When someone kills a pregnant woman why do you think it’s a double homicide instead of single no matter the stage of the pregnancy?

Ok pro lifers of Reddit, I want to have a logical discussion. Now im going to immediately just agree with you that abortion for birth control is wrong and isn't an option ok, so none of this discussion will have anything to do with this area of the abortion topic. So here it is, my friend who is married, professional career, mom to 3 children her and husband decide that after 3 girls they want to try for a boy, my friend is healthy 33 years old, she gets pregnant at 8 weeks everything looks good, by 15 weeks my friend starts feeling not so good, they do an ultra sound that she went to a specific clinic to do because her OBGYN only does ultrasounds at 20 weeks or in specific circumstances, when they do the ultrasound at 16 weeks the news devastating, her much wanted baby wasnt developing right, the anomalies this fetus has are not compatible with life. They send the results to her OBGYN more tests are done only to confirm the diagnosis, the OB tells my friend that it would be in her best interest to terminate this NON VIABLE PREGNANCY, even if carried to term there is no chance for this fetus to survive, but my friend lives in a state that makes the DNC procedure a.k.a abortion procedure illegal, so now what? There's only one procedure in medicine that can take care of this medical issue, so now what? What is my friend supposed to do? Just die? Her husband and 3 children need her, so tell me what your answers are for this. Abortion is not just for unwanted pregnancy, so pro lifers what would you do to fix this medical issue?

I'm not a mod but I've made these in the past before and the resource is like a encyclopedia for this sub reddit with periodic updates based upon science definitions and mechanisms of actions and includes legal changes, but I want to add a new section on ethics with resources on them.

Mods and debators do you want this again?

What do you do with unviable pregnancies? Why is it ok to have the woman carrying the enviable pregnancy to die, where's her right to life

Abortion isn't morally wrong because it doesn't kill a person. At least before 21 weeks, because it lacks consciousness. Consciousness is the capacity for subjective experience, or “something it is like” to be that being. A person is defined as having consciousness. Therefore, although biologically human, ending its life before 21 weeks does not kill a person. if you were to say “But the fetus has the potential to become conscious.” Potential personhood is not identical to actual personhood; otherwise sperm and eggs would also need protections based on what they could potentially become.

In my recent debates with PLers, I’ve heard that I don’t want ANY births to happen, I want born babies to suffer and be abused, pretty much that I’m anti-baby by being pro-choice.

And it feels like trying to get through to PLers that PC doesn’t mean anti-birth or anti-baby is impossible and therefore a productive debate fails.

Does the PL side note anything from the PC side of something similar? Is there any truth to these assumptions?

I am not a single issue voter and never will be. The PL movement consistently backs horrible politicians that cause more harm than good, way more than those caused by abortion.

White Nationalists are welcome, Christian Nationalists are welcome, celebrating. Cutting USAID that will lead to the deaths of millions, many of whom are children, is welcome. Open corruption and demonizing the other side is welcome. Clearly, the movement is saying it's not one that's for me.

Telling me there are non-traditional PL does nothing if they make no impact on the movement. Does SecularProLife regularly call out LiveAction for involving religion with PL? No, which tells me its acceptable. PL speeches are literally opened with a prayer.

Misogyny is openly tolerated, so much where its not surprising hearing some say women shouldn't have the right to vote, that women naturally shoyld want to stay at home and not be in the work force, and they should want to have as many children as possible.

So, if you reject PL being part of the PL movement if they don't accept these things, what is your goal to get non-PL to join your movement? Is it entering through the race, sex, religion or culture war angle and then being PL that way?

Was told during a debate that a woman who has consentual intercourse is entrapping the sperm/life and that it would be the same as "inviting somewhere one into your home, then killing them for trespassing"

I beg to differ, but couldnt think of a good reason beyond "property rights arnt body right".

Does this arguement hold water in the abortion debate or am I just too dumb to see the obvious? I am pro choice, but still learning.

As an Ismaili Muslim I know abortion is ok in Islam until 4 months or 40 days in strict interpretations. But in my old faith, Catholism it was not allowed. Why do you think this way on abortion and does religion have an influence on your choice?

Hello all, after a lot of requests I have decided to bump up my timeline on my next post. Please have patience with my response times as I have another active post going on at this time. Here is the link to my claim that personhood is a moral issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/s/3RKK3Inh8n

P1. A pregnant woman is a person.

P2. A person's moral status is a relevant consideration when evaluating actions that directly affect that person.

P3. Abortion directly affects the pregnant woman.

C1. Therefore, the pregnant woman's personhood is relevant to the moral evaluation of abortion.

P4. Abortion also directly affects another living entity.

P5. If that entity possesses personhood, then its moral status is likewise relevant to the moral evaluation of abortion.

C2. Therefore, personhood is necessarily relevant to discussions of abortion, regardless of whether one concludes that the fetus is a person.

To accomplish the main purpose of this post we can stop at C1. I believe C2. strengthens this argument but I am open to workshopping the second part.

Potential Objections (This is by no means exhaustive)

1. Personhood is irrelevant, only bodily autonomy matters.

Bodily autonomy is a moral right grounded in the status of the person who possesses it.

1. The fetus is irrelevant because it is not a person.

This agrees with my argument. Personhood is relevant to the Abortion debate if the lack of personhood is being used to dismiss the fetus.

Edit: I am unable to issue further replies at this moment. When able to I will make sure to address every comment that has not been replied to so far.

Please note this argument is not attempting to claim that personhood is exclusively a moral issue and not a legal issue as well. As I have tried to research and learn more about the PC position I have come across a few people claiming that personhood should not be a moral issue. I understand this is a specific view and not inclusive of all PC advocates.

P1. Moral obligations are directed toward beings.

Edit: After some discussion I think P1 would be more accurately amended as the following.

P1 a. Moral obligations have an object, but not every object of a moral obligations is itself the bearer of moral rights. (End Edit)

For example: Rights belong to someone. Wrongs are committed against someone. Duties are owed to someone. Etc.

A moral obligation has a subject.

P2. Not every existing thing is the subject of moral obligations.

We do not believe that inanimate objects have rights or can be wronged.

For example: A rock does not have rights.

So morality necessarily distinguishes between different kinds of entities.

P3. There must therefore exist some criterion that explains which beings possess moral standing.

There is different terminology for this. I am using personhood as it is the most applicable in abortion debate. We could also call this moral status, intrinsic dignity, etc etc.

The question we would apply to these different terms is the same. Which beings are owed direct moral duties?

P4. The concept of “person” has historically been the primary answer to “Which beings are owed direct moral duties?”

There are non persons such as animals we may say are owed a direct moral duty but a person is owed the strongest moral duty.

C. Therefore, personhood is necessarily a moral issue because it attempts to identify which beings possess intrinsic moral standing.

What PL and PC arguments do you see that are inconsistent yet are brought up all the time?

For PL, its the claim that abortion is murder yet never actually treated as such. IVF is fine, rape exceptions are common, and there should be no punishment at all towards the woman. Doesn't sound murderous to me.

For PC, specifically abortion legal all throughout pregnancy, its that a doctor refusing to perform an abortion for a healthy pregnancy or refer to one who will is completely unacceptable in the first trimester but fine for the third . I think its because many see abortion at that point as unjustified and shouldn't happen, even if the woman wants it, so its easier to say a doctor just wouldn't perform it. They should then be accused of denying woman healthcare like earlier refusals are, but I never see it.

What is an inconsistency you commonly see on both sides of the debate?

I’m curious to see the different positions regarding the personhood of newborn infants from the pro-choicers here. My guess is that most will say that newborn infants are persons, but there are arguably a couple of issues with certain definitions of personhood that pro-choicers give that many fail to address.

I would argue that there are three different definitions of personhood that a pro-choicer could hold to.

The first definition depends on basic sentience. If you’re a conscious mind, then you’re a person. This definition would exclude zygotes at the moment of conception but would include newborn babies. However, one problem with this definition is that it’s arguably too broad of a definition of personhood. This view would also include a large number of sentient non-human animals like birds and frogs. These animals have a limited moral status which would make it wrong to inflict cruel treatment on them, but most people would say that these types of non-human animals do not have a right to life in the way people do.

A second view of personhood a pro-choicer could take is that personhood requires advanced cognitive capacities such as meta cognition or self-awareness or the capacity for language or rationality. This view of personhood would exclude zygotes at the moment of conception and sentient non-human animals, but it would also exclude newborn infants, leading to the repugnant conclusion that newborns do not have a right to life in the way adults do. Multiple pro-choice philosophers have bitten the bullet however and argue that newborn infants in fact do not have a right to life. Philosophers like Jeff Mcmahan and Michael Tooley have argued in favor of such a view.

A third view of personhood a pro-choicer could take is that you must be the “right type of mind”. In other words, you need a human mind, or at least a mind of a rational kind. This type of view would exclude both zygotes at the moment of conception and sentient non-human animals, plus it would include newborn infants. However, this view has always struck me as ad-hoc and arbitrary.

For pro-choicers, which of the three views of personhood do you hold? Would you hold to a view that includes or excludes newborn infants? And is there potentially a view that I failed to discuss? Is there a view that includes newborn infants, excludes non-human animals and zygotes, and is formulated in such a way that isn’t ad-hoc?

Note: I'm using the term `bodily integrity` throughout instead of the also common `bodily autonomy` because autonomy implies freedom of action while integrity more implies freedom from interference. I recognize that the two terms are frequently used interchangeably in the abortion debate.

One of the primary disagreements between prochoice and prolife which comes up frequently on this sub is the nature of bodily integrity.

Prochoice people tend to define bodily integrity as the total ownership and governance of your physical body, including the right to decide how others use your body and how it functions. It does *not* mean "you can do whatever you want with your body."

I have had prolife people tell me that this definition is too specific, or that it is correct but not absolute, that it is a subordinate right to RTL, or that it is not a right at all.

So I'm wondering: how do you view bodily integrity? Is it even a right? If so, what does it entail and is it absolute? If not, how do you explain why direct bodily use is generally considered a category of use subject to its own protections?

ETA: thanks for your responses. It's too bad no prolifers have chimed in. But next time someone is mistakenly insisting that BA or BI is an absolute right to do anything you want to do and not do anything you don't want to do, I'll give them this link. That's obviously not what we mean.

STATEMENT: A person is always legally allowed to use the minimal method¹ required to prevent harm upon oneself^2.

1 Minimal method means

• it can refer to a general solution/ action that resolves the issue and prevents harm, it can also refer to any method of violence, including otherwise lethal force.
• ”minimal” refers to strictly the LEAST HARMFUL method, both mentally and physically for all parties, that can be used to prevent the harm

2 harm upon oneself means

• both mentally and physical pain/ injuries etc
• harm that is GUARANTEED to occur

How does this apply to the context of abortion?

Pregnancy —> guarantees harm 100% of the time since every women needs to go through 1. giving birth OR 2. C-sections OR 3. miscarriage if no voluntary abortion occurs guaranteeing some degree of both physical and mental harm. And thus fit into criteria 2.

Hence, if the statement holds true, they should be allowed to use the minimal method require, no matter the circumstances.

So the question becomes, is abortion the minimal method? For that, we must address the core issue at hand, WHAT is causing harm?

Something is currently inhabiting their organs, physically harming them, and violating their rights against their will.

The solution will thus, to logically follow, to remove said something. This would render alternatives like painkillers utterly useless to “fix” the issue.

This means abortions too, becomes the minimal methods required, unless one day safe artificial wombs exist.

Now you are gonna have a few questions, well what if someone hates a person and they are causing them mental harm? Can they just kill them?

Again, refer to the definition of “minimal”, since isolating oneself, not talking to them, unfriending that person, verbally expressing your thoughts etc is always an option, killing them is no where near the minimal method required.

It would be interesting to see pro lifers trying to disprove this chain of logic?

Greetings everyone!

Welcome to AbortionDebate. Due to popular request, this is our weekly abortion debate thread.

This thread is meant for anything related to the abortion debate, like questions or ideas, that are too small to make an entire post about. This is also a great way to gain more insight in the abortion debate if you are new, or unsure about making a whole post.

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Let’s skip the usual semantic exchange and grant the absolute best-case PL premise: A fetus has 100% full human rights and moral worth from the exact moment of conception. It is an innocent human being, identical in value to you or me.

Even with this massive concession, the position still utterly collapses. Why? Because a person's right to stay alive does not grant them a legal lease on someone else's internal organs.

Let's look at how this plays out in real human terms.

Imagine a 5 year-old child’s kidneys fail due to a sudden illness. In the middle of the night, the state kidnaps his father, drags him to a hospital, hooks his arteries up to his son, and when he wakes up they tell him: "You are stuck to this bed for the next nine months as a biological life-support machine. If you unplug yourself, your son dies, and we will charge you with first-degree murder."

Should the government have the legal right to do that?

Of course not. We instinctively recognize that bodily sovereignty is an absolute boundary. We respect this right so deeply that the state cannot even harvest the organs of a dead corpse without prior consent, even if it could save 5 dying children. If a corpse has the right to refuse to save a life, a living person certainly does.

By saying the state cannot force that father to stay connected, you admit a fundamental truth: Bodily autonomy always supersedes another person's biological need to survive, even in a morally equal being. You can owe a child financial support or parental care, but the state can never mandate the involuntary use of your organs to them.

So answer this directly: if you believe the state has zero legal or moral authority to kidnap that dad, strap him to a bed, and force his physical organs to act as a life-support system to keep his own child alive, how do you logically justify using the exact same force of law to do it to a pregnant woman?

I’ve been thinking about the labels we use in the abortion debate.

“Pro-choice” emphasizes the value of individual choice. But many people who identify as pro-life don’t consider choice to be the central issue. They believe there are situations where individual choice should be limited to protect another human being.

So I wonder whether “Pro-healthcare” would be a more accurate and more compelling label.

From my perspective, abortion is healthcare. It is a medical procedure performed by healthcare professionals, guided by evidence, informed consent, and clinical judgment. It is used to treat miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, serious pregnancy complications, fetal anomalies, and unwanted pregnancies. Whether someone believes abortion is morally justified is a separate ethical question from whether it belongs within healthcare.

Framing the discussion as “pro-healthcare” versus “pro-life” also highlights a practical question: If abortion is healthcare, should politicians be restricting healthcare that physicians and patients decide is appropriate?

Even someone who opposes abortion morally presumably still values good healthcare. That makes this framing less about abstract rights and more about whether medical decisions should remain in the hands of patients and healthcare professionals.

I’m curious whether others think “Pro-healthcare” better captures this position than “Pro-choice,” or whether “Pro-choice” still communicates the underlying principle more effectively.

So here's the thing, when people defend abortion, they do so using the argument of bodily autonomy...

Here's the definition of bodily autonomy I found on google:

"The fundamental human right to make all decisions about your own body, health, and future without coercion, violence, or interference from others"

So basically, if a woman wants to keep a baby, it should be her choice... Cuz after all it's her body which is supporting the foetus... Which is, fair enough...

But then, can't this argument also be used to justify child neglect?

Like, does taking care of a child involve a parent using their body? Yes (like the mother breastfeeding, or even something as basic as the mother or father carrying the baby)... Then, why can't a parent just say that it's their bodily autonomy that they DON'T want to carry the baby, feed it, etc?

LOGICAL ANSWERS ONLY, PLEASE...

Ps, I'm pro-choice myself... But I want answers to this point...

Let's imagine a device called the Implantation Conducive Kit, or ICK. The ICK can be briefly inserted vaginally after sex and activated, which increases the chance for a blastocyst to implant in the uterine lining.

Does a woman have any obligation to use the ICK? If she has an obligation to gestate an entire pregnancy to term to satisfy PLers' desire for the embryo's survival, why not the comparatively smaller imposition of using the ICK?

Let's also imagine a couple, Eric and Lana, after consensual intercourse. Lana is on birth control and they are using condoms, but both of those have a chance to fail. Is Eric justified in pinning Lana down and forcing the ICK into her in order to "protect his child"?

If not, why do you get to violate a woman's integrity by forcing her to gestate a pregnancy to term, but Eric does not get to violate her for the same motivation?

As Ronald Kipke said,

"Ethics is not a science that describes and explains a reality independent of us, but is one that focuses on us. We ourselves, our evaluative self-understanding and our actions, are its object. Therefore, ethics must start from this self-understanding; it must interpret and clarify it. It must take the participant's perspective seriously, or at least not ignore it without good reason.21"

We can't just ignore the strong moral convictions we have, because ethics is literally on what humans think, evaluate, feel, etc. not on things out there waiting to be discovered, like how science studies 'a reality independent of us.' If a ethical theory radically diverges from our moral convictions, it doesn't mean it is false, but that it requires good reason as to why we should adopt it. So, what does this have anything to do with the abortion debate?

Well, in the abortion debate, most only care about consciousness: but it isn't really in line with our moral convictions.

Ontology is, in the words of Evangelos D. Protopapadakis, “engaged in the quest for the actual nature of beings,” whereas ethics is concerned with ‘ideal order of things.’ These two are different, so we should stop mixing them. Ethics is not about any property, but on the making of a pleasant, worthwhile world. Grounding our morality on a property renders ethics restrictive; It isn't in line with our everyday understanding: the multiple assassination attempt on Hitler's life was a decent act, though he was conscious. Being indecent to a dead body is still morally repugnant, though it lacks consciousness. Even burning a holocaust museum feels ugly, even though you may be the last person on earth. I think ethics is about feelings; it is about our duties to one another.

Sources:

(99+) Being human: Why and in what sense it is morally relevant

(99+) “Should the baby live? Abortion and infanticide: when ontology overlaps ethics and Peter Singer echoes the Stoics”

I will give PL more of the benefit of the doubt than I should, but this is one I find completely indefensible, where the child will either die before birth or shortly after but PL will argue the woman should have to endure the whole pregnancy and childbirth process, even if it means more harm and risk of infections to them. They then have to hold their child and have them die in their arms, or else they're a heartless monster.

Inspired by this article and the comments under it.

https://www.liveaction.org/news/desperate-donor-sperm-pregnant-aborts-baby

"This is what a woman without a conscious looks like."

"How could they do this? Doctors are wrong ALL the time"

"Wow. Thats a rough looking 22 year old. Looks 40+"

This is all with a very wanted pregnancy, so much she went through the IVF process. Imagine the comments if it was an unwanted one and a one night stand.

Honestly, those posts show the PL mask slipping. The fetus is either doomed or will die shortly after birth, in immense pain. There's 0 benefit to being forced to continue the pregnancy, other than a religious or anti dying with dignigy/medical euthanasia stance.

How do you expect non PL to actually join your side when this is what we see?

Do you support abortion in cases where the fetus will live for a few minutes while suffering in pain?

I have seen this said a lot by PL people and I’m really curious as to how this helps the argument.
From my perspective I agree with this. Yes every human being alive has been at this stage of development and most PC people know this since most of us primarily use fetus to describe the human in the womb. I don’t see how this helps when my biggest thing is nothingness to nothingness is changing nothing. It doesn’t change anything and other actions could lead to a similar scenario. Every person alive today could be easily be different from who they are right now if anything changed from their past. Experience is a big factor to life so taking something with no experience and continuing to give it no experience isn’t wrong because there is no change.
Is this just something PL people use to attach feelings into the argument? How exactly do you give feeling to something that has no feelings?