had the baby and treated it as an innocent child. Some would be given up for adoption. Some societies force the rapist to pay. No society killed the baby when it was born.

> Getting pregnant is not something you cannot avoid.

Unless you promote not having sex at all, then yes, it’s something you cannot avoid. You can take precautions, but contraception fails.

And that still doesn’t even touch topics such as rape.

Large majorities of arbortions nowadays have nothing to do with rape (while the right for abortion was fought using that argument originally). Its by far convenience abortions.

Todd Akin?

My girlfriend had an IUD, tied with vasectomy as the best form of contraception.

She got pregnant anyway. The nurses were so incredulous, they tested her four times, said it was impossible, and finally gave her a blood test to confirm.

We caught it very early, and it was ectopic. Her doctor said if she didn't abort it, she would likely die. Even a healthy pregnancy is more likely to kill you than an abortion in the first trimester.

Anyway, my point is that none of this is your or the govt's business. It was between her and her doctor. Someone can be 100% responsible and still be in a regrettable medical situation, and no one should have the authority to say, "You need to die or risk dying for this cluster of cells."

> We caught it very early

I know what you mean but this triggered me for some reason :)

Why?

It was a likely-fatal medical condition. It was impossible to bring to term and produce a healthy baby.

"Caught" implies that we discovered the pregnancy before it progressed into a more dangerous phase. "It" refers to the pregnancy.

Humans may want to see meaning in certain rapidly-growing clusters of cells, but that doesn't make them less dangerous if they're growing in the wrong part of the body.

> It's common to say that the "pro-life vs. pro-choice" debate is all about whether the foetus is a person of not, but that's a misdirect.

I would say exact opposite. It is the key question, because if there is no fetus-person claim, the whole issue is moot as there is no entity to which pregnant person has moral responsibility.

But if we assume a fetus is a person with all personal rights, it is just clash of rights and freedoms of two persons, which may turn out both ways based on relative valuations of these rights in a society. Personal autonomy is a strong card, but there are many cases where it is restricted to protect life of others (involuntary treatment of mentally ill or forced isolation of infected).

Also, the case is stronger as (with the exception of rape) parents are mostly responsible for conception of child. One can say that it was not their decision and contraceptions can fail, but the same can be said for car accidents.

OTOH, the fetus-person position is here only because it is a forced religious idea on secular society. So it is much more clear-cut to just reject fetus-person proposition on secular grounds. (We already did something similar for braindead cases that are biologically alive.) Without that 'pro-life' position has no standing. By abandoning fetus-person debate and making the debate about personal autonomy, the 'pro-choice' side just unnecessary weakened their case.

> if there is no fetus-person claim

This question is essentially unsolvable from a philosophical point of view. Laws and people will take their stand about when human life beings, but there is no objective definition that will solve this. Making the debate about an unsolvable question makes the debate unsolvable. This makes it very difficult to change existing laws. This "debate" favors whichever side the current laws already favor.

I agree that i may be unsolvable. But that is also point for 'pro-choice'. It is not symmetrical debate. It is debate about whether state is allowed to restrict some personal behavior.

In liberal society restricting personal freedom requires strong claim of necessity. Therefore it is a burden of 'pro-life' side to make such strong claim. As such claim requires fetus-person claim, the 'pro-life' side would need to show that (or at least show that it is universally hold position in society).

> This is not the case. Even if the foetus is a human person, body autonomy tells us that no person should be forced to give up their own bodily well being in ensure the survival of someone else.

Exactly. I think it helps to steer the debate towards the assumption that the fetus is a human being since it exists. The mother does not have the right to kill it as it would be murder. However, the mother has the right to stop her pregnancy since it is her body. Now the kick is: These two statements are not contradictory! If the fetus is viable then his life can be saved by the doctors, otherwise it will die. In either case, it is not the (legal) responsibility of the mother.

Of course, the mother would be probably a douchebag if she tries to interrupt a pregnancy at 8 months, but that's a different issue.

Not taking sides, but I don't think it is so black and white if you frame it like that.

A newborn baby is pretty much helpless and needs its mother/other. If we go just by that, it means a new mother does nothing wrong if they leave their kid outside in the sun for 5 days until it dies. After all, no-one should give their 'bodily' well being. Yes, you can give him for adoption, etc, but by the logic here it means if a mother just leaves their kids to starve, not kill them directly, but not doing 'motherly' things, it is ok, after all, they aren't fully responsible.

(again, not taking sides in the pro-life/pro-choice argument, just stating it isn't black or white)

I think yours is a very good analogy, and it really holds. If a mother has a baby that, for whatever reasons, cannot take care of, then she has the right to give the baby for adoption (or give the custody to the father). If she kills the baby (e.g., by neglect), then she is of course guilty of murder. An abortion is a very similar case, she cannot take care of the fetus inside her body, and she assigns the care of the fetus to the doctors that perform the abortion. These doctors may or may not be able to keep the fetus alive. That way, you can be pro-choice and pro-life at the same time (albeit limited by the current status of medical technology).

EDIT: to clarify, I'm not really unbiased about that and I do take sides: I think that people have the right to control their bodies, and thus women have the right to have abortions. (I also think that abortion is wrong when there's no risk of physical trauma for the woman, but hey, people have the right to do wrong things!)

Coleman Hughes does a really good job of looking and clearing up both sides of the argument:

https://quillette.com/2019/05/21/rethinking-abortion-advocac...

https://m.soundcloud.com/therightsideirl/interview-coleman-h...

But "life" and "person" are two different things. Why not call themselves pro-person? I think it's because then you have to discuss when person-hood start.

In general, "pro-life" people are not pro-life, they are pro-soul, but they know instinctively that's a debate they can't win, so they change the name. It's, in my opinion, a big, big hypocrisy.

> The term "pro-life" may creates a false dichotomy when put in that way, but if you think at it as the crux of the argument not so much.

Even then, not really. Otherwise Pro-Life adherents would push policies that reduce the number of abortions overall—like better access to and education about birth control—over policies that don’t—like making abortions illegal. Instead, they demonstrate that their goal isn’t to actually reduce the number of abortions overall.

> if a foetus is a life (i.e. a person) from day one, then it follows women shouldn't have a choice

Living people making unwanted intrusions into one’s body, even where one has previously consented, can generally be forcibly stopped from that intrusion. There are basically no circumstances where being alive itself gives someone the kind of claim on someone else’s body necessary to sustain a fetus. So, no, the conclusion you present does not follow from the assumption that the fetus is a living human person with all the rights and privileges usually associated with that status. It still requires assumption of novel, sui generis, privileges.

I feel that these terms fail to represent the demographic of people who are against abortions, but also hate babies.

> Person at conception vs Person at X weeks/months

Except that some pro-choice advocates admit that it is a human life being killed and still insist it is good and necessary. That and most of the rest of the pro-choice activists would never accept being forced into making a determination on when they believe life begins. They don't care when life begins. They care about not restricting abortion.

Edit: I should have read other comments here first. As you can see, many pro-choice people are perfectly willing to acknowledge that they are willing to allow abortion even though it is a person. In other words, actively killing your child if you don't want to support them.

If you believe women should be able to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term, or not, you are pro-abortion. Lots of people are pro-abortion. Futhermore, lots of people recognise they are pro-abortion and are perfectly willing, if not encourage, the label. Maybe this is taboo in your upbringing and social circle but to make the claim that "almost no one" is pro-abortion is beyond wrong.

Your local puritanical propaganda is winning, it would seem. I'm european. I see the conversation as explicitly pro-abortion and anti-abortion. Now and then the anti-abortionists try to americanize and call themselves pro-life but few buy it.

> Because almost no one is "pro-abortion". It's a horrible and traumatic experience to go through and no one is happy to have one. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have the option to do it.

I am pro-abortion, because I understand that it's a traumatic experience, which nonetheless can be very desirable given some circumstances. If you're trying to side-step the fact that no-one ideally would have an abortion, you're just opening yourself up to counter-arguments attacking exactly that, and that's dumb, because you've detracted the debate from the true point (from a pro-abortion viewpoint) – sometimes it's a necessary sacrifice.

I am pro legal abortion

I am also pro euthanasia

Being in favour of something it doesn't mean you hope things will go south

You support their existence exactly because if things go south it's better to have them

I am not pro choice, I am anti anti abortists

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