A basic question for "pro-lifers" who agree to abortion in cases of rape-

No, the tide hasn't turned, most Americans support abortions being legal which makes them safe.....Anti-Choicers want them illegal and UNSAFE which hardly supports women.


Gosnell was a murderer, he wasn't charged with abortions and bringing that old irrelevant intentionally misleading story into the discussion is a sure sign of desperation.


You post: """"but peoples eyes are opened wide when they see a photo of a baby inn utero, or hear the story of Gosnell, or hear about partial birth abortion. Once people get both sides, they turn against abortion"""


You claimed it, you prove it.

 

nope, one earlier than that post #224

That is your contention, not so from the judges, so the onus is on you to provide compelling reason why.

It has them, just as any other person does . .though it cannot impose itself onto another person without consent, just as you cannot regardless of what other rights you have.

There have been times that SCOTUS has had a majority of what would be seen as conservative judges, and yet ALL challenges to Roe have failed.

not according to the polls you are not, the majority has changed very little since 1973 and that majority is to NOT over turn Roe.

Really, how and where?

If you mean CPC's then they are nothing but a bunch of liars with no medical training what so ever.

Incorrect.

Not just the right to privacy, or do you not support that a person can protect themselves against unconsented injury?

Gosnell murdered BORN children and partial birth abortion is illegal, so both are really irrelevant.

Really . .Well I was pro-life for the first half of my life and it wasn't until I actually started to research the subject and look beyond the emotional rhetoric of the pro-life message that I became pro-choice.

Suggest you read the following as well;

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-lost-faith-in-the-pro-life-movement.html
http://keelium.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/the-day-i-became-pro-choice/
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2010/01/22/the-day-i-became-prochoice/
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Am-Pro-Choice/274178
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2013/06/26/how-my-miscarriage-made-me-more-pro-choice/
http://dohmocile.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/how-i-became-pro-choice/

and those are just the tip of the iceberg.

 

There is no patent on phrase, nor is there ownership based on who uses a phrase first.

And whether the prolife movement is rooted in religion is totally irrelevant in this OP as not one aspect of my arguement is based on religion. Is this how you counter a non-religious based arguement?

 

How many abortion clinics have closed in the past 10 years? We are winning.

 

Yup, through dirty dealing some clinics have been closed with Anti-Choicers gleefully realizing they have made some women's lives harder (misogyny at it's finest).

Now , when poor women can't get to a clinic and have to give birth the Anti-Choicers GLEEFULLY will vilify her for being a single poor mother and scream about the increase in taxes to pay for care for poor children (as they have always done).

I guess they will be so gleeful that rape victims will pay for their "crime" of being raped for the rest of their lives....

They will be over the moon that an 11-12 year old will HAVE to give birth to their father's/uncle's neighbor's/ priest's baby...

All the while ignoring WEALTHY women who can get an abortion anytime.

But these self-righteous corrupt psychopaths will pat themselves on their backs because they "saved the world from The Evil That is Women"....



However, abortions will still happen, as they always have, despite sick twisted nosy control freak busybodies who have no life of their own so have to meddle in others.

 

and I have claimed neither.

Fully agree, just stating the facts .. if you believe in person at conception then the whole ideology surrounding that comes from religion .. there is no scientific consensus that there is a person at conception, it is in fact a legal debate not a medical or biological one.

So do you want to debate the OP on legal and biological facts?

 

I find it disturbing that you support TRAP laws that stop the poorest getting contraception etc as that is what makes up 97% of what PP provide.

That is the problem with such laws they target only those who are the poorest, it will make not the slightest difference to the rich.

 

As I have maintained throughout, the point at which the baby becomes a human with the rights and protections afforded all humans is unknown but occurs somewhere between conception and 21 weeks. At this point, science cannot answer the question and it is pointless to argue the medical and biological aspects (rather, the lack of medical and biological aspests).

The law is rooted in ethics. The justice system is founded on the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and to err on the side of caution and restraint - to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin and Blackstone, better that 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent suffer. Since it is unknown when between conception and 21 weeks the baby gains human status and protections, the prudent course is to assume the point is conception until proven otherwise. That means the rights of the mother and baby must be balanced. The baby has a right to life unless it significantly threatens the life of the mother (and don't say all pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, that carries no weight in court or in the abortion debate).

 

No it doesn't. Rights begin at birth

Well, no, that's wrong.

A human being's rights begin at birth. otherwise everything you claim would be enshrined in law.

 

From Wiki: ""Although abortion was accepted in Rome, attitudes changed with the spread of Christianity and around 211 CE emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla banned abortion as infringing on parental rights; temporary exile was the punishment.[20] Punishment for abortion in the Roman Republic was generally inflicted as a violation of the father's right to dispose of his offspring.[19]:3 Because of the influence of Stoicism, which did not view the fetus as a person, the Romans did not punish abortion as homicide.[47]"""





YOU may not have religious reasons but religion IS responsible for the attack on women's rights.

 

Fair enough, so that rules out the medical and biological arguments, which leaves us with the legal arguments.

and who is saying the fetus is guilty of anything .. not I.

I assume you know what mens rea and actus reus are, but in case you don't;

Mens rea, a person's awareness of the fact that his or her conduct is criminal, is the mental element, and actus reus, the act itself, is the physical element.

If the fetus is a 'person', it also would have to be "assigned" a level of mens rea for legal purposes - this would be as a mentally incompetent person ie the fetus cannot legally be held responsible for it's actions, be they voluntary or involuntary actions. Even though a person who is mentally incompetent cannot be legally charged for any voluntary or involuntary action it does not mean that they are free to impose on another person, nor does it mean that a person being imposed upon by a mentally incompetent person cannot defend themselves up to an including deadly force and that the state has a legal duty to help protect all people from such imposition.

The issue of whether and when a fetus becomes a person is not really a relevant argument, the relevant argument is not what the fetus is but what it does and whether the female consents to what it does to her in a pregnancy relationship.

On a purely legal level it is not the man who causes a woman's body to go from a non-pregnant state to a pregnant one, the only entity that can achieve that is a fertilized ovum when it implants itself into the uterus (which is the generally accepted start of pregnancy).
So although a sexual relationship between a man and a woman usually precede a pregnancy relationship between a woman and a fetus the two relationships are by no means the same. what is more, not only is it the fertilized ovum, rather than the man, that joins with a woman in a pregnancy relationship, but it is the fertilized ovum, not the man, that is the primary cause of that relationship. The only way a woman will ever be pregnant is if a fertilized ovum implants itself and stays there, and the only way to terminate the condition of pregnancy in a woman's body is to remove the cause of that pregnancy; the fertilized ovum (or fetus in later stages). Under the law, therefore, it is the fertilized ovum or fetus, not a man, that is the primary cause of pregnancy.

How to assess causality, whether of pregnancy or any other matter, is one of the most complex questions in the legal field. Often the law must determine cause in order to assess who or what is responsible for events or damages. The law makes that determination by assessing casual links, that is, by identifying the sequence of events, or chains, that explain how or why an event occurred. The law tries to consider only the causes that are "so closely connected with the result" -Source : Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts - Page 264 that it makes sense to regard them as responsible for it. In the process, courts distinguish between two main types of causes; factual causes, which explains in a broad context why an event occurred, and legal causes, which constitute the sole or primary reason for an event's occurrence.
A factual cause can be thought of as necessary but not sufficient cause of an event, there are two types of factual cause - 1. casual links, 2. "but for" causes, the former increases the chances that another event will occur but do not cause the actual event itself - Source : Calabresi - Concerning Cause and the Law of Torts - Page 71 - and the latter are acts or activities "without which a particular injury would not have occurred", yet not sufficient in itself for its occurrence eg. If a woman jogs in Central Park at ten o-clock at night although such activity increases the chances they may be beaten, raped or murdered, it does not actually cause those events to occur; someone else has to do the beating, raping or murdering. Exposing oneself to the risk of injury, therefore, while it may be a necessary, factual cause of that injury, does not mean it is the sufficient, legal cause. The person who does the beating, raping or murdering are the necessary and sufficient cause of the injuries, and thus are the legal cause.
Among the virtually infinite number of necessary factual causes the task of the law is to locate the one necessary and sufficient cause of the event, that is, the legal cause. The legal cause is "that which is nearest in the order of responsible causation .. the primary or moving cause ... the lat negligent act contributory to an injury, without which such an injury would not have resulted. The dominant, moving or producing cause" - Source : Black's Law Dictionary 6th Ed Page 1225, the legal cause is, therefore, both a necessary and sufficient condition to explain why an event occurred.

A man is a necessary factual cause in the chain of events that can lead to pregnancy .. but a man is not the legal cause
A man depositing sperm into the vagina is- for the most - a necessary factual cause in the chain of events that can lead to pregnancy .. but is not the legal cause.
The sperm fertilizing the ova is a necessary and significant cause in the chain of events that can lead to pregnancy, this is the legal cause.

Factual Cause - http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/actual-cause/
Legal Cause - http://definitions.uslegal.com/l/legal-cause/

Even if the fetus has a right to life, that right does not allow it to impose on another person in order to sustain that life, in fact the right of a person to protect themselves from unconsented injury is one of the very few that over rides the right to life of another person .. you cannot force another person to give you any part of their body, not even a drop of blood, and if you try to take it without consent that person has the right to protect themselves up to and included deadly force.

Currently states recognize three contexts of when deadly force in self defence is justified;

1. when one is threatened with death
2. when one is threatened with a serious bodily injury (defined as damage or loss of use of an organ or limb for a protracted period of time, such as six weeks)
3. the invasion of one's liberty, such as in kidnaping, rape, or slavery

The courts already recognise pregnancy as a literal injury in some cases, as do some states.

So on purely legal standings a woman has every right to an abortion in order to protect herself from the unconsented injuries being caused by another person, even though that person may be legally seen as mentally incompetent and as such cannot be prosecuted for it's actions, that does not allow the person to impose themselves onto another.

 

Excellent analysis, although I doubt the extremists (on both sides of this issue) will pay any attention to it.

Just to play devil's advocate, what if we made an analogy to skydiving or rock climbing? If another person tried to do this in tandem with you, without your consent, that would probably be a no-brainer. But what about cases where you initially intended to do this? Should you be able to cut the line to an inexperienced skydiver/rock climber just because you changed your mind?

 

Everything you wrote is geared to 2 autonomous people and ignores one major glaringly obvious fact - the baby came into existence in the situation of being inside and dependent upon the mother. And you also ignore that the mother voluntarily engaged in intercourse - an act whose purpose is to create a baby - and has to accept responsibility for the result of her actions. Using your jogger example, the mother is the jogger and the mugger.

 

Nonsense. It's only for that purpose if the people doing it intend it to be for that purpose. Otherwise it's done for the purposes of intimacy and pleasure.

 

Intercourse is designed for reproduction. People engage in it for intimacy & pleasure, but they have to take measures to circumvent the designed purpose of reproduction. When those measures fail and reproduction occurs, the people have to take responsibiity for creating a life.

 

"""and has to accept responsibility for the result of her actions. """"


Why?

Who says?

Is it a law?

Where's the law?




AND your ""mother voluntarily engaged in intercourse "".....why do you NOW qualify it with "voluntary" when you believe that even rape is no justification for abortion?

 

Do you also feel this way about every life that's created when they fertilize eggs during the IVF process?

 

Thank you.

The main problem I see with your analogy is that there is a known intent of the person who agrees to strap the inexperienced skydiver/rock climber to them the same cannot be said in a pregnancy, it also does not address the argument of the injuries caused by the fetus to the woman, to make it more akin to that I would adjust your analogy to say - Cases where you initially intended to do this and during the jump the inexperienced person starts to injury you and the only way to stop those injuries would be to cut the line .. would that then be justified?

 

That does not change it's status or the restrictions upon that status, nor does it change the injuries it causes.

As already pointed out consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy, so it is irrelevant whether the female (there is no mother until after the birth or if she has other born children) voluntarily engaged in sex, that consent is given to a separate person (the man) and cannot be transferred or seen as proxy consent to another individual person (the zef) without her agreement.

Her actions are nothing more than consenting to sexually intercourse which only creates the risk of pregnancy (below 9% for a single act of unprotected sex). Pregnancy is a separate situation from sexually intercourse, and even though the two may be related an act of sexually intercourse does not always lead to pregnancy, there is only one thing that leads to pregnancy and that is the conception and implantation of a fertilized ovum which under the pro-life ideology of person at conception is a separate person and as such, like all other persons, must gain consent to do so, it cannot be presumed by a woman's previous actions that she gives consent to a separate person for a separate action. The "mere fact that one is willing to incur a risk that conduct in a deliberate violent act will be committed", for example, "does not mean one is willing for such conduct to be committed" - Source : W. Page Keeton, Dan B. Dobbs, Robert E. Keeton, and David G. Owen; Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts, 5th Ed, Page 113 - What this means is that just because normal consensual sexual intercourse usually precedes pregnancy does not mean that a woman has consented to pregnancy.

I think what you are alluding to is contributory negligence. The assumption of risk can, and is, often tied into contributory negligence where the actions of a person can bring harm to themselves but even so those people who consent to risk do not lose the right to be free of non consensual injuries from others.
The distinction between the assumption of risk and contributory negligence is that the former is viewed as serving one's interests, while the latter is action that does not serve one's interests. Women who assume the risk of pregnancy must there for be seen as acting in their own interest .. however, that consent can be revoked at any point thus breaking the consensual relationship to be harmed, should the opponent continue to inflict harm after the relationship is broken, the victim would be entitled at that point to state assistance to stop the attack.
Should the woman decided to rescind her assumption of risk, she would be entitled to do so. The fertilized ovum's imposition on the woman would be unjustified because she no longer agrees to assume the risks of being harmed.
The assumption of risk can also be seen in cases where people realize that others have created risks yet they voluntarily exposes themselves to those risks, in the context of a pregnant woman it would mean if she has voluntarily agreed to be pregnant, she cannot hold the fetus responsible for harming her, on the other hand, of course, should she not agree to be pregnant, the fetuses harm to her falls outside the parameters of her assumption of risk.

In general even if a woman can be said to have assumed the risk that a fertilized ovum will harm her, since people are not bound to continue their assumption of risk, neither would she be bound ergo even if we were to apply an assumption of risk analysis to pregnancy it would not entitle a fertilized ovum to harm a woman unless she has consented to that harm.

In the example used, the woman would be the jogger, the zef the mugger.

 

Actually the moment a Fetus becomes a Human Being is the moment after the Fetus has either been born naturally or removed via C-Section or other method and can remain alive with or without the aid of mechanical assistance...and it's Umbilical Cord is cut as it does not become a Baby until it is seperated from the Mother.

This has been determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.

AboveAlpha

 

Actually, you're still saying that in your adjusted analogy. In cases of planned pregnancy, there usually is a known intent. In this case the woman knows the consequences of a normal pregnancy and consents to them. Currently women can have elective abortions even in cases of planned pregnancies. Wouldn't this be analogous to "cutting the line" even when the inexperienced person isn't causing any injuries to you?

Even in the cases where they are injuring you, where do you draw the line between ones that justify killing them (by withdrawing consent to use your equipment) and ones that don't?

 

If its a human at conception, then it doesnt matter where the conception occured, and IVF creates human beings.

 

First, the law and SCOTUS are far from perfect. And you are going to rest your arguement on the same SCOTUS that upheld Kelo v New London (totally unconstitutional), Patriot Act, NDAA, "rewrote" obamacare so it could be upheld, etc.?

Second, read the thread (particularly the comparison of the viability of a baby and Hawking), viability is not a deciding factor.

 

What do you rest your argument on?

 

Reason, morality, ethics, dignity, fairness - all the things that are lacking in the "justice" system.