Fill in the blank: " It's okay to kill your baby when... "

When is it okay to kill your unborn baby?
Whenever the mother feels like it?
Whenever the baby is inside the mother?
Whenever the mother feels like there is even the slightest chance that terminating the baby might increase her odds of survival.
Are there ever situations where it is okay to kill a sleeping baby outside the womb?

 

Best to have an abortion as early as possible if she wants to end her pregnancy. Waiting becomes more dangerous for the woman and borderline illegal unfortunately.

I don't believe there should be any laws on abortion simply for the fact that women who NEED late term abortions to save their lives have to jump through figgin' hoops to get them.

You mean when it's still a fetus? Which is the medical term for 'unborn baby' as you put it, then yes.

If she feels she must abort to save her life then absolutely.

Absolutely not. The neonate has now become a separate entity from the woman, it has personhood and is a human being who is no longer infringing on her bodily autonomy.

 

What if she does not feel that way, but is just saying so to obtain an abortion born out of pure convenience?
If the doctor tells the woman that an abortion could increase her chances of survival by 1%, should she still be given the right to get an abortion?

How does the fetus just suddenly become a baby? Apparently you do not believe it does not necessarily have to do with time period of development because some fetuses are born prematurely and survive, yet you would not advocate for aborting them.
Is personhood magically conferred as soon as it passes through the birth canal?
If the fetus is not a separate entity from the woman, is the woman infringing on the bodily rights of the fetus when she aborts it?
Does a woman's bodily rights for, let us suppose, 2 months, outweigh the life of a fetus in the advanced stages of development?
Does there come a point in time where the woman has forfeited her bodily rights, when choices were available to her to avoid being in the present situation she now finds herself in?

 

What if we don't make assumptions just because you want to restrict a woman's right to have control over her own physical and emotional health?

It has already been stated thousands of times here that the vast majority of women who have third trimester abortions, you know that 1%, are doing so for life threatening medical reasons. I don't know why so many pro-lifers here seem to think women are literally waiting until the last minute and going, "Whoops! My water broke, guess I better go get that abortion now." It's just silly. You really need to lay off the pro-life propaganda sites Anders, it's messing with your ability to rationalize clearly.

Of course. Why shouldn't she be free take every percentage possible to save her own life? If she does not want to that is her choice too. It's all about choice here. She needs to have the option since it directly affects her own well being.

I use medical terms in this debate Anders because this is about a medical procedure. Ovum, sperm, zygote, embryo, fetus and neonate are all stages of life of humans. Neonate is the proper medical term for a person who has just been born. Baby is an emotionally charged term that can be used in a variety of ways and is simply not a good term to use in this debate as it can be very confusing as to which reproductive stage one is discussing. Baby can mean her zygote/embryo/fetus (most women who plan to carry to term affectionately refer to their fetus as such), baby can be what I call my boyfriend when I want to cuddle with him, "Hey baby, c'mon over n' snuggle!", baby is what my mother still affectionately calls my little brother because he's her youngest child out of the three of us, but he's 16 years old, baby is often used by pro-lifers to make women envision that their 6 week old fetus looks just like a newborn little infant that can cry, think, and do everything else a born person can. Baby is just too broad and far too emotionally charged of a term for me to bother with in this debate.

So, when does a fetus become a neonate would be the proper question here. A fetus becomes a neonate after birth.

I advocate allowing the woman to be free to make her own choices about her own body. Do not read into my position as advocating for anything other than that.

I wouldn't call it a 'magical' process but neonates are granted personhood upon birth. They become members of society with a name and an ability to biologically function without the aid of their mother.

No because the fetus has no rights.

I believe it does.

I don't believe so, but the society I live in currently dictates, thanks to pro-life lobbyers mind you, that a woman cannot legally abort past 21 weeks or so except in cases of life and death.

 

The society I live in generally limits abortion past 12 weeks, although exceptions are made for woman of "poor socioeconomic standing" and women under the age of 18 who are considered "ill-equiped for motherhood". Still, abortions are usually not allowed past 18 weeks.

I advocate for giving the unborn a chance to decide for themselves whether they want to live or die, when they are old enough to make that decission.

 

This was posted by a woman online before she was about to get an abortion:

What I don't understand is these women say they want to give their babies a better life... yet just look at what they do!
How is tearing apart you little unborn baby into little shreds giving it "a better life" ?

 

Do you have any idea how much it angers me that you can look around this country today, and think, "I want to talk about abortion".

 

So now you not only want government to control actions it is not capable of controlling, you want government to control thoughts? I'd suggest some counseling to deal with that anger.

 

That's not what he said. He just said it makes him angry.
Unlike many liberals who actually would like to control speech. And we have no farther to look than the UK to say what they would do if given the chance.

sounds like you might be projecting some of your own insecurities onto someone else.
There's got to be a lot of hate/anger/fear to feel that way about a baby, unborn or not.

 

It makes him angry that anyone can THINK about talking about abortion. It's a natural leap that he would want something done to stop anyone THINKING that, and most pro-lifers want to give that chore to government. He is easily angered if someone thinking about talking does make him angry, so he needs help dealing with that or he will end up being one of the right-wing assassins.

As an amateur psychologist, you fail. I don't feel anything at all about someone else's zef. I feel for the pregnant woman, if she wants a baby, I want her to have it. If she doesn't want it, I don't want her to have to have it.

 

I'd suggest that you get your reading glasses fixed granny, because I said nothing about the government controlling your thoughts.

I called you stupid for caring about this under today's conditions.

If you can't handle accountability that is your problem!

 

That all sounds very subjective. I mean, Ovum and sperm are well defined, but can you "scientifically" determine the instant when one transistions from zygote to embryo and so on? And should semantics be what determines who lives and who dies?

Many unborn children already do have names, and at a certain point, could indeed survive without the mother, if they were not trapped inside her. So according to you, they are members of society, yes?

 

Yes.

That should give you an idea of the stages of embryonic development. Days 1-4 it is a zygote, weeks 2-8 it is an embryo and for the rest of the pregnancy it is a fetus. Not that hard to figure out and certainly not difficult to use proper medical and scientific terms.

Did anyone say semantics should determine who lives and dies? If anything it is just the woman making an individual choice to determine whether or not to continue her pregnancy. I doubt she is thinking of semantics when making this choice. We use correct terminology here because we are having a debate on the subject and need to be clear and concise when discussing our positions, at least that's how I prefer to be when discussing my position and making my case for freedom of choice.

Pro-choicers want women to be free to make whatever choice they want. I personally want to see more aid and care given to women in the poorer class to be able to give birth to and raise the children they want. However I know of many lifers who align themselves with conservatives and from my understanding conservatives don't much care to help or aid anyone poor, let alone pregnant women who they've decided it's their own fault for their predicament and should be forced to fend for themselves.

 

Before it can survive outside the womb it is a fetus and acceptable to terminate, once it is developed enough to survive it is a baby and should only be terminated under specail conditions such as it having no brain stem or has an illness or birth defect that would only allow a few days of pain filled life before dieing anyway.

 

Actually we do have boundaries for those terms i.e. Blastocyst, embryo, foetus

So? I know people who have named their computers, their cars, their I-phones and even their pet rocks

 

It is never, ever, ok to kill a baby. It is ok to kill a single cell creature, a zygote, a blastocyst, and an embryo. At about that point, unless you are a right to life extremist, some controversy begins because we begin to call the collection of cells a fetus. Now up to this stage, the greatest abortionist of them all is God (if you believe in the old guy) because most conceptions end in spontaneous abortions. From this point forward, both God and humans begin to pay some attention - again except for the right to life nuts. Much negotiation is possible in the world of abortion, but not with those who assume life begins with the sperm and the egg. Any body spilled a pile of life recently into a kleenex?

 

While I have deep moral reservations about killing a perfectly normal healthy growing human embryo, I am content to let women make the moral determination for themselves. But the point at which the fetus takes on human charactaristics and starts moving around, I think the life of the fetus needs protection.

 

So you would be okay with abortion in the first 12 weeks, then?

 

Assuming it's a normal healthy fetus, and carrying through with the pregnancy would not pose a serious threat beyond what an abortion would pose, I think the decision should not be left to the mother after somewhere between 16-18 weeks. Remember, some fetuses have survived premature birth at 21 weeks, so this is cutting it really close.


Here is a fetus at 12 weeks:



While I think its very creepy, not to mention morally questionable, to abort the fetus at this stage, I would be okay giving the choice to the woman at this stage, since there is so much moral ambiguity, and no one can really say with certainty whether it is a human being yet, even though it already has some eery resemblance to the human form. But I really still have many reservations about allowing abortion at this time. Some fetuses begin to suck their thumb after 12 weeks! That is really creepy. The only way to justify allowing abortion is to compare the fetus to an animal.

 

There is a huge difference between a reflex action and a thought out process

We keep saying that the vast majority of abortions are done before 8 weeks actually - and even those figures are changing due to the advent of the morning after pill and "Medical abortions"

Again the vast majority of late term are done for foetal abnormality such as this - and don't worry it is actually a pro-life site
[video=youtube;6hQHLJTGdTU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hQHLJTGdTU[/video]

 

That doesn't mean late-term abortions are not still being done on perfectly normal healthy babies.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/08/10/most-late-term-abortions-are-not-done-for-medical-reasons/
http://www.jillstanek.com/2011/01/n...-babies-by-lethal-injection-and-nothing-more/
http://www.operationrescue.org/arch...g-in-washington-post-front-page-news-article/
http://flfamily.org/life/the-reality-of-late-term-abortion/

 

That's going to moral issues, which are separate from rights. Her body, her rules.

 

And all of these are prolife sites and more than one have found to be, well, less than honest with the facts

 

Your avatar suites you poorly; perhaps an image like this would be more in order:





Oh, by the way, the fetus is not merely just another part of the woman's body. That should be obvious.

 

Wonderful. There must be about 1 in 1000 liberals who might agree with the cartoon. The rest of us Liberals find the cartoon degrading, insulting, frankly - stupid. Shall we have one of a Conservative telling a rape victim how lucky she is to have he opportunity to give birth? I would guess the percentages of Conservatives who would agree with it are about the same as of Liberals who would agree with the above piece of crap.