Post Roe - abortions increase

While we do compel transfers of resources among citizens, you have a good point that fetus-mother is a uniquely obligate relationship. However, not compelling someone to bear a fetus necessarily leads to the killing of that fetus, and I think that killing another person is usually only permitted for self-defense. By allowing abortions without any medical threat to the mother, we would be expanding that permission to allow killing for the purposes of limiting sacrifice. It seems we end up outside the scope of legal norms in either direction, but with the case of abortion incurring a larger cost on the harmed party (death) than not aborting (9 months of child bearing).

Perhaps we have injected a level of rational argument into the debate given the assumption that the fetus is a person, but I think the heavy lifting is still performed extra-rationally during the initial determination of whether the fetus is a person.

 

About 32,000 More Babies Being Born Annually In U.S. Since Roe V. Wade Overturned, New Analysis Suggests (msn.com)

Approximately 32,000 additional children are being born annually since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion, a new analysis suggested.

The report suggested the number of births rose 2.3% on average in states where abortion was banned compared to states where it stayed legal (however, that excludes Texas, because it had managed to effectively ban abortion prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and thus the researchers felt it obscured the number—with Texas, the increase was 1.3%).

For comparison, among women aged 25-29 and 30-44, births increased 2.8% and 2%, respectively, according to the study.

Among Hispanic women, births rose 4.7%, while white and Black women saw births rise 3% and 3.8%, respectively.

 

Correct. It just falls outside of regular framework. Makes it hard, especially in terms of generally applicable policy.

I have often hypothesized if the issue would be substantially altered, if not conclusively resolved, if the pregnancy were terminated by removal and incubation at early stage. Not technologically there, if we ever will be, and host of related complications, but it would shift the paradigm for purposes of discussion, impacting both "sides".

Acknowledge this is way way reductive.

From the "choice" side (again reductive with so many permutations not accounted for, just for discussion), would you accept at least partially invasive surgery, with risks (assuming there will be), and knowledge that if the fetus fully incubates, you have a "child" out there somewhere (we might not need a new legal regimen beyond adoption, though we likely would)?

On the "life" side (again, reductive), would you accept the preservation of life as sufficient, or does there need to be some greater "cost/penalty" for getting pregnant? (this impulse is always more present than acknowledged). If life is paramount, would you adopt or even incubate, undertaking the sacrifice you demand of the other? If you respond that you didn't get yourself in that position, is it about "life" or "consequences" for sex, i.e. the lizard brain/slasher movie impulse (the "slut" gets killed first; the virgin survives). That is deep enough in our lizard brain to drive a trope and scripts.

All kinds of complications; really just a thought exercise to tease out

 

The question is when does personhood attach? It certainly doesn’t at conception.

 

Fascinating ideas. Just when I thought there wasn’t anything interesting left to say about this topic.

 

I don’t see why it wouldn’t be at conception. Then again, I also don’t see why it would. This is my point that I don’t really see anyway of answering the question except by using our gut feelings, wherever the hell those come from.

 

This piece raises a significant point about the politics of the issue. Regardless of how one thought about the morality of abortion in the abstract pre-Dobbs, the actions the pro-Life movement after the decision shows that they CANNOT be trusted to govern humanely on these issues:

But these responses ignore the elephant in the room. Pro-lifers lost this battle over a year ago, on the day when a ten-year-old rape victim was denied an abortion in her home state of Ohio, forcing her and her family to travel across state lines to obtain the procedure in Indianapolis. Before the pro-life movement begins excoriating voters in Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio as turncoats and libertines, it is worth considering the events of eighteen months ago in more detail. It is also worth examining their considerable implications for sound moral and legal judgment.

The young girl in question was raped in May 2022, when she was nine years old. She sought an abortion in Ohio in late June, just days after the Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which returned the abortion question to the states. But it was already too late. Dobbs had reanimated the strict anti-abortion law that Ohio had passed in 2019, which outlawed the procedure after the detection of a fetal heartbeat (about six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant) and made no exceptions for rape and incest. The young girl was six weeks and three days pregnant. Evidently unable to qualify for one of the law’s narrow medical exceptions, she obtained an abortion from a physician in Indianapolis on the last day of June.



Some pro-life activists will try to dismiss these concerns as rooted in an objectionable moral relativism. These activists may claim that “yes” voters wrongly believe that everyone makes a decision about abortion that is “right for them.” But this is to fatally misunderstand what happened in Ohio, Kentucky, and other Midwestern states. In my view, many of these voters were not saying that there is no objective moral truth to be grasped about abortion decisions. Instead, they judged their politicians and pro-life activists too callous to help the rest of us find that truth.

 

Straddle that fence too long and you risk serious injury to your private parts.

 

Is it impossible not to use some sort of rational process to determine when we think the life attains personhood status, such that we deem that they have rights that exceed the rights of the mother’s bodily autonomy?

Admittedly whatever we come up with will be somewhat arbitrary, but I would argue whatever we come up with makes more sense that assigning a zygote personhood.

Among potential factors that could come into play

- brain development
- ability to have thought
- ability to feel pain
- working circulatory system
- size of embryo/fetus
- To what extent are they approaching ability to survive outside of womb, with assistance
- what is the means of termination of the life during an abortion
- what value to we place on the life of the fetus at various stages?

If the answer to many of those is “zygote” then that’s not being honest.

 

Im not straddling. I’m arguing ardently that there is no fence. Whatever it is you believe is the moment of personhood is just that: your belief.

 

I would step back and ask why any of those criteria is inherently rational. Why would ability to feel pain, body size, or brain development have anything to do with personhood? These attributes may define personhood only if we decide that they should do so. Definitions are necessarily constructs.

Now I can say that my personal feelings are consistent with your arguments, but I cannot provide any logical reason to justify my feelings. If it makes sense to us to apply personhood at 15 weeks but not at 8 weeks, this can only be because we’ve decided to value characters that develop between 8 and 15 weeks.

 

How else are you going to determine personhood?

There is no universal right to life, even for humans, or for persons. In many instances we decide who lives and dies.

 

Yes exactly. That is my meager point. We can disagree about this issue, but it hardly seems right to criticize the other side of being irrational. Unlike a situation like viruses, which exist whether or not we believe in them, personhood only exists if we decree it so. In the end, we are left with an unsatisfactory democratic definition based on the extra-rational opinions of humans.

Personally, I think that the libertarian party has identified the best of our crappy options here: “Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.”

Though of course all this does is sidesteps the issue.

 

I’ve never heard of a fetus when it’s wanted. It’s always a baby.

 

I generally stay out of these abortion threads because they're always circular. But I agree with you. A rational argument can be made that personhood begins anywhere on the spectrum from conception to actual birth. I'm not advocating for either of those polar opposites, just saying I think they both have rational logic behind them and can't be dismissed outright. Only dismissed on emotion.

 

Actually, instead of saying NEITHER extreme can be dismissed outright, I’d say BOTH extremes can and should be dismissed outright.

Especially considering the game the “pro-lifers” play is arguing against a strawman: “1 day before due date” abortions. They rile up their base against something that already just about statistically never happens.

Personhood from birth is simply not in any way practical either. I’m fine conceptually with a legal review (with the fetus being “represented”) in 3rd trimester abortions, but in practice if a woman has an emergent health care need not sure we want government bureaucrats or courtrooms of lawyers sitting there “deciding” for women. It’s actually ludicrous to think that’s the way to go. Could have some less intrusive regulatory requirement that TWO doctors need to sign off or something along those lines, although for all I know that already happens. No legit doctor is going to perform an “abortion” at 8 months.

 

I agree that both extremes should be dismissed outright, politically speaking. I just have empathy for anyone that feels personhood begins at conception, even if I personally disagree. Because I don't think there is a definitively wrong answer on the spectrum between conception and birth. Even though I think 3rd trimester abortions are, broadly speaking, terribly wrong, and I have zero empathy for anyone at the side of the discussion.

 

Do you know why third trimester abortions even exist?

A woman doesn’t just decide “ya know what? I’ve changed my mind about this whole thing.” These babies are very much wanted but there exists a catastrophic issue incompatible with life. Should a woman and her medical team roll the dice about a woman dying of sepsis?

Third trimester abortions are a red herring perpetrated by pro-birthers. The only person I’ve ever PERSONALLY heard of being in this position was an acquaintance of my daughter who was forced to give birth in Alabama to a child with a trisomy disorder. The child was born with no hands and no face. Mercifully, she lived for about a minute. This young couple is so traumatized by this that they may never attempt to have another child.

 

Yeah from what I have read late term abortions are a very small portion of abortions and are almost entirely due to significant/severe health conditions regarding the mother or the fetus.

edit: looking at some sources the number of abortions past 20 weeks (which isn’t even into the third trimester) is something like 15000. In addition to health dangers of mother and fetus, it does happen that women don’t realize they’re pregnant until third trimester, as odd as that sounds. Also some women want an abortion during the first trimester but don’t have the funds or availability at that time.

Is third‐trimester abortion exceptional? Two pathways to abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy in the United States