Your rights DO change when you have a baby. You can no longer do your own thing; you have to care for the child, including letting it use your organs (specifically mammary glands.) If you neglect to do that you might just end up in jail.
Abortion Limit: UK
- Thread starter universaldistress
- Start date
Your rights DO change when you have a baby. You can no longer do your own thing; you have to care for the child, including letting it use your organs (specifically mammary glands.) If you neglect to do that you might just end up in jail.
I wasn't talking about rights in general, I was talking about the right not to have something done to your body against your will. Presumably you can see the difference between having to change a nappy and having to let something be hooked up to your internal organs for months.
No one is even legally required to breastfeed, since you mentioned it. Women are quite within their rights to use formula.
Lol...I wonder what she V.I say to that.
universal distress said:
Hey there, UD,
Since this topic involves the law, it occurred to me that there are already existing laws concerning education. (Presumably in most countries it's "illegal" to be uneducated.)
I wonder if some strengthening of the educational curriculum might help cure some of this. For example, I wonder if kids could be given two flavors of string candy (like strands of licorice - something with color and plasticity). They could be asked to randomly twist them and then to longitudinally bisect them, then take one half of each of two of these operations (starting with two sets made from four different colored strands) and put them together with the explanation that each individual is the fusion of two random processes, one per parent, which combines the traits of each of four grandparents.
They could be asked to write a short essay, choosing themselves, their guardian, a friend, or even a pet, as the genetic fusion. They could even choose a fictional character if they wanted to. This essay could have as its objective a way to get the student to look into the way traits are inherited. I think this could start in the first year of school, and it should be repeated each year thereafter, gradually seeking a more introspective answer from the student. By the time they complete the minimum education requirement they should understand the basics quite well.
I'm thinking this least this would cure the case where the pregnant rape victim has misunderstood that her daughter was not carrying just as many genes from the perpetrator's parents as her son would carry. Also, by the time they got out of high school, they should well understand that the gender of a baby is entirely determined by whichever of the father's innumerable gametes succeeded in donating either an X or Y.
Of course I'm not suggesting this be done just to cover this particular issue, but by improving science education (whether or not by doing it as I suggested) some of the biases, myths and hateful things people do (in general) could be reduced. Plus students get a better grasp of how things work.
I realize that this may have nothing to do with the aversion the victim may feel to the child, particularly by projecting the persona of the perpetrator onto the child through some deep psychological response to the trauma of rape, compounded by pregnancy. For that I believe there should be free psychological services provided at the public expense. It could conceivably assist her in resolving any unhealthy ideation she is experiencing on account of the rape.
Something else crossed my mind as I was reading the thread. Wouldn't it be ironic if a mother selected out one gender of child by abortion, then got pregnant again, this time with the desired gender, then, after striving to assure this child of its gender in early life . . . the child emerges as transgender?
And that gets back to education, too. I think that social skills training is vastly improving, but I could imagine a parallel program to the one I mentioned above, one which associates gender more scientifically, so that kids learn--beginning at a very young age--that all people are not only created equally, but randomly, including the physical and emotional aspects of gender. Social sciences could be integrated into this to help young people understand phobias and the reason for hateful attitudes. This might help reduce some of the bias young parents may have for one gender over another.
I think all the public can do is to try to help. I would be in favor of free counseling services prior to marriage, to help young couples however they can, plus other kinds of counseling for people who are contemplating sex, and deeper psychological counseling for those who are at risk for making an unwanted pregnancy by recklessness, and deeper counseling still for those who are walking time bombs--as far as perpetrating rape is concerned.
I don't think abortion is going away anytime soon no matter how many ways we try to conceive of solving the precursors. I think it's a matter of converging in the future to a better world, one in which abortion would (ideally) never be necessary, or at least it would be happening at a minimal rate. Presumably that world would be a much better one in many regards, if indeed hatred itself were all but eliminated.
I'm not that naive or optimistic, although my outlook might shift more this way if the nuts who hold our national conversations hostage (primarily fundamentalists) were not cluttering our radar screens with their UFOs. If not for them, I feel that more policies and workable solutions would be on the table than the same old useless and tired proposal that they keep regurgitating, namely, to repeal Roe v Wade (here in the US) and to outlaw abortion.
Actually that isn't true about the mammary glands. I breastfed my first born but the 3 that came after it never got a drop of breast milk from me. They were formula fed.
However, if a pregnant woman is walking along and someone attacks her causing her to lose her fetus the attacker can be charged with murder of said fetus. So the fetus has rights to live, and the ability to live depends on the ability to use the woman's organs. So that implies that at some point the unborn fetus does in fact have rights over the woman. So this is where I am torn on abortion laws. I believe a woman should have a right to an abortion for any reason up to a certain point in the pregnancy. I don't think late term should be allowed. And if a pregnant woman is assaulted and it is before the late term cut off limit I don't think the attacker should be charged with murder if the fetus is lost. Because up until that point, our laws permit her to kill it at will and for on any whim.
Perhaps a compromise is called for here. A fetus has no rights until it is 24 weeks old. At that point, the rights of the fetus over the woman take hold and she has no right to abort. Until then it is nothing more than a clump of cells with potential and she should abort asap, if she does not want it to become a human being with rights to her body. So she has an out, a way of protecting herself. But she cannot dilly dally in making up her mind. Imagine if you are standing on a train track with a train coming, you only have so much time to think about whether or not you should move. There comes a point when its a bit too late. If you really want to live, you would have moved as soon as you knew a train was coming. You cannot wait until the train is 10 feet away and demand that the train stop. It just makes no sense.
So you would give an attacker the same rights over the fetus as the mother? Keep in mind that a mother and father that want a child will consider the fetus to be their child, and that any attack that prematurely terminates the pregnancy will be viewed as murder by the parents to be. Much more so if the pregnancy was a hard difficult conceive.
Strong point but my two bits here:
If society cannot recognize and respect the life, why should a double standard be applied even to a criminal? In order to charge him, you'd have to also charge the mother should she choose to kill it.
Sorry I don't see it as a double standard at all. You are beginning to sound like a right to lifer, willing to use any argument to make your case. A criminal committing an assault on a pregnant woman should be liable for any death caused by that assault.
It's not that. Its in an effort to avoid a double standard. If a stranger cannot kill the baby, why should the parents be allowed to? If the mother can kill the fetus because it is not determined to be a human being with rights, then why is a stranger guilty of murdering a human when it is determined that the thing that was killed was not a human being with rights. Do you see where I am going with this? Why is the "thing" (for lack of better word) defined by that which would kill it. If it is wanted it is a baby, if it is not wanted it is a parasite. See the issue I am having? It is what it is regardless of whether it is wanted or not. Its like saying a black person is an animal if they are perceived by a bigot but if the black person is perceived by a non-bigot then they are a person. We cannot have loose definitions. For sake of law, we need concrete definitions that can be applied universally.
So if we legally define a human being to be anyone beyond 24 weeks of gestation then intentionally causing the life cycle of that human to end beyond that 24th week of gestation would be murder regardless of who the aggressor is. But to cause the end of the life cycle before that point would not be murder because it was not yet legally human. Before the 24th week it would be destruction of private property. Something the owner of said property, (the mother) has every right to do but no other individual does.
How is it not a double standard?
A man kills a person. That's murder.
A woman kills a child- that's not murder.
A man kills that womans child- if it's not murder when she does it, it cannot by murder when he does it or it would be a double standard.
Your last paragraph gets closer to what I'm thinking. Before 24 weeks the mother has the option to terminate. However, a criminal committing assault does not have those options. By his actions he has taken and intended new life away and it should be treated as murder IMO.
Nope.
If she decides without his input or knowledge that she's keeping a pregnancy, no. That's not fair.
This smacks of Kidnapping, but "It's ok cuz I won't make you pay a ransom."
What in the name of crap are you talking about?
Hang on, so if he knows then its ok but if he doesn't its not? So going back to the start of the thread, she knows, she had the ultrasound so she would know the sex of the baby so she knows she's pregant
NO NO NO!
*sigh* Let me recap and make myself absolutely clear.
Asking for child support if she made the decision to keep the pregnancy without consulting him is what I disagree with. Not abortion.
In a world that you perceive as fair: What if she does discuss it with him and he does not want the child? She however does not want an abortion, does he have the right to force her to have the abortion? Or does he simply not have any obligation to the child? What if the father wants the child but the mother does not? Does she have the right to take his child away from him and kill it? What if neither the father or the mother want the child but for financial reasons cannot afford an abortion? Is the state obligated to provide that abortion? Are they obligated to provide for that child once it is born or can they abandon it? Can the mother seek reparations for having had her body held hostage by the fetus? Are any adults ever held responsible for producing a child?
In the real world: Driving drunk does not mean that the driver intends to kill anyone yet the drunk driver is charged with a minimum of manslaughter if they cause an accident while drunk resulting in the death of anyone. So it is understood that we as a society expect people to take responsibility for the outcomes of their actions. This includes the production of a fetus. In having unprotected sex, it is implied that the participants understand the risks and are willing to accept responsibility for any possible outcome of their activity, this can be pregnancy, std, hurt feelings, or stronger emotional attachment. (Rape understandably is a different situation entirely.) I think there is abortion and there is frivolous abortion. I am opposed to the latter. Just like there are law suits and there are frivolous lawsuits. I am opposed to the latter.
Which is what I referred to is basically kidnapping, without the ransom.
Taking the child but not the money.
No, I don't think he has any right to force her to either gestate or abort.
Haven't quite formed an opinion re: state healthcare, but I'd lean towards yes.
I agree that people should be responsible beforehand, but being a moron should not be punishable by forcing someone to have a baby.