Fair, it’s both.
Removal of life support generally refers to ceasing provision of extra-ordinary measures such as ventilation. One might consider inducing birth akin to that, as leaving the womb and maternal provision of oxygenation/nutrition/waste removal is moving from one normal to another normal (and continuing that intensive support after birth would be extra-ordinary.). However, using sharp instruments to pierce a child’s spinal cord and dismember the body is hardly equivalent to normal behavior and would be considered murder if done outside the womb. Permitting someone to die by discontinuing extra-ordinary measures is much different than actively ending their life. Permitting someone to die by locking them in a room and letting them starve to death is withholding normal measures to support life and also morally wrong.
I know you have strong feelings regarding this out of religious beliefs and deep regard of life. If I’d found myself in a situation in which we believed that termination was the most compassionate option, I’d want it to be injected with something to stop its heart first. I don’t know how standard that is but I know it’s done.
I wish that the primary focus was on preventing unwanted pregnancies (sex education, contraceptives access, sexual assault prevention and prosecution), improve maternal-fetal health, and removing financial and societal barriers that would otherwise lead one to choose termination. Instead rapists get elected, welfare programs get cut, Medicaid is constrained, and so on.
What I think morally is different than what I think should be permitted legally. There are too many nuances to draw clean lines.
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It isn’t just a religious belief, but a matter of civic, practical, public action that holds the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights of humans. And who is a human is a fundamental question, in which the broadest possible answer guarantees rights to the most people.
Yes, nuances are where difficult judgement must be applied. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be lines, however. Medical personnel often have to make time-constrained decisions with limited information, like actuaries, but with life and death consequences. A fair amount of leeway is in order.
We disagree on what can be done in the name of compassion. But I don’t doubt you feel a desire for it.
And what of the rights of the pregnant person…
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The rights are in balance with the other person involved, no different than any other interaction between humans. There is, of course, the degree of involvement that is much like the old breakfast joke about the chicken and the pig.
One bill, re-introduced this year, would allow women who receive abortions to be charged with homicide.
The bill, pre-filed by Representative Robert Harris, seeks to redefine an unborn child as a “person” under South Carolina’s state homicide and assault laws. This means harm to an unborn child, including through abortion, could be prosecuted as homicide.
My lawyer aunt informs me that, in South Carolina, this bill could lead to the death penalty as punishment for having an abortion.
There are people who supported overturning Roe v Wade, but not because of being pro-life. I’m one of them.
My belief was that Roe v Wade was decided by activist members of SCOTUS. The 14th Amendment was not intended to apply to abortions when it was written. Since the Constitution doesn’t mention abortions, it’s something that should be decided at a state level.
If people really want to codify the right to an abortion, it needs to be done via an Amendment, not through Congress passing a law. That’s what SCOTUS ruled already - Congress can try to pass laws, but I believe they’d be overturned.
For the record, I feel the same way about Obergefell v.Hodges.
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While there were many reasons to not add to our family, knowing that it’d be a high risk pregnancy with a higher chance of fetal abnormalities and what we’d do was a contributing factor, then add the legal mess of what is/isn’t allowed and the shifting legal landscape. Plus it’s one thing to think what you’d do in theory, another what you’d actually do in face of that situation.
When we talk about rights and freedom, there is no situation in which completing a pregnancy doesn’t cause some degree of harm to the mother, whether physically, mentally, and/or financially, sometimes catastrophically. Aren’t half of pregnancies unintended? Is that just the cost of having a uterus? (Rhetorical questions.) Do I think it’s fine to voluntarily terminate a healthy fetus at 8 months because the mom says “feeling cute, idk, think I’ll get an abortion”? No. Do I think a 12 year old should be denied a termination at 18 weeks? Also no. I’ll admit I don’t know where the line should be, because it’s not going to be clean no matter where it is.
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I really struggle with extending the constitution so that we use it as a tool for social issues and reforms. The document was written before the French revolution and the social reforms that happened in other places in the western world in the 19th century. It doesn’t have any broad ideals, for example those people that wrote that document had slaves so when they wrote all men are created equal that was just being written but they didn’t mean it. Also if freedom was meant broadly we wouldn’t need specific amendments for black men and women to vote. My first point in a nut shell is that document is a flawed document because it wasn’t created with social reform in mind but it was created with political freedom for USA in mind.
My second point is we need to think about this and other social reforms more broadly. It makes no sense to debate that abortion is/isn’t a right then not have things like maternal leave etc in the discussion. To me it’s even more dangerous when we have these discussions and all we are doing is defaulting back to the position that was there previously which is also not protected in the constitution. Abortion was not denied in the constitution it therefore should be just an open question and should be decided either way by a constitutional amendment if needed
My final point is there are a lot of unspoken things in the constitution and it is long overdue that the constitution be rewritten to have broad values/principles. We should be reasonable enough to understand that we can’t include all issues but we can decide issues based on principles we hold dear.
We chose adoption over reproduction partially due to genetic diseases.
Now we have JD Vance who’s repeatedly called adoptive parents childless, knowing full well that they are parents. Mix that with his clear distaste for childless people and their rights such as voting, and… ugh.
To a lot this is a thought experiment that they just need to have a position whether moral, religious or otherwise. It makes it difficult to explain that there are many personal things to consider.
In the mid 2000s my partner died from cancer that was only discovered after she got pregnant. If I was seen to have put the child’s life ahead of her’s her relatives would have been a serious problem.
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I think that they meant what they said/wrote.
The question is more along the lines of “what they thought a ‘man’ is to be defined as in terms of politics?” Most would’ve likely had an educated, land-owning person in mind. (One might recall the huge hissy-fit many had when Andrew Jackson declared he was going to run for President.)
I agree that the document has some significant “flaws” to the extent that there should be a “redraft” of the document to incorporate clear topics that were not an issue/consideration back then. We should also take into consideration that they were actually doing something pretty new for that era, so there are bound to be issues to be considered that historically was done through Amendments; but a re-write wouldn’t be remiss, IMO.)
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Agreed.
I agree with you that the limitations of their definitions of certain words like ‘man’ is central to how they then limited the constitution.
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Except we cannot be sure it’s between humans. We cannot know the degree to which a fetus is a human in the same degree we are.
Even the Catholic encyclopedia admits that we cannot know when a fetus becomes a person. It recommends taking the most “conservative” approach and treating the fetus as a person if there is any chance that there is a person.
That is the fundamental moral problem: how do we balance the rights of the pregnant mother against the rights of the possible child.
I do not think it should be framed in a way that ignores this uncertainty.
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The expansive way is to say humans are people. There is not a scientific debate about whether they are human. It is a moral/philosophical discussion about whether they qualify as persons. Your “definition” of potential determines a person is highly problematic given you can’t measure it. It also paves the way for setting a bar that will deprive many older persons of their lives.
What is a ‘human’?
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I think a homo sapiens is a human. Is there much scientific debate about this? It does introduce difficulties when major genetic manipulation occurs (which AFAIK hasn’t happened yet), one is generally the offspring of another set.
Sure, but how much of the human do you need to consider it actually human? Fully-functioning adult, just the brain in a vat? A few skin cells? It’s a slippery slope and is the crux of the disagreement imo.
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This is effectively hyperbole masquerading as an attempt at rationalisatiing your own internal position about abortion.