"Alberich" <Alberich@NoSpam.com> wrote in message
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On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 19:53:30 +0000 (UTC), "kathryn" <nospam@here.com>
wrote:

"Alberich" <Alberich@NoSpam.com> wrote in message
news:u2l31256dm9o8l7qqnu75dukkv2fuqemb2@4ax.com...

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 19:01:29 +0000 (UTC), "kathryn" <nospam@here.com>
wrote:

"Alberich" <Alberich@NoSpam.com> wrote in message
news:u4h3129fu2q9cj69uth67d3vf5f8k748is@4ax.com...

On 10 Mar 2006 10:03:24 -0800, "Frank O'Dwyer" <batsignal1@gmail.com>
wrote:

Alberich wrote:

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:57:50 -0600, Don Kresch
<ROT13.qxerfpu@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:

In alt.atheism On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:07:07 GMT, Eden
<banmilk@hotmail.com> let us all know that:
Why does the fetus have rights, and the woman has none?

No anti-choicer ever answers that. They always run away. They never
want to deal with the fact that their line of thought makes a slave
of
the woman--a mere vessel without rights which must carry the fetus
no
matter what.

There are several possible answers to that question. Take as a
group,
they make a poweful argument, even if one that doesn't appeal to or
convince all of its opponents:

(1) The woman has, in most instances, already *made* her choice.

Assuming your conclusion. Namely, that the choice to have an abortion
is not a legitimate choice and should be off the table.

No, my conclusion is that to become pregnant, the woman must have
engaged in sexual intercourse.

By analogy, when you get in a car and don't use your safety belt, or
it
is faulty, then when you fly through the windscreen you should be left
at the side of the road to bleed to death. You already made your
choice. You chose to fly through the windscreen and bleed to death.

And yes, attending to you will result in the deaths of others. Send
the
ambulance elsewhere to those more needy cases. Or, if there are enough
ambulances, don't fund those extra ambulances at all, spend that money
on more deserving cases. Let you die and use your organs to save the
lives of more responsible people. And so on.

She
made the choice to have sexual intercourse. She made the choice to
use or to not use artificial methods of contraception. She made the
use to employ natural methods of contraception, such as NFP (note,
this is far different than the (far less reliable) "rythym method").

And the zygote went ahead and implanted anyway despite her reasonable
precautions.

It is quite a leap to get from there to consent to pregnancy.

Far and away, the overwhelming majority of women who conceive were not
using birth control of one sort or another. (Or, to be more precise,
the *couple* wasn't using birth control of one sort or another.)

(1a) The fetus has had no opportunity yet to make a choice or, in
this
case, to have a choice made for it. (And before the canard that if
the fetus cannot make a choice, it doesn't deserve one gets tossed
out, remember that neither can a two-month-old make a choice as to
its
own preservation, either.) To deprive the fetus of its chance to
choose life, therefore, is to subjugate the fetus's rights to the
woman's.

No it is not. First it is far from clear that the fetus has any
rights.
If it should have the rights of a person then it is far from clear
that
people have a "right to life". Certainly no person has the right to
demand the use of someone else's body and do them harm.

First, you are arguing the conclusion--that there can be no reason to
disallow abortion. Second, it is far from normal to consider
pregnancy as "doing harm" to the woman.

eh?

You mean aside from the risk to life - pre eclampsia, loss of blood,
problems with caesarians - and then all the post op issues, post natal
depression ranging from so called baby blues to full blown psychosis,
potential loss of bladder control, loss of sensation, if you get
stitches
they can do they too tightly, blocked milk ducts. Your body is *never*
the
same again.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said the "risk" to life.
Sure, there is a risk to the life of the woman. Do you happen to have
statistics of how many women die from pregnancy or childbirth? I
understand it to be rather low, at least in the United States.
Compare that to the number of fetuses killed during an abortion. The
percentage there is much higher--100%. All of I have said is that
when weighing rights of fetus versus rights of woman, the relative
risk of harm must be taken into account. In once case, the relative
risk is rather low, in the other, the relative risk is an assured
100%. And I don't believe that there is a single pro-lifer out there
who, when faced with a situation in which a woman is actually dying
from pregnancy, would not act to save the woman's life. Even the
Catholic Church teaches that to act in a manner and intent to save the
life of a woman, even if inadvertently causing an abortion, is not
sinful.

Alberich

You'd be wrong, there are a few pro-lifers who believe that abortion is
never acceptable regardless of the circumstances.

No, they still wouldn't find abortion to be acceptable, but they
*would* find saving the life to be acceptable, a la the Law of Double
Effect.

Nope. if they both die it's gods will. Rather quite disturbing

Besides even if the actual risk to life is low - there are plenty of other
serious problems that arise through pregnancy and birth. If that pregnancy
wasn't even wanted in the first place I can only imagine how detrimental
that would be to someones mental health.

I hate to sound like a fundamentalist Christian (which I'm not), but
in that case, the majority of women seeking abortions should have made
the choice to remain celibate. In law, if you intend an act with full
awareness of the possibile outcomes of that act, you can be said to
intend that act. So if a woman engages in sexual intercourse knowing
that there is a risk of pregnancy, I certainly sympathize with her
situation, but I think she should take responsibilty for her actions.

And what about the father?

| So yes, I am all in favor of the woman's choice: The woman has (and
| should always have) the right to not engage in sexual activity if she
| is not prepared to accept responsibility for that activity.

On 10 Mar 2006 10:03:24 -0800, "Frank O'Dwyer" <batsignal1@gmail.com>
wrote:

Alberich wrote:

On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:57:50 -0600, Don Kresch
<ROT13.qxerfpu@jv.ee.pbz.com> wrote:

In alt.atheism On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:07:07 GMT, Eden
<banmilk@hotmail.com> let us all know that:
Why does the fetus have rights, and the woman has none?

No anti-choicer ever answers that. They always run away. They never
want to deal with the fact that their line of thought makes a slave of
the woman--a mere vessel without rights which must carry the fetus no
matter what.

There are several possible answers to that question. Take as a group,
they make a poweful argument, even if one that doesn't appeal to or
convince all of its opponents:

(1) The woman has, in most instances, already *made* her choice.

Assuming your conclusion. Namely, that the choice to have an abortion
is not a legitimate choice and should be off the table.

No, my conclusion is that to become pregnant, the woman must have
engaged in sexual intercourse.

By analogy, when you get in a car and don't use your safety belt, or it
is faulty, then when you fly through the windscreen you should be left
at the side of the road to bleed to death. You already made your
choice. You chose to fly through the windscreen and bleed to death.

And yes, attending to you will result in the deaths of others. Send the
ambulance elsewhere to those more needy cases. Or, if there are enough
ambulances, don't fund those extra ambulances at all, spend that money
on more deserving cases. Let you die and use your organs to save the
lives of more responsible people. And so on.

She
made the choice to have sexual intercourse. She made the choice to
use or to not use artificial methods of contraception. She made the
use to employ natural methods of contraception, such as NFP (note,
this is far different than the (far less reliable) "rythym method").

And the zygote went ahead and implanted anyway despite her reasonable
precautions.

It is quite a leap to get from there to consent to pregnancy.

Far and away, the overwhelming majority of women who conceive were not
using birth control of one sort or another. (Or, to be more precise,
the *couple* wasn't using birth control of one sort or another.)

(1a) The fetus has had no opportunity yet to make a choice or, in this
case, to have a choice made for it. (And before the canard that if
the fetus cannot make a choice, it doesn't deserve one gets tossed
out, remember that neither can a two-month-old make a choice as to its
own preservation, either.) To deprive the fetus of its chance to
choose life, therefore, is to subjugate the fetus's rights to the
woman's.

No it is not. First it is far from clear that the fetus has any rights.
If it should have the rights of a person then it is far from clear that
people have a "right to life". Certainly no person has the right to
demand the use of someone else's body and do them harm.

First, you are arguing the conclusion--that there can be no reason to
disallow abortion.

Second, it is far from normal to consider
pregnancy as "doing harm" to the woman.

(2) Okay, I hear you say that the woman may be raped, it may be a
result of incest, or some other such argument. (I find it interesting
that these are always presented as two *distinct* reasons for
abortion. As if incest is not included as rape. If not--if the
incest was *consensual*, then this argument holds no water, and should
revert to approach (1). The worry of incestual inbreeding only should
arise upon the practice of incest within multiple generations in the
same branch of the family tree.) The argument goes that the woman
doesn't want this fetus, so why should she be forced to be an
incubator for it?

That's not the argument. It is not that she "doesn't want the fetus"
but she doesn't want to be pregnant.

In the context of this argument, that is a semantic difference.

Why should she be forced into a nine-month slavery
to carry something she is not responsible for?

In this instance, a simple "balancing of rights" should be made.
Weigh the rights of the woman--i.e, freedom to live the next nine
months as she wishes and not to be forced to "confinement" by the
fetus--against the fetus's rights--right to life--and see which is
more compelling. It is difficult to imagine that the right to nine
months of freedom can trump the right to an entire life.

Then cancel your plans for the next nine months. Sure, it will hurt a
lot, it will do you some harm, you may have to choose a less lucrative
career, you might lose your house or your children - but we have better
uses for your time and there is only a small chance that it will
disable or kill you.

You do well to draw out the possible downside of pregnancy. Here is
the downside of an abortion. A fetus is certainly--and without
doubt--killed. Your downside (above, not to make a pun) is all
speculative. The level of certainty of outcome should also be taken
into account when weighing the rights.

As a further argument, suppose that the woman says that having this
baby will upset her entire life--forcing her from graduate school,
bringing the stigma of single-motherhood (which, admittedly, is not
much a stigma in 2006), etc... Adoption counters all of the above
arguments.

No it doesn't. For many women pregnancy is game over, even aside from
the ones it kills. Also, pregnancy and childbirth are directly harmful
in themselves. Certainly the damage done by being FORCED to remain
pregnant for nine months against your will, that is incalculable and
akin to rape.

I cannot accept as fact that pregnancy is directly harmful in itself.
Childbirth is undoubtedly painful, and may be harmful if a C-section
is required, for sure.