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Trump and the Republicans have played things like "post-birth abortions" very well so far. If they're smart, they'll apply the same mix of hyperbole and accuracy for the "abolition of motherhood". The Republicans may struggle with young women, but married women with children have been fertile ground (excuse the metaphor) for them and other conservative parties in the past.
Speaking of post-birth abortions, is this a real thing? My uneducated assumption : it's not, but also there is some kernel of truth there. Any abortion past fetal viability might look a lot like baby killing to someone who is watching it. How many of these happen every year? I will confess near complete ignorance.
While abortion is generally a winning issue for Democrats, they don't do themselves any favors when they hem-and-haw about late term abortions. It makes me think that the modal Democratic politician would support something that looks a lot like a baby being ripped from the womb. Biden, to his credit, did flatly say during the debate that he does not support late term abortions. Republicans in general should make this is an issue and force Democrats to take a stand against the more insane members of their coalition.
Trump was referring to comments made by the then-Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam in which he said:
Source here.
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The specific problem that conservatives are deriding is when a woman has a late-term abortion but the child is still alive after the procedure. Is this a common occurrence? I don't think anyone argues for that. (Though "Most clinicians (69%) who report performing D&Es at 18 weeks last menstrual period or greater do not routinely induce fetal demise preoperatively." apparently, which changes my mind a little towards "this could be happening more often than I would guess.")
The important things to note are that:
It does happen occasionally. Dr. Willard Cates, then-director of abortion surveillance at the CDC, estimated “that 400 to 500 abortion live births” occurred every year in the United States.
Melissa Ohden is famously a survivor of a Saline Abortion at 31 weeks. She was saved by a nurse who heard her crying as she lay among medical waste at a US hospital. Not only does it happen, it happens to neonates who might be able to survive, if provided the same level of care that a wanted child of X gestational weeks would receive as a matter of course.
It seems like an obvious area where Liberals and Conservatives could come together and agree on what is right and wrong. "My body, my choice," OK, maybe Liberals really believe that. But once the child's out of the body, then it's not the mother's choice, is it? Why wouldn't such children be provided the same level of care that neonates receive in every NICU across the country?
But yet there is no agreement from the left of the aisle on this. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act has faced fierce partisan opposition. Why is this?
Much the same reason that there is resistance to efforts to require anesthetic for aborted babies when the abortion is done at a late enough stage for the baby to feel pain, or resistance to efforts to make the killing of an unborn baby by e.g. a drunk driver a criminal offence. That is, defenders of abortion recognise the political danger of giving an inch.
Once you concede the baby has any rights, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify why this but not that. Once you start saying that it's right to save the life of a born child who is dying from an incomplete abortion, well, people might question whether it was right to try to kill it in the first place.
The left engages in MMA, the right engages in WWE.
For those of us who aren't into televised fighting, what does this mean?
I think WWE is scripted/fake, and MMA is an actual sport, correct? How does that apply here?
My best guess: the left's decisions seem directed towards the goal of winning: do not give an inch. The right's decisions seem directed towards pleasing an audience: the base?
It seems to me that "winning" in the case of the left is really just pleasing the base's preferences: wanting to get abortions. Are you saying the right's base has silly preferences or something?
The funny thing is, as one of the resident left-leaning people, both sides think the other side are genius political actors, racking up win after win, while their side is useless, weak, and being rolled over.
I think part of it is that in a 50/50 political world, and with enough states under strong Dem and GOP control, there are overreaches on both sides to make it seem like either side is running over things, based on your own views, while thinking your side is unable to fight.
What are the main losses that you'd point to? The Supreme court, sure. Elon buying twitter. What else?
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There's nothing funny about it, they're both pointing at something real. I don't know how you can look at the sudden repudiation of colorblindness in favor of esoteric racialism, or redefining basic terms as "woman" and "mother" as per the OP, the turning of neutral institutions into enforcers of the new dogma, and tools for censorship etc., etc., etc., and not come to the conclusion that whoever is responsible for that are genius political actor scoring win after win.
Sure, an earnest left winger might point out that their ideals about helping the common man, not draping Goldman Sachs offices trans flags. They might also point out that it's also a mark of political genius to use left wing social causes as a front for redirecting more and more power to the rich.
They're both right. My issue with the earnest left winger is that he doesn't actually want to get rid of the political geniuses that are reshaping the world to their liking, he just wants them to also implement his economic agenda.
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Despite the well-known Roman disregard for fetal and infant life, they established that a "nasciturus" posseses certain legal rights, particularly concerning inheritance, as if it was already born.
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A post-birth abortion is an oxymoron, like a post-birth miscarriage.
I think critics would be quite happy to go back to calling it "infanticide", but there's resistance to that too. Just like "woke", "SJW", and "PC".
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About a year or two ago there was a article published in a medical journal by two notable medical ethicists evaluating the possibility of infanticide, calling it “post-birth abortion” and coming down in favor of it.
It takes lots of study, and a couple of advanced degrees, before you become morally advanced enough to advocate killing babies.
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Got a link? I need to keep that one handy. Not that linking it will ever do anything but trigger the "it's not happening" -> "and they deserve it" shift
Link (from 2013, not "about a year or two ago")
Editor's justification for publishing the article
I do approve of the editor's justification for publishing the article. Free speech above all.
Huh. It's... true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_Protocol
Who defines "unbearable suffering"?
Well then.
At least 20 years ago all cases seem heavy disabilities:
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There's a thing called neglect deaths that float around the conservative circles I interact with. There's also some rhetoric around the six states that do not have any term limits on abortion, mostly from some conservatives twisting "all stages of pregnancy" (the usual language used in the laws) into "up to and including birth."
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Having trouble finding it now, but I recall an account from a former abortion provider that they'd induce labor after doing something that was supposed to kill the baby, I forget if this was pharmaceutical or surgical. In some instances the baby would come out not dead.
There was a rule that mandated that the hospital provide life-saving care only if the parents wanted it or if the baby was above a certain weight. Part of this doctor's realization that they needed to get out of this line of work involved them fudging the numbers so that the writhing premie would be saved instead of left to die.
I tried getting ChatGPT to assist me and while it couldn't dig this story up, it did find this: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/35725/what-happens-when-babies-survive-abortion-a-doctors-alarming-response
These folks are aware of popular opinion, and they're competent enough to get through med school. They're not going to advertise that they're trying to work around the laws, you're only going to find evidence through undercover operations and whisteblowers.
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On "post-birth abortion" (more accurately, non-resucitation of neonatal infants) the Republicans are right that this occurs, though it is a matter of physician's judgement rather than something the mother can just demand:
https://eu.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/27/fact-check-do-democrats-support-abortion-up-until-and-after-birth/984338007/
They conclude that, fortunately, there is no actual post-birth abortion... because they DEFINE abortion to exclude such cases. That's like saying there are no gun owners who commit school shootings, because you DEFINE "gun owner" to exclude those who use guns for illegal purposes that would lead to their gun licence being revoked.
For moderates on abortion who don't even like the existence of a slippery slope towards infanticide (e.g. as "little prospect" becomes extended, then a judgement for the mother etc.) this sort of thing is cold comfort and an easy point of attack for Republicans against Democrats.
More generally, to see how this is a needlessly difficult issue for Democrats, see how the (generally sympathetic to them) FactCheck puts it:
Same with AP news:
These editorial spins are fact-checker answers for when they can't say that something is false, but they would love to do so.
What you're doing here seems to be the exact process Scott argued for in "Bounded Distrust". You're looking at a system that lies a lot, and you're extracting usable signal from it by comparing the output of that system to the rules that supposedly constrain its falsehoods. As I understand his arguments, this should be a straightforward process to obtain truth-value, which is then generally persuasive. I think this is an interesting example of the "Bounded Distrust" thesis actually being tested.
I think you are entirely correct. I don't expect your argument to be very persuasive to anyone you're responding to, though, because the additional indirection provides too many degrees of epistemic freedom. "The Rules" leave you in a position of inferring the truth, and inference is much easier to dismiss. The Rules were created, it seems to me, with this goal in mind: to provide cover to rationalization. As I've mentioned elsewhere in the context of masked rioters, plausible deniability adds value at every step of the process of rationalization. "Bounded Distrust" is just a formalized defense of rationalization.
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I think it's simple, really. The latest abortion must take place before the earliest premature baby is born, otherwise it's very clearly baby killing.
That's about 21 weeks, last I checked.
If baby-killing is based on whether it can be kept alive outside the mother using current technology, does this imply that the invention of full artificial wombs would turn disposal of embryos by IVF clinics into baby-killing? For that matter, would it turn the death of sperm or eggs into baby-killing, since theoretically each sperm can survive if you can stick it into an artificial womb with an egg and have it become a child? Is it baby-killing to shed skin cells if the latest technology can turn them into embryos and then develop them outside a human body?
Yes, it does.
I don't see why. Neither sperm nor eggs are people, nor are they distinct or unique from their source. It is only at conception, the combining of genetics, that new people are created. Many die early. Some die later. All die eventually.
No, not until you actually turn skin cells into a human. Then, it would be.
If we can deliver a baby at 21 weeks, then an abortion at 21 weeks is infanticide. Before conception there is no baby, no person. In your skin example it is the same. If you could breathe the spark of life into a dead skin cell, such that it was the equivalent of a fertilized egg, and then raised it to maturity, then destroyed it, that would be murder.
I'd be happy to address the specifics of such technology when it comes closer to reality.
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It's already baby-killing, in my view.
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Yes
No. No living organisms of the species homo sapiens were harmed
No. No living organisms of the species homo sapiens were harmed
You are conflating ignoring the potential to create a new organism with the harming of existing organisms.
Why would morality track technological development in this way? You could already make an embryo survive by sticking it in a woman, that might even be cheaper than the hypothetical artificial womb even in the future where such technology exists, but for some reason its existence the moral relevancy of embryos?
This is based entirely on the definition of "organism", why would such a distinction have any moral relevance? Both are equally unthinking/unfeeling and both are similarly capable of developing into a human if given extensive support. (And braindead humans are organisms too, are they included?)
Why is species what matters? An embryo with a dozen cells has moral relevance in a post-artificial-womb world but a sapient alien or a member of Homo Erectus pleading for his life wouldn't?
I don't mind biting the "sapient aliens don't matter but human embryos do" bullet. I value humanity, not intelligence. But if you care about sapience rather than humanity per se, how about the baby counts as a baby once it has a brain?
I'm not a human so... fuck you too buddy? Actually- I'm a bit of a bleeding heart so I'm willing to play tit for tat with forgiveness and hope you eventually change your mind. But seriously, one sapient manifestation of the divine to another- I recommend you get out of the defecting against aliens business before the aliens become common.
Humanity is not determined by self-identification. You may not be a particularly grounded-in-reality human, but you are human nonetheless.
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I'm 100% pro life, so I don't think morality tracks development this way. But someone on the fence might say something like, "A fetus has significant moral worth, though not enough to balance out the singular imposition on the mother. Once that imposition is removed, there is no justification to not provide all available medical technologies to caring for the well being of the child."
This is completely false. One already is a human organism, one is not human any more than a pile of water (35 L), carbon (20 kg), ammonia (4 L), lime (1.5 kg), phosphorus (800 g), salt (250 g), saltpeter (100 g), sulfur (80 g), fluorine (7.5 g), iron (5 g), silicon (3 g) and trace amounts of fifteen other elements.
Of course. I get the feeling we're on different moral planets. I'm a human-protectionist.
Where do you get that idea? I would extend the protection and provision of resources to not only these sapient aliens, but also their entire lifecycle from moment of whatever the equivalent of conception is for them.
agreed... if we presuppose the scientific definition of genetic organism. But wasn't that the contention? And more importantly, is that really the precise line your ethics draws?
Eggs are part of the human reproductive cycle. So why does a zygote get a 'still an organism' pass when it relies on nutrients it doesn't produce itself? Why do humans get a 'still an organism' pass when they rely on amino acids and oxygen that we don't produce ourselves? And why doesn't the egg get a similar 'still an organism' pass when it relies on sperm that it doesn't produce itself?
Again- I know the scientific definition of organism. But- It sounds like you might already agree that sapient computer viruses could have ethical weight even if not scientifically categorized as organisms. Genetic independence from other genetic systems isn't the only or even the most principled way to cleave reality at the edges. So why do you personally choose to cleave it there? If you came across an alien species with sentient sperm, can you see your position evolving?
I don't mean to say your position is invalid... But perhaps the value of sperm, eggs, and zygotes can be more favorably framed with respect to how much effort they concentrate within the 'purpose' of the human reproductive cycle. Sperm evolved to be shotgunned, most of them expecting to die. Eggs get spent monthly, regardless of use. Zygotes represent a sudden spike in progress. Perhaps that provides a less deniable reason to draw the line there.
The sperm in my father and egg in my mother were not me. I don't share an identity with either. I would not be who I am without my mother. I would not be who I am without my father. The blastocyst in my mother was me because it had both genetic components.
The blastocyst relied on a particular environment, sure. So do I now. The blastocyst was pretty helpless, at times I need help as well. The blastocyst didn't have consciousness. Daily I also become unconscious.
We universally acknowledge that it is wrong to kill a sleeping human, even if they wouldn't even notice it. People speak of a continuity of consciousness that depends on the existence of consciousness prior to the unconsciousness. I think that this continuity extends backwards as well as forwards.
I think you are arguing that the blastocyst needed nutrients to grow into an adult, and a egg and sperm needed to meet in order to grow into an adult, so why is one need considered matter of fact and protected and the other need extra ordinary and not protected? I think you are conflating two different types of causes. When someone asks Why or How, there really are four different categories of causes they could be asking.
The Efficient Cause of a human is when two gametes meet and conception occurrs. There is no moral requirement for any particular human to be efficiently caused. After the gametes meet, there exists a new Formal Cause, an organism, and this formal cause is the same throughout the organisms entire lifecycle. A formal cause is what makes a thing what it is, and is the difference between a pile of chemicals and a human being. The formal cause of an organism is different from the formal causes of the gametes that existed prior.
There is a moral requirement for parents to care for their offspring as best as they are able.
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