Texas banned abortion, then sepsis rates soared
propublica.org
propublica.org
It's clear, in the Health community, that pregnancy can be avoided with contraceptives and instructing the population (adults and teenagers) on how to deal with this issue.
Not only that, but it's tragic that we have such a good organization, WHO, which does instruct on how to deal with this, and yet we ignore because of beliefs of “pro-life” movements which in the end kill the infant's mother.
So from a scientific perspective, they don't care, all they care about is a fetus being born, not well cared for, not born to a family that wants it, not born healthily, just born. Science has no place in their philosophy.
It's a textbook example of how theocracy is wholly incapable of sound public governance.
Abortion became illegal and started to get "theocratized" for business interests by the American Medical Association for regulatory capture of "physician services" and push out homeopaths and midwives where were the administers of abortion drugs. The AMA lobbied congress and Congress passed the Comstock Act of 1873, and finally made abortion illegal in 1880.
Prior to these, abortion was not only legal, but it was not even considered immoral. It was just a fact of life.
No, the Church has never allowed abortion. When gradual ensoulment of the fetus was the dominant scientific theory, the quickening marked the difference between homicide and murder.
No soul, no murder.
As part of that I was roped into also taking Morals and Ethics led by a talented Jesuit type whose name escapes me and who went at depth into many such questions; I had the actual original texts by the three I mentioned in front of me back in the day.
Right now, the best I can do on the fly is point at, say:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#SoulCreaBein
and state that Augustine made a strong case for soul–body dualism and considered at least three paths for the soul to join the body, along with the belief that that a soul must also leave a body, and (IIRC) wrote about "the quickening" (motion of a fetus) being a sign of a soul either transfering in part from the mother or arriving "from outside" via God, etc.
He also remained uncommitted to "one true notion" for the bulk of his life (according to the Stanford and other articles I skimmed).
Augustine is, I believe, the best known for writing on soul-body dualism but I have not taken a deep interest in this area of Philosophy and am by no means an expert.
If you're interested in leaning more about the thoughts that humans have had on the matter that's likely a good starting point for reading material and references, going forward it'd be best to find a diverse group of other interested parties in that part of Philosophy, there will be no absolute answers, just a wealth of conjecture and reasoned arguments for sometimes opposing opinions.
I used to be pro-choice because I thought the motivation for pro-life was religion, and I thought that had no place in determining what others can do.
Eventually I started to see abortion as something closer to murder. Obviously it’s much more complicated than that, but, to me, I view the fetus as a person, even if they aren’t born yet.
There are absolutely cases where abortion can be justified, e.g. for the health of the mother, or if the mother didn’t make the choice to have sex (for example, rape). In this case I feel like it’s still murder; it’s just a terrible situation overall.
In other cases though, I don’t see why abortion should be assisted. Yes, people will try to terminate in other ways. That sucks, but there’s no reason why we should be helping people murder other people just because they might hurt themselves otherwise.
There are a lot of other arguments (like what if the child is born into a terrible situation) that are relevant but IMO at that point you’re essentially asking who deserves to live.
Definitely open to conversation on this/feel free to link any articles that you think might change my mind.
Imagine a mother who had to give birth to her child and had to care until its adult life, in an abusive way, mistreating the child, hating that one human being and treating like garbage. What is worse, the “murder” of the child or raising someone in those conditions?
The hypocrisy here is that most of the pro-life movement wants the child to be born but does not care at all when it's in the world.
This video[0] shows an example of a politician how empathy makes you realize your error. Every so often, you have your view of the world, but how is important is your view in the expanse of the others?
Should we just begin murdering anyone who might not have a life that we define as good?
That's essentially the argument that I'm hearing, except you're limiting the scope to unborn children.
Though, I do completely understand your point. I just think that even in the worst of circumstances someone would generally prefer to live. I didn't have a particularly happy upbringing, and there were times I wanted to commit suicide, but I'm quite happy with where I'm at now.
So imagine a situation where a mother and father have a falling out. By week 6 the mother feels there is no future in the relationship and feels she can't offer the coming child a good childhood on her own. I feel if a child is unwanted by the parents, they are more likely to suffer.
So in this sense, abortion can be a form of harm reduction. It does not reduce ALL harm, but reduces the net-harm across all parties.
Should we encourage abortions for single mothers because their child might not have a happy life? Should we abort fetuses who have some disability? I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.
Yes.
> Should we abort fetuses who have some disability?
If the parents are unwilling or unable to deal with it every day for the rest of their life, yes.
> I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.
That's too big an assumption. But, in any case, not being born, and not having a working brain capable of abstract thought and understanding of the situation, nor a way to express it, they don't get a vote.
Abortions are a way to provide choice to people in tough situations. We have built a world where a lot of people are unable to care for their children in a decent way. In my opinion, that is the crime here.
Blaming these people and calling them murderers, or forcing them into parenthood is just cruel.
Does a mother who forgets to pull the hand break of the car and kills her son, should do jail time?
Does a police officer who shots and kills a person which is in a degraded mental state but threats his life, be accused of murdering?
Does a police officer who shoots a known murderer fugitive without following the standard procedure be prosecuted as a homicide?
See the point?
If two rights clash, who gets to decide which right wins? There's always going to be exceptions, and a lot of the time I think it makes sense letting the people who will be directly affected make the hard choice. And calling them murderers is not helpful.
>>>IMO at that point you’re essentially asking who deserves to live.
The answer is the pregnant woman. She is the one who deserves to live, every time, full stop.
> Does a pregnant woman somehow magically lose rights once she becomes pregnant? If the answer is yes, pregnant women do lose rights, then how much?
Nobody is losing rights. Nobody has the right to end the life of another barring cases like self-defense.
The mother made a choice (ignoring cases of rape) to have sex which could, even with contraceptives, lead to the outcome pregnancy.
> What weight do you put on the rights of a hypothetical person-to-be compared to a fully alive not at all hypothetical pregnant woman?
IMO, both parties deserve to live. If a fetus threatens the mother it should be terminated for her health. If the fetus doesn't, then the mother shouldn't (morally) have an abortion.
> The answer is the pregnant woman. She is the one who deserves to live, every time, full stop.
You're missing the point of my question about "who deserves to live". Should we encourage abortions for single mothers because their child might not have a happy life? Should we abort fetuses who have some disability? I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.
The common example of the violinist analogy disagrees here. You are under no obligation to provide continuing physical support to another person, even one everyone agrees is fully grown/sentient/alive/etc. Similarly, you are under no obligation to donate your liver/kidney/blood, even if you already promised to do so, even if not doing so will cause someone's death. In every case except abortion, we respect medical bodily autonomy to an extreme degree. And indeed in other cases we often find it immoral to force someone to assist a family member's survival on an ongoing basis (see "Savior Siblings").
> I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.
Not always, lots of people desire medically assisted suicide. Blanket assuming that everyone desires to live regardless of circumstance is factually incorrect.
This is incorrect. Parents have a duty to care of their children. Parents whose children die because of parental neglect end in prison.
Sure, but if you wait ~5 seconds when trying to conceive a child then that first potential person won't exist and a different one will instead (different genetics and subtly different environments). We always and continuously make choices about which (and whether) potential individuals will actually exist.
As a fetus ages its expectation of existing in the future increases over time but never to the extent that its' mother expects to exist, so expected utility of mothers exceeds fetuses in every scenario.
If we had magical technology we'd simply instantiate all the possible people from scratch and let them enjoy preferring to live. As it is we have to choose the best limited set of individuals who get to exist, and part of that means not allowing a slave class to exist whose sole or primary purpose is reproduction to the exclusion of their own happiness and agency.
So you're fine with early term abortion, at least up until week 9.
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032846/
It made me change my mind.
I think that some of the considerations being made such as whether or not the fetus is human is not really so relevant, and is missing the point. The child being born into a terrible situation is not really the point either (or at least, is not really the most important point), since there will be better ways to deal with that.
I am against abortion in general, but many of the bans of abortion are way too excessive (banning discussion and communication of information about such things, allowing to sue people without evidence, etc, are probably excessive regardless of what is being banned, though). If abortion seems necessary in this case, the government should not interfere with it (doing so will just make it more messy than it needs to be). However, it is generally better to avoid being pregnant at first, if you are able to do that; and I think that people should not try to have too many children anyways (during these days); such prevention before you are pregnant is better than afterward, isn't it?
But you should still have the right to your own body anyways, and if you are pregnant then before the child is born it is still your body. (There is mistreatment of your own body, but still you properly would have the right to it.)
A better way for the law to handle is that the policies can reduce the need for abortion, rather than trying to affect it directly.
And, sometimes is necessary, that you will value the actual life rather than the potential life, anyways; but, if the mother instead wishes to risk such a birth that might not work and will harm her, that will be her choice to accept or not accept such a risk, I think. I do believe that abortion is "immoral", but that actual situations are not always ideal situations so that such a thing might be necessary sometimes anyways.
Doctors should still provide necessary care anyways. (I think the Catholic church does allow necessary emergency medical procedures that will save the mother even if they have abortion as a side effect, anyways (and yet, many people still don't like that either). Even then, not everyone is or should be Catholic or whatever religion, but that does not make the Catholic church worthless either, even though they (like many large organizations) have done many bad things too.)
I think that many "pro-life" is not a real "pro-life"; they are "pro human birth" without the other consideration. However, this is not true of everyone, so you should not assume that everyone is the same, because it isn't. A real "pro-life" should pro any life including those who have already been born and also the non-human animal and plant life. (Deliberate abortion of humans birth is one thing, but some people like it is more important than everything else and than all other life and that does not make sense and it is wrong.)
What changed my mind here was the realization that this position comes out of Catholic doctrine that defines "a person" at the moment of conception. Once you made that assumption, it's reasonable to say that abortion ends a person's life (aka murder).
This assumption doesn't match biology, however. In the first trimester, it simply isn't a person yet. It's not a proto-person, and it's not simply a cake that needs to finish baking in the oven. Becoming a person takes active work by the mother's body that isn't completed until well into the pregnancy. You could call that point "viability", but it's not a precise instant in time.
If there's no person yet, then it's the mother's body and it's up to that person what they choose to do with their body, just like in every other instance of bodily autonomy.
It's obviously OK if you believe in the same doctrine, but then it's also not a simple case of ethics anymore.
This problem should be considered moral, not legal.
The only common ground that seems to be available between these two camps is in extreme cases (i.e., the mother's life is at risk or rape). Otherwise, I think they are fundamentally incompatible.
I had a friend whose wife got pregnant and neither one of them knew beforehand how dangerous it would be for her. They definitely wanted the child. But his first priority was his wife. So if it had come down to an abortion or letting his wife die, he was going to choose an abortion.
Even if the doctors thought it was the best course of action for the wife, the doctor would have still been afraid to do it because of criminal liability in todays environment in red states.
My friend and his wife decided to induce labor two months early instead and take their chances. The baby is now a healthy 12 year old.
After seeing what his wife went through, he decided to get a vasectomy and they adopted 5 years later.
There are probably people who are flippant about it, and maybe those people are essentially murderers, but the common case is probably a variety of complex moral dilemmas and special cases to consider, and it's probably a bad idea to jump to the murderer label by default lest you apply it to people who didn't want to have to ask such questions.
Which of those should be coerced to give up a piece of their liver to save your life? Morally speaking…
As someone who's lost a newborn and had to make life-impacting medical decisions leading up to it...
I can't imagine those getting abortions are doing so lightly and don't forever bear their own burdens. Let's support, advise, and trust each other to make our own decisions. I don't know what shoes anyone else walks in and wouldn't presume to make decisions for them.
It can be found on the internet[0], and is only 13 pages. Alternatively I think the wikipedia article outlines her three main arguments quite well[1], and is a quicker read. The most known part is her violinist thought experiment, which can be read to only allow abortion in cases of rape. However, the subsequent parts convinced me that, abortion is moral in general. So long as reasonable steps have been taken to avoid pregnancy.
[0] https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Thomson.pdf
I hope you don't honestly hold that generalization to be true. I can think of several people who would immediately dismiss that as false, anyways.
Pastor David BarnhardtIt's not clear to me that the Health community is winning that battle based on abortion rates.
For 2023 Guttmacher estimates 1,037,000 abortions were provided by clinicians in states without total bans [1].
Compare the 2022 CDC leading causes of death [2] which starts Heart disease: 702,880; Cancer: 608,371; ...
That is, if one thinks of abortion as an avoidable disease it's one hell of a disease. And the rates suggest the Health community hasn't solved the root causes by a long shot.
[1] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-unite...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
It basically halved from 1990 to 2015, and has increased in correlation with prof-life policies like reduced access to education and contraception.
But yes, abortions will happen, the mother is the best person to decide here and access to clinics has to be self-evident.
I think the current more severe restrictions aren't even due to people essentially and strictly being against abortion, it is some quite loud abortion proponents arguing that badly, that people reflected on their stances and many folded while lawmakers took the political opportunity to restrict rights again.
Regardless, I agree: society should always provide safe, legal ways for anyone to get the care they need, no questions asked.
Forcing a raped woman to carry to term and parent for life exceeds the sentencing guidelines. When the state abuses the citizen beyond the sentencing guidelines, the citizen has the right to self defense using at least equal force.
That is, don't persons denied abortions by the state have the right to trap their abusers into parenting a reminder of their trauma for life, in self defense?
"Just put your kid up for adoption, to please God."
In 2024, there were 391,098 kids in foster care hoping to be adopted or age out of the system. There are demographic breakdown by race(s) and preference(s).
**
It would not please a benevolent God to trap rape victims with a reminder of their trauma for life!
It would not please a benevolent God to force children into a life of resentment and neglect!
Is there a benevolent God? Not in law, no.
Should the court admit that:
God designed that humans would be the genetically disadvantaged incestuous products of Adam and his daughter Eve and their children?
Genesis (Bible Chapter 1): Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel, and then they violently fought and Cain slew Abel, but the third child was fine (*).
Why must the church track genetic relations, in God's design? Isn't it criminally abusive to teach kids in public school that we're all the products of incest, which survived after God's drowning genocidal wrath toward God's own creations?
Is it morally acceptable for God to drown everyone on Earth to fix God's design and keep testing free will?
If God was qualified to be teaching about medical PPD, God should have instructed humans to wash their hands before delivering babies* instead of instructing them to spread Kaneh Bosm (Holy Anointing Oil) all over the tabernacle or manger.)
In 1865-1867 AD/CE, Joseph Lister discovered that sanitizing surgical instruments with carbolic acid - an antiseptic to prevent sepsis - reduced the number of post-surgical infections, amputations, and deaths.
What has law, for childbirth and God?
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that abortion is a sin, or even of any concern to God at all. Although if one takes the Bible seriously, one has to accept that God is pro slavery and made women inferior to men.
Which is why the Bible shouldn't be taken seriously. It has a few good moral precepts which can be found anywhere and a lot of bullshit that the Western world has been dragged down by for millennia.