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  1. Writing at The Hill, Juan Williams contends that voters hoping to legalize abortion are a force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election:Nativist Republicans hope to cash in on this gang leader's recent rise to power in Haiti at election time. (Image by Voice of America, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)It was the biggest issue in the 2022 midterms, halting a promised "Red Wave," of Republican victories. Last year voters in Virginia gave Democrats the majority of the state legislature after Republicans backed a 15-week ban on abortions. And this year, abortion rights are likely to be on the ballot in several states where activists are pushing to make abortion access a right in the state constitution. Some of those states are critical to the outcome of the race for the White House, including Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. States with lots of Republican voters, including Kansas and Ohio, are among the six states that have already voted to approve state constitutional protection for abortion. In fact, so far, voters have backed abortion rights every time it has been on the ballot. [links omitted, bold added]Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump, who helped cause Roe vs. Wade to be overturned with his Supreme Court appointments, is hoping nativism and xenophobia will come to his rescue:Trump is trying to cloud over the abortion fight by loudly demonizing immigrants. The only way that can work is if most of the country joins in the immigration hype.This, Williams suggests, is due to the economy not being a clear win for him in this election. I don't think Williams is completely right. Although Trump certainly doesn't deserve more trust on the economy, I think he probably still has that to a degree. That said, I think Trump is definitely working to make the non-crisis that is immigration into the centerpiece of his campaign, at least in part to distract from abortion and his general unfitness for office. It will be interesting to see how this strategy pans out. People concerned about abortion are unlikly to forget the issue. Maybe some who are concerned about abortion (and believe "Honest Don" when he claims to want abortion legal up until 16 weeks) and worry about importing Haitian gangs might vote for Trump -- but also Democrats for Congress. -- CAVLink to Original
  2. The "same people" (to apply a tribalistic phrase from the right to that tribe) who for decades complained (sometimes with justification) about left-wing jurists "legislating from the bench" will no doubt turn around and celebrate a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court to the effect that frozen embryos are children:Alabama's Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos are children under state law and subject to legislation dealing with the wrongful death of a minor, stating that it "applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location." The court issued this majority decision in a lawsuit brought forth by a group of in vitro fertilization (IVF) patients whose frozen embryos were destroyed in December 2020 when a patient removed the embryos from a cryogenic storage unit and dropped them on the ground.Parts of the majority opinion and the lone dissent are illuminating. In today's cultural climate, I find myself compelled to label the above skit SATIRE. The ruling appears to be an application of the state's theocratic "personhood" amendment to an 1872 law:[Justice Jay] Mitchell, however, wrote that the clinic was asking the court "to recognize an unwritten exception for extrauterine children in the wrongful-death context" and that the law "applies to all children, born and unborn, without limitation." "It is not the role of this Court to craft a new limitation based on our own view of what is or is not wise public policy," Mitchell wrote. "That is especially true where, as here, the people of this state have adopted a constitutional amendment directly aimed at stopping courts from excluding 'unborn life' from legal protection." Chief Justice Tom Parker, concurring with the opinion, wrote "that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory," which he argued was set in policy when Alabama voters approved the 2018 amendment. [links omitted, bold added]The dissent contests neither the arbitrary, mystical definition of human life, nor the implied purpose of government being to implement religious morality, rather than to protect individual rights. It is nevertheless interesting for its historical points:Justice Greg Cook, who filed the only full dissent, wrote that the Wrongful Death Act does not define the term 'minor child,' and that its meaning has remained unchanged since it was first written in 1872. Cook also noted a 1926 opinion from the Alabama Supreme Court that held that the law "did not permit recovery for injuries during pregnancy that resulted in the death of the fetus." "There is no doubt that the common law did not consider an unborn infant to be a child capable of being killed for the purpose of civil liability or criminal-homicide liability," Cook wrote. "In fact, for 100 years after the passage of the Wrongful Death Act, our case law did not allow a claim for the death of an unborn infant, confirming that the common law in 1872 did not recognize that an unborn infant (much less a frozen embryo) was a 'minor child' who could be killed." [bold added]Please note that even during times when Americans were generally more religious than they are now, fetuses were not treated as if they were fully human under the law. I am not optimistic about the prospects for abortion remaining legal anywhere in the United States if this case makes it to the current Supreme Court, which overruled Roe vs. Wade, or an even more theocratic one if Donald Trump gets elected again. The best imaginable outcome of that would be a patchwork of states with reproductive freedom (which is an unbearable idea to today's right) and those which treat potential human beings as actual ones for the purposes of the law. If the left ever needed to get serious about something, it is making reproductive freedom legal, and that clearly entails enacting a rational, secular definition of human life into law. -- CAVLink to Original
  3. Image by Gayatri Malhotra, via Unsplash, license.After what sounds to me like a uniformly underwhelming debate, it appears, at least according to Matt Drudge's numbers as of this morning that Nikki Haley decisively won. As of writing, we have: 43% Nikki Haley, 25% Vivek Ramaswamy, 15% Ron DeSantis (!), 13% Chris Christie, and 4% Tim Scott. Haley's total is more than the second- and third-place finishers put together. Since Haley has momentum and is the main non-Trump candidate aside from Ron DeSantis, this would suggest that the smart money is on her as the best chance for the GOP to rid itself of Donald Trump in this election cycle, rather than continuing to lose elections and alienate independent voters (for starters) for another four years (also, for starters). But if Donald Trump is the most immediate threat to the GOP (and to liberty, via the two-party system), its stand on abortion is a much more potent and longer-term threat, as yesterday's results once again indicated. Two of those things we used to call Tweets should show the depth of the problem -- which, big picture, shows that the Republican Party is at best a temporary check on the Democrats, rather than a long-term home for those of us who value liberty. The first tweet, by the execrable Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, shows that the anti-abortionists in no way are wondering whether their goal should be reconsidered. The money quotes from the long-form post are, "Giving up on the unborn is not an option. It's politically dumb and morally repugnant." and, "So let's keep fighting for our country's children, and let's find a way to win." This appeal to a deeply wrong view of morality amounts to We lost on messaging, since the goal -- enslaving women to fetuses -- is immoral and there is no earthly argument to do so, or way to motivate about half the electorate to accept it. There is a saying that goes something like, "You can't reason a person out of an opinion that person did not reach by reason." Vance demonstrates this in spades: He doesn't stop and think Hmmmm. Maybe "the unborn" don't have rights because they aren't individuals, yet, or Lots of people don't seem to accept my idea of what constitutes a human life. Perhaps I should rethink that. This doesn't mean that Vance and other pro-lifers can't consider this question rationally; but the fact is, they aren't. The anti-abortionists overwhelmingly hold their position on faith, and based on religious teachings they exempt from the kinds of questions they would (or should) correctly ask of any other knowledge claim -- such as that morality lies outside the province of reason. (It doesn't.) There is much more to say about this, but time does not permit, so I shall close with the second tweet, by historian C. Bradley Thompson, author of America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It:The most potent force in American politics today is young women between the ages of 18 & 35. And the Republican message to them is ________?Religious Republicans often call themselves "values voters," but the above quote is much more in line with a rational (but too often, vaguely, inconsistently, and implicitly-held) grasp of values. What Republicans seem uniformly oblivious to, is what is obvious to many young women: Outlawing abortion threatens their lives (because pregnancy is always medically risky) and futures (as any halfway conscientious parent or prospective parent will know), and for what? Satisfaction of the alleged demands of an alleged being that noone has proved exists in thousands of years of time to do so. Women are correct to rebuff the Republicans as long as they continue to champion the alleged rights of "the unborn" at the expense of the living. -- CAVLink to Original
  4. USA Today reports on a proposed amendment to Ohio's constitution legalizing abortion. It will come up for a vote in November, but with a twist. This comes after the governor there signed into law a ban on the procedure when there is detectable cardiac activity in a fetus."For sure, I think folks are really paying attention," said Heather Shumaker, director of state abortion access for the National Women's Law Center, which supports the amendment. That's especially true in states where Republican-controlled state governments have imposed strict limits on abortions in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. "We know that ballot measures have emerged as one of the most promising strategies to preserve abortion access." [bold added]It is good to know that, absent the Democrats adopting what I see as a workable strategy -- of focusing on explicitly legalizing abortion -- it is being implemented anyway. Activists on both sides of the reproductive freedom debate will be watching closely, trying to hone tactics for future statewide battles. Two things already stand out regarding what the anti-freedom side is trying. First, if I read the story right, there is an attempt to move the goal posts on what it will take to pass the measure:A special election on Aug. 8 could change the prospects for passage. Now, ballot measures in Ohio need a simple majority, 50% plus one, to amend the state constitution. Under the proposal being voted on next month, the bar would be raised to 60%. Support in the new survey for the abortion-rights measure, at 58%, would fall just short of that level. [bold added]Second, we have an attempt to re-frame this as a parental rights issue:... Protect Women Ohio, a coalition opposing the proposal ... describe the measure as "anti-parent," arguing it undermines the authority of parents to make decisions about abortion and gender assignment issues for their minor children.Let's look at the text of the measure as reported by Ballotpedia:Abortion is completely banned by local ordinance in Lebanon, Ohio. (Image by R.P. Piper, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)Article I, Section 22. The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety A. Every individual has a right to make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on: contraception;fertility treatment;continuing one's own pregnancy;miscarriage care; andabortion.B. The State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either: An individual's voluntary exercise of this right orA person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right,unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual's health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care. However, abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability. But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient's life or health. C. As used in this Section: "Fetal viability" means "the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures. This is determined on a case-by-case basis.""State" includes any governmental entity and any political subdivision.D. This Section is self-executing.Setting aside the question about pregnant minors, I fail to see how this amendment could undermine the rights of parents, particularly to prevent their children being surgically mutilated as is so currently fashionable on the left. This strikes me as both dishonest scare mongering and a trivialization of the one serious issue buried under the ridiculous false alternative between "gender fluidity" and opposition to any and all sexual reassignment surgery, including for adults. This measure isn't perfect, but if I lived in Ohio, I'd vote against the August measure and for the above proposal. -- CAVLink to Original
  5. At Slate is a good update on the state-level aftermath of Dobbs, as far as pro-choice states go, with the main focus being on Maryland. As with practically anything these days, the news is mixed: Blue states are working to ensure "access" to abortions, including for non-residents. I've explained the good and bad of this before in "Free Abortions vs. Abortion Freedom:"Image by Emma Guliani, via Pexels, license.[Access] is a word the left does not use in the same way normal people use the word. Many (if not most) people would regard access to contraceptives in a political context as being free to purchase and use them. But at least since before the ObamaCare debates, the word access has been code for "obtain at someone else's expense," much in the same way Southern planters had "access" to manual labor in antebellum times. This kind of "access" was wrong then and it is wrong now, even if the form has changed from chattel slavery to forms of government theft and redistribution that everyone is way too comfortable with.So, to get the bad news out of the way, blue states are, to varying degrees, finding new ways to make people pay for other people's abortions, such as by funding medical training or even providing financial aid outright to women seeking abortions. The state should protect a woman's right to an abortion. It has no business picking anyone's pockets to pay for anyone's abortion. The good news is that these states are working to fully legalize abortion and to shield providers from the laws of other states that have wrongly criminalized abortion:Democratic Gov. Wes Moore recently signed a new law that prohibits Maryland entities from assisting in abortion-related investigations and court proceedings that originate in other states, shielding abortion providers and out-of-state patients from other states' restrictions. Another new law helps protect patients by barring electronic medical records about their reproductive health care from being shared across state lines without consent. ... And next year, Maryland residents will vote on an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, making it much harder for any future Legislature to take them away. A poll from the Baltimore Sun and the University of Baltimore found last year that 71 percent of likely Maryland voters would support such an amendment. [link omitted, bold added]The shielding measure is one I hope other states adopt given that some states have atempted to extend their tyranny across their borders by such means as criminalizing helping pregnant minors (!) travel to obtain abortions elsewhere. -- CAVLink to Original
  6. Ahead of a November vote in Ohio to make reproductive freedom a (state) constitutional right, I recently noted:[T]here is an attempt to move the goal posts on what it will take to pass the measure...I am glad to see that the attempt went down in flames yesterday, as Ohioans overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to raise the threshold to pass a constitutional amendment:I'm glad her side won, but I must say that's an interesting question coming from someone protesting against holding yesterday's election at all. (Image by Becker1999, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)The measure would have raised the threshold for approving future changes to the state constitution through the ballot box from a simple majority -- 50%, plus one vote -- to 60%. The outcome of Tuesday's special election maintains the lower bar that has been in place since 1912 and could pave the way for approval of the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that seeks to protect abortion rights. A July poll from the USA Today Network and Suffolk University found 58% of Ohio voters support the effort to enshrine abortion access in the state's founding document.Ohioans rejected the proposal by a 56% to 44% margin, meaning there is reasonable hope that abortion will be protected by the state constitution after the November elections. -- CAVLink to Original
  7. The Democrat won in an important race for a seat on Wisconsin's supreme court yesterday, and it would behoove the Republican Party to take a moment to ask itself why:Image by Gayatri Malhotra, via Unsplash, license.At the center of the race, however, was abortion rights. The state Supreme Court is widely expected to decide the fate of the state’s restrictive 1849 abortion law in the near term. Several of Protasiewicz’s television advertisements emphasized her support for abortion rights and slammed “extremists” on the other side. Kelly, who refrained from saying how he would rule in such a case, was endorsed by three groups that oppose abortion rights, and he provided counsel to another Wisconsin group that opposes abortion rights. [bold added]Another story notes:The Wisconsin Supreme Court may also be asked once again to rule on a challenge to a presidential election. In 2020, the court threw out a challenge brought by former President Donald Trump with conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joining the liberal members of the court. While a majority of the justices refused to hear Trump's challenge to the election, three justices on the seven-member court wanted to take up the case.Both stories discussed elections, but with different slants, with the leftist NBC News focusing on the court's role in how Wisconsin draws its electoral maps and the right-wing Newsweek noting the court's reaction to one of Donald Trump's loony 2020 electoral challenges. But both outlets note that this election could end up costing the GOP House seats if questions arise about how congressional districts are drawn up. The GOP, which these days runs as "not the Democrats" while only actually getting excited by banning abortion or being Donald Trump's lapdog has only itself to blame for losing a majority in that court for the first time in 15 years. -- CAVLink to Original
  8. Dick Morris explains why he thinks abortion will not have a major impact on the midterm elections. Here's the nut of his argument:Since the public had long since embraced a nuanced, compromise view on the issue, it was plain that whoever moved to the center first could win. But, sensing a political chance to make a big score, the Democrats held to their position of demanding abortion with no restrictions. Republicans, however, saw the writing on the wall and congealed around the compromise put forward by Senator Lindsey Graham(R-SC) of allowing abortion in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother and for any reason in the first trimester. Remarkably, the right to life movement acquiesced in this change opening the door for a massive conservative victory. Armed with the Graham compromise, Republicans hit the airwaves in September and blunted the Democratic attack ads by saying that they opposed a federal mandate and that they would support the Lindsey Graham compromise. This argument totally disarmed the Democratic left since it relieved women of the worry that their own right to an abortion, in their home state, would be curbed. [bold added]The above reminds me of two things. First, how many times have you heard Republicans gloating that "all the Democrats had to do was sound sane" following some electoral loss? The Republicans apparently remembered their own advice concerning abortion. (I think abortion should be legal until birth, but absent a well-reasoned and well-articulated case that voters are familiar with, I acknowledge that my position will sound nuts to many of them. Conversely, the abortion should be illegal, no exceptions position is so inhuman that even those who hold it know that they will lose an open fight. In today's political context, neither side would win an election.) Second, and more important, this reminds me of Ayn Rand's argument that compromise on basic principles only benefits the evil:Muddy premises are as bad for the mind as muddy water is for the body. (Image by Chandler Cruttenden, via Unsplash, license.)The three rules listed below are by no means exhaustive; they are merely the first leads to the understanding of a vast subject.In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.We see this working twice in Graham's compromise... First, as I have indicated elsewhere, the Democrats' support of abortion is compromised in part by its package-dealing it with paying for it (i.e., the welfare state). The case for abortion as a right is also damaged by widespread ignorance of what rights are across the political spectrum. Democrats who (rightly) want a woman to be free of the lifelong obligation of an unchosen child shoot themselves in the foot by (wrongly) being fine with forcing uninvolved third parties to accept an unchosen obligation to pay for the procedure. This is inconsistent and further muddies the concept rights in the minds of a public that needs to accept it in order to see why abortion should be legal. Second -- and for Graham, the big payoff -- that compromised stand and widespread confusion have given cover for conservatives (of all people!) to lay out the following Big Lie: The GOP has basically staked out the pre-Dobbs status quo that it just upended as its own 'reasonable' position! I do not find it "remarkable" at all that the "pro-life" anti-abortionists who have been waging guerrilla war against abortion for decades would accept this camouflage: I can almost hear them shriek with joy: Put those harlots back to sleep so we can continue the Lord's work undisturbed! The public's thinking is muddled, and absent a serious, intense, and likely prolonged campaign of "moral suasion" in favor of abortion, it will continue to be seduced by the idea that there is no need to decide the issue on a federal level one way or the other ... while the anti-abortionists continue to work for the day they wield enough power to outlaw it completely. Until enough people wake up and start fighting for reproductive freedom from the moral high ground (i.e., from correct, clear, and uncompromised principles), theocrats will continue to pretend to be open to "compromise" while working towards the day that it will be Too Late for the vast majority of Americans who are inclined to legalize abortion to do so. -- CAVLink to Original
  9. Image by Gayatri Malhotra, via Unsplash, license.Diana Greene Foster, author of The Turnaway Study, which compares the consequences of having an abortion vs. being denied one, offers six predictions regarding what the Supreme Court's expected overturning of Roe vs. Wade will mean for the women who will be denied abortions as a result. This article is worth a full read for several reasons, the most important of which is that it can help those of us who support reproductive freedom tie this issue to reality. It's one thing to say, correctly, that an embryo is only a potential human being, and has no rights, and -- again, correctly -- that the only person who should have a say in the matter of whether a woman carries a pregnancy to term should be that woman. But it is quite another to be able to project what that means in real-life terms to someone facing that difficult choice. Just put the baby up for adoption! (as one Justice basically put it) is a popular, and very thoughtless response to the question. This piece will show just how thoughtless. Before I list a summary of the predictions of depriving women of control over their own bodies, let me note an observation that comports with my own experience as a young man:What we found is that decisions about abortion and pregnancy are often driven by the desire to be a good parent. Among people seeking abortion, 60 percent already had children and 40 percent said they want to have a child in the future. Far from being irresponsible, the women we interviewed knew full well what is involved in having children and wanted to wait to do so under the right circumstances. Most commonly, those seeking abortion said they were not financially prepared to take care of a child. Others said it wasn't the right time for a baby or that they wanted to focus on the children they already had. In other words, many people, like my grandmother, choose to wait to have children until they are better able to support a family. [links omitted, bold added]For me and my girlfriend at the time, it turned out to be a false alarm, but I remember facing the terrifying possibility of having gotten someone I wasn't sure I wanted to marry pregnant at a time I was undecided about having children -- and when neither of us was at all ready to be a decent parent. The consequences of an unwanted pregnancy are serious, especially for a woman, as we can see from the six predictions, which I list below in bold and briefly summarize in italics (or with a representative quotation). Foster elaborates further on each within the piece:Wealthier Americans will still get abortions. Lower-income Americans will have children at the wrong time. -- About a quarter of women who might have otherwise had abortions will end up giving birth.People who are pregnant and don't want to be will face serious physical health risks. -- A full-term pregnancy is riskier to a woman's health than a medically-supervised abortion.Few people will place their children for adoption. -- "We found that when someone has gone through the literally life-threatening process of staying pregnant and giving birth, the vast majority -- about 90 percent -- choose to parent the child."More unwanted births now will result in fewer wanted births later. -- This is often due to the lingering financial hardship caused by having an unplanned child.Those unable to get an abortion will experience economic hardship and curtailed life ambitions. -- Foster notes many hardships for the woman here. All will profoundly also affect any offspring.More children will be raised in poverty and strain. -- As noted previously, and Foster elaborates on psychological consequences.Foster ends her piece with a hard-hitting contrast: Between her two grandmothers, one of whom had had an abortion before having her children when she was ready to, and one who placed her own child up for adoption, and whose life was much harder than it might have been, had she been able to have an abortion. My biggest criticism of the piece is that it never names abortion as a right, which it most certainly is. Until and unless proponents of reproductive rights stand up for abortion as a right -- and this emphatically excludes forcing other people to pay for it -- they will never gain traction to codify this right into law -- no matter how dire the consequences for those who will suffer directly or indirectly due to its denial. -- CAVLink to Original
  10. A synagogue in Florida has legally challenged that state's ban on abortions after 15 weeks on the bases of that state's constitutional right to privacy, and religious freedom. The attorney filing the suit sounds like he's on the right track in this quote:In an interview Tuesday, [Barry] Silver said when separation of religion and government crumbles, religious minorities such as Jews often suffer. "Every time that wall starts to crack, bad things start to happen," he said, noting that DeSantis signed the law at an evangelical Christian church.But the piece continues, noting that the suit claims "the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion" and goes on to cite a religious scholar on the matter:"This ruling would be outlawing abortion in cases when our religion would permit us," said Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, scholar in residence at the National Council of Jewish Women, "and it is basing its concepts of when life begins on someone else's philosophy or theology." [bold added]This may be true, but the United States is a secular republic with a constitutional ban on the establishment of religion. If an embryo were an individual human life (it isn't), an abortion would be a murder, and sanctioning a religious exemption for it might as well excuse any act, so long as religion were cited as a motive. The Supreme Court has ruled that religious beliefs are not a defense against a criminal indictment. The charge was bigamy, and a proper defense would have invoked the right to contract. (Image by Unknown (modified by Ubcule), via Wikimedia Commons, public domain -- copyright expired.)Any cursory review of history or even of current events should give one pause about this rationale, considering the kinds of barbarity religions have routinely excused or even urged their followers to commit across history up to and including the present day. It is bad enough to have a theocratic abortion ban on the books; replacing said ban with a legal precedent that subordinates rule of law to the whims of religious leaders is even worse. I can understand suing on the basis of privacy as a stop-gap legal tactic: It is far from ideal, but it can preserve some protection for reproductive rights until efforts to fully legalize abortion can succeed. But opening the door for the even further subordination of individual rights to religion is to play around with gasoline in a room already on fire. In a secular state, one may practice one's religion in any respect -- so long as doing so does not violate the individual rights of others. This principle protects us from, say, being imprisoned, tortured, or murdered for "heresy," by subordinating adherents to every religion to rule of law. For the same reason, "religious freedom" cannot provide the justification for performing any act -- even if it is or should be perfectly legal on the grounds of individual rights. Abortion should be legal because (a) an embryo is not an individual human life and (b) the woman carrying that embryo has the right to decide what to do with that part of her own body. Full stop. If abortion is against a woman's religion, nobody will stop her from remaining pregnant. And that is the full extent -- for an individual -- to which religion should have a role on the question of abortion. -- CAVLink to Original
  11. I recall life as a young man enough to remember that the abortion debate was, in a certain sense, not "real" to me. I was in no danger of becoming pregnant myself, and I made sure I wasn't the only one using contraception. I considered and accepted Ayn Rand's arguments in favor of abortion, but my understanding wasn't on a gut level. The passion to stand up for that right, as well as the thirst for the knowledge to become clearer about the issue were both less for me then than they are now. This was partly simply an issue of my age and newness to philosophical thinking, but part of this was certainly due to a casual blindness. I am amazed and a little embarrassed to admit that even after a close call, I really just knew that I was pro-choice. Abortion remained in my mind, mostly an issue for women. (To be clear, being young and male were just part of that problem. The relegation of women to second-class status in society was more of a problem when I was younger, and the reaction, of framing this part of equality as a woman's issue may have energized women to fight for this right, but did not help make this any more real to me, either. This is an issue of individual rights: It is not just in women's best interests to achieve political equality with men: It is in everyone's best interests.) It disturbs me to look back on those days. I think I was more thoughtful than average then, and yet this life-and-death issue simply did not hit me as a life-and-death issue in the same way it does today. That is a big problem in the abortion debate -- the issue of motivation, particularly among the young men whose futures are in the crosshairs now, assuming that Roe vs. Wade gets overturned. They can't get knocked up. Or so they think. This is what I have been thinking ever since I happened upon a question-and-answer from You Literally Asked for It, a parody advice blog. The blog takes actual questions that have been fielded by the likes of Carolyn Hax, Allison Green, and Ellie Tesher -- questions that come from a desire for validation rather than a sincere concern with clarity -- and gives them the answers the authors seem to be fishing for -- good and hard. One, originally fielded by Carolyn Hax, came from a married woman who was considering "accidentally" getting pregnant despite her agreement with her husband that they were going to remain childless. The answer makes a couple of great points about the decision to have children. The first is that it's a great responsibility:Bringing a child into this world is a serious, life-changing event for all involved. An entire whole human's life will be in your hands, and making the intentional decision to create a living being carries tremendous emotional, financial, and social weight. This is not a journey upon which one should embark cavalierly. Unless you personally just really want a baby!!!!!!From image by Gayatri Malhotra, via Unsplash, license.It is worth noting that there are people who want to override such considerations -- who aren't directly affected one way or the other from carelessly bringing a child into the world and yet want to make other people do exactly that. And that, along with the woman who wants to trick her husband into twenty years of childrearing or financial hardship, brings up the following:Sure, you'll kind of be a rapist, but you'll be a mommy, too!!! Your husband's personal reproductive agency and entire fucking self-determined future matter little in the grand scheme of the universe, which spawned from nothingness untold billions of years ago with the express purpose of leading up to this moment, in which you get the baby you are owed at all costs. It's a real gamble to think that your husband knows his own heart and mind; you'd really be taking a major risk expecting him to use his own life experiences, knowledge of the world, and hopes and desires to inform whether or not he wishes to be a parent. No way that works out! That's just topsy-turvy thinking all around!The punchline at the end is good, too, but pales in comparison to what we face today, with the likely overturning of Roe vs. Wade: Anti-abortionists -- who have no earthly reason to offer for their contention that abortion is murder -- do not themselves want the countless babies this will cause to be brought into the world by unwilling people. In that respect, the letter writer is arguably, possibly a rung of hell higher than they. The anti-abortion movement really is an attack on individual sovereignty, waged for pretend reasons, and -- we are being told -- on behalf of what are not yet human beings, much less individuals. As the Ayn Rand villain, Ellsworth Toohey once put it, "Don't bother to examine a folly, ask yourself only what it accomplishes." -- CAVLink to Original
  12. Jill Filipovic of CNN argues that a Supreme Court decision overturning or severely weakening Roe vs. Wade would be extremely unpopular both in the short term and in the long term. The short-term unpopularity would arise from the fact that most Americans support a woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy:I say we should make abortion fully legal, instead. (Image by Gayatri Malhotra, via Unsplash, license.)According to this latest [ABC News/Washington Post] poll, even a slim majority of Republicans and conservatives, and 75% percent of Americans generally, believe that abortion should be a private decision between a woman and her doctor. Just one in five Americans, a small minority, want to see the decision of whether or not to have an abortion regulated by law. Majorities support abortion rights across racial, gender, regional, and educational lines; almost half of white Evangelicals, the most conservative voting bloc in the country, say abortion should be between a woman and her doctor instead of regulated by law and 62% of Catholics favor upholding Roe v Wade. Only about a quarter of Americans strongly support state laws that make it more difficult for clinics to run. [link omitted, bold added]Truth is, of course, not a matter of majority opinion, although it is nice to know that most people support what I consider to be the correct position on reproductive freedom. Longer-term, the implications of such a decision would make it even more unpopular:This poll didn't look at support for contraceptive access, but Americans should understand that the right to prevent a pregnancy and plan a family is tied up with the right to abortion. Even though access to highly effective and long-acting contraception is the most effective way to reduce the abortion rate -- and is in fact the primary reason abortions have become less common in the US -- many major "pro-life" groups actively oppose most forms of modern contraception, including the IUD and the birth control pill... ... ... Roe was decided based on the precedent set by a 1965 case, Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to sexual privacy for American adults and legalized contraception for married couples. From that case sprung Roe and others, including cases legalizing consensual sex between adults regardless of gender and establishing a right to same-sex marriage. The primary right-wing legal argument against Roe is that a constitutional right to sexual privacy doesn't exist. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe on that basis, it's hard to imagine a universe in which the rights to contraception and marriage equality couldn't be similarly challenged. [links omitted, bold added]These are at least thought-provoking arguments, if not good ones. But a question: If support for reproductive rights is so strong, why won't Democrats run on a promise to pass legislation to make abortion unambiguously legal? I think at least part of the answer lies within Filipovic's otherwise perspicacious piece, in the form of the word access, which is a word the left does not use in the same way normal people use the word. Many (if not most) people would regard access to contraceptives in a political context as being free to purchase and use them. But at least since before the ObamaCare debates, the word access has been code for "obtain at someone else's expense," much in the same way Southern planters had "access" to manual labor in antebellum times. This kind of "access" was wrong then and it is wrong now, even if the form has changed from chattel slavery to forms of government theft and redistribution that everyone is way too comfortable with. That said, while most people support (actual) access to contraceptives and abortion, with the understanding that they will pay for their own or find someone willing to pay on their behalf, most also know that when Democrats say access, a new tax or coerced expense is lurking in the background. Among other things, this fact makes it perfectly reasonable (to say the least!) to exempt businesses from having to pay for insurance plans that include abortion benefits. (I'll pass over arguing that government shouldn't be dictating terms of insurance coverage, and there should be no need to scrounge around for an excuse based on religious freedom to get such an exemption, for starters.) My views are far from the Overton Window, but the fact remains that every time the Democrats talk about the freedom to have an abortion, they wrongly package it with forcing third parties to pay for it. This makes the cause of legalizing it less compelling for the very significant part of the American population -- which this poll did not measure, but of which I am a part -- that fully supports reproductive freedom, but strongly opposes being forced to pay for the decisions or medical procedures of others. Separate those issues. Promise to do one thing: Just ... make ... abortion ... legal. If the Democrats really cared about any kind of freedom in general and reproductive freedom in particular, they'd get over their desire to take money from everyone, and do just this, rather than hoping for a terrible Supreme Court decision so they can ... oh, I don't know ... overrun Congress and the pack the Supreme Court so it can legislate from the bench instead. -- CAVLink to Original
  13. In an article in the New York Magazine Intelligencer, Ed Kilgore kicks off the year of speculation he predicts regarding how the Supreme Court might rule in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a Mississippi abortion rights case it has agreed to hear. Kilgore presents a worst-case scenario of Roe v. Wade being overturned outright -- from a "chronically pessimistic" legal analyst -- before offering his own take, which sounds realistic to me: Here is why -- whatever the Court rules -- it is probably necessary to do something proactive on the federal level to protect abortion rights. (Image by CartoonDiablo, via Wikipedia, license.)Could that (i.e., a reframing rather than a reversal of the right to choose) happen again [as in 1992]? It seems unlikely, but there is one straw in the wind that suggests it's not necessarily a done deal. Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan did not choose to publish dissents to the order to hear Dobbs, which one might have expected if a conservative majority to reverse Roe is in place, given the unquestioned unconstitutionality of the Mississippi law under the existing precedents. It remains possible that Roberts and Kavanaugh, fearing an anti-Court outcry among women everywhere, could be persuaded to reaffirm the viability standard yet again, perhaps alongside some new leeway for less fundamental state restrictions. In other words, the 1992 saga could be replayed with a similar result. Short of a change of Court membership during the next year, that may be the abiding hope of reproductive-rights advocates. But they'd best focus most of their efforts on formulating a strategy for restoring the right to choose via intense political warfare in the states.Had the pandemic not shown just how poorly most politicians, journalists, and activists understand the concept of individual rights, I'd feel optimistic that now would be a good time to work on legislation protecting a woman's right to abort a fetus. Much has changed, culturally since the 1970s and 1990s. To begin with, most Americans support legalization of abortion in some form, with 70% not wishing to see Roe v. Wade overturned. So there would seem to be a basis for optimism that such long-term solutions as legislation or even a constitutional amendment -- that might not have been possible then -- are achievable now. The big but, though, is whether enough people to make a difference truly understand individual rights or how abortion fits into the government's proper purpose of protecting the same. It will be interesting to see how the Court rules, but regardless, I think it may now be both necessary and possible to protect reproductive rights from being overturned by the Supreme Court. -- CAVLink to Original
  14. Charlie Kirk thinks he has a logical case against abortion. I'll call it the DNA argument: "it's not your DNA, it's not your choice." He didn't go into much detail, but I suppose the basic idea is that a woman needs a man to fertilize her egg with his sperm, and because this produces an embryo with DNA from both the egg and the sperm, the man has a claim to 50% of the fetus. The problem with this argument is that without a contractual agreement such as a marriage, the sperm is merely a gift, and the man has no claim on it after giving it away voluntarily. Also, even if the man owns 50% of the fetus, how is this an argument against abortion? Both parties could agree to abort. In my opinion, the most effective argument against abortion is still "life begins at conception," because it challenges "life begins at birth" while sidelining the question of when rights begin. But I'm not interested in rehashing that old debate again. Mostly I'm curious what others think of this DNA argument.
  15. Writing at Quillette, Steve Jacobs claims in his title, "I Asked Thousands of Biologists When Life Begins. The Answer Wasn't Popular." The closing of his article is more important than his data: A group of men, just waiting to be interviewed so someone can twist their words into something else entirely and attribute that to them. (Image by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez, via Unsplash, license.) In my research, I was not advocating for such a [policy] compromise [on abortion]. However, advancing my own preferred outcome was not the point of my academic project. My goal was to use my training to establish common ground, learn whether a compromise was possible, and report on the most likely form such a compromise might take. An important takeaway is that both sides do agree on the arbiters of the question of when life begins. While the justices in Roe could not answer the difficult question of when life begins, the U.S. Supreme Court might well revisit this question in the future. The Court can trust the uncensored viewpoints of biologists and acknowledge that scientific experts affirm the view that a human's life begins at fertilization -- even if some would prefer that this fact be hidden from view. [link omitted, bold added]Before we go on, here go the data: "... 96% of the 5,577 biologists who responded to me affirmed the view that a human life begins at fertilization." The scientific consensus -- with a high percentage attached! -- being hijacked to affect a political debate reminds me of a title from the climate debate: "'97% of Climate Scientists Agree' Is 100% Wrong." The fact that Jacobs's claim reminds me of that title is no coincidence. After asking (1) "What exactly do the ... scientists agree on?" and (2) "How do we know the 97% agree?" Epstein states: The 97 percent claim is a deliberate misrepresentation designed to intimidate the public -- and numerous scientists whose papers were classified by Cook protested... ... Think about how many times you hear that 97 percent or some similar figure thrown around. It's based on crude manipulation propagated by people whose ideological agenda it serves. It is a license to intimidate. It's time to revoke that license. [bold added, link omitted]Within the Quilette piece, Jacobs quotes some rather crude protests by some of the biologists he surveyed once they caught on to why he was querying them. His personal position is not clear in the article, but his framing of this issue as a scientific debate and his apparent willingness to consider the presence of a full set of chromosomes in a cell as sufficient for someone to be human (and in full possession of rights) make me suspect that the scientists are guessing correctly. (He asked them if a fertilized egg was "biologically human." See: "What were they agreeing on?") And it is true that their words can and will be used to argue against abortion rights. But, as Ben Bayer of the Ayn Rand Institute notes, "Science Without Philosophy Can't Resolve [the] Abortion Debate:" There is a new push by prominent opponents of abortion to cloak their position in the mantle of science, and claim that anyone who defends abortion rights is a "science denier." 1 This push has been the impetus for an onslaught of legislation aimed at restricting abortions on both the state and federal level. In response to this push, most abortion defenders have reacted by claiming that the anti-abortion partisans are the real "science deniers." This whole debate is a mistake. The science invoked by abortion opponents appears to support their case only through the lens of very particular philosophical assumptions. Since abortion defenders do not challenge their opponents' philosophical assumptions or argue for alternatives, it is little surprise that their battle looks like a rearguard action in a war that has already been lost. [bold added]Bayer goes on, after citing several examples, such as the presence of pain receptors in the fetus, of science being misused to claim rights for the fetus to say: The fundamental philosophical question at the heart of the abortion debate is whether a being like the embryo or fetus has a right to life. A few ordinary observations should make clear why the specialized scientific findings considered so far will not help us answer this question.I recommend reading the full article to anyone truly interested in the abortion debate. Steve Jacobs may have a PhD, and he will probably get journal articles out of his survey. But his results are just the latest in a new line of meretricious attacks against abortion rights that ape the equally fraudulent use of "science" by the Luddites of the left. -- CAV Link to Original
  16. I know there are a lot of abortion topics on this site, apologies if this is a duplicate - I didn't want to get lost in an old thread and didn't want to read through all of the old topics. I wanted to get some thoughts on this. For an argument against late term abortion and birth as the clear line: there is a point, maybe around 6 months(ish), where a mother has a moral (and legal - ideally) obligation to carry out the pregnancy, given that her health isn't at risk. At around 6 months (ish) or however far along the process it is determined, the fetus is developed enough to be considered human - it experiences consciousness, feelings, could live outside of the mother at this time if given the opportunity, etc. At this point, the mother has a responsibility to carry out the pregnancy because it is by her action that the cells were able to develop inside her body to the point where it actualized into a human being deserving of rights. Although it is the mother's body and she has the right to do what she wishes with it, she does not have the right to kill another human being after initially extending an invitation (I mean this metaphorically, though I suppose it will be a point of contention, especially using the word invitation). The fetus is "trespassing" at this point, but that does not give her the right to kill it when it depends on her for life. She had a responsibility to abort the cells before it developed to the point of a human being deserving of rights. I liken this to when you invite someone on a boat and travel into the ocean. You are cannot get upset with them in the middle of the ocean and claim that they are trespassing as it is YOUR boat and demand that they get off your property (i.e. jump in the ocean, leading to their death). In the same fashion, you cannot demand a fetus get removed from your body after you have implicitly invited them through inaction. I'm not stuck on this argument, I just was thinking about it and wanted to get some thoughts.
  17. personally wondered if there was still debate among Objectivism, about where "personhood" or "individuation" began. Many resources take it to be the moment of birth, whether c-section or labor. Below is a different view, from an Objectivist writer. I found it compelling to consider, perhaps others will also: Abortion Rights and Parental Obligations An Objectivist Account Greg Perkins Nov 26, 2016 ~18 min read ***** excerpted from linked article ***** people can also implicitly adopt responsibility for caring for others: If Bob decides to take Mary for a ride out to sea, he does not have the right to then order her off his boat to her death.¹⁶ That would be murder because Bob chose to bring Mary — another person — into a state of vital dependence on him. Mary’s rights would be violated by then arbitrarily removing his support and thrusting her into mortal danger rather than delivering her safely from the dependent condition he created. (And note that such withdrawal of support would be a rights violation no matter whether she was threatened by his explicit design, depraved indifference, or mere recklessness.) Bob is responsible for Mary’s welfare until the dependence he invited has ended. Fetal Rights and Maternal Obligations Recall that rights are rooted in the essential nature of the entity itself, that there is no metaphysically-significant change in the nature of the newborn at birth, and that we recognize its basic human rights at every point thereafter. This indicates that the point of personhood is reached some time before birth. But does this introduce an inherent clash of rights between mother and fetus? Are we faced with any call to compromise, “balance,” or “trade off” rights between them? No. On this account, all people retain all of their rights, completely intact. A mother can have no duties or claims forced upon her in a rights-respecting society; people can only be bound by obligations they choose to create. The principle from the boat ride identifies how maternal obligations arise as fetal rights obtain: in choosing to let her pregnancy proceed to the point of personhood, the mother thereby adopts responsibility for the person she brings into a condition of vital dependence. Like the boat captain, she is not free to then arbitrarily kill or neglect her charge; that would be a clear violation of a person’s rights. She has chosen to shoulder the responsibility of supporting the fetus to independence, and this is a serious obligation she can and should be held to. Attaining Personhood Finally turning to personhood itself, recall that a human being need not be fully developed to be a person (indeed, it cannot be fully developed while in the womb). Nonetheless, a person must necessarily be an actual human being and not a mere potential. The point we seek to identify is where the entity becomes an essentially formed human being — a living human organism with essential organs and a nervous system, operating at least at some basic level to maintain its own existence as an organism.²¹ This captures the basis of the capacity for biological independence explicitly demonstrated in birth, and names what is implicitly recognized in the idea of viability when it is not bound tightly to technology. Importantly, this keeps our attention where it belongs: on the basic nature of the developing entity. A glance at prenatal development makes it clear that this point cannot be in the first trimester, because the embryonic stages of development conclude only as “All essential organs have at least begun formation.”²² Indeed, early on, human embryos are largely indistinguishable from those of other mammals, with higher evolutionary features appearing later (like the cerebrum, the most sophisticated part of our brain, which develops last).²³ Later, in the fetal stages of development, weeks 25–28 feature rapid brain growth and the nervous system finally developing enough to control some body functions. At this point the respiratory system, while still immature, has also developed to the point where gas exchange is possible.²⁴ So the developmental point of personhood appears to be near the beginning of the third trimester, and this point’s candidacy is perhaps urged by the still later appearance in week 31 of “Thalamic brain connections, which mediate sensory input [and] form.”²⁵ Of course this is only a layman’s estimate; determining just when this stage of development is attained is a biological question that must be answered by scientists, not by philosophers.²⁶ It is interesting that, if the start of the third trimester indeed marks the developmental point for attainment of personhood, this would result in my arguing for an outcome which roughly agrees with the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade bottom line that a woman may abort her pregnancy for any reason until the fetus reaches viability (which the Court took to be at about seven months or 28 weeks), while abortion after viability must be available when needed to protect the woman’s life or health.²⁷ Unfortunately as explained above, the point the Court argued for was characterized using the technologically-bound concept of viability, thus clouding the essential issue of personhood. And their position was based on a “right to privacy” and entailed a balancing of rights against “state interests” rather than being an expression and defense of basic human rights as inalienable absolutes.²⁸ This has confused the discussion of rights and obligations, and hobbled our legal system’s pursuit of just and uniform treatment of the myriad issues around and beyond pregnancy and parenthood. Conclusion Prior to the point of being an essentially formed human being — of actually being a human being — an embryo can have no rights to be recognized or violated. So the pregnant woman must be left legally free as a matter of right to choose whether to carry an embryo to the point of personhood. After that point, the fetus is a human being with the attendant basic human rights, and these must be safeguarded in a rights-respecting society. This entails no clash or compromise of rights because parental obligations arise as fetal rights obtain: in choosing to bring another person into a condition of vital dependence on her, a mother elects to shoulder the responsibility of (non-suicidally) supporting that person to independence — a responsibility to which the father can likewise elect to be bound via contract. Thus we have an integrated approach to fetal rights, reproductive rights, maternal obligation, and parental obligation. Importantly, this is an account that demands full and consistent recognition of the basic human rights of all as absolutes, never to be compromised or abridged. https://medium.com/@gregperk/abortion-rights-and-parental-obligations-9acaed799539
  18. Over at Commentary magazine, an article by Sohrab Ahmari argues that the near-eradication of Down Syndrome in Iceland is a Bad Thing: ... With new tests that can detect chromosomal abnormalities earlier in the pregnancy and with greater precision, an entire category of human beings faces extermination in societies that claim to prize tolerance and diversity above all. Well, not if Charlotte "Charlie" Fien has something to say about it. The 21-year-old from Surrey, England, is fast emerging as one of Europe's most important anti-eradication advocates. Her activism is especially compelling because Fien is living proof against the argument, frequently proffered by those who support systematic prenatal detection and abortion, that people with the disability are miserable.First of all, let's be clear on something: supporting a woman's individual right to decide what to do with her own body is not the same thing as "systematic prenatal detection and abortion" (whatever that's supposed to mean), so let's set that smear aside and get down to brass tacks: Whatever Charlie Fien's quality of life may be, it is completely irrelevant to the question of whether a woman has the right to decide what to do with her own body or her own life. On this matter, I will defer to Ayn Rand's clear, concise explanation of the issues at stake: Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a "right to life." A piece of protoplasm has no rights -- and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone's benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.That said, the author makes it seem as if Iceland mandates termination of pregnancies with positive screens for Down Syndrome. It doesn't, nor should it. In fact, for the government to coerce any aspect of such a personal decision, for or against (including funding or banning it), is an abuse of government power. It is heartening, for the sake of some who have Down Syndrome, that they can live happy lives. And a pregnant woman who knows about this can certainly take this into consideration, should she receive news that she faces the prospect of raising a child with this syndrome. But that is where such news should begin and end. If "anti-eradication" advocacy consisted merely of an education campaign, I would have no problem with it, but it doesn't end there: Anti-abortion activists are taking advantage of the fact that neither side of the anti-abortion debate understands individual rights by working, sometimes successfully, to ban abortions performed for this reason: Indiana's new law prevents a person from performing an abortion if he knows the pregnant woman wishes to abort the unborn baby because of a diagnosis of Down syndrome or any other disability. It also prevents abortions due to the race, color, national origin, ancestry, or sex of the child. Notice how this religiously-motivated law is designed to appeal to the shared altruism and collectivism of the left via a laundry list of collectives allegedly injured by abortion. Unlike the authors of this law, let us spare a thought for the forgotten woman: She is pregnant and wants what is best for herself. And, if she is at all responsible, she also wants the best for any child she chooses to bring into the world. It is wrong to meddle with such a decision and appalling to do so while mouthing platitudes about equality. -- CAV Link to Original
  19. I've been doing a bunch of research on this but wanted more precise answers from yall expers ;) . I was wondering about the rights of an individual in a comma, how they apply etc. They have lost their rational functions, but in whose hands is their life then? Who can determine whether they should live or not depending on their mental/health state. Do they have potential rights? If so, how does this compare to abortion. Cheers.
  20. Today hundreds of thousands of people are rallying in Washington, D.C. to protest Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, reports USA Today. In the midst of this crusade, it is crucial for Americans to understand and emphasize that abortion bans are not “pro-life” but anti-life. The genuine pro-life position holds that a woman has the right to choose an abortion. Outlawing abortion would violate the rights of—and thus damage the lives of—women and their partners and doctors. Among other rights violations, abortion bans would force pregnant women to carry the fetus to term, even in cases of rape and incest, and even at risk to the woman’s life or health; outlaw common types of birth control that might prevent implantation of an embryo; outlaw common fertility treatments that result in the destruction of unused embryos; and preposterously treat women who get abortions as murderers. On the basis of religious dogma (or other mystical “insights”), those who advocate abortion bans seek to sacrifice the actual person—a pregnant woman who wishes to get an abortion—to the potential person—an embryo or fetus. The ralliers and most anti-abortion advocates explicitly ground their protest on religious beliefs. For example, the “March for Life” organization behind the rally invokes “the law of God” for its cause. Only religious dogma or the like, not reality-based morality, can declare a clump of largely undifferentiated cells living within the body of a woman to be a person with full legal rights, on par with a born infant. That abortion bans threaten and sometimes end the lives of women became obvious to Savita Halappanavar and her loved ones, when Halappanavar died after being denied a life-saving abortion in Ireland because of the anti-abortion laws there. “March for Life” is quite explicit that the abortion ban it favors would kill some women in cases of medical emergencies. However, the organization holds, “no value distinction shall be made between the value of the life of one individual and of another”—here referring to an embryo and a woman. “March for Life” openly recognizes that, under its favored policy, women’s lives “may be lost.” Although regrettable, they maintain, this is the way it must be. In their words: [T]he guiding principles are that no innocent human may be intentionally killed in an effort to save another human, and that it shall not be predetermined by law that one human life may be sacrificed to save the life of another human. Any decision about who may be saved must be made on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration the total circumstances, and trying to save as many humans as possible. . . . Although a pregnant mother and/or her preborn child may die, there is no justification in the law of God or man for the intentional killing of even one innocent born or preborn human in existence at fertilization. NO EXCEPTION! NO COMPROMISE! In other words, according to the abortion ban favored by “March for Life,” a woman may not get an abortion even if she is certain to die if she does not, unless perhaps the authorities make a “case-by-case” exception on grounds such as that the fetus would die anyway. If carrying a pregnancy to term would “merely” permanently maim or disable the woman, then, according to the asininely named “March for Life,” she must be legally forbidden from getting an abortion. For a clear explanation of the moral basis for a woman’s right to choose an abortion, see “The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties,” by Diana Hsieh and me. Here are a few key passages: Rights are not implanted by God in zygotes at conception, nor are they innate possessions or properties of human beings. Rights are factual requirements of human survival and flourishing in society. They apply only to human beings living and acting as individuals in a social context—not to embryos or fetuses in the womb. . . . A “right,” as Ayn Rand observed, is “a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.” The purpose of this principle is to identify the fundamental actions that an individual must be free to take to live as a human being—actions such as living one’s life as one sees fit (the right to life), acting on one’s judgment (the right to liberty), keeping and using the products of one’s effort (the right to property), and expressing one’s ideas (freedom of speech). A person’s rights, when recognized and protected, enable that individual to act free of forcible interference from other people. A woman is morally entitled to the protection of rights because she is an individual, a person in her own right, who must think and act freely in order to live. An embryo or fetus in the womb, in contrast, is not an individual. It is a wholly dependent being, contained within and supported by the body of the pregnant woman. The fetus does not act independently to sustain its life, not even on the basic biological level possible to a day-old infant. It does not breathe independently, eat independently, move independently, or even defecate independently. The fetus cannot know or interact with the world outside the womb in any meaningful way. It is not an individual member of society, but rather a part of the pregnant woman. None of this changes until the fetus departs from the woman’s body at birth and thereby becomes an individual human person. (The entire article can be read with a subscription to The Objective Standard or by purchasing a PDF of the essay.) March for Life and others advocating abortion bans are anti-life, anti-rights, anti-reason—their puffed-up pretense notwithstanding. In the abortion debate, the only side logically deserving of the “pro-life” mantle is the side that recognizes and upholds a woman’s right to life, which includes her right to choose abortion. Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard. Related: The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties Todd Akin and the GOP’s Abortion Problem Creative Commons Image: John Stephen Dwyer Link to Original
  21. On Sunday’s Philosophy in Action Radio, I’ll discuss Judith Thomson’s classic “violinist” argument in favor of abortion rights. It’s an engaging and accessible article which has been widely read and reprinted. If you’ve never read it — or you’ve not read it in a while — you might want to read or re-read it before Sunday’s broadcast. You can do so here: Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion. Here’s the introduction to whet your appetite. Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception. The premise is argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most common argument. We are asked to notice that the development of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continuous; then it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say “before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person” is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in the nature of things no good reason can be given. It is concluded that the fetus is. or anyway that we had better say it is, a person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak trees, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are. Arguments of this form are sometimes called “slippery slope arguments”–the phrase is perhaps self-explanatory–and it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically. I am inclined to agree, however, that the prospects for “drawing a line” in the development of the fetus look dim. I am inclined to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already become a human person well before birth. Indeed, it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life it begins to acquire human characteristics. By the tenth week, for example, it already has a face, arms and less, fingers and toes; it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable. On the other hand, I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception. A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted clump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. But I shall not discuss any of this. For it seems to me to be of great interest to ask what happens if, for the sake of argument, we allow the premise. How, precisely, are we supposed to get from there to the conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible? Opponents of abortion commonly spend most of their time establishing that the fetus is a person, and hardly anytime explaining the step from there to the impermissibility of abortion. Perhaps they think the step too simple and obvious to require much comment. Or perhaps instead they are simply being economical in argument. Many of those who defend abortion rely on the premise that the fetus is not a person, but only a bit of tissue that will become a person at birth; and why pay out more arguments than you have to? Whatever the explanation, I suggest that the step they take is neither easy nor obvious, that it calls for closer examination than it is commonly given, and that when we do give it this closer examination we shall feel inclined to reject it. I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does the argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that. But surely a person’s right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed. It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you–we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.” Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. “Tough luck. I agree. but now you’ve got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him.” I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago. In this case, of course, you were kidnapped, you didn’t volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly. They can say that persons have a right to life only if they didn’t come into existence because of rape; or they can say that all persons have a right to life, but that some have less of a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existence because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. Surely the question of whether you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn’t turn on the question of whether or not you are a product of a rape. And in fact the people who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in case of rape. Nor do they make an exception for a case in which the mother has to spend the nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother; but all the same, all persons have a right to life, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which, miraculously enough, the pregnancy went on for nine years, or even the rest of the mother’s life. Some won’t even make an exception for a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother’s life, they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother’s life. Such cases are nowadays very rare, and many opponents of abortion do not accept this extreme view. All the same, it is a good place to begin: a number of points of interest come out in respect to it. Again, you can read the whole article here: A Defense of Abortion by Judith Thomson. Then… please join us on Sunday morning for the live broadcast of Philosophy in Action Radio — or listen to the podcast later. Link to Original
  22. semm

    Abortion

    Note: Please familiarize yourself with the Objectivist position on abortion before participating on this thread. A good starting point is the Abortion article on the Objectivism Wiki. - GC I find the views of certain members of The ARI, such as Peikoff and Brook, on the topic of absortion to not be rational. I will brefly here present my pro-life, objectivist standpoint and invite anyone who cares to to try and find a contradiction in my arguement. The views of Peikoff, and likely many other objectivists, is that people are only endowned withe rights of a human beings after they are born. Before conception, it takes an act of will to create a fetus. A fetus will develop into a rational human being unless another act of will is responcible for the termination of that fetus. The fact that the life exists within the body of another is irrelevant. In the near future we will be able to allow a fetus to develop entirely outside of a human body, this does not mean that person is not human because they where never actually born in the traditional sense. As a correlary it is also clear that very little is different about a fetus/human being in the moments before it is born and those immediately afterwards. I say then that assigning a fetus the human right to life only 'after it is born' is being arbitary, and hense, not rational. As there is no objective measure for consiousness aside from human/non-human I say that stating any cutoff between when a fetus is endowned with the rights of a human other than conception is unreasonable.
  23. After a hiatus in 2012, I’m sorry to report that “Personhood for Zygotes” is on the ballot again in Colorado in 2014. However, I’m pleased to announce that Ari Armstrong and I will update 2010 policy paper in defense of abortion rights in light of the very much changed political landscape. Once again, we need your support to make that happen! Colorado’s New “Personhood for Zygotes” Amendment Despite the defeats of “personhood” measures in 2008 and 2010, the crusaders against abortion rights have returned with yet another attempt to grant the full legal rights of personhood to fertilized eggs. The ballot question reads: Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution protecting pregnant women and unborn children by defining “person” and “child” in the Colorado criminal code and the Colorado wrongful death act to include unborn human beings? ( Full Text) If successful, this measure would outlaw therapeutic and elective abortions, common fertility treatments, and popular forms of birth control. It would subject women and their doctors to intrusive police controls and unjust criminal prosecutions. It would force Coloradoans to abide by the deeply religious and sectarian view that the fertilized egg is imbued with rights from God. Due to its misleading wording — particularly its talk of “protecting pregnant women” — 2014′s Amendment 67 will likely fare significantly better in the polls than the “personhood” amendments proposed in 2008 and 2010. It’s unlikely to pass, but that doesn’t mean that abortion rights are secure. The dangerous ideology of “personhood” has spread like wildfire in the past four years among religious conservatives. In the 2012 presidential election, every Republican candidate except Mitt Romney endorsed “personhood for zygotes.” The ideology of “personhood for zygotes” must be steadfastly opposed — based on a firm understanding of rights in pregnancy — not merely because “it goes too far.” Support a 2014 Paper in Defense of Abortion Rights To combat the dangerous ideology of “personhood” and defend abortion rights on principle, Ari Armstrong and I will publish a new version of their policy paper on the “personhood” movement. The updates to the paper will focus on the new language in 2014′s Amendment 67, the widespread embrace of “personhood” by the Republican Party in the 2012 election, the synergy between “incremental” and “personhood” approaches to abortion bans, the defeat of a “personhood” amendment in Mississippi, and more. However, that work depends on your support! The update to the paper will only go forward if at least $1500 is pledged by August 20th. That will help pay for the many hours of work this update will require. If sufficient funds are pledged, the 2014 paper will be published by September 17th. So, if you want to help defend abortion rights in this 2014 election, please pledge! Any amount is welcome, and your pledge is not due until the paper is published. http://pledgeproject.heroku.com/projects/19/pledges/new_embed' scrolling='auto' frameborder='0' allowtransparency='true' style='width: 100%; border: 1px solid black;' height='600' > Note: Due to efforts of the Center for Competitive Politics on CSG’s behalf, Diana hopes that she will not have to report on funds collected for this project, as she’s been obliged to do in prior elections. Time — or rather the judge — will tell. In any case, pledges for this paper are helping us have a viable case with which to challenge Colorado’s onerous campaign finance laws. If you have any questions about the project or pledging, please email me. Link to Original
  24. Anti-abortion Republicans need to knock off their dogma-driven nonsense. The zealotry to outlaw abortion is morally wrong and politically suicidal. Consider the latest controversy. Todd Akin, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, had the following exchange August 19 with Charles Jaco: Jaco: Are there any circumstances in your mind in which an abortion should be legal? Akin: . . . Sometimes people talk about life of the mother as a situation. . . . I would say you optimize life. So, for instance, a woman has a tubal pregnancy or something. Well, technically, by my understanding, life begins at conception, so you’ve technically had conception. But the child doesn’t have a chance and will soon kill the mother. So I would say in those kinds of situations you try to optimize life. . . . Jaco: What about in the case of rape? Should [abortion] be legal, or not? Akin: . . . From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist, and not attacking the child. While most of the popular debate has revolved around Akin’s idiotic phrase, “legitimate rape,” less attention has been paid to the full context of his remarks. Let us consider it. By “optimizing life,” Akin means that he would permit abortion if both the woman and the embryo otherwise would die. If, on the other hand, doctors could save the embryo or fetus at the cost of the woman’s life, health, or well-being, then “optimizing life,” according to Akin’s twisted conception, may well require forcibly sacrificing the woman, an actual person, to her fetus, a potential person inside her body. Even in his retraction, Akin emphasized that he would outlaw abortion in the case of rape. Unfortunately, Akin is not alone in advocating this anti-life policy. Paul Ryan—now the Republican candidate for vice president—cosponsored a “fetal personhood” bill that would grant a fertilized “one-celled human embryo” a legal “right” to life. Akin and Ryan would not only outlaw abortion even in cases of risks to the health of the mother and in cases of rape and incest; they would also outlaw in vitro fertility treatments that involve the destruction of embryos, as well as types of birth control that can prevent the implantation of a zygote (an embryo just after fertilization). Subscribe to the Journal for People of ReasonFortunately, some Republicans are beginning to soften on their anti-abortion dogma. Whereas Ryan’s position on fetal “personhood” implies that abortion should be outlawed even in cases of rape, the Romney campaign recently denounced that view, stating that the “Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.” Moreover, many Republican leaders have are asking Akin to drop out of the race. These are good signs. It is time for true lovers of life to openly and loudly declare that “pro-life” properly means “pro-individual rights”—which means keeping abortion, part of a woman’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, legal. Tell the GOP that respecting the “sanctity of life” requires respecting a woman’s right to abortion. Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard. Related: The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand’s Morality of Egoism Ayn Rand’s Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society Image: Wikimedia Commons Original: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2012/08/todd-akin-and-the-gops-abortion-problem/
  25. “We are seeing an incredible acceleration in the speed and in the breadth of the restrictions on abortion that are passing” at the state level, says Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights and a supporter of abortion rights. The Wall Street Journal reports that, among recently passed abortion restrictions in the states, Arkansas outlawed most abortions after 12 weeks pregnancy, while North Dakota “banned the procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy,” depending on the detection of a fetal heartbeat. And the Huffington Post reports that Kansas passed a law that (among other things) mandates what doctors must tell their patients regarding abortion. The Kansas law also declares that life begins at fertilization—an odd legal declaration given that no one contests that a zygote is alive. The language is, of course, a nod to the “personhood” movement, which seeks to establish that a zygote is not only alive but also a person with all the legal rights of a born infant. But neither the life nor the heartbeat of an embryo or fetus gives rise to rights. As Diana Hsieh and show in our TOS article, “The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties”: Rights are factual requirements of human survival and flourishing in society. They apply only to human beings living and acting as individuals in a social context—not to embryos or fetuses in the womb. (See the article for our full argument.) When the government creates ersatz “rights” for embryos and fetuses, it necessarily violates the genuine rights of pregnant women and their doctors. Laws that outlaw abortion violate a woman’s right to control her own body and to decide her own future, declaring her a criminal and subjecting her to legal action if she seeks an abortion. The Kansas law (and similar laws in other states) violates doctors’ rights to practice medicine by their own judgment, and it violates the rights of doctors and patients to negotiate health services as they see fit. Embryos and fetuses do not and logically cannot have rights. By pretending otherwise, governments violate the rights of actual people. States should repeal all such rights-violating laws—and rights-respecting Americans morally must demand that they do. Like this post? Join our mailing list to receive our weekly digest. And for in-depth commentary from an Objectivist perspective, subscribe to our quarterly journal, The Objective Standard. Related: The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties With Abortion Ban Proposal, Rand Paul Assaults Rights and Aids Democrats Link to Original
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