Max, as you know, I referred to the fetus the entire time as the child/baby. I think it ignorant for people to call it a fetus; it's a child, a potential life any way you look at it.. That said, I still think that if a woman wants/needs an abortion she should be able to have one anytime she pleases. Yes, it is a form of birth control in the last instance as far as I'm concerned. So? Birth control doesn't work all the time and there are many women who would simply rather not take the pill and even THAT is unreliable. My sister is the result of one of those mishaps.
In any event, if I'm 45 and get pregnant and don't want a child I want access to an abortion, preferably RU48 or alternative medicinal abortions. Hell, for that matter if I get pregnant right now, 20% chance given the method we use, then I will have an abortion because I don't really want to carry a pregnancy through or raise a child right now. If I just don't want any kids at all right now even if I were to have the means and time, then I still want access to an abortion. And, I want a world in which it is perfectly OK for me to not want a child and not want to be pregnant if I choose not to be. And, if I decide that I don't want a child with Down's syndrome, a cleft foot, who's blind or whatever, then that should be MY decision, one made in the context of the local community of family and friends within which I live. I will be the one who will have to suffer the condemnations of those who think I'm wrong. I will be the one who will have to suffer from my own conscience and self- reproach if I choose such a path. Does this mean my rights trump that of the unborn child. You betcha. I don't see how that is a problem.
The only way a pro-life position is actually consistent is if the pro-life advocate honors the sanctity of life in *EVERY* possible way and fights consistently against the loss of human life for absolutely any reason whatsoever: war, capital punishment, poverty, an economic system in which people die everyday as the result of conscious decisions made in corporate boardrooms, anything whatsoever that takes human lives when another way of organizing human affairs is conceivable and possible.
The problem with this discussion is that it operates according to a liberal conception of rights in which individuals are bearers of rights that somehow exist prior to and independent of society. This is what Schaap meant when he argued for a notion of rights that recognizes that rights are inextricably intertwined with responsibilities. Once you operate w/ the rights/responsibilities model, then it is much easier to see how a mother's rights trump those of the unborn child: the unborn child is not yet a member of society and thus has no rights.
Furthermore, I also argue for an abortion on demand policy because the moral decision making process is best left in what I would call the realm of civil society (NO, you dogmatic twits, NOT conceived of in terms of Marx's impoverished understanding of civil society). When the state usurps our ability to make moral decision for ourselves, we become less than fully human, less able to negotiate the moral rules that order our rights and responsibilities to ourselves and others.
>By your numbers, we're talking about 80 percent of
>a number between 200 and 1000, annually, that are
>problematic.
Actually, its 2/3 as the first set of numbers from AGI noted.
>In spite of yourself, you're acknowledging that
>late-term abortions are undesirable or in some
>way, unfortunate outcomes.
Not in spite of myself. I get annoyed at these discussions because they seem to overlook the obvious: much of the abortion problem can be prevented and it doesn't seem to me that the debate is worth having when we can easily prevent many, many of the abortions performed in the early 2nd trimester by making it OK to have an abortion. These women agonize and wait because they are so traumatized by having to make this decision in the first place.
Finally, the slippery slope argument is exactly where I see this headed as evidenced, not by your posts, but by others. I'm truly sorry that our society is bigoted against disabled folks. That is plainly wrong. However, the answer is education so that women will learn to want to raise these children in the same way they would want to raise a child who is temporarily able bodied. And, if she simply doesn't want to have children, then the solution is prevention, birth control and a society which recognizes the need to keep abortion an available, acceptable option so that women will seek them out early on instead of being immobilized by guilt.