With all the talk about 'controlling our bodies' in terms of abortion, and I can see both sides of that one, your own life is the one thing you really own. To have that control taken away is the worst kind of insult by the state.
Plus, the people that need this are (quite obviously) unable to make this happen on their own. So this comes with the additional moral qualms of whether this is really what the wanted and if their mental state clear enough to make a decision like this.
Lastly, not killing these people is the "safe choice" - you're not getting sued for not killing a person. In the end, it probably boils down to this.
How so? We don't have to create a system in which it is legal to shoot someone in the head and then claim they asked you to do it. Have it be a medical procedure that must be done in a hospital by government certified doctors. You can even require a psych evaluation before it becomes an option.
I can understand there being some gray area in which it isn't clear that the person has all their faculties to the point they can request it, but that shouldn't stop us from creating a system that works for all the obvious cases.
Incentives are different too. Outside of highly fundamentalist cultures, there isn't really a strong benefit to a family from pressuring someone to keep a child. In developed countries, children are a huge liability for the first ~20 years of their life. Meanwhile, with assisted suicide, there are strong incentives around cessation of ongoing medical care (costs), and obviously inheritance.
Between that and possibility of presenting some murders as assisted suicide, I think if the idea is to be implemented, it really needs to be done extra carefully.
Car kills many, doesn't stopped that from banning cars completely. Yes do it carefully, but no. Even people who live alone, doesn't have anything valuable, are not able to die with dignity. Must suffer.
And even then: We already allow families to decide to take folks off of life support.
Many terminally ill people receive substandard palliative care, and want assisted suicide – it seems likely that at least some wouldn't want it any more (or might never have sought it in the first place) if their palliative care was better.
What are the ethics of saying to people "we aren't going to do anything to fix the substandard palliative care you are receiving, but we are happy to help you kill yourself"?
Of course we shouldn't have substandard care, palliative or not. Of course we should try not to let people suffer. It isn't like palliative care is at all affected by whether or not we have assisted suicide, as we can obviously have good palliative care without allowing assisted suicide at all (or the opposite, but we aren't that cruel yet).
But not matter how much we try to make folks comfortable, it simply doesn't always happen and not everyone wants to die slowly, even if they are comfortable in the meantime. Even the most comfortable care we can muster for the majority of folks doesn't result in a good quality of life, after all. (Of course, some folks are more comfortable than others just because of income and situation, which we can lessen but not get rid of entirely).
Assisted suicide shouldn't always come from the folks receiving palliative care, either. I'm fine with folks having plans in place to die if they have dementia, for example, or if their wish for a decade has been to kill themselves, despite getting are. Or heck, even if someone wants to die at x age, if they live that long. Well-planned assisted suicide should be available.
> who has never been in the very unfortunate position of needing to die.
Defining that line is very, very, tricky. People only reach this point at a desperate time, when they are potentailly very vulnerable. There's a huge difference between two people in an end-of-life situation, one who is willing to die and one who isn't, yet both may "need" to die, and we have the meansright now to provide an easier transition from "terminally ill" to the former, but yet people end up in the second bucket all the time.
> Because so few people ever get stuck in that situation.
Yet we have many many people who have suicidal thoughts, and who commit suicide (arguably needlessly), when we have methods of helping. We should have the same methods of helping people who are terminally ill.
(That's not to get into the mess of what do the family of the patient want; things get messy _really_ fast when money is on the line as I've unfortunately witnessed, and it tears families apart.)
You know how people will sometimes change their mind when confronted with reality? You know how some men scoff at a dangerous activity until they are pushed out from the crowd to do it themselves? The reality of the situation sets in. All of a sudden your mind is revealing to you things that you had not considered before. Revealing intuitions and details that it had not performed for you because your brain doesn’t consider things in detail until they are perceived as important to you — until they are in front of you. This also happens for death. All of a sudden, details fill in that have never been emphasized in the idiot internet threads. All the details of how a suicide attempt can go wrong, where the line of death really is, all the ways that you might feel pain. It’s completely overwhelming if you are suddenly in desperate need of death. It’s the experience of the most marginalized and abused group of people to ever exist. Forced to die in gruesome and terrible ways and in horrific home made contraptions that very often create a huge amount of pain before fulfilling their purpose.
It's not the same line as "Life is wretched and miserable (because of depression, bankruptcy, relationship breakdown...) and therefore I'd like to check out." Those are all at least potentially fixable with reasonable odds of success.
Something like locked-in syndrome after a bad stroke, or late-stage Alzheimer's - potentially a vegetative state that can last a decade - isn't.
The real problem is making sure the choice is free and informed - not being "encouraged" by other family members for personal gain, revenge, or some other unacceptable motivation. Possibly after a person is no longer considered legally competent, but may still be signalling a current desire to avoid death even though they left a living will stating they would welcome it.
It does indeed get messy very, very quickly.
Open legalisation complicates all of that and turns it into a much harder problem than it is already. The courts would spend a lot of time dealing with those cases.
How would you do this?
One way or the other, I think you would end up attempting to create a metric for QoL. Some people, for example, might want death after losing their limbs, or their sight - a difficult life, but not a painful one, some people are born without these facilities and manage to live fruitful lives. If you allow death for those cases, why not evaluate regular suicides the same way?
Once you open the flood gates, you will have plenty who kill themselves who otherwise wouldn't with just a little bit of extra support.
...for nothing. The right to abortion isn't premised on any of those, in general. The only one that is particularly relevant as a justification is protecting the life of the mother, and that mostly has to do with abortions later in pregnancy, Cobstitutionally.
Otherwise, the justification of abortion is bodily autonomy.
By name, no. It’s a popular term which I think maps pretty well to a large and significant subset of “privacy” law under the Supreme Court’s 5th (as applies to the federal government) and 14th (as applies to the States) Amendment “due process” jurisprudence.
> What's the justification for the drugs laws then?
Arguably, none. The only case which has reached the Supreme Court in which I ama aware of the relevant Constitutional argument was kind-of considered against the Controlled Substances Act used it as an argument in the lower courts for Constitutional avoidance (a doctrine under which the courts read ambiguity in laws to favor an interpretation which does not violate the Constitution), and the Court refused to apply it because the law was not ambiguously crafted so as to permit the reading preferred, even if it was Cobstitutionally necessary; because invalidity of the law itself was not argued at the lower court, the Supreme Court declined to consider it for the first time on appeal. United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, 532 U.S. 483 (2001).
It's not like becoming pregnant is "being forced to give birth";
if it is the distinction is meaningless since not allowing <x> is forcing you to not do <x>, and forcing you to do <x> is disallowing you to not do <x>.
But you are right. This distinction is meaningless by itself.
What actually has meaning is if what we are forcing/forbidding you to do with your body puts your health and life at risk for some other benefit, for example for benefit of a single new other human.
Forcing someone to carry pregnancy to term to save the life of this new human is like forcing someone to giva a kidney to save some other person's life.
It's commendable but it shouldn't be obligatory.
And being responsible for getting pregnant shouldn't be automatically punished with being forced to risk your health and life for benefit of human that is not you. Unless pregnancy is a crime there should be no punishment at all. Let alone the corporal punisment.
Why not? Those are the stakes of sex and we all know it going in. I'm a man, but I know that if I accidentally get a woman pregnant one of the consequences will be being forced to monetarily support the resulting child. She knows going in that pregnancy is a potential consequence. Neither of us is "innocent" here, we both took a gamble and lost. The question is, if one believes that a fetus is a person with a right to life, do we not also believe that those who knowingly engaged in its creation have a responsibility towards it?
> Unless pregnancy is a crime there should be no punishment at all. Let alone the corporal punisment.
Having children is not a crime, yet we routinely force people to be responsible for their children. One could say that the crime is being irresponsible, but then one could just as easily say the same about terminating a pregnancy.
Because getting pregnant is not a crime so it shouldn't be punished.
> Those are the stakes of sex and we all know it going in.
You can say that about crimes as well. Knowing the stakes doesn't mean that something that follows is not a punishment. And we should be punishing only crimes. And we shouldn't be using corporal punishments at all.
> I'm a man, but I know that if I accidentally get a woman pregnant one of the consequences will be being forced to monetarily support the resulting child.
That's a horrible idea too unless you are voluntarily choosing to do it.
> Neither of us is "innocent" here, we both took a gamble and lost.
That doesn't mean either of you should suffer any punishment.
> The question is, if one believes that a fetus is a person with a right to life, do we not also believe that those who knowingly engaged in its creation have a responsibility towards it?
Even if you believe a fetus is as much of a person as adult human you still can't compel other human to risk her health and life for that person even if not risking it means this person dies. Even if she's responsible for giving this human life.
Human that needs a kidney also has the right to live but you can't ensure that right is fulfilled by taking involuntarily kidneys of other people.
What's more, even if your child needs a kidney to survive you are not obliged to provide it and punished for not doing so.
An yet if somebody needs a uterus (and the rest of your body with all it's fragile systems) you are forced to provide it if it's your kid.
> Having children is not a crime, yet we routinely force people to be responsible for their children. One could say that the crime is being irresponsible, but then one could just as easily say the same about terminating a pregnancy.
When the child is born, you don't have to take it with you from the hospital. If you did, you voluntarily assumed the rights of a parent with all the responsibilities. When you neglect a child you are punished for violation of this voluntary agreement.
You don't voluntarily agree to getting pregnant and giving birth unless you are planning it and wanting it. Having sex is not acceptance of being forced to deliver a child. Acceptance could be assumed if having children was the only reason people have sex. But people use sex as communication and bonding tool.
When people engage in sports they don't voluntarily agree to being injured or injuring others, they don't plan for or want it, yet these things are known risks of playing sports.
I'm saying that having sex, something that no one needs to do to survive, is acceptance of the risk of becoming pregnant[0], the same way that playing a sport is acceptance of the risk of becoming injured. If people choose to engage in activity with a known risk of a certain outcome, is that outcome not their responsibility should it occur?
> When the child is born, you don't have to take it with you from the hospital. If you did, you voluntarily assumed the rights of a parent with all the responsibilities. When you neglect a child you are punished for violation of this voluntary agreement.
Given that sex is a voluntary act with known risks, one that no one forced you to engage in, I do not think that it is unreasonable to apply the same standard: you have assumed the responsibilities of pregnancy and can, conceptually[1], be punished for violation of that responsibility.
[0] For the sake of brevity it should be assumed that by "becoming pregnant" I am referring to the state of both sexes as regards their potential future state of parenthood.
[1] I don't necessarily agree with doing so, I just don't think the issue is nearly as neat and tidy as people make it out to be.
Is a person legally responsible for the injury if he engages in skydiving but then gets injured because the pilot of his plane made a mistake or manufacturer technician of his plane didn't prepare it correctly?
Is a person walking at night legally responsible for getting mugged, because there's a known risk of getting mugged?
Is the responsibility for any action with known risk solely on the person undertaking the action?
And if this person is legally defined to be responsible should this person and only this person be corporeally punished for engaging with this risky action when it results in undesirable outcome for herself?
Since father is also equally responsible why not take out one of his organs he can live without as a punishment for the undesirable outcome? Or why not give him 100 lashes or something?
Why corporal punishment for a women but just a fine for a man?
Refusing women abortion is similarly barbaric. We just don't notice it.
I don't see how that tracks. You appear to be saying "if birth control fails", but birth control is known to be less than 100% effective the same way protective sports equipment is. Arguably you have a point if the birth control in question is defective.
> Is a person walking at night legally responsible for getting mugged, because there's a known risk of getting mugged?
> Is the responsibility for any action with known risk solely on the person undertaking the action?
So the sperm and egg are committing a crime now? They are not conscious actors, they don't have responsibility.
> Since father is also equally responsible why not take out one of his organs he can live without as a punishment for the undesirable outcome?
> Why corporal punishment for a women but just a fine for a man?
We already have child support to extract responsibility, in some form, from the father. I think it would be fair to say that money is not nearly as big a deal as the pregnancy, so yeah maybe there should be a different form of responsibility enforced. Taking an organ doesn't really accomplish anything though, because the purpose isn't to punish but to support the child and taking an organ does nothing for that.
> Refusing women abortion is similarly barbaric. We just don't notice it.
I don't agree. While I'm certainly uncomfortable with the idea of forcing people to endure pregnancy and its consequences against their will, if one takes the position that fetuses are people and deserve the same human rights as everyone else, and quite a lot of people do (though for the record I lean toward not agreeing on this), then I don't think the issue is quite as straight-forward as saying that the mother (or father for that matter, but obviously his situation is different) bears no responsibility towards the fetus.
I never claimed that. If anything, I am claiming that there's no responsibility that needs to be assigned to anyone because it's not a reprehensible act. And the only responsibility there is here, is the one that women voluntarily might or might not take upon herself.
> Taking an organ doesn't really accomplish anything though, because the purpose isn't to punish but to support the child and taking an organ does nothing for that.
You may always use that organ to help someone else in exchange for support for the child. Body of the woman is lawfully coerced to sustain harm and we don't do the same with man.
> I don't think the issue is quite as straight-forward as saying that the mother (or father for that matter, but obviously his situation is different) bears no responsibility towards the fetus.
Even if there's a responsibility. Even if we consider getting conceived the worst thing two humans can do to another it doesn't mean that is should be corporeally punished.
We shouldn't (and in almost all cases we don't) legally force people to risk their health and life to help someone else, even to save someone else's life. No matter how much responsibility the person is burdened with. We don't even take the kidneys of serial killers, even though the responsibility that they brought upon themselves is orders of magnitude larger than any other.
> getting pregnant is not a crime
neither is signing a contract, but you can be penalised for breaking one. Neither is joining the army, but you can be punished for deserting. You are suggesting that if it's not a crime to take on a responsibility, you can't be punished for betraying it - that doesn't follow to me.
> you don't have to take it with you from the hospital. If you did, you voluntarily assumed the rights of a parent
why don't you assume the potential consequence of bringing a pregnancy to full term by voluntarily having sex, and not aborting in early terms?
> you still can't compel other human to risk her health and life
No, but you can penalise them. Can you not penalise members of the army for deserting? Yes, because they took on that responsibility. Who takes on the responsibility for a strangers kidney problems?
> if your child needs a kidney to survive you are not obliged to provide it
you aren't responsible for such a condition.
> yet if somebody needs a uterus
because you put them there? Can I lock you in a cage and claim no responsibility in getting you out?
I'm suggesting the exactly opposite. That by having sex and getting pregnant you don't enter any contract and you don't automatically agree to take any responsibility. You can be punished for violating terms of something you voluntarily agreed to.
> why don't you assume the potential consequence of bringing a pregnancy to full term by voluntarily having sex, and not aborting in early terms?
If you made a voluntary decision to not abort in early terms then probably we can assume that.
>> if your child needs a kidney to survive you are not obliged to provide it > you aren't responsible for such a condition.
You might be. This might be a genetic birth defect (which is your responsibility for having sex by your count because it's one of the possible outcomes you are assumed to accept). Or you might have damaged you kid kidney with bad diet or herbal remedies or just beating the kid. And you still wouldn't be obliged to provide your kidney as a replacement. The point is, the law should never require of you the piece of your body.
> because you put them there? Can I lock you in a cage and claim no responsibility in getting you out?
Absolutely. However you'll be fully responsible for putting me there, if it was illegal.
I don't think this reasoning tracks. Let's say you're in a bar and get into a heated argument with another person and you decide to "take it outside", as it were. You don't have to fight this person, no one is making you, you both decided to engage in the activity. Now one of you ends up severely injured or maybe even dead, not because that was the intention but because of bad luck.
You agreed to the fight, with the known probability of significant bodily harm even though neither party desired that outcome. Do either of you have any responsibility for that outcome?
> The point is, the law should never require of you the piece of your body.
I think this is your strongest argument, because I honestly cannot think of a reason the state should be allowed to do that and the only counter argument I can muster is that there's currently no other way to bring a fetus to term, which I feel is a weak justification.
Sure. But does that mean that as a punishment we should break your legs or take a kidney out of each of you?
If conceiving an unwanted child is harm, then just make mother and father pay a fine and give mother an abortion. Don't punish her with damage to her health.
And if conceiving an unwanted child is not a harm, them do the same just without any punishment.
> I think this is your strongest argument, because I honestly cannot think of a reason the state should be allowed to do that and the only counter argument I can muster is that there's currently no other way to bring a fetus to term, which I feel is a weak justification.
That's my main point, that I think is the strongest argument in existence for any right to choice of abortion, even limited. Since I got this point across I'm perfectly happy to end this thread at that. Thank you.
> then probably we can assume that
then penalise non-medical late-term abortions?
> This might be a genetic birth defect (which is your responsibility for having sex by your count because it's one of the possible outcomes you are assumed to accept)
but acting in good faith, there's no formal responsibility to pass on good genes. An interesting concept, but moot in modern society. Also, it doesn't follow that "donating a kidney" fixes the issue in the same way "not aborting" would.
> or just beating the kid
In which case you would obviously be punished.
> you still wouldn't be obliged to provide your kidney as a replacement
My original comments agree this is true, but also state it doesn't mean you can't be punished/penalised.
> the law should never require of you the piece of your body
Then can I state your doctors can never retrieve/tamper with a piece of someone else's body, even if it exists inside your womb?
> However you'll be fully responsible for putting me there, if it was illegal
And I where a jailer who put you in there legally, but illegally left you there to rot? The legality of the first act would not change my initial responsibility to let you out.
it doesnt matter that the women entered the pregnancy knowing the consequences, she is allowed to revoke the babies privilege to use her body whenever she wants.
When did that baby consent to being conceived?
then why do so many pro-choicers also hate vaxxers? And please don't say "that's different, it affects other people!"
Preempting the flaw in your strawman doesn’t invalidate it. A woman choosing to abort a pregnancy has no bearing on anyone but her. In contrast, the anti-vaccine crowd both directly, and indirectly, contribute to the propagation of disease.
Your right to bodily autonomy stops at society’s doorstep, which is broadly agreeing that the unvaccinated don’t get to participate in the non-essential aspects of society, otherwise furthering the risk to everyone else without reason.
Isn't the baby also affected by that choice?
Legally, zygotes, embryos, and fetuses (like spermatazoa and ova, and unlike babies which are not involved in this) are not persons.
A zygote, an embryo, and a fetus are genetically fully human, and are distinct individuals from the mother. So saying "has no bearing on anyone but [the mother]" is... legally correct, but morally much more grey. And saying "it only affects one person" is also pre-empting the objection to the strawman.
Define “genetically fully human” and “distinct individuals” and provide an argument as to why each is ethically relevant.
"Distinct individual": Genetically different from the parent, and not just different with a transcription error.
Why it's relevant: Because "it's her body" and "it affects nobody else" aren't relevant arguments when it's not just her body, when there's another individual there. Now we have to have a real moral/ethical discussion, and we can't short-circuit it with dismissive strawmen.
But I'm fairly sure you knew all of that. I suspect that you just want to keep using the strawmen to avoid having the actual ethical/moral discussion.
> like spermatazoa and ova, and unlike babies which are not involved in this
Do mean some fetuses are people aka babies, or all fetuses are distinct from babies and hence not persons.
Er, why not? The fact that it affects what is legally a non-person entity in whom the State has a legitimate interest is why abortion rights have different parameters later in pregnancy, so why wouldn't it be the consistent that vaccination having public health impacts that affect the life and health of other actual people is relevant?
At what point is a person a person? "at birth" seems arbitrary.
All lines dividing up creation into named categories and entities are arbitrary.
That one is arbitrary is not an argument against it and in favor of a different (and equally arbitrary) one.
> That one is arbitrary is not an argument against it and in favor of a different (and equally arbitrary) one.
True, but that's not my aim. I am instead attacking the notion of personhood, which was a dependency of your own argument, not mine. If there are no meaningful indicators of personhood, the only way to avoid aborting a person is to set a limit at a point where a foetus is still likely to be a non-person, because detailed gauges of personhood are otherwise unavailable.
I think a better direction for this argument would be to burden you with the question; why aren't we allowed to terminate once a child is born? pre-empting the argument "but then there are no health risks / autonomy considerations" - does that mean all abortions are done for purely health-risk reasons?
What you mean by that? There is extremely high demand to adopt newborns, which is why parents desperate for children adopt from other countries. There is currently a waiting list of 2 million families willing to adopt newborns.
Children in foster care are different story - people are much less willing to adopt older kids.
Maybe finish adopting all those kids who exist and need families right now, regardless of where they’re from, rather than force people to give birth to more babies that need adoption.
https://adoptionnetwork.com/types-of-adoption-options/domest...
> Domestic – If you are looking to adopt a newborn or young infant, you are looking at a domestic adoption. It’s that simple.
> more babies that need adoption.
That's a strange way of looking at it. When you say it like that, it sounds as if a new baby will create an imbalance between supply and demand. There's 2 million families waiting to adopt a newborn, so a new baby will help balance that, not imbalance it.
Fertility is dropping, so I wonder if there will be an even higher demand for newborns in the future.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p09k7qw5/how-modern-life-is...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/26/falling-sper...
My parents looked into adopting from another country - it was a program they were introduced to through church. It cost $20,000 plus travel... in the 1990s.
Is there a scientific reason for that idea? I don't see how implantation can really be considered a transition from potential human to human. I think with enough scientific advances a human could be raised entirely outside the womb, and in that case there would be no implantation.
(Implantation itself doesn't feel like the transition point either, but it's just the last obvious discrete step before the continuous progression all the way to birth.)
It seems strange to say that our current definition is not the correct long-term definition, but we'll keep using the current one. To me that's basically saying our current definition of human is wrong, and I don't see why it's acceptable to use a wrong definition.
I'm not sure it avoids the majority since a decent amount of folks have the knowledge and tools to simply avoid the pregnancy in the first place, but it does lower it.
Putting a newborn up for adoption is different, it doesn't have either of those problems. There are 2 million families in the US waiting to adopt a newborn.
That's why there's so much interest in defining limits around abortions. Late term abortions are pretty much described as horrific by the vast majority. There should be room for political agreement here.
To be clear, you are right that a late term abortion is pretty horrific. They're also -traumatic-. No one is -intentionally- waiting around to get an abortion; there isn't room for political argument here because anyone who finds themselves pregnant at a late stage and doesn't want to be is already in the case of "reasonable exception". A medical complication, a change in financial status to where she can't support it (when before she thought she could), etc.
No one is finding out they're pregnant in the first trimester, and then just can't make up their mind until the third, and we as a society need to set a date she has to make up her mind, or force her to keep it against her will. That's a made up justification, and as we continue to see, the same forces that make that justification don't even stop there.
>But data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1363/4521013
>“[t]here aren’t good data on how often later abortions are for medical reasons.”
>“Based on limited research and discussions with researchers in the field, Dr. Foster believes that abortions for fetal anomaly ‘make up a small minority of later abortion’ and that those for life endangerment are even harder to characterize,” the report stated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/tough-qu...
Of course that doesn't invalidate the findings; but it is a a fairly small number of events they're talking about here, that's all.
I think you're misunderstanding how the sentence I quoted relates to the study. The study I linked to actually only studied women who had abortions unrelated to fetal anomalies or life endangerment. So none of the 56% who declined to participate in the study nor any of the 44% who accepted to participate in it had abortions related to fetal anomalies or life endangerment.
The quote I quoted was basically an offhand remark that the paper made to justify its relevance, not backed up by evidence in the paper, but instead backed up by a citation to a different paper that I found hard to understand in a quick skim.
The general way I interpret the meaning of parentheses is that it's a part of the sentence that provides extra information, but the sentence would still be correct if it was removed.
That said, I don't think there will be political agreement because it's not 100% about the rules around abortions anyway. It's a political instrument at this point. Either side is trying to win, not do what's right, and that's how things have gotten so extreme.
But then here you come with the ~93% of reasons that boil down to convenience. It's more convenient to murder this baby than to not murder it so murder it is.
There is a very important and overlooked 7% of abortions that are medically related that save the whole concept of legal abortion for me. Mothers who want babies but, because literally everything in biology can go wrong in ways that make abortion the only humane option, those poor women can't. And they don't need police investigating their terminations in the middle of unimaginable grief.
It is absolutely not convenience. To flip it another way, these are often homes you would never allow to adopt a baby, or homes where the child is inevitably taken by child services due to abuse or incapacity of the parent(s). Then they end up in foster care, far too late to be adopted by the nice well-to-do family with a white picket fence, and they bounce around the foster system.
The foster system can't even handle all the kids that aren't adopted, and some kids end up too broken to stay in care. What happens then? At some point they just throw a bunch of broken kids into a shitty house together and have a child services worker come check in on them every day or so.
This isn't directed at you, but I have had countless conversations about this very topic. The detriments are greatly overstated. I've found usually people are talking of these things outside looking in in an ideological vacuum, and not an experiential one.
Let's take societal outcomes for african americans, as an example. What people don't realize is, when people speak of abortions in a vaccuum (and lets be frank -- it's usually white liberals who champion it the hardest), the elephant in the room is with african american women carry out the disproportionate volume of abortions, and the the overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood locations being located in poor and black neighborhoods. There is a large argument now that is catching on in many african american communities that maybe if we had the estimated 11 million more black babies born in this country, black representation would be much better off in all matters of the socioeconomic and political spheres, resulting in better lives overall for the general population. In 2015, in association with National Black Pro-Life Coalition, Protecting Black Life, and National Black Pro-Life Union met with CURE to deliver a congressional report detailing all of these facts, and making the strong case that the economic and societal impact of all the abortions in the black community is far greater. I encourage everyone to read it: https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/106562/witnesses/...
There are welfare states such as scandinavian ones where the financial help for having children and/or being a single mother is very generous.
A single mother with 6 children can receive financial aid to the equivalent of a senior software engineer salary without having to work at all. Source: https://www.expressen.se/gt/gt-granskar/shukri-hade-fatt-lik...
Even with these levels of financial support, abortions are common - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#Trends
Although the numbers are a bit different here, maybe he’s referencing a newer data set. Still it’s shocking:
> non-Hispanic Black women had the highest abortion rate (21.2 abortions per 1,000 women) and ratio (335 abortions per 1,000 live births)
Many would disagree with that characterization.
At the stages of development when most abortions are performed, the life that is being ended is much less of a life than that of a cow, or pig, or chicken, or even fish, that ends up being killed for food.
If people truly believe that ending abortion is a moral and ethical issue, then the only consistent stance is to also be vegan and push for laws requiring everyone else be vegan.
Your concern may be genuine but it is misplaced.
I understand that different health authorities here have different policies on the registration and application of such "living wills". I have no confidence that if I get sick in the wrong place, my statement will even be noticed, let alone respected. Also, there's no reason why a paramedic coming to my home would know to look in my desk-drawer (I live on my own), and so discover that I don't want any CPR, ever.
And ultimately, these living wills are advisory only; medics can't be sued for ignoring them.
It's a bloody mess. I really hope I don't ever get demented.
It's one of those things that I might support in idealistic principle but where I develop serious reservations when I factor in how ugly people can be in real life.
Sir T Pratchett wrote extensively about being on the wrong end of dementia. He didn't have much to say about abortion when he was dealing with cognitive decline.