The discussion on Friday seemed like it moved from science and morality to purely morality and there are a number of questions that I would like to pose concerned both the scientific nature and also about ethics/morality:
Everyone seemed to accept the definition that the fertilized egg at conception was a "child" and not a collection of cells -- scientifically is this fair? accurrate? If we do not accept that definition of "child", what happens to the debate?
It was interesting to see the discussion focus only on the females and their decision, or lack of one, in this process. Likewise the responsibility of men's actions were absent. IN SD, should men be held responsible for the pregnancy as well? How?
If a man gets a woman pregnant should he be required to pay for prenatal care? Doctor's visits?
Should he be forced to go to the doctors and baby classes (which would mean missing school or work)?
Should his name be distributed as getting this girl pregnant?
If he tells her to abort, should he be charged with a crime?
If she decides to keep the baby, should the man be forced to take care of the baby (at least every other week)? Why or why not? What if the woman does not want to take care of the child? Should the man also be responsible for the child's other needs?
What if the man does not want to give the child up for abortion?
Many couples can not take care of children with severe deformities or mental deficiencies. Should they be forced to nurture a deformed or mentally deficient child for 9 mos?
Most likely that child will be raised by the state; is that fair to the child? How will the state pay for this? Medicare and medicaid already can not handle the people they serve now and many states are being bankrupted by these responsibilities, so how will this fit in? Should money even be a consideration?
There are millions of spontaneous abortions every year -- if a woman exercises too much and has a miscarriage, should she be charged? Can a man bring suit against her if she thinks she is not doing enough to protect the fetus?
If a woman can not afford good prenatal care and has a natural abortion, can she sue the state for not providing her with the care she needed to properly care for the fetus?
Nietzsche states that degenerates who can't control themselves are the worst moralizers and argues that they just want to determine "guilt" and "punish" others. Is the SD law in this vein? How so? Or why not? Explore?
Should we outlaw contraception? Is contraception just a way to "kill" a possible child? Many religious people believe this to be so, so should we listen to them? If not, which religious people should we listen to? Why?
If a person can not afford contraception, should they not be allowed to have sex?
If a state bans all contraception (as suggested in MO -- at least to the poor), should those people not have sex since there is no 100% effective way to make sure a woman does not get pregnant?
How do we justify forced sterilization of some people while arguing abortion is murder?
These were some of the questions off the top of my head -- your thoughts?
posted by chad rohrbacher at 6:27 AM
2 Comments:
Hello, I'm Jerry and I've been reading some comments and I wanted to throw one in there. Scientifically couldn't we justify calling a fertilized egg a child because unlike any other random collection of cells or flesh, this fertilized egg has everything it needs to develop and grow and maintain life. In this way to abandon an embryo capable of independent growth with the proper resources is in a way similar to abandoning a newborn baby (that's not to say the two are one in the same). As far as some of the other questions go...I think it is easy enough to say that we should require 50% responsibility sharing of the father and mother, but practically speaking this is a child growing inside of a person, so obviously the woman is going to have more responsibility, and with that responsibility she should carry the power of making the final choice of the outcome of the baby, whether adoption, or mothering, or whatever the outcome. There is an inexhaustible list of parents waiting to adopt babies, so many in fact that parents are willing to pay 10's of thousands of dollars to adopt children from other countries like China and India and so on. These children may or may not live out the life of excess that the U.S. holds so dear, but they will have a life, and personally I'm glad my mother didn't abort me for lack of funds as a 1995 poll shows makes up 66% of the reasons for abortions, with less than 1% aborting because of baby defects or rape. With 1.3 million abortions every year, a death toll higher than all American wars combined, I think a "pro-choice" stance is more than a little unwise. From 1973 to 1997 35 million unborn babies were aborted. That's ridiculous. These stats are from http://www.californiaprolife.org/abortion/aborstats.html
12:35 AM
A few have commented that: "As for the question about which religious groups we should listen to I think the answer is none of them." However, isn't the abortion debate a religious/moral one at its core?
A couple have also said that a man should not be charged with a crime if he supports or even encourages a woman to get an abortion; however, if it is illegal as in SD, and it is "murder", wouldn't that mean that the man is an accessory to that murder? If two people conspire to kill someone, but only one pulls the trigger, they are both charged -- why should this issue be different?
For that matter if a woman has an abortion, should she be charged with a crime? The SD law charges doctors, should it also include women?
8:19 AM
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