All things Philosophical. discussion

Just seemed like we needed a thread for this to go with the one on Euthanasia.

I don't think this is an easy topic to discuss at all and most definitely controversial. From my own experience, I was given up for adoption when I was 10 days old back in 1967. This was before Roe v. Wade, so my birthmother did not have the option of having an abortion. If I had been born after 1970, well we can only guess whether or not she would have chosen that route. If so, I would not exist.

This is an interesting one. I would love to start it off, but I'm a bit afraid of the firestorm that may be caused.

I know this is an extreme case but it was used in another group of which I am a member. What do you all have to say about this link. http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/...

What I can't understand is why abortion is such a hot topic? Why is it anyone's business about the decisions a grown woman makes concernint her body?

Because it doesn't just concern her body, it is a moral/ethical issue for many people.

Chris wrote: "Because it doesn't just concern her body, it is a moral/ethical issue for many people."

If it's the woman's moral/ethical issue, how is it anyone's business but hers?

I guess if the woman where able to self replicate and she where a hermit it would only affect her, and it would be her moral/ethical issue to deal with alone.

It being only her business and it only affecting her are two different things.

Mark wrote: "It being only her business and it only affecting her are two different things."

How so?

One could say that it is morally her her business and choice and it would still affect others without there being any necessary preclusion or contradiction between the two. The effect you have is not personally decided but whether or not it is only your business regardless of the effect on others is something that one reasons out for oneself and actively decides to do.

For instance one could perhaps say that it is only the business of a law keeping professional as a judge to provide justice. However in providing that justice he would by definition affect others. A flawed analogy however...

The main thing I think the issue comes to again is: who has the right to decide life and death as with euthanasia and when does one have that right? Which is where debate and argument arises.

Is it really "only her business"?
Does it really only affect her?

Regardless of the answers to the above questions, the abortion definitely affects the woman, and the new life growing within her, regardless of the human status of the fetus.

Strictly speaking is we counted 'human status' and not 'personhood' which is where human rights actually comes into play then the Fetus would count. But we don't do that. As for the effect it has on the women that is an issue but only a secondary one that happens post the abortion and the moral question should only be about what the doctors tell her and the care provided afterwards if she does go ahead. Of course the only way for this to be possible would be to have it fully legalised.

Is it not fully legalized?

Depends where you are.

"the moral question should only be about what the doctors tell her and the care provided afterwards if she does go ahead"

Why is that the moral question? To me it seems there are many many moral questions... There is a lot of grey that can be covered here.

None Michael?

The thread became painted that way and now you have to look at it I suppose. By which I mean...we allowed it to be about the woman and her effect/affect on others and herself. Thus the issue was the effect that it would have on her on a psychological level. This meant that the next thing to be considered was the after care. There are bigger issues but you are going to have to actually pose them yourself as you have yet to provide anything but what appear to be attempts to apply a reductio ad absurdum to our comments. Just saying.

I don't know that I want to make any blanket statements of how things should be on this thread. To me this is all theoretical and non-emotional.

But when a person says something like "Her morals, her choice. No government mandates." it pulls the reductionist out of me...

If it is theoretical and not emotional they why aren't you making your points rather than just answering ours? I'm not talking about blanket statements. I'm talking about you posing the questions from the other side of the debate and outlining your point. All you've done so far is ask questions that actually where kind of sweeping.

Well there are bigger issues, such as "person-hood", but I don't know if that would just go around in circles, but I assume it would...

Chris wrote: "But when a person says something like "Her morals, her choice. No government mandates." it pulls the reductionist out of me..."

Maybe but the point is actually technically correct because the government should not be involved with things that have yet to be covered under human rights. However I'm not entirely sure if they were making that subtle of a point.

Chris wrote: "Well there are bigger issues, such as "person-hood", but I don't know if that would just go around in circles, but I assume it would..."

It would go around in circles. However, I have yet to see any stand up for life in and of itself in any kind of extended way. All I've seen is a lot of pro-choice followed 'It's more than that'. Or any discussion on the cut off point for abortions in terms of how many weeks. Personally I always think that the discussion should at least wait until after the period in which twinning is possible has come and gone. But that is just a technical point on moral decisions having to be fully informed. Knowing whether it is one or more fetus is rather important information to overlook.

Ok now I will make a point.

"Maybe but the point is actually technically correct because the government should not be involved with things that have yet to be covered under human rights. However I'm not entirely sure if they were making that subtle of a point. "

I know very little about abortion law in general, let alone other countries, so please excuse my legal ignorance.

What about aborting a perfectly healthy (as well as no other mitigating factors,such as rape, incest etc.), almost full term baby, lets say 8.5 months old. The woman decides to abort at this stage for no other reason than she wants to. As far as I can tell this is murder, infanticide, whatever you want to call it.

If the baby was born at this point it would survive, it is fully developed, it is an independent life, except that it's stuck with a mother who has decided to kill it.

I guess one has to decide when one sees a fetus as a person?

If someone where to punch a pregnant woman in the stomach and the baby died there would be a fiasco, why if the baby isn't a person? Is it the element of wanted vs. unwanted?

Standing up for anything in and of itself can be hard, especially if it's all a matter of opinion.

Chris wrote: "Ok now I will make a point.

"Maybe but the point is actually technically correct because the government should not be involved with things that have yet to be covered under human rights. However ..."

As I mentioned my cut off point for making the decision one way or the other is just after the possibility of twinning. This is only a few weeks in to the pregnancy. I do not condone abortions at a time when the fetus would survive from that point if it was delivered. I also know that they do not allow this. There is a certain point in the development at which doctors can not go ahead and do the abortion. I can't remember exactly when that is but it is somewhere between those two examples.

Why twinning as the cutoff? Just curious.

You can't make a fully informed decision before that point and on the other side...you have to stop somewhere.

Mark wrote: "One could say that it is morally her her business and choice and it would still affect others without there being any necessary preclusion or contradiction between the two. The effect you have is n..."

How does her choice affect others when it's a private and personal decision?

Chris wrote: "Ok now I will make a point.

"Maybe but the point is actually technically correct because the government should not be involved with things that have yet to be covered under human rights. However ..."

What about aborting a perfectly healthy (as well as no other mitigating factors,such as rape, incest etc.), almost full term baby, lets say 8.5 months old. The woman decides to abort at this stage for no other reason than she wants to. As far as I can tell this is murder, infanticide, whatever you want to call it.

Are you presenting this as fact or as your personal opinion?

As far as I can tell it is a fact, or the opinion of the majority as well as the law.

Chris wrote: "As far as I can tell it is a fact, or the opinion of the majority as well as the law."

Do you have statistics showing how many abortions were done at the 8.5 months stage?

Will these same statistics show how many were done for health reasons?

Will these same statistics show how many were done because the woman just wanted to?

If you are trying to tell me abortions at that stage are only done for health reasons, good. I hope that's the only reason they are done at that stage. If you read my example you will find I am not talking about people who are doing it for health reasons.

I am giving an example of what I consider immoral, and I'm happy society agrees.

Well at that stage any reason, even for health reasons it is in my mind questionable at best, but if both where going to die instead of just one, I can at least empathize with making such a hard decision.

Like I said before making that statement, I had no idea what is legal or illegal in such situations. If someone was raped or the victim of incest then I would hope they would make the decision long before it ever got that far along.

So, even though I don't condone abortion in such a circumstance, I can at least understand that a woman may be in a certain frame of mind that could lead to the wish for such a thing to be an option.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/10/...

Any thoughts about this?

Anything involving humanity is rarely black and white, I tend to try and think with more nuance than that. As for your other points I don't have the time right now to address them.

Needless to say I disagree with certain points and agree with others. I find this statement very odd "society does not have the right or moral justification to impose their beliefs on the rights and wrongs of what a woman chooses to do with her own body"

As for what do I mean by 'far' I believe I said 8.5 months, an age where if the baby where born it could survive.

I know, just throwing my two cents in.

Chris wrote: "If you are trying to tell me abortions at that stage are only done for health reasons, good. I hope that's the only reason they are done at that stage. If you read my example you will find I am not..."

You didn't answer any of my questions. Why not?

They seemed rhetorical and leading...

What are you trying to get at?

Chris...play by your own rules. You were nothing but rhetorical for most of this thread.

Pam. I see no need to answer your long post as it agrees in large with what I would say and I have actually posted a more extreme real-life case of the young child getting pregnant above. I'll merely add to it that a technicality of canonical law has meant that Christians have always been obliged, (though they may not now this clearly), to consider rape as a lesser sin than homosexual behaviors (being homosexual is actually okay but you can not act on it), and contraception and of course it follows that abortion is there too simply because rape, if the victim is a female, could lead to there being a baby.

Ok, but I simply don't know the answers to those questions... if she has some questions I can answer I would gladly do so.

That is fair enough. If you had said that the first time nobody would really have minded. For the record I don't want to see anybody attacking Chris over this. I know some people would do that.

Though I would prefer not being attacked, I fully expect this conversation to be... not easy. Especially since my stance is not black and white and many others are.

A CDC report from 2004 reports on the number of abortions by weeks of gestation and state, but it reports all abortions past 20 weeks in one category, eight states are unreported, and the gestation period of almost 2% of listed abortions are unknown. Still, less than 1.3%, or 8365 abortions, in 42 states and DC were reported after the 20th week in 2004.

However, we can improve on this knowledge. Only nine states (AK, CO, MS, NH, NJ, NM, OR, VT, WV) and DC have no prohibition laws, permitting abortions to take place past the 28th week without being justified by health complications. Six of the states that permit abortions have good reporting, while Mississippi only reported a total and New Hampshire and West Virginia did not report. From the six states, we know that between 1177 and 1434 abortions happened that legally could have been voluntary and after the third trimester. These amount to about 0.2% of all abortions. Many, in fact, may not be voluntary and unrelated to health.

Only seven states (AL, ID, IN, KS, LA, NE, NC) prohibit abortions as early as 20 weeks. Under the same report as above, four of these states have good reporting while three of them are unable to report the gestation time for over 5% of their abortions. We know that 1056 abortions happened that legally must be due to health reasons after 20 weeks in these states. Assuming the unreported abortions are proportioned similar to those reported in each state, we can assume this number is not greater than 1250. The total number of abortions in these states is 89,238. Therefore, around 1.2% of the abortions in these states are due to health complications that arise beyond 20 weeks of gestation. This would account for about 8000 of the abortions across all reporting states, or all but 5% of abortions after 20 weeks, if a similar proportion were true in general.

Also, a report from the Guttmacher Institute in 2004 titled Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives reports that the percentage of women who have had abortions that cited concern for their health or the health of the fetus as a reason are 12% and 13%, respectively. Each individual was allowed to cite multiple reasons, so the correlation between these is not known. The text of the report seems to indicate that there is effectively none and, therefore, near 25% of those reported were concerned with health. It might also noteworthy that 21% of those concerned with fetal health had an abortion after the 13th week. Of course, the reasons are self-reported and do not specify if actual health complications were imminent.

Vannessagrace, while these statistics do not quite answer your questions, I hope they are helpful. If you are interested, information on the laws regarding abortion in each state can be found here.

Vannessagrace wrote: "Mark wrote: "One could say that it is morally her her business and choice and it would still affect others without there being any necessary preclusion or contradiction between the two. The effect ..."

I'll answer this this one with both you and Chris in mind. It does affect others because others are involved in the process before during and afterwards. However it is ultimately her body and her decision and her issue. My point being that you are saying its all about her while Chris is championing its effect on society as a whole if it was considered as an option for everybody through the law and health services etc. They are both valid considerations but the reality is that they can not truly be taken separately at all. The reality is a mixture of both.

Edward wrote: "A CDC report from 2004 reports on the number of abortions by weeks of gestation and state, but it reports all abortions past 20 weeks in one category, eight states are unreported, and the gestatio..."

Thank you for the CDC report, Edward.

Chris wrote: "They seemed rhetorical and leading...

What are you trying to get at?"

Thank you for your response Chris.

Here's an article about a point of view that is rarely phttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfr....