[lbo-talk] abortion poll

joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Fri Mar 9 19:25:08 PST 2007


John Thornton wrote:


>>The issue that I'm raising is that sometime after conception and before
>>full term, a foetus is viable outside the mother's body. Given that this
>>is the case, does a woman have the right to end a life that could
>>continue outside her body? Or is that possibly a space in which society
>>has a voice.
>>
>>I'm not arguing for a particular resolution to this issue; I'm just
>>saying that at the point where a foetus is viable without the mother, we
>>enter an area where it's not a hangnail or a polyp.
>>
>>I am also not arguing that God wants eight month old foetuses to be
>>aborted -- though the Sacrifice of Isaac comes close to that -- I'm just
>>saying that at the point where the foetus is viable, can a woman for any
>>reason whatsoever, choose to have it killed.
>>
>>I understand that this covers a very, very small percentage of cases,
>>but I was irritated by the blanket statement (not coincidentally made by
>>males) that a foetus can be killed whenever and for the hell of it.
>>
>>I can follow the logic of an idea as well as anyone. But a foetus is not
>>an idea.
>>
>>Joanna
>>
>>
>Since the time frame you write of where the fetus could be viable
>outside the womb varies from one fetus to the next it seems an easier
>proposition to define "birth" than set a time frame within the womb. Not
>that defining birth is necessarily easy.
>
Exactly. Whatever this question is, "easy," isn't one of them. But just because it's hard doesn't mean we don't deal with it by pretending it's easy.


>I'm not certain why you object to the idea of "for the hell of it".
>Surely you don't imagine you should have any say in another womans
>decision to have an abortion?
>
I have already stated the one condition under which we enter a gray area and that is when the foetus is viable without the mother. As Yoshie notes, this represents a miniscule number of cases. But they exist.


>If you have no say then if her reason is
>"for the hell of it" then that will suffice.
>
I personally may have no say, but the society to which we belong --- those other people that need to be there in order for an abortion to be possible -- does have a say. A mother cannot abort an eight month old foetus. She needs help to do that.


> In order to protect
>abortion rights they must be absolute otherwise you will have what we
>currently have. A slow erosion of those rights over time as the
>legitimacy of some reasons are called into question..
>
Just because some of the people challenging abortion on demand are idiots, doesn't mean that abortion on demand is always the right option.


>The reality is the chances of a woman deciding to abort for the hell of
>it are so exceedingly slim it makes little sense to object to it unless
>your objective is to open the door for addition restrictions based on
>the legitimacy of a womans reasoning.
>
>
There are lots of women today who are having abortions because they do not wish to give birth to girls. Women have abortions for all kinds of reasons.

I do fundamentally agree that abortion should be decided by the woman -- but there are edge cases and the issue is not resolved just by saying that women decide for whatever reason period..

Being a socialist means that you care about life. You can't make that claim and then pretend that abortion is an easy issue or that it doesn't deserve full deliberative reflection.

Joanna



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