Texas Freedom Caucus Warns of Illegality for Companies Funding Employee Abortion
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It seems to me that if you truly believe that an abortion is murdering a human, then the penalty should be the same as the murder of a human who is already born. In other words, a very long prison sentence or the death penalty (depending on locale).
However, if you think that penalty is too severe, then do you really believe it is murder when you have an abortion?
Many countries legalized abortion over the past 20 years; very few went the other way.
This facts are all scientifically indisputable:
1) A fetus is a genetically distinct and unique human life from the moment of conception;
2) By 6-8 weeks, an embryo has a four-chambered beating heart;
3) By week 12, a fetus looks recognizably human, has a face, fingers and toes, internal organs, etc: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-...
All of these comprise scientific bases for the range of "pro life" positions.
> Many countries legalized abortion over the past 20 years; very few went the other way.
So what? Eugenics was seen as a progressive advance in the early 20th century, before humanity reversed course. "Progress" doesn't happen in an arc, but hits dead ends.
They are also all irrelevant. We don’t force parents to donate organs for life-saving transplants; why would we have a different rule specifically for uterus?
Worth pointing out you’re comparing the idea of bodily autonomy, one of basic human rights, with eugenics, because it opposes a certain religious superstition.
In other words, is it that you acknowledge what is inside _is_ a life but you reject the validity of its right to be alive ? or do you _not_ agree that it is a life in the first place, therefore it couldn't possibly have a right to be alive?
This, btw, is a common element of Catholic ideology - a lot of it is literal bullshit written in a way to make it hard to parse; one cornerstone of it is abusing the language, but another is exploiting people’s ignorance.
In the case of abortion, the default (inaction) means the baby lives, whereas having an abortion is an active action which ends the “life” (I don’t entirely believe it’s a life up to a certain point, but just conceding it for the sake of argument).
In the case of forced organ donation, not donating unfortunately results in the death of the other person, but that’s the default state (inaction).
For those with agency, we place greater moral weight on active actions than on the absence of action.
But it is not about personhood, it is not about murder — this is about sex and giving the state the power to enforce prude religious ideas. Which is why there are open discussions about banning contraception as well.
The idea: Sex should only be had for the purpose of generating offspring. It should never be enjoyed. This is the believe, and anyone has to follow it, so it needs to become law.
As to the sex argument, do you really find it persuasive? Because it makes no sense to me. Religious conservatives view babies as a blessing, not a punishment—for having sex or anything else. What they reject is the premise that destroying a human life must be legal to maintain the fiction that sex is without consequences. (Note that the vast majority of republicans support legalized contraception, at about the same rate as democrats: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-most-americans-will-balk-if-cons...)
They view it as both depending on what suits them. They view it as a punishment for promiscuous sex, and a reward for people trying to have children. More realistically, they view it as a blessing for the father, who gets the valuable possession of a child, without any of the pain or risk to life and limb of bearing a pregnancy to term.
My favorite thought experiment is to follow the belief in the soul of the hypothetical person in the womb into the hypothetical afterlife to explore the consequences of abortion (and miscarriage, which is when the supreme deity performs the abortion). Do these hypothetical people go to heaven? If so, heaven is full of souls who never experienced life at all, they just woke up in heaven. There are millions upon millions of happy souls in heaven who never had to endure a single trial or make a conscious choice to get there. This seems like an amazing hack! Indeed, you could operate a fertility clinic and singlehandedly dominate the demographics of the afterlife. Furthermore, if hypothetical people who never become real automatically go to heaven, abortion would seem like the best thing you can do for them. There's no chance they'll ever be tempted into sin and end up in hell.
However, some Calvinists will tell you that predestination means that the terminated pregnancy (which, remember, the divine hand has personally performed in majority of cases) has derailed the divine plan, and some of the hypothetical people were going to make choices that landed them in hell. So they arbitrarily come into existence and spend eternity in endless, vicious torment, placed there by the deity who allegedly is a being of pure love. This is even more dark and mind-twisting! It means that there are millions upon millions of souls in hell, suffering eternal torment and they have no idea why they're there.
Why don't you try to steel-man the opposing view? E.g. (a) children are a blessing; and (b) the desire to be free of the natural and predictable consequences of sex does not justify destroying a human life, especially given (a).
This formulation explains the opposition to abortion, and is internally consistent.
> More realistically, they view it as a blessing for the father, who gets the valuable possession of a child, without any of the pain or risk to life and limb of bearing a pregnancy to term.
If you aren't aware that religious conservatives (like nearly everyone else) view children and motherhood as a blessing for women, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe spend some time in Africa or Asia and you might realize that it's not just something the GOP made up to piss off Democrats.
I don't think it's safe to conflate religious fundamentalists with 'everyone else.' For everyone else, a wanted child is a blessing. An unplanned pregnancy ranges from a major misfortune to a potentially fatal crisis. Furthermore:
> the desire to be free of the natural and predictable consequences of sex does not justify destroying a human life, especially given
Pregnancy isn't really a natural and predictable consequence of sex, in fact it's a pretty unusual outcome of intercourse. Humans, compared to other primates, must engage in a relatively huge amount of intercourse to end up with a pregnancy. There's also the minor detail of those being most opposed to abortion also being the most opposed to birth control. You'd think if reducing abortion was the goal, birth control would be foremost on everyone's mind. So no, it's not internally consistent in this framework. It is internally consistent with a framework where women are chattel and their autonomy over their bodies to decide the outcome of their pregnancy is viewed as theft from their owners.
The argument is of course completely bonkers, but this is the thinking behind it — and I grew up in a deeply catholic area: You just need to talk to those people and ask them "Why" a few times and you will end up there. The church seeing itself as a torch of morality in questions like:
- when do people have sex?
- what do women wear?
This is nothing new and not limited to catholics. If they control your private life they control your life.
IMO church should limit itself to questions of spirituality and be kept out of the state, law and private lives of the rest of us at all cost.
It's about taking an innocent life.
Under what circumstances should a miscarriage be investigated as a criminal matter? In this question I include any involved parties. Prosecuting a woman's relatives or loved ones is tantamount to prosecuting her.
Under what circumstances should a healthcare decision be investigated as a criminal matter?
If it is about an innocent life, then which states added funding for healthcare and child care as a part of their abortion trigger laws? Which states restored planned parenthood funding?
I don't think abortion is GOOD. I also don't think it's any of the government's business. Making abortion illegal does not make anyone any more moral. Making abortion illegal does not change anyone's mind about the morality of abortion. Making abortion illegal will not save anyone's soul from damnation. Making abortion illegal WILL increase the number of kids born to mothers in poverty.
Under what circumstances do we investigate the death of a newborn as a criminal matter today?
> If it is about an innocent life, then which states added funding for healthcare and child care as a part of their abortion trigger laws? Which states restored planned parenthood funding?
I don't understand the line of thinking that says you can't care about stopping intentional killings unless you also want to give them a bunch of free stuff. Example: Able-bodied adults need food to live. I don't want murder of able-bodied adults to be legal. That doesn't mean that I should have to pay for every other able-bodied adult's food for them.
Are you absolutely sure you want to apply the same standard? Do you know how many pregnancies end in miscarriage?
> I don't understand the line of thinking that says you can't care about stopping intentional killings unless you also want to give them a bunch of free stuff.
It's not about the free stuff. When the power of the state stepped in to force the pregnancy to continue, they took responsibility for the life of the person.
You care about "intentional killings of babies". I believe that. I believe that you can imagine the life of the potential person when you see a pregnancy. Do you believe that people should be able to have sex without getting pregnant? Is preventing the fertilization of the egg an acceptable way to prevent the "intentional killing of a baby"? Should the power of the state enforce your belief about contraception? Is preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall acceptable? Should the power of the state step in here?
At what point in the act of intimacy should the power of the state be enforced?
If the state stops someone from killing me, do they take responsibility for my life from then on too?
> Do you believe that people should be able to have sex without getting pregnant? Is preventing the fertilization of the egg an acceptable way to prevent the "intentional killing of a baby"?
I think both of those should remain legal.
> Should the power of the state enforce your belief about contraception?
No.
> Is preventing the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall acceptable?
No. Once the egg gets fertilized, it's too late for contraception to work, and anything from then on that appears to be contraception is actually just a very early term abortion.
> Should the power of the state step in here?
Yes.
> At what point in the act of intimacy should the power of the state be enforced?
Once conception (i.e., fertizilation) has occurred.
Do you really believe this is equivalent? You can't see any distinction here?
> Once conception (i.e., fertizilation) has occurred.
Do you know the percentage of fertilized eggs that make it to the uterine wall? That make it through the first week of pregnancy? That make it through the first trimester?
Should couples register their fertilized eggs with the government so they can be tracked?
I assume the distinction that you want me to draw is that I'm an independent adult, and the baby isn't. Consider instead, then, if the government saved a toddler's life. Unless the parents died, or were themselves trying to commit the murder and so are now in jail, responsibility for the child in the future will remain with them and not with the government.
> Do you know the percentage of fertilized eggs that make it to the uterine wall? That make it through the first week of pregnancy? That make it through the first trimester?
I know it's low. But the fact that natural deaths are common in a certain situation doesn't automatically make intentional killings in that situation okay. For example, even though the survival rate of Zaire ebolavirus is only 10-17%, it's still murder if you kill someone who has Ebola.
> Should couples register their fertilized eggs with the government so they can be tracked?
No, we don't need more government tracking, and the right to life shouldn't be conditional on being tracked by the government.
Which brings me back to my original question: When should a miscarriage be investigated by the government. Not "when does life start". Not "is abortion morally wrong". Not "is abortion murder". When should the government get involved?
If 50% of fertilized eggs are naturally lost in the first week, how do you decide which should be investigated by the government? Should the government be examining women for IUDs?
> Unless the parents died, or were themselves trying to commit the murder and so are now in jail, responsibility for the child in the future will remain with them and not with the government.
So the mother carries the baby to term. Can she simply leave the hospital without paying after giving birth? Does she have to take the baby home? Does she have to love the baby? Does the government get to enforce that too?
When there's some reason to believe that it might have been intentional.
> If 50% of fertilized eggs are naturally lost in the first week, how do you decide which should be investigated by the government? Should the government be examining women for IUDs?
Couldn't very early abortions like that be effectively stopped just by banning the pills that are meant to cause them, without having to investigate early miscarriages at all? And no, the government generally shouldn't be examining women for IUDs, since that would constitute an unreasonable search without probable cause.
> Can she simply leave the hospital without paying after giving birth?
I don't see what this has to do with the topic at hand. How would this be any different than leaving the hospital after getting a cast put on a broken bone without paying, or leaving a restaurant after eating without paying?
> Does she have to take the baby home? Does she have to love the baby?
No, she can give the baby up for adoption instead.
> Couldn't very early abortions like that be effectively stopped just by banning the pills that are meant to cause them, without having to investigate early miscarriages at all?
It feels very good to be on the righteous side of an argument. Righteousness is a very powerful emotion. It feels good to defend life. It is easy to imagine the future baby.
It feels like preventing a needless death. But most fertilized eggs probably don't make it to live birth. That's a stark fact that does not feel good.
> I don't see what this has to do with the topic at hand. How would this be any different than leaving the hospital after getting a cast put on a broken bone without paying, or leaving a restaurant after eating without paying?
Because she did not choose to be there. She did not want to go down this path. If a bully breaks your kid's arm, should their family pay the doctor bills? If your date takes you to a restaurant you don't want to go to, should you have to pay the bill?
> No, she can give the baby up for adoption instead.
And if the baby is not adopted?
Isn't that true of most other reasons that people go to hospitals too? Why should this one in particular be free?
> If a bully breaks your kid's arm, should their family pay the doctor bills?
Isn't the way this works that you'd have to pay the bill initially, and then later be able to go after them for compensation?
> If your date takes you to a restaurant you don't want to go to, should you have to pay the bill?
Can't you just decline to go to that particular restaurant?
> And if the baby is not adopted?
Then the baby would end up in the foster care system. Not a good outcome, but a way less bad one than being killed.
It also seems that you are willing to cut the power of the state very very fine - intentional killing of a fertilized egg is equivalent to killing an infant, but the state does not have a catalog or any way of knowing about all fertilized eggs, so how does it know when to investigate?
The state has no right to know about a woman's IUD, but does have a right to know if she has taken steps to stop that fertilized egg from developing further, if I understand your position correctly.
We get our belief system from our family and friends. We see their values and we see what works for them. We feel righteous when we defend those values. This is true for everyone. It's not "both sides" it's "all humans".
I personally view humankind as my cousins. I don't like all my cousins, I don't agree with everything they do. Some need help, some need to be stopped by force, some are greedy, some are kind. If we're all cousins, then we all have rights, and we have to decide how to balance those rights. A pregnant woman has rights, and an unborn child has rights, and those do need to be balanced. I am comfortable putting the balancing point at some measure of 'viability'. I am not a specialist in pregnancy, so I don't know exactly when that is, but it's definitely not at the moment of conception.
> The state has no right to know about a woman's IUD, but does have a right to know if she has taken steps to stop that fertilized egg from developing further, if I understand your position correctly.
The state can make something illegal without needing intrusive investigative powers to be able to find it. Consider that CSAM is illegal, even though we don't have a national registry of cameras or hard drives, and the government isn't allowed to search your cameras or hard drives for CSAM without probable cause.
So, it comes back to my first argument - if you really think that an abortion is the murder of a human, then it is in the first degree, right? And if so, the penalty would be pretty high. Are you OK with that?
Why would that follow logically? Willfulness and premeditation are two aggravating factors that make first degree murder “worse” than lesser degrees of murder. That doesn’t mean that those are the only factors that can be used to distinguish different degrees of culpability for killing a human. The law of homicide is extremely sensitive to context and circumstances.
It’s entirely consistent to believe on one hand that abortion is murder (intentional killing of a human being), and to believe on the other hand that the circumstances are mitigating factors that lessen the gravity of the offense.
It’s even consistent to believe that abortion is murder, but doesn’t warrant any punishment at all—like killing in self defense. Under German constitutional law, for example, abortion is deemed a deprivation of a right to life that begins at conception. But the German constitutional court has held that, nonetheless, the state doesn’t necessarily need to criminally penalize it.
I fully agree with it. The punishments for murdering unborn children are too mild. They should be more severe.
There are other arguments involved. Was the murder brutal? Did people depend on the victim? Children have no dependents, though this is offset by the vulnerability and future life of the victim.
And the insurance companies, doctors, and medical groups involved are basically in an industry of assembly line baby murder for money. The culpability of doctors cannot be the same.
It’s not based on logic. It’s based on emotion. America was founded by the Puritans.
It’s not about life, it’s about control.
That can't make sense otherwise any state can make laws for other states. Effectively allowing each state to be a federal-level lawmaker.
This is clearly unconstitutional, but of course, it all depends on the insanity of the current SCOTUS.
That changes when someone relinquishes their citizenship, however. As to American states, relinquishing citizenship is as easy as relocating to another state and taking steps indicating intent to change your residence permanently, such as changing your driver’s license or voter registration.
Thus providing relocation assistance is on different legal footing than paying for abortions out of state.
I hope they get punished.
I remember the day when libertarians were vehemently pro-choice. What happened?