Abortion- "It is her body!" But is it?

The abortion section of this forums is mainly that of a woman's rights section where discussions often evolve around whether regulating and restricting right to abortion is good or bad and where the limit should be set and other boring and contraproductive and rather uninteresting discussions as such.

Abortion is only interesting to discuss from a moral and philosophical standpoint imo, where questions about whose body it really is, definitions of life and murder and individual responsibilities are put under the spotlight.

To kick this party off I begin with pointing at what I see as rather problematic with the whole "it is her body" argument; when a woman actually wants to be pregnant, she will do whatever it takes to prevent harm to her baby by entirely changing the whole way she treats her body. Mindful and aware as she is that it is actually not just "her body", she can no longer do what she wants because that would, obviously, kill her baby.

So, is the "it's her body" claim really valid and if yes, explain how that stance can be justified.

 

Without subscribing to any arguments I don't make (and maybe not even to the ones I do make), I don't see how a willing woman's interest in preventing harm to the foetus means she accepts it as not just her body. I prevent harm to my legs, that doesn't mean I accept it as somebody else's body.

 

Yes, in my opinion it is valid for a woman to claim that it is her body providing energy and nutrition to the organism which will potentially develop into a person. When she recognizes that she is hosting this organism, and has decided that she wants to invest in the creation of a new person, she should have the right to do so and the government should protect that right by punishing anybody who tries to harm that POTENTIAL person she is gestating. On the other hand, when she recognizes that she is hosting this organism, and has decided that she does NOT want to invest in the creation of a new person, she should have the right to do so and the government should protect that right by punishing anybody who tries to prevent her from aborting gestation (just as they would punish a man who rapes her and locks her in the basement for 9 months to force her to have his baby).

There is no second party to claim ownership of the body under construction until actual birth (at which point it is inhabited by an active mind, or soul if you prefer the philosophical view).

 

This is interesting because the fetus/baby/ball of cells/life has the ability to "shape-shift" from circumstance to circumstance; if the woman wants to become a mother, it will be considered a "baby". If not, then it is a "fetus". If the pregnant woman has a miscarriage it is no comfort telling her "there, there. It wasn't a life anyways." If a pregnant woman is hit in the belly and the baby dies, it is pretty much seen as murder. If the woman has an abortion, it is not murder.

In this sense the baby/fetus is anomalious- it is neither something nor nothing. Depending on context, it has the ability to switch between the two which makes this one a really difficult question to grasp. Either you can be consistent by taking on the more Catholic perception of life or you can continue to be ambigious by adapting more of a "Pro Choice" attutude where the "baby-fetus" is a chameleon.

The self-ownership argument is very interesting too. Through this lens it is indeed valid tonargue the baby/fetus is a guest living not only inside but also of the pregnant woman. But is it really "uninvited"? Engaging in unprotected sex could, very well, be seen as inviting the baby/fetus to the womb.

This is very difficult.

 

Yes, it is very difficult. Most people I know who are pro-choice were also very pro-life in making their own decisions. They vote pro-choice because they believe every woman has the right to make her own decision when she is dealing with pregnancy.

Regarding the fetus as a chameleon:

I do not think it is accurate to say the fetus was not alive (in the case of a miscarriage) but it would be accurate to say that the fetus had not yet become a person. As you point out, there is a dichotomy in the way we perceive such an event. A woman who wanted a baby is devastated, but a woman who did not want a baby may be relieved (or she may be devastated because she wants a baby but knows this is the wrong time to have one). No logic is going to console a woman who wanted a child and lost it. It is unfair, and hard to deal with... but forcing another woman to gestate a child against her will does not make her loss any easier, or any more fair, does it?

The current Catholic position (if I understand it properly) is based on the mythology that the soul inhabits the body as soon as the sperm and egg combine. That would mean God is guilty of killing more babies than any abortionist. The pro-choice position (at least the ones who believe in God and souls) is that the soul enters the body when the mind is activated (at birth). It was a fairly common belief for many centuries (You may have heard the phrase "the breath of life" before - a reference to the concept that the soul enters the newborn with that first breath of life). A person with strict Catholic beliefs might evaluate the fetus as if it already had a soul while a pro-choice person might evaluate the fetus as if it was an organic life support system being prepared for a soul. Would you really expect both groups to come to the same conclusion (or evaluation)?

Regarding sex as an invitation to the fetus:

Engaging in sex (protected or not) involves a risk of pregnancy and/or infection, but does not represent consent to host a new life (or to host an infection). I agree that a woman who does NOT want to create a new person would save herself a lot of trouble by avoiding sex, or using birth control, or using contraception, or getting an abortion at the earliest possible moment... but the mere fact that a sperm and an egg combined does not obligate her to gestate and give birth to a new person. What would be the basis of such an obligation?

 

It's her body. My god says so.

 

If she wants to abort her body then she can go right ahead but it seems that she wants to abort someone else's body since at the very beginning the baby has different DNA.

 

A fetus is never a baby....no matter what people may call it

 

When my mam was preggers with me half a century ago it was a local scandal because her and my dad had to have a shotgun wedding.
My mother gave birth to me, and although I can't prove it I suspect my dad wanted to have me aborted, because he used to treat me bad with cheap sadistic remarks all through my childhood that shot my self-confidence to pieces, and once he kicked me like a dog.
Perhaps in his twisted way he blamed me for making him have to get married, whereas it was all his fault for not keeping his flies zipped..

 

How dare you defy the morality of my god? Hell awaits you.

 

Since it's her body when she's not pregnant, and since being pregnant does not mean your body becomes the property of another, there is no change. Her body before pregnancy, her body during, and her body after.

 

It's only someone else's body when that body is not a connected dependent extension of her own. That change begins at birth which is why that is the cutoff for the ability to have an abortion.

 

In nature, lions commit afterbirth abortions. Since we are just animals, I don't see the problem. Question is: Are we above animals? Perhaps we are below animals considering we are the only species that commits suicide, that I know of.

 

There is no such thing as an "after birth" abortion. Abortion only occurs before birth.
Animals do eat their BORN young but that's not an abortion.

 

Wrong, male lions kill other males Cubs in order to bring females into heat, not to eat.

 

The statement “It’s her body” isn’t a stance, it’s just part of the reasoning for various stances on the wider question. In itself I’m not convinced it’s all that helpful. Nobody sensible and reasonable would deny that it is her body and as such she has every right to make medical decisions in relation to it. Nobody sensible and reasonable would deny that pregnancy is a unique situation though and the decisions a pregnant woman makes in relation to her body have unique consequences. Unfortunately that doesn’t answer the fundamental question of how to strike the balance between those conflicting elements.

Those with predetermined answers will underplay or overplay this “It’s her body” element to meet their own preconceptions (no pun intended ) but then I’ve always said that the first step in getting to as close as we can to resolving the questions surrounding abortion is to stop those at the extremes dominating the debate.

 

A. That is NOT the point. The point is, if you follow the bolded, is that there is no "abortion AFTER birth"...abortions happen BEFORE birth.

B. It is TOTALLY correct to state : ""Animals do eat their BORN young but that's not an abortion.""

There is more than one kind of animal, all animals are not lions and besides lions DO eat cubs...

Back to the POINT, do you understand there is no abortion AFTER birth ?

 

A pregnancy is not unique, there is no unique set of circumstances. A woman's body is always HERS.
















Women's rights do NOT balance on their reproductive circumstances.
















There really aren't any questions surrounding abortion, it's a legal medical procedure.

 

Well stated.

The baby does not switch its status. Its the woman who changes her concept of the baby based upon her desires and independent of the actual status of the baby. If she wants the baby and is faced with miscarriage, still-birth, or loss of the baby due to accident, then the woman considers the baby a person and often has an actual funeral for the baby. If the woman does not want the baby, then she decides its not a baby or person in order to allow it to be aborted - again a decision made without any consideration of the actual status of the baby.

One aspect which is so disturbing is the arbitrary life and death decision making by a person with a vested interest in the outcome, and in which the punishment is levied on a voiceless third party.

The fact that many women decide and act as if the unborn is a person is strong evidence that it is a person.

 

Many people decided and acted as if blacks were not people....but they are.

 

Abortion is an issue of the extremes. If the baby is not a person, then there is no issue at all and abortion is just another medical procedure. If the baby is a person then it has all the rights and protections granted to all people, and the ability to abort is extremely restricted just as the ability to kill a born person is extremely limited. There is no middle ground - its either a person or its not.

 

My point is that other animals kill their own young/innocence why should humans be any different?

 

you have no right to use my body to save your life, why would you give those rights to a glob of cells? a glob of cells is not a human life, it can become so, but it's not there yet... just like a person can die before their body dies

.

 

It's ,as you have been told many times in the Abortion Forum, not a person.


IF a fetus (there is no "baby" involved in abortion) is ever deemed a person

it has all the rights and protections AND RESTRICTIONS granted to all people.

A restriction: No person may use another's body to sustain it's life, you can't, I can't, no one can....not even a "person" inside another person.

 

People aren't animals. ....