Redux: Rape, Abortion, and "Personhood"

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Nov 1, 2012.

?

Do I support the proposition? (see post #2)

Poll closed Nov 11, 2013.
  1. Anti-abortion: Yes

    22.2%
  2. Anti-abortion: No

    5.6%
  3. Pro-choice: Yes

    44.4%
  4. Pro-choice: No

    16.7%
  5. Other (Please explain below)

    11.1%
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  1. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    18,523
    I'm fine with that, can we end this there then?
    I guess not, I think the discussion of accountability to "sympathizer" to terrorist would be nice for another thread. "on the fence' you say, troll you say, yes the slander continues.

    Ignored most everything I've said, great, I simply criticize your hateful statements and you call it picking and fight, I try to stay on issue and demand a focus on person-hood and you claim it the opposite.
    As I said I stop playing the devils advocate pages ago. I believe most of what I said (other then when high) was made with respect and aim to intellectual discussion, if you can prove otherwise let also make that a thread of its own... and what am I suppose to interpret from your comparing me to two banned members, or Tiassa talk of there being no standards here officially.

    By all means if you could go back to discussing fetal personhood and ethics here, now, not about who are perverts or terrorists or extremists, or how god dam awful they are, as it does nothing to prove our position on abortion.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    And this is the weirdness of it - you treat the discussion as if it were hypothetical, without basis in reality, when you do that. Bell's direction of argument was reality based, and "turning around the exact word's" involves denying that reality, invoking a fantasy world of two sides of some hypothetical issue in which those terms of description apply equally to both, and wording "turned around" is equivalently meaningful or relevant.

    The topic was the potential consequences of a perverted and extreme fantasy of "personhood" for embryos gaining the force of law and the backing of the State at the behest of an organized political faction with a track record of supporting terrorism against pregnant women.

    My take on it is that it is hypocrisy only - the faction has no idea what such legal personhood would imply and doesn't care and cannot be persuaded to attend to the matter, as their only interest is justification and coercive backing of their treatment of pregnant or impregnable women. That end validates whatever means happens to work for them. As evidence we have the collective posts here of the defenders of that fantasy "personhood", with attention to what they attend to on this thread.

    If so, a discussion of the ethics of the matter is a discussion of the ethics of that faction, its track record, and the behaviors it exhibits, justifies, and supports.
     
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  5. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Show me where the Church, itself, made any such statement, or tell me a little fantasy about how you would handicap your own lawyer by keeping him from using legal definitions. Like I said, red-herring.
     
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  7. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

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    Potential full life is superior to temporarily poor quality of life.

    Which is why the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Making abortion illegal is not the end-all solution, but between the unmet demand to adopt and increased contraceptive availability, it is likely more of a balance could be struck.

    Statistics guarantee that some abortions could have led to a full life, especially in cases where the mother decides to raise the child (without any significant regret), and most adopted children end up very well-adjusted.

    See my post #607.
     
  8. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    When you hire a lawyer to represent you in court, they speak for you in court. During the case, the Church and the Catholic owned hospital remained silent on their legal representative making said argument. It was only after, when they were caught out in their hypocrisy that they commented they would never allow their lawyers to make such an argument on their behalf again. Really, reading links is hard, yes?

    If you are so inherently pro-life that you are willing to let women die for your beliefs, then it stands to reason that you would not suddenly switch sides when it comes to money. Hypocrisy.. This is what you defend.

    The lead defendant in the case is Catholic Health Initiatives, the Englewood-based nonprofit that runs St. Thomas More Hospital as well as roughly 170 other health facilities in 17 states. Last year, the hospital chain reported national assets of $15 billion. The organization’s mission, according to its promotional literature, is to “nurture the healing ministry of the Church” and to be guided by “fidelity to the Gospel.” Toward those ends, Catholic Health facilities seek to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those rules have stirred controversy for decades, mainly for forbidding non-natural birth control and abortions. “Catholic health care ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life ‘from the moment of conception until death,’” the directives state. “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.”

    [HR][/HR]

    But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.

     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Coercing the sacrifice (or even the risk) of someone's existing life for the supposed possible future life of somebody else is immoral.

    Declaring that fertilized eggs are human beings under the protection of the State while in the womb will reduce contraceptive availability and increase unwanted pregnancies - and such a reduction is an overt goal of the pro-life movement generally, as well as the establishment of pregnancy and subjugation of the woman as an enforced and State mandated consequence of sex (revealing the underlying agenda, which is not reducing abortions but controlling young women's sexual behavior).

    Making abortion illegal is not even a solution to abortion - abortions were common when they were illegal, and will remain common if they are made illegal again. They have always been common, in all but the very most oppressively misogynistic societies, at least since the invention of agriculture.

    Why are you advocating laws leading to the banning of various contraceptives, and achieving your "balance" by abusing impregnable women for the benefit of others?

    As far as your "unmet demand to adopt", besides the immorality of using women that way it's not reliable - the latest example to cross my path is an 18 month old blonde, blue-eyed baby boy taken from his drug addicted mother as a ward of the State (Minnesota) and now living in foster care after being "returned" by the only adoptive family available at the time. You want him?
     
  10. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    How open are you to discussing the proposition that sex is a need?
    Last I remember, it was entirely taboo for you to discuss this proposition, as you maintained that sex is a need, non-negotiable.



    If other people do things that you deem wrong or harmful, are you perfectly okay about it? Do you just let them do it, never paying their actions any further thoughts or concern in any way?



     
  11. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    How nice of you. You're such a paragon of good faith!


    I am referring to Bells', and a few other posters', persistent abuse and misrepresenting of some other posters here.

    Myself and others have pointed this out many times.


    I've noted this at least once before -

    And I stopped counting how many times I or LG said "Will the irony never end?"

    Bells, and yourself, frequently ascribe to us positions we don't hold, and then you judge us for them.

    And if we point out that you are misrepresenting us, you simply accuse us of lying and a number of lowly things. And then you continue in your misrepresenting.

    And if this doesn't ring a bell in your mind, then I don't know what to say.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  12. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    16,330
    Don't see anything in the article about liturgies of rhetoric of hate and name calling.
    If we look at your posts however ...

    :scratchin:

    yet all pro-lifers are terrorists ....

    :shrug:
     
  13. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    The pathetic aspect of your once again taking this thread where it does not need to go is that I did rectify that and I clearly said corrected the misapprehension you seem to have that I meant all pro-life, all of this while you deliberately ignore the content of those articles and even of my post. And it is trolling and disingenuous posts by you, Wynn and Fetus in its prime.

    Fetus, hell knows what he's on about, because he prefers to be more intent on discussing hypothetical's instead of the realities of the abortion issue, Wynn is trying so hard to impress you that no one knows what she's on about until she started to complain about people having sex or being sexually active, accused me of rape and then whined that I am apparently forcing people to have sex... and you have spent more time doing the shrug emote and trolling it off topic than actually discussing the realities of the subject matter itself.

    It is absolutely astounding. And you complain when we don't take you seriously?

    Let us look at Wynn as a prime example. After vague comments that had nothing to do with this thread and clearly something only she could identify, she accuses me of rape. Apparently I am raping you LG. And her as well. And you want to complain that I didn't say "some"? I post articles about how the pro life movement is being corrupted by extremists, and how extremists are using pro life groups to quite literally, identify their next targets of attack and all you find to complain about is that I didn't say the word "some"? This is the reality of abortion in America. And instead of discussing those realities, instead of addressing the issues, you all prefer to troll and then complain when we don't take your troll seriously enough.
     
  14. lightgigantic Banned Banned

    Messages:
    16,330
    And that pathetic aspect of your posts is that you can't even bring yourself to discuss the other fanatic extreme of the issue (or even how * any* issue is * never* accommodated by just *one* extreme) ... which finds a very real representation in your attitude and behaviour as displayed on this thread.

    And bells goes on a tirade of unparalleled name calling with anyone who even so much as slightly disagrees with her hate rhetoric.

    Actually we complain that you have information assimilation issues.
    The only detail is whether this is a deliberate tool of intellectual dishonesty or a somewhat innocent loss of attention due to hysteria and attachment to preconceived ideas.

    And she clarifies that she is talking about your proclivity to imagine people as belonging to certain categories or roles in arguments you have formulated, and then insist that certain people in this thread actually are belonging to those categories.
    We see this in your inability to actually engage in discussion with EF and your allegations of others masturbating to chicks on the internet or whatever droll mockery your hyperactive imagination dreams up.

    :shrug:
     
  15. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    18,523
    Yes I would like to talk about a hypothetical call personhood, (an abstract concept to be exact) its in the title so I thought it was up for discussion, but I guess not.

    I tolerate it generally, as long as it would be oppressive of me to do otherwise.
     
  16. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,201
    Really? By that logic all women should attempt to become pregnant as often as possible, right? After all, what is enduring a little "temporarily poor quality of life" in conceiving and carrying a child to term compared to all that "potential full life" inherent in those wonderful ova and spermatozoa?

    All these selfish people wasting gametes every day - tsk, tsk - think of the precious latent life going unfulfilled.

    Tell me why your logic doesn't extend back before implantation, indeed, even before conception. Or does it? Do you prescribe to the Catholic stereotype of "go forth and multiply", preferably as often as possible? If no, why not? Where is the fallacy in labeling all gametes "potential life" in need only of coming together wih a partner? Is it just a personal choice on your part Syne? If so, feel free to follow your choice, I don't think any pro-choice people will attempt to limit the number of offspring you produce. OTH, pro-lifers always seem to want to proscribe others' choices, right? Kind of by definition.

    On another topic, why don't you address the original issue in this thread on its own merits as Tiassa keeps requesting of the posters here? What happens if Personhood is granted at conception? What's the matter, don't you have the courage of your convictions? Why not stand up and be counted as a proponent of police investigations into every miscarriage? Shouldn't the enforcement of murder charges be stepped up when the woman knew or should have known that her behavior could harm that child within her womb? How about mandatory requirements imposed on all health care providers to ascertain if a nominally "dead" woman is pregnant so that heroic measures can be taken to keep the incubator alive in all possible cases? Ponder the ramifications of your stance if enforced as law just for a moment. Frightening, right? So let's just not talk about that subject...
     
  17. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,883
    (Insert Title Here)

    You don't get to make this complaint. That is to say, as much as you and LG want to push some "triage model", you can't actually tell us what it is. Yet you demand it be included in the discussion. Without any definition from the advocates, it is left to everyone else to figure out what that means. As such, you don't get to complain about what other people come up with; the simplest route through is to provide a functional definition of what you're talking about.

    And that is microcosmic. We've told people what we see, and even why we see it. What we're getting in return is negative affirmations, and complaints that we're wrong. Okay, fine. Then lay it out in functional terms.

    That pattern is much the same with the thread in general. The proposition spots the anti-abortion crowd its personhood argument in order to explore what comes next. We know more about what LACP advocates say they don't think and believe than what they do.

    And this is pretty much how its gone for over forty years.

    While it is evident that anti-abortion advocates do not like certain characterizations, it is just as clear that the behavior moving those characterizations will continue.

    On the surface, it would appear that LACP advocates have no idea what it is they're asking for.

    Ask them the question, and it becomes apparent that they have no desire to have any idea what they're asking for; they just want what they want.

    In concept, it is simple enough: These are the problems we see with LACP.

    The response is to complain about the characterizations, but there are so few—are there any?—affirmative arguments about what LACP (or your triage model, or any number of other aspects about the anti-abortion argument) actually means in practice. The route through looks straightforward: Answer these concerns, help reconcile the different perceptions.

    And as the last fourteen months reminds, looks are deceiving. Ontological continuity is now an extraordinary expectation. To the other, if I suggest the historical record means nothing to the anti-abortion crowd, neither is that something the advocates should resent insofar as willfully ignoring history is a tradition of American political rhetoric. Consider our neighbor, ElectricFetus, who would hope to advance the dialogue by asking his pro-choice associates to brick their brains to mush trying to prove a negative assertion. The problem is this: Compared to the historical and anthropological record, the Life at Conception Personhood argument is new, germinating over the last several decades. In the thousands of years of human society, LACP is a new assertion, and it has never endured any real scrutiny in the public discourse since its introduction to the abortion debate.

    And yet, in order to understand how it works in society, we have here a thread intended to be about what happens when personhood is acknowledged.

    So, yeah. After fourteen months, you and your anti-abortion fellows have had many, many chances to undertake an affirmative discussion of what you're prescribing. The reluctance to do so is either pretty straightforward—e.g., the misogyny some of us are noting—or else so complex that even the anti-abortionists don't know why they can't rise to the question.

    Given diversity, each of those factors is in play. But they inevitably lead back to philosophical markers generally unexamined; there are certainly recognizable misogynists in the movement, but the (ahem!) "innocent" anti-abortionists are to some degree guilty by complicity. That is to say, for many the position is constructed entirely from articles of faith, and as such the implications are irrelevant; the functional result is that sure, this is really bad for women, will turn our society's entire ethical scheme on its ear, and possibly create the most intrusive bureaucratic nightmare we've ever constructed, but none of that is relevant. In the end, it is a discussion that I have had many times before; sure, we get that one is not a bigot, it's just that one needs or will accept bigoted outcomes as right. In this case, the question of bigotry is complicated by the assertion of a second person, the organism inside the female person referred to as the "mother". But this assertion is, historically, ontologically, philosophically new. And the lack of an affirmative argument on its behalf leaves it nothing more than an article of faith. And maybe one doesn't want to call it misogyny, but what do we call tolerance of or even desire for a condition obsesrvably disproportionately negative to an identifiable class of people—that also happens to make up more than half of our society—for an article of faith?

    One of the long-running arguments is that the pro-choice argument thinks this will be terrible for women, and thus objects, and the anti-abortion argument thinks ... well, what? We know more about what it doesn't think, such as the response to the equal protection implications, observable in this thread. Rather than arguing that these outcomes are worth it, the anti-abortion argument holds that such outcomes are ridiculous speculation. The outcomes are projected according to certain criteria, and though the anti-abortion movement rejects these criteria, it will not put affirmative criteria on the table.

    Think of all the posts people have spent complaining about the point on misogyny. So far the strongest response is still weak tea, that we should give deference to articles of faith because people really believe it, even if they can't tell us why. In all of that, is there one affirmative argument for the proposition that desiring or tolerating such poor outcomes for women isn't misogynistic? Aside from the appeal to emotion—that articles of faith are more important than human beings, and oh, why can't we just see and accept that?—there really isn't much to work with. As far as rational arguments go, there is nothing to work with.

    If you keep leaving the definitions of your ideas to us, you will always have a reason to object. Dialectically, though, one can reasonably suggest that's part of the point.
     
  18. lightgigantic Banned Banned

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    16,330
    How does any of this explain why bells claim people who disagree with her masturbate to some chick on the Internet?
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You do realize you and your little prolife pack of slanderers and dishonest, pretend-oblivious trolls are a special case on this forum, right? Nobody else can do what you just did in post 915 and expect to remain a poster on a discussion forum like this.

    And I think there's a basic reason for that - you represent a serious and influential faction of American politics. Having you present, behaving like that live on screen, means that people actually discussing issues - such as the ascription of personhood to a human zygote - don't have to describe you when arguing various points. Nobody has to accept my description or take my word for it that people such as yourself exist and are significant factors in the use of power against women in the US - I can just point.

    If zygotes are legally declared to be persons, and their various ascribed rights defended by the State against the living women they live in and off of, people such as lightgigantic and syne and wynn will be administering these laws. Just sayin'.
     
  20. Bells Staff Member

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    24,270
    I have been here for over 10 years and have participated in just about every single discussion about abortion in my time here. How many times do I have to answer his questions and he just keeps repeating the same question at me? Give me a rough number?

    10? 20? To infinity?

    No, really, give me a number?

    Fetus' complaint is that I am not taking his "devil's advocate" role in this thread seriously. There are a few reasons for this. Because there are only so many times that I can answer the exact same question that it then becomes clear that repeating the exact same question and comments, all hypothetical, before it becomes clear that it is pure and simple trolling. Whining that I don't give trolls the attention they feel they deserve? Oh boo hoo.

    Actually not at all. I disagree with a lot of people about a lot of things, even this very issue. The difference between them and you is that they are willing to have an honest discussion about it and not sit there and make crap up and demand that their model's are better and then whine when the reality of their 'model's' is put in place and then complain about the effects of what it is they have been advocating. You don't get to push the triage model down people's throats as though it is the correct answer and then whine and troll and complain when your triage model is actually applied and becomes reality in the case of Munoz. The reality of your triage model is keeping dead women alive to incubate babies in their "deteriorating bodies". Don't like the reality of that? Don't advocate it.

    Nor do you get to whine when your behaviour is correctly identified and you are treated accordingly.

    See, when trolls complain that I am not taking them seriously, then I know I am doing a good thing. Which is essentially what you are saying. I have a woman accusing me of rape because I am not willing to give her trolling behaviour and rants about whatever is fantasy that is going on in her head the time she feels it deserves.

    Oh no, my disregarding you and her is deliberate. Because all you do is troll.

    Nice twisting of the argument there, troll.

    I only have one category for you LG. And it is one that you have deliberately placed yourself in.

    Having spent days and days 'engaging with EF' and having the exact same question repeated over and over again and having to answer the exact same thing over and over again, it becomes obvious is that his role here is that to provoke, so that he can whine when he gets the response he deserves.

    Does the trolling ever end?

    No, really, does it?

    And you wonder why I refuse to take you and your merry band of trolls seriously? You are the perfect representation of 'pro-life'. You, Wynn, Syne are the very tools that everyone with an ounce of sense finds disgusting and reprehensible. Even many pro-life people. Because what you advocate and support did result in a dead woman's body being kept alive to grow a "baby".

    So you can be as dishonest as you and your fellow trolls want and accuse me of forcing people to have sex, to raping people, to apparently claiming that anyone who disagrees with me masturbates to porn on the internet. All you are doing is just proving my point. So thank you LG. Keep up the good work.
     
  21. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Ok Bells, just one more time please: what questions have I been asking that you been answering, over and over again? And if you could provide that answer one more time that would be great.
     
  22. Bells Staff Member

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    You mean like the one you keep asking about personhood, even though I and many others have pointed out that to give personhood from whatever stage of pregnancy denies the woman any rights she may have over her body and it could very well result in the reality we are seeing in the US and elsewhere where women are being arrested and charged with murder for stillbirths, miscarriages and some being detained and arrested for choosing to have a home birth with a midwife or refusing to have a c-section or take medication their doctor believes they should take.

    So once again. The reality of the questions you keep demanding about the ethics of providing personhood to a zygote, embryo, foetus still in utero. I have seen you demand questions to this point and frankly, it has been discussed so many times in this thread that it beggars belief that you are incapable of reading through the thread to determine our answers and even when we answered you, you kept going on about the ethics of personhood for the foetus - all while proclaiming that you are supposedly pro-choice and playing devil's advocate. That you could even ask about this, repeatedly, beggars belief.

    So I will answer your question about why it is unethical to demand personhood from whatever stage of pregnancy one may personally apply - thus far in this thread I have heard the argument from fertilisation onwards, with one troll saying it should apply from when the brain starts functioning in the first trimester. Here is a breakdown of the study linked above, of exactly what happens when you declare personhood:

    This study makes clear that post-Roe anti-choice and “pro-life” measures are being used to do more than limit access to abortion; they are providing the basis for arresting women, locking them up, and forcing them to submit to medical interventions, including surgery. The cases documented in our study through 2005, as well as more recent cases, make clear that 40 years after Roe v. Wade was decided, far more is at stake than abortion or women’s reproductive rights. Pregnant women face attacks on virtually every right associated with constitutional personhood, including the very basic right to physical liberty.

    Our study identified 413 criminal and civil cases involving the arrests, detentions, and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women’s physical liberty that occurred between 1973 (when Roe v. Wade was decided) and 2005. Because many cases are not reported publicly, we know that this is a substantial under count. Furthermore, new data collection indicates that at least 250 such interventions have taken place since 2005.

    In almost all of the cases we identified, the arrests and other actions would not have happened but for the fact that the woman was pregnant at the time of the alleged violation of law. And, in almost every case we identified, the person who initiated the action had no direct legal authority for doing so. No state legislature has passed a law that holds women legally liable for the outcome of their pregnancies. No state legislature has passed a law making it a crime for a pregnant woman to continue her pregnancy to term in spite of a drug or alcohol problem. No state has passed a law exempting pregnant women from the protections of the state and federal constitution. And, under Roe v. Wade, abortion remains legal.

    Now, I want you to think about the implication of this for a moment. And most of all, the reality of this nightmare.

    This study was conducted prior to the horror show that Texas did to a dead woman and her family.

    Now, here is what happened to just a few women, discussed in the article based on the study. Keep in mind, this is just the tip of the ice-berg:

    Women have been arrested while still pregnant, taken straight from the hospital in handcuffs, and sometimes shackled around the waist and at the ankles. Pregnant women have been held under house arrest and incarcerated in jails and prisons. Pregnant women have been held in locked psychiatric wards, as well as in hospitals and in drug treatment programs under 24-hour guard. They have been forced to undergo intimate medical exams and blood transfusions over their religious objections. Women have been forced to submit to cesarean surgery. They have been arrested shortly after giving birth while dressed only in hospital gowns. And, despite claims by some anti-choice activists that women themselves will not be arrested if abortion is re-criminalized, women who have ended their pregnancies and had abortions are already being arrested.

    Consider the following:

    • A woman in Utah gave birth to twins. When one was stillborn, she was arrested and charged with criminal homicide based on the claim that her decision to delay cesarean surgery was the cause of the stillbirth.
    • After a hearing that lasted less than a day, a court issued an order requiring a critically-ill pregnant woman in Washington, D.C. to undergo cesarean surgery over her objections. Neither she nor her baby survived.
    • A judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.
    • A woman in Oregon who did not comply with a doctor’s recommendation to have additional testing for gestational diabetes was subjected to involuntary civil commitment. During her detention, the additional testing was never performed.
    • A Louisiana woman was charged with murder and spent approximately a year in jail before her counsel was able to show that what was deemed a murder of a fetus or newborn was actually a miscarriage that resulted from medication given to her by a health care provider.
    • In Texas, a pregnant woman who sometimes smoked marijuana to ease nausea and boost her appetite gave birth to healthy twins. She was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.
    • A doctor in Wisconsin had concerns about a woman’s plans to have her birth attended by a midwife. As a result, a civil court order of protective custody for the woman’s fetus was obtained. The order authorized the sheriff’s department to take the woman into custody, transport her to a hospital, and subject her to involuntary testing and medical treatment.


    You repeatedly asked about the ethics of not declaring personhood? There is your answer.

    Because to declare personhood denies the mother any personhood whatsoever and any rights whatsoever.

    You can apply LG's triage models, you can discuss anything at all. It will never escape from the reality of what is currently being done to women because they are pregnant and because someone wholly unconnected to them has determined what they are carrying is a person and thus, she must now relinquish her whole body to the State or whoever else deems they have more authority over it. In one case, it can probably be assumed that the State pushed a woman to actually abort. One of the cases, discussed in the study was that of Martina Greywind:

    Martina Greywind, a twenty-eight-year-old homeless Native American woman from Fargo, North Dakota, was arrested when she was approximately twelve weeks pregnant. She was charged with reckless endangerment, based on the claim that by inhaling paint fumes she was creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death to her unborn child. After spending approximately two weeks in the Cass County Jail, Greywind was able to obtain release for a medical appointment. At that appointment Greywind obtained an abortion, despite widely publicized efforts by abortion opponents to persuade her to carry the pregnancy to term. Following the abortion, Greywind filed a motion to dismiss the charges. The state agreed to a dismissal: “Defendant has made it known to the State that she has terminated her pregnancy. Consequently, the controversial legal issues presented are no longer ripe for litigation.” According to news reports, the prosecutor in the case stated that since Greywind had had an abortion, it was “no longer worth the time or expense to prosecute her” (Orlando Sentinel 1992).


    The only way she could escape the charges and get out of jail was to have an abortion. The ethics of personhood indeed.

    How about the case of Julie Starks, one of the many cases mentioned in the study, who was arrested and placed in prison because they believed (with no evidence whatsoever) she was breathing in toxic fumes and thus, the State declared her foetus was "deprived". She was found guilty and while in prison, with no pre-natal care she actually got sick and instead of putting on weight, lost weight. The court held that the State could take custody of her foetus - which was still inside her.

    I could go on, but frankly, reading through the study is enough to bring forth nightmares that they make science fiction movies about. For example, Roe vs Wade clearly and explicitly stated that a foetus, even at the point of viability, was not a person. However, people have decided to ignore that and apply it anyway, and the result has been forced c-sections and other invasive treatments, not to mention arrests and detainment and incarceration, because others have decided to distort the law:

    In Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court explicitly rejected the claim that fetuses, even after attaining viability, are separate legal persons with rights independent of the pregnant women who carry, nurture, and sustain them. Still, consistent with the goals of personhood measures, prosecutors, hospital attorneys, and judges frequently misrepresent the decision to stand for the opposite meaning (Gallagher 1987). They claim that Roe instead establishes that viable fetuses must be treated as legal persons
    fully separate from the pregnant woman. This misstatement of Roe’s actual holding has been used in numerous cases as authority for depriving pregnant women of their liberty.

    A Massachusetts trial-level court relied on this distortion of Roe when it ordered Rebecca Corneau, a thirty two year old white woman, imprisoned so the state could force her to undergo medical examinations over her religious objections. In Pennsylvania a hospital sought a court order to force Amber Marlowe, a twenty five year old white woman, to undergo cesarean surgery. Counsel for the hospital cited Roe for the proposition that “Baby Doe, a full term viable fetus, has certain rights, including the
    right to have decisions made for it, independent of its parents, regarding its health and survival.” The court granted the order, awarding the hospital custody of a fetus before, during, and after delivery and giving the hospital the right to force Marlowe to undergo cesarean surgery without her consent. In Florida Roe was misused as authority for taking Pemberton, the Florida woman discussed above who attempted a VBAC, into police custody and forcing her to undergo cesarean surgery. As a trial level federal court asserted, “Whatever the scope of Pemberton’s personal constitutional rights in this situation, they clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child. . . . This is confirmed by Roe v. Wade.”



    This is LG's triage model in action.

    So, once and for all, does this answer your question about the ethics of personhood for the foetus and why pro-choice are against it?
     
  23. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    Actually I asked many questions, but I have been asking that we focus on talking about personhood, I grant you that, now if we can just stay focused.

    And as I pointed out repeatedly now only to be ignored by you: that is very poor logic! You see your not proving why a fetus is not a person, what your saying is we have to declare it not a person simply because the consequences would be too grave, basically your saying we need to give women a special license to kill, for if the fetus is a person or not does not matter, women rights is more important. Such an argument is rather sexist, for it violates gender equality, and makes you look like hateful. (well many other things and comments, and name calling, makes you look hateful)

    As I said before I asked many other questions such as: just how many sub-person rights should we grant a fetus if any at all?, how do we declare personhood and when?, does a corpse have more rights then a fetus?, could a women morally sell fetuses for money and science?, etc, etc, questions unanswered, specifically ignored by the likes of you.

    ---
    Yes yes horror stories, meanwhile millions of fetuses are aborted a year, I'm sure the pro-lifers would call that a horror story.
    ---

    Ok so the twins were viable, right, they were in the process of being born no less, so how do you ethically declare them not people and thus the mother did no wrong? Oh right because if declare she did a wrong, not even legally but just morally, it somehow destroy all women of rights people?

    Well these are vague, can you provide links? Especially the midwife one, that one makes very little sense at all.

    Well I think that one goes to the stupidity of pot laws

    I really think that is overly presumptuous. Not everyone women upon becoming pregnant is held against her will as a living incubator, striped of all rights. More so when do we grant personhood? at viability? Well then some of those cases would be immoral. Are you saying that a women has the right to mutilate her fetus, regardless of how developed it is as long as she does not bring it to term? If a pregnant women is murderer how can the murderer be charged with double homicide? Can I get an answer to these questions, and not slanderous insults? You see I challenging you to develop an ethical framework, for some of these questions lead to real life cases, and without such a framework all we have is emotional appeals and impulse to deal with them.

    I don't care for LG's triage model, but again a pro-lifer they would argue the bizzaro of you and say something like "why is the state or someone not stopping this "mass murder"?" You see we live in a society and laws are made that do in fact oppress us, ourselves, and we live by. Exactly how far can the state go into our bodies?, I don't know. Is it right of them to declare heroine illegal? Put fluoride in our drinking water? Require vaccinations? Anyways the state does say we can't murder, even our children, and to a pro-lifer abortion is the same thing as child murder so to them their argument is righteous, to them not restricting the rights of some pregnant women is less then the lives of fetuses. To you the rights of women are so paramount it magically turns fetuses into non-people, I'm sorry but I don't see the logic, sure sure you can argue means justify the ends, but It does not make it moral. On the other hand directly disproving the personhood of a fetus would solve that problem.


    Well then from the link:

    Regina McKnight: Her case is due again to the stupidity of drug laws.

    Laura Pemberton: The paper does not specify why a doctor thought she could not have vaginal birth, I seriously don't it was simply because she has a Cesarean before. Again if we apply the viability model to personhood we would find favor for the fetus, for it was viable, we would need are more extensive model of personhood to deny the fetus in the process of being born after a full gestation, personhood. In fact the Wikipedia article reveals that the state sided with the doctors, found Roe vs Wade did not apply because the fetus was wanted and that the extraordinary particulars of this case allow for the state to intervene. Now because you want to talk about the real world, in the real world sometime special judgements need to be made, judgements that many would disagree with, such as people that believe a few exception "denies the mother any personhood whatsoever and any rights whatsoever".

    Rachael Lowe: Again drugs laws.

    Martina Greywind: She abort, and she huffs paint... anyways do you think a mother has the right to threaten a fetus with substance abuse or worse, if she going to abort it? How about if she wants to keep it? Does the mother have the right to mutilate a fetus?

    Michelle Marie Greenup: this case appear to deal with confusing a miscarriage for infanticide. Tell me can a women legally, let alone morally, murder her baby after giving birth to it? If not then would it not be right to the justice department to investigate and charge some women of infanticide when evidence warrants it. Michelle was acquitted, the law worked, but would you have the state forgo such a process?

    yeah fumes from methamphetamine production, she was charged with "manufacture and possession of methamphetamine", again that is a drug law discussion.

    Note quite, the justices disagreed on the exact time or the standard being it viability or quickening at which a state could put a limit on abortions. And worse that the state interested was in both the health of the mother and the fetus.

    We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman, whether she be a resident of the State or a nonresident who seeks medical consultation and treatment there, and that it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life. These interests are separate and distinct. Each grows in substantiality as the woman approaches [p163] term and, at a point during pregnancy, each becomes "compelling."

    With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the "compelling" point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of the now-established medical fact, referred to above at 149, that, until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth. It follows that, from and after this point, a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health.


    This means, on the other hand, that, for the period of pregnancy prior to this "compelling" point, the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State.

    With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the "compelling" point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion [p164] during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.


    -- http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113

    As for the nature of personhood the ruling does specifically argue a fetus is not legally as stated in the constitution, a person, but this does not strip the fetus of ALL rights, for logically if it did then the court would not have been arguing for the state right to "potentiality of human life", nor would it make such allowance for the regulation of abortions post viability as is describes above.

    So I ask what rights should be grant the fetus, if any? None you say I'm guessing, then what about the ethical problems that could result, children born accidentally by negligence or intentionally mutilated? Fetuses aborted for medical profit, can a women have a fetus killed just as long at its still insider her, even if it was in the process of being born and was viable?
     
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