This is an incredibly sad story all around. The saddest part, to me, was that for whatever reason they chose to wait rather than legally ending the pregnancy much earlier. The fetus aborted was 28 weeks, or 7 months, and almost certainly viable.
Could the fetus have survived? Who could say. Would the fetus have had a good quality of life? Who could say. I can say for sure that two humans are experiencing something truly, truly awful and may be forced into enduring the awfulness for years to come.
Can someone ELI5 why this is the standard? Shouldn't it be something more reasonable like "has a relatively developed brain", "can experience pain", "shows early signs of consciousness", "has major organs", "is a recognizably bipedal/human lifeform", etc? Every cutoff I've encountered seems to be entirely subjective and like it reduces down to "whatever I find politically expedient".
The very cynical side of me feels like the standard typically used was meant to buy as much time as possible for an abortion and not because it was grounded in anything scientific or morally conscionable.
Humans are somewhat unique in that they can't. Our fetuses are parasitic, and attempt to force the mother to carry them to term through endocrinological trucks. Except... We can now disrupt that parasitism and join every other mammalian species in giving mothers the authority over whether their bodies supply resources to a developing clump of cells within them.
We choose, however, in some parts of the world to not give women control of the resources in their body and instead tell them, "this fetus could become a human, so you are required to use your resources to make it so."
Until the fetus is viable on its own, it's literally in a parasitic relationship with the mother. It might have human-like traits, but until it's capable of surviving outside of that parasitic relationship, I'm inclined to give the mother the authority to say whether they want to play host.
I'm also not saying pregnancies shouldn't be terminable by choice, to be clear. I'm inquiring about how we justify placing the line where it is in the usual standard.
https://www.reading.ac.uk/news-archive/press-releases/pr9938....
It's a topic of much, much discussion, and I don't believe that it's deranged to discuss how human pregnancy is particularly unique in the chemical and hormonal ways the placenta interacts with the uterine wall.
Edit: for instance, human embryos attack and digest the urine wall, paralyzing the cells there and pushing growth hormones to the blood vessels to increase the blood supply to the placenta. Other mammals don't operate this way, the mother controls access to nutrients. Human embryos are so aggressive in seeking blood they typically leave behind clumps of cells throughout the mother's body, making the mother a generic chimera.
In other mammals, the placental wall is not breached, so a failed or terminated pregnancy doesn't have the network of paralyzed and intertwined arteries that a human pregnancy does, making it much more dangerous for human mothers. The human embryo is nearly unique in it's aggression in seeking out arteries.
One effect of human gestation is that the fetus has direct access to the mother's bloodstream, and injects hormones to regulate the mother's behavior - again, this manipulation is fairly unique - increasing blood sugar and blood pressure to serve the fetus even at the expense of the mother. A fetus may spend up to 25% of its protein intake on hormonal regulation of the mother (which, by the way, the mother's body tried very, very hard to shut down.)
It's a complicated and hugely messy affair, and in humans represents a literal fight for resources.
I think this is the first issue to address.
Contraception is for the woman to learn about, pay for and take, same for plan b, pregnancy tests and even abortions.
Pregnancy costs are for the mother to pay, for the mother to learn what to do about it, how to handle. Raising a child is for the mother to do. Shame related to all this is for the woman to endure.
I think any argument for forcing a woman to X, Y or Z would be much stronger if some equivalent contribution was provided to them for the service which they would be obligated to provide.
If all this education was provided properly and for free, access to all these paid for and readily available, if society or father's had to provide adequate in-full financial compensations without lengthy court battles, if father's were forced to be there at various step of the pregnancy, donate their own blood or organs if needed due to medical complications, take care of the child fully if the mother doesn't want it, etc. If women were given full pregnancy work leaves at no reduced salary, etc.
If you had that, you could posture to make abortion illegal, maybe minus certain medical related complications and maybe a few other scenarios like incestual rapes and all that.
Minus all that, I think it's hard to have a discussion about forcing someone to do something against their will, which will incur health repercussions, lifestyle changes, lifelong time and money commitments, and physical and mental pain.
We don't force people to give a hungry man some food. We don't force people to share their property with others. We don't force people to care for the elderly. We don't force people to pay for others medical expenses.
Generally it's done with some sense of equality though. That's probably the issue here. If we all shared the burden of child birth and raising children equally, you'd have a much stronger case. Then when someone says we should ban abortion, everyone would feel the trade offs of doing so. If you don't have skin in the game, it seems disingenuous to argue for.
I doubt this is true, especially given the fact that many people refer to kids as parasites.
Morally, arguments are just as strong in terms of the fetus putting the mother at risk, or the obligations on society to force the mother to behave in ways that care for the fetus and later for the child itself, with limited support or assistance.
Similarly, you can claim that life is life even if it obligates others to sacrifices of their own.
Both arguments also have their equal share of counterpoints.
The thing is, it's a decision, similar to deciding that suicide is a crime. You believe what you want, and choose what you'd prefer the rules to be, but society must kind of all agree to those decisions so we can coexist in harmony, find some compromise amongst ourselves.
For a lot of things, people tend to agree more easily on what they'd prefer. Would you rather have the right to kill others, but it means you could in turn be killed by others, or would you rather lose your right to kill and similarly have others prevented from killing you?
What if something lives inside you, drains you of energy, blood, minerals, food, could cause health complications, and will require lifelong time and financial support and commitment. What if you didn't consent to this thing living in you, maybe it was rape or accidental? Would you rather be allowed to choose to care for it or not? Or would you rather that had it been you living inside a host, you'd have the right to live no matter the choice of your carrier and to their sacrifice or to the circumstances of your conception?
Some people feel at that point, little would be lost to them, so they'd rather get to choose to carry or not. Others feel differently. Everyone might have their own reasons.
There are other options as well, often not discussed, because people are just trying to get their way most of the time.
Men don't have this problem at all, so it is less surprising when they think that the carrier should be forced to carry, since they will never be the one in the "being forced to carry" position themselves. Complicating the matter even more, since we're not all as impacted by the issue itself.
So often a compromise has to be found in practice. A middle ground looks like allowing it but not past some time, gives you enough time to decide what you want, but wait too long and the choice is made for you. Exceptions can be made for special cases, those can be listed.
You'll find people unwilling to compromise as well on both sides.
It's how it goes.
The point being, there is no science to draw on for the cutoff, unless you contextualize it with other arbitrary criteria, and even then, a lot of those criteria are subjective, like "consciousness", that's not a scientific concept, we cannot observe, prove or disprove it, understand nothing of it's mechanisms if it exists, etc.
I have absolutely no qualms with abortion in the event of life-threatening complications experienced by the mother at any stage of pregnancy. That seems perfectly reasonable. In fact, I think most supposedly 'pro life' states carve out such exceptions?
> or the obligations on society to force the mother to behave in ways that care for the fetus and later for the child itself, with limited support or assistance
> What if you didn't consent to this thing living in you, maybe it was rape or accidental?
Does it really take 20-24 weeks to realize and act upon this? Keep in mind I'm asking about where the line is placed, not about whether or not abortion should be permissible.
> The point being, there is no science to draw on for the cutoff
I disagree. Science tells us very precisely what kind of life is being disposed of at every stage of pregnancy.
People are being intellectually dishonest about this on both sides to serve their own purposes. Extreme pro-lifers, for example, will argue that life begins at conception merely because of the potential for it to become a child. My point was that setting the cutoff at "viability outside the womb" is equally as extreme and just as likely to be motivated by political expediency, in the opposing direction.
I see nothing in your comment that meaningfully invalidates that assertion.
Maybe some genetic test results came back indicating severe problems, or the mother got a diagnosis herself, or the father has backed out of support. It's hard to judge without intimidate knowledge of the circumstances.
I think a lot of them are explicitly not carving out any exceptions. But for some reason, it's really hard to get accurate acces to this information.
> Does it really take 20-24 weeks to realize and act upon this? Keep in mind I'm asking about where the line is placed, not about whether or not abortion should be permissible
I wasn't discussing what should or shouldn't be. Simply explaining why there's no easy way to gather consensus on where to draw the line.
In practice, in most places that allow abortions, there are already limits in at what point you can get an abortion. This is a common compromise between pro-life and pro-choice. I think only two states used to allow abortions at any point for any reason, all others had reasonable limits with carve outs for exceptions.
If you look at the statistics, an incredibly small number of abortions are made beyond the first few weeks. There's a lot of secrecy in the details, but it's likely those made after the first few weeks are cases of medical complications, unforseen life altering surprises (death of the father, financial bankruptcy), or were due to inability to actually get an abortion sooner, long waiting times, social stigma, etc.
> I disagree. Science tells us very precisely what kind of life is being disposed of at every stage of pregnancy
Things are a lot fuzzier than you claim.
Sometimes you can't even tell that there are two fetuses until the 20 week mark.
It's not that there's nothing you can observe, but what observations you consider important to use as a criteria on a cutoff is arbitrary. A beating heart? What does that mean? We can grow a beating heart in-lab, is that life?
A 6 months old baby? Is it conscious? Self-aware? You can try to see if it acts differently when seeing a photo of itself versus that of other babies, what does that truly tell you?
People can't agree on if a lobster feels pain when boiled alive...
That's what I mean by that you can't just appeal to science, you have to apply an arbitrary judgement to what science is able to observe.
> My point was that setting the cutoff at "viability outside the womb" is equally as extreme and just as likely to be motivated by political expediency, in the opposing direction
Yes, that's my point as well. I was arguing to your other point:
> Shouldn't it be something more reasonable like "has a relatively developed brain", "can experience pain", "shows early signs of consciousness", "has major organs", "is a recognizably bipedal/human lifeform", etc? [...] grounded in anything scientific or morally conscionable
My point is that none of these are any more or less reasonable. They're all based on some arbitrary rational we've agreed too.
If you're curious though, it's not "viability in the womb", it's actually "fetal viability", and it refers to the complete opposite, which is viability of the fetus to survive outside of the womb.
> Fetal viability is the ability of a human fetus to survive outside the uterus. Medical viability is generally considered to be between 23 and 24 weeks gestational age. Viability depends upon factors such as birth weight, gestational age, and the availability of advanced medical care
The argument goes, if the fetus can now survive without the carrier, on "its own", aka inside advanced medical incubating machines and under advanced medical supervision, the fetus is therefore no longer dependent on the carrier, that means instead of giving an abortion, you could remove the fetus and see if it'll live. The mother can therefore "end" her pragnency without resorting to aborting it, she can simply choose to accelerate the delivery instead.
Now some people think this is also a good criteria for the threshold to be considered alive, that you can survive on your own, independently, detached from a host. You could argue that it's reasonable to say life begins when you can survive as an independent organism (and maybe being dependent on machines and medical care counts as well).
Much more likely than not at 28 weeks. ~50% viability is like a month earlier than that.
> Would the fetus have had a good quality of life?
Roughly even or better chances of lasting complications. Of course, some percentage of babies delivered at every stage of pregnancy have a chance of lasting complications. You could throw a "who could say" after anything you want.
My point is you cannot apply the average case to each individual case. You don't have enough data to confidently say "more likely than not" for this case.
I'm working with the same information you are. All we know is that it was 28 weeks. That gives it a > 50% survival chance if delivered in a hospital in the US. You might come to a different number if you used different sources, or if you had more information. But "we can't know for certain" is just a truism; nobody's saying we know anything for certain. We're just estimating the probability based on what we do know.
Of course that is hyperbole as there is an adoption process, but if the baby was not wanted she could have had all of her medical bills covered and given the child to a family that desperately wanted to raise said child.
I’ll just pick a side, 28 weeks is too late. 12, ok. Maybe I could be talked into 15 even. 28 is just too late. Hell my wife and I would have raised the kid if that was the alternative to an abortion so late.
Never surprises me that HN is full of world-class doctors who can provide a medical conclusion based simply on a news story.