Ireland compensates woman forced to travel to Britain for an abortion

[Valmy]

Every time I make a point, you ask me if it directly affects me.

Wait. No you make a point I don't understand so I ask for clarification. Why would the UKs more restrictive laws be better? Why would you almost dying in a place where you could have gotten an abortion if you wanted one be an example of how you have heard about the rights of the fetus your whole life? Did somebody say something? Were you referring to something else?

You seem to be having a difficult time understanding that I don't have to have this directly affect me for it to still be important to me.

You would be wrong. It does not affect me but I feel quite strongly about it.

[The Brain]

I don't understand the "it's rare so it should be legal" argument.

And his entire point was their rarity is completely beside the point as to whether or not a law should be made about them.

My point is that it's adding morality and laws to a topic where they shouldn't be. Either a woman has the right to decide for herself how she treats her body or she doesn't. That's the stand that Canada has taken, as I understand it. (I believe that prostitution is also legal there?) To add laws regarding late-term abortions or for the safety of the mother is to change directions in reasoning.

Is that an explanation?

[Valmy]

And his entire point was their rarity is completely beside the point as to whether or not a law should be made about them.

My point is that it's adding morality and laws to a topic where they shouldn't be. Either a woman has the right to decide for herself how she treats her body or she doesn't. That's the stand that Canada has taken, as I understand it. (I believe that prostitution is also legal there?) To add laws regarding late-term abortions or for the safety of the mother is to change directions in reasoning.

Well that is a different point entirely.

[merithyn]

As for the infanticide argument, that's silly. Killing a person is illegal. There isn't a need for an additional law against killing infants in particular. If there are laws on the books about that, it was in order to add more time to the punishment, not because it's a different crime.

You're wrong, actually.

Even the lowest form of homicide, manslaughter, can carry a sentence of life imprisonment.  Infanticide however carries a maximum sentence of five years.  Infanticide, while being it's own separate offence, is actually also a form of defence to a murder/manslaughter charge, given the greatly diminished penalty.

I know you'll just LOVE the reasoning for this: infanticide applies only to a mother killing their own newly born child.  The reasoning is that such a woman is not fully recovered from the process of giving birth, and thus her mind is disturbed, and thus her moral culpability is diminished.

Oh for fucks' sake.... 

[merithyn]

Wait. No you make a point I don't understand so I ask for clarification. Why would the UKs more restrictive laws be better? Why would you almost dying in a place where you could have gotten an abortion if you wanted one be an example of how you have heard about the rights of the fetus your whole life? Did somebody say something? Were you referring to something else?

I was explaining how "could kill the mother" isn't hyperbole, using my experiences as an example. I could have pulled stats about how 18 mothers die for every 100,000 deliveries instead. I chose a more personal route.

[Barrister]

And his entire point was their rarity is completely beside the point as to whether or not a law should be made about them.

My point is that it's adding morality and laws to a topic where they shouldn't be. Either a woman has the right to decide for herself how she treats her body or she doesn't. That's the stand that Canada has taken, as I understand it. (I believe that prostitution is also legal there?) To add laws regarding late-term abortions or for the safety of the mother is to change directions in reasoning.

Not really.  In Canada the SCC struck down the existing abortion law in the 1980s.  They didn't make such a wide-sweeping ruling as to say that there was an unfettered right to an abortion, but merely that the laws as written were unconstitutional, and they invited Parliament to write a new one.  The government of the day had committee meetings, but they were so divisive they ultimately threw up their hands and never even submitted a bill to parliament.  That's the opposite of Canada taking a stand - it's the absence of a stand.

As for prostitution... being a prostitute is legal.  Purchasing the services of a prostitute is not.  The intent is to go after johns.

[Barrister]

Oh for fucks' sake.... 

I knew you'd like that one.

[merithyn]

Not really.  In Canada the SCC struck down the existing abortion law in the 1980s.  They didn't make such a wide-sweeping ruling as to say that there was an unfettered right to an abortion, but merely that the laws as written were unconstitutional, and they invited Parliament to write a new one.  The government of the day had committee meetings, but they were so divisive they ultimately threw up their hands and never even submitted a bill to parliament.  That's the opposite of Canada taking a stand - it's the absence of a stand.

Why haven't they taken up that banner since then? I mean, that was three decades ago. There have been ample opportunities to bring it up again, and yet they haven't. Why not?

As for prostitution... being a prostitute is legal.  Purchasing the services of a prostitute is not.  The intent is to go after johns.

I get that reasoning, and it's thrown around here in Illinois a lot. But I disagree with it. An adult should be allowed to sell sex, and an adult should be allowed to buy sex. I seriously don't understand the laws on this.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Few things:

1. Not to focus on the pedantic, but a fetus is certainly alive, by every standard definition in biology. I doubt there's a biologist in the world who would say a fetus isn't life. It isn't "viable life outside the womb" until a certain point in fetal development where modern medicine can keep a premature baby alive and get it to healthy life in the NICU. Lots of things cannot live on their own, but they're still life (various bacterias etc.)

2. Most ethicists talking about abortion focus on personhood. Depending on your beliefs, a fetus isn't a person until x time. For devout Catholics this is basically at the moment of conception. For many who take a more scientific view on it, it's some time around viability. The more hardcore pro-choicers (like you apparently) believe a fetus isn't a person until the instant it is fully outside the woman's body. I think the U.S. Supreme Court did a pretty good job in Roe, they said that in the third trimester (the time, in the era of Roe, when babies could be viable outside the womb--it's a little earlier now) since the fetus was viable outside the womb the State had a compelling interest in fetal life to step in and protect it. The Roe court acknowledge the rights of fetal life prior to that point, but held that since the fetus and the woman were inextricably linked prior to the third trimester, the privacy rights of the woman to handle her medical affairs trumped the fetus's rights, but post-viability (and the later Casey ruling shifted us off the trimester system to one of medical viability) this rights weighing, in the minds of the court, comes out differently.

For me, I largely agree with Roe, you largely don't. You either believe personhood starts at birth, or that personhood doesn't "matter"  before birth versus the woman's rights. I take a different view.

3. The comparisons to kidney donation and blood transfusions are materially different because those would be requirements I sacrifice something to save the life of a stranger. My argument is a mother has an intrinsic ethical responsibility to her fetus and to her child, once it is born. I fully recognize this is "unfair" in a ton of  ways, but I view it as "biology isn't fair" in various ways between men and women, and this is simply one of them.

I'm sympathetic to the desire that the abortion debate be solely about the woman, but I care about women and babies (including the unborn, past a certain point of fetal development), and while I recognize the political reasons you'd like me to just care about the woman, that isn't going to happen. I think it's not going to happen for a lot of people (including most women--your position of no restrictions on abortion at all I bet isn't supported by even 30% of American women--and this isn't just an appeal to numbers, we live in a democracy, numerical support matters.)

[Admiral Yi]

Bisquick is so smart.  I agree 100% with that last post.

One additional definition of personhood which appeals to me is the beginning of electrical activity in the brain.  Can't remember when it is, but it's either at the end of the 1st or the 2nd trimester.

[Valmy]

Oh for fucks' sake.... 

I knew you'd like that one.

How old is that law? My understanding is that infanticide and exposure/abandonment used to be absolutely epidemic. I would understand why they would have a special category just for that.

[Fate]

I think we need to be careful about making viability outside the womb the basis for abortion's legality. That is going to be a moving target as medicine improves. Right now a fetus around 23 weeks has a ~10-35% chance of living. At 22 weeks we're getting in the 0-10% territory.

Imagine an era of synthetic incubators that we could start 'saving' babies at say 15 or 20 weeks at the cost of millions of dollars per kid. Are we going to ban abortions after that new viability point in the early to mid second trimester? Or are we going to have rooms upon rooms full of baby incubators in Texas to bring these unwanted (probably heavily Hispanic and black) fetuses to term? Might be a good time to become an extremely-premature NICU specialist. But I doubt Texas wants to add so many expensive, new Democrat voters to the voting rolls.

[OttoVonBismarck]

For me the better answer is more education, IUDs for all (I feel they are the best form of birth control), and availability of the morning after pill OTC. Abortion ideally would be a very rare medical procedure for tragic situations where the fetus has a terrible defect, the pregnancy is a risk to the mother or etc. I'd much prefer that to theoretical large farms of premies in advanced incubators.

Obviously the people who oppose these common sense things for moral reasons, I take issue with.

[dps]

I think I largely agree with OvB, but I would quibble on some of the details.  A few points:

1)  I may not be legally required to risk my life to save another person's life, but it's not legal for me to deliberate end another person's life in most cases, either.  As someone said upthread, a lot hinges on one's definition of personhood.  I'm not really sure exactly where I stand on that issue.  My position used to be that since we can't know for sure, we probably should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt.  I now feel that while that might be ethically sound, it probably isn't a practical stance.

2)  Speaking as a Christian, I have absolutely no problem with people practicing birth control.  I know there are some groups that feel otherwise, but in my experience the vast majority of American Protestants would agree with me.  Even people who strongly feel that sex should be confined to marriage mostly feel that, given that some people are obviously having sex outside of marriage, it's better if they use birth control than if they don't.  Even among American Catholics, my sense is that most of them are OK with birth control, even if the Church itself disagrees.  Polls I have seen tend to back that up.

3)  That said, why should birth control be free?  Pretty much nothing else is, why should birth control be an exception?

4)  I also don't have a problem with sex education.  OTOH, I think lack of responsibility rather than lack of education is the reason for many if not most unplanned pregnancies.  And yes, the lack of responsibility is as much on the man as on the woman.  (As an aside, I think I've mentioned this before, but in my high school we had a poster aimed at the male students which said, "If you were the one who got pregnant, wouldn't you use protection then?".  All of the guys pretty much mocked the poster, for the obvious reason that the guy isn't the one who gets pregnant.)

5)  Men can't just father a child and walk away free and clear.  That used to be the case, but not now with deadbeat dad laws.  I don't claim to know how effective those laws actually are.  I'm sure that they're not 100% effective (has any law ever been 100% effective), and I do know that enforcement varies a lot by state, but I don't know the details.

6)  If 75% of abortions are performed on women below the poverty line, that suggests to me that:
     
     a)  upon finding out she has an unplanned pregnancy, a well-off woman might well decide to go ahead and have the baby because she can afford to take care of it, whereas a poor woman might wisely conclude that she can't afford a child, 'and that
     
     b)  statements that current restrictions on abortion are onerous are overblown if so many poor women are able to obtain them.

7)  If the law in Texas says that an aborted fetus must be buried the same as if it were a living child, doesn't that mean that you can't legally bury an aborted fetus there?  'Cause I'm pretty sure that it's not legal to bury a living child, even in Texas.  Or a living adult, for that matter.  Unless they're a professional escape artist performing a show.        

Yeah, on that last bit, I know what Meri meant, but I couldn't resist.

[grumbler]

3)  That said, why should birth control be free?  Pretty much nothing else is, why should birth control be an exception?

Because making it free saves an enormous amount of public money.  It is like needle exchanges; yeah, they cost public money, but they save a fuckton more public money.  You don't even need the rationale that you want to reduce abortions to justify free birth control.