Cobb

"There is no society..."

Not true. The attitude of society regarding births has varied back and forth over the centuries. In seventeenth century England, for example, it was common for midwives to save the child at the expense of the mother.

This is not to impinge your argument, since quite patently attitudes have swung in the other direction during the intervening centuries.

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Thanks,

John

Fair enough. My fundamental here is that there are economies of value of human life. Not necessarily pretty to consider, but necessary to consider.

Even those who interpret the will of God must concede that the value of women and children has been interpreted differently over the ages. Any weighing in on the question of abortion must then, from my perspective, acknowledge that there is some new value they are applying - a value that changes with context, which is why the scientific matters.

The duty of society is to promote the care and protection of the innocent whether they are here or in the womb. I find it interesting that the right to kill unborn children does'nt extend to the father. If having a child or an abortion is a womans right,a man and/or society should not be forced to contribute to the upkeep or destruction of that child. With rights come responsibilities.

While overturning Roe may be radical, restricting it down to the level of questions about the life of the mother vs the life of the child may be a step that we can agree on. According to some stats that I have seen only about 3% of all abortions are done for the medical reason of the mother health. The same study show 3% done for the health of the baby and 1% for rape and incest. Your argument for keeping Roe intact will only apply to 7%.

If the life of an infant were equal to the life of the mother, then our institution of marriage would not exist. That is because we would be perfectly willing to have women die during childbirth. In addition to the old adage, an eye for an eye, we'd say 'a child for a mother' and call it even.

This argument does not justify abortion. The majority of times when a woman have an abortion, her life is NOT in danger of having the child. Your argument speaks only when a woman's life is in danger of having that child.

Contrary to what the liberl Chicken-Littles would have you believe, the dreaded "overturning Roe v. Wade" isn't a light switch that would automatically render all abortion illegal. Rather, it simply returns the question to the States, a place many libertarians and federalists feel it rightly belongs.

I also think you've exceeded your hyperbole quota in the statement Tavares references. Not only is it ludicrous to say that concern for one one party requires ambivilence toward another, it postulates that somehow abortion is more directly linked to childbirth complications than is statistically sound. If you really want to go down that road, I think you'd be surprised how many people mainly in the pro-life column would be willing to accept abortion to preserve the life of the mother in exchange for a ban on elective abortion.

Here's where I'm going.

I think anti-abortionists are contradicting themselves or overreaching. There is one tactic that suggests that a human life has value of unit 1, the same as any adult. If you terminate that life, it's murder. Murder is an offense prosecutable by the state, and what it wants to do is push the jurisdiction of the state literally inside a human body.

That's tantamount to making sperm a controlled substance, like an illegal drug. It's saying we trust you to put this in your body, but when this particular biological event happens (like a BAC > 0.8) the state has an interest in regulating your body. So we would be assigning pregnancy as a particular condition under which the state's interest in restricting your behavior outweighs your freedom. You can see where this just steps all over the premises of individual liberty.

So if such a definition occurs, then a woman's duty is to accord herself in line with the spirit of the law, which is to carry the pregnancy to term. I tell you that I will find out stories from China when I go to tell you how women pregnant with a second child were treated under the one child per family regime.

My arugment is not over the jurisdiction of the law, rather the logic of the state interest wherever the jursidiction. If there is an pro-life contingent, which like LaShawn appears to be, wants to extend the state interest in preserving life into the gestation period, then there are some fairly bizzare consequences.

So I want to make the distinction between anti-abortion and pro-life. I'm anti-abortion myself. I think there is a legitimate state interest in reducing the number of abortions and certifying the medical procedures and other FDA kinds of matters. I'm willing to concede some nanny state in this regard under the banner of 'planned parenthood' just as I concede the same for drug abuse as in DARE. But I am not willing to allow a redefinition of manslaughter or murder to include the unborn as victims, nor am I willing to grant any legal standing to the unborn, or allow pleading on behalf of the unborn to have legal standing.

"But there is no society in the history of mankind that has subordinated the life of a woman to her progeny." There are plenty, as Scott has pointed out. Whenever women do not have full legal rights, and men do, especially in societies that follow primogeniture, the valuation of women's lives compared to male progeny is assured to be unequal.

"If the life of an infant were equal to the life of the mother, then our institution of marriage would not exist. That is because we would be perfectly willing to have women die during childbirth. In addition to the old adage, an eye for an eye, we'd say 'a child for a mother' and call it even."

MB, my dear, I have been trying and trying to make sense of this logic. Marriage has had many economic and social meanings--the religious meanings are grafted on top. Marriage in the United States has been a property arrangement (for the most part). Sometimes, for example, the production of a viable male child more important than the mother's life.

First, I need to declare myself: I think that the decision to carry or terminate a pregnancy should be between a woman and her doctor, full stop. Every abortion is a tragedy (on some level). I see a medical and moral problem in using surgical abortion as birth control, but not a legal problem. I see absolutely no problem in using chemical abortion (the "morning after pill" and other not-yet-established technologies) to interrupt pregnancy.

Reproductive and neonatal science has whizzed right on past historical economic, social, and religious ideas about marriage and the sanctity of life. Should we ban all forms of assisted reproduction that result in many more fertilized ova than can be implanted? What about those hundreds or prehaps thousands of fertilized ova waiting in the wings, all frozen? We now have the ability to determine if a woman is pregnant within a very short period of time--say, within 14 to 21 days of fertilization (that is, the first day of the missed period, assuming a regular 28-day cycle.) If it becomes forbidden to interrupt pregancies, should we then test all women monthly for the crime of failing to carry a pregnancy to term? We can now fairly reliably keep alive very pre-term infants (very low birth-weight) Should we be morally obligated to do so?

There are a lot of other issues of this nature to be wrestled with and thought through.