I also want to add that the comparison of killing a 3 year old and terminating a human embryo are not morally equivalent. Pro-lifers are trying to elevate a human embryo to a 3 year old and i will not fall for it and most reasonable people even some pro-lifers can see the difference. Let me ask how many people have embryo funerals? yet a 3 year old would have a funeral, what does that tell you? To me trying to equate a 3 year old with an embryo is misleading, i see right through it. I know women that have had abortions and they are not psychopaths, they are normal people living normal lives and neither of these people would kill a 3 year old.
Gladys, please read my articles more carefully before commenting. I want comments to continue the conversation by responding to what I have written, but I addressed both of your concerns already within the post. "You may feel like my example is not comparable to abortion because Makayla is a young child, not a human embryo. If you think pro-life people are wrong to claim that the two deserve the same moral consideration, then that’s the argument you should make. Put down the insults and accusations. Instead, make an argument to show why you think we are wrong about the value of the human embryo." I've invited you to make an argument, but instead of doing so your comment points out this issue as if I ignored it in the original post. There is nothing to "see right through" because I am not misleading anyone. I address it directly. In my endnote, I clarify exactly what I am not saying about women who have abortions. I feel like there is no charitable, reasonable way for someone to read the endnote and conclude that I think women who have had abortions are psychopaths.
The reasonable conclusion that anyone would get from reading the article is that if killing a 3 year old is the same morally as killing an embryo then by default a woman having an abortion is a psychopath. Yes i do think Pro-life people are not only wrong by way off in trying say that a 3 year old and a human embroyo deserve the same moral consideration. Any reasonable person who is not a hardcore pro-lifers can see that. If you were to ask a reasonable person on the street that does not have an agenda either way, which they consider more morally wrong killing a 3 year old or a woman having an abortion of an embryo, i wonder how many would say that both are the same? The reasons are simple, an embryo is still a human being that has not been born, it is still inside the woman needing gestation, it is not aware of itself due to lack of brain development. I think it takes a lot more effort to see an embryo the same as a 3 year old. if you look at it in a reasonable way without pre-conceived indoctrination from a pro-life perspective. Even before i was pro-choice, if someone asked me if i thought an embryo was the same as a 3 year old, i did not. A reasonable person does not need to be pro-choice or pro-life to see the distinction morally unless of course they have been indoctrinated to see it that way.
This whole article is flawed, their is a big difference between a 3 year old and an embryo. I dare anyone to tell me to my face that i don't have a right to my own uterus, and that i don't know what is the best decision for my life, my body and what affects my life?
Gladys, you've been warned multiple times about our comments policy. As a reminder, here are a few things that our comment policy makes clear:
You may disagree with us. We welcome debate. However, we ask that if you disagree with us—or anyone else, for that matter—do so in a way that is respectful. In our opinion, there is way too much shouting in the public square to tolerate it here. We reserve the right to delete your comments. This is our blog. We don’t have an obligation to publish your comments. The First Amendment gives you the right to express your opinions on your blog, not ours. The goal of the comments section on this blog is simply and unambiguously to promote productive dialogue. But there is a major obstacle to that goal: the internet is a terrible place for dialogue. People are much more inclined to be poor at dialogue and impossible to reason with on the internet. Our solution is to ruthlessly and without warning ban anyone that is engaging in poor dialogue activity (as outlined below) for the good of all. The result of this is that some people we ban will not appreciate or agree with it. That is unavoidable. Some of these calls will be a simple matter of our discretion. If you want to debate people in a free-for-all environment where you can say anything you want, go to almost any other part of the internet. If you want to dialogue respectfully, charitably, and reasonably, we hope you’ll find this to be a helpful place to seek truth with us. Examples of bannable bad dialogue activity include (but is not limited to): being snarky, disrespectful, off-topic, libelous, flagrantly uncharitable, defamatory, abusive, harassing, threatening, profane, pornographic, offensive, false, misleading, or which otherwise violates or encourages others to violate my sense of decorum and civility or any law, including intellectual property laws; or (d) “spam,” i.e., an attempt to advertise, solicit, or otherwise promote goods and services. You may, however, post a link to your site or your most recent blog post.
Under this post alone, you: 1: Commented without reading it, as evidenced by your first comment that acted like your concerns weren't covered in the piece; (unless you had in fact read it and decided to purposefully attempt to deceive casual readers into thinking that those objections weren't covered in the original post, which would be even worse than commenting without reading it) 2: Accused us of calling aborting women psychopaths, even though that's contradicted by the post itself as well as our entire blog archive; 3: Didn't respond with any common ground to the author warning you and pointing out that the article itself responds to your objections, instead stating that it is not possible for a reasonable person to disagree with you unless they've been "indoctrinated"; 4: And in this comment, amp'd up your rhetoric to a veiled threat. "I dare anyone to tell me to my face . . . " that they disagree about abortion. While it's been pretty rare for us to need to ban people from our comments section due to repeated violations of our comments policy, I don't know if I've ever seen a clearer pattern of willfully violating the policies as you've shown in the last few days. You were warned, and now you're banned. You can go accuse pro-life advocates of being unreasonable and/or indoctrinated people somewhere else, not in a place where we're trying to encourage gracious and productive dialogue between both sides.
If you are a pro-choice advocate who uses this “Trust Women” rhetoric, ask yourself why you use such clearly misleading language. If a position on a moral issue cannot stand without rhetorically cheating, then it is a position that is worth reconsidering. Rachel thank you for the wonderful article. I did want to address this point though. How would you respond to the fact that the Pro-Life movement consistently engages in falsehoods to promote its message? For example how do you respond to the fact that CPC's consistently lie to women and promote numerous falsehoods? https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2018/03/14/447885/anti-choice-movements-continued-pursuit-politicized-medicine/ Or the fact a congressional study on federally-funded CPCs found that 87 percent of them present false or misleading information to women who come through their doors? https://www.chsourcebook.com/articles/waxman2.pdf Or for example how previous research has discovered that at least 40 of the Virginia's 58 CPCs are telling their clients medically inaccurate information about birth control and abortion. https://thinkprogress.org/virginias-right-wing-crisis-pregnancy-centers-caught-on-tape-lying-to-women-9d9c765f394a/ Or how this is this is a nation wide issue as well https://www.nirhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cpcreport2010.pdf Or how a larger examination of 254 CPC websites, published in Contraception in 2014, found that 80 percent provided at least one item of false or misleading information — most commonly, claiming links between abortion and mental health concerns. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25091391 Or even researchers from the University of North Carolina who visited 19 CPCs in the state from March to June of 2011 found that nearly half “provide counseling on abortion and its risks,” and over half provided at least one piece of information that was misleading or false, ranging from the efficacy of condoms to links between abortion and infertility, breast cancer and mental health problems. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22770790 So already we have an issue of dishonesty with CPC's a big part of the Pro-Life movement. But it doesn't stop there. For example let's take a look at the Silent Scream, a popular pro-life film allegedly showing an abortion procedure. It was debunked several times By numerous physicians https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/11/opinion/a-false-scream.html By Harvard http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1985/3/11/manipulative-silent-scream-pbto-the-editors/ and by OB/GYN's from Johns Hopkins and other Reputable Schools http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,964142-1,00.html And then there is claim that "Abortion causes breast cancer" which has been debunked as well: https://insights.ovid.com/pubmed?pmid=19461458 I could go on, but I hope you understand my point. I don't say this to be snarky or mean, because you seem to be concerned for the truth as much as I am. But the point I am trying to make is why does your movement need to lie or mislead in so many ways if you truly believe in what you are talking about? I already outlined how the initial premise trust women is not based on the premise you took it to be, so I would like an answer to my point as well and hopefully we can reason together with a more intellectually honest discourse.
The main issue with your analogy is that the pro-choice individual doesn't see the fetus as a separate individual person. There is a huge host of differences between a 3 year old and a Zygote/Embryo/Fetus.
Your replies to my "The author addresses your objection" post and my "Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY" post appeared in this comment section for a while, but now they have disappeared. Their disappearance doesn't necessarily mean that you deleted them, because sometimes Disqus does funny things. Would you like them to appear?
Hello. Yes I don't understand what happened. I kept them civil and maintained intellectual discourse. I did thoroughly respond to them in my opinion too.
This is my reply to Skeptic_Thinking_Power's "Except the vast majority of studies do show" post: I had written: "Many women who abort later regret their decision. In those cases, whom should we have trusted, the woman who aborted or the woman who regretted?" My point was that everyone experiences changes of heart during their lifetime, so if "what a woman decides" is to be the standard of what justice is, then in seeking justice we are trying to hit a moving target. (This is not the only objection to "Trust women," but it is a point that the article hadn't made, so I made it.) How many women have to regret in order for me to make that point? This is a serious question. If you think that even numbers like 95% (even if that is correct) discredit my point, then I don't think you've understood my point. 5% would be almost 50,000 women in the US alone every year – way more than enough to make my point. I could cite plenty more evidence that many women who abort later regret their decision, but if you've understood by now that my point is a very modest one and therefore that huge numbers would not be required to make my point, maybe I don't need to provide further links.
"My point is that not only may trusting women be unjust to the unborn, but in some cases the woman herself will eventually wish we hadn't trusted her."
Well the data clearly refutes you in this regard. The fact that 95% of cases don't regret, even if those data are correct, "clearly refutes" the idea that "some cases" do regret? I'm surprised you would say that. "So? And I know those who didn't." But no one is denying that there are those who didn't! Those who didn't are irrelevant to the point I'm making. In your "So?," you at least seem to accept the fact that those women I personally know who have regretted really exist. Again, how many women have to regret in order for me to make my point about the moving target? "You cited a religious based publication where the author tried to make a case between abortion and breast cancer something that has been debunked for ages now." I have no opinion about the breast cancer claim myself, but please show me where the article you linked to debunks the China and South Asian studies that the author cited. "Second the BJP study he cited actually turned out to have several methodological errors and was ultimately retracted and dismissed." The link you provided was to a counter-argument which did not itself say anything about retracted and dismissed, but maybe you have other information about that. Whose word is "dismissed"? I haven't read the counter-argument, have you? The study's being retracted would not per se mean that we could not learn anything from it. We would need more information about those methodological errors. For instance, if better methods showed that women who had an abortion were only 75 percent more likely to have mental health problems, rather than 81 percent, that might have been reason enough to retract the study, but we would still be left with 75 percent.
I will try to respond to you arguments despite the given confusions, but I apologize if they may be out of order.
How many women have to regret in order for me to make that point? This is a serious question. Except I don't think you understand the issue here. The overwhelming majority of women do not regret abortions. There isn't a mental health issue in regards to this. As long ago as 1989, mere months after Surgeon General Dr. Everett Koop concluded there was no public health case against abortion, the American Psychological Association (APA) conducted an exhaustive review of the scientifically valid research on the subject and concluded that legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy “does not pose a psychological hazard for most women.” University of California at San Francisco Professor Nancy Adler testified in Congress on behalf of the APA at that time that “severe negative reactions are rare and are in line with those following other normal life stresses.” She observed that given the millions of U.S. women who had had abortions, “if severe reactions were common, there would be an epidemic of women seeking treatment. There is no evidence of such an epidemic.” This is something that continues today. In the last five years alone, at least three more major reports reached similar conclusions. In 2006, the APA revisited the issue and created another task force on mental health and abortion. Its updated and comprehensive report, issued in 2008, reinforced its findings from two decades earlier: “The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion than if they deliver that pregnancy.”
Again, how many women have to regret in order for me to make my point about the moving target? You have to show that the overwhelming majority of those receiveIn 2008, researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published their own analysis in which they concluded that “the highest-quality research available does not support the hypothesis that abortion leads to long-term mental health problems.” They found a “clear trend” by which “the highest quality studies had findings that were mostly neutral, suggesting few, if any, differences between women who had abortions and their respective comparison groups in terms of mental health sequelae.” Notably, the Hopkins teams also stated that it was the “studies with the most flawed methodology [that] found negative mental health sequelae of abortion.” abortions, have mental health issues. This is not the case. All the data that you could potentially cite in regards to abortion regret that shows abortion increasing mental health outcomes has shown to be flawed.
I have no opinion about the breast cancer claim myself, but please show me where the article you linked to debunks the China and South Asian studies that the author cited. Sure! "the study’s methodology and data appear seriously flawed, with the results likely reflecting “recall bias.” This would invalidate the study’s findings. Recall bias is a common hazard in case-control studies, which use questionnaires or interviews to gather historical data from participants. Results can be skewed or inaccurate because people have a tendency to forget past events, or neglect to mention them, especially if they are uncomfortable with sharing the information with researchers. For example, underreporting occurs when people are asked about substance use, criminal offenses, family background, or school performance." https://rewire[.]news/article/2014/01/09/how-deeply-flawed-studies-on-abortion-and-breast-cancer-become-anti-choice-fodder/ https://www.cancer[.]org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html https://journals.lww[.]com/md-journal/Fulltext/2018/01190/Induced_abortion_and_breast_cancer__An_updated.23.aspx I didn't want to get marked for spam, so I decided to just jot down the links with the dot.www part bracketed.
The link you provided was to a counter-argument which did not itself say anything about retracted and dismissed, but maybe you have other information about that. The study itself is no long valid, and has several flawed methodological claims. The methods, results, and conclusions of this meta-analysis have been seriously questioned by several researchers and scholars. Ten letters to the editor were highly critical of the methodology used, with 2 calling for a retraction of this meta-analysis. In addition, the final version of a review by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) stated that“A number of methodological problems with the meta-analysis conducted in the Coleman review have been identified, which brings into question both the results and conclusions.” And, a commentary published in January 2012 , written by authors of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ review concluded that the Coleman meta-analysis (p. 12) “cannot be regarded as a formal systematic review.” Like others , we strongly question the quality of this meta-analysis of 22 papers just as the reliability, validity, and replicability of some of the studies in the meta-analysis have been questioned.
For instance, if better methods showed that women who had an abortion were only 75 percent more likely to have mental health problems, rather than 81 percent, that might have been reason enough to retract the study, but we would still be left with 75 percent. Except that's not how it works because the study was ruled to be invalid. So just decreasing the amount of those who would be affected by mental health issues is intellectually dishonest. Research on the relationship between abortion and subsequent mental health (like all research on topics with important public health implications) should be subjected to great scrutiny before publication during the peer-review process, and even if published, independent reanalysis can reveal (and in this case has revealed) errors that can be fatal. We found here, after publication, that the analyses and methods contained many errors which render the conclusions invalid.
Thanks for your reply. However, in the interval since I last wrote I noticed that on another website someone had recounted that he had called something I had said BS, and that I had stopped talking to him for that reason. You (or someone with your name) replied: "Sir you need to teach me your ways when it comes to dealing with pro lifers lol." Quite a contrast to your writing to someone above, "I look forward to further reasoned and civil discourse on this topic." Anyway, if you will clarify on that website and to me here that you were just joking, we can continue. Or if you will clarify there and here that you were not joking, but that you have thought better of it, we can continue.
A bit of a late response but I think you are taking a very small remark and blowing it out of proportion. I was simply asking the user in a light-hearted way his tips and strategies on debate rhetoric with pro-lifers as he is very good at refuting many posts. Throughout this discussion I have been nothing but civil to you and the moderators would agree my comments have been respectful.
Well, nothing in that post of yours or anywhere on that page gave any indication that you were aware of any of his debating abilities other than his ability to say "BS." (It seemed clear to me, by the way, that in the situation where he had said that, he had simply failed to understand something I had written. Though it was a rude thing to say, I wouldn't have considered it an insult if he had seemed to have any valid point.) So if you were asking him about his overall tips and strategies, I think you were almost sure to have been misunderstood by him and anyone else who was reading. Readers do go back to those old pages sometimes, and you wouldn't want to leave that person himself with the impression that you were celebrating his worst tendencies and not his best. So why not, on that page, clarify what you meant? Then we can proceed.
I really think you are making a big deal out of something that is really minor. You may feel that he hasn't done a good job, but I was impressed by his argument. All in all, I have made the points in this discussion that I planned too. Thank you for at least repoting my responses that got deleted. But I believe I responded to what I felt was necessary.
"You may feel that he hasn't done a good job" I don't feel one way or the other about that. I haven't read any of his posts on that page carefully. He may well have done a good job. But my point when I said – "nothing in that post of yours or anywhere on that page gave any indication that you were aware of any of his debating abilities other than his ability to say BS'" – was that you didn't appear to have read any of his posts either, other than the "BS" one. Or at least it wasn't clear that you had. Here on this page you are making it clear that you had read others as well, but there you didn't make it clear that you had read others, and certainly you didn't make it clear that your appreciation related to others, and it's still not clear there. What you appeared to appreciate / be impressed with was that person's ability to say BS to pro-lifers. You didn't reply to or seem to refer to any of his posts where he presumably made good arguments. Was "lol" intended to refer to those other posts? I tend to believe you when you say you were trying to express appreciation of his arguments rather than of his rudeness. But if you would edit that post yours to make that clear – simply to make clear what you always intended to express, which I would think that you would want to do of your own initiative, even if I didn't request it – then I would be completely confident that that's what you were trying to do. I think you must surely have been understood, by anyone who read your post, as applauding and aspiring to emulate that person's rudeness.
Regret is not a good standard, bodily rights should be the standard. Their are many things in this life that one might regret. I can regret buying a house or marrying someone, regretting something does not make the decision morally right or wrong. Abortion should be based on bodily rights.
What follows is Skeptic_Thinking_Power's reply to my "Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY" post:
Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY show that very few women regret abortion (which I don't think they do) Except the vast majority of studies do show that women don't regret abortions.
Ninety-five percent of women who have had abortions do not regret the decision to terminate their pregnancies. Published in the multidisciplinary academic journal PLOS ONE. http://journals.plos.org/pl...
In a sample of teenagers who obtained pregnancy tests in 1985–1986, those who terminated a pregnancy were no more likely to have psychological problems two years later than were those who had not been pregnant or had gone on to give birth. In fact, they experienced less negative psychological change than the others. https://www.jstor.org/stabl...
One week after having an abortion, women in a 2008–2010 study “felt more regret, sadness and anger about the pregnancy than about the abortion, and felt more relief and happiness about the abortion than about the pregnancy.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley...
A study of Dutch women who were interviewed shortly after having abortions in 2010–2011 and followed for an average of nearly three years found no connection between abortion-related variables—preabortion decision difficulty or uncertainty, and history of multiple abortions, to name a few—and later mental disorders. https://onlinelibrary.wiley... I could recent studies too, but I hope you get the point. For decades it's been a consistent trend that women do not regret abortion. Not that I think this speaks anything to the morality of abortion itself, I think we should at least be intellectually honest.
My point is that not only may trusting women be unjust to the unborn, but in some cases the woman herself will eventually wish we hadn't trusted her. Well the data clearly refutes you in this regard.
I know women who regret their abortions. So? And I know those who didn't. Personal experiences don't really invalidate the large subsets of data we have on this issue.
See also: You cited a religious based publication where the author tried to make a case between abortion and breast cancer something that has been debunked for ages now. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html Second the BJP study he cited actually turned out to have several methodological errors and was ultimately retracted and dismissed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3646711/
This is my reply to Skeptic_Thinking_Power's "Except that's not what it is understood as" post: The argument you are making now, if I understand correctly, is "Yes, there must be a moral premise underlying 'Trust women,' but the premise is 'trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights,' and not what Acyutananda (and presumably the author) think it is." (By the way "ability" suggests that the choices they will make will be GOOD choices, so I think we agree that "because the results will be for the best" is part of the premise. More on this later.) That argument ("the premise is 'trust them in . . . their Reproductive Rights'") would be a coherent response to the article. But what you wrote originally – "The main issue with your analogy is that the pro-choice individual doesn't see the fetus as a separate individual person. There is a huge host of differences between a 3 year old and a Zygote/Embryo/Fetus" – neither argued clearly that our version of the premise was an incorrect version, nor argued "the [actual] premise is 'trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights.'" What you wrote was at best partial evidence in support of "the [actual] premise is . . ." So what you wrote did not seem to be a coherent response to the article. What you wrote seemed to be the response the author had anticipated when she had written "If you think pro-life people are wrong to claim that the two deserve the same moral consideration, then that’s the argument you should make." So I thought you had not understood what the author was trying to do. Whatever you may have had in mind initially, now you have framed the issue as "What are those who say 'Trust women' trying to say?" Well, those who say "Trust women" are engaged in sloganeering and rhetoric and sound bites, so it may be expecting too much to expect to find a coherent thesis. The NARAL tweet above seems to support your version, but the Cecile Richards tweet better supports something like "We should always trust women regarding their offspring" (my version that I believe is also the author's version), or really something even broader. However, if as you say those who say "Trust women" don't see the fetus as a separate individual, why do they need to say anything at all? No one in the world is arguing that women should not be trusted about removing their warts. "Trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their warts" – yes, we should trust them, but that would sound ridiculously overblown, wouldn't it? So "Trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights" is either ridiculously overblown, or it is not unambiguous about the fetus not being a separate individual. It seems to me that the slogan brings in the word "trust" as an emotional appeal about respect for women, and as an appeal for a broad kind of trust. If the slogan tries for that meaning, then, though I would not agree, at least the slogan wouldn't sound ridiculously overblown for what it is trying to say. When I say that I would not agree – personally, I would have to say that I appreciated a comment under the ERI Facebook announcement of this article. The gist of the comment was that any woman who wants to abort shouldn't be trusted. "Your initial premise is invalid because we as Pro-Choice advocates would support entities such as social services or foster care to intervene if their was a situation where a child was not being treated properly." As I said, "We all agree that we should NOT trust women who want to kill their 3-year-olds." The invalidity of the premise can be easily demonstrated once the premise is spoken. But with an UNSPOKEN premise, one can get away with a lot of invalidity, so the fact that it is invalid doesn't mean that it is not in play in "Trust women." "the benefits for women who are able to control their fertility." Certainly the institution of legal abortion carries benefits for women, but it carries costs also that the WMA may not have thought of (and I don't mean only regret). See http://blog.secularprolife.org/2017/02/a-pro-life-feminist-balance-sheet.html "This context of reproductive rights is protected by the right to privacy. In the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade. . . . privacy and liberty. . . . right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion. . . . a basic right to privacy. . . . the woman’s right . . . the right . . ." RvW is clearly concerned about rights, but did it make any attempt to predict (as the "Trust women" slogan predicts) whether the outcome of granting rights would be for the best, that is to say whether the choices women would make would be GOOD choices? By the way, "There is a huge host of differences between a 3 year old and a Zygote/Embryo/Fetus." Yes, but we are talking in a certain context, the context of whether it is okay to kill the ZEF. Not all the differences are relevant in that context. For instance the fact that an early embryo can't move much. Stephen Hawking couldn't move much; he was different also; but that doesn't mean it would have been all right to kill him. In the context of whether it is okay to kill the ZEF, the only differences that are relevant are those differences that are relevant to the permissibility of killing ANYONE. And to identify what those differences are, we have to ask in the first place, http://blog.secularprolife.org/2018/02/whats-wrong-with-killing.html
For various reasons, I don't think that the moderators deleted you. For one thing, if they had deleted you I think they would have said something to you at the same time. Your reply to my "Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY" contained a lot of links, but if that had been the reason, I would think their software would not have allowed it to be posted in the first place. Anyway, now that it's clear that you would like those posts to appear, I'll try including your "Except that's not" post hereunder in this post. Then I will make another post with my reply to your "Except that's not." If that works, then a few hours from now I'll do the same with your "Except the vast majority of studies do show" post. What follow is Skeptic_Thinking_Power's reply to my "The author addresses your objection" post: "We should always trust women regarding their offspring, because the results will be for the best." Except that's not what it is understood as. I believe it is a straw man argument of what the initial idea of "Trusting Women" means. When we say we "trust women", it is not necessarily in account of their parenting or relationship to their offspring, but rather trusting them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights.. Your initial premise is invalid because we as Pro-Choice advocates would support entities such as social services or foster care to intervene if their was a situation where a child was not being treated properly. Rather the premise of the argument "Trusting Women" is based on the idea that a women should be able to make her own decisions regarding reproductive care. To quote the Prestigious World Medical Association, representing over 11 million world class physicians. The WMA (World Medical Association): recognizes the benefits for women who are able to control their fertility. They should be helped to make such choices themselves, as well as in discussion with their partners. The ability to do so by choice and not chance is a principal component of women's physical and mental health and social well being. https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-family-planning-and-the-right-of-a-woman-to-contraception/ This context of reproductive rights is protected by the right to privacy. In the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court applied this core constitutional principle of privacy and liberty to a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy. In Roe, the Court held that the constitutional right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion. The Court made clear that as a basic right to privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the woman’s right is “fundamental,” meaning that governmental attempts to interfere with the right are subject to “strict scrutiny.”. That is why the government has a right to interfere with issues where their could be harm to a child in cases of child abuse, but why the idea of a women making reproductive decisions for herself is different and that is what we mean by Trusting Women.
The author addresses your objection. She says: "If you think pro-life people are wrong to claim that the two deserve the same moral consideration, then that’s the argument you should make." I hope the author, and not only I, will reply to you, but it seems to me her argument goes like this:
The claim that we should trust women who want to kill their ZEF is underlain by some understood moral premise such as "We should always trust women regarding their offspring, because the results will be for the best."
IF that understood moral premise is valid, then we should trust women who want to kill their 3-year-olds.
We all agree that we should NOT trust women who want to kill their 3-year-olds.
Therefore "We should always trust women regarding their offspring, because the results will be for the best" is invalid.
An invalid premise cannot be used to support any claim, so it cannot be used to support "We should trust women who want to kill their ZEF." You are free to try some other argument to support "We should trust women who want to kill their ZEF." For instance, "If you think pro-life people are wrong to claim that the two deserve the same moral consideration, then that’s the argument you should make." But you can no longer use that moral premise. She has reduced that premise to absurdity. Regarding "we should trust women who want to kill their ZEF" and "we should trust women who want to kill their 3-year-old," her argument only assumes that both statements are underlain by the same moral premise. Her argument does not assume that there is any other similarity (moral equivalence or any other similarity) between the two statements.
We should always trust women regarding their offspring, because the results will be for the best." Except that's not what it is understood as. I believe it is a straw man argument of what the initial idea of "Trusting Women" means. When we say we "trust women", it is not necessarily in account of their parenting or relationship to their offspring, but rather trusting them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights. Your initial premise is invalid because we as Pro-Choice advocates would support entities such as social services or foster care to intervene if their was a situation where a child was not being treated properly. Rather the premise of the argument "Trusting Women" is based on the idea that a women should be able to make her own decisions regarding reproductive care. To quote the Prestigious World Medical Association, representing over 11 million world class physicians. The WMA(World Medical Association) : recognizes the benefits for women who are able to control their fertility. They should be helped to make such choices themselves, as well as in discussion with their partners. The ability to do so by choice and not chance is a principal component of women's physical and mental health and social well being. https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-family-planning-and-the-right-of-a-woman-to-contraception/ This context of reproductive rights is protected by the right to privacy. In the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court applied this core constitutional principle of privacy and liberty to a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy. In Roe, the Court held that the constitutional right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion. The Court made clear that as a basic right to privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the woman’s right is “fundamental,” meaning that governmental attempts to interfere with the right are subject to “strict scrutiny.”. That is why the government has a right to interfere with issues where their could be harm to a child in cases of child abuse, but why the idea of a women making reproductive decisions for herself is different and that is what we mean by Trusting Women.
Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY show that very few women regret abortion (which I don't think they do), I could have made the same point by saying "A few women who abort later regret their decision." My point is that not only may trusting women be unjust to the unborn, but in some cases the woman herself will eventually wish we hadn't trusted her. I know women who regret their abortions. See also: https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/03/14/mean-pro-lifers-consistently-seek-tell-truth/ . . . we should not be credulous even when it comes to peer-reviewed medical literature-particularly a culture like the United States which has been so badly damaged by the abortion wars. Consider, for instance, that the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry published a thorough meta-analysis of studies done on abortion and mental health from 1995-2009. In a monstrously large sample of 877,297 participants in 22 different studies, women who had an abortion were 81 percent more likely to have mental health problems. And when women who aborted were compared to a control group of women who delivered the baby, the analysis found the former were 55 percent more likely to experience mental health problems. This data is from the largest quantitative estimate available in the world. It is not surprising that the American Psychological Association would have its finger on the scales . . .
Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY show that very few women regret abortion (which I don't think they do) Except the vast majority of studies do show that women don't regret abortions. • Ninety-five percent of women who have had abortions do not regret the decision to terminate their pregnancies. Published in the multidisciplinary academic journal PLOS ONE. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0128832#sec013 • In a sample of teenagers who obtained pregnancy tests in 1985–1986, those who terminated a pregnancy were no more likely to have psychological problems two years later than were those who had not been pregnant or had gone on to give birth. In fact, they experienced less negative psychological change than the others. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2135377?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents • One week after having an abortion, women in a 2008–2010 study “felt more regret, sadness and anger about the pregnancy than about the abortion, and felt more relief and happiness about the abortion than about the pregnancy.” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4512213 • A study of Dutch women who were interviewed shortly after having abortions in 2010–2011 and followed for an average of nearly three years found no connection between abortion-related variables—preabortion decision difficulty or uncertainty, and history of multiple abortions, to name a few—and later mental disorders. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/psrh.12028 I could recent studies too, but I hope you get the point. For decades it's been a consistent trend that women do not regret abortion. Not that I think this speaks anything to the morality of abortion itself, I think we should at least be intellectually honest.
My point is that not only may trusting women be unjust to the unborn, but in some cases the woman herself will eventually wish we hadn't trusted her. Well the data clearly refutes you in this regard.
I know women who regret their abortions. So? And I know those who didn't. Personal experiences don't really invalidate the large subsets of data we have on this issue.
See also: You cited a religious based publication where the author tried to make a case between abortion and breast cancer something that has been debunked for ages now. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html Second the BJP study he cited actually turned out to have several methodological errors and was ultimately retracted and dismissed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3646711/
It's a ridiculous accusation but I've certainly heard it before. I don't think anybody can be trusted with the choice to kill anyone no matter if they are a man or woman.
Let me ask how many people have embryo funerals? yet a 3 year old would have a funeral, what does that tell you?
To me trying to equate a 3 year old with an embryo is misleading, i see right through it.
I know women that have had abortions and they are not psychopaths, they are normal people living normal lives and neither of these people would kill a 3 year old.
In my endnote, I clarify exactly what I am not saying about women who have abortions. I feel like there is no charitable, reasonable way for someone to read the endnote and conclude that I think women who have had abortions are psychopaths.
Yes i do think Pro-life people are not only wrong by way off in trying say that a 3 year old and a human embroyo deserve the same moral consideration. Any reasonable person who is not a hardcore pro-lifers can see that.
If you were to ask a reasonable person on the street that does not have an agenda either way, which they consider more morally wrong killing a 3 year old or a woman having an abortion of an embryo, i wonder how many would say that both are the same?
The reasons are simple, an embryo is still a human being that has not been born, it is still inside the woman needing gestation, it is not aware of itself due to lack of brain development.
I think it takes a lot more effort to see an embryo the same as a 3 year old. if you look at it in a reasonable way without pre-conceived indoctrination from a pro-life perspective.
Even before i was pro-choice, if someone asked me if i thought an embryo was the same as a 3 year old, i did not.
A reasonable person does not need to be pro-choice or pro-life to see the distinction morally unless of course they have been indoctrinated to see it that way.
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The goal of the comments section on this blog is simply and unambiguously to promote productive dialogue. But there is a major obstacle to that goal: the internet is a terrible place for dialogue. People are much more inclined to be poor at dialogue and impossible to reason with on the internet. Our solution is to ruthlessly and without warning ban anyone that is engaging in poor dialogue activity (as outlined below) for the good of all. The result of this is that some people we ban will not appreciate or agree with it. That is unavoidable. Some of these calls will be a simple matter of our discretion. If you want to debate people in a free-for-all environment where you can say anything you want, go to almost any other part of the internet. If you want to dialogue respectfully, charitably, and reasonably, we hope you’ll find this to be a helpful place to seek truth with us. Examples of bannable bad dialogue activity include (but is not limited to): being snarky, disrespectful, off-topic, libelous, flagrantly uncharitable, defamatory, abusive, harassing, threatening, profane, pornographic, offensive, false, misleading, or which otherwise violates or encourages others to violate my sense of decorum and civility or any law, including intellectual property laws; or (d) “spam,” i.e., an attempt to advertise, solicit, or otherwise promote goods and services. You may, however, post a link to your site or your most recent blog post. Under this post alone, you:
1: Commented without reading it, as evidenced by your first comment that acted like your concerns weren't covered in the piece; (unless you had in fact read it and decided to purposefully attempt to deceive casual readers into thinking that those objections weren't covered in the original post, which would be even worse than commenting without reading it)
2: Accused us of calling aborting women psychopaths, even though that's contradicted by the post itself as well as our entire blog archive;
3: Didn't respond with any common ground to the author warning you and pointing out that the article itself responds to your objections, instead stating that it is not possible for a reasonable person to disagree with you unless they've been "indoctrinated";
4: And in this comment, amp'd up your rhetoric to a veiled threat. "I dare anyone to tell me to my face . . . " that they disagree about abortion.
While it's been pretty rare for us to need to ban people from our comments section due to repeated violations of our comments policy, I don't know if I've ever seen a clearer pattern of willfully violating the policies as you've shown in the last few days. You were warned, and now you're banned.
You can go accuse pro-life advocates of being unreasonable and/or indoctrinated people somewhere else, not in a place where we're trying to encourage gracious and productive dialogue between both sides.
Rachel thank you for the wonderful article. I did want to address this point though. How would you respond to the fact that the Pro-Life movement consistently engages in falsehoods to promote its message?
For example how do you respond to the fact that CPC's consistently lie to women and promote numerous falsehoods?
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2018/03/14/447885/anti-choice-movements-continued-pursuit-politicized-medicine/
Or the fact a congressional study on federally-funded CPCs found that 87 percent of them present false or misleading information to women who come through their doors?
https://www.chsourcebook.com/articles/waxman2.pdf
Or for example how previous research has discovered that at least 40 of the Virginia's 58 CPCs are telling their clients medically inaccurate information about birth control and abortion.
https://thinkprogress.org/virginias-right-wing-crisis-pregnancy-centers-caught-on-tape-lying-to-women-9d9c765f394a/
Or how this is this is a nation wide issue as well
https://www.nirhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cpcreport2010.pdf
Or how a larger examination of 254 CPC websites, published in Contraception in 2014, found that 80 percent provided at least one item of false or misleading information — most commonly, claiming links between abortion and mental health concerns.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25091391
Or even researchers from the University of North Carolina who visited 19 CPCs in the state from March to June of 2011 found that nearly half “provide counseling on abortion and its risks,” and over half provided at least one piece of information that was misleading or false, ranging from the efficacy of condoms to links between abortion and infertility, breast cancer and mental health problems.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22770790
So already we have an issue of dishonesty with CPC's a big part of the Pro-Life movement. But it doesn't stop there. For example let's take a look at the Silent Scream, a popular pro-life film allegedly showing an abortion procedure.
It was debunked several times
By numerous physicians
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/11/opinion/a-false-scream.html
By Harvard
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1985/3/11/manipulative-silent-scream-pbto-the-editors/
and by OB/GYN's from Johns Hopkins and other Reputable Schools
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,964142-1,00.html
And then there is claim that "Abortion causes breast cancer" which has been debunked as well:
https://insights.ovid.com/pubmed?pmid=19461458
I could go on, but I hope you understand my point. I don't say this to be snarky or mean, because you seem to be concerned for the truth as much as I am. But the point I am trying to make is why does your movement need to lie or mislead in so many ways if you truly believe in what you are talking about? I already outlined how the initial premise trust women is not based on the premise you took it to be, so I would like an answer to my point as well and hopefully we can reason together with a more intellectually honest discourse.
Yes I don't understand what happened. I kept them civil and maintained intellectual discourse. I did thoroughly respond to them in my opinion too.
This is my reply to Skeptic_Thinking_Power's "Except the vast majority of studies do show" post:
I had written:
"Many women who abort later regret their decision. In those cases, whom should we have trusted, the woman who aborted or the woman who regretted?"
My point was that everyone experiences changes of heart during their lifetime, so if "what a woman decides" is to be the standard of what justice is, then in seeking justice we are trying to hit a moving target. (This is not the only objection to "Trust women," but it is a point that the article hadn't made, so I made it.)
How many women have to regret in order for me to make that point? This is a serious question. If you think that even numbers like 95% (even if that is correct) discredit my point, then I don't think you've understood my point. 5% would be almost 50,000 women in the US alone every year – way more than enough to make my point.
I could cite plenty more evidence that many women who abort later regret their decision, but if you've understood by now that my point is a very modest one and therefore that huge numbers would not be required to make my point, maybe I don't need to provide further links. "My point is that not only may trusting women be unjust to the unborn, but in some cases the woman herself will eventually wish we hadn't trusted her." Well the data clearly refutes you in this regard.
The fact that 95% of cases don't regret, even if those data are correct, "clearly refutes" the idea that "some cases" do regret? I'm surprised you would say that.
"So? And I know those who didn't."
But no one is denying that there are those who didn't! Those who didn't are irrelevant to the point I'm making. In your "So?," you at least seem to accept the fact that those women I personally know who have regretted really exist. Again, how many women have to regret in order for me to make my point about the moving target?
"You cited a religious based publication where the author tried to make a case between abortion and breast cancer something that has been debunked for ages now."
I have no opinion about the breast cancer claim myself, but please show me where the article you linked to debunks the China and South Asian studies that the author cited.
"Second the BJP study he cited actually turned out to have several methodological errors and was ultimately retracted and dismissed."
The link you provided was to a counter-argument which did not itself say anything about retracted and dismissed, but maybe you have other information about that. Whose word is "dismissed"?
I haven't read the counter-argument, have you? The study's being retracted would not per se mean that we could not learn anything from it. We would need more information about those methodological errors. For instance, if better methods showed that women who had an abortion were only 75 percent more likely to have mental health problems, rather than 81 percent, that might have been reason enough to retract the study, but we would still be left with 75 percent.
Except I don't think you understand the issue here. The overwhelming majority of women do not regret abortions. There isn't a mental health issue in regards to this. As long ago as 1989, mere months after Surgeon General Dr. Everett Koop concluded there was no public health case against abortion, the American Psychological Association (APA) conducted an exhaustive review of the scientifically valid research on the subject and concluded that legal abortion of an unwanted pregnancy “does not pose a psychological hazard for most women.” University of California at San Francisco Professor Nancy Adler testified in Congress on behalf of the APA at that time that “severe negative reactions are rare and are in line with those following other normal life stresses.” She observed that given the millions of U.S. women who had had abortions, “if severe reactions were common, there would be an epidemic of women seeking treatment. There is no evidence of such an epidemic.”
This is something that continues today.
In the last five years alone, at least three more major reports reached similar conclusions. In 2006, the APA revisited the issue and created another task force on mental health and abortion. Its updated and comprehensive report, issued in 2008, reinforced its findings from two decades earlier: “The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion than if they deliver that pregnancy.” Again, how many women have to regret in order for me to make my point about the moving target?
You have to show that the overwhelming majority of those receiveIn 2008, researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published their own analysis in which they concluded that “the highest-quality research available does not support the hypothesis that abortion leads to long-term mental health problems.” They found a “clear trend” by which “the highest quality studies had findings that were mostly neutral, suggesting few, if any, differences between women who had abortions and their respective comparison groups in terms of mental health sequelae.”
Notably, the Hopkins teams also stated that it was the “studies with the most flawed methodology [that] found negative mental health sequelae of abortion.” abortions, have mental health issues. This is not the case.
All the data that you could potentially cite in regards to abortion regret that shows abortion increasing mental health outcomes has shown to be flawed. I have no opinion about the breast cancer claim myself, but please show me where the article you linked to debunks the China and South Asian studies that the author cited.
Sure!
"the study’s methodology and data appear seriously flawed, with the results likely reflecting “recall bias.” This would invalidate the study’s findings. Recall bias is a common hazard in case-control studies, which use questionnaires or interviews to gather historical data from participants. Results can be skewed or inaccurate because people have a tendency to forget past events, or neglect to mention them, especially if they are uncomfortable with sharing the information with researchers. For example, underreporting occurs when people are asked about substance use, criminal offenses, family background, or school performance."
https://rewire[.]news/article/2014/01/09/how-deeply-flawed-studies-on-abortion-and-breast-cancer-become-anti-choice-fodder/
https://www.cancer[.]org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html
https://journals.lww[.]com/md-journal/Fulltext/2018/01190/Induced_abortion_and_breast_cancer__An_updated.23.aspx
I didn't want to get marked for spam, so I decided to just jot down the links with the dot.www part bracketed. The link you provided was to a counter-argument which did not itself say anything about retracted and dismissed, but maybe you have other information about that.
The study itself is no long valid, and has several flawed methodological claims. The methods, results, and conclusions of this meta-analysis have been seriously questioned by several researchers and scholars. Ten letters to the editor were highly critical of the methodology used, with 2 calling for a retraction of this meta-analysis. In addition, the final version of a review by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) stated that“A number of methodological problems with the meta-analysis conducted in the Coleman review have been identified, which brings into question both the results and conclusions.” And, a commentary published in January 2012 , written by authors of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ review concluded that the Coleman meta-analysis (p. 12) “cannot be regarded as a formal systematic review.” Like others , we strongly question the quality of this meta-analysis of 22 papers just as the reliability, validity, and replicability of some of the studies in the meta-analysis have been questioned. For instance, if better methods showed that women who had an abortion were only 75 percent more likely to have mental health problems, rather than 81 percent, that might have been reason enough to retract the study, but we would still be left with 75 percent.
Except that's not how it works because the study was ruled to be invalid. So just decreasing the amount of those who would be affected by mental health issues is intellectually dishonest. Research on the relationship between abortion and subsequent mental health (like all research on topics with important public health implications) should be subjected to great scrutiny before publication during the peer-review process, and even if published, independent reanalysis can reveal (and in this case has revealed) errors that can be fatal. We found here, after publication, that the analyses and methods contained many errors which render the conclusions invalid.
"Sir you need to teach me your ways when it comes to dealing with pro lifers lol."
Quite a contrast to your writing to someone above, "I look forward to further reasoned and civil discourse on this topic."
Anyway, if you will clarify on that website and to me here that you were just joking, we can continue. Or if you will clarify there and here that you were not joking, but that you have thought better of it, we can continue.
I don't feel one way or the other about that. I haven't read any of his posts on that page carefully. He may well have done a good job. But my point when I said –
"nothing in that post of yours or anywhere on that page gave any indication that you were aware of any of his debating abilities other than his ability to say BS'"
– was that you didn't appear to have read any of his posts either, other than the "BS" one. Or at least it wasn't clear that you had. Here on this page you are making it clear that you had read others as well, but there you didn't make it clear that you had read others, and certainly you didn't make it clear that your appreciation related to others, and it's still not clear there.
What you appeared to appreciate / be impressed with was that person's ability to say BS to pro-lifers. You didn't reply to or seem to refer to any of his posts where he presumably made good arguments. Was "lol" intended to refer to those other posts?
I tend to believe you when you say you were trying to express appreciation of his arguments rather than of his rudeness. But if you would edit that post yours to make that clear – simply to make clear what you always intended to express, which I would think that you would want to do of your own initiative, even if I didn't request it – then I would be completely confident that that's what you were trying to do. I think you must surely have been understood, by anyone who read your post, as applauding and aspiring to emulate that person's rudeness.
What follows is Skeptic_Thinking_Power's reply to my "Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY" post: Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY show that very few women regret abortion (which I don't think they do)
Except the vast majority of studies do show that women don't regret abortions.
- Ninety-five percent of women who have had abortions do not regret the decision to terminate their pregnancies. Published in the multidisciplinary academic journal PLOS ONE. http://journals.plos.org/pl...
- In a sample of teenagers who obtained pregnancy tests in 1985–1986, those who terminated a pregnancy were no more likely to have psychological problems two years later than were those who had not been pregnant or had gone on to give birth. In fact, they experienced less negative psychological change than the others.
- One week after having an abortion, women in a 2008–2010 study “felt more regret, sadness and anger about the pregnancy than about the abortion, and felt more relief and happiness about the abortion than about the pregnancy.”
- A study of Dutch women who were interviewed shortly after having abortions in 2010–2011 and followed for an average of nearly three years found no connection between abortion-related variables—preabortion decision difficulty or uncertainty, and history of multiple abortions, to name a few—and later mental disorders. https://onlinelibrary.wiley...
My point is that not only may trusting women be unjust to the unborn, but in some cases the woman herself will eventually wish we hadn't trusted her.https://www.jstor.org/stabl...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley...
I could recent studies too, but I hope you get the point. For decades it's been a consistent trend that women do not regret abortion. Not that I think this speaks anything to the morality of abortion itself, I think we should at least be intellectually honest.
Well the data clearly refutes you in this regard. I know women who regret their abortions.
So? And I know those who didn't. Personal experiences don't really invalidate the large subsets of data we have on this issue. See also:
You cited a religious based publication where the author tried to make a case between abortion and breast cancer something that has been debunked for ages now. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html
Second the BJP study he cited actually turned out to have several methodological errors and was ultimately retracted and dismissed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3646711/
This is my reply to Skeptic_Thinking_Power's "Except that's not what it is understood as" post:
The argument you are making now, if I understand correctly, is "Yes, there must be a moral premise underlying 'Trust women,' but the premise is 'trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights,' and not what Acyutananda (and presumably the author) think it is."
(By the way "ability" suggests that the choices they will make will be GOOD choices, so I think we agree that "because the results will be for the best" is part of the premise. More on this later.)
That argument ("the premise is 'trust them in . . . their Reproductive Rights'") would be a coherent response to the article. But what you wrote originally –
"The main issue with your analogy is that the pro-choice individual doesn't see the fetus as a separate individual person. There is a huge host of differences between a 3 year old and a Zygote/Embryo/Fetus"
– neither argued clearly that our version of the premise was an incorrect version, nor argued "the [actual] premise is 'trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights.'" What you wrote was at best partial evidence in support of "the [actual] premise is . . ." So what you wrote did not seem to be a coherent response to the article. What you wrote seemed to be the response the author had anticipated when she had written "If you think pro-life people are wrong to claim that the two deserve the same moral consideration, then that’s the argument you should make." So I thought you had not understood what the author was trying to do.
Whatever you may have had in mind initially, now you have framed the issue as "What are those who say 'Trust women' trying to say?" Well, those who say "Trust women" are engaged in sloganeering and rhetoric and sound bites, so it may be expecting too much to expect to find a coherent thesis. The NARAL tweet above seems to support your version, but the Cecile Richards tweet better supports something like "We should always trust women regarding their offspring" (my version that I believe is also the author's version), or really something even broader.
However, if as you say those who say "Trust women" don't see the fetus as a separate individual, why do they need to say anything at all? No one in the world is arguing that women should not be trusted about removing their warts. "Trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their warts" – yes, we should trust them, but that would sound ridiculously overblown, wouldn't it? So "Trust them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights" is either ridiculously overblown, or it is not unambiguous about the fetus not being a separate individual.
It seems to me that the slogan brings in the word "trust" as an emotional appeal about respect for women, and as an appeal for a broad kind of trust. If the slogan tries for that meaning, then, though I would not agree, at least the slogan wouldn't sound ridiculously overblown for what it is trying to say.
When I say that I would not agree – personally, I would have to say that I appreciated a comment under the ERI Facebook announcement of this article. The gist of the comment was that any woman who wants to abort shouldn't be trusted.
"Your initial premise is invalid because we as Pro-Choice advocates would support entities such as social services or foster care to intervene if their was a situation where a child was not being treated properly."
As I said, "We all agree that we should NOT trust women who want to kill their 3-year-olds." The invalidity of the premise can be easily demonstrated once the premise is spoken. But with an UNSPOKEN premise, one can get away with a lot of invalidity, so the fact that it is invalid doesn't mean that it is not in play in "Trust women."
"the benefits for women who are able to control their fertility."
Certainly the institution of legal abortion carries benefits for women, but it carries costs also that the WMA may not have thought of (and I don't mean only regret). See http://blog.secularprolife.org/2017/02/a-pro-life-feminist-balance-sheet.html
"This context of reproductive rights is protected by the right to privacy. In the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade. . . . privacy and liberty. . . . right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion. . . . a basic right to privacy. . . . the woman’s right . . . the right . . ."
RvW is clearly concerned about rights, but did it make any attempt to predict (as the "Trust women" slogan predicts) whether the outcome of granting rights would be for the best, that is to say whether the choices women would make would be GOOD choices?
By the way, "There is a huge host of differences between a 3 year old and a Zygote/Embryo/Fetus."
Yes, but we are talking in a certain context, the context of whether it is okay to kill the ZEF. Not all the differences are relevant in that context. For instance the fact that an early embryo can't move much. Stephen Hawking couldn't move much; he was different also; but that doesn't mean it would have been all right to kill him. In the context of whether it is okay to kill the ZEF, the only differences that are relevant are those differences that are relevant to the permissibility of killing ANYONE. And to identify what those differences are, we have to ask in the first place, http://blog.secularprolife.org/2018/02/whats-wrong-with-killing.html
Your reply to my "Even if any studies SUCCESSFULLY" contained a lot of links, but if that had been the reason, I would think their software would not have allowed it to be posted in the first place.
Anyway, now that it's clear that you would like those posts to appear, I'll try including your "Except that's not" post hereunder in this post. Then I will make another post with my reply to your "Except that's not." If that works, then a few hours from now I'll do the same with your "Except the vast majority of studies do show" post.
What follow is Skeptic_Thinking_Power's reply to my "The author addresses your objection" post:
"We should always trust women regarding their offspring, because the results will be for the best."
Except that's not what it is understood as. I believe it is a straw man argument of what the initial idea of "Trusting Women" means. When we say we "trust women", it is not necessarily in account of their parenting or relationship to their offspring, but rather trusting them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights..
Your initial premise is invalid because we as Pro-Choice advocates would support entities such as social services or foster care to intervene if their was a situation where a child was not being treated properly.
Rather the premise of the argument "Trusting Women" is based on the idea that a women should be able to make her own decisions regarding reproductive care.
To quote the Prestigious World Medical Association, representing over 11 million world class physicians. The WMA (World Medical Association): recognizes the benefits for women who are able to control their fertility. They should be helped to make such choices themselves, as well as in discussion with their partners. The ability to do so by choice and not chance is a principal component of women's physical and mental health and social well being.
https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-family-planning-and-the-right-of-a-woman-to-contraception/
This context of reproductive rights is protected by the right to privacy. In the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court applied this core constitutional principle of privacy and liberty to a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy. In Roe, the Court held that the constitutional right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion. The Court made clear that as a basic right to privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the woman’s right is “fundamental,” meaning that governmental attempts to interfere with the right are subject to “strict scrutiny.”. That is why the government has a right to interfere with issues where their could be harm to a child in cases of child abuse, but why the idea of a women making reproductive decisions for herself is different and that is what we mean by Trusting Women.
"If you think pro-life people are wrong to claim that the two deserve the same moral consideration, then that’s the argument you should make."
I hope the author, and not only I, will reply to you, but it seems to me her argument goes like this:
She has reduced that premise to absurdity.
Regarding "we should trust women who want to kill their ZEF" and "we should trust women who want to kill their 3-year-old," her argument only assumes that both statements are underlain by the same moral premise. Her argument does not assume that there is any other similarity (moral equivalence or any other similarity) between the two statements.
Except that's not what it is understood as. I believe it is a straw man argument of what the initial idea of "Trusting Women" means. When we say we "trust women", it is not necessarily in account of their parenting or relationship to their offspring, but rather trusting them in their ability to make choices in regards to their Reproductive Rights.
Your initial premise is invalid because we as Pro-Choice advocates would support entities such as social services or foster care to intervene if their was a situation where a child was not being treated properly.
Rather the premise of the argument "Trusting Women" is based on the idea that a women should be able to make her own decisions regarding reproductive care.
To quote the Prestigious World Medical Association, representing over 11 million world class physicians. The WMA(World Medical Association) : recognizes the benefits for women who are able to control their fertility. They should be helped to make such choices themselves, as well as in discussion with their partners. The ability to do so by choice and not chance is a principal component of women's physical and mental health and social well being.
https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-statement-on-family-planning-and-the-right-of-a-woman-to-contraception/
This context of reproductive rights is protected by the right to privacy. In the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court applied this core constitutional principle of privacy and liberty to a woman’s ability to terminate a pregnancy. In Roe, the Court held that the constitutional right to privacy includes a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion. The Court made clear that as a basic right to privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the woman’s right is “fundamental,” meaning that governmental attempts to interfere with the right are subject to “strict scrutiny.”. That is why the government has a right to interfere with issues where their could be harm to a child in cases of child abuse, but why the idea of a women making reproductive decisions for herself is different and that is what we mean by Trusting Women.
I know women who regret their abortions. See also:
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2017/03/14/mean-pro-lifers-consistently-seek-tell-truth/
. . . we should not be credulous even when it comes to peer-reviewed medical literature-particularly a culture like the United States which has been so badly damaged by the abortion wars.
Consider, for instance, that the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry published a thorough meta-analysis of studies done on abortion and mental health from 1995-2009. In a monstrously large sample of 877,297 participants in 22 different studies, women who had an abortion were 81 percent more likely to have mental health problems.
And when women who aborted were compared to a control group of women who delivered the baby, the analysis found the former were 55 percent more likely to experience mental health problems. This data is from the largest quantitative estimate available in the world.
It is not surprising that the American Psychological Association would have its finger on the scales . . .
Except the vast majority of studies do show that women don't regret abortions.
• Ninety-five percent of women who have had abortions do not regret the decision to terminate their pregnancies. Published in the multidisciplinary academic journal PLOS ONE. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0128832#sec013
• In a sample of teenagers who obtained pregnancy tests in 1985–1986, those who terminated a pregnancy were no more likely to have psychological problems two years later than were those who had not been pregnant or had gone on to give birth. In fact, they experienced less negative psychological change than the others.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2135377?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
• One week after having an abortion, women in a 2008–2010 study “felt more regret, sadness and anger about the pregnancy than about the abortion, and felt more relief and happiness about the abortion than about the pregnancy.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4512213
• A study of Dutch women who were interviewed shortly after having abortions in 2010–2011 and followed for an average of nearly three years found no connection between abortion-related variables—preabortion decision difficulty or uncertainty, and history of multiple abortions, to name a few—and later mental disorders. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/psrh.12028
I could recent studies too, but I hope you get the point. For decades it's been a consistent trend that women do not regret abortion. Not that I think this speaks anything to the morality of abortion itself, I think we should at least be intellectually honest. My point is that not only may trusting women be unjust to the unborn, but in some cases the woman herself will eventually wish we hadn't trusted her.
Well the data clearly refutes you in this regard. I know women who regret their abortions.
So? And I know those who didn't. Personal experiences don't really invalidate the large subsets of data we have on this issue. See also:
You cited a religious based publication where the author tried to make a case between abortion and breast cancer something that has been debunked for ages now. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/medical-treatments/abortion-and-breast-cancer-risk.html
Second the BJP study he cited actually turned out to have several methodological errors and was ultimately retracted and dismissed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3646711/