Is arguing about what constitutes the beginning of ones humanity helpful within a discussion about abortion?

Regarding pro-choice discussing when life begins can be relevant. I don’t think arguing whether life begins at conception is relevant, but to me viability of the fetus is. There is a bit of hypocrisy in it. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, but once the baby is no longer parasitic on the mother, I’m not ok with killing it.

@JLeslie
Children are parasitic until they move out of the house.

@ragingloli You have a point there. Lol.

One of the most interesting pro-choice points I’ve seen recently is that everywhere the start of life is mentioned in “The Bible” it is the moment of the first breath, NOT when a couple of zygotes hook up and start dividing.
This and this and this discuss the point.

@dabbler Ah excellent point

It’s irrelevant. Bodily autonomy isn’t dependent on whether another human’s life is at stake.

If I cannot be forced by law to donate blood to save a person’s life, or even to donate organs I’m not using after I’m dead, how can I logically be required to donate my entire body to provide life to another person?

@ragingloli If they ever move out of the house.

I find the “autonomy” argument to be shallow. If you completely neglect an infant it will die and you can be charged with murder. I’m not completely against abortion because I think it’s mostly gray and every situation is unique. Yes, I think it is relevant but defining when a fetus is viable can be tricky.

Yes, it is definitely relevant. Killing another human is against the law, whether that human is dependant on others or not. For abortions to be legal, we need to work with definitions. We can’t really pretend we are not killing a fetus by aborting it. We can argue whether it is considered a human yet.

Nope. Alive or not, nobody has the right to use my body. I would not be forced to donate blood to a grown, obviously alive adult, even if it meant the difference between life or death for them. So it should be 100% irrelevant whether the fetus is considered alive or not when considering abortion laws.

Oh, I see @Seek already said the same thing.

@AYKM – I wouldn’t be required to donate blood to my own infant, either.

We have the technology to understand pregnancy long before a fetus is in late term. I don’t have much sympathy if it is allowed to progress into late-term and there are no problems with the pregnancy. It borders on murder IMO. Call it whatever you want, it’s all gray so it’s silly to argue about it. I think it just boils down to “are you a decent human or not”
For the record I donate my blood regularly and I hope it saves or has saved someones life.

Who brought up late term abortion – that convenient red herring that makes up a vanishing amount of elective abortions, and serves to prevent women from dying or risking their lives trying to deliver a nonviable fetus?

I swear the only people who argue about elective late term abortions are people who have never been pregnant and religious nutcases. No one is doing 30 weeks of pregnancy for a kid they don’t want.

Not to mention that placing barriers in front of a woman who wants an abortion just makes it more likely she’ll have to do it late. If people were really so hung up on late term abortions only they’d be advocating ways to help women get them early not trying to delay them until it becomes illegal.

What do you think @NerdyKeith ?

There are those of us (well, me anyway) who feel that a persons humanity doesn’t begin until they get a job and move out of their parents house.

I think it is a topic worthy of discussion.
When does a person become a human? What are those traits or attributes that define a person as human? When do these characteristics occur in the life cycle? Can you be a person without being human or are the two terms synonymous?

@Seek I bring up the donating blood and organs argument all the time too, but then I draw a line. I don’t feel it’s ok to abort a 71/2 month fetus and kill the baby in the process. Maybe we could argue the mother always has the right to remove the baby from her body though, but not always the right to kill the baby. If it is self sustaining, if it lives with no help (or the minimal of care that is giving to almost any live birth) then the baby is its own separate viable being.

The above not to be confused with the late term abortion argument. Everyone I know who had a “late term” abortion wanted their developing child. There was either something very wrong with the fetus or pregnancy. People who want to take away the late term abortion are as you said, either people who have never been pregnant, or people totally ignorant to what can happen during pregnancy.

People do have late-term abortions so no, it is not a red herring. I’m not religious and it’s something I feel strongly about. That said its gray all over every situation is unique and deserves consideration. Like pregnancy complications mentioned above, I can’t say that would be universal though either. There are no real hard lines so it makes this a hot button issue as it should be.

@janbb Well as you all know I am pro-choice and no matter what I will always support the choice of the woman to be in control of her own body.

But in terms of having a debate or discussion about abortion, I feel there could possibly be a better way to promote the pro choice argument. Opening a dialogue to what constitutes a human being sounds like a slippery slope to me. Possibly a little to cynical. In a way it detracts from the real issue which is the woman’s body.

@NerdyKeith The best argument is that the government should not be able to order anyone, man or women, to give their own life systems to support another life. They can’t order you to give blood, a piece of your liver, or a kidney, pregnancy does all those things and more. If a man stood by a dying person and could save them with a blood transfusion he is in no jeopardy of breaking the law.

@JLeslie
Thats a very good point, I totally agree.

That was @Seek‘s point originally on this Q.

Well in any case I agree with you both.

I just like to give credit where credit is due.

So when humanity begins is not relevant to the abortion issue?
it is still an interesting question though

@rojo No because it’s a distracting point that will only lead to pro life supporters zooming in on their perception of your morality.

It’s an interesting question but it’s not like we’ll ever get a definitive answer to it. It’s too metaphysical. That’s why it feels so useless to me in this debate.

Nothing is helpful and such arguments are pointless.

Nobody is going to convince the other to see the issue differently.

This is why abortion is at the top of my No Debate list.

It’s all situational too. It’s not like you can lump any of it into some neatly structured moral flowchart that says good or bad at the end. I don’t think anybody likes it. The only thing I can say is I do think there are times when it is morally wrong and other times when it is the right decision. Regardless of how you want to view it it is human life we are dealing with. The fact that it is both the child and the mother complicate things greatly.

One thing to consider is religions look at this very differently, so the religious beliefs of a person obviously influence whether this question of when life begins matters. In Catholicism my impression is they just always favor the fetus. Remember that nun not many years ago being excommunicated in America for helping a woman abort, because her health was endanger? The woman had other children she was already raising.

Then look at Judaism. If the life of the mother is in danger the religion says you must abort. The pregnancy at that point is attacking the woman, and so killing the pregnancy is in self defense. Pretty much all religions are ok with self defense killings, but for some reason it becomes a big question mark if it is a fetus doing the initial violent act.

Let the woman choose.

Give the child a voice.
___

“Is it even relevant?”

In matters of life and death, discussion is always relevant.

Only if asked for an opinion. Otherwise, what a woman feels she must do about a pregnancy is her own business.

Probably not relevent.
The big questions are…
Can the Political State force a woman to take pregnancy to term?
Should people who think it is wrong be compelled to pay for somebody else’s abortion?
Does the fact that the modern abortion debate has it’s origins in the eugenics movement make any body just a little uneasy.

Interesting point @josie. Does the modern debate have its origins in the eugenics movement or did the eugenics movement allow for debate on an otherwise taboo subject? Was there even a debate before the modern age? How much of a negative effect did Victorian morality have on abortion in the Western world? Was abortion more prevalent and with fewer penalties prior to this time?

I think it is relevant. We may disagree at what point, if any, a fetus becomes human, but we can agree that before that point, abortion is okay. The philosopher Peter Singer says that after birth a child does not become a conscious being for another month, and is okay with infanticide before that point.

I don’t think that the argument that abortion is only about a woman’s body is valid. The point is that there is another being involved and, unlike the case of donating blood, the child’s life and the woman’s life have become intertwined.

The issue is complicated. I don’t think there are any easy answers.

@LostInParadise On the other hand, people use infanticide as a slippery slope argument against abortion. “Why do we draw the line at birth??? Is it okay to kill infants because they can’t fend for themselves??? Is it okay to kill my teenager because they’re financially dependent on me???” This is why I find the bodily autonomy argument so useful because it shuts that shit right down. No, it’s not okay to kill infants or other children. Giving your time and money and services is very different from giving your body.

I don’t fully understand your argument against bodily autonomy as an argument. The case of donating blood has another being involved and can involve the donor and the donee’s lives being intertwined. I could have caused the car accident that caused someone else to need a life-saving blood transfusion and I still am not legally obligated to give them my blood.

I think there is a unique connection between a woman and her fetus that makes other analogies hard to draw.

For me the most compelling argument against pro-lifers who use the humanity of the fetus to restrict abortion is that they are only “pro-life” until the baby is born. They don’t give a shit about maternal health, children raised in poverty or education. As a nun was quoted as saying, “That is being pro-birth, not pro-life.”