It does not have to be a “good thing.” Laws neither need to be good nor bad. It is constitutional, and it is fair. This is what you call real diversity.
@emiliya None, apparently. The Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is. Inalienable rights don't exist.
I support abortion rights on moral grounds. All the law can do is make sure they're protected on an official level.
Should the states be allowed to decide for themselves if they want to legalize things like slavery, child rape, or govern themselves as a communist dictatorship? Laws can definitely be good or bad.
@Prison1203 Where in the Bill of Rights does it say you have the right to self-defense? Or the right to travel freely? The right to own a house? The right to start your own business? None of these are mentioned. But if the government took those rights away, you'd be very upset, and rightfully so. The Bill of Rights isn't a comprehensive list of every right you could possibly have. It's a limitation on some actions of the government.
The 4th Amendment could be understood as conferring a right to abortion as it gives people the right to be secure in their persons against unreasonable search and seizure. This means that the government cannot limit what you do with your own body. Of course, we allow the government to outlaw many drugs. In a libertarian society, using drugs or doing anything else to your body, including removing an unwanted fetus from it, would not be restricted.
The 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, could also apply to abortion as the government should not be able to force a woman to gestate a fetus against her will.
@Pikachu “What person has the right to another person's body against their will?”
Pregnancy is natural, and the baby is not making a choice to use “another body against their will.” A man and a woman have sex and if no contraception or protection is used, and she is ovulating, she gets pregnant. Almost every woman in the world knows this. Every woman who has been taught biology in school and every woman who has been told by female relatives in their family that their period means they can get pregnant.
Using another body is a choice, and a baby cannot make this choice. The woman can make a choice whether to be pregnant or not before the conception happens.
“In this context, abortion is self defense.”
How? The woman chose to get pregnant. If you have sex without preventing the pregnancy, conception will happen. Abortion is used as birth control. One does not “defend” against the baby growing inside them. This is insane talk. You western liberals are insane.
@Pikachu “What person has the right to another person's body against their will?”
Let us say we are in a scenario where the woman has no access to infant formula, but can produce breast milk. She is one of those women who do not want to breastfeed. Her baby needs feeding and will die without her breast milk. Does the baby have a right to her breast milk?
@emiliya What's with these crazy scenarios? This is the old snowy cabin in the woods scenario that PL on Reddit love to bring up. If a woman goes by herself to a cabin in the woods in winter and gets trapped by a snowstorm, she was very irresponsible. And if there's no food in the cabin, both of them will die. What if the only way the woman can survive is by conserving her energy, so if she breastfeeds the infant, she'll die? Can she refuse to breastfeed it for that reason?
Does a dialysis patient have a right to take one of your kidneys, since he needs it to live and you can survive with just one?
@LeopoldBloom “Can she refuse to breastfeed it for that reason?”
No. She will be able to survive without food for a number of days, but her infant will not. Her infant will need her breast milk to survive. She will still produce it if the infant is feeding regularly.
If she is going to stay at a cabin in a remote area, she would bring food.
Where are the neighbors? Where is her car? Does she have tools to remove the snow?
“Does a dialysis patient have a right to take one of your kidneys, since he needs it to live and you can survive with just one?”
It isn't natural for me to give my kidney to a dialysis patient. I would only do it if I knew them and liked them, or if they were a child who needed it. This is a permanent decision. A pregnancy is temporary. A pregnancy only lasts for 9–10 months. When the baby is born, the woman gets her body back. What is so good about it anyway? I would say a woman's body has no worth. Even you think she can't find her way out of a snowstorm. The only worth it has is sex and reproduction. Why do we have a womb if not to carry babies?
@emiliya It's not natural for a woman and a baby to be trapped in a remote cabin in a snowstorm with no food, either. So if you won't entertain the kidney donation scenario, I don't need to entertain yours. Yes, the woman should breastfeed the baby since it's not inside her body and poses no danger to her, as pregnancy and childbirth does. Same if a man is trapped in a cabin with a baby and he has to mix up some formula to feed it. Expecting him to do that isn't the same as forcing a woman to risk her life giving birth when she doesn't want to.
Childbirth isn't natural either, at least, the way we do it now isn't. The only reason the maternal (and infant) death rates are as low as they are is because of the advanced technology we employ in very unnatural hospitals. Try giving birth by yourself and see how well you do. Human beings are the only animals that require assistance to give birth.
The womb doesn't have a "purpose." It has a function. The function is not to provide a safe place for the ZEF as the ZEF only needs a blood supply, which is why ectopic pregnancies happen where the ZEF implants in the wrong place. The womb's function is more to protect the woman from the growing ZEF so it doesn't kill her.
Many women don't have children; does that make them less valuable as people?
@LeopoldBloom Women are not forced to give birth in hospitals. In developed countries, there has been a resurgence in home births. Some women give birth on the way to hospital. I have given birth three times and they were all natural. My third baby was very eager, and the labor only lasted an hour. Childbirth is very natural, one of the most natural things in the world.
The womb exists for the fetus. It is where the baby grows and receives nourishment. Women have a womb so they can have children. A function is what something does. It would imply the womb has other important functions. What are they? Its purpose is reproduction.
“Many women don't have children; does that make them less valuable as people?”
It means they aren't doing what they are meant to do and will never experience the pure joy that motherhood brings. They will be denying their purpose in life. How can they be valued in the same way a mother is? A woman has value to her children.
@emiliya Regardless, women can't give birth alone; they require midwifes at the very least. It's nice that your births were easy and enjoyable, but that's not the case for most women.
The womb exists to protect the woman from the fetus. The proof of this is that ectopic pregnancies are fatal. The zygote can attach itself anywhere there is a blood supply. Theoretically, you could implant a zygote on a man's abdominal wall and it would attach itself, then kill him when it grew too large as there's no structure in a man's body to protect him from it.
Purpose implies design. There's no evidence that human beings were designed by anyone. We use the word "function" as a description. But even if you could prove that wombs were "designed" to carry the fetus, that doesn't mean women should be required to do so.
Not everyone enjoys motherhood, especially if it's forced on them by government edict. Again, just because you enjoy motherhood and have found fulfillment through it doesn't mean everyone else will. And saying that the purpose of women is to pump out babies negates everything else women are capable of. Many women have achieved fulfillment in other areas, like politics, science, and the arts.
Forcing women to give birth against their will is evil and destructive to society. Look around the world and you'll notice a correlation between the degree of liberty and prosperity in a given country and the availability of birth control and abortion. There are very few if any countries that are free and prosperous where abortion is illegal or unavailable.
Abortion is health care. If you're against abortion, don't have one, but don't tell other women what to do either.
@LeopoldBloom Women can give birth without the assistance of a midwife. It is inevitable sometimes.
The womb exists for our babies to grow and be born. It is all about reproduction. Without reproduction, the womb is useless. A man would not have a fertilized egg implant in his body; men cannot get pregnant. An ectopic pregnancy can only occur in a female, as only a female can get pregnant. When it does occur, it is still in the reproductive system. A fertilized egg can only ever be in the female reproductive system. An ectopic pregnancy occurs outside the womb, but the egg is not going to appear anywhere else in the body. It will be in one of the fallopian tubes. It is meant to be in the womb. The womb is meant to be where our babies grow and leave when they are born.
Abortion has never been health care. If I had stayed in medical school and if I were working as a primary care physician, the physician I wanted to be, and a woman asked me to refer her for an abortion, I would not be able to do it. These women want to use abortion as birth control. Abortion is their pill. What if we all wanted to get rid of people like that? Do you look at others and wish to get rid of them? A baby is innocent and beautiful, and they have the same right to life as the women carrying them.
@emiliya I'm aware that women can give birth by themselves, but it's very dangerous for both the woman and the baby. Giving birth with assistance is much safer, which is why midwives have existed in every culture since prehistoric times. And the low rate of mother and infant mortality in modern, developed societies is due to the technology we bring to bear on childbirth.
The womb's function is to carry the ZEF, but that doesn't obligate anyone to anything. The function of feet is walking, but that doesn't mean you can't take a car if you want to go somewhere and must walk there instead.
It's fine if you wouldn't have performed an abortion or referred someone to a different practitioner, but your opinion should not govern society. What would you have done if the woman was bleeding out and needed an abortion to survive? Let her die, I guess. I'm glad you didn't become a physician, you would have been a menace to your patients.
Nobody has the right to use another person's body without their consent. Just as a dialysis patient can't take one of your kidneys if you don't want to donate it, a ZEF has no right to a woman's body if she doesn't want to be pregnant. And societies that force women to gestate against their will are almost without exception either poor or oppressive in other ways. I don't know what country you live in - is it one where abortion is illegal?
@LeopoldBloom A fetus is a baby, not a body part we use to walk with. It has a body separate from the body of its mother. These are two human bodies; two beating hearts, two brains, two sets of legs and arms. A pregnancy is only temporary and in nine to ten months the baby will be born.
A woman often using a midwife to give birth is supposed to mean what? That she should not have to carry the child she became pregnant with? Why wasn't she using contraception? Contraception is highly effective. It works for women when they are using it, using it properly.
I could go back to medical school and become a menace to my patients. A woman looking to abort would have to find another doctor. I am also against euthanasia. If someone came to me and expressed an interest in dying, I would tell them I want nothing to do with it.
I am from Russia, but I live in UK. Abortion is legal in both countries. In UK, a woman can have an abortion for any reason up to 24 weeks. Women who have abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy have their baby surgically removed. It is dissected while inside her and brought out in small pieces. How evil is that?
@emiliya "Baby" is the term for after it's born. "Fetus" refers to before birth.
If a fetus is a separate body from the woman, than take it out and put it in a crib so someone else can take care of it. What you aren't addressing is how you want to force women to gestate fetuses when they don't want to.
You obviously didn't go to medical school because a 12 week fetus isn't "dismembered," it resembles a heavy period. Later abortions are done when the pregnancy either threatens the mother's life or the fetus won't be viable after birth. The fact that you find this gruesome isn't relevant. Open-heart surgery is gruesome but that shouldn't stop doctors from performing it.
I'm glad you can't vote in the U.S. We have enough anti-abortion fanatics here.
@LeopoldBloom Is there a difference between a baby and a fetus? Is a baby who still has its umbilical cord not a baby? If a fetus does not matter, how do you explain the Unborn Victims of Violence Act in the US? When I was pregnant, I never called my babies fetuses. They are my babies. You will be asked: “what are you going to name your baby?”, and “are you excited about your baby?” In the medical reports, it will say fetus. When you talk to a doctor or a nurse, they will say baby. It is only those who are pro abortion who believe that a fetus is not a baby and call babies fetuses. The word “fetus” means offspring, the bearing of life.
The dismemberment starts between 12 and 13 weeks. This is a medical reality.
Prior to this gestational age, a woman takes two different pills. The first pill stops the body from making progesterone the pregnancy needs, and second pill causes the womb to contract, baby coming out soon after. This is what causes heavy bleeding. You will also bleed heavily if your baby is surgically removed. Where I live, a baby can be surgically removed (you can see what this entails) for ANY reason up to 24 weeks. In most of Europe, an abortion is legal up to 12 weeks.
In heart surgery, you are trying to save the life of a patient. Abortion is the taking of life, innocent life.
and the baby is not making a choice to use “another body against their will.
Doesn't matter. Either the fetus has the rights of a person or it does not. If it does not then there is no issue, if it does then the fact is that no person has the right to make use of another person's body against their will and the choice of the violator does not factor into it.
The woman chose to get pregnant. If you have sex without preventing the pregnancy, conception will happen
And how does that help the little girl raped by her family member? How does that help the woman who wanted a baby but for whom the pregnancy has become life threatening?
Do you understand? Letting a state decide to take away a woman's right over her own body, letting a state put a woman's life in danger....this is not right.
You make no concessions for abuse, rape or even danger to the woman's life. You have no compassion for the real life experiences of actual people.
You have a commitment to an idea divorced from and without connection to reality.
