Alabama abortion ban: Republican state senate passes most restrictive law in US

[crazy canuck]

I always felt like we should be able to come together and find a way to give both sides as much of what they want as possible. That we could find policies and medical technology to give women control of their bodies and support the humanity of the fetus. I mean maybe not perfectly but we could really do much better. But it just never really happened. Even doing something logical in that context. like provide free birth control for women to reduce unwanted pregnancies seems to be hard to pull off. I always found that weird since that theoretically should be a no-brainer thing both sides should want.

Kind of hard to try to come to a compromise with people who doubt--no, not just doubt, deny--the sincerity of my views even when I say that as a practical matter I'm OK with the 3 trimester standard the Supreme Court articulated in Roe v Wade simply because I suggest that it's possible that a developing fetus is a human being sometime before the completion of a full 9 month term pregnancy.  Guess they'll only be satisfied if we not only allow abortion on demand at any point before full term, but also outlaw providing medical care to preemies.

Kind of hard to have any sympathy for your position when you repeat the lies of the Trumpists in the same post.

[Valmy]

Guess they'll only be satisfied if we not only allow abortion on demand at any point before full term, but also outlaw providing medical care to preemies.

Well there you go. You seem to doubt the sincerity that that it is about women having bodily autonomy and not a bloodthirsty lust to murder babies.

[Valmy]

All the stuff I said would minimize abortions and was called a radical feminist for. Because common sense is not for women, you know. We must be radical to want to be consider more human that a clump of cells.

Who must be radical? Women? Well clearly the majority of women in Alabama are radicals...for the other side unfortunately.

[Eddie Teach]

Such as?

Free birth control.  Sex education taught from an early age so that children grow up knowing how to use and expect to use birth control.  Fee health care so that women can gain immediate access to morning after pills if they are at all concerned that the birth control has failed, or the have been sexually assaulted.  Social policy changes which provide women with greater economic opportunity so that they can avoid being in relationships they do no desire simply to derive some small measure of economic security. 

I am sure if you start thinking about this from the perspective of a woman you will be able to come up with more.

Birth control and sex education is all well and good, but it doesn't eliminate the problem of unwanted pregnancies. Legal abortion and the well-being of the fetus will always conflict.

[crazy canuck]

Such as?

Free birth control.  Sex education taught from an early age so that children grow up knowing how to use and expect to use birth control.  Fee health care so that women can gain immediate access to morning after pills if they are at all concerned that the birth control has failed, or the have been sexually assaulted.  Social policy changes which provide women with greater economic opportunity so that they can avoid being in relationships they do no desire simply to derive some small measure of economic security. 

I am sure if you start thinking about this from the perspective of a woman you will be able to come up with more.

Birth control and sex education is all well and good, but it doesn't eliminate the problem of unwanted pregnancies. Legal abortion and the well-being of the fetus will always conflict.

You are correct that there is no perfect solution.  But that was not the claim.  What Meri, I and others have proposed from time to time as alternative to the dysfunctional system you currently have would be much better and would go a long way to deal with the concerns of those who truly value life above all.

[Eddie Teach]

You said the issue could be resolved to the satisfaction of both sides. That isn't possible.

[dps]

I always felt like we should be able to come together and find a way to give both sides as much of what they want as possible. That we could find policies and medical technology to give women control of their bodies and support the humanity of the fetus. I mean maybe not perfectly but we could really do much better. But it just never really happened. Even doing something logical in that context. like provide free birth control for women to reduce unwanted pregnancies seems to be hard to pull off. I always found that weird since that theoretically should be a no-brainer thing both sides should want.

Kind of hard to try to come to a compromise with people who doubt--no, not just doubt, deny--the sincerity of my views even when I say that as a practical matter I'm OK with the 3 trimester standard the Supreme Court articulated in Roe v Wade simply because I suggest that it's possible that a developing fetus is a human being sometime before the completion of a full 9 month term pregnancy.  Guess they'll only be satisfied if we not only allow abortion on demand at any point before full term, but also outlaw providing medical care to preemies.

Kind of hard to have any sympathy for your position when you repeat the lies of the Trumpists in the same post.

Other than the sarcastic last sentence, what in my post is a lie?

[Solmyr]

As for the government providing free or low-cost birth control, no I'm not in favor of that.  That doesn't mean that I'm against birth control;  I'm also against censorship, but I don't think that supporting freedom of the press means that the government has to give you money to run your own newspaper or broadcast station, either.

That's a pretty crap comparison, as those are in no way similar. You generally run a newspaper or broadcast station as a service to a wide audience and for profit, and birth control is related to personal health and has neither of those factors. A better comparison would be with public healthcare, as birth control can be seen as part of that. Moreover, there have been e.g. a marked reduction in teen pregnancies where free birth control was provided, so it clearly has a beneficial effect.

[crazy canuck]

I always felt like we should be able to come together and find a way to give both sides as much of what they want as possible. That we could find policies and medical technology to give women control of their bodies and support the humanity of the fetus. I mean maybe not perfectly but we could really do much better. But it just never really happened. Even doing something logical in that context. like provide free birth control for women to reduce unwanted pregnancies seems to be hard to pull off. I always found that weird since that theoretically should be a no-brainer thing both sides should want.

Kind of hard to try to come to a compromise with people who doubt--no, not just doubt, deny--the sincerity of my views even when I say that as a practical matter I'm OK with the 3 trimester standard the Supreme Court articulated in Roe v Wade simply because I suggest that it's possible that a developing fetus is a human being sometime before the completion of a full 9 month term pregnancy.  Guess they'll only be satisfied if we not only allow abortion on demand at any point before full term, but also outlaw providing medical care to preemies.

Kind of hard to have any sympathy for your position when you repeat the lies of the Trumpists in the same post.

Other than the sarcastic last sentence, what in my post is a lie?

It was the last sentence I was referring to.

[dps]

Other than the sarcastic last sentence, what in my post is a lie?

It was the last sentence I was referring to.

Has someone in the Trump administration actually suggested that Democrats want to deny health care to preemies?       Jesus, you can't be sarcastic anymore;  no matter how clearly ridiculous someone is, some politician somewhere actually believes it.

[crazy canuck]

Other than the sarcastic last sentence, what in my post is a lie?

It was the last sentence I was referring to.

Has someone in the Trump administration actually suggested that Democrats want to deny health care to preemies?       Jesus, you can't be sarcastic anymore;  no matter how clearly ridiculous someone is, some politician somewhere actually believes it.

Such is the world we now live

[Berkut]

I've never really understood the claim that we cannot tell when a fetus is human.

It seems pretty straightforward to me.

First, lets talk about what we mean when we say "human". Why is it murder to kill a human, and not to kill something not-human, say, a fish?

What is it that we should value when we talk about humanity such that it is a crime to harm it?

I think it is our consciousness and our ability to experience pain because of that advanced level of cognition that is (as far as we know) actually unique to being a human being is the thing that we value. Now, there are some interesting argument around this of course, but in this context, I think it is pretty clear what it is that we consider to be relevant - human levels of conscious thinking and potential for suffering.

And we can tell when a fetus starts exhibiting human like brain activity. It can be pretty simply measured. It is around 28 weeks. I am pretty happy with tossing in a margin of error there, and calling it the current SC standard actually rather reasonable. '

I actually reject what I see as Meri's argument (which was Roe's argument I think, that the SC rejected as well) that a womans right to an abortion was absolute. I do think that there is in fact a balance to be struck between the individual rights of the mother, and societies interest in the prenatal health of this human being. And I think the argument that there is no possible way to have the view that abortion should be regulated in good faith, ie, based on concern for the health of this fetus rather than a desire to control women, is simply crazy. I am very content and comfortable saying that I think abortion can be  progressively more restricted as the pregnancy progresses, AND that we can and should do a much, much better job providing better heath care and health services to children and potential parents.

Great article on the development of the human brain in vitro:

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/books/chapters/the-ethical-brain.html

[dps]

Well, I stand corrected, then.  I guess my original assumption that technology could provide an answer as to when a developing fetus becomes human can be answered, at least to Berkut's satisfaction.

[Berkut]

Well, I stand corrected, then.  I guess my original assumption that technology could provide an answer as to when a developing fetus becomes human can be answered, at least to Berkut's satisfaction.

Well, it CAN be answered, as long as you start with some kind of reasonable definition of what it means to "be human" at all.

That is, I don't think it is hard to do with modern technology (ability to measure and understand brain activity) combined with modern research into the nature of thought and consciousness and how it develops.

Now, if you don't care about consciousness as a measure of humanity to begin with, then that isn't useful of course. But in that case, no amount of even possible technology can help*.




*Absent some better answers to some really interesting questions about just what it means to be "conscious" which is an amazing field of study - but I suspect most fundamental pro-lifers aren't really digging into the latest scientific articles about the nature of human thought.

[Razgovory]

Defining human is a bit more tricky.  There are people who are alive who exhibit very little brain activity, though we don't consider them legally dead.